A Prologue To Love (53 page)

It was only before marriage that Tom had ever really ‘listened’ to her or had tried to understand her fumbling and awkward explanations. After marriage he had wished her to fit the pattern he had designed for her as a wife and mother. She looked at her life with Tom in spite of her pain. All concessions, such as they were, had been on her part. She had consented to a house she never wanted. She had let Tom have his will about the children’s education. She had tried, in her tragic way, to do what he wished, even if it was only after a bitter quarrel and dispute. Tom had loved his children; they had now only scorn for him. Yet he had once or twice accused her of being an unnatural mother, of withholding warm love from her children! To what end had his love for them brought him?

There had never been any use in trying to explain to him what her father’s money meant to her. He could only reply, as she stumbled inarticulately, in violent accusations against the dead man. And against her for being her father’s victim and not attempting to ‘free’ herself. What had he meant by ‘freedom’? She never understood. The first real break between them had come with Beth’s death. He would not listen to the doctor, who had later tried to tell him that even with the very best and most expensive of care Beth would have died when she did. His only furious reply was that ‘Beth had died alone’. But, Caroline asked herself, remembering with the unhealed pain of many years ago, do we not all die alone? How had her presence comforted or eased her father?

From early childhood Caroline had always been suffused with a sense of faceless guilt, and out of that guilt she had evolved an acute conscience and absolute honesty. Invariably she always asked herself, in any situation, where she had been to blame. According to her standards, impeccable and severe, she had done her best. Tom’s attitude during their married life had invariably baffled her. He had no attitudes but his own. She had examined them and found them absolutely alien to her nature and her training, and not to be understood.

One thing above all had remained steadfast in her deprived spirit: her love for her husband. Possessive, blind, eager, desperate — it had been all his. But it had remained. One day — and she had hoped each day — he would come to her and say, “Let us understand each other, or at least try.” He had never truly tried; the Carrie he had married was not Caroline Ames and had existed only in his imagination.

On reaching that devastating conclusion, Caroline huddled in her bed; a dark area in her mind swelled, and she brought all the force of her will and self-control to keep it from expanding and drowning her. If her thoughts ever entered it, she was absolutely certain, the very walls of her life would drop about her and there would be nothing but loss and ruin.

Midnight came and went, and then the harsh dawn stood at her windows. With the dawn came one despairing conclusion. She must try to reach Tom, if only for the last time. After yesterday, she must have a haven again. She would tell Tom about their sons. She would go to his room and shut the door and she would force him to listen, to be still, not to interrupt, not to accuse. Now a hungry warmth came to her, and she got out of bed and went to the window — to see Tom driving away. No matter. He would return that night, and she would go to him and say, “I am your wife and I must speak, and you must try to know what I will try to tell you.”

She dressed quickly in one of her rusty old-fashioned black dresses with jet buttons, went into her study, and had her breakfast there. The mail arrived, and she ran through it listlessly. Someone knocked softly, and she knew it was Elizabeth and did not reply. She could think of nothing but Tom. She wanted to pray, but she had not prayed for endless years. There was no God, she said to herself. But how blessed it would be if He existed!

It was dark twilight when Tom returned, and she heard his laboring foot steps on the stairs, and after a while she rose from behind her desk, her heart pounding. She had not run for years. Now she ran down the black hall like a girl, and she was smiling at last.

I must get to bed, thought Tom, and found himself staggering. He sat on the edge of the bed and had no more strength. He could scarcely breathe for pain; his lungs were on fire and stabbed with hot knives. He had eaten almost nothing that day, but he struggled against a desire to vomit. He was sweating, yet icy cold. He did not hear Caroline enter until he heard her voice, low and uncertain, “Tom?”

She had never once come into this room since their separation, and there she was, standing like an awkward girl near him, tall and massive, clothed in black like a widow, pale and still, her hands clasped tightly against her waist. With a great effort he raised his eyes and looked at her, at her broad face, her colorless mouth, her tight, graying braids. He closed his eyes.

“Tom?” she said again.

He must speak now and end it all forever, and then sleep. He spoke, and even he was surprised at his stifled difficulty in speaking. “Carrie. I want to talk to you.”

“Yes, yes,” she murmured. “I do too. That’s why I’m here, Tom. Tom, is something the matter?” Her voice rose and became almost shrill and she leaned toward him. But he held her off with his hand.

“It won’t take long.” His hoarse voice made the words slow and weak.

“I’m leaving this house tomorrow.” He had to pause for breath between sentences. “Tomorrow. I’m not coming back again. It’s all ended. I want a divorce from you, Carrie.”

She did not move. She blinked and was stupefied. She looked about the small room, grimy and meagerly furnished, at the lamp, at the fire, as if all of these could explain to her what she had heard. “What?” she stammered. “What did you say, Tom?”

Why was it so terribly hard to talk? Tom repeated, “I’m leaving. Divorce. There’s no place for me here any longer. That’s all, Carrie. I’m sick. Please go away and let me rest.”

He was too exhausted even to wonder why she had come to his room, or to care. His head fell on his chest. Then Caroline uttered a great cry. “Tom! You’re sick! Tom, what’s the matter? Wait! I’ll send for the doctor at once!”

“Do what you want, but — ” Tom began with another enormous effort. But Caroline had flown from the room; the door was swinging behind her. He heard her race to her study, to her telephone. He fell back on the bed, which began to sway gently under him like a cloud. Perhaps he slept, but when he opened his eyes again he found himself undressed, under the blankets and quilts, and the fire was roaring, and Carrie was seated beside him, her hand on his forehead, her face a blaze of absolute terror.

“He’ll be here soon, Tom,” she said when she saw his eyes on her, glazed and dark and only partly aware. “Oh, my God, Tom, you are very sick! Oh, Tom.”

“You heard,” he whispered. “I’ve got to go, Carrie. Divorce.”

She was bathing his head with cool water and a cloth. She stopped, squeezed her eyelids together. “Why, Tom? Is it because you’re sick? You’re very feverish. You shouldn’t have gone to Boston — What did you say, Tom? A divorce?” Her face took on again that stupefied expression, and she shook her head over and over. “Why?”

His whispering voice said, “I want to marry Melinda. I love her.”

The darkness took him and flowed under him. Then he rose into light once more. Caroline was sitting beside him, rigid and staring into space. He mumbled without volition, but only out of his need: “I’m very sick. I’d like to see Melinda.” His own voice sounded as if it were coming from a far distance, and the walls were rocking, and the ceiling tilted.

“My sister,” said Caroline without inflection. “Did you know she is my real sister, Tom, the daughter of my father?” She put her hands to her throat.

“Your sister,” said Tom. It meant nothing to him now. And then it meant a great deal. He even rose on one elbow.

“My sister,” said Caroline. “My father’s daughter, and the daughter of that woman I’ve always hated.” Her face changed. “My sister! You want to marry my sister! Tom, I’m your wife. I love you. I never loved anyone else except my father. You can’t mean it, Tom. You’re delirious.”

She bent toward him, and she was crying and gulping. “I’m your wife. I love you, Tom. I love you. Can you hear me?”

Tom’s mind cleared miraculously, and everything was too vivid for his sight, too dreadful. Caroline was stuttering through her flood of tears. “I thought he loved me; I thought I was the only one he had in all the world. But he had Melinda. When he was dying he didn’t call to me. He called to Melinda. Not me, but Melinda.”

Tom fell back on his pillows again, but the clarity of his mind and his eyes increased. He forgot his sickness; he forgot his pain. He looked only at his wife, at her tears, at her wringing hands, at her anguish and her twisted features. She was trembling violently; her hands moved over and over each other in the ancient movements of utter despair and loss.

“I have only you, Tom,” she said. “I think I never had anyone but you, after all.”

He was being drawn away into a vast distance, but he was also in the room, a diminished but very sharp, very clear room, even though in miniature. In the very center was his wife, Caroline. His wife, Carrie.

And then he knew that he had been wrong, after all. There had never been anyone but Carrie; he had never loved any other woman but Carrie, this crying girl, this broken and heartsick girl. He could hear the sea now, soft and blue and singing, and the sky was bright and infinite, and young Carrie was sitting on the boulder in her ugly dress, looking at him, waiting and crying for him to speak, with the blueness all about her and her braids whipping in the summer wind. It was all so very small, like a vivid picture, but it was fully detailed. He was being drawn away from it but was yet in it.

“Carrie, my darling,” he said. “Don’t cry. I love you, darling. I always did. I’ll never leave you. Don’t you remember that I said I’d never leave you?”

But Carrie did not hear a word, for he had not spoken aloud in his last extremity, though he believed he had. He was beyond speaking. He had heard a story, and he had understood at last, and he thought he held out his arms to his wife.

Tom never recovered consciousness again. He died of pneumonia twenty-four hours later, with Caroline and the doctor beside him. He had left, as he had said, ‘tomorrow’.

It was repeated with hatred in the village that Caroline Sheldon had said on the death of her husband, “Take his body away, out of this house, and put it in the church — if his friends want to see it.”

What the pallid woman had actually said to the diffident young minister who had come to her house was something quite different. “This was never his home, as it was never mine. I don’t know why, but it is so. He liked your old church standing in its graveyard. That was really his home, as the village itself was really his home. He had many friends and he liked them, and even loved a number. He would want them to say good-by to him.” Her empty, expressionless eyes did not change. “He was born in Lyme; he died in Lyme. I can’t explain it, but if his friends came to this house they wouldn’t find him here at all. So let him lie in your church, please, where his mother and father were married. He would want it.” She had given the minister a check and had said, “I never knew any clergymen. I only know that you do your best, but you are so few, and it doesn’t seem to do any good at all.”

The minister had replied with pity, “I understand. Yes, it would be the best for Tom to be in his church.” He had hesitated and had looked at Caroline, who was old enough to be his mother. He then said impulsively, “God bless and help you!”

But she had not heard him. She heard and saw almost nothing these days. She felt absolutely nothing except an arctic solitude, without thought or emotion.

It was the slatternly housemaid who had overheard the conversation, and it was her sly and malicious distortion which was repeated in the village. His wife had despised Tom; she had neglected him; she hadn’t even called the doctor until it was too late — she hadn’t wanted to spend the money. The village would ‘show’ her. The little old church, black as iron and decrepit, had very few parishioners since a ‘fancy’ new church had been built in the village, more convenient, brighter, and with no depressing view of a graveyard through its windows and doors. But when Tom’s body was carried there the villagers vengefully filled the church with spring flowers; a fund was raised to bring hothouse daffodils, narcissi, Madonna lilies and hyacinths from Boston. Candles appeared in ranks of white and gold, dimming out the old oil lamps. The worn nave carpet was removed and a new one installed in a matter of hours. The young minister looked hopefully at all this and thought that God was good and that this would be the beginning of a larger parish and more spiritual devotion.

Then on the second day the church was smothered with more sophisticated flowers from friends in Boston, from ‘old’ families. Roses. Carnations. Heliotrope. Mimosa. The trains filled with former associates of John Ames, with business associates of Caroline. Newspaper reporters came. It was reported that Caroline Ames Sheldon never entered the church for those three days, though her husband lay in his open coffin before the altar. Her sons were there and his pretty, weeping daughter. But not the widow. Throngs came and went, but Caroline was not there.

Caroline was there alone, at dawn, for she had asked the minister to unlock the door for her. He would stand at the back, hidden by shadows and peeling wooden pillars, and watch her with sorrow and prayer as she sat in the first pew near her dead husband. She did not pray; she did not move. She never took her eyes from her husband’s quiet and sleeping face. When the cold sun rose she would leave. She would return after twilight, when the church was again empty, and take up her solitary vigil. She would pass within a few steps of the hidden minister, and he would see her face, and he would pray again for her.

A blanket of white roses arrived for Tom from Melinda Bothwell. Caroline stood and looked at it. She made no gesture. She bought a large lot in the cemetery, which contained the graves of Tom’s parents, and she ordered a huge marble monument to be marked with the name of Sheldon. She said to the minister, “I will be here one day beside Tom. I wish I could bring my father’s body here.” She looked at the minister emptily. She said, “I can’t attend the funeral. I can’t explain this, either. But I feel that Tom wouldn’t want me to. I don’t know why.”

The minister said, “Perhaps it is because he wants you to know that he isn’t in that coffin at all but is with you in prayer all the time.” Caroline’s face changed, became grayer and stiffer, and she shook her head and went away.

The newspapers and the townfolk and the friends from Boston were scandalized that the widow was not at the funeral. “But isn’t it like Caroline Ames?” said those from Boston. “I remember that she didn’t show any grief at all when her father was buried.” The townfolk said: “That Ames woman! What can you expect?”

Caroline sat alone in her absolutely empty house when her husband’s funeral took place, for the servants were attending the services. She sat in the icy and gritty drawing room before a very low fire. She listened to the tolling of the distant bell brought to her in the faintest of echoes on the clear cold air, and below the echoes the uneasy sea rumbled like a drum. Then the bell was silent and Caroline stood up and went to her husband’s bedroom. She called, “Tom? Tom?” She lay down on his bed. When her household returned she was in her study, with the door closed.

Two days later she walked the more than three miles along the turbulent beach and then up the hill to her husband’s silent grave. She looked at the raw earth, at the dead and blasted flowers heaped about mountainously. All about her stood old and leaning gravestones and high dead grass thrusting through the waning snow. She said to Tom’s grave: “It was that woman who seduced my father, and it was her daughter who seduced you. It wasn’t my father’s fault; it wasn’t yours, dear Tom. Tom? Tom!” She suddenly shrieked, fearlessly, abruptly, sharply, and it was a lost, inhuman sound.

No one came to the somber house on the hill to offer condolences. Caroline would not have received anyone in any event, and it was tacitly understood.

‘Young’ Mr. Tandy came with Tom’s will, and Caroline listened to the reading of it in the midst of her black-clad children. It did not matter to her, but at the end she gave her astonished sons a grim smile. “So you each have, as of today, seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars apiece, to be invested, to be turned over to each of you in full when you are twenty-one. I didn’t know your father had that much money. You also have his successful business, which will be managed for you.” She looked at Elizabeth, who was blank with shock. “Two thousand dollars,” said Caroline. She uttered the strangest sound, then got up and left the room. Tom had been quite right; Caroline never once thought of contesting the will.

The children returned to their schools, and Caroline was all alone. She worked in her study. Only the servants saw the steady dwindling of her flesh. They rarely heard her speak. But they knew that she sat up almost until dawn.

Caroline saw that her only hope of survival lay in not thinking, in not feeling. She would not even see her cousin Timothy Winslow. She did not open the cable of condolence from her aunt. It was weeks before she left her house, and then it was full spring.

Her sons had never been near her. When they asked the executors for money enough to go away for the summer together and the executors consulted their mother, she said, “They have their lives. They must live them for themselves. Let them have the money. I was not named executor, though they are under age.”

Elizabeth said to her mother, “I’d rather stay home with you this summer. I want to learn all you can teach me.” She spoke in a carefully subdued voice and looked at her mother with eyes deliberately enlarged. Caroline nodded. “Yes, that would be best, Elizabeth. You are all I have now.” She looked at Elizabeth’s face, so like the face of John Ames.

Elizabeth was exultant. Her brothers had been made briefly maudlin about their father’s will and had even cried! She thought of them with contempt. Two thousand dollars. All at once she was respectful of her father as she had never been respectful during his lifetime. He had known all about her. In a way, she congratulated herself, it was just as well he was dead. He would have been a formidable enemy.

Caroline never once resented her husband’s will, for she had gone beyond any personal feelings at all. Once or twice she wondered at it listlessly. Elizabeth had been his favorite, but he had cut her out ruthlessly except for two thousand dollars. Why?

It was in warm June that the maid brought a thin large package to Caroline. “I found this, Mrs. Sheldon, when we were clearing out Mr. Sheldon’s things for the Salvation Army, like you told us. It’s got your name on it.”

The brown paper was old and crinkled. On it Tom had written: “For Caroline, Christmas, 1901.” Caroline took the package and dismissed the maid. She looked at the writing again. A warning of agony started at the very tip of her heart, and she suppressed it with her powerful will. Nearly three years ago. Why hadn’t Tom given this to her at that Christmas? She would never know. She opened the paper, and it crackled dryly in her hands.

It was the painting by David Ames which Elizabeth had described to her and which had once hung over the Adam mantelpiece in old Harper Bothwell’s house in Boston. Timothy, Elizabeth had told her mother, did not like it. The house had been left to both Amanda Winslow and her brother Alfred. Timothy had removed the painting. Tom had known that his wife had a few of David Ames’ paintings. So he had bought this from Timothy for her when he had heard of it. He had bought it in love, for her joy, in spite of the black years. He had wanted to give her what she would have wanted most. The agony rose again in the tip of Caroline’s heart, and this time it took all her effort to suppress it.

She tilted the picture on her knee and studied it: the dark purplish mountains, the desolate valley strewn with boulders, the blind and stumbling man, the apocalyptic sky. A sensation of terror came to her, of desertion, of threat, of warning. She jumped to her feet, overwhelmed. She stood shivering in her sun-warmed study. “No, no,” she said aloud to her emotions. “I mustn’t think. If I do, I’ll die.” She thought of her father, and she did not know why she thought of him. She studied the vaguely malformed man in the painting. It was entirely unlike John Ames, but she thought of him without her volition. It was very strange that she had the peculiar sensation that if she turned her head quickly enough she would see her father. His presence was poignant in the room. Her fear heightened. She took the painting out of the room and went upstairs to her gallery, and there she hung it.

Then she said aloud to the portrait of her grandfather, “Why did you paint this? It’s more terrible than the tower. Why is the man blind? He could remove the blindfold if he wanted to; but he keeps it on. What is the meaning?”

Her grandfather’s face smiled on her gently. She looked into the eyes so like her own. She leaned her cheek against his painted cheek. “You are the only one I can talk to about Tom, about myself. You’re the only one who ever understood.” She dropped her voice and whispered, “Help me, please. Please help.”

The roses Tom had planted so long ago and which had now grown wild spilled their fragrance, mingled with the odor of salt, into the gallery. The sea walk was filled with boulders. Caroline repeated, “Help.”

Nobody could console her; no one had tried except the young minister. But now she felt a soft consolation, a sensation of sympathy and love. For the first time since Tom died, she wept.