A Prologue To Love (22 page)

“And that makes you a majority of one,” said Cynthia. “Look at the time! My chick should have been in bed and asleep half an hour ago.”

Cynthia came down to the sitting room, where Tim was reading a dull financial paper. She had refused to have gaslight installed, saying it smelled bad, flickered too much, and was too harsh and glaring. Timothy knew that she preferred the softer light of lamps because of the filmy webbing about her eyes and the one small cleft between them. Otherwise she was as stately and graceful as in her youth, with a slender and supple figure; she moved lightly, and her native polish was enhanced by the years as silver is enhanced by use and becomes more satiny. She sat down in her favorite chair near the fireplace; the aperture had been filled with a basket of red roses, and the scent filled the room. It had been raining a little; an odor of warm dust and freshness and heated stone came through the tall opened windows.

Timothy had risen automatically when his mother came in, then when she had sat down he took up his paper again. They had, as yet, not exchanged a word. Cynthia picked up her embroidery. The clock chimed ten.

“Why don’t you wear spectacles, Mother?” asked Timothy idly from behind his paper. “You’re in the bosom of your family and there’s no one to peep. It is almost painful for me to watch you holding your work at arm’s length and squinting. That’s a fine way to acquire the wrinkles you loathe, you know.”

“One can always trust you, Timothy, to say the kindest things,” said Cynthia.

“One remembers that on his mother’s next birthday she will be forty — ?”

Cynthia could not help smiling. “Forty,” she said. “I’ve been forty some time now and I don’t intend to be any older even when I have grandchildren. Don’t be impertinent, Timothy.” She sighed, looked at her work impatiently, and put it down. “How time flies,” she said.

“I’ve heard that remark before,” said her son.

Her restless thoughts moved on. “Really,” she said, “I don’t see how you can subsist like a gentleman in New York on eighteen dollars a week. It’s ridiculous.”

“I’ll subsist, if not necessarily like a gentleman. I’ll be as rigorous as my dear Uncle John was at my age.”

“You never mention him without a sneer in your voice,” said Cynthia. “What has John ever done to hurt you? He has been more than good to me, and without any obligation on his part, and good to you, too.”

“But, dear Mama, he isn’t a gentleman, and you are always speaking of breeding. Never mind, don’t frown. It only makes that mark between your eyes go deeper. There are some who can afford to be gentlemen; I am not one of them yet, due in great part to the profligacy of both you and my dear dead papa.”

Cynthia’s cheeks colored. She looked with animus at her son, and then she saw that he appeared strained and pale and that his light eyes were tired. She could not help it: he was abominable and merciless, but he was her son and she loved him even if she disliked him heartily as a person. “You’ve said that before,” she remarked in a milder tone than he expected. “Your father’s expectations were exaggerated, and neither of us had ever had a reason to be prudent. We weren’t trained in prudence. But at least you’ve had a beautiful home, an excellent education, and you are a gentleman in spite of what you say.”

Timothy shrugged and rattled the paper. Cynthia became exasperated. “You surely will allow me to send you a sum which will double your income,” she said. “Why, I believe you’re proud! It’s good to be proud, but not at the price of cheap shirts, poor lodgings, bad food, and coarse boots. Especially when it isn’t necessary.”

“It won’t be necessary long,” Timothy assured her. One of his feet moved restively. For a moment she was deeply moved. She wished he had been a less difficult child, but even as an infant he had resented coddlings and kissings and murmurous sounds against his cheek. “He’s like a little thistle,” she would complain. What did she know about Timothy? she reflected. Absolutely nothing. He had been an unloving baby, an unloving and self-assured child, and now he was a withdrawn young man.

Timothy continued, when she remained silent: “I expect to start at eighteen dollars a week, yes. But I hope — I know that I will be getting much more than that within a year. And I hope that I’ll be a junior partner within five years. Dear Uncle John has hinted as much; he practically owns that law firm. At least he frightens the devil out of the whole office when he appears. A rich, tidy firm. I remember an old Scots saying to the effect that lawyers are the devil’s race, and I’m sure it is true.”

“Why do you always ascribe villainy to everybody?” Cynthia said with renewed exasperation.

“Probably because everyone is a villain at heart,” he replied, pleased that he had annoyed her. “Except, of course, Melly.”

“Don’t call her ‘Melly’!” Cynthia cried. “What a vulgar nickname.”

He put down the paper. “She calls me Tim, and that’s a nickname,” he said.

“But she’s only a child. She’s growing up. At least she will soon begin to grow up,” Cynthia added hastily. “And it’s time for even you to call her by her right name.” She clasped her hands in her mauve silk lap and smiled. “The child is in love! Imagine that, she is in love.”

Her large gray eyes dreamed, grew brighter, as if a little tearful. “Is she indeed?” Timothy said. “With whom?”

“A silly schoolboy just a little older than herself. Harper Bothwell’s adopted son, his nephew. That big uncouth boy, Alfred.”

“Did she say so herself?” asked Timothy.

“I think so. Yes, I think she did. At least when I teased her about Alfred — he’s always coming here with Amanda and standing around looking ill at ease and staring at Melinda. Like a stork, on one foot.”

“Did she say so herself?” repeated Timothy. Cynthia was startled.

“Dear me,” she said, “you are actually sounding like an outraged father.” She was pleased. “Or the very much older brother you really are. What does it matter? Those children! Now I don’t recall that Melinda really did say anything.”

Timothy carefully folded his newspaper, then smoothed it neatly. The ring his mother had given him on his fifteenth birthday, a deep ruby set in bright gold, twinkled in the soft lamplight.

“However,” said Cynthia, “I agree with you that it’s ridiculous even talking about such a thing in connection with those children. It’ll be years and years. I myself was married too young. I wasn’t quite twenty-one, and very inexperienced, practically a dolt concerning worldly matters, and no doubt very stupid.” She glanced at the portrait on the wall.

“Melinda,” said Timothy, “will be eighteen in less than six years. And that horror of a boy is only a little older than she.”

“But he’s going to be handsome. All the Bothwells are handsome, and he is a Bothwell by birth as well as by adoption, you know. He has really lovely Irish eyes, deep blue, and such long black lashes, and his hair is black and curly. He is pimply just now, but he’ll be a fine-looking man. Melinda could do much worse — with all that money, too. Ah, well, it will be centuries, and it’s foolish even to talk about it now.”

“You are so particular about breeding,” said Timothy. “I’ve often wondered why you adopted Melinda.”

Cynthia took up her embroidery, held it at arm’s length, and pretended to scrutinize it. “How tiresome,” she said. “I think I took too large a stitch there. It will have to come out. What did you say, Timothy? Oh yes something about Melinda’s parents. Well, one has only to look at the child to know that she didn’t come from a mean line. And when I saw her for the very first time I said to myself, ‘Why, if dear Ann had had another daughter she would have looked exactly like Melinda’. It almost killed me when Ann died.”

“Of neglect,” Timothy reminded her. “Dear Uncle John was too parsimonious to call a physician in time.”

“I know, I know,” said Cynthia in distress. “In a way, it’s not entirely his fault. I know how hard he had to struggle. He wasn’t sure of himself. He still isn’t, even now.”

“I think it was Frederick the Great who said, ‘Nothing is enough for a man to whom everything is not enough’,” Timothy replied. “Or something similar. Yes indeed, I think poor old Uncle John should be pitied. But not for wanting more and more money. I want it myself, and I’m just as determined as he is to get it. I just pity him for having such a gargoyle of a daughter.”

“Oh, Timothy, how unkind. Caroline is becoming, in a way, a very impressive young woman. Is it possible that she, like you, is twenty-three? How time flies. And she’s gained considerable poise during all those travels with her father. Her eyes are really remarkable; they grow more beautiful every time I see her, and her smile is charming. She has such pretty teeth — a little too large, but pretty just the same. And she dresses almost stylishly after spending nearly a year in Paris. Yes, very impressive. She is certainly old enough to marry. I must speak about it to John when they return from Switzerland. And she has a marvelous mind. You ought to appreciate that, at any rate.” She stared long and thoughtfully at her son and smiled teasingly. “Have you ever thought of marrying Caroline yourself? You do love money, you know, and she will inherit so many countless millions.”

“Good God!” exclaimed Timothy. “What grotesque ideas you do get!”

But Cynthia had become a trifle excited by the idea. “Do let’s be practical,” she said. “You are so cold-blooded; you are determined to be as rich as John. How better, and how much more expedient, to get it by marrying than merely drudging along year after year in hope. You can’t really detest Caroline as much as you imply. What has the poor girl done to you? She’ll be a grand old lady. No Boston man ever let a woman’s appearance stand in the way of a good marriage. And Caroline will not only be immensely rich, but she’s my sister’s daughter and she is well bred. Really, Timothy, you could do much worse.”

“I don’t think so,” said Timothy with an elaborate shudder. “We hated each other from the first minute.”

Cynthia pursed her lips. “It’s hard to say what Caroline ever thinks. I doubt she ‘hates’ you; she’s indifferent to anyone but her father. It is I she dislikes intensely, if anybody. She won’t even stay in this house when they’re in Boston. Timothy, you’ve always been practical, perhaps too much so. Your marrying Caroline will keep the money in the family, where it belongs. And if you really can’t stand Caroline after you marry her, there are other consolations.”

“Such as a mistress,” said Timothy pleasantly.

Cynthia laughed. “Why not? There, you’ll think I’m shameless.”

“Nothing to me is shameless,” said Timothy, “provided there is cash concerned in it. But Caroline really sticks in my throat. Shall we drop the horrible subject?”

Cynthia nodded, but she was becoming even more excited. What a solution for poor Timothy! She must speak to John. She had very little, herself, to leave her son.

“Don’t forget, I’m giving a dinner for you to celebrate your graduation before you go to New York,” she said. “I’ve invited all my friends. They can be helpful to you.” She yawned suddenly. “Is it actually eleven? I remember when that was only the beginning of the evening for me. I must indeed be becoming — middle-aged.” But she glanced down with satisfaction at her smooth white hands which showed no rising veins, no mottling, no withering. “You seem so tired, Timothy,” she said in a gentle tone. “It’s been very hard on you. But you do have your key, and I’m proud of you. Why don’t you go to bed?”

“I will,” he said, standing up. “Shall I ring for the maids to put out these dingy lamps?”

“In a moment. Good night my dear.”

She stayed alone for a minute or two. She did not know why she felt so suddenly depressed. Then she rang the bell and left the room. She floated up the graceful stairway, then stopped on the last step. Timothy was standing at Melinda’s door, his head inclined in its direction. Cynthia smiled sadly. How he loved the child! Her son moved on, his head bent.

Caroline had seen Tom Sheldon briefly but once during her two weeks in Lyme in 1878. He had later paced up and down the narrow shingle but did not glance at the house. She had cried, then had resolutely turned away. In 1879 she had not seen him at all, for she was constantly traveling with her father. In 1880 he had come upon her at dawn on her boulder in front of the house at Lyme, and he had sat down beside her and they had not spoken, and then he had kissed her cheek gently and had gone away. In 1881 she had spent only one week at Lyme and encountered him once in the village, where he had bowed soberly and had gone about his business. In 1882 she had remained in Lyndon for the short time she and her father were in America, but that year, on her twenty-second birthday, she had received a little gift from Tom, a small baroque pearl set in a coil of old silver.

But he wrote her constantly, though she did not reply, except once to thank him abruptly for his gift. (She never knew that he had half expected her to return it. Had she done so, he would have known it was hopeless.) She read his letters, deeply and darkly stirred. Always, she looked for his last words:

“I will wait for you, Carrie darling. Don’t forget me.”

She wrote Beth long letters, which often confused and baffled that simple and aging woman, but Caroline knew that Tom would be the next to read them. She described the countries she had visited and the people she had met. She did not mention her father. But her letters were unconsciously filled with her cry of bewilderment, fear, and loneliness, which grew year by year. So Tom’s letters to her were full of reassurance and love and understanding. Her loyalty to her father prevented her acknowledging the passionate gratitude she felt. It was impossible for her to marry Tom; she must avoid him forever. And then she would watch the post for Beth’s next letter in which Tom’s letter was enclosed.

She had met multitudes (it seemed to her) of people in these years, mostly associates of her father’s, and sometimes she and John dined at their London, Paris, Berlin, and Geneva homes. Sometimes, when John thought she seemed especially silent and dull and pale, he would take her to the French Riviera for the sun and air. She would walk in loneliness, averting her eyes from the bathing and sunning men and women, and avoiding the gay
salles
à
manger
and eating in her room. She shivered at the sound of music. She cared nothing for the exotic food and ate plainly, as did her father.

It had taken Caroline several years to come to the horrified conclusion that all the Alecks were not confined to the gross and ignorant working classes, to the brutes on docks, to the drivers of hacks. They lived and had their being among her father’s friends. They had the same fierce expression as the original Aleck, the same imperviousness, the same lustful greed, the same solid brutality, though their exteriors were clothed in broadcloth and they spoke in cultivated voices and smoked rich cigars and drank fine wines and lived in magnificent homes. They were as merciless as Aleck, and as exigent, and resorted to gigantic exigency when they considered it necessary. She had always believed that the less desirable traits of the human race were forbidden entry to good homes and were unknown among people of breeding and education. She had believed that the animal traits of cruelty, avarice, and opportunism, of hypocrisy and falsehood, of treachery, of rapacity and barbarousness, were limited strictly to the Alecks. When she discovered that these traits existed among those who did not have to work for a living with their hands and who had tremendous fortunes, it was a violent experience for her. Illustrious names, lofty bearing, education, charm, and worldliness did nothing to change human nature, she dismally concluded.

However, there was a distinction, she observed: The Alecks frequently were assailed by the law. Their counterparts among her father’s associates were not only not assailed by the law but were decorated by governments and received many honors and spoke easily of czars and kaisers and emperors and kings, and lesser but still august ranks. They were accepted everywhere. It seemed, to the appalled girl, that one had only to be a monster on a tremendous scale to be honored.

As she sat now in her suite in Geneva, she recalled one man in particular whom she regarded with silent but furious loathing and terror. He was an Englishman, Montague de Valle Brookingham, and when his father died he would become Montague Lord Halnes. Forty-four years old, he had been more than considering asking John Ames for his daughter. Caroline could do worse, John would think, and Brookingham was on his way up and had come a long way from being a younger son — his older brother had died two years ago — of a noble but impoverished family. There was nothing Brookingham would not do, and he had done almost all of it. Though he had been young at the time, he had made a fortune through the Franco-Prussian War and had received the ribbon of the Legion of Honor from a government which had apparently been unaware of the fact that he had supplied arms to the Prussians also. Like John Ames, he was a formidable adventurer and had a nose for money, and enormous liquid assets, most of which he kept discreetly in the banks in Switzerland. The crumbling family home in Devonshire had been restored by him after his brother’s death. Had his brother not providentially died, the house could have rotted for all he would have cared, he had said to John laughingly. Fortunately his brother had also died without an heir. The title would come to Montague, and the old lord was now in his seventies and ‘doddering’. Queen Victoria, it was said, regarded Montague with much favor and thought him witty and captivating, and Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli, though disliking and suspecting him, had to be polite when he called upon the monarch. Prince Albert had privately thought him despicable, but the Queen remembered that he had been of excellent service in the Affair of India. He had dreams of an earldom, and his dreams were not without substance.

He was now in Switzerland, as were numerous other friends of John Ames. Caroline sat alone, dreading the evening. Mr. Brookingham would be present, as always. He was at least two inches shorter than the tall young woman, with a large head covered with thin mouse-colored hair, a cleanshaven face, and a somewhat chubby body and a small bulge in his belly. The head was quite out of proportion to his general size. When he was serious or in repose, his plump features were ordinary and undistinguished, even commonplace, his light blue eyes faintly reflective, his nose broad and shapeless. In cheap and ordinary clothing he could have passed as a semi-skilled artisan or poor shopkeeper on the streets of London on his way home to a meager fire, small crowded rooms full of cheap bric-a-brac, a sleazy rug on the floor, and to a tea composed of boiled eggs, toast, and currant jam. But even in his well-tailored and expensive clothing he had a look utterly without distinction or flair. He faintly resembled a valet dressed in discarded garments from the wardrobe of his master.

It was when he smiled or laughed that he terrified Caroline. Immediately his face, and even his features, changed amazingly and actually took on different contours. Then the light blue eyes darkened, tilted, and became demonic under faded brows that flashed upward from the corners. His quiet mouth was then diabolical. His nostrils flared, his ears peaked, his plump cheeks became angular. A portrait of him in repose and another in amusement would have convinced any viewer that this was not the same man at all.

There would be others present tonight, but they did not seem to Caroline to be half so dangerous, evil, and ruthless as this man. In a way he fascinated her; she was always watching for his face to change, for the rather dull quietness to take on a preternatural quality of pure and laughing malignance. She had heard others say he was charming, and she had been dumbly incredulous. Her father relaxed in his company, and his other friends enjoyed his witticisms and his delicately depraved remarks and his way with a joke. He was always extremely courteous to Caroline, and thoughtful, and she thought he mocked her. The innocence in her was startled in his presence.

So, drearily this evening, she shrank from the thought of the man who wanted to marry her for his own reasons. She did not like Switzerland, and she thought longingly of Italy, and especially of Rome, with its smooth white grandeur, its eternal immovability, its waiting air of timeless power. She had been in Switzerland three times, and it had always remained alien to her, which surprised John Ames, who thought the gray starkness of the country resembled his daughter’s character.

Caroline remembered her first journey to Switzerland. Italy had overwhelmed her with its exuberant beauty, its flashes of almost intolerably lovely color, its lush untidiness which was part of its enchantment, its harmonious and flashing landscapes, its humming repose and murmurous silences. John had believed his daughter indifferent to these, just as he was indifferent. It was in Milan where she had secretly bought a tiny painting of the Bay of Naples for Tom Sheldon; it remained in her luggage under layers of paper. She knew that hundreds of artists had made the Bay of Naples almost as banal and blasé to millions of eyes as copies of the Venus de Milo. But this painting was different; the usual purples and blues and scarlets had not been used. The unknown artist had captured a noonday view in one blinding moment of gold — gold every tint, shade, and hue; mountains, rocks, and water — so that the painting lay in the hands like a shimmering rectangle of living gilt, changeful and pulsing.

It was also in Milan where a subtle change came to John Ames, a kind of gray darkening over his flesh, over his eyes, and over his fading hair. He was not a complainer, but with the intensity of absorbed love Caroline fearfully saw the change. She asked herself dozens of frantic questions: Did John’s appetite, always spare, become even more spare in Milan? Was he less decisive of movement; was his voice slower; did he appear faintly exhausted? She timidly suggested a physician. “Here?” he had said contemptuously, dismissing the wisdom and the glory of Italy in one word. Then, seeing her face, he had added kindly, “There is nothing wrong with me. You must remember that I’m not young any longer, Caroline, and I’ve been busy in Rome, and the climate is enervating. I’ll be glad to be in Switzerland, and so will you. You’ll like everything about it.”

That had been three years ago. She had never given the little painting to Tom Sheldon after all. She had become almost accustomed to the change in her father; at least, since no other symptoms of any disorder developed, she reluctantly came to the conclusion that if there was any change at all it was due to his age. She rarely saw Cynthia and even more rarely spoke to her; she did not know that her aunt was apprehensive also and that Cynthia ‘nagged’, as John called it, about eminent Boston physicians.

Father and daughter had stayed overnight in Stresa before Caroline’s first visit to Switzerland. This was north Italy, but spring was vehement everywhere, though with less passion than in the south. Caroline could see Lake Maggiore from her bedroom window, silvery and glistening, afloat with two islands of vivid green. At her left stood an arm of the Alps pitching down into the water in a broken chaos of purplish gray under a dim sky of lilac. Caroline stepped onto her narrow balcony and looked below her at the grounds of the hotel, at the bursting colors of azaleas, the wet coolness of palm trees, the greenness of sloping lawns. A soft rain began to fall, rustling. The air filled with a thousand faint fragrances. I should like to live here! thought Caroline. She wrote to Beth: “I can’t describe Stresa. It is so still and calm and great, a study in grisaille, greens, and faint lavenders.”

One of Caroline’s teachers had once told her: “There are no real boundaries in the world; there are only artificial ones made by greedy governments. People, countries are all the same, and only governments keep them apart. There are no such things as race and national temperaments; you would see that if presidents, kings, czars, and kaisers didn’t divide people for their own purposes.” On seeing Switzerland, and on other occasions in other countries, Caroline knew that her teacher was a milky fool, had either never traveled or had done her traveling through dull minds who saw no variety in mankind and preferred to see all men as of one dun color. Men’s spirits, in spite of their detractors or their adulators, remained superbly isolated and deeply different one from another.

The next day she and her father left for her first visit to Switzerland. She stood at the border while her luggage was examined by kindly Italians, and she looked at the grave and motionless faces of the Swiss officers. Then with only a few steps she was in a nation entirely different from Italy, and among people who had nothing in common, temperamentally, with the Italians. She boarded the excellent Swiss train and read the admonitions in Italian, French, and German concerning the dire penalties inflicted on those who destroyed or defaced or dirtied the shining cleanliness of the conveyance. The exhortations irritated her. She remarked on it to John, who shrugged and said, “They are a very strict and rigorous people. Unlike the Italians.” Caroline added to herself in rebellion, “They have no color.” She glanced down at her dull dress of brown wool and for the first time in her life she thought, “I too have no color.” She saw her broad face in the glistening windowpane and was sadly affronted by her lack of beauty. She did not see that she had a kind of large majesty and that her face, in spite of its broad shape, had a Gothic quality.