A Prologue To Love (38 page)

He that maketh haste to be rich

shall not be innocent.

Proverbs 23:5

“Just one more firecracker, John,” said Tom Sheldon, looking up the long sea path to the great house. “It’s breakfast time. Let me light the cracker, this little one. You’ll wake the babies.”

But the little boy insisted on striking the wooden match himself and lighting the fuse. It hissed, and then the firecracker went off with a pleasing noise. John’s eyes glowed with excitement and satisfaction. He pleaded for another, but Tom shook his head. “It wouldn’t be fair. You must wait until Elizabeth and Ames are dressed and brought into the garden. Remember, you promised last night.”

“But that was last night,” said the child, scowling. “What’s a promise, anyway?” His large hazel eyes were discontented.

“A promise is a man’s word,” said Tom reprovingly. “Come on, now. Your mother will be looking for you.”

“No, she won’t. Not even on the Fourth of July,” said the six-year-old child. “All she cares about is her old papers and books and such stuff.”

“That’s enough, John,” said Tom sharply. “You’re being very disrespectful and impertinent.”

“She don’t care for nobody,” the child muttered, following his father up the wide flagged walk from the beach. “No sir, nobody.”

Tom turned. “She loves us all, and so that’s enough, John.”

The boy stopped and kicked at one flag. He looked mutinous. “She never even sees us, hardly. Always in her study with her old books and papers, and then she goes to Boston and New York all the time. Why can’t she be like other mothers?”

“Because she isn’t,” said Tom. “Stop pitying yourself. You have everything you want.”

“That’s because of you, Daddy,” said John slyly. “All she gives me is five cents every Saturday. She don’t know about what you give me!”

“You’re making me sorry I give you anything,” said Tom, stopping to fill his pipe. “It isn’t fair to your mother. Go on, Johnnie; I’ll follow you in a few minutes.”

“I just want to know one thing,” said the emphatic little boy, planting his sturdy legs in front of his father. “Why can’t I go to school like the other boys?”

Tom thought: How can you tell a child that his mother is chronically frightened and mistrustful of everything and particularly everybody, that she sees the whole world as a personal threat and deadly menace to herself and her family? You can’t tell a child that; you will only frighten him too.

So Tom said, “Your mother thinks that a tutor is best at your age. It will be different later. You’ll see; go on, Johnnie.”

But John gave him that glinting, upward glance again and said, “She’s scared. That’s what, she’s scared!” And then he ran up the very wide flagged walk from the sea, and Tom, disturbed, watched the agile and powerful little body race along.

Tom had built this house with his own hands and the help of his devoted stonemasons, bricklayers, and carpenters. He had borrowed the money from Caroline and had insisted upon giving her due notes; half of what he had borrowed, with interest, he had already returned to her by 1892. She had said, “But, Tom, my money is yours.” And he had replied, “Yes, dear, and my money is yours. But I’d prefer it this way just now.” He knew that she had spoken out of affection but not out of her deepest convictions.

There had been no question of a cozy little house in Tom’s mind, for Tom had experienced almost from the start the subtle but cogent corruption of his wife’s wealth. Caroline did not care where or how they lived; she had, at first, insisted that ‘with a little paint here and there and perhaps a few bricks and some wood’ the houses in Lyndon and Lyme would be quite satisfactory. Who cared for ‘display’, and why? Who wished for ‘grand’ furniture and rich rugs and molded ceilings? Who would be their visitors? “I know no one and care to know less,” said Caroline. “We’ll never entertain.”

“Don’t you want beautiful things around you?” asked Tom, puzzled. (A Caroline Ames should have a proper setting.)

“Not vulgar things,” Caroline had replied. And Tom had thought with love: She’s very simple and unaffected and austere, my darling. She cares only for things that are truly beautiful. Tom was certain of this when he discovered that his wife was buying as many of the canvases of a David Ames as possible and paying enormous prices for them. She did this while they lived in Lyme and Lyndon, waiting for the new house to be ready for them. She locked the paintings away. She would have a room for them all, Tom thought, or perhaps scatter them about the house. When the house was built Caroline did indeed have a small gallery for the pictures. But she locked the gallery door and kept the key and would not permit even her family to enter. Her daughter was later to refer to the gallery as ‘Bluebeard’s Closet’.

Though Caroline did not want a new house, and particularly an expensive one, Tom insisted it was ‘due’ his wife and that she ‘deserved’ it. He bought twelve acres of sea front and sandy land some ten miles from Lyme with his borrowed money. The land rose on a steady swell from the beach, so that the house finally stood on a considerable headland and was connected with the beach by a twenty-foot-wide flagged walk bordered by hardy bramble roses which formed a colorful hedge almost the entire season from spring to fall. Tom had designed the house in its entirety; Caroline could have shown no less interest than she did.

It was a very large house, three stories in height, built of yellow stone and yellowish brick. Tom did not like the pretentious houses of Newport — which he had visited for inspiration — or other homes along the ocean, also pretentious. He did not like round towers and turrets and foolish battlements and empty piazzas. He chose building materials the color of the sand, and his house rose strongly on its headland, rectangular, proud and unornamented, broad and high of shining window, tall and impressive of door. It appeared not to be superimposed on the landscape but as if the landscape itself had given birth to it. The main rooms — the parlors, the dining room, the breakfast or ‘morning room’, as Tom had enthusiastically called it — and all the major bedrooms looked out upon the changing sea. Caroline had neither admired nor protested; her only comment was when the servants’ rooms, on the third floor, also faced the sea and had large windows. “But, Tom, why bother about what the servants see or can’t see? They’ll be only too busy working and won’t have time to waste looking at the water. What will they want with ‘a view’?”

“They’re human, aren’t they?” Tom had asked. Caroline’s large mouth had moved just a little in an expression of contempt. “We’ll need no other servants,” she said. “We have Beth. Perhaps one of the local women can come in occasionally to help her if necessary.”

“Beth? With all these rooms, Carrie?”

“There, you see, Tom? I told you such a big house was totally frivolous and unnecessary. We’ll be putting ourselves in bondage to menials. I used to hear my aunt’s friends complain of how they were the slaves of their servants. I never wanted that. Beth is quite enough; oh, don’t talk to me about her age! She’s very lively, really; she can manage. With occasional assistance, if any.”

It was Tom, in his first act of treachery toward his wife, who went to Beth and told her. Beth, who was delighted by the thought of the rising house, became dismayed. “But, Tom, I’m getting old, really. Do you mean that Carrie honestly expects me to take care of that big house and do the cooking and everything and look after the baby that’s coming, all by myself?”

“She does, Beth. And so you must tell her that it’s impossible.”

Beth had studied him. “Why can’t you tell her yourself, Tom? You’re the master, you know.”

This was in January 1886, just prior to the birth of little John. But Tom had learned enough by now to say to Beth, “I may be the master, Beth, but it’s Carrie’s money. I’m building those new little houses all the time, clear up to Marblehead, but I put everything I make into new land and new buildings and have almost no cash on hand. And then I’m paying for this house, too, on borrowed money.”

With considerable prescience, he had insisted upon the house directly after the marriage. Had he waited even a year the house would never have been built, and he had known that somehow. But Caroline, fiercely and desperately in love, willing to listen if even only reluctantly, had consented to the house. If Tom wished it, he could have it, though it was so extravagant and wasteful an idea. She was so grateful to him for loving her. By the time they had been married one year she was much less pliant; had not the house been half built by then, she would have refused the whole thing. Even so, the Christmas before her first child was born she had actually hinted that they could make a profit if they sold the house when completed or just as it was.

On the quiet advice of Tom, and with indignation, Beth had gone to Caroline and had said, “Carrie, we’ll be moving into the new house in April. We haven’t much time; do you want to talk with agencies in Boston about a cook and kitchenmaid and at least two housemaids and a gardener — there’s all that land, you know — and a coachman and a stable boy? And the baby will be born soon, and I do wish he’d be born in the new house instead of this awful old Lyndon place! You’ll need a nursemaid.”

Caroline was sitting by a warped window, wrapped in heavy shawls. She was weighty with her child, and a little languid. She had drawn a table to the window, and a chair, and here she would sit, going over her investments and her ledgers and her papers, making notes for the office in Boston. She worked endlessly from morning until evening. Now she lifted her large head, glanced absently at the snow-filled grounds about the old house, and said, “What are you talking about, Beth? We won’t use all the rooms in the new house; that would be ridiculous. We’ll need only the kitchen, three bedrooms and one bathroom, and the smallest sitting room. And as it will all be new, there will be little dust. Why, you won’t have even as much work to do as you have in this house!”

Beth said quietly, “I think you’re wrong, Carrie. Tom’s been down to New York a lot, and he’s buying furniture and he doesn’t have any intention of building a big house so that we can all crouch in a couple of rooms like ditchdiggers. I’m getting real old and tired, Carrie. I can’t take care of a baby — ”

“I intend to take care of my own child,” said Carrie coldly, waving her hand in dismissal.

But Beth stood there, fat and weary and white. “You haven’t the slightest idea of how to take care of a baby or all the work there is, Carrie. All the washing, all the night feedings, all the watching and caring. You’d be so tired you wouldn’t have time to fuss with all those books and ledgers and papers of yours, and you wouldn’t be able to go in to Boston at all, what with the nursing and such. Or perhaps,” said Beth angrily, “you’ll attend those meetings of yours and nurse the baby right in front of all those men!”

Caroline had stared at her, but Beth, very angry now, stared back. “Very well, then,” said Caroline at last, “I don’t want to burden you too much, Beth. We’ll hire a nursemaid for the first few months. Get a girl from the country; eight dollars a month will be more than enough for the time we’ll need her.”

Beth was almost defeated, and then she remembered what Tom had said: “Don’t back down, Beth. Carrie is only a young woman, after all, and very inexperienced.”

So Beth said resolutely, “No, Carrie. Not just a nursemaid. We’ll need all the other help too.”

Carrie narrowed her eyes at the old woman, and for the first time Beth saw John Ames in his daughter. She was so startled that she stepped back a little in fear.

“No,” said Caroline, and bent over her books again in the fading winter light.

Beth pulled in a deep breath and remembered what Tom had told her to say. “All right, Carrie. Then I’ll give you a month’s notice right now. I’m sorry I’ll be gone when the baby is born, but it’s too much for me.”

Caroline carefully laid down her pen. She could not believe it. She stared at Beth incredulously and with contempt. “Are you out of your mind, Beth? Where would you go?”

“I have enough to buy a little house, and with the rest of my savings and my pension from the government — and I just got an increase, too — I can live easy somewhere in Boston. Have you forgotten that your father left me three thousand dollars, too?” She turned away and added in a lower voice, “A month, Carrie. You’d best get busy right now to replace me, and when you do you’ll find that no other woman, even if she’s real stupid, will work as I do or go to the new house all alone.”

“You’d leave me, Beth?” Caroline’s voice had changed to that of a fearful and bewildered little girl; Beth’s first impulse was to run to her, pull her head to her breast and say, as she had said hundreds of times before, “Of course I’ll never leave you, dear!” But she thought of Tom again. So she turned near the door and looked at Caroline and did not move.

She said, “I really will, Carrie. I’ve made up my mind. I raised you and cooked and washed for you and made your clothes for years and was like a mother to you. But there comes a time when a person’s got to think of herself, too, and the time’s come for me.”

Caroline was silent, but she lifted her hand to detain Beth. Then she said slowly, “The house is costing a large fortune in itself. More servants will be a constant drain. I can’t afford it, Beth. I can’t even bear to think of losing all that money every month.”

Now Beth was angry again. “Carrie! Do you think I’m a fool? Maybe the papers exaggerate, but if you have only half of what they say you have you’ll never be able to spend a half of the income, let alone the principal you’re always talking about, not even if you lived like Mrs. Vanderbilt. That’s what the papers said. You’re one of the richest girls in the world, Carrie.”

“What my father left me,” said Caroline, trying to control her vast fear and rage, “is a trust. A sacred trust. It can’t be spent criminally on frivolities and stupidities. It’s money, Beth, it’s money! Can’t you understand that?”

“I certainly can. And what’s money for, except to enjoy it?”

“It’s to be kept and increased.”

“What for?”

But Caroline could not explain to this simple woman that money in itself was sacred and inviolable and a place of secure refuge from the world. She exclaimed, “What for? To have, just to have!”

Beth shrugged wearily. “That sounds crazy, Carrie. I believe in saving; I’ve saved all my life. You’ve got to have some security in your old age. You can’t be a beggar or go to the poorhouse if you have any pride. Why, I’d rather starve, myself. You can’t expect others to do for you what you should do for yourself. Even a little child knows that. But money, just to have! That’s crazy, Carrie.”

“Then thousands of wealthy people all over the world are crazy too,” said Caroline with a grim smile. “I’ve met many of them. They are very careful and thrifty, even with their children; they teach them proper respect for money. They’re not extravagant and heedless fools. They know what money is and what it means, and they never spend a penny they don’t have to, under any circumstances.”

“Then they’re crazy too,” said Beth. “I don’t believe in being extravagant, either. But I believe in using some of your money to enjoy life, too, after you’re sure you have something to leave your children. Carrie, I’m tired. I don’t want to talk any longer; we don’t understand each other any more, though I’ve tried to teach you since you were little. So you have my notice. I’ll be sorry to leave you, for you were like a child to me. But I’ve got to look after myself, now that I’m old.”

She left the darkening room. When Tom came in after spending cold hours upstairs in a dusty, bleak room over his own prints and designs for his house and the small houses he would start in the summer, he found Caroline silent and crouching over the small fire. She cried to him hysterically, “Tom, you must talk to Beth! I think she’s lost her mind, at the very least!”

Tom listened. His body was cold and his hands red and stiff, for there was little wood in the woodshed, and the fire upstairs did not draw very well in its ancient chimney, and the bitter winter wind crept through every crack in the old house. He knew what poverty was. But his parents’ little house had never been as poor and as cold as this one, and he had never been so thoroughly chilled before, not even on the canalboats in a blizzard.