Octopus — Book II, Chapter 3, Part 1

CHAPTER III

Presley's room in the ranch house of Los Muertos was in the second story of the building.

It was a corner room; one of its windows facing the south, the other the east.

Its appointments were of the simplest.

In one angle was the small white painted iron bed, covered with a white counterpane.

The walls were hung with a white paper figured with knots of pale green leaves, very gay and bright.

There was a straw matting on the floor.

White muslin half-curtains hung in the windows, upon the sills of which certain plants bearing pink waxen flowers of which Presley did not know the name, grew in oblong green boxes.

The walls were unadorned, save by two pictures, one a reproduction of the “Reading from Homer,” the other a charcoal drawing of the Mission of San Juan de Guadalajara, which Presley had made himself.

By the east window stood the plainest of deal tables, innocent of any cloth or covering, such as might have been used in a kitchen.

It was Presley's work table, and was invariably littered with papers, half-finished manuscripts, drafts of poems, notebooks, pens, half-smoked cigarettes, and the like.

Near at hand, upon a shelf, were his books.

There were but two chairs in the room--the straight backed wooden chair, that stood in front of the table, angular, upright, and in which it was impossible to take one's ease, and the long comfortable wicker steamer chair, stretching its length in front of the south window.

Presley was immensely fond of this room.

It amused and interested him to maintain its air of rigorous simplicity and freshness.

He abhorred cluttered bric-a-brac and meaningless objets d'art.

Once in so often he submitted his room to a vigorous inspection; setting it to rights, removing everything but the essentials, the few ornaments which, in a way, were part of his life.

His writing had by this time undergone a complete change.

The notes for his great Song of the West, the epic poem he once had hoped to write he had flung aside, together with all the abortive attempts at its beginning.

Also he had torn up a great quantity of “fugitive” verses, preserving only a certain half-finished poem, that he called “The Toilers.

” This poem was a comment upon the social fabric, and had been inspired by the sight of a painting he had seen in Cedarquist's art gallery.

He had written all but the last verse.

On the day that he had overheard the conversation between Dyke and Caraher, in the latter's saloon, which had acquainted him with the monstrous injustice of the increased tariff, Presley had returned to Los Muertos, white and trembling, roused to a pitch of exaltation, the like of which he had never known in all his life.

His wrath was little short of even Caraher's. He too “saw red”; a mighty spirit of revolt heaved tumultuous within him.

It did not seem possible that this outrage could go on much longer.

The oppression was incredible; the plain story of it set down in truthful statement of fact would not be believed by the outside world.

He went up to his little room and paced the floor with clenched fists and burning face, till at last, the repression of his contending thoughts all but suffocated him, and he flung himself before his table and began to write.

For a time, his pen seemed to travel of itself;

words came to him without searching, shaping themselves into phrases,--the phrases building themselves up to great, forcible sentences, full of eloquence, of fire, of passion.

As his prose grew more exalted, it passed easily into the domain of poetry.

Soon the cadence of his paragraphs settled to an ordered beat and rhythm, and in the end Presley had thrust aside his journal and was once more writing verse.

He picked up his incomplete poem of “The Toilers,” read it hastily a couple of times to catch its swing, then the Idea of the last verse--the Idea for which he so long had sought in vain--abruptly springing to his brain, wrote it off without so much as replenishing his pen with ink.

He added still another verse, bringing the poem to a definite close, resuming its entire conception, and ending with a single majestic thought, simple, noble, dignified, absolutely convincing.

Presley laid down his pen and leaned back in his chair, with the certainty that for one moment he had touched untrod heights.

His hands were cold, his head on fire, his heart leaping tumultuous in his breast.

Now at last, he had achieved.

He saw why he had never grasped the inspiration for his vast, vague, IMPERSONAL Song of the West.

At the time when he sought for it, his convictions had not been aroused; he had not then cared for the People.

His sympathies had not been touched.

Small wonder that he had missed it.

Now he was of the People; he had been stirred to his lowest depths.

His earnestness was almost a frenzy.

He BELIEVED, and so to him all things were possible at once.

Then the artist in him reasserted itself.

He became more interested in his poem, as such, than in the cause that had inspired it.

He went over it again, retouching it carefully, changing a word here and there, and improving its rhythm.

For the moment, he forgot the People, forgot his rage, his agitation of the previous hour, he remembered only that he had written a great poem.

Then doubt intruded.

After all, was it so great?

Did not its sublimity overpass a little the bounds of the ridiculous?

Had he seen true?

Had he failed again?

He re-read the poem carefully; and it seemed all at once to lose force.

By now, Presley could not tell whether what he had written was true poetry or doggerel.

He distrusted profoundly his own judgment.

He must have the opinion of some one else, some one competent to judge.

He could not wait; to-morrow would not do.

He must know to a certainty before he could rest that night.

He made a careful copy of what he had written, and putting on his hat and laced boots, went down stairs and out upon the lawn, crossing over to the stables.

He found Phelps there, washing down the buckboard.

“Do you know where Vanamee is to-day?

” he asked the latter.

Phelps put his chin in the air.

“Ask me something easy,” he responded.

“He might be at Guadalajara, or he might be up at Osterman's, or he might be a hundred miles away from either place.

I know where he ought to be, Mr. Presley, but that ain't saying where the crazy gesabe is.

He OUGHT to be range-riding over east of Four, at the head waters of Mission Creek.

” “I'll try for him there, at all events,” answered Presley.

“If you see Harran when he comes in, tell him I may not be back in time for supper.

” Presley found the pony in the corral, cinched the saddle upon him, and went off over the Lower Road, going eastward at a brisk canter.

At Hooven's he called a “How do you do” to Minna, whom he saw lying in a slat hammock under the mammoth live oak, her foot in bandages; and then galloped on over the bridge across the irrigating ditch, wondering vaguely what would become of such a pretty girl as Minna, and if in the end she would marry the Portuguese foreman in charge of the ditching-gang.

He told himself that he hoped she would, and that speedily.

There was no lack of comment as to Minna Hooven about the ranches.

Certainly she was a good girl, but she was seen at all hours here and there about Bonneville and Guadalajara, skylarking with the Portuguese farm hands of Quien Sabe and Los Muertos.

She was very pretty; the men made fools of themselves over her.

Presley hoped they would not end by making a fool of her.

Just beyond the irrigating ditch, Presley left the Lower Road, and following a trail that branched off southeasterly from this point, held on across the Fourth Division of the ranch, keeping the Mission Creek on his left.

A few miles farther on, he went through a gate in a barbed wire fence, and at once engaged himself in a system of little arroyos and low rolling hills, that steadily lifted and increased in size as he proceeded.

This higher ground was the advance guard of the Sierra foothills, and served as the stock range for Los Muertos.

The hills were huge rolling hummocks of bare ground, covered only by wild oats.

At long intervals, were isolated live oaks.

In the canyons and arroyos, the chaparral and manzanita grew in dark olive-green thickets.

The ground was honey-combed with gopher-holes, and the gophers themselves were everywhere.

Occasionally a jack rabbit bounded across the open, from one growth of chaparral to another, taking long leaps, his ears erect.

High overhead, a hawk or two swung at anchor, and once, with a startling rush of wings, a covey of quail flushed from the brush at the side of the trail.

On the hillsides, in thinly scattered groups were the cattle, grazing deliberately, working slowly toward the water-holes for their evening drink, the horses keeping to themselves, the colts nuzzling at their mothers' bellies, whisking their tails, stamping their unshod feet.

But once in a remoter field, solitary, magnificent, enormous, the short hair curling tight upon his forehead, his small red eyes twinkling, his vast neck heavy with muscles, Presley came upon the monarch, the king, the great Durham bull, maintaining his lonely state, unapproachable, austere.

Presley found the one-time shepherd by a water-hole, in a far distant corner of the range.

He had made his simple camp for the night.

His blue-grey army blanket lay spread under a live oak, his horse grazed near at hand.

He himself sat on his heels before a little fire of dead manzanita roots, cooking his coffee and bacon.

Never had Presley conceived so keen an impression of loneliness as his crouching figure presented.

The bald, bare landscape widened about him to infinity.

Vanamee was a spot in it all, a tiny dot, a single atom of human organisation, floating endlessly on the ocean of an illimitable nature.

The two friends ate together, and Vanamee, having snared a brace of quails, dressed and then roasted them on a sharpened stick.

After eating, they drank great refreshing draughts from the water-hole.

Then, at length, Presley having lit his cigarette, and Vanamee his pipe, the former said: “Vanamee, I have been writing again.

” Vanamee turned his lean ascetic face toward him, his black eyes fixed attentively.

“I know,” he said, “your journal.

” “No, this is a poem.

You remember, I told you about it once.

'The Toilers,' I called it.

” “Oh, verse!

Well, I am glad you have gone back to it.

It is your natural vehicle.

” “You remember the poem?

” asked Presley.

“It was unfinished.

” “Yes, I remember it.

There was better promise in it than anything you ever wrote.

Now, I suppose, you have finished it.

” Without reply, Presley brought it from out the breast pocket of his shooting coat.

The moment seemed propitious.

The stillness of the vast, bare hills was profound.

The sun was setting in a cloudless brazier of red light; a golden dust pervaded all the landscape.

Presley read his poem aloud.

When he had finished, his friend looked at him.

“What have you been doing lately?

” he demanded.

Presley, wondering, told of his various comings and goings.

“I don't mean that,” returned the other.

“Something has happened to you, something has aroused you.

I am right, am I not?

Yes, I thought so.

In this poem of yours, you have not been trying to make a sounding piece of literature.

You wrote it under tremendous stress.

Its very imperfections show that.

It is better than a mere rhyme.

It is an Utterance--a Message.

It is Truth.

You have come back to the primal heart of things, and you have seen clearly.

Yes, it is a great poem.

” “Thank you,” exclaimed Presley fervidly.

“I had begun to mistrust myself.

” “Now,” observed Vanamee, “I presume you will rush it into print.

To have formulated a great thought, simply to have accomplished, is not enough.

” “I think I am sincere,” objected Presley.

“If it is good it will do good to others.

You said yourself it was a Message.

If it has any value, I do not think it would be right to keep it back from even a very small and most indifferent public.

” “Don't publish it in the magazines at all events,” Vanamee answered.

“Your inspiration has come FROM the People.

Then let it go straight TO the People--not the literary readers of the monthly periodicals, the rich, who would only be indirectly interested.

If you must publish it, let it be in the daily press.

Don't interrupt.

I know what you will say.

It will be that the daily press is common, is vulgar, is undignified;

and I tell you that such a poem as this of yours, called as it is, 'The Toilers,' must be read BY the Toilers.

It MUST BE common; it must be vulgarised.

You must not stand upon your dignity with the People, if you are to reach them.

” “That is true, I suppose,” Presley admitted, “but I can't get rid of the idea that it would be throwing my poem away.

The great magazine gives me such--a--background; gives me such weight.

” “Gives YOU such weight, gives you such background.

Is it YOURSELF you think of?

You helper of the helpless.

Is that your sincerity?

You must sink yourself; must forget yourself and your own desire of fame, of admitted success.

It is your POEM, your MESSAGE, that must prevail,--not YOU, who wrote it.

You preach a doctrine of abnegation, of self-obliteration, and you sign your name to your words as high on the tablets as you can reach, so that all the world may see, not the poem, but the poet.

Presley, there are many like you.

The social reformer writes a book on the iniquity of the possession of land, and out of the proceeds, buys a corner lot.

The economist who laments the hardships of the poor, allows himself to grow rich upon the sale of his book.

” But Presley would hear no further.