Read Steel for Free Online Page B

grating falsetto. “ No , madame. Assuredly , madame. I kiss with reverent lips your fat, unwholesome mind, Madame! ”
    Alfred Lord smiled now, content to let the barrages of his father fall upon himself.
    â€œLet me remind you,” he said, “of the importance of the profit system.”
    â€œProfit system!” exploded his sire. “Jungle system!”
    â€œSupply and demand,” said Alfred Lord.
    â€œAlfred, don’t,” Eunice cautioned.
    Too late to prevent venous eyeballs from threatening to discharge from their sockets. “Judas of the brain!” screamed the poet. “Boy scout of intellect!”
    â€œI pain to mention it,” Alfred Lord still dropped coals, “but even a businessman may, tentatively, accept Christianity.”
    â€œChristianity!” snapped the jaded near-corpse, losing aim in his fury. “Outmoded bag of long-suffering beans! Better the lions had eaten all of them and saved the world from a bad bargain!”
    â€œThat will do, Iverson,” said the doctor. “Calm yourself.”
    â€œYou’re upset, Ivie,” said his wife. “Alfred, you mustn’t upset your father.”
    Iverson Lord’s dulling eyes flicked up final lashes of scorn at his fifty-year whipping post.
    â€œMy wife’s capacity for intelligible discourse,” he said, “is about that of primordial gelatine.”
    He patted her bowed head with a smile. “My dear,” he said, “you are nothing. You are absolutely nothing.”
    Mrs. Lord pressed white fingers to her cheek. “You’re upset, Ivie,” her frail voice spoke. “You don’t mean it.”
    The old man sagged back, dejected.
    â€œThis is my penitence,” he said, “to live with this woman who knows so little of words she cannot tell insult from praise.”
    The doctor beckoned to the poet’s family. They moved from the bed toward the fireplace.
    â€œThat’s right,” moaned the rotting scholar, “desert me. Leave me to the rats.”
    â€œNo rats,” said the doctor.
    As the three Lords moved across the thick rug they heard the old man’s voice.
    â€œYou’ve been my doctor twenty years,” it said. “Your brain is varicosed.” “I am to perish,” it bemoaned, “sans pity, sans hope, sans all.” “Words,” it mused. “Build me a sepulcher of words and I shall rise again.”
    And domineered: “This is my legacy! To all semantic drudges—irreverence, intolerance and the generation of unbridled dismay!”
    The three survivors stood before the crackling flames.
    â€œHe’s disappointed,” said the son. “He expected to live forever.”
    â€œHe will live forever,” Eunice emoted. “He is a great man.”
    â€œHe’s a little man,” said Alfred Lord, “who is trying to get even with nature for reducing his excellence to usual dust.”
    â€œAlfred,” said his mother. “Your father is old. And … he’s afraid.”
    â€œAfraid, perhaps. Great? No. Every spoken cruelty, every deception and selfishness has reduced his greatness. Right now he’s just an old, dying crank.”
    Then they heard Iverson Lord. “Sweep her away!” howled the sinking poet. “Whip her away with ninetails of eternal life!”
    The doctor was trying to capture the flailing wrist. They all moved hastily for the bed.
    â€œArrest her!” yelled Iverson Lord. “Let her not embrace me as her lover! Avaunt—black, foul-faced strumpet!” He took a sock at her. “Avaunt, I say!”
    The old man collapsed back on his pillow. His breath escaped like faltering steam. His lips formed soundless, never-to-be-known quatrains. His gaze fused to the ceiling. His hands twitched out a last palsied gesture of defiance. Then he stared at the ceiling until the doctor reached out adjusting