The Strong City

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  “The mistress can never keep a personal maid more than a few weeks,” said Mrs. Flaherty. “So, you’ll be leaving us soon, I suppose, Irmgard.”

  At this, Irmgard would only smile. As the weeks went on she became thinner and even more silent. She had never had much color, but her very pallor had been luminous with health. Now, she was only pale, and the splendid modelling of her face became sharper and more attenuated.

  This morning, her first delight in the pale December sunshine began to fade, as she moved down the hall with Mrs. Schmidt’s breakfast tray. No amount of sunshine without could penetrate into that lofty vast gloom, nor drive away its mustiness and chill. The distant windows were bright with light, but the light did not extend beyond the wide windowsills. The curving well of the staircase was splashed here and there with blue and crimson and yellow, as the sun struck against the stained glass window on the second landing. But all this only made the dark rooms darker and more funereal in comparison, more tomb-like.

  She passed Baldur’s door. It was open, and he stood near it. When he saw her, he smiled radiantly, so that his face had a light of its own.

  “Come in, Irmgard,” he said, standing aside.

  She put the tray on a chair, and followed him to an easel.

  He had been painting her at odd intervals, when she could be spared from ministering to his mother. The portrait was half-finished. He had painted her as she was, with no elaborate background or dress. The pure calmness of her face and eyes gazed out from the canvas with a remote nobility.

  “The light is excellent this morning,” he said. “Can you spare me a few minutes?”

  He looked at her with that strange light on his face, and she looked down at him in a momentary silence.

  “Mrs. Schmidt and Miss Ernestine wish to go for a drive,” she said, smiling a little. “It is such a nice day. Perhaps you will go with us?”

  He glanced through the window, restlessly. “Is it a nice day?” he murmured. He turned back to her. “This will only take a few moments, Irmgard.”

  She sat down, obediently, and he picked up his palette. He painted rapidly, in silence. As she sat, she looked at the great angel in the corner. Her lips tightened somewhat, because a faint pain contracted her heart. She had come to dislike the statue with an odd and passionate dislike. It reminded her too strongly of Franz, at once supplicating and arrogant and arresting. Yet, she could not look away from it. Now her lips drooped a little, mournfully. She started when Baldur spoke so gently and softly that she was hardly aware of his voice:

  “You have changed, Irmgard. You don’t look very well. You are confined so much.”

  She turned her green eyes to him. “I am perfectly well,” she said.

  He paused in his work and regarded her gravely. He seemed about to speak, then apparently changed his mind. But he stood there before her in his ruined and tragic splendor. He often stood like this, motionless, gazing at her. At these times his eyes would seem to glow and enlarge, so that they poured light out over his face.

  “But you are not happy?” he asked at last.

  She did not reply. After a moment or two he went on painting. But she saw that his delicate hand trembled. He put aside his paints.

  “That’s all, Irmgard,” he said, gently.

  She stood up. He waited. They looked long and intently at each other.

  “I shall tell your mother you will go with us?” she asked.

  He did not answer at once, and then he said: “Do you want me to go, Irmgard?” His voice was hardly audible.

  She was silent. His blue eyes still glowed with that inner radiance, but his face was very grave, and filled with a bitter appeal. She began to tremble a little. She half drew back when he took her hand, not hastily, but with the utmost gentleness. Now his expression became intense and despairing, and he looked up at her imploringly.

  “Yes, I want you to go,” she whispered. Pain flowed along her nerves. She could feel the smart of tears against her lashes. She tried to smile.

  “You say that because you are kind,” he said, but his thin hand tightened on hers. “It is because you are kind, Irmgard?”

  She forced herself to smile. “I am not very kind,” she replied.

  He released her hand, but he held her by his look, so desperate and yearning.

  “I will go,” he said, quietly. His features became small and pinched. His lips parted as though he wanted to say things which must be left unspoken.

  She picked up the tray and went out of the room. For a long time after she had gone he stood where she had left him, a mournful ruined figure held in sad and bitter reflection.

  CHAPTER 19

  Mrs. Schmidt wished to ride in the brougham, but Irmgard gently insisted upon the victoria. “Such nice air and sunshine!” she said. “And soon, the winter will be here. We must cherish the sun.”

  So Mrs. Schmidt wrapped herself in a cape of sables. Above this mound of rich fur her face was wan and shrivelled, but still faintly lighted by a piteous eagerness. Irmgard brought her her best bonnet of brown velvet and dark plumes, and ordered hot bricks for her feet. “I am so excited!” she exclaimed, looking at Irmgard pathetically. Ernestine appeared in a black astrakhan jacket, but her small bonnet was gay with velvet flowers, and her face shone with delicate color and excitment. In an extravagant mood she had pinned two pink rosebuds on her astrakhan muff, and one near her throat. When Baldur came slowly downstairs, in his broadcloth cape with a fur collar, his broad shallow hat in his hand, he was smiling. The cape hung almost to his ankles, and he might have been a child in his father’s garments had it not been for his large heroic features and melancholy blue eyes.

  Before leaving, Irmgard wrote a hasty note to her aunt. “Again, dear Aunt Emmi, I must ask your pardon for not spending this Thursday afternoon with you. Mrs. Schmidt needs my services today. I am taking her for a drive. This is the first time she has been out of this distressing house since I came here. Nor, I regret, is Sunday possible, though it is my own Sunday. Please forgive me. My duties are very pressing.”

  She sealed the note, sighing tightly to herself. Her aunt, she knew, would be excessively annoyed and hurt. She must make a special effort to go to her on her next Thursday afternoon, leaving before Franz would return home. She thinks me ungrateful, thought the girl. But I must risk this. It is so terrible, though, that I cannot see Uncle Egon. She sent the note by one of the stable boys, and watched him go with sudden heavy depression.

  They drove away in the pale cold sunlight, the scentless and sterile wind in their faces. The streets were quiet and filled with shadowless light. The wheels echoed on the pavements, and the hoofbeats were soporific in their rhythms. The coachman and footman, high on their perch above the women and Baldur, sat straight in their uniforms of plum and gold, and the whip flashed in the sun. Ernestine chattered breathlessly, looking about her with the wide bright eyes of a young girl, distended and brilliant. A fever seemed to be running in her body. Her lips turned a vivid red. She laughed almost incessantly, sometimes turning to kiss her mother’s cheek impulsively, as though she could not contain her excitement, and sometimes leaning forward to press Irmgard’s or Baldur’s hand.

  Baldur smiled sympathetically at his sister, delighted and surprised at her animation. He was filled with content. Irmgard sat beside him, quiet and dignified in her awkward black clothing, her hands in black cotton gloves. But he saw how the sun made a huge knot of smooth gold of the hair under the bonnet, and brought out sparkles of blue light in her green eyes. When he looked at her serene large profile, so classic in its repose and immobility, the chronic pain in his heart subsided, leaving only a dreamlike content behind. He had learned to live for the moment, to refuse to believe in the possibility of tomorrows. There was only this Now, heavy with peace and fulfilment. His head was on a level with her breast. For a single burning instant, which it took all his strength to quell, he had an almost irresistible desire to lay his head on that high and beautiful breast, and forg
et everything but ecstasy. But the instant passed. It left warmth in his flesh, and something like a still shining light in his mind. He had never known happiness. He did not recognize it when it came to him now. He had only one wish: that this drive might go on forever, that time might be suspended, that his thigh might continue to press against her thigh, and that night might never come.

  They went through street after street of tall houses, silent in the sunshine beyond the green-streaked brown lawns. Here and there a nursemaid in a cloak wheeled a perambulator along the walks, or scolded a running child. Here and there a cart, loaded with vegetables, stopped along a curb, the horse nibbling at sparse blades of winter grass. Once they heard a faint far hammering, and sparrows fluttered and shrilled on the empty boughs of great trees. Once they caught the mournful churning of a hurdy-gurdy on some distant street. The air was full of sleepy echoes, blowing like faint breezes in the December light.

  Irmgard watched Mrs. Schmidt closely. The poor lady lay huddled in her mound of sables, her thin feet pressed against the hot bricks, which were wrapped in a piece of red flannel. She spoke very little, but she looked at her children, at Irmgard, at the streets, with sick eyes once more bright with a spectral hope. Sometimes the hope was quenched in a shadowy fear. They had all left the house while Matilda had been marketing. What would she say when they returned? It was in vain that Mrs. Schmidt tried to force herself to remember that she was mistress of her great house, and Matilda only her housekeeper. But even in her weakness she dared not so humiliate herself as to confess that she was afraid of the buxom German woman. But Matilda can be such a drill sergeant, she thought, distressedly. And so unpleasant when crossed. No doubt she is activated by a deep regard for my health—she is so solicitious, and so stern with poor Irmgard, always suspecting her of neglecting her duty to me. But perhaps I am not so ill as Matilda thinks. I feel quite strong today—

  Nevertheless, when thinking of Matilda, she shivered. She remembered how infuriated the woman had become yesterday when Irmgard had insisted on throwing open windows and drawing draperies in the afternoon, and had urged Mrs. Schmidt to rise from her bed, and, warmly wrapped, sit by a window. “You want to kill the lady?” Matilda had shouted, crimson with rage. She had slammed the windows, drawn the curtains so that the room was once again in semi-darkness and fetid. She had literally lifted Mrs. Schmidt from the chair and carried her back to her hot and uneasy bed. “The poor lady!” she had mourned, viciously. “Her head is heated. Her hands are like ice. You are a murderer!” she had screamed, turning violently upon Irmgard.

  Irmgard had been silent during all this. But all at once she said something to Matilda in a low and rapid German which Mrs. Schmidt, with her faulty knowledge of the language, could not understand. But the effect was terrible. Matilda had straightened up. Her broad face had turned white as death, and her eyes had become malignant. She had tried to speak, but could not. After a few moments, she had left the room. Then Irmgard had asked Mrs. Schmidt if she would like to sit by the window again. But Mrs. Schmidt shrank back on her pillows with dread and fear, pleading weariness.

  That night the other servants heard the furious controversy between Matilda and Mr. Schmidt as it rumbled through the doors of her apartment. They did not understand the words, but they gathered that Irmgard was again under fire.

  Thinking of Matilda, Mrs. Schmidt gave Irmgard a sudden nervous smile.

  “Matilda will be so annoyed, don’t you think, my dear?” she asked, unaware that she had broken into a running breathless rhapsody from Ernestine.

  Irmgard returned the smile tranquilly. “I am afraid she pampers you too much, Madam,” she replied. But the smile touched only her lips. Her eyes were hard and still as jade.

  Ernestine had paused to listen. Her head was held like a bird’s, poised and eager. She burst out: “That terrible creature! I have been trying to persuade Papa to let her go. She—she tyrannizes over us. When she first came to us she was as meek and sweet as butter. Now she is arrogant and mean, and frightening.”

  In quick terror Mrs. Schmidt exclaimed: “Oh, Ernestine, that is so uncharitable. She has our interest at heart. Your Papa says we are so undisciplined. Perhaps Matilda is good for us. The house runs so smoothly now. We must forgive her for much, for she is so devoted.” She turned to Irmgard. “My dear child, what did you say to her yesterday, to disturb her so? I have been very curious.”

  Irmgard had said: “You wish to kill this woman. You think you will take her place. But first, you must step over me, and you shall never do that.”

  She looked at Mrs. Schmidt calmly. “I only said, Mrs. Schmidt, that I was your maid, and I knew what was best for you.”

  “How determined of you!” said Ernestine, with admiration and love.

  But Baldur said, smiling: “Do we have to discuss that detestable female? I thought this was a drive for pleasure.” His thigh pressed a little closer to Irmgard’s. It seemed to him that a wave of warm strength flowed from her body to his. He looked at her lips. Did he imagine that they were a little paler?

  Nazareth had only one long street of important shops, and these were only about a dozen in number. The street was really a “square,” filled with trees, and in the center a fountain surrounded by Civil War heroes. On the east side of the square were the poultry and fish shops, the meat market and the grocery stores. At right angles was the street devoted to hardware and farm equipment, and facing it, opposite the square, also at right angles, were feed shops and furniture stores. On the west side of the square were the clothing shops, the boot shops, the millinery establishments. Only one of these shops was patronized by the more fashionable ladies of Nazareth, who preferred to do most of their shopping in Philadelphia or New York. This shop, Morgan’s, was voted “extreme” by the middle-class ladies, so New Yorkish was its atmosphere and so gay and expensive its gowns and frocks and mantles and coats. Cheek by jowl with it was Mlle. Le Clair’s, owned by Morgan’s. Here the millinery was also too “extreme” for solid middle-class taste. But this did not prevent all the ladies, from the farmers’ wives and daughters and up through the middle-class matrons to the very fashionable, from pausing for ecstatic half hours to gaze on the three or four distracting bonnets on display behind the broad plateglass windows.

  Mlle. Le Clair’s was all gray plush and velvet and rich deep gold in décor. The three salesladies were clad in looped, braided and bustled gray satin, caught with yellow velvet ribbons, and they wore tiny Watteau hats all yellow velvet and vivid green throughout the day. They were charming girls, from Philadelphia, all blondes, with thin affected voices and very chic manners. The customers sat on gray velvet divans, and had bonnets presented to them with great gravity and reverence. The salesladies held large gold-framed mirrors. If the ladies wished to observe a complete ensemble, they were led to the opposite wall, which was lined with mirrors. Only one bonnet was brought to a customer at a time, and if rejected, was carefuly placed behind glass in the rear. Everything was hushed and devout within the salon. The salesladies were really young priestesses whose lives, apparently, were lived and breathed exclusively within those plushy purlieus.

  Mlle. Le Clair was ostensibly French. She rarely emerged from the rear of the shop except when a very important customer entered. She was a tall thin woman of regal carriage and hectic color and Continental manners and exquisite accent. Always clad in severe black, she added éclat and awe to the shop. Her name was really Mamie Murphy, and she was a farmer’s daughter, but her soul, she would say to herself, was French. Her heart was French. She was France itself. She knew only a dozen French words, which she used with such “la’s!” and such gestures, such shruggings and winkings and jerkings of the head, such uplifted hands and rolling of the eyes, that the meagre words were quite adequate for the purpose of impressing the unsophisticated and guileless. A few of Nazareth’s fashionable ladies wished to freshen their finishing-school French with the aid of Mlle. Le Clair, and were charmed by her vehement: “Non! Non! I am
now Americaine! I am patriot! I no speak Français in America!” They thought this excessively “sweet” and touching, and bought extensively of this patriot, even curtailing their visits to the New York milliners.

  Mlle Le Clair designed her own hats, and they were both astonishing and chic. On more than one occasion New York designers had copied them without reticence. Mlle. Le Clair loved hats, and seemed quite indifferent to gowns and other feminine paraphernalia. She wore no jewels or laces, and if she had changes of garments, they were not evident, for she invariably wore her regal and almost puritanical black. She did not really need to design bonnets for a living, for she was part owner of a very exclusive and flourishing brothel in Nazareth, and from this source came a greater part of her very substantial wealth. This brothel was also a house of assignation, and more than one discreet young maiden and matron made furtive arrangements in the quiet rear of the millinery shop. Mlle Le Clair had one true characteristic of the French, a passionate and parsimonious love of money, and she watched the market reports with the absorbed anxiety of a male broker, and was a shrewd gambler.