One morning, at the beginning of the second week of Fred Starratt's
stay at Fairview, as he and Monet were swinging back to lunch after a
brisk walk, they received orders to fall in line with the inmates of
Ward 6.
"Things will be better now," Monet said, with his usual air of quiet
reassurance.
And so it proved.
Fred's first introduction was to the dining room. It was not an
extraordinary place, and yet Fred gave a little gasp as he entered it
and stood staring almost foolishly at the tables set with clean linen.
Three of its sides were made up almost entirely of windows, before
which the shades were drawn to shut out the hot noonday sun, and its
floor of polished hardwood glistened even in the subdued light. They
sat down in the first seats that came to hand, and it was not until
some cold meat was passed that Fred discovered a knife and fork at his
place. The meat was neither choice nor dainty, but somehow just the
fact of this knife and fork gave it extraordinary zest. Later on,
small pats of butter were circulated and a spoonful of sugar apiece
for the tea. And once again he listened to people talk while they ate
... heard a subdued, but sane, laugh or two... There was a smoking
room also, not overlarge, but adequate.
The inmates of Ward 6, from whom Fred had stood aloof, welcomed him
warmly. He was at a loss to know why until Monet explained.
"It's the cigarettes."
"Ah, then you distributed them here? I thought they went to the other
poor devils."
The youth turned a wistful glance toward him. "I knew you'd get over
to this place finally ... and I wanted them to like you..."
Fred fell silent over the implied rebuke.
The dormitories were large and light and airy and scrupulously clean,
but the usual institutional chill pervaded everything... Yet, for a
season, Fred Starratt found all discrimination smothered in his
reaction to normal sights and sounds. But, after a day or two, the
same human adaptability that had made him accept the life in Ward 1 as
a matter of course rose to the new environment and occasion. Presently
his critical faculty flooded back again--almost for the first time
since his arrest. And he knew instinctively that he was standing again
on surer ground. He began to wonder, for instance, just what the
commonwealth was doing for these human derelicts which it shed such
facile tears over... He knew, of course, what it had done in his case.
It had given him three indifferent meals, vaccinated him, put him
through a few stereotyped quizzes to assure itself that he was neither
insane nor criminal, and finally moved him on to a less trying but an
equally vacuous existence. He used to wonder just what tortures the
others had endured during that week of probation in Ward 1, which, in
nearly every case, so far as he could learn, included the experience
of the bull pen. For, after all, these other men were physically
shaken from excess--weak, spent, tremulous. He had been through mental
tortures, but, at least, his body and soul had had some fitness for
the strain upon him. How close did the winds of madness come to
snapping clean these empty reeds ... how many were broken utterly? He
asked Monet.
"Lots of them go under," Felix Monet had returned. "I think I came
very near it myself... I remember that first night I spent alone in
Ward One... I'd been three weeks without a drop of anything to drink.
Cut off, suddenly, like that!" He made a swift gesture. "And all at
once I found myself in a madhouse. I actually knocked my head against
the wall that night... And, in the morning, came the bull pen... They
knew I wasn't insane. My record--everything--proved that! ... When I
protested, their excuse was that everyone was equal here ... there
were no favorites. ... More lies in the name of equality! The thing
doesn't exist--it never has existed. Nothing is equal, and trying to
make it so produces hell. They're always trying to level ... level.
They want to strip you of everything but your flock mind. Ah yes,
timid sheep make easy herding!"
For the first time Fred Starratt saw Monet quivering with unleashed
conviction, and he glimpsed the hidden turbulence of spirit which
churned under the placid surface.
"After a while," Monet went on, "when I got almost to the snapping
point, they sent me to Ward Six. You know how it is--like a clear,
cold plunge ... it wakes you up... There's a method in it all. They
know that after a week in hell you find even purgatory desirable."
"And yet, once you got away, you traveled the same road that had
brought you here in the first place... Was the game worth the candle?"
"It was an escape while it lasted, even though it did lead me to
prison again... But isn't that where escape always leads? The world is
a good deal like Fairview--a rule-ridden institution on a larger
scale... We escape for a time in our work, in our play, in our loves,
but the tether's pretty short. ... And finally, one day, death swings
the door open and we go farther afield."
"To another institution with a little more garden space?" Fred
queried, pensively.
Monet shrugged. "Perhaps... Who knows?"
* * * * *
There followed another week of idleness, and one day, as Fred Starratt
was dawdling in the sun, Harrison came up to him and said:
"The head waiter in the dining room at Ward Six goes out to-morrow.
Would you like his job?"
"Like it?" Fred found himself echoing, incredulously. "Can I begin at
once ... now?"
Harrison chuckled with rare good nature. "Well, to-morrow, anyway.
Just report in the kitchen after breakfast."
He could hardly wait for the next morning to come. He bungled things
horribly at first. It looked easy enough from the side lines--bringing
in the plates of steaming food, doling out sugar for the tea, passing
the dishpan about at the end of the meal for the inmates to yield up
their knives and forks. But after the first day Fred was swept with a
healing humility. It was necessary for even the humblest occupation to
be lighted with flickerings of skill.
He liked setting the table best, especially in the morning after the
breakfast crowd had gone. Then the sun was not yet too hot for comfort
and the long dining room was bathed in a golden mist. In a corner near
one of the windows a canary hopped blithely about its bobbing cage and
released its soul in a flood of song. He would begin by laying the
plates first, inverted, in long, precise rows. Then carefully he would
group the knives and forks about them. Not only carefully, but slowly,
so that the task might not be accomplished too readily. And all the
time his thoughts would be flying back and forth ... back and forth,
like a weaver's shuttle. At first these thoughts would pound harshly;
but gradually, under the spell of his busy hands, he would find his
mental process growing less and less painful, until he would wake up
suddenly and find that he had been day dreaming, escaping for a time
into a heaven of forgetfulness.
Toward the end of the month a crew was picked among the inmates of
Ward 6 to man a construction camp a few miles to the north where the
state was building a dam. Clancy was among the number, and Fordham and
Wainright, junior. Monet was offered the choice of assisting Fred
Starratt in the dining room or going out with the kitchen staff to
camp. He chose the dining-room job.
The only personal news from the outside world came to Fred in a weekly
letter from Helen, which arrived every Saturday night. He used to tear
the envelopes open viciously and read every word with cold disdain. He
never thought of answering one ... indeed, many a time he had an
impulse to send them back unopened. But curiosity always got the
better hand. Not that he found her news of such moment, but her
dissimulation fascinated him. She never chided him for not replying
... she never complained ... but every line was flavored with the
self-justification of all essential falseness. She was playing a game
with herself as completely as if she had written the letters and then
scribbled her own name upon the envelope. She was looking forward to
the day when she could say:
"I did my duty ... I helped start him in business ... I saved him from
jail ... I wrote him a letter every week, in spite of the fact that he
never answered me... What more would you have a woman do?"
What more, indeed? How completely he read her now! Yes, even between
the lines of her nonchalant gossipings he could glimpse her soul in
all its intricate completeness. Her letters were salt on his deadened
wound. Perhaps that was why he did not return them unopened. He felt
vaguely that it would be a shameful thing to be ultimately sealed to
indifference.
But one Saturday night two letters were put into his hand. He read the
strange one first.
I have not written you before because I had no news for you.
Yesterday I passed Hilmer's house and saw your wife wheeling
Mrs. Hilmer up and down the sidewalk. Some day when I get a
chance I shall speak to Mrs. Hilmer.
I am living in a lodging house on Turk Street. My name is
Sylvia Molineaux. You will find my address below. Write and
tell me what you want. And always remember that I am here
watching.
GINGER.