On a certain afternoon in the early part of July, about a month after
the fight at the irrigating ditch and the mass meeting at Bonneville,
Cedarquist, at the moment opening his mail in his office in San
Francisco, was genuinely surprised to receive a visit from Presley.
“Well, upon my word, Pres,” exclaimed the manufacturer, as the young man
came in through the door that the office boy held open for him, “upon
my word, have you been sick? Sit down, my boy. Have a glass of sherry. I
always keep a bottle here.”
Presley accepted the wine and sank into the depths of a great leather
chair near by.
“Sick?” he answered. “Yes, I have been sick. I'm sick now. I'm gone to
pieces, sir.”
His manner was the extreme of listlessness--the listlessness of great
fatigue. “Well, well,” observed the other. “I'm right sorry to hear
that. What's the trouble, Pres?”
“Oh, nerves mostly, I suppose, and my head, and insomnia, and
weakness, a general collapse all along the line, the doctor tells
me. 'Over-cerebration,' he says; 'over-excitement.' I fancy I rather
narrowly missed brain fever.”
“Well, I can easily suppose it,” answered Cedarquist gravely, “after all
you have been through.”
Presley closed his eyes--they were sunken in circles of dark brown
flesh--and pressed a thin hand to the back of his head.
“It is a nightmare,” he murmured. “A frightful nightmare, and it's not
over yet. You have heard of it all only through the newspaper reports.
But down there, at Bonneville, at Los Muertos--oh, you can have no idea
of it, of the misery caused by the defeat of the ranchers and by this
decision of the Supreme Court that dispossesses them all. We had gone on
hoping to the last that we would win there. We had thought that in the
Supreme Court of the United States, at least, we could find justice. And
the news of its decision was the worst, last blow of all. For Magnus it
was the last--positively the very last.”
“Poor, poor Derrick,” murmured Cedarquist. “Tell me about him, Pres. How
does he take it? What is he going to do?”
“It beggars him, sir. He sunk a great deal more than any of us believed
in his ranch, when he resolved to turn off most of the tenants and farm
the ranch himself. Then the fight he made against the Railroad in the
Courts and the political campaign he went into, to get Lyman on
the Railroad Commission, took more of it. The money that Genslinger
blackmailed him of, it seems, was about all he had left. He had been
gambling--you know the Governor--on another bonanza crop this year to
recoup him. Well, the bonanza came right enough--just in time for S.
Behrman and the Railroad to grab it. Magnus is ruined.”
“What a tragedy! what a tragedy!” murmured the other. “Lyman turning
rascal, Harran killed, and now this; and all within so short a time--all
at the SAME time, you might almost say.”
“If it had only killed him,” continued Presley; “but that is the worst
of it.”
“How the worst?”
“I'm afraid, honestly, I'm afraid it is going to turn his wits,
sir. It's broken him; oh, you should see him, you should see him. A
shambling, stooping, trembling old man, in his dotage already. He sits
all day in the dining-room, turning over papers, sorting them, tying
them up, opening them again, forgetting them--all fumbling and mumbling
and confused. And at table sometimes he forgets to eat. And, listen,
you know, from the house we can hear the trains whistling for the Long
Trestle. As often as that happens the Governor seems to be--oh, I don't
know, frightened. He will sink his head between his shoulders, as though
he were dodging something, and he won't fetch a long breath again till
the train is out of hearing. He seems to have conceived an abject,
unreasoned terror of the Railroad.”
“But he will have to leave Los Muertos now, of course?”
“Yes, they will all have to leave. They have a fortnight more. The few
tenants that were still on Los Muertos are leaving. That is one thing
that brings me to the city. The family of one of the men who was
killed--Hooven was his name--have come to the city to find work. I
think they are liable to be in great distress, unless they have been
wonderfully lucky, and I am trying to find them in order to look after
them.”
“You need looking after yourself, Pres.”
“Oh, once away from Bonneville and the sight of the ruin there, I'm
better. But I intend to go away. And that makes me think, I came to ask
you if you could help me. If you would let me take passage on one of
your wheat ships. The Doctor says an ocean voyage would set me up.”
“Why, certainly, Pres,” declared Cedarquist. “But I'm sorry you'll have
to go. We expected to have you down in the country with us this winter.”
Presley shook his head. “No,” he answered. “I must go. Even if I had all
my health, I could not bring myself to stay in California just now. If
you can introduce me to one of your captains--”
“With pleasure. When do you want to go? You may have to wait a few
weeks. Our first ship won't clear till the end of the month.”
“That would do very well. Thank you, sir.”
But Cedarquist was still interested in the land troubles of the
Bonneville farmers, and took the first occasion to ask:
“So, the Railroad are in possession on most of the ranches?” “On all
of them,” returned Presley. “The League went all to pieces, so soon as
Magnus was forced to resign. The old story--they got quarrelling among
themselves. Somebody started a compromise party, and upon that issue
a new president was elected. Then there were defections. The Railroad
offered to lease the lands in question to the ranchers--the ranchers
who owned them,” he exclaimed bitterly, “and because the terms were
nominal--almost nothing--plenty of the men took the chance of saving
themselves. And, of course, once signing the lease, they acknowledged
the Railroad's title. But the road would not lease to Magnus. S. Behrman
takes over Los Muertos in a few weeks now.”
“No doubt, the road made over their title in the property to him,”
observed Cedarquist, “as a reward of his services.”
“No doubt,” murmured Presley wearily. He rose to go.
“By the way,” said Cedarquist, “what have you on hand for, let us say,
Friday evening? Won't you dine with us then? The girls are going to the
country Monday of next week, and you probably won't see them again for
some time if you take that ocean voyage of yours.”
“I'm afraid I shall be very poor company, sir,” hazarded Presley.
“There's no 'go,' no life in me at all these days. I am like a clock
with a broken spring.”
“Not broken, Pres, my boy;” urged the other, “only run down. Try and see
if we can't wind you up a bit. Say that we can expect you. We dine at
seven.”
“Thank you, sir. Till Friday at seven, then.”
Regaining the street, Presley sent his valise to his club (where he had
engaged a room) by a messenger boy, and boarded a Castro Street car.
Before leaving Bonneville, he had ascertained, by strenuous enquiry,
Mrs. Hooven's address in the city, and thitherward he now directed his
steps.
When Presley had told Cedarquist that he was ill, that he was jaded,
worn out, he had only told half the truth. Exhausted he was, nerveless,
weak, but this apathy was still invaded from time to time with fierce
incursions of a spirit of unrest and revolt, reactions, momentary
returns of the blind, undirected energy that at one time had prompted
him to a vast desire to acquit himself of some terrible deed of
readjustment, just what, he could not say, some terrifying martyrdom,
some awe-inspiring immolation, consummate, incisive, conclusive. He
fancied himself to be fired with the purblind, mistaken heroism of the
anarchist, hurling his victim to destruction with full knowledge that
the catastrophe shall sweep him also into the vortex it creates.
But his constitutional irresoluteness obstructed his path continually;
brain-sick, weak of will, emotional, timid even, he temporised,
procrastinated, brooded; came to decisions in the dark hours of the
night, only to abandon them in the morning.
Once only he had ACTED. And at this moment, as he was carried through
the windy, squalid streets, he trembled at the remembrance of it. The
horror of “what might have been” incompatible with the vengeance
whose minister he fancied he was, oppressed him. The scene perpetually
reconstructed itself in his imagination. He saw himself under the shade
of the encompassing trees and shrubbery, creeping on his belly toward
the house, in the suburbs of Bonneville, watching his chances, seizing
opportunities, spying upon the lighted windows where the raised curtains
afforded a view of the interior. Then had come the appearance in the
glare of the gas of the figure of the man for whom he waited. He saw
himself rise and run forward. He remembered the feel and weight in his
hand of Caraher's bomb--the six inches of plugged gas pipe. His upraised
arm shot forward. There was a shiver of smashed window-panes, then--a
void--a red whirl of confusion, the air rent, the ground rocking,
himself flung headlong, flung off the spinning circumference of things
out into a place of terror and vacancy and darkness. And then after a
long time the return of reason, the consciousness that his feet were set
upon the road to Los Muertos, and that he was fleeing terror-stricken,
gasping, all but insane with hysteria. Then the never-to-be-forgotten
night that ensued, when he descended into the pit, horrified at what
he supposed he had done, at one moment ridden with remorse, at another
raging against his own feebleness, his lack of courage, his wretched,
vacillating spirit. But morning had come, and with it the knowledge that
he had failed, and the baser assurance that he was not even remotely
suspected. His own escape had been no less miraculous than that of his
enemy, and he had fallen on his knees in inarticulate prayer, weeping,
pouring out his thanks to God for the deliverance from the gulf to the
very brink of which his feet had been drawn.
After this, however, there had come to Presley a deep-rooted suspicion
that he was--of all human beings, the most wretched--a failure.
Everything to which he had set his mind failed--his great epic, his
efforts to help the people who surrounded him, even his attempted
destruction of the enemy, all these had come to nothing. Girding his
shattered strength together, he resolved upon one last attempt to live
up to the best that was in him, and to that end had set himself to lift
out of the despair into which they had been thrust, the bereaved family
of the German, Hooven.
After all was over, and Hooven, together with the seven others who had
fallen at the irrigating ditch, was buried in the Bonneville cemetery,
Mrs. Hooven, asking no one's aid or advice, and taking with her Minna
and little Hilda, had gone to San Francisco--had gone to find work,
abandoning Los Muertos and her home forever. Presley only learned of the
departure of the family after fifteen days had elapsed.
At once, however, the suspicion forced itself upon him that Mrs.
Hooven--and Minna, too for the matter of that--country-bred, ignorant of
city ways, might easily come to grief in the hard, huge struggle of city
life. This suspicion had swiftly hardened to a conviction, acting at
last upon which Presley had followed them to San Francisco, bent upon
finding and assisting them.
The house to which Presley was led by the address in his memorandum book
was a cheap but fairly decent hotel near the power house of the Castro
Street cable. He inquired for Mrs. Hooven.
The landlady recollected the Hoovens perfectly.
“German woman, with a little girl-baby, and an older daughter, sure.
The older daughter was main pretty. Sure I remember them, but they ain't
here no more. They left a week ago. I had to ask them for their room.
As it was, they owed a week's room-rent. Mister, I can't afford----”
“Well, do you know where they went? Did you hear what address they had
their trunk expressed to?”
“Ah, yes, their trunk,” vociferated the woman, clapping her hands to her
hips, her face purpling. “Their trunk, ah, sure. I got their trunk, and
what are you going to do about it? I'm holding it till I get my money.
What have you got to say about it? Let's hear it.”
Presley turned away with a gesture of discouragement, his heart sinking.
On the street corner he stood for a long time, frowning in trouble and
perplexity. His suspicions had been only too well founded. So long ago
as a week, the Hoovens had exhausted all their little store of money.
For seven days now they had been without resources, unless, indeed, work
had been found; “and what,” he asked himself, “what work in God's name
could they find to do here in the city?”
Seven days! He quailed at the thought of it. Seven days without money,
knowing not a soul in all that swarming city. Ignorant of city life as
both Minna and her mother were, would they even realise that there were
institutions built and generously endowed for just such as they? He
knew them to have their share of pride, the dogged sullen pride of the
peasant; even if they knew of charitable organisations, would they,
could they bring themselves to apply there? A poignant anxiety thrust
itself sharply into Presley's heart. Where were they now? Where had they
slept last night? Where breakfasted this morning? Had there even been
any breakfast this morning? Had there even been any bed last night?
Lost, and forgotten in the plexus of the city's life, what had befallen
them? Towards what fate was the ebb tide of the streets drifting them?
Was this to be still another theme wrought out by iron hands upon the
old, the world-old, world-wide keynote? How far were the consequences
of that dreadful day's work at the irrigating ditch to reach? To what
length was the tentacle of the monster to extend?
Presley returned toward the central, the business quarter of the city,
alternately formulating and dismissing from his mind plan after plan
for the finding and aiding of Mrs. Hooven and her daughters. He reached
Montgomery Street, and turned toward his club, his imagination once more
reviewing all the causes and circumstances of the great battle of which
for the last eighteen months he had been witness.
All at once he paused, his eye caught by a sign affixed to the wall just
inside the street entrance of a huge office building, and smitten with
an idea, stood for an instant motionless, upon the sidewalk, his eyes
wide, his fists shut tight.
The building contained the General Office of the Pacific and
Southwestern Railroad. Large though it was, it nevertheless, was not
pretentious, and during his visits to the city, Presley must have passed
it, unheeding, many times.
But for all that it was the stronghold of the enemy--the centre of all
that vast ramifying system of arteries that drained the life-blood
of the State; the nucleus of the web in which so many lives, so many
fortunes, so many destinies had been enmeshed. From this place--so he
told himself--had emanated that policy of extortion, oppression and
injustice that little by little had shouldered the ranchers from their
rights, till, their backs to the wall, exasperated and despairing they
had turned and fought and died. From here had come the orders to S.
Behrman, to Cyrus Ruggles and to Genslinger, the orders that had brought
Dyke to a prison, that had killed Annixter, that had ruined Magnus, that
had corrupted Lyman. Here was the keep of the castle, and here, behind
one of those many windows, in one of those many offices, his hand upon
the levers of his mighty engine, sat the master, Shelgrim himself.
Instantly, upon the realisation of this fact an ungovernable desire
seized upon Presley, an inordinate curiosity. Why not see, face to face,
the man whose power was so vast, whose will was so resistless, whose
potency for evil so limitless, the man who for so long and so
hopelessly they had all been fighting. By reputation he knew him to
be approachable; why should he not then approach him? Presley took his
resolution in both hands. If he failed to act upon this impulse, he knew
he would never act at all. His heart beating, his breath coming short,
he entered the building, and in a few moments found himself seated in an
ante-room, his eyes fixed with hypnotic intensity upon the frosted pane
of an adjoining door, whereon in gold letters was inscribed the word,
“PRESIDENT.”
In the end, Presley had been surprised to find that Shelgrim was still
in. It was already very late, after six o'clock, and the other offices
in the building were in the act of closing. Many of them were already
deserted. At every instant, through the open door of the ante-room,
he caught a glimpse of clerks, office boys, book-keepers, and other
employees hurrying towards the stairs and elevators, quitting business
for the day. Shelgrim, it seemed, still remained at his desk, knowing no
fatigue, requiring no leisure.
“What time does Mr. Shelgrim usually go home?” inquired Presley of the
young man who sat ruling forms at the table in the ante-room.
“Anywhere between half-past six and seven,” the other answered, adding,
“Very often he comes back in the evening.”
And the man was seventy years old. Presley could not repress a murmur of
astonishment. Not only mentally, then, was the President of the P. and
S. W. a giant. Seventy years of age and still at his post, holding there
with the energy, with a concentration of purpose that would have wrecked
the health and impaired the mind of many men in the prime of their
manhood.
But the next instant Presley set his teeth.
“It is an ogre's vitality,” he said to himself. “Just so is the
man-eating tiger strong. The man should have energy who has sucked the
life-blood from an entire People.”
A little electric bell on the wall near at hand trilled a warning. The
young man who was ruling forms laid down his pen, and opening the
door of the President's office, thrust in his head, then after a word
exchanged with the unseen occupant of the room, he swung the door wide,
saying to Presley:
“Mr. Shelgrim will see you, sir.”
Presley entered a large, well lighted, but singularly barren office. A
well-worn carpet was on the floor, two steel engravings hung against the
wall, an extra chair or two stood near a large, plain, littered table.
That was absolutely all, unless he excepted the corner wash-stand,
on which was set a pitcher of ice water, covered with a clean, stiff
napkin. A man, evidently some sort of manager's assistant, stood at the
end of the table, leaning on the back of one of the chairs. Shelgrim
himself sat at the table.
He was large, almost to massiveness. An iron-grey beard and a mustache
that completely hid the mouth covered the lower part of his face. His
eyes were a pale blue, and a little watery; here and there upon his face
were moth spots. But the enormous breadth of the shoulders was what, at
first, most vividly forced itself upon Presley's notice. Never had
he seen a broader man; the neck, however, seemed in a manner to have
settled into the shoulders, and furthermore they were humped and
rounded, as if to bear great responsibilities, and great abuse.
At the moment he was wearing a silk skull-cap, pushed to one side and
a little awry, a frock coat of broadcloth, with long sleeves, and a
waistcoat from the lower buttons of which the cloth was worn and, upon
the edges, rubbed away, showing the metal underneath. At the top this
waistcoat was unbuttoned and in the shirt front disclosed were two pearl
studs.
Presley, uninvited, unnoticed apparently, sat down. The assistant
manager was in the act of making a report. His voice was not lowered,
and Presley heard every word that was spoken.
The report proved interesting. It concerned a book-keeper in the
office of the auditor of disbursements. It seems he was at most times
thoroughly reliable, hard-working, industrious, ambitious. But at long
intervals the vice of drunkenness seized upon the man and for three days
rode him like a hag. Not only during the period of this intemperance,
but for the few days immediately following, the man was useless, his
work untrustworthy. He was a family man and earnestly strove to rid
himself of his habit; he was, when sober, valuable. In consideration of
these facts, he had been pardoned again and again.
“You remember, Mr. Shelgrim,” observed the manager, “that you have more
than once interfered in his behalf, when we were disposed to let him go.
I don't think we can do anything with him, sir. He promises to reform
continually, but it is the same old story. This last time we saw nothing
of him for four days. Honestly, Mr. Shelgrim, I think we ought to let
Tentell out. We can't afford to keep him. He is really losing us too
much money. Here's the order ready now, if you care to let it go.”
There was a pause. Presley all attention, listened breathlessly. The
assistant manager laid before his President the typewritten order in
question. The silence lengthened; in the hall outside, the wrought-iron
door of the elevator cage slid to with a clash. Shelgrim did not look at
the order. He turned his swivel chair about and faced the windows behind
him, looking out with unseeing eyes. At last he spoke:
“Tentell has a family, wife and three children. How much do we pay him?”
“One hundred and thirty.”
“Let's double that, or say two hundred and fifty. Let's see how that
will do.”
“Why--of course--if you say so, but really, Mr. Shelgrim”
“Well, we'll try that, anyhow.”
Presley had not time to readjust his perspective to this new point of
view of the President of the P. and S. W. before the assistant manager
had withdrawn. Shelgrim wrote a few memoranda on his calendar pad, and
signed a couple of letters before turning his attention to Presley. At
last, he looked up and fixed the young man with a direct, grave glance.
He did not smile. It was some time before he spoke. At last, he said:
“Well, sir.”
Presley advanced and took a chair nearer at hand. Shelgrim turned and
from his desk picked up and consulted Presley's card. Presley observed
that he read without the use of glasses.
“You,” he said, again facing about, “you are the young man who wrote the
poem called 'The Toilers.'”
“Yes, sir.”
“It seems to have made a great deal of talk. I've read it, and I've seen
the picture in Cedarquist's house, the picture you took the idea from.”
Presley, his senses never more alive, observed that, curiously enough,
Shelgrim did not move his body. His arms moved, and his head, but
the great bulk of the man remained immobile in its place, and as the
interview proceeded and this peculiarity emphasised itself, Presley
began to conceive the odd idea that Shelgrim had, as it were, placed his
body in the chair to rest, while his head and brain and hands went
on working independently. A saucer of shelled filberts stood near his
elbow, and from time to time he picked up one of these in a great thumb
and forefinger and put it between his teeth.
“I've seen the picture called 'The Toilers,'” continued Shelgrim, “and
of the two, I like the picture better than the poem.”
“The picture is by a master,” Presley hastened to interpose.
“And for that reason,” said Shelgrim, “it leaves nothing more to be
said. You might just as well have kept quiet. There's only one best way
to say anything. And what has made the picture of 'The Toilers' great is
that the artist said in it the BEST that could be said on the subject.”
“I had never looked at it in just that light,” observed Presley. He
was confused, all at sea, embarrassed. What he had expected to find in
Shelgrim, he could not have exactly said. But he had been prepared
to come upon an ogre, a brute, a terrible man of blood and iron, and
instead had discovered a sentimentalist and an art critic. No standards
of measurement in his mental equipment would apply to the actual man,
and it began to dawn upon him that possibly it was not because these
standards were different in kind, but that they were lamentably
deficient in size. He began to see that here was the man not only great,
but large; many-sided, of vast sympathies, who understood with equal
intelligence, the human nature in an habitual drunkard, the ethics of
a masterpiece of painting, and the financiering and operation of ten
thousand miles of railroad.
“I had never looked at it in just that light,” repeated Presley. “There
is a great deal in what you say.”
“If I am to listen,” continued Shelgrim, “to that kind of talk, I prefer
to listen to it first hand. I would rather listen to what the great
French painter has to say, than to what YOU have to say about what he
has already said.”
His speech, loud and emphatic at first, when the idea of what he had to
say was fresh in his mind, lapsed and lowered itself at the end of his
sentences as though he had already abandoned and lost interest in that
thought, so that the concluding words were indistinct, beneath the grey
beard and mustache. Also at times there was the faintest suggestion of a
lisp.
“I wrote that poem,” hazarded Presley, “at a time when I was terribly
upset. I live,” he concluded, “or did live on the Los Muertos ranch in
Tulare County--Magnus Derrick's ranch.”
“The Railroad's ranch LEASED to Mr. Derrick,” observed Shelgrim.
Presley spread out his hands with a helpless, resigned gesture.
“And,” continued the President of the P. and S. W. with grave intensity,
looking at Presley keenly, “I suppose you believe I am a grand old
rascal.”
“I believe,” answered Presley, “I am persuaded----” He hesitated,
searching for his words.
“Believe this, young man,” exclaimed Shelgrim, laying a thick powerful
forefinger on the table to emphasise his words, “try to believe this--to
begin with--THAT RAILROADS BUILD THEMSELVES. Where there is a demand
sooner or later there will be a supply. Mr. Derrick, does he grow his
wheat? The Wheat grows itself. What does he count for? Does he supply
the force? What do I count for? Do I build the Railroad? You are dealing
with forces, young man, when you speak of Wheat and the Railroads, not
with men. There is the Wheat, the supply. It must be carried to feed
the People. There is the demand. The Wheat is one force, the Railroad,
another, and there is the law that governs them--supply and demand. Men
have only little to do in the whole business. Complications may arise,
conditions that bear hard on the individual--crush him maybe--BUT THE
WHEAT WILL BE CARRIED TO FEED THE PEOPLE as inevitably as it will grow.
If you want to fasten the blame of the affair at Los Muertos on any one
person, you will make a mistake. Blame conditions, not men.”
“But--but,” faltered Presley, “you are the head, you control the road.”
“You are a very young man. Control the road! Can I stop it? I can
go into bankruptcy if you like. But otherwise if I run my road, as a
business proposition, I can do nothing. I can not control it. It is
a force born out of certain conditions, and I--no man--can stop it or
control it. Can your Mr. Derrick stop the Wheat growing? He can burn his
crop, or he can give it away, or sell it for a cent a bushel--just as I
could go into bankruptcy--but otherwise his Wheat must grow. Can any one
stop the Wheat? Well, then no more can I stop the Road.”
Presley regained the street stupefied, his brain in a whirl. This new
idea, this new conception dumfounded him. Somehow, he could not deny
it. It rang with the clear reverberation of truth. Was no one, then, to
blame for the horror at the irrigating ditch? Forces, conditions,
laws of supply and demand--were these then the enemies, after all? Not
enemies; there was no malevolence in Nature. Colossal indifference
only, a vast trend toward appointed goals. Nature was, then, a gigantic
engine, a vast cyclopean power, huge, terrible, a leviathan with a heart
of steel, knowing no compunction, no forgiveness, no tolerance; crushing
out the human atom standing in its way, with nirvanic calm, the agony of
destruction sending never a jar, never the faintest tremour through all
that prodigious mechanism of wheels and cogs. He went to his club and
ate his supper alone, in gloomy agitation. He was sombre, brooding, lost
in a dark maze of gloomy reflections. However, just as he was rising
from the table an incident occurred that for the moment roused him and
sharply diverted his mind.
His table had been placed near a window and as he was sipping his
after-dinner coffee, he happened to glance across the street. His eye
was at once caught by the sight of a familiar figure. Was it Minna
Hooven? The figure turned the street corner and was lost to sight; but
it had been strangely like. On the moment, Presley had risen from the
table and, clapping on his hat, had hurried into the streets, where the
lamps were already beginning to shine.
But search though he would, Presley could not again come upon the young
woman, in whom he fancied he had seen the daughter of the unfortunate
German. At last, he gave up the hunt, and returning to his club--at this
hour almost deserted--smoked a few cigarettes, vainly attempted to
read from a volume of essays in the library, and at last, nervous,
distraught, exhausted, retired to his bed.
But none the less, Presley had not been mistaken. The girl whom he had
tried to follow had been indeed Minna Hooven.
When Minna, a week before this time, had returned to the lodging house
on Castro Street, after a day's unsuccessful effort to find employment,
and was told that her mother and Hilda had gone, she was struck
speechless with surprise and dismay. She had never before been in any
town larger than Bonneville, and now knew not which way to turn nor how
to account for the disappearance of her mother and little Hilda. That
the landlady was on the point of turning them out, she understood, but
it had been agreed that the family should be allowed to stay yet one
more day, in the hope that Minna would find work. Of this she reminded
the land-lady. But this latter at once launched upon her such a torrent
of vituperation, that the girl was frightened to speechless submission.
“Oh, oh,” she faltered, “I know. I am sorry. I know we owe you money,
but where did my mother go? I only want to find her.”
“Oh, I ain't going to be bothered,” shrilled the other. “How do I know?”
The truth of the matter was that Mrs. Hooven, afraid to stay in the
vicinity of the house, after her eviction, and threatened with arrest by
the landlady if she persisted in hanging around, had left with the
woman a note scrawled on an old blotter, to be given to Minna when
she returned. This the landlady had lost. To cover her confusion, she
affected a vast indignation, and a turbulent, irascible demeanour.
“I ain't going to be bothered with such cattle as you,” she vociferated
in Minna's face. “I don't know where your folks is. Me, I only have
dealings with honest people. I ain't got a word to say so long as the
rent is paid. But when I'm soldiered out of a week's lodging, then I'm
done. You get right along now. I don't know you. I ain't going to have
my place get a bad name by having any South of Market Street chippies
hanging around. You get along, or I'll call an officer.”
Minna sought the street, her head in a whirl. It was about five o'clock.
In her pocket was thirty-five cents, all she had in the world. What now?
All at once, the Terror of the City, that blind, unreasoned fear that
only the outcast knows, swooped upon her, and clutched her vulture-wise,
by the throat.
Her first few days' experience in the matter of finding employment, had
taught her just what she might expect from this new world upon which she
had been thrown. What was to become of her? What was she to do, where
was she to go? Unanswerable, grim questions, and now she no longer had
herself to fear for. Her mother and the baby, little Hilda, both of them
equally unable to look after themselves, what was to become of them,
where were they gone? Lost, lost, all of them, herself as well. But she
rallied herself, as she walked along. The idea of her starving, of her
mother and Hilda starving, was out of all reason. Of course, it would
not come to that, of course not. It was not thus that starvation came.
Something would happen, of course, it would--in time. But meanwhile,
meanwhile, how to get through this approaching night, and the next few
days. That was the thing to think of just now.
The suddenness of it all was what most unnerved her. During all the
nineteen years of her life, she had never known what it meant to shift
for herself. Her father had always sufficed for the family; he had taken
care of her, then, all of a sudden, her father had been killed, her
mother snatched from her. Then all of a sudden there was no help
anywhere. Then all of a sudden a terrible voice demanded of her, “Now
just what can you do to keep yourself alive?” Life faced her; she looked
the huge stone image squarely in the lustreless eyes.
It was nearly twilight. Minna, for the sake of avoiding observation--for
it seemed to her that now a thousand prying glances followed
her--assumed a matter-of-fact demeanour, and began to walk briskly
toward the business quarter of the town.
She was dressed neatly enough, in a blue cloth skirt with a blue plush
belt, fairly decent shoes, once her mother's, a pink shirt waist, and
jacket and a straw sailor. She was, in an unusual fashion, pretty. Even
her troubles had not dimmed the bright light of her pale, greenish-blue
eyes, nor faded the astonishing redness of her lips, nor hollowed her
strangely white face. Her blue-black hair was trim. She carried her
well-shaped, well-rounded figure erectly. Even in her distress, she
observed that men looked keenly at her, and sometimes after her as she
went along. But this she noted with a dim sub-conscious faculty. The
real Minna, harassed, terrified, lashed with a thousand anxieties, kept
murmuring under her breath:
“What shall I do, what shall I do, oh, what shall I do, now?”
After an interminable walk, she gained Kearney Street, and held it till
the well-lighted, well-kept neighbourhood of the shopping district
gave place to the vice-crowded saloons and concert halls of the Barbary
Coast. She turned aside in avoidance of this, only to plunge into the
purlieus of Chinatown, whence only she emerged, panic-stricken and out
of breath, after a half hour of never-to-be-forgotten terrors, and at a
time when it had grown quite dark.
On the corner of California and Dupont streets, she stood a long moment,
pondering.
“I MUST do something,” she said to herself. “I must do SOMETHING.” She
was tired out by now, and the idea occurred to her to enter the Catholic
church in whose shadow she stood, and sit down and rest. This she did.
The evening service was just being concluded. But long after the priests
and altar boys had departed from the chancel, Minna still sat in the
dim, echoing interior, confronting her desperate situation as best she
might.
Two or three hours later, the sexton woke her. The church was being
closed; she must leave. Once more, chilled with the sharp night air,
numb with long sitting in the same attitude, still oppressed with
drowsiness, confused, frightened, Minna found herself on the pavement.
She began to be hungry, and, at length, yielding to the demand that
every moment grew more imperious, bought and eagerly devoured a
five-cent bag of fruit. Then, once more she took up the round of
walking.
At length, in an obscure street that branched from Kearney Street, near
the corner of the Plaza, she came upon an illuminated sign, bearing the
inscription, “Beds for the Night, 15 and 25 cents.”
Fifteen cents! Could she afford it? It would leave her with only that
much more, that much between herself and a state of privation of which
she dared not think; and, besides, the forbidding look of the building
frightened her. It was dark, gloomy, dirty, a place suggestive of
obscure crimes and hidden terrors. For twenty minutes or half an hour,
she hesitated, walking twice and three times around the block. At last,
she made up her mind. Exhaustion such as she had never known, weighed
like lead upon her shoulders and dragged at her heels. She must sleep.
She could not walk the streets all night. She entered the door-way under
the sign, and found her way up a filthy flight of stairs. At the top, a
man in a blue checked “jumper” was filling a lamp behind a high desk. To
him Minna applied.
“I should like,” she faltered, “to have a room--a bed for the night. One
of those for fifteen cents will be good enough, I think.”
“Well, this place is only for men,” said the man, looking up from the
lamp.
“Oh,” said Minna, “oh--I--I didn't know.”
She looked at him stupidly, and he, with equal stupidity, returned the
gaze. Thus, for a long moment, they held each other's eyes.
“I--I didn't know,” repeated Minna.
“Yes, it's for men,” repeated the other. She slowly descended the
stairs, and once more came out upon the streets.
And upon those streets that, as the hours advanced, grew more and more
deserted, more and more silent, more and more oppressive with the
sense of the bitter hardness of life towards those who have no means of
living, Minna Hooven spent the first night of her struggle to keep
her head above the ebb-tide of the city's sea, into which she had been
plunged.
Morning came, and with it renewed hunger. At this time, she had found
her way uptown again, and towards ten o'clock was sitting upon a bench
in a little park full of nurse-maids and children. A group of the maids
drew their baby-buggies to Minna's bench, and sat down, continuing a
conversation they had already begun. Minna listened. A friend of one of
the maids had suddenly thrown up her position, leaving her “madame” in
what would appear to have been deserved embarrassment.
“Oh,” said Minna, breaking in, and lying with sudden unwonted fluency,
“I am a nurse-girl. I am out of a place. Do you think I could get that
one?”
The group turned and fixed her--so evidently a country girl--with a
supercilious indifference.
“Well, you might try,” said one of them. “Got good references?”
“References?” repeated Minna blankly. She did not know what this meant.
“Oh, Mrs. Field ain't the kind to stick about references,” spoke up the
other, “she's that soft. Why, anybody could work her.”
“I'll go there,” said Minna. “Have you the address?” It was told to her.
“Lorin,” she murmured. “Is that out of town?”
“Well, it's across the Bay.”
“Across the Bay.”
“Um. You're from the country, ain't you?”
“Yes. How--how do I get there? Is it far?”
“Well, you take the ferry at the foot of Market Street, and then the
train on the other side. No, it ain't very far. Just ask any one down
there. They'll tell you.”
It was a chance; but Minna, after walking down to the ferry slips, found
that the round trip would cost her twenty cents. If the journey
proved fruitless, only a dime would stand between her and the end
of everything. But it was a chance; the only one that had, as yet,
presented itself. She made the trip.
And upon the street-railway cars, upon the ferryboats, on the
locomotives and way-coaches of the local trains, she was reminded of
her father's death, and of the giant power that had reduced her to her
present straits, by the letters, P. and S. W. R. R. To her mind, they
occurred everywhere. She seemed to see them in every direction. She
fancied herself surrounded upon every hand by the long arms of the
monster.
Minute after minute, her hunger gnawed at her. She could not keep
her mind from it. As she sat on the boat, she found herself curiously
scanning the faces of the passengers, wondering how long since such
a one had breakfasted, how long before this other should sit down to
lunch.
When Minna descended from the train, at Lorin on the other side of the
Bay, she found that the place was one of those suburban towns, not yet
become fashionable, such as may be seen beyond the outskirts of any
large American city. All along the line of the railroad thereabouts,
houses, small villas--contractors' ventures--were scattered, the
advantages of suburban lots and sites for homes being proclaimed in
seven-foot letters upon mammoth bill-boards close to the right of
way. Without much trouble, Minna found the house to which she had been
directed, a pretty little cottage, set back from the street and shaded
by palms, live oaks, and the inevitable eucalyptus. Her heart warmed at
the sight of it. Oh, to find a little niche for herself here, a home,
a refuge from those horrible city streets, from the rat of famine, with
its relentless tooth. How she would work, how strenuously she would
endeavour to please, how patient of rebuke she would be, how faithful,
how conscientious. Nor were her pretensions altogether false; upon her,
while at home, had devolved almost continually the care of the baby
Hilda, her little sister. She knew the wants and needs of children.
Her heart beating, her breath failing, she rang the bell set squarely in
the middle of the front door.
The lady of the house herself, an elderly lady, with pleasant, kindly
face, opened the door. Minna stated her errand.
“But I have already engaged a girl,” she said.
“Oh,” murmured Minna, striving with all her might to maintain
appearances. “Oh--I thought perhaps--” She turned away.
“I'm sorry,” said the lady. Then she added, “Would you care to look
after so many as three little children, and help around in light
housework between whiles?”
“Yes, ma'am.” “Because my sister--she lives in North Berkeley, above
here--she's looking far a girl. Have you had lots of experience? Got
good references?”
“Yes, ma'am.”
“Well, I'll give you the address. She lives up in North Berkeley.”
She turned back into the house a moment, and returned, handing Minna a
card.
“That's where she lives--careful not to BLOT it, child, the ink's wet
yet--you had better see her.”
“Is it far? Could I walk there?”
“My, no; you better take the electric cars, about six blocks above
here.”
When Minna arrived in North Berkeley, she had no money left. By a cruel
mistake, she had taken a car going in the wrong direction, and though
her error was rectified easily enough, it had cost her her last
five-cent piece. She was now to try her last hope. Promptly it crumbled
away. Like the former, this place had been already filled, and Minna
left the door of the house with the certainty that her chance had
come to naught, and that now she entered into the last struggle with
life--the death struggle--shorn of her last pitiful defence, her last
safeguard, her last penny.
As she once more resumed her interminable walk, she realised she
was weak, faint; and she knew that it was the weakness of complete
exhaustion, and the faintness of approaching starvation. Was this the
end coming on? Terror of death aroused her.
“I MUST, I MUST do something, oh, anything. I must have something to
eat.”
At this late hour, the idea of pawning her little jacket occurred to
her, but now she was far away from the city and its pawnshops, and there
was no getting back.
She walked on. An hour passed. She lost her sense of direction, became
confused, knew not where she was going, turned corners and went up
by-streets without knowing why, anything to keep moving, for she fancied
that so soon as she stood still, the rat in the pit of her stomach
gnawed more eagerly.
At last, she entered what seemed to be, if not a park, at least
some sort of public enclosure. There were many trees; the place was
beautiful; well-kept roads and walks led sinuously and invitingly
underneath the shade. Through the trees upon the other side of a wide
expanse of turf, brown and sear under the summer sun, she caught a
glimpse of tall buildings and a flagstaff. The whole place had a vaguely
public, educational appearance, and Minna guessed, from certain notices
affixed to the trees, warning the public against the picking of flowers,
that she had found her way into the grounds of the State University. She
went on a little further. The path she was following led her, at length,
into a grove of gigantic live oaks, whose lower branches all but swept
the ground. Here the grass was green, the few flowers in bloom, the
shade very thick. A more lovely spot she had seldom seen. Near at hand
was a bench, built around the trunk of the largest live oak, and here,
at length, weak from hunger, exhausted to the limits of her endurance,
despairing, abandoned, Minna Hooven sat down to enquire of herself what
next she could do.
But once seated, the demands of the animal--so she could believe--became
more clamorous, more insistent. To eat, to rest, to be safely housed
against another night, above all else, these were the things she craved;
and the craving within her grew so mighty that she crisped her poor,
starved hands into little fists, in an agony of desire, while the tears
ran from her eyes, and the sobs rose thick from her breast and struggled
and strangled in her aching throat.
But in a few moments Minna was aware that a woman, apparently of some
thirty years of age, had twice passed along the walk in front of the
bench where she sat, and now, as she took more notice of her, she
remembered that she had seen her on the ferry-boat coming over from the
city.
The woman was gowned in silk, tightly corseted, and wore a hat of rather
ostentatious smartness. Minna became convinced that the person was
watching her, but before she had a chance to act upon this conviction
she was surprised out of all countenance by the stranger coming up to
where she sat and speaking to her.
“Here is a coincidence,” exclaimed the new-comer, as she sat down;
“surely you are the young girl who sat opposite me on the boat. Strange
I should come across you again. I've had you in mind ever since.”
On this nearer view Minna observed that the woman's face bore
rather more than a trace of enamel and that the atmosphere about was
impregnated with sachet. She was not otherwise conspicuous, but there
was a certain hardness about her mouth and a certain droop of fatigue
in her eyelids which, combined with an indefinite self-confidence of
manner, held Minna's attention.
“Do you know,” continued the woman, “I believe you are in trouble. I
thought so when I saw you on the boat, and I think so now. Are you? Are
you in trouble? You're from the country, ain't you?”
Minna, glad to find a sympathiser, even in this chance acquaintance,
admitted that she was in distress; that she had become separated from
her mother, and that she was indeed from the country.
“I've been trying to find a situation,” she hazarded in conclusion,
“but I don't seem to succeed. I've never been in a city before, except
Bonneville.”
“Well, it IS a coincidence,” said the other. “I know I wasn't drawn to
you for nothing. I am looking for just such a young girl as you. You
see, I live alone a good deal and I've been wanting to find a nice,
bright, sociable girl who will be a sort of COMPANION to me. Understand?
And there's something about you that I like. I took to you the moment I
saw you on the boat. Now shall we talk this over?”
Towards the end of the week, one afternoon, as Presley was returning
from his club, he came suddenly face to face with Minna upon a street
corner.
“Ah,” he cried, coming toward her joyfully. “Upon my word, I had almost
given you up. I've been looking everywhere for you. I was afraid you
might not be getting along, and I wanted to see if there was anything
I could do. How are your mother and Hilda? Where are you stopping? Have
you got a good place?”
“I don't know where mamma is,” answered Minna. “We got separated, and I
never have been able to find her again.”
Meanwhile, Presley had been taking in with a quick eye the details of
Minna's silk dress, with its garniture of lace, its edging of velvet,
its silver belt-buckle. Her hair was arranged in a new way and on her
head was a wide hat with a flare to one side, set off with a gilt buckle
and a puff of bright blue plush. He glanced at her sharply.
“Well, but--but how are you getting on?” he demanded.
Minna laughed scornfully.
“I?” she cried. “Oh, I'VE gone to hell. It was either that or
starvation.”
Presley regained his room at the club, white and trembling. Worse than
the worst he had feared had happened. He had not been soon enough to
help. He had failed again. A superstitious fear assailed him that he
was, in a manner, marked; that he was foredoomed to fail. Minna had
come--had been driven to this; and he, acting too late upon his tardy
resolve, had not been able to prevent it. Were the horrors, then, never
to end? Was the grisly spectre of consequence to forever dance in his
vision? Were the results, the far-reaching results of that battle at
the irrigating ditch to cross his path forever? When would the affair
be terminated, the incident closed? Where was that spot to which the
tentacle of the monster could not reach?
By now, he was sick with the dread of it all. He wanted to get away, to
be free from that endless misery, so that he might not see what he
could no longer help. Cowardly he now knew himself to be. He thought of
himself only with loathing.
Bitterly self-contemptuous that he could bring himself to a
participation in such trivialities, he began to dress to keep his
engagement to dine with the Cedarquists.
He arrived at the house nearly half an hour late, but before he could
take off his overcoat, Mrs. Cedarquist appeared in the doorway of the
drawing-room at the end of the hall. She was dressed as if to go out.
“My DEAR Presley,” she exclaimed, her stout, over-dressed body bustling
toward him with a great rustle of silk. “I never was so glad. You poor,
dear poet, you are thin as a ghost. You need a better dinner than I can
give you, and that is just what you are to have.”
“Have I blundered?” Presley hastened to exclaim. “Did not Mr. Cedarquist
mention Friday evening?”
“No, no, no,” she cried; “it was he who blundered. YOU blundering in
a social amenity! Preposterous! No; Mr. Cedarquist forgot that we were
dining out ourselves to-night, and when he told me he had asked you
here for the same evening, I fell upon the man, my dear, I did actually,
tooth and nail. But I wouldn't hear of his wiring you. I just dropped
a note to our hostess, asking if I could not bring you, and when I told
her who you WERE, she received the idea with, oh, empressement. So,
there it is, all settled. Cedarquist and the girls are gone on ahead,
and you are to take the old lady like a dear, dear poet. I believe I
hear the carriage. Allons! En voiture!”
Once settled in the cool gloom of the coupe, odorous of leather and
upholstery, Mrs. Cedarquist exclaimed:
“And I've never told you who you were to dine with; oh, a personage,
really. Fancy, you will be in the camp of your dearest foes. You are
to dine with the Gerard people, one of the Vice-Presidents of your bete
noir, the P. and S. W. Railroad.”
Presley started, his fists clenching so abruptly as to all but split his
white gloves. He was not conscious of what he said in reply, and Mrs.
Cedarquist was so taken up with her own endless stream of talk that she
did not observe his confusion.
“Their daughter Honora is going to Europe next week; her mother is to
take her, and Mrs. Gerard is to have just a few people to dinner--very
informal, you know--ourselves, you and, oh, I don't know, two or three
others. Have you ever seen Honora? The prettiest little thing, and
will she be rich? Millions, I would not dare say how many. Tiens. Nous
voici.”
The coupe drew up to the curb, and Presley followed Mrs. Cedarquist up
the steps to the massive doors of the great house. In a confused daze,
he allowed one of the footmen to relieve him of his hat and coat; in a
daze he rejoined Mrs. Cedarquist in a room with a glass roof, hung with
pictures, the art gallery, no doubt, and in a daze heard their names
announced at the entrance of another room, the doors of which were hung
with thick, blue curtains.
He entered, collecting his wits for the introductions and presentations
that he foresaw impended.
The room was very large, and of excessive loftiness. Flat, rectagonal
pillars of a rose-tinted, variegated marble, rose from the floor almost
flush with the walls, finishing off at the top with gilded capitals of
a Corinthian design, which supported the ceiling. The ceiling itself,
instead of joining the walls at right angles, curved to meet them, a
device that produced a sort of dome-like effect. This ceiling was a maze
of golden involutions in very high relief, that adjusted themselves to
form a massive framing for a great picture, nymphs and goddesses, white
doves, golden chariots and the like, all wreathed about with clouds and
garlands of roses. Between the pillars around the sides of the room
were hangings of silk, the design--of a Louis Quinze type--of beautiful
simplicity and faultless taste. The fireplace was a marvel. It reached
from floor to ceiling; the lower parts, black marble, carved into
crouching Atlases, with great muscles that upbore the superstructure.
The design of this latter, of a kind of purple marble, shot through
with white veinings, was in the same style as the design of the
silk hangings. In its midst was a bronze escutcheon, bearing an
undecipherable monogram and a Latin motto. Andirons of brass, nearly six
feet high, flanked the hearthstone.
The windows of the room were heavily draped in sombre brocade and ecru
lace, in which the initials of the family were very beautifully worked.
But directly opposite the fireplace, an extra window, lighted from
the adjoining conservatory, threw a wonderful, rich light into the
apartment. It was a Gothic window of stained glass, very large, the
centre figures being armed warriors, Parsifal and Lohengrin; the one
with a banner, the other with a swan. The effect was exquisite, the
window a veritable masterpiece, glowing, flaming, and burning with a
hundred tints and colours--opalescent, purple, wine-red, clouded pinks,
royal blues, saffrons, violets so dark as to be almost black.
Under foot, the carpet had all the softness of texture of grass; skins
(one of them of an enormous polar bear) and rugs of silk velvet were
spread upon the floor. A Renaissance cabinet of ebony, many feet taller
than Presley's head, and inlaid with ivory and silver, occupied one
corner of the room, while in its centre stood a vast table of Flemish
oak, black, heavy as iron, massive. A faint odour of sandalwood
pervaded the air. From the conservatory near-by, came the splashing of
a fountain. A row of electric bulbs let into the frieze of the walls
between the golden capitals, and burning dimly behind hemispheres of
clouded glass, threw a subdued light over the whole scene.
Mrs. Gerard came forward.
“This is Mr. Presley, of course, our new poet of whom we are all so
proud. I was so afraid you would be unable to come. You have given me a
real pleasure in allowing me to welcome you here.”
The footman appeared at her elbow.
“Dinner is served, madame,” he announced.
*****
When Mrs. Hooven had left the boarding-house on Castro Street, she
had taken up a position on a neighbouring corner, to wait for Minna's
reappearance. Little Hilda, at this time hardly more than six years of
age, was with her, holding to her hand.
Mrs. Hooven was by no means an old woman, but hard work had aged her.
She no longer had any claim to good looks. She no longer took much
interest in her personal appearance. At the time of her eviction
from the Castro Street boarding-house, she wore a faded black bonnet,
garnished with faded artificial flowers of dirty pink. A plaid shawl
was about her shoulders. But this day of misfortune had set Mrs. Hooven
adrift in even worse condition than her daughter. Her purse, containing
a miserable handful of dimes and nickels, was in her trunk, and her
trunk was in the hands of the landlady. Minna had been allowed such
reprieve as her thirty-five cents would purchase. The destitution of
Mrs. Hooven and her little girl had begun from the very moment of her
eviction.
While she waited for Minna, watching every street car and every
approaching pedestrian, a policeman appeared, asked what she did, and,
receiving no satisfactory reply, promptly moved her on.
Minna had had little assurance in facing the life struggle of the city.
Mrs. Hooven had absolutely none. In her, grief, distress, the pinch of
poverty, and, above all, the nameless fear of the turbulent, fierce life
of the streets, had produced a numbness, an embruted, sodden, silent,
speechless condition of dazed mind, and clogged, unintelligent speech.
She was dumb, bewildered, stupid, animated but by a single impulse. She
clung to life, and to the life of her little daughter Hilda, with the
blind tenacity of purpose of a drowning cat.
Thus, when ordered to move on by the officer, she had silently obeyed,
not even attempting to explain her situation. She walked away to the
next street-crossing. Then, in a few moments returned, taking up her
place on the corner near the boarding-house, spying upon the approaching
cable cars, peeping anxiously down the length of the sidewalks.
Once more, the officer ordered her away, and once more, unprotesting,
she complied. But when for the third time the policeman found her on
the forbidden spot, he had lost his temper. This time when Mrs. Hooven
departed, he had followed her, and when, bewildered, persistent, she had
attempted to turn back, he caught her by the shoulder.
“Do you want to get arrested, hey?” he demanded. “Do you want me to lock
you up? Say, do you, speak up?”
The ominous words at length reached Mrs. Hooven's comprehension.
Arrested! She was to be arrested. The countrywoman's fear of the Jail
nipped and bit eagerly at her unwilling heels. She hurried off, thinking
to return to her post after the policeman should have gone away. But
when, at length, turning back, she tried to find the boarding-house, she
suddenly discovered that she was on an unfamiliar street. Unwittingly,
no doubt, she had turned a corner. She could not retrace her steps. She
and Hilda were lost.
“Mammy, I'm tired,” Hilda complained.
Her mother picked her up.
“Mammy, where're we gowun, mammy?”
Where, indeed? Stupefied, Mrs. Hooven looked about her at the endless
blocks of buildings, the endless procession of vehicles in the streets,
the endless march of pedestrians on the sidewalks. Where was Minna;
where was she and her baby to sleep that night? How was Hilda to be fed?
She could not stand still. There was no place to sit down; but one thing
was left, walk.
Ah, that via dolorosa of the destitute, that chemin de la croix of the
homeless. Ah, the mile after mile of granite pavement that MUST be, MUST
be traversed. Walk they must. Move, they must; onward, forward, whither
they cannot tell; why, they do not know. Walk, walk, walk with bleeding
feet and smarting joints; walk with aching back and trembling knees;
walk, though the senses grow giddy with fatigue, though the eyes droop
with sleep, though every nerve, demanding rest, sets in motion its tiny
alarm of pain. Death is at the end of that devious, winding maze of
paths, crossed and re-crossed and crossed again. There is but one goal
to the via dolorosa; there is no escape from the central chamber of that
labyrinth. Fate guides the feet of them that are set therein. Double on
their steps though they may, weave in and out of the myriad corners of
the city's streets, return, go forward, back, from side to side, here,
there, anywhere, dodge, twist, wind, the central chamber where Death
sits is reached inexorably at the end.
Sometimes leading and sometimes carrying Hilda, Mrs. Hooven set off
upon her objectless journey. Block after block she walked, street after
street. She was afraid to stop, because of the policemen. As often as
she so much as slackened her pace, she was sure to see one of these
terrible figures in the distance, watching her, so it seemed to her,
waiting for her to halt for the fraction of a second, in order that he
might have an excuse to arrest her.
Hilda fretted incessantly.
“Mammy, where're we gowun? Mammy, I'm tired.” Then, at last, for the
first time, that plaint that stabbed the mother's heart:
“Mammy, I'm hungry.”
“Be qui-ut, den,” said Mrs. Hooven. “Bretty soon we'll hev der subber.”
Passers-by on the sidewalk, men and women in the great six o'clock
homeward march, jostled them as they went along. With dumb, dull
curiousness, she looked into one after another of the limitless stream
of faces, and she fancied she saw in them every emotion but pity. The
faces were gay, were anxious, were sorrowful, were mirthful, were lined
with thought, or were merely flat and expressionless, but not one was
turned toward her in compassion. The expressions of the faces might be
various, but an underlying callousness was discoverable beneath every
mask. The people seemed removed from her immeasurably; they were
infinitely above her. What was she to them, she and her baby, the
crippled outcasts of the human herd, the unfit, not able to survive,
thrust out on the heath to perish?
To beg from these people did not yet occur to her. There was no pride,
however, in the matter. She would have as readily asked alms of so many
sphinxes.
She went on. Without willing it, her feet carried her in a wide circle.
Soon she began to recognise the houses; she had been in that street
before. Somehow, this was distasteful to her; so, striking off at right
angles, she walked straight before her for over a dozen blocks. By now,
it was growing darker. The sun had set. The hands of a clock on the
power-house of a cable line pointed to seven. No doubt, Minna had come
long before this time, had found her mother gone, and had--just what had
she done, just what COULD she do? Where was her daughter now? Walking
the streets herself, no doubt. What was to become of Minna, pretty
girl that she was, lost, houseless and friendless in the maze of these
streets? Mrs. Hooven, roused from her lethargy, could not repress an
exclamation of anguish. Here was misfortune indeed; here was calamity.
She bestirred herself, and remembered the address of the boarding-house.
She might inquire her way back thither. No doubt, by now the policeman
would be gone home for the night. She looked about. She was in the
district of modest residences, and a young man was coming toward her,
carrying a new garden hose looped around his shoulder.
“Say, Meest'r; say, blease----”
The young man gave her a quick look and passed on, hitching the coil
of hose over his shoulder. But a few paces distant, he slackened in his
walk and fumbled in his vest pocket with his fingers. Then he came back
to Mrs. Hooven and put a quarter into her hand.
Mrs. Hooven stared at the coin stupefied. The young man disappeared.
He thought, then, that she was begging. It had come to that; she,
independent all her life, whose husband had held five hundred acres of
wheat land, had been taken for a beggar. A flush of shame shot to her
face. She was about to throw the money after its giver. But at the
moment, Hilda again exclaimed:
“Mammy, I'm hungry.”
With a movement of infinite lassitude and resigned acceptance of the
situation, Mrs. Hooven put the coin in her pocket. She had no right to
be proud any longer. Hilda must have food.
That evening, she and her child had supper at a cheap restaurant in
a poor quarter of the town, and passed the night on the benches of a
little uptown park.
Unused to the ways of the town, ignorant as to the customs and
possibilities of eating-houses, she spent the whole of her quarter upon
supper for herself and Hilda, and had nothing left wherewith to buy a
lodging.
The night was dreadful; Hilda sobbed herself to sleep on her mother's
shoulder, waking thereafter from hour to hour, to protest, though
wrapped in her mother's shawl, that she was cold, and to enquire why
they did not go to bed. Drunken men snored and sprawled near at hand.
Towards morning, a loafer, reeking of alcohol, sat down beside her,
and indulged in an incoherent soliloquy, punctuated with oaths and
obscenities. It was not till far along towards daylight that she fell
asleep.
She awoke to find it broad day. Hilda--mercifully--slept. Her mother's
limbs were stiff and lame with cold and damp; her head throbbed. She
moved to another bench which stood in the rays of the sun, and for a
long two hours sat there in the thin warmth, till the moisture of the
night that clung to her clothes was evaporated.
A policeman came into view. She woke Hilda, and carrying her in her
arms, took herself away.
“Mammy,” began Hilda as soon as she was well awake; “Mammy, I'm hungry.
I want mein breakfest.”
“Sure, sure, soon now, leedle tochter.”
She herself was hungry, but she had but little thought of that. How was
Hilda to be fed? She remembered her experience of the previous day, when
the young man with the hose had given her money. Was it so easy, then,
to beg? Could charity be had for the asking? So it seemed; but all that
was left of her sturdy independence revolted at the thought. SHE beg!
SHE hold out the hand to strangers!
“Mammy, I'm hungry.”
There was no other way. It must come to that in the end. Why temporise,
why put off the inevitable? She sought out a frequented street where men
and women were on their way to work. One after another, she let them
go by, searching their faces, deterred at the very last moment by some
trifling variation of expression, a firm set mouth, a serious, level
eyebrow, an advancing chin. Then, twice, when she had made a choice, and
brought her resolution to the point of speech, she quailed, shrinking,
her ears tingling, her whole being protesting against the degradation.
Every one must be looking at her. Her shame was no doubt the object of
an hundred eyes.
“Mammy, I'm hungry,” protested Hilda again.
She made up her mind. What, though, was she to say? In what words did
beggars ask for assistance?
She tried to remember how tramps who had appeared at her back door
on Los Muertos had addressed her; how and with what formula certain
mendicants of Bonneville had appealed to her. Then, having settled upon
a phrase, she approached a whiskered gentleman with a large stomach,
walking briskly in the direction of the town.
“Say, den, blease hellup a boor womun.”
The gentleman passed on.
“Perhaps he doand hear me,” she murmured.
Two well-dressed women advanced, chattering gayly.
“Say, say, den, blease hellup a boor womun.”
One of the women paused, murmuring to her companion, and from her purse
extracted a yellow ticket which she gave to Mrs. Hooven with voluble
explanations. But Mrs. Hooven was confused, she did not understand. What
could the ticket mean? The women went on their way.
The next person to whom she applied was a young girl of about eighteen,
very prettily dressed.
“Say, say, den, blease hellup a boor womun.”
In evident embarrassment, the young girl paused and searched in her
little pocketbook. “I think I have--I think--I have just ten cents here
somewhere,” she murmured again and again.
In the end, she found a dime, and dropped it into Mrs. Hooven's palm.
That was the beginning. The first step once taken, the others became
easy. All day long, Mrs. Hooven and Hilda followed the streets, begging,
begging. Here it was a nickel, there a dime, here a nickel again. But
she was not expert in the art, nor did she know where to buy food the
cheapest; and the entire day's work resulted only in barely enough for
two meals of bread, milk, and a wretchedly cooked stew. Tuesday night
found the pair once more shelterless.
Once more, Mrs. Hooven and her baby passed the night on the park
benches. But early on Wednesday morning, Mrs. Hooven found herself
assailed by sharp pains and cramps in her stomach. What was the
cause she could not say; but as the day went on, the pains increased,
alternating with hot flushes over all her body, and a certain weakness
and faintness. As the day went on, the pain and the weakness increased.
When she tried to walk, she found she could do so only with the greatest
difficulty. Here was fresh misfortune. To beg, she must walk. Dragging
herself forward a half-block at a time, she regained the street once
more. She succeeded in begging a couple of nickels, bought a bag of
apples from a vender, and, returning to the park, sank exhausted upon a
bench.
Here she remained all day until evening, Hilda alternately whimpering
for her bread and milk, or playing languidly in the gravel walk at her
feet. In the evening, she started out again. This time, it was bitter
hard. Nobody seemed inclined to give. Twice she was “moved on” by
policemen. Two hours' begging elicited but a single dime. With this, she
bought Hilda's bread and milk, and refusing herself to eat, returned to
the bench--the only home she knew--and spent the night shivering with
cold, burning with fever.
From Wednesday morning till Friday evening, with the exception of the
few apples she had bought, and a quarter of a loaf of hard bread that
she found in a greasy newspaper--scraps of a workman's dinner--Mrs.
Hooven had nothing to eat. In her weakened condition, begging became
hourly more difficult, and such little money as was given her, she
resolutely spent on Hilda's bread and milk in the morning and evening.
By Friday afternoon, she was very weak, indeed. Her eyes troubled her.
She could no longer see distinctly, and at times there appeared to
her curious figures, huge crystal goblets of the most graceful shapes,
floating and swaying in the air in front of her, almost within arm's
reach. Vases of elegant forms, made of shimmering glass, bowed and
courtesied toward her. Glass bulbs took graceful and varying shapes
before her vision, now rounding into globes, now evolving into
hour-glasses, now twisting into pretzel-shaped convolutions.
“Mammy, I'm hungry,” insisted Hilda, passing her hands over her face.
Mrs. Hooven started and woke. It was Friday evening. Already the street
lamps were being lit.
“Gome, den, leedle girl,” she said, rising and taking Hilda's hand.
“Gome, den, we go vind subber, hey?”
She issued from the park and took a cross street, directly away from the
locality where she had begged the previous days. She had had no success
there of late. She would try some other quarter of the town. After a
weary walk, she came out upon Van Ness Avenue, near its junction with
Market Street. She turned into the avenue, and went on toward the Bay,
painfully traversing block after block, begging of all whom she met (for
she no longer made any distinction among the passers-by).
“Say, say, den, blease hellup a boor womun.”
“Mammy, mammy, I'm hungry.”
It was Friday night, between seven and eight. The great deserted avenue
was already dark. A sea fog was scudding overhead, and by degrees
descending lower. The warmth was of the meagerest, and the street lamps,
birds of fire in cages of glass, fluttered and danced in the prolonged
gusts of the trade wind that threshed and weltered in the city streets
from off the ocean.
*****
Presley entered the dining-room of the Gerard mansion with little Miss
Gerard on his arm. The other guests had preceded them--Cedarquist with
Mrs. Gerard; a pale-faced, languid young man (introduced to Presley
as Julian Lambert) with Presley's cousin Beatrice, one of the twin
daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Cedarquist; his brother Stephen, whose
hair was straight as an Indian's, but of a pallid straw color, with
Beatrice's sister; Gerard himself, taciturn, bearded, rotund, loud of
breath, escorted Mrs. Cedarquist. Besides these, there were one or two
other couples, whose names Presley did not remember.
The dining-room was superb in its appointments. On three sides of the
room, to the height of some ten feet, ran a continuous picture, an oil
painting, divided into long sections by narrow panels of black oak. The
painting represented the personages in the Romaunt de la Rose, and
was conceived in an atmosphere of the most delicate, most ephemeral
allegory. One saw young chevaliers, blue-eyed, of elemental beauty
and purity; women with crowns, gold girdles, and cloudy wimples; young
girls, entrancing in their loveliness, wearing snow-white kerchiefs,
their golden hair unbound and flowing, dressed in white samite, bearing
armfuls of flowers; the whole procession defiling against a background
of forest glades, venerable oaks, half-hidden fountains, and fields of
asphodel and roses.
Otherwise, the room was simple. Against the side of the wall unoccupied
by the picture stood a sideboard of gigantic size, that once had adorned
the banquet hall of an Italian palace of the late Renaissance. It was
black with age, and against its sombre surfaces glittered an array of
heavy silver dishes and heavier cut-glass bowls and goblets.
The company sat down to the first course of raw Blue Point oysters,
served upon little pyramids of shaved ice, and the two butlers at once
began filling the glasses of the guests with cool Haut Sauterne.
Mrs. Gerard, who was very proud of her dinners, and never able to resist
the temptation of commenting upon them to her guests, leaned across to
Presley and Mrs. Cedarquist, murmuring, “Mr. Presley, do you find that
Sauterne too cold? I always believe it is so bourgeois to keep such
a delicate wine as Sauterne on the ice, and to ice Bordeaux or
Burgundy--oh, it is nothing short of a crime.”
“This is from your own vineyard, is it not?” asked Julian Lambert. “I
think I recognise the bouquet.”
He strove to maintain an attitude of fin gourmet, unable to refrain from
comment upon the courses as they succeeded one another.
Little Honora Gerard turned to Presley:
“You know,” she explained, “Papa has his own vineyards in southern
France. He is so particular about his wines; turns up his nose at
California wines. And I am to go there next summer. Ferrieres is the
name of the place where our vineyards are, the dearest village!” She was
a beautiful little girl of a dainty porcelain type, her colouring low
in tone. She wore no jewels, but her little, undeveloped neck and
shoulders, of an exquisite immaturity, rose from the tulle bodice of her
first decollete gown.
“Yes,” she continued; “I'm to go to Europe for the first time. Won't it
be gay? And I am to have my own bonne, and Mamma and I are to travel--so
many places, Baden, Homburg, Spa, the Tyrol. Won't it be gay?”
Presley assented in meaningless words. He sipped his wine mechanically,
looking about that marvellous room, with its subdued saffron lights,
its glitter of glass and silver, its beautiful women in their elaborate
toilets, its deft, correct servants; its array of tableware--cut glass,
chased silver, and Dresden crockery. It was Wealth, in all its outward
and visible forms, the signs of an opulence so great that it need never
be husbanded. It was the home of a railway “Magnate,” a Railroad King.
For this, then, the farmers paid. It was for this that S. Behrman turned
the screw, tightened the vise. It was for this that Dyke had been driven
to outlawry and a jail. It was for this that Lyman Derrick had been
bought, the Governor ruined and broken, Annixter shot down, Hooven
killed.
The soup, puree a la Derby, was served, and at the same time, as hors
d'oeuvres, ortolan patties, together with a tiny sandwich made of
browned toast and thin slices of ham, sprinkled over with Parmesan
cheese. The wine, so Mrs. Gerard caused it to be understood, was Xeres,
of the 1815 vintage.
*****
Mrs. Hooven crossed the avenue. It was growing late. Without knowing
it, she had come to a part of the city that experienced beggars shunned.
There was nobody about. Block after block of residences stretched
away on either hand, lighted, full of people. But the sidewalks were
deserted.
“Mammy,” whimpered Hilda. “I'm tired, carry me.”
Using all her strength, Mrs. Hooven picked her up and moved on
aimlessly.
Then again that terrible cry, the cry of the hungry child appealing to
the helpless mother:
“Mammy, I'm hungry.”
“Ach, Gott, leedle girl,” exclaimed Mrs. Hooven, holding her close to
her shoulder, the tears starting from her eyes. “Ach, leedle tochter.
Doand, doand, doand. You praik my hairt. I cen't vind any subber. We got
noddings to eat, noddings, noddings.”
“When do we have those bread'n milk again, Mammy?”
“To-morrow--soon--py-and-py, Hilda. I doand know what pecome oaf us now,
what pecome oaf my leedle babby.”
She went on, holding Hilda against her shoulder with one arm as best she
might, one hand steadying herself against the fence railings along the
sidewalk. At last, a solitary pedestrian came into view, a young man
in a top hat and overcoat, walking rapidly. Mrs. Hooven held out a
quivering hand as he passed her.
“Say, say, den, Meest'r, blease hellup a boor womun.”
The other hurried on.
*****
The fish course was grenadins of bass and small salmon, the latter
stuffed, and cooked in white wine and mushroom liquor.
“I have read your poem, of course, Mr. Presley,” observed Mrs. Gerard.
“'The Toilers,' I mean. What a sermon you read us, you dreadful young
man. I felt that I ought at once to 'sell all that I have and give to
the poor.' Positively, it did stir me up. You may congratulate yourself
upon making at least one convert. Just because of that poem Mrs.
Cedarquist and I have started a movement to send a whole shipload of
wheat to the starving people in India. Now, you horrid reactionnaire,
are you satisfied?”
“I am very glad,” murmured Presley.
“But I am afraid,” observed Mrs. Cedarquist, “that we may be too late.
They are dying so fast, those poor people. By the time our ship reaches
India the famine may be all over.”
“One need never be afraid of being 'too late' in the matter of helping
the destitute,” answered Presley. “Unfortunately, they are always a
fixed quantity. 'The poor ye have always with you.'”
“How very clever that is,” said Mrs. Gerard.
Mrs. Cedarquist tapped the table with her fan in mild applause.
“Brilliant, brilliant,” she murmured, “epigrammatical.”
“Honora,” said Mrs. Gerard, turning to her daughter, at that moment in
conversation with the languid Lambert, “Honora, entends-tu, ma cherie,
l'esprit de notre jeune Lamartine.”
*****
Mrs. Hooven went on, stumbling from street to street, holding Hilda to
her breast. Famine gnawed incessantly at her stomach; walk though she
might, turn upon her tracks up and down the streets, back to the avenue
again, incessantly and relentlessly the torture dug into her vitals.
She was hungry, hungry, and if the want of food harassed and rended
her, full-grown woman that she was, what must it be in the poor, starved
stomach of her little girl? Oh, for some helping hand now, oh, for one
little mouthful, one little nibble! Food, food, all her wrecked body
clamoured for nourishment; anything to numb those gnawing teeth--an
abandoned loaf, hard, mouldered; a half-eaten fruit, yes, even the
refuse of the gutter, even the garbage of the ash heap. On she went,
peering into dark corners, into the areaways, anywhere, everywhere,
watching the silent prowling of cats, the intent rovings of stray
dogs. But she was growing weaker; the pains and cramps in her stomach
returned. Hilda's weight bore her to the pavement. More than once a
great giddiness, a certain wheeling faintness all but overcame her.
Hilda, however, was asleep. To wake her would only mean to revive her to
the consciousness of hunger; yet how to carry her further? Mrs. Hooven
began to fear that she would fall with her child in her arms. The terror
of a collapse upon those cold pavements glistening with fog-damp roused
her; she must make an effort to get through the night. She rallied all
her strength, and pausing a moment to shift the weight of her baby to
the other arm, once more set off through the night. A little while later
she found on the edge of the sidewalk the peeling of a banana. It had
been trodden upon and it was muddy, but joyfully she caught it up.
“Hilda,” she cried, “wake oop, leedle girl. See, loog den, dere's
somedings to eat. Look den, hey? Dat's goot, ain't it? Zum bunaner.”
But it could not be eaten. Decayed, dirty, all but rotting, the stomach
turned from the refuse, nauseated.
“No, no,” cried Hilda, “that's not good. I can't eat it. Oh, Mammy,
please gif me those bread'n milk.”
*****
By now the guests of Mrs. Gerard had come to the entrees--Londonderry
pheasants, escallops of duck, and rissolettes a la pompadour. The wine
was Chateau Latour.
All around the table conversations were going forward gayly. The good
wines had broken up the slight restraint of the early part of the
evening and a spirit of good humour and good fellowship prevailed. Young
Lambert and Mr. Gerard were deep in reminiscences of certain mutual
duck-shooting expeditions. Mrs. Gerard and Mrs. Cedarquist discussed
a novel--a strange mingling of psychology, degeneracy, and analysis
of erotic conditions--which had just been translated from the Italian.
Stephen Lambert and Beatrice disputed over the merits of a Scotch collie
just given to the young lady. The scene was gay, the electric bulbs
sparkled, the wine flashing back the light. The entire table was a vague
glow of white napery, delicate china, and glass as brilliant as crystal.
Behind the guests the serving-men came and went, filling the glasses
continually, changing the covers, serving the entrees, managing the
dinner without interruption, confusion, or the slightest unnecessary
noise.
But Presley could find no enjoyment in the occasion. From that picture
of feasting, that scene of luxury, that atmosphere of decorous,
well-bred refinement, his thoughts went back to Los Muertos and Quien
Sabe and the irrigating ditch at Hooven's. He saw them fall, one by one,
Harran, Annixter, Osterman, Broderson, Hooven. The clink of the wine
glasses was drowned in the explosion of revolvers. The Railroad might
indeed be a force only, which no man could control and for which no man
was responsible, but his friends had been killed, but years of extortion
and oppression had wrung money from all the San Joaquin, money that had
made possible this very scene in which he found himself. Because Magnus
had been beggared, Gerard had become Railroad King; because the farmers
of the valley were poor, these men were rich.
The fancy grew big in his mind, distorted, caricatured, terrible.
Because the farmers had been killed at the irrigation ditch, these
others, Gerard and his family, fed full. They fattened on the blood of
the People, on the blood of the men who had been killed at the ditch.
It was a half-ludicrous, half-horrible “dog eat dog,” an unspeakable
cannibalism. Harran, Annixter, and Hooven were being devoured there
under his eyes. These dainty women, his cousin Beatrice and little Miss
Gerard, frail, delicate; all these fine ladies with their small fingers
and slender necks, suddenly were transfigured in his tortured mind into
harpies tearing human flesh. His head swam with the horror of it, the
terror of it. Yes, the People WOULD turn some day, and turning, rend
those who now preyed upon them. It would be “dog eat dog” again, with
positions reversed, and he saw for one instant of time that splendid
house sacked to its foundations, the tables overturned, the pictures
torn, the hangings blazing, and Liberty, the red-handed Man in the
Street, grimed with powder smoke, foul with the gutter, rush yelling,
torch in hand, through every door.
*****
At ten o'clock Mrs. Hooven fell.
Luckily she was leading Hilda by the hand at the time and the little
girl was not hurt. In vain had Mrs. Hooven, hour after hour, walked the
streets. After a while she no longer made any attempt to beg; nobody was
stirring, nor did she even try to hunt for food with the stray dogs and
cats. She had made up her mind to return to the park in order to
sit upon the benches there, but she had mistaken the direction, and
following up Sacramento Street, had come out at length, not upon the
park, but upon a great vacant lot at the very top of the Clay Street
hill. The ground was unfenced and rose above her to form the cap of the
hill, all overgrown with bushes and a few stunted live oaks. It was in
trying to cross this piece of ground that she fell. She got upon her
feet again.
“Ach, Mammy, did you hurt yourself?” asked Hilda.
“No, no.”
“Is that house where we get those bread'n milk?”
Hilda pointed to a single rambling building just visible in the night,
that stood isolated upon the summit of the hill in a grove of trees.
“No, no, dere aindt no braid end miluk, leedle tochter.”
Hilda once more began to sob.
“Ach, Mammy, please, PLEASE, I want it. I'm hungry.”
The jangled nerves snapped at last under the tension, and Mrs. Hooven,
suddenly shaking Hilda roughly, cried out: “Stop, stop. Doand say ut
egen, you. My Gott, you kill me yet.”
But quick upon this came the reaction. The mother caught her little
girl to her, sinking down upon her knees, putting her arms around her,
holding her close.
“No, no, gry all so mudge es you want. Say dot you are hongry. Say ut
egen, say ut all de dime, ofer end ofer egen. Say ut, poor, starfing,
leedle babby. Oh, mein poor, leedle tochter. My Gott, oh, I go crazy
bretty soon, I guess. I cen't hellup you. I cen't ged you noddings to
eat, noddings, noddings. Hilda, we gowun to die togedder. Put der arms
roundt me, soh, tighd, leedle babby. We gowun to die, we gowun to vind
Popper. We aindt gowun to be hongry eny more.”
“Vair we go now?” demanded Hilda.
“No places. Mommer's soh tiredt. We stop heir, leedle while, end rest.”
Underneath a large bush that afforded a little shelter from the wind,
Mrs. Hooven lay down, taking Hilda in her arms and wrapping her shawl
about her. The infinite, vast night expanded gigantic all around them.
At this elevation they were far above the city. It was still. Close
overhead whirled the chariots of the fog, galloping landward, smothering
lights, blurring outlines. Soon all sight of the town was shut out; even
the solitary house on the hilltop vanished. There was nothing left but
grey, wheeling fog, and the mother and child, alone, shivering in a
little strip of damp ground, an island drifting aimlessly in empty
space.
Hilda's fingers touched a leaf from the bush and instinctively closed
upon it and carried it to her mouth.
“Mammy,” she said, “I'm eating those leaf. Is those good?”
Her mother did not reply.
“You going to sleep, Mammy?” inquired Hilda, touching her face.
Mrs. Hooven roused herself a little.
“Hey? Vat you say? Asleep? Yais, I guess I wass asleep.”
Her voice trailed unintelligibly to silence again. She was not, however,
asleep. Her eyes were open. A grateful numbness had begun to creep over
her, a pleasing semi-insensibility. She no longer felt the pain and
cramps of her stomach, even the hunger was ceasing to bite.
*****
“These stuffed artichokes are delicious, Mrs. Gerard,” murmured young
Lambert, wiping his lips with a corner of his napkin. “Pardon me for
mentioning it, but your dinner must be my excuse.”
“And this asparagus--since Mr. Lambert has set the bad example,”
observed Mrs. Cedarquist, “so delicate, such an exquisite flavour. How
do you manage?”
“We get all our asparagus from the southern part of the State, from one
particular ranch,” explained Mrs. Gerard. “We order it by wire and get
it only twenty hours after cutting. My husband sees to it that it is
put on a special train. It stops at this ranch just to take on our
asparagus. Extravagant, isn't it, but I simply cannot eat asparagus that
has been cut more than a day.”
“Nor I,” exclaimed Julian Lambert, who posed as an epicure. “I can tell
to an hour just how long asparagus has been picked.”
“Fancy eating ordinary market asparagus,” said Mrs. Gerard, “that has
been fingered by Heaven knows how many hands.”
*****
“Mammy, mammy, wake up,” cried Hilda, trying to push open Mrs. Hooven's
eyelids, at last closed. “Mammy, don't. You're just trying to frighten
me.”
Feebly Hilda shook her by the shoulder. At last Mrs. Hooven's lips
stirred. Putting her head down, Hilda distinguished the whispered words:
“I'm sick. Go to schleep....Sick....Noddings to eat.”
*****
The dessert was a wonderful preparation of alternate layers of biscuit
glaces, ice cream, and candied chestnuts.
“Delicious, is it not?” observed Julian Lambert, partly to himself,
partly to Miss Cedarquist. “This Moscovite fouette--upon my word, I have
never tasted its equal.”
“And you should know, shouldn't you?” returned the young lady.
*****
“Mammy, mammy, wake up,” cried Hilda. “Don't sleep so. I'm frightenedt.”
Repeatedly she shook her; repeatedly she tried to raise the inert
eyelids with the point of her finger. But her mother no longer stirred.
The gaunt, lean body, with its bony face and sunken eye-sockets, lay
back, prone upon the ground, the feet upturned and showing the ragged,
worn soles of the shoes, the forehead and grey hair beaded with fog, the
poor, faded bonnet awry, the poor, faded dress soiled and torn. Hilda
drew close to her mother, kissing her face, twining her arms around
her neck. For a long time, she lay that way, alternately sobbing and
sleeping. Then, after a long time, there was a stir. She woke from a
doze to find a police officer and two or three other men bending over
her. Some one carried a lantern. Terrified, smitten dumb, she was unable
to answer the questions put to her. Then a woman, evidently a mistress
of the house on the top of the hill, arrived and took Hilda in her arms
and cried over her.
“I'll take the little girl,” she said to the police officer.
“But the mother, can you save her? Is she too far gone?”
“I've sent for a doctor,” replied the other.
*****
Just before the ladies left the table, young Lambert raised his glass of
Madeira. Turning towards the wife of the Railroad King, he said:
“My best compliments for a delightful dinner.”
*****
The doctor who had been bending over Mrs. Hooven, rose.
“It's no use,” he said; “she has been dead some time--exhaustion from
starvation.”