Kitabı oku: «Мартин Иден / Martin Eden», sayfa 2

“You have such a scar on your neck, Mr. Eden,” the girl was saying. “How did it happen?”

“A Mexican with a knife, miss,” he answered. “It was just a fight.”

“Oh,” the girl said, in a faint, far voice, and he noticed the shock in her sensitive face.

He felt a shock himself. There was a brief pause in the conversation.

“This man Swineburne,⁹” he began,

“Who?”

“Swineburne,” he repeated, with the same mispronunciation. “The poet.”

“Swinburne,” she corrected.

“Yes, that’s the chap,” he stammered, his cheeks hot again. “How long since he died?”

“Why, I haven’t heard that he was dead.” She looked at him curiously. “Where did you meet him?”

“I never saw him,” was the reply. “But I read some of his poetry out of that book there on the table just before you come in. How do you like his poetry?”

And she began to talk quickly and easily upon the subject that he had suggested. Here was intellectual life, he thought, and here was beauty. He forgot himself and stared at her with hungry eyes. The books were true. There were such women in the world. She was one of them.

“Now Longfellow¹⁰ – ” she was saying.

“Yes, I’ve read it,” he was glad to say so. “‘The Psalm of Life,’ ‘Excelsior,¹¹’ and… I guess that’s all.”

She nodded her head and smiled, and he felt, somehow, that her smile was tolerant, pitifully tolerant.

“Excuse me, miss. I guess that I don’t know much about such things. But I will know it…”

It sounded like a threat. His voice was determined, his eyes were flashing.

“I think you will know it,” she finished with a laugh. “You are very strong.”

“Yes, I’m not an invalid,” he said. “But most of what you were saying I can’t digest, you see. I like books and poetry, but I’ve never thought about them. That’s why I can’t talk about them. How did you learn all this?”

“By going to school, and by studying,” she answered.

“I went to school when I was a kid,” he began to object.

“Yes; but I mean high school, and lectures, and the university.”

“You’ve gone to the university?” he demanded in frank amazement.

“I’m going there now.”

At the same moment a woman was entering the room. The girl left her chair and came to the woman. They kissed each other. That must be her mother, he thought. She was a tall, blond woman, slender, and stately, and beautiful.