Bab Bab 30 · Chapter XXX

. Chapter XXX

On a beautiful fall day, a day of similar Indian summer to that which

had seen their love declared the year before, Martin read his

“Love-cycle” to Ruth. It was in the afternoon, and, as before, they had

ridden out to their favorite knoll in the hills. Now and again she had

interrupted his reading with exclamations of pleasure, and now, as he

laid the last sheet of manuscript with its fellows, he waited her

judgment.

She delayed to speak, and at last she spoke haltingly, hesitating to

frame in words the harshness of her thought.

“I think they are beautiful, very beautiful,” she said; “but you can’t

sell them, can you? You see what I mean,” she said, almost pleaded.

“This writing of yours is not practical. Something is the matter—maybe

it is with the market—that prevents you from earning a living by it.

And please, dear, don’t misunderstand me. I am flattered, and made

proud, and all that—I could not be a true woman were it otherwise—that

you should write these poems to me. But they do not make our marriage

possible. Don’t you see, Martin? Don’t think me mercenary. It is love,

the thought of our future, with which I am burdened. A whole year has

gone by since we learned we loved each other, and our wedding day is no

nearer. Don’t think me immodest in thus talking about our wedding, for

really I have my heart, all that I am, at stake. Why don’t you try to

get work on a newspaper, if you are so bound up in your writing? Why

not become a reporter?—for a while, at least?”

“It would spoil my style,” was his answer, in a low, monotonous voice.

“You have no idea how I’ve worked for style.”

“But those storiettes,” she argued. “You called them hack-work. You

wrote many of them. Didn’t they spoil your style?”

“No, the cases are different. The storiettes were ground out, jaded, at

the end of a long day of application to style. But a reporter’s work is

all hack from morning till night, is the one paramount thing of life.

And it is a whirlwind life, the life of the moment, with neither past

nor future, and certainly without thought of any style but reportorial

style, and that certainly is not literature. To become a reporter now,

just as my style is taking form, crystallizing, would be to commit

literary suicide. As it is, every storiette, every word of every

storiette, was a violation of myself, of my self-respect, of my respect

for beauty. I tell you it was sickening. I was guilty of sin. And I was

secretly glad when the markets failed, even if my clothes did go into

pawn. But the joy of writing the ‘Love-cycle’! The creative joy in its

noblest form! That was compensation for everything.”

Martin did not know that Ruth was unsympathetic concerning the creative

joy. She used the phrase—it was on her lips he had first heard it. She

had read about it, studied about it, in the university in the course of

earning her Bachelorship of Arts; but she was not original, not

creative, and all manifestations of culture on her part were but

harpings of the harpings of others.

“May not the editor have been right in his revision of your ‘Sea

Lyrics’?” she questioned. “Remember, an editor must have proved

qualifications or else he would not be an editor.”

“That’s in line with the persistence of the established,” he rejoined,

his heat against the editor-folk getting the better of him. “What is,

is not only right, but is the best possible. The existence of anything

is sufficient vindication of its fitness to exist—to exist, mark you,

as the average person unconsciously believes, not merely in present

conditions, but in all conditions. It is their ignorance, of course,

that makes them believe such rot—their ignorance, which is nothing more

nor less than the henidical mental process described by Weininger. They

think they think, and such thinkless creatures are the arbiters of the

lives of the few who really think.”

He paused, overcome by the consciousness that he had been talking over

Ruth’s head.

“I’m sure I don’t know who this Weininger is,” she retorted. “And you

are so dreadfully general that I fail to follow you. What I was

speaking of was the qualification of editors—”

“And I’ll tell you,” he interrupted. “The chief qualification of

ninety-nine per cent of all editors is failure. They have failed as

writers. Don’t think they prefer the drudgery of the desk and the

slavery to their circulation and to the business manager to the joy of

writing. They have tried to write, and they have failed. And right

there is the cursed paradox of it. Every portal to success in

literature is guarded by those watch-dogs, the failures in literature.

The editors, sub-editors, associate editors, most of them, and the

manuscript-readers for the magazines and book-publishers, most of them,

nearly all of them, are men who wanted to write and who have failed.

And yet they, of all creatures under the sun the most unfit, are the

very creatures who decide what shall and what shall not find its way

into print—they, who have proved themselves not original, who have

demonstrated that they lack the divine fire, sit in judgment upon

originality and genius. And after them come the reviewers, just so many

more failures. Don’t tell me that they have not dreamed the dream and

attempted to write poetry or fiction; for they have, and they have

failed. Why, the average review is more nauseating than cod-liver oil.

But you know my opinion on the reviewers and the alleged critics. There

are great critics, but they are as rare as comets. If I fail as a

writer, I shall have proved for the career of editorship. There’s bread

and butter and jam, at any rate.”

Ruth’s mind was quick, and her disapproval of her lover’s views was

buttressed by the contradiction she found in his contention.

“But, Martin, if that be so, if all the doors are closed as you have

shown so conclusively, how is it possible that any of the great writers

ever arrived?”

“They arrived by achieving the impossible,” he answered. “They did such

blazing, glorious work as to burn to ashes those that opposed them.

They arrived by course of miracle, by winning a thousand-to-one wager

against them. They arrived because they were Carlyle’s battle-scarred

giants who will not be kept down. And that is what I must do; I must

achieve the impossible.”

“But if you fail? You must consider me as well, Martin.”

“If I fail?” He regarded her for a moment as though the thought she had

uttered was unthinkable. Then intelligence illumined his eyes. “If I

fail, I shall become an editor, and you will be an editor’s wife.”

She frowned at his facetiousness—a pretty, adorable frown that made him

put his arm around her and kiss it away.

“There, that’s enough,” she urged, by an effort of will withdrawing

herself from the fascination of his strength. “I have talked with

father and mother. I never before asserted myself so against them. I

demanded to be heard. I was very undutiful. They are against you, you

know; but I assured them over and over of my abiding love for you, and

at last father agreed that if you wanted to, you could begin right away

in his office. And then, of his own accord, he said he would pay you

enough at the start so that we could get married and have a little

cottage somewhere. Which I think was very fine of him—don’t you?”

Martin, with the dull pain of despair at his heart, mechanically

reaching for the tobacco and paper (which he no longer carried) to roll

a cigarette, muttered something inarticulate, and Ruth went on.

“Frankly, though, and don’t let it hurt you—I tell you, to show you

precisely how you stand with him—he doesn’t like your radical views,

and he thinks you are lazy. Of course I know you are not. I know you

work hard.”

How hard, even she did not know, was the thought in Martin’s mind.

“Well, then,” he said, “how about my views? Do you think they are so

radical?”

He held her eyes and waited the answer.

“I think them, well, very disconcerting,” she replied.

The question was answered for him, and so oppressed was he by the

grayness of life that he forgot the tentative proposition she had made

for him to go to work. And she, having gone as far as she dared, was

willing to wait the answer till she should bring the question up again.

She had not long to wait. Martin had a question of his own to propound

to her. He wanted to ascertain the measure of her faith in him, and

within the week each was answered. Martin precipitated it by reading to

her his “The Shame of the Sun.”

“Why don’t you become a reporter?” she asked when he had finished. “You

love writing so, and I am sure you would succeed. You could rise in

journalism and make a name for yourself. There are a number of great

special correspondents. Their salaries are large, and their field is

the world. They are sent everywhere, to the heart of Africa, like

Stanley, or to interview the Pope, or to explore unknown Thibet.”

“Then you don’t like my essay?” he rejoined. “You believe that I have

some show in journalism but none in literature?”

“No, no; I do like it. It reads well. But I am afraid it’s over the

heads of your readers. At least it is over mine. It sounds beautiful,

but I don’t understand it. Your scientific slang is beyond me. You are

an extremist, you know, dear, and what may be intelligible to you may

not be intelligible to the rest of us.”

“I imagine it’s the philosophic slang that bothers you,” was all he

could say.

He was flaming from the fresh reading of the ripest thought he had

expressed, and her verdict stunned him.

“No matter how poorly it is done,” he persisted, “don’t you see

anything in it?—in the thought of it, I mean?”

She shook her head.

“No, it is so different from anything I have read. I read Maeterlinck

and understand him—”

“His mysticism, you understand that?” Martin flashed out.

“Yes, but this of yours, which is supposed to be an attack upon him, I

don’t understand. Of course, if originality counts—”

He stopped her with an impatient gesture that was not followed by

speech. He became suddenly aware that she was speaking and that she had

been speaking for some time.

“After all, your writing has been a toy to you,” she was saying.

“Surely you have played with it long enough. It is time to take up life

seriously—_our_ life, Martin. Hitherto you have lived solely your own.”

“You want me to go to work?” he asked.

“Yes. Father has offered—”

“I understand all that,” he broke in; “but what I want to know is

whether or not you have lost faith in me?”

She pressed his hand mutely, her eyes dim.

“In your writing, dear,” she admitted in a half-whisper.

“You’ve read lots of my stuff,” he went on brutally. “What do you think

of it? Is it utterly hopeless? How does it compare with other men’s

work?”

“But they sell theirs, and you—don’t.”

“That doesn’t answer my question. Do you think that literature is not

at all my vocation?”

“Then I will answer.” She steeled herself to do it. “I don’t think you

were made to write. Forgive me, dear. You compel me to say it; and you

know I know more about literature than you do.”

“Yes, you are a Bachelor of Arts,” he said meditatively; “and you ought

to know.”

“But there is more to be said,” he continued, after a pause painful to

both. “I know what I have in me. No one knows that so well as I. I know

I shall succeed. I will not be kept down. I am afire with what I have

to say in verse, and fiction, and essay. I do not ask you to have faith

in that, though. I do not ask you to have faith in me, nor in my

writing. What I do ask of you is to love me and have faith in love.

“A year ago I begged for two years. One of those years is yet to run.

And I do believe, upon my honor and my soul, that before that year is

run I shall have succeeded. You remember what you told me long ago,

that I must serve my apprenticeship to writing. Well, I have served it.

I have crammed it and telescoped it. With you at the end awaiting me, I

have never shirked. Do you know, I have forgotten what it is to fall

peacefully asleep. A few million years ago I knew what it was to sleep

my fill and to awake naturally from very glut of sleep. I am awakened

always now by an alarm clock. If I fall asleep early or late, I set the

alarm accordingly; and this, and the putting out of the lamp, are my

last conscious actions.

“When I begin to feel drowsy, I change the heavy book I am reading for

a lighter one. And when I doze over that, I beat my head with my

knuckles in order to drive sleep away. Somewhere I read of a man who

was afraid to sleep. Kipling wrote the story. This man arranged a spur

so that when unconsciousness came, his naked body pressed against the

iron teeth. Well, I’ve done the same. I look at the time, and I resolve

that not until midnight, or not until one o’clock, or two o’clock, or

three o’clock, shall the spur be removed. And so it rowels me awake

until the appointed time. That spur has been my bed-mate for months. I

have grown so desperate that five and a half hours of sleep is an

extravagance. I sleep four hours now. I am starved for sleep. There are

times when I am light-headed from want of sleep, times when death, with

its rest and sleep, is a positive lure to me, times when I am haunted

by Longfellow’s lines:

“‘The sea is still and deep;

All things within its bosom sleep;

A single step and all is o’er,

A plunge, a bubble, and no more.’

“Of course, this is sheer nonsense. It comes from nervousness, from an

overwrought mind. But the point is: Why have I done this? For you. To

shorten my apprenticeship. To compel Success to hasten. And my

apprenticeship is now served. I know my equipment. I swear that I learn

more each month than the average college man learns in a year. I know

it, I tell you. But were my need for you to understand not so desperate

I should not tell you. It is not boasting. I measure the results by the

books. Your brothers, to-day, are ignorant barbarians compared with me

and the knowledge I have wrung from the books in the hours they were

sleeping. Long ago I wanted to be famous. I care very little for fame

now. What I want is you; I am more hungry for you than for food, or

clothing, or recognition. I have a dream of laying my head on your

breast and sleeping an aeon or so, and the dream will come true ere

another year is gone.”

His power beat against her, wave upon wave; and in the moment his will

opposed hers most she felt herself most strongly drawn toward him. The

strength that had always poured out from him to her was now flowering

in his impassioned voice, his flashing eyes, and the vigor of life and

intellect surging in him. And in that moment, and for the moment, she

was aware of a rift that showed in her certitude—a rift through which

she caught sight of the real Martin Eden, splendid and invincible; and

as animal-trainers have their moments of doubt, so she, for the

instant, seemed to doubt her power to tame this wild spirit of a man.

“And another thing,” he swept on. “You love me. But why do you love me?

The thing in me that compels me to write is the very thing that draws

your love. You love me because I am somehow different from the men you

have known and might have loved. I was not made for the desk and

counting-house, for petty business squabbling, and legal jangling. Make

me do such things, make me like those other men, doing the work they

do, breathing the air they breathe, developing the point of view they

have developed, and you have destroyed the difference, destroyed me,

destroyed the thing you love. My desire to write is the most vital

thing in me. Had I been a mere clod, neither would I have desired to

write, nor would you have desired me for a husband.”

“But you forget,” she interrupted, the quick surface of her mind

glimpsing a parallel. “There have been eccentric inventors, starving

their families while they sought such chimeras as perpetual motion.

Doubtless their wives loved them, and suffered with them and for them,

not because of but in spite of their infatuation for perpetual motion.”

“True,” was the reply. “But there have been inventors who were not

eccentric and who starved while they sought to invent practical things;

and sometimes, it is recorded, they succeeded. Certainly I do not seek

any impossibilities—”

“You have called it ‘achieving the impossible,’” she interpolated.

“I spoke figuratively. I seek to do what men have done before me—to

write and to live by my writing.”

Her silence spurred him on.

“To you, then, my goal is as much a chimera as perpetual motion?” he

demanded.

He read her answer in the pressure of her hand on his—the pitying

mother-hand for the hurt child. And to her, just then, he was the hurt

child, the infatuated man striving to achieve the impossible.

Toward the close of their talk she warned him again of the antagonism

of her father and mother.

“But you love me?” he asked.

“I do! I do!” she cried.

“And I love you, not them, and nothing they do can hurt me.” Triumph

sounded in his voice. “For I have faith in your love, not fear of their

enmity. All things may go astray in this world, but not love. Love

cannot go wrong unless it be a weakling that faints and stumbles by the

way.”