Broken to the Plow

Toward four o'clock in the afternoon Fred Starratt remembered that he had been commissioned by his wife to bring home oyster cocktails for dinner. Of course, it went without saying that he was expected to attend to the cigars. That meant he must touch old Wetherbee for money. Five dollars would do the trick, but, while he was about it, he decided that he might as well ask for twenty-five. There were bound to be other demands before the first of the month, and the hard-fisted cashier of Ford, Wetherbee & Co. seemed to grow more and more crusty over drafts against the salary account.

If one caught him in a good humor it was all right. Usually a risqué story was the safest road to geniality. Starratt raked his brains for a new one, to no purpose. Every moment of delay added greater certainty to the conviction that he was in for a disagreeable encounter. At four o'clock Wetherbee always began to balance his cash for the day and he was particularly vicious at any interruptions during this precise performance. What in the world had possessed Helen to give this absurd dinner party to two people Starratt had never met? At least she might have put the thing off until pay day, when money was more plentiful.

How did others manage? Starratt asked himself. Because there was a small minority in the office who received their full month's salary without a break during the entire year. Take young Brauer, for instance. He got a little over a hundred a month and yet he never seemed short. He dressed well, too-or neatly, to be nearer the truth; there was no great style to his make-up. Of course, Brauer was not married, but Starratt could never remember a time, even before he took the plunge into matrimony, when he was not going through the motions of smoothing old Wetherbee into a good-humored acceptance of an IOU tag. Starratt did not think himself extravagant, and it always had puzzled him to observe how free some of his salaried friends were with their coin. Only that morning his wife had reflected his own mood with exaggerated petulancy when she had said:

"I'm sure I don't know where all the money goes! We don't spend it on cafés, and we haven't a car, and goodness knows I only buy what I have to when it comes down to clothes."

What she had to! He thought over the phrase not with any desire to put Helen in the pillory, but merely to uncover, if possible, the source of their economic ills.

In days gone by, when his mother was alive, he had heard almost the same remark leveled at his father:

"Well, I suppose some people could save on our income. But we've got to be decent-we can't go about in rags!"

He knew from long experience just the sort his mother had meant by the term "some people." Brauer was a case in point. Mrs. Starratt always spoke of such as he with lofty tolerance.

"Oh, of course, foreigners always get on! They're accustomed to live that way!"

Fred Starratt had not altogether accepted his mother's philosophy that everybody lacking the grace of an Anglo-Saxon or Scotch name was a foreigner. There were times when he was given to wonder vaguely why the gift of "getting on" had been given to "foreigners" and denied him. Once in a while he rebelled against the implied gentility which had been wished on him. Were rags necessary to achieve economy? Granting the premises, in moments of rare revolt he became hospitable to any contingency that would free him from the ever-present humiliation of an empty purse.

He soon had learned that the term "rags" was a mere figure of speech, which stood for every pretense offered up as a sacrifice upon the altar of appearances. His mother had never been a spendthrift and certainly one could not convict Helen on such a charge. But they both had one thing in common-they "had to have things" for almost any and every occasion. If a trip were planned or a dancing party arranged or a tea projected-well, one simply couldn't go looking like a fright, and that was all there was to it. His father never thought to argue such a question. Women folks had to have clothes, and so he accepted the situation with the philosophy born of bowing gracefully to the inevitable. But Starratt himself occasionally voiced a protest.

"Nothing to wear?" he would echo, incredulously. "Why, how about that pink dress? That hasn't worn out yet."

"No, that's just it! It simply won't! I'm sick and tired of putting it on. Everybody knows it down to the last hook and eye… Oh, well, I'll stay home. It isn't a matter of life and death. I've given things up before."

When a woman took that tone of martyrdom there really was nothing to do but acknowledge defeat. Other men were able to provide frocks for their wives and he supposed he ought to be willing to do the same thing. There was an element of stung pride in his surrender. He had the ingrained Californian's distaste for admitting, even to himself, that there was anything he could not afford. And in the end it was this feeling rising above the surface of his irritation which made him a bit ashamed of his attitude toward Helen's dinner party. After all, it would be the same a thousand years from now. A man couldn't have his cake and eat it, and a man like Brauer must live a dull sort of life. What could be the use of saving money if one forgot how to spend it in the drab process? As a matter of fact, old Wetherbee wouldn't gobble him. He'd grunt or grumble or even rave a bit, but in the end he would yield up the money. He always did. And suddenly, while his courage had been so adroitly screwed to the sticking point, he went over to old Wetherbee's desk without further ado.

The cashier was absorbed in adding several columns of figures and he let Starratt wait. This was not a reassuring sign. Finally, when he condescended to acknowledge the younger man's presence he did it with the merest uplift of the eyebrows. Starratt decided at once against pleasantries. Instead, he matched Wetherbee's quizzical pantomime by throwing the carefully written IOU tag down on the desk.

Wetherbee tossed the tag aside. "You got twenty-five dollars a couple of days ago!" he bawled out suddenly.

Starratt was surprised into silence. Old Wetherbee was sometimes given to half-audible and impersonal grumblings, but this was the first time he had ever gone so far as to voice a specific objection to an appeal for funds.

"What do you think this is?" Wetherbee went on in a tone loud enough to be heard by all the office force. "The Bank of England?… I've got something else to do besides advance money every other day to a bunch of joy-riding spendthrifts. In my day a young man ordered his expenditures to suit his pocketbook. We got our salary once a month and we saw to it that it lasted… What's the matter-somebody sick at home?"

Starratt could easily have lied and closed the incident quickly, but an illogical pride stirred him to the truth.

"No," he returned, quietly, "I'm simply short. We're having some company in for dinner and there are a few things to get-cigars and-well, you know what."

Wetherbee threw him a lip-curling glance. "Cigars? Well, twopenny clerks do keep up a pretty scratch and no mistake. In my day-"

Starratt cut him short with an impatient gesture.

"Times have changed, Mr. Wetherbee."

"Yes, I should say they have," the elder man sneered, as he reached for the key to the cash drawer.

For a moment Starratt felt an enormous relief at the old man's significant movement. He was to get the money, after all! But almost at once he was moved to sudden resentment. What right had Wetherbee to humiliate him before everybody within earshot? He knew that the eyes of the entire force were being leveled at him, and he felt a surge of satisfaction as he said, very distinctly:

"Don't bother, Mr. Wetherbee… It really doesn't make the slightest difference. I'll manage somehow."

Old Wetherbee shrugged and went on adding figures. Starratt felt confused. The whole scene had fallen flat. His suave heroics had not even made Wetherbee feel cheap. He went back to his desk.

Presently a hand rested upon his shoulder. He knew Brauer's fawning, almost apologetic, touch. He turned.

"If you're short-" Brauer was whispering.

Starratt hesitated. Deep down he never had liked Brauer; in fact, he always had just missed snubbing him. Still it was decent of Brauer to…

"That's very kind, I'm sure. Could you give me-say, five dollars?"

Brauer thrust two lean, bloodless fingers into his vest pocket and drew out a crisp note.

"Thanks, awfully," Starratt said, quickly, as he reached for the money.

Brauer's face lit up with a swift glow of satisfaction. Starratt almost shrank back. He felt a clammy hand pressing the bill against his palm.

"Thanks, awfully," he murmured again.

Brauer dropped his eyes with a suggestion of unpleasant humility.

"I wish," flashed through Starratt's mind, "that I had asked for ten dollars."

* * * * *

As Fred Starratt came down the steps leading from the California Market with a bottle of oyster cocktails held gingerly before him he never remembered when he had been less in the mood for guests. A passing friend invited him to drop down for a drink at Collins & Wheeland's, but the state of his finances urged a speedy flight home instead. At this hour the California Street cars were crowded, but he managed to squeeze into a place on the running board. He always enjoyed the glide of this old-fashioned cable car up the stone-paved slope of Nob Hill, and even the discomfort of a huddled foothold was more than discounted by the ability to catch backward glimpses of city and bay falling away in the slanting gold of an early spring twilight like some enchanted and fabulous capital.

At Hyde Street he changed cars, continuing his homeward flight in the direction of Russian Hill. He prided himself on the fact that he still clung to one of the old quarters of the town, scorning the outlying districts with all the disdain of a San Franciscan born and bred of pioneer stock. He liked to be within easy walking distance of work, and only a trifle over fifteen minutes from the shops and cafés and theaters. And his present quarters in a comparatively new apartment house just below the topmost height of Green Street answered these wishes in every particular.

On the Hyde Street car he found a seat, and, without the distraction of maintaining his foothold or the diversion of an unfolding panorama, his thoughts turned naturally on his immediate problems. The five dollars had gone a ridiculously small way. Four oyster cocktails came to a dollar and a quarter, and he had to have at least six cigars at twenty-five cents apiece. This left him somewhat short of the maid's wage of three dollars for cooking and serving dinner and washing up the dishes. If Helen had engaged Mrs. Finn, everything would be all right. She knew them and she would wait. Still, he didn't like putting anybody off-he was neither quite too poor nor quite too affluent to be nonchalant in his postponement of obligations.

When he arrived home he found that Helen had been having her troubles, too. Mrs. Finn had disappointed her and sent a frowsy female, who exuded vile whisky and the unpleasant odors of a slattern.

"I think she's half drunk," Helen had confessed, brutally. "You can't depend on anyone these days. Servants are getting so independent!"

The roast had been delivered late, too, and when Helen had called up the shop to protest she had been met with cool insolence.

"I told the boy who talked to me that I'd report him to the boss. And what do you suppose he said? 'Go as far as you like! We're all going out on a strike next week, so we should worry!' Fancy a butcher talking like that to me! I don't know what things are coming to."

Frankly, neither did Fred Starratt, but he held his peace. He was thinking just where he would gather enough money together to pay Mrs. Finn's questionable substitute.

The guests arrived shortly and there were the usual stiff, bromidic greetings. Mrs. Hilmer had been presented to Fred first … a little, spotless, homey Scandinavian type, who radiated competent housekeeping and flawless cooking. The Starratts had once had just such a shining-faced body for a neighbor-a woman who ran up the back stairs during the dinner hour with a bit of roasted chicken or a pan of featherweight pop-overs or a dish of crumbly cookies for the children. Mrs. Starratt, senior, had acknowledged her neighbor's culinary merits ungrudgingly, tempering her enthusiasm, however, with a swift dab of criticism directed at the lady's personality.

"My, but isn't she Dutch, though!" frequently had escaped her.

Somehow the characterization had struck Fred Starratt as very apt even in his younger days. And as he shook hands with Mrs. Hilmer these same words came to mind.

Hilmer disturbed him. He was a huge man with a rather well-chiseled face, considering his thickness of limb, and his blond hair fell in an untidy shower about his prominent and throbbing temples. Fred felt him to be a man without any inherited social graces, yet he contrived to appear at ease. Was it because he was disposed to let the women chatter? No, that could not account for his acquired suavity, for silence is very often much more awkward than even clumsy attempts at speech.

As the dinner progressed, Fred Starratt began to wonder just what had tempted Helen to arrange this little dinner party for the Hilmers. When she had broached the matter, her words had scarcely conveyed their type. A woman who had helped his wife out at the Red Cross Center during the influenza epidemic could be of almost any pattern. But immediately he had gauged her as one of his wife's own kind. Helen and her women friends were not incompetent housewives, but their efforts leaned rather to an escape from domestic drudgery than to a patient yielding to its yoke. If they discussed housekeeping at all, it was with reference to some new labor-saving device flashing across the culinary horizon. But Mrs. Hilmer's conversation thrilled with the pride of her gastronomic achievements without any reference to the labor involved. She invested her estate as housekeeper for her husband with a commendable dignity. It appeared that she took an enormous amount of pains with the simplest dishes. It was incredible, for instance, how much thought and care and time went into a custard which she described at great length for Helen's benefit.

"But that takes hours and hours!" Helen protested.

"But it's a real custard," Hilmer put in, dryly.

Fred Starratt felt himself flushing. Hilmer's scant speech had the double-edged quality of most short weapons. Could it be that his guest was sneering by implication at the fare that Helen had provided? No, that was hardly it, because Helen had provided good fare, even if she had prepared most of it vicariously. Hilmer's covert disdain was more impersonal, yet it remained every whit as irritating, for all that. Perhaps a bit more so, since Fred Starratt found it hard to put a finger on its precise quality. He had another taste of it later when the inevitable strike gossip intruded itself. It was Helen who opened up, repeating her verbal passage with the butcher.

"They want eight hours a day and forty-five dollars a week," she finished. "I call that ridiculous!"

"Why?" asked Hilmer, abruptly.

"For a butcher?" Helen countered, with pained incredulity.

"How long does your husband work?" Hilmer went on, calmly.

"I'm sure I don't know. How long do you work, Fred?"

Starratt hesitated. "Let me see … nine to twelve is three hours … one to five is four hours-seven in all."

Hilmer smiled with cryptic irritation. "There you have it!… What's wrong with a butcher wanting eight hours?"

Helen shrugged. "Well, a butcher doesn't have to use his brains very much!" she threw out, triumphantly.

"And your husband does. I see!"

Starratt winced. He felt his wife's eye turned expectantly upon him. "Seven hours is a normal day's work," he put in, deciding to ignore Hilmer's insolence, "but as an employer of an office force you must know how much overtime the average clerk puts in. We're not afraid to work a little bit more than we're paid for. We're thinking of something else besides money."

Hilmer buttered a roll. "What, for instance?"

"Why, the firm's interest … our own advancement, of course … the enlarged capacity that comes with greater skill and knowledge." He leaned back in his seat with a self-satisfied smile.

Hilmer laid down his butter knife very deliberately. "That's very well put," he said; "very well put, indeed! And would you mind telling me just what your duties are in the office where you work?"

"I'm in the insurance business … fire. We have a general agency here for the Pacific coast. That means that all the subagents in the smaller towns report the risks they have insured to us. I'm what they call a map clerk. I enter the details of every risk on bound maps of the larger towns which every insurance company is provided with. In this way we know just how much we have at risk in any building, block, or section of any city. And we are able to keep our liability within proper limits."

"You do this same thing … for seven hours every day … not to speak of overtime?"

"Yes."

"And how long have you been doing this?"

"About five years."

"And how long will you continue to do it?"

"God knows!"

Hilmer rested both hands on the white cloth. They were shapely hands in spite of their size, with healthy pink nails, except on a thumb and forefinger, which had been badly mangled. "For five years you have worked seven hours every day on this routine … and in order to enlarge your capacity and skill and knowledge you have worked many hours overtime on this same routine, I suppose without any extra pay… It seems to me that a man who only gets a chance to exercise with dumb-bells might keep in condition, but he'd hardly grow more skillful… Of course, that still leaves two theories intact-working for your own advancement … and the interest of your firm. I suppose the advancement has come, I suppose you've been paid for your overtime … in increased salary."

Helen made a scornful movement. "If you call an increase of ten dollars a month in two years an advancement," she ventured, bitterly.

Starratt flushed.

"That leaves only one excuse for overtime. And that excuse is usually a lie. Why should you have the interest of your firm at heart when it does nothing for you beyond what it is forced to do?"

Fred Starratt bared his teeth in sudden snapping anger. "Well, and what do you do, Mr. Hilmer, for your clerks?"

"Nothing … absolutely nothing … unless they demand it. And even then it's only the exceptional man who can force me into a corner. The average clerk in any country is like a gelded horse. He's been robbed of his power by education … of a sort. He's a reasonable, rational, considerate beast that can be broken to any harness."

"What do you want us to do? Go on a strike and heave bricks into your plate-glass window?… What would you do in our place?"

"I wouldn't be there, to begin with. I've heaved bricks in my day." He leaned forward, exhibiting his smashed thumb and forefinger. "I killed the man who did that to me. I was born in a Norwegian fishing village and after a while I followed the sea. That's a good school for action. And what education you get is thrashed into you. The little that sticks doesn't do much more than toughen you. And if you don't want any more it does well enough. Later on, if you have a thirst for knowledge, you drink the brand you pick yourself and it doesn't go to your head. Now with you … you didn't have any choice. You drank up what they handed out and, at the age when you could have made a selection, your taste was formed … by others… I don't mind people kicking at the man who works with his hands if they know what they're talking about. But most of them don't. They get the thing second hand. They're chock full of loyalty to superiors and systems and governments, just from habit… I've worked with my hands, and I've fought for a half loaf of bread with a dirk knife, and I know all the dirty, rotten things of life by direct contact. So when I disagree with the demands of the men who build my vessels I know why I'm disagreeing. And I usually do disagree … because if they've got guts enough in them they'll fight. And I like a good fight. That's why potting clerks is such a tame business. It's almost as sickening as a rabbit drive."

He finished with a gesture of contempt and reached for his goblet of water.

Starratt decided not to dodge the issue; if Hilmer wished to throw any further mud he was perfectly ready to stand up and be the target.

"Well, and what's the remedy for stiffening the backbone of my sort?" he asked, with polite insolence.

"Stiffening the backbone of the middle class is next to impossible. They've been bowing and scraping until there's a permanent kink in their backs!"

"The 'middle class'?" Helen echoed, incredulously.

Hilmer was smiling widely. There was a strange, embarrassed silence. Starratt was the first to recover himself. "Why, of course!… Why not? You didn't think we belonged to any other class, did you?"

It was Mrs. Hilmer who changed the subject. "What nice corn pudding this is, Mrs. Starratt! Would you mind telling me how you made it?"

Hostilities ceased with the black coffee, and in the tiny living room Hilmer grew almost genial. His life had been varied and he was rather proud of it-that is, he was proud of the more sordid details, which he recounted with an air of satisfaction. He liked to dwell on his poverty, his lack of opportunity, his scant education. He had the pride of his achievements, and he was always eager to throw them into sharper relief by dwelling upon the depths from which he had sprung. He had his vulgarities, of course, but it was amazing how well selected they were-the vulgarities of simplicity rather than of coarseness. And while he talked he moved his hands unusually for a man of northern blood, revealing the sinister thumb and forefinger, which to Fred Starratt grew to be a symbol of his guest's rough-hewn power. Hilmer was full of raw-boned stories of the sea and he had the seafarer's trick of vivid speech. Even Helen Starratt was absorbed … a thing unusual for her. At least in her husband's hearing she always disclaimed any interest in the brutalities. She never read about murders or the sweaty stories in the human-interest columns of the paper or the unpleasant fictioning of realists. Her excuse was the threadbare one that a trivial environment always calls forth, "There are enough unpleasant things in life without reading about them!"

The unpleasant things in Helen Starratt's life didn't go very far beyond half-tipsy maids and impertinent butcher boys.

Hilmer's experiences were not quite in the line of drawing-room anecdotes, and Starratt had seen the time when his wife would have recoiled from them with the disdainful grace of a feline shaking unwelcome moisture from its paws. But to-night she drew her dark eyebrows together tensely and let her thin, vivid lips part with frank eagerness. Her interest flamed her with a new quality. Fred Starratt had always known that his wife was attractive; he would not have married her otherwise; but, as she leaned forward upon the arm of her chair, resting her elbows upon an orange satin pillow, he saw that she was handsome. And, somehow, the realization vaguely disturbed him.

Hilmer's stories of prosperity were not so moving. From a penniless emigrant in New York until he had achieved the distinction of being one of the leading shipbuilders of the Pacific coast, his narrative steadily dwindled in power, the stream of his life choked with stagnant scum of good fortune. Indeed, he grew so dull that Helen Starratt, stifling a yawn, said:

"If it's not too personal … won't you please tell us … about … about the man you killed for smashing your thumb?"

He laughed with charming naivete, and began at once. But it was all disappointingly simple. It had happened aboard ship. A hulking Finn, one of the crew's bullies, had accused Hilmer of stealing his tobacco. A scuffle followed, blows, blood drawn. Upon the slippery deck Hilmer had fallen prone in an attempt to place a swinging blow. The Finn had seized this opportunity and flung a bit of pig iron upon Hilmer's sprawling right hand. Hilmer had leaped to his feet at once and, seizing the bar of iron in his dripping fingers, had crushed the bully's head with one sure, swift blow.

"He fell face downward … his head split open like a rotten melon."

Helen Starratt shuddered. "How … how perfectly fascinating!" escaped her.

Starratt stared. He had never seen his wife so kindled with morbid excitement.

"I … I thought you didn't like to hear unpleasant stories," he threw at her, disagreeably.

She tossed the flaming cushion, upon which she had been leaning, into a corner, a certain insolence in her quick gesture.

"I don't like to read about them," she retorted, and she turned a wanton smile in the direction of Hilmer.

At this juncture the maid opened the folding doors between the dining room and the living room. She had on her hat and coat, and, as she retreated to the kitchen, Helen Starratt flashed a significant look at her husband.

He followed the woman reluctantly. When he entered the kitchen she was leaning against the sink, smoothing on a pair of faded silk gloves.

"I'm sorry," he began, awkwardly, "but I forgot to cash a check to-day. How much do you charge?"

The woman's hands flew instinctively to her hips as she braced herself into an attitude of defiance.

"Three dollars!" she snapped. "And my car fare."

He searched his pockets and held out a palm filled with silver for her inspection. "I've just got two forty," he announced, apologetically. "You see, we usually have Mrs. Finn. She knows us and I felt sure she'd wait until next time. If you give me your address I can send you the difference to-morrow."

She tossed back her head. "Nothing doing!" she retorted. "I don't give a damn what you thought. I want my money now or, by Gawd, I'll start something!"

Her voice had risen sharply. Starratt was sure that everybody could hear.

"I haven't got three dollars," he insisted, in a low voice. "Can't you see that I haven't?"

"Ask your wife, then."

"She hasn't a cent… I should have cashed a check to-day, but I forgot… You forget things sometimes, don't you?"

He was conscious that his voice had drawn out in a snuffling appeal, but he simply had to placate this female ogress in some way.

"Ask your swell friends, then."

"Why, I can't do that… I don't know them well enough. This is the first time-"

She cut him short with a snap of her ringers. "You don't know me, either … and I don't know you. That's the gist of the whole thing. If you can ask a strange woman who's done an honest night's work to wait for her money, you can ask a strange man to lend you sixty cents… And, what's more, I'll wait right here until you do!"

"Well, wait then!" he flung out, suddenly, as he pocketed the silver.

He kicked open the swinging door and gained the dining room. She followed close upon his heels.

"Oh, I know your kind!" he heard her spitting out at him. "You're a cheap skate trying to put up a front! But you won't get by with me, not if I know it!… You come through with three dollars or I'll wreck this joint!"

A crash followed her harangue. Starratt turned. A tray of Haviland cups and saucers lay in a shattered heap upon the floor.

He raised a threatening finger at her. "Will you be good enough to leave this house!" he commanded.

She thrust a red-knuckled fist into his face. "Not much I won't!" she defied him, swinging her head back and forth.

He fell back sharply. What was he to do? He couldn't kick her out… He heard a chair scraped back noisily upon the hardwood floor of the living room. Presently Hilmer stood at his side.

"Let me handle her!" Hilmer said, quietly.

Starratt gave a gesture of assent.

His guest took one stride toward the obstreperous female. "Get out!

Understand?"

She stopped the defiant seesawing of her head.

"Wot in hell…" she was beginning, but her voice suddenly broke into tearful blubbering. "I'm a poor, lone widder woman-"

He took her arm and gave her a significant shove.

"Get out!" he repeated, with brief emphasis.

She cast a look at him, half despair and half admiration. He pointed to the door. She went.

Hilmer laughed and regained the living room. Starratt hesitated.

"I guess I'd better pick up the mess," he said, with an attempt at nonchalance.

Nobody made any reply. He bent over the litter. Above the faint tinkle of shattered porcelain dropping upon the lacquered tray he heard his wife's voice cloying the air with unpleasant sweetness as she said:

"Oh yes, Mr. Hilmer, you were telling us about the time you fought a man with a dirk knife … for a half loaf of bread."