Chapter XLIV

CHAPTER XLIV

Mr. Morse met Martin in the office of the Hotel Metropole. Whether
he had happened there just casually, intent on other affairs, or
whether he had come there for the direct purpose of inviting him to
dinner, Martin never could quite make up his mind, though he
inclined toward the second hypothesis. At any rate, invited to
dinner he was by Mr. Morse - Ruth's father, who had forbidden him
the house and broken off the engagement.

Martin was not angry. He was not even on his dignity. He
tolerated Mr. Morse, wondering the while how it felt to eat such
humble pie. He did not decline the invitation. Instead, he put it
off with vagueness and indefiniteness and inquired after the
family, particularly after Mrs. Morse and Ruth. He spoke her name
without hesitancy, naturally, though secretly surprised that he had
had no inward quiver, no old, familiar increase of pulse and warm
surge of blood.

He had many invitations to dinner, some of which he accepted.
Persons got themselves introduced to him in order to invite him to
dinner. And he went on puzzling over the little thing that was
becoming a great thing. Bernard Higginbotham invited him to
dinner. He puzzled the harder. He remembered the days of his
desperate starvation when no one invited him to dinner. That was
the time he needed dinners, and went weak and faint for lack of
them and lost weight from sheer famine. That was the paradox of
it. When he wanted dinners, no one gave them to him, and now that
he could buy a hundred thousand dinners and was losing his
appetite, dinners were thrust upon him right and left. But why?
There was no justice in it, no merit on his part. He was no
different. All the work he had done was even at that time work
performed. Mr. and Mrs. Morse had condemned him for an idler and a
shirk and through Ruth had urged that he take a clerk's position in
an office. Furthermore, they had been aware of his work performed.
Manuscript after manuscript of his had been turned over to them by
Ruth. They had read them. It was the very same work that had put
his name in all the papers, and, it was his name being in all the
papers that led them to invite him.

One thing was certain: the Morses had not cared to have him for
himself or for his work. Therefore they could not want him now for
himself or for his work, but for the fame that was his, because he
was somebody amongst men, and - why not? - because he had a hundred
thousand dollars or so. That was the way bourgeois society valued
a man, and who was he to expect it otherwise? But he was proud.
He disdained such valuation. He desired to be valued for himself,
or for his work, which, after all, was an expression of himself.
That was the way Lizzie