Chapter XXXII

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

　　Promptly, the next afternoon, Maria was excited by Martin's secondvisitor. But she did not lose her head this time, for she seatedBrissenden in her parlor's grandeur of respectability."Hope you don't mind my coming?" Brissenden began."No, no, not at all," Martin answered, shaking hands and waving himto the solitary chair, himself taking to the bed. "But how did youknow where I lived?""Called up the Morses. Miss Morse answered the 'phone. And here Iam." He tugged at his coat pocket and flung a thin volume on thetable. "There's a book, by a poet. Read it and keep it." Andthen, in reply to Martin's protest: "What have I to do with books?I had another hemorrhage this morning. Got any whiskey? No, ofcourse not. Wait a minute."He was off and away. Martin watched his long figure go down theoutside steps, and, on turning to close the gate, noted with a pangthe shoulders, which had once been broad, drawn in now over, thecollapsed ruin of the chest. Martin got two tumblers, and fell toreading the book of verse, Henry Vaughn Marlow's latest collection."No Scotch," Brissenden announced on his return. "The beggar sellsnothing but American whiskey. But here's a quart of it.""I'll send one of the youngsters for lemons, and we'll make atoddy," Martin offered."I wonder what a book like that will earn Marlow?" he went on,holding up the volume in question."Possibly fifty dollars," came the answer. "Though he's lucky ifhe pulls even on it, or if he can inveigle a publisher to riskbringing it out.""Then one can't make a living out of poetry?"Martin's tone and face alike showed his dejection."Certainly not. What fool expects to? Out of rhyming, yes.There's Bruce, and Virginia Spring, and Sedgwick. They do verynicely. But poetry - do you know how Vaughn Marlow makes hisliving? - teaching in a boys' cramming-joint down in Pennsylvania,and of all private little hells such a billet is the limit. Iwouldn't trade places with him if he had fifty years of life beforehim. And yet his work stands out from the ruck of the contemporaryversifiers as a balas ruby among carrots. And the reviews he gets!Damn them, all of them, the crass manikins!""Too much is written by the men who can't write about the men whodo write," Martin concurred. "Why, I was appalled at thequantities of rubbish written about Stevenson and his work.""Ghouls and harpies!" Brissenden snapped out with clicking teeth."Yes, I know the spawn - complacently pecking at him for his FatherDamien letter, analyzing him, weighing him - ""Measuring him by the yardstick of their own miserable egos,"Martin broke in."Yes, that's it, a good phrase, - mouthing and besliming the True,and Beautiful, and Good, and finally patting him on the back andsaying, 'Good dog, Fido.' Faugh! 'The little chattering daws ofmen,' Richard Realf called them the night he died.""Pecking at star-dust," Martin took up the strain warmly; "at themeteoric flight of the master-men. I once wrote a squib on them -the critics, or the reviewers, rather.""Let's see it," Brissenden begged eagerly.So Martin unearthed a carbon copy of "Star-dust," and during thereading of it Brissenden chuckled, rubbed his hands, and forgot tosip his toddy."Strikes me you're a bit of star-dust yourself, flung into a worldof cowled gnomes who cannot see," was his comment at the end of it."Of course it was snapped up by the first magazine?"Martin ran over the pages of his manuscript book. "It has beenrefused by twenty-seven of them."Brissenden essayed a long and hearty laugh, but broke down in a fitof coughing."Say, you needn't tell me you haven't tackled poetry," he gasped."Let me see some of it.""Don't read it now," Martin pleaded. "I want to talk with you.I'll make up a bundle and you can take it home."Brissenden departed with the "Love-cycle," and "The Peri and thePearl," returning next day to greet Martin with:-"I want more."Not only did he assure Martin that he was a poet, but Martinlearned that Brissenden also was one. He was swept off his feet bythe other's work, and astounded that no attempt had been made topublish it."A plague on all their houses!" was Brissenden's answer to Martin'svolunteering to market his work for him. "Love Beauty for its ownsake," was his counsel, "and leave the magazines alone. Back toyour ships and your sea - that's my advice to you, Martin Eden.What do you want in these sick and rotten cities of men? You arecutting your throat every day you waste in them trying toprostitute beauty to the needs of magazinedom. What was it youquoted me the other day? - Oh, yes, 'Man, the latest of theephemera.' Well, what do you, the latest of the ephemera, wantwith fame? If you got it, it would be poison to you. You are toosimple, took elemental, and too rational, by my faith, to prosperon such pap. I hope you never do sell a line to the magazines.Beauty is the only master to serve. Serve her and damn themultitude! Success! What in hell's success if it isn't rightthere in your Stevenson sonnet, which outranks Henley's'Apparition,' in that 'Love-cycle,' in those sea-poems?"It is not in what you succeed in doing that you get your joy, butin the doing of it. You can't tell me. I know it. You know it.Beauty hurts you. It is an everlasting pain in you, a wound thatdoes not heal, a knife of flame. Why should you palter withmagazines? Let beauty be your end. Why should you mint beautyinto gold? Anyway, you can't; so there's no use in my gettingexcited over it. You can read the magazines for a thousand yearsand you won't find the value of one line of Keats. Leave fame andcoin alone, sign away on a ship to-morrow, and go back to yoursea.""Not for fame, but for love," Martin laughed. "Love seems to haveno place in your Cosmos; in mine, Beauty is the handmaiden ofLove."Brissenden looked at him pityingly and admiringly. "You are soyoung, Martin boy, so young. You will flutter high, but your wingsare of the finest gauze, dusted with the fairest pigments. Do notscorch them. But of course you have scorched them already. Itrequired some glorified petticoat to account for that 'Love-cycle,'and that's the shame of it.""It glorifies love as well as the petticoat," Martin laughed."The philosophy of madness," was the retort. "So have I assuredmyself when wandering in hasheesh dreams. But beware. Thesebourgeois cities will kill you. Look at that den of traitors whereI met you. Dry rot is no name for it. One can't keep his sanityin such an atmosphere. It's degrading. There's not one of themwho is not degrading, man and woman, all of them animated stomachsguided by the high intellectual and artistic impulses of clams - "He broke off suddenly and regarded Martin. Then, with a flash ofdivination, he saw the situation. The expression on his faceturned to wondering horror."And you wrote that tremendous 'Love-cycle' to her - that pale,shrivelled, female thing!"The next instant Martin's right hand had shot to a throttlingclutch on his throat, and he was being shaken till his teethrattled. But Martin, looking into his eyes, saw no fear there, -naught but a curious and mocking devil. Martin remembered himself,and flung Brissenden, by the neck, sidelong upon the bed, at thesame moment releasing his hold.Brissenden panted and gasped painfully for a moment, then began tochuckle."You had made me eternally your debtor had you shaken out theflame," he said."My nerves are on a hair-trigger these days," Martin apologized."Hope I didn't hurt you. Here, let me mix a fresh toddy.""Ah, you young Greek!" Brissenden went on. "I wonder if you takejust pride in that body of yours. You are devilish strong. Youare a young panther, a lion cub. Well, well, it is you who mustpay for that strength.""What do you mean?" Martin asked curiously, passing aim a glass."Here, down this and be good.""Because - " Brissenden sipped his toddy and smiled appreciation ofit. "Because of the women. They will worry you until you die, asthey have already worried you, or else I was born yesterday. Nowthere's no use in your choking me; I'm going to have my say. Thisis undoubtedly your calf love; but for Beauty's sake show bettertaste next time. What under heaven do you want with a daughter ofthe bourgeoisie? Leave them alone. Pick out some great, wantonflame of a woman, who laughs at life and jeers at death and lovesone while she may. There are such women, and they will love youjust as readily as any pusillanimous product of bourgeois shelteredlife.""Pusillanimous?" Martin protested."Just so, pusillanimous; prattling out little moralities that havebeen prattled into them, and afraid to live life. They will loveyou, Martin, but they will love their little moralities more. Whatyou want is the magnificent abandon of life, the great free souls,the blazing butterflies and not the little gray moths. Oh, youwill grow tired of them, too, of all the female things, if you areunlucky enough to live. But you won't live. You won't go back toyour ships and sea; therefore, you'll hang around these pest-holesof cities until your bones are rotten, and then you'll die.""You can lecture me, but you can't make me talk back," Martin said."After all, you have but the wisdom of your temperament, and thewisdom of my temperament is just as unimpeachable as yours."They disagreed about love, and the magazines, and many things, butthey liked each other, and on Martin's part it was no less than aprofound liking. Day after day they were together, if for no morethan the hour Brissenden spent in Martin's stuffy room. Brissendennever arrived without his quart of whiskey, and when they dinedtogether down-town, he drank Scotch and soda throughout the meal.He invariably paid the way for both, and it was through him thatMartin learned the refinements of food, drank his first champagne,and made acquaintance with Rhenish wines.But Brissenden was always an enigma. With the face of an ascetic,he was, in all the failing blood of him, a frank voluptuary. Hewas unafraid to die, bitter and cynical of all the ways of living;and yet, dying, he loved life, to the last atom of it. He waspossessed by a madness to live, to thrill, "to squirm my littlespace in the cosmic dust whence I came," as he phrased it oncehimself. He had tampered with drugs and done many strange thingsin quest of new thrills, new sensations. As he told Martin, he hadonce gone three days without water, had done so voluntarily, inorder to experience the exquisite delight of such a thirstassuaged. Who or what he was, Martin never learned. He was a manwithout a past, whose future was the imminent grave and whosepresent was a bitter fever of living.