Kabanata Kabanata 46 · Chapter XLVI

. 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 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. And 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 fund 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 legs 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.