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Elisha Cuthbert Photos Books: Martin Eden The Pickwick Papers The Sea Wolf |
were fit but which he feared he could not pronounce,
rejecting other words he knew would not be understood or would be raw and
harsh. But all the time he was oppressed by the consciousness that this
carefulness of diction was making a booby of him, preventing him from
expressing what he had in him. Also, his love of freedom chafed against
the restriction in much the same way his neck chafed against the starched
fetter of a collar. Besides, he was confident that he could not keep it
up. He was by nature powerful of thought and sensibility, and the
creative spirit was restive and urgent. He was swiftly mastered by the
concept or sensation in him that struggled in birth-throes to receive
expression and form, and then he forgot himself and where he was, and the
old words--the tools of speech he knew--slipped out.
Once, he declined something from the servant who interrupted and pestered
at his shoulder, and he said, shortly and emphatically, "Pew!"
On the instant those at the table were keyed up and expectant, the
servant was smugly pleased, and he was wallowing in mortification. But
he recovered himself quickly.
"Its the Kanaka for finish," he explained, "and it just come out
naturally. Its spelt p-a-u."
He caught her curious and speculative eyes fixed on his hands, and, being
in explanatory mood, he said:-
"I just come down the Coast on one of the Pacific mail steamers. She was
behind time, an around the Puget Sound ports we worked like niggers,
storing cargo-mixed freight, if you know what that means. Thats how the
skin got knocked off."
"Oh, it wasnt that," she hastened to explain, in turn. "Your hands
seemed too small for your body."
His cheeks were hot. He took it as an exposure of another of his
deficiencies.
"Yes," he said depreciatingly. "They aint big enough to stand the
strain. I can hit like a mule with my arms and shoulders. They are too
strong, an when I smash a man on the jaw the hands get smashed, too."
He was not happy at what he had said. He was filled with disgust at
himself. He had loosed the guard upon his tongue and talked about things
that were not nice.
"It was brave of you to help Arthur the way you did--and you a stranger,"
she said tactfully, aware of his discomfiture though not of the reason
for it.
He, in turn, realized what she had done, and in the consequent warm surge
of gratefulness that overwhelmed him forgot his loose-worded tongue.
"It wasnt nothin at all," he said. "Any guy ud do it for another.
That bunch of hoodlums was lookin for trouble, an Arthur wasnt
botherin em none. They butted in on m, an then I butted in on them
an poked a few. Thats where some of the skin off my hands went, along
with some of the teeth of the gang. I wouldnt a missed it for
anything. When I seen--"
He paused, open-mouthed, on the verge of the pit of his own depravity and
utter worthlessness to breathe the same air she did. And while Arthur
took up the tale, for the twentieth time, of his adventure with the
drunken hoodlums on the ferry-boat and of how Martin Eden had rushed in
and rescued him, that individual, with frowning brows, meditated upon the
fool he had made of himself, and wrestled more determinedly with the
problem of how he should conduct himself toward these people. He
certainly had not succeeded so far. He wasnt of their tribe, and he
couldnt talk their lingo, was the way he put it to himself. He couldnt
fake being their kind. The masquerade would fail, and besides,
masquerade was foreign to his nature. There was no room in him for sham
or artifice. Whatever happened, he must be real. He couldnt talk their
talk just yet, though in time he would. Upon that he was resolved. But
in the meantime, talk he must, and it must be his own talk, toned down,
of course, so as to be comprehensible to them and so as not to shook them
too much. And furthermore, he wouldnt claim, not even by tacit
acceptance, to be familiar with anything that was unfamiliar. In
pursuance of this decision, when the two brothers, talking university
shop, had used Martin Eden page 8 Martin Eden page 10 |