Chapter XI

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

　　Martin went back to his pearl-diving article, which would have beenfinished sooner if it had not been broken in upon so frequently byhis attempts to write poetry. His poems were love poems, inspiredby Ruth, but they were never completed. Not in a day could helearn to chant in noble verse. Rhyme and metre and structure wereserious enough in themselves, but there was, over and beyond them,an intangible and evasive something that he caught in all greatpoetry, but which he could not catch and imprison in his own. Itwas the elusive spirit of poetry itself that he sensed and soughtafter but could not capture. It seemed a glow to him, a warm andtrailing vapor, ever beyond his reaching, though sometimes he wasrewarded by catching at shreds of it and weaving them into phrasesthat echoed in his brain with haunting notes or drifted across hisvision in misty wafture of unseen beauty. It was baffling. Heached with desire to express and could but gibber prosaically aseverybody gibbered. He read his fragments aloud. The metremarched along on perfect feet, and the rhyme pounded a longer andequally faultless rhythm, but the glow and high exaltation that hefelt within were lacking. He could not understand, and time andagain, in despair, defeated and depressed, he returned to hisarticle. Prose was certainly an easier medium.Following the "Pearl-diving," he wrote an article on the sea as acareer, another on turtle-catching, and a third on the northeasttrades. Then he tried, as an experiment, a short story, and beforehe broke his stride he had finished six short stories anddespatched them to various magazines. He wrote prolifically,intensely, from morning till night, and late at night, except whenhe broke off to go to the reading-room, draw books from thelibrary, or to call on Ruth. He was profoundly happy. Life waspitched high. He was in a fever that never broke. The joy ofcreation that is supposed to belong to the gods was his. All thelife about him - the odors of stale vegetables and soapsuds, theslatternly form of his sister, and the jeering face of Mr.Higginbotham - was a dream. The real world was in his mind, andthe stories he wrote were so many pieces of reality out of hismind.The days were too short. There was so much he wanted to study. Hecut his sleep down to five hours and found that he could get alongupon it. He tried four hours and a half, and regretfully came backto five. He could joyfully have spent all his waking hours uponany one of his pursuits. It was with regret that he ceased fromwriting to study, that he ceased from study to go to the library,that he tore himself away from that chart-room of knowledge or fromthe magazines in the reading-room that were filled with the secretsof writers who succeeded in selling their wares. It was likesevering heart strings, when he was with Ruth, to stand up and go;and he scorched through the dark streets so as to get home to hisbooks at the least possible expense of time. And hardest of allwas it to shut up the algebra or physics, put note-book and pencilaside, and close his tired eyes in sleep. He hated the thought ofceasing to live, even for so short a time, and his sole consolationwas that the alarm clock was set five hours ahead. He would loseonly five hours anyway, and then the jangling bell would jerk himout of unconsciousness and he would have before him anotherglorious day of nineteen hours.In the meantime the weeks were passing, his money was ebbing low,and there was no money coming in. A month after he had mailed it,the adventure serial for boys was returned to him by The Youth'sCompanion. The rejection slip was so tactfully worded that he feltkindly toward the editor. But he did not feel so kindly toward theeditor of the San Francisco Examiner. After waiting two wholeweeks, Martin had written to him. A week later he wrote again. Atthe end of the month, he went over to San Francisco and personallycalled upon the editor. But he did not meet that exaltedpersonage, thanks to a Cerberus of an office boy, of tender yearsand red hair, who guarded the portals. At the end of the fifthweek the manuscript came back to him, by mail, without comment.There was no rejection slip, no explanation, nothing. In the sameway his other articles were tied up with the other leading SanFrancisco papers. When he recovered them, he sent them to themagazines in the East, from which they were returned more promptly,accompanied always by the printed rejection slips.The short stories were returned in similar fashion. He read themover and over, and liked them so much that he could not puzzle outthe cause of their rejection, until, one day, he read in anewspaper that manuscripts should always be typewritten. Thatexplained it. Of course editors were so busy that they could notafford the time and strain of reading handwriting. Martin rented atypewriter and spent a day mastering the machine. Each day hetyped what he composed, and he typed his earlier manuscripts asfast as they were returned him. He was surprised when the typedones began to come back. His jaw seemed to become squarer, hischin more aggressive, and he bundled the manuscripts off to neweditors.The thought came to him that he was not a good judge of his ownwork. He tried it out on Gertrude. He read his stories aloud toher. Her eyes glistened, and she looked at him proudly as shesaid:-"Ain't it grand, you writin' those sort of things.""Yes, yes," he demanded impatiently. "But the story - how did youlike it?""Just grand," was the reply. "Just grand, an' thrilling, too. Iwas all worked up."He could see that her mind was not clear. The perplexity wasstrong in her good-natured face. So he waited."But, say, Mart," after a long pause, "how did it end? Did thatyoung man who spoke so highfalutin' get her?"And, after he had explained the end, which he thought he had madeartistically obvious, she would say:-"That's what I wanted to know. Why didn't you write that way inthe story?"One thing he learned, after he had read her a number of stories,namely, that she liked happy endings."That story was perfectly grand," she announced, straightening upfrom the wash-tub with a tired sigh and wiping the sweat from herforehead with a red, steamy hand; "but it makes me sad. I want tocry. There is too many sad things in the world anyway. It makesme happy to think about happy things. Now if he'd married her, and- You don't mind, Mart?" she queried apprehensively. "I justhappen to feel that way, because I'm tired, I guess. But the storywas grand just the same, perfectly grand. Where are you goin' tosell it?""That's a horse of another color," he laughed."But if you did sell it, what do you think you'd get for it?""Oh, a hundred dollars. That would be the least, the way pricesgo.""My! I do hope you'll sell it!""Easy money, eh?" Then he added proudly: "I wrote it in two days.That's fifty dollars a day."He longed to read his stories to Ruth, but did not dare. He wouldwait till some were published, he decided, then she wouldunderstand what he had been working for. In the meantime he toiledon. Never had the spirit of adventure lured him more strongly thanon this amazing exploration of the realm of mind. He bought thetext-books on physics and chemistry, and, along with his algebra,worked out problems and demonstrations. He took the laboratoryproofs on faith, and his intense power of vision enabled him to seethe reactions of chemicals more understandingly than the averagestudent saw them in the laboratory. Martin wandered on through theheavy pages, overwhelmed by the clews he was getting to the natureof things. He had accepted the world as the world, but now he wascomprehending the organization of it, the play and interplay offorce and matter. Spontaneous explanations of old matters werecontinually arising in his mind. Levers and purchases fascinatedhim, and his mind roved backward to hand-spikes and blocks andtackles at sea. The theory of navigation, which enabled the shipsto travel unerringly their courses over the pathless ocean, wasmade clear to him. The mysteries of storm, and rain, and tide wererevealed, and the reason for the existence of trade-winds made himwonder whether he had written his article on the northeast tradetoo soon. At any rate he knew he could write it better now. Oneafternoon he went out with Arthur to the University of California,and, with bated breath and a feeling of religious awe, went throughthe laboratories, saw demonstrations, and listened to a physicsprofessor lecturing to his classes.But he did not neglect his writing. A stream of short storiesflowed from his pen, and he branched out into the easier forms ofverse - the kind he saw printed in the magazines - though he losthis head and wasted two weeks on a tragedy in blank verse, theswift rejection of which, by half a dozen magazines, dumfoundedhim. Then he discovered Henley and wrote a series of sea-poems onthe model of "Hospital Sketches." They were simple poems, of lightand color, and romance and adventure. "Sea Lyrics," he calledthem, and he judged them to be the best work he had yet done.There were thirty, and he completed them in a month, doing one aday after having done his regular day's work on fiction, whichday's work was the equivalent to a week's work of the averagesuccessful writer. The toil meant nothing to him. It was nottoil. He was finding speech, and all the beauty and wonder thathad been pent for years behind his inarticulate lips was nowpouring forth in a wild and virile flood.He showed the "Sea Lyrics" to no one, not even to the editors. Hehad become distrustful of editors. But it was not distrust thatprevented him from submitting the "Lyrics." They were so beautifulto him that he was impelled to save them to share with Ruth in someglorious, far-off time when he would dare to read to her what hehad written. Against that time he kept them with him, reading themaloud, going over them until he knew them by heart.He lived every moment of his waking hours, and he lived in hissleep, his subjective mind rioting through his five hours ofsurcease and combining the thoughts and events of the day intogrotesque and impossible marvels. In reality, he never rested, anda weaker body or a less firmly poised brain would have beenprostrated in a general break-down. His late afternoon calls onRuth were rarer now, for June was approaching, when she would takeher degree and finish with the university. Bachelor of Arts! -when he thought of her degree, it seemed she fled beyond him fasterthan he could pursue.One afternoon a week she gave to him, and arriving late, he usuallystayed for dinner and for music afterward. Those were his red-letter days. The atmosphere of the house, in such contrast withthat in which he lived, and the mere nearness to her, sent himforth each time with a firmer grip on his resolve to climb theheights. In spite of the beauty in him, and the aching desire tocreate, it was for her that he struggled. He was a lover first andalways. All other things he subordinated to love.Greater than his adventure in the world of thought was his love-adventure. The world itself was not so amazing because of theatoms and molecules that composed it according to the propulsionsof irresistible force; what made it amazing was the fact that Ruthlived in it. She was the most amazing thing he had ever known, ordreamed, or guessed.But he was oppressed always by her remoteness. She was so far fromhim, and he did not know how to approach her. He had been asuccess with girls and women in his own class; but he had neverloved any of them, while he did love her, and besides, she was notmerely of another class. His very love elevated her above allclasses. She was a being apart, so far apart that he did not knowhow to draw near to her as a lover should draw near. It was true,as he acquired knowledge and language, that he was drawing nearer,talking her speech, discovering ideas and delights in common; butthis did not satisfy his lover's yearning. His lover's imaginationhad made her holy, too holy, too spiritualized, to have any kinshipwith him in the flesh. It was his own love that thrust her fromhim and made her seem impossible for him. Love itself denied himthe one thing that it desired.And then, one day, without warning, the gulf between them wasbridged for a moment, and thereafter, though the gulf remained, itwas ever narrower. They had been eating cherries - great,luscious, black cherries with a juice of the color of dark wine.And later, as she read aloud to him from "The Princess," he chancedto notice the stain of the cherries on her lips. For the momenther divinity was shattered. She was clay, after all, mere clay,subject to the common law of clay as his clay was subject, oranybody's clay. Her lips were flesh like his, and cherries dyedthem as cherries dyed his. And if so with her lips, then was it sowith all of her. She was woman, all woman, just like any woman.It came upon him abruptly. It was a revelation that stunned him.It was as if he had seen the sun fall out of the sky, or had seenworshipped purity polluted.Then he realized the significance of it, and his heart beganpounding and challenging him to play the lover with this woman whowas not a spirit from other worlds but a mere woman with lips acherry could stain. He trembled at the audacity of his thought;but all his soul was singing, and reason, in a triumphant paean,assured him he was right. Something of this change in him musthave reached her, for she paused from her reading, looked up athim, and smiled. His eyes dropped from her blue eyes to her lips,and the sight of the stain maddened him. His arms all but flashedout to her and around her, in the way of his old careless life.She seemed to lean toward him, to wait, and all his will fought tohold him back."You were not following a word," she pouted.Then she laughed at him, delighting in his confusion, and as helooked into her frank eyes and knew that she had divined nothing ofwhat he felt, he became abashed. He had indeed in thought daredtoo far. Of all the women he had known there was no woman whowould not have guessed - save her. And she had not guessed. Therewas the difference. She was different. He was appalled by his owngrossness, awed by her clear innocence, and he gazed again at heracross the gulf. The bridge had broken down.But still the incident had brought him nearer. The memory of itpersisted, and in the moments when he was most cast down, he dweltupon it eagerly. The gulf was never again so wide. He hadaccomplished a distance vastly greater than a bachelorship of arts,or a dozen bachelorships. She was pure, it was true, as he hadnever dreamed of purity; but cherries stained her lips. She wassubject to the laws of the universe just as inexorably as he was.She had to eat to live, and when she got her feet wet, she caughtcold. But that was not the point. If she could feel hunger andthirst, and heat and cold, then could she feel love - and love fora man. Well, he was a man. And why could he not be the man?"It's up to me to make good," he would murmur fervently. "I willbe the man. I will make myself the man. I will make good."