The Wide House

by Taylor Caldwell

  Bertie had disappeared as if the earth had swallowed him up. The last person who had seen him? A young man, a lieutenant in the Army. Bertie had been spied talking to the young officer at the corner of Niagara and Hudson Streets, at about four that afternoon. Mrs. Fiske had seen him, from her carriage, and had bowed to him, and he had bowed back with his usual graciousness. No, she had never seen the officer before. It was nothing unusual for Bertie to strike up acquaintances with strangers, and converse with them affably and with apparent interest for several minutes, and even to walk with them.

  “Has anyone seen the lieutenant, questioned him, found him?” exclaimed Robbie.

  Yes, the police had found him at an enlistment center on Niagara Street. He was John Girard, from New York City, stationed now at The Front. He readily remembered Bertie, for he had stopped Bertie in a friendly enough fashion on Niagara Street and asked him why he was not in the Army. Bertie had affably replied that he was “quite the invalid,” and had changed the subject. They had fed pigeons together, and had discussed the war with considerable interest. John had been charmed with his new friend. He had asked him to dine with him at a near-by tavern, but Bertie had politely refused. He had some “business” to attend to, he had explained.

  Robbie turned to his mother at this, and something of the gray tension relaxed in his face. His most terrible fear was partly allayed. “Not near the river!” he exclaimed.

  Suddenly, over the wind and the rainless storm they heard the opening and shutting of a door. Janie sprang to her feet with a cry, and she and Robbie ran into the hall. But it was only the rigid, white-faced Angus in his broadcloth who stood there quietly and composedly, and something like an involuntary curse upon him rose to Janie’s despairing lips.

  Angus gave Robbie his usual cold and distant glance of recognition. Then he put his thin black arm about his mother, who strained against his embrace. He said: “So, he hasn’t returned yet? This is terrible. Thoughtless, cruel, insensible! But it is to be expected of such a drunkard and blackguard and fool!”

  With one fierce and vehement motion, Janie freed herself from him, glared at him with fiery eyes. “Be off with you, you wooden stick of a wretch!” she screamed. “How dare you speak of my darling Bertie like this? Who wants you about here, you heartless praying corpse of a man? Get out of my house!”

  She was hysterical, mad, unable to control herself. Angus stepped back from her, blinking, the pallor on his face graying, his eyes sick with suffering. She stamped her foot at him, shrieked at him, cursed him with foam on her lips. The years of her hatred fumed at her mouth, expressed itself in obscene and unspeakable words. Her eyes were insane with her hatred, her despair, her terror and agony. And Angus stood and listened, not moving, his hands hanging slack at his sides, and with such a look on his face that not even the cynical Robbie could endure it. Whatever Angus was, he did not deserve this monstrous tirade of loathing and detestation and repudiation. He had loved his mother, had obeyed and served her, had hung upon her steps and had given her the only devotion of her life.

  When Janie paused for sheer lack of breath, Angus said softly: “You really hate me, don’t you, Ma?” His voice was strange and wondering, and faint, and his brow was wrinkled.

  “Hate you?” screamed Janie, recovering herself. “I’ve hated you since you were born, you with your prayers, and your kirk, and your psalms, and your mealy-mouthed texts, and your cursed ‘duty’ and ‘honor’ and obedience! I’ve hated the sickly sight of you, the very sound of your voice, your sly steps, your pious looks, your sermons and your parsonish airs! You’ve never been a man. You’ve been a stick, a corpse, an idiot, all your life, whining and whimpering like a dog at my heels, wanting me to love you! Love you? Damn you, I say, damn you to hell, you loathsome slimy thing!”

  Her face was demented, her teeth and green eyes glistening savagely and with merciless gloating in the light of the flickering lamp. She stamped at him. She mouthed at him. And Angus only listened, his head bent forward a little, his gaze fixed on her intently, his pale mouth still and quiet.

  “I have wished you dead a thousand times!” screamed Janie, with renewed fury. “Why can’t you be lying at the bottom of your grave, or the river? You’ve been like a vile disease in my house, infecting it! It was a joyous day when you left, and I’ve only prayed that I need never see you again!” Suddenly she burst into terrible tears. “Why can’t it be you who has gone, and no trace? Why must it be you standing here, and not my bonny boy?”

  Angus stirred. He drew a deep and audible breath, and to Robbie it was an infinitely awful sound, as if a heart was breaking. He appeared to shrink and dwindle in his heavy black clothing. He lifted his hand and pressed it abstractedly to his temple. He sighed again.

  A surge of profound and aching sympathy and compassion passed through Robbie. It was absurd to think it of Angus, but there it was: all his life he had sought for someone to love, who would love him in return. But he had been repudiated by everyone. He had been hated and despised by Janie, rejected with cynical scorn by Laurie, ignored by Bertie, laughed at by Robbie, devoured by his wife. Yet he had only wanted to be loved, and to serve. At the last then, he had been rejected not only by the poor and valueless creatures about him, but by God, Himself.

  Robbie stepped in now. He laid his hand on Angus’ arm, and said, with quietness: “Don’t listen to Ma. She’s distracted, naturally, at Bertie’s disappearance. Let’s go into the parlor.”

  Angus abstractedly shook off his brother’s arm. He walked into the parlor. He moved as if bemused, or as if in a dream. His gray eyes were clouded, darkened, with deep and voiceless suffering. Once in the parlor he walked to the cold hearth and stood beside it, looking down at the floor. Robbie led his stormily weeping mother to a chair, and set her in it.

  Robbie began to talk again, quietly, explaining to his brother that Bertie had not yet been found, but that there was no reason to fear any violence. Angus said nothing. It was impossible to know whether he was listening. Only the occasional movement of his eyelids testified to any life in him.

  “We’re continuing the search,” said Robbie. He lit a cheroot, and the striking of the lucifer was like a sharp crack in the room. He put the cheroot in his mouth, regarded the ceiling thoughtfully. His own frenzy had disappeared in this new emergency, and there was an odd relaxing in him, as of relief and reassurance. “There’ll be news shortly, I have no doubt. Bertie’s not been in the taverns, or—or near the river, and everyone who has seen him has declared that he appeared perfectly normal.”

  He glanced at Angus. Angus stirred, as if the movement was a profound effort. He lifted his dead gray dyes and fixed them on Robbie. But he still said nothing. Janie was weeping more quietly now, after Robbie’s words. She held out a trembling hand to him, and whimpered: “Ye are the only consolation and comfort to me now, my little lad.”

  Robbie looked at her hand, and he thought: It is the hand of a murderess. This was the one which had struck Angus to his death, made of Laurie a hard and dominant and remorseless trollop, driven Bertie into his negation of life and perhaps into his grave. It is the hand of a murderess, he thought. And he looked at her hand, and then into her face, not moving.

  Janie looked back at him, and suddenly her swollen green eyes narrowed with understanding, and gleamed with hatred for him. Her teeth bared. But she made no sound.

  In that hollow gaunt silence, filled with bitter and frozen emotions, deadly and unforgiving and heart-broken, no one heard the quiet entrance of another man, in the uniform of the Army of the United States. He stood in the doorway, looking at the three petrified people in the room, smiling a little, his thin but erect figure clad in Union Blue, his hat half-hiding the shining blue of his eyes.

  It was Robbie, turning his long and piercing gaze from his mother, who saw the soldier first, and so intense had been his thoughts that for a moment he could only stare, thinking confusedly: It is Bertie’s friend. And then he saw that it was not a stranger who
stood there, so silent, so smiling, but Bertie himself.

  Brother looked at brother across the length of the room, before either Angus or Janie was aware of the newcomer. And Bertie, still smiling, still motionless, gazed back at Robbie.

  All at once Robbie felt a swelling and pulsing in his heart which was both pain and joy and fear. He went silently across the carpet and held out his hand to his brother. Bertie looked at that hand, and then he took it, not slowly and indifferently, but with strength and firmness, and with warmth. They did not smile now.

  There was a faint sound behind them, a smothered and gasping moan. Janie was rising slowly and stiffly from her chair, her shawl dropping from her shoulders, her face idiotic with stupefaction, her mouth working soundlessly. And then, with a loud hoarse cry, she was running across the carpet, her arms held out, tears pouring from her eyes. Robbie released his brother’s hand; the strong warm tingle of it was still in his flesh. Janie flung her arms about her son, pressed her face to his chest, clutched him frantically, uttering incoherent cries the while, imploring him, blessing him, running her hands over him as if to reassure herself that he was alive and close to her heart again, sobbing her thanks to God in the same voice that had cursed Angus hardly ten minutes before. She was completely beside herself. Bertie was forced to hold her firmly in his arms, or, in her transports of joy she would have collapsed at his feet. She snatched at his hands and kissed them; she strained to reach his cheek. She stroked his face and called him endearing names. Tears dashed from her eyes, quivered over her distended and grimacing mouth.

  Robbie turned away. He could not refrain from pitying his mother, even though her ecstasy and joy had in them an element of savagery and violence, and shamelessness. He took a step or two in Angus’ direction. Angus was looking at his mother and brother. His face was stark and tragic. But he made no move to go to Janie or to Bertie, or to speak.

  Bertie, laughing, trying to calm his mother, half-carried, half-dragged her to a chair. But she would not release him. She kissed his hands, over and over. She ran her hands over his sleeve. It was not for some distraught moments that she realized the stuff of which that sleeve was made, and its color. When she did, her cries and exclamations and sobs halted abruptly, and she stared at the uniform with an expression completely blank and shocked.

  Robbie came back to them. His own mind still had an area of stunned numbness in it, and now it slowly returned to life, throbbing dimly. He stood beside Bertie, his hand on his brother’s shoulder.

  Bertie was talking, easily, with his usual lightness and casual amiability. “I waited in the enlistment office all afternoon and evening, expecting every moment to see the officer in charge. But there were so many before me, and I was afraid to leave to send you a message lest someone else take my place. It was not until ten o’clock that my turn came, and the officer and I became so engrossed in our conversation that I was amazed to learn it was midnight. He invited me to share his lodgings behind the office, where we continued our conversation. I decided not to disturb you last night, but to return this morning, after my enlistment had been completed. It seems there was much to consider—”

  He paused. He looked at Robbie now, smilingly, and Robbie, in silence, smiled back, his lips stiff and cold. And then he saw Bertie’s eyes. They were no longer untenanted, filled only with their usual blank light. They were quiet and sparkling. But again Robbie saw the warning in them, not repudiating now, but pleading.

  Janie held her son’s hand to her breast. She did not stir. She only gazed at him steadfastly, every sallow freckle distinct on her sallow cheeks and large nose.

  “The enlistment took all day. Many tests were given me. I didn’t care about a commission. I only wanted to enlist as a common soldier. Finally, I was persuaded.” He paused, then looked down at his mother. His free hand touched her cheek, very gently. He added, with slow softness: “I must leave tonight, for my training camp.”

  Robbie never knew what instinct made him reach his mother’s side and press his hand against her shoulder, firmly, with hard pressure. She had opened her mouth wide, as if to cry out, but at his touch she fell silent, paling even more. She looked at Bertie with a strange and intense penetration, and her features became austere and even dignified with her repressed emotion and the warning Robbie had conveyed to her.

  “Bertie,” he said, looking full into his brother’s eyes, “did you want to do this?” His voice was low and earnest.

  Bertie smiled. He inclined his head. “I did, indeed.”

  Robbie was silent. Had Bertie actually been filled with desire for this? Had he actually been harboring in himself the pangs and passions of patriotism? Had this war truly had some meaning for him? Robbie could not recall that in two years of war Bertie had ever discussed the matter with him or with anyone else. He had read the papers, idly remarked on a battle, turned a page, yawned. What had been transpiring in him all this time? Robbie could not make himself believe that Bertie had hidden a secret excitement, a secret desire and resolution, in himself.

  Bertie remained an enigma. He had answered his brother’s question politely, and with easy amiability. He had made the conventional reply. Robbie bit his lip. But what lay behind that reply, and its immediate affirmation? What was America to Bertie, who had really never lived at all in this world?

  Robbie said, aloud: “This is a wonderful thing, Bertie. A wonderful thing. I haven’t congratulated you yet. I will do it now.” And again he held out his hand to his brother, thinking: Go your way, Bertie. Try to find yourself, somewhere, somehow.

  His thought was in his face, and Bertie saw it He shook Robbie’s hand with hard pressure.

  Janie, too, must have had her thoughts. She was weeping again, but very softly now. She rose, stood on tiptoe, and kissed Bertie’s cheek. “My braw laddie! My soldier laddie!” she murmured. “My handsome laddie! I’m proud of you, my darling.”

  Bertie regarded her with pleased surprise. He returned her kiss. He let her embrace him again. But over her head he looked at his brother, and Robbie, though his heart throbbed with sick presentiment, returned that look strongly, and with affection.

  They all started a little when they saw that Angus stood near them, and was looking at them, for they had forgotten him. He was glancing slowly and wanly from Janie to Bertie. His gray eyes fastened themselves with inexorable bitterness and cold violence upon his younger brother.

  “So this is all you can do, worrying your mother to death, forcing her to believe you had died in some gutter in your drunkenness or taken yourself to the river, and then returning like a conquering hero in a uniform you have no right to wear! A uniform which is meaningless to us, to you. You are a cheap and flamboyant rascal, sir, and I despise you, I repudiate you!”

  His voice shaking with passion, with overwhelming and despairing emotion, with jealousy and anguish, rang through the room. He lifted a lean white finger and pointed it implacably at his brother, and there was such murderous hatred in his face that even Bertie lost his constant smile, and became grave and silent.

  “All your life you have been a burden and a shame to your mother, a disgrace to your sister, an ignominy to your brothers! All your life you have lain on this family like a black cloud, humiliating us before our inferiors, besmirching our name and our honor. Do you think, sir, to inspire us with admiration for your folly? But I tell you this is your crowning achievement in our mortification, the last act calculated to hold us from our equals, our inferiors and our superiors in complete and disastrous ridicule.”

  His stern and narrow face, always so white and so expressionless, had become the face of a wild and hating demon. He was like one possessed. He vibrated with his emotions. He looked only at Bertie, who said nothing.

  And then, before Janie could awake from her new stupefaction, he had turned and left the room, staggering a little, as if drunk.

  Robbie sat beside Alice in the pale dawn light. The girl slept, her young face drawn and haggard, but at rest. Two hours ago
she had given birth to a daughter, now lying in her crib in the nursery across the hall where Alice had lain.

  For two hours Robbie had sat like this beside his wife, watching her. But he was not thinking of her, or even of his child. He was thinking of his brother. And he said to himself: I know I shall never see him again. He has gone away, forever.

  There was in him now a wide and empty desolation in which pain walked like a specter. He looked steadily at the sleeping face of the girl, and saw only Bertie. It was not Alice’s hand he held, but his brother’s. When she sighed a little in her profound sleep, it was Bertie’s sigh he heard.

  He felt that he was not sitting in a room where life had entered, but in a room where death waited.

  CHAPTER 62

  “So,” said Stuart, with elaborate mockery and rage, “you’ll not be having them, eh? Well, let me tell you, Grundy, that you’ll have them whether you want them or not! I’m paying for them, not you.”

  “I’ll appeal to the police!” shouted Father Houlihan furiously. “I’ll not be having your bruisers and your skull-breakers following on my steps! I’ll have you thrown into gaol, you scoundrel!”

  “I think,” said Sam Berkowitz slowly, “that you should consider Stuart, Father.”

  “‘Consider Stuart!”’ bellowed the priest, all the dimness now gone from his energetic blue eyes, which were blazing. “He’ll be having me followed by a corps of cutthroats and bullies, as if I were a criminal, by God! And that reminds me: God is my Protector. I don’t need murderers with clubs and guns.”

  “God,” remarked Stuart, “hasn’t prevented you from having your skull almost broken three times. Or perhaps you walked into a door, that gave you those two grand black eyes, eh? And it was your worshipping, I presume, that brought that broken arm upon you. Slipped, perhaps, before the altar, when you raised the Host?”