poured its gold into his money-sack, and from what little he knew
of the bourgeoisie it was not clear to him how it could possibly
appreciate or comprehend what he had written. His intrinsic beauty
and power meant nothing to the hundreds of thousands who were
acclaiming him and buying his books. He was the fad of the hour,
the adventurer who had stormed Parnassus while the gods nodded.
The hundreds of thousands read him and acclaimed him with the same
brute non-understanding with which they had flung themselves on
Brissenden’s “Ephemera” and torn it to pieces – a wolf-rabble that
fawned on him instead of fanging him. Fawn or fang, it was all a
matter of chance. One thing he knew with absolute certitude:
“Ephemera” was infinitely greater than anything he had done. It
was infinitely greater than anything he had in him. It was a poem
of centuries. Then the tribute the mob paid him was a sorry
tribute indeed, for that same mob had wallowed “Ephemera” into the
mire. He sighed heavily and with satisfaction. He was glad the
last manuscript was sold and that he would soon be done with it
all.
CHAPTER XLIV
Mr. Morse met Martin in the office of the Hotel Metropole. Whether
he had happened there just casually, intent on other affairs, or
whether he had come there for the direct purpose of inviting him to
dinner, Martin never could quite make up his mind, though he
inclined toward the second hypothesis. At any rate, invited to
dinner he was by Mr. Morse – Ruth’s father, who had forbidden him
the house and broken off the engagement.
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Martin was not angry. He was not even on his dignity. He
tolerated Mr. Morse, wondering the while how it felt to eat such
humble pie. He did not decline the invitation. Instead, he put it
off with vagueness and indefiniteness and inquired after the
family, particularly after Mrs. Morse and Ruth. He spoke her name
without hesitancy, naturally, though secretly surprised that he had
had no inward quiver, no old, familiar increase of pulse and warm
surge of blood.
He had many invitations to dinner, some of which he accepted.
Persons got themselves introduced to him in order to invite him to
dinner. And he went on puzzling over the little thing that was
becoming a great thing. Bernard Higginbotham invited him to
dinner. He puzzled the harder. He remembered the days of his
desperate starvation when no one invited him to dinner. That was
the time he needed dinners, and went weak and faint for lack of
them and lost weight from sheer famine. That was the paradox of
it. When he wanted dinners, no one gave them to him, and now that
he could buy a hundred thousand dinners and was losing his
appetite, dinners were thrust upon him right and left. But why?
There was no justice in it, no merit on his part. He was no
different. All the work he had done was even at that time work
performed. Mr. and Mrs. Morse had condemned him for an idler and a
shirk and through Ruth had urged that he take a clerk’s position in
an office. Furthermore, they had been aware of his work performed.
Manuscript after manuscript of his had been turned over to them by
Ruth. They had read them. It was the very same work that had put
his name in all the papers, and, it was his name being in all the
papers that led them to invite him.
One thing was certain: the Morses had not cared to have him for
himself or for his work. Therefore they could not want him now for
himself or for his work, but for the fame that was his, because he
was somebody amongst men, and – why not? – because he had a hundred
thousand dollars or so. That was the way bourgeois society valued
a man, and who was he to expect it otherwise? But he was proud.
He disdained such valuation. He desired to be valued for himself,
or for his work, which, after all, was an expression of himself.
That was the way Lizzie valued him. The work, with her, did not
even count. She valued him, himself. That was the way Jimmy, the
plumber, and all the old gang valued him. That had been proved
often enough in the days when he ran with them; it had been proved
that Sunday at Shell Mound Park. His work could go hang. What
they liked, and were willing to scrap for, was just Mart Eden, one
of the bunch and a pretty good guy.
Then there was Ruth. She had liked him for himself, that was
indisputable. And yet, much as she had liked him she had liked the
bourgeois standard of valuation more. She had opposed his writing,
and principally, it seemed to him, because it did not earn money.
That had been her criticism of his “Love-cycle.” She, too, had
urged him to get a job. It was true, she refined it to “position,”
but it meant the same thing, and in his own mind the old
nomenclature stuck. He had read her all that he wrote – poems,
stories, essays – “Wiki-Wiki,” “The Shame of the Sun,” everything.
And she had always and consistently urged him to get a job, to go
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to work – good God! – as if he hadn’t been working, robbing sleep,
exhausting life, in order to be worthy of her.
So the little thing grew bigger. He was healthy and normal, ate
regularly, slept long hours, and yet the growing little thing was
becoming an obsession. WORK PERFORMED. The phrase haunted his
brain. He sat opposite Bernard Higginbotham at a heavy Sunday
dinner over Higginbotham’s Cash Store, and it was all he could do
to restrain himself from shouting out:-
“It was work performed! And now you feed me, when then you let me
starve, forbade me your house, and damned me because I wouldn’t get
a job. And the work was already done, all done. And now, when I
speak, you check the thought unuttered on your lips and hang on my
lips and pay respectful attention to whatever I choose to say. I
tell you your party is rotten and filled with grafters, and instead
of flying into a rage you hum and haw and admit there is a great
deal in what I say. And why? Because I’m famous; because I’ve a
lot of money. Not because I’m Martin Eden, a pretty good fellow
and not particularly a fool. I could tell you the moon is made of
green cheese and you would subscribe to the notion, at least you
would not repudiate it, because I’ve got dollars, mountains of
them. And it was all done long ago; it was work performed, I tell
you, when you spat upon me as the dirt under your feet.”
But Martin did not shout out. The thought gnawed in his brain, an
unceasing torment, while he smiled and succeeded in being tolerant.
As he grew silent, Bernard Higginbotham got the reins and did the
talking. He was a success himself, and proud of it. He was self-
made. No one had helped him. He owed no man. He was fulfilling
his duty as a citizen and bringing up a large family. And there
was Higginbotham’s Cash Store, that monument of his own industry
and ability. He loved Higginbotham’s Cash Store as some men loved
their wives. He opened up his heart to Martin, showed with what
keenness and with what enormous planning he had made the store.
And he had plans for it, ambitious plans. The neighborhood was
growing up fast. The store was really too small. If he had more
room, he would be able to put in a score of labor-saving and money-
saving improvements. And he would do it yet. He was straining
every effort for the day when he could buy the adjoining lot and
put up another two-story frame building. The upstairs he could
rent, and the whole ground-floor of both buildings would be
Higginbotham’s Cash Store. His eyes glistened when he spoke of the
new sign that would stretch clear across both buildings.
Martin forgot to listen. The refrain of “Work performed,” in his
own brain, was drowning the other’s clatter. The refrain maddened
him, and he tried to escape from it.
“How much did you say it would cost?” he asked suddenly.
His brother-in-law paused in the middle of an expatiation on the
business opportunities of the neighborhood. He hadn’t said how
much it would cost. But he knew. He had figured it out a score of
times.
“At the way lumber is now,” he said, “four thousand could do it.”
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“Including the sign?”
“I didn’t count on that. It’d just have to come, onc’t the
buildin’ was there.”
“And the ground?”