you know that the heroine was alone when thinking these thoughts,
and that neither the author nor any one else was capable of hearing
them. And so with the stage, with sculpture, with opera, with
every art form. Certain irreconcilable things must be accepted.”
“Yes, I understood that,” Martin answered. “All the arts have
their conventions.” (Ruth was surprised at his use of the word.
It was as if he had studied at the university himself, instead of
being ill-equipped from browsing at haphazard through the books in
the library.) “But even the conventions must be real. Trees,
painted on flat cardboard and stuck up on each side of the stage,
we accept as a forest. It is a real enough convention. But, on
the other hand, we would not accept a sea scene as a forest. We
can’t do it. It violates our senses. Nor would you, or, rather,
should you, accept the ravings and writhings and agonized
contortions of those two lunatics to-night as a convincing
portrayal of love.”
“But you don’t hold yourself superior to all the judges of music?”
she protested.
“No, no, not for a moment. I merely maintain my right as an
individual. I have just been telling you what I think, in order to
explain why the elephantine gambols of Madame Tetralani spoil the
orchestra for me. The world’s judges of music may all be right.
But I am I, and I won’t subordinate my taste to the unanimous
judgment of mankind. If I don’t like a thing, I don’t like it,
that’s all; and there is no reason under the sun why I should ape a
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liking for it just because the majority of my fellow-creatures like
it, or make believe they like it. I can’t follow the fashions in
the things I like or dislike.”
“But music, you know, is a matter of training,” Ruth argued; “and
opera is even more a matter of training. May it not be – ”
“That I am not trained in opera?” he dashed in.
She nodded.
“The very thing,” he agreed. “And I consider I am fortunate in not
having been caught when I was young. If I had, I could have wept
sentimental tears to-night, and the clownish antics of that
precious pair would have but enhanced the beauty of their voices
and the beauty of the accompanying orchestra. You are right. It’s
mostly a matter of training. And I am too old, now. I must have
the real or nothing. An illusion that won’t convince is a palpable
lie, and that’s what grand opera is to me when little Barillo
throws a fit, clutches mighty Tetralani in his arms (also in a
fit), and tells her how passionately he adores her.”
Again Ruth measured his thoughts by comparison of externals and in
accordance with her belief in the established. Who was he that he
should be right and all the cultured world wrong? His words and
thoughts made no impression upon her. She was too firmly
intrenched in the established to have any sympathy with
revolutionary ideas. She had always been used to music, and she
had enjoyed opera ever since she was a child, and all her world had
enjoyed it, too. Then by what right did Martin Eden emerge, as he
had so recently emerged, from his rag-time and working-class songs,
and pass judgment on the world’s music? She was vexed with him,
and as she walked beside him she had a vague feeling of outrage.
At the best, in her most charitable frame of mind, she considered
the statement of his views to be a caprice, an erratic and
uncalled-for prank. But when he took her in his arms at the door
and kissed her good night in tender lover-fashion, she forgot
everything in the outrush of her own love to him. And later, on a
sleepless pillow, she puzzled, as she had often puzzled of late, as
to how it was that she loved so strange a man, and loved him
despite the disapproval of her people.
And next day Martin Eden cast hack-work aside, and at white heat
hammered out an essay to which he gave the title, “The Philosophy
of Illusion.” A stamp started it on its travels, but it was
destined to receive many stamps and to be started on many travels
in the months that followed.
CHAPTER XXV
Maria Silva was poor, and all the ways of poverty were clear to
her. Poverty, to Ruth, was a word signifying a not-nice condition
of existence. That was her total knowledge on the subject. She
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knew Martin was poor, and his condition she associated in her mind
with the boyhood of Abraham Lincoln, of Mr. Butler, and of other
men who had become successes. Also, while aware that poverty was
anything but delectable, she had a comfortable middle-class feeling
that poverty was salutary, that it was a sharp spur that urged on
to success all men who were not degraded and hopeless drudges. So
that her knowledge that Martin was so poor that he had pawned his
watch and overcoat did not disturb her. She even considered it the
hopeful side of the situation, believing that sooner or later it
would arouse him and compel him to abandon his writing.
Ruth never read hunger in Martin’s face, which had grown lean and
had enlarged the slight hollows in the cheeks. In fact, she marked
the change in his face with satisfaction. It seemed to refine him,
to remove from him much of the dross of flesh and the too animal-
like vigor that lured her while she detested it. Sometimes, when
with her, she noted an unusual brightness in his eyes, and she
admired it, for it made him appear more the poet and the scholar –
the things he would have liked to be and which she would have liked
him to be. But Maria Silva read a different tale in the hollow
cheeks and the burning eyes, and she noted the changes in them from
day to day, by them following the ebb and flow of his fortunes.
She saw him leave the house with his overcoat and return without
it, though the day was chill and raw, and promptly she saw his
cheeks fill out slightly and the fire of hunger leave his eyes. In
the same way she had seen his wheel and watch go, and after each
event she had seen his vigor bloom again.
Likewise she watched his toils, and knew the measure of the
midnight oil he burned. Work! She knew that he outdid her, though
his work was of a different order. And she was surprised to behold
that the less food he had, the harder he worked. On occasion, in a
casual sort of way, when she thought hunger pinched hardest, she
would send him in a loaf of new baking, awkwardly covering the act
with banter to the effect that it was better than he could bake.
And again, she would send one of her toddlers in to him with a
great pitcher of hot soup, debating inwardly the while whether she
was justified in taking it from the mouths of her own flesh and
blood. Nor was Martin ungrateful, knowing as he did the lives of
the poor, and that if ever in the world there was charity, this was
it.
On a day when she had filled her brood with what was left in the
house, Maria invested her last fifteen cents in a gallon of cheap
wine. Martin, coming into her kitchen to fetch water, was invited
to sit down and drink. He drank her very-good health, and in
return she drank his. Then she drank to prosperity in his
undertakings, and he drank to the hope that James Grant would show
up and pay her for his washing. James Grant was a journeymen
carpenter who did not always pay his bills and who owed Maria three
dollars.
Both Maria and Martin drank the sour new wine on empty stomachs,
and it went swiftly to their heads. Utterly differentiated
creatures that they were, they were lonely in their misery, and
though the misery was tacitly ignored, it was the bond that drew
them together. Maria was amazed to learn that he had been in the
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Azores, where she had lived until she was eleven. She was doubly
amazed that he had been in the Hawaiian Islands, whither she had
migrated from the Azores with her people. But her amazement passed
all bounds when he told her he had been on Maui, the particular
island whereon she had attained womanhood and married. Kahului,
where she had first met her husband, – he, Martin, had been there
twice! Yes, she remembered the sugar steamers, and he had been on
them – well, well, it was a small world. And Wailuku! That place,
too! Did he know the head-luna of the plantation? Yes, and had