The Strong City

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  “Suppose, however, that you decide to leave me. You will go to Sessions. You will be hampered there. By Jules Bouchard. I have seen him only once or twice. You know more about him than I do. I ask you to reflect on him, and consider if he will be a better master than I. Or if you will go farther with him. You will not even make as much money! And you will certainly not have the freedom, the authority. Perhaps, however, that will not be so important to you as thwarting me.”

  Franz, not turning, said in a muffled voice: “Nothing is so important to me as doing what I have been doing, in these mills. I have never let personal considerations interfere with anything I wish to do.”

  Baldur looked reflectively at the fire, and said quietly: “You accept, then?”

  Franz came back. He sat down slowly. Again, he was very pale. “Yes,” he said, deliberately. “I would be a fool to refuse. You have offered me everything.”

  And then, for the first time since he had entered this room tonight, he looked at Irmgard’s portrait on the wall above Baldur’s head. Baldur, though he did not lift his eyes from the fire, knew that he looked, and again, he felt admiration for this man who could forget everything in his one supreme purpose, his own desire for limitless power, his own love for himself, though it was a love deeply intermingled with profound hatred.

  CHAPTER 13

  Each morning the children came in to see their parents after their nursery breakfast. Because Franz could not endure breakfast in the chill gloomy vault of the dining-room, his own breakfast, and Ernestine’s, was served in what he considered the only cheerful room in the house. After Mrs. Schmidt’s death, her large chamber had been converted into a “morning-room” for Ernestine, and assisted by Baldur’s suggestions, she had made it into a sunny, gaily colored and comfortable apartment; with much emphasis on yellow, coral and light-green. She had, in late years, manifested her mother’s desire for darkness and heaviness and somber draperies, which Baldur, seconded by Franz, had declared to be sickly and disheartening. At times, these days, she found the sunlight a little overpowering, and the colors of the room not too flattering to her increasing sallowness and pallor, but Franz declared the room to be gay and cheerful and homelike. This was enough for her. Because he liked flowers, every vase and bowl overflowed, even in winter, with masses of soft bloom and sprays of ferns. The fire burned in a grate beneath a simple white-marble mantelpiece, over which hung a large canvas of yellow roses. (Mrs. Trenchard, that dolorous and sententious lady, declared that the room was “vulgar,” and had no “elegance nor air.” This however, did not discourage Franz, who said privately to his wife that there was “air and air,” with different connotations.)

  In this room he could be amiable, and assume, without much trouble, an aspect of paterfamilias. He could even endure his wife’s company for an hour, in the midst of this warm gaiety of color. He could be indulgent to his sons, throwing them a word from behind his morning newspaper and the cloud of smoke from his cigar. In truth, he felt relaxed in this room, whether the early winter morning demanded gaslights or fire, or whether rain gushed in cataracts at the widely exposed windows.

  The January winds and rain had halted in the night, but there was an iron silence, an iron gloom, about the air, the sky and the earth today. Moreover, it had become very cold, and tiny icicles had formed on the window-ledges. Ernestine, in her crimson-velvet peignoir, which was trimmed with bands of white ermine, shivered involuntarily as she sat before the fire, her feet on the brass fender. Always conscious of her seniority over her husband, and increasingly conscious of her swollen body and shrinking sallow features, she attempted a coquettish hair-dress. Her front hair was banged and frizzed in the latest mode, the back and sides swirled to a large bun on the top of her head. But because it lacked vitality and youth, there were always a number of untidy and frayed locks straggling over her thin neck, which had lost its former whiteness and innocence. Lost, too, was the former delicate shyness and the fragile, uncertain gaiety she had possessed as a young woman, qualities Hans had loved. There had once been a pathetic eagerness about her, and a sweetness, a softness. All these had been replaced, and the impulsiveness, too, by a fretful and chronic semi-invalidism, a slight but constant hysteria, a melancholy and tired uncertainty. And a feverish bewilderment, both painful and tedious to her associates. Moreover, she had developed a peevishness with every one but Franz, with whom she was always nervously fearful, solicitious, eager to please, adoring and possessive, yet servile. Her absorption in him had given her once-soft and upcurling lips a hysterical, half-parted droop, imparting to her countenance a look of blankness and instability. Her feeble health, rapidly declining, had sallowed her complexion, and had encircled her eyes with dark streaked circles. Even her eyes had lost something of their large simplicity and childlike ingenuousness, which had been replaced by a wandering and febrile stare. She looked much as her mother had looked at her age, and the resemblance was markedly increasing every day. Her voice, once high and sweet, had sharpened, developing an undertone of petulance. Because of brown spots on her small thin hands, she affected much frothing of lace at the sleeves, and many rings, which repulsed Franz, who liked simplicity and cleanness in women, or, in some women, healthy exuberance and sparkle. There was something in Ernestine which he found unhealthy and unclean, no matter her perfumes and her Pears’ soap. Perhaps this was because her body, in spite of two pregnancies, remained flat and immature, and without vitality. Her shriveled flesh and bad color, her ringed eyes and fluttering hands, made him distend his nostrils as though they had encountered a fetid odor, which revolted him. At one time, during the early years of their marriage, he had sometimes liked a certain illusive delicacy in her, a certain light laugh and innocent eagerness. These had gone, leaving an aging woman full of pains and weariness behind, a woman who disgusted him with her love and her hands, which gave him, in his health and strength, a sense of personal violation.

  He had not forgotten Irmgard. But the singular quality of his mind prevented him from concentrating upon her to the hurt of his ambitions and his expediency. However, she remained for him a symbol of that cleanness and freshness which he secretly loved, and which became all the more precious to him in this atmosphere of cloying adoration, dark corners, gloomy corridors and close unaired smells. When he thought of Irmgard, he seemed to see her on a high windy hill-top, silhouetted against a brilliant blue sky. He had never seen her like this, with the odors of sweet hay and pungent fields heavy about her, and sun on her hair and on her lifted profile. Yet, he was sure he had really seen it, and the memory tormented him when he was alone at night. Somewhere in his mind the clue lurked, tantalizing, yet promising a momentous revelation if he could find it. He still searched for Irmgard, but without much hope, and now, without much passion. She had become a dream to him, as she was a dream to Baldur. But the dream made his life with Ernestine all the more unbearable, and increased his hatred for his wife, and his disgust. However, his self-control, which came from his shrewd and scheming lack of imagination, made him put aside anything which might distract him and give him pain. Baldur suspected hypocrisy in Franz’s blandness and amiability. But there was more than hypocrisy. There was self-protectiveness, and a real ability to make the most of the passing moment, and the passing acquaintance.

  He had a curiosity about his children, half-instinctive, half-malicious, and so he endured Ernestine’s cosy and maternal interviews with the little boys in the morning. He would put down his paper and smile at them indulgently and pleasantly. He would rally them, chuck them under their chins, tease them more than a little, then admonishing them with a sudden hard sternness which Sigmund found distracting, he would yawn, rise, kiss his wife on her flabby thin cheek, pat the boys on the head, and leave. For the rest of the day he never gave them a thought.

  Ernestine had a headache this morning. The headaches her physician ascribed to her “delicate condition.” But she remembered that she had been having them for years. She detested the thought of spec
tacles, which would enhance her appearance of seniority, and, fond of reading romantic and grandiloquent novels, she would squint for hours over fine close print. Thereafter, she would be exhausted and almost blind. Last night she had read until three in the morning, not putting down her book until she heard Franz’s soft feline steps on the carpet in the corridor. She had hurriedly blown out her bedside lamp, pretending to sleep. Never did she reproach him for these long mysterious absences at night. Something instinctive warned her against the revelation which would bring her agony, for she had no doubt, in her subconscious mind, that Franz would take a malevolent pleasure in telling her, if she asked. But, consciously, she told herself that she pretended sleep because he would be annoyed at this threat to her health in long sleepless hours of reading.

  The little boys came in, having eaten their breakfast. They were small for their nine years, but they were neat in their tight little trousers, long black stockings and buttoned boots, and dark-blue blouses with wide, braid-trimmed sailor collars. Their boots shone; their hair was brushed and smoothed until it gleamed. Joseph was slightly smaller than his twin, and quicker, and more given to quick sly grins. Sigmund walked reluctantly one step in Joseph’s rear, his diminutive triangular face watchful and somewhat sullen. There was a bruise on his cheek.

  Ernestine held out her arms to them with a wide dramatic gesture. “My darlings!” she fluted, in her high voice which had for some time taken on a thin tremor. She never lost the hope that her children would spring lovingly into her arms, and she would hold them to her breast, looking wide-eyed and smiling over their heads at Franz. (There was just such a picture in the novel she was now reading: “Mrs. Smitherley’s Secret Loves.” She was enamored of the picture she would make, but the picture never materialized. Joseph invariably sidled over to her, crab-wise, impatiently evading her arms, and letting her warm kiss touch his ducking ear. Then he would dart away, on some restless errand of exploration. Sigmund, however, would approach within a wary two feet of her, and would hang back as she would literally drag him to her knee. There he would suffer a kiss on his cheek. He did not move. He would merely grow rigid and very stiff. She would, at the last, have to push him away with a half-playful, half-impatient laugh. “Such a cold child,” she would say, and in her smile was something repellent and inimical.

  The same pantomime transpired this morning. Franz found it enjoyable. He knew what Ernestine wished, and what she thought, and he found her invariable frustration one of the happier moments of his morning. Consequently, his smile for his children would be genuinely amiable and amused, as if he were grateful. He found nothing pathetic in the scene. He never considered the heart-hunger behind the dramatics. He only knew that Ernestine produced this little play in order to seduce him into a fresh realization of their own intimacy as parents of these children. His satisfaction at her wistful disappointment and frustrated sickly sentimentality made him feel quite a real, if only momentary, fondness for the little boys. They were conspirators with him against the unhealthiness which was their mother.

  There was a smudge of egg on Joseph’s upper lip this morning, and Ernestine complainingly called him back to her. Protesting, scowling, the little fellow returned to her, struggled while she wiped off the egg with a wisp of handkerchief saturated with eau de cologne. (Always, in later years, the children were nauseated by that strong lemon odor, for it reminded them of their mother’s morning-room, her damp thin hands, her aura of ill-health and forlornness.) In the meantime, Sigmund waited rigidly for his mother to comment peevishly on something in his toilette, after the more gentle ministrations offered Joseph. He was not disappointed. When Joseph darted away to his father, Ernestine critically examined Sigmund. The English governess, however, was exemplary. Nothing was wrong. Ah, yes: one dark brown lock of hair did not lie so closely to his long narrow skull as it might have done. She pulled him to her with a hard and wiry jerk, and forcibly laid down the lock. Her hand had an almost vicious strength in it as she did so.

  “Such an untidy little boy,” she sighed. Sigmund’s large blue eyes met hers. He felt the old familiar pang, vague, insecure, half-frightened, at the expression in her eyes, pointed, cold and suspicious. It was this he saw, not the fond smile. He did not love his mother. He was even more repelled by her than Joseph, for his sensibilities were sharper and more delicate. But it frightened him that any one should dislike him so, that he, a child, should be regarded by an adult with personal animosity. His world, unstable enough as it was in this gaunt dark mansion, surrounded by servants, filled with hatred for his father and repulsion for his mother, tottered even more precariously during these cosy morning interviews.

  Joseph had climbed upon Franz’s knee. He was chattering loudly in his childish treble. It was no gay juvenile talk, full of babyish laughter and high spirits. It was a pack of exaggerated lies and complaints about the governess. Joseph was a born liar. He lied without provocation, and merely for dramatic effect. He lied with malice and cruelty, hoping for revenge on everything and every one. Franz listened, amused and knowing. His big strong hand held the thin little body on his knee. He smiled into Joseph’s narrow sparkling eyes.

  “Dirty, little, lying schwein,” he said at last, indulgently. Joseph paused. He grinned. He was not offended. Franz’s hand explored tentatively in one of his pockets, and Joseph waited, with eagerness. Franz produced a silver coin, which Joseph snatched, with a squeal of delight. Ernestine watched, smiling affectionately, her head on one side. “But he does lie dreadfully, Franz,” she murmured.

  “This is no world for an honest man,” he replied. He was already bored with the child. He pushed him off his knee. He looked down at his paper. Then his eye, travelling downward, encountered the face of Sigmund, watching unblinkingly.

  Franz’s hand, reaching for his paper, halted in midair. He was used to these eye-encounters with his other son, but they never failed to disconcert him, and infuriate him. There was no fear in the little boy’s expression at these times, only an inscrutable wideness and something too large even for conjecture. Franz frowned slightly. He had been able to quell the treacherous and unnamed thing which sometimes made him wish to reach out suddenly for the child and hold him, as one held a strange verity in the midst of chaos. He had been able to quell it, yes, but its pang remained, like a chronic sore, angering him, shaming him, depressing him. Lately, it made him want to inflict some cruelty on this helpless child, in revenge for his own pain.

  “What are you staring at, you little monkey?” he asked, not smiling, his expression and his voice brutal.

  Ernestine came alertly to life, and frowned severely on Sigmund.

  “What a rude little boy!” she said. “Why do you not answer your Papa?”

  Sigmund slowly turned and looked at her. “I was just looking at him,” he said. Then he seemed to shrink, bent his head, and wandered disconsolately to the window. Franz’s eye followed him, and his scowl deepened.

  Ernestine, the sycophant wife, became feverishly animated. She looked after the child. “I don’t know what is to become of him!” she complained, loudly. “He is so ungrateful, so impertinent. And so quiet. I have heard that quiet people are not to be trusted. I hope Sigmund is not going to hurt his Mama and his Papa when he grows up, and repay them with naughtiness for all their love and care.”

  Franz repressed a sudden contemptuous smile. Sigmund stood at the window, his chin on the level with the high sill. His small back was stiff and straight, pathetic and stubborn, yet very defenseless. Franz, watching him, became thoughtful. He allowed an amicable smile to spread over his broad fair face.

  “Leave the child alone, Tina,” he said. “You don’t understand him. He is not bad. Are you, Sigmund?”

  Ernestine’s eyes became hollow and fixed with surprise at this unexpected championing. Bewildered, she looked from father to son. Sigmund did not turn. But the small thin shoulders trembled a little, as though they had been struck. Joseph, who had been restlessly handling his mother’s b
ric-a-brac in the forbidden what-not, dropped a Dresden figurine on the carpet. He glanced surreptitiously at his parents. To his surprise, and gratitude, he saw that they were looking at his brother. He kicked the delicate broken figurine under the convenient leg of a sofa, and ran impishly toward Sigmund. He seized his twin by the sailor-collar, which he dexterously twisted, thus dragging Sigmund backwards.

  “Joseph!” protested Ernestine, still bemused by her startled wonder. Franz rose, snatched the two children apart, and administered a sound thwack to the seat of Joseph’s trousers. Joseph set up a loud howl at this unexpected attack. But Sigmund, very pale and still, merely straightened his collar, and stared.

  “This is enough,” said Franz, sternly, to his favorite son. “You must not hurt your brother. I am tired of it. Leave him alone.” His eye sidled to Sigmund, and he tried for a friendly glance. “Why don’t you thrash him, you little coward?”

  “Franz!” murmured Ernestine, aghast, and increasingly bewildered.

  But Sigmund looked straightly at his father. “They beat me when I do,” he said, quite clearly, quite dispassionately. “And you beat me,” he added, without fear.

  Franz laughed suddenly. “And I shall beat you, if you don’t,” he said. He patted Sigmund’s head. He did not meet those straight large eyes. Joseph, wailing tearlessly but stentoriously at all this infuriating treachery, halted his uproar, and stared.

  Franz picked up his paper, kissed his wife, laughed again, shortly, and left the room, leaving a confused Ernestine, a snivelling Joseph, and a silent Sigmund behind.