Broken to the Plow Part 29

Fred gave a little gesture of resignation.

"You know perfectly well that I'm not built to betray the man who gives me shelter."

"Oh, I'm not sheltering you for love!"

"You have some purpose, of course. I understand that. But you're wasting time."

"Well, I'll risk it... I know well enough you're not a man easily won to an abstract hatred... But a personal hatred very often serves as good a turn... Everything is grist to my mill."

"A personal hatred?" echoed Fred.

Storch blew out the light.

"You're duller than I thought," he called through the gloom.

Fred turned his face away and tried to sleep.

The next day he decided to crawl out of bed and begin to win back his strength. He couldn't lie there forever sharing Storch's roof and crust. But the effort left him exhausted and he was soon glad to fling himself back upon the couch.

Each succeeding day he felt a little stronger, until the time came when he was able to drag himself to the open door and sit in the sunshine. He had never thought much about sunshine in the old days. A fine day had been something to be remarked, but scarcely h.o.a.rded. With the steam radiator working, it had not mattered so much whether the sun shone or not... He remembered the first time that a real sense of the sun's beauty had struck him--on that morning which now seemed so remote--when he had risen weakly from his cot at the detention hospital and made ready for exile at Fairview. Less than a year ago!

How many things had a.s.sumed new values since then! Now, he could exploit every sunbeam to its minutest warmth, he could wring sustenance from a handful of crumbs, he knew what a cup of cold water meant. He was on speaking terms with hunger, he had been comrade to madness, he had looked upon sudden death, he was an outcast and, in a sense, a criminal. He felt that he could almost say with Hilmer:

"I know all the dirty, rotten things of life by direct contact."

All but murder--yet it had brushed close to him. Even now he could evoke the choking rage that had engulfed him on that night of his arrest when his defenseless cheek had reddened to the blow of humiliation. This had been, however, a flash of pa.s.sion. But once, meeting a man who blocked his path in the first upper reaches of the hills, beyond Fairview, he had felt the even more primitive itch of self-preservation urging him to the ultimate crime. Would he end by going a step farther and planning the destruction of life in cold blood?

It was curious how constant a.s.sociation with a sensational idea dulled the edge of its novelty. The first time he had heard deliberate and pa.s.sionless murder all but plotted in Storch's huddled room he had felt a quick heartbeat of instinctive protest. Had he been stronger at that moment he would have leaped to his feet in opposition. But the moment pa.s.sed and when he heard the subject broached again he listened curiously. Finally he ceased to feel the slightest tremor of revolt.

Was indifference always the first step toward surrender?

Finally Fred grew strong enough to desert his couch at evening. Up to this point he had been ignored by the nightly visitors, but now they made a place for him in the circle about the sputtering lamp. It seemed, also, that, with his active presence, the talk began to a.s.sume general point and direction. Storch had been giving them plenty of tether, but now he was beginning to pull up sharply, putting their windy theories to the test. They were for clearing the ground, were they? Well, so far so good. But generalities led nowhere. Why not something specific? Wasn't the time ripe for action--thousands of men, walking the streets, locked out because they dared to demand a decent and even break? And this in the face of all the altruistic rumble-b.u.mble which war had evoked? He played this theme over and over again, and finally one night with an almost casual air he said:

"Take the shipyards, for instance ... forty-odd thousand men locked out while the owners lay plans to shackle them further. Now is the chance. Quit talking and get busy!"

It ended in a list being made of the chief offenders--owners, managers, irascible foremen. Fred Starratt listened like a man in a dream. When Hilmer was named he found himself shivering. These people were plotting murder now--cool, calm, pa.s.sionless murder! There was something fascinating in the very nonchalance of it.

Storch's eyes glittered more and more savagely. He drew up plans, arranged incredible details, delivered specific offenders into the hands of certain of his henchmen.

"You are responsible for this man, now," he used to fling at the chosen one. "How or where or when does not interest me--but get him, you understand, _get him_!"

One night a member said, significantly:

"Everybody's been picked but Hilmer... What's the matter, Storch, are you saving that plum for yourself?"

Storch rubbed his hands together, flashing a look at Fred.

"No... There's an option on Hilmer!" he cried, gleefully.

Fred tried to ignore the implication, but all night the suggestion burned itself into his brain. So some one was to get Hilmer, after all! Well, why not? Hilmer liked men with guts enough to fight--rabbit drives were not to his taste... Among all the names brought up and discussed at these sinister gatherings about Storch's round table Hilmer's stood out as the ultimate prize. No one spoke a good word for him and yet Fred had to admit that the revilings were flavored with a certain grudging respect. He was an open and consistent tyrant, at any rate.

An option on Hilmer! What a trick Storch had for illuminating phrases!

... And his divinations were uncanny. Why should he a.s.sume that Hilmer was in any way bound up in Fred Starratt's life?

The next morning Fred decided to chance a walk in the open. He had a vague wish to try his wings again, now that he had grown stronger. The situation reminded him remotely of Fairview on those first days when Monet and he had attempted to harden their muscles against the day of escape. But this time he was struggling to free himself from a personality, from an idea. He must leave Storch and his motley brood as soon as possible; somehow the acid of their ruthless philosophy was eating away the remnants of any inner beauty which had been left him.

At first he had been all revolt, but now there were swift moments in which he asked himself what quarrel he could have with any blows struck at authority. What had established order done for him? Acted as a screen for villainy and inconstancy for the most part.

He turned all this over in his mind as he slunk furtively along the water front, trying vaguely to shape a plan of action. He felt himself to be a very unusual and almost terrible figure, and yet no one paid any heed to him. His beard had lost its sunburned character and grown jet black, his face, and particularly his hands, were pale to transparence, his eyes burned too brightly in their sunken sockets. He was not even a ghost of his former self, but rather a sinister reincarnation. He felt that he was even more forbidding than on that night when he had sent Brauer shivering from his presence. He doubted whether Brauer would recognize him again, so subtle and marked was the change. He hardly recognized himself, and the transformation was not solely a matter of physical degeneration. No, there was something indefinable in the quality of his decline.

He fluttered about the town, at first aimlessly, like a defenseless fledgling thrust before its time from the nest. He was weak and tremulous and utterly miserable. Yet he felt compelled to go forward.

He must escape from Storch! _He must_!

The docks, usually full of bustle, were silent and almost deserted.

Fred questioned a man loafing upon a pile of lumber. It appeared that a strike of stevedores was the cause of this outward sign of inactivity. Boats were being loaded quietly, but the process was furtive and sullen. Occasionally, out of the wide expanse of brooding indolence a knot of men would gather flockwise, and melt as quickly.

There was an ominous quality in the swiftness with which these cloudlike groups congealed and disintegrated. The sinister blight of repression was over everything--repressed desires, repressed joys, repressed hatreds. It was almost as sad as the noonday silence of Fairview.

Fred slunk along in deep dejection. He wanted the color and life and bustle of accomplishment. A slight activity before one of the docks beguiled him from his depression. A pa.s.senger steamer was preparing for its appointed flight south and a knot of blue-coated policemen maintained a safe path from curb to dock entrance. Here was a touch of liveliness and gayety--the released laughter of people bent on a holiday, hopeful farewells called out heartily, taxicabs dashing up with exaggerated haste. He was warming himself at the flame of this genial pageant, when an opulent machine came rolling up to the curb. A sudden surge of arrivals had pressed into service every available porter, and the alighting occupants, a man and a woman, stood waiting for some one to help them with their luggage. Fred stared with impersonal curiosity. Then, as instinctively, he fell back. The man was Axel Hilmer and the woman was Helen Starratt! His shrinking movement must have singled him out for attention, because a policeman began to hustle him on, and the next instant he was conscious that Hilmer was calling in his voice of a.s.sured authority:

"Here, there, don't send that man away! I need some one to help me with these grips. This lady has got to catch the boat!"

The officer touched his hat respectfully and Fred felt himself gently impelled toward Helen Starratt. He did not have time to protest nor shape any plan of action. Instead, he answered Hilmer's imperious pantomime by grasping a suitcase in one hand and a valise in the other and staggering after them toward the waiting vessel.

They had arrived not a moment too soon; already the steamer was preparing to cast off. In the confusion which followed, Fred had very little sense of what was happening. He knew that a porter had relieved him of his burden and that Helen Starratt had pressed a silver coin into his hand. There was a scramble up the gangplank, a warning whistle, a chorus of farewell, and then silence... He had a realization that he had all but fainted--he looked up to find Hilmer at his side.

"What's the matter?" Hilmer was asking, brusquely. "Are you sick?"

He roused himself with a mighty effort.

"Yes."

"You look half starved, too... Why don't you go to work? Or are you one of those d.a.m.ned strikers?"

"No," he heard himself answer. "I'm just a man who's ... who's up against it."

Hilmer took out a card and scribbled on it.

"Here, look up my superintendent at the yard to-morrow. He'll give you a job. There's plenty of work for those who want it. But don't lose that card ... otherwise they won't let you see him."

Fred took the proffered pasteboard and as he did so his fingers closed over Hilmer's mangled thumb. He could feel himself trembling from head to foot... He waited until Hilmer was gone. Then he crawled slowly in the direction of the street again. Midway he felt some force impelling him to a backward glance. He turned about--a green smile betrayed Storch's sinister presence; Fred felt him swing close and whisper, triumphantly:

"That was your wife, wasn't it?"

"How do you know?"

"Never mind. Answer me--it was your wife?"

"Yes."

"How much did she give you?"