The Wide House

by Taylor Caldwell

  “Nice here,” commented Robbie. He opened the knapsack, and withdrew two books from it. One was his “Discussions on Criminal Law,” and the other, Bertie’s Keats. He glanced at that thin volume, and tossed it indulgently to his brother. “Why you read poetic trash is beyond me,” he commented, but with affection. He opened his book. He glanced at his watch. “We’ll eat in an hour,” he said. “Just time for a couple of chapters. Judge Taylor is to question me about them tomorrow.”

  Bertie took his book. He sighed and smiled. “I’ll miss you, when you leave for Harvard, Robbie,” he said.

  Robbie shrugged indifferently. “That won’t be until after Christmas,” he answered. “I’ll be home often. The winter will pass very soon.”

  Bertie’s smile was more vivid. “Not for me,” he commented. He opened his book. “Not for me,” he said, in a lower tone.

  Robbie said: “Yes, I know what the damned winters are here. There’ll be snow in hardly another month. But you’ll quite probably be very interested in your portrait work.”

  “Oh, of course,” said Bertie, a shade too enthusiastically. Robbie frowned. He looked at the end of his cheroot. “You could go to New York to study,” he remarked.

  Bertie shook his head. His smile was very gay. “No, not for me,” he said cheerfully. He brushed an ash off his knee. “I’m not interested in New York.”

  Robbie regarded him with grave thoughtfulness. No, he thought with secret pain, you’ll never be interested in New York. Or in anything. Never, never interested in yourself, or in living, or in anything in the world.

  But Bertie seemed quite at peace, and happy, beginning to read his poetry. There was not a line in his body, in the bending of his head, which was not beautiful and perfect. Robbie could not understand the deepening of his pain. He began to read, but at first he could grasp nothing of the small text. Then, summoning his stern self-discipline he soon became absorbed in the intricacies of criminal law “as practiced in the sovereign State of New York.”

  Now there was nothing at all but the whispering woods and the echo of distant lapping water and the calls of the birds and the shrilling of late locusts. The light under the trees became softer and clearer, yet more spectral.

  Robbie, to his irritation, began to discover that his book did not interest him very much. His thoughts ran away with him, a most unusual thing. He began to think about his brother, and finally he did not see the printed page before him.

  He thought of Bertie with the sadness and heaviness with which one thinks of the dead or the inexorably dying. But his thoughts were without words. They were only a sad enduring, a faint sick restlessness like formless grief. There was nothing he could do for Bertie. There was nothing anyone could do for Bertie. For Bertie could do nothing for himself. Within that shining head there was no will, no desire. He was like a bright leaf in the sun, which when that sun was gone was without a light of its own, nor cared for any light. It only waited.

  He had known women, but he had known them as one knows food and then forgets it until the next exigent hunger. He could not love. Robbie even doubted that Bertie had for him more than a childlike affection and attachment, a little stronger than what he might feel for anyone or anything.

  Then, quite suddenly and with hurting vividness, Robbie recalled that scene with the disgusting old dog. From the cool and colorless depths of his heart there rose a great silent cry, like a burst of anguish: Bertie! Bertie! There is something you have not told me! There is something you could tell me, and I would try to understand!

  Bertie felt his intense look, and glanced up. He smiled broadly. “Look here now, Robbie, I know you hate poetry, but you’ve simply got to listen to this. Two excerpts. I’ve marked them. I’ll read them to you, damn you, and you’ll listen!”

  He expected Robbie to protest abruptly, and wave him off. But to his mild surprise Robbie said with unusual gentleness: “Yes. Read them to me.”

  Bertie began to read in a voice Robbie had not heard before:

  “Darkling I listen; and for many a time

  I have been half in love with easeful Death,

  Called him soft names in many a mused rhyme,

  To take into the air my quiet breath;

  Now more than ever seems it rich to die,

  To cease upon the midnight with no pain,—”

  His rich voice stopped, and he looked at Robbie with his unchanging smile, and in silence.

  Robbie did not speak. His black eyes did not leave his brother’s face. But he felt a frozen stillness in him like death itself.

  Bertie bent over his book again. “Here is another excerpt:

  “‘Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

  Are sweeter; therefore, yet soft pipes, play on;

  Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared,

  Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:

  Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave

  Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare—’”

  Robbie did not hear when Bertie’s voice stopped. He heard only:

  “Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave

  Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare—”

  And then he knew that Bertie had a song, but it was not one he could ever sing to anyone, not anyone in all the world. He had no words for it; he had only pain, which he confronted with his brilliant smile and his gay eyes.

  And Robbie also knew; with the mysterious prescience that came to him so rarely, that he would always see his brother, like the youth in the poem, singing his unearthly song under trees forever in full leaf, forever unchanging, himself forever dead.

  He came to himself with a start He had heard a curious sound.

  Bertie had bowed his head on his knees and was weeping.

  CHAPTER 37

  It was Angus’ custom to accompany his sister, Laurie, to Stuart’s house every Sunday afternoon in order that the girl might play for an hour or so for her benefactor.

  But on this particular first Sunday in November he had taken ill with a feverish cold, and Janie commanded her youngest son, Robbie, to convey his sister to Stuart’s home. Robbie, gloomy and exhausted, did not find this a pleasant prospect, but he was not one to argue vindictively, and was too adult to refuse a favor or even a peremptory request, if it did not inconvenience him too much. He saw no adequate reason, then, why he should not accompany his young sister through the streets of Sunday Grandeville.

  Robbie did not particularly care for Laurie, though he had a casual affection for her because in some ways she resembled their brother, Bertie. She had Bertie’s blue eyes, and her hair was only a few shades more golden, and she also possessed his fresh coloring and tall classic stature. But she and Robbie had had little conversation together, for he thought her rather a “dull piece” for all her beauty. Moreover, though she was but thirteen, she was almost as tall as he, and as he was irritably aware that his own stature was hardly impressive it annoyed him that so young a girl could almost meet him eye to eye.

  However, he was prepared to be kind to her, uninteresting though her conversation would probably be, during the mile walk to the home of their kinsman. Also, he wished to speak to Stuart privately. In a paternal voice, therefore, he urged Laurie to dress warmly and to take her muff. For the streets were already filled with snow and ice, and a stiff gale, arctic and numbing, swept through the desolate streets under a low and angry gray sky.

  The endless Northern winter had set in late in October. Until the middle of the following May the city would be gripped within the frozen hands of the Lakes and the bitter river. Robbie, whose blood was thin and cool, hated this northern clime, and contemplated the next seven months of rigorous winter with complete gloom and disgust.

  So sentimental a term as “heaviness of heart” was not appropriate for Robbie, yet he was now suffering a very similar affliction. Too analytical and logical for a real surge of emotion, it annoyed him that he could experience such a dragging weight in his
chest, such an aching stiffness in his limbs. Yet, discipline himself though he would, he could not rid himself of his weary malaise, his deep hopelessness. I have made my decision, he would say sternly to himself, and with self-disgust, and I shall think no more of it. But his denied and repressed emotions (though he would not acknowledge their existence) refused the decision made by his mind.

  Reviewing all this, he walked with his sister through the deserted, windy streets. They had covered over half the distance before he became aware that he had exchanged no words at all with Laurie. He was too polite and civilized not to feel some discomfort over this. Therefore he glanced sideways at her, as he clung to his tall hat, and smiled frigidly, “Horrible weather, isn’t it, Laurie?” he asked, courteously, and immediately felt complete ennui.

  She turned her face to him, and returned his smile. It was a very lovely face, he noted absently. “Yes,” she murmured. Her cheeks were flushed and cold.

  “I’m afraid I’m not an interesting companion,” he conceded. “Unfortunate that Angus has his chill. He would have much more to talk to you about.”

  Laurie turned her face away. She said, with cool tranquillity: “Angus and I never have anything to talk about, anymore.”

  Robbie was politely surprised. He bent his head in order to get a glimpse of Laurie’s face. It was quite rigid and tight under the beaver bonnet, he observed, and unpleasantly mature in its expression. Now he felt a stir of real interest.

  “But you were always such friends, Laurie,” he suggested.

  She did not answer. She only walked a little quicker, with her long and smooth glide. For a moment or two Robbie was humiliatingly forced to trot to catch up with her. He was quite convinced, now, that tiny Alice Cummings was the young lady for him, and he immediately discarded his former admiration for statuesque females. Laurie would be quite a giant, he thought irritably.

  “Angus was always your guardian,” he remarked, further annoyed that his breath was a little hurried. “And you two were quite close.”

  But Laurie said clearly: “Angus has changed.”

  “Yes?” said Robbie, with increasing interest.

  He was somewhat discomfited when his sister glanced at him with an odd smile, and a dimple appeared in her cheek as if she found him naïve. “Angus has changed, that is all,” she said.

  “We all change,” he commented coldly. “Did you expect him to remain a little lad?”

  “No,” she said, very quietly, “but I did not expect a man to become a little lad.”

  Robbie was amazed. He thought this a very peculiar and provocative remark to be made by a young lady not yet fourteen. Had he heard rightly? If he had, then his preconceived notions about Laurie were all wrong, and he would be forced to revise them. That would make for mental messiness, and take time. He preferred to analyse, index, and file all his conclusions permanently.

  “I don’t understand, child.”

  Laurie compressed her lips, and her young face appeared older and harder. She said with some coldness: “Why should you be interested, Robbie? You and Angus were never concerned with each other. Or are you just curious?”

  “Curious!” exclaimed Robbie, annoyed. “I was only making conversation.”

  Laurie said: “I don’t like making conversation. It is a waste of time.”

  Robbie, before he could discipline himself again, was conscious of a really hot dislike for his sister, and a renewed sense of humiliation. These were aggravated by her cold and unpleasantly amused smile as she stared steadily before her,

  “It seems,” he said severely, “that your polite education has been sadly neglected. Has no one told you that pleasant conversation is a necessity in civilized society?”

  Laurie laughed suddenly. She touched her brother’s arm lightly, and her eyes danced. “Then how your ‘polite education’ has been neglected, Robbie!”

  His mind said to him: The minx is impossible. But some unsuspected spot of humor in him was tickled, and he laughed involuntarily. “Yes,” he admitted, in an unusually warm tone, “I’m afraid it has, Laurie. I was only speaking as an elder brother to a young sister. Frankly, I think we Cauders aren’t very civilized, are we? But what can you expect, with such a delightfully uncivilized mother?” he added, ironically.

  Laurie had been smiling. But at his last words her eyes darkened, her lips became tight and hard. She shrugged. She walked a little faster.

  All at once Robbie was conscious of the most infuriating pain in his chest, a sharpening of his sickness. For there was a look about Laurie, now, of Bertie. Her walk, the smoothness of her steps, the color of her hair, the lines of her profile, were all Bertie’s. As one clings to a portrait of one who is dead or who is forever far away, so Robbie wished to cling to Laurie with a quite unreasoning passion.

  He said, and was shocked at his own involuntary words: “Laurie, do you know that you look very much like Bertie?”

  Her walk slowed. She turned her head to him. Now her young blue eyes were grave and gentle as they fixed themselves upon him. Stupefied, he saw compassion in them, and a new and thoughtful tenderness.

  “Do you think so, Robbie dear?” she asked softly. She took his hand and held it, as they walked along more slowly.

  He could not control himself. He said, with rare simplicity: “Yes, my dear. You do.” He paused. “I—I am very fond of Bertie,” he added, in a low voice.

  “I know,” she whispered. Then she said: “I am glad I look like Bertie.”

  He was silent. Their hands held together strongly. Robbie’s mind said: This is ridiculous. But the sickness continued to lighten in his heart, and he felt the warmth of his sister’s hand.

  They did not speak again until they reached Stuart’s house.

  Here, by the river, the wintry air was heavy and sluggish, massive with cold. The river, gray and ruffled, reflected the somber light of the dark afternoon; the Canadian shore was lost in a gloomy mist. One could hear the rushing of the waters, the groaning of the wind in the bare trees. There was nothing but gray desolation and the monotonous flow of the river as far as eye could see, and heaven tumbling with dusky clouds. Occasionally a bronze or scarlet leaf, dry and crumpled, blew through the heavy and laboring air, or a gull rose, crying dolorously, a pale leaden light on its curving wings. All the grasses round about had turned a rusty brown, and bent in the wind with a crackling sound. Along the shore, waves hissed against the stones, left on those stones a skin of thin and breaking foam. Here and there were patches of snow, white as bone, and frozen.

  Above them stood Stuart’s house, the “Irishman’s Folly,” bleached and gleaming white against the rolling gray sky, a lonely temple of beauty incongruous in that wild setting. Laurie and Robbie climbed the flagged walks and opened the fretted iron gate. When they lifted the knocker clamoring echoes followed the sound, too loud in that immense and desolate silence.

  But the shining black and white hall was warm, filled with a sweet and languorous scent, and lamps bloomed about, softly. A maid helped Laurie with her cloak and bonnet. While Robbie was similarly assisted, Laurie smoothed her ruffled golden hair with the palms of her hands, and glanced down at her crimson merino frock. Then she walked with Robbie into the great and lovely parlor, all her composure and serenity returned, her head high.

  Stuart and his wife, Marvina, and his little girl, were waiting for them. With them was Mr. Richard Berry, the “fine teacher from New York,” a very little dark man with a full black beard and a fiery black eye. He came forward, pointing his narrow polished boots like a dancer, and bowed deeply. Though he was pure New Englander, he affected a fierce and Continental manner, appropriate to a teacher of voice. He might even have kissed the young Laurie’s, hand had she given him the opportunity. He glanced restlessly at Robbie, and when Stuart came forward to introduce the two, he bowed again. He heartily disliked small men, and he did not like Robbie’s cold and derisive eye.

  Marvina, a radiant vision in blue velvet, came gracefully across the A
ubusson carpets to greet Laurie and her brother. She kissed the girl on the cheek, and beamed emptily on Robbie. Wifehood and motherhood had done well by Marvina; she was quite plump now, and statuesque. But they had not put maturity into her beautiful vapid face with the wide golden eyes. It was the face of a child, forever.

  “Oh, my pet, you are quite cold!” she said, in her rich voice, which had no expression in it at all. “And our dear Robbie is with you today, and not our Angus. Why is this?”

  “Angus has a cold,” said Robbie, politely, bored already. He did not like fools. But even a fool was better than this charming woman with the shining black hair who did not even possess folly. She made him uneasy. It was like addressing a statue, to speak to her. It gave him a sense of surprise when she answered a remark, for he was certain that anything said to her was unheard, and aroused no response in that perfect breast or behind that smooth white forehead.

  He glanced curiously at Stuart, standing and smiling fixedly beside his wife, and he wondered idly, as he had wondered a dozen times before, how this violent and tempestuous man could endure the society of this empty woman who was nothing at all but a great doll echoing the thoughts and words of others. But, he thought, perhaps she was soothing.

  Little Mary Rose came up now, shyly, smiling at Laurie, whom she deeply loved. The child took the older girl’s hand confidently, and looked up at her. She was a very frail little creature, with a pointed and elfin face, white and thin. Her mouth was too wide, and too sensitive, and very tremulous at the corners, and a mass of lusterless dark hair tumbled over her fragile shoulders. Her straight little nose had quivering nostrils. But her eyes, enormous and black and full of sadness, were also radiant with sweetness, bright as dark stars, and trembling with light. Over her red wool frock was fastened a ruffled pinafore. She was so fairy-like, so frail and tender, that even Robbie could not look at her dispassionately, and he smiled at her frigidly and touched her cheek with his finger.