He staggered along like a drunken man, murmuring fervently aloud: By God! By God!
A policeman on a street corner eyed him suspiciously, then noted his sailor roll.
Where did you get it? the policeman demanded.
Martin Eden came back to earth. His was a fluid organism, swiftly adjustable, capable of flowing into and filling all sorts of nooks and crannies. With the policemans hail he was immediately his ordinary self, grasping the situation clearly.
Its a beaut, aint it? he laughed back. I didnt know I was talkin out loud.
Youll be singing next, was the policemans diagnosis.
No, I wont. Gimme a match an Ill catch the next car home.
He lighted his cigarette, said good night, and went on. Now wouldnt that rattle you? he ejaculated under his breath. That copper thought I was drunk. He smiled to himself and meditated. I guess I was, he added; but I didnt think a womans faced do it.
He caught a Telegraph Avenue car that was going to Berkeley. It was crowded with youths and young men who were singing songs and ever and again barking out college yells. He studied them curiously. They were university boys. They went to the same university that she did, were in her class socially, could know her, could see her every day if they wanted to. He wondered that they did not want to, that they had been out having a good time instead of being with her that evening, talking with her, sitting around her in a worshipful and adoring circle. His thoughts wandered on. He noticed one with narrow-slitted eyes and a loose-lipped mouth. That fellow was vicious, he decided. On shipboard he would be a sneak, a whiner, a tattler. He, Martin Eden, was a better man than that fellow. The thought cheered him. It seemed to draw him nearer to Her. He began comparing himself with the students. He grew conscious of the muscled mechanism of his body and felt confident that he was physically their master. But their heads were filled with knowledge that enabled them to talk her talk, the thought depressed him. But what was a brain for? he demanded passionately. What they had done, he could do. They had been studying about life from the books while he had been busy living life. His brain was just as full of knowledge as theirs, though it was a different kind of knowledge. How many of them could tie a lanyard knot, or take a wheel or a lookout? His life spread out before him in a series of pictures of danger and daring, hardship and toil. He remembered his failures and scrapes in the process of learning. He was that much to the good, anyway. Later on they would have to begin living life and going through the mill as he had gone. Very well. While they were busy with that, he could be learning the other side of life from the books.
As the car crossed the zone of scattered dwellings that separated Oakland from Berkeley, he kept a lookout for a familiar, two-story building along the front of which ran the proud sign, HIGGINBOTHAMS CASH STORE. Martin Eden got off at this corner. He stared up for a moment at the sign. It carried a message to him beyond its mere wording. A personality of smallness and egotism and petty underhandedness seemed to emanate from the letters themselves. Bernard Higginbotham had married his sister, and he knew him well. He let himself in with a latch-key and climbed the stairs to the second floor. Here lived his brother-in-law. The grocery was below. There was a smell of stale vegetables in the air. As he groped his way across the hall he stumbled over a toy-cart, left there by one of his numerous nephews and nieces, and brought up against a door with a resounding bang. The pincher, was his thought; too miserly to burn two cents worth of gas and save his boarders necks.
He fumbled for the knob and entered a lighted room, where sat his sister and Bernard Higginbotham. She was patching a pair of his trousers, while his lean body was distributed over two chairs, his feet dangling in dilapidated carpet-slippers over the edge of the second chair. He glanced across the top of the paper he was reading, showing a pair of dark, insincere, sharp-staring eyes. Martin Eden never looked at him without experiencing a sense of repulsion. What his sister had seen in the man was beyond him. The other affected him as so much vermin, and always aroused in him an impulse to crush him under his foot. Some day Ill beat the face off of him, was the way he often consoled himself for enduring the mans existence. The eyes, weasel-like and cruel, were looking at him complainingly.
Well, Martin demanded. Out with it.
I had that door painted only last week, Mr. Higginbotham half whined, half bullied; and you know what union wages are. You should be more careful.
Martin had intended to reply, but he was struck by the hopelessness of it. He gazed across the monstrous sordidness of soul to a chromo on the wall. It surprised him. He had always liked it, but it seemed that now he was seeing it for the first time. It was cheap, that was what it was, like everything else in this house. His mind went back to the house he had just left, and he saw, first, the paintings, and next, Her, looking at him with melting sweetness as she shook his hand at leaving. He forgot where he was and Bernard Higginbothams existence, till that gentleman demanded:-
Seen a ghost?
Martin came back and looked at the beady eyes, sneering, truculent, cowardly, and there leaped into his vision, as on a screen, the same eyes when their owner was making a sale in the store below subservient eyes, smug, and oily, and flattering.
Yes, Martin answered. I seen a ghost. Good night. Good night, Gertrude.
He started to leave the room, tripping over a loose seam in the slatternly carpet.
Dont bang the door, Mr. Higginbotham cautioned him.
He felt the blood crawl in his veins, but controlled himself and closed the door softly behind him.
Mr. Higginbotham looked at his wife exultantly.
Hes ben drinkin, he proclaimed in a hoarse whisper. I told you he would.
She nodded her head resignedly.
His eyes was pretty shiny, she confessed; and he didnt have no collar, though he went away with one. But mebbe he didnt have moren a couple of glasses.
He couldnt stand up straight, asserted her husband. I watched him. He couldnt walk across the floor without stumblin. You heard m yourself almost fall down in the hall.
I think it was over Alices cart, she said. He couldnt see it in the dark.
Mr. Higginbothams voice and wrath began to rise. All day he effaced himself in the store, reserving for the evening, with his family, the privilege of being himself.
I tell you that precious brother of yours was drunk.
His voice was cold, sharp, and final, his lips stamping the enunciation of each word like the die of a machine. His wife sighed and remained silent. She was a large, stout woman, always dressed slatternly and always tired from the burdens of her flesh, her work, and her husband.
Hes got it in him, I tell you, from his father, Mr. Higginbotham went on accusingly. An hell croak in the gutter the same way. You know that.
She nodded, sighed, and went on stitching. They were agreed that Martin had come home drunk. They did not have it in their souls to know beauty, or they would have known that those shining eyes and that glowing face betokened youths first vision of love.
Settin a fine example to the children, Mr. Higginbotham snorted, suddenly, in the silence for which his wife was responsible and which he resented. Sometimes he almost wished she would oppose him more. If he does it again, hes got to get out. Understand! I wont put up with his shinanigan debotchin innocent children with his boozing. Mr. Higginbotham liked the word, which was a new one in his vocabulary, recently gleaned from a newspaper column. Thats what it is, debotchinthere aint no other name for it.