Broken to the Plow Part 35

"Don't scream!" he commanded between his locked lips. "I don't want that man to know that--"

She released her breath sharply. "Shall we go in?" she whispered.

He nodded. Storch was pretending to be otherwise absorbed, but Fred knew that he had been intent on their pantomime.

Her room was bare, pitifully bare, swept clean of all the tawdry fripperies that one might expect from such an environment and circ.u.mstance. She motioned him wearily to an uncompromising chair, standing herself with an air of profound resignation as she leaned against the cheaply varnished bureau.

"Is this the first time--" she began, and stopped short.

"No ... I've watched you every night for nearly two weeks."

"What was the idea?" she threw out, with an air of banter.

He stood up suddenly. "I wanted to see how much I _could_ stand," he answered.

She closed her eyes for a moment ... her immobility was full of tremulous fear and hope.

"Ah!" she said, finally. "So you did care, after all!"

"Yes ... when it was too late."

She crossed over to him, putting one wan finger on his trembling lips in protest. She did not speak, but he read the thrilling simplicity of her silence completely. "Love is never too late!" was what her eloquent gesture implied.

He thrust her forward at arm's length, searching her eyes. "You are right," he said, slowly. "And yet it can be bitter!"

She released herself gently. "You shouldn't have watched me like that ... it wasn't fair."

"I didn't think you would ever know... And that first night I didn't intend to watch ... not really. After that it got to be habit...

You've no idea the capacity for suffering an unhappy man can acquire."

She took off her hat and flung it on the bed. "What made you follow me to-night?"

"You came out of a clear sky ... when I needed you most ... as you have always done... I didn't think I could ever escape that man waiting for me below--not even for an instant... To-morrow, at this time, I may be dead ... or worse."

"Dead?"

"To-morrow, at noon, I'm scheduled to blow up Axel Hilmer... There will be five others in the party ... my wife and his among them."

Her body was rigid ... only her lips moved. "You are going to do it?"

"No."

She pa.s.sed a fluttering hand over her forehead. "But you spoke of death..."

He smiled bitterly. "Either I shall be dead--or the man waiting for me on the street corner... I shall not tell him my decision until the last moment. I don't want to give him the chance to work in an understudy or complete the job himself... Will you go to Hilmer to-morrow and warn him?... He arrives from the south at the Third and Townsend depot somewhere around eleven o'clock. Advise him to postpone the launching. And have the approaches to the s.h.i.+pyards combed for radicals... Let them watch particularly for a man with a kodak on the roof of the stores opposite the north gate."

She picked up her hat quickly. "I'll go out now and warn the police ... indirectly. I have ways, you know."

He put out a restraining hand. "No ... that's risky. My friend Storch has spies everywhere. He's giving me a little rope here ... he may be waiting just to see how foolishly I use it. If you lie low until to-morrow there will be less of a chance of things going wrong...

Besides, I owe this man something. He's fed and sheltered me. I'm going to give him an even break. You would do that much, I'm sure."

She threw her arms suddenly about him. "Let me go down to him," she whispered. "Perhaps I can persuade him. Maybe he'll go away, then, and leave you in peace."

He stroked her hair. "No, I can't escape him now. Sooner or later he would get me. You don't understand his power. All my life I've dodged issues. But now I've run up against a stone wall. Either I scale it or I break my neck in the attempt."

She s.h.i.+vered as if his touch filled her with an exquisite fear as she drew away.

"I'm wondering if you are quite real," she said, wistfully. "Sometimes I've thought of you as dead, and, again, it didn't seem possible...

Always at night upon the street I've really looked for you. In every face that stared at me I had a hope that your eyes would answer mine... I think I've looked for you all my life... It isn't always necessity that drives a woman to the streets... Sometimes it is the search for happiness... I suppose you can't understand that..."

"I understand anything you tell me _now_!"

She went over to him again and took his hand. "You _are_ real, aren't you?... Because I couldn't bear it ... if I were to wake up and find this all a dream... Nothing else matters ... nothing in my whole life ... but this moment. And when it is over nothing will ever matter ...

again."

He sat there stroking her hand foolishly. There were no words with which to answer her... Presently she put her lips close to his and he kissed her, and he knew then that only a woman who had tasted the bitter wormwood of infamy could put such purity into a kiss. How many times she must have hungered for this moment! How many times must she have felt her soul rising to her lips only to find it betrayed!

He loved her for her words and he loved her for her silence. Once he would have sat waiting pa.s.sionately for her to defend herself. He would have been tricked into believing that any course of action _could_ be justified. But she brought no charges, she placed no blame, she offered no excuse. "It isn't always necessity that drives a woman to the streets!" It took a great soul to be that honest. She might have reproached him, too, for his neglect of her--for his fear to take his happiness on any terms. But all she had said was, "You shouldn't have watched me like that ... it wasn't fair."

He rose, finally, shaking himself into the world of reality again.

"I must be going now," he said, quietly. "Storch will begin to be impatient."

She picked a gilt hairpin from the floor. "Let me see if I've got everything straight. To-morrow at eleven o'clock I am to see Hilmer and tell him to postpone the launching. And to watch at the north gate for a man with a kodak... And then?"

He reached for his hat. "If you do not hear from me you might come and look me up. I'll be at Storch cottage on Rincon Hill ... at the foot of Second Street. Anyone about can tell you which house is his."

Her lips were an ashen gray. "You mean you'll be there ... _dead?_"

"If you are afraid ..."

"_Afraid!_" She drew herself up proudly.

"Well ... there is danger for you, too... I should have thought of that!"

"You do not understand even now." She went and stood close to him. "I _love_ you ... can't you realize that?"

He felt suddenly abashed, as if he stood convicted of being a cup too shallow to hold her outpouring.

"Good-by," he whispered.

She closed her eyes, lifting her brow for his waiting kiss. The heavy perfume of her hair seemed to draw his soul to a prodigal outpouring.

He found her lips again, clasping her close.

"Good-by," he heard her answer.

And at that moment he felt the mysterious Presence that had swept so close to him on that heartbreaking Christmas Eve at Fairview.