A Prologue To Love (18 page)

Now Caroline was utterly baffled. The wide openness of her eyes and innocent face were turned to him, trying to understand.

“For instance,” he said, watching her, “this freighter, while carrying cargo, also carries much more precious merchandise. The rooms on this deck are used exclusively for passengers who wish to leave their respective countries for a time, or for life, and who must do it without delay, without clearances, without public notice. The
Queen Ann
has carried bankers, princes, merchant chiefs, great industrialists, noblemen of many nations, even a petty king occasionally, and their ladies, to countries far from their own. The last occupant was a jewel merchant with a large personal cargo. The price of their passage is paid to me. I find it very lucrative.”

Caroline, still looking at him with that calm innocence, was silent. He waited. He let her think. Then all at once she dropped her eyes and stared at her purse.

“I see you understand,” said John.

“I understand,” she said.

“But there is something else you do not understand,” he said. “Great fortunes, immense fortunes, are rarely made honestly, and certainly not very fast. It was not my intention to start a dynasty slowly and carefully. And legitimately. That would have taken too long for my purposes. Besides, what is ‘legitimately’? Some of the mightiest fortunes in America, now honored and scraped to reverently, were made in a fashion similar to mine. The Delanos, for instance, made their fortune through opium, the Astors through their exploitation of the Indians and their furs, the Vanderbilts through their ruthless manipulation of railroads and stock market. Yet who despises them? Presidents and kings are delighted to entertain them, and as delighted to be entertained in turn. One of the really tremendous fortunes in America was made by gun-running to the South during the war; another, equally tremendous, was made by blackbirding, the running of naked black savages from Africa to America in spite of intricate and punitive laws. The heirs of all these have married into some of Europe’s noblest families; their children are now aristocrats. Their marriages and their deaths and their births make notable headlines in the newspapers.

“Murder of the helpless, ruin of the weak, theft, exploitation and despair and death have attended the making of these fortunes for a few. Not to mention, of course, the subornation of politicians, princes, and statesmen, who profited by glancing the other way or by quietly assisting.

“Yet who cares? Who denounces? Only last month the daughter of one of these men, who had been admitted to the most elegant schools in the world and whose debut cost countless thousands of dollars, was married to a British duke, and all the world applauded, and the newspapers went mad in their ecstasies and their stories of ‘the little duchess’, and the very exploited mobs themselves became delirious with joy, though it was on their own suffering bodies that the fortune had been made.

“Caroline, there is only one crime which the world will not forgive, and that is poverty. And long ago, as I told you, I was determined never again to commit that unpardonable crime.”

All the color had left Caroline’s face. Only her golden eyes stood in that face, wide and staring and mute. John stood up and began to pace about the room, his head bent, his hands in the pockets of his striped trousers, his long black coat hanging from his lean shoulders.

“The penalty of failure, honesty, and weakness is ignominy, degradation, and obscurity, as well as hunger and despair. Did I make this world? No. But I met it on its own terms. Money, or your life. The prattle of clergymen and philosophers does not change these things. It was always so. It will always be so. Laws may be passed in the future, as they’ve been passed in the past, to restrain the immutable law of the world, to change it, to modify it. These will never succeed. The giants will always ignore punitive and restraining laws; laws were not made for giants, but only for pygmies. You see, the giants can buy anyone, anywhere, or if they can’t buy them they can destroy them. Revolutions have been instigated against princes who defied the giants and tried to protect the weak; Presidents have gone down under shameful accusations when they opposed the giants. Calumny can be bought and used as a weapon. The politician, backed by the giants, will always win elections. For to whom do the people really listen? They listen to the man or the organization with cash. You see, there is no virtue in the people, either. They are just as hungry and as ruthless and as terrible as their masters.”

Like jetsam and flotsam, broken phrases from the Bible rose to the surface of Caroline’s mind. The virtue embedded in her character, the simplicity which was part of her nature, the honor which was her very spirit was outraged, terrified, and sickened. A passionate revolt stirred her, and a loathing, not for her father, but for the world which had made him what he was. He had stopped before her now and was looking down at her still and stricken face and averted eyes.

“Well, Caroline?” he asked with gentleness.

“I think,” she muttered, “that I’d like a drink of water.”

He pursed his lips. “I think a little brandy would be best,” he said. He pulled a bell rope. Caroline did not move; she was staring at her shoes, a large figure as motionless as stone. She was not even aware of the entrance of the young man with a silver tray holding brandy and wine bottles and crystal glasses. When a glass, very slender and thin and filled with a golden liquid, appeared before her eyes, she started. She made a slight gesture of repugnance and rejection, but her father’s hand remained insistently before her. She could see its long white firmness, the signet ring on the finger, the tight knuckles and clean pale nails, as if in a glaring and hurting light. Then she took the glass.

“Drink it,” said John. “Slowly.”

She automatically put the glass to her lips and sipped. The stinging brandy touched her tongue. It reached her stomach. It lay there like a burning coal, and tears crept about her eyelids from the sensation. When she looked at her father he was sitting opposite again and slowly and morosely drinking.

“Papa,” she said, and coughed.

“Yes, Caroline.”

“Papa,” said Caroline, and her voice shook. “I know — knew — there were bad and wicked people in the world. I’ve read about them in history. But I always thought they were — strange. Unusual. I thought they didn’t resemble — all the rest of us. I thought — conscience — I thought even the bad people had a conscience and that at times they were ashamed, or frightened, or disgusted with themselves.” She stopped and looked at him despairingly.

John raised his eyebrows and sipped a little. “Conscience?” he repeated. “What a child you are, Caroline. Man is an animal, Caroline; he is different from the other animals because he has intelligence, which makes him all the worse because it gives him a larger outlet for his savagery, his terribleness. I know hundreds, perhaps thousands, of men who have no more conscience than a tree or a stone. Are they unhappy, or do they accuse themselves? No. Not at all. They are the happiest, most contented, most satisfied, and most serene people in the world. They enjoy living, and they live, not merely exist. Many of them are absolutely charming. I believe even the Bible says that the children of darkness are wiser in their generation than the children of light. As for those with a conscience — Caroline, they are the most miserable of people. They are the failures, the unhappy, the incomplete, the despised of their families and their neighbors. They die, as it has been said, unwept, unhonored, and unsung. Very few even attend their funerals. I don’t think there are many of them, anywhere, so they aren’t a problem. Caroline, if you are thinking of religion, I will tell you this. One of the worst scoundrels I have ever known, who had caused the deaths of scores of men while he was getting his fortune, died only a month ago in New York. It was almost impossible to reach the church where the funeral was being held. I had to leave my carriage several streets away and proceed on foot, though the police were out in platoons to keep order, riding on their horses, swinging their clubs against the heads of the urgent but reverent mob, and whistling all over the place.

“All wheel traffic was halted several streets in a square around that church. Thousands of shabby people filled pavement and street like trees, men and women and children. They surged like waves about the church, breaking under the onslaughts of the police so that dignitaries from Washington could climb the steps, and statesmen and giant fellow thieves and ambassadors from a dozen powerful nations. Even the President was there, flanked by senators and generals. Flags hung at half mast all over the city. The big church was like a flower garden and stuffed to the walls with men and women who had come to do that scoundrel and murderer the last honor and obeisance. The choir thundered and wept. The clergymen — and there were five of them — knelt before the altar and prayed for that man’s soul, and women pressed handkerchiefs to their eyes.

“It was as if a great and mighty and heroic king had died, and not a giant thief from the gutters of Pittsburgh, a murderer and a liar, a suborner of statesmen and rulers, a man who had helped to make a whole nation, China, desolate and opium-ridden, among many other crimes. Yet one had the feeling that the very seraphim were present in that church where the cross hung over the bronze and gilt coffin in which that man lay in state.”

Caroline moistened lips that felt heavy. “Perhaps,” she said in a very faint voice, “he tried to do something good before he died. Charity?”

“Not a penny. His fortune went to his sons and their families, and they were even more rapacious, if possible, than he was. He had left nothing to servants who had worn out their lives in their long service to him.”

John looked broodingly at his glass. “I knew him well. He was a devil. And the very happiest of men. He lived to be very old and enjoyed every minute of his life. He had thousands of devoted friends.”

Caroline felt as though she were hearing the most monstrous and most insane of blasphemies.

“But why, Papa? Why all this for him?”

“Because he had money. Because he had the enormous power which only money can give. And that is all the people ever worshiped. Christianity is over eighteen hundred years old. It has never been able to remove the people’s true god from them, nor cast out the devils who serve it, nor throw down the temples which house it. The people are responsible for their satans.

“You’ve seen the men on my docks and on my ships. There isn’t one there who wouldn’t lay down his life for me and who wouldn’t thank me for the honor. Yet if I should suddenly lose all I have there isn’t a man there who wouldn’t crush my skull with his club.”

Yes, thought Caroline. All the Alecks everywhere. They had made her father what he was. They, and not their masters, were the true devils. They deserved their demons. It was the people of England, she remembered, who had loved their horrible king, Henry VIII, and his enormities against them, and his crimes and his murders, and his executions of his wives. He had been Good King Hal to them, this monster, this vile creature. They had even adored Cromwell, who had brought drab dismalness and terror to them and who had had them whipped in their very streets and thrown into prison. History abounded with the adored demons whose tombs were now shrines.

“Are you ill?” asked John with sincere anxiety. “Poor girl. I hope I haven’t frightened you.”

“I do feel a little sick,” murmured Caroline.

“I think you’ve had enough for today,” said John.

“What have you done to Caroline?” Cynthia asked John that night. Her gray eyes stared at him inimically.

“Don’t be a fool, Cynthia,” he said. “I did nothing but take her down to my docks.”

“And that is why she didn’t come down to dinner and why she lies like a deaf-mute on her bed. Is that it, John?”

“Perhaps,” he answered. “I think she is just a little tired.”

“Don’t touch me,” said Cynthia. “I think I am a little tired, myself.”

A year later on the last night she was ever to spend in Cynthia Winslow’s house, Caroline was called into her aunt’s sitting room. She came with sullen reluctance, and sat down in her usual fashion on the edge of a little chair while Cynthia half lay on her chaise longue in a drift of white silk and lace.

“Caroline,” said Cynthia, “you are now going home to Lyndon and to Lyme; you’ve left Miss Stockington’s school forever. You are my sister’s child, my dear Ann’s girl, the daughter of my twin. You don’t know what it is to be a twin; a person’s twin is her other self and not apart from her as with just another sister. So, in a way, you are also my daughter.”

Caroline did not reply. Cynthia took up her silver brush and began to brush her long loose hair. Then she flung the brush from her with a crash and sat up. “Caroline! I wish you wouldn’t sit there like a lump and just stare down at your hands. I used to think you were fond of me until just a short time ago. No matter. But you must listen to me. It’s very important.”

“What is it?” muttered Caroline. She could never meet her aunt’s eyes any longer without blushing and feeling hot and hating.

Cynthia studied her with despair. “Caroline, I must talk to you. You’ve been seeing a lot of your father this year. He has been taking you about; he has been talking to you. And each time when you’ve come home you’ve been ill and white, and you look like death. I know your father. I knew him before you did and before he married my sister. I have a great deal of respect for him; he’s a man, which is much more than you can say of many men these days; I know all about men.”

“You should,” Caroline muttered.

Cynthia paused and frowned. “What did you say?”

But Caroline was silent. Cynthia rolled up her eyes and pressed her lips together for a few moments. “Though your father hasn’t told me, I have some pretty shrewd ideas of what he has been teaching you. He has a distorted view of life, and no doubt he has reasons to have that view which seem valid to him. He trusts no one; he dislikes almost everybody; he hates too much. I am not going to be a bonbon and say he is entirely wrong. I know what the world is. But it is not exclusively filled with liars, thieves, scoundrels, murderers, vipers, ingrates, slanderers, and brutes. Not every man and woman is detestable and loathsome; not everybody is spiritually diseased and cruel and merciless. And there are some who are so good that it is a joy to be with them and listen to their voices. They’re rare, but they do exist. In a larger measure than your father suspects. I’ve met them. My sister, your mother, was one. I had an aunt and an uncle who became Romans, one a nun, the other a priest, and they went away on foreign missions and died of awful diseases, trying to help the unfortunate in other lands. Just to be in their presence was to feel holiness. I’ve met devoted people all over the world who spoke nothing but truth and goodness. I’ve known heroes who would betray no one, not even a dog. Some of the most blessed people I’ve known had no money; some had a great deal. It is your father’s misfortune that he will not see these people or, if he sees them, he does not recognize them.”

Caroline was outraged. She had heard nothing beyond Cynthia’s criticism of her father. Her cheeks burned and her eyes came up to meet her aunt’s with absolute ferocity. She jumped to her feet and cried out: “How dare you say such things of my father? You, you especially!”

Cynthia got up slowly and moved a step or two closer to the girl.

“Caroline,” said Cynthia. “Caroline, what is it?”

But Caroline swung heavily about and ran from the room. When she reached her own room she sat down on the edge of her bed and beat the pillows fiercely with her fists and said over and over, aloud and passionately, “I hate her! Oh, how I hate her!”

Caroline Ames sat on the boulder on the wet black shingle, where she had sat for so many summer mornings and days and evenings. The vast stone-colored Atlantic stretched before her, heaving sluggishly, and the pale opaline sky of pre-dawn sloped down to mingle with it. A cold salt wind gushed from the water and pressed like an invisible wall against the girl’s chilled body. She shivered and pulled Beth’s thick gray shawl over her shoulders and stared at the east, only half seeing. She listened vaguely to the dull lap and gigantic breath of the ocean. Now the opaline sky brightened far over the water, flushed into delicate pearl and rose and clear green, and long streamers of it touched the farthest waves so that they quickened into color. Then a golden crescent of light lifted over the rim of the ocean, grew larger, more brilliant, and the sun strode over the sea toward the western land, and all about him pennants and banners of a hundred hues heralded him.

Caroline did not know why she cried, why she always cried at seeing this ever-changing victorious march of the dawn sun over the water, and why she was always so stunningly moved. She fumbled for her handkerchief and found none in the pocket of her brown cotton frock. She wiped away the tears with the backs of her hands, childishly. It was foolish, she thought, to feel such sorrow, such yearning, and such passion at the sight of a phenomenon that had occurred every morning through the ages and would occur monotonously for ages more. But she continued to cry even while the shingle, black and wet, began to glimmer with pink and blue and heliotrope all about her, and the wind warmed and sea gulls chattered and shrilled and caught all that color on their wings and skimmed over the surging water.

“Caroline,” said a man’s voice near her, and she started, then turned red with embarrassment. She did not turn. She knew that Tom Sheldon was here; her hands tightened together in her lap and she did not answer. She felt him move closer until he was at her shoulder.

“You’ve been here over a week, and I haven’t seen you,” said Tom. “And so I thought you might come here in the early morning, and so I came.”

Caroline was silent, but something in her leaned with a fierce and tender eagerness toward him, like thirst and hunger combined. He stood there; she could see, out of the corner of her eye, the height and strength of his tall body, his rough brown shirt and workman’s trousers, his tanned arms bare to his elbows, his big worn boots.

“Didn’t you want to see me?” asked Tom.

“Yes, yes,” she murmured. The last tears were icy on her cheeks. She turned to him now. He smiled down at her gravely. She had not seen him for a year, and her first thought was that he looked much older and that he was no longer a youth but a man of nearly twenty-one and that she loved him. Simply, like a very tired child, she drooped her head sideways and rested it against his upper arm and tried to keep from crying again. “Oh, Tom,” she said.

He put his arm about her shoulders and held her to him tightly, and she said again, “Oh, Tom.”

He kissed the top of her head, and then her forehead, and for the first time she turned her lips up to him and very gently he gave her the first kiss of love. She felt the kiss not only on her mouth but in her heart, and then through all her young body, and now she could not prevent sobbing.

“Hush, dear,” said Tom, but he let her cry as she clung to him, her arms tight about his waist, her head on his chest. “Poor little Carrie. What’s wrong? You wouldn’t cry like this if there wasn’t something terribly wrong. Here, let me wipe your face and your poor eyes.” He pulled out a dark blue coarse handkerchief and lovingly patted her cheeks and her eyes, and she looked at him as if she could not get enough of seeing. She moved to give him room on the boulder, and he rested one buttock on the stone, and their arms clutched each other. His strong black hair ruffled in the wind, his blue eyes smiled, his browned face was all planes and angles, and his dimpled chin was hard and firm. A deep peace came to Caroline; she dropped her head on his shoulder and held off the pain which she felt climbing in her.

They watched the sea and the sky and the sun. Behind them, in the old beaten house and behind a discreet old curtain, Beth Knowles watched them and smiled and cried a little herself. She had done the right thing to tell Tom in the village yesterday when he could find Caroline. Thank heavens, she thought,
he
wasn’t here; in a little she would call the children to come in and have a hearty breakfast of flapjacks and pork sausage and syrup and good hot coffee, and again there would be young voices in this dreadful house, and young laughter. Poor Carrie. How wretched she had been this past week, how lonely, how sad, how desolate, peeping through the window at sundown at Tom as he restlessly strolled up and down the shingle, waiting for her. Caroline no longer ‘talked’ to Beth; her remarks were few, her answers monosyllables, her face heavy and sullen, her mouth sulky, her eyes always shifting away. She spent most of the time in her room with endless books and went out only at dawn and at night, walking in loneliness up and down as Tom walked. What had he done to Carrie, that horrible monster, that fiend of a man? Carrie had been changing for a long time, but the change was more awful and more definite now, as if Carrie had been covered invincibly with stone.

“Tell me all about it,” said Tom to Caroline, his arms warm and protecting about her.

But I can’t tell you, thought Caroline desolately. How can I tell you that among so many other things my father is a smuggler, that he corrupts government tariff officials so that they don’t see what his ships are bringing in, that all his enterprises are built on people’s greed and hatred for each other, whether it is gun-running or opium or money manipulations or gaining control of them so that they are either ruined or pay him a huge profit, and that there isn’t a nation anywhere that doesn’t know my father or a government that doesn’t try to destroy him or court him, and that he knows generals and senators and kings and statesmen who help him at a price, and that he buys so many of them? Tom, you wouldn’t understand that my father could not be what he is unless others wanted his services or his money or his help. They corrupted him; he didn’t corrupt them. He only supplies what they want — for a profit.

“Don’t cry again, dear,” said Tom, and again mopped with clumsy love at her cheeks and eyes. “Not unless you tell me what’s the matter.”

Caroline thought of the promise she had made her father a year ago, and she cringed. She pushed aside the dabbing handkerchief, lifted her head from Tom’s shoulder, and dropped it on her chest. The wind stirred little wisps of her fine black hair about her cheeks and forehead. There were grayish shadows under her eyes and under her cheekbones. Tom looked at her with concern. “There’s something really wrong, isn’t there, Carrie?” he asked sternly. “And that’s why you’ve kept away from me.”

“No, nol” she exclaimed, lifting her head but averting it from him. “There’s nothing wrong. I’m not a child any more, Tom. I have things to think about.”

“Am I one of them, Carrie?” he asked in a softened voice. “Please tell me I am.”

She waited, then nodded.

“I see,” said Tom, and he sighed. “Well, that doesn’t matter. Just as long as I know you love me. And you do.”

Caroline said, “How are you and your father doing, Tom?” Her voice was dull and low. Tom looked at her with sharpness. Then he made himself smile and speak with enthusiasm.

“Oh, fine. Wonderful. We have orders for six more houses this summer, Carrie. We’re even hiring carpenters and bricklayers from Boston. All these new summer houses between here and the village. We’ve bought up most of the ocean-front land, and I can tell you they’ll bring a big price when the houses are built. Big for the kind of people who buy them. They’re people from all around who couldn’t afford the sort of houses real rich people buy, like at Newport and Marblehead, but they’re people who would like to have a place away from Boston for their wives and children when it’s hot in the city. We’re even thinking of buying land at Cape Cod; I’m sure there’s a future there for the houses we build, good sound summer houses, nicely designed and comfortable and airy, with plank floors and cool plastered walls, and porches and little gardens behind, and a little beach in front or on a bluff looking out to sea. America’s changing, thank God. Now we have a lot of small merchants and businessmen and manufacturers with nice shops or small factories of their own, and they’re thriving. There are a lot of people who don’t like industry. But what would they have, anyway? The old aristocratic society of great landowners and people who just worked the land for them and were paid practically nothing?

“Not,” said Tom, one arm dropping from Caroline, “that I like a lot of the mills and foundries and factories, full of poor Hungarians and Poles and Italians brought over by the boatload from Europe to live on compounds like cattle and eat and sleep and die behind the big wood-and-iron fences. And half starved; practically prisoners in this big land of the free! But we already have people in government raising howls about this contract labor. They’re talking in Washington about passing an alien contract labor law, and the big fellows can shout and curse and threaten, and we’ll have the law just the same. If not this year, then the next, or the next.”