The Strong City

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  Emmi held him with new fierce tightness in her arms.

  “It has been too much for you, Egon,” she said. “We shall go back to the Fatherland. I was mistaken. There is no fulfilment of dreams here. I believed lies, or I believed in a thing which has already died in America. We came too early, or too late. We shall go home.”

  She felt him stir fitfully against her breast.

  “Emmi,” he whispered, “for you to go back will be a defeat.”

  She stared over his head grimly.

  “Not to retreat, in defeat, is idiocy. Besides, what am I? Am I important? No! Not even the dreams I had were important.”

  Her egotism, then, received a wound from which it would never entirely recover. But her wide hard eyes looked at the wound bitterly.

  “And Franz?” whispered Egon. His stirring was stronger now, as though he were daring to hope.

  “Franz will go with us. Of that I am sure. He is much attached to you. He will not let you go alone.”

  Egon was silent. Then suddenly, as though new strength had been given him, new joy, new realization, he lifted his head, and smiled wildly. A light even came into his blind eyes.

  “Home!” he cried. ‘My home! My Fatherland!”

  She could not bear the sight of that convulsive ecstasy.

  “Home,” she repeated, and could feel relief that he could not see her dry twisted lips.

  He put his hands over his face and wept aloud. She let him weep. Her embittered heart was filled with a humble and astonished wonder that she had never known before what Egon had suffered in such patient and gentle silence. It frightened her, tormented her, made her feel mean and contemptible.

  Egon dropped his hands. Then he started violently. He looked about him, unbelieving. He looked at Emmi, and his old pale lips parted, as though intolerably surprised.

  “I see!” he cried. “I see again!”

  “Yes!” she exclaimed, overcome. She took his hands. “Yes! I understand, now. It was not your eyes, my Egon. It was your mind, your heart, that could no longer endure to see your life!”

  They clung to each other convulsively, weeping together, heart to heart as they had never been before.

  She made him return to bed, and brought him his breakfast, though he protested, his face shining, that he had never felt so well. He watched her move about the room, he allowed her to feed him. He was like a trusting and rapturous child, brought back from death.

  Once he took her hand. “You are so good to me, Emmi, Liebchen,” he said, and then he kissed the back of that dry bony hand, and then the callouses on its palm. She looked down on his bent gray head, and her heart twisted savagely.

  He was never to go back to the office in the Mills. That, she had decided. There was five thousand dollars in the bank. It was enough. She had another inspiration. Irmgard still owned the small farm in Germany. She, Emmi, would buy that farm. Her inspiration mounted. They would all return, she and Egon and Franz and Irmgard! Franz and Irmgard would be married. She, Emmi, would forget herself, forget all her silly impassioned dreams. She would live for Egon, and her grandchildren. She would be an old German frau, contented on the land.

  I have lived for nothing but myself, before, she thought, clean and swept in her renunciation of self. I thought only of myself, and believed I had some mission. I was a fool.

  Yet, she was too forthright, too honest, to believe that this renunciation of a life of ideals and dreams was without pain for her. A cold and passionless emptiness pervaded her; she was filled with a sense of barrenness and futility. She was too strong to live happily only for others. In such a living, she knew, there was the soft core of weakness. The strong live for themselves, for that is their nature, she said to herself. If they abandon self, they have entered spiritual monasteries, in which there is nothing but bleakness and sterility, a denial of nature.

  Nevertheless, this she must do. The sacrifice was not joyful to her. It was gall on her lips, vinegar in her side. Not with supreme rapture did she hang herself on her own private cross, believing that in renunciation she had found completeness and peace. She found only uncompensating death.

  I am stronger than Egon, she thought. I can endure suffering with more fortitude. Therefore, there must be an end to his own suffering. It is my turn.

  He fell asleep out of exhaustion, not long afterwards, holding her hand. She listened to the ticking of the clock, downstairs, and aroused herself. At eleven o’clock Tom Harrow’s funeral was to take place. She had promised Mrs. Harrow to be at the cottage at nine o’clock. It was almost eleven. Gently, she released her hand, and stood for a moment looking down at Egon’s drawn and sleeping face. Then she left the dark dank bedroom, and ran swiftly downstairs. She flung her shawl over her head and shouders, put her keys in the pocket in her skirt.

  Then she heard a tapping on the front door. They have sent for me, she thought. She opened the door, and was astonished to see Irmgard standing there, smiling, beautiful in a green cloth dress and black velvet jacket and green bonnet.

  “Well, Irmgard,” she said, helplessly, clutching her shawl, which was caught by the bright strong wind of the December day.

  “Aunt Emmi,” said the girl. Emmi moved aside, and the two women stood in the little dark hall. Irmgard smiled again, though she was disturbed by her aunt’s strange white look and drawn lips. “It is my Thursday. I thought I would spend the day with you.” A faint color, like a ripple, ran over her smooth cheeks.

  “It is well,” said Emmi, mechanically.

  Irmgard was made uneasy by Emmi’s expression, so taut and rigid, yet absent, as though she were engrossed deeply in thoughts not connected with the present. She gave the impression that Irmgard had not yet completely impinged herself on her awareness.

  Then, Emmi, as though finally becoming cognizant of Irmgard, kissed her on the forehead. Irmgard’s faint alarm sharpened at the touch of those cold and lifeless lips, preoccupied and hasty.

  “Have I come at the wrong time?” she asked, quickly. “Is there something wrong?”

  “No. No, child. It is just that your uncle is not well. Do not be disturbed. It is nothing with his body. It is his mind. He cannot endure, any longer.”

  She waited impatiently for a puzzled look to come on Irmgard’s quiet face. But no such look appeared. Irmgard’s green eyes widened for an instant, and then were hidden by an opaque shadow.

  “What can I do?” she asked. “Shall I see him now?”

  “No.” Emmi paused. Her preoccupation increased. They stood in the hall, still. Emmi had not yet invited Irmgard to come into the bleak living room. Irmgard saw that a peculiar light flickered restlessly in her aunt’s eyes, and she had the sensation that in some way she was concerned with it.

  “I am glad you came,” said Emmi, suddenly. Her face darkened a little, inimically. “It has been long since you came. I thought you had forgotten us.”

  Irmgard looked away. “I never forgot,” she said in a low voice. “But others needed me.”

  Emmi gave an impatient gesture, and again Irmgard felt that she had brushed away, not her own words, but some unimportant irrelevancy. A filtered light glimmered in from the raw cold sunlight outside through the window in the door. Irmgard saw that her aunt was consumed with some inner excitement. When she spoke again, Irmgard knew that her words were not connected with this excitement.

  “Do you remember that little Englishwoman to whom I introduced you some time ago, Irmgard? On the second day you were here? Her husband was killed a day or two ago, by thieves. Franz was with him.”

  Irmgard’s averted lashes flew upwards, and the color left her cheeks.

  “Franz!” she exclaimed, and her gloved hands came together swiftly.

  Emmi shook her head impatiently. “Franz was not hurt by them. He drove them away, but not until they had beaten poor Mr. Harrow to death.”

  “How terrible,” murmured Irmgard. She looked down at her locked fingers, then deliberately relaxed them.

  “I
t is very terrible,” said Emmi. “He was Franz’s only friend. I go, now, to the funeral. The house is down the next street.” She paused. “Will you go with me?”

  Irmgard hesitated. “Would it not be better if I remained with Uncle Egon, while you are away.”

  Emmi considered. Then, she made up her mind swiftly. Egon would speak to Irmgard, and tell her joyously of the decision to leave America. She preferred to tell Irmgard, herself, so that there would be no confusion, no hesitation in her plans. Her exigent mind began to operate again, with great rapidity.

  “He is sleeping,” she said. “He must be quiet. He is not wel. I would prefer,” she added, inexorably, “that you come with me.”

  Then, for the first time, Irmgard realized what a tragedy had taken place. This, most probably, after all, was the reason for Emmi’s distraction and grim whiteness of lip. They went out into the sharp and vivid coldness of the morning. Irmgard lifted her heavy green skirts from the gritty sidewalk. Under them, she wore high-buttoned boots, obviously new, and very trim. Emmi saw them, disapprovingly. She glanced quickly at the new smart bonnet, with its pale greenness tied under Irmgard’s chin. She noticed the black kid gloves. This girl, with the pale hair lightly curled under the rim of the bonnet, was not the awkward country German maiden who had arrived in Nazareth just a short time ago. There was an air of quiet composure and sureness about her, instead of that former stiff dignity.

  “You resemble, no longer, a German girl,” said Emmi, as they walked down the bleak and deserted street. “You have become an American.”

  Irmgard smiled slightly. “Are you disappointed, Aunt Emmi?”

  Emmi shrugged her lean shoulders under the shawl. “Such swift changes are spurious,” she said, with her old brutality. “They are not in character. You are a German girl, yet you wish to deceive one that you are an American.”

  “I am,” said Irmgard, and now she was no longer smiling.

  She was startled by the sudden harshness of her aunt’s glance, the sudden anger in her eyes. “You talk like a fool,” said Emmi, loudly. “You do not understand what you say!”

  Irmgard was silent. She heard her aunt’s loud breathing. Her expression was like one who feels himself threatened, and was infuriated in consequence. Emmi walked so rapidly now that Irmgard fell behind a little, trailing in her rear. There was an air of flight in Emmi’s march down the street.

  “There is nothing here, in America,” Emmi flung over her shoulder. “Where such things as this happen, and the police find nothing.”

  Irmgard still did not speak. Her heels were high, and she was not accustomed to them yet. Because of her exertion, her cheeks became rosy, her lips bright red. She concentrated on her footing on the broken wooden walks. A great beer wagon, laden with kegs, and drawn by two straining gray horses, rumbled heavily past over the cobbled street. The driver stared at Irmgard impudently, and whistled. The wind caught up small whirlpools of dirt and chaff, and blew them into her face, choking her. She was suddenly greatly depressed. The poverty and drabness of Mulberry Street choked her. She glanced at the dun cottages of the poor, and the refuse-filled yards. Even the very poor in the little town near where she had lived in Germany had not existed in such bleakness, in such ugliness. There is no excuse for filth, she thought. Such an atmosphere comes from the souls of the people, Had America drawn only dead souls from Europe?

  They reached Tom Harrow’s little neat cottage, with the trim worn lace curtains at the windows, and the polished knocker and door knob. Irmgard was surprised to see a large silent knot of workmen on the walks before the cottage, waiting, humbly and ponderously, like stricken beasts, resigned and suffering. Irmgard saw their grimy faces, moved and contorted with efforts to retain the stolidity of their class; she saw their shabby caps and torn clothing, their dirty woolen scarves, wound tightly about their necks. They stood, not speaking, not moving, hands thrust deep within trouser pockets for protection against the cold. Their shoulders were huddled, shrunken together, their heads bent. She had seen sick cattle in drought-blasted fields in Germany with this same immobile aspect, these same expressions of bewilderment and pain, this same hopelessness. She saw grief on those drawn and dirty faces. But she also saw fear and chronic despair.

  She paused for an instant, in Emmi’s wake, and looked steadfastly at these men, her heart beating with indignation and anger. What had happened to these poor creatures? What years of struggle, starvation, brutality and poverty had they endured, in this country whose lighted towers illuminated the whole earth? Had they come, like Emmi, in pursuit of a dream of warmth and freedom and happiness, only to find a worse pit, a worse city, and more barren fields? They had come from Old World little villages, with their wine-taverns and their peasant laughter; they had come from meadows and mountains and great rivers, in pursuit of that dream. And they had found sterility and dust, darkness and cold, hunger and pain. They had found ugliness beyond all imagining. In the end, they had not even a dream to bequeath their children in this new land. What was America’s hope for the future, in the offspring of these betrayed innocents? What hope for patriotism and fire and loyalty and love? Ah, surely it was not the dream which had betrayed them! It was a handful of greedy and rapacious men, who had thrown the fog of their evil minds and souls over the bright colors of the hopeful flag. They had made the lighted towers destructive flames, drawing the moths to destruction. The filth of the cities was the materialization of the hopelessness of the betrayed.

  A hearse trundled up, the hearse of the poor, and paused before the little neat cottage. Irmgard saw the drooping melancholy plumes, the half-starved black horses, the mud-covered wheels. The driver wore a tall black hat, a black cape, and white gloves. His face was round and rosy under the hat, and impudent. He tied up the horses, took out a half-smoked cigar, and lit it. He put his hands under his coat-tails, and paced about, waiting for a signal from within.

  Emmi, her gray shawl over her head and shoulders, a basket of food for Mrs. Harrow and the children on her arm, had knocked on the door. A workman’s wife, slatternly and snivelling, opened it, admitted the two women into a dark close interior, raw and chill. Irmgard heard the sound of muffled weeping and sniffles, and little groans. The small parlor was filled with shawled and aproned women. Near the darkened windows, a cheap coffin stood on a trestle, draped in black. There were no flowers, except a single wreath of white roses on the white shroud. Irmgard shrank back a little, not wanting to see the dead face above the shroud. Two candles, tall and thin, burnt at the head of the coffin. They, and the darkness, momentarily blinded her. When she could accustom her eyes to the scene, she saw little Mrs. Harrow sitting in a chair near the coffin, half-fainting, bitterly sobbing, supported by two murmuring, work-stained women, against a background of other women. Three little girls stood about their mother, in black dresses, their childish faces solemn, streaked with tears and flickering candlelight.

  Then Irmgard’s heart gave a throbbing leap. Franz Stoessel stood at the foot of the coffin, his arms folded on his chest, his head bent, his eyes fixed on the shroud. He did not look up at the entrance of his mother and cousin. He seemed absorbed in some rigid meditation of his own. Behind him, pressed into a dim corner, was the huge bulk of a workman. For some reason, after that first aching glance at Franz, Irmgard’s gaze was drawn to that workman, and could not turn aside. She did not see his face; she saw only the great bulk of his half-seen form. But the candlelight, for some reason, shone on his hands. She saw that they were clenched, like rocks, like crushing weapons. A sudden fear thrilled through her, without a name, without understanding. There was something dreadful in the silence and immobility of that shadowy form with the illumined fists, like a vengeance and a waiting menace.

  Hidden by the dimness, Irmgard could see the small crowded room, full of its sobbing and sniffling women, holding aprons to their faces. She could see little Dolly and her crying children. She could see a sharp pencil of light at the bottom of the drawn shades, and the wan c
andlelight, and the narrow black coffin. An acrid odor of cabbage pervaded the room, for some woman had been boiling that vegetable in the kitchen. It mingled with the odors of sweat and acid and burning tallow and dust which filled the air. And, silent and motionless, Franz stood at the foot of the coffin, and behind him, that menacing shadow with the enormous clenched fists.

  Emmi had given the basket to one of the women, who took it into the kitchen. She went directly to Mrs. Harrow, and laid her hand on her shoulder, speechlessly. She looked at the little shivering girls, and frowned. The room was very cold. The children, in their cheap black dresses, had blue lips and white faces. Emmi turned to one of the women.

  “There is a fire in the kitchen?” she asked, abruptly.

  The woman removed her apron from her face, and blinked. Then she nodded, wonderingly. Emmi beckoned to the children, peremptorily. They followed her meekly into the kitchen. Irmgard could hear her moving briskly about, and scolding under her breath; she could hear the rattle of coals in the stove, then Emmi's voice, brisk and strong; thick with its Teutonic accent:

  “A little hot milk for the little maids, yes? And some of this fine cake, and this good ham, and nice bread and butter. Hands to the fire, please. It is not good for children to be cold. No, never must children be cold. You will wash your hands, please, and wipe the hands not on the dresses.”

  Irmgard heard a smothered childish giggle. The sounds from the kitchen penetrated into that dank chamber of death, with its sobbing and dust and chill. The sounds of life breaking in on the silence of dissolution. It was good. The poor father in his coffin must have been grateful. Then, Irmgard, for the first time, saw the sleeping face, bruised and calm, lofty with sleep and forgetfulness.

  It was an ugly face, crowned with ugly, thickly-curling black hair. But it had a majesty and gentleness in it which even death could not dissipate. Irmgard felt an enormous sadness, as she gazed at that face, and a sense of mystery cold with withdrawal. So absorbed was she, that she did not notice the curious furtive glances of the women, who stared at the elegance of this young woman with the green velvet bonnet, black velvet jacket and bustled green dress. There was distrust in these glances, and enmity. She was a stranger, in her fine garments, and her beauty. One or two of the women whispered together, and pointed.