Read Online Martin Eden by Jack London - Free Book Online Page A

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 Higginbotham’s existence, till that gentleman demanded:—
    â€œSeen 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—subser—vient eyes, smug, and oily, and flattering.
    â€œYes,” 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.
    â€œDon’t 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.
    â€œHe’s been drinkin’,” he proclaimed in a hoarse whisper. “I told you he would.”
    She nodded her head resignedly.
    â€œHis eyes was pretty shiny,” she confessed, “and he didn’t have no collar, though he went away with one. But mebbe he didn’t have more’n a couple of glasses.”
    â€œHe couldn’t stand up straight,” asserted her husband. “I watched him. He couldn’t walk across the floor without stumblin’. You heard’m yourself almost fall down in the hall.”
    â€œI think it was over Alice’s cart,” she said. “He couldn’t see it in the dark.”
    Mr. Higginbotham’s 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.
    â€œI 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.
    â€œHe’s got it in him, I tell you, from his father,” Mr. Higginbotham went on accusingly. “An’ he’ll 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 youth’s first vision of love.
    â€œSettin’ 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, he’s got to get out. Understand! I won’t 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. “That’s what it is, debotchin’—there ain’t no other name for it.”
    Still his wife sighed, shook her head sorrowfully, and stitched on. Mr. Higginbotham resumed the newspaper.
    â€œHas he paid last week’s board?” he shot across the top of the newspaper.
    She nodded, then added, “He still has some money.”
    â€œWhen is he goin’ to sea again?”
    â€œWhen his pay-day’s spent, I guess,” she answered. “He was over to San Francisco yesterday looking for a ship. But he’s got money, yet, an’ he’s particular about the kind of ship he signs for.”
    â€œIt’s not for a deck-swab like him to put on airs,” Mr.