Complete Works of Frank Norris

by Frank Norris

  Vandover could do nothing; he had almost stripped himself to help clothe the others. Nothing more could be done. The suffering had to go on, and he began to wonder how human beings could endure such stress and yet live.

  But Vandover himself suffered too keenly to take much thought for the sufferings of the others, while besides that anguish which he shared with the whole boat, the pain in his broken thumb gnawed incessantly like a rat. From time to time he stared listlessly about him, looking at the dark sky, the tumbling ocean, and the crowded groups in the plunging, rolling lifeboat.

  There was nothing picturesque about it all, nothing heroic. It was unlike any pictures he had seen of lifeboat rescues, unlike anything he had ever imagined. It was all sordid, miserable, and the sight of the half-clad women, dirty, sodden, unkempt, stirred him rather to disgust than to pity.

  At last the dawn came and grew white over a world of tumbling green billows and scudding wrack. Some three miles distant, seen only when the boat topped a higher wave, the same procession of bleached hills moved gradually to the south under the fog, their feet covered by the white line of the surf. Not far behind in the wake of the boat the stern of the Mazatlan rose out of a ring of white foam, the waves breaking over her as if she had been there for ages, the screw writhing its flanges into the air like some enormous starfish already fastened upon the hulk.

  One of the other boats could be seen now and then between them and the shore, a momentary dot of black on the vast blur of green and gray.

  There was no conversation; the men relieved each other at the oars or bailed out the water with their caps and hands, scarcely interchanging a word. The only utterance was an occasional moaning from among the women and children. There was nothing to eat; long since the two whisky flasks had been exhausted. The rain fell steadily into the sea with a prolonged rippling noise.

  Vandover was leaning upon the gunwale of the boat, his head buried in his arms, when suddenly he raised himself and asked of the man who sat next to him:

  “What was the matter last night? What caused the accident?”

  The other shook his head, wearily, turning away again. However, the engineer answered:

  “We couldn’t carry coal enough to keep up the right pressure of steam and drifted in upon a reef. I said once before that it would happen some time.”

  About an hour later Vandover dropped off to sleep, in spite of the cold, the wet, and the torment in his thumb. He dozed and woke, and dozed again all through the morning. About noon he was awakened by a more violent rolling of the boat, the sound of voices, and a stir among the other passengers.

  It was still raining; the boat was no longer cutting the waves with her nose, but was being rowed seaward flank on; a sailor stood in the bow holding a coil of rope. Close in and seen over the tops of the waves were the shaking and slatting sails of a pilot-boat, lying to. One of the sails bore an enormous number six.

  Vandover slept all that day and the night following, rolled in hot blankets. The next morning he awoke with a strange sense of unreality and of having dropped a day somewhere. As he lay in his stuffy little bunk between decks, and felt the rolling of the pilot-boat under him, he still fancied himself upon the Mazatlan; he felt the pain in his bandaged thumb and wondered how it came there. Then his fall on the deck came back to him, the wreck of the steamer, the excitement on board, the reports of the rifle fired as a minute gun, the clouds of steam that smelt of a great laundry, and the drowning of the little Jew of the plush cap with the ear-laps. He shuddered and grew sick again for a minute, telling himself that he would never forget that scene.

  Such of the passengers as could get about breakfasted as best they could in the cabin with the boatkeeper and four of the pilots. Here they were informed as to what was to be done with them. The schooner would not go in for two weeks, and it was out of the question to keep the castaways on board for that length of time. However, at that moment the pilots were cruising in the neighbourhood on the lookout for two Cape Horners that were expected to be up at any moment. It was decided that when the first of these should be met with the party should be transferred.

  An hour after they had been picked up, the wind had begun to freshen. By noon of the second day it had come on to blow half a gale. One could hope only for the best as regarded the rest of the Mazatlan’s boats and rafts. Not another sign of the wreck was seen by the schooner.

  The castaways filled the little schooner to overflowing, hindering her management, and getting in the way at every step. The pilot crew hustled them about without ceremony, and after dinner one had to intervene to prevent a fight between one of them and a sailor from the Mazatlan over the question of a broken pipe. The women of the Mazatlan kept in their berths continually, rolled in hot blankets, dosed with steaming whisky punches. In the afternoon, however, Vandover saw two of them in the lee of the house attempting to dry their hair; one of them was the woman he had particularly noticed in the lifeboat clad in a night-dress, and he wondered vaguely where the dress had come from she now was wearing.

  About three o’clock of the afternoon of the following day Vandover was sitting on the deck near the stern, fastening on his shoes with a length of tarred rope, the laces which he had left trailing having long before broken and pulled out. By that time the wind was blowing squally out of the northeast. The schooner was put under try sails, “a three-reefed mitten with the thumb brailed up,” as he heard the boatkeeper call it. This latter was at the wheel for a moment, but in a little while he called up a young man dressed in a suit of oilskins and a pea jacket and gave him the charge. For a long time Vandover watched the boy turning the spokes back and forth, his eyes alternating between the binocle and the horizon.

  In the evening about half-past ten, the lookout in the crow’s nest sang out: “Smoke — oh!” sounding upon his fish horn. The boatkeeper ran aft and lit a huge calcium flare, holding it so as to illuminate the big number on the mainsail. Suddenly, about a quarter of a mile off their weather-bow, a couple of rockets left a long trail of yellow against the night. It was the Cape Horner, and presently Vandover made out her lights, two glowing spots moving upon the darkness, like the eyes of some nocturnal sea-monster. In a few minutes she showed a blue light on the bridge; she wanted a pilot.

  The schooner approached and was laid to, and the towering mass of the great deep-sea tramp began to be dimly seen through the darkness. There was little confusion in making the transfer of the castaways. Most of them seemed still benumbed with their recent terrible exposure. They docilely allowed themselves to be pushed into the pilot tender and again endured the experience of being lowered to the shifting waves below. Silently, like frightened sheep, they stood up in turn in the rocking tender and allowed the life preserver to be fitted about their shoulders to protect them from the bite of the rope’s noose beneath their arms. There followed a sickening upward whirl between sea and sky, and then the comforting grasp of many welcoming hands from the deck above. By three o’clock in the morning the transfer had been made.

  Vandover boarded the Cape Horner in company with the pilot and the rest and reached San Francisco late on the next day, which happened to be a Sunday.

  Chapter Ten

  About ten o’clock Vandover went ashore in the ship’s yawl and landed in the city on a literally perfect day in early November. It seemed many years since he had been there. The drizzly morning upon which the Santa Rosa had cast off was already too long ago to be remembered. The city itself as he walked up Market Street toward Kearney seemed to have taken on a strange appearance.

  It was Sunday, the downtown streets were deserted except for the cable-cars and an occasional newsboy. The stores were closed and in their vestibules one saw the peddlers who were never there on week-days, venders of canes and peddlers of glue with heavy weights attached to mended china plates.

  Vandover had had no breakfast and was conscious of feeling desperately hungry. He determined to breakfast downtown, as he would arrive home too late for one meal and
too early for the other.

  Almost all of his money had been lost with the Mazatlan; he found he had but a dollar left. He would have preferred breakfasting at the Grillroom, but concluded he was too shabby in appearance, and he knew he would get more for his money at the Imperial.

  It was absolutely quiet in the Imperial at the hour when he arrived. The single bartender was reading a paper, and in the passage between the private rooms a Chinese with a clean napkin wound around his head was polishing the brass and woodwork. In the passage he met Toby, the red-eyed waiter, just going off night duty, without his usual apron or white coat, dressed very carefully, wearing a brown felt hat.

  “Why, how do you do, Mr. Vandover?” exclaimed Toby. “Haven’t seen you round here for some time.” Vandover was about to answer when the other interrupted:

  “Well, what’s happened to you? Look as though you’d been drawn through hell backward and beaten with a cat!”

  In fact Vandover’s appearance was extraordinary. His hat was torn and broken, and his clothes, stained with tar and dirt, shrunken and wrinkled by sea-water. His shoes were fastened with bits of tarred rope; he was wearing a red flannel shirt with bone buttons which the boatkeeper on the pilot boat had given him, tied at the neck with a purple handkerchief of pongee silk; his hair was long, and a week’s growth of beard was upon his lip and cheeks.

  “That’s a fact,” he answered grimly. “I do look queer. I was in a wreck down the coast,” he added hastily.

  “The Mazatlan!” exclaimed Toby. “That’s a fact; the papers have been full of it. That’s so, you were one of the survivors.”

  “The survivors!” echoed Vandover with wondering curiosity. “Tell me — you know I haven’t heard a word yet — were there many lives lost?” He marvelled at the strangeness of the situation, that this bar waiter should know more of the wreck than he himself who had been upon it.

  “You bet there were!” answered Toby. “Twenty-three altogether; one boat capsized; Kelly, ‘Bug’ Kelly, son of that fellow that runs the Crystal Grotto, he was drowned, and one of Hocheimer’s — Hocheimer, the jeweller, you know — one of his travelling salesmen was drowned; a little Jew named Brann, a diamond expert; he jumped overboard and—”

  “Don’t!” said Vandover with a sharp gesture. “I saw him drown — it was sickening.”

  “Were you in that boat?” exclaimed Toby. “Well, wait till I tell you; the authorities here are right after that first engineer with a sharp stick, and some of the passengers, too, for not taking him in. A woman in one of the other boats saw it all and gave the whole thing away. A thing like that is regular murder, you know.” Vandover shut his teeth against answering, and after a little Toby went on, willing to talk. “You know, we’ve got a new man for the day-work down here now — George isn’t here any more. No, he’s going to start a roadhouse out on the almshouse drive in a few months; swell place, you know. I’ll have him send you cards for the opening.”

  Vandover ordered oysters, an omelette, and a pint of claret from the new waiter who did the day-work, and ate and drank the meal — the like of which he had not tasted since leaving Coronado — with delicious enjoyment.

  He delayed over it long, taking a great pleasure in satisfying the demands of the animal in him. The wine made him heavy, warm, stupid; he felt calm, soothed, and perfectly contented, and had to struggle against a desire to go to sleep where he was. The atmosphere of the Imperial was warm and there was a tepid languor in the air as of the traces of many past debauches, a stale odour of sweetened whisky and of musk. After the roughness and hardships of the last week he felt a pleasant sense of quiet, of relaxation, of enervation. He even began to wish that Flossie would come in. This, however, made him rouse himself; he shook himself, and started home, paying his carfare with his last nickel.

  He sat on the outside of the car, wondering if any one he knew would see him, half hoping that such a thing might happen, realizing the dramatic interest that would centre about him now in his present condition as a survivor of a wreck. The idea soon attracted him immensely and he began to look out for any possible acquaintance as the car began to climb over Nob Hill.

  At the crossing of Polk Street he saw Ida Wade’s mother in deep mourning, standing near a grocery store holding a little pink parcel.

  It was like a blow between the eyes. Vandover caught his breath and started violently, feeling again for an instant the cold grip of the hysterical terror that had so nearly overcome him on the morning after Ida’s death. It slowly relaxed, however, and by the time he had reached the house on California Street he was almost himself again.

  It was about church time when Vandover arrived at home once more. There was a Sunday quiet in the air. The bells were ringing, and here and there family groups on their way to church, the children walking in front, very sedate in their best clothes, carrying the prayer-books carefully, by special privilege.

  The butler was working in the garden, as he sometimes did of a Sunday morning, pottering about a certain bed of sweet-peas, and it was the housekeeper who answered his ring. She recognized him with a prolonged exclamation, raising her hands to heaven.

  “O-oh, and is it you, Mr. Vandover, sir? Ah, how we’ve been upset about you and all, and it’s glad to see you back again your father will be! Oh, such times as we had when we heard about the wreck and knowing you were on it! Yes, sir, your father’s pretty well, though he was main poorly yesterday morning. But he’s better now. You’ll find him in the smoking-room now, sir.”

  Vandover pushed open the door of the smoking-room quietly. His father was sitting unoccupied in the huge leather chair before the fireplace. He was dead, and must have died some considerable time before, as he was already cold. He could have suffered no pain, hardly a muscle had moved, and his attitude was quite natural, the legs crossed, the right hand holding the morning’s paper. However, as soon as Vandover touched the body it collapsed and slid down into a heap in the depth of the chair, the jaw dropping open, the head rolling sidewise upon his shoulder.

  Vandover ran out into the hall, waving his arms, shouting for the servants. “Oh, why didn’t you tell me?” he cried to the housekeeper “Why did you let me find him so? When did he die?” The housekeeper was distraught. She couldn’t believe it. Only a little while ago he had called her to say there were no more matches in the little brass matchsafe. She began to utter long cries and lamentations like a hen in distress, raising her hands to heaven. All at once they heard some one rushing up the stairs. It was the butler, in his shirt-sleeves and his enormous apron of ticking, still carrying his trowel in his hand. He was bewildered, his eyes protruding, while all about him he spread the smell of fresh earth. At every instant he exclaimed:

  “What? What? What’s the matter?”

  “Oh, my dear old governor — and all alone!” cried Vandover through shut teeth.

  “Oh, oh, the good God!” exclaimed the housekeeper, crossing herself and rolling her eyes. “And him asking for matches in the little brass box only a minute since. Oh, the good, kind master!”

  Suddenly Vandover rushed down the stairs and through the front hall, snatching his hat from the hatrack as he passed. He ran to call the family doctor, who lived some two blocks below on the same street. He caught him just as he was getting into the carry-all with his family, bound for church.

  Vandover and the physician rode back together in the carry-all, the two gray horses going up the steep hill at a trot. The doctor was dressed for church; he wore red gloves with thick white seams, a spray of lilies-of-the-valley in his lapel.

  “I’m afraid we can do nothing,” he said warningly. “It’s your father’s old enemy, I suppose. This was — it was sure to happen sooner or later. Any sudden shock, you know.”

  Vandover scarcely listened, holding the door of the carry-all open with one hand, ready to jump out, beating the other hand upon his knee.

  “Go back and take the rest of them to church now,” said the doctor to his coachman when the carry-
all stopped in front of Vandover’s house.

  The whole house was in the greatest agitation all the rest of the day. The curtains were drawn, the door bell rang incessantly, strange faces passed the windows, and the noise of strange footsteps continually mounted and descended the staircase. The hours for meals were all deranged, the table stood ready all day long, and one ate when there was a chance. The telephone was in constant use, and at every moment messenger boys came and went, people spoke in low tones, walking on tiptoe; the florist’s wagon drove to the door again and again, and the house began to smell of tuberoses. Reporters came, waiting patiently for interviews, sitting on the leather chairs in the dining-room, or writing rapidly on a corner of the dining-table, the cloth pushed back. The undertaker’s assistants went about in their shirt-sleeves, working very hard, and toward the middle of the afternoon the undertaker himself tied the crêpe to the bell handle.

  Little by little a subdued excitement spread throughout the vicinity. The neighbours appeared at their windows, looking down into the street, watching everything that went on. It was a veritable event, a matter of comment and interest for the whole block. Women found excuses to call on each other, talking over what had happened, as they sat near their parlour windows, shaking their heads at each other, peering out between the lace curtains. The people on the cable-cars and the pedestrians looked again and again at the crêpe on the bell handle, and the curtained windows, craning their necks backward when they had passed. The neighbours’ children collected in little groups on the sidewalk near the house, looking and pointing, drawn close together, talking in low tones. At last even a policeman appeared, walking deliberately, casting the shadow of his huge stomach upon the fence that was about the vacant lot. He frowned upon the children, ordering them away. But suddenly he discovered an acquaintance, the driver of an express-wagon that had just driven up with an enormous anchor of violets. He paused, exclaiming: