Chapter XL

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

　　"Overdue" still continued to lie forgotten on the table. Everymanuscript that he had had out now lay under the table. Only onemanuscript he kept going, and that was Brissenden's "Ephemera."His bicycle and black suit were again in pawn, and the type-writerpeople were once more worrying about the rent. But such things nolonger bothered him. He was seeking a new orientation, and untilthat was found his life must stand still.After several weeks, what he had been waiting for happened. He metRuth on the street. It was true, she was accompanied by herbrother, Norman, and it was true that they tried to ignore him andthat Norman attempted to wave him aside."If you interfere with my sister, I'll call an officer," Normanthreatened. "She does not wish to speak with you, and yourinsistence is insult.""If you persist, you'll have to call that officer, and then you'llget your name in the papers," Martin answered grimly. "And now,get out of my way and get the officer if you want to. I'm going totalk with Ruth.""I want to have it from your own lips," he said to her.She was pale and trembling, but she held up and looked inquiringly."The question I asked in my letter," he prompted.Norman made an impatient movement, but Martin checked him with aswift look.She shook her head."Is all this of your own free will?" he demanded."It is." She spoke in a low, firm voice and with deliberation."It is of my own free will. You have disgraced me so that I amashamed to meet my friends. They are all talking about me, I know.That is all I can tell you. You have made me very unhappy, and Inever wish to see you again.""Friends! Gossip! Newspaper misreports! Surely such things arenot stronger than love! I can only believe that you never lovedme."A blush drove the pallor from her face."After what has passed?" she said faintly. "Martin, you do notknow what you are saying. I am not common.""You see, she doesn't want to have anything to do with you," Normanblurted out, starting on with her.Martin stood aside and let them pass, fumbling unconsciously in hiscoat pocket for the tobacco and brown papers that were not there.It was a long walk to North Oakland, but it was not until he wentup the steps and entered his room that he knew he had walked it.He found himself sitting on the edge of the bed and staring abouthim like an awakened somnambulist. He noticed "Overdue" lying onthe table and drew up his chair and reached for his pen. There wasin his nature a logical compulsion toward completeness. Here wassomething undone. It had been deferred against the completion ofsomething else. Now that something else had been finished, and hewould apply himself to this task until it was finished. What hewould do next he did not know. All that he did know was that aclimacteric in his life had been attained. A period had beenreached, and he was rounding it off in workman-like fashion. Hewas not curious about the future. He would soon enough find outwhat it held in store for him. Whatever it was, it did not matter.Nothing seemed to matter.For five days he toiled on at "Overdue," going nowhere, seeingnobody, and eating meagrely. On the morning of the sixth day thepostman brought him a thin letter from the editor of The Parthenon.A glance told him that "Ephemera" was accepted. "We have submittedthe poem to Mr. Cartwright Bruce," the editor went on to say, "andhe has reported so favorably upon it that we cannot let it go. Asan earnest of our pleasure in publishing the poem, let me tell youthat we have set it for the August number, our July number beingalready made up. Kindly extend our pleasure and our thanks to Mr.Brissenden. Please send by return mail his photograph andbiographical data. If our honorarium is unsatisfactory, kindlytelegraph us at once and state what you consider a fair price."Since the honorarium they had offered was three hundred and fiftydollars, Martin thought it not worth while to telegraph. Then,too, there was Brissenden's consent to be gained. Well, he hadbeen right, after all. Here was one magazine editor who knew realpoetry when he saw it. And the price was splendid, even though itwas for the poem of a century. As for Cartwright Bruce, Martinknew that he was the one critic for whose opinions Brissenden hadany respect.Martin rode down town on an electric car, and as he watched thehouses and cross-streets slipping by he was aware of a regret thathe was not more elated over his friend's success and over his ownsignal victory. The one critic in the United States had pronouncedfavorably on the poem, while his own contention that good stuffcould find its way into the magazines had proved correct. Butenthusiasm had lost its spring in him, and he found that he wasmore anxious to see Brissenden than he was to carry the good news.The acceptance of The Parthenon had recalled to him that during hisfive days' devotion to "Overdue" he had not heard from Brissendennor even thought about him. For the first time Martin realized thedaze he had been in, and he felt shame for having forgotten hisfriend. But even the shame did not burn very sharply. He was numbto emotions of any sort save the artistic ones concerned in thewriting of "Overdue." So far as other affairs were concerned, hehad been in a trance. For that matter, he was still in a trance.All this life through which the electric car whirred seemed remoteand unreal, and he would have experienced little interest and lessshook if the great stone steeple of the church he passed hadsuddenly crumbled to mortar-dust upon his head.At the hotel he hurried up to Brissenden's room, and hurried downagain. The room was empty. All luggage was gone."Did Mr. Brissenden leave any address?" he asked the clerk, wholooked at him curiously for a moment."Haven't you heard?" he asked.Martin shook his head."Why, the papers were full of it. He was found dead in bed.Suicide. Shot himself through the head.""Is he buried yet?" Martin seemed to hear his voice, like some oneelse's voice, from a long way off, asking the question."No. The body was shipped East after the inquest. Lawyers engagedby his people saw to the arrangements.""They were quick about it, I must say," Martin commented."Oh, I don't know. It happened five days ago.""Five days ago?""Yes, five days ago.""Oh," Martin said as he turned and went out.At the corner he stepped into the Western Union and sent a telegramto The Parthenon, advising them to proceed with the publication ofthe poem. He had in his pocket but five cents with which to payhis carfare home, so he sent the message collect.Once in his room, he resumed his writing. The days and nights cameand went, and he sat at his table and wrote on. He went nowhere,save to the pawnbroker, took no exercise, and ate methodically whenhe was hungry and had something to cook, and just as methodicallywent without when he had nothing to cook. Composed as the storywas, in advance, chapter by chapter, he nevertheless saw anddeveloped an opening that increased the power of it, though itnecessitated twenty thousand additional words. It was not thatthere was any vital need that the thing should be well done, butthat his artistic canons compelled him to do it well. He worked onin the daze, strangely detached from the world around him, feelinglike a familiar ghost among these literary trappings of his formerlife. He remembered that some one had said that a ghost was thespirit of a man who was dead and who did not have sense enough toknow it; and he paused for the moment to wonder if he were reallydead did unaware of it.Came the day when "Overdue" was finished. The agent of the type-writer firm had come for the machine, and he sat on the bed whileMartin, on the one chair, typed the last pages of the finalchapter. "Finis," he wrote, in capitals, at the end, and to him itwas indeed finis. He watched the type-writer carried out the doorwith a feeling of relief, then went over and lay down on the bed.He was faint from hunger. Food had not passed his lips in thirty-six hours, but he did not think about it. He lay on his back, withclosed eyes, and did not think at all, while the daze or stuporslowly welled up, saturating his consciousness. Half in delirium,he began muttering aloud the lines of an anonymous poem Brissendenhad been fond of quoting to him. Maria, listening anxiouslyoutside his door, was perturbed by his monotonous utterance. Thewords in themselves were not significant to her, but the fact thathe was saying them was. "I have done," was the burden of the poem."'I have done -Put by the lute.Song and singing soon are overAs the airy shades that hoverIn among the purple clover.I have done -Put by the lute.Once I sang as early thrushesSing among the dewy bushes;Now I'm mute.I am like a weary linnet,For my throat has no song in it;I have had my singing minute.I have done.Put by the lute.'"Maria could stand it no longer, and hurried away to the stove,where she filled a quart-bowl with soup, putting into it the lion'sshare of chopped meat and vegetables which her ladle scraped fromthe bottom of the pot. Martin roused himself and sat up and beganto eat, between spoonfuls reassuring Maria that he had not beentalking in his sleep and that he did not have any fever.After she left him he sat drearily, with drooping shoulders, on theedge of the bed, gazing about him with lack-lustre eyes that sawnothing until the torn wrapper of a magazine, which had come in themorning's mail and which lay unopened, shot a gleam of light intohis darkened brain. It is The Parthenon, he thought, the AugustParthenon, and it must contain "Ephemera." If only Brissenden werehere to see!He was turning the pages of the magazine, when suddenly he stopped."Ephemera" had been featured, with gorgeous head-piece andBeardsley-like margin decorations. On one side of the head-piecewas Brissenden's photograph, on the other side was the photographof Sir John Value, the British Ambassador. A preliminary editorialnote quoted Sir John Value as saying that there were no poets inAmerica, and the publication of "Ephemera" was The Parthenon's."There, take that, Sir John Value!" Cartwright Bruce was describedas the greatest critic in America, and he was quoted as saying that"Ephemera" was the greatest poem ever written in America. Andfinally, the editor's foreword ended with: "We have not yet madeup our minds entirely as to the merits of "Ephemera"; perhaps weshall never be able to do so. But we have read it often, wonderingat the words and their arrangement, wondering where Mr. Brissendengot them, and how he could fasten them together." Then followedthe poem."Pretty good thing you died, Briss, old man," Martin murmured,letting the magazine slip between his knees to the floor.The cheapness and vulgarity of it was nauseating, and Martin notedapathetically that he was not nauseated very much. He wished hecould get angry, but did not have energy enough to try. He was toonumb. His blood was too congealed to accelerate to the swift tidalflow of indignation. After all, what did it matter? It was on apar with all the rest that Brissenden had condemned in bourgeoissociety."Poor Briss," Martin communed; "he would never have forgiven me."Rousing himself with an effort, he possessed himself of a box whichhad once contained type-writer paper. Going through its contents,he drew forth eleven poems which his friend had written. These hetore lengthwise and crosswise and dropped into the waste basket.He did it languidly, and, when he had finished, sat on the edge ofthe bed staring blankly before him.How long he sat there he did not know, until, suddenly, across hissightless vision he saw form a long horizontal line of white. Itwas curious. But as he watched it grow in definiteness he saw thatit was a coral reef smoking in the white Pacific surges. Next, inthe line of breakers he made out a small canoe, an outrigger canoe.In the stern he saw a young bronzed god in scarlet hip-clothdipping a flashing paddle. He recognized him. He was Moti, theyoungest son of Tati, the chief, and this was Tahiti, and beyondthat smoking reef lay the sweet land of Papara and the chief'sgrass house by the river's mouth. It was the end of the day, andMoti was coming home from the fishing. He was waiting for the rushof a big breaker whereon to jump the reef. Then he saw himself,sitting forward in the canoe as he had often sat in the past,dipping a paddle that waited Moti's word to dig in like mad whenthe turquoise wall of the great breaker rose behind them. Next, hewas no longer an onlooker but was himself in the canoe, Moti wascrying out, they were both thrusting hard with their paddles,racing on the steep face of the flying turquoise. Under the bowthe water was hissing as from a steam jet, the air was filled withdriven spray, there was a rush and rumble and long-echoing roar,and the canoe floated on the placid water of the lagoon. Motilaughed and shook the salt water from his eyes, and together theypaddled in to the pounded-coral beach where Tati's grass wallsthrough the cocoanut-palms showed golden in the setting sun.The picture faded, and before his eyes stretched the disorder ofhis squalid room. He strove in vain to see Tahiti again. He knewthere was singing among the trees and that the maidens were dancingin the moonlight, but he could not see them. He could see only thelittered writing-table, the empty space where the type-writer hadstood, and the unwashed window-pane. He closed his eyes with agroan, and slept.