A Prologue To Love (80 page)

“You know by now that I prevented you from being elected senator last November.”

She looked up at him from her papers. His face told her nothing. He sat like a thin gray image across the desk from her, his paralyzed lip twitching involuntarily.

“That was revenge for Elizabeth. Since then other motives have entered the picture, partly, as I’ve said, because of Elizabeth, and partly because of what you are. In 1914, last year, Timothy, you had reached the point in your affairs when you felt secure enough to begin to speculate in the market. However, when the European war began in August 1914, the Stock Exchange in New York closed, and there was no market for stocks, especially for large blocks, which could not be negotiated privately. I’ll come back to that shortly. Prior to the war you wanted to amass a fortune as large as mine; nothing else would satisfy you. The Bothwell estate was sensibly divided into irrevocable trusts by Amanda very recently, so you could do nothing with it. Did Amanda know you so well?”

Timothy’s paralyzed arm moved spasmodically, without his volition. His pale nostrils widened; he stared speechlessly at Caroline, who nodded, satisfied.

“So you had only the money you had saved from the large salaries you had earned through my generosity, and the money you had inherited from your mother. But you knew something only a few knew: a war was impending. You’d known it for several years, a long time, before it broke out. I know the names of all your associates in America and in Europe, Timothy, because I know them all myself and have always known them. They recognized you for what you are, and they knew you were one of them, even if you had comparatively very little money of your own. Devils always help each other. So on their advice you began buying stocks in steel, munitions, railroads, and chemicals, and then you pledged these stocks as security and borrowed money from affable banks on this collateral. You bought the last stocks in July 1914 with this borrowed money.”

How did she know? Who told her? Who violated confidences? thought Timothy with hate and fear. A fine prickle of sweat appeared all over his face; a dull sickening pain began in his head.

The dispassionate voice went on, filled with indifference: “You bought those stocks at high prices with that borrowed money, and you gave your banks, at their insistence, in spite of their affability, the power to sell them in an emergency, which you thought would never come. You signed the certificates to make them negotiable.

“In the meantime, the Stock Exchange closed in August 1914. You hadn’t known that would happen, had you? Your friends in Europe and in New York and Washington neglected to tell you it would happen.” Caroline smiled a little. “But I knew. I wonder why your friends didn’t tell you.”

She’s laughing at me, thought Timothy, trembling. His whole body trembled; he felt the shaking of every nerve and bone. It was her money, he thought, and her threats. Even ‘they’ had to listen to her.

“Then,” said Caroline, “you ran for office. Your state chairman told you that he’d have to have $250,000 for the campaign. You had no large store of cash. You did have considerable real estate in Boston and a small amount of liquid assets, but not the cash you needed. So you placed mortgages on all your real estate — the Bothwell house belongs to Amanda, and she wouldn’t let you touch that — renewable every three months. But you were confident; the market would reopen soon, and your pledged stocks would boom, and you would be a senator. You’d be able to redeem your stock when the market opened, and you’d renew your speculations and pay off your indebtedness on your real estate.”

Caroline folded her big ungloved hands quietly on her papers and looked at her silent cousin thoughtfully. “It would all have happened as you had planned — if it hadn’t been for what you did to Elizabeth. But you helped to kill my young daughter with your hate and lies.”

Timothy could not speak. The pain in his head was sharpening disastrously. He glanced at the paperweight on his desk, heavy, glassy. He was not and had never been a man inclined to physical violence; all his violence had been of the mind and intellect. But if he could have moved now, in this nightmare, he would have taken up the paperweight and thrown it murderously at his cousin, wanting to kill her. He would have stood up, screaming without control.

“You lost the election, Timothy,” said Caroline in the voice of a disinterested schoolmistress. “You were heavily in debt. Your daughter married my son. You had a stroke. You were very sick for weeks. And — I waited.”

He could only look at her, mute, trembling, vaguely conscious of his pain, but powerfully conscious of his hatred and his desire to kill.

“Last December,” said Caroline, “the market did open again, but it went down from the Dow Jones average of eighty in July to about fifty-three, and it kept on falling every day thereafter. The banks to whom you owed money and who had your stock as collateral were frightened. They did not want to sell your pledged stock, as it wouldn’t be sufficient to cover the loans. They knew you were sick, and they knew that Amanda couldn’t raise the money, all that money, to cover the loans, because of the irrevocable trusts. Moreover, your mortgages came due, and the banks didn’t want to foreclose on them. After all, you have friends in those banks, don’t you, who are men like you?

“So, Timothy, they came to me, those bankers. I was your cousin; your daughter had married my son. Who else would be willing to help you but your first cousin, the mother of Ames Sheldon? I have huge deposits in many banks, including my own in New York; the money was available to me at any time. The closing of the market didn’t affect me, and I owed nothing to anyone. I have never had to borrow money.”

She turned her head and looked at the sunlit library windows. “I never dissembled in my life; I never knew how to do it and I never wanted to learn. Perhaps it was because I didn’t need to dissemble at any time, so I can’t count my honesty as a virtue. But now I did dissemble, for the first time, when your frightened bankers came to me. I paid the amounts you owed and took over your stock and also your mortgages. I made only one condition; I said that you were very sick and shouldn’t be exposed to another shock. You must not be informed by your attorneys that I had your stock and your mortgages. I, I said, would in due time tell you myself, when you were better able to face your calamities, and I would let you repay me and would return to you all your property. You would over a period of time, I said, be able to repay me at the price I had paid for your stock and your mortgages. Everyone was relieved; they congratulated me on my family feeling. But until you could face it all you weren’t to be told. Some of the bankers were even able to bring tears to their eyes as they thought of my family affection for you. In the meantime, not to alarm you, you received rents from your mortgaged property.”

I am finished, done, thought Timothy. I’m beggared. A glassy haze, mingled with a pink tint, began to float before his eyes, and he had the sensation of dropping rapidly through space. He brought up his unaffected arm, placed the elbow on his desk, and leaned his withered cheek in the palm of his hand.

“No,” said Caroline, “I haven’t ruined you. Not yet. I am willing to return your stocks to you, and your mortgages. You may buy back the stocks at the price I paid for them, though the stocks are worth double that price now. You may take all the time you wish. On two conditions.”

I’m dying, thought Timothy. He hardly heard what Caroline was saying. Then her words came back to him like a far but enormous echo, slow and ponderous. The lids of his eyes were heavy, and he had to make the most dreadful effort to lift them and look at his cousin.

“What?” he murmured.

“You’ve paid for Elizabeth,” said Caroline. “The debt is settled. But there are two things you must do. You must take back your daughter willingly. More even than that, you must, from this time on, dissociate yourself from your friends in Washington, New York, and Europe.”

Timothy could feel the hysterical laughter gathering in him, the sick, deathly laughter. But his face did not change.

“I have ways of knowing,” said Caroline. “It will take many years for you to repay me, and during that time I can refuse to let you repay me for your stocks and mortgages at the prices I paid for them. I can, at any time, sell your mortgages. I can insist on current market prices for the stock. Until the last cent is repaid, you can do nothing, Timothy.”

Timothy thought of his ‘friends’, who insistently wrote him almost daily, in spite of his physical condition. They did not know that he was financially impotent now; if they knew they would abandon him at once. At this stage they needed men with money and power and influence. He had none of these. It was this which had made the hysterical laughter bubble in him.

“Well?” said Caroline abruptly.

He opened his mouth, but he could not speak. So he gravely nodded his painful head.

“You’ve already said that you’d take Amy back,” said Caroline. “And I assume you are meeting my second condition?”

He could suddenly speak. “Yes,” he said. “But I haven’t the faintest notion, Caroline — ”

“Yes,” said Caroline wearily. “You do, indeed.”

She put the papers into her purse. Her hands shook. “You are only one man of your kind among tens of thousands, but your friends need every one of you, even you, struck down as you are. They need your money. They must never get another cent, Timothy, from you. That is my warning.”

She stood up. “Your sons,” she said. “If they were like you I’d not have been here in this room with you. Not even for Amy. But they are good young men; they’d never betray their country; your friends will never reach them. I satisfied myself about that. They are like their mother.”

She went out of the room and closed the door behind her. Timothy watched the door closing. The pain in his head was frightful now, unendurable. He let it drop on the desk. He would rest a little. And then he would think. He would find a way; his friends would help him, in spite of Caroline, in spite of all her money. Her accursed money! His eyes were closed against the pain, but he saw the heap of her money, a golden mountain, and he said to himself: I can’t climb it. But I must. I must. There must be some way to destroy her.

Amanda met Caroline in the hall. “It’s very well now,” said Caroline in the stately tones of Miss Stockington’s School. “He’s accepted Amy.”

Amanda smiled at her gently. “Dear Caroline,” she said.

“No,” said Caroline. “Don’t say that to me. There are often things you must do for many reasons, but they don’t give pleasure. Would you call a cab for me?”

“No,” said Amanda. “I will call our car to take you to the station. Caroline, how can I tell you — ”

“Don’t,” said Caroline shortly. “I only want to go home.”

“Tea, first,” Amanda pleaded, seeing Caroline’s gray and exhausted color.

“No. There is a train in half an hour.” Then Caroline raised her voice, almost in despair. “Please let me go!”

When Caroline was driven away Amanda went quickly to the library. She cried out when she saw her husband half lying over his desk, his head dropped upon it. “Timothy!” she exclaimed, going to him quickly and full of dread. But he had not died. He could lift his head a little; however, he could only gibber, and Amanda ran at once for her sons, and her cries filled the big house with tumultuous and terrified noises.

I must get home, thought Caroline in the large automobile which belonged to Amanda. She looked listlessly at the smart back of the uniformed chauffeur and at the plate of glass which shut him off from her. Once Elizabeth, in her delirium, had mentioned the glass wall which protected her from the world. I’ve lived behind it all my life, too, Caroline thought, and there was a sensation of prostration just below her heart. She had forgotten her medicine. I must get home, she repeated to herself. Home, where there was nothing, where there never had been anything.

The handsome and formal people on the street did not interest her. She had never been part of them, of their teas and dances and charity balls and long, dull dinners. Why do they bother to live? she thought. For what end?

As the car approached the station the streets became a welter of hurrying people, shops, warehouses, streetcars, wagons, carriages and automobiles and bicycles, and noise and hot sunlight. The topaz haze which always seemed part of Boston hung over the streets, clouded the distant vistas in strong golden light. The chauffeur brought the car to a stop to allow a billowing crowd of people to cross the street, and Caroline languidly looked through the window. There was a church on the corner, and pacing slowly on the sidewalk was a priest with bent head, a tall, middle-aged priest who looked both tired and stern, gentle and remote. That is the church I visited, thought Caroline. And that must be the priest who wanted to help me — to help me — so long ago.

She had rarely moved impulsively, but now she tapped on the glass, and the chauffeur slid it aside and turned to her. “Wait for me on the next street,” she said. “I have something to do. I will come back in fifteen minutes.”

The chauffeur was confused, and hesitated. This frowzy and bustling street was no place for Mrs. Caroline Ames Sheldon; surely she did not want to shop in those stores nearby! But he had heard about Caroline’s eccentricities, so he formally left his seat and opened the door for her, bowing. She waved him on impatiently and stood there, dusty and black-clothed, in her ancient hat and carrying her big purse, until he reluctantly turned the corner. The priest was returning along the sidewalk. Caroline looked at him, beginning to tremble as she always did when about to speak to a stranger. When he was almost upon her she lifted her head and she saw his thin, pale face, his calm deep eyes, his quiet expression, and in his turn he saw a woman he considered elderly, evidently poor, dressed in an old fashion, stocky, and gray and solid. She stood directly in his path, and he had to stop, inclining his head questioningly and smiling a little.

“I want to talk to you,” said Caroline in her brusque way.

“Of course,” said the priest. “Are you one of my — ”

“No,” she said impatiently. “But a long time ago, years ago, you wanted to help me. I’ve never forgotten.”

He had helped thousands like this ‘poor old soul’ over all the years. They had become one face to him, one face of anguish and despair and bewilderment. “I’m Father Bellamy,” he said. “I’ll be glad to help you. Will you come into the rectory?” And he glanced at the shabby clapboard house next to the church.

He waited to hear her name, but she did not give it. She marched ahead of him up the walk to the house, then stopped on the wooden porch with its neat chairs and its struggling wistaria vine. She had an air, he was surprised to see, of compact decisiveness in spite of her evident misery, and there was nothing cringing about her. He opened the door of the house for her, and she stepped into a long dark hall, glimmering with cleanliness and wax, and very quiet. “You people,” said Caroline, “always keep things so clean, don’t you, so uncluttered?”

Now the priest became aware of her voice. He had heard those intonations before, sharp and firm and trimmed, when he had gone with considerable shyness and trepidation to the homes of fine Boston ladies to ask for some donation, however small, for the endless needs of the clergy and their churches and their schools and the convents and the missions. He felt some bewilderment; this ‘poor old soul’ spoke with the authority and accents of the great ladies of Boston in spite of her wretched clothing and appearance of dilapidated poverty.

“Uncluttered? Clean?” he murmured. He opened a door in the hall, and Caroline entered a small dark parlor with wooden walls and spare furniture and brilliantly polished linoleum floor. “I never did like clutter,” said Caroline. “This is how I’d have liked a house if anyone had ever consulted me.” She looked at the great crucifix on the far wall, then walked firmly to it and looked up at it with intense concentration. After a moment she sat down on the edge of a stiff chair the priest indicated, and he sat down in a wooden armchair. He waited. He spent a great part of his life waiting for people to speak, to cry out to him, to weep, to ask him stammering questions.