Complete Works of Frank Norris

by Frank Norris

  He went out, closing the door behind him, and in a moment, Magnus heard the wheels of his buckboard grating on the driveway.

  The following morning brought a letter to Magnus from Gethings, of the San Pueblo ranch, which was situated very close to Visalia. The letter was to the effect that all around Visalia, upon the ranches affected by the regrade of the Railroad, men were arming and drilling, and that the strength of the League in that quarter was undoubted. “But to refer,” continued the letter, “to a most painful recollection. You will, no doubt, remember that, at the close of our last committee meeting, specific charges were made as to fraud in the nomination and election of one of our commissioners, emanating, most unfortunately, from the commissioner himself. These charges, my dear Mr. Derrick, were directed at yourself. How the secrets of the committee have been noised about, I cannot understand. You may be, of course, assured of my own unquestioning confidence and loyalty. However, I regret exceedingly to state not only that the rumour of the charges referred to above is spreading in this district, but that also they are made use of by the enemies of the League. It is to be deplored that some of the Leaguers themselves — you know, we number in our ranks many small farmers, ignorant Portuguese and foreigners — have listened to these stories and have permitted a feeling of uneasiness to develop among them. Even though it were admitted that fraudulent means had been employed in the elections, which, of course, I personally do not admit, I do not think it would make very much difference in the confidence which the vast majority of the Leaguers repose in their chiefs. Yet we have so insisted upon the probity of our position as opposed to Railroad chicanery, that I believe it advisable to quell this distant suspicion at once; to publish a denial of these rumoured charges would only be to give them too much importance. However, can you not write me a letter, stating exactly how the campaign was conducted, and the commission nominated and elected? I could show this to some of the more disaffected, and it would serve to allay all suspicion on the instant. I think it would be well to write as though the initiative came, not from me, but from yourself, ignoring this present letter. I offer this only as a suggestion, and will confidently endorse any decision you may arrive at.”

  The letter closed with renewed protestations of confidence.

  Magnus was alone when he read this. He put it carefully away in the filing cabinet in his office, and wiped the sweat from his forehead and face. He stood for one moment, his hands rigid at his sides, his fists clinched.

  “This is piling up,” he muttered, looking blankly at the opposite wall. “My God, this is piling up. What am I to do?”

  Ah, the bitterness of unavailing regret, the anguish of compromise with conscience, the remorse of a bad deed done in a moment of excitement. Ah, the humiliation of detection, the degradation of being caught, caught like a schoolboy pilfering his fellows’ desks, and, worse than all, worse than all, the consciousness of lost self-respect, the knowledge of a prestige vanishing, a dignity impaired, knowledge that the grip which held a multitude in check was trembling, that control was wavering, that command was being weakened. Then the little tricks to deceive the crowd, the little subterfuges, the little pretences that kept up appearances, the lies, the bluster, the pose, the strut, the gasconade, where once was iron authority; the turning of the head so as not to see that which could not be prevented; the suspicion of suspicion, the haunting fear of the Man on the Street, the uneasiness of the direct glance, the questioning as to motives — why had this been said, what was meant by that word, that gesture, that glance?

  Wednesday passed, and Thursday. Magnus kept to himself, seeing no visitors, avoiding even his family. How to break through the mesh of the net, how to regain the old position, how to prevent discovery? If there were only some way, some vast, superhuman effort by which he could rise in his old strength once more, crushing Lyman with one hand, Genslinger with the other, and for one more moment, the last, to stand supreme again, indomitable, the leader; then go to his death, triumphant at the end, his memory untarnished, his fame undimmed. But the plague-spot was in himself, knitted forever into the fabric of his being. Though Genslinger should be silenced, though Lyman should be crushed, though even the League should overcome the Railroad, though he should be the acknowledged leader of a resplendent victory, yet the plague-spot would remain. There was no success for him now. However conspicuous the outward achievement, he, he himself, Magnus Derrick, had failed, miserably and irredeemably.

  Petty, material complications intruded, sordid considerations. Even if Genslinger was to be paid, where was the money to come from? His legal battles with the Railroad, extending now over a period of many years, had cost him dear; his plan of sowing all of Los Muertos to wheat, discharging the tenants, had proved expensive, the campaign resulting in Lyman’s election had drawn heavily upon his account. All along he had been relying upon a “bonanza crop” to reimburse him. It was not believable that the Railroad would “jump” Los Muertos, but if this should happen, he would be left without resources. Ten thousand dollars! Could he raise the amount? Possibly. But to pay it out to a blackmailer! To be held up thus in road-agent fashion, without a single means of redress! Would it not cripple him financially? Genslinger could do his worst. He, Magnus, would brave it out. Was not his character above suspicion?

  Was it? This letter of Gethings’s. Already the murmur of uneasiness made itself heard. Was this not the thin edge of the wedge? How the publication of Genslinger’s story would drive it home! How the spark of suspicion would flare into the blaze of open accusation! There would be investigations. Investigation! There was terror in the word. He could not stand investigation. Magnus groaned aloud, covering his head with his clasped hands. Briber, corrupter of government, ballot-box stuffer, descending to the level of back-room politicians, of bar-room heelers, he, Magnus Derrick, statesman of the old school, Roman in his iron integrity, abandoning a career rather than enter the “new politics,” had, in one moment of weakness, hazarding all, even honour, on a single stake, taking great chances to achieve great results, swept away the work of a lifetime.

  Gambler that he was, he had at last chanced his highest stake, his personal honour, in the greatest game of his life, and had lost.

  It was Presley’s morbidly keen observation that first noticed the evidence of a new trouble in the Governor’s face and manner. Presley was sure that Lyman’s defection had not so upset him. The morning after the committee meeting, Magnus had called Harran and Annie Derrick into the office, and, after telling his wife of Lyman’s betrayal, had forbidden either of them to mention his name again. His attitude towards his prodigal son was that of stern, unrelenting resentment. But now, Presley could not fail to detect traces of a more deep-seated travail. Something was in the wind, the times were troublous. What next was about to happen? What fresh calamity impended?

  One morning, toward the very end of the week, Presley woke early in his small, white-painted iron bed. He hastened to get up and dress. There was much to be done that day. Until late the night before, he had been at work on a collection of some of his verses, gathered from the magazines in which they had first appeared. Presley had received a liberal offer for the publication of these verses in book form. “The Toilers” was to be included in this book, and, indeed, was to give it its name— “The Toilers and Other Poems.” Thus it was that, until the previous midnight, he had been preparing the collection for publication, revising, annotating, arranging. The book was to be sent off that morning.

  But also Presley had received a typewritten note from Annixter, inviting him to Quien Sabe that same day. Annixter explained that it was Hilma’s birthday, and that he had planned a picnic on the high ground of his ranch, at the headwaters of Broderson Creek. They were to go in the carry-all, Hilma, Presley, Mrs. Dyke, Sidney, and himself, and were to make a day of it. They would leave Quien Sabe at ten in the morning. Presley had at once resolved to go. He was immensely fond of Annixter — more so than ever since his marriage with Hilma and the astonis
hing transformation of his character. Hilma, as well, was delightful as Mrs. Annixter; and Mrs. Dyke and the little tad had always been his friends. He would have a good time.

  But nobody was to go into Bonneville that morning with the mail, and if he wished to send his manuscript, he would have to take it in himself. He had resolved to do this, getting an early start, and going on horseback to Quien Sabe, by way of Bonneville.

  It was barely six o’clock when Presley sat down to his coffee and eggs in the dining-room of Los Muertos. The day promised to be hot, and for the first time, Presley had put on a new khaki riding suit, very English-looking, though in place of the regulation top-boots, he wore his laced knee-boots, with a great spur on the left heel. Harran joined him at breakfast, in his working clothes of blue canvas. He was bound for the irrigating ditch to see how the work was getting on there.

  “How is the wheat looking?” asked Presley.

  “Bully,” answered the other, stirring his coffee. “The Governor has had his usual luck. Practically, every acre of the ranch was sown to wheat, and everywhere the stand is good. I was over on Two, day before yesterday, and if nothing happens, I believe it will go thirty sacks to the acre there. Cutter reports that there are spots on Four where we will get forty-two or three. Hooven, too, brought up some wonderful fine ears for me to look at. The grains were just beginning to show. Some of the ears carried twenty grains. That means nearly forty bushels of wheat to every acre. I call it a bonanza year.”

  “Have you got any mail?” said Presley, rising. “I’m going into town.”

  Harran shook his head, and took himself away, and Presley went down to the stable-corral to get his pony.

  As he rode out of the stable-yard and passed by the ranch house, on the driveway, he was surprised to see Magnus on the lowest step of the porch.

  “Good morning, Governor,” called Presley. “Aren’t you up pretty early?”

  “Good morning, Pres, my boy.” The Governor came forward and, putting his hand on the pony’s withers, walked along by his side.

  “Going to town, Pres?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir. Can I do anything for you, Governor?”

  Magnus drew a sealed envelope from his pocket.

  “I wish you would drop in at the office of the Mercury for me,” he said, “and see Mr. Genslinger personally, and give him this envelope. It is a package of papers, but they involve a considerable sum of money, and you must be careful of them. A few years ago, when our enmity was not so strong, Mr. Genslinger and I had some business dealings with each other. I thought it as well just now, considering that we are so openly opposed, to terminate the whole affair, and break off relations. We came to a settlement a few days ago. These are the final papers. They must be given to him in person, Presley. You understand.”

  Presley cantered on, turning into the county road and holding northward by the mammoth watering tank and Broderson’s popular windbreak. As he passed Caraher’s, he saw the saloon-keeper in the doorway of his place, and waved him a salutation which the other returned.

  By degrees, Presley had come to consider Caraher in a more favourable light. He found, to his immense astonishment, that Caraher knew something of Mill and Bakounin, not, however, from their books, but from extracts and quotations from their writings, reprinted in the anarchistic journals to which he subscribed. More than once, the two had held long conversations, and from Caraher’s own lips, Presley heard the terrible story of the death of his wife, who had been accidentally killed by Pinkertons during a “demonstration” of strikers. It invested the saloon-keeper, in Presley’s imagination, with all the dignity of the tragedy. He could not blame Caraher for being a “red.” He even wondered how it was the saloon-keeper had not put his theories into practice, and adjusted his ancient wrong with his “six inches of plugged gas-pipe.” Presley began to conceive of the man as a “character.”

  “You wait, Mr. Presley,” the saloon-keeper had once said, when Presley had protested against his radical ideas. “You don’t know the Railroad yet. Watch it and its doings long enough, and you’ll come over to my way of thinking, too.”

  It was about half-past seven when Presley reached Bonneville. The business part of the town was as yet hardly astir; he despatched his manuscript, and then hurried to the office of the “Mercury.” Genslinger, as he feared, had not yet put in appearance, but the janitor of the building gave Presley the address of the editor’s residence, and it was there he found him in the act of sitting down to breakfast. Presley was hardly courteous to the little man, and abruptly refused his offer of a drink. He delivered Magnus’s envelope to him and departed.

  It had occurred to him that it would not do to present himself at Quien Sabe on Hilma’s birthday, empty-handed, and, on leaving Genslinger’s house, he turned his pony’s head toward the business part of the town again pulling up in front of the jeweller’s, just as the clerk was taking down the shutters.

  At the jeweller’s, he purchased a little brooch for Hilma and at the cigar stand in the lobby of the Yosemite House, a box of superfine cigars, which, when it was too late, he realised that the master of Quien Sabe would never smoke, holding, as he did, with defiant inconsistency, to miserable weeds, black, bitter, and flagrantly doctored, which he bought, three for a nickel, at Guadalajara.

  Presley arrived at Quien Sabe nearly half an hour behind the appointed time; but, as he had expected, the party were in no way ready to start. The carry-all, its horses covered with white fly-nets, stood under a tree near the house, young Vacca dozing on the seat. Hilma and Sidney, the latter exuberant with a gayety that all but brought the tears to Presley’s eyes, were making sandwiches on the back porch. Mrs. Dyke was nowhere to be seen, and Annixter was shaving himself in his bedroom.

  This latter put a half-lathered face out of the window as Presley cantered through the gate, and waved his razor with a beckoning motion.

  “Come on in, Pres,” he cried. “Nobody’s ready yet. You’re hours ahead of time.”

  Presley came into the bedroom, his huge spur clinking on the straw matting. Annixter was without coat, vest or collar, his blue silk suspenders hung in loops over either hip, his hair was disordered, the crown lock stiffer than ever.

  “Glad to see you, old boy,” he announced, as Presley came in. “No, don’t shake hands, I’m all lather. Here, find a chair, will you? I won’t be long.”

  “I thought you said ten o’clock,” observed Presley, sitting down on the edge of the bed.

  “Well, I did, but — —”

  “But, then again, in a way, you didn’t, hey?” his friend interrupted.

  Annixter grunted good-humouredly, and turned to strop his razor. Presley looked with suspicious disfavour at his suspenders.

  “Why is it,” he observed, “that as soon as a man is about to get married, he buys himself pale blue suspenders, silk ones? Think of it. You, Buck Annixter, with sky-blue, silk suspenders. It ought to be a strap and a nail.”

  “Old fool,” observed Annixter, whose repartee was the heaving of brick bats. “Say,” he continued, holding the razor from his face, and jerking his head over his shoulder, while he looked at Presley’s reflection in his mirror; “say, look around. Isn’t this a nifty little room? We refitted the whole house, you know. Notice she’s all painted?”

  “I have been looking around,” answered Presley, sweeping the room with a series of glances. He forebore criticism. Annixter was so boyishly proud of the effect that it would have been unkind to have undeceived him. Presley looked at the marvellous, department-store bed of brass, with its brave, gay canopy; the mill-made wash-stand, with its pitcher and bowl of blinding red and green china, the straw-framed lithographs of symbolic female figures against the multi-coloured, new wall-paper; the inadequate spindle chairs of white and gold; the sphere of tissue paper hanging from the gas fixture, and the plumes of pampas grass tacked to the wall at artistic angles, and overhanging two astonishing oil paintings, in dazzling golden frames.

  “Say,
how about those paintings, Pres?” inquired Annixter a little uneasily. “I don’t know whether they’re good or not. They were painted by a three-fingered Chinaman in Monterey, and I got the lot for thirty dollars, frames thrown in. Why, I think the frames alone are worth thirty dollars.”

  “Well, so do I,” declared Presley. He hastened to change the subject.

  “Buck,” he said, “I hear you’ve brought Mrs. Dyke and Sidney to live with you. You know, I think that’s rather white of you.”

  “Oh, rot, Pres,” muttered Annixter, turning abruptly to his shaving.

  “And you can’t fool me, either, old man,” Presley continued. “You’re giving this picnic as much for Mrs. Dyke and the little tad as you are for your wife, just to cheer them up a bit.”

  “Oh, pshaw, you make me sick.”

  “Well, that’s the right thing to do, Buck, and I’m as glad for your sake as I am for theirs. There was a time when you would have let them all go to grass, and never so much as thought of them. I don’t want to seem to be officious, but you’ve changed for the better, old man, and I guess I know why. She—” Presley caught his friend’s eye, and added gravely, “She’s a good woman, Buck.”

  Annixter turned around abruptly, his face flushing under its lather.

  “Pres,” he exclaimed, “she’s made a man of me. I was a machine before, and if another man, or woman, or child got in my way, I rode ’em down, and I never DREAMED of anybody else but myself. But as soon as I woke up to the fact that I really loved her, why, it was glory hallelujah all in a minute, and, in a way, I kind of loved everybody then, and wanted to be everybody’s friend. And I began to see that a fellow can’t live FOR himself any more than he can live BY himself. He’s got to think of others. If he’s got brains, he’s got to think for the poor ducks that haven’t ‘em, and not give ’em a boot in the backsides because they happen to be stupid; and if he’s got money, he’s got to help those that are busted, and if he’s got a house, he’s got to think of those that ain’t got anywhere to go. I’ve got a whole lot of ideas since I began to love Hilma, and just as soon as I can, I’m going to get in and HELP people, and I’m going to keep to that idea the rest of my natural life. That ain’t much of a religion, but it’s the best I’ve got, and Henry Ward Beecher couldn’t do any more than that. And it’s all come about because of Hilma, and because we cared for each other.”