Chapter 7 Chapter Four

Because of the contact with his brother-in-law, Martin Eden was still angry.He groped his way through the unlit back hall into his own room—a small room with only room for a bed, a washstand, and a chair.Mr. Higginbotham is too thrifty to employ a man when he has a wife to do the work.Besides, the servants' quarters could be rented out—to two people instead of one.Martin put the Swinburne and Browning books on the chair, took off his coat, and sat down on the bed, panting as the asthmatic springs creaked under the pressure of his body, without him noticing.He was sweating and starting to take off his shoes, but suddenly he stared blankly at the opposite wall.The white paint on the wall was stained with dirty tan streaks from the rain that had leaked from the roof.Phantoms began to wander and burn on this grimy background.He forgot to take off his shoes and stared blankly for a long time before finally his lips began to move and he murmured the word "Ruth".

"Ruth," he didn't expect such a simple voice to be so beautiful.He was happy to hear it, so he repeated it again, moreover excited. "Ruth," it was a talisman (recorded on Takeshita), a mantra that could summon the soul.Every time he whispered the name, her face appeared before the ground, golden and bright, illuminating the grimy walls.The golden light does not stay on the wall, but extends to infinity.His soul searched Ruth's soul in the depths of that golden light.The best part of his chest turned into a wonderful torrent.The thought of her made him noble, pure, and progressive, and made him more ambitious.This is a new feeling for him.He had never met a woman who made him better.Women always have the opposite effect, making him more of a beast.He didn't know that many women, too, had tried to make a difference, even if it didn't work out.Because he was never self-aware, he didn't know that he had bred in himself a charm that could attract women's love, that could make them stretch out their hands to his youth.Although they often came to trouble him, he never bothered about them, nor dreamed that a woman would be able to advance because of him.Hitherto he had led a free and carefree life, and now it seemed to him that they were always reaching out to him with evil hands to drag him down.It wasn't fair to her to ask, and it wasn't fair to himself.However, he who had self-awareness for the first time did not yet have the conditions to judge. He stared blankly at the phantom of his own shame and felt ashamed.

He stood up abruptly, trying to look at himself in the dirty mirror of the Union washbasin.He wiped the mirror with a towel and looked at it carefully for a long time.That was the first time he really saw himself.He was born with a pair of observant eyes, but before that his eyes were only filled with the ever-changing images of the vast world, and he could not see himself when he only focused on the world. Now he saw the head and face of a young man of twenty .Because he is not used to being judgmental, he doesn't know how to measure himself.On Fangzheng's forehead is a pile of brown hair, chestnut-like brown, rolled into a big flower, and connected with a few small waves that can please women.That hair can make women's hands itch and want to touch it; it can make their fingers restless and want to insert it and rub it.But he ignored the hair, thinking it was nothing to Ruth.He thought about that square and high forehead for a long time, trying to see through it and know its connotation.He kept asking: How is the brain in there?what can it doWhat can it bring him?Could it bring him close to her?

His steel-gray eyes often turned azure blue to withstand the salty winds of the sunny sea.He didn't know if his eyes had a soul, and he didn't know how Lu Sizhu's eyes felt.He tried to think of himself as her, to look into those eyes, but he failed at the acrobatic.He could put himself in the shoes of other men, but only if he knew how they lived.And he didn't know Ruth's way of life.Ruth was mysterious, a miracle, and could he guess her thoughts?Even one?Well, he concluded that his eyes were sincere, and there was nothing petty or mean in them.His sun-tanned face surprised him.He never dreamed that he would be so dark.He rolled up his sleeves and compared the white inside of his arm to his face.Yes, he was white after all.But his arms were also tanned.He turned his arm sideways again, twisted his bicep with the other hand, and looked where the sun was least visible.The place is very white.He smiled at his bronzed face in the mirror when he remembered that his face was as white as under his arms.He couldn't imagine any fair beauty in the world who could boast that her skin was fairer and smoother than the sun-ravaged parts of his.

His full, sensitive lips would have looked like a baby's mouth if they hadn't been pressed tightly together under pressure.Sometimes the mouth is tightly pursed, and it looks severe and fierce!Even ascetic harshness.It was the mouth of a fighter, and it was also the mouth of a lover.It can savor the sweetness of life happily, or it can put aside the sweetness to command life.His jaw and brow, just beginning to reveal the majestic angles, also help the lips command life.Here, strength and sensitivity are combined with hardness and softness, which complement each other, prompting him to love the beauty that is beneficial to the body and mind, and to tremble with the feeling of not harming health.The tooth between his lips had never seen or needed a dentist.He thought the teeth were white, strong, and regular.But after looking at it again, he became anxious again, and in some corner of his mind somehow there was a vague impression: some people had to have their teeth cleaned every day, and that was the upper class, the Ruth class.She must also clean her teeth every day.How would she feel if she found out that he had never had his teeth cleaned in his life?He decided to buy a toothbrush and develop the habit of brushing his teeth.He resolved to start at once, tomorrow.Since he wanted to get close to her, he couldn't rely on his ability alone, he had to improve himself in every way, even cleaning his teeth and wearing a tie, although he felt that putting on a stiff collar was like giving up his freedom.

He raised his hand and rubbed his calloused palm with the belly of his thumb.Look carefully at the dirt embedded in the texture that even a brush can't remove.How different Ruth's palms were!He trembled with joy at the memory.Like rose petals, he thought; cooling off.Soft, like snowflakes, he had never thought that a literati's hands could be so soft and lovely; he suddenly found himself imagining a miracle: being touched by a hand like this, he couldn't help but blushed with shame.To conceive such thoughts of her would be gross, and it might be said to be a profanation of her noble spirit.She was a pale, slender elf, far beyond the body, but the tenderness of her palms still haunted him.He was used to the calluses of factory girls and working women, and he understood why their hands were rough, but Ruth's hands were... tender and delicate from never working. The thought that someone could live without working.The gulf between Ruth and him widened.He suddenly understood the nobility of the unlaborer.The avatar stood tall on the wall in front of the ground, like an arrogant and domineering bronze statue. He himself had always worked, and his earliest memories seemed to be inseparable from work.His whole family works.Gertru was exposed to work; her hands were red and swollen like boiled beef long before they were calloused from the endless work, mostly laundry, and Sister Morianne's work.Last summer he went to work in a cannery, and his white, tender and beautiful hands were scarred by the tomato knife. Last winter, she left two fingertips in the carton factory's paper cutter.He remembered the rough palms of his mother's hands as she lay in her coffin; his father, dry to his last feeble breath, died with calloused hands half an inch thick.But Ruth's hands were soft, and so were her mother's hands, and her brother's.The fact that her brother's hand surprised him speaks eloquently of the high class status of his family and of the distance between Ruth and him.

He smiled wryly, sat back on the bed, and finally took off his shoes.He was a fool to be intoxicated by a woman's face and her soft white hands.Another phantom appeared on the dirty paint wall in front of him.It's night.In London's East End, he stood in front of a gloomy flat.In front of her stood Marge, a fifteen-year-old working girl.After the dismissal banquet, he sent her back to the door of the house.She lived in that gloomy flat that wasn't fit for a pig.He held out his hand to her and said good night.She lifted her lips for his kiss, but he didn't want to kiss her.For some reason he was a little afraid of her.So she grabbed his hand and squeezed feverishly.He felt the calluses on her hands rub against the calluses on his hands, and he couldn't help feeling strong pity in his heart.He saw her expectant eyes and her malnourished female body.The body was maturing hastily and brutally with fear.So he embraced her with great indulgence, and stooped to kiss her on the lips.Her low cry of joy rang in his ears.He felt her close to him like a cat.Poor horny girl!He continued to stare at the hallucinations of the past long ago, and his flesh throbbed just as it did that night when the little girl clung to him.There was a burst of heat in his heart, and pity was born spontaneously.It was a gray scene, a sombre gray, with the drizzle falling sullenly on the paving stones.Now, a brilliant light fell on the wall, and her pale face under the golden crown of hair pierced the phantom just now, replacing it, but as far away as a star.

He took the Brownings and Swinburnes from the chair and kissed them, she asked me to see her again anyway, he thought.Looking at himself in the mirror again, he exclaimed very solemnly: "Martin Eden, you're going to the free library first thing in the morning and read about social etiquette. Get it!" He turned off the light, and the springs creaked under him again. "But you can't swear any more, Martin, man, you can't swear!" he cried. So he fell asleep and dreamed.The dream was as wild and audacious as the dream of the opium ghost.