Мартин Иден / Martin Eden

“You next!” Martin shouted at Mr. Ford. “I want seventy-five cents more.”

Mr. Ford did not wait, but gave him sixty cents.

“What have you got in your vest pockets?” Martin demanded. “What’s that? – A ferry ticket? Here, give it to me. It’s worth ten cents. I’ve now got four dollars and ninety-five cents, including the ticket. Five cents is still due me.”

“Thank you,” Martin said, addressing them collectively. “I wish you a good day.”

“Robber!” Mr. Ends snarled after him.

“Thief!” Martin retorted.

Chapter 31

Ruth climbed Maria’s front steps. She had come to know whether or not he would be at their table for Thanksgiving dinner; but Martin said:

“Here, let me read you this,” he cried. “It’s my latest story, and different from anything I’ve done. You will be my judge. It’s an Hawaiian story.[143] I’ve called it ‘Wiki-wiki.’”

Ruth listened with great attention. Finally he asked: —

“Frankly, what do you think of it?”

“I–I don’t know,” she, answered. “Will it – do you think it will sell?”

“I’m afraid not,” was the confession. “It’s too strong for the magazines. But it’s true.”

“But why do you write such things when you know they won’t sell? The reason for your writing is to make a living,[144] isn’t it?”

“Yes, that’s right; but the story itself demanded to be written.”

“That character, that Wiki-Wiki, why does he talk so roughly? Surely it will offend your readers, and surely that is why the editors will refuse your work.”

“Because the real Wiki-Wiki talks that way.”

“But it is not good taste.”

“It is life,” he replied bluntly. “It is real. It is true. And I must write life as I see it.”

She made no answer, and for an awkward moment they sat silent.

“Well, I’ve taken money from the TRANSCONTINENTAL,” he said.

“Then you’ll come!” she cried joyously.

“Come?” he muttered absently. “Where?”

“Why, to dinner tomorrow. You know you said you’d recover your suit if you got that money.”

“I forgot about it,” he said humbly. “You see, this morning the policeman got Maria’s two cows and the baby calf, and – well, it happened that Maria didn’t have any money, and so I had to recover her cows for her. That’s where the TRANSCONTINENTAL money went – ‘The Ring of Bells’ went into the policeman’s pocket.”

“Then you won’t come?”

He looked down at his clothing.

“I can’t.”

Tears of disappointment and reproach glistened in her blue eyes, but she said nothing.

“Next Thanksgiving you’ll have dinner with me in London,” he said cheerily; “or in Paris, or anywhere you wish. I know it.”

“Oh,” was all she said, when he finished. She stood up, pulling at her gloves. “I must go, Martin. Arthur is waiting for me.”

He took her in his arms and kissed her. Her arms did not go around him.

She was angry with him, he concluded, as he returned from the gate. But why? It was unfortunate that the policeman had taken Maria’s cows. Nobody could be blamed for it.

Nobody understood him, nobody, except Brissenden, and Brissenden had disappeared, God alone knew where.

At night Martin left the fruit store. At the corner he noticed the familiar figure, and his heart leapt with joy. It was Brissenden – with books, and with a quart bottle of whiskey.

Chapter 33

Brissenden gave no explanation of his long absence.

“I was not idle,” Brissenden proclaimed.

He pulled a manuscript from his inside coat pocket and passed it to Martin, who looked at the title and glanced up curiously.

“Yes, that’s it,” Brissenden laughed. “Pretty good title, eh? ‘Ephemera’[145] – it is the one word. It got into my head and I had to write it. Tell me what you think of it.”

Martin’s face, flushed at first, paled as he read on. It was perfect art. It was a long poem of six or seven hundred lines, and it was a fantastic, amazing, unearthly thing. It was terrific, impossible! It was a mad orgy of imagination, playing in the skull of a dying man.

“There is nothing like it in literature,” Martin said, when at last he was able to speak. “It’s wonderful! – wonderful! I am drunken with it. You are – I don’t know what you are – you are wonderful, that’s all. But how do you do it? How do you do it?

“I shall never write again. You have shown me the work of the real artist. Genius! This is something more than genius. It transcends genius. And now I won’t say another word. I am overwhelmed, crushed. Let me try to publish it.”

Brissenden grinned. “Nobody would dare to publish it – you know that.”

“I know nothing. That’s not a poem of the year. It’s the poem of the century.”

“No, it’s mine. I made it, and I’ve shared it with you.”

“But think of the rest of the world,” Martin protested.

“It’s my beauty.”

“Don’t be selfish.”

“Please type it for me,” said Brissenden. “And now I want to give you some advice.” He drew a bulky manuscript from his outside coat pocket. “Here’s your ‘Shame of the Sun.’ I’ve read it not once, but twice and three times – the highest compliment I can pay you. After what you’ve said about ‘Ephemera’ I must be silent. But this I will say: when ‘The Shame of the Sun’ is published, it will make a hit. Offer it to the first-class publishing houses. You’ve read the books. One day Martin Eden will be famous because of that work. So you must get a publisher for it – the sooner the better.[146]”

Brissenden went home late that night; and just as he mounted the first step of the car, he suddenly gave Martin a small piece of paper.

“Here, take this,” he said.

Martin unrolled the paper and found a hundred-dollar bill.

He was not very surprised. He knew his friend had always plenty of money. In the morning he paid every bill, gave Maria three months’ advance on the room, and redeemed everything at the pawnshop. Next he bought presents for Ruth and Gertrude. Moreover, he bought Maria’s children many toys.

Chapter 34

“Come on, – I’ll show you the real people,” Brissenden said to Martin, one evening in January.

They had dined together in San Francisco, and were at the Ferry Building, returning to Oakland, when the idea came to him to show Martin the “real people.” “Maybe nobody will be there,” Brissenden said, when they came into the heart of the working-class ghetto, south of Market Street.

“Men, intelligent men. You read the books and you found yourself all alone. Well, I’m going to show you tonight some other men who’ve read the books, so that you won’t be lonely any more.

“I’m not interested in book philosophy. But you’ll find these fellows intelligences and not bourgeois swine.

“I hope Norton’s[147] there. Norton’s an idealist – a Harvard man.[148] Prodigious memory. Idealism led him to philosophic anarchy, and his family threw him off.”

Martin had no idea where they were going.

“I hope Hamilton’s there.” Brissenden said. “He is a clerk, or he is trying to be a clerk, in a socialist cooperative store for six dollars a week. He was a Spencerian[149] like you till Kreis turned him to materialistic view.”

“Who is Kreis?” Martin asked.

“A professor – fired from university – usual story. I know he’s been a street fakir. Difference between him – and the bourgeoisie is that he robs without illusion. He’ll talk Nietzsche, or Schopenhauer, or Kant, or anything, but the only thing in this world that he really cares for, is his monism.”

They came to the usual two-story corner building. “The gang lives here – come on.”

Brissenden stopped to speak to Martin.

“There’s one fellow – Stevens[150] – a theosophist.[151] Just now he’s dish-washer in a restaurant. Likes a good cigar. I’ve got a couple in my pocket for him.”

“And there’s another fellow – Parry[152] – an Australian, a statistician and a sporting encyclopaedia.[153]”

Brissenden advanced through the darkness. A knock and an answer opened it, and Martin saw Kreis, a handsome brunette man, with dazzling white teeth, black moustache, and large eyes.

“We’re lucky that most of them are here,” Brissenden whispered to Martin. “There’s Norton and Hamilton; come on and meet them.”

They were men with opinions, they were witty and clever, they were not superficial. Never had Martin, at the Morses’, heard so amazing a range of topics discussed. The talk wandered from Mrs. Humphry Ward’s[154] new book to Shaw’s latest play…

But it was time to catch the last ferry-boat for Oakland, and Brissenden and Martin went out.

“You showed me a fairyland,” Martin said on the ferry-boat. “It makes life worth[155] while to meet people like that. I never appreciated idealism before. Yet I can’t accept it. I know that I shall always be a realist. I see I must read some more.”

Chapter 35

The first thing Martin did next morning was to mail “The Shame of the Sun” to THE ACROPOLIS.[156] “Ephemera” he likewise wrapped and mailed to a magazine.

Martin began, that morning, a sea story, a tale of twentieth-century adventure and romance.

He was conscious that it was great stuff he was writing. “It will go! It will go!” was the refrain that was sounding in his ears. Of course it would go. He toiled on all day, recollecting, at the last moment, that he was invited to have dinner at the Morses’. Thanks to Brissenden, his black suit was out of pawn and he was again eligible for dinner parties. “Bourgeois,” “traders” – Brissenden’s words repeated themselves in his mind. But what of that? he demanded angrily. He was marrying Ruth, not her family.

It seemed to him that he had never seen Ruth more beautiful, more spiritual and ethereal and at the same time more healthy. There was color in her cheeks, and her eyes drew him again and again. He saw love there. And in his own eyes was love, too.

The half hour he had with her left him supremely happy and supremely satisfied with life.

Across the table from him, at Mr. Morse’s right, sat Judge Blount.[157] He and Ruth’s father were discussing labor union politics, the local situation, and socialism. At last Judge Blount looked across the table with benignant and fatherly pity. Martin smiled to himself.

“You’ll grow out of it, young man,” he said. “Time is the best cure for such youthful distempers.” He turned to Mr. Morse. “I do not believe discussion is good in such cases. It makes the patient obstinate.”

“That is true,” the other assented gravely. “But it is well to warn the patient occasionally of his condition.”

Martin laughed merrily, but it was with an effort.

“Undoubtedly you are both excellent doctors,” he said; “but you are poor diagnosticians. In fact, you are both suffering from the disease you think you find in me. As for me, the socialist philosophy has passed me by.[158]”

“My young man – ”

“Remember, I’ve heard your campaign speeches,” Martin said. “They are socialistic.

When I was younger, – a few months younger, – I believed the same thing. You see, the ideas of you and yours had impressed me. But merchants and traders are cowardly rulers. Nietzsche was right. I won’t take the time to tell you who Nietzsche was, but he was right. The world belongs to the strong – to the strong who are noble. The world belongs to the true noblemen, to the noncompromisers.[159] And they will eat you up, you socialists – who are afraid of socialism and who think yourselves individualists.”

He turned to Ruth.

“I’m tired today,” he said. “All I want to do is to love, not talk.”

“There is no god but the Unknowable, and Herbert Spencer is its prophet,” Judge Blount was saying at that moment.

Martin turned upon him.

“A cheap judgment,” he remarked quietly. “I heard it first in the City Hall Park. I have heard it often since. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.[160] You are disgusting.”

It was like a thunderbolt. Silence reigned. Mr. Morse was secretly pleased. He could see that his daughter was shocked. It was what he wanted to do.

Judge Blount attempted to go on.

“You can’t discuss Spencer with me,” Martin cried. “You do not know anything about Spencer. But it is no fault of yours. It is because of the contemptible ignorance!”

Martin ceased abruptly, in a dead silence. Everybody in Ruth’s family looked up to Judge Blount as a man of power and achievement. The remainder of the dinner passed like a funeral. Then afterward, when Ruth and Martin were alone, there was a scene.

“You are unbearable,” she wept.

But his anger was still going on, and he muttered, “The beasts! The beasts!”

When she said that he had insulted the judge, he retorted: —

“I told him the truth!”