with his ease of expression, he displayed a lightness and
facetiousness of thought that delighted her. It was his old spirit
of humor and badinage that had made him a favorite in his own
class, but which he had hitherto been unable to use in her presence
through lack of words and training. He was just beginning to
orientate himself and to feel that he was not wholly an intruder.
But he was very tentative, fastidiously so, letting Ruth set the
pace of sprightliness and fancy, keeping up with her but never
daring to go beyond her.
He told her of what he had been doing, and of his plan to write for
a livelihood and of going on with his studies. But he was
disappointed at her lack of approval. She did not think much of
his plan.
“You see,” she said frankly, “writing must be a trade, like
anything else. Not that I know anything about it, of course. I
only bring common judgment to bear. You couldn’t hope to be a
blacksmith without spending three years at learning the trade – or
is it five years! Now writers are so much better paid than
blacksmiths that there must be ever so many more men who would like
to write, who – try to write.”
“But then, may not I be peculiarly constituted to write?” he
queried, secretly exulting at the language he had used, his swift
imagination throwing the whole scene and atmosphere upon a vast
screen along with a thousand other scenes from his life – scenes
that were rough and raw, gross and bestial.
The whole composite vision was achieved with the speed of light,
producing no pause in the conversation, nor interrupting his calm
train of thought. On the screen of his imagination he saw himself
and this sweet and beautiful girl, facing each other and conversing
in good English, in a room of books and paintings and tone and
Martin Eden
55
culture, and all illuminated by a bright light of steadfast
brilliance; while ranged about and fading away to the remote edges
of the screen were antithetical scenes, each scene a picture, and
he the onlooker, free to look at will upon what he wished. He saw
these other scenes through drifting vapors and swirls of sullen fog
dissolving before shafts of red and garish light. He saw cowboys
at the bar, drinking fierce whiskey, the air filled with obscenity
and ribald language, and he saw himself with them drinking and
cursing with the wildest, or sitting at table with them, under
smoking kerosene lamps, while the chips clicked and clattered and
the cards were dealt around. He saw himself, stripped to the
waist, with naked fists, fighting his great fight with Liverpool
Red in the forecastle of the Susquehanna; and he saw the bloody
deck of the John Rogers, that gray morning of attempted mutiny, the
mate kicking in death-throes on the main-hatch, the revolver in the
old man’s hand spitting fire and smoke, the men with passion-
wrenched faces, of brutes screaming vile blasphemies and falling
about him – and then he returned to the central scene, calm and
clean in the steadfast light, where Ruth sat and talked with him
amid books and paintings; and he saw the grand piano upon which she
would later play to him; and he heard the echoes of his own
selected and correct words, “But then, may I not be peculiarly
constituted to write?”
“But no matter how peculiarly constituted a man may be for
blacksmithing,” she was laughing, “I never heard of one becoming a
blacksmith without first serving his apprenticeship.”
“What would you advise?” he asked. “And don’t forget that I feel
in me this capacity to write – I can’t explain it; I just know that
it is in me.”
“You must get a thorough education,” was the answer, “whether or
not you ultimately become a writer. This education is
indispensable for whatever career you select, and it must not be
slipshod or sketchy. You should go to high school.”
“Yes – ” he began; but she interrupted with an afterthought:-
“Of course, you could go on with your writing, too.”
“I would have to,” he said grimly.
“Why?” She looked at him, prettily puzzled, for she did not quite
like the persistence with which he clung to his notion.
“Because, without writing there wouldn’t be any high school. I
must live and buy books and clothes, you know.”
“I’d forgotten that,” she laughed. “Why weren’t you born with an
income?”
“I’d rather have good health and imagination,” he answered. “I can
make good on the income, but the other things have to be made good
for – ” He almost said “you,” then amended his sentence to, “have
to be made good for one.”
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56
“Don’t say ‘make good,'” she cried, sweetly petulant. “It’s slang,
and it’s horrid.”
He flushed, and stammered, “That’s right, and I only wish you’d
correct me every time.”
“I – I’d like to,” she said haltingly. “You have so much in you
that is good that I want to see you perfect.”
He was clay in her hands immediately, as passionately desirous of
being moulded by her as she was desirous of shaping him into the
image of her ideal of man. And when she pointed out the
opportuneness of the time, that the entrance examinations to high
school began on the following Monday, he promptly volunteered that
he would take them.
Then she played and sang to him, while he gazed with hungry
yearning at her, drinking in her loveliness and marvelling that
there should not be a hundred suitors listening there and longing
for her as he listened and longed.
CHAPTER X
He stopped to dinner that evening, and, much to Ruth’s
satisfaction, made a favorable impression on her father. They
talked about the sea as a career, a subject which Martin had at his
finger-ends, and Mr. Morse remarked afterward that he seemed a very
clear-headed young man. In his avoidance of slang and his search
after right words, Martin was compelled to talk slowly, which
enabled him to find the best thoughts that were in him. He was
more at ease than that first night at dinner, nearly a year before,
and his shyness and modesty even commended him to Mrs. Morse, who
was pleased at his manifest improvement.
“He is the first man that ever drew passing notice from Ruth,” she
told her husband. “She has been so singularly backward where men
are concerned that I have been worried greatly.”
Mr. Morse looked at his wife curiously.
“You mean to use this young sailor to wake her up?” he questioned.
“I mean that she is not to die an old maid if I can help it,” was
the answer. “If this young Eden can arouse her interest in mankind
in general, it will be a good thing.”
“A very good thing,” he commented. “But suppose, – and we must
suppose, sometimes, my dear, – suppose he arouses her interest too
particularly in him?”
“Impossible,” Mrs. Morse laughed. “She is three years older than
he, and, besides, it is impossible. Nothing will ever come of it.
Trust that to me.”
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57
And so Martin’s role was arranged for him, while he, led on by
Arthur and Norman, was meditating an extravagance. They were going
out for a ride into the hills Sunday morning on their wheels, which
did not interest Martin until he learned that Ruth, too, rode a
wheel and was going along. He did not ride, nor own a wheel, but
if Ruth rode, it was up to him to begin, was his decision; and when
he said good night, he stopped in at a cyclery on his way home and
spent forty dollars for a wheel. It was more than a month’s hard-
earned wages, and it reduced his stock of money amazingly; but when
he added the hundred dollars he was to receive from the EXAMINER to
the four hundred and twenty dollars that was the least THE YOUTH’S
COMPANION could pay him, he felt that he had reduced the perplexity
the unwonted amount of money had caused him. Nor did he mind, in
the course of learning to ride the wheel home, the fact that he
ruined his suit of clothes. He caught the tailor by telephone that
night from Mr. Higginbotham’s store and ordered another suit. Then
he carried the wheel up the narrow stairway that clung like a fire-
escape to the rear wall of the building, and when he had moved his
bed out from the wall, found there was just space enough in the
small room for himself and the wheel.
Sunday he had intended to devote to studying for the high school
examination, but the pearl-diving article lured him away, and he
spent the day in the white-hot fever of re-creating the beauty and
romance that burned in him. The fact that the EXAMINER of that