Complete Works of Frank Norris

by Frank Norris

  From time to time, as the novel progressed, he read it to the dilettante women whom he knew best among the New Bohemians. They advised him as to its development, and “influenced” its outcome and dénouement.

  “I think you have found your métier, dear boy,” said one of them, when “Renunciations” was nearly completed. “To portray the concrete — is it not a small achievement, sublimated journalese, nothing more? But to grasp abstractions, to analyse a woman’s soul, to evoke the spiritual essence in humanity, as you have done in your ninth chapter of ‘Renunciations’ — that is the true function of art. Je vous fais mes compliments. ‘Renunciations’ is a chef-d’oeuvre. Can’t you see yourself what a stride you have made, how much broader your outlook has become, how much more catholic, since the days of ‘Bunt McBride’?”

  To be sure, Overbeck could see it. Ah, he was growing, he was expanding. He was mounting higher planes. He was more — catholic. That, of all words, was the one to express his mood. Catholic, ah, yes, he was catholic!

  When “Renunciations” was finished he took the manuscript to Conant and waited a fortnight in an agony of suspense and repressed jubilation for the great man’s verdict. He was all the more anxious to hear it because, every now and then, while writing the story, doubts — distressing, perplexing — had intruded. At times and all of a sudden, after days of the steadiest footing, the surest progress, the story — the whole set and trend of the affair — would seem, as it were, to escape from his control. Where once, in “Bunt McBride,” he had gripped, he must now grope. What was it? He had been so sure of himself, with all the stimulus of new surroundings, the work in this second novel should have been all the easier. But the doubt would fade, and for weeks he would plough on, till again, and all unexpectedly, he would find himself in an agony of indecision as to the outcome of some vital pivotal episode of the story. Of two methods of treatment, both equally plausible, he could not say which was the true, which the false; and he must needs take, as it were, a leap in the dark — it was either that or abandoning the story, trusting to mere luck that he would, somehow, be carried through.

  A fortnight after he had delivered the manuscript to Conant he presented himself in the publisher’s office.

  “I was just about to send for you,” said Conant. “I finished your story last week.”

  There was a pause. Overbeck settled himself comfortably in his chair, but his nails were cutting his palms.

  “Hastings has read it, too — and — well, frankly, Overbeck, we were disappointed.”

  “Yes?” inquired Overbeck, calmly. “H’m — that’s too b-bad.”

  He could not hear, or at least could not understand, just what the publisher said next. Then, after a time that seemed immeasurably long, he caught the words:

  “It would not do you a bit of good, my boy, to have us publish it — it would harm you. There are a good many things I would lie about, but books are not included. This ‘Renunciations’ of yours is — is, why, confound it, Overbeck, it’s foolishness.”

  Overbeck went out and sat on a bench in a square near by, looking vacantly at a fountain as it rose and fell and rose again with an incessant cadenced splashing. Then he took himself home to his hall bedroom. He had brought the manuscript of his novel with him, and for a long time he sat at his table listlessly turning the leaves, confused, stupid, all but inert. The end, however, did not come suddenly. A few weeks later “Renunciations” was published, but not by Conant. It bore the imprint of an obscure firm in Boston. The covers were of limp dressed leather, olive green, and could be tied together by thongs, like a portfolio. The sale stopped after five hundred copies had been ordered, and the real critics, those who did not belong to New Bohemia, hardly so much as noticed the book.

  In the Autumn, when the third-raters had come back from their vacations, the “evenings” at Miss Patten’s were resumed, and Overbeck hurried to the very first meeting. He wanted to talk it all over with them. In his chagrin and cruel disappointment he was hungry for some word of praise, of condolement. He wanted to be told again, even though he had begun to suspect many things, that he had succeeded where Kipling had failed, that he was Stevenson with more refinement.

  But the New Bohemians, the same women and fakirs and half-baked minor poets who had “influenced” him and had ruined him, could hardly find time to notice him now. The guest of the evening was a new little lion who had joined the set. A symbolist versifier who wrote over the pseudonym of de la Houssaye, with black, oily hair and long white hands; him the Bohemians thronged about in crowds as before they had thronged about Overbeck. Only once did any one of them pay attention to the latter. This was the woman who had nicknamed him “Young Lochinvar.” Yes, she had read “Renunciations,” a capital little thing, a little thin in parts, lacking in finesse. He must strive for his true medium of expression, his true note. Ah, art was long! Study of the new symbolists would help him. She would beg him to read Monsieur de la Houssaye’s “The Monoliths.” Such subtlety, such delicious word-chords! It could not fail to inspire him.

  Shouldered off, forgotten, the young fellow crept back to his little hall bedroom and sat down to think it over. There in the dark of the night his eyes were opened, and he saw, at last, what these people had done to him; saw the Great Mistake, and that he had wasted his substance.

  The golden apples, that had been his for the stretching of the hand, he had flung from him. Tricked, trapped, exploited, he had prostituted the great good thing that had been his by right divine, for the privilege of eating husks with swine. Now was the day of the mighty famine, and the starved and broken heart of him, crying out for help, found only a farrago of empty phrases.

  He tried to go back; he did in very fact go back to the mountains and the cañons of the great Sierras. “He arose and went to his father,” and, with such sapped and broken strength as New Bohemia had left him, strove to wrest some wreckage from the dying fire.

  But the ashes were cold by now. The fire that the gods had allowed him to snatch, because he was humble and pure and clean and brave, had been stamped out beneath the feet of minor and dilettante poets, and now the gods guarded close the brands that yet remained on the altars.

  They may not be violated twice, those sacred fires. Once in a lifetime the very young and the pure in heart may see the shine of them and pluck a brand from the altar’s edge. But, once possessed, it must be watched with a greater vigilance than even that of the gods, for its light will live only for him who snatched it first. Only for him that shields it, even with his life, from the contact of the world does it burst into a burning and a shining light. Let once the touch of alien fingers disturb it, and there remains only a little heap of bitter ashes.

  GRETTIR AT DRANGEY

  I

  HOW GRETTIR CAME TO THE ISLAND

  A long slant of rain came from out the northwest, and much fog; and the sea, still swollen by the last of the winter gales — now two days gone — raced by the bows of their boat in great swells, quiet, huge.

  It was cold, and the wind, like a hound at fault, hunted along through the gorges between the wave heads, casting back and forth swiftly in bulging, sounding blasts that made an echo between the walls of water. At times the wind discovered the boat and leaped upon it suddenly with a gush of fierce noise, clutching at the sail and bearing it down as the dog bears down the young elk.

  The sky, a vast reach of broken grey, slid along close overhead, sometimes even dropping flat upon the sea, blotting the horizon and whirling about like geyser mist or the reek and smoke from the mouth of jokuls. Then, perhaps, out of the fog and out of the rain, suddenly great and fearful came towering and dipping a mighty berg, the waves breaking like surf about its base, spires of grey ice lifting skywards, all dripping and gashed and jagged; knobs and sharp ridges thrusting from under beneath the water, full of danger to ships. At such moments they must put the helm over quickly, sheering off from the colossus before it caught and trampled them.

  But no liv
ing thing did they see through all the day. Sea birds there were none; no porpoises played about the boat, no seals barked from surge to surge. There was nothing but the silent gallop of the waves, the flitting of the leaden sky, the uneven panting of the wind, and the rattle of the rain on the half-frozen sail. The sea was very lonely, barren, empty of all life.

  Towards the middle of the day, when Iceland lay far behind them, — a bar of black on the ocean’s edge, — they were little by little aware of the roll and thunder of breakers, and the cries and calls of very many sea birds and — very faint — the bleating of sheep. The fog and the scud of rain and the spindrift that the wind whipped from off the wavetops shut out all sight beyond the cast of a spear. But they knew that they must be driving hard upon the island, and Grettir, from his place at the helm, bent himself to look under the curve of the sail. He called to Illugi, his brother, and to Noise, the thrall, who stood peering at the bows of the boat (their eyes made small to pierce the mist), to know if they saw aught of the island.

  “I see,” answered Illugi, “only wrack and drift of wreck and streamers of kelp, but we are close upon it.”

  Then all at once Grettir threw the boat up into the wind, and shouted aloud:

  “Look overhead! Quick! Above there! We are indeed close.”

  And for all that the foot and mid-most part of the island were unseen because of the mist, there, far above them, between sea and sky, looming, as it were, out of heaven, rose suddenly the front of the cliff, rearing the forehead of it, high from out all that din of surf and swirl of mist and rain, bare to the buffet of storms, iron-strong, everlasting, a mighty rock.

  They lowered the sail and ran out the sweeps, and for an hour skirted the edge of the island searching for the landing-place, where the rope-ladder hung from the cliff’s edge. When they had found it, they turned the nose of the boat landward, and, caught by the set of the surf, were drawn inwards, and at last flung up on the beaches. Waist-deep in the icy undertow, they ran the boat up and made her fast, rejoicing that they had won to land without ill-fortune.

  The wind for an instant tore in twain the veils of fog, and they saw the black cliff towering above them, as well as the ladder that hung from its summit clattering against the rock as the wind dashed it to and fro, and as they turned from the boat to look about them, lo, at their feet, stranded at make of the ebb, a great walrus, crushed between two ice-floes, lay dead, the rime of the frost encrusting its barbels.

  So Grettir Asmundson, called The Strong, outlawed throughout Iceland, came with his brother Illugi, and the thrall Noise, to live on the Island of Drangey.

  II

  HOW GRETTIR AND ILLUGI HIS BROTHER KEPT THE ISLAND

  On top of the cliff (to be reached only by climbing the rope-ladder) were sheep-walks, where the shepherds from the mainland kept their flocks. Grettir and Illugi took over these, for food and for the sake of their pelts which were to make them coverings. They built themselves a house out of the driftwood that came ashore at the foot of the cliff with every tide, and throughout the rest of the winter days lived in peace.

  But in the early spring a fisherman carried the news to the mainland that he had seen men on the top of Drangey, and that the ladder was up.

  Forthwith came the farmers and shepherds in their boats to know if such were the truth. They found, indeed, the ladder up, and after calling and shouting a long time time, brought the hero and his brother to the cliff’s edge.

  “What now?” they cried. “Give a reckoning of our sheep. Is it peace or war between you and us? Why have you come to our island? Answer, Grettir — outlaw.”

  “What I have, I hold,” called Grettir. “Outlawed I am, indeed, and no man is there in all Iceland that dare help me to home or hiding. Mine is the Island of Drangey, and mine are the sheep and the goats.”

  “Robber!” shouted the shepherds, “since when have you bought the island? Show the title.”

  For answer Grettir drew his sword from its sheath, and held it high.

  “That is my title,” he cried. “When that you shall take from me, the Island of Drangey is yours again.”

  “At least render up our sheep,” answered the shepherds.

  “What I have said, I have said!” cried Grettir, and with that he and Illugi drew back from the cliff’s edge and were no more seen.

  The shepherds sailed back to the mainland, and could think of no way of ridding the island of Grettir and his brother.

  The summer waned, and finding themselves no further along than at the beginning, they struck hands with a certain Thorbjorn, called The Hook, and sold him their several claims.

  So it came about that Thorbjorn the Hook was also an enemy of Grettir, for he swore that foul or fair, ill or well, he would have the head of the hero, and the price that was upon it, as well as the sheepwalks and herds of Drangey.

  This Thorbjorn had an old foster-mother named Thurid, who, although the law of Christ had long since prevailed through all the country, still made witchcraft, and by this means promised The Hook that he should have the island, and with it the heads of Illugi and Grettir. She herself was a mumbling, fumbling carline of a sour spirit and fierce temper. Once when The Hook and his brother were at tail-game, she, looking over his shoulder, taunted him because he had made a bad move. On his answering in surly fashion, she caught up one of the pieces, and drove the tail of it so fiercely against his eye that the ball had started from the socket. He had sprung up with a mighty oath, and dealt her so strong a blow that she had taken to her bed a month, and thereafterward must walk with a stick. There was no love lost between the two.

  Meanwhile, Grettir and Illugi lived in peace upon the top of Drangey. Illugi was younger than the hero; a fine lad with yellow hair and blue eyes. The brothers loved each other, and could not walk or sit together, but that the arm of one was about the shoulder of the other. The lad knew very well that neither he nor Grettir would ever leave Drangey alive; but in spite of that he abode on the island, and was happy in the love and comradeship of his older brother. As for Grettir, hunted and hustled from Norway to Skaptar Jokul, he could trust Illugi only. The thrall Noise was meet for little but to gather driftwood to feed the fire. But Illugi, of all men in the world, Grettir had chosen to stay at his side in this, the last stand of his life, and to bear him company in the night when he waked and was afraid.

  For the weird that the Vampire had laid upon Grettir, when he had fought with him through the night at Thorhall-stead, lay heavy upon him. As the Vampire had said, his strength was never greater than at the moment when, spent and weary with the grapple, he had turned the monster under him; and, moreover, as the dead man had foretold, the eyes of him — the sightless, lightless dead eyes of him — grew out of the darkness in the late watches of the night, and stared at Grettir whichever way he turned.

  For a long time all went well with the two. Bleak though it was, the brothers grew to love the Island of Drangey. Not all the days were so bitter as the one that witnessed their arrival. Throughout the summer — when the daylight lengthened and lengthened, till at last the sun never set at all — the weather held fair. The crust of soil on the top of the great rock grew green and brilliant with gorse and moss and manzel-wursel. Blackberries flourished on southern exposures and in crevices between the bowlders, and wild thyme and heather bloomed and billowed in the sea wind.

  Day after day the brothers walked the edge of the cliff, making the rounds of the snares they had set for sea fowl. Day after day, descending to the beaches, they fished in the offing or with ready spears crept from rock to rock, stalking the great bull-walruses that made the land to sun themselves. Day after day in a cloudless sky the sun shone; day after day the sea, deep blue, coruscated and flashed in his light; day after day the wind blew free, the flowers spread, and the surf shouted hoarsely on the beaches, and the sea fowl clamoured, cried, and rose and fell in glinting hordes. The air was full of the fine, clean aroma of the ocean, even the perfume of the flowers was crossed with a tang
of salt, and the seaweed at low tide threw off, under the heat of the sun, a warm, sweet redolence of its own.

  It was a brave life. They were no man’s men. The lonely, rock-ribbed island, the grass, the growths of green, the blue sea, and the blessed sunlight were their friends, their helpers; they held what of the world they saw in fief. They made songs to the morning, and sang them on the cliff’s edge, looking off over the sea beneath, standing on a point of rock, the wind in their faces, the taste of salt in their mouths, their long braids of yellow hair streaming from their foreheads.

  They made songs to their swords, and swung the ponderous blades in cadence as they sang — wild, unrhymed, metrical chants, monotonous, turning upon but few notes; savage songs, full of man-slayings and death-fights against great odds, shouted out in deep-toned, male voices, there, far above the world, on that airy, wind-swept, lonely rock. A brave life!

  The end they knew must come betimes. They were in nowise afraid. They made a song to their death — the song they would sing when they had turned Berserk in the crash of swords, when the great grey blades were rising and falling, death, like lightning, leaping from their edges; when shield rasped shield, and the spears sank home and wrenched out the life in a spurt of scarlet, and the massive axes rang upon helmet and hauberk, and men, heroes all, met death with a cheer, and went out into the Dark with a shout. A brave life!

  III

  OF THE WEIRD OF THURID, FOSTER-MOTHER TO THORBJORN HOOK

  Twice during that summer The Hook made attempts to secure the island. Once he sailed over to Drangey, and standing up in the prow of his boat near the beach, close by where the ladder hung, talked long with Grettir, who came to the rim of the cliff in answer to his shouts. He promised the Outlaw (so only that he would yield up the island) full possession of half the sheep that yet remained and a free passage in one of his ships to any port within fifty leagues. But the hero had but one answer to all persuadings.