Broken to the Plow written by Charles Caldwell Dobie
C >>
Charles Caldwell Dobie >> Broken to the Plow
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 | 16 |
17
"A steady, conscientious, faithful employee until he became bitten
with parlor radicalism."
And Brauer, rather frightened, yet garrulous, would add, for want of
anything better:
"An honest partner until he began hitting the booze."
There would be his wife, too. "I did all I could. Stood by him to the
last ... even when I discovered that there was another woman."
The authorities at Fairview would doubtless add their note to the
general chorus:
"An exceptional patient. He seemed to have planned deliberately to get
our confidence and then betray it... He was directly responsible for
Felix Monet's death. Without his influence Monet would never have
thought of escape."
And in summing up, the police would declare:
"A bad actor from the word go. One of the sort who reach a certain
point in respectability and then run amuck. A danger to the community
because of his brains."
But what of Hilmer? Fred Starratt had a feeling that Hilmer would be
discreet to a point of silence.
He could see every printed phrase as plainly as if he were reading it
all himself. How many times in the old days had he not perused some
such story over his morning coffee, thanking himself unconsciously
that he was not as other men! How perfectly and smugly he had played
the Pharisee for his own delight and satisfaction! He had not bothered
then to cry his virtues aloud in the market place or to thank God
publicly for his salvation. No, he was too self-sufficient to take the
trouble to advertise his worthiness.
To-night he was on the brink of disaster, and yet he found himself
shuddering at the colorless fate to which his complacence might have
condemned him. To have gone on forever in a state of drowsy
contentment ... to have been surrounded on all sides by the thunderous
cataracts of life and caught only the pretty significance of rainbows
through the spray ... to have remained untouched by any and every
primitive impulse and feeling--he could not now imagine anything more
tragic. And yet, to-morrow, people would hold up the desirability of
his former estate, pointing to him in warning for the soft-armed
profit of an oncoming generation. He saw himself as he might have
been, going on to the end of time in the service of Ford, Wetherbee &
Co., rising from map clerk to counter man, to special agent, perhaps
even to a managership, writing sharp or conciliatory letters to agents
according to their importance, trimming office expense and shaving
salaries, heckling green office boys, and, his workday ended, going
home to _The Literary Digest_ and Helen, fresh from the triumphs of
the golf links or the card table. Yes, no doubt Helen would have
matched his own rise in fortune with equal gentility. Perhaps he might
have taken an hour between office closing and dinner to wield a golf
club himself ... bringing back a desirable guest to dinner or
proposing through the telephone to Helen that they dine at the Palace
or St. Francis... Yes, even at best his imagination could not do more
with the material in hand. Indeed, he knew that he had crowded the
very most that was possible on so small a canvas.
This, then, had been his unconscious life plan, his unvoiced fate.
Thus had he sketched it hazily, as a teller of tales sketches the plot
of a story, such and such a sum being the total of all the characters
and circumstances. But as he had gone on developing it, suddenly a new
character had appeared to change the final figures--a wrench thrown
into the wheel of continuity ... a wrench that bore the name of Axel
Hilmer... He felt no bitterness now for the man. Had he ever felt it?
Axel Hilmer had long ceased to be a living personality to Fred
Starratt. Instead, he had taken on almost the significance of a
strange divinity ... an eternal questioner. At their very first
meeting he had started the ferment in Fred Starratt's soul with the
directness of his interrogations. He was not a man who declared his
own faiths ... he merely asked you to prove yours. The questions he
had asked Fred Starratt on that first night had been insignificant in
themselves. Why was it ridiculous for a butcher to want an eight-hour
day? Why should one have the firm's interest at heart? And yet the
sparks from such verbal flint stones had kindled a revolt that had
wrecked Fred Starratt's complacence.
One's sight becomes strengthened to destructive ideas by gradual
perception. And ideas of any kind are destructive flashed on
consciousness unawares. Fred had thought at first that Hilmer had but
opened his eyes to things standing in his range of vision, when, as a
matter of fact, Hilmer had merely loaned him his spectacles.
Everything he had seen from that first moment had been through
Hilmer's medium. A wise man would have proceeded slowly, building
himself up for the struggle. But Fred Starratt had had all the wistful
enthusiasm of a fool seeking to achieve power overnight. Yes, only a
fool could have been ashamed of his heritage. And when Hilmer had
placed him calmly in the ranks of the middle class the wine of content
had turned suddenly sour. A year ago his efforts were being directed
at escape from so contemptuous a characterization; to-night he was
content to acknowledge the impeachment and find a pride in the
circumstance. And, as he sat there shivering in the gloom of Storch's
cracked lamp, he had a vision of this scorned company to which he
unquestionably belonged, sterile and barren in the glare of accepted
standards, broken gradually by the plowshare of disillusionment and
harrowed to great potentialities by a deeper sense of their faiths and
needs. Yes, he had a conviction that what could take place in one soul
could take place in the soul of the mass ... he had not changed his
standards so much as he had proved them. The shape and color and
perfume of love and loyalty and faith had not been altered for him,
but he could discover their blossoming among the shadowy places.
At a black hour, before the first greenish glow was quickening the
east, he tiptoed and stood gazing down at Storch. He had never seen a
face more placid and untroubled. He felt that any man must have an
extraordinary sense of self-righteousness to yield so completely to
serenity in the face of deliberate crime. But Storch was of the stuff
of which all fanatics were made. Ends to him always justified means.
Of such were the Inquisitors of Spain, the Puritans of the
Reformation, the radicals of to-day. They had neither doubts nor fears
nor pity, and the helmets of their faith were a screen behind which
they hid their overweening egotism. They were ever seeking to entrap
humanity and humanity was forever in the end eluding them. And if
Hilmer were the eternal questioner made flesh, the gamekeeper beating
the furtive birds from the brush, this man Storch was the eternal
hunter, at once patient and relentless for his quarry.
And now the hunter slept with a smile on his lips. Of what could he be
dreaming? Was it possible to dream of smile-fashioning themes with
potential destruction within a stone's throw? In a corner of this
room, in a well-packed square case, reposed the force that, once set
in motion at the proper or miscalculated moment, could hurl both
Storch and Fred Starratt to eternity, and yet Storch slept
undisturbed. Well, was not the broader canvas of life full of just
such profound faith or profound indifference? Did not society itself
sleep with the repressed hatreds of the submerged waiting their
appointed season? And while new worlds flew flaming from the wheel of
creation, and old ones died in an eye's twinkling, did not the race
dream on contemptuous of the changes which lurked in the restless
heavens? Yes, the meanest coward in existence had his innate courage
and there was a note of bravery in life on any terms.
Fred stood before Storch's sleeping form a long time, and all manner
of impulses stirred him. There was even a moment when it came to him
that he might fall upon his gaoler while he slept and achieve a swift
freedom. And every ignoble murder of legend or history beckoned him
with the hands of red expediency. He ended by going to the door and
opening it cautiously as he had done the night before. But this time
the operation was more skillful and no warning click disturbed the
slumberer. He crept out into the night, down the cliff's edge, looking
back for the betraying shadow of a hidden spy. But there seemed to be
nothing to block his freedom. A virginal moon was languishing upon the
western rim of hills...a solitary cock crew lustily...occasional
footfalls floated up from the paved streets below...a cart rumbled in
the gloom. All these noises of the night were extraordinarily
friendly...like the smothered murmurings of a youth escaping from the
chains of sleep in pleasant dreaming.
A swarm of platitudes surging through his brain urged him to flight.
But in the end self-esteem gave him his final cue, and he knew in a
flash how futile would be any truce with cowardice. A locked door
would have justified escape, but in the face of an unlatched threshold
there was only one course conceivable.
Fred Starratt went back and wrapped himself in his blanket. Toward
daylight Storch arose and filled a pot with coffee. But neither spoke
a word.
CHAPTER XXIII
As Storch cleared away the primitive evidences of the morning meal and
stood before the sink letting a thin trickle of cold water wash clean
the cups he said:
"If we get the ten-o'clock boat to Oakland we will be in plenty of
time."
Starratt rolled a cigarette. "Ah, then you are going, too!"
"Naturally," Storch replied, as he turned off the water.
Fred began to dress himself carefully. Storch loaned him an
indifferent razor. The shaving process was slow but in the end it was
accomplished. Fred was amazed at the freshness of his appearance. Only
once before in his life had he deliberately sat up all night without
either the desire or determination to sleep, and that was on that
night which now seemed so remote when he had felt the first budding of
Helen's scorn. He recalled that he had been just as alert and
clear-minded on the following morning as he was now. And just as
uncertain as to what the future held in store.
Storch also made a careful toilet--for him. He rummaged for a clean
flannel shirt, combed his reddish beard, dusted off his clumsy boots.
But they were ready much too soon, like a couple of children promptly
dressed for an excursion, impatiently awaiting the hour of departure.
Of the two, Storch evinced the more nervousness. He poked into nooks
and corners of the room upon all sorts of pretended orderliness. Fred
sat and eyed him calmly--smoking cigarette after cigarette. Finally,
Storch lifted the kodak case from its hiding place and set it on the
center table. Cautiously he pried loose the false top and peered into
its depths. There followed a tense moment during which he bent in a
close inspection over its fascinating depths. Presently Fred caught a
distinct ticking sound, and he knew that Storch had set in motion the
clock upon which depended the bomb's explosion at the appointed hour.
But withal he remained curiously unmoved.
The cry of a belated newsboy floated through the open front door.
Storch went out and bought a paper, flinging a section of it at Fred.
A thickly headlined account of the launching at the Hilmer yards
occupied chief place on the first page of the local news section.
There was a picture of the hull that had been put through on schedule
time in spite of strikes and lockouts, and another one of Hilmer, and
a second photograph of a woman. Fred looked twice before he realized
that the face of his wife was staring up at him from the printed
sheet. Helen Starratt was to be the ship's sponsor and there was a
pretty and touching story in this connection. It had always been Mrs.
Hilmer's ambition to christen a seagoing giant, and she had been
chosen to act as godmother to a huge oil-tanker only a year before,
but a serious accident had laid her low. Now, though she was unable to
perform the rite herself, she had intrusted her part to her faithful
friend, Mrs. Starratt. It was to be done by proxy, as it were, with
Mrs. Hilmer carried to the grand stand, where she was to repeat the
mystic formula, giving the ship a name at the moment when Helen
Starratt brought the foaming bottle of champagne crashing against the
vessel's side. The whole article, even down to this obvious dash of
"sob stuff," was at once Hilmer's challenge to the strikers and his
appeal to the gallery. There was a certain irony in realizing that all
these carefully planned effects had been seized upon for Hilmer's own
undoing. He was working in the dark, very much as Fred Starratt had
worked during those heartbreaking months when he had battled for place
in the business world. Then Hilmer had held him in the palm of his
hand. Now the situation was reversed--he held Axel Hilmer's fate in
his own keeping, and it was his finger that would spin the wheel of
destiny. Any fool could demand an eye for an eye; so much for so much
was the cut-and-dried morality of the market place. It took a poet to
bestow a wage out of all proportion to the workday, to turn the cheek
of humility to the blows of arrogance, to commend the extravagant gift
of the magdalene. And it was the poetry of life, after all, which
counted. Fred Starratt knew that now. A year ago he had thought of
poetry as strings of high-sounding words which produced a pleasant
mental reaction, something abstract and exotic. He had never fancied
that poetry was a thing to be seen and understood and lived, and that
such common things as bread and wine and love and hatred were shot
through with the pure gold of mystery. Once, if he had been moved to
magnanimity it would have been through an impulse of weak and
bloodless sentimentality ... now he had risen to generosity on the
wings of a supreme indifference, a magnificent contempt for
unessentials, a full-blooded understanding. Not that he had achieved a
cold and pallid philosophy ... a system of lukewarm expediencies. He
could still be swept by gusts of feeling ... he could even risk his
life to preserve it.
He turned the pages of the newspaper over mechanically, reading word
upon word which held not the slightest meaning. He felt Storch's eyes
upon him, drawn, no doubt, by a mixture of subtle doubts and vague
appraisals. His thoughts flew to Ginger. What was she doing at this
moment? Was there any chance of _her_ failure? For answer another
question shaped itself: Had she _ever_ failed? Yet, this time she was
beset with dangers. And in his imagination he saw her treading the
thin ice of destiny with the same glorified contempt which lured him
to the poetical depths of life... And again Monet was at his side...
vague, mysterious, impalpable, the essence of things unseen but hoped
for, the solved riddle made spirit, the vast patience of eternity
realized. And still Storch's restless eyes were fixed upon him.
Presently he heard Storch's voice coming to his ears out of a friendly
dusk:
"It's nine-thirty...I guess we had better be moving."
He did not stir at first...he merely sat staring at Storch, very much
as a man waking suddenly and not yet alive to the precise details of
his environment. "Moving...where?" he finally inquired.
Storch crumpled the newspaper in his hand viciously. "Come...you've
been dreaming!" he flung out. "That's dangerous!"
Fred braced himself in his chair. "I'm not going," he said, quietly.
"I've changed my mind!"
Storch's mouth widened, not in a smile this time, but in a vicious
snarl. He took out a cheap watch from his pocket, glanced at it, and
put it back.
"It's just twenty-five minutes to ten," he said, quietly. "I'll give
you five more minutes."
Fred put both his arms upon the cluttered table, leaning forward, as
he answered:
"Nothing can alter my decision now, Storch... You should have known
better than to have counted on one of my sort...In the end, you see,
my standards _have_ shackled me."
"Counted on your sort!" Storch laughed back, sarcastically. "Do you
suppose for one moment that I ever count on anyone?... I like a game
of chance ... that's why I chose you. I like to triumph in spite of a
poor hand ... and you have been in some ways the poorest deal I've
ever risked a play on. But if I'd gotten you I'd have chuckled to my
dying day ... even in spite of the fact that it would have shattered
all my theories. I catch my fish upon the lowest and highest tides ...
slack water never yields much."
He was rising to his feet. His face was a placid mask, but his voice
dripped venom. Fred matched his movements with equal quiet.
"Still you did have hopes for me," Fred threw at him in grim raillery.
"I may have been the poorest prospect, but I have been the most
uncertain also... You might just as well admit that."
He saw Storch's eyes widen at the arrogance of this unexpected thrust.
"Slack water is always uncertain," Storch replied, "unless you know
which turn in the tide is to follow."
They stood gazing at each other for a fraction of time, which seemed
eternity. And in that swift and yet prolonged exchange of glances Fred
Starratt read Storch's purpose completely...
There followed a moment of swift action in which Storch made a clipt
movement toward his hip pocket, and in a trice Fred Starratt felt
himself bear quickly down upon the shattered lamp, grasp it firmly in
his two hands, and bring it crashing against Storch's upflung
forehead.
He was not conscious of seeing Storch crumple over, but he felt a thud
shake the cluttered room to its foundations... He went over quietly
and closed the open door. Then he put on his hat. Storch lay quite
still and an ugly red pool was already luring flies to a crimson
feast. The floor was covered with bits of shattered glass glistening
in the sun.
Presently he opened the door again. A child had crept up to the
doorstep and sat prattling to her tattered doll. He stepped aside so
as not to disturb her, shut the door with a sharp bang, and walked
swiftly to the edge of the cliff. But this time he plunged down. He
looked back once. Not a soul followed him.
CHAPTER XXIV
He was sitting on a pile of lumber when, an hour later, his thoughts
began to run in rational channels again. Before him lay a patch of
gray-green bay, flanked on either side by wharves upon which two
black-hulled lumber schooners were disgorging their resinous cargo.
The strike of the longshoremen was still in progress and the
Embarcadero as good as deserted. Armed guards paraded before the
entrance to the docks and only occasional idlers sunned themselves and
viewed the silent and furtive loading of restive craft straining at
their moorings.
He began to wonder dimly whether he had left Storch dead or merely
stunned, and, granting either alternative, how definitely this
circumstance would halt the plot against Hilmer's life. It was
conceivable to him now that Storch might have provided against the
possibility of failure, given the role of assassin into the hands of
an understudy, to be exact. Suppose Ginger should fail in her warning?
Not that he doubted her, but there was a chance that she had been
hedged about with all manner of difficulties--perhaps even death.
Suddenly with an arresting irrelevance he thought of the child upon
Storch's doorstep, hugging her doll close, and as swiftly he
remembered the black kodak case upon the center table. He wondered if
the child were still sitting there ... Perhaps, by this time, a swarm
of children were tumbling about the weather-beaten steps. He asked a
passer-by the hour. Eleven-thirty! In fifteen more minutes, if the
ticking clock within that sinister case performed its function,
Storch's dwelling would be tumbling in upon his prostrate body. And,
in the face of this, children might be prattling before the threshold.
He must go back again!
He jumped to his feet and began to run. In an instant a conflagration
of potential disasters leaped up from the spark of the immediate
danger. He flew along faster, colliding with irate pedestrians,
escaping the wheels of skimming automobiles ... Presently the familiar
cliff and the tawny path scaling it loomed ahead. He began to climb
upward, almost on all-fours, digging his finger nails into the yellow
clay in an instinctive effort to pull himself forward. Finally he
gained the top ... The street, somnolent with approaching noon, was
deserted--the child had disappeared. He recovered his whirling senses
and looked again. This time he saw that the door of the shack stood
open. He took a step forward. A figure loomed in the doorway. He
shaded his eyes from the sun's glare and narrowed his lids. It was a
woman!
The unexpectedness of this presence overwhelmed him as completely as
if he had seen an apparition. For an instant he did not grasp its
significance.
Then, in another moment, understanding began to flood in upon him. He
felt a great weakness ... but he managed to make a trumpet with his
hands, calling in a voice that sounded remote:
"Come out! For God's sake, come out!"
He saw the woman start back in a movement of quick confusion, and
heard himself call again, this time with muffled agony:
"Ginger!"
There was a tremendous roar ... he felt a shower of stones hitting him
sharply in the face ... He pressed forward ... sheets of flame were
leaping greedily toward the sky and a string of people poured out into
the sun-baked street.
At midnight Fred Starratt, making his way from the outlying districts
toward the center of the town, came out of a mental turmoil that had
flung him about all day in a series of blind impulses. The air was
raucous with the shrill cry of newsboys announcing the details of the
morning's sensation. He knew how the journalistic tale would run
without bothering to glimpse the headlines. At this time it would be
made up for the most part of vague speculations as to who was the
prime mover of the enterprise.
The moments following the disaster were now fathomless, but he fancied
that he had been outwardly cool, chilled into subconscious calculation
by the very violence of the shock ... The frenzy had come later when
he found himself aboard a ferryboat bound for Oakland. He could not
disentangle the mixed impulses which had sent him upon this irrational
errand, but he remembered now that a consuming desire to see Hilmer
had possessed him. Perhaps an itching for revenge again had sprung
into life, perhaps a fury to release a measure of his scorn and
contempt, perhaps a mere curiosity to glimpse once more this man whose
armor of arrogance remained unpierced ... Whatever the urge, it had
keyed him to a quivering determination. He had wondered what stupidity
possessed him to send Ginger in warning to a man like Hilmer. ... With
almost psychic power he had created for himself the scene at the depot
with Ginger pouring her tremulous message into contemptuous ears. For
it was certain that Hilmer had been contemptuous. ... Afterward,
standing before the north gate of Hilmer's shipyards, a man at his
side confirmed his intuitions between irritating puffs from a
blackened pipe:
"Nobody can double-cross Hilmer ... and they'd better give up trying
... He said a launching at noon and it _was_ at noon, you can bet your
life on that! ... They say a woman tried to scare the old man this
morning ... He just laughed in her face and came on over."
Almost as the man had finished speaking the crowd surged forward. And
in a twinkling Hilmer's machine had swept past, leaving Fred,
trembling from head to foot, staring stupidly into a cloud of dust ...
He had not even glimpsed the occupants! But his failure to achieve
whatever vague plan was buffeting him about drove him back to San
Francisco. His confused mind had worked with the rational capacity for
details which characterizes madness. He knew that Hilmer must wait for
the automobile ferry...that the regular passenger boat would reach the
other side at least a half hour in advance.
He had been prepared this time for the appearance of Hilmer's car. It
came off the boat preceded by a thin line of automobiles, moving
slowly. ... For a moment he wondered how he would achieve his purpose,
and the next thing he knew he had leaped aboard the running board...
He remembered long after that his wife had given a cry, that Mrs.
Hilmer had stirred ever so slightly, that Hilmer's eyes had widened.
Then out of a tense moment of suppressed confusion he had heard his
wife's voice floating toward him as she said:
"Ah, then you were not drowned, after all!"
With amazing effrontery he threw open the door and pressed down the
emergency seat opposite her.
"No... I swam out of that black pool!"
A slight tremor ran through her. Mrs. Hilmer smiled.
Recalling the scene, he remembered how outwardly commonplace were the
moments which followed. Even Hilmer had been surprised into
banalities. Fred Starratt might have parted with them but yesterday,
for any indications to the contrary, and for an instant he had found
all sense of tragedy swallowed up in amazement at the passive tenacity
of the conventions.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 | 16 |
17