The Strong City Page 16

  Emmi had apparently fallen asleep again. Franz heard the renewed rhythm of her snoring. Then he looked down at the girl in his arms. Her head lay on his shoulder. A soft rosy light covered her face, and her lips pulsed with scarlet. He bent his head and kissed her mouth with a kind of ferocity, again and again. His ferocity was not satiated by the touch of her soft lips. It mounted to fury, tumultuous and shaking. Her hair loosened, and a coil fell on her shoulders. He bent her backwards, and now she tried to escape him, struggling and thrusting, turning her head from side to side. There was something terrible in this silent struggle between them, for neither dared make a sound. A sick shame overwhelmed the girl. All the color was gone from her face. She tried to kick him, but her long heavy garments and his very nearness prevented this. Her breast strained against his chest, repudiating him with mingled terror and humiliation.

  He finally released her, laughing under his breath. She fell back from him, against the wall. She regarded him with wild hatred.

  “Go away!” she cried, her hands fumbling at her hair and garments. “Go away, or I shall call your mother!”

  He hesitated. His face was deeply congested. “Irmgard,” he began.

  But she had recovered herself. “Go away!” she cried again.

  There was now a definite creaking and grumbling upstairs. Franz heard his mother shuffling for her slippers, and Egon’s faint questioning voice. He looked at the girl, and his lips drew back from his teeth in a swift flash. She was looking at him as though he were a loathsome visitation. She was fully aroused, and was capable of anything. He saw that, and he smiled in reluctant admiration. He recognized such ruthlessness, and acknowledged it, sardonically.

  He opened the door. Emmi was already feeling her way in the darkness down the kitchen steps. He closed the door behind him, and swiftly ran back to his room, just as Emmi opened the kitchen door. He flung himself onto his bed and pulled the quilts over him.

  Emmi came into the kitchen, grumbling. “Who is there?” she called.

  The wind answered her. Franz could feel her listening in the darkness. Then, muttering angrily to herself, she went up the stairs again.

  Franz lay tense for a long time. His flesh was hot and feverish, his head aching and humming.

  Then he began to laugh silently to himself.

  CHAPTER 17

  He came into the kitchen earlier than usual the next morning. He had not slept. For the first time in his life, truly violent emotion had come to him, and the unfamiliarity of it, and the profound mystery, had thrown him into a turmoil. Mere lust, which he could understand, appeared to have a small part in it. Irmgard was like some disease which had entered all his body and his blood, consuming them, changing them, and filling them with an abysmal fever and anguished ache. If this were hatred, he could not recognize it, not having hated anything or any one before, except impersonally. By the time the first dim light appeared at his small sooty window, he was certain it was hatred. Surely it was hatred which made him get up this early, and go out into the kitchen! He started a fire for his mother, which surprised her immensely, and softened some of the bitter ice in her heart.

  “That is very kind of you, Franz,” she said, grudgingly, but her eyes were gentler than usual.

  “Nonsense,” he replied, with his charming smile. “I should have done it oftener. I will do it every morning, after this.”

  He insisted upon helping her set the table, and this so bewildered her, and softened her, that she touched him awkwardly once or twice with her rough hand. Her affection was always reluctant and hard, and expressed itself usually in scolding and recrimination. But now she was so overcome that she could scarcely speak.

  Egon came down, and was delighted to see the amity between his wife and son. Peace-loving and gentle and amiable, and hating nothing but disorder and loud voices, his tired strained face lighted, and he could even laugh softly at Franz’s awkward efforts to assist his mother. A good warmth, not only of the stove, filled the snug kitchen, though outside the November day was dull and heavy and lifeless.

  It was now breakfast time, and still Irmgard had not appeared. Nor did Emmi remark on the fact. Franz waited, his fever mounting steadily. Finally he said, with an air of carelessness: “It is getting late. Where is my cousin?”

  Emmi turned to him, surprised and pleased. “Did you not know? Irmgard was to leave before breakfast. A carriage was coming for her very early. She said she would not disturb us.”

  She Stopped, and stared at her son with growing amazement. His face had paled excessively. Even his lips had paled, and an ashen grimness turned his expression dark. “So,” he said, slowly, “she has gone.”

  Emmi felt her heart lift incredulously, and with sudden ecstasy.

  “You like her, Irmgard?” she exclaimed. “Franz!”

  But he turned away abruptly, and went into his bedroom for his coat and cap. Emmi turned excitedly to her husband. “Egon! It is happening as I dreamed! He loves Irmgard! Mein Gott, I can hardly believe it!”

  Egon smiled with deep affection at his wife. He wanted her to be pleased and happy. And now her gaunt tight face was alight with joy. Tears filled his eyes.

  “It is good, it is good,” he said tranquilly, taking her tremulous hand and pressing it between his thin palms.

  Franz came from his room. Emmi smiled at him with strange tenderness. “But your breakfast, Franz?”

  “I am not hungry,” he said, with absent gloom. He did not look at his parents. “It is an odd return for your kindness—she should not have left you so soon,” he added, as though to himself.

  “But, she will be here often, my son,” said Emmi, with sly gentleness. Suddenly, her small blue eyes widened, and she colored. But before she could speak, Franz had snatched up his dinner pail and had gone. Emmi turned with renewed excitement to her husband. “I remember! They spoke to each other last night. I knew it. I came downstairs, but no one answered me when I called. I was certain I heard their voices, and they were speaking loudly, and quarrelsomely. A lovers’ quarrel!” She clenched her hands together, and Egon was unbearably touched by the light and joy in her eyes.

  “Then, it will come about as you wish, Liebchen,” he said, happy only that she was happy. He took off his pince-nez and wiped the mist from them.

  Emmi picked up a corner of her apron, and rubbed it over her eyes. She smiled, and sighed, and smiled again. Her taut face was dissolved in her joy. “There will be grandchildren, Egon,” she murmured, and looked at him softly.

  In the meantime, Franz hurried along the street, which was already shrouded with a veil of mingled drizzle and soot. His shoulders were bent. He walked almost at a running pace, and there was a sickness in him, mingled with fury. His head ached savagely; his eyes were rimmed in dry lids of fire. He hated himself, and hated Irmgard more. He was infuriated that she had dared intrude upon him like this. He flung his head about as though to throw off an incubus. The drizzle freshed to a sharp rain, which ran over his face. He did not feel it. His knees felt weak and uncertain, and now his breath came thickly. He stopped at the corner of the street, and breathed deeply, shaking his head again and again. “Curse her,” he said aloud, and then again, “curse her.”

  He was appalled at his own weakness. He had never experienced strong emotion before. It was his own nature, and his own plan, to keep from feeling strongly about any creature. He had only one purpose. It was now dangerously threatened. He was suddenly frightened, with a raw abysmal fright. If he were capable of such strong emotion, then he was not to be trusted. His whole life was menaced, because of an obdurate and insignificant girl. She had shown him how weak he was. And if it were true that he was so weak, could be assaulted so easily, then his life would be nothing but failure, and he would end up in impotence. His fright increased to a real and shaking terror. He loathed himself. I am not what I thought I was! he exclaimed, in open and horrified despair.

  “You are empty,” Irmgard had said. She had known! Only she could understand
him. And with this thought came such a powerful yearning, such an anguished grief, that he was appalled, and stood in rigid immobility, staring blindly at the rain. For he realized for the first time that he was not really alone in the world. There was some one else—. Then it was possible for some one to understand him, and by that understanding not to decrease his stature. He could be stronger for such understanding, after all. For he realized, with a flash of light, that he had always been lonely. He had never known it before. It was this loneliness, now, which was consuming him, and not truly the realization that he was impotent and weak!

  All at once his hatred for Irmgard vanished, and it was swallowed up in a great yearning for her. She had not weakened him. She had only made him realize that he was lonely. He had endured loneliness; he could endure it again, if necessary. But surely it was not necessary. Irmgard’s understanding could really strengthen him. He remembered her face, when she was in his arms, and her passionate if momentary yielding. All his flesh suddenly burned, and he was filled with exultation. He laughed openly, loudly, and the workmen, passing him curiously, turned and stared as at a drunkard.

  Someone took his arm. “Are you balmy, man?” said Tom Harrow’s jocular voice. “I’ve been watchin’ you, standin’ here like a duck in the rain.”

  “I was waiting for you, Tom,” replied Franz, with one of those smiles which Tom always darkly suspected but could never resist. Franz’s face, during one of these smiles, took on an expression of amused candor and affection. “Blast me,” Tom would grumble to his wife, “I never can figger out if the chap is a rascal or not, when he grins at me. But I’ve seen chaps as was villains with the faces of babbies, so that’s no tellin’.”

  Dolly would assure him heatedly that Franz was all kindness and gaiety and loyalty. But Tom was never convinced. He was not convinced now. He had often suggested that he and Franz walk together to work in the morning, but it was the rare occasion when Franz consented. Tom subconsciously knew that Franz was a solitary, and his primitive but shrewd instinct guessed that the solitary was always an enemy to other men. But when they were together, the solitary was masked with humor and affection, apparently open-hearted and jovial. It was very puzzling.

  “Dolly’s made us pork pies again,” said Tom, stopping for a moment in the shelter of a doorway to light his pipe. His convex shoulders were thin under the patched overcoat, and rain ran down his sharp beak of a nose.

  “Excellent!” said Franz. “And I’ve some apple kuchen.”

  “And Mary gave me her apple for you,” said Tom, smiling, as they went on together. “Her school apple. The lass fair adores you, Franz, though God knows why.”

  “She is a sweet child,” responded Franz, and for a moment his eyes flickered.

  They walked in silence for a few moments. Then Tom said: “You ’aven’t forgot the meetin’ tonight, in the Elks Hall?”

  “No, no. I’ll stop at your house for you.”

  “You’ll learn something,” said Tom, with enthusiasm. He talked of the projected strike. “If we can only get the Hunkies and Dutchmen together!” he exclaimed. “But those chaps as ’ave lived in countries without freedom and decency is ’ard to learn anythin’. You’ve got to keep after them. Education.”

  “And you are going to teach them?”

  “Why not?” demanded Tom, belligerently. “I’ve got a tongue in my head, ain’t I? And I know what it’s all about. Didn’t my Pa get killed in a mine? Didn’t three of us kids die of starvation, after that? Who’s better than me to tell them foreigners a thing or two?”

  The open hearths were already glowing like the sun when they arrived in the mills. Men stood on small platforms near the furnaces and shovelled coal into the molten mass below. The great cranes scurried under the roof, clanging their bells, the mighty kettles of liquid, brilliant metal swaying from hooks. The kettles poised over ingot moulds, and the metal ran out, the thin hissing cataract too bright for the eye, the clouds of steam rising in a pale pink mist which filled the mill with the shadows of hell.

  Schmidt’s mill was one of the few in the State which combined the manufacture of pig iron with the making of steel. It had been prophesied by his rivals that he was “biting off more than he could chew,” by this. “The next thing you know,” they said, contemptuously, “he’ll be making his own coke, and mining his own coal.” But Schmidt, as though appalled at his own audacity, went no further than this.

  Tom and Franz proceeded through the mill, which was hardly more than a shed open to the bitter winds of winter, to the bessemer and crucible steel mills. Beyond were the blast furnaces, fired by charcoal, which were able to make fifty to one hundred tons a day, a record produced by Schmidt, and which, to date, had not been surpassed by any of his competitors.

  Tom passed Jan Kozak, and touched him on the arm. “Remember? The meetin’,” he said, and Jan nodded and smiled.

  Franz’s temper had not been improved by his sleepless night, and he drove his men viciously. Tom could hear him shouting above the growling roar of the mill. Once he sauntered over and looked curiously at his friend’s pale and livid face and malignant eyes. “Easy there, easy there,” he said. “It’s easy for a chap to give a slip and pour you a bellyful of hot soup. You can drive ’em just so far, you know.”

  “Go back and mind your own business,” responded Franz. He did not give Tom one of his customary smiles. In fact, his expression was both brutal and evil, and Tom was taken aback. “There, there,” he said, nonplussed. “You’ve got the face of a devil, lad. Look there, at the chaps lookin’ at you. They’d love to do you in.”

  Franz clenched his fist as though it held a whip. Tom stared at him, more and more astonished. But in himself he thought: I knew it all the time. He studied Franz with increasing thoughtfulness. Two of the open hearth doors were open; dazzling golden-white light gushed out into the dark mill, and its incandescent reflection shone on Franz’s face. His distended blue eyes, his strong Norseman’s face with its hard jaw and arrogant nose, his big mouth with the lips drawn back so that his teeth glistened vividly, and his big, wellformed body, naked to the waist, but white as milk, were bathed in that sunlike molten glow. His attitude was that of a man half-crouched to spring, and this, combined with his face and his body, gave him an unearthly look, both savage and wild and violent. He did not turn to Tom. He was staring at his men as a trainer stares at untamed beasts. And the men, caught by his look, stood motionless, shielding their eyes from the glare near which they stood, and stared back at him.

  “You’re a one!” stammered Tom. A thrill of something like fear crept along his spine. He saw murder in the driven men’s faces. But this is not what subtly frightened him. It was Franz who frightened him inordinately. The Englishman had known many men, and thought he would never be surprised by his kind again. But there was something in Franz which he had not encountered before in all his life, something not to be understood by him. He could understand all villainy, all treachery, all wickedness, and even all cruelty. But this look and attitude of Franz’s, as though he were a visitation from another world and had not human quality, appalled and astounded him.

  It was over in a moment or two. The men, finally cowed by Franz’s face and eyes, bent their heads and resumed their work. They closed the furnace doors. Now they were in dusk again. Tom turned to Franz. His friend was regarding him smilingly. “Well, what is it?” he asked, amiably enough, wiping his damp foreheaad and upper lip.

  “Nothing,” said Tom. He regarded Franz in a curious silence. Then he added: “Mark my words, one of these days you’re goin’ to get a shovel in your back. Not ’arf!”

  “Why? Because I’ve shown them who’s master around here?” Franz put his hand on Tom’s shoulder.

  Tom did not smile in return. “You hate the chaps, don’t you?”

  “Hate them?” Franz was amused. “Probably.”

  Tom went back to his work without another word. But he was abstracted. What he had seen depressed him, though he could
not understand his own depression. He was tough and hard and wiry, himself. He knew men thoroughly. But he did not know Franz. And not being able to know him, his old distrust and wariness became stronger. “A rum ’un,” he said to himself.

  One of his own men was a German, a hard-working simple giant of a man with friendly shy manners and a tremendous capacity for work. After some hesitation, Tom approached him and addressed him with the name he used indiscriminately with all Germans: “Look here, Fritzie, you come from Dutchland, too. Ever see such chaps like Franz Stoessel there?”

  The big giant leaned on his charcoal shovel and looked long and earnestly down the mill to Franz’s furnaces. His broad flat face darkened, and he paused, as though apprehensive. “Ja. Some. In the Army. Prussians. That’s why I come here.” He smiled diffidently. “I come, or I kill, see?”

  “What a country!” exclaimed Tom. He had a sudden wild vision of a race of men like Franz, overrunning the earth. Then he laughed at his own extravagance. “Go back to work, Fritzie,” he said, shortly, but touched the man in a friendly fashion on the arm. However, he did not return to work for a few moments, himself. His long dark face wrinkled and twisted with his thoughts, and his tiny black eyes seemed to draw closer to the bridge of his enormous nose. He scratched his thick black curls thoughtfully.

  But when Franz met him at the noon hour, nothing could have been more amiable than his face. He shared his lunch with his usual generosity, and Tom, who had been preparing devastating remarks, found nothing to say.