The Wide House

by Taylor Caldwell

  “You dirty blasphemer!” screamed Father Houlihan, half rising from his chair with clenched fists. “I’ll not be having a blasphemer and a defiler in my house! Get the hell out of here, before I throw you out in person!”

  But Stuart only laughed, for Father Houlihan, in his vigorous movements, had set into loud protest numerous muscles still sore and bruised from his last beating at the hands of masked ruffians. The priest subsided into his chair again, with a groan. But his look was still fiery and suffused.

  “I think,” said Father Billingsley, in his neutral and precise voice, “that Father Houlihan is quite correct in his objections. No man needs more than the protection of God.”

  “He doesn’t, eh?” asked Stuart contemptuously, and eyeing the younger priest with complete unpleasantness. “The evidence of history refutes you, Father. Or perhaps you are not a student of history?”

  Stuart well knew that Father Billingsley was a very learned authority on history, that he had written a scholarly book on Napoleon and another on Gustavus Adolphus, both of which had attracted much attention among pedagogues on both Continents. Father Houlihan, momentarily distracted from his own personal rage, exclaimed: “Well, now, and that’s a blackguardly thing to say, I’m thinking! You, who don’t know the difference between Mount Etna and St. Helena! Or perhaps, sir, you wish to give Father Billingsley a lesson in history, yourself?”

  Stuart was suddenly exasperated. “I could teach him, and you too, confound you, a very fine lesson in human nature, and a grand lesson on the wool-gathering of the Almighty, when He ought to be about protecting fools and children like yourselves! I’m tired of this nonsense. You’ll have these—these excellent gentlemen to protect you, whether you want them or not, and they’re good Irish Catholics, too, and you won’t dare forbid them to follow on your heels right up to the altar. So resign yourself.”

  “I’ll not have it!” shrieked the priest, brandishing his clenched fists.

  “You already have it,” responded Stuart, grinning.

  He glanced at the two huge young Irishmen who were standing respectfully near the door of the priest’s neat little parlor. They returned his grin, touched their foreheads in a casual salute. Father Houlihan glared at them. “And why, may I humbly ask,” he said with heavy sarcasm, “why are these fine lads not in the Army, instead of haunting a poor old harmless priest like myself?”

  “They’ve already been in the Army, Grundy, and have been honorably discharged, with wounds. Walsh, here, is blinded in the right eye, and Cullen has a bullet in his hip. But their muscles are still splendid, and they know which end of a gun shoots, and they fire first and ask questions afterwards.”

  “So it’s murderers I have guarding me! I’ll be leaving a trail of corpses behind me! I’ll not have it.” The priest was quite beside himself.

  “You already have it,” Stuart repeated gently.

  The priest exhaled with a snorting sound, and a ferocious look. He tried to quell the smiles of his new bodyguard. They returned his vitriolic glance with bland and innocent and respectful eyes. Sam laughed softly. “Stuart is very right, Father. You need protection. Stuart has no time to waste worrying over you. You must haf some regard for him.”

  “And Cullen confided in me that he hasn’t made a confession for three years,” said Stuart, smiling, “and Walsh hasn’t attended Mass for nearly four. You can work on them at your leisure.”

  “Heretics, too,” wailed Father Houlihan. He fixed the young men with a stern frown, and began to berate them on their default in duty. They listened humbly, with sad expressions, nodding their heads in agreement as his indignation mounted against them. Suddenly he began to laugh. His arm, only lately released from its sling, ached. He rubbed it absently.

  “And who’s to feed them, and house them?” he asked of Stuart, trying not to be too forgiving just yet.

  “I have engaged rooms for them at Mrs. Murphy’s, two doors down. They will take turns guarding you, one by day, the other by night. For instance Cullen, with his gun handy, will curl up on the threshold of your bedroom tonight, like a good dog. Tomorrow Walsh will follow humbly in your steps. You can get him a rosary and a prayerbook, and converse with him on religious matters as you go about your duties. He needs the re-education.”

  The priest gazed at Stuart, trying to retain his grim and furious expression. But it was hopeless. He sighed, and smiled. His voice shook a little when he said: “Stuart, you are a damned rascal and an obstinate wretch. Stuart, I love you.” He extended his hand to his friend, who took it and pressed it warmly. The priest’s eyes dwelt on him with obscure sadness.

  Stuart said: “It’s come to a fine pass when a man of God must be guarded, in America. It’s an excellent thing to observe in a free Republic that harmless good women cannot leave their convent without being subjected to filthy insults and threats, and little children leaving their schools must be terrorized. It’s a lovely scene to watch one like Sam, here, being spat upon in the public streets and receiving communications menacing his life. It soothes the heart with hopes for humanity and the progress of the human race, to discern these things.”

  But Father Houlihan said indignantly: “Mankind rises two steps, falls back one. But we’ve come a long way from the pit, and with the help of God we shall rise still higher. This is a time of stress, and men’s passions are maddened. This, too, will pass.”

  “Oh, you and your love for America! You have me repeating your words all over the place, like a parrot.” But Stuart, though his eyes remained somber, smiled a little. “Yes, this will pass. Perhaps. But the spores of hatred and cruelty have a long survival, and what is broadcast on the wind today will find a growing place tomorrow. Do not think that the spores which have settled on the soil of America in these days will die. They may have a long sleeping. But they will awake and grow, twenty, thirty, fifty, one hundred years from now. I feel it in my heart.”

  “They always grow. The soil is forever infected with them. But faith and love and mercy and justice will always destroy them, wherever they rise,” said the priest earnestly. “I have never been afraid. I saw, and knew, the face of one of my attackers, but I brought no charges against him. It was not he who originated the disease. It was a man in one of these grand houses, who is afraid that my words threaten his soft bed, with its numerous occupants, his fine wines and table, his sparkling carriages, his swollen bank-accounts, and his bonds.”

  Stuart’s face darkened uneasily. “And there’s another thing. Grundy. When you spoke at Union Hall, and urged the workers in Schnitzel’s slaughter-houses to demand higher wages, and to form a trade union against him for their protection, you did a dangerous thing. You’ve made a very deadly enemy. Oh, it’s true that Schnitzel had to disgorge, but you’ve won a sinister victory. There were those other speeches you made, too, to the workers in Zimmermann’s sausage factory, and to the workers on the docks and on the steamers, and in the steel manufactories, and other places. You’ve made Grandeville unsafe for you—”

  “I’ve made it a more decent place for the workers!” cried the priest. “By God, do you think it is not the work of a priest to protect his people, to make their life more endurable, as well as to guard their souls? I despise those men of God who believe that a priest’s work ends at the altar, where he must talk only of transcendental things. A man’s belly must be fed before he listens to his soul. Justice must live, if religion, itself, would survive.”

  Stuart studied him with affection. “All right, Grundy. All right. I agree with you. But not one hundred dastardly workers is worth your little finger. They’re the first to turn on you, remember, the first to listen to evil lies against you, even while they devour the more lavish food you’ve enabled them to eat, and the extra decent money you’ve put jingling into their pockets. Even while they lie under whole roofs, in reasonably comfortable beds—all procured by your work—they mull over the canards they’ve heard about you, and hate you.”

  “I can’t believe it,”
whispered the priest. But the simple suffering on his tired face belied his words, and he turned aside his head. He sighed. “Even if it is so, I must do what I can. Sometime they will know, and understand.”

  Stuart rose. But Mrs. O’Keefe entered at that moment with the announcement that a light supper was being served for the gentlemen. She glanced at the hulking bodyguards with satisfaction, and graciously remarked that a generous plate of ham and some good beer was waiting for them also, in the kitchen. She gave Stuart a smug wink, which he returned. Father Billingsley rose with austerity, and asked Father Houlihan’s permission to retire. The older priest watched his junior leave, and sighed deeply. He said to Stuart: “There is a good lad, a very good lad, and a fine soul. But as removed from the earth as if he—”

  “Was spinning on your old proverbial needle point,” added Stuart. “By the way, are you and Mother Mary Elizabeth reconciled yet?”

  Father Houlihan laughed ruefully. “Ah, there is a very, very clever lady! So erudite. So saintly. She puts me to shame. I am afraid I am a great disappointment to her. My conversation is very vulgar, she believes, and as for the needle point business, I must confess that I still do not understand it.”

  “You know something much better, Grundy,” said Stuart fondly.

  They went into the little back sitting-room where Mrs. O’Keefe had laid out a most excellent supper. But Father Houlihan’s usually robust appetite was feeble tonight. He furtively scrutinized Stuart. Yes, there was a change in the dear lad. He was thinner, and somewhat febrile, and his eye was very bright and restless. He appeared younger, more excitable and alive, it is true, almost as he had been ten years ago. But he could not rest; he was nervous and intense. Father Houlihan averted his eyes. The wider patches of gray in Stuart’s hair had disappeared mysteriously. The priest thought that the saddest and most revealing thing of all. Also, a certain flamboyance and gaudy splendor in Stuart’s dress had been subdued, and he was attired with a quiet elegance which had never been to his natural taste. He drank more than ever, but the drink did not make him exuberant as it used to do, but even more nervous and uneasy, and he had a way of becoming absent and darkly thoughtful. Several of his more garish rings had disappeared, and his jewelled watch-chain had been replaced by discreet and genteel links across waistcoats notable for their restraint.

  Father Houlihan inquired about Marvina and Mary Rose. Stuart’s expression subtly changed. He played with the silver near his plate. His wife and daughter were now at Saratoga, he said. Mary Rose was much improved, the doctors had assured him. But she needed the waters. In two weeks she and her mother would go to the mountains again for a few weeks, to complete the improvement in her health. They would be home in November.

  The priest cleared his throat. And how was New York these days? Was the war affecting that city, also, to any great extent? Stuart carefully cut another slice of ham, though two slices still remained on his plate. Sam Berko-witz glanced anxiously and silently from his friend to the priest. Yes, the people were more shabby; they had less money, in New York. The streets were full of troops, and the soldiers improved their furloughs by considerable drunken rioting. But otherwise the city was quite gay. There was not so much to buy, for the blockade and Southern raiders had curtailed American shipping. However, the grand ladies were still lavishly attired, and he, Stuart, had never seen so many jewels.

  “You’ll be going to hear Laurie in her opera,” suggested the priest, with what he considered much casual artfulness.

  Stuart took another slice of bread. Of course he would be going to hear her. New York was very excited even now, though it was only September. It would be a fine thing if Grundy and Sam could go, also. It was bound to be spectacular and wonderful. Stuart’s hand shook a little. His cheek flushed. His eye had the brightness of a man under the influence of alcohol.

  And then he abruptly changed the subject.

  It was not hard, the priest reflected, to help a man to the right path if that man could be made to see that the other path was evil, or if the man was evil, himself. But Stuart was not evil. He was a good man. He had only the faults of the excess of his virtues. Prodigal he might be, but his very prodigality in unworthy things sprouted from the prodigality of his generosity, his kindness, his warm passions and his capacity for love. The same rain and hot sun which caused the flowers, the trees, the grass, the fruit and the food of the earth to flourish in profusion also stimulated the growth of the poisonous weed, the tangled jungle, the barbed tree, the venomous berry.

  What could he say to Stuart? That he was an adulterer, and in danger of hell-fire? That he had seduced a young woman, to her possible destruction? The priest smiled sadly to himself. Stuart had been an “adulterer” for many, many years, and Father Houlihan doubted very much that he was in danger of hell-fire. Hell-fire, he was convinced, was especially prepared and reserved for those virtuous men who possessed no charity or kindness in their souls, who prayed earnestly with their lips and hated their fellows with their minds, who sedulously haunted the churches and paid into their coffers and had nothing but malignance for humanity in their cold hearts. (Nor was Father Houlihan convinced that these virtuous men were hypocrites, as Stuart would call them. They had intense faith, far more faith than was possessed by the easy, unvirtuous men who would gladly give their lives to help mankind to a better future and a gentler and nobler existence.)

  Nor did the priest have the slightest doubt that if any seduction had taken place Stuart was the seduced, not the seducer. He knew for certain only one thing: that Stuart loved a woman for the first time in his life. How could he, the priest, then say to Stuart that he was doing an evil thing? I am doubtless very unorthodox, and completely in error, and my bishop would be flabbergasted, thought Father Houlihan humbly, but I see no foulness in love, if it is truly love, and I see no sin in such a love, whether blessed or unblessed. The power of love, and love itself, comes from God, and nothing evil comes from Him.

  When Stuart and Sam had left him, he sat in meditation for a long time, praying for the peace of his friend, and earnestly invoking God’s protection for him. It came to him, with naïve surprise, that he prayed more for Stuart than for anyone else in the world! Under the spell of this unique surprise, and quite intrigued by it, he went upstairs to his bedroom. He found that his capable sister had somewhere unearthed a camp cot, and on this cot Mr. Cullen was reposing in a roll of blankets, and very wide-awake. Father Houlihan was taken aback. He frowned at the young man, who rose politely, and gave him an army salute. “You’ll not be sleeping across my door?” asked the priest. “I will that; Father,” replied the young man genially. “That’s my job.”

  “And a better job you’d be doing sleeping in your own home like a Christian,” said the priest severely. “Such nonsense.” When he closed his bedroom door after him, he heard Mr. Cullen conscientiously moving his cot across the doorway, and then the creak of the springs.

  What dramatics! Stuart had a flair for the histrionic thing. As if anyone would break into this quiet little house with assassination in mind! It was ridiculous.

  CHAPTER 63

  Stuart and Sam Berkowitz walked slowly home together in the mild and clear September night. A hunter’s moon hung, enormously and golden, over the thinning trees, and the black sky was pervaded with a wide and luminous glow. The air, soft and balmy, was warm with spicy scents, flowing over the city. The street-lamps shone on empty streets, the silence of which was broken only occasionally by a voice, a footfall, the rolling of a carriage going home. All the upper stories of the houses were lit, testifying that the families were preparing for bed.

  The two men strolled in companionable silence for some time, Sam smoking his usual pipe, Stuart puffing on his cheroot. They passed a few young officers briskly leaving a home where they had been happily entertained. They laughed and joked with one another. Stuart scanned their faces. Perhaps one of them might be Bertie Cauder. But Bertie was not among them. His family had not heard from him for nearly
six weeks. His training would hardly be completed yet. But the vast machinery of war was rolling rapidly now. No one could know.

  Stuart glanced sideways at the tired, thin, middle-aged man beside him. It hurt him that Sam appeared so old, his hair so white, his graven face so deeply lined and weary. Yet Sam’s expression was quite peaceful, overlaid with thought. He felt Stuart’s glance, turned his head, smiled slightly.

  “Business was a little better this week,” he observed tentatively.

  Stuart raised his hand. “Please. No talk of business, Sam. You know I don’t like it. I know, and you know, that I’m on the edge of a precipice, but I, in a muddled way, believe that if I ignore the precipice I won’t be frightened by it, and might even be able to walk away from it in time, still intact.” He smiled wryly.

  No, thought Sam, this time neither you nor I will walk away from it. He sighed. Stuart no longer even glanced at the books. He spent his time in the shops, conversing amiably with the customers, closing reluctant sales. He lived in a kind of feverish dream-state, from which he refused to be awakened lest he expire of sheer terror. Sam shook his head. It was almost the end. Only a miracle could save the shops now.

  Suddenly he saw Angus Cauder’s face, and his mouth tightened grimly. But how could he speak now to Stuart? It was too late.

  He, Sam, had come to the end. His work in the shops was done. His money would soon pass from his hands, and River Island would be his. His step quickened; he was less tired. His eyes glowed under the brim of his tall hat. His long dream had at last been called into reality by God, and within a year two thousand harried and tormented and homeless people would find a last haven within the leafy safety of River Island, there to lift their bruised and weary arms to the saving tasks of life.