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MARTIN EDEN
MARTIN EDEN JACK LONDON CHAPTER I
The one opened the door with a latch-key and went in followed by a
young fellow who awkwardly removed his cap. He wore rough clothes
that smacked of the sea and he was manifestly out of place in the
spacious hall in which he found himself. He did not know what to
do with his cap and was stuffing it into his coat pocket when the
other took it from him. The act was done quietly and naturally
and the awkward young fellow appreciated it. "He understands" was
his thought. "He'll see me through all right."
He walked at the other's heels with a swing to his shoulders and
his legs spread unwittingly as if the level floors were tilting up
and sinking down to the heave and lunge of the sea. The wide rooms
seemed too narrow for his rolling gait and to himself he was in
terror lest his broad shoulders should collide with the doorways or
sweep the bric-a-brac from the low mantel. He recoiled from side
to side between the various objects and multiplied the hazards that
in reality lodged only in his mind. Between a grand piano and a
centre-table piled high with books was space for a half a dozen to
walk abreast yet he essayed it with trepidation. His heavy arms
hung loosely at his sides. He did not know what to do with those
arms and hands and when to his excited vision one arm seemed
liable to brush against the books on the table he lurched away
like a frightened horse barely missing the piano stool. He
watched the easy walk of the other in front of him and for the
first time realized that his walk was different from that of other
men. He experienced a momentary pang of shame that he should walk
so uncouthly. The sweat burst through the skin of his forehead in
tiny beads and he paused and mopped his bronzed face with his
handkerchief.
"Hold on Arthur my boy" he said attempting to mask his anxiety
with facetious utterance. "This is too much all at once for yours
truly. Give me a chance to get my nerve. You know I didn't want
to come an' I guess your fam'ly ain't hankerin' to see me
neither."
"That's all right" was the reassuring answer. "You mustn't be
frightened at us. We're just homely people - Hello there's a
letter for me."
He stepped back to the table tore open the envelope and began to
read giving the stranger an opportunity to recover himself. And
the stranger understood and appreciated. His was the gift of
sympathy understanding; and beneath his alarmed exterior that
sympathetic process went on. He mopped his forehead dry and
glanced about him with a controlled face though in the eyes there
was an expression such as wild animals betray when they fear the
trap. He was surrounded by the unknown apprehensive of what might
happen ignorant of what he should do aware that he walked and
bore himself awkwardly fearful that every attribute and power of
him was similarly afflicted. He was keenly sensitive hopelessly
self-conscious and the amused glance that the other stole privily
at him over the top of the letter burned into him like a dagger-
thrust. He saw the glance but he gave no sign for among the
things he had learned was discipline. Also that dagger-thrust
went to his pride. He cursed himself for having come and at the
same time resolved that happen what would having come he would
carry it through. The lines of his face hardened and into his
eyes came a fighting light. He looked about more unconcernedly
sharply observant every detail of the pretty interior registering
itself on his brain. His eyes were wide apart; nothing in their
field of vision escaped; and as they drank in the beauty before
them the fighting light died out and a warm glow took its place.
He was responsive to beauty and here was cause to respond.
An oil painting caught and held him. A heavy surf thundered and
burst over an outjutting rock; lowering storm-clouds covered the
sky; and outside the line of surf a pilot-schooner close-hauled
heeled over till every detail of her deck was visible was surging
along against a stormy sunset sky. There was beauty and it drew
him irresistibly. He forgot his awkward walk and came closer to
the painting very close. The beauty faded out of the canvas. His
face expressed his bepuzzlement. He stared at what seemed a
careless daub of paint then stepped away. Immediately all the
beauty flashed back into the canvas. "A trick picture" was his
thought as he dismissed it though in the midst of the
multitudinous impressions he was receiving he found time to feel a
prod of indignation that so much beauty should be sacrificed to
make a trick. He did not know painting. He had been brought up on
chromos and lithographs that were always definite and sharp near
or far. He had seen oil paintings it was true in the show
windows of shops but the glass of the windows had prevented his
eager eyes from approaching too near.
He glanced around at his friend reading the letter and saw the
books on the table. Into his eyes leaped a wistfulness and a
yearning as promptly as the yearning leaps into the eyes of a
starving man at sight of food. An impulsive stride with one lurch
to right and left of the shoulders brought him to the table where
he began affectionately handling the books. He glanced at the
titles and the authors' names read fragments of text caressing
the volumes with his eyes and hands and once recognized a book
he had read. For the rest they were strange books and strange
authors. He chanced upon a volume of Swinburne and began reading
steadily forgetful of where he was his face glowing. Twice he
closed the book on his forefinger to look at the name of the
author. Swinburne! he would remember that name. That fellow had
eyes and he had certainly seen color and flashing light. But who
was Swinburne? Was he dead a hundred years or so like most of the
poets? Or was he alive still and writing? He turned to the
title-page . . . yes he had written other books; well he would go
to the free library the first thing in the morning and try to get
hold of some of Swinburne's stuff. He went back to the text and
lost himself. He did not notice that a young woman had entered the
room. The first he knew was when he heard Arthur's voice saying:-
"Ruth this is Mr. Eden."
The book was closed on his forefinger and before he turned he was
thrilling to the first new impression which was not of the girl
but of her brother's words. Under that muscled body of his he was
a mass of quivering sensibilities. At the slightest impact of the
outside world upon his consciousness his thoughts sympathies and
emotions leapt and played like lambent flame. He was
extraordinarily receptive and responsive while his imagination
pitched high was ever at work establishing relations of likeness
and difference. "Mr. Eden" was what he had thrilled to - he who
had been called "Eden" or "Martin Eden" or just "Martin" all his
life. And "MISTER!" It was certainly going some was his internal
comment. His mind seemed to turn on the instant into a vast
camera obscura and he saw arrayed around his consciousness endless
pictures from his life of stoke-holes and forecastles camps and
beaches jails and boozing-kens fever-hospitals and slum streets
wherein the thread of association was the fashion in which he had
been addressed in those various situations.
And then he turned and saw the girl. The phantasmagoria of his
brain vanished at sight of her. She was a pale ethereal creature
with wide spiritual blue eyes and a wealth of golden hair. He did
not know how she was dressed except that the dress was as
wonderful as she. He likened her to a pale gold flower upon a
slender stem. No she was a spirit a divinity a goddess; such
sublimated beauty was not of the earth. Or perhaps the books were
right and there were many such as she in the upper walks of life.
She might well be sung by that chap Swinburne. Perhaps he had had
somebody like her in mind when he painted that girl Iseult in the
book there on the table. All this plethora of sight and feeling
and thought occurred on the instant. There was no pause of the
realities wherein he moved. He saw her hand coming out to his and
she looked him straight in the eyes as she shook hands frankly
like a man. The women he had known did not shake hands that way.
For that matter most of them did not shake hands at all. A flood
of associations visions of various ways he had made the
acquaintance of women rushed into his mind and threatened to swamp
it. But he shook them aside and looked at her. Never had he seen
such a woman. The women he had known! Immediately beside her on
either hand ranged the women he had known. For an eternal second
he stood in the midst of a portrait gallery wherein she occupied
the central place while about her were limned many women all to
be weighed and measured by a fleeting glance herself the unit of
weight and measure. He saw the weak and sickly faces of the girls
of the factories and the simpering boisterous girls from the
south of Market. There were women of the cattle camps and swarthy
cigarette-smoking women of Old Mexico. These in turn were
crowded out by Japanese women doll-like stepping mincingly on
wooden clogs; by Eurasians delicate featured stamped with
degeneracy; by full-bodied South-Sea-Island women flower-crowned
and brown-skinned. All these were blotted out by a grotesque and
terrible nightmare brood - frowsy shuffling creatures from the
pavements of Whitechapel gin-bloated hags of the stews and all
the vast hell's following of harpies vile-mouthed and filthy that
under the guise of monstrous female form prey upon sailors the
scrapings of the ports the scum and slime of the human pit.
"Won't you sit down Mr. Eden?" the girl was saying. "I have been
looking forward to meeting you ever since Arthur told us. It was
brave of you - "
He waved his hand deprecatingly and muttered that it was nothing at
all what he had done and that any fellow would have done it. She
noticed that the hand he waved was covered with fresh abrasions in
the process of healing and a glance at the other loose-hanging
hand showed it to be in the same condition. Also with quick
critical eye she noted a scar on his cheek another that peeped
out from under the hair of the forehead and a third that ran down
and disappeared under the starched collar. She repressed a smile
at sight of the red line that marked the chafe of the collar
against the bronzed neck. He was evidently unused to stiff
collars. Likewise her feminine eye took in the clothes he wore
the cheap and unaesthetic cut the wrinkling of the coat across the
shoulders and the series of wrinkles in the sleeves that
advertised bulging biceps muscles.
While he waved his hand and muttered that he had done nothing at
all he was obeying her behest by trying to get into a chair. He
found time to admire the ease with which she sat down then lurched
toward a chair facing her overwhelmed with consciousness of the
awkward figure he was cutting. This was a new experience for him.
All his life up to then he had been unaware of being either
graceful or awkward. Such thoughts of self had never entered his
mind. He sat down gingerly on the edge of the chair greatly
worried by his hands. They were in the way wherever he put them.
Arthur was leaving the room and Martin Eden followed his exit with
longing eyes. He felt lost alone there in the room with that pale
spirit of a woman. There was no bar-keeper upon whom to call for
drinks no small boy to send around the corner for a can of beer
and by means of that social fluid start the amenities of friendship
flowing.
"You have such a scar on your neck Mr. Eden" the girl was saying.
"How did it happen? I am sure it must have been some adventure."
"A Mexican with a knife miss" he answered moistening his parched
lips and clearing hip throat. "It was just a fight. After I got
the knife away he tried to bite off my nose."
Baldly as he had stated it in his eyes was a rich vision of that
hot starry night at Salina Cruz the white strip of beach the
lights of the sugar steamers in the harbor the voices of the
drunken sailors in the distance the jostling stevedores the
flaming passion in the Mexican's face the glint of the beast-eyes
in the starlight the sting of the steel in his neck and the rush
of blood the crowd and the cries the two bodies his and the
Mexican's locked together rolling over and over and tearing up
the sand and from away off somewhere the mellow tinkling of a
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