The Strong City

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  She heard him slap the reins on the horse’s back, heard the wheels following her. The hack was abreast of her. Out of the corner of her stony eye she saw Franz leaning out.

  “I shall follow you, you know, until you get in,” he said, laughing.

  She walked on, more and more rapidly. She would turn around the corner, and so come back to the Schmidt mansion, and then she would go in, still without speaking. The wheels and the hoofs followed her. It was intolerably ridiculous and mortifying. Franz was humming casually. He began to whistle, softly. She hated him more than ever.

  “A nice day for a walk,” he remarked from his high seat.

  She looked ahead, savagely.

  “Do not be a fool,” he said, relapsing into German. “You know I shall follow you. If you return to that house, I shall still follow you. You would not like a scene?”

  This so infuriated her that she turned, words seething to her lips. But he was looking at her with such good humor, such deep laughter, that she could not speak. She could only gasp, her eyes green fires in her white face. She believed him. He would do anything. Resistance on her part would only increase her humiliation: The thought of his forced entry into that house, with the subsequent confusion and explanations, could not be endured.

  “Leave me alone!” she cried, clenching her hands in her muff.

  He appeared greatly surprised. “Did you not come out to meet me?” he asked, innocently raising his brows.

  “No!” she cried again, very loudly.

  He stared. Then he burst into laughter.

  “You are a bad liar,” he said, at last, through his laughter. He pushed his low black bowler far back on his head. She saw that he was very well dressed, in an obviously new checked coat and dark blue trousers. He, too, had dressed in his best, to meet her, as she had dressed in her best, to meet him. The same thought seemed to occur to him. He studied her appraisingly, still laughing a little.

  “Very handsome,” he remarked. “Too handsome to waste on the street.”

  He sprang down lightly from the buggy, and ceremoniously bowed to her, pressing his hat to his heart with an exaggerated gesture.

  “Gnädige frau,” he murmured, “will you honor me by accompanying me for a drive?”

  She was still trembling with anger. And then, in spite of herself, she could not restrain her sudden laughter. “You are such a fool,” she said. The first joy came back, the first gladness at the sight of him. She thought to herself that she was the fool, letting him see her humiliation. She ought to have ignored the fact that he had kept her waiting; she ought not to have let him see her wounded anger. This had given him the advantage.

  I will put him in his place, once and for all, she thought, not stopping to analyze her relief at her own decision. She gave him her hand, trying to sustain the mood of his ridiculous and exaggerated deference. He raised the hand to his lips. At his touch on her hand, a flame ran up her arm to her heart, then to all her body, a shameful flame that made her pulses pound. Preoccupied with its strangeness, its terror, its wanton abandon, she allowed him to help her up the high step to the narrow seat. A mist floated before her eyes. It seemed to her that the universe had stopped in its whirling, and that she stood at its core, panting and disheveled.

  He climbed up beside her, took up the reins. He began to whistle again, softly. They rolled down the street, not speaking. Irmgard sat as far from her cousin as she could, primly, staring straight ahead, only her eyes revealing the emotions that tormented and frenzied her. She felt the sun striking on her cheek, and wondered vaguely why it was so hot and burning. She could hear the pounding of her heart, and was afraid that he might hear it, too.

  To fill in a silence that was fast becoming too much for her, she asked coolly: “And how is my aunt, and my uncle?”

  “Well, but wondering why you have neglected them,” he replied. He was looking pleasantly at the black rump of the horse.

  “I did not neglect them,” she said slowly. “But Mrs. Schmidt is an invalid, and needed me.”

  He made no comment. The silence was thicker than ever between them. It was like a darkness in which she fumbled for words frantically. But none would come. She knew he knew why she had not visited the flat on Mulberry Street. Again, mortification struck at her. She was a fool. She ought to have gone to her aunt, frequently, thus proving to Franz that he had no power to disturb her. All my actions, she thought angrily, have only raised his own self-conceit, his own belief that he has some power over me.

  “I shall visit Aunt Emmi on my next Thursday,” she said, aloud, in a muffled voice.

  He was still silent. She dared not look at him directly, but she looked at his hands, strong square brutal hands, from which prolonged scrubbing could not entirely eliminate the stains of his work. After the first glance, she tried to look away, but could not. The hands fascinated her, hypnotized her. She was aware again of the renewed acceleration of her blood, and of an unfamiliar but terrible yearning. Her eyelids stung as though with brine, and now all the joy was gone, leaving behind it only a passionate sense of sorrow and desolation.

  They drove through the almost deserted streets in a silence which was as intimate as the touch of hands on naked flesh. They drove like this for over half an hour, until they reached the outskirts of the small city. The houses became fewer and fewer, and the short winter day inclined slowly toward the twilight. The wind was brisker, more chilly. Then they were driving rapidly over a country road, the horse’s hoofs beating a rhythmic pattern against the still, cold silence. Once they heard the wail of a distant train. The empty trees were crowding about them, filled with shrilling sparrows, and the sun fell wanly through the black branches in a fret-work of pale light.

  Now, not a house could be seen, though here and there, on the horizon seen occasionally through the trunks of the trees, a wisp of smoke unfurled itself against the dim blue sky. Irmgard felt a freshening wind against her cheeks, a wind that told her that the false promise of the false spring was passing, and winter coming. Her desolation increased. The winter without hope and without joy. A weight, as of cold iron, lay in her breast. It was too heavy for shivering, too profound to be analyzed.

  Then Franz spoke, softly: “You do not look happy, my cousin.”

  “I am very happy,” she said, trying to make her voice formal, but it shook in spite of her. She felt his eyes upon her, thoughtful, considering eyes.

  “If that is happiness, then I have never seen misery,” he said.

  Her cheeks colored at this intimacy, this insolence. She lifted her chin proudly, not answering.

  “I have often seen that house,” he said, reflectively. “A catacomb. And the people in it are probably corpses, to correspond.”

  Her sadness was momentarily forgotten in her indignation. She turned to him fully. “That is not true. They are kind people, and very good to me.”

  “What!” he exclaimed cynically. “I have heard of them. An old daughter, and a crippled idiot son. It is the talk of the mills. And Schmidt’s wife, they say, is a bed-ridden invalid, whom he never sees, probably with good reason.”

  It was not for a long time that she realized he was artfully drawing her out about the people in the mansion on Grove Street, and that his seemingly casual and indifferent questions were not to make conversation, but for a deep personal reason of his own. But today she mercifully did not know this, and only felt her indignation increasing.

  “Miss Ernestime is not old. She seems very young, and sweet, and pretty. Her mother’s invalidism has kept her confined a great deal, but things are becoming better. There is to be a party soon, and everyone is very happy. And Mr. Baldur is no idiot. It is true that he is a cripple, but he is a splendid gentleman. He plays beautifully, and paints. He has painted my portrait—”

  She paused, for Franz’s face was suddenly sharp and grim, his eyes boldly appraising as he stared at her.

  “So,” he said, slowly, in a hard voice, “the cripple is still a man, eh?”
r />   Baldur’s face suddenly flashed before Irmgard. She saw his blue eyes, so melancholy, so quiet, yet so alive, so full of what he dared not say to her. Again, sorrow struck at her, but not for herself. Franz saw the sadness about her mouth, the deep brooding tenderness in her eyes, a tenderness he had never suspected she could feel for anything. He could not understand the quick fury that seized him, the outrage which was like the result of a slap in the face. His hands tore brutally at the reins, the horse reared up. Irmgard was startled at this action, and looked at him.

  “Your portrait!” he said, with ineffable contempt. “What will be next? Love-making? You, and that—that cripple?”

  Irmgard could hardly believe she had heard these outrageous words. Her face took on such a blank expression that it was almost idiotic. Then, recovering herself, she cried out: “How dare you? Oh, how dare you!”

  She thought he would laugh, that he would dismiss the subject with one of his airy, casual remarks and gestures. But he did not. He looked into her eyes, and his own were like slits of blue steel, and the contempt deepened on his face.

  “You do not like it, eh? Well, I will tell you that I do not like the look of you, when I speak of him. I might say to you: ‘How dare you?’ And to him, also.”

  “You—you are contemptible!” she exclaimed, her cheeks bright red. Her breath came fast. “Take me back at once. If you do not turn about, I shall get out of this carriage at once, and walk home!”

  He stared at her, and then, very slowly, the hard lines about his mouth relaxed, and his eyes began to smile.

  “Forgive me,” he said, his voice hypocritically contrite. “But I did not like the thought that my cousin might be involved with a cripple, even innocently. Perhaps it is the healthy German in me,” he added, with an air of frankness. “You must forgive my candor. I was always candid.”

  “You were never candid in all your life!” she cried. “And I cannot forgive your unspeakable remarks about that poor gentleman.” She was breathing fast. There was a disordered look about her, of mingled indignation and deep sorrow.

  “I have asked your pardon,” he reminded her tranquilly. “You are as hard as iron, Irmgard. And as ruthless. You see, I know all about you, too. But see, it is a pleasant day. Let us forget the words were ever spoken.”

  “I cannot forget,” she said, and her voice broke. Nevertheless, she did not demand again that he turn the vehicle about, and take her home. He heard that break in her voice, and though he smiled deprecatingly, the fury still lurked in him, murderous and outraged.

  “You are my cousin,” he said gently. “You are alone in the world, a young female without protection except what we can give you. You must forgive me if I am so concerned with your welfare.”

  “You!” she said, scornfully, glancing at him with passionate disdain.

  He laughed now, good-temperedly. “You do me an injustice,” he said.

  He looked about him. They were far out in the country. To the right, the bank of the road rose upward, steeply, rising to a small low hill. The hill was crowned by a country cemetery. Against that dim blue winter sky white crosses leaned in solitary silence, the spectral light glancing from pale granite slabs. Mingled with these mournful monuments were the skeletons of the winter trees. To the left of the road, the brown and silent countryside spread away to the shadowy purple distance. And over it all was that ghostly light of the winter, falling from the empty heavens. It might have been spring, but there was no sound of spring in the chill air, no awakening voices, no promise. It was the death of the year, the death of the earth, brown and sterile and done, held in a tomblike stillness, without echo.

  Franz reined in the horse. Irmgard glanced about her. They were all alone, and not a house was visible. She looked up at the cemetery, and then down at the country to the left, so desolate, so abandoned. Franz had gotten out of the buggy, and was standing below her, extending his hand. She hesitated, then ignoring his hand, she lifted her long skirts and sprang out of the vehicle. Why had he brought her here, to this lonely and melancholy spot? But she was too proud, and still too angry, to ask him.

  He said: “A little way down the road there is an inn, where we can have our supper. But the sun still shines a little, and there will be few days like this. I thought we might walk here for a while, and talk.”

  “I have nothing to say to you,” she said, and knew at once that the words were childish.

  She preceded him up the hill to the cemetery. At its rim was a white bench, drifted over with dead leaves. Franz swept the leaves away with his kerchief, and Irmgard sat down. He sat down beside her. He did not speak for a long time. They gazed over the country at their feet, in complete silence. Irmgard did not look at her cousin, but she was again hotly aware of his nearness, of his shoulder near her chin, so strong and hard. She had seen him in workclothes only, before, and they seemed more appropriate to her on this muscular body than in the new garments he was wearing now. The folded black cravat, so carefully arranged, was incongruous about that hard throat. He had taken off his black bowler, and it lay on his knees. She knew, without looking, that the silent wind was blowing through his yellow hair.

  She was aware that he was watching her profile steadfastly and boldly. She feigned indifference, affecting to be absorbed in her contemplation of her surroundings. She knew, instantly, however, that he was moving closer to her, and that he was bending his head so that his breath was on her cheek.

  “I have never had an opportunity to talk to you like this before,” he was saying, in a quiet, intimate voice. “I have never asked you about your life in Germany. I knew about it only from what my mother told me.”

  “There is nothing to tell,” she replied coldly, wishing with despair that she had the strength to move away from him, and struggling against the soft languor that was beginning to possess her.

  “Nothing, Irmgard? But you must have had a hard life.”

  She was silent. She thought of the years on the little farm, and her father. She thought of the days of endless work and suffering and endurance, the frugal living, the hopeless months that went by, one by one, in a dark procession. But they had given her strength to endure all things. Life, she thought, could never really hurt her, never pierce through the wall of undesiring courage which she had raised stone by stone between her and its exigencies. She had lost, perhaps, the capacity for happiness or great ecstasy. But, perhaps, she had also lost the capacity to suffer.

  “And your father,” Franz was saying. “It must have been intolerable for you.”

  But her life with her father, she thought, had given her one thing: it had made her distrust all frenzy, all dark rapture, all vehemence and passion. She had seen to what despairing depths these things could hurl the human soul, and how futile they were, and how stupid. They had given her contempt and strong ridicule for them. Men like her father spent their lives in a wild dream, full of imagined glory and ecstasy. But at the end they were like blazing torches thrown, hissing, into a swamp, to sputter out impotently in the universal night. Men like her father were full of splendid and terrible hallucinations. They moved in a vision that never shone on land or sea. What good did they do? They were without reason, without thoughtfulness. They shone on dark hills, a will-of-the-wisp leading other men to death and ruin. She would not let herself think that they might be great bonfires, lighting the darkness, great living beacons dissipating the night. She had seen how her father had died, lonely and abandoned, derided and impotent. He had accomplished nothing. He had brought only sorrow and death to her mother, and had brought these things to himself. He had brought himself pain, years of torment which were the result of his years in prison.

  Then she remembered the night he had died. There had been no one else there but herself. She had lit the solitary candle beside his bed, and had sat there, waiting, full of bitterness and sadness, yet resenting this emaciated man with the tortured face and the bright burning eyes. She had even felt a contempt for him, this man of flame and
unreason. She had listened to his tormented breathing, his gasping for another breath, and then another. She had listened quietly, sitting beside him with folded hands, her young face cold and still. She knew he was dying. She felt no regret, no grief, but only a sense of waste.

  All these years he had hardly noticed her in his frightful preoccupation with the rights of man and the glory shimmering on the horizon of the future. She was only a creature that tended the farm, and cooked the poor meals, and milked the cows and fed the few chickens. She was not his daughter, his flesh, to him. She was a shadow in the background, serving him, often rubbing his swollen limbs at night. He had not had the time, in his dreams, to think of her kindly, or to speak to her.

  Tonight, he knew he was dying. For the first time, he was aware of his daughter. He looked at her near his bed, the light throwing dim shadows on her young and quiet face. This, then, was all he had to leave to the world, this woman, so cold and grave and indifferent. Nothing else, but this woman. All his manuscripts had been burned long ago. What he had written lately was nothing, only echoes. Only the dream had remained, the dream of peace and justice, of enlightenment and serenity, of a world of one brotherhood and one joy and one hope and one love. But with him, his dream would die. His old companions were either dead, or had become fat, or had long disappeared. If he had had a son, he might have handed the gilded manuscript on to him. But he had only this daughter.

  The pangs of agony and death were nothing now compared with this thought. If the dream should lie moldering in his grave, then he had lived for nothing. He forced his eyes to see her more clearly; he forced himself not to die yet. Yet he was filled with the black coldness of an infinite despair.