Broken to the Plow | Page 7

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."

CHAPTER II
When the Hilmers left, about half past eleven, Starratt went down to the
curb with them, on the pretext of looking at Hilmer's new car. It proved
to be a very late and very luxurious model.
"Is it insured?" asked Starratt, as he lifted Mrs. Hilmer in.
"What a hungry bunch you insurance men are!" Hilmer returned.
"You're the fiftieth man that's asked me that."
Starratt flushed. The business end of his suggestion had been the last
thing in his mind. He managed to voice a commonplace protest, and
Hilmer, taking his place at the wheel, said:
"Come in and talk it over sometime... Perhaps you can persuade me."
Starratt smiled pallidly and the car shot forward. He watched it out of
sight. Instead of going back into the house he walked aimlessly down
the block. He had no objective beyond a desire to kill the time and give
Helen a chance to retire before he returned. He wasn't in a mood for
talking.
It was not an unusual thing for him to take a stroll before turning in,
and habit led him along a beaten path. He always found it fascinating to
dip down the Hyde Street hill toward Lombard Street, where he could
glimpse both the bay and the opposite shore. Then, he liked to pass the
old-fashioned gardens spilling the mingled scent of heliotrope and
crimson sage into the lap of night. There was something fascinating and
melancholy about this venerable quarter that had been spared the
ravages of fire ... overlooked, as it were, by the relentless flames, either
in pity or contempt. There had been marvelous tales concerning this
section's escape from the holocaust of 1906, when San Francisco had
been shaken by earthquake and shriveled by flames. One house had

been saved by a crimson flood of wine siphoned from its fragrant cellar,
another by pluck and a garden hose, a third by quickly hewn branches
of eucalyptus and cypress piled against the outside walls as a screen to
the blistering