made the wind, and air, and sun. The man-world was made by man,
and a rotten job it was. Yet, and she remembered it well, the
teaching in the orphan asylum, God had made everything. Her
mother, too, had believed this, had believed in this God. Things
could not be different. It was ordained.
For a time Saxon sat crushed, helpless. Then smoldered protest,
revolt. Vainly she asked why God had it in for her. What had she
done to deserve such fate? She briefly reviewed her life in quest
of deadly sins committed, and found them not. She had obeyed her
mother; obeyed Cady, the saloon-keeper, and Cady's wife; obeyed
the matron and the other women in the orphan asylum; obeyed Tom
when she came to live in his house, and never run in the streets
because he didn't wish her to. At school she had always been
honorably promoted, and never had her deportment report varied
from one hundred per cent. She had worked from the day she left
school to the day of her marriage. She had been a good worker,
too. The little Jew who ran the paper box factory had almost wept
when she quit. It was the same at the cannery. She was among the
high-line weavers when the jute mills closed down. I And she had
kept straight. It was not as if she had been ugly or
unattractive. She had known her temptations and encountered her
dangers. The fellows had been crazy about her. They had run after
her, fought over her, in a way to turn most girls' heads. But she
had kept straight. And then had come Billy, her reward. She had
devoted herself to him, to his house, to all that would nourish
his love; and now she and Billy were sinking down into this
senseless vortex of misery and heartbreak of the man-made world.
No, God was not responsible. She could have made a better world
herself--a finer, squarer world. This being so, then there was no
God. God could not make a botch. The matron had been wrong, her
mother had been wrong. Then there was no immortality, and Bert,
wild and crazy Bert, falling at her front gate with his foolish
death-cry, was right. One was a long time dead.
Looking thus at life, shorn of its superrational sanctions, Saxon
floundered into the morass of pessimism. There was no
justification for right conduct in the universe, no square
deal for her who had earned reward, for the millions who worked
like animals, died like animals, and were a long time and forever
dead. Like the hosts of more learned thinkers before her, she
concluded that the universe was unmoral and without concern for
men.
And now she sat crushed in greater helplessness than when she had
included God in the scheme of injustice. As long as God was,
there was always chance for a miracle, for some supernatural
intervention, some rewarding with ineffable bliss. With God
missing, the world was a trap. Life was a trap. She was like a
linnet, caught by small boys and imprisoned in a cage. That was
because the linnet was stupid. But she rebelled. She fluttered
and beat her soul against the hard face of things as did the
linnet against the bars of wire. She was not stupid. She did not
belong in the trap. She would fight her way out of the trap.
There must be such a way out. When canal boys and rail-splitters,
the lowliest of the stupid lowly, as she had read in her school
history, could find their way out and become presidents of the
nation and rule over even the clever ones in their automobiles,
then could she find her way out and win to the tiny reward she
craved--Billy, a little love, a little happiness. She would not
mind that the universe was unmoral, that there was no God, no
immortality. She was willing to go into the black grave and
remain in its blackness forever, to go into the salt vats and let
the young men cut her dead flesh to sausage-meat, if--if only she
could get her small meed of happiness first.
How she would work for that happiness! How she would appreciate
it, make the most of each least particle of it! But how was she
to do it. Where was the path? She could not vision it. Her eyes
showed her only the smudge of San Francisco, the smudge of
Oakland, where men were breaking heads and killing one another,
where babies were dying, born and unborn, and where women were
weeping with bruised breasts.
CHAPTER XVI
Her vague, unreal existence continued. It seemed in some previous
life-time that Billy had gone away, that another life-time would
have to come before he returned. She still suffered from
insomnia. Long nights passed in succession, during which she
never closed her eyes. At other times she slept through long
stupors, waking stunned and numbed, scarcely able to open her
heavy eyes, to move her weary limbs. The pressure of the iron
she a cent of money. She often went a whole day without eating.
Once, seventy-two hours elapsed without food passing her lips.
She dug clams in the marsh, knocked the tiny oysters from the
rocks, and gathered mussels.
And yet, when Bud Strothers came to see how she was getting
along, she convinced him that all was well. One evening after
work, Tom came, and forced two dollars upon her. He was terribly
worried. He would like to help more, but Sarah was expecting
another baby. There had been slack times in his trade because of
the strikes in the other trades. He did not know what the country
was coming to. And it was all so simple. All they had to do was
see things in his way and vote the way he voted. Then everybody
would get a square deal. Christ was a Socialist, he told her.
"Christ died two thousand years ago," Saxon said.
"Well?" Tom queried, not catching her implication.
"Think," she said, "think of all the men and women who died in
those two thousand years, and socialism has not come yet. And in
two thousand years more it may be as far away as ever. Tom, your
socialism never did you any good. It is a dream."
"It wouldn't be if--" he began with a flash of resentment.
"If they believed as you do. Only they don't. You don't succeed
in making them."
"But we are increasing every year," he argued.
"Two thousand years is an awfully long time," she said quietly.
Her brother's tired face saddened as he noted. Then he sighed:
"Well, Saxon, if it's a dream, it is a good dream."
"I don't want to dream," was her reply. "I want things real. I
want them now."
And before her fancy passed the countless generations of the
stupid lowly, the Billys and Saxons, the Berts and Marys, the
Toms and Sarahs. And to what end? The salt vats and the grave.
Mercedes was a hard and wicked woman, but Mercedes was right. The
stupid must always be under the heels of the clever ones. Only
she, Saxon, daughter of Daisy who had written wonderful poems and
of a soldier-father on a roan war-horse, daughter of the strong.
generations who hall won half a world from wild nature and the
savage Indian--no
, she was not stupid. It was as if she suffered
false imprisonment. There was some mistake. She would find the
way out.
With the two dollars she bought a sack of flour and half a sack
of potatoes. This relieved the monotony of her clams and mussels.
Like the Italian and Portuguese women, she gathered driftwood and
carried it home, though always she did it with shamed pride,
timing her arrival so that it would be after dark. One day, on
the mud-flat side of the Rock Wall, an Italian fishing boat
hauled up on the sand dredged from the channel. From the top of
the wall Saxon watched the men grouped about the charcoal
brazier, eating crusty Italian bread and a stew of meat and
vegetables, washed down with long draughts of thin red wine. She
envied them their freedom that advertised itself in the
heartiness of their meal, in the tones of their chatter and
laughter, in the very boat itself that was not tied always to one
place and that carried them wherever they willed. Afterward, they
dragged a seine across the mud-flats and up on the sand,
selecting for themselves only the larger kinds of fish. Many
thousands of small fish, like sardines, they left dying on the
sand when they sailed away. Saxon got a sackful of the fish, and
was compelled to make two trips in order to carry them home,
where she salted them down in a wooden washtubs.
Her lapses of consciousness continued. The strangest thing she
did while in such condition was on Sandy Beach. There she
discovered herself, one windy afternoon, lying in a hole she had
dug, with sacks for blankets. She had even roofed the hole in
rough fashion by means of drift wood and marsh grass. On top of
the grass she had piled sand.
Another time she came to herself walking across the marshes, a
bundle of driftwood, tied with bale-rope, on her shoulder.
Charley Long was walking beside her. She could see his face in
the starlight. She wondered dully how long he had been talking,
what he had said. Then she was curious to hear what he was
saying. She was not afraid, despite his strength, his wicked
nature, and the loneliness and darkness of the marsh.
"It's a shame for a girl like you to have to do this," he was
saying, apparently in repetition of what he had already urged.
"Come on an' say the word, Saxon. Come on an' say the word."
"Listen, Charley Long. Billy's only doing thirty days, and his
time is almost up. When he gets out your life won't be worth a
pinch of salt if I tell him you've been bothering me. Now listen.
If you go right now away from here, and stay away, I won't tell
him. That's all I've got to say."
The big blacksmith stood in scowling indecisions his face
pathetic in its fierce yearning, his hands making unconscious,
clutching contractions.
"Why, you little, small thing," he said desperately, "I could
break you in one hand. I could--why, I could do anything I
wanted. I don't want to hurt you, Saxon. You know that. Just say
the word--"
"I've said the only word I'm going to say."
"God!" he muttered in involuntary admiration. "You ain't afraid.
You ain't afraid."
They faced each other for long silent minutes.
"Why ain't you afraid?" he demanded at last, after peering into
the surrounding darkness as if searching for her hidden allies.
"Because I married a man," Saxon said briefly. "And now you'd
better go."
When he had gone she shifted the load of wood to her other
shoulder and started on, in her breast a quiet thrill of pride in
Billy. Though behind prison bars, still she leaned against his
strength. The mere naming of him was sufficient to drive away a
brute like Charley Long.
On the day that Otto Frank was hanged she remained indoors. The
evening papers published the account. There had been no reprieve.
In Sacramento was a railroad Governor who might reprieve or even
pardon bank-wreckers and grafters, but who dared not lift his
finger for a workingman. All this was the talk of the
neighborhood. It had been Billy's talk. It had been Bert's talk.
The next day Saxon started out the Rock Wall, and the specter of
Otto Frank walked by her side. And with him was a dimmer, mistier
specter that she recognized as Billy. Was he, too, destined to
tread his way to Otto Frank's dark end? Surely so, if the blood
and strike continued. He was a fighter. He felt he was right in
fighting. It was easy to kill a man. Even if he did not intend
it, some time, when he was slugging a scab, the scab would
fracture his skull on a stone curbing or a cement sidewalk. And
then Billy would hang. That was why Otto Frank hanged. He had not
intended to kill Henderson. It was only by accident that
Henderson's skull was fractured. Yet Otto Frank had been hanged
for it just the same.
She wrung her hands and wept loudly as she stumbled among the
windy rocks. The hours passed, and she was lost to herself and
her grief. When she came to she found herself on the far end of
the wall where it jutted into the bay between the Oakland and
Alameda Moles. But she could see no wall. It was the time of the
full moon, and the unusual high tide covered the rocks. She was
knee deep in the water, and about her knees swam scores of big
rock rats, squeaking and fighting, scrambling to climb upon her
out of the flood. She screamed with fright and horror, and kicked
at them. Some dived and swam away under water; others circled
about her warily at a distance; and one big fellow laid his teeth
into her shoe. Him she stepped on and crushed with her free foot.
By this time, though still trembling, she was able coolly to
consider the situation. She waded to a stout stick of driftwood a
few feet away, and with this quickly cleared a space about
herself.
A grinning small boy, in a small, bright-painted and half-decked
skiff, sailed close in to the wall and let go his sheet to spill
the wind. "Want to get aboard?" he called.
"Yes," she answered. "There are thousands of big rats here. I'm
afraid of them."
He nodded, ran close in, spilled the wind from his sail, the
boat's way carrying it gently to her.
"Shove out its bow," he commanded. "That's right. I don't want to
break my centerboard. . . . An' then jump aboard in the
stern--quick!--alongside of me."
She obeyed, stepping in lightly beside him. He held the tiller up
with his elbow, pulled in on the sheet, and as the sail filled
the boat sprang away over the rippling water.
"You know boats," the boy said approvingly.
He was a slender, almost frail lad, of twelve or thirteen years,
though healthy enough, with sunburned freckled face and large
gray eyes that were clear and wistful.
Despite his possession of the pretty boat, Saxon was quick to
sense that he was one of them, a child of the people.
"First boat I was ever in, except ferryboats," Saxon laughed.
He looked at her keenly. "Well, you take to it like a duck to
water is all I can say about it. Where d'ye want me to land you?"
"Anywhere."
He opened his mouth to speak, gave her another long look,
considered for a space, then asked suddenly: "Got plenty of
time?"
She nodded.
"All day?"
Again she nodded.
"Say--I'll tell you, I'm goin' out on this ebb to Goat Island for
rockcod, an' I'll come in on the flood this evening. I got plenty
of lines an' bait. Want to come along? We can both fish. And what
you catch you can have."
Saxon hesitated. The freedom and motion of the small boat
appealed to her. Like the ships she had envied, it was outbound.
"Maybe you'll drown me," she parleyed.
The boy threw back his head with pride.
"I guess I've been sailin' many a long day by myself, an' I ain't
drowned yet."
"All right," she consented. "Though remember, I don't know
anything about boats."
"Aw, that's all right.--Now I'm goin' to go about. When I say
'Hard a-lee!' like that, you duck your head so the boom don't hit
you, an' shift over to the other side."
He executed the maneuver, Saxon obeyed, and found herself sitting
beside him on the opposite side of the boat, while the boat
itself, on the other tack, was heading toward Long Wharf where
the coal bunkers were. She was aglow with admiration, the more so
because the mechanics of boat-sailing was to her a complex and
mysterious thing.
"Where did you learn it all?" she inquired.
"Taught myself, just naturally taught myself. I liked it, you
see, an' what a fellow likes he's likeliest to do. This is my
second boat. My first didn't have a centerboard. I bought it for
two dollars an' learned a lot, though it never stopped leaking.
What d 'ye think I paid for this one? It's worth twenty-five
dollars right now. What d 'ye think I paid for it?"
"I give up," Saxon said. "How much?"
"Six dollars. Think of it! A boat like this! Of course I done a
lot of work, an' the sail cost two dollars, the oars one forty,
an' the paint one seventy-five. But just the same eleven dollars
and fifteen cents is a real bargain. It took me a long time
saving for it, though. I carry papers morning and
evening--there's a boy taking my route for me this afternoon--I
give 'm ten cents, an' all the extras he sells is his; and I'd
a-got the boat sooner only I had to pay for my shorthand lessons.
My mother wants me to become a court reporter. They get sometimes
as much as twenty dollars a day. Gee! But I don't want it. It's a
shame to waste the money on the lessons."
"What do you want?" she asked, partly from idleness, and yet with
genuine curiosity; for she felt drawn to this boy in knee pants
who was so confident and at the same time so wistful.
"What do I want?" he repeated after her.
Turning his head slowly, he followed the sky-line, pausing
especially when his eyes rested landward on the brown Contra
Costa hills, and seaward, past Alcatraz, on the Golden Glate. The
wistfulness in his eyes was overwhelming and went to her heart.
"That," he said, sweeping the circle of the world with a wave of
his arm.
"That?" she queried.
He looked at her, perplexed in that he had not made his meaning
clear.
"Don't you ever feel that way?" he asked, bidding for sympathy
with his dream. "Don't you sometimes feel you'd die if you didn't
know what's beyond them hills an' what's beyond the other hills
behind them hills? An' the Golden Gate! There's the Pacific Ocean
beyond, and China, an' Japan, an' India, an' . . . an' all the
coral islands. You can go anywhere out through the Golden
Gate--to Australia, to Africa, to the seal islands, to the North
Pole, to Cape Horn. Why, all them places are just waitin' for me
to come an' see 'em. I've lived in Oakland all my life, but I'm