morning had failed to publish his treasure-hunting article did not
dash his spirits. He was at too great a height for that, and
having been deaf to a twice-repeated summons, he went without the
heavy Sunday dinner with which Mr. Higginbotham invariably graced
his table. To Mr. Higginbotham such a dinner was advertisement of
his worldly achievement and prosperity, and he honored it by
delivering platitudinous sermonettes upon American institutions and
the opportunity said institutions gave to any hard-working man to
rise – the rise, in his case, which he pointed out unfailingly,
being from a grocer’s clerk to the ownership of Higginbotham’s Cash
Store.
Martin Eden looked with a sigh at his unfinished “Pearl-diving” on
Monday morning, and took the car down to Oakland to the high
school. And when, days later, he applied for the results of his
examinations, he learned that he had failed in everything save
grammar.
“Your grammar is excellent,” Professor Hilton informed him, staring
at him through heavy spectacles; “but you know nothing, positively
nothing, in the other branches, and your United States history is
abominable – there is no other word for it, abominable. I should
advise you – ”
Professor Hilton paused and glared at him, unsympathetic and
unimaginative as one of his own test-tubes. He was professor of
physics in the high school, possessor of a large family, a meagre
salary, and a select fund of parrot-learned knowledge.
“Yes, sir,” Martin said humbly, wishing somehow that the man at the
desk in the library was in Professor Hilton’s place just then.
Martin Eden
58
“And I should advise you to go back to the grammar school for at
least two years. Good day.”
Martin was not deeply affected by his failure, though he was
surprised at Ruth’s shocked expression when he told her Professor
Hilton’s advice. Her disappointment was so evident that he was
sorry he had failed, but chiefly so for her sake.
“You see I was right,” she said. “You know far more than any of
the students entering high school, and yet you can’t pass the
examinations. It is because what education you have is
fragmentary, sketchy. You need the discipline of study, such as
only skilled teachers can give you. You must be thoroughly
grounded. Professor Hilton is right, and if I were you, I’d go to
night school. A year and a half of it might enable you to catch up
that additional six months. Besides, that would leave you your
days in which to write, or, if you could not make your living by
your pen, you would have your days in which to work in some
position.”
But if my days are taken up with work and my nights with school,
when am I going to see you? – was Martin’s first thought, though he
refrained from uttering it. Instead, he said:-
“It seems so babyish for me to be going to night school. But I
wouldn’t mind that if I thought it would pay. But I don’t think it
will pay. I can do the work quicker than they can teach me. It
would be a loss of time – ” he thought of her and his desire to
have her – “and I can’t afford the time. I haven’t the time to
spare, in fact.”
“There is so much that is necessary.” She looked at him gently,
and he was a brute to oppose her. “Physics and chemistry – you
can’t do them without laboratory study; and you’ll find algebra and
geometry almost hopeless with instruction. You need the skilled
teachers, the specialists in the art of imparting knowledge.”
He was silent for a minute, casting about for the least
vainglorious way in which to express himself.
“Please don’t think I’m bragging,” he began. “I don’t intend it
that way at all. But I have a feeling that I am what I may call a
natural student. I can study by myself. I take to it kindly, like
a duck to water. You see yourself what I did with grammar. And
I’ve learned much of other things – you would never dream how much.
And I’m only getting started. Wait till I get – ” He hesitated
and assured himself of the pronunciation before he said “momentum.
I’m getting my first real feel of things now. I’m beginning to
size up the situation – ”
“Please don’t say ‘size up,'” she interrupted.
“To get a line on things,” he hastily amended.
“That doesn’t mean anything in correct English,” she objected.
Martin Eden
59
He floundered for a fresh start.
“What I’m driving at is that I’m beginning to get the lay of the
land.”
Out of pity she forebore, and he went on.
“Knowledge seems to me like a chart-room. Whenever I go into the
library, I am impressed that way. The part played by teachers is
to teach the student the contents of the chart-room in a systematic
way. The teachers are guides to the chart-room, that’s all. It’s
not something that they have in their own heads. They don’t make
it up, don’t create it. It’s all in the chart-room and they know
their way about in it, and it’s their business to show the place to
strangers who might else get lost. Now I don’t get lost easily. I
have the bump of location. I usually know where I’m at – What’s
wrong now?”
“Don’t say ‘where I’m at.'”
“That’s right,” he said gratefully, “where I am. But where am I at
– I mean, where am I? Oh, yes, in the chart-room. Well, some
people – ”
“Persons,” she corrected.
“Some persons need guides, most persons do; but I think I can get
along without them. I’ve spent a lot of time in the chart-room
now, and I’m on the edge of knowing my way about, what charts I
want to refer to, what coasts I want to explore. And from the way
I line it up, I’ll explore a whole lot more quickly by myself. The
speed of a fleet, you know, is the speed of the slowest ship, and
the speed of the teachers is affected the same way. They can’t go
any faster than the ruck of their scholars, and I can set a faster
pace for myself than they set for a whole schoolroom.”
“‘He travels the fastest who travels alone,'” she quoted at him.
But I’d travel faster with you just the same, was what he wanted to
blurt out, as he caught a vision of a world without end of sunlit
spaces and starry voids through which he drifted with her, his arm
around her, her pale gold hair blowing about his face. In the same
instant he was aware of the pitiful inadequacy of speech. God! If
he could so frame words that she could see what he then saw! And
he felt the stir in him, like a throe of yearning pain, of the
desire to paint these visions that flashed unsummoned on the mirror
of his mind. Ah, that was it! He caught at the hem of the secret.
It was the very thing that the great writers and master-poets did.
That was why they were giants. They knew how to express what they
thought, and felt, and saw. Dogs asleep in the sun often whined
and barked, but they were unable to tell what they saw that made
them whine and bark. He had often wondered what it was. And that
was all he was, a dog asleep in the sun. He saw noble and
beautiful visions, but he could only whine and bark at Ruth. But
he would cease sleeping in the sun. He would stand up, with open
eyes, and he would struggle and toil and learn until, with eyes
unblinded and tongue untied, he could share with her his visioned
Martin Eden
60
wealth. Other men had discovered the trick of expression, of
making words obedient servitors, and of making combinations of
words mean more than the sum of their separate meanings. He was
stirred profoundly by the passing glimpse at the secret, and he was
again caught up in the vision of sunlit spaces and starry voids –
until it came to him that it was very quiet, and he saw Ruth
regarding him with an amused expression and a smile in her eyes.
“I have had a great visioning,” he said, and at the sound of his
words in his own ears his heart gave a leap. Where had those words
come from? They had adequately expressed the pause his vision had
put in the conversation. It was a miracle. Never had he so
loftily framed a lofty thought. But never had he attempted to
frame lofty thoughts in words. That was it. That explained it.
He had never tried. But Swinburne had, and Tennyson, and Kipling,
and all the other poets. His mind flashed on to his “Pearl-
diving.” He had never dared the big things, the spirit of the