The Wide House

  His mind was like a castle of airless and sunless towers, ordered and quiet and inhabited, with no echoes murmuring in the towering halls and no sighs heard in the corridors. Whatever remained of his youth lay entranced and chained in the black dungeons under the solid stone floors, and no voice came from the fastnesses.

  But there was one room, which like Bluebeard’s chamber was never opened, and in that room lived Laurie, his sister. He dared not put the key in the lock; he dared not swing wide the door. He dared not look at her face, and her body, dressed in the garments of his memory. He had, he reminded himself pompously, “done his duty” towards her, and assured her future. Then he closed the door upon her eyes and her voice.

  With regard to others of his acquaintance and family, Angus was not even so positive in his attitude. He considered Stuart, contemptuously, as a wild and profligate fool, bereft of the well-bred moralities and the decencies, a man not to be considered seriously, and always to be suspected. (Nevertheless, he still feared Stuart, though he would have denied this.) He considered Sam with equal contempt, and suspected him even more than he did his kinsman, though he acknowledged Sam’s capabilities and caution and thrift. Both of these, eventually, he would remove from the Grandeville Supreme Emporium, not in a spirit of vindictiveness, but with a quite impersonal detachment.

  For Bertie, Angus had a cold and remote disgust. He was like something indescribably indecent and contemptible, of which no intelligent and civilized man could think. So far as Angus was concerned, Bertie was dead, or dying, wallowing in his own corruption, and from the loathsome spectacle he resolutely turned his consciousness. He only prayed that Bertie would never impose his existence upon the awareness of his elder brother, and so long as this was granted Angus would do him the honor of forgetting him.

  Robbie was somewhat different, and this obscurely infuriated Angus. However he might ignore his younger brother, however he might gaze at him with icy withdrawal and disinterest, Robbie’s personality impinged itself uncomfortably upon him. He had always the unnerving suspicion that Robbie was amused by him, and disregarded him as one of no active importance. He felt Robbie analysing him with scientific detachment, curious about him academically. Robbie, felt Angus, saw him as a “specimen,” an object, a casual phenomenon, without any personal entanglement whatsoever.

  In short, Robbie was not impressed by Angus.

  Angus felt no humiliation. He felt only scorn that his brother was so obtuse and unobservant. He saw that Robbie’s coldness and precision came from no self-discipline, as did his own, but were natural manifestations of his character. He told himself that he despised Robbie, that Robbie was but an earthworm, tranquil and undisturbed in the midst of events. When Robbie once casually remarked that money was but a means to an end, and that if a man did not particularly desire any end money lost its value, Angus felt a kind of congealed joy and satisfaction, and was confirmed in his disdain for his brother. The fact that Robbie had now been admitted to the bar, and that old Judge Taylor had jubilantly announced that the young man would soon be a judge in his own right, impressed Angus only mildly. Some day, he thought to himself righteously, he might admit Robbie as a consultant in the legal affairs of the shops. This gave him a sense of virtue, and inclined him more magnanimously towards his brother.

  It was, therefore, a frozen statue of a young man that rode beside Gretchen this blue October day, as upright as a steel rod, as uncompromising as a stone, and as lifeless. He had completely forgotten the existence of his wife. A faint frown marked the smooth harshness of his forehead. Now, under his quiet, his breathlessness, the entranced captives in the dungeons had begun faintly to stir, to breathe, to sigh. He quelled them. They subsided, but he felt the mournful regard of their imprisoned eyes. A dim light showed under the door behind which Laurie was hidden.

  Then, suddenly, he was seized by a curious physical phenomenon. During the past year or so, when “aroused” like this, it sometimes happened that a quite hideous pain would flash through his skull, not once but many times, at intervals of about ten seconds. It would start at his right temple, rush across his forehead like a knife of lightning, and seem to emerge at his left temple. The first few pangs would be endurable. But the fifth and sixth, and those that followed, would be more than he could bear. He would clench his fists, close his eyes, grit his teeth, and endure in a breathless silence, uttering no exclamation even when alone. For the pain was too intense for a muffled cry, or indeed, for any motion at all. The final pain would seem to rend his brain apart into dazzling fragments, open like a crushed egg, and he would feel all through his flesh the quivering impulses of dissolution. Finally, he would open his eyes, to look out at a swimming world, unreal and tilted, and his whole face would be livid and moist, his heart roaring, his breath labored.

  He had gone to a physician, who had prescribed spectacles “for close work,” and sleep and rest, and attention to diet. None of these had helped.

  During these seizures, he was removed from consciousness as though he had died. So it was that when he opened his eyes, and had seen the rocking backs of the horses and the fiery October sky, and had surreptitiously wiped his face with his kerchief, he became aware that Gretchen had been talking petulantly in her lowered and sullen voice. She was staring at him with her shallow pale eyes and scowling a little.

  “Does your head hurt again, Angus?” she asked resentfully. “Dear me, it does seem that Dr. Schultz’ pills ought to have done something!”

  Angus swallowed stiffly, drew a deep breath, straightened himself. He glanced at his wife with haughty apology. “Nothing relieves it, my love,” he replied, and his voice was faint but firm. “But Dr. Schultz assures me there is nothing really wrong. An affliction of my nervous temperament.”

  “Well, you don’t appear nervous to me,” said his loving wife, flatly, with a disagreeable shrug. She added, accusingly: “It’s very odd, to me. You’ve had most of the attacks when we have been conversing together, like this, and nothing about to agitate you. Do you find me tiresome, Angus?”

  “Nonsense, Gretchen,” he replied with hauteur. There was a deep trembling all along his veins. But this, he knew, would subside shortly. “There is no reason, apparently, for these seizures. Doubtless, they will pass.”

  She looked without favor at his white repressed face and grim quiet eyes. Then she scowled again, as her thoughts veered. “That odious priest! How dared he speak to you, Angus! Like a beggar.”

  “Extremely impudent,” agreed Angus. He drew out his gold watch, gift of his father-in-law, and murmured an exclamation. “It is almost five, Gretchen. We must return, I am afraid. Tea at six tonight, you know.”

  He gave an order to the coachman, who touched his hat with his whip, then turned the horses about.

  Gretchen had begun to smile with sly satisfaction. “Papa tells me that at the last meeting of the Know-Nothings a resolution was passed to outlaw the Roman Church in America. How agreeable that will be, and how necessary it is! But Papa said you did not go to that meeting, Angus.”

  “If you will recall, my dear, I was engaged with the books at the shops,” said Angus repressively.

  “After all,” continued Gretchen, “we must realize that this is really a German country.”

  Angus looked at her. His heart, which had begun to quiet down, beat fast again, and heat flushed to his face. He said coldly: “I am misinformed, then. I was under the impression that the founders of the American Republic were Englishmen, with a few Scotsmen, and Irish. Perhaps, Gretchen, you think it preposterous that we speak the English language in America, and that the laws of America are based on the British Common Law?”

  Gretchen glared upon him with dislike. “Well, Englishmen are really Germans,” she said, with the quick and sullen rage of the Teuton. “And I don’t recall that there were many Scotchmen or Irishmen. Odious creatures!”

  But Angus was suddenly exhausted. He sat back in the carriage and said nothing until they arrived at the ugly mansi
on on Franklin Street.

  CHAPTER 45

  The hall in the house of Otto Schnitzel was high, dark and cavernous, execrable with Turkey-red carpeting, gilt and plush chairs tortuously, carved, and crimson draperies. It smelled heavily of beeswax and repellent chill, even on this blazing October evening. A sly-faced German maid took Angus’ caped coat, hat and cane, and divested Gretchen of her cloak and bonnet. She announced that “Herr Schnitzel and Frau Schnitzel” were awaiting their daughter and her husband in the parlor, and that dinner would be served within an hour.

  Angus thanked her gravely. He glanced at his wife, and saw the glimmer of her large white face in the dusk. The top of her rough flaxen head reached only to his chin. Her figure was thick and clumsy, and she had big pudgy hands heavily jewelled. Her brown velvet dress, with its enormous hoops, only accentuated her obesity and solid shapelessness. As her head was set so closely upon her massive shoulders, the neck was indicated solely by a small collar of lace fastened with a pearl-rimmed cameo brooch. Over this collar was more than a suggestion of a thickened double chin. Her bosom, like her shoulders, was massive and matronly, and sagged for sheer weight. Her upper arms almost burst the velvet of her sleeves. When she walked, the floor creaked, sturdy though it was.

  She glanced at Angus with her customarily sullen and bellicose look, which was also sluggishly challenging. “Shall we join Mama and Papa, Angus?” she asked, and her tone was commanding. She moved towards the folding doors that shut off the parlor from the hall. Angus, walking slightly behind her, appeared cadaverous and unbending in his black, towering over her like a frozen tree, his step silent and slow.

  The long narrow parlor stretched the length of the house and was pierced by windows eight-feet high and narrow as slits, shrouded in the ubiquitous crimson draperies. Dimly flowered Brussels carpet covered the floor. The gloomy black-walnut furniture was upholstered in horsehair and purplish or scarlet plush. Heavy and ponderous tables, covered with velvet cloths bordered with gilt fringe, held dimly lit crystal lamps whose bases were of intricately twisted brass or gold or silver. A fire smoldered on the black-marble hearth, and over the mantelpiece was a glimmering mirror in a thick gold frame, which reflected back the ugly and oppressive room.

  Mr. Otto Schnitzel, slaughter-house owner and solid citizen and wealthy burgher, sat before the fire reading and rustling the local daily, The Commercial, and grunting out ill-tempered comments to his wife, in a rumbling and snarling voice. He was a short and enormously bloated man, with a huge bald skull and red, outstanding ears. In that great square head one might have expected a face to match, on a large scale. But, curiously, it was an exceptionally small and piggish face, the blunt little features suffused and highly colored, the lips pursed in a cruel and suspicious expression, the little pale blue eyes glittering meanly behind thick spectacles, which had a way of slipping incongruously down his low-bridged, pudgy and upturned nose.

  Frau Schnitzel, near him, was a giantess in comparison. Time had not decreased the sulky swinishness of her vast countenance, nor softened her bristling manner, though it had laid harsh ribbons of gray through her dull light hair. She had a brutish and merciless look, arrogant and insensible.

  As Angus and Gretchen entered, Mrs. Schnitzel regarded them with her usual domineering and suspicious look, and said ill-temperedly: “You are half an hour late. Where have you been?”

  Mr. Schnitzel dropped his Commercial, and glowered at them. “Late,” he commented.

  Gretchen’s stays creaked as she bent to kiss her mother. She giggled disagreeably, and said with ill-nature: “It wasn’t my fault, dear Mama. But that horrible old priest, Mr. Houlihan, would stop Angus and converse with him at length. We almost ran him down. Perhaps it was unfortunate that we didn’t.” She giggled again.

  Mr. Schnitzel and his affable wife stared at Angus, accusingly, and waited in bristling silence for his explanation and apology.

  But Angus returned their regard with formal reticence and pride. “I am sorry if we are late,” he said. “Father Houlihan was preoccupied and stepped into the path of our carriage. I was forced to apologize to him, though it was his fault. We had a short conversation, then drove on.”

  Mr. Schnitzel grunted, and planted his feet on the crackling newspaper. He pursed up his lips. Mrs. Schnitzel shrugged massively, and snorted. “Did he try to convert you again, Angus?” she asked maliciously.

  Angus compressed his lips. He regarded his mother-in-law coldly, with a look that often quelled her. “Father Houlihan has never tried to convert me, Mother. He is a close friend of Stuart’s, and was very kind to me when I was a boy.”

  Mrs. Schnitzel snorted again, and tossed her head. Mr. Schnitzel cleared his throat with a bestial sound. “Kind to you, was he? They’re always looking for converts, those people! I’ll have nothing like that in my family.”

  I must control myself, thought Angus. Father Houlihan is nothing to me. I do not even like him. But a thin and sickening pulse began to beat in his throat, and a thread of pain wriggled through his temple. He said haughtily: “I am not aware that I have ever shown any partiality to Catholicism, Father.”

  “He did ask you to call upon him, Angus,” said Gretchen, moving closer to her mother. Her parents, at this, eyed Angus with surly accusation and wariness.

  “So he did,” agreed Angus. He sat down at a little distance from the others and looked straight before him.

  “Do you intend to go?” demanded Mr. Schnitzel, in a bullying tone.

  Angus slowly turned his eyes upon him, and appeared to meditate for a long time, during which Mr. Schnitzel became quite crimson with baffled rage. Then Angus said deliberately: “I do not think so. I may. But at present, I do not think so.”

  As always, the Teuton was intimidated by a cold and unmoved front. Mr. Schnitzel, after a wavering glare at his son-in-law, let his eyes drop. He muttered: “Well. Well, then. Don’t think of it.”

  “Coffee, Angus?” asked the affable Mrs. Schnitzel, with bluster.

  “Please,” he returned, neutrally. Mrs. Schnitzel rattled the coffee cups, in a great temper, while Gretchen carefully inserted some loaf sugar into the brown fluid, and added some thick cream. Mr. Schnitzel shoved a plate of rich little cakes at his son-in-law. He respected Angus. He greatly admired his gentlemanly ways, and his integrity. He also feared his chilly gray eye and his lack of intimidation. He smirked at the young man, now.

  “I see, by the Commercial, that the betrothal of your brother, Robbie, to Miss Alice Cummings, is to be celebrated by a dinner at the Mayor’s home next month,” he said in a heavily friendly tone. “He’s doing well for himself. Money there. When’s the wedding to be?”

  “I’m not certain, Father. I think, in November. By the way, I understand that Robbie is to be appointed to the Bench as junior judge in January. So we have been informed by Judge Taylor. Then, next year when Judge Taylor retires, he will seek election.”

  “Good, good,” grunted Mr. Schnitzel. But Mrs. Schnitzel was envious and annoyed. “He’s too young,” she said flatly. “Much too young. And not at all an amiable young man, but very presumptuous in spite of his quiet ways. I never liked him, I’m sorry to say, Angus. He has no social graces, and never tries to be overly civil. As for Alice Cummings, she is a very colorless young woman, very artificial in her manner, and entirely too sweet. I suspect such sweetness as hypocrisy.”

  Angus said quietly: “Miss Cummings is considered an excellent catch, and Robbie is fortunate.”

  “I never voted for Cummings,” said Mr. Schnitzel, belligerently, glaring anew upon Angus. “He’s too smooth for me. I’ve always thought him a liar. That library, now, what do you call it? The Grosvenor. Open to the damn public. Dirty smeary hands of day laborers handling books. What do they want books for, the pigs? Let ’em do their work well, and go back to their shacks, and never let us see ’em. That’s what I say, and mean it, too. Books! Books for pigs and dogs! All a lot of nonsense. Cummings’ doings, with his highfalutin’
idea of public education. And your cousin, Stuart Coleman, giving two thousand dollars to it, and being made an officer, and he with all his scandalous debts!”

  “Scandalous!” echoed Mrs. Schnitzel, nodding her head grimly.

  “It’s anarchistic!” shouted Mr. Schnitzel, with a violent surge forward in his chair.

  “It’s un-Christian,” Gretchen chimed in.

  Angus looked at them all, with a hard repressed look. His face was very white and still. I must control myself, he thought. He said in a low tone: “I’m not qualified to pass on the wisdom of the library.”

  Mr. Schnitzel was now almost beside himself, apoplectic of color. He wagged a fat finger at Angus, and shouted: “That Cummings! And your Stuart is no better! Accusing me of harborin’ my laborers in pigpens! They’re my shacks, aren’t they? It’s my land, near the slaughter-house, ain’t it? Is this a free country or isn’t it? Agitatin’ scoundrels! Havin’ me up in Court, and tryin’ to force me to clean up my property, when the cattle’s satisfied with the way things are, anyway!”

  “It’s always that way, when people associate with Jews,” agreed Mrs. Schnitzel, somewhat obscurely.

  “Are you going to clean up, Father?” asked Angus, unmoved. The thread of pain had become a wire in his brow, boring and burning.

  Mr. Schnitzel was silent for some moments. He sat in his chair, a big lump of infuriated flesh. He looked at Angus with a minatory scowl.

  “When they get an injunction,” he said at last. “And not until.”

  “They will. Robbie’s preparing it,” Angus informed him, with a chill smile.

  Mr. Schnitzel clenched his meaty fists and roared out an oath. Gretchen covered her ears with her hands, and giggled. Mrs. Schnitzel squealed.