Bab Bab 7 · Chapter VII

. Chapter VII

A week of heavy reading had passed since the evening he first met Ruth

Morse, and still he dared not call. Time and again he nerved himself up

to call, but under the doubts that assailed him his determination died

away. He did not know the proper time to call, nor was there any one to

tell him, and he was afraid of committing himself to an irretrievable

blunder. Having shaken himself free from his old companions and old

ways of life, and having no new companions, nothing remained for him

but to read, and the long hours he devoted to it would have ruined a

dozen pairs of ordinary eyes. But his eyes were strong, and they were

backed by a body superbly strong. Furthermore, his mind was fallow. It

had lain fallow all his life so far as the abstract thought of the

books was concerned, and it was ripe for the sowing. It had never been

jaded by study, and it bit hold of the knowledge in the books with

sharp teeth that would not let go.

It seemed to him, by the end of the week, that he had lived centuries,

so far behind were the old life and outlook. But he was baffled by lack

of preparation. He attempted to read books that required years of

preliminary specialization. One day he would read a book of antiquated

philosophy, and the next day one that was ultra-modern, so that his

head would be whirling with the conflict and contradiction of ideas. It

was the same with the economists. On the one shelf at the library he

found Karl Marx, Ricardo, Adam Smith, and Mill, and the abstruse

formulas of the one gave no clew that the ideas of another were

obsolete. He was bewildered, and yet he wanted to know. He had become

interested, in a day, in economics, industry, and politics. Passing

through the City Hall Park, he had noticed a group of men, in the

centre of which were half a dozen, with flushed faces and raised

voices, earnestly carrying on a discussion. He joined the listeners,

and heard a new, alien tongue in the mouths of the philosophers of the

people. One was a tramp, another was a labor agitator, a third was a

law-school student, and the remainder was composed of wordy workingmen.

For the first time he heard of socialism, anarchism, and single tax,

and learned that there were warring social philosophies. He heard

hundreds of technical words that were new to him, belonging to fields

of thought that his meagre reading had never touched upon. Because of

this he could not follow the arguments closely, and he could only guess

at and surmise the ideas wrapped up in such strange expressions. Then

there was a black-eyed restaurant waiter who was a theosophist, a union

baker who was an agnostic, an old man who baffled all of them with the

strange philosophy that _what is is right_, and another old man who

discoursed interminably about the cosmos and the father-atom and the

mother-atom.

Martin Eden’s head was in a state of addlement when he went away after

several hours, and he hurried to the library to look up the definitions

of a dozen unusual words. And when he left the library, he carried

under his arm four volumes: Madam Blavatsky’s “Secret Doctrine,”

“Progress and Poverty,” “The Quintessence of Socialism,” and “Warfare

of Religion and Science.” Unfortunately, he began on the “Secret

Doctrine.” Every line bristled with many-syllabled words he did not

understand. He sat up in bed, and the dictionary was in front of him

more often than the book. He looked up so many new words that when they

recurred, he had forgotten their meaning and had to look them up again.

He devised the plan of writing the definitions in a note-book, and

filled page after page with them. And still he could not understand. He

read until three in the morning, and his brain was in a turmoil, but

not one essential thought in the text had he grasped. He looked up, and

it seemed that the room was lifting, heeling, and plunging like a ship

upon the sea. Then he hurled the “Secret Doctrine” and many curses

across the room, turned off the gas, and composed himself to sleep. Nor

did he have much better luck with the other three books. It was not

that his brain was weak or incapable; it could think these thoughts

were it not for lack of training in thinking and lack of the

thought-tools with which to think. He guessed this, and for a while

entertained the idea of reading nothing but the dictionary until he had

mastered every word in it.

Poetry, however, was his solace, and he read much of it, finding his

greatest joy in the simpler poets, who were more understandable. He

loved beauty, and there he found beauty. Poetry, like music, stirred

him profoundly, and, though he did not know it, he was preparing his

mind for the heavier work that was to come. The pages of his mind were

blank, and, without effort, much he read and liked, stanza by stanza,

was impressed upon those pages, so that he was soon able to extract

great joy from chanting aloud or under his breath the music and the

beauty of the printed words he had read. Then he stumbled upon Gayley’s

“Classic Myths” and Bulfinch’s “Age of Fable,” side by side on a

library shelf. It was illumination, a great light in the darkness of

his ignorance, and he read poetry more avidly than ever.

The man at the desk in the library had seen Martin there so often that

he had become quite cordial, always greeting him with a smile and a nod

when he entered. It was because of this that Martin did a daring thing.

Drawing out some books at the desk, and while the man was stamping the

cards, Martin blurted out:-

“Say, there’s something I’d like to ask you.”

The man smiled and paid attention.

“When you meet a young lady an’ she asks you to call, how soon can you

call?”

Martin felt his shirt press and cling to his shoulders, what of the

sweat of the effort.

“Why I’d say any time,” the man answered.

“Yes, but this is different,” Martin objected. “She—I—well, you see,

it’s this way: maybe she won’t be there. She goes to the university.”

“Then call again.”

“What I said ain’t what I meant,” Martin confessed falteringly, while

he made up his mind to throw himself wholly upon the other’s mercy.

“I’m just a rough sort of a fellow, an’ I ain’t never seen anything of

society. This girl is all that I ain’t, an’ I ain’t anything that she

is. You don’t think I’m playin’ the fool, do you?” he demanded

abruptly.

“No, no; not at all, I assure you,” the other protested. “Your request

is not exactly in the scope of the reference department, but I shall be

only too pleased to assist you.”

Martin looked at him admiringly.

“If I could tear it off that way, I’d be all right,” he said.

“I beg pardon?”

“I mean if I could talk easy that way, an’ polite, an’ all the rest.”

“Oh,” said the other, with comprehension.

“What is the best time to call? The afternoon?—not too close to

meal-time? Or the evening? Or Sunday?”

“I’ll tell you,” the librarian said with a brightening face. “You call

her up on the telephone and find out.”

“I’ll do it,” he said, picking up his books and starting away.

He turned back and asked:-

“When you’re speakin’ to a young lady—say, for instance, Miss Lizzie

Smith—do you say ‘Miss Lizzie’? or ‘Miss Smith’?”

“Say ‘Miss Smith,’” the librarian stated authoritatively. “Say ‘Miss

Smith’ always—until you come to know her better.”

So it was that Martin Eden solved the problem.

“Come down any time; I’ll be at home all afternoon,” was Ruth’s reply

over the telephone to his stammered request as to when he could return

the borrowed books.

She met him at the door herself, and her woman’s eyes took in

immediately the creased trousers and the certain slight but indefinable

change in him for the better. Also, she was struck by his face. It was

almost violent, this health of his, and it seemed to rush out of him

and at her in waves of force. She felt the urge again of the desire to

lean toward him for warmth, and marvelled again at the effect his

presence produced upon her. And he, in turn, knew again the swimming

sensation of bliss when he felt the contact of her hand in greeting.

The difference between them lay in that she was cool and self-possessed

while his face flushed to the roots of the hair. He stumbled with his

old awkwardness after her, and his shoulders swung and lurched

perilously.

Once they were seated in the living-room, he began to get on

easily—more easily by far than he had expected. She made it easy for

him; and the gracious spirit with which she did it made him love her

more madly than ever. They talked first of the borrowed books, of the

Swinburne he was devoted to, and of the Browning he did not understand;

and she led the conversation on from subject to subject, while she

pondered the problem of how she could be of help to him. She had

thought of this often since their first meeting. She wanted to help

him. He made a call upon her pity and tenderness that no one had ever

made before, and the pity was not so much derogatory of him as maternal

in her. Her pity could not be of the common sort, when the man who drew

it was so much man as to shock her with maidenly fears and set her mind

and pulse thrilling with strange thoughts and feelings. The old

fascination of his neck was there, and there was sweetness in the

thought of laying her hands upon it. It seemed still a wanton impulse,

but she had grown more used to it. She did not dream that in such guise

new-born love would epitomize itself. Nor did she dream that the

feeling he excited in her was love. She thought she was merely

interested in him as an unusual type possessing various potential

excellencies, and she even felt philanthropic about it.

She did not know she desired him; but with him it was different. He

knew that he loved her, and he desired her as he had never before

desired anything in his life. He had loved poetry for beauty’s sake;

but since he met her the gates to the vast field of love-poetry had

been opened wide. She had given him understanding even more than

Bulfinch and Gayley. There was a line that a week before he would not

have favored with a second thought—“God’s own mad lover dying on a

kiss”; but now it was ever insistent in his mind. He marvelled at the

wonder of it and the truth; and as he gazed upon her he knew that he

could die gladly upon a kiss. He felt himself God’s own mad lover, and

no accolade of knighthood could have given him greater pride. And at

last he knew the meaning of life and why he had been born.

As he gazed at her and listened, his thoughts grew daring. He reviewed

all the wild delight of the pressure of her hand in his at the door,

and longed for it again. His gaze wandered often toward her lips, and

he yearned for them hungrily. But there was nothing gross or earthly

about this yearning. It gave him exquisite delight to watch every

movement and play of those lips as they enunciated the words she spoke;

yet they were not ordinary lips such as all men and women had. Their

substance was not mere human clay. They were lips of pure spirit, and

his desire for them seemed absolutely different from the desire that

had led him to other women’s lips. He could kiss her lips, rest his own

physical lips upon them, but it would be with the lofty and awful

fervor with which one would kiss the robe of God. He was not conscious

of this transvaluation of values that had taken place in him, and was

unaware that the light that shone in his eyes when he looked at her was

quite the same light that shines in all men’s eyes when the desire of

love is upon them. He did not dream how ardent and masculine his gaze

was, nor that the warm flame of it was affecting the alchemy of her

spirit. Her penetrative virginity exalted and disguised his own

emotions, elevating his thoughts to a star-cool chastity, and he would

have been startled to learn that there was that shining out of his

eyes, like warm waves, that flowed through her and kindled a kindred

warmth. She was subtly perturbed by it, and more than once, though she

knew not why, it disrupted her train of thought with its delicious

intrusion and compelled her to grope for the remainder of ideas partly

uttered. Speech was always easy with her, and these interruptions would

have puzzled her had she not decided that it was because he was a

remarkable type. She was very sensitive to impressions, and it was not

strange, after all, that this aura of a traveller from another world

should so affect her.

The problem in the background of her consciousness was how to help him,

and she turned the conversation in that direction; but it was Martin

who came to the point first.

“I wonder if I can get some advice from you,” he began, and received an

acquiescence of willingness that made his heart bound. “You remember

the other time I was here I said I couldn’t talk about books an’ things

because I didn’t know how? Well, I’ve ben doin’ a lot of thinkin’ ever

since. I’ve ben to the library a whole lot, but most of the books I’ve

tackled have ben over my head. Mebbe I’d better begin at the beginnin’.

I ain’t never had no advantages. I’ve worked pretty hard ever since I

was a kid, an’ since I’ve ben to the library, lookin’ with new eyes at

books—an’ lookin’ at new books, too—I’ve just about concluded that I

ain’t ben reading the right kind. You know the books you find in

cattle-camps an’ fo’c’s’ls ain’t the same you’ve got in this house, for

instance. Well, that’s the sort of readin’ matter I’ve ben accustomed

to. And yet—an’ I ain’t just makin’ a brag of it—I’ve ben different

from the people I’ve herded with. Not that I’m any better than the

sailors an’ cow-punchers I travelled with,—I was cow-punchin’ for a

short time, you know,—but I always liked books, read everything I could

lay hands on, an’—well, I guess I think differently from most of ’em.

“Now, to come to what I’m drivin’ at. I was never inside a house like

this. When I come a week ago, an’ saw all this, an’ you, an’ your

mother, an’ brothers, an’ everything—well, I liked it. I’d heard about

such things an’ read about such things in some of the books, an’ when I

looked around at your house, why, the books come true. But the thing

I’m after is I liked it. I wanted it. I want it now. I want to breathe

air like you get in this house—air that is filled with books, and

pictures, and beautiful things, where people talk in low voices an’ are

clean, an’ their thoughts are clean. The air I always breathed was

mixed up with grub an’ house-rent an’ scrappin’ an booze an’ that’s all

they talked about, too. Why, when you was crossin’ the room to kiss

your mother, I thought it was the most beautiful thing I ever seen.

I’ve seen a whole lot of life, an’ somehow I’ve seen a whole lot more

of it than most of them that was with me. I like to see, an’ I want to

see more, an’ I want to see it different.

“But I ain’t got to the point yet. Here it is. I want to make my way to

the kind of life you have in this house. There’s more in life than

booze, an’ hard work, an’ knockin’ about. Now, how am I goin’ to get

it? Where do I take hold an’ begin? I’m willin’ to work my passage, you

know, an’ I can make most men sick when it comes to hard work. Once I

get started, I’ll work night an’ day. Mebbe you think it’s funny, me

askin’ you about all this. I know you’re the last person in the world I

ought to ask, but I don’t know anybody else I could ask—unless it’s

Arthur. Mebbe I ought to ask him. If I was—”

His voice died away. His firmly planned intention had come to a halt on

the verge of the horrible probability that he should have asked Arthur

and that he had made a fool of himself. Ruth did not speak immediately.

She was too absorbed in striving to reconcile the stumbling, uncouth

speech and its simplicity of thought with what she saw in his face. She

had never looked in eyes that expressed greater power. Here was a man

who could do anything, was the message she read there, and it accorded

ill with the weakness of his spoken thought. And for that matter so

complex and quick was her own mind that she did not have a just

appreciation of simplicity. And yet she had caught an impression of

power in the very groping of this mind. It had seemed to her like a

giant writhing and straining at the bonds that held him down. Her face

was all sympathy when she did speak.

“What you need, you realize yourself, and it is education. You should

go back and finish grammar school, and then go through to high school

and university.”

“But that takes money,” he interrupted.

“Oh!” she cried. “I had not thought of that. But then you have

relatives, somebody who could assist you?”

He shook his head.

“My father and mother are dead. I’ve two sisters, one married, an’ the

other’ll get married soon, I suppose. Then I’ve a string of

brothers,—I’m the youngest,—but they never helped nobody. They’ve just

knocked around over the world, lookin’ out for number one. The oldest

died in India. Two are in South Africa now, an’ another’s on a whaling

voyage, an’ one’s travellin’ with a circus—he does trapeze work. An’ I

guess I’m just like them. I’ve taken care of myself since I was

eleven—that’s when my mother died. I’ve got to study by myself, I

guess, an’ what I want to know is where to begin.”

“I should say the first thing of all would be to get a grammar. Your

grammar is—” She had intended saying “awful,” but she amended it to “is

not particularly good.”

He flushed and sweated.

“I know I must talk a lot of slang an’ words you don’t understand. But

then they’re the only words I know—how to speak. I’ve got other words

in my mind, picked ’em up from books, but I can’t pronounce ’em, so I

don’t use ’em.”

“It isn’t what you say, so much as how you say it. You don’t mind my

being frank, do you? I don’t want to hurt you.”

“No, no,” he cried, while he secretly blessed her for her kindness.

“Fire away. I’ve got to know, an’ I’d sooner know from you than anybody

else.”

“Well, then, you say, ‘You was’; it should be, ‘You were.’ You say ‘I

seen’ for ‘I saw.’ You use the double negative—”

“What’s the double negative?” he demanded; then added humbly, “You see,

I don’t even understand your explanations.”

“I’m afraid I didn’t explain that,” she smiled. “A double negative

is—let me see—well, you say, ‘never helped nobody.’ ‘Never’ is a

negative. ‘Nobody’ is another negative. It is a rule that two negatives

make a positive. ‘Never helped nobody’ means that, not helping nobody,

they must have helped somebody.”

“That’s pretty clear,” he said. “I never thought of it before. But it

don’t mean they _must_ have helped somebody, does it? Seems to me that

‘never helped nobody’ just naturally fails to say whether or not they

helped somebody. I never thought of it before, and I’ll never say it

again.”

She was pleased and surprised with the quickness and surety of his

mind. As soon as he had got the clew he not only understood but

corrected her error.

“You’ll find it all in the grammar,” she went on. “There’s something

else I noticed in your speech. You say ‘don’t’ when you shouldn’t.

‘Don’t’ is a contraction and stands for two words. Do you know them?”

He thought a moment, then answered, “‘Do not.’”

She nodded her head, and said, “And you use ‘don’t’ when you mean ‘does

not.’”

He was puzzled over this, and did not get it so quickly.

“Give me an illustration,” he asked.

“Well—” She puckered her brows and pursed up her mouth as she thought,

while he looked on and decided that her expression was most adorable.

“‘It don’t do to be hasty.’ Change ‘don’t’ to ‘do not,’ and it reads,

‘It do not do to be hasty,’ which is perfectly absurd.”

He turned it over in his mind and considered.

“Doesn’t it jar on your ear?” she suggested.

“Can’t say that it does,” he replied judicially.

“Why didn’t you say, ‘Can’t say that it do’?” she queried.

“That sounds wrong,” he said slowly. “As for the other I can’t make up

my mind. I guess my ear ain’t had the trainin’ yours has.”

“There is no such word as ‘ain’t,’” she said, prettily emphatic.

Martin flushed again.

“And you say ‘ben’ for ‘been,’” she continued; “‘come’ for ‘came’; and

the way you chop your endings is something dreadful.”

“How do you mean?” He leaned forward, feeling that he ought to get down

on his knees before so marvellous a mind. “How do I chop?”

“You don’t complete the endings. ‘A-n-d’ spells ‘and.’ You pronounce it

‘an’.’ ‘I-n-g’ spells ‘ing.’ Sometimes you pronounce it ‘ing’ and

sometimes you leave off the ‘g.’ And then you slur by dropping initial

letters and diphthongs. ‘T-h-e-m’ spells ‘them.’ You pronounce it—oh,

well, it is not necessary to go over all of them. What you need is the

grammar. I’ll get one and show you how to begin.”

As she arose, there shot through his mind something that he had read in

the etiquette books, and he stood up awkwardly, worrying as to whether

he was doing the right thing, and fearing that she might take it as a

sign that he was about to go.

“By the way, Mr. Eden,” she called back, as she was leaving the room.

“What is _booze_? You used it several times, you know.”

“Oh, booze,” he laughed. “It’s slang. It means whiskey an’

beer—anything that will make you drunk.”

“And another thing,” she laughed back. “Don’t use ‘you’ when you are

impersonal. ‘You’ is very personal, and your use of it just now was not

precisely what you meant.”

“I don’t just see that.”

“Why, you said just now, to me, ‘whiskey and beer—anything that will

make you drunk’—make me drunk, don’t you see?”

“Well, it would, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes, of course,” she smiled. “But it would be nicer not to bring me

into it. Substitute ‘one’ for ‘you’ and see how much better it sounds.”

When she returned with the grammar, she drew a chair near his—he

wondered if he should have helped her with the chair—and sat down

beside him. She turned the pages of the grammar, and their heads were

inclined toward each other. He could hardly follow her outlining of the

work he must do, so amazed was he by her delightful propinquity. But

when she began to lay down the importance of conjugation, he forgot all

about her. He had never heard of conjugation, and was fascinated by the

glimpse he was catching into the tie-ribs of language. He leaned closer

to the page, and her hair touched his cheek. He had fainted but once in

his life, and he thought he was going to faint again. He could scarcely

breathe, and his heart was pounding the blood up into his throat and

suffocating him. Never had she seemed so accessible as now. For the

moment the great gulf that separated them was bridged. But there was no

diminution in the loftiness of his feeling for her. She had not

descended to him. It was he who had been caught up into the clouds and

carried to her. His reverence for her, in that moment, was of the same

order as religious awe and fervor. It seemed to him that he had

intruded upon the holy of holies, and slowly and carefully he moved his

head aside from the contact which thrilled him like an electric shock

and of which she had not been aware.