by Frank Norris
“We are going away,” she told Presley, as the two sat down at opposite ends of the dining table. “Just Magnus and myself — all there is left of us. There is very little money left; Magnus can hardly take care of himself, to say nothing of me. I must look after him now. We are going to Marysville.”
“Why there?”
“You see,” she explained, “it happens that my old place is vacant in the Seminary there. I am going back to teach — literature.” She smiled wearily. “It is beginning all over again, isn’t it? Only there is nothing to look forward to now. Magnus is an old man already, and I must take care of him.”
“He will go with you, then,” Presley said, “that will be some comfort to you at least.”
“I don’t know,” she said slowly, “you have not seen Magnus lately.”
“Is he — how do you mean? Isn’t he any better?”
“Would you like to see him? He is in the office. You can go right in.”
Presley rose. He hesitated a moment, then:
“Mrs. Annixter,” he asked, “Hilma — is she still with you? I should like to see her before I go.” “Go in and see Magnus,” said Mrs. Derrick. “I will tell her you are here.”
Presley stepped across the stone-paved hallway with the glass roof, and after knocking three times at the office door pushed it open and entered.
Magnus sat in the chair before the desk and did not look up as Presley entered. He had the appearance of a man nearer eighty than sixty. All the old-time erectness was broken and bent. It was as though the muscles that once had held the back rigid, the chin high, had softened and stretched. A certain fatness, the obesity of inertia, hung heavy around the hips and abdomen, the eye was watery and vague, the cheeks and chin unshaven and unkempt, the grey hair had lost its forward curl towards the temples and hung thin and ragged around the ears. The hawk-like nose seemed hooked to meet the chin; the lips were slack, the mouth half-opened.
Where once the Governor had been a model of neatness in his dress, the frock coat buttoned, the linen clean, he now sat in his shirt sleeves, the waistcoat open and showing the soiled shirt. His hands were stained with ink, and these, the only members of his body that yet appeared to retain their activity, were busy with a great pile of papers, — oblong, legal documents, that littered the table before him. Without a moment’s cessation, these hands of the Governor’s came and went among the papers, deft, nimble, dexterous.
Magnus was sorting papers. From the heap upon his left hand he selected a document, opened it, glanced over it, then tied it carefully, and laid it away upon a second pile on his right hand. When all the papers were in one pile, he reversed the process, taking from his right hand to place upon his left, then back from left to right again, then once more from right to left. He spoke no word, he sat absolutely still, even his eyes did not move, only his hands, swift, nervous, agitated, seemed alive.
“Why, how are you, Governor?” said Presley, coming forward. Magnus turned slowly about and looked at him and at the hand in which he shook his own.
“Ah,” he said at length, “Presley...yes.”
Then his glance fell, and he looked aimlessly about upon the floor. “I’ve come to say good-bye, Governor,” continued Presley, “I’m going away.”
“Going away...yes, why it’s Presley. Good-day, Presley.”
“Good-day, Governor. I’m going away. I’ve come to say good-bye.”
“Good-bye?” Magnus bent his brows, “what are you saying good-bye for?”
“I’m going away, sir.”
The Governor did not answer. Staring at the ledge of the desk, he seemed lost in thought. There was a long silence. Then, at length, Presley said:
“How are you getting on, Governor?”
Magnus looked up slowly.
“Why it’s Presley,” he said. “How do you do, Presley.”
“Are you getting on all right, sir?”
“Yes,” said Magnus after a while, “yes, all right. I am going away. I’ve come to say good-bye. No—” He interrupted himself with a deprecatory smile, “YOU said THAT, didn’t you?”
“Well, you are going away, too, your wife tells me.”
“Yes, I’m going away. I can’t stay on...” he hesitated a long time, groping for the right word, “I can’t stay on — on — what’s the name of this place?”
“Los Muertos,” put in Presley.
“No, it isn’t. Yes, it is, too, that’s right, Los Muertos. I don’t know where my memory has gone to of late.”
“Well, I hope you will be better soon, Governor.”
As Presley spoke the words, S. Behrman entered the room, and the Governor sprang up with unexpected agility and stood against the wall, drawing one long breath after another, watching the railroad agent with intent eyes.
S. Behrman saluted both men affably and sat down near the desk, drawing the links of his heavy watch chain through his fat fingers.
“There wasn’t anybody outside when I knocked, but I heard your voice in here, Governor, so I came right in. I wanted to ask you, Governor, if my carpenters can begin work in here day after to-morrow. I want to take down that partition there, and throw this room and the next into one. I guess that will be O. K., won’t it? You’ll be out of here by then, won’t you?”
There was no vagueness about Magnus’s speech or manner now. There was that same alertness in his demeanour that one sees in a tamed lion in the presence of its trainer.
“Yes, yes,” he said quickly, “you can send your men here. I will be gone by to-morrow.”
“I don’t want to seem to hurry you, Governor.” “No, you will not hurry me. I am ready to go now.”
“Anything I can do for you, Governor?”
“Nothing.”
“Yes, there is, Governor,” insisted S. Behrman. “I think now that all is over we ought to be good friends. I think I can do something for you. We still want an assistant in the local freight manager’s office. Now, what do you say to having a try at it? There’s a salary of fifty a month goes with it. I guess you must be in need of money now, and there’s always the wife to support; what do you say? Will you try the place?”
Presley could only stare at the man in speechless wonder. What was he driving at? What reason was there back of this new move, and why should it be made thus openly and in his hearing? An explanation occurred to him. Was this merely a pleasantry on the part of S. Behrman, a way of enjoying to the full his triumph; was he testing the completeness of his victory, trying to see just how far he could go, how far beneath his feet he could push his old-time enemy?
“What do you say?” he repeated. “Will you try the place?”
“You — you INSIST?” inquired the Governor.
“Oh, I’m not insisting on anything,” cried S. Behrman. “I’m offering you a place, that’s all. Will you take it?”
“Yes, yes, I’ll take it.”
“You’ll come over to our side?”
“Yes, I’ll come over.”
“You’ll have to turn ‘railroad,’ understand?”
“I’ll turn railroad.”
“Guess there may be times when you’ll have to take orders from me.”
“I’ll take orders from you.”
“You’ll have to be loyal to railroad, you know. No funny business.”
“I’ll be loyal to the railroad.”
“You would like the place then?”
“Yes.”
S. Behrman turned from Magnus, who at once resumed his seat and began again to sort his papers.
“Well, Presley,” said the railroad agent: “I guess I won’t see you again.”
“I hope not,” answered the other.
“Tut, tut, Presley, you know you can’t make me angry.”
He put on his hat of varnished straw and wiped his fat forehead with his handkerchief. Of late, he had grown fatter than ever, and the linen vest, stamped with a multitude of interlocked horseshoes, strained tight its imitation pearl buttons across the great
protuberant stomach.
Presley looked at the man a moment before replying.
But a few weeks ago he could not thus have faced the great enemy of the farmers without a gust of blind rage blowing tempestuous through all his bones. Now, however, he found to his surprise that his fury had lapsed to a profound contempt, in which there was bitterness, but no truculence. He was tired, tired to death of the whole business.
“Yes,” he answered deliberately, “I am going away. You have ruined this place for me. I couldn’t live here where I should have to see you, or the results of what you have done, whenever I stirred out of doors.”
“Nonsense, Presley,” answered the other, refusing to become angry. “That’s foolishness, that kind of talk; though, of course, I understand how you feel. I guess it was you, wasn’t it, who threw that bomb into my house?”
“It was.”
“Well, that don’t show any common sense, Presley,” returned S. Behrman with perfect aplomb. “What could you have gained by killing me?”
“Not so much probably as you have gained by killing Harran and Annixter. But that’s all passed now. You’re safe from me.” The strangeness of this talk, the oddity of the situation burst upon him and he laughed aloud. “It don’t seem as though you could be brought to book, S. Behrman, by anybody, or by any means, does it? They can’t get at you through the courts, — the law can’t get you, Dyke’s pistol missed fire for just your benefit, and you even escaped Caraher’s six inches of plugged gas pipe. Just what are we going to do with you?”
“Best give it up, Pres, my boy,” returned the other. “I guess there ain’t anything can touch me. Well, Magnus,” he said, turning once more to the Governor. “Well, I’ll think over what you say, and let you know if I can get the place for you in a day or two. You see,” he added, “you’re getting pretty old, Magnus Derrick.”
Presley flung himself from the room, unable any longer to witness the depths into which Magnus had fallen. What other scenes of degradation were enacted in that room, how much further S. Behrman carried the humiliation, he did not know. He suddenly felt that the air of the office was choking him.
He hurried up to what once had been his own room. On his way he could not but note that much of the house was in disarray, a great packing-up was in progress; trunks, half-full, stood in the hallways, crates and cases in a litter of straw encumbered the rooms. The servants came and went with armfuls of books, ornaments, articles of clothing.
Presley took from his room only a few manuscripts and note-books, and a small valise full of his personal effects; at the doorway he paused and, holding the knob of the door in his hand, looked back into the room a very long time.
He descended to the lower floor and entered the dining-room. Mrs. Derrick had disappeared. Presley stood for a long moment in front of the fireplace, looking about the room, remembering the scenes that he had witnessed there — the conference when Osterman had first suggested the fight for Railroad Commissioner and then later the attack on Lyman Derrick and the sudden revelation of that inconceivable treachery. But as he stood considering these things a door to his right opened and Hilma entered the room.
Presley came forward, holding out his hand, all unable to believe his eyes. It was a woman, grave, dignified, composed, who advanced to meet him. Hilma was dressed in black, the cut and fashion of the gown severe, almost monastic. All the little feminine and contradictory daintinesses were nowhere to be seen. Her statuesque calm evenness of contour yet remained, but it was the calmness of great sorrow, of infinite resignation. Beautiful she still remained, but she was older. The seriousness of one who has gained the knowledge of the world — knowledge of its evil — seemed to envelope her. The calm gravity of a great suffering past, but not forgotten, sat upon her. Not yet twenty-one, she exhibited the demeanour of a woman of forty.
The one-time amplitude of her figure, the fulness of hip and shoulder, the great deep swell from waist to throat were gone. She had grown thinner and, in consequence, seemed unusually, almost unnaturally tall. Her neck was slender, the outline of her full lips and round chin was a little sharp; her arms, those wonderful, beautiful arms of hers, were a little shrunken. But her eyes were as wide open as always, rimmed as ever by the thin, intensely black line of the lashes and her brown, fragrant hair was still thick, still, at times, glittered and coruscated in the sun. When she spoke, it was with the old-time velvety huskiness of voice that Annixter had learned to love so well.
“Oh, it is you,” she said, giving him her hand. “You were good to want to see me before you left. I hear that you are going away.”
She sat down upon the sofa.
“Yes,” Presley answered, drawing a chair near to her, “yes, I felt I could not stay — down here any longer. I am going to take a long ocean voyage. My ship sails in a few days. But you, Mrs. Annixter, what are you going to do? Is there any way I can serve you?”
“No,” she answered, “nothing. Papa is doing well. We are living here now.”
“You are well?”
She made a little helpless gesture with both her hands, smiling very sadly.
“As you see,” she answered.
As he talked, Presley was looking at her intently. Her dignity was a new element in her character and the certain slender effect of her figure, emphasised now by the long folds of the black gown she wore, carried it almost superbly. She conveyed something of the impression of a queen in exile. But she had lost none of her womanliness; rather, the contrary. Adversity had softened her, as well as deepened her. Presley saw that very clearly. Hilma had arrived now at her perfect maturity; she had known great love and she had known great grief, and the woman that had awakened in her with her affection for Annixter had been strengthened and infinitely ennobled by his death. What if things had been different? Thus, as he conversed with her, Presley found himself wondering. Her sweetness, her beautiful gentleness, and tenderness were almost like palpable presences. It was almost as if a caress had been laid softly upon his cheek, as if a gentle hand closed upon his. Here, he knew, was sympathy; here, he knew, was an infinite capacity for love.
Then suddenly all the tired heart of him went out towards her. A longing to give the best that was in him to the memory of her, to be strong and noble because of her, to reshape his purposeless, half-wasted life with her nobility and purity and gentleness for his inspiration leaped all at once within him, leaped and stood firm, hardening to a resolve stronger than any he had ever known.
For an instant he told himself that the suddenness of this new emotion must be evidence of its insincerity. He was perfectly well aware that his impulses were abrupt and of short duration. But he knew that this was not sudden. Without realising it, he had been from the first drawn to Hilma, and all through these last terrible days, since the time he had seen her at Los Muertos, just after the battle at the ditch, she had obtruded continually upon his thoughts. The sight of her to-day, more beautiful than ever, quiet, strong, reserved, had only brought matters to a culmination.
“Are you,” he asked her, “are you so unhappy, Hilma, that you can look forward to no more brightness in your life?”
“Unless I could forget — forget my husband,” she answered, “how can I be happy? I would rather be unhappy in remembering him than happy in forgetting him. He was my whole world, literally and truly. Nothing seemed to count before I knew him, and nothing can count for me now, after I have lost him.”
“You think now,” he answered, “that in being happy again you would be disloyal to him. But you will find after a while — years from now — that it need not be so. The part of you that belonged to your husband can always keep him sacred, that part of you belongs to him and he to it. But you are young; you have all your life to live yet. Your sorrow need not be a burden to you. If you consider it as you should — as you WILL some day, believe me — it will only be a great help to you. It will make you more noble, a truer woman, more generous.”
“I think I see,” she answered, “and
I never thought about it in that light before.”
“I want to help you,” he answered, “as you have helped me. I want to be your friend, and above all things I do not want to see your life wasted. I am going away and it is quite possible I shall never see you again, but you will always be a help to me.”
“I do not understand,” she answered, “but I know you mean to be very, very kind to me. Yes, I hope when you come back — if you ever do — you will still be that. I do not know why you should want to be so kind, unless — yes, of course — you were my husband’s dearest friend.”
They talked a little longer, and at length Presley rose.
“I cannot bring myself to see Mrs. Derrick again,” he said. “It would only serve to make her very unhappy. Will you explain that to her? I think she will understand.”
“Yes,” answered Hilma. “Yes, I will.”
There was a pause. There seemed to be nothing more for either of them to say. Presley held out his hand.
“Good-bye,” she said, as she gave him hers.
He carried it to his lips.
“Good-bye,” he answered. “Good-bye and may God bless you.”
He turned away abruptly and left the room. But as he was quietly making his way out of the house, hoping to get to his horse unobserved, he came suddenly upon Mrs. Dyke and Sidney on the porch of the house. He had forgotten that since the affair at the ditch, Los Muertos had been a home to the engineer’s mother and daughter.
“And you, Mrs. Dyke,” he asked as he took her hand, “in this break-up of everything, where do you go?”
“To the city,” she answered, “to San Francisco. I have a sister there who will look after the little tad.”
“But you, how about yourself, Mrs. Dyke?”
She answered him in a quiet voice, monotonous, expressionless: