Chapter Chapter 39 · Chapter XXXIX

. 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 von

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.