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Martin was steadily losing his battle. He brought his black suit in pawn and was unable to accept the Morses’ invitation to dinner. He told Ruth that he would go to San Francisco, to the TRANSCONTINENTAL office, collect the five dollars due him, and with it redeem his suit of clothes.
In the morning he borrowed ten cents from Maria. Brissenden disappeared. Two weeks had passed since Martin had seen him. The ten cents carried Martin across the ferry to San Francisco.
The door to the TRANSCONTINENTAL office was ajar.
“I–I am Martin Eden,” Martin began the conversation. (“And I want my five dollars,” he wanted to say.)
But Mr. Ford, the editor, leaped into the air with a “You don’t say so!” and the next moment, with both hands, was shaking Martin’s hand effusively.
“Can’t say how glad I am to see you, Mr. Eden. Your story, you know, showed such breadth, and vigor, such depth of thought. A masterpiece, that story – I knew it. Let me tell you how I first read it. But no; first let me introduce you to the staff.”
Mr. Ford led him into the general office, where he introduced him to the associate editor, Mr. White, a slender, frail little man whose hand seemed strangely cold.
“And Mr. Ends, Mr. Eden. Mr. Ends is our business manager, you know.”
Martin shook hands with a cranky-eyed, bald-headed man.
The three men surrounded Martin, all talking admiringly.
“We often wondered why you didn’t call,” Mr. White was saying.
“I’ll tell you what I came for,” Martin said finally. “I want my money for that story all of you like so well. Five dollars, I believe, is what you promised me.”
Mr. Ford said that he had left his money home.
“I am sorry,” said Mr. Ends, “but I paid the printer not an hour ago, and he took all my money.”
Both men looked expectantly at Mr. White, but that gentleman laughed and shrugged his shoulders. His conscience was clean.
“It’s rather absurd, Mr. Eden,” Mr. Ford said airily. “But I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll mail you a check in the morning. You have Mr. Eden’s address, haven’t you, Mr. Ends?”
“I need the money today,” Martin answered.
“Mr. Ford has already explained the situation,” Mr. Ends said with asperity. “The check will be mailed – “
“I also have explained,” Martin said, “and I have explained that I want the money today.”
At that moment, with an impatient movement, Mr. Ends turned as if about to leave the room. At the same instant Martin sprang for him and clutched him by the throat with his hand.
“Dig up!“ Martin exhorted. “Dig up, or I’ll shake it out of you!”
Mr. Ends’s trousers pocket yielded four dollars and fifteen cents.
“Inside out with it!“ Martin commanded.
An additional ten cents fell out.
“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.
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. 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, 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.
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’ – 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.”
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.
“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 there. Norton’s an idealist – a Harvard man. 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 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 – a theosophist. 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 – an Australian, a statistician and a sporting encyclopaedia.”
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 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 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.”
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