A Prologue To Love (75 page)

“I am a busy woman, Higsby,” said Caroline with irritation, that morning. “You said you had something important to ask me today and that is why I let you come. Now you ask me for money.”

Then she said sourly, “I’ve told you before. This war was planned long ago; I heard of it when I was a young girl. So do you think Wilson can keep us out? No.”

“No,” said Higsby. “I quite agree, however, that this war and the others which will follow it have a purpose beyond the knowledge of most people. But at least we can disseminate information so that even if America is embroiled there will be a large body of the population which will be informed, and in turn they will inform their children and their grandchildren, and America will know the real enemy, the old ancient reactionary enemy which is as old as man himself. Despotism. All-powerful centralized government. Rule by men and not by law. Did you think America is, and will be, immune from the efforts of evil men to establish a despotism here?”

“No. We’re no more immune than any other nation,” said Caroline with contempt. “We’ll fall, just as Rome fell and other despotisms. So why should I waste my money on a lost cause to ‘inform the people’? Besides, even despots respect money and power. I’ll have no difficulty.” And she gave Higsby a dark, cold smile.

“You don’t care what happens to your country, Caroline?”

“Not particularly. Why should I? When a nation starts declining it never stops and returns. But money is money everywhere.”

“And so are human lives and souls, Caroline.” It was dank in this decaying and sifting room, though the hot late-summer sun simmered outside. Mr. Chalmers leaned toward Caroline pleadingly. “Is your money more important, Caroline, than the lives and freedom of millions of innocent people?”

“Certainly,” said Caroline. “Don’t be a fool, Higsby. You’re entirely too moral for me, I’m afraid. Don’t you remember what Macaulay said about his own countrymen? ‘We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the public in one of its periodic fits of morality’.”

“And I,” said Mr. Chalmers, “know no spectacle so tragic as any nation which does not have ‘periodic fits of morality’. That nation is already dead.” He paused. “Your fellow Americans — ”

“I’ve told you, they’re nothing to me!” exclaimed Caroline. “Why should they be?”

“If you don’t know by instinct and by emotion and affection, then I can’t convince you,” said Higsby, and he pulled his fat thighs over the torn fabric of his chair and stood up. Caroline immediately jerked the bell rope, and when her slatternly maid sullenly appeared at the doorway Caroline ordered her to call a hack for Mr. Chalmers.

Higsby said, “When you see the despair, bankruptcy and ruin and slavery in this country, Caroline, you’ll regret you didn’t help us.”

“I doubt it,” said Caroline, and left the room with her lumbering stride. She did not hear Mr. Chalmers go; she had forgotten him by the time she opened her study door. She made her usual late-morning calls to her brokers in New York, called her New York bank and her Boston office. Then suddenly she was aware of the intense silence about her. For the first time it was an intrusion, not a protection. She looked about her uneasily. She glanced through the large uncurtained window at the blue and shimmering ocean. There was no hint of a storm. Nevertheless, she had the impression that something calamitous was brewing. “Nonsense,” she said aloud, “it’s just that foolish Higsby and his silly prophecies. What or who can harm me, with my money and my power?”

She ponderously leaned back in her chair and contemplated her money and power. She would be safe. But the uneasiness persisted. Exasperated, she threw down her pen and went to her gallery, where there was always peace and understanding for her, and quiet.

She had hung Mimi Bothwell’s little painting of the girl on the boulder, with the bright red ribbon in her hair, in a conspicuous spot. But she avoided looking at it now. She could not remove it, and still she would not look at it since the day her son John had married Mimi. She had offered John money not to marry the girl and had been confused by his refusal. “You don’t seem to understand that I want Mimi,” he had said smilingly.

“You mean,” said Caroline, “the Bothwell money, don’t you?”

She had been surprised when John did not answer immediately. He had finally said, “Partly, but not completely. I should have wanted to marry Mimi without the money.”

Caroline had not believed that. “Again, I warn you that if you marry her there’ll be nothing for you. And nothing for your children.”

That had caused John intense anger and dismay. “What the hell will you do with your money? Leave it to Ames’ and Amy’s brats entirely?”

“Perhaps.” She thought she had reached him. Certainly he was staring at her murderously. But he stood up at last and said, “Well, so that’s it. I am still going to marry Mimi.”

Caroline had received a wedding invitation from Melinda and had thrown it into the fire. She sent no gift. She had not seen either John or Mimi since that cold bright day in March when they had been married in the Bothwell house in Boston. The girl, Caroline said to herself, deserved John, apparently. But she had never recovered from the grief of the marriage. It was as if Mimi, too, were buried on the hill with Elizabeth. There had even been one frightening occasion when Caroline, visiting Elizabeth’s grave, had actually looked for Mimi’s. The stunning realization that she had been so looking had upset Caroline for days and had given her another fear, this time for herself. In consequence she had visited a physician in Boston. What had the fool said? “It is your heart, Mrs. Sheldon. It is badly overstrained; I don’t want to be too technical. There are indications of stresses. At your age — ”

“Nonsense,” said Caroline. “I have no physical stresses and never have had. What are you going to charge me for this concoction of yours?” And she looked distastefully at the bottle of digitalis in her hand. “Doctors always overcharge those they think are rich.”

The young doctor had smiled wryly. “Suppose you give a donation to the Sisters of Charity Hospital in the city,” he said.

The digitalis had helped her very much. Therefore, she considered herself cured of whatever had ailed her. She had not feared for her heart; she had feared for her mind. She could feel a new anger now. Mimi had betrayed her and her love. “Everyone is alike at the last,” she would say to the self-portrait of her grandfather. “I thought Mimi was different. But I was wrong.”

So she did not look at Mimi’s little painting which so resembled her young self and she could not take it down. She merely avoided glancing at it. Mimi was no part of her life any longer; where the girl had lived in Caroline there was now a huge sick place. Cynthia, Melinda, Mimi; they had all injured her to a most terrible extent. She would never forgive any of them. As for John, she had removed him neatly from her consciousness as if he had never existed; it had been no trouble at all for her.

She talked to her grandfather. “I don’t know why I feel calamity in the air,” she said to him. “Of course, at my age, it is expected that I be nervous at times. Occasionally melancholy. But not morbid, I trust! Was it peaceful when you were alive? Of course not.

“My father, your son, used to say that men were devils. So there was no peace, ever, in this world. Was there?”

The portrait looked into her eyes, and the gentle smile appeared alive. “Except,” said Caroline astonishingly, “in some people’s souls.”

She considered her own remark, and a vague and enormous distress came to her. She said, “Now that was a foolish remark, wasn’t it?”

She looked into her grandfather’s eyes. “Were you at peace?” she demanded. The calm and tender face smiled at her. She stepped back and rubbed her right cheek. She muttered, “Yes. Yes, you were. In spite of everything.”

She was so overcome that she had to sit down in the one chair in the gallery. Her whole body felt heavy and old and overpoweringly tired. Had she forgotten to take her last dose of medicine? No, she had taken it at ten o’clock. But she could feel a dull loud thumping in her chest. “I’ve said everything to you that I possibly could,” she said. “I’ve told you everything. You know all about me. But now there seems to be so much that I haven’t told you, though I don’t know what it is. Do you know?”

It was absurd, of course, to believe that someone living was in the gallery with her and that his face was reflected in the portrait. “What?” muttered Caroline. She pushed herself to her feet, then caught the back of the chair. A doomful atmosphere filled the sunny room in spite of the fresh sea wind that gushed through the window. Caroline swung her white head slowly and ponderously from side to side, trying to breathe through a sensation of smothering. “I’m all alone,” she muttered. “I always wanted to be alone, except for Beth and my father. And Tom.”

She looked at the portrait. “Where are they?” she said. “Where are you? And — Oh, God! Where am I?” She forced herself, wavering step by step, to her grandfather’s paintings. She looked at the tower, at the church and the fearful sky. And finally she looked at the painting of the blindfolded man wandering among the gigantic boulders against the apocalyptic mountains. She leaned toward it, pressing her hands against her big breast. Who was that man? Surely she recognized the half-hidden face! What was his name? His groping hands, his staggering blind step, his shrouded eyes — they were all familiar. Where had she seen him? He had walked like that, fumbling in self-willed darkness. Looking, searching. For what?

“I knew you!” Caroline shouted. “You’re as familiar to me as myself! Why didn’t I see that before?” She appealed to her grandfather’s portrait. “You knew him too! Tell me! You see, I must know. It’s terribly important for me to know, and I don’t know why.”

The vague distress became terrible now. She had only to listen to it. “No, no!” she cried, retreating. “Don’t tell me! I mustn’t know! If I do — if I do — ”

She put her hands over her face. “I’ll die if I know,” she said through her fingers. “You must never tell me. All my reason for living will be gone then.”

Heavily but rapidly she ran to the door. Then she stopped and looked back over her shoulder, and her eyes struck on Mimi’s painting of the hopeful young girl on the boulder looking eagerly to her left, waiting. “No,” said Caroline. “There was never anything to wait for. It was all a lie.” She thought of her children, and they were like cardboard lithographs to her, even Elizabeth. “A lie,” she repeated; a great pain struck her heart and she gasped under it. But she pulled open the door, stepped into the hall, and locked the door behind her. She did not know that tears were pouring down her cheeks; the slatternly maid, suddenly materializing in the dusk of the dusty hall, saw them and stared curiously.

“What do you want?” said Caroline.

The girl peered at the evidences of unconscious weeping. She licked her lips. “Why, there’s a big red autermobil at the gate. Mrs. John Sheldon, and she’s got to see you.”

“Send her away,” said Caroline with immediate harshness. The girl nodded. Then Caroline put up her hand. “Wait.” She had to lean against the wall. She was so weak suddenly, so prostrated. Her head fell on her chest. No, she thought, I don’t want to see her. I told her never to come here again. It will just make everything far worse for me. “Mary!” she said aloud. She moved away from the wall and went downstairs. She could not move fast enough; her hand slipped on the greasy balustrade; her feet fumbled on each step; her black old skirts rustled behind her. She was in flight from the terror she had experienced in her gallery. “I must run, run,” she said, and the girl following her was tantalized with more curiosity. The old lady was crazy, but she paid good because she couldn’t get nobody to stay with her unless the pay was good. The folks in the village said a person’s life wasn’t safe in this house, but they didn’t know about the money. The girl saw Caroline run across the hall, and she said, “Ma’am, want me to go to the gates?”

Caroline did not answer. As she had run to Tom so long ago, so she ran now to Mimi Bothwell sitting in the big red automobile on the other side of the gates, the chauffeur standing at the door stiffly and watching Caroline’s lumbering rush toward them. There was only a mere hint of a gravel path through the sun-struck wilderness of wild and dying trees and shrubs and high grass between the walls; the decaying house loomed behind Caroline with an ominous glowering, its brick walls covered with a weed-like vine.

Mimi watched Caroline’s passage, and then she said, “I’ll get out now, please,” and the chauffeur opened the door and Mimi ran to the gate and clung to the rusting bars like a child. She called, “Aunt Caroline! Don’t run, don’t run. I’ll wait.” For there was something in Caroline’s running movements which frightened the girl. She was like a terrified old woman running, her black thick skirts fluttering about her, her face half blind in expression. “Oh, Aunt Caroline,” said Mimi, and wanted to cry. Then Caroline stood within touching distance, and the two looked at each other. Oh, my God, thought Mimi, she’s dying. She put her hand through the gate and held it out mutely to her aunt.

Caroline, panting, looked at the extended hand as if she did not know what it was. The sun lay on the strong white fingers, the smooth palm. The whole hand had a posture of love and strength and consolation. Caroline’s hand rose unsteadily; then, like a child, she took Mimi’s and held it, and the girl could feel the roughness and dryness of the hand so like her own. She felt the desperate clinging, the loneliness, the abandonment. “Dear Aunt Caroline,” said Mimi, and swallowed so that she would not burst into tears.

Caroline clung to the hand and blinked her eyes in the sunlight, old sunken yellowish eyes. She said, “The lock. It’s the lock.” She looked at Mimi’s pretty and sorrowful face, at the red lips that tried to smile and could only tremble, at the golden eyes shining with tears. “It’s the lock,” said Caroline in a far dull voice, as if explaining.

“Yes, dear,” said Mimi. The sea wind moved her cloud of dark hair.

“I must open the lock,” said Caroline.

“Of course,” said Mimi.

“So you can come in,” said Caroline in that anxious voice of explanation.

She needed both hands to open the lock, and the key was on a ring in the pocket of her frayed black dress. But she would not release Mimi’s hand. She held to life, to youth, to beauty, to herself, to the young Caroline Ames.

Mimi understood, in her sad and perceptive young mind. She held her aunt’s hand firmly. Then, to her relief, she saw the maid hovering avidly at the end of the path. “Come here, please,” she called. The girl came running, eager to see this extraordinary thing so she could gossip about it in the village. She stared at Mimi when she reached the gate; she stared at the clasped hands. Why, that was the funniest thing! She wanted to laugh out loud, the old woman clamping onto the hand of this young woman.

“Do you know where the key is?” Mimi said sharply.

“Why, sure, ma’am,” said the girl, inclining her head with sly derision at the silent and clutching Caroline, and speaking as if Caroline were not present. “She keeps the key on a big ring in her pocket. Right there.”

“Well, take it out and open the gate,” said Mimi in a voice that flogged the girl angrily. “What are you waiting for? Stop staring. Can’t you see my aunt is sick? Open the gate!”

The cold command in Mimi’s voice startled the girl into fast action. She thrust her hand into Caroline’s pocket and pulled out the clattering ring of keys. Gulls cried in the shining silence; the wild and dying brush rustled. Caroline still looked blindly at Mimi’s face. Then the maid snapped the lock open and stepped back. “You just got to push it now,” she said sullenly. Who did this girl, no older than herself, think she was, anyways, yelling at people like they were dogs or something? She, Maizie, was as good as anybody else, and she wasn’t going to take this ordering around like she was nobody at all. That’s what everybody said nowadays; you didn’t take orders if you’d a mind not to, not even from a rich somebody in a big shiny red autermobil with a fella in a silly uniform like a policeman.