A Prologue To Love (26 page)

“The elevator,” said Herr Schloesser. “Good God, this is frightful. I will take you up myself.”

Caroline was sobbing weakly now. She had released the doctor; she wrung her hands over and over as the ponderous elevator drew them up past sleeping floors. Once or twice she coughed chokingly; the doctor’s arm was now on her shoulders with solicitude. (But whoever would have thought!)

“I have summoned my wife,” said the owner as he opened the lacy iron door of the elevator. He glanced with concern at the girl. “Poor Fr
ä
ulein,” he murmured. He forgot the bad treatment in the matter of tips for his employees. This young lady was on the verge of collapse. His sentimental Teutonic heart made tears come to his eyes. But how strange this was! Why had she not called for help here in the hotel?

Caroline ran to the open door of her suite, and the two men hurried after her, the gaunt bearded doctor and the tall fat Herr Schloesser. She ran into her father’s room. It sounded with his groans, which were fainter now. Herr Schloesser lit more lights. Caroline fell on her knees beside her father’s bed, then merely rested there, her eyes on John’s face, her white lips twisting in incoherent prayer. She did not feel the presence of Frau Schloesser, who knelt beside her, rosary in her fat fingers. She did not hear the woman’s mumbled prayers. The doctor examined his unconscious patient carefully. He began to frown as he listened to his heart. He was very important and in command of the situation now and very tender toward both father and daughter.

He said, “We shall need nurses. This is very bad. The gentleman has had a serious heart attack. He must not be moved for an instant.” He reached into his bag for a hypodermic needle and fussily asked for water. Herr Schloesser brought it in a clean glass, and the doctor dropped three little gray pellets in it. When they were dissolved he injected the liquid into the thin limp arm of his patient. “That will relieve his pain,” he said, and studied the livid face, the blue lips, the sweat, the heaving chest.

Herr Schloesser murmured, “He is — he is — ?”

“Possibly,” said the doctor in rich tones of commiseration. “But one cannot tell. I have seen worse recover. It is a matter of extreme quiet. Please wake a servant and send to the hospital for nurses, in my name.”

He sat down beside the bed. There was nothing to do but wait. He looked at Caroline and shook his head sympathetically and motioned to Frau Schloesser with his hand. Obediently she pulled Caroline to her feet, saying, “Dear little one, it is in the hands of God. Sit down here in this chair at the foot of the bed. Adolf, send for some brandy.”

The hall outside was now quietly humming with servants, who brought in hot pans to be put at the sick man’s feet and against his icy hands, and heavier blankets. Caroline was now in a state of mute stupefaction. She crouched on the chair, and her eyes fixed themselves on her father’s face. She continued the dolorous wringing of her hands. She had no thoughts. She was only stunned. When the glass of brandy was put to her lips she was not aware of it; she only swallowed, then coughed briefly. Cold was all about her, cold in the room, cold immobilizing her body, cold in her heart, and the bitterest cold in her soul.

Don’t die, Papa, she whispered in herself. Don’t leave me, Papa. I’ll do anything, if you won’t leave me. I’ll marry anyone you want. Don’t leave me. I am all alone. There is no one else in the world, only you, Papa.

The lights in the room were, to her, only a yellow mist in which floated her father’s unconscious face. It looked like a face of gray granite on the white pillow. But he was breathing easier. The sweat had dried. He appeared to be sleeping. The doctor examined him again and nodded with a slight satisfaction. “I believe the heart is rallying,” he said. How large a fee should he charge these rich Americans? They had money to throw away in handfuls, these millionaires. He glanced furtively at Caroline. But why should a rich young lady dress in such ragged clothing? He shook his head. Everyone knew that Americans were quite mad and had peculiar ways.

He cleared his throat as he felt his patient’s pulse. Caroline started, as if something had crashed against her ears. She looked at the doctor, who was bending over her father, this doctor with Fern’s eyes, this man who had asked that crushing question, who had believed she was very poor and so would not come to a dying man without assurance of his fee. He would have let Papa die if they could not have paid, if Herr Schloesser had not come to her rescue. She had had to drag him through the street; she had had to plead with him as a dog would plead. Because he had thought she had no money. No money, no money, no money, clanged the iron tongue in her mind. If we had no money Papa would have been left to die. No money, no money. “Oh, God,” she muttered aloud.

Frau Schloesser was now holding a cup of hot fresh chocolate to her lips. But the sight of it nauseated her, and she gulped and shook her head. She put her hand to her mouth to control the retching. Then she felt the doctor’s solicitous fingers on her own wrist. His eyes were still Fern’s eyes, but they were also beaming as Fern’s eyes had beamed when Caroline had shown him her aunt’s ring. She snatched her wrist from him.

The bells of Geneva proclaimed the hour of four. A ghostly glimmer quickened in the east, and the black mountains stood against it. The lake murmured restlessly. Two tall nuns in the white of nursing Sisters came into the room, accompanied by a priest. All rose but Caroline, who looked only at her father.

She felt a gentle touch on her shoulder. A Sister was bending over her. She asked, “Mademoiselle, has your father been baptized? He is a Christian?”

“What? What?” she muttered. The Sister was patient. She said slowly, “Your father — he has been baptized, he is a Christian?” She spoke in French, and then as Caroline looked at her uncomprehendingly she repeated the question again, in German. Caroline stared, her broad face a deathly color. “Christian,” she repeated. “No. No, I don’t think so.”

She put her frozen hands to her face. The words meant nothing to her at all. They were foolish. Her father was very ill, and this woman asked questions. “No,” she said again, for she had been educated to be polite even in the face of irrelevance. “I remember. He told me he hadn’t been baptized, and my aunt said he wouldn’t let me be baptized.” Then she became conscious of the white linen of the Sister and understood she was a nurse.

“Will my father live?” she asked piteously, and caught the snowy robe.

The Sister said gently, “It is in the hands of God. But the Father is here to baptize your father, to administer Extreme Unction, in behalf of his immortal soul, should he die. Are you willing, mademoiselle, that this take place?”

“Die!” cried Caroline wildly, and clutched the robe tighter.

“There are things worse than death,” said the Sister with compassion.

“No,” said Caroline, and then was silent. After a moment she murmured, “It is much worse to be poor.” She paused, then said lifelessly, “Baptize him if you wish.”

The priest sighed. Frau Schloesser had removed articles from the bedside table and had spread it with a clean white cloth and had brought water. One of the Sisters lit a candle in a ruby glass. Caroline watched, hardly seeing. The priest was putting on a strange strip of cloth, embroidered, over his thin old shoulders. He had opened a book. All fell on their knees, and the priest intoned in Latin. There was a little dish with oil in it and two or three little balls of white cotton. What is it? whispered Caroline in herself. A Sister was raising John’s head, a thick white napkin covering her hand and part of her arm. The priest lifted the water, murmuring, and let the water flow over John’s unconscious forehead. “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,” said the priest. He anointed the unconscious man with oil. The others, kneeling, lifted their voices in prayer, including the doctor. Caroline watched and listened dumbly. She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes, and all sound and sight receded from her.

When she opened her eyes — and it seemed to her that a long time had passed — the priest had gone and the two Sisters were sitting beside her father. The doctor was leaving. Caroline could not move. A window had been opened; the sharp mountain air invaded the room. Somewhere swallows chattered, and a frail gray light came through the windows.

Then John Ames said, “Caroline?”

Caroline started to her feet, but she was so cold, so shattered, that she stumbled and fell against the bed. There was no one in the room now but her father and herself and the Sisters. She dropped on her knees beside John Ames. His eyes were open and sunken far back in his head, and there was an awful searching in them. “Papa,” said Caroline. “Oh, Papa.” A Sister compassionately put her hand on the girl’s shoulder.

“Caroline,” he repeated, and his voice was dry and whistling. “Listen to me.” The searching brightened in his eyes.

“Yes, Papa.”

“Go home,” said the dying man. “Forget — Caroline. Go home. Don’t remember — I was wrong.” He paused and struggled for breath. He shut his eyes.

“Papa,” pleaded Caroline. “Papa, I’ll marry Mr. Brookingham for you.”

Again his eyes opened and became intense. “No,” he said. “No, no. Go home. Forget. I was wrong. Remember, I was wrong.”

“Yes, Papa,” said Caroline, not understanding.

Once more he seemed to sleep. Caroline took his hand; it was as cold as stone. She pressed it to her cheek. Then he said in a loving voice, “My darling, my little daughter, my Melinda. Melinda. My daughter.” He smiled. “My pretty child.”

Caroline stiffened. Her mouth opened soundlessly.

Then John Ames spoke for the last time in his life, and all his passion and longing were in his final cry. “Cynthia! Cynthia!”

And then he died.

Love is to the moral nature

what the sun is to the earth.

Balzac

The small hotel on Beacon Street in Brookline was not old, but it had been designed deliberately to look old from the very moment it had been completed. Otherwise it would not have appeared respectable and so would have been avoided by those for whom it was intended: the elderly dowagers, the decrepit widowers, the spinsters and the aged bachelors of good family who were possessed of something which was now much more important in Boston — money. This is not to say that wealthy nobodies of no ‘connections’ would have been tolerated in the Beverley, but neither would ancients of excellent name but uncertain income have been welcome.

So the Beverley gave solid and discreet service to those who were childless or without immediate relatives or who had found that an impertinent government had cut off, through immigration laws, a constant flow of cheap servants willing to live in a cold attic room for a few dollars a month and work at least fifteen hours a day in the kitchens and parlors and dining rooms of huge mansions and be always at call no matter the hour.

Cynthia Winslow thought the Beverley equally as bad as the other small resident hotels now springing up in secluded Brookline and even in Boston itself. Why they had to be so ugly, if comfortable, she thought, was beyond her. Almost invariably they were constructed, as was the Beverley, of soft-looking muddy-brown stone, with tall, thin arched windows, gloomy little lobbies full of rubber plants and desiccated palm trees in tubs, dark corridors, and dining rooms calculated to chill the blood even in the summer. They all smelled of wood and wool and old bodies and peppermint and polish and varnish and lemony cologne and Pears soap and, in the vicinity of the gloomy dining rooms, of lamb stew and tea. Noting the dark crimson velvet draperies and lace curtains and the dull brown-patterned rugs in the lobby, she had no doubt that this depressing decor existed in the bedrooms and private little sitting rooms also.

Normally she would be at Newport now, looking at the blue sea of July. But Caroline Ames had written her a stiff little note that she wished to see her aunt at four, precisely, in her sitting room, for tea ‘and certain matters which need discussing. Cynthia, thin and tall and very white and strained in her black silk mourning, sighed as she was assisted from her handsome victoria by the doorman, a comparatively young man of thirty-five whose brown livery and general demeanor tried to hint that he was at least fifty-five. He glanced respectfully and with approval at the bright hair under the small frilled black bonnet and noted the white chin above the black satin ribbons. “Mrs. Winslow,” he murmured, and led her preciously to the glass-and-wood double doors, making her feel at once like some tottering dowager of eighty. Good God, thought Cynthia as she always did when visiting the Beverley and similar hotels, why do people consider that only age is respectable, and the smells of age? You would never think, her thoughts would run, that America is a young country when you encounter Boston and the Beverley hotels. Cynthia was not only weary and sad, but heavily depressed. She had almost decided to move to New York, which was electric and passionate and gay and utterly disreputable and lively and young. My heart is only partly dead, she would tell herself; if I remain here, I will utterly die. I will eventually retire to a Beverley.

But Melinda belonged in Boston — grave, sweet, and gentle Melinda.

As she was conveyed up two floors in the elevator, which groaned heavily, as was proper, and whose ropes squeaked distressingly, Cynthia became more downhearted and her grief sharper. She had experienced grief many times in her life; one should become accustomed to it eventually, she thought. But sorrow was always fresh, always new, and always wore a new and unfamiliar face. If only John had listened to her three years ago and had consulted a physician; if only he had not driven himself so hard; if only he had refreshed himself with constant little joys and pleasures in a life like a desert; if only he had not been obsessed beyond the mere need of money; if only he had learned to laugh and to be flexible in a measure. If only . . . It was always the lament of the grieved. Even Melinda and I could not keep our darling alive, thought Cynthia, forgetting to be irritated because the liveried old man, old enough to be her father, carefully assisted her from the elevator.

She even smiled drearily at him when he insisted on accompanying her down the narrow dark hall with its smells of old bombazine, asthma remedies, arnica lotions, and gas jets to the gleaming walnut door of Caroline’s suite. He knocked on the door importantly; Cynthia’s thin black silk rustled and exhaled a fresh odor of lilies of the valley. Beth opened the door, and a hot gush of sunlight poured into the hall, and the old man bowed and retreated. “Beth,” said Cynthia, unaware of the gratitude in her voice. She did not want to see her niece alone. “Mrs. Winslow,” said Beth in a muted voice. “Please come in.” She sighed, and Cynthia, passing her, touched her arm comfortingly, though why Beth needed comforting she did not know.

The suite, as Cynthia feared, carried on the brown and dark crimson and navy blue of the lobby below. But it had a still and sterile smell and was hot. In the very center of the sitting room sat Caroline in very heavy black clothing with a silver and pearl pin at her throat. Cynthia saw her silent profile, forbidding and impassive, and her straight tall back and her coronet of coiled braids and her large folded hands. The older woman’s heart was filled with pity; she had not seen her niece since the funeral of John Ames some weeks ago, nor had she heard from her.

“Caroline,” said Cynthia impulsively. She was not a woman of easy tears, but now her beautiful gray eyes filled with them. She went to her niece and put her gloved hand on the young woman’s shoulder. But Caroline did not move. She merely said in her strong voice, “Please sit down, Aunt Cynthia,” and indicated a stiff chair opposite her. “And, Beth, please leave us alone.” Beth sighed again, retreated to a bedroom, and shut the door. Cynthia sat down opposite her niece and looked at her earnestly. Then she was shocked. This girl was still stunned with grief; her features appeared wooden, her hazel eyes without life.

“This won’t take long. I won’t detain you,” said Caroline. The folded hands tightened. “I’ve been in Lyndon and in New York. I’ve been consulting with Papa’s lawyers.”

“Of course,” murmured Cynthia helplessly. “Did you see Timothy too?”

“Yes,” said Caroline. She looked down at her hands. Cynthia said, “Caroline, why don’t you come and stay with me and Melinda for a while? Let us go to Newport together.”

For the first time Caroline looked at her, and the hatred and revulsion on her face shocked Cynthia. Cynthia could not help crying out, “Caroline! What have I done to you to make you look at me like that — you, my sister’s child!”

But Caroline could not accuse her of her sins, for that would be involving her dead father. She could not speak of Melinda, for that would disgrace John Ames, who had been the victim of this shameless woman, this extravagant and foolish strumpet, this trollop, this middle-aged woman who had the audacity to flood perfume upon herself even now and curl and color her hair and wear fashionable mourning clothes!

“I have work to do,” said Caroline. “I can go nowhere. I’m not an idle woman.”

“Yes,” said Cynthia, and wondered why she spoke at all. Only pity held her here; she must make another effort to help that grief, that crushed immobility. John would want her to do that, and this was Ann’s daughter. There was no trace of the mother in Caroline, nor a single trace of John Ames; Cynthia had never considered Caroline really ugly. But now she was ugly in her sorrow and hatred and seemed years older. Her dark skin was thicker and heavier, her chin more massive, her large head actually giving the illusion that it was sitting squarely on her shoulders without the benefit of any neck at all. This gave her a fold under the chin, though she was not stout. Rather, she had lost much weight; the hideous thick black mourning of some undetermined cloth hung on her body.

Caroline looked at the tall and narrow windows swathed in lace curtains and crimson draperies. She spoke without emotion, “My father left — left your adopted daughter — nearly one million dollars. Well invested, secure, sound.”

“Do we have to talk about this?” cried Cynthia. “Caroline, you’re my niece. I want to help you. We both loved your father,” she continued recklessly. “I’m grieved, too, though possibly not as much as you are, for he was all you had. You’ve avoided me; you haven’t answered my letters. You’re flesh of my flesh and blood of my blood. Let us console each other and not talk about money just now, please!”

“You knew about my father’s will?” said Caroline inexorably, as if Cynthia had not spoken. “Before he died?”

“Yes,” said Cynthia, sagging in defeat.

Caroline looked at her again, directly, seeing her aunt’s beauty and style, her slenderness and her jewels.

“You think that will was fair?” asked Caroline.

“Fair?” repeated Cynthia faintly. Then she colored and became vaguely indignant. “My dear. Your father left you all he had, many, many millions of dollars. If he wished to spare a little for Melinda, that was his privilege. Did you want it all?” she exclaimed, flushing even deeper. “I never thought you were greedy, Caroline! Why, you couldn’t even begin to spend a tenth of the income from the money and property he left you!”

“I don’t intend to spend even a tenth,” said Caroline, still speaking without emotion. “I intend to use the income to increase Papa’s fortune, as he would want me to do. I see there is no use in speaking of fairness to you — about your adopted daughter.” She paused. “I did think, though, that you’d be willing to refuse that money. You have no right to it.”

“It is not mine. It’s Melinda’s,” said Cynthia, and there was a sharp constriction in her throat. “I have no legal right, or any other right, to refuse money left to my daughter.”

She was filled with cold alarm. Did Caroline know that Melinda was her sister? But how could she know? “Do you hate Melinda?” asked Cynthia angrily. “And if so, why?”

Caroline was silent. The fold of flesh under her chin became a dark pink. Then she said dully, “Yes, I hate her. I never did like her, and I never knew why. I wasn’t jealous of her; why should I be? But — ” She paused, lifted her hand, and dropped it.

“Hatred is a wicked thing,” said Cynthia, and now her lovely voice was hard. “It is even worse than greed. Are you greedy, Caroline?”

Caroline’s mouth tightened in a bitter half smile. “Aren’t you?” she said. “I see you won’t give up that money left to — to your adopted daughter. I’ve talked with the lawyers in an effort to break that will. They tell me I can’t. I could put you through years of litigation, they tell me, but you would probably win in the end. My father, they said, had the right to leave his money as he wished. I only thought you would see that justice was on my side. I was foolish, wasn’t I?”

The small and burdened room became intolerable to Cynthia. But she controlled herself. “It was very kind of your father,” she said, measuring out her words carefully. “We are all grateful. Don’t look at me so terribly; you aren’t intimidating me. Melinda will keep her money. Is there anything else?”

“Yes,” said Caroline. Cynthia could not know that the girl wanted to burst into wild and desperate tears. “There is the matter of the twenty-five thousand dollars a year left you in trust, for life, by my father. I’m sure that now he’s dead you’ll be willing to give it up.”

“No,” said Cynthia quietly. “Why should I? It is all I have. Would you wish me to starve, Caroline?”

“You’d receive an income from Melinda’s trust,” said Caroline. “It wouldn’t be that much money, but it would be enough, until Melinda is twenty-one, when she will be able to manage Papa’s money herself. And surely she wouldn’t let you starve!”

Cynthia was really angry now. “I have no intention of giving up my twenty-five thousand dollars a year for life, Caroline. The trust was established many years ago, when you were about ten years old. It is not part of your father’s estate at all. It was money set aside, as you know. Upon my death the trust will revert to his estate. Can’t you wait that long, Caroline? Do you want everybody to die so you will have everything?”

She stood up, rustling and sweet with perfume. “Have you no respect for your father’s wishes? For the provisions he made from his own money? I thought you loved him.”

Caroline’s large breast moved and trembled. She could not speak. She could not say, “You exploited my father, for yourself and your daughter, and I only want to right a wrong. You cheated and robbed him for your own wicked purposes, for you are without shame and decency.” To speak so might invite fresh revelations, and to have them spoken would defame her father and disgrace his memory.

Helplessness and suffering thickened her tongue and kept her silent. Cynthia drew on her gloves. She was very pale. Then Caroline could speak, and only in a low voice:

“I see it’s all hopeless. But I can ask one thing, and I wish you would grant it. I go often to Papa’s grave. And I see you leave flowers on it all the time. I wish you wouldn’t.”

“Why not?” asked Cynthia. “I was very — fond of your father. And so was Melinda. Why do you want to deprive us of a little consolation?”

Caroline lifted her hand, then let it fall. How could she explain that she thought her aunt’s and Melinda’s visits and flowers desecrated that grave?

“I’m sure that your father doesn’t mind,” said Cynthia sadly, picking up her purse. She looked at the big and inarticulate girl, and she was full of pity again. “Caroline, you’ve led a very unnatural life, and you’re still young, only going on twenty-four. You were deprived all your young years, and I quarreled with your father about it. Now you are rich. In a way, you’re free. Take up your life, Caroline, if you can. And, if you will, I can help you.”

“To be like you?” asked Caroline with loathing. Cynthia was horrified. She felt naked and unclean. She wanted to strike Caroline, and never had she wanted to strike anyone before, not even Timothy.

“What a dull and stupid fool you are, Caroline,” she said in a shaking voice, her hands clutching her black silk purse. “What do you know of living? Of love and enjoyment, of happiness and laughter? Of being young and gay? Of liking people and music? You’ve lived like — like a — beast, Caroline. A miserable big beast in a zoo, fed and sheltered adequately, but that is all. You know nothing of the world and mankind. Oh, my God!” she cried. “It isn’t your fault, I know! It was your father’s fault, and I can never forgive him for that, never! I only wanted to help you.”

She began to cry. Then she ran to the door and went away.

Hearing the departure and the slam of the door, Beth came into the room. Caroline was sitting soundlessly, her hands over her face. Beth had not been ashamed to eavesdrop on the conversation. She stood and looked at Caroline, and she was disgusted with her, and outraged. But she loved the girl. She said, “Carrie, Carrie, my child?”

“Don’t, Beth,” said Caroline, and she stood up and went into her own room.

Beth wrote to Tom Sheldon:

“We’ll be in Lyme for a week or two beginning next Tuesday, dear Tom. Please help me with Carrie. Sometimes she seems to be going out of her mind with grief. She hardly speaks at all. She just wanders around the house in Lyndon, and then she goes to New York to see her lawyers, alone. She won’t even let me go with her. She looks like she’s dying, Tom. And she will die, I’m sure, if someone doesn’t help her. Her aunt tried, and she drove her away. I try, and she won’t answer me. She does love you, Tom. She wears your brooch all the time. It’s the only jewelry she does wear; she never touches the jewelry her mother left her and which is now out of the bank. Never mind if she acts like she doesn’t want to see you or talk to you. Just be there, Tom dear. She needs you.”

Tom had written many times to Caroline since her father’s death, but she had not answered. He had even gone to Lyndon, to find that she was in New York. He left urgent messages for her, which she had ignored. Now he read Beth’s letter and shook his head. He would try once more, and if he failed, then it would be the end. He would have to try to forget her. Perhaps he wouldn’t. But he had a life to live too. He held Beth’s letter in his hand and reread that portion of it referring to the brooch he had bought for Caroline. Then all at once he was desperate, and he saw himself as a ridiculous figure, a buffoon, an ignoramus. What had he, Tom Sheldon, who had never had a formal education and who was now twenty-six years old and only a builder of good little houses in obscure places, to offer a woman whom the newspapers were still referring to as ‘one of the richest girls in the world’? He had always thought of her only as Carrie Ames, a sad, shy girl, a shabby, frightened girl, a girl he loved and had to protect.