Broken to the Plow written by Charles Caldwell Dobie

C >> Charles Caldwell Dobie >> Broken to the Plow

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"Poor Helen Starratt! She has had an awful time!... I don't know what
she would have done without the Hilmers... She's so devoted to Mrs.
Hilmer... I do think it's lovely that they can be together."

He felt that he could have admired a Helen Starratt with the courage
of her primitive instincts. As it was, he was ashamed to own that he
experienced even rancor at her pretenses.

He heard the sound of a wheeled chair coming toward the living room
and he made a pretense of staring aimlessly into the street. Presently
a sepulchral voice broke the silence. He turned--Mrs. Hilmer was
leaning forward in her chair, regarding him attentively, while the
maid stood a little to one side. He had expected to come upon a huddle
of blond plumpness, an inanimate mass of forceless flesh robbed of its
bovine suavity by inactivity. What he saw was a body thin to
emaciation and a face drawn into a tight-lipped discontent. The old
curves of flesh had melted, displaying the heaviness of the framework
which had supported them. The eyes were restless and glittering, the
once-plump hands shrunken into claws.

"You ... you have a message from Sylvia Molineaux?"

She tossed the question toward him with biting directness. Could it be
possible that this was the same woman who had purred so contentedly
over a receipt for corn pudding somewhat over a year ago?

He moved a step nearer. "Yes ... but it is private."

The maid made a slight grimace and put her hand protectingly upon Mrs.
Hilmer's chair. Mrs. Hilmer shifted about impatiently.

"Never mind, Hilda," she snapped out. "I am not afraid."

The maid shrugged and departed.

"I have wanted to see her," Mrs. Hilmer went on, coldly. "But who
could I send? ... Few people understand her life."

"Ah, then you have guessed?"

"Guessed? ... She has told me everything."

A shade of bitter malice crept into her face--the malice of a woman
who has learned truths and is no longer shocked by them. Fred Starratt
put his hat aside and he went up close to her.

"I lied to get in here," he said, quickly. "I am looking for Sylvia
Molineaux myself."

"Why don't you try the streets, then?" she flung out, venomously.

He felt almost as if an insult had been hurled at _him_. He searched
Mrs. Hilmer's face. Something more than physical pain had harrowed the
woman before him to such deliberate mockery.

"You, too!" he cried. "How you must have suffered!"

She gave a little cackling laugh that made him shudder. "What about
yourself?" she queried. "You do not look like a happy man."

"Would you be ... if ... Look at me closely, Mrs. Hilmer! Have you
ever seen me before?"

He bent toward her. She took his face between her two clawlike
fingers. Her eyes were points of greedy flame.

When she finally spoke her voice had almost a pensive quality to it.

"You might have been Fred Starratt, _once_," she said, evenly.

He rose to his feet.

"I knew you were not dead," he heard her saying. "And I don't think
she felt sure, either... Ah, how I have worried her since that day!
Every morning I used to say: 'I dreamed of your husband last night. He
was swimming out of a black pool ... a very black pool.'"

She chuckled at the memory of her sinister banter. So Helen Starratt
did not have everything her own way! There were weapons which even
weakness could flourish.

"Where has she gone?" he asked, suddenly.

"South, for a change... I've worried her sick with my black pool.
Whenever the doorbell would ring I would say as sweetly as I could,
'What if that should be your husband?' I drove her out with just
that... You've come just the right time to help. It couldn't have been
planned any better."

She might have been Storch, masquerading in skirts, as she sat there
casting significantly narrow glances at him. He wondered why he had
come. He felt like a fly struggling from the moist depths of a cream
jug only to be thrust continually back by a ruthless force. Was
everybody bent on plunging him into the ultimate despair? He moved
back with a poignant gesture of escape.

"You mustn't count on me, Mrs. Hilmer!" he cried, desperately. "I'm
nothing but a poor, spent man. I've lost the capacity for revenge."

She smiled maliciously. "You see me here--helpless. And yet, in all
these months I've prayed for only one thing--to have strength enough
one day to rise in this chair and throw myself upon them both... Oh,
but I should like to kill them!... You talk about suffering ... but do
you know what it is to feel the caress of hands that are waiting to
lay hold of everything that was once yours?... I have six months more
to live. The doctor told me yesterday... Six months more, getting
weaker every day, until at last--"

She brought her hands up in a vigorous flourish, which died pitifully.
He felt a contempt for his impotence. He dropped into a seat opposite
her.

"Tell me about it ... all ... from the beginning," he begged.

She opened the floodgates cautiously at first ... going back to the
day when it had come upon her that she was a stranger in her own
house. ... Hilmer's moral lapses had never affronted her. She knew
men--or her father, to be exact, and his father before him. They were
as God made them, no better and no worse. Perhaps she had never
admitted it, but she would no doubt have felt a contempt for a man
without the capacity for truant inconstancies. But she had her place
from which it was inconceivable that she could be dislodged. ... On
that day when she had realized that this position was threatened she
had been put to one of two alternatives--open revolt or deceitful
acceptance. She had chosen the latter. In the end her choice was
justified, for she had begun to undermine Helen Starratt's content
with subtle purring which dripped a steady pool of disquiet.

"She hasn't abandoned herself yet," she said, moving her claws
restlessly. "She's too clever for that... She wants _my_ place.
Hilmer's like all men--he won't have a mistress for a wife... And she
never would be any man's mistress while she saw a chance for the other
thing ... she's too--"

She broke off suddenly, unable to find a word inclusive enough for all
the contempt she wished to crowd into it. He was learning things. She
could have ignored a frank courtesan with disdainful aloofness, but
discreetly veiled wantonness made her articulate. When she mentioned
Ginger her voice took a soft pity, mixed with certain condescension.
She was sympathetic, but there were still many things she could not
understand.

"She used to come and pass me every morning," Mrs. Hilmer explained,
"and your wife would look at her from head to foot. One day I said,
'Who is that woman?' ... 'How should I know?' she answered me. And I
knew from her manner that she was lying. The next day I spoke
deliberately. After that it was easy... She is a strange girl. She
would come and read me such beautiful things and then go away to
_that_! ... 'How is it possible for one woman to be so good and so
bad?' I asked her once. And all she said was, 'How would you have
us--all devil or all saint?' ... During all this your wife said
nothing. When she _would_ see Sylvia Molineaux coming down the street
she would wheel my chair into a quiet corner and walk calmly into the
house... One day Sylvia Molineaux spoke of you. She told me the whole
story and in the end she said: 'I don't come here altogether to be
kind to you ... I come here to worry her. You cannot imagine how I
hate her!' The next morning I said to Helen Starratt, 'Did you know
that Sylvia Molineaux was a friend of your husband?' She had to answer
me civilly. There was no other way out. But after that I said,
whenever I could, 'Sylvia Molineaux tells me this,' or, 'Sylvia
Molineaux tells me that.' And I would give her the tattle of
Fairview... I know she could have strangled me, because she smiled too
sweetly. But she made no protest, no comment. She merely walked into
the house whenever Sylvia Molineaux appeared. But it worried her--yes,
almost as much as that black pool from which I had you swimming every
morning... And so it went on until the day after word had come that
you had been drowned. I had not seen Sylvia for some days. She came
down the street at the usual time. Helen was still up in her room ...
the maid had wheeled me out. She said nothing about what had happened.
But she looked very pale as she opened her book to read to me. In the
midst of all this your wife came out and stood for a moment upon the
landing. We looked up. She was in black. I gave one glance at Sylvia.
She closed her book with a bang and suddenly she was on her feet.
'Black! _Black_!' she cried out in a loud voice. 'How _can_ you!' Your
wife grew pale and walked quickly back into the house. Sylvia's face
was dreadful. 'I can't trust myself to come here again!' she said,
turning on me fiercely. 'Fancy, _she_ can wear black. The hussy ...
the...' No, I shall not repeat what else she said... But when she had
finished I caught her hand and I said: 'Come back and kill her! Come
back and kill her, Sylvia Molineaux!' She gave a cry and left me. I
have not seen her since."

He sat staring at the wasted figure before him. Who would have
thought, seeing her in a happier day, that she could quiver with such
red-fanged energy! After all, she was more primitive even than Ginger.
She was like some limpid, prattling stream swollen to sudden fury by a
cloudburst of bitterness.

He was recalled from his scrutiny of the terrible figure before him by
the sound of her voice, this time dropping into a monologue which held
a half-musing quality. Hilmer was puzzling her a bit. She could not
quite understand why a man accustomed to hew his way without restraint
should be possessing his soul in such patience before Helen Starratt's
provocative advances and discreet retreats. Either she was unable or
unwilling to fathom the fascination which a subtle game sometimes held
for a man schooled only in elemental approaches toward his goal. Was
he enthralled or confused or merely curious? And how long would he
continue to give his sufferance scope? How long would he pretend to
play the moth to Helen Starratt's fitful flamings? Mrs. Hilmer,
raising the question, answered it tentatively by a statement that held
a curious mixture of hope and fear.

"Hilmer's going south himself next week... On business, he _says_."
She laughed harshly. "I wonder if they both think me quite a fool! ...
If he succeeds this time she's done for!"

Fred Starratt stirred in his seat.

"Don't deceive yourself," he found himself saying, coldly; "whatever
else my wife is, she's no fool... Remember, she wrote me a letter
every week. She looks over her cards before she plays them...A few
months more or less don't--"

He broke off, suddenly amazed at his cruelty. Mrs. Hilmer's expression
changed from arrested exultation to fretful appeal.

"I have only six months to live," she wailed. "If I could walk just
for a day...an hour...five minutes!"

She covered her face in her hands.

"What do you expect _me_ to do?" he asked, helplessly, with a certain
air of resignation.

She took her fingers from her eyes. A crafty smile illumined her
features. "How should I know? ...What do men do in such cases?...She
will be gone two weeks. I pray God she may never enter this house
again. But that is in your hands."

He felt suddenly cold all over, as if she had delivered an enemy into
his keeping. She still loved Axel Hilmer...loved him to the point of
hatred. What she wished for was his head upon a charger. With other
backgrounds and other circumstances crowding her to fury she would
have danced for her boon like the daughter of Herodias. As it was, she
sat like some pagan goddess, full of sinister silences, impotent, yet
unconquered.

And again Storch's prophetic words swept him:

"Like a field broken to the plow!"

There was a terrible beauty in the phrase. Was sorrow the only
plowshare that turned the quiescent soul to bountiful harvest? Was it
better to reap a whirlwind than to see a shallow yield of unbroken
content wither to its sterile end?

* * * * *

He found Ginger's lodgings that night, in a questionable quarter of
the town, but she did not respond to his knock upon the door.

"Why don't you try the streets, then?" Mrs. Hilmer's sneer recurred
with all its covert bitterness.

The suggestion made him sick. And he had fancied all along that
ugliness had lost the power to move him ... that he was prepared for
the harsh facts of existence!

He waited an hour upon the street corner, and when she came along
finally she was in the company of a man... He grew suddenly cold all
over. When they passed him he could almost hear his teeth chattering.
They disappeared, swallowed up in the sinister light of a beguiling
doorway. He stared for a moment stupidly, then turned and fled,
looking neither to the right nor to the left. He realized now that he
had reached the heights of bitterest ecstasy and the depths of
profound humiliation.

Storch was alone, bending close to the lamp, reading, when Fred
Starratt broke in upon him. He did not lift his head.

Fred went softly into a corner and sat down... Finally, after a while,
Storch laid his book aside. He gave one searching look at Fred's face.

"Well, have you decided?" he asked, with calm directness.

Fred's hands gave a flourish of resignation. "Yes... I'll do it!" he
answered in a whisper.

Storch picked up his book again and went on reading. Presently he
lifted his eyes from the printed page as he said:

"We won't have any more meetings here... Things are getting a little
too dangerous... How soon will the job be finished?"

Fred rose, shaking himself. "Within two weeks, if it is finished at
all!"

He went close to Storch and put a hand upon his shoulder. "You know
every bitter thing ... tell me, why does a man love?"

Storch laughed unpleasantly. "To breed hatred!"

Fred Starratt sat down again with a gesture of despair.

CHAPTER XX

From this moment on Fred Starratt's existence had the elements of a
sleepwalking dream. He felt himself going through motions which he was
powerless to direct. Already Storch and his associates were allowing
him a certain aloofness--letting him set himself apart with the
melancholy arrogance of one who had been chosen for a fanatical
sacrifice.

Replying to Storch's question regarding his plans, he said, decidedly:

"I leave all that to you... Give me instructions and I'll act. But I
want to know nothing until the end."

"Within two weeks... Is there a special reason why ..."

"Yes ... a very special reason."

Storch turned away. But the next day he said, "Have you that card that
Hilmer gave you?"

Fred yielded it up.

Storch smiled his wide, green smile. Fred asked no questions, but he
guessed the plans. A spy was to be worked in upon Hilmer.

Every morning now Fred Starratt found a silver dollar upon the
cluttered table at Storch's. He smiled grimly as he pocketed the
money. He was to have not a care in the world. Like a perfect youth of
the ancients marked for a sweet-scented offering to the gods, he was
to go his way in perfect freedom until his appointed time. There was
an element of grotesqueness in it all that dulled the edge of horror
which he should have felt.

Sometimes he would sally forth in a noonday sun, intent on solitude,
but usually he craved life and bustle and the squalor of cluttered
foregrounds. With his daily dole of silver jingling in his pocket he
went from coffeehouse to coffeehouse or drowsed an hour or two in a
crowded square or stood with his foot upon the rail of some
emasculated saloon, listening to the malcontents muttering over their
draughts of watery beer.

"Ah yes," he would hear these last grumble, "the rich can have their
grog... But the poor man--he can get it only when he is dying ...
providing he has the price."

And here would follow the inevitable reply, sharpened by bitter
sarcasm:

"But all this is for the poor man's good ... you understand. Men work
better when they do not indulge in follies... They will stop dancing
next. Girls in factories should not come to work all tired out on
Monday morning. They would find it much more restful to spend the time
upon their knees."

It was not what they said, but the tone of it, that made Fred Starratt
shudder. Their laughter was the terrible laughter of sober men without
either the wit or circumstance to escape into a temperate gayety of
spirit. He still sat apart, as he had done at Fairview and again at
Storch's gatherings. He had not been crushed sufficiently, even yet,
to mingle either harsh mirth or scalding tears with theirs. But he was
feeling a passion for ugliness ... he wanted to drain the bitter
circumstance of life to the lees. He was seeking to harden himself to
his task past all hope of reconsideration.

He liked especially to talk to the cripples of industry. Here was a
man who had been blinded by a hot iron bolt flung wide of its mark,
and another with his hand gnawed clean by some gangrenous product of
flesh made raw by the vibrations of a riveting machine. And there were
the men deafened by the incessant pounding of boiler shops, and one
poor, silly, lone creature whose teeth had been slowly eaten away by
the excessive sugar floating in the air of a candy factory. Somehow
this last man was the most pathetic of all. In the final analysis, his
calling seemed so trivial, and he a sacrifice upon the altar of a
petty vanity. Once he met a man weakened into consumption by the
deadly heat of a bakeshop. These men did not whine, but they exhibited
their distortions with the malicious pride of beggars. They demanded
sympathy, and somehow their insistence had a humiliating quality. He
used to wonder, in rare moments of reflection, how long it would take
for all this foul seepage to undermine the foundations of life. Or
would it merely corrode everything it came in contact with, very much
as it had corroded him? Only occasionally did he have an impulse to
escape from the terrible estate to which his rancor had called him. At
such intervals he would turn his feet toward the old quarter of the
town and stand before the garden that had once smiled upon his
mother's wooing, seeking to warm himself once again in the sunlight of
traditions. The fence, that had screened the garden from the nipping
wind which swept in every afternoon from the bay, was rotting to a
sure decline, disclosing great gaps, and the magnolia tree struggling
bravely against odds to its appointed blossoming. But it was growing
blackened and distorted. Some day, he thought, it would wither
utterly... He always turned away from this familiar scene with the
profound melancholy springing from the realization that the past was a
pale corpse lighted by the tapers of feeble memory.

One afternoon, accomplishing again this vain pilgrimage, he found the
tree snapped to an untimely end. It had gone down ingloriously in a
twisting gale that had swept the garden the night before.

In answer to his question, the man intent on clearing away the
wreckage said:

"The wind just caught it right... It was dying, anyway."

Fred Starratt retraced his steps. It was as if the old tree had stood
as a symbol of his own life.

He never went back to view the old garden again, but, instead, he
stood at midnight upon the corner past which Ginger walked with such
monotonous and terrible fidelity. He would stand off in the shadows
and see her go by, sometimes alone, but more often in obscene company.
And in those moments he tasted the concentrated bitterness of life.
Was this really a malicious jest or a test of his endurance? To what
black purpose had belated love sprung up in his heart for this woman
of the streets? And to think that once he had fancied that so
withering a passion was as much a matter of good form as of cosmic
urging! There had been conventions in love--and styles and seasons!
One loved purity and youth and freshness. Yes, it had been as easy as
that for him. Just as it had been as easy for him to choose a nice and
pallid calling for expressing his work-day joy. He could have
understood a feeling of sinister passion for Sylvia Molineaux and
likewise he could have indulged it. But the snare was more subtle and
cruel than that. He was fated to feel the awe and mystery and beauty
of a rose-white love which he saw hourly trampled in the grime of the
streets. He had fancied once that love was a matter of give and take
... he knew now that it was essentially an outpouring ... that to love
was sufficient to itself ... that it could be without reward, or wage,
or even hope. He knew now that it could spring up without sowing,
endure without rain, come to its blossoming in utter darkness. And yet
he did not have the courage of these revelations. He felt their
beauty, but it was the beauty of nakedness, and he had no skill to
weave a philosophy with which to clothe them. If it had been possible
a year ago for him to have admitted so cruel a love he knew what he
would have done. He would have waited for her upon this selfsame
street corner and shot her down, turning the weapon upon himself. Yes,
he would have been full of just such empty heroics. Thus would he have
expressed his contempt and scorn of the circumstance which had tricked
him. But now he was beyond so conventional a settlement.

The huddled meetings about Storch's shattered lamp were no more, but
in small groups the scattered malcontents exchanged whispered
confidences in any gathering place they chanced upon. Fred Starratt
listened to the furtive reports of their activities with morbid
interest. But he had to confess that, so far, they were proving empty
windbags. The promised reign of terror seemed still a long way off.
There were moments even when he would speculate whether or not he was
being tricked into unsupported crime. But he raised the question
merely out of curiosity... Word seemed to have been passed that he was
disdainful of all plans for setting the trap which he was to spring.
But one day, coming upon a group unawares in a Greek coffeehouse on
Folsom Street, he caught a whispered reference to Hilmer. Upon the
marble-topped table was spread a newspaper--Hilmer's picture smiled
insolently from the printed page. The gathering broke up in quick
confusion on finding him a silent auditor. When they were gone he
reached for the newspaper. A record-breaking launching was to be
achieved at Hilmer's shipyard within the week. The article ended with
a boastful fling from Hilmer to the effect that his plant was running
to full capacity in spite of strikes and lockouts. Fred threw the
paper to the floor. A chill enveloped him. He had caught only the
merest fragments of conversation which had fallen from the lips of the
group he had surprised, but his intuitions had been sharpened by
months of misfortune. He knew at once what date had been set for the
consummation of Storch's sinister plot. He rose to his feet, shivering
until his teeth chattered. He felt like a man invested with all the
horrid solemnity of the death watch.

CHAPTER XXI

That night Storch confirmed Fred's intuitions. He said, pausing a
moment over gulping his inevitable bread and cheese:

"I have planned everything for Saturday."

Fred cut himself a slice of bread. "So I understand," he said, coldly.

"Who told you?"

"Your companions are great gossips ... and I have ears."

The insolence in Fred's tone made Storch knit his brows.

"Well, knowing so much, you must be ready for details now," he flung
out.

Fred nodded.

Storch lighted his pipe and glowered. "The launching is to take place
at noon. Hilmer has planned to arrive at the yards promptly at eleven
forty-five at the north gate. Everything is ready, down to the last
detail."

"Including the bomb?" Fred snapped, suddenly.

"Including the bomb," Storch repeated, malevolently, caressing the
phrase with a note of rare affection. "It is the most skillful
arrangement I have seen in a long time ... in a kodak case. By the way
... are you accurate at heaving things?... You are to stand upon the
roof of a row of one-story stores quite near the entrance and promptly
at the precise minute--"

"Ah, a time bomb!"

"Naturally."

"And if Hilmer should be late?"

"He is always on time... And, besides, there is a special reason. He
wants the launching accomplished on the stroke of noon."

"And if he comes too early?"

"Impossible. He went south last week ... you knew that, of course. And
he doesn't get into San Francisco until late that morning. He is to be
met at Third and Townsend streets and go at once to Oakland in his
machine... There will be four in the party ... perhaps six."

Fred Starratt stood up slowly, repressing a desire to leap suddenly to
his feet. He walked up and down the cluttered room twice. Storch
watched him narrowly.

"Six in the party?" Fred echoed. "Any women?"

Storch rubbed his palms together. "There may be two ... providing your
wife comes back with him... Mrs. Hilmer sent for her."

"Mrs. Hilmer!"

Storch smiled his usual broad smile, exhibiting his green teeth.

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