A Prologue To Love (21 page)

John Ames had begun as a stock clerk in one of Norman Benchley Broome’s warehouses. Broome at that time practically controlled the auction business in New York. He also financed traders who sailed to far places for various commodities, such as copra, hemp from India, teak, tea from Ceylon and China, ivory from the Belgian Congo, sables, lambskins and squirrel furs from Russia, priceless shawls from Kashmir, silks from China, spices, velvets from Italy and France, carved alabaster from Spain, works of art from a dozen different ports, stolen from famous galleries, and a thousand other things avidly desired in Europe and America. John was in the accounting department of Broome and Company. Auctioneers; there had been three brothers then; Norman outlived his two younger brothers.

John’s initial salary had been five dollars for seventy-two hours’ work every week, and often on Sundays without extra pay when a special shipment was due to dock. He paid three dollars of that a week to his landlady in the Bowery for rent of a back room and two meals a day. He worked furiously and apparently without fatigue, not only because he hoped to earn more money, but because he had decided after two weeks that here lay the beginning of the fortune he was determined to have. Other clerks dropped out from sheer exhaustion; others found better situations; others were discharged upon a timid request for more money. John stayed on, making friends among superiors with his industry and willingness. Within four months he came to the attention of the eldest Mr. Broome. Mr. Norman then moved John to his own personal offices. “I trust you, my boy,” he had said. “And that’s more than I can say of even my own brothers. Remain with me and you’ll make your way.”

John remained. For several years, since he had been fourteen, he had learned not only to work in a superhuman fashion and under incredibly terrible conditions but also how to ingratiate himself with the powerful. They asked nothing, he had observed, but that a young man be polite, work all the hours possible without complaint or demands for higher wages, be absolutely loyal and always at hand, anxious to serve, and give all and ask nothing. Such a young man, they would say, had character. They highly approved of character in inferiors. If besides character they were also personable, well spoken, and appeared to have education, the approval became stronger and a personal interest was taken. But John had known. He possessed two hundred dollars, which he had earned and saved, and that was no small accomplishment, considering that in these years he had never earned more than eight dollars a week and had had to live on it. Quite casually one time he brought this to Mr. Broome’s notice after asking Mr. Broome, who was unusually expansive that day, what he would suggest as an investment. Mr. Broome was surprised, pleased, and full of approval. He himself had inherited an excellent name and exactly fifty dollars when his father had died full of integrity and debts, and what he had now he had earned in the way John had earned his first two hundred dollars. John, Mr. Broome decided, was the son he ought to have had. Moreover, the young devil had the appearance of a gentleman.

Good blood there, Mr. Broome had reflected, looking for the first time at the long and narrow hands which were serving him so well and so perfectly, at the narrow feet in worn but polished boots, at the clean if threadbare clothing and the precisely folded cravat. So he, Norman Benchley Broome, had been at John’s age, with two younger brothers to educate and a fortune to make. Indifferently, to disguise his interest and sudden affection for one so like his own young self, Mr. Broome had tentatively inquired as to John’s parentage. Only to Mr. Broome had John then confided that his father had been a promising young lawyer, a friend of Supreme Court Justice John Marshall, who had prophesied a seat on the Bench for him in the future, and that his mother had been a Hollingshead of Albany. Mr. Broome, who instinctively knew when a man was telling the truth, knew that John was telling it now, reluctantly and only because both of them knew it was necessary. He felt less uneasy about his interest in John now; it was never good to encourage the low-born too much, in spite of ability. John had birth and character too. Excellent.

He took John under his wing, with no increase in salary. But he did advise John to invest in Broome and Company, which John did at once. More and more often John was called into the old gentleman’s office, not only for discussions about the business, but for cautiously friendly talks about his future. In spite of himself, John began to feel some affection for this old patrician. He studied Mr. Broome’s manipulations. Mr. Broome had a seat on the Stock Exchange, and John learned quickly and well.

In time, Mr. Broome entrusted him with various missions dealing with the piratical traders with whom he did business and with the disposal of the merchandise. He was charmed with John’s knowledge and astuteness and passionate interest. He had, by now, increased John’s salary, without being requested, to twenty dollars a week, a large sum. He watched John narrowly after this for any signs of profligacy. But John continued to live and dress as frugally as ever and to save even more money, which he invested in Broome and Company and in some other enterprises upon which John had consulted his patron. When John was nearly thirty Mr. Broome had come to rely upon him implicitly and to put him ‘in the way of things’. “Make yourself ready, John,” the old man would say, “and fortune will find you.” By this time the two younger brothers had died, leaving sons and daughters the oldest Mr. Broome detested for their lavish habits and frivolity. He had bought back his father’s house, where he had been born; he had filled it with treasures.

When John was thirty-one his salary was the unbelievable amount of one hundred dollars a week and he had his desk in the pleasant room adjoining Mr. Broome’s office. His investments were growing rapidly. He was comparatively well off. He moved closer to Broome and Company, so that he could work longer hours, but he spent little if any more money than he had spent eight or more years ago. He was asked to dine at the Broome house at least twice a week. Maggie had become fond of him and praised him mightily to her ancient husband. She spoke to all her friends of ‘Norman’s boy, John Ames’, without the slightest jealousy or anxiety. She tried to find a wife suitable for him; that is, a girl with financial prospects. Mr. Broome’s best friend was Mr. Esmond of Boston, with whose father he had attended Harvard; the disparity in ages had meant nothing to the decrepit old aristocrat.

On one occasion Mr. Broome and his wife had been invited to the debut of Mr. Esmond’s daughters, Ann and Cynthia. Maggie had suspicions of aristocrats, especially when they were not multimillionaires, and she had declined. “Take Johnny Ames,” she had said jokingly. But Mr. Broome thought it an excellent idea and had taken John, and John had met the beautiful young Ann and had fallen in love with her at once. But he had to wait.

He did not have to wait too long. Mr. Broome died in his sleep one night. Maggie was forty-eight years old and one of the richest widows in the world. It was no surprise to her that John was made one of the executors of Mr. Broome’s estate, in conjunction with his firm of old family lawyers, and was appointed chairman of the Board of Broome and Company, received a salary of eight thousand dollars a year, investment advantages, a stipend of five thousand dollars a year as joint executor, and an outright legacy of one hundred thousand dollars from the estate of his late employer. He was a rich man. He married Ann Esmond and took over her fortune, and he was well on his way.

After consultation with Maggie Broome and after even longer consultation with the family lawyers, and with their consent and Maggie’s, John Ames liquidated fifty percent of the Broome holdings, invested them in sound stocks for Maggie, and so relieved her of any concern with the business. He managed the remaining interest and within a few years had built it up to power and position. (He now owned fifty-one percent of it.) John was extremely active in numerous other enterprises as well as the Broome interests at the time of his wife’s death and was regarded with respect and admiration by wealthy men twice his age. Five years ago he had gone into the importing-exporting business himself. If the manipulations he undertook and his personal business were highly suspect, it did not diminish the admiration and respect of his associates. He was a multimillionaire this day as he sat with his daughter and his old friend, Maggie Broome, in the Broome mansion.

The sun had long since set. The summer twilight had set in, gray and hot.

Both Maggie and John had talked to the girl, and she had listened soundlessly. Servants came in to light lamps, to murmur to their absorbed mistress, who waved them away impatiently.

She bellowed hoarsely to Caroline, “And the rascal has every penny he’s ever earned, damn him!” She beamed at John with open affection and admiration. “Why, he could have a dozen houses like this, on the Mediterranean, in London, Paris, Berlin, Budapest, Newport, just like I have! But not him; dear me, no, not Johnny-boy Ames! And it’ll all be yours one day, my girl, all yours! Lucky little bitch!”

Caroline flinched, but almost absent-mindedly. She had not missed a word of what to her was a touching saga. She wished she had known Mr. Broome. Without him, her father might never have succeeded. “Damn me, but the girl does have beautiful eyes, like yellow-brown velvet in the sun!” exclaimed Maggie. “And she almost smiled a couple of times, and it was real pretty, Johnny boy. Maybe you won’t have to buy her a husband after all.”

“Well, Caroline?” said John.

“I think it was very interesting,” murmured Caroline, speaking for the first time. (Oh, this frightful old woman! How could her father bear her even for a moment?)

“Interesting, she says!” shouted Maggie, thumping John hilariously on the shoulder. “Interesting, the silly minx says! Why, that’s like calling — What’s that damn big tomb in India, Johnny?”

“The Taj Mahal.”

“The Taj Mahal — calling it nice and pretty. Or maybe like calling that cursed big stone lion-thing in Egypt — ”

“The Sphinx.”

“The Sphinx-kind of sweet. Hell, but what can you expect of a mincing schoolgirl?” Maggie was disgusted.

“I meant,” Caroline said clearly and loudly, “that anything concerning my father is interesting to me.”

“Um,” said Maggie, cocking her head in the lamplight and studying Caroline narrowly. “Maybe the girl isn’t a dunce after all. Spirit. I love spirit; I had lots of it in my day; had to. And now, come to think of it, she’s a big girl, and there’s something about her that’s familiar. What d’you think it is, Johnny?”

“The scent of power,” said John.

“Could be. Yes, could be. Hope you’re right. After all, this girl’ll be working for me as you’ve worked for me, Johnny. Someday. Think she can do it?”

“I know she can,” said John, and gave Caroline one of his few smiles. She instantly felt a warm glow of joy and smiled in return.

A soft gong, which had already sounded twice, now sounded again. Maggie snorted and moved her bony shoulders restively. “Let ‘em pound!” she screamed in the direction of the hall where a servant hovered. “Who’s paying their damned wages, anyway, the scum?” Her voice dropped to a growl. “I don’t know what the world’s coming to these days. They cost me a fortune, all nine of them, and live like kings and queens at my expense, and are they grateful? No, they pound that goddamn thing in my ears when I’m not ready.”

She shouted at the hovering servant, “Bring more whiskey and soda! Bring more glasses! And shut up!” She turned to John. “God! I wish these were the slave-owning days! I’d teach them manners!”

Caroline never answered Tom Sheldon’s letters, though she cried over them and kept them until the ink was almost obliterated by her tears and the cheap paper blistered. She kept them to the end of her life.

He had written her only a few days ago and had given his letter to be enclosed with one of Beth’s.

I’ll wait for you, Carrie, forever. No matter how long, I’ll wait. There will never be any other girl for me but you. Now you’re gone, I walk in front of the house every morning and at sunset, after I’ve quit working, and I pretend you’re walking with me and talking to me. Why, I can even hear your voice and the way you laugh and see the sunset in your eyes.

Don’t forget me, Carrie. Don’t forget me, my darling. I’m here. I’m waiting.

Little love, little darling, thought Timothy Winslow as he watched his adopted sister seriously cultivate about the rosebushes of Cynthia’s long and narrow garden. The girl’s pale yellow hair streamed in ripples and waves down her back, but the smooth locks were tightly controlled about her head with a blue ribbon. She sat on her heels, her blue dimity frock spread all about her and protected by a ruffled white apron; her hands were gloved. But she did not work daintily; she had a thoroughness and a disciplined manner of working which alone would have commended her to the diligent Timothy. The warm June sky was already deepening in tint as the sun sloped westward. Cynthia’s garden, like herself, was trim and formal in appearance, with curving graveled paths among ornamental trees and shrubs, and flower beds that were always in bloom and always changeful in color and always sharply defined and neat. It was not a large garden; there were many much larger on Beacon Street and more elaborate. But none had more charm and grace.

Timothy sat in the shade of a tree on a white bench, long and precise in his black broadcloth, his fair head bare. He watched Melinda. She was not a chatterer; what she undertook, she did earnestly and gave all her efforts to it. She moved about easily in her squatting position, merely shifting her pretty feet in their black slippers, her legs protected by long white silk stockings. She was not quite thirteen, but her profile, grave and thoughtful, the posture of her head, and the warm hints in her slender body told of approaching womanhood.

“Aren’t you tired, Melinda?” he asked. He was pale and weary, for he had just been graduated from the Harvard Law School, where he had worked with a quiet and controlled intensity and so had earned a number of honors and the respect if not the liking of his teachers and fellow students. In two weeks he was to join the staff of John Ames’ lawyers in New York — Tandy, Harkness and Swift — as a junior law clerk. His salary was to be eighteen dollars a week and he intended to live on it alone, for since childhood he had known why John Ames had settled a trust fund on his mother. He did not castigate his mother in his mind for a single instant; having no real moral values of his own, though sparing in his own private life, he thought the whole arrangement rather clever of her. Coldly analytical of everyone, and especially of himself, he had not yet reached a satisfactory conclusion as to why he would no longer take money from his mother. Certainly there were no virtuous scruples attached, he would think.

He loved no one but Melinda, his adopted sister. Two years ago, when he was twenty-one, he had decided that he would marry her someday. She would be eighteen in a little less than six years. In the meantime he would begin his delicate and careful courtship. He knew she loved him also, in her childish fashion. He resented it when he heard others remark on Melinda’s resemblance to Cynthia. He saw no resemblance at all, except perhaps for the coloring. The girl was grave, serious, and full of tenderness for everything, and her gray eyes were deep and thoughtful. To Timothy Winslow she was the most beautiful, most precious, and most delightful creature in all the world. He loved her because she possessed what he lacked.

It had enraged him for years that John Ames dearly loved Melinda also. He felt that in some way this love violated the young girl. But he kept his rage to himself and never expressed it. No one had told him, but he felt sure that John had provided very generously for this child in his will. He had one fierce hope: that John Ames would die before Melinda was eighteen and before John became aware of the attachment between Timothy and Melinda. Otherwise he might change his codicil. There was no valid reason that John should dissent to his well-born, diligent, and ambitious nephew’s marrying a girl without a name of her own, but still Timothy’s exquisitely acute and keen mind suspected that John would indeed object.

Another obstacle was in the way: Cynthia, herself, who did not like her son even if she did love him maternally and was proud of him.

Melinda looked up from the roses and smiled. Then she took a pair of scissors and cut a white rosebud and ran to him with it across the grass. Her shadow flew behind her, elongated. It was the shadow of the woman she would be, graceful and flowing. She knelt on the bench beside Timothy, kissed his cheek shyly, then pushed the stem of the rosebud into his buttonhole. “There,” she said in her sweet, clear voice, “that is all you needed.”

Timothy put his arm about her slender waist, and his fingers stroked her back. “Needed, in what way?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said, and leaned back contentedly in the curve of his arm. “But it does seem to complete you, somehow.” She bent her head to sniff at the rosebud, and he looked down at the smoothness of it and the tender way the gilt hairs glimmered on her temples. She had a soft and immaculate profile, firm and pure. She would be an exceedingly lovely woman, Timothy thought with detachment. But he loved what she was more than her appearance. His arm tightened about her, and she knelt upright to examine his face seriously.

“Is there something the matter, Tim?” she asked. She was the only one who used the diminutive form.

“No, why should there be? I was just enjoying watching you dig around those silly roses.”

“They’re not silly,” said Melinda reprovingly. “They’re beautiful. They have the most wonderful odor.”

He playfully rubbed his knuckles against a soft cheek colored like a tea-rose. “You’re much prettier,” he said. “And you smell nicer.”

She had an endearing chuckle. “Oh, you! You always say good things to me,” she said in her pretty child’s voice. “You’re a flatterer, as Mama would say.”

“I never flatter anyone,” replied Timothy with absolute truth. “Puss, will you miss me when I’m in New York?”

“I always miss you,” she answered. They looked into each other’s eyes. The shadow of the future woman was in Melinda’s, with no coquetry. “After all, you’re my brother, and I do love you so much, Tim.”

Timothy frowned a little. “I’m not really your brother, you know, Melly.” He watched her closely.

“No, not really. But more than other people are brother and sister.”

“What do you mean by that?” asked Timothy.

The child shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know! I suppose it’s because you never tease me the way other boys tease their sisters, and never ridicule me the way they do, and never want me to leave the room. Other girls’ brothers do all that, and so they often don’t like their brothers. You’re so awfully kind to me, Tim.”

Tim paused. He made his first definite move. “That is because I love you, Melly.”

He had said this to her scores of times, lightly, affectionately. But now he spoke as a man. The girl, so sensitive, heard the change of tone. She leaned again against his arm and studied him. The large gray eyes moved over his face. Then all at once she blushed deeply, and she jumped down from the bench and ran to the roses. But she did not squat down or take up the trowel. She looked at the flowers in absolute silence and without moving, her hands hanging at her sides, her head bent. Warm shadows ran over her face; an evening wind lifted the glittering cape of her hair and blew it briefly.

Timothy waited. Something had changed between them, and both were conscious of it, though what had been said was only the apparently playful exchange between a brother who was a man and a sister who was still half a child. He knew a poignant moment had been reached. A great deal now depended on what Melinda would say and what she would do. If she suddenly laughed and ran into the house, he would know that he had been deluded, that he had not touched her at all, and that she was still only a child and thought only as a child.

She turned her head and looked at him, and there was trouble in her eyes and a searching, too. He looked back at her with the same gravity. The wind made a murmuring in the trees and the shrubs. Clouds of golden bees rose from flower beds and drifted away. A robin let his clear and melancholy evening song roll like drops of silver down the blue slope of the sky. Swallows chittered, gathered together, and flew into the sun. Shadows deepened and lengthened, and the warm air subtly changed and filled with a thousand sweet scents. Melinda looked at Timothy in silence, and for a long time.

Then she slowly moved toward him again, not running as a child runs, but as a woman walks, half reluctant, half eager. Reaching him, she stood before him. Carefully, tenderly, so as not to frighten her — for he knew that any vehement move would now frighten her — he lifted his hand. She looked at it and moved back a small step. She looked into his eyes again.

Timothy had never been so intent, yet in appearance he appeared negligent and casual. The girl’s eyes fluttered from his face, then to his hand, then back again. She reached out and took Timothy’s hand. There was no childish pressure now, no childish grasping. It was a woman’s shy touch, a woman’s half-fearful reaching.

“Melinda,” said Timothy gently.

“Tim,” she answered.

That was all, but it was enough for Timothy. He smiled. He stood up and, still holding Melinda’s hand, he went toward the house, and Melinda walked sedately beside him and did not look at him again.

Cynthia that night spent her usual evening hour with Melinda in her bedroom before saying good night. There was a deep tenderness between mother and adopted daughter, a sure confidence, and an artless trust. Melinda was never loquacious, nor did she speak easily and carelessly. Every word, Cynthia was certain, was well thought out before Melinda spoke.

To Cynthia, Melinda was still a beloved child, and only a child. She was not yet thirteen. She had reached puberty and was changing day by day. Cynthia was aware of this; it sometimes alarmed her and made her uneasy. But she knew her mother had felt so about her own daughters. It’s just that we know we are going to lose them someday, and perhaps sooner than we wish, Cynthia would think. It’s quite a tragedy — for us. But as long as I can, I am going to keep Melinda a child.

“What is it, pet?” she asked Melinda, who sat near her in a ruffled nightgown of the softest Egyptian cotton, her long hair braided neatly for the night. Was it possible that she, Cynthia, had never noticed before the increasing firmness of the child’s features and the budding of her young body? Where has the time gone? Cynthia asked herself with a mother’s familiar pain.

The girl’s bedroom was in her favorite colors, blue and ivory, with a dainty tester bed and ivory rug. Melinda rocked in a chair near Cynthia, and Cynthia impulsively reached out and smoothed the girl’s head with love. “You’re so quiet, darling,” she said. “Don’t you feel well? Is something bothering you?”

“No, Mama,” said Melinda slowly. “It’s just that I’m thinking. I’ll be thirteen in October, won’t I?”

“So you will,” agreed Cynthia.

Now Melinda’s face glowed, and Cynthia saw it. “Don’t be in a hurry!” she cried. “You are only a child, still. You look like Alice in Wonderland, dear,” she said somewhat incoherently. “There’s nothing much in a grown-up world, Melinda. It’s all disillusion, and worry, and pain, and anxiety, and very little pleasure. Be a child as long as you can.”

“But I’m not a child,” said Melinda. “Not really, Mama.”

“You’ll always be a child to me,” said Cynthia. “A mother,” she went on, trying to smile lightly, “never does want her children to grow up. She wants them with her always. Of course, darling, you’ll be a woman someday, and then I suppose you’ll marry and leave me. Well, we don’t have to worry about anything for many, many years yet, do we?”

“Mary Ann’s sister is seventeen, and she hasn’t come out yet, and she’s engaged,” said Melinda. “She’s really been engaged since she was fifteen, and that’s less than three years older than I am.”

“Oh, heavens,” said Cynthia, and laughed a little. “Have you been reading romances behind my back?”

“The Mother of Christ was only fourteen when He was born,” said Melinda with a stubbornness Cynthia had encountered several times before.

Cynthia sighed. “I suppose that is what they say,” she admitted. “But we aren’t living in the old times, dear, and girls don’t marry so young. Not in America, at least. They don’t even get engaged then.” She paused. “What little boy has charmed you, pet? It seems to me that Amanda brings that big hulk of a thirteen-year-old brother around very often these days. No wonder; you’re so pretty. Is it Alfred?” She smiled indulgently, thinking of her own long-past and childish infatuations. “Alfred Bothwell has a long way to go before he becomes a man. Many, many years. Is it Alfred?”

Harper Bothwell, finally becoming certain that Cynthia would never marry him, had married a cousin twelve years ago, a widow with a boy about a year old, and had adopted him, and he now had a daughter of his own in addition.

Melinda was silent. Cynthia smiled again. So it was Alfred, that big hulking boy. The love affairs of children! But one had to manage them wisely or the little souls were extremely hurt, and the hurt could last all one’s life. Cynthia remembered her own young years. She had been frightfully infatuated with — now, what was his name? She could not remember. But he had had a beautiful pair of big brown eyes. Like a cow’s, she thought now wryly. She had been thrilled to the heart when he had sent her a bunch of tight little hothouse roses when she was Melinda’s age. Where was the poor creature now? He was a fat old banker with a belly, in New York.

Melinda said, “Mama, do you still not know who my parents were?”

The girl had asked this many times before, and Cynthia, respecting her, had always answered: “Darling, no one knows. The records are always sealed.” So she repeated this again tonight, expecting Melinda to accept it as casually as she had done in other years. Melinda was not satisfied.

“I wish I knew,” she said wistfully.

“Why?” Cynthia demanded.

“I don’t know, Mama. I wonder if they are dead.”

Cynthia bit her lip. She had been about to say, “Of course they are not dead.” She shivered at the thought of how close she had been to saying that. She drew her light lace shawl closer about her. Really, these June nights could be deceptive.

“Are you dissatisfied, Melinda?” asked Cynthia with some sharpness. “Haven’t I been a good mother to you?”

“Oh, Mama,” said Melinda with remorse, putting her hand on Cynthia’s knee. “I’ve hurt your feelings. I’m so sorry. But a girl, adopted like me, often wonders about her real parents. Don’t be hurt, Mama. I love you so much.”

Cynthia held out her arms to Melinda, and the girl came to her and sat on her lap, and they clung to each other. Cynthia murmured over and over, “My darling, my darling, my darling.”

They rocked together, and Cynthia thought, as she had thought many times before, that she would literally burst with her passionate love. She murmured endearments against the girl’s temple and cheek. “Melinda, Melinda,” she said.

Then Melinda said, “Mama, I’m sorry Tim’s going away so soon to New York.”

Cynthia stopped rocking. She smoothed Melinda’s head. “Well, dear, after all, he’s a man now. He has his own way to make. He can’t stay home forever.”

“I suppose not,” Melinda sighed.

“You two have always been so fond of each other,” said Cynthia. “But never mind. He’ll be home on the holidays, no doubt.”

“Yes. Yes,” said Melinda. “But I’ll miss him so much.”

“There’s always Alfred Bothwell,” said Cynthia, smiling.

Melinda did not answer. Cynthia rocked again with the girl in her arms.

“I’ve always loved Tim so much,” said Melinda.