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On Monday morning, Joe groaned and groaned.
“I say,” he began.
“Don’t talk to me,” Martin snarled.
“I’m sorry, Joe,” he said at noon, when they went for dinner.
Tears came into the other’s eyes.
“That’s all right, old man,” he said. “We’re in hell, and we can’t help ourselves. But, you know, I like you.”
Martin shook his hand.
“Let’s quit,” Joe suggested. “Let’s go hoboing. I have never tried it, but it must be easy. And nothing to do. Just think of it, nothing to do. I was sick once, typhoid, in the hospital, and it was beautiful. I want to be sick again.”
The week dragged on. The hotel was full. They worked late each night, and even got in a half hour’s work before breakfast. Martin no longer took his cold baths.
It was only at rare moments that Martin was able to think. The house of thought was closed. He was a shadow. Joe was right. They were both shadows. Was it a dream? Saturday came, as usual.
“I’ll go down and get a glass of beer,” Joe said, in the queer, monotonous tones that marked his week-end collapse.
A fifth week passed, and a sixth, during which he lived and toiled as a machine. At the end of the seventh week, too weak to resist, Martin went down to the village with Joe and drowned life and found life until Monday morning. The drink was an effect, not a cause. The whiskey was wise. It knew secrets of life.
Martin called for paper and pencil.
“A telegram, Joe,” he said. “Read it.”
Joe read it with a drunken, quizzical leer. But what he read seemed to sober him.
“You are going to leave me, Mart?” he queried hopelessly.
Martin nodded, and called the boy to take the message to the telegraph office.
“Wait,” Joe muttered. “Let me think.”
Martin’s arm around him and supporting him, while he thought.
“Write that two laundrymen are leaving,” he said abruptly. “Here, write so.”
Martin looked at him for a moment, then cried:
“By God, I think you’re right! Better a hobo, man, than a beast of toil.”
“I was in hospital, once,” Joe remembered again. “It was beautiful. Typhoid – did I tell you?”
While Martin changed the telegram to “two laundrymen,” Joe went on:
“I never wanted to drink when I was in hospital. Funny, isn’t it? But when I work like a slave all week, I must drink. Here, let me pay half of that telegram. Come on, everybody, drink!” Joe called.
Martin was standing, ready to go. They shook hands, and Joe said:
“I’m going to see you again, Mart, before you and me die. I feel it in my bones. Good-bye, Mart, and be good. I like you, you know.”
Ruth and her family were home again, and Martin, returned to Oakland, saw her very often. She gained her degree, she was doing no more studying. Martin was very tired to write. This gave them time for each other that they had never had before.
At first, Martin had done nothing but rest. He had slept much, and spent long hours thinking and doing nothing. The first signs of reawakening came when he discovered languid interest in the daily paper. Then he began to read again – light novels, and poetry; and after several days his splendid body and health made new vitality.
Ruth showed her disappointment when he announced that he was going to sea for another voyage.
“Why do you want to do that?” she asked.
“Money,” was the answer. “For my next attack on the editors. Money is the sinews of war, in my case – money and patience.”
“But if all you wanted was money, why didn’t you stay in the laundry?”
“Because the laundry was making a beast of me. Too much work of that sort drives to drink.”
She stared at him with horror in her eyes.
“Do you mean —?”
“Yes,” he answered. “Just that. Several times.”
She drew away from him.
“No man that I have ever known did that – ever did that.”
“Then they never worked in the laundry at Shelly Hot Springs,” he laughed bitterly. “I’m going to sea one more voyage. It will be my last, I think, for when I come back, I shall break into the magazines. I am certain of it.”
She was silent.
“Some day I shall write it – ‘The Degradation of Toil’ or the ‘Psychology of Drink in the Working-class’, or something like that for a title.”
They walked a lot, and read poetry aloud, and discussed many things, and spent time with each other – more and more.
“I can recommend my little girl to be careful,” her mother warned her one day.
“I know what you mean. But it is impossible. He – ”
Ruth was blushing.
“He is rough, brutal, strong – too strong,” her mother finished the sentence for her.
“And he frightens me. Sometimes I am in terror of him, when he talks about the things he has done.”
“But I am interested in him,” Ruth continued. “He is my protege. Then, too, he is my first boy friend – but not exactly friend; rather protege and friend combined. Sometimes, too, when he frightens me, it seems that he is a bulldog.”
Her mother waited.
“He interests me, I suppose, like the bulldog. And there is much good in him, too; but there is much in him that I would not like. He swears, he smokes, he drinks, he fights. Then he is too strong. My prince must be tall, and slender, and dark – a graceful, bewitching prince. No, there is no danger of my failing in love with Martin Eden.”
“But have you thought about him?” her mother equivocated. “He can fall in love with you?”
“But he does – already,” she cried.
“It was to be expected,” Mrs. Morse said gently.
“I am happy with Martin Eden!” Ruth exclaimed. “No one ever loved me before – no man, I mean, in that way. And I like it. You think I am dreadful, I know, but I am honest, and I tell you just how I feel.”
Mrs. Morse was strangely sad and happy. Her child-daughter, who was a bachelor of arts, was gone; but in her place was a woman-daughter. It was a holy hour for mother and daughter, and their eyes were wet as they talked on in the twilight.
“He is four years younger than you,” Mrs. Morse said. “He has no place in the world. He has neither position nor salary. He is impractical. Martin Eden, I am afraid, will never grow up. He does not take to responsibility and a man’s work in the world like your father did, or like all our friends, Mr. Butler for example. Martin Eden, I am afraid, will never be a money-earner. And in this world money is necessary for happiness.”
“You see, I do not love him.”
“I am glad of that. I do not want that my daughter, who is so clean and pure, love a man like him. There are noble men in the world who are clean and true and manly. Wait for them. You will find one some day, and you will love him and be loved by him, and you will be happy with him as your father and I have been happy with each other. And there is one thing – “
“Yes, mother.”
Mrs. Morse’s voice was low and sweet as she said, “And that is the children.”
“I – have thought about them.”
“And it is that, the children, that makes Mr. Eden impossible,” Mrs. Morse went on incisively. “Their heritage must be clean, and he is, I am afraid, not clean. Your father has told me of sailors’ lives, and – and you understand.”
Ruth pressed her mother’s hand.
“We are women together,” her mother said, drawing her to her and kissing her. “We are women together,” she repeated, as they went out of the room.
“Our little girl has become a woman,” Mrs. Morse said proudly to her husband an hour later.
“That means,” he said, after a long look at his wife, “that means she is in love.”
“No, but that she is loved,” was the answer.
“Then we’ll have to get rid of him.” Mr. Morse spoke briskly, in businesslike tones.
But his wife shook her head. “It will not be necessary. Ruth says he is going to sea in a few days. When he comes back, she will not be here. We will send her to Aunt Clara’s.”
The desire to write came to Martin again. He composed the sonnet that was the first of a love-cycle of fifty sonnets which was completed within two months.
“I don’t believe you know a word of what you are reading,” she said once when he had finished reading his sonnets.
He looked at her with burning eyes.
“I don’t believe you know either. What was the last sonnet about?”
“I don’t know,” she laughed frankly. “I’ve already forgotten. Don’t let us read any more. The day is too beautiful.”
The book slipped from his hands to the ground, and they sat idly and silently. Ruth glanced at his neck. Her shoulder touched his as lightly as a butterfly touches a flower. His lips approached hers.
This must be love, she thought. It could be nothing else than love.
“When did you love me?” she whispered.
“From the first, the very first, the first moment I had seen you. I am mad, now, dear. I am almost a lunatic.”
“I am glad I am a woman, Martin – dear,” she said, after a long sigh.
He crushed her in his arms again and again, and then asked: —
“And you? When did you first know?”
“It came to me suddenly.” She was speaking very slowly. “I never knew until just now when – you put your arms around me. And I never expected to marry you, Martin, not until just now. How did it happen?”
“I don’t know,” he laughed.
“What will my relatives say?” she cried.
“I don’t know.”
“But if mamma objects? I am sure I am afraid to tell her.”
“Let me tell her,” he offered. “I think your mother does not like me, but I can win her sympathy. A fellow who can win you can win anything.”
“I am older than you,” she remarked suddenly, “three years older.”
“Hush, you are only a child, and I am forty years older than you, in experience,” was his answer.
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