A Prologue To Love (77 page)

“Yes, I’m so happy, Aunt Caroline. John and I — we love each other so much. That’s why he’s so foolishly jealous of my painting. He says he wants all of me, everything I can give him, because — ” She bit her lip.

“Because he didn’t have love here,” said Caroline. “Yes, I can see that.” Her eyes were blank and empty again. “I didn’t know how to love anyone except my father, I think. And even that wasn’t real love; it was just need. I couldn’t love my husband as he needed to be loved; I didn’t love my children at all. There is Elizabeth, all alone on the hill. But she isn’t more alone now than when she was in this house where she was born.”

She folded her hands together and looked down at them, and Mimi could see the thin white crown of her head. “I believe it all began when I talked to Ames the other day about his wife. It was something he said. Yes, it began then.”

She smiled at Mimi tenderly, and she herself had the sudden majesty and beauty of a worn statue.

“I’ll tell Ames that he must let Amy go and that he’ll have the money I promised just the same. It is a kind of debt; yes, a debt.”

She reached out and took Mimi’s hand like a mother. “I’ll talk to Amy’s father. He won’t dare send her away — as he sent my own daughter. Not after I’ve talked with him.”

She considered that. “Yes, I’d have done it. Yes, I’ve waited a long time. But for Elizabeth, I’ll help Amy.”

The maid came into the room surlily. “Your telephone was ringin’, Miz Sheldon. In the study. The door wasn’t locked, like usual, so I went in. It’s a man saying that he wants to talk to you about Mr. Ames Sheldon. And three million dollars!” The pale eyes rounded, and the pale mouth. “He wants to come out to see you.”

Caroline walked to the gate with Mimi, her hand on the girl’s arm. She unlocked the gate. Then she said, “There’s nothing I can do for John. It’s too late. Perhaps you can do something, Mary. I don’t know.”

“If you’d just see him,” Mimi pleaded.

But Caroline shook her head. “We have nothing to say to each other that would be kind. It could only be true. Truth is the most frightful thing in the world. There, love, you mustn’t cry again. No wonder we run away from truth; who can stand it? Your painting, Mary? You won’t abandon that? You mustn’t let John take everything from you just because his mother was no mother at all.”

Mimi smiled, her eyes still wet. “I won’t let him,” she said. “I’m not going to hide in a corner with him when he comes home to our house in New York, though he’d like that. He doesn’t even want Nathaniel to come too often. I tell John that I’m afraid he’s going to eat me alive!” She laughed shakily. “That makes him so angry.”

But Caroline was grave. “I don’t know why it is, but every one of us, I suspect, tried to eat others alive, in more ways than one. The human race is very terrible.”

She kissed Mimi, not with the shyness of a whole lifetime, but with deep love and strength. The girl clung to her. Caroline patted the young shoulders, the soft fine hair, the tinted cheek. “There, there, love,” she murmured.

“Promise me you’ll wear my locket,” said Mimi. “With my miniature in it.”

“I promise. I’ll put it on at once.” Caroline shivered and looked about her vaguely. “I put it away very carefully in Elizabeth’s box with a blue ribbon.”

She turned then and went slowly up the path to her house, to meet Griffith, who would arrive very soon. Then she looked back; she did not even remember that she had not locked the gate. Mimi was standing there, watching her. When Mimi saw Caroline turn she kissed her hand and blew the kiss to her aunt. Caroline had never made the gesture before, not once in her life. Awkwardly she put her own fingers to her lips and returned the kiss.

The shadow in her mind had a face and form now. Her father’s. She looked at it and said very gently in her mind, “Yes, Papa, I know. Let us help each other. I don’t know how, but let us help. It’s probably too late for both of us, but we can try.”

Her hand could hardly lift the latch on the door, yet she felt strength in her like a fortress. It would not last, no. But for this minute she could be strong.

While Amanda shuddered at the thought of the impression that would be created on Griffith by Caroline and wondered if Caroline would demolish ‘that poor man’ immediately, Griffith himself, sitting in the crumbling parlor of the house in Lyme, was not in the least intimidated or dismayed. While he thought the decay of the house shocking, in view of its fine proportions and possibilities, he had seen worse in the Counties where indifference, morbidity, or lack of finances had been the cause. Elderly widows, he recalled, often let their houses deteriorate like this when there were no direct heirs to take over entailed estates and fortunes. He rather suspected that, in a way, this was the case with Caroline Ames Sheldon, among other reasons.

He was impressed, not alarmed, by Caroline herself. How well she would be understood, if occasionally censured, in England! (However, the censure would include a sort of esteem.) In England, now, she would be surrounded by ostensibly adoring nieces and nephews and grandchildren and cousins and children, and more distant relatives, over whom her command would be supreme, her advice lavishly admired and often taken, her power reverenced, her lawyers always in attendance, her neighbors discreetly solicitous, officials deferential, the community always conscious of her presence and invariably respectful of her desire for privacy and seclusion. It would all come to her by a natural and organic process, through her power and her personality. The old were honored in Europe, especially if they had money and influence, no matter how bad-tempered they were or irascible or eccentric, or how possessed of the most deplorable character, or how heinous their acts, or how abominable their tongues. In fact, these things only added to their importance in the eyes of hordes of relatives; no family was complete without a formidable and potent old uncle, aunt, or grandmother of whom tales would be told long after their deaths, until they became affectionate legends.

But unfortunately it was quite different in America, where the old were expected to heap adulation on the young — and the younger the better — and where hard wisdom was derided and dullness was deified. Eccentricity in America was never regarded as the height of individualism and character, and treasured. It was attacked with a vicious, if playful, public and private yowling and with malice and resentment. Walls and hedges about one’s property, as well as about one’s soul, were considered an affront. All must be open to monkey fingers, to monkey curiosity, to monkey flea-searching. No wonder America had produced no awesome devils in the historical tradition, or mighty saint, or any blaze of grandeur.

Never once in her life, not even by the two who had loved her most — Beth and Tom — had Caroline been given open approval for herself, as an individual entitled to her way of life and her opinions. Looking at her as she sat grimly opposite him, Griffith could see that she had suffered deeply from many profound and obscure things, some of them possibly quite terrible. He regarded her with serious respect and deference.

She had known who he was immediately when she had admitted him, though she had never seen him before. Ames had talked of him frequently. She was prepared for some curious story, or even a blackmailing one. Griffith’s attitude toward her first caused her astonishment, then suspicion. Then when she saw his acceptance and respect, something had dimly eased in her. She was astonished again.

She had listened in silence to his measured recital of her son and Amy, and she was vaguely pleased by his lack of hysteria and absence of emotionalism. Then when he had concluded she sat and looked at him, not with her usual evasive glance when with strangers, but directly, and a young woman, not an old, stirred in her clouded hazel eyes.

She said abruptly, “Will you have tea?”

Griffith bowed in his chair. “It will be delightful, madam.”

Caroline looked at the bell rope and hesitated. Griffith rose. “Perhaps the young person in the kitchen is not very efficient?” he murmured. “This is quite common these days, due to the war factories draining off the more trained. May I assist?”

Caroline said, “Certainly.” (That was exactly what a great lady would say, thought Griffith with satisfaction as he found his way to the kitchen. Great ladies accepted miserable situations and embarrassments and contretemps calmly, with a rationality that conceded that the world was quite mad, frequently disgusting, and not to be regarded with too much excitement and consternation.)

Caroline waited for Griffith’s return, yet it was not really a waiting. She continued to sit stiffly, and now she looked at nothing. There was a great hiatus in her, an awesome abeyance, in which silent but urgent tongues were waiting for her will to speak. She would have to listen to them eventually: she would have to realize what they told her. She said to herself, as she had said earlier this day: But for this minute I can be strong. Courage, she thought, must often consist of facing only the immediate. To face it all at once would be total destruction. The busy mind which had never been still for many decades was now still. She was exhausted; a sinking sensation lay in the middle of her body; the very act of blinking or swallowing was almost more than she could do automatically; she did it only by an actual act of will. Then she pushed herself to her feet and went to the table and gave herself another dose of her digitalis. She turned very feebly and slowly and saw the sea and the yellow-bright air and the mountainous boulders heaped one upon another on what once had been Tom’s proud sea walk. Had it changed from monotony, all this; had it quickened and taken on another aspect? She closed her eyes briefly; she wanted no change, no strangeness — not yet.

She did not hear Maizie’s angry and then sullenly complying voice in the kitchen, nor the brisk movements of Griffith. But all at once she felt that in this house was someone who neither judged, derided, feared, envied, cajoled, nor hated her, nor found her peculiar or her house revolting. He had actually seemed to find her perfectly normal and familiar. The lonely woman smiled a little and realized that in the true sense she had never had a friend before. This thought was so unique, yet so soothing, that she lay back in her chair and fell into a light sleep, which, in her mental and physical condition, resembled a state under anesthesia.

She started awake at a discreet clatter. Griffith was placing a tea tray on the table before her. The sun was lower, and long blurred rays struck through the grimy windows; some time must have passed, thought Caroline. The silver was clean and bright, though the crevices would never be anything but black because of long neglect. There was a little plate of smoking tea biscuits and jam. “I took the liberty, madam,” said Griffith, “of making the biscuits. Fortunately there was a fire in the stove — simple enough, these.” He sat down, his head inclined. Caroline stared at the tray. “It’s been a long time,” she said. “I always associated teatime with my aunt, whom I disliked, and her friends, whom I also disliked.”

“I do not believe,” said Griffith, “that there is anything in the American Constitution which gives us the right to dislike, or even hate. But it is implicit in freedom. I have disliked more people in my life than I have liked. What man of spirit and perception can live in this world and then diffuse a warming-pan affection over all humanity? Children are much more astute, even in the nursery. They fear and dislike practically everyone but the immediate family, and they reserve judgment even for these.”

“Yes,” said Caroline. “Do you prefer your tea weak or strong?”

Her hand trembled as she held the heavy silver teapot. Griffith said, “Strong, please.” The poor lady. He glanced discreetly about the room and through the windows and sighed. He glanced at Caroline’s massive profile, at the straight and monumental set of her body, and sighed again. The neglect that surrounded her testified to the neglect of her whole life and the lovelessness of her condition. He took the cup Caroline extended to him and let her serve him sugar and weak milk. Caroline had watched people sharply all her life. She felt no such necessity to watch Griffith. She poured tea for herself, then took a tea biscuit, put it absently into her mouth. She smiled like a young girl at him, shyly. “No wonder my son Ames considers you a treasure, “she said. “I do my best, madam,” he said with polite severity. “But the best is no longer admired. I have read and reread your Elbert Hubbard’s
Message to Garcia
many times. He was quite correct in his contempt for what he called ‘dowdy work’ and lack of responsibility.”

Caroline ate another biscuit. She considered. Then she spoke without fear. “I have always done my best. Contrary to sentimental opinion, the best is rarely successful. Quite often it results in tragedy for everyone. It did so for me and my family. Do have one of your very excellent biscuits, Mr. Griffith.”

A little flush had come over her livid cheekbones. “It is a very long story,” she said. “Have you heard of the great American artist, David Ames?”

“Yes, madam.”

“I will take you to my private gallery upstairs where I have several of his paintings. When I was a young girl I wanted to be an artist; I loved color and form.” Her eyes, brilliant now, were the eyes of youth.

Griffith expertly concealed his surprise. Caroline was smiling with a freedom she had never known before, not even with Mimi. “My father thought all life ridiculous and evil. For that reason” — she paused a moment — “he was a blind man. My grandfather painted him, even when he was still only a boy, showing him blindfolded and stumbling about on an ominous landscape. I’ve come to the conclusion that blindness of the mind evokes terror; I’m afraid I’m not making myself clear, am I?”

“Indeed you are, madam.”

“I didn’t know until this morning that the young man in the painting was my father; he stood, symbolically, for men like him all over the world. I loved him with all my heart and soul.”

Their eyes met, and Griffith saw the sorrow and all the tragic years in Caroline’s face.

“It is true,” said Caroline, “that environment and character shape men. But where one man of similar environment and character will become great and noble, his brother will become a — ” She stopped, looked down at the cup in her hands. She murmured, “A disaster to himself, and all about him.” She put the cup on the table and breathed painfully and loudly. “But that is something I must not think about yet. You’ve told me about Ames and little Amy. I had already decided what to do about them both. Your visit was not necessary.”

She smiled at him again, and he thought in astonishment: She must have been beautiful as a girl!

“But I am glad you came,” said Caroline. “I am very glad you came.”

She took him upstairs to her gallery, where the low and level sun still shone. Slowly he went from one painting to another, studying each carefully. He paused before Mimi’s painting of the girl on the boulder. “You, madam, of course,” he said.

“Of course,” said Caroline. She looked at the painting. “The girl will wait for nothing, forever.”

Caroline, dressed in her rusty black and her ancient bonnet, went to the depot the next morning. She walked with a slow but stately step to the train for Boston, now oblivious of the fawning and slyly derisive folk on the wooden platform. Twenty minutes later she arrived in Boston and took a cab to her son’s apartment. It was still late August and there was a golden haze in the warm air. The streets were full of people. Caroline, for almost the first time in her life, became conscious of individuals in the masses; she felt an odd excitement as she picked out a mournful or tragic or youthful face. She even wondered who these people were, where they lived, how they lived.

Griffith let her into the apartment. “Mr. Ames left for New York this morning,” he said. “Mrs. Sheldon is all alone.” He paused. “She is — sleeping. I have just made some strong coffee for her. Would you like to come into her bedroom, madam, while I fetch the coffee?”

But Caroline looked at the long living room with its high ivory ceilings, its fine furniture, its paintings, its mirrors. She said almost gently, “Ames, I see, likes exquisiteness and beauty. Once I’d have called all this a ‘boutique’. Who am I to talk of blindness? I’ve been blind most of my life.” She went to Amy’s bedroom. The draperies, of pale gray silk, were still drawn, and the furniture and bed were only shapes in the dimness. But the air was filled with the rank odor of sour whiskey and drunkenness.

Caroline sat down in a tufted chair near the bed and let her eyes become accustomed to the dimness. While she waited she said to herself: It is my fault. It was my father’s fault before me. He gave his whole life to his work, and it meant nothing but calamity for me, for my children. For this poor child in her drunken sleep on her bed. It meant calamity for Melinda. The children who will come — will the calamity stretch out to them also? Where did the evil begin, and in whom? In what generation? My father’s mother — why hadn’t she had the honest courage to return to her parents with her son and tell them that she could not understand an artist and that she must leave him? Love? But one must forgo love when it is necessary to save someone else: it’s a luxury we sometimes can’t permit ourselves.