A Prologue To Love (52 page)

“We’ll talk about it,” she said abruptly, and struck her desk with the flat of her right hand, and all at once she seemed to enlarge before her son’s eyes, to become formidable. “My father and I didn’t spend our lives getting money to be wasted on trash and worthless
objets d’art
. I know about your precious collection. I hoped once that you’d get over all that shameful nonsense. Apparently I was wrong.”

Ames, who now knew that he had lost, came angrily to himself, and his eyes sparkled at his mother. He interrupted: “Wait a minute, Mama. You have a private art gallery of your own upstairs which you hide away from everybody. I’ve heard rumors that you paid plenty for those paintings!”

Caroline looked at him. “That is another matter entirely,” she said. “There is a reason for my gallery, which you’ll never know. Only one artist’s works are there; I’d never collect another artist’s.

“No matter. It seems I’m to be defeated everywhere I turn. I’m not going to let my father’s money and what I’ve added to it to be squandered in stupidities and what you like to call the graciousness of living. You are a spendthrift by nature, it seems. And so I have to guard the trust my father gave me. I’ve just told your brother that he’ll get nothing from me but five thousand dollars a year for life when I die, from a perpetual trust. You’ll have to work for a living, as my father worked; you’re no better than he. You’ll have your education, and that is all. You may go now.”

Ames did not fly into a rage of frustration and hatred as his brother had done. Though he had been dismissed, he sat in his chair and regarded his mother with cold curiosity. “I want to say something too,” he said. “You are a miser, and there’s nothing uglier than a miser. You never knew what it was to live and you want to prevent others from living. Because you never saw, you want others to be blind. Your whole life is a study in ugliness and perversion. Disgusting. Like a mole’s life. What have you ever had — except money? And what has your money done for you? Nothing. Who cares about you? Not even my father. I can’t blame him for what he is doing now. It must have been a terrible life for him here with you. How could he have stood it for all these years?” Ames smiled at his mother. “He didn’t, after all! And I’m glad.”

He stood up. Caroline’s thoughts were in furious chaos, but she finally fastened on what her son had said about her husband. “What do you mean?” she cried.

Ames laughed gently. “You don’t know? I don’t intend to tell you. But when you do know — I’m not sixteen yet, but I’m not the only one with eyes in this house, and ears, too. You’re due for a nice fall, dear Mama, and I hope it will be very soon.”

He bowed like an eighteenth-century gentleman. “All my best wishes for your unhappiness,” he said, and went gracefully from the room.

When the door closed Caroline jumped from her chair and ran to the windows. The red sun stood over the gray water; the snow and the empty beach below were a picture of desolation. The tide was coming in, black and deathly cold, on the rocks and on the sand.

A premonition of loss and fear and grief came to Caroline. Where was Tom? She must talk to him! How long had it been since they had talked to each other at all? Months? Years? “Tom!” she cried aloud, and leaned her forehead against the icy window. She heard the rumbling tide come in, and the sun became a dull crimson and sank behind the water.

She forgot the years in between, and the silence, and the bitterness. She was the girl who had looked from another window, like this, and had seen the young Tom smoking his pipe on the shingle. She was the girl who had seen him move away, and she was the girl who had lifted her heavy skirts and had raced down shaking old stairs and out into the wind and the twilight, calling, crying. Tom had turned to her. He would turn to her now in her extremity, and they would understand each other again. Tomorrow.

Tom Sheldon came home at ten that night, haggard and silent, and thinking. He had come to the end. He had not willed for it to happen this way, but it had happened. He was past forty-six now. He had had a happy and serene life until that accursed day when he had married, not Carrie, but Caroline Ames. That was twenty-one years ago. Twenty-one years in a dark prison, among strangers! He had served his sentence. There was nothing for him here. He had no wife, no real children. He had deluded himself for years, trying to bring kindness and love and understanding to these other prisoners. They had wanted nothing of him and had laughed at what he had wanted to give them.

John. Elizabeth. Ames. His children! He locked the door behind him and smiled drearily. They were not his children. They were the children of Caroline Ames. “She’s welcome to them,” he said aloud as he took off his coat and hung it up in the cloakroom. It hurt him to say this, but he knew it was true. If he was to have a little of life, the little that was left, he must face facts. He had been refusing to face facts for years. He stood in the cold and unswept hall. Only one meager gaslight burned. Caroline did not like friendly lights burning ‘all over the house, wasting money’. So the house was like a dark cavern, musty and forsaken. He had just left a house full of life and light and warmth and affection. How little it took, even in money, to have a fire and a lamp! It made all the difference to a man’s soul.

Here it was, the Easter holidays, and the house full of young people! The house was as silent as though completely deserted. He glanced into the drawing room; the little fire had smoldered out; no one had drawn the worn draperies, and so they reflected blackly and meanly the one small gaslight near the mantelpiece. When he had first stood in the completed room Tom had thought of children about that fire, a big fire, and a loving wife and himself watching them and listening to them and laughing with them. He had been stupid not to realize from the very beginning. He thought of John Ames and cursed him simply in his distraught mind.

Look what you have done to your daughter and her husband and her children, he thought. I hope you are in hell somewhere and that you can see and hear and know everything now. If I thought that by staying here I could still save them and help them, in spite of what I really want, I’d do it. But it’s no use; it never was.

The house seemed to listen to him. It seemed suddenly filled with alert ghosts pondering what he had thought. He shivered, because he was cold and desperate and lonely, and very, very tired. His father had never been as tired as this, though he had lived to be an old man. It wasn’t work that exhausted a man and broke his spirit. It was loneliness and lovelessness and lack of hope. If there were a way out, a man should take it before it was too late. He had really known it for over two years, but he had hesitated because of his children. Those two years had been wasted.

He went slowly and heavily up the stairs, hating the worn and grimy carpet, hating the cold and the smell of dust and mice. It had taken only twenty-one years of neglect to reduce a fine house to a hovel, to destroy its beauty and comfort.

It was late, but he saw the light under Caroline’s study door. The light in John’s room was still burning. He heard the muttering of his sons’ voices. He stood in the hall and listened. The boys seemed to be agitated about something; he heard John utter an oath, and then Ames laughed thinly. There was a feeling that something had happened here, and Tom’s senses became alert. He knocked on John’s door, then opened it.

A good fire was burning here, as if in defiance. All the gaslights were brightly lit. John was sprawling on his untidy bed, his arms supporting his head, and Ames was sitting near him. Tom did not shrink, as he always did, at the bold and unfriendly glances his sons gave him. He shut the door behind him and said, “Well? What is it? It must be something or you two wouldn’t be talking about it so late.”

It was the quiet firmness in his voice, his lack of a smile, his searching and demanding expression, that startled his sons. This was a father they had never seen before. He walked into the room, warmed his hands at the fire while they watched him in silence. He looked about and said, “A filthy mess. You should have more self-respect. Well? What is it?”

John was so surprised that he sat up, and Ames lost his faintly mocking smile. “We’ve been foxed — someway,” John said curtly.

“Foxed? By what?”

“By whom is correct,” said Ames.

“Are you going to tell me about it?” asked Tom in a hard voice. “Don’t if you don’t want to. But this is your last chance, boys.”

“What?” asked John, alert.

“Never mind. I only want to say that I’ve failed with you. It was never any use. But if I can, even now, help you, I will. For the last time. Make up your minds very fast. I want to go to bed.”

The brothers exchanged a quick glance. Then Ames shrugged.

“All right,” said John sullenly. “What harm can it do?”

He told Tom about his and Ames’ conversation with their sister that afternoon and the interviews with their mother. Tom listened silently, standing on the torn hearthrug. His dark blue eyes turned slowly from one face to the other. His lean features became hard and tight. It came to Ames as he watched his father during John’s recital that his father had changed, had come to some indomitable resolution, that he was a man at last in his own right and not merely the soft shadow of his wife, imploring in the background for his children’s affection.

Tom showed none of the anger and disgust he was feeling. His sons had been stupid; they should have known their mother better. He saw them sharply and clearly. They had become corrupt; their mother had corrupted them. But still, they had human minds and spirits of their own and they were old enough now to resist the corruption.

He also knew who had ‘foxed’ his sons. Elizabeth. How could they have failed to see that? It was very obvious. He saw Elizabeth even more clearly than he did his sons, and he thought of John Ames. He wanted to say, “It was your sister who deceived you and led you into this mess.” But he held it back. Any affection he had had for his daughter left him, and he was sorry for his sons.

“That is all there is,” said John at last, and fell back on his pillows.

“No,” said Tom. “You’re wrong. I am trebling your allowance from now on, John, and doubling yours, Ames, until you’re John’s age. I don’t need to warn you not to tell your mother.”

Yes, it was Elizabeth who had slyly and deftly ruined her brothers. For what purpose? To become her mother’s chief heir, to take her mother’s place later. He looked at the picture of his daughter in his mind, and many things that had puzzled him about her became part of a precise and plotted pattern. He had surprised her listening at doors; he had thought it a childish pastime. He had come upon her silently standing in halls, in doorways. He had thought it part of her ‘shyness’ and girlishness. He was not horrified at what he knew now. It had been inevitable. It was he who had been the fool.

John was sitting up again and smiling sheepishly at his father. “Why, that’s wonderful, Dad,” he said.

“Wonderful,” repeated Ames, but he was wondering what had led Tom to this, Tom who had always admonished them to respect their mother.

“When I was in Boston two days ago, Ames,” said Tom, “I saw a silver-gilt salt cup that might interest you. Go in tomorrow and look at it. It’s at Wooden’s. They want one hundred dollars. Very rare. If you like it, buy it, and charge it to me.”

He turned to John. “What else do you want besides the money?”

John was stupefied. His hazel eyes jumped. Then he blurted, “I’d like my own little sailboat for the summer. But that’s two hundred and fifty dollars.”

“Done,” said Tom. “I’ll put my check under your door tonight.”

He went out of the room. He would remake his will within the next day or two. He would leave Elizabeth exactly two thousand dollars. The balance of his large estate, including all his construction business, would be left equally divided between his two sons. “What in hell do you think’s happened to him?” asked John of his brother.

When had he first come to love Melinda Bothwell? Tom often asked himself. Was it during those first dreadful weeks after her husband had been killed and he had visited her often and had sat with her? Or was it later, when she had remembered to smile a little and thank him for visiting her and for his interest in her children? Or had he always loved her, since the first day he had seen her with young Alfred after their marriage, when she had consulted with him about the house rising on the land Alfred had bought?

That was eleven years ago. But Tom could remember his first sight of Melinda, her large gray eyes, her soft expression, her gentle mouth, her quiet manners; he could remember her voice, thoughtful and very sweet. He had thought she looked abstracted and a little sad, just as she had appeared in her early photograph. When anyone spoke she had a way of turning her head in his direction and looking at him with kindness and understanding, and she gave all her attention. She and Alfred had stood close together on that first day, and she had touched Alfred’s sleeve occasionally, with affection. It was a moving gesture; it expressed more than love. Yes, it was possible that he, Tom, had loved her then.

But it was not until two years ago that he had faced the fact that he was in love with Melinda Bothwell. There was no love in his life; he had no true wife, no real children. He was not wanted, not needed, not respected in his house. By nature inclined to be extremely optimistic, and therefore not acquainted with reality, he had always, as his father used to advise him, ‘hoped for the best’. Against truth, against what his eyes and ears told him about his family, against all his self-protective instincts, against all reasonable evidence, he had continued to ‘hope for the best’, to repeat to himself those glowing aphorisms concocted by those who did not see the world as it was. “Give love and you will receive love in return. Evil passes away, but good remains.” Apposed to these desperate folk fictions, there was the true world of men, but for a long time Tom would not see that world.

In his opposite way Tom had been as deluded as Caroline, and with almost as disastrous results to himself. It was his wild need for love that had made him love Melinda Bothwell. At this point in his life any kind and gentle woman would have inspired him. The fact that Melinda had suffered through his own wife, was a widow and lonely, brightened his need for her as a fellow sufferer, a bewildered and bereaved one, a beautiful young woman who had created beauty around her, and peace and serenity. Above all, he could talk to her and she would listen with gentle sympathy, her eyes turned to him in compassion. That Melinda, in spite of her husband’s death, had never suffered as Caroline had suffered, had never been abused, frightened, and lost, and so was therefore capable of pity and was possessed of stamina of soul, did not occur to Tom. An essentially uncomplex man, he believed that all men formed themselves alone, that a tree crowded between stone walls could grow tall and strong, that a cripple could decide one day to stand upright, whole and renewed, if he wished.

It was inevitable that he should begin to contrast Caroline with Melinda, his house with Melinda’s, his children with Melinda’s. He began to see Caroline as a powerfully destructive force. He had given her love, he reminded himself; that he had frequently not understood her did not cross his mind. When he cursed her father, he did not absolve Caroline entirely. At the end, he did not absolve her at all.

Years ago he had believed that Caroline loved him, was obsessed with him. He looked back on those years with derision; he remembered with mortification his talk with Mr. Tandy. No wonder the old man had looked at him so oddly! Tom no longer asked himself why Caroline had married him. He had guessed that she had needed children for her own purpose, and he had served her purpose. That she might have loved him seemed a ridiculous thought to him now. The girl who had clung to him in a blue and windy twilight and had cried out incoherently to him and had confided in him was a dream which had dissolved into the reality of a bitter woman in her forties, a silent, brooding, working woman in her study in the center of a house which reflected her barrenness of spirit. She had even taken on an aspect of evil for him.

Tom had no doubt that he must leave this house, this wife who was no wife, these children who were no children. Melinda had become his passage of escape. When he was divorced from Caroline, then he would tell Melinda that he loved her. He was certain that she loved him, for her lovely face became light when she saw him, and her hand in his was confiding and warm. But his sense of personal honor stopped him from telling her until he was free to tell her. I am past forty-six, he would say to himself. If I am to live again, it must be soon.

After the talk with his sons tonight Tom could not sleep. He had told himself for a long time that nothing that happened in this house could concern him any longer. However, he found that he was mistaken. He was sickened with anger against Caroline; he turned from the thought of Elizabeth with aching disgust. How had it escaped him until now that she resembled her grandfather physically and mentally? Once he had said to himself in a sharp alarm he did not stop to analyze: Carrie has an enemy in this house!

So, sad, wretched, confused, and frightened, Tom could not sleep in his cold and lonely bedroom. At seven he got up wearily, felt all his flesh heavy and sore. I’m worn out, he thought, and rubbed his chest, which had a sensation of oppression in it. He thought of postponing his trip to New York to see Tandy, Harkness and Swift, then shook his head. He shaved in icy water; the maid very often forgot to bring hot. He could smell the chill dust in his room, the airlessness. Suddenly he shivered violently; he hurried into his clothing. The maid was just sullenly laying the breakfast table in the dank morning room when he came in. He could smell porridge, slightly-burned, and an odor of cheap coffee. He was nauseated. He looked through the large smeared window that gave on to the sea. The waters were the color of lead; the sky was leaden. He could hear the hissing of the tide and could see the dull snow. It was very cold.

He arrived in New York at one o’clock. The city stood in the stark and brilliant light of early spring, struck with sun, patched with sharp shade. He usually liked New York for its stimulation and lively air. He did not like it today, for a crushing malaise was on him. He found himself shivering in quick and passing spasms. He had used Caroline’s telephone long after midnight, when she had gone silently to bed, to send ‘young’ Mr. Tandy a telegram to expect him at half-past one on urgent business. Mr. Tandy was a replica of his uncle, and he was fond of Tom. He said when they shook hands, “Are you sick? You look so gray and drawn.”

“I seem to have a chill,” Tom said. “And I didn’t sleep well last night.”

“There is so much la grippe in the cities now,” said Mr. Tandy. “Shall we lunch?” They went to a restaurant which Tom liked. He found he could not eat. He could only sip a little of the hot soup and cradle his hands about the cup to warm them. He drank two cups of coffee but could feel no internal heat. It was as if all his organs were numb and frozen. Mr. Tandy watched him with concern. Tom had aged; the dark blue eyes were dull, the cleft chin less sure, the kind mouth pale and puckered. But he talked well enough, and Mr. Tandy listened, frowning.

“Are you sure you want to write a will like this?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Caroline has her dower rights, you know.”

“I’ve left her the house. And she isn’t the kind to insist on dower rights.”

Mr. Tandy wondered what had caused this drastic change of thought in Tom Sheldon. It was not a lawyer’s business to protest the will of a client, but to protect it. Still, something must have happened. Mr. Tandy ate his dessert slowly. “After all,” he said at last, “if you change your mind it can always be rectified — while you live.”

“Carrie lent me the money to build the house,” said Tom. “I’ve repaid every cent, long ago, with interest. I want to mention that in my will, considering I’ve left her the house.”

They returned to the warm offices, but Tom kept his sturdy coat on, and his lips were bluish. The will was short. It was signed, witnessed, and sealed. Tom sighed when it was done. He looked about the room and said, “I’ve often wondered why Tim Winslow left you a year ago.”

“His own affairs became too pressing,” said Mr. Tandy. “The Broome Company and his wife’s estates. He still has his town house in New York, but he comes in only when there are Board meetings and other necessary matters connected with the Bothwell holdings. He’s had particular success with Mrs. Melinda Bothwell’s affairs, as you know. She is several times a millionaire in her own right, and that is not to be dismissed as a trifle.” Mr. Tandy smiled.

Tom had not considered Melinda’s money. Now he thought of it with perturbation. How could he have forgotten the fifty percent of the Bothwell money and her own inheritance from that rascal, John Ames, of which Caroline had told him? Still, it did not matter. He was no pauper himself.

“We’ve drawn this will very carefully,” said Mr. Tandy. “Still, Caroline could contest it if she wished to. She would probably not win; the court would consider her own fortune. However, let us not worry about that now. As you say, I doubt if Caroline would contest.” He shook hands with Tom and said, “I am not one of these modern optimists, in the style of Teddy Roosevelt, who are so popular these days. I don’t believe that this is the best of all possible worlds, nor do I believe that tragedies or misunderstandings or evils ever right themselves automatically. It needs a great deal of co-operation between heaven and man. Man very rarely offers that cooperation.”

Tom fell into a sick and feverish sleep on the drafty train back to Lyme. He dreamed that he was on a barren bank of stone sloping steeply down to black and rushing water. He tried not to fall down the bank, but something inexorably pushed him, though he cried for help. Then he was in the water, and it was choking him, and he could not swim. He awoke, to find himself breathless and gasping, and the earlier oppression in his chest was one flaring pain, increasing with each gulp of air. He knew then that he was sick. His father had one sovereign remedy for all illnesses: plentiful whiskey. Whiskey was the only thing Tom thought of during the drive that brought him back to his desolate house.

As usual, all was silent here except for the clash of dishes in the kitchen. The hall was like a cave, the drawing room like some abandoned loft. His teeth chattering, Tom went to his room, where there was no fire. He built one; he crouched over the flames, trying to get warm. His head was swimming, and now he coughed painfully and shortly. The whiskey had had no effect on him except to increase his nausea. He looked at the bed but could not bring himself to leave the fire.

Caroline had heard Tom’s buggy leave that morning. She had run to the window; the buggy was heading toward the station. So Tom was going to Boston. She, too, had not slept all night; she had kept her lamp burning low, for lately when she was awake she had a fear of the dark. She had lain under a mound of quilts which needed mending and stared at the cold walls of her room, the silent and unshaded walls.

Her sons did not believe they had disturbed her very much. “Ma was always like that,” John had said contemptuously to his brother. But her distraction was very deep and agonizing. Her sons had come too close to her in those short interviews. During all their lives she had thought of them as her heirs, as the guardians of the trust that had been given her. Now, for the first time, she thought of them as human beings, and she was terribly frightened. She had done what she could for them, she told herself. What else could a mother do for her children but give them health, shelter, food, education, and training in their responsibilities? She had planned for John to visit London and Paris the next summer, to meet some of her investment associates. As she had been educated, so her son would be educated.

Her plans for Ames had followed the same pattern. She had seen herself as eventually old, still the potent matriarch, still the guiding force. But her sons were to take from her the mountainous responsibilities which were now hers. They, too, would marry and have heirs, and the trust would descend to grandchildren. Elizabeth also would be part of the pattern.

There was only Elizabeth now to receive the trust. Why had she, Caroline Ames, been so betrayed by her sons? What had she done, except to guard and train them? But they had looked at her today not with the eyes of trust-guarders. They had looked at her with the eyes of mankind, and they had repudiated her, despised her, and mocked her. They were her enemies. She cried out, “Why? Oh, God, why?”

It was inevitable, then, that she begin to think of Tom, her husband, and she searched her mind. He had turned from her irrevocably on the day that Alfred Bothwell and his father had been killed. He would not listen. She had wanted to tell him that only that morning she had telegraphed the offices of the North Shore line in Boston not to let the runs take place that afternoon. The telegram was not received, the horrified officials told her later. Or it had been ignored. She would never know. It was she who had told her lawyers in New York not to haggle over death and injury settlements, in or out of court.