Chapter Chapter 45 · Chapter XLV

. 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.