A Prologue To Love (82 page)

While Caroline waited for her son Ames, she picked her way through the great boulders covering the sea walk and reached the shingle. It was seldom hot near the sea, but now a steaming giant’s mouth seemed to be pressing over land and water, gaseous and fuming. It concealed the sun; it was the color of wet smoke. The long waves, rushing toward the land in uneasy thunder, were dark gray, ridged with breaking foam and splashes of turquoise, and the horizon was tumultuous. Here and there in the sky lavender clouds were forming in tormented patterns, and now, as Caroline watched, they were veined with branching lightning, and immediately steely paths flashed over the water in answer. But there was no wind; the air suffocated one’s lungs.

Caroline looked to the right and left; her high walls shut off any view of new neighbors, of any view at all but the sea. I should feel, she thought, now that I am released from an old evil lie, a sudden desire to see others besides myself. But that is romanticism. Sudden convulsions of feeling can occur only in the very young. I’ve grown old in my spirit; I’m only a speck of unwilling life still throbbing faintly deep inside the calcified, serrated, and thickened shell I have built about myself for many years, perhaps from the moment I was born. I am blinded by it, deafened by it, imprisoned by it, held immovable by it. I could not change if I wanted to, and I do not want to. What other life could there be for me but the one I know? It’s all such a weariness. If the shell were cracked open I should die in a different environment from the only one I’ve ever known. And I’m not ready to die — not yet — though there is no reason why I should live.

Her father had not really left her a ‘trust’. Yet she must continue as if her old fantasy were still with her. It was still a wall, all that money, which protected her from what could only destroy her.

She went back through the boulders, slowly, heavily, around the side of the dying house and into what had once been Tom’s cherished gardens. The brush and the wild trees and the knee-high grass murmured apprehensively, though there was still no wind. It was a gray-and-green jungle of struggling life, inhibited by its very profusion. The birds, usually so noisy, were silent. There was not even a bee or a wasp or a butterfly visible. They had all hidden themselves; they had all gone to shelter before the coming storm. But we, thought Caroline, have no shelter, we have no home, none of us. We are open to everything, like exiles pushed from safety. Even I, with all my money. We build our strong cities and they don’t shelter us. We formulate philosophies which do not comfort us. We make all the world clamorous, and nothing listens to us, and everything that is innocent avoids us as though we were death itself. I wonder why?

We have nowhere to go — humanity.

The crowding and monolithic trees whitened with the lightning, and the darkness increased. Now a heavy wind struck the earth, and the trees and the shrubbery roared in green rage, and the voice of the sea echoed the voice of thunder. Caroline still stood and looked at the savage growth within her walls. She stood under a great and twisted tree, and so when the first hard drops of rain came she did not feel them.

Where shall I go? she thought. Where is there any shelter for me, any quietness? Any peace? Nowhere, of course. There is nowhere for everyone else, either. We were given the capacity to think and reflect on that — that we have nowhere to go. No creature receives a faculty that is of no use to it; nature is economical. We received the faculty to be aware that there is — nothing — and I wonder why? Of what use is it to us, except to make us kill ourselves, one way or another?

We all kill ourselves, one way or another. We are the race of suicides.

We don’t resemble any other creature, in this. What drives man to murder himself, through hate, ambition, work, striving, hope, despair, struggle, building, destroying, and war? Does he hate himself so much? Caroline looked at the sky; the lavender patterns of clouds had become a deep and furious purple, and the lightning that veined through them was too brilliant. What had someone once written? ‘We are born so that we should know God. That is the only reason. When we refuse to know, then we die in many ways.’

Caroline shook her head, over and over. It was too simple and yet too impossible. How did one ‘know’ God — if there was a God? It was beyond an act of will. It had to come from without oneself. What had the priest said? ‘Grace’. Faith was a grace given to man. Why was it withheld from almost every human being, then? Did God hate man too?

Her eyes fixed on the lightning-torn purple clouds, Caroline said aloud with bitter lips, “Give me Your grace. I can’t will it for myself. If You exist, give it to me.”

After a little she stepped from under the tree and did not feel the rain on her face. She stopped in the shelter of her doorway and said again with increasing bitterness, “Give me Your grace. Perhaps then I’ll understand why I was born, and to such a father, and in such circumstances, and why I never had happiness, but only pain and fear, and why I have always hated living.”

Thunder exploded in the sky. Meaningless noise. I have lost what meaning I had for living, even if it was false, thought Caroline. Does the knowledge that there is no meaning make man murder himself? Had nature given him that awareness so he would destroy himself and his fellow man? Was man so hateful, then, to the very source of his existence? If so, why had nature produced him at all?

Caroline went into her expiring house. Every dank room was full of purple shadows, slashed with lightning, and silent except for thunder. Maizie, she thought, was hiding in some closet; she was terrified of storms. Didn’t the poor girl realize that there was no place to hide? Man was open to calamity, and there was no shelter. Animals died, without any knowledge of death. Man had that knowledge. Why? If, thought Caroline, You had any mercy, You would never have created man — if You exist. Life is too terrible for us. We didn’t deserve this blind punishment.

She paused, and was struck, and then shaken. For the first time she felt a huge and swelling compassion for all humanity, a sense of sharing in universal disaster, a sense of pain and companionship and sadness. And as she felt this she lost, for the first time in her life, her terror of mankind. It was gone, in the storm of her pity, and she knew that it would never return again. So, she thought vaguely, dimly, that is the first step. The very first step. She leaned her cheek in the palm of her hand. Tears dripped over her fingers. What had she said to herself? The first step. What was the next, and to where? She lifted her head, her eyes dazzled by the lightning that shot vividly into the dusky room. She must wait. She only knew that she had a sensation of something releasing her.

She suddenly thought of all those whom she had hated and feared in her life. The Alecks. The Ferns. She could not feel the usual throb of fear which only yesterday she would have felt. She examined this curiously. They, too, had lived in a context of their own, as she had lived, and who was to say which was the more terrible? Had they sensed, as she had, the anarchy which lived just beyond the flicker of man’s sight, just beyond the detection of his ear? If it was Order and not anarchy, it was nonetheless affrighting, for man could not understand it, could not relate it to himself. Who could blame the Alecks and the Ferns for trying to create a distorted and frantic order of their own?

Caroline thought of Cynthia, and all at once she was smiling and was astonished that she was smiling. There was nothing in herself which would ever understand the Cynthias of the world, but one had to grant that they were graceful and never willingly harmed anyone. I have done more harm in my life innocently, thought Caroline, than my aunt ever did in her life uninnocently. I have never committed adultery; I have never borne an illegitimate child; I have never contrived, gaily betrayed, been frivolous and artful and exigent. Yet I suppose I am a more wicked woman than was my aunt, for I was blind and I lied to myself when the truth was wholly visible to me.

She stood up wearily in the glitter and dusk of the room and went to her bottle of medicine and measured out a dose, for her heart was pounding with pain and was erratic in its struggle. She drank the bitter dose and looked about her musingly, seeing her surroundings clearly for the first time. “This is what I did,” she said aloud. “No one else did it; only I.”

Forgetting the storm, Caroline climbed laboriously to her study and called Higsby Chalmers in Boston. While she waited a tree was struck in the far part of Tom’s ruined garden, and the telephone receiver tingled in her hand. She saw the sudden flare of flame; the house trembled. Now a roar of rain slammed against the old windows and drowned them. “Higsby?” said Caroline in her rough voice.

“Caroline?” said Mr. Chalmers.

“Yes. I’ve read your letter, though I’ve not answered it. And now I understand. Will you come to see me tomorrow here in Lyme?”

Mr. Chalmers was moved and elated. “Certainly, dear Caroline! I will bring you some new information also.” He paused. “Is that the storm I hear over the telephone? It is here in Boston too.”

“Something was just struck near the house,” said Caroline.

“Really?” said Mr. Chalmers. “Isn’t it dangerous, then, to be using the telephone, Caroline? Is there a fire?”

“I suppose so,” said Caroline. “Thank you, Higsby.”

The rain drowned the struck tree; Caroline could see, very faintly through the rain, the stream of smoke. Poor creature, thought Caroline, you lived and burned as meaninglessly as we do, and your death is as meaningless as ours. She went into Elizabeth’s room, so like a nun’s cell. She looked about her and said aloud, “My child, where are you? Pray for me, if you can hear me. We were both victims of ourselves as well as others.”

She smoothed the narrow white bed, and then a most extraordinary thing occurred. She felt the actual presence of Elizabeth, tentative and understanding. She looked about her eagerly. The lightning strode into the room, and the sound of the thunder, and yet it all seemed so silent, so alive, so filled with peace. “I’m glad,” said Caroline. “I’m glad that you’re not here any longer, Elizabeth. You are safe — ”

Tears gushed down her cheeks, yet she was smiling when she left Elizabeth’s room, and she was still smiling when she closed the door gently behind herself. “Safe,” she whispered to herself in the dark hall. But she could not quite understand what she had said. She went into Tom’s room. She said, “Tom?” She waited, but there was no answering presence. She said, “I am sorry, Tom. Will you wait for me?” There was no answer. Sighing, she left the room.

She went to the rooms formerly occupied by her sons. Ames’ room had a cool, barren air, rejecting. John’s room was still pervaded by an air of confusion and helplessness. Now, she thought, that is strange. I always thought of John as a very strong and potent and self-sufficient young man. She stood in John’s room and then was struck with pity and fear. She went back into her dark study and called John’s office in New York. While she waited the storm became more fierce and even closer.

“John?” she said at last.

“Yes?” His voice was sullen and weary.

“I’d like to see you, John,” she said.

He was silent. She could feel his astonishment. “Why?” he said at last.

“I want to see you.”

“Wouldn’t you rather see Mimi?” His tone was hard and sarcastic.

“No. You, John.”

He paused. She could sense his astounded and conjecturing thoughts. “All right,” he said. “When?”

“A week today?”

“Very well.”

She did not know why she felt so defeated when she went slowly down the gritty stairs and why there was such a weight on her chest. The outside door opened and Ames ran into the house, his hat pulled down to protect his face from the rain, his shoulders stained with large dark spots. He threw his hat from him and shrugged as if the rain had, in some way, violated him. He looked at his mother. “Well,” he said. She sat down in her usual chair, silently, and he stood at a little distance from her and lighted a cigarette with neat, controlled gestures. The glimmering lightning touched his pale hair, his smooth face with its lack of expression.

“You asked me to come,” he said. “I received your message in my office.”

“Yes. You know that Amy has left you.”

“Thanks to you,” said Ames. His voice was light but venomous. “You do like to play cat and mouse, don’t you? You persuade me to keep my wife, then when I’m in New York you abduct her. It’s no loss to me to have her gone; I wanted that myself. I’m thinking of another loss to me, much more important.”

Caroline did not speak for a moment or two. The lightning revealed her son’s face sharply, then the following darkness obscured it. She leaned her head back against the chair.

“You have no loss,” she said. “I will keep my part of the bargain. You will receive what I agreed to allow you.”

“Well!” he said again, but with quick pleasure and gratification. He sat down opposite his mother. He began to speak again, but his voice was lost in the thunder. He glanced at the windows, and Caroline suddenly remembered that he had been afraid of storms when he was a child and that Tom had always held him in his arms during them. She could see them so clearly, the young and tender father, the screaming little boy with his hands over his ears. She looked at Ames now and waited for the long rolling to subside. I’ve never really seen him before, she thought. My son. My son.

“I never thought of you as being capricious,” said Ames. He smoked rapidly, and his slate-gray eyes kept darting at the windows, which glared repeatedly.

“I am not,” said Caroline.

Ames paused. “I appreciate all this, Mother. But, just to satisfy my curiosity, will you tell me why you shifted from one opinion to the direct opposite? Not,” he added hastily, “that I’m not grateful.”

“It would be very hard to explain,” said Caroline. “There are things beyond explanation. One just has to accept them. I suppose you are willing for Amy to divorce you?”

“The sooner the better,” he said. He was very nervous in this storm. He had never seen a worse one, and he was exasperated at himself, “I smell smoke,” he said.

“Of course. A tree was hit in the garden.”

“That close?” he said, alarmed.

“Ames,” said Caroline, ignoring the question, “I must ask you something, Did you never care about Amy at all?”

“Certainly,” he answered. Was the old hag becoming sentimental in her old age? “But that was before I found out how stupid she was. Surely you knew that?”

“I know a great many things. Now,” said Caroline. A red flare of lightning lit the room and was followed instantaneously by a deafening explosion of thunder. The house shuddered. Ames jumped to his feet, and his tall and slender body appeared to cringe. He looked at his mother and saw her eyes in the lightning, strange and large and inscrutable. He laughed a little.

“I never liked to be in a house when there’s a storm about,” he said. “I prefer large office buildings or railroad stations.”

“You don’t like to be exposed,” said Caroline. “Or threatened. Yes, I understand that. I hated storms myself when I was a child and when I was your age. I hated them until today. I hated them for the very reasons you hate them.”

Her voice, to him, sounded far and weak. As he had never heard her speak gently before, he did not recognize the gentleness now. “I’m sorry, but I don’t understand you,” he said politely. “Exposed? Threatened? I’m not a child, Mother. I do know, however, that storms aren’t to be laughed at by anyone. Do you know that about a thousand people a year are killed in this country alone by lightning?”