Balance Wheel Page 4

  But Friederich was ranting again, still in German: “You have no pride in our inheritance. Our father, and our grandparents, left Germany because they could not endure Bismarck and slavery. I ask little of you, except that you remember this with humility, and inspiration.”

  Charles tried unsuccessfully to control himself. Speaking in English, and in a hard voice, he said: “Fred, you don’t know what you’re talking about.” He paused. You damned little Bismarck, yourself! he thought. “Maybe Pa and his parents came here to get away from Bismarckian Germany. Yes, they did. And why? Because Pa and his Pa were naturally the sort of people who could not live in any atmosphere but one of free enterprise and individually ambitious men, where a man could be left alone to live his own life, and to rise or fall by his own efforts. Pa wanted nothing of anyone or any Government but the chance to develop himself, without interference or paternalism, or busybodyness from a pack of bureaucrats.”

  Friederich was silent. His glance at Charles steadied, and narrowed. Something was flickering far back in his eyes, those small brown eyes so like Charles’, and yet so dissimilar in expression. They had the look of the zealot, the dangerous look of a man madly preoccupied with his own ideas and madly hating those who did not share them. He cleared his throat. Now his eyes had a curiously sly and furtive gleam.

  It always annoyed Charles that Friederich resembled him rather closely. They were of a height, though Friederich did not have Charles’ somewhat stolid and heavy appearance. He was Charles himself, pared down and attenuated, agitated and fleshless, with the same straight brown hair, the same wide face and heavy mouth. But Charles’ usual expression of good-tempered mildness and determination were lacking in Friederich, and, instead, the latter exuded a bellicose tenseness and passion. All the incoherence and vehemence of his narrow nature seemed to leap from him in visible, zigzag waves, even when he sat still like this, and these were enhanced by the untidiness of his clothing, his loosened dark-blue tie, his dusty shoes.

  Charles thought, with contempt: I’d look just like him, if I lost my mind or started to hate something, or someone, or everyone. Joe thinks Fred is “visionary” and “impractical.” Hell. He’s as visionary as a stone, as impractical as a banker! I’ve never taken Fred too seriously before. Why am I doing it now? I have an instinct, a feeling—

  Charles became alarmed. It was the same alarm he had felt when he had been with Wilhelm. He said, banally: “Well. How are you, Fred? After all, it’s Sunday afternoon, and a time for friendly visits.”

  Friederich said disdainfully, but now he spoke in English: “You do have a gift for saying the most mediocre things. Safe. You like safety, don’t you?”

  “It has its points,” agreed Charles. He smiled. “You haven’t told me how you are.”

  Friederich waved his hand abruptly. “Who cares? Do you? Don’t be a hypocrite.” Now his face changed, became charged with malevolence. “And how is our precious Wilhelm? Still babbling about ‘art’? Still engrossed with that china figurine of a wife of his? Still living in his Dresden tower?”

  Charles tried to answer indulgently: “‘Dresden tower?’ I always thought they called it an ivory tower. But then, I’m not literary, or something. Willie’s all right. Why do you ask? Haven’t you seen him, yourself, lately?” (China figurine! Phyllis. Why, the confounded idiot!)

  Friederich shifted himself in his chair in such a way that the motion appeared obscene to Charles’ suddenly bilious eyes. “Yes, I had the pleasure of having dinner in his pretty house two weeks ago,” said Friederich. His words were loaded with ridicule. “What food! Veal kidneys in wine sauce! Consomme! Something he said was a salad. The imbecile mixed it himself. Green weeds, with wine vinegar and olive oil, with a ‘soupçon’ of garlic. Pretentious ass. Raw fruit and some disgusting French cheese and black coffee for dessert. Is that a meal for an honest man?”

  Charles’ cold resentment vanished as he could not keep himself from laughing. He, too, was familiar with Wilhelm’s table.

  “Give me Mrs. Schuele’s apfel-kuchen and a pot of her coffee and you can have a dozen of Wilhelm’s meals,” Friederich said.

  He had a habit of clenching and unclenching his right hand almost continually, as it lay on the arm of his chair, which always irritated Charles. He was doing this now. Charles looked away. “At least,” said Friederich, with an air of unwilling tolerance, “you have a good German cook. I grant you that.”

  “Come to dinner tomorrow night,” said Charles, immediately regretting his impulsiveness.

  “I’m speaking in Philadelphia tomorrow,” said Friederich. “I won’t be back until Thursday morning.” However, his surliness lessened.

  “Willie’s got a new Van Gogh,” said Charles, unobtrusively glancing at his. watch.

  Immediately, Friederich became excited again, sitting up tensely in his chair. His eyes glinted. “He would! I asked him for a contribution to the Workman’s Unemployed League, and he laughed at me. Told me to tell the poor devils to go to work! Forgot that we’ve been having a lot of unemployment the last two years, of course. So, he preferred a Van Gogh to feeding a few families, did he? I wonder how he’ll feel when—”

  “‘Comes the Revolution,’” Charles contributed, with boredom.

  Friederich’s nostrils flared and his eyes became vicious. “All right, sneer, Karl,” he said. “But it’ll come, no fear. Bloodless, if possible, bloody, if need be. We’ve got Wilson now, and the tide against oppressive capitalism is turning.”

  Charles folded his hands together with a comfortable gesture. “Ah, yes,” he murmured. “Incidentally, now that we’ll be having a Federal income tax, you’ll be taxed, yourself, pretty hard, won’t you, Fred?”

  The unquiet hand became a hard fist. Friederich sat stiffly, watching his brother.

  “Now I,” said Charles, conversationally, “don’t mind paying an income tax, if that means buying a more efficient Government. But there are some, of course, who are not taking the new income taxes agreeably. Greedy people, and so on.”

  Friederich cleared his throat. It was a rough sound, and one of his annoying mannerisms. “What?” he said. “I pay income tax? I don’t get that much—”

  “Oh, yes, you do,” said Charles, in the most affectionate manner. “I’ve been looking over our incomes. You’ll pay quite a bit, Fred. But then, you like Mr. Wilson. You know that he is so very anxious to help the workers, don’t you? You know, something like the Kaiser has set up in Germany. You’ve always admired the Kaiser, haven’t you?”

  The fist became harder, like a rock. Again, Friederich cleared his throat. “I don’t think it’s fair for me to pay any income taxes, Karl. The company could take care of our taxes.”

  “The company?” said Charles softly. “Who is the company? You, I, Wilhelm, Jochen. We’re the company. We’re the stockholders. Are you suggesting that Wilhelm and I and Jochen pay your taxes, Fred? You, a bachelor?”

  Friederich’s large and bony face became ugly. “We could pass along the taxes to—”

  “To whom?” asked Charles, as his brother did not continue. “Should we lower wages? Do you think we should increase the prices to our customers, who will inevitably order less from us, and so cut down our gross income? Or make an inferior product, so we lose customers? Or throw some of our workers out? I’m open to suggestions, Fred.”

  Friederich did not answer. The gloomy light in the room deepened.

  “Of course,” said Charles, “we could make the men work twelve hours a day, and so get rid of about fifteen men. What do you think?”

  The fist opened, and the fingers worked again, furiously. “Some of the men don’t put in a decent day’s work,” Friederich muttered, uneasily.

  Charles smiled grimly. He said: “But you’ve always maintained that labor is being ‘sweated.’ You wouldn’t want us to sweat our labor, would you, Fred? Our men are on a nine-hour day, working many hours less a week than other men in other factories in Andersburg. You wouldn’t want a twelve
-hour day, would you, Fred?”

  He waited. But Friederich, caught in his own trap, did not speak. Charles fingered his watch, and his smile was open. “You’ve mentioned income tax before, but you thought it meant the Rockefellers, didn’t you, Fred, or the du Ponts, or the Vanderbilts, or the Morgans. You didn’t think it meant you, too, did you, Fred? But all the time it did mean you.”

  Friederich lost control of himself. “Don’t call me ‘Fred’!” he shouted. “My name is Friederich! You’re goading me, aren’t you! Trying to infuriate me. Yes, I did think it meant the rich, and I still think it ought to mean the rich—not us!”

  “But we’re not exactly poor,” said Charles, soothingly. “And, after all, there are so few multimillionaires in America. Even if we took all their money from them, it wouldn’t mean a dollar extra a week for every workingman in the country. Someone’s got to pay taxes. Everyone ought to, even if he gets only ten dollars a week, or if he gets ten thousand. That is the democratic way. And you’re always saying that the real democratic way is the true Socialistic way—Fred. So, we’ll all be happy Socialists together, paying taxes for the common good. It seems that some of your dreams are coming true, doesn’t it?”

  He had always known that Friederich was greedy. In espousing Socialism, Friederich not only expressed his hatred for better men and wealthier men, and his envy of them, but he had enlarged his egotism, had acquired an audience. I wonder, thought Charles, watching his brother’s face, how much of this he knows, himself. Does he really think he is an idealist?

  He enjoyed himself in the silence, but it was a grim enjoyment. Then Mrs. Schuele came in with an untidy tray of strong coffee and applecake. Charles transferred his attention to the tray, betrayed by a natural kindness. To stare at Friederich too long, and to see what there was to be seen, would have been too brutal. So Charles studied the stained cups and the coarse cake. Mrs. Schuele pushed aside a pile of books on the nearest oak table with a reverent hand, and put down the tray. “Coffee and two lumps of sugar for me, please,” said Charles.

  The old woman thrust out her lips, then, as if she had not heard, she stomped out of the room. “‘Comes the Revolution,’” Charles repeated to himself, amused. “Shall I pour the coffee, Friederich?” he asked.

  “Thanks,” said Friederich, sullenly. Charles lifted the coffeepot The handle was sticky. The hot liquid came out, smelling of chickory. The cheapest damn coffee! Charles, a coffee lover, lost his appetite. He poured a very small cup for himself. There was pale blue milk, no cream. The sugar was spotted. The cake was dry and fell into stale crumbs at a touch.

  Usually, during these visits, Friederich would talk almost constantly of Debs and Socialism. For some reason or other, he did not bring up the subject today. He chewed his cake moodily, staring at nothing, the crumbs falling over his vest and his knees. He was thinking. Sometimes his eyebrows quirked. Charles, his sure instinct once more aroused, again scrutinized him. When Friederich looked like this, he was thinking of only one thing—money.

  Charles said, idly: “There’s a meeting on Thursday, as you know. The Connington Steel Company wants our land along the river.”

  Friederich swallowed his cake. He lifted his cup to his lips. “I am going to vote ‘no,’” said Charles.

  “Why?” The word was explosive. “What’s your objection? They’ll employ a lot of men, Karl. What’s wrong with furnishing employment to hundreds of men, bringing in new workers, if necessary?” Friederich glared at him. “They’re offering a good price, too.”

  Charles shook his head slightly. “Oh, you’ve forgotten about the Connington, Fred. They’ve mills, as you know, in Pittsburgh, and in Parkersburg. They sweat their labor.”

  “I’ll help organize them,” said Friederich, his eyes sparkling with fervor. “We’ll agitate for a closed shop. We—”

  “They’re a powerful company, Fred. You know that. Pinkertons. They know how to break strikes. They pay the lowest wages. You wouldn’t want all that, would you, Fred? The workers who practically worship you here wouldn’t like to hear you voted to bring in the Connington, would they?”

  Friederich put down his cup on the table with a violent thump. “Don’t think you can keep on jeering at me this way, Karl!”

  Charles raised his eyebrows. “Jeering? I’m not jeering. I was just going along with you, I thought. Well, then, if you think you can do something about them, let them come in. But not on our land. I’m taking out an option on the Burnsley land, five miles away from the river, and offering it to the Connington. They’ll take it, because they want a mill in this area.”

  “But they won’t pay so much for the Burnsley land,” blurted Friederich. At his own betrayal, he caught his breath. But Charles did not seem to have noticed.

  “Maybe not. But then, if we don’t offer them the Burnsley land, which we can buy cheaply, and sell to them for as high a price as possible, and if we don’t sell them our river land, they’ll buy land from someone else. Or do you object to making an honest dollar, Fred?”

  Again, Friederich was silent, and this time with rage.

  Charles leaned back in his chair, with an expression of judiciousness. “Now, then, if it were generally known, among the people here, that Friederich Wittmann voted against the Connington getting our river land, and so preserving our water front, it would react in your favor, Fred. Then you could tell the newspapers that you intend to see to it that the houses of any new workers built near the mills, on the Burnsley land, would comply with what you call decent housing. And then we could announce that we’re going to sell the river land to the city; they want it, you know. It could be called the Wittmann Civic Park. It could be announced that it would be a park for the people, for their enjoyment. That would make you very popular, Fred. Everyone would think it was your idea. It would be just like you, wouldn’t it?”

  Friederich stared at him, with as great and as sudden an excitement as Wilhelm had shown. But avarice struggled a little longer in Friederich than it had struggled in Wilhelm, Charles noticed. In the end, as it had done in Wilhelm, egotism won.

  “The Wittmann Civic Park!” exclaimed Friederich. He saw the headlines in the newspapers. “Mr. Friederich Wittmann, always a fighter for the common people, has just announced—”

  Friederich’s knotted fist went to his mouth. He looked at Charles. Then his eyes narrowed suspiciously. “It doesn’t sound like you,” he mumbled. “You’ve got something up your sleeve, Karl.”

  “No, I haven’t.” Charles smiled. “I honestly like the idea of the park.”

  Friederich thought again of his talk with his brother Jochen, only a few days ago. Again, the struggle began in him. Charles watched that struggle.

  The Connington Steel Company would employ many workers, now unemployed. They would bring in more. Friederich’s field of activity would be widened. He would become even more important. What an opportunity! This, with the park, would make his position invincible, would gain more fame for him.

  He removed his fist from his mouth. “I’ll vote with you, Karl,” he said, with an air of high resolution and self-sacrifice.

  Charles nodded. “I knew you would, of course,” he said. He stood up. He offered his hand to his brother, who remained seated. Friederich reluctantly took that hand. He was still suspicious. Karl was a “capitalist” and a conservative of the worst kind. But there was one thing certain—he would never do anything that would entail a loss for the company.

  Charles put his hands in his pockets. He smiled down at Friederich. “Joe will try to influence you,” he said, with an innocent air. “Don’t let him. He wants to sell that land to the Connington. But you understand things, how Joe’ll do anything for money. You know that. Remember how he contributed to the strike-breaking fund of the Andersburg Forge Company? You didn’t speak to him for six months after that, and good for you, too! You remember how disgusted I was with him, myself. And then there was that business about our own company having a closed shop. I went along with you on
that.”

  Friederich muttered something.

  “Joe calls you a rabble-rouser,” said Charles, indulgently. “But that’s just his way. And I didn’t like him calling you a crackpot, either. Brothers should stand together, shouldn’t they, Fred?”

  Friederich’s face darkened with anger and hatred. “Jochen was always a swine,” he said. Friederich was one who never forgave.

  He accompanied his brother to the door. The twilight was clear and fresh even on that tree-sheltered street. Two men, neighbors, well-dressed and stout, were examining the house deliberately and murmuring through puffs of cigar smoke. When they saw Charles, they nodded with friendly smiles, but ignored Friederich. With immense leisure, they looked at the grassless lawns, glanced at the stables behind the house, lifted their hats and went on. Their pompous walk was an insult in itself. Charles held back a smile. But Friederich flushed.

  “Interfering rascals,” he said. “What business is it of theirs?”

  “None at all,” agreed Charles. “If grass won’t grow, it won’t grow, that’s all. Good night, Fred.”

  CHAPTER IV

  As Charles’ carriage rolled on, he could indulge himself in a normally malicious complacency. Well, that settles Joe, he thought. Then he scowled. It seemed to him that he was always “settling” something or other about his brothers, and always rescuing the Company from them, and even the city, itself, in some measure.

  Thinking of those brothers, it came to him more clearly than ever that in spite of Friederich’s hatred for Jochen, and Jochen’s ridicule of Friederich, these two were “closer” than a casual inspection of their relationship would disclose. Just as Willie and I are curiously “close,” thought Charles, surprised. The thought intrigued him. Willie and his art! But Wilhelm had been his ally in many contests, and Wilhelm had frequently shown respect for his older brother. For Friederich, Wilhelm had only a cold contempt, and for Jochen he had an even colder detestation.