What did he mean? She turned again and looked; they were staring after her as though fascinated. A small nagging uneasiness began to gnaw at her.
She emerged now on the broad floor of the valley. In the distance she could see the white glimmer of the house. The horse began to throt again. She was passing over her own land, her own rich acres, her own earth. The high waters had retreated completely; because they had never risen very high here. The grass was in its last greenness; even the hills were a soft green. She saw everything with new eyes. She was like someone who had been away from home for many years and was returning, noticing every detail with tenderness and affection. She felt herself at last, again, one with the earth, with all things.
Half a mile, a quarter of a mile. She saw a group of men and women standing in the road ahead. They heard the wheels of the trap and turned. Immediately they were silent, staring at her emptily. She wanted to call out to them, I’ve come home! See, I’m home! She waved her whip at them.
When she came abreast of them, she saw that one of the women was crying, and that she hid her face from Margaret. The other women glanced aside, wetting their lips. The men fumbled in their pockets, reddened.
Sudden fear fell upon her. “What’s the matter?” she demanded, leaning out of the trap, her face going white. “Is someone hurt?”
For several long seconds there was only silence. Then one of the women came toward Margaret. Her expression was sad and fearful.
“You been away, Miz Hobart. Ain’t you heard?”
“Heard what?” cried Margaret. “What’s the matter?”
The woman glanced at her companions as though asking help, and then she mumbled, “Miz Hobart, I ain’t likin’ to tell you this, but seems like nobody else will. Johnny Hobart’s been hurt—bad. You’d best go home right quick.”
Margaret stared at her dumbly. “Hurt?” she whispered, swallowing hard. No, dear God, this was not true! She was coming home to him! “Hurt? Do you mean—”
“No, Miz Hobart. He ain’t dead. Yet.” Helplessly, she looked at the others. “But that ain’t all. You’d best go home and find out, yourself.”
Still gazing at the woman Margaret lifted her whip and struck the horse. The horse leapt, the trap almost turned over, then animal and vehicle ran and bumped wildly, madly, down the road. They looked after her; she was crouching, slashing at the horse; they could see the insane rise and fall of her whip, the leaping, straining back of the tired animal.
The countryside, so beaming with light only a moment ago, now became a hell-lit nightmare land to her; it seemed to her that the horse ran only in one spot. She was not conscious that she was making that raw and groaning noise she heard dimly. Her arm did not tire in its flailing.
She could see nothing but old Margot’s face, and a loud cry burst from her.
“Granny, don’t let anything happen to him! Hold him; don’t let him go! Granny, please!”
The house was only a hundred yards away. As in a dream she saw the knots of men and women, and children. When the horse and trap roared up, they looked at Margaret somberly. Reaching the gate, she leapt down, flung aside the reins. Someone opened the gate for her; she saw only a monstrous vision of pitying faces. She ran toward the house, caught her foot on her skirts, and fell to her hands and knees. Before anyone could reach her, she was up again, not even limping, though blood smeared her palms. Her hair fell from its coils and tumbled down her back. Everyone stood aside to let this wildfaced woman pass; there was something in her expression that frightened them. She reached the door, they heard her cry out, and then she vanished.
“Looks like Maggie Hamilton’s come down from her high horse this time,” said the acrid voice of a woman.
“Shet up!” a man cried fiercely, and there was an approving murmur.
Once in the hall, Margaret began to call in a hoarse, strained voice. “John! Mary! Mabel! Aunt Betsy!”
The dim quiet of the hall floated around her. She could hear low voices upstairs. She ran to the foot of the stairs and started to climb, her legs bending under her. But before she was halfway up, Miss Betsy appeared at the top. The old woman had thought of this moment with a certain bitter hatred, but now, looking down at Margaret, her hair about her, her face mad, blood on her hands, the hatred died away with only compassion left. She ran as lightly as a girl down the stairs and put her arm about the younger woman.
“Margaret,” she said quietly, “my poor girl. No, you can’t go up there yet. I want to talk to you. No, Margaret, please don’t fight me. Listen to me. John is sleeping now; I’ve got to talk to you before you see him.”
Margaret clutched her savagely, hope in her eyes. “He’s not dead?” she moaned.
“No,” said Miss Betsy gravely, and sighed. Her eyes filled with tears. “Not dead, Margaret. He won’t die, we hope. It’s his leg. Broken, and he’s got a deep wound in the head, and he’s badly bruised. But Dr. Brewster said he’ll get well. Come with me, Margaret, into the parlor. I must talk to you.”
Margaret had begun to sob; she collapsed against Miss Betsy; her eyes closed. But she could still walk; she felt herself being led away; she felt herself being put gently into a chair. Through the mists she could see the sunlight on the stiff white curtains. She cried uncontrollably. Miss Betsy stood beside her for a moment; her own face was very white. Then she pulled a chair up beside the younger woman.
“Margaret,” she said quietly. “I always thought you were brave; I knew you were brave. You aren’t a fool. If you were, you wouldn’t be here now. You wouldn’t feel the way you do. So I can talk to you without mincing words. You’ve got to know. If you were a weakling I’d let you know gradually. But you’re strong.”
Something in her manner quieted Margaret, but only increased the dread she felt. She dropped her hands from her face, looked at Miss Betsy stonily.
“Tell me,” she said hoarsely. “I don’t care what happened so long as John is going to live. I can stand everything.”
“Yes, I believe you can stand it. Margaret, about three hours ago John took Gregory and Dickie with him to Whitmore.” She paused. For a moment she struggled for breath. “They went in the buggy. He didn’t want to leave the children alone, seeing as how I was over in the old house and had my hands full with two sick babies, and the girls were tired out. So he took the children.
“No one knows yet just what happened, Margaret. But a little way behind the buggy Bill King was riding to town on his horse. Seth Holbrooks and Mrs. Holbrooks were about an eighth of a mile behind Bill. Well, John rode over the bridge at Big Bend, the only bridge that hadn’t been washed out. And when he and the children were halfway over, the bridge went down.
“You know how the creek’s been during the last couple of weeks. Like a torrent, full of tree trunks, rushing along like something crazy—” She stopped.
A pang of mortal agony twisted Margaret, and her hands writhed in her lap. “Go on,” she whispered. Her dry lips moved.
“Well, Margaret, we don’t know just what happened. But John said to me, when he could, that there was no use trying to save both children at once. He said he thought of you, even when he was fighting in that water, trying to swim against the current that he must save Dickie for you. So he caught at poor little Dickie and tried to swim with him. A tree trunk came along, dashing and swirling, and he got between it and the boy. That’s when his leg was broken. But somehow, thanks to God, he caught hold of the roots of a tree, and held himself and Dickie above water until Seth Holbrooks had come up, and could drag them out.
“And now, Margaret, only a little more. God help you. Bill King had come up, almost on John’s heels. He saw what was happening; he saw poor little Gregory’s head, and he dived in, boots and coat and all, to save him. Seth Holbrooks said that he saw him take hold of the baby, who was screaming for John, and that he thought everything would be all right. But another trunk came along, and hit Bill. He struggled against it, kept on swimming though he was covered with blood, still hol
ding on to Gregory. And then,” she said softly, turning aside for a moment, “they both went down. They were out in the middle of the water, and nothing could be done. They didn’t come up again.”
She turned to Margaret again, weeping. But Margaret was staring into space. Her hands were still in her lap. There was no moisture in her eyes.
“Don’t look like that, Maggie,” whispered Miss Betsy, putting her arms about her. “God was good. Dickie is all right, though a little bruised. He’s in bed. John will get well, we hope. And we must remember that Bill King gave his life to try to save poor little Gregory. We must remember that.”
Margaret turned her blind eyes to her. “Nothing matters,” she said clearly. “Nothing matters. Just so long as I still have John.”
And then she stood up. “I killed Gregory, Aunt Betsy. If I had not gone away, the children would have stayed with me. Gregory would be here, shouting in this room. I killed him. Don’t you see that?”
Miss Betsy stood up, too. “But Margaret,” she said, “If you had not gone, you wouldn’t have come back, really come back, to John. You see, we knew why you had gone. And when you came back, I knew you had come back to your husband. I knew you had come back when I saw your face, come back in your mind and in your heart.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
It was night before they let her see John. They were all amazed at her quietness. She had just waited until she could see John, rocking by the fire with little Dickie, whom they had brought downstairs to her, had put in her lap. She seemed to derive comfort from him. Sometimes she seemed to listen; they knew she was listening for Gregory.
Then they let her go up to John who had awakened. She went with slow and steady steps into his room, their room. The firelight glowed on the hearth and a dim light burned beside the bed. He lay with closed eyes, looking close to death, his big body ridged under the quilts. There was a bloodstained bandage about his head. He did not open his eyes until Margaret stood beside him, and then for a long time he stared at her as though trying to see her through mists.
“Maggie,” he whispered through bruised lips.
She knelt down beside him, laid her cheek against his shoulder. “Forgive me, John,” she said. “Just forgive me.”
His bruised arm moved, feebly enclosed her. His mouth touched her head. “There ain’t nothin’ to forgive, Maggie, seein’ that you came back to me.”
The others left them alone, closed the door softly behind them.
“Maggie,” said John. “I’ve thought about lots of things, lyin’ here while they thought I was asleep. And everythin’ came clear to me. We both been wrong. It took this,” and his features writhed for a moment, “all this, to show us. I ain’t goin’ to speak of the baby; I can’t, just now. But, somehow, it took it all to show us. I ain’t sorry. You mustn’t be. We’ve got a long life to live, yet, you and me. Together. That’s all I care about, that we’ll be together.”
“Together, John,” she answered. “Always together.”
She knew that there were months ahead of physical and mental agony, of remembering Gregory, of listening for him. Of a thousand things they would never be able to speak about. But even then, knowing this, she could put her mouth on John’s sweetly, and feel peace.
A Biography of Taylor Caldwell
Taylor Caldwell was one of the most prolific and widely read American authors of the twentieth century. In a career that spanned five decades, she wrote forty novels, many of which were New York Times bestsellers.
Caldwell captivated readers with emotionally charged historical novels and family sagas such as Captains and the Kings, which sold 4.5 million copies and was made into a television miniseries in 1976. Her novels based on the lives of religious figures, Dear and Glorious Physician, a portrayal of the life of St. Luke, and Great Lion of God, a panoramic novel about the life and times of St. Paul, are among the bestselling religious novels of all time.
Born Janet Miriam Holland Taylor Caldwell in 1900 in Manchester, England, into a family of Scotch-Irish descent, she began attending an academically rigorous school at the age of four, studying Latin, French, history, and geography. At six, she won a national gold medal for her essay on novelist Charles Dickens. On weekends, she performed a long list of household chores and attended Sunday school and church twice a day. Caldwell often credited her Spartan childhood with making her a rugged individualist.
In 1907, Caldwell, her parents, and her younger brother immigrated to the United States, settling in Buffalo, New York, where she would live for most of her life. She started writing stories when she was eight years old and completed her first novel, The Romance of Atlantis, when she was twelve, although it was not published until 1975. Marriage at the age of eighteen to William Combs and the birth of her first child, Mary Margaret—Peggy—did not deter her from pursuing an education. While working as a stenographer and a court reporter to help support her family, she took college courses at night.
Upon receiving a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Buffalo in 1931, she divorced her husband and married Marcus Reback, her boss at the US Immigration Department office in Buffalo. Caldwell then dedicated herself to writing full time. Even as her family grew with the arrival of her second daughter, Judith, Caldwell’s unpublished manuscripts continued to pile up.
At the age of thirty-eight, she finally sold a novel, Dynasty of Death, to a major New York publisher. Convinced that a pre–World War I saga of two dynasties of munitions manufacturers would be better received if people thought it was written by a man, Maxwell Perkins, her editor at Scribner—who also discovered F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway—advised her to use only part of her name—Taylor Caldwell—as her pen name. Dynasty of Death became a bestseller in 1938 and the saga continued with The Eagles Gather in 1940 and The Final Hour in 1944. Inevitably, a public stir ensued when people discovered Taylor Caldwell was a woman.
Over the next forty years, Caldwell often worked from midnight to early morning at her electric typewriter in her book-crammed study, producing a wide array of sagas (This Side of Innocence, Answer as a Man) and historical novels (Testimony of Two Men, Ceremony of the Innocent) that celebrated American values and passions.
She also produced novels set in the ancient world (A Pillar of Iron, Glory and the Lightning), dystopian fiction (The Devil’s Advocate, Your Sins and Mine), and spiritually themed novels (The Listener, No One Hears But Him, Dialogues with the Devil).
Apart from their across-the-board popularity with readers and their commercial success, which made Caldwell a wealthy woman, her long list of bestselling novels possessed common themes that were close to her heart: self-reliance and individualism, man’s struggle for justice, the government’s encroachment on personal freedoms, and the conflict between man’s desire for wealth and power and his need for love and family bonding.
The long hours spent at her typewriter did not keep Caldwell from enjoying life. She gave elegant parties at her grand house in Buffalo. One of her grandchildren recalls watching her hold the crowd in awe with her observations about life and politics. She embarked on annual worldwide cruises and was fond of a glass of good bourbon. Drina Fried recalls her grandmother confiding in her: “I vehemently believe that we should have as much fun as is possible in our dolorous life, if it does not injure ourselves or anyone else. The only thing is—be discreet. The world will forgive you anything but getting caught.”
Caldwell didn’t stop writing until she suffered a debilitating stroke at the age of eighty. Her last novel, Answer as a Man, was published in 1981 and hit the New York Times bestseller list before its official publication date. She died at her home in Greenwich, Connecticut, in 1985.
William Combs, Taylor Caldwell’s first husband and father to Peggy, aboard a naval ship, circa 1926.
A portrait of Caldwell at the start of her career in the late 1930s.
A portrait of Caldwell taken before Scribner’s publication of Melissa on June 21, 1948.
Caldwell at
her desk in Palm Beach, Florida, in 1949. She spent many winter months at Whitehall, a resort hotel on the property of Henry Flagler’s former estate, which is now the Flagler Museum.
Caldwell’s second daughter, Judith Ann Reback, during time with her mother at Whitehall in the 1940s.
Caldwell receiving an award in Los Angeles, California, for A Pillar of Iron after its publication in 1965.
Caldwell with her daughters, Peggy Fried and Judith Ann Reback (Goodman), and Ted Goodman in 1969 on the MS Bergensfjord.
Caldwell at a cocktail party with her daughter, Peggy, and the hostess of a research world cruise on the SS President Wilson in 1970.
Caldwell with her granddaughter, Drina Fried, at her home in Buffalo, New York, winter 1975. Soula Angelou, her personal assistant, insisted on taking this rare family picture.
An invitation from 1975 to one of Caldwell’s many cocktail parties. She hosted at least two parties a year in Buffalo, New York, before she moved to Connecticut.
Caldwell with her fourth husband, Robert Prestie, who cared for her in the last six years of her life in Connecticut.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1953 by Taylor Caldwell