“Yes, I know he is,” said Alfred.
Again, there was silence between them. The low fire crackled. The old elm branch scraped along the eaves. Alfred started. It was like the knock of a friend on an old, forgotten door.
Alfred spoke: “Amalie, I came here tonight to persuade you not to leave Hilltop.”
She turned her face to him, dimly startled. She shook her head. “I must, Alfred. I really must. You see, it was never really my home. It is Philip’s home. And Mary’s.” She paused, then she cried faintly: “It is yours, too, Alfred! I have no right here!”
He went to her then, and took her hand. It was cold and damp. He held it strongly. “It is your home, Amalie. I can’t bear to think of you not being here. Will you stay here, for my sake? Will you let me continue to think of you in this room, and in these gardens, and looking through these windows?” His voice began to fail him, so that it was almost a whisper: “You don’t know how it has comforted me, all these years, to imagine you here, Amalie.”
His hand was warm and firm as it held hers, and its strength was good to her. She clung to that hand; tears were spilling over her face. She was trying to smile again. But she shook her head a little.
“Alfred, you are only trying to be kind—”
“Oh, no,” he said. “No. I am trying to keep my memory of you, Amalie. That is all.”
Full of wonder, incredulous, she looked up at him. Their eyes held together. Now there was only the sound of the fire and the scraping of the elm branch in the quiet.
He bent his head. “Yes, Amalie,” he murmured.
Still clinging to his hand, she got slowly to her feet. She could not look away from him. She tried to speak. She made several attempts, but her lips trembled. Then she could only whisper:
“Alfred, you—”
He said: “Amalie, will you let me come again? Some day, soon? You will let me see you? Amalie?”
Had she really moved? Had she come a little closer to him? He could see the wet purple of her eyes, and the brilliant iris.
She was saying: “Yes. You may come again. And soon. You must come again, Alfred. You must always come.”
Yes, I will come, thought Alfred, with deep surety. And some day I shan’t go away again.
A Biography of Taylor Caldwell
Taylor Caldwell was one of the most prolific and widely read American authors of the twentieth century. In a career that spanned five decades, she wrote forty novels, many of which were New York Times bestsellers.
Caldwell captivated readers with emotionally charged historical novels and family sagas such as Captains and the Kings, which sold 4.5 million copies and was made into a television miniseries in 1976. Her novels based on the lives of religious figures, Dear and Glorious Physician, a portrayal of the life of St. Luke, and Great Lion of God, a panoramic novel about the life and times of St. Paul, are among the bestselling religious novels of all time.
Born Janet Miriam Holland Taylor Caldwell in 1900 in Manchester, England, into a family of Scotch-Irish descent, she began attending an academically rigorous school at the age of four, studying Latin, French, history, and geography. At six, she won a national gold medal for her essay on novelist Charles Dickens. On weekends, she performed a long list of household chores and attended Sunday school and church twice a day. Caldwell often credited her Spartan childhood with making her a rugged individualist.
In 1907, Caldwell, her parents, and her younger brother immigrated to the United States, settling in Buffalo, New York, where she would live for most of her life. She started writing stories when she was eight years old and completed her first novel, The Romance of Atlantis, when she was twelve, although it was not published until 1975. Marriage at the age of eighteen to William Combs and the birth of her first child, Mary Margaret—Peggy—did not deter her from pursuing an education. While working as a stenographer and a court reporter to help support her family, she took college courses at night.
Upon receiving a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Buffalo in 1931, she divorced her husband and married Marcus Reback, her boss at the US Immigration Department office in Buffalo. Caldwell then dedicated herself to writing full time. Even as her family grew with the arrival of her second daughter, Judith, Caldwell’s unpublished manuscripts continued to pile up.
At the age of thirty-eight, she finally sold a novel, Dynasty of Death, to a major New York publisher. Convinced that a pre–World War I saga of two dynasties of munitions manufacturers would be better received if people thought it was written by a man, Maxwell Perkins, her editor at Scribner—who also discovered F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway—advised her to use only part of her name—Taylor Caldwell—as her pen name. Dynasty of Death became a bestseller in 1938 and the saga continued with The Eagles Gather in 1940 and The Final Hour in 1944. Inevitably, a public stir ensued when people discovered Taylor Caldwell was a woman.
Over the next forty years, Caldwell often worked from midnight to early morning at her electric typewriter in her book-crammed study, producing a wide array of sagas (This Side of Innocence, Answer as a Man) and historical novels (Testimony of Two Men, Ceremony of the Innocent) that celebrated American values and passions.
She also produced novels set in the ancient world (A Pillar of Iron, Glory and the Lightning), dystopian fiction (The Devil’s Advocate, Your Sins and Mine), and spiritually themed novels (The Listener, No One Hears But Him, Dialogues with the Devil).
Apart from their across-the-board popularity with readers and their commercial success, which made Caldwell a wealthy woman, her long list of bestselling novels possessed common themes that were close to her heart: self-reliance and individualism, man’s struggle for justice, the government’s encroachment on personal freedoms, and the conflict between man’s desire for wealth and power and his need for love and family bonding.
The long hours spent at her typewriter did not keep Caldwell from enjoying life. She gave elegant parties at her grand house in Buffalo. One of her grandchildren recalls watching her hold the crowd in awe with her observations about life and politics. She embarked on annual worldwide cruises and was fond of a glass of good bourbon. Drina Fried recalls her grandmother confiding in her: “I vehemently believe that we should have as much fun as is possible in our dolorous life, if it does not injure ourselves or anyone else. The only thing is—be discreet. The world will forgive you anything but getting caught.”
Caldwell didn’t stop writing until she suffered a debilitating stroke at the age of eighty. Her last novel, Answer as a Man, was published in 1981 and hit the New York Times bestseller list before its official publication date. She died at her home in Greenwich, Connecticut, in 1985.
William Combs, Taylor Caldwell’s first husband and father to Peggy, aboard a naval ship, circa 1926.
A portrait of Caldwell at the start of her career in the late 1930s.
A portrait of Caldwell taken before Scribner’s publication of Melissa on June 21, 1948.
Caldwell at her desk in Palm Beach, Florida, in 1949. She spent many winter months at Whitehall, a resort hotel on the property of Henry Flagler’s former estate, which is now the Flagler Museum.
Caldwell’s second daughter, Judith Ann Reback, during time with her mother at Whitehall in the 1940s.
Caldwell receiving an award in Los Angeles, California, for A Pillar of Iron after its publication in 1965.
Caldwell with her daughters, Peggy Fried and Judith Ann Reback (Goodman), and Ted Goodman in 1969 on the MS Bergensfjord.
Caldwell at a cocktail party with her daughter, Peggy, and the hostess of a research world cruise on the SS President Wilson in 1970.
Caldwell with her granddaughter, Drina Fried, at her home in Buffalo, New York, winter 1975. Soula Angelou, her personal assistant, insisted on taking this rare family picture.
An invitation from 1975 to one of Caldwell’s many cocktail parties. She hosted at least two parties a year in Buffalo, New York, before she moved to Connecticut.
&nb
sp; Caldwell with her fourth husband, Robert Prestie, who cared for her in the last six years of her life in Connecticut.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1946 by Taylor Caldwell
Cover design by Connie Gabbert
ISBN: 978-1-5040-5323-5
This edition published in 2018 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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New York, NY 10038
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TAYLOR CALDWELL
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