There was a sudden yet violent silence, in which the two men stared rigidly at each other. Then Hans, with a roaring bellow, sprang to his feet so furiously that the chair toppled over. He stood before Franz, a quivering and savage lump of pink flesh, his eyes flaming, his fists clenched. Every hair on his rosy skull bristled, as did his mustache. His chest heaved. Dull sounds issued from him, as though he were choking.
The effect was a little nullified, when Franz calmly lifted and replaced the chair. Seeing this, Hans doubled his rage.
“So! You would be a Kaiser, a King of Prussia, would you! You would be my Superintendent, would you! Who are you? A yellow Prussian swine, working in my own mills! I ought to kick you out of here, and down to the street! How dare you be so impudent, you pig?”
Franz paled. Had he gone too far? If he had, then everything was lost. Nothing more could be lost by increased boldness. Moreover, his own cold anger was rising, the murderous anger of the German. This foul fat peasant, who by a whimsy in this contemptible and casteless America, had become rich and powerful, while better men had to cater to him! In Germany, he thought, fixing Hans with eyes as black and vicious as winter ice, it is I who would boot you out of my way!
Then, another thought occurred to him. Did Hans know this, know the contempt which one like Franz would feel for him in their native country? And was he merely taking a malicious pleasure in revenging himself on Franz’s helplessness? Suddenly Franz was sure of it. For Hans, still roaring, had retreated a step before Franz’s fixed and contemptuous eyes. Franz quickly concealed his own feelings. He made his face express pride and affront.
“I am going,” he said, and there was no respect in his words. He picked up his cap and went towards the door. He was sweating a little. But he did not walk slowly. If his intuition was correct, he would be recalled. If it was wrong, he had lost nothing.
At each step he expected the stentoriously breathing Schmidt to halt him. But he did not. I have lost, he thought. He put his hand on the door-handle. He turned it. I have lost, he thought again, with a sinking sensation.
Then Hans, who had been watching him cunningly, suddenly yelled:
“Come back, you pig! How dare you leave without my permission?”
Franz halted, his hand still on the door-handle, the door a little open. He saw Dietrich beyond, smiling slyly, Dietrich who had heard Hans’s roaring. Franz opened the door wider, then looked back over his shoulder.
“I shall not stay to be insulted,” he said, coldly.
Hans danced a step or two in fury. “Come back!” he shouted. “I have commanded you!”
Franz shot a quick glance at Dietrich, who had stopped smiling. The two men regarded each other through the opened slit of the door. Dietrich had turned the color of old ashes. Franz closed the door softly, smiling to himself. He went back to Hans, walking reluctantly, and he faced him.
“What more is there to say, Mein Herr?” he asked.
Hans continued to breathe hoarsely, and to scowl with ferocity. Then he fumbled for his chair, and sat down. He pointed to the one extra chair in the room. “Sit down,” he said, grimacing.
Now Franz knew that he had victory. He wished that he had left the door open a little. His heart began to pound with dizzy exultation. Nevertheless, he pretended more reluctance, as he took the chair indicated. He stuffed his cap in his pocket, leaned back in the chair.
“So!” said Hans, thrusting out his lips. “You will be Superintendent, eh? You, who know nothing!”
“If you mean the men, Mein Herr,” said Franz, “I do not admit I know nothing. I know them only too well. However, it is true that the theories of actual management are unknown to me. That is why I am now asking you to make me assistant Superintendent to Herr Dietrich. Not merely his ‘assistant,’ as proposed before. Then, after I have qualified, and learned everything, I wish to be Superintendent.”
He leaned forward a little, facing the speechless Schmidt.
“There is much wrong with these mills; I have made a study. They are failing. They will continue to fail, even with my patent for my moulds. I know what is wrong. Within two years, or less, I can correct these things.”
He added, reflectively: “I can make these mills the greatest in the state, perhaps even in the country.”
Hans glared at him incredulously. “You conceited fool! You believe that?”
He could not believe that he had actually heard Franz’s words. He stared into his eyes. He began to smile, savagely, contemptuously.
And then, all at once, he knew that Franz had spoken the truth. It was incredible! It was not to be believed! It was madness, and all insanity! Yet, his shrewd intuition, which had never failed him before, shouted that it was all true! His tiny eyes opened and fixed themselves, astounded, and the jaw sagged. He was regarding a miracle. The veins in his neck and temples swelled, became congested. He felt old stirrings in himself, which he had not felt since he was a young man, when everything had seemed possible. It was a long time since he had experienced these stirrings; he had almost forgotten how they had affected him. These last years he had become static, had accepted what success he had made, had believed he could go no further. That is why I have been failing! he thought to himself, with sudden and dumfounded revelation. When a man believes he has accomplished all that there is in him to accomplish, he has failed. He is retreating. He has no more inspirations, no more visions, no more exaltations. He lives, hovering on the edge of his own grave, not because he is only tired and old, but because he has ceased to believe in miracles.
A vast and sweating excitement filled him, and now all over his body the veins were swelling, and his heart was beating as fast as it had beaten when he was young. The placid gates of resignation had opened. He heard and saw the battle once again, and now he was once more young and excited and eager! Joy flooded him. His eyes flamed, sparkled. He exuded excitement and exultation.
Yet he said, trying to speak contemptuously, trying to laugh harshly:
“It is a mad program, spoken like a fool! You are audacious to speak so to me, who have done everything. You have done nothing. You are a braggart, like all Prussians. You are a dreamer of wild dreams.”
“I never dream,” said Franz, quietly. “I plot.”
Hans laughed uproariously. “Tell me you have plotted today!” he shouted.
“I did!” Franz stood up now, leaned his hands on the desk, and leaned across it to Hans. “I did. Not perhaps just in this way. But I lived for today, and even for the things we have said.”
Hans stopped laughing, abruptly. A sneering grin still lingered on his lips. But the sneer was not in his eyes, which bored into Franz.
“I believe you,” he said at last, incredulously.
He could not endure his excitement. He stood up. He had paled; his whole round flabby face was pale. He began to smile.
“It is madness,” he said. “It is not to be believed. Yet, I believe you. It is done!” he added, speaking loudly, rapidly.
He walked to the window on shaking stout legs. He stood and gazed through the dusty panes, and looked at his mills. Once he had dreamt that they would be huge, encompassing, formidable—a kingdom of steel. The dream had him again. It was not too late. Suddenly he saw Ernestine’s small face.
He turned quickly. Franz was still standing near the desk, white and quiet. But his eyes were blazing.
Hans came back to the desk.
“It is done, then,” he said, surlily, touching his bell for Dietrich. He wet his lips. “On New Year’s Eve,” he continued, as the door opened and the ashen Superintendent came in, “there is a party at my home. You will be there. At eight o’clock.”
He frowned at Dietrich, who hardly seemed able to walk. “Take this man out!” he bellowed. “I have heard enough foolishness this morning!”
CHAPTER 38
Once deciding upon a course of action, Emmi wasted no time in discussion, caution, and vacillating words. Like a steel weapon, she drove home to the heart o
f the problem. A farm must now be bought, and she did not murmur vaguely of waiting for “better weather,” and “the spring,” and “perhaps we ought to look at another part of the country.” Her great hatred was for those weak souls who “weigh every aspect of the situation carefully,” and who fear “to do things in a hurry,” and who urge “consideration and judiciousness.” In such inane mumblings, she saw timidity, self-distrust, suspicion and incompetence.
Now she consulted farm-agents, and drove out, during the week before Christmas, in their wagons, their buggies and carry-alls, to survey the countryside. She inspected dozens of farms. If the agents hoped to find an easy and ignorant woman, capable of being deceived into buying worthless property and blighted land, they were woefully mistaken. Emmi, in her loud uncompromising voice, asked scores of questions, poked, investigated, gave her ruthless opinion, larded with insults anent the agent’s intelligence, and marched back to her conveyance through mud and early snow with an arrogant toss of her black and shabby bonnet. Her skirts would flap about her boot-tops, and sometimes she would lift them superbly above her knees as she climbed fences, investigated roofs, disparaged chicken-coops and barns. While doing this, long expanses of white-and-black striped cotton stockings would be visible, encasing strong and sturdy legs. One agent, a former New Englander, paid her a remarkable compliment. “Ma’am,” he said, doffing his hat after a very unsuccessful, and, to him, a smarting day, “you are a foreigner, but you are a blood-sister to my old grandma in Vermont. There was a vixen, beggin’ your pardon, but a lady who knew her own mind and didn’t care who heard her express it.”
“I’ll not be cheated,” replied Emmi, loudly and contemptuously. “We worked very hard for our money, and I shall get my money’s worth.”
“You mean more than your money’s worth,” said the agent, respectfully.
Emmi smiled sourly. “Why not?” she asked.
Under dun skies, through rainstorms and snow-storms, though wind and hail and running roads, she marched everywhere, inexhaustibly. The rim of her bonnet often sagged with wetness, her skirts and boots were muddied, her black jacket became permanently wrinkled and weather-beaten, but her strong pale face and hard little blue eyes were undaunted. She was shocked, audibly, at the sight of neglected farms and blasted land and the general incompetence of the farming people.
“In Germany,” she said, “we raised ten times the wheat on a similar acre of ground, and our cattle, though lacking much pasture, were twice as fat. As for these chickens! I would not use them for soup!”
She glowered at slatternly farm-wives and their hosts of malnourished children. She scowled at dirty farm-kitchens and smoking stoves. She insulted farmers for their lack of energy.
“Such a land!” she would exclaim. “It should flow with milk and honey. But it is sown with weeds and stones and rubbish. Look at that barn! The wind and the rain come in at will. Wicked wastefulness!”
One by one, the beaten and subdued agents abandoned her. At times, she went alone, striding through the countryside, or paying a farmer to carry her short distances in creaking, springless wagons. Sometimes she sat on the hard board seats of these wagons, rigidly holding a huge black umbrella to protect her from the merciless elements. She would look about her at the brown, drenched and bleak fields, at the broken smoking chimneys, at the black hills streaming with water under the gray skies. Her expression betrayed her disdain, her manner despised the people. Then she would tramp from farm to farm, asking if any were for sale. She was shocked at the number of them which she could buy, and she would glare at the discouraged slack faces of the owners.
“A nation which has no love for land is a nation doomed,” she would say, to a bewildered and gaping farmer, who found both her accent and her words incomprehensible. “In Germany,” she would add, “we love the land. That is why you will find none neglected, none blighted. Look at your orchards! It is winter, but I can tell that your trees will be blackened in the spring, and have little fruit.”
She discovered that the most eager desire of most of the farmers was to sell the land and “work on the railroad,” or “on public works.” She was puzzled by the expression “public works,” which conjured up before her inner vision vistas of vast Government buildings, mighty Government highways and avenues. When she learned that it only meant factories, she snorted: “Public works! Ha!” She kept repeating the phrase over and over, with fiercer intonations of contempt each time.
One day, near Christmas, she investigated a certain gloomy worn-out farm whose owner had more spirit than those she had previously encountered. He decided he did not like this “furrin woman,” with her “hoity-toity ways,” and nasty tongue. When he mentioned “public works,” where a “man could make a decent living without workin’ every blessed minute,” she lashed out at him:
“What is to become of your country, where the people abandon the land and rush into the towns? Do you not know that eventually you will have huge cities and empty land, and that in the end all Americans will be working for a handful of masters? Have you no independence, no spirit, no pride, no self-respect? No! For a handful of dollars you will sell your liberty and your soul!”
The man’s long whiskered face darkened. He spat deliberately very close to Emmi.
“Us Americans got along all right till you danged furriners came a-troopin’, ma’am, and if you don’t like our country you kin git out.”
Emmi surveyed him in profound scorn. “A silly argument! Have you no better? You have not answered my questions. You either dare not, or you do not have the intelligence to answer.”
The man fired up instantly. “I don’t have to take no insults from nobody, ma’am, and you don’t ack like a female, nohow! Whyn’t you go over to the other furriners, the Amish folks, and stay with your own kind?”
Emmi was immediately interested. “The Amish.” Her manner became more conciliatory. “Who are they? I am sorry if I have offended you. I did not mean to. Tell me about these Amish.”
The man was surly; then, observing that her face had become quite kind and subdued, he said, scratching his head: “Well, ma’am, they’re furriners like you, though I ’spect they been here a long time. Leastways, they was here when my grandpappy bought this here land. He kind of liked ’em, but I don’t. Stuck-up folks, keepin’ to themselves, and havin’ their own heathen church. Won’t come to ours, nohow. The wimmin-folk wear silly little bonnets, and the men got long beards and funny hats. Marry among their own kind, too, like they thought our own gals and boys wasn’t good enough for ’em!” Reminded thus of a long grievance, he looked at Emmi formidably. “Furriners like that ain’t got no right in our country. Our parson says we’re cherishing adders in our bosom.”
Emmi waited patiently.
“Got the best farms in the country, too!” went on the man, irately. “Stole it right from under our noses. No wonder we got sour land. We got the leavin’s. T’ain’t right. Some says they’re better farmers than we uns, but that’s a lie. Americans are the best of everythin’ in the world. We don’t need no danged furriners showin’ us how to farm. We’re Americans, ain’t we?”
“Certainly,” murmured Emmi. “But perhaps they have no aversion for work.”
“What’s that, ma’am?” demanded the man, suspiciously, then as Emmi did not answer, he went on, fuming:
“Ridin’ around in their funny wagons, and wearin’ their long faces, and jabberin’ in their furrin lingo! They call ’emselves ‘Dutch.’ But I figger they’re Germans.”
“Deutsch,” said Emmi. She was suddenly excited.
“How does one go to their country?”
The farmer surveyed her cautiously. He noted that her clothing was no better than his “old woman’s,” and that she was covered with mud. But her independent air, her arrogantly held head, her firm mouth and her strong stride, had convinced him that she was no beaten and poverty-stricken creature.
He scratched his head. “Well, ma’am, I could take you there. A right
smart piece. ’Bout ten miles. Wouldn’t pay me for my time, and the hoss and wagon, for less’n two dollars.”
“Take me at once,” said Emmi, peremptorily.
She waited in the rutted roadway while he went with more alacrity than usual to hitch his horse to his springless and mud-covered farm wagon. There had been a snow, and then a thaw. The brown ruts, jagged like old broken teeth, ran with thin black water. There was a feeling almost of spring in the air, so clear and pure was it, and so filled with the odor of the soil. Emmi looked over the bronzed and empty countryside, which rose and fell in slight waves and mounds to a distant copse of barren trees. The sky was a pale and silvery dome overhead, like highly polished pewter, in which a few crows circled and floated. There was no sound, not even a stirring of wind, except for the creaking of a pump behind the gray and weather-beaten farmhouse. Emmi breathed deeply, as though cleansing her lungs. She felt invaded by shafts of limitless pellucid air, and made free by them.
The farmer drove his wagon over the ruts, and it heaved like a small ship on choppy waves. Emmi sat upright on the narrow board seat beside the farmer, her umbrella clutched in her black-gloved hand. For a few miles the country was bleak, the houses miserable. A barking dog or two raced after them, leaping and rushing. Emmi waved her umbrella at them, which excited them the more.
Now the country was changing. Low hills glistened with red-brown tints in the distance. The land, barren now of grass, was rich and bronzed. In one field a young farmer with a long black beard was sowing winter wheat. The houses became neater, more compact, many of them of stone, and others of white-painted clapboards with green shutters and red chimneys, which smoked against the sky. The fences were higher, and sturdily made. The silos and barns were painted a vivid scarlet. The barnyards were neat, and full of fat fowl pecking in the pale bright sunlight. The children who played in the roads, and in front of the houses were plump, plainly and warmly dressed in bonnets and hoods and knitted caps and mufflers, and their cheeks were round and hard as apples. A decent, almost smug, prosperity hung over the country. A young woman in a black dress covered by a checked apron, and wearing a tiny black bonnet of peculiar shape, was pumping water from a well, and she waved in a friendly fashion at the wagon as it rumbled past.
The Strong City Page 41
