The Wide House: A Novel

By Taylor Caldwell

An “intimately limned” saga of passion and greed in the decade before the Civil War—from the New York Times–bestselling author of Captains and the Kings (Kirkus Reviews).

The Wide House is the story of two cousins from Ireland: Stuart Coleman, a shopkeeper who dreams of building a big white house and raising a family, and Janie Cauder, a young widow with four children, only one of whom she truly adores. When Janie arrives in Grandeville, New York, the two begin a surprising romance—but happiness is not to be their fate.
 
Driven by ambition and haunted by self-doubt, Stuart spurns Janie for the beautiful daughter of a business rival. Janie, meanwhile, takes her disappointment out on her children and pursues new romantic opportunities—to diminishing returns. As the national mood turns increasingly antagonistic to outsiders, Stuart and Janie’s inability to love will leave a bitter mark on their lives, and on generations to come.
 
A richly detailed portrait of a fascinating time in American history, The Wide House is a masterwork from an author whose “sheer power” has captivated millions of readers all over the world (The New York Times).
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Release date: Sep 4, 2018
• ISBN: 9781504053167

Taylor Caldwell

Taylor Caldwell (1900–1985) was one of the most prolific and widely read authors of the twentieth century. Born Janet Miriam Holland Taylor Caldwell in Manchester, England, she moved with her family to Buffalo, New York, in 1907. She started writing stories when she was eight years old and completed her first novel when she was twelve. Married at age eighteen, Caldwell worked as a stenographer and court reporter to help support her family and took college courses at night, earning a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Buffalo in 1931. She adopted the pen name Taylor Caldwell because legendary editor Maxwell Perkins thought her debut novel, Dynasty of Death (1938), would be better received if readers assumed it were written by a man. In a career that spanned five decades, Caldwell published forty novels, many of which were New York Times bestsellers. Her best-known works include the historical sagas The Sound of Thunder (1957), Testimony of Two Men (1968), Captains and the Kings (1972), and Ceremony of the Innocent (1976), and the spiritually themed novels The Listener (1960) and No One Hears But Him (1966). Dear and Glorious Physician (1958), a portrayal of the life of St. Luke, and Great Lion of God (1970), about the life of St. Paul, are among the bestselling religious novels of all time. Caldwell’s last novel, Answer as a Man (1981), hit the New York Times bestseller list before its official publication date. She died at her home in Greenwich, Connecticut, in 1985.  

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Janie Driscoll Cauder, in the later years of her life, would often say, with that simper and arching of her head that her daughter, Laurie, could not endure without pressing her nails into the palms of her hands: I landed here, a young widow, with twenty trunks and bags, three lads and a little lass, with none to care and only the help of God to sustain me. Ah, if it hadn’t, been for the good Lord, what would have become of me, a young widow, landing alone in a strange country, with nae hoose nor kinfolk to comfort me?

Janie, of course, confronted by an admiring and servile audience, would fail to mention that in addition to the twenty trunks and bags, three lads and a little lass, she was also in possession of some fifteen thousand pounds sterling, given to her by her infatuated Irish mother. Had she mentioned the fifteen thousand pounds, it would have considerably dimmed the picture of the pathetic young widow thrusting out her tiny foot so gallantly, and so bravely, upon the unfeeling shore of a strange country, surrounded by her children and her enormous luggage. Janie always pictured the circumstances about her as large and overwhelming, so that the audience could see her in contrast, so little, so slender, so childlike, and so undaunted, against the grim gray backdrop of New York in March, 1850, a fluttering small creature with chin held high above the ribbons of her bonnet, her gay eyes bright with a quicksilver humor.

New York had had a snowstorm the day previous, and snow lay in sodden soot-streaked heaps on the wooden pier. Against a sky the color of wrinkled lead the masts of the great ship were tangled with rope, and between them squatted the broad chimneys that had smoked so sturdily, but so intermittently, across the boiling Atlantic. Hundreds of immigrants, surrounded by squalling children who whimpered and tried to warm their red hands under pinafores and meager shawls, surged over the pier, dragging bundles of bedding rescued from the dank holds of the ship, frayed carpet bags and various knobby bundles. In contrast to these frightened wretches, Janie, in her sable cape and her trim gray woolen frock, her tiny bonnet covered with velvet violets, was a pleasant sight. She had come first class, of course, and had acquired, as usual, a flock of admiring and loving friends, who assisted her with the luggage, and snatched some of the smaller bags from the hands of stewards. The friends were all gentlemen, because ladies were not apt to be overly cordial with Janie after a day or two of acquaintance. So Janie’s handsome little French bonnet was all bobbing animation among tall stovepipe hats and broad, fur-collared shoulders, and her laugh, arrestingly loud and hoarse and jovial, boomed out rollickingly. Sometimes she would withdraw a little mittened hand from the warm confines of her great sable muff, and she would then strike some urgent gentleman soundly on the chest or arm, as if to reprove him, and sometimes she would coquettishly twitch a thick Scotch shawl from the shoulders of another gentleman.

Her children stood a little apart from her, well-dressed and comely, and silent. The eldest boy, Angus Driscoll Cauder, held his little sister’s hand in a firm if chilly grip. He was the least well-favored of Janie’s lads, unusually tall, dark and dour-faced, and thirteen years old. His expression was reserved, cold and lightless. His complexion was sallow, his features were meager and small, his nose short and sharp, his nostrils compressed and narrow, his mouth thin and drawn. He had a good chin, however, firm and dimpled, and if one cared to look closer after a first careless glance, he would see Angus’ eyes, a clear and very shy gray, the color of smoke.

His little sister, clasped so firmly to him, was a beautiful child of about six. Under her beaver bonnet with its wide brown ribbons, flowed a cascade of hair so flaxen yet so radiant, that it was like a cape of pale gold over the fur-bordered capes of her bulging coat. Her big and smiling eyes were a translucent blue, shadowed by golden lashes, and she had a sweet round little face the color of milk and tea-roses, and a large pink smile that trembled easily into a myriad of dimples. The fact that the bitter wind sweeping in from the sea had turned her tilted nose quite red, and made her sniffle, did not detract from her touching loveliness, and her air of shy but eager gaiety.

Though the four children stood together in a circle, a quick eye would have discerned that in reality they formed two distinct groups—one, Angus with his sister, and Bertram (Bertie) Coleman Cauder and Rob Roy (Robbie) Duncan Cauder, the other. Strangers were apt to be much taken by Bertie, his mother’s darling, for the eleven-year-old lad was almost as tall as Angus, but better formed, exceedingly solid, and extremely handsome. He had a large round face, all life and ruddiness and laughter, with big white teeth that flashed with constant and innocently malicious smiles, and bright blue eyes, a trifle small. His head was large and round and strong, covered by auburn curls that glinted with gold, and all his ways were quick and vital and restless.

Robbie was the black one, as Janie would say, with candid disfavor. He was little; he had inherited Janie’s smallness and wiriness of body. He looked hardly older than Laurie, his sister. Nevertheless, there was nothing childlike or pathetic about his compact lean little body; in truth, there were times when he resembled a sinewy gnome.

As Janie continued to dally with her admirers, and her voice, so hoarse and rollicking and coarse and hearty, continued to boom out over the bedlam of other voices, even Bertie, the effervescent, became miserably quiet. The wind grew in intensity; the sky became more lowering. It was nearly five in the afternoon, and darkness was running in long waves from the sea and over the huddled city beyond the pier. A dull roaring came from the ocean; wind whistled through the masts of the ship, and the crew scuttled along the decks. The crowd was beginning to disperse, slowly. From the low broken banks of New York, yellow lights began to twinkle. The wooden pier bent and echoed with hurrying feet.

A tall, slender young man, his long fawn coat caped in sable, his tall hat set at a fashionable angle on his high small head, sauntered through the crowds. His saunter was graceful; he was all fashion and favor. His tight fawn pantaloons were fastened by straps under his thin, polished black boots. He carried a gold-headed ebony cane, very slender, with which he lightly moved aside urchins and shivering women and even men. His coat was open, and swinging, revealing a flowered silk vest, and crisp white ruffles. He had a dark full face, bright and keen, with a subtle smiling mouth, and black eyes, very large and piercing. His black hair, sleekly brushed back, curled at the ends in a most engaging manner. His air was careless, composed and arrogant, and between the fingers of one gloved hand he carried a long cigar. He was a great gentleman, doubtless, thought many a woman as she cringed from his path.

He stopped, not far from the four children of Janie Driscoll Cauder, and studied them. He put his cigar to his lips, and smoked idly. Then he said: Good God! He began to walk again, more quickly this time. He came back to the children, and smiled at them, his very white teeth glistening between his lips. Are you Janie’s brats? he asked, genially, his restless eye searching each face.

They stared at him, sunken in their chill wretchedness. Only Robbie spoke, and he came forward courteously and composedly, removing his hat. Would you be our cousin Stuart? he asked, in his light voice, without inflection.

I would, indeed, the man said, lightly, with a deep amused bow. Or rather, your mama’s cousin, Stuart Coleman.

Little Laurie bobbed automatically in a curtsey, and the other children bowed stiffly. Bertie had recovered his ruddy gaiety. He approached Stuart and tucked his hand in his arm. We’re damn cold, he said, frankly. Will you get Mama away from those gentlemen?

The smile left Stuart’s face. He looked down at Bertie thoughtfully. He patted the small firm hand on his arm. I will that, he said, with much kindness. He turned his attention to Laurie, who was staring at him with her great blue eyes, so wondering and so calm. Hello, pet, said Stuart, softly. He reached out and gently pinched her cold round cheek. She smiled at him radiantly, blushed, and buried her head against Angus’ arm.

Tell me your names; which is which? said Stuart. Robbie, as usual, took command. He indicated his elder brother, and in a quiet competent voice, said: This is Angus. He indicated Bertie, clinging so affectionately to Stuart: That’s Bertie, Bertram. I’m Rob Roy, Robbie. This is Laurie, our sister, and he waved indifferently at the little girl.

Four of you, eh? said Stuart, meditatively. I didn’t quite know there were four. He smiled a little. Janie was careless. I thought she might bring two, at the most. She only mentioned Bertie and Laurie.

Robbie shrugged indifferently, and Stuart eyed him with shrewd quickness. He turned and surveyed Janie, still laughing hoarsely, she and her gentlemen now quite isolated on the wooden pier. Janie as usual, commented the young man. He gave the children a reassuring nod and smile, and left them, sauntering, amused, towards his cousin and her covey of admirers. He stood on the animated outskirts, swung his cane, and smoked. Then, quite suddenly and alarmingly, he shouted: Janie! For God’s sake!

The gentlemen jumped like startled fawns, and parted instinctively to reveal the little vivacious woman in their midst. She stared at Stuart, then rushed in tiny lively steps towards her cousin, shrieking, holding out one mittened hand, the other clutching the huge sable muff. Her sable cape streamed after her, her little French sandals twinkled under her gray skirt, her purple veil blew back from the velvet violets of her bonnet. She flung herself into the laughing Stuart’s arms, the while the uneasy gentlemen huddled together and scowled. She was all extravagant kisses, little hoarse cries, and perfumed embraces. Ah, Stuart, my darling! she exclaimed, her face running with her easy tears. And where have you been this long time?

He held her gently from him. Let’s look at you, he said, fondly. Yes, it’s the same old Janie, though I haven’t seen you since the day you were married.

Stuart Coleman was now twenty-eight, and he had been only fourteen years old when he had last seen his cousin. But he remembered very clearly the small triangular face with its somewhat sallow complexion, and the thick array of brown freckles over a nose frankly large and Roman. He remembered the wide mobile mouth with its crafty grin, audacious and merry, and the little square white teeth, glistening and perfect. He remembered the long glinting green eyes, merciless, sly and always twinkling with incipient laughter under their streaks of tilted auburn brows, and the sharp specks of amber in them, which gave them a feline and untamable quality. And he had never forgotten her bright red hair, naturally straight and always tortuously curled into smooth gleaming sausages about her animated face, and just touching her shoulders. Janie had not changed much. She was now thirty-two, and did not possess the slightest beauty, for all her neat trim little figure and high taste in somewhat flamboyant fashion, and candid use of rouge and powder.

Stuart Coleman, who was astute, knew all about Janie. But he was amused by her, charmed by her. He kissed her heartily, as she clung to him, knowing the hypocrisy of her tears of joy. A false baggage, he observed to himself. But a merry soul, he added. He knew at once why she really had come to America. She intended to marry him. He laughed, inwardly.

Come, I’ve got a carriage waiting, and I’ll take you all to your hotel, my darling, he said, chucking her under the chin. Is all this your damned luggage? All of it? My God! He indicated the trunks and bags with his cane. He glanced carelessly at the discomfited and deprived gentlemen, who began to slink away into the gathering darkness like beaten hounds.

Janie clung helplessly to his arm, and adored him with her green dancing eyes. She became suddenly limp and very female. She sighed, and touched her dry eyes with her kerchief. My love, what should I have done without you? she whimpered.

Stuart smiled broadly. I really don’t know, my pet. But we must hurry. The carriage is waiting. Gather up your pretty brood, and we’ll be on our way.

CHAPTER 2

When Janie wished to make an impression, as she did now upon her cousin, Stuart Coleman, she suffered a few apprehensions. Her mother had been cousin to Stuart’s dead father, and Gordon Coleman had been no admirer of Janie. What, then, she asked herself, watching Stuart warily, had the young man heard of her?

Stuart had heard a great deal, but being a wise gentleman he allowed Janie to stew in her own juice, as he inelegantly put it to himself. He knew all about Janie. He would continue to stare through the spattered windows of the huge stagecoach which was bearing them all to his home in Grandeville, N.Y., and he would affect to be engrossed in the dun flat country that fled beneath the groaning wheels.

His father had been a loquacious and petulant talker. He had been much attached to his cousin, Bridget Murphy, Janie’s mother, and had been infuriated at her marriage to that damned Scotsman, Duncan Driscoll. Gordon Coleman was a wild Irishman, in the family’s opinion, and would come to no good end. He had married Stuart’s mother, now dead, and had gone with her to America to make his fortune, when Stuart had been fourteen years old. The family, in relief, had contributed generously towards the fund which made his exile possible, and though they had loved the young Stuart, they had been glad to be rid of relatives that had been a constant drain on reluctant purses. When they heard of Gordon’s amazing success, they did not change their personal opinion of him, but said, enviously, that apparently it was possible for the most foolish lout to make money in America. It was by reason of Gordon Coleman’s pettish diatribes that Stuart had learned so much about Janie and her family.

Janie’s father, Duncan Driscoll, a lowlander from Bar-head, Scotland, had, with the aid of a considerable inheritance from a dead uncle, purchased an unusually large farm just across the English border. That was reprehensible enough, that he had bought land in England, but that he, a seaman, should make a resounding success of it was enough to make any self-respecting Scot indignant. What did he know of cattle and sheep and other beasties? Duncan apparently knew much, and as he was a man of resolution and intelligence he throve from the start. But, when he married the buxom Irish Bridget Murphy, his own family abandoned him with thoroughness and dispatch.

Duncan, with the rocky serenity of a Scot who is prosperous, betrayed no worry over this situation. He was amiable to everyone, though not particularly fond of anyone, and was agreeable and friendly to his wife’s people. He even allowed her cousin, Gordon Coleman, and the latter’s wife and son, to occupy a small cottage on his land. Gordon was lodge-keeper, and exerted his Irish love for overseership on the other farm-laborers, but he had none of the Irishman’s geniality and friendliness and good-fellowship. In consequence he was hated by his underlings.

Duncan’s wife presented him with seventeen children, of whom Janie was the youngest. While Gordon Coleman (who hated Duncan more wildly than he hated anyone else, doubtless due to the fact that he had received endless benefits from the Scotsman) disliked Bridget’s children with a dull and heavy aversion, he particularly detested Janie. His own son, Stuart, born some five years after Janie, soon revealed a disgusting fondness for the girl, and she for him. She would run down from the great gray house on its knoll, and invade the little gray cottage at the gates, her carrotty hair fluttering, her green eyes dancing, her mouth one broad grin.

Janie became an obsession to this gloomy and frustrated man. As hatred has a memory as boundless as love, he compiled quite a dossier about the young lady. It was this dossier, which even in America many years later, he laid before his son. He forgot nothing. Much of what Stuart had not learned by actual contact with Janie, he learned from his father.

Janie had been coddled by her father and her elder brothers and sisters, though they had understood all about her from her first lisp. Her mother, however, worshipped this child of her old age, and nothing was too expensive, too inappropriate, for the wily little creature. Bridget, fat, aging, illiterate and adoring, found nothing more fascinating than this last child of her womb, and nothing that. Janie could do was reprehensible in her fatuous eyes. Janie had a tiny sable cape, stole, bonnet and muff when she was barely five years old. Janie had her own Shetland ponies, her own garden, her own maid, her own gold watch, her own little jewelry case filled with rich rings and bangles and chains. Her velvets and silks were imported from France, as were the delicate laces on her cambric underwear. Her boots came from London. She was early taught the use of lotions for her complexion, which, despite the most anxious efforts of maids, remained distinctly yellowish in cast. Though no sun was allowed to touch her bare skin, her large and predatory nose gathered to itself a crop of thick brown freckles every spring, bathe them as she would with buttermilk.

The servants hated and feared little Janie, from the lowliest scullery maid to the special Oxford tutor engaged to teach her. For she was full of cruel pranks, which she vehemently denied when her tearful mother gently reproached her. Janie had the ability to look her accuser directly and straight in the eye, without flinching, and declare that she had done no such thing. Once, after a particularly outrageous trick upon a stableman, by which he was almost gored to death by a bull which Janie had slyly let out of its compound, Duncan thoroughly thrashed his little daughter. In consequence, Bridget did not speak to him for a month, and was not appeased until the harassed man presented Janie with three new lengths of velvet and an ermine cloak.

Yet her ways were so winning when she desired, so meek and sweet, her expression so innocent, that she could come over anyone whom she wished to placate. She had coaxing little manners, also, and she could even, upon occasion, subdue the loud and raucous hoarseness of her voice so that it was almost soft. She might pull fat Bridget’s mobcap strings from under her chin, and tie them in hopeless knots as the good-natured woman slept in her chair before the fire, she might put pins into her mother’s favorite red velvet cushion so that Bridget would arise with an anguished cry, clutching her great buttocks, she might do any number of such knaveries, yet she was always forgiven when she could induce a large tear to fall over her cheek and make her thin wide mouth tremble.

She was hardly ten years old when her doting mother began to search anxiously among the neighboring gentlemen farmers for a proper husband for her child. Her sisters had all been married before they were seventeen to comfortable and sturdy young men of the neighborhood, and well-settled on excellent farms. To Bridget’s increasing distress, Janie took no apparent interest, during her adolescence, in eligible youths of the countryside. It was not until she was nineteen that her avaricious eye fell on young Robin Cauder and her desire fastened on him.

As Janie was so abysmally greedy, her lust for Robin Cauder was inexplicable. For Robin had only the garments on his back, and a thin collection of shillings and pence in his tight, frayed pantaloons. He had been born in the dark and violent highlands of Scotland, one of numerous sons of a starveling shepherd. Robin, at a very early age, was set to work as a shepherd also, and in the deep snows of the black mornings he would take the flock out to forage for the meager moss under the snow. Then it was that he sang to the lonely star of the morning, and in such a voice, so golden, so strong and sure, that it seemed the gnarled rocks listened, and the twisted trees. Even the sheep lifted their heads, as if enchanted. He sang the Highland lays, full of wild melancholy, full of death and lovesick girls and fated young men, full of war and glory and hatred for England. He would wrap his shawls about him, oblivious of the terrible winds that swirled his kilts about his reddened young legs, and he would lift his face to the paling morning sky, and sing like a veritable angel.

He also had an angelic beauty. Tall, sturdy, full of grace, he had a dark clear skin, fine black eyes, the Hebraic nose of the true highlander, and a mop of curling black hair. The girls soon loved him. But Robin loved nothing but his savage mountains and the sound of his own singing. He was only sixteen when he left the highlands and made his way, a minstrel, through the towns and hamlets of Scotland. His voice, though untutored, charmed and intoxicated his poor listeners to such an extent that they would produce numerous pennies, and even shillings, for him. They loved to hear his laughter, rich and rollicking, full of joy in life.

He wandered through Scotland, this singing young vagabond, for a whole year, living gaily with strangers who would give him shelter, even though it were only the hearth before the meager pit fires or in a barn with the cattle. He was seventeen when he reached Barhead, Scotland, and cast his eye curiously across the English border. Englishmen, he knew, were more lavish with shillings and pence, than his own cautious countrymen. He wandered across and sang in English taverns until even the prosaic English tenant farmers would raise their heads from their warm beer and listen, open-mouthed. It was in one of these taverns that the reckless son of the local minister heard him sing, and induced him to visit his father. The minister, overcome by such a glorious voice, persuaded Robin to learn the dull hymns of respectability, and to sing in his chapel. Robin found it all very boring, for he had a restless and wandering foot. He decided to stay until he had collected ten pounds. In the meantime, he slept in the garret of the minister’s house, where the blankets were clean and adequate.

Janie heard him sing in the chapel. She watched him from the family pew. From the first day she desired him, with voracity. She would marry this seventeen-year-old youth, and no other, she vowed. She broke this appalling news calmly to her parents, who were thrown into desperate perplexity. Duncan stormed and raged; Bridget exuded buckets of tears, the brothers and sisters sat about in their woolen breeches and frocks, and lifted their hands in wailing horror. Janie was firm. She would remain a spinster, reviled by the neighbors, unless she had her Robin.

Robin, in the meantime, remained happily ignorant of the fury that engulfed Stronghold, the Driscoll farmlands. He had noticed Janie in her pew, her slight little body arrayed in velvets, furs and silks, bejewelled like a Jezebel, and with a suspicious coloring on her sallow cheeks, and though he was aware that she looked at him steadily with her long green eyes, and smirked at him coyly as he sang, he was not taken by her. He had never loved money. He desired only to sing his way through life, careless, restless, and full of merriment. Janie’s position did not impress him in the least.

It was not until she contrived to waylay him on the road home to the minister’s house, that he began to look at her with interest. He was not a lad to forego any promised pleasure. But Janie was astute. It was marriage or nothing. She dressed herself in her best, and was so gay, so amusing, so full of hoarse laughter herself, that the lad found himself waiting for her on the winding road. Janie soon saw that sables and silks and the best beaver bonnets had no power over him, and subtle as always, she found the way to his quicksilver heart. She would sigh and murmur that she was but a little fluttering bird in a golden nest, that she desired nothing but to see the world, that her spirit was smothering to death at Stronghold. When Robin spoke of far places, of his own highlands, Janie would cleverly contrive to make her eyes sparkle with green light, or tears, and she would vow that she must see those highlands.

Still, it might have come to nothing had not Duncan, with fury, visited the awed and trembling minister’s house, shouting that he would see that jackanapes immediately, or, with his own hands, he would tear the very beams from the ceilings. Robin, hearing the uproar, came negligently and gracefully from his garret. He was not intimidated by Duncan. When he finally, through the imprecations and threats, caught the gist of the old man’s words, the lad threw back his head and laughed with huge enjoyment.

Nevertheless he was also angered, for he was both stubborn and proud. So, he was not good enough for Janie, was he? He must leave at once, must he, with a pocket lined with pounds? Robin only laughed. When next he met Janie on the road, he asked her to wed him.

They did not marry for two months, and Janie was imprisoned in her home, Duncan finally overcoming the tears and pleas of Bridget. Janie went into a decline. She would neither eat nor sleep, she wept, until she had her Robin. Her mother’s tearful pleading had no effect. Janie locked herself in her room. Outside, the brown autumn winds tossed drying leaves against the closed shutters. She would sob loudly, and then listen. If, after some time, she did not hear the distressed shuffling of her mother’s feet outside the door, or her deep sighing, Janie would go off into a tantrum, screaming and shrieking like a banshee, hurling herself violently upon the floor, kicking and drumming against the polished boards.

Duncan, who was of a considerable toughness, finally surrendered.

Hae y’braw vagabond, then, and be damned to y’both! he roared one morning, outside Janie’s door. And then he thumped off crashingly out of the house, mounted his horse, and rode to the nearest tavern. When he returned, in a golden numb daze, Janie was seated before the fire sipping not milk and brandy, while Bridget bumbled and flurried about her reconciled child.

Robin was waited on, a few days later, by two of Janie’s elder brothers. They, they announced irately, had come to give their father’s consent to Robin’s marriage to Janie.

Now Robin had not seen Janie for nearly two weeks, and, in truth, he had almost forgotten her. He stared in amazement at her brothers, and then his clear dark skin flushed scarlet. Inwardly, he cursed the wild and stubborn folly that had brought him to this impasse. He said nothing to the young farmers, but when they had gone, he decided on flight. Wed a lass and be tied to the earth? Not Robin!

He tried to flee the next morning. But on the road back to Scotland he encountered the eldest and strongest of Janie’s brothers, on horseback. Robin stared up at that large brown face with the relentless eyes, and burst out laughing. He shifted his knapsack, turned about, and went back to the minister’s house, whistling.

He was wedded to Janie six weeks later. Gordon Coleman did not come. But his wife and Stuart were there. Stuart had followed the course of Janie’s wooing with a schoolboy’s great curiosity, mingled with amused affection for his older cousin. In truth, he was delighted at her artful success, and her cunning, and thought her a bold and venturesome baggage whose life would be interesting to observe and follow. No more would he and Janie scamper through the woods, searching for butterflies, and feeling the soft moss under their feet as the slanting red light of the dying sun fell through the columns of the trees. No more would he watch with Janie the dim white light of spring in the evening sky, nor would they run down to the river again and skate upon the black ice glittering in the noonday winter sun. He remembered Janie scrambling up the tilted trunk of some old tree, then, reaching a low branch, grasping it and swinging herself out into space, hanging by her hands. How her petticoats would flutter in the cool forest wind, and how thin and active her legs looked, in their long frilled pantaloons! For indeed, Janie was as lively as an insect, and as noisy as a cricket, and as daring as a squirrel. No one could be dull in her presence, slyly malign though it was. Then too, for Stuart, at least, she had a boisterous affection, for all her tormenting ways, her cruel little teasings and malice.

Remembering how she had endlessly entertained him, how she had violently clouted him one moment then fawned on him the next, remembering the coarse and rollicking laughter, obscene in its tones, echoing in the dark woods, remembering her avarice and her impulsive generosities of the instant, he felt his sadness growing.

It was a raw brown autumn day when Robin and Janie were wedded, and the narrow-paned windows gushed with leaden water. The big gray house, gloomy as always with the exception of the kitchen and its copper pots glowing in the fire, had a dank chill smell. There was a wide window-seat beneath the back windows, and Stuart sat there, yawning and waiting with the others, for Janie and her groom to appear. These windows overlooked the kitchen and the herb gardens, bounded by a gray stone wall. In the center of these lush and untidy gardens grew a tree, sinewy and twisted. Pools stood about in the midst of tangled and drooping vegetation, trembling in the cold wind, rippling and wrinkling like miniature lakes whipped by a storm. Dirty brownish clouds scudded across the darkening sky. For a little while the rain had stopped. Drenched doves had ventured forth from the dove-cote, and now sat in a row on the low gray wall, their feathers ruffling miserably. They had a woebegone look, and made mourning sounds, infinitely melancholy. A dog was barking wretchedly. From some distance came the somber lowing of cattle making their way back to the barnyard. And now, as Stuart watched, a dim skirling mist began to rise from the black and ruined garden, twisting its way through dead stalks and grass, then lifting a little like an up-flung drifting scarf, or in puffs like mushrooms.

It was not a day of good omen. Fires had been built in the parlor, which was seldom used except on grand occasions such as Christmas (though Duncan, the Scot, was against any Papish observance of the holiday), or a wedding or a funeral. In consequence, the very panelled walls had a damp patina over them, and in places farthest from the fire this dampness gathered in dots of water on the polished wood. The mahogany furniture, slippery with horsehair or hard tapestry or velvet, glimmered blackly in the firelight, and the wide Turkey carpeting stretched drearily from wall to wall. The many guests felt this despondent atmosphere, and huddled about the immense black-marble fireplace, their whiskey-glasses in their hands. The males had fortified themselves prodigiously, and their hoarse country voices were becoming exceedingly loud. The ladies, in their large velvet skirts and pelisses and fur-trimmed mantles, had withdrawn primly from their menfolk, and were chattering in the subdued voices appropriate to weddings or funerals. The lamps, thriftily not yet lighted, waited for the touch of a taper. Gloom thickened in every corner.

Near the north wall sat the minister’s eldest daughter, a thin consumptive young female, dressed in dull brown, her bonnet hiding her lean pale face. Near at her hand stood a small organ, and by that organ miserably lounged the minister’s only son, a very fat little boy about ten years old, who had been delegated to supply the air for the instrument which, was to resound forth the wedding march. No one noticed these poor abandoned young creatures, though the boy had an attack of loud sniffles, and kept wiping his nose surreptitiously on his sleeve, and his sister made dismal clucking noises in reproach, tendering her handkerchief.

One of the brothers, annoyed at the thickening dimness, dared to light one lamp in a far corner, but this wan illumination only intensified the dusk. The fire could not warm the room. When the sad old minister entered, his caped coat damp and stained, his hat in his hand, all in the room glowered at him as if he was not the victim of their own cupidity but a venal serf rightly stricken by heaven with the direst poverty.

No one had as yet seen the bridegroom, that wild black lad of seventeen, and as time passed, and there were preliminary sounds upstairs, the company became restive, and some of the gentlemen went to the windows to stare out into the darkening evening. Making a run for it, eh? said one of the younger men out of the corner of his mouth to a companion. Don’t know if I blame him. The minister, venturing a word in a stammering tone, announced that Robin had arrived with him and would be in immediately.

At that moment Robin entered, attired in a fine pearl gray coat and lighter gray pantaloons, finery at which the company stared with frank amazement. On his arm he carried a tall gray beaver hat, and about his strong young throat the white ruffles were stiff and glistening. He brought with him such splendor, such freshness and high youth, that he appeared to light the room. Among those country horse-breeders and farmers, he moved with lightness and vivid grace, and though his face was soberer than usual, and very thoughtful, nothing could repress his natural air of brilliant vitality. The ladies turned stiffly on their chairs, and the dourest face of the most malign old woman softened at the sight of him. The men glowered, muttered greetings, and stared. But the minister stood by the youth he had come to love and smiled at him gently.

Everyone started when the minister’s daughter heavily attacked the organ. And now there were footsteps on the polished wooden stairs. All rose, the ladies rustling, their bonnet strings falling on their firm bosoms. Now Duncan entered with his daughter on his arm, his expression ponderous and gloomy, and in their wake came fat Bridget, weeping copiously, and attended by her daughters.

Nothing could make Janie pretty, though she had rubbed her cheeks fiercely with a piece of dampened red flannel until they glowed suspiciously, and though she had rubbed her wide lips with the same material until they were sore. She appeared unusually childlike on her huge father’s arm, drooping meekly and modestly as if she found the weight of the assembled regard overpowering. As Janie’s toilettes were always awaited avidly, every female eye fixed itself upon her, and mouths became enviously and meanly round. For Janie’s wedding gown, hastily rushed from London on the last stagecoach, was a French importation. Janie had always had chic, and an air of fashion. Her little but shapely body did justice to the creation, which was all white satin and point lace. From her tiny waist, the skirt was an enormous sloping bell, flowing about her feet, drifting with lace on which tiny pearls had been sewn. The basque, gleaming like moonlight seen through faint and delicate clouds, was fastened tightly with crystal buttons. The raw red curls were almost completely hidden in a mist of the finest point lace, crowned with artificial orange blossoms, and upon her little arms the white kid gloves wrinkled freshly.

And then, suddenly, all this glory was ruined. Duncan stopped so suddenly, and with violence, almost on the threshold of the parlor, that Janie stumbled and fell against him. He glared about the room, his face suffused with crimson.

Where hae the damned lights, then? he shouted. And he stamped his foot furiously, several times.

A confused murmur passed through the guests and the relatives. Bridget stopped her weeping; her daughters blushed furiously. Then into the room charged a housemaid in mobcap and apron, carrying a taper, her petticoats billowing. She rushed at the fire, a path being suddenly made for her, lighted the taper and darted from table to table. Everyone watched her. The minister’s daughter was so unnerved by Duncan’s oath and the confusion that she burst into tears, and the little boy forgot to pump, let the organ music die on one last caterwaul, and gave a loud squall of terror.

Then all at once the oddest sound broke through the funereal and startled silence. It was Robin’s laughter, a little wild, but loud and merry. He was leaning against a table, and was so shaken with his mirth that he had to cling to it, his head thrown back, his mouth open so wide that all his white and glistening teeth were visible. Now the attention of the stupefied company turned, astounded, upon the lad, and the lamplight showed distended and shining eyeballs. Stuart, near his mother, began to grin.

And then, as suddenly as Robin had laughed, he was abruptly still, and very pale. He stood up straight, and stared emptily at nothing. One of Janie’s sisters had pinched the weeping minister’s daughter, and she struck the organ keys with feverish energy. The little boy pumped. Everything was as it had been, but Janie was trembling with rage, and Duncan had the fixed dull look of a man who had been savagely kicked.

After that everything was anti-climax. Stuart guessed that Janie would never forgive her husband for that outburst of rude but uncontrollable mirth. The marriage, performed respectably enough, the repast afterwards, consisting of mighty hams and cold beef and ale and whiskey (all of which was hugely enjoyed by the gentlemen), would never eradicate from her mind the rough humiliation she had suffered. She smirked and simpered, accepted kisses and handshakes, her green eyes sparkling, but when she glanced at Robin, very white and apart now, her glance was virulent.

She made him pay. For two months, during which he first began to hate her, she balked him of the one lone joy of his marriage.

CHAPTER 3

Shortly after Janie’s marriage to her braw Robin, Stuart was taken to America by his parents. Thereafter, all his tales came to him from his father. Gordon, infatuated by hatred, corresponded with his cousin Bridget, mother of Janie, and it was from that barely literate poor woman that the spate of stories crossed the long green ocean, to lodge forever in Gordon’s inflamed brain.

Duncan Driscoll, it appeared, had some gloomy sympathy for the young lad precipitated so unwillingly into the bosom of his family. At any rate he did not press Robin for a time to take his proper place in the household, and learn the art of gentleman-farming. Robin wandered restlessly in and out of the great stone house, spending his time in the taverns, or sometimes, with strange obedience, following his father-in-law about the land and listening abstractedly to his rich, though brief, comments on farming in general. Duncan did not yet insist; Robin came and went, often returning slightly the worse from the inns, and, from the very beginning, becoming daily less given to conversation. But not until the end of the first year of his marriage was it noticed that Robin rarely sang now, and when he did sing, it was in a low and melancholy tone.

Then he began to develop another trait which had lain deeply beneath his careless youth. By the time he and Janie had been married two years, he was given to somber fits of violent depression during which he raved and screamed wildly. And afterwards became abruptly and blackly silent for many days. His young face grew heavier, yet paler; the flash of his dark eye was no longer gay fire, but passionate and malefic rage. It was not all Janie’s fault. She had caught this savage young hawk in her rapacious hands, and though she held him; bewildered and resentful at his struggles, trying to pet and coax him, she deserved some pity for the wounds he inflicted on her with his lacerating beak, so sharpened with despair. It was not she alone that he hated. He hated this warm, smug farmland, this quiet country, this land of close green meadows and sun, and the hopelessness of its peace. It had captured and imprisoned him. He hated it and its jailer. In the beginning, he had tried to be patient, even docile, with shrugging Scot resignation. But it was too much for him; he was too young.

He’ll be off one of these fine days, my lass, mark my words, said Duncan to his wife, and there was hope in his pitying voice.

But Robin stayed, though neither his irritable brothers-in-law, who despised him for his wild ways and his scorn of money, nor poor, fat and loving Bridget, nor Janie, knew why. Only Duncan understood. No matter if Robin left now, he would never be free again. The memory of the prison would forever remain with him. His wings were broken. The wild things, Duncan understood, must never know a prison. Their memory is too long. Scotsmen never forget grief nor hardship nor pain nor injustice nor despair, no matter how far it lies behind them in the past.

The first child appeared thirteen months after the marriage: dark, feeble little Angus with the long legs. Robin looked at him sluggishly, then turned away. But later, touched in his own youth by this little snuffling creature, he began to play with it, for he was so young and so desolate. By the time Angus was two Robin was devoted to him, and would carry him in his arms far from the house into the nearby forest, and would not return for hours. It was whispered in the village that Robin was heard to sing in the forest, and that sometimes he would climb a distant hill, his child in his arms, and fill the clear and empty air with his wild songs. Janie did not care. She had never been fond of little Angus, and hating Robin by now, she affected to believe the baby resembled him. Too, she had another baby in her arms, her darling, her Benjamin, ruddy Bertie with the laughing blue eyes.

Two years, and Robin still was doing nothing whatsoever to assist Duncan. Nor was he asked. It was enough for him to take the bairn to the forest and the hills. He never lost his dark melancholy, but something like peace had come to him in these days. When Rob Roy was born Robin did not appear aware of the fact. Later, when he did become aware that he had a third child, he appeared dazed, and was very silent. He was barely twenty-three and the life had left his face forever. He had that pathetic and confused gentleness of wild things that have been broken but not tamed. Rare, now, were his furious quarrels with Janie. He seldom spoke to her, even in bed. Days would go by without a word passing from him to his wife’s kin. By this time the family had given him up as a bad job, and left him alone and forgot him.

Duncan was very old by the time Laurie was born, and he found the chatter and crying of children too much for him. Janie had become a shrew, and quarrelled viciously with her father. Bridget, as always, was adoring, and one or another of the babies was always in her arms.

For the second time, when Laurie arrived, Robin was interested. This beautiful little girl-child with the golden hair and eyes like Northern winter skies fascinated him, caught and fixed his attention. Angus, now nearly eight, was his young father’s constant and silent companion, and he walked beside him through the meadows while Robin carried Laurie, singing to her softly.

No one but Angus and Laurie knew what he sang to them, or how joyously he played with them, when he was alone with his children. Sometimes a far glimpse of them was seen, Robin running, the children stumbling and racing behind him, frantic with shrill laughter and joy, Laurie’s long golden curls streaming in the bright wind, Angus’ thin gaunt legs flashing, Robin’s black locks dishevelled.

For some reason, Robin never sang his Scottish ballads to the children. He sang other songs, lovely, terrible, rich and majestic, and it was not until she was a woman that Laurie knew that these songs had come from Robin’s heart, and not from any folklore or the pen of any composer. Each of the children had a favorite song. Angus’ was O Morning Star! And Laurie’s was: O Love Greater than Life!

Laurie was four years old when Robin died. He had taken a touch of rheumy cold and was dead in two days. His illness had not been severe; it amazed and confounded his physicians when he suddenly spoke no more, and they found he had left his prison forever. Not even his two beloved children could keep him. Just before he died he had sent for little Angus, who had waited for hours outside his father’s door in the tragic and tearless silence of mortal grief. And Robin said only, holding his son’s small thin hand: Ye’ll not forget our songs, then, ma little lad, and ye’ll help your wee sister to remember?

Angus, speechless, had nodded, and had bent to kiss Robin, who was smiling. When Angus lifted his head and tried to speak, Robin was still smiling and gazing at him. But Robin was dead. Only Duncan knew why he had died. Only Duncan, looking at the young and vivid face, strangely wild and free and happy now, was glad. Only Duncan wept, though Janie had used an onion copiously to induce tears.

For Janie was not displeased at the death of this hating lad she had married. He had been a burden and a shame and a soreness to her for years. She was free of him. With characteristic vigor, she began to plot her new life.

She lived with her aged parents for two more years, but her acquisitive and avid mind was never still. She was a born adventuress. Her restlessness and ill temper grew as her vigor mounted. Nothing satisfied her. Duncan broadly hinted that there was a fortune in it for any man courageous enough to marry his youngest daughter. Many presented themselves. But Janie had had enough of the quiet life.

Letters still arrived from America from Stuart. His parents had died. He said little about his mode of living, and only once or twice mentioned a shop, which, he declared, was doing well in the struggling but vital city of Grandeville, N.Y., on some outlandish body of water he called the Great Lakes. A shop? queried his kinsmen, discontentedly. Who ever heard of a man making much of a living in a shop? But when Stuart carelessly mentioned having made over ten thousand dollars the last year (ten thousand dollars hastily calculated was apparently two thousand pounds!) his kinsmen were dumfounded. Janie was very proud of the letters. She carried them in her reticule for days. She remembered Stuart with fondness. When, one Christmas, he sent her a miniature of himself, she was entranced by his handsomeness, by the deviltry in his black Irish eyes.

It was on a blustery January morning that Janie announced that she would take her children and be off to America.

Bridget was prostrated with grief. But Duncan listened with sour interest and dawning hope. Janie had made a hell of his house these past years with her quarrelling, her screams, her bad temper, her tricks, and her greed. She had filled the old man’s house with children who were always crying or demanding or sulking. Duncan prayed to his gods that Janie was serious about this, and for the first time in many years he was tender with his daughter, and began to discuss with her large and elaborate plans.

Janie hid her fury and disappointment. She had, in the beginning, decided to leave all her children save her darling Bertie with her parents. Four children to America! She had fully expected that her mother, at least, would demur, would demand that the children be left behind to comfort her old age. But Bridget had been quite savagely warned by Duncan that he would not put up with it, and that Janie would go with her children, all of them, or remain at home with all of them. He gave way to senile but violent rage when alone with Bridget. She’ll nae leave her whelps in ma hoose! he cried, to free herself, the besom! from her responsibilities! Ah’ve had frae enough of her antics, ma lass, and Ah’ll die in peace in ma ain bed with nae sight of her face!

Janie, confronted by her father’s ultimatum, almost gave up her gay plans. She had written to Stuart, however, some time ago, and now a letter arrived from him, full of laughter, full of urgings that she come. So Janie announced that nothing could separate her from her bairns, and she would be off, a lone widow with no home of her own.

Bridget gave her all of the fifteen thousand pounds left to her by her own father. And Janie went to America, with the heartfelt blessings of her parents.

CHAPTER 4

Janie, during the first few hours in the stagecoach had filled her cousin’s ears with horrid stories of the hardships she had endured during her crossing. How ill she had been! How she had lain in her hard bed, tossed to and fro through black and stormy nights! How hideous had been the slops fed to her, and how the stewards had neglected her, leaving her all desolate and at death’s door for hours together! She painted a most lurid picture for Stuart, all dark and shifting shadows of suffering, in which she, a most brave and valiant little woman, had endured unmentionable things without complaint and only with gentle patience. She had been robbed of a precious ring by a steward, who had fawned upon her and gained her confidence. Her children had run about the ship untended, while their poor little mother had moaned and sobbed in her bed, all bewildered at the treatment accorded her, remembering the hard-heartedness of her parents, and enduring her homesickness and desertion with meek resignation.

Stuart assumed a most sympathetic expression and pressed Janie’s hand. He hid as best he could the black sparkle of his eyes. Janie was very diverting. But her children were even more diverting. For, as Janie sobbed out her story, touching very dry eyes pathetically with her perfumed handkerchief, Stuart watched the faces of Angus, Bertie, Robbie and little Laurie. Angus had aroused himself from his peculiar dim lethargy, and was gazing at his mother, his thin black brows knotted together in stern perplexity, his small white teeth worrying his lip, his hands twining nervously in his shawl. Bertie was grinning. Robbie, however, regarded his mother with indifferent contempt, and shrugged. When he met Stuart’s eye, he smiled faintly, with amused disdain, turning away immediately afterwards to stare through the dusty and rattling windows. Little Laurie only stared at Janie, blinking rapidly, her blue eyes shining with worry and bafflement, young as she was.

When Janie paused for breath, quite overcome by the pathos of her recital, Angus stammered weakly: But, Ma, you weren’t very ill. Only the first night. Then you danced. Don’t you remember, Ma? All the gentlemen coming to the door of our room, and quarrelling about who was to dance with you first? And Ma, he added, shrinking as her baleful and murderous eye fell fully upon him, you had such fine gowns and rings and bangles and chains, and you wouldn’t come back until it was almost morning. I remember, he added with hysterical loudness and haste, as Janie’s infuriated look increased in hating virulence upon him, that it was morning, often. And you would be singing, and the lady next to us would knock on the wall, and you would shout back at her and laugh, and the gentleman at the door would laugh, too. And the ring wasn’t stolen. You found it this morning.

Oh, shut up, said Robbie, disgustedly, without turning from his contemplation of the wet and wintry landscape outside. Bertie chuckled, kicked his elder brother vigorously in the shins, and winked at him with good-natured warning.

But poor Angus, apparently firmly under the belief that Janie had innocently forgotten, and was only making mistakes which she would be grateful to him for correcting, went on with even wilder haste and loudness, looking at his mother earnestly:

Don’t you remember, Ma? And the stewards were very good to us, bringing us our breakfasts in the morning when you forgot to take us to the dining-room, and were sleeping so soundly. And you tipped them, and they cried the last day, and you kissed them all around, and thanked them. And everyone said you were the Belle of the Ball, and the captain sent you a basket of fruit with his compliments?

There, thought Stuart, suppressing his laughter, is an innocent who will never learn, never in his life. He looked compassionately at the young lad’s eager intense face, at his urgent gray eyes and trembling mouth. He saw how white his knuckles had become, and how his fingers were entwined in the shawl, and how he was quivering. His earnestness was astounding.

But Janie looked at him with rage, her tight and sallow face suffused. She was beyond speech, except for a hoarse and animal-like grating deep in her throat, like a growl. Then, without warning, she darted, crouching, from her seat beside Stuart, and clouted poor Angus violently over the head with her clenched fist. He tried to evade her blows, crying out, sheltering his head with his thin arms, but she found openings in his guards, and punched and thrust cleverly. Her eyes were all glittering green madness under her red curls and the bobbing purple violets of her bonnet, and she had caught her lip between her teeth and was uttering ugly panting sounds in her furious exertions. Her skirts fluttered and swayed; she kept her footing miraculously in the lurching coach, which, fortunately, had no other passengers but the Cauders and Stuart. Her agility was remarkable; she pounced, feinted, struck, recoiled, slashed and beat, with such speed, such dexterity, such telling and energetic blows, that one could hardly follow her movements and could only see the fluttering and swaying of her petticoats, the frenetic bobbing of her bonnet and the dancing of her little feet.

During all this, the two other boys, with great deftness, had lifted their feet from the gritty floor of the coach, and had huddled their knees under their chins. Little Laurie, sitting beside her assaulted brother, had not moved. She sat very still, stark and white, and looked at her prancing and feinting mother. And there was horror on her little face, the frozen and appalled horror which is without fear, and is akin to loathing. As for Angus, he uttered no cry, nor did he gather himself into a hard tight ball, like a bug, seeking to expose little vulnerable surface to his mother’s blows. He only feebly kept his arms above his head, shrinking only a trifle, and his attitude, tragic, humble, despairing and resigned, made Stuart’s careless heart beat with a voluptuous rage against Janie. Still, he might have done nothing, shrugging fatalistically, had it not been for a sharp glimpse of little Laurie’s face, with its remembrance of many such scenes.

Then it was that he reached out, caught a large thick wad of Janie’s petticoats in his hand, and wrenched her violently back upon her seat. Just at that precise moment, the wheels of the stage encountered a particularly obdurate rock, and the occupants of the vehicle were thrown about like dolls in a box. In consequence, Janie was hurled about somewhat roughly, and as her rage was not spent in the least, and she apparently felt that Stuart had contrived the rolling of the stage, she turned on him with blind and insensate fury, striking him a sharp and vicious blow on the cheek. Stinging from that assault, Stuart acted with instinctive anger, lifted his hand and vigorously boxed his cousin’s ears, and then thrust her from him with an exclamation of disgust. Her bonnet fell over her brow, so that only her gibbering mouth was visible, and apparently it firmly wedged itself there. She had fallen into a corner of the stage seat on which she was sitting, and there she sprawled, frantically clutching at the bonnet whose stubborn brim had flattened her nose. She accompanied her struggles with stiff and spasmodic jerks of her outflung legs, and much raucous puffing. Her skirts had rolled back above her knees, displaying small but pretty legs tastefully enclosed in white silk stockings, and Stuart, recovered from his anger, regarded them briefly with automatic admiration. Then the sight of the struggling and maddened woman, battling with her stubborn bonnet, struck him as singularly funny, and he burst into a shout of laughter. He reached for Janie’s skirts, pulled them down decorously, gave her bonnet a yank, and revealed her distorted face, which was all blotches and malignance and glittering green eyes.

You’re a big lass now, Janie, he said, with high good humor. Keep your skirts down, in public at least. And be thankful for that big nose of yours; it kept you from smothering to death. He touched his cheek, and clucked. You’re a damn little bitch, Janie, and need a thrashing.

Panting, Janie lay back in her corner, glaring at her cousin with the maddest hatred. He smiled back at her easily, and shook his head, clucking again. Truly, you must do something for that complexion, my girl. Yellowish-green doesn’t go well with hair the color of young carrots.

Janie opened her twisted mouth and emitted an oath, an ugly and obscene series of words. Stuart, in spite of himself

Reviews for The Wide House

[Carol Ann Watson · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of the best books I have read in years. Marvelous characters, riveting plot and lots of words that I had to look up on my IPad dictionary. I was completely engrossed in this novel and am just about to start another book by this brilliant author.