A Prologue To Love (61 page)

John Sheldon visited his mother a few times a year, not out of affection, but to exhibit his well-being and success to her. To others, his own fortune and business would have seemed picayune compared with his mother’s enormous estate and holdings, but he knew that to Caroline no money or fortune was small and that one dollar to her was as precious as a million. Moreover, as he was a naturally optimistic person, unlike his brother Ames, he was somewhat convinced that when his mother saw that he was really a ‘responsible’ man she would come to change her will or at least modify it. He had increased his inheritance from his father with some wild but lucky investments. If nothing else, his mother was keenly interested in the market, and she would listen to the stock quotations as some women listen to sonnets.

“We shouldn’t let everything go by default to that scheming sister of ours,” John would say to Ames when he came up to Boston from New York.

“You haven’t any proof that she’s not the victim of a ‘spendthrift’ clause too,” said Ames. “You know how suspicious Ma is; she’s also convinced she’s going to live forever.”

While in Boston, John stayed with Ames. The two brothers were not natively congenial, but they had been almost exclusively thrown together as companions in early childhood and they had much in common, such as their hopes of inheriting a large part of their mother’s money.

John knew that his sister was abroad, and so she would not be there with her icy and sneering face when he visited his mother today. When he arrived at the station he was pleased with the coolness that greeted him; Boston was usually a sweat box in the summer. He hired a hack and drove to his mother’s house. Each time he arrived he thought that it appeared more abandoned and decrepit than ever, though it was little more than a quarter of a century old. Shingles curled and fell and were never replaced; the woodwork about the stone windows had not been painted in years; the doors were beginning to take on the ancient silvery appearance of neglected wood. The glass was filthy everywhere, the walks neglected, the grimy draperies like coarse ropes, the gardens overgrown and forgotten, so that the once beautiful grounds had reverted to wilderness. The whole scene had a wild and desolate air; mortar and fragments from the stone and brick littered the three walks that led to the house, and there was an immense silence about all things except for the silken hiss of the summer sea.

John rang the bell and heard it echoing through the house. He waited. He rang again. There was no answer. What the hell! Didn’t the old lady keep a maid any longer? Where was she, herself? He tried the door facing landward, and it was locked firmly. He went to the side and found it ajar, so he entered. The musty smell of a closed house was all about him, and the acrid stench of dust and grease and neglect. He went through the rooms, calling for his mother, half hoping that he would find her dead in her bed room. He was a lawyer; there were ways of getting around a will. ‘Nuisance’ suits. But his mother was not in the house.

If she had been in the village he would have been told. However, she was never seen in the village any longer, though he had heard rumors that she haunted the graveyard on the hill, where both cemetery and church had been abandoned three years ago.

He looked in the kitchen, and the smells revolted him, and the heaps of unwashed dishes and the bulks of newspapers and financial journals piled against the walls. The wooden floor was dark with spilled oil. A skillet filled with half-melted fat stood on the black stove. The bedroom, untouched and the bed unmade, and these other evidences of recent occupancy told him that his mother was still alive. He grunted. But where the hell was she, the recluse who never left her house, who had not been seen in the village lately, who no longer went in to Boston to her office? The kitchen windows facing the sea were open, and John went to them and looked at the long mass of boulders which had once been the sea walk.

He heard voices now, for the first time, clear in the fetid silence. Both voices were familiar. One was his mother’s and the other his pretty little Mimi’s, whom he intended to marry when she was eighteen. He could not believe it. Carefully concealing himself at the side of the window, he bent his head and listened intently.

Caroline was absorbed in what Mimi was doing. They were sitting on low boulders, and Mimi was painting a shattered heap of them against the hot blue sky.

“The girl — the child — on them won’t come true,” Mimi was saying in a dissatisfied voice.

“No,” Caroline reflected in her rusty voice. “She looks too expectant, doesn’t she? But she should never have been expectant; there was nothing to expect.”

There was a silence, increased by the sound of the sea. Then Caroline said, “Give me the brush, Mary. I’ll darken the side of her face just a little. Umber, perhaps, mixed with a touch of black.” Another silence, then a cry of delight from Mimi.

“Aunt Caroline! That’s just what was needed! What a wonderful feeling you have!”

Good God, what is this? thought John, dumfounded.

“You are a better artist than I!” cried Mimi.

“Nonsense,” Caroline grunted. But it was evident that she was excited. “I never learned to paint anything but dreary little water colors at Miss Stockington’s. I’m glad you took up oils, Mary. They have much more depth.”

“And much easier,” said Mimi. “It was you, Aunt Caroline, who taught me how to use oils, even though you never worked in them yourself. What do you think? Should I brighten that red ribbon in the girl’s hair? In spite of the sky, it all looks so somber.”

There was silent consultation. Then Caroline said heavily, “Yes. It must be scarlet. It should imply hope, even though there was never any hope.”

John leaned against the side of the window, incredulous. His mother — and Mimi. It wasn’t possible. Then he began to smile with delight. How in the devil had these two come together — his mother, who hated everybody and never saw anyone except on business, and whose conversation was confined to her financial affairs; and bright little Mimi, who loved all things and whose hope was as ardent as sunlight on a butterfly’s wings? The little imp! Why hadn’t she told him of this in her letters?

The voices came closer. He peered around the window frame. His mother was standing against the sky in her stained black, as tall and massive as ever, and as formidable, her gray braids like a silvery crown on her head. But her dark face was flushed by sun and wind, and she was smiling. John had not seen her smile in many years. Her hand was timidly on Mimi’s arm, and then it rose to smooth the girl’s blown hair, and it lingered.

“I’ll miss you, Mary,” Caroline said.

“I’ll miss you too, Aunt Caroline,” said the girl, and she bent forward and kissed Caroline’s cheek. Caroline stood rigid. When the girl shyly withdrew, Caroline put her hand to the kissed cheek, as if to hold something there.

“But you can’t miss the opportunity to go to Paris for a few weeks to study painting and art,” said Caroline with sudden firmness.

“If I do well, Mama has promised me I can stay for a year! Isn’t that marvelous?” The girl laughed with joy. Her pink dress whipped away from her ankles in the sea wind, and then her whole body was outlined, free and airy and alive.

“A whole year,” said Caroline. “Yes, you will be away a whole year.”

John already knew of this plan, for Mimi had written him. This was one of the reasons he had come to Boston, to say good-by to Mimi and to laugh at her indulgently. He was much more interested now in his mother’s expression of sorrow and loss, the sudden sagging of her heavy body. Then Caroline said briskly, “This is a wonderful opportunity. There has been no female artist of consequence before or since Rosa Bonheur. Why? Art is sexless, arid so is pure intelligence. What has kept women from the sciences and the arts? Children? But I have children and they never stood in my way. Women must advance a better explanation of their failures as artists than children.” Then she softened. “You are a naturally great artist, Mary; you can be as great as David Ames, for you have his style and power and eye for color and vitality. You must never let it go.”

“Never,” said the young Mimi.

Caroline looked at her long and silently, and she saw what she herself might have been. Then she said abruptly and with pain, “Good-by, Mary. Remember, you’ve promised to write to me.”

“I’ll write all the time!” cried Mary. “And don’t worry about me. Mama’s friend, Mrs. Wentworth, will take good care of me while Angela is at the Sorbonne. But I’m afraid I’m not really so very good; I may be back within a few weeks after all.”

“No,” said Caroline, “you will not be back. They’ll be astonished at you.” Then she said again, with more abruptness, as if she could not linger with pain of parting, “Good-by, Mary.”

She took a few steps toward the house, and Mimi was alone, lovely and alive against the blue shadow of the sea, watching her aunt with yearning and wonder. All at once she ran after Caroline, holding out the small canvas in her hands. “Aunt Caroline! I know this isn’t very good, but do you want it? Will you take it? I’d like to know you have it!”

Caroline took the canvas and looked down at it. “You are giving it to me, Mary?”

“Yes,” said the girl eagerly. “In some way it reminds me of you.”

Caroline nodded, then turned away again and laboriously moved among the boulders toward the house, and Mimi watched her go. Caroline did not take her eyes from the painting. Once or twice she stumbled.

She mustn’t find me here right now, thought John, and he rushed through the kitchen and let himself silently out through the side door. He hurried toward the public road beyond the house. He was a burly and strong young man, but by the time he reached the road his heart was racing and he was exultant. He hid behind a clump of pines and waited ten minutes by his watch. Then he went back to the house and vigorously rang the bell, as if he had just arrived.

It took his mother a long time to come to the door. First there were two shootings of bolts, then the rattle of a chain, a cautious wait. Then the door opened a crack. “Oh,” said Caroline surlily, “it’s you. I wasn’t expecting you until tomorrow.”

“I came a day earlier, Ma,” said John easily. “Well, aren’t you going to let me in?” There was a furtive and hesitant air about his mother. She opened the door, let him in, then walked away toward the dusty living room, and he tossed his hat, whistling, onto the gritty hall table and followed her. She was already sitting stiffly in a straight chair when John entered. He remembered this room as a child, sunlit and pleasant. Though the sun was still high outside and the sea bright, the room was cold, musty, and dark. No wonder, with those dirty windows and the shutters half over them, thought John with new disgust.

“Are you staying overnight?” asked Caroline sullenly. “I may as well tell you. I let the girl go when Elizabeth went to Europe with Timothy and his family. A worthless slut. So if you stay you can’t expect any waiting on.”

“You are doing everything yourself? And staying here all by yourself?”

“Yes. I have good doors. And bolts.” She smiled grimly.

“But there are the windows,” said John. “It’s dangerous. You know what rumor is. Someone may get the notion that you keep a pile of gold in here.”

“I also have a gun,” said Caroline with a still grimmer smile. “And I know how to use it. You might let a rumor of it around in Lyme.”

“You need a big dog,” said John.

“No.”

“Well, for God’s sake, get another maid! You can’t live in a rubbish heap like this!”

“My wants are few,” said Caroline. “Groceries are delivered to me twice a week from the village. I use only my study, the kitchen, and the bedroom, and I’m not helpless, even at past fifty. If you think this is a rubbish heap you don’t have to stay, you know.”

“I intend to stay overnight,” said John. He looked at her curiously. “Don’t you ever need to speak to anyone?”

“No.”

“You haven’t seen anyone to speak to since Elizabeth left?”

“I talk with New York every day, and Boston. That’s enough.”

So the old lady was keeping her association with Mimi to herself.

“I’m having some stew for dinner,” said Caroline. “I also have some fresh bread and milk and tea and a tin of pears. That’s what you’ll eat if you stay.”

“You don’t want me to stay?”

“Please yourself.” She shrugged. Then her face changed darkly. “I know you visit that Bothwell woman before you come here. I don’t like it.”

“You never did,” said John easily, but watching her. “I’ve even lost my curiosity.”

“Don’t go there any more,” said Caroline shortly. She paused, “Or at least not this time.”

John pondered this remark.

“What’s the inducement?” he asked lightly.

“Inducement?”

“Never mind. I do intend to go there, however.”

“Why?” She was sitting up and staring hard at him.

“I like Aunt Melinda,” he said. “And I hear that kid Mimi is going abroad in a few days and I want to say good-by to her.”

“Stay away from her!” exclaimed Caroline almost fiercely.

John pretended astonishment. “Why should I? That child? What does it matter? What do you know about Mimi, anyway? You’ve never even seen her.”

“I don’t want to,” said Caroline. “I don’t want you to either.”

“That’s unreasonable,” said John. “My father liked the whole family. I like them too. I particularly like Nat, Mimi’s twin brother. A fine boy.”

“He can’t be, if you like him,” said Caroline with harsh rudeness.

“Thank you,” said John. “Oh, come. I’m really a remarkable young man. I came to tell you the good news. I’ve had an increase in salary. Moreover, when I’m twenty-five I’m going to be a full partner in your dear old law concern.”

Caroline was interested in spite of herself. But she scowled.

“Moreover, again, I’ve just made five thousand dollars in a very keen investment,” said John. “Nothing you would touch. A new small concern making small arms. The stock was sold for ninety cents. It went up to two dollars in less than two weeks.”

“Why?” Now Caroline did not hide her interest.

“I don’t know. I sold out. At two dollars. Then a few days later it went down to one-fifty and I bought in again. Ten thousand shares. There’s a dividend, too, a juicy one, in December.”

He leaned back in his chair, enjoying this. “It went up to three-ten yesterday. Possibly because of the rumor that Bouchard is trying to buy them out.”