The Strong City

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  Baldur, fearful that his mother would be awakened, gently shook his father’s arm. Hans’s eyes flew open, blankly, not seeing. His pink face was very pale, and there was a look on it of complete fright and wretchedness.

  “Nein!” he repeated, very loudly. “It is all lost! You are taking from me my life! You shall not do these things! Today it must stop!” Sweat sprang out visibly upon his face, and he started up, clutching the arms of his chair. “It is wrong! You shall not do it! Too long I have been silent!”

  “Father,” urged Baldur, with a fearful glance at his mother.

  But Hans was aware of nothing but his agony. His eyes started from his head. His lips shook. He was like a man cornered by executioners.

  “There is money, you say! But what is money? Ach, I thought it much! But it is nothing now. You have pushed me away. You laugh at me. I am an old man with old ideas. I am done. You will make us all very rich. Ach, that is what you say! But it is not enough. You are taking from me my life!”

  Baldur shook him again, and now comprehension came into those little wild eyes, so strained, so bloodshot, so starting. Baldur felt the hard trembling muscles on the arm he grasped, the desperate straining. Then the muscles relaxed, slackly. The old man was trying to scowl again.

  “You wake me,” he muttered. “Does she want me?”

  “No, not yet. But you were talking too loudly in your sleep.”

  “Ach,” said Hans, falling back in the chair. He began to pluck at the black silk of his robe. He glowered. But even the glowering was pathetic. Once he muttered again, exhaustedly: “Gleichschaltung!”

  Hail rattled against the windows, and the light of the candle bowed, flared, wavered, sank into semi-darkness. Hans shivered. His hands, plucking, moved feverishly. He was groping in some fathomless despair of his own. All at once he lifted his head and fixed his eyes on Baldur, blankly. Then, slowly, to Baldur’s uneasy surprise, he began to smile, cunningly, slyly. The smile became static, frozen, like the grimace on the face of a statue. Baldur was even more surprised when his father spoke thickly, haltingly:

  “You do not like Franz, nein?”

  Baldur sighed. “I do not think of him at all. My mother is dying.”

  But Hans was suddenly imbued with a febrile activity. He caught Baldur’s thin wrist in his sweating fingers.

  “You are my son! I see, there is a way!” He dropped Baldur’s wrist. But his smile remained, cunning, lighted, infinitely crafty.

  Baldur was taken aback. He could not understand. He frowned a little, sighing.

  He knew only that some deep sleepless agony had his father, as formless but encompassing as universal pain. He knew that his father was lost and blind in that pain. He saw Hans slowly push himself to his feet, and move to Mrs. Schmidt’s bedside. Hans gripped the bedpost. He stood motionless, looking down at the dying woman, who hardly breathed.

  Then to Baldur’s moved surprise, the old man suddenly began to weep.

  “Fanny,” he whimpered. “It is I, your Hans. Fanny.”

  His short fat legs wavered. He collapsed on his knees. He laid his head and his tear-wet face on the pillows beside the head of his wife. He was like a terrified child, fleeing at last to his only refuge.

  His voice, his presence, awakened Mrs. Schmidt to life for the first time. She stirred, and her eyes opened. She saw her husband beside her. She smiled, as a mother smiled. Her hand moved, lifted, fluttered, laid itself gently on his cheek. She sighed once, smiled again, closed her eyes. Hans’s whimpering rose higher and higher, until it was a far howl.

  A few days later, after the funeral, Mrs. Schmidt’s will was read.

  To Ernestine, her daughter, she had left all her many jewels and personal treasures, locked safely away in bank vaults.

  To her husband, there was left what he already had: the Schmidt Steel Comany, which had been her father’s.

  To Baldur was left two-thirds of the bonds of the Schmidt Steel Company. Now Baldur was a very wealthy man, for in one year he would be thirty-five, the date on which he would inherit the vast fortune of his grandfather, which had been left in trust for him.

  CHAPTER 9

  The shock of Mrs. Schmidt’s will was a profound one to Franz Stoessel. He knew that she had in her possession two-thirds of the bonds of the Schmidt Steel Company. He had thought that Ernestine would inherit them. When he discovered that the will, leaving the bonds to Baldur, had been made only two months before her death, he suspected, with vicious insight, that in some way the poor creature had been influenced to do this. Could it be Baldur? He doubted it. Then, he knew that Hans had done this thing to him.

  He was appalled, and infuriated. Had he been too indiscreet in forcing Hans too rapidly? He knew that Hans was inordinately proud of him, that he had deep rough affection for him. He also knew that Hans detested Baldur. What then, lay behind this? He dared not ask outright. When he tried delicate questioning, Hans displayed a subtlety and reserve which Franz did not know he possessed.

  However, one day he said bluntly, with a peculiarly furtive glance at Franz: “Is it not enough for you? The bonds, you would have, ja? Why? My wife, she thought that Tina and you would have the mills some day. That is not enough for you, but you should have the bonds, ja?”

  When he said this, Franz was enormously relieved. It was not the bonds so much, that had frightened him. Shortly, he began to renew the pressure on Hans, but now with more finesse and tact. This chaffed and infuriated him. He believed in riding a rising tide. The tide was rising rapidly, and now he must dally, side-step, and wait, while the tide rose higher and higher. For one of his nature, this was intolerable.

  His lack of inner resources had kept him from developing a philosophy which might have sustained him in a hiatus. This was both his strength and his weakness. The strength of this lack prevented him from indulging in a patience which would have really been complacence, and forced him to continue to advance, paradoxically, while he marked time. The weakness of his lack resulted in a moody restlesness and irritation, for he found no satisfaction in anything but the advancement of his own purposes. The world, for him, possessed three dimensions only when it was colored and made solid by self-gain and triumph. When he was forced to wait, or move very slowly, the world became backless cardboard, without color or substance, an arid place of sawdust, gloom and silence. A lesser, or a greater, man, would have filled these periods with lightness, gaiety, amusement, education, travel, reading or music. But something in him shrank from music, so that he would close his doors, or leave the house, when Baldur played. The music, when he could not flee from it, produced in him a sort of thick smoldering despair and bitter hunger, which he dared not analyze. Something strange and dark and mournful stirred in him, when he could not escape, something which made Irmgard appear before him, vivid, lost, and warm. But it was even beyond Irmgard; she was only a symbol. He no longer read, not even his favorite poets. Once he picked up a volume of Shakespeare, but a few passages aroused in him such a hot tormenting fever, such a sensation of complete desolation, that he flung the book from him with a loud cry.

  One night he encountered Baldur in the hallway. Baldur had been softly playing excerpts from Mozart, and had left his piano for a few moments.

  “You are leaving? And just before dinner?” asked Baldur, with his invariable politeness.

  Franz regarded him with open savagery just before he assumed his usual bland and charming smile.

  “Yes. There is some business.” And then he had gone, with a courteous inclination of his head. But Baldur looked after him reflectively, with a sensation of amused but saddened compassion. He was beginning to understand his brother-in-law more and more every day, and the understanding, while it increased his original detestation and disgust, also increased his pity and interest. Baldur, these days, had been finding life less dull. There was Irmgard, restored to him though at long intervals. There was little Sigmund. And last, but certainly not least, there was Franz. Yes, he would think, life was defi
nitely assuming some frail excitement.

  In the meantime, Franz moved with a definite, though maddeningly careful progress. In the mills, he had begun to roll steel instead of casting it. (In every move now, he respectfully consulted Hans, and deftly contrived, in most instances, to infer that the innovations were those of the old man, and not his own. Quite frequently, Hans was deceived.) Slowly, Franz began to abandon making rails by the Bessemer process. In the Bessemer method phosphorus had been the brittling agent, which caused rail-failure. By the open hearth process, the phosphorus was eliminated. Too, rails too often “crocked.” The hydrogen had little time to escape. Franz began to roll rails, at the suggestion of one of his insignificant research men.

  Another of his men declared that the father-to-son method of welding was unscientific. He suggested improvement which Franz cautiously put into operation without Hans’s immediate knowledge.

  Orders were growing enormously. When Franz had married Ernestine, a customer was content, when ordering 20 per cent carbon steel, to take 30 per cent or even 40 per cent. Franz was able to reduce this to even less than 15 per cent.

  Now, at another suggestion of one of his obscure and ill-paid little research workers, Franz began to use coke for fuel, though Hans and Dietrich vehemently protested, prophesying complete failure. But it was not a failure. It was a tremendous success. The old blast furnaces were considered satisfactory if they produced fifty to one hundred tons a day. Franz was able to increase this production to as high as four hundred tons. He was able, then, to reduce the price of his steel far below the existing market rate. “The only way steel can be used for many more purposes than it is today being used for, is to make it cheaper,” he said.

  The iron ore deposits in Northern Michigan were now, to a satisfying extent, in the hands of the Schmidt Steel Company, this making the company, in a large measure, independent of the Pennsylvania mines owned by the Sessions Steel Company. As a result, Sessions Steel offered their iron ore at greatly reduced rates. Jules Bouchard, in person, came to Nazareth with his offers.

  In the meantime, having heard that Brazil had been discovered rich in manganese ore, Franz quietly bought up options in that country, and began to import the ore, which had originally been obtained from Russia. The savings were enormous. Sessions Steel, fuming and enraged, bought the ore from Franz at his own price, which he cleverly kept considerably under the price of the Russian ore. He negotiated with the owners of freight boats, tied them up with contracts. Sessions Steel began to regard him with immense and thoughtful respect, while hating him.

  In the meantime, he secretly began experimenting with structural steel. He continued his experiments with the rolling of steel instead of casting it.

  The Schmidt Steel Company, now, from originally being a small tidy concern, humbly grateful for a place in the industrial sun allowed it by such concerns as Sessions Steel, began to lift its chimneys far above all others, and to turn its thoughts to the widening and ever-accelerating future. Wall Street regarded it respectfully. Andrew Carnegie spoke of it with irritation. John D. Rockefeller rubbed his chin, and said nothing, but thought a great deal. The mills in Nazareth had expanded, in less than seven years, to three times their original size, and employed ten times their first number. Franz had cleverly contrived to import his own laborers from Europe, in spite of the Alien Contract Labor Law, which Sessions, among the original sufferers from this law, loudly brought to the attention of Washington. But Franz had carefully prepared the ground in advance, among his many politician friends, among them even Nicholas Session himself, who was not above good rich bribes at the expense of his own brother’s loss.

  Once Jules Bouchard said to his brother, Leon, with much ruefulness, but admiration: “This German swine is an even greater rascal than I am. For a member of a race completely lacking in subtlety and real imagination, he is doing very well.”

  To which Leon replied: “He has replaced subtlety with the blunderbuss and the club. Who knows? Perhaps the day is coming when the club will be more effective than clever conversation.”

  But Jules said, reflectively: “I have talked with him. He is no fool. But he is also no genius. He uses other men’s brains, while we distrust them. Perhaps that is his secret. But it is not in our character to treat respectfully the brains of others. We French are too egotistic.”

  Leon answered: “It may be the Germans have the secret of the future: the use of other men’s wit as well as their strength.”

  And now Joseph Bryan, arch-enemy of the Bouchards and the Barbours, and the Sessions Steel Company, and their patron, Jay Regan, smiled smugly in his black-walnut and crimson New York office, and congratulated himself that Franz Stoessel had persuaded him to grant certain loans. “I never make a mistake in a man,” he boasted, for Bryan was an Irishman and had no false modesty.

  Franz Stoessel, forced to move with delicacy and caution for a little while, watched the rising tide of his life arch high above his head, and fumed.

  But on the whole, it was not too bad. He was a millionaire now. He was not satisfied. If he had all the world, he knew, he would never be satisfied. There was a thirst and a hunger in him to which he would give no recognition, but they were there, consuming.

  CHAPTER 10

  Since her mother’s death, a sick suspicion had come into Ernestine’s mind that she was desperately, horribly, alone. Some invisible and intangible barrier, but a strong one, had risen between her and her father, and her brother, and her children. There was no comfort for the confused and miserable little creature even in her children. Sigmund, she discovered, was hardly her child. He was so quiet, so remote, so timid, and yet so haughty. There was Joseph, the pride of his father, but he was even less her child than Sigmund. There remained only Franz, and from the night of a certain dream, she regarded him with vague dim bewilderment, touched with fear.

  She dreamt that she was in the immense and gloomy drawing-room on a cold dark night. She could see the fire faintly burning, and heard the wind at the windows. She was sewing before the fire, and long white lengths, dimly glistening, flowed from her knees onto the carpet. She sewed desperately, and with a kind of fever, for the dream had begun on a note of deathly panic. She must finish this sewing! She looked up, and the room was filled with her family: Hans, Baldur, the children, and Franz. In a far corner, endlessly watching, sat Matilda, her plump hands on her fat knees.

  Suddenly the panic gripped Ernestine fiercely by the throat. She looked at her father, who sat near her, staring at the fire. She called to him. He did not answer. He appeared frail and tenuous, with pale slack cheeks and bowed head. She thought to herself: He is old. She stood up abruptly, and the shining stuff fell about her feet. She ran to her father, reached out to touch him, and saw that he had disappeared. His chair was empty. She uttered a loud cry. She turned to Baldur, and called to him. He did not look at her. She reached out to him, and then his chair was empty. Horror seized her, the black horror of a nightmare. She turned to her children, holding out her arms to them. They were playing on the carpet, in utter pale silence. She approached them, and the spot where they had been became empty. She was conscious of icy wind in the room, and she thought confusedly: The windows have been blown in!

  She turned to Franz, the terror and ghastliness of the nightmare thick upon her. She ran to him, screaming, for protection. The lights became dimmer. She was in a wide empty place of complete desolation. Franz rose up to meet her, as she stumbled across a floor suddenly become a sucking marsh. Wind froze her flesh; her legs bent under her. Her arms fumbled for Franz. He was waiting for her, not moving. She came to him, ready to fling herself for protection upon his chest. Then she saw that he loomed over her, tremendous, silent, smiling. It was his smile that stopped her, for it was so gloating, so hating, so brilliant with malignance. She stood, shuddering, staring at him. He said nothing. She could see the glittering of his eyes, the fixed loathing and triumph of his smile. Her heart became iron, studded with spikes, turning over and
over in her breast. She felt the complete fear of death, and something else, unnamable, but formed of terror and approaching dissolution.

  He stood and looked at her, and it seemed to her that eons passed, while she stared, her flesh dissolving. She thought: He is my enemy. He has always been my enemy. He has hated me. He has driven away my father and my mother and my brother and my children, so that he can destroy me. There was no grief in this thought, but only despair and terror, and the desire for flight. But she could not move.

  All at once she heard Matilda’s laughter, shrill, high, inhuman. It was that sound that released the icy grip on her body. She turned. She tried to run. But everything was dark and swirling. Suddenly she felt Franz’s hand on her shoulder, crushing down to the bone. She struggled. The nightmare gag on her tongue was momentarily loosened. She uttered a wild and despairing scream, such as an animal might utter. Then she woke up.

  It was Franz who had awakened her, impatiently, but with an indulgent smile. He had lit a lamp, and now stood by the bedside, laughing a little. “What a dream that must have been!” he exclaimed. From her pillows she stared up at him with wild eyes, motionless, distended. He reached out to touch her reassuringly, but she shrank back from him, whimpering.

  “Go away,” she pleaded. “Oh, please! Go away!”

  He had shrugged, and had left the room. She lay on her bed, shivering, unable to warm herself. She did not wonder where he had gone, in the middle of the night. She was not concerned. She continued to stare at the opposite wall until long after daylight. For several days thereafter, she was unusually silent, and pale and nervous, and given to sudden inexplicable gusts of weeping, which made Franz impatient. “It is your condition, my love,” he would say, indulgently, for Ernestine was four months pregnant with her third child. “But you must control yourself. It is not good for the little one.”