Chapter XXVI

CHAPTER XXVI

Martin Eden did not go out to hunt for a job in the morning. It
was late afternoon before he came out of his delirium and gazed
with aching eyes about the room. Mary, one of the tribe of Silva,
eight years old, keeping watch, raised a screech at sight of his
returning consciousness. Maria hurried into the room from the
kitchen. She put her work-calloused hand upon his hot forehead and
felt his pulse.

"You lika da eat?" she asked.

He shook his head. Eating was farthest from his desire, and he
wondered that he should ever have been hungry in his life.

"I'm sick, Maria," he said weakly. "What is it? Do you know?"

"Grip," she answered. "Two or three days you alla da right.
Better you no eat now. Bimeby plenty can eat, to-morrow can eat
maybe."

Martin was not used to sickness, and when Maria and her little girl
left him, he essayed to get up and dress. By a supreme exertion of
will, with rearing brain and eyes that ached so that he could not
keep them open, he managed to get out of bed, only to be left
stranded by his senses upon the table. Half an hour later he
managed to regain the bed, where he was content to lie with closed
eyes and analyze his various pains and weaknesses. Maria came in
several times to change the cold cloths on his forehead. Otherwise
she left him in peace, too wise to vex him with chatter. This
moved him to gratitude, and he murmured to himself, "Maria, you
getta da milka ranch, all righta, all right."

Then he remembered his long-buried past of yesterday.

It seemed a life-time since he had received that letter from the
TRANSCONTINENTAL, a life-time since it was all over and done with
and a new page turned. He had shot his bolt, and shot it hard, and
now he was down on his back. If he hadn't starved himself, he
wouldn't have been caught by La Grippe. He had been run down, and
he had not had the strength to throw off the germ of disease which
had invaded his system. This was what resulted.

"What does it profit a man to write a whole library and lose his
own life?" he demanded aloud. "This is no place for me. No more
literature in mine. Me for the counting-house and ledger, the
monthly salary, and the little home with Ruth."

Two days later, having eaten an egg and two slices of toast and
drunk a cup of tea, he asked for his mail, but found his eyes still
hurt too much to permit him to read.

"You read for me, Maria," he said. "Never mind the big, long
letters. Throw them under the table. Read me the small letters."

"No can," was the answer. "Teresa, she go to school, she can."

So Teresa Silva, aged nine, opened his letters and read them to
him. He listened absently to a long dun from the