He had met the Woman. He had sat next to her at table. He had felt her hand in his, he had looked into her eyes. This feeling of the divine startled him. He had never believed in the divine. He had always been irreligious. There was no life beyond; it was here and now, then darkness everlasting. But what he had seen in her eyes was soul – immortal soul that never dies. Nobody had given him the message of immortality. But she had. She had whispered it to him the first moment she looked at him. He did not deserve such fortune. He was like a drunken man, murmuring aloud: “By God! By God!”
He caught a car that was going to Berkeley. It was crowded with young men who were singing songs. He studied them curiously. They were university boys. They went to the same university that she did, they could know her, could see her every day if they wanted to.
The car came to the two-story building with the proud sign, HIGGINBOTHAM’S CASH STORE. Bernard Higginbotham had married his sister, and he knew him well. He climbed the stairs to the second floor. Here lived his brother-in-law.
He entered a room, where sat his sister and Bernard Higginbotham. Martin Eden never looked at him without repulsion. What his sister had found in that man was a mystery.
“Good night,” said Martin. “Good night, Gertrude.”
“Don’t bang the door,” Mr. Higginbotham cautioned him.
Martin controlled himself and closed the door softly behind him.
Mr. Higginbotham looked at his wife exultantly.
“He is drunk,” he proclaimed in a hoarse whisper. “I told you. A fine example to the children! If he does it again, he’s got to get out.”
His wife sighed, and shook her head sorrowfully. Mr. Higginbotham asked:
“Has he paid last week’s board?”
She nodded, then added, “He still has some money.”
“When is he going to sea again?”
“He was over to San Francisco yesterday looking for a ship,” she answered. “But he’s got money at the moment.”
“I can give him a job: to drive the wagon,” her husband said. “Tom went away.”
“I told you you’d lose him,” she cried out. “You paid him very little.”
“Now look here, old woman, for the thousandth time I’ve told you to keep your nose out of the business. I won’t tell you again.”
“I don’t care,” she said. “Tom was a good boy.” Her husband glared at her.
“Your brother – ” he began.
“He pays his board,” was the retort. “And he’s my brother, what do you want?”
“I will charge him for gas: he is reading in bed,” her husband answered.
Mrs. Higginbotham made no reply. Her husband was triumphant.
Chapter 4
Martin Eden entered his room, a tiny hole with space for a bed, a wash-stand, and one chair. Mr. Higginbotham was too greedy to keep a servant when his wife could do the work. Martin placed the Swinburne and Browning on the chair, took off his coat, and sat down on the bed. He murmured, “Ruth.”
“Ruth.” He had not thought a simple sound could be so beautiful. This name delighted his ear. “Ruth.” It was a talisman, a magic word to conjure with. Each time he murmured it, her face shimmered before him. The very thought of her ennobled and purified him, made him better. This was new to him. He had never known women who had made him better.
He got up abruptly and tried to see himself in the dirty looking-glass over the wash-stand. It was the first time he had ever really seen himself. He saw the head and face of a young fellow of twenty. The brown sunburn of his face surprised him. He had not dreamed he was so black. His arms were sunburnt, too.
He sat back on the bed with a bitter laugh, and took off his shoes. He took the Browning and the Swinburne from the chair and kissed them. She told me to come again, he thought. He looked at himself in the glass, and said aloud:
“Martin Eden, tomorrow you go to the library and read up on etiquette.”
Chapter 5
He awoke next morning in a steamy atmosphere. As he came out of his room he heard the slosh of water, a sharp exclamation. The squall of the child went through him like a knife. How different, he thought, from the atmosphere of beauty and repose of the house wherein Ruth dwelt. There it was all spiritual. Here it was all material.
“Come here, Alfred,” he called to the crying child. He put a quarter in the youngster’s hand and held him in his arms a moment. “Now run along and get some candy, and don’t forget to give some to your brothers and sisters.”
His sister looked at him. The tears welled into her eyes.
“You’ll find breakfast in the oven,” she said hurriedly.
Martin went into the kitchen. Then he went downstairs and out into the street. He had debated between the Berkeley Library and the Oakland Library, and chose the latter because Ruth lived in Oakland. He wandered through endless rows of books, and did not know what to ask the man at the desk.
“Did you find what you wanted?” the man at the desk asked him as he was leaving.
“Yes, sir,” he answered. “You have a fine library here.”
The man nodded. “We should be glad to see you here often. Are you a sailor?”
“Yes, sir,” he answered. “And I’ll come again.”
Now, how did he know that? he asked himself as he went down the stairs.
Chapter 6
Martin Eden was afraid that he might visit Ruth too soon. He spent long hours in the Oakland and Berkeley libraries. He burned the gas late in the servant’s room, and was charged fifty cents a week for it by Mr. Higginbotham.
He read many books; every page of every book was a hole into the realm of knowledge. His hunger increased. He read more of Swinburne than was contained in the volume Ruth had given him. Then he studied Kipling’s poems. Psychology was a new word in Martin’s vocabulary.
He dared not go near Ruth’s house in the daytime, but at night he was lurking like a thief around the Morse home.
He had undergone a moral revolution. Her cleanness and purity made him clean, too. He began to brush his teeth, and used a nail-brush. He found a book in the library on the care of the body, and promptly decided to have a cold-water bath every morning.
The reform went deeper. He still smoked, but he drank no more. He was drunken in new and more profound ways – with Ruth, who had fired him with love and with a glimpse of higher and eternal life; with books, and with the sense of personal cleanliness.
One night he went to the theatre, and from the second balcony he did see her. He saw her with Arthur and a strange young man with eyeglasses.
He left his seat before the curtain went down on the last act. He wanted to see her again. Suddenly two girls appeared. One of them was a slender, dark girl, with black, defiant eyes. They smiled at him, and he smiled back.
“Hello,” he said.
It was automatic. The black-eyed girl smiled, and showed signs of stopping. At the corner where the main stream of people flowed onward, he started to follow the cross street. But the girl with the black eyes caught his arm, and cried:
“Bill! Where are you going?”
He halted with a laugh, and turned back.
“What’s her name?” he asked the giggling girl, nodding at the dark-eyed one.
“You ask her,” was the response.
“Well, what is it?” he demanded, turning