The Man behind the Legend: Memoirs, Autobiographical Novels & Essays of Jack London. Jack London
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then,” he said, “how about my views? Do you think they are so radical?”
He held her eyes and waited the answer.
“I think them, well, very disconcerting,” she replied.
The question was answered for him, and so oppressed was he by the grayness of life that he forgot the tentative proposition she had made for him to go to work. And she, having gone as far as she dared, was willing to wait the answer till she should bring the question up again.
She had not long to wait. Martin had a question of his own to propound to her. He wanted to ascertain the measure of her faith in him, and within the week each was answered. Martin precipitated it by reading to her his “The Shame of the Sun.”
“Why don’t you become a reporter?” she asked when he had finished. “You love writing so, and I am sure you would succeed. You could rise in journalism and make a name for yourself. There are a number of great special correspondents. Their salaries are large, and their field is the world. They are sent everywhere, to the heart of Africa, like Stanley, or to interview the Pope, or to explore unknown Thibet.”
“Then you don’t like my essay?” he rejoined. “You believe that I have some show in journalism but none in literature?”
“No, no; I do like it. It reads well. But I am afraid it’s over the heads of your readers. At least it is over mine. It sounds beautiful, but I don’t understand it. Your scientific slang is beyond me. You are an extremist, you know, dear, and what may be intelligible to you may not be intelligible to the rest of us.”
“I imagine it’s the philosophic slang that bothers you,” was all he could say.
He was flaming from the fresh reading of the ripest thought he had expressed, and her verdict stunned him.
“No matter how poorly it is done,” he persisted, “don’t you see anything in it?—in the thought of it, I mean?”
She shook her head.
“No, it is so different from anything I have read. I read Maeterlinck and understand him—”
“His mysticism, you understand that?” Martin flashed out.
“Yes, but this of yours, which is supposed to be an attack upon him, I don’t understand. Of course, if originality counts—”
He stopped her with an impatient gesture that was not followed by speech. He became suddenly aware that she was speaking and that she had been speaking for some time.
“After all, your writing has been a toy to you,” she was saying. “Surely you have played with it long enough. It is time to take up life seriously—our life, Martin. Hitherto you have lived solely your own.”
“You want me to go to work?” he asked.
“Yes. Father has offered—”
“I understand all that,” he broke in; “but what I want to know is whether or not you have lost faith in me?”
She pressed his hand mutely, her eyes dim.
“In your writing, dear,” she admitted in a half-whisper.
“You’ve read lots of my stuff,” he went on brutally. “What do you think of it? Is it utterly hopeless? How does it compare with other men’s work?”
“But they sell theirs, and you—don’t.”
“That doesn’t answer my question. Do you think that literature is not at all my vocation?”
“Then I will answer.” She steeled herself to do it. “I don’t think you were made to write. Forgive me, dear. You compel me to say it; and you know I know more about literature than you do.”
“Yes, you are a Bachelor of Arts,” he said meditatively; “and you ought to know.”
“But there is more to be said,” he continued, after a pause painful to both. “I know what I have in me. No one knows that so well as I. I know I shall succeed. I will not be kept down. I am afire with what I have to say in verse, and fiction, and essay. I do not ask you to have faith in that, though. I do not ask you to have faith in me, nor in my writing. What I do ask of you is to love me and have faith in love.”
“A year ago I believed for two years. One of those years is yet to run. And I do believe, upon my honor and my soul, that before that year is run I shall have succeeded. You remember what you told me long ago, that I must serve my apprenticeship to writing. Well, I have served it. I have crammed it and telescoped it. With you at the end awaiting me, I have never shirked. Do you know, I have forgotten what it is to fall peacefully asleep. A few million years ago I knew what it was to sleep my fill and to awake naturally from very glut of sleep. I am awakened always now by an alarm clock. If I fall asleep early or late, I set the alarm accordingly; and this, and the putting out of the lamp, are my last conscious actions.”
“When I begin to feel drowsy, I change the heavy book I am reading for a lighter one. And when I doze over that, I beat my head with my knuckles in order to drive sleep away. Somewhere I read of a man who was afraid to sleep. Kipling wrote the story. This man arranged a spur so that when unconsciousness came, his naked body pressed against the iron teeth. Well, I’ve done the same. I look at the time, and I resolve that not until midnight, or not until one o’clock, or two o’clock, or three o’clock, shall the spur be removed. And so it rowels me awake until the appointed time. That spur has been my bed-mate for months. I have grown so desperate that five and a half hours of sleep is an extravagance. I sleep four hours now. I am starved for sleep. There are times when I am light-headed from want of sleep, times when death, with its rest and sleep, is a positive lure to me, times when I am haunted by Longfellow’s lines:
“‘The sea is still and deep;
All things within its bosom sleep;
A single step and all is o’er,
A plunge, a bubble, and no more.’
“Of course, this is sheer nonsense. It comes from nervousness, from an overwrought mind. But the point is: Why have I done this? For you. To shorten my apprenticeship. To compel Success to hasten. And my apprenticeship is now served. I know my equipment. I swear that I learn more each month than the average college man learns in a year. I know it, I tell you. But were my need for you to understand not so desperate I should not tell you. It is not boasting. I measure the results by the books. Your brothers, to-day, are ignorant barbarians compared with me and the knowledge I have wrung from the books in the hours they were sleeping. Long ago I wanted to be famous. I care very little for fame now. What I want is you; I am more hungry for you than for food, or clothing, or recognition. I have a dream of laying my head on your breast and sleeping an aeon or so, and the dream will come true ere another year is gone.”
His power beat against her, wave upon wave; and in the moment his will opposed hers most she felt herself most strongly drawn toward him. The strength that had always poured out from him to her was now flowering in his impassioned voice, his flashing eyes, and the vigor of life and intellect surging in him. And in that moment, and for the moment, she was aware of a rift that showed in her certitude—a rift through which she caught sight of the real Martin Eden, splendid and invincible; and as animal-trainers have their moments of doubt, so she, for the instant, seemed to doubt her power to tame this wild spirit of a man.
“And another thing,” he swept on. “You love me. But why do you love me? The thing in me that compels me to write is the very thing that draws your love. You love me because I am somehow different from the men you have known and might have loved. I was not made for the desk and counting-house, for petty business squabbling, and legal jangling. Make me do such things, make me like those other men, doing the work they do, breathing the air they breathe, developing the point of view they have developed, and you have destroyed the difference, destroyed me, destroyed the thing you love. My desire to write is the most vital thing in me. Had I been a mere clod, neither would I have desired to write, nor would you have desired me for a husband.”
“But