The Wide House

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  “Laurie!” he said, and his voice was full of pain and anger.

  But she shook her head at him, scornfully. “She wants nothing of me but to be a fine young lady and make a good marriage. I am not a fine young lady, and I shall not make a ‘good marriage.’ I shall do what I wish. Only you are a bowl of porridge, Angus.”

  She had turned away from him abruptly, and had begun to pick her way over the stones, holding her skirts high, before he followed her. Now his face was dark and tight, his gray eyes flashing. He reached her. He took her elbow. “Laurie, you are cruel. You don’t know what you say.”

  She pulled her arm away from him, and looked at him with glittering disdain. But she only said: “I can make my way alone, Angus.”

  And now, as he stood there before the fire he remembered that Sunday, and Laurie’s words. They seemed enormously significant to him. He said aloud: “But I do not understand.” Yet, when he tried to understand, he was filled with fear and complete desolation. He turned away from the memory, sick and trembling.

  Laurie had not sung again, he remembered. Nor had she walked with him, or even talked with him for long. The cold hard imperviousness had slipped over her. Had she been avoiding him? He believed it now.

  But he was not concerned with himself now, nor with the pain he was suffering at the memory of Laurie’s words. He was thinking only of Laurie, Laurie who had been his darling, his little sister. All at once, he was terribly afraid. He was filled with a nameless conviction of guilt. “I can make my way alone,” she had said. The phrase was full of grim significance, of sorrow, of repudiation.

  He listened to the echoing gloomy silence of the day. It was evening now. The wind had risen strongly. It muttered restlessly at the windows. He lit a candle and put it on the mantelpiece. He looked about the room. It was strange and empty and alien to him, and unfamiliar.

  He walked about the room, looking at Laurie’s few possessions. But it was the room of a stranger, which disliked him, which willed him to leave. One of her ribbons lay on the bed. He picked it up, absently. It slithered softly through his fingers, as if to escape him. But he wound it through his fingers, feeling its silken texture, its warmth, as if it remembered what long lengths of gold it had tied. Without knowing why he did it, he put the ribbon in his pocket, thrusting it in with fingers that seemed too aware, every nerve exposed.

  Then, as if in great haste, he left the room, half-running back to his mother’s apartments.

  CHAPTER 31

  “Be careful!” said Janie, vindictively, pulling her head away from the brush which Laurie wielded. “You are an uncommonly awkward besom, Laurie. And careless as the devil. Haven’t you remembered yet that you must take a strand smoothly from my head and brush it gently? Go away with you! Give me that brush.”

  Laurie surrendered the brush calmly. And, calmly, she lit the lamps about the room, going from table to fireplace with unmoved serenity and dignity. Then she pinched the tip of the wax taper, and replaced it in the vase with the others on the mantelpiece. She yawned, brushed her pinafore free of her mother’s loose red hairs. Janie watched her.

  “You are completely worthless, Laurie,” she said, with viciousness. “You aren’t even clever at your school. God knows why I pay one hundred pounds a year for you there! You aren’t worth it. A great awkward girl like you! They tell me you will never be graceful in the dance, if you practise for a thousand years. You have no deportment. You resist all the efforts of your teachers. Your French is abominable. I had hopes for you at the pianoforte, but Miss Humphreys tells me now that you show no more interest, and are very dull. Nor is your singing improving. They tell me your voice is rusty for lack of conscientious training. As for your needlework, it is the work of an infant. You are disinterested in charades. Your exercises with the backboard do nothing to improve your carriage, for you are a great stupid girl, like an ox. Wherever did you get that gigantic height? The women of my family were all petite and full of grace. You are as graceful as a cow, Laurie, and I am ashamed of you.

  “I realize,” continued Janie, with gathering excitement, “that you are not to blame for your deficiencies of appearance, and your big feet and hands, and your overgrown size. You will never be attractive to gentlemen, for gentlemen do not admire young ladies who top them by a head, and must wear enormous boots, like a stableman. But you could at least make some small effort to be proficient at your studies. I understand that you are not to leave your form this year, but must remain with the little girls several years younger than yourself. I cannot believe that a child of mine is by nature stupid! If you would but make an effort you could be as proficient as any other girl of your age with the globes, and in languages and music, and could at least learn to walk like a lady.”

  Unmoved, her face as expressionless as tinted wax, Laurie stood on the hearthrug and stared at her mother. Her feet were apart in a somewhat ungraceful position, her hands clasped behind her back. Janie could see the girl’s strong and sturdy ankles, her Scots virility and health, and impassiveness.

  Janie’s rowdy voice was loud and hoarse, when she cried: “There you stand, like an ox, utterly without grace or lady-likeness! A great stupid girl! Your only occupation is novel-reading and day-dreaming. You walk about this house with your heavy and lumbering tread, and do not even deign to keep your room in order. Are you popular with the other girls of the proper society, miss? No, they are too milk-and-watery for you, you have said! Do you invite them to tea, as I have urged upon you? No, indeed, they are too dull and ‘young’ for my grand and elderly minx! You prefer the horses in the stable, and the stable boys, and your novels, and your long rambling walks along the river, stumbling and climbing over the stones like a lad too big for his britches. Do you take an interest in your wardrobe? No, my lovely daughter must chaff and stamp and fume before the dressmakers and cause them to give up in despair. You would prefer linsey-woolsey, I presume, made in the fashion of a sack, so long as it covered your nakedness.

  “My God!” resumed Janie, flinging the brush from her into a corner where it crashed loudly. “To have a daughter like this, utterly without style, with enormous feet and big clacking boots and a dull and lightless face! Whatever is to become of you? Who will want you? The only proper ambition of a girl is to make a good marriage, to repay her parents by doing them proud. By setting up her own establishment and taking her place in the world of fashion and style and accomplishment. But it seems that I must be saddled for life with your ugliness and obstinacy and lumbering feet and uselessness.”

  Then Laurie spoke, calmly, without perturbation: “You are right, Mama. I shall never make a good marriage. I know that. The lads do not admire me. It is annoying, but it is a fact. I do not know yet what I shall do, but I shall choose my own way.”

  Janie glared at her, enraged. “‘Choose your own way,’ did you say, miss? What way? What is there for you to do?”

  Laurie smiled. “I suppose there could be less pleasant ways than managing a household for one’s mother.”

  At this absurdity, Janie burst into raucous laughter. She flung herself back on her couch. Her mirth was ugly, full of hate.

  She shouted: “You’ll manage no household for me, you daft fool! You are incapable of it, if nothing else. Do you visit the kitchen to inspect the cooking pots? Do you show any interest in the marketing? Do you call the attention of the housemaid to dust under the beds? Do you count the linen and the silver? God knows you are old enough for all this, but you do not do it, skulking in your dirty room with a novel on your big bony knees. You do not even watch over your own cambrics and laces and ribbons and frocks. And this is the one, by God! who would manage a household for me!”

  “It seems that I am entirely useless,” agreed Laurie.

  But this only further infuriated Janie, who jerked upright on the couch as if to rise and smack her daughter soundly. Laurie regarded her serenely. There was a wicked glint in her blue eyes.

  “Of course I can always be a governess, or a
schoolma’am, Mama.”

  Outrage stupefied Janie. Laurie remained tranquil and apparently unaware, one mused. “But, no, as you said, Mama, I am no scholar, and can be neither a governess nor a schoolma’am. I am afraid that I can see no hope for me.”

  Janie let out her pent breath on a gust of rage. “Well, let me tell you now, miss, you shall not live the rest of your life on my bounty! I do not intend to keep a buxom young female in idleness the rest of her life! You can well look about you in a year or two, to see what inferior man might be willing to have you, though not as an ornament, God help you! Gentlemen of fashion and position demand females of fortune or comeliness to grace their homes, and not louts and japes and numskulls.”

  Laurie was silent, and undisturbed. Her impassivity was one of the most hateful things about her, to her mother. She looked indifferently across the room, and regarded her reflection in the opposite mirror with unconcern. She saw her strong and beautiful face, with its brilliant and intelligent eyes and stoical bright mouth. She saw the breadth of her young shoulders, which were square, and not sloping in the admired fashion, and the Grecian column of her throat with its creamy skin. Idly she admitted that eveything about her was on too majestic a scale, too large, but she was not regretful. Once, in a moment of rare affection, Janie had called her a “braw lassie.” She was indeed very “braw,” she acknowledged. Health was too ruddy in her lips and cheeks, vitality too passionate in the glance of her blue eyes; even her nose, well-formed and straight and white, was too big, for all its classical outlines. She was one for heath and hill, for mountains and crags, for the roaring seas. She would never learn the gentle art of swooning, of the frail fainting voice, of graceful vapors. She thought of all this with her usual cold nonchalance.

  She lifted her child’s arms, and felt the smooth flowing of good muscles. Her flesh tingled with strength. She dropped her arms, and again clasped her hands behind her back. She spread her feet a little farther apart.

  Angus opened the door. He was breathless and flushed. Laurie glanced at him; there was an imperceptible tightening of her features, and she turned away her head. Angus looked at his mother, her face dark with malevolent rage. In his usual abrupt fashion, which knew no tact, he said to Janie:

  “Mama, it has just occurred to me that Laurie doesn’t sing anymore.”

  Janie gaped at him. Was he daft, this ninny? She uttered a rough oath, and threw herself with fury back against the cushions of her lounge. As for Laurie, she turned her head very slowly and gazed at her brother with icy inattention.

  But Angus, excited, still under the spell of his misery and pain, approached Janie, and said with stammering eagerness: “All her teachers have said they never heard such a voice, Mama. There—there is a fortune in it.” God knew what subtlety lay behind his trembling words, and his manner, but he was successful in causing Janie to cease her profanity and to stare at him, licking her lips.

  He stood at the foot of her lounge, and spread out his hands helplessly. “It is true, Mama. Laurie can be a great singer. She can go everywhere. There is a fortune in it. It is wicked of her to neglect such a talent.”

  “What is all this?” asked Janie roughly, covering her feet with her shawl.

  “Mama, you must have heard of the great female singers, who are famous in New York, in Paris and London.” He paused. “Mama, you’ve told me how you heard Jenny Lind in London, in 1847, and how prodigious was the applause. You remember, you said she was Alice in Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable, and that later she appeared in operas in Manchester and Liverpool. Then she was in Berlin, and Paris, and all over Europe, and everywhere she travelled and sang she was greeted with adulation by all the crowned heads. Didn’t I also hear that she sang in America, too, superbly? She made a fortune, Mama, you remember, and lives most luxuriously.”

  But Janie burst into a great shaking roar of laughter, ribald and hating. She pointed a finger at the immobile Laurie, standing there on the hearthrug, with a peculiar gleam upon her face.

  “Are you trying to tell me, you ninny, that that great hulking lump of a young female is another Jenny Lind?” cried Janie, when she could get her breath. “Look at her!” Like a cow in a pasture! You are out of your wits, lad!”

  But Angus was stubborn, afire with cold flame. He looked at his mother steadfastly. “Mama, you know I am right. You’ve heard her teachers. You’ve heard her sing. I’ve watched you. You—you were entranced. We all were. Mama,” and he clenched his damp hands tightly together in his terrible earnestness. “I beg of you to listen to me. Take her to a clever teacher. Take her to New York. Let others be the judge.”

  Janie laughed uproariously again. And then she stopped, abruptly. Her eyes slid about to fix themselves on her daughter. She was silent. Again she licked her lips. “What do your teachers at that damn school say about your voice these days, you obstinate wench?” she demanded, in a threatening tone. “Tell us. Tell your daft brother.” Derision was crude and violent in her tone.

  But Laurie did not speak. She was still looking at Angus, and the look was hard and watchful.

  “I can tell you what they said!” Janie continued, with harsh excitement. “They said she never sings, that when she is finally forced to do so she makes havoc of the sweet ballads, that her voice is like a roaring calf’s under the moon. That is what they said, you zany.”

  Angus turned and regarded his sister somberly. He said, almost reflectively: “What can they know, those female chirpers, who have never heard a real voice? They think a girl’s voice should be sweet and inane, like little bells, How can they judge a voice like Laurie’s, so pure and strong and rich? Have they ever heard an opera? Have they ever heard Jenny Lind, as you have done, Mama? What do they know of volume and greatness and presence? Laurie’s voice has the volume, the greatness, the purity. She has the presence for the boards—”

  “Are you suggesting I make my daughter an actress? An actress?” exclaimed Janie, grinning with her contempt. But her eyes were cunningly thoughtful.

  “I am suggesting that you allow some competent authority to hear Laurie, and that if they agree that she has a great voice that you will send her to the best music schools in New York—”

  “And with what, my fine planner and spinner of dreams?” screamed Janie, infuriated as always whenever it was suggested that she spend money.

  Angus slowly fixed his eyes upon her. He said, with dignity: “Then I would be willing to pay for it, Mama.”

  Again, Janie shrieked with laughter. She rolled her head on her cushions, with her lewd mirth. Angus, very white, waited, until the noisy laughter abated a little. Then he said very quietly:

  “I have enough to take her to a real teacher. After that, ma’am, it is in your hands. Later, perhaps, I can help. But it might be too late.”

  It was then that Laurie stirred. Her voice, slow, quiet, rich and full of resonance, filled the room. She said: “Mama is right, Angus. It is very foolish of you. I have no voice at all, though I thank you for the compliment.” She paused. Her tone became louder, firmer, but more hurried: “I tell you, I never sing now. I shall never sing again!”

  “The besom has more sense than you, Angus,” said Janie, sourly. But her eyes were still narrowed, still thoughtful, and she still licked the corners of her lips. Her imagination was powerful enough to allow her to hear again Jenny Lind’s magnificent voice, echoing through His Majesty’s Theatre, in London. And now her heart, her wizened nugget of a heart, began to beat heavily.

  But Laurie had come to life, on her hearthrug where she had been so obstinately rooted. She took a step or two towards Angus. Her young face was fluid again, beautifully violent and moved. Her blue eyes flashed like flame. She said: “I’ll thank you to mind your own business, sir, and keep your silly opinions to yourself.”

  For a moment he was petrified by her look, by her manner, by her vehemence. He felt a sick pounding in himself. Never had he seen Laurie like this, his gentle silent sister whom he loved so deeply. It was a s
tranger, an inimical stranger, who repudiated him now, looked at him with bitter scorn and detestation, with accusation and contempt.

  “Laurie,” he began, holding out his hands, in fear.

  But she turned away from him with a loathing gesture. She had just reached the hearthrug when they all heard the confused mutter of men below, the opening and shutting of doors, the sound of dragging footsteps, a fall, and Robbie’s cool light laughter.

  “What—” began Janie. She swung her little feet to the floor. She caught up her shawl. She ran to the door and flung it open. She called down angrily: “What is this? What is the matter?”

  And now Stuart’s voice, sullen but loud, came up the well of the dark stairway: “We’ve brought home your son, ma’am. Your drunken son. And will you come down and give him a look?”

  CHAPTER 32

  Janie flew down the stairs, her skirts sailing behind her. She clutched the bosom of her peignoir. Stuart watched her come. On the lower steps Bertie lay sprawled, with a foolish sleepy grin on his suffused face, his ruddy hair damp and disordered. Robbie stood over him, with a detached expression. A servant had lighted the lamp on the newel post, and its bronze light hovered over the tableau on the stairs.

  But Janie saw no one but her Benjamin. She rushed to him, then stopped just above him, and stared down in silence. Angry and furious words began to move Stuarts tongue, and then he could not speak. For never had he seen such a look on Janie’s face, wizened, still, and full of stark tragedy. She stood there, in her disarray, her slippered feet on the same step that held the lolling head of the grinning Bertie, and was as motionless as a carved figure. Her lips worked; her thin and freckled throat pulsed; the hands that held her velvet garments trembled. Now she was an old woman, with red hair that flaunted itself over her stricken eyes.

  Stuart’s warm heart, so treacherously always at the edge of melting, now betrayed his anger into pity. He mumbled: “We’ve brought him home, Janie. Don’t mind, ma’am. He’s only a lad. Lads do foolish things.”