Kabanata Kabanata 11 · Chapter XI

. 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.”