From this moment on Fred Starratt's existence had the elements of a
sleepwalking dream. He felt himself going through motions which he was
powerless to direct. Already Storch and his associates were allowing
him a certain aloofness--letting him set himself apart with the
melancholy arrogance of one who had been chosen for a fanatical
sacrifice.
Replying to Storch's question regarding his plans, he said, decidedly:
"I leave all that to you... Give me instructions and I'll act. But I
want to know nothing until the end."
"Within two weeks... Is there a special reason why ..."
"Yes ... a very special reason."
Storch turned away. But the next day he said, "Have you that card that
Hilmer gave you?"
Fred yielded it up.
Storch smiled his wide, green smile. Fred asked no questions, but he
guessed the plans. A spy was to be worked in upon Hilmer.
Every morning now Fred Starratt found a silver dollar upon the
cluttered table at Storch's. He smiled grimly as he pocketed the
money. He was to have not a care in the world. Like a perfect youth of
the ancients marked for a sweet-scented offering to the gods, he was
to go his way in perfect freedom until his appointed time. There was
an element of grotesqueness in it all that dulled the edge of horror
which he should have felt.
Sometimes he would sally forth in a noonday sun, intent on solitude,
but usually he craved life and bustle and the squalor of cluttered
foregrounds. With his daily dole of silver jingling in his pocket he
went from coffeehouse to coffeehouse or drowsed an hour or two in a
crowded square or stood with his foot upon the rail of some
emasculated saloon, listening to the malcontents muttering over their
draughts of watery beer.
"Ah yes," he would hear these last grumble, "the rich can have their
grog... But the poor man--he can get it only when he is dying ...
providing he has the price."
And here would follow the inevitable reply, sharpened by bitter
sarcasm:
"But all this is for the poor man's good ... you understand. Men work
better when they do not indulge in follies... They will stop dancing
next. Girls in factories should not come to work all tired out on
Monday morning. They would find it much more restful to spend the time
upon their knees."
It was not what they said, but the tone of it, that made Fred Starratt
shudder. Their laughter was the terrible laughter of sober men without
either the wit or circumstance to escape into a temperate gayety of
spirit. He still sat apart, as he had done at Fairview and again at
Storch's gatherings. He had not been crushed sufficiently, even yet,
to mingle either harsh mirth or scalding tears with theirs. But he was
feeling a passion for ugliness ... he wanted to drain the bitter
circumstance of life to the lees. He was seeking to harden himself to
his task past all hope of reconsideration.
He liked especially to talk to the cripples of industry. Here was a
man who had been blinded by a hot iron bolt flung wide of its mark,
and another with his hand gnawed clean by some gangrenous product of
flesh made raw by the vibrations of a riveting machine. And there were
the men deafened by the incessant pounding of boiler shops, and one
poor, silly, lone creature whose teeth had been slowly eaten away by
the excessive sugar floating in the air of a candy factory. Somehow
this last man was the most pathetic of all. In the final analysis, his
calling seemed so trivial, and he a sacrifice upon the altar of a
petty vanity. Once he met a man weakened into consumption by the
deadly heat of a bakeshop. These men did not whine, but they exhibited
their distortions with the malicious pride of beggars. They demanded
sympathy, and somehow their insistence had a humiliating quality. He
used to wonder, in rare moments of reflection, how long it would take
for all this foul seepage to undermine the foundations of life. Or
would it merely corrode everything it came in contact with, very much
as it had corroded him? Only occasionally did he have an impulse to
escape from the terrible estate to which his rancor had called him. At
such intervals he would turn his feet toward the old quarter of the
town and stand before the garden that had once smiled upon his
mother's wooing, seeking to warm himself once again in the sunlight of
traditions. The fence, that had screened the garden from the nipping
wind which swept in every afternoon from the bay, was rotting to a
sure decline, disclosing great gaps, and the magnolia tree struggling
bravely against odds to its appointed blossoming. But it was growing
blackened and distorted. Some day, he thought, it would wither
utterly... He always turned away from this familiar scene with the
profound melancholy springing from the realization that the past was a
pale corpse lighted by the tapers of feeble memory.
One afternoon, accomplishing again this vain pilgrimage, he found the
tree snapped to an untimely end. It had gone down ingloriously in a
twisting gale that had swept the garden the night before.
In answer to his question, the man intent on clearing away the
wreckage said:
"The wind just caught it right... It was dying, anyway."
Fred Starratt retraced his steps. It was as if the old tree had stood
as a symbol of his own life.
He never went back to view the old garden again, but, instead, he
stood at midnight upon the corner past which Ginger walked with such
monotonous and terrible fidelity. He would stand off in the shadows
and see her go by, sometimes alone, but more often in obscene company.
And in those moments he tasted the concentrated bitterness of life.
Was this really a malicious jest or a test of his endurance? To what
black purpose had belated love sprung up in his heart for this woman
of the streets? And to think that once he had fancied that so
withering a passion was as much a matter of good form as of cosmic
urging! There had been conventions in love--and styles and seasons!
One loved purity and youth and freshness. Yes, it had been as easy as
that for him. Just as it had been as easy for him to choose a nice and
pallid calling for expressing his work-day joy. He could have
understood a feeling of sinister passion for Sylvia Molineaux and
likewise he could have indulged it. But the snare was more subtle and
cruel than that. He was fated to feel the awe and mystery and beauty
of a rose-white love which he saw hourly trampled in the grime of the
streets. He had fancied once that love was a matter of give and take
... he knew now that it was essentially an outpouring ... that to love
was sufficient to itself ... that it could be without reward, or wage,
or even hope. He knew now that it could spring up without sowing,
endure without rain, come to its blossoming in utter darkness. And yet
he did not have the courage of these revelations. He felt their
beauty, but it was the beauty of nakedness, and he had no skill to
weave a philosophy with which to clothe them. If it had been possible
a year ago for him to have admitted so cruel a love he knew what he
would have done. He would have waited for her upon this selfsame
street corner and shot her down, turning the weapon upon himself. Yes,
he would have been full of just such empty heroics. Thus would he have
expressed his contempt and scorn of the circumstance which had tricked
him. But now he was beyond so conventional a settlement.
The huddled meetings about Storch's shattered lamp were no more, but
in small groups the scattered malcontents exchanged whispered
confidences in any gathering place they chanced upon. Fred Starratt
listened to the furtive reports of their activities with morbid
interest. But he had to confess that, so far, they were proving empty
windbags. The promised reign of terror seemed still a long way off.
There were moments even when he would speculate whether or not he was
being tricked into unsupported crime. But he raised the question
merely out of curiosity... Word seemed to have been passed that he was
disdainful of all plans for setting the trap which he was to spring.
But one day, coming upon a group unawares in a Greek coffeehouse on
Folsom Street, he caught a whispered reference to Hilmer. Upon the
marble-topped table was spread a newspaper--Hilmer's picture smiled
insolently from the printed page. The gathering broke up in quick
confusion on finding him a silent auditor. When they were gone he
reached for the newspaper. A record-breaking launching was to be
achieved at Hilmer's shipyard within the week. The article ended with
a boastful fling from Hilmer to the effect that his plant was running
to full capacity in spite of strikes and lockouts. Fred threw the
paper to the floor. A chill enveloped him. He had caught only the
merest fragments of conversation which had fallen from the lips of the
group he had surprised, but his intuitions had been sharpened by
months of misfortune. He knew at once what date had been set for the
consummation of Storch's sinister plot. He rose to his feet, shivering
until his teeth chattered. He felt like a man invested with all the
horrid solemnity of the death watch.