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Storch also made a careful toilet for him. He rummaged for a clean flannel shirt, combed his reddish beard, dusted off his clumsy boots. But they were ready much too soon, like a couple of children promptly dressed for an excursion, impatiently awaiting the hour of departure. Of the two, Storch evinced the more nervousness.
A tumble-down couch stood against the wall, and in an opposite corner a heap of tattered quilts had been flung disdainfully. Storch pointed to the couch. "You sleep there to-night. I'll roll up on the floor." It never occurred to Fred to protest. The two began to shed their outer garments. Fred crawled in between the musty quilts.
Instinctively his footsteps found their way to Storch's shack. A light was glimmering inside. Fred beat upon the door. It swung open quickly, revealing Storch's greenish teeth bared in a wide smile of satisfaction. "Come in ... come in!" Storch cried out gayly. "Have a good day?" "Excellent!" Fred snapped back, venomously. "I learned, among other things, that I am legally dead."
He poked into nooks and corners of the room upon all sorts of pretended orderliness. Fred sat and eyed him calmly smoking cigarette after cigarette. Finally, Storch lifted the kodak case from its hiding place and set it on the center table. Cautiously he pried loose the false top and peered into its depths.
After all, it took great simplicity to approach the calamitous moments of life through the channels of the commonplace. Presently Storch was snoring with the zest which he always brought to sleep. The night air had chilled the room past the point of comfort and the lamp seemed to make little headway with its thin volume of ascending warmth.
Storch may have been prodding for rancor, but he really had touched the mainspring of all false and empty achievement vanity. "Losing a wife isn't of such moment ... but to be laughed at that is another matter!" The words with which Storch had held him up to the scorn of the crowd swept him now with their real significance. He had been afraid to seem uncourageous. Thus also had Mrs.
He felt a certain shame back of the possibility, and at such moments the words of Storch used to ring in his ears: "Wounds heal so quickly ... so disgustingly quickly!"
Storch blew out the lamp, and Fred saw him move toward the quilts in the corner. Without bothering to straighten them out he flung himself down and pulled a covering over him. The light from the street lamp continued to flood the room. Presently Fred heard Storch chuckling. "So you know Hilmer!" he was repeating again, making a sound of satisfaction, as one does over a succulent morsel.
Storch went out and bought a paper, flinging a section of it at Fred. A thickly headlined account of the launching at the Hilmer yards occupied chief place on the first page of the local news section. There was a picture of the hull that had been put through on schedule time in spite of strikes and lockouts, and another one of Hilmer, and a second photograph of a woman.
Storch laughed unpleasantly. "To breed hatred!" Fred Starratt sat down again with a gesture of despair. 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.
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