A Prologue To Love (58 page)

She had seen William only twice before, and always she had felt a dim stirring, and when he had gone after a few words in the presence of his family she had had the sensation of emptiness and loss. The sensation haunted her for days. But she had been younger then. Now she was sixteen.

Melinda’s laughter had stopped when she saw her niece, but she gave her a kind smile and greeted her and, as always, she asked about Caroline. Elizabeth murmured something. She looked at William; he was not handsome, not distinguished, not a young man to attract a young girl’s attention at first glance. He was somewhat short, pudgy, and unremarkable of face and feature. Yet when Elizabeth looked at him her excitement increased, until he was the very focus of the warm spring day. Her pale face flushed as he shook hands with her. The wind blew several strands of her pretty hair over her cheeks and into her eyes, and William laughed and pushed them behind her ears.

“I’ll go in for Mimi,” said Melinda, pleased at the sudden laughter of her brother. She glanced at Elizabeth and was surprised to see that cold young girl laughing also. Why, the child was actually beautiful with that color in her cheeks and her white teeth flashing in the sun. How unfortunate that her clothing was so plain, her manner usually so constrained and indifferent. Melinda smiled again and went into the school and left the two young people alone.

William remarked pleasantly on the day. He was in America for another week; he had been here a month. Then he was going to Canada for the first time. He would travel from coast to coast. “One has to keep an eye on the empire, you know,” he said, pursing his mouth amusingly. Elizabeth listened with silent gravity, not to his words, but to his voice. Her right arm, pressed against her side, could feel the thumping of her heart.

Then Elizabeth said abruptly, “I haven’t seen you for two years.”

He was surprised, for he had asked her an amiable question concerning her knowledge of Canada. She had apparently not heard a word he had said. He stopped smiling. He looked at her intently. The Sheldon family, he had heard, was very odd, indeed, and this girl apparently was a good example. But what beautiful blue eyes she had, the most beautiful he had ever seen. Absolutely blue, so that the color appeared to fill her eye sockets. Her features were stern now as she watched him.

“I suppose not,” he said.

She moved a little closer to him. She was too young to ask herself why she was so helplessly pulled to this young man, why she wanted to touch his hand, his plump cheek.

“Your parents?” said William lamely. Where the devil was Melinda? But he looked into Elizabeth’s eyes again and forgot his sister.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Elizabeth. (Why was she staring at him like that? thought William a little uneasily.) “I remember every time I ever saw you,” said the girl.

“Oh?” said William. Melinda and Mimi came out then, and he turned to them. When he looked for Elizabeth she had gone.

“I was sixteen,” said Elizabeth as she stood with William, looking far down at the night sea in Devon. “I never forgot, never once. It was a day in spring, and you came with Aunt Melinda for Mimi. You and I stood talking on the steps of Miss Stockington’s. Don’t you remember?” she pleaded.

He did not. But he was good and kind and he said, “How a person forgets. But of course — ”

He kissed Elizabeth again, and they walked back to the house.

Elizabeth did not sleep that night. As her grandfather had loved her great-aunt, so she loved William, with as much passion, fierceness, and devotion. But John Ames had been able to think of other important things beyond his love. Elizabeth, as a woman, could think of nothing else but the young man.

In spite of her sleepless night — she could think only of William under the same roof with her — she bloomed the next morning. She was gentle; she laughed easily; she was kind to Amanda and her children. She walked and moved as if unbearably exhilarated. Sometimes she would press her palms together and shiver. Only Timothy understood. Cynthia and Amanda thought the girl ‘was coming out of herself for the first time’. They were pleased, for they were kindhearted women.

Cynthia had a riding habit which exactly fitted Elizabeth, and so the girl went riding with William. She had been taught to ride at Miss Stockington’s. She sat beautifully and with grace, the long skirt sweeping the horse’s side, Cynthia’s postilion hat riding her shining light hair, the wind whipping color into her cheeks. She did not need to talk with William. They rode in a sweet silence. They came to a quiet glade, dismounted, and sat on the scented grass together.

Then Elizabeth began to speak. Something tight and dark and strong broke in her, and she spoke to William as her mother had spoken to young Tom Sheldon in a blue twilight so long ago. She spoke with passionate loathing of what she knew and what she had heard in London; she spoke with sudden hatred of her mother’s seclusion and hostility toward the world. She leaned toward William, tense with emotion, her face paling and flushing, her eyes large. And William listened.

He listened as Tom had listened, but without Tom’s incredulity and repulsion. For he knew many things himself and had heard many things in London. He watched Elizabeth, not with Tom’s bewildered anger and confusion, but with sadness and understanding and with indignation that this beautiful girl had been exposed to such experiences.

“I never want to go back!” she cried, beating her gloved fist against her skirted knee. She had removed her hat; the sunlight, sifting through tall trees, gilded her hair. “I shall never go back! What is all that to me?”

William was his father’s son, in spite of everything. He was also sophisticated. He knew what Elizabeth, in her profound innocence, was offering. He thought of the huge Ames fortune. He knew from Timothy that it would belong to Elizabeth if she trod softly about her mother. Would Elizabeth regret one day that she had thrown it aside? He did not know. Did people, even young people, change so radically as Elizabeth appeared to have changed? He did not know.

He understood that Elizabeth loved him. Did he love her? He brushed a blade of grass from his knee. He thought soberly. He looked up and found her face close to his, and he saw the intense wide blueness of her eyes. Then he knew that he loved her beyond any doubt.

But one did not make lifelong commitments in a single moment of passion. William was no romanticist. He despised what Londoners called ‘brouhaha’. He had an aversion for buoyant, radiant, ‘sudden’ people. They were invariably ineffective, in spite of their noisy leaping and their hysteria. They were like children, eager, forgetful, fast on the heels of the latest novelty, discarding as quickly as they had accepted. It was purely an American phenomenon and very immature.

So William hesitated. He held Elizabeth’s hand and murmured consolations. He kissed her as he had kissed her the night before. Then she flung her arms about him and pressed her mouth against his, and he held her tightly. He felt her tears on his own cheek. All his body urged toward her. He gently touched her breast. She shuddered and pressed closer to him.

Then she was crying, “I love you! I’ve loved you since I first saw you!”

With a tremendous effort he controlled himself. “But you’ve only seen me a few times, Elizabeth.” He stroked her cheek.

“You must give yourself time, darling,” he said, and he took her hand and helped her to her feet. He brushed her skirt with his hand, and as he bent she put her hand on his head. It was the simplest and most trusting of gestures. He took her hand and kissed it.

“How many men have you known?” he said gently. “Very few. You must be fair to yourself. Shall we leave it this way for a few days? There are so many things for you to consider.”

“Yes,” she said humbly, without understanding at all. She only knew that he had accepted her and that she must wait a little. She did not know why, but he had asked it.

He would never forget that hot, sunlit day. He would remember it all his life.

That night William went into his mother’s sitting room, where she was preparing for bed. He often went there for a quiet good night, alone. She had brushed out her long white hair; it hung in silver over her shoulders, and her eyes were bright.

“Dear William,” she said. “It’s been a busy time, hasn’t it?”

But their guests, their relatives, had been here only two days. Did the old feel that the slightest nudge out of their routine was a ‘busy time’? It made him feel sad. He sat down near his mother, and she said, “You are such a comfort,” as she had said so many times.

“Perhaps not such a comfort,” he said. “Mother, I know you want me to marry Rose Haven.”

She put down her brush and looked at him in her mirror. “But I thought it was — You are so suited to each other, dear. I thought it was all settled.”

“Perhaps too settled,” he said. “Perhaps too suited. All at once I’m not sure that roast beef and Yorkshire pudding is the sort of diet I’m satisfied to eat the rest of my life.”

She stared at him in the mirror.

“I don’t think you liked such a diet, Mother,” he went on. “You’ve always been frank with me. Would you have deliberately chosen such a meal yourself?”

She was distressed, disappointed, yet amused.

“No,” she said. “I never did. I always liked exotic things.” She paused. “Have you fallen in love with a perfectly wild actress in London or some impossible young woman? A priest can’t marry such a woman!”

He smiled.

“Of course,” she said briskly, “I prefer excitement and color. One can’t really call Rose exciting and colorful.” Then she sighed. “I’m getting very old if I forget that you are young and might have different ideas and if I can be pleased at the thought of your marrying good, sound Rose Haven. I just wanted you to be settled before I died. I never gave it a thought that Rose might bore you.” She paused again. “Does she bore you?”

“Yes. But I didn’t realize it until recently.”

“Never marry anyone who bores you,” she said with decision. “Never. That’s death in life. I know. My first husband was a very tedious man. I yawned my way through the years of our marriage. I won’t pretend I’m not a little disappointed, but that’s because I’m old now. Who is the young lady — if she is a young lady?”

“She is a lady.”

Now Cynthia was alert and excited. She swung around in her chair like a girl. “Who?” she cried.

“Elizabeth.”

He stood up. It was terrible to see his mother age like this before his eyes, become so crumpled and wilted and broken and small, silently stricken. She looked at him as though he had struck her down ruthlessly.

“Mother! What’s wrong?” he exclaimed.

But she pushed him away feebly with her hand, as if he had obstructed her breathing.

“Elizabeth?” she whispered. “Elizabeth Sheldon?”

“It’s not settled,” he said hurriedly. “Please don’t look like that. I know it’s very soon. I — hardly know the girl. That’s true. Let me give you some brandy.”

“No!” she cried. She pressed her hands on her dressing table. She was the color of old paper.

Then she cried again, “No! Not Elizabeth! Oh, dear God, not Elizabeth!”

She put her hand on her breast and muttered, “I’m too old now for these things.” She closed her eyes and repeated, “Not Elizabeth.”

William sat down near her. “Why not Elizabeth, your own sister’s granddaughter? Is that so awful?”

She bent her head on the back of her hands, breathing heavily. Then she lifted her head. She was quieter now.

“I believe in blood, William. Please listen carefully. There is very bad blood in Elizabeth. I might even say evil blood. I loved her grandfather, as you know. But I wouldn’t marry him, not even for Melinda’s sake. Perhaps I was wrong. I don’t think I was. He would have crippled Melinda as he crippled Caroline, his older daughter. He would have twisted her, deformed her. He was that way by nature. He told me at one time that his father had ‘made’ him what he was. Perhaps. But the bad material has to be there first. John Ames was a bad man; I loved him, but he was a bad man.

“William, Melinda has his blood, but I kept her away from his influence. He was very careful; he couldn’t do anything about Melinda so long as I wasn’t married to him. I was her protection. He constantly asked me to marry him. If I had done so, the Ames money would have belonged to me, or at least a large share of it. But the money was not enough inducement for me to sacrifice Melinda. In my way, I was an honorable woman.”

“Yes,” he said. Then all at once he felt the need to fight for something precious to him beyond anything else in the world. “But Elizabeth is also an Esmond. And her father was a good sort, you always said, though not of family.”

“There is her mother, my niece Caroline,” she said slowly, painfully. “A deformed woman, a crippled woman. Elizabeth is her daughter; she has had Caroline at her elbow all her life. Do you think, blood aside, that that influence can be overcome in a day, a year, a lifetime? No. What is bred in the bone will be born in the flesh. This is as true of the mind as it is of the body. Today Elizabeth is young and pretty. Tomorrow you would see her mother emerge in her. And her grandfather. It’s inevitable. She would kill you as her grandfather killed my sister, as her mother killed the spirit of Tom Sheldon. Did you ever see a good man disintegrate? I did. I saw Tom slowly die. That would happen to you.”

“Elizabeth isn’t like her mother or her grandfather.”

Cynthia shook her head over and over. “Yes, my dear, she is. I saw them in her when she was only a little girl. Blood — and environment. You can overcome one with the grace of God. You can’t overcome both. Unless through a miracle. Elizabeth, at twenty-one, is too old for a miracle. She seems soft and pliant to you now, because she loves you, just as her mother seemed soft and pliant and trusting to Tom Sheldon when he married her. The change came, as it had to come. It will come to Elizabeth if you marry her. Her nature is already formed. She would destroy you.”

She said despairingly, “I only saw Tom Sheldon a few times. It was enough. And once he told me that he couldn’t understand: Caroline had changed from the girl he had married. She hadn’t really changed. It was only Tom who was deceived. She was her father’s daughter; she was what he had made her. And Elizabeth is what her mother has made her.”

She took her son’s cold hand piteously. “Oh, why did this happen? So soon? It’s impossible. I’m dreaming. Oh, William.”

William said, “Nothing is impossible with God. He has transformed people before. If Elizabeth has inherited anything vicious from her grandfather, and even if her mother has deformed her spirit, God can help her. And me.” He spoke with deep quietness. “I will soon be a priest. If I did not believe God could do this for Elizabeth, I would have to refuse ordination.”

“He can’t change a man, not even God, if the man doesn’t want to be changed, my dear. Elizabeth has had no religious education at all; she hasn’t any frame of reference. She would never be able to understand you. Think of her as a vicar’s wife in some English town or village! Elizabeth Sheldon.”

“She could do it, with the grace of God,” said William, still very quietly. “There is another thing. She knows that her mother will disown her if she marries me; she implied that. You know what money has always meant to Elizabeth; Timothy has told us. But she is willing to give up all that money and never return to America. For me.”

Cynthia put her wrinkled hands over her face. “Poor child, poor girl,” she said. Then she dropped her hands. Her face changed, became terribly frightened, and she caught William’s arm.

“Listen!” she cried. “There is something else. But first, how far has this gone?”

“Quite far,” he admitted mildly, and wondered at his mother’s open fear.

“It can’t go any further, William! If you marry Elizabeth you’ll not only not be ordained, you’ll be forever cut off from your friends. Forever. Technically, as you know, you are Elizabeth’s uncle — ”

“Yes. Technically. I am half brother to Melinda, who is Elizabeth’s aunt. But in reality I am only her second cousin. There are closer relationships in the royal families of Europe.”

“I am not speaking of that, William! I am Lady Halnes; I am the mother of a peer who will enter not only the Church but the House of Lords. You come of a famous old family; one of your ancestors had a morganatic marriage with a royal personage. Listen to me! Tonight, before dinner, Amanda came to this very room to speak to me. Such a good young woman. She was troubled.”

“Yes?” said William, holding his mother’s hand and speaking soothingly.

“Oh, dear God,” groaned Cynthia. “It is quite true that old sins have long shadows. I’ve long known that Timothy hates Caroline and hates her children, and especially Elizabeth. He remembers John Ames; he sees him in that poor girl. Once John said that Timothy was pernicious; as a mother I resented it. Now I know it is true.

“Tonight Amanda told me privately that she had opposed Elizabeth’s coming here. She doesn’t like the girl, but she is fair and honest. She said that Timothy wasn’t in the least averse to having Elizabeth come. He must have known something! He was always that way as a child — he learns everything he can use to hurt an enemy or someone he wants to ruin.

“If you marry Elizabeth, William, Timothy won’t stop at anything. He’s fond of you, but not fond enough to prevent him from striking at poor dead John, and especially Caroline, through Elizabeth. Once he wouldn’t have dared; he needed Caroline. Now he doesn’t need her. I am his mother; he has been plotting for a long time, trying to contrive ways. To injure Caroline or her children. Amanda has felt it too. She told me she has a ‘feeling’, as she said, that ‘Timothy is up to nothing good’. When someone like Amanda, who is logical and very sane, has a ‘feeling’, one should listen to it.

“He’ll strike if you marry Elizabeth. He’ll let the whole world know that Melinda is my daughter, that I was her father’s mistress for years.” Cynthia’s face became frantic with terror. “Don’t you understand what that will mean? Melinda will be shamed in America; perhaps most people in Boston do know the truth; they are willing to overlook it if it isn’t pushed into their faces.

Melinda’s children will be disgraced. I will be disgraced — I, your mother. It will be an international scandal. We aren’t obscure people, William. ‘Questions’, as the English call them, will be asked in the House, at the very least. The Church won’t countenance such a scandal. Your peers will turn their backs to you, as your mother’s son. It may be that the King has given some fillip to scandal, but not a scandal like this. Never a gross, open scandal, no matter how old.”

She stood up in her desperation and held William by both his arms. “My children. You and Melinda. And Melinda’s children. And your future children. There’s no mercy in Timothy. I have no way to bribe him; he doesn’t need what I can leave him from my own fortune. There is nothing any of us can do that will stop him — not this time. Not you. Not even Melinda. In a way, he’ll think he is avenging Melinda, even if he disgraces her for life.

“What of your own life, William, my son? And your children? Your whole life has been directed toward the priesthood. You speak of God. Are you willing to desert Him?”

She had never seen her son so white, so quiet. But for his sake she had to go on.

“How will you and Elizabeth endure it, ostracized, disgraced, spoken of behind hands? You would both begin to remember what you had given up. Love is sometimes not worth the price, William. If you can’t just now remember God, think at least of your children and their future.”

“Please, Mother,” said William. He began to walk slowly up and down the pretty lamplit room.

“You couldn’t live in England, William,” his mother sobbed. “You’d have to go to the Continent. You’d never be free from it until the day you died. You and Elizabeth would come to hate each other.”

He stood at the window, his back to her, and he stood there for a long time while she cried convulsively. Then he came to her and held her in his arms as his father had held her.

“Don’t, Mother. Don’t cry any more.”

She looked at him through her tears and saw his suffering, and she wished she had died before he had been born.

“I’ll talk to Elizabeth,” she said, her voice old and trembling. “I will explain.”

“No, dear.” He thought of Elizabeth with despair.

During all the long night William did not sleep once. He walked his floor; he prayed; he considered and reflected. He stood at his window and looked out at the darkness. The dawn became gray-blue, like a dream. There was a large willow outside his window and it moved gently. The quickening dawn appeared between the framing fronds, and it resembled numerous painted-glass windows of rose and gold and blue and red. Then William said to himself: I must find out for certain. Mother is old and has a lot of fears which are possibly groundless.

At six o’clock, when only one servant was stirring sluggishly, William tapped on Timothy’s door. It was opened at once. William wondered for a moment why it was that if someone was agitated in a house others there were subtly disturbed by it as if by osmosis. At any rate, Timothy was already dressed and alert. “I thought,” said William, “that you’d like to go for a ride with me. It’s a fine day.”

William was already in riding clothes. Timothy paused, then nodded quickly, and William went downstairs and outside to the stables. He saddled his own mare and another horse for his brother. The morning was cool and sweet, the sky wide and full of light, the grass watery with shining dew. A wind came from the sea. The trees still swam in a rosy mist, but their tops were afire. Timothy came into the stables, and if he noticed that William was pale and tired he made no comment. He himself moved as alertly as a youth, tall and thin and, as his mother would say, ‘all of one color’. His graying fair hair was uncovered and it lifted a little from its smoothness in the morning breeze. “There’s nothing I like better,” he said with jocularity, “than getting up before the world and prowling about.”

“You were awake,” said William in the mild voice he had inherited from his father. He turned quickly. “Weren’t you?”

“So I was. I’m not a heavy sleeper; never did like the dogs who can fall asleep instantly, then give a reasonable facsimile of being dead for nine hours.” He looked at the horse saddled for him, then patted the animal on its neck. The horse, a very gentle one, suddenly backed away and snorted and showed the whites of its eyes.

“That’s odd,” said William. “I don’t believe that animals ‘know’, as the country people say, and instinctively recognize a villain. I’ve known the worst villains to have dogs and horses and other animals devoted to them, and children too.”

Timothy took the reins and sprang up onto the reluctant horse’s saddle like a young man. He touched the horse’s side lightly with his crop, and she became still. William mounted, and they rode away in the full dawn, which was heavy with the scent of many flowers and grass and sea and pines. They rode through the village, where only an occasional chimney pot was smoking over thatched or tiled roofs. Then a church bell rang half-past six to the clear sky, and doors began to open to the sweet air. They left the village and began to climb again to the headlands, where the turf was thick and mossy and the voices of cattle could be heard. They passed through a copse of trees, which showered them with wet splinters of light. Then they were trotting briskly down a road already warm with dust, above which hedgerows appeared thick and massed against the sky. They had not spoken a word since they left the house.