Bab Bab 1 · Chapter I

. Chapter I

The one opened the door with a latch-key and went in, followed by a

young fellow who awkwardly removed his cap. He wore rough clothes that

smacked of the sea, and he was manifestly out of place in the spacious

hall in which he found himself. He did not know what to do with his

cap, and was stuffing it into his coat pocket when the other took it

from him. The act was done quietly and naturally, and the awkward young

fellow appreciated it. “He understands,” was his thought. “He’ll see me

through all right.”

He walked at the other’s heels with a swing to his shoulders, and his

legs spread unwittingly, as if the level floors were tilting up and

sinking down to the heave and lunge of the sea. The wide rooms seemed

too narrow for his rolling gait, and to himself he was in terror lest

his broad shoulders should collide with the doorways or sweep the

bric-a-brac from the low mantel. He recoiled from side to side between

the various objects and multiplied the hazards that in reality lodged

only in his mind. Between a grand piano and a centre-table piled high

with books was space for a half a dozen to walk abreast, yet he essayed

it with trepidation. His heavy arms hung loosely at his sides. He did

not know what to do with those arms and hands, and when, to his excited

vision, one arm seemed liable to brush against the books on the table,

he lurched away like a frightened horse, barely missing the piano

stool. He watched the easy walk of the other in front of him, and for

the first time realized that his walk was different from that of other

men. He experienced a momentary pang of shame that he should walk so

uncouthly. The sweat burst through the skin of his forehead in tiny

beads, and he paused and mopped his bronzed face with his handkerchief.

“Hold on, Arthur, my boy,” he said, attempting to mask his anxiety with

facetious utterance. “This is too much all at once for yours truly.

Give me a chance to get my nerve. You know I didn’t want to come, an’ I

guess your fam’ly ain’t hankerin’ to see me neither.”

“That’s all right,” was the reassuring answer. “You mustn’t be

frightened at us. We’re just homely people—Hello, there’s a letter for

me.”

He stepped back to the table, tore open the envelope, and began to

read, giving the stranger an opportunity to recover himself. And the

stranger understood and appreciated. His was the gift of sympathy,

understanding; and beneath his alarmed exterior that sympathetic

process went on. He mopped his forehead dry and glanced about him with

a controlled face, though in the eyes there was an expression such as

wild animals betray when they fear the trap. He was surrounded by the

unknown, apprehensive of what might happen, ignorant of what he should

do, aware that he walked and bore himself awkwardly, fearful that every

attribute and power of him was similarly afflicted. He was keenly

sensitive, hopelessly self-conscious, and the amused glance that the

other stole privily at him over the top of the letter burned into him

like a dagger-thrust. He saw the glance, but he gave no sign, for among

the things he had learned was discipline. Also, that dagger-thrust went

to his pride. He cursed himself for having come, and at the same time

resolved that, happen what would, having come, he would carry it

through. The lines of his face hardened, and into his eyes came a

fighting light. He looked about more unconcernedly, sharply observant,

every detail of the pretty interior registering itself on his brain.

His eyes were wide apart; nothing in their field of vision escaped; and

as they drank in the beauty before them the fighting light died out and

a warm glow took its place. He was responsive to beauty, and here was

cause to respond.

An oil painting caught and held him. A heavy surf thundered and burst

over an outjutting rock; lowering storm-clouds covered the sky; and,

outside the line of surf, a pilot-schooner, close-hauled, heeled over

till every detail of her deck was visible, was surging along against a

stormy sunset sky. There was beauty, and it drew him irresistibly. He

forgot his awkward walk and came closer to the painting, very close.

The beauty faded out of the canvas. His face expressed his

bepuzzlement. He stared at what seemed a careless daub of paint, then

stepped away. Immediately all the beauty flashed back into the canvas.

“A trick picture,” was his thought, as he dismissed it, though in the

midst of the multitudinous impressions he was receiving he found time

to feel a prod of indignation that so much beauty should be sacrificed

to make a trick. He did not know painting. He had been brought up on

chromos and lithographs that were always definite and sharp, near or

far. He had seen oil paintings, it was true, in the show windows of

shops, but the glass of the windows had prevented his eager eyes from

approaching too near.

He glanced around at his friend reading the letter and saw the books on

the table. Into his eyes leaped a wistfulness and a yearning as

promptly as the yearning leaps into the eyes of a starving man at sight

of food. An impulsive stride, with one lurch to right and left of the

shoulders, brought him to the table, where he began affectionately

handling the books. He glanced at the titles and the authors’ names,

read fragments of text, caressing the volumes with his eyes and hands,

and, once, recognized a book he had read. For the rest, they were

strange books and strange authors. He chanced upon a volume of

Swinburne and began reading steadily, forgetful of where he was, his

face glowing. Twice he closed the book on his forefinger to look at the

name of the author. Swinburne! he would remember that name. That fellow

had eyes, and he had certainly seen color and flashing light. But who

was Swinburne? Was he dead a hundred years or so, like most of the

poets? Or was he alive still, and writing? He turned to the title-page

. . . yes, he had written other books; well, he would go to the free

library the first thing in the morning and try to get hold of some of

Swinburne’s stuff. He went back to the text and lost himself. He did

not notice that a young woman had entered the room. The first he knew

was when he heard Arthur’s voice saying:-

“Ruth, this is Mr. Eden.”

The book was closed on his forefinger, and before he turned he was

thrilling to the first new impression, which was not of the girl, but

of her brother’s words. Under that muscled body of his he was a mass of

quivering sensibilities. At the slightest impact of the outside world

upon his consciousness, his thoughts, sympathies, and emotions leapt

and played like lambent flame. He was extraordinarily receptive and

responsive, while his imagination, pitched high, was ever at work

establishing relations of likeness and difference. “Mr. Eden,” was what

he had thrilled to—he who had been called “Eden,” or “Martin Eden,” or

just “Martin,” all his life. And “_Mister_!” It was certainly going

some, was his internal comment. His mind seemed to turn, on the

instant, into a vast camera obscura, and he saw arrayed around his

consciousness endless pictures from his life, of stoke-holes and

forecastles, camps and beaches, jails and boozing-kens, fever-hospitals

and slum streets, wherein the thread of association was the fashion in

which he had been addressed in those various situations.

And then he turned and saw the girl. The phantasmagoria of his brain

vanished at sight of her. She was a pale, ethereal creature, with wide,

spiritual blue eyes and a wealth of golden hair. He did not know how

she was dressed, except that the dress was as wonderful as she. He

likened her to a pale gold flower upon a slender stem. No, she was a

spirit, a divinity, a goddess; such sublimated beauty was not of the

earth. Or perhaps the books were right, and there were many such as she

in the upper walks of life. She might well be sung by that chap,

Swinburne. Perhaps he had had somebody like her in mind when he painted

that girl, Iseult, in the book there on the table. All this plethora of

sight, and feeling, and thought occurred on the instant. There was no

pause of the realities wherein he moved. He saw her hand coming out to

his, and she looked him straight in the eyes as she shook hands,

frankly, like a man. The women he had known did not shake hands that

way. For that matter, most of them did not shake hands at all. A flood

of associations, visions of various ways he had made the acquaintance

of women, rushed into his mind and threatened to swamp it. But he shook

them aside and looked at her. Never had he seen such a woman. The women

he had known! Immediately, beside her, on either hand, ranged the women

he had known. For an eternal second he stood in the midst of a portrait

gallery, wherein she occupied the central place, while about her were

limned many women, all to be weighed and measured by a fleeting glance,

herself the unit of weight and measure. He saw the weak and sickly

faces of the girls of the factories, and the simpering, boisterous

girls from the south of Market. There were women of the cattle camps,

and swarthy cigarette-smoking women of Old Mexico. These, in turn, were

crowded out by Japanese women, doll-like, stepping mincingly on wooden

clogs; by Eurasians, delicate featured, stamped with degeneracy; by

full-bodied South-Sea-Island women, flower-crowned and brown-skinned.

All these were blotted out by a grotesque and terrible nightmare

brood—frowsy, shuffling creatures from the pavements of Whitechapel,

gin-bloated hags of the stews, and all the vast hell’s following of

harpies, vile-mouthed and filthy, that under the guise of monstrous

female form prey upon sailors, the scrapings of the ports, the scum and

slime of the human pit.

“Won’t you sit down, Mr. Eden?” the girl was saying. “I have been

looking forward to meeting you ever since Arthur told us. It was brave

of you—”

He waved his hand deprecatingly and muttered that it was nothing at

all, what he had done, and that any fellow would have done it. She

noticed that the hand he waved was covered with fresh abrasions, in the

process of healing, and a glance at the other loose-hanging hand showed

it to be in the same condition. Also, with quick, critical eye, she

noted a scar on his cheek, another that peeped out from under the hair

of the forehead, and a third that ran down and disappeared under the

starched collar. She repressed a smile at sight of the red line that

marked the chafe of the collar against the bronzed neck. He was

evidently unused to stiff collars. Likewise her feminine eye took in

the clothes he wore, the cheap and unaesthetic cut, the wrinkling of

the coat across the shoulders, and the series of wrinkles in the

sleeves that advertised bulging biceps muscles.

While he waved his hand and muttered that he had done nothing at all,

he was obeying her behest by trying to get into a chair. He found time

to admire the ease with which she sat down, then lurched toward a chair

facing her, overwhelmed with consciousness of the awkward figure he was

cutting. This was a new experience for him. All his life, up to then,

he had been unaware of being either graceful or awkward. Such thoughts

of self had never entered his mind. He sat down gingerly on the edge of

the chair, greatly worried by his hands. They were in the way wherever

he put them. Arthur was leaving the room, and Martin Eden followed his

exit with longing eyes. He felt lost, alone there in the room with that

pale spirit of a woman. There was no bar-keeper upon whom to call for

drinks, no small boy to send around the corner for a can of beer and by

means of that social fluid start the amenities of friendship flowing.

“You have such a scar on your neck, Mr. Eden,” the girl was saying.

“How did it happen? I am sure it must have been some adventure.”

“A Mexican with a knife, miss,” he answered, moistening his parched

lips and clearing his throat. “It was just a fight. After I got the

knife away, he tried to bite off my nose.”

Baldly as he had stated it, in his eyes was a rich vision of that hot,

starry night at Salina Cruz, the white strip of beach, the lights of

the sugar steamers in the harbor, the voices of the drunken sailors in

the distance, the jostling stevedores, the flaming passion in the

Mexican’s face, the glint of the beast-eyes in the starlight, the sting

of the steel in his neck, and the rush of blood, the crowd and the

cries, the two bodies, his and the Mexican’s, locked together, rolling

over and over and tearing up the sand, and from away off somewhere the

mellow tinkling of a guitar. Such was the picture, and he thrilled to

the memory of it, wondering if the man could paint it who had painted

the pilot-schooner on the wall. The white beach, the stars, and the

lights of the sugar steamers would look great, he thought, and midway

on the sand the dark group of figures that surrounded the fighters. The

knife occupied a place in the picture, he decided, and would show well,

with a sort of gleam, in the light of the stars. But of all this no

hint had crept into his speech. “He tried to bite off my nose,” he

concluded.

“Oh,” the girl said, in a faint, far voice, and he noticed the shock in

her sensitive face.

He felt a shock himself, and a blush of embarrassment shone faintly on

his sunburned cheeks, though to him it burned as hotly as when his

cheeks had been exposed to the open furnace-door in the fire-room. Such

sordid things as stabbing affrays were evidently not fit subjects for

conversation with a lady. People in the books, in her walk of life, did

not talk about such things—perhaps they did not know about them,

either.

There was a brief pause in the conversation they were trying to get

started. Then she asked tentatively about the scar on his cheek. Even

as she asked, he realized that she was making an effort to talk his

talk, and he resolved to get away from it and talk hers.

“It was just an accident,” he said, putting his hand to his cheek. “One

night, in a calm, with a heavy sea running, the main-boom-lift carried

away, an’ next the tackle. The lift was wire, an’ it was threshin’

around like a snake. The whole watch was tryin’ to grab it, an’ I

rushed in an’ got swatted.”

“Oh,” she said, this time with an accent of comprehension, though

secretly his speech had been so much Greek to her and she was wondering

what a _lift_ was and what _swatted_ meant.

“This man Swineburne,” he began, attempting to put his plan into

execution and pronouncing the _i_ long.

“Who?”

“Swineburne,” he repeated, with the same mispronunciation. “The poet.”

“Swinburne,” she corrected.

“Yes, that’s the chap,” he stammered, his cheeks hot again. “How long

since he died?”

“Why, I haven’t heard that he was dead.” She looked at him curiously.

“Where did you make his acquaintance?”

“I never clapped eyes on him,” was the reply. “But I read some of his

poetry out of that book there on the table just before you come in. How

do you like his poetry?”

And thereat she began to talk quickly and easily upon the subject he

had suggested. He felt better, and settled back slightly from the edge

of the chair, holding tightly to its arms with his hands, as if it

might get away from him and buck him to the floor. He had succeeded in

making her talk her talk, and while she rattled on, he strove to follow

her, marvelling at all the knowledge that was stowed away in that

pretty head of hers, and drinking in the pale beauty of her face.

Follow her he did, though bothered by unfamiliar words that fell glibly

from her lips and by critical phrases and thought-processes that were

foreign to his mind, but that nevertheless stimulated his mind and set

it tingling. Here was intellectual life, he thought, and here was

beauty, warm and wonderful as he had never dreamed it could be. He

forgot himself and stared at her with hungry eyes. Here was something

to live for, to win to, to fight for—ay, and die for. The books were

true. There were such women in the world. She was one of them. She lent

wings to his imagination, and great, luminous canvases spread

themselves before him whereon loomed vague, gigantic figures of love

and romance, and of heroic deeds for woman’s sake—for a pale woman, a

flower of gold. And through the swaying, palpitant vision, as through a

fairy mirage, he stared at the real woman, sitting there and talking of

literature and art. He listened as well, but he stared, unconscious of

the fixity of his gaze or of the fact that all that was essentially

masculine in his nature was shining in his eyes. But she, who knew

little of the world of men, being a woman, was keenly aware of his

burning eyes. She had never had men look at her in such fashion, and it

embarrassed her. She stumbled and halted in her utterance. The thread

of argument slipped from her. He frightened her, and at the same time

it was strangely pleasant to be so looked upon. Her training warned her

of peril and of wrong, subtle, mysterious, luring; while her instincts

rang clarion-voiced through her being, impelling her to hurdle caste

and place and gain to this traveller from another world, to this

uncouth young fellow with lacerated hands and a line of raw red caused

by the unaccustomed linen at his throat, who, all too evidently, was

soiled and tainted by ungracious existence. She was clean, and her

cleanness revolted; but she was woman, and she was just beginning to

learn the paradox of woman.

“As I was saying—what was I saying?” She broke off abruptly and laughed

merrily at her predicament.

“You was saying that this man Swinburne failed bein’ a great poet

because—an’ that was as far as you got, miss,” he prompted, while to

himself he seemed suddenly hungry, and delicious little thrills crawled

up and down his spine at the sound of her laughter. Like silver, he

thought to himself, like tinkling silver bells; and on the instant, and

for an instant, he was transported to a far land, where under pink

cherry blossoms, he smoked a cigarette and listened to the bells of the

peaked pagoda calling straw-sandalled devotees to worship.

“Yes, thank you,” she said. “Swinburne fails, when all is said, because

he is, well, indelicate. There are many of his poems that should never

be read. Every line of the really great poets is filled with beautiful

truth, and calls to all that is high and noble in the human. Not a line

of the great poets can be spared without impoverishing the world by

that much.”

“I thought it was great,” he said hesitatingly, “the little I read. I

had no idea he was such a—a scoundrel. I guess that crops out in his

other books.”

“There are many lines that could be spared from the book you were

reading,” she said, her voice primly firm and dogmatic.

“I must ’a’ missed ’em,” he announced. “What I read was the real goods.

It was all lighted up an’ shining, an’ it shun right into me an’

lighted me up inside, like the sun or a searchlight. That’s the way it

landed on me, but I guess I ain’t up much on poetry, miss.”

He broke off lamely. He was confused, painfully conscious of his

inarticulateness. He had felt the bigness and glow of life in what he

had read, but his speech was inadequate. He could not express what he

felt, and to himself he likened himself to a sailor, in a strange ship,

on a dark night, groping about in the unfamiliar running rigging. Well,

he decided, it was up to him to get acquainted in this new world. He

had never seen anything that he couldn’t get the hang of when he wanted

to and it was about time for him to want to learn to talk the things

that were inside of him so that she could understand. _She_ was bulking

large on his horizon.

“Now Longfellow—” she was saying.

“Yes, I’ve read ’m,” he broke in impulsively, spurred on to exhibit and

make the most of his little store of book knowledge, desirous of

showing her that he was not wholly a stupid clod. “‘The Psalm of Life,’

‘Excelsior,’ an’ . . . I guess that’s all.”

She nodded her head and smiled, and he felt, somehow, that her smile

was tolerant, pitifully tolerant. He was a fool to attempt to make a

pretence that way. That Longfellow chap most likely had written

countless books of poetry.

“Excuse me, miss, for buttin’ in that way. I guess the real facts is

that I don’t know nothin’ much about such things. It ain’t in my class.

But I’m goin’ to make it in my class.”

It sounded like a threat. His voice was determined, his eyes were

flashing, the lines of his face had grown harsh. And to her it seemed

that the angle of his jaw had changed; its pitch had become

unpleasantly aggressive. At the same time a wave of intense virility

seemed to surge out from him and impinge upon her.

“I think you could make it in—in your class,” she finished with a

laugh. “You are very strong.”

Her gaze rested for a moment on the muscular neck, heavy corded, almost

bull-like, bronzed by the sun, spilling over with rugged health and

strength. And though he sat there, blushing and humble, again she felt

drawn to him. She was surprised by a wanton thought that rushed into

her mind. It seemed to her that if she could lay her two hands upon

that neck that all its strength and vigor would flow out to her. She

was shocked by this thought. It seemed to reveal to her an undreamed

depravity in her nature. Besides, strength to her was a gross and

brutish thing. Her ideal of masculine beauty had always been slender

gracefulness. Yet the thought still persisted. It bewildered her that

she should desire to place her hands on that sunburned neck. In truth,

she was far from robust, and the need of her body and mind was for

strength. But she did not know it. She knew only that no man had ever

affected her before as this one had, who shocked her from moment to

moment with his awful grammar.

“Yes, I ain’t no invalid,” he said. “When it comes down to hard-pan, I

can digest scrap-iron. But just now I’ve got dyspepsia. Most of what

you was sayin’ I can’t digest. Never trained that way, you see. I like

books and poetry, and what time I’ve had I’ve read ’em, but I’ve never

thought about ’em the way you have. That’s why I can’t talk about ’em.

I’m like a navigator adrift on a strange sea without chart or compass.

Now I want to get my bearin’s. Mebbe you can put me right. How did you

learn all this you’ve ben talkin’?”

“By going to school, I fancy, and by studying,” she answered.

“I went to school when I was a kid,” he began to object.

“Yes; but I mean high school, and lectures, and the university.”

“You’ve gone to the university?” he demanded in frank amazement. He

felt that she had become remoter from him by at least a million miles.

“I’m going there now. I’m taking special courses in English.”

He did not know what “English” meant, but he made a mental note of that

item of ignorance and passed on.

“How long would I have to study before I could go to the university?”

he asked.

She beamed encouragement upon his desire for knowledge, and said: “That

depends upon how much studying you have already done. You have never

attended high school? Of course not. But did you finish grammar

school?”

“I had two years to run, when I left,” he answered. “But I was always

honorably promoted at school.”

The next moment, angry with himself for the boast, he had gripped the

arms of the chair so savagely that every finger-end was stinging. At

the same moment he became aware that a woman was entering the room. He

saw the girl leave her chair and trip swiftly across the floor to the

newcomer. They kissed each other, and, with arms around each other’s

waists, they advanced toward him. That must be her mother, he thought.

She was a tall, blond woman, slender, and stately, and beautiful. Her

gown was what he might expect in such a house. His eyes delighted in

the graceful lines of it. She and her dress together reminded him of

women on the stage. Then he remembered seeing similar grand ladies and

gowns entering the London theatres while he stood and watched and the

policemen shoved him back into the drizzle beyond the awning. Next his

mind leaped to the Grand Hotel at Yokohama, where, too, from the

sidewalk, he had seen grand ladies. Then the city and the harbor of

Yokohama, in a thousand pictures, began flashing before his eyes. But

he swiftly dismissed the kaleidoscope of memory, oppressed by the

urgent need of the present. He knew that he must stand up to be

introduced, and he struggled painfully to his feet, where he stood with

trousers bagging at the knees, his arms loose-hanging and ludicrous,

his face set hard for the impending ordeal.