The Wide House

by Taylor Caldwell

  “Have you talked to Stuart?” asked Robbie, amused.

  “I leave that to his family—you,” replied the Mayor, with simplicity.

  “Me!” exclaimed Robbie. And he laughed. “He would boot me out. You’re his friend, Father. Why not try, yourself?”

  The Mayor shrugged helplessly. Robbie continued: “Suppose we just leave it in Stuart’s hands, and insist all is innocent. As it is, of course. That is the best defense, both for Stuart and Laurie. If we speak of it openly, and with pleasure and affection, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for a middle-aged kinsman to be concerned with the advancement of his protégée, then no one can say much. If I make it a point to announce openly, at our party next week, that Laurie has written that Stuart beaus her about the city, and is very proud of her, and she is devotedly grateful to him, I am certain that much of the scandal will die down, or at least will go under cover.” He added: “You are thinking of Alice, aren’t you, Father?”

  “Yes, of course, my dear boy. She mustn’t be agitated just now.”

  “Alice,” said her husband, “is a lot tougher than you know, Father. She has, for a long time, been quite aware that Laurie and Stuart are—fond—of each other.”

  His voice trembled a little as he spoke of his wife, and his face darkened slightly, as if with pain.

  The Mayor said, “I wanted to ask your opinion, Robbie. There is the matter of River Island. I have approved the sale to Sam Berkowitz. I was not prepared for the storm this has raised. You know what has happened. Handbills have been printed and distributed condemning my action, and calling Sam the foulest of names. I’m afraid there will be some sort of trouble. Old Allstairs was set on the Island, but he offered no more than eight thousand, and Sam, after the approval of the Council, will pay eleven thousand. The Council can’t get over that. If they disapprove the sale, there will be many questions why. They have no excuse, you know. Old Allstairs is behind all the popular agitation, of course. In all my life, in my own country, I’ve never before heard a man cursed for being a Jew. I hear it now. Allstairs has Several ministers raving from the pulpits, like demented half-wits. Naturally, old Allstairs is thinking of his pocket, and to gain his ends he is creating feeling in the city against Sam. What am I to do?”

  Robbie’s small neat face tightened. “You will stand by your approval, of course, Allstairs or no Allstairs, and his demented friends. I understand that Allstairs wishes to buy the Island for eight thousand dollars, and will then sell it to Sam for twenty thousand. That is his sole purpose in creating this agitation. Once he has bought the Island, and resold it to Sam, you’ll be surprised what a good fellow Sam will be once again, in the eye of our psalm-singing old acquaintance.”

  “The villainy of mankind surpasses my understanding!” exclaimed the Mayor, with passion.

  “The villainy of mankind,” said Robbie, “comes up to my expectations.”

  The Mayor was much disturbed. “I shall put pressure on the Council to approve the sale,” he said resolutely. “Sam shall have the Island if it is over my dead body. I have always hated Allstairs. He is a bad influence in Grandeville, and though my city has its faults, I still love it.”

  Alice and her mother were waiting for the gentlemen in the drawing-room. Mrs. Cummings was placidly sewing the christening robe for her expected grandchild. The glistening folds of lace and silk spread over her purple hoops to the floor. But Alice, though her face brightened at the sight of her father and her husband, appeared pale and exhausted. She was fanning herself listlessly. Robbie went to her and took her hand, examining her face anxiously.

  “It is the heat, my love,” she said, answering his unspoken question.

  It was almost her time now, and Mrs. Cummings spent many quick hours on the robe. Robbie tenderly smoothed the damp brown curls on his wife’s head, and ran his hand under them at the nape of her neck. They were quite wet. Alice’s gentle mouth was fixed and mauve, her eyes sunken. Her heavy and ungainly body was wrapped in a white lace silk wrapper, and her feet had been lifted to a footstool.

  The evening was very hot, and the fresh wind had died. But the lightning brightened balefully in the west, and now there were faint rumblings in the distance. The windows had been closed against the swarm of mosquitoes, and the lamplight revealed myriads of them crawling and fluttering over the polished panes, attempting to enter. The summer had been unusually warm, and very sultry. It was a choice, Robbie observed, of being eaten alive or enjoying the slight breeze. As for himself, he preferred to be devoured in comparative comfort, but one had to consider Alice who had little blood to spare.

  Mrs. Cummings sewed. The Mayor read his paper. Robbie sat beside his wife, and talked gently to her. Nothing could have been softer and tenderer than his voice. The girl listened to him, smiling, her little hand in his. Her weary and sunken eyes were fixed on his face with intense love. Sometimes her mouth moved, as if in sad and involuntary yearning. But she said little. However, her heart cried over and over: When will you truly belong to me, my darling? You speak to me with such sweetness and tenderness, but there is something held away from me, which should be mine, too.

  She was too tired this hot night to think much of anything except how terribly she loved her husband. His hand, though small, had a strength and firmness in it which she needed. When he touched her, she had to turn her head away to hide her tears. But she clung to his hand.

  The storm was coming closer. There was a sudden uneasy threshing in the trees outside, a deeper muttering of thunder. The heat in the parlor increased. The Mayor put down his paper, and his face was crimson. He stood up. Robbie had begun to examine some of his legal papers, but when his father-in-law rose, he also rose, politely.

  “Let’s have a little turn in the garden, shall we?” asked Mr. Cummings of his family.

  Alice shook her head slightly. But she added quickly, as Robbie appeared about to resume his chair beside her: “I’m too tired, I’m afraid. But Robbie, my love, do go with Papa into the garden, for a little fresh air. Mama will stay with me.”

  The two men left the house and strolled up and down in the dark gardens. The wind had raised late July scents from the earth and the flowers, and they filled the air with smothering intensity. The dark plumes of the trees swayed against the lightning. The earth reverberated with the approaching thunder. Beyond the walls, the street lamps flickered fitfully, and a carriage or two rattled home precipitately over the cobbled streets beyond the gardens. Somewhere a dog barked. In the intervals of thunder and wind the silence was thick and black and hot. “We need the rain,” said the Mayor, as he and Robbie walked the gravelled paths, smoking together. “Everything drying up.”

  They talked of legal matters. Robbie discussed a case or two with his father-in-law. The lightning lit up the western horizons constantly now, so that each could see the other’s face plainly. But though the trees and the flowers threshed, no rain fell.

  Suddenly Robbie halted. “Did you hear a cry?” he asked.

  The Mayor stopped, and listened. Yes, there was a faint cry from the house, and from it came a curious emanation of agitation. The two men hurried back, rushing up the stairs, Robbie ahead, the Mayor panting in his rear. They were met by Mrs. Cummings, very pale and trembling, but smiling.

  “I’m afraid it’s begun, my dears,” she said, through quivering lips. “I’m sending the carriage at once for the doctor. And now, will you please help me with Alice?”

  They carried Alice, moaning, but trying to smile, up to her bed. Her head lay on Robbie’s shoulder during the journey up the stairs. Her father, in his perturbation, exclaimed over and over: “There, now, there now. Mustn’t be excited, my darling. We are all here. We shall take care of you. Don’t cry, now. Another step. Easy. Very easy.” His face was purple and wet with his exertions. But Alice looked only at her husband, though her eyes were dilated with her surges of pain.

  They laid her on her bed, and a maid sent them out of the room while she undressed her
mistress. The Mayor and Robbie descended to the hall again. Robbie was pale, but bright-eyed. The Mayor, extremely upset, apparently thought the young man in a condition quite bordering on pre-paternal insanity, for he cried over and over: “Mustn’t upset yourself, now! It will soon be over. I’ve been through this before. Sit down, man, sit down!” He, himself, raced back and forth through the room, while Robbie watched him with secret and affectionate amusement. The Mayor continued: “Nothing in male nature, sir, is equal to such an emergency, and one must leave it to God and to nature!”

  “I am quite willing, sir,” murmured Robbie. But the Mayor did not hear him.

  There was a ringing of the bell, and the Mayor, not waiting for a servant, bolted furiously to the door, crying: “The doctor!” But it was not the doctor, but a maid from Janie’s house, who wished to speak to Mr. Cauder. Robbie came into the hall, and the girl exclaimed: “Oh, sir, it’s Mr. Bertie, sir! Mrs. Cauder is quite upset, sir, and wishes you to come at once! Mr. Bertie’s not been home for two days, and the mistress is quite out of her mind!”

  The Mayor cried impatiently: “Please express our regrets to your mistress, girl, but it is impossible for Mr. Cauder to come. There is a matter of—of importance—transpiring—”

  But Robbie advanced towards the girl. He was very white and very quiet. He said: “I will come at once.”

  The Mayor heard this, dumfounded. His mouth fell open. He glared at Robbie, stupefied. His lips moved, over and over, before he could stammer: “But, there is Alice! She needs you. The doctor—the doctor will be here at any moment. You can’t possibly mean you are leaving, Robbie?”

  Robbie looked at the Mayor. He said in a still, firm voice: “I must go. Alice is well taken care of. Besides, I shall return very shortly.”

  The Mayor stared at the young man’s curiously taut and colorless face, at his strange fixed eyes. He could not recognize him. His heart boiled with indignation and incredulity. He said thickly: “You can’t leave your wife, now. Your wife, sir. She needs you. My daughter. Your brother is a drunkard and a blackguard, sir, and is out on one of his disgraceful sprees. You would leave my daughter, your wife, in order to find him and pull him from the gutter, again?”

  Robbie clenched his hands. The girl, highly diverted and excited, looked eagerly from one man to the other in the flickering lamplight. The thunder was coming closer.

  Robbie said: “You don’t understand. My brother has never stayed away, like this. It must be something—quite frightful. He may be dead. I’ve got to find him. I couldn’t stay here, wondering what had happened to him. It will be some hours before Alice—I must go. But I shall return immediately, when I have some news of Bertie.”

  He moved towards the door. But the Mayor, recovering partly from his stupefaction, bounded after him, grasped him by the arm. His face was crimson, his eyes full of fire. “You cannot go, sir! I forbid it! I forbid this disgraceful and unfeeling desertion of your wife! You must be out of your mind!”

  Robbie, with fingers as stiff and cold as ice, removed the restraining hand from his arm. “I must go,” he repeated. His voice was like steel, but quicker now. “You may tell Alice, if you wish. She will understand.” His eyes regarded the Mayor as if they did not see him. There was a silent and fanatical torment in them. “She will understand,” he repeated. “This is a matter of life and death to me.”

  “Life and death!” stuttered the Mayor, staggering so that he had to catch the newel post to save himself. “It is my daughter who is facing life or death. Your wife. Yet for the sake of your brother you will leave her in her hour of need!” He drew a smothered breath. “If you leave her now, sir, I shall never forgive you, never.”

  “That I must chance, sir,” said Robbie. “But Alice will forgive. She will know.”

  Appalled, still disbelieving, the Mayor watched him run down the white stone steps of the house, saw his slight compact figure lit by lightning. And then he was gone.

  CHAPTER 61

  The wind, lightning and thunder increased to a pitch of fury as Robbie sat in the carriage his mother had sent for him. He crouched on the edge of the leather seat, as if prepared to spring out the moment the vehicle halted. He was completely unaware of the servant girl opposite him, wrapped in her shawl. He heard nothing of the threshing of torn trees and the mighty cart-wheels of the thunder rolling through the boiling heavens, nor did he see the continuous glare of lightning. Street-lamps flickered and dimmed; clouds of chaff and dust swept through the cobbled streets, which had emptied of strolling summer crowds.

  Robbie’s delicate jaw was clenched, the bones protruding, his eyes staring ahead. He did not move during the drive. But there was a sickness and faintness in the pit of his stomach, and a pounding ache in his head. He had completely forgotten his young wife, now writhing in labor. He thought only of Bertie, with frantic intensity. Now, he had been gone two days and a night, without any word or trace of him. He is dead, thought Robbie, the sinking sensation almost overpowering him. His body arched with frenzied haste; his heart beat so rapidly that he could hardly breathe. All his muscles were cramped and aching. What had happened to Bertie? Where had he gone? Had he, in the midst of his delirium, hurled himself into the river? Robbie tried to calm himself. The negation of life did not always argue that the harborer of such negation desired death. Those who had no love for life rarely yearned for extinction. Unless, unless, he had been swept into death because he would make no struggle to survive when threatened. He might have wandered off in his drunkenness, fallen into the river, flung up his arms with a smile, and gone down as listlessly and as compliantly as he had lived.

  I should never have left him, never, thought Robbie. If he is dead, then I am guilty of his death. I should have remained with him. He had no real love for me, but he trusted me. He went where I wished, did as I asked, complied with everything I suggested. Surely he loved me a little; surely he had some consideration for me. Surely he would not do this thing which would cause me such an agony!

  All his calm reason was swept away in the wind of his anguish. He called out in himself: Bertie! Bertie, wait for me! I’m coming. He felt his urgency leave him like a loud and imploring voice, reaching across space, holding back his brother from the ultimate darkness. Now there was a stinging along his eyelids, an acid burning. His voice could not reach Bertie; his hands were empty. Always, Bertie had escaped him with a smile, and when he had grasped him, Bertie had looked at him with a strange and shining look of warning which had made Robbie let go.

  For the first time Robbie asked himself: Why have I loved him like this? And there was no answer. There was no answer even in the books of normal affection, nor in the dark questioning volumes written by men who were beginning to explore the hidden and shrouded continent of the human mind. It is an obsession, thought Robbie. But why have I been so obsessed, or so possessed?

  The house on Porter Avenue was lit from top to bottom. Robbie sprang out of the carriage before it reached the steps, and he was running fleetly up those steps into the house. He was met in the hall by Janie, red-eyed, dishevelled, and weeping loudly. She clung to Robbie, moaning incoherently. He led her into the hot, lamplit parlor, and then cried out: “No news, yet? Have you notified the police? Where was he seen last? When did he disappear? Did he say anything?”

  She tried to speak through her tears, and in his wild impatience Robbie shook her savagely. Distracted, even in the midst of her fear and misery, by his look, his vehemence, she could only gape at him for several moments. Then, with a strange stare at him, she pulled herself from his grasp and stepped back a pace or two, wetting her dry and shaking lips. “Robbie,” she said, “ye are fair mad, man. Calm yourself.”

  Still staring at him, she reached behind her for a chair, and sat down. She was shivering, in spite of the intense heat. She could not look away from him. She said again: “Calm yourself. You are demented, Robbie. Don’t look at me like that. Be a man. Sit down, and we shall talk of it.”

  But he sto
od before her, and she had never seen his eyes like this, so distraught. She tried to keep her hoarse voice low and quiet, for he filled her with fear. Bertie, she said, had told her two days ago he wished to buy some new cravats. That was about eleven in the morning. He had appeared quite normal. He had kissed her that day, as he always did, and with nothing odd in his manner. It had been only two months since his last bout, and one was not again due for at least another month. She had given him some money, and she had asked him to stop in at the shops and request that Angus call on her that evening on a matter of business. He consented. He had also mentioned that he would be back in time for tea, and that he would pick up her copy of Godey’s Lady’s Book on the way home, a copy which she had lent to Mrs. Hathaway. As it was such a fine morning he had not ordered a carriage, and had gone off, whistling, evidently at peace with the world and himself, and showing no signs of the ominous restlessness, silence and abstraction which always preceded his bouts by at least three days. He had had little money, and had not urged her for more.

  Robbie listened with passionate attention, his eyes never leaving his mother’s face. He said, when she paused: “He did not kiss you as if—as if he intended to go on a long journey, or anything? He took nothing with him? He did not look about him, as if it was for the last time?”

  “What are you saying, man?” Janie cried, frantically. “Certainly not. My bonny boy! I would have known it in my heart if there had been something wrong with him, if he had any—peculiar intention. It was all so ordinary. He did not even look back as he went down the street What are you trying to say, Robbie?”

  But Robbie began to walk up and down the room, hurling short fierce questions at her. She replied to them as shortly, through her tears. Yes, the police had been notified. All the taverns which Bertie usually haunted had been visited. He had appeared at none of them. As far as anyone knew, he had not had a single drink. A few people admitted having seen him, walking and whistling down Delaware Avenue, or Main Street. But he had not gone to the shops. Angus had not seen him, nor Stuart.