Broken to the Plow / A Novel

by Charles Caldwell Dobie

The next instant he had touched Fred's forehead gently, almost tenderly, but his eyes glittered beneath their shaggy brows with an insane ferocity… Fred took the glass. 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, flashing 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 assembly 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 scraps of indifferent food at irregular intervals, and set a cracked pitcher of water within reach. But beyond that, he had been ignored. The nightly assembly 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…"