A Prologue To Love (73 page)

“That’s not a fraction of what John will get through Mimi’s share of the Bothwell estate,” said Ames, affecting dissatisfaction. “Or what he’ll get from the estate you’ll leave his children.”

“You don’t know,” said Caroline. She added, “Thirty thousand dollars a year. That is all I am going to offer you.”

Ames was exultant. Not the endless millions of the Ames money which should come rightfully to him, but quite a sum. And what was that cryptic remark of his mother’s?

“Done!” he said. “I suppose I can expect the first installment almost immediately?” He thought of the enamels.

“Yes.” There was a click in his ear. Ames hung up. He began to hum and went back to his locked library. He sat down and pondered. Was it possible the old girl was sweet on Amy, that little prattling and apprehensive fool? In that case, there was hope of much more than his mother had offered. “You don’t know,” she had said. Ames laughed aloud. Perhaps old Johnnie was due for a shock on his mother’s death.

Griffith looked up from the board on which he was carefully slicing carrots for the julienne soup. “Yes, madam?” he said to Amy. Then he ran to the white-faced girl and caught her in his strong arms and helped her to a chair. “Madam!” he exclaimed. The girl sprawled in the chair like a broken doll, her gloves and purse spilling to the floor, her head dropping. Her eyes were closed; her mouth sagged. Griffith held her, for she would have fallen without his support. He wondered whether to shout for the master, whom he had heard talking in the hall for a considerable time.

Griffith looked down with deep pity and concern at the fainting girl half in his arms, half on the chair. She appeared to be dying. The soft dark hair spilled from under her wide gray silk hat; her thin throat palpitated feebly. Then she opened her eyes and looked at Griffith blankly, in a state of extreme shock.

“I heard,” she whispered slowly. “I — was looking for my key, in my purse. I’m always losing it. Ames — ” She swallowed and shivered.

“You should have rung, madam,” said Griffith. “I’d have come.”

But the blank, blind eyes only stared at him. “He — was in the hall. His mother.” The whispering voice was almost too low to be heard, so Griffith bent closer. “He was talking to his mother. Then he told his mother — He wants to divorce me. I — I didn’t hear much after that, I don’t think.” She shook her head feebly. “But there was something about money if he’d — if he’d — keep me.”

Griffith’s face darkened. He should not be listening to this, he told himself sternly. He was only a servant. Young Mrs. Sheldon would regret this later. He said, “It’s very hard to hear correctly through a stout wooden door, madam. Everything is blurred, distorted. Do you think I could leave you for a moment to get you a little refreshing brandy?”

But Amy seized his arms in her little white hands. “Griffith! I heard. He hates me.” The pathetic face lifted to his with the dying expression in the eyes. “I — I thought he loved me, Griffith.” She began to shake her head over and over, and her loosened hair fell in soft clouds over her shoulders. “I found the key. I even had the door a little open — I think I was stunned. He said it, Griffith, he said it. He hates me, I can’t have any children, you see.” And the eyes implored him.

“Oh no, no, indeed,” said Griffith, overcome with his compassionate distraction. “You heard wrong, madam. Why, the master — ”

“Hates me,” she said. She was like a shattered child clinging to him. “He is all I have, Griffith. My father won’t see me. I can’t go to the house, you see. Papa found out I was visiting Mama, and he told her not to let me come any more. And my brothers — I hardly ever see them, Griffith. Mama comes here twice a month. The last time — ” She could not go on.

“You were not in, madam,” said Griffith. Like a father, he smoothed the hair on one of Amy’s shoulders. “You were ill. You didn’t want to worry your mother.”

“Yes, Griffith. I wasn’t in,” she said. “I was in bed. I was drunk, Griffith.”

“No, no, madam.”

She sighed, almost moaning. “Yes, Griffith. And one day — I was shopping — I could hardly walk. Old Mrs. Spencer — she was with her daughters. They had to help me — to a room — I lay down. I don’t know. When I could open my eyes again I was in our automobile and Peters was looking straight ahead, driving. That was the day after Ames moved to the other bedroom. You remember?” she asked earnestly, as if it was most important that he remember.

He shook his head. “Madam, I will get you a little brandy. You are not yourself.” He slowly and carefully released his arms. Then he ran into the dining room and returned with a glass of brandy. Amy was still sitting, sprawled, in the chair, staring blankly at a wall. “Thank you,” she said in a little girl’s voice, and took the glass and put it to her lips. She drank the liquid down in one gulp and did not even cough. Amy gave him the glass politely.

“I don’t like brandy much,” she said. “Whiskey is much better. Peters buys it for me now. I just ran a few minutes ago into my room and took a big drink, and then I had to talk to you.”

Griffith wondered distractedly if he should tell Mr. Sheldon. No, that would never do. He must talk to Peters, the chauffeur. No, the least said, the sooner mended. Peters was young and surly. He would not listen to threats. But what could he, Griffith, do to help this poor little lady? A young lady, still hardly more than a girl, and whiskey. More horrifying was the thought of the talk which must inevitably be going about Boston even now through that old Mrs. Spencer and her daughters. Or would they, being First Family, murmur about a member of another First Family? Certainly, thought the despairing Griffith with anger. A lady who used a plush-seated water closet was no better when it came to gossip than a farm maid and her odorous outside privy.

“I’m so lonely,” Amy was saying. One tear after another was dropping off her thin cheeks onto her immature breast. The gray silk was becoming rapidly spotted.

“Yes, madam,” he murmured. “It will be well again, madam.”

“Oh no,” she said, and she shook her head once more, over and over. “Never again. How could it, Griffith? He’ll let me stay, for the money his mother will give him. Not love, not children, not being happy together. Just money.” The slurred voice was almost unintelligible now and weaker. “Ames doesn’t love me. That’s why I have to drink, to stop thinking about it, Griffith.”

“May I help you to your room, madam?” said Griffith, more and more despairing.

“Yes, please get me some more brandy,” said Amy. “Then I’ll be strong enough to walk.” Griffith did not move. “Please!” said Amy. Griffith took the glass away, refilled it, and returned. Amy swallowed the brandy as neatly as she had done before. He had seen drunkards in his time, and they had drunk as Amy drank, swiftly, as if seeking an anodyne. But surely this delicate shy child was not a drunkard. Dear God, thought Griffith, thinking of the whiskey hidden in some drawer or closet in Amy’s room. Should he tell the master? Griffith shook his head. There was violence under Ames’ sleek exterior, but also a kind of wickedness which might find Amy’s awful condition highly amusing. Rage or amusement in this case would be equally disastrous to the girl.

“It’s because I’m so stupid,” the childish voice was continuing. “It’s not Ames’ fault. It’s all mine. Poor Ames.” Then she cried out, “But how can I live without him! He’s all I have! I can talk to him better when I have my whiskey. You see, you see? I’m not afraid of him then; I can make myself feel he loves me, though he doesn’t. It’s awful to be lonely, isn’t it, Griffith?”

She had talked rapidly, almost incoherently. She tried to get up, staggered, and Griffith caught her. She clung to him and began to laugh wildly. With consternation Griffith looked at the closed kitchen doors.

“I can’t sleep unless I drink,” Amy said after her laughter had abruptly stopped. “I can’t live, knowing — it’s always the knowing — isn’t it, Griffith?”

“Yes. That is it. The knowing,” he said with aching pity. Then he lifted her in his arms, swung open the kitchen door, crossed the hall on tiptoe to Amy’s room. He laid her down on the bed, removed her crumpled hat and her little gray slippers. He opened the windows. The girl was already deep in alcoholic slumber, her flushed face, like a child’s, turned into the pillow, her hair streaming about her. Griffith shut the door. He had come to a stern and desperate decision.

The butler went back to the kitchen. In about an hour he would take strong coffee to that child. He thought of what she had said. The ‘knowing’. Yes, it was always that, the knowing that one was without love, and lonely, and abandoned. A drunkard did not have ‘loved ones’, as the foolish said. He was always alone, and the starved spirit reached instinctively for a little death.

Henry Bothwell Winslow came into the Boston house of his parents sweating heavily on this hot August day. He removed the stiff straw sailor from his head, laid down his smart white cane, and unfastened the broad red, white, and blue ribbon which spread from his waist and over his right shoulder in the manner of the British Order of the Garter. He had been marching for three hours in a Preparedness Parade through the main streets of Boston, and he was hot, foot-blistered, and weary. He was just twenty-three years old; he thought President Wilson a cautious old fuddy-duddy; he was afire with patriotism; he hated Wilhelm, Emperor of Germany, and was absolutely convinced that should the Kaiser be victorious in Europe he would immediately order the whole German fleet and every foot soldier and every howitzer and ‘big Bertha’ to set themselves on the United States of America.

“Preparedness,” he would tell his mother firmly, “is the only way to prevent war with Germany.”

“It seems to me that the Kaiser has enough to do with Europe,” Amanda would reply. “Why should he bother with us?”

“Because he wants to conquer the whole world,” Henry said with unusual irritability.

“Who says so?” his mother inquired.

“Why, everybody. Don’t you read the papers?”

“Certainly.” Amanda thought of Timothy, her husband. “Do you believe every excited opinion you read, child?”

“I am not a child,” said Henry with exasperated patience.

“There is something going on in the world much more dreadful than this war; I’d had a glimpse of it years ago when we were all in London. This war was for a reason, and it isn’t an ambitious war on Germany’s part, though we are being led to think so. Does it ever occur to you, my child, that President Wilson, who isn’t of our party, might have some very sound reasons why he doesn’t want us to get involved in the European war? Reasons so terrible but so hidden that he doesn’t speak of them because everyone but the men responsible for this war would laugh at him?”

Henry frowned. “I don’t follow you, Mother.”

“Do you actually believe that all of Europe would have been embroiled in this war merely because a crazed Bosnian boy killed the Archduke of Austria and his wife? There have been many assassinations in Europe over the past one hundred years, and no war resulted from them. But this war was planned.”

“By whom?” Henry asked incredulously.

“By people I hope you will never meet,” said Amanda. “From some of the opinions I’ve heard you airing recently, I am even more afraid that you’ve already met them.” She looked at the handsome, kind face of her son, so ingenuous and so honest, and shook her head. “I’ve heard you talk very kindly about Eugene Debs, for instance. Where did you first hear of him?”

Henry looked bewildered. “Why, at the university, of course. Mother — ”

“There’s been a Communist organization in this country since 1872,” said Amanda. “Didn’t you know?”

Henry considered this. “But socialism isn’t communism, dear.”

“No? Of course it is. Despotism is only socialism in a hurry, I’ve recently heard.”

“But what has all this to do with us being prepared for any actuality, such as war?”

“Everything.” Amanda looked at her son with terror. “You and Harper! You are just the right age. Oh dear God! Deliver us from this evil!”

The old lady was really getting old, Henry had thought with concerned affection. She was almost forty-five; at that age one could get the most outlandish ideas. What had socialism and communism to do with that insane Kaiser’s war ‘against humanity’? Oh, there were profs at Harvard who were as cautious and as conservative, as far as this war was concerned, as was President Wilson, and who hinted there were ‘other matters’ hidden behind it, but they were never explicit. Henry considered, baffled. But other profs were vehement about America not only being prepared but actually engaging in the European imbroglio. They were great admirers of Eugene Debs; they spoke of the ‘class struggle’ and ‘oppressed workers and criminals of great wealth’. They gave young men such as Henry Winslow, now in the law school, twinges of guilt and embarrassment and then fired them with the vague passion to do something about ‘social inequities’.

“I’m not sure I know exactly what is under all this,” said Amanda, her round face red with urgency, “but I heard hints about it in London years and years ago. Oh, dear me! I just wish I’d found out a little more when I had the opportunity!”

“Dad thinks we should be prepared and then get into the struggle against the Kaiser, Mother.”

“Yes, I know.” Amanda’s voice was bitter.

“Well, what stake would he have in it?”

“A great deal, I am afraid,” said Amanda. “Your Uncle William in England told me when we were there that there would be a war, but not for the reasons we’d be given. Much more terrible ones.”

“What?” asked Henry indulgently, thinking of his clerical uncle.

Amanda spoke hesitatingly, trying to find words. “William did say that there would be a series of wars in this century for the sole purpose of driving free government and liberty from the face of the earth — for the benefit of wicked men who wanted to rule all of us like the ancient despots. I believe he mentioned Karl Marx once.”

“Oh, Mother! What in God’s name has an old dead Socialist got to do with this mess in Europe, and an insane Kaiser, and the threat of war against us too?”

“You never heard any of your profs mentioning Karl Marx, Henry?”

“Well, yes, I did. But, Mother — Why, this is fantastic! Of course socialism, at least some of its ideas, aren’t bad at all. Even Dad says so.”

“Yes, he would say that,” said Amanda with greater bitterness.

Henry had marched in the Preparedness Parade behind very martial drums and trumpets and felt very patriotic and high-hearted and stirred. The only way to avoid war was to be prepared to fight it. There was only one thing which had puzzled him: while marching he had passed a large body of shabby men who had shouted their approval at the young and old marchers and who had yelled, “Down with all kings and emperors and despots!” Well, that was ridiculous, Henry had thought, striding manfully. All of Europe, except Switzerland, was ruled by monarchs, very good ones except the Kaiser. Well, those shabby men were just hysterical and excited and carried away by the music. What else had they shouted? Oh yes: “Workers of the world, Unite!”

A maid came to him and said that his mother wished to see him in the morning room. Henry, walking with a long military stride, went to the morning room. The doors were almost never shut, but they were shut now. Henry sighed, knocked, then opened the double doors.