his eyes except for the money it brought, and his horror stories,
two of which he had sold, he did not consider high work nor his
best work. To him they were frankly imaginative and fantastic,
though invested with all the glamour of the real, wherein lay their
power. This investiture of the grotesque and impossible with
reality, he looked upon as a trick – a skilful trick at best.
Great literature could not reside in such a field. Their artistry
was high, but he denied the worthwhileness of artistry when
divorced from humanness. The trick had been to fling over the face
of his artistry a mask of humanness, and this he had done in the
half-dozen or so stories of the horror brand he had written before
he emerged upon the high peaks of “Adventure,” “Joy,” “The Pot,”
and “The Wine of Life.”
The three dollars he received for the triolets he used to eke out a
precarious existence against the arrival of the WHITE MOUSE check.
He cashed the first check with the suspicious Portuguese grocer,
paying a dollar on account and dividing the remaining two dollars
between the baker and the fruit store. Martin was not yet rich
enough to afford meat, and he was on slim allowance when the WHITE
MOUSE check arrived. He was divided on the cashing of it. He had
never been in a bank in his life, much less been in one on
business, and he had a naive and childlike desire to walk into one
of the big banks down in Oakland and fling down his indorsed check
for forty dollars. On the other hand, practical common sense ruled
that he should cash it with his grocer and thereby make an
impression that would later result in an increase of credit.
Reluctantly Martin yielded to the claims of the grocer, paying his
bill with him in full, and receiving in change a pocketful of
jingling coin. Also, he paid the other tradesmen in full, redeemed
his suit and his bicycle, paid one month’s rent on the type-writer,
and paid Maria the overdue month for his room and a month in
advance. This left him in his pocket, for emergencies, a balance
of nearly three dollars.
In itself, this small sum seemed a fortune. Immediately on
recovering his clothes he had gone to see Ruth, and on the way he
could not refrain from jingling the little handful of silver in his
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pocket. He had been so long without money that, like a rescued
starving man who cannot let the unconsumed food out of his sight,
Martin could not keep his hand off the silver. He was not mean,
nor avaricious, but the money meant more than so many dollars and
cents. It stood for success, and the eagles stamped upon the coins
were to him so many winged victories.
It came to him insensibly that it was a very good world. It
certainly appeared more beautiful to him. For weeks it had been a
very dull and sombre world; but now, with nearly all debts paid,
three dollars jingling in his pocket, and in his mind the
consciousness of success, the sun shone bright and warm, and even a
rain-squall that soaked unprepared pedestrians seemed a merry
happening to him. When he starved, his thoughts had dwelt often
upon the thousands he knew were starving the world over; but now
that he was feasted full, the fact of the thousands starving was no
longer pregnant in his brain. He forgot about them, and, being in
love, remembered the countless lovers in the world. Without
deliberately thinking about it, MOTIFS for love-lyrics began to
agitate his brain. Swept away by the creative impulse, he got off
the electric car, without vexation, two blocks beyond his crossing.
He found a number of persons in the Morse home. Ruth’s two girl-
cousins were visiting her from San Rafael, and Mrs. Morse, under
pretext of entertaining them, was pursuing her plan of surrounding
Ruth with young people. The campaign had begun during Martin’s
enforced absence, and was already in full swing. She was making a
point of having at the house men who were doing things. Thus, in
addition to the cousins Dorothy and Florence, Martin encountered
two university professors, one of Latin, the other of English; a
young army officer just back from the Philippines, one-time school-
mate of Ruth’s; a young fellow named Melville, private secretary to
Joseph Perkins, head of the San Francisco Trust Company; and
finally of the men, a live bank cashier, Charles Hapgood, a
youngish man of thirty-five, graduate of Stanford University,
member of the Nile Club and the Unity Club, and a conservative
speaker for the Republican Party during campaigns – in short, a
rising young man in every way. Among the women was one who painted
portraits, another who was a professional musician, and still
another who possessed the degree of Doctor of Sociology and who was
locally famous for her social settlement work in the slums of San
Francisco. But the women did not count for much in Mrs. Morse’s
plan. At the best, they were necessary accessories. The men who
did things must be drawn to the house somehow.
“Don’t get excited when you talk,” Ruth admonished Martin, before
the ordeal of introduction began.
He bore himself a bit stiffly at first, oppressed by a sense of his
own awkwardness, especially of his shoulders, which were up to
their old trick of threatening destruction to furniture and
ornaments. Also, he was rendered self-conscious by the company.
He had never before been in contact with such exalted beings nor
with so many of them. Melville, the bank cashier, fascinated him,
and he resolved to investigate him at the first opportunity. For
underneath Martin’s awe lurked his assertive ego, and he felt the
urge to measure himself with these men and women and to find out
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what they had learned from the books and life which he had not
learned.
Ruth’s eyes roved to him frequently to see how he was getting on,
and she was surprised and gladdened by the ease with which he got
acquainted with her cousins. He certainly did not grow excited,
while being seated removed from him the worry of his shoulders.
Ruth knew them for clever girls, superficially brilliant, and she
could scarcely understand their praise of Martin later that night
at going to bed. But he, on the other hand, a wit in his own
class, a gay quizzer and laughter-maker at dances and Sunday
picnics, had found the making of fun and the breaking of good-
natured lances simple enough in this environment. And on this
evening success stood at his back, patting him on the shoulder and
telling him that he was making good, so that he could afford to
laugh and make laughter and remain unabashed.
Later, Ruth’s anxiety found justification. Martin and Professor
Caldwell had got together in a conspicuous corner, and though
Martin no longer wove the air with his hands, to Ruth’s critical
eye he permitted his own eyes to flash and glitter too frequently,
talked too rapidly and warmly, grew too intense, and allowed his
aroused blood to redden his cheeks too much. He lacked decorum and
control, and was in decided contrast to the young professor of
English with whom he talked.
But Martin was not concerned with appearances! He had been swift
to note the other’s trained mind and to appreciate his command of
knowledge. Furthermore, Professor Caldwell did not realize
Martin’s concept of the average English professor. Martin wanted
him to talk shop, and, though he seemed averse at first, succeeded
in making him do it. For Martin did not see why a man should not
talk shop.
“It’s absurd and unfair,” he had told Ruth weeks before, “this
objection to talking shop. For what reason under the sun do men
and women come together if not for the exchange of the best that is
in them? And the best that is in them is what they are interested
in, the thing by which they make their living, the thing they’ve
specialized on and sat up days and nights over, and even dreamed
about. Imagine Mr. Butler living up to social etiquette and
enunciating his views on Paul Verlaine or the German drama or the
novels of D’Annunzio. We’d be bored to death. I, for one, if I
must listen to Mr. Butler, prefer to hear him talk about his law.
It’s the best that is in him, and life is so short that I want the
best of every man and woman I meet.”
“But,” Ruth had objected, “there are the topics of general interest
to all.”
“There, you mistake,” he had rushed on. “All persons in society,
all cliques in society – or, rather, nearly all persons and cliques
– ape their betters. Now, who are the best betters? The idlers,
the wealthy idlers. They do not know, as a rule, the things known