shot eyes.
He learned, also, that he spoke nightly to the workmen in the City
Hall Park, and that among the anarchists and agitators that there
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inflamed the minds of the people he drew the largest audiences and
made the most revolutionary speeches. The cub painted a high-light
picture of his poor little room, its oil-stove and the one chair,
and of the death’s-head tramp who kept him company and who looked
as if he had just emerged from twenty years of solitary confinement
in some fortress dungeon.
The cub had been industrious. He had scurried around and nosed out
Martin’s family history, and procured a photograph of
Higginbotham’s Cash Store with Bernard Higginbotham himself
standing out in front. That gentleman was depicted as an
intelligent, dignified businessman who had no patience with his
brother-in-law’s socialistic views, and no patience with the
brother-in-law, either, whom he was quoted as characterizing as a
lazy good-for-nothing who wouldn’t take a job when it was offered
to him and who would go to jail yet. Hermann Yon Schmidt, Marian’s
husband, had likewise been interviewed. He had called Martin the
black sheep of the family and repudiated him. “He tried to sponge
off of me, but I put a stop to that good and quick,” Von Schmidt
had said to the reporter. “He knows better than to come bumming
around here. A man who won’t work is no good, take that from me.”
This time Martin was genuinely angry. Brissenden looked upon the
affair as a good joke, but he could not console Martin, who knew
that it would be no easy task to explain to Ruth. As for her
father, he knew that he must be overjoyed with what had happened
and that he would make the most of it to break off the engagement.
How much he would make of it he was soon to realize. The afternoon
mail brought a letter from Ruth. Martin opened it with a
premonition of disaster, and read it standing at the open door when
he had received it from the postman. As he read, mechanically his
hand sought his pocket for the tobacco and brown paper of his old
cigarette days. He was not aware that the pocket was empty or that
he had even reached for the materials with which to roll a
cigarette.
It was not a passionate letter. There were no touches of anger in
it. But all the way through, from the first sentence to the last,
was sounded the note of hurt and disappointment. She had expected
better of him. She had thought he had got over his youthful
wildness, that her love for him had been sufficiently worth while
to enable him to live seriously and decently. And now her father
and mother had taken a firm stand and commanded that the engagement
be broken. That they were justified in this she could not but
admit. Their relation could never be a happy one. It had been
unfortunate from the first. But one regret she voiced in the whole
letter, and it was a bitter one to Martin. “If only you had
settled down to some position and attempted to make something of
yourself,” she wrote. “But it was not to be. Your past life had
been too wild and irregular. I can understand that you are not to
be blamed. You could act only according to your nature and your
early training. So I do not blame you, Martin. Please remember
that. It was simply a mistake. As father and mother have
contended, we were not made for each other, and we should both be
happy because it was discovered not too late.” . . “There is no use
trying to see me,” she said toward the last. “It would be an
unhappy meeting for both of us, as well as for my mother. I feel,
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as it is, that I have caused her great pain and worry. I shall
have to do much living to atone for it.”
He read it through to the end, carefully, a second time, then sat
down and replied. He outlined the remarks he had uttered at the
socialist meeting, pointing out that they were in all ways the
converse of what the newspaper had put in his mouth. Toward the
end of the letter he was God’s own lover pleading passionately for
love. “Please answer,” he said, “and in your answer you have to
tell me but one thing. Do you love me? That is all – the answer
to that one question.”
But no answer came the next day, nor the next. “Overdue” lay
untouched upon the table, and each day the heap of returned
manuscripts under the table grew larger. For the first time
Martin’s glorious sleep was interrupted by insomnia, and he tossed
through long, restless nights. Three times he called at the Morse
home, but was turned away by the servant who answered the bell.
Brissenden lay sick in his hotel, too feeble to stir out, and,
though Martin was with him often, he did not worry him with his
troubles.
For Martin’s troubles were many. The aftermath of the cub
reporter’s deed was even wider than Martin had anticipated. The
Portuguese grocer refused him further credit, while the
greengrocer, who was an American and proud of it, had called him a
traitor to his country and refused further dealings with him –
carrying his patriotism to such a degree that he cancelled Martin’s
account and forbade him ever to attempt to pay it. The talk in the
neighborhood reflected the same feeling, and indignation against
Martin ran high. No one would have anything to do with a socialist
traitor. Poor Maria was dubious and frightened, but she remained
loyal. The children of the neighborhood recovered from the awe of
the grand carriage which once had visited Martin, and from safe
distances they called him “hobo” and “bum.” The Silva tribe,
however, stanchly defended him, fighting more than one pitched
battle for his honor, and black eyes and bloody noses became quite
the order of the day and added to Maria’s perplexities and
troubles.
Once, Martin met Gertrude on the street, down in Oakland, and
learned what he knew could not be otherwise – that Bernard
Higginbotham was furious with him for having dragged the family
into public disgrace, and that he had forbidden him the house.
“Why don’t you go away, Martin?” Gertrude had begged. “Go away and
get a job somewhere and steady down. Afterwards, when this all
blows over, you can come back.”
Martin shook his head, but gave no explanations. How could he
explain? He was appalled at the awful intellectual chasm that
yawned between him and his people. He could never cross it and
explain to them his position, – the Nietzschean position, in regard
to socialism. There were not words enough in the English language,
nor in any language, to make his attitude and conduct intelligible
to them. Their highest concept of right conduct, in his case, was
to get a job. That was their first word and their last. It
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constituted their whole lexicon of ideas. Get a job! Go to work!
Poor, stupid slaves, he thought, while his sister talked. Small
wonder the world belonged to the strong. The slaves were obsessed
by their own slavery. A job was to them a golden fetich before
which they fell down and worshipped.
He shook his head again, when Gertrude offered him money, though he
knew that within the day he would have to make a trip to the
pawnbroker.
“Don’t come near Bernard now,” she admonished him. “After a few
months, when he is cooled down, if you want to, you can get the job
of drivin’ delivery-wagon for him. Any time you want me, just send
for me an’ I’ll come. Don’t forget.”
She went away weeping audibly, and he felt a pang of sorrow shoot
through him at sight of her heavy body and uncouth gait. As he
watched her go, the Nietzschean edifice seemed to shake and totter.
The slave-class in the abstract was all very well, but it was not
wholly satisfactory when it was brought home to his own family.
And yet, if there was ever a slave trampled by the strong, that
slave was his sister Gertrude. He grinned savagely at the paradox.
A fine Nietzsche-man he was, to allow his intellectual concepts to
be shaken by the first sentiment or emotion that strayed along –
ay, to be shaken by the slave-morality itself, for that was what
his pity for his sister really was. The true noble men were above
pity and compassion. Pity and compassion had been generated in the
subterranean barracoons of the slaves and were no more than the
agony and sweat of the crowded miserables and weaklings.
CHAPTER XL
“Overdue” still continued to lie forgotten on the table. Every
manuscript that he had had out now lay under the table. Only one