Chapter 35

The first thing Martin did next morning was to mail “The Shame of the Sun” to THE ACROPOLIS. “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. 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.”

“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. 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. 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!”

“I don’t care whether it was true or not,” she insisted. “You have no license to insult anybody.”

“Then where did Judge Blount get the license to assault truth?” Martin demanded. “He did worse than that. He blackened the name of a great, noble man who is dead. Oh, the beasts! The beasts!”

Chapter 36

“I’m very sick,” said Brissenden. “You have health. As for me, you wonder why I am a socialist. I’ll tell you. It is because Socialism is inevitable; because the present rotten and irrational system cannot endure. The past is past, and the man who says history repeats itself is a liar. Of course I don’t like the crowd, but what to do?”

It was Sunday night, and they visited the small hall packed by the Oakland socialists, chiefly members of the working class. The speaker won Martin’s admiration. To Martin he was a symbol. They were the unfit.

So Martin thought, and so he spoke when Brissenden urged him to do that.

“No state composed of the slave,” he was speaking, “can endure. You slaves – it is too bad to be slaves, I grant – but you slaves dream of a society where the law of development will be annulled. What will be the result? It will diminish. Your society of slaves – of, by, and for, slaves – must inevitably weaken and go to pieces.”

“How about the United States?” a man yelled from the audience.

“And how about it?” Martin retorted. “The thirteen colonies threw off their rulers and formed the Republic so-called. The slaves were their own masters, without a revolution. And there arose new masters – not the great, virile, noble men, but the shrewd and spidery traders and money-lenders. And they enslaved you over again. They have purchased your slave judges, they have debauched your slave legislatures.”

There was a reporter sat in the audience. He did not know what all the talk was about. It was not necessary. Words like REVOLUTION gave him his cue. Like a paleontologist, able to reconstruct an entire skeleton from one fossil bone, he was able to reconstruct a whole speech from the one word REVOLUTION. He did it that night, and he did it well.

Chapter 37

Over the coffee, in his little room, Martin read next morning’s paper. It was a novel experience to find himself on the first page at that; and he was surprised to learn that he was the most notorious leader of the Oakland socialists. He read the violent speech that the reporter had constructed for him.

“But what do you care?“ Brissenden asked. “Surely you don’t desire the approval of the bourgeois swine that read the newspapers?”

Martin thought for a while, then said:

“No, I really don’t care for their approval. I want to read you what I’ve done today. It’s ‘Overdue’, of course.”

He was reading aloud when Maria opened the door and a young man came in.

“Sit down,” Brissenden said.

“I heard your speech last night, Mr. Eden, and I’ve come to interview you,” he began.

Brissenden laughed.

“A brother socialist?” the reporter asked, with a quick glance at Brissenden.

“And he wrote that report,” Martin said softly. “Why, he is only a boy!”

“Why don’t you poke him?” Brissenden asked meditatively. “Poke him, Martin! Poke him!”

“It wasn’t true, not a word of what he wrote,” said Martin.

“It’s good advertising, Martin, old boy,” Brissenden repeated solemnly.

“Let me see – where were you born, Mr. Eden?” the reporter asked.

“He doesn’t take notes,” said Brissenden. “He remembers it all. Martin, if you don’t poke him, I’ll do it myself!”

The next instant Martin was seated on the edge of the bed with the reporter’s face across his knees.

“Now don’t bite,” Martin warned, “or else I’ll have to punch your face. It would be a pity, for it is such a pretty face.”

His uplifted hand descended, and thereafter rose and fell in a swift and steady rhythm. The reporter struggled and cursed and squirmed, but did not offer to bite.

“I’ll tell the police! They will arrested you for this!” he cried. “You’ll see!”

In the next morning’s paper Martin learned a great deal more about himself that was new to him. “We are the enemies of society. No, we are not anarchists but socialists.” When the reporter told him that there was little difference between the two schools, Martin had shrugged his shoulders in silent affirmation. His face was described as asymmetrical, and various other signs of degeneration were described.

He learned, also, that he spoke to the workers in the City Hall Park, and that among the anarchists and agitators he drew the largest audiences and made the most revolutionary speeches. The reporter was industrious and wrote even about Martin’s family. He wrote that Martin’s relatives did not like his views and said that Martin would go to jail very soon.

This time Martin was really angry. He knew that it would be difficult to explain everything to Ruth. The afternoon mail brought a letter from Ruth. Martin opened it, and read it standing at the door when he had received it from the postman.

It was not an angry letter. But from the first sentence to the last it carried disappointment. Ruth had expected better of him. She thought that he would live seriously and decently. And now her father and mother commanded that the engagement be broken. “Your past life had been too wild and irregular,” she wrote. I can understand that 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. Please do not try to see me.”

Martin read it through to the end, carefully, a second time, then sat down and replied. He wrote that the newspaper was lying. “Please answer,” he said, “Do you love me? That is all – the answer to that one question.”

But no answer came the next day, nor the next. Three times he came to the Morse home, but was turned away by the servant who answered the bell. Brissenden lay sick in his hotel, 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 reporter’s deed was even wider than Martin had thought. 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. He cancelled Martin’s account and did not want to see him at all. The neighbors didn’t want to talk to a socialist traitor. Once, Martin met Gertrude on the street.

“Why don’t you go away, Martin?” Gertrude had begged. “Go away and get a job somewhere. Afterwards, you can come back.”

Martin shook his head, but gave no explanations. How could he explain? There were not words enough in the English language, nor in any language, to make his attitude and conduct intelligible to them. They could just offer him: get a job. That was their first word and their last. Get a job! Go to work! Poor, stupid slaves, he thought, while his sister talked. Yes, the world belonged to the strong. The slaves were obsessed by their own slavery.

He shook his head again, when Gertrude offered him money, though he knew that within the day he would go to the pawnbroker.

“Don’t come near Bernard now,” she admonished him. “But any time you want to see me, just send for me and I’ll come. Don’t forget.”