Chapter XXV

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