Octopus — Book II, Chapter 8, Part 5

Where, indeed?

Stupefied, Mrs. Hooven looked about her at the endless blocks of buildings, the endless procession of vehicles in the streets, the endless march of pedestrians on the sidewalks.

Where was Minna;

where was she and her baby to sleep that night?

How was Hilda to be fed?

She could not stand still.

There was no place to sit down; but one thing was left, walk.

Ah, that via dolorosa of the destitute, that chemin de la croix of the homeless.

Ah, the mile after mile of granite pavement that MUST be, MUST be traversed.

Walk they must.

Move, they must; onward, forward, whither they cannot tell; why, they do not know.

Walk, walk, walk with bleeding feet and smarting joints; walk with aching back and trembling knees;

walk, though the senses grow giddy with fatigue, though the eyes droop with sleep, though every nerve, demanding rest, sets in motion its tiny alarm of pain.

Death is at the end of that devious, winding maze of paths, crossed and re-crossed and crossed again.

There is but one goal to the via dolorosa; there is no escape from the central chamber of that labyrinth.

Fate guides the feet of them that are set therein.

Double on their steps though they may, weave in and out of the myriad corners of the city's streets, return, go forward, back, from side to side, here, there, anywhere, dodge, twist, wind, the central chamber where Death sits is reached inexorably at the end.

Sometimes leading and sometimes carrying Hilda, Mrs. Hooven set off upon her objectless journey.

Block after block she walked, street after street.

She was afraid to stop, because of the policemen.

As often as she so much as slackened her pace, she was sure to see one of these terrible figures in the distance, watching her, so it seemed to her, waiting for her to halt for the fraction of a second, in order that he might have an excuse to arrest her.

Hilda fretted incessantly.

“Mammy, where're we gowun?

Mammy, I'm tired.

” Then, at last, for the first time, that plaint that stabbed the mother's heart: “Mammy, I'm hungry.

” “Be qui-ut, den,” said Mrs. Hooven.

“Bretty soon we'll hev der subber.

” Passers-by on the sidewalk, men and women in the great six o'clock homeward march, jostled them as they went along.

With dumb, dull curiousness, she looked into one after another of the limitless stream of faces, and she fancied she saw in them every emotion but pity.

The faces were gay, were anxious, were sorrowful, were mirthful, were lined with thought, or were merely flat and expressionless, but not one was turned toward her in compassion.

The expressions of the faces might be various, but an underlying callousness was discoverable beneath every mask.

The people seemed removed from her immeasurably; they were infinitely above her.

What was she to them, she and her baby, the crippled outcasts of the human herd, the unfit, not able to survive, thrust out on the heath to perish?

To beg from these people did not yet occur to her.

There was no pride, however, in the matter.

She would have as readily asked alms of so many sphinxes.

She went on.

Without willing it, her feet carried her in a wide circle.

Soon she began to recognise the houses; she had been in that street before.

Somehow, this was distasteful to her; so, striking off at right angles, she walked straight before her for over a dozen blocks.

By now, it was growing darker.

The sun had set.

The hands of a clock on the power-house of a cable line pointed to seven.

No doubt, Minna had come long before this time, had found her mother gone, and had--just what had she done, just what COULD she do?

Where was her daughter now?

Walking the streets herself, no doubt.

What was to become of Minna, pretty girl that she was, lost, houseless and friendless in the maze of these streets?

Mrs. Hooven, roused from her lethargy, could not repress an exclamation of anguish.

Here was misfortune indeed; here was calamity.

She bestirred herself, and remembered the address of the boarding-house.

She might inquire her way back thither.

No doubt, by now the policeman would be gone home for the night.

She looked about.

She was in the district of modest residences, and a young man was coming toward her, carrying a new garden hose looped around his shoulder.

“Say, Meest'r; say, blease----” The young man gave her a quick look and passed on, hitching the coil of hose over his shoulder.

But a few paces distant, he slackened in his walk and fumbled in his vest pocket with his fingers.

Then he came back to Mrs. Hooven and put a quarter into her hand.

Mrs. Hooven stared at the coin stupefied.

The young man disappeared.

He thought, then, that she was begging.

It had come to that; she, independent all her life, whose husband had held five hundred acres of wheat land, had been taken for a beggar.

A flush of shame shot to her face.

She was about to throw the money after its giver.

But at the moment, Hilda again exclaimed: “Mammy, I'm hungry.

” With a movement of infinite lassitude and resigned acceptance of the situation, Mrs. Hooven put the coin in her pocket.

She had no right to be proud any longer.

Hilda must have food.

That evening, she and her child had supper at a cheap restaurant in a poor quarter of the town, and passed the night on the benches of a little uptown park.

Unused to the ways of the town, ignorant as to the customs and possibilities of eating-houses, she spent the whole of her quarter upon supper for herself and Hilda, and had nothing left wherewith to buy a lodging.

The night was dreadful; Hilda sobbed herself to sleep on her mother's shoulder, waking thereafter from hour to hour, to protest, though wrapped in her mother's shawl, that she was cold, and to enquire why they did not go to bed.

Drunken men snored and sprawled near at hand.

Towards morning, a loafer, reeking of alcohol, sat down beside her, and indulged in an incoherent soliloquy, punctuated with oaths and obscenities.

It was not till far along towards daylight that she fell asleep.

She awoke to find it broad day.

Hilda--mercifully--slept.

Her mother's limbs were stiff and lame with cold and damp; her head throbbed.

She moved to another bench which stood in the rays of the sun, and for a long two hours sat there in the thin warmth, till the moisture of the night that clung to her clothes was evaporated.

A policeman came into view.

She woke Hilda, and carrying her in her arms, took herself away.

“Mammy,” began Hilda as soon as she was well awake; “Mammy, I'm hungry.

I want mein breakfest.

” “Sure, sure, soon now, leedle tochter.

” She herself was hungry, but she had but little thought of that.

How was Hilda to be fed?

She remembered her experience of the previous day, when the young man with the hose had given her money.

Was it so easy, then, to beg?

Could charity be had for the asking?

So it seemed; but all that was left of her sturdy independence revolted at the thought.

SHE beg!

SHE hold out the hand to strangers!

“Mammy, I'm hungry.

” There was no other way.

It must come to that in the end.

Why temporise, why put off the inevitable?

She sought out a frequented street where men and women were on their way to work.

One after another, she let them go by, searching their faces, deterred at the very last moment by some trifling variation of expression, a firm set mouth, a serious, level eyebrow, an advancing chin.

Then, twice, when she had made a choice, and brought her resolution to the point of speech, she quailed, shrinking, her ears tingling, her whole being protesting against the degradation.

Every one must be looking at her.

Her shame was no doubt the object of an hundred eyes.

“Mammy, I'm hungry,” protested Hilda again.

She made up her mind.

What, though, was she to say?

In what words did beggars ask for assistance?

She tried to remember how tramps who had appeared at her back door on Los Muertos had addressed her; how and with what formula certain mendicants of Bonneville had appealed to her.

Then, having settled upon a phrase, she approached a whiskered gentleman with a large stomach, walking briskly in the direction of the town.

“Say, den, blease hellup a boor womun.

” The gentleman passed on.

“Perhaps he doand hear me,” she murmured.

Two well-dressed women advanced, chattering gayly.

“Say, say, den, blease hellup a boor womun.

” One of the women paused, murmuring to her companion, and from her purse extracted a yellow ticket which she gave to Mrs. Hooven with voluble explanations.

But Mrs. Hooven was confused, she did not understand.

What could the ticket mean?

The women went on their way.

The next person to whom she applied was a young girl of about eighteen, very prettily dressed.

“Say, say, den, blease hellup a boor womun.

” In evident embarrassment, the young girl paused and searched in her little pocketbook.

“I think I have--I think--I have just ten cents here somewhere,” she murmured again and again.

In the end, she found a dime, and dropped it into Mrs. Hooven's palm.

That was the beginning.

The first step once taken, the others became easy.

All day long, Mrs. Hooven and Hilda followed the streets, begging, begging.

Here it was a nickel, there a dime, here a nickel again.

But she was not expert in the art, nor did she know where to buy food the cheapest; and the entire day's work resulted only in barely enough for two meals of bread, milk, and a wretchedly cooked stew.

Tuesday night found the pair once more shelterless.

Once more, Mrs. Hooven and her baby passed the night on the park benches.

But early on Wednesday morning, Mrs. Hooven found herself assailed by sharp pains and cramps in her stomach.

What was the cause she could not say; but as the day went on, the pains increased, alternating with hot flushes over all her body, and a certain weakness and faintness.

As the day went on, the pain and the weakness increased.

When she tried to walk, she found she could do so only with the greatest difficulty.

Here was fresh misfortune.

To beg, she must walk.

Dragging herself forward a half-block at a time, she regained the street once more.

She succeeded in begging a couple of nickels, bought a bag of apples from a vender, and, returning to the park, sank exhausted upon a bench.

Here she remained all day until evening, Hilda alternately whimpering for her bread and milk, or playing languidly in the gravel walk at her feet.

In the evening, she started out again.

This time, it was bitter hard.

Nobody seemed inclined to give.

Twice she was “moved on” by policemen.

Two hours' begging elicited but a single dime.

With this, she bought Hilda's bread and milk, and refusing herself to eat, returned to the bench--the only home she knew--and spent the night shivering with cold, burning with fever.

From Wednesday morning till Friday evening, with the exception of the few apples she had bought, and a quarter of a loaf of hard bread that she found in a greasy newspaper--scraps of a workman's dinner--Mrs. Hooven had nothing to eat.

In her weakened condition, begging became hourly more difficult, and such little money as was given her, she resolutely spent on Hilda's bread and milk in the morning and evening.

By Friday afternoon, she was very weak, indeed.

Her eyes troubled her.

She could no longer see distinctly, and at times there appeared to her curious figures, huge crystal goblets of the most graceful shapes, floating and swaying in the air in front of her, almost within arm's reach.

Vases of elegant forms, made of shimmering glass, bowed and courtesied toward her.

Glass bulbs took graceful and varying shapes before her vision, now rounding into globes, now evolving into hour-glasses, now twisting into pretzel-shaped convolutions.

“Mammy, I'm hungry,” insisted Hilda, passing her hands over her face.

Mrs. Hooven started and woke.

It was Friday evening.

Already the street lamps were being lit.

“Gome, den, leedle girl,” she said, rising and taking Hilda's hand.

“Gome, den, we go vind subber, hey?

” She issued from the park and took a cross street, directly away from the locality where she had begged the previous days.

She had had no success there of late.

She would try some other quarter of the town.

After a weary walk, she came out upon Van Ness Avenue, near its junction with Market Street.

She turned into the avenue, and went on toward the Bay, painfully traversing block after block, begging of all whom she met (for she no longer made any distinction among the passers-by).

“Say, say, den, blease hellup a boor womun.

” “Mammy, mammy, I'm hungry.

” It was Friday night, between seven and eight.

The great deserted avenue was already dark.

A sea fog was scudding overhead, and by degrees descending lower.

The warmth was of the meagerest, and the street lamps, birds of fire in cages of glass, fluttered and danced in the prolonged gusts of the trade wind that threshed and weltered in the city streets from off the ocean.