A Prologue To Love (32 page)

“Indeed! How kind of you, Caroline,” said Timothy.

“There will be a percentage for you,” said Caroline. “I hope it won’t all be too much for you, Timothy.”

Timothy wanted to laugh again. He remained properly and seriously sober.

“Before I left,” said Caroline with that touching simplicity which always amused Timothy and made him contemptuous, “I had a quiet talk with Mr. Tandy and Mr. Harkness and Mr. Swift. We all agreed that you could not, with your new responsibilities, be only a junior partner any longer. You will be a full partner.”

Timothy was speechless. His moods were not vivid or quick; they moved slowly and inexorably and without passion. But now he actually wanted to get up and kiss Caroline with fervor.

“They had the greatest confidence in you,” Caroline continued, beginning to eat her execrable rice pudding and unaware of the painful joy and ecstasy her cousin was feeling. “Mr. Tandy did remark that you were still only twenty-four, but I reminded him that I am going on twenty-four, too. Besides, you are my only male relative.” She paused. Her natural honesty then made her blurt out, “I wish I’d understood about you earlier, Timothy! I always thought you were — I was afraid of you, Timothy. Truly. I thought you were just like your mother! You see how stupid I was? I didn’t understand.”

“I am not in the least like my mother,” said Timothy gently, thinking of Cynthia’s natural sympathy, kindness, joy in living, love for all that was beautiful and graceful, her foolish generosity and instant warmth. He shook his head and repeated, “I am not in the least like her, Caroline.”

“And Melinda’s just like her,” said Caroline, and she was ugly again.

Timothy was startled, seeing that abrupt change of expression and the naked hatred. He wanted to say, “You are wrong. Melinda is a love.” But his remarkable intuitiveness warned him that everything would be ruined if he said that. It was only too obvious that Caroline hated the young girl. This made him reflect again. Would Caroline destroy him when he married Melinda? Yes, she was capable of any recklessness, he now discerned, to satisfy her furious loathings.

Caroline, blushing, was murmuring, “I am going to be married, Timothy.”

“What!” he exclaimed. “What!” The old ladies muttering and complaining about him stared at him, aghast at his male vehemence in so genteel a setting.

Caroline was blushing even more; worse, that damned beautiful smile was on her face again. Timothy pushed back his chair, and his pale eyes sparkled. “What are you talking about?” he demanded rudely. (All that money! In the hands of an unknown, accursed stranger!) “Who is he?” said Timothy, and he was so agitated and so incredulous that his usually smooth and controlled voice was rough with rage. “Some European fortune hunter?”

Caroline was immediately reminded of Mr. Brookingham. “No, no,” she said hurriedly. (How kind Timothy was.) She added soothingly, “Dear Timothy, I’d never do that. I thought you understood that I am no longer interested in European affairs, except as they affect the stock market. I dislike Europe intensely, and Europeans. They frighten me. So knowing. So ruthless. Please don’t look so worried, Timothy. The man I am going to marry — I have known him since I was about ten years old.”

A Bostonian! Timothy, a Bostonian himself, knew these Bostonians. Let the swine once get control of all that money, and he, Timothy, would be out in the cold.

“Who?” said Timothy. (God damn the bastard! The sneaking, sly swine who had done this to him, probably laughing behind his back!)

“You don’t know him,” said Caroline apologetically. (Dear Timothy, how concerned he was for her!) “But when you know him you will like him immensely.

“Please don’t worry, dear Timothy. Tom is so good, so kind.”

“Tom who?” he almost shouted. “Tom Adams, Tom Graves, Tom Winthrop, Tom Burnett?”

“Tom Sheldon,” said Caroline, suddenly aware of the avid attention of the old widows and spinsters about her. “Please be calm, dear Timothy. You don’t know him. He lives in Lyme.”

“In Lyme?” Timothy repeated, stupefied. No one lived in that wretched seaside village! Timothy began to sweat. “We don’t know anyone in Lyme, Caroline!”

“I do. He builds houses, Timothy. His father was a handy man, and then he and Tom began to build little summer cottages and houses. You can see them all over.”

Timothy was absolutely dumb. He could only stare at Caroline; a dull and sickening ache struck the back of his head. Then he muttered, “Sheldon? I don’t know any Sheldons.”

“Of course you don’t, Timothy,” said Caroline. “You were only once in Lyme, if you remember, and it was only for a day, and you were about fourteen then. And Tom was about sixteen and helping his father, doing chores in the village.”

I’m not really hearing this! Timothy thought. I’m going mad. He said faintly, “Doing chores in the village?” And then louder, “A handy man?”

Caroline stopped smiling. She looked aside and frowned anxiously. The horror and disbelief in Tom’s voice had finally impressed themselves upon her. She remembered now her own thoughts about old Thomas Sheldon. She had thought this, she recalled very clearly; she had thought it even this morning on the train, and she had been full of anger against Beth.

She looked furtively at her seething cousin; she had never seen Timothy so disturbed. His coolness was completely shattered.

“You aren’t serious, Caroline! This is impossible!”

She murmured, “I suppose it sounds so. I didn’t really understand how it would sound to you; I never thought of it. Do try to be patient with me, Timothy, while I explain.” And in that uncertain stammering voice which she always used when disconcerted or ashamed or frightened, she told Timothy of Tom Sheldon. He listened intently, never moving his pale eyes from her face. There was no pity in him now, no gratitude, no exultation.

When she was done, he passed his hand over his smooth light hair and then stared blankly at the table. What else could one expect, he asked himself, of the daughter of a wretched nobody, a tramp from nowhere, possessing no family, no background? One could expect precisely this, a comedy of vulgarity, of lewd barnyard scuffling and clutching, of a mating between a village dolt and a lumbering female fool. They would breed a horde of ugly, featureless brats who would inherit all that money. All that money!

“Caroline, please listen to me.” He made himself smile at her like a brother, full of indulgence and patience. “I am now the only male relative you have; I have a responsibility for you. You are alone in the world; you are a female, still young and unprotected. But you are a traveled, educated woman. You are the heiress to one of America’s greatest fortunes.” He thought he would stifle in that hot room full of its odors of wax, peppermint, old bodies, and heated wool. A thin shaft of hot copper sunlight struck his arched fingers where they were pressed on the stiff linen of the tablecloth.

“You could marry any distinguished man in the world,” he went on, clearing his tight throat. “You could marry a prince if you wished. Yet you now tell me — ” He paused. He could not speak Tom’s name or talk of his background; his white eyelids dropped over his eyes, and he squeezed them together so that they were parched wrinkles in his face. He shook his head over and over.

“Have you thought, Caroline, what your father would think of this madness?”

Caroline’s large mouth wavered. She said, “Yes, Timothy. I’ve thought. The night Papa died — there was a meeting in our suite in Geneva and all the gentlemen were what you would call distinguished, and their wives were of excellent family, or at least they had fortunes. They wanted to embroil Papa in something infamous — I must tell you of it sometime — and Papa rejected them and their plans. He despised them.” She stopped and then pressed the damp palms of her hands together in an urgent gesture, almost passionate. “One of the men was a Mr. Montague Brookingham. You may have heard of him. His father died recently and he is now Lord Halnes. He wanted to marry me, Timothy; he had spoken to Papa about it. He was abhorrent to me. And just before Papa died he indicated that he didn’t want me to marry that man; he wanted me to go home and forget all of them, all those you speak of as distinguished. So Papa would have understood about Tom.” She looked at him pleadingly.

“Your father knew about him; he knew this feller?”

“Timothy, please. Don’t call Tom — that. No, Papa never knew anything about him. I was going to tell him that very night. And then he died.” Tears came into her eyes, and she swallowed.

He did not speak; the arched fingers curled on the tablecloth as he struggled for control. Caroline continued: “But I had already made up my mind earlier in the evening that even if Papa objected I’d go home, back to Tom. Tom is clean and good. I love him, Timothy.”

The simplicity of her final words would have moved a less relentless and rapacious man than Timothy Winslow. But they only infuriated him.

“Your father would have disinherited you, Caroline. I knew him very well; I have studied his whole career almost all my life, and especially since I have been in that law office.”

Caroline shook her head. “No, Timothy, you are wrong. I know it now.”

He wanted to say to her, “You can’t do this disgusting thing. Do you know to whom your money rightfully belongs? To the Esmonds, who have had to endure your contemptible nobody of a father for too long! It was the money of an Esmond lady which he confiscated, a full two hundred thousand dollars.”

He was hardly able to control himself, and it was a curious emotion for Timothy Winslow, who had never before permitted any human being to outrage him like this. But even in his sickening anger he knew that a wrong word now would wreck all his future, would send Caroline from him forever. So he said, “Caroline, you are really so inexperienced. This — this man — he knows who you are and all about your fortune.”

She interrupted him eagerly. “Yes, Timothy, he has always known. It isn’t of any consequence to him.”

He gaped at her. He put both smoothing hands over his head now.

“Tom isn’t interested in my money,” Caroline went on. “He wants to build a little house for us in Lyme. We’ll live very quietly. That is why I am putting so much of my money into investment trusts which my bankers and your partners will take care of for me. I never intend to touch the principal of Papa’s money; we’ll live simply on what Tom earns as a builder of little houses and some of the interest on my fortune. And I do plan to increase that fortune, as Papa would want me to do.”

Oh, God, thought Timothy. He studied Caroline with sharp intensity. Nothing would change that bovine mind; nothing could convulse that lump of stolid flesh. She would have her peasant, and all that money would be his and a brood of animals’. The money would never be Timothy’s and Melinda’s, Melinda who had grace and beauty and intelligence and who deserved this fortune and whose children would deserve it. Melinda deserved mansions and castles, homes in New York, Boston, Paris, London, on the Mediterranean. But this creature would keep it locked in her milkmaid’s hands, then give it to her faceless cubs.

He had to conceal his face; he knew that; he shadowed it with one long hand. Caroline was touched. “Dear Timothy, it will all be well,” she said. “Please don’t be disturbed. I want you to meet Tom very soon. I want you to be at our wedding.” When he did not answer, she added timidly, “You may have thought I was impulsive today, Timothy. But I wasn’t. You see, for many years Papa talked of you; he admired you so much. You are my cousin, and I only wish I had known you better before.”

Timothy dropped his hand to the table with the exhaustion only great emotion can bring. But he could not bear to look at her. He forgot what he now owed Caroline; he felt as one feels who has been irretrievably robbed. He accepted this fact; nobody could persuade Caroline from this disaster, which was his own. He knew her stubbornness, her rocklike immovability.

He thought of his mother. What would she think of this? If only she had some influence over her niece! Damn her, why had she inspired such hatred in Caroline?

He said, “Caroline, take some time to think about this — matter. Don’t be hasty. It’s all your life, you know. If later you find you’ve made a mistake, it will be a calamity for you.”

Caroline smiled with gratitude. “I’m not making a mistake, Timothy. I know Tom too well. I want you two to be friends.”

When Timothy returned to his hot but austere room that night he found a letter from his mother. He did not want to read it immediately; he knew her annoying vivacity, the way she had of making something trivial into an enthusiastic adventure, though her letters, since that dog had died, had been somewhat subdued.

Listlessly he dropped the letter on his bedside table and walked up and down his room in the fervid twilight. He told himself repeatedly that there was nothing he could do. A wrong move, and he would only destroy himself. If he went to that bumpkin rascal, Sheldon, who was licking his lips in anticipation over the Ames fortune, Caroline would be hopelessly offended. A gentleman would listen to a gentleman, but what could a gentleman say to a cowherd? There was nothing he, Timothy Winslow, could do about it.

Then he picked up his mother’s letter absently. He lit the oil lamp near his narrow bed and tore open the envelope. He recognized from Cynthia’s handwriting that the old girl was vivacious again; there were all those loops and twirls. He made a contemptuous sound and began to read. It was a short letter for Cynthia, and, as he feared, it scintillated.

“Darling, you must come home immediately! I have the most marvelous news for you! I have so much to tell you!”

“And I, madam,” said Timothy grimly, and aloud, “have so much to tell you too.”