A Prologue To Love (67 page)

“A warm day,” said Caroline at last.

“Oh, Caroline. You must know why I’ve come all the way from Newport to see you,” said Amanda in a tired voice.

“Yes?” said Caroline. “But you and Timothy quite often come here, don’t you? What is so unusual about your visit today?”

“Ames. Your son Ames,” said Amanda.

“Ames?”

Amanda looked at her.

“Has something happened to Ames?” asked Caroline.

Amanda did not speak.

Caroline spoke irritably. “I’m afraid I’m not very good at guessing, Amanda. What has Ames got to do with you?”

“Then you know,” said Amanda flatly.

“I know nothing and care about very little,” said Caroline.

Amanda looked at her gloves and purse. She had never noticed it before, for her family had always been rich, but now she felt power in the room, and ruthlessness, and a force beyond money.

“You’ve always hated Timothy’s mother,” said Amanda. “I suppose you still hate her, though she died a year ago. And you hate Melinda, my sister-in-law.”

“I don’t follow you,” said Caroline. “I thought you were speaking of my son Ames.”

“You and Timothy have always been such friends,” said Amanda. “I had hoped you and I could talk frankly today.”

“Why don’t you then?” asked Caroline with impatience.

Amanda wanted to cry. She swallowed her tears. “Very well. You know our daughter Amy.”

“I have seen her a few times. A pretty young thing. But a little vacuous, isn’t she?”

Amanda was shocked. “Caroline! Amy may be quiet, but she is a lovely girl.”

“What has Ames got to do with Amy?” asked Caroline.

“Amy told us last night that she and Ames are going to marry after the elections,” said Amanda.

“Indeed,” said Caroline. “Well, isn’t that their own business? Amy is of age, isn’t she?”

“Not until November the first.”

Caroline frowned with more impatience. “Ames and I are not very close,” she said. “He has gone his way, and I have gone mine. Are you asking me for my approval, Amanda?”

“I’m asking you to disapprove, Caroline.”

“Why should I?”

Amanda said, “Ames asked Amy to keep their decision to marry to themselves until after Timothy is elected senator. But Amy is devoted to her father; she felt she ought to tell him. Timothy is wild, Caroline.”

“Why?” said Caroline brutally. “Is my son such a poor marriage prospect? Aren’t you being a little insulting, Amanda?”

The harsh large face confronted her with derision. Amanda exclaimed, “You did know, Caroline! You knew all the time! You’ve always hated Timothy’s mother, but you don’t mind Ames marrying her granddaughter! Why, Caroline?”

“I make it a point not to interfere in anyone’s affairs,” said Caroline. “Don’t be hysterical, Amanda.”

“I, hysterical?” Amanda was outraged. “I’ve never been hysterical in my life! Oh, it is all too much! That Boston newspaper attacking Timothy all at once! The letters, the advertisements in the other newspapers! All the new posters! Editorials! Poor Timothy. He was so certain he would be elected, and now all this! It’s too much for him to bear.”

“You are incoherent,” said Caroline coldly. Amanda had snapped open her purse and taken out her handkerchief and was wiping her eyes. Her plump shoulders shook. “What has this political matter got to do with Ames?” Caroline continued.

“I don’t know!” cried Amanda. “You are muddling me. I am trying to say that Timothy has a great deal to bear just now, and then Amy tells us that she will marry Ames after the elections. And you sit there, Caroline, and it means nothing to you.”

“What have you against Ames? You and Timothy?”

Amanda lost all caution in her extremity. “We don’t want our little girl to marry Ames. He’s only five or six years older, and as you say he is doing well and has many friends. But there’s something else. We feel, in many ways, that he is too old for Amy, and it’s not just his age. I’m sorry, Caroline, but we don’t like him.”

“That is unfortunate. But evidently your daughter does.”

Amanda, who was never wild, became wild now. “He’s corrupt! He isn’t a good person, Caroline!”

“I still don’t follow you,” said Caroline.

Amanda stood up and looked about as if searching for an escape. Then she swung toward Caroline. “You corrupted him! He hasn’t any real human feelings. You never treated him as a human being, as your son. And so he is callous. You destroyed your children, Caroline, because your father destroyed you. You didn’t know any better.”

Caroline’s face swelled and became an ugly red. “Go on,” she said.

“I never knew your father. Timothy hated him.” She blushed under her tears.

“I never did care for family history,” said Caroline calmly.

“Timothy doesn’t want our daughter to marry the grandson of John Ames. There it is, Caroline, and I’m sorry if I’ve hurt you.”

“Let me see,” said Caroline. “You have just insulted my father, me, and my son. Yet you are ‘sorry’.” She smiled tightly. “Is it that Timothy thinks Ames won’t have enough money?”

“Oh, Caroline!” Amanda sat down again and looked at the other woman in despair. “We aren’t talking about money. It’s Ames. We don’t want him to marry Amy! He will destroy her.” She put her hands to her mouth.

“Timothy mentioned your husband, Tom Sheldon. I always liked Tom.”

“What has Tom got to do with this?” Caroline began to tremble with sickness and wrath.

“You don’t understand. How can I say it? We are afraid you — that you — that Ames will treat Amy as you treated Tom. Harshness and indifference would kill her.”

“So you think I was harsh and indifferent to my husband.”

“You were, Caroline, you were. Not that Timothy blamed you too much.”

“You must not speak of Tom,” said Caroline with great quietness. “I can’t understand what you are talking about. What do you want me to do?”

“Stop Ames from marrying Amy!”

“What would you suggest?”

Amanda wrung her gloves in her hands. “You surely have some influence over Ames. Perhaps you could promise him some money if he didn’t marry Amy.”

“I certainly will not offer Ames money to prevent any marriage he wishes to make. Why should I, even if the girl he wants to marry is the daughter of Timothy Winslow?”

Caroline stood up, and Amanda stood up also, slowly, as if pushed to her feet. They confronted each other.

Then Amanda said in a hushed and fearful tone, “What do you mean, ‘even if the girl he wants to marry is the daughter of Timothy Winslow’?”

“I am only returning insult for insult, Amanda. You are trying my patience.”

“I don’t think so,” said Amanda. She shook her head. “You helped Timothy. Do you hate him, Caroline?”

“If I helped him so, why should I hate him?”

But Amanda said, as if she had not heard, “There was his mother’s will. She left him two thousand dollars. That was all. Why?”

“I’m sure I don’t know.”

“And William never writes to Timothy; only to me. He never sends his regards to Timothy. When his last child was born Timothy sent his congratulations and a check. The check was returned,” said Amanda faintly, her brown eyes dazed and clouded.

“How you do harp on money, Amanda,” said Caroline. “Have you no other conversation?”

Amanda cried, “I was brought up in such a kind, good family! I don’t understand all these overtones! I don’t understand anything!” She sobbed. “And there was Elizabeth, who lost her mind. There must be something wrong in the family.”

At the expression on Caroline’s face she fell back. Caroline pulled the bell rope, and when the maid answered Caroline said, “Mrs. Winslow wishes a hack to the station. Please call for one.”

She turned abruptly and left the room, and the maid smirked disdainfully at Amanda, the rudely abandoned.

The war in Europe blundered and rolled on, weltering voluptuously in hatred and blood and murder, in lies and countercharges of atrocities, in hysteria and rage. Now even bubbling, childlike America could ignore it no longer. But she did not know what to think in this morning of her confused awakening. Newspapers published accounts of crematoriums in Germany (
Life
) where the bodies of Allied and German soldiers (some only wounded, many of the accounts read) were thrown for their ‘lubricant oils, fats and fertilizers’. An alleged American newspaperman declared that he had bluffed his way to the front and had seen German soldiers gaily carrying ‘bagfuls of ears’. (Mark Sullivan’s
Over Here
.) There was not an atrocity allegedly committed by the German troops which the German government, with photographs, did not declare had been committed by Allied troops. “Super-Dum-Dums inflict awful injuries on victims!” cried the New York
Herald
of October 1914 in an article execrating the German armies. With perfect photographs taken in German field hospitals, and with German meticulousness, the German government revealed that it was the Allies who were using these ‘soft’ bullets. The Kaiser protested that German soldiers were not being taken prisoner; they were being murdered after their arms had been taken from them. The Kaiser vehemently denied any atrocities on civilian populations. He invited American newsmen to the areas now under his fist, so that they might inquire and see for themselves. The invitation was not accepted.

The fiendish charges and countercharges blazed at Americans from the headlines in their newspapers. At first. But by late October the newspapers no longer published the German charges; it was as if a signal had been given; the accounts now were all of ‘Hun inhumanity’. When the German ambassador in Washington implored American tourists not to travel to England on British vessels, the newspapers were loud in their indignation. America was neutral; Americans ‘had a right’ to travel when and how they wished. The German government published pleas to American tourists. They were laughed at or ignored.

A large Chicago daily declared, “There is a curious flavor to this war. It seems only a prelude to something that is still obscure to the whole world, something dangerous to all humanity, perhaps. It is well that President Wilson has assured us that Americans have no desire to embroil themselves in this mysterious conflict.” A Buffalo, New York, daily said with facetious truth: “This European war suggests that maybe the white man’s burden is the white man himself.” An Indiana paper declared: “We never appreciated so keenly as now the foresight exercised by our forefathers in emigrating from Europe.” The Chicago
Herald
said: “Peace-loving citizens of this country will now rise up and tender a hearty vote of thanks to Columbus for having discovered America.” A New York newspaper wrote warningly: “There is something in the European war which does not honestly meet the eye. There is a shadow over the guns belching in Belgium and France, and it isn’t clear yet.”

To Caroline Ames Sheldon the war meant nothing. She had more important things to think of, as the stable world she had known died hour by hour. She was becoming richer daily; the golden fortress rose higher about her. She waited and planned for the day when she would destroy Timothy Winslow utterly, completely. Her money and her vengeance were now her sole reasons for living. As summer merged into autumn, she did not go to the abandoned graveyard on the hill. She sat in her study and thought and plotted. Her voice, almost unused except when she called her Boston office or her bank or lawyers or brokers in New York, became as rusty as abandoned iron.

Her only truly human pleasure came when she received letters from Mimi Bothwell. Mimi had left Paris after a series of triumphs, because Paris had no time for art exhibits, even the most provocative, after the first weeks of the war. She had gone to London for several shows. But London, too, had begun to have more serious matters on its mind, such as the zeppelins showering death and fire upon the old city. So Mimi, on October 1, left England for America. She cabled both her mother and her aunt. The two women feared the submarines. One prayed. The other did not, for she had long ago forgotten how to pray. One thanked God when Mimi’s ship arrived safely in New York after a long and tedious and dark voyage.

Two days before the elections, Timothy Winslow came to Lyme to see his cousin Caroline. They had not seen each other for some time. Not even their financial paths crossed now.

When the slatternly maid came to Caroline to tell her that Mr. Winslow had arrived and wished to speak to her, Caroline smiled darkly and briefly. She made Timothy wait for fifteen minutes. Then rustling in her ancient black silk, which was frayed at the hems and seams, she went down to the rotting drawing room. Timothy was standing near the cold fireplace. It was a day of gloom and chill, with a flaying wind from the sea. “Well?” said Caroline.

Timothy did not answer immediately. He looked about the room slowly. His shiver was not affected. He felt the gritty carpet under his feet; he was afraid to touch anything in the room, for he was meticulous and had a horror of dirt and soil. The house smelled of must and damp and grease and abandonment. He did not know why it was, but the very house convinced him that he had come here only to be defeated. Then he looked at his cousin with open hatred, and she stood at a distance from him and stared at him with eyes that were curiously fervent.

His appearance gave her satisfaction, Timothy was still tall and lean and upright and elegant. But he had completely faded. Exhaustion and desolation were painted in gray shadows on his gaunt face. His light eyes were sunken in wrinkled patches; his fine hair was colorless, as were his lips, and there was a wizened look to his aristocratic nose. There was no resemblance in him to his mother now. Her vitality and grace had been washed from his face and expression, leaving behind only a parchness and dryness and an emaciated angularity.

He studied his cousin in silence, and he thought that the old gray hag looked much older and much more battered than when he had last seen her. Then his satisfaction disappeared. For the first time he was impressed by her aspect of absolute power and relentlessness. His voice almost shook as he said formally, “How do you do, Caroline?”

She sat down without answering, and her brittle silk rattled like paper.

He stood before her and said,”I’ve been too busy for visits. The elections, you know.”

She still did not speak. So he said, “Amanda told me only yesterday that she came to see you in the summer — about Amy. And your son. She should not have done that, Caroline.”

Caroline said, “I agree.”

“It was my place, not Amanda’s, to come.” It was cold, drafty, and dank here, but a light dampness broke out on Timothy’s forehead and in the palms of his hands.

He continued: “I’d have come before this — but the elections. One can never trust the electorate — capricious. I thought it was all settled; I’m not so sure as of today.” He paused. He knew he was rambling and even slightly incoherent, but he could not help himself.

“But you think you will be elected?” said Caroline with indifference.

He tried to smile. He remembered that he had rehearsed this scene with Caroline all the way to Lyme. He would be gravely jocular and reasonable. He had been deeply alarmed at Amanda’s account of her clash with Caroline, but then Amanda was tactless. She had not approached Caroline in the right fashion; she had set her back up. Even Caroline Ames could be insulted, it seemed. He said, putting confidence in his light voice, “Certainly I’ll be elected, Caroline.”

Caroline looked down at her hands. They were big hands, and good, but they were dry and gnarled, and the knuckles suggested grime. Caroline said, “I have just read one of your recent speeches, Timothy. I never knew you were so eloquent.” Her voice filled the room, and it was toneless and mechanical. “I also never knew that ‘the plight of the working people’ affected you so much. You were lyrical in places about ‘the new future, the new world of justice’.”

“You think I’m insincere?” He watched her.

She studied him, and her hazel eyes, so deep now beneath her black brows, sparkled. “Of course you are insincere. But I am also sure that you are absolutely sincere about your aims — which you don’t permit the people to know anything about.”

He almost forgot Amy in his sudden alertness. “And what are my ‘aims’, as you call them, Caroline?”

She shrugged her great shoulders. “I know them as well as you do, so why discuss them? But I can tell you that you won’t succeed. Not in America.”

Now he was really alarmed. But how could she know, this recluse who spent her life in this disgusting house, spinning her golden webs like a huge spider and knowing nothing of the world?

“I haven’t the faintest idea what you mean,” he said.

She shrugged again. “No matter.”

But he thought suddenly of that morning, years ago, when his brother William had sat on his horse and had looked down at him and had known him, to his apprehension. He had thought William a little stupid, always. But William had not been stupid at all. Was he making the same mistake about Caroline?

Caroline said, “But why did you come to see me today? Amanda surely must have told you that I have no interest in my son’s love affairs and that I refuse to interfere.”

It was actually an effort to bring his thoughts back to Amy, because his perceptive mind had become engrossed with a sense of danger in this room.

“As your cousin, Caroline, and one of your very few relatives, I thought we could discuss this matter reasonably.”

She smiled and did not speak.

“No one can know Ames better than you, Caroline,” he said. “He is only a few years older than Amy but seems much more. She is a quiet, innocent child. I want her to be happy in marriage. Ames won’t make her happy. I know you haven’t anything against my child — how could you have? She’s been particularly sheltered, for she has a frail character. She’s too gentle and shy and unassuming. Ames — well, he’s worldly, to say the least.”

“He’s very much like you,” said Caroline abruptly.

Timothy could not speak. A liar, even in his spirit, he recognized the truth of what Caroline had said, and he had always hated truth.

“No doubt you feel I am insulting,” said Caroline, smoothing one of her wrists with the fingers of her other hand.

Timothy, in his shock, decided to be honest. “You are quite right, Caroline. Ames would crush her.” He paused. “If Ames thinks that by marrying Amy he’ll come into a fortune, he’s badly mistaken. I’ll leave her nothing.”

“That is your own affair,” said Caroline.

“And I understand from Ames himself — and from others — that he will inherit little from you.”

“He has his father’s money,” said Caroline in a tired voice. “And he’s done very well for himself. He doesn’t need your money.”

“And you have no objection to Amy, considering her grandmother? You always hated my mother, Caroline.”

“I am not in the least interested in what my sons do or whom they marry,” said Caroline.

Then Timothy, really distracted, lost control of himself. Had his party chairman been more optimistic about his chances of becoming senator, he would have been more assured, more able to guard his speech, more confident. But the party chairman had told him only yesterday that if he won — if he won — it would be only by the smallest margin. Yet only a few months ago his election was practically sure. It was the damned newspapers. It was something else, much more stealthy and hidden. It was money somewhere, and pressure, which was threatening him.

“Your son will kill Amy!” he exclaimed with despairing hatred.

“Is she that weak?” said Caroline. “That feeble?”

“You’ve made Ames what he is!” said Timothy recklessly. “He’s distorted, deformed, perverted. You know that. You did it to him.”

His sunken and faded cheeks flared with furious color. He wanted to take Caroline by the throat and strangle her.

“What kind of a life did he have in this house?” said Timothy. “A stupid, illiterate father! A mother who had no interests beyond money, who lived in filth and never saw it.” All his old envy and loathing for Caroline were thick in his throat, and all his disgust for her father, and all his aversion for his mother. “Did you ever care for your children, Caroline? Your son John has been invited to leave Tandy, Harkness and Swift because of his shady manipulations and practices. Your daughter died insane. Your father was a cheap nobody, a thief on a monumental scale, despised by everybody. That is the background your son Ames has, and he wants to marry my daughter! God! I’ll do anything to prevent it. Anything!”

Caroline’s face became remote and closed. When Timothy had stopped speaking she waited for him to finish mopping his haggard face and his sweating hands. Then she said, “What can you do?”

Timothy was actually groaning. He put away his handkerchief.

“You can do nothing,” said Caroline calmly. “But I won’t overlook your insults. And your errors. You speak of Ames’ background. Let me enlighten you first about your own. You are proud that your mother was an Esmond. But who was your mother, really? The granddaughter of a kitchen slavey. A pretty slavey who entangled your great-grandfather. I understand she never learned to read and write and that even her daughter’s father was in doubt. You see, Timothy, I have done some investigation. Over all these years. For my own reasons.

“Your father, Timothy? George Winslow? His father was a physician who was indicted for malpractice — in other words, illegal operations. It was very fitting, wasn’t it, that your mother, with her spotted ancestry, should marry such a man? George Winslow’s father was not only a criminal and a clever dullard, but he left little money. My father supported your mother, your father’s widow, and she was his mistress. She bore my father an illegitimate daughter, your sister Melinda. Your sister Melinda, who is my sister also, has a much better ancestry, for she has mine.”

Timothy stood in absolute silence, staring at this woman who was blasting away his pride, destroying the pedestal on which he had stood all his life. He could not disbelieve her. There was such surety in her voice and manner, and such cold gloating, and such absolute power. “But who cares for ancestry?” said Caroline in a peculiar voice. “Certainly not I. However, you may be interested to know mine, which is much different from your own murky family’s.

“You’ve said that my father was a ‘cheap nobody’. You are quite wrong. His father was the famous American painter, David Ames.”

“I don’t believe it!” cried Timothy.

“You are perfectly free not to believe it,” said Caroline. “I have many of his paintings upstairs in my private gallery. And what was David Ames’ ancestry? His father was the youngest son of a British peer. I have the full genealogy. And who was my grandmother? A Hollingshead of England, a family of poets, historians, teachers, philosophers, and nobility. One of her family is buried in Westminster Abbey. A very old family.

“If anyone should object to a marriage on the plea of ancestry, I should be the one.”

She stood up. “If you insult me much more, Timothy, I will supply the press with your family history. How your friends in Boston will laugh.”