The Strong City

  When Irmgard, in the ensuing months, became calmer, quieter, working vigorously, never sparing herself, and speaking rationally and even with amusement of trivial things, Emmi was satisfied. Irmgard was a sensible girl. She did not hurl herself at iron gates. She accepted everything. Emmi kept her very busy, gave her unending tasks to tire her body so that she would not think. She felt that she had succeeded. Irmgard did not speak of Franz again. His name was never mentioned in that serene house, where Emmi worked tirelessly with new-born vigor and determination. The simple Amish and a few other farmers welcomed the new tenants of this farm, and when Emmi had explained to them that this was Mrs. Darmstadter, a young widow, and her niece, recently come from Germany to escape her grief, they were all simplicity, kindliness and sympathy. Emmi could not recall when she had ever lied before, and was sometimes appalled at the facility with which the new lies came to her lips. It shook her.

  Irmgard, seeing that her incoherent hatred and weeping only annoyed Emmi, who could not understand such weak “foolishness,” maintained composure during the day. But when she was alone, as she was now, she abandoned herself to storms of loathing and fury, longing for revenge, and weeping. Sometimes she felt that she was being devoured by visible teeth, and torn by visible claws. She would bite her pillows, beat her head with her clenched hands, to relieve the torture of her longing for Franz, moaning for him with stifled murmurs, pleading for him against her shut lips.

  She knew he had married Ernestine Schmidt on February 25th. She had read of the elaborate wedding in the Nazareth Morning Journal, which the farm received every morning. All that day a horrible numbness had lain over her body, like freezing ice. She had expected this, she told herself, over and over. She had known this would come. But the coming prostrated her. To the very last, she had watched the roads hourly, secretly believing that Franz would try to find her, that he would come for her. “I will never let you go,” he had said, and in her heart, she had believed this. At night, she had developed a fever, which kept her bed-bound for nearly a week, and so ill that the doctor thought she might lose the new life hardly begun in her. She wished for this with a desperate ardor and new hope. But her young body was too strong to relinquish its hold. She had recovered, slowly but surely.

  It was then that she had written to Baldur Schmidt, reminding him that she was now keeping her promise to let him know where she was, and urging him to remember that he had given his word that no one was to know where she was living now. Baldur wrote her joyously. He would come to see her. He had much to tell her. But, shuddering at the thought of what changes he would see in her, she wrote to him that her uncle had recently died, and that her aunt was in a very poor state, and needed only quiet. She again asked that Baldur not mention her name to his sister and mother. “I left them without word or notice, merely disappearing, and though there were extenuating reasons, I feel guilty. It is best that they never hear of me again.” She knew Baldur would be puzzled at this, but she also knew that he would obey her request.

  “Some day, perhaps soon, you will let me see you,” he wrote to her, in his tiny script-like hand. “Your portrait hangs on the wall in my rooms. I speak to it daily. Sometimes I believe it even smiles at me. I am a very foolish poor creature.”

  Slowly, she began to feel comfort in the thought of that friend, as lonely and deprived as herself, and thinking of her. Some day, she thought, she might allow him to come to her, and they would walk through Emmi’s beloved rose-gardens and sit on the low hill under the shadow of the woods.

  In the meantime, with acknowledged selfishness, she wrote him at least once a week. She dared not ask him for news of Franz, but she professed to be eagerly anxious about Ernestine. Baldur, who had the recluse’s inverted preoccupation with self, wrote only briefly about his sister. Because of his innate reserve and good taste, his remarks were casual. He spoke of Franz without emotion. “He is a great favorite of my father’s. My father has shown a new interest in everything lately, and is kind even to me. I sometimes think that not only has Ernestine acquired a husband, but my father has acquired the son he always wanted.” But this was the longest remark he ever made about his family. His letters were filled with love for herself, and anxiety, and tenderness. He told her all his thoughts, with the complete lack of reserve which the recluse, once having broken, can pour out inexhaustibly. He did not know that Irmgard skipped feverishly and impatiently over these long pages to find the one casual remark about his family, and Franz. For the last three letters, he had not mentioned Franz at all. He had said only that Ernestine was “blooming,” and that his mother missed Irmgard excessively, and that she was ill again.

  Emmi was annoyed by these letters, and secretly, in spite of her cold condemnations, she too, wished to hear about Franz.

  On the morning of this hot August day there had come another letter from Baldur.

  He hinted discreetly that Ernestine was not as well as she might be, that her new color had faded, and that she did not go about among the new friends she had sedulously acquired since her marriage and her reborn interest in life. “But females at this difficult period often avoid company, preferring the company of their mothers in their new anticipations.” Irmgard, after some puzzling, had an annihilating shock. Then Ernestine, too, was about to bear a child of Franz’s!

  It was not to be borne! It was a profanation. Irmgard, as usual, had gone to her room, and her anguish, despair and uncontrolled passion tore her apart. All her hatred and loathing and grief and desolation came back to her, enhanced a thousand times. She had walked up and down her room, sobbing dryly, beating her breast with her fists, running her fingers savagely through her disheveled hair. A thousand delirious plans for revenge rushed through her mind. She would go at once to Ernestine, exhibiting her swollen body, so soon to be relieved of its living burden. She would denounce Franz to his face, before his miserable little wife! She would scream at him, and spit at him, and curse him. For two hours, while Emmi thought the girl was resting, Irmgard alternately paced and flung herself on her bed, writhing. Her hands were tangled in strands of her own hair, and her own flesh was bruised. It was only when a living pang of fire rushed through her body like a sword, and she had to give unpreoccupied and stern attention to this new anguish, that she came to her senses.

  The pang left her, and she was profoundly prostrated. She fell into a sleep like a faint. Coming to see her, Emmi found her lying across her bed, her long shining hair and head hanging over the edge, her arms half on the floor, the palms upturned. She was in an attitude of abandonment, as though she had been cruelly beaten and then tossed aside to die. Emmi found the letter on the commode, and read it, shamelessly. Her face whitened under its new brownness. Slowly, she folded the letter. She did not feel that this new child was flesh of her flesh, and she had no yearning for it, as she yearned for Irmgard’s child, who was not only her grandson, but the grandson of her beloved sister. It was almost as though the little one were doubly her own. But for Ernestine Schmidt’s child she felt nothing but disgust.

  She had gently lifted Irmgard to a more comfortable position on the bed. She could not endure, without wincing and deep passionate sorrow, the sight of that tortured and exhausted face with the bleeding lips. She had hesitated a moment, then kissed the wet forehead, on which the pale gilt hair was so tangled and damp. She had seen the sunken eyes, and she had listened to the faint catching sobs that bubbled up from the strained throat. For the first time she realized fully what love devastated this poor girl, and what agony she was still suffering.

  But when the little one comes, she thought, it will be different.

  She had covered the girl’s feet with an afghan, and then had gone downstairs again. There, she was somewhat shorter than usual with the foolish Florence Tandy, with her endless trillings and chatter and silly remarks. She listened for sounds from upstairs.

  It was noon before Irmgard came down, controlled, very pale, but slightly smiling. Her hair was smooth. Only the blue clefts a
bout her lips and the sunken patches of purple about her eyes betrayed what she had been suffering. Irmgard worked feverishly that day.

  When, later, she had gone to her room, towards sunset, she had lain on her bed. But nothing but her hatred remained, like a great scorching fire, hatred for Franz and hatred for his child. She plotted quietly, without delirium. But each of her plots she acknowledged as foolish. There was nothing she could do. It was this impotence that so humiliated her. But finally even the impotence was gone, and there remained only her hatred, like a conflagration over a dark country.

  She heard Emmi calling her, much later, for the evening meal. It was still full and brilliant day, though the western hills were becoming sharp and dense against a widening glow. But she could eat nothing. The food was dry and sickening in her mouth, and she could not swallow it. She did not protest when Emmi sent her upstairs again. She did not see Emmi’s long, thoughtful, anxious following gaze. She lay on her bed, staring at the bright windows with dull and empty eyes.

  Suddenly, the earlier pang of the day divided her again, and she screamed aloud before she could control herself.

  CHAPTER 2

  Emmi came running up the stairs like a young girl. She found Irmgard writhing on the bed. The girl looked at her with abysmal terror, but could not speak. Emmi made a brief examination, pressing her hands on Irmgard’s body.

  “It has come,” she said, in a voice of quiet triumph. “A little early, but not too early.”

  She avoided Irmgard’s stark staring, and quickly undressed her. She called down the stairs to Florence Tandy in the kitchen, urging her to ask Hermann to go for the doctor after the milking was completed. “It will not be for some time,” she said to Irmgard, comfortingly.

  She put fresh stiff linen on the bed, pushed back the curtains so that the rising evening wind could cool the hot room. She brought cold water and sponged the girl’s red and sweating face. She combed the long hair and braided it. Irmgard lay on her coarse pillows, her golden braids over her ruffled nightgown. She could see the golden and scarlet flush of the skies, and the quiet dreaming hills. Between the intervals of her pain, she could feel nothing but great exhaustion and weakness. Even the hatred was diminished. Sometimes she had only one thought: the hope of approaching death.

  At twilight, the doctor came, a small fat man with a beard, a long coat, a rusty cravat and a very large hat. He examined the apathetic girl, shook his head slightly, and informed Emmi that the child would be born probably after midnight. “In the meantime,” he said, shaking out some pills in his calloused palm, “she must rest.” Downstairs, he expressed some anxiety for Irmgard’s condition. “There is no hope, no anticipation there,” he said.

  “She is a widow,” replied Emmi, looking at him levelly. “She has grieved over her young husband.”

  Irmgard fell into a dim uneasy sleep, punctuated by sharp lightning flashes of pain. Emmi sat beside her, fanning her, holding her hand. Florence Tandy’s long thin figure, appeared at intervals with towels and water. She would thrust her curled forehead and horse-like face into the room, and tiptoe in with elaborate caution. Emmi could hear the shrilling of crickets, the pumping of water, the lowing of the cows. A robin, in a lonely tree, sang his sweet and melancholy prophecy of rain to the curve of the young moon, which was slowly brightening in the depths of dark cobalt sky. Over the faint shadows of the sinking hills there was a last golden gleam. Everywhere the intense stillness was like the prelude to evening prayer, and the earth seemed to lift her vast widespread arms in a large and solemn gesture. From her lips rose the incense of her breath, so that all the cooling air was heavy with the scent of soil, grass, flower and ripening field.

  Emmi rose and went to the window. Now she could see the tall white and red stalks of her hollyhocks pressing about her house, the lonely white curve of the road drifting into the darkening distance. She could feel the new wind on her face. She looked at the far hills, haloed with their gilded light. She could see the outline of her good red barns and her silo. Now the crickets were beginning a louder clamor to the night, so that their shrilling enhanced the enormous silence.

  “And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.” Ah, surely, thought Emmi, He walked then, in lonely meditation, where a mist of light lingered over the forest, which bowed and murmured in a gentle monotone, and man, having removed his pestilential presence from the afflicted earth, had hidden himself in sleep. It was easy to imagine the sound of His footsteps on the grass, His pausing under some great bending tree, His contemplation of the immensity of the heavens.

  A wide still peace flowed over Emmi, so that she forgot everything but the awareness of this Presence, and everything hot and small and tormented sank into nothingness in this flood of strength and majesty. She felt that Egon stood beside her. She was afraid to turn, for fear he might retreat, but she knew that he stood at her side, watching the night with her. She experienced a large unquestioning peace and joy.

  Irmgard murmured brokenly from her bed, and Emmi, remembering with satisfaction that the haying was done, with the help of kind neighbors, went back to the girl. Irmgard was awake now. She was staring darkly at her aunt. She said: “He told me he would never let me go. I believe it. He will come to me soon.”

  Emmi sat down and took the hot tremulous hand.

  “You are brave. You must have courage,” she said.

  But the mingled effect of pain and drug had loosed the iron control which Irmgard for so long had imposed upon herself. She twisted her hand restlessly from Emmi’s, and she panted.

  “It is not to be endured, if he does not come. Why should I live? There is nothing.” She spoke in hard rapid words, between her quick breathing. “All that he is, I know. But of what consequence is that? I love him. He must come to me.”

  Emmi was silent, but her lips pressed themselves together in bitter grimness. Over this grimness, her eyes were gentle and heavy with compassion. She did not know what to say in comfort, in consolation.

  Irmgard tossed herself with rising excitement on her hot pillows.

  “That foolish woman he married. She can be nothing to him, in that hideous house. He must think of me. He promised that he would never leave me. He will come soon. Then this pain will stop, and I can sleep.”

  Emmi, who had listened to wild crying hatred from Irmgard in the beginning, knew then that she had underestimated the passion of this poor child for Franz. She was both horrified and frightened. She could only stare in aching silence at that darkly flushed wet face and eyes brilliant with green light in the beams of the lamp.

  “You must be brave,” she said at last, with difficulty. “All things come to the brave.”

  Irmgard regarded her with intensity, and then she smiled. “Yes, yes,” she cried, eagerly. “It is so.” She continued, very rapidly: “I have forgotten everything else, except that I love him.”

  Emmi forced her to swallow two more pills. She sat beside the girl, holding her hand firmly. Still smiling, Irmgard slept again, this time more peacefully. Emmi sat outside the lamp’s thin path of light, sighing over and over.

  She heard the sound of wheels, muffled and soft in the thick dust of the road. The doctor, then, had returned sooner than expected. She went downstairs swiftly and silently. Florence Tandy was already at the door, smiling her usual silly smile which always seemed to be anticipating something exciting and pleasant.

  But it was not the doctor’s rig which had drawn up at the gate. It was a fine handsome closed carriage, drawn by two black horses and driven by a coachman. This was not the doctor who was descending. Emmi, seeing who it was, felt a sickening lurch in herself. She could not move until the man was halfway up the walk toward the house. Then she turned quickly to Florence Tandy and whispered fiercely through shaking lips:

  “Go up to Mrs. Darmstadter and stay with her! Do not let her speak, nor make a sound, no matter what you must do! Do not tell her—”

  Florence Tandy’s gooseb
erry eyes widened in bewilderment. Emmi suddenly shook her. “You understand me?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Stoessel,” stammered the woman. She wrung her long hands impotently in her apron, still staring.

  “He must not know she is here. It is very important.”

  The man, a tall broad young fellow, elegantly and fashionably clad, was now within earshot. He saw the two women, and recognized his mother. He smiled, and removed his high black hat. The evening wind lifted the long skirts of his coat. His pointed shoes shone in the lamplight that streamed through the open door.

  Frightened, Florence ducked her head in response to the smile and the nod, and retreated. Emmi heard her stumbling up the stairs to Irmgard’s room. She clenched her hands together, and tried to control the lurching of her heart, and the coldness of her terror. She did not know what to do, what to say. She said only: “Franz.”

  Her first impulse was to deny him admission, to close the door in his face. But she dared not do this. He might suspect what she was hiding in this house. But to bring him in, was to risk his hearing Irmgard’s moaning, or her cries, when she awoke. Torn by her fears, her indecision, her anger and dread, she could only stand before him, rigid and tall in her apron.

  “Mother,” he said, looking up at her, as she stood on the high step. He was still smiling easily. “Are you not going to invite me in?”

  Surely Irmgard, even in her sleep, must stir and awaken at the sound of that voice. But Emmi refrained from her first impulse to glance back over her shoulder. She made her voice low, cold and hard.