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Jack London - "Love of Life And Other Stories"

Stendhal - "La Duchesse de Palliano"

Edward Carpenter - "Project Gutenberg surfs with a modem donated by Supra."

Ellis Parker Butler - "The Water Goats and Other Troubles"

The Octopus, by Frank Norris

F >> Frank Norris >> The Octopus, by Frank Norris




"Well, that's what we want him to do, and he won't do it."

"Yes, yes," cried the half-dozen men who crowded around Magnus,
"yes, that's what we want him to do."

Keast turned to Magnus.

"Why, what's all this, Governor?" he exclaimed. "You've got to
answer that. Hey? why don't you give 'em the lie?"

"I--I," Magnus loosened the collar about his throat "it is a lie.
I will not stoop--I would not--would be--it would be beneath my--
my--it would be beneath me."

Keast stared in amazement. Was this the Great Man the Leader,
indomitable, of Roman integrity, of Roman valour, before whose
voice whole conventions had quailed? Was it possible he was
AFRAID to face those hired villifiers?

"Well, how about this?" demanded Garnett suddenly. "It is a lie,
isn't it? That Commission was elected honestly, wasn't it?"

"How dare you, sir!" Magnus burst out. "How dare you question
me--call me to account! Please understand, sir, that I tolerate----"

"Oh, quit it!" cried a voice from the group. "You can't scare
us, Derrick. That sort of talk was well enough once, but it
don't go any more. We want a yes or no answer."

It was gone--that old-time power of mastery, that faculty of
command. The ground crumbled beneath his feet. Long since it
had been, by his own hand, undermined. Authority was gone. Why
keep up this miserable sham any longer? Could they not read the
lie in his face, in his voice? What a folly to maintain the
wretched pretence! He had failed. He was ruined. Harran was
gone. His ranch would soon go; his money was gone. Lyman was
worse than dead. His own honour had been prostituted. Gone,
gone, everything he held dear, gone, lost, and swept away in that
fierce struggle. And suddenly and all in a moment the last
remaining shells of the fabric of his being, the sham that had
stood already wonderfully long, cracked and collapsed.

"Was the Commission honestly elected?" insisted Garnett. "Were
the delegates--did you bribe the delegates?"

"We were obliged to shut our eyes to means," faltered Magnus.
"There was no other way to--" Then suddenly and with the last
dregs of his resolution, he concluded with: "Yes, I gave them two
thousand dollars each."

"Oh, hell! Oh, my God!" exclaimed Keast, sitting swiftly down
upon the ragged sofa.

There was a long silence. A sense of poignant embarrassment
descended upon those present. No one knew what to say or where
to look. Garnett, with a laboured attempt at nonchalance,
murmured:

"I see. Well, that's what I was trying to get at. Yes, I see."

"Well," said Gethings at length, bestirring himself, "I guess
I'LL go home."

There was a movement. The group broke up, the men making for the
door. One by one they went out. The last to go was Keast. He
came up to Magnus and shook the Governor's limp hand.

"Good-bye, Governor," he said. "I'll see you again pretty soon.
Don't let this discourage you. They'll come around all right
after a while. So long."

He went out, shutting the door.

And seated in the one chair of the room, Magnus Derrick remained
a long time, looking at his face in the cracked mirror that for
so many years had reflected the painted faces of soubrettes, in
this atmosphere of stale perfume and mouldy rice powder.

It had come--his fall, his ruin. After so many years of
integrity and honest battle, his life had ended here--in an
actress's dressing-room, deserted by his friends, his son
murdered, his dishonesty known, an old man, broken, discarded,
discredited, and abandoned.
Before nightfall of that day, Bonneville was further excited by
an astonishing bit of news. S. Behrman lived in a detached house
at some distance from the town, surrounded by a grove of live oak
and eucalyptus trees. At a little after half-past six, as he was
sitting down to his supper, a bomb was thrown through the window
of his dining-room, exploding near the doorway leading into the
hall. The room was wrecked and nearly every window of the house
shattered. By a miracle, S. Behrman, himself, remained
untouched.


VIII


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:

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