Chapter XX

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

　　The desire to write was stirring in Martin once more. Stories andpoems were springing into spontaneous creation in his brain, and hemade notes of them against the future time when he would give themexpression. But he did not write. This was his little vacation;he had resolved to devote it to rest and love, and in both mattershe prospered. He was soon spilling over with vitality, and eachday he saw Ruth, at the moment of meeting, she experienced the oldshock of his strength and health."Be careful," her mother warned her once again. "I am afraid youare seeing too much of Martin Eden."But Ruth laughed from security. She was sure of herself, and in afew days he would be off to sea. Then, by the time he returned,she would be away on her visit East. There was a magic, however,in the strength and health of Martin. He, too, had been told ofher contemplated Eastern trip, and he felt the need for haste. Yethe did not know how to make love to a girl like Ruth. Then, too,he was handicapped by the possession of a great fund of experiencewith girls and women who had been absolutely different from her.They had known about love and life and flirtation, while she knewnothing about such things. Her prodigious innocence appalled him,freezing on his lips all ardors of speech, and convincing him, inspite of himself, of his own unworthiness. Also he was handicappedin another way. He had himself never been in love before. He hadliked women in that turgid past of his, and been fascinated by someof them, but he had not known what it was to love them. He hadwhistled in a masterful, careless way, and they had come to him.They had been diversions, incidents, part of the game men play, buta small part at most. And now, and for the first time, he was asuppliant, tender and timid and doubting. He did not know the wayof love, nor its speech, while he was frightened at his loved one'sclear innocence.In the course of getting acquainted with a varied world, whirlingon through the ever changing phases of it, he had learned a rule ofconduct which was to the effect that when one played a strangegame, he should let the other fellow play first. This had stoodhim in good stead a thousand times and trained him as an observeras well. He knew how to watch the thing that was strange, and towait for a weakness, for a place of entrance, to divulge itself.It was like sparring for an opening in fist-fighting. And whensuch an opening came, he knew by long experience to play for it andto play hard.So he waited with Ruth and watched, desiring to speak his love butnot daring. He was afraid of shocking her, and he was not sure ofhimself. Had he but known it, he was following the right coursewith her. Love came into the world before articulate speech, andin its own early youth it had learned ways and means that it hadnever forgotten. It was in this old, primitive way that Martinwooed Ruth. He did not know he was doing it at first, though laterhe divined it. The touch of his hand on hers was vastly morepotent than any word he could utter, the impact of his strength onher imagination was more alluring than the printed poems and spokenpassions of a thousand generations of lovers. Whatever his tonguecould express would have appealed, in part, to her judgment; butthe touch of hand, the fleeting contact, made its way directly toher instinct. Her judgment was as young as she, but her instinctswere as old as the race and older. They had been young when lovewas young, and they were wiser than convention and opinion and allthe new-born things. So her judgment did not act. There was nocall upon it, and she did not realize the strength of the appealMartin made from moment to moment to her love-nature. That heloved her, on the other hand, was as clear as day, and sheconsciously delighted in beholding his love-manifestations - theglowing eyes with their tender lights, the trembling hands, and thenever failing swarthy flush that flooded darkly under his sunburn.She even went farther, in a timid way inciting him, but doing it sodelicately that he never suspected, and doing it half-consciously,so that she scarcely suspected herself. She thrilled with theseproofs of her power that proclaimed her a woman, and she took anEve-like delight in tormenting him and playing upon him.Tongue-tied by inexperience and by excess of ardor, wooingunwittingly and awkwardly, Martin continued his approach bycontact. The touch of his hand was pleasant to her, and somethingdeliciously more than pleasant. Martin did not know it, but he didknow that it was not distasteful to her. Not that they touchedhands often, save at meeting and parting; but that in handling thebicycles, in strapping on the books of verse they carried into thehills, and in conning the pages of books side by side, there wereopportunities for hand to stray against hand. And there wereopportunities, too, for her hair to brush his cheek, and forshoulder to touch shoulder, as they leaned together over the beautyof the books. She smiled to herself at vagrant impulses whicharose from nowhere and suggested that she rumple his hair; while hedesired greatly, when they tired of reading, to rest his head inher lap and dream with closed eyes about the future that was to betheirs. On Sunday picnics at Shellmound Park and Schuetzen Park,in the past, he had rested his head on many laps, and, usually, hehad slept soundly and selfishly while the girls shaded his facefrom the sun and looked down and loved him and wondered at hislordly carelessness of their love. To rest his head in a girl'slap had been the easiest thing in the world until now, and now hefound Ruth's lap inaccessible and impossible. Yet it was righthere, in his reticence, that the strength of his wooing lay. Itwas because of this reticence that he never alarmed her. Herselffastidious and timid, she never awakened to the perilous trend oftheir intercourse. Subtly and unaware she grew toward him andcloser to him, while he, sensing the growing closeness, longed todare but was afraid.Once he dared, one afternoon, when he found her in the darkenedliving room with a blinding headache."Nothing can do it any good," she had answered his inquiries. "Andbesides, I don't take headache powders. Doctor Hall won't permitme.""I can cure it, I think, and without drugs," was Martin's answer."I am not sure, of course, but I'd like to try. It's simplymassage. I learned the trick first from the Japanese. They are arace of masseurs, you know. Then I learned it all over again withvariations from the Hawaiians. They call it lomi-lomi. It canaccomplish most of the things drugs accomplish and a few thingsthat drugs can't."Scarcely had his hands touched her head when she sighed deeply."That is so good," she said.She spoke once again, half an hour later, when she asked, "Aren'tyou tired?"The question was perfunctory, and she knew what the answer wouldbe. Then she lost herself in drowsy contemplation of the soothingbalm of his strength: Life poured from the ends of his fingers,driving the pain before it, or so it seemed to her, until with theeasement of pain, she fell asleep and he stole away.She called him up by telephone that evening to thank him."I slept until dinner," she said. "You cured me completely, Mr.Eden, and I don't know how to thank you."He was warm, and bungling of speech, and very happy, as he repliedto her, and there was dancing in his mind, throughout the telephoneconversation, the memory of Browning and of sickly ElizabethBarrett. What had been done could be done again, and he, MartinEden, could do it and would do it for Ruth Morse. He went back tohis room and to the volume of Spencer's "Sociology" lying open onthe bed. But he could not read. Love tormented him and overrodehis will, so that, despite all determination, he found himself atthe little ink-stained table. The sonnet he composed that nightwas the first of a love-cycle of fifty sonnets which was completedwithin two months. He had the "Love-sonnets from the Portuguese"in mind as he wrote, and he wrote under the best conditions forgreat work, at a climacteric of living, in the throes of his ownsweet love-madness.The many hours he was not with Ruth he devoted to the "Love-cycle,"to reading at home, or to the public reading-rooms, where he gotmore closely in touch with the magazines of the day and the natureof their policy and content. The hours he spent with Ruth weremaddening alike in promise and in inconclusiveness. It was a weekafter he cured her headache that a moonlight sail on Lake Merrittwas proposed by Norman and seconded by Arthur and Olney. Martinwas the only one capable of handling a boat, and he was pressedinto service. Ruth sat near him in the stern, while the threeyoung fellows lounged amidships, deep in a wordy wrangle over"frat" affairs.The moon had not yet risen, and Ruth, gazing into the starry vaultof the sky and exchanging no speech with Martin, experienced asudden feeling of loneliness. She glanced at him. A puff of windwas heeling the boat over till the deck was awash, and he, one handon tiller and the other on main-sheet, was luffing slightly, at thesame time peering ahead to make out the near-lying north shore. Hewas unaware of her gaze, and she watched him intently, speculatingfancifully about the strange warp of soul that led him, a young manwith signal powers, to fritter away his time on the writing ofstories and poems foredoomed to mediocrity and failure.Her eyes wandered along the strong throat, dimly seen in thestarlight, and over the firm-poised head, and the old desire to layher hands upon his neck came back to her. The strength sheabhorred attracted her. Her feeling of loneliness became morepronounced, and she felt tired. Her position on the heeling boatirked her, and she remembered the headache he had cured and thesoothing rest that resided in him. He was sitting beside her,quite beside her, and the boat seemed to tilt her toward him. Thenarose in her the impulse to lean against him, to rest herselfagainst his strength - a vague, half-formed impulse, which, even asshe considered it, mastered her and made her lean toward him. Orwas it the heeling of the boat? She did not know. She never knew.She knew only that she was leaning against him and that theeasement and soothing rest were very good. Perhaps it had been theboat's fault, but she made no effort to retrieve it. She leanedlightly against his shoulder, but she leaned, and she continued tolean when he shifted his position to make it more comfortable forher.It was a madness, but she refused to consider the madness. She wasno longer herself but a woman, with a woman's clinging need; andthough she leaned ever so lightly, the need seemed satisfied. Shewas no longer tired. Martin did not speak. Had he, the spellwould have been broken. But his reticence of love prolonged it.He was dazed and dizzy. He could not understand what washappening. It was too wonderful to be anything but a delirium. Heconquered a mad desire to let go sheet and tiller and to clasp herin his arms. His intuition told him it was the wrong thing to do,and he was glad that sheet and tiller kept his hands occupied andfended off temptation. But he luffed the boat less delicately,spilling the wind shamelessly from the sail so as to prolong thetack to the north shore. The shore would compel him to go about,and the contact would be broken. He sailed with skill, stoppingway on the boat without exciting the notice of the wranglers, andmentally forgiving his hardest voyages in that they had made thismarvellous night possible, giving him mastery over sea and boat andwind so that he could sail with her beside him, her dear weightagainst him on his shoulder.When the first light of the rising moon touched the sail,illuminating the boat with pearly radiance, Ruth moved away fromhim. And, even as she moved, she felt him move away. The impulseto avoid detection was mutual. The episode was tacitly andsecretly intimate. She sat apart from him with burning cheeks,while the full force of it came home to her. She had been guiltyof something she would not have her brothers see, nor Olney see.Why had she done it? She had never done anything like it in herlife, and yet she had been moonlight-sailing with young men before.She had never desired to do anything like it. She was overcomewith shame and with the mystery of her own burgeoning womanhood.She stole a glance at Martin, who was busy putting the boat abouton the other tack, and she could have hated him for having made herdo an immodest and shameful thing. And he, of all men! Perhapsher mother was right, and she was seeing too much of him. It wouldnever happen again, she resolved, and she would see less of him inthe future. She entertained a wild idea of explaining to him thefirst time they were alone together, of lying to him, of mentioningcasually the attack of faintness that had overpowered her justbefore the moon came up. Then she remembered how they had drawnmutually away before the revealing moon, and she knew he would knowit for a lie.In the days that swiftly followed she was no longer herself but astrange, puzzling creature, wilful over judgment and scornful ofself-analysis, refusing to peer into the future or to think aboutherself and whither she was drifting. She was in a fever oftingling mystery, alternately frightened and charmed, and inconstant bewilderment. She had one idea firmly fixed, however,which insured her security. She would not let Martin speak hislove. As long as she did this, all would be well. In a few dayshe would be off to sea. And even if he did speak, all would bewell. It could not be otherwise, for she did not love him. Ofcourse, it would be a painful half hour for him, and anembarrassing half hour for her, because it would be her firstproposal. She thrilled deliciously at the thought. She was reallya woman, with a man ripe to ask for her in marriage. It was a lureto all that was fundamental in her sex. The fabric of her life, ofall that constituted her, quivered and grew tremulous. The thoughtfluttered in her mind like a flame-attracted moth. She went so faras to imagine Martin proposing, herself putting the words into hismouth; and she rehearsed her refusal, tempering it with kindnessand exhorting him to true and noble manhood. And especially hemust stop smoking cigarettes. She would make a point of that. Butno, she must not let him speak at all. She could stop him, and shehad told her mother that she would. All flushed and burning, sheregretfully dismissed the conjured situation. Her first proposalwould have to be deferred to a more propitious time and a moreeligible suitor.