Read Steel for Free Online Page A

soldier defending the fort against senility.
    â€œI refuse to die,” he announced as if someone had suggested it. His face darkened. “I will not let bleak nature dim my light nor strip the jewel of being from my fingers!”
    â€œThere, there,” said his wife.
    â€œ There, there! There, there! ” rasped the poet, false teeth clicking in an outrage. “What betrayal is this! That I, who shape my words and breathe into their forms the breath of might, should be a-fettered to this cliché-ridden imbecile!”
    Mrs. Lord submitted her delicate presence to the abuse of her husband. She strained out a peace-making smile which played upon her features of faded rose. She plucked feebly at mouse-gray curls.
    â€œYou’re upset, Ivie dear,” she said.
    â€œUpset!” he cried. “Who would not be upset when set upon by gloating jackals!”
    â€œFather,” his daughter implored.
    â€œJackals, whose brains like sterile lumps beneath their skulls refuse to emanate the vaguest glow of insight into words.”
    He narrowed his eyes and gave his life-long lecture once again. “Who cannot deal with word cannot deal with thought,” he said. “Who cannot deal with thought should be dealt with—mercilessly!” He pounded a strengthless fist on the counterpane.
    â€œWords!” he cried. “Our tools, our glory and our welded chains!”
    â€œYou’d better save your strength,” his son suggested.
    The jade eyes stabbed up, demolishing. Iverson Lord curled thin lips in revulsion.
    â€œ Bug ,” he said.
    His son looked down on him. “Compose your affairs, Father,” he said. “Accept. You’ll find death not half bad.”
    â€œI am not dying!” howled the old poet. “You’d murder me, wouldn’t you! Thug! I shall not listen further!”
    He jerked up the covers and buried his white-crowned head beneath them. His scrawny, dry fingers dribbled over the sheet edge.
    â€œIvie, dear,” entreated his wife. “You’ll smother yourself.”
    â€œBetter smothered than betrayed!” came the muffled rejoinder.
    The doctor drew back the blankets.
    â€œMurdered!” croaked Iverson Lord at all of them, “brutally, foully murdered!”
    â€œIvie, dear, no one has murdered you,” said his wife. “We’ve tried to be good to you.”
    â€œ Good! ” He grew apoplectic. “Mute good. Groveling good. Insignificant good. Ah! That I should have created the barren flesh about this bed of pain.”
    â€œFather, don’t,” begged his daughter.
    Iverson Lord looked upon her. A look of stage indulgence flickered on his face.
    â€œSo Eunice, my bespectacled owl,” he said, “I suppose you are as eager as the rest to view your sire in the act of perishing.”
    â€œFather, don’t talk that way,” said myopic Eunice.
    â€œWhat way, Eunice, my tooth-ridden gobbler—my erupted Venus? In literate English? Yes, perhaps that does put rather a strain on your embalmed faculties.”
    Eunice blinked. She accepted.
    â€œWhat will you do, child,” inquired Iverson Lord, “when I am taken from you? Who will speak to you? Indeed, who will even look?” The old eyes glittered a coup de grâce. “Let there be no equivocation, my dear,” he said gently. “You are ugly in the extreme.”
    â€œIvie, dear,” pleaded Mrs. Lord.
    â€œLeave her alone!” said Alfred Lord. “Must you destroy everything before you leave?”
    Iverson Lord raised a hackle.
    â€œ You ,” he intoned, darting a fanged glance. “Mental vandal. Desecrator of the mind. Defacing your birthright in the name of business. Pouring your honored blood into the sewers of commerciality.”
    His stale breath fluttered harshly. “Groveler before check books,” he sneered. “Scraper before bank accounts.”
    His voice strained into