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Elisha Cuthbert Photos Books: Martin Eden The Pickwick Papers The Sea Wolf |
In spite of the beauty
in him, and the aching desire to create, it was for her that he
struggled. He was a lover first and always. All other things he
subordinated to love.
Greater than his adventure in the world of thought was his
love-adventure. The world itself was not so amazing because of the atoms
and molecules that composed it according to the propulsions of
irresistible force; what made it amazing was the fact that Ruth lived in
it. She was the most amazing thing he had ever known, or dreamed, or
guessed.
But he was oppressed always by her remoteness. She was so far from him,
and he did not know how to approach her. He had been a success with
girls and women in his own class; but he had never loved any of them,
while he did love her, and besides, she was not merely of another class.
His very love elevated her above all classes. She was a being apart, so
far apart that he did not know how to draw near to her as a lover should
draw near. It was true, as he acquired knowledge and language, that he
was drawing nearer, talking her speech, discovering ideas and delights in
common; but this did not satisfy his lovers yearning. His lovers
imagination had made her holy, too holy, too spiritualized, to have any
kinship with him in the flesh. It was his own love that thrust her from
him and made her seem impossible for him. Love itself denied him the one
thing that it desired.
And then, one day, without warning, the gulf between them was bridged for
a moment, and thereafter, though the gulf remained, it was ever narrower.
They had been eating cherries--great, luscious, black cherries with a
juice of the color of dark wine. And later, as she read aloud to him
from "The Princess," he chanced to notice the stain of the cherries on
her lips. For the moment her divinity was shattered. She was clay,
after all, mere clay, subject to the common law of clay as his clay was
subject, or anybodys clay. Her lips were flesh like his, and cherries
dyed them as cherries dyed his. And if so with her lips, then was it so
with all of her. She was woman, all woman, just like any woman. It came
upon him abruptly. It was a revelation that stunned him. It was as if
he had seen the sun fall out of the sky, or had seen worshipped purity
polluted.
Then he realized the significance of it, and his heart began pounding and
challenging him to play the lover with this woman who was not a spirit
from other worlds but a mere woman with lips a cherry could stain. He
trembled at the audacity of his thought; but all his soul was singing,
and reason, in a triumphant paean, assured him he was right. Something
of this change in him must have reached her, for she paused from her
reading, looked up at him, and smiled. His eyes dropped from her blue
eyes to her lips, and the sight of the stain maddened him. His arms all
but flashed out to her and around her, in the way of his old careless
life. She seemed to lean toward him, to wait, and all his will fought to
hold him back.
"You were not following a word," she pouted.
Then she laughed at him, delighting in his confusion, and as he looked
into her frank eyes and knew that she had divined nothing of what he
felt, he became abashed. He had indeed in thought dared too far. Of all
the women he had known there was no woman who would not have guessed--save
her. And she had not guessed. There was the difference. She was
different. He was appalled by his own grossness, awed by her clear
innocence, and he gazed again at her across the gulf. The bridge had
broken down.
But still the incident had brought him nearer. The memory of it
persisted, and in the moments when he was most cast down, he dwelt upon
it eagerly. The gulf was never again so wide. He had accomplished a
distance vastly greater than a bachelorship of arts, or a dozen
bachelorships. She was pure, Martin Eden page 46 Martin Eden page 48 |