The Wide House

by Taylor Caldwell

  “She will soon be sixteen,” remarked Angus, absently. He looked down at the floor. His expression was very sad and very weary. He sighed, unconsciously. He added: “She never writes to me, only to Mama, and sometimes to Robbie, about Bertie.”

  “Well, now,” said Stuart, feeling awkward, “that is too bad of the minx. After all, it is due to you that she has had this chance at all. Doesn’t she know that?”

  Angus looked up quickly, and his eyes were full of quick pain. “She is grateful only to you, Stuart. She does it—just for you, because you wish it. My own part in it she found impudent.”

  He added, unable to endure the look of sympathy in Stuart’s warm eyes, and taking on himself his old pride and stiff arrogance: “Do not think I have forgotten how much you have done for Laurie, Stuart. Someday, I shall repay you. And that is another matter. I think I can make a payment next month. One hundred dollars. And thereafter I shall make regular payments. You must give me a complete bill.”

  “Go to the devil!” exclaimed Stuart, with his sudden rage. “Keep your damned money! Have you nothing to say to me but insults?”

  He glared at Angus, who had flushed dimly. “Do you think she would take your money, you conceited popinjay? Let her once know you are paying for her studies, and she will abandon them at once.”

  “You wouldn’t tell her, Stuart?” asked Angus, with proud anger.

  “I would that! Immediately. Well, damn you, do as you wish. I can’t stop you. But on your first payment to me I shall write to Laurie.”

  He swung away on his heel, leaving Angus to look after him in desperation and complete misery.

  CHAPTER 43

  But unfortunately for Father Houlihan’s innocently benevolent hopes, Angus’ surreptitious visits to the Hospital of the Sisters of Charity abruptly ceased, for no understandable reason. Dr. Malone reported this, regretfully.

  Father Houlihan was of too impulsive and passionate a nature to sigh with resignation and turn away from a problem, leaving events in the hands of Heaven. Though he had so simple and profound a belief in God, he was of the conviction that it aid no harm at all to assist the Deity by direct methods, a kind of pious nudging of the Divine Ribs. By works, by prayer, by concentration and humble insistence, he earnestly believed that God’s attention could be secured, however irritable, and that often the Lord was induced to accomplish many a miracle by the sheer tenacity of His beseechers.

  When he informed Stuart of his plot against the peace of the Almighty, Stuart laughed. “Grundy, you are a damned, long-nosed meddler. It wouldn’t surprise me if your ‘favorite saint’ up and smote you properly for your impudence. Leave Angus alone. Let the devil stew in his own juice.”

  Father Houlihan was outraged. “You don’t understand the efficacy of prayer, Stuart.”

  “Well, pray. As far as I am concerned, I’ve washed my hands of him. Greedy pig that he is. If you could see him fondle the cash, you’d stop tormenting your pet saint, and consign Angus to hell.”

  Father Houlihan often wandered disconsolately near the hospital, and within it, much to Mother Mary Elizabeth’s gratification. She privately considered the priest a very careless man, and did not approve of his frequent, booming laughter. Now he engaged her in pious conversations, exceedingly serious ones, and was much awed and depressed by her intellect and stern faith. He persuaded her, also, to pray for Angus and having slyly enlisted her in the service of tormenting the Lord, he felt considerable satisfaction.

  One Sunday afternoon, Father Houlihan visited the hospital and had one of his profoundly depressing discussions with Mother Mary Elizabeth. (Sometimes he felt this, also, was in the nature of a sacrifice and this was his only cheer.) Mother Mary Elizabeth was the daughter of an old New England family, and a lady of great intellect and crushing erudition. She could read and write fluently in six languages, and as Father Houlihan could speak only one with any fluency at all, and was deplorably uncertain in Latin, except for the prayers and the celebration of Mass, he would always retire from her effulgent presence convinced that he was both simple-minded and stupid, and that her eye had dwelt on him with chilly scorn for his scholarly attainments. As he was enormously fat and short, and Mother Mary Elizabeth was aristocratically tall and slender, his feeling of inferiority could not be relieved except in privacy, when he gave vent to many eloquent and pointless oaths, for which he later did distressed penance.

  His faith, he came to believe, was very primitive and uncomplex, and disgustingly childlike. Mother Mary Elizabeth could converse easily and eloquently on many obscure subjects, and was very mystical into the bargain. Father Houlihan found himself floundering in discussions which had a precarious resemblance to the old problem of how many angels could dance upon the point of a needle. As this was a problem which was utterly beyond him, and completely out of the range of his comprehension (“damned silly idea, I’m thinking”) he would retire from the lady’s august presence feeling excessively puerile and worthless.

  Father Houlihan remembered the simple and ignorant nuns of his childhood, with their loving faces and worn, calloused hands, and he thought Mother Mary Elizabeth a great mistake, and had many dark meditations on the education of females. He disliked the Mother very much, and always went smarting and blushing from her presence.

  Accordingly, on this particular Sunday, he was in a very despondent name of mind. He had gone but a few yards from the hospital when he was almost run over by a somber black carriage with glittering silver harness. The black horses reared suddenly and stood up momentarily on their hind legs as the coachman wrenched on the reins. Father Houlihan retired hastily to the sidewalk and brushed off his hat, which had fallen into the dust upon his retreat. This was the last straw. He began to curse, with regrettable audibility, and to look at the occupants of the carriage with a blasting eye.

  “Why don’t ye watch where ye’re going?” he shouted. “Running down the populace in your damned card D’ye think ye own the streets, perhaps?”

  The carriage did not go on. There was a flustered air about it. The coachman grinned contemptuously. But the young man sitting with the young lady seemed disturbed and embarrassed, and slowly climbed down to the walk beside the priest. Father Houlihan, with a rush of crimson to his face, recognized Angus Cauder. He grinned foolishly.

  “Well, now, it’s Angus,” he stammered. “I didn’t know.”

  Angus hesitated, then removed his hat with stiff hauteur. “How do you do, Father Houlihan,” he said, formally. “I’m sorry. But you did come off the curb very hastily, you know. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s my carelessness,” said the priest. But he looked at Angus earnestly.

  He had not seen Angus since his marriage a year ago. How grim and pale the young man was, and how emaciated. It was pitiful to see. He looked up into those frozen gray eyes under the straight black brows, and at the rigid mouth. Angus’ funereal black emphasized his pallor, his haggard features. But he was prouder than ever, and quietly arrogant. He regarded his old friend with distant politeness and cold if secret aversion.

  “May we give you a lift—Father?” suggested Angus, gesturing towards the carriage with his gloved hand.

  Now this, thought Father Houlihan, with a rise of his simple heart, may be an opportunity extended to me by St. Francis. He looked hopefully at the carriage, and then his spirits sank again.

  The young lady returned Father Houlihan’s regard with stolid contempt and repudiation. She sat there, in her sable cape and huge brown bonnet, like a lethargic lump of deplorably young obesity, her hands in her sable muff. Under the shadow of the bonnet, and above the brown satin ribbons, was a round, moonlike face, as white as lard, and as featureless. It was smooth and flaccid, that face, and its only expression was dull superciliousness and brutality. The little thick nose turned upwards, the nostrils static. The mouth pale, thick and protruding. The shallow blue eyes were very big and round, and completely torpid and fixed. Stiff lusterless curls of a coarse yellow clustered about h
er heavy neck. Yet, she had the coarse prettiness of a stupid peasant girl and that girl’s suspiciousness, and evidently considered herself a grand lady. As Father Houlihan stared at her with open surprise and regret, she ostentatiously shrugged, lifted a hand from her muff to display her many jewels, turned away. She stared stolidly at the back of the coachman, and thereafter ignored the priest.

  So, thought Father Houlihan, this is the lad’s wife. God help him.

  He turned to Angus, and said with a painful smile: “Thank you, Angus, kindly. But I am visiting in the neighborhood.” He hesitated. He looked up again at the tall young man, and stammered: “I’ve missed you, lad. Will you come to me, soon?”

  As Angus had not visited the priest’s house for many years, this was a surprising remark. One of Angus’ level eyebrows lifted. But he said gravely: “Thank you.”

  He glanced at his wife. His mouth became thinner and narrower, if possible. It was evident that he wished to be off. It was also evident that he felt the pressure of decent courtesy, and was considering introducing Gretchen to his old friend. But the set of her massive shoulders under the cloak, the flabby obduracy of her porcine profile, dissuaded him.

  Father Houlihan put his hand on the young man’s arm. Angus drew back a little, then restrained himself. “Angus, you’ll be coming to see me, soon? I’ll be looking forward to it. It’s been a long time.”

  Angus looked down at him. He said, with reluctant formality: “Yes, it has been a long time, hasn’t it? How are you?”

  “Well! Well! But after all, I am not young any longer.” Father Houlihan had turned bright scarlet, and his humble smile was painful.

  “It has been pleasant to see you, Father—Houlihan,” said Angus. Now he smiled, himself. But the smile was only a contortion, a meaningless grimace, and his pale cheeks were rigid. He put his hand on the carriage. “Do give my regards to Mrs. O’Keefe, will you not?”

  “Yes, yes,” stammered the priest. But the carriage was already bowling off down the street, glittering in the pale December sunlight. He stood there a long time, watching it, until it turned the corner.

  He went on his way. He was sick at heart. His step was slow and feeble. His lips moved in soundless prayer.

  It was just before Vespers, and he crept humbly into his beautiful little church and knelt down like any other supplicant before one of the altars. A few of his parishioners were kneeling in their pews, and some were making the Stations of the Cross. He knelt in dim shadow, his hands clasped on his broad breast, his head bent.

  The smooth and arching walls of the church were like snow, spectral in the dusk, and glimmering. The white floor was awash in a crepuscular light, and vaguely reflected the pews, and the slender, towering columns that rose like the white trunks of trees to the exquisitely groined roof. The lovely little altars were ashine with the flickering starlight candles, and the air was pervaded with incense and the scent of roses from Stuart’s conservatories. Here was peace and twilight silence and sacred meditation, broken only by a subdued cough now and then, or the shuffle of pious feet.

  Father Houlihan, whose mind was never profound or devious, and who had no high opinion of dialectic and obscurantism, believed as Emerson believed, that “the meal in the firkin; the milk in the pan; the ballad in the street; the news of the boat; the glance of the eye; the form and gait of the body; show me the ultimate reason of these matters—and the world lies no longer a dull miscellany and lumber-room, but has form and order; there is no trifle, there is no puzzle, but one design unites and animates the farthest pinnacle and the lowest trench.” This was his belief. Let the philosophers argue their obscure and scholarly philosophies. Let the learned priests discuss their dialectical matters, until they lost themselves in a cloud of words and lifted their feet above the common earth. Let a million angels dance on needle-points in their unknowable essence. Let God be so discussed, so argued, so meditated upon, so dissected, that He become tenuous and dissipated and finally vanish and explode into a thousand intangible fragments and be no more. This was not for Father Houlihan, who could know only “the meal in the firkin and the milk in the pan” which explained everything.

  But now, with chaotic suddenness, things were no longer so simple.

  For the first time in his life Father Houlihan had a hideous and ominous prescience that the world was too much for men, and perhaps too much for God, also. His innocent mind was invaded by the most terrible thoughts, which affrighted him. He saw himself in a universe filled with strange beings, among whom he could not discover a single familiar face. Those few moments with Angus had been like a door in a comfortable room, filled with affection, and the furniture of friendliness. And that door had opened, without warning, showing him the boundless and dreadful country outside, which he had never suspected of existing. He stood on the threshold, dumb and trembling, feeling awful winds upon his frightened face, and even the stars were not the stars of his knowledge. He could not explain it to himself. He could only know fear, and wonder, and suffering.

  He had thought the human soul as uncomplicated as his own, eager and hungry for light, willing to abandon its burden at the word of a waiting God, willing to discard its sins and errors if only the way were shown. But now he saw that human soul in its unfamiliar and frightful lineaments, and it was like the moon to him, showing only one face to the world, a face artificially lit by circumstance and exigency and convention, the dark side enormously suggested in its full dreadfulness and mystery, but never to be discerned.

  “The meal in the firkin, the milk in the pan.” No, there was no longer such a kind and artless explanation for the world of men and the Heaven of God. While he suffered, Father Houlihan felt a profound humiliation and contempt and desperation in himself that he had been so guileless. Perhaps God also had been scornful of his elemental philosophy.

  He was filled with a prostrating grief and despair. He could not even pray. He clasped his hands humbly and besought the altar. Its eternal light flickered at him, remote as the farthest star. Then his vision was dazzled and splintered, and a moisture inundated the sockets of his dejected eyes.

  For many years he had sought the explanation of wars, of cruelties, or madnesses, of insanities and treacheries and the insensibility of hearts. He had encountered all these things, and they had distressed him. But he had thought them errors, committed only by the blind and the foolish and the unenlightened, and he had displayed anger and indignation in their presence, and had been eager to teach and to guide. Now he said to himself, I know I have been a fool. There are terrible abysses and chasms and strange and awful countries in the human soul, and I have never known of them, or believed in them.

  A great terror seized the priest. He looked about him. All was strange. He cried out, aloud: “O God! O God!”

  His voice was like a screaming arch of agony, and the few worshipers in the church started, uttered little cries, and stared at him in the white dusk.

  CHAPTER 44

  Unaware of the bottomless suffering and despair which he had inflicted on his innocent old friend, however inadvertently, Angus continued the drive with his wife, the former Gretchen Schnitzel. He sat beside her in his frozen silence, as stiff and arrogant as an image, and stared fixedly ahead of him. So well disciplined were his thoughts in these latter years that almost never was he afflicted by his old malaise of the spirit, his old despondency and terror. When he felt the darkness moving towards him like an unseen and fearful tide he would resolutely and sternly turn his face from it, and his consciousness. He had a way, now, of substituting clear and ordinary thoughts in his mind, as householders light the little familiar lamps, while the earth rolls inexorably into the unknowable and frightening night. And, as those householders draw the heavy draperies across the windows to keep out the cold and the sickening sunless air, so he drew the curtains of discipline across the awareness of his subconscious soul.

  He did not allow himself any reflections on his wife. She was there; he had married her. She had
brought him a potential fortune. He resided with her in the house of her parents on Franklin Street, and though the house was repellent, and very damp, it was at least fairly comfortable. Mr. and Mrs. Schnitzel, though dull as to conversation and boorish of manner, were worthy people, and he hoped that he would steadily increase the regard they had for him.

  He was now assistant manager in the shops, and was receiving fifty dollars a week, out of which he scrupulously paid twenty-five dollars for his and Gretchen’s “keep” in the Schnitzel mansion. Mr. Schnitzel had grunted his refusal, but when Angus had insisted, the slaughter-house owner had eyed him with hoggish respect.

  He never asked himself whether he liked or disliked his wife. He gave her courtesy and respect. He never questioned whether she was a lady, or intelligent, or if she had any thoughts of her own, or what kind of a creature she was. They were polite to each other, and apparently indifferent.

  Janie might have been interested in their private life behind the dull door of their duller bedroom, huge and crimson and completely hideous. As a connoisseur of life, and a lover of life, and full of zest as she was, Janie might have been appalled. For passion in its most joyous sense, its deepest completion, its love and ardor and tenderness, had no part in the conjugal atmosphere in that bedroom. It can only be said that Angus and Gretchen mated, with as little wildness and madness as can be imagined, and with only enough to make the act possible at all.

  Stuart had disgustedly called him “a graven image.”

  Angus had only one passion now, and with the single-heartedness of the disciplined and sterile man he had directed what bleak desire he still possessed towards that one passion. And that passion was money. But he did not lust for it as Stuart lusted, for what it could bring in pleasure and security and peace of mind. He lusted for it as a thing in itself, a beginning and an end.