The Strong City by Taylor Caldwell
His flush deepened, and his eyes flashed angrily, with humiliation. But she was regarding him, aroused, her cheeks colored, and he thought: There is something which drives her to speak harshly, and to hurt, for she has been hurt. He replied mildly, trying to laugh:
“It is necessary for every man to have some heroic conception of himself, just as it is necessary for a nation to have that conception. That is what is wrong with America: she has no heroic vision of herself as a people. Neither have I, perhaps. And yet again, you may be right. It is possible that I regard myself as unusual, probably even heroic.” He smiled bitterly. “What would you have me do?” he added.
“You are a musician. I have listened to you, often. You could give that to others, if nothing else.”
He walked to a window, clasping his hands behind his deformed back. He spoke without turning:
“Why should I bother about others? What use are they to me, or I to them?” He turned back to her.
“I’ve lived a number of years, Irmgard. My contacts haven’t been very extended. But I have learned enough about people. I have learned that very few exist who are decent, honest and kind. Because of my—condition, my whole personality has seemed to be skinless, every nerve exposed. No one has bothered to hide himself from me, thinking me irrelevant. So, I have seen and felt. And I know that humanity is the foulest, most bestial, most treacherous, indecent, false and contemptible species alive. Do you think differently?”
“No,” she replied, in a low voice. “What you say is true.”
He went on, rapidly: “People speak of their ‘friends.’ Yet, no man has a friend, though he may have innumerable acquaintances who will eat his food, sleep in his bed, exchange the time of day with him, and enjoy his money. But let him need real help, real sympathy, real kindness, and he will find himself talking to empty air. His ‘friends’ will do all they can to kick him lower, to lie about him, destroy him. That is the nature of men. I accept it, without reproach, though wondering sometimes, if there is a God, why He allows humanity to profane the earth. But I am no sentimentalist. I do not believe that humanity is worth the saving, or the serving. I shun it. I have been hurt too often, by looking at the faces of others, and knowing their thoughts. I know their jealousy and envy, their hatred for their kind, their lustfulness and avarice, their cruelty and brutality. I have spent my life looking for some good, and haven’t found it. So, not being able to stand what I see, I shut myself in here, sick of myself, seeing in myself everything there is in others.”
“And in your mother and sister, too?”
He was not offended, as Ernestine had been narrowly offended. His mouth became gloomy.
“My mother! She is pathetic. But she is a coward. She is made that way. She has done my father no good, but has made his life miserable. He would not be so bad, if she had not been a fool. In her treatment of him, she has been treacherous. Her nature forced him into this filthy mess with Matilda. Do you think he enjoys it? She is too weak to be avaricious, too engrossed with herself to be envious. Her mind is like brackish water in which not even cruelty can exist. Would you call her good because she hasn’t even the bowels to be bad? It is true she is gentle and kind at times, but these are negative virtues. I am sorry for her, and I love her very much.”
He paused. “And Ernestine. Given the opportunity she would be as small and malicious as all other women, and as meanly treacherous. She merely lacks the opportunity. She is sweet because she has never been bruised. She, too, is a weakling. Like my mother. Like myself.”
He looked at the silent girl, who was watching him so mournfully, and he smiled again, whimsically.
“Yet, I feel that your vices are less than your positive virtues, Irmgard. You are strong and honest. You are not too kind. You are truthful with yourself. You could be cruel and harsh, and remorseless, but not unnecessarily so. There is the thing!” he exclaimed, with sudden excitement. “People are cruel and brutal, treacherous and lying, merciless and ferocious, most often without necessity! Even wild beasts kill only for food, and never for malignancy. That is why they are superior to the human race. That is why they are clean and wholesome—I think you are clean and wholesome, Irmgard. You are not poisonous, like others, and never venomous, like other women.”
For the first time since coming into that room today, Irmgard smiled, almost with amusement and enjoyment.
“You know nothing about me, Mr. Baldur. And you exaggerate. Too, why should you care about others? If, as you say, the world is so hideous, why do you not give it some beauty?”
He laughed. He came back to stand near her. “I don’t give a damn about the world, Irmgard. I’m no sentimentalist. Let it rot. The quicker the better. I’d like to help it rot. I’d like to be the sole survivor of a cataclysm, and watch others destroyed. I’m not revengeful, only understanding.”
Despite his laughter, she knew he spoke the truth.
“The great ‘bad’ men of the world, the Cæsars, the Napoleons, the Richelieus, Talleyrands and Machiavellis—they knew what men were, and so they could control them. They had no sentimentality about them. They kicked, booted and killed them, and so were made heroes. The new sentimentality—democracy—is based on the inherent goodness, independence and intelligence of men, which do not exist. That is why it will be destroyed by those it tries to elevate. The halo sits too tightly on the head of the ape. We need a Napoleon, a Machiavelli, to make the people happy. Some day some true realist will be born, who will understand mankind, and know that it can be happy only when it is enslaved, and yoked. And the sentimentalists, the idealists, will be sent to gnaw their own silly fingers in a corner, abandoned by those they tried to save.” He added: “America needs a Bismarck, not a Lincoln. Men speak condescendingly of a saint, and with reverence of a brute, even when they pretend to hate him.”
She was silent. He said: “You do not think so?”
“Yes,” she replied. “You are right. The world cannot be made a safe place for the few good men. It would make too much misery for the others.”
She started to get up from her chair, and he spoke quickly:
“Irmgard, just a few moments more, please. I can talk to no one but you.”
She waited, but he had fallen into an uneasy silence, watching her closely. Then he said: “What is wrong, Irmgard?”
She answered: “Nothing, except that I am sorry to leave you—this house. But I must. I am going to live with my aunt, who has just bought a farm. She needs me.”
He was frightened, and bereft. “No! We can’t let you go. We are selfish, and you have done so much for us! You see, I’m not thinking of you at all, or your own desires. Do not leave us, Irmgard. Do not leave me!” he cried, internally.
She regarded him with great gentleness, and he saw that she was devoured by some deep wretchedness.
“I must go, Mr. Baldur. My uncle is sick. Perhaps he will die soon. My aunt needs me.”
Then he said, speaking passionately, and without reserve: “But I need you, more than any one. Irmgard, haven’t you known that?”
She did not speak, but her face flushed darkly. He took one of her cold hands, and held it feverishly.
“I have nothing to give you, Liebchen, my dearest, but money which I have not even earned myself. I am insulting you by saying all this, by asking you to marry me. But, see, I have done it.”
She looked up at him, at his ruined body and beautiful ruined face. Intense pity rose like brimming waters to her eyes, and profound gentleness.
“Do not speak like that! It is not true. It is a great honor—”
She paused, and now her eyes were pale green and icy, like the sea in winter, with her sudden thoughts. What if she married this poor creature, indeed? Franz Stoessel would then find a formidable enemy in the house which he was trying to invade, an insurmountable barrier, a barricade, a high stone wall. He would find some one as remorseless and implacable as himself, ready to dispute every step with him, ready to destroy him!
She ga
“It is not possible,” she said, loudly, but to herself and not to him.
“Why not?” he urged. He moistened his parched lips, pressed closer to her. “I can give you very little. You can give me everything. I can’t exist without the things you can give me,” and he smiled wrily, yet apologetically.
She forced herself to rise, kept the pity from her eyes and voice.
“There is somebody else, Mr. Baldur—in Germany. I ought to have told you that before. Now I must go to my aunt, and wait for him.”
He acknowledged to himself, then, with frantic despair, how much he had relied upon a dream he had never admitted before even to himself. He could not speak. He had suffered before, but never like this. He felt himself seized in monstrous iron teeth, which shook and rended him. Yesterday, an hour ago, when alone, if he had thought to himself: Irmgard might marry me, he would have laughed incredulously at himself for a presumptuous and egotistic fool. Yet still, he might have hoped, and in that hope found a meagre sustenance for life. He might, however, never have dared put the hope to the test, but its dream, its pale reflection, might have sustained him during all his existence. Now, having spoken, and been refused, the earth fell away from him in utter darkness, and the last spark flickered out. Always, in previous suffering, invisible hands of determination and fortitude had supported him, and his bitter cynicism, though like vinegar, had quenched a little of his tormenting thirst. Now he had nothing. He saw how treacherous the secret and unacknowledged places in him had been, how in the hidden niches of the dank wall, which shut him out of life, fragile and colorless blooms had taken root, not planted by himself, but nevertheless reaching delicate tendrils into morsels of arid soil. He bled, now, when they were torn from their precarious beds, and thrown aside. Wave after wave of black hopelessness and complete abysmal grief rolled over him. He could only stand before Irmgard, crumbling internally, and he seemed to dwindle visibly so that he appeared to be a small deformed child fatally struck and dying. The small iron core of some secret courage crystallized in him, disintegrated, blew away into dust, and he was completely undone. He was a scarecrow, stuffed with straw, fallen limply to the ground when its wooden support had been wrenched away. He could only stare emptily, but with boundless hatred, at a God who had betrayed him again.
He looked up at her, with his dulled eyes, and he saw her compassion and pain. Instantly, he was aroused to a salutary anger, even to a rage. Mortified impotence gave him a spurious courage and pride. He even smiled, shook his head slightly.
“I was a fool to ask,” he said, hoarsely.
“No,” she answered, in a low tone. “I shall never forget this.”
Then he saw that she was suffering almost as much as he was suffering. He watched her go to the door, and he cried out internally: Do not go! I shall die if you leave me, if I never see you again! He lifted his hand and called to her urgently, his voice breaking:
“Irmgard! You will let me know where you go?”
She heard all his agony, all his love, in that cry, all the wail of his despair. She turned to him, from the doorway, and the two who were suffering so greatly looked across the space of the room at each other.
“Yes,” she said. “Oh, yes. But you must tell no one else, not even your mother and your sister.”
She smiled now, and he saw the pale tightness of her lips, the blue marks about her eyes, and he went to her, and took her hand again.
“You will not tell me why you are so wretched. I know it has nothing to do with me, but I would die to help you. You know that?”
His hand was hot but firm, and it gave her some courage, some strength. As on the first day she had come here, she knew she had a friend, who would always be hers. Her eyes filled slowly with burning tears.
“Yes, I know,” she faltered.
She went out, leaving him standing alone in a room from which all the light seemed to have gone. He did not move. Moment after moment passed away, and he heard only the distant hollow booming in the house. He began to shiver. Then he cried out:
“O God! O God!”
CHAPTER 42
Irmgard dressed herself in a wine-colored woolen frock, tight of basque, full and draped of skirt, and decorated with black jet buttons. She put on her new sealskin jacket, and toque, and picked up the new muff. About her throat she clasped Baldur’s opals, and they lay on the bodice like frozen tears. She glanced at herself in her mirror. But her new splendor, her beautiful figure and shining gilt hair could not disguise the strained harshness of her face and the bitter greenness in her eyes. She might have been a younger Emmi Stoessel standing there, implacable and gaunt, filled with anger and hatred and despair. But where Emmi was incapable of much ruthlessness, Irmgard knew that she, herself, was capable of anything.
She went silently and swiftly down the servants’ back hall, then, on an impulse she turned and went through an empty room, and thence into the great corridor of the second floor. She leaned over the balustrades and looked down the curving staircase into the pit of the immense house. She saw the large deserted drawing room with its core of dim fire which burned in the black marble fireplace, the vast reaches of carpet, the lurking furniture, the gloomy draperies which held out the sun. In one window stood a gigantic Christmas tree, blazing in sunlight, the one bright spot in the somber immensity, its green boughs laden with dripping foil and tall green, white and red candles, a silver star on its topmost twig. But this was the only sign of Christmas in the house. The dining-room was desolate, its silver dimly gleaming in the dusk. Heavy shadows were everywhere, and dustiness and silence. Behind Irmgard stretched the long corridor with its closed doors. She knew that in Matilda’s rooms there was some warm and cosy festivity between the woman and Hans Schmidt. But there was no lightness, no gaiety, here, in this haggard mansion.
She shivered, and thrust her hands deep into her muff. She would be glad to leave this awful place, now that no affection remained here for her. She thought of Ernestine with hatred and revulsion, and Mrs. Schmidt seemed no longer pathetic to her, but only something cloying and sickly, from which she must escape.
A long rolling chord rushed like a wave down the corridor, and she lifted her head, listening. Discordant music broke upon the stony gloom of the house like a cataract of mingled lightning and water and thunder. It was like some wild and demented spirit leaping in a storm, full of defiance and despair and savage sorrow. It shrieked and groaned its impotence, its unendurable pain, its screams of torture. Boulders crashed about it, hurled by torrents; black and twisted tree-trunks swirled about it, and mountain walls fell. But through the uproar was its high shrieking voice, always discernible, sometimes madly laughing, sometimes moaning deeply. The house groaned in answer, its very dark immobility like the motionless core of a hurricane.
Irmgard put her hands over her ears, swallowing over a sharp point in her throat. She expected that every moment each shut door would burst open, disgorging frightened faces and running forms. No one, surely, could hear that unearthly and hellish clamor and thunder without hurling himself blindly away to safety. But nothing stirred. The walls did not collapse. No door opened. She stood alone in the vortex of discordant screaming sound, shadows creeping closer about her. The sun was vivid against the vast windows, but the darkness increased inside. Everything listened, and cowered, and stood in silence.
Irmgard bent her head and ran. She flung herself down the winding marble staircase. She raced for the grilled doors of the front entrance, holding up her skirts which tried to bind her legs. She ran in a nightmare of horror, pursued by the music, which was a league of scarlet demons chasing her. She felt that any moment hideous forms would spring up about her, and clutch her. She reached the door, panting. She could hardly turn the handle. She burst out into the sunshine, dishevel
The horror was still on her, and she sped down the street. But slowly the cold and dazzling air cooled her fright. The snow was soft underfoot. Children ran about with red sleds, or carried dolls and laughed in the sunshine, watched by their nursemaids. Windows glittered. Sleighs passed, tinkling with bells, and filled with rosy happy faces and furs. Cries of “Merry Christmas!” rang in the glasslike atmosphere. Trembling from head to foot, Irmgard stood still, breathing painfully, the wind blowing her hair, skeins of sparkling snow fluttering about her skirts. Her heart slowly lessened its rolling and turning. She knew now that she could never return to that house, not even for a night. In it there lived a fury. But she did not think of that fury as Baldur. He had merely given expression to it.
The horse-car she boarded was filled with happy men, women and children, carrying large bundles wrapped in red and green and white paper. Children sucked peppermint sticks. Young girls preened in the new finery of cheap plume-trimmed velvet bonnets and fur toques, and held muffs coquettishly to bright faces. Young men, self-conscious and beaming, adjusted round gray and brown bowlers surreptitiously, and fingered new cravats stuck through with gold-plated pins. Old women, in their shawls and nodding bonnets glittering with jet, smiled benignly. The car rolled merrily; the harness jingled. Even the horses had plaited ropes of tinsel about their necks and stepped higher in the shining holiday air. Strangers exchanged murmurs of “Merry Christmas.” One young couple held a slaughtered goose, bloodily wrapped in paper, on their knees, and smiled in anticipation.
Slowly, in this happy normal atmosphere of noise and goodwill, Irmgard returned to equanimity. The horror and fear which had made her hurtle herself from the Schmidt mansion began to subside. As the car passed through busy streets, in which markets still stood open displaying baskets of potatoes and turnips, barrels of pickles and windows full of hanging fowl, she began to breathe more slowly. Health and peace and the short joy of the holiday were all about her. Churches were still open, and crowds streamed in and out for brief prayers, the women and children gaily dressed, the young bloods and the old men alike splendid in new coats and mufflers. Carriages lined the curbs, sunlight splintering on wheels and polished harness, and cries of greeting shot through the air like brilliant arrows.