Chapter XXI

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

　　Came a beautiful fall day, warm and languid, palpitant with thehush of the changing season, a California Indian summer day, withhazy sun and wandering wisps of breeze that did not stir theslumber of the air. Filmy purple mists, that were not vapors butfabrics woven of color, hid in the recesses of the hills. SanFrancisco lay like a blur of smoke upon her heights. Theintervening bay was a dull sheen of molten metal, whereon sailingcraft lay motionless or drifted with the lazy tide. Far Tamalpais,barely seen in the silver haze, bulked hugely by the Golden Gate,the latter a pale gold pathway under the westering sun. Beyond,the Pacific, dim and vast, was raising on its sky-line tumbledcloud-masses that swept landward, giving warning of the firstblustering breath of winter.The erasure of summer was at hand. Yet summer lingered, fading andfainting among her hills, deepening the purple of her valleys,spinning a shroud of haze from waning powers and sated raptures,dying with the calm content of having lived and lived well. Andamong the hills, on their favorite knoll, Martin and Ruth sat sideby side, their heads bent over the same pages, he reading aloudfrom the love-sonnets of the woman who had loved Browning as it isgiven to few men to be loved.But the reading languished. The spell of passing beauty all aboutthem was too strong. The golden year was dying as it had lived, abeautiful and unrepentant voluptuary, and reminiscent rapture andcontent freighted heavily the air. It entered into them, dreamyand languorous, weakening the fibres of resolution, suffusing theface of morality, or of judgment, with haze and purple mist.Martin felt tender and melting, and from time to time warm glowspassed over him. His head was very near to hers, and whenwandering phantoms of breeze stirred her hair so that it touchedhis face, the printed pages swam before his eyes."I don't believe you know a word of what you are reading," she saidonce when he had lost his place.He looked at her with burning eyes, and was on the verge ofbecoming awkward, when a retort came to his lips."I don't believe you know either. What was the last sonnet about?""I don't know," she laughed frankly. "I've already forgotten.Don't let us read any more. The day is too beautiful.""It will be our last in the hills for some time," he announcedgravely. "There's a storm gathering out there on the sea-rim."The book slipped from his hands to the ground, and they sat idlyand silently, gazing out over the dreamy bay with eyes that dreamedand did not see. Ruth glanced sidewise at his neck. She did notlean toward him. She was drawn by some force outside of herselfand stronger than gravitation, strong as destiny. It was only aninch to lean, and it was accomplished without volition on her part.Her shoulder touched his as lightly as a butterfly touches aflower, and just as lightly was the counter-pressure. She felt hisshoulder press hers, and a tremor run through him. Then was thetime for her to draw back. But she had become an automaton. Heractions had passed beyond the control of her will - she neverthought of control or will in the delicious madness that was uponher. His arm began to steal behind her and around her. She waitedits slow progress in a torment of delight. She waited, she knewnot for what, panting, with dry, burning lips, a leaping pulse, anda fever of expectancy in all her blood. The girdling arm liftedhigher and drew her toward him, drew her slowly and caressingly.She could wait no longer. With a tired sigh, and with an impulsivemovement all her own, unpremeditated, spasmodic, she rested herhead upon his breast. His head bent over swiftly, and, as his lipsapproached, hers flew to meet them.This must be love, she thought, in the one rational moment that wasvouchsafed her. If it was not love, it was too shameful. It couldbe nothing else than love. She loved the man whose arms werearound her and whose lips were pressed to hers. She pressed more,tightly to him, with a snuggling movement of her body. And amoment later, tearing herself half out of his embrace, suddenly andexultantly she reached up and placed both hands upon Martin Eden'ssunburnt neck. So exquisite was the pang of love and desirefulfilled that she uttered a low moan, relaxed her hands, and layhalf-swooning in his arms.Not a word had been spoken, and not a word was spoken for a longtime. Twice he bent and kissed her, and each time her lips met hisshyly and her body made its happy, nestling movement. She clung tohim, unable to release herself, and he sat, half supporting her inhis arms, as he gazed with unseeing eyes at the blur of the greatcity across the bay. For once there were no visions in his brain.Only colors and lights and glows pulsed there, warm as the day andwarm as his love. He bent over her. She was speaking."When did you love me?" she whispered."From the first, the very first, the first moment I laid eye onyou. I was mad for love of you then, and in all the time that haspassed since then I have only grown the madder. I am maddest, now,dear. I am almost a lunatic, my head is so turned with joy.""I am glad I am a woman, Martin - dear," she said, after a longsigh.He crushed her in his arms again and again, and then asked:-"And you? When did you first know?""Oh, I knew it all the time, almost, from the first.""And I have been as blind as a bat!" he cried, a ring of vexationin his voice. "I never dreamed it until just how, when I - when Ikissed you.""I didn't mean that." She drew herself partly away and looked athim. "I meant I knew you loved almost from the first.""And you?" he demanded."It came to me suddenly." She was speaking very slowly, her eyeswarm and fluttery and melting, a soft flush on her cheeks that didnot go away. "I never knew until just now when - you put your armsaround me. And I never expected to marry you, Martin, not untiljust now. How did you make me love you?""I don't know," he laughed, "unless just by loving you, for I lovedyou hard enough to melt the heart of a stone, much less the heartof the living, breathing woman you are.""This is so different from what I thought love would be," sheannounced irrelevantly."What did you think it would be like?""I didn't think it would be like this." She was looking into hiseyes at the moment, but her own dropped as she continued, "You see,I didn't know what this was like."He offered to draw her toward him again, but it was no more than atentative muscular movement of the girdling arm, for he feared thathe might be greedy. Then he felt her body yielding, and once againshe was close in his arms and lips were pressed on lips."What will my people say?" she queried, with sudden apprehension,in one of the pauses."I don't know. We can find out very easily any time we are sominded.""But if mamma objects? I am sure I am afraid to tell her.""Let me tell her," he volunteered valiantly. "I think your motherdoes not like me, but I can win her around. A fellow who can winyou can win anything. And if we don't - ""Yes?""Why, we'll have each other. But there's no danger not winningyour mother to our marriage. She loves you too well.""I should not like to break her heart," Ruth said pensively.He felt like assuring her that mothers' hearts were not so easilybroken, but instead he said, "And love is the greatest thing in theworld.""Do you know, Martin, you sometimes frighten me. I am frightenednow, when I think of you and of what you have been. You must bevery, very good to me. Remember, after all, that I am only achild. I never loved before.""Nor I. We are both children together. And we are fortunate abovemost, for we have found our first love in each other.""But that is impossible!" she cried, withdrawing herself from hisarms with a swift, passionate movement. "Impossible for you. Youhave been a sailor, and sailors, I have heard, are - are - "Her voice faltered and died away."Are addicted to having a wife in every port?" he suggested. "Isthat what you mean?""Yes," she answered in a low voice."But that is not love." He spoke authoritatively. "I have been inmany ports, but I never knew a passing touch of love until I sawyou that first night. Do you know, when I said good night and wentaway, I was almost arrested.""Arrested?""Yes. The policeman thought I was drunk; and I was, too - withlove for you.""But you said we were children, and I said it was impossible, foryou, and we have strayed away from the point.""I said that I never loved anybody but you," he replied. "You aremy first, my very first.""And yet you have been a sailor," she objected."But that doesn't prevent me from loving you the first.""And there have been women - other women - oh!"And to Martin Eden's supreme surprise, she burst into a storm oftears that took more kisses than one and many caresses to driveaway. And all the while there was running through his headKipling's line: "And the Colonel's lady and Judy O'Grady aresisters under their skins." It was true, he decided; though thenovels he had read had led him to believe otherwise. His idea, forwhich the novels were responsible, had been that only formalproposals obtained in the upper classes. It was all right enough,down whence he had come, for youths and maidens to win each otherby contact; but for the exalted personages up above on the heightsto make love in similar fashion had seemed unthinkable. Yet thenovels were wrong. Here was a proof of it. The same pressures andcaresses, unaccompanied by speech, that were efficacious with thegirls of the working-class, were equally efficacious with the girlsabove the working-class. They were all of the same flesh, afterall, sisters under their skins; and he might have known as muchhimself had he remembered his Spencer. As he held Ruth in his armsand soothed her, he took great consolation in the thought that theColonel's lady and Judy O'Grady were pretty much alike under theirskins. It brought Ruth closer to him, made her possible. Her dearflesh was as anybody's flesh, as his flesh. There was no bar totheir marriage. Class difference was the only difference, andclass was extrinsic. It could be shaken off. A slave, he hadread, had risen to the Roman purple. That being so, then he couldrise to Ruth. Under her purity, and saintliness, and culture, andethereal beauty of soul, she was, in things fundamentally human,just like Lizzie Connolly and all Lizzie Connollys. All that waspossible of them was possible of her. She could love, and hate,maybe have hysterics; and she could certainly be jealous, as shewas jealous now, uttering her last sobs in his arms."Besides, I am older than you," she remarked suddenly, opening hereyes and looking up at him, "three years older.""Hush, you are only a child, and I am forty years older than you,in experience," was his answer.In truth, they were children together, so far as love wasconcerned, and they were as naive and immature in the expression oftheir love as a pair of children, and this despite the fact thatshe was crammed with a university education and that his head wasfull of scientific philosophy and the hard facts of life.They sat on through the passing glory of the day, talking as loversare prone to talk, marvelling at the wonder of love and at destinythat had flung them so strangely together, and dogmaticallybelieving that they loved to a degree never attained by loversbefore. And they returned insistently, again and again, to arehearsal of their first impressions of each other and to hopelessattempts to analyze just precisely what they felt for each otherand how much there was of it.The cloud-masses on the western horizon received the descendingsun, and the circle of the sky turned to rose, while the zenithglowed with the same warm color. The rosy light was all aboutthem, flooding over them, as she sang, "Good-by, Sweet Day." Shesang softly, leaning in the cradle of his arm, her hands in his,their hearts in each other's hands.