LITMIR.BIZ

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he said sadly. “And what’s the good of it all, hey? Sometimes I wish I was a hobo. They don’t work, and they get their living. You’ll stay over for the Sunday.”

      “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 and a half. Didn’t 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 Joe had disappeared. Most likely he had gone for a glass of beer. Martin lay on his bed with his shoes off, trying to make up his mind. 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, and when the gardener remarked that most likely he was drinking in the bar, Martin understood. He went to bed immediately afterward, and in the morning decided that he was greatly rested. Joe was still absent. The morning passed, Martin did not know 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, with a towel around his head, was running the washer and mixing soft-soap.

      “I simply can’t stop drinking,” he explained. “I must drink when Saturday night comes around.”

      Another week passed, Martin’s Sunday was the same as before. He slept in the shade of the trees, 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 had no vitality. He was dead. His soul seemed dead. He was a beast, a work-beast. He saw no beauty in the sunshine, life was intolerably dull and stupid, and its taste was bad in his mouth. He envied Joe, who was drinking and enjoying cheap wine, and not thinking about the toil.

      A third week went by, and Martin loathed himself, and loathed life. There was reason for the editors to refuse his stories. 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. She knew they were failures, and he read her disapproval in every line of her letter. And she was right. Beauty and wonder had departed from him.

      When Sunday came he went to the saloon.

      “I thought you didn’t drink at all,” was Joe’s greeting.

      Martin called for whiskey, and took the bottle.

      “The work did it, eh?” Joe queried.

      Martin refused to discuss the matter. He was drinking silently. A few more drinks, and he began to forget about the toil.

      Joe had a dream – to have his own laundry.

      “I tell yeh, Mart, there won’t be any kids in my laundry – no. And there won’t be any work after six P.M. I say! I’ll make you superintendent. Now here’s the scheme – “

      But Martin turned away, leaving him to tell it to the barkeeper.

      Chapter 17

      On Monday morning, Joe groaned and groaned.

      “I say,” he began.

      “Don’t talk to me,” Martin snarled.

      “I’m sorry, Joe,” he said at noon, when they went for dinner.

      Tears came into the other’s eyes.

      “That’s all right, old man,” he said. “We’re in hell, and we can’t help ourselves. But, you know, I like you.”

      Martin shook his hand.

      “Let’s quit,” Joe suggested. “Let’s go hoboing. I have never tried it, but it must be easy. And nothing to do. Just think of it, nothing to do. I was sick once, typhoid, in the hospital, and it was beautiful. I want to be sick again.”

      The week dragged on. The hotel was full. They worked late each night, and even got in a half hour’s work before breakfast. Martin no longer took his cold baths.

      It was only at rare moments that Martin was able to think. The house of thought was closed. He was a shadow. Joe was right. They were both shadows. Was it a dream? Saturday came, as usual.

      “I’ll go down and get a glass of beer,” Joe said, in the queer, monotonous tones that marked his week-end collapse.

      A fifth week passed, and a sixth, during which he lived and toiled as a machine. At the end of the seventh week, too weak to resist, Martin went down to the village with Joe and drowned life and found life until Monday morning. The drink was an effect, not a cause. The whiskey was wise. It knew secrets of life.

      Martin called for paper and pencil.

      “A telegram, Joe,” he said. “Read it.”

      Joe read it with a drunken, quizzical leer. But what he read seemed to sober him.

      “You are going to leave me, Mart?” he queried hopelessly.

      Martin nodded, and called the boy to take the message to the telegraph office.

      “Wait,” Joe muttered. “Let me think.”

      Martin’s arm around him and supporting him, while he thought.

      “Write that two laundrymen are leaving,” he said abruptly. “Here, write so.”

      Martin looked at him for a moment, then cried:

      “By God, I think you’re right! Better a hobo, man, than a beast of toil.”

      “I was in hospital, once,” Joe remembered again. “It was beautiful. Typhoid – did I tell you?”

      While Martin changed the telegram to “two laundrymen,” Joe went on:

      “I never wanted to drink when I was in hospital. Funny, isn’t it? But when I work like a slave all week, I must drink. Here, let me pay half of that telegram. Come on, everybody, drink!” Joe called.

      Martin was standing, ready to go. They shook hands, and Joe said:

      “I’m going to see you again, Mart, before you and me die. I feel it in my bones. Good-bye, Mart, and be good. I like you, you know.”

      Chapter 18

      Ruth and her family were home again, and Martin, returned to Oakland, saw her very often. She gained her degree, she was doing no more studying. Martin was very tired of writing. This gave them time for each other that they had never had before.

      At first, Martin had done nothing but rest. He had slept much, and spent long hours thinking and doing nothing. The first signs of reawakening came when he discovered languid interest in the daily paper. Then he began to read again – light novels, and poetry; and after several days his splendid body and health made new vitality.

      Ruth showed her disappointment when he announced that he was going to sea for another voyage.

      “Why do you want to do that?” she asked.

      “Money,” was the answer. “For my next attack on the editors. Money is the sinews of war, in my case – money and patience.”

      “But if all you wanted was money, why didn’t you stay in the laundry?”

      “Because the laundry was making a beast of me. Too much work of that sort drives to drink.”

      She stared at him with horror in her eyes.

      “Do you mean – ?”

      “Yes,” he answered. “Just that. Several times.”

      She drew away from him.

      “No man that I have ever known did that – ever did that.”

      “Then they never worked in the laundry at Shelly Hot Springs,” he laughed bitterly. “I’m going to sea one more voyage. It will be my last,

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