The Strong City

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  His voice, rather quick, mobile and fluent for a man of his stature and build and race, and accented, which had never failed before to soothe, reassure and charm her, now only filled her with vague, unformed misery. With all her lonely and wretched heart, she longed for his affection and tenderness. She knew she had only to implore him for them, and he would respond quickly. But it would only be falseness, she thought, involuntarily, and the thought, when she analyzed it, increased her chronic terror and misery, and appalled her. I am wronging him, my darling! she cried to herself. But she could not approach him, yet. She would not let him touch her. Desolation thickened about her daily, and her weeping increased. Was it her imagination, or did there really exist between him and that horrible Matilda a loathesome kind of rapport? And was it her imagination indeed which made her see little significant glances exchanged, little humorous nods of the head, little smiles, as though these two found the Schmidts contemptible, stupid, detestable? Did they really hate the Schmidts, Hans, Baldur, Ernestine? Never had Ernestine felt so lonely, so desperate, so terrified. She felt enemies about her, creeping in darkness, hidden behind ambushes of smiling affection and gestures of concern and solicitude.

  These sensations did not decrease as the days went on. Now, when her father returned home, with his new heaviness and perturbation and his new lack of bellicosity, she would fly to him, to huddle in his arms, to cling to him speechlessly, overcome with her numb anguish. He would pet her, pat her back, ruffle her dark curls, murmur to her. But he never asked her the cause of her deep trouble. Was this because he knew, or because he was growing old and was preoccupied with his own pains? At any rate, this fat old man was not the father of her younger years, full of loud fierce laughter, shouting words, and strength. There was no comfort for her in him.

  Now, in her appalling loneliness, anguish and misery, she thought of her brother, who had always loved and protected her. She saw, with remorse and dismay, how far she had alienated herself from him. Confused, she tried to understand how this had happened. But she was too ingenuous to see the malevolent hand which had pulled her away from Baldur. I have been too engrossed with my children, and my husband, she thought, reproaching herself for her neglect of this friend as well as brother.

  Yet, her subconscious must have been aware of the real truth, for she found a bewildering reluctance in herself to approach Baldur, a kind of guiltiness and shame. This all increased her hunger for Baldur, a yearning for his understanding and gentleness. She would look across the long dining-room table at him with her misery, dismay and pain in her large dark eyes, but her lips were mute and stiff. She saw many things she had never seen before. She saw that though Baldur was, as always, scrupulously kind and courteous to her, that he was also cold and reserved. I have hurt him, she thought, and dimly wondered at the strength of the pang which assailed her, which even to her innocent self seemed all out of proportion to the fancied cause.

  One morning in the early fall, Baldur heard a faint tentative knock on his door. He was reading by his window, and finding pleasure in occasional glimpses of the russet and yellow trees, and the bright grass sprinkled with crisp fragments of crimson and gold. Since his reunion with Irmgard, he had become aware again of how beautiful the world was, how large, how infinitely full of thoughts and movements and winds. He was experiencing once more that rare peace, that substance-filled solitude, which comes only to the man of thought whose life is refined of grossness, expediency, and greedy ambition.

  When he heard the knock, he smiled and put aside the book. That would be little Sigmund, coming for his morning conversation with his uncle. But when the door opened, it was Ernestine who stood there.

  Brother and sister regarded each other in a prolonged silence, in the clarity of the morning light. Baldur was so surprised that he did not immediately invite his sister to enter, and she stood, wavering, on the threshold. He saw, suddenly, how frail and attenuated she had become, how white were her drawn cheeks, how hollow her dark eyes and colorless her lips. She was so small and delicate of body and stature that she had never seemed to age to Baldur and her father, but all at once Baldur thought: She is middle-aged. She is becoming old. She looks like my mother. Ernestine was thirty-six now, five years older than her husband. She appeared much more, standing there, hesitating, her hand on the door-jamb. There were thin streaks of pure white through her dark girlish curls, and there were pale shadows at her thin and sunken temples. It was her expression, however, which filled Baldur with pain, so sick with chronic terror was it, so fugitive, so ill. Again, he thought of his mother.

  A faint cloud passed across the autumn sun, and its dimness muffled Ernestine’s expression, reduced the sharp threads of whiteness in her hair. She wore a ruffled white-silk morning peignoir, which concealed the swelling of her small thin body. Swirling and graceful as it was, it gave her a spurious girlishness and immaturity. Under its influence, Baldur called gently: “Good morning, Tina. Please come in.”

  He watched her narrowly as she entered the room. Her step was uncertain, as though she had been ill a long time. She did not look away from him. Her eyes fastened themselves on him with a drowning expression. She did not speak. She sat down in a chair near him, poised on its edge like a broken white bird, her hands clenched together on one little thin knee. Now the sun came out from behind its cloud, and Baldur saw her clearly again, and he thought to himself: She is sick. She is dying. She is being consumed by fear and bewilderment.

  But, in spite of his alarm, and the return of his old tenderness for her, he said nothing, only waited. There was no embarrassment in him, only regret and uneasiness. She was like a loved one who had returned from a far journey a stranger. One must move cautiously. Yes, he thought, one must move cautiously, for fear of alarming this bewildered and stricken traveller. Then, all at once, he knew what had driven her to him, instinctively. His alarm grew, and with it, his compassion. He regarded her with hidden alertness, though he retained an attitude of careful ease.

  Her lips, pale and parched, divided in a sigh. She tried to smile. Then her face changed abruptly, became blank yet distracted. A whimper, long-drawn, only half audible, issued from her throat.

  “Baldur,” she began, in a trembling voice.

  “Yes, Tina?” he said, gravely, softly, still holding his book in his hands.

  She smiled again, convulsively. “It is so long since you have called me ‘Tina!’” she exclaimed, with a thin note of hysteria in her words.

  “It is so long since you and I have talked at all,” he replied, speaking carefully, and watching her acutely.

  She made a swift futile gesture with her small white hands, a distraught and fumbling gesture. Again, she smiled.

  “I—there have been so many things,” she murmured. “So busy.” She moistened her lips. Baldur said nothing.

  Suddenly, her face changed again, became wild, blind. Again she whimpered. “I want my mother!” she said.

  Baldur’s eyes darkened. Ernestine had seemed overcome at her mother’s death, but her emotion had been short-lived, and had passed quickly. That had surprised him, for mother and daughter had been very intimate and affectionate. But Ernestine, since her marriage, had appeared engrossed in a kind of bemused and happy enchantment, which had no place in it for grief of any tenacity. His understanding grew larger, deeper.

  “But mother has been dead over a year,” he said. “Much over a year.”

  Again, she made that distraught gesture, which he saw was the gesture of a person involved in intense suffering.

  “It just now occurs to me—that she is dead.” Her voice was faint, without resonance.

  Once more there was silence. Ernestine’s lips twisted, and she wet them with the tip of her tongue. Her eyes did not leave his face. What is it she wants to say? he thought. Why has she come to me, now? Will she say what she wishes to say?

  She was speaking again. “I wish I had a female friend,” she said. “I have only acquaintances. I wish Irmgard were here. Yo
u remember Irmgard?” Her tone was childish. Her eyes were slowly filling with childish tears.

  “Yes,” he said, reflectively. “I remember Irmgard.”

  She spoke with sudden querulousness. “I still cannot understand why she left! It was so ungrateful! And without a word to us! We had been so good to her! Only that day, Christmas, we had given her such valuable gifts, far beyond her station. She was not treated as a servant—Mama was like a mother to her. I—I was her friend. Yet, without a word! And only that little note, arriving a day or two later, after that silence in which we were so worried about her! So cold, so heartless!”

  Baldur could not keep the sharpness and impatience from his voice when he answered this selfish and childish outburst:

  “How do you know that, Tina? How do you know she was cold and heartless? Did it ever occur to you that she had a life of her own, and that in that life she might have had some deep trouble, some sorrow you knew nothing about? How did you know but what she was distracted, or frightened, or wretched? No, you never asked yourself this. You thought only that your convenient servant had run away, without apology or leave. She was a woman, too, and human.”

  “But we were her friends!” she cried, though her eyes dropped with sullen guiltiness. “She might have told us! We might have helped her.”

  “Have you ever thought she had dignity, that she did not wish to impose her troubles or misfortunes upon you, Tina? That, to me, is the highest form friendship can take.”

  She shook her head, stubbornly. “She was all alone, except for that aunt and uncle. She had no other ties here. What misfortunes could she have had?”

  Baldur said nothing. He knew now that this complaint came not very deeply from his sister, and the cause was not very important to her. There was something else. He knew that he had guessed rightly, for she now appeared restless and impatient, as though the subject annoyed and bored her, and had diverted her attention from her real misery and pain.

  “I am all alone,” she murmured to herself. He hardly caught the words. He did not know what to answer, but his concern for her, and his consternation, grew. She wrung her hands on her knees, and again her hunted eyes implored him, furtively. He could not endure it. He bent towards her.

  “What is it, Tina? Can’t you tell me?”

  His voice, filled with the old solicitude, unnerved her. She kept her features rigid, but tears swam up to her lids, ran over them. Her body moved towards him, as though seeking refuge. She cried: “I don’t know! I—I feel ill! Everything is so strange!” In that cry he read her overwrought terror, her grief, her confusion, her abandonment.

  His first impulse was to go to her, and hold her in his arms. He could hardly resist that anguished, twisted face, those tears, that trembling. But he said to himself: Careful. If she tells me too much, she will hate me. She has come to me for the first time in years: something is terribly wrong. Has she found him out? But if I dare intimate I know this, she will really hate me, and will never come to me again. So, he regarded her calmly, judiciously, repudiating the confidence he knew would destroy the last thread between them. He knew that she was coming to him now for reassurance, not for advice after a confession.

  He made his voice normal, strong and warm, even a little tenderly indulgent.

  “Naturally, you feel ill. Women always do under these circumstances, don’t they? They are given to fancies, I have heard. And imaginings. They are also given to strange premonitions, and fears, and dreams—”

  “Dreams!” she exclaimed, moving a little towards him on her chair. Now her expression was less distracted, and had become somewhat eager. “Yes, dreams! So frightening! Nightmares.” Her voice dwindled. She looked at him imploringly.

  He shrugged, and smiled. “And nightmares, in your condition, take on undue importance and substance.” Nevertheless, he was curious to know what her nightmare had been. He believed that nightmares came without casualness. He believed that there was some deep underlying knowledge in the soul which made it cast up the lurid shadows of terrifying dreams into the conscious mind. “Tell me your nightmare, Tina.”

  He was sure he had come upon the truth when she colored slightly, and dropped her eyes. “Silly,” she murmured. She tried to laugh a little, and the sound pained him like the stab of a knife. This miserable, small, unprotected and frightened creature, whom he still loved so much! She looked at him now, and laughed again. “It was so absurd. It was a month ago. I—I dreamt you all disappeared, you and Papa, and the children. There was only Franz. And Matilda. I—I dreamt they were my enemies. I tried to run away. It was really very silly.”

  “Very silly,” he echoed. But his heart had begun to beat rapidly.

  She was less overwrought now. Her smile was less wild. She relaxed a little, and spoke more normally.

  “I was so frightened, Baldur! You can’t imagine. The influence has stayed with me all this time. I don’t feel normally, towards Franz. That is so unjust, isn’t it?”

  “Very unjust,” he said, quietly, and mechanically. He watched her closely. “And without justification, too.” There was just the slightest questioning inflection in his phrasing.

  “Oh, yes, without justification. He is so sweet and good to me. Always so considerate, and thoughtful. No one could have a better husband. This is being very unkind to my husband—”

  “An unkindness I am sure he will forgive, under the circumstances,” said Baldur. He hesitated. “Have you told him about your dream?”

  “Oh no! How could I be so foolish? It would hurt him so.”

  Baldur was silent. He plucked at his lower lip, inscrutably. I should like to see his face if she told him, he thought, and was immediately ashamed of this very human thought.

  She had begun to talk rapidly, feverishly, beating her small fists quickly on her knees as she spoke:

  “I have never liked Matilda. But I—I don’t mind her so much, lately. Papa—Papa does not seem to see her any more. She is just the housekeeper, which is very proper, and just as it should be. She is in her proper place, at last. So, the dream seems even more silly, doesn’t it? Of course, I can see why I dreamt of her. She and Franz, they are Germans. There—there must be a language link, don’t you think so? But, he is very particular about servants keeping their place, more so than I am. But he is so kind, and indulgent, and so he doesn’t say anything to Matilda about impertinences. I—I suppose I should be more strict—the mistress of the house now, since poor Mama died—”

  She was very incoherent. Over the feverish stream of her voice her eyes implored him again.

  “You are making something of nothing,” said Baldur, calmly, clearly. “But, if you cannot endure Matilda, why don’t you discharge her? As you say, father won’t mind. Now. He is hardly aware of her existence. You can easily discharge her.” He kept the hope out of his voice.

  “Discharge Matilda?” She was incredulous, but her own hope lightened her face, subdued her hysteria momentarily. “What should I do without Matilda? I am such a silly little person. I know nothing of managing a home. I wouldn’t even be competent enough to engage another housekeeper.”

  She laughed, and the laugh was almost normal, as her eyes pleaded with him for his affectionate indulgence.

  “Nonsense,” he replied, in the mood she forced upon him. “You could really be very competent, if you wished. You are just lazy.”

  He was almost overwhelmed with his passionate desire to go to her, to say to her: “Your dream was true. These two are your enemies. Rid yourself of this woman. Drive this man away. He cannot hurt you. If he tries, I know enough to prevent him. He will kill you, eventually. That is what he wishes. He is a monster. For all our sakes, send him away.”

  But he dared not say this.

  She nodded her head brightly, smiling with foolish self-indulgence. “Yes,” she said, almst archly. “I am really despicably lazy.”

  Baldur had a sudden thought. “Let Matilda go. You know that Aunt Elizabeth has offered to come to live with us.
You wouldn’t consider it before. She is almost an old woman now, but she is an excellent manager, and would take Matilda’s place.”

  He knew, by the sudden flaring of relief and excitement on her face, how intense had been her dream, how intense had been her preoccupation with it, and her dread, and the sceret knowledge of her submerged soul.

  “That is an excellent idea, Baldur! I shall write to her, today!”

  She looked at him with real relief, and joy. She was the younger Tina again, released from intolerable terror.

  “And, in the meantime,” he said, again watching her acutely, “there are the children. You are not so alone.”

  The joy faded. She paled. “The children,” she murmured.

  “There is Sigmund,” he urged, hoping against hope that he could arouse some maternal passion in her for that poor child.

  But her expression had become sullen again, and resistant.

  “He has such a bad temper, Baldur. I don’t understand the boy. And so rude to Franz, too. So distant, and difficult. He is quite beyond me. I know he hurts Franz, too, with his runnings-away, and his crying when Franz so much as comes near him.”

  He saw it was useless. She was forever aliented from Sigmund, because of the child’s aversion for his father. He saw then how profound was her infatuation, how deathly.

  “I find him a splendid character,” he said, mildly, and with some listlessness.

  The resistant look turned upon him then, and with it was mixed some hostility. “You indulge him. Baldur. Franz has often remarked about it. We think this has something to do with his impudence, and secretiveness.”

  So, thought Baldur, with hatred, he cannot leave even this little one alone. How intense must be his hatred of everybody!

  He tried to turn the hostility aside with lightness. “Every one must have a favorite. Sigmund is mine. I intend to make him my heir. Tell Franz that.”

  “That is unjust to Joseph!” she exclaimed, flushing.