章节正文
Smoke Bellew
by Jack London
Contents
THE TASTE OF THE MEAT
THE MEAT
THE STAMPEDE TO SQUAW CREEK
SHORTY DREAMS
THE MAN ON THE OTHER BANK
THE RACE FOR NUMBER ONE
THE TASTE OF THE MEAT.
I.
In the beginning he was Christopher Bellew. By the time he was at
college he had become Chris Bellew. Later, in the Bohemian crowd of
San Francisco, he was called Kit Bellew. And in the end he was
known by no other name than Smoke Bellew. And this history of the
evolution of his name is the history of his evolution. Nor would it
have happened had he not had a fond mother and an iron uncle, and
had he not received a letter from Gillet Bellamy.
"I have just seen a copy of the Billow," Gillet wrote from Paris.
"Of course O'Hara will succeed with it. But he's missing some
plays." (Here followed details in the improvement of the budding
society weekly.) "Go down and see him. Let him think they're your
own suggestions. Don't let him know they're from me. If he does,
he'll make me Paris correspondent, which I can't afford, because I'm
getting real money for my stuff from the big magazines. Above all,
don't forget to make him fire that dub who's doing the musical and
art criticism. Another thing, San Francisco has always had a
literature of her own. But she hasn't any now. Tell him to kick
around and get some gink to turn out a live serial, and to put into
it the real romance and glamour and colour of San Francisco."
And down to the office of the Billow went Kit Bellew faithfully to
instruct. O'Hara listened. O'Hara debated. O'Hara agreed. O'Hara
fired the dub who wrote criticism. Further, O'Hara had a way with
him--the very way that was feared by Gillet in distant Paris. When
O'Hara wanted anything, no friend could deny him. He was sweetly
and compellingly irresistible. Before Kit Bellew could escape from
the office he had become an associate editor, had agreed to write
weeklycolumns of criticism till some decent pen was found, and had
pledged himself to write a weekly instalment of ten thousand words
on the San Francisco serial--and all this without pay. The Billow
wasn't paying yet, O'Hara explained; and just as convincingly had he
exposited that there was only one man in San Francisco capable of
writing the serial, and that man Kit Bellew.
"Oh, Lord, I'm the gink!" Kit had groaned to himself afterwards on
the narrow stairway.
And thereat had begun his servitude to O'Hara and the insatiable
columns of the Billow. Week after week he held down an office
chair, stood off creditors, wrangled with printers, and turned out
twenty-five thousand words of all sorts weekly. Nor did his labours
lighten. The Billow was ambitious. It went in for illustration.
The processes were expensive. It never had any money to pay Kit
Bellew, and by the same token it was unable to pay for any additions
to the office staff.
"This is what comes of being a good fellow," Kit grumbled one day.
"Thank God for good fellows then," O'Hara cried, with tears in his
eyes as he gripped Kit's hand. "You're all that's saved me, Kit.
But for you I'd have gone bust. Just a little longer, old man, and
things will be easier."
"Never," was Kit's plaint. "I see my fate clearly. I shall be here
always."
A little later he thought he saw his way out. Watching his chance,
in O'Hara's presence, he fell over a chair. A few minutes
afterwards he bumped into the corner of the desk, and, with fumbling
fingers, capsized a paste pot.
"Out late?" O'Hara queried.
Kit brushed his eyes with his hands and peered about him anxiously
before replying.
"No, it's not that. It's my eyes. They seem to be going back on
me, that's all."
For several days he continued to fall over and bump into the office
furniture. But O'Hara's heart was not softened.
"I tell you what, Kit," he said one day, "you've got to see an
oculist. There's Doctor Hassdapple. He's a crackerjack. And it
won't cost you anything. We can get it for advertizing. I'll see
him myself."
And, true to his word, he dispatched Kit to the oculist.
"There's nothing the matter with your eyes," was the doctor's
verdict, after a lengthy examination. "In fact, your eyes are
magnificent--a pair in a million."
"Don't tell O'Hara," Kit pleaded. "And give me a pair of black
glasses."
The result of this was that O'Hara sympathized and talked glowingly
of the time when the Billow would be on its feet.
Luckily for Kit Bellew, he had his own income. Small it was,
compared with some, yet it was large enough to enable him to belong
to several clubs and maintain a studio in the Latin Quarter. In
point of fact, since his associate editorship, his expenses had
decreased prodigiously. He had no time to spend money. He never
saw the studio any more, nor entertained the local Bohemians with
his famous chafing-dish suppers. Yet he was always broke, for the
Billow, in perennialdistress, absorbed his cash as well as his
brains. There were the illustrators who periodically refused to
illustrate, the printers who periodically refused to print, and the
office boy who frequently refused to officiate. At such times
O'Hara looked at Kit, and Kit did the rest.
When the steamship Excelsior arrived from Alaska, bringing the news
of the Klondike strike that set the country mad, Kit made a purely
frivolous proposition.
"Look here, O'Hara," he said. "This gold rush is going to be big--
the days of '49 over again. Suppose I cover it for the Billow?
I'll pay my own expenses."
O'Hara shook his head.
"Can't spare you from the office, Kit. Then there's that serial.
Besides, I saw Jackson not an hour ago. He's starting for the
Klondike to-morrow, and he's agreed to send a weekly letter and
photos. I wouldn't let him get away till he promised. And the
beauty of it is, that it doesn't cost us anything."
The next Kit heard of the Klondike was when he dropped into the club
that afternoon, and, in an alcove off the library, encountered his
uncle.
"Hello, avuncular relative," Kit greeted, sliding into a leather
chair and spreading out his legs. "Won't you join me?"
He ordered a cocktail, but the uncle contented himself with the thin
native claret he invariably drank. He glanced with irritated
disapproval at the cocktail, and on to his nephew's face. Kit saw a
lecture gathering.
"I've only a minute," he announced hastily. "I've got to run and
take in that Keith exhibition at Ellery's and do half a column on
it."
"What's the matter with you?" the other demanded. "You're pale.
You're a wreck."
Kit's only answer was a groan.
"I'll have the pleasure of burying you, I can see that."
Kit shook his head sadly.
"No destroying worm, thank you. Cremation for mine."
John Bellew came of the old hard and hardy stock that had crossed
the plains by ox-team in the fifties, and in him was this same
hardness and the hardness of a childhood spent in the conquering of
a new land.
"You're not living right, Christopher. I'm ashamed of you."
"Primrose path, eh?" Kit chuckled.
The older man shrugged his shoulders.
"Shake not your gory locks at me, avuncular. I wish it were the
primrose path. But that's all cut out. I have no time."
"Then what in-?"
"Overwork."
John Bellew laughed harshly and incredulously.
"Honest?"
Again came the laughter.
"Men are the products of their environment," Kit proclaimed,
pointing at the other's glass. "Your mirth is thin and bitter as
your drink."
"Overwork!" was the sneer. "You never earned a cent in your life."
"You bet I have--only I never got it. I'm earning five hundred a
week right now, and doing four men's work."
"Pictures that won't sell? Or--er--fancy work of some sort? Can
you swim?"
"I used to."
"Sit a horse?"
"I have essayed that adventure."
John Bellew snorted his disgust.
"I'm glad your father didn't live to see you in all the glory of
your gracelessness," he said. "Your father was a man, every inch of
him. Do you get it? A Man. I think he'd have whaled all this
musical and artistictomfoolery out of you."
"Alas! these degenerate days," Kit sighed.
"I could understand it, and tolerate it," the other went on
savagely, "if you succeeded at it. You've never earned a cent in
your life, nor done a tap of man's work."
"Etchings, and pictures, and fans," Kit contributed unsoothingly.
"You're a dabbler and a failure. What pictures have you painted?
Dinky water-colours and nightmare posters. You've never had one
exhibited, even here in San Francisco-"
"Ah, you forget. There is one in the jinks room of this very club."
"A gross cartoon. Music? Your dear fool of a mother spent hundreds
on lessons. You've dabbled and failed. You've never even earned a
five-dollar piece by accompanying some one at a concert. Your
songs?--rag-time rot that's never printed and that's sung only by a
pack of fake Bohemians."
"I had a book published once--those sonnets, you remember," Kit
interposed meekly.
"What did it cost you?"
"Only a couple of hundred."
"Any other achievements?"
"I had a forest play acted at the summer jinks."
"What did you get for it?"
"Glory."
"And you used to swim, and you have essayed to sit a horse!" John
Bellew set his glass down with unnecessary violence. "What earthly
good are you anyway? You were well put up, yet even at university
you didn't play football. You didn't row. You didn't-"
"I boxed and fenced--some."
"When did you last box?"
"Not since; but I was considered an excellent judge of time and
distance, only I was--er-"
"Go on."
"Considered desultory."
"Lazy, you mean."
"I always imagined it was an euphemism."
"My father, sir, your grandfather, old Isaac Bellew, killed a man
with a blow of his fist when he was sixty-nine years old."
"The man?"
"No, your--you graceless scamp! But you'll never kill a mosquito at
sixty-nine."
"The times have changed, oh, my avuncular. They send men to state
prisons for homicide now."
"Your father rode one hundred and eighty-five miles, without
sleeping, and killed three horses."
"Had he lived to-day, he'd have snored over the course in a
Pullman."
The older man was on the verge of choking with wrath, but swallowed
by Jack London
Contents
THE TASTE OF THE MEAT
THE MEAT
THE STAMPEDE TO SQUAW CREEK
SHORTY DREAMS
THE MAN ON THE OTHER BANK
THE RACE FOR NUMBER ONE
THE TASTE OF THE MEAT.
I.
In the beginning he was Christopher Bellew. By the time he was at
college he had become Chris Bellew. Later, in the Bohemian crowd of
San Francisco, he was called Kit Bellew. And in the end he was
known by no other name than Smoke Bellew. And this history of the
evolution of his name is the history of his evolution. Nor would it
have happened had he not had a fond mother and an iron uncle, and
had he not received a letter from Gillet Bellamy.
"I have just seen a copy of the Billow," Gillet wrote from Paris.
"Of course O'Hara will succeed with it. But he's missing some
plays." (Here followed details in the improvement of the budding
society weekly.) "Go down and see him. Let him think they're your
own suggestions. Don't let him know they're from me. If he does,
he'll make me Paris correspondent, which I can't afford, because I'm
getting real money for my stuff from the big magazines. Above all,
don't forget to make him fire that dub who's doing the musical and
art criticism. Another thing, San Francisco has always had a
literature of her own. But she hasn't any now. Tell him to kick
around and get some gink to turn out a live serial, and to put into
it the real romance and glamour and colour of San Francisco."
And down to the office of the Billow went Kit Bellew faithfully to
instruct. O'Hara listened. O'Hara debated. O'Hara agreed. O'Hara
fired the dub who wrote criticism. Further, O'Hara had a way with
him--the very way that was feared by Gillet in distant Paris. When
O'Hara wanted anything, no friend could deny him. He was sweetly
and compellingly irresistible. Before Kit Bellew could escape from
the office he had become an associate editor, had agreed to write
weeklycolumns of criticism till some decent pen was found, and had
pledged himself to write a weekly instalment of ten thousand words
on the San Francisco serial--and all this without pay. The Billow
wasn't paying yet, O'Hara explained; and just as convincingly had he
exposited that there was only one man in San Francisco capable of
writing the serial, and that man Kit Bellew.
"Oh, Lord, I'm the gink!" Kit had groaned to himself afterwards on
the narrow stairway.
And thereat had begun his servitude to O'Hara and the insatiable
columns of the Billow. Week after week he held down an office
chair, stood off creditors, wrangled with printers, and turned out
twenty-five thousand words of all sorts weekly. Nor did his labours
lighten. The Billow was ambitious. It went in for illustration.
The processes were expensive. It never had any money to pay Kit
Bellew, and by the same token it was unable to pay for any additions
to the office staff.
"This is what comes of being a good fellow," Kit grumbled one day.
"Thank God for good fellows then," O'Hara cried, with tears in his
eyes as he gripped Kit's hand. "You're all that's saved me, Kit.
But for you I'd have gone bust. Just a little longer, old man, and
things will be easier."
"Never," was Kit's plaint. "I see my fate clearly. I shall be here
always."
A little later he thought he saw his way out. Watching his chance,
in O'Hara's presence, he fell over a chair. A few minutes
afterwards he bumped into the corner of the desk, and, with fumbling
fingers, capsized a paste pot.
"Out late?" O'Hara queried.
Kit brushed his eyes with his hands and peered about him anxiously
before replying.
"No, it's not that. It's my eyes. They seem to be going back on
me, that's all."
For several days he continued to fall over and bump into the office
furniture. But O'Hara's heart was not softened.
"I tell you what, Kit," he said one day, "you've got to see an
oculist. There's Doctor Hassdapple. He's a crackerjack. And it
won't cost you anything. We can get it for advertizing. I'll see
him myself."
And, true to his word, he dispatched Kit to the oculist.
"There's nothing the matter with your eyes," was the doctor's
verdict, after a lengthy examination. "In fact, your eyes are
magnificent--a pair in a million."
"Don't tell O'Hara," Kit pleaded. "And give me a pair of black
glasses."
The result of this was that O'Hara sympathized and talked glowingly
of the time when the Billow would be on its feet.
Luckily for Kit Bellew, he had his own income. Small it was,
compared with some, yet it was large enough to enable him to belong
to several clubs and maintain a studio in the Latin Quarter. In
point of fact, since his associate editorship, his expenses had
decreased prodigiously. He had no time to spend money. He never
saw the studio any more, nor entertained the local Bohemians with
his famous chafing-dish suppers. Yet he was always broke, for the
Billow, in perennialdistress, absorbed his cash as well as his
brains. There were the illustrators who periodically refused to
illustrate, the printers who periodically refused to print, and the
office boy who frequently refused to officiate. At such times
O'Hara looked at Kit, and Kit did the rest.
When the steamship Excelsior arrived from Alaska, bringing the news
of the Klondike strike that set the country mad, Kit made a purely
frivolous proposition.
"Look here, O'Hara," he said. "This gold rush is going to be big--
the days of '49 over again. Suppose I cover it for the Billow?
I'll pay my own expenses."
O'Hara shook his head.
"Can't spare you from the office, Kit. Then there's that serial.
Besides, I saw Jackson not an hour ago. He's starting for the
Klondike to-morrow, and he's agreed to send a weekly letter and
photos. I wouldn't let him get away till he promised. And the
beauty of it is, that it doesn't cost us anything."
The next Kit heard of the Klondike was when he dropped into the club
that afternoon, and, in an alcove off the library, encountered his
uncle.
"Hello, avuncular relative," Kit greeted, sliding into a leather
chair and spreading out his legs. "Won't you join me?"
He ordered a cocktail, but the uncle contented himself with the thin
native claret he invariably drank. He glanced with irritated
disapproval at the cocktail, and on to his nephew's face. Kit saw a
lecture gathering.
"I've only a minute," he announced hastily. "I've got to run and
take in that Keith exhibition at Ellery's and do half a column on
it."
"What's the matter with you?" the other demanded. "You're pale.
You're a wreck."
Kit's only answer was a groan.
"I'll have the pleasure of burying you, I can see that."
Kit shook his head sadly.
"No destroying worm, thank you. Cremation for mine."
John Bellew came of the old hard and hardy stock that had crossed
the plains by ox-team in the fifties, and in him was this same
hardness and the hardness of a childhood spent in the conquering of
a new land.
"You're not living right, Christopher. I'm ashamed of you."
"Primrose path, eh?" Kit chuckled.
The older man shrugged his shoulders.
"Shake not your gory locks at me, avuncular. I wish it were the
primrose path. But that's all cut out. I have no time."
"Then what in-?"
"Overwork."
John Bellew laughed harshly and incredulously.
"Honest?"
Again came the laughter.
"Men are the products of their environment," Kit proclaimed,
pointing at the other's glass. "Your mirth is thin and bitter as
your drink."
"Overwork!" was the sneer. "You never earned a cent in your life."
"You bet I have--only I never got it. I'm earning five hundred a
week right now, and doing four men's work."
"Pictures that won't sell? Or--er--fancy work of some sort? Can
you swim?"
"I used to."
"Sit a horse?"
"I have essayed that adventure."
John Bellew snorted his disgust.
"I'm glad your father didn't live to see you in all the glory of
your gracelessness," he said. "Your father was a man, every inch of
him. Do you get it? A Man. I think he'd have whaled all this
musical and artistictomfoolery out of you."
"Alas! these degenerate days," Kit sighed.
"I could understand it, and tolerate it," the other went on
savagely, "if you succeeded at it. You've never earned a cent in
your life, nor done a tap of man's work."
"Etchings, and pictures, and fans," Kit contributed unsoothingly.
"You're a dabbler and a failure. What pictures have you painted?
Dinky water-colours and nightmare posters. You've never had one
exhibited, even here in San Francisco-"
"Ah, you forget. There is one in the jinks room of this very club."
"A gross cartoon. Music? Your dear fool of a mother spent hundreds
on lessons. You've dabbled and failed. You've never even earned a
five-dollar piece by accompanying some one at a concert. Your
songs?--rag-time rot that's never printed and that's sung only by a
pack of fake Bohemians."
"I had a book published once--those sonnets, you remember," Kit
interposed meekly.
"What did it cost you?"
"Only a couple of hundred."
"Any other achievements?"
"I had a forest play acted at the summer jinks."
"What did you get for it?"
"Glory."
"And you used to swim, and you have essayed to sit a horse!" John
Bellew set his glass down with unnecessary violence. "What earthly
good are you anyway? You were well put up, yet even at university
you didn't play football. You didn't row. You didn't-"
"I boxed and fenced--some."
"When did you last box?"
"Not since; but I was considered an excellent judge of time and
distance, only I was--er-"
"Go on."
"Considered desultory."
"Lazy, you mean."
"I always imagined it was an euphemism."
"My father, sir, your grandfather, old Isaac Bellew, killed a man
with a blow of his fist when he was sixty-nine years old."
"The man?"
"No, your--you graceless scamp! But you'll never kill a mosquito at
sixty-nine."
"The times have changed, oh, my avuncular. They send men to state
prisons for homicide now."
"Your father rode one hundred and eighty-five miles, without
sleeping, and killed three horses."
"Had he lived to-day, he'd have snored over the course in a
Pullman."
The older man was on the verge of choking with wrath, but swallowed
- beginning [bi´giniŋ]
n.开始，开端；起源 (初中英语单词) - missing [´misiŋ] a.缺掉的；失踪的 (初中英语单词)
- improvement [im´pru:vmənt] n.改进，改善，进步 (初中英语单词)
- correspondent [,kɔri´spɔndənt] n.记者 a.符合的 (初中英语单词)
- musical [´mju:zikəl] a.音乐的；悦耳的 (初中英语单词)
- criticism [´kritisizəm] n.批评；评论(文) (初中英语单词)
- romance [rəu´mæns] n.中世纪骑士小说 (初中英语单词)
- associate [ə´səuʃieit] v.联合a.同伴的n.伙伴 (初中英语单词)
- weekly [´wi:kli] a.&ad.每周一次(的) (初中英语单词)
- capable [´keipəbəl] a.有能力；能干的 (初中英语单词)
- ambitious [æm´biʃəs] a.有雄心的；热望的 (初中英语单词)
- expensive [ik´spensiv] a.费钱的，昂贵的 (初中英语单词)
- unable [ʌn´eibəl] a.不能的；无能为力的 (初中英语单词)
- examination [ig,zæmi´neiʃən] n.检查；考试；检验 (初中英语单词)
- income [´inkʌm] n.收入，所得 (初中英语单词)
- enable [i´neibəl] vt.使能够；赋予权力 (初中英语单词)
- maintain [mein´tein] vt.维持；保持；继续 (初中英语单词)
- distress [di´stres] n.痛苦 vt.使苦恼 (初中英语单词)
- hastily [´heistili] ad.急速地；草率地 (初中英语单词)
- column [´kɔləm] n.柱；柱状物；纵队 (初中英语单词)
- childhood [´tʃaildhud] n.幼年(时代)；早期 (初中英语单词)
- ashamed [ə´ʃeimd] a.惭愧；不好意思 (初中英语单词)
- failure [´feiljə] n.失败；衰竭；破产 (初中英语单词)
- violence [´vaiələns] n.猛烈；暴力(行) (初中英语单词)
- grandfather [´grænd,fɑ:ðə] n.(外)祖父；祖先 (初中英语单词)
- mosquito [məs´ki:təu] n.蚊子 (初中英语单词)
- faithfully [´feiθfəli] ad.忠实地；诚恳地 (高中英语单词)
- decent [´di:sənt] a.体面的，正派的 (高中英语单词)
- studio [´stju:diəu] n.画室；照相室 (高中英语单词)
- alaska [ə´læskə] n.阿拉斯加(州) (高中英语单词)
- cocktail [´kɔkteil] n.&a.鸡尾酒(的) (高中英语单词)
- contented [kən´tentid] a.满足的；心满意足的 (高中英语单词)
- invariably [in´veəriəbli] ad.不变地；永恒地 (高中英语单词)
- exhibition [eksi´biʃ(ə)n] n.展览；显示；表演 (高中英语单词)
- artistic [ɑ:´tistik] a.艺术的；有美感的 (高中英语单词)
- evolution [,i:və´lu:ʃən] n.进化；发展；发育 (英语四级单词)
- billow [´biləu] n.巨浪 v.(使)翻腾 (英语四级单词)
- irresistible [,iri´zistəbəl] a.不可抵抗的 (英语四级单词)
- steamship [´sti:m,ʃip] n.大轮船 (英语四级单词)
- hardness [´hɑ:dnis] n.坚硬；严厉；难度 (英语四级单词)
- tomfoolery [tɔm´fu:ləri] n.愚蠢举动(言语) (英语四级单词)
- degenerate [di´dʒenərət, -reit] vi.腐化，堕落 (英语四级单词)
- tolerate [´tɔləreit] vt.忍受；宽容 (英语四级单词)
- nightmare [´naitmeə] n.梦魇；恶梦 (英语四级单词)
- servitude [´sə:vitju:d] n.奴隶状态；苦役 (英语六级单词)
- perennial [pə´reniəl] a.长期的 n.多年生植物 (英语六级单词)
- harshly [´hɑ:ʃli] ad.粗糙地，冷酷地 (英语六级单词)
- cartoon [kɑ:´tu:n] n.漫画；(电影)卡通片 (英语六级单词)
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