The Strong City

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  Richard looked sheepish for exactly thirty seconds, then the flame bounded up in him again. “That was just trial and error,” he said, largely. “It is just beginning to dawn on me, what I want. And it isn’t learning a pack of dry dead nonsense in dusty schoolrooms. It’s—it’s living!” He paused, and his brows drew together in fierce concentration. “It’s men. It’s the substance of life. I don’t know just how to go about it, but it’s beginning to dawn on me, I tell you, Baldur!”

  Baldur was silent, waiting and smiling. Marcia was listening gravely, and Sigmund had fixed his eyes intently on his fiery cousin. Then Richard suddenly flung himself before Baldur, on his knees, his hands clutching the arms of his cousin’s chair. His dark thin face was alive, passionately working, and before that intensity Baldur ceased his smiling.

  “I only know I want to go into the mills. Oh, I’m not interested in learning the confounded business! It’s the men I want to know, the men who work there, sweating all hell out of themselves to make Franz rich, and all of us rich! We aren’t real. But the men who work there, are, and it’s their realness, and what they think, and how they live, that I want to know. Don’t you understand?” he cried, and shook Baldur’s chair in his thin hands, his face twisting in a dark fire.

  Baldur did not answer. His expression became grave and thoughtful, and he looked reflectively at his young cousin. His sensibilities, his perceptions, were so acute that he could understand everything, even that which was alien to him. Through the eyes of others he saw strange and confused and unfamiliar worlds. He saw Richard’s mind, dark, twisting, full of living turmoil, and as vitally alive as a nebula swirling into turbulent being. The sudden vision excited him, and he had the thought that he was gazing at something tremendous and full of meaning and passion and strength. But his own weakness of body, his own delicate and reticent mind, shrank away from the vision as at the touch of robust and painful fingers.

  “Yes,” he said, slowly, at last, “I think I understand. Why don’t you, then, ask Franz to let you into the mills?”

  Richard sprang to his feet, began to race up and down the room, clenching his fists and shaking them in the air. “He’ll laugh at me, I tell you! He already thinks I am a fool, the damn German! Germans can only understand things that have a concrete and practical reason behind them. They can’t understand things that are real, but without hard substance. But I’ll ask him,” he added, threateningly, suddenly pausing before Baldur, and shaking his fists in front of his chest. He breathed loudly. His eye sparkled darkly.

  “I’ve learned something. He got around the alien contract labor law slyly enough. Now he ‘lends’ those poor Poles, Prussians, Bavarians and Hungarians the boat fare They pay him back, with enormous interest, when they go to work in the mills. They really never get finished paying him. There are so many extras. It’s a scandal! Why doesn’t the government stop him? Because he’s bought too many politicians, that’s why. And then when he’s wrung the poor brutes dry, he throws them out, and gets more, from Europe. It’s got to be stopped, the whole damn business of bringing them here—”

  Baldur nodded his head. “Yes, I agree with you there, Dick. Those who come to America because they were persecuted in Europe for racial or religious reasons, those who come because they can’t endure tyranny and oppression, are valuable to America. They bring with them courage and fortitude and faith, and understanding. They have seen what America is, potentially. But those who come because they were starving in their own countries, and because they think America can make them comfortable, or rich, are a great danger to us. They bring only avarice and stupidity here, and a dull brutishness. Their children will continue to be an increasing danger, for they will never understand America, and will never feel a loyalty for her, and never any affection. They are the real vandals inside the gates—”

  “Yes, they will be a danger!” cried Richard, explosively. He eyed Baldur with ferocious hostility. “But not in the way you mean! The danger is in men like Franz, who bring them here. Men like Franz starve the poor wretches, make slaves out of them, brutalize them, deprive them of real humanity. Men like Franz have no moral responsibility. That is the danger! A population of creatures without manhood and strength, without the courage to fight for justice and freedom. And why? Because they’ve never had a chance in America to become Americans. And America can’t endure with a populace of perpetual aliens. We’ll all go down, I tell you! One day we’ll be a nation of a ruling aristocracy of money at the head of a nation of weak dull slaves, without faith and vision. How can we endure? How can we defend ourselves from enemies with a people who have never had the opportunity to become friends?”

  “How can strangers, who are different from us in blood, race and culture, become our friends?” asked Baldur, smiling with an air of reasonableness.

  “But Americans aren’t a race—they are a people!” shouted Richard, furiously. “We’re all races, and all cultures, and all bloods! But we can have one philosophy, which will make us one people. But men like Franz destroy the philosophy right at the roots, at the very beginning. Because they exploit the newcomers, they force them to herd together, keep them isolated from America, prevent their children from becoming Americans. They build a wall about them, and never give them time or opportunity to be free. For they know that if these poor brutes were free, they wouldn’t be able to make so much money, and keep it.”

  He halted, his face working. He flung out his arms with an angry hopelessness. “But what’s the use? You don’t understand.”

  “But you aren’t very clear, yourself, Dick.”

  Richard beat one fist into the palm of his other hand. “I know that! That’s what I’m fumbling after—to make it clear. It will come clear some day, I know. That’s why I’ve got to get close to the men in the mills and the mines. I’ve got to help them get free, from such men as Franz—” His face lighted up, as though it had been struck by a vivid external illumination. “That’s it! I’ve got to help them get free! For their sake, for the sake of America!”

  He flung himself on the rug before Baldur, and seized Baldur’s small thin knees. His eyes blazed. He smiled passionately. “You always help me, Baldur. You’ve helped me. The first step is to get into the mills—”

  Baldur was silent. He looked down at the vibrating thin young body, consumed with its wild fanaticism and idealistic intolerance and superb ignorance of a hideous and devious world. And then he understood that worlds were not made, not undone, not set upon a path ablaze with fires and stars and the thunders of becoming, by such reasonable and detached men like himself, who love a cynical status quo that has made them comfortable. All the glories and the turmoils which have raised men from apehood into a precarious but shining humanity have burst out like coronas from the individual suns of such as Richard, who are without cold reason and sterile contemplation. Such reason and such contemplation are arid and dusty, the dried and crumbling bones of life, stripped of warm and pulsing flesh. But Richard, who refused to see the derisively smiling faces on the pillars of salt, looked forward eagerly, glowing with the mystic knowledge of unreason, believing in impossible dreams that tomorrow will make possible. Those who do not see the world as it is create new worlds, where fantasies of glory and beauty crystallize into white cities of light, and a vision becomes a reality.

  Baldur was shaken, in spite of his icy reason, and he felt a consuming pang of envy and melancholy. Surely to have a dream, however preposterous, but blazing with passion and beauty, was better than to live in a dusky prison of a world in which only beasts fought and fed and excreted. But I should not like to have such a dream, he thought. It would be so uncomfortable, and dangerous.

  He said: “Go into the mills, then, Dick.”

  But Richard’s mind, like a racer carrying the torch of an immortal flame, had already sped far beyond him. “What do men like Franz care about America? They hate America.” His voice was low and muttering and more than a little savage. “They love only money. And beca
use they love only money, they will destroy America, and everything that is American.”

  He fell into a deep and brooding silence, where he looked at his dreams. His head fell on his chest. He stared at the fire, his young profile large and fierce against the red light. With relief, Baldur abandoned him, turned his eyes smilingly on Marcia and Sigmund. The girl had listened to her brother quietly, hardly seeming to breathe. When the flame had lept in him, there had been in her eyes an answering shine and glimmer. Now she met Baldur’s look seriously, and with an expression of exaltation.

  “Have you spoken to your mother yet, Marcia,” he asked.

  She shook her head slightly. “Not yet,” she answered gravely. Her mouth seemed to pale in distress, then tightened with severe resolution. “But I shall have to do so, soon. I know she won’t consent.” She sighed. “But that won’t matter, not very much.”

  “You’ve spoken, then, to Father Brunswick?”

  “Yes.” Her voice was low, almost inaudible. “Yesterday. I’m eighteen. I can enter the convent without Mama’s consent. I don’t want to do it, but I must. I’ve always wanted this. There is nothing else I ever wanted.”

  Baldur put out his thin white hand and touched the glossy chignon. “I shall miss you, Marcia,” he said, very gently. Strange that this pretty child, brought up in the cold and formal tenets of an indifferent Protestantism, should have this urgent and devouring desire to immure herself in the cloister of a foreign creed. He could well imagine Mrs. Trenchard’s rage and horror and shock. But who knew the mysterious and inexplicable urgings of the human heart? Who could tell from where they came? Baldur knew that it was no romanticism, no fear of life, that impelled Marcia. Perhaps her desire came from loneliness, from an isolation of soul, from some passionate dedication with which she was born. This dedication, though cooler, more lofty, more calm and more attenuated than Richard’s, was the very same. Odd that such a mother should have given birth to these children. Their father had been a dull rich little man, involved in stocks and bonds and financial manipulations, whose imagination embraced only money. Yes, it was very strange.

  As if she understood his thoughts, Marcia put out her hand and laid it over her brother’s. He lifted his head alertly, his eyes still clouded with his dreams. They smiled at each other, deeply, intensely, like comrades come together in an alien land. Their smile was full of love.

  Sigmund had listened silently to all this, turning his head slowly from one speaker to another, as if he understood in his child’s mind. He had the quality of isolation, also, and he had the defenselessness of those who live in themselves. Baldur also knew that in spite of the boy’s stubbornness, pride and natural hauteur, he was too sensitive, too vulnerable. This had given him a pervading weakness. He would always be too open to attack, and before it, he would eventually disintegrate. Could he, Baldur, save him? He would try! Whether he would succeed or not, only time would tell.

  “The cakes are drying up,” he said, speaking very loudly, as if to shout down his thoughts, and the thoughts of the others.

  Some one knocked on the door. The frightened face of old Gillespie appeared. “Mr. Schmidt, Mrs. Trenchard would like to speak to you, in Mrs. Stoessel’s rooms. Mrs. Stoessel is unwell.”

  CHAPTER 15

  “You’ve sent for Franz, and the doctor?” asked Baldur, on the threshold of Ernestine’s sitting-room.

  “Yes, of course,” snapped Mrs. Trenchard. But she was pale and disturbed, and there was a disordered look about her brisk body and face as though she had had some sort of a guilty shock. Something had apparently alarmed her, and her manner was both perturbed and hostile. “You must think me an idiot, Baldur!”

  Baldur, frowning a little, followed her hard and agile step through the sitting-room into Ernestine’s bedroom. Lamps had been lighted, shades drawn, and a fire lit. The room was large and comfortable and warm. Ernestine lay, supported by pillows, her emaciated face ghastly pale and covered with drops of moisture. She had been watching the door achingly, and Baldur caught her eager look, the shine of her sunken and tortured eyes before they faded, upon his appearance. “Oh, Baldur,” she murmured dully, and turned her head aside.

  Pained and somber, Baldur came to the bedside, took the cold and tremulous hand. Ernestine did not look at him. He felt a deep convulsion seize her body, but she made no sound. Baldur laid the hand down gently, and regarded his sister with great anxiety. Mrs. Trenchard stood on the other side of the bed, regarding her niece with a curious mingling of fear, concern and resentment. She kept tossing her head slightly, and compressing her lips, as though she were having an acrimonious argument in her mind with Ernestine. At last she said aloud, with a gloomy pride:

  “The females in our family were always of a poor constitution. There is no strength there.”

  In spite of his anxiety for his sister, Baldur added silently to himself, with bitterness: And there is I, too! He thought of Mrs. Trenchard’s brother, and his mother’s, who was another such as he. He gazed at his sister, his alarm for her increasing. Between the spasms of her silent pain, her exhaustion was profound, and frightening. She kept her eyes shut. Her thick dark lashes lay on her sunken cheek; her mouth drooped. Lying like this, she appeared young again, and vulnerable, and pathetically helpless. Her hands, lying palm up on the bed, looked like the hands of one struck by some one unsuspected of cruelty and hatred. She had forgotten Baldur. Her finely cut profile, drawn with suffering, had taken on a pale dignity and aloofness. The embroidered cambric ruffles at her throat and wrists trembled faintly as though her body was still reverberating to the notes of pain. Her dark hair, released from coils and pins, lay on the white pillows in touching, gray-streaked tendrils.

  Baldur’s alarm suddenly quickened to the heights of panic. He bent over his sister, and said in a low and urgent voice: “Tina! Speak to me, Tina.”

  Her eyelids quivered, then subsided, and she sighed feebly. But she did not look at him, nor speak. Baldur sat down, his legs quaking. “She is very ill,” he said to Mrs. Trenchard.

  “She lets herself go,” replied his aunt. “She refuses to make an effort. One must control oneself.”

  He looked at her, his brows drawing together, his eyes points of blue fire under them. Mrs. Trenchard, meeting that look, quailed, fell back.

  “What brought this about?” he demanded, sternly.

  A dull flush crept over her cheekbones. She shook her head, avoiding his gaze. “I’m sure I don’t know, Baldur. I went in to see her this morning, as usual, and she complained of feeling ill. I helped her into bed, and made her comfortable. Of course, her condition—” and she dropped her eyes decorously. “It is almost time.”

  Baldur said nothing. He leaned over the bed and studied Ernestine closely. Was she conscious? He did not know. She seemed fallen into a profound abstraction, some half-sleep. Her expression became more and more austere, more aloof. Her lips were folded in a stony calm.

  Then, all at once, she stirred, sighed heavily. She said, not opening her eyes, and very feebly: “Baldur.” Her hand moved. He caught it strongly in his own. “Yes, Tina. Yes?”

  But she said nothing more, only repeating, over and over, her deep sighing. Baldur could not endure it. Her hand was cold and clammy in his, the fingers curled about his with desperate strength. He sat there, holding her hand, not moving his eyes from her.

  “Is there anything I can do for you, Tina?” he whispered.

  For a long moment he thought she had not heard. Then, so slow was the movement that it was hardly perceptible, her eyelids rose. She looked at him out of the fathomless deeps of her pain and anguish, and he saw only prostrated accusation there, and dying hostility.

  “So unjust—to Franz,” she murmured, through her livid lips.

  He was shocked, and sickened. He felt her draw her cooling hand from his. He caught it again. He held it tightly. And then he knew that her accusation, her enmity, came from her own terror, which was killing her. The nightmare had her again, and would
not let her go. He saw the shadows of it on her face.

  At all cost, she must have peace now. He bent over her. He forced her to look at him.

  “Yes,” he said, in a low clear voice, “I was unjust. I was wrong. He is everything—that you think he is, Tina. Tina, my dear.”

  The shadow lightened on that poor face. Her lips trembled into the ghost of a smile. The hand ceased its struggling in his. She regarded him with eagerness.

  “And Papa—” she whispered.

  “He was wrong, Tina,” he said, firmly. “And unjust, too. But he was very ill, and old. He—he did not understand Franz. He was so very old.”

  “Yes,” she sighed, smiling almost brilliantly. She closed her eyes again. She breathed more naturally. Her hand warmed a little.

  Baldur suddenly glanced up. Mrs. Trenchard was smiling, tight-lipped, cynical, knowing. Their eyes met. He hated her. In some way he knew that Tina’s collapse was due to this woman. She saw the vivid blue pointing of his eyes, and shrank away.

  The doctor arrived, and made his examination, very gravely. Then he and Baldur went into the sitting-room. The old man hesitated, tapping his fingers with his spectacles, and eyeing Baldur with hesitation.

  “The child will be born soon, somewhat early, Mr. Schmidt.” He shook his head. “Her constitution—I am not satisfied. There is a collapse there, a will to die. I don’t like it.”

  “No, she mustn’t die,” said Baldur. The doctor shook his head again.

  Franz arrived, concerned and pale, and Baldur stood in the background while the doctor repeated what he had said. Franz said nothing; his lips twitched, drew together. Is he acting? thought Baldur. Strange, that one could never tell about Franz. Only he, Baldur, had been able to detect, on occasion, whether the man was hypocritical or not.

  “Is there a question of the mother—or the child?” asked Franz at last, in a stifled voice.