The Octopus - Frank Norris (novel24 .TXT) 📗

he had resolved to put all thoughts of business out of his head. For the matter of that, things were going well enough. Osterman was back from Los Angeles with a favourable report as to his affair with Disbrow and Darrell. There had been another meeting of the committee. Harran Derrick had attended. Though he had taken no part in the discussion, Annixter was satisfied. The Governor had consented to allow Harran to “come in,” if he so desired, and Harran had pledged himself to share one-sixth of the campaign expenses, providing these did not exceed a certain figure.

As Annixter came to the door of the barn to shout abuse at the distraught Chinese cook who was cutting up lemons in the kitchen, he caught sight of Presley and Vanamee and hailed them.

“Hello, Pres,” he called. “Come over here and see how she looks;” he indicated the barn with a movement of his head. “Well, we’re getting ready for you tonight,” he went on as the two friends came up. “But how we are going to get straightened out by eight o’clock I don’t know. Would you believe that pip Caraher is short of lemons—at this last minute and I told him I’d want three cases of ‘em as much as a month ago, and here, just when I want a good lively saddle horse to get around on, somebody hikes the buckskin out the corral. STOLE her, by jingo. I’ll have the law on that thief if it breaks me—and a sixty-dollar saddle ‘n’ head-stall gone with her; and only about half the number of Jap lanterns that I ordered have shown up and not candles enough for those. It’s enough to make a dog sick. There’s nothing done that you don’t do yourself, unless you stand over these loafers with a club. I’m sick of the whole business— and I’ve lost my hat; wish to God I’d never dreamed of givin’ this rotten fool dance. Clutter the whole place up with a lot of feemales. I sure did lose my presence of mind when I got THAT idea.”

Then, ignoring the fact that it was he, himself, who had called the young men to him, he added:

“Well, this is my busy day. Sorry I can’t stop and talk to you longer.”

He shouted a last imprecation at the Chinaman and turned back into the barn. Presley and Vanamee went on, but Annixter, as he crossed the floor of the barn, all but collided with Hilma Tree, who came out from one of the stalls, a box of candles in her arms.

Gasping out an apology, Annixter reentered the harness room, closing the door behind him, and forgetting all the responsibility of the moment, lit a cigar and sat down in one of the hired chairs, his hands in his pockets, his feet on the table, frowning thoughtfully through the blue smoke.

Annixter was at last driven to confess to himself that he could not get the thought of Hilma Tree out of his mind. Finally she had “got a hold on him.” The thing that of all others he most dreaded had happened. A feemale girl had got a hold on him, and now there was no longer for him any such thing as peace of mind. The idea of the young woman was with him continually. He went to bed with it; he got up with it. At every moment of the day he was pestered with it. It interfered with his work, got mixed up in his business. What a miserable confession for a man to make; a fine way to waste his time. Was it possible that only the other day he had stood in front of the music store in Bonneville and seriously considered making Hilma a present of a music-box? Even now, the very thought of it made him flush with shame, and this after she had told him plainly that she did not like him. He was running after her—he, Annixter! He ripped out a furious oath, striking the table with his boot heel. Again and again he had resolved to put the whole affair from out his mind. Once he had been able to do so, but of late it was becoming harder and harder with every successive day. He had only to close his eyes to see her as plain as if she stood before him; he saw her in a glory of sunlight that set a fine tinted lustre of pale carnation and gold on the silken sheen of her white skin, her hair sparkled with it, her thick, strong neck, sloping to her shoulders with beautiful, full curves, seemed to radiate the light; her eyes, brown, wide, innocent in expression, disclosing the full disc of the pupil upon the slightest provocation, flashed in this sunlight like diamonds.

Annixter was all bewildered. With the exception of the timid little creature in the glove-cleaning establishment in Sacramento, he had had no acquaintance with any woman. His world was harsh, crude, a world of men only—men who were to be combatted, opposed—his hand was against nearly every one of them. Women he distrusted with the instinctive distrust of the overgrown schoolboy. Now, at length, a young woman had come into his life. Promptly he was struck with discomfiture, annoyed almost beyond endurance, harassed, bedevilled, excited, made angry and exasperated. He was suspicious of the woman, yet desired her, totally ignorant of how to approach her, hating the sex, yet drawn to the individual, confusing the two emotions, sometimes even hating Hilma as a result of this confusion, but at all times disturbed, vexed, irritated beyond power of expression.

At length, Annixter cast his cigar from him and plunged again into the work of the day. The afternoon wore to evening, to the accompaniment of wearying and clamorous endeavour. In some unexplained fashion, the labour of putting the great barn in readiness for the dance was accomplished; the last bolt of cambric was hung in place from the rafters. The last evergreen tree was nailed to the joists of the walls; the last lantern hung, the last nail driven into the musicians’ platform. The sun set. There was a great scurry to have supper and dress. Annixter, last of all the other workers, left the barn in the dusk of twilight. He was alone; he had a saw under one arm, a bag of tools was in his hand. He was in his shirt sleeves and carried his coat over his shoulder; a hammer was thrust into one of his hip pockets. He was in execrable temper. The day’s work had fagged him out. He had not been able to find his hat.

“And the buckskin with sixty dollars’ worth of saddle gone, too,” he groaned. “Oh, ain’t it sweet?”

At his house, Mrs. Tree had set out a cold supper for him, the inevitable dish of prunes serving as dessert. After supper Annixter bathed and dressed. He decided at the last moment to wear his usual town-going suit, a sack suit of black, made by a Bonneville tailor. But his hat was gone. There were other hats he might have worn, but because this particular one was lost he fretted about it all through his dressing and then decided to have one more look around the barn for it.

For over a quarter of an hour he pottered about the barn, going from stall to stall, rummaging the harness room and feed room, all to no purpose. At last he came out again upon the main floor, definitely giving up the search, looking about him to see if everything was in order.

The festoons of Japanese lanterns in and around the, barn were not yet lighted, but some half-dozen lamps, with great, tin reflectors, that hung against the walls, were burning low. A dull half light pervaded the vast interior, hollow, echoing, leaving the corners and roof thick with impenetrable black shadows. The barn faced the west and through the open sliding doors was streaming a single bright bar from the afterglow, incongruous and out of all harmony with the dull flare of the kerosene lamps.

As Annixter glanced about him, he saw a figure step briskly out of the shadows of one corner of the building, pause for the fraction of one instant in the bar of light, then, at sight of him, dart back again. There was a sound of hurried footsteps.

Annixter, with recollections of the stolen buckskin in his mind, cried out sharply:

“Who’s there?”

There was no answer. In a second his pistol was in his hand.

“Who’s there? Quick, speak up or I’ll shoot.”

“No, no, no, don’t shoot,” cried an answering voice. “Oh, be careful. It’s I—Hilma Tree.”

Annixter slid the pistol into his pocket with a great qualm of apprehension. He came forward and met Hilma in the doorway.

“Good Lord,” he murmured, “that sure did give me a start. If I HAD shot–-”

Hilma stood abashed and confused before him. She was dressed in a white organdie frock of the most rigorous simplicity and wore neither flower nor ornament. The severity of her dress made her look even larger than usual, and even as it was her eyes were on a level with Annixter’s. There was a certain fascination in the contradiction of stature and character of Hilma—a great girl, half-child as yet, but tall as a man for all that.

There was a moment’s awkward silence, then Hilma explained:

“I—I came back to look for my hat. I thought I left it here this afternoon.”

“And I was looking for my hat,” cried Annixter. “Funny enough, hey?”

They laughed at this as heartily as children might have done. The constraint of the situation was a little relaxed and Annixter, with sudden directness, glanced sharply at the young woman and demanded:

“Well, Miss Hilma, hate me as much as ever?”

“Oh, no, sir,” she answered, “I never said I hated you.”

“Well,—dislike me, then; I know you said that.”

“I—I disliked what you did—TRIED to do. It made me angry and it hurt me. I shouldn’t have said what I did that time, but it was your fault.”

“You mean you shouldn’t have said you didn’t like me?” asked Annixter. “Why?”

“Well, well,—I don’t—I don’t DISlike anybody,” admitted Hilma.

“Then I can take it that you don’t dislike ME? Is that it?”

“I don’t dislike anybody,” persisted Hilma.

“Well, I asked you more than that, didn’t I?” queried Annixter uneasily. “I asked you to like me, remember, the other day. I’m asking you that again, now. I want you to like me.”

Hilma lifted her eyes inquiringly to his. In her words was an unmistakable ring of absolute sincerity. Innocently she inquired:

“Why?”

Annixter was struck speechless. In the face of such candour, such perfect ingenuousness, he was at a loss for any words.

“Well—well,” he stammered, “well—I don’t know,” he suddenly burst out. “That is,” he went on, groping for his wits, “I can’t quite say why.” The idea of a colossal lie occurred to him, a thing actually royal.

“I like to have the people who are around me like me,” he declared. “I—I like to be popular, understand? Yes, that’s it,” he continued, more reassured. “I don’t like the idea of any one disliking me. That’s the way I am. It’s my nature.”

“Oh, then,” returned Hilma, “you needn’t bother. No, I don’t dislike you.”

“Well, that’s good,” declared Annixter judicially. “That’s good. But hold on,” he interrupted, “I’m forgetting. It’s not enough to not dislike me. I want you to like me. How about THAT?”

Hilma paused for a moment, glancing vaguely out of the doorway toward the lighted window of the dairy-house, her head tilted.

“I don’t know that I ever thought about that,” she said.

“Well, think about it now,” insisted Annixter.

“But I never thought about liking anybody particularly,” she observed. “It’s