Broken to the Plow Part 28

"Your hat, you see--it was found in the water ... not far from the dead body of your friend... Naturally..."

"Yes, naturally, the wish was father to the thought. Just so!"

And with that Fred Starratt laughed so unpleasantly that Brauer s.h.i.+vered and his face reddened.

By this time Fred Starratt had finished eating. Brauer paid the check and the two departed. At the first street corner Brauer attempted to slip a five-dollar bill into Starratt's hand. He refused scornfully.

"Money? I don't want your money. There is only one thing that will buy my good will--_your silence_. Do you understand what I mean? ... I'm not the same man you tricked last July. Then I thought I had everything to lose. Now I know that no one ever loses anything... You don't understand me, do you? ... Oh, well, it doesn't matter."

Brauer's frightened lips scarcely moved as he asked:

"Where are you staying?"

"Anywhere I can find a shelter... Last night I spent with an anarchist... I think he'd blow up almost anyone for just the sheer joy of it."

Brauer shuddered. "Where will you spend to-night?"

"I think I'll go back to the same place... This morning I was undecided. But I've heard a lot of things since then... I'm taking an interest in life again... By the way, the man I'm staying with knows Hilmer... And I don't think he likes him, either... I'll give you one tip, Brauer. Never get an anarchist sore at you... _They_ haven't anything to lose, either."

He had never seen such pallor as that which shook the color from Brauer's face. He decided not to torment him further.

He had established a sense of the unfathomable for the present and future terror of his trembling little ex-partner. His revenge, so far as Brauer was concerned, was complete. He had not the slightest wish to see Brauer again.

He let his hands close once more tightly about Brauer's puny wrists.

"Remember ... you have not seen me. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"Not a living soul ... you are not to even suggest that ... otherwise ... well, I am living with an anarchist, and a word to the wise ..."

He turned abruptly and left his companion standing on the street corner, staring vacantly after him.

Instinctively his footsteps found their way to Storch's shack. A light was glimmering inside. Fred beat upon the door. It swung open quickly, revealing Storch's greenish teeth bared in a wide smile of satisfaction.

"Come in ... come in!" Storch cried out gayly. "Have a good day?"

"Excellent!" Fred snapped back, venomously. "I learned, among other things, that I am legally dead."

Storch rubbed his hands together in satisfaction. "A clean slate! Do you realize how wonderful it is, my man, to start fresh?"

Fred threw himself into a chair. He felt tired. Sharp, darting pains were stabbing his eyes. "I think I'm going to be ill!" he said, with sudden irrelevance.

Storch lighted the oil stove. "Crawl into bed and I'll get you something hot to drink!"

Storch's tone was kind to a point of softness, and yet, later, when he bent over the couch with a steaming gla.s.s in his hand Fred experienced a sharp revulsion.

"I dreamed all last night," Fred said, almost defiantly, "that this room was a cobweb and that you were a huge spider, dangling on a thread."

"And you were the fly, I suppose," Storch replied, sneeringly.

The next instant he had touched Fred's forehead gently, almost tenderly, but his eyes glittered beneath their s.h.a.ggy brows with an insane ferocity... Fred took the gla.s.s. He was too ill to care much one way or the other.

CHAPTER XVIII

Next morning Fred Starratt knew that he was too ill to rise. Then everything became hazy. He had moments of consciousness when he sensed Storch's figure moving in a sort of mist, flas.h.i.+ng a green smile through the gloom. He saw other figures, too---Helen Starratt, swathed in clinging black; Hilmer, displaying his mangled thumb; Monet with eyes of gentle reproach; and Ginger, very vague and very wistful.

There were times when the room seemed crowded with strange people who came and went and gesticulated, people gathering close to the dim lamp which Storch lighted at nightfall.

The visions of Monet were a curious mixture of shadow and reality.

Sometimes he seemed very elusive, but, again, his face would grow clear to the point of dazzling brightness. At such moments Fred would screen his eyes and turn away, only in the end to catch a melting glimpse of Monet fading gradually with a gesture of resignation and regret. But slowly the outlines of Monet grew less and less tangible and the personality of Storch more and more shot through with warm-breathed vitality, and the strange company that gathered at dusk about the lamp became living things instead of shadows. Yet it took him some time to realize that these nightly gatherings at Storch's were composed of real flesh and blood.

At first he was content to lie in a drowse and listen to the incoherent babblings of these nocturnal visitors, but, as he grew stronger, detached bits of conversation began to impress themselves upon him. These people had each some pet grievance and it remained for Storch to pick upon the strings of their discontents with unerring accuracy. At about eight o'clock every night the first stragglers would drift in, reinforced by a steady stream, until midnight saw a room stuffed with sweating humanity releasing their emotions in a biting flood of protests. They protested at everything under the sun--at custom, at order, at work, at play, at love, at life itself.

And Storch, for the most part silent, would sit with folded arms, puffing at his pipe, a suggestion of genial malice on his face, throwing out a phrase here and there that set the pack about him leaping like hungry dogs to the lure of food. In confused moments Fred Starratt fell to wondering whether he really had escaped from Fairview, whether the forms about him were not the same motley a.s.sembly that used to gather in the open and exchange whines. The wails now seemed keyed to howls of defiance, but the source was essentially the same.

Fred wondered how he lived through these dreadful evenings with the air thick to choking. Indeed, he used to wonder what had saved him from death at any stage of the game. Storch had permitted him the use of a maggoty couch, had shared sc.r.a.ps of indifferent food at irregular intervals, and set a cracked pitcher of water within reach. But beyond that, he had been ignored. The nightly a.s.sembly did not even cast their glances his way.

During the day Fred was left alone for the most part, and he felt a certain luxury in this personal solitude after the months at Fairview with its unescapable human contacts. He would lie there, his ears still ringing with the echoes from the nightly gathering of malcontents, trying to reconstruct his own quarrel with life. He had a feeling that he would remain a silent onlooker only until Storch decreed otherwise. If he stayed long enough the night would come when Storch would call upon him for a testimonial of hatred. He knew that deep down somewhere within him rancors were stirring to sinister life.

He had experienced the first glimmerings of cruelty in that moment when he had felt Brauer tremble under his grasp. What would have been his reaction to physical fear on Helen Starratt's part? Suppose on that afternoon when he had watched her wheeling Mrs. Hilmer up and down with deceitful patience he had gone over and struck her the blow which was primitively her portion? Would the sight of her whimpering fear have stirred him to further elemental cruelties? Would he have ended by killing her? ... Physically weak as he was, he could still feel the thrill of cruelty that had shaken him at the realization of Brauer's dismay. As a child, when a truant gust of deviltry had swept him, he had felt the same satisfaction in pummeling a comrade who backed away from friendly cuffs turned instantly to blows of malice.

Even now he had occasionally a desire to seek out Brauer again and worry him further. He was fearing indifference. What if, after all that he had suffered at the hands of others, he should find himself in the pale clutch of an impotent indifference? He felt a certain shame back of the possibility, and at such moments the words of Storch used to ring in his ears:

"Wounds heal so quickly ... so disgustingly quickly!"

And again, watching Storch at night, touching the quivering cords which might otherwise have rusted in inactive silence, he remembered further the introduction to this contemptuous phrase:

"I like to get my recruits when they're bleeding raw. I like them when the salt of truth can sting deep..."

How Storch lived Fred could only guess. But he managed always to jingle a silver coin or two and keep a crust of bread in the house.

His fare was frugal to the point of being ascetic. Once or twice, as if moved by Fred's physical weakness, he brought some sc.r.a.ps of beef home and brewed a few cups of steaming bouillon, and again, one Sunday morning he went out and bought a half dozen eggs which he converted into an impossibly tough omelet. But for the most part he lived on coffee and fresh French bread and cheese. It was on this incredible fare that Fred Starratt won back his strength. His exhaustion was an exhaustion of the spirit, and food seemed to have little part in either his disorder or his recovery.

Whatever Storch's specific grievance with life, he never voiced it and in this he won Fred's admiration. He liked to jangle the discordant pa.s.sions of others, but his own he m.u.f.fled into complete silence. He had worked at almost every known calling. It seemed that he came and disappeared always as suddenly and in his wake a furrow of men harrowed to supreme unrest yielded up a harvest sown of dragon's teeth. He was an idea made flesh, patient, relentless, almost intangible. He flashed upon new horizons like a cloud from the south and he vanished as completely once he had revived hatred with his insinuating showers. He was, as he had said on that first meeting with Fred, a fanatic, a high priest. He called many, but he chose few.

One night after the others had left Fred said to him:

"Do you realize what you are doing? ... You are working up these men to a frenzy. Some morning we shall wake to find murder done."

"How quickly you are learning," Storch answered, flinging his coat aside.

"Are you fair?" Fred went on, pa.s.sionately. "If you have your convictions, why not risk your own hide to prove them? Why make cats'-paws of the others?"

Storch took out his pipe and lighted it deliberately. "Prospective martyrs are as plentiful as fish in a net," he answered. "Of what good is the sea's yield without fishermen? ... I sacrifice myself and who takes my place? Will you?"

Fred turned on him suddenly. "You are not training me to be your successor, I hope," he said, with a slight sneer. "Because I lie here without protest is no reason that I approve. Indeed, I wonder sometimes if I do quite right to permit all this... There are authorities, you know."

Storch looked at him steadily. "The door is open, my friend."