A Prologue To Love (62 page)

Now Caroline was intensely interested. “They’re the biggest munitions concern in the world, almost as large as Kronk in Germany. Why are the munitions stocks going up?”

“I don’t know. Maybe we’re going to try some new forays in Mexico.”

Caroline shook her head. “No. It can’t be that. I’ve never seen so much activity in munitions stocks and subsidiary concerns. Not even during the Spanish-American War. What’s the name of your little company?”

“Enright Arms. They have a patent for an automatic pistol. Bouchard is definitely interested. If Bouchard buys, my stock will be worth a fortune, for Enright will sell out only to Bouchard.” He scrutinized his mother. “You don’t buy what you call fly-by-night stocks. But I definitely suggest you buy Enright. There’s some stock still on the market; some people are buying like mad.”

Caroline thought. Then she stood up and left the room without a word, and John heard her mounting up to her study, and he ran to the bottom of the stairs and listened. She was telephoning New York. He nodded happily. If the rumor got out that the old lady was buying all the available stock of Enright there would be a boom, indeed, and Bouchard would pay more. And the dividends would be much, much juicier. He went back to his chair. In a few minutes Caroline returned.

“I forgot,” said John. “While I was waiting in the depot the stationmaster came out and said there was a cable for you from England. Probably Elizabeth. Here it is.”

He gave her the yellow envelope, and she opened it abstractedly. Then she uttered an exclamation. “Elizabeth’s on the way home! She’ll arrive in seven days. I thought she was going to stay with Timothy for the rest of the time — four weeks.”

“Is she sick?” asked John with hope.

“No. She says she’s decided to come home. Why, I wonder? She was so anxious to go. She has something to tell me, she says.”

“Maybe she’s fallen in love with some blooming Englishman,” said John.

“Nonsense. She’s too sensible. She knows I need her here.” Caroline frowned, looking at the cable.

Then Caroline said, as if speaking to herself, “It must be very important. Elizabeth has been visiting my English associates.”

Without warning, Caroline suddenly remembered the night of her father’s death. She could see the room in Switzerland; she could see all those faces, many of them dead now. She could hear the voices and what they said.

“What’s the matter?” said John.

“Nothing.” But Caroline felt both sick and excited. The girl she had been struggled with the woman she was now. The woman won, as usual. She looked at John. “If I were you I wouldn’t speculate with the Enright stock. I’d hold it, not sell it for a quick profit.”

“I’ll hold it,” said John.

John visited the Bothwells the next day. Mimi said never a word about his mother. He probed lightly, speaking of Caroline, but though Mimi flushed uneasily she was silent. Melinda, as usual, asked kindly about his mother, and he said, “She seems younger, somehow, and more alive. As if she had a new interest or something.”

Mimi glanced at her mother unhappily.

“I’m very glad to hear that,” said Melinda gently. “Poor Caroline, I wonder what interest it is. She never goes out.”

John was more in love with young Mimi than ever. He had loved her for herself and had always intended to marry her. But now there was his mother’s interest in this girl. He kissed Mimi for the very first time that night when they were alone, and when she clung to him he was not only excited and happy, but exultant.

“Don’t stay away too long from me, dear,” he said.

“Not too long,” she said in return, and lifted her young face to his again. Aunt Caroline was wrong about John. He was the dearest thing in the world to her now, dearer even than her mother or her twin brother.

It was not possible for Caroline to know that she loved Mary Bothwell with an absolutely unflawed devotion. For her father she had had fear and shyness and uncertainty, mixed with her headlong love — and he had never treated her with overt affection. To Beth she had been ‘that poor child’, and Beth had hated John Ames and had been a woman incapable of understanding that Caroline Ames, the woman, was not Carrie Ames, the child. Tom Sheldon, too, had seen Caroline as he wished to see her. He had obstinately insisted on his own conception, and when it failed to materialize he was alienated and wounded, feeling himself cast out and rejected. No one had accepted her for what she was.

Caroline’s children were her tragedy, and the tragedy was no less terrible because she was the author of their indifference, their exigency, and their greed. She did not honestly believe that Elizabeth loved her; that first illusion had withered several years ago. Caroline had too penetrating an eye to be deceived by her daughter, though she clung to Elizabeth out of her desperate need for love, given or received.

But Mimi Bothwell loved her, did not find her peculiar, had no interest in her money, did not doubt or shrink from her, and accepted her with an ardent devotion. The affection between them was maternal and filial, sisterly, childlike, accepting, purely unselfish, and illuminated with their mutual passion for color and light. There was no demand between them, no false images, no distortions, no self-serving, no fear. For the first time in her life Caroline felt a love that was utterly free and unhampered and without awkwardness. When Mimi had told her that she was to leave for Paris almost immediately, Caroline was dismayed and sad, but at once she knew this was the best for the girl and had put aside her own dread of approaching loneliness and loss.

So deep was Caroline’s love for the girl that she could feel something stir in herself at the thought of the girl’s going abroad and studying, and she did not know that this was pleasure and a kind of youthful anticipation. The projection of herself into the future of Mimi brought her a sense of well-being and hope, things she had never known since childhood. So when Elizabeth arrived home she was momentarily astonished at the color in her mother’s face, the confident ring in her voice, and the peculiar if abstracted gentleness. Elizabeth thought it was because she had returned. If the old hateful fool was really so dependent on her, so much the better. Now.

Caroline, Elizabeth now fully believed, was the cause of her rejection by William, and she had spent the days on the ship in fits of incoherent vengefulness. Her mother would pay for what she had done to her daughter, though how this would be accomplished Elizabeth had only a few vague ideas at the best. But two of them were Ames and Amy Winslow, and not only would Elizabeth be revenged on her mother through them, but she would be revenged on Timothy also.

She had overheard Timothy say to Amanda, “Thank God Amy never speaks of Ames Sheldon any longer since we came here. She’s gotten over that foolishness.” Elizabeth had been startled at this piece of news; she had not known that her secretive brother Ames and Amy, his cousin, had anything in common or even saw each other often. She had filed this news in her mind.

Caroline was so contented because of Mimi that she did not immediately notice Elizabeth’s increased thinness, which had become almost emaciation, and the sharp brittleness in her young voice. There was a new maid in the house, who had attacked the hopeless grime of the years hopefully and then had given up. But she could cook to Caroline’s austere taste and with frugality, and that was sufficient. The only room in the house which the maid had been able to clean well was Elizabeth’s, for it had not been dirty at any time.

Elizabeth neatly unpacked in her room. When she came on the fine dresses she had bought with William in mind, she suddenly, and for the first time, broke down. She clung to them and wept silently. She no longer hated William for her humiliation and frightful suffering. She sat on her hard white bed and cradled the dresses in her arms as a mother cradles a child. One of the dresses still held a white rose he had plucked for her and pinned on her shoulder. It was dry and crushed now and fell into fragments in her hand. She held them to her lips. She put them in a small box, then returned to cradling the dresses, pressing them to her breast. Her grief was more than she could endure. There was a blue ribbon at the sleeve of the white Swiss dress; it had loosened one night, and William had gently tied it, then kissed it. She kissed it now, and the tears ran down her cheeks. The dresses crackled in her arms; she smoothed their folds with a gentle hand as a mother soothes a complaining child.

She had never loved before, and the emotion devastated her, exploded with agony in her. She had no philosophy for it, no strength or experience to bring to it. She would never be rid of the pain. All at once a convulsion stunned the side of her head and pulsed there like fire, and she put a hand to it. It took some time to subside, and when it did her flesh was prickled over with shivering moisture and she was dizzy and sick. She forced herself to put the dresses between sheets of tissue paper, then was struck by some strangeness. She looked about the room. Nothing was changed; the sunlight, reflecting from the sea, filled the room, glanced off the white walls. Yet something had changed, a faint distortion, perhaps, a shortening or lengthening of perspective, an ominous quality to the sun’s light. A slight glaze appeared to have settled on the few pieces of furniture, and there was a sensation in her as though she looked at everything through a sheet of glass which stood between herself and the world. But now her grief was more diffused, more bearable.

She noticed that the gritty stairs appeared elongated as she went down them. Do I need spectacles? she thought, and then the thought was gone. She was conscious that she had a new strength and a new hardening. She had not slept all the way across the ocean; it was possible that sleeplessness was giving her a kind of hallucination. But she would sleep tonight. She had so much to do.

Tea had never been served in this house since Beth’s death, and Elizabeth was coldly amused to find that her mother had prepared tea for them in the dank and moldering living room. The cups and saucers were of the original fine set Tom had bought, glowing S
è
vres porcelain. They were all chipped, and there were stains in the larger crevices. Fresh from the fine mansion in Devon, Elizabeth looked at them with distaste, then she thought: Nothing matters. Only money. Only what money can do for you. Why waste it on trivialities? She sat down opposite Caroline, who, as always, was shy and uncertain even if massive and monumental. “There’re cakes too,” Caroline mumbled, pointing to a silver plate, very tarnished, on which stood some ‘store’ cookies hard with sprinkled sugar.

“Can’t Jenny bake?” said Elizabeth, pushing one away with the tip of a finger.

“She has a lot to do. Not only the house, but the laundry. There’s no time for baking,” said Caroline. She had never been able to look fully at anyone for long, not even her husband after the first year of their marriage. She peered under her thick black eyelashes at her daughter. Then she was apprehensive. What had happened to Elizabeth, sitting so rigidly opposite her, her blue eyes a little glassy and fixed, her body, in its white duck skirt and shirtwaist, so thin?

“What’s wrong?” she asked bluntly as she poured tea for Elizabeth from a silver pot so tarnished that it was black along the handle and spout and yellowish all over. “Europe didn’t suit you?”

“Not particularly.” The tea was weak and lukewarm and had a sickening taste to Elizabeth. She put down the cup. “But you’re not interested in my travels, I’m sure.”

“You haven’t told me anything,” said Caroline. She bit into a cookie with her strong white teeth and appeared to enjoy it. “Who did you see? What did they say? But first, why did you come back to America so soon? I thought you were going to stay another month.”

“I changed my mind,” said Elizabeth. The one sip of tea lingered with an odd taste on the back of her tongue, like some sweetened astringent.

“Why?”

“I was bored. You haven’t any idea how boring Amanda and her children can be.” Elizabeth laughed. Caroline quickened and glanced uneasily at her daughter. Elizabeth very seldom laughed, and even then it was more of a short light murmur. But now Elizabeth’s laughter was loud and abrupt, without mirth, and it had a ring of uncontrol, as though she had been profoundly amused beyond her expectations. Caroline listened to the sound, and she felt a sensation as if a cold finger had been laid on the back of her broad thick neck. She, too, put down her cup, and she stared at her daughter. As abruptly as she had laughed, Elizabeth stopped and looked beyond her mother at the smeared windows and the bright shadow of the sun on them.

Even when she had believed Elizabeth understood her, even when she loved Elizabeth with the awful and helpless love she had felt for her father, Caroline had been diffident with the girl and oddly uneasy. Now she exclaimed with a dread that was without a name, “Elizabeth!”

The girl still looked at the windows, and Caroline could see the grayish shadow under the beautifully formed cheekbones, the colorless lips still half open after the last burst of laughter, the frozen blue eyes. It was the face of one in a trance, and Caroline half rose and cried again, “Elizabeth?”

“Very boring,” said Elizabeth, as if she had not laughed at all and her mother had not spoken. “London, too, is dull; it was worse with my dear cousins. Amy is especially stupid.” A flicker appeared in her eyes for an instant. “We toured constantly, except when I had to be away from them.”

She took a cake and bit into it, then threw it from her. “Why, these are horrible! Sawdust and flour! How can you eat them?”

“You don’t look well,” Caroline said. “I thought Europe would do you good; it wasn’t only a matter of business.” Her throat had a weight in it.

“I am well enough,” said Elizabeth. She looked at the windows again. It would be long dim twilight now in Devon. The family would be gathering for dinner. The scent of roses and the sea would be coming in the long french windows, and the firelight would be brightening the soft draperies. And beyond the window there were the dark gardens, the arbors, the hushed trees, voices coming across the grass, and joy in the windy air.

“I don’t think you look well,” Caroline persisted.

“There will be a war,” said Elizabeth. “That is what they told me, and that is what I heard; there was a rumble about it in parliament.”

Her voice had never been particularly resonant and had never had any sweetness or eloquent intonations except in England. Now it was a mechanical voice. It was also precise, controlled, and reasonable and revealed Elizabeth’s great intelligence and awareness of what she was saying. If the eyes did not show any expression or the lips warm with any color, she appeared to have recovered from her trancelike condition.

This reassured Caroline. She listened, nodding occasionally.

“They talked of the Second Hague Peace Conference two years ago,” said the girl, reporting steadily and with no inflection. “Your friends thought that was amusing; they also thought former President Roosevelt even more so for asking for the conference. But I don’t think they were very much amused after all; there was too much venom in what they said about Mr. Roosevelt. They seemed to be afraid that he knew too much. They’re much better pleased with our present President, Mr. Taft.”

She ran a finger absently over the chipped handle of her rejected cup. “Mr. Taft, they thought, was a man without suspicions. They wondered why Mr. Roosevelt had had any. It was finally decided with well-bred British laughter that he was a dolt.” She looked at her mother now, and Caroline had the impression that the girl really did not see her. “But of course Mr. Roosevelt isn’t a dolt.”

“When?” asked Caroline.

“When? Oh, the war. Soon, it is believed. I even heard the word ‘inevitable’.” She smiled a little. “There was one old man, Mr. Purvey, who said he had known you when you were a girl, and he implied that you were much more ‘conscious’, he said, of things than I am. They seemed to think I was a little young for consultations with them, and so I did not hear all that I should. Mr. Purvey merely sent you the message, to be prepared.”

“Prepared?” Caroline pondered this. She remembered what her son had told her. She shifted her bulk on the frayed chair. “Yes, I see. Was it definitely decided it would be Germany?”

Elizabeth continued to speak. Not only did the English hate Germany for her ‘invasion’ of British markets, they also hated America because of the passage of the Payne Tariff Bill. They also had contempt for America, especially since Mr. Roosevelt’s ‘attempts’ to get the red hat for Archbishop Ireland. They spoke of America’s ‘racism’ and said, “We can’t afford that in the empire, you know.” But it always came back to Mr. Roosevelt. One gentleman had remarked, “He’s too previous. Or, rather, blundering. When we move, it will not be with his sort of ‘public welfare’. It will have a design.”