Martin Eden: Chapter 45

作者: Jack London

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Author: Jack London

Kreis came to Martin one day - Kreis, of the "real dirt"; and
Martin turned to him with relief, to receive the glowing details of
a scheme sufficiently wild-catty to interest him as a fictionist
rather than an investor. Kreis paused long enough in the midst of
his exposition to tell him that in most of his "Shame of the Sun"
he had been a chump.

"But I didn't come here to spout philosophy," Kreis went on. "What
I want to know is whether or not you will put a thousand dollars in
on this deal?"

"No, I'm not chump enough for that, at any rate," Martin answered.
"But I'll tell you what I will do.  You gave me the greatest night
of my life.  You gave me what money cannot buy.  Now I've got
money, and it means nothing to me.  I'd like to turn over to you a
thousand dollars of what I don't value for what you gave me that
night and which was beyond price.  You need the money.  I've got
more than I need.  You want it.  You came for it.  There's no use
scheming it out of me.  Take it."

Kreis betrayed no surprise. He folded the check away in his
pocket.

"At that rate I'd like the contract of providing you with many such
nights," he said.

"Too late."  Martin shook his head.  "That night was the one night
for me.  I was in paradise.  It's commonplace with you, I know.
But it wasn't to me.  I shall never live at such a pitch again.
I'm done with philosophy.  I want never to hear another word of
it."

"The first dollar I ever made in my life out of my philosophy,"
Kreis remarked, as he paused in the doorway. "And then the market
broke."

Mrs. Morse drove by Martin on the street one day, and smiled and
nodded.  He smiled back and lifted his hat.  The episode did not
affect him.  A month before it might have disgusted him, or made
him curious and set him to speculating about her state of
consciousness at that moment.  But now it was not provocative of a
second thought.  He forgot about it the next moment.  He forgot
about it as he would have forgotten the Central Bank Building or
the City Hall after having walked past them.  Yet his mind was
preternaturally active.  His thoughts went ever around and around
in a circle.  The centre of that circle was "work performed"; it
ate at his brain like a deathless maggot.  He awoke to it in the
morning.  It tormented his dreams at night.  Every affair of life
around him that penetrated through his senses immediately related
itself to "work performed."  He drove along the path of relentless
logic to the conclusion that he was nobody, nothing.  Mart Eden,
the hoodlum, and Mart Eden, the sailor, had been real, had been he;
but Martin Eden! the famous writer, did not exist.  Martin Eden,
the famous writer, was a vapor that had arisen in the mob-mind and
by the mob-mind had been thrust into the corporeal being of Mart
Eden, the hoodlum and sailor.  But it couldn't fool him.  He was
not that sun-myth that the mob was worshipping and sacrificing
dinners to.  He knew better.

He read the magazines about himself, and pored over portraits of
himself published therein until he was unable to associate his
identity with those portraits.  He was the fellow who had lived and
thrilled and loved; who had been easy-going and tolerant of the
frailties of life; who had served in the forecastle, wandered in
strange lands, and led his gang in the old fighting days.  He was
the fellow who had been stunned at first by the thousands of books
in the free library, and who had afterward learned his way among
them and mastered them; he was the fellow who had burned the
midnight oil and bedded with a spur and written books himself.  But
the one thing he was not was that colossal appetite that all the
mob was bent upon feeding.

There were things, however, in the magazines that amused him.  All
the magazines were claiming him.  WARREN'S MONTHLY advertised to
its subscribers that it was always on the quest after new writers,
and that, among others, it had introduced Martin Eden to the
reading public.  THE WHITE MOUSE claimed him; so did THE NORTHERN
REVIEW and MACKINTOSH'S MAGAZINE, until silenced by THE GLOBE,
which pointed triumphantly to its files where the mangled "Sea
Lyrics" lay buried.  YOUTH AND AGE, which had come to life again
after having escaped paying its bills, put in a prior claim, which
nobody but farmers' children ever read.  The TRANSCONTINENTAL made
a dignified and convincing statement of how it first discovered
Martin Eden, which was warmly disputed by THE HORNET, with the
exhibit of "The Peri and the Pearl."  The modest claim of
Singletree, Darnley