The Man behind the Legend: Memoirs, Autobiographical Novels & Essays of Jack London. Jack London
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thumb and forefinger she swept the dripping suds first from one arm and then from the other. He put his arms round her massive waist and kissed her wet steamy lips. The tears welled into her eyes—not so much from strength of feeling as from the weakness of chronic overwork. She shoved him away from her, but not before he caught a glimpse of her moist eyes.
“You’ll find breakfast in the oven,” she said hurriedly. “Jim ought to be up now. I had to get up early for the washing. Now get along with you and get out of the house early. It won’t be nice to-day, what of Tom quittin’ an’ nobody but Bernard to drive the wagon.”
Martin went into the kitchen with a sinking heart, the image of her red face and slatternly form eating its way like acid into his brain. She might love him if she only had some time, he concluded. But she was worked to death. Bernard Higginbotham was a brute to work her so hard. But he could not help but feel, on the other hand, that there had not been anything beautiful in that kiss. It was true, it was an unusual kiss. For years she had kissed him only when he returned from voyages or departed on voyages. But this kiss had tasted soapsuds, and the lips, he had noticed, were flabby. There had been no quick, vigorous lip-pressure such as should accompany any kiss. Hers was the kiss of a tired woman who had been tired so long that she had forgotten how to kiss. He remembered her as a girl, before her marriage, when she would dance with the best, all night, after a hard day’s work at the laundry, and think nothing of leaving the dance to go to another day’s hard work. And then he thought of Ruth and the cool sweetness that must reside in her lips as it resided in all about her. Her kiss would be like her hand-shake or the way she looked at one, firm and frank. In imagination he dared to think of her lips on his, and so vividly did he imagine that he went dizzy at the thought and seemed to rift through clouds of rose-petals, filling his brain with their perfume.
In the kitchen he found Jim, the other boarder, eating mush very languidly, with a sick, far-away look in his eyes. Jim was a plumber’s apprentice whose weak chin and hedonistic temperament, coupled with a certain nervous stupidity, promised to take him nowhere in the race for bread and butter.
“Why don’t you eat?” he demanded, as Martin dipped dolefully into the cold, half-cooked oatmeal mush. “Was you drunk again last night?”
Martin shook his head. He was oppressed by the utter squalidness of it all. Ruth Morse seemed farther removed than ever.
“I was,” Jim went on with a boastful, nervous giggle. “I was loaded right to the neck. Oh, she was a daisy. Billy brought me home.”
Martin nodded that he heard,—it was a habit of nature with him to pay heed to whoever talked to him,—and poured a cup of lukewarm coffee.
“Goin’ to the Lotus Club dance to-night?” Jim demanded. “They’re goin’ to have beer, an’ if that Temescal bunch comes, there’ll be a rough-house. I don’t care, though. I’m takin’ my lady friend just the same. Cripes, but I’ve got a taste in my mouth!”
He made a wry face and attempted to wash the taste away with coffee.
“D’ye know Julia?”
Martin shook his head.
“She’s my lady friend,” Jim explained, “and she’s a peach. I’d introduce you to her, only you’d win her. I don’t see what the girls see in you, honest I don’t; but the way you win them away from the fellers is sickenin’.”
“I never got any away from you,” Martin answered uninterestedly. The breakfast had to be got through somehow.
“Yes, you did, too,” the other asserted warmly. “There was Maggie.”
“Never had anything to do with her. Never danced with her except that one night.”
“Yes, an’ that’s just what did it,” Jim cried out. “You just danced with her an’ looked at her, an’ it was all off. Of course you didn’t mean nothin’ by it, but it settled me for keeps. Wouldn’t look at me again. Always askin’ about you. She’d have made fast dates enough with you if you’d wanted to.”
“But I didn’t want to.”
“Wasn’t necessary. I was left at the pole.” Jim looked at him admiringly. “How d’ye do it, anyway, Mart?”
“By not carin’ about ’em,” was the answer.
“You mean makin’ b’lieve you don’t care about them?” Jim queried eagerly.
Martin considered for a moment, then answered, “Perhaps that will do, but with me I guess it’s different. I never have cared—much. If you can put it on, it’s all right, most likely.”
“You should ’a’ ben up at Riley’s barn last night,” Jim announced inconsequently. “A lot of the fellers put on the gloves. There was a peach from West Oakland. They called ’m ‘The Rat.’ Slick as silk. No one could touch ’m. We was all wishin’ you was there. Where was you anyway?”
“Down in Oakland,” Martin replied.
“To the show?”
Martin shoved his plate away and got up.
“Comin’ to the dance to-night?” the other called after him.
“No, I think not,” he answered.
He went downstairs and out into the street, breathing great breaths of air. He had been suffocating in that atmosphere, while the apprentice’s chatter had driven him frantic. There had been times when it was all he could do to refrain from reaching over and mopping Jim’s face in the mush-plate. The more he had chattered, the more remote had Ruth seemed to him. How could he, herding with such cattle, ever become worthy of her? He was appalled at the problem confronting him, weighted down by the incubus of his working-class station. Everything reached out to hold him down—his sister, his sister’s house and family, Jim the apprentice, everybody he knew, every tie of life. Existence did not taste good in his mouth. Up to then he had accepted existence, as he had lived it with all about him, as a good thing. He had never questioned it, except when he read books; but then, they were only books, fairy stories of a fairer and impossible world. But now he had seen that world, possible and real, with a flower of a woman called Ruth in the midmost centre of it; and thenceforth he must know bitter tastes, and longings sharp as pain, and hopelessness that tantalized because it fed on hope.
He had debated between the Berkeley Free Library and the Oakland Free Library, and decided upon the latter because Ruth lived in Oakland. Who could tell?—a library was a most likely place for her, and he might see her there. He did not know the way of libraries, and he wandered through endless rows of fiction, till the delicate-featured French-looking girl who seemed in charge, told him that the reference department was upstairs. He did not know enough to ask the man at the desk, and began his adventures in the philosophy alcove. He had heard of book philosophy, but had not imagined there had been so much written about it. The high, bulging shelves of heavy tomes humbled him and at the same time stimulated him. Here was work for the vigor of his brain. He found books on trigonometry in the mathematics section, and ran the pages, and stared at the meaningless formulas and figures. He could read English, but he saw there an alien speech. Norman and Arthur knew that speech. He had heard them talking it. And they were her brothers. He left the alcove in despair. From every side the books seemed to press upon him and crush him.
He had never dreamed that the fund of human knowledge bulked so big. He was frightened. How could his brain ever master it all? Later, he remembered that there were other men, many men, who had mastered it; and he breathed a great oath, passionately, under his breath, swearing that his brain could do what theirs had done.
And so he wandered on, alternating between depression and elation as he stared at the shelves packed with wisdom. In one miscellaneous section he came upon a “Norrie’s Epitome.” He turned the pages reverently. In a way, it spoke a kindred speech. Both he and it were of the sea. Then he found a “Bowditch” and books by Lecky and Marshall. There it was; he would teach himself navigation. He would quit drinking, work up, and become a captain. Ruth seemed very near to