CHAPTER XV
Toward the middle of the following week Fred answered Ginger's letter. But his phrases were guarded and his description of life at the hospital full of studied distortion. He knew quite well that every letter which left the institution was opened and censored, but, with certain plans lying fallow in his brain, he had a method back of the exaggerated contentment he pictured. He had a feeling that Ginger would not be misled altogether. She knew the deceitful bravado of life too well and, according to her own report, something of the existence he was leading in the bargain. He found himself curiously willing to take anything from her hand that was in her power to supply. He felt no sense of awkwardness, no arrogant pride, no irritating obligation. She had become for him one of the definite, though unexplainable, facts of existence which he accepted with all the simplicity of a child of misfortune.
She answered promptly, sending cigarettes and tobacco and a pipe. But her letter was devoid of news—-except that she had passed Hilmer's again and found Helen wheeling Mrs. Hilmer back and forth in the sunshine at the appointed hour. But, as time wore on, it transpired that this seemingly innocent passing and repassing of the Hilmer house carried unmistakable point. Presently, to Mrs. Hilmer, basking in the sun and deserted for a moment, Ginger had nodded a brief good-morning. There followed other opportunities for even more prolonged greetings until the moment when Ginger had boldly carried on a short conversation in the coldly calm presence of Helen Starratt. Helen must have known Ginger. It was inconceivable that any woman, under the circumstances, could have forgotten. But either indecision or a veiled purpose made her assume indifference, and Ginger's progress was registered in a short sentence at the end of a brief scrawl which said:
To-day I took a book out and read to Mrs. Hilmer for an hour
in the sunshine.
And later another statement forwarded this curious drama with pregnant swiftness:
Yesterday, I told Mrs. Hilmer about you.
Fred read this sentence over and over again. To what purpose did Ginger discuss him with Mrs. Hilmer? … Surely not altogether in the name of entertainment.
Meanwhile, summer died, hot and palpitant and arid to the end. And autumn came gently with cool, foggy mornings and days of sunshine mellowed like old gold. Fred Starratt rose in rapid succession to the position of pantryman, head waiter to the attendants, assistant bookkeeper in the office. He was given more and more freedom. Indeed, between the working intervals, undisturbed by even a formal surveillance, he and Monet fell to taking walks far afield. He found the shorter days more tolerable. With dusk coming on rapidly, it was easier to accept the inflexible rule that required everyone to be in bed and locked up by seven o'clock.
New faces made their appearance in Ward 6, old ones vanished. Clancy made a get-away sometime in September just before the construction camp broke up. Fordham tried also, but was unsuccessful, and got a month in the bull pen for his pains. These adventures stirred everyone to vague restlessness. Fred began to speculate on chances, talking them over with Monet. But the boy seemed listless and depressed, without enthusiasm for anything. He brooded a great deal apart. Finally one day Fred asked him what was troubling him.
"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—"Noël" 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!"