A Prologue To Love (57 page)

Yes, she had ‘seen’. Timothy had not. He saw now. The questions had not been merely to make conversation, for Elizabeth detested social exchanges just as her grandfather had detested them. If she were interested in young William, then she was totally interested. She had that sort of character.

Timothy had a sudden mental image of his brother. He resembled his father in appearance but not in nature. Respectable. Inconspicuous. Round-faced, sober-faced, with thoughtful and intelligent eyes. When in repose, his expression and his face were undistinguished. When he smiled he was completely charming and could move even Timothy with that look of gentleness and mirth. Timothy loathed ‘goodness’ in people. He did not loathe it in his brother. He was very fond of William, who was intellectual as well as virtuous, good without being boring, informed without being pedantic, religious without being dogmatic.

Was it possible, Timothy asked himself incredulously, that this young woman who he thought as ruthless as a dagger could be in love — in love! — with William? She had seen him only briefly and at long intervals. When writing to his American relatives, William had never once mentioned Elizabeth Sheldon. During this trip Elizabeth herself had not spoken of him. That, in itself, could be very significant.

Timothy’s thoughts rushed rapidly from point to point. Caroline would be angered at this visit. If she became angry enough she would put a ‘spendthrift’ clause in her will against her daughter, as she had done with her sons. Elizabeth was risking all that, coldly. A woman had only one reason for that risk, any woman. Love. There could be no other explanation.

But Timothy was still incredulous. He coughed and said in a low voice so as not to disturb his wife and daughter, “I hope it won’t be very dull for you down in the country, Elizabeth.”

“Why should it be?” asked Elizabeth, turning her face to him.

“Well, everyone will be either too young or too old for you.”

Elizabeth was silent. But he saw that she was watching him intently.

“William, of course, is down from Oxford. But my mother mentioned he had an invitation to visit friends — ”

Did her face actually change? She shook a cinder from her gloves. She said indifferently, “Then you won’t see him on this visit?”

Timothy did not answer. He found this effective with others. Silence in reply to a question always brought up eyes. It did so now. Timothy was startled. He had never seen this expression in Elizabeth’s eyes before, full, totally directed, and entirely unguarded.

“Oh, I expect we’ll see him,” said Timothy. “After all, we’re brothers. I don’t want him to shorten his holiday, though. If necessary, I’ll run up to see him where he’s visiting; very nice County people, the Havens.” He smiled. “There’s a hint in my mother’s letters that young Lady Rose Haven and William are more than interested in each other. There may be an announcement when we’re there.”

Elizabeth was naturally pale. But now she became very white and very still. She said quietly, “Won’t Amanda and the others want to see William too?”

“Well, we may all run down for a day; it’s only twenty miles by train. Mother’s arthritis is bad now, so she won’t be going. You can entertain each other for a few hours.” He smiled blandly at Elizabeth. “The Havens are often at Mother’s house. Lovely girl, Rose. Typically English, and just twenty. The family is very old and noble, and rich, too, a little horsy, but all the English are. Who was it who said that Paris is paradise for women, Italy for children, and England for horses? I must admit, though, that Rose is superb on a horse. She’s won prizes for jumping too.”

“Jumping?” murmured Elizabeth, looking again at her gloves.

“Steeple jumping, I think it is called. On a horse. Yes, Rose is a lovely girl. Fine figure. Just the girl for William.”

Timothy was sure now. He became excited. Was the first move in his years’ old determination for vengeance going to be successful? John Ames, Caroline, Elizabeth; they were all one in his unrelenting mind.

I think, said Timothy to Elizabeth in his thoughts, that I’m going to find this visit very interesting.

It was disconcerting to see that Elizabeth was watching him closely. It was impossible that she could have read his mind. But she was smiling just a little. It was a secret smile, and she turned away. Her long fair lashes touched her cheek.

William was at home, as Timothy had known he would be, and he and his mother greeted their guests with love and affection. “It’s been some time, hasn’t it, Elizabeth?” William said to his cousin, holding her long hand in both of his warm and pudgy ones. He had the power to project his kindness, for it was genuine. He already had a priestly look in his black clothing, and his round and serious face resembled that of a young monk, until he smiled. Then his eyes shone gaily, his smile was delightful. Elizabeth found herself smiling in answer. Her chill heart lurched and quickened, and she knew for certain now that she honestly and blindly loved and that there would be no one else for her in all the world. Her childish impulse of years ago toward this man had been direct and profound. Her pale cheeks flushed and her blue eyes sparkled.

Elizabeth had never been conscious of atmosphere before. The homes of others in Boston and in Lyme never excited her imagination or longing. Only the trivial demanded pleasantness and beauty around them, and ornament and perfect coloring. But Elizabeth was deeply impressed by the casual magnificence of this English country mansion, its warm and inviting vistas, its mullioned windows open to the scent of the sea and late roses, its air of strength and endurance and dignity. She would live here; there was nothing else for her.

How beautiful the girl is, thought Cynthia, even while embracing her granddaughter Amy, whom she loved dearly; she could not help glancing over Amy’s shoulder at Elizabeth standing with such quiet elegance near William, who was exchanging witticisms with his brother.

“When I look at all of you,” said Cynthia, sighing and smiling, “you make me feel so old and so sad. I remember that I am over seventy and that when you go away I may never see you again, any of you.”

“Nonsense,” said Amanda. “You’ll always be young.” Even the arthritis which Cynthia suffered could not take away the quick sprightliness of her smile, though her undyed hair was white and soft now and rolled neatly at the back of her head. She had shriveled considerably and moved with slowness and caution, but her smoky gray eyes were the eyes of a girl, and she dressed with taste. Her mauve tea dress of silk had a subtle air and grace, and her profile, when she smiled, took on young contours.

They had tea. The sun was lowering over the scalloped bay. Elizabeth had never heard a nightingale before, and when the pure cry of music came to her through the windows on the first murmur of the evening breeze, she was both enthralled and startled. There had been silence in her mother’s house, oppressive and secret. She had never known peace and serenity. She was like one who had gained sight and hearing after a lifetime of blindness and deafness. She saw blue shadows moving slowly over the thick lawns and settling in purplish hollows under the great old oaks and plane trees. She had not known such a transparent sky before, such light and delicate pink fingerings of sun on the uppermost leaves. The wideness of the peace here, the sweet fragrance of flowers and grass and wood and tea, the tranquility, lay on that ascetic young spirit like a blessing. She could hear now the clear ringing of the church bells in the village below the headland, the call of thrushes, the deeper passion of the nightingale’s voice. She could not remember when she had last cried, or even if she had ever cried. She wanted to cry now. She looked at William. He was gazing at her thoughtfully, and when he caught her glance he smiled as if he understood, and she smiled at him with her very first innocent smile. He lifted his teacup and bent his head a little and wondered why he was suddenly disturbed and moved.

The family went to their rooms to rest and supervise unpacking and then bathe and dress for dinner at eight. The light lingered. Elizabeth was in her large and pretty room overlooking the land and then the sea. A golden mist was invading the grounds; the lower branches of the trees swam dreamily in it, as if enchanted. She opened the windows wide and looked at the sea, crimson and gilded, far below. Little sailboats with red and blue and white sails were drifting into harbor. In copses of entranced trees the girl could see distant houses on the headlands and on sloping hillsides that ran down to the sea. The scents of southern England were almost overpowering to Elizabeth; the limitless peace crept over her, and she forgot everything except William and the joy of being here. In those moments she was only a girl, soft and hoping.

She could not leave this place. She would not leave it. Resolutely she opened the polished mahogany wardrobe where a maid had already hung her gowns and frocks and gave thought as to what she would wear that night. She found herself deliriously shivering. She selected a white silk dress embroidered with fine traceries of azure flowers, and silver slippers. The maid knocked discreetly and brought in a brass pitcher of hot water and fresh towels and opened a packet of scented soap. Murmuring, she lit the oil lamps and turned them up and then touched a light to a small fire in the black marble hearth. For, though it was southern England and July, the evenings were tangy and chill so near the sea.

Elizabeth dressed quickly. The gown showed her beautifully modeled white shoulders and her smooth white arms and clung to her narrow waist and then fell into elegant folds below the knee. Caroline had never worn her mother’s pearl necklace, the necklace of the portrait of Ann and Cynthia which now hung in the drawing room below. She had given the necklace to Elizabeth on her twenty-first birthday with a strange sour smile. Elizabeth wore it for the first time. She wound up her light brown hair in soft fold on fold on the crown of her head. She stood before the pier mirror and inspected herself closely, and she felt a tumult of joy. She saw herself as William would see her, and she was full of delight and pleasure. She did not wait for the dinner bell. She ran down the great staircase to the drawing room and found William standing alone before the newly lit fire, glancing over the evening newspaper from London.

She halted in the doorway and looked at him, and she felt unsteady. He put a pipe in his mouth, struck a match, and lit it. He continued to read. His solid round head bent to an item in the paper; he exuded comfort and kind strength and contentment. Then something disturbed him. He lifted his head and slowly turned toward the doorway and saw Elizabeth standing there.

She shimmered in the lamplight, white and silvery, the pearls glowing about her throat, her blue eyes soft, her figure no longer angular but melting. The two young people regarded each other in grave silence.

Then William said, using an Americanism he had learned from his mother: “Hello, there.” He dropped the paper and came toward his cousin, and he smiled and held out his hand. Elizabeth could not speak; she gave him her hand, and her fingers involuntarily curled about his like the fingers of a lonely child.

He led her to a chair and then stood before her. Gentle conversation came naturally to him as a rule; it did not come now. He folded his hands under the back of his long black coat and looked down at Elizabeth. How could he have remembered her as a hard, cold child, palely indifferent and with a shut expression? His memory had been wrong, or she had changed as she had become a young woman.

“I’ve just been thinking,” he said, “how tangled our family relationships are. Very British; hardly American.” His voice was deep and eloquent and confiding.

“Yes,” said Elizabeth with a shyness her brothers would never have believed. “You’re my second cousin, aren’t you, William? You’re my mother’s first cousin. And Timothy is your brother, and he’s also my second cousin. And Melinda is my mother’s adopted sister. Yes, it is very tangled, isn’t it?”

“Do you see Melinda often?” he asked.

“No. I sometimes meet her and her children at Timothy’s Boston house. But that is all.” She had always despised Melinda. Yet now, as she looked at William, she did not despise his ‘adopted’ sister any longer. She was so very happy. Her voice, usually so modulated and almost monotonous in its indifference, was warm and young. It had a ringing clarity, as of innocence. William thought: Timothy has often mentioned that the girl and her brothers are corrupt, and I had taken it for granted that corruption always recognizes corruption. But Timothy is wrong. This girl is no more corrupt than Amy.

He thought of Rose Haven. He knew his mother hoped for a marriage between her son and this girl of whom she was so fond; Rose’s family also hoped for it. He more than liked her; he was drifting into a deep affection for her, placid and accepting. But now, involuntarily, he compared her with Elizabeth. Life with Rose would be peaceful and serene. It would be gracious. It would also, he found himself thinking with dismay, be a damned bore. He was so taken aback by his own thoughts that he sat down abruptly and stared earnestly at Elizabeth.

Life with this girl would never be boring. Intelligence stood in her eyes. He knew, from reports given him by Timothy, that Elizabeth was smoothly taking over many of her mother’s affairs, and with competence. She had a look of sophistication, in spite of her youth, and a charmingly worldly air. Her conversation would be stimulating and not confined to parish duties, wifely duties, and duties to children. She would never prattle nicely for hours about nothing at all until her husband yawned and furtively glanced at his watch to see if it was not time to put out the lights and forget boredom in sleep. He had never, as yet, held any real conversation with Elizabeth. But he guessed quite positively that she would not bore him and that, for her, her husband would be first above all others. He knew that he would inherit a vast fortune. Rose knew nothing about money except, as she said, “it was lovely to have.” Elizabeth knew all about money. William was, after all, his father’s son. He had, in fact, been studying financial news from London, Paris, Berlin, New York, and Berne, when Elizabeth had entered the room.

“Tell me,” he said, leaning toward Elizabeth, as if urgently asking to be told a secret, “how you like England.”

I love you, I love you, thought Elizabeth. Her face lit up. For the first time in her life she began to speak without calculation, without guile, without indifference, without coldness. William watched her, fascinated and smiling. He was more than half in love with her when the rest of the family wandered in. He had never heard a girl speak before with such joy, with such eager simplicity, and with such ardent passion.

“How beautiful you are,” said Cynthia, looking at her sister’s grand daughter with astonishment. “I think that you really look like my dear Ann.”

She smiled tenderly and she kissed Elizabeth gently on the cheek. Amanda, Amy, and the boys gaped at this incredible Elizabeth, so stately and so full of queenliness, with her delicately flushed cheeks and her shining blue eyes and exquisite gown. Timothy looked sharply from Elizabeth to William. The young peer was gazing at Elizabeth with an expression Timothy, the malicious, could only describe as fatuous and bedazzled.

Amanda, as usual, was somewhat dowdy in her no-nonsense gown, and Amy appeared callow and awkward compared with Elizabeth. The boys, staring at Elizabeth, appeared more fatuous than their Uncle William. We are a fine success, thought Timothy. He said, “Is it really you, Elizabeth?”

“I think,” said William, “that it is.”

They went into the dining room, where silver and candlelight and fragrance again enchanted Elizabeth. Her Esmond blood, so long suppressed and inhibited, delighted in this display of mellowed graciousness. It was as if she had been born only this day, had come to maturity only this night. She had no other memories but of this house, no love but this young man sitting beside her and solicitous that she should be served the proper cut of beef. When William’s sleeve touched her bare arm she trembled. When he turned to her she could only look into his eyes with naked and touching love.

Timothy smiled in himself with elation. Amanda thought: Perhaps I was mistaken in the girl. Poor thing. How happy she seems away from her mother and that horrible moldering house. She is only a girl, after all. I must do more for her at home. She said to Henry, who, almost eighteen, was at the susceptible age, “Dear, you haven’t touched that wonderful Yorkshire pudding, your favorite.” She looked at Amy, her pretty daughter, and thought crossly that salmon pink was definitely not the girl’s color. She saw Cynthia smiling at Elizabeth as at some resurrected vision and was pleased. Then she saw Timothy’s face and was startled. He kept glancing at Elizabeth, and there was something in that glance that made Amanda uneasy.

“I keep early hours now, children,” said Cynthia. “How I used to hate them! I never went to bed before two in the morning, even when I wasn’t entertaining. I loved the night; much more exciting than the day. But now I must creep off like an old, sick child, at ten.”

She added quickly, “Don’t pity me! I’ve had a most enjoyable life, much better than most.”

“We’re all tired too,” said Amanda. “Timothy has been attending so many meetings in London, and so has Elizabeth, on her mother’s business. And this country air is making all the children yawn. I think we should go to bed early.”

They were sitting in the drawing room now, and Amanda was drinking whiskey, Amy was shyly sipping a little sweet port, and the boys, defying their mother’s scowl, had accepted small glasses of beer. Timothy found his brandy was giving him heartburn. He could not look away from Elizabeth and William murmurously laughing together side by side on a love seat.

When Cynthia stood up, all stood with her. But William said, “I’m not sleepy, and I’m sure Elizabeth isn’t. I’d like to walk with her about the grounds. There’s an uncommonly fine moon tonight.”

Cynthia was very tired. She was pleased that William liked this poor, loveless girl who was taking on a resemblance to ‘dear Ann’ more and more in Cynthia’s eyes. “Oh, do,” she said. “I think the sunken garden is especially lovely in moonlight.”

William took Elizabeth’s hand easily; they said good night and walked out together. “Dear children,” sighed Cynthia sentimentally. “William is so kind. Did I tell you, dears, that I hope we’ll have a Very Important Announcement to make while you are here? William and Rose Haven.”

“Excellent,” said Timothy, looking at the french doors through which William and Elizabeth had just disappeared. “Excellent,” he repeated. He caught his wife’s eye. She was frowning at him. Damn Mandy. She had a way of reading what he really meant under his words. Had she heard him gloating? His fingers as he grasped Amanda’s arm just above her elbow cut into her warm flesh, and she said frankly, “Ouch! Do you have to pinch me like that, Timothy, my love?”

Elizabeth, who had been born to beauty only that day, only this night, wandered slowly with William over the thick grass which was sprinkled with shining drops of dew under the moon. They did not speak now that they were alone. They passed a fountain and paused to look at it. They walked on and on, until they left the grounds and could stand on the headland and look at the sea. It was a plain of silver. The evening wind gushed with fragrance and salt.

“What is it, Elizabeth?” asked William. “Are you crying?”

“I can’t help it,” she stammered. “I don’t know why. But it’s as if I were alive for the first time in all my life.”

He took his handkerchief and wiped her eyes gently, as his father had wiped Cynthia’s eyes more than twenty-five years ago. He could see the blue under Elizabeth’s lashes, the soft curve of her cheek, the rose of her lips. He dropped his hand.

Then, hardly standing on his toes, he kissed the girl’s parted lips, simply and naturally. She put her hand on his shoulder.

“Oh, William,” said Elizabeth, and her shriveled heart expanded painfully.

“Dear Elizabeth,” said William, and he kissed her again and felt her innocence and inexperience, and he was full of compassion. Her lips moved timidly against his.

Was he in love with this girl? He did not know. He was not an impulsive young man. He only knew that what he felt for Elizabeth was totally different from the affection he felt for Rose Haven. During his early student years he had engaged in what the English discreetly called ‘young men’s indiscretions’, but only briefly and at long intervals. He knew what passion was. He felt it now, and something else that keenly disturbed yet delighted him. He became overpoweringly aware of the beauty of the night.

“Do you remember the last time we met?” asked Elizabeth, leaning against his shoulder.

William thought. He could not remember in the least. He said, “It was a long time ago, wasn’t it?”

It was only yesterday for Elizabeth. She had been sixteen. It was a slightly warm pre-Easter day in Boston, and the air had a sweetness in it. Even Elizabeth, the exigent, was suddenly startled by the promised fragrance of spring, and she had stopped on the steps of Miss Stockington’s school and had looked about her vaguely and had as vaguely frowned, as at an imperious voice intruding upon her. Her books were heavy on her arm; her fair hair blew back from her face in the living breeze. She looked at the houses across the brick road, their walls bright and rosy in the sun, and she was suddenly excited and did not know why. Then a carriage had drawn up and her Aunt Melinda was being assisted from it by young William, and they were laughing together.