textfiles/etext/FICTION/london-martin-768.txt

MARTIN EDEN by Jack London

CHAPTER I

The one opened the door with a latch-key and went in, followed by a young
fellow who awkwardly removed his cap. He wore rough clothes that smacked of
the sea, and he was manifestly out of place in the spacious hall in which
he found himself. He did not know what to do with his cap, and was stuffing
it into his coat pocket when the other took it from him. The act was done
quietly and naturally, and the awkward young fellow appreciated it. "He
understands," was his thought. "He'll see me through all right."

He walked at the other's heels with a swing to his shoulders, and his legs
spread unwittingly, as if the level floors were tilting up and sinking down
to the heave and lunge of the sea. The wide rooms seemed too narrow for his
rolling gait, and to himself he was in terror lest his broad shoulders
should collide with the doorways or sweep the bric-a-brac from the low
mantel. He recoiled from side to side between the various objects and
multiplied the hazards that in reality lodged only in his mind. Between a
grand piano and a centre-table piled high with books was space for a half a
dozen to walk abreast, yet he essayed it with trepidation. His heavy arms
hung loosely at his sides. He did not know what to do with those arms and
hands, and when, to his excited vision, one arm seemed liable to brush
against the books on the table, he lurched away like a frightened horse,
barely missing the piano stool. He watched the easy walk of the other in
front of him, and for the first time realized that his walk was different
from that of other men. He experienced a momentary pang of shame that he
should walk so uncouthly. The sweat burst through the skin of his forehead
in tiny beads, and he paused and mopped his bronzed face with his
handkerchief.

"Hold on, Arthur, my boy," he said, attempting to mask his anxiety with
facetious utterance. "This is too much all at once for yours truly. Give me
a chance to get my nerve. You know I didn't want to come, an' I guess your
fam'ly ain't hankerin' to see me neither."

"That's all right," was the reassuring answer. "You mustn't be frightened
at us. We're just homely people - Hello, there's a letter for me."

He stepped back to the table, tore open the envelope, and began to read,
giving the stranger an opportunity to recover himself. And the stranger
understood and appreciated. His was the gift of sympathy, understanding;
and beneath his alarmed exterior that sympathetic process went on. He
mopped his forehead dry and glanced about him with a controlled face,
though in the eyes there was an expression such as wild animals betray when
they fear the trap. He was surrounded by the unknown, apprehensive of what
might happen, ignorant of what he should do, aware that he walked and bore
himself awkwardly, fearful that every attribute and power of him was
similarly afflicted. He was keenly sensitive, hopelessly self-conscious,
and the amused glance that the other stole privily at him over the top of
the letter burned into him like a dagger- thrust. He saw the glance, but he
gave no sign, for among the things he had learned was discipline. Also,
that dagger-thrust went to his pride. He cursed himself for having come,
and at the same time resolved that, happen what would, having come, he
would carry it through. The lines of his face hardened, and into his eyes
came a fighting light. He looked about more unconcernedly, sharply
observant, every detail of the pretty interior registering itself on his
brain. His eyes were wide apart; nothing in their field of vision escaped;
and as they drank in the beauty before them the fighting light died out and
a warm glow took its place. He was responsive to beauty, and here was cause
to respond.

An oil painting caught and held him. A heavy surf thundered and burst over
an outjutting rock; lowering storm-clouds covered the sky; and, outside the
line of surf, a pilot-schooner, close-hauled, heeled over till every detail
of her deck was visible, was surging along against a stormy sunset sky.
There was beauty, and it drew him irresistibly. He forgot his awkward walk
and came closer to the painting, very close. The beauty faded out of the
canvas. His face expressed his bepuzzlement. He stared at what seemed a
careless daub of paint, then stepped away. Immediately all the beauty
flashed back into the canvas. "A trick picture," was his thought, as he
dismissed it, though in the midst of the multitudinous impressions he was
receiving he found time to feel a prod of indignation that so much beauty
should be sacrificed to make a trick. He did not know painting. He had been
brought up on chromos and lithographs that were always definite and sharp,
near or far. He had seen oil paintings, it was true, in the show windows of
shops, but the glass of the windows had prevented his eager eyes from
approaching too near.

He glanced around at his friend reading the letter and saw the books on the
table. Into his eyes leaped a wistfulness and a yearning as promptly as the
yearning leaps into the eyes of a starving man at sight of food. An
impulsive stride, with one lurch to right and left of the shoulders,
brought him to the table, where he began affectionately handling the books.
He glanced at the titles and the authors' names, read fragments of text,
caressing the volumes with his eyes and hands, and, once, recognized a book
he had read. For the rest, they were strange books and strange authors. He
chanced upon a volume of Swinburne and began reading steadily, forgetful of
where he was, his face glowing. Twice he closed the book on his forefinger
to look at the name of the author. Swinburne! he would remember that name.
That fellow had eyes, and he had certainly seen color and flashing light.
But who was Swinburne? Was he dead a hundred years or so, like most of the
poets? Or was he alive still, and writing? He turned to the title-page . .
. yes, he had written other books; well, he would go to the free library
the first thing in the morning and try to get hold of some of Swinburne's
stuff. He went back to the text and lost himself. He did not notice that a
young woman had entered the room. The first he knew was when he heard
Arthur's voice saying:-

"Ruth, this is Mr. Eden."

The book was closed on his forefinger, and before he turned he was
thrilling to the first new impression, which was not of the girl, but of
her brother's words. Under that muscled body of his he was a mass of
quivering sensibilities. At the slightest impact of the outside world upon
his consciousness, his thoughts, sympathies, and emotions leapt and played
like lambent flame. He was extraordinarily receptive and responsive, while
his imagination, pitched high, was ever at work establishing relations of
likeness and difference. "Mr. Eden," was what he had thrilled to - he who
had been called "Eden," or "Martin Eden," or just "Martin," all his life.
And "MISTER!" It was certainly going some, was his internal comment. His
mind seemed to turn, on the instant, into a vast camera obscura, and he saw
arrayed around his consciousness endless pictures from his life, of
stoke-holes and forecastles, camps and beaches, jails and boozing-kens,
fever-hospitals and slum streets, wherein the thread of association was the
fashion in which he had been addressed in those various situations.

And then he turned and saw the girl. The phantasmagoria of his brain
vanished at sight of her. She was a pale, ethereal creature, with wide,
spiritual blue eyes and a wealth of golden hair. He did not know how she
was dressed, except that the dress was as wonderful as she. He likened her
to a pale gold flower upon a slender stem. No, she was a spirit, a
divinity, a goddess; such sublimated beauty was not of the earth. Or
perhaps the books were right, and there were many such as she in the upper
walks of life. She might well be sung by that chap, Swinburne. Perhaps he
had had somebody like her in mind when he painted that girl, Iseult, in the
book there on the table. All this plethora of sight, and feeling, and
thought occurred on the instant. There was no pause of the realities
wherein he moved. He saw her hand coming out to his, and she looked him
straight in the eyes as she shook hands, frankly, like a man. The women he
had known did not shake hands that way. For that matter, most of them did
not shake hands at all. A flood of associations, visions of various ways he
had made the acquaintance of women, rushed into his mind and threatened to
swamp it. But he shook them aside and looked at her. Never had he seen such
a woman. The women he had known! Immediately, beside her, on either hand,
ranged the women he had known. For an eternal second he stood in the midst
of a portrait gallery, wherein she occupied the central place, while about
her were limned many women, all to be weighed and measured by a fleeting
glance, herself the unit of weight and measure. He saw the weak and sickly
faces of the girls of the factories, and the simpering, boisterous girls
from the south of Market. There were women of the cattle camps, and swarthy
cigarette-smoking women of Old Mexico. These, in turn, were crowded out by
Japanese women, doll-like, stepping mincingly on wooden clogs; by
Eurasians, delicate featured, stamped with degeneracy; by full-bodied
South-Sea-Island women, flower-crowned and brown-skinned. All these were
blotted out by a grotesque and terrible nightmare brood - frowsy, shuffling
creatures from the pavements of Whitechapel, gin-bloated hags of the stews,
and all the vast hell's following of harpies, vile-mouthed and filthy, that
under the guise of monstrous female form prey upon sailors, the scrapings
of the ports, the scum and slime of the human pit.

"Won't you sit down, Mr. Eden?" the girl was saying. "I have been looking
forward to meeting you ever since Arthur told us. It was brave of you - "

He waved his hand deprecatingly and muttered that it was nothing at all,
what he had done, and that any fellow would have done it. She noticed that
the hand he waved was covered with fresh abrasions, in the process of
healing, and a glance at the other loose-hanging hand showed it to be in
the same condition. Also, with quick, critical eye, she noted a scar on his
cheek, another that peeped out from under the hair of the forehead, and a
third that ran down and disappeared under the starched collar. She
repressed a smile at sight of the red line that marked the chafe of the
collar against the bronzed neck. He was evidently unused to stiff collars.
Likewise her feminine eye took in the clothes he wore, the cheap and
unaesthetic cut, the wrinkling of the coat across the shoulders, and the
series of wrinkles in the sleeves that advertised bulging biceps muscles.

While he waved his hand and muttered that he had done nothing at all, he
was obeying her behest by trying to get into a chair. He found time to
admire the ease with which she sat down, then lurched toward a chair facing
her, overwhelmed with consciousness of the awkward figure he was cutting.
This was a new experience for him. All his life, up to then, he had been
unaware of being either graceful or awkward. Such thoughts of self had
never entered his mind. He sat down gingerly on the edge of the chair,
greatly worried by his hands. They were in the way wherever he put them.
Arthur was leaving the room, and Martin Eden followed his exit with longing
eyes. He felt lost, alone there in the room with that pale spirit of a
woman. There was no bar-keeper upon whom to call for drinks, no small boy
to send around the corner for a can of beer and by means of that social
fluid start the amenities of friendship flowing.

"You have such a scar on your neck, Mr. Eden," the girl was saying. "How
did it happen? I am sure it must have been some adventure."

"A Mexican with a knife, miss," he answered, moistening his parched lips
and clearing hip throat. "It was just a fight. After I got the knife away,
he tried to bite off my nose."

Baldly as he had stated it, in his eyes was a rich vision of that hot,
starry night at Salina Cruz, the white strip of beach, the lights of the
sugar steamers in the harbor, the voices of the drunken sailors in the
distance, the jostling stevedores, the flaming passion in the Mexican's
face, the glint of the beast-eyes in the starlight, the sting of the steel
in his neck, and the rush of blood, the crowd and the cries, the two
bodies, his and the Mexican's, locked together, rolling over and over and
tearing up the sand, and from away off somewhere the mellow tinkling of a
guitar. Such was the picture, and he thrilled to the memory of it,
wondering if the man could paint it who had painted the pilot- schooner on
the wall. The white beach, the stars, and the lights of the sugar steamers
would look great, he thought, and midway on the sand the dark group of
figures that surrounded the fighters. The knife occupied a place in the
picture, he decided, and would show well, with a sort of gleam, in the
light of the stars. But of all this no hint had crept into his speech. "He
tried to bite off my nose," he concluded.

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

He felt a shock himself, and a blush of embarrassment shone faintly on his
sunburned cheeks, though to him it burned as hotly as when his cheeks had
been exposed to the open furnace-door in the fire- room. Such sordid things
as stabbing affrays were evidently not fit subjects for conversation with a
lady. People in the books, in her walk of life, did not talk about such
things - perhaps they did not know about them, either.

There was a brief pause in the conversation they were trying to get
started. Then she asked tentatively about the scar on his cheek. Even as
she asked, he realized that she was making an effort to talk his talk, and
he resolved to get away from it and talk hers.

"It was just an accident," he said, putting his hand to his cheek. "One
night, in a calm, with a heavy sea running, the main-boom-lift carried
away, an' next the tackle. The lift was wire, an' it was threshin' around
like a snake. The whole watch was tryin' to grab it, an' I rushed in an'
got swatted."

"Oh," she said, this time with an accent of comprehension, though secretly
his speech had been so much Greek to her and she was wondering what a LIFT
was and what SWATTED meant.

"This man Swineburne," he began, attempting to put his plan into execution
and pronouncing the I long.

"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 make his acquaintance?"

"I never clapped eyes on 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 thereat she began to talk quickly and easily upon the subject he had
suggested. He felt better, and settled back slightly from the edge of the
chair, holding tightly to its arms with his hands, as if it might get away
from him and buck him to the floor. He had succeeded in making her talk her
talk, and while she rattled on, he strove to follow her, marvelling at all
the knowledge that was stowed away in that pretty head of hers, and
drinking in the pale beauty of her face. Follow her he did, though bothered
by unfamiliar words that fell glibly from her lips and by critical phrases
and thought-processes that were foreign to his mind, but that nevertheless
stimulated his mind and set it tingling. Here was intellectual life, he
thought, and here was beauty, warm and wonderful as he had never dreamed it
could be. He forgot himself and stared at her with hungry eyes. Here was
something to live for, to win to, to fight for - ay, and die for. The books
were true. There were such women in the world. She was one of them. She
lent wings to his imagination, and great, luminous canvases spread
themselves before him whereon loomed vague, gigantic figures of love and
romance, and of heroic deeds for woman's sake - for a pale woman, a flower
of gold. And through the swaying, palpitant vision, as through a fairy
mirage, he stared at the real woman, sitting there and talking of
literature and art. He listened as well, but he stared, unconscious of the
fixity of his gaze or of the fact that all that was essentially masculine
in his nature was shining in his eyes. But she, who knew little of the
world of men, being a woman, was keenly aware of his burning eyes. She had
never had men look at her in such fashion, and it embarrassed her. She
stumbled and halted in her utterance. The thread of argument slipped from
her. He frightened her, and at the same time it was strangely pleasant to
be so looked upon. Her training warned her of peril and of wrong, subtle,
mysterious, luring; while her instincts rang clarion-voiced through her
being, impelling her to hurdle caste and place and gain to this traveller
from another world, to this uncouth young fellow with lacerated hands and a
line of raw red caused by the unaccustomed linen at his throat, who, all
too evidently, was soiled and tainted by ungracious existence. She was
clean, and her cleanness revolted; but she was woman, and she was just
beginning to learn the paradox of woman.

"As I was saying - what was I saying?" She broke off abruptly and laughed
merrily at her predicament.

"You was saying that this man Swinburne failed bein' a great poet because -
an' that was as far as you got, miss," he prompted, while to himself he
seemed suddenly hungry, and delicious little thrills crawled up and down
his spine at the sound of her laughter. Like silver, he thought to himself,
like tinkling silver bells; and on the instant, and for an instant, he was
transported to a far land, where under pink cherry blossoms, he smoked a
cigarette and listened to the bells of the peaked pagoda calling
straw-sandalled devotees to worship.

"Yes, thank you," she said. "Swinburne fails, when all is said, because he
is, well, indelicate. There are many of his poems that should never be
read. Every line of the really great poets is filled with beautiful truth,
and calls to all that is high and noble in the human. Not a line of the
great poets can be spared without impoverishing the world by that much."

"I thought it was great," he said hesitatingly, "the little I read. I had
no idea he was such a - a scoundrel. I guess that crops out in his other
books."

"There are many lines that could be spared from the book you were reading,"
she said, her voice primly firm and dogmatic.

"I must 'a' missed 'em," he announced. "What I read was the real goods. It
was all lighted up an' shining, an' it shun right into me an' lighted me up
inside, like the sun or a searchlight. That's the way it landed on me, but
I guess I ain't up much on poetry, miss."

He broke off lamely. He was confused, painfully conscious of his
inarticulateness. He had felt the bigness and glow of life in what he had
read, but his speech was inadequate. He could not express what he felt, and
to himself he likened himself to a sailor, in a strange ship, on a dark
night, groping about in the unfamiliar running rigging. Well, he decided,
it was up to him to get acquainted in this new world. He had never seen
anything that he couldn't get the hang of when he wanted to and it was
about time for him to want to learn to talk the things that were inside of
him so that she could understand. SHE was bulking large on his horizon.

"Now Longfellow - " she was saying.

"Yes, I've read 'm," he broke in impulsively, spurred on to exhibit and
make the most of his little store of book knowledge, desirous of showing
her that he was not wholly a stupid clod. "'The Psalm of Life,'
'Excelsior,' an' . . . I guess that's all."

She nodded her head and smiled, and he felt, somehow, that her smile was
tolerant, pitifully tolerant. He was a fool to attempt to make a pretence
that way. That Longfellow chap most likely had written countless books of
poetry.

"Excuse me, miss, for buttin' in that way. I guess the real facts is that I
don't know nothin' much about such things. It ain't in my class. But I'm
goin' to make it in my class."

It sounded like a threat. His voice was determined, his eyes were flashing,
the lines of his face had grown harsh. And to her it seemed that the angle
of his jaw had changed; its pitch had become unpleasantly aggressive. At
the same time a wave of intense virility seemed to surge out from him and
impinge upon her.

"I think you could make it in - in your class," she finished with a laugh.
"You are very strong."

Her gaze rested for a moment on the muscular neck, heavy corded, almost
bull-like, bronzed by the sun, spilling over with rugged health and
strength. And though he sat there, blushing and humble, again she felt
drawn to him. She was surprised by a wanton thought that rushed into her
mind. It seemed to her that if she could lay her two hands upon that neck
that all its strength and vigor would flow out to her. She was shocked by
this thought. It seemed to reveal to her an undreamed depravity in her
nature. Besides, strength to her was a gross and brutish thing. Her ideal
of masculine beauty had always been slender gracefulness. Yet the thought
still persisted. It bewildered her that she should desire to place her
hands on that sunburned neck. In truth, she was far from robust, and the
need of her body and mind was for strength. But she did not know it. She
knew only that no man had ever affected her before as this one had, who
shocked her from moment to moment with his awful grammar.

"Yes, I ain't no invalid," he said. "When it comes down to hard- pan, I can
digest scrap-iron. But just now I've got dyspepsia. Most of what you was
sayin' I can't digest. Never trained that way, you see. I like books and
poetry, and what time I've had I've read 'em, but I've never thought about
'em the way you have. That's why I can't talk about 'em. I'm like a
navigator adrift on a strange sea without chart or compass. Now I want to
get my bearin's. Mebbe you can put me right. How did you learn all this
you've ben talkin'?"

"By going to school, I fancy, 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. He felt
that she had become remoter from him by at least a million miles.

"I'm going there now. I'm taking special courses in English."

He did not know what "English" meant, but he made a mental note of that
item of ignorance and passed on.

"How long would I have to study before I could go to the university?" he
asked.

She beamed encouragement upon his desire for knowledge, and said: "That
depends upon how much studying you have already done. You have never
attended high school? Of course not. But did you finish grammar school?"

"I had two years to run, when I left," he answered. "But I was always
honorably promoted at school."

The next moment, angry with himself for the boast, he had gripped the arms
of the chair so savagely that every finger-end was stinging. At the same
moment he became aware that a woman was entering the room. He saw the girl
leave her chair and trip swiftly across the floor to the newcomer. They
kissed each other, and, with arms around each other's waists, they advanced
toward him. That must be her mother, he thought. She was a tall, blond
woman, slender, and stately, and beautiful. Her gown was what he might
expect in such a house. His eyes delighted in the graceful lines of it. She
and her dress together reminded him of women on the stage. Then he
remembered seeing similar grand ladies and gowns entering the London
theatres while he stood and watched and the policemen shoved him back into
the drizzle beyond the awning. Next his mind leaped to the Grand Hotel at
Yokohama, where, too, from the sidewalk, he had seen grand ladies. Then the
city and the harbor of Yokohama, in a thousand pictures, began flashing
before his eyes. But he swiftly dismissed the kaleidoscope of memory,
oppressed by the urgent need of the present. He knew that he must stand up
to be introduced, and he struggled painfully to his feet, where he stood
with trousers bagging at the knees, his arms loose- hanging and ludicrous,
his face set hard for the impending ordeal.

CHAPTER II

The process of getting into the dining room was a nightmare to him. Between
halts and stumbles, jerks and lurches, locomotion had at times seemed
impossible. But at last he had made it, and was seated alongside of Her.
The array of knives and forks frightened him. They bristled with unknown
perils, and he gazed at them, fascinated, till their dazzle became a
background across which moved a succession of forecastle pictures, wherein
he and his mates sat eating salt beef with sheath-knives and fingers, or
scooping thick pea-soup out of pannikins by means of battered iron spoons.
The stench of bad beef was in his nostrils, while in his ears, to the
accompaniment of creaking timbers and groaning bulkheads, echoed the loud
mouth-noises of the eaters. He watched them eating, and decided that they
ate like pigs. Well, he would be careful here. He would make no noise. He
would keep his mind upon it all the time.

He glanced around the table. Opposite him was Arthur, and Arthur's brother,
Norman. They were her brothers, he reminded himself, and his heart warmed
toward them. How they loved each other, the members of this family! There
flashed into his mind the picture of her mother, of the kiss of greeting,
and of the pair of them walking toward him with arms entwined. Not in his
world were such displays of affection between parents and children made. It
was a revelation of the heights of existence that were attained in the
world above. It was the finest thing yet that he had seen in this small
glimpse of that world. He was moved deeply by appreciation of it, and his
heart was melting with sympathetic tenderness. He had starved for love all
his life. His nature craved love. It was an organic demand of his being.
Yet he had gone without, and hardened himself in the process. He had not
known that he needed love. Nor did he know it now. He merely saw it in
operation, and thrilled to it, and thought it fine, and high, and splendid.

He was glad that Mr. Morse was not there. It was difficult enough getting
acquainted with her, and her mother, and her brother, Norman. Arthur he
already knew somewhat. The father would have been too much for him, he felt
sure. It seemed to him that he had never worked so hard in his life. The
severest toil was child's play compared with this. Tiny nodules of moisture
stood out on his forehead, and his shirt was wet with sweat from the
exertion of doing so many unaccustomed things at once. He had to eat as he
had never eaten before, to handle strange tools, to glance surreptitiously
about and learn how to accomplish each new thing, to receive the flood of
impressions that was pouring in upon him and being mentally annotated and
classified; to be conscious of a yearning for her that perturbed him in the
form of a dull, aching restlessness; to feel the prod of desire to win to
the walk in life whereon she trod, and to have his mind ever and again
straying off in speculation and vague plans of how to reach to her. Also,
when his secret glance went across to Norman opposite him, or to any one
else, to ascertain just what knife or fork was to be used in any particular
occasion, that person's features were seized upon by his mind, which
automatically strove to appraise them and to divine what they were - all in
relation to her. Then he had to talk, to hear what was said to him and what
was said back and forth, and to answer, when it was necessary, with a
tongue prone to looseness of speech that required a constant curb. And to
add confusion to confusion, there was the servant, an unceasing menace,
that appeared noiselessly at his shoulder, a dire Sphinx that propounded
puzzles and conundrums demanding instantaneous solution. He was oppressed
throughout the meal by the thought of finger-bowls. Irrelevantly,
insistently, scores of times, he wondered when they would come on and what
they looked like. He had heard of such things, and now, sooner or later,
somewhere in the next few minutes, he would see them, sit at table with
exalted beings who used them - ay, and he would use them himself. And most
important of all, far down and yet always at the surface of his thought,
was the problem of how he should comport himself toward these persons. What
should his attitude be? He wrestled continually and anxiously with the
problem. There were cowardly suggestions that he should make believe,
assume a part; and there were still more cowardly suggestions that warned
him he would fail in such course, that his nature was not fitted to live up
to it, and that he would make a fool of himself.

It was during the first part of the dinner, struggling to decide upon his
attitude, that he was very quiet. He did not know that his quietness was
giving the lie to Arthur's words of the day before, when that brother of
hers had announced that he was going to bring a wild man home to dinner and
for them not to be alarmed, because they would find him an interesting wild
man. Martin Eden could not have found it in him, just then, to believe that
her brother could be guilty of such treachery - especially when he had been
the means of getting this particular brother out of an unpleasant row. So
he sat at table, perturbed by his own unfitness and at the same time
charmed by all that went on about him. For the first time he realized that
eating was something more than a utilitarian function. He was unaware of
what he ate. It was merely food. He was feasting his love of beauty at this
table where eating was an aesthetic function. It was an intellectual
function, too. His mind was stirred. He heard words spoken that were
meaningless to him, and other words that he had seen only in books and that
no man or woman he had known was of large enough mental caliber to
pronounce. When he heard such words dropping carelessly from the lips of
the members of this marvellous family, her family, he thrilled with
delight. The romance, and beauty, and high vigor of the books were coming
true. He was in that rare and blissful state wherein a man sees his dreams
stalk out from the crannies of fantasy and become fact.

Never had he been at such an altitude of living, and he kept himself in the
background, listening, observing, and pleasuring, replying in reticent
monosyllables, saying, "Yes, miss," and "No, miss," to her, and "Yes,
ma'am," and "No, ma'am," to her mother. He curbed the impulse, arising out
of his sea-training, to say "Yes, sir," and "No, sir," to her brothers. He
felt that it would be inappropriate and a confession of inferiority on his
part - which would never do if he was to win to her. Also, it was a dictate
of his pride. "By God!" he cried to himself, once; "I'm just as good as
them, and if they do know lots that I don't, I could learn 'm a few myself,
all the same!" And the next moment, when she or her mother addressed him as
"Mr. Eden," his aggressive pride was forgotten, and he was glowing and warm
with delight. He was a civilized man, that was what he was, shoulder to
shoulder, at dinner, with people he had read about in books. He was in the
books himself, adventuring through the printed pages of bound volumes.

But while he belied Arthur's description, and appeared a gentle lamb rather
than a wild man, he was racking his brains for a course of action. He was
no gentle lamb, and the part of second fiddle would never do for the
high-pitched dominance of his nature. He talked only when he had to, and
then his speech was like his walk to the table, filled with jerks and halts
as he groped in his polyglot vocabulary for words, debating over words he
knew were fit but which he feared he could not pronounce, rejecting other
words he knew would not be understood or would be raw and harsh. But all
the time he was oppressed by the consciousness that this carefulness of
diction was making a booby of him, preventing him from expressing what he
had in him. Also, his love of freedom chafed against the restriction in
much the same way his neck chafed against the starched fetter of a collar.
Besides, he was confident that he could not keep it up. He was by nature
powerful of thought and sensibility, and the creative spirit was restive
and urgent. He was swiftly mastered by the concept or sensation in him that
struggled in birth-throes to receive expression and form, and then he
forgot himself and where he was, and the old words - the tools of speech he
knew - slipped out.

Once, he declined something from the servant who interrupted and pestered
at his shoulder, and he said, shortly and emphatically, "Pew!"

On the instant those at the table were keyed up and expectant, the servant
was smugly pleased, and he was wallowing in mortification. But he recovered
himself quickly.

"It's the Kanaka for 'finish,'" he explained, "and it just come out
naturally. It's spelt p-a-u."

He caught her curious and speculative eyes fixed on his hands, and, being
in explanatory mood, he said:-

"I just come down the Coast on one of the Pacific mail steamers. She was
behind time, an' around the Puget Sound ports we worked like niggers,
storing cargo-mixed freight, if you know what that means. That's how the
skin got knocked off."

"Oh, it wasn't that," she hastened to explain, in turn. "Your hands seemed
too small for your body."

His cheeks were hot. He took it as an exposure of another of his
deficiencies.

"Yes," he said depreciatingly. "They ain't big enough to stand the strain.
I can hit like a mule with my arms and shoulders. They are too strong, an'
when I smash a man on the jaw the hands get smashed, too."

He was not happy at what he had said. He was filled with disgust at
himself. He had loosed the guard upon his tongue and talked about things
that were not nice.

"It was brave of you to help Arthur the way you did - and you a stranger,"
she said tactfully, aware of his discomfiture though not of the reason for
it.

He, in turn, realized what she had done, and in the consequent warm surge
of gratefulness that overwhelmed him forgot his loose-worded tongue.

"It wasn't nothin' at all," he said. "Any guy 'ud do it for another. That
bunch of hoodlums was lookin' for trouble, an' Arthur wasn't botherin' 'em
none. They butted in on 'm, an' then I butted in on them an' poked a few.
That's where some of the skin off my hands went, along with some of the
teeth of the gang. I wouldn't 'a' missed it for anything. When I seen - "

He paused, open-mouthed, on the verge of the pit of his own depravity and
utter worthlessness to breathe the same air she did. And while Arthur took
up the tale, for the twentieth time, of his adventure with the drunken
hoodlums on the ferry-boat and of how Martin Eden had rushed in and rescued
him, that individual, with frowning brows, meditated upon the fool he had
made of himself, and wrestled more determinedly with the problem of how he
should conduct himself toward these people. He certainly had not succeeded
so far. He wasn't of their tribe, and he couldn't talk their lingo, was the
way he put it to himself. He couldn't fake being their kind. The masquerade
would fail, and besides, masquerade was foreign to his nature. There was no
room in him for sham or artifice. Whatever happened, he must be real. He
couldn't talk their talk just yet, though in time he would. Upon that he
was resolved. But in the meantime, talk he must, and it must be his own
talk, toned down, of course, so as to be comprehensible to them and so as
not to shook them too much. And furthermore, he wouldn't claim, not even by
tacit acceptance, to be familiar with anything that was unfamiliar. In
pursuance of this decision, when the two brothers, talking university shop,
had used "trig" several times, Martin Eden demanded:-

"What is TRIG?"

"Trignometry," Norman said; "a higher form of math."

"And what is math?" was the next question, which, somehow, brought the
laugh on Norman.

"Mathematics, arithmetic," was the answer.

Martin Eden nodded. He had caught a glimpse of the apparently illimitable
vistas of knowledge. What he saw took on tangibility. His abnormal power of
vision made abstractions take on concrete form. In the alchemy of his
brain, trigonometry and mathematics and the whole field of knowledge which
they betokened were transmuted into so much landscape. The vistas he saw
were vistas of green foliage and forest glades, all softly luminous or shot
through with flashing lights. In the distance, detail was veiled and
blurred by a purple haze, but behind this purple haze, he knew, was the
glamour of the unknown, the lure of romance. It was like wine to him. Here
was adventure, something to do with head and hand, a world to conquer - and
straightway from the back of his consciousness rushed the thought,
CONQUERING, TO WIN TO HER, THAT LILY-PALE SPIRIT SITTING BESIDE HIM.

The glimmering vision was rent asunder and dissipated by Arthur, who, all
evening, had been trying to draw his wild man out. Martin Eden remembered
his decision. For the first time he became himself, consciously and
deliberately at first, but soon lost in the joy of creating in making life
as he knew it appear before his listeners' eyes. He had been a member of
the crew of the smuggling schooner Halcyon when she was captured by a
revenue cutter. He saw with wide eyes, and he could tell what he saw. He
brought the pulsing sea before them, and the men and the ships upon the
sea. He communicated his power of vision, till they saw with his eyes what
he had seen. He selected from the vast mass of detail with an artist's
touch, drawing pictures of life that glowed and burned with light and
color, injecting movement so that his listeners surged along with him on
the flood of rough eloquence, enthusiasm, and power. At times he shocked
them with the vividness of the narrative and his terms of speech, but
beauty always followed fast upon the heels of violence, and tragedy was
relieved by humor, by interpretations of the strange twists and quirks of
sailors' minds.

And while he talked, the girl looked at him with startled eyes. His fire
warmed her. She wondered if she had been cold all her days. She wanted to
lean toward this burning, blazing man that was like a volcano spouting
forth strength, robustness, and health. She felt that she must lean toward
him, and resisted by an effort. Then, too, there was the counter impulse to
shrink away from him. She was repelled by those lacerated hands, grimed by
toil so that the very dirt of life was ingrained in the flesh itself, by
that red chafe of the collar and those bulging muscles. His roughness
frightened her; each roughness of speech was an insult to her ear, each
rough phase of his life an insult to her soul. And ever and again would
come the draw of him, till she thought he must be evil to have such power
over her. All that was most firmly established in her mind was rocking. His
romance and adventure were battering at the conventions. Before his facile
perils and ready laugh, life was no longer an affair of serious effort and
restraint, but a toy, to be played with and turned topsy-turvy, carelessly
to be lived and pleasured in, and carelessly to be flung aside. "Therefore,
play!" was the cry that rang through her. "Lean toward him, if so you will,
and place your two hands upon his neck!" She wanted to cry out at the
recklessness of the thought, and in vain she appraised her own cleanness
and culture and balanced all that she was against what he was not. She
glanced about her and saw the others gazing at him with rapt attention; and
she would have despaired had not she seen horror in her mother's eyes -
fascinated horror, it was true, but none the less horror. This man from
outer darkness was evil. Her mother saw it, and her mother was right. She
would trust her mother's judgment in this as she had always trusted it in
all things. The fire of him was no longer warm, and the fear of him was no
longer poignant.

Later, at the piano, she played for him, and at him, aggressively, with the
vague intent of emphasizing the impassableness of the gulf that separated
them. Her music was a club that she swung brutally upon his head; and
though it stunned him and crushed him down, it incited him. He gazed upon
her in awe. In his mind, as in her own, the gulf widened; but faster than
it widened, towered his ambition to win across it. But he was too
complicated a plexus of sensibilities to sit staring at a gulf a whole
evening, especially when there was music. He was remarkably susceptible to
music. It was like strong drink, firing him to audacities of feeling, - a
drug that laid hold of his imagination and went cloud-soaring through the
sky. It banished sordid fact, flooded his mind with beauty, loosed romance
and to its heels added wings. He did not understand the music she played.
It was different from the dance- hall piano-banging and blatant brass bands
he had heard. But he had caught hints of such music from the books, and he
accepted her playing largely on faith, patiently waiting, at first, for the
lifting measures of pronounced and simple rhythm, puzzled because those
measures were not long continued. Just as he caught the swing of them and
started, his imagination attuned in flight, always they vanished away in a
chaotic scramble of sounds that was meaningless to him, and that dropped
his imagination, an inert weight, back to earth.

Once, it entered his mind that there was a deliberate rebuff in all this.
He caught her spirit of antagonism and strove to divine the message that
her hands pronounced upon the keys. Then he dismissed the thought as
unworthy and impossible, and yielded himself more freely to the music. The
old delightful condition began to be induced. His feet were no longer clay,
and his flesh became spirit; before his eyes and behind his eyes shone a
great glory; and then the scene before him vanished and he was away,
rocking over the world that was to him a very dear world. The known and the
unknown were commingled in the dream-pageant that thronged his vision. He
entered strange ports of sun-washed lands, and trod market-places among
barbaric peoples that no man had ever seen. The scent of the spice islands
was in his nostrils as he had known it on warm, breathless nights at sea,
or he beat up against the southeast trades through long tropic days,
sinking palm-tufted coral islets in the turquoise sea behind and lifting
palm-tufted coral islets in the turquoise sea ahead. Swift as thought the
pictures came and went. One instant he was astride a broncho and flying
through the fairy-colored Painted Desert country; the next instant he was
gazing down through shimmering heat into the whited sepulchre of Death
Valley, or pulling an oar on a freezing ocean where great ice islands
towered and glistened in the sun. He lay on a coral beach where the
cocoanuts grew down to the mellow- sounding surf. The hulk of an ancient
wreck burned with blue fires, in the light of which danced the HULA dancers
to the barbaric love-calls of the singers, who chanted to tinkling UKULELES
and rumbling tom-toms. It was a sensuous, tropic night. In the background a
volcano crater was silhouetted against the stars. Overhead drifted a pale
crescent moon, and the Southern Cross burned low in the sky.

He was a harp; all life that he had known and that was his consciousness
was the strings; and the flood of music was a wind that poured against
those strings and set them vibrating with memories and dreams. He did not
merely feel. Sensation invested itself in form and color and radiance, and
what his imagination dared, it objectified in some sublimated and magic
way. Past, present, and future mingled; and he went on oscillating across
the broad, warm world, through high adventure and noble deeds to Her - ay,
and with her, winning her, his arm about her, and carrying her on in flight
through the empery of his mind.

And she, glancing at him across her shoulder, saw something of all this in
his face. It was a transfigured face, with great shining eyes that gazed
beyond the veil of sound and saw behind it the leap and pulse of life and
the gigantic phantoms of the spirit. She was startled. The raw, stumbling
lout was gone. The ill-fitting clothes, battered hands, and sunburned face
remained; but these seemed the prison-bars through which she saw a great
soul looking forth, inarticulate and dumb because of those feeble lips that
would not give it speech. Only for a flashing moment did she see this, then
she saw the lout returned, and she laughed at the whim of her fancy. But
the impression of that fleeting glimpse lingered, and when the time came
for him to beat a stumbling retreat and go, she lent him the volume of
Swinburne, and another of Browning - she was studying Browning in one of
her English courses. He seemed such a boy, as he stood blushing and
stammering his thanks, that a wave of pity, maternal in its prompting,
welled up in her. She did not remember the lout, nor the imprisoned soul,
nor the man who had stared at her in all masculineness and delighted and
frightened her. She saw before her only a boy, who was shaking her hand
with a hand so calloused that it felt like a nutmeg-grater and rasped her
skin, and who was saying jerkily:-

"The greatest time of my life. You see, I ain't used to things. . . " He
looked about him helplessly. "To people and houses like this. It's all new
to me, and I like it."

"I hope you'll call again," she said, as he was saying good night to her
brothers.

He pulled on his cap, lurched desperately through the doorway, and was
gone.

"Well, what do you think of him?" Arthur demanded.

"He is most interesting, a whiff of ozone," she answered. "How old is he?"

"Twenty - almost twenty-one. I asked him this afternoon. I didn't think he
was that young."

And I am three years older, was the thought in her mind as she kissed her
brothers goodnight.

CHAPTER III

As Martin Eden went down the steps, his hand dropped into his coat pocket.
It came out with a brown rice paper and a pinch of Mexican tobacco, which
were deftly rolled together into a cigarette. He drew the first whiff of
smoke deep into his lungs and expelled it in a long and lingering
exhalation. "By God!" he said aloud, in a voice of awe and wonder. "By
God!" he repeated. And yet again he murmured, "By God!" Then his hand went
to his collar, which he ripped out of the shirt and stuffed into his
pocket. A cold drizzle was falling, but he bared his head to it and
unbuttoned his vest, swinging along in splendid unconcern. He was only
dimly aware that it was raining. He was in an ecstasy, dreaming dreams and
reconstructing the scenes just past.

He had met the woman at last - the woman that he had thought little about,
not being given to thinking about women, but whom he had expected, in a
remote way, he would sometime meet. He had sat next to her at table. He had
felt her hand in his, he had looked into her eyes and caught a vision of a
beautiful spirit; - but no more beautiful than the eyes through which it
shone, nor than the flesh that gave it expression and form. He did not
think of her flesh as flesh, - which was new to him; for of the women he
had known that was the only way he thought. Her flesh was somehow
different. He did not conceive of her body as a body, subject to the ills
and frailties of bodies. Her body was more than the garb of her spirit. It
was an emanation of her spirit, a pure and gracious crystallization of her
divine essence. This feeling of the divine startled him. It shocked him
from his dreams to sober thought. No word, no clew, no hint, of the divine
had ever reached him before. He had never believed in the divine. He had
always been irreligious, scoffing good-naturedly at the sky-pilots and
their immortality of the soul. There was no life beyond, he had contended;
it was here and now, then darkness everlasting. But what he had seen in her
eyes was soul - immortal soul that could never die. No man he had known,
nor any woman, had given him the message of immortality. But she had. She
had whispered it to him the first moment she looked at him. Her face
shimmered before his eyes as he walked along, - pale and serious, sweet and
sensitive, smiling with pity and tenderness as only a spirit could smile,
and pure as he had never dreamed purity could be. Her purity smote him like
a blow. It startled him. He had known good and bad; but purity, as an
attribute of existence, had never entered his mind. And now, in her, he
conceived purity to be the superlative of goodness and of cleanness, the
sum of which constituted eternal life.

And promptly urged his ambition to grasp at eternal life. He was not fit to
carry water for her - he knew that; it was a miracle of luck and a
fantastic stroke that had enabled him to see her and be with her and talk
with her that night. It was accidental. There was no merit in it. He did
not deserve such fortune. His mood was essentially religious. He was humble
and meek, filled with self- disparagement and abasement. In such frame of
mind sinners come to the penitent form. He was convicted of sin. But as the
meek and lowly at the penitent form catch splendid glimpses of their future
lordly existence, so did he catch similar glimpses of the state he would
gain to by possessing her. But this possession of her was dim and nebulous
and totally different from possession as he had known it. Ambition soared
on mad wings, and he saw himself climbing the heights with her, sharing
thoughts with her, pleasuring in beautiful and noble things with her. It
was a soul- possession he dreamed, refined beyond any grossness, a free
comradeship of spirit that he could not put into definite thought. He did
not think it. For that matter, he did not think at all. Sensation usurped
reason, and he was quivering and palpitant with emotions he had never
known, drifting deliciously on a sea of sensibility where feeling itself
was exalted and spiritualized and carried beyond the summits of life.

He staggered along like a drunken man, murmuring fervently aloud: "By God!
By God!"

A policeman on a street corner eyed him suspiciously, then noted his sailor
roll.

"Where did you get it?" the policeman demanded.

Martin Eden came back to earth. His was a fluid organism, swiftly
adjustable, capable of flowing into and filling all sorts of nooks and
crannies. With the policeman's hail he was immediately his ordinary self,
grasping the situation clearly.

"It's a beaut, ain't it?" he laughed back. "I didn't know I was talkin' out
loud."

"You'll be singing next," was the policeman's diagnosis.

"No, I won't. Gimme a match an' I'll catch the next car home."

He lighted his cigarette, said good night, and went on. "Now wouldn't that
rattle you?" he ejaculated under his breath. "That copper thought I was
drunk." He smiled to himself and meditated. "I guess I was," he added; "but
I didn't think a woman's face'd do it."

He caught a Telegraph Avenue car that was going to Berkeley. It was crowded
with youths and young men who were singing songs and ever and again barking
out college yells. He studied them curiously. They were university boys.
They went to the same university that she did, were in her class socially,
could know her, could see her every day if they wanted to. He wondered that
they did not want to, that they had been out having a good time instead of
being with her that evening, talking with her, sitting around her in a
worshipful and adoring circle. His thoughts wandered on. He noticed one
with narrow-slitted eyes and a loose- lipped mouth. That fellow was
vicious, he decided. On shipboard he would be a sneak, a whiner, a tattler.
He, Martin Eden, was a better man than that fellow. The thought cheered
him. It seemed to draw him nearer to Her. He began comparing himself with
the students. He grew conscious of the muscled mechanism of his body and
felt confident that he was physically their master. But their heads were
filled with knowledge that enabled them to talk her talk, - the thought
depressed him. But what was a brain for? he demanded passionately. What
they had done, he could do. They had been studying about life from the
books while he had been busy living life. His brain was just as full of
knowledge as theirs, though it was a different kind of knowledge. How many
of them could tie a lanyard knot, or take a wheel or a lookout? His life
spread out before him in a series of pictures of danger and daring,
hardship and toil. He remembered his failures and scrapes in the process of
learning. He was that much to the good, anyway. Later on they would have to
begin living life and going through the mill as he had gone. Very well.
While they were busy with that, he could be learning the other side of life
from the books.

As the car crossed the zone of scattered dwellings that separated Oakland
from Berkeley, he kept a lookout for a familiar, two-story building along
the front of which ran the proud sign, HIGGINBOTHAM'S CASH STORE. Martin
Eden got off at this corner. He stared up for a moment at the sign. It
carried a message to him beyond its mere wording. A personality of
smallness and egotism and petty underhandedness seemed to emanate from the
letters themselves. Bernard Higginbotham had married his sister, and he
knew him well. He let himself in with a latch-key and climbed the stairs to
the second floor. Here lived his brother-in-law. The grocery was below.
There was a smell of stale vegetables in the air. As he groped his way
across the hall he stumbled over a toy- cart, left there by one of his
numerous nephews and nieces, and brought up against a door with a
resounding bang. "The pincher," was his thought; "too miserly to burn two
cents' worth of gas and save his boarders' necks."

He fumbled for the knob and entered a lighted room, where sat his sister
and Bernard Higginbotham. She was patching a pair of his trousers, while
his lean body was distributed over two chairs, his feet dangling in
dilapidated carpet-slippers over the edge of the second chair. He glanced
across the top of the paper he was reading, showing a pair of dark,
insincere, sharp-staring eyes. Martin Eden never looked at him without
experiencing a sense of repulsion. What his sister had seen in the man was
beyond him. The other affected him as so much vermin, and always aroused in
him an impulse to crush him under his foot. "Some day I'll beat the face
off of him," was the way he often consoled himself for enduring the man's
existence. The eyes, weasel-like and cruel, were looking at him
complainingly.

"Well," Martin demanded. "Out with it."

"I had that door painted only last week," Mr. Higginbotham half whined,
half bullied; "and you know what union wages are. You should be more
careful."

Martin had intended to reply, but he was struck by the hopelessness of it.
He gazed across the monstrous sordidness of soul to a chromo on the wall.
It surprised him. He had always liked it, but it seemed that now he was
seeing it for the first time. It was cheap, that was what it was, like
everything else in this house. His mind went back to the house he had just
left, and he saw, first, the paintings, and next, Her, looking at him with
melting sweetness as she shook his hand at leaving. He forgot where he was
and Bernard Higginbotham's existence, till that gentleman demanded:-

"Seen a ghost?"

Martin came back and looked at the beady eyes, sneering, truculent,
cowardly, and there leaped into his vision, as on a screen, the same eyes
when their owner was making a sale in the store below - subservient eyes,
smug, and oily, and flattering.

"Yes," Martin answered. "I seen a ghost. Good night. Good night, Gertrude."

He started to leave the room, tripping over a loose seam in the slatternly
carpet.

"Don't bang the door," Mr. Higginbotham cautioned him.

He felt the blood crawl in his veins, but controlled himself and closed the
door softly behind him.

Mr. Higginbotham looked at his wife exultantly.

"He's ben drinkin'," he proclaimed in a hoarse whisper. "I told you he
would."

She nodded her head resignedly.

"His eyes was pretty shiny," she confessed; "and he didn't have no collar,
though he went away with one. But mebbe he didn't have more'n a couple of
glasses."

"He couldn't stand up straight," asserted her husband. "I watched him. He
couldn't walk across the floor without stumblin'. You heard 'm yourself
almost fall down in the hall."

"I think it was over Alice's cart," she said. "He couldn't see it in the
dark."

Mr. Higginbotham's voice and wrath began to rise. All day he effaced
himself in the store, reserving for the evening, with his family, the
privilege of being himself.

"I tell you that precious brother of yours was drunk."

His voice was cold, sharp, and final, his lips stamping the enunciation of
each word like the die of a machine. His wife sighed and remained silent.
She was a large, stout woman, always dressed slatternly and always tired
from the burdens of her flesh, her work, and her husband.

"He's got it in him, I tell you, from his father," Mr. Higginbotham went on
accusingly. "An' he'll croak in the gutter the same way. You know that."

She nodded, sighed, and went on stitching. They were agreed that Martin had
come home drunk. They did not have it in their souls to know beauty, or
they would have known that those shining eyes and that glowing face
betokened youth's first vision of love.

"Settin' a fine example to the children," Mr. Higginbotham snorted,
suddenly, in the silence for which his wife was responsible and which he
resented. Sometimes he almost wished she would oppose him more. "If he does
it again, he's got to get out. Understand! I won't put up with his
shinanigan - debotchin' innocent children with his boozing." Mr.
Higginbotham liked the word, which was a new one in his vocabulary,
recently gleaned from a newspaper column. "That's what it is, debotchin' -
there ain't no other name for it."

Still his wife sighed, shook her head sorrowfully, and stitched on. Mr.
Higginbotham resumed the newspaper.

"Has he paid last week's board?" he shot across the top of the newspaper.

She nodded, then added, "He still has some money."

"When is he goin' to sea again?"

"When his pay-day's spent, I guess," she answered. "He was over to San
Francisco yesterday looking for a ship. But he's got money, yet, an' he's
particular about the kind of ship he signs for."

"It's not for a deck-swab like him to put on airs," Mr. Higginbotham
snorted. "Particular! Him!"

"He said something about a schooner that's gettin' ready to go off to some
outlandish place to look for buried treasure, that he'd sail on her if his
money held out."

"If he only wanted to steady down, I'd give him a job drivin' the wagon,"
her husband said, but with no trace of benevolence in his voice. "Tom's
quit."

His wife looked alarm and interrogation.

"Quit to-night. Is goin' to work for Carruthers. They paid 'm more'n I
could afford."

"I told you you'd lose 'm," she cried out. "He was worth more'n you was
giving him."

"Now look here, old woman," Higginbotham bullied, "for the thousandth time
I've told you to keep your nose out of the business. I won't tell you
again."

"I don't care," she sniffled. "Tom was a good boy." Her husband glared at
her. This was unqualified defiance.

"If that brother of yours was worth his salt, he could take the wagon," he
snorted.

"He pays his board, just the same," was the retort. "An' he's my brother,
an' so long as he don't owe you money you've got no right to be jumping on
him all the time. I've got some feelings, if I have been married to you for
seven years."

"Did you tell 'm you'd charge him for gas if he goes on readin' in bed?" he
demanded.

Mrs. Higginbotham made no reply. Her revolt faded away, her spirit wilting
down into her tired flesh. Her husband was triumphant. He had her. His eyes
snapped vindictively, while his ears joyed in the sniffles she emitted. He
extracted great happiness from squelching her, and she squelched easily
these days, though it had been different in the first years of their
married life, before the brood of children and his incessant nagging had
sapped her energy.

"Well, you tell 'm to-morrow, that's all," he said. "An' I just want to
tell you, before I forget it, that you'd better send for Marian to-morrow
to take care of the children. With Tom quit, I'll have to be out on the
wagon, an' you can make up your mind to it to be down below waitin' on the
counter."

"But to-morrow's wash day," she objected weakly.

"Get up early, then, an' do it first. I won't start out till ten o'clock."

He crinkled the paper viciously and resumed his reading.

CHAPTER IV

Martin Eden, with blood still crawling from contact with his
brother-in-law, felt his way along the unlighted back hall and entered his
room, a tiny cubbyhole with space for a bed, a wash- stand, and one chair.
Mr. Higginbotham was too thrifty to keep a servant when his wife could do
the work. Besides, the servant's room enabled them to take in two boarders
instead of one. Martin placed the Swinburne and Browning on the chair, took
off his coat, and sat down on the bed. A screeching of asthmatic springs
greeted the weight of his body, but he did not notice them. He started to
take off his shoes, but fell to staring at the white plaster wall opposite
him, broken by long streaks of dirty brown where rain had leaked through
the roof. On this befouled background visions began to flow and burn. He
forgot his shoes and stared long, till his lips began to move and he
murmured, "Ruth."

"Ruth." He had not thought a simple sound could be so beautiful. It
delighted his ear, and he grew intoxicated with the repetition of it.
"Ruth." It was a talisman, a magic word to conjure with. Each time he
murmured it, her face shimmered before him, suffusing the foul wall with a
golden radiance. This radiance did not stop at the wall. It extended on
into infinity, and through its golden depths his soul went questing after
hers. The best that was in him was out in splendid flood. The very thought
of her ennobled and purified him, made him better, and made him want to be
better. This was new to him. He had never known women who had made him
better. They had always had the counter effect of making him beastly. He
did not know that many of them had done their best, bad as it was. Never
having been conscious of himself, he did not know that he had that in his
being that drew love from women and which had been the cause of their
reaching out for his youth. Though they had often bothered him, he had
never bothered about them; and he would never have dreamed that there were
women who had been better because of him. Always in sublime carelessness
had he lived, till now, and now it seemed to him that they had always
reached out and dragged at him with vile hands. This was not just to them,
nor to himself. But he, who for the first time was becoming conscious of
himself, was in no condition to judge, and he burned with shame as he
stared at the vision of his infamy.

He got up abruptly and tried to see himself in the dirty looking- glass
over the wash-stand. He passed a towel over it and looked again, long and
carefully. It was the first time he had ever really seen himself. His eyes
were made for seeing, but up to that moment they had been filled with the
ever changing panorama of the world, at which he had been too busy gazing,
ever to gaze at himself. He saw the head and face of a young fellow of
twenty, but, being unused to such appraisement, he did not know how to
value it. Above a square-domed forehead he saw a mop of brown hair,
nut-brown, with a wave to it and hints of curls that were a delight to any
woman, making hands tingle to stroke it and fingers tingle to pass caresses
through it. But he passed it by as without merit, in Her eyes, and dwelt
long and thoughtfully on the high, square forehead, - striving to penetrate
it and learn the quality of its content. What kind of a brain lay behind
there? was his insistent interrogation. What was it capable of? How far
would it take him? Would it take him to her?

He wondered if there was soul in those steel-gray eyes that were often
quite blue of color and that were strong with the briny airs of the
sun-washed deep. He wondered, also, how his eyes looked to her. He tried to
imagine himself she, gazing into those eyes of his, but failed in the
jugglery. He could successfully put himself inside other men's minds, but
they had to be men whose ways of life he knew. He did not know her way of
life. She was wonder and mystery, and how could he guess one thought of
hers? Well, they were honest eyes, he concluded, and in them was neither
smallness nor meanness. The brown sunburn of his face surprised him. He had
not dreamed he was so black. He rolled up his shirt-sleeve and compared the
white underside if the arm with his face. Yes, he was a white man, after
all. But the arms were sunburned, too. He twisted his arm, rolled the
biceps over with his other hand, and gazed underneath where he was least
touched by the sun. It was very white. He laughed at his bronzed face in
the glass at the thought that it was once as white as the underside of his
arm; nor did he dream that in the world there were few pale spirits of
women who could boast fairer or smoother skins than he - fairer than where
he had escaped the ravages of the sun.

His might have been a cherub's mouth, had not the full, sensuous lips a
trick, under stress, of drawing firmly across the teeth. At times, so
tightly did they draw, the mouth became stern and harsh, even ascetic. They
were the lips of a fighter and of a lover. They could taste the sweetness
of life with relish, and they could put the sweetness aside and command
life. The chin and jaw, strong and just hinting of square aggressiveness,
helped the lips to command life. Strength balanced sensuousness and had
upon it a tonic effect, compelling him to love beauty that was healthy and
making him vibrate to sensations that were wholesome. And between the lips
were teeth that had never known nor needed the dentist's care. They were
white and strong and regular, he decided, as he looked at them. But as he
looked, he began to be troubled. Somewhere, stored away in the recesses of
his mind and vaguely remembered, was the impression that there were people
who washed their teeth every day. They were the people from up above -
people in her class. She must wash her teeth every day, too. What would she
think if she learned that he had never washed his teeth in all the days of
his life? He resolved to get a tooth-brush and form the habit. He would
begin at once, to-morrow. It was not by mere achievement that he could hope
to win to her. He must make a personal reform in all things, even to
tooth-washing and neck-gear, though a starched collar affected him as a
renunciation of freedom.

He held up his hand, rubbing the ball of the thumb over the calloused palm
and gazing at the dirt that was ingrained in the flesh itself and which no
brush could scrub away. How different was her palm! He thrilled deliciously
at the remembrance. Like a rose-petal, he thought; cool and soft as a
snowflake. He had never thought that a mere woman's hand could be so
sweetly soft. He caught himself imagining the wonder of a caress from such
a hand, and flushed guiltily. It was too gross a thought for her. In ways
it seemed to impugn her high spirituality. She was a pale, slender spirit,
exalted far beyond the flesh; but nevertheless the softness of her palm
persisted in his thoughts. He was used to the harsh callousness of factory
girls and working women. Well he knew why their hands were rough; but this
hand of hers . . . It was soft because she had never used it to work with.
The gulf yawned between her and him at the awesome thought of a person who
did not have to work for a living. He suddenly saw the aristocracy of the
people who did not labor. It towered before him on the wall, a figure in
brass, arrogant and powerful. He had worked himself; his first memories
seemed connected with work, and all his family had worked. There was
Gertrude. When her hands were not hard from the endless housework, they
were swollen and red like boiled beef, what of the washing. And there was
his sister Marian. She had worked in the cannery the preceding summer, and
her slim, pretty hands were all scarred with the tomato-knives. Besides,
the tips of two of her fingers had been left in the cutting machine at the
paper- box factory the preceding winter. He remembered the hard palms of
his mother as she lay in her coffin. And his father had worked to the last
fading gasp; the horned growth on his hands must have been half an inch
thick when he died. But Her hands were soft, and her mother's hands, and
her brothers'. This last came to him as a surprise; it was tremendously
indicative of the highness of their caste, of the enormous distance that
stretched between her and him.

He sat back on the bed with a bitter laugh, and finished taking off his
shoes. He was a fool; he had been made drunken by a woman's face and by a
woman's soft, white hands. And then, suddenly, before his eyes, on the foul
plaster-wall appeared a vision. He stood in front of a gloomy tenement
house. It was night-time, in the East End of London, and before him stood
Margey, a little factory girl of fifteen. He had seen her home after the
bean- feast. She lived in that gloomy tenement, a place not fit for swine.
His hand was going out to hers as he said good night. She had put her lips
up to be kissed, but he wasn't going to kiss her. Somehow he was afraid of
her. And then her hand closed on his and pressed feverishly. He felt her
callouses grind and grate on his, and a great wave of pity welled over him.
He saw her yearning, hungry eyes, and her ill-fed female form which had
been rushed from childhood into a frightened and ferocious maturity; then
he put his arms about her in large tolerance and stooped and kissed her on
the lips. Her glad little cry rang in his ears, and he felt her clinging to
him like a cat. Poor little starveling! He continued to stare at the vision
of what had happened in the long ago. His flesh was crawling as it had
crawled that night when she clung to him, and his heart was warm with pity.
It was a gray scene, greasy gray, and the rain drizzled greasily on the
pavement stones. And then a radiant glory shone on the wall, and up through
the other vision, displacing it, glimmered Her pale face under its crown of
golden hair, remote and inaccessible as a star.

He took the Browning and the Swinburne from the chair and kissed them. Just
the same, she told me to call again, he thought. He took another look at
himself in the glass, and said aloud, with great solemnity:-

"Martin Eden, the first thing to-morrow you go to the free library an' read
up on etiquette. Understand!"

He turned off the gas, and the springs shrieked under his body.

"But you've got to quit cussin', Martin, old boy; you've got to quit
cussin'," he said aloud.

Then he dozed off to sleep and to dream dreams that for madness and
audacity rivalled those of poppy-eaters.

CHAPTER V

He awoke next morning from rosy scenes of dream to a steamy atmosphere that
smelled of soapsuds and dirty clothes, and that was vibrant with the jar
and jangle of tormented life. As he came out of his room he heard the slosh
of water, a sharp exclamation, and a resounding smack as his sister visited
her irritation upon one of her numerous progeny. The squall of the child
went through him like a knife. He was aware that the whole thing, the very
air he breathed, was repulsive and mean. How different, he thought, from
the atmosphere of beauty and repose of the house wherein Ruth dwelt. There
it was all spiritual. Here it was all material, and meanly material.

"Come here, Alfred," he called to the crying child, at the same time
thrusting his hand into his trousers pocket, where he carried his money
loose in the same large way that he lived life in general. He put a quarter
in the youngster's hand and held him in his arms a moment, soothing his
sobs. "Now run along and get some candy, and don't forget to give some to
your brothers and sisters. Be sure and get the kind that lasts longest."

His sister lifted a flushed face from the wash-tub and looked at him.

"A nickel'd ha' ben enough," she said. "It's just like you, no idea of the
value of money. The child'll eat himself sick."

"That's all right, sis," he answered jovially. "My money'll take care of
itself. If you weren't so busy, I'd kiss you good morning."

He wanted to be affectionate to this sister, who was good, and who, in her
way, he knew, loved him. But, somehow, she grew less herself as the years
went by, and more and more baffling. It was the hard work, the many
children, and the nagging of her husband, he decided, that had changed her.
It came to him, in a flash of fancy, that her nature seemed taking on the
attributes of stale vegetables, smelly soapsuds, and of the greasy dimes,
nickels, and quarters she took in over the counter of the store.

"Go along an' get your breakfast," she said roughly, though secretly
pleased. Of all her wandering brood of brothers he had always been her
favorite. "I declare I WILL kiss you," she said, with a sudden stir at her
heart.

With thumb and forefinger she swept the dripping suds first from one arm
and then from the other. He put his arms round her massive waist and kissed
her wet steamy lips. The tears welled into her eyes - not so much from
strength of feeling as from the weakness of chronic overwork. She shoved
him away from her, but not before he caught a glimpse of her moist eyes.

"You'll find breakfast in the oven," she said hurriedly. "Jim ought to be
up now. I had to get up early for the washing. Now get along with you and
get out of the house early. It won't be nice to-day, what of Tom quittin'
an' nobody but Bernard to drive the wagon."

Martin went into the kitchen with a sinking heart, the image of her red
face and slatternly form eating its way like acid into his brain. She might
love him if she only had some time, he concluded. But she was worked to
death. Bernard Higginbotham was a brute to work her so hard. But he could
not help but feel, on the other hand, that there had not been anything
beautiful in that kiss. It was true, it was an unusual kiss. For years she
had kissed him only when he returned from voyages or departed on voyages.
But this kiss had tasted soapsuds, and the lips, he had noticed, were
flabby. There had been no quick, vigorous lip-pressure such as should
accompany any kiss. Hers was the kiss of a tired woman who had been tired
so long that she had forgotten how to kiss. He remembered her as a girl,
before her marriage, when she would dance with the best, all night, after a
hard day's work at the laundry, and think nothing of leaving the dance to
go to another day's hard work. And then he thought of Ruth and the cool
sweetness that must reside in her lips as it resided in all about her. Her
kiss would be like her hand-shake or the way she looked at one, firm and
frank. In imagination he dared to think of her lips on his, and so vividly
did he imagine that he went dizzy at the thought and seemed to rift through
clouds of rose-petals, filling his brain with their perfume.

In the kitchen he found Jim, the other boarder, eating mush very languidly,
with a sick, far-away look in his eyes. Jim was a plumber's apprentice
whose weak chin and hedonistic temperament, coupled with a certain nervous
stupidity, promised to take him nowhere in the race for bread and butter.

"Why don't you eat?" he demanded, as Martin dipped dolefully into the cold,
half-cooked oatmeal mush. "Was you drunk again last night?"

Martin shook his head. He was oppressed by the utter squalidness of it all.
Ruth Morse seemed farther removed than ever.

"I was," Jim went on with a boastful, nervous giggle. "I was loaded right
to the neck. Oh, she was a daisy. Billy brought me home."

Martin nodded that he heard, - it was a habit of nature with him to pay
heed to whoever talked to him, - and poured a cup of lukewarm coffee.

"Goin' to the Lotus Club dance to-night?" Jim demanded. "They're goin' to
have beer, an' if that Temescal bunch comes, there'll be a rough-house. I
don't care, though. I'm takin' my lady friend just the same. Cripes, but
I've got a taste in my mouth!"

He made a wry face and attempted to wash the taste away with coffee.

"D'ye know Julia?"

Martin shook his head.

"She's my lady friend," Jim explained, "and she's a peach. I'd introduce
you to her, only you'd win her. I don't see what the girls see in you,
honest I don't; but the way you win them away from the fellers is
sickenin'."

"I never got any away from you," Martin answered uninterestedly. The
breakfast had to be got through somehow.

"Yes, you did, too," the other asserted warmly. "There was Maggie."

"Never had anything to do with her. Never danced with her except that one
night."

"Yes, an' that's just what did it," Jim cried out. "You just danced with
her an' looked at her, an' it was all off. Of course you didn't mean
nothin' by it, but it settled me for keeps. Wouldn't look at me again.
Always askin' about you. She'd have made fast dates enough with you if
you'd wanted to."

"But I didn't want to."

"Wasn't necessary. I was left at the pole." Jim looked at him admiringly.
"How d'ye do it, anyway, Mart?"

"By not carin' about 'em," was the answer.

"You mean makin' b'lieve you don't care about them?" Jim queried eagerly.

Martin considered for a moment, then answered, "Perhaps that will do, but
with me I guess it's different. I never have cared - much. If you can put
it on, it's all right, most likely."

"You should 'a' ben up at Riley's barn last night," Jim announced
inconsequently. "A lot of the fellers put on the gloves. There was a peach
from West Oakland. They called 'm 'The Rat.' Slick as silk. No one could
touch 'm. We was all wishin' you was there. Where was you anyway?"

"Down in Oakland," Martin replied.

"To the show?"

Martin shoved his plate away and got up.

"Comin' to the dance to-night?" the other called after him.

"No, I think not," he answered.

He went downstairs and out into the street, breathing great breaths of air.
He had been suffocating in that atmosphere, while the apprentice's chatter
had driven him frantic. There had been times when it was all he could do to
refrain from reaching over and mopping Jim's face in the mush-plate. The
more he had chattered, the more remote had Ruth seemed to him. How could
he, herding with such cattle, ever become worthy of her? He was appalled at
the problem confronting him, weighted down by the incubus of his
working-class station. Everything reached out to hold him down - his
sister, his sister's house and family, Jim the apprentice, everybody he
knew, every tie of life. Existence did not taste good in his mouth. Up to
then he had accepted existence, as he had lived it with all about him, as a
good thing. He had never questioned it, except when he read books; but
then, they were only books, fairy stories of a fairer and impossible world.
But now he had seen that world, possible and real, with a flower of a woman
called Ruth in the midmost centre of it; and thenceforth he must know
bitter tastes, and longings sharp as pain, and hopelessness that tantalized
because it fed on hope.

He had debated between the Berkeley Free Library and the Oakland Free
Library, and decided upon the latter because Ruth lived in Oakland. Who
could tell? - a library was a most likely place for her, and he might see
her there. He did not know the way of libraries, and he wandered through
endless rows of fiction, till the delicate-featured French-looking girl who
seemed in charge, told him that the reference department was upstairs. He
did not know enough to ask the man at the desk, and began his adventures in
the philosophy alcove. He had heard of book philosophy, but had not
imagined there had been so much written about it. The high, bulging shelves
of heavy tomes humbled him and at the same time stimulated him. Here was
work for the vigor of his brain. He found books on trigonometry in the
mathematics section, and ran the pages, and stared at the meaningless
formulas and figures. He could read English, but he saw there an alien
speech. Norman and Arthur knew that speech. He had heard them talking it.
And they were her brothers. He left the alcove in despair. From every side
the books seemed to press upon him and crush him.

He had never dreamed that the fund of human knowledge bulked so big. He was
frightened. How could his brain ever master it all? Later, he remembered
that there were other men, many men, who had mastered it; and he breathed a
great oath, passionately, under his breath, swearing that his brain could
do what theirs had done.

And so he wandered on, alternating between depression and elation as he
stared at the shelves packed with wisdom. In one miscellaneous section he
came upon a "Norrie's Epitome." He turned the pages reverently. In a way,
it spoke a kindred speech. Both he and it were of the sea. Then he found a
"Bowditch" and books by Lecky and Marshall. There it was; he would teach
himself navigation. He would quit drinking, work up, and become a captain.
Ruth seemed very near to him in that moment. As a captain, he could marry
her (if she would have him). And if she wouldn't, well - he would live a
good life among men, because of Her, and he would quit drinking anyway.
Then he remembered the underwriters and the owners, the two masters a
captain must serve, either of which could and would break him and whose
interests were diametrically opposed. He cast his eyes about the room and
closed the lids down on a vision of ten thousand books. No; no more of the
sea for him. There was power in all that wealth of books, and if he would
do great things, he must do them on the land. Besides, captains were not
allowed to take their wives to sea with them.

Noon came, and afternoon. He forgot to eat, and sought on for the books on
etiquette; for, in addition to career, his mind was vexed by a simple and
very concrete problem: WHEN YOU MEET A YOUNG LADY AND SHE ASKS YOU TO CALL,
HOW SOON CAN YOU CALL? was the way he worded it to himself. But when he
found the right shelf, he sought vainly for the answer. He was appalled at
the vast edifice of etiquette, and lost himself in the mazes of
visiting-card conduct between persons in polite society. He abandoned his
search. He had not found what he wanted, though he had found that it would
take all of a man's time to be polite, and that he would have to live a
preliminary life in which to learn how to be polite.

"Did you find what you wanted?" the man at the desk asked him as he was
leaving.

"Yes, sir," he answered. "You have a fine library here."

The man nodded. "We should be glad to see you here often. Are you a
sailor?"

"Yes, sir," he answered. "And I'll come again."

Now, how did he know that? he asked himself as he went down the stairs.

And for the first block along the street he walked very stiff and straight
and awkwardly, until he forgot himself in his thoughts, whereupon his
rolling gait gracefully returned to him.

CHAPTER VI

A terrible restlessness that was akin to hunger afflicted Martin Eden. He
was famished for a sight of the girl whose slender hands had gripped his
life with a giant's grasp. He could not steel himself to call upon her. He
was afraid that he might call too soon, and so be guilty of an awful breach
of that awful thing called etiquette. He spent long hours in the Oakland
and Berkeley libraries, and made out application blanks for membership for
himself, his sisters Gertrude and Marian, and Jim, the latter's consent
being obtained at the expense of several glasses of beer. With four cards
permitting him to draw books, he burned the gas late in the servant's room,
and was charged fifty cents a week for it by Mr. Higginbotham.

The many books he read but served to whet his unrest. Every page of every
book was a peep-hole into the realm of knowledge. His hunger fed upon what
he read, and increased. Also, he did not know where to begin, and
continually suffered from lack of preparation. The commonest references,
that he could see plainly every reader was expected to know, he did not
know. And the same was true of the poetry he read which maddened him with
delight. He read more of Swinburne than was contained in the volume Ruth
had lent him; and "Dolores" he understood thoroughly. But surely Ruth did
not understand it, he concluded. How could she, living the refined life she
did? Then he chanced upon Kipling's poems, and was swept away by the lilt
and swing and glamour with which familiar things had been invested. He was
amazed at the man's sympathy with life and at his incisive psychology.
PSYCHOLOGY was a new word in Martin's vocabulary. He had bought a
dictionary, which deed had decreased his supply of money and brought nearer
the day on which he must sail in search of more. Also, it incensed Mr.
Higginbotham, who would have preferred the money taking the form of board.

He dared not go near Ruth's neighborhood in the daytime, but night found
him lurking like a thief around the Morse home, stealing glimpses at the
windows and loving the very walls that sheltered her. Several times he
barely escaped being caught by her brothers, and once he trailed Mr. Morse
down town and studied his face in the lighted streets, longing all the
while for some quick danger of death to threaten so that he might spring in
and save her father. On another night, his vigil was rewarded by a glimpse
of Ruth through a second-story window. He saw only her head and shoulders,
and her arms raised as she fixed her hair before a mirror. It was only for
a moment, but it was a long moment to him, during which his blood turned to
wine and sang through his veins. Then she pulled down the shade. But it was
her room - he had learned that; and thereafter he strayed there often,
hiding under a dark tree on the opposite side of the street and smoking
countless cigarettes. One afternoon he saw her mother coming out of a bank,
and received another proof of the enormous distance that separated Ruth
from him. She was of the class that dealt with banks. He had never been
inside a bank in his life, and he had an idea that such institutions were
frequented only by the very rich and the very powerful.

In one way, he had undergone a moral revolution. Her cleanness and purity
had reacted upon him, and he felt in his being a crying need to be clean.
He must be that if he were ever to be worthy of breathing the same air with
her. He washed his teeth, and scrubbed his hands with a kitchen scrub-brush
till he saw a nail-brush in a drug-store window and divined its use. While
purchasing it, the clerk glanced at his nails, suggested a nail-file, and
so he became possessed of an additional toilet-tool. He ran across a book
in the library on the care of the body, and promptly developed a penchant
for a cold-water bath every morning, much to the amazement of Jim, and to
the bewilderment of Mr. Higginbotham, who was not in sympathy with such
high-fangled notions and who seriously debated whether or not he should
charge Martin extra for the water. Another stride was in the direction of
creased trousers. Now that Martin was aroused in such matters, he swiftly
noted the difference between the baggy knees of the trousers worn by the
working class and the straight line from knee to foot of those worn by the
men above the working class. Also, he learned the reason why, and invaded
his sister's kitchen in search of irons and ironing-board. He had
misadventures at first, hopelessly burning one pair and buying another,
which expenditure again brought nearer the day on which he must put to sea.

But the reform went deeper than mere outward appearance. He still smoked,
but he drank no more. Up to that time, drinking had seemed to him the
proper thing for men to do, and he had prided himself on his strong head
which enabled him to drink most men under the table. Whenever he
encountered a chance shipmate, and there were many in San Francisco, he
treated them and was treated in turn, as of old, but he ordered for himself
root beer or ginger ale and good-naturedly endured their chaffing. And as
they waxed maudlin he studied them, watching the beast rise and master them
and thanking God that he was no longer as they. They had their limitations
to forget, and when they were drunk, their dim, stupid spirits were even as
gods, and each ruled in his heaven of intoxicated desire. With Martin the
need for strong drink had vanished. He was drunken in new and more profound
ways - with Ruth, who had fired him with love and with a glimpse of higher
and eternal life; with books, that had set a myriad maggots of desire
gnawing in his brain; and with the sense of personal cleanliness he was
achieving, that gave him even more superb health than what he had enjoyed
and that made his whole body sing with physical well- being.

One night he went to the theatre, on the blind chance that he might see her
there, and from the second balcony he did see her. He saw her come down the
aisle, with Arthur and a strange young man with a football mop of hair and
eyeglasses, the sight of whom spurred him to instant apprehension and
jealousy. He saw her take her seat in the orchestra circle, and little else
than her did he see that night - a pair of slender white shoulders and a
mass of pale gold hair, dim with distance. But there were others who saw,
and now and again, glancing at those about him, he noted two young girls
who looked back from the row in front, a dozen seats along, and who smiled
at him with bold eyes. He had always been easy-going. It was not in his
nature to give rebuff. In the old days he would have smiled back, and gone
further and encouraged smiling. But now it was different. He did smile
back, then looked away, and looked no more deliberately. But several times,
forgetting the existence of the two girls, his eyes caught their smiles. He
could not re- thumb himself in a day, nor could he violate the intrinsic
kindliness of his nature; so, at such moments, he smiled at the girls in
warm human friendliness. It was nothing new to him. He knew they were
reaching out their woman's hands to him. But it was different now. Far down
there in the orchestra circle was the one woman in all the world, so
different, so terrifically different, from these two girls of his class,
that he could feel for them only pity and sorrow. He had it in his heart to
wish that they could possess, in some small measure, her goodness and
glory. And not for the world could he hurt them because of their
outreaching. He was not flattered by it; he even felt a slight shame at his
lowliness that permitted it. He knew, did he belong in Ruth's class, that
there would be no overtures from these girls; and with each glance of
theirs he felt the fingers of his own class clutching at him to hold him
down.

He left his seat before the curtain went down on the last act, intent on
seeing Her as she passed out. There were always numbers of men who stood on
the sidewalk outside, and he could pull his cap down over his eyes and
screen himself behind some one's shoulder so that she should not see him.
He emerged from the theatre with the first of the crowd; but scarcely had
he taken his position on the edge of the sidewalk when the two girls
appeared. They were looking for him, he knew; and for the moment he could
have cursed that in him which drew women. Their casual edging across the
sidewalk to the curb, as they drew near, apprised him of discovery. They
slowed down, and were in the thick of the crown as they came up with him.
One of them brushed against him and apparently for the first time noticed
him. She was a slender, dark girl, with black, defiant eyes. But they
smiled at him, and he smiled back.

"Hello," he said.

It was automatic; he had said it so often before under similar
circumstances of first meetings. Besides, he could do no less. There was
that large tolerance and sympathy in his nature that would permit him to do
no less. The black-eyed girl smiled gratification and greeting, and showed
signs of stopping, while her companion, arm linked in arm, giggled and
likewise showed signs of halting. He thought quickly. It would never do for
Her to come out and see him talking there with them. Quite naturally, as a
matter of course, he swung in along-side the dark-eyed one and walked with
her. There was no awkwardness on his part, no numb tongue. He was at home
here, and he held his own royally in the badinage, bristling with slang and
sharpness, that was always the preliminary to getting acquainted in these
swift-moving affairs. At the corner where the main stream of people flowed
onward, he started to edge out into the cross street. But the girl with the
black eyes caught his arm, following him and dragging her companion after
her, as she cried:

"Hold on, Bill! What's yer rush? You're not goin' to shake us so sudden as
all that?"

He halted with a laugh, and turned, facing them. Across their shoulders he
could see the moving throng passing under the street lamps. Where he stood
it was not so light, and, unseen, he would be able to see Her as she passed
by. She would certainly pass by, for that way led home.

"What's her name?" he asked of the giggling girl, nodding at the dark-eyed
one.

"You ask her," was the convulsed response.

"Well, what is it?" he demanded, turning squarely on the girl in question.

"You ain't told me yours, yet," she retorted.

"You never asked it," he smiled. "Besides, you guessed the first rattle.
It's Bill, all right, all right."

"Aw, go 'long with you." She looked him in the eyes, her own sharply
passionate and inviting. "What is it, honest?"

Again she looked. All the centuries of woman since sex began were eloquent
in her eyes. And he measured her in a careless way, and knew, bold now,
that she would begin to retreat, coyly and delicately, as he pursued, ever
ready to reverse the game should he turn fainthearted. And, too, he was
human, and could feel the draw of her, while his ego could not but
appreciate the flattery of her kindness. Oh, he knew it all, and knew them
well, from A to Z. Good, as goodness might be measured in their particular
class, hard-working for meagre wages and scorning the sale of self for
easier ways, nervously desirous for some small pinch of happiness in the
desert of existence, and facing a future that was a gamble between the
ugliness of unending toil and the black pit of more terrible wretchedness,
the way whereto being briefer though better paid.

"Bill," he answered, nodding his head. "Sure, Pete, Bill an' no other."

"No joshin'?" she queried.

"It ain't Bill at all," the other broke in.

"How do you know?" he demanded. "You never laid eyes on me before."

"No need to, to know you're lyin'," was the retort.

"Straight, Bill, what is it?" the first girl asked.

"Bill'll do," he confessed.

She reached out to his arm and shook him playfully. "I knew you was lyin',
but you look good to me just the same."

He captured the hand that invited, and felt on the palm familiar markings
and distortions.

"When'd you chuck the cannery?" he asked.

"How'd yeh know?" and, "My, ain't cheh a mind-reader!" the girls chorussed.

And while he exchanged the stupidities of stupid minds with them, before
his inner sight towered the book-shelves of the library, filled with the
wisdom of the ages. He smiled bitterly at the incongruity of it, and was
assailed by doubts. But between inner vision and outward pleasantry he
found time to watch the theatre crowd streaming by. And then he saw Her,
under the lights, between her brother and the strange young man with
glasses, and his heart seemed to stand still. He had waited long for this
moment. He had time to note the light, fluffy something that hid her
queenly head, the tasteful lines of her wrapped figure, the gracefulness of
her carriage and of the hand that caught up her skirts; and then she was
gone and he was left staring at the two girls of the cannery, at their
tawdry attempts at prettiness of dress, their tragic efforts to be clean
and trim, the cheap cloth, the cheap ribbons, and the cheap rings on the
fingers. He felt a tug at his arm, and heard a voice saying:-

"Wake up, Bill! What's the matter with you?"

"What was you sayin'?" he asked.

"Oh, nothin'," the dark girl answered, with a toss of her head. "I was only
remarkin' - "

"What?"

"Well, I was whisperin' it'd be a good idea if you could dig up a gentleman
friend - for her" (indicating her companion), "and then, we could go off
an' have ice-cream soda somewhere, or coffee, or anything."

He was afflicted by a sudden spiritual nausea. The transition from Ruth to
this had been too abrupt. Ranged side by side with the bold, defiant eyes
of the girl before him, he saw Ruth's clear, luminous eyes, like a saint's,
gazing at him out of unplumbed depths of purity. And, somehow, he felt
within him a stir of power. He was better than this. Life meant more to him
than it meant to these two girls whose thoughts did not go beyond ice-cream
and a gentleman friend. He remembered that he had led always a secret life
in his thoughts. These thoughts he had tried to share, but never had he
found a woman capable of understanding - nor a man. He had tried, at times,
but had only puzzled his listeners. And as his thoughts had been beyond
them, so, he argued now, he must be beyond them. He felt power move in him,
and clenched his fists. If life meant more to him, then it was for him to
demand more from life, but he could not demand it from such companionship
as this. Those bold black eyes had nothing to offer. He knew the thoughts
behind them - of ice-cream and of something else. But those saint's eyes
alongside - they offered all he knew and more than he could guess. They
offered books and painting, beauty and repose, and all the fine elegance of
higher existence. Behind those black eyes he knew every thought process. It
was like clockwork. He could watch every wheel go around. Their bid was low
pleasure, narrow as the grave, that palled, and the grave was at the end of
it. But the bid of the saint's eyes was mystery, and wonder unthinkable,
and eternal life. He had caught glimpses of the soul in them, and glimpses
of his own soul, too.

"There's only one thing wrong with the programme," he said aloud. "I've got
a date already."

The girl's eyes blazed her disappointment.

"To sit up with a sick friend, I suppose?" she sneered.

"No, a real, honest date with - " he faltered, "with a girl."

"You're not stringin' me?" she asked earnestly.

He looked her in the eyes and answered: "It's straight, all right. But why
can't we meet some other time? You ain't told me your name yet. An' where
d'ye live?"

"Lizzie," she replied, softening toward him, her hand pressing his arm,
while her body leaned against his. "Lizzie Connolly. And I live at Fifth
an' Market."

He talked on a few minutes before saying good night. He did not go home
immediately; and under the tree where he kept his vigils he looked up at a
window and murmured: "That date was with you, Ruth. I kept it for you."

CHAPTER VII

A week of heavy reading had passed since the evening he first met Ruth
Morse, and still he dared not call. Time and again he nerved himself up to
call, but under the doubts that assailed him his determination died away.
He did not know the proper time to call, nor was there any one to tell him,
and he was afraid of committing himself to an irretrievable blunder. Having
shaken himself free from his old companions and old ways of life, and
having no new companions, nothing remained for him but to read, and the
long hours he devoted to it would have ruined a dozen pairs of ordinary
eyes. But his eyes were strong, and they were backed by a body superbly
strong. Furthermore, his mind was fallow. It had lain fallow all his life
so far as the abstract thought of the books was concerned, and it was ripe
for the sowing. It had never been jaded by study, and it bit hold of the
knowledge in the books with sharp teeth that would not let go.

It seemed to him, by the end of the week, that he had lived centuries, so
far behind were the old life and outlook. But he was baffled by lack of
preparation. He attempted to read books that required years of preliminary
specialization. One day he would read a book of antiquated philosophy, and
the next day one that was ultra-modern, so that his head would be whirling
with the conflict and contradiction of ideas. It was the same with the
economists. On the one shelf at the library he found Karl Marx, Ricardo,
Adam Smith, and Mill, and the abstruse formulas of the one gave no clew
that the ideas of another were obsolete. He was bewildered, and yet he
wanted to know. He had become interested, in a day, in economics, industry,
and politics. Passing through the City Hall Park, he had noticed a group of
men, in the centre of which were half a dozen, with flushed faces and
raised voices, earnestly carrying on a discussion. He joined the listeners,
and heard a new, alien tongue in the mouths of the philosophers of the
people. One was a tramp, another was a labor agitator, a third was a law-
school student, and the remainder was composed of wordy workingmen. For the
first time he heard of socialism, anarchism, and single tax, and learned
that there were warring social philosophies. He heard hundreds of technical
words that were new to him, belonging to fields of thought that his meagre
reading had never touched upon. Because of this he could not follow the
arguments closely, and he could only guess at and surmise the ideas wrapped
up in such strange expressions. Then there was a black-eyed restaurant
waiter who was a theosophist, a union baker who was an agnostic, an old man
who baffled all of them with the strange philosophy that WHAT IS IS RIGHT,
and another old man who discoursed interminably about the cosmos and the
father-atom and the mother-atom.

Martin Eden's head was in a state of addlement when he went away after
several hours, and he hurried to the library to look up the definitions of
a dozen unusual words. And when he left the library, he carried under his
arm four volumes: Madam Blavatsky's "Secret Doctrine," "Progress and
Poverty," "The Quintessence of Socialism," and, "Warfare of Religion and
Science." Unfortunately, he began on the "Secret Doctrine." Every line
bristled with many- syllabled words he did not understand. He sat up in
bed, and the dictionary was in front of him more often than the book. He
looked up so many new words that when they recurred, he had forgotten their
meaning and had to look them up again. He devised the plan of writing the
definitions in a note-book, and filled page after page with them. And still
he could not understand. He read until three in the morning, and his brain
was in a turmoil, but not one essential thought in the text had he grasped.
He looked up, and it seemed that the room was lifting, heeling, and
plunging like a ship upon the sea. Then he hurled the "Secret Doctrine" and
many curses across the room, turned off the gas, and composed himself to
sleep. Nor did he have much better luck with the other three books. It was
not that his brain was weak or incapable; it could think these thoughts
were it not for lack of training in thinking and lack of the thought-tools
with which to think. He guessed this, and for a while entertained the idea
of reading nothing but the dictionary until he had mastered every word in
it.

Poetry, however, was his solace, and he read much of it, finding his
greatest joy in the simpler poets, who were more understandable. He loved
beauty, and there he found beauty. Poetry, like music, stirred him
profoundly, and, though he did not know it, he was preparing his mind for
the heavier work that was to come. The pages of his mind were blank, and,
without effort, much he read and liked, stanza by stanza, was impressed
upon those pages, so that he was soon able to extract great joy from
chanting aloud or under his breath the music and the beauty of the printed
words he had read. Then he stumbled upon Gayley's "Classic Myths" and
Bulfinch's "Age of Fable," side by side on a library shelf. It was
illumination, a great light in the darkness of his ignorance, and he read
poetry more avidly than ever.

The man at the desk in the library had seen Martin there so often that he
had become quite cordial, always greeting him with a smile and a nod when
he entered. It was because of this that Martin did a daring thing. Drawing
out some books at the desk, and while the man was stamping the cards,
Martin blurted out:-

"Say, there's something I'd like to ask you."

The man smiled and paid attention.

"When you meet a young lady an' she asks you to call, how soon can you
call?"

Martin felt his shirt press and cling to his shoulders, what of the sweat
of the effort.

"Why I'd say any time," the man answered.

"Yes, but this is different," Martin objected. "She - I - well, you see,
it's this way: maybe she won't be there. She goes to the university."

"Then call again."

"What I said ain't what I meant," Martin confessed falteringly, while he
made up his mind to throw himself wholly upon the other's mercy. "I'm just
a rough sort of a fellow, an' I ain't never seen anything of society. This
girl is all that I ain't, an' I ain't anything that she is. You don't think
I'm playin' the fool, do you?" he demanded abruptly.

"No, no; not at all, I assure you," the other protested. "Your request is
not exactly in the scope of the reference department, but I shall be only
too pleased to assist you."

Martin looked at him admiringly.

"If I could tear it off that way, I'd be all right," he said.

"I beg pardon?"

"I mean if I could talk easy that way, an' polite, an' all the rest."

"Oh," said the other, with comprehension.

"What is the best time to call? The afternoon? - not too close to
meal-time? Or the evening? Or Sunday?"

"I'll tell you," the librarian said with a brightening face. "You call her
up on the telephone and find out."

"I'll do it," he said, picking up his books and starting away.

He turned back and asked:-

"When you're speakin' to a young lady - say, for instance, Miss Lizzie
Smith - do you say 'Miss Lizzie'? or 'Miss Smith'?"

"Say 'Miss Smith,'" the librarian stated authoritatively. "Say 'Miss Smith'
always - until you come to know her better."

So it was that Martin Eden solved the problem.

"Come down any time; I'll be at home all afternoon," was Ruth's reply over
the telephone to his stammered request as to when he could return the
borrowed books.

She met him at the door herself, and her woman's eyes took in immediately
the creased trousers and the certain slight but indefinable change in him
for the better. Also, she was struck by his face. It was almost violent,
this health of his, and it seemed to rush out of him and at her in waves of
force. She felt the urge again of the desire to lean toward him for warmth,
and marvelled again at the effect his presence produced upon her. And he,
in turn, knew again the swimming sensation of bliss when he felt the
contact of her hand in greeting. The difference between them lay in that
she was cool and self-possessed while his face flushed to the roots of the
hair. He stumbled with his old awkwardness after her, and his shoulders
swung and lurched perilously.

Once they were seated in the living-room, he began to get on easily - more
easily by far than he had expected. She made it easy for him; and the
gracious spirit with which she did it made him love her more madly than
ever. They talked first of the borrowed books, of the Swinburne he was
devoted to, and of the Browning he did not understand; and she led the
conversation on from subject to subject, while she pondered the problem of
how she could be of help to him. She had thought of this often since their
first meeting. She wanted to help him. He made a call upon her pity and
tenderness that no one had ever made before, and the pity was not so much
derogatory of him as maternal in her. Her pity could not be of the common
sort, when the man who drew it was so much man as to shock her with
maidenly fears and set her mind and pulse thrilling with strange thoughts
and feelings. The old fascination of his neck was there, and there was
sweetness in the thought of laying her hands upon it. It seemed still a
wanton impulse, but she had grown more used to it. She did not dream that
in such guise new-born love would epitomize itself. Nor did she dream that
the feeling he excited in her was love. She thought she was merely
interested in him as an unusual type possessing various potential
excellencies, and she even felt philanthropic about it.

She did not know she desired him; but with him it was different. He knew
that he loved her, and he desired her as he had never before desired
anything in his life. He had loved poetry for beauty's sake; but since he
met her the gates to the vast field of love-poetry had been opened wide.
She had given him understanding even more than Bulfinch and Gayley. There
was a line that a week before he would not have favored with a second
thought - "God's own mad lover dying on a kiss"; but now it was ever
insistent in his mind. He marvelled at the wonder of it and the truth; and
as he gazed upon her he knew that he could die gladly upon a kiss. He felt
himself God's own mad lover, and no accolade of knighthood could have given
him greater pride. And at last he knew the meaning of life and why he had
been born.

As he gazed at her and listened, his thoughts grew daring. He reviewed all
the wild delight of the pressure of her hand in his at the door, and longed
for it again. His gaze wandered often toward her lips, and he yearned for
them hungrily. But there was nothing gross or earthly about this yearning.
It gave him exquisite delight to watch every movement and play of those
lips as they enunciated the words she spoke; yet they were not ordinary
lips such as all men and women had. Their substance was not mere human
clay. They were lips of pure spirit, and his desire for them seemed
absolutely different from the desire that had led him to other women's
lips. He could kiss her lips, rest his own physical lips upon them, but it
would be with the lofty and awful fervor with which one would kiss the robe
of God. He was not conscious of this transvaluation of values that had
taken place in him, and was unaware that the light that shone in his eyes
when he looked at her was quite the same light that shines in all men's
eyes when the desire of love is upon them. He did not dream how ardent and
masculine his gaze was, nor that the warm flame of it was affecting the
alchemy of her spirit. Her penetrative virginity exalted and disguised his
own emotions, elevating his thoughts to a star-cool chastity, and he would
have been startled to learn that there was that shining out of his eyes,
like warm waves, that flowed through her and kindled a kindred warmth. She
was subtly perturbed by it, and more than once, though she knew not why, it
disrupted her train of thought with its delicious intrusion and compelled
her to grope for the remainder of ideas partly uttered. Speech was always
easy with her, and these interruptions would have puzzled her had she not
decided that it was because he was a remarkable type. She was very
sensitive to impressions, and it was not strange, after all, that this aura
of a traveller from another world should so affect her.

The problem in the background of her consciousness was how to help him, and
she turned the conversation in that direction; but it was Martin who came
to the point first.

"I wonder if I can get some advice from you," he began, and received an
acquiescence of willingness that made his heart bound. "You remember the
other time I was here I said I couldn't talk about books an' things because
I didn't know how? Well, I've ben doin' a lot of thinkin' ever since. I've
ben to the library a whole lot, but most of the books I've tackled have ben
over my head. Mebbe I'd better begin at the beginnin'. I ain't never had no
advantages. I've worked pretty hard ever since I was a kid, an' since I've
ben to the library, lookin' with new eyes at books - an' lookin' at new
books, too - I've just about concluded that I ain't ben reading the right
kind. You know the books you find in cattle- camps an' fo'c's'ls ain't the
same you've got in this house, for instance. Well, that's the sort of
readin' matter I've ben accustomed to. And yet - an' I ain't just makin' a
brag of it - I've ben different from the people I've herded with. Not that
I'm any better than the sailors an' cow-punchers I travelled with, - I was
cow-punchin' for a short time, you know, - but I always liked books, read
everything I could lay hands on, an' - well, I guess I think differently
from most of 'em.

"Now, to come to what I'm drivin' at. I was never inside a house like this.
When I come a week ago, an' saw all this, an' you, an' your mother, an'
brothers, an' everything - well, I liked it. I'd heard about such things
an' read about such things in some of the books, an' when I looked around
at your house, why, the books come true. But the thing I'm after is I liked
it. I wanted it. I want it now. I want to breathe air like you get in this
house - air that is filled with books, and pictures, and beautiful things,
where people talk in low voices an' are clean, an' their thoughts are
clean. The air I always breathed was mixed up with grub an' house-rent an'
scrappin' an booze an' that's all they talked about, too. Why, when you was
crossin' the room to kiss your mother, I thought it was the most beautiful
thing I ever seen. I've seen a whole lot of life, an' somehow I've seen a
whole lot more of it than most of them that was with me. I like to see, an'
I want to see more, an' I want to see it different.

"But I ain't got to the point yet. Here it is. I want to make my way to the
kind of life you have in this house. There's more in life than booze, an'
hard work, an' knockin' about. Now, how am I goin' to get it? Where do I
take hold an' begin? I'm willin' to work my passage, you know, an' I can
make most men sick when it comes to hard work. Once I get started, I'll
work night an' day. Mebbe you think it's funny, me askin' you about all
this. I know you're the last person in the world I ought to ask, but I
don't know anybody else I could ask - unless it's Arthur. Mebbe I ought to
ask him. If I was - "

His voice died away. His firmly planned intention had come to a halt on the
verge of the horrible probability that he should have asked Arthur and that
he had made a fool of himself. Ruth did not speak immediately. She was too
absorbed in striving to reconcile the stumbling, uncouth speech and its
simplicity of thought with what she saw in his face. She had never looked
in eyes that expressed greater power. Here was a man who could do anything,
was the message she read there, and it accorded ill with the weakness of
his spoken thought. And for that matter so complex and quick was her own
mind that she did not have a just appreciation of simplicity. And yet she
had caught an impression of power in the very groping of this mind. It had
seemed to her like a giant writhing and straining at the bonds that held
him down. Her face was all sympathy when she did speak.

"What you need, you realize yourself, and it is education. You should go
back and finish grammar school, and then go through to high school and
university."

"But that takes money," he interrupted.

"Oh!" she cried. "I had not thought of that. But then you have relatives,
somebody who could assist you?"

He shook his head.

"My father and mother are dead. I've two sisters, one married, an' the
other'll get married soon, I suppose. Then I've a string of brothers, - I'm
the youngest, - but they never helped nobody. They've just knocked around
over the world, lookin' out for number one. The oldest died in India. Two
are in South Africa now, an' another's on a whaling voyage, an' one's
travellin' with a circus - he does trapeze work. An' I guess I'm just like
them. I've taken care of myself since I was eleven - that's when my mother
died. I've got to study by myself, I guess, an' what I want to know is
where to begin."

"I should say the first thing of all would be to get a grammar. Your
grammar is - " She had intended saying "awful," but she amended it to "is
not particularly good."

He flushed and sweated.

"I know I must talk a lot of slang an' words you don't understand. But then
they're the only words I know - how to speak. I've got other words in my
mind, picked 'em up from books, but I can't pronounce 'em, so I don't use
'em."

"It isn't what you say, so much as how you say it. You don't mind my being
frank, do you? I don't want to hurt you."

"No, no," he cried, while he secretly blessed her for her kindness. "Fire
away. I've got to know, an' I'd sooner know from you than anybody else."

"Well, then, you say, 'You was'; it should be, 'You were.' You say 'I seen'
for 'I saw.' You use the double negative - "

"What's the double negative?" he demanded; then added humbly, "You see, I
don't even understand your explanations."

"I'm afraid I didn't explain that," she smiled. "A double negative is - let
me see - well, you say, 'never helped nobody.' 'Never' is a negative.
'Nobody' is another negative. It is a rule that two negatives make a
positive. 'Never helped nobody' means that, not helping nobody, they must
have helped somebody."

"That's pretty clear," he said. "I never thought of it before. But it don't
mean they MUST have helped somebody, does it? Seems to me that 'never
helped nobody' just naturally fails to say whether or not they helped
somebody. I never thought of it before, and I'll never say it again."

She was pleased and surprised with the quickness and surety of his mind. As
soon as he had got the clew he not only understood but corrected her error.

"You'll find it all in the grammar," she went on. "There's something else I
noticed in your speech. You say 'don't' when you shouldn't. 'Don't' is a
contraction and stands for two words. Do you know them?"

He thought a moment, then answered, "'Do not.'"

She nodded her head, and said, "And you use 'don't' when you mean 'does
not.'"

He was puzzled over this, and did not get it so quickly.

"Give me an illustration," he asked.

"Well - " She puckered her brows and pursed up her mouth as she thought,
while he looked on and decided that her expression was most adorable. "'It
don't do to be hasty.' Change 'don't' to 'do not,' and it reads, 'It do not
do to be hasty,' which is perfectly absurd."

He turned it over in his mind and considered.

"Doesn't it jar on your ear?" she suggested.

"Can't say that it does," he replied judicially.

"Why didn't you say, 'Can't say that it do'?" she queried.

"That sounds wrong," he said slowly. "As for the other I can't make up my
mind. I guess my ear ain't had the trainin' yours has."

"There is no such word as 'ain't,'" she said, prettily emphatic.

Martin flushed again.

"And you say 'ben' for 'been,'" she continued; "'come' for 'came'; and the
way you chop your endings is something dreadful."

"How do you mean?" He leaned forward, feeling that he ought to get down on
his knees before so marvellous a mind. "How do I chop?"

"You don't complete the endings. 'A-n-d' spells 'and.' You pronounce it
'an'.' 'I-n-g' spells 'ing.' Sometimes you pronounce it 'ing' and sometimes
you leave off the 'g.' And then you slur by dropping initial letters and
diphthongs. 'T-h-e-m' spells 'them.' You pronounce it - oh, well, it is not
necessary to go over all of them. What you need is the grammar. I'll get
one and show you how to begin."

As she arose, there shot through his mind something that he had read in the
etiquette books, and he stood up awkwardly, worrying as to whether he was
doing the right thing, and fearing that she might take it as a sign that he
was about to go.

"By the way, Mr. Eden," she called back, as she was leaving the room. "What
is BOOZE? You used it several times, you know."

"Oh, booze," he laughed. "It's slang. It means whiskey an' beer - anything
that will make you drunk."

"And another thing," she laughed back. "Don't use 'you' when you are
impersonal. 'You' is very personal, and your use of it just now was not
precisely what you meant."

"I don't just see that."

"Why, you said just now, to me, 'whiskey and beer - anything that will make
you drunk' - make me drunk, don't you see?"

"Well, it would, wouldn't it?"

"Yes, of course," she smiled. "But it would be nicer not to bring me into
it. Substitute 'one' for 'you' and see how much better it sounds."

When she returned with the grammar, she drew a chair near his - he wondered
if he should have helped her with the chair - and sat down beside him. She
turned the pages of the grammar, and their heads were inclined toward each
other. He could hardly follow her outlining of the work he must do, so
amazed was he by her delightful propinquity. But when she began to lay down
the importance of conjugation, he forgot all about her. He had never heard
of conjugation, and was fascinated by the glimpse he was catching into the
tie-ribs of language. He leaned closer to the page, and her hair touched
his cheek. He had fainted but once in his life, and he thought he was going
to faint again. He could scarcely breathe, and his heart was pounding the
blood up into his throat and suffocating him. Never had she seemed so
accessible as now. For the moment the great gulf that separated them was
bridged. But there was no diminution in the loftiness of his feeling for
her. She had not descended to him. It was he who had been caught up into
the clouds and carried to her. His reverence for her, in that moment, was
of the same order as religious awe and fervor. It seemed to him that he had
intruded upon the holy of holies, and slowly and carefully he moved his
head aside from the contact which thrilled him like an electric shock and
of which she had not been aware.

CHAPTER VIII

Several weeks went by, during which Martin Eden studied his grammar,
reviewed the books on etiquette, and read voraciously the books that caught
his fancy. Of his own class he saw nothing. The girls of the Lotus Club
wondered what had become of him and worried Jim with questions, and some of
the fellows who put on the glove at Riley's were glad that Martin came no
more. He made another discovery of treasure-trove in the library. As the
grammar had shown him the tie-ribs of language, so that book showed him the
tie-ribs of poetry, and he began to learn metre and construction and form,
beneath the beauty he loved finding the why and wherefore of that beauty.
Another modern book he found treated poetry as a representative art,
treated it exhaustively, with copious illustrations from the best in
literature. Never had he read fiction with so keen zest as he studied these
books. And his fresh mind, untaxed for twenty years and impelled by
maturity of desire, gripped hold of what he read with a virility unusual to
the student mind.

When he looked back now from his vantage-ground, the old world he had
known, the world of land and sea and ships, of sailor-men and harpy-women,
seemed a very small world; and yet it blended in with this new world and
expanded. His mind made for unity, and he was surprised when at first he
began to see points of contact between the two worlds. And he was ennobled,
as well, by the loftiness of thought and beauty he found in the books. This
led him to believe more firmly than ever that up above him, in society like
Ruth and her family, all men and women thought these thoughts and lived
them. Down below where he lived was the ignoble, and he wanted to purge
himself of the ignoble that had soiled all his days, and to rise to that
sublimated realm where dwelt the upper classes. All his childhood and youth
had been troubled by a vague unrest; he had never known what he wanted, but
he had wanted something that he had hunted vainly for until he met Ruth.
And now his unrest had become sharp and painful, and he knew at last,
clearly and definitely, that it was beauty, and intellect, and love that he
must have.

During those several weeks he saw Ruth half a dozen times, and each time
was an added inspiration. She helped him with his English, corrected his
pronunciation, and started him on arithmetic. But their intercourse was not
all devoted to elementary study. He had seen too much of life, and his mind
was too matured, to be wholly content with fractions, cube root, parsing,
and analysis; and there were times when their conversation turned on other
themes - the last poetry he had read, the latest poet she had studied. And
when she read aloud to him her favorite passages, he ascended to the
topmost heaven of delight. Never, in all the women he had heard speak, had
he heard a voice like hers. The least sound of it was a stimulus to his
love, and he thrilled and throbbed with every word she uttered. It was the
quality of it, the repose, and the musical modulation - the soft, rich,
indefinable product of culture and a gentle soul. As he listened to her,
there rang in the ears of his memory the harsh cries of barbarian women and
of hags, and, in lesser degrees of harshness, the strident voices of
working women and of the girls of his own class. Then the chemistry of
vision would begin to work, and they would troop in review across his mind,
each, by contrast, multiplying Ruth's glories. Then, too, his bliss was
heightened by the knowledge that her mind was comprehending what she read
and was quivering with appreciation of the beauty of the written thought.
She read to him much from "The Princess," and often he saw her eyes
swimming with tears, so finely was her aesthetic nature strung. At such
moments her own emotions elevated him till he was as a god, and, as he
gazed at her and listened, he seemed gazing on the face of life and reading
its deepest secrets. And then, becoming aware of the heights of exquisite
sensibility he attained, he decided that this was love and that love was
the greatest thing in the world. And in review would pass along the
corridors of memory all previous thrills and burnings he had known, - the
drunkenness of wine, the caresses of women, the rough play and give and
take of physical contests, - and they seemed trivial and mean compared with
this sublime ardor he now enjoyed.

The situation was obscured to Ruth. She had never had any experiences of
the heart. Her only experiences in such matters were of the books, where
the facts of ordinary day were translated by fancy into a fairy realm of
unreality; and she little knew that this rough sailor was creeping into her
heart and storing there pent forces that would some day burst forth and
surge through her in waves of fire. She did not know the actual fire of
love. Her knowledge of love was purely theoretical, and she conceived of it
as lambent flame, gentle as the fall of dew or the ripple of quiet water,
and cool as the velvet-dark of summer nights. Her idea of love was more
that of placid affection, serving the loved one softly in an atmosphere,
flower-scented and dim-lighted, of ethereal calm. She did not dream of the
volcanic convulsions of love, its scorching heat and sterile wastes of
parched ashes. She knew neither her own potencies, nor the potencies of the
world; and the deeps of life were to her seas of illusion. The conjugal
affection of her father and mother constituted her ideal of love- affinity,
and she looked forward some day to emerging, without shock or friction,
into that same quiet sweetness of existence with a loved one.

So it was that she looked upon Martin Eden as a novelty, a strange
individual, and she identified with novelty and strangeness the effects he
produced upon her. It was only natural. In similar ways she had experienced
unusual feelings when she looked at wild animals in the menagerie, or when
she witnessed a storm of wind, or shuddered at the bright-ribbed lightning.
There was something cosmic in such things, and there was something cosmic
in him. He came to her breathing of large airs and great spaces. The blaze
of tropic suns was in his face, and in his swelling, resilient muscles was
the primordial vigor of life. He was marred and scarred by that mysterious
world of rough men and rougher deeds, the outposts of which began beyond
her horizon. He was untamed, wild, and in secret ways her vanity was
touched by the fact that he came so mildly to her hand. Likewise she was
stirred by the common impulse to tame the wild thing. It was an unconscious
impulse, and farthest from her thoughts that her desire was to re-thumb the
clay of him into a likeness of her father's image, which image she believed
to be the finest in the world. Nor was there any way, out of her
inexperience, for her to know that the cosmic feel she caught of him was
that most cosmic of things, love, which with equal power drew men and women
together across the world, compelled stags to kill each other in the
rutting season, and drove even the elements irresistibly to unite.

His swift development was a source of surprise and interest. She detected
unguessed finenesses in him that seemed to bud, day by day, like flowers in
congenial soil. She read Browning aloud to him, and was often puzzled by
the strange interpretations he gave to mooted passages. It was beyond her
to realize that, out of his experience of men and women and life, his
interpretations were far more frequently correct than hers. His conceptions
seemed naive to her, though she was often fired by his daring flights of
comprehension, whose orbit-path was so wide among the stars that she could
not follow and could only sit and thrill to the impact of unguessed power.
Then she played to him - no longer at him - and probed him with music that
sank to depths beyond her plumb-line. His nature opened to music as a
flower to the sun, and the transition was quick from his working-class
rag-time and jingles to her classical display pieces that she knew nearly
by heart. Yet he betrayed a democratic fondness for Wagner, and the
"Tannhauser" overture, when she had given him the clew to it, claimed him
as nothing else she played. In an immediate way it personified his life.
All his past was the VENUSBURG motif, while her he identified somehow with
the PILGRIM'S CHORUS motif; and from the exalted state this elevated him
to, he swept onward and upward into that vast shadow-realm of
spirit-groping, where good and evil war eternally.

Sometimes he questioned, and induced in her mind temporary doubts as to the
correctness of her own definitions and conceptions of music. But her
singing he did not question. It was too wholly her, and he sat always
amazed at the divine melody of her pure soprano voice. And he could not
help but contrast it with the weak pipings and shrill quaverings of factory
girls, ill-nourished and untrained, and with the raucous shriekings from
gin-cracked throats of the women of the seaport towns. She enjoyed singing
and playing to him. In truth, it was the first time she had ever had a
human soul to play with, and the plastic clay of him was a delight to
mould; for she thought she was moulding it, and her intentions were good.
Besides, it was pleasant to be with him. He did not repel her. That first
repulsion had been really a fear of her undiscovered self, and the fear had
gone to sleep. Though she did not know it, she had a feeling in him of
proprietary right. Also, he had a tonic effect upon her. She was studying
hard at the university, and it seemed to strengthen her to emerge from the
dusty books and have the fresh sea-breeze of his personality blow upon her.
Strength! Strength was what she needed, and he gave it to her in generous
measure. To come into the same room with him, or to meet him at the door,
was to take heart of life. And when he had gone, she would return to her
books with a keener zest and fresh store of energy.

She knew her Browning, but it had never sunk into her that it was an
awkward thing to play with souls. As her interest in Martin increased, the
remodelling of his life became a passion with her.

"There is Mr. Butler," she said one afternoon, when grammar and arithmetic
and poetry had been put aside.

"He had comparatively no advantages at first. His father had been a bank
cashier, but he lingered for years, dying of consumption in Arizona, so
that when he was dead, Mr. Butler, Charles Butler he was called, found
himself alone in the world. His father had come from Australia, you know,
and so he had no relatives in California. He went to work in a
printing-office, - I have heard him tell of it many times, - and he got
three dollars a week, at first. His income to-day is at least thirty
thousand a year. How did he do it? He was honest, and faithful, and
industrious, and economical. He denied himself the enjoyments that most
boys indulge in. He made it a point to save so much every week, no matter
what he had to do without in order to save it. Of course, he was soon
earning more than three dollars a week, and as his wages increased he saved
more and more.

"He worked in the daytime, and at night he went to night school. He had his
eyes fixed always on the future. Later on he went to night high school.
When he was only seventeen, he was earning excellent wages at setting type,
but he was ambitious. He wanted a career, not a livelihood, and he was
content to make immediate sacrifices for his ultimate again. He decided
upon the law, and he entered father's office as an office boy - think of
that! - and got only four dollars a week. But he had learned how to be
economical, and out of that four dollars he went on saving money."

She paused for breath, and to note how Martin was receiving it. His face
was lighted up with interest in the youthful struggles of Mr. Butler; but
there was a frown upon his face as well.

"I'd say they was pretty hard lines for a young fellow," he remarked. "Four
dollars a week! How could he live on it? You can bet he didn't have any
frills. Why, I pay five dollars a week for board now, an' there's nothin'
excitin' about it, you can lay to that. He must have lived like a dog. The
food he ate - "

"He cooked for himself," she interrupted, "on a little kerosene stove."

"The food he ate must have been worse than what a sailor gets on the
worst-feedin' deep-water ships, than which there ain't much that can be
possibly worse."

"But think of him now!" she cried enthusiastically. "Think of what his
income affords him. His early denials are paid for a thousand- fold."

Martin looked at her sharply.

"There's one thing I'll bet you," he said, "and it is that Mr. Butler is
nothin' gay-hearted now in his fat days. He fed himself like that for years
an' years, on a boy's stomach, an' I bet his stomach's none too good now
for it."

Her eyes dropped before his searching gaze.

"I'll bet he's got dyspepsia right now!" Martin challenged.

"Yes, he has," she confessed; "but - "

"An' I bet," Martin dashed on, "that he's solemn an' serious as an old owl,
an' doesn't care a rap for a good time, for all his thirty thousand a year.
An' I'll bet he's not particularly joyful at seein' others have a good
time. Ain't I right?"

She nodded her head in agreement, and hastened to explain:-

"But he is not that type of man. By nature he is sober and serious. He
always was that."

"You can bet he was," Martin proclaimed. "Three dollars a week, an' four
dollars a week, an' a young boy cookin' for himself on an oil-burner an'
layin' up money, workin' all day an' studyin' all night, just workin' an'
never playin', never havin' a good time, an' never learnin' how to have a
good time - of course his thirty thousand came along too late."

His sympathetic imagination was flashing upon his inner sight all the
thousands of details of the boy's existence and of his narrow spiritual
development into a thirty-thousand-dollar-a-year man. With the swiftness
and wide-reaching of multitudinous thought Charles Butler's whole life was
telescoped upon his vision.

"Do you know," he added, "I feel sorry for Mr. Butler. He was too young to
know better, but he robbed himself of life for the sake of thirty thousand
a year that's clean wasted upon him. Why, thirty thousand, lump sum,
wouldn't buy for him right now what ten cents he was layin' up would have
bought him, when he was a kid, in the way of candy an' peanuts or a seat in
nigger heaven."

It was just such uniqueness of points of view that startled Ruth. Not only
were they new to her, and contrary to her own beliefs, but she always felt
in them germs of truth that threatened to unseat or modify her own
convictions. Had she been fourteen instead of twenty-four, she might have
been changed by them; but she was twenty-four, conservative by nature and
upbringing, and already crystallized into the cranny of life where she had
been born and formed. It was true, his bizarre judgments troubled her in
the moments they were uttered, but she ascribed them to his novelty of type
and strangeness of living, and they were soon forgotten. Nevertheless,
while she disapproved of them, the strength of their utterance, and the
flashing of eyes and earnestness of face that accompanied them, always
thrilled her and drew her toward him. She would never have guessed that
this man who had come from beyond her horizon, was, in such moments,
flashing on beyond her horizon with wider and deeper concepts. Her own
limits were the limits of her horizon; but limited minds can recognize
limitations only in others. And so she felt that her outlook was very wide
indeed, and that where his conflicted with hers marked his limitations; and
she dreamed of helping him to see as she saw, of widening his horizon until
it was identified with hers.

"But I have not finished my story," she said. "He worked, so father says,
as no other office boy he ever had. Mr. Butler was always eager to work. He
never was late, and he was usually at the office a few minutes before his
regular time. And yet he saved his time. Every spare moment was devoted to
study. He studied book- keeping and type-writing, and he paid for lessons
in shorthand by dictating at night to a court reporter who needed practice.
He quickly became a clerk, and he made himself invaluable. Father
appreciated him and saw that he was bound to rise. It was on father's
suggestion that he went to law college. He became a lawyer, and hardly was
he back in the office when father took him in as junior partner. He is a
great man. He refused the United States Senate several times, and father
says he could become a justice of the Supreme Court any time a vacancy
occurs, if he wants to. Such a life is an inspiration to all of us. It
shows us that a man with will may rise superior to his environment."

"He is a great man," Martin said sincerely.

But it seemed to him there was something in the recital that jarred upon
his sense of beauty and life. He could not find an adequate motive in Mr.
Butler's life of pinching and privation. Had he done it for love of a
woman, or for attainment of beauty, Martin would have understood. God's own
mad lover should do anything for the kiss, but not for thirty thousand
dollars a year. He was dissatisfied with Mr. Butler's career. There was
something paltry about it, after all. Thirty thousand a year was all right,
but dyspepsia and inability to be humanly happy robbed such princely income
of all its value.

Much of this he strove to express to Ruth, and shocked her and made it
clear that more remodelling was necessary. Hers was that common insularity
of mind that makes human creatures believe that their color, creed, and
politics are best and right and that other human creatures scattered over
the world are less fortunately placed than they. It was the same insularity
of mind that made the ancient Jew thank God he was not born a woman, and
sent the modern missionary god-substituting to the ends of the earth; and
it made Ruth desire to shape this man from other crannies of life into the
likeness of the men who lived in her particular cranny of life.

CHAPTER IX

Back from sea Martin Eden came, homing for California with a lover's
desire. His store of money exhausted, he had shipped before the mast on the
treasure-hunting schooner; and the Solomon Islands, after eight months of
failure to find treasure, had witnessed the breaking up of the expedition.
The men had been paid off in Australia, and Martin had immediately shipped
on a deep- water vessel for San Francisco. Not alone had those eight months
earned him enough money to stay on land for many weeks, but they had
enabled him to do a great deal of studying and reading.

His was the student's mind, and behind his ability to learn was the
indomitability of his nature and his love for Ruth. The grammar he had
taken along he went through again and again until his unjaded brain had
mastered it. He noticed the bad grammar used by his shipmates, and made a
point of mentally correcting and reconstructing their crudities of speech.
To his great joy he discovered that his ear was becoming sensitive and that
he was developing grammatical nerves. A double negative jarred him like a
discord, and often, from lack of practice, it was from his own lips that
the jar came. His tongue refused to learn new tricks in a day.

After he had been through the grammar repeatedly, he took up the dictionary
and added twenty words a day to his vocabulary. He found that this was no
light task, and at wheel or lookout he steadily went over and over his
lengthening list of pronunciations and definitions, while he invariably
memorized himself to sleep. "Never did anything," "if I were," and "those
things," were phrases, with many variations, that he repeated under his
breath in order to accustom his tongue to the language spoken by Ruth.
"And" and "ing," with the "d" and "g" pronounced emphatically, he went over
thousands of times; and to his surprise he noticed that he was beginning to
speak cleaner and more correct English than the officers themselves and the
gentleman-adventurers in the cabin who had financed the expedition.

The captain was a fishy-eyed Norwegian who somehow had fallen into
possession of a complete Shakespeare, which he never read, and Martin had
washed his clothes for him and in return been permitted access to the
precious volumes. For a time, so steeped was he in the plays and in the
many favorite passages that impressed themselves almost without effort on
his brain, that all the world seemed to shape itself into forms of
Elizabethan tragedy or comedy and his very thoughts were in blank verse. It
trained his ear and gave him a fine appreciation for noble English; withal
it introduced into his mind much that was archaic and obsolete.

The eight months had been well spent, and, in addition to what he had
learned of right speaking and high thinking, he had learned much of
himself. Along with his humbleness because he knew so little, there arose a
conviction of power. He felt a sharp gradation between himself and his
shipmates, and was wise enough to realize that the difference lay in
potentiality rather than achievement. What he could do, - they could do;
but within him he felt a confused ferment working that told him there was
more in him than he had done. He was tortured by the exquisite beauty of
the world, and wished that Ruth were there to share it with him. He decided
that he would describe to her many of the bits of South Sea beauty. The
creative spirit in him flamed up at the thought and urged that he recreate
this beauty for a wider audience than Ruth. And then, in splendor and
glory, came the great idea. He would write. He would be one of the eyes
through which the world saw, one of the ears through which it heard, one of
the hearts through which it felt. He would write - everything - poetry and
prose, fiction and description, and plays like Shakespeare. There was
career and the way to win to Ruth. The men of literature were the world's
giants, and he conceived them to be far finer than the Mr. Butlers who
earned thirty thousand a year and could be Supreme Court justices if they
wanted to.

Once the idea had germinated, it mastered him, and the return voyage to San
Francisco was like a dream. He was drunken with unguessed power and felt
that he could do anything. In the midst of the great and lonely sea he
gained perspective. Clearly, and for the first lime, he saw Ruth and her
world. It was all visualized in his mind as a concrete thing which he could
take up in his two hands and turn around and about and examine. There was
much that was dim and nebulous in that world, but he saw it as a whole and
not in detail, and he saw, also, the way to master it. To write! The
thought was fire in him. He would begin as soon as he got back. The first
thing he would do would be to describe the voyage of the treasure-hunters.
He would sell it to some San Francisco newspaper. He would not tell Ruth
anything about it, and she would be surprised and pleased when she saw his
name in print. While he wrote, he could go on studying. There were
twenty-four hours in each day. He was invincible. He knew how to work, and
the citadels would go down before him. He would not have to go to sea again
- as a sailor; and for the instant he caught a vision of a steam yacht.
There were other writers who possessed steam yachts. Of course, he
cautioned himself, it would be slow succeeding at first, and for a time he
would be content to earn enough money by his writing to enable him to go on
studying. And then, after some time, - a very indeterminate time, - when he
had learned and prepared himself, he would write the great things and his
name would be on all men's lips. But greater than that, infinitely greater
and greatest of all, he would have proved himself worthy of Ruth. Fame was
all very well, but it was for Ruth that his splendid dream arose. He was
not a fame-monger, but merely one of God's mad lovers.

Arrived in Oakland, with his snug pay-day in his pocket, he took up his old
room at Bernard Higginbotham's and set to work. He did not even let Ruth
know he was back. He would go and see her when he finished the article on
the treasure-hunters. It was not so difficult to abstain from seeing her,
because of the violent heat of creative fever that burned in him. Besides,
the very article he was writing would bring her nearer to him. He did not
know how long an article he should write, but he counted the words in a
double-page article in the Sunday supplement of the SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER,
and guided himself by that. Three days, at white heat, completed his
narrative; but when he had copied it carefully, in a large scrawl that was
easy to read, he learned from a rhetoric he picked up in the library that
there were such things as paragraphs and quotation marks. He had never
thought of such things before; and he promptly set to work writing the
article over, referring continually to the pages of the rhetoric and
learning more in a day about composition than the average schoolboy in a
year. When he had copied the article a second time and rolled it up
carefully, he read in a newspaper an item on hints to beginners, and
discovered the iron law that manuscripts should never be rolled and that
they should be written on one side of the paper. He had violated the law on
both counts. Also, he learned from the item that first- class papers paid a
minimum of ten dollars a column. So, while he copied the manuscript a third
time, he consoled himself by multiplying ten columns by ten dollars. The
product was always the same, one hundred dollars, and he decided that that
was better than seafaring. If it hadn't been for his blunders, he would
have finished the article in three days. One hundred dollars in three days!
It would have taken him three months and longer on the sea to earn a
similar amount. A man was a fool to go to sea when he could write, he
concluded, though the money in itself meant nothing to him. Its value was
in the liberty it would get him, the presentable garments it would buy him,
all of which would bring him nearer, swiftly nearer, to the slender, pale
girl who had turned his life back upon itself and given him inspiration.

He mailed the manuscript in a flat envelope, and addressed it to the editor
of the SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER. He had an idea that anything accepted by a
paper was published immediately, and as he had sent the manuscript in on
Friday he expected it to come out on the following Sunday. He conceived
that it would be fine to let that event apprise Ruth of his return. Then,
Sunday afternoon, he would call and see her. In the meantime he was
occupied by another idea, which he prided himself upon as being a
particularly sane, careful, and modest idea. He would write an adventure
story for boys and sell it to THE YOUTH'S COMPANION. He went to the free
reading-room and looked through the files of THE YOUTH'S COMPANION. Serial
stories, he found, were usually published in that weekly in five
instalments of about three thousand words each. He discovered several
serials that ran to seven instalments, and decided to write one of that
length.

He had been on a whaling voyage in the Arctic, once - a voyage that was to
have been for three years and which had terminated in shipwreck at the end
of six months. While his imagination was fanciful, even fantastic at times,
he had a basic love of reality that compelled him to write about the things
he knew. He knew whaling, and out of the real materials of his knowledge he
proceeded to manufacture the fictitious adventures of the two boys he
intended to use as joint heroes. It was easy work, he decided on Saturday
evening. He had completed on that day the first instalment of three
thousand words - much to the amusement of Jim, and to the open derision of
Mr. Higginbotham, who sneered throughout meal-time at the "litery" person
they had discovered in the family.

Martin contented himself by picturing his brother-in-law's surprise on
Sunday morning when he opened his EXAMINER and saw the article on the
treasure-hunters. Early that morning he was out himself to the front door,
nervously racing through the many-sheeted newspaper. He went through it a
second time, very carefully, then folded it up and left it where he had
found it. He was glad he had not told any one about his article. On second
thought he concluded that he had been wrong about the speed with which
things found their way into newspaper columns. Besides, there had not been
any news value in his article, and most likely the editor would write to
him about it first.

After breakfast he went on with his serial. The words flowed from his pen,
though he broke off from the writing frequently to look up definitions in
the dictionary or to refer to the rhetoric. He often read or re-read a
chapter at a time, during such pauses; and he consoled himself that while
he was not writing the great things he felt to be in him, he was learning
composition, at any rate, and training himself to shape up and express his
thoughts. He toiled on till dark, when he went out to the reading-room and
explored magazines and weeklies until the place closed at ten o'clock. This
was his programme for a week. Each day he did three thousand words, and
each evening he puzzled his way through the magazines, taking note of the
stories, articles, and poems that editors saw fit to publish. One thing was
certain: What these multitudinous writers did he could do, and only give
him time and he would do what they could not do. He was cheered to read in
BOOK NEWS, in a paragraph on the payment of magazine writers, not that
Rudyard Kipling received a dollar per word, but that the minimum rate paid
by first-class magazines was two cents a word. THE YOUTH'S COMPANION was
certainly first class, and at that rate the three thousand words he had
written that day would bring him sixty dollars - two months' wages on the
sea!

On Friday night he finished the serial, twenty-one thousand words long. At
two cents a word, he calculated, that would bring him four hundred and
twenty dollars. Not a bad week's work. It was more money than he had ever
possessed at one time. He did not know how he could spend it all. He had
tapped a gold mine. Where this came from he could always get more. He
planned to buy some more clothes, to subscribe to many magazines, and to
buy dozens of reference books that at present he was compelled to go to the
library to consult. And still there was a large portion of the four hundred
and twenty dollars unspent. This worried him until the thought came to him
of hiring a servant for Gertrude and of buying a bicycle for Marion.

He mailed the bulky manuscript to THE YOUTH'S COMPANION, and on Saturday
afternoon, after having planned an article on pearl- diving, he went to see
Ruth. He had telephoned, and she went herself to greet him at the door. The
old familiar blaze of health rushed out from him and struck her like a
blow. It seemed to enter into her body and course through her veins in a
liquid glow, and to set her quivering with its imparted strength. He
flushed warmly as he took her hand and looked into her blue eyes, but the
fresh bronze of eight months of sun hid the flush, though it did not
protect the neck from the gnawing chafe of the stiff collar. She noted the
red line of it with amusement which quickly vanished as she glanced at his
clothes. They really fitted him, - it was his first made-to-order suit, -
and he seemed slimmer and better modelled. In addition, his cloth cap had
been replaced by a soft hat, which she commanded him to put on and then
complimented him on his appearance. She did not remember when she had felt
so happy. This change in him was her handiwork, and she was proud of it and
fired with ambition further to help him.

But the most radical change of all, and the one that pleased her most, was
the change in his speech. Not only did he speak more correctly, but he
spoke more easily, and there were many new words in his vocabulary. When he
grew excited or enthusiastic, however, he dropped back into the old
slurring and the dropping of final consonants. Also, there was an awkward
hesitancy, at times, as he essayed the new words he had learned. On the
other hand, along with his ease of expression, he displayed a lightness and
facetiousness of thought that delighted her. It was his old spirit of humor
and badinage that had made him a favorite in his own class, but which he
had hitherto been unable to use in her presence through lack of words and
training. He was just beginning to orientate himself and to feel that he
was not wholly an intruder. But he was very tentative, fastidiously so,
letting Ruth set the pace of sprightliness and fancy, keeping up with her
but never daring to go beyond her.

He told her of what he had been doing, and of his plan to write for a
livelihood and of going on with his studies. But he was disappointed at her
lack of approval. She did not think much of his plan.

"You see," she said frankly, "writing must be a trade, like anything else.
Not that I know anything about it, of course. I only bring common judgment
to bear. You couldn't hope to be a blacksmith without spending three years
at learning the trade - or is it five years! Now writers are so much better
paid than blacksmiths that there must be ever so many more men who would
like to write, who - try to write."

"But then, may not I be peculiarly constituted to write?" he queried,
secretly exulting at the language he had used, his swift imagination
throwing the whole scene and atmosphere upon a vast screen along with a
thousand other scenes from his life - scenes that were rough and raw, gross
and bestial.

The whole composite vision was achieved with the speed of light, producing
no pause in the conversation, nor interrupting his calm train of thought.
On the screen of his imagination he saw himself and this sweet and
beautiful girl, facing each other and conversing in good English, in a room
of books and paintings and tone and culture, and all illuminated by a
bright light of steadfast brilliance; while ranged about and fading away to
the remote edges of the screen were antithetical scenes, each scene a
picture, and he the onlooker, free to look at will upon what he wished. He
saw these other scenes through drifting vapors and swirls of sullen fog
dissolving before shafts of red and garish light. He saw cowboys at the
bar, drinking fierce whiskey, the air filled with obscenity and ribald
language, and he saw himself with them drinking and cursing with the
wildest, or sitting at table with them, under smoking kerosene lamps, while
the chips clicked and clattered and the cards were dealt around. He saw
himself, stripped to the waist, with naked fists, fighting his great fight
with Liverpool Red in the forecastle of the Susquehanna; and he saw the
bloody deck of the John Rogers, that gray morning of attempted mutiny, the
mate kicking in death-throes on the main-hatch, the revolver in the old
man's hand spitting fire and smoke, the men with passion- wrenched faces,
of brutes screaming vile blasphemies and falling about him - and then he
returned to the central scene, calm and clean in the steadfast light, where
Ruth sat and talked with him amid books and paintings; and he saw the grand
piano upon which she would later play to him; and he heard the echoes of
his own selected and correct words, "But then, may I not be peculiarly
constituted to write?"

"But no matter how peculiarly constituted a man may be for blacksmithing,"
she was laughing, "I never heard of one becoming a blacksmith without first
serving his apprenticeship."

"What would you advise?" he asked. "And don't forget that I feel in me this
capacity to write - I can't explain it; I just know that it is in me."

"You must get a thorough education," was the answer, "whether or not you
ultimately become a writer. This education is indispensable for whatever
career you select, and it must not be slipshod or sketchy. You should go to
high school."

"Yes - " he began; but she interrupted with an afterthought:-

"Of course, you could go on with your writing, too."

"I would have to," he said grimly.

"Why?" She looked at him, prettily puzzled, for she did not quite like the
persistence with which he clung to his notion.

"Because, without writing there wouldn't be any high school. I must live
and buy books and clothes, you know."

"I'd forgotten that," she laughed. "Why weren't you born with an income?"

"I'd rather have good health and imagination," he answered. "I can make
good on the income, but the other things have to be made good for - " He
almost said "you," then amended his sentence to, "have to be made good for
one."

"Don't say 'make good,'" she cried, sweetly petulant. "It's slang, and it's
horrid."

He flushed, and stammered, "That's right, and I only wish you'd correct me
every time."

"I - I'd like to," she said haltingly. "You have so much in you that is
good that I want to see you perfect."

He was clay in her hands immediately, as passionately desirous of being
moulded by her as she was desirous of shaping him into the image of her
ideal of man. And when she pointed out the opportuneness of the time, that
the entrance examinations to high school began on the following Monday, he
promptly volunteered that he would take them.

Then she played and sang to him, while he gazed with hungry yearning at
her, drinking in her loveliness and marvelling that there should not be a
hundred suitors listening there and longing for her as he listened and
longed.

CHAPTER X

He stopped to dinner that evening, and, much to Ruth's satisfaction, made a
favorable impression on her father. They talked about the sea as a career,
a subject which Martin had at his finger-ends, and Mr. Morse remarked
afterward that he seemed a very clear-headed young man. In his avoidance of
slang and his search after right words, Martin was compelled to talk
slowly, which enabled him to find the best thoughts that were in him. He
was more at ease than that first night at dinner, nearly a year before, and
his shyness and modesty even commended him to Mrs. Morse, who was pleased
at his manifest improvement.

"He is the first man that ever drew passing notice from Ruth," she told her
husband. "She has been so singularly backward where men are concerned that
I have been worried greatly."

Mr. Morse looked at his wife curiously.

"You mean to use this young sailor to wake her up?" he questioned.

"I mean that she is not to die an old maid if I can help it," was the
answer. "If this young Eden can arouse her interest in mankind in general,
it will be a good thing."

"A very good thing," he commented. "But suppose, - and we must suppose,
sometimes, my dear, - suppose he arouses her interest too particularly in
him?"

"Impossible," Mrs. Morse laughed. "She is three years older than he, and,
besides, it is impossible. Nothing will ever come of it. Trust that to me."

And so Martin's role was arranged for him, while he, led on by Arthur and
Norman, was meditating an extravagance. They were going out for a ride into
the hills Sunday morning on their wheels, which did not interest Martin
until he learned that Ruth, too, rode a wheel and was going along. He did
not ride, nor own a wheel, but if Ruth rode, it was up to him to begin, was
his decision; and when he said good night, he stopped in at a cyclery on
his way home and spent forty dollars for a wheel. It was more than a
month's hard- earned wages, and it reduced his stock of money amazingly;
but when he added the hundred dollars he was to receive from the EXAMINER
to the four hundred and twenty dollars that was the least THE YOUTH'S
COMPANION could pay him, he felt that he had reduced the perplexity the
unwonted amount of money had caused him. Nor did he mind, in the course of
learning to ride the wheel home, the fact that he ruined his suit of
clothes. He caught the tailor by telephone that night from Mr.
Higginbotham's store and ordered another suit. Then he carried the wheel up
the narrow stairway that clung like a fire- escape to the rear wall of the
building, and when he had moved his bed out from the wall, found there was
just space enough in the small room for himself and the wheel.

Sunday he had intended to devote to studying for the high school
examination, but the pearl-diving article lured him away, and he spent the
day in the white-hot fever of re-creating the beauty and romance that
burned in him. The fact that the EXAMINER of that morning had failed to
publish his treasure-hunting article did not dash his spirits. He was at
too great a height for that, and having been deaf to a twice-repeated
summons, he went without the heavy Sunday dinner with which Mr.
Higginbotham invariably graced his table. To Mr. Higginbotham such a dinner
was advertisement of his worldly achievement and prosperity, and he honored
it by delivering platitudinous sermonettes upon American institutions and
the opportunity said institutions gave to any hard-working man to rise -
the rise, in his case, which he pointed out unfailingly, being from a
grocer's clerk to the ownership of Higginbotham's Cash Store.

Martin Eden looked with a sigh at his unfinished "Pearl-diving" on Monday
morning, and took the car down to Oakland to the high school. And when,
days later, he applied for the results of his examinations, he learned that
he had failed in everything save grammar.

"Your grammar is excellent," Professor Hilton informed him, staring at him
through heavy spectacles; "but you know nothing, positively nothing, in the
other branches, and your United States history is abominable - there is no
other word for it, abominable. I should advise you - "

Professor Hilton paused and glared at him, unsympathetic and unimaginative
as one of his own test-tubes. He was professor of physics in the high
school, possessor of a large family, a meagre salary, and a select fund of
parrot-learned knowledge.

"Yes, sir," Martin said humbly, wishing somehow that the man at the desk in
the library was in Professor Hilton's place just then.

"And I should advise you to go back to the grammar school for at least two
years. Good day."

Martin was not deeply affected by his failure, though he was surprised at
Ruth's shocked expression when he told her Professor Hilton's advice. Her
disappointment was so evident that he was sorry he had failed, but chiefly
so for her sake.

"You see I was right," she said. "You know far more than any of the
students entering high school, and yet you can't pass the examinations. It
is because what education you have is fragmentary, sketchy. You need the
discipline of study, such as only skilled teachers can give you. You must
be thoroughly grounded. Professor Hilton is right, and if I were you, I'd
go to night school. A year and a half of it might enable you to catch up
that additional six months. Besides, that would leave you your days in
which to write, or, if you could not make your living by your pen, you
would have your days in which to work in some position."

But if my days are taken up with work and my nights with school, when am I
going to see you? - was Martin's first thought, though he refrained from
uttering it. Instead, he said:-

"It seems so babyish for me to be going to night school. But I wouldn't
mind that if I thought it would pay. But I don't think it will pay. I can
do the work quicker than they can teach me. It would be a loss of time - "
he thought of her and his desire to have her - "and I can't afford the
time. I haven't the time to spare, in fact."

"There is so much that is necessary." She looked at him gently, and he was
a brute to oppose her. "Physics and chemistry - you can't do them without
laboratory study; and you'll find algebra and geometry almost hopeless with
instruction. You need the skilled teachers, the specialists in the art of
imparting knowledge."

He was silent for a minute, casting about for the least vainglorious way in
which to express himself.

"Please don't think I'm bragging," he began. "I don't intend it that way at
all. But I have a feeling that I am what I may call a natural student. I
can study by myself. I take to it kindly, like a duck to water. You see
yourself what I did with grammar. And I've learned much of other things -
you would never dream how much. And I'm only getting started. Wait till I
get - " He hesitated and assured himself of the pronunciation before he
said "momentum. I'm getting my first real feel of things now. I'm beginning
to size up the situation - "

"Please don't say 'size up,'" she interrupted.

"To get a line on things," he hastily amended.

"That doesn't mean anything in correct English," she objected.

He floundered for a fresh start.

"What I'm driving at is that I'm beginning to get the lay of the land."

Out of pity she forebore, and he went on.

"Knowledge seems to me like a chart-room. Whenever I go into the library, I
am impressed that way. The part played by teachers is to teach the student
the contents of the chart-room in a systematic way. The teachers are guides
to the chart-room, that's all. It's not something that they have in their
own heads. They don't make it up, don't create it. It's all in the
chart-room and they know their way about in it, and it's their business to
show the place to strangers who might else get lost. Now I don't get lost
easily. I have the bump of location. I usually know where I'm at - What's
wrong now?"

"Don't say 'where I'm at.'"

"That's right," he said gratefully, "where I am. But where am I at - I
mean, where am I? Oh, yes, in the chart-room. Well, some people - "

"Persons," she corrected.

"Some persons need guides, most persons do; but I think I can get along
without them. I've spent a lot of time in the chart-room now, and I'm on
the edge of knowing my way about, what charts I want to refer to, what
coasts I want to explore. And from the way I line it up, I'll explore a
whole lot more quickly by myself. The speed of a fleet, you know, is the
speed of the slowest ship, and the speed of the teachers is affected the
same way. They can't go any faster than the ruck of their scholars, and I
can set a faster pace for myself than they set for a whole schoolroom."

"'He travels the fastest who travels alone,'" she quoted at him.

But I'd travel faster with you just the same, was what he wanted to blurt
out, as he caught a vision of a world without end of sunlit spaces and
starry voids through which he drifted with her, his arm around her, her
pale gold hair blowing about his face. In the same instant he was aware of
the pitiful inadequacy of speech. God! If he could so frame words that she
could see what he then saw! And he felt the stir in him, like a throe of
yearning pain, of the desire to paint these visions that flashed unsummoned
on the mirror of his mind. Ah, that was it! He caught at the hem of the
secret. It was the very thing that the great writers and master-poets did.
That was why they were giants. They knew how to express what they thought,
and felt, and saw. Dogs asleep in the sun often whined and barked, but they
were unable to tell what they saw that made them whine and bark. He had
often wondered what it was. And that was all he was, a dog asleep in the
sun. He saw noble and beautiful visions, but he could only whine and bark
at Ruth. But he would cease sleeping in the sun. He would stand up, with
open eyes, and he would struggle and toil and learn until, with eyes
unblinded and tongue untied, he could share with her his visioned wealth.
Other men had discovered the trick of expression, of making words obedient
servitors, and of making combinations of words mean more than the sum of
their separate meanings. He was stirred profoundly by the passing glimpse
at the secret, and he was again caught up in the vision of sunlit spaces
and starry voids - until it came to him that it was very quiet, and he saw
Ruth regarding him with an amused expression and a smile in her eyes.

"I have had a great visioning," he said, and at the sound of his words in
his own ears his heart gave a leap. Where had those words come from? They
had adequately expressed the pause his vision had put in the conversation.
It was a miracle. Never had he so loftily framed a lofty thought. But never
had he attempted to frame lofty thoughts in words. That was it. That
explained it. He had never tried. But Swinburne had, and Tennyson, and
Kipling, and all the other poets. His mind flashed on to his "Pearl-
diving." He had never dared the big things, the spirit of the beauty that
was a fire in him. That article would be a different thing when he was done
with it. He was appalled by the vastness of the beauty that rightfully
belonged in it, and again his mind flashed and dared, and he demanded of
himself why he could not chant that beauty in noble verse as the great
poets did. And there was all the mysterious delight and spiritual wonder of
his love for Ruth. Why could he not chant that, too, as the poets did? They
had sung of love. So would he. By God! -

And in his frightened ears he heard his exclamation echoing. Carried away,
he had breathed it aloud. The blood surged into his face, wave upon wave,
mastering the bronze of it till the blush of shame flaunted itself from
collar-rim to the roots of his hair.

"I - I - beg your pardon," he stammered. "I was thinking."

"It sounded as if you were praying," she said bravely, but she felt herself
inside to be withering and shrinking. It was the first time she had heard
an oath from the lips of a man she knew, and she was shocked, not merely as
a matter of principle and training, but shocked in spirit by this rough
blast of life in the garden of her sheltered maidenhood.

But she forgave, and with surprise at the ease of her forgiveness. Somehow
it was not so difficult to forgive him anything. He had not had a chance to
be as other men, and he was trying so hard, and succeeding, too. It never
entered her head that there could be any other reason for her being kindly
disposed toward him. She was tenderly disposed toward him, but she did not
know it. She had no way of knowing it. The placid poise of twenty-four
years without a single love affair did not fit her with a keen perception
of her own feelings, and she who had never warmed to actual love was
unaware that she was warming now.

CHAPTER XI

Martin went back to his pearl-diving article, which would have been
finished sooner if it had not been broken in upon so frequently by his
attempts to write poetry. His poems were love poems, inspired by Ruth, but
they were never completed. Not in a day could he learn to chant in noble
verse. Rhyme and metre and structure were serious enough in themselves, but
there was, over and beyond them, an intangible and evasive something that
he caught in all great poetry, but which he could not catch and imprison in
his own. It was the elusive spirit of poetry itself that he sensed and
sought after but could not capture. It seemed a glow to him, a warm and
trailing vapor, ever beyond his reaching, though sometimes he was rewarded
by catching at shreds of it and weaving them into phrases that echoed in
his brain with haunting notes or drifted across his vision in misty wafture
of unseen beauty. It was baffling. He ached with desire to express and
could but gibber prosaically as everybody gibbered. He read his fragments
aloud. The metre marched along on perfect feet, and the rhyme pounded a
longer and equally faultless rhythm, but the glow and high exaltation that
he felt within were lacking. He could not understand, and time and again,
in despair, defeated and depressed, he returned to his article. Prose was
certainly an easier medium.

Following the "Pearl-diving," he wrote an article on the sea as a career,
another on turtle-catching, and a third on the northeast trades. Then he
tried, as an experiment, a short story, and before he broke his stride he
had finished six short stories and despatched them to various magazines. He
wrote prolifically, intensely, from morning till night, and late at night,
except when he broke off to go to the reading-room, draw books from the
library, or to call on Ruth. He was profoundly happy. Life was pitched
high. He was in a fever that never broke. The joy of creation that is
supposed to belong to the gods was his. All the life about him - the odors
of stale vegetables and soapsuds, the slatternly form of his sister, and
the jeering face of Mr. Higginbotham - was a dream. The real world was in
his mind, and the stories he wrote were so many pieces of reality out of
his mind.

The days were too short. There was so much he wanted to study. He cut his
sleep down to five hours and found that he could get along upon it. He
tried four hours and a half, and regretfully came back to five. He could
joyfully have spent all his waking hours upon any one of his pursuits. It
was with regret that he ceased from writing to study, that he ceased from
study to go to the library, that he tore himself away from that chart-room
of knowledge or from the magazines in the reading-room that were filled
with the secrets of writers who succeeded in selling their wares. It was
like severing heart strings, when he was with Ruth, to stand up and go; and
he scorched through the dark streets so as to get home to his books at the
least possible expense of time. And hardest of all was it to shut up the
algebra or physics, put note-book and pencil aside, and close his tired
eyes in sleep. He hated the thought of ceasing to live, even for so short a
time, and his sole consolation was that the alarm clock was set five hours
ahead. He would lose only five hours anyway, and then the jangling bell
would jerk him out of unconsciousness and he would have before him another
glorious day of nineteen hours.

In the meantime the weeks were passing, his money was ebbing low, and there
was no money coming in. A month after he had mailed it, the adventure
serial for boys was returned to him by THE YOUTH'S COMPANION. The rejection
slip was so tactfully worded that he felt kindly toward the editor. But he
did not feel so kindly toward the editor of the SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER.
After waiting two whole weeks, Martin had written to him. A week later he
wrote again. At the end of the month, he went over to San Francisco and
personally called upon the editor. But he did not meet that exalted
personage, thanks to a Cerberus of an office boy, of tender years and red
hair, who guarded the portals. At the end of the fifth week the manuscript
came back to him, by mail, without comment. There was no rejection slip, no
explanation, nothing. In the same way his other articles were tied up with
the other leading San Francisco papers. When he recovered them, he sent
them to the magazines in the East, from which they were returned more
promptly, accompanied always by the printed rejection slips.

The short stories were returned in similar fashion. He read them over and
over, and liked them so much that he could not puzzle out the cause of
their rejection, until, one day, he read in a newspaper that manuscripts
should always be typewritten. That explained it. Of course editors were so
busy that they could not afford the time and strain of reading handwriting.
Martin rented a typewriter and spent a day mastering the machine. Each day
he typed what he composed, and he typed his earlier manuscripts as fast as
they were returned him. He was surprised when the typed ones began to come
back. His jaw seemed to become squarer, his chin more aggressive, and he
bundled the manuscripts off to new editors.

The thought came to him that he was not a good judge of his own work. He
tried it out on Gertrude. He read his stories aloud to her. Her eyes
glistened, and she looked at him proudly as she said:-

"Ain't it grand, you writin' those sort of things."

"Yes, yes," he demanded impatiently. "But the story - how did you like it?"

"Just grand," was the reply. "Just grand, an' thrilling, too. I was all
worked up."

He could see that her mind was not clear. The perplexity was strong in her
good-natured face. So he waited.

"But, say, Mart," after a long pause, "how did it end? Did that young man
who spoke so highfalutin' get her?"

And, after he had explained the end, which he thought he had made
artistically obvious, she would say:-

"That's what I wanted to know. Why didn't you write that way in the story?"

One thing he learned, after he had read her a number of stories, namely,
that she liked happy endings.

"That story was perfectly grand," she announced, straightening up from the
wash-tub with a tired sigh and wiping the sweat from her forehead with a
red, steamy hand; "but it makes me sad. I want to cry. There is too many
sad things in the world anyway. It makes me happy to think about happy
things. Now if he'd married her, and - You don't mind, Mart?" she queried
apprehensively. "I just happen to feel that way, because I'm tired, I
guess. But the story was grand just the same, perfectly grand. Where are
you goin' to sell it?"

"That's a horse of another color," he laughed.

"But if you DID sell it, what do you think you'd get for it?"

"Oh, a hundred dollars. That would be the least, the way prices go."

"My! I do hope you'll sell it!"

"Easy money, eh?" Then he added proudly: "I wrote it in two days. That's
fifty dollars a day."

He longed to read his stories to Ruth, but did not dare. He would wait till
some were published, he decided, then she would understand what he had been
working for. In the meantime he toiled on. Never had the spirit of
adventure lured him more strongly than on this amazing exploration of the
realm of mind. He bought the text-books on physics and chemistry, and,
along with his algebra, worked out problems and demonstrations. He took the
laboratory proofs on faith, and his intense power of vision enabled him to
see the reactions of chemicals more understandingly than the average
student saw them in the laboratory. Martin wandered on through the heavy
pages, overwhelmed by the clews he was getting to the nature of things. He
had accepted the world as the world, but now he was comprehending the
organization of it, the play and interplay of force and matter. Spontaneous
explanations of old matters were continually arising in his mind. Levers
and purchases fascinated him, and his mind roved backward to hand-spikes
and blocks and tackles at sea. The theory of navigation, which enabled the
ships to travel unerringly their courses over the pathless ocean, was made
clear to him. The mysteries of storm, and rain, and tide were revealed, and
the reason for the existence of trade-winds made him wonder whether he had
written his article on the northeast trade too soon. At any rate he knew he
could write it better now. One afternoon he went out with Arthur to the
University of California, and, with bated breath and a feeling of religious
awe, went through the laboratories, saw demonstrations, and listened to a
physics professor lecturing to his classes.

But he did not neglect his writing. A stream of short stories flowed from
his pen, and he branched out into the easier forms of verse - the kind he
saw printed in the magazines - though he lost his head and wasted two weeks
on a tragedy in blank verse, the swift rejection of which, by half a dozen
magazines, dumfounded him. Then he discovered Henley and wrote a series of
sea-poems on the model of "Hospital Sketches." They were simple poems, of
light and color, and romance and adventure. "Sea Lyrics," he called them,
and he judged them to be the best work he had yet done. There were thirty,
and he completed them in a month, doing one a day after having done his
regular day's work on fiction, which day's work was the equivalent to a
week's work of the average successful writer. The toil meant nothing to
him. It was not toil. He was finding speech, and all the beauty and wonder
that had been pent for years behind his inarticulate lips was now pouring
forth in a wild and virile flood.

He showed the "Sea Lyrics" to no one, not even to the editors. He had
become distrustful of editors. But it was not distrust that prevented him
from submitting the "Lyrics." They were so beautiful to him that he was
impelled to save them to share with Ruth in some glorious, far-off time
when he would dare to read to her what he had written. Against that time he
kept them with him, reading them aloud, going over them until he knew them
by heart.

He lived every moment of his waking hours, and he lived in his sleep, his
subjective mind rioting through his five hours of surcease and combining
the thoughts and events of the day into grotesque and impossible marvels.
In reality, he never rested, and a weaker body or a less firmly poised
brain would have been prostrated in a general break-down. His late
afternoon calls on Ruth were rarer now, for June was approaching, when she
would take her degree and finish with the university. Bachelor of Arts! -
when he thought of her degree, it seemed she fled beyond him faster than he
could pursue.

One afternoon a week she gave to him, and arriving late, he usually stayed
for dinner and for music afterward. Those were his red- letter days. The
atmosphere of the house, in such contrast with that in which he lived, and
the mere nearness to her, sent him forth each time with a firmer grip on
his resolve to climb the heights. In spite of the beauty in him, and the
aching desire to create, it was for her that he struggled. He was a lover
first and always. All other things he subordinated to love.

Greater than his adventure in the world of thought was his love- adventure.
The world itself was not so amazing because of the atoms and molecules that
composed it according to the propulsions of irresistible force; what made
it amazing was the fact that Ruth lived in it. She was the most amazing
thing he had ever known, or dreamed, or guessed.

But he was oppressed always by her remoteness. She was so far from him, and
he did not know how to approach her. He had been a success with girls and
women in his own class; but he had never loved any of them, while he did
love her, and besides, she was not merely of another class. His very love
elevated her above all classes. She was a being apart, so far apart that he
did not know how to draw near to her as a lover should draw near. It was
true, as he acquired knowledge and language, that he was drawing nearer,
talking her speech, discovering ideas and delights in common; but this did
not satisfy his lover's yearning. His lover's imagination had made her
holy, too holy, too spiritualized, to have any kinship with him in the
flesh. It was his own love that thrust her from him and made her seem
impossible for him. Love itself denied him the one thing that it desired.

And then, one day, without warning, the gulf between them was bridged for a
moment, and thereafter, though the gulf remained, it was ever narrower.
They had been eating cherries - great, luscious, black cherries with a
juice of the color of dark wine. And later, as she read aloud to him from
"The Princess," he chanced to notice the stain of the cherries on her lips.
For the moment her divinity was shattered. She was clay, after all, mere
clay, subject to the common law of clay as his clay was subject, or
anybody's clay. Her lips were flesh like his, and cherries dyed them as
cherries dyed his. And if so with her lips, then was it so with all of her.
She was woman, all woman, just like any woman. It came upon him abruptly.
It was a revelation that stunned him. It was as if he had seen the sun fall
out of the sky, or had seen worshipped purity polluted.

Then he realized the significance of it, and his heart began pounding and
challenging him to play the lover with this woman who was not a spirit from
other worlds but a mere woman with lips a cherry could stain. He trembled
at the audacity of his thought; but all his soul was singing, and reason,
in a triumphant paean, assured him he was right. Something of this change
in him must have reached her, for she paused from her reading, looked up at
him, and smiled. His eyes dropped from her blue eyes to her lips, and the
sight of the stain maddened him. His arms all but flashed out to her and
around her, in the way of his old careless life. She seemed to lean toward
him, to wait, and all his will fought to hold him back.

"You were not following a word," she pouted.

Then she laughed at him, delighting in his confusion, and as he looked into
her frank eyes and knew that she had divined nothing of what he felt, he
became abashed. He had indeed in thought dared too far. Of all the women he
had known there was no woman who would not have guessed - save her. And she
had not guessed. There was the difference. She was different. He was
appalled by his own grossness, awed by her clear innocence, and he gazed
again at her across the gulf. The bridge had broken down.

But still the incident had brought him nearer. The memory of it persisted,
and in the moments when he was most cast down, he dwelt upon it eagerly.
The gulf was never again so wide. He had accomplished a distance vastly
greater than a bachelorship of arts, or a dozen bachelorships. She was
pure, it was true, as he had never dreamed of purity; but cherries stained
her lips. She was subject to the laws of the universe just as inexorably as
he was. She had to eat to live, and when she got her feet wet, she caught
cold. But that was not the point. If she could feel hunger and thirst, and
heat and cold, then could she feel love - and love for a man. Well, he was
a man. And why could he not be the man? "It's up to me to make good," he
would murmur fervently. "I will be THE man. I will make myself THE man. I
will make good."

CHAPTER XII

Early one evening, struggling with a sonnet that twisted all awry the
beauty and thought that trailed in glow and vapor through his brain, Martin
was called to the telephone.

"It's a lady's voice, a fine lady's," Mr. Higginbotham, who had called him,
jeered.

Martin went to the telephone in the corner of the room, and felt a wave of
warmth rush through him as he heard Ruth's voice. In his battle with the
sonnet he had forgotten her existence, and at the sound of her voice his
love for her smote him like a sudden blow. And such a voice! - delicate and
sweet, like a strain of music heard far off and faint, or, better, like a
bell of silver, a perfect tone, crystal-pure. No mere woman had a voice
like that. There was something celestial about it, and it came from other
worlds. He could scarcely hear what it said, so ravished was he, though he
controlled his face, for he knew that Mr. Higginbotham's ferret eyes were
fixed upon him.

It was not much that Ruth wanted to say - merely that Norman had been going
to take her to a lecture that night, but that he had a headache, and she
was so disappointed, and she had the tickets, and that if he had no other
engagement, would he be good enough to take her?

Would he! He fought to suppress the eagerness in his voice. It was amazing.
He had always seen her in her own house. And he had never dared to ask her
to go anywhere with him. Quite irrelevantly, still at the telephone and
talking with her, he felt an overpowering desire to die for her, and
visions of heroic sacrifice shaped and dissolved in his whirling brain. He
loved her so much, so terribly, so hopelessly. In that moment of mad
happiness that she should go out with him, go to a lecture with him - with
him, Martin Eden - she soared so far above him that there seemed nothing
else for him to do than die for her. It was the only fit way in which he
could express the tremendous and lofty emotion he felt for her. It was the
sublime abnegation of true love that comes to all lovers, and it came to
him there, at the telephone, in a whirlwind of fire and glory; and to die
for her, he felt, was to have lived and loved well. And he was only twenty-
one, and he had never been in love before.

His hand trembled as he hung up the receiver, and he was weak from the
organ which had stirred him. His eyes were shining like an angel's, and his
face was transfigured, purged of all earthly dross, and pure and holy.

"Makin' dates outside, eh?" his brother-in-law sneered. "You know what that
means. You'll be in the police court yet."

But Martin could not come down from the height. Not even the bestiality of
the allusion could bring him back to earth. Anger and hurt were beneath
him. He had seen a great vision and was as a god, and he could feel only
profound and awful pity for this maggot of a man. He did not look at him,
and though his eyes passed over him, he did not see him; and as in a dream
he passed out of the room to dress. It was not until he had reached his own
room and was tying his necktie that he became aware of a sound that
lingered unpleasantly in his ears. On investigating this sound he
identified it as the final snort of Bernard Higginbotham, which somehow had
not penetrated to his brain before.

As Ruth's front door closed behind them and he came down the steps with
her, he found himself greatly perturbed. It was not unalloyed bliss, taking
her to the lecture. He did not know what he ought to do. He had seen, on
the streets, with persons of her class, that the women took the men's arms.
But then, again, he had seen them when they didn't; and he wondered if it
was only in the evening that arms were taken, or only between husbands and
wives and relatives.

Just before he reached the sidewalk, he remembered Minnie. Minnie had
always been a stickler. She had called him down the second time she walked
out with him, because he had gone along on the inside, and she had laid the
law down to him that a gentleman always walked on the outside - when he was
with a lady. And Minnie had made a practice of kicking his heels, whenever
they crossed from one side of the street to the other, to remind him to get
over on the outside. He wondered where she had got that item of etiquette,
and whether it had filtered down from above and was all right.

It wouldn't do any harm to try it, he decided, by the time they had reached
the sidewalk; and he swung behind Ruth and took up his station on the
outside. Then the other problem presented itself. Should he offer her his
arm? He had never offered anybody his arm in his life. The girls he had
known never took the fellows' arms. For the first several times they walked
freely, side by side, and after that it was arms around the waists, and
heads against the fellows' shoulders where the streets were unlighted. But
this was different. She wasn't that kind of a girl. He must do something.

He crooked the arm next to her - crooked it very slightly and with secret
tentativeness, not invitingly, but just casually, as though he was
accustomed to walk that way. And then the wonderful thing happened. He felt
her hand upon his arm. Delicious thrills ran through him at the contact,
and for a few sweet moments it seemed that he had left the solid earth and
was flying with her through the air. But he was soon back again, perturbed
by a new complication. They were crossing the street. This would put him on
the inside. He should be on the outside. Should he therefore drop her arm
and change over? And if he did so, would he have to repeat the manoeuvre
the next time? And the next? There was something wrong about it, and he
resolved not to caper about and play the fool. Yet he was not satisfied
with his conclusion, and when he found himself on the inside, he talked
quickly and earnestly, making a show of being carried away by what he was
saying, so that, in case he was wrong in not changing sides, his enthusiasm
would seem the cause for his carelessness.

As they crossed Broadway, he came face to face with a new problem. In the
blaze of the electric lights, he saw Lizzie Connolly and her giggly friend.
Only for an instant he hesitated, then his hand went up and his hat came
off. He could not be disloyal to his kind, and it was to more than Lizzie
Connolly that his hat was lifted. She nodded and looked at him boldly, not
with soft and gentle eyes like Ruth's, but with eyes that were handsome and
hard, and that swept on past him to Ruth and itemized her face and dress
and station. And he was aware that Ruth looked, too, with quick eyes that
were timid and mild as a dove's, but which saw, in a look that was a
flutter on and past, the working-class girl in her cheap finery and under
the strange hat that all working-class girls were wearing just then.

"What a pretty girl!" Ruth said a moment later.

Martin could have blessed her, though he said:-

"I don't know. I guess it's all a matter of personal taste, but she doesn't
strike me as being particularly pretty."

"Why, there isn't one woman in ten thousand with features as regular as
hers. They are splendid. Her face is as clear-cut as a cameo. And her eyes
are beautiful."

"Do you think so?" Martin queried absently, for to him there was only one
beautiful woman in the world, and she was beside him, her hand upon his
arm.

"Do I think so? If that girl had proper opportunity to dress, Mr. Eden, and
if she were taught how to carry herself, you would be fairly dazzled by
her, and so would all men."

"She would have to be taught how to speak," he commented, "or else most of
the men wouldn't understand her. I'm sure you couldn't understand a quarter
of what she said if she just spoke naturally."

"Nonsense! You are as bad as Arthur when you try to make your point."

"You forget how I talked when you first met me. I have learned a new
language since then. Before that time I talked as that girl talks. Now I
can manage to make myself understood sufficiently in your language to
explain that you do not know that other girl's language. And do you know
why she carries herself the way she does? I think about such things now,
though I never used to think about them, and I am beginning to understand -
much."

"But why does she?"

"She has worked long hours for years at machines. When one's body is young,
it is very pliable, and hard work will mould it like putty according to the
nature of the work. I can tell at a glance the trades of many workingmen I
meet on the street. Look at me. Why am I rolling all about the shop?
Because of the years I put in on the sea. If I'd put in the same years
cow-punching, with my body young and pliable, I wouldn't be rolling now,
but I'd be bow- legged. And so with that girl. You noticed that her eyes
were what I might call hard. She has never been sheltered. She has had to
take care of herself, and a young girl can't take care of herself and keep
her eyes soft and gentle like - like yours, for example."

"I think you are right," Ruth said in a low voice. "And it is too bad. She
is such a pretty girl."

He looked at her and saw her eyes luminous with pity. And then he
remembered that he loved her and was lost in amazement at his fortune that
permitted him to love her and to take her on his arm to a lecture.

Who are you, Martin Eden? he demanded of himself in the looking- glass,
that night when he got back to his room. He gazed at himself long and
curiously. Who are you? What are you? Where do you belong? You belong by
rights to girls like Lizzie Connolly. You belong with the legions of toil,
with all that is low, and vulgar, and unbeautiful. You belong with the oxen
and the drudges, in dirty surroundings among smells and stenches. There are
the stale vegetables now. Those potatoes are rotting. Smell them, damn you,
smell them. And yet you dare to open the books, to listen to beautiful
music, to learn to love beautiful paintings, to speak good English, to
think thoughts that none of your own kind thinks, to tear yourself away
from the oxen and the Lizzie Connollys and to love a pale spirit of a woman
who is a million miles beyond you and who lives in the stars! Who are you?
and what are you? damn you! And are you going to make good?

He shook his fist at himself in the glass, and sat down on the edge of the
bed to dream for a space with wide eyes. Then he got out note-book and
algebra and lost himself in quadratic equations, while the hours slipped
by, and the stars dimmed, and the gray of dawn flooded against his window.

CHAPTER XIII

It was the knot of wordy socialists and working-class philosophers that
held forth in the City Hall Park on warm afternoons that was responsible
for the great discovery. Once or twice in the month, while riding through
the park on his way to the library, Martin dismounted from his wheel and
listened to the arguments, and each time he tore himself away reluctantly.
The tone of discussion was much lower than at Mr. Morse's table. The men
were not grave and dignified. They lost their tempers easily and called one
another names, while oaths and obscene allusions were frequent on their
lips. Once or twice he had seen them come to blows. And yet, he knew not
why, there seemed something vital about the stuff of these men's thoughts.
Their logomachy was far more stimulating to his intellect than the reserved
and quiet dogmatism of Mr. Morse. These men, who slaughtered English,
gesticulated like lunatics, and fought one another's ideas with primitive
anger, seemed somehow to be more alive than Mr. Morse and his crony, Mr.
Butler.

Martin had heard Herbert Spencer quoted several times in the park, but one
afternoon a disciple of Spencer's appeared, a seedy tramp with a dirty coat
buttoned tightly at the throat to conceal the absence of a shirt. Battle
royal was waged, amid the smoking of many cigarettes and the expectoration
of much tobacco-juice, wherein the tramp successfully held his own, even
when a socialist workman sneered, "There is no god but the Unknowable, and
Herbert Spencer is his prophet." Martin was puzzled as to what the
discussion was about, but when he rode on to the library he carried with
him a new-born interest in Herbert Spencer, and because of the frequency
with which the tramp had mentioned "First Principles," Martin drew out that
volume.

So the great discovery began. Once before he had tried Spencer, and
choosing the "Principles of Psychology" to begin with, he had failed as
abjectly as he had failed with Madam Blavatsky. There had been no
understanding the book, and he had returned it unread. But this night,
after algebra and physics, and an attempt at a sonnet, he got into bed and
opened "First Principles." Morning found him still reading. It was
impossible for him to sleep. Nor did he write that day. He lay on the bed
till his body grew tired, when he tried the hard floor, reading on his
back, the book held in the air above him, or changing from side to side. He
slept that night, and did his writing next morning, and then the book
tempted him and he fell, reading all afternoon, oblivious to everything and
oblivious to the fact that that was the afternoon Ruth gave to him. His
first consciousness of the immediate world about him was when Bernard
Higginbotham jerked open the door and demanded to know if he thought they
were running a restaurant.

Martin Eden had been mastered by curiosity all his days. He wanted to know,
and it was this desire that had sent him adventuring over the world. But he
was now learning from Spencer that he never had known, and that he never
could have known had he continued his sailing and wandering forever. He had
merely skimmed over the surface of things, observing detached phenomena,
accumulating fragments of facts, making superficial little generalizations
- and all and everything quite unrelated in a capricious and disorderly
world of whim and chance. The mechanism of the flight of birds he had
watched and reasoned about with understanding; but it had never entered his
head to try to explain the process whereby birds, as organic flying
mechanisms, had been developed. He had never dreamed there was such a
process. That birds should have come to be, was unguessed. They always had
been. They just happened.

And as it was with birds, so had it been with everything. His ignorant and
unprepared attempts at philosophy had been fruitless. The medieval
metaphysics of Kant had given him the key to nothing, and had served the
sole purpose of making him doubt his own intellectual powers. In similar
manner his attempt to study evolution had been confined to a hopelessly
technical volume by Romanes. He had understood nothing, and the only idea
he had gathered was that evolution was a dry-as-dust theory, of a lot of
little men possessed of huge and unintelligible vocabularies. And now he
learned that evolution was no mere theory but an accepted process of
development; that scientists no longer disagreed about it, their only
differences being over the method of evolution.

And here was the man Spencer, organizing all knowledge for him, reducing
everything to unity, elaborating ultimate realities, and presenting to his
startled gaze a universe so concrete of realization that it was like the
model of a ship such as sailors make and put into glass bottles. There was
no caprice, no chance. All was law. It was in obedience to law that the
bird flew, and it was in obedience to the same law that fermenting slime
had writhed and squirmed and put out legs and wings and become a bird.

Martin had ascended from pitch to pitch of intellectual living, and here he
was at a higher pitch than ever. All the hidden things were laying their
secrets bare. He was drunken with comprehension. At night, asleep, he lived
with the gods in colossal nightmare; and awake, in the day, he went around
like a somnambulist, with absent stare, gazing upon the world he had just
discovered. At table he failed to hear the conversation about petty and
ignoble things, his eager mind seeking out and following cause and effect
in everything before him. In the meat on the platter he saw the shining sun
and traced its energy back through all its transformations to its source a
hundred million miles away, or traced its energy ahead to the moving
muscles in his arms that enabled him to cut the meat, and to the brain
wherewith he willed the muscles to move to cut the meat, until, with inward
gaze, he saw the same sun shining in his brain. He was entranced by
illumination, and did not hear the "Bughouse," whispered by Jim, nor see
the anxiety on his sister's face, nor notice the rotary motion of Bernard
Higginbotham's finger, whereby he imparted the suggestion of wheels
revolving in his brother-in-law's head.

What, in a way, most profoundly impressed Martin, was the correlation of
knowledge - of all knowledge. He had been curious to know things, and
whatever he acquired he had filed away in separate memory compartments in
his brain. Thus, on the subject of sailing he had an immense store. On the
subject of woman he had a fairly large store. But these two subjects had
been unrelated. Between the two memory compartments there had been no
connection. That, in the fabric of knowledge, there should be any
connection whatever between a woman with hysterics and a schooner carrying
a weather-helm or heaving to in a gale, would have struck him as ridiculous
and impossible. But Herbert Spencer had shown him not only that it was not
ridiculous, but that it was impossible for there to be no connection. All
things were related to all other things from the farthermost star in the
wastes of space to the myriads of atoms in the grain of sand under one's
foot. This new concept was a perpetual amazement to Martin, and he found
himself engaged continually in tracing the relationship between all things
under the sun and on the other side of the sun. He drew up lists of the
most incongruous things and was unhappy until he succeeded in establishing
kinship between them all - kinship between love, poetry, earthquake, fire,
rattlesnakes, rainbows, precious gems, monstrosities, sunsets, the roaring
of lions, illuminating gas, cannibalism, beauty, murder, lovers, fulcrums,
and tobacco. Thus, he unified the universe and held it up and looked at it,
or wandered through its byways and alleys and jungles, not as a terrified
traveller in the thick of mysteries seeking an unknown goal, but observing
and charting and becoming familiar with all there was to know. And the more
he knew, the more passionately he admired the universe, and life, and his
own life in the midst of it all.

"You fool!" he cried at his image in the looking-glass. "You wanted to
write, and you tried to write, and you had nothing in you to write about.
What did you have in you? - some childish notions, a few half-baked
sentiments, a lot of undigested beauty, a great black mass of ignorance, a
heart filled to bursting with love, and an ambition as big as your love and
as futile as your ignorance. And you wanted to write! Why, you're just on
the edge of beginning to get something in you to write about. You wanted to
create beauty, but how could you when you knew nothing about the nature of
beauty? You wanted to write about life when you knew nothing of the
essential characteristics of life. You wanted to write about the world and
the scheme of existence when the world was a Chinese puzzle to you and all
that you could have written would have been about what you did not know of
the scheme of existence. But cheer up, Martin, my boy. You'll write yet.
You know a little, a very little, and you're on the right road now to know
more. Some day, if you're lucky, you may come pretty close to knowing all
that may be known. Then you will write."

He brought his great discovery to Ruth, sharing with her all his joy and
wonder in it. But she did not seem to be so enthusiastic over it. She
tacitly accepted it and, in a way, seemed aware of it from her own studies.
It did not stir her deeply, as it did him, and he would have been surprised
had he not reasoned it out that it was not new and fresh to her as it was
to him. Arthur and Norman, he found, believed in evolution and had read
Spencer, though it did not seem to have made any vital impression upon
them, while the young fellow with the glasses and the mop of hair, Will
Olney, sneered disagreeably at Spencer and repeated the epigram, "There is
no god but the Unknowable, and Herbert Spencer is his prophet."

But Martin forgave him the sneer, for he had begun to discover that Olney
was not in love with Ruth. Later, he was dumfounded to learn from various
little happenings not only that Olney did not care for Ruth, but that he
had a positive dislike for her. Martin could not understand this. It was a
bit of phenomena that he could not correlate with all the rest of the
phenomena in the universe. But nevertheless he felt sorry for the young
fellow because of the great lack in his nature that prevented him from a
proper appreciation of Ruth's fineness and beauty. They rode out into the
hills several Sundays on their wheels, and Martin had ample opportunity to
observe the armed truce that existed between Ruth and Olney. The latter
chummed with Norman, throwing Arthur and Martin into company with Ruth, for
which Martin was duly grateful.

Those Sundays were great days for Martin, greatest because he was with
Ruth, and great, also, because they were putting him more on a par with the
young men of her class. In spite of their long years of disciplined
education, he was finding himself their intellectual equal, and the hours
spent with them in conversation was so much practice for him in the use of
the grammar he had studied so hard. He had abandoned the etiquette books,
falling back upon observation to show him the right things to do. Except
when carried away by his enthusiasm, he was always on guard, keenly
watchful of their actions and learning their little courtesies and
refinements of conduct.

The fact that Spencer was very little read was for some time a source of
surprise to Martin. "Herbert Spencer," said the man at the desk in the
library, "oh, yes, a great mind." But the man did not seem to know anything
of the content of that great mind. One evening, at dinner, when Mr. Butler
was there, Martin turned the conversation upon Spencer. Mr. Morse bitterly
arraigned the English philosopher's agnosticism, but confessed that he had
not read "First Principles"; while Mr. Butler stated that he had no
patience with Spencer, had never read a line of him, and had managed to get
along quite well without him. Doubts arose in Martin's mind, and had he
been less strongly individual he would have accepted the general opinion
and given Herbert Spencer up. As it was, he found Spencer's explanation of
things convincing; and, as he phrased it to himself, to give up Spencer
would be equivalent to a navigator throwing the compass and chronometer
overboard. So Martin went on into a thorough study of evolution, mastering
more and more the subject himself, and being convinced by the corroborative
testimony of a thousand independent writers. The more he studied, the more
vistas he caught of fields of knowledge yet unexplored, and the regret that
days were only twenty-four hours long became a chronic complaint with him.

One day, because the days were so short, he decided to give up algebra and
geometry. Trigonometry he had not even attempted. Then he cut chemistry
from his study-list, retaining only physics.

"I am not a specialist," he said, in defence, to Ruth. "Nor am I going to
try to be a specialist. There are too many special fields for any one man,
in a whole lifetime, to master a tithe of them. I must pursue general
knowledge. When I need the work of specialists, I shall refer to their
books."

"But that is not like having the knowledge yourself," she protested.

"But it is unnecessary to have it. We profit from the work of the
specialists. That's what they are for. When I came in, I noticed the
chimney-sweeps at work. They're specialists, and when they get done, you
will enjoy clean chimneys without knowing anything about the construction
of chimneys."

"That's far-fetched, I am afraid."

She looked at him curiously, and he felt a reproach in her gaze and manner.
But he was convinced of the rightness of his position.

"All thinkers on general subjects, the greatest minds in the world, in
fact, rely on the specialists. Herbert Spencer did that. He generalized
upon the findings of thousands of investigators. He would have had to live
a thousand lives in order to do it all himself. And so with Darwin. He took
advantage of all that had been learned by the florists and
cattle-breeders."

"You're right, Martin," Olney said. "You know what you're after, and Ruth
doesn't. She doesn't know what she is after for herself even."

" - Oh, yes," Olney rushed on, heading off her objection, "I know you call
it general culture. But it doesn't matter what you study if you want
general culture. You can study French, or you can study German, or cut them
both out and study Esperanto, you'll get the culture tone just the same.
You can study Greek or Latin, too, for the same purpose, though it will
never be any use to you. It will be culture, though. Why, Ruth studied
Saxon, became clever in it, - that was two years ago, - and all that she
remembers of it now is 'Whan that sweet Aprile with his schowers soote' -
isn't that the way it goes?"

"But it's given you the culture tone just the same," he laughed, again
heading her off. "I know. We were in the same classes."

"But you speak of culture as if it should be a means to something," Ruth
cried out. Her eyes were flashing, and in her cheeks were two spots of
color. "Culture is the end in itself."

"But that is not what Martin wants."

"How do you know?"

"What do you want, Martin?" Olney demanded, turning squarely upon him.

Martin felt very uncomfortable, and looked entreaty at Ruth.

"Yes, what do you want?" Ruth asked. "That will settle it."

"Yes, of course, I want culture," Martin faltered. "I love beauty, and
culture will give me a finer and keener appreciation of beauty."

She nodded her head and looked triumph.

"Rot, and you know it," was Olney's comment. "Martin's after career, not
culture. It just happens that culture, in his case, is incidental to
career. If he wanted to be a chemist, culture would be unnecessary. Martin
wants to write, but he's afraid to say so because it will put you in the
wrong."

"And why does Martin want to write?" he went on. "Because he isn't rolling
in wealth. Why do you fill your head with Saxon and general culture?
Because you don't have to make your way in the world. Your father sees to
that. He buys your clothes for you, and all the rest. What rotten good is
our education, yours and mine and Arthur's and Norman's? We're soaked in
general culture, and if our daddies went broke to-day, we'd be falling down
to- morrow on teachers' examinations. The best job you could get, Ruth,
would be a country school or music teacher in a girls' boarding-school."

"And pray what would you do?" she asked.

"Not a blessed thing. I could earn a dollar and a half a day, common labor,
and I might get in as instructor in Hanley's cramming joint - I say might,
mind you, and I might be chucked out at the end of the week for sheer
inability."

Martin followed the discussion closely, and while he was convinced that
Olney was right, he resented the rather cavalier treatment he accorded
Ruth. A new conception of love formed in his mind as he listened. Reason
had nothing to do with love. It mattered not whether the woman he loved
reasoned correctly or incorrectly. Love was above reason. If it just
happened that she did not fully appreciate his necessity for a career, that
did not make her a bit less lovable. She was all lovable, and what she
thought had nothing to do with her lovableness.

"What's that?" he replied to a question from Olney that broke in upon his
train of thought.

"I was saying that I hoped you wouldn't be fool enough to tackle Latin."

"But Latin is more than culture," Ruth broke in. "It is equipment."

"Well, are you going to tackle it?" Olney persisted.

Martin was sore beset. He could see that Ruth was hanging eagerly upon his
answer.

"I am afraid I won't have time," he said finally. "I'd like to, but I won't
have time."

"You see, Martin's not seeking culture," Olney exulted. "He's trying to get
somewhere, to do something."

"Oh, but it's mental training. It's mind discipline. It's what makes
disciplined minds." Ruth looked expectantly at Martin, as if waiting for
him to change his judgment. "You know, the foot-ball players have to train
before the big game. And that is what Latin does for the thinker. It
trains."

"Rot and bosh! That's what they told us when we were kids. But there is one
thing they didn't tell us then. They let us find it out for ourselves
afterwards." Olney paused for effect, then added, "And what they didn't
tell us was that every gentleman should have studied Latin, but that no
gentleman should know Latin."

"Now that's unfair," Ruth cried. "I knew you were turning the conversation
just in order to get off something."

"It's clever all right," was the retort, "but it's fair, too. The only men
who know their Latin are the apothecaries, the lawyers, and the Latin
professors. And if Martin wants to be one of them, I miss my guess. But
what's all that got to do with Herbert Spencer anyway? Martin's just
discovered Spencer, and he's wild over him. Why? Because Spencer is taking
him somewhere. Spencer couldn't take me anywhere, nor you. We haven't got
anywhere to go. You'll get married some day, and I'll have nothing to do
but keep track of the lawyers and business agents who will take care of the
money my father's going to leave me."

Onley got up to go, but turned at the door and delivered a parting shot.

"You leave Martin alone, Ruth. He knows what's best for himself. Look at
what he's done already. He makes me sick sometimes, sick and ashamed of
myself. He knows more now about the world, and life, and man's place, and
all the rest, than Arthur, or Norman, or I, or you, too, for that matter,
and in spite of all our Latin, and French, and Saxon, and culture."

"But Ruth is my teacher," Martin answered chivalrously. "She is responsible
for what little I have learned."

"Rats!" Olney looked at Ruth, and his expression was malicious. "I suppose
you'll be telling me next that you read Spencer on her recommendation -
only you didn't. And she doesn't know anything more about Darwin and
evolution than I do about King Solomon's mines. What's that jawbreaker
definition about something or other, of Spencer's, that you sprang on us
the other day - that indefinite, incoherent homogeneity thing? Spring it on
her, and see if she understands a word of it. That isn't culture, you see.
Well, tra la, and if you tackle Latin, Martin, I won't have any respect for
you."

And all the while, interested in the discussion, Martin had been aware of
an irk in it as well. It was about studies and lessons, dealing with the
rudiments of knowledge, and the schoolboyish tone of it conflicted with the
big things that were stirring in him - with the grip upon life that was
even then crooking his fingers like eagle's talons, with the cosmic thrills
that made him ache, and with the inchoate consciousness of mastery of it
all. He likened himself to a poet, wrecked on the shores of a strange land,
filled with power of beauty, stumbling and stammering and vainly trying to
sing in the rough, barbaric tongue of his brethren in the new land. And so
with him. He was alive, painfully alive, to the great universal things, and
yet he was compelled to potter and grope among schoolboy topics and debate
whether or not he should study Latin.

"What in hell has Latin to do with it?" he demanded before his mirror that
night. "I wish dead people would stay dead. Why should I and the beauty in
me be ruled by the dead? Beauty is alive and everlasting. Languages come
and go. They are the dust of the dead."

And his next thought was that he had been phrasing his ideas very well, and
he went to bed wondering why he could not talk in similar fashion when he
was with Ruth. He was only a schoolboy, with a schoolboy's tongue, when he
was in her presence.

"Give me time," he said aloud. "Only give me time."

Time! Time! Time! was his unending plaint.

CHAPTER XIV

It was not because of Olney, but in spite of Ruth, and his love for Ruth,
that he finally decided not to take up Latin. His money meant time. There
was so much that was more important than Latin, so many studies that
clamored with imperious voices. And he must write. He must earn money. He
had had no acceptances. Twoscore of manuscripts were travelling the endless
round of the magazines. How did the others do it? He spent long hours in
the free reading- room, going over what others had written, studying their
work eagerly and critically, comparing it with his own, and wondering,
wondering, about the secret trick they had discovered which enabled them to
sell their work.

He was amazed at the immense amount of printed stuff that was dead. No
light, no life, no color, was shot through it. There was no breath of life
in it, and yet it sold, at two cents a word, twenty dollars a thousand -
the newspaper clipping had said so. He was puzzled by countless short
stories, written lightly and cleverly he confessed, but without vitality or
reality. Life was so strange and wonderful, filled with an immensity of
problems, of dreams, and of heroic toils, and yet these stories dealt only
with the commonplaces of life. He felt the stress and strain of life, its
fevers and sweats and wild insurgences - surely this was the stuff to write
about! He wanted to glorify the leaders of forlorn hopes, the mad lovers,
the giants that fought under stress and strain, amid terror and tragedy,
making life crackle with the strength of their endeavor. And yet the
magazine short stories seemed intent on glorifying the Mr. Butlers, the
sordid dollar-chasers, and the commonplace little love affairs of
commonplace little men and women. Was it because the editors of the
magazines were commonplace? he demanded. Or were they afraid of life, these
writers and editors and readers?

But his chief trouble was that he did not know any editors or writers. And
not merely did he not know any writers, but he did not know anybody who had
ever attempted to write. There was nobody to tell him, to hint to him, to
give him the least word of advice. He began to doubt that editors were real
men. They seemed cogs in a machine. That was what it was, a machine. He
poured his soul into stories, articles, and poems, and intrusted them to
the machine. He folded them just so, put the proper stamps inside the long
envelope along with the manuscript, sealed the envelope, put more stamps
outside, and dropped it into the mail-box. It travelled across the
continent, and after a certain lapse of time the postman returned him the
manuscript in another long envelope, on the outside of which were the
stamps he had enclosed. There was no human editor at the other end, but a
mere cunning arrangement of cogs that changed the manuscript from one
envelope to another and stuck on the stamps. It was like the slot machines
wherein one dropped pennies, and, with a metallic whirl of machinery had
delivered to him a stick of chewing-gum or a tablet of chocolate. It
depended upon which slot one dropped the penny in, whether he got chocolate
or gum. And so with the editorial machine. One slot brought checks and the
other brought rejection slips. So far he had found only the latter slot.

It was the rejection slips that completed the horrible machinelikeness of
the process. These slips were printed in stereotyped forms and he had
received hundreds of them - as many as a dozen or more on each of his
earlier manuscripts. If he had received one line, one personal line, along
with one rejection of all his rejections, he would have been cheered. But
not one editor had given that proof of existence. And he could conclude
only that there were no warm human men at the other end, only mere cogs,
well oiled and running beautifully in the machine.

He was a good fighter, whole-souled and stubborn, and he would have been
content to continue feeding the machine for years; but he was bleeding to
death, and not years but weeks would determine the fight. Each week his
board bill brought him nearer destruction, while the postage on forty
manuscripts bled him almost as severely. He no longer bought books, and he
economized in petty ways and sought to delay the inevitable end; though he
did not know how to economize, and brought the end nearer by a week when he
gave his sister Marian five dollars for a dress.

He struggled in the dark, without advice, without encouragement, and in the
teeth of discouragement. Even Gertrude was beginning to look askance. At
first she had tolerated with sisterly fondness what she conceived to be his
foolishness; but now, out of sisterly solicitude, she grew anxious. To her
it seemed that his foolishness was becoming a madness. Martin knew this and
suffered more keenly from it than from the open and nagging contempt of
Bernard Higginbotham. Martin had faith in himself, but he was alone in this
faith. Not even Ruth had faith. She had wanted him to devote himself to
study, and, though she had not openly disapproved of his writing, she had
never approved.

He had never offered to show her his work. A fastidious delicacy had
prevented him. Besides, she had been studying heavily at the university,
and he felt averse to robbing her of her time. But when she had taken her
degree, she asked him herself to let her see something of what he had been
doing. Martin was elated and diffident. Here was a judge. She was a
bachelor of arts. She had studied literature under skilled instructors.
Perhaps the editors were capable judges, too. But she would be different
from them. She would not hand him a stereotyped rejection slip, nor would
she inform him that lack of preference for his work did not necessarily
imply lack of merit in his work. She would talk, a warm human being, in her
quick, bright way, and, most important of all, she would catch glimpses of
the real Martin Eden. In his work she would discern what his heart and soul
were like, and she would come to understand something, a little something,
of the stuff of his dreams and the strength of his power.

Martin gathered together a number of carbon copies of his short stories,
hesitated a moment, then added his "Sea Lyrics." They mounted their wheels
on a late June afternoon and rode for the hills. It was the second time he
had been out with her alone, and as they rode along through the balmy
warmth, just chilled by she sea-breeze to refreshing coolness, he was
profoundly impressed by the fact that it was a very beautiful and
well-ordered world and that it was good to be alive and to love. They left
their wheels by the roadside and climbed to the brown top of an open knoll
where the sunburnt grass breathed a harvest breath of dry sweetness and
content.

"Its work is done," Martin said, as they seated themselves, she upon his
coat, and he sprawling close to the warm earth. He sniffed the sweetness of
the tawny grass, which entered his brain and set his thoughts whirling on
from the particular to the universal. "It has achieved its reason for
existence," he went on, patting the dry grass affectionately. "It quickened
with ambition under the dreary downpour of last winter, fought the violent
early spring, flowered, and lured the insects and the bees, scattered its
seeds, squared itself with its duty and the world, and - "

"Why do you always look at things with such dreadfully practical eyes?" she
interrupted.

"Because I've been studying evolution, I guess. It's only recently that I
got my eyesight, if the truth were told."

"But it seems to me you lose sight of beauty by being so practical, that
you destroy beauty like the boys who catch butterflies and rub the down off
their beautiful wings."

He shook his head.

"Beauty has significance, but I never knew its significance before. I just
accepted beauty as something meaningless, as something that was just
beautiful without rhyme or reason. I did not know anything about beauty.
But now I know, or, rather, am just beginning to know. This grass is more
beautiful to me now that I know why it is grass, and all the hidden
chemistry of sun and rain and earth that makes it become grass. Why, there
is romance in the life-history of any grass, yes, and adventure, too. The
very thought of it stirs me. When I think of the play of force and matter,
and all the tremendous struggle of it, I feel as if I could write an epic
on the grass.

"How well you talk," she said absently, and he noted that she was looking
at him in a searching way.

He was all confusion and embarrassment on the instant, the blood flushing
red on his neck and brow.

"I hope I am learning to talk," he stammered. "There seems to be so much in
me I want to say. But it is all so big. I can't find ways to say what is
really in me. Sometimes it seems to me that all the world, all life,
everything, had taken up residence inside of me and was clamoring for me to
be the spokesman. I feel - oh, I can't describe it - I feel the bigness of
it, but when I speak, I babble like a little child. It is a great task to
transmute feeling and sensation into speech, written or spoken, that will,
in turn, in him who reads or listens, transmute itself back into the
selfsame feeling and sensation. It is a lordly task. See, I bury my face in
the grass, and the breath I draw in through my nostrils sets me quivering
with a thousand thoughts and fancies. It is a breath of the universe I have
breathed. I know song and laughter, and success and pain, and struggle and
death; and I see visions that arise in my brain somehow out of the scent of
the grass, and I would like to tell them to you, to the world. But how can
I? My tongue is tied. I have tried, by the spoken word, just now, to
describe to you the effect on me of the scent of the grass. But I have not
succeeded. I have no more than hinted in awkward speech. My words seem
gibberish to me. And yet I am stifled with desire to tell. Oh! - " he threw
up his hands with a despairing gesture - "it is impossible! It is not
understandable! It is incommunicable!"

"But you do talk well," she insisted. "Just think how you have improved in
the short time I have known you. Mr. Butler is a noted public speaker. He
is always asked by the State Committee to go out on stump during campaign.
Yet you talked just as well as he the other night at dinner. Only he was
more controlled. You get too excited; but you will get over that with
practice. Why, you would make a good public speaker. You can go far - if
you want to. You are masterly. You can lead men, I am sure, and there is no
reason why you should not succeed at anything you set your hand to, just as
you have succeeded with grammar. You would make a good lawyer. You should
shine in politics. There is nothing to prevent you from making as great a
success as Mr. Butler has made. And minus the dyspepsia," she added with a
smile.

They talked on; she, in her gently persistent way, returning always to the
need of thorough grounding in education and to the advantages of Latin as
part of the foundation for any career. She drew her ideal of the successful
man, and it was largely in her father's image, with a few unmistakable
lines and touches of color from the image of Mr. Butler. He listened
eagerly, with receptive ears, lying on his back and looking up and joying
in each movement of her lips as she talked. But his brain was not
receptive. There was nothing alluring in the pictures she drew, and he was
aware of a dull pain of disappointment and of a sharper ache of love for
her. In all she said there was no mention of his writing, and the
manuscripts he had brought to read lay neglected on the ground.

At last, in a pause, he glanced at the sun, measured its height above the
horizon, and suggested his manuscripts by picking them up.

"I had forgotten," she said quickly. "And I am so anxious to hear."

He read to her a story, one that he flattered himself was among his very
best. He called it "The Wine of Life," and the wine of it, that had stolen
into his brain when he wrote it, stole into his brain now as he read it.
There was a certain magic in the original conception, and he had adorned it
with more magic of phrase and touch. All the old fire and passion with
which he had written it were reborn in him, and he was swayed and swept
away so that he was blind and deaf to the faults of it. But it was not so
with Ruth. Her trained ear detected the weaknesses and exaggerations, the
overemphasis of the tyro, and she was instantly aware each time the
sentence-rhythm tripped and faltered. She scarcely noted the rhythm
otherwise, except when it became too pompous, at which moments she was
disagreeably impressed with its amateurishness. That was her final judgment
on the story as a whole - amateurish, though she did not tell him so.
Instead, when he had done, she pointed out the minor flaws and said that
she liked the story.

But he was disappointed. Her criticism was just. He acknowledged that, but
he had a feeling that he was not sharing his work with her for the purpose
of schoolroom correction. The details did not matter. They could take care
of themselves. He could mend them, he could learn to mend them. Out of life
he had captured something big and attempted to imprison it in the story. It
was the big thing out of life he had read to her, not sentence-structure
and semicolons. He wanted her to feel with him this big thing that was his,
that he had seen with his own eyes, grappled with his own brain, and placed
there on the page with his own hands in printed words. Well, he had failed,
was his secret decision. Perhaps the editors were right. He had felt the
big thing, but he had failed to transmute it. He concealed his
disappointment, and joined so easily with her in her criticism that she did
not realize that deep down in him was running a strong undercurrent of
disagreement.

"This next thing I've called 'The Pot'," he said, unfolding the manuscript.
"It has been refused by four or five magazines now, but still I think it is
good. In fact, I don't know what to think of it, except that I've caught
something there. Maybe it won't affect you as it does me. It's a short
thing - only two thousand words."

"How dreadful!" she cried, when he had finished. "It is horrible,
unutterably horrible!"

He noted her pale face, her eyes wide and tense, and her clenched hands,
with secret satisfaction. He had succeeded. He had communicated the stuff
of fancy and feeling from out of his brain. It had struck home. No matter
whether she liked it or not, it had gripped her and mastered her, made her
sit there and listen and forget details.

"It is life," he said, "and life is not always beautiful. And yet, perhaps
because I am strangely made, I find something beautiful there. It seems to
me that the beauty is tenfold enhanced because it is there - "

"But why couldn't the poor woman - " she broke in disconnectedly. Then she
left the revolt of her thought unexpressed to cry out: "Oh! It is
degrading! It is not nice! It is nasty!"

For the moment it seemed to him that his heart stood still. NASTY! He had
never dreamed it. He had not meant it. The whole sketch stood before him in
letters of fire, and in such blaze of illumination he sought vainly for
nastiness. Then his heart began to beat again. He was not guilty.

"Why didn't you select a nice subject?" she was saying. "We know there are
nasty things in the world, but that is no reason - "

She talked on in her indignant strain, but he was not following her. He was
smiling to himself as he looked up into her virginal face, so innocent, so
penetratingly innocent, that its purity seemed always to enter into him,
driving out of him all dross and bathing him in some ethereal effulgence
that was as cool and soft and velvety as starshine. WE KNOW THERE ARE NASTY
THINGS IN THE WORLD! He cuddled to him the notion of her knowing, and
chuckled over it as a love joke. The next moment, in a flashing vision of
multitudinous detail, he sighted the whole sea of life's nastiness that he
had known and voyaged over and through, and he forgave her for not
understanding the story. It was through no fault of hers that she could not
understand. He thanked God that she had been born and sheltered to such
innocence. But he knew life, its foulness as well as its fairness, its
greatness in spite of the slime that infested it, and by God he was going
to have his say on it to the world. Saints in heaven - how could they be
anything but fair and pure? No praise to them. But saints in slime - ah,
that was the everlasting wonder! That was what made life worth while. To
see moral grandeur rising out of cesspools of iniquity; to rise himself and
first glimpse beauty, faint and far, through mud- dripping eyes; to see out
of weakness, and frailty, and viciousness, and all abysmal brutishness,
arising strength, and truth, and high spiritual endowment -

He caught a stray sequence of sentences she was uttering.

"The tone of it all is low. And there is so much that is high. Take 'In
Memoriam.'"

He was impelled to suggest "Locksley Hall," and would have done so, had not
his vision gripped him again and left him staring at her, the female of his
kind, who, out of the primordial ferment, creeping and crawling up the vast
ladder of life for a thousand thousand centuries, had emerged on the
topmost rung, having become one Ruth, pure, and fair, and divine, and with
power to make him know love, and to aspire toward purity, and to desire to
taste divinity - him, Martin Eden, who, too, had come up in some amazing
fashion from out of the ruck and the mire and the countless mistakes and
abortions of unending creation. There was the romance, and the wonder, and
the glory. There was the stuff to write, if he could only find speech.
Saints in heaven! - They were only saints and could not help themselves.
But he was a man.

"You have strength," he could hear her saying, "but it is untutored
strength."

"Like a bull in a china shop," he suggested, and won a smile.

"And you must develop discrimination. You must consult taste, and fineness,
and tone."

"I dare too much," he muttered.

She smiled approbation, and settled herself to listen to another story.

"I don't know what you'll make of this," he said apologetically. "It's a
funny thing. I'm afraid I got beyond my depth in it, but my intentions were
good. Don't bother about the little features of it. Just see if you catch
the feel of the big thing in it. It is big, and it is true, though the
chance is large that I have failed to make it intelligible."

He read, and as he read he watched her. At last he had reached her, he
thought. She sat without movement, her eyes steadfast upon him, scarcely
breathing, caught up and out of herself, he thought, by the witchery of the
thing he had created. He had entitled the story "Adventure," and it was the
apotheosis of adventure - not of the adventure of the storybooks, but of
real adventure, the savage taskmaster, awful of punishment and awful of
reward, faithless and whimsical, demanding terrible patience and
heartbreaking days and nights of toil, offering the blazing sunlight glory
or dark death at the end of thirst and famine or of the long drag and
monstrous delirium of rotting fever, through blood and sweat and stinging
insects leading up by long chains of petty and ignoble contacts to royal
culminations and lordly achievements.

It was this, all of it, and more, that he had put into his story, and it
was this, he believed, that warmed her as she sat and listened. Her eyes
were wide, color was in her pale cheeks, and before he finished it seemed
to him that she was almost panting. Truly, she was warmed; but she was
warmed, not by the story, but by him. She did not think much of the story;
it was Martin's intensity of power, the old excess of strength that seemed
to pour from his body and on and over her. The paradox of it was that it
was the story itself that was freighted with his power, that was the
channel, for the time being, through which his strength poured out to her.
She was aware only of the strength, and not of the medium, and when she
seemed most carried away by what he had written, in reality she had been
carried away by something quite foreign to it - by a thought, terrible and
perilous, that had formed itself unsummoned in her brain. She had caught
herself wondering what marriage was like, and the becoming conscious of the
waywardness and ardor of the thought had terrified her. It was unmaidenly.
It was not like her. She had never been tormented by womanhood, and she had
lived in a dreamland of Tennysonian poesy, dense even to the full
significance of that delicate master's delicate allusions to the
grossnesses that intrude upon the relations of queens and knights. She had
been asleep, always, and now life was thundering imperatively at all her
doors. Mentally she was in a panic to shoot the bolts and drop the bars
into place, while wanton instincts urged her to throw wide her portals and
bid the deliciously strange visitor to enter in.

Martin waited with satisfaction for her verdict. He had no doubt of what it
would be, and he was astounded when he heard her say:

"It is beautiful."

"It is beautiful," she repeated, with emphasis, after a pause.

Of course it was beautiful; but there was something more than mere beauty
in it, something more stingingly splendid which had made beauty its
handmaiden. He sprawled silently on the ground, watching the grisly form of
a great doubt rising before him. He had failed. He was inarticulate. He had
seen one of the greatest things in the world, and he had not expressed it.

"What did you think of the - " He hesitated, abashed at his first attempt
to use a strange word. "Of the MOTIF?" he asked.

"It was confused," she answered. "That is my only criticism in the large
way. I followed the story, but there seemed so much else. It is too wordy.
You clog the action by introducing so much extraneous material."

"That was the major MOTIF," he hurriedly explained, "the big underrunning
MOTIF, the cosmic and universal thing. I tried to make it keep time with
the story itself, which was only superficial after all. I was on the right
scent, but I guess I did it badly. I did not succeed in suggesting what I
was driving at. But I'll learn in time."

She did not follow him. She was a bachelor of arts, but he had gone beyond
her limitations. This she did not comprehend, attributing her
incomprehension to his incoherence.

"You were too voluble," she said. "But it was beautiful, in places."

He heard her voice as from far off, for he was debating whether he would
read her the "Sea Lyrics." He lay in dull despair, while she watched him
searchingly, pondering again upon unsummoned and wayward thoughts of
marriage.

"You want to be famous?" she asked abruptly.

"Yes, a little bit," he confessed. "That is part of the adventure. It is
not the being famous, but the process of becoming so, that counts. And
after all, to be famous would be, for me, only a means to something else. I
want to be famous very much, for that matter, and for that reason."

"For your sake," he wanted to add, and might have added had she proved
enthusiastic over what he had read to her.

But she was too busy in her mind, carving out a career for him that would
at least be possible, to ask what the ultimate something was which he had
hinted at. There was no career for him in literature. Of that she was
convinced. He had proved it to-day, with his amateurish and sophomoric
productions. He could talk well, but he was incapable of expressing himself
in a literary way. She compared Tennyson, and Browning, and her favorite
prose masters with him, and to his hopeless discredit. Yet she did not tell
him her whole mind. Her strange interest in him led her to temporize. His
desire to write was, after all, a little weakness which he would grow out
of in time. Then he would devote himself to the more serious affairs of
life. And he would succeed, too. She knew that. He was so strong that he
could not fail - if only he would drop writing.

"I wish you would show me all you write, Mr. Eden," she said.

He flushed with pleasure. She was interested, that much was sure. And at
least she had not given him a rejection slip. She had called certain
portions of his work beautiful, and that was the first encouragement he had
ever received from any one.

"I will," he said passionately. "And I promise you, Miss Morse, that I will
make good. I have come far, I know that; and I have far to go, and I will
cover it if I have to do it on my hands and knees." He held up a bunch of
manuscript. "Here are the 'Sea Lyrics.' When you get home, I'll turn them
over to you to read at your leisure. And you must be sure to tell me just
what you think of them. What I need, you know, above all things, is
criticism. And do, please, be frank with me."

"I will be perfectly frank," she promised, with an uneasy conviction that
she had not been frank with him and with a doubt if she could be quite
frank with him the next time.

CHAPTER XV

"The first battle, fought and finished," Martin said to the looking-glass
ten days later. "But there will be a second battle, and a third battle, and
battles to the end of time, unless - "

He had not finished the sentence, but looked about the mean little room and
let his eyes dwell sadly upon a heap of returned manuscripts, still in
their long envelopes, which lay in a corner on the floor. He had no stamps
with which to continue them on their travels, and for a week they had been
piling up. More of them would come in on the morrow, and on the next day,
and the next, till they were all in. And he would be unable to start them
out again. He was a month's rent behind on the typewriter, which he could
not pay, having barely enough for the week's board which was due and for
the employment office fees.

He sat down and regarded the table thoughtfully. There were ink stains upon
it, and he suddenly discovered that he was fond of it.

"Dear old table," he said, "I've spent some happy hours with you, and
you've been a pretty good friend when all is said and done. You never
turned me down, never passed me out a reward-of-unmerit rejection slip,
never complained about working overtime."

He dropped his arms upon the table and buried his face in them. His throat
was aching, and he wanted to cry. It reminded him of his first fight, when
he was six years old, when he punched away with the tears running down his
cheeks while the other boy, two years his elder, had beaten and pounded him
into exhaustion. He saw the ring of boys, howling like barbarians as he
went down at last, writhing in the throes of nausea, the blood streaming
from his nose and the tears from his bruised eyes.

"Poor little shaver," he murmured. "And you're just as badly licked now.
You're beaten to a pulp. You're down and out."

But the vision of that first fight still lingered under his eyelids, and as
he watched he saw it dissolve and reshape into the series of fights which
had followed. Six months later Cheese-Face (that was the boy) had whipped
him again. But he had blacked Cheese-Face's eye that time. That was going
some. He saw them all, fight after fight, himself always whipped and
Cheese-Face exulting over him. But he had never run away. He felt
strengthened by the memory of that. He had always stayed and taken his
medicine. Cheese-Face had been a little fiend at fighting, and had never
once shown mercy to him. But he had stayed! He had stayed with it!

Next, he saw a narrow alley, between ramshackle frame buildings. The end of
the alley was blocked by a one-story brick building, out of which issued
the rhythmic thunder of the presses, running off the first edition of the
ENQUIRER. He was eleven, and Cheese-Face was thirteen, and they both
carried the ENQUIRER. That was why they were there, waiting for their
papers. And, of course, Cheese- Face had picked on him again, and there was
another fight that was indeterminate, because at quarter to four the door
of the press- room was thrown open and the gang of boys crowded in to fold
their papers.

"I'll lick you to-morrow," he heard Cheese-Face promise; and he heard his
own voice, piping and trembling with unshed tears, agreeing to be there on
the morrow.

And he had come there the next day, hurrying from school to be there first,
and beating Cheese-Face by two minutes. The other boys said he was all
right, and gave him advice, pointing out his faults as a scrapper and
promising him victory if he carried out their instructions. The same boys
gave Cheese-Face advice, too. How they had enjoyed the fight! He paused in
his recollections long enough to envy them the spectacle he and Cheese-Face
had put up. Then the fight was on, and it went on, without rounds, for
thirty minutes, until the press-room door was opened.

He watched the youthful apparition of himself, day after day, hurrying from
school to the ENQUIRER alley. He could not walk very fast. He was stiff and
lame from the incessant fighting. His forearms were black and blue from
wrist to elbow, what of the countless blows he had warded off, and here and
there the tortured flesh was beginning to fester. His head and arms and
shoulders ached, the small of his back ached, - he ached all over, and his
brain was heavy and dazed. He did not play at school. Nor did he study.
Even to sit still all day at his desk, as he did, was a torment. It seemed
centuries since he had begun the round of daily fights, and time stretched
away into a nightmare and infinite future of daily fights. Why couldn't
Cheese-Face be licked? he often thought; that would put him, Martin, out of
his misery. It never entered his head to cease fighting, to allow
Cheese-Face to whip him.

And so he dragged himself to the ENQUIRER alley, sick in body and soul, but
learning the long patience, to confront his eternal enemy, Cheese-Face, who
was just as sick as he, and just a bit willing to quit if it were not for
the gang of newsboys that looked on and made pride painful and necessary.
One afternoon, after twenty minutes of desperate efforts to annihilate each
other according to set rules that did not permit kicking, striking below
the belt, nor hitting when one was down, Cheese-Face, panting for breath
and reeling, offered to call it quits. And Martin, head on arms, thrilled
at the picture he caught of himself, at that moment in the afternoon of
long ago, when he reeled and panted and choked with the blood that ran into
his mouth and down his throat from his cut lips; when he tottered toward
Cheese-Face, spitting out a mouthful of blood so that he could speak,
crying out that he would never quit, though Cheese-Face could give in if he
wanted to. And Cheese-Face did not give in, and the fight went on.

The next day and the next, days without end, witnessed the afternoon fight.
When he put up his arms, each day, to begin, they pained exquisitely, and
the first few blows, struck and received, racked his soul; after that
things grew numb, and he fought on blindly, seeing as in a dream, dancing
and wavering, the large features and burning, animal-like eyes of
Cheese-Face. He concentrated upon that face; all else about him was a
whirling void. There was nothing else in the world but that face, and he
would never know rest, blessed rest, until he had beaten that face into a
pulp with his bleeding knuckles, or until the bleeding knuckles that
somehow belonged to that face had beaten him into a pulp. And then, one way
or the other, he would have rest. But to quit, - for him, Martin, to quit,
- that was impossible!

Came the day when he dragged himself into the ENQUIRER alley, and there was
no Cheese-Face. Nor did Cheese-Face come. The boys congratulated him, and
told him that he had licked Cheese-Face. But Martin was not satisfied. He
had not licked Cheese-Face, nor had Cheese-Face licked him. The problem had
not been solved. It was not until afterward that they learned that
Cheese-Face's father had died suddenly that very day.

Martin skipped on through the years to the night in the nigger heaven at
the Auditorium. He was seventeen and just back from sea. A row started.
Somebody was bullying somebody, and Martin interfered, to be confronted by
Cheese-Face's blazing eyes.

"I'll fix you after de show," his ancient enemy hissed.

Martin nodded. The nigger-heaven bouncer was making his way toward the
disturbance.

"I'll meet you outside, after the last act," Martin whispered, the while
his face showed undivided interest in the buck-and-wing dancing on the
stage.

The bouncer glared and went away.

"Got a gang?" he asked Cheese-Face, at the end of the act.

"Sure."

"Then I got to get one," Martin announced.

Between the acts he mustered his following - three fellows he knew from the
nail works, a railroad fireman, and half a dozen of the Boo Gang, along
with as many more from the dread Eighteen-and- Market Gang.

When the theatre let out, the two gangs strung along inconspicuously on
opposite sides of the street. When they came to a quiet corner, they united
and held a council of war.

"Eighth Street Bridge is the place," said a red-headed fellow belonging to
Cheese-Face's Gang. "You kin fight in the middle, under the electric light,
an' whichever way the bulls come in we kin sneak the other way."

"That's agreeable to me," Martin said, after consulting with the leaders of
his own gang.

The Eighth Street Bridge, crossing an arm of San Antonio Estuary, was the
length of three city blocks. In the middle of the bridge, and at each end,
were electric lights. No policeman could pass those end-lights unseen. It
was the safe place for the battle that revived itself under Martin's
eyelids. He saw the two gangs, aggressive and sullen, rigidly keeping apart
from each other and backing their respective champions; and he saw himself
and Cheese- Face stripping. A short distance away lookouts were set, their
task being to watch the lighted ends of the bridge. A member of the Boo
Gang held Martin's coat, and shirt, and cap, ready to race with them into
safety in case the police interfered. Martin watched himself go into the
centre, facing Cheese-Face, and he heard himself say, as he held up his
hand warningly:-

"They ain't no hand-shakin' in this. Understand? They ain't nothin' but
scrap. No throwin' up the sponge. This is a grudge- fight an' it's to a
finish. Understand? Somebody's goin' to get licked."

Cheese-Face wanted to demur, - Martin could see that, - but Cheese- Face's
old perilous pride was touched before the two gangs.

"Aw, come on," he replied. "Wot's the good of chewin' de rag about it? I'm
wit' cheh to de finish."

Then they fell upon each other, like young bulls, in all the glory of
youth, with naked fists, with hatred, with desire to hurt, to maim, to
destroy. All the painful, thousand years' gains of man in his upward climb
through creation were lost. Only the electric light remained, a milestone
on the path of the great human adventure. Martin and Cheese-Face were two
savages, of the stone age, of the squatting place and the tree refuge. They
sank lower and lower into the muddy abyss, back into the dregs of the raw
beginnings of life, striving blindly and chemically, as atoms strive, as
the star-dust if the heavens strives, colliding, recoiling, and colliding
again and eternally again.

"God! We are animals! Brute-beasts!" Martin muttered aloud, as he watched
the progress of the fight. It was to him, with his splendid power of
vision, like gazing into a kinetoscope. He was both onlooker and
participant. His long months of culture and refinement shuddered at the
sight; then the present was blotted out of his consciousness and the ghosts
of the past possessed him, and he was Martin Eden, just returned from sea
and fighting Cheese-Face on the Eighth Street Bridge. He suffered and
toiled and sweated and bled, and exulted when his naked knuckles smashed
home.

They were twin whirlwinds of hatred, revolving about each other
monstrously. The time passed, and the two hostile gangs became very quiet.
They had never witnessed such intensity of ferocity, and they were awed by
it. The two fighters were greater brutes than they. The first splendid
velvet edge of youth and condition wore off, and they fought more
cautiously and deliberately. There had been no advantage gained either way.
"It's anybody's fight," Martin heard some one saying. Then he followed up a
feint, right and left, was fiercely countered, and felt his cheek laid open
to the bone. No bare knuckle had done that. He heard mutters of amazement
at the ghastly damage wrought, and was drenched with his own blood. But he
gave no sign. He became immensely wary, for he was wise with knowledge of
the low cunning and foul vileness of his kind. He watched and waited, until
he feigned a wild rush, which he stopped midway, for he had seen the glint
of metal.

"Hold up yer hand!" he screamed. "Them's brass knuckles, an' you hit me
with 'em!"

Both gangs surged forward, growling and snarling. In a second there would
be a free-for-all fight, and he would be robbed of his vengeance. He was
beside himself.

"You guys keep out!" he screamed hoarsely. "Understand? Say, d'ye
understand?"

They shrank away from him. They were brutes, but he was the arch- brute, a
thing of terror that towered over them and dominated them.

"This is my scrap, an' they ain't goin' to be no buttin' in. Gimme them
knuckles."

Cheese-Face, sobered and a bit frightened, surrendered the foul weapon.

"You passed 'em to him, you red-head sneakin' in behind the push there,"
Martin went on, as he tossed the knuckles into the water. "I seen you, an'
I was wonderin' what you was up to. If you try anything like that again,
I'll beat cheh to death. Understand?"

They fought on, through exhaustion and beyond, to exhaustion immeasurable
and inconceivable, until the crowd of brutes, its blood-lust sated,
terrified by what it saw, begged them impartially to cease. And
Cheese-Face, ready to drop and die, or to stay on his legs and die, a
grisly monster out of whose features all likeness to Cheese-Face had been
beaten, wavered and hesitated; but Martin sprang in and smashed him again
and again.

Next, after a seeming century or so, with Cheese-Face weakening fast, in a
mix-up of blows there was a loud snap, and Martin's right arm dropped to
his side. It was a broken bone. Everybody heard it and knew; and
Cheese-Face knew, rushing like a tiger in the other's extremity and raining
blow on blow. Martin's gang surged forward to interfere. Dazed by the rapid
succession of blows, Martin warned them back with vile and earnest curses
sobbed out and groaned in ultimate desolation and despair.

He punched on, with his left hand only, and as he punched, doggedly, only
half-conscious, as from a remote distance he heard murmurs of fear in the
gangs, and one who said with shaking voice: "This ain't a scrap, fellows.
It's murder, an' we ought to stop it."

But no one stopped it, and he was glad, punching on wearily and endlessly
with his one arm, battering away at a bloody something before him that was
not a face but a horror, an oscillating, hideous, gibbering, nameless thing
that persisted before his wavering vision and would not go away. And he
punched on and on, slower and slower, as the last shreds of vitality oozed
from him, through centuries and aeons and enormous lapses of time, until,
in a dim way, he became aware that the nameless thing was sinking, slowly
sinking down to the rough board-planking of the bridge. And the next moment
he was standing over it, staggering and swaying on shaky legs, clutching at
the air for support, and saying in a voice he did not recognize:-

"D'ye want any more? Say, d'ye want any more?"

He was still saying it, over and over, - demanding, entreating,
threatening, to know if it wanted any more, - when he felt the fellows of
his gang laying hands on him, patting him on the back and trying to put his
coat on him. And then came a sudden rush of blackness and oblivion.

The tin alarm-clock on the table ticked on, but Martin Eden, his face
buried on his arms, did not hear it. He heard nothing. He did not think. So
absolutely had he relived life that he had fainted just as he fainted years
before on the Eighth Street Bridge. For a full minute the blackness and the
blankness endured. Then, like one from the dead, he sprang upright, eyes
flaming, sweat pouring down his face, shouting:-

"I licked you, Cheese-Face! It took me eleven years, but I licked you!"

His knees were trembling under him, he felt faint, and he staggered back to
the bed, sinking down and sitting on the edge of it. He was still in the
clutch of the past. He looked about the room, perplexed, alarmed, wondering
where he was, until he caught sight of the pile of manuscripts in the
corner. Then the wheels of memory slipped ahead through four years of time,
and he was aware of the present, of the books he had opened and the
universe he had won from their pages, of his dreams and ambitions, and of
his love for a pale wraith of a girl, sensitive and sheltered and ethereal,
who would die of horror did she witness but one moment of what he had just
lived through - one moment of all the muck of life through which he had
waded.

He arose to his feet and confronted himself in the looking-glass.

"And so you arise from the mud, Martin Eden," he said solemnly. "And you
cleanse your eyes in a great brightness, and thrust your shoulders among
the stars, doing what all life has done, letting the 'ape and tiger die'
and wresting highest heritage from all powers that be."

He looked more closely at himself and laughed.

"A bit of hysteria and melodrama, eh?" he queried. "Well, never mind. You
licked Cheese-Face, and you'll lick the editors if it takes twice eleven
years to do it in. You can't stop here. You've got to go on. It's to a
finish, you know."

CHAPTER XVI

The alarm-clock went off, jerking Martin out of sleep with a suddenness
that would have given headache to one with less splendid constitution.
Though he slept soundly, he awoke instantly, like a cat, and he awoke
eagerly, glad that the five hours of unconsciousness were gone. He hated
the oblivion of sleep. There was too much to do, too much of life to live.
He grudged every moment of life sleep robbed him of, and before the clock
had ceased its clattering he was head and ears in the washbasin and
thrilling to the cold bite of the water.

But he did not follow his regular programme. There was no unfinished story
waiting his hand, no new story demanding articulation. He had studied late,
and it was nearly time for breakfast. He tried to read a chapter in Fiske,
but his brain was restless and he closed the book. To-day witnessed the
beginning of the new battle, wherein for some time there would be no
writing. He was aware of a sadness akin to that with which one leaves home
and family. He looked at the manuscripts in the corner. That was it. He was
going away from them, his pitiful, dishonored children that were welcome
nowhere. He went over and began to rummage among them, reading snatches
here and there, his favorite portions. "The Pot" he honored with reading
aloud, as he did "Adventure." "Joy," his latest-born, completed the day
before and tossed into the corner for lack of stamps, won his keenest
approbation.

"I can't understand," he murmured. "Or maybe it's the editors who can't
understand. There's nothing wrong with that. They publish worse every
month. Everything they publish is worse - nearly everything, anyway."

After breakfast he put the type-writer in its case and carried it down into
Oakland.

"I owe a month on it," he told the clerk in the store. "But you tell the
manager I'm going to work and that I'll be in in a month or so and
straighten up."

He crossed on the ferry to San Francisco and made his way to an employment
office. "Any kind of work, no trade," he told the agent; and was
interrupted by a new-comer, dressed rather foppishly, as some workingmen
dress who have instincts for finer things. The agent shook his head
despondently.

"Nothin' doin' eh?" said the other. "Well, I got to get somebody to-day."

He turned and stared at Martin, and Martin, staring back, noted the puffed
and discolored face, handsome and weak, and knew that he had been making a
night of it.

"Lookin' for a job?" the other queried. "What can you do?"

"Hard labor, sailorizing, run a type-writer, no shorthand, can sit on a
horse, willing to do anything and tackle anything," was the answer.

The other nodded.

"Sounds good to me. My name's Dawson, Joe Dawson, an' I'm tryin' to scare
up a laundryman."

"Too much for me." Martin caught an amusing glimpse of himself ironing
fluffy white things that women wear. But he had taken a liking to the
other, and he added: "I might do the plain washing. I learned that much at
sea." Joe Dawson thought visibly for a moment.

"Look here, let's get together an' frame it up. Willin' to listen?"

Martin nodded.

"This is a small laundry, up country, belongs to Shelly Hot Springs, -
hotel, you know. Two men do the work, boss and assistant. I'm the boss. You
don't work for me, but you work under me. Think you'd be willin' to learn?"

Martin paused to think. The prospect was alluring. A few months of it, and
he would have time to himself for study. He could work hard and study hard.

"Good grub an' a room to yourself," Joe said.

That settled it. A room to himself where he could burn the midnight oil
unmolested.

"But work like hell," the other added.

Martin caressed his swelling shoulder-muscles significantly. "That came
from hard work."

"Then let's get to it." Joe held his hand to his head for a moment. "Gee,
but it's a stem-winder. Can hardly see. I went down the line last night -
everything - everything. Here's the frame-up. The wages for two is a
hundred and board. I've ben drawin' down sixty, the second man forty. But
he knew the biz. You're green. If I break you in, I'll be doing plenty of
your work at first. Suppose you begin at thirty, an' work up to the forty.
I'll play fair. Just as soon as you can do your share you get the forty."

"I'll go you," Martin announced, stretching out his hand, which the other
shook. "Any advance? - for rail-road ticket and extras?"

"I blew it in," was Joe's sad answer, with another reach at his aching
head. "All I got is a return ticket."

"And I'm broke - when I pay my board."

"Jump it," Joe advised.

"Can't. Owe it to my sister."

Joe whistled a long, perplexed whistle, and racked his brains to little
purpose.

"I've got the price of the drinks," he said desperately. "Come on, an'
mebbe we'll cook up something."

Martin declined.

"Water-wagon?"

This time Martin nodded, and Joe lamented, "Wish I was."

"But I somehow just can't," he said in extenuation. "After I've ben workin'
like hell all week I just got to booze up. If I didn't, I'd cut my throat
or burn up the premises. But I'm glad you're on the wagon. Stay with it."

Martin knew of the enormous gulf between him and this man - the gulf the
books had made; but he found no difficulty in crossing back over that gulf.
He had lived all his life in the working- class world, and the CAMARADERIE
of labor was second nature with him. He solved the difficulty of
transportation that was too much for the other's aching head. He would send
his trunk up to Shelly Hot Springs on Joe's ticket. As for himself, there
was his wheel. It was seventy miles, and he could ride it on Sunday and be
ready for work Monday morning. In the meantime he would go home and pack
up. There was no one to say good-by to. Ruth and her whole family were
spending the long summer in the Sierras, at Lake Tahoe.

He arrived at Shelly Hot Springs, tired and dusty, on Sunday night. Joe
greeted him exuberantly. With a wet towel bound about his aching brow, he
had been at work all day.

"Part of last week's washin' mounted up, me bein' away to get you," he
explained. "Your box arrived all right. It's in your room. But it's a hell
of a thing to call a trunk. An' what's in it? Gold bricks?"

Joe sat on the bed while Martin unpacked. The box was a packing- case for
breakfast food, and Mr. Higginbotham had charged him half a dollar for it.
Two rope handles, nailed on by Martin, had technically transformed it into
a trunk eligible for the baggage- car. Joe watched, with bulging eyes, a
few shirts and several changes of underclothes come out of the box,
followed by books, and more books.

"Books clean to the bottom?" he asked.

Martin nodded, and went on arranging the books on a kitchen table which
served in the room in place of a wash-stand.

"Gee!" Joe exploded, then waited in silence for the deduction to arise in
his brain. At last it came.

"Say, you don't care for the girls - much?" he queried.

"No," was the answer. "I used to chase a lot before I tackled the books.
But since then there's no time."

"And there won't be any time here. All you can do is work an' sleep."

Martin thought of his five hours' sleep a night, and smiled. The room was
situated over the laundry and was in the same building with the engine that
pumped water, made electricity, and ran the laundry machinery. The
engineer, who occupied the adjoining room, dropped in to meet the new hand
and helped Martin rig up an electric bulb, on an extension wire, so that it
travelled along a stretched cord from over the table to the bed.

The next morning, at quarter-past six, Martin was routed out for a
quarter-to-seven breakfast. There happened to be a bath-tub for the
servants in the laundry building, and he electrified Joe by taking a cold
bath.

"Gee, but you're a hummer!" Joe announced, as they sat down to breakfast in
a corner of the hotel kitchen.

With them was the engineer, the gardener, and the assistant gardener, and
two or three men from the stable. They ate hurriedly and gloomily, with but
little conversation, and as Martin ate and listened he realized how far he
had travelled from their status. Their small mental caliber was depressing
to him, and he was anxious to get away from them. So he bolted his
breakfast, a sickly, sloppy affair, as rapidly as they, and heaved a sigh
of relief when he passed out through the kitchen door.

It was a perfectly appointed, small steam laundry, wherein the most modern
machinery did everything that was possible for machinery to do. Martin,
after a few instructions, sorted the great heaps of soiled clothes, while
Joe started the masher and made up fresh supplies of soft-soap, compounded
of biting chemicals that compelled him to swathe his mouth and nostrils and
eyes in bath- towels till he resembled a mummy. Finished the sorting,
Martin lent a hand in wringing the clothes. This was done by dumping them
into a spinning receptacle that went at a rate of a few thousand
revolutions a minute, tearing the matter from the clothes by centrifugal
force. Then Martin began to alternate between the dryer and the wringer,
between times "shaking out" socks and stockings. By the afternoon, one
feeding and one, stacking up, they were running socks and stockings through
the mangle while the irons were heating. Then it was hot irons and
underclothes till six o'clock, at which time Joe shook his head dubiously.

"Way behind," he said. "Got to work after supper." And after supper they
worked until ten o'clock, under the blazing electric lights, until the last
piece of under-clothing was ironed and folded away in the distributing
room. It was a hot California night, and though the windows were thrown
wide, the room, with its red-hot ironing-stove, was a furnace. Martin and
Joe, down to undershirts, bare armed, sweated and panted for air.

"Like trimming cargo in the tropics," Martin said, when they went upstairs.

"You'll do," Joe answered. "You take hold like a good fellow. If you keep
up the pace, you'll be on thirty dollars only one month. The second month
you'll be gettin' your forty. But don't tell me you never ironed before. I
know better."

"Never ironed a rag in my life, honestly, until to-day," Martin protested.

He was surprised at his weariness when he act into his room, forgetful of
the fact that he had been on his feet and working without let up for
fourteen hours. He set the alarm clock at six, and measured back five hours
to one o'clock. He could read until then. Slipping off his shoes, to ease
his swollen feet, he sat down at the table with his books. He opened Fiske,
where he had left off to read. But he found trouble began to read it
through a second time. Then he awoke, in pain from his stiffened muscles
and chilled by the mountain wind that had begun to blow in through the
window. He looked at the clock. It marked two. He had been asleep four
hours. He pulled off his clothes and crawled into bed, where he was asleep
the moment after his head touched the pillow.

Tuesday was a day of similar unremitting toil. The speed with which Joe
worked won Martin's admiration. Joe was a dozen of demons for work. He was
keyed up to concert pitch, and there was never a moment in the long day
when he was not fighting for moments. He concentrated himself upon his work
and upon how to save time, pointing out to Martin where he did in five
motions what could be done in three, or in three motions what could be done
in two. "Elimination of waste motion," Martin phrased it as he watched and
patterned after. He was a good workman himself, quick and deft, and it had
always been a point of pride with him that no man should do any of his work
for him or outwork him. As a result, he concentrated with a similar
singleness of purpose, greedily snapping up the hints and suggestions
thrown out by his working mate. He "rubbed out' collars and cuffs, rubbing
the starch out from between the double thicknesses of linen so that there
would be no blisters when it came to the ironing, and doing it at a pace
that elicited Joe's praise.

There was never an interval when something was not at hand to be done. Joe
waited for nothing, waited on nothing, and went on the jump from task to
task. They starched two hundred white shirts, with a single gathering
movement seizing a shirt so that the wristbands, neckband, yoke, and bosom
protruded beyond the circling right hand. At the same moment the left hand
held up the body of the shirt so that it would not enter the starch, and at
the moment the right hand dipped into the starch - starch so hot that, in
order to wring it out, their hands had to thrust, and thrust continually,
into a bucket of cold water. And that night they worked till half-past ten,
dipping "fancy starch" - all the frilled and airy, delicate wear of ladies.

"Me for the tropics and no clothes," Martin laughed.

"And me out of a job," Joe answered seriously. "I don't know nothin' but
laundrying."

"And you know it well."

"I ought to. Began in the Contra Costa in Oakland when I was eleven,
shakin' out for the mangle. That was eighteen years ago, an' I've never
done a tap of anything else. But this job is the fiercest I ever had. Ought
to be one more man on it at least. We work to-morrow night. Always run the
mangle Wednesday nights - collars an' cuffs."

Martin set his alarm, drew up to the table, and opened Fiske. He did not
finish the first paragraph. The lines blurred and ran together and his head
nodded. He walked up and down, batting his head savagely with his fists,
but he could not conquer the numbness of sleep. He propped the book before
him, and propped his eyelids with his fingers, and fell asleep with his
eyes wide open. Then he surrendered, and, scarcely conscious of what he
did, got off his clothes and into bed. He slept seven hours of heavy,
animal-like sleep, and awoke by the alarm, feeling that he had not had
enough.

"Doin' much readin'?" Joe asked.

Martin shook his head.

"Never mind. We got to run the mangle to-night, but Thursday we'll knock
off at six. That'll give you a chance."

Martin washed woollens that day, by hand, in a large barrel, with strong
soft-soap, by means of a hub from a wagon wheel, mounted on a plunger-pole
that was attached to a spring-pole overhead.

"My invention," Joe said proudly. "Beats a washboard an' your knuckles,
and, besides, it saves at least fifteen minutes in the week, an' fifteen
minutes ain't to be sneezed at in this shebang."

Running the collars and cuffs through the mangle was also Joe's idea. That
night, while they toiled on under the electric lights, he explained it.

"Something no laundry ever does, except this one. An' I got to do it if I'm
goin' to get done Saturday afternoon at three o'clock. But I know how, an'
that's the difference. Got to have right heat, right pressure, and run 'em
through three times. Look at that!" He held a cuff aloft. "Couldn't do it
better by hand or on a tiler."

Thursday, Joe was in a rage. A bundle of extra "fancy starch" had come in.

"I'm goin' to quit," he announced. "I won't stand for it. I'm goin' to quit
it cold. What's the good of me workin' like a slave all week, a-savin'
minutes, an' them a-comin' an' ringin' in fancy- starch extras on me? This
is a free country, an' I'm to tell that fat Dutchman what I think of him.
An' I won't tell 'm in French. Plain United States is good enough for me.
Him a-ringin' in fancy starch extras!"

"We got to work to-night," he said the next moment, reversing his judgment
and surrendering to fate.

And Martin did no reading that night. He had seen no daily paper all week,
and, strangely to him, felt no desire to see one. He was not interested in
the news. He was too tired and jaded to be interested in anything, though
he planned to leave Saturday afternoon, if they finished at three, and ride
on his wheel to Oakland. It was seventy miles, and the same distance back
on Sunday afternoon would leave him anything but rested for the second
week's work. It would have been easier to go on the train, but the round
trip was two dollars and a half, and he was intent on saving money.

CHAPTER XVII

Martin learned to do many things. In the course of the first week, in one
afternoon, he and Joe accounted for the two hundred white shirts. Joe ran
the tiler, a machine wherein a hot iron was hooked on a steel string which
furnished the pressure. By this means he ironed the yoke, wristbands, and
neckband, setting the latter at right angles to the shirt, and put the
glossy finish on the bosom. As fast as he finished them, he flung the
shirts on a rack between him and Martin, who caught them up and "backed"
them. This task consisted of ironing all the unstarched portions of the
shirts.

It was exhausting work, carried on, hour after hour, at top speed. Out on
the broad verandas of the hotel, men and women, in cool white, sipped iced
drinks and kept their circulation down. But in the laundry the air was
sizzling. The huge stove roared red hot and white hot, while the irons,
moving over the damp cloth, sent up clouds of steam. The heat of these
irons was different from that used by housewives. An iron that stood the
ordinary test of a wet finger was too cold for Joe and Martin, and such
test was useless. They went wholly by holding the irons close to their
cheeks, gauging the heat by some secret mental process that Martin admired
but could not understand. When the fresh irons proved too hot, they hooked
them on iron rods and dipped them into cold water. This again required a
precise and subtle judgment. A fraction of a second too long in the water
and the fine and silken edge of the proper heat was lost, and Martin found
time to marvel at the accuracy he developed - an automatic accuracy,
founded upon criteria that were machine-like and unerring.

But there was little time in which to marvel. All Martin's consciousness
was concentrated in the work. Ceaselessly active, head and hand, an
intelligent machine, all that constituted him a man was devoted to
furnishing that intelligence. There was no room in his brain for the
universe and its mighty problems. All the broad and spacious corridors of
his mind were closed and hermetically sealed. The echoing chamber of his
soul was a narrow room, a conning tower, whence were directed his arm and
shoulder muscles, his ten nimble fingers, and the swift-moving iron along
its steaming path in broad, sweeping strokes, just so many strokes and no
more, just so far with each stroke and not a fraction of an inch farther,
rushing along interminable sleeves, sides, backs, and tails, and tossing
the finished shirts, without rumpling, upon the receiving frame. And even
as his hurrying soul tossed, it was reaching for another shirt. This went
on, hour after hour, while outside all the world swooned under the overhead
California sun. But there was no swooning in that superheated room. The
cool guests on the verandas needed clean linen.

The sweat poured from Martin. He drank enormous quantities of water, but so
great was the heat of the day and of his exertions, that the water sluiced
through the interstices of his flesh and out at all his pores. Always, at
sea, except at rare intervals, the work he performed had given him ample
opportunity to commune with himself. The master of the ship had been lord
of Martin's time; but here the manager of the hotel was lord of Martin's
thoughts as well. He had no thoughts save for the nerve-racking, body-
destroying toil. Outside of that it was impossible to think. He did not
know that he loved Ruth. She did not even exist, for his driven soul had no
time to remember her. It was only when he crawled to bed at night, or to
breakfast in the morning, that she asserted herself to him in fleeting
memories.

"This is hell, ain't it?" Joe remarked once.

Martin nodded, but felt a rasp of irritation. The statement had been
obvious and unnecessary. They did not talk while they worked. Conversation
threw them out of their stride, as it did this time, compelling Martin to
miss a stroke of his iron and to make two extra motions before he caught
his stride again.

On Friday morning the washer ran. Twice a week they had to put through
hotel linen, - the sheets, pillow-slips, spreads, table- cloths, and
napkins. This finished, they buckled down to "fancy starch." It was slow
work, fastidious and delicate, and Martin did not learn it so readily.
Besides, he could not take chances. Mistakes were disastrous.

"See that," Joe said, holding up a filmy corset-cover that he could have
crumpled from view in one hand. "Scorch that an' it's twenty dollars out of
your wages."

So Martin did not scorch that, and eased down on his muscular tension,
though nervous tension rose higher than ever, and he listened
sympathetically to the other's blasphemies as he toiled and suffered over
the beautiful things that women wear when they do not have to do their own
laundrying. "Fancy starch" was Martin's nightmare, and it was Joe's, too.
It was "fancy starch" that robbed them of their hard-won minutes. They
toiled at it all day. At seven in the evening they broke off to run the
hotel linen through the mangle. At ten o'clock, while the hotel guests
slept, the two laundrymen sweated on at "fancy starch" till midnight, till
one, till two. At half-past two they knocked off.

Saturday morning it was "fancy starch," and odds and ends, and at three in
the afternoon the week's work was done.

"You ain't a-goin' to ride them seventy miles into Oakland on top of this?"
Joe demanded, as they sat on the stairs and took a triumphant smoke.

"Got to," was the answer.

"What are you goin' for? - a girl?"

"No; to save two and a half on the railroad ticket. I want to renew some
books at the library."

"Why don't you send 'em down an' up by express? That'll cost only a quarter
each way."

Martin considered it.

"An' take a rest to-morrow," the other urged. "You need it. I know I do.
I'm plumb tuckered out."

He looked it. Indomitable, never resting, fighting for seconds and minutes
all week, circumventing delays and crushing down obstacles, a fount of
resistless energy, a high-driven human motor, a demon for work, now that he
had accomplished the week's task he was in a state of collapse. He was worn
and haggard, and his handsome face drooped in lean exhaustion. He pulled
his cigarette spiritlessly, and his voice was peculiarly dead and
monotonous. All the snap and fire had gone out of him. His triumph seemed a
sorry one.

"An' next week we got to do it all over again," he said sadly. "An' what's
the good of it all, hey? Sometimes I wish I was a hobo. They don't work,
an' they get their livin'. Gee! I wish I had a glass of beer; but I can't
get up the gumption to go down to the village an' get it. You'll stay over,
an' send your books dawn by express, or else you're a damn fool."

"But what can I do here all day Sunday?" Martin asked.

"Rest. You don't know how tired you are. Why, I'm that tired Sunday I can't
even read the papers. I was sick once - typhoid. In the hospital two months
an' a half. Didn't do a tap of work all that time. It was beautiful."

"It was beautiful," he repeated dreamily, a minute later.

Martin took a bath, after which he found that the head laundryman had
disappeared. Most likely he had gone for a glass of beer Martin decided,
but the half-mile walk down to the village to find out seemed a long
journey to him. He lay on his bed with his shoes off, trying to make up his
mind. He did not reach out for a book. He was too tired to feel sleepy, and
he lay, scarcely thinking, in a semi-stupor of weariness, until it was time
for supper. Joe did not appear for that function, and when Martin heard the
gardener remark that most likely he was ripping the slats off the bar,
Martin understood. He went to bed immediately afterward, and in the morning
decided that he was greatly rested. Joe being still absent, Martin procured
a Sunday paper and lay down in a shady nook under the trees. The morning
passed, he knew not how. He did not sleep, nobody disturbed him, and he did
not finish the paper. He came back to it in the afternoon, after dinner,
and fell asleep over it.

So passed Sunday, and Monday morning he was hard at work, sorting clothes,
while Joe, a towel bound tightly around his head, with groans and
blasphemies, was running the washer and mixing soft- soap.

"I simply can't help it," he explained. "I got to drink when Saturday night
comes around."

Another week passed, a great battle that continued under the electric
lights each night and that culminated on Saturday afternoon at three
o'clock, when Joe tasted his moment of wilted triumph and then drifted down
to the village to forget. Martin's Sunday was the same as before. He slept
in the shade of the trees, toiled aimlessly through the newspaper, and
spent long hours lying on his back, doing nothing, thinking nothing. He was
too dazed to think, though he was aware that he did not like himself. He
was self-repelled, as though he had undergone some degradation or was
intrinsically foul. All that was god-like in him was blotted out. The spur
of ambition was blunted; he had no vitality with which to feel the prod of
it. He was dead. His soul seemed dead. He was a beast, a work-beast. He saw
no beauty in the sunshine sifting down through the green leaves, nor did
the azure vault of the sky whisper as of old and hint of cosmic vastness
and secrets trembling to disclosure. Life was intolerably dull and stupid,
and its taste was bad in his mouth. A black screen was drawn across his
mirror of inner vision, and fancy lay in a darkened sick-room where entered
no ray of light. He envied Joe, down in the village, rampant, tearing the
slats off the bar, his brain gnawing with maggots, exulting in maudlin ways
over maudlin things, fantastically and gloriously drunk and forgetful of
Monday morning and the week of deadening toil to come.

A third week went by, and Martin loathed himself, and loathed life. He was
oppressed by a sense of failure. There was reason for the editors refusing
his stuff. He could see that clearly now, and laugh at himself and the
dreams he had dreamed. Ruth returned his "Sea Lyrics" by mail. He read her
letter apathetically. She did her best to say how much she liked them and
that they were beautiful. But she could not lie, and she could not disguise
the truth from herself. She knew they were failures, and he read her
disapproval in every perfunctory and unenthusiastic line of her letter. And
she was right. He was firmly convinced of it as he read the poems over.
Beauty and wonder had departed from him, and as he read the poems he caught
himself puzzling as to what he had had in mind when he wrote them. His
audacities of phrase struck him as grotesque, his felicities of expression
were monstrosities, and everything was absurd, unreal, and impossible. He
would have burned the "Sea Lyrics" on the spot, had his will been strong
enough to set them aflame. There was the engine-room, but the exertion of
carrying them to the furnace was not worth while. All his exertion was used
in washing other persons' clothes. He did not have any left for private
affairs.

He resolved that when Sunday came he would pull himself together and answer
Ruth's letter. 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. The hotel was full, and extra "fancy starch" poured in
upon them. They performed prodigies of valor. They fought late each night
under the electric lights, bolted their meals, and even got in a half
hour's work before breakfast. Martin no longer took his cold baths. Every
moment was drive, drive, drive, and Joe was the masterful shepherd of
moments, herding them carefully, never losing one, counting them over like
a miser counting gold, working on in a frenzy, toil-mad, a feverish
machine, aided ably by that other machine that thought of itself as once
having been one Martin Eden, a man.

But it was only at rare moments that Martin was able to think. The house of
thought was closed, its windows boarded up, and he was its shadowy
caretaker. He was a shadow. Joe was right. They were both shadows, and this
was the unending limbo of toil. Or was it a dream? Sometimes, in the
steaming, sizzling heat, as he swung the heavy irons back and forth over
the white garments, it came to him that it was a dream. In a short while,
or maybe after a thousand years or so, he would awake, in his little room
with the ink- stained table, and take up his writing where he had left off
the day before. Or maybe that was a dream, too, and the awakening would be
the changing of the watches, when he would drop down out of his bunk in the
lurching forecastle and go up on deck, under the tropic stars, and take the
wheel and feel the cool tradewind blowing through his flesh.

Came Saturday and its hollow victory at three o'clock.

"Guess I'll go down an' get a glass of beer," Joe said, in the queer,
monotonous tones that marked his week-end collapse.

Martin seemed suddenly to wake up. He opened the kit bag and oiled his
wheel, putting graphite on the chain and adjusting the bearings. Joe was
halfway down to the saloon when Martin passed by, bending low over the
handle-bars, his legs driving the ninety- six gear with rhythmic strength,
his face set for seventy miles of road and grade and dust. He slept in
Oakland that night, and on Sunday covered the seventy miles back. And on
Monday morning, weary, he began the new week's work, but he had kept sober.

A fifth week passed, and a sixth, during which he lived and toiled as a
machine, with just a spark of something more in him, just a glimmering bit
of soul, that compelled him, at each week-end, to scorch off the hundred
and forty miles. But this was not rest. It was super-machinelike, and it
helped to crush out the glimmering bit of soul that was all that was left
him from former life. At the end of the seventh week, without intending it,
too weak to resist, he drifted down to the village with Joe and drowned
life and found life until Monday morning.

Again, at the week-ends, he ground out the one hundred and forty miles,
obliterating the numbness of too great exertion by the numbness of still
greater exertion. At the end of three months he went down a third time to
the village with Joe. He forgot, and lived again, and, living, he saw, in
clear illumination, the beast he was making of himself - not by the drink,
but by the work. The drink was an effect, not a cause. It followed
inevitably upon the work, as the night follows upon the day. Not by
becoming a toil- beast could he win to the heights, was the message the
whiskey whispered to him, and he nodded approbation. The whiskey was wise.
It told secrets on itself.

He called for paper and pencil, and for drinks all around, and while they
drank his very good health, he clung to the bar and scribbled.

"A telegram, Joe," he said. "Read it."

Joe read it with a drunken, quizzical leer. But what he read seemed to
sober him. He looked at the other reproachfully, tears oozing into his eyes
and down his cheeks.

"You ain't goin' back on me, Mart?" he queried hopelessly.

Martin nodded, and called one of the loungers to him to take the message to
the telegraph office.

"Hold on," Joe muttered thickly. "Lemme think."

He held on to the bar, his legs wobbling under him, Martin's arm around him
and supporting him, while he thought.

"Make that two laundrymen," he said abruptly. "Here, lemme fix it."

"What are you quitting for?" Martin demanded.

"Same reason as you."

"But I'm going to sea. You can't do that."

"Nope," was the answer, "but I can hobo all right, all right."

Martin looked at him searchingly for a moment, then cried:-

"By God, I think you're right! Better a hobo than a beast of toil. Why,
man, you'll live. And that's more than you ever did before."

"I was in hospital, once," Joe corrected. "It was beautiful. Typhoid - did
I tell you?"

While Martin changed the telegram to "two laundrymen," Joe went on:-

"I never wanted to drink when I was in hospital. Funny, ain't it? But when
I've ben workin' like a slave all week, I just got to bowl up. Ever noticed
that cooks drink like hell? - an' bakers, too? It's the work. They've sure
got to. Here, lemme pay half of that telegram."

"I'll shake you for it," Martin offered.

"Come on, everybody drink," Joe called, as they rattled the dice and rolled
them out on the damp bar.

Monday morning Joe was wild with anticipation. He did not mind his aching
head, nor did he take interest in his work. Whole herds of moments stole
away and were lost while their careless shepherd gazed out of the window at
the sunshine and the trees.

"Just look at it!" he cried. "An' it's all mine! It's free. I can lie down
under them trees an' sleep for a thousan' years if I want to. Aw, come on,
Mart, let's chuck it. What's the good of waitin' another moment. That's the
land of nothin' to do out there, an' I got a ticket for it - an' it ain't
no return ticket, b'gosh!"

A few minutes later, filling the truck with soiled clothes for the washer,
Joe spied the hotel manager's shirt. He knew its mark, and with a sudden
glorious consciousness of freedom he threw it on the floor and stamped on
it.

"I wish you was in it, you pig-headed Dutchman!" he shouted. "In it, an'
right there where I've got you! Take that! an' that! an' that! damn you!
Hold me back, somebody! Hold me back!"

Martin laughed and held him to his work. On Tuesday night the new
laundrymen arrived, and the rest of the week was spent breaking them into
the routine. Joe sat around and explained his system, but he did no more
work.

"Not a tap," he announced. "Not a tap. They can fire me if they want to,
but if they do, I'll quit. No more work in mine, thank you kindly. Me for
the freight cars an' the shade under the trees. Go to it, you slaves!
That's right. Slave an' sweat! Slave an' sweat! An' when you're dead,
you'll rot the same as me, an' what's it matter how you live? - eh? Tell me
that - what's it matter in the long run?"

On Saturday they drew their pay and came to the parting of the ways.

"They ain't no use in me askin' you to change your mind an' hit the road
with me?" Joe asked hopelessly:

Martin shook his head. He was standing by his wheel, ready to start. They
shook hands, and Joe held on to his for a moment, as he said:-

"I'm goin' to see you again, Mart, before you an' me die. That's straight
dope. I feel it in my bones. Good-by, Mart, an' be good. I like you like
hell, you know."

He stood, a forlorn figure, in the middle of the road, watching until
Martin turned a bend and was gone from sight.

"He's a good Indian, that boy," he muttered. "A good Indian."

Then he plodded down the road himself, to the water tank, where half a
dozen empties lay on a side-track waiting for the up freight.

CHAPTER XIX

Ruth and her family were home again, and Martin, returned to Oakland, saw
much of her. Having gained her degree, she was doing no more studying; and
he, having worked all vitality out of his mind and body, was doing no
writing. This gave them time for each other that they had never had before,
and their intimacy ripened fast.

At first, Martin had done nothing but rest. He had slept a great deal, and
spent long hours musing and thinking and doing nothing. He was like one
recovering from some terrible bout if hardship. The first signs of
reawakening came when he discovered more than languid interest in the daily
paper. Then he began to read again - light novels, and poetry; and after
several days more he was head over heels in his long-neglected Fiske. His
splendid body and health made new vitality, and he possessed all the
resiliency and rebound of youth.

Ruth showed her disappointment plainly when he announced that he was going
to sea for another voyage as soon as he was well rested.

"Why do you want to do that?" she asked.

"Money," was the answer. "I'll have to lay in a supply for my next attack
on the editors. Money is the sinews of war, in my case - money and
patience."

"But if all you wanted was money, why didn't you stay in the laundry?"

"Because the laundry was making a beast of me. Too much work of that sort
drives to drink."

She stared at him with horror in her eyes.

"Do you mean - ?" she quavered.

It would have been easy for him to get out of it; but his natural impulse
was for frankness, and he remembered his old resolve to be frank, no matter
what happened.

"Yes," he answered. "Just that. Several times."

She shivered and drew away from him.

"No man that I have ever known did that - ever did that."

"Then they never worked in the laundry at Shelly Hot Springs," he laughed
bitterly. "Toil is a good thing. It is necessary for human health, so all
the preachers say, and Heaven knows I've never been afraid of it. But there
is such a thing as too much of a good thing, and the laundry up there is
one of them. And that's why I'm going to sea one more voyage. It will be my
last, I think, for when I come back, I shall break into the magazines. I am
certain of it."

She was silent, unsympathetic, and he watched her moodily, realizing how
impossible it was for her to understand what he had been through.

"Some day I shall write it up - 'The Degradation of Toil' or the
'Psychology of Drink in the Working-class,' or something like that for a
title."

Never, since the first meeting, had they seemed so far apart as that day.
His confession, told in frankness, with the spirit of revolt behind, had
repelled her. But she was more shocked by the repulsion itself than by the
cause of it. It pointed out to her how near she had drawn to him, and once
accepted, it paved the way for greater intimacy. Pity, too, was aroused,
and innocent, idealistic thoughts of reform. She would save this raw young
man who had come so far. She would save him from the curse of his early
environment, and she would save him from himself in spite of himself. And
all this affected her as a very noble state of consciousness; nor did she
dream that behind it and underlying it were the jealousy and desire of
love.

They rode on their wheels much in the delightful fall weather, and out in
the hills they read poetry aloud, now one and now the other, noble,
uplifting poetry that turned one's thoughts to higher things. Renunciation,
sacrifice, patience, industry, and high endeavor were the principles she
thus indirectly preached - such abstractions being objectified in her mind
by her father, and Mr. Butler, and by Andrew Carnegie, who, from a poor
immigrant boy had arisen to be the book-giver of the world. All of which
was appreciated and enjoyed by Martin. He followed her mental processes
more clearly now, and her soul was no longer the sealed wonder it had been.
He was on terms of intellectual equality with her. But the points of
disagreement did not affect his love. His love was more ardent than ever,
for he loved her for what she was, and even her physical frailty was an
added charm in his eyes. He read of sickly Elizabeth Barrett, who for years
had not placed her feet upon the ground, until that day of flame when she
eloped with Browning and stood upright, upon the earth, under the open sky;
and what Browning had done for her, Martin decided he could do for Ruth.
But first, she must love him. The rest would be easy. He would give her
strength and health. And he caught glimpses of their life, in the years to
come, wherein, against a background of work and comfort and general
well-being, he saw himself and Ruth reading and discussing poetry, she
propped amid a multitude of cushions on the ground while she read aloud to
him. This was the key to the life they would live. And always he saw that
particular picture. Sometimes it was she who leaned against him while he
read, one arm about her, her head upon his shoulder. Sometimes they pored
together over the printed pages of beauty. Then, too, she loved nature, and
with generous imagination he changed the scene of their reading - sometimes
they read in closed-in valleys with precipitous walls, or in high mountain
meadows, and, again, down by the gray sand-dunes with a wreath of billows
at their feet, or afar on some volcanic tropic isle where waterfalls
descended and became mist, reaching the sea in vapor veils that swayed and
shivered to every vagrant wisp of wind. But always, in the foreground,
lords of beauty and eternally reading and sharing, lay he and Ruth, and
always in the background that was beyond the background of nature, dim and
hazy, were work and success and money earned that made them free of the
world and all its treasures.

"I should recommend my little girl to be careful," her mother warned her
one day.

"I know what you mean. But it is impossible. He if; not - "

Ruth was blushing, but it was the blush of maidenhood called upon for the
first time to discuss the sacred things of life with a mother held equally
sacred.

"Your kind." Her mother finished the sentence for her.

Ruth nodded.

"I did not want to say it, but he is not. He is rough, brutal, strong - too
strong. He has not - "

She hesitated and could not go on. It was a new experience, talking over
such matters with her mother. And again her mother completed her thought
for her.

"He has not lived a clean life, is what you wanted to say."

Again Ruth nodded, and again a blush mantled her face.

"It is just that," she said. "It has not been his fault, but he has played
much with - "

"With pitch?"

"Yes, with pitch. And he frightens me. Sometimes I am positively in terror
of him, when he talks in that free and easy way of the things he has done -
as if they did not matter. They do matter, don't they?"

They sat with their arms twined around each other, and in the pause her
mother patted her hand and waited for her to go on.

"But I am interested in him dreadfully," she continued. "In a way he is my
protege. Then, too, he is my first boy friend - but not exactly friend;
rather protege and friend combined. Sometimes, too, when he frightens me,
it seems that he is a bulldog I have taken for a plaything, like some of
the 'frat' girls, and he is tugging hard, and showing his teeth, and
threatening to break loose."

Again her mother waited.

"He interests me, I suppose, like the bulldog. And there is much good in
him, too; but there is much in him that I would not like in - in the other
way. You see, I have been thinking. He swears, he smokes, he drinks, he has
fought with his fists (he has told me so, and he likes it; he says so). He
is all that a man should not be - a man I would want for my - " her voice
sank very low - "husband. Then he is too strong. My prince must be tall,
and slender, and dark - a graceful, bewitching prince. No, there is no
danger of my failing in love with Martin Eden. It would be the worst fate
that could befall me."

"But it is not that that I spoke about," her mother equivocated. "Have you
thought about him? He is so ineligible in every way, you know, and suppose
he should come to love you?"

"But he does - already," she cried.

"It was to be expected," Mrs. Morse said gently. "How could it be otherwise
with any one who knew you?"

"Olney hates me!" she exclaimed passionately. "And I hate Olney. I feel
always like a cat when he is around. I feel that I must be nasty to him,
and even when I don't happen to feel that way, why, he's nasty to me,
anyway. But I am happy with Martin Eden. No one ever loved me before - no
man, I mean, in that way. And it is sweet to be loved - that way. You know
what I mean, mother dear. It is sweet to feel that you are really and truly
a woman." She buried her face in her mother's lap, sobbing. "You think I am
dreadful, I know, but I am honest, and I tell you just how I feel."

Mrs. Morse was strangely sad and happy. Her child-daughter, who was a
bachelor of arts, was gone; but in her place was a woman- daughter. The
experiment had succeeded. The strange void in Ruth's nature had been
filled, and filled without danger or penalty. This rough sailor-fellow had
been the instrument, and, though Ruth did not love him, he had made her
conscious of her womanhood.

"His hand trembles," Ruth was confessing, her face, for shame's sake, still
buried. "It is most amusing and ridiculous, but I feel sorry for him, too.
And when his hands are too trembly, and his eyes too shiny, why, I lecture
him about his life and the wrong way he is going about it to mend it. But
he worships me, I know. His eyes and his hands do not lie. And it makes me
feel grown-up, the thought of it, the very thought of it; and I feel that I
am possessed of something that is by rights my own - that makes me like the
other girls - and - and young women. And, then, too, I knew that I was not
like them before, and I knew that it worried you. You thought you did not
let me know that dear worry of yours, but I did, and I wanted to - 'to make
good,' as Martin Eden says."

It was a holy hour for mother and daughter, and their eyes were wet as they
talked on in the twilight, Ruth all white innocence and frankness, her
mother sympathetic, receptive, yet calmly explaining and guiding.

"He is four years younger than you," she said. "He has no place in the
world. He has neither position nor salary. He is impractical. Loving you,
he should, in the name of common sense, be doing something that would give
him the right to marry, instead of paltering around with those stories of
his and with childish dreams. Martin Eden, I am afraid, will never grow up.
He does not take to responsibility and a man's work in the world like your
father did, or like all our friends, Mr. Butler for one. Martin Eden, I am
afraid, will never be a money-earner. And this world is so ordered that
money is necessary to happiness - oh, no, not these swollen fortunes, but
enough of money to permit of common comfort and decency. He - he has never
spoken?"

"He has not breathed a word. He has not attempted to; but if he did, I
would not let him, because, you see, I do not love him."

"I am glad of that. I should not care to see my daughter, my one daughter,
who is so clean and pure, love a man like him. There are noble men in the
world who are clean and true and manly. Wait for them. You will find one
some day, and you will love him and be loved by him, and you will be happy
with him as your father and I have been happy with each other. And there is
one thing you must always carry in mind - "

"Yes, mother."

Mrs. Morse's voice was low and sweet as she said, "And that is the
children."

"I - have thought about them," Ruth confessed, remembering the wanton
thoughts that had vexed her in the past, her face again red with maiden
shame that she should be telling such things.

"And it is that, the children, that makes Mr. Eden impossible," Mrs. Morse
went on incisively. "Their heritage must be clean, and he is, I am afraid,
not clean. Your father has told me of sailors' lives, and - and you
understand."

Ruth pressed her mother's hand in assent, feeling that she really did
understand, though her conception was of something vague, remote, and
terrible that was beyond the scope of imagination.

"You know I do nothing without telling you," she began. " - Only, sometimes
you must ask me, like this time. I wanted to tell you, but I did not know
how. It is false modesty, I know it is that, but you can make it easy for
me. Sometimes, like this time, you must ask me, you must give me a chance."

"Why, mother, you are a woman, too!" she cried exultantly, as they stood
up, catching her mother's hands and standing erect, facing her in the
twilight, conscious of a strangely sweet equality between them. "I should
never have thought of you in that way if we had not had this talk. I had to
learn that I was a woman to know that you were one, too."

"We are women together," her mother said, drawing her to her and kissing
her. "We are women together," she repeated, as they went out of the room,
their arms around each other's waists, their hearts swelling with a new
sense of companionship.

"Our little girl has become a woman," Mrs. Morse said proudly to her
husband an hour later.

"That means," he said, after a long look at his wife, "that means she is in
love."

"No, but that she is loved," was the smiling rejoinder. "The experiment has
succeeded. She is awakened at last."

"Then we'll have to get rid of him." Mr. Morse spoke briskly, in
matter-of-fact, businesslike tones.

But his wife shook her head. "It will not be necessary. Ruth says he is
going to sea in a few days. When he comes back, she will not be here. We
will send her to Aunt Clara's. And, besides, a year in the East, with the
change in climate, people, ideas, and everything, is just the thing she
needs."

CHAPTER XX

The desire to write was stirring in Martin once more. Stories and poems
were springing into spontaneous creation in his brain, and he made notes of
them against the future time when he would give them expression. But he did
not write. This was his little vacation; he had resolved to devote it to
rest and love, and in both matters he prospered. He was soon spilling over
with vitality, and each day he saw Ruth, at the moment of meeting, she
experienced the old shock of his strength and health.

"Be careful," her mother warned her once again. "I am afraid you are seeing
too much of Martin Eden."

But Ruth laughed from security. She was sure of herself, and in a few days
he would be off to sea. Then, by the time he returned, she would be away on
her visit East. There was a magic, however, in the strength and health of
Martin. He, too, had been told of her contemplated Eastern trip, and he
felt the need for haste. Yet he did not know how to make love to a girl
like Ruth. Then, too, he was handicapped by the possession of a great fund
of experience with girls and women who had been absolutely different from
her. They had known about love and life and flirtation, while she knew
nothing about such things. Her prodigious innocence appalled him, freezing
on his lips all ardors of speech, and convincing him, in spite of himself,
of his own unworthiness. Also he was handicapped in another way. He had
himself never been in love before. He had liked women in that turgid past
of his, and been fascinated by some of them, but he had not known what it
was to love them. He had whistled in a masterful, careless way, and they
had come to him. They had been diversions, incidents, part of the game men
play, but a small part at most. And now, and for the first time, he was a
suppliant, tender and timid and doubting. He did not know the way of love,
nor its speech, while he was frightened at his loved one's clear innocence.

In the course of getting acquainted with a varied world, whirling on
through the ever changing phases of it, he had learned a rule of conduct
which was to the effect that when one played a strange game, he should let
the other fellow play first. This had stood him in good stead a thousand
times and trained him as an observer as well. He knew how to watch the
thing that was strange, and to wait for a weakness, for a place of
entrance, to divulge itself. It was like sparring for an opening in
fist-fighting. And when such an opening came, he knew by long experience to
play for it and to play hard.

So he waited with Ruth and watched, desiring to speak his love but not
daring. He was afraid of shocking her, and he was not sure of himself. Had
he but known it, he was following the right course with her. Love came into
the world before articulate speech, and in its own early youth it had
learned ways and means that it had never forgotten. It was in this old,
primitive way that Martin wooed Ruth. He did not know he was doing it at
first, though later he divined it. The touch of his hand on hers was vastly
more potent than any word he could utter, the impact of his strength on her
imagination was more alluring than the printed poems and spoken passions of
a thousand generations of lovers. Whatever his tongue could express would
have appealed, in part, to her judgment; but the touch of hand, the
fleeting contact, made its way directly to her instinct. Her judgment was
as young as she, but her instincts were as old as the race and older. They
had been young when love was young, and they were wiser than convention and
opinion and all the new-born things. So her judgment did not act. There was
no call upon it, and she did not realize the strength of the appeal Martin
made from moment to moment to her love-nature. That he loved her, on the
other hand, was as clear as day, and she consciously delighted in beholding
his love-manifestations - the glowing eyes with their tender lights, the
trembling hands, and the never failing swarthy flush that flooded darkly
under his sunburn. She even went farther, in a timid way inciting him, but
doing it so delicately that he never suspected, and doing it
half-consciously, so that she scarcely suspected herself. She thrilled with
these proofs of her power that proclaimed her a woman, and she took an
Eve-like delight in tormenting him and playing upon him.

Tongue-tied by inexperience and by excess of ardor, wooing unwittingly and
awkwardly, Martin continued his approach by contact. The touch of his hand
was pleasant to her, and something deliciously more than pleasant. Martin
did not know it, but he did know that it was not distasteful to her. Not
that they touched hands often, save at meeting and parting; but that in
handling the bicycles, in strapping on the books of verse they carried into
the hills, and in conning the pages of books side by side, there were
opportunities for hand to stray against hand. And there were opportunities,
too, for her hair to brush his cheek, and for shoulder to touch shoulder,
as they leaned together over the beauty of the books. She smiled to herself
at vagrant impulses which arose from nowhere and suggested that she rumple
his hair; while he desired greatly, when they tired of reading, to rest his
head in her lap and dream with closed eyes about the future that was to be
theirs. On Sunday picnics at Shellmound Park and Schuetzen Park, in the
past, he had rested his head on many laps, and, usually, he had slept
soundly and selfishly while the girls shaded his face from the sun and
looked down and loved him and wondered at his lordly carelessness of their
love. To rest his head in a girl's lap had been the easiest thing in the
world until now, and now he found Ruth's lap inaccessible and impossible.
Yet it was right here, in his reticence, that the strength of his wooing
lay. It was because of this reticence that he never alarmed her. Herself
fastidious and timid, she never awakened to the perilous trend of their
intercourse. Subtly and unaware she grew toward him and closer to him,
while he, sensing the growing closeness, longed to dare but was afraid.

Once he dared, one afternoon, when he found her in the darkened living room
with a blinding headache.

"Nothing can do it any good," she had answered his inquiries. "And besides,
I don't take headache powders. Doctor Hall won't permit me."

"I can cure it, I think, and without drugs," was Martin's answer. "I am not
sure, of course, but I'd like to try. It's simply massage. I learned the
trick first from the Japanese. They are a race of masseurs, you know. Then
I learned it all over again with variations from the Hawaiians. They call
it LOMI-LOMI. It can accomplish most of the things drugs accomplish and a
few things that drugs can't."

Scarcely had his hands touched her head when she sighed deeply.

"That is so good," she said.

She spoke once again, half an hour later, when she asked, "Aren't you
tired?"

The question was perfunctory, and she knew what the answer would be. Then
she lost herself in drowsy contemplation of the soothing balm of his
strength: Life poured from the ends of his fingers, driving the pain before
it, or so it seemed to her, until with the easement of pain, she fell
asleep and he stole away.

She called him up by telephone that evening to thank him.

"I slept until dinner," she said. "You cured me completely, Mr. Eden, and I
don't know how to thank you."

He was warm, and bungling of speech, and very happy, as he replied to her,
and there was dancing in his mind, throughout the telephone conversation,
the memory of Browning and of sickly Elizabeth Barrett. What had been done
could be done again, and he, Martin Eden, could do it and would do it for
Ruth Morse. He went back to his room and to the volume of Spencer's
"Sociology" lying open on the bed. But he could not read. Love tormented
him and overrode his will, so that, despite all determination, he found
himself at the little ink-stained table. The sonnet he composed that night
was the first of a love-cycle of fifty sonnets which was completed within
two months. He had the "Love-sonnets from the Portuguese" in mind as he
wrote, and he wrote under the best conditions for great work, at a
climacteric of living, in the throes of his own sweet love-madness.

The many hours he was not with Ruth he devoted to the "Love-cycle," to
reading at home, or to the public reading-rooms, where he got more closely
in touch with the magazines of the day and the nature of their policy and
content. The hours he spent with Ruth were maddening alike in promise and
in inconclusiveness. It was a week after he cured her headache that a
moonlight sail on Lake Merritt was proposed by Norman and seconded by
Arthur and Olney. Martin was the only one capable of handling a boat, and
he was pressed into service. Ruth sat near him in the stern, while the
three young fellows lounged amidships, deep in a wordy wrangle over "frat"
affairs.

The moon had not yet risen, and Ruth, gazing into the starry vault of the
sky and exchanging no speech with Martin, experienced a sudden feeling of
loneliness. She glanced at him. A puff of wind was heeling the boat over
till the deck was awash, and he, one hand on tiller and the other on
main-sheet, was luffing slightly, at the same time peering ahead to make
out the near-lying north shore. He was unaware of her gaze, and she watched
him intently, speculating fancifully about the strange warp of soul that
led him, a young man with signal powers, to fritter away his time on the
writing of stories and poems foredoomed to mediocrity and failure.

Her eyes wandered along the strong throat, dimly seen in the starlight, and
over the firm-poised head, and the old desire to lay her hands upon his
neck came back to her. The strength she abhorred attracted her. Her feeling
of loneliness became more pronounced, and she felt tired. Her position on
the heeling boat irked her, and she remembered the headache he had cured
and the soothing rest that resided in him. He was sitting beside her, quite
beside her, and the boat seemed to tilt her toward him. Then arose in her
the impulse to lean against him, to rest herself against his strength - a
vague, half-formed impulse, which, even as she considered it, mastered her
and made her lean toward him. Or was it the heeling of the boat? She did
not know. She never knew. She knew only that she was leaning against him
and that the easement and soothing rest were very good. Perhaps it had been
the boat's fault, but she made no effort to retrieve it. She leaned lightly
against his shoulder, but she leaned, and she continued to lean when he
shifted his position to make it more comfortable for her.

It was a madness, but she refused to consider the madness. She was no
longer herself but a woman, with a woman's clinging need; and though she
leaned ever so lightly, the need seemed satisfied. She was no longer tired.
Martin did not speak. Had he, the spell would have been broken. But his
reticence of love prolonged it. He was dazed and dizzy. He could not
understand what was happening. It was too wonderful to be anything but a
delirium. He conquered a mad desire to let go sheet and tiller and to clasp
her in his arms. His intuition told him it was the wrong thing to do, and
he was glad that sheet and tiller kept his hands occupied and fended off
temptation. But he luffed the boat less delicately, spilling the wind
shamelessly from the sail so as to prolong the tack to the north shore. The
shore would compel him to go about, and the contact would be broken. He
sailed with skill, stopping way on the boat without exciting the notice of
the wranglers, and mentally forgiving his hardest voyages in that they had
made this marvellous night possible, giving him mastery over sea and boat
and wind so that he could sail with her beside him, her dear weight against
him on his shoulder.

When the first light of the rising moon touched the sail, illuminating the
boat with pearly radiance, Ruth moved away from him. And, even as she
moved, she felt him move away. The impulse to avoid detection was mutual.
The episode was tacitly and secretly intimate. She sat apart from him with
burning cheeks, while the full force of it came home to her. She had been
guilty of something she would not have her brothers see, nor Olney see. Why
had she done it? She had never done anything like it in her life, and yet
she had been moonlight-sailing with young men before. She had never desired
to do anything like it. She was overcome with shame and with the mystery of
her own burgeoning womanhood. She stole a glance at Martin, who was busy
putting the boat about on the other tack, and she could have hated him for
having made her do an immodest and shameful thing. And he, of all men!
Perhaps her mother was right, and she was seeing too much of him. It would
never happen again, she resolved, and she would see less of him in the
future. She entertained a wild idea of explaining to him the first time
they were alone together, of lying to him, of mentioning casually the
attack of faintness that had overpowered her just before the moon came up.
Then she remembered how they had drawn mutually away before the revealing
moon, and she knew he would know it for a lie.

In the days that swiftly followed she was no longer herself but a strange,
puzzling creature, wilful over judgment and scornful of self-analysis,
refusing to peer into the future or to think about herself and whither she
was drifting. She was in a fever of tingling mystery, alternately
frightened and charmed, and in constant bewilderment. She had one idea
firmly fixed, however, which insured her security. She would not let Martin
speak his love. As long as she did this, all would be well. In a few days
he would be off to sea. And even if he did speak, all would be well. It
could not be otherwise, for she did not love him. Of course, it would be a
painful half hour for him, and an embarrassing half hour for her, because
it would be her first proposal. She thrilled deliciously at the thought.
She was really a woman, with a man ripe to ask for her in marriage. It was
a lure to all that was fundamental in her sex. The fabric of her life, of
all that constituted her, quivered and grew tremulous. The thought
fluttered in her mind like a flame-attracted moth. She went so far as to
imagine Martin proposing, herself putting the words into his mouth; and she
rehearsed her refusal, tempering it with kindness and exhorting him to true
and noble manhood. And especially he must stop smoking cigarettes. She
would make a point of that. But no, she must not let him speak at all. She
could stop him, and she had told her mother that she would. All flushed and
burning, she regretfully dismissed the conjured situation. Her first
proposal would have to be deferred to a more propitious time and a more
eligible suitor.

CHAPTER XXI

Came a beautiful fall day, warm and languid, palpitant with the hush of the
changing season, a California Indian summer day, with hazy sun and
wandering wisps of breeze that did not stir the slumber of the air. Filmy
purple mists, that were not vapors but fabrics woven of color, hid in the
recesses of the hills. San Francisco lay like a blur of smoke upon her
heights. The intervening bay was a dull sheen of molten metal, whereon
sailing craft lay motionless or drifted with the lazy tide. Far Tamalpais,
barely seen in the silver haze, bulked hugely by the Golden Gate, the
latter a pale gold pathway under the westering sun. Beyond, the Pacific,
dim and vast, was raising on its sky-line tumbled cloud-masses that swept
landward, giving warning of the first blustering breath of winter.

The erasure of summer was at hand. Yet summer lingered, fading and fainting
among her hills, deepening the purple of her valleys, spinning a shroud of
haze from waning powers and sated raptures, dying with the calm content of
having lived and lived well. And among the hills, on their favorite knoll,
Martin and Ruth sat side by side, their heads bent over the same pages, he
reading aloud from the love-sonnets of the woman who had loved Browning as
it is given to few men to be loved.

But the reading languished. The spell of passing beauty all about them was
too strong. The golden year was dying as it had lived, a beautiful and
unrepentant voluptuary, and reminiscent rapture and content freighted
heavily the air. It entered into them, dreamy and languorous, weakening the
fibres of resolution, suffusing the face of morality, or of judgment, with
haze and purple mist. Martin felt tender and melting, and from time to time
warm glows passed over him. His head was very near to hers, and when
wandering phantoms of breeze stirred her hair so that it touched his face,
the printed pages swam before his eyes.

"I don't believe you know a word of what you are reading," she said once
when he had lost his place.

He looked at her with burning eyes, and was on the verge of becoming
awkward, when a retort came to his lips.

"I don't believe you know either. What was the last sonnet about?"

"I don't know," she laughed frankly. "I've already forgotten. Don't let us
read any more. The day is too beautiful."

"It will be our last in the hills for some time," he announced gravely.
"There's a storm gathering out there on the sea-rim."

The book slipped from his hands to the ground, and they sat idly and
silently, gazing out over the dreamy bay with eyes that dreamed and did not
see. Ruth glanced sidewise at his neck. She did not lean toward him. She
was drawn by some force outside of herself and stronger than gravitation,
strong as destiny. It was only an inch to lean, and it was accomplished
without volition on her part. Her shoulder touched his as lightly as a
butterfly touches a flower, and just as lightly was the counter-pressure.
She felt his shoulder press hers, and a tremor run through him. Then was
the time for her to draw back. But she had become an automaton. Her actions
had passed beyond the control of her will - she never thought of control or
will in the delicious madness that was upon her. His arm began to steal
behind her and around her. She waited its slow progress in a torment of
delight. She waited, she knew not for what, panting, with dry, burning
lips, a leaping pulse, and a fever of expectancy in all her blood. The
girdling arm lifted higher and drew her toward him, drew her slowly and
caressingly. She could wait no longer. With a tired sigh, and with an
impulsive movement all her own, unpremeditated, spasmodic, she rested her
head upon his breast. His head bent over swiftly, and, as his lips
approached, hers flew to meet them.

This must be love, she thought, in the one rational moment that was
vouchsafed her. If it was not love, it was too shameful. It could be
nothing else than love. She loved the man whose arms were around her and
whose lips were pressed to hers. She pressed more, tightly to him, with a
snuggling movement of her body. And a moment later, tearing herself half
out of his embrace, suddenly and exultantly she reached up and placed both
hands upon Martin Eden's sunburnt neck. So exquisite was the pang of love
and desire fulfilled that she uttered a low moan, relaxed her hands, and
lay half-swooning in his arms.

Not a word had been spoken, and not a word was spoken for a long time.
Twice he bent and kissed her, and each time her lips met his shyly and her
body made its happy, nestling movement. She clung to him, unable to release
herself, and he sat, half supporting her in his arms, as he gazed with
unseeing eyes at the blur of the great city across the bay. For once there
were no visions in his brain. Only colors and lights and glows pulsed
there, warm as the day and warm as his love. He bent over her. She was
speaking.

"When did you love me?" she whispered.

"From the first, the very first, the first moment I laid eye on you. I was
mad for love of you then, and in all the time that has passed since then I
have only grown the madder. I am maddest, now, dear. I am almost a lunatic,
my head is so turned with joy."

"I am glad I am a woman, Martin - dear," she said, after a long sigh.

He crushed her in his arms again and again, and then asked:-

"And you? When did you first know?"

"Oh, I knew it all the time, almost, from the first."

"And I have been as blind as a bat!" he cried, a ring of vexation in his
voice. "I never dreamed it until just how, when I - when I kissed you."

"I didn't mean that." She drew herself partly away and looked at him. "I
meant I knew you loved almost from the first."

"And you?" he demanded.

"It came to me suddenly." She was speaking very slowly, her eyes warm and
fluttery and melting, a soft flush on her cheeks that did not go away. "I
never knew until just now when - you put your arms around me. And I never
expected to marry you, Martin, not until just now. How did you make me love
you?"

"I don't know," he laughed, "unless just by loving you, for I loved you
hard enough to melt the heart of a stone, much less the heart of the
living, breathing woman you are."

"This is so different from what I thought love would be," she announced
irrelevantly.

"What did you think it would be like?"

"I didn't think it would be like this." She was looking into his eyes at
the moment, but her own dropped as she continued, "You see, I didn't know
what this was like."

He offered to draw her toward him again, but it was no more than a
tentative muscular movement of the girdling arm, for he feared that he
might be greedy. Then he felt her body yielding, and once again she was
close in his arms and lips were pressed on lips.

"What will my people say?" she queried, with sudden apprehension, in one of
the pauses.

"I don't know. We can find out very easily any time we are so minded."

"But if mamma objects? I am sure I am afraid to tell her."

"Let me tell her," he volunteered valiantly. "I think your mother does not
like me, but I can win her around. A fellow who can win you can win
anything. And if we don't - "

"Yes?"

"Why, we'll have each other. But there's no danger not winning your mother
to our marriage. She loves you too well."

"I should not like to break her heart," Ruth said pensively.

He felt like assuring her that mothers' hearts were not so easily broken,
but instead he said, "And love is the greatest thing in the world."

"Do you know, Martin, you sometimes frighten me. I am frightened now, when
I think of you and of what you have been. You must be very, very good to
me. Remember, after all, that I am only a child. I never loved before."

"Nor I. We are both children together. And we are fortunate above most, for
we have found our first love in each other."

"But that is impossible!" she cried, withdrawing herself from his arms with
a swift, passionate movement. "Impossible for you. You have been a sailor,
and sailors, I have heard, are - are - "

Her voice faltered and died away.

"Are addicted to having a wife in every port?" he suggested. "Is that what
you mean?"

"Yes," she answered in a low voice.

"But that is not love." He spoke authoritatively. "I have been in many
ports, but I never knew a passing touch of love until I saw you that first
night. Do you know, when I said good night and went away, I was almost
arrested."

"Arrested?"

"Yes. The policeman thought I was drunk; and I was, too - with love for
you."

"But you said we were children, and I said it was impossible, for you, and
we have strayed away from the point."

"I said that I never loved anybody but you," he replied. "You are my first,
my very first."

"And yet you have been a sailor," she objected.

"But that doesn't prevent me from loving you the first."

"And there have been women - other women - oh!"

And to Martin Eden's supreme surprise, she burst into a storm of tears that
took more kisses than one and many caresses to drive away. And all the
while there was running through his head Kipling's line: "AND THE COLONEL'S
LADY AND JUDY O'GRADY ARE SISTERS UNDER THEIR SKINS." It was true, he
decided; though the novels he had read had led him to believe otherwise.
His idea, for which the novels were responsible, had been that only formal
proposals obtained in the upper classes. It was all right enough, down
whence he had come, for youths and maidens to win each other by contact;
but for the exalted personages up above on the heights to make love in
similar fashion had seemed unthinkable. Yet the novels were wrong. Here was
a proof of it. The same pressures and caresses, unaccompanied by speech,
that were efficacious with the girls of the working-class, were equally
efficacious with the girls above the working-class. They were all of the
same flesh, after all, sisters under their skins; and he might have known
as much himself had he remembered his Spencer. As he held Ruth in his arms
and soothed her, he took great consolation in the thought that the
Colonel's lady and Judy O'Grady were pretty much alike under their skins.
It brought Ruth closer to him, made her possible. Her dear flesh was as
anybody's flesh, as his flesh. There was no bar to their marriage. Class
difference was the only difference, and class was extrinsic. It could be
shaken off. A slave, he had read, had risen to the Roman purple. That being
so, then he could rise to Ruth. Under her purity, and saintliness, and
culture, and ethereal beauty of soul, she was, in things fundamentally
human, just like Lizzie Connolly and all Lizzie Connollys. All that was
possible of them was possible of her. She could love, and hate, maybe have
hysterics; and she could certainly be jealous, as she was jealous now,
uttering her last sobs in his arms.

"Besides, I am older than you," she remarked suddenly, opening her eyes and
looking up at him, "three years older."

"Hush, you are only a child, and I am forty years older than you, in
experience," was his answer.

In truth, they were children together, so far as love was concerned, and
they were as naive and immature in the expression of their love as a pair
of children, and this despite the fact that she was crammed with a
university education and that his head was full of scientific philosophy
and the hard facts of life.

They sat on through the passing glory of the day, talking as lovers are
prone to talk, marvelling at the wonder of love and at destiny that had
flung them so strangely together, and dogmatically believing that they
loved to a degree never attained by lovers before. And they returned
insistently, again and again, to a rehearsal of their first impressions of
each other and to hopeless attempts to analyze just precisely what they
felt for each other and how much there was of it.

The cloud-masses on the western horizon received the descending sun, and
the circle of the sky turned to rose, while the zenith glowed with the same
warm color. The rosy light was all about them, flooding over them, as she
sang, "Good-by, Sweet Day." She sang softly, leaning in the cradle of his
arm, her hands in his, their hearts in each other's hands.

CHAPTER XXII

Mrs. Morse did not require a mother's intuition to read the advertisement
in Ruth's face when she returned home. The flush that would not leave the
cheeks told the simple story, and more eloquently did the eyes, large and
bright, reflecting an unmistakable inward glory.

"What has happened?" Mrs. Morse asked, having bided her time till Ruth had
gone to bed.

"You know?" Ruth queried, with trembling lips.

For reply, her mother's arm went around her, and a hand was softly
caressing her hair.

"He did not speak," she blurted out. "I did not intend that it should
happen, and I would never have let him speak - only he didn't speak."

"But if he did not speak, then nothing could have happened, could it?"

"But it did, just the same."

"In the name of goodness, child, what are you babbling about?" Mrs. Morse
was bewildered. "I don't think know what happened, after all. What did
happen?"

Ruth looked at her mother in surprise.

"I thought you knew. Why, we're engaged, Martin and I."

Mrs. Morse laughed with incredulous vexation.

"No, he didn't speak," Ruth explained. "He just loved me, that was all. I
was as surprised as you are. He didn't say a word. He just put his arm
around me. And - and I was not myself. And he kissed me, and I kissed him.
I couldn't help it. I just had to. And then I knew I loved him."

She paused, waiting with expectancy the benediction of her mother's kiss,
but Mrs. Morse was coldly silent.

"It is a dreadful accident, I know," Ruth recommenced with a sinking voice.
"And I don't know how you will ever forgive me. But I couldn't help it. I
did not dream that I loved him until that moment. And you must tell father
for me."

"Would it not be better not to tell your father? Let me see Martin Eden,
and talk with him, and explain. He will understand and release you."

"No! no!" Ruth cried, starting up. "I do not want to be released. I love
him, and love is very sweet. I am going to marry him - of course, if you
will let me."

"We have other plans for you, Ruth, dear, your father and I - oh, no, no;
no man picked out for you, or anything like that. Our plans go no farther
than your marrying some man in your own station in life, a good and
honorable gentleman, whom you will select yourself, when you love him."

"But I love Martin already," was the plaintive protest.

"We would not influence your choice in any way; but you are our daughter,
and we could not bear to see you make a marriage such as this. He has
nothing but roughness and coarseness to offer you in exchange for all that
is refined and delicate in you. He is no match for you in any way. He could
not support you. We have no foolish ideas about wealth, but comfort is
another matter, and our daughter should at least marry a man who can give
her that - and not a penniless adventurer, a sailor, a cowboy, a smuggler,
and Heaven knows what else, who, in addition to everything, is hare-
brained and irresponsible."

Ruth was silent. Every word she recognized as true.

"He wastes his time over his writing, trying to accomplish what geniuses
and rare men with college educations sometimes accomplish. A man thinking
of marriage should be preparing for marriage. But not he. As I have said,
and I know you agree with me, he is irresponsible. And why should he not
be? It is the way of sailors. He has never learned to be economical or
temperate. The spendthrift years have marked him. It is not his fault, of
course, but that does not alter his nature. And have you thought of the
years of licentiousness he inevitably has lived? Have you thought of that,
daughter? You know what marriage means."

Ruth shuddered and clung close to her mother.

"I have thought." Ruth waited a long time for the thought to frame itself.
"And it is terrible. It sickens me to think of it. I told you it was a
dreadful accident, my loving him; but I can't help myself. Could you help
loving father? Then it is the same with me. There is something in me, in
him - I never knew it was there until to-day - but it is there, and it
makes me love him. I never thought to love him, but, you see, I do," she
concluded, a certain faint triumph in her voice.

They talked long, and to little purpose, in conclusion agreeing to wait an
indeterminate time without doing anything.

The same conclusion was reached, a little later that night, between Mrs.
Morse and her husband, after she had made due confession of the miscarriage
of her plans.

"It could hardly have come otherwise," was Mr. Morse's judgment. "This
sailor-fellow has been the only man she was in touch with. Sooner or later
she was going to awaken anyway; and she did awaken, and lo! here was this
sailor-fellow, the only accessible man at the moment, and of course she
promptly loved him, or thought she did, which amounts to the same thing."

Mrs. Morse took it upon herself to work slowly and indirectly upon Ruth,
rather than to combat her. There would be plenty of time for this, for
Martin was not in position to marry.

"Let her see all she wants of him," was Mr. Morse's advice. "The more she
knows him, the less she'll love him, I wager. And give her plenty of
contrast. Make a point of having young people at the house. Young women and
young men, all sorts of young men, clever men, men who have done something
or who are doing things, men of her own class, gentlemen. She can gauge him
by them. They will show him up for what he is. And after all, he is a mere
boy of twenty-one. Ruth is no more than a child. It is calf love with the
pair of them, and they will grow out of it."

So the matter rested. Within the family it was accepted that Ruth and
Martin were engaged, but no announcement was made. The family did not think
it would ever be necessary. Also, it was tacitly understood that it was to
be a long engagement. They did not ask Martin to go to work, nor to cease
writing. They did not intend to encourage him to mend himself. And he aided
and abetted them in their unfriendly designs, for going to work was
farthest from his thoughts.

"I wonder if you'll like what I have done!" he said to Ruth several days
later. "I've decided that boarding with my sister is too expensive, and I
am going to board myself. I've rented a little room out in North Oakland,
retired neighborhood and all the rest, you know, and I've bought an
oil-burner on which to cook."

Ruth was overjoyed. The oil-burner especially pleased her.

"That was the way Mr. Butler began his start," she said.

Martin frowned inwardly at the citation of that worthy gentleman, and went
on: "I put stamps on all my manuscripts and started them off to the editors
again. Then to-day I moved in, and to-morrow I start to work."

"A position!" she cried, betraying the gladness of her surprise in all her
body, nestling closer to him, pressing his hand, smiling. "And you never
told me! What is it?"

He shook his head.

"I meant that I was going to work at my writing." Her face fell, and he
went on hastily. "Don't misjudge me. I am not going in this time with any
iridescent ideas. It is to be a cold, prosaic, matter-of-fact business
proposition. It is better than going to sea again, and I shall earn more
money than any position in Oakland can bring an unskilled man."

"You see, this vacation I have taken has given me perspective. I haven't
been working the life out of my body, and I haven't been writing, at least
not for publication. All I've done has been to love you and to think. I've
read some, too, but it has been part of my thinking, and I have read
principally magazines. I have generalized about myself, and the world, my
place in it, and my chance to win to a place that will be fit for you.
Also, I've been reading Spencer's 'Philosophy of Style,' and found out a
lot of what was the matter with me - or my writing, rather; and for that
matter with most of the writing that is published every month in the
magazines."

"But the upshot of it all - of my thinking and reading and loving - is that
I am going to move to Grub Street. I shall leave masterpieces alone and do
hack-work - jokes, paragraphs, feature articles, humorous verse, and
society verse - all the rot for which there seems so much demand. Then
there are the newspaper syndicates, and the newspaper short-story
syndicates, and the syndicates for the Sunday supplements. I can go ahead
and hammer out the stuff they want, and earn the equivalent of a good
salary by it. There are free-lances, you know, who earn as much as four or
five hundred a month. I don't care to become as they; but I'll earn a good
living, and have plenty of time to myself, which I wouldn't have in any
position."

"Then, I'll have my spare time for study and for real work. In between the
grind I'll try my hand at masterpieces, and I'll study and prepare myself
for the writing of masterpieces. Why, I am amazed at the distance I have
come already. When I first tried to write, I had nothing to write about
except a few paltry experiences which I neither understood nor appreciated.
But I had no thoughts. I really didn't. I didn't even have the words with
which to think. My experiences were so many meaningless pictures. But as I
began to add to my knowledge, and to my vocabulary, I saw something more in
my experiences than mere pictures. I retained the pictures and I found
their interpretation. That was when I began to do good work, when I wrote
'Adventure,' 'Joy,' 'The Pot,' 'The Wine of Life,' 'The Jostling Street,'
the 'Love-cycle,' and the 'Sea Lyrics.' I shall write more like them, and
better; but I shall do it in my spare time. My feet are on the solid earth,
now. Hack- work and income first, masterpieces afterward. Just to show you,
I wrote half a dozen jokes last night for the comic weeklies; and just as I
was going to bed, the thought struck me to try my hand at a triolet - a
humorous one; and inside an hour I had written four. They ought to be worth
a dollar apiece. Four dollars right there for a few afterthoughts on the
way to bed."

"Of course it's all valueless, just so much dull and sordid plodding; but
it is no more dull and sordid than keeping books at sixty dollars a month,
adding up endless columns of meaningless figures until one dies. And
furthermore, the hack-work keeps me in touch with things literary and gives
me time to try bigger things."

"But what good are these bigger-things, these masterpieces?" Ruth demanded.
"You can't sell them."

"Oh, yes, I can," he began; but she interrupted.

"All those you named, and which you say yourself are good - you have not
sold any of them. We can't get married on masterpieces that won't sell."

"Then we'll get married on triolets that will sell," he asserted stoutly,
putting his arm around her and drawing a very unresponsive sweetheart
toward him.

"Listen to this," he went on in attempted gayety. "It's not art, but it's a
dollar.

"He came in When I was out, To borrow some tin Was why he came in, And he
went without; So I was in And he was out."

The merry lilt with which he had invested the jingle was at variance with
the dejection that came into his face as he finished. He had drawn no smile
from Ruth. She was looking at him in an earnest and troubled way.

"It may be a dollar," she said, "but it is a jester's dollar, the fee of a
clown. Don't you see, Martin, the whole thing is lowering. I want the man I
love and honor to be something finer and higher than a perpetrator of jokes
and doggerel."

"You want him to be like - say Mr. Butler?" he suggested.

"I know you don't like Mr. Butler," she began.

"Mr. Butler's all right," he interrupted. "It's only his indigestion I find
fault with. But to save me I can't see any difference between writing jokes
or comic verse and running a type- writer, taking dictation, or keeping
sets of books. It is all a means to an end. Your theory is for me to begin
with keeping books in order to become a successful lawyer or man of
business. Mine is to begin with hack-work and develop into an able author."

"There is a difference," she insisted.

"What is it?"

"Why, your good work, what you yourself call good, you can't sell. You have
tried, you know that, - but the editors won't buy it."

"Give me time, dear," he pleaded. "The hack-work is only makeshift, and I
don't take it seriously. Give me two years. I shall succeed in that time,
and the editors will be glad to buy my good work. I know what I am saying;
I have faith in myself. I know what I have in me; I know what literature
is, now; I know the average rot that is poured out by a lot of little men;
and I know that at the end of two years I shall be on the highroad to
success. As for business, I shall never succeed at it. I am not in sympathy
with it. It strikes me as dull, and stupid, and mercenary, and tricky.
Anyway I am not adapted for it. I'd never get beyond a clerkship, and how
could you and I be happy on the paltry earnings of a clerk? I want the best
of everything in the world for you, and the only time when I won't want it
will be when there is something better. And I'm going to get it, going to
get all of it. The income of a successful author makes Mr. Butler look
cheap. A 'best-seller' will earn anywhere between fifty and a hundred
thousand dollars - sometimes more and sometimes less; but, as a rule,
pretty close to those figures."

She remained silent; her disappointment was apparent.

"Well?" he asked.

"I had hoped and planned otherwise. I had thought, and I still think, that
the best thing for you would be to study shorthand - you already know
type-writing - and go into father's office. You have a good mind, and I am
confident you would succeed as a lawyer."

CHAPTER XXIII

That Ruth had little faith in his power as a writer, did not alter her nor
diminish her in Martin's eyes. In the breathing spell of the vacation he
had taken, he had spent many hours in self- analysis, and thereby learned
much of himself. He had discovered that he loved beauty more than fame, and
that what desire he had for fame was largely for Ruth's sake. It was for
this reason that his desire for fame was strong. He wanted to be great in
the world's eyes; "to make good," as he expressed it, in order that the
woman he loved should be proud of him and deem him worthy.

As for himself, he loved beauty passionately, and the joy of serving her
was to him sufficient wage. And more than beauty he loved Ruth. He
considered love the finest thing in the world. It was love that had worked
the revolution in him, changing him from an uncouth sailor to a student and
an artist; therefore, to him, the finest and greatest of the three, greater
than learning and artistry, was love. Already he had discovered that his
brain went beyond Ruth's, just as it went beyond the brains of her
brothers, or the brain of her father. In spite of every advantage of
university training, and in the face of her bachelorship of arts, his power
of intellect overshadowed hers, and his year or so of self-study and
equipment gave him a mastery of the affairs of the world and art and life
that she could never hope to possess.

All this he realized, but it did not affect his love for her, nor her love
for him. Love was too fine and noble, and he was too loyal a lover for him
to besmirch love with criticism. What did love have to do with Ruth's
divergent views on art, right conduct, the French Revolution, or equal
suffrage? They were mental processes, but love was beyond reason; it was
superrational. He could not belittle love. He worshipped it. Love lay on
the mountain-tops beyond the valley-land of reason. It was a sublimates
condition of existence, the topmost peak of living, and it came rarely.
Thanks to the school of scientific philosophers he favored, he knew the
biological significance of love; but by a refined process of the same
scientific reasoning he reached the conclusion that the human organism
achieved its highest purpose in love, that love must not be questioned, but
must be accepted as the highest guerdon of life. Thus, he considered the
lover blessed over all creatures, and it was a delight to him to think of
"God's own mad lover," rising above the things of earth, above wealth and
judgment, public opinion and applause, rising above life itself and "dying
on a kiss."

Much of this Martin had already reasoned out, and some of it he reasoned
out later. In the meantime he worked, taking no recreation except when he
went to see Ruth, and living like a Spartan. He paid two dollars and a half
a month rent for the small room he got from his Portuguese landlady, Maria
Silva, a virago and a widow, hard working and harsher tempered, rearing her
large brood of children somehow, and drowning her sorrow and fatigue at
irregular intervals in a gallon of the thin, sour wine that she bought from
the corner grocery and saloon for fifteen cents. From detesting her and her
foul tongue at first, Martin grew to admire her as he observed the brave
fight she made. There were but four rooms in the little house - three, when
Martin's was subtracted. One of these, the parlor, gay with an ingrain
carpet and dolorous with a funeral card and a death-picture of one of her
numerous departed babes, was kept strictly for company. The blinds were
always down, and her barefooted tribe was never permitted to enter the
sacred precinct save on state occasions. She cooked, and all ate, in the
kitchen, where she likewise washed, starched, and ironed clothes on all
days of the week except Sunday; for her income came largely from taking in
washing from her more prosperous neighbors. Remained the bedroom, small as
the one occupied by Martin, into which she and her seven little ones
crowded and slept. It was an everlasting miracle to Martin how it was
accomplished, and from her side of the thin partition he heard nightly
every detail of the going to bed, the squalls and squabbles, the soft
chattering, and the sleepy, twittering noises as of birds. Another source
of income to Maria were her cows, two of them, which she milked night and
morning and which gained a surreptitious livelihood from vacant lots and
the grass that grew on either side the public side walks, attended always
by one or more of her ragged boys, whose watchful guardianship consisted
chiefly in keeping their eyes out for the poundmen.

In his own small room Martin lived, slept, studied, wrote, and kept house.
Before the one window, looking out on the tiny front porch, was the kitchen
table that served as desk, library, and type- writing stand. The bed,
against the rear wall, occupied two-thirds of the total space of the room.
The table was flanked on one side by a gaudy bureau, manufactured for
profit and not for service, the thin veneer of which was shed day by day.
This bureau stood in the corner, and in the opposite corner, on the table's
other flank, was the kitchen - the oil-stove on a dry-goods box, inside of
which were dishes and cooking utensils, a shelf on the wall for provisions,
and a bucket of water on the floor. Martin had to carry his water from the
kitchen sink, there being no tap in his room. On days when there was much
steam to his cooking, the harvest of veneer from the bureau was unusually
generous. Over the bed, hoisted by a tackle to the ceiling, was his
bicycle. At first he had tried to keep it in the basement; but the tribe of
Silva, loosening the bearings and puncturing the tires, had driven him out.
Next he attempted the tiny front porch, until a howling southeaster
drenched the wheel a night-long. Then he had retreated with it to his room
and slung it aloft.

A small closet contained his clothes and the books he had accumulated and
for which there was no room on the table or under the table. Hand in hand
with reading, he had developed the habit of making notes, and so copiously
did he make them that there would have been no existence for him in the
confined quarters had he not rigged several clothes-lines across the room
on which the notes were hung. Even so, he was crowded until navigating the
room was a difficult task. He could not open the door without first closing
the closet door, and VICE VERSA. It was impossible for him anywhere to
traverse the room in a straight line. To go from the door to the head of
the bed was a zigzag course that he was never quite able to accomplish in
the dark without collisions. Having settled the difficulty of the
conflicting doors, he had to steer sharply to the right to avoid the
kitchen. Next, he sheered to the left, to escape the foot of the bed; but
this sheer, if too generous, brought him against the corner of the table.
With a sudden twitch and lurch, he terminated the sheer and bore off to the
right along a sort of canal, one bank of which was the bed, the other the
table. When the one chair in the room was at its usual place before the
table, the canal was unnavigable. When the chair was not in use, it reposed
on top of the bed, though sometimes he sat on the chair when cooking,
reading a book while the water boiled, and even becoming skilful enough to
manage a paragraph or two while steak was frying. Also, so small was the
little corner that constituted the kitchen, he was able, sitting down, to
reach anything he needed. In fact, it was expedient to cook sitting down;
standing up, he was too often in his own way.

In conjunction with a perfect stomach that could digest anything, he
possessed knowledge of the various foods that were at the same time
nutritious and cheap. Pea-soup was a common article in his diet, as well as
potatoes and beans, the latter large and brown and cooked in Mexican style.
Rice, cooked as American housewives never cook it and can never learn to
cook it, appeared on Martin's table at least once a day. Dried fruits were
less expensive than fresh, and he had usually a pot of them, cooked and
ready at hand, for they took the place of butter on his bread. Occasionally
he graced his table with a piece of round-steak, or with a soup-bone.
Coffee, without cream or milk, he had twice a day, in the evening
substituting tea; but both coffee and tea were excellently cooked.

There was need for him to be economical. His vacation had consumed nearly
all he had earned in the laundry, and he was so far from his market that
weeks must elapse before he could hope for the first returns from his
hack-work. Except at such times as he saw Ruth, or dropped in to see his
sister Gertude, he lived a recluse, in each day accomplishing at least
three days' labor of ordinary men. He slept a scant five hours, and only
one with a constitution of iron could have held himself down, as Martin
did, day after day, to nineteen consecutive hours of toil. He never lost a
moment. On the looking-glass were lists of definitions and pronunciations;
when shaving, or dressing, or combing his hair, he conned these lists over.
Similar lists were on the wall over the oil-stove, and they were similarly
conned while he was engaged in cooking or in washing the dishes. New lists
continually displaced the old ones. Every strange or partly familiar word
encountered in his reading was immediately jotted down, and later, when a
sufficient number had been accumulated, were typed and pinned to the wall
or looking- glass. He even carried them in his pockets, and reviewed them
at odd moments on the street, or while waiting in butcher shop or grocery
to be served.

He went farther in the matter. Reading the works of men who had arrived, he
noted every result achieved by them, and worked out the tricks by which
they had been achieved - the tricks of narrative, of exposition, of style,
the points of view, the contrasts, the epigrams; and of all these he made
lists for study. He did not ape. He sought principles. He drew up lists of
effective and fetching mannerisms, till out of many such, culled from many
writers, he was able to induce the general principle of mannerism, and,
thus equipped, to cast about for new and original ones of his own, and to
weigh and measure and appraise them properly. In similar manner he
collected lists of strong phrases, the phrases of living language, phrases
that bit like acid and scorched like flame, or that glowed and were mellow
and luscious in the midst of the arid desert of common speech. He sought
always for the principle that lay behind and beneath. He wanted to know how
the thing was done; after that he could do it for himself. He was not
content with the fair face of beauty. He dissected beauty in his crowded
little bedroom laboratory, where cooking smells alternated with the outer
bedlam of the Silva tribe; and, having dissected and learned the anatomy of
beauty, he was nearer being able to create beauty itself.

He was so made that he could work only with understanding. He could not
work blindly, in the dark, ignorant of what he was producing and trusting
to chance and the star of his genius that the effect produced should be
right and fine. He had no patience with chance effects. He wanted to know
why and how. His was deliberate creative genius, and, before he began a
story or poem, the thing itself was already alive in his brain, with the
end in sight and the means of realizing that end in his conscious
possession. Otherwise the effort was doomed to failure. On the other hand,
he appreciated the chance effects in words and phrases that came lightly
and easily into his brain, and that later stood all tests of beauty and
power and developed tremendous and incommunicable connotations. Before such
he bowed down and marvelled, knowing that they were beyond the deliberate
creation of any man. And no matter how much he dissected beauty in search
of the principles that underlie beauty and make beauty possible, he was
aware, always, of the innermost mystery of beauty to which he did not
penetrate and to which no man had ever penetrated. He knew full well, from
his Spencer, that man can never attain ultimate knowledge of anything, and
that the mystery of beauty was no less than that of life - nay, more that
the fibres of beauty and life were intertwisted, and that he himself was
but a bit of the same nonunderstandable fabric, twisted of sunshine and
star-dust and wonder.

In fact, it was when filled with these thoughts that he wrote his essay
entitled "Star-dust," in which he had his fling, not at the principles of
criticism, but at the principal critics. It was brilliant, deep,
philosophical, and deliciously touched with laughter. Also it was promptly
rejected by the magazines as often as it was submitted. But having cleared
his mind of it, he went serenely on his way. It was a habit he developed,
of incubating and maturing his thought upon a subject, and of then rushing
into the type-writer with it. That it did not see print was a matter a
small moment with him. The writing of it was the culminating act of a long
mental process, the drawing together of scattered threads of thought and
the final generalizing upon all the data with which his mind was burdened.
To write such an article was the conscious effort by which he freed his
mind and made it ready for fresh material and problems. It was in a way
akin to that common habit of men and women troubled by real or fancied
grievances, who periodically and volubly break their long-suffering silence
and "have their say" till the last word is said.

CHAPTER XXIV

The weeks passed. Martin ran out of money, and publishers' checks were far
away as ever. All his important manuscripts had come back and been started
out again, and his hack-work fared no better. His little kitchen was no
longer graced with a variety of foods. Caught in the pinch with a part sack
of rice and a few pounds of dried apricots, rice and apricots was his menu
three times a day for five days hand-running. Then he startled to realize
on his credit. The Portuguese grocer, to whom he had hitherto paid cash,
called a halt when Martin's bill reached the magnificent total of three
dollars and eighty-five cents.

"For you see," said the grocer, "you no catcha da work, I losa da mon'."

And Martin could reply nothing. There was no way of explaining. It was not
true business principle to allow credit to a strong- bodied young fellow of
the working-class who was too lazy to work.

"You catcha da job, I let you have mora da grub," the grocer assured
Martin. "No job, no grub. Thata da business." And then, to show that it was
purely business foresight and not prejudice, "Hava da drink on da house -
good friends justa da same."

So Martin drank, in his easy way, to show that he was good friends with the
house, and then went supperless to bed.

The fruit store, where Martin had bought his vegetables, was run by an
American whose business principles were so weak that he let Martin run a
bill of five dollars before stopping his credit. The baker stopped at two
dollars, and the butcher at four dollars. Martin added his debts and found
that he was possessed of a total credit in all the world of fourteen
dollars and eighty-five cents. He was up with his type-writer rent, but he
estimated that he could get two months' credit on that, which would be
eight dollars. When that occurred, he would have exhausted all possible
credit.

The last purchase from the fruit store had been a sack of potatoes, and for
a week he had potatoes, and nothing but potatoes, three times a day. An
occasional dinner at Ruth's helped to keep strength in his body, though he
found it tantalizing enough to refuse further helping when his appetite was
raging at sight of so much food spread before it. Now and again, though
afflicted with secret shame, he dropped in at his sister's at meal-time and
ate as much as he dared - more than he dared at the Morse table.

Day by day he worked on, and day by day the postman delivered to him
rejected manuscripts. He had no money for stamps, so the manuscripts
accumulated in a heap under the table. Came a day when for forty hours he
had not tasted food. He could not hope for a meal at Ruth's, for she was
away to San Rafael on a two weeks' visit; and for very shame's sake he
could not go to his sister's. To cap misfortune, the postman, in his
afternoon round, brought him five returned manuscripts. Then it was that
Martin wore his overcoat down into Oakland, and came back without it, but
with five dollars tinkling in his pocket. He paid a dollar each on account
to the four tradesmen, and in his kitchen fried steak and onions, made
coffee, and stewed a large pot of prunes. And having dined, he sat down at
his table-desk and completed before midnight an essay which he entitled
"The Dignity of Usury." Having typed it out, he flung it under the table,
for there had been nothing left from the five dollars with which to buy
stamps.

Later on he pawned his watch, and still later his wheel, reducing the
amount available for food by putting stamps on all his manuscripts and
sending them out. He was disappointed with his hack-work. Nobody cared to
buy. He compared it with what he found in the newspapers, weeklies, and
cheap magazines, and decided that his was better, far better, than the
average; yet it would not sell. Then he discovered that most of the
newspapers printed a great deal of what was called "plate" stuff, and he
got the address of the association that furnished it. His own work that he
sent in was returned, along with a stereotyped slip informing him that the
staff supplied all the copy that was needed.

In one of the great juvenile periodicals he noted whole columns of incident
and anecdote. Here was a chance. His paragraphs were returned, and though
he tried repeatedly he never succeeded in placing one. Later on, when it no
longer mattered, he learned that the associate editors and sub-editors
augmented their salaries by supplying those paragraphs themselves. The
comic weeklies returned his jokes and humorous verse, and the light society
verse he wrote for the large magazines found no abiding-place. Then there
was the newspaper storiette. He knew that he could write better ones than
were published. Managing to obtain the addresses of two newspaper
syndicates, he deluged them with storiettes. When he had written twenty and
failed to place one of them, he ceased. And yet, from day to day, he read
storiettes in the dailies and weeklies, scores and scores of storiettes,
not one of which would compare with his. In his despondency, he concluded
that he had no judgment whatever, that he was hypnotized by what he wrote,
and that he was a self- deluded pretender.

The inhuman editorial machine ran smoothly as ever. He folded the stamps in
with his manuscript, dropped it into the letter-box, and from three weeks
to a month afterward the postman came up the steps and handed him the
manuscript. Surely there were no live, warm editors at the other end. It
was all wheels and cogs and oil-cups - a clever mechanism operated by
automatons. He reached stages of despair wherein he doubted if editors
existed at all. He had never received a sign of the existence of one, and
from absence of judgment in rejecting all he wrote it seemed plausible that
editors were myths, manufactured and maintained by office boys,
typesetters, and pressmen.

The hours he spent with Ruth were the only happy ones he had, and they were
not all happy. He was afflicted always with a gnawing restlessness, more
tantalizing than in the old days before he possessed her love; for now that
he did possess her love, the possession of her was far away as ever. He had
asked for two years; time was flying, and he was achieving nothing. Again,
he was always conscious of the fact that she did not approve what he was
doing. She did not say so directly. Yet indirectly she let him understand
it as clearly and definitely as she could have spoken it. It was not
resentment with her, but disapproval; though less sweet-natured women might
have resented where she was no more than disappointed. Her disappointment
lay in that this man she had taken to mould, refused to be moulded. To a
certain extent she had found his clay plastic, then it had developed
stubbornness, declining to be shaped in the image of her father or of Mr.
Butler.

What was great and strong in him, she missed, or, worse yet, misunderstood.
This man, whose clay was so plastic that he could live in any number of
pigeonholes of human existence, she thought wilful and most obstinate
because she could not shape him to live in her pigeonhole, which was the
only one she knew. She could not follow the flights of his mind, and when
his brain got beyond her, she deemed him erratic. Nobody else's brain ever
got beyond her. She could always follow her father and mother, her brothers
and Olney; wherefore, when she could not follow Martin, she believed the
fault lay with him. It was the old tragedy of insularity trying to serve as
mentor to the universal.

"You worship at the shrine of the established," he told her once, in a
discussion they had over Praps and Vanderwater. "I grant that as
authorities to quote they are most excellent - the two foremost literary
critics in the United States. Every school teacher in the land looks up to
Vanderwater as the Dean of American criticism. Yet I read his stuff, and it
seems to me the perfection of the felicitous expression of the inane. Why,
he is no more than a ponderous bromide, thanks to Gelett Burgess. And Praps
is no better. His 'Hemlock Mosses,' for instance is beautifully written.
Not a comma is out of place; and the tone - ah! - is lofty, so lofty. He is
the best-paid critic in the United States. Though, Heaven forbid! he's not
a critic at all. They do criticism better in England.

"But the point is, they sound the popular note, and they sound it so
beautifully and morally and contentedly. Their reviews remind me of a
British Sunday. They are the popular mouthpieces. They back up your
professors of English, and your professors of English back them up. And
there isn't an original idea in any of their skulls. They know only the
established, - in fact, they are the established. They are weak minded, and
the established impresses itself upon them as easily as the name of the
brewery is impressed on a beer bottle. And their function is to catch all
the young fellows attending the university, to drive out of their minds any
glimmering originality that may chance to be there, and to put upon them
the stamp of the established."

"I think I am nearer the truth," she replied, "when I stand by the
established, than you are, raging around like an iconoclastic South Sea
Islander."

"It was the missionary who did the image breaking," he laughed. "And
unfortunately, all the missionaries are off among the heathen, so there are
none left at home to break those old images, Mr. Vanderwater and Mr.
Praps."

"And the college professors, as well," she added.

He shook his head emphatically. "No; the science professors should live.
They're really great. But it would be a good deed to break the heads of
nine-tenths of the English professors - little, microscopic-minded
parrots!"

Which was rather severe on the professors, but which to Ruth was blasphemy.
She could not help but measure the professors, neat, scholarly, in fitting
clothes, speaking in well-modulated voices, breathing of culture and
refinement, with this almost indescribable young fellow whom somehow she
loved, whose clothes never would fit him, whose heavy muscles told of
damning toil, who grew excited when he talked, substituting abuse for calm
statement and passionate utterance for cool self-possession. They at least
earned good salaries and were - yes, she compelled herself to face it -
were gentlemen; while he could not earn a penny, and he was not as they.

She did not weigh Martin's words nor judge his argument by them. Her
conclusion that his argument was wrong was reached - unconsciously, it is
true - by a comparison of externals. They, the professors, were right in
their literary judgments because they were successes. Martin's literary
judgments were wrong because he could not sell his wares. To use his own
phrase, they made good, and he did not make good. And besides, it did not
seem reasonable that he should be right - he who had stood, so short a time
before, in that same living room, blushing and awkward, acknowledging his
introduction, looking fearfully about him at the bric-a-brac his swinging
shoulders threatened to break, asking how long since Swinburne died, and
boastfully announcing that he had read "Excelsior" and the "Psalm of Life."

Unwittingly, Ruth herself proved his point that she worshipped the
established. Martin followed the processes of her thoughts, but forbore to
go farther. He did not love her for what she thought of Praps and
Vanderwater and English professors, and he was coming to realize, with
increasing conviction, that he possessed brain-areas and stretches of
knowledge which she could never comprehend nor know existed.

In music she thought him unreasonable, and in the matter of opera not only
unreasonable but wilfully perverse.

"How did you like it?" she asked him one night, on the way home from the
opera.

It was a night when he had taken her at the expense of a month's rigid
economizing on food. After vainly waiting for him to speak about it,
herself still tremulous and stirred by what she had just seen and heard,
she had asked the question.

"I liked the overture," was his answer. "It was splendid."

"Yes, but the opera itself?"

"That was splendid too; that is, the orchestra was, though I'd have enjoyed
it more if those jumping-jacks had kept quiet or gone off the stage."

Ruth was aghast.

"You don't mean Tetralani or Barillo?" she queried.

"All of them - the whole kit and crew."

"But they are great artists," she protested.

"They spoiled the music just the same, with their antics and unrealities."

"But don't you like Barillo's voice?" Ruth asked. "He is next to Caruso,
they say."

"Of course I liked him, and I liked Tetralani even better. Her voice is
exquisite - or at least I think so."

"But, but - " Ruth stammered. "I don't know what you mean, then. You admire
their voices, yet say they spoiled the music."

"Precisely that. I'd give anything to hear them in concert, and I'd give
even a bit more not to hear them when the orchestra is playing. I'm afraid
I am a hopeless realist. Great singers are not great actors. To hear
Barillo sing a love passage with the voice of an angel, and to hear
Tetralani reply like another angel, and to hear it all accompanied by a
perfect orgy of glowing and colorful music - is ravishing, most ravishing.
I do not admit it. I assert it. But the whole effect is spoiled when I look
at them - at Tetralani, five feet ten in her stocking feet and weighing a
hundred and ninety pounds, and at Barillo, a scant five feet four,
greasy-featured, with the chest of a squat, undersized blacksmith, and at
the pair of them, attitudinizing, clasping their breasts, flinging their
arms in the air like demented creatures in an asylum; and when I am
expected to accept all this as the faithful illusion of a love-scene
between a slender and beautiful princess and a handsome, romantic, young
prince - why, I can't accept it, that's all. It's rot; it's absurd; it's
unreal. That's what's the matter with it. It's not real. Don't tell me that
anybody in this world ever made love that way. Why, if I'd made love to you
in such fashion, you'd have boxed my ears."

"But you misunderstand," Ruth protested. "Every form of art has its
limitations." (She was busy recalling a lecture she had heard at the
university on the conventions of the arts.) "In painting there are only two
dimensions to the canvas, yet you accept the illusion of three dimensions
which the art of a painter enables him to throw into the canvas. In
writing, again, the author must be omnipotent. You accept as perfectly
legitimate the author's account of the secret thoughts of the heroine, and
yet all the time you know that the heroine was alone when thinking these
thoughts, and that neither the author nor any one else was capable of
hearing them. And so with the stage, with sculpture, with opera, with every
art form. Certain irreconcilable things must be accepted."

"Yes, I understood that," Martin answered. "All the arts have their
conventions." (Ruth was surprised at his use of the word. It was as if he
had studied at the university himself, instead of being ill-equipped from
browsing at haphazard through the books in the library.) "But even the
conventions must be real. Trees, painted on flat cardboard and stuck up on
each side of the stage, we accept as a forest. It is a real enough
convention. But, on the other hand, we would not accept a sea scene as a
forest. We can't do it. It violates our senses. Nor would you, or, rather,
should you, accept the ravings and writhings and agonized contortions of
those two lunatics to-night as a convincing portrayal of love."

"But you don't hold yourself superior to all the judges of music?" she
protested.

"No, no, not for a moment. I merely maintain my right as an individual. I
have just been telling you what I think, in order to explain why the
elephantine gambols of Madame Tetralani spoil the orchestra for me. The
world's judges of music may all be right. But I am I, and I won't
subordinate my taste to the unanimous judgment of mankind. If I don't like
a thing, I don't like it, that's all; and there is no reason under the sun
why I should ape a liking for it just because the majority of my
fellow-creatures like it, or make believe they like it. I can't follow the
fashions in the things I like or dislike."

"But music, you know, is a matter of training," Ruth argued; "and opera is
even more a matter of training. May it not be - "

"That I am not trained in opera?" he dashed in.

She nodded.

"The very thing," he agreed. "And I consider I am fortunate in not having
been caught when I was young. If I had, I could have wept sentimental tears
to-night, and the clownish antics of that precious pair would have but
enhanced the beauty of their voices and the beauty of the accompanying
orchestra. You are right. It's mostly a matter of training. And I am too
old, now. I must have the real or nothing. An illusion that won't convince
is a palpable lie, and that's what grand opera is to me when little Barillo
throws a fit, clutches mighty Tetralani in his arms (also in a fit), and
tells her how passionately he adores her."

Again Ruth measured his thoughts by comparison of externals and in
accordance with her belief in the established. Who was he that he should be
right and all the cultured world wrong? His words and thoughts made no
impression upon her. She was too firmly intrenched in the established to
have any sympathy with revolutionary ideas. She had always been used to
music, and she had enjoyed opera ever since she was a child, and all her
world had enjoyed it, too. Then by what right did Martin Eden emerge, as he
had so recently emerged, from his rag-time and working-class songs, and
pass judgment on the world's music? She was vexed with him, and as she
walked beside him she had a vague feeling of outrage. At the best, in her
most charitable frame of mind, she considered the statement of his views to
be a caprice, an erratic and uncalled-for prank. But when he took her in
his arms at the door and kissed her good night in tender lover-fashion, she
forgot everything in the outrush of her own love to him. And later, on a
sleepless pillow, she puzzled, as she had often puzzled of late, as to how
it was that she loved so strange a man, and loved him despite the
disapproval of her people.

And next day Martin Eden cast hack-work aside, and at white heat hammered
out an essay to which he gave the title, "The Philosophy of Illusion." A
stamp started it on its travels, but it was destined to receive many stamps
and to be started on many travels in the months that followed.

CHAPTER XXV

Maria Silva was poor, and all the ways of poverty were clear to her.
Poverty, to Ruth, was a word signifying a not-nice condition of existence.
That was her total knowledge on the subject. She knew Martin was poor, and
his condition she associated in her mind with the boyhood of Abraham
Lincoln, of Mr. Butler, and of other men who had become successes. Also,
while aware that poverty was anything but delectable, she had a comfortable
middle-class feeling that poverty was salutary, that it was a sharp spur
that urged on to success all men who were not degraded and hopeless
drudges. So that her knowledge that Martin was so poor that he had pawned
his watch and overcoat did not disturb her. She even considered it the
hopeful side of the situation, believing that sooner or later it would
arouse him and compel him to abandon his writing.

Ruth never read hunger in Martin's face, which had grown lean and had
enlarged the slight hollows in the cheeks. In fact, she marked the change
in his face with satisfaction. It seemed to refine him, to remove from him
much of the dross of flesh and the too animal- like vigor that lured her
while she detested it. Sometimes, when with her, she noted an unusual
brightness in his eyes, and she admired it, for it made him appear more the
poet and the scholar - the things he would have liked to be and which she
would have liked him to be. But Maria Silva read a different tale in the
hollow cheeks and the burning eyes, and she noted the changes in them from
day to day, by them following the ebb and flow of his fortunes. She saw him
leave the house with his overcoat and return without it, though the day was
chill and raw, and promptly she saw his cheeks fill out slightly and the
fire of hunger leave his eyes. In the same way she had seen his wheel and
watch go, and after each event she had seen his vigor bloom again.

Likewise she watched his toils, and knew the measure of the midnight oil he
burned. Work! She knew that he outdid her, though his work was of a
different order. And she was surprised to behold that the less food he had,
the harder he worked. On occasion, in a casual sort of way, when she
thought hunger pinched hardest, she would send him in a loaf of new baking,
awkwardly covering the act with banter to the effect that it was better
than he could bake. And again, she would send one of her toddlers in to him
with a great pitcher of hot soup, debating inwardly the while whether she
was justified in taking it from the mouths of her own flesh and blood. Nor
was Martin ungrateful, knowing as he did the lives of the poor, and that if
ever in the world there was charity, this was it.

On a day when she had filled her brood with what was left in the house,
Maria invested her last fifteen cents in a gallon of cheap wine. Martin,
coming into her kitchen to fetch water, was invited to sit down and drink.
He drank her very-good health, and in return she drank his. Then she drank
to prosperity in his undertakings, and he drank to the hope that James
Grant would show up and pay her for his washing. James Grant was a
journeymen carpenter who did not always pay his bills and who owed Maria
three dollars.

Both Maria and Martin drank the sour new wine on empty stomachs, and it
went swiftly to their heads. Utterly differentiated creatures that they
were, they were lonely in their misery, and though the misery was tacitly
ignored, it was the bond that drew them together. Maria was amazed to learn
that he had been in the Azores, where she had lived until she was eleven.
She was doubly amazed that he had been in the Hawaiian Islands, whither she
had migrated from the Azores with her people. But her amazement passed all
bounds when he told her he had been on Maui, the particular island whereon
she had attained womanhood and married. Kahului, where she had first met
her husband, - he, Martin, had been there twice! Yes, she remembered the
sugar steamers, and he had been on them - well, well, it was a small world.
And Wailuku! That place, too! Did he know the head-luna of the plantation?
Yes, and had had a couple of drinks with him.

And so they reminiscenced and drowned their hunger in the raw, sour wine.
To Martin the future did not seem so dim. Success trembled just before him.
He was on the verge of clasping it. Then he studied the deep-lined face of
the toil-worn woman before him, remembered her soups and loaves of new
baking, and felt spring up in him the warmest gratitude and philanthropy.

"Maria," he exclaimed suddenly. "What would you like to have?"

She looked at him, bepuzzled.

"What would you like to have now, right now, if you could get it?"

"Shoe alla da roun' for da childs - seven pairs da shoe."

"You shall have them," he announced, while she nodded her head gravely.
"But I mean a big wish, something big that you want."

Her eyes sparkled good-naturedly. He was choosing to make fun with her,
Maria, with whom few made fun these days.

"Think hard," he cautioned, just as she was opening her mouth to speak.

"Alla right," she answered. "I thinka da hard. I lika da house, dis house -
all mine, no paya da rent, seven dollar da month."

"You shall have it," he granted, "and in a short time. Now wish the great
wish. Make believe I am God, and I say to you anything you want you can
have. Then you wish that thing, and I listen."

Maria considered solemnly for a space.

"You no 'fraid?" she asked warningly.

"No, no," he laughed, "I'm not afraid. Go ahead."

"Most verra big," she warned again.

"All right. Fire away."

"Well, den - " She drew a big breath like a child, as she voiced to the
uttermost all she cared to demand of life. "I lika da have one milka ranch
- good milka ranch. Plenty cow, plenty land, plenty grass. I lika da have
near San Le-an; my sister liva dere. I sella da milk in Oakland. I maka da
plentee mon. Joe an' Nick no runna da cow. Dey go-a to school. Bimeby maka
da good engineer, worka da railroad. Yes, I lika da milka ranch."

She paused and regarded Martin with twinkling eyes.

"You shall have it," he answered promptly.

She nodded her head and touched her lips courteously to the wine- glass and
to the giver of the gift she knew would never be given. His heart was
right, and in her own heart she appreciated his intention as much as if the
gift had gone with it.

"No, Maria," he went on; "Nick and Joe won't have to peddle milk, and all
the kids can go to school and wear shoes the whole year round. It will be a
first-class milk ranch - everything complete. There will be a house to live
in and a stable for the horses, and cow-barns, of course. There will be
chickens, pigs, vegetables, fruit trees, and everything like that; and
there will be enough cows to pay for a hired man or two. Then you won't
have anything to do but take care of the children. For that matter, if you
find a good man, you can marry and take it easy while he runs the ranch."

And from such largess, dispensed from his future, Martin turned and took
his one good suit of clothes to the pawnshop. His plight was desperate for
him to do this, for it cut him off from Ruth. He had no second-best suit
that was presentable, and though he could go to the butcher and the baker,
and even on occasion to his sister's, it was beyond all daring to dream of
entering the Morse home so disreputably apparelled.

He toiled on, miserable and well-nigh hopeless. It began to appear to him
that the second battle was lost and that he would have to go to work. In
doing this he would satisfy everybody - the grocer, his sister, Ruth, and
even Maria, to whom he owed a month's room rent. He was two months behind
with his type-writer, and the agency was clamoring for payment or for the
return of the machine. In desperation, all but ready to surrender, to make
a truce with fate until he could get a fresh start, he took the civil
service examinations for the Railway Mail. To his surprise, he passed
first. The job was assured, though when the call would come to enter upon
his duties nobody knew.

It was at this time, at the lowest ebb, that the smooth-running editorial
machine broke down. A cog must have slipped or an oil- cup run dry, for the
postman brought him one morning a short, thin envelope. Martin glanced at
the upper left-hand corner and read the name and address of the
TRANSCONTINENTAL MONTHLY. His heart gave a great leap, and he suddenly felt
faint, the sinking feeling accompanied by a strange trembling of the knees.
He staggered into his room and sat down on the bed, the envelope still
unopened, and in that moment came understanding to him how people suddenly
fall dead upon receipt of extraordinarily good news.

Of course this was good news. There was no manuscript in that thin
envelope, therefore it was an acceptance. He knew the story in the hands of
the TRANSCONTINENTAL. It was "The Ring of Bells," one of his horror
stories, and it was an even five thousand words. And, since first-class
magazines always paid on acceptance, there was a check inside. Two cents a
word - twenty dollars a thousand; the check must be a hundred dollars. One
hundred dollars! As he tore the envelope open, every item of all his debts
surged in his brain - $3.85 to the grocer; butcher $4.00 flat; baker,
$2.00; fruit store, $5.00; total, $14.85. Then there was room rent, $2.50;
another month in advance, $2.50; two months' type-writer, $8.00; a month in
advance, $4.00; total, $31.85. And finally to be added, his pledges, plus
interest, with the pawnbroker - watch, $5.50; overcoat, $5.50; wheel,
$7.75; suit of clothes, $5.50 (60 % interest, but what did it matter?) -
grand total, $56.10. He saw, as if visible in the air before him, in
illuminated figures, the whole sum, and the subtraction that followed and
that gave a remainder of $43.90. When he had squared every debt, redeemed
every pledge, he would still have jingling in his pockets a princely
$43.90. And on top of that he would have a month's rent paid in advance on
the type-writer and on the room.

By this time he had drawn the single sheet of type-written letter out and
spread it open. There was no check. He peered into the envelope, held it to
the light, but could not trust his eyes, and in trembling haste tore the
envelope apart. There was no check. He read the letter, skimming it line by
line, dashing through the editor's praise of his story to the meat of the
letter, the statement why the check had not been sent. He found no such
statement, but he did find that which made him suddenly wilt. The letter
slid from his hand. His eyes went lack-lustre, and he lay back on the
pillow, pulling the blanket about him and up to his chin.

Five dollars for "The Ring of Bells" - five dollars for five thousand
words! Instead of two cents a word, ten words for a cent! And the editor
had praised it, too. And he would receive the check when the story was
published. Then it was all poppycock, two cents a word for minimum rate and
payment upon acceptance. It was a lie, and it had led him astray. He would
never have attempted to write had he known that. He would have gone to work
- to work for Ruth. He went back to the day he first attempted to write,
and was appalled at the enormous waste of time - and all for ten words for
a cent. And the other high rewards of writers, that he had read about, must
be lies, too. His second-hand ideas of authorship were wrong, for here was
the proof of it.

The TRANSCONTINENTAL sold for twenty-five cents, and its dignified and
artistic cover proclaimed it as among the first-class magazines. It was a
staid, respectable magazine, and it had been published continuously since
long before he was born. Why, on the outside cover were printed every month
the words of one of the world's great writers, words proclaiming the
inspired mission of the TRANSCONTINENTAL by a star of literature whose
first coruscations had appeared inside those self-same covers. And the high
and lofty, heaven-inspired TRANSCONTINENTAL paid five dollars for five
thousand words! The great writer had recently died in a foreign land - in
dire poverty, Martin remembered, which was not to be wondered at,
considering the magnificent pay authors receive.

Well, he had taken the bait, the newspaper lies about writers and their
pay, and he had wasted two years over it. But he would disgorge the bait
now. Not another line would he ever write. He would do what Ruth wanted him
to do, what everybody wanted him to do - get a job. The thought of going to
work reminded him of Joe - Joe, tramping through the land of nothing-to-do.
Martin heaved a great sigh of envy. The reaction of nineteen hours a day
for many days was strong upon him. But then, Joe was not in love, had none
of the responsibilities of love, and he could afford to loaf through the
land of nothing-to-do. He, Martin, had something to work for, and go to
work he would. He would start out early next morning to hunt a job. And he
would let Ruth know, too, that he had mended his ways and was willing to go
into her father's office.

Five dollars for five thousand words, ten words for a cent, the market
price for art. The disappointment of it, the lie of it, the infamy of it,
were uppermost in his thoughts; and under his closed eyelids, in fiery
figures, burned the "$3.85" he owed the grocer. He shivered, and was aware
of an aching in his bones. The small of his back ached especially. His head
ached, the top of it ached, the back of it ached, the brains inside of it
ached and seemed to be swelling, while the ache over his brows was
intolerable. And beneath the brows, planted under his lids, was the
merciless "$3.85." He opened his eyes to escape it, but the white light of
the room seemed to sear the balls and forced him to close his eyes, when
the "$3.85" confronted him again.

Five dollars for five thousand words, ten words for a cent - that
particular thought took up its residence in his brain, and he could no more
escape it than he could the "$3.85" under his eyelids. A change seemed to
come over the latter, and he watched curiously, till "$2.00" burned in its
stead. Ah, he thought, that was the baker. The next sum that appeared was
"$2.50." It puzzled him, and he pondered it as if life and death hung on
the solution. He owed somebody two dollars and a half, that was certain,
but who was it? To find it was the task set him by an imperious and
malignant universe, and he wandered through the endless corridors of his
mind, opening all manner of lumber rooms and chambers stored with odds and
ends of memories and knowledge as he vainly sought the answer. After
several centuries it came to him, easily, without effort, that it was
Maria. With a great relief he turned his soul to the screen of torment
under his lids. He had solved the problem; now he could rest. But no, the
"$2.50" faded away, and in its place burned "$8.00." Who was that? He must
go the dreary round of his mind again and find out.

How long he was gone on this quest he did not know, but after what seemed
an enormous lapse of time, he was called back to himself by a knock at the
door, and by Maria's asking if he was sick. He replied in a muffled voice
he did not recognize, saying that he was merely taking a nap. He was
surprised when he noted the darkness of night in the room. He had received
the letter at two in the afternoon, and he realized that he was sick.

Then the "$8.00" began to smoulder under his lids again, and he returned
himself to servitude. But he grew cunning. There was no need for him to
wander through his mind. He had been a fool. He pulled a lever and made his
mind revolve about him, a monstrous wheel of fortune, a merry-go-round of
memory, a revolving sphere of wisdom. Faster and faster it revolved, until
its vortex sucked him in and he was flung whirling through black chaos.

Quite naturally he found himself at a mangle, feeding starched cuffs. But
as he fed he noticed figures printed in the cuffs. It was a new way of
marking linen, he thought, until, looking closer, he saw "$3.85" on one of
the cuffs. Then it came to him that it was the grocer's bill, and that
these were his bills flying around on the drum of the mangle. A crafty idea
came to him. He would throw the bills on the floor and so escape paying
them. No sooner thought than done, and he crumpled the cuffs spitefully as
he flung them upon an unusually dirty floor. Ever the heap grew, and though
each bill was duplicated a thousand times, he found only one for two
dollars and a half, which was what he owed Maria. That meant that Maria
would not press for payment, and he resolved generously that it would be
the only one he would pay; so he began searching through the cast-out heap
for hers. He sought it desperately, for ages, and was still searching when
the manager of the hotel entered, the fat Dutchman. His face blazed with
wrath, and he shouted in stentorian tones that echoed down the universe, "I
shall deduct the cost of those cuffs from your wages!" The pile of cuffs
grew into a mountain, and Martin knew that he was doomed to toil for a
thousand years to pay for them. Well, there was nothing left to do but kill
the manager and burn down the laundry. But the big Dutchman frustrated him,
seizing him by the nape of the neck and dancing him up and down. He danced
him over the ironing tables, the stove, and the mangles, and out into the
wash-room and over the wringer and washer. Martin was danced until his
teeth rattled and his head ached, and he marvelled that the Dutchman was so
strong.

And then he found himself before the mangle, this time receiving the cuffs
an editor of a magazine was feeding from the other side. Each cuff was a
check, and Martin went over them anxiously, in a fever of expectation, but
they were all blanks. He stood there and received the blanks for a million
years or so, never letting one go by for fear it might be filled out. At
last he found it. With trembling fingers he held it to the light. It was
for five dollars. "Ha! Ha!" laughed the editor across the mangle. "Well,
then, I shall kill you," Martin said. He went out into the wash- room to
get the axe, and found Joe starching manuscripts. He tried to make him
desist, then swung the axe for him. But the weapon remained poised in
mid-air, for Martin found himself back in the ironing room in the midst of
a snow-storm. No, it was not snow that was falling, but checks of large
denomination, the smallest not less than a thousand dollars. He began to
collect them and sort them out, in packages of a hundred, tying each
package securely with twine.

He looked up from his task and saw Joe standing before him juggling
flat-irons, starched shirts, and manuscripts. Now and again he reached out
and added a bundle of checks to the flying miscellany that soared through
the roof and out of sight in a tremendous circle. Martin struck at him, but
he seized the axe and added it to the flying circle. Then he plucked Martin
and added him. Martin went up through the roof, clutching at manuscripts,
so that by the time he came down he had a large armful. But no sooner down
than up again, and a second and a third time and countless times he flew
around the circle. From far off he could hear a childish treble singing:
"Waltz me around again, Willie, around, around, around."

He recovered the axe in the midst of the Milky Way of checks, starched
shirts, and manuscripts, and prepared, when he came down, to kill Joe. But
he did not come down. Instead, at two in the morning, Maria, having heard
his groans through the thin partition, came into his room, to put hot
flat-irons against his body and damp cloths upon his aching eyes.

CHAPTER XXVI

Martin Eden did not go out to hunt for a job in the morning. It was late
afternoon before he came out of his delirium and gazed with aching eyes
about the room. Mary, one of the tribe of Silva, eight years old, keeping
watch, raised a screech at sight of his returning consciousness. Maria
hurried into the room from the kitchen. She put her work-calloused hand
upon his hot forehead and felt his pulse.

"You lika da eat?" she asked.

He shook his head. Eating was farthest from his desire, and he wondered
that he should ever have been hungry in his life.

"I'm sick, Maria," he said weakly. "What is it? Do you know?"

"Grip," she answered. "Two or three days you alla da right. Better you no
eat now. Bimeby plenty can eat, to-morrow can eat maybe."

Martin was not used to sickness, and when Maria and her little girl left
him, he essayed to get up and dress. By a supreme exertion of will, with
rearing brain and eyes that ached so that he could not keep them open, he
managed to get out of bed, only to be left stranded by his senses upon the
table. Half an hour later he managed to regain the bed, where he was
content to lie with closed eyes and analyze his various pains and
weaknesses. Maria came in several times to change the cold cloths on his
forehead. Otherwise she left him in peace, too wise to vex him with
chatter. This moved him to gratitude, and he murmured to himself, "Maria,
you getta da milka ranch, all righta, all right."

Then he remembered his long-buried past of yesterday.

It seemed a life-time since he had received that letter from the
TRANSCONTINENTAL, a life-time since it was all over and done with and a new
page turned. He had shot his bolt, and shot it hard, and now he was down on
his back. If he hadn't starved himself, he wouldn't have been caught by La
Grippe. He had been run down, and he had not had the strength to throw off
the germ of disease which had invaded his system. This was what resulted.

"What does it profit a man to write a whole library and lose his own life?"
he demanded aloud. "This is no place for me. No more literature in mine. Me
for the counting-house and ledger, the monthly salary, and the little home
with Ruth."

Two days later, having eaten an egg and two slices of toast and drunk a cup
of tea, he asked for his mail, but found his eyes still hurt too much to
permit him to read.

"You read for me, Maria," he said. "Never mind the big, long letters. Throw
them under the table. Read me the small letters."

"No can," was the answer. "Teresa, she go to school, she can."

So Teresa Silva, aged nine, opened his letters and read them to him. He
listened absently to a long dun from the type-writer people, his mind busy
with ways and means of finding a job. Suddenly he was shocked back to
himself.

"'We offer you forty dollars for all serial rights in your story,'" Teresa
slowly spelled out, "'provided you allow us to make the alterations
suggested.'"

"What magazine is that?" Martin shouted. "Here, give it to me!"

He could see to read, now, and he was unaware of the pain of the action. It
was the WHITE MOUSE that was offering him forty dollars, and the story was
"The Whirlpool," another of his early horror stories. He read the letter
through again and again. The editor told him plainly that he had not
handled the idea properly, but that it was the idea they were buying
because it was original. If they could cut the story down one-third, they
would take it and send him forty dollars on receipt of his answer.

He called for pen and ink, and told the editor he could cut the story down
three-thirds if he wanted to, and to send the forty dollars right along.

The letter despatched to the letter-box by Teresa, Martin lay back and
thought. It wasn't a lie, after all. The WHITE MOUSE paid on acceptance.
There were three thousand words in "The Whirlpool." Cut down a third, there
would be two thousand. At forty dollars that would be two cents a word. Pay
on acceptance and two cents a word - the newspapers had told the truth. And
he had thought the WHITE MOUSE a third-rater! It was evident that he did
not know the magazines. He had deemed the TRANSCONTINENTAL a first-rater,
and it paid a cent for ten words. He had classed the WHITE MOUSE as of no
account, and it paid twenty times as much as the TRANSCONTINENTAL and also
had paid on acceptance.

Well, there was one thing certain: when he got well, he would not go out
looking for a job. There were more stories in his head as good as "The
Whirlpool," and at forty dollars apiece he could earn far more than in any
job or position. Just when he thought the battle lost, it was won. He had
proved for his career. The way was clear. Beginning with the WHITE MOUSE he
would add magazine after magazine to his growing list of patrons. Hack-work
could be put aside. For that matter, it had been wasted time, for it had
not brought him a dollar. He would devote himself to work, good work, and
he would pour out the best that was in him. He wished Ruth was there to
share in his joy, and when he went over the letters left lying on his bed,
he found one from her. It was sweetly reproachful, wondering what had kept
him away for so dreadful a length of time. He reread the letter adoringly,
dwelling over her handwriting, loving each stroke of her pen, and in the
end kissing her signature.

And when he answered, he told her recklessly that he had not been to see
her because his best clothes were in pawn. He told her that he had been
sick, but was once more nearly well, and that inside ten days or two weeks
(as soon as a letter could travel to New York City and return) he would
redeem his clothes and be with her.

But Ruth did not care to wait ten days or two weeks. Besides, her lover was
sick. The next afternoon, accompanied by Arthur, she arrived in the Morse
carriage, to the unqualified delight of the Silva tribe and of all the
urchins on the street, and to the consternation of Maria. She boxed the
ears of the Silvas who crowded about the visitors on the tiny front porch,
and in more than usual atrocious English tried to apologize for her
appearance. Sleeves rolled up from soap-flecked arms and a wet gunny-sack
around her waist told of the task at which she had been caught. So
flustered was she by two such grand young people asking for her lodger,
that she forgot to invite them to sit down in the little parlor. To enter
Martin's room, they passed through the kitchen, warm and moist and steamy
from the big washing in progress. Maria, in her excitement, jammed the
bedroom and bedroom-closet doors together, and for five minutes, through
the partly open door, clouds of steam, smelling of soap-suds and dirt,
poured into the sick chamber.

Ruth succeeded in veering right and left and right again, and in running
the narrow passage between table and bed to Martin's side; but Arthur
veered too wide and fetched up with clatter and bang of pots and pans in
the corner where Martin did his cooking. Arthur did not linger long. Ruth
occupied the only chair, and having done his duty, he went outside and
stood by the gate, the centre of seven marvelling Silvas, who watched him
as they would have watched a curiosity in a side-show. All about the
carriage were gathered the children from a dozen blocks, waiting and eager
for some tragic and terrible denouement. Carriages were seen on their
street only for weddings and funerals. Here was neither marriage nor death:
therefore, it was something transcending experience and well worth waiting
for.

Martin had been wild to see Ruth. His was essentially a love- nature, and
he possessed more than the average man's need for sympathy. He was starving
for sympathy, which, with him, meant intelligent understanding; and he had
yet to learn that Ruth's sympathy was largely sentimental and tactful, and
that it proceeded from gentleness of nature rather than from understanding
of the objects of her sympathy. So it was while Martin held her hand and
gladly talked, that her love for him prompted her to press his hand in
return, and that her eyes were moist and luminous at sight of his
helplessness and of the marks suffering had stamped upon his face.

But while he told her of his two acceptances, of his despair when he
received the one from the TRANSCONTINENTAL, and of the corresponding
delight with which he received the one from the WHITE MOUSE, she did not
follow him. She heard the words he uttered and understood their literal
import, but she was not with him in his despair and his delight. She could
not get out of herself. She was not interested in selling stories to
magazines. What was important to her was matrimony. She was not aware of
it, however, any more than she was aware that her desire that Martin take a
position was the instinctive and preparative impulse of motherhood. She
would have blushed had she been told as much in plain, set terms, and next,
she might have grown indignant and asserted that her sole interest lay in
the man she loved and her desire for him to make the best of himself. So,
while Martin poured out his heart to her, elated with the first success his
chosen work in the world had received, she paid heed to his bare words
only, gazing now and again about the room, shocked by what she saw.

For the first time Ruth gazed upon the sordid face of poverty. Starving
lovers had always seemed romantic to her, - but she had had no idea how
starving lovers lived. She had never dreamed it could be like this. Ever
her gaze shifted from the room to him and back again. The steamy smell of
dirty clothes, which had entered with her from the kitchen, was sickening.
Martin must be soaked with it, Ruth concluded, if that awful woman washed
frequently. Such was the contagiousness of degradation. When she looked at
Martin, she seemed to see the smirch left upon him by his surroundings. She
had never seen him unshaven, and the three days' growth of beard on his
face was repulsive to her. Not alone did it give him the same dark and
murky aspect of the Silva house, inside and out, but it seemed to emphasize
that animal-like strength of his which she detested. And here he was, being
confirmed in his madness by the two acceptances he took such pride in
telling her about. A little longer and he would have surrendered and gone
to work. Now he would continue on in this horrible house, writing and
starving for a few more months.

"What is that smell?" she asked suddenly.

"Some of Maria's washing smells, I imagine," was the answer. "I am growing
quite accustomed to them."

"No, no; not that. It is something else. A stale, sickish smell."

Martin sampled the air before replying.

"I can't smell anything else, except stale tobacco smoke," he announced.

"That's it. It is terrible. Why do you smoke so much, Martin?"

"I don't know, except that I smoke more than usual when I am lonely. And
then, too, it's such a long-standing habit. I learned when I was only a
youngster."

"It is not a nice habit, you know," she reproved. "It smells to heaven."

"That's the fault of the tobacco. I can afford only the cheapest. But wait
until I get that forty-dollar check. I'll use a brand that is not offensive
even to the angels. But that wasn't so bad, was it, two acceptances in
three days? That forty-five dollars will pay about all my debts."

"For two years' work?" she queried.

"No, for less than a week's work. Please pass me that book over on the far
corner of the table, the account book with the gray cover." He opened it
and began turning over the pages rapidly. "Yes, I was right. Four days for
'The Ring of Bells,' two days for 'The Whirlpool.' That's forty-five
dollars for a week's work, one hundred and eighty dollars a month. That
beats any salary I can command. And, besides, I'm just beginning. A
thousand dollars a month is not too much to buy for you all I want you to
have. A salary of five hundred a month would be too small. That forty-five
dollars is just a starter. Wait till I get my stride. Then watch my smoke."

Ruth misunderstood his slang, and reverted to cigarettes.

"You smoke more than enough as it is, and the brand of tobacco will make no
difference. It is the smoking itself that is not nice, no matter what the
brand may be. You are a chimney, a living volcano, a perambulating
smoke-stack, and you are a perfect disgrace, Martin dear, you know you
are."

She leaned toward him, entreaty in her eyes, and as he looked at her
delicate face and into her pure, limpid eyes, as of old he was struck with
his own unworthiness.

"I wish you wouldn't smoke any more," she whispered. "Please, for - my
sake."

"All right, I won't," he cried. "I'll do anything you ask, dear love,
anything; you know that."

A great temptation assailed her. In an insistent way she had caught
glimpses of the large, easy-going side of his nature, and she felt sure, if
she asked him to cease attempting to write, that he would grant her wish.
In the swift instant that elapsed, the words trembled on her lips. But she
did not utter them. She was not quite brave enough; she did not quite dare.
Instead, she leaned toward him to meet him, and in his arms murmured:-

"You know, it is really not for my sake, Martin, but for your own. I am
sure smoking hurts you; and besides, it is not good to be a slave to
anything, to a drug least of all."

"I shall always be your slave," he smiled.

"In which case, I shall begin issuing my commands."

She looked at him mischievously, though deep down she was already
regretting that she had not preferred her largest request.

"I live but to obey, your majesty."

"Well, then, my first commandment is, Thou shalt not omit to shave every
day. Look how you have scratched my cheek."

And so it ended in caresses and love-laughter. But she had made one point,
and she could not expect to make more than one at a time. She felt a
woman's pride in that she had made him stop smoking. Another time she would
persuade him to take a position, for had he not said he would do anything
she asked?

She left his side to explore the room, examining the clothes-lines of notes
overhead, learning the mystery of the tackle used for suspending his wheel
under the ceiling, and being saddened by the heap of manuscripts under the
table which represented to her just so much wasted time. The oil-stove won
her admiration, but on investigating the food shelves she found them empty.

"Why, you haven't anything to eat, you poor dear," she said with tender
compassion. "You must be starving."

"I store my food in Maria's safe and in her pantry," he lied. "It keeps
better there. No danger of my starving. Look at that."

She had come back to his side, and she saw him double his arm at the elbow,
the biceps crawling under his shirt-sleeve and swelling into a knot of
muscle, heavy and hard. The sight repelled her. Sentimentally, she disliked
it. But her pulse, her blood, every fibre of her, loved it and yearned for
it, and, in the old, inexplicable way, she leaned toward him, not away from
him. And in the moment that followed, when he crushed her in his arms, the
brain of her, concerned with the superficial aspects of life, was in
revolt; while the heart of her, the woman of her, concerned with life
itself, exulted triumphantly. It was in moments like this that she felt to
the uttermost the greatness of her love for Martin, for it was almost a
swoon of delight to her to feel his strong arms about her, holding her
tightly, hurting her with the grip of their fervor. At such moments she
found justification for her treason to her standards, for her violation of
her own high ideals, and, most of all, for her tacit disobedience to her
mother and father. They did not want her to marry this man. It shocked them
that she should love him. It shocked her, too, sometimes, when she was
apart from him, a cool and reasoning creature. With him, she loved him - in
truth, at times a vexed and worried love; but love it was, a love that was
stronger than she.

"This La Grippe is nothing," he was saying. "It hurts a bit, and gives one
a nasty headache, but it doesn't compare with break-bone fever."

"Have you had that, too?" she queried absently, intent on the heaven-sent
justification she was finding in his arms.

And so, with absent queries, she led him on, till suddenly his words
startled her.

He had had the fever in a secret colony of thirty lepers on one of the
Hawaiian Islands.

"But why did you go there?" she demanded.

Such royal carelessness of body seemed criminal.

"Because I didn't know," he answered. "I never dreamed of lepers. When I
deserted the schooner and landed on the beach, I headed inland for some
place of hiding. For three days I lived off guavas, OHIA-apples, and
bananas, all of which grew wild in the jungle. On the fourth day I found
the trail - a mere foot-trail. It led inland, and it led up. It was the way
I wanted to go, and it showed signs of recent travel. At one place it ran
along the crest of a ridge that was no more than a knife-edge. The trail
wasn't three feet wide on the crest, and on either side the ridge fell away
in precipices hundreds of feet deep. One man, with plenty of ammunition,
could have held it against a hundred thousand.

"It was the only way in to the hiding-place. Three hours after I found the
trail I was there, in a little mountain valley, a pocket in the midst of
lava peaks. The whole place was terraced for taro- patches, fruit trees
grew there, and there were eight or ten grass huts. But as soon as I saw
the inhabitants I knew what I'd struck. One sight of them was enough."

"What did you do?" Ruth demanded breathlessly, listening, like any
Desdemona, appalled and fascinated.

"Nothing for me to do. Their leader was a kind old fellow, pretty far gone,
but he ruled like a king. He had discovered the little valley and founded
the settlement - all of which was against the law. But he had guns, plenty
of ammunition, and those Kanakas, trained to the shooting of wild cattle
and wild pig, were dead shots. No, there wasn't any running away for Martin
Eden. He stayed - for three months."

"But how did you escape?"

"I'd have been there yet, if it hadn't been for a girl there, a
half-Chinese, quarter-white, and quarter-Hawaiian. She was a beauty, poor
thing, and well educated. Her mother, in Honolulu, was worth a million or
so. Well, this girl got me away at last. Her mother financed the
settlement, you see, so the girl wasn't afraid of being punished for
letting me go. But she made me swear, first, never to reveal the
hiding-place; and I never have. This is the first time I have even
mentioned it. The girl had just the first signs of leprosy. The fingers of
her right hand were slightly twisted, and there was a small spot on her
arm. That was all. I guess she is dead, now."

"But weren't you frightened? And weren't you glad to get away without
catching that dreadful disease?"

"Well," he confessed, "I was a bit shivery at first; but I got used to it.
I used to feel sorry for that poor girl, though. That made me forget to be
afraid. She was such a beauty, in spirit as well as in appearance, and she
was only slightly touched; yet she was doomed to lie there, living the life
of a primitive savage and rotting slowly away. Leprosy is far more terrible
than you can imagine it."

"Poor thing," Ruth murmured softly. "It's a wonder she let you get away."

"How do you mean?" Martin asked unwittingly.

"Because she must have loved you," Ruth said, still softly. "Candidly, now,
didn't she?"

Martin's sunburn had been bleached by his work in the laundry and by the
indoor life he was living, while the hunger and the sickness had made his
face even pale; and across this pallor flowed the slow wave of a blush. He
was opening his mouth to speak, but Ruth shut him off.

"Never mind, don't answer; it's not necessary," she laughed.

But it seemed to him there was something metallic in her laughter, and that
the light in her eyes was cold. On the spur of the moment it reminded him
of a gale he had once experienced in the North Pacific. And for the moment
the apparition of the gale rose before his eyes - a gale at night, with a
clear sky and under a full moon, the huge seas glinting coldly in the
moonlight. Next, he saw the girl in the leper refuge and remembered it was
for love of him that she had let him go.

"She was noble," he said simply. "She gave me life."

That was all of the incident, but he heard Ruth muffle a dry sob in her
throat, and noticed that she turned her face away to gaze out of the
window. When she turned it back to him, it was composed, and there was no
hint of the gale in her eyes.

"I'm such a silly," she said plaintively. "But I can't help it. I do so
love you, Martin, I do, I do. I shall grow more catholic in time, but at
present I can't help being jealous of those ghosts of the past, and you
know your past is full of ghosts."

"It must be," she silenced his protest. "It could not be otherwise. And
there's poor Arthur motioning me to come. He's tired waiting. And now
good-by, dear."

"There's some kind of a mixture, put up by the druggists, that helps men to
stop the use of tobacco," she called back from the door, "and I am going to
send you some."

The door closed, but opened again.

"I do, I do," she whispered to him; and this time she was really gone.

Maria, with worshipful eyes that none the less were keen to note the
texture of Ruth's garments and the cut of them (a cut unknown that produced
an effect mysteriously beautiful), saw her to the carriage. The crowd of
disappointed urchins stared till the carriage disappeared from view, then
transferred their stare to Maria, who had abruptly become the most
important person on the street. But it was one of her progeny who blasted
Maria's reputation by announcing that the grand visitors had been for her
lodger. After that Maria dropped back into her old obscurity and Martin
began to notice the respectful manner in which he was regarded by the small
fry of the neighborhood. As for Maria, Martin rose in her estimation a full
hundred per cent, and had the Portuguese grocer witnessed that afternoon
carriage-call he would have allowed Martin an additional
three-dollars-and-eighty-five- cents' worth of credit.

CHAPTER XXVII

The sun of Martin's good fortune rose. The day after Ruth's visit, he
received a check for three dollars from a New York scandal weekly in
payment for three of his triolets. Two days later a newspaper published in
Chicago accepted his "Treasure Hunters," promising to pay ten dollars for
it on publication. The price was small, but it was the first article he had
written, his very first attempt to express his thought on the printed page.
To cap everything, the adventure serial for boys, his second attempt, was
accepted before the end of the week by a juvenile monthly calling itself
YOUTH AND AGE. It was true the serial was twenty-one thousand words, and
they offered to pay him sixteen dollars on publication, which was something
like seventy-five cents a thousand words; but it was equally true that it
was the second thing he had attempted to write and that he was himself
thoroughly aware of its clumsy worthlessness.

But even his earliest efforts were not marked with the clumsiness of
mediocrity. What characterized them was the clumsiness of too great
strength - the clumsiness which the tyro betrays when he crushes
butterflies with battering rams and hammers out vignettes with a war-club.
So it was that Martin was glad to sell his early efforts for songs. He knew
them for what they were, and it had not taken him long to acquire this
knowledge. What he pinned his faith to was his later work. He had striven
to be something more than a mere writer of magazine fiction. He had sought
to equip himself with the tools of artistry. On the other hand, he had not
sacrificed strength. His conscious aim had been to increase his strength by
avoiding excess of strength. Nor had he departed from his love of reality.
His work was realism, though he had endeavored to fuse with it the fancies
and beauties of imagination. What he sought was an impassioned realism,
shot through with human aspiration and faith. What he wanted was life as it
was, with all its spirit-groping and soul-reaching left in.

He had discovered, in the course of his reading, two schools of fiction.
One treated of man as a god, ignoring his earthly origin; the other treated
of man as a clod, ignoring his heaven-sent dreams and divine possibilities.
Both the god and the clod schools erred, in Martin's estimation, and erred
through too great singleness of sight and purpose. There was a compromise
that approximated the truth, though it flattered not the school of god,
while it challenged the brute-savageness of the school of clod. It was his
story, "Adventure," which had dragged with Ruth, that Martin believed had
achieved his ideal of the true in fiction; and it was in an essay, "God and
Clod," that he had expressed his views on the whole general subject.

But "Adventure," and all that he deemed his best work, still went begging
among the editors. His early work counted for nothing in his eyes except
for the money it brought, and his horror stories, two of which he had sold,
he did not consider high work nor his best work. To him they were frankly
imaginative and fantastic, though invested with all the glamour of the
real, wherein lay their power. This investiture of the grotesque and
impossible with reality, he looked upon as a trick - a skilful trick at
best. Great literature could not reside in such a field. Their artistry was
high, but he denied the worthwhileness of artistry when divorced from
humanness. The trick had been to fling over the face of his artistry a mask
of humanness, and this he had done in the half-dozen or so stories of the
horror brand he had written before he emerged upon the high peaks of
"Adventure," "Joy," "The Pot," and "The Wine of Life."

The three dollars he received for the triolets he used to eke out a
precarious existence against the arrival of the WHITE MOUSE check. He
cashed the first check with the suspicious Portuguese grocer, paying a
dollar on account and dividing the remaining two dollars between the baker
and the fruit store. Martin was not yet rich enough to afford meat, and he
was on slim allowance when the WHITE MOUSE check arrived. He was divided on
the cashing of it. He had never been in a bank in his life, much less been
in one on business, and he had a naive and childlike desire to walk into
one of the big banks down in Oakland and fling down his indorsed check for
forty dollars. On the other hand, practical common sense ruled that he
should cash it with his grocer and thereby make an impression that would
later result in an increase of credit. Reluctantly Martin yielded to the
claims of the grocer, paying his bill with him in full, and receiving in
change a pocketful of jingling coin. Also, he paid the other tradesmen in
full, redeemed his suit and his bicycle, paid one month's rent on the
type-writer, and paid Maria the overdue month for his room and a month in
advance. This left him in his pocket, for emergencies, a balance of nearly
three dollars.

In itself, this small sum seemed a fortune. Immediately on recovering his
clothes he had gone to see Ruth, and on the way he could not refrain from
jingling the little handful of silver in his pocket. He had been so long
without money that, like a rescued starving man who cannot let the
unconsumed food out of his sight, Martin could not keep his hand off the
silver. He was not mean, nor avaricious, but the money meant more than so
many dollars and cents. It stood for success, and the eagles stamped upon
the coins were to him so many winged victories.

It came to him insensibly that it was a very good world. It certainly
appeared more beautiful to him. For weeks it had been a very dull and
sombre world; but now, with nearly all debts paid, three dollars jingling
in his pocket, and in his mind the consciousness of success, the sun shone
bright and warm, and even a rain-squall that soaked unprepared pedestrians
seemed a merry happening to him. When he starved, his thoughts had dwelt
often upon the thousands he knew were starving the world over; but now that
he was feasted full, the fact of the thousands starving was no longer
pregnant in his brain. He forgot about them, and, being in love, remembered
the countless lovers in the world. Without deliberately thinking about it,
MOTIFS for love-lyrics began to agitate his brain. Swept away by the
creative impulse, he got off the electric car, without vexation, two blocks
beyond his crossing.

He found a number of persons in the Morse home. Ruth's two girl- cousins
were visiting her from San Rafael, and Mrs. Morse, under pretext of
entertaining them, was pursuing her plan of surrounding Ruth with young
people. The campaign had begun during Martin's enforced absence, and was
already in full swing. She was making a point of having at the house men
who were doing things. Thus, in addition to the cousins Dorothy and
Florence, Martin encountered two university professors, one of Latin, the
other of English; a young army officer just back from the Philippines,
one-time school- mate of Ruth's; a young fellow named Melville, private
secretary to Joseph Perkins, head of the San Francisco Trust Company; and
finally of the men, a live bank cashier, Charles Hapgood, a youngish man of
thirty-five, graduate of Stanford University, member of the Nile Club and
the Unity Club, and a conservative speaker for the Republican Party during
campaigns - in short, a rising young man in every way. Among the women was
one who painted portraits, another who was a professional musician, and
still another who possessed the degree of Doctor of Sociology and who was
locally famous for her social settlement work in the slums of San
Francisco. But the women did not count for much in Mrs. Morse's plan. At
the best, they were necessary accessories. The men who did things must be
drawn to the house somehow.

"Don't get excited when you talk," Ruth admonished Martin, before the
ordeal of introduction began.

He bore himself a bit stiffly at first, oppressed by a sense of his own
awkwardness, especially of his shoulders, which were up to their old trick
of threatening destruction to furniture and ornaments. Also, he was
rendered self-conscious by the company. He had never before been in contact
with such exalted beings nor with so many of them. Melville, the bank
cashier, fascinated him, and he resolved to investigate him at the first
opportunity. For underneath Martin's awe lurked his assertive ego, and he
felt the urge to measure himself with these men and women and to find out
what they had learned from the books and life which he had not learned.

Ruth's eyes roved to him frequently to see how he was getting on, and she
was surprised and gladdened by the ease with which he got acquainted with
her cousins. He certainly did not grow excited, while being seated removed
from him the worry of his shoulders. Ruth knew them for clever girls,
superficially brilliant, and she could scarcely understand their praise of
Martin later that night at going to bed. But he, on the other hand, a wit
in his own class, a gay quizzer and laughter-maker at dances and Sunday
picnics, had found the making of fun and the breaking of good- natured
lances simple enough in this environment. And on this evening success stood
at his back, patting him on the shoulder and telling him that he was making
good, so that he could afford to laugh and make laughter and remain
unabashed.

Later, Ruth's anxiety found justification. Martin and Professor Caldwell
had got together in a conspicuous corner, and though Martin no longer wove
the air with his hands, to Ruth's critical eye he permitted his own eyes to
flash and glitter too frequently, talked too rapidly and warmly, grew too
intense, and allowed his aroused blood to redden his cheeks too much. He
lacked decorum and control, and was in decided contrast to the young
professor of English with whom he talked.

But Martin was not concerned with appearances! He had been swift to note
the other's trained mind and to appreciate his command of knowledge.
Furthermore, Professor Caldwell did not realize Martin's concept of the
average English professor. Martin wanted him to talk shop, and, though he
seemed averse at first, succeeded in making him do it. For Martin did not
see why a man should not talk shop.

"It's absurd and unfair," he had told Ruth weeks before, "this objection to
talking shop. For what reason under the sun do men and women come together
if not for the exchange of the best that is in them? And the best that is
in them is what they are interested in, the thing by which they make their
living, the thing they've specialized on and sat up days and nights over,
and even dreamed about. Imagine Mr. Butler living up to social etiquette
and enunciating his views on Paul Verlaine or the German drama or the
novels of D'Annunzio. We'd be bored to death. I, for one, if I must listen
to Mr. Butler, prefer to hear him talk about his law. It's the best that is
in him, and life is so short that I want the best of every man and woman I
meet."

"But," Ruth had objected, "there are the topics of general interest to
all."

"There, you mistake," he had rushed on. "All persons in society, all
cliques in society - or, rather, nearly all persons and cliques - ape their
betters. Now, who are the best betters? The idlers, the wealthy idlers.
They do not know, as a rule, the things known by the persons who are doing
something in the world. To listen to conversation about such things would
mean to be bored, wherefore the idlers decree that such things are shop and
must not be talked about. Likewise they decree the things that are not shop
and which may be talked about, and those things are the latest operas,
latest novels, cards, billiards, cocktails, automobiles, horse shows, trout
fishing, tuna-fishing, big-game shooting, yacht sailing, and so forth - and
mark you, these are the things the idlers know. In all truth, they
constitute the shop-talk of the idlers. And the funniest part of it is that
many of the clever people, and all the would-be clever people, allow the
idlers so to impose upon them. As for me, I want the best a man's got in
him, call it shop vulgarity or anything you please."

And Ruth had not understood. This attack of his on the established had
seemed to her just so much wilfulness of opinion.

So Martin contaminated Professor Caldwell with his own earnestness,
challenging him to speak his mind. As Ruth paused beside them she heard
Martin saying:-

"You surely don't pronounce such heresies in the University of California?"

Professor Caldwell shrugged his shoulders. "The honest taxpayer and the
politician, you know. Sacramento gives us our appropriations and therefore
we kowtow to Sacramento, and to the Board of Regents, and to the party
press, or to the press of both parties."

"Yes, that's clear; but how about you?" Martin urged. "You must be a fish
out of the water."

"Few like me, I imagine, in the university pond. Sometimes I am fairly sure
I am out of water, and that I should belong in Paris, in Grub Street, in a
hermit's cave, or in some sadly wild Bohemian crowd, drinking claret, -
dago-red they call it in San Francisco, - dining in cheap restaurants in
the Latin Quarter, and expressing vociferously radical views upon all
creation. Really, I am frequently almost sure that I was cut out to be a
radical. But then, there are so many questions on which I am not sure. I
grow timid when I am face to face with my human frailty, which ever
prevents me from grasping all the factors in any problem - human, vital
problems, you know."

And as he talked on, Martin became aware that to his own lips had come the
"Song of the Trade Wind":-

"I am strongest at noon, But under the moon I stiffen the bunt of the
sail."

He was almost humming the words, and it dawned upon him that the other
reminded him of the trade wind, of the Northeast Trade, steady, and cool,
and strong. He was equable, he was to be relied upon, and withal there was
a certain bafflement about him. Martin had the feeling that he never spoke
his full mind, just as he had often had the feeling that the trades never
blew their strongest but always held reserves of strength that were never
used. Martin's trick of visioning was active as ever. His brain was a most
accessible storehouse of remembered fact and fancy, and its contents seemed
ever ordered and spread for his inspection. Whatever occurred in the
instant present, Martin's mind immediately presented associated antithesis
or similitude which ordinarily expressed themselves to him in vision. It
was sheerly automatic, and his visioning was an unfailing accompaniment to
the living present. Just as Ruth's face, in a momentary jealousy had called
before his eyes a forgotten moonlight gale, and as Professor Caldwell made
him see again the Northeast Trade herding the white billows across the
purple sea, so, from moment to moment, not disconcerting but rather
identifying and classifying, new memory- visions rose before him, or spread
under his eyelids, or were thrown upon the screen of his consciousness.
These visions came out of the actions and sensations of the past, out of
things and events and books of yesterday and last week - a countless host
of apparitions that, waking or sleeping, forever thronged his mind.

So it was, as he listened to Professor Caldwell's easy flow of speech - the
conversation of a clever, cultured man - that Martin kept seeing himself
down all his past. He saw himself when he had been quite the hoodlum,
wearing a "stiff-rim" Stetson hat and a square-cut, double-breasted coat,
with a certain swagger to the shoulders and possessing the ideal of being
as tough as the police permitted. He did not disguise it to himself, nor
attempt to palliate it. At one time in his life he had been just a common
hoodlum, the leader of a gang that worried the police and terrorized
honest, working-class householders. But his ideals had changed. He glanced
about him at the well-bred, well-dressed men and women, and breathed into
his lungs the atmosphere of culture and refinement, and at the same moment
the ghost of his early youth, in stiff-rim and square-cut, with swagger and
toughness, stalked across the room. This figure, of the corner hoodlum, he
saw merge into himself, sitting and talking with an actual university
professor.

For, after all, he had never found his permanent abiding place. He had
fitted in wherever he found himself, been a favorite always and everywhere
by virtue of holding his own at work and at play and by his willingness and
ability to fight for his rights and command respect. But he had never taken
root. He had fitted in sufficiently to satisfy his fellows but not to
satisfy himself. He had been perturbed always by a feeling of unrest, had
heard always the call of something from beyond, and had wandered on through
life seeking it until he found books and art and love. And here he was, in
the midst of all this, the only one of all the comrades he had adventured
with who could have made themselves eligible for the inside of the Morse
home.

But such thoughts and visions did not prevent him from following Professor
Caldwell closely. And as he followed, comprehendingly and critically, he
noted the unbroken field of the other's knowledge. As for himself, from
moment to moment the conversation showed him gaps and open stretches, whole
subjects with which he was unfamiliar. Nevertheless, thanks to his Spencer,
he saw that he possessed the outlines of the field of knowledge. It was a
matter only of time, when he would fill in the outline. Then watch out, he
thought - 'ware shoal, everybody! He felt like sitting at the feet of the
professor, worshipful and absorbent; but, as he listened, he began to
discern a weakness in the other's judgments - a weakness so stray and
elusive that he might not have caught it had it not been ever present. And
when he did catch it, he leapt to equality at once.

Ruth came up to them a second time, just as Martin began to speak.

"I'll tell you where you are wrong, or, rather, what weakens your
judgments," he said. "You lack biology. It has no place in your scheme of
things. - Oh, I mean the real interpretative biology, from the ground up,
from the laboratory and the test-tube and the vitalized inorganic right on
up to the widest aesthetic and sociological generalizations."

Ruth was appalled. She had sat two lecture courses under Professor Caldwell
and looked up to him as the living repository of all knowledge.

"I scarcely follow you," he said dubiously.

Martin was not so sure but what he had followed him.

"Then I'll try to explain," he said. "I remember reading in Egyptian
history something to the effect that understanding could not be had of
Egyptian art without first studying the land question."

"Quite right," the professor nodded.

"And it seems to me," Martin continued, "that knowledge of the land
question, in turn, of all questions, for that matter, cannot be had without
previous knowledge of the stuff and the constitution of life. How can we
understand laws and institutions, religions and customs, without
understanding, not merely the nature of the creatures that made them, but
the nature of the stuff out of which the creatures are made? Is literature
less human than the architecture and sculpture of Egypt? Is there one thing
in the known universe that is not subject to the law of evolution? - Oh, I
know there is an elaborate evolution of the various arts laid down, but it
seems to me to be too mechanical. The human himself is left out. The
evolution of the tool, of the harp, of music and song and dance, are all
beautifully elaborated; but how about the evolution of the human himself,
the development of the basic and intrinsic parts that were in him before he
made his first tool or gibbered his first chant? It is that which you do
not consider, and which I call biology. It is biology in its largest
aspects.

"I know I express myself incoherently, but I've tried to hammer out the
idea. It came to me as you were talking, so I was not primed and ready to
deliver it. You spoke yourself of the human frailty that prevented one from
taking all the factors into consideration. And you, in turn, - or so it
seems to me, - leave out the biological factor, the very stuff out of which
has been spun the fabric of all the arts, the warp and the woof of all
human actions and achievements."

To Ruth's amazement, Martin was not immediately crushed, and that the
professor replied in the way he did struck her as forbearance for Martin's
youth. Professor Caldwell sat for a full minute, silent and fingering his
watch chain.

"Do you know," he said at last, "I've had that same criticism passed on me
once before - by a very great man, a scientist and evolutionist, Joseph Le
Conte. But he is dead, and I thought to remain undetected; and now you come
along and expose me. Seriously, though - and this is confession - I think
there is something in your contention - a great deal, in fact. I am too
classical, not enough up-to-date in the interpretative branches of science,
and I can only plead the disadvantages of my education and a temperamental
slothfulness that prevents me from doing the work. I wonder if you'll
believe that I've never been inside a physics or chemistry laboratory? It
is true, nevertheless. Le Conte was right, and so are you, Mr. Eden, at
least to an extent - how much I do not know."

Ruth drew Martin away with her on a pretext; when she had got him aside,
whispering:-

"You shouldn't have monopolized Professor Caldwell that way. There may be
others who want to talk with him."

"My mistake," Martin admitted contritely. "But I'd got him stirred up, and
he was so interesting that I did not think. Do you know, he is the
brightest, the most intellectual, man I have ever talked with. And I'll
tell you something else. I once thought that everybody who went to
universities, or who sat in the high places in society, was just as
brilliant and intelligent as he."

"He's an exception," she answered.

"I should say so. Whom do you want me to talk to now? - Oh, say, bring me
up against that cashier-fellow."

Martin talked for fifteen minutes with him, nor could Ruth have wished
better behavior on her lover's part. Not once did his eyes flash nor his
cheeks flush, while the calmness and poise with which he talked surprised
her. But in Martin's estimation the whole tribe of bank cashiers fell a few
hundred per cent, and for the rest of the evening he labored under the
impression that bank cashiers and talkers of platitudes were synonymous
phrases. The army officer he found good-natured and simple, a healthy,
wholesome young fellow, content to occupy the place in life into which
birth and luck had flung him. On learning that he had completed two years
in the university, Martin was puzzled to know where he had stored it away.
Nevertheless Martin liked him better than the platitudinous bank cashier.

"I really don't object to platitudes," he told Ruth later; "but what
worries me into nervousness is the pompous, smugly complacent, superior
certitude with which they are uttered and the time taken to do it. Why, I
could give that man the whole history of the Reformation in the time he
took to tell me that the Union-Labor Party had fused with the Democrats. Do
you know, he skins his words as a professional poker-player skins the cards
that are dealt out to him. Some day I'll show you what I mean."

"I'm sorry you don't like him," was her reply. "He's a favorite of Mr.
Butler's. Mr. Butler says he is safe and honest - calls him the Rock,
Peter, and says that upon him any banking institution can well be built."

"I don't doubt it - from the little I saw of him and the less I heard from
him; but I don't think so much of banks as I did. You don't mind my
speaking my mind this way, dear?"

"No, no; it is most interesting."

"Yes," Martin went on heartily, "I'm no more than a barbarian getting my
first impressions of civilization. Such impressions must be entertainingly
novel to the civilized person."

"What did you think of my cousins?" Ruth queried.

"I liked them better than the other women. There's plenty of fun in them
along with paucity of pretence."

"Then you did like the other women?"

He shook his head.

"That social-settlement woman is no more than a sociological poll- parrot.
I swear, if you winnowed her out between the stars, like Tomlinson, there
would be found in her not one original thought. As for the
portrait-painter, she was a positive bore. She'd make a good wife for the
cashier. And the musician woman! I don't care how nimble her fingers are,
how perfect her technique, how wonderful her expression - the fact is, she
knows nothing about music."

"She plays beautifully," Ruth protested.

"Yes, she's undoubtedly gymnastic in the externals of music, but the
intrinsic spirit of music is unguessed by her. I asked her what music meant
to her - you know I'm always curious to know that particular thing; and she
did not know what it meant to her, except that she adored it, that it was
the greatest of the arts, and that it meant more than life to her."

"You were making them talk shop," Ruth charged him.

"I confess it. And if they were failures on shop, imagine my sufferings if
they had discoursed on other subjects. Why, I used to think that up here,
where all the advantages of culture were enjoyed - " He paused for a
moment, and watched the youthful shade of himself, in stiff-rim and
square-cut, enter the door and swagger across the room. "As I was saying,
up here I thought all men and women were brilliant and radiant. But now,
from what little I've seen of them, they strike me as a pack of ninnies,
most of them, and ninety percent of the remainder as bores. Now there's
Professor Caldwell - he's different. He's a man, every inch of him and
every atom of his gray matter."

Ruth's face brightened.

"Tell me about him," she urged. "Not what is large and brilliant - I know
those qualities; but whatever you feel is adverse. I am most curious to
know."

"Perhaps I'll get myself in a pickle." Martin debated humorously for a
moment. "Suppose you tell me first. Or maybe you find in him nothing less
than the best."

"I attended two lecture courses under him, and I have known him for two
years; that is why I am anxious for your first impression."

"Bad impression, you mean? Well, here goes. He is all the fine things you
think about him, I guess. At least, he is the finest specimen of
intellectual man I have met; but he is a man with a secret shame."

"Oh, no, no!" he hastened to cry. "Nothing paltry nor vulgar. What I mean
is that he strikes me as a man who has gone to the bottom of things, and is
so afraid of what he saw that he makes believe to himself that he never saw
it. Perhaps that's not the clearest way to express it. Here's another way.
A man who has found the path to the hidden temple but has not followed it;
who has, perhaps, caught glimpses of the temple and striven afterward to
convince himself that it was only a mirage of foliage. Yet another way. A
man who could have done things but who placed no value on the doing, and
who, all the time, in his innermost heart, is regretting that he has not
done them; who has secretly laughed at the rewards for doing, and yet,
still more secretly, has yearned for the rewards and for the joy of doing."

"I don't read him that way," she said. "And for that matter, I don't see
just what you mean."

"It is only a vague feeling on my part," Martin temporized. "I have no
reason for it. It is only a feeling, and most likely it is wrong. You
certainly should know him better than I."

From the evening at Ruth's Martin brought away with him strange confusions
and conflicting feelings. He was disappointed in his goal, in the persons
he had climbed to be with. On the other hand, he was encouraged with his
success. The climb had been easier than he expected. He was superior to the
climb, and (he did not, with false modesty, hide it from himself) he was
superior to the beings among whom he had climbed - with the exception, of
course, of Professor Caldwell. About life and the books he knew more than
they, and he wondered into what nooks and crannies they had cast aside
their educations. He did not know that he was himself possessed of unusual
brain vigor; nor did he know that the persons who were given to probing the
depths and to thinking ultimate thoughts were not to be found in the
drawing rooms of the world's Morses; nor did he dream that such persons
were as lonely eagles sailing solitary in the azure sky far above the earth
and its swarming freight of gregarious life.

CHAPTER XXVIII

But success had lost Martin's address, and her messengers no longer came to
his door. For twenty-five days, working Sundays and holidays, he toiled on
"The Shame of the Sun," a long essay of some thirty thousand words. It was
a deliberate attack on the mysticism of the Maeterlinck school - an attack
from the citadel of positive science upon the wonder-dreamers, but an
attack nevertheless that retained much of beauty and wonder of the sort
compatible with ascertained fact. It was a little later that he followed up
the attack with two short essays, "The Wonder-Dreamers" and "The Yardstick
of the Ego." And on essays, long and short, he began to pay the travelling
expenses from magazine to magazine.

During the twenty-five days spent on "The Shame of the Sun," he sold
hack-work to the extent of six dollars and fifty cents. A joke had brought
in fifty cents, and a second one, sold to a high- grade comic weekly, had
fetched a dollar. Then two humorous poems had earned two dollars and three
dollars respectively. As a result, having exhausted his credit with the
tradesmen (though he had increased his credit with the grocer to five
dollars), his wheel and suit of clothes went back to the pawnbroker. The
type- writer people were again clamoring for money, insistently pointing
out that according to the agreement rent was to be paid strictly in
advance.

Encouraged by his several small sales, Martin went back to hack- work.
Perhaps there was a living in it, after all. Stored away under his table
were the twenty storiettes which had been rejected by the newspaper
short-story syndicate. He read them over in order to find out how not to
write newspaper storiettes, and so doing, reasoned out the perfect formula.
He found that the newspaper storiette should never be tragic, should never
end unhappily, and should never contain beauty of language, subtlety of
thought, nor real delicacy of sentiment. Sentiment it must contain, plenty
of it, pure and noble, of the sort that in his own early youth had brought
his applause from "nigger heaven" - the "For-God-my- country-and-the-Czar"
and "I-may-be-poor-but-I-am-honest" brand of sentiment.

Having learned such precautions, Martin consulted "The Duchess" for tone,
and proceeded to mix according to formula. The formula consists of three
parts: (1) a pair of lovers are jarred apart; (2) by some deed or event
they are reunited; (3) marriage bells. The third part was an unvarying
quantity, but the first and second parts could be varied an infinite number
of times. Thus, the pair of lovers could be jarred apart by misunderstood
motives, by accident of fate, by jealous rivals, by irate parents, by
crafty guardians, by scheming relatives, and so forth and so forth; they
could be reunited by a brave deed of the man lover, by a similar deed of
the woman lover, by change of heart in one lover or the other, by forced
confession of crafty guardian, scheming relative, or jealous rival, by
voluntary confession of same, by discovery of some unguessed secret, by
lover storming girl's heart, by lover making long and noble self-sacrifice,
and so on, endlessly. It was very fetching to make the girl propose in the
course of being reunited, and Martin discovered, bit by bit, other
decidedly piquant and fetching ruses. But marriage bells at the end was the
one thing he could take no liberties with; though the heavens rolled up as
a scroll and the stars fell, the wedding bells must go on ringing just the
same. In quantity, the formula prescribed twelve hundred words minimum
dose, fifteen hundred words maximum dose.

Before he got very far along in the art of the storiette, Martin worked out
half a dozen stock forms, which he always consulted when constructing
storiettes. These forms were like the cunning tables used by
mathematicians, which may be entered from top, bottom, right, and left,
which entrances consist of scores of lines and dozens of columns, and from
which may be drawn, without reasoning or thinking, thousands of different
conclusions, all unchallengably precise and true. Thus, in the course of
half an hour with his forms, Martin could frame up a dozen or so
storiettes, which he put aside and filled in at his convenience. He found
that he could fill one in, after a day of serious work, in the hour before
going to bed. As he later confessed to Ruth, he could almost do it in his
sleep. The real work was in constructing the frames, and that was merely
mechanical.

He had no doubt whatever of the efficacy of his formula, and for once he
knew the editorial mind when he said positively to himself that the first
two he sent off would bring checks. And checks they brought, for four
dollars each, at the end of twelve days.

In the meantime he was making fresh and alarming discoveries concerning the
magazines. Though the TRANSCONTINENTAL had published "The Ring of Bells,"
no check was forthcoming. Martin needed it, and he wrote for it. An evasive
answer and a request for more of his work was all he received. He had gone
hungry two days waiting for the reply, and it was then that he put his
wheel back in pawn. He wrote regularly, twice a week, to the
TRANSCONTINENTAL for his five dollars, though it was only semi-
occasionally that he elicited a reply. He did not know that the
TRANSCONTINENTAL had been staggering along precariously for years, that it
was a fourth-rater, or tenth-rater, without standing, with a crazy
circulation that partly rested on petty bullying and partly on patriotic
appealing, and with advertisements that were scarcely more than charitable
donations. Nor did he know that the TRANSCONTINENTAL was the sole
livelihood of the editor and the business manager, and that they could
wring their livelihood out of it only by moving to escape paying rent and
by never paying any bill they could evade. Nor could he have guessed that
the particular five dollars that belonged to him had been appropriated by
the business manager for the painting of his house in Alameda, which
painting he performed himself, on week-day afternoons, because he could not
afford to pay union wages and because the first scab he had employed had
had a ladder jerked out from under him and been sent to the hospital with a
broken collar-bone.

The ten dollars for which Martin had sold "Treasure Hunters" to the Chicago
newspaper did not come to hand. The article had been published, as he had
ascertained at the file in the Central Reading-room, but no word could he
get from the editor. His letters were ignored. To satisfy himself that they
had been received, he registered several of them. It was nothing less than
robbery, he concluded - a cold-blooded steal; while he starved, he was
pilfered of his merchandise, of his goods, the sale of which was the sole
way of getting bread to eat.

YOUTH AND AGE was a weekly, and it had published two-thirds of his
twenty-one-thousand-word serial when it went out of business. With it went
all hopes of getting his sixteen dollars.

To cap the situation, "The Pot," which he looked upon as one of the best
things he had written, was lost to him. In despair, casting about
frantically among the magazines, he had sent it to THE BILLOW, a society
weekly in San Francisco. His chief reason for submitting it to that
publication was that, having only to travel across the bay from Oakland, a
quick decision could be reached. Two weeks later he was overjoyed to see,
in the latest number on the news-stand, his story printed in full,
illustrated, and in the place of honor. He went home with leaping pulse,
wondering how much they would pay him for one of the best things he had
done. Also, the celerity with which it had been accepted and published was
a pleasant thought to him. That the editor had not informed him of the
acceptance made the surprise more complete. After waiting a week, two
weeks, and half a week longer, desperation conquered diffidence, and he
wrote to the editor of THE BILLOW, suggesting that possibly through some
negligence of the business manager his little account had been overlooked.

Even if it isn't more than five dollars, Martin thought to himself, it will
buy enough beans and pea-soup to enable me to write half a dozen like it,
and possibly as good.

Back came a cool letter from the editor that at least elicited Martin's
admiration.

"We thank you," it ran, "for your excellent contribution. All of us in the
office enjoyed it immensely, and, as you see, it was given the place of
honor and immediate publication. We earnestly hope that you liked the
illustrations.

"On rereading your letter it seems to us that you are laboring under the
misapprehension that we pay for unsolicited manuscripts. This is not our
custom, and of course yours was unsolicited. We assumed, naturally, when we
received your story, that you understood the situation. We can only deeply
regret this unfortunate misunderstanding, and assure you of our unfailing
regard. Again, thanking you for your kind contribution, and hoping to
receive more from you in the near future, we remain, etc."

There was also a postscript to the effect that though THE BILLOW carried no
free-list, it took great pleasure in sending him a complimentary
subscription for the ensuing year.

After that experience, Martin typed at the top of the first sheet of all
his manuscripts: "Submitted at your usual rate."

Some day, he consoled himself, they will be submitted at MY usual rate.

He discovered in himself, at this period, a passion for perfection, under
the sway of which he rewrote and polished "The Jostling Street," "The Wine
of Life," "Joy," the "Sea Lyrics," and others of his earlier work. As of
old, nineteen hours of labor a day was all too little to suit him. He wrote
prodigiously, and he read prodigiously, forgetting in his toil the pangs
caused by giving up his tobacco. Ruth's promised cure for the habit,
flamboyantly labelled, he stowed away in the most inaccessible corner of
his bureau. Especially during his stretches of famine he suffered from lack
of the weed; but no matter how often he mastered the craving, it remained
with him as strong as ever. He regarded it as the biggest thing he had ever
achieved. Ruth's point of view was that he was doing no more than was
right. She brought him the anti- tobacco remedy, purchased out of her glove
money, and in a few days forgot all about it.

His machine-made storiettes, though he hated them and derided them, were
successful. By means of them he redeemed all his pledges, paid most of his
bills, and bought a new set of tires for his wheel. The storiettes at least
kept the pot a-boiling and gave him time for ambitious work; while the one
thing that upheld him was the forty dollars he had received from THE WHITE
MOUSE. He anchored his faith to that, and was confident that the really
first-class magazines would pay an unknown writer at least an equal rate,
if not a better one. But the thing was, how to get into the first-class
magazines. His best stories, essays, and poems went begging among them, and
yet, each month, he read reams of dull, prosy, inartistic stuff between all
their various covers. If only one editor, he sometimes thought, would
descend from his high seat of pride to write me one cheering line! No
matter if my work is unusual, no matter if it is unfit, for prudential
reasons, for their pages, surely there must be some sparks in it,
somewhere, a few, to warm them to some sort of appreciation. And thereupon
he would get out one or another of his manuscripts, such as "Adventure,"
and read it over and over in a vain attempt to vindicate the editorial
silence.

As the sweet California spring came on, his period of plenty came to an
end. For several weeks he had been worried by a strange silence on the part
of the newspaper storiette syndicate. Then, one day, came back to him
through the mail ten of his immaculate machine-made storiettes. They were
accompanied by a brief letter to the effect that the syndicate was
overstocked, and that some months would elapse before it would be in the
market again for manuscripts. Martin had even been extravagant m the
strength of those on ten storiettes. Toward the last the syndicate had been
paying him five dollars each for them and accepting every one he sent. So
he had looked upon the ten as good as sold, and he had lived accordingly,
on a basis of fifty dollars in the bank. So it was that he entered abruptly
upon a lean period, wherein he continued selling his earlier efforts to
publications that would not pay and submitting his later work to magazines
that would not buy. Also, he resumed his trips to the pawn-broker down in
Oakland. A few jokes and snatches of humorous verse, sold to the New York
weeklies, made existence barely possible for him. It was at this time that
he wrote letters of inquiry to the several great monthly and quarterly
reviews, and learned in reply that they rarely considered unsolicited
articles, and that most of their contents were written upon order by
well-known specialists who were authorities in their various fields.

CHAPTER XXIX

It was a hard summer for Martin. Manuscript readers and editors were away
on vacation, and publications that ordinarily returned a decision in three
weeks now retained his manuscript for three months or more. The consolation
he drew from it was that a saving in postage was effected by the deadlock.
Only the robber- publications seemed to remain actively in business, and to
them Martin disposed of all his early efforts, such as "Pearl-diving," "The
Sea as a Career," "Turtle-catching," and "The Northeast Trades." For these
manuscripts he never received a penny. It is true, after six months'
correspondence, he effected a compromise, whereby he received a safety
razor for "Turtle-catching," and that THE ACROPOLIS, having agreed to give
him five dollars cash and five yearly subscriptions: for "The Northeast
Trades," fulfilled the second part of the agreement.

For a sonnet on Stevenson he managed to wring two dollars out of a Boston
editor who was running a magazine with a Matthew Arnold taste and a
penny-dreadful purse. "The Peri and the Pearl," a clever skit of a poem of
two hundred lines, just finished, white hot from his brain, won the heart
of the editor of a San Francisco magazine published in the interest of a
great railroad. When the editor wrote, offering him payment in
transportation, Martin wrote back to inquire if the transportation was
transferable. It was not, and so, being prevented from peddling it, he
asked for the return of the poem. Back it came, with the editor's regrets,
and Martin sent it to San Francisco again, this time to THE HORNET, a
pretentious monthly that had been fanned into a constellation of the first
magnitude by the brilliant journalist who founded it. But THE HORNET'S
light had begun to dim long before Martin was born. The editor promised
Martin fifteen dollars for the poem, but, when it was published, seemed to
forget about it. Several of his letters being ignored, Martin indicted an
angry one which drew a reply. It was written by a new editor, who coolly
informed Martin that he declined to be held responsible for the old
editor's mistakes, and that he did not think much of "The Peri and the
Pearl" anyway.

But THE GLOBE, a Chicago magazine, gave Martin the most cruel treatment of
all. He had refrained from offering his "Sea Lyrics" for publication, until
driven to it by starvation. After having been rejected by a dozen
magazines, they had come to rest in THE GLOBE office. There were thirty
poems in the collection, and he was to receive a dollar apiece for them.
The first month four were published, and he promptly received a cheek for
four dollars; but when he looked over the magazine, he was appalled at the
slaughter. In some cases the titles had been altered: "Finis," for
instance, being changed to "The Finish," and "The Song of the Outer Reef"
to "The Song of the Coral Reef." In one case, an absolutely different
title, a misappropriate title, was substituted. In place of his own,
"Medusa Lights," the editor had printed, "The Backward Track." But the
slaughter in the body of the poems was terrifying. Martin groaned and
sweated and thrust his hands through his hair. Phrases, lines, and stanzas
were cut out, interchanged, or juggled about in the most incomprehensible
manner. Sometimes lines and stanzas not his own were substituted for his.
He could not believe that a sane editor could be guilty of such
maltreatment, and his favorite hypothesis was that his poems must have been
doctored by the office boy or the stenographer. Martin wrote immediately,
begging the editor to cease publishing the lyrics and to return them to
him.

He wrote again and again, begging, entreating, threatening, but his letters
were ignored. Month by month the slaughter went on till the thirty poems
were published, and month by month he received a check for those which had
appeared in the current number.

Despite these various misadventures, the memory of the WHITE MOUSE
forty-dollar check sustained him, though he was driven more and more to
hack-work. He discovered a bread-and-butter field in the agricultural
weeklies and trade journals, though among the religious weeklies he found
he could easily starve. At his lowest ebb, when his black suit was in pawn,
he made a ten-strike - or so it seemed to him - in a prize contest arranged
by the County Committee of the Republican Party. There were three branches
of the contest, and he entered them all, laughing at himself bitterly the
while in that he was driven to such straits to live. His poem won the first
prize of ten dollars, his campaign song the second prize of five dollars,
his essay on the principles of the Republican Party the first prize of
twenty-five dollars. Which was very gratifying to him until he tried to
collect. Something had gone wrong in the County Committee, and, though a
rich banker and a state senator were members of it, the money was not
forthcoming. While this affair was hanging fire, he proved that he
understood the principles of the Democratic Party by winning the first
prize for his essay in a similar contest. And, moreover, he received the
money, twenty-five dollars. But the forty dollars won in the first contest
he never received.

Driven to shifts in order to see Ruth, and deciding that the long walk from
north Oakland to her house and back again consumed too much time, he kept
his black suit in pawn in place of his bicycle. The latter gave him
exercise, saved him hours of time for work, and enabled him to see Ruth
just the same. A pair of knee duck trousers and an old sweater made him a
presentable wheel costume, so that he could go with Ruth on afternoon
rides. Besides, he no longer had opportunity to see much of her in her own
home, where Mrs. Morse was thoroughly prosecuting her campaign of
entertainment. The exalted beings he met there, and to whom he had looked
up but a short time before, now bored him. They were no longer exalted. He
was nervous and irritable, what of his hard times, disappointments, and
close application to work, and the conversation of such people was
maddening. He was not unduly egotistic. He measured the narrowness of their
minds by the minds of the thinkers in the books he read. At Ruth's home he
never met a large mind, with the exception of Professor Caldwell, and
Caldwell he had met there only once. As for the rest, they were numskulls,
ninnies, superficial, dogmatic, and ignorant. It was their ignorance that
astounded him. What was the matter with them? What had they done with their
educations? They had had access to the same books he had. How did it happen
that they had drawn nothing from them?

He knew that the great minds, the deep and rational thinkers, existed. He
had his proofs from the books, the books that had educated him beyond the
Morse standard. And he knew that higher intellects than those of the Morse
circle were to be found in the world. He read English society novels,
wherein he caught glimpses of men and women talking politics and
philosophy. And he read of salons in great cities, even in the United
States, where art and intellect congregated. Foolishly, in the past, he had
conceived that all well-groomed persons above the working class were
persons with power of intellect and vigor of beauty. Culture and collars
had gone together, to him, and he had been deceived into believing that
college educations and mastery were the same things.

Well, he would fight his way on and up higher. And he would take Ruth with
him. Her he dearly loved, and he was confident that she would shine
anywhere. As it was clear to him that he had been handicapped by his early
environment, so now he perceived that she was similarly handicapped. She
had not had a chance to expand. The books on her father's shelves, the
paintings on the walls, the music on the piano - all was just so much
meretricious display. To real literature, real painting, real music, the
Morses and their kind, were dead. And bigger than such things was life, of
which they were densely, hopelessly ignorant. In spite of their Unitarian
proclivities and their masks of conservative broadmindedness, they were two
generations behind interpretative science: their mental processes were
mediaeval, while their thinking on the ultimate data of existence and of
the universe struck him as the same metaphysical method that was as young
as the youngest race, as old as the cave-man, and older - the same that
moved the first Pleistocene ape-man to fear the dark; that moved the first
hasty Hebrew savage to incarnate Eve from Adam's rib; that moved Descartes
to build an idealistic system of the universe out of the projections of his
own puny ego; and that moved the famous British ecclesiastic to denounce
evolution in satire so scathing as to win immediate applause and leave his
name a notorious scrawl on the page of history.

So Martin thought, and he thought further, till it dawned upon him that the
difference between these lawyers, officers, business men, and bank cashiers
he had met and the members of the working class he had known was on a par
with the difference in the food they ate, clothes they wore, neighborhoods
in which they lived. Certainly, in all of them was lacking the something
more which he found in himself and in the books. The Morses had shown him
the best their social position could produce, and he was not impressed by
it. A pauper himself, a slave to the money-lender, he knew himself the
superior of those he met at the Morses'; and, when his one decent suit of
clothes was out of pawn, he moved among them a lord of life, quivering with
a sense of outrage akin to what a prince would suffer if condemned to live
with goat-herds.

"You hate and fear the socialists," he remarked to Mr. Morse, one evening
at dinner; "but why? You know neither them nor their doctrines."

The conversation had been swung in that direction by Mrs. Morse, who had
been invidiously singing the praises of Mr. Hapgood. The cashier was
Martin's black beast, and his temper was a trifle short where the talker of
platitudes was concerned.

"Yes," he had said, "Charley Hapgood is what they call a rising young man -
somebody told me as much. And it is true. He'll make the Governor's Chair
before he dies, and, who knows? maybe the United States Senate."

"What makes you think so?" Mrs. Morse had inquired.

"I've heard him make a campaign speech. It was so cleverly stupid and
unoriginal, and also so convincing, that the leaders cannot help but regard
him as safe and sure, while his platitudes are so much like the platitudes
of the average voter that - oh, well, you know you flatter any man by
dressing up his own thoughts for him and presenting them to him."

"I actually think you are jealous of Mr. Hapgood," Ruth had chimed in.

"Heaven forbid!"

The look of horror on Martin's face stirred Mrs. Morse to belligerence.

"You surely don't mean to say that Mr. Hapgood is stupid?" she demanded
icily.

"No more than the average Republican," was the retort, "or average
Democrat, either. They are all stupid when they are not crafty, and very
few of them are crafty. The only wise Republicans are the millionnaires and
their conscious henchmen. They know which side their bread is buttered on,
and they know why."

"I am a Republican," Mr. Morse put in lightly. "Pray, how do you classify
me?"

"Oh, you are an unconscious henchman."

"Henchman?"

"Why, yes. You do corporation work. You have no working-class nor criminal
practice. You don't depend upon wife-beaters and pickpockets for your
income. You get your livelihood from the masters of society, and whoever
feeds a man is that man's master. Yes, you are a henchman. You are
interested in advancing the interests of the aggregations of capital you
serve."

Mr. Morse's face was a trifle red.

"I confess, sir," he said, "that you talk like a scoundrelly socialist."

Then it was that Martin made his remark:

"You hate and fear the socialists; but why? You know neither them nor their
doctrines."

"Your doctrine certainly sounds like socialism," Mr. Morse replied, while
Ruth gazed anxiously from one to the other, and Mrs. Morse beamed happily
at the opportunity afforded of rousing her liege lord's antagonism.

"Because I say Republicans are stupid, and hold that liberty, equality, and
fraternity are exploded bubbles, does not make me a socialist," Martin said
with a smile. "Because I question Jefferson and the unscientific Frenchmen
who informed his mind, does not make me a socialist. Believe me, Mr. Morse,
you are far nearer socialism than I who am its avowed enemy."

"Now you please to be facetious," was all the other could say.

"Not at all. I speak in all seriousness. You still believe in equality, and
yet you do the work of the corporations, and the corporations, from day to
day, are busily engaged in burying equality. And you call me a socialist
because I deny equality, because I affirm just what you live up to. The
Republicans are foes to equality, though most of them fight the battle
against equality with the very word itself the slogan on their lips. In the
name of equality they destroy equality. That was why I called them stupid.
As for myself, I am an individualist. I believe the race is to the swift,
the battle to the strong. Such is the lesson I have learned from biology,
or at least think I have learned. As I said, I am an individualist, and
individualism is the hereditary and eternal foe of socialism."

"But you frequent socialist meetings," Mr. Morse challenged.

"Certainly, just as spies frequent hostile camps. How else are you to learn
about the enemy? Besides, I enjoy myself at their meetings. They are good
fighters, and, right or wrong, they have read the books. Any one of them
knows far more about sociology and all the other ologies than the average
captain of industry. Yes, I have been to half a dozen of their meetings,
but that doesn't make me a socialist any more than hearing Charley Hapgood
orate made me a Republican."

"I can't help it," Mr. Morse said feebly, "but I still believe you incline
that way."

Bless me, Martin thought to himself, he doesn't know what I was talking
about. He hasn't understood a word of it. What did he do with his
education, anyway?

Thus, in his development, Martin found himself face to face with economic
morality, or the morality of class; and soon it became to him a grisly
monster. Personally, he was an intellectual moralist, and more offending to
him than platitudinous pomposity was the morality of those about him, which
was a curious hotchpotch of the economic, the metaphysical, the
sentimental, and the imitative.

A sample of this curious messy mixture he encountered nearer home. His
sister Marian had been keeping company with an industrious young mechanic,
of German extraction, who, after thoroughly learning the trade, had set up
for himself in a bicycle-repair shop. Also, having got the agency for a
low-grade make of wheel, he was prosperous. Marian had called on Martin in
his room a short time before to announce her engagement, during which visit
she had playfully inspected Martin's palm and told his fortune. On her next
visit she brought Hermann von Schmidt along with her. Martin did the honors
and congratulated both of them in language so easy and graceful as to
affect disagreeably the peasant-mind of his sister's lover. This bad
impression was further heightened by Martin's reading aloud the half-dozen
stanzas of verse with which he had commemorated Marian's previous visit. It
was a bit of society verse, airy and delicate, which he had named "The
Palmist." He was surprised, when he finished reading it, to note no
enjoyment in his sister's face. Instead, her eyes were fixed anxiously upon
her betrothed, and Martin, following her gaze, saw spread on that worthy's
asymmetrical features nothing but black and sullen disapproval. The
incident passed over, they made an early departure, and Martin forgot all
about it, though for the moment he had been puzzled that any woman, even of
the working class, should not have been flattered and delighted by having
poetry written about her.

Several evenings later Marian again visited him, this time alone. Nor did
she waste time in coming to the point, upbraiding him sorrowfully for what
he had done.

"Why, Marian," he chided, "you talk as though you were ashamed of your
relatives, or of your brother at any rate."

"And I am, too," she blurted out.

Martin was bewildered by the tears of mortification he saw in her eyes. The
mood, whatever it was, was genuine.

"But, Marian, why should your Hermann be jealous of my writing poetry about
my own sister?"

"He ain't jealous," she sobbed. "He says it was indecent, ob - obscene."

Martin emitted a long, low whistle of incredulity, then proceeded to
resurrect and read a carbon copy of "The Palmist."

"I can't see it," he said finally, proffering the manuscript to her. "Read
it yourself and show me whatever strikes you as obscene - that was the
word, wasn't it?"

"He says so, and he ought to know," was the answer, with a wave aside of
the manuscript, accompanied by a look of loathing. "And he says you've got
to tear it up. He says he won't have no wife of his with such things
written about her which anybody can read. He says it's a disgrace, an' he
won't stand for it."

"Now, look here, Marian, this is nothing but nonsense," Martin began; then
abruptly changed his mind.

He saw before him an unhappy girl, knew the futility of attempting to
convince her husband or her, and, though the whole situation was absurd and
preposterous, he resolved to surrender.

"All right," he announced, tearing the manuscript into half a dozen pieces
and throwing it into the waste-basket.

He contented himself with the knowledge that even then the original
type-written manuscript was reposing in the office of a New York magazine.
Marian and her husband would never know, and neither himself nor they nor
the world would lose if the pretty, harmless poem ever were published.

Marian, starting to reach into the waste-basket, refrained.

"Can I?" she pleaded.

He nodded his head, regarding her thoughtfully as she gathered the torn
pieces of manuscript and tucked them into the pocket of her jacket - ocular
evidence of the success of her mission. She reminded him of Lizzie
Connolly, though there was less of fire and gorgeous flaunting life in her
than in that other girl of the working class whom he had seen twice. But
they were on a par, the pair of them, in dress and carriage, and he smiled
with inward amusement at the caprice of his fancy which suggested the
appearance of either of them in Mrs. Morse's drawing-room. The amusement
faded, and he was aware of a great loneliness. This sister of his and the
Morse drawing-room were milestones of the road he had travelled. And he had
left them behind. He glanced affectionately about him at his few books.
They were all the comrades left to him.

"Hello, what's that?" he demanded in startled surprise.

Marian repeated her question.

"Why don't I go to work?" He broke into a laugh that was only half-hearted.
"That Hermann of yours has been talking to you."

She shook her head.

"Don't lie," he commanded, and the nod of her head affirmed his charge.

"Well, you tell that Hermann of yours to mind his own business; that when I
write poetry about the girl he's keeping company with it's his business,
but that outside of that he's got no say so. Understand?

"So you don't think I'll succeed as a writer, eh?" he went on. "You think
I'm no good? - that I've fallen down and am a disgrace to the family?"

"I think it would be much better if you got a job," she said firmly, and he
saw she was sincere. "Hermann says - "

"Damn Hermann!" he broke out good-naturedly. "What I want to know is when
you're going to get married. Also, you find out from your Hermann if he
will deign to permit you to accept a wedding present from me."

He mused over the incident after she had gone, and once or twice broke out
into laughter that was bitter as he saw his sister and her betrothed, all
the members of his own class and the members of Ruth's class, directing
their narrow little lives by narrow little formulas - herd-creatures,
flocking together and patterning their lives by one another's opinions,
failing of being individuals and of really living life because of the
childlike formulas by which they were enslaved. He summoned them before him
in apparitional procession: Bernard Higginbotham arm in arm with Mr.
Butler, Hermann von Schmidt cheek by jowl with Charley Hapgood, and one by
one and in pairs he judged them and dismissed them - judged them by the
standards of intellect and morality he had learned from the books. Vainly
he asked: Where are the great souls, the great men and women? He found them
not among the careless, gross, and stupid intelligences that answered the
call of vision to his narrow room. He felt a loathing for them such as
Circe must have felt for her swine. When he had dismissed the last one and
thought himself alone, a late-comer entered, unexpected and unsummoned.
Martin watched him and saw the stiff-rim, the square-cut, double-breasted
coat and the swaggering shoulders, of the youthful hoodlum who had once
been he.

"You were like all the rest, young fellow," Martin sneered. "Your morality
and your knowledge were just the same as theirs. You did not think and act
for yourself. Your opinions, like your clothes, were ready made; your acts
were shaped by popular approval. You were cock of your gang because others
acclaimed you the real thing. You fought and ruled the gang, not because
you liked to, - you know you really despised it, - but because the other
fellows patted you on the shoulder. You licked Cheese-Face because you
wouldn't give in, and you wouldn't give in partly because you were an
abysmal brute and for the rest because you believed what every one about
you believed, that the measure of manhood was the carnivorous ferocity
displayed in injuring and marring fellow-creatures' anatomies. Why, you
whelp, you even won other fellows' girls away from them, not because you
wanted the girls, but because in the marrow of those about you, those who
set your moral pace, was the instinct of the wild stallion and the
bull-seal. Well, the years have passed, and what do you think about it
now?"

As if in reply, the vision underwent a swift metamorphosis. The stiff-rim
and the square-cut vanished, being replaced by milder garments; the
toughness went out of the face, the hardness out of the eyes; and, the
face, chastened and refined, was irradiated from an inner life of communion
with beauty and knowledge. The apparition was very like his present self,
and, as he regarded it, he noted the student-lamp by which it was
illuminated, and the book over which it pored. He glanced at the title and
read, "The Science of AEsthetics." Next, he entered into the apparition,
trimmed the student-lamp, and himself went on reading "The Science of
AEsthetics."

CHAPTER XXX

On a beautiful fall day, a day of similar Indian summer to that which had
seen their love declared the year before, Martin read his "Love-cycle" to
Ruth. It was in the afternoon, and, as before, they had ridden out to their
favorite knoll in the hills. Now and again she had interrupted his reading
with exclamations of pleasure, and now, as he laid the last sheet of
manuscript with its fellows, he waited her judgment.

She delayed to speak, and at last she spoke haltingly, hesitating to frame
in words the harshness of her thought.

"I think they are beautiful, very beautiful," she said; "but you can't sell
them, can you? You see what I mean," she said, almost pleaded. "This
writing of yours is not practical. Something is the matter - maybe it is
with the market - that prevents you from earning a living by it. And
please, dear, don't misunderstand me. I am flattered, and made proud, and
all that - I could not be a true woman were it otherwise - that you should
write these poems to me. But they do not make our marriage possible. Don't
you see, Martin? Don't think me mercenary. It is love, the thought of our
future, with which I am burdened. A whole year has gone by since we learned
we loved each other, and our wedding day is no nearer. Don't think me
immodest in thus talking about our wedding, for really I have my heart, all
that I am, at stake. Why don't you try to get work on a newspaper, if you
are so bound up in your writing? Why not become a reporter? - for a while,
at least?"

"It would spoil my style," was his answer, in a low, monotonous voice. "You
have no idea how I've worked for style."

"But those storiettes," she argued. "You called them hack-work. You wrote
many of them. Didn't they spoil your style?"

"No, the cases are different. The storiettes were ground out, jaded, at the
end of a long day of application to style. But a reporter's work is all
hack from morning till night, is the one paramount thing of life. And it is
a whirlwind life, the life of the moment, with neither past nor future, and
certainly without thought of any style but reportorial style, and that
certainly is not literature. To become a reporter now, just as my style is
taking form, crystallizing, would be to commit literary suicide. As it is,
every storiette, every word of every storiette, was a violation of myself,
of my self-respect, of my respect for beauty. I tell you it was sickening.
I was guilty of sin. And I was secretly glad when the markets failed, even
if my clothes did go into pawn. But the joy of writing the 'Love-cycle'!
The creative joy in its noblest form! That was compensation for
everything."

Martin did not know that Ruth was unsympathetic concerning the creative
joy. She used the phrase - it was on her lips he had first heard it. She
had read about it, studied about it, in the university in the course of
earning her Bachelorship of Arts; but she was not original, not creative,
and all manifestations of culture on her part were but harpings of the
harpings of others.

"May not the editor have been right in his revision of your 'Sea Lyrics'?"
she questioned. "Remember, an editor must have proved qualifications or
else he would not be an editor."

"That's in line with the persistence of the established," he rejoined, his
heat against the editor-folk getting the better of him. "What is, is not
only right, but is the best possible. The existence of anything is
sufficient vindication of its fitness to exist - to exist, mark you, as the
average person unconsciously believes, not merely in present conditions,
but in all conditions. It is their ignorance, of course, that makes them
believe such rot - their ignorance, which is nothing more nor less than the
henidical mental process described by Weininger. They think they think, and
such thinkless creatures are the arbiters of the lives of the few who
really think."

He paused, overcome by the consciousness that he had been talking over
Ruth's head.

"I'm sure I don't know who this Weininger is," she retorted. "And you are
so dreadfully general that I fail to follow you. What I was speaking of was
the qualification of editors - "

"And I'll tell you," he interrupted. "The chief qualification of
ninety-nine per cent of all editors is failure. They have failed as
writers. Don't think they prefer the drudgery of the desk and the slavery
to their circulation and to the business manager to the joy of writing.
They have tried to write, and they have failed. And right there is the
cursed paradox of it. Every portal to success in literature is guarded by
those watch-dogs, the failures in literature. The editors, sub-editors,
associate editors, most of them, and the manuscript-readers for the
magazines and book- publishers, most of them, nearly all of them, are men
who wanted to write and who have failed. And yet they, of all creatures
under the sun the most unfit, are the very creatures who decide what shall
and what shall not find its way into print - they, who have proved
themselves not original, who have demonstrated that they lack the divine
fire, sit in judgment upon originality and genius. And after them come the
reviewers, just so many more failures. Don't tell me that they have not
dreamed the dream and attempted to write poetry or fiction; for they have,
and they have failed. Why, the average review is more nauseating than
cod-liver oil. But you know my opinion on the reviewers and the alleged
critics. There are great critics, but they are as rare as comets. If I fail
as a writer, I shall have proved for the career of editorship. There's
bread and butter and jam, at any rate."

Ruth's mind was quick, and her disapproval of her lover's views was
buttressed by the contradiction she found in his contention.

"But, Martin, if that be so, if all the doors are closed as you have shown
so conclusively, how is it possible that any of the great writers ever
arrived?"

"They arrived by achieving the impossible," he answered. "They did such
blazing, glorious work as to burn to ashes those that opposed them. They
arrived by course of miracle, by winning a thousand-to- one wager against
them. They arrived because they were Carlyle's battle-scarred giants who
will not be kept down. And that is what I must do; I must achieve the
impossible."

"But if you fail? You must consider me as well, Martin."

"If I fail?" He regarded her for a moment as though the thought she had
uttered was unthinkable. Then intelligence illumined his eyes. "If I fail,
I shall become an editor, and you will be an editor's wife."

She frowned at his facetiousness - a pretty, adorable frown that made him
put his arm around her and kiss it away.

"There, that's enough," she urged, by an effort of will withdrawing herself
from the fascination of his strength. "I have talked with father and
mother. I never before asserted myself so against them. I demanded to be
heard. I was very undutiful. They are against you, you know; but I assured
them over and over of my abiding love for you, and at last father agreed
that if you wanted to, you could begin right away in his office. And then,
of his own accord, he said he would pay you enough at the start so that we
could get married and have a little cottage somewhere. Which I think was
very fine of him - don't you?"

Martin, with the dull pain of despair at his heart, mechanically reaching
for the tobacco and paper (which he no longer carried) to roll a cigarette,
muttered something inarticulate, and Ruth went on.

"Frankly, though, and don't let it hurt you - I tell you, to show you
precisely how you stand with him - he doesn't like your radical views, and
he thinks you are lazy. Of course I know you are not. I know you work
hard."

How hard, even she did not know, was the thought in Martin's mind.

"Well, then," he said, "how about my views? Do you think they are so
radical?"

He held her eyes and waited the answer.

"I think them, well, very disconcerting," she replied.

The question was answered for him, and so oppressed was he by the grayness
of life that he forgot the tentative proposition she had made for him to go
to work. And she, having gone as far as she dared, was willing to wait the
answer till she should bring the question up again.

She had not long to wait. Martin had a question of his own to propound to
her. He wanted to ascertain the measure of her faith in him, and within the
week each was answered. Martin precipitated it by reading to her his "The
Shame of the Sun."

"Why don't you become a reporter?" she asked when he had finished. "You
love writing so, and I am sure you would succeed. You could rise in
journalism and make a name for yourself. There are a number of great
special correspondents. Their salaries are large, and their field is the
world. They are sent everywhere, to the heart of Africa, like Stanley, or
to interview the Pope, or to explore unknown Thibet."

"Then you don't like my essay?" he rejoined. "You believe that I have some
show in journalism but none in literature?"

"No, no; I do like it. It reads well. But I am afraid it's over the heads
of your readers. At least it is over mine. It sounds beautiful, but I don't
understand it. Your scientific slang is beyond me. You are an extremist,
you know, dear, and what may be intelligible to you may not be intelligible
to the rest of us."

"I imagine it's the philosophic slang that bothers you," was all he could
say.

He was flaming from the fresh reading of the ripest thought he had
expressed, and her verdict stunned him.

"No matter how poorly it is done," he persisted, "don't you see anything in
it? - in the thought of it, I mean?"

She shook her head.

"No, it is so different from anything I have read. I read Maeterlinck and
understand him - "

"His mysticism, you understand that?" Martin flashed out.

"Yes, but this of yours, which is supposed to be an attack upon him, I
don't understand. Of course, if originality counts - "

He stopped her with an impatient gesture that was not followed by speech.
He became suddenly aware that she was speaking and that she had been
speaking for some time.

"After all, your writing has been a toy to you," she was saying. "Surely
you have played with it long enough. It is time to take up life seriously -
OUR life, Martin. Hitherto you have lived solely your own."

"You want me to go to work?" he asked.

"Yes. Father has offered - "

"I understand all that," he broke in; "but what I want to know is whether
or not you have lost faith in me?"

She pressed his hand mutely, her eyes dim.

"In your writing, dear," she admitted in a half-whisper.

"You've read lots of my stuff," he went on brutally. "What do you think of
it? Is it utterly hopeless? How does it compare with other men's work?"

"But they sell theirs, and you - don't."

"That doesn't answer my question. Do you think that literature is not at
all my vocation?"

"Then I will answer." She steeled herself to do it. "I don't think you were
made to write. Forgive me, dear. You compel me to say it; and you know I
know more about literature than you do."

"Yes, you are a Bachelor of Arts," he said meditatively; "and you ought to
know."

"But there is more to be said," he continued, after a pause painful to
both. "I know what I have in me. No one knows that so well as I. I know I
shall succeed. I will not be kept down. I am afire with what I have to say
in verse, and fiction, and essay. I do not ask you to have faith in that,
though. I do not ask you to have faith in me, nor in my writing. What I do
ask of you is to love me and have faith in love."

"A year ago I believed for two years. One of those years is yet to run. And
I do believe, upon my honor and my soul, that before that year is run I
shall have succeeded. You remember what you told me long ago, that I must
serve my apprenticeship to writing. Well, I have served it. I have crammed
it and telescoped it. With you at the end awaiting me, I have never
shirked. Do you know, I have forgotten what it is to fall peacefully
asleep. A few million years ago I knew what it was to sleep my fill and to
awake naturally from very glut of sleep. I am awakened always now by an
alarm clock. If I fall asleep early or late, I set the alarm accordingly;
and this, and the putting out of the lamp, are my last conscious actions."

"When I begin to feel drowsy, I change the heavy book I am reading for a
lighter one. And when I doze over that, I beat my head with my knuckles in
order to drive sleep away. Somewhere I read of a man who was afraid to
sleep. Kipling wrote the story. This man arranged a spur so that when
unconsciousness came, his naked body pressed against the iron teeth. Well,
I've done the same. I look at the time, and I resolve that not until
midnight, or not until one o'clock, or two o'clock, or three o'clock, shall
the spur be removed. And so it rowels me awake until the appointed time.
That spur has been my bed-mate for months. I have grown so desperate that
five and a half hours of sleep is an extravagance. I sleep four hours now.
I am starved for sleep. There are times when I am light-headed from want of
sleep, times when death, with its rest and sleep, is a positive lure to me,
times when I am haunted by Longfellow's lines:

"'The sea is still and deep; All things within its bosom sleep; A single
step and all is o'er, A plunge, a bubble, and no more.'

"Of course, this is sheer nonsense. It comes from nervousness, from an
overwrought mind. But the point is: Why have I done this? For you. To
shorten my apprenticeship. To compel Success to hasten. And my
apprenticeship is now served. I know my equipment. I swear that I learn
more each month than the average college man learns in a year. I know it, I
tell you. But were my need for you to understand not so desperate I should
not tell you. It is not boasting. I measure the results by the books. Your
brothers, to- day, are ignorant barbarians compared with me and the
knowledge I have wrung from the books in the hours they were sleeping. Long
ago I wanted to be famous. I care very little for fame now. What I want is
you; I am more hungry for you than for food, or clothing, or recognition. I
have a dream of laying my head on your breast and sleeping an aeon or so,
and the dream will come true ere another year is gone."

His power beat against her, wave upon wave; and in the moment his will
opposed hers most she felt herself most strongly drawn toward him. The
strength that had always poured out from him to her was now flowering in
his impassioned voice, his flashing eyes, and the vigor of life and
intellect surging in him. And in that moment, and for the moment, she was
aware of a rift that showed in her certitude - a rift through which she
caught sight of the real Martin Eden, splendid and invincible; and as
animal-trainers have their moments of doubt, so she, for the instant,
seemed to doubt her power to tame this wild spirit of a man.

"And another thing," he swept on. "You love me. But why do you love me? The
thing in me that compels me to write is the very thing that draws your
love. You love me because I am somehow different from the men you have
known and might have loved. I was not made for the desk and counting-house,
for petty business squabbling, and legal jangling. Make me do such things,
make me like those other men, doing the work they do, breathing the air
they breathe, developing the point of view they have developed, and you
have destroyed the difference, destroyed me, destroyed the thing you love.
My desire to write is the most vital thing in me. Had I been a mere clod,
neither would I have desired to write, nor would you have desired me for a
husband."

"But you forget," she interrupted, the quick surface of her mind glimpsing
a parallel. "There have been eccentric inventors, starving their families
while they sought such chimeras as perpetual motion. Doubtless their wives
loved them, and suffered with them and for them, not because of but in
spite of their infatuation for perpetual motion."

"True," was the reply. "But there have been inventors who were not
eccentric and who starved while they sought to invent practical things; and
sometimes, it is recorded, they succeeded. Certainly I do not seek any
impossibilities - "

"You have called it 'achieving the impossible,'" she interpolated.

"I spoke figuratively. I seek to do what men have done before me - to write
and to live by my writing."

Her silence spurred him on.

"To you, then, my goal is as much a chimera as perpetual motion?" he
demanded.

He read her answer in the pressure of her hand on his - the pitying
mother-hand for the hurt child. And to her, just then, he was the hurt
child, the infatuated man striving to achieve the impossible.

Toward the close of their talk she warned him again of the antagonism of
her father and mother.

"But you love me?" he asked.

"I do! I do!" she cried.

"And I love you, not them, and nothing they do can hurt me." Triumph
sounded in his voice. "For I have faith in your love, not fear of their
enmity. All things may go astray in this world, but not love. Love cannot
go wrong unless it be a weakling that faints and stumbles by the way."

CHAPTER XXXI

Martin had encountered his sister Gertrude by chance on Broadway - as it
proved, a most propitious yet disconcerting chance. Waiting on the corner
for a car, she had seen him first, and noted the eager, hungry lines of his
face and the desperate, worried look of his eyes. In truth, he was
desperate and worried. He had just come from a fruitless interview with the
pawnbroker, from whom he had tried to wring an additional loan on his
wheel. The muddy fall weather having come on, Martin had pledged his wheel
some time since and retained his black suit.

"There's the black suit," the pawnbroker, who knew his every asset, had
answered. "You needn't tell me you've gone and pledged it with that Jew,
Lipka. Because if you have - "

The man had looked the threat, and Martin hastened to cry:-

"No, no; I've got it. But I want to wear it on a matter of business."

"All right," the mollified usurer had replied. "And I want it on a matter
of business before I can let you have any more money. You don't think I'm
in it for my health?"

"But it's a forty-dollar wheel, in good condition," Martin had argued. "And
you've only let me have seven dollars on it. No, not even seven. Six and a
quarter; you took the interest in advance."

"If you want some more, bring the suit," had been the reply that sent
Martin out of the stuffy little den, so desperate at heart as to reflect it
in his face and touch his sister to pity.

Scarcely had they met when the Telegraph Avenue car came along and stopped
to take on a crowd of afternoon shoppers. Mrs. Higginbotham divined from
the grip on her arm as he helped her on, that he was not going to follow
her. She turned on the step and looked down upon him. His haggard face
smote her to the heart again.

"Ain't you comin'?" she asked

The next moment she had descended to his side.

"I'm walking - exercise, you know," he explained.

"Then I'll go along for a few blocks," she announced. "Mebbe it'll do me
good. I ain't ben feelin' any too spry these last few days."

Martin glanced at her and verified her statement in her general slovenly
appearance, in the unhealthy fat, in the drooping shoulders, the tired face
with the sagging lines, and in the heavy fall of her feet, without
elasticity - a very caricature of the walk that belongs to a free and happy
body.

"You'd better stop here," he said, though she had already come to a halt at
the first corner, "and take the next car."

"My goodness! - if I ain't all tired a'ready!" she panted. "But I'm just as
able to walk as you in them soles. They're that thin they'll bu'st long
before you git out to North Oakland."

"I've a better pair at home," was the answer.

"Come out to dinner to-morrow," she invited irrelevantly. "Mr. Higginbotham
won't be there. He's goin' to San Leandro on business."

Martin shook his head, but he had failed to keep back the wolfish, hungry
look that leapt into his eyes at the suggestion of dinner.

"You haven't a penny, Mart, and that's why you're walkin'. Exercise!" She
tried to sniff contemptuously, but succeeded in producing only a sniffle.
"Here, lemme see."

And, fumbling in her satchel, she pressed a five-dollar piece into his
hand. "I guess I forgot your last birthday, Mart," she mumbled lamely.

Martin's hand instinctively closed on the piece of gold. In the same
instant he knew he ought not to accept, and found himself struggling in the
throes of indecision. That bit of gold meant food, life, and light in his
body and brain, power to go on writing, and - who was to say? - maybe to
write something that would bring in many pieces of gold. Clear on his
vision burned the manuscripts of two essays he had just completed. He saw
them under the table on top of the heap of returned manuscripts for which
he had no stamps, and he saw their titles, just as he had typed them - "The
High Priests of Mystery," and "The Cradle of Beauty." He had never
submitted them anywhere. They were as good as anything he had done in that
line. If only he had stamps for them! Then the certitude of his ultimate
success rose up in him, an able ally of hunger, and with a quick movement
he slipped the coin into his pocket.

"I'll pay you back, Gertrude, a hundred times over," he gulped out, his
throat painfully contracted and in his eyes a swift hint of moisture.

"Mark my words!" he cried with abrupt positiveness. "Before the year is out
I'll put an even hundred of those little yellow-boys into your hand. I
don't ask you to believe me. All you have to do is wait and see."

Nor did she believe. Her incredulity made her uncomfortable, and failing of
other expedient, she said:-

"I know you're hungry, Mart. It's sticking out all over you. Come in to
meals any time. I'll send one of the children to tell you when Mr.
Higginbotham ain't to be there. An' Mart - "

He waited, though he knew in his secret heart what she was about to say, so
visible was her thought process to him.

"Don't you think it's about time you got a job?"

"You don't think I'll win out?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"Nobody has faith in me, Gertrude, except myself." His voice was
passionately rebellious. "I've done good work already, plenty of it, and
sooner or later it will sell."

"How do you know it is good?"

"Because - " He faltered as the whole vast field of literature and the
history of literature stirred in his brain and pointed the futility of his
attempting to convey to her the reasons for his faith. "Well, because it's
better than ninety-nine per cent of what is published in the magazines."

"I wish't you'd listen to reason," she answered feebly, but with unwavering
belief in the correctness of her diagnosis of what was ailing him. "I
wish't you'd listen to reason," she repeated, "an' come to dinner
to-morrow."

After Martin had helped her on the car, he hurried to the post- office and
invested three of the five dollars in stamps; and when, later in the day,
on the way to the Morse home, he stopped in at the post-office to weigh a
large number of long, bulky envelopes, he affixed to them all the stamps
save three of the two-cent denomination.

It proved a momentous night for Martin, for after dinner he met Russ
Brissenden. How he chanced to come there, whose friend he was or what
acquaintance brought him, Martin did not know. Nor had he the curiosity to
inquire about him of Ruth. In short, Brissenden struck Martin as anaemic
and feather-brained, and was promptly dismissed from his mind. An hour
later he decided that Brissenden was a boor as well, what of the way he
prowled about from one room to another, staring at the pictures or poking
his nose into books and magazines he picked up from the table or drew from
the shelves. Though a stranger in the house he finally isolated himself in
the midst of the company, huddling into a capacious Morris chair and
reading steadily from a thin volume he had drawn from his pocket. As he
read, he abstractedly ran his fingers, with a caressing movement, through
his hair. Martin noticed him no more that evening, except once when he
observed him chaffing with great apparent success with several of the young
women.

It chanced that when Martin was leaving, he overtook Brissenden already
half down the walk to the street.

"Hello, is that you?" Martin said.

The other replied with an ungracious grunt, but swung alongside. Martin
made no further attempt at conversation, and for several blocks unbroken
silence lay upon them.

"Pompous old ass!"

The suddenness and the virulence of the exclamation startled Martin. He
felt amused, and at the same time was aware of a growing dislike for the
other.

"What do you go to such a place for?" was abruptly flung at him after
another block of silence.

"Why do you?" Martin countered.

"Bless me, I don't know," came back. "At least this is my first
indiscretion. There are twenty-four hours in each day, and I must spend
them somehow. Come and have a drink."

"All right," Martin answered.

The next moment he was nonplussed by the readiness of his acceptance. At
home was several hours' hack-work waiting for him before he went to bed,
and after he went to bed there was a volume of Weismann waiting for him, to
say nothing of Herbert Spencer's Autobiography, which was as replete for
him with romance as any thrilling novel. Why should he waste any time with
this man he did not like? was his thought. And yet, it was not so much the
man nor the drink as was it what was associated with the drink - the bright
lights, the mirrors and dazzling array of glasses, the warm and glowing
faces and the resonant hum of the voices of men. That was it, it was the
voices of men, optimistic men, men who breathed success and spent their
money for drinks like men. He was lonely, that was what was the matter with
him; that was why he had snapped at the invitation as a bonita strikes at a
white rag on a hook. Not since with Joe, at Shelly Hot Springs, with the
one exception of the wine he took with the Portuguese grocer, had Martin
had a drink at a public bar. Mental exhaustion did not produce a craving
for liquor such as physical exhaustion did, and he had felt no need for it.
But just now he felt desire for the drink, or, rather, for the atmosphere
wherein drinks were dispensed and disposed of. Such a place was the Grotto,
where Brissenden and he lounged in capacious leather chairs and drank
Scotch and soda.

They talked. They talked about many things, and now Brissenden and now
Martin took turn in ordering Scotch and soda. Martin, who was extremely
strong-headed, marvelled at the other's capacity for liquor, and ever and
anon broke off to marvel at the other's conversation. He was not long in
assuming that Brissenden knew everything, and in deciding that here was the
second intellectual man he had met. But he noted that Brissenden had what
Professor Caldwell lacked - namely, fire, the flashing insight and
perception, the flaming uncontrol of genius. Living language flowed from
him. His thin lips, like the dies of a machine, stamped out phrases that
cut and stung; or again, pursing caressingly about the inchoate sound they
articulated, the thin lips shaped soft and velvety things, mellow phrases
of glow and glory, of haunting beauty, reverberant of the mystery and
inscrutableness of life; and yet again the thin lips were like a bugle,
from which rang the crash and tumult of cosmic strife, phrases that sounded
clear as silver, that were luminous as starry spaces, that epitomized the
final word of science and yet said something more - the poet's word, the
transcendental truth, elusive and without words which could express, and
which none the less found expression in the subtle and all but ungraspable
connotations of common words. He, by some wonder of vision, saw beyond the
farthest outpost of empiricism, where was no language for narration, and
yet, by some golden miracle of speech, investing known words with unknown
significances, he conveyed to Martin's consciousness messages that were
incommunicable to ordinary souls.

Martin forgot his first impression of dislike. Here was the best the books
had to offer coming true. Here was an intelligence, a living man for him to
look up to. "I am down in the dirt at your feet," Martin repeated to
himself again and again.

"You've studied biology," he said aloud, in significant allusion.

To his surprise Brissenden shook his head.

"But you are stating truths that are substantiated only by biology," Martin
insisted, and was rewarded by a blank stare. "Your conclusions are in line
with the books which you must have read."

"I am glad to hear it," was the answer. "That my smattering of knowledge
should enable me to short-cut my way to truth is most reassuring. As for
myself, I never bother to find out if I am right or not. It is all
valueless anyway. Man can never know the ultimate verities."

"You are a disciple of Spencer!" Martin cried triumphantly.

"I haven't read him since adolescence, and all I read then was his
'Education.'"

"I wish I could gather knowledge as carelessly," Martin broke out half an
hour later. He had been closely analyzing Brissenden's mental equipment.
"You are a sheer dogmatist, and that's what makes it so marvellous. You
state dogmatically the latest facts which science has been able to
establish only by E POSTERIORI reasoning. You jump at correct conclusions.
You certainly short- cut with a vengeance. You feel your way with the speed
of light, by some hyperrational process, to truth."

"Yes, that was what used to bother Father Joseph, and Brother Dutton,"
Brissenden replied. "Oh, no," he added; "I am not anything. It was a lucky
trick of fate that sent me to a Catholic college for my education. Where
did you pick up what you know?"

And while Martin told him, he was busy studying Brissenden, ranging from a
long, lean, aristocratic face and drooping shoulders to the overcoat on a
neighboring chair, its pockets sagged and bulged by the freightage of many
books. Brissenden's face and long, slender hands were browned by the sun -
excessively browned, Martin thought. This sunburn bothered Martin. It was
patent that Brissenden was no outdoor man. Then how had he been ravaged by
the sun? Something morbid and significant attached to that sunburn, was
Martin's thought as he returned to a study of the face, narrow, with high
cheek-bones and cavernous hollows, and graced with as delicate and fine an
aquiline nose as Martin had ever seen. There was nothing remarkable about
the size of the eyes. They were neither large nor small, while their color
was a nondescript brown; but in them smouldered a fire, or, rather, lurked
an expression dual and strangely contradictory. Defiant, indomitable, even
harsh to excess, they at the same time aroused pity. Martin found himself
pitying him he knew not why, though he was soon to learn.

"Oh, I'm a lunger," Brissenden announced, offhand, a little later, having
already stated that he came from Arizona. "I've been down there a couple of
years living on the climate."

"Aren't you afraid to venture it up in this climate?"

"Afraid?"

There was no special emphasis of his repetition of Martin's word. But
Martin saw in that ascetic face the advertisement that there was nothing of
which it was afraid. The eyes had narrowed till they were eagle-like, and
Martin almost caught his breath as he noted the eagle beak with its dilated
nostrils, defiant, assertive, aggressive. Magnificent, was what he
commented to himself, his blood thrilling at the sight. Aloud, he quoted:-

"'Under the bludgeoning of Chance My head is bloody but unbowed.'"

"You like Henley," Brissenden said, his expression changing swiftly to
large graciousness and tenderness. "Of course, I couldn't have expected
anything else of you. Ah, Henley! A brave soul. He stands out among
contemporary rhymesters - magazine rhymesters - as a gladiator stands out
in the midst of a band of eunuchs."

"You don't like the magazines," Martin softly impeached.

"Do you?" was snarled back at him so savagely as to startle him.

"I - I write, or, rather, try to write, for the magazines," Martin
faltered.

"That's better," was the mollified rejoinder. "You try to write, but you
don't succeed. I respect and admire your failure. I know what you write. I
can see it with half an eye, and there's one ingredient in it that shuts it
out of the magazines. It's guts, and magazines have no use for that
particular commodity. What they want is wish-wash and slush, and God knows
they get it, but not from you."

"I'm not above hack-work," Martin contended.

"On the contrary - " Brissenden paused and ran an insolent eye over
Martin's objective poverty, passing from the well-worn tie and the
saw-edged collar to the shiny sleeves of the coat and on to the slight fray
of one cuff, winding up and dwelling upon Martin's sunken cheeks. "On the
contrary, hack-work is above you, so far above you that you can never hope
to rise to it. Why, man, I could insult you by asking you to have something
to eat."

Martin felt the heat in his face of the involuntary blood, and Brissenden
laughed triumphantly.

"A full man is not insulted by such an invitation," he concluded.

"You are a devil," Martin cried irritably.

"Anyway, I didn't ask you."

"You didn't dare."

"Oh, I don't know about that. I invite you now."

Brissenden half rose from his chair as he spoke, as if with the intention
of departing to the restaurant forthwith.

Martin's fists were tight-clenched, and his blood was drumming in his
temples.

"Bosco! He eats 'em alive! Eats 'em alive!" Brissenden exclaimed, imitating
the SPIELER of a locally famous snake-eater.

"I could certainly eat you alive," Martin said, in turn running insolent
eyes over the other's disease-ravaged frame.

"Only I'm not worthy of it?"

"On the contrary," Martin considered, "because the incident is not worthy."
He broke into a laugh, hearty and wholesome. "I confess you made a fool of
me, Brissenden. That I am hungry and you are aware of it are only ordinary
phenomena, and there's no disgrace. You see, I laugh at the conventional
little moralities of the herd; then you drift by, say a sharp, true word,
and immediately I am the slave of the same little moralities."

"You were insulted," Brissenden affirmed.

"I certainly was, a moment ago. The prejudice of early youth, you know. I
learned such things then, and they cheapen what I have since learned. They
are the skeletons in my particular closet."

"But you've got the door shut on them now?"

"I certainly have."

"Sure?"

"Sure."

"Then let's go and get something to eat."

"I'll go you," Martin answered, attempting to pay for the current Scotch
and soda with the last change from his two dollars and seeing the waiter
bullied by Brissenden into putting that change back on the table.

Martin pocketed it with a grimace, and felt for a moment the kindly weight
of Brissenden's hand upon his shoulder.

CHAPTER XXXII

Promptly, the next afternoon, Maria was excited by Martin's second visitor.
But she did not lose her head this time, for she seated Brissenden in her
parlor's grandeur of respectability.

"Hope you don't mind my coming?" Brissenden began.

"No, no, not at all," Martin answered, shaking hands and waving him to the
solitary chair, himself taking to the bed. "But how did you know where I
lived?"

"Called up the Morses. Miss Morse answered the 'phone. And here I am." He
tugged at his coat pocket and flung a thin volume on the table. "There's a
book, by a poet. Read it and keep it." And then, in reply to Martin's
protest: "What have I to do with books? I had another hemorrhage this
morning. Got any whiskey? No, of course not. Wait a minute."

He was off and away. Martin watched his long figure go down the outside
steps, and, on turning to close the gate, noted with a pang the shoulders,
which had once been broad, drawn in now over, the collapsed ruin of the
chest. Martin got two tumblers, and fell to reading the book of verse,
Henry Vaughn Marlow's latest collection.

"No Scotch," Brissenden announced on his return. "The beggar sells nothing
but American whiskey. But here's a quart of it."

"I'll send one of the youngsters for lemons, and we'll make a toddy,"
Martin offered.

"I wonder what a book like that will earn Marlow?" he went on, holding up
the volume in question.

"Possibly fifty dollars," came the answer. "Though he's lucky if he pulls
even on it, or if he can inveigle a publisher to risk bringing it out."

"Then one can't make a living out of poetry?"

Martin's tone and face alike showed his dejection.

"Certainly not. What fool expects to? Out of rhyming, yes. There's Bruce,
and Virginia Spring, and Sedgwick. They do very nicely. But poetry - do you
know how Vaughn Marlow makes his living? - teaching in a boys'
cramming-joint down in Pennsylvania, and of all private little hells such a
billet is the limit. I wouldn't trade places with him if he had fifty years
of life before him. And yet his work stands out from the ruck of the
contemporary versifiers as a balas ruby among carrots. And the reviews he
gets! Damn them, all of them, the crass manikins!"

"Too much is written by the men who can't write about the men who do
write," Martin concurred. "Why, I was appalled at the quantities of rubbish
written about Stevenson and his work."

"Ghouls and harpies!" Brissenden snapped out with clicking teeth. "Yes, I
know the spawn - complacently pecking at him for his Father Damien letter,
analyzing him, weighing him - "

"Measuring him by the yardstick of their own miserable egos," Martin broke
in.

"Yes, that's it, a good phrase, - mouthing and besliming the True, and
Beautiful, and Good, and finally patting him on the back and saying, 'Good
dog, Fido.' Faugh! 'The little chattering daws of men,' Richard Realf
called them the night he died."

"Pecking at star-dust," Martin took up the strain warmly; "at the meteoric
flight of the master-men. I once wrote a squib on them - the critics, or
the reviewers, rather."

"Let's see it," Brissenden begged eagerly.

So Martin unearthed a carbon copy of "Star-dust," and during the reading of
it Brissenden chuckled, rubbed his hands, and forgot to sip his toddy.

"Strikes me you're a bit of star-dust yourself, flung into a world of
cowled gnomes who cannot see," was his comment at the end of it. "Of course
it was snapped up by the first magazine?"

Martin ran over the pages of his manuscript book. "It has been refused by
twenty-seven of them."

Brissenden essayed a long and hearty laugh, but broke down in a fit of
coughing.

"Say, you needn't tell me you haven't tackled poetry," he gasped. "Let me
see some of it."

"Don't read it now," Martin pleaded. "I want to talk with you. I'll make up
a bundle and you can take it home."

Brissenden departed with the "Love-cycle," and "The Peri and the Pearl,"
returning next day to greet Martin with:-

"I want more."

Not only did he assure Martin that he was a poet, but Martin learned that
Brissenden also was one. He was swept off his feet by the other's work, and
astounded that no attempt had been made to publish it.

"A plague on all their houses!" was Brissenden's answer to Martin's
volunteering to market his work for him. "Love Beauty for its own sake,"
was his counsel, "and leave the magazines alone. Back to your ships and
your sea - that's my advice to you, Martin Eden. What do you want in these
sick and rotten cities of men? You are cutting your throat every day you
waste in them trying to prostitute beauty to the needs of magazinedom. What
was it you quoted me the other day? - Oh, yes, 'Man, the latest of the
ephemera.' Well, what do you, the latest of the ephemera, want with fame?
If you got it, it would be poison to you. You are too simple, took
elemental, and too rational, by my faith, to prosper on such pap. I hope
you never do sell a line to the magazines. Beauty is the only master to
serve. Serve her and damn the multitude! Success! What in hell's success if
it isn't right there in your Stevenson sonnet, which outranks Henley's
'Apparition,' in that 'Love-cycle,' in those sea-poems?

"It is not in what you succeed in doing that you get your joy, but in the
doing of it. You can't tell me. I know it. You know it. Beauty hurts you.
It is an everlasting pain in you, a wound that does not heal, a knife of
flame. Why should you palter with magazines? Let beauty be your end. Why
should you mint beauty into gold? Anyway, you can't; so there's no use in
my getting excited over it. You can read the magazines for a thousand years
and you won't find the value of one line of Keats. Leave fame and coin
alone, sign away on a ship to-morrow, and go back to your sea."

"Not for fame, but for love," Martin laughed. "Love seems to have no place
in your Cosmos; in mine, Beauty is the handmaiden of Love."

Brissenden looked at him pityingly and admiringly. "You are so young,
Martin boy, so young. You will flutter high, but your wings are of the
finest gauze, dusted with the fairest pigments. Do not scorch them. But of
course you have scorched them already. It required some glorified petticoat
to account for that 'Love-cycle,' and that's the shame of it."

"It glorifies love as well as the petticoat," Martin laughed.

"The philosophy of madness," was the retort. "So have I assured myself when
wandering in hasheesh dreams. But beware. These bourgeois cities will kill
you. Look at that den of traitors where I met you. Dry rot is no name for
it. One can't keep his sanity in such an atmosphere. It's degrading.
There's not one of them who is not degrading, man and woman, all of them
animated stomachs guided by the high intellectual and artistic impulses of
clams - "

He broke off suddenly and regarded Martin. Then, with a flash of
divination, he saw the situation. The expression on his face turned to
wondering horror.

"And you wrote that tremendous 'Love-cycle' to her - that pale, shrivelled,
female thing!"

The next instant Martin's right hand had shot to a throttling clutch on his
throat, and he was being shaken till his teeth rattled. But Martin, looking
into his eyes, saw no fear there, - naught but a curious and mocking devil.
Martin remembered himself, and flung Brissenden, by the neck, sidelong upon
the bed, at the same moment releasing his hold.

Brissenden panted and gasped painfully for a moment, then began to chuckle.

"You had made me eternally your debtor had you shaken out the flame," he
said.

"My nerves are on a hair-trigger these days," Martin apologized. "Hope I
didn't hurt you. Here, let me mix a fresh toddy."

"Ah, you young Greek!" Brissenden went on. "I wonder if you take just pride
in that body of yours. You are devilish strong. You are a young panther, a
lion cub. Well, well, it is you who must pay for that strength."

"What do you mean?" Martin asked curiously, passing aim a glass. "Here,
down this and be good."

"Because - " Brissenden sipped his toddy and smiled appreciation of it.
"Because of the women. They will worry you until you die, as they have
already worried you, or else I was born yesterday. Now there's no use in
your choking me; I'm going to have my say. This is undoubtedly your calf
love; but for Beauty's sake show better taste next time. What under heaven
do you want with a daughter of the bourgeoisie? Leave them alone. Pick out
some great, wanton flame of a woman, who laughs at life and jeers at death
and loves one while she may. There are such women, and they will love you
just as readily as any pusillanimous product of bourgeois sheltered life."

"Pusillanimous?" Martin protested.

"Just so, pusillanimous; prattling out little moralities that have been
prattled into them, and afraid to live life. They will love you, Martin,
but they will love their little moralities more. What you want is the
magnificent abandon of life, the great free souls, the blazing butterflies
and not the little gray moths. Oh, you will grow tired of them, too, of all
the female things, if you are unlucky enough to live. But you won't live.
You won't go back to your ships and sea; therefore, you'll hang around
these pest-holes of cities until your bones are rotten, and then you'll
die."

"You can lecture me, but you can't make me talk back," Martin said. "After
all, you have but the wisdom of your temperament, and the wisdom of my
temperament is just as unimpeachable as yours."

They disagreed about love, and the magazines, and many things, but they
liked each other, and on Martin's part it was no less than a profound
liking. Day after day they were together, if for no more than the hour
Brissenden spent in Martin's stuffy room. Brissenden never arrived without
his quart of whiskey, and when they dined together down-town, he drank
Scotch and soda throughout the meal. He invariably paid the way for both,
and it was through him that Martin learned the refinements of food, drank
his first champagne, and made acquaintance with Rhenish wines.

But Brissenden was always an enigma. With the face of an ascetic, he was,
in all the failing blood of him, a frank voluptuary. He was unafraid to
die, bitter and cynical of all the ways of living; and yet, dying, he loved
life, to the last atom of it. He was possessed by a madness to live, to
thrill, "to squirm my little space in the cosmic dust whence I came," as he
phrased it once himself. He had tampered with drugs and done many strange
things in quest of new thrills, new sensations. As he told Martin, he had
once gone three days without water, had done so voluntarily, in order to
experience the exquisite delight of such a thirst assuaged. Who or what he
was, Martin never learned. He was a man without a past, whose future was
the imminent grave and whose present was a bitter fever of living.

CHAPTER XXXIII

Martin was steadily losing his battle. Economize as he would, the earnings
from hack-work did not balance expenses. Thanksgiving found him with his
black suit in pawn and unable to accept the Morses' invitation to dinner.
Ruth was not made happy by his reason for not coming, and the corresponding
effect on him was one of desperation. He told her that he would come, after
all; that he would go over to San Francisco, to the TRANSCONTINENTAL
office, collect the five dollars due him, and with it redeem his suit of
clothes.

In the morning he borrowed ten cents from Maria. He would have borrowed it,
by preference, from Brissenden, but that erratic individual had
disappeared. Two weeks had passed since Martin had seen him, and he vainly
cudgelled his brains for some cause of offence. The ten cents carried
Martin across the ferry to San Francisco, and as he walked up Market Street
he speculated upon his predicament in case he failed to collect the money.
There would then be no way for him to return to Oakland, and he knew no one
in San Francisco from whom to borrow another ten cents.

The door to the TRANSCONTINENTAL office was ajar, and Martin, in the act of
opening it, was brought to a sudden pause by a loud voice from within,
which exclaimed:- "But that is not the question, Mr. Ford." (Ford, Martin
knew, from his correspondence, to be the editor's name.) "The question is,
are you prepared to pay? - cash, and cash down, I mean? I am not interested
in the prospects of the TRANSCONTINENTAL and what you expect to make it
next year. What I want is to be paid for what I do. And I tell you, right
now, the Christmas TRANSCONTINENTAL don't go to press till I have the money
in my hand. Good day. When you get the money, come and see me."

The door jerked open, and the man flung past Martin, with an angry
countenance and went down the corridor, muttering curses and clenching his
fists. Martin decided not to enter immediately, and lingered in the
hallways for a quarter of an hour. Then he shoved the door open and walked
in. It was a new experience, the first time he had been inside an editorial
office. Cards evidently were not necessary in that office, for the boy
carried word to an inner room that there was a man who wanted to see Mr.
Ford. Returning, the boy beckoned him from halfway across the room and led
him to the private office, the editorial sanctum. Martin's first impression
was of the disorder and cluttered confusion of the room. Next he noticed a
bewhiskered, youthful-looking man, sitting at a roll-top desk, who regarded
him curiously. Martin marvelled at the calm repose of his face. It was
evident that the squabble with the printer had not affected his equanimity.

"I - I am Martin Eden," Martin began the conversation. ("And I want my five
dollars," was what he would have liked to say.)

But this was his first editor, and under the circumstances he did not
desire to scare him too abruptly. To his surprise, Mr. Ford leaped into the
air with a "You don't say so!" and the next moment, with both hands, was
shaking Martin's hand effusively.

"Can't say how glad I am to see you, Mr. Eden. Often wondered what you were
like."

Here he held Martin off at arm's length and ran his beaming eyes over
Martin's second-best suit, which was also his worst suit, and which was
ragged and past repair, though the trousers showed the careful crease he
had put in with Maria's flat-irons.

"I confess, though, I conceived you to be a much older man than you are.
Your story, you know, showed such breadth, and vigor, such maturity and
depth of thought. A masterpiece, that story - I knew it when I had read the
first half-dozen lines. Let me tell you how I first read it. But no; first
let me introduce you to the staff."

Still talking, Mr. Ford led him into the general office, where he
introduced him to the associate editor, Mr. White, a slender, frail little
man whose hand seemed strangely cold, as if he were suffering from a chill,
and whose whiskers were sparse and silky.

"And Mr. Ends, Mr. Eden. Mr. Ends is our business manager, you know."

Martin found himself shaking hands with a cranky-eyed, bald-headed man,
whose face looked youthful enough from what little could be seen of it, for
most of it was covered by a snow-white beard, carefully trimmed - by his
wife, who did it on Sundays, at which times she also shaved the back of his
neck.

The three men surrounded Martin, all talking admiringly and at once, until
it seemed to him that they were talking against time for a wager.

"We often wondered why you didn't call," Mr. White was saying.

"I didn't have the carfare, and I live across the Bay," Martin answered
bluntly, with the idea of showing them his imperative need for the money.

Surely, he thought to himself, my glad rags in themselves are eloquent
advertisement of my need. Time and again, whenever opportunity offered, he
hinted about the purpose of his business. But his admirers' ears were deaf.
They sang his praises, told him what they had thought of his story at first
sight, what they subsequently thought, what their wives and families
thought; but not one hint did they breathe of intention to pay him for it.

"Did I tell you how I first read your story?" Mr. Ford said. "Of course I
didn't. I was coming west from New York, and when the train stopped at
Ogden, the train-boy on the new run brought aboard the current number of
the TRANSCONTINENTAL."

My God! Martin thought; you can travel in a Pullman while I starve for the
paltry five dollars you owe me. A wave of anger rushed over him. The wrong
done him by the TRANSCONTINENTAL loomed colossal, for strong upon him were
all the dreary months of vain yearning, of hunger and privation, and his
present hunger awoke and gnawed at him, reminding him that he had eaten
nothing since the day before, and little enough then. For the moment he saw
red. These creatures were not even robbers. They were sneak-thieves. By
lies and broken promises they had tricked him out of his story. Well, he
would show them. And a great resolve surged into his will to the effect
that he would not leave the office until he got his money. He remembered,
if he did not get it, that there was no way for him to go back to Oakland.
He controlled himself with an effort, but not before the wolfish expression
of his face had awed and perturbed them.

They became more voluble than ever. Mr. Ford started anew to tell how he
had first read "The Ring of Bells," and Mr. Ends at the same time was
striving to repeat his niece's appreciation of "The Ring of Bells," said
niece being a school-teacher in Alameda.

"I'll tell you what I came for," Martin said finally. "To be paid for that
story all of you like so well. Five dollars, I believe, is what you
promised me would be paid on publication."

Mr. Ford, with an expression on his mobile features of mediate and happy
acquiescence, started to reach for his pocket, then turned suddenly to Mr.
Ends, and said that he had left his money home. That Mr. Ends resented
this, was patent; and Martin saw the twitch of his arm as if to protect his
trousers pocket. Martin knew that the money was there.

"I am sorry," said Mr. Ends, "but I paid the printer not an hour ago, and
he took my ready change. It was careless of me to be so short; but the bill
was not yet due, and the printer's request, as a favor, to make an
immediate advance, was quite unexpected."

Both men looked expectantly at Mr. White, but that gentleman laughed and
shrugged his shoulders. His conscience was clean at any rate. He had come
into the TRANSCONTINENTAL to learn magazine- literature, instead of which
he had principally learned finance. The TRANSCONTINENTAL owed him four
months' salary, and he knew that the printer must be appeased before the
associate editor.

"It's rather absurd, Mr. Eden, to have caught us in this shape," Mr. Ford
preambled airily. "All carelessness, I assure you. But I'll tell you what
we'll do. We'll mail you a check the first thing in the morning. You have
Mr. Eden's address, haven't you, Mr. Ends?"

Yes, Mr. Ends had the address, and the check would be mailed the first
thing in the morning. Martin's knowledge of banks and checks was hazy, but
he could see no reason why they should not give him the check on this day
just as well as on the next.

"Then it is understood, Mr. Eden, that we'll mail you the check to-
morrow?" Mr. Ford said.

"I need the money to-day," Martin answered stolidly.

"The unfortunate circumstances - if you had chanced here any other day,"
Mr. Ford began suavely, only to be interrupted by Mr. Ends, whose cranky
eyes justified themselves in his shortness of temper.

"Mr. Ford has already explained the situation," he said with asperity. "And
so have I. The check will be mailed - "

"I also have explained," Martin broke in, "and I have explained that I want
the money to-day."

He had felt his pulse quicken a trifle at the business manager's
brusqueness, and upon him he kept an alert eye, for it was in that
gentleman's trousers pocket that he divined the TRANSCONTINENTAL'S ready
cash was reposing.

"It is too bad - " Mr. Ford began.

But at that moment, with an impatient movement, Mr. Ends turned as if about
to leave the room. At the same instant Martin sprang for him, clutching him
by the throat with one hand in such fashion that Mr. Ends' snow-white
beard, still maintaining its immaculate trimness, pointed ceilingward at an
angle of forty-five degrees. To the horror of Mr. White and Mr. Ford, they
saw their business manager shaken like an Astrakhan rug.

"Dig up, you venerable discourager of rising young talent!" Martin
exhorted. "Dig up, or I'll shake it out of you, even if it's all in
nickels." Then, to the two affrighted onlookers: "Keep away! If you
interfere, somebody's liable to get hurt."

Mr. Ends was choking, and it was not until the grip on his throat was eased
that he was able to signify his acquiescence in the digging-up programme.
All together, after repeated digs, its trousers pocket yielded four dollars
and fifteen cents.

"Inside out with it," Martin commanded.

An additional ten cents fell out. Martin counted the result of his raid a
second time to make sure.

"You next!" he shouted at Mr. Ford. "I want seventy-five cents more."

Mr. Ford did not wait, but ransacked his pockets, with the result of sixty
cents.

"Sure that is all?" Martin demanded menacingly, possessing himself of it.
"What have you got in your vest pockets?"

In token of his good faith, Mr. Ford turned two of his pockets inside out.
A strip of cardboard fell to the floor from one of them. He recovered it
and was in the act of returning it, when Martin cried:-

"What's that? - A ferry ticket? Here, give it to me. It's worth ten cents.
I'll credit you with it. I've now got four dollars and ninety-five cents,
including the ticket. Five cents is still due me."

He looked fiercely at Mr. White, and found that fragile creature in the act
of handing him a nickel.

"Thank you," Martin said, addressing them collectively. "I wish you a good
day."

"Robber!" Mr. Ends snarled after him.

"Sneak-thief!" Martin retorted, slamming the door as he passed out.

Martin was elated - so elated that when he recollected that THE HORNET owed
him fifteen dollars for "The Peri and the Pearl," he decided forthwith to
go and collect it. But THE HORNET was run by a set of clean-shaven,
strapping young men, frank buccaneers who robbed everything and everybody,
not excepting one another. After some breakage of the office furniture, the
editor (an ex-college athlete), ably assisted by the business manager, an
advertising agent, and the porter, succeeded in removing Martin from the
office and in accelerating, by initial impulse, his descent of the first
flight of stairs.

"Come again, Mr. Eden; glad to see you any time," they laughed down at him
from the landing above.

Martin grinned as he picked himself up.

"Phew!" he murmured back. "The TRANSCONTINENTAL crowd were nanny- goats,
but you fellows are a lot of prize-fighters."

More laughter greeted this.

"I must say, Mr. Eden," the editor of THE HORNET called down, "that for a
poet you can go some yourself. Where did you learn that right cross - if I
may ask?"

"Where you learned that half-Nelson," Martin answered. "Anyway, you're
going to have a black eye."

"I hope your neck doesn't stiffen up," the editor wished solicitously:
"What do you say we all go out and have a drink on it - not the neck, of
course, but the little rough-house?"

"I'll go you if I lose," Martin accepted.

And robbers and robbed drank together, amicably agreeing that the battle
was to the strong, and that the fifteen dollars for "The Peri and the
Pearl" belonged by right to THE HORNET'S editorial staff.

CHAPTER XXXIV

Arthur remained at the gate while Ruth climbed Maria's front steps. She
heard the rapid click of the type-writer, and when Martin let her in, found
him on the last page of a manuscript. She had come to make certain whether
or not he would be at their table for Thanksgiving dinner; but before she
could broach the subject Martin plunged into the one with which he was
full.

"Here, let me read you this," he cried, separating the carbon copies and
running the pages of manuscript into shape. "It's my latest, and different
from anything I've done. It is so altogether different that I am almost
afraid of it, and yet I've a sneaking idea it is good. You be judge. It's
an Hawaiian story. I've called it 'Wiki-wiki.'"

His face was bright with the creative glow, though she shivered in the cold
room and had been struck by the coldness of his hands at greeting. She
listened closely while he read, and though he from time to time had seen
only disapprobation in her face, at the close he asked:-

"Frankly, what do you think of it?"

"I - I don't know," she, answered. "Will it - do you think it will sell?"

"I'm afraid not," was the confession. "It's too strong for the magazines.
But it's true, on my word it's true."

"But why do you persist in writing such things when you know they won't
sell?" she went on inexorably. "The reason for your writing is to make a
living, isn't it?"

"Yes, that's right; but the miserable story got away with me. I couldn't
help writing it. It demanded to be written."

"But that character, that Wiki-Wiki, why do you make him talk so roughly?
Surely it will offend your readers, and surely that is why the editors are
justified in refusing your work."

"Because the real Wiki-Wiki would have talked that way."

"But it is not good taste."

"It is life," he replied bluntly. "It is real. It is true. And I must write
life as I see it."

She made no answer, and for an awkward moment they sat silent. It was
because he loved her that he did not quite understand her, and she could
not understand him because he was so large that he bulked beyond her
horizon

"Well, I've collected from the TRANSCONTINENTAL," he said in an effort to
shift the conversation to a more comfortable subject. The picture of the
bewhiskered trio, as he had last seen them, mulcted of four dollars and
ninety cents and a ferry ticket, made him chuckle.

"Then you'll come!" she cried joyously. "That was what I came to find out."

"Come?" he muttered absently. "Where?"

"Why, to dinner to-morrow. You know you said you'd recover your suit if you
got that money."

"I forgot all about it," he said humbly. "You see, this morning the
poundman got Maria's two cows and the baby calf, and - well, it happened
that Maria didn't have any money, and so I had to recover her cows for her.
That's where the TRANSCONTINENTAL fiver went - 'The Ring of Bells' went
into the poundman's pocket."

"Then you won't come?"

He looked down at his clothing.

"I can't."

Tears of disappointment and reproach glistened in her blue eyes, but she
said nothing.

"Next Thanksgiving you'll have dinner with me in Delmonico's," he said
cheerily; "or in London, or Paris, or anywhere you wish. I know it."

"I saw in the paper a few days ago," she announced abruptly, "that there
had been several local appointments to the Railway Mail. You passed first,
didn't you?"

He was compelled to admit that the call had come for him, but that he had
declined it. "I was so sure - I am so sure - of myself," he concluded. "A
year from now I'll be earning more than a dozen men in the Railway Mail.
You wait and see."

"Oh," was all she said, when he finished. She stood up, pulling at her
gloves. "I must go, Martin. Arthur is waiting for me."

He took her in his arms and kissed her, but she proved a passive
sweetheart. There was no tenseness in her body, her arms did not go around
him, and her lips met his without their wonted pressure.

She was angry with him, he concluded, as he returned from the gate. But
why? It was unfortunate that the poundman had gobbled Maria's cows. But it
was only a stroke of fate. Nobody could be blamed for it. Nor did it enter
his head that he could have done aught otherwise than what he had done.
Well, yes, he was to blame a little, was his next thought, for having
refused the call to the Railway Mail. And she had not liked "Wiki-Wiki."

He turned at the head of the steps to meet the letter-carrier on his
afternoon round. The ever recurrent fever of expectancy assailed Martin as
he took the bundle of long envelopes. One was not long. It was short and
thin, and outside was printed the address of THE NEW YORK OUTVIEW. He
paused in the act of tearing the envelope open. It could not be an
acceptance. He had no manuscripts with that publication. Perhaps - his
heart almost stood still at the - wild thought - perhaps they were ordering
an article from him; but the next instant he dismissed the surmise as
hopelessly impossible.

It was a short, formal letter, signed by the office editor, merely
informing him that an anonymous letter which they had received was
enclosed, and that he could rest assured the OUTVIEW'S staff never under
any circumstances gave consideration to anonymous correspondence.

The enclosed letter Martin found to be crudely printed by hand. It was a
hotchpotch of illiterate abuse of Martin, and of assertion that the
"so-called Martin Eden" who was selling stories to magazines was no writer
at all, and that in reality he was stealing stories from old magazines,
typing them, and sending them out as his own. The envelope was postmarked
"San Leandro." Martin did not require a second thought to discover the
author. Higginbotham's grammar, Higginbotham's colloquialisms,
Higginbotham's mental quirks and processes, were apparent throughout.
Martin saw in every line, not the fine Italian hand, but the coarse
grocer's fist, of his brother-in-law.

But why? he vainly questioned. What injury had he done Bernard
Higginbotham? The thing was so unreasonable, so wanton. There was no
explaining it. In the course of the week a dozen similar letters were
forwarded to Martin by the editors of various Eastern magazines. The
editors were behaving handsomely, Martin concluded. He was wholly unknown
to them, yet some of them had even been sympathetic. It was evident that
they detested anonymity. He saw that the malicious attempt to hurt him had
failed. In fact, if anything came of it, it was bound to be good, for at
least his name had been called to the attention of a number of editors.
Sometime, perhaps, reading a submitted manuscript of his, they might
remember him as the fellow about whom they had received an anonymous
letter. And who was to say that such a remembrance might not sway the
balance of their judgment just a trifle in his favor?

It was about this time that Martin took a great slump in Maria's
estimation. He found her in the kitchen one morning groaning with pain,
tears of weakness running down her cheeks, vainly endeavoring to put
through a large ironing. He promptly diagnosed her affliction as La Grippe,
dosed her with hot whiskey (the remnants in the bottles for which
Brissenden was responsible), and ordered her to bed. But Maria was
refractory. The ironing had to be done, she protested, and delivered that
night, or else there would be no food on the morrow for the seven small and
hungry Silvas.

To her astonishment (and it was something that she never ceased from
relating to her dying day), she saw Martin Eden seize an iron from the
stove and throw a fancy shirt-waist on the ironing-board. It was Kate
Flanagan's best Sunday waist, than whom there was no more exacting and
fastidiously dressed woman in Maria's world. Also, Miss Flanagan had sent
special instruction that said waist must be delivered by that night. As
every one knew, she was keeping company with John Collins, the blacksmith,
and, as Maria knew privily, Miss Flanagan and Mr. Collins were going next
day to Golden Gate Park. Vain was Maria's attempt to rescue the garment.
Martin guided her tottering footsteps to a chair, from where she watched
him with bulging eyes. In a quarter of the time it would have taken her she
saw the shirt-waist safely ironed, and ironed as well as she could have
done it, as Martin made her grant.

"I could work faster," he explained, "if your irons were only hotter."

To her, the irons he swung were much hotter than she ever dared to use.

"Your sprinkling is all wrong," he complained next. "Here, let me teach you
how to sprinkle. Pressure is what's wanted. Sprinkle under pressure if you
want to iron fast."

He procured a packing-case from the woodpile in the cellar, fitted a cover
to it, and raided the scrap-iron the Silva tribe was collecting for the
junkman. With fresh-sprinkled garments in the box, covered with the board
and pressed by the iron, the device was complete and in operation.

"Now you watch me, Maria," he said, stripping off to his undershirt and
gripping an iron that was what he called "really hot."

"An' when he feenish da iron' he washa da wools," as she described it
afterward. "He say, 'Maria, you are da greata fool. I showa you how to
washa da wools,' an' he shows me, too. Ten minutes he maka da machine - one
barrel, one wheel-hub, two poles, justa like dat."

Martin had learned the contrivance from Joe at the Shelly Hot Springs. The
old wheel-hub, fixed on the end of the upright pole, constituted the
plunger. Making this, in turn, fast to the spring- pole attached to the
kitchen rafters, so that the hub played upon the woollens in the barrel, he
was able, with one hand, thoroughly to pound them.

"No more Maria washa da wools," her story always ended. "I maka da kids
worka da pole an' da hub an' da barrel. Him da smarta man, Mister Eden."

Nevertheless, by his masterly operation and improvement of her
kitchen-laundry he fell an immense distance in her regard. The glamour of
romance with which her imagination had invested him faded away in the cold
light of fact that he was an ex-laundryman. All his books, and his grand
friends who visited him in carriages or with countless bottles of whiskey,
went for naught. He was, after all, a mere workingman, a member of her own
class and caste. He was more human and approachable, but, he was no longer
mystery.

Martin's alienation from his family continued. Following upon Mr.
Higginbotham's unprovoked attack, Mr. Hermann von Schmidt showed his hand.
The fortunate sale of several storiettes, some humorous verse, and a few
jokes gave Martin a temporary splurge of prosperity. Not only did he
partially pay up his bills, but he had sufficient balance left to redeem
his black suit and wheel. The latter, by virtue of a twisted crank-hanger,
required repairing, and, as a matter of friendliness with his future
brother-in-law, he sent it to Von Schmidt's shop.

The afternoon of the same day Martin was pleased by the wheel being
delivered by a small boy. Von Schmidt was also inclined to be friendly, was
Martin's conclusion from this unusual favor. Repaired wheels usually had to
be called for. But when he examined the wheel, he discovered no repairs had
been made. A little later in the day he telephoned his sister's betrothed,
and learned that that person didn't want anything to do with him in "any
shape, manner, or form."

"Hermann von Schmidt," Martin answered cheerfully, "I've a good mind to
come over and punch that Dutch nose of yours."

"You come to my shop," came the reply, "an' I'll send for the police. An'
I'll put you through, too. Oh, I know you, but you can't make no
rough-house with me. I don't want nothin' to do with the likes of you.
You're a loafer, that's what, an' I ain't asleep. You ain't goin' to do no
spongin' off me just because I'm marryin' your sister. Why don't you go to
work an' earn an honest livin', eh? Answer me that."

Martin's philosophy asserted itself, dissipating his anger, and he hung up
the receiver with a long whistle of incredulous amusement. But after the
amusement came the reaction, and he was oppressed by his loneliness. Nobody
understood him, nobody seemed to have any use for him, except Brissenden,
and Brissenden had disappeared, God alone knew where.

Twilight was falling as Martin left the fruit store and turned homeward,
his marketing on his arm. At the corner an electric car had stopped, and at
sight of a lean, familiar figure alighting, his heart leapt with joy. It
was Brissenden, and in the fleeting glimpse, ere the car started up, Martin
noted the overcoat pockets, one bulging with books, the other bulging with
a quart bottle of whiskey.

CHAPTER XXXV

Brissenden gave no explanation of his long absence, nor did Martin pry into
it. He was content to see his friend's cadaverous face opposite him through
the steam rising from a tumbler of toddy.

"I, too, have not been idle," Brissenden proclaimed, after hearing Martin's
account of the work he had accomplished.

He pulled a manuscript from his inside coat pocket and passed it to Martin,
who looked at the title and glanced up curiously.

"Yes, that's it," Brissenden laughed. "Pretty good title, eh? 'Ephemera' -
it is the one word. And you're responsible for it, what of your MAN, who is
always the erected, the vitalized inorganic, the latest of the ephemera,
the creature of temperature strutting his little space on the thermometer.
It got into my head and I had to write it to get rid of it. Tell me what
you think of it."

Martin's face, flushed at first, paled as he read on. It was perfect art.
Form triumphed over substance, if triumph it could be called where the last
conceivable atom of substance had found expression in so perfect
construction as to make Martin's head swim with delight, to put passionate
tears into his eyes, and to send chills creeping up and down his back. It
was a long poem of six or seven hundred lines, and it was a fantastic,
amazing, unearthly thing. It was terrific, impossible; and yet there it
was, scrawled in black ink across the sheets of paper. It dealt with man
and his soul-gropings in their ultimate terms, plumbing the abysses of
space for the testimony of remotest suns and rainbow spectrums. It was a
mad orgy of imagination, wassailing in the skull of a dying man who half
sobbed under his breath and was quick with the wild flutter of fading
heart-beats. The poem swung in majestic rhythm to the cool tumult of
interstellar conflict, to the onset of starry hosts, to the impact of cold
suns and the flaming up of nebular in the darkened void; and through it
all, unceasing and faint, like a silver shuttle, ran the frail, piping
voice of man, a querulous chirp amid the screaming of planets and the crash
of systems.

"There is nothing like it in literature," Martin said, when at last he was
able to speak. "It's wonderful! - wonderful! It has gone to my head. I am
drunken with it. That great, infinitesimal question - I can't shake it out
of my thoughts. That questing, eternal, ever recurring, thin little wailing
voice of man is still ringing in my ears. It is like the dead-march of a
gnat amid the trumpeting of elephants and the roaring of lions. It is
insatiable with microscopic desire. I now I'm making a fool of myself, but
the thing has obsessed me. You are - I don't know what you are - you are
wonderful, that's all. But how do you do it? How do you do it?"

Martin paused from his rhapsody, only to break out afresh.

"I shall never write again. I am a dauber in clay. You have shown me the
work of the real artificer-artisan. Genius! This is something more than
genius. It transcends genius. It is truth gone mad. It is true, man, every
line of it. I wonder if you realize that, you dogmatist. Science cannot
give you the lie. It is the truth of the sneer, stamped out from the black
iron of the Cosmos and interwoven with mighty rhythms of sound into a
fabric of splendor and beauty. And now I won't say another word. I am
overwhelmed, crushed. Yes, I will, too. Let me market it for you."

Brissenden grinned. "There's not a magazine in Christendom that would dare
to publish it - you know that."

"I know nothing of the sort. I know there's not a magazine in Christendom
that wouldn't jump at it. They don't get things like that every day. That's
no mere poem of the year. It's the poem of the century."

"I'd like to take you up on the proposition."

"Now don't get cynical," Martin exhorted. "The magazine editors are not
wholly fatuous. I know that. And I'll close with you on the bet. I'll wager
anything you want that 'Ephemera' is accepted either on the first or second
offering."

"There's just one thing that prevents me from taking you." Brissenden
waited a moment. "The thing is big - the biggest I've ever done. I know
that. It's my swan song. I am almighty proud of it. I worship it. It's
better than whiskey. It is what I dreamed of - the great and perfect thing
- when I was a simple young man, with sweet illusions and clean ideals. And
I've got it, now, in my last grasp, and I'll not have it pawed over and
soiled by a lot of swine. No, I won't take the bet. It's mine. I made it,
and I've shared it with you."

"But think of the rest of the world," Martin protested. "The function of
beauty is joy-making."

"It's my beauty."

"Don't be selfish."

"I'm not selfish." Brissenden grinned soberly in the way he had when
pleased by the thing his thin lips were about to shape. "I'm as unselfish
as a famished hog."

In vain Martin strove to shake him from his decision. Martin told him that
his hatred of the magazines was rabid, fanatical, and that his conduct was
a thousand times more despicable than that of the youth who burned the
temple of Diana at Ephesus. Under the storm of denunciation Brissenden
complacently sipped his toddy and affirmed that everything the other said
was quite true, with the exception of the magazine editors. His hatred of
them knew no bounds, and he excelled Martin in denunciation when he turned
upon them.

"I wish you'd type it for me," he said. "You know how a thousand times
better than any stenographer. And now I want to give you some advice." He
drew a bulky manuscript from his outside coat pocket. "Here's your 'Shame
of the Sun.' I've read it not once, but twice and three times - the highest
compliment I can pay you. After what you've said about 'Ephemera' I must be
silent. But this I will say: when 'The Shame of the Sun' is published, it
will make a hit. It will start a controversy that will be worth thousands
to you just in advertising."

Martin laughed. "I suppose your next advice will be to submit it to the
magazines."

"By all means no - that is, if you want to see it in print. Offer it to the
first-class houses. Some publisher's reader may be mad enough or drunk
enough to report favorably on it. You've read the books. The meat of them
has been transmuted in the alembic of Martin Eden's mind and poured into
'The Shame of the Sun,' and one day Martin Eden will be famous, and not the
least of his fame will rest upon that work. So you must get a publisher for
it - the sooner the better."

Brissenden went home late that night; and just as he mounted the first step
of the car, he swung suddenly back on Martin and thrust into his hand a
small, tightly crumpled wad of paper.

"Here, take this," he said. "I was out to the races to-day, and I had the
right dope."

The bell clanged and the car pulled out, leaving Martin wondering as to the
nature of the crinkly, greasy wad he clutched in his hand. Back in his room
he unrolled it and found a hundred-dollar bill.

He did not scruple to use it. He knew his friend had always plenty of
money, and he knew also, with profound certitude, that his success would
enable him to repay it. In the morning he paid every bill, gave Maria three
months' advance on the room, and redeemed every pledge at the pawnshop.
Next he bought Marian's wedding present, and simpler presents, suitable to
Christmas, for Ruth and Gertrude. And finally, on the balance remaining to
him, he herded the whole Silva tribe down into Oakland. He was a winter
late in redeeming his promise, but redeemed it was, for the last, least
Silva got a pair of shoes, as well as Maria herself. Also, there were
horns, and dolls, and toys of various sorts, and parcels and bundles of
candies and nuts that filled the arms of all the Silvas to overflowing.

It was with this extraordinary procession trooping at his and Maria's heels
into a confectioner's in quest if the biggest candy- cane ever made, that
he encountered Ruth and her mother. Mrs. Morse was shocked. Even Ruth was
hurt, for she had some regard for appearances, and her lover, cheek by jowl
with Maria, at the head of that army of Portuguese ragamuffins, was not a
pretty sight. But it was not that which hurt so much as what she took to be
his lack of pride and self-respect. Further, and keenest of all, she read
into the incident the impossibility of his living down his working-class
origin. There was stigma enough in the fact of it, but shamelessly to
flaunt it in the face of the world - her world - was going too far. Though
her engagement to Martin had been kept secret, their long intimacy had not
been unproductive of gossip; and in the shop, glancing covertly at her
lover and his following, had been several of her acquaintances. She lacked
the easy largeness of Martin and could not rise superior to her
environment. She had been hurt to the quick, and her sensitive nature was
quivering with the shame of it. So it was, when Martin arrived later in the
day, that he kept her present in his breast-pocket, deferring the giving of
it to a more propitious occasion. Ruth in tears - passionate, angry tears -
was a revelation to him. The spectacle of her suffering convinced him that
he had been a brute, yet in the soul of him he could not see how nor why.
It never entered his head to be ashamed of those he knew, and to take the
Silvas out to a Christmas treat could in no way, so it seemed to him, show
lack of consideration for Ruth. On the other hand, he did see Ruth's point
of view, after she had explained it; and he looked upon it as a feminine
weakness, such as afflicted all women and the best of women.

CHAPTER XXXVI

"Come on, - I'll show you the real dirt," Brissenden said to him, one
evening in January.

They had dined together in San Francisco, and were at the Ferry Building,
returning to Oakland, when the whim came to him to show Martin the "real
dirt." He turned and fled across the water-front, a meagre shadow in a
flapping overcoat, with Martin straining to keep up with him. At a
wholesale liquor store he bought two gallon-demijohns of old port, and with
one in each hand boarded a Mission Street car, Martin at his heels burdened
with several quart-bottles of whiskey.

If Ruth could see me now, was his thought, while he wondered as to what
constituted the real dirt.

"Maybe nobody will be there," Brissenden said, when they dismounted and
plunged off to the right into the heart of the working-class ghetto, south
of Market Street. "In which case you'll miss what you've been looking for
so long."

"And what the deuce is that?" Martin asked.

"Men, intelligent men, and not the gibbering nonentities I found you
consorting with in that trader's den. You read the books and you found
yourself all alone. Well, I'm going to show you to-night some other men
who've read the books, so that you won't be lonely any more."

"Not that I bother my head about their everlasting discussions," he said at
the end of a block. "I'm not interested in book philosophy. But you'll find
these fellows intelligences and not bourgeois swine. But watch out, they'll
talk an arm off of you on any subject under the sun."

"Hope Norton's there," he panted a little later, resisting Martin's effort
to relieve him of the two demijohns. "Norton's an idealist - a Harvard man.
Prodigious memory. Idealism led him to philosophic anarchy, and his family
threw him off. Father's a railroad president and many times millionnaire,
but the son's starving in 'Frisco, editing an anarchist sheet for
twenty-five a month."

Martin was little acquainted in San Francisco, and not at all south of
Market; so he had no idea of where he was being led.

"Go ahead," he said; "tell me about them beforehand. What do they do for a
living? How do they happen to be here?"

"Hope Hamilton's there." Brissenden paused and rested his hands.
"Strawn-Hamilton's his name - hyphenated, you know - comes of old Southern
stock. He's a tramp - laziest man I ever knew, though he's clerking, or
trying to, in a socialist cooperative store for six dollars a week. But
he's a confirmed hobo. Tramped into town. I've seen him sit all day on a
bench and never a bite pass his lips, and in the evening, when I invited
him to dinner - restaurant two blocks away - have him say, 'Too much
trouble, old man. Buy me a package of cigarettes instead.' He was a
Spencerian like you till Kreis turned him to materialistic monism. I'll
start him on monism if I can. Norton's another monist - only he affirms
naught but spirit. He can give Kreis and Hamilton all they want, too."

"Who is Kreis?" Martin asked.

"His rooms we're going to. One time professor - fired from university -
usual story. A mind like a steel trap. Makes his living any old way. I know
he's been a street fakir when he was down. Unscrupulous. Rob a corpse of a
shroud - anything. Difference between him - and the bourgeoisie is that he
robs without illusion. He'll talk Nietzsche, or Schopenhauer, or Kant, or
anything, but the only thing in this world, not excepting Mary, that he
really cares for, is his monism. Haeckel is his little tin god. The only
way to insult him is to take a slap at Haeckel."

"Here's the hang-out." Brissenden rested his demijohn at the upstairs
entrance, preliminary to the climb. It was the usual two- story corner
building, with a saloon and grocery underneath. "The gang lives here - got
the whole upstairs to themselves. But Kreis is the only one who has two
rooms. Come on."

No lights burned in the upper hall, but Brissenden threaded the utter
blackness like a familiar ghost. He stopped to speak to Martin.

"There's one fellow - Stevens - a theosophist. Makes a pretty tangle when
he gets going. Just now he's dish-washer in a restaurant. Likes a good
cigar. I've seen him eat in a ten-cent hash-house and pay fifty cents for
the cigar he smoked afterward. I've got a couple in my pocket for him, if
he shows up."

"And there's another fellow - Parry - an Australian, a statistician and a
sporting encyclopaedia. Ask him the grain output of Paraguay for 1903, or
the English importation of sheetings into China for 1890, or at what weight
Jimmy Britt fought Battling Nelson, or who was welter-weight champion of
the United States in '68, and you'll get the correct answer with the
automatic celerity of a slot- machine. And there's Andy, a stone-mason, has
ideas on everything, a good chess-player; and another fellow, Harry, a
baker, red hot socialist and strong union man. By the way, you remember
Cooks' and Waiters' strike - Hamilton was the chap who organized that union
and precipitated the strike - planned it all out in advance, right here in
Kreis's rooms. Did it just for the fun of it, but was too lazy to stay by
the union. Yet he could have risen high if he wanted to. There's no end to
the possibilities in that man - if he weren't so insuperably lazy."

Brissenden advanced through the darkness till a thread of light marked the
threshold of a door. A knock and an answer opened it, and Martin found
himself shaking hands with Kreis, a handsome brunette man, with dazzling
white teeth, a drooping black mustache, and large, flashing black eyes.
Mary, a matronly young blonde, was washing dishes in the little back room
that served for kitchen and dining room. The front room served as
bedchamber and living room. Overhead was the week's washing, hanging in
festoons so low that Martin did not see at first the two men talking in a
corner. They hailed Brissenden and his demijohns with acclamation, and, on
being introduced, Martin learned they were Andy and Parry. He joined them
and listened attentively to the description of a prize-fight Parry had seen
the night before; while Brissenden, in his glory, plunged into the
manufacture of a toddy and the serving of wine and whiskey-and-sodas. At
his command, "Bring in the clan," Andy departed to go the round of the
rooms for the lodgers.

"We're lucky that most of them are here," Brissenden whispered to Martin.
"There's Norton and Hamilton; come on and meet them. Stevens isn't around,
I hear. I'm going to get them started on monism if I can. Wait till they
get a few jolts in them and they'll warm up."

At first the conversation was desultory. Nevertheless Martin could not fail
to appreciate the keen play of their minds. They were men with opinions,
though the opinions often clashed, and, though they were witty and clever,
they were not superficial. He swiftly saw, no matter upon what they talked,
that each man applied the correlation of knowledge and had also a
deep-seated and unified conception of society and the Cosmos. Nobody
manufactured their opinions for them; they were all rebels of one variety
or another, and their lips were strangers to platitudes. Never had Martin,
at the Morses', heard so amazing a range of topics discussed. There seemed
no limit save time to the things they were alive to. The talk wandered from
Mrs. Humphry Ward's new book to Shaw's latest play, through the future of
the drama to reminiscences of Mansfield. They appreciated or sneered at the
morning editorials, jumped from labor conditions in New Zealand to Henry
James and Brander Matthews, passed on to the German designs in the Far East
and the economic aspect of the Yellow Peril, wrangled over the German
elections and Bebel's last speech, and settled down to local politics, the
latest plans and scandals in the union labor party administration, and the
wires that were pulled to bring about the Coast Seamen's strike. Martin was
struck by the inside knowledge they possessed. They knew what was never
printed in the newspapers - the wires and strings and the hidden hands that
made the puppets dance. To Martin's surprise, the girl, Mary, joined in the
conversation, displaying an intelligence he had never encountered in the
few women he had met. They talked together on Swinburne and Rossetti, after
which she led him beyond his depth into the by- paths of French literature.
His revenge came when she defended Maeterlinck and he brought into action
the carefully-thought-out thesis of "The Shame of the Sun."

Several other men had dropped in, and the air was thick with tobacco smoke,
when Brissenden waved the red flag.

"Here's fresh meat for your axe, Kreis," he said; "a rose-white youth with
the ardor of a lover for Herbert Spencer. Make a Haeckelite of him - if you
can."

Kreis seemed to wake up and flash like some metallic, magnetic thing, while
Norton looked at Martin sympathetically, with a sweet, girlish smile, as
much as to say that he would be amply protected.

Kreis began directly on Martin, but step by step Norton interfered, until
he and Kreis were off and away in a personal battle. Martin listened and
fain would have rubbed his eyes. It was impossible that this should be,
much less in the labor ghetto south of Market. The books were alive in
these men. They talked with fire and enthusiasm, the intellectual stimulant
stirring them as he had seen drink and anger stir other men. What he heard
was no longer the philosophy of the dry, printed word, written by
half-mythical demigods like Kant and Spencer. It was living philosophy,
with warm, red blood, incarnated in these two men till its very features
worked with excitement. Now and again other men joined in, and all followed
the discussion with cigarettes going out in their hands and with alert,
intent faces.

Idealism had never attracted Martin, but the exposition it now received at
the hands of Norton was a revelation. The logical plausibility of it, that
made an appeal to his intellect, seemed missed by Kreis and Hamilton, who
sneered at Norton as a metaphysician, and who, in turn, sneered back at
them as metaphysicians. PHENOMENON and NOUMENON were bandied back and
forth. They charged him with attempting to explain consciousness by itself.
He charged them with word-jugglery, with reasoning from words to theory
instead of from facts to theory. At this they were aghast. It was the
cardinal tenet of their mode of reasoning to start with facts and to give
names to the facts.

When Norton wandered into the intricacies of Kant, Kreis reminded him that
all good little German philosophies when they died went to Oxford. A little
later Norton reminded them of Hamilton's Law of Parsimony, the application
of which they immediately claimed for every reasoning process of theirs.
And Martin hugged his knees and exulted in it all. But Norton was no
Spencerian, and he, too, strove for Martin's philosophic soul, talking as
much at him as to his two opponents.

"You know Berkeley has never been answered," he said, looking directly at
Martin. "Herbert Spencer came the nearest, which was not very near. Even
the stanchest of Spencer's followers will not go farther. I was reading an
essay of Saleeby's the other day, and the best Saleeby could say was that
Herbert Spencer NEARLY succeeded in answering Berkeley."

"You know what Hume said?" Hamilton asked. Norton nodded, but Hamilton gave
it for the benefit of the rest. "He said that Berkeley's arguments admit of
no answer and produce no conviction."

"In his, Hume's, mind," was the reply. "And Hume's mind was the same as
yours, with this difference: he was wise enough to admit there was no
answering Berkeley."

Norton was sensitive and excitable, though he never lost his head, while
Kreis and Hamilton were like a pair of cold-blooded savages, seeking out
tender places to prod and poke. As the evening grew late, Norton, smarting
under the repeated charges of being a metaphysician, clutching his chair to
keep from jumping to his feet, his gray eyes snapping and his girlish face
grown harsh and sure, made a grand attack upon their position.

"All right, you Haeckelites, I may reason like a medicine man, but, pray,
how do you reason? You have nothing to stand on, you unscientific
dogmatists with your positive science which you are always lugging about
into places it has no right to be. Long before the school of materialistic
monism arose, the ground was removed so that there could be no foundation.
Locke was the man, John Locke. Two hundred years ago - more than that, even
in his 'Essay concerning the Human Understanding,' he proved the non-
existence of innate ideas. The best of it is that that is precisely what
you claim. To-night, again and again, you have asserted the non-existence
of innate ideas.

"And what does that mean? It means that you can never know ultimate
reality. Your brains are empty when you are born. Appearances, or
phenomena, are all the content your minds can receive from your five
senses. Then noumena, which are not in your minds when you are born, have
no way of getting in - "

"I deny - " Kreis started to interrupt.

"You wait till I'm done," Norton shouted. "You can know only that much of
the play and interplay of force and matter as impinges in one way or
another on our senses. You see, I am willing to admit, for the sake of the
argument, that matter exists; and what I am about to do is to efface you by
your own argument. I can't do it any other way, for you are both
congenitally unable to understand a philosophic abstraction."

"And now, what do you know of matter, according to your own positive
science? You know it only by its phenomena, its appearances. You are aware
only of its changes, or of such changes in it as cause changes in your
consciousness. Positive science deals only with phenomena, yet you are
foolish enough to strive to be ontologists and to deal with noumena. Yet,
by the very definition of positive science, science is concerned only with
appearances. As somebody has said, phenomenal knowledge cannot transcend
phenomena."

"You cannot answer Berkeley, even if you have annihilated Kant, and yet,
perforce, you assume that Berkeley is wrong when you affirm that science
proves the non-existence of God, or, as much to the point, the existence of
matter. - You know I granted the reality of matter only in order to make
myself intelligible to your understanding. Be positive scientists, if you
please; but ontology has no place in positive science, so leave it alone.
Spencer is right in his agnosticism, but if Spencer - "

But it was time to catch the last ferry-boat for Oakland, and Brissenden
and Martin slipped out, leaving Norton still talking and Kreis and Hamilton
waiting to pounce on him like a pair of hounds as soon as he finished.

"You have given me a glimpse of fairyland," Martin said on the ferry-boat.
"It makes life worth while to meet people like that. My mind is all worked
up. I never appreciated idealism before. Yet I can't accept it. I know that
I shall always be a realist. I am so made, I guess. But I'd like to have
made a reply to Kreis and Hamilton, and I think I'd have had a word or two
for Norton. I didn't see that Spencer was damaged any. I'm as excited as a
child on its first visit to the circus. I see I must read up some more. I'm
going to get hold of Saleeby. I still think Spencer is unassailable, and
next time I'm going to take a hand myself."

But Brissenden, breathing painfully, had dropped off to sleep, his chin
buried in a scarf and resting on his sunken chest, his body wrapped in the
long overcoat and shaking to the vibration of the propellers.

CHAPTER XXXVII

The first thing Martin did next morning was to go counter both to
Brissenden's advice and command. "The Shame of the Sun" he wrapped and
mailed to THE ACROPOLIS. He believed he could find magazine publication for
it, and he felt that recognition by the magazines would commend him to the
book-publishing houses. "Ephemera" he likewise wrapped and mailed to a
magazine. Despite Brissenden's prejudice against the magazines, which was a
pronounced mania with him, Martin decided that the great poem should see
print. He did not intend, however, to publish it without the other's
permission. His plan was to get it accepted by one of the high magazines,
and, thus armed, again to wrestle with Brissenden for consent.

Martin began, that morning, a story which he had sketched out a number of
weeks before and which ever since had been worrying him with its insistent
clamor to be created. Apparently it was to be a rattling sea story, a tale
of twentieth-century adventure and romance, handling real characters, in a
real world, under real conditions. But beneath the swing and go of the
story was to be something else - something that the superficial reader
would never discern and which, on the other hand, would not diminish in any
way the interest and enjoyment for such a reader. It was this, and not the
mere story, that impelled Martin to write it. For that matter, it was
always the great, universal motif that suggested plots to him. After having
found such a motif, he cast about for the particular persons and particular
location in time and space wherewith and wherein to utter the universal
thing. "Overdue" was the title he had decided for it, and its length he
believed would not be more than sixty thousand words - a bagatelle for him
with his splendid vigor of production. On this first day he took hold of it
with conscious delight in the mastery of his tools. He no longer worried
for fear that the sharp, cutting edges should slip and mar his work. The
long months of intense application and study had brought their reward. He
could now devote himself with sure hand to the larger phases of the thing
he shaped; and as he worked, hour after hour, he felt, as never before, the
sure and cosmic grasp with which he held life and the affairs of life.
"Overdue" would tell a story that would be true of its particular
characters and its particular events; but it would tell, too, he was
confident, great vital things that would be true of all time, and all sea,
and all life - thanks to Herbert Spencer, he thought, leaning back for a
moment from the table. Ay, thanks to Herbert Spencer and to the master-key
of life, evolution, which Spencer had placed in his hands.

He was conscious that it was great stuff he was writing. "It will go! It
will go!" was the refrain that kept, sounding in his ears. Of course it
would go. At last he was turning out the thing at which the magazines would
jump. The whole story worked out before him in lightning flashes. He broke
off from it long enough to write a paragraph in his note-book. This would
be the last paragraph in "Overdue"; but so thoroughly was the whole book
already composed in his brain that he could write, weeks before he had
arrived at the end, the end itself. He compared the tale, as yet unwritten,
with the tales of the sea-writers, and he felt it to be immeasurably
superior. "There's only one man who could touch it," he murmured aloud,
"and that's Conrad. And it ought to make even him sit up and shake hands
with me, and say, 'Well done, Martin, my boy.'"

He toiled on all day, recollecting, at the last moment, that he was to have
dinner at the Morses'. Thanks to Brissenden, his black suit was out of pawn
and he was again eligible for dinner parties. Down town he stopped off long
enough to run into the library and search for Saleeby's books. He drew out
'The Cycle of Life," and on the car turned to the essay Norton had
mentioned on Spencer. As Martin read, he grew angry. His face flushed, his
jaw set, and unconsciously his hand clenched, unclenched, and clenched
again as if he were taking fresh grips upon some hateful thing out of which
he was squeezing the life. When he left the car, he strode along the
sidewalk as a wrathful man will stride, and he rang the Morse bell with
such viciousness that it roused him to consciousness of his condition, so
that he entered in good nature, smiling with amusement at himself. No
sooner, however, was he inside than a great depression descended upon him.
He fell from the height where he had been up-borne all day on the wings of
inspiration. "Bourgeois," "trader's den" - Brissenden's epithets repeated
themselves in his mind. But what of that? he demanded angrily. He was
marrying Ruth, not her family.

It seemed to him that he had never seen Ruth more beautiful, more spiritual
and ethereal and at the same time more healthy. There was color in her
cheeks, and her eyes drew him again and again - the eyes in which he had
first read immortality. He had forgotten immortality of late, and the trend
of his scientific reading had been away from it; but here, in Ruth's eyes,
he read an argument without words that transcended all worded arguments. He
saw that in her eyes before which all discussion fled away, for he saw love
there. And in his own eyes was love; and love was unanswerable. Such was
his passionate doctrine.

The half hour he had with her, before they went in to dinner, left him
supremely happy and supremely satisfied with life. Nevertheless, at table,
the inevitable reaction and exhaustion consequent upon the hard day seized
hold of him. He was aware that his eyes were tired and that he was
irritable. He remembered it was at this table, at which he now sneered and
was so often bored, that he had first eaten with civilized beings in what
he had imagined was an atmosphere of high culture and refinement. He caught
a glimpse of that pathetic figure of him, so long ago, a self-conscious
savage, sprouting sweat at every pore in an agony of apprehension, puzzled
by the bewildering minutiae of eating- implements, tortured by the ogre of
a servant, striving at a leap to live at such dizzy social altitude, and
deciding in the end to be frankly himself, pretending no knowledge and no
polish he did not possess.

He glanced at Ruth for reassurance, much in the same manner that a
passenger, with sudden panic thought of possible shipwreck, will strive to
locate the life preservers. Well, that much had come out of it - love and
Ruth. All the rest had failed to stand the test of the books. But Ruth and
love had stood the test; for them he found a biological sanction. Love was
the most exalted expression of life. Nature had been busy designing him, as
she had been busy with all normal men, for the purpose of loving. She had
spent ten thousand centuries - ay, a hundred thousand and a million
centuries - upon the task, and he was the best she could do. She had made
love the strongest thing in him, increased its power a myriad per cent with
her gift of imagination, and sent him forth into the ephemera to thrill and
melt and mate. His hand sought Ruth's hand beside him hidden by the table,
and a warm pressure was given and received. She looked at him a swift
instant, and her eyes were radiant and melting. So were his in the thrill
that pervaded him; nor did he realize how much that was radiant and melting
in her eyes had been aroused by what she had seen in his.

Across the table from him, cater-cornered, at Mr. Morse's right, sat Judge
Blount, a local superior court judge. Martin had met him a number of times
and had failed to like him. He and Ruth's father were discussing labor
union politics, the local situation, and socialism, and Mr. Morse was
endeavoring to twit Martin on the latter topic. At last Judge Blount looked
across the table with benignant and fatherly pity. Martin smiled to
himself.

"You'll grow out of it, young man," he said soothingly. "Time is the best
cure for such youthful distempers." He turned to Mr. Morse. "I do not
believe discussion is good in such cases. It makes the patient obstinate."

"That is true," the other assented gravely. "But it is well to warn the
patient occasionally of his condition."

Martin laughed merrily, but it was with an effort. The day had been too
long, the day's effort too intense, and he was deep in the throes of the
reaction.

"Undoubtedly you are both excellent doctors," he said; "but if you care a
whit for the opinion of the patient, let him tell you that you are poor
diagnosticians. In fact, you are both suffering from the disease you think
you find in me. As for me, I am immune. The socialist philosophy that riots
half-baked in your veins has passed me by."

"Clever, clever," murmured the judge. "An excellent ruse in controversy, to
reverse positions."

"Out of your mouth." Martin's eyes were sparkling, but he kept control of
himself. "You see, Judge, I've heard your campaign speeches. By some
henidical process - henidical, by the way is a favorite word of mine which
nobody understands - by some henidical process you persuade yourself that
you believe in the competitive system and the survival of the strong, and
at the same time you indorse with might and main all sorts of measures to
shear the strength from the strong."

"My young man - "

"Remember, I've heard your campaign speeches," Martin warned. "It's on
record, your position on interstate commerce regulation, on regulation of
the railway trust and Standard Oil, on the conservation of the forests, on
a thousand and one restrictive measures that are nothing else than
socialistic."

"Do you mean to tell me that you do not believe in regulating these various
outrageous exercises of power?"

"That's not the point. I mean to tell you that you are a poor
diagnostician. I mean to tell you that I am not suffering from the microbe
of socialism. I mean to tell you that it is you who are suffering from the
emasculating ravages of that same microbe. As for me, I am an inveterate
opponent of socialism just as I am an inveterate opponent of your own
mongrel democracy that is nothing else than pseudo-socialism masquerading
under a garb of words that will not stand the test of the dictionary."

"I am a reactionary - so complete a reactionary that my position is
incomprehensible to you who live in a veiled lie of social organization and
whose sight is not keen enough to pierce the veil. You make believe that
you believe in the survival of the strong and the rule of the strong. I
believe. That is the difference. When I was a trifle younger, - a few
months younger, - I believed the same thing. You see, the ideas of you and
yours had impressed me. But merchants and traders are cowardly rulers at
best; they grunt and grub all their days in the trough of money-getting,
and I have swung back to aristocracy, if you please. I am the only
individualist in this room. I look to the state for nothing. I look only to
the strong man, the man on horseback, to save the state from its own rotten
futility."

"Nietzsche was right. I won't take the time to tell you who Nietzsche was,
but he was right. The world belongs to the strong - to the strong who are
noble as well and who do not wallow in the swine-trough of trade and
exchange. The world belongs to the true nobleman, to the great blond
beasts, to the noncompromisers, to the 'yes-sayers.' And they will eat you
up, you socialists - who are afraid of socialism and who think yourselves
individualists. Your slave-morality of the meek and lowly will never save
you. - Oh, it's all Greek, I know, and I won't bother you any more with it.
But remember one thing. There aren't half a dozen individualists in
Oakland, but Martin Eden is one of them."

He signified that he was done with the discussion, and turned to Ruth.

"I'm wrought up to-day," he said in an undertone. "All I want to do is to
love, not talk."

He ignored Mr. Morse, who said:-

"I am unconvinced. All socialists are Jesuits. That is the way to tell
them."

"We'll make a good Republican out of you yet," said Judge Blount.

"The man on horseback will arrive before that time," Martin retorted with
good humor, and returned to Ruth.

But Mr. Morse was not content. He did not like the laziness and the
disinclination for sober, legitimate work of this prospective son-in-law of
his, for whose ideas he had no respect and of whose nature he had no
understanding. So he turned the conversation to Herbert Spencer. Judge
Blount ably seconded him, and Martin, whose ears had pricked at the first
mention of the philosopher's name, listened to the judge enunciate a grave
and complacent diatribe against Spencer. From time to time Mr. Morse
glanced at Martin, as much as to say, "There, my boy, you see."

"Chattering daws," Martin muttered under his breath, and went on talking
with Ruth and Arthur.

But the long day and the "real dirt" of the night before were telling upon
him; and, besides, still in his burnt mind was what had made him angry when
he read it on the car.

"What is the matter?" Ruth asked suddenly alarmed by the effort he was
making to contain himself.

"There is no god but the Unknowable, and Herbert Spencer is its prophet,"
Judge Blount was saying at that moment.

Martin turned upon him.

"A cheap judgment," he remarked quietly. "I heard it first in the City Hall
Park, on the lips of a workingman who ought to have known better. I have
heard it often since, and each time the clap-trap of it nauseates me. You
ought to be ashamed of yourself. To hear that great and noble man's name
upon your lips is like finding a dew-drop in a cesspool. You are
disgusting."

It was like a thunderbolt. Judge Blount glared at him with apoplectic
countenance, and silence reigned. Mr. Morse was secretly pleased. He could
see that his daughter was shocked. It was what he wanted to do - to bring
out the innate ruffianism of this man he did not like.

Ruth's hand sought Martin's beseechingly under the table, but his blood was
up. He was inflamed by the intellectual pretence and fraud of those who sat
in the high places. A Superior Court Judge! It was only several years
before that he had looked up from the mire at such glorious entities and
deemed them gods.

Judge Blount recovered himself and attempted to go on, addressing himself
to Martin with an assumption of politeness that the latter understood was
for the benefit of the ladies. Even this added to his anger. Was there no
honesty in the world?

"You can't discuss Spencer with me," he cried. "You do not know any more
about Spencer than do his own countrymen. But it is no fault of yours, I
grant. It is just a phase of the contemptible ignorance of the times. I ran
across a sample of it on my way here this evening. I was reading an essay
by Saleeby on Spencer. You should read it. It is accessible to all men. You
can buy it in any book-store or draw it from the public library. You would
feel ashamed of your paucity of abuse and ignorance of that noble man
compared with what Saleeby has collected on the subject. It is a record of
shame that would shame your shame."

"'The philosopher of the half-educated,' he was called by an academic
Philosopher who was not worthy to pollute the atmosphere he breathed. I
don't think you have read ten pages of Spencer, but there have been
critics, assumably more intelligent than you, who have read no more than
you of Spencer, who publicly challenged his followers to adduce one single
idea from all his writings - from Herbert Spencer's writings, the man who
has impressed the stamp of his genius over the whole field of scientific
research and modern thought; the father of psychology; the man who
revolutionized pedagogy, so that to-day the child of the French peasant is
taught the three R's according to principles laid down by him. And the
little gnats of men sting his memory when they get their very bread and
butter from the technical application of his ideas. What little of worth
resides in their brains is largely due to him. It is certain that had he
never lived, most of what is correct in their parrot-learned knowledge
would be absent."

"And yet a man like Principal Fairbanks of Oxford - a man who sits in an
even higher place than you, Judge Blount - has said that Spencer will be
dismissed by posterity as a poet and dreamer rather than a thinker. Yappers
and blatherskites, the whole brood of them! '"First Principles" is not
wholly destitute of a certain literary power,' said one of them. And others
of them have said that he was an industrious plodder rather than an
original thinker. Yappers and blatherskites! Yappers and blatherskites!"

Martin ceased abruptly, in a dead silence. Everybody in Ruth's family
looked up to Judge Blount as a man of power and achievement, and they were
horrified at Martin's outbreak. The remainder of the dinner passed like a
funeral, the judge and Mr. Morse confining their talk to each other, and
the rest of the conversation being extremely desultory. Then afterward,
when Ruth and Martin were alone, there was a scene.

"You are unbearable," she wept.

But his anger still smouldered, and he kept muttering, "The beasts! The
beasts!"

When she averred he had insulted the judge, he retorted:-

"By telling the truth about him?"

"I don't care whether it was true or not," she insisted. "There are certain
bounds of decency, and you had no license to insult anybody."

"Then where did Judge Blount get the license to assault truth?" Martin
demanded. "Surely to assault truth is a more serious misdemeanor than to
insult a pygmy personality such as the judge's. He did worse than that. He
blackened the name of a great, noble man who is dead. Oh, the beasts! The
beasts!"

His complex anger flamed afresh, and Ruth was in terror of him. Never had
she seen him so angry, and it was all mystified and unreasonable to her
comprehension. And yet, through her very terror ran the fibres of
fascination that had drawn and that still drew her to him - that had
compelled her to lean towards him, and, in that mad, culminating moment,
lay her hands upon his neck. She was hurt and outraged by what had taken
place, and yet she lay in his arms and quivered while he went on muttering,
"The beasts! The beasts!" And she still lay there when he said: "I'll not
bother your table again, dear. They do not like me, and it is wrong of me
to thrust my objectionable presence upon them. Besides, they are just as
objectionable to me. Faugh! They are sickening. And to think of it, I
dreamed in my innocence that the persons who sat in the high places, who
lived in fine houses and had educations and bank accounts, were worth
while!

CHAPTER XXXVIII

"Come on, let's go down to the local."

So spoke Brissenden, faint from a hemorrhage of half an hour before - the
second hemorrhage in three days. The perennial whiskey glass was in his
hands, and he drained it with shaking fingers.

"What do I want with socialism?" Martin demanded.

"Outsiders are allowed five-minute speeches," the sick man urged. "Get up
and spout. Tell them why you don't want socialism. Tell them what you think
about them and their ghetto ethics. Slam Nietzsche into them and get
walloped for your pains. Make a scrap of it. It will do them good.
Discussion is what they want, and what you want, too. You see, I'd like to
see you a socialist before I'm gone. It will give you a sanction for your
existence. It is the one thing that will save you in the time of
disappointment that is coming to you."

"I never can puzzle out why you, of all men, are a socialist," Martin
pondered. "You detest the crowd so. Surely there is nothing in the canaille
to recommend it to your aesthetic soul." He pointed an accusing finger at
the whiskey glass which the other was refilling. "Socialism doesn't seem to
save you."

"I'm very sick," was the answer. "With you it is different. You have health
and much to live for, and you must be handcuffed to life somehow. As for
me, you wonder why I am a socialist. I'll tell you. It is because Socialism
is inevitable; because the present rotten and irrational system cannot
endure; because the day is past for your man on horseback. The slaves won't
stand for it. They are too many, and willy-nilly they'll drag down the
would-be equestrian before ever he gets astride. You can't get away from
them, and you'll have to swallow the whole slave-morality. It's not a nice
mess, I'll allow. But it's been a-brewing and swallow it you must. You are
antediluvian anyway, with your Nietzsche ideas. The past is past, and the
man who says history repeats itself is a liar. Of course I don't like the
crowd, but what's a poor chap to do? We can't have the man on horseback,
and anything is preferable to the timid swine that now rule. But come on,
anyway. I'm loaded to the guards now, and if I sit here any longer, I'll
get drunk. And you know the doctor says - damn the doctor! I'll fool him
yet."

It was Sunday night, and they found the small hall packed by the Oakland
socialists, chiefly members of the working class. The speaker, a clever
Jew, won Martin's admiration at the same time that he aroused his
antagonism. The man's stooped and narrow shoulders and weazened chest
proclaimed him the true child of the crowded ghetto, and strong on Martin
was the age-long struggle of the feeble, wretched slaves against the lordly
handful of men who had ruled over them and would rule over them to the end
of time. To Martin this withered wisp of a creature was a symbol. He was
the figure that stood forth representative of the whole miserable mass of
weaklings and inefficients who perished according to biological law on the
ragged confines of life. They were the unfit. In spite of their cunning
philosophy and of their antlike proclivities for cooperation, Nature
rejected them for the exceptional man. Out of the plentiful spawn of life
she flung from her prolific hand she selected only the best. It was by the
same method that men, aping her, bred race-horses and cucumbers. Doubtless,
a creator of a Cosmos could have devised a better method; but creatures of
this particular Cosmos must put up with this particular method. Of course,
they could squirm as they perished, as the socialists squirmed, as the
speaker on the platform and the perspiring crowd were squirming even now as
they counselled together for some new device with which to minimize the
penalties of living and outwit the Cosmos.

So Martin thought, and so he spoke when Brissenden urged him to give them
hell. He obeyed the mandate, walking up to the platform, as was the custom,
and addressing the chairman. He began in a low voice, haltingly, forming
into order the ideas which had surged in his brain while the Jew was
speaking. In such meetings five minutes was the time allotted to each
speaker; but when Martin's five minutes were up, he was in full stride, his
attack upon their doctrines but half completed. He had caught their
interest, and the audience urged the chairman by acclamation to extend
Martin's time. They appreciated him as a foeman worthy of their intellect,
and they listened intently, following every word. He spoke with fire and
conviction, mincing no words in his attack upon the slaves and their
morality and tactics and frankly alluding to his hearers as the slaves in
question. He quoted Spencer and Malthus, and enunciated the biological law
of development.

"And so," he concluded, in a swift resume, "no state composed of the
slave-types can endure. The old law of development still holds. In the
struggle for existence, as I have shown, the strong and the progeny of the
strong tend to survive, while the weak and the progeny of the weak are
crushed and tend to perish. The result is that the strong and the progeny
of the strong survive, and, so long as the struggle obtains, the strength
of each generation increases. That is development. But you slaves - it is
too bad to be slaves, I grant - but you slaves dream of a society where the
law of development will be annulled, where no weaklings and inefficients
will perish, where every inefficient will have as much as he wants to eat
as many times a day as he desires, and where all will marry and have
progeny - the weak as well as the strong. What will be the result? No
longer will the strength and life-value of each generation increase. On the
contrary, it will diminish. There is the Nemesis of your slave philosophy.
Your society of slaves - of, by, and for, slaves - must inevitably weaken
and go to pieces as the life which composes it weakens and goes to pieces.

"Remember, I am enunciating biology and not sentimental ethics. No state of
slaves can stand - "

"How about the United States?" a man yelled from the audience.

"And how about it?" Martin retorted. "The thirteen colonies threw off their
rulers and formed the Republic so-called. The slaves were their own
masters. There were no more masters of the sword. But you couldn't get
along without masters of some sort, and there arose a new set of masters -
not the great, virile, noble men, but the shrewd and spidery traders and
money-lenders. And they enslaved you over again - but not frankly, as the
true, noble men would do with weight of their own right arms, but secretly,
by spidery machinations and by wheedling and cajolery and lies. They have
purchased your slave judges, they have debauched your slave legislatures,
and they have forced to worse horrors than chattel slavery your slave boys
and girls. Two million of your children are toiling to-day in this
trader-oligarchy of the United States. Ten millions of you slaves are not
properly sheltered nor properly fed."

"But to return. I have shown that no society of slaves can endure, because,
in its very nature, such society must annul the law of development. No
sooner can a slave society be organized than deterioration sets in. It is
easy for you to talk of annulling the law of development, but where is the
new law of development that will maintain your strength? Formulate it. Is
it already formulated? Then state it."

Martin took his seat amidst an uproar of voices. A score of men were on
their feet clamoring for recognition from the chair. And one by one,
encouraged by vociferous applause, speaking with fire and enthusiasm and
excited gestures, they replied to the attack. It was a wild night - but it
was wild intellectually, a battle of ideas. Some strayed from the point,
but most of the speakers replied directly to Martin. They shook him with
lines of thought that were new to him; and gave him insights, not into new
biological laws, but into new applications of the old laws. They were too
earnest to be always polite, and more than once the chairman rapped and
pounded for order.

It chanced that a cub reporter sat in the audience, detailed there on a day
dull of news and impressed by the urgent need of journalism for sensation.
He was not a bright cub reporter. He was merely facile and glib. He was too
dense to follow the discussion. In fact, he had a comfortable feeling that
he was vastly superior to these wordy maniacs of the working class. Also,
he had a great respect for those who sat in the high places and dictated
the policies of nations and newspapers. Further, he had an ideal, namely,
of achieving that excellence of the perfect reporter who is able to make
something - even a great deal - out of nothing.

He did not know what all the talk was about. It was not necessary. Words
like REVOLUTION gave him his cue. Like a paleontologist, able to
reconstruct an entire skeleton from one fossil bone, he was able to
reconstruct a whole speech from the one word REVOLUTION. He did it that
night, and he did it well; and since Martin had made the biggest stir, he
put it all into his mouth and made him the arch-anarch of the show,
transforming his reactionary individualism into the most lurid, red-shirt
socialist utterance. The cub reporter was an artist, and it was a large
brush with which he laid on the local color - wild-eyed long-haired men,
neurasthenia and degenerate types of men, voices shaken with passion,
clenched fists raised on high, and all projected against a background of
oaths, yells, and the throaty rumbling of angry men.

CHAPTER XXXIX

Over the coffee, in his little room, Martin read next morning's paper. It
was a novel experience to find himself head-lined, on the first page at
that; and he was surprised to learn that he was the most notorious leader
of the Oakland socialists. He ran over the violent speech the cub reporter
had constructed for him, and, though at first he was angered by the
fabrication, in the end he tossed the paper aside with a laugh.

"Either the man was drunk or criminally malicious," he said that afternoon,
from his perch on the bed, when Brissenden had arrived and dropped limply
into the one chair.

"But what do you care?" Brissenden asked. "Surely you don't desire the
approval of the bourgeois swine that read the newspapers?"

Martin thought for a while, then said:-

"No, I really don't care for their approval, not a whit. On the other hand,
it's very likely to make my relations with Ruth's family a trifle awkward.
Her father always contended I was a socialist, and this miserable stuff
will clinch his belief. Not that I care for his opinion - but what's the
odds? I want to read you what I've been doing to-day. It's 'Overdue,' of
course, and I'm just about halfway through."

He was reading aloud when Maria thrust open the door and ushered in a young
man in a natty suit who glanced briskly about him, noting the oil-burner
and the kitchen in the corner before his gaze wandered on to Martin.

"Sit down," Brissenden said.

Martin made room for the young man on the bed and waited for him to broach
his business.

"I heard you speak last night, Mr. Eden, and I've come to interview you,"
he began.

Brissenden burst out in a hearty laugh.

"A brother socialist?" the reporter asked, with a quick glance at
Brissenden that appraised the color-value of that cadaverous and dying man.

"And he wrote that report," Martin said softly. "Why, he is only a boy!"

"Why don't you poke him?" Brissenden asked. "I'd give a thousand dollars to
have my lungs back for five minutes."

The cub reporter was a trifle perplexed by this talking over him and around
him and at him. But he had been commended for his brilliant description of
the socialist meeting and had further been detailed to get a personal
interview with Martin Eden, the leader of the organized menace to society.

"You do not object to having your picture taken, Mr. Eden?" he said. "I've
a staff photographer outside, you see, and he says it will be better to
take you right away before the sun gets lower. Then we can have the
interview afterward."

"A photographer," Brissenden said meditatively. "Poke him, Martin! Poke
him!"

"I guess I'm getting old," was the answer. "I know I ought, but I really
haven't the heart. It doesn't seem to matter."

"For his mother's sake," Brissenden urged.

"It's worth considering," Martin replied; "but it doesn't seem worth while
enough to rouse sufficient energy in me. You see, it does take energy to
give a fellow a poking. Besides, what does it matter?"

"That's right - that's the way to take it," the cub announced airily,
though he had already begun to glance anxiously at the door.

"But it wasn't true, not a word of what he wrote," Martin went on,
confining his attention to Brissenden.

"It was just in a general way a description, you understand," the cub
ventured, "and besides, it's good advertising. That's what counts. It was a
favor to you."

"It's good advertising, Martin, old boy," Brissenden repeated solemnly.

"And it was a favor to me - think of that!" was Martin's contribution.

"Let me see - where were you born, Mr. Eden?" the cub asked, assuming an
air of expectant attention.

"He doesn't take notes," said Brissenden. "He remembers it all."

"That is sufficient for me." The cub was trying not to look worried. "No
decent reporter needs to bother with notes."

"That was sufficient - for last night." But Brissenden was not a disciple
of quietism, and he changed his attitude abruptly. "Martin, if you don't
poke him, I'll do it myself, if I fall dead on the floor the next moment."

"How will a spanking do?" Martin asked.

Brissenden considered judicially, and nodded his head.

The next instant Martin was seated on the edge of the bed with the cub face
downward across his knees.

"Now don't bite," Martin warned, "or else I'll have to punch your face. It
would be a pity, for it is such a pretty face."

His uplifted hand descended, and thereafter rose and fell in a swift and
steady rhythm. The cub struggled and cursed and squirmed, but did not offer
to bite. Brissenden looked on gravely, though once he grew excited and
gripped the whiskey bottle, pleading, "Here, just let me swat him once."

"Sorry my hand played out," Martin said, when at last he desisted. "It is
quite numb."

He uprighted the cub and perched him on the bed.

"I'll have you arrested for this," he snarled, tears of boyish indignation
running down his flushed cheeks. "I'll make you sweat for this. You'll
see."

"The pretty thing," Martin remarked. "He doesn't realize that he has
entered upon the downward path. It is not honest, it is not square, it is
not manly, to tell lies about one's fellow-creatures the way he has done,
and he doesn't know it."

"He has to come to us to be told," Brissenden filled in a pause.

"Yes, to me whom he has maligned and injured. My grocery will undoubtedly
refuse me credit now. The worst of it is that the poor boy will keep on
this way until he deteriorates into a first-class newspaper man and also a
first-class scoundrel."

"But there is yet time," quoth Brissenden. "Who knows but what you may
prove the humble instrument to save him. Why didn't you let me swat him
just once? I'd like to have had a hand in it."

"I'll have you arrested, the pair of you, you b-b-big brutes," sobbed the
erring soul.

"No, his mouth is too pretty and too weak." Martin shook his head
lugubriously. "I'm afraid I've numbed my hand in vain. The young man cannot
reform. He will become eventually a very great and successful newspaper
man. He has no conscience. That alone will make him great."

With that the cub passed out the door in trepidation to the last for fear
that Brissenden would hit him in the back with the bottle he still
clutched.

In the next morning's paper Martin learned a great deal more about himself
that was new to him. "We are the sworn enemies of society," he found
himself quoted as saying in a column interview. "No, we are not anarchists
but socialists." When the reporter pointed out to him that there seemed
little difference between the two schools, Martin had shrugged his
shoulders in silent affirmation. His face was described as bilaterally
asymmetrical, and various other signs of degeneration were described.
Especially notable were his thuglike hands and the fiery gleams in his
blood- shot eyes.

He learned, also, that he spoke nightly to the workmen in the City Hall
Park, and that among the anarchists and agitators that there inflamed the
minds of the people he drew the largest audiences and made the most
revolutionary speeches. The cub painted a high-light picture of his poor
little room, its oil-stove and the one chair, and of the death's-head tramp
who kept him company and who looked as if he had just emerged from twenty
years of solitary confinement in some fortress dungeon.

The cub had been industrious. He had scurried around and nosed out Martin's
family history, and procured a photograph of Higginbotham's Cash Store with
Bernard Higginbotham himself standing out in front. That gentleman was
depicted as an intelligent, dignified businessman who had no patience with
his brother-in-law's socialistic views, and no patience with the
brother-in-law, either, whom he was quoted as characterizing as a lazy
good-for-nothing who wouldn't take a job when it was offered to him and who
would go to jail yet. Hermann Yon Schmidt, Marian's husband, had likewise
been interviewed. He had called Martin the black sheep of the family and
repudiated him. "He tried to sponge off of me, but I put a stop to that
good and quick," Von Schmidt had said to the reporter. "He knows better
than to come bumming around here. A man who won't work is no good, take
that from me."

This time Martin was genuinely angry. Brissenden looked upon the affair as
a good joke, but he could not console Martin, who knew that it would be no
easy task to explain to Ruth. As for her father, he knew that he must be
overjoyed with what had happened and that he would make the most of it to
break off the engagement. How much he would make of it he was soon to
realize. The afternoon mail brought a letter from Ruth. Martin opened it
with a premonition of disaster, and read it standing at the open door when
he had received it from the postman. As he read, mechanically his hand
sought his pocket for the tobacco and brown paper of his old cigarette
days. He was not aware that the pocket was empty or that he had even
reached for the materials with which to roll a cigarette.

It was not a passionate letter. There were no touches of anger in it. But
all the way through, from the first sentence to the last, was sounded the
note of hurt and disappointment. She had expected better of him. She had
thought he had got over his youthful wildness, that her love for him had
been sufficiently worth while to enable him to live seriously and decently.
And now her father and mother had taken a firm stand and commanded that the
engagement be broken. That they were justified in this she could not but
admit. Their relation could never be a happy one. It had been unfortunate
from the first. But one regret she voiced in the whole letter, and it was a
bitter one to Martin. "If only you had settled down to some position and
attempted to make something of yourself," she wrote. "But it was not to be.
Your past life had been too wild and irregular. I can understand that you
are not to be blamed. You could act only according to your nature and your
early training. So I do not blame you, Martin. Please remember that. It was
simply a mistake. As father and mother have contended, we were not made for
each other, and we should both be happy because it was discovered not too
late." . . "There is no use trying to see me," she said toward the last.
"It would be an unhappy meeting for both of us, as well as for my mother. I
feel, as it is, that I have caused her great pain and worry. I shall have
to do much living to atone for it."

He read it through to the end, carefully, a second time, then sat down and
replied. He outlined the remarks he had uttered at the socialist meeting,
pointing out that they were in all ways the converse of what the newspaper
had put in his mouth. Toward the end of the letter he was God's own lover
pleading passionately for love. "Please answer," he said, "and in your
answer you have to tell me but one thing. Do you love me? That is all - the
answer to that one question."

But no answer came the next day, nor the next. "Overdue" lay untouched upon
the table, and each day the heap of returned manuscripts under the table
grew larger. For the first time Martin's glorious sleep was interrupted by
insomnia, and he tossed through long, restless nights. Three times he
called at the Morse home, but was turned away by the servant who answered
the bell. Brissenden lay sick in his hotel, too feeble to stir out, and,
though Martin was with him often, he did not worry him with his troubles.

For Martin's troubles were many. The aftermath of the cub reporter's deed
was even wider than Martin had anticipated. The Portuguese grocer refused
him further credit, while the greengrocer, who was an American and proud of
it, had called him a traitor to his country and refused further dealings
with him - carrying his patriotism to such a degree that he cancelled
Martin's account and forbade him ever to attempt to pay it. The talk in the
neighborhood reflected the same feeling, and indignation against Martin ran
high. No one would have anything to do with a socialist traitor. Poor Maria
was dubious and frightened, but she remained loyal. The children of the
neighborhood recovered from the awe of the grand carriage which once had
visited Martin, and from safe distances they called him "hobo" and "bum."
The Silva tribe, however, stanchly defended him, fighting more than one
pitched battle for his honor, and black eyes and bloody noses became quite
the order of the day and added to Maria's perplexities and troubles.

Once, Martin met Gertrude on the street, down in Oakland, and learned what
he knew could not be otherwise - that Bernard Higginbotham was furious with
him for having dragged the family into public disgrace, and that he had
forbidden him the house.

"Why don't you go away, Martin?" Gertrude had begged. "Go away and get a
job somewhere and steady down. Afterwards, when this all blows over, you
can come back."

Martin shook his head, but gave no explanations. How could he explain? He
was appalled at the awful intellectual chasm that yawned between him and
his people. He could never cross it and explain to them his position, - the
Nietzschean position, in regard to socialism. There were not words enough
in the English language, nor in any language, to make his attitude and
conduct intelligible to them. Their highest concept of right conduct, in
his case, was to get a job. That was their first word and their last. It
constituted their whole lexicon of ideas. Get a job! Go to work! Poor,
stupid slaves, he thought, while his sister talked. Small wonder the world
belonged to the strong. The slaves were obsessed by their own slavery. A
job was to them a golden fetich before which they fell down and worshipped.

He shook his head again, when Gertrude offered him money, though he knew
that within the day he would have to make a trip to the pawnbroker.

"Don't come near Bernard now," she admonished him. "After a few months,
when he is cooled down, if you want to, you can get the job of drivin'
delivery-wagon for him. Any time you want me, just send for me an' I'll
come. Don't forget."

She went away weeping audibly, and he felt a pang of sorrow shoot through
him at sight of her heavy body and uncouth gait. As he watched her go, the
Nietzschean edifice seemed to shake and totter. The slave-class in the
abstract was all very well, but it was not wholly satisfactory when it was
brought home to his own family. And yet, if there was ever a slave trampled
by the strong, that slave was his sister Gertrude. He grinned savagely at
the paradox. A fine Nietzsche-man he was, to allow his intellectual
concepts to be shaken by the first sentiment or emotion that strayed along
- ay, to be shaken by the slave-morality itself, for that was what his pity
for his sister really was. The true noble men were above pity and
compassion. Pity and compassion had been generated in the subterranean
barracoons of the slaves and were no more than the agony and sweat of the
crowded miserables and weaklings.

CHAPTER XL

"Overdue" still continued to lie forgotten on the table. Every manuscript
that he had had out now lay under the table. Only one manuscript he kept
going, and that was Brissenden's "Ephemera." His bicycle and black suit
were again in pawn, and the type-writer people were once more worrying
about the rent. But such things no longer bothered him. He was seeking a
new orientation, and until that was found his life must stand still.

After several weeks, what he had been waiting for happened. He met Ruth on
the street. It was true, she was accompanied by her brother, Norman, and it
was true that they tried to ignore him and that Norman attempted to wave
him aside.

"If you interfere with my sister, I'll call an officer," Norman threatened.
"She does not wish to speak with you, and your insistence is insult."

"If you persist, you'll have to call that officer, and then you'll get your
name in the papers," Martin answered grimly. "And now, get out of my way
and get the officer if you want to. I'm going to talk with Ruth."

"I want to have it from your own lips," he said to her.

She was pale and trembling, but she held up and looked inquiringly.

"The question I asked in my letter," he prompted.

Norman made an impatient movement, but Martin checked him with a swift
look.

She shook her head.

"Is all this of your own free will?" he demanded.

"It is." She spoke in a low, firm voice and with deliberation. "It is of my
own free will. You have disgraced me so that I am ashamed to meet my
friends. They are all talking about me, I know. That is all I can tell you.
You have made me very unhappy, and I never wish to see you again."

"Friends! Gossip! Newspaper misreports! Surely such things are not stronger
than love! I can only believe that you never loved me."

A blush drove the pallor from her face.

"After what has passed?" she said faintly. "Martin, you do not know what
you are saying. I am not common."

"You see, she doesn't want to have anything to do with you," Norman blurted
out, starting on with her.

Martin stood aside and let them pass, fumbling unconsciously in his coat
pocket for the tobacco and brown papers that were not there.

It was a long walk to North Oakland, but it was not until he went up the
steps and entered his room that he knew he had walked it. He found himself
sitting on the edge of the bed and staring about him like an awakened
somnambulist. He noticed "Overdue" lying on the table and drew up his chair
and reached for his pen. There was in his nature a logical compulsion
toward completeness. Here was something undone. It had been deferred
against the completion of something else. Now that something else had been
finished, and he would apply himself to this task until it was finished.
What he would do next he did not know. All that he did know was that a
climacteric in his life had been attained. A period had been reached, and
he was rounding it off in workman-like fashion. He was not curious about
the future. He would soon enough find out what it held in store for him.
Whatever it was, it did not matter. Nothing seemed to matter.

For five days he toiled on at "Overdue," going nowhere, seeing nobody, and
eating meagrely. On the morning of the sixth day the postman brought him a
thin letter from the editor of THE PARTHENON. A glance told him that
"Ephemera" was accepted. "We have submitted the poem to Mr. Cartwright
Bruce," the editor went on to say, "and he has reported so favorably upon
it that we cannot let it go. As an earnest of our pleasure in publishing
the poem, let me tell you that we have set it for the August number, our
July number being already made up. Kindly extend our pleasure and our
thanks to Mr. Brissenden. Please send by return mail his photograph and
biographical data. If our honorarium is unsatisfactory, kindly telegraph us
at once and state what you consider a fair price."

Since the honorarium they had offered was three hundred and fifty dollars,
Martin thought it not worth while to telegraph. Then, too, there was
Brissenden's consent to be gained. Well, he had been right, after all. Here
was one magazine editor who knew real poetry when he saw it. And the price
was splendid, even though it was for the poem of a century. As for
Cartwright Bruce, Martin knew that he was the one critic for whose opinions
Brissenden had any respect.

Martin rode down town on an electric car, and as he watched the houses and
cross-streets slipping by he was aware of a regret that he was not more
elated over his friend's success and over his own signal victory. The one
critic in the United States had pronounced favorably on the poem, while his
own contention that good stuff could find its way into the magazines had
proved correct. But enthusiasm had lost its spring in him, and he found
that he was more anxious to see Brissenden than he was to carry the good
news. The acceptance of THE PARTHENON had recalled to him that during his
five days' devotion to "Overdue" he had not heard from Brissenden nor even
thought about him. For the first time Martin realized the daze he had been
in, and he felt shame for having forgotten his friend. But even the shame
did not burn very sharply. He was numb to emotions of any sort save the
artistic ones concerned in the writing of "Overdue." So far as other
affairs were concerned, he had been in a trance. For that matter, he was
still in a trance. All this life through which the electric car whirred
seemed remote and unreal, and he would have experienced little interest and
less shook if the great stone steeple of the church he passed had suddenly
crumbled to mortar-dust upon his head.

At the hotel he hurried up to Brissenden's room, and hurried down again.
The room was empty. All luggage was gone.

"Did Mr. Brissenden leave any address?" he asked the clerk, who looked at
him curiously for a moment.

"Haven't you heard?" he asked.

Martin shook his head.

"Why, the papers were full of it. He was found dead in bed. Suicide. Shot
himself through the head."

"Is he buried yet?" Martin seemed to hear his voice, like some one else's
voice, from a long way off, asking the question.

"No. The body was shipped East after the inquest. Lawyers engaged by his
people saw to the arrangements."

"They were quick about it, I must say," Martin commented.

"Oh, I don't know. It happened five days ago."

"Five days ago?"

"Yes, five days ago."

"Oh," Martin said as he turned and went out.

At the corner he stepped into the Western Union and sent a telegram to THE
PARTHENON, advising them to proceed with the publication of the poem. He
had in his pocket but five cents with which to pay his carfare home, so he
sent the message collect.

Once in his room, he resumed his writing. The days and nights came and
went, and he sat at his table and wrote on. He went nowhere, save to the
pawnbroker, took no exercise, and ate methodically when he was hungry and
had something to cook, and just as methodically went without when he had
nothing to cook. Composed as the story was, in advance, chapter by chapter,
he nevertheless saw and developed an opening that increased the power of
it, though it necessitated twenty thousand additional words. It was not
that there was any vital need that the thing should be well done, but that
his artistic canons compelled him to do it well. He worked on in the daze,
strangely detached from the world around him, feeling like a familiar ghost
among these literary trappings of his former life. He remembered that some
one had said that a ghost was the spirit of a man who was dead and who did
not have sense enough to know it; and he paused for the moment to wonder if
he were really dead did unaware of it.

Came the day when "Overdue" was finished. The agent of the type- writer
firm had come for the machine, and he sat on the bed while Martin, on the
one chair, typed the last pages of the final chapter. "Finis," he wrote, in
capitals, at the end, and to him it was indeed finis. He watched the
type-writer carried out the door with a feeling of relief, then went over
and lay down on the bed. He was faint from hunger. Food had not passed his
lips in thirty- six hours, but he did not think about it. He lay on his
back, with closed eyes, and did not think at all, while the daze or stupor
slowly welled up, saturating his consciousness. Half in delirium, he began
muttering aloud the lines of an anonymous poem Brissenden had been fond of
quoting to him. Maria, listening anxiously outside his door, was perturbed
by his monotonous utterance. The words in themselves were not significant
to her, but the fact that he was saying them was. "I have done," was the
burden of the poem.

"'I have done - Put by the lute. Song and singing soon are over As the airy
shades that hover In among the purple clover. I have done - Put by the
lute. Once I sang as early thrushes Sing among the dewy bushes; Now I'm
mute. I am like a weary linnet, For my throat has no song in it; I have had
my singing minute. I have done. Put by the lute.'"

Maria could stand it no longer, and hurried away to the stove, where she
filled a quart-bowl with soup, putting into it the lion's share of chopped
meat and vegetables which her ladle scraped from the bottom of the pot.
Martin roused himself and sat up and began to eat, between spoonfuls
reassuring Maria that he had not been talking in his sleep and that he did
not have any fever.

After she left him he sat drearily, with drooping shoulders, on the edge of
the bed, gazing about him with lack-lustre eyes that saw nothing until the
torn wrapper of a magazine, which had come in the morning's mail and which
lay unopened, shot a gleam of light into his darkened brain. It is THE
PARTHENON, he thought, the August PARTHENON, and it must contain
"Ephemera." If only Brissenden were here to see!

He was turning the pages of the magazine, when suddenly he stopped.
"Ephemera" had been featured, with gorgeous head-piece and Beardsley-like
margin decorations. On one side of the head-piece was Brissenden's
photograph, on the other side was the photograph of Sir John Value, the
British Ambassador. A preliminary editorial note quoted Sir John Value as
saying that there were no poets in America, and the publication of
"Ephemera" was THE PARTHENON'S. "There, take that, Sir John Value!"
Cartwright Bruce was described as the greatest critic in America, and he
was quoted as saying that "Ephemera" was the greatest poem ever written in
America. And finally, the editor's foreword ended with: "We have not yet
made up our minds entirely as to the merits of "Ephemera"; perhaps we shall
never be able to do so. But we have read it often, wondering at the words
and their arrangement, wondering where Mr. Brissenden got them, and how he
could fasten them together." Then followed the poem.

"Pretty good thing you died, Briss, old man," Martin murmured, letting the
magazine slip between his knees to the floor.

The cheapness and vulgarity of it was nauseating, and Martin noted
apathetically that he was not nauseated very much. He wished he could get
angry, but did not have energy enough to try. He was too numb. His blood
was too congealed to accelerate to the swift tidal flow of indignation.
After all, what did it matter? It was on a par with all the rest that
Brissenden had condemned in bourgeois society.

"Poor Briss," Martin communed; "he would never have forgiven me."

Rousing himself with an effort, he possessed himself of a box which had
once contained type-writer paper. Going through its contents, he drew forth
eleven poems which his friend had written. These he tore lengthwise and
crosswise and dropped into the waste basket. He did it languidly, and, when
he had finished, sat on the edge of the bed staring blankly before him.

How long he sat there he did not know, until, suddenly, across his
sightless vision he saw form a long horizontal line of white. It was
curious. But as he watched it grow in definiteness he saw that it was a
coral reef smoking in the white Pacific surges. Next, in the line of
breakers he made out a small canoe, an outrigger canoe. In the stern he saw
a young bronzed god in scarlet hip-cloth dipping a flashing paddle. He
recognized him. He was Moti, the youngest son of Tati, the chief, and this
was Tahiti, and beyond that smoking reef lay the sweet land of Papara and
the chief's grass house by the river's mouth. It was the end of the day,
and Moti was coming home from the fishing. He was waiting for the rush of a
big breaker whereon to jump the reef. Then he saw himself, sitting forward
in the canoe as he had often sat in the past, dipping a paddle that waited
Moti's word to dig in like mad when the turquoise wall of the great breaker
rose behind them. Next, he was no longer an onlooker but was himself in the
canoe, Moti was crying out, they were both thrusting hard with their
paddles, racing on the steep face of the flying turquoise. Under the bow
the water was hissing as from a steam jet, the air was filled with driven
spray, there was a rush and rumble and long-echoing roar, and the canoe
floated on the placid water of the lagoon. Moti laughed and shook the salt
water from his eyes, and together they paddled in to the pounded-coral
beach where Tati's grass walls through the cocoanut-palms showed golden in
the setting sun.

The picture faded, and before his eyes stretched the disorder of his
squalid room. He strove in vain to see Tahiti again. He knew there was
singing among the trees and that the maidens were dancing in the moonlight,
but he could not see them. He could see only the littered writing-table,
the empty space where the type-writer had stood, and the unwashed
window-pane. He closed his eyes with a groan, and slept.

CHAPTER XLI

He slept heavily all night, and did not stir until aroused by the postman
on his morning round. Martin felt tired and passive, and went through his
letters aimlessly. One thin envelope, from a robber magazine, contained for
twenty-two dollars. He had been dunning for it for a year and a half. He
noted its amount apathetically. The old-time thrill at receiving a
publisher's check was gone. Unlike his earlier checks, this one was not
pregnant with promise of great things to come. To him it was a check for
twenty-two dollars, that was all, and it would buy him something to eat.

Another check was in the same mail, sent from a New York weekly in payment
for some humorous verse which had been accepted months before. It was for
ten dollars. An idea came to him, which he calmly considered. He did not
know what he was going to do, and he felt in no hurry to do anything. In
the meantime he must live. Also he owed numerous debts. Would it not be a
paying investment to put stamps on the huge pile of manuscripts under the
table and start them on their travels again? One or two of them might be
accepted. That would help him to live. He decided on the investment, and,
after he had cashed the checks at the bank down in Oakland, he bought ten
dollars' worth of postage stamps. The thought of going home to cook
breakfast in his stuffy little room was repulsive to him. For the first
time he refused to consider his debts. He knew that in his room he could
manufacture a substantial breakfast at a cost of from fifteen to twenty
cents. But, instead, he went into the Forum Cafe and ordered a breakfast
that cost two dollars. He tipped the waiter a quarter, and spent fifty
cents for a package of Egyptian cigarettes. It was the first time he had
smoked since Ruth had asked him to stop. But he could see now no reason why
he should not, and besides, he wanted to smoke. And what did the money
matter? For five cents he could have bought a package of Durham and brown
papers and rolled forty cigarettes - but what of it? Money had no meaning
to him now except what it would immediately buy. He was chartless and
rudderless, and he had no port to make, while drifting involved the least
living, and it was living that hurt.

The days slipped along, and he slept eight hours regularly every night.
Though now, while waiting for more checks, he ate in the Japanese
restaurants where meals were served for ten cents, his wasted body filled
out, as did the hollows in his cheeks. He no longer abused himself with
short sleep, overwork, and overstudy. He wrote nothing, and the books were
closed. He walked much, out in the hills, and loafed long hours in the
quiet parks. He had no friends nor acquaintances, nor did he make any. He
had no inclination. He was waiting for some impulse, from he knew not
where, to put his stopped life into motion again. In the meantime his life
remained run down, planless, and empty and idle.

Once he made a trip to San Francisco to look up the "real dirt." But at the
last moment, as he stepped into the upstairs entrance, he recoiled and
turned and fled through the swarming ghetto. He was frightened at the
thought of hearing philosophy discussed, and he fled furtively, for fear
that some one of the "real dirt" might chance along and recognize him.

Sometimes he glanced over the magazines and newspapers to see how
"Ephemera" was being maltreated. It had made a hit. But what a hit!
Everybody had read it, and everybody was discussing whether or not it was
really poetry. The local papers had taken it up, and daily there appeared
columns of learned criticisms, facetious editorials, and serious letters
from subscribers. Helen Della Delmar (proclaimed with a flourish of
trumpets and rolling of tomtoms to be the greatest woman poet in the United
States) denied Brissenden a seat beside her on Pegasus and wrote voluminous
letters to the public, proving that he was no poet.

THE PARTHENON came out in its next number patting itself on the back for
the stir it had made, sneering at Sir John Value, and exploiting
Brissenden's death with ruthless commercialism. A newspaper with a sworn
circulation of half a million published an original and spontaneous poem by
Helen Della Delmar, in which she gibed and sneered at Brissenden. Also, she
was guilty of a second poem, in which she parodied him.

Martin had many times to be glad that Brissenden was dead. He had hated the
crowd so, and here all that was finest and most sacred of him had been
thrown to the crowd. Daily the vivisection of Beauty went on. Every
nincompoop in the land rushed into free print, floating their wizened
little egos into the public eye on the surge of Brissenden's greatness.
Quoth one paper: "We have received a letter from a gentleman who wrote a
poem just like it, only better, some time ago." Another paper, in deadly
seriousness, reproving Helen Della Delmar for her parody, said: "But
unquestionably Miss Delmar wrote it in a moment of badinage and not quite
with the respect that one great poet should show to another and perhaps to
the greatest. However, whether Miss Delmar be jealous or not of the man who
invented 'Ephemera,' it is certain that she, like thousands of others, is
fascinated by his work, and that the day may come when she will try to
write lines like his."

Ministers began to preach sermons against "Ephemera," and one, who too
stoutly stood for much of its content, was expelled for heresy. The great
poem contributed to the gayety of the world. The comic verse-writers and
the cartoonists took hold of it with screaming laughter, and in the
personal columns of society weeklies jokes were perpetrated on it to the
effect that Charley Frensham told Archie Jennings, in confidence, that five
lines of "Ephemera" would drive a man to beat a cripple, and that ten lines
would send him to the bottom of the river.

Martin did not laugh; nor did he grit his teeth in anger. The effect
produced upon him was one of great sadness. In the crash of his whole
world, with love on the pinnacle, the crash of magazinedom and the dear
public was a small crash indeed. Brissenden had been wholly right in his
judgment of the magazines, and he, Martin, had spent arduous and futile
years in order to find it out for himself. The magazines were all
Brissenden had said they were and more. Well, he was done, he solaced
himself. He had hitched his wagon to a star and been landed in a
pestiferous marsh. The visions of Tahiti - clean, sweet Tahiti - were
coming to him more frequently. And there were the low Paumotus, and the
high Marquesas; he saw himself often, now, on board trading schooners or
frail little cutters, slipping out at dawn through the reef at Papeete and
beginning the long beat through the pearl-atolls to Nukahiva and the Bay of
Taiohae, where Tamari, he knew, would kill a pig in honor of his coming,
and where Tamari's flower-garlanded daughters would seize his hands and
with song and laughter garland him with flowers. The South Seas were
calling, and he knew that sooner or later he would answer the call.

In the meantime he drifted, resting and recuperating after the long
traverse he had made through the realm of knowledge. When THE PARTHENON
check of three hundred and fifty dollars was forwarded to him, he turned it
over to the local lawyer who had attended to Brissenden's affairs for his
family. Martin took a receipt for the check, and at the same time gave a
note for the hundred dollars Brissenden had let him have.

The time was not long when Martin ceased patronizing the Japanese
restaurants. At the very moment when he had abandoned the fight, the tide
turned. But it had turned too late. Without a thrill he opened a thick
envelope from THE MILLENNIUM, scanned the face of a check that represented
three hundred dollars, and noted that it was the payment on acceptance for
"Adventure." Every debt he owed in the world, including the pawnshop, with
its usurious interest, amounted to less than a hundred dollars. And when he
had paid everything, and lifted the hundred-dollar note with Brissenden's
lawyer, he still had over a hundred dollars in pocket. He ordered a suit of
clothes from the tailor and ate his meals in the best cafes in town. He
still slept in his little room at Maria's, but the sight of his new clothes
caused the neighborhood children to cease from calling him "hobo" and
"tramp" from the roofs of woodsheds and over back fences.

"Wiki-Wiki," his Hawaiian short story, was bought by WARREN'S MONTHLY for
two hundred and fifty dollars. THE NORTHERN REVIEW took his essay, "The
Cradle of Beauty," and MACKINTOSH'S MAGAZINE took "The Palmist" - the poem
he had written to Marian. The editors and readers were back from their
summer vacations, and manuscripts were being handled quickly. But Martin
could not puzzle out what strange whim animated them to this general
acceptance of the things they had persistently rejected for two years.
Nothing of his had been published. He was not known anywhere outside of
Oakland, and in Oakland, with the few who thought they knew him, he was
notorious as a red-shirt and a socialist. So there was no explaining this
sudden acceptability of his wares. It was sheer jugglery of fate.

After it had been refused by a number of magazines, he had taken
Brissenden's rejected advice and started, "The Shame of the Sun" on the
round of publishers. After several refusals, Singletree, Darnley & Co.
accepted it, promising fall publication. When Martin asked for an advance
on royalties, they wrote that such was not their custom, that books of that
nature rarely paid for themselves, and that they doubted if his book would
sell a thousand copies. Martin figured what the book would earn him on such
a sale. Retailed at a dollar, on a royalty of fifteen per cent, it would
bring him one hundred and fifty dollars. He decided that if he had it to do
over again he would confine himself to fiction. "Adventure," one-fourth as
long, had brought him twice as much from THE MILLENNIUM. That newspaper
paragraph he had read so long ago had been true, after all. The first-class
magazines did not pay on acceptance, and they paid well. Not two cents a
word, but four cents a word, had THE MILLENNIUM paid him. And, furthermore,
they bought good stuff, too, for were they not buying his? This last
thought he accompanied with a grin.

He wrote to Singletree, Darnley & Co., offering to sell out his rights in
"The Shame of the Sun" for a hundred dollars, but they did not care to take
the risk. In the meantime he was not in need of money, for several of his
later stories had been accepted and paid for. He actually opened a bank
account, where, without a debt in the world, he had several hundred dollars
to his credit. "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 cafes 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. It was filled
with tropical fruits, wild chickens, and wild pigs, with an occasional herd
of wild cattle, while high up among the peaks were herds of wild goats
harried by packs of wild dogs. The whole place was wild. Not a human lived
in it. And he could buy it and the bay for a thousand Chili dollars.

The bay, as he remembered it, was magnificent, with water deep enough to
accommodate the largest vessel afloat, and so safe that the South Pacific
Directory recommended it to the best careening place for ships for hundreds
of miles around. He would buy a schooner - one of those yacht-like,
coppered crafts that sailed like witches - and go trading copra and
pearling among the islands. He would make the valley and the bay his
headquarters. He would build a patriarchal grass house like Tati's, and
have it and the valley and the schooner filled with dark-skinned servitors.
He would entertain there the factor of Taiohae, captains of wandering
traders, and all the best of the South Pacific riffraff. He would keep open
house and entertain like a prince. And he would forget the books he had
opened and the world that had proved an illusion.

To do all this he must wait in California to fill the sack with money.
Already it was beginning to flow in. If one of the books made a strike, it
might enable him to sell the whole heap of manuscripts. Also he could
collect the stories and the poems into books, and make sure of the valley
and the bay and the schooner. He would never write again. Upon that he was
resolved. But in the meantime, awaiting the publication of the books, he
must do something more than live dazed and stupid in the sort of uncaring
trance into which he had fallen.

He noted, one Sunday morning, that the Bricklayers' Picnic took place that
day at Shell Mound Park, and to Shell Mound Park he went. He had been to
the working-class picnics too often in his earlier life not to know what
they were like, and as he entered the park he experienced a recrudescence
of all the old sensations. After all, they were his kind, these working
people. He had been born among them, he had lived among them, and though he
had strayed for a time, it was well to come back among them.

"If it ain't Mart!" he heard some one say, and the next moment a hearty
hand was on his shoulder. "Where you ben all the time? Off to sea? Come on
an' have a drink."

It was the old crowd in which he found himself - the old crowd, with here
and there a gap, and here and there a new face. The fellows were not
bricklayers, but, as in the old days, they attended all Sunday picnics for
the dancing, and the fighting, and the fun. Martin drank with them, and
began to feel really human once more. He was a fool to have ever left them,
he thought; and he was very certain that his sum of happiness would have
been greater had he remained with them and let alone the books and the
people who sat in the high places. Yet the beer seemed not so good as of
yore. It didn't taste as it used to taste. Brissenden had spoiled him for
steam beer, he concluded, and wondered if, after all, the books had spoiled
him for companionship with these friends of his youth. He resolved that he
would not be so spoiled, and he went on to the dancing pavilion. Jimmy, the
plumber, he met there, in the company of a tall, blond girl who promptly
forsook him for Martin.

"Gee, it's like old times," Jimmy explained to the gang that gave him the
laugh as Martin and the blonde whirled away in a waltz. "An' I don't give a
rap. I'm too damned glad to see 'm back. Watch 'm waltz, eh? It's like
silk. Who'd blame any girl?"

But Martin restored the blonde to Jimmy, and the three of them, with half a
dozen friends, watched the revolving couples and laughed and joked with one
another. Everybody was glad to see Martin back. No book of his been
published; he carried no fictitious value in their eyes. They liked him for
himself. He felt like a prince returned from excile, and his lonely heart
burgeoned in the geniality in which it bathed. He made a mad day of it, and
was at his best. Also, he had money in his pockets, and, as in the old days
when he returned from sea with a pay-day, he made the money fly.

Once, on the dancing-floor, he saw Lizzie Connolly go by in the arms of a
young workingman; and, later, when he made the round of the pavilion, he
came upon her sitting by a refreshment table. Surprise and greetings over,
he led her away into the grounds, where they could talk without shouting
down the music. From the instant he spoke to her, she was his. He knew it.
She showed it in the proud humility of her eyes, in every caressing
movement of her proudly carried body, and in the way she hung upon his
speech. She was not the young girl as he had known her. She was a woman,
now, and Martin noted that her wild, defiant beauty had improved, losing
none of its wildness, while the defiance and the fire seemed more in
control. "A beauty, a perfect beauty," he murmured admiringly under his
breath. And he knew she was his, that all he had to do was to say "Come,"
and she would go with him over the world wherever he led.

Even as the thought flashed through his brain he received a heavy blow on
the side of his head that nearly knocked him down. It was a man's fist,
directed by a man so angry and in such haste that the fist had missed the
jaw for which it was aimed. Martin turned as he staggered, and saw the fist
coming at him in a wild swing. Quite as a matter of course he ducked, and
the fist flew harmlessly past, pivoting the man who had driven it. Martin
hooked with his left, landing on the pivoting man with the weight of his
body behind the blow. The man went to the ground sidewise, leaped to his
feet, and made a mad rush. Martin saw his passion-distorted face and
wondered what could be the cause of the fellow's anger. But while he
wondered, he shot in a straight left, the weight of his body behind the
blow. The man went over backward and fell in a crumpled heap. Jimmy and
others of the gang were running toward them.

Martin was thrilling all over. This was the old days with a vengeance, with
their dancing, and their fighting, and their fun. While he kept a wary eye
on his antagonist, he glanced at Lizzie. Usually the girls screamed when
the fellows got to scrapping, but she had not screamed. She was looking on
with bated breath, leaning slightly forward, so keen was her interest, one
hand pressed to her breast, her cheek flushed, and in her eyes a great and
amazed admiration.

The man had gained his feet and was struggling to escape the restraining
arms that were laid on him.

"She was waitin' for me to come back!" he was proclaiming to all and
sundry. "She was waitin' for me to come back, an' then that fresh guy comes
buttin' in. Let go o' me, I tell yeh. I'm goin' to fix 'm."

"What's eatin' yer?" Jimmy was demanding, as he helped hold the young
fellow back. "That guy's Mart Eden. He's nifty with his mits, lemme tell
you that, an' he'll eat you alive if you monkey with 'm."

"He can't steal her on me that way," the other interjected.

"He licked the Flyin' Dutchman, an' you know HIM," Jimmy went on
expostulating. "An' he did it in five rounds. You couldn't last a minute
against him. See?"

This information seemed to have a mollifying effect, and the irate young
man favored Martin with a measuring stare.

"He don't look it," he sneered; but the sneer was without passion.

"That's what the Flyin' Dutchman thought," Jimmy assured him. "Come on,
now, let's get outa this. There's lots of other girls. Come on."

The young fellow allowed himself to be led away toward the pavilion, and
the gang followed after him.

"Who is he?" Martin asked Lizzie. "And what's it all about, anyway?"

Already the zest of combat, which of old had been so keen and lasting, had
died down, and he discovered that he was self- analytical, too much so to
live, single heart and single hand, so primitive an existence.

Lizzie tossed her head.

"Oh, he's nobody," she said. "He's just ben keepin' company with me."

"I had to, you see," she explained after a pause. "I was gettin' pretty
lonesome. But I never forgot." Her voice sank lower, and she looked
straight before her. "I'd throw 'm down for you any time."

Martin looking at her averted face, knowing that all he had to do was to
reach out his hand and pluck her, fell to pondering whether, after all,
there was any real worth in refined, grammatical English, and, so, forgot
to reply to her.

"You put it all over him," she said tentatively, with a laugh.

"He's a husky young fellow, though," he admitted generously. "If they
hadn't taken him away, he might have given me my hands full."

"Who was that lady friend I seen you with that night?" she asked abruptly.

"Oh, just a lady friend," was his answer.

"It was a long time ago," she murmured contemplatively. "It seems like a
thousand years."

But Martin went no further into the matter. He led the conversation off
into other channels. They had lunch in the restaurant, where he ordered
wine and expensive delicacies and afterward he danced with her and with no
one but her, till she was tired. He was a good dancer, and she whirled
around and around with him in a heaven of delight, her head against his
shoulder, wishing that it could last forever. Later in the afternoon they
strayed off among the trees, where, in the good old fashion, she sat down
while he sprawled on his back, his head in her lap. He lay and dozed, while
she fondled his hair, looked down on his closed eyes, and loved him without
reserve. Looking up suddenly, he read the tender advertisement in her face.
Her eyes fluttered down, then they opened and looked into his with soft
defiance.

"I've kept straight all these years," she said, her voice so low that it
was almost a whisper.

In his heart Martin knew that it was the miraculous truth. And at his heart
pleaded a great temptation. It was in his power to make her happy. Denied
happiness himself, why should he deny happiness to her? He could marry her
and take her down with him to dwell in the grass-walled castle in the
Marquesas. The desire to do it was strong, but stronger still was the
imperative command of his nature not to do it. In spite of himself he was
still faithful to Love. The old days of license and easy living were gone.
He could not bring them back, nor could he go back to them. He was changed
- how changed he had not realized until now.

"I am not a marrying man, Lizzie," he said lightly.

The hand caressing his hair paused perceptibly, then went on with the same
gentle stroke. He noticed her face harden, but it was with the hardness of
resolution, for still the soft color was in her cheeks and she was all
glowing and melting.

"I did not mean that - " she began, then faltered. "Or anyway I don't
care."

"I don't care," she repeated. "I'm proud to be your friend. I'd do anything
for you. I'm made that way, I guess."

Martin sat up. He took her hand in his. He did it deliberately, with warmth
but without passion; and such warmth chilled her.

"Don't let's talk about it," she said.

"You are a great and noble woman," he said. "And it is I who should be
proud to know you. And I am, I am. You are a ray of light to me in a very
dark world, and I've got to be straight with you, just as straight as you
have been."

"I don't care whether you're straight with me or not. You could do anything
with me. You could throw me in the dirt an' walk on me. An' you're the only
man in the world that can," she added with a defiant flash. "I ain't taken
care of myself ever since I was a kid for nothin'."

"And it's just because of that that I'm not going to," he said gently. "You
are so big and generous that you challenge me to equal generousness. I'm
not marrying, and I'm not - well, loving without marrying, though I've done
my share of that in the past. I'm sorry I came here to-day and met you. But
it can't be helped now, and I never expected it would turn out this way."

"But look here, Lizzie. I can't begin to tell you how much I like you. I do
more than like you. I admire and respect you. You are magnificent, and you
are magnificently good. But what's the use of words? Yet there's something
I'd like to do. You've had a hard life; let me make it easy for you." (A
joyous light welled into her eyes, then faded out again.) "I'm pretty sure
of getting hold of some money soon - lots of it."

In that moment he abandoned the idea of the valley and the bay, the
grass-walled castle and the trim, white schooner. After all, what did it
matter? He could go away, as he had done so often, before the mast, on any
ship bound anywhere.

"I'd like to turn it over to you. There must be something you want - to go
to school or business college. You might like to study and be a
stenographer. I could fix it for you. Or maybe your father and mother are
living - I could set them up in a grocery store or something. Anything you
want, just name it, and I can fix it for you."

She made no reply, but sat, gazing straight before her, dry-eyed and
motionless, but with an ache in the throat which Martin divined so strongly
that it made his own throat ache. He regretted that he had spoken. It
seemed so tawdry what he had offered her - mere money - compared with what
she offered him. He offered her an extraneous thing with which he could
part without a pang, while she offered him herself, along with disgrace and
shame, and sin, and all her hopes of heaven.

"Don't let's talk about it," she said with a catch in her voice that she
changed to a cough. She stood up. "Come on, let's go home. I'm all tired
out."

The day was done, and the merrymakers had nearly all departed. But as
Martin and Lizzie emerged from the trees they found the gang waiting for
them. Martin knew immediately the meaning of it. Trouble was brewing. The
gang was his body-guard. They passed out through the gates of the park
with, straggling in the rear, a second gang, the friends that Lizzie's
young man had collected to avenge the loss of his lady. Several constables
and special police officers, anticipating trouble, trailed along to prevent
it, and herded the two gangs separately aboard the train for San Francisco.
Martin told Jimmy that he would get off at Sixteenth Street Station and
catch the electric car into Oakland. Lizzie was very quiet and without
interest in what was impending. The train pulled in to Sixteenth Street
Station, and the waiting electric car could be seen, the conductor of which
was impatiently clanging the gong.

"There she is," Jimmy counselled. "Make a run for it, an' we'll hold 'em
back. Now you go! Hit her up!"

The hostile gang was temporarily disconcerted by the manoeuvre, then it
dashed from the train in pursuit. The staid and sober Oakland folk who sat
upon the car scarcely noted the young fellow and the girl who ran for it
and found a seat in front on the outside. They did not connect the couple
with Jimmy, who sprang on the steps, crying to the motorman:-

"Slam on the juice, old man, and beat it outa here!"

The next moment Jimmy whirled about, and the passengers saw him land his
fist on the face of a running man who was trying to board the car. But
fists were landing on faces the whole length of the car. Thus, Jimmy and
his gang, strung out on the long, lower steps, met the attacking gang. The
car started with a great clanging of its gong, and, as Jimmy's gang drove
off the last assailants, they, too, jumped off to finish the job. The car
dashed on, leaving the flurry of combat far behind, and its dumfounded
passengers never dreamed that the quiet young man and the pretty
working-girl sitting in the corner on the outside seat had been the cause
of the row.

Martin had enjoyed the fight, with a recrudescence of the old fighting
thrills. But they quickly died away, and he was oppressed by a great
sadness. He felt very old - centuries older than those careless, care-free
young companions of his others days. He had travelled far, too far to go
back. Their mode of life, which had once been his, was now distasteful to
him. He was disappointed in it all. He had developed into an alien. As the
steam beer had tasted raw, so their companionship seemed raw to him. He was
too far removed. Too many thousands of opened books yawned between them and
him. He had exiled himself. He had travelled in the vast realm of intellect
until he could no longer return home. On the other hand, he was human, and
his gregarious need for companionship remained unsatisfied. He had found no
new home. As the gang could not understand him, as his own family could not
understand him, as the bourgeoisie could not understand him, so this girl
beside him, whom he honored high, could not understand him nor the honor he
paid her. His sadness was not untouched with bitterness as he thought it
over.

"Make it up with him," he advised Lizzie, at parting, as they stood in
front of the workingman's shack in which she lived, near Sixth and Market.
He referred to the young fellow whose place he had usurped that day.

"I can't - now," she said.

"Oh, go on," he said jovially. "All you have to do is whistle and he'll
come running."

"I didn't mean that," she said simply.

And he knew what she had meant.

She leaned toward him as he was about to say good night. But she leaned not
imperatively, not seductively, but wistfully and humbly. He was touched to
the heart. His large tolerance rose up in him. He put his arms around her,
and kissed her, and knew that upon his own lips rested as true a kiss as
man ever received.

"My God!" she sobbed. "I could die for you. I could die for you."

She tore herself from him suddenly and ran up the steps. He felt a quick
moisture in his eyes.

"Martin Eden," he communed. "You're not a brute, and you're a damn poor
Nietzscheman. You'd marry her if you could and fill her quivering heart
full with happiness. But you can't, you can't. And it's a damn shame."

"'A poor old tramp explains his poor old ulcers,'" he muttered, remembering
his Henly. "'Life is, I think, a blunder and a shame.' It is - a blunder
and a shame."

CHAPTER XLIII

"The Shame of the Sun" was published in October. As Martin cut the cords of
the express package and the half-dozen complimentary copies from the
publishers spilled out on the table, a heavy sadness fell upon him. He
thought of the wild delight that would have been his had this happened a
few short months before, and he contrasted that delight that should have
been with his present uncaring coldness. His book, his first book, and his
pulse had not gone up a fraction of a beat, and he was only sad. It meant
little to him now. The most it meant was that it might bring some money,
and little enough did he care for money.

He carried a copy out into the kitchen and presented it to Maria.

"I did it," he explained, in order to clear up her bewilderment. "I wrote
it in the room there, and I guess some few quarts of your vegetable soup
went into the making of it. Keep it. It's yours. Just to remember me by,
you know."

He was not bragging, not showing off. His sole motive was to make her
happy, to make her proud of him, to justify her long faith in him. She put
the book in the front room on top of the family Bible. A sacred thing was
this book her lodger had made, a fetich of friendship. It softened the blow
of his having been a laundryman, and though she could not understand a line
of it, she knew that every line of it was great. She was a simple,
practical, hard-working woman, but she possessed faith in large endowment.

Just as emotionlessly as he had received "The Shame of the Sun" did he read
the reviews of it that came in weekly from the clipping bureau. The book
was making a hit, that was evident. It meant more gold in the money sack.
He could fix up Lizzie, redeem all his promises, and still have enough left
to build his grass-walled castle.

Singletree, Darnley & Co. had cautiously brought out an edition of fifteen
hundred copies, but the first reviews had started a second edition of twice
the size through the presses; and ere this was delivered a third edition of
five thousand had been ordered. A London firm made arrangements by cable
for an English edition, and hot-footed upon this came the news of French,
German, and Scandinavian translations in progress. The attack upon the
Maeterlinck school could not have been made at a more opportune moment. A
fierce controversy was precipitated. Saleeby and Haeckel indorsed and
defended "The Shame of the Sun," for once finding themselves on the same
side of a question. Crookes and Wallace ranged up on the opposing side,
while Sir Oliver Lodge attempted to formulate a compromise that would jibe
with his particular cosmic theories. Maeterlinck's followers rallied around
the standard of mysticism. Chesterton set the whole world laughing with a
series of alleged non-partisan essays on the subject, and the whole affair,
controversy and controversialists, was well-nigh swept into the pit by a
thundering broadside from George Bernard Shaw. Needless to say the arena
was crowded with hosts of lesser lights, and the dust and sweat and din
became terrific.

"It is a most marvellous happening," Singletree, Darnley & Co. wrote
Martin, "a critical philosophic essay selling like a novel. You could not
have chosen your subject better, and all contributory factors have been
unwarrantedly propitious. We need scarcely to assure you that we are making
hay while the sun shines. Over forty thousand copies have already been sold
in the United States and Canada, and a new edition of twenty thousand is on
the presses. We are overworked, trying to supply the demand. Nevertheless
we have helped to create that demand. We have already spent five thousand
dollars in advertising. The book is bound to be a record-breaker."

"Please find herewith a contract in duplicate for your next book which we
have taken the liberty of forwarding to you. You will please note that we
have increased your royalties to twenty per cent, which is about as high as
a conservative publishing house dares go. If our offer is agreeable to you,
please fill in the proper blank space with the title of your book. We make
no stipulations concerning its nature. Any book on any subject. If you have
one already written, so much the better. Now is the time to strike. The
iron could not be hotter."

"On receipt of signed contract we shall be pleased to make you an advance
on royalties of five thousand dollars. You see, we have faith in you, and
we are going in on this thing big. We should like, also, to discuss with
you the drawing up of a contract for a term of years, say ten, during which
we shall have the exclusive right of publishing in book-form all that you
produce. But more of this anon."

Martin laid down the letter and worked a problem in mental arithmetic,
finding the product of fifteen cents times sixty thousand to be nine
thousand dollars. He signed the new contract, inserting "The Smoke of Joy"
in the blank space, and mailed it back to the publishers along with the
twenty storiettes he had written in the days before he discovered the
formula for the newspaper storiette. And promptly as the United States mail
could deliver and return, came Singletree, Darnley & Co.'s check for five
thousand dollars.

"I want you to come down town with me, Maria, this afternoon about two
o'clock," Martin said, the morning the check arrived. "Or, better, meet me
at Fourteenth and Broadway at two o'clock. I'll be looking out for you."

At the appointed time she was there; but SHOES was the only clew to the
mystery her mind had been capable of evolving, and she suffered a distinct
shock of disappointment when Martin walked her right by a shoe-store and
dived into a real estate office. What happened thereupon resided forever
after in her memory as a dream. Fine gentlemen smiled at her benevolently
as they talked with Martin and one another; a type-writer clicked;
signatures were affixed to an imposing document; her own landlord was
there, too, and affixed his signature; and when all was over and she was
outside on the sidewalk, her landlord spoke to her, saying, "Well, Maria,
you won't have to pay me no seven dollars and a half this month."

Maria was too stunned for speech.

"Or next month, or the next, or the next," her landlord said.

She thanked him incoherently, as if for a favor. And it was not until she
had returned home to North Oakland and conferred with her own kind, and had
the Portuguese grocer investigate, that she really knew that she was the
owner of the little house in which she had lived and for which she had paid
rent so long.

"Why don't you trade with me no more?" the Portuguese grocer asked Martin
that evening, stepping out to hail him when he got off the car; and Martin
explained that he wasn't doing his own cooking any more, and then went in
and had a drink of wine on the house. He noted it was the best wine the
grocer had in stock.

"Maria," Martin announced that night, "I'm going to leave you. And you're
going to leave here yourself soon. Then you can rent the house and be a
landlord yourself. You've a brother in San Leandro or Haywards, and he's in
the milk business. I want you to send all your washing back unwashed -
understand? - unwashed, and to go out to San Leandro to-morrow, or
Haywards, or wherever it is, and see that brother of yours. Tell him to
come to see me. I'll be stopping at the Metropole down in Oakland. He'll
know a good milk- ranch when he sees one."

And so it was that Maria became a landlord and the sole owner of a dairy,
with two hired men to do the work for her and a bank account that steadily
increased despite the fact that her whole brood wore shoes and went to
school. Few persons ever meet the fairy princes they dream about; but
Maria, who worked hard and whose head was hard, never dreaming about fairy
princes, entertained hers in the guise of an ex-laundryman.

In the meantime the world had begun to ask: "Who is this Martin Eden?" He
had declined to give any biographical data to his publishers, but the
newspapers were not to be denied. Oakland was his own town, and the
reporters nosed out scores of individuals who could supply information. All
that he was and was not, all that he had done and most of what he had not
done, was spread out for the delectation of the public, accompanied by
snapshots and photographs - the latter procured from the local photographer
who had once taken Martin's picture and who promptly copyrighted it and put
it on the market. At first, so great was his disgust with the magazines and
all bourgeois society, Martin fought against publicity; but in the end,
because it was easier than not to, he surrendered. He found that he could
not refuse himself to the special writers who travelled long distances to
see him. Then again, each day was so many hours long, and, since he no
longer was occupied with writing and studying, those hours had to be
occupied somehow; so he yielded to what was to him a whim, permitted
interviews, gave his opinions on literature and philosophy, and even
accepted invitations of the bourgeoisie. He had settled down into a strange
and comfortable state of mind. He no longer cared. He forgave everybody,
even the cub reporter who had painted him red and to whom he now granted a
full page with specially posed photographs.

He saw Lizzie occasionally, and it was patent that she regretted the
greatness that had come to him. It widened the space between them. Perhaps
it was with the hope of narrowing it that she yielded to his persuasions to
go to night school and business college and to have herself gowned by a
wonderful dressmaker who charged outrageous prices. She improved visibly
from day to day, until Martin wondered if he was doing right, for he knew
that all her compliance and endeavor was for his sake. She was trying to
make herself of worth in his eyes - of the sort of worth he seemed to
value. Yet he gave her no hope, treating her in brotherly fashion and
rarely seeing her.

"Overdue" was rushed upon the market by the Meredith-Lowell Company in the
height of his popularity, and being fiction, in point of sales it made even
a bigger strike than "The Shame of the Sun." Week after week his was the
credit of the unprecedented performance of having two books at the head of
the list of best-sellers. Not only did the story take with the
fiction-readers, but those who read "The Shame of the Sun" with avidity
were likewise attracted to the sea-story by the cosmic grasp of mastery
with which he had handled it. First he had attacked the literature of
mysticism, and had done it exceeding well; and, next, he had successfully
supplied the very literature he had exposited, thus proving himself to be
that rare genius, a critic and a creator in one.

Money poured in on him, fame poured in on him; he flashed, comet- like,
through the world of literature, and he was more amused than interested by
the stir he was making. One thing was puzzling him, a little thing that
would have puzzled the world had it known. But the world would have puzzled
over his bepuzzlement rather than over the little thing that to him loomed
gigantic. Judge Blount invited him to dinner. That was the little thing, or
the beginning of the little thing, that was soon to become the big thing.
He had insulted Judge Blount, treated him abominably, and Judge Blount,
meeting him on the street, invited him to dinner. Martin bethought himself
of the numerous occasions on which he had met Judge Blount at the Morses'
and when Judge Blount had not invited him to dinner. Why had he not invited
him to dinner then? he asked himself. He had not changed. He was the same
Martin Eden. What made the difference? The fact that the stuff he had
written had appeared inside the covers of books? But it was work performed.
It was not something he had done since. It was achievement accomplished at
the very time Judge Blount was sharing this general view and sneering at
his Spencer and his intellect. Therefore it was not for any real value, but
for a purely fictitious value that Judge Blount invited him to dinner.

Martin grinned and accepted the invitation, marvelling the while at his
complacence. And at the dinner, where, with their womankind, were half a
dozen of those that sat in high places, and where Martin found himself
quite the lion, Judge Blount, warmly seconded by Judge Hanwell, urged
privately that Martin should permit his name to be put up for the Styx -
the ultra-select club to which belonged, not the mere men of wealth, but
the men of attainment. And Martin declined, and was more puzzled than ever.

He was kept busy disposing of his heap of manuscripts. He was overwhelmed
by requests from editors. It had been discovered that he was a stylist,
with meat under his style. THE NORTHERN REVIEW, after publishing "The
Cradle of Beauty," had written him for half a dozen similar essays, which
would have been supplied out of the heap, had not BURTON'S MAGAZINE, in a
speculative mood, offered him five hundred dollars each for five essays. He
wrote back that he would supply the demand, but at a thousand dollars an
essay. He remembered that all these manuscripts had been refused by the
very magazines that were now clamoring for them. And their refusals had
been cold-blooded, automatic, stereotyped. They had made him sweat, and now
he intended to make them sweat. BURTON'S MAGAZINE paid his price for five
essays, and the remaining four, at the same rate, were snapped up by
MACKINTOSH'S MONTHLY, THE NORTHERN REVIEW being too poor to stand the pace.
Thus went out to the world "The High Priests of Mystery," "The
Wonder-Dreamers," "The Yardstick of the Ego," "Philosophy of Illusion,"
"God and Clod," "Art and Biology," "Critics and Test-tubes," "Star-dust,"
and "The Dignity of Usury," - to raise storms and rumblings and mutterings
that were many a day in dying down.

Editors wrote to him telling him to name his own terms, which he did, but
it was always for work performed. He refused resolutely to pledge himself
to any new thing. The thought of again setting pen to paper maddened him.
He had seen Brissenden torn to pieces by the crowd, and despite the fact
that him the crowd acclaimed, he could not get over the shock nor gather
any respect for the crowd. His very popularity seemed a disgrace and a
treason to Brissenden. It made him wince, but he made up his mind to go on
and fill the money-bag.

He received letters from editors like the following: "About a year ago we
were unfortunate enough to refuse your collection of love- poems. We were
greatly impressed by them at the time, but certain arrangements already
entered into prevented our taking them. If you still have them, and if you
will be kind enough to forward them, we shall be glad to publish the entire
collection on your own terms. We are also prepared to make a most
advantageous offer for bringing them out in book-form."

Martin recollected his blank-verse tragedy, and sent it instead. He read it
over before mailing, and was particularly impressed by its sophomoric
amateurishness and general worthlessness. But he sent it; and it was
published, to the everlasting regret of the editor. The public was
indignant and incredulous. It was too far a cry from Martin Eden's high
standard to that serious bosh. It was asserted that he had never written
it, that the magazine had faked it very clumsily, or that Martin Eden was
emulating the elder Dumas and at the height of success was hiring his
writing done for him. But when he explained that the tragedy was an early
effort of his literary childhood, and that the magazine had refused to be
happy unless it got it, a great laugh went up at the magazine's expense and
a change in the editorship followed. The tragedy was never brought out in
book-form, though Martin pocketed the advance royalties that had been paid.

COLEMAN'S WEEKLY sent Martin a lengthy telegram, costing nearly three
hundred dollars, offering him a thousand dollars an article for twenty
articles. He was to travel over the United States, with all expenses paid,
and select whatever topics interested him. The body of the telegram was
devoted to hypothetical topics in order to show him the freedom of range
that was to be his. The only restriction placed upon him was that he must
confine himself to the United States. Martin sent his inability to accept
and his regrets by wire "collect."

"Wiki-Wiki," published in WARREN'S MONTHLY, was an instantaneous success.
It was brought out forward in a wide-margined, beautifully decorated volume
that struck the holiday trade and sold like wildfire. The critics were
unanimous in the belief that it would take its place with those two
classics by two great writers, "The Bottle Imp" and "The Magic Skin."

The public, however, received the "Smoke of Joy" collection rather
dubiously and coldly. The audacity and unconventionality of the storiettes
was a shock to bourgeois morality and prejudice; but when Paris went mad
over the immediate translation that was made, the American and English
reading public followed suit and bought so many copies that Martin
compelled the conservative house of Singletree, Darnley & Co. to pay a flat
royalty of twenty-five per cent for a third book, and thirty per cent flat
for a fourth. These two volumes comprised all the short stories he had
written and which had received, or were receiving, serial publication. "The
Ring of Bells" and his horror stories constituted one collection; the other
collection was composed of "Adventure," "The Pot," "The Wine of Life," "The
Whirlpool," "The Jostling Street," and four other stories. The
Lowell-Meredith Company captured the collection of all his essays, and the
Maxmillian Company got his "Sea Lyrics" and the "Love-cycle," the latter
receiving serial publication in the LADIES' HOME COMPANION after the
payment of an extortionate price.

Martin heaved a sigh of relief when he had disposed of the last manuscript.
The grass-walled castle and the white, coppered schooner were very near to
him. Well, at any rate he had discovered Brissenden's contention that
nothing of merit found its way into the magazines. His own success
demonstrated that Brissenden had been wrong.

And yet, somehow, he had a feeling that Brissenden had been right, after
all. "The Shame of the Sun" had been the cause of his success more than the
stuff he had written. That stuff had been merely incidental. It had been
rejected right and left by the magazines. The publication of "The Shame of
the Sun" had started a controversy and precipitated the landslide in his
favor. Had there been no "Shame of the Sun" there would have been no
landslide, and had there been no miracle in the go of "The Shame of the
Sun" there would have been no landslide. Singletree, Darnley & Co. attested
that miracle. They had brought out a first edition of fifteen hundred
copies and been dubious of selling it. They were experienced publishers and
no one had been more astounded than they at the success which had followed.
To them it had been in truth a miracle. They never got over it, and every
letter they wrote him reflected their reverent awe of that first mysterious
happening. They did not attempt to explain it. There was no explaining it.
It had happened. In the face of all experience to the contrary, it had
happened.

So it was, reasoning thus, that Martin questioned the validity of his
popularity. It was the bourgeoisie that bought his books and poured its
gold into his money-sack, and from what little he knew of the bourgeoisie
it was not clear to him how it could possibly appreciate or comprehend what
he had written. His intrinsic beauty and power meant nothing to the
hundreds of thousands who were acclaiming him and buying his books. He was
the fad of the hour, the adventurer who had stormed Parnassus while the
gods nodded. The hundreds of thousands read him and acclaimed him with the
same brute non-understanding with which they had flung themselves on
Brissenden's "Ephemera" and torn it to pieces - a wolf-rabble that fawned
on him instead of fanging him. Fawn or fang, it was all a matter of chance.
One thing he knew with absolute certitude: "Ephemera" was infinitely
greater than anything he had done. It was infinitely greater than anything
he had in him. It was a poem of centuries. Then the tribute the mob paid
him was a sorry tribute indeed, for that same mob had wallowed "Ephemera"
into the mire. He sighed heavily and with satisfaction. He was glad the
last manuscript was sold and that he would soon be done with it all.

CHAPTER XLIV

Mr. Morse met Martin in the office of the Hotel Metropole. Whether he had
happened there just casually, intent on other affairs, or whether he had
come there for the direct purpose of inviting him to dinner, Martin never
could quite make up his mind, though he inclined toward the second
hypothesis. At any rate, invited to dinner he was by Mr. Morse - Ruth's
father, who had forbidden him the house and broken off the engagement.

Martin was not angry. He was not even on his dignity. He tolerated Mr.
Morse, wondering the while how it felt to eat such humble pie. He did not
decline the invitation. Instead, he put it off with vagueness and
indefiniteness and inquired after the family, particularly after Mrs. Morse
and Ruth. He spoke her name without hesitancy, naturally, though secretly
surprised that he had had no inward quiver, no old, familiar increase of
pulse and warm surge of blood.

He had many invitations to dinner, some of which he accepted. Persons got
themselves introduced to him in order to invite him to dinner. And he went
on puzzling over the little thing that was becoming a great thing. Bernard
Higginbotham invited him to dinner. He puzzled the harder. He remembered
the days of his desperate starvation when no one invited him to dinner.
That was the time he needed dinners, and went weak and faint for lack of
them and lost weight from sheer famine. That was the paradox of it. When he
wanted dinners, no one gave them to him, and now that he could buy a
hundred thousand dinners and was losing his appetite, dinners were thrust
upon him right and left. But why? There was no justice in it, no merit on
his part. He was no different. All the work he had done was even at that
time work performed. Mr. and Mrs. Morse had condemned him for an idler and
a shirk and through Ruth had urged that he take a clerk's position in an
office. Furthermore, they had been aware of his work performed. Manuscript
after manuscript of his had been turned over to them by Ruth. They had read
them. It was the very same work that had put his name in all the papers,
and, it was his name being in all the papers that led them to invite him.

One thing was certain: the Morses had not cared to have him for himself or
for his work. Therefore they could not want him now for himself or for his
work, but for the fame that was his, because he was somebody amongst men,
and - why not? - because he had a hundred thousand dollars or so. That was
the way bourgeois society valued a man, and who was he to expect it
otherwise? But he was proud. He disdained such valuation. He desired to be
valued for himself, or for his work, which, after all, was an expression of
himself. That was the way Lizzie valued him. The work, with her, did not
even count. She valued him, himself. That was the way Jimmy, the plumber,
and all the old gang valued him. That had been proved often enough in the
days when he ran with them; it had been proved that Sunday at Shell Mound
Park. His work could go hang. What they liked, and were willing to scrap
for, was just Mart Eden, one of the bunch and a pretty good guy.

Then there was Ruth. She had liked him for himself, that was indisputable.
And yet, much as she had liked him she had liked the bourgeois standard of
valuation more. She had opposed his writing, and principally, it seemed to
him, because it did not earn money. That had been her criticism of his
"Love-cycle." She, too, had urged him to get a job. It was true, she
refined it to "position," but it meant the same thing, and in his own mind
the old nomenclature stuck. He had read her all that he wrote - poems,
stories, essays - "Wiki-Wiki," "The Shame of the Sun," everything. And she
had always and consistently urged him to get a job, to go to work - good
God! - as if he hadn't been working, robbing sleep, exhausting life, in
order to be worthy of her.

So the little thing grew bigger. He was healthy and normal, ate regularly,
slept long hours, and yet the growing little thing was becoming an
obsession. WORK PERFORMED. The phrase haunted his brain. He sat opposite
Bernard Higginbotham at a heavy Sunday dinner over Higginbotham's Cash
Store, and it was all he could do to restrain himself from shouting out:-

"It was work performed! And now you feed me, when then you let me starve,
forbade me your house, and damned me because I wouldn't get a job. And the
work was already done, all done. And now, when I speak, you check the
thought unuttered on your lips and hang on my lips and pay respectful
attention to whatever I choose to say. I tell you your party is rotten and
filled with grafters, and instead of flying into a rage you hum and haw and
admit there is a great deal in what I say. And why? Because I'm famous;
because I've a lot of money. Not because I'm Martin Eden, a pretty good
fellow and not particularly a fool. I could tell you the moon is made of
green cheese and you would subscribe to the notion, at least you would not
repudiate it, because I've got dollars, mountains of them. And it was all
done long ago; it was work performed, I tell you, when you spat upon me as
the dirt under your feet."

But Martin did not shout out. The thought gnawed in his brain, an unceasing
torment, while he smiled and succeeded in being tolerant. As he grew
silent, Bernard Higginbotham got the reins and did the talking. He was a
success himself, and proud of it. He was self- made. No one had helped him.
He owed no man. He was fulfilling his duty as a citizen and bringing up a
large family. And there was Higginbotham's Cash Store, that monument of his
own industry and ability. He loved Higginbotham's Cash Store as some men
loved their wives. He opened up his heart to Martin, showed with what
keenness and with what enormous planning he had made the store. And he had
plans for it, ambitious plans. The neighborhood was growing up fast. The
store was really too small. If he had more room, he would be able to put in
a score of labor-saving and money- saving improvements. And he would do it
yet. He was straining every effort for the day when he could buy the
adjoining lot and put up another two-story frame building. The upstairs he
could rent, and the whole ground-floor of both buildings would be
Higginbotham's Cash Store. His eyes glistened when he spoke of the new sign
that would stretch clear across both buildings.

Martin forgot to listen. The refrain of "Work performed," in his own brain,
was drowning the other's clatter. The refrain maddened him, and he tried to
escape from it.

"How much did you say it would cost?" he asked suddenly.

His brother-in-law paused in the middle of an expatiation on the business
opportunities of the neighborhood. He hadn't said how much it would cost.
But he knew. He had figured it out a score of times.

"At the way lumber is now," he said, "four thousand could do it."

"Including the sign?"

"I didn't count on that. It'd just have to come, onc't the buildin' was
there."

"And the ground?"

"Three thousand more."

He leaned forward, licking his lips, nervously spreading and closing his
fingers, while he watched Martin write a check. When it was passed over to
him, he glanced at the amount-seven thousand dollars.

"I - I can't afford to pay more than six per cent," he said huskily.

Martin wanted to laugh, but, instead, demanded:-

"How much would that be?"

"Lemme see. Six per cent - six times seven - four hundred an' twenty."

"That would be thirty-five dollars a month, wouldn't it?"

Higginbotham nodded.

"Then, if you've no objection, well arrange it this way." Martin glanced at
Gertrude. "You can have the principal to keep for yourself, if you'll use
the thirty-five dollars a month for cooking and washing and scrubbing. The
seven thousand is yours if you'll guarantee that Gertrude does no more
drudgery. Is it a go?"

Mr. Higginbotham swallowed hard. That his wife should do no more housework
was an affront to his thrifty soul. The magnificent present was the coating
of a pill, a bitter pill. That his wife should not work! It gagged him.

"All right, then," Martin said. "I'll pay the thirty-five a month, and - "

He reached across the table for the check. But Bernard Higginbotham got his
hand on it first, crying:

"I accept! I accept!"

When Martin got on the electric car, he was very sick and tired. He looked
up at the assertive sign.

"The swine," he groaned. "The swine, the swine."

When MACKINTOSH'S MAGAZINE published "The Palmist," featuring it with
decorations by Berthier and with two pictures by Wenn, Hermann von Schmidt
forgot that he had called the verses obscene. He announced that his wife
had inspired the poem, saw to it that the news reached the ears of a
reporter, and submitted to an interview by a staff writer who was
accompanied by a staff photographer and a staff artist. The result was a
full page in a Sunday supplement, filled with photographs and idealized
drawings of Marian, with many intimate details of Martin Eden and his
family, and with the full text of "The Palmist" in large type, and
republished by special permission of MACKINTOSH'S MAGAZINE. It caused quite
a stir in the neighborhood, and good housewives were proud to have the
acquaintances of the great writer's sister, while those who had not made
haste to cultivate it. Hermann von Schmidt chuckled in his little repair
shop and decided to order a new lathe. "Better than advertising," he told
Marian, "and it costs nothing."

"We'd better have him to dinner," she suggested.

And to dinner Martin came, making himself agreeable with the fat wholesale
butcher and his fatter wife - important folk, they, likely to be of use to
a rising young man like Hermann Yon Schmidt. No less a bait, however, had
been required to draw them to his house than his great brother-in-law.
Another man at table who had swallowed the same bait was the superintendent
of the Pacific Coast agencies for the Asa Bicycle Company. Him Von Schmidt
desired to please and propitiate because from him could be obtained the
Oakland agency for the bicycle. So Hermann von Schmidt found it a goodly
asset to have Martin for a brother-in-law, but in his heart of hearts he
couldn't understand where it all came in. In the silent watches of the
night, while his wife slept, he had floundered through Martin's books and
poems, and decided that the world was a fool to buy them.

And in his heart of hearts Martin understood the situation only too well,
as he leaned back and gloated at Von Schmidt's head, in fancy punching it
well-nigh off of him, sending blow after blow home just right - the
chuckle-headed Dutchman! One thing he did like about him, however. Poor as
he was, and determined to rise as he was, he nevertheless hired one servant
to take the heavy work off of Marian's hands. Martin talked with the
superintendent of the Asa agencies, and after dinner he drew him aside with
Hermann, whom he backed financially for the best bicycle store with
fittings in Oakland. He went further, and in a private talk with Hermann
told him to keep his eyes open for an automobile agency and garage, for
there was no reason that he should not be able to run both establishments
successfully.

With tears in her eyes and her arms around his neck, Marian, at parting,
told Martin how much she loved him and always had loved him. It was true,
there was a perceptible halt midway in her assertion, which she glossed
over with more tears and kisses and incoherent stammerings, and which
Martin inferred to be her appeal for forgiveness for the time she had
lacked faith in him and insisted on his getting a job.

"He can't never keep his money, that's sure," Hermann von Schmidt confided
to his wife. "He got mad when I spoke of interest, an' he said damn the
principal and if I mentioned it again, he'd punch my Dutch head off. That's
what he said - my Dutch head. But he's all right, even if he ain't no
business man. He's given me my chance, an' he's all right."

Invitations to dinner poured in on Martin; and the more they poured, the
more he puzzled. He sat, the guest of honor, at an Arden Club banquet, with
men of note whom he had heard about and read about all his life; and they
told him how, when they had read "The Ring of Bells" in the
TRANSCONTINENTAL, and "The Peri and the Pearl" in THE HORNET, they had
immediately picked him for a winner. My God! and I was hungry and in rags,
he thought to himself. Why didn't you give me a dinner then? Then was the
time. It was work performed. If you are feeding me now for work performed,
why did you not feed me then when I needed it? Not one word in "The Ring of
Bells," nor in "The Peri and the Pearl" has been changed. No; you're not
feeding me now for work performed. You are feeding me because everybody
else is feeding me and because it is an honor to feed me. You are feeding
me now because you are herd animals; because you are part of the mob;
because the one blind, automatic thought in the mob-mind just now is to
feed me. And where does Martin Eden and the work Martin Eden performed come
in in all this? he asked himself plaintively, then arose to respond
cleverly and wittily to a clever and witty toast.

So it went. Wherever he happened to be - at the Press Club, at the Redwood
Club, at pink teas and literary gatherings - always were remembered "The
Ring of Bells" and "The Peri and the Pearl" when they were first published.
And always was Martin's maddening and unuttered demand: Why didn't you feed
me then? It was work performed. "The Ring of Bells" and "The Peri and the
Pearl" are not changed one iota. They were just as artistic, just as worth
while, then as now. But you are not feeding me for their sake, nor for the
sake of anything else I have written. You're feeding me because it is the
style of feeding just now, because the whole mob is crazy with the idea of
feeding Martin Eden.

And often, at such times, he would abruptly see slouch in among the company
a young hoodlum in square-cut coat and under a stiff-rim Stetson hat. It
happened to him at the Gallina Society in Oakland one afternoon. As he rose
from his chair and stepped forward across the platform, he saw stalk
through the wide door at the rear of the great room the young hoodlum with
the square-cut coat and stiff-rim hat. Five hundred fashionably gowned
women turned their heads, so intent and steadfast was Martin's gaze, to see
what he was seeing. But they saw only the empty centre aisle. He saw the
young tough lurching down that aisle and wondered if he would remove the
stiff-rim which never yet had he seen him without. Straight down the aisle
he came, and up the platform. Martin could have wept over that youthful
shade of himself, when he thought of all that lay before him. Across the
platform he swaggered, right up to Martin, and into the foreground of
Martin's consciousness disappeared. The five hundred women applauded softly
with gloved hands, seeking to encourage the bashful great man who was their
guest. And Martin shook the vision from his brain, smiled, and began to
speak.

The Superintendent of Schools, good old man, stopped Martin on the street
and remembered him, recalling seances in his office when Martin was
expelled from school for fighting.

"I read your 'Ring of Bells' in one of the magazines quite a time ago," he
said. "It was as good as Poe. Splendid, I said at the time, splendid!"

Yes, and twice in the months that followed you passed me on the street and
did not know me, Martin almost said aloud. Each time I was hungry and
heading for the pawnbroker. Yet it was work performed. You did not know me
then. Why do you know me now?

"I was remarking to my wife only the other day," the other was saying,
"wouldn't it be a good idea to have you out to dinner some time? And she
quite agreed with me. Yes, she quite agreed with me."

"Dinner?" Martin said so sharply that it was almost a snarl.

"Why, yes, yes, dinner, you know - just pot luck with us, with your old
superintendent, you rascal," he uttered nervously, poking Martin in an
attempt at jocular fellowship.

Martin went down the street in a daze. He stopped at the corner and looked
about him vacantly.

"Well, I'll be damned!" he murmured at last. "The old fellow was afraid of
me."

CHAPTER XLV

Kreis came to Martin one day - Kreis, of the "real dirt"; and Martin turned
to him with relief, to receive the glowing details of a scheme sufficiently
wild-catty to interest him as a fictionist rather than an investor. Kreis
paused long enough in the midst of his exposition to tell him that in most
of his "Shame of the Sun" he had been a chump.

"But I didn't come here to spout philosophy," Kreis went on. "What I want
to know is whether or not you will put a thousand dollars in on this deal?"

"No, I'm not chump enough for that, at any rate," Martin answered. "But
I'll tell you what I will do. You gave me the greatest night of my life.
You gave me what money cannot buy. Now I've got money, and it means nothing
to me. I'd like to turn over to you a thousand dollars of what I don't
value for what you gave me that night and which was beyond price. You need
the money. I've got more than I need. You want it. You came for it. There's
no use scheming it out of me. Take it."

Kreis betrayed no surprise. He folded the check away in his pocket.

"At that rate I'd like the contract of providing you with many such
nights," he said.

"Too late." Martin shook his head. "That night was the one night for me. I
was in paradise. It's commonplace with you, I know. But it wasn't to me. I
shall never live at such a pitch again. I'm done with philosophy. I want
never to hear another word of it."

"The first dollar I ever made in my life out of my philosophy," Kreis
remarked, as he paused in the doorway. "And then the market broke."

Mrs. Morse drove by Martin on the street one day, and smiled and nodded. He
smiled back and lifted his hat. The episode did not affect him. A month
before it might have disgusted him, or made him curious and set him to
speculating about her state of consciousness at that moment. But now it was
not provocative of a second thought. He forgot about it the next moment. He
forgot about it as he would have forgotten the Central Bank Building or the
City Hall after having walked past them. Yet his mind was preternaturally
active. His thoughts went ever around and around in a circle. The centre of
that circle was "work performed"; it ate at his brain like a deathless
maggot. He awoke to it in the morning. It tormented his dreams at night.
Every affair of life around him that penetrated through his senses
immediately related itself to "work performed." He drove along the path of
relentless logic to the conclusion that he was nobody, nothing. Mart Eden,
the hoodlum, and Mart Eden, the sailor, had been real, had been he; but
Martin Eden! the famous writer, did not exist. Martin Eden, the famous
writer, was a vapor that had arisen in the mob-mind and by the mob-mind had
been thrust into the corporeal being of Mart Eden, the hoodlum and sailor.
But it couldn't fool him. He was not that sun-myth that the mob was
worshipping and sacrificing dinners to. He knew better.

He read the magazines about himself, and pored over portraits of himself
published therein until he was unable to associate his identity with those
portraits. He was the fellow who had lived and thrilled and loved; who had
been easy-going and tolerant of the frailties of life; who had served in
the forecastle, wandered in strange lands, and led his gang in the old
fighting days. He was the fellow who had been stunned at first by the
thousands of books in the free library, and who had afterward learned his
way among them and mastered them; he was the fellow who had burned the
midnight oil and bedded with a spur and written books himself. But the one
thing he was not was that colossal appetite that all the mob was bent upon
feeding.

There were things, however, in the magazines that amused him. All the
magazines were claiming him. WARREN'S MONTHLY advertised to its subscribers
that it was always on the quest after new writers, and that, among others,
it had introduced Martin Eden to the reading public. THE WHITE MOUSE
claimed him; so did THE NORTHERN REVIEW and MACKINTOSH'S MAGAZINE, until
silenced by THE GLOBE, which pointed triumphantly to its files where the
mangled "Sea Lyrics" lay buried. YOUTH AND AGE, which had come to life
again after having escaped paying its bills, put in a prior claim, which
nobody but farmers' children ever read. The TRANSCONTINENTAL made a
dignified and convincing statement of how it first discovered Martin Eden,
which was warmly disputed by THE HORNET, with the exhibit of "The Peri and
the Pearl." The modest claim of Singletree, Darnley & Co. was lost in the
din. Besides, that publishing firm did not own a magazine wherewith to make
its claim less modest.

The newspapers calculated Martin's royalties. In some way the magnificent
offers certain magazines had made him leaked out, and Oakland ministers
called upon him in a friendly way, while professional begging letters began
to clutter his mail. But worse than all this were the women. His
photographs were published broadcast, and special writers exploited his
strong, bronzed face, his scars, his heavy shoulders, his clear, quiet
eyes, and the slight hollows in his cheeks like an ascetic's. At this last
he remembered his wild youth and smiled. Often, among the women he met, he
would see now one, now another, looking at him, appraising him, selecting
him. He laughed to himself. He remembered Brissenden's warning and laughed
again. The women would never destroy him, that much was certain. He had
gone past that stage.

Once, walking with Lizzie toward night school, she caught a glance directed
toward him by a well-gowned, handsome woman of the bourgeoisie. The glance
was a trifle too long, a shade too considerative. Lizzie knew it for what
it was, and her body tensed angrily. Martin noticed, noticed the cause of
it, told her how used he was becoming to it and that he did not care
anyway.

"You ought to care," she answered with blazing eyes. "You're sick. That's
what's the matter."

"Never healthier in my life. I weigh five pounds more than I ever did."

"It ain't your body. It's your head. Something's wrong with your
think-machine. Even I can see that, an' I ain't nobody."

He walked on beside her, reflecting.

"I'd give anything to see you get over it," she broke out impulsively. "You
ought to care when women look at you that way, a man like you. It's not
natural. It's all right enough for sissy- boys. But you ain't made that
way. So help me, I'd be willing an' glad if the right woman came along an'
made you care."

When he left Lizzie at night school, he returned to the Metropole.

Once in his rooms, he dropped into a Morris chair and sat staring straight
before him. He did not doze. Nor did he think. His mind was a blank, save
for the intervals when unsummoned memory pictures took form and color and
radiance just under his eyelids. He saw these pictures, but he was scarcely
conscious of them - no more so than if they had been dreams. Yet he was not
asleep. Once, he roused himself and glanced at his watch. It was just eight
o'clock. He had nothing to do, and it was too early for bed. Then his mind
went blank again, and the pictures began to form and vanish under his
eyelids. There was nothing distinctive about the pictures. They were always
masses of leaves and shrub-like branches shot through with hot sunshine.

A knock at the door aroused him. He was not asleep, and his mind
immediately connected the knock with a telegram, or letter, or perhaps one
of the servants bringing back clean clothes from the laundry. He was
thinking about Joe and wondering where he was, as he said, "Come in."

He was still thinking about Joe, and did not turn toward the door. He heard
it close softly. There was a long silence. He forgot that there had been a
knock at the door, and was still staring blankly before him when he heard a
woman's sob. It was involuntary, spasmodic, checked, and stifled - he noted
that as he turned about. The next instant he was on his feet.

"Ruth!" he said, amazed and bewildered.

Her face was white and strained. She stood just inside the door, one hand
against it for support, the other pressed to her side. She extended both
hands toward him piteously, and started forward to meet him. As he caught
her hands and led her to the Morris chair he noticed how cold they were. He
drew up another chair and sat down on the broad arm of it. He was too
confused to speak. In his own mind his affair with Ruth was closed and
sealed. He felt much in the same way that he would have felt had the Shelly
Hot Springs Laundry suddenly invaded the Hotel Metropole with a whole
week's washing ready for him to pitch into. Several times he was about to
speak, and each time he hesitated.

"No one knows I am here," Ruth said in a faint voice, with an appealing
smile.

"What did you say?"

He was surprised at the sound of his own voice.

She repeated her words.

"Oh," he said, then wondered what more he could possibly say.

"I saw you come in, and I waited a few minutes."

"Oh," he said again.

He had never been so tongue-tied in his life. Positively he did not have an
idea in his head. He felt stupid and awkward, but for the life of him he
could think of nothing to say. It would have been easier had the intrusion
been the Shelly Hot Springs laundry. He could have rolled up his sleeves
and gone to work.

"And then you came in," he said finally.

She nodded, with a slightly arch expression, and loosened the scarf at her
throat.

"I saw you first from across the street when you were with that girl."

"Oh, yes," he said simply. "I took her down to night school."

"Well, aren't you glad to see me?" she said at the end of another silence.

"Yes, yes." He spoke hastily. "But wasn't it rash of you to come here?"

"I slipped in. Nobody knows I am here. I wanted to see you. I came to tell
you I have been very foolish. I came because I could no longer stay away,
because my heart compelled me to come, because - because I wanted to come."

She came forward, out of her chair and over to him. She rested her hand on
his shoulder a moment, breathing quickly, and then slipped into his arms.
And in his large, easy way, desirous of not inflicting hurt, knowing that
to repulse this proffer of herself was to inflict the most grievous hurt a
woman could receive, he folded his arms around her and held her close. But
there was no warmth in the embrace, no caress in the contact. She had come
into his arms, and he held her, that was all. She nestled against him, and
then, with a change of position, her hands crept up and rested upon his
neck. But his flesh was not fire beneath those hands, and he felt awkward
and uncomfortable.

"What makes you tremble so?" he asked. "Is it a chill? Shall I light the
grate?"

He made a movement to disengage himself, but she clung more closely to him,
shivering violently.

"It is merely nervousness," she said with chattering teeth. "I'll control
myself in a minute. There, I am better already."

Slowly her shivering died away. He continued to hold her, but he was no
longer puzzled. He knew now for what she had come.

"My mother wanted me to marry Charley Hapgood," she announced.

"Charley Hapgood, that fellow who speaks always in platitudes?" Martin
groaned. Then he added, "And now, I suppose, your mother wants you to marry
me."

He did not put it in the form of a question. He stated it as a certitude,
and before his eyes began to dance the rows of figures of his royalties.

"She will not object, I know that much," Ruth said.

"She considers me quite eligible?"

Ruth nodded.

"And yet I am not a bit more eligible now than I was when she broke our
engagement," he meditated. "I haven't changed any. I'm the same Martin
Eden, though for that matter I'm a bit worse - I smoke now. Don't you smell
my breath?"

In reply she pressed her open fingers against his lips, placed them
graciously and playfully, and in expectancy of the kiss that of old had
always been a consequence. But there was no caressing answer of Martin's
lips. He waited until the fingers were removed and then went on.

"I am not changed. I haven't got a job. I'm not looking for a job.
Furthermore, I am not going to look for a job. And I still believe that
Herbert Spencer is a great and noble man and that Judge Blount is an
unmitigated ass. I had dinner with him the other night, so I ought to
know."

"But you didn't accept father's invitation," she chided.

"So you know about that? Who sent him? Your mother?"

She remained silent.

"Then she did send him. I thought so. And now I suppose she has sent you."

"No one knows that I am here," she protested. "Do you think my mother would
permit this?"

"She'd permit you to marry me, that's certain."

She gave a sharp cry. "Oh, Martin, don't be cruel. You have not kissed me
once. You are as unresponsive as a stone. And think what I have dared to
do." She looked about her with a shiver, though half the look was
curiosity. "Just think of where I am."

"I COULD DIE FOR YOU! I COULD DIE FOR YOU!" - Lizzie's words were ringing
in his ears.

"Why didn't you dare it before?" he asked harshly. "When I hadn't a job?
When I was starving? When I was just as I am now, as a man, as an artist,
the same Martin Eden? That's the question I've been propounding to myself
for many a day - not concerning you merely, but concerning everybody. You
see I have not changed, though my sudden apparent appreciation in value
compels me constantly to reassure myself on that point. I've got the same
flesh on my bones, the same ten fingers and toes. I am the same. I have not
developed any new strength nor virtue. My brain is the same old brain. I
haven't made even one new generalization on literature or philosophy. I am
personally of the same value that I was when nobody wanted me. And what is
puzzling me is why they want me now. Surely they don't want me for myself,
for myself is the same old self they did not want. Then they must want me
for something else, for something that is outside of me, for something that
is not I! Shall I tell you what that something is? It is for the
recognition I have received. That recognition is not I. It resides in the
minds of others. Then again for the money I have earned and am earning. But
that money is not I. It resides in banks and in the pockets of Tom, Dick,
and Harry. And is it for that, for the recognition and the money, that you
now want me?"

"You are breaking my heart," she sobbed. "You know I love you, that I am
here because I love you."

"I am afraid you don't see my point," he said gently. "What I mean is: if
you love me, how does it happen that you love me now so much more than you
did when your love was weak enough to deny me?"

"Forget and forgive," she cried passionately. "I loved you all the time,
remember that, and I am here, now, in your arms."

"I'm afraid I am a shrewd merchant, peering into the scales, trying to
weigh your love and find out what manner of thing it is."

She withdrew herself from his arms, sat upright, and looked at him long and
searchingly. She was about to speak, then faltered and changed her mind.

"You see, it appears this way to me," he went on. "When I was all that I am
now, nobody out of my own class seemed to care for me. When my books were
all written, no one who had read the manuscripts seemed to care for them.
In point of fact, because of the stuff I had written they seemed to care
even less for me. In writing the stuff it seemed that I had committed acts
that were, to say the least, derogatory. 'Get a job,' everybody said."

She made a movement of dissent.

"Yes, yes," he said; "except in your case you told me to get a position.
The homely word JOB, like much that I have written, offends you. It is
brutal. But I assure you it was no less brutal to me when everybody I knew
recommended it to me as they would recommend right conduct to an immoral
creature. But to return. The publication of what I had written, and the
public notice I received, wrought a change in the fibre of your love.
Martin Eden, with his work all performed, you would not marry. Your love
for him was not strong enough to enable you to marry him. But your love is
now strong enough, and I cannot avoid the conclusion that its strength
arises from the publication and the public notice. In your case I do not
mention royalties, though I am certain that they apply to the change
wrought in your mother and father. Of course, all this is not flattering to
me. But worst of all, it makes me question love, sacred love. Is love so
gross a thing that it must feed upon publication and public notice? It
would seem so. I have sat and thought upon it till my head went around."

"Poor, dear head." She reached up a hand and passed the fingers soothingly
through his hair. "Let it go around no more. Let us begin anew, now. I
loved you all the time. I know that I was weak in yielding to my mother's
will. I should not have done so. Yet I have heard you speak so often with
broad charity of the fallibility and frailty of humankind. Extend that
charity to me. I acted mistakenly. Forgive me."

"Oh, I do forgive," he said impatiently. "It is easy to forgive where there
is really nothing to forgive. Nothing that you have done requires
forgiveness. One acts according to one's lights, and more than that one
cannot do. As well might I ask you to forgive me for my not getting a job."

"I meant well," she protested. "You know that I could not have loved you
and not meant well."

"True; but you would have destroyed me out of your well-meaning."

"Yes, yes," he shut off her attempted objection. "You would have destroyed
my writing and my career. Realism is imperative to my nature, and the
bourgeois spirit hates realism. The bourgeoisie is cowardly. It is afraid
of life. And all your effort was to make me afraid of life. You would have
formalized me. You would have compressed me into a two-by-four pigeonhole
of life, where all life's values are unreal, and false, and vulgar." He
felt her stir protestingly. "Vulgarity - a hearty vulgarity, I'll admit -
is the basis of bourgeois refinement and culture. As I say, you wanted to
formalize me, to make me over into one of your own class, with your
class-ideals, class-values, and class-prejudices." He shook his head sadly.
"And you do not understand, even now, what I am saying. My words do not
mean to you what I endeavor to make them mean. What I say is so much
fantasy to you. Yet to me it is vital reality. At the best you are a trifle
puzzled and amused that this raw boy, crawling up out of the mire of the
abyss, should pass judgment upon your class and call it vulgar."

She leaned her head wearily against his shoulder, and her body shivered
with recurrent nervousness. He waited for a time for her to speak, and then
went on.

"And now you want to renew our love. You want us to be married. You want
me. And yet, listen - if my books had not been noticed, I'd nevertheless
have been just what I am now. And you would have stayed away. It is all
those damned books - "

"Don't swear," she interrupted.

Her reproof startled him. He broke into a harsh laugh.

"That's it," he said, "at a high moment, when what seems your life's
happiness is at stake, you are afraid of life in the same old way - afraid
of life and a healthy oath."

She was stung by his words into realization of the puerility of her act,
and yet she felt that he had magnified it unduly and was consequently
resentful. They sat in silence for a long time, she thinking desperately
and he pondering upon his love which had departed. He knew, now, that he
had not really loved her. It was an idealized Ruth he had loved, an
ethereal creature of his own creating, the bright and luminous spirit of
his love-poems. The real bourgeois Ruth, with all the bourgeois failings
and with the hopeless cramp of the bourgeois psychology in her mind, he had
never loved.

She suddenly began to speak.

"I know that much you have said is so. I have been afraid of life. I did
not love you well enough. I have learned to love better. I love you for
what you are, for what you were, for the ways even by which you have
become. I love you for the ways wherein you differ from what you call my
class, for your beliefs which I do not understand but which I know I can
come to understand. I shall devote myself to understanding them. And even
your smoking and your swearing - they are part of you and I will love you
for them, too. I can still learn. In the last ten minutes I have learned
much. That I have dared to come here is a token of what I have already
learned. Oh, Martin! - "

She was sobbing and nestling close against him.

For the first time his arms folded her gently and with sympathy, and she
acknowledged it with a happy movement and a brightening face.

"It is too late," he said. He remembered Lizzie's words. "I am a sick man -
oh, not my body. It is my soul, my brain. I seem to have lost all values. I
care for nothing. If you had been this way a few months ago, it would have
been different. It is too late, now."

"It is not too late," she cried. "I will show you. I will prove to you that
my love has grown, that it is greater to me than my class and all that is
dearest to me. All that is dearest to the bourgeoisie I will flout. I am no
longer afraid of life. I will leave my father and mother, and let my name
become a by-word with my friends. I will come to you here and now, in free
love if you will, and I will be proud and glad to be with you. If I have
been a traitor to love, I will now, for love's sake, be a traitor to all
that made that earlier treason."

She stood before him, with shining eyes.

"I am waiting, Martin," she whispered, "waiting for you to accept me. Look
at me."

It was splendid, he thought, looking at her. She had redeemed herself for
all that she had lacked, rising up at last, true woman, superior to the
iron rule of bourgeois convention. It was splendid, magnificent, desperate.
And yet, what was the matter with him? He was not thrilled nor stirred by
what she had done. It was splendid and magnificent only intellectually. In
what should have been a moment of fire, he coldly appraised her. His heart
was untouched. He was unaware of any desire for her. Again he remembered
Lizzie's words.

"I am sick, very sick," he said with a despairing gesture. "How sick I did
not know till now. Something has gone out of me. I have always been
unafraid of life, but I never dreamed of being sated with life. Life has so
filled me that I am empty of any desire for anything. If there were room, I
should want you, now. You see how sick I am."

He leaned his head back and closed his eyes; and like a child, crying, that
forgets its grief in watching the sunlight percolate through the
tear-dimmed films over the pupils, so Martin forgot his sickness, the
presence of Ruth, everything, in watching the masses of vegetation, shot
through hotly with sunshine that took form and blazed against this
background of his eyelids. It was not restful, that green foliage. The
sunlight was too raw and glaring. It hurt him to look at it, and yet he
looked, he knew not why.

He was brought back to himself by the rattle of the door-knob. Ruth was at
the door.

"How shall I get out?" she questioned tearfully. "I am afraid."

"Oh, forgive me," he cried, springing to his feet. "I'm not myself, you
know. I forgot you were here." He put his hand to his head. "You see, I'm
not just right. I'll take you home. We can go out by the servants'
entrance. No one will see us. Pull down that veil and everything will be
all right."

She clung to his arm through the dim-lighted passages and down the narrow
stairs.

"I am safe now," she said, when they emerged on the sidewalk, at the same
time starting to take her hand from his arm.

"No, no, I'll see you home," he answered.

"No, please don't," she objected. "It is unnecessary."

Again she started to remove her hand. He felt a momentary curiosity. Now
that she was out of danger she was afraid. She was in almost a panic to be
quit of him. He could see no reason for it and attributed it to her
nervousness. So he restrained her withdrawing hand and started to walk on
with her. Halfway down the block, he saw a man in a long overcoat shrink
back into a doorway. He shot a glance in as he passed by, and, despite the
high turned- up collar, he was certain that he recognized Ruth's brother,
Norman.

During the walk Ruth and Martin held little conversation. She was stunned.
He was apathetic. Once, he mentioned that he was going away, back to the
South Seas, and, once, she asked him to forgive her having come to him. And
that was all. The parting at her door was conventional. They shook hands,
said good night, and he lifted his hat. The door swung shut, and he lighted
a cigarette and turned back for his hotel. When he came to the doorway into
which he had seen Norman shrink, he stopped and looked in in a speculative
humor.

"She lied," he said aloud. "She made believe to me that she had dared
greatly, and all the while she knew the brother that brought her was
waiting to take her back." He burst into laughter. "Oh, these bourgeois!
When I was broke, I was not fit to be seen with his sister. When I have a
bank account, he brings her to me."

As he swung on his heel to go on, a tramp, going in the same direction,
begged him over his shoulder.

"Say, mister, can you give me a quarter to get a bed?" were the words.

But it was the voice that made Martin turn around. The next instant he had
Joe by the hand.

"D'ye remember that time we parted at the Hot Springs?" the other was
saying. "I said then we'd meet again. I felt it in my bones. An' here we
are."

"You're looking good," Martin said admiringly, "and you've put on weight."

"I sure have." Joe's face was beaming. "I never knew what it was to live
till I hit hoboin'. I'm thirty pounds heavier an' feel tiptop all the time.
Why, I was worked to skin an' bone in them old days. Hoboin' sure agrees
with me."

"But you're looking for a bed just the same," Martin chided, "and it's a
cold night."

"Huh? Lookin' for a bed?" Joe shot a hand into his hip pocket and brought
it out filled with small change. "That beats hard graft," he exulted. "You
just looked good; that's why I battered you."

Martin laughed and gave in.

"You've several full-sized drunks right there," he insinuated.

Joe slid the money back into his pocket.

"Not in mine," he announced. "No gettin' oryide for me, though there ain't
nothin' to stop me except I don't want to. I've ben drunk once since I seen
you last, an' then it was unexpected, bein' on an empty stomach. When I
work like a beast, I drink like a beast. When I live like a man, I drink
like a man - a jolt now an' again when I feel like it, an' that's all."

Martin arranged to meet him next day, and went on to the hotel. He paused
in the office to look up steamer sailings. The Mariposa sailed for Tahiti
in five days.

"Telephone over to-morrow and reserve a stateroom for me," he told the
clerk. "No deck-stateroom, but down below, on the weather- side, - the
port-side, remember that, the port-side. You'd better write it down."

Once in his room he got into bed and slipped off to sleep as gently as a
child. The occurrences of the evening had made no impression on him. His
mind was dead to impressions. The glow of warmth with which he met Joe had
been most fleeting. The succeeding minute he had been bothered by the
ex-laundryman's presence and by the compulsion of conversation. That in
five more days he sailed for his loved South Seas meant nothing to him. So
he closed his eyes and slept normally and comfortably for eight
uninterrupted hours. He was not restless. He did not change his position,
nor did he dream. Sleep had become to him oblivion, and each day that he
awoke, he awoke with regret. Life worried and bored him, and time was a
vexation.

CHAPTER XLVI

"Say, Joe," was his greeting to his old-time working-mate next morning,
"there's a Frenchman out on Twenty-eighth Street. He's made a pot of money,
and he's going back to France. It's a dandy, well-appointed, small steam
laundry. There's a start for you if you want to settle down. Here, take
this; buy some clothes with it and be at this man's office by ten o'clock.
He looked up the laundry for me, and he'll take you out and show you
around. If you like it, and think it is worth the price - twelve thousand -
let me know and it is yours. Now run along. I'm busy. I'll see you later."

"Now look here, Mart," the other said slowly, with kindling anger, "I come
here this mornin' to see you. Savve? I didn't come here to get no laundry.
I come a here for a talk for old friends' sake, and you shove a laundry at
me. I tell you, what you can do. You can take that laundry an' go to hell."

He was out of the room when Martin caught him and whirled him around.

"Now look here, Joe," he said; "if you act that way, I'll punch your head.
An for old friends' sake I'll punch it hard. Savve? - you will, will you?"

Joe had clinched and attempted to throw him, and he was twisting and
writhing out of the advantage of the other's hold. They reeled about the
room, locked in each other's arms, and came down with a crash across the
splintered wreckage of a wicker chair. Joe was underneath, with arms spread
out and held and with Martin's knee on his chest. He was panting and
gasping for breath when Martin released him.

"Now we'll talk a moment," Martin said. "You can't get fresh with me. I
want that laundry business finished first of all. Then you can come back
and we'll talk for old sake's sake. I told you I was busy. Look at that."

A servant had just come in with the morning mail, a great mass of letters
and magazines.

"How can I wade through that and talk with you? You go and fix up that
laundry, and then we'll get together."

"All right," Joe admitted reluctantly. "I thought you was turnin' me down,
but I guess I was mistaken. But you can't lick me, Mart, in a stand-up
fight. I've got the reach on you."

"We'll put on the gloves sometime and see," Martin said with a smile.

"Sure; as soon as I get that laundry going." Joe extended his arm. "You see
that reach? It'll make you go a few."

Martin heaved a sigh of relief when the door closed behind the laundryman.
He was becoming anti-social. Daily he found it a severer strain to be
decent with people. Their presence perturbed him, and the effort of
conversation irritated him. They made him restless, and no sooner was he in
contact with them than he was casting about for excuses to get rid of them.

He did not proceed to attack his mail, and for a half hour he lolled in his
chair, doing nothing, while no more than vague, half- formed thoughts
occasionally filtered through his intelligence, or rather, at wide
intervals, themselves constituted the flickering of his intelligence.

He roused himself and began glancing through his mail. There were a dozen
requests for autographs - he knew them at sight; there were professional
begging letters; and there were letters from cranks, ranging from the man
with a working model of perpetual motion, and the man who demonstrated that
the surface of the earth was the inside of a hollow sphere, to the man
seeking financial aid to purchase the Peninsula of Lower California for the
purpose of communist colonization. There were letters from women seeking to
know him, and over one such he smiled, for enclosed was her receipt for
pew-rent, sent as evidence of her good faith and as proof of her
respectability.

Editors and publishers contributed to the daily heap of letters, the former
on their knees for his manuscripts, the latter on their knees for his books
- his poor disdained manuscripts that had kept all he possessed in pawn for
so many dreary months in order to find them in postage. There were
unexpected checks for English serial rights and for advance payments on
foreign translations. His English agent announced the sale of German
translation rights in three of his books, and informed him that Swedish
editions, from which he could expect nothing because Sweden was not a party
to the Berne Convention, were already on the market. Then there was a
nominal request for his permission for a Russian translation, that country
being likewise outside the Berne Convention.

He turned to the huge bundle of clippings which had come in from his press
bureau, and read about himself and his vogue, which had become a furore.
All his creative output had been flung to the public in one magnificent
sweep. That seemed to account for it. He had taken the public off its feet,
the way Kipling had, that time when he lay near to death and all the mob,
animated by a mob- mind thought, began suddenly to read him. Martin
remembered how that same world-mob, having read him and acclaimed him and
not understood him in the least, had, abruptly, a few months later, flung
itself upon him and torn him to pieces. Martin grinned at the thought. Who
was he that he should not be similarly treated in a few more months? Well,
he would fool the mob. He would be away, in the South Seas, building his
grass house, trading for pearls and copra, jumping reefs in frail
outriggers, catching sharks and bonitas, hunting wild goats among the
cliffs of the valley that lay next to the valley of Taiohae.

In the moment of that thought the desperateness of his situation dawned
upon him. He saw, cleared eyed, that he was in the Valley of the Shadow.
All the life that was in him was fading, fainting, making toward death.

He realized how much he slept, and how much he desired to sleep. Of old, he
had hated sleep. It had robbed him of precious moments of living. Four
hours of sleep in the twenty-four had meant being robbed of four hours of
life. How he had grudged sleep! Now it was life he grudged. Life was not
good; its taste in his mouth was without tang, and bitter. This was his
peril. Life that did not yearn toward life was in fair way toward ceasing.
Some remote instinct for preservation stirred in him, and he knew he must
get away. He glanced about the room, and the thought of packing was
burdensome. Perhaps it would be better to leave that to the last. In the
meantime he might be getting an outfit.

He put on his hat and went out, stopping in at a gun-store, where he spent
the remainder of the morning buying automatic rifles, ammunition, and
fishing tackle. Fashions changed in trading, and he knew he would have to
wait till he reached Tahiti before ordering his trade-goods. They could
come up from Australia, anyway. This solution was a source of pleasure. He
had avoided doing something, and the doing of anything just now was
unpleasant. He went back to the hotel gladly, with a feeling of
satisfaction in that the comfortable Morris chair was waiting for him; and
he groaned inwardly, on entering his room, at sight of Joe in the Morris
chair.

Joe was delighted with the laundry. Everything was settled, and he would
enter into possession next day. Martin lay on the bed, with closed eyes,
while the other talked on. Martin's thoughts were far away - so far away
that he was rarely aware that he was thinking. It was only by an effort
that he occasionally responded. And yet this was Joe, whom he had always
liked. But Joe was too keen with life. The boisterous impact of it on
Martin's jaded mind was a hurt. It was an aching probe to his tired
sensitiveness. When Joe reminded him that sometime in the future they were
going to put on the gloves together, he could almost have screamed.

"Remember, Joe, you're to run the laundry according to those old rules you
used to lay down at Shelly Hot Springs," he said. "No overworking. No
working at night. And no children at the mangles. No children anywhere. And
a fair wage."

Joe nodded and pulled out a note-book.

"Look at here. I was workin' out them rules before breakfast this A.M. What
d'ye think of them?"

He read them aloud, and Martin approved, worrying at the same time as to
when Joe would take himself off.

It was late afternoon when he awoke. Slowly the fact of life came back to
him. He glanced about the room. Joe had evidently stolen away after he had
dozed off. That was considerate of Joe, he thought. Then he closed his eyes
and slept again.

In the days that followed Joe was too busy organizing and taking hold of
the laundry to bother him much; and it was not until the day before sailing
that the newspapers made the announcement that he had taken passage on the
Mariposa. Once, when the instinct of preservation fluttered, he went to a
doctor and underwent a searching physical examination. Nothing could be
found the matter with him. His heart and lungs were pronounced magnificent.
Every organ, so far as the doctor could know, was normal and was working
normally.

"There is nothing the matter with you, Mr. Eden," he said, "positively
nothing the matter with you. You are in the pink of condition. Candidly, I
envy you your health. It is superb. Look at that chest. There, and in your
stomach, lies the secret of your remarkable constitution. Physically, you
are a man in a thousand - in ten thousand. Barring accidents, you should
live to be a hundred."

And Martin knew that Lizzie's diagnosis had been correct. Physically he was
all right. It was his "think-machine" that had gone wrong, and there was no
cure for that except to get away to the South Seas. The trouble was that
now, on the verge of departure, he had no desire to go. The South Seas
charmed him no more than did bourgeois civilization. There was no zest in
the thought of departure, while the act of departure appalled him as a
weariness of the flesh. He would have felt better if he were already on
board and gone.

The last day was a sore trial. Having read of his sailing in the morning
papers, Bernard Higginbotham, Gertrude, and all the family came to say
good-by, as did Hermann von Schmidt and Marian. Then there was business to
be transacted, bills to be paid, and everlasting reporters to be endured.
He said good-by to Lizzie Connolly, abruptly, at the entrance to night
school, and hurried away. At the hotel he found Joe, too busy all day with
the laundry to have come to him earlier. It was the last straw, but Martin
gripped the arms of his chair and talked and listened for half an hour.

"You know, Joe," he said, "that you are not tied down to that laundry.
There are no strings on it. You can sell it any time and blow the money.
Any time you get sick of it and want to hit the road, just pull out. Do
what will make you the happiest."

Joe shook his head.

"No more road in mine, thank you kindly. Hoboin's all right, exceptin' for
one thing - the girls. I can't help it, but I'm a ladies' man. I can't get
along without 'em, and you've got to get along without 'em when you're
hoboin'. The times I've passed by houses where dances an' parties was goin'
on, an' heard the women laugh, an' saw their white dresses and smiling
faces through the windows - Gee! I tell you them moments was plain hell. I
like dancin' an' picnics, an' walking in the moonlight, an' all the rest
too well. Me for the laundry, and a good front, with big iron dollars
clinkin' in my jeans. I seen a girl already, just yesterday, and, d'ye
know, I'm feelin' already I'd just as soon marry her as not. I've ben
whistlin' all day at the thought of it. She's a beaut, with the kindest
eyes and softest voice you ever heard. Me for her, you can stack on that.
Say, why don't you get married with all this money to burn? You could get
the finest girl in the land."

Martin shook his head with a smile, but in his secret heart he was
wondering why any man wanted to marry. It seemed an amazing and
incomprehensible thing.

From the deck of the Mariposa, at the sailing hour, he saw Lizzie Connolly
hiding in the skirts of the crowd on the wharf. Take her with you, came the
thought. It is easy to be kind. She will be supremely happy. It was almost
a temptation one moment, and the succeeding moment it became a terror. He
was in a panic at the thought of it. His tired soul cried out in protest.
He turned away from the rail with a groan, muttering, "Man, you are too
sick, you are too sick."

He fled to his stateroom, where he lurked until the steamer was clear of
the dock. In the dining saloon, at luncheon, he found himself in the place
of honor, at the captain's right; and he was not long in discovering that
he was the great man on board. But no more unsatisfactory great man ever
sailed on a ship. He spent the afternoon in a deck-chair, with closed eyes,
dozing brokenly most of the time, and in the evening went early to bed.

After the second day, recovered from seasickness, the full passenger list
was in evidence, and the more he saw of the passengers the more he disliked
them. Yet he knew that he did them injustice. They were good and kindly
people, he forced himself to acknowledge, and in the moment of
acknowledgment he qualified - good and kindly like all the bourgeoisie,
with all the psychological cramp and intellectual futility of their kind,
they bored him when they talked with him, their little superficial minds
were so filled with emptiness; while the boisterous high spirits and the
excessive energy of the younger people shocked him. They were never quiet,
ceaselessly playing deck-quoits, tossing rings, promenading, or rushing to
the rail with loud cries to watch the leaping porpoises and the first
schools of flying fish.

He slept much. After breakfast he sought his deck-chair with a magazine he
never finished. The printed pages tired him. He puzzled that men found so
much to write about, and, puzzling, dozed in his chair. When the gong awoke
him for luncheon, he was irritated that he must awaken. There was no
satisfaction in being awake.

Once, he tried to arouse himself from his lethargy, and went forward into
the forecastle with the sailors. But the breed of sailors seemed to have
changed since the days he had lived in the forecastle. He could find no
kinship with these stolid-faced, ox- minded bestial creatures. He was in
despair. Up above nobody had wanted Martin Eden for his own sake, and he
could not go back to those of his own class who had wanted him in the past.
He did not want them. He could not stand them any more than he could stand
the stupid first-cabin passengers and the riotous young people.

Life was to him like strong, white light that hurts the tired eyes of a
sick person. During every conscious moment life blazed in a raw glare
around him and upon him. It hurt. It hurt intolerably. It was the first
time in his life that Martin had travelled first class. On ships at sea he
had always been in the forecastle, the steerage, or in the black depths of
the coal-hold, passing coal. In those days, climbing up the iron ladders
out the pit of stifling heat, he had often caught glimpses of the
passengers, in cool white, doing nothing but enjoy themselves, under
awnings spread to keep the sun and wind away from them, with subservient
stewards taking care of their every want and whim, and it had seemed to him
that the realm in which they moved and had their being was nothing else
than paradise. Well, here he was, the great man on board, in the midmost
centre of it, sitting at the captain's right hand, and yet vainly harking
back to forecastle and stoke-hole in quest of the Paradise he had lost. He
had found no new one, and now he could not find the old one.

He strove to stir himself and find something to interest him. He ventured
the petty officers' mess, and was glad to get away. He talked with a
quartermaster off duty, an intelligent man who promptly prodded him with
the socialist propaganda and forced into his hands a bunch of leaflets and
pamphlets. He listened to the man expounding the slave-morality, and as he
listened, he thought languidly of his own Nietzsche philosophy. But what
was it worth, after all? He remembered one of Nietzsche's mad utterances
wherein that madman had doubted truth. And who was to say? Perhaps
Nietzsche had been right. Perhaps there was no truth in anything, no truth
in truth - no such thing as truth. But his mind wearied quickly, and he was
content to go back to his chair and doze.

Miserable as he was on the steamer, a new misery came upon him. What when
the steamer reached Tahiti? He would have to go ashore. He would have to
order his trade-goods, to find a passage on a schooner to the Marquesas, to
do a thousand and one things that were awful to contemplate. Whenever he
steeled himself deliberately to think, he could see the desperate peril in
which he stood. In all truth, he was in the Valley of the Shadow, and his
danger lay in that he was not afraid. If he were only afraid, he would make
toward life. Being unafraid, he was drifting deeper into the shadow. He
found no delight in the old familiar things of life. The Mariposa was now
in the northeast trades, and this wine of wind, surging against him,
irritated him. He had his chair moved to escape the embrace of this lusty
comrade of old days and nights.

The day the Mariposa entered the doldrums, Martin was more miserable than
ever. He could no longer sleep. He was soaked with sleep, and perforce he
must now stay awake and endure the white glare of life. He moved about
restlessly. The air was sticky and humid, and the rain-squalls were
unrefreshing. He ached with life. He walked around the deck until that hurt
too much, then sat in his chair until he was compelled to walk again. He
forced himself at last to finish the magazine, and from the steamer library
he culled several volumes of poetry. But they could not hold him, and once
more he took to walking.

He stayed late on deck, after dinner, but that did not help him, for when
he went below, he could not sleep. This surcease from life had failed him.
It was too much. He turned on the electric light and tried to read. One of
the volumes was a Swinburne. He lay in bed, glancing through its pages,
until suddenly he became aware that he was reading with interest. He
finished the stanza, attempted to read on, then came back to it. He rested
the book face downward on his breast and fell to thinking. That was it. The
very thing. Strange that it had never come to him before. That was the
meaning of it all; he had been drifting that way all the time, and now
Swinburne showed him that it was the happy way out. He wanted rest, and
here was rest awaiting him. He glanced at the open port-hole. Yes, it was
large enough. For the first time in weeks he felt happy. At last he had
discovered the cure of his ill. He picked up the book and read the stanza
slowly aloud:-

"'From too much love of living, From hope and fear set free, We thank with
brief thanksgiving Whatever gods may be That no life lives forever; That
dead men rise up never; That even the weariest river Winds somewhere safe
to sea.'"

He looked again at the open port. Swinburne had furnished the key. Life was
ill, or, rather, it had become ill - an unbearable thing. "That dead men
rise up never!" That line stirred him with a profound feeling of gratitude.
It was the one beneficent thing in the universe. When life became an aching
weariness, death was ready to soothe away to everlasting sleep. But what
was he waiting for? It was time to go.

He arose and thrust his head out the port-hole, looking down into the milky
wash. The Mariposa was deeply loaded, and, hanging by his hands, his feet
would be in the water. He could slip in noiselessly. No one would hear. A
smother of spray dashed up, wetting his face. It tasted salt on his lips,
and the taste was good. He wondered if he ought to write a swan-song, but
laughed the thought away. There was no time. He was too impatient to be
gone.

Turning off the light in his room so that it might not betray him, he went
out the port-hole feet first. His shoulders stuck, and he forced himself
back so as to try it with one arm down by his side. A roll of the steamer
aided him, and he was through, hanging by his hands. When his feet touched
the sea, he let go. He was in a milky froth of water. The side of the
Mariposa rushed past him like a dark wall, broken here and there by lighted
ports. She was certainly making time. Almost before he knew it, he was
astern, swimming gently on the foam-crackling surface.

A bonita struck at his white body, and he laughed aloud. It had taken a
piece out, and the sting of it reminded him of why he was there. In the
work to do he had forgotten the purpose of it. The lights of the Mariposa
were growing dim in the distance, and there he was, swimming confidently,
as though it were his intention to make for the nearest land a thousand
miles or so away.

It was the automatic instinct to live. He ceased swimming, but the moment
he felt the water rising above his mouth the hands struck out sharply with
a lifting movement. The will to live, was his thought, and the thought was
accompanied by a sneer. Well, he had will, - ay, will strong enough that
with one last exertion it could destroy itself and cease to be.

He changed his position to a vertical one. He glanced up at the quiet
stars, at the same time emptying his lungs of air. With swift, vigorous
propulsion of hands and feet, he lifted his shoulders and half his chest
out of water. This was to gain impetus for the descent. Then he let himself
go and sank without movement, a white statue, into the sea. He breathed in
the water deeply, deliberately, after the manner of a man taking an
anaesthetic. When he strangled, quite involuntarily his arms and legs
clawed the water and drove him up to the surface and into the clear sight
of the stars.

The will to live, he thought disdainfully, vainly endeavoring not to
breathe the air into his bursting lungs. Well, he would have to try a new
way. He filled his lungs with air, filled them full. This supply would take
him far down. He turned over and went down head first, swimming with all
his strength and all his will. Deeper and deeper he went. His eyes were
open, and he watched the ghostly, phosphorescent trails of the darting
bonita. As he swam, he hoped that they would not strike at him, for it
might snap the tension of his will. But they did not strike, and he found
time to be grateful for this last kindness of life.

Down, down, he swam till his arms and leg grew tired and hardly moved. He
knew that he was deep. The pressure on his ear-drums was a pain, and there
was a buzzing in his head. His endurance was faltering, but he compelled
his arms and legs to drive him deeper until his will snapped and the air
drove from his lungs in a great explosive rush. The bubbles rubbed and
bounded like tiny balloons against his cheeks and eyes as they took their
upward flight. Then came pain and strangulation. This hurt was not death,
was the thought that oscillated through his reeling consciousness. Death
did not hurt. It was life, the pangs of life, this awful, suffocating
feeling; it was the last blow life could deal him.

His wilful hands and feet began to beat and churn about, spasmodically and
feebly. But he had fooled them and the will to live that made them beat and
churn. He was too deep down. They could never bring him to the surface. He
seemed floating languidly in a sea of dreamy vision. Colors and radiances
surrounded him and bathed him and pervaded him. What was that? It seemed a
lighthouse; but it was inside his brain - a flashing, bright white light.
It flashed swifter and swifter. There was a long rumble of sound, and it
seemed to him that he was falling down a vast and interminable stairway.
And somewhere at the bottom he fell into darkness. That much he knew. He
had fallen into darkness. And at the instant he knew, he ceased to know.

-=> END <=-