Chapter VIII

CHAPTER VIII

Several weeks went by, during which Martin Eden studied his
grammar, reviewed the books on etiquette, and read voraciously the
books that caught his fancy. Of his own class he saw nothing. The
girls of the Lotus Club wondered what had become of him and worried
Jim with questions, and some of the fellows who put on the glove at
Riley's were glad that Martin came no more. He made another
discovery of treasure-trove in the library. As the grammar had
shown him the tie-ribs of language, so that book showed him the
tie-ribs of poetry, and he began to learn metre and construction
and form, beneath the beauty he loved finding the why and wherefore
of that beauty. Another modern book he found treated poetry as a
representative art, treated it exhaustively, with copious
illustrations from the best in literature. Never had he read
fiction with so keen zest as he studied these books. And his fresh
mind, untaxed for twenty years and impelled by maturity of desire,
gripped hold 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