A Prologue To Love (59 page)

The cattle were in the luscious meadows; larks rose against the rapidly rising sun and dropped their music down to the cool earth. Timothy frequently glanced at the quiet plump profile of his brother but did not speak. They finally pulled up their horses in the shade of a giant oak which rose in lonely majesty on a low knoll. William lit his pipe, and Timothy put a cigarette in his mouth. They smoked in a little silence. Two or three times Timothy began to speak, then stopped. William sat very still on his horse and looked over the countryside; the broken shadow of leaves moved over his face.

Then Timothy said, “May I assume this dawn galloping has a purpose?”

“In a way,” said William. He turned his head and looked at his brother, and Timothy saw the sober trouble in his gentle eyes.

“Anything I can do?” asked Timothy lightly.

“I don’t know,” said William. “That’s the trouble. I don’t know.”

“You’re one of the very few people, Bill, that I’m fond of,” said Timothy. “Thinking of giving up the Church?”

“Perhaps,” said William.

Timothy had asked the question jokingly. He was so astonished at the answer that he took the cigarette from his mouth and stared at William. “You’re not serious!” he exclaimed.

“I don’t know,” said William. “It depends on circumstances.”

“The Havens been putting pressure on you?” asked Timothy. “I noticed they weren’t a very reverent family.”

William did not answer. Timothy reached out and patted his arm. “What does Shakespeare say? ‘Men have died, and worms have eaten them. But not for love’.”

William took off his cap. Then he said, “I’m not so sure of that. Perhaps not physically, not always. But spiritually.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Timothy. “But perhaps my family doesn’t love in that way.”

“Perhaps not,” said William. His pipe had gone out and he lit it again. All at once Timothy was restless. He dismounted and began to walk about, idly switching at the top of the tall grass. His face had become older and had even less color than usual.

“You haven’t told me yet,” William said, “what your political plans are now since they refused to appoint you, in America, as senator.”

Timothy stopped. He stood with his back to his brother. “I’m waiting for an amendment to the Constitution,” he said. “We’re working at it. We have eighteen states in line now; we’ll soon have the rest. Then senators will be elected by the people, directly, and not appointed by political hacks. I can wait.”

“And you think that you’ll be elected?”

Timothy turned and smiled a little. “Certainly. I have the money. You need money to be elected in America. Haven’t you heard? Even if my opponent were the angel Gabriel himself, my money could beat him. A baboon could be elected to any office in the United States if he had enough money. And had richly paid hirelings to promise everything.”

“Indeed?” said William. He stroked the neck of his browsing horse. “I’ve given the subject a great deal of thought and I’ve come to the conclusion that the parliamentary system is much better than yours and can guard the interests of the whole people much more honestly and efficiently. A very rich man aspiring to Parliament has very little advantage over a poorer man or even one in very modest circumstances. That is because of our election laws. We can spend only so much, and it is a small amount. We can’t promise patronage or favors or bribes. You can be disqualified by law if there is the slightest hint of such things. Then there are the libel laws, which are very strict. You can’t abuse your opponent, as you can in America, and hint nasty things about him or attack his character. You can only attack his political ideas, and you have to be careful about them too. Yes, the parliamentary system is best.”

“For whom?” asked Timothy, still smiling. “What is the use of money if it can’t buy you what you want, such as high political office? You see, Bill, in America we have only money — no titles, no natural prerogatives as birthrights, no natural position because of family or birth. I could point out a dozen men and women on the streets of Boston who were born of families illustrious in our Revolution and in the forming of the Constitution. One I know is a ribbon clerk in a shop, and a daughter of another family is a housemaid. Why? Because their families had lost their money long ago and so they are no longer admitted to ‘Society’. Society, in America, is a purely money-based thing, and any boor with enough money can break in after a token resistance.”

“Money,” said William, “is surely the lowest value of a man.”

Timothy shrugged. “Perhaps. But we aren’t an aristocratic people, remember. We have no tradition of aristocracy, or noblesse oblige, or high principle, or chivalry; we haven’t even an aristocracy of the mind. In fact, in America, intellectualism is very, very suspect. In the early days of the Republic there was a frame of aristocratic and intellectual reference. But not any longer. The Vandals took over. I know a man in Philadelphia who was a starving bricklayer, a drunkard, a cheap gambler in a saloon, where he lost all his wages. One night he won a worthless piece of ground playing poker. That was about forty years ago. A short time after that — it was near Titusville — oil was discovered on the property, and he was a multimillionaire in two years. His children now live on the Main Line, and their grandchildren attend the very best of schools and are admitted and courted everywhere. But coming down to that, you aren’t so rarefied yourselves here in England. What about stout and tea? And the big soap merchant?”

“Those men had to be something else besides purveyors of stout and tea and soap,” said William, and now he, too, smiled. “They had to be men of intelligence and some taste and acceptable in other ways. Money was not the sole basis, as it is in America.”

“It will be, one of these days,” said Timothy. “You’ll see. You, too, have the middle class.”

William was bewildered. “I’m afraid I don’t follow you,” he said. “What has the middle class got to do with this?”

But Timothy had begun to walk up and down again, slashing at the grass, and William watched him. Then William thought. He remembered long and recent discussions he had had with old friends in London and men who had known his father. He remembered questions raised in the House and murmurs among the Lords. It was very nebulous. But something was stirring, and William had felt the uneasiness and anxiety. He wished now that he had listened more closely, for the affairs of the world were also the concern of God. What had old Lord Chetlow said? “Of course there will be a war.” It had seemed absurd to William.

He watched Timothy and again felt uneasy and anxious. He said, “If and when that amendment is passed, and if and when you become a candidate for the Senate, on what will you base your appeal to the people — when they can elect their senators directly?”

Timothy stopped walking restlessly up and down. He turned to William and smiled pleasantly.

“The class struggle,” he said.

“What?” cried William incredulously. “What class struggle? You have no classes in America. Any man with a little intelligence and industry and inventiveness can make money in America and keep it and add to it and make himself a fortune, for you have no personal income rates as we have. Such a man can rise to any position in America. You haven’t any classes!”

“We’ll make them,” said Timothy, and smiled more pleasantly.

“Why, for heaven’s sake?”

“For political purposes. We’ll also pass an income tax law, which will prevent, eventually, any man from accumulating new wealth and will act to protect those who have inherited wealth and also to protect them from the Vandals.”

“What Vandals?”

“The middle class, which is invading all parts of our national life now, as it is invading your British life. With its vulgarity and suety virtues and morality and bad taste. We’ll use the working class to destroy the middle class in America; we’ll give the working class such hatred and such lusts that the middle class will be so taxed to death to support the working class’s greed that they’ll go out of existence. Liberty, equality, fraternity! Every man as alike as every other man, if we have to chop off the heads that stand up above the crowd!” He laughed and thought that William’s face, looking down at his, was utterly uncomprehending and just a little stupid.

“Then,” said Timothy, “we who have the great old inherited fortunes will also have power. And we’ll invent our own aristocracy. America’s a republic, now. But so was Rome, for the first four hundred years. We’ll have an American ‘democratic empire’ eventually, ruled by those born to rule, with only the contented and obedient masses under them and no challenging middle class.”

“You’ll never be able to accomplish that in America,” said William. “You’ll never be able to make the people class-conscious, not when they know that a class society means the end of freedom for them.”

“But they’ll never know,” said Timothy. “Just as your own working class, which can become middle class with enough hard work and intelligence, will never know.”

“You’ll never accomplish that without revolution,” William said. “And revolutions are born of wars.”

Timothy, looking at his brother, became silent.

The young Englishman on his horse turned his head and looked at the peaceful sunshine, the green meadows, the distant cliffs, the quiet hedgerows, the placid trees. The sun was warm on his shoulders, but he felt cold. But surely, he thought, these atavisms like Timothy are few in the world. The lust for power was a latent evil in all humanity, but it was a lust which present civilization had modified to a great extent or sublimated into a desire for true public service. This was a civilized world, not a world of marching empires, not a world of soldiers and despots, not an imperial world. There was only one despotism left in the Western world now, and that was Russia, and even Russia was feeling the moderating influence of Europe and was becoming exceedingly prosperous and less suspicious of her neighbors.

“Were you thinking of going into politics, after all?” asked Timothy with deceptive joviality. His eyes were probing his brother, and he was not entirely assured now that he had been airing his views to a mild provincial Englishman who would soon retire into some shadowy and cloistered cathedral. William felt that probing. He said, “Of course not. I am not interested in politics.”

He stroked his horse’s neck again, but he fixed his calm eyes fully on Timothy’s. “As a churchman, I am interested in the ancient problem of evil. I have discovered something. Evil men are fundamentally superficial. They are incapable of powerful emotions. And of course, being superficial, they can’t love deeply or have any loyalties except to themselves, or any deep principles or convictions, even wrong ones. Their malice, though often disastrous to others, is not even based on lust or greed to any profound extent. It’s mere impulsiveness — atavistic. Though they seem to have aims, they are really aimless, striking without full knowledge. I would call them petty if they weren’t so dangerous to others.”

Timothy could not look away from his brother. He said, “That isn’t what Nietzsche said of them.”

“He was speaking of an entirely different race. He was speaking of truly wicked men who were beyond good and evil. Such men have intrinsic reasoning power — Satanism. They’ve always been very few in the world, fortunately. I could not name them on the fingers of one hand.

“One of these days,” continued William, “we’ll understand the nature of evil. Its attrition. Its bleakness. Its fruitlessness. Its barrenness. Its refusal to distinguish between right and wrong. Its piteousness. What a world without song or light, without pity and gentleness, without color and contrast, without affirmation or vitality, without satisfaction and joy! Only a corroding acid malice, only a hellish loneliness. Destructiveness without a feeling of accomplishment. They are the ravenous bellies St. Paul spoke of, which are never filled.”

He looked at the sky. He said, “They are the damned.”

He knew that he had lost. He was dealing with an evil man. While he was sick with pain he was also compassionate. He knew what he must do, what he had known from the beginning. The Church, alone, understood the problem of evil.

He said, “Why do you hate Elizabeth? That young girl?”

Timothy’s whole expression changed.

“Do you hate her because of her mother? Or her grandfather? Or are you only destructive?”

Their eyes held for a sudden long space. Then Timothy mounted his horse again. William waited. “You think I’m evil, don’t you?” Timothy said. “You were coming to this question when you expounded your idea of what you consider evil.”

“Don’t try to read my mind, please,” said William. “I have asked you the first questions.”

“I couldn’t explain,” said Timothy, “for the simple reason that you would not understand.”

“That’s the answer of a man who has no defensible grounds, Timothy.”

“Yes. I have. I hated her grandfather for reasons you ought to know. I hate her mother; that is a different question and has different reasons. Her father was a clod. Don’t speak to me of her Esmond blood! There’s very little of that in her. Her whole character — ”

“A young woman’s character,” said William.

Timothy moved in his saddle and looked again at his brother, and he was pale and serious. But before he could speak William spoke. “Are you one to talk of ‘character’? Are you capable of doing so?” His face had flushed, and his pain was on him again.

“Let me say this,” said Timothy. “I have a daughter, Amy, and I believe I love her, though you would say I’m not capable of love. But I’d rather see her dead than married to one of Caroline’s sons. I’d go to any lengths to prevent such a marriage. Any.” He paused. “Do you understand now?”

“Yes. I think I do.”

William looked for the last time at the peaceful country. He took up his reins. “I believe we understand each other,” he said. “Shall we go back?” He touched his crop to his horse and she spurted away, leaving Timothy alone.

William found Elizabeth where he knew she would be, in a quiet and hidden part of the garden where they had met yesterday. She was sitting on a wicker seat in her long white Swiss dress; a blue sash was crumpled high under her breasts. When she saw William her face became subtly charged with joy and love and innocence. She moved a little, and her hair was illuminated by the early morning sun.

William came to her and took her hands and held them tightly, standing before her. He prayed that he would speak well and that this girl, younger in many ways than her actual years, would not be hurt too bitterly. She looked up at him, smiling eagerly and hopefully, and she was like a child. Dear God, he said inwardly, help me. Elizabeth, waiting, saw his expression, and her hands tightened on his.