A Prologue To Love (83 page)

“No, I didn’t know. But the fact that you found that item interesting is very revealing,” said Caroline.

Ames’ fine fair eyebrows drew together, and his eyes became a little mocking. “Are you analyzing me, Mother?” he said. “And if so, why?” The thunder, after that annihilating crash, was suddenly retreating, though the wind and the rain and the lightning continued. But Ames was still nervous; he was, to his disgust, trembling slightly, like a cat. He took his eyes from the windows and turned to his mother and was startled. What a peculiar expression she had!

“You will marry again, I suppose,” said Caroline.

“No doubt,” he said carefully, watching Caroline. “But not immediately. After all, I’ve not had a very happy experience.”

Caroline nodded. Her hands were like gray stone as they lay in her broad lap. “You will be able to marry again, and not for money,” she said.

“One can always use that,” said Ames, smiling, and relaxing now that the thunder was only growling in the distance. A wan light began to fill the room as the hidden sun brightened behind the thinning clouds. And in that light he saw his mother’s eyes again, quiet and probing.

“It is stupid,” said Caroline, “to wish anyone happiness in this world, for happiness doesn’t exist. It’s a word for children. But I hope you will be better satisfied the next time you marry. I hope your wife will bring you — ”

“Children,” he said, watching his mother again.

“As my ultimate heirs?” Caroline smiled drearily. “No, that isn’t what I meant. I hope your wife will bring” — she turned her head abruptly from him — “some contentment, some meaning, into your life.”

The suddenly quiet room was filled only with the sound of wind and rain and distant thunder. His cigarette fell from his fingers, and he bent and picked it up, and then to his own amazement he was throwing it violently into the cold and ash-filled fireplace. His chest felt tight, constricted, his face hot and stiff, and there were quivers of something closely resembling pain about his mouth. He had experienced it all before as a very young child. Several times. Even as the sensations increased helplessly in their intensity, he could remember the helplessness, the sensation of abandonment and rage and hysteria. He tried to steady himself, but he was suddenly on his feet and breathing hard and he could not stop.

“Why should you care about any contentment or peace I might have?” he said, and he was shocked at the uncontrolled sound of his own voice.

Caroline did not answer him because she could not. The enormous defeat was on her again, the vast spiritual sickness.

I must control myself, thought Ames, and heard himself say, “You never did before. Not once in my life! Why now?”

Caroline closed her eyes. “I’ve learned a great deal. Lately. I told you I couldn’t explain, Ames, for I don’t have the words. You must let it remain at that.”

He swung from her and went to one of the windows. The rain poured against it in long livid paths. He traced a mark in the dust on the inside of the glass. He watched the shaking of his finger, and he was enraged at himself and he hated his mother. The very salt of hatred was in his mouth. The quivering hysteria thrilled all about his lips. He forced himself to stand there, to stifle his disgusting emotions, the mindless fury that surged all through him like the storm. He began to talk inwardly. I never could stand lightning and thunder. The air’s charged with it. It would make anyone else, but one like her, as nervous as all hell. I’m a sensitive man, not a clod.

Caroline saw his thin back, his lean shoulders, his bent head. She could see part of his profile, thin and very pale. “Ames,” she said.

“Yes?” He did not turn to her. He was humiliated; he did not want her to see his face yet. “What have you learned, Mother?”

“Things I’m afraid you’ll never learn, Ames.”

The tracing finger halted on the glass. What a stupid remark, he thought. She’s out of her mind at last; there must be a taint in the family. Elizabeth. My grandfather — I’ve heard that he was not quite sane himself.

“I’d like to show you something,” said Caroline. She forced herself wearily to her feet. “In my gallery.”

His loathing for her was a force that helped him to self-control. His trembling stopped, the hysteria disappeared at once, the fury died down. He could turn now and could smile. “Ah, your paintings,” he said. “I’ve been very curious.”

He followed her up the stairs. The crunching of grit under his feet, the darkness, the closed and musty smells, the airlessness so revolted him that the last rage left him entirely, and he could smile slightly in contempt, seeing the broad black figure rising painfully above him. He followed his mother down the hall; the carpet was in shreds and stank of old dust and decay. He glanced at the door of his room, at the door of John’s room. Had he ever lived in this shut horror, this aged grime? His mother was unlocking the door of her gallery, and when she pushed it open the emerging sun shot long beams of warm yellow light into the room, and it was like walking into goldness.

He was surprised. Here all was neatness and quiet and serenity, with only one chair standing before a lined wall of paintings, and the floor was polished, the windows clear. He raised his eyebrows. His eyes involuntarily met his mother’s. She pointed mutely at the pictures. He went to them eagerly, alertly, the connoisseur once more, not knowing what to expect. It had been his opinion that his mother, who was without taste or sensitivity or perception, had bought ridiculous paintings for her private enjoyment. He stopped before one and was astonished. He bent and peered at it acutely. He went to the next, and to the next.

“David Ames!” he cried incredulously.

“Your great-grandfather,” said Caroline.

“Originals!” exclaimed Ames in awe. “Originals!” He stopped. Then he turned very slowly. “What did you say?” he said, astounded. “My great-grandfather?”

“Yes,” Caroline said. She was unknowingly wringing her hands. “They will tell you what I can’t, Ames.”

“My great-grandfather!” he said again, staring at her and then at the paintings. “Good God! Are you sure?”

She pointed to David Ames’ self-portrait, and he went to it and stood for a long time before it, remembering his young mother and seeing the absolute resemblance. Then his next sensation was exultation. He had no more need now to think of his grandfather with disdain, the ‘buccaneer nobody’. He did not need now to focus his family pride on the Esmonds. He was the great-grandson of David Ames! It was with something like profound gratitude that he swung about to his mother.

“Why didn’t you let me know before?” he demanded.

“Why should I have? Is it so important to you?” asked Caroline with that new and dreadful pity of hers, and understanding.

“Good God, yes! David Ames! I’ve seen only one original, or perhaps two. All the rest have been copies or prints.” He was elated, smiling. He walked from painting to painting, with deepening excitement and awe. He filled his eyes with color and form as a drunkard fills his mouth and belly with his one delight and one consolation.

Why, he isn’t thinking of their worth in money, thought Caroline, and her eyes filled with tears. He isn’t now even thinking of the honor of having David Ames as his great-grandfather. Elizabeth deceived me, but Ames is not deceiving me. She saw him touch a line of vivid red paint. He was moving rapidly from one painting to another, over and over, his footsteps clicking fastidiously on the polished floor. He was murmuring joyfully, lustfully, to himself and nodding his head. Then he stopped before the tower and was still. “Where — where did you get them?” he murmured, marveling. Then the tower held him once more, and he could not have enough of looking.

“Does it mean anything to you, that painting?” asked Caroline.

He did not answer for a long time. Then he said, “I’ve never seen such marvelous work. I’ve seen prints of this; they were like black-and-whites. Copies never have caught the depth, the splendor, the form, the line, the perspectives, the glow.”

“The tower,” said Caroline. “Does it mean something to you, anything at all?”

“A ruin,” said Ames, staring at it greedily and with immense pleasure. “A bleak ruin. Lost. Abandoned. Eerie. The light of another world.”

Caroline sighed. “You feel that?” she asked, and she did not know if the pain she was enduring was physical or spiritual.

“Yes. Of course. But each viewer finds something in any painting which relates to himself,” said Ames, and did not know what he was saying.

“Yes,” said Caroline, heartbroken. But Ames did not hear her. He was moving again, overcome with his powerful excitement. Caroline stood still, her hands clasped hard together, and watched his rapid movements. Then he stopped before the little painting of Mimi’s, the picture of a young girl waiting on a boulder, her profile turned ardently and with hope to the viewer, the red ribbon in her hair streaming in the wind, and the ocean before her. “This,” said Ames, frowning. “I don’t know whose this is. Childish, in many ways, but showing true strength and artistic feeling. What is it doing here?”

“A friend gave it to me,” said Caroline. “Long ago.”

“Who? Has he done much lately? What is his name?”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Caroline listlessly. She pointed to the painting of the blinded man stumbling among great stones, with the purple mountains behind him and the ominous sky above him. “Do you understand that?” she asked.

Ames gave the painting all his attention. Caroline had never seen that powerful concentration of his before, that giving of himself to beauty and the terror of beauty, and her hope came again.

“A man incapable of seeing,” said Ames.

“Seeing what?”

Ames was irritated at what he considered a most foolish question.

“Form. Order. Style. It’s the picture of the perpetual fool, without taste or comprehension. The universal fool. The common man. The dolt who should never have been born. You see him on every street, everywhere you go. The blind.”

“The man who will not see?” asked Caroline.

His irritation became anger. How dare a woman like his mother have these tremendous things, these glorious things! She had bought them, of course, as one of her damned investments. Well, she had done excellently: that is all that interested her.

“The man,” said Ames, “who was born incapable of seeing, a man without discernment or sensitivity. The common man. The color-blind animal.’’

“No,” said Caroline, shaking her head heavily from side to side. But Ames did not hear her. He was again studying another painting.

Then Caroline’s new huge compassion took her again, and this time for her father, who had destroyed her and who had destroyed his grandchildren. She could only pity, and the pity devastated her. She sat down abruptly in the chair, and her head fell on her breast. Dear God, she thought, have mercy on Your children. Have mercy. Forgive us; we never know what we do, because we never try to understand. Ames was laughing delightedly.

“He must have been in Mexico,” he said. “This girl — what power, what color, what subtlety!”

He went again to the painting of the church and the apocalyptic sky and the small vivid cross soaring valiantly against the furious and threatening color, in defiance, in promise, in a strength that not even the shaking of all the earth and the heavens could move from its place, could throw down.

Ames was nodding. “Wonderful,” he murmured. “How he’s portrayed the uselessness, the vulnerability, the littleness of human superstition. The stupidity of religion. The utter defenselessness of it in the face of a crashing reality.”

Caroline was silent. Ames came to stand beside her. “What are you — ” And then he stopped.

“What am I going to do with them?” said Caroline feebly. “I intend to give them to the Boston Museum, in my will. But you may make three choices, and I will arrange for you to have them when I am dead.”

Ames was aghast. “The Boston Museum!” he cried, pushing his hands deeply into his pockets. “For every dog to look at, for every blind eye to see?”

“For everyone to see,” said Caroline.

“But that’s blasphemy!”

“If you had them all, you’d lock them away? As I did, as I do? Just for yourself?”

“I tell you, it’s blasphemy,” said Ames. “Yes, I’d lock them away for myself.”

“As I did.”

Ames paused. But you only bought them as an investment, he said to himself. They have no meaning for you.

He tried to speak reasonably. “Mother, it’s true that they are worth a fabulous fortune now. They’re beyond price. You aren’t serious when you say you’ll give them — give them! — away?”

“I am perfectly serious,” said Caroline. She stood up. “Shall we go now?”

He hated her. She was mad, of course. “Don’t you know how I feel about them myself?” he said, still controlling his voice. “My great-grandfather’s paintings? Don’t you know how I’d treasure them? You know what I am.”

“Yes,” said Caroline. “I know. Please make your three choices, Ames.’’

He did, but his sickness grew during the difficulty of choosing. “Yon aren’t leaving any of them to John?”

“No.”

“He’s your son too.”

You mean, thought Caroline, that if John has a few you’ll buy them from him.

“I don’t think,” said Caroline, “that John would care for any of them.”

“He cares for anything that’s valuable,” said Ames. “Did you know, by the way, that he’s color-blind?”

“Is he?” said Caroline. “No, I didn’t know.” So her son John was married to an artist, and he would never know what she was doing; he would never see the coloring, the light, the shade of hue, the exquisite and subtle tint.

Ames had chosen the tower, the picture of the little church against the mad and insensate fury of destruction, the girl in the exotic garden. Caroline, watching him as he made his choices, saw that the painting of the blind man made him vaguely uneasy.