Martin Eden

Martin found himself pitying him he knew not why, though he was soon to learn.
    “Oh, I’m a lunger,” Brissenden announced, offhand, a little later, having already stated that he came from Arizona. “I’ve been down there a couple of years living on the climate.”
    “Aren’t you afraid to venture it up in this climate?”
    “Afraid?”
    There was no special emphasis of his repetition of Martin’s word. But Martin saw in that ascetic face the advertisement that there was nothing of which it was afraid. The eyes had narrowed till they were eagle-like, and Martin almost caught his breath as he noted the eagle beak with its dilated nostrils, defiant, assertive, aggressive. Magnificent, was what he commented to himself, his blood thrilling at the sight. Aloud, he quoted:-
“‘Under the bludgeoning of Chance
My head is bloody but unbowed.’”
    “You like Henley,” Brissenden said, his expression changing swiftly to large graciousness and tenderness. “Of course, I couldn’t have expected anything else of you. Ah, Henley! A brave soul. He stands out among contemporary rhymesters—magazine rhymesters—as a gladiator stands out in the midst of a band of eunuchs.”
    “You don’t like the magazines,” Martin softly impeached.
    “Do you?” was snarled back at him so savagely as to startle him.
    “I—I write, or, rather, try to write, for the magazines,” Martin faltered.
    “That’s better,” was the mollified rejoinder. “You try to write, but you don’t succeed. I respect and admire your failure. I know what you write. I can see it with half an eye, and there’s one ingredient in it that shuts it out of the magazines. It’s guts, and magazines have no use for that particular commodity. What they want is wish-wash and slush, and God knows they get it, but not from you.”
    “I’m not above hack-work,” Martin contended.
    “On the contrary—” Brissenden paused and ran an insolent eye over Martin’s objective poverty, passing from the well-worn tie and the saw-edged collar to the shiny sleeves of the coat and on to the slight fray of one cuff, winding up and dwelling upon Martin’s sunken cheeks. “On the contrary, hack-work is above you, so far above you that you can never hope to rise to it. Why, man, I could insult you by asking you to have something to eat.”
    Martin felt the heat in his face of the involuntary blood, and Brissenden laughed triumphantly.
    “A full man is not insulted by such an invitation,” he concluded.
    “You are a devil,” Martin cried irritably.
    “Anyway, I didn’t ask you.”
    “You didn’t dare.”
    “Oh, I don’t know about that. I invite you now.”
    Brissenden half rose from his chair as he spoke, as if with the intention of departing to the restaurant forthwith.
    Martin’s fists were tight-clenched, and his blood was drumming in his temples.
    “Bosco! He eats ’em alive! Eats ’em alive!” Brissenden exclaimed, imitating the spieler of a locally famous snake-eater.
    “I could certainly eat you alive,” Martin said, in turn running insolent eyes over the other’s disease-ravaged frame.
    “Only I’m not worthy of it?”
    “On the contrary,” Martin considered, “because the incident is not worthy.” He broke into a laugh, hearty and wholesome. “I confess you made a fool of me, Brissenden. That I am hungry and you are aware of it are only ordinary phenomena, and there’s no disgrace. You see, I laugh at the conventional little moralities of the herd; then you drift by, say a sharp, true word, and immediately I am the slave of the same little moralities.”
    “You were insulted,” Brissenden affirmed.
    “I certainly was, a moment ago. The prejudice of early youth, you know. I learned such things then, and they cheapen what I have since learned. They are the skeletons in my particular closet.”
    “But you’ve got the door shut on them now?”
    “I certainly have.”
    “Sure?”
    “Sure.”
    “Then let’s go and get something to eat.”
    “I’ll go you,” Martin answered, attempting to pay for the current Scotch and soda with the last change from his two dollars and seeing the waiter bullied by Brissenden into putting that change back on the table.
    Martin pocketed it with a grimace, and felt for a moment the kindly weight of Brissenden’s hand upon his shoulder.

CHAPTER XXXII
    Promptly, the next afternoon, Maria was excited by Martin’s second visitor. But she did not lose her head this time, for she seated