Мартин Иден / Martin Eden (+ аудиоприложение LECTA) - стр. 9

She nodded her head in agreement, and hastened to explain:

“But he is not that type of man. By nature he is sober and serious. He always was that.”

“Three dollars a week,” Martin proclaimed. “And four dollars a week, and a young boy cooking for himself and saving money, working all day and studying all night, just working and never playing, never having a good time, and never learning how to have a good time – of course his thirty thousand came along too late.”

“Do you know,” he added, “I feel sorry for Mr. Butler. He was too young to know better, but he robbed himself of life for the sake of thirty thousand a year. Thirty thousand, a great sum, can’t buy for him right now what ten cents could when he was a kid.”

Such points of view were new to Ruth, and contrary to her own beliefs. But she was twenty-four, conservative by nature, and already crystallized into the cranny of life where she had been born and formed. It was true, his bizarre judgments troubled her, but she ascribed them to his novelty of type and strangeness of living, and they were soon forgotten. Nevertheless, Martin’s strength, and the flashing of eyes and earnestness of face thrilled her and drew her toward him.

“But I have not finished my story,” she said. “He worked, so father says, as no other office boy he ever had. Mr. Butler was always eager to work. He never was late, and he was usually at the office a few minutes before his regular time. And yet he saved his time. Every spare moment was devoted to study. He quickly became a clerk, and he made himself invaluable. Father appreciated him, and he went to law college. He became a lawyer. He is a great man.”

“Yes, he is a great man,” Martin said sincerely.

But it seemed to him that thirty thousand a year was all right, but dyspepsia and inability to be humanly happy robbed the value of this great income.

Martin Eden’s store of money exhausted, and he went to sea. He worked as a sailor for eight months. He earned enough money to stay on land for many weeks, and he did a great deal of studying and reading.

He mastered the grammar and noticed the bad grammar used by his shipmates. He took the dictionary and started to add twenty words a day to his vocabulary. He found that this was not an easy task. He repeated new words in order to accustom his tongue to the language spoken by Ruth.

The captain possessed of a complete Shakespeare, which he never read, and Martin had washed his clothes for him and received the permission to read the precious volumes.

He was touched by the exquisite beauty of the world, and wished that Ruth were there to share it with him. He decided that he would describe to her the South Sea beauty. But soon he understood that he would describe the beauty of the ocean for a wider audience than Ruth. And then came the great idea. He will write! He will write – everything – poetry and prose, fiction and description, and plays like Shakespeare. It is the way to win Ruth. The men of literature were the world’s giants, greater than Mr. Butlers.

To write! This thought was fire in him.

So he entered his old room at Bernard Higginbotham’s and set to work. He did not tell Ruth that he was back. He did not know how long an article he would write, but he counted the words in a article in the SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER. His writing lasted for three days. Also, he learned that first-class papers paid a minimum of ten dollars a column. So one hundred dollars! and he decided that that was better than seafaring.