The Wide House

by Taylor Caldwell

  Father Houlihan blushed brightly. He said eagerly: “Oh, no, no! You must not believe that of me! I am really a bad man, a sinful man. There is no controlling my heart, and my thoughts. Sometimes I even wish to kill! You do not believe that? Oh, there are times when I could do many a mischief, I’m thinking, when I see how cruel man is to his brother, and how relentless, and how brutal, and how stupid. No, no, Sam, you must not believe good of me. I am weak and vulnerable, and I never think until after the event, and I have a tongue like a saw.”

  He shook his head vehemently. Sam’s smile had become broader. He laughed a little. He regarded his friend with affectionate interest.

  “I am so busy doing penances,” said Father Houlihan ruefully, “that I really have no time to examine my soul, and understand God even in a small measure.”

  Again, there was silence between them, and Father Houlihan was helpless again. What had he done to comfort his friend? Nothing. His favorite saint must be busy on other affairs just now, and impatient of any interruption. Father Houlihan felt very humble and depressed.

  Time passed.

  Father Houlihan, in brushing off his black garments, felt the bulk of a small book in his pocket He removed it He smiled at it, pleasedly, looking at Sam. Perhaps a few excerpts from this book might redirect Sam’s somber thoughts. He uttered a small and tentative sound.

  “Have you read much of Thoreau, Sam? A very wonderful philosopher. One of my favorites, and so full of the life and vitality of America, and its underlying spirit. Would you mind if I read you a little?”

  “Please,” said Sam politely, and though his heart was too heavy for thought, he turned on his elbow to listen.

  Father Houlihan had a good and flexible voice, sturdy and full of sincerity. He waved his small black book at the water and the trees. “Thoreau has words for this: ‘When we walk, we naturally go to the fields and woods; what would become of us if we walked only in a garden or a mall? Even some sects of philosophers have felt the necessity of importing the woods to themselves, since they did not go to the woods.’”

  He paused and contemplated the water again. “Sometimes,” he said, meditatively, “I have thought that in a spiritual sense more deeply than in any other, that passage refers to America. This wonderful, wonderful America! This land of width and forest and air and water and glorious skies. See what Thoreau says: ‘The heavens of America appear infinitely higher, the sky is bluer, the air is fresher, the cold is intenser, the moon looks larger, the stars are brighter, the thunder is louder, the lightning is vivider, the wind is stronger, the rain is heavier, the mountains are higher, the rivers longer, the forests bigger, the plains broader.’

  “Yes,” said the priest, his face kindling, “and the heart is greater, the soul is larger and stronger, the mind is freer, hope is without boundaries, and faith is nobler. There is no end to what is America. You, Sam, have called it the Promised Land, the Promised Land for all men.”

  “The Promised Land,” repeated Sam slowly. He looked about him at the Island he had loved and coveted for the oppressed. His eyes closed on quick pain. The priest saw it, and his heart swelled with responsive suffering. He turned to his book, sighing.

  “Thoreau speaks of America as the ‘holy land.’ Hear what he says: ‘So we saunter toward the Holy Land, till one day the sun shall shine more brightly than ever he has done, shall perchance shine into our minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives with the great awakening light, as warm and serene and golden as on a bankside in autumn.’

  “Yes,” said the priest gently, “that is the future of America. She will go through much sorrow and agony, much darkness and distress and hopelessness, much error, and pain and bewilderment and stupidity, but at the end, there will be the ‘great awakening light.’ Nowhere else in the world will that light be, for the darkness is too thick in the Old World.”

  Sam looked at him steadily. The weariness lifted from his eyes a little, and they had begun to brighten. “Yes. Yes. I haf always believed so.”

  “We are all Pilgrims, to America,” said Father Houlihan. “We have come from wicked places and tired places. We have come here naked, with only our hope. With all the other races of men which form America, we will band together in brotherhood, and create a new destiny. In this land, all men will be brothers.”

  Sam sighed. “Yesterday I read in the paper that a man called Mr. Stephen A. Douglas has defeated Abraham Lincoln for the senatorship from Illinois. The papers make much of it. They foretell many gloomy things from it. I haf read much of this Abraham Lincoln. I believe he is what you say: ‘an American.’”

  Again they sat in silence. Sam had relapsed into his reflective despondency. Annoyed at his favorite saint, and abandoning tact and delicate approach, Father Houlihan burst out impulsively: “Sam, Stuart’s told me what you did for him, and what it has meant for you!”

  For a moment or two Sam’s face expressed only annoyance and impatience. “He talks too much,” he commented.

  “You did not mind him telling me?” asked the priest, anxiously.

  “No. No, certainly. But I thought—”

  “That he might have more reticence?” suggested Father Houlihan, when Sam paused. He laughed a little. “Neither Stuart nor I belong to a reticent race. We speak from the heart, quickly, or from the devil in us, rashly. We bluster, roar, curse, weep, love or praise, at the top of our voices. Yes, were a noisy people. But we never plot. For that, perhaps, God might forgive us our clamorous tongues.”

  When Sam only smiled faintly, the priest continued impulsively: “It was a kind thing. It was such a kind thing! And Stuart wasn’t insensible to the cost to you, Sam.”

  Sam’s thick white brows knitted quickly, as if with impatience. His hands touched the earth of the Island, and a flash of pain ran through his eyes. He could see, with his inner eye, this fine fair Island settled, the neat white cottages surrounded by gardens, by plowed fields, by thick orchards, by meadows filled with fat cattle. He could see the burnished roof of a synagogue here, off in that green mass of towering pines. He could see the brick wall of a school. He could hear the laughter of children, the happy voices of women, the deeper tones of freed men who lifted their eyes to a free and peaceful sky. Now the pain was deeper in his face, like an inner pang of agony.

  He said, out of his pain: “Kind! Do not think it gives me pleasure to know that I haf paid for the diamond necklaces of Stuart’s ladies, and their carriages, and their sable cloaks, for which he went so heavily into debt! Paid for them all with the lives of tortured men and the tears of little children!”

  The priest regarded him with bitter sorrow and understanding. He put out his hand and pressed the hand of Sam, whose fingers were clenched in the soil and grass of the Island, which would never shelter the exiled and the wounded now.

  “I have no words of comfort for you, Sam, nothing that could ease you. Anything I could say would be foolish. I can only say this, that I’ve never heard of a kinder or more selfless thing.” He gathered courage and strength now. “God will not forget. God will understand. God, in some strange way, will, and must, help you.”

  But Sam only smiled dimly. The furrows beside his mouth deepened.

  Father Houlihan said with passion: “You did it for Stuart, not for his ladies! You did it because you loved him. He was your friend. Do you think this is easy for him, Sam? Do you think he is completely insensible?”

  Sam replied heavily: “If it would haf taught him a lesson, it would not be wasted. But I do not think it will teach him a lesson.”

  The priest shook his head sorrowfully. “Stuart is as he was made. With all his faults, he is the kindest man. Otherwise we would not love him so. He, too, has his burdens, and they are none the less heavy because he puts them on his own shoulders, himself. He is a child; he will never understand the cruelty and wickedness of others.”

  “No,” said Sam, staring gravely before him, “he will never understand.”

  They stood up, now, and began
to walk back to the little dock where their boat waited. The autumn day had turned bronze with the coming sunset. The haze was deeper, the river a brighter, slower green, and its voice was louder. The scent of woodsmoke came stronger towards them on the richer wind.

  They paused for a moment on the dock, where their boatman sat and smoked lazily. They looked at the water, and then at the land behind them. Father Houlihan spoke, then, almost exultantly:

  “We don’t need islands and hidden places in which to hide the suffering and the oppressed! All of America is here for them, from one border to the other, from sea to sea! It is here, waiting, filled with the promise of God, with the hope of God, under the shadow of Gods wing. It is the Promised Land.”

  At that very hour thousands of anxious men were reading Hinton Rowman Helpers The Impending Crisis, and listening, with strained ears, to the distant thunder of mighty steel wheels rolling from outer space upon a land soon to be torn in a bloody agony.

  CHAPTER 41

  Janie sat beside Bertie’s bed. The dark and spectral December day stood outside the house like death itself. Mounds and dunes of snow curved and sloped over the dead lawns to the streets, and the branches of the empty trees were weighted with heavy white. It had begun to snow again, slow whirling flakes rushing past the windows in a dusky silence. Janie, wrapped in her shawl, shivered, held out her feet to the low fire.

  There had been two months of peace in that house on Porter Avenue, when Bertie had been gay again, and well, courteously refusing even a small glass of wine at dinner, and watching visiting friends and relatives drinking their brandy or whiskey with complete disinterest and indifference. But no one ever knew or heard the gatherings of the storm within him, the first lightnings, the first dim thunders, the first dark gales. One day he would be as usual. The next, he had rushed away from them into his own maelstrom of destruction, and they would not see the old Bertie again for a long time. When he would finally emerge, after days and even weeks of complete annihilation, it was as if a battered traveller had returned to them from far and terrible places, bearing in his eyes and in his manner the memory of most dreadful and nameless things.

  Then would come the long nursing, the despair, the hopelessness, until the traveller could look about him again, smile, and begin once more the long upward journey to health and tranquillity.

  On this day, Bertie was very ill. He had returned to his family only a week ago from his own secret and nightmare excursions. Each time that he returned, the painful climb to health and normality was longer, more tedious, more dangerous. The doctors could prescribe nothing for him but rest, quiet, casual treatment, and bromides. It was then that Janie nursed him, sleeplessly, cooked the little dishes he loved, coaxed him to eat, read to him, laughed with him, and brooded over him when he slept fitfully.

  But she was too realistic, when off guard, to believe that anything now could be done for her darling.

  A little lamp flickered in the corner of Bertie’s handsome room, throwing small wavering shadows on the white walls. By its light she could see Bertie’s sleeping face. She could see the thinness of that face, its sunken eyes, the drawn mouth, the convex cheeks. It had a strange expression, remote rather than peaceful, stern and austere, an expression that it never wore in consciousness. She did not know this Bertie, Bertie who laughed, sang, whistled, made jokes and danced, who twitted and teased and filled the house with a kind of bright sunshine. The ruddy hair on the pillow was the only thing she recognized, and as she looked at the soft and glimmering curls in the lamplight, seeming so vulnerable, so beaten, a dry ache burned in her throat and her eyes were full of liquid fire. The room seemed full of bitter cold. She rose and poked at the red coals on the hearth, and stood there, looking down at them with anguish in her meager breast. The rising firelight quivered on her pale freckled face, and in her green eyes.

  She went to the smooth white bed where Bertie lay as still as if he had died, only the faintest breath and the slightest quivering of his nostrils testifying that he still lived. She bent over him. Her hand touched his hair with the softest touch.

  She sat down again, near him. She looked at his gaunt profile. She began to think.

  Dear God, she said to herself, what is wrong, what has happened to my Bertie? What have I done? What has anyone done? Why does he do these things?

  For now she knew that no mere zest, no mere buoyancy of spirit, no mere recklessness or heedlessness or folly lay behind the unconscious attemps at suicide which sent Bertie into his black country of lightnings and furies. Something drove Bertie to destruction. What was it?

  As she sat there in the cold room, with the day outside slowly revolving into night, she searched her heart and memory with that dolorous and mournful honesty of a mother who sits beside the deathbed of her child. Where, she asked herself humbly, have I failed Bertie?

  Her weary and tortured mind slowly crept, like a broken and weeping penitent, back through the echoing years of Bertie’s life, pausing at each dim milestone, searching about it to discover whether, in the midst of the dead grass and landmarks of the vanished years, a clue lay there, waiting to be seen. Back, back to the day of Bertie’s birth, where the baby, warm and pink and crowned with ruddy curls, lay in her arms.

  Other milestones passed slowly in the dim procession of her mind. Bertie at three toddling after the dark and wizened Robbie he loved. Bertie in the garden, his small arms full of flowers. Bertie enraptured with his baby sister. Bertie laughing at the dour and timid Angus. Bertie, always, laughing and playing, generous and affable. Bertie, whom everyone loved, and admired for his sweet nature and his pretty round face. Only his young wild father had not noticed or petted him. Robin, with his black eyes and distorted face and ringing voice: was there a clue there?

  Janie huddled in her shawl, wet her dry lips, stared fixedly into the gloom of the shadows. She could see Robin again clearly, so young, so restless, throwing up his head like a savage colt terrified at the sight of strangers. She could see him standing vehemently before her, endlessly quarrelling, infuriated and broken-hearted. And the little four-year-old Bertie stood near his father, looking up at him with strange laughing blue eyes, but silent as he was never usually silent.

  She could even hear Robin’s voice, stilled these many years, but crying out now as fresh and clear as if he might be in that room where his son lay in his most awful unconsciousness: “Ye take the heart out o’ a mon! The heart and the soul! Ye squeeze it dry, for ye will ha’ your way!”

  Robin had gone, gone back into his grave, and there was only silence in the room, and the dropping of coals.

  No! she cried in her soul, I did not squeeze Bertie’s soul dry! I gave him everything he wished! I denied him nothing! I would have sacrificed the lives of all of them, for him! He must have understood that nothing was valuable but my darling, that there was no value anywhere but him!

  In the faded blowing grasses of the dead years lay a clue, faintly bright, faintly glimmering, near the milestone.

  She plodded on. Another milestone. Bertie was only fourteen. He had come to her one evening, in his laughing, coaxing way, to kiss her goodnight. He stood beside her, outlined against the blue summer sky that shone against her window. There was a pale crescent moon in that sky, and one twinkling star, and the air was full of the warm scent of dew and grass, and the trees were shadowy green. He had kissed her. He had leaned against her chair. And then he had said, quite suddenly: “Mama, I’d like to go to sea.”

  How clear and vivid his eyes had been! She had never seen them quite like that. She had taken his strong young hand, and had patted it indulgently.

  “To seal Whatever for, you rascal?”

  Had he trembled, or was she only imagining now that he had trembled? He had said, strongly, and with a kind of quiet desperation in his voice: “I want to go to seal I’ve always loved the sea. You remember how I’ve always asked for books of sea stories, and how I love the water? Mama,” he had said, after a still pause, “I’ll f
ind myself at sea.”

  She had looked at him, surprised at his vehemence, and she had laughed. Did she imagine that he had stared at her in the strangest way? And then he had cried out, pulling his hand from hers: “Don’t, tell me, Mama, as you always tell me, that there is no sense in it! Don’t tell me that it is stupid and silly! Mama, I’ve got to believe that something is of value, somewhere!”

  She had been very tender and gentle. She made fond fun of him. He, her darling Bertie, a smelly, ugly sailor! Who cared for sailors? What good was there in being a sailor? How ridiculous. She, his mama, could hardly keep from dying of laughter at the idea of her Bertie going to sea. And whatever did he mean that he had to believe “that something is of value, somewhere!”?

  He had not answered. He had kissed her gently, and had gone away. His head was bent; he walked as if dazed, and lost.

  Janie shook her head, over and over, and shivered under her shawl. Was that a clue? Had the foolish darling boy really wanted to go to sea that much? Had his frustration turned him to drink? She shook her head again. It was not enough. If he had really wanted to go, he could have gone. Eventually she would have denied him nothing. But—he had not had the courage.

  She made this admission to herself with a tremendous sinking pang of agony. Bertie had not had the courage. He had never really wanted anything very much. However, on that night he had wanted to go to sea. He had wanted it as he had never wanted anything before or since. He had wanted it because he had felt that at sea he might find himself, might discover “that something is of value.” But later he had not wanted it.

  Tortured by her thoughts she started to her feet and went to the bed. She bent over it. She stood there, bowed over the bed, in the most hideous grief she had ever known.

  She knew now that she had determined, almost from Bertie’s birth, that he must never leave her, never have another interest but her love for him. So it was that when he had advanced any desire which would remove him even a little from her influence, or any wish which would set him free in a world where men must make their own decisions and choices, and in which he would be an emancipated individual with a life of his own, she had opposed him, not in anger or obstinacy, but with loving laughter and jealousy. She had made him see the absurdity of his desires. She had stripped all value, purpose and dignity from any life or dream upon which his very young eyes had looked in yearning and wistfulness.