Broken to the Plow / A Novel

by Charles Caldwell Dobie

CHAPTER IV

It was noon before Helen Starratt finished her housework next morning—an unusually late hour for her, but she had been preoccupied, and her movements slow in consequence. A four-room apartment, with hardwood floors and a vacuum cleaner, was hardly a serious task for a full-grown woman, childless, and with a vigor that reacted perfectly to an ice-cold shower at 7 A.M. She used to look back occasionally at the contrast her mother's life had presented. Even with a servant, a three-storied, bay-windowed house had not given Mrs. Somers much leisure for women's clubs. The Ladies Aid Society and a Christmas festival in the church parlors were about as far along the road of alleged social service as the woman of the last generation had traveled. There was marketing to do, and sewing continually on hand, and house-cleaning at stated intervals. In Helen Somers's old home the daily routine had been as inflexible as its ancestor's original Calvinistic creed—Monday, washing; Tuesday, ironing; Wednesday, cleaning the silver; Thursday, at home to visitors; Friday, sweeping; Saturday, baking; and Sunday, the hardest day of all. For, withal, the Puritan sense of observance, that had not been utterly swamped by the blue and enticing skies of California, Sunday was a feast day, not in a lightsome sense, but in a dull, heavy, gastronomic way, unleavened by either wine or passable wit. On Sunday the men of the family returned home from church and gorged. If the day were fine, perhaps everybody save mother took a cable-car ride, or a walk, or something equally exciting. The sparkle of environment had won these people away from tombstone reading and family prayers as a Sabbath diversion, but even California could not be expected to make over a bluestocking in an eye's twinkling. Mother, of course, stayed home on Sunday to "pick up" and get ready for supper in the absence of the servant girl. A later generation had the grace to elevate these slatternly drudges to the title of maid, but a sterner ancestry found it expedient to be more practical and less pretentious in its terms. On these drab Sundays Helen Somers had passionately envied the children of foreign breed, who seemed less hedged about by sabbatical restrictions. Not that she wished her family to be of the questionable sort that went to El Campo or Shell Mound Park for Sunday picnics and returned in quarrelsome state at a late hour smelling of bad whisky and worse gin. Nor did she aspire to have sprung from the Teutonic stock that perpetrated more respectable but equally noisy outings in the vicinity of Woodward's Gardens. But she had a furtive and sly desire to float oil-like upon the surface of this turbid sea, touching it at certain points, yet scarcely mixing with it. Indeed, this inclination to taste the core of life without committing herself the further indiscretion of swallowing it grew to such proportions that at the age of fifteen she almost succumbed to its allurement. Even at this late date she could recall every detail of a seemingly casual conversation which she had held with the stalwart butcher boy who came daily to the kitchen door to deliver meat. The first day she merely had broached the subject of Sunday picnics; the second she had intrigued him into giving her one or two fleeting details; the third day she held him captive a full ten minutes while he enlarged upon his subject. And so on, until one morning he said, quite directly:

"Would you like to go to one?… If you do, I'll take you."

She had drawn back at first from this frontal attack, but in the end she decided to chance the experience. She pretended to her mother that she was going to see a girl friend who was sick. She met her crude cavalier at the ferry. She even boarded the boat with him. At first he had been a bit constrained and shy, but soon she felt the warm, moist pressure of his thick-fingered hands against hers. And presently his arm encircled her waist. With curious intuition she realized the futility of struggling against him… She had to admit, in the end, that she found his physical nearness pleasurable… She often had wondered, looking back on that day, what might have happened if she had gone through with this truant indiscretion. But halfway on the journey her escort had deserted her momentarily to buy a cigar. Left alone upon the upper deck of a ferryboat, crowded with a strident and raucous company, she had felt herself suddenly grow cold, not with fear, but with a certain haughty and disdainful anger. These people were not her kind! She had risen swiftly from her seat and hidden discreetly in the ladies' washroom until after the boat had landed and was on its way back to the city. When she got home she found the house in confusion. Her father had been taken suddenly ill.

"I came very near sending to Nellie's for you," her mother had said.

The incident had taught her a lesson, but there were times when she regretted its termination—when she was stirred to a certain morbid and profitless speculation as to what might have been.

Shortly after this a reaction began to set in against the dullness which certain people found desirable in the observation of what they were pleased to call with questionable humility the Lord's Day, and by the time Helen had budded to womanhood this new tide was at its flood. People, even piously inclined, were taking houses across the bay, at Belvedere or Sausalito or Mill Valley, for the summer. Somehow, one didn't go to church during this holiday. Friends came over for Saturday and Sunday to visit, and the term "week-end" became intelligible and acquired significance. The Somerses took a cottage for three successive seasons in Belvedere—that is, they spoke of it as a cottage. In reality, it was the abandoned hulk of a ferryboat that had been converted into rather uncomfortable quarters and set up on the slimy beach. The effect of this unconventional habitation slowly undermined the pale ghost of the Somers' family tradition. They became bohemian. Instead of the lugubrious Sunday feast of thick joints and heavy puddings, they began to make the acquaintance of the can opener. And from can opener to corkscrew it was only a brief step… It was at this point that Helen met Fred Starratt. Quite naturally the inevitable happened. Moonlight rowing in the cove at Belvedere, set to the tune of mandolins, was always providing a job for the parson, and, if the truth were told, for the divorce courts as well. It all had been pleasant enough, and normal enough, and the expected thing. That's what young people always did if the proper setting were provided, especially when the moon kept on the job.

Helen Starratt had read about the thrills that the heroines of novels received from the mating fever, but she had to confess that she had not experienced anything as exciting as a thrill during the entire period of her husband's wooing. She had felt satisfaction, a mild triumph, a gratified vanity, if you will, but that was as far as her emotional experience had gone. After all, her career had been marriage, and she had taken the most likely situation that had been offered. She presumed it was the same when one graduated from business college. You were expected to land a job and you did. Sometimes it was a good one, and then again it wasn't. Looking back, she conceded that her choice had been fair. Fred Starratt didn't drink to excess, he didn't beat or swear at her, he didn't make sarcastic remarks about her relations, or do any of the things which anyone who reads the daily papers discovers so many men do under provocation or otherwise. But, on the other hand, he hadn't made a fortune or bought a car or given her any reason for feeling compensated for the lack of marital excitement. His friends called him a nice fellow—in some ways as damning a thing as one could say about anybody—and let it go at that. However, Helen Starratt's vocabulary was just as limited when it came to characterizing her conventional aims and ambitions. If, occasionally, her speculations stirred the muddy reaches of certain furtive desires, she took care that they did not become articulate. This term "nice" included every desirable virtue. One married nice men, and one lived in a nice neighborhood, and one made nice acquaintances. In her mother's day she had heard people say:

"I believe in having the young folks identified with church work—they meet such nice people."

And years later a friend, attempting to interest her in the activities of a local orphan asylum, had clinched every other argument by stating, blandly:

"You really ought to go in for it, Helen—you've no idea what nice people you meet."

When America's entry into the war brought up the question of Red Cross endeavor, her first thought had been:

"I really ought to do something, I suppose. And, besides, I'll meet lots of nice people."

Well, she had met a lot of nice people, but the only fruitful yield socially had been Mrs. Hilmer. And somehow it never occurred to Helen to apply such a discriminating term as nice to her latest acquisition. Mrs. Hilmer was wholesome and good hearted and a dear, and no doubt she was nice in a negative way, but one never thought about saying so. And Hilmer…? No, he was not what one would call a nice man, but he was tremendously interesting and in the hands of the right woman… You see, Mrs. Hilmer was a good soul, but, of course, she didn't quite … that is, she was a bit old fashioned and … well, she didn't know how, poor dear!

Thus it was that over her household tasks on this particular February morning Helen Starratt dawdled as her mind played with the fiction of what Hilmer might become under the proper influence. Now, if she had married him!…

It was all very well for Mrs. Hilmer to see that her lord and master was fed properly, but why did she waste hours over a custard when she had money enough to hire it done? That course didn't get either of them anywhere—Hilmer remained at a level of torpid content, and naturally he looked down on his wife as a sort of sublimated servant girl who wasn't always preparing to leave and demanding higher wages… No, most men fell too easily in the trap of their personal comforts. Even Fred had become self-satisfied. Beyond his dinner and paper and an occasional sober flight at the movies or bridge with old friends he didn't seem to have any stirring ambitions. That was where a wife came in. Hadn't she been casting around for bait that would make Fred rise to something new? Hadn't she invited the Hilmers to dinner in the hope that the two men would hit it off? The very first time she had met Hilmer she had thought, "There's a man that Fred ought to know."

She was perfectly willing to concede certain virtues to her husband, and she flattered herself that with the materials at her command she had managed to keep Fred pretty well up to the scratch. The only thing that had been lacking was plenty of money. If she had had one quarter of Hilmer's income she would have evolved a husband that any woman could have been proud of, instead of one that most women would have found merely satisfactory… This was the way she had argued before her absurd dinner party. She had to admit, after it was all over, that her husband had managed to make her thoroughly ashamed of him. It was better to have an outrageous husband than a ridiculous one. And she fancied that Hilmer could be outrageous if he chose… But she was sure of one thing … if Hilmer came home and announced that he had given up his position and had decided to plunge in boldly for himself, his wife would scarcely give the matter a second thought. Hilmer would carry the thing through … some way. A man who could brain an assailant and fight for a mouthful of bread would put things over by hook or crook. There wasn't much chance for failure there. But Fred Starratt … well, he was apt to have some ridiculous scruple or too keen a sense of business courtesy or a sensitiveness to rebuffs. Take his passage at arms with the drunken maid … if he had thrown her out promptly, or come in and frankly borrowed the money from Hilmer, it would have at least shown decision.

Of course she couldn't do anything, now that he was committed to this new business venture. It was all very well for him to snarl: "Don't worry… I sha'n't ask you to do without any more than you've done without so far."

That was the lofty way most men theorized when their vanity was wounded. But she knew enough to realize that if he failed she would have to share that failure. Of course, if Fred could interest Hilmer… Perhaps she could help things along in some way … with a chance remark to Mrs. Hilmer. Would it be better to cast the seed more directly?… If she could only manage to run across Hilmer—she wouldn't want to seem to be putting in her oar… Would it be very dreadful if she were to think up some excuse and go beard the lion in his den?

She was still interested in her orphan asylum. Why not go ask him for a subscription? She wondered if he would be very brusque; insulting, even. The possibilities fascinated her. She felt that she would like a passage at arms with him. He was a man worth worsting. Under such circumstances Fred Starratt would be either liberal beyond his means or profusely apologetic. Not by any chance would he give a prompt and emphatic refusal… The more she thought about it the more enticing the prospect became. She felt sure that if Hilmer didn't approve of her charity he would say so frankly, perhaps disagreeably. And if he didn't think much of her husband's venture he would be equally direct. She rather wanted to know what he did think about Fred Starratt. She ended by coming to an emphatic decision. She would not only go, but she would go that very afternoon. If there were any chance for her to prepare an easy road for Fred's advance it lay in speedy action.

When she finished dressing for the encounter and stood surveying herself in the long mirror set into the closet door of her bedroom she had to admit that she had missed none of her points. Most women at her age would have been sagging a bit, the cords of youth slackened by the weight of maternity or the continual pull against ill health and genteel poverty. Or they would have been smothered in the plump content of Mrs. Hilmer. Helen Starratt's slenderness had still a virginal quality and she knew every artifice that heightened this effect. To-day she was a trifle startled at quite the lengths she had gone to strike a note of sophisticated youth. She had long since ceased dressing consciously for her husband, and dressing for other women was more a matter of perfect detail than attempted beguilement. She was curious, she told herself, to see whether a man like Hilmer would be impressed by feminine artifice… Did a black silk gown, with spotless lace at wrist and throat, spell the acme of Hilmer's ideal of womanhood? Was woman to him something durable and utilitarian or did his fancy sometimes carry him to more decorative ideals?

She did not go directly to his office; instead, she dawdled a bit over the shop windows. Things were appallingly high, she noted with growing dismay, especially the evening gowns. On the shrugging, simpering French wax figures they were at once very scant and very vivid … strung with beads and shot through with gold thread or spangled with flashing sequins. She tried to imagine Mrs. Hilmer in one of these gaudy confections. Almost any of them would have looked well on Helen herself. But any woman who went in for dressing at all would need a trunkload, she concluded, if one were to decently last out a season. She found herself speculating on just what class of people would invest in these hectic flesh coverings. Certainly not the enormously rich … they didn't buy their provocative draperies from show windows. And even the comfortably off might pause, she thought, before throwing a couple of hundred dollars into a wisp of veiling that didn't reach much below the knees and would look like a weather-beaten cobweb after the second wearing. With all this talk about profiteering and economy and the high cost of living, even Helen Starratt had to admit that one could go without an evening gown at two hundred dollars. But, judging from the shoppers on the street, there didn't seem to be many who intended to do without them. She began to wonder what her chances were for at least a spring tailor-made. She supposed now, with Fred going into business, she would be expected to make her old one do. Well, she decided she wouldn't make it do if she had to beg on the street corner. She'd had it a year and a half, and during war times that was quite all right. The best people had played frumpish parts then. But now everybody was perking up. As for an evening gown … well, she simply couldn't conceive where even a hundred dollars would be available for one of these spangled harem veils that was passing muster as a full-grown dress… If she had possessed untold wealth, all this flimsiness, this stylistic froth, would have appealed to her; as it was, she was irritated by it. What were things coming to? she demanded. Just when you thought you were up to the minute, the styles changed overnight. It was the same with household furniture. Ten years ago, when she and Fred had set up housekeeping, everybody had exclaimed over her quaint bits of mahogany, her neutral window drapes, even at her wonderful porcelain gas range. Now, everything, from bed to dining-room table, was painted in dull colors pricked by gorgeous designs; the hangings at the windows screamed with color; electric stoves were coming in. The day of polished surfaces and shining brass was over—antiques were no longer the rage.

Her dissatisfaction finally drove her toward Hilmer's office. She stopped at one of the flower stands on Grant Avenue and bought a half dozen daffodils. She begrudged the price she had to give for them, but they did set off the dull raisin shade of her dress with a proper flare of color. She concluded she would play up the yellow note in her costuming oftener. Somehow it kindled her. She wondered for the first time in her life what gypsy strain had flooded her with such dark beauty. She stopped before a millinery shop and peered critically at her reflection in a window mirror. Yes, the yellow note was a good one, but she was still a trifle cold. If her lips had been a little fuller… Strange she had never thought about that before. Well, next time she would touch them ever so deftly into a suggestion of ripe opulence. She sauntered slowly down Post Street, turned into Montgomery. There were scarcely any women on the street and the men who passed were, for the most part, in preoccupied flight. Yet she saw more than one pair of eyes widen with brief appraisal as she went by. Hilmer's offices were in the Merchants' Exchange Building. Helen decided to slip in through the Montgomery Street entrance. She felt that there might be a chance of running into Fred on California Street and she didn't want to do that.

As she shot up toward the eleventh story in the elevator she rehearsed her opening scene with Hilmer. She decided to take her cue flippantly. She would banter him at first and gradually veer to more serious topics… But once she stood in his rather austere inner shrine of business, she decided against subterfuges. He had stepped into the main office, the boy who showed her in explained. Would she have a seat? She dropped into a chair, taking in her background with feminine swiftness. A barometer, a map, two stiffly painted pictures exhibiting as many sailing vessels in full flight, a calendar bearing the advertisement of a ship-chandlery firm—this was the extent of the wall decoration. The office furniture was golden oak, the rugs of indifferent neutrality. On his desk he had a picture of Mrs. Hilmer, taken in a bygone day, very plump and blond and youthful in a soft, tranquil way. And by its side, in a little ridiculously-blue glass vase, some spring wild flowers languished, pallidly white and withered by the heat of captivity. She checked an impulse to rise when he came in. For a moment his virility had overwhelmed her into a feeling of deference, but she recovered herself sufficiently to droop nonchalantly into her seat as he gave her his hand. He was not in the least put out of countenance by her unexpected presence, and she felt a fleeting sense of disappointment, almost of pique.

"I suppose you're wondering why I'm here," she began, tritely.

He swung his swivel chair toward her and sat down. "Yes, naturally," he returned, with disconcerting candor.

She touched the petals of her daffodils with a pensive finger. "Well, really, you know, I'd quite made up my mind to pretend at first… Women never like to come directly to the point. I thought up a silly excuse—begging for an orphan asylum, to be exact. But I can see that wouldn't go here… And I don't believe you're the least bit interested in orphans."

"Why should I be?" he asked, bluntly.

She had a dozen arguments that might have won the ordinary man, but she knew it would take more than stock phrases to convince him, so she ignored the challenge. "You see, my husband has decided to go into business … and … well, I thought perhaps if you had any insurance … a stray bit, don't you know, that isn't pledged or spoken for … it would all be so encouraging!"

He smoothed his cheek with an appraising gesture. Against the blond freshness of his skin his mangled thumb stood out vividly.

"Why doesn't your husband come to see me himself?"

She drew back a trifle, but her recovery was swift. "Oh, he intends to, naturally. I'm just preparing the way… Fred's a perfect dear and all that, but he is a little bit reserved about some things… It would be so much easier for him to ask a favor for some one else… Of course, he'd be perfectly furious if he knew that I had come here. But you understand, Mr. Hilmer, I want to do all I can… I'd make any sacrifice for Fred."

She paused to give him a chance to put in a word, but he sat silent. It was plain that he didn't intend to help out her growing embarrassment.

"It's all come out of a clear sky," she went on, trailing the fringe of her beaded hand bag across her shoe tops. "He only told me last night… There isn't any use pretending … he hasn't any capital to work on. And until the premiums begin to come in there'll be office rent and a stenographer's salary piling up … and our living expenses in the bargain… A friend of his is putting up some money, but I can't imagine it's a whole lot… I'm a little bit upset about it, of course. I wish I could really do something to help him."

She knew from his look that he intended to hurl another disconcerting question at her.

"Well, if you want to help him, why don't you?" he quizzed.

"Why, I … why, I'm not fit for anything, really," she tried to throw back.

"My wife said you were pretty efficient at the Red Cross."

"Oh, but that was different!"

"Why?"

"Well, I can't just explain, but it's easy to do something you … you…"

"Feel you don't have to," he finished for her, ironically.

She shrugged petulantly. "What do you want me to do? Solicit insurance?"

He smiled. "That's what you're doing now, isn't it?"

"Mr. Hilmer!" She rose majestically in her seat.

He continued to sit, but she was conscious that his eyes were sweeping her from head to foot with frank appraisal.

"A pretty woman has a good chance to get by with almost anything she sets her mind on," he said, finally.

She drew in a barely perceptible breath. The blunt tip of his shoe was jammed squarely against her toe. She withdrew her foot, but she sat down again.

"I really ought to be angry with you, Mr. Hilmer," she purred at him, archly. "It's very nice of you to attempt to be so gallant, but, after all, talk is pretty cheap, isn't it?… So far I don't seem to be making good as a solicitor. So what else is there left?"

"How about being your husband's stenographer?" he asked, without a trace of banter.

She forgot to be amazed. "I don't know anything about shorthand," she replied, simply.

"Well, you could soon learn to run a typewriter," he insisted. "I have a young woman in my office who takes my letters direct on the machine as I dictate them. She's as good as, if not better than, my chief stenographer. That would save your husband at least seventy-five dollars a month."

She had an impulse to rise and sweep haughtily out of the room. What right had this man to tell her what she could or could not do? The impudence of him! But she didn't want to appear absurd. She leaned back and looked at him through her half-closed eyelids as she said, with a slight drawl:

"Would my presence in the office be a bid for your support, Mr.
Hilmer?"

"It might," he said, looking at her keenly.

She did not flinch, but his steady gaze cut her composure like a knife. She got to her feet again.

"What silly little flowers!" escaped her, as she took a step near his desk and pulled a faded blossom from the blue vase.

He left his seat and stood beside her. "I got them down by St. Francis Wood last Sunday," he admitted. "They reminded me of the early spring blossoms in the old country … the sort that shoot up almost at the melting snow bank's edge… The flowers here are very gorgeous, but somehow they never seem as sweet."

She looked at him curiously, almost with the expectation of finding that he was jesting. This flowering of sentiment was unexpected. It had come, as he had described his native spring blooms, almost at the snow bank's edge. She reached out, gathered up the faded blossoms ruthlessly, and dropped them into a convenient waste basket.

"Do you mind?" she asked, lifting her eyes heavily.

He did not answer.

Slowly she unpinned the flaming daffodils from her side and slipped them into the empty vase. She stepped back to survey their sunlit brilliance, resting a gloved hand upon the chair she had deserted. She was conscious that another hand was bearing down heavily upon her slender ringers. The weight crushed and pained her, yet she felt no desire to withdraw…

The office boy came in. She moved forward quickly.

"There's a gentleman named Starratt waiting to see you," he announced.

She threw back her head defensively.

"This way!" Hilmer said, as he opened a private exit for her.

She found herself in the marble-flanked hallway and presently she gained the sun-flooded street. The blood was pounding at her temples and its throb hurt.

She walked home rapidly, swept by half-formulated impulses that stirred her to almost adolescent self-revelations, yet when she reached her apartment she was quite calm, almost too calm, and outwardly cold.

That night over the black coffee Fred Starratt said to his wife, with an air of restrained triumph:

"Well, I landed the insurance on Hilmer's car to-day."

She flashed him, an enigmatical smile. "Oh, lovely!"…

He sipped his coffee with preening satisfaction.

"Everything is going beautifully," he continued. "I hired an office and began to connect up with two or three firms. That preliminary from Hilmer was a great boost… A man named Kendrick handles all his business, so I've sort of got the street guessing. They can't figure how I could even get a look in… Of course I'm convinced that Kendrick shares his commissions with Hilmer, which is against the rules of the Broker's Exchange. But he didn't ask for any shakedown… Brauer and I ordered some office furniture, and to-morrow I'll advertise for a girl."

"I've got one for you already," she said, deliberately.

"Who?"

She reached across the shallow length of the table and touched his arm significantly.

"I've decided to do it myself," she purred.

He patted her hand as an incredulous stare escaped him. "You!" he laughed.

She suffered his indulgent and mildly contemptuous caress. "Don't laugh, sonny," she drawled, almost disagreeably. "Your wife may prove a lot more clever than she seems."