The Wide House

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  “That’s the ticket! That’s the ticket!” he exclaimed. “Allus help a fellowman and make a profit! Thank ye, sir, thank ye! And, Mr. Berkowitz, what is your next order, sir?”

  Gordon suppressed a desire to boot the dealer vigorously. There was a hot crawling in the roots of his hair, and all over his flesh.

  In the beginning he intended only to remain in Grandeville until Sam had returned his money, with appropriate interest. He visited the store often, for he was very lonely and filled with nostalgia. Sam was his only friend. He would sit near the splintered counter in the miserable little shop, so filled with dust and hopelessness, and watch the wrangling transactions of the housewives, with their bonnets and baskets. As Gordon hated practically everyone, he hated these pinched-faced women with their mean eyes. He came to enjoy his hatred. But he did not hate Sam Berkowitz.

  And that was a strange thing. Perhaps it was because the gentle and courteous Sam was no match for the women with the tight and meager faces. Perhaps it was his own memory of being exploited by those who despised him. At any rate, he began to take an interest in the store. It was soothing to talk to Sam, who had boundless gratitude for him, and who thought him a very superior gentleman. He argued with Sam, pointed out to him that he was often cheated and had to sell his goods under cost. His egotism, so long bruised, swelled and flourished. And then one day he pushed Sam to the rear of the store, and confronted the next women himself when they entered. They were accustomed to Sam’s shy deprecation and shrinking from them. Now they were faced by a truculent Irishman with a hard flushed face and a belligerent glare in his eyes. At the end of the day Gordon’s exultation was unrestrained. He was drunken with his success. He had confronted the world, had struggled with it, and had conquered. Moreover, he had gotten almost twice as much for the goods as Sam might have got.

  He became Sam’s partner. Sam was only too happy. Now that he was released from the actual hideous necessity of dealing with the public, he was full of the most magnificent ideas. They were endless. After shop hours he and Gordon would sit in the tiny living-room behind the rear door and argue. Old Mrs. Berkowitz would stir a fragrant iron pot on the iron stove, and regard them lovingly.

  Within a few months Gordon had moved his family from the dirty hostelry in which they had been wretchedly sojourning, and had transported them to a neat cottage not far from the shop. The young Stuart was pressed into service behind the counter, and for deliveries of the larger goods. Now every shelf was filled, the quality and the variety of the merchandise expanded. Stuart and his father sold the wares; Sam purchased them, poring over catalogs and bills sent him by dealers and manufacturers in other cities.

  At the end of a year young Stuart was forced to attend a “gentleman’s school” in Grandeville, where he first encountered the fat youthful progeny of the “old” city. It was there, too, that he first encountered the class distinction and racial hatred for which America was to be known in the future. He was a “dirty Irishman.” He was a “filthy Papist.” He was a “slum rat.” Even when he had convinced his tormenters that he was no “Papist,” he could not deny his Irish blood. However, when by his fists and his superior curses, he had made them take cognizance of the fact that he had been born in Scotland, of a Scottish mother, his life was more tolerable. But he knew, and his enemies knew, that his father paid twice the tuition that the more elegant young gentlemen’s parents paid for their education.

  No retiring blossom by nature, he became a swaggerer out of sheer defensiveness. He was bigger and heavier than his contemporaries. He had made them respect his fists and his oaths. It was no desire of his that he associate with these young noblemen of families who drew their wealth from tanneries and abattoirs and venality. But Gordon, obsessed with the idea that his son must be a gentleman, forced him to attend. Stuart would much have preferred the shop, and the company of Sam, and the strange delicacies which Mrs. Berkowitz produced from her stove.

  By the time Stuart was eighteen, and happily released from his school (where he had not in the least distinguished himself in Latin or literature or the arts), the shop had become the Grandeville Supreme Emporium. Moreover, it had absorbed two nearby shops, and was prospering. It even had a second floor, an astounding innovation. Sam was a shrewd and inspired buyer. Gordon was a hard but just retailer. It had been Sam’s idea that perhaps the ladies of Grandeville might be interested in purchasing more handsome articles for their homes than had hitherto been available in the city. Why should the ladies import such things from Chicago, New York and Philadelphia, when they might be persuaded to purchase them, at a lower price, right at home in Grandeville? Besides, many of the ladies bought sight unseen from the distant shops. Here, they could examine and haggle and consider.

  As a result, some fine lace curtains appeared in the shop. Only a few. These were gone in two days. Later, the daring Sam produced some excellent little Oriental rugs, a few sets of imported French china. The ladies were enthusiastic. They filled the shop to bursting. Moreover, there was a handsome young man behind the counter, as well as the hard and sullen Gordon who had never learned beguilement. Now carriages filled the street before the shop, and the ladies said some very pointed things to each other, when they jostled to buy. One day the Mayor’s lady, herself, came in state, and swept away triumphantly with a set of Limoges china and a silver toasting fork, much to the awed rage of the other defeated ladies.

  Stuart, it was, who suggested that the shop might be totally irresistible if it lost its dusty and unattractive air. He was a young man of much imagination and dash and color. (And, as the ladies had approvingly observed, he possessed excellent legs and the most enchanting manners.) So it was, over the angry protests of his father, that he actually laid a Brussels rug on the ground floor of the shop, and placed a few comfortable chairs about for the comfort of the lady customers. He, himself, kept the small windows sparkling. Once, in his enthusiasm, he had even suggested that tea might be served the ladies at certain hours, but here he was completely outshouted by his father, and deserted even by his warmest friend, Sam Berkowitz. He had to let the matter drop, but it by no means died in his mind.

  By the time Stuart was twenty-two the shop was enormous, “almost as large as a Philadelphia shop, my dear, of the best clientele,” the Mayor’s wife had graciously informed her friends. It filled three floors. It had been widened and expanded. Carriage blocks were placed strategically at the curb for the convenience of customers, and a small immaculate boy (not in the uniform the inspired Stuart had deliriously suggested, however) was always poised to race out to assist.

  Stuart was not completely mad. He knew that the solid life-blood of a trade was the custom of the farmers and the lesser townsfolk. So, adjoining the more resplendent and elegant shop was a large, neat but simple store where bright calicos and humbler household wares could be purchased at a most reasonable price. Here the farmers’ wives in their sunbonnets and their shawls, and the poorer women of the town, could shop without being awed and thrust aside by the more delicate ladies.

  Stuart was no cynic. He had at first been a little fearful about his own idea of making class distinctions between one stratum of his customers, and another. Would not the farmers’ wives and the poor townswomen be angered at the implicit suggestion that they were not fit for the elegant emporium, that their presence was more welcome elsewhere? But to his amazement, and cynical disillusionment, he saw that the poorer shop was greeted with pleasure and gratitude by its customers. He saw that it was appreciated, and considered most proper, by those who had by no means been subtly insulted. It was the oppressed then, that created the oppressors, who accepted oppression with a sense of appropriateness. It was the oppressed who perpetrated the class distinctions, and laid themselves humbly down before their “superiors” for the latter’s boots, and who preferred to be treated as lesser beings.

  Out of pity and contempt Stuart, in dull hours in the elegant shop, would himself wait on the customers in the poorer shop. Here
he was all graciousness and courtesy, with a slight touch of genteel patronage. He saw to it, however, that the cheaper wares displayed were of the best quality obtainable of their kind, and that the prices were reasonable.

  By the time that Stuart’s father died, when the young man was twenty-five, the Grandeville Supreme Emporium was absorbing almost the complete trade of the whole countryside. There were “departments” here, in adjoining subsidiary shops, where the farmers could purchase harness and tools, denim and boots, feed and tobacco. The Emporium had devoured the little individually-owned stores in its path, and digested them. The first department store had made its appearance, though it did not as yet bear that name. “Everything for the Mansion and the Cottage,” had become its slogan, sprung from the glowing brain of Stuart Coleman, ably assisted and abetted by Sam Berkowitz, who was buyer and treasurer.

  Relieved of the inhibiting presence of Gordon, who always prophesied the direst results from expansion and innovations, Sam really displayed his mettle. Now there was an adjoining shop where stoves were sold exclusively, and fireplace equipment. Sam and Stuart went on to dizzier heights. In one tiny shop, branching out from the mother shops, were sold goods exclusively for babies and young children, from the finest nainsook to yards of material to be cut into squares and prepared for the regrettable habits of children who were as yet unable to comprehend more sanitary arrangements. There were little fur bonnets and mittens, made of the softest white fur, and carriage blankets of appropriate sizes, and bassinets of the most cunning white wicker, and even wooden toys, and the most delicate French laces.

  By this time the Grandeville Supreme Emporium had absorbed one complete block of stores and shops, and stood grandly facing the sunsets, unchallenged and magnificent. Years later, other great shops were to declare that they were the innovators of the department store, but in fact the Grandeville Supreme Emporium was the first of its kind, and its fame had extended even as far as New York itself.

  All this was not accomplished without gigantic stress and strain and consuming anxiety and debt. Because Stuart and Sam poured back their profits into expansion and more daring innovations, they were compelled to borrow money. As Joshua Allstairs controlled the First National Bank, and emphatically disapproved of the Grandeville Supreme Emporium for no clear reasons except that it was “high-falutin” and ridiculous, Stuart was compelled to pay enormous interest. But the fantastic success of the Emporium, by reason of its novelty and its variety and its amazing innovations, always relieved Stuart of any doubts. When he was twenty-six, a year after the death of his father, he built his astounding house and borrowed ten thousand dollars for its erection. Then it was that he indeed had a reason for expanding success. He drew ideas from Sam’s inexhaustible brain as magicians draw rabbits from hats. He often drew out rabbits from his own hat, also. He and Sam rarely disagreed.

  Though Stuart was still “that Irishman,” and was not fully accepted in the most elegant society of Grandeville, he was handsome enough and rich enough to be considered a great catch by the dainty young ladies of the best families. But Stuart had his house. It was enough for him. His more robust desires were ably satisfied in a certain discreet little house near the outskirts of the town, where he often met the sober husbands and fathers of the best society. Here, too, he could drink and gamble in elegant surroundings. Joshua Allstairs, as was understandable, drew a profit from this establishment also.

  Two years before the coming of Janie to Grandeville, with her brats, Stuart had been allowed to make the acquaintance of Miss Marvina Allstairs. She had just returned from a young ladies’ finishing school near Philadelphia, and was possessed of the most magnificent wardrobe and jewels. She was her father’s Benjamin, the apple of his eye, the treasure of his heart, and, in a way, she represented to old Joshua what Stuart’s house represented to him. She was the reason for his rapacity and greed, his mercilessness and evil, his ownership of brothels and banks, his steamships and his trade, his investments and his rascality.

  Joshua guarded her jealously. He scrutinized every invitation that came to her, and accompanied her to every house. He was old and wicked, and almost infirm, yet he drove his vitality constantly so that she should go nowhere without him. There were few homes, however, to which he permitted her to go, and at every turn he directed her thoughts away from Grandeville to New York, Boston and Philadelphia, and beyond them, to England, where her destiny lay. She sojourned temporarily in Grandeville, but did not live in the little city.

  Stuart might never have met this golden pearl of a woman had he not called unexpectedly one evening to visit old Joshua privately on the subject of a loan for his house.

  Miss Marvina was sitting with her father in the enormous and somber parlor of the hideous great house when Stuart arrived. She was introduced to him.

  It was Miss Marvina, rather than Stuart, who decided that she would remain in Grandeville, and that she would marry him.

  CHAPTER 10

  Stuart had been conducted ceremoniously to the parlor where old Joshua lurked like a thin gray spider with his bright fly of a daughter. Nothing was on Stuart’s ebullient and darkly fiery mind but his plans for his house. Like many of his violent and vehement temper, he could think of but one thing at a time, and that thing at this moment was the beautiful mansion he was planning near the river. In fact, as he saw, in the dim lamplight, the rising form of a female person, his first sensation was of irritable annoyance and frustration. This, then, was Joshua’s daughter, and her presence would inhibit him from the persistent and dogged arguments he had already formulated.

  A servant discreetly lit another lamp or two, and the long dark shadows retreated before their sudden beams, so that the full repulsiveness of the dark crimson and mahogany room was revealed in its utter dankness and coldness, its sweeps of somber velvet and Brussels rug, its oak-panelled walls and snarling scarlet fire under the shelter of the black marble mantelpiece. Stuart drew a deep breath. This room, so crowded with the ugliest and most immense pieces of mahogany furniture, so littered with small round tables covered with velvet cloths bordered with golden embroidery and balls, and holding upon them bronze and china lamps and a profusion of knickknacks and objets d’art, always suffocated him and threw him into the deepest despondency. As no air was ever admitted into this house, it smelled of mold and beeswax and dampness. There was an inimical and repellent atmosphere here, enhanced by the dark portraits scattered here and there on the walls. Here, one knew instinctively, were only suspicion and hatred of all others beyond this house, and detestation and sinister malice and unfriendliness. It was a hateful place, no less hateful than its master, and he who infrequently entered here was conscious of malevolence and rapacity and sly evil. Even the servants demonstrated the truism of the saying: “Like master, like man,” and their faces, lip-licking, furtive, silent, their sidelong looks, gave the more impressionable visitors the feeling that they had inadvertently wandered into a dark ominous chamber of hell whose demon-master was served by lesser demons.

  Stuart, remembering the quality and atmosphere of this terrible house, had fortified himself with whiskey before entering. Nevertheless, he could not restrain a shiver or two. He felt his warm blood congeal. He would not have been surprised had his breath left his lips in a cloud of vapor.

  Old Joshua did not stir from his huge winged chair near the fire. He only tightened his gnarled hands on the ball of his cane and squinted at Stuart sourly. But his daughter, startled at an unexpected visitor, rose on a wave of dainty confusion and uncertainty. She knew that her father never wished her to extend any friendliness to the inhabitants of Grandeville, and her first thought was flight. And then she saw Stuart standing there, near the far doorway, and she drew a little quick breath.

  For Stuart, in his best fawn pantaloons (so cunningly fitted to his long fine legs that they seemed another skin), so polished of narrow boot, so excellently garbed in a long brown coat and flowered waistcoat and ruffles and perfectly folded stock, with gl
ittering rings on his fingers and the glitter of a heavy golden chain across his middle, was the handsomest sight she had ever encountered in the shape of young male flesh. He was so tall, his shoulders so broad, his hips so narrow, and his face, dark and youthful and glowing, was so compelling, that the girl stood, fascinated, her lips falling open, breathlessly.

  As Joshua had always referred to Stuart, when infrequently mentioning him with contempt to his daughter, as “that beefy Irish animal,” Miss Marvina could not believe for a moment or two that this was young Mr. Coleman. And so it was that Miss Marvina could only stand on the hearth like a beautiful and timid bird poised for flight, and stare at Stuart, with utter stupefaction.

  Obsessed with his grim idea of persuading old Joshua to lend him ten thousand dollars, and marshalling all his arguments, and trying to breathe in this dank and smothering atmosphere, Stuart did not, for a moment or two, focus his attention on Miss Marvina. It was not until old Joshua grunted: “Good evening,” and waved his wasted hand at the girl with a muttered word of angry introduction, that Stuart became aware of her in her entirety. He bowed to her indifferently, and then as he straightened up, he saw her distinctly, and was completely startled and amazed.

  Never had he seen such perfect loveliness, such tall slenderness and perfection of figure, such grace and lightness. Miss Marvina was only sixteen, but her height and carriage made her appear several years older. She wore a gown of gray satin, tight to and revealing her tiny waist, from which it swelled out like an enormous shimmering bell to the floor, and it was draped and caught cunningly in a hundred ripples of silvery light. Her ivory shoulders were quite bare; they gleamed softly in the lamplight as if polished and carved and rubbed by a master artist, with the most loving attention. Her arms, too, were bare, and possessed of the luminous quality of ivory, and of the most perfect shape and delicacy, and Stuart could catch glimpses of her young breast, soft and gently pulsating in its ivory sweetness. About her throat was clasped a string of exquisite pearls, and as she breathed they glimmered with a lustrous life of their own against flesh no less perfect.