"Overdue," after having been declined by a number of magazines, came to rest at the Meredith-Lowell Company.
Martin remembered the five dollars Gertrude had given him, and his resolve to return it to her a hundred times over; so he wrote for an advance on royalties of five hundred dollars.
To his surprise a check for that amount, accompanied by a contract, came by return mail.
He cashed the check into five-dollar gold pieces and telephoned Gertrude that he wanted to see her.
She arrived at the house panting and short of breath from the haste she had made.
Apprehensive of trouble, she had stuffed the few dollars she possessed into her hand-satchel; and so sure was she that disaster had overtaken her brother, that she stumbled forward, sobbing, into his arms, at the same time thrusting the satchel mutely at him.
"I’d have come myself," he said. "But I didn’t want a row with Mr. Higginbotham, and that is what would have surely happened."
"He’ll be all right after a time," she assured him, while she wondered what the trouble was that Martin was in. "But you’d best get a job first an’ steady down.
Bernard does like to see a man at honest work.
That stuff in the newspapers broke ’m all up.
I never saw ’m so mad before."
"I’m not going to get a job," Martin said with a smile. "And you can tell him so from me.
I don’t need a job, and there’s the proof of it."
He emptied the hundred gold pieces into her lap in a glinting, tinkling stream.
"You remember that fiver you gave me the time I didn’t have carfare?
Well, there it is, with ninety-nine brothers of different ages but all of the same size."
If Gertrude had been frightened when she arrived, she was now in a panic of fear.
Her fear was such that it was certitude.
She was not suspicious. She was convinced.
She looked at Martin in horror, and her heavy limbs shrank under the golden stream as though it were burning her.
"It’s yours," he laughed.
She burst into tears, and began to moan,
"My poor boy, my poor boy!"
He was puzzled for a moment.
Then he divined the cause of her agitation and handed her the Meredith-Lowell letter which had accompanied the check.
She stumbled through it, pausing now and again to wipe her eyes, and when she had finished, said:-
"An’ does it mean that you come by the money honestly?"
"More honestly than if I’d won it in a lottery.
I earned it."
Slowly faith came back to her, and she reread the letter carefully.
It took him long to explain to her the nature of the transaction which had put the money into his possession, and longer still to get her to understand that the money was really hers and that he did not need it.
"I’ll put it in the bank for you," she said finally.
"You’ll do nothing of the sort.
It’s yours, to do with as you please, and if you won’t take it, I’ll give it to Maria.
She’ll know what to do with it.
I’d suggest, though, that you hire a servant and take a good long rest."
"I’m goin’ to tell Bernard all about it," she announced, when she was leaving.
Martin winced, then grinned.
"Yes, do," he said.
"And then, maybe, he’ll invite me to dinner again."
"Yes, he will-I’m sure he will!" she exclaimed fervently, as she drew him to her and kissed and hugged him.
CHAPTER XLII
One day Martin became aware that he was lonely.
He was healthy and strong, and had nothing to do.
The cessation from writing and studying, the death of Brissenden, and the estrangement from Ruth had made a big hole in his life; and his life refused to be pinned down to good living in cafйs and the smoking of Egyptian cigarettes.
It was true the South Seas were calling to him, but he had a feeling that the game was not yet played out in the United States.
Two books were soon to be published, and he had more books that might find publication.
Money could be made out of them, and he would wait and take a sackful of it into the South Seas.
He knew a valley and a bay in the Marquesas that he could buy for a thousand Chili dollars.
The valley ran from the horseshoe, land-locked bay to the tops of the dizzy, cloud-capped peaks and contained perhaps ten thousand acres.