lord’s antagonism.
“Because I say Republicans are stupid, and hold that liberty,
equality, and fraternity are exploded bubbles, does not make me a
socialist,” Martin said with a smile. “Because I question
Jefferson and the unscientific Frenchmen who informed his mind,
does not make me a socialist. Believe me, Mr. Morse, you are far
nearer socialism than I who am its avowed enemy.”
“Now you please to be facetious,” was all the other could say.
“Not at all. I speak in all seriousness. You still believe in
equality, and yet you do the work of the corporations, and the
corporations, from day to day, are busily engaged in burying
equality. And you call me a socialist because I deny equality,
because I affirm just what you live up to. The Republicans are
foes to equality, though most of them fight the battle against
equality with the very word itself the slogan on their lips. In
the name of equality they destroy equality. That was why I called
them stupid. As for myself, I am an individualist. I believe the
race is to the swift, the battle to the strong. Such is the lesson
I have learned from biology, or at least think I have learned. As
I said, I am an individualist, and individualism is the hereditary
and eternal foe of socialism.”
“But you frequent socialist meetings,” Mr. Morse challenged.
“Certainly, just as spies frequent hostile camps. How else are you
to learn about the enemy? Besides, I enjoy myself at their
meetings. They are good fighters, and, right or wrong, they have
read the books. Any one of them knows far more about sociology and
all the other ologies than the average captain of industry. Yes, I
have been to half a dozen of their meetings, but that doesn’t make
me a socialist any more than hearing Charley Hapgood orate made me
a Republican.”
“I can’t help it,” Mr. Morse said feebly, “but I still believe you
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incline that way.”
Bless me, Martin thought to himself, he doesn’t know what I was
talking about. He hasn’t understood a word of it. What did he do
with his education, anyway?
Thus, in his development, Martin found himself face to face with
economic morality, or the morality of class; and soon it became to
him a grisly monster. Personally, he was an intellectual moralist,
and more offending to him than platitudinous pomposity was the
morality of those about him, which was a curious hotchpotch of the
economic, the metaphysical, the sentimental, and the imitative.
A sample of this curious messy mixture he encountered nearer home.
His sister Marian had been keeping company with an industrious
young mechanic, of German extraction, who, after thoroughly
learning the trade, had set up for himself in a bicycle-repair
shop. Also, having got the agency for a low-grade make of wheel,
he was prosperous. Marian had called on Martin in his room a short
time before to announce her engagement, during which visit she had
playfully inspected Martin’s palm and told his fortune. On her
next visit she brought Hermann von Schmidt along with her. Martin
did the honors and congratulated both of them in language so easy
and graceful as to affect disagreeably the peasant-mind of his
sister’s lover. This bad impression was further heightened by
Martin’s reading aloud the half-dozen stanzas of verse with which
he had commemorated Marian’s previous visit. It was a bit of
society verse, airy and delicate, which he had named “The Palmist.”
He was surprised, when he finished reading it, to note no enjoyment
in his sister’s face. Instead, her eyes were fixed anxiously upon
her betrothed, and Martin, following her gaze, saw spread on that
worthy’s asymmetrical features nothing but black and sullen
disapproval. The incident passed over, they made an early
departure, and Martin forgot all about it, though for the moment he
had been puzzled that any woman, even of the working class, should
not have been flattered and delighted by having poetry written
about her.
Several evenings later Marian again visited him, this time alone.
Nor did she waste time in coming to the point, upbraiding him
sorrowfully for what he had done.
“Why, Marian,” he chided, “you talk as though you were ashamed of
your relatives, or of your brother at any rate.”
“And I am, too,” she blurted out.
Martin was bewildered by the tears of mortification he saw in her
eyes. The mood, whatever it was, was genuine.
“But, Marian, why should your Hermann be jealous of my writing
poetry about my own sister?”
“He ain’t jealous,” she sobbed. “He says it was indecent, ob –
obscene.”
Martin emitted a long, low whistle of incredulity, then proceeded
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to resurrect and read a carbon copy of “The Palmist.”
“I can’t see it,” he said finally, proffering the manuscript to
her. “Read it yourself and show me whatever strikes you as obscene
– that was the word, wasn’t it?”
“He says so, and he ought to know,” was the answer, with a wave
aside of the manuscript, accompanied by a look of loathing. “And
he says you’ve got to tear it up. He says he won’t have no wife of
his with such things written about her which anybody can read. He
says it’s a disgrace, an’ he won’t stand for it.”
“Now, look here, Marian, this is nothing but nonsense,” Martin
began; then abruptly changed his mind.
He saw before him an unhappy girl, knew the futility of attempting
to convince her husband or her, and, though the whole situation was
absurd and preposterous, he resolved to surrender.
“All right,” he announced, tearing the manuscript into half a dozen
pieces and throwing it into the waste-basket.
He contented himself with the knowledge that even then the original
type-written manuscript was reposing in the office of a New York
magazine. Marian and her husband would never know, and neither
himself nor they nor the world would lose if the pretty, harmless
poem ever were published.
Marian, starting to reach into the waste-basket, refrained.
“Can I?” she pleaded.
He nodded his head, regarding her thoughtfully as she gathered the
torn pieces of manuscript and tucked them into the pocket of her
jacket – ocular evidence of the success of her mission. She
reminded him of Lizzie Connolly, though there was less of fire and
gorgeous flaunting life in her than in that other girl of the
working class whom he had seen twice. But they were on a par, the
pair of them, in dress and carriage, and he smiled with inward
amusement at the caprice of his fancy which suggested the
appearance of either of them in Mrs. Morse’s drawing-room. The
amusement faded, and he was aware of a great loneliness. This
sister of his and the Morse drawing-room were milestones of the
road he had travelled. And he had left them behind. He glanced
affectionately about him at his few books. They were all the
comrades left to him.
“Hello, what’s that?” he demanded in startled surprise.
Marian repeated her question.
“Why don’t I go to work?” He broke into a laugh that was only
half-hearted. “That Hermann of yours has been talking to you.”
She shook her head.
“Don’t lie,” he commanded, and the nod of her head affirmed his
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charge.
“Well, you tell that Hermann of yours to mind his own business;
that when I write poetry about the girl he’s keeping company with
it’s his business, but that outside of that he’s got no say so.
Understand?
“So you don’t think I’ll succeed as a writer, eh?” he went on.
“You think I’m no good? – that I’ve fallen down and am a disgrace
to the family?”
“I think it would be much better if you got a job,” she said
firmly, and he saw she was sincere. “Hermann says – ”
“Damn Hermann!” he broke out good-naturedly. “What I want to know
is when you’re going to get married. Also, you find out from your
Hermann if he will deign to permit you to accept a wedding present
from me.”
He mused over the incident after she had gone, and once or twice
broke out into laughter that was bitter as he saw his sister and
her betrothed, all the members of his own class and the members of
Ruth’s class, directing their narrow little lives by narrow little
formulas – herd-creatures, flocking together and patterning their
lives by one another’s opinions, failing of being individuals and
of really living life because of the childlike formulas by which
they were enslaved. He summoned them before him in apparitional
procession: Bernard Higginbotham arm in arm with Mr. Butler,
Hermann von Schmidt cheek by jowl with Charley Hapgood, and one by
one and in pairs he judged them and dismissed them – judged them by
the standards of intellect and morality he had learned from the
books. Vainly he asked: Where are the great souls, the great men