thoughts behind them – of ice-cream and of something else. But
those saint’s eyes alongside – they offered all he knew and more
than he could guess. They offered books and painting, beauty and
repose, and all the fine elegance of higher existence. Behind
those black eyes he knew every thought process. It was like
clockwork. He could watch every wheel go around. Their bid was
low pleasure, narrow as the grave, that palled, and the grave was
at the end of it. But the bid of the saint’s eyes was mystery, and
wonder unthinkable, and eternal life. He had caught glimpses of
the soul in them, and glimpses of his own soul, too.
“There’s only one thing wrong with the programme,” he said aloud.
“I’ve got a date already.”
The girl’s eyes blazed her disappointment.
“To sit up with a sick friend, I suppose?” she sneered.
“No, a real, honest date with – ” he faltered, “with a girl.”
“You’re not stringin’ me?” she asked earnestly.
He looked her in the eyes and answered: “It’s straight, all right.
But why can’t we meet some other time? You ain’t told me your name
yet. An’ where d’ye live?”
“Lizzie,” she replied, softening toward him, her hand pressing his
arm, while her body leaned against his. “Lizzie Connolly. And I
Martin Eden
36
live at Fifth an’ Market.”
He talked on a few minutes before saying good night. He did not go
home immediately; and under the tree where he kept his vigils he
looked up at a window and murmured: “That date was with you, Ruth.
I kept it for you.”
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
Martin Eden
37
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.
Martin Eden
38
“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