"When shall it be? Let us get out quickly. We can make our way easily with this!" he would cry, tapping the violin lovingly. "While I play on street corners you can collect the dimes and nickels."

Monet had meant to be absurd, of course, but Fred was finding nothing absurd or impossible these days. The youth's laughing suggestions flamed him with a sudden yearning for vagabondage. He wanted, himself, to be up and off. But by this time October was upon them, ushered in by extraordinary rainfall. The coming rain gave him pause. He used to look searchingly at Monet's delicate face, and finally one day, in answer to the oft-repeated question, Fred replied:

"I think we'll have to stand it until spring... If we want to go east, over the mountains--this is no time."

They had often speculated as to a route. Most runaways took the road toward the coast and achieved capture even in the face of comparative indifference. The trails to the east led into the heart of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. With the first breath of autumn these byways, difficult of achievement in any case, became more and more impa.s.sable.

And, while flight toward the west might be successful, it was too charged with a suggestion of failure to be tempting.

"We don't just want to _attempt_ to escape," Starratt used to explain.

"We want to _do_ it!"

"But, spring!" Monet would echo. "That means May at the earliest. The mountain pa.s.ses will be impossible even in April. Let's try!"

"Come, come! Why this sudden restlessness? I thought your music would be a solace. But it seems to have made you dissatisfied. I can't understand it."

"We live by desire! I am happy only when I am burning! When the flame is out there are only ashes."

Fred yielded finally to the extent of starting plans. Food was the first consideration. Monet was still in the dining room at Ward 6.

About the first of November he began h.o.a.rding sugar and rice. A hollow tree in an obscure corner of the grounds back of the barns was the hiding place. Everyday a little more was added to the store. The process communicated a feeling of extraordinary interest to them both.

Around this almost trivial circ.u.mstance whirled the shadows of infinite romance. Escape! At last these two men had a goal ... they were no longer drifting.

Once a week Fred continued to receive two letters--one from his wife and one from Ginger. It was curious to compare them--reading an ironical comedy between the lines ... creating the scenes that were being enacted by the triangle of women in front of the Hilmer dwelling every day in the early morning sunshine. For, as time went on, it appeared that Ginger walked through her inscrutable part with irritating fidelity--that is, irritating to Helen Starratt. It could not be otherwise, Fred decided, remembering the look of cool contempt which his wife had thrown at Ginger's departing figure on the day of their last interview. He saw Mrs. Hilmer only vaguely, in a half-light, and yet out of the fragmentary sentences he got a sense of something patient and brooding and terrible waiting an appointed season. She seemed to be sitting back like some veiled and mystic chorus, watching the duel of the other two and somehow shaping it to her pa.s.sive purpose.

And where was Hilmer in it all? Somehow, in spite of his masculine virility, he seemed to have no place nor footing upon the narrow ledge of feminine subtleties. No doubt, as usual, he was proceeding in his direct and complacent line, unaware of anything save the brutally obvious... Perhaps only the brutally obvious had any existence, perhaps Fred Starratt was spinning fantasies out of threads which came to his hand. He did not know, he could not say, but in the still watches of the night the figures of these three women circled round and round the seething caldron of the future like skinny witches upon a blasted heath.

Meanwhile, rain succeeded rain. Fred Starratt knew that escape was impossible under these conditions, but he let Monet chatter away and continue his h.o.a.rding. Thus they pa.s.sed Thanksgiving, and suddenly Fred felt that Christmas would soon be upon them, with all its heartbreaking melancholy.

As Christmas drew near a bitter restlessness began to pervade Ward 6.

The rain fell in torrents for days. There was little chance for fresh air or exercise except in the bull pen, which was provided with a shed that ran the length of the wall. Into this dismal and jail-like yard poured the entire human wreckage of Fairview. Fred and Monet went with the others for one or two days, but finally Monet said:

"Let's walk in the rain ... anything would be better than this."

And so the next day, waiting until a pelting shower had merged gradually into a faint mist, the two took a quick-step run about the parade ground. They came back splashed with mud and dripping wet, but their cheeks glowed and their hearts beat quickly. After that, no matter how violent the downpour, they managed to take a turn in the open. Sometimes they circled the grounds repeatedly. Again, if the rain proved too drenching, one short run was all they could achieve.

At the end of a week of such heroic exercising Monet said, significantly:

"You see how well I am standing this! Every day toughens us up... We ought to be leaving soon."

"After Christmas," Fred conceded, briefly.

There followed a brief respite of clear, crisp days, warming to mellowness at noon. After the midday meal everyone crawled out into the sunlight, standing in little shivering groups, while Monet played upon his violin. The cracked inventor, pulling his cardboard box on its ridiculous spools, stopped to listen; Weeping Willow forgot his grief and almost achieved a smile. Only the Emperor of j.a.pan continued his pacing back and forth, his royal gloom untouched by any responsive chord.

But the reaction from this sedative of music was in every case violent. The remainder of the afternoon pa.s.sed in tragic unquiet. One day Harrison called Fred aside. The a.s.sistant superintendent was daily yielding more and more to Fred's judgment.

"What do you think about a Christmas tree for Ward Six?"

For a moment Fred was uncertain. He knew the poignance of disturbing memories. But, in the end, he felt that perhaps the floodgate of grief had best be lifted. He knew by this time the cleansing solace of tears.

"We've never done it before," Harrison went on.

"There has been a prejudice against bringing old days back too clearly to these wretches... But Monet's been playing his music and they seem to like that."

It ended by Fred going out with Monet and one of the attendants into the hills and bringing back a beautiful fir tree. They set it up in a corner of the dining room and its bruised fragrance filled the entire building... There followed the problem of its tr.i.m.m.i.n.g. At first some one suggested that it was more beautiful untricked with gauds, but to Fred, unlighted by any human touch its loveliness seemed too cold and impersonal and cruelly pagan. Presently the long afternoons were rilled with a pathetic bustle. Everyone became interested. They popped corn and strung it in snow-white garlands and some one from the kitchen sent in a bowl of cranberries which were woven into a blood-red necklace for the central branches. Harrison brought round a sack of walnuts and some liquid gilt and two brushes. Men began to quarrel good-naturedly for a chance at the gilding. A woman attendant, hearing about the tree, rode, herself, into the village and bought candles... Finally it was finished, and it stood in the early twilight of a dripping Christmas Eve, a fantastic captive from the hills, suffering its severe dignity to be melted in a cheap, but human, splendor... They had a late dinner by way of marking the event, and the usual turn of keys in the locks at seven o'clock was missing. At the close of the meal as they were bringing on plum pudding Fred rose from his place to light the candles... A little tremor ran through the room; Monet started to play... He played all the heartbreaking melodies--"Noel" and "Nazareth" and "Adeste Fideles." Slowly the tears began to trickle, but they fell silently, welling up from mysterious reaches too deep for shallow murmurings. Suddenly a thin, quavering voice started a song.

"G.o.d rest you, merry gentlemen!"

The first line rang out in all its tremulous bravery.

"_Merry_ gentlemen!" flashed through Fred's mind. "What mockery!"

But a swelling chorus took it up and in the next instant they were men again. They sang it all--every word to the last line ... repeating each stanza after the little man who had begun it and who had risen and taken his place beside Monet.

"Now to the Lord sing praises, All you within this place, And with true love and brotherhood Each other now embrace, This holy tide of Christmas All other doth deface."

Only Fred remained silent. He could not sing, the bravery of it all smote him too deeply.

"This holy tide of Christmas All other doth deface."

They were singing the last words over again.

Fred Starratt bowed his head. For the first and only time in his life he felt Christ very near. But the Presence pa.s.sed as quickly. When he looked up the singing had ceased and the candles upon the tree were guttering to a pallid end. Monet laid down his violin and blew out the dying flames; his face was ashen and as he grasped the branches of the tree his hand shook. A man in front rose to his feet. Flockwise the others followed his lead. Christmas was over!... Fred Starratt had a sense that it had died still-born.

The next morning came wrapped in a dreadful silence. Men stood about in huddling groups and whispered. The exaltation of the night before had been too violent. A great dreariness oppressed Fred Starratt. He felt the inevitable sadness of a man who had met unveiled Beauty face to face and as speedily found the vision dissolved. The tree still swept the rooms and corridors with its fragrance, but in the harsh daylight its cheap trappings gave it a wanton look. Somehow, it mocked him, filled him with a sense of the vanity of life and all its fleeting impressions. The rain came down in a tremulous flood, investing everything with its colorless tears. The trees, the buildings, the very earth itself seemed to be melting away in silvery-gray grief.

Just before noon it lightened up a trifle and the rain stopped.

"Let's get out of this!" Monet said, sweeping the frozen a.s.sembly in the smoking room with an almost scornful glance.

They found their hats and without further ado they started on a swing about the grounds. It grew lighter and lighter ... it seemed for a moment as if the sun would presently peep out from the clouds. They achieved the full length of the parade ground and stopped, panting for breath. Fred wiped his forehead with a huge handkerchief.

"Shall we keep going?" he asked.

Monet nodded. They swung into a wolfish trot again, across a stretch of green turf, avoiding the clogging mud of the beaten trails. They said nothing. Presently their rhythmic flight settled down to a pleasurable monotony. They lost all sense of time and s.p.a.ce.

Gradually their speed slackened, and they were conscious that they were winding up ... up... It was Monet who halted first. They were on a flat surface again, coming out of a thicket suddenly. There was a level sweep of ground, ending abruptly in s.p.a.ce.

"We're on Squaw Rock!" Fred Starratt exclaimed.

The two went forward to the edge of a precipice. The embryo plain leaped violently down a sheer three hundred feet directly into the lap of a foaming river pool. Fred peered over.

"There's the usual Indian legend, isn't there," he asked Monet, "connected with this place?"

Monet moved back with a little shudder. "Yes ... I believe there is...

The inevitable lovelorn maiden and the leap to death... Well, it's a good plunging place."

They both fell back a trifle, letting their gaze sweep the landscape below, which was unfolding in theatrical unreality. At that moment the sun came out, flooding the countryside with a flash of truant splendor. To the south nestled the cl.u.s.ter of hospital buildings, each sending out thin gray lines of smoke. Moving up the valley, hugging the sinuous banks of the river, a train nosed its impudent way.

"When shall we be leaving for good?" Monet asked, suddenly.