At three that afternoon Willie’s victoria called to bear Lily and Irene
to the Cyclops Mills for the tour which he proposed. Workmen, passing
the carriage, regarded the two sisters with curiosity, frowning at the
sight of Irene in a carriage they recognized as Harrison’s. A stranger
might have believed the pair were a great lady and her housekeeper on
the way to market, so different and incongruous were the appearances of
the two women. Lily, leaning back against the thick mulberry cushions,
sat wrapped in a sable stole. She wore a gray tailored suit and the
smallest and smartest of black slippers. Around her white throat, which
she wore exposed in defiance of fashions which demanded high, boned
collars, she had placed a single string of pearls the size of peas. By
the side of her opulent beauty Irene possessed the austerity and
plainness of a Gothic saint. As usual she wore a badly cut suit, a plain
black hat and flat shoes with large, efficient heels. Her thin hands,
clad in knitted woolen gloves, lay listlessly in her lap.
Willie Harrison was waiting for them at the window of the
superintendent’s office just inside the gate. They saw him standing
there as the victoria turned across the cinders in through the
red-painted entrance. He stood peering out of the window in a
near-sighted way, his shoulders slightly stooped, his small hands
fumbling as usual the ruby clasp of his watch chain. At the sight of him
Lily frowned and bit her fine red lip as though she felt that a man so
rich, a man so powerful, a man who owned all these furnaces and steel
sheds should have an air more conquering and impressive.
Irene said, “Oh, there’s William waiting for us now.” And a second later
the victoria halted by the concrete steps and Willie himself came out to
greet them, hatless, his thin blond hair waving in a breeze which with
the sinking of the sun grew rapidly more chilly. The sun itself,
hanging over the roseate tops of the furnaces, had become a shield of
deep copper red.
“You’re just in time,” said Willie. “The shifts will be changing in a
little while. Shall we start here? I’ll show you the offices.”
They went inside and Willie, whose manner had become a little more
confident at the prospect of such a display, led them into a long room
where men sat in uniform rows on high stools at long tables. Over each
table hung suspended a half-dozen electric lights hooded by green
shades. The lights, so Willie told them, were placed exactly to the
sixteenth of an inch eight feet and three inches apart. It was part of
his theory of precision and regularity.
“This,” said Willie, with a contracted sweep of his arm, “is the
bookkeeping department. The files are kept here, the orders and all the
paper work.”
At the approach of the visitors, the younger men looked up for an
instant fascinated by the presence of so lovely a creature as Lily
wandering in to shatter so carelessly the sacred routine of their day.
There were men of every age and description, old and young, vigorous and
exhausted, men in every stage of service to the ponderous mill gods. The
younger ones had a restless air and constantly stole glances in the
direction of the visitors. The middle-aged ones looked once or twice at
Lily and then returned drearily to their columns of figures. The older
ones did not notice her at all. They had gone down for the last time in
a sea of grinding routine.
Irene, who knew the Town better than Lily, pointed out among the
near-sighted, narrow-chested workers men who were grandsons or
great-grandsons of original settlers in the county, descendants of the
very men who had cleared away the wilderness to make room for banks and
lawyers and mills.
“Let’s go on,” said Lily, “to the Mills. They’re more interesting than
this, I’m sure. You know I’ve never been inside a mill-yard.” She spoke
almost scornfully, as if she thought the counting room were a poor show
indeed. A shadow of disappointment crossed Willie’s sallow face.
After donning a broadcloth coat with an astrakhan collar and a derby
hat, he led the way. For a long time they walked among freight cars
labeled with names from every part of North America ... Santa Fé,
Southern Pacific, Great Northern, Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul....
They passed between great warehouses and vast piles of rusty pig iron
still covered with frost, the dirty snow lying unmelted in the
crevasses; and at last they came to an open space where rose a vast,
shapeless object in the process of being raised toward the sky.
“Here,” said Willie, “are the new furnaces. There are to be six of them.
This is the first.”
“I like this better,” said Lily. “There is spirit here ... even among
the laborers.”
The structure bore a strange resemblance to the Tower of Babel. Swarthy
workmen, swarming over the mass of concrete and steel, shouted to each
other above the din of the Mills in barbaric tongues which carried no
meaning to the visitors. Workmen, like ants, pushed wheelbarrows filled
with concrete, with fire clay or fire bricks. Overhead a giant crane
lifted steel girders with an effortless stride and swung them into
place. The figures of the workmen swept toward the tower in a constant
stream of movement so that the whole took on a fantastic composition, as
if the tower, rushing on its way heavenward, were growing taller and
taller before their very eyes, as if before they moved away it might
pierce the very clouds.
At the sight of Willie Harrison, the foremen grew more officious in
manner and shouted their orders with redoubled vigor, as if the strength
of their lungs contributed something toward the speed with which the
great tower grew. But the workmen moved no more rapidly. On returning to
the mounds of sand and fire brick, they even stopped altogether at times
to stare calmly like curious animals at the visitors. One or two nodded
in recognition of Irene’s “Good-day, Joe,” or “How are you,
Boris?”--words which appeared to cloud somewhat Willie’s proud enjoyment
of the spectacle. And every man who passed stared long and hard at Lily,
standing wrapped in her furs, a little aloof, her eyes bright
nevertheless with the wonder of the sight. Neither Lily nor Irene nor
Willie spoke more than was necessary, for in order to be heard above the
din they were forced to scream.
From the growing tower the little party turned west toward the sunset,
walking slowly over a rough roadway made of cinders and slag. Once a
cinder penetrated Lily’s frail shoe and she was forced to lean against
Willie while she took it off and removed the offending particle. He
supported her politely and turned away his face so that he should not
offend her by seeing her shapely stockinged foot.
A hundred yards further on they came upon a dozen great vats covered by
a single roof of sheet iron. From the vats rose a faint mist, veiling
the black bodies of negroes who, shouting as they worked, dipped great
plates of steel in and out. An acrid smell filled the air and penetrated
the throats of the visitors as they passed rapidly by, causing Lily to
take from her hand bag a handkerchief of the thinnest linen which she
held against her nose until they were once more beyond the zone of the
fumes.
“Those are the tempering vats,” said Willie. “Only negroes work here.”
“But why?” asked Irene.
“Because the other workers won’t,” he said. “The acid eats into their
lungs. The negroes come from South Carolina and Georgia to do it. They
are willing!”
As they walked the sound of pounding, which appeared to come from the
great iron shed lying before them black against the sunset, grew louder
and louder, steadily more distinct. In the fading twilight that now
surrounded them the Mill yard became a fantastic world inhabited by
monsters of iron and steel. Great cranes swung to and fro against the
glow of the sky, lifting and tossing into piles huge plates of steel
that fell with an unearthly slithering din when an invisible hand,
concealed somewhere high among the black vertebræ of the monsters,
released a lever. High in the air lights, red and green, or cold
piercing blue-white, like eyes appeared one by one peering down at them
wickedly. Beyond the cranes in the adjoining yard the black furnaces
raised gigantic towers crowned by halos of red flame that rose and fell,
palpitating as the molten iron deep in the bowels of the towers churned
and boiled with a white infernal heat. Dancing malignant shadows
assailed them on every side.
The three visitors, dwarfed by the monsters of steel, made their way
across the slag and cinders, deafened by the unearthly noise.
“Yesterday,” shouted William Harrison in his thin voice, “there was a
terrible accident yonder in the other yard. A workman fell into a vat of
molten iron.”
Irene turned to her companion with horror stricken eyes. “I know,” she
said. “It was an Italian named Rizzo. I heard of it this morning. I have
been to see his wife and family. There are nine of them.”
William shouted again. “They found nothing of him. He became a part of
the iron. He is part of a steel girder by now.”
Out of the evil, dancing shadows a man blackened by smoke leapt suddenly
at them. “Look out!” he cried, and thrust them against the wall of a
neighboring shed so roughly that Irene fell forward upon her knees. A
great bundle of steel plates--tons of them--swung viciously out of the
darkness, so close to the little party that the warmth of the metal
touched their faces. It vanished instantly, drawn high into the air by
some invisible hand. It was as if the monster had rebelled suddenly
against its master, as if it sought to destroy Willie Harrison as it had
destroyed the Italian named Rizzo.
Willie lost all power of speech, all thought of action. Irene, her face
deathly white, leaned against the wall calling upon Lily to support her.
It was Lily, strangely enough, who alone managed to control herself. She
displayed no fear. On the contrary she was quiet, fiercely quiet as if a
deadly anger had taken complete possession of her soul.
“Great God!” she exclaimed passionately. “This is a nightmare!” Willie
fumbled helplessly by her side, rubbing the wrists of the younger sister
until she raised her head and reassured them.
“I’m all right,” said Irene. “We can go on now.”
But Lily was for taking her home. “You’ve seen enough. I’m not going to
have you faint on my hands.”
“I’m all right ... really,” repeated Irene, weakly. “I want to see the
rest. I must see it. It’s necessary. It is part of my duty.”
“Don’t be a fool! Don’t try to make a martyr of yourself!”
But Irene insisted and Lily, who was neither frightened nor exhausted,
yielded at last, weakened by her own curiosity. At the same moment her
anger vanished; she became completely amiable once more.
Willie led them across another open space shut in on the far side by the
great shed which had loomed before them throughout the tour. They passed
through a low, narrow door and stood all at once in an enormous cavern
glowing with red flames that poured from the mouths of a score of
enormous ovens. From overhead, among the tangle of cranes and steelwork,
showers of brilliant cold light descended from hooded globes. The cavern
echoed and reechoed with the sound of a vast hammering, irregular and
confused--the very hammering which heard in the House at Cypress Hill
took on a throbbing, strongly-marked rhythm. On the floor of the cavern,
dwarfed by its very immensity, men stripped to the waist, smooth, hard,
glistening and streaked with sweat and smoke, toiled in the red glow
from the ovens.