A Prologue to Love

by Taylor Caldwell

  “Hello, Alice,” said Tom. “I’ve brought you some flowers.” He wished he had a glass pot and some water so that the roses would not die too soon, as this girl had died. He took some moist earth from a broken old urn and arranged it on the grave and stuck his roses in it. They stood up bravely, red, white, and yellow, with brilliant green leaves. The sentimental captain, watching, sighed, blinked his eyes, and coughed.

  Tom, looking down at the grave, suddenly thought of Caroline, and he did not know why. He walked away. When he reached the gate he saw that the broad street was full of dust and running and fast-walking figures of men and women. He smiled his thanks to the captain and struck off on a side road. He would not be able to see Caroline; she would be surrounded and immured and veiled. In fact, she would not be his Carrie at all.

  He remembered all this as he read Beth’s letter. He remembered the letters he had written Caroline after her father’s burial. She had not answered them. He had made excuses for her: she was sick with sorrow; she had a great deal of responsibility and many papers. There would be people who would have to consult her and whom she would have to consult. But she would be alone. She had lost the father she had loved; she had only Beth and himself, Tom Sheldon, now. Surely it was only natural that she would remember this.

  Tom’s mother had died a year ago. He lived alone with his old father, who had developed, very late, a marvelous talent for designing little homes which were spacious and peaceful and full of modest loveliness. He and Tom loved each other devotedly and, in spite of the fact that fifty years lay between their ages, they had been like brothers. Now, for the first time, Tom wondered why he had never spoken to his father about Caroline Ames, not even when he was only twelve years old. Had he known, even then, as he knew now, that his father would not have understood? Had he known that his father’s reaction would have been based on solid reality and not on dreams and hopes? Old Thomas Sheldon was a man of sense as well as kindness. He would, with only a few pragmatic words, have destroyed something that was as intangible as a breath.

  Caroline’s money was a golden wall that would keep them apart. Tom had never seen its power and its height and its invincibility before, and its awe-inspiring glitter. Caroline had been more intelligent. She had not answered any of his letters. What if she did wear his brooch? She probably never gave it a thought. He would never see her again. To him, her money was nothing. As her father’s daughter, Caroline would know that her money was everything.

  But it isn’t, thought Tom. Or is it?

  Chapter 2

  Beth Knowles, who was kind as well as shrewd, and was growing old and tired, could not understand why Caroline Ames rarely if ever spoke of her father. To Beth, the dead were not far away; she had a vague conviction that they still loved the living and that they craved remembrance and love in return. Her family had been simple; almost all the people she had ever known had been simple. The complex and mysterious ones, like John Ames, were, in her opinion, hardly to be considered human at all, and certainly not normal. Once or twice before her father’s death Caroline had tried to tell Beth of the people she had met in the great American cities and abroad, but Beth had only gaped wonderingly, had shaken her head, and had expressed her sturdy incredulity. “Now, dear,” she would say coaxingly and with a hint of rejecting fear in her loving eyes, “aren’t you exaggerating just a little? Why, the governments would do something about them. Christian folks would rout them out or put them in prison or something.” She wanted to be reassured that the majority of people were like herself, intrinsically good, full of simplicity, loving, kind, and brave.

  To Beth, Caroline was as simple as herself. Her inexplicable moods and withdrawals, her broodings and sullenness and sudden outbursts of incomprehensible passion, were only symptoms of the misery her father had brought into her life from her very birth. Now that John Ames was dead, Beth told herself, the girl would be a prisoner released, and she would be ‘like every other young lady’. It would take a few weeks, perhaps, and then the wings of her spirit would lift. Being simple and normal, she would soon speak of him with sad affection, as Beth always spoke of her own dead. But Caroline never mentioned him or gave any indication that she was thinking of him.

  Unlike Tom, Beth did not connect Caroline with money and power. She had avidly read of Caroline’s great fortune; she had cut articles about the girl from the Boston newspapers and had smiled knowingly at the conjectures of the reporters about whom Caroline would eventually marry. No one but ‘important folks’ got their names so lavishly printed in the newspapers almost daily. But the Caroline Ames of the newspapers and the fortune and the ‘little Carrie’ whom Beth loved did not actually mesh into one fabric in Beth’s thoughts. After all, she would say to herself when some uneasy and unwelcome thought came to her, hadn’t she always made Carrie’s flannel nightgowns and petticoats and drawers, and hadn’t she wiped the little girl’s nose and sopped away her tears and held her in her lap and told her of ‘Jesus, meek and mild’, and instructed her in the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount? To Beth, Caroline was still a child, needing protection and love. The money was mysterious and not quite real to the affectionate woman.

  Beth was delighted when Caroline told her in Lyndon that they would go to Lyme on Sunday rather than Tuesday. Ah, thought Beth delightedly, she is thinking of Tom! So Beth sang as she packed her own clothing and Caroline’s. Old Jim was long dead; they would take a hack to the station.

  Caroline had never been loquacious, not even with Beth. Now she was almost invariably silent. She sat with Beth in a dirty coach in the train and looked blindly through the smudged windows. They had always traveled like this, in a welter of crying children, the stench of oranges, urine, straw, and ham sandwiches. The crowded aisles, filled with opened wicker baskets of coarse food, running infants and milling adults in shabby clothing, were familiar and reassuring to Beth. Nothing had changed. She looked at Caroline’s large profile, impassive and darkly pale, with the broad nose and the heavy folded lips. Sunlight occasionally struck her eyes; they were cold and yellowish between the thick black lashes. A sharp uneasiness struck Beth. She moistened her lips and said, “I hope that Lyme won’t bring too many sad memories back, dear. One must go on.”

  She eagerly waited, in her simplicity, to hear Caroline sigh and say gently, “I’ll try, Beth.” That was the acceptable reply in Beth’s world. But Caroline did not answer for several moments. Then she said, “I’m going to sell the house in Lyme.”

  Beth considered this statement for a few moments. Then her heart was touched deeply. The girl did not want the house in Lyme any longer because it would remind her too much of her father and she could not bear it yet. So Beth said with tender complacency, “Well, we’ll not be hasty, will we, dear? The house has a wonderful view. It does need some work done on it badly, but I imagine we can get Tom to do it for us very reasonably.” Caroline did not reply.

  They got into a hired hack at the depot, and after a few moments the summer sea came into view as they trundled down the rutty road. It was a blue plain, filled with bright shadows. A few fishermen’s boats studded the horizon like black periods, accenting the emptiness of water and brilliant sky. Beth pointed to the high land to her left and cried with pleasure, “Look, Carrie! Those lovely little houses up there which Tom built last summer! And so reasonable, too.” Caroline did not look or answer.

  The Ames house stood stark and gray and rotting beyond its shingle, its dusty windows blind, its wooden walks heaped with dead leaves and rivulets of sand, its chimneys leaning, its clapboards and roof curling. Beth was more depressed than usual when she saw the house. Really, it should be taken down, she thought, thinking of the barren rooms, the dirty stone fireplaces, the kerosene lamps, the frayed matting, the crumbling furniture, the dark attic, the cold kitchen with its old wood stove and uneven floorboards, and the outhouse behind. Even when first built, Beth thought, it must have been ugly.

  There was a pile of stove and fire wood nea
r the rear door, and Beth immediately built a fire in the kitchen stove and put on a large boiler for hot water; she also built a fire in the wretched living room. Caroline said nothing. She sat in a dusty chair whose upholstery was torn, the cotton stuffing revealed dirtily, and apparently watched Beth building the fire and apparently listened to Beth’s heartening chatter. “I’ll clean your room first of all, Carrie,” said Beth. “I’m glad I took down all the curtains last year and stored them upstairs after washing them. In one of the trunks. Would you like the Paisley-patterned ones for your room, or the ones with the big red roses?”

  Caroline, all at once, could not bear Beth’s loving chatter. She stood up, looked about her aimlessly with blank eyes, and said, “It doesn’t matter.” Beth was kneeling on the ashy hearth, and Caroline saw her weary plump shoulders, her slowed movements. She said, “I’ll go to the attic and get the curtains.” Her voice was almost gentle.

  Beth looked over her shoulder with a happy and wondering smile. “Why, how nice of you, dear. They’re in the trunk with the round lid, the wood one with the brass hinges.”

  Caroline went up the creaking and gritty bare stairs, indifferent to the dust she collected on her black skirts. Beth could hear her heavy and sure steps mounting to the attic. She began to hum to herself. One just had to have patience; one just had to work; everything would be good soon. All things came to one in time. Caroline, in the webbed and rotting attic, closed the door, then leaned against it, shutting her eyes. It was very warm here. She did not notice the stifling air. When she opened her eyes again she did not see the soft thick carpet of old dust on the floor. Why had she come up here? Then she remembered, through the haze and agony of pain which never left her.

  She pushed herself away from the door with extreme effort, for she was always exhausted these days. Her feet sank into the soft thick dust, and a cloud of it rose about her. She coughed. She found the trunk and lifted the rounded lid and looked listlessly at the faded curtains Beth had placed there last fall. Poor Beth, she thought vaguely. Compassion was an unusual emotion for her, she who was always engrossed in her own fear and now in her own anguish. She paused, looking down at the curtains. All at once, and for the first time since her father’s death, tears came into her eyes and she bent her head against the lifted lid of the trunk and sobbed chokingly. She could not stop and she did not know why she cried. Her uncontrollable sobs shook her; her efforts to restrain them made sweat burst out over her face and join her tears.

  Finally she could control herself. She fished in her skirt pocket for her handkerchief and rubbed it dazedly over her eyes and then blew her nose. For only a few instants there was a calm cool place in her mind, full of peace. Then it was gone, and there was only cold pain again. She picked up all the curtains and was about to close the lid with her elbow when she saw a dim package at the bottom of the trunk, covered with dull gray newspaper — a flat package, like a picture. She stared at it, frowning, seeing the sifted fragments of paper and the outlines of a frame. A picture? But her father never bought pictures. He had never gone with her to the various art galleries in Europe.

  What? thought Caroline, and felt the smallest thrill of interest. A portrait of her dead young mother? Her father must have valued it, to keep it. She put the curtains down on the top of a flat trunk and lifted the picture in her hands. The paper drifted from it; she saw the dimmed gilt of the frame. Then she carried the picture to the attic window that looked out on the sea, and she held it to the light, brushing off the fragments of paper.

  For a stunned moment or two as she stared down at the portrait she thought she was seeing a painting of herself or that she was looking into a mirror. She blinked furiously; she smudged her handkerchief again over her face. Her ears began to ring. She brought the portrait closer, and then she saw it was not a painting of herself or a mirror. It was a man. The large golden eyes smiled up at her; the large full mouth was curved slightly in a smile. There was a wide eagerness in the expression. A fragment of the sifting newspaper clung to the top of the frame. ‘April 4, 1839, Genesee, N.Y.’ The print was barely legible. Now it drifted to the floor. Then Caroline, whose heart was beginning to hammer, saw the artist’s signature on the painting: ‘Self-portrait. D.A. 1838.’

  Without wonder, without amazement or conjecture, she knew at once. She leaned against the webbed wall near the window. She began to sweat again. She looked at the portrait almost fiercely. D.A. was David Ames. She knew his style well; she had, only two weeks ago, gone to a private showing of eight of his paintings in Boston, remembering what Herr Ernst had told her that terrible night in Switzerland. She had hoped to see the painting of the tower, of the awful apocalyptic painting of the church with its fiery cross against foreboding skies. But they were not in this loaned collection, which was from New York and London. She had walked mutely from one painting to another in the small but select art gallery in Boston, unaware that other people had recognized her from her photographs and were now whispering discreetly behind their hands to their friends.

  She had only known that this David Ames was a great artist, that his pictures glowed and palpitated and teemed with the color she loved, no matter the subject. They lived on the walls; they were like windows rather than paintings; they opened out on strange scenes full of emotion and vivid life. One was a young girl, very young, with a dark swarthy face and long lank black hair lying on bare shoulders the color of copper. She wore a scarlet dress with a bright blue apron, and her legs from the knees down were bare, as were her feet. She was seated on a rough wicker chair in a garden crowned with burning hues, and there was a bare table near her elbow filled with curious fruits like large jewels. The black eyes gazed at the viewer with strange but composed interest; the red lips were serious and grave. Caroline’s finger, without her volition, had reached out and touched the painted fruit; the paint was thick and had apparently been laid on with a knife.

  And now she was looking down at another painting of David Ames. He was her grandfather, the man her own father had hated, whose crimes against him and her grandmother had been hinted at in the very few times John Ames had mentioned him. He had spoken only when he had been very tired. Caroline leaned more heavily against the wall, moistening her lips. Then, without knowing why she did so, she suddenly clutched the portrait against her breast and held it there tightly in a passionate embrace.

  Her emotions almost shattered her. Why had her father saved this portrait? She would never know anything at all about her grandfather, whose face, the replica of hers, lay against her breast. Slowly she held out the picture again, studying her very eyes, the very formation of her face, the very texture of her hair, and her own large ears and short neck. Only the expression was different. It was an older face, but in all ways it was also a much younger face than hers. It was a face without fear. Caroline did not know that she was beginning to smile; a sensation of deep knowledge and love was invading her for her grandfather. She did not hear her own soft weeping. David Ames had not been a vicious and wicked man, a cruel and heartless man, as her father had said. He had been a great artist, lonely and despised before his death.

  “I wish I’d known you,” said Caroline aloud, and she held the portrait to her cheek so that it touched the cheek of the dead man.

  There was a movement far below on the wet shingle, which was reddening under the declining sun. She looked down through the window and saw Tom Sheldon standing on the shingle, staring at the house. He was smoking, and the gray trail of the smoke lifted straight up in the warm air. His blue and white striped shirt was open at his throat; his arms were bare and brown. He stood tall and solidly on the gleaming sand, his sun-darkened face thoughtful and serious. He smoked idly, but he was watching the opened door of the old house. Then he turned away.

  If Caroline had not found the self-portrait of her grandfather she would not have done what she did now. The emotion she had been experiencing quickened to a storm. She put the portrait of David Ames on the pile of curtains, caught up he
r dragging black skirts, and ran out of the attic. Beth heard the rapid tumult of her running feet on the stairs, the desperate clatter, the smothered crying. She came hurriedly out of the kitchen in time to see Caroline, her skirts flying, her arms outstretched, racing toward the door. She had a glimpse of Caroline’s face, laughing, weeping, distracted, and of her disheveled hair. “What is it?” screamed Beth, terrified. But Caroline fled across the sagging boards of the living room and through the door, and she was calling, “Tom! Tom! Wait for me!”

  Beth stumbled to the door, watching that turbulent young figure rushing down the wet shingle. And there was Tom, turning, startled. Then he was holding out his arms and he was laughing and the gulls wheeled about him. A moment later Caroline was in his arms, and she was clutching him, and Beth could hear her incoherent cries. Then she was still, and Tom was smoothing her hair and holding her to him as a father might hold a child.