"That I am not trained in opera?" he dashed in.
She nodded.
"The very thing," he agreed. "And I consider I am fortunate in not having been caught when I was young.
If I had, I could have wept sentimental tears to-night, and the clownish antics of that precious pair would have but enhanced the beauty of their voices and the beauty of the accompanying orchestra.
You are right.
It’s mostly a matter of training.
And I am too old, now.
I must have the real or nothing.
An illusion that won’t convince is a palpable lie, and that’s what grand opera is to me when little Barillo throws a fit, clutches mighty Tetralani in his arms (also in a fit), and tells her how passionately he adores her."
Again Ruth measured his thoughts by comparison of externals and in accordance with her belief in the established.
Who was he that he should be right and all the cultured world wrong?
His words and thoughts made no impression upon her.
She was too firmly intrenched in the established to have any sympathy with revolutionary ideas.
She had always been used to music, and she had enjoyed opera ever since she was a child, and all her world had enjoyed it, too.
Then by what right did Martin Eden emerge, as he had so recently emerged, from his rag-time and working-class songs, and pass judgment on the world’s music?
She was vexed with him, and as she walked beside him she had a vague feeling of outrage.
At the best, in her most charitable frame of mind, she considered the statement of his views to be a caprice, an erratic and uncalled-for prank.
But when he took her in his arms at the door and kissed her good night in tender lover-fashion, she forgot everything in the outrush of her own love to him.
And later, on a sleepless pillow, she puzzled, as she had often puzzled of late, as to how it was that she loved so strange a man, and loved him despite the disapproval of her people.
And next day Martin Eden cast hack-work aside, and at white heat hammered out an essay to which he gave the title,
"The Philosophy of Illusion."
A stamp started it on its travels, but it was destined to receive many stamps and to be started on many travels in the months that followed.
CHAPTER XXV
Maria Silva was poor, and all the ways of poverty were clear to her.
Poverty, to Ruth, was a word signifying a not-nice condition of existence.
That was her total knowledge on the subject.
She knew Martin was poor, and his condition she associated in her mind with the boyhood of Abraham Lincoln, of Mr. Butler, and of other men who had become successes.
Also, while aware that poverty was anything but delectable, she had a comfortable middle-class feeling that poverty was salutary, that it was a sharp spur that urged on to success all men who were not degraded and hopeless drudges. So that her knowledge that Martin was so poor that he had pawned his watch and overcoat did not disturb her.
She even considered it the hopeful side of the situation, believing that sooner or later it would arouse him and compel him to abandon his writing.
Ruth never read hunger in Martin’s face, which had grown lean and had enlarged the slight hollows in the cheeks.
In fact, she marked the change in his face with satisfaction.
It seemed to refine him, to remove from him much of the dross of flesh and the too animal-like vigor that lured her while she detested it.
Sometimes, when with her, she noted an unusual brightness in his eyes, and she admired it, for it made him appear more the poet and the scholar-the things he would have liked to be and which she would have liked him to be.
But Maria Silva read a different tale in the hollow cheeks and the burning eyes, and she noted the changes in them from day to day, by them following the ebb and flow of his fortunes.
She saw him leave the house with his overcoat and return without it, though the day was chill and raw, and promptly she saw his cheeks fill out slightly and the fire of hunger leave his eyes.
In the same way she had seen his wheel and watch go, and after each event she had seen his vigor bloom again.
Likewise she watched his toils, and knew the measure of the midnight oil he burned.
Work!
She knew that he outdid her, though his work was of a different order.
And she was surprised to behold that the less food he had, the harder he worked.
On occasion, in a casual sort of way, when she thought hunger pinched hardest, she would send him in a loaf of new baking, awkwardly covering the act with banter to the effect that it was better than he could bake.
And again, she would send one of her toddlers in to him with a great pitcher of hot soup, debating inwardly the while whether she was justified in taking it from the mouths of her own flesh and blood.
Nor was Martin ungrateful, knowing as he did the lives of the poor, and that if ever in the world there was charity, this was it.
On a day when she had filled her brood with what was left in the house, Maria invested her last fifteen cents in a gallon of cheap wine.
Martin, coming into her kitchen to fetch water, was invited to sit down and drink.
He drank her very-good health, and in return she drank his.
Then she drank to prosperity in his undertakings, and he drank to the hope that James Grant would show up and pay her for his washing.
James Grant was a journeymen carpenter who did not always pay his bills and who owed Maria three dollars.
Both Maria and Martin drank the sour new wine on empty stomachs, and it went swiftly to their heads.
Utterly differentiated creatures that they were, they were lonely in their misery, and though the misery was tacitly ignored, it was the bond that drew them together.