Chapter IV

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

　　Martin Eden, with blood still crawling from contact with hisbrother-in-law, felt his way along the unlighted back hall andentered his room, a tiny cubbyhole with space for a bed, a wash-stand, and one chair. Mr. Higginbotham was too thrifty to keep aservant when his wife could do the work. Besides, the servant'sroom enabled them to take in two boarders instead of one. Martinplaced the Swinburne and Browning on the chair, took off his coat,and sat down on the bed. A screeching of asthmatic springs greetedthe weight of his body, but he did not notice them. He started totake off his shoes, but fell to staring at the white plaster wallopposite him, broken by long streaks of dirty brown where rain hadleaked through the roof. On this befouled background visions beganto flow and burn. He forgot his shoes and stared long, till hislips began to move and he murmured, "Ruth.""Ruth." He had not thought a simple sound could be so beautiful.It delighted his ear, and he grew intoxicated with the repetitionof it. "Ruth." It was a talisman, a magic word to conjure with.Each time he murmured it, her face shimmered before him, suffusingthe foul wall with a golden radiance. This radiance did not stopat the wall. It extended on into infinity, and through its goldendepths his soul went questing after hers. The best that was in himwas out in splendid flood. The very thought of her ennobled andpurified him, made him better, and made him want to be better.This was new to him. He had never known women who had made himbetter. They had always had the counter effect of making himbeastly. He did not know that many of them had done their best,bad as it was. Never having been conscious of himself, he did notknow that he had that in his being that drew love from women andwhich had been the cause of their reaching out for his youth.Though they had often bothered him, he had never bothered aboutthem; and he would never have dreamed that there were women who hadbeen better because of him. Always in sublime carelessness had helived, till now, and now it seemed to him that they had alwaysreached out and dragged at him with vile hands. This was not justto them, nor to himself. But he, who for the first time wasbecoming conscious of himself, was in no condition to judge, and heburned with shame as he stared at the vision of his infamy.He got up abruptly and tried to see himself in the dirty looking-glass over the wash-stand. He passed a towel over it and lookedagain, long and carefully. It was the first time he had everreally seen himself. His eyes were made for seeing, but up to thatmoment they had been filled with the ever changing panorama of theworld, at which he had been too busy gazing, ever to gaze athimself. He saw the head and face of a young fellow of twenty,but, being unused to such appraisement, he did not know how tovalue it. Above a square-domed forehead he saw a mop of brownhair, nut-brown, with a wave to it and hints of curls that were adelight to any woman, making hands tingle to stroke it and fingerstingle to pass caresses through it. But he passed it by as withoutmerit, in Her eyes, and dwelt long and thoughtfully on the high,square forehead, - striving to penetrate it and learn the qualityof its content. What kind of a brain lay behind there? was hisinsistent interrogation. What was it capable of? How far would ittake him? Would it take him to her?He wondered if there was soul in those steel-gray eyes that wereoften quite blue of color and that were strong with the briny airsof the sun-washed deep. He wondered, also, how his eyes looked toher. He tried to imagine himself she, gazing into those eyes ofhis, but failed in the jugglery. He could successfully put himselfinside other men's minds, but they had to be men whose ways of lifehe knew. He did not know her way of life. She was wonder andmystery, and how could he guess one thought of hers? Well, theywere honest eyes, he concluded, and in them was neither smallnessnor meanness. The brown sunburn of his face surprised him. He hadnot dreamed he was so black. He rolled up his shirt-sleeve andcompared the white underside if the arm with his face. Yes, he wasa white man, after all. But the arms were sunburned, too. Hetwisted his arm, rolled the biceps over with his other hand, andgazed underneath where he was least touched by the sun. It wasvery white. He laughed at his bronzed face in the glass at thethought that it was once as white as the underside of his arm; nordid he dream that in the world there were few pale spirits of womenwho could boast fairer or smoother skins than he - fairer thanwhere he had escaped the ravages of the sun.His might have been a cherub's mouth, had not the full, sensuouslips a trick, under stress, of drawing firmly across the teeth. Attimes, so tightly did they draw, the mouth became stern and harsh,even ascetic. They were the lips of a fighter and of a lover.They could taste the sweetness of life with relish, and they couldput the sweetness aside and command life. The chin and jaw, strongand just hinting of square aggressiveness, helped the lips tocommand life. Strength balanced sensuousness and had upon it atonic effect, compelling him to love beauty that was healthy andmaking him vibrate to sensations that were wholesome. And betweenthe lips were teeth that had never known nor needed the dentist'scare. They were white and strong and regular, he decided, as helooked at them. But as he looked, he began to be troubled.Somewhere, stored away in the recesses of his mind and vaguelyremembered, was the impression that there were people who washedtheir teeth every day. They were the people from up above - peoplein her class. She must wash her teeth every day, too. What wouldshe think if she learned that he had never washed his teeth in allthe days of his life? He resolved to get a tooth-brush and formthe habit. He would begin at once, to-morrow. It was not by mereachievement that he could hope to win to her. He must make apersonal reform in all things, even to tooth-washing and neck-gear,though a starched collar affected him as a renunciation of freedom.He held up his hand, rubbing the ball of the thumb over thecalloused palm and gazing at the dirt that was ingrained in theflesh itself and which no brush could scrub away. How differentwas her palm! He thrilled deliciously at the remembrance. Like arose-petal, he thought; cool and soft as a snowflake. He had neverthought that a mere woman's hand could be so sweetly soft. Hecaught himself imagining the wonder of a caress from such a hand,and flushed guiltily. It was too gross a thought for her. In waysit seemed to impugn her high spirituality. She was a pale, slenderspirit, exalted far beyond the flesh; but nevertheless the softnessof her palm persisted in his thoughts. He was used to the harshcallousness of factory girls and working women. Well he knew whytheir hands were rough; but this hand of hers . . . It was softbecause she had never used it to work with. The gulf yawnedbetween her and him at the awesome thought of a person who did nothave to work for a living. He suddenly saw the aristocracy of thepeople who did not labor. It towered before him on the wall, afigure in brass, arrogant and powerful. He had worked himself; hisfirst memories seemed connected with work, and all his family hadworked. There was Gertrude. When her hands were not hard from theendless housework, they were swollen and red like boiled beef, whatof the washing. And there was his sister Marian. She had workedin the cannery the preceding summer, and her slim, pretty handswere all scarred with the tomato-knives. Besides, the tips of twoof her fingers had been left in the cutting machine at the paper-box factory the preceding winter. He remembered the hard palms ofhis mother as she lay in her coffin. And his father had worked tothe last fading gasp; the horned growth on his hands must have beenhalf an inch thick when he died. But Her hands were soft, and hermother's hands, and her brothers'. This last came to him as asurprise; it was tremendously indicative of the highness of theircaste, of the enormous distance that stretched between her and him.He sat back on the bed with a bitter laugh, and finished taking offhis shoes. He was a fool; he had been made drunken by a woman'sface and by a woman's soft, white hands. And then, suddenly,before his eyes, on the foul plaster-wall appeared a vision. Hestood in front of a gloomy tenement house. It was night-time, inthe East End of London, and before him stood Margey, a littlefactory girl of fifteen. He had seen her home after the bean-feast. She lived in that gloomy tenement, a place not fit forswine. His hand was going out to hers as he said good night. Shehad put her lips up to be kissed, but he wasn't going to kiss her.Somehow he was afraid of her. And then her hand closed on his andpressed feverishly. He felt her callouses grind and grate on his,and a great wave of pity welled over him. He saw her yearning,hungry eyes, and her ill-fed female form which had been rushed fromchildhood into a frightened and ferocious maturity; then he put hisarms about her in large tolerance and stooped and kissed her on thelips. Her glad little cry rang in his ears, and he felt herclinging to him like a cat. Poor little starveling! He continuedto stare at the vision of what had happened in the long ago. Hisflesh was crawling as it had crawled that night when she clung tohim, and his heart was warm with pity. It was a gray scene, greasygray, and the rain drizzled greasily on the pavement stones. Andthen a radiant glory shone on the wall, and up through the othervision, displacing it, glimmered Her pale face under its crown ofgolden hair, remote and inaccessible as a star.He took the Browning and the Swinburne from the chair and kissedthem. Just the same, she told me to call again, he thought. Hetook another look at himself in the glass, and said aloud, withgreat solemnity:-"Martin Eden, the first thing to-morrow you go to the free libraryan' read up on etiquette. Understand!"He turned off the gas, and the springs shrieked under his body."But you've got to quit cussin', Martin, old boy; you've got toquit cussin'," he said aloud.Then he dozed off to sleep and to dream dreams that for madness andaudacity rivalled those of poppy-eaters.