A Prologue To Love (65 page)

The story was not quite clear to her, except that Timothy had done this thing, with deliberate lying, with deliberate hatred not only for Caroline but for her daughter.

Caroline did not go to bed that night, nor the next. On the third night she slept in absolute exhaustion. When she awoke, it was with vengefulness. She would ruin Timothy. She would destroy him. She needed only a plan.

But he was invulnerable. He did not need her. He had not only his own money, which she had helped him gain, but the Bothwell fortune. He was established and powerful. But there must be something. For weeks and months, and then years, she searched and pondered while Elizabeth lay unseeing and unknowing at Hillcrest Sanitarium. When Timothy saw her she spoke to him in her usual fashion, and he believed she had forgiven him for taking Elizabeth to Devon. She saw that he watched her closely while inquiring about the girl. He had had no pity, no remorse for what he had done. There were three parts to her mind now — Elizabeth, her affairs, and Timothy.

One plan was for the future, concerning Timothy. She had worked it out. It would take time. But another plan was still closer. On May 31, 1913, appointment of senators by the legislatures had been changed to direct election by the people. Three days ago Timothy Winslow had announced that he would seek the office of senator in November. She had known for a long time that he intended to go into politics ‘when the time was ripe’. It was ripe now.

So now, on June 27, 1914, as she sat and looked at her daughter, her shattered daughter, she thought of Timothy and what she would do to him in a few days. Miss Crimmens saw her face, shivered, then sturdily told herself that she was imagining things. This was only a poor old woman who had nothing but money and a daughter who would never really know her again and never again be alive.

On Monday morning, four hours before Elizabeth was to return to the sanitarium, Caroline received calls from her brokers. But she already knew. The morning paper, June 29, 1914, was spread before her. “Heir to Austria’s throne is slain with his wife by a Bosnian youth to avenge seizure of his country.”

So the Jacobins had finally moved, with silent power and surety. The Bosnian youth had been only the instrument, the commanded ignorant finger. Caroline listened to the congratulations of her brokers, because she had bought so much munitions stock lately. Then, in the midst of a freshet of more congratulations, she hung up the receiver of her telephone. Later she would think. But first came Elizabeth.

Miss Crimmens had informed Caroline at seven this morning that Elizabeth had not slept well. Caroline, too, had not slept. She had listened all night to Elizabeth’s distressful cries, to her mutterings, to her groans of torment. The drugs had had no effect on her, as they had had before when she visited her home. She had made sounds of a soul in extremity, in the process of dissolution.

The nurse had exhausted herself in her attempts at quieting Elizabeth. She had failed. Caroline went up to her daughter’s room. Elizabeth was running about, her blanched hair in wild disorder around her distorted face. Her arms flew in aimless gestures. When she saw Caroline she became fearfully excited.

“Why did you do this?” she screamed, clutching lengths of her hair. “What did I do to you? Why do you hate me? Why don’t you let me alone?”

Miss Crimmens, like a small but active young bird, fluttered about her charge, murmuring. Suddenly Elizabeth became aware of her and with super-strength she flung the girl from her so that the nurse fell violently on the floor. Then Elizabeth advanced on her mother. Caroline waited, and when Elizabeth reached her she seized her hands and held them tightly.

“Elizabeth,” she said.

Elizabeth stared at her, her faded blue eyes wide. She stopped struggling. She looked down at her mother’s hands. “It’s all right,” she muttered, “I won’t be late for the train to Boston. Where is the dispatch case?” She moved, as if in pain. But she was flaccid now. Caroline led her to the bed and made her sit down, and she looked at her. Great drops of water appeared on the girl’s forehead, like tears.

“You don’t understand,” said Elizabeth with quiet seriousness. “I can explain it. It was all that money for William and me. It isn’t wrong to want money, is it?” Her far eyes questioned her mother intensely. Caroline shook her head. Elizabeth leaned toward her. “You’ll ask him to come, won’t you?”

“Of course,” said Caroline, out of her own agony. “This very minute.”

Elizabeth shook her head vigorously and she laughed, that shrill meaningless laugh. “But it wasn’t the money, really. It was Timothy all the time.” Again she leaned toward Caroline and whispered confidentially, “Do you know what he said? That William couldn’t marry me because of my dreadful mother and her father. They were so notorious! Everyone despised them. Timothy explained. Do you think he was right?” she asked anxiously.

“Did William, too, tell you that?” asked Caroline.

Again the pathetic hair flew as Elizabeth shook her head in emphatic denial. “Oh no! You remember that. You were there.” She smiled slyly. The pulses were beating violently in her throat and temples, and her face was the color of death. “He just told me we couldn’t be married. And I found out that Timothy had done it all. He’d lied to him. You will send for William, won’t you?”

“Yes, Elizabeth.” Caroline squeezed her eyes shut for a moment.

“I never loved anyone but William,” said Elizabeth with the slow care and patience of one explaining to an obtuse woman. “I’ve loved him since I was a little girl, for, you see — ” She paused and frowned and shook her head. “My father was stupid. He wanted us to love him, and it wasn’t any use. A very silly man. Did you ever know him?” she asked her mother suddenly. Her wandering eyes stopped, clouded fretfully.

“Oh yes,” said Caroline. The nurse had gotten up off the floor and was standing and looking at mother and daughter.

“I don’t know why, but I think I feel sorry for him,” said Elizabeth. “It’s so foolish, isn’t it? And my mother goes up to his grave and looks at it. I hate her, but she was more sensible than my father; she never wanted anyone to love her.” Elizabeth sagged on the bed. Her color became more livid, and now the drops on her forehead trickled down her cheeks.

“Could we send for the man she calls William?” asked Miss Crimmens hopefully. “She called for him all night. Perhaps he could help her.” She crept softly to Elizabeth, took her wrist and felt her pulse, and glanced worriedly at Caroline. Caroline shook her head.

“I don’t know,” said Miss Crimmens, paling. “Her heart — There’s something wrong. We must send for a doctor!”

“Go to my study upstairs. You will find his village number.” But Caroline spoke dully. The nurse raced from the room, and Caroline took her daughter’s hands.

“You must tell me, Elizabeth,” she said with the utmost quietness. “It was Timothy, wasn’t it? I must be sure, very sure.”

“Oh yes,” said Elizabeth with the earnestness of a child. “But you must excuse me. I have a letter to finish to William, and then he will come. For now he must know that Timothy is a liar and that he hated me and was trying to do something to my mother through me. Wasn’t that very wrong?” Her eyes pleaded with her mother. Her lips had become leaden, and there were leaden patches about her eyes.

“It began a long time ago,” said Caroline, holding her daughter.

“Oh, God,” said Elizabeth with the awful weariness of the dying. “Do you think William will come, after all? It’s a long way, and it’s getting longer every minute. I can’t stop thinking of Timothy. Where am I? Timothy hates all of us. He’s afraid Amy will marry Ames. Just as he was afraid of William marrying me. Where am I?”

Caroline wanted to say “Home,” but she could not. She could only say, “Here. With me.” She could no longer look at the ravaged face, at the expiring and tormented eyes. She dropped her head on her chest. She heard Elizabeth breathing in short sounds as she leaned against her mother, broken with exhaustion. The girl muttered incoherently over and over.

“Longer and longer,” she muttered. “Farther and farther. I’m getting farther away from William. I wish you’d stop the ship. The waves are very high and I think a storm is coming — Did you see the lightning?”

“Oh, God. Please, God,” said Caroline.

“Hush, you shouldn’t say that,” said Elizabeth with faint severity. “There isn’t any God, you know. I wish I could sleep, but I’m afraid — all those awful things and colors and going into darkness. I’m always afraid I’ll never come back and never find William again.”

Her eyes closed. Caroline had to hold her upright, and strongly. Elizabeth suddenly slept. She weighed so little now. She was hardly a pressure in her mother’s arms. A mysterious change spread over her face, peaceful, removed, young, and quiet. It became the face of the dead John Ames. She sighed once, deeply, then did not breathe again. A slight convulsion, as of intense cold, rippled over her body.

Caroline laid her dead daughter on the bed and stood over her, and when Miss Crimmens returned she found the mother gently smoothing the tangled hair. And then Caroline bent and kissed Elizabeth’s cheek.

She walked out of the room then, and Miss Crimmens stepped back, feeling that the older woman did not see her at all.

The funeral was quiet and private. Only Timothy and his family and Elizabeth’s brothers. At Caroline’s request there were no flowers. But she had heard from Miss Crimmens of the mysterious white roses, fresh and pure, which had always been in Elizabeth’s room at the sanitarium, a room Caroline had never entered. She had seen her daughter only in the reception room, when permitted.

It did not take much pondering on Caroline’s part to know who had sent those roses through the years, though he was married now and had a son. So Elizabeth’s coffin was surrounded by identical roses from Caroline, and there were white rosebuds on the satin pillow. They filled the parlor with a heavy sweet scent. Elizabeth slept in death, serene and at peace.

Her brothers had not loved her, but they were vaguely sorry. However, they could not help conjecturing about their mother’s will now, since the contender was dead. The old girl was very composed, even when she looked at her daughter. Her voice was normal. Her sons often caught her glance at Timothy, who appeared definitely uneasy. Amanda cried and silently regretted that she had not liked poor Elizabeth. Her two fine boys, young men now, were very sober. Amy, very subdued, cried a little, even though she had hardly known Elizabeth. It seemed very sad to her, and she would look timidly at her second cousin, old Caroline, who was also Ames’ mother, and she wanted to comfort her. It surprised the girl to find Caroline looking at her very often.

The service was short. Elizabeth was carried to the Sheldon lot on the hill and laid near her father. The white roses were piled high on her grave in the hot July sunlight. Caroline took one bud from them.

John and Ames had been in this decaying house for three days and could not leave fast enough. John, saying that he must get back to New York, left the day after the funeral, after some vague words of consolation to his mother. “It’s all for the best, Ma,” he said. “She wouldn’t have gotten better.”

“Leaving on the same train with me?” he asked his brother.

“No,” said Ames. “I just go to Boston. Someone should stay a little longer with the old lady.”

John was slightly suspicious, then shrugged, kissed his mother, and went away. He was having his own troubles these days with Mimi.

Caroline and Ames sat in the dank living room, which felt chill in spite of the heat and light outside. Ames waited for his mother to speak. But she only sat there in her black old-fashioned clothing, looking at the rosebud in her hands. Then Ames said, “You asked me privately to stay for a little talk with you, Mother.”

“Yes,” said Caroline. She lifted her eyes and regarded her son thoughtfully — the subtle triangular face, the fair hair, the delicate coloring, the hard slate-gray eyes. She said, “That girl Amy. Timothy’s daughter. I’ve heard you want to marry her.”

Well, this was bound to come sooner or later. He said, “Yes. She’s a fine girl, a nice girl. I’ve wanted to marry her since she was eighteen.”

“Yes? Why didn’t you?”

“I’m not a favorite of dear old Timothy’s.” Ames paused. There had been an odd note in his mother’s voice; he looked at her more closely now and was surprised that she did not appear angry, but only intent. “In fact, he as much as suggested that I shouldn’t see as much of Amy as I was doing. That was a year ago. I should give her an opportunity to meet other men. Younger men. The devil! I’m only five years older than Amy. I think he heard,” said Ames with a full, hard look at his mother, “in some way, of the arrangements in your will. I don’t know how, but I suspect it. It would be just like old Timothy.”

“Of course,” said Caroline.

Ames was more surprised. “I wish you really knew Amy,” he said cautiously.

“I think I do,” said Caroline. “I’m not blind. The girl would make you an excellent wife. She has a sweet, good face. She might improve your character.”

Ames could hardly believe what he was hearing. He sat up in his chair, and color came into his thin cheeks.

“Whether you’ll improve hers is a moot question,” said Caroline.

She spoke dispassionately. This was a damned strange conversation to have just after the funeral of Elizabeth, to whom Caroline was devoted, thought Ames. He was more than a trifle bewildered. But then, she was granite.

Caroline said, “What is Timothy’s objection?”

Ames shrugged elegantly. “Since I was a very young child I knew there was no love lost between you and old Timothy. Then, as I’ve said, he’s probably caught a rumor of your will. He was still in your law firm, you’ll remember, when you made it, and lawyers have a way of finding out. However, I think it is a more personal objection. He’s very cordial, of course, and is quite an actor. But I’ve caught him off guard a few times. Why he should hate me, I don’t know; I’m a rich man. Amy could do worse.” Ames regarded his mother blandly.

“What is Amy’s attitude toward you?”

“The same as mine toward her. We want to be married.”

“And so?”

“She happens to be devoted to her father. She wants more rime to make him change his mind. He won’t. He hardly spoke to me today. And Amanda shows her antagonism very clearly. So Amy and I are just wandering about at the present time, and it isn’t making her very happy.”

“You’ve been dilly-dallying,” said Caroline. She looked again at the rosebud. “Haven’t young men any enterprise these days? If you want the girl, tell her to make up her mind immediately. In fact, you can mention that you won’t see her again unless she consents.”

Ames had to control his sudden and powerful excitement. “And you wouldn’t mind? I thought you hated her grandmother.”

“I did. I still do. But that doesn’t matter. I like the girl.”

Ames lit a cigarette. He was, like his dead sister, a person of immense self-control. There was something he could not understand here, but he was not going to explore it.

“I suppose if Timothy heard I was changing my will a little, he would not object then?”

Ames’ greed urged him to say “Yes!” But he was too involved with Amy for games. He shook his head. “No. It’s more than that. I just recently had another talk with Amy. We meet now in the Boston Museum. She practically promised me that if her father was not reconciled to the marriage she would marry me when she is twenty-one.”

“You think it is the lack of love between Timothy and me? I put him on his way, you know.”

“Yes, I know.” Ames paused. Then he said with unusual bluntness, “He told Amy something. He said he’d rather see her dead than married to me, your son.”

Caroline smiled grimly. “That is what I suspected.”

“But why, for God’s sake?”

“He hated your grandfather too.” Caroline smoothed the leaves of the rosebud with a slow hand.

“But my grandfather has been dead for ages. What does he have to do with it?”

“Timothy thought him ill bred. Besides,” said Caroline calmly, “there was a personal hatred. His mother was my father’s mistress for many years.”

“Oh. The devil!” exclaimed Ames. “Honor of the family, eh?”

“Not in the way you mean. Besides, he hates me much more. It is envy. He is a very greedy and voracious man, in spite of his fine airs. But again, it is much more than that. He thinks we have bad blood, yet he is one of the most corrupt men I’ve ever known. But such men are very careful of their daughters. No doubt he believes you are quite corrupt, yourself.”

Ames smiled. “It is possible I am. I feel quite respectable these days, however. I haven’t turned out as frightful as even you thought I would.”

“Quite right,” said Caroline.

She held the rosebud with both hands now, almost clutching it. “Let me tell you this. On the day you marry Amy Winslow, I will give you three million dollars. As my wedding present to you. If that does not make you press the girl at once, nothing else will.”

Ames was so stunned that he took the cigarette from his mouth, stared at it as if wondering what it was, then threw it into the littered, cold fireplace.

“You will put that in writing?”

“Yes. Before you leave. On one condition: that when you marry Amy you will show it to her parents.”

“I see,” said Ames. He narrowed his eyes at his mother.

“If it will convince you more, I will, within a few days, set that money aside for you, in your name, to be drawn only when you marry Amy.”

“I see,” repeated Ames.

But he did not really ‘see’. He would let himself wonder and conjecture later. He was swept up in excitement.

“I am tired now,” said Caroline. “I think I will go to my room and rest. But you must keep me informed. Moreover, you must not let your brother know.”

She began to walk away, then stopped. “There must always be a time limit to everything. I suggest you marry Amy Winslow within one week after the elections this fall.”

Ames considered this. “After Timothy is elected senator?” He smiled. “That will soften the blow.”

“I said, after the elections,” answered Caroline. She looked at the rose she held. “After the elections. Is that understood?”

Ames repeated, “Yes. I see.” The dreary room was heavily weighted with the scent of roses.

Mr. Higsby Chalmers alighted stiffly and chubbily from the train at Lyme on August 16, 1914, the day the Germans captured Liege. It was very hot in Boston, and he was pleased to find the air so cool in Lyme. He had been reading his morning paper on the train with great concern, for he was one of the few men in America — except for those who had planned this war a long time ago and were now bustling like evil wasps behind their shut doors in New York and Washington — who realized what was about to happen to the world. His knowledge was not precise, for he was a good, sound, and conservative Bostonian, and he was extremely intelligent and state chairman of his political party. His awareness was more than a little intuitive, sharpened only to a degree by his favorite pastime of ‘reading between the lines’ and political acumen.

What had alarmed him particularly this morning was a statement issued by President Wilson to the effect that ‘America is in no danger of being involved’ in the holocaust in Europe. Americans were not as yet interested in a war they regarded with less concern than baseball; there were few, if any, editorials about the war in this country. In fact, many newspapers put the war on the back pages or second pages, to give headlines to the more engrossing news about the ‘White Slave Traffic’, fulminations against the modern dance and ragtime, Mr. Elbert Hubbard’s sparkling little publication called
The Philistine
, the belligerence of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, the latest philanthropies of Andrew Carnegie, Mr. Henry Ford’s ‘tin lizzie’ and accompanying jokes, prospects for the coming football season, the new Freudian theories of sex, and, as always, Fundamentalist religion and ‘the crime against youth’ contained in na
ï
ve motion pictures and popular magazines. The picture pages of the newspapers were filled with photographs of the building of Grand Central Station in New York, actresses, happy dogs, airplanes, fashion portraits, and ballroom dancers in the contortions of the Turkey Trot and Grizzly Bear.

So, thought Mr. Chalmers with increasing alarm, why did President Wilson ‘reassure’ the country that it would not be involved in Europe’s wars when the country was not asking ‘reassurance’ about anything except the lifting of a mild depression and more and more popular entertainment and vulgar excitement? Was Mr. Wilson warning men who were as yet faceless to the people, or of whose existence the people did not even dream? Was he telling them, in effect, that so long as he was alive and President, America would not abandon George Washington’s emphatic admonition to beware of foreign entanglements?

‘An unknown source close to the Vatican,’ however, was more pointed than Mr. Wilson. That source was warning the world in a strong and steadfast voice that it must beware of the seeming in Europe and halt hostilities before it was too late, for the men behind an apparently simple war were men who were enemies of Germany and England alike. “Thunder from the Left,” said the source urgently. But only those who already knew listened to Rome, and then with a derisive smile and with hateful words of contempt. Did Rome actually think, they asked each other, laughing, that the stupid and simple masses would stop their rush to suicide behind the Judas-goat the plotters had provided?

Mr. Wilson’s reassurance appeared on page 5 of the newspaper, and the ‘source close to the Vatican’ appeared over the obituaries. And that, thought Mr. Chalmers, was a terrible and ironic, if unconscious, bit of humor. He felt restless and vaguely frightened, and he thought of his young grandsons. Like all dignified Bostonians, he made few concessions to weather and wore his usual fine black broadcloth suit, with high stiff collar and tight knotted tie. He was a short man, and very stout, and wore gold cuff links, a gold watch chain, and a gold and diamond stickpin, and he had trouble mounting the high step of one of the station hacks. He said, “The Sheldon residence,” and sat on the ragged leather seat, reread Mr. Wilson’s statement and the warning of the ‘source close to the Vatican’, and fanned himself agitatedly with his hat.

“What?” he said with some irritation when the driver asked him his destination. “I thought I told you the Sheldon residence, Mrs. Caroline Ames Sheldon’s residence.”

“Ayeah,” grumbled the driver, applying his whip to his horse. “That’s what I thought you said, mister, but there ain’t hardly anyone ever going out there and I wanted to be sure.” He looked over his shoulder at the very red stout face of Mr. Chalmers and stopped a snigger at Mr. Chalmers’ old-fashioned gray-and-auburn little beard.

“Well, you are sure now,” said Mr. Chalmers, rustling his paper pointedly. He sniffed. He preferred horses to automobiles, for he was sixty years old and very dignified, but this poor nag not only was covered with flies but had a very bad smell indeed. Still, it wasn’t worse than gasoline fumes.

Then he was curious. As the hack rattled away from the dusty depot and took the rough public road lying a little distant from the ocean, he said, “I’m sorry to hear Mrs. Sheldon has so few visitors. She must be lonely.”

The driver snorted. “Not her! With all that money! What more she need, anyways? Nobody ever sees her, except folks who go up to the old graveyard once in a while — right there over that first hill — and she never speaks to nobody. Keeps her girl’s grave covered with white roses; they come twice a week from Boston, in big boxes. Nobody ever gets buried up there any more, but you should see that there Sheldon plot. Acshully pays a man to keep the grass nice and green, and urns planted! Crazy!”

Nobody, my man, thought Mr. Chalmers with a slight smile, is ‘crazy’ who has been able to increase one hundred million dollars to nearly three hundred millions since 1884. When Caroline’s curt note asking him to call upon her had arrived three days ago, his wife Clara had said, “No one has seen Caroline Ames for centuries, just centuries. I wonder what on earth she wants with you, Higsby?” Mr. Chalmers wondered too.

He had expected to find a rather neglected house, for rumors ran avidly in Boston, but he had not expected to find the large mansion in such incredible decay. The house had been built — 1885? — not even thirty years ago. Yet it had the appearance of an old crumbling ruin in the sad countryside of poor Ireland or in some forgotten section of Wales. The great lean pines were almost strangled by vines and scrub; there was no garden; there were no lawns, but only stretches of sea grass, nettles, weeds, and boulders. Good God, thought Mr. Chalmers, paying off the hack driver, surely even Caroline should be aware of this jungle, this dreadful forlornness, this indecent neglect. Every window, he saw as he carefully picked his way over small rocks and gravel and fallen ancient leaves and small dropped branches, was covered with blown sand and dirt. The pines sighed in the sea wind, and Mr. Chalmers sighed also. He pulled the bell and heard it echo in the house, and he half expected no one to answer. But eventually the door was opened by a homely and slatternly maid who peered at him suspiciously. He gave her his card, and she examined it, turning it over and over in her dirty hands.