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 “Tannhauser”
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
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47
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 again. 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
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48
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.”
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49
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