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Elisha Cuthbert Photos Books: Martin Eden The Pickwick Papers The Sea Wolf |
of what he read with a virility unusual to the student mind.
When he looked back now from his vantage-ground, the old world he had
known, the world of land and sea and ships, of sailor-men and
harpy-women, seemed a very small world; and yet it blended in with this
new world and expanded. His mind made for unity, and he was surprised
when at first he began to see points of contact between the two worlds.
And he was ennobled, as well, by the loftiness of thought and beauty he
found in the books. This led him to believe more firmly than ever that
up above him, in society like Ruth and her family, all men and women
thought these thoughts and lived them. Down below where he lived was the
ignoble, and he wanted to purge himself of the ignoble that had soiled
all his days, and to rise to that sublimated realm where dwelt the upper
classes. All his childhood and youth had been troubled by a vague
unrest; he had never known what he wanted, but he had wanted something
that he had hunted vainly for until he met Ruth. And now his unrest had
become sharp and painful, and he knew at last, clearly and definitely,
that it was beauty, and intellect, and love that he must have.
During those several weeks he saw Ruth half a dozen times, and each time
was an added inspiration. She helped him with his English, corrected his
pronunciation, and started him on arithmetic. But their intercourse was
not all devoted to elementary study. He had seen too much of life, and
his mind was too matured, to be wholly content with fractions, cube root,
parsing, and analysis; and there were times when their conversation
turned on other themes--the last poetry he had read, the latest poet she
had studied. And when she read aloud to him her favorite passages, he
ascended to the topmost heaven of delight. Never, in all the women he
had heard speak, had he heard a voice like hers. The least sound of it
was a stimulus to his love, and he thrilled and throbbed with every word
she uttered. It was the quality of it, the repose, and the musical
modulation--the soft, rich, indefinable product of culture and a gentle
soul. As he listened to her, there rang in the ears of his memory the
harsh cries of barbarian women and of hags, and, in lesser degrees of
harshness, the strident voices of working women and of the girls of his
own class. Then the chemistry of vision would begin to work, and they
would troop in review across his mind, each, by contrast, multiplying
Ruths glories. Then, too, his bliss was heightened by the knowledge
that her mind was comprehending what she read and was quivering with
appreciation of the beauty of the written thought. She read to him much
from "The Princess," and often he saw her eyes swimming with tears, so
finely was her aesthetic nature strung. At such moments her own emotions
elevated him till he was as a god, and, as he gazed at her and listened,
he seemed gazing on the face of life and reading its deepest secrets. And
then, becoming aware of the heights of exquisite sensibility he attained,
he decided that this was love and that love was the greatest thing in the
world. And in review would pass along the corridors of memory all
previous thrills and burnings he had known,--the drunkenness of wine, the
caresses of women, the rough play and give and take of physical
contests,--and they seemed trivial and mean compared with this sublime
ardor he now enjoyed.
The situation was obscured to Ruth. She had never had any experiences of
the heart. Her only experiences in such matters were of the books, where
the facts of ordinary day were translated by fancy into a fairy realm of
unreality; and she little knew that this rough sailor was creeping into
her heart and storing there pent forces that would some day burst forth
and surge through her in waves of fire. She did not know the actual fire
of love. Her knowledge of love was purely theoretical, and she conceived
of it as lambent flame, gentle as the fall of dew or the ripple of quiet
water, and cool as the velvet-dark of summer Martin Eden page 31 Martin Eden page 33 |