But Saturday afternoon, after work was finished and he had taken a bath, the desire to forget overpowered him.
"I guess I’ll go down and see how Joe’s getting on," was the way he put it to himself; and in the same moment he knew that he lied.
But he did not have the energy to consider the lie.
If he had had the energy, he would have refused to consider the lie, because he wanted to forget.
He started for the village slowly and casually, increasing his pace in spite of himself as he neared the saloon.
"I thought you was on the water-wagon," was Joe’s greeting.
Martin did not deign to offer excuses, but called for whiskey, filling his own glass brimming before he passed the bottle.
"Don’t take all night about it," he said roughly.
The other was dawdling with the bottle, and Martin refused to wait for him, tossing the glass off in a gulp and refilling it.
"Now, I can wait for you," he said grimly; "but hurry up."
Joe hurried, and they drank together.
"The work did it, eh?" Joe queried.
Martin refused to discuss the matter.
"It’s fair hell, I know," the other went on, "but I kind of hate to see you come off the wagon, Mart.
Well, here’s how!"
Martin drank on silently, biting out his orders and invitations and awing the barkeeper, an effeminate country youngster with watery blue eyes and hair parted in the middle.
"It’s something scandalous the way they work us poor devils," Joe was remarking.
"If I didn’t bowl up, I’d break loose an’ burn down the shebang.
My bowlin’ up is all that saves ’em, I can tell you that."
But Martin made no answer.
A few more drinks, and in his brain he felt the maggots of intoxication beginning to crawl.
Ah, it was living, the first breath of life he had breathed in three weeks.
His dreams came back to him.
Fancy came out of the darkened room and lured him on, a thing of flaming brightness.
His mirror of vision was silver-clear, a flashing, dazzling palimpsest of imagery.
Wonder and beauty walked with him, hand in hand, and all power was his.
He tried to tell it to Joe, but Joe had visions of his own, infallible schemes whereby he would escape the slavery of laundry-work and become himself the owner of a great steam laundry.
"I tell yeh, Mart, they won’t be no kids workin’ in my laundry-not on yer life.
An’ they won’t be no workin’ a livin’ soul after six P.M. You hear me talk!
They’ll be machinery enough an’ hands enough to do it all in decent workin’ hours, an’ Mart, s’help me, I’ll make yeh superintendent of the shebang-the whole of it, all of it. Now here’s the scheme. I get on the water-wagon an’ save my money for two years-save an’ then-"
But Martin turned away, leaving him to tell it to the barkeeper, until that worthy was called away to furnish drinks to two farmers who, coming in, accepted Martin’s invitation.
Martin dispensed royal largess, inviting everybody up, farm-hands, a stableman, and the gardener’s assistant from the hotel, the barkeeper, and the furtive hobo who slid in like a shadow and like a shadow hovered at the end of the bar.
CHAPTER XVIII
Monday morning, Joe groaned over the first truck load of clothes to the washer.
"I say," he began.
"Don’t talk to me," Martin snarled.
"I’m sorry, Joe," he said at noon, when they knocked off for dinner.
Tears came into the other’s eyes.
"That’s all right, old man," he said. "We’re in hell, an’ we can’t help ourselves.
An’, you know, I kind of like you a whole lot.
That’s what made it-hurt.
I cottoned to you from the first."
Martin shook his hand.
"Let’s quit," Joe suggested. "Let’s chuck it, an’ go hoboin’.
I ain’t never tried it, but it must be dead easy.
An’ nothin’ to do.
Just think of it, nothin’ to do.
I was sick once, typhoid, in the hospital, an’ it was beautiful.
I wish I’d get sick again."
The week dragged on.