Chapter XIV

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

　　It was not because of Olney, but in spite of Ruth, and his love forRuth, that he finally decided not to take up Latin. His moneymeant time. There was so much that was more important than Latin,so many studies that clamored with imperious voices. And he mustwrite. He must earn money. He had had no acceptances. Twoscoreof manuscripts were travelling the endless round of the magazines.How did the others do it? He spent long hours in the free reading-room, going over what others had written, studying their workeagerly and critically, comparing it with his own, and wondering,wondering, about the secret trick they had discovered which enabledthem to sell their work.He was amazed at the immense amount of printed stuff that was dead.No light, no life, no color, was shot through it. There was nobreath of life in it, and yet it sold, at two cents a word, twentydollars a thousand - the newspaper clipping had said so. He waspuzzled by countless short stories, written lightly and cleverly heconfessed, but without vitality or reality. Life was so strangeand wonderful, filled with an immensity of problems, of dreams, andof heroic toils, and yet these stories dealt only with thecommonplaces of life. He felt the stress and strain of life, itsfevers and sweats and wild insurgences - surely this was the stuffto write about! He wanted to glorify the leaders of forlorn hopes,the mad lovers, the giants that fought under stress and strain,amid terror and tragedy, making life crackle with the strength oftheir endeavor. And yet the magazine short stories seemed intenton glorifying the Mr. Butlers, the sordid dollar-chasers, and thecommonplace little love affairs of commonplace little men andwomen. Was it because the editors of the magazines werecommonplace? he demanded. Or were they afraid of life, thesewriters and editors and readers?But his chief trouble was that he did not know any editors orwriters. And not merely did he not know any writers, but he didnot know anybody who had ever attempted to write. There was nobodyto tell him, to hint to him, to give him the least word of advice.He began to doubt that editors were real men. They seemed cogs ina machine. That was what it was, a machine. He poured his soulinto stories, articles, and poems, and intrusted them to themachine. He folded them just so, put the proper stamps inside thelong envelope along with the manuscript, sealed the envelope, putmore stamps outside, and dropped it into the mail-box. Ittravelled across the continent, and after a certain lapse of timethe postman returned him the manuscript in another long envelope,on the outside of which were the stamps he had enclosed. There wasno human editor at the other end, but a mere cunning arrangement ofcogs that changed the manuscript from one envelope to another andstuck on the stamps. It was like the slot machines wherein onedropped pennies, and, with a metallic whirl of machinery haddelivered to him a stick of chewing-gum or a tablet of chocolate.It depended upon which slot one dropped the penny in, whether hegot chocolate or gum. And so with the editorial machine. One slotbrought checks and the other brought rejection slips. So far hehad found only the latter slot.It was the rejection slips that completed the horriblemachinelikeness of the process. These slips were printed instereotyped forms and he had received hundreds of them - as many asa dozen or more on each of his earlier manuscripts. If he hadreceived one line, one personal line, along with one rejection ofall his rejections, he would have been cheered. But not one editorhad given that proof of existence. And he could conclude only thatthere were no warm human men at the other end, only mere cogs, welloiled and running beautifully in the machine.He was a good fighter, whole-souled and stubborn, and he would havebeen content to continue feeding the machine for years; but he wasbleeding to death, and not years but weeks would determine thefight. Each week his board bill brought him nearer destruction,while the postage on forty manuscripts bled him almost as severely.He no longer bought books, and he economized in petty ways andsought to delay the inevitable end; though he did not know how toeconomize, and brought the end nearer by a week when he gave hissister Marian five dollars for a dress.He struggled in the dark, without advice, without encouragement,and in the teeth of discouragement. Even Gertrude was beginning tolook askance. At first she had tolerated with sisterly fondnesswhat she conceived to be his foolishness; but now, out of sisterlysolicitude, she grew anxious. To her it seemed that hisfoolishness was becoming a madness. Martin knew this and sufferedmore keenly from it than from the open and nagging contempt ofBernard Higginbotham. Martin had faith in himself, but he wasalone in this faith. Not even Ruth had faith. She had wanted himto devote himself to study, and, though she had not openlydisapproved of his writing, she had never approved.He had never offered to show her his work. A fastidious delicacyhad prevented him. Besides, she had been studying heavily at theuniversity, and he felt averse to robbing her of her time. Butwhen she had taken her degree, she asked him herself to let her seesomething of what he had been doing. Martin was elated anddiffident. Here was a judge. She was a bachelor of arts. She hadstudied literature under skilled instructors. Perhaps the editorswere capable judges, too. But she would be different from them.She would not hand him a stereotyped rejection slip, nor would sheinform him that lack of preference for his work did not necessarilyimply lack of merit in his work. She would talk, a warm humanbeing, in her quick, bright way, and, most important of all, shewould catch glimpses of the real Martin Eden. In his work shewould discern what his heart and soul were like, and she would cometo understand something, a little something, of the stuff of hisdreams and the strength of his power.Martin gathered together a number of carbon copies of his shortstories, hesitated a moment, then added his "Sea Lyrics." Theymounted their wheels on a late June afternoon and rode for thehills. It was the second time he had been out with her alone, andas they rode along through the balmy warmth, just chilled by shesea-breeze to refreshing coolness, he was profoundly impressed bythe fact that it was a very beautiful and well-ordered world andthat it was good to be alive and to love. They left their wheelsby the roadside and climbed to the brown top of an open knoll wherethe sunburnt grass breathed a harvest breath of dry sweetness andcontent."Its work is done," Martin said, as they seated themselves, sheupon his coat, and he sprawling close to the warm earth. Hesniffed the sweetness of the tawny grass, which entered his brainand set his thoughts whirling on from the particular to theuniversal. "It has achieved its reason for existence," he went on,patting the dry grass affectionately. "It quickened with ambitionunder the dreary downpour of last winter, fought the violent earlyspring, flowered, and lured the insects and the bees, scattered itsseeds, squared itself with its duty and the world, and - ""Why do you always look at things with such dreadfully practicaleyes?" she interrupted."Because I've been studying evolution, I guess. It's only recentlythat I got my eyesight, if the truth were told.""But it seems to me you lose sight of beauty by being so practical,that you destroy beauty like the boys who catch butterflies and rubthe down off their beautiful wings."He shook his head."Beauty has significance, but I never knew its significance before.I just accepted beauty as something meaningless, as something thatwas just beautiful without rhyme or reason. I did not knowanything about beauty. But now I know, or, rather, am justbeginning to know. This grass is more beautiful to me now that Iknow why it is grass, and all the hidden chemistry of sun and rainand earth that makes it become grass. Why, there is romance in thelife-history of any grass, yes, and adventure, too. The verythought of it stirs me. When I think of the play of force andmatter, and all the tremendous struggle of it, I feel as if I couldwrite an epic on the grass."How well you talk," she said absently, and he noted that she waslooking at him in a searching way.He was all confusion and embarrassment on the instant, the bloodflushing red on his neck and brow."I hope I am learning to talk," he stammered. "There seems to beso much in me I want to say. But it is all so big. I can't findways to say what is really in me. Sometimes it seems to me thatall the world, all life, everything, had taken up residence insideof me and was clamoring for me to be the spokesman. I feel - oh, Ican't describe it - I feel the bigness of it, but when I speak, Ibabble like a little child. It is a great task to transmutefeeling and sensation into speech, written or spoken, that will, inturn, in him who reads or listens, transmute itself back into theselfsame feeling and sensation. It is a lordly task. See, I burymy face in the grass, and the breath I draw in through my nostrilssets me quivering with a thousand thoughts and fancies. It is abreath of the universe I have breathed. I know song and laughter,and success and pain, and struggle and death; and I see visionsthat arise in my brain somehow out of the scent of the grass, and Iwould like to tell them to you, to the world. But how can I? Mytongue is tied. I have tried, by the spoken word, just now, todescribe to you the effect on me of the scent of the grass. But Ihave not succeeded. I have no more than hinted in awkward speech.My words seem gibberish to me. And yet I am stifled with desire totell. Oh! - " he threw up his hands with a despairing gesture -"it is impossible! It is not understandable! It isincommunicable!""But you do talk well," she insisted. "Just think how you haveimproved in the short time I have known you. Mr. Butler is a notedpublic speaker. He is always asked by the State Committee to goout on stump during campaign. Yet you talked just as well as hethe other night at dinner. Only he was more controlled. You gettoo excited; but you will get over that with practice. Why, youwould make a good public speaker. You can go far - if you want to.You are masterly. You can lead men, I am sure, and there is noreason why you should not succeed at anything you set your hand to,just as you have succeeded with grammar. You would make a goodlawyer. You should shine in politics. There is nothing to preventyou from making as great a success as Mr. Butler has made. Andminus the dyspepsia," she added with a smile.They talked on; she, in her gently persistent way, returning alwaysto the need of thorough grounding in education and to theadvantages of Latin as part of the foundation for any career. Shedrew her ideal of the successful man, and it was largely in herfather's image, with a few unmistakable lines and touches of colorfrom the image of Mr. Butler. He listened eagerly, with receptiveears, lying on his back and looking up and joying in each movementof her lips as she talked. But his brain was not receptive. Therewas nothing alluring in the pictures she drew, and he was aware ofa dull pain of disappointment and of a sharper ache of love forher. In all she said there was no mention of his writing, and themanuscripts he had brought to read lay neglected on the ground.At last, in a pause, he glanced at the sun, measured its heightabove the horizon, and suggested his manuscripts by picking themup."I had forgotten," she said quickly. "And I am so anxious tohear."He read to her a story, one that he flattered himself was among hisvery best. He called it "The Wine of Life," and the wine of it,that had stolen into his brain when he wrote it, stole into hisbrain now as he read it. There was a certain magic in the originalconception, and he had adorned it with more magic of phrase andtouch. All the old fire and passion with which he had written itwere reborn in him, and he was swayed and swept away so that he wasblind and deaf to the faults of it. But it was not so with Ruth.Her trained ear detected the weaknesses and exaggerations, theoveremphasis of the tyro, and she was instantly aware each time thesentence-rhythm tripped and faltered. She scarcely noted therhythm otherwise, except when it became too pompous, at whichmoments she was disagreeably impressed with its amateurishness.That was her final judgment on the story as a whole - amateurish,though she did not tell him so. Instead, when he had done, shepointed out the minor flaws and said that she liked the story.But he was disappointed. Her criticism was just. He acknowledgedthat, but he had a feeling that he was not sharing his work withher for the purpose of schoolroom correction. The details did notmatter. They could take care of themselves. He could mend them,he could learn to mend them. Out of life he had captured somethingbig and attempted to imprison it in the story. It was the bigthing out of life he had read to her, not sentence-structure andsemicolons. He wanted her to feel with him this big thing that washis, that he had seen with his own eyes, grappled with his ownbrain, and placed there on the page with his own hands in printedwords. Well, he had failed, was his secret decision. Perhaps theeditors were right. He had felt the big thing, but he had failedto transmute it. He concealed his disappointment, and joined soeasily with her in her criticism that she did not realize that deepdown in him was running a strong undercurrent of disagreement."This next thing I've called 'The Pot'," he said, unfolding themanuscript. "It has been refused by four or five magazines now,but still I think it is good. In fact, I don't know what to thinkof it, except that I've caught something there. Maybe it won'taffect you as it does me. It's a short thing - only two thousandwords.""How dreadful!" she cried, when he had finished. "It is horrible,unutterably horrible!"He noted her pale face, her eyes wide and tense, and her clenchedhands, with secret satisfaction. He had succeeded. He hadcommunicated the stuff of fancy and feeling from out of his brain.It had struck home. No matter whether she liked it or not, it hadgripped her and mastered her, made her sit there and listen andforget details."It is life," he said, "and life is not always beautiful. And yet,perhaps because I am strangely made, I find something beautifulthere. It seems to me that the beauty is tenfold enhanced becauseit is there - ""But why couldn't the poor woman - " she broke in disconnectedly.Then she left the revolt of her thought unexpressed to cry out:"Oh! It is degrading! It is not nice! It is nasty!"For the moment it seemed to him that his heart stood still. Nasty!He had never dreamed it. He had not meant it. The whole sketchstood before him in letters of fire, and in such blaze ofillumination he sought vainly for nastiness. Then his heart beganto beat again. He was not guilty."Why didn't you select a nice subject?" she was saying. "We knowthere are nasty things in the world, but that is no reason - "She talked on in her indignant strain, but he was not followingher. He was smiling to himself as he looked up into her virginalface, so innocent, so penetratingly innocent, that its purityseemed always to enter into him, driving out of him all dross andbathing him in some ethereal effulgence that was as cool and softand velvety as starshine. We know there are nasty things in theworld! He cuddled to him the notion of her knowing, and chuckledover it as a love joke. The next moment, in a flashing vision ofmultitudinous detail, he sighted the whole sea of life's nastinessthat he had known and voyaged over and through, and he forgave herfor not understanding the story. It was through no fault of hersthat she could not understand. He thanked God that she had beenborn and sheltered to such innocence. But he knew life, itsfoulness as well as its fairness, its greatness in spite of theslime that infested it, and by God he was going to have his say onit to the world. Saints in heaven - how could they be anything butfair and pure? No praise to them. But saints in slime - ah, thatwas the everlasting wonder! That was what made life worth while.To see moral grandeur rising out of cesspools of iniquity; to risehimself and first glimpse beauty, faint and far, through mud-dripping eyes; to see out of weakness, and frailty, andviciousness, and all abysmal brutishness, arising strength, andtruth, and high spiritual endowment -He caught a stray sequence of sentences she was uttering."The tone of it all is low. And there is so much that is high.Take 'In Memoriam.'"He was impelled to suggest "Locksley Hall," and would have done so,had not his vision gripped him again and left him staring at her,the female of his kind, who, out of the primordial ferment,creeping and crawling up the vast ladder of life for a thousandthousand centuries, had emerged on the topmost rung, having becomeone Ruth, pure, and fair, and divine, and with power to make himknow love, and to aspire toward purity, and to desire to tastedivinity - him, Martin Eden, who, too, had come up in some amazingfashion from out of the ruck and the mire and the countlessmistakes and abortions of unending creation. There was theromance, and the wonder, and the glory. There was the stuff towrite, if he could only find speech. Saints in heaven! - They wereonly saints and could not help themselves. But he was a man."You have strength," he could hear her saying, "but it is untutoredstrength.""Like a bull in a china shop," he suggested, and won a smile."And you must develop discrimination. You must consult taste, andfineness, and tone.""I dare too much," he muttered.She smiled approbation, and settled herself to listen to anotherstory."I don't know what you'll make of this," he said apologetically."It's a funny thing. I'm afraid I got beyond my depth in it, butmy intentions were good. Don't bother about the little features ofit. Just see if you catch the feel of the big thing in it. It isbig, and it is true, though the chance is large that I have failedto make it intelligible."He read, and as he read he watched her. At last he had reachedher, he thought. She sat without movement, her eyes steadfast uponhim, scarcely breathing, caught up and out of herself, he thought,by the witchery of the thing he had created. He had entitled thestory "Adventure," and it was the apotheosis of adventure - not ofthe adventure of the storybooks, but of real adventure, the savagetaskmaster, awful of punishment and awful of reward, faithless andwhimsical, demanding terrible patience and heartbreaking days andnights of toil, offering the blazing sunlight glory or dark deathat the end of thirst and famine or of the long drag and monstrousdelirium of rotting fever, through blood and sweat and stinginginsects leading up by long chains of petty and ignoble contacts toroyal culminations and lordly achievements.It was this, all of it, and more, that he had put into his story,and it was this, he believed, that warmed her as she sat andlistened. Her eyes were wide, color was in her pale cheeks, andbefore he finished it seemed to him that she was almost panting.Truly, she was warmed; but she was warmed, not by the story, but byhim. She did not think much of the story; it was Martin'sintensity of power, the old excess of strength that seemed to pourfrom his body and on and over her. The paradox of it was that itwas the story itself that was freighted with his power, that wasthe channel, for the time being, through which his strength pouredout to her. She was aware only of the strength, and not of themedium, and when she seemed most carried away by what he hadwritten, in reality she had been carried away by something quiteforeign to it - by a thought, terrible and perilous, that hadformed itself unsummoned in her brain. She had caught herselfwondering what marriage was like, and the becoming conscious of thewaywardness and ardor of the thought had terrified her. It wasunmaidenly. It was not like her. She had never been tormented bywomanhood, and she had lived in a dreamland of Tennysonian poesy,dense even to the full significance of that delicate master'sdelicate allusions to the grossnesses that intrude upon therelations of queens and knights. She had been asleep, always, andnow life was thundering imperatively at all her doors. Mentallyshe was in a panic to shoot the bolts and drop the bars into place,while wanton instincts urged her to throw wide her portals and bidthe deliciously strange visitor to enter in.Martin waited with satisfaction for her verdict. He had no doubtof what it would be, and he was astounded when he heard her say:"It is beautiful.""It is beautiful," she repeated, with emphasis, after a pause.Of course it was beautiful; but there was something more than merebeauty in it, something more stingingly splendid which had madebeauty its handmaiden. He sprawled silently on the ground,watching the grisly form of a great doubt rising before him. Hehad failed. He was inarticulate. He had seen one of the greatestthings in the world, and he had not expressed it."What did you think of the - " He hesitated, abashed at his firstattempt to use a strange word. "Of the motif?" he asked."It was confused," she answered. "That is my only criticism in thelarge way. I followed the story, but there seemed so much else.It is too wordy. You clog the action by introducing so muchextraneous material.""That was the major motif," he hurriedly explained, "the bigunderrunning motif, the cosmic and universal thing. I tried tomake it keep time with the story itself, which was only superficialafter all. I was on the right scent, but I guess I did it badly.I did not succeed in suggesting what I was driving at. But I'lllearn in time."She did not follow him. She was a bachelor of arts, but he hadgone beyond her limitations. This she did not comprehend,attributing her incomprehension to his incoherence."You were too voluble," she said. "But it was beautiful, inplaces."He heard her voice as from far off, for he was debating whether hewould read her the "Sea Lyrics." He lay in dull despair, while shewatched him searchingly, pondering again upon unsummoned andwayward thoughts of marriage."You want to be famous?" she asked abruptly."Yes, a little bit," he confessed. "That is part of the adventure.It is not the being famous, but the process of becoming so, thatcounts. And after all, to be famous would be, for me, only a meansto something else. I want to be famous very much, for that matter,and for that reason.""For your sake," he wanted to add, and might have added had sheproved enthusiastic over what he had read to her.But she was too busy in her mind, carving out a career for him thatwould at least be possible, to ask what the ultimate something waswhich he had hinted at. There was no career for him in literature.Of that she was convinced. He had proved it to-day, with hisamateurish and sophomoric productions. He could talk well, but hewas incapable of expressing himself in a literary way. Shecompared Tennyson, and Browning, and her favorite prose masterswith him, and to his hopeless discredit. Yet she did not tell himher whole mind. Her strange interest in him led her to temporize.His desire to write was, after all, a little weakness which hewould grow out of in time. Then he would devote himself to themore serious affairs of life. And he would succeed, too. She knewthat. He was so strong that he could not fail - if only he woulddrop writing."I wish you would show me all you write, Mr. Eden," she said.He flushed with pleasure. She was interested, that much was sure.And at least she had not given him a rejection slip. She hadcalled certain portions of his work beautiful, and that was thefirst encouragement he had ever received from any one."I will," he said passionately. "And I promise you, Miss Morse,that I will make good. I have come far, I know that; and I havefar to go, and I will cover it if I have to do it on my hands andknees." He held up a bunch of manuscript. "Here are the 'SeaLyrics.' When you get home, I'll turn them over to you to read atyour leisure. And you must be sure to tell me just what you thinkof them. What I need, you know, above all things, is criticism.And do, please, be frank with me.""I will be perfectly frank," she promised, with an uneasyconviction that she had not been frank with him and with a doubt ifshe could be quite frank with him the next time.