Broken to the Plow written by Charles Caldwell Dobie

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"I miss my music," he said, briefly.

Fred prodded further. His need was, of course, for a violin.

"We'll write Ginger," Fred decided at once.

It had seemed quite a matter of course until he sat down with pen in
hand and then he had a feeling that this last demand was excessive. He
fancied she would achieve it someway, and he was not mistaken. The
violin came and, everything considered, it was not a bad one. Monet's
joy was pathetic. Fred wrote back their thanks. "How did you manage
it?" he asked.

Her reply was brief and significant: "You forget I know all kinds of
people."

From the moment the violin arrived Monet was a changed man. Suddenly
he became full of nervous reactions to everything about him. He lost
all his sluggish indifference, he talked of flight now with
fascinating ardor.

"When shall it be? Let us get out quickly. We can make our way easily
with this!" he would cry, tapping the violin lovingly. "While I play
on street corners you can collect the dimes and nickels."

Monet had meant to be absurd, of course, but Fred was finding nothing
absurd or impossible these days. The youth's laughing suggestions
flamed him with a sudden yearning for vagabondage. He wanted, himself,
to be up and off. But by this time October was upon them, ushered in
by extraordinary rainfall. The coming rain gave him pause. He used to
look searchingly at Monet's delicate face, and finally one day, in
answer to the oft-repeated question, Fred replied:

"I think we'll have to stand it until spring... If we want to go east,
over the mountains--this is no time."

They had often speculated as to a route. Most runaways took the road
toward the coast and achieved capture even in the face of comparative
indifference. The trails to the east led into the heart of the Sierra
Nevada Mountains. With the first breath of autumn these byways,
difficult of achievement in any case, became more and more impassable.
And, while flight toward the west might be successful, it was too
charged with a suggestion of failure to be tempting.

"We don't just want to _attempt_ to escape," Starratt used to explain.
"We want to _do_ it!"

"But, spring!" Monet would echo. "That means May at the earliest. The
mountain passes will be impossible even in April. Let's try!"

"Come, come! Why this sudden restlessness? I thought your music would
be a solace. But it seems to have made you dissatisfied. I can't
understand it."

"We live by desire! I am happy only when I am burning! When the flame
is out there are only ashes."

Fred yielded finally to the extent of starting plans. Food was the
first consideration. Monet was still in the dining room at Ward 6.
About the first of November he began hoarding sugar and rice. A hollow
tree in an obscure corner of the grounds back of the barns was the
hiding place. Everyday a little more was added to the store. The
process communicated a feeling of extraordinary interest to them both.
Around this almost trivial circumstance whirled the shadows of
infinite romance. Escape! At last these two men had a goal ... they
were no longer drifting.

Once a week Fred continued to receive two letters--one from his wife
and one from Ginger. It was curious to compare them--reading an
ironical comedy between the lines ... creating the scenes that were
being enacted by the triangle of women in front of the Hilmer dwelling
every day in the early morning sunshine. For, as time went on, it
appeared that Ginger walked through her inscrutable part with
irritating fidelity--that is, irritating to Helen Starratt. It could
not be otherwise, Fred decided, remembering the look of cool contempt
which his wife had thrown at Ginger's departing figure on the day of
their last interview. He saw Mrs. Hilmer only vaguely, in a
half-light, and yet out of the fragmentary sentences he got a sense of
something patient and brooding and terrible waiting an appointed
season. She seemed to be sitting back like some veiled and mystic
chorus, watching the duel of the other two and somehow shaping it to
her passive purpose.

And where was Hilmer in it all? Somehow, in spite of his masculine
virility, he seemed to have no place nor footing upon the narrow ledge
of feminine subtleties. No doubt, as usual, he was proceeding in his
direct and complacent line, unaware of anything save the brutally
obvious... Perhaps only the brutally obvious had any existence,
perhaps Fred Starratt was spinning fantasies out of threads which came
to his hand. He did not know, he could not say, but in the still
watches of the night the figures of these three women circled round
and round the seething caldron of the future like skinny witches upon
a blasted heath.

Meanwhile, rain succeeded rain. Fred Starratt knew that escape was
impossible under these conditions, but he let Monet chatter away and
continue his hoarding. Thus they passed Thanksgiving, and suddenly
Fred felt that Christmas would soon be upon them, with all its
heartbreaking melancholy.

As Christmas drew near a bitter restlessness began to pervade Ward 6.
The rain fell in torrents for days. There was little chance for fresh
air or exercise except in the bull pen, which was provided with a shed
that ran the length of the wall. Into this dismal and jail-like yard
poured the entire human wreckage of Fairview. Fred and Monet went with
the others for one or two days, but finally Monet said:

"Let's walk in the rain ... anything would be better than this."

And so the next day, waiting until a pelting shower had merged
gradually into a faint mist, the two took a quick-step run about the
parade ground. They came back splashed with mud and dripping wet, but
their cheeks glowed and their hearts beat quickly. After that, no
matter how violent the downpour, they managed to take a turn in the
open. Sometimes they circled the grounds repeatedly. Again, if the
rain proved too drenching, one short run was all they could achieve.

At the end of a week of such heroic exercising Monet said,
significantly:

"You see how well I am standing this! Every day toughens us up... We
ought to be leaving soon."

"After Christmas," Fred conceded, briefly.

There followed a brief respite of clear, crisp days, warming to
mellowness at noon. After the midday meal everyone crawled out into
the sunlight, standing in little shivering groups, while Monet played
upon his violin. The cracked inventor, pulling his cardboard box on
its ridiculous spools, stopped to listen; Weeping Willow forgot his
grief and almost achieved a smile. Only the Emperor of Japan continued
his pacing back and forth, his royal gloom untouched by any responsive
chord.

But the reaction from this sedative of music was in every case
violent. The remainder of the afternoon passed in tragic unquiet. One
day Harrison called Fred aside. The assistant superintendent was daily
yielding more and more to Fred's judgment.

"What do you think about a Christmas tree for Ward Six?"

For a moment Fred was uncertain. He knew the poignance of disturbing
memories. But, in the end, he felt that perhaps the floodgate of grief
had best be lifted. He knew by this time the cleansing solace of
tears.

"We've never done it before," Harrison went on.

"There has been a prejudice against bringing old days back too clearly
to these wretches... But Monet's been playing his music and they seem
to like that."

It ended by Fred going out with Monet and one of the attendants into
the hills and bringing back a beautiful fir tree. They set it up in a
corner of the dining room and its bruised fragrance filled the entire
building... There followed the problem of its trimming. At first some
one suggested that it was more beautiful untricked with gauds, but to
Fred, unlighted by any human touch its loveliness seemed too cold and
impersonal and cruelly pagan. Presently the long afternoons were
rilled with a pathetic bustle. Everyone became interested. They popped
corn and strung it in snow-white garlands and some one from the
kitchen sent in a bowl of cranberries which were woven into a
blood-red necklace for the central branches. Harrison brought round a
sack of walnuts and some liquid gilt and two brushes. Men began to
quarrel good-naturedly for a chance at the gilding. A woman attendant,
hearing about the tree, rode, herself, into the village and bought
candles... Finally it was finished, and it stood in the early twilight
of a dripping Christmas Eve, a fantastic captive from the hills,
suffering its severe dignity to be melted in a cheap, but human,
splendor... They had a late dinner by way of marking the event, and
the usual turn of keys in the locks at seven o'clock was missing. At
the close of the meal as they were bringing on plum pudding Fred rose
from his place to light the candles... A little tremor ran through the
room; Monet started to play... He played all the heartbreaking
melodies--"Noel" and "Nazareth" and "Adeste Fideles." Slowly the tears
began to trickle, but they fell silently, welling up from mysterious
reaches too deep for shallow murmurings. Suddenly a thin, quavering
voice started a song.

"God rest you, merry gentlemen!"

The first line rang out in all its tremulous bravery.

"_Merry_ gentlemen!" flashed through Fred's mind. "What mockery!"

But a swelling chorus took it up and in the next instant they were men
again. They sang it all--every word to the last line ... repeating
each stanza after the little man who had begun it and who had risen
and taken his place beside Monet.

"Now to the Lord sing praises,
All you within this place,
And with true love and brotherhood
Each other now embrace,
This holy tide of Christmas
All other doth deface."

Only Fred remained silent. He could not sing,
the bravery of it all smote him too deeply.

"This holy tide of Christmas
All other doth deface."

They were singing the last words over again.

Fred Starratt bowed his head. For the first and only time in his life
he felt Christ very near. But the Presence passed as quickly. When he
looked up the singing had ceased and the candles upon the tree were
guttering to a pallid end. Monet laid down his violin and blew out the
dying flames; his face was ashen and as he grasped the branches of the
tree his hand shook. A man in front rose to his feet. Flockwise the
others followed his lead. Christmas was over!... Fred Starratt had a
sense that it had died still-born.

The next morning came wrapped in a dreadful silence. Men stood about
in huddling groups and whispered. The exaltation of the night before
had been too violent. A great dreariness oppressed Fred Starratt. He
felt the inevitable sadness of a man who had met unveiled Beauty face
to face and as speedily found the vision dissolved. The tree still
swept the rooms and corridors with its fragrance, but in the harsh
daylight its cheap trappings gave it a wanton look. Somehow, it mocked
him, filled him with a sense of the vanity of life and all its
fleeting impressions. The rain came down in a tremulous flood,
investing everything with its colorless tears. The trees, the
buildings, the very earth itself seemed to be melting away in
silvery-gray grief.

Just before noon it lightened up a trifle and the rain stopped.

"Let's get out of this!" Monet said, sweeping the frozen assembly in
the smoking room with an almost scornful glance.

They found their hats and without further ado they started on a swing
about the grounds. It grew lighter and lighter ... it seemed for a
moment as if the sun would presently peep out from the clouds. They
achieved the full length of the parade ground and stopped, panting for
breath. Fred wiped his forehead with a huge handkerchief.

"Shall we keep going?" he asked.

Monet nodded. They swung into a wolfish trot again, across a stretch
of green turf, avoiding the clogging mud of the beaten trails. They
said nothing. Presently their rhythmic flight settled down to a
pleasurable monotony. They lost all sense of time and space.

Gradually their speed slackened, and they were conscious that they
were winding up ... up... It was Monet who halted first. They were on
a flat surface again, coming out of a thicket suddenly. There was a
level sweep of ground, ending abruptly in space.

"We're on Squaw Rock!" Fred Starratt exclaimed.

The two went forward to the edge of a precipice. The embryo plain
leaped violently down a sheer three hundred feet directly into the lap
of a foaming river pool. Fred peered over.

"There's the usual Indian legend, isn't there," he asked Monet,
"connected with this place?"

Monet moved back with a little shudder. "Yes ... I believe there is...
The inevitable lovelorn maiden and the leap to death... Well, it's a
good plunging place."

They both fell back a trifle, letting their gaze sweep the landscape
below, which was unfolding in theatrical unreality. At that moment the
sun came out, flooding the countryside with a flash of truant
splendor. To the south nestled the cluster of hospital buildings, each
sending out thin gray lines of smoke. Moving up the valley, hugging
the sinuous banks of the river, a train nosed its impudent way.

"When shall we be leaving for good?" Monet asked, suddenly.

Fred let out a deep breath. "The first time it really clears!"

Monet rested his hand upon Fred's shoulder. "If we go east we'll have
to cross the river."

"We'll follow the railroad track north for a mile or two. There's a
crossing near Pritchard's. I saw it on the day we went after the
tree."

The train pulled into the station and was whistling on its way again.
The hospital automobile swung toward the grounds. Suddenly the sun was
snuffed out again; it grew dark and lowering.

"We had better be on our way," Fred said, warningly. "It's going to
pour in less than no time."

For a moment a silence fell between them, succeeded by an outburst
from Monet.

"Let's keep on!" he cried, harshly. "Let's keep right on going! I
don't want to go back. I won't, I tell you! I won't!"

Fred took him by the shoulders ... he was trembling violently. "Come
... come! We can't do that, you know!... We haven't provisions or
proper clothing. And the rain, my boy! We'd die of exposure ... or ...
worse!"

"I don't care!" Monet flung out, passionately. "I'm not afraid to die
... not in the open."

"And you haven't your violin," Fred put in, gently.

"I never want to play again--after last night. ... It was horrible ...
horrible... '_God rest you, merry gentlemen_!' What could have
possessed them?"

"Come, now!... You'll feel better to-morrow... And I promise you on
the first clear day we'll make it... The first morning we wake up and
find a cloudless sky."

Fred moved forward, urging Monet to follow. The youth gave a little
shiver and suffered Fred's guidance.

"If I go back now," he said, sadly, "it will be forever. I shall never
leave."

Fred turned about and gave him a slight shake. "Nonsense! Last night
made you morbid. Harrison ought to have known better. This is no place
for Christmas! One day should be always like another."

Monet shook his head. "While they were sing ... something passed ... I
can't describe it. But I grew cold all over ... I knew at once that...
Oh, well! what's the use? You do not understand!"

He flung his hands up in a gesture of despair.

Fred looked up at the sky. It had grown ominously black. "We'd better
speed up," he said, significantly.

Monet squared himself doggedly. "You run if you want to... It doesn't
matter to me one way or another ... I feel tired."

The rain began to fall in great garrulous drops. Fred took Monet's
sleeve between his fingers; slowly they retraced their steps. For a
few yards the youth surrendered passively, but as Fred neared the
thicket again he felt the sharp release of Monet's coat sleeve. He
continued on his way... Suddenly he heard a noise of swift feet
stirring up the rain-soaked leaves. He turned abruptly. Monet was
running in the other direction--toward the precipice. A dreadful chill
swept him. He tried to call, to run, but a great weakness transfixed
him. The startled air made a foolish whistling sound. Monet's figure
flew on in silence, gave a quick leaping movement, and was lost!

Fred Starratt crawled back toward the precipice. The rain descended in
torrents and a wind rose to meet its violence. He looked down. The
pool below was churning to whitecapped fury, releasing a flood of
greedy and ferocious gurglings. Gradually a bitter silence fell and a
gloom gathered. Everything went black as midnight...

He felt a cold blast playing through his hair. Instinctively he put
his hand to his head. His hat was gone.

Suddenly it came to him that he would have to go back to Fairview ...
_alone_.

He rose to his feet. "North ... a mile or two!" he muttered. "If I can
once cross the bridge!"

CHAPTER XVI

On a certain evening in February Fred Starratt, from the upper deck of
a ferryboat, again saw the dusky outlines of San Francisco stretch
themselves in faint allurement pricked with glittering splendor. It
was a mild night--the skies clear, the air tinged with pleasant chill,
the bay stilled to nocturnal quiet.

He had come out upon the upper deck to be alone. He wanted to approach
the city of his birth in decent solitude, to feel the thrill of
home-coming in all its poignant melancholy. He had expected the event
to assume a special significance, to be fraught with hidden meaning,
to set his pulses leaping. But he had to confess that neither the
beauty of the night nor the uncommon quality of the event moved him.
Had he been wrung dry of all emotional reaction? It was not until a
woman came from the stuffy cabin and took a seat in a sheltered corner
outside that he had the slightest realization of the nearness of his
old environment. As she passed close to his pacing form a sickly sweet
odor enveloped him. He looked after her retreating figure. She was
carrying a yellow armful of blossoming acacia. The perfume evoked a
sad memory of virginal springs innumerable ... springs that seemed to
go back wistfully beyond his own existence ... springs long dead and
never to be revived. Dead? No, perhaps not quite that, but springs
never to be again his portion. This perfume of the blossoming acacia
... how in the old days it had always brought home a sense of
awakening, a sense of renewal to a land burned and seared and ravished
in the hot and tearless passion of summer! Following the first rains
would come the faint flush of green upon the hillsides, growing a
little deeper as the healing floods released themselves, and then, one
day, suddenly, almost overnight, the acacia would bend beneath a
yellow burden, sending a swooning fragrance out to match the yellow
sunlight of February. From that moment on the pageant was continuous,
bud and blossom and virginal leaf succeeding one another in showering
abundance. But nothing that followed quite matched the heavy beauty of
these first golden boughs, nothing that could evoke quite the same
infinite yearning for hidden and heroic destinies. He defined the
spell of the perfume again, but he did not feel it. It shook his
memory to its foundations, but it left his senses cold. And the city
before him was as sharply revealed and as cruelly unmoving.

Suddenly he was done with a desire for solitude and he went below. A
half score of men were idling upon the lower deck. He began his
restless pacings again, stroking his faded beard with a strangely
white hand. Finally he stopped, gazing wistfully at the dark beauty of
the ferry tower, sending its winsome shaft up into the quivering
night. A man at his elbow began to speak in the characteristically
Californian fashion about the weather.

"Yes," Fred assented, briefly, "it _is_ a fine night."

"Too fine," the stranger returned. "We need rain."

"Haven't you had much down this way, either?" Fred found himself
inquiring, glad of a chance to escape for the moment into the
commonplace.

"At the beginning of the season it came on a bit, but since Christmas
there has been scarcely a drop. How does the country look?"

Fred leaned against a water barrel and continued to stroke his beard.

"Pretty well burned up. But the fruit trees will soon be blossoming in
spite of everything... The worst of it is there isn't any snow in the
mountains."

"Ah, then you've been up into the Sierras."

"Yes, since December... I had to make my way through the northern
passes just after Christmas. Folks told me it couldn't be done... I
guess it would have been almost impossible in a wet season. But things
were the same way up north. No end of rain in the fall and none to
speak of since the holidays. But at that I've been through some tough
times... How are things in town?"

The stranger unbuttoned his shabby overcoat and took out a bag of
tobacco. His indifferent suit and thick blue-flannel shirt, which
ordinarily would have stamped him as an artisan, was belied by the
quality of his speech.

"Things are rotten. Everybody is striking. You can't get work anywhere
except you want to scab... You'd better have stayed where you came
from."

There was a tentative quality in this observation that roused in Fred
a vague speculation. He had a feeling that the stranger was leading up
cautiously to some subject. He looked again, this time sharply, at his
companion of the moment. There was nothing extraordinary in the face
except the eyes burning fitfully under the gloom of incredibly thick,
coarse, reddish eyebrows. His mouth was a curious mixture of softness
and cruelty, and his hands were broad, but not ungraceful.

"Well, if a man is starving he'll do almost anything, I guess," Fred
returned, significantly.

"Do you mean that _you_ would--if you were starving?"

"I'm starving now!" escaped Fred Starratt, almost involuntarily.

"I thought so," said the other, quietly.

"Why?"

"I've seen plenty of starving men in my day. I know the look. And
you're suffering in the bargain. Not physically. But you've been
through a hell of some kind. Am I right?"

"Yes ... you're quite right."

The boat was swinging into the slip. Already a crowd was moving down
upon them.

"That's why I spoke to you. A man who's been through hell is like a
field freshly broken to the plow. He's ready for seed."

Fred cast an ironical glance at the man before him. "And you, I
suppose, are the sower," he said, mockingly. "A parson?"

The other laughed, disclosing greenish teeth. "Of a sort... Perhaps
high priest would be nearer the truth. There's a certain purposeful
cruelty about that term which appeals to me. I'm a bit of a fanatic,
you know... But I like to get my recruits when they're bleeding raw. I
like them when the salt of truth can sting deep... Wounds heal so
quickly ... so disgustingly quickly."

He spat contemptuously and began to cram a blackened pipe to
overflowing. The boat had landed and already the crowd was moving up
the apron. Fred and his companion felt themselves urged forward by the
pressure of this human tide.

"Come and have some coffee with me," Fred heard the man at his side
say in a half-commanding tone. "My name is Storch. What shall I call
you?"

"Anything you like!" Fred snapped, viciously.

The other laughed. "You're in capital form! Upon my word we'll get on
famously together." And he spat again, this time with satisfaction and
rare good humor.

Fred Starratt looked up. They had emerged suddenly from the uncertain
twilight of a stone-flanked corridor into a harsh blue-white flood of
electricity. A confused babble of noises fell upon his ears. He put
out his hand instinctively and clutched the arm of the man at his
side.

"Yes ... yes..." the voice of his companion broke in, reassuringly.
"You're all right. In a moment ... after you've had coffee things
will..."

He clutched again and presently, like a drowning man borne upon the
waves by a superior force, he felt himself guided through a maze of
confusing details, into swift and certain safety.

* * * * *

The coffee house into which Fred Starratt had been led by Storch was
choked with men and the thick odor of coffee and fried ham. To a man
who had eaten sparingly for days the smell of food was nauseating.
Storch ordered coffee for himself and a bowl of soup for Fred. This
last was a good choice in spite of the fact that for a moment Fred
felt instinctive rebellion. These pale, watery messes were too
suggestive of Fairview. But in the end the warm fluid dissipated his
weakness and he began to experience a normal hunger.

Storch finished his cup of coffee and wiped a dark-brown ooze from his
upper lip with a paper napkin.

"Better take a slice of bread or two," he advised Fred, "and then call
it quits. You'll feel better in the long run. A starved stomach
shouldn't be surprised with too much food."

Fred obeyed. He could see that this man understood many things.

Gradually the crowd thinned. Soon only Fred and Storch were left at
the particular table that they had chosen. Stragglers came and went,
but still Storch made no move to go, and Fred was equally inactive. He
felt warm and comfortably drowsy and, on the whole, quite content. The
waiter cleared away the empty dishes and then discreetly ignored them.
Fred fell to studying his reflection in the polished mirror running
the length of the room. He had to acknowledge that he looked savage,
with his hair long and untidy and a bristling, sunburnt beard
smothering his features. And suddenly, in the intensity of his
concentration, he felt a swooning sense of nonexistence, as if his
inner consciousness had detached itself someway from the egotism of
the flesh and stood apart, watching... He was recalled by Storch's
voice. He shuddered slightly and turned his face toward his
questioner.

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