A Prologue to Love

by Taylor Caldwell

  “That’s a lot of money,” said Tom, still smarting over Timothy. “And he’s not quite thirty yet, is he? And he’s still with your lawyers too?”

  Caroline did not like even Tom to question her judgments. “You may not like Timothy, but I have absolute confidence in him now, and I made a wise selection. He represents me at meetings of the Board of Broome and Company; I could hardly be on the Board myself, as a woman, and that’s very tiresome. Well, it isn’t too much money for Timothy, considering what he does for me. I wouldn’t know what to do without him.”

  One day early in 1889 she returned from New York strangely excited. She was then pregnant with Ames. Tom had protested her going in her condition, but she had refused to listen to him. He thought when she returned that she was sick. But she had given him a darkly exultant smile and had said impatiently that she was quite well and there was nothing wrong.

  He was certain there was, but he knew how obstinate Caroline could be and that she became even more so if pressed.

  She had stayed on that occasion, as always when alone, at the Gentlewoman’s Pension, which was becoming exceedingly shabby; it was in its final year. She and Timothy had dinner there, also customary after a day or two of long, hard discussion and consultations. The food was more execrable than ever. Caroline noticed that Timothy hardly touched his plate and that he appeared tense. His smile was absent; there were lines of nervousness in his pale face. But he seemed more than usually solicitous about his cousin and unusually deferential. She was quite pleased.

  “Should you, Caroline,” he said delicately, “be coming to New York so often — now?”

  Caroline said bluntly, “Why not? You mean about my being pregnant? I don’t believe in all that silliness about retiring, Timothy, and keeping out of sight, with the dainty pretension that nothing is about to happen. What is so shameful concerning pregnancy? Queen Victoria used to preside at Parliament and at Court on the very eve, I’ve heard, and no one commented on it.”

  Timothy had laughed quickly, though he thought her gross and common.

  “Does it show?” asked Caroline in her forthright manner.

  Timothy glanced about him furtively. He tried to be as forthright as Caroline and let her see that he admired her, which he did not. “No. No, Caroline. What an extraordinary woman you are! I wish more of our ladies were so honest.”

  “I haven’t time to be anything else,” said Caroline. She paused. “I’m grateful to you, Timothy. Against all other advice, but taking your advice about that harvester stock, I made a fine profit on it.”

  “Twenty-five thousand dollars,” agreed Timothy. He relaxed a little. Now for it! “These old men are too conservative; they distrust modern inventions and our powerfully rising industry all over the country. But we are still young, and we have faith in the future.”

  She nodded. “I won’t forget this, Timothy. It’s been my biggest profit in three months, and even the last big profit was due to you.”

  He sipped a little vile coffee. Then he leaned his elbows on the table and looked at her with flattering seriousness. “Caroline, I must protest your check.”

  “Nonsense. You earned it,” said Caroline, wincing only a little.

  “I’ve come to admire you over all these years, Caroline. I’ve come to think of you as my best friend.”

  She was more and more pleased with him. She was sorry she still could not like him very much.

  “And so,” said Timothy, “I want you to be the very first to know.” He hesitated and made his pale eyes more serious than ever and more flattering. “I’m going to be married this summer.”

  “Are you?” Caroline appeared interested. “That awful Bothwell girl, Amanda, who has been pursuing you for years?”

  “Oh, Carrie.” He lifted his hand deprecatingly and then let it drop on the table. “It wasn’t very gallant of me to tell you, was it? I thought it would amuse you. How old was she when you last saw her? Well, she’s twenty now, and one of those big, hearty Boston girls. A man eater, brisk and ruddy, and addicted to long walks and museums. There, I’m being ungallant again.”

  “She has a lot of money,” said Caroline thoughtfully. “The Bothwell fortune is one of the largest in Boston, and they’re very clever in their investments, I’ve heard. You could do worse, Timothy. Then it is Amanda?”

  “No.” There was no retreat now. “Caroline, I know how you feel about the other members of our family, and in many ways I don’t blame you. I’ve revised my opinion about one. In fact, I have come to love her, if I may speak frankly. And I want you to think of her kindly, too, as my future wife.”

  Caroline knew instantly. The ‘one’ could only be Melinda. She was so shocked that she turned deathly white. Her eyes widened, became huge and full of extreme horror. She pushed her chair back from the table, looked about wildly, as if searching for an exit in an urgent emergency.

  Timothy was frightened for the first time in his life. He could see only anger and repudiation in Caroline’s face, in the way her eyelids jerked spasmodically, in the way she had put both hands to her large breast. He had never seen her so shaken. What if he had ruined himself?

  “Caroline, please,” he said pleadingly.

  Caroline caught her breath. Then she whispered, “Oh, not Melinda! Timothy, not Melinda!”

  His acute ear caught something strange in her voice, and his eye something even stranger in her appearance. She was not angry, after all. She was only extremely shaken.

  “Caroline dear, please listen,” he urged. “I know how you feel; you think of my mother in connection with Melinda. But Melinda isn’t the least like her, believe me. I wish you had known her better; you would now love her too. I am going to marry her this summer and bring her home with me. The English climate isn’t good for her; she’s quite frail, you know.”

  Caroline found her voice. She repeated, “Oh, Timothy. Not Melinda! How could it be Melinda?” And then, to his amazement, he saw that her eyes were large with tears.

  “It is Melinda, I’m afraid,” he said with more courage.

  Then she cried, “That’s impossible!”

  “Why, dear? Do you hate her so much?”

  She wanted to say, “You can’t. I never told anyone before, but I know she is my sister. And yours.” But she held back. To tell him this devastating fact would be to degrade her father, to heap filth on his memory. Yet something must be done. Then another thought came to her and sickened her almost beyond bearing.

  “Does your mother know about this?”

  Timothy, though excessively puzzled about Caroline’s reaction, was relieved. “No, Caroline. Melinda is going to tell her. I’ve just had a letter from her today. She has possibly told Mother by this time. And that is why I am sailing for England the day after tomorrow.”

  “Oh, Timothy,” said Caroline in despair for him. “Why didn’t you tell your mother before?”

  “Mother’s never liked me, as you know, Caroline. And she adores Melinda. I’ve always been afraid that if she knew prematurely she would do all she could to keep Melinda from marrying me. I’ve had the astute idea for a long time that she would consider me unsuitable for Melinda, not only because I am more than ten years older, but because she distrusts me and never concealed the fact. She’s wrong. I never cared for anyone before Melinda or since. Melinda insisted on telling her now; she is a girl who can’t bear deceit. She’s devoted to my dear mama.”

  “That terrible woman!” cried Caroline.

  Timothy was silent.

  “You can’t marry Melinda,” said Caroline, and her eyes filled with tears again.

  “Why?” he insisted.

  “Your mother should have told you.”

  “What should she have told me? Is your objection, Caroline, because Melinda is an orphan of unknown parentage?”

  Caroline wanted to say yes, but falsehood was almost impossible for her. She could only shake her head mutely.

  “Well, then.” Her strangeness made him uneasy. “Wha
t else, Caroline?”

  She tried to drink water, but it splashed over her hand, and she put the glass down. Then she stared at him blankly for several moments. Wicked woman! Let her tell her son herself, in faraway England. Let her suffer as she had made others suffer with her wantonness. Let her feel shame and agony. Let all know what she was.

  She said in a clearer voice, “Please don’t think, dear Timothy, that I am objecting. But you must tell your mother. You say Melinda has probably already told her by now. I doubt she will give her the reason why you cannot marry Melinda. And she must tell you!”

  Now Timothy watched her alertly.

  “What can she tell me, Caroline?” he asked.

  “It’s not for me to tell you.”

  Timothy considered all possibilities but the true one. “Melinda’s father or mother was a criminal, perhaps?”

  Caroline hesitated. Then she said loudly, “Yes! Yes!”

  “How do you know?”

  “I — heard, Timothy. Perhaps I heard. Don’t press me; I won’t tell you.”

  So Caroline was as haughty about the family as he was himself. Yet she had married that familyless bumpkin. Was she regretting it? Timothy hoped so.

  “Let your mother tell you,” she said.

  “But even if there was something despicable in Melinda’s background, it will not make any difference to me,” said Timothy. “All that is behind her.”

  Caroline stood up. “Let your mother tell you.” Timothy rose with her. She had a sudden thought. Was that horrible woman capable, for her own sake, of keeping silent before this dreadful situation? Would she permit incest?

  Caroline said, “Write me. If she doesn’t tell you, write me and I’ll tell you, Timothy. Be sure to write me before marrying Melinda.”

  “I will,” he promised. He would have to do that, for his own sake. Otherwise Caroline would never forgive him. But whatever this mysterious thing was, it meant nothing to him. Caroline had been immured most of her life. She was making something of a thing that was of no consequence to him. He would return with Melinda as his wife, and Caroline, who now needed him, would have to be reconciled.

  They parted in a subdued atmosphere. Later Caroline felt her first exultation. She had finally been avenged on her aunt.

  Chapter 3

  Though Timothy had frequently heard his friends and others contemptuously refer to Caroline as ‘that stupid Ames girl’, he had always known that Caroline was neither stupid nor a fool. She, more than anyone else in all his life, had the power to alarm him, and for this alone he was never to forgive her.

  So when he sailed for England in June 1889 to marry Melinda and bring her back with him to America, he began to feel uneasy on the second day out. He tried to dismiss Caroline’s strange words and expressions. He did not succeed. By the fifth day his uneasiness had become sharp tension and anger. Why had not Caroline told him what she thought he should know? He no longer believed that Caroline was inspired by some female dislike of Melinda, or jealousy, or resentment, or anything equally trivial. She had been horrified, genuinely aghast. She had said it was his mother’s place to tell him, not her own. Perhaps so. But as he had acquired a feminine characteristic or two of his own, he was angry at his cousin. She trusted him in other ways; she should have trusted him in this.

  On the sixth and balmy day he became excessively restless and walked the pleasant promenade deck for hours. He stood at the rail and urged the ship on with his will. He thought of Melinda constantly, but the memory of her grave sweetness, her gentle voice, her artless mannerisms, and all the other characteristics which had charmed him since she had been a child of four only tormented him now. He had seen her at least twice a year since his mother’s marriage, a month in the summer and often at Christmas. They wrote to each other more than once a week. He could not remember a time when he had not planned on marrying Melinda. Now she was eighteen, and it was all understood between them.

  She had promised to speak to Cynthia. If anything was wrong, Cynthia herself would have cabled her son. But her last letter, received only a few days before he had sailed, had expressed her pleasure over his visit and the things she had planned for his amusement. She had enclosed a photograph, pridefully, of her son William and her daughter Melinda. On the last night out, just before going to the captain’s ball, Timothy took out that photograph and studied it again, as if it would tell him something. He looked at the faces of the young girl and the child. The boy had a round and sober face, somewhat resembling his father’s, but he had his mother’s and Melinda’s large light eyes framed in thick and silken lashes. The photograph told Timothy nothing, yet he felt some premonition of calamity on looking at it.

  He did not sleep that last night. He was almost the first passenger to disembark at Southampton on this hot June day. He was more than usually irritated by the solemn delay of the Customs and the fact that as his name began with one of the last letters in the alphabet he had to stand, fuming, under the large W for too long a time. The last train to London was already puffing restively when he had finally closed his luggage, found a porter, and jumped into a first-class carriage. A fastidious young man, he was abnormally sensitive to the presence of others; he was glad to find that his compartment contained only himself and a deaf elderly man engrossed hungrily in English newspapers. He sat and looked out at the green English countryside, the placid cattle, the tall hedges, the profusion of buttercups and ferns, the little blue streams, the larches and oaks and willows, the small hamlets. England was peaceful and tranquil, in spite of the distant smoke of great factories and glimpses of dull workmen’s streets and attached houses behind dusty hedges. In London he took the waiting train for Devonshire, for the family was in the country. The heat and smoke and rushing crowds in the glass-covered station suffocated him; his face and hands became gritty and moist.

  Three old ladies in shawls and bonnets and carrying old-fashioned reticules occupied his compartment, and they glanced at him quickly over half-glasses and compressed identical withered lips. “Not English,” they communicated with each other silently. They took out shapeless lengths of gray knitting the color and texture of their own hair and knitted busily and murmured together in far, high English voices. Timothy did not feel his usual empathy for the British. He knew the old ladies expected him to smoke and were ready to ring for the trainman in that event. He looked impatiently through the dusty window and swung one lean leg over the other. When the train stopped to pick up fussy families, he detested the clipped treble voices of the children, the dowdiness of the women, the authoritarian manners of the men, the clucking nannies, and the inane young girls with their fair rosy skins and the heaps of fair hair under large straw hats. Why did the English always travel with so many shawls and plaid blankets and mysterious packages on hot summer days?

  The train growled, bleated, and smoked its way south, and now the country broadened, became wide and sedate, yet mysterious in its velvety green, its parklike hills and knolls and isolated giant trees, its moors purple under the sun, its villages and cathedrals faerie-like, its cloudscapes enormous and changeful over the quiet earth. Scents of grass and flowers and water invaded the compartment. There were some who spoke fondly of England being ‘pretty, lovely’. But Timothy could feel the monolithic heart of British power under all this pleasantness, this serene smile, this passage of little stone bridges and quiet river and stream. The spirit of Empire lay under the deceptive calm and order, and the spirit of Empire had not only an imperial quality but a ruthlessness. One of these days, thought Timothy, we in America will feel that ageless stirring. An old if powerful Europe was bad enough and menacing enough for humanity. But a young American empire with no traditions, no caution, no experience, no wisdom, no craft, no wily diplomacy to control it would be a terror, even more terrible than ancient Rome.

  Timothy usually spent these hours agreeably, either in studying his companions or in taking pleasure in the scenery. But now his thoughts were not only irritable but appre
hensive. His leg swung faster and faster. He could not read or rest. The sun was hotter than he remembered from last summer. When he caught glimpses of the sea it shimmered with colorless intensity. Country roads seemed too crowded with dogcarts and carriages and other vehicles, villages too teeming. The old ladies waddled off the train and he was alone, and the long transparent English evening was beginning. Lonely houses appeared, buried in green shadow. The moors took on a threatening silence without horizon.

  Then he was at the last station, and the train emptied. An evening wind was rising, pure and fresh and scented, with a hint of wilderness. He climbed the long wooden steps rapidly. He would be met, as usual, by a family carriage and he hoped the coachman would be young and brisk and not potter over the road. A porter struggled behind the young man, who ran up the stairs two at a time. He reached the platform and found himself met not by a coachman but by Melinda. She cried out his name as his head and shoulders appeared and ran to him lightly. She was in his arms, repeating his name over and over in an ecstatic whisper.