money and patience.”
“But if all you wanted was money, why didn’t you stay in the
laundry?”
“Because the laundry was making a beast of me. Too much work of
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that sort drives to drink.”
She stared at him with horror in her eyes.
“Do you mean – ?” she quavered.
It would have been easy for him to get out of it; but his natural
impulse was for frankness, and he remembered his old resolve to be
frank, no matter what happened.
“Yes,” he answered. “Just that. Several times.”
She shivered and drew away from him.
“No man that I have ever known did that – ever did that.”
“Then they never worked in the laundry at Shelly Hot Springs,” he
laughed bitterly. “Toil is a good thing. It is necessary for
human health, so all the preachers say, and Heaven knows I’ve never
been afraid of it. But there is such a thing as too much of a good
thing, and the laundry up there is one of them. And that’s why I’m
going to sea one more voyage. It will be my last, I think, for
when I come back, I shall break into the magazines. I am certain
of it.”
She was silent, unsympathetic, and he watched her moodily,
realizing how impossible it was for her to understand what he had
been through.
“Some day I shall write it up – ‘The Degradation of Toil’ or the
‘Psychology of Drink in the Working-class,’ or something like that
for a title.”
Never, since the first meeting, had they seemed so far apart as
that day. His confession, told in frankness, with the spirit of
revolt behind, had repelled her. But she was more shocked by the
repulsion itself than by the cause of it. It pointed out to her
how near she had drawn to him, and once accepted, it paved the way
for greater intimacy. Pity, too, was aroused, and innocent,
idealistic thoughts of reform. She would save this raw young man
who had come so far. She would save him from the curse of his
early environment, and she would save him from himself in spite of
himself. And all this affected her as a very noble state of
consciousness; nor did she dream that behind it and underlying it
were the jealousy and desire of love.
They rode on their wheels much in the delightful fall weather, and
out in the hills they read poetry aloud, now one and now the other,
noble, uplifting poetry that turned one’s thoughts to higher
things. Renunciation, sacrifice, patience, industry, and high
endeavor were the principles she thus indirectly preached – such
abstractions being objectified in her mind by her father, and Mr.
Butler, and by Andrew Carnegie, who, from a poor immigrant boy had
arisen to be the book-giver of the world. All of which was
appreciated and enjoyed by Martin. He followed her mental
processes more clearly now, and her soul was no longer the sealed
wonder it had been. He was on terms of intellectual equality with
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her. But the points of disagreement did not affect his love. His
love was more ardent than ever, for he loved her for what she was,
and even her physical frailty was an added charm in his eyes. He
read of sickly Elizabeth Barrett, who for years had not placed her
feet upon the ground, until that day of flame when she eloped with
Browning and stood upright, upon the earth, under the open sky; and
what Browning had done for her, Martin decided he could do for
Ruth. But first, she must love him. The rest would be easy. He
would give her strength and health. And he caught glimpses of
their life, in the years to come, wherein, against a background of
work and comfort and general well-being, he saw himself and Ruth
reading and discussing poetry, she propped amid a multitude of
cushions on the ground while she read aloud to him. This was the
key to the life they would live. And always he saw that particular
picture. Sometimes it was she who leaned against him while he
read, one arm about her, her head upon his shoulder. Sometimes
they pored together over the printed pages of beauty. Then, too,
she loved nature, and with generous imagination he changed the
scene of their reading – sometimes they read in closed-in valleys
with precipitous walls, or in high mountain meadows, and, again,
down by the gray sand-dunes with a wreath of billows at their feet,
or afar on some volcanic tropic isle where waterfalls descended and
became mist, reaching the sea in vapor veils that swayed and
shivered to every vagrant wisp of wind. But always, in the
foreground, lords of beauty and eternally reading and sharing, lay
he and Ruth, and always in the background that was beyond the
background of nature, dim and hazy, were work and success and money
earned that made them free of the world and all its treasures.
“I should recommend my little girl to be careful,” her mother
warned her one day.
“I know what you mean. But it is impossible. He if; not – ”
Ruth was blushing, but it was the blush of maidenhood called upon
for the first time to discuss the sacred things of life with a
mother held equally sacred.
“Your kind.” Her mother finished the sentence for her.
Ruth nodded.
“I did not want to say it, but he is not. He is rough, brutal,
strong – too strong. He has not – ”
She hesitated and could not go on. It was a new experience,
talking over such matters with her mother. And again her mother
completed her thought for her.
“He has not lived a clean life, is what you wanted to say.”
Again Ruth nodded, and again a blush mantled her face.
“It is just that,” she said. “It has not been his fault, but he
has played much with – ”
“With pitch?”
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“Yes, with pitch. And he frightens me. Sometimes I am positively
in terror of him, when he talks in that free and easy way of the
things he has done – as if they did not matter. They do matter,
don’t they?”
They sat with their arms twined around each other, and in the pause
her mother patted her hand and waited for her to go on.
“But I am interested in him dreadfully,” she continued. “In a way
he is my protege. Then, too, he is my first boy friend – but not
exactly friend; rather protege and friend combined. Sometimes,
too, when he frightens me, it seems that he is a bulldog I have
taken for a plaything, like some of the ‘frat’ girls, and he is
tugging hard, and showing his teeth, and threatening to break
loose.”
Again her mother waited.
“He interests me, I suppose, like the bulldog. And there is much
good in him, too; but there is much in him that I would not like in
– in the other way. You see, I have been thinking. He swears, he
smokes, he drinks, he has fought with his fists (he has told me so,
and he likes it; he says so). He is all that a man should not be –
a man I would want for my – ” her voice sank very low – “husband.
Then he is too strong. My prince must be tall, and slender, and
dark – a graceful, bewitching prince. No, there is no danger of my
failing in love with Martin Eden. It would be the worst fate that
could befall me.”
“But it is not that that I spoke about,” her mother equivocated.
“Have you thought about him? He is so ineligible in every way, you
know, and suppose he should come to love you?”
“But he does – already,” she cried.
“It was to be expected,” Mrs. Morse said gently. “How could it be
otherwise with any one who knew you?”
“Olney hates me!” she exclaimed passionately. “And I hate Olney.
I feel always like a cat when he is around. I feel that I must be
nasty to him, and even when I don’t happen to feel that way, why,
he’s nasty to me, anyway. But I am happy with Martin Eden. No one
ever loved me before – no man, I mean, in that way. And it is
sweet to be loved – that way. You know what I mean, mother dear.
It is sweet to feel that you are really and truly a woman.” She
buried her face in her mother’s lap, sobbing. “You think I am
dreadful, I know, but I am honest, and I tell you just how I feel.”
Mrs. Morse was strangely sad and happy. Her child-daughter, who
was a bachelor of arts, was gone; but in her place was a woman-
daughter. The experiment had succeeded. The strange void in