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Home -> Jack London -> Martin Eden -> Chapter 17

Martin Eden - Chapter 17

1. Chapter 1

2. Chapter 2

3. Chapter 3

4. Chapter 4

5. Chapter 5

6. Chapter 6

7. Chapter 7

8. Chapter 8

9. Chapter 9

10. Chapter 10

11. Chapter 11

12. Chapter 12

13. Chapter 13

14. Chapter 14

15. Chapter 15

16. Chapter 16

17. Chapter 17

18. Chapter 18

19. Chapter 19

20. Chapter 20

21. Chapter 21

22. Chapter 22

23. Chapter 23

24. Chapter 24

25. Chapter 25

26. Chapter 26

27. Chapter 27

28. Chapter 28

29. Chapter 29

30. Chapter 30

31. Chapter 31

32. Chapter 32

33. Chapter 33

34. Chapter 34

35. Chapter 35

36. Chapter 36

37. Chapter 37

38. Chapter 38

39. Chapter 39

40. Chapter 40

41. Chapter 41

42. Chapter 42

43. Chapter 43

44. Chapter 44

45. Chapter 45

46. Chapter 46







Martin learned to do many things. In the course of the first week,
in one afternoon, he and Joe accounted for the two hundred white
shirts. Joe ran the tiler, a machine wherein a hot iron was hooked
on a steel string which furnished the pressure. By this means he
ironed the yoke, wristbands, and neckband, setting the latter at
right angles to the shirt, and put the glossy finish on the bosom.
As fast as he finished them, he flung the shirts on a rack between
him and Martin, who caught them up and "backed" them. This task
consisted of ironing all the unstarched portions of the shirts.

It was exhausting work, carried on, hour after hour, at top speed.
Out on the broad verandas of the hotel, men and women, in cool
white, sipped iced drinks and kept their circulation down. But in
the laundry the air was sizzling. The huge stove roared red hot
and white hot, while the irons, moving over the damp cloth, sent up
clouds of steam. The heat of these irons was different from that
used by housewives. An iron that stood the ordinary test of a wet
finger was too cold for Joe and Martin, and such test was useless.
They went wholly by holding the irons close to their cheeks,
gauging the heat by some secret mental process that Martin admired
but could not understand. When the fresh irons proved too hot,
they hooked them on iron rods and dipped them into cold water.
This again required a precise and subtle judgment. A fraction of a
second too long in the water and the fine and silken edge of the
proper heat was lost, and Martin found time to marvel at the
accuracy he developed - an automatic accuracy, founded upon
criteria that were machine-like and unerring.

But there was little time in which to marvel. All Martin's
consciousness was concentrated in the work. Ceaselessly active,
head and hand, an intelligent machine, all that constituted him a
man was devoted to furnishing that intelligence. There was no room
in his brain for the universe and its mighty problems. All the
broad and spacious corridors of his mind were closed and
hermetically sealed. The echoing chamber of his soul was a narrow
room, a conning tower, whence were directed his arm and shoulder
muscles, his ten nimble fingers, and the swift-moving iron along
its steaming path in broad, sweeping strokes, just so many strokes
and no more, just so far with each stroke and not a fraction of an
inch farther, rushing along interminable sleeves, sides, backs, and
tails, and tossing the finished shirts, without rumpling, upon the
receiving frame. And even as his hurrying soul tossed, it was
reaching for another shirt. This went on, hour after hour, while
outside all the world swooned under the overhead California sun.
But there was no swooning in that superheated room. The cool
guests on the verandas needed clean linen.

The sweat poured from Martin. He drank enormous quantities of
water, but so great was the heat of the day and of his exertions,
that the water sluiced through the interstices of his flesh and out
at all his pores. Always, at sea, except at rare intervals, the
work he performed had given him ample opportunity to commune with
himself. The master of the ship had been lord of Martin's time;
but here the manager of the hotel was lord of Martin's thoughts as
well. He had no thoughts save for the nerve-racking, body-
destroying toil. Outside of that it was impossible to think. He
did not know that he loved Ruth. She did not even exist, for his
driven soul had no time to remember her. It was only when he
crawled to bed at night, or to breakfast in the morning, that she
asserted herself to him in fleeting memories.

"This is hell, ain't it?" Joe remarked once.

Martin nodded, but felt a rasp of irritation. The statement had
been obvious and unnecessary. They did not talk while they worked.
Conversation threw them out of their stride, as it did this time,
compelling Martin to miss a stroke of his iron and to make two
extra motions before he caught his stride again.

On Friday morning the washer ran. Twice a week they had to put
through hotel linen, - the sheets, pillow-slips, spreads, table-
cloths, and napkins. This finished, they buckled down to "fancy
starch." It was slow work, fastidious and delicate, and Martin did
not learn it so readily. Besides, he could not take chances.
Mistakes were disastrous.

"See that," Joe said, holding up a filmy corset-cover that he could
have crumpled from view in one hand. "Scorch that an' it's twenty
dollars out of your wages."

So Martin did not scorch that, and eased down on his muscular
tension, though nervous tension rose higher than ever, and he
listened sympathetically to the other's blasphemies as he toiled
and suffered over the beautiful things that women wear when they do
not have to do their own laundrying. "Fancy starch" was Martin's
nightmare, and it was Joe's, too. It was "fancy starch" that
robbed them of their hard-won minutes. They toiled at it all day.
At seven in the evening they broke off to run the hotel linen
through the mangle. At ten o'clock, while the hotel guests slept,
the two laundrymen sweated on at "fancy starch" till midnight, till
one, till two. At half-past two they knocked off.

Saturday morning it was "fancy starch," and odds and ends, and at
three in the afternoon the week's work was done.

"You ain't a-goin' to ride them seventy miles into Oakland on top
of this?" Joe demanded, as they sat on the stairs and took a
triumphant smoke.

"Got to," was the answer.

"What are you goin' for? - a girl?"

"No; to save two and a half on the railroad ticket. I want to
renew some books at the library."

"Why don't you send 'em down an' up by express? That'll cost only
a quarter each way."

Martin considered it.

"An' take a rest to-morrow," the other urged. "You need it. I
know I do. I'm plumb tuckered out."

He looked it. Indomitable, never resting, fighting for seconds and
minutes all week, circumventing delays and crushing down obstacles,
a fount of resistless energy, a high-driven human motor, a demon
for work, now that he had accomplished the week's task he was in a
state of collapse. He was worn and haggard, and his handsome face
drooped in lean exhaustion. He pulled his cigarette spiritlessly,
and his voice was peculiarly dead and monotonous. All the snap and
fire had gone out of him. His triumph seemed a sorry one.

"An' next week we got to do it all over again," he said sadly.
"An' what's the good of it all, hey? Sometimes I wish I was a
hobo. They don't work, an' they get their livin'. Gee! I wish I
had a glass of beer; but I can't get up the gumption to go down to
the village an' get it. You'll stay over, an' send your books dawn
by express, or else you're a damn fool."

"But what can I do here all day Sunday?" Martin asked.

"Rest. You don't know how tired you are. Why, I'm that tired
Sunday I can't even read the papers. I was sick once - typhoid.
In the hospital two months an' a half. Didn't do a tap of work all
that time. It was beautiful."

"It was beautiful," he repeated dreamily, a minute later.

Martin took a bath, after which he found that the head laundryman
had disappeared. Most likely he had gone for a glass of beer
Martin decided, but the half-mile walk down to the village to find
out seemed a long journey to him. He lay on his bed with his shoes
off, trying to make up his mind. He did not reach out for a book.
He was too tired to feel sleepy, and he lay, scarcely thinking, in
a semi-stupor of weariness, until it was time for supper. Joe did
not appear for that function, and when Martin heard the gardener
remark that most likely he was ripping the slats off the bar,
Martin understood. He went to bed immediately afterward, and in
the morning decided that he was greatly rested. Joe being still
absent, Martin procured a Sunday paper and lay down in a shady nook
under the trees. The morning passed, he knew not how. He did not
sleep, nobody disturbed him, and he did not finish the paper. He
came back to it in the afternoon, after dinner, and fell asleep
over it.

So passed Sunday, and Monday morning he was hard at work, sorting
clothes, while Joe, a towel bound tightly around his head, with
groans and blasphemies, was running the washer and mixing soft-
soap.

"I simply can't help it," he explained. "I got to drink when
Saturday night comes around."

Another week passed, a great battle that continued under the
electric lights each night and that culminated on Saturday
afternoon at three o'clock, when Joe tasted his moment of wilted
triumph and then drifted down to the village to forget. Martin's
Sunday was the same as before. He slept in the shade of the trees,
toiled aimlessly through the newspaper, and spent long hours lying
on his back, doing nothing, thinking nothing. He was too dazed to
think, though he was aware that he did not like himself. He was
self-repelled, as though he had undergone some degradation or was
intrinsically foul. All that was god-like in him was blotted out.
The spur of ambition was blunted; he had no vitality with which to
feel the prod of it. He was dead. His soul seemed dead. He was a
beast, a work-beast. He saw no beauty in the sunshine sifting down
through the green leaves, nor did the azure vault of the sky
whisper as of old and hint of cosmic vastness and secrets trembling
to disclosure. Life was intolerably dull and stupid, and its taste
was bad in his mouth. A black screen was drawn across his mirror
of inner vision, and fancy lay in a darkened sick-room where
entered no ray of light. He envied Joe, down in the village,
rampant, tearing the slats off the bar, his brain gnawing with
maggots, exulting in maudlin ways over maudlin things,
fantastically and gloriously drunk and forgetful of Monday morning
and the week of deadening toil to come.

A third week went by, and Martin loathed himself, and loathed life.
He was oppressed by a sense of failure. There was reason for the
editors refusing his stuff. He could see that clearly now, and
laugh at himself and the dreams he had dreamed. Ruth returned his
"Sea Lyrics" by mail. He read her letter apathetically. She did
her best to say how much she liked them and that they were
beautiful. But she could not lie, and she could not disguise the
truth from herself. She knew they were failures, and he read her
disapproval in every perfunctory and unenthusiastic line of her
letter. And she was right. He was firmly convinced of it as he
read the poems over. Beauty and wonder had departed from him, and
as he read the poems he caught himself puzzling as to what he had
had in mind when he wrote them. His audacities of phrase struck
him as grotesque, his felicities of expression were monstrosities,
and everything was absurd, unreal, and impossible. He would have
burned the "Sea Lyrics" on the spot, had his will been strong
enough to set them aflame. There was the engine-room, but the
exertion of carrying them to the furnace was not worth while. All
his exertion was used in washing other persons' clothes. He did
not have any left for private affairs.

He resolved that when Sunday came he would pull himself together
and answer Ruth's letter. But Saturday afternoon, after work was
finished and he had taken a bath, the desire to forget overpowered
him. "I guess I'll go down and see how Joe's getting on," was the
way he put it to himself; and in the same moment he knew that he
lied. But he did not have the energy to consider the lie. If he
had had the energy, he would have refused to consider the lie,
because he wanted to forget. He started for the village slowly and
casually, increasing his pace in spite of himself as he neared the
saloon.

"I thought you was on the water-wagon," was Joe's greeting.

Martin did not deign to offer excuses, but called for whiskey,
filling his own glass brimming before he passed the bottle.

"Don't take all night about it," he said roughly.

The other was dawdling with the bottle, and Martin refused to wait
for him, tossing the glass off in a gulp and refilling it.

"Now, I can wait for you," he said grimly; "but hurry up."

Joe hurried, and they drank together.

"The work did it, eh?" Joe queried.

Martin refused to discuss the matter.

"It's fair hell, I know," the other went on, "but I kind of hate to
see you come off the wagon, Mart. Well, here's how!"

Martin drank on silently, biting out his orders and invitations and
awing the barkeeper, an effeminate country youngster with watery
blue eyes and hair parted in the middle.

"It's something scandalous the way they work us poor devils," Joe
was remarking. "If I didn't bowl up, I'd break loose an' burn down
the shebang. My bowlin' up is all that saves 'em, I can tell you
that."

But Martin made no answer. A few more drinks, and in his brain he
felt the maggots of intoxication beginning to crawl. Ah, it was
living, the first breath of life he had breathed in three weeks.
His dreams came back to him. Fancy came out of the darkened room
and lured him on, a thing of flaming brightness. His mirror of
vision was silver-clear, a flashing, dazzling palimpsest of
imagery. Wonder and beauty walked with him, hand in hand, and all
power was his. He tried to tell it to Joe, but Joe had visions of
his own, infallible schemes whereby he would escape the slavery of
laundry-work and become himself the owner of a great steam laundry.

"I tell yeh, Mart, they won't be no kids workin' in my laundry -
not on yer life. An' they won't be no workin' a livin' soul after
six P.M. You hear me talk! They'll be machinery enough an' hands
enough to do it all in decent workin' hours, an' Mart, s'help me,
I'll make yeh superintendent of the shebang - the whole of it, all
of it. Now here's the scheme. I get on the water-wagon an' save
my money for two years - save an' then - "

But Martin turned away, leaving him to tell it to the barkeeper,
until that worthy was called away to furnish drinks to two farmers
who, coming in, accepted Martin's invitation. Martin dispensed
royal largess, inviting everybody up, farm-hands, a stableman, and
the gardener's assistant from the hotel, the barkeeper, and the
furtive hobo who slid in like a shadow and like a shadow hovered at
the end of the bar.




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