Martin finances Bernard’s store expansion for Gertrude’s sake

Martin Eden’s financing of Bernard Higginbotham’s store expansion is both a concrete act of support for Gertrude and a bitter reckoning with the way money has changed how others treat him. At a Sunday dinner above the Cash Store, he offers Bernard $7,000 for the expansion, but attaches a condition: Gertrude must no longer do the household drudgery. The money can relieve her daily burden, yet the transaction also sharpens Martin’s sense that the respect now shown him belongs to his wealth and fame, not to the person he was before success arrived.

The grievance behind the offer

Martin sits opposite Bernard at dinner while the phrase “Work performed” repeats in his mind. He remembers the contrast between the period when he was struggling to write and the present, when Bernard listens to him with deference. In the speech Martin restrains himself from shouting, he recalls being fed now after having been allowed to starve, being excluded from Bernard’s house, and being condemned for not getting a job. He insists that his writing had already required exhausting labor, even when it brought no income or recognition.

The grievance extends beyond Bernard. Martin recalls that Ruth Morse had liked him, but had also valued the bourgeois standard by which his work was judged according to its earnings. She had urged him to get a job—or, in her more refined wording, a position—and had criticized writing that did not make money. To Martin, the family’s new attentiveness belongs to the same valuation system: after he becomes famous and wealthy, even his criticisms of Bernard’s political party receive respectful consideration. His private refrain is therefore not simply resentment about past hardship. It is an indictment of a social order that treats the same person differently once his work has acquired a market value.

From expansion plans to a check

Bernard is describing his ambition to buy the adjoining lot and put up another two-story frame building. He imagines renting the upper floor and extending the Cash Store across the ground floor of both buildings; the prospect of a sign stretching across them excites him. Martin, however, has stopped listening. The recurring thought of work already completed drowns out Bernard’s talk, until Martin abruptly asks the cost.

Bernard has not stated a figure, but has calculated it repeatedly. He estimates that construction would cost $4,000 at the current price of lumber. Martin then asks about the ground; Bernard says it would cost another $3,000. While Bernard nervously spreads and closes his fingers, Martin writes a check for $7,000 and passes it across the table. Bernard looks at the amount, then says huskily that he cannot afford to pay more than six per cent. The scene moves quickly from Martin’s inward protest to a specific offer, with the check making his new financial power materially visible.

The condition for Gertrude

Martin asks whether six per cent would amount to $35 a month. Bernard confirms the figure. Martin then proposes that Bernard keep the principal, while the monthly $35 is used for cooking, washing, and scrubbing, on the condition that Gertrude do no more drudgery. He glances at Gertrude as he makes the proposal, directing the benefit toward the person whose domestic burden he means to change. The money is not offered as an unqualified investment: its use is tied to a change in her daily life.

Bernard’s response reveals the friction inside the arrangement. The prospect that his wife should do no more housework affronts his thrifty instincts; the substantial financial offer comes, for him, wrapped around a bitter condition. Martin begins to say that he will pay the monthly amount, then reaches across the table for the check. Bernard gets to it first and cries that he accepts. His eagerness resolves the negotiation, but does not erase the resistance the condition has exposed.

Relief, resentment, and the meaning of the money

The payment extends Martin’s support for his sister into the organization of household life: he uses his wealth to make a possible alternative to Gertrude’s continued drudgery part of the deal. Yet the scene offers no indication that this act settles his anger about how the family treated him while he was poor. Instead, the gift and the resentment occupy the same moment. Martin can provide what Bernard’s plans require, and he can insist that some of the resulting money serve Gertrude; he cannot make the offer separate from the social reversal that has brought Bernard to accept his terms.

Afterward, Martin boards the electric car feeling very sick and tired. He looks up at the assertive sign and groans, “The swine,” repeating the insult. The reaction follows his generosity rather than contradicting it: he has helped secure the expansion and demanded a change for Gertrude, but the transaction leaves him sickened by the people and values surrounding it. The recurring idea of work performed gives the episode its sting. His labor preceded the money and the deference; now the check that demonstrates his success also exposes how little recognition he believes that labor received before it became profitable.