Kabanata Kabanata 8 · Chapter VIII

. 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 “Tannhäuser”

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 gain. 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.