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Home -> Jack London -> Martin Eden -> Chapter 21

Martin Eden - Chapter 21

1. Chapter 1

2. Chapter 2

3. Chapter 3

4. Chapter 4

5. Chapter 5

6. Chapter 6

7. Chapter 7

8. Chapter 8

9. Chapter 9

10. Chapter 10

11. Chapter 11

12. Chapter 12

13. Chapter 13

14. Chapter 14

15. Chapter 15

16. Chapter 16

17. Chapter 17

18. Chapter 18

19. Chapter 19

20. Chapter 20

21. Chapter 21

22. Chapter 22

23. Chapter 23

24. Chapter 24

25. Chapter 25

26. Chapter 26

27. Chapter 27

28. Chapter 28

29. Chapter 29

30. Chapter 30

31. Chapter 31

32. Chapter 32

33. Chapter 33

34. Chapter 34

35. Chapter 35

36. Chapter 36

37. Chapter 37

38. Chapter 38

39. Chapter 39

40. Chapter 40

41. Chapter 41

42. Chapter 42

43. Chapter 43

44. Chapter 44

45. Chapter 45

46. Chapter 46







Came a beautiful fall day, warm and languid, palpitant with the
hush of the changing season, a California Indian summer day, with
hazy sun and wandering wisps of breeze that did not stir the
slumber of the air. Filmy purple mists, that were not vapors but
fabrics woven of color, hid in the recesses of the hills. San
Francisco lay like a blur of smoke upon her heights. The
intervening bay was a dull sheen of molten metal, whereon sailing
craft 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 tumbled
cloud-masses that swept landward, giving warning of the first
blustering breath of winter.

The erasure of summer was at hand. Yet summer lingered, fading and
fainting 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. And
among the hills, on their favorite knoll, Martin and Ruth sat side
by side, their heads bent over the same pages, he reading aloud
from the love-sonnets of the woman who had loved Browning as it is
given to few men to be loved.

But the reading languished. The spell of passing beauty all about
them was too strong. The golden year was dying as it had lived, a
beautiful and unrepentant voluptuary, and reminiscent rapture and
content freighted heavily the air. It entered into them, dreamy
and languorous, weakening the fibres of resolution, suffusing the
face of morality, or of judgment, with haze and purple mist.
Martin felt tender and melting, and from time to time warm glows
passed over him. His head was very near to hers, and when
wandering phantoms of breeze stirred her hair so that it touched
his face, the printed pages swam before his eyes.

"I don't believe you know a word of what you are reading," she said
once when he had lost his place.

He looked at her with burning eyes, and was on the verge of
becoming 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 announced
gravely. "There's a storm gathering out there on the sea-rim."

The book slipped from his hands to the ground, and they sat idly
and silently, gazing out over the dreamy bay with eyes that dreamed
and did not see. Ruth glanced sidewise at his neck. She did not
lean toward him. She was drawn by some force outside of herself
and stronger than gravitation, strong as destiny. It was only an
inch to lean, and it was accomplished without volition on her part.
Her shoulder touched his as lightly as a butterfly touches a
flower, and just as lightly was the counter-pressure. She felt his
shoulder press hers, and a tremor run through him. Then was the
time for her to draw back. But she had become an automaton. Her
actions had passed beyond the control of her will - she never
thought of control or will in the delicious madness that was upon
her. His arm began to steal behind her and around her. She waited
its slow progress in a torment of delight. She waited, she knew
not for what, panting, with dry, burning lips, a leaping pulse, and
a fever of expectancy in all her blood. The girdling arm lifted
higher and drew her toward him, drew her slowly and caressingly.
She could wait no longer. With a tired sigh, and with an impulsive
movement all her own, unpremeditated, spasmodic, she rested her
head upon his breast. His head bent over swiftly, and, as his lips
approached, hers flew to meet them.

This must be love, she thought, in the one rational moment that was
vouchsafed her. If it was not love, it was too shameful. It could
be nothing else than love. She loved the man whose arms were
around her and whose lips were pressed to hers. She pressed more,
tightly to him, with a snuggling movement of her body. And a
moment later, tearing herself half out of his embrace, suddenly and
exultantly she reached up and placed both hands upon Martin Eden's
sunburnt neck. So exquisite was the pang of love and desire
fulfilled that she uttered a low moan, relaxed her hands, and lay
half-swooning in his arms.

Not a word had been spoken, and not a word was spoken for a long
time. Twice he bent and kissed her, and each time her lips met his
shyly and her body made its happy, nestling movement. She clung to
him, unable to release herself, and he sat, half supporting her in
his arms, as he gazed with unseeing eyes at the blur of the great
city across the bay. For once there were no visions in his brain.
Only colors and lights and glows pulsed there, warm as the day and
warm 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 on
you. I was mad for love of you then, and in all the time that has
passed 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 long
sigh.

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 vexation
in his voice. "I never dreamed it until just how, when I - when I
kissed you."

"I didn't mean that." She drew herself partly away and looked at
him. "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 eyes
warm and fluttery and melting, a soft flush on her cheeks that did
not go away. "I never knew until just now when - you put your arms
around me. And I never expected to marry you, Martin, not until
just now. How did you make me love you?"

"I don't know," he laughed, "unless just by loving you, for I loved
you hard enough to melt the heart of a stone, much less the heart
of the living, breathing woman you are."

"This is so different from what I thought love would be," she
announced irrelevantly.

"What did you think it would be like?"

"I didn't think it would be like this." She was looking into his
eyes 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 a
tentative muscular movement of the girdling arm, for he feared that
he might be greedy. Then he felt her body yielding, and once again
she 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 so
minded."

"But if mamma objects? I am sure I am afraid to tell her."

"Let me tell her," he volunteered valiantly. "I think your mother
does not like me, but I can win her around. A fellow who can win
you can win anything. And if we don't - "

"Yes?"

"Why, we'll have each other. But there's no danger not winning
your 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 easily
broken, but instead he said, "And love is the greatest thing in the
world."

"Do you know, Martin, you sometimes frighten me. I am frightened
now, when I think of you and of what you have been. You must be
very, very good to me. Remember, after all, that I am only a
child. I never loved before."

"Nor I. We are both children together. And we are fortunate above
most, for we have found our first love in each other."

"But that is impossible!" she cried, withdrawing herself from his
arms with a swift, passionate movement. "Impossible for you. You
have 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. "Is
that what you mean?"

"Yes," she answered in a low voice.

"But that is not love." He spoke authoritatively. "I have been in
many ports, but I never knew a passing touch of love until I saw
you that first night. Do you know, when I said good night and went
away, I was almost arrested."

"Arrested?"

"Yes. The policeman thought I was drunk; and I was, too - with
love for you."

"But you said we were children, and I said it was impossible, for
you, and we have strayed away from the point."

"I said that I never loved anybody but you," he replied. "You are
my 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 of
tears that took more kisses than one and many caresses to drive
away. And all the while there was running through his head
Kipling's line: "AND THE COLONEL'S LADY AND JUDY O'GRADY ARE
SISTERS UNDER THEIR SKINS." It was true, he decided; though the
novels he had read had led him to believe otherwise. His idea, for
which the novels were responsible, had been that only formal
proposals obtained in the upper classes. It was all right enough,
down whence he had come, for youths and maidens to win each other
by contact; but for the exalted personages up above on the heights
to make love in similar fashion had seemed unthinkable. Yet the
novels were wrong. Here was a proof of it. The same pressures and
caresses, unaccompanied by speech, that were efficacious with the
girls of the working-class, were equally efficacious with the girls
above the working-class. They were all of the same flesh, after
all, sisters under their skins; and he might have known as much
himself had he remembered his Spencer. As he held Ruth in his arms
and soothed her, he took great consolation in the thought that the
Colonel's lady and Judy O'Grady were pretty much alike under their
skins. It brought Ruth closer to him, made her possible. Her dear
flesh was as anybody's flesh, as his flesh. There was no bar to
their marriage. Class difference was the only difference, and
class was extrinsic. It could be shaken off. A slave, he had
read, had risen to the Roman purple. That being so, then he could
rise to Ruth. Under her purity, and saintliness, and culture, and
ethereal beauty of soul, she was, in things fundamentally human,
just like Lizzie Connolly and all Lizzie Connollys. All that was
possible of them was possible of her. She could love, and hate,
maybe have hysterics; and she could certainly be jealous, as she
was jealous now, uttering her last sobs in his arms.

"Besides, I am older than you," she remarked suddenly, opening her
eyes 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 was
concerned, and they were as naive and immature in the expression of
their love as a pair of children, and this despite the fact that
she was crammed with a university education and that his head was
full of scientific philosophy and the hard facts of life.

They sat on through the passing glory of the day, talking as lovers
are prone to talk, marvelling at the wonder of love and at destiny
that had flung them so strangely together, and dogmatically
believing that they loved to a degree never attained by lovers
before. And they returned insistently, again and again, to a
rehearsal of their first impressions of each other and to hopeless
attempts to analyze just precisely what they felt for each other
and how much there was of it.

The cloud-masses on the western horizon received the descending
sun, and the circle of the sky turned to rose, while the zenith
glowed with the same warm color. The rosy light was all about
them, flooding over them, as she sang, "Good-by, Sweet Day." She
sang softly, leaning in the cradle of his arm, her hands in his,
their hearts in each other's hands.




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