A Prologue to Love

by Taylor Caldwell

  If she had been in the village he would have been told. However, she was never seen in the village any longer, though he had heard rumors that she haunted the graveyard on the hill, where both cemetery and church had been abandoned three years ago.

  He looked in the kitchen, and the smells revolted him, and the heaps of unwashed dishes and the bulks of newspapers and financial journals piled against the walls. The wooden floor was dark with spilled oil. A skillet filled with half-melted fat stood on the black stove. The bedroom, untouched and the bed unmade, and these other evidences of recent occupancy told him that his mother was still alive. He grunted. But where the hell was she, the recluse who never left her house, who had not been seen in the village lately, who no longer went in to Boston to her office? The kitchen windows facing the sea were open, and John went to them and looked at the long mass of boulders which had once been the sea walk.

  He heard voices now, for the first time, clear in the fetid silence. Both voices were familiar. One was his mother’s and the other his pretty little Mimi’s, whom he intended to marry when she was eighteen. He could not believe it. Carefully concealing himself at the side of the window, he bent his head and listened intently.

  Caroline was absorbed in what Mimi was doing. They were sitting on low boulders, and Mimi was painting a shattered heap of them against the hot blue sky.

  “The girl — the child — on them won’t come true,” Mimi was saying in a dissatisfied voice.

  “No,” Caroline reflected in her rusty voice. “She looks too expectant, doesn’t she? But she should never have been expectant; there was nothing to expect.”

  There was a silence, increased by the sound of the sea. Then Caroline said, “Give me the brush, Mary. I’ll darken the side of her face just a little. Umber, perhaps, mixed with a touch of black.” Another silence, then a cry of delight from Mimi.

  “Aunt Caroline! That’s just what was needed! What a wonderful feeling you have!”

  Good God, what is this? thought John, dumfounded.

  “You are a better artist than I!” cried Mimi.

  “Nonsense,” Caroline grunted. But it was evident that she was excited. “I never learned to paint anything but dreary little water colors at Miss Stockington’s. I’m glad you took up oils, Mary. They have much more depth.”

  “And much easier,” said Mimi. “It was you, Aunt Caroline, who taught me how to use oils, even though you never worked in them yourself. What do you think? Should I brighten that red ribbon in the girl’s hair? In spite of the sky, it all looks so somber.”

  There was silent consultation. Then Caroline said heavily, “Yes. It must be scarlet. It should imply hope, even though there was never any hope.”

  John leaned against the side of the window, incredulous. His mother — and Mimi. It wasn’t possible. Then he began to smile with delight. How in the devil had these two come together — his mother, who hated everybody and never saw anyone except on business, and whose conversation was confined to her financial affairs; and bright little Mimi, who loved all things and whose hope was as ardent as sunlight on a butterfly’s wings? The little imp! Why hadn’t she told him of this in her letters?

  The voices came closer. He peered around the window frame. His mother was standing against the sky in her stained black, as tall and massive as ever, and as formidable, her gray braids like a silvery crown on her head. But her dark face was flushed by sun and wind, and she was smiling. John had not seen her smile in many years. Her hand was timidly on Mimi’s arm, and then it rose to smooth the girl’s blown hair, and it lingered.

  “I’ll miss you, Mary,” Caroline said.

  “I’ll miss you too, Aunt Caroline,” said the girl, and she bent forward and kissed Caroline’s cheek. Caroline stood rigid. When the girl shyly withdrew, Caroline put her hand to the kissed cheek, as if to hold something there.

  “But you can’t miss the opportunity to go to Paris for a few weeks to study painting and art,” said Caroline with sudden firmness.

  “If I do well, Mama has promised me I can stay for a year! Isn’t that marvelous?” The girl laughed with joy. Her pink dress whipped away from her ankles in the sea wind, and then her whole body was outlined, free and airy and alive.

  “A whole year,” said Caroline. “Yes, you will be away a whole year.”

  John already knew of this plan, for Mimi had written him. This was one of the reasons he had come to Boston, to say good-by to Mimi and to laugh at her indulgently. He was much more interested now in his mother’s expression of sorrow and loss, the sudden sagging of her heavy body. Then Caroline said briskly, “This is a wonderful opportunity. There has been no female artist of consequence before or since Rosa Bonheur. Why? Art is sexless, arid so is pure intelligence. What has kept women from the sciences and the arts? Children? But I have children and they never stood in my way. Women must advance a better explanation of their failures as artists than children.” Then she softened. “You are a naturally great artist, Mary; you can be as great as David Ames, for you have his style and power and eye for color and vitality. You must never let it go.”

  “Never,” said the young Mimi.

  Caroline looked at her long and silently, and she saw what she herself might have been. Then she said abruptly and with pain, “Good-by, Mary. Remember, you’ve promised to write to me.”

  “I’ll write all the time!” cried Mary. “And don’t worry about me. Mama’s friend, Mrs. Wentworth, will take good care of me while Angela is at the Sorbonne. But I’m afraid I’m not really so very good; I may be back within a few weeks after all.”

  “No,” said Caroline, “you will not be back. They’ll be astonished at you.” Then she said again, with more abruptness, as if she could not linger with pain of parting, “Good-by, Mary.”

  She took a few steps toward the house, and Mimi was alone, lovely and alive against the blue shadow of the sea, watching her aunt with yearning and wonder. All at once she ran after Caroline, holding out the small canvas in her hands. “Aunt Caroline! I know this isn’t very good, but do you want it? Will you take it? I’d like to know you have it!”

  Caroline took the canvas and looked down at it. “You are giving it to me, Mary?”

  “Yes,” said the girl eagerly. “In some way it reminds me of you.”

  Caroline nodded, then turned away again and laboriously moved among the boulders toward the house, and Mimi watched her go. Caroline did not take her eyes from the painting. Once or twice she stumbled.

  She mustn’t find me here right now, thought John, and he rushed through the kitchen and let himself silently out through the side door. He hurried toward the public road beyond the house. He was a burly and strong young man, but by the time he reached the road his heart was racing and he was exultant. He hid behind a clump of pines and waited ten minutes by his watch. Then he went back to the house and vigorously rang the bell, as if he had just arrived.

  It took his mother a long time to come to the door. First there were two shootings of bolts, then the rattle of a chain, a cautious wait. Then the door opened a crack. “Oh,” said Caroline surlily, “it’s you. I wasn’t expecting you until tomorrow.”

  “I came a day earlier, Ma,” said John easily. “Well, aren’t you going to let me in?” There was a furtive and hesitant air about his mother. She opened the door, let him in, then walked away toward the dusty living room, and he tossed his hat, whistling, onto the gritty hall table and followed her. She was already sitting stiffly in a straight chair when John entered. He remembered this room as a child, sunlit and pleasant. Though the sun was still high outside and the sea bright, the room was cold, musty, and dark. No wonder, with those dirty windows and the shutters half over them, thought John with new disgust.

  “Are you staying overnight?” asked Caroline sullenly. “I may as well tell you. I let the girl go when Elizabeth went to Europe with Timothy and his family. A worthless slut. So if you stay you can’t expect any waiting on.”

  “You are doing ever
ything yourself? And staying here all by yourself?”

  “Yes. I have good doors. And bolts.” She smiled grimly.

  “But there are the windows,” said John. “It’s dangerous. You know what rumor is. Someone may get the notion that you keep a pile of gold in here.”

  “I also have a gun,” said Caroline with a still grimmer smile. “And I know how to use it. You might let a rumor of it around in Lyme.”

  “You need a big dog,” said John.

  “No.”

  “Well, for God’s sake, get another maid! You can’t live in a rubbish heap like this!”

  “My wants are few,” said Caroline. “Groceries are delivered to me twice a week from the village. I use only my study, the kitchen, and the bedroom, and I’m not helpless, even at past fifty. If you think this is a rubbish heap you don’t have to stay, you know.”

  “I intend to stay overnight,” said John. He looked at her curiously. “Don’t you ever need to speak to anyone?”

  “No.”

  “You haven’t seen anyone to speak to since Elizabeth left?”

  “I talk with New York every day, and Boston. That’s enough.”

  So the old lady was keeping her association with Mimi to herself.

  “I’m having some stew for dinner,” said Caroline. “I also have some fresh bread and milk and tea and a tin of pears. That’s what you’ll eat if you stay.”

  “You don’t want me to stay?”

  “Please yourself.” She shrugged. Then her face changed darkly. “I know you visit that Bothwell woman before you come here. I don’t like it.”

  “You never did,” said John easily, but watching her. “I’ve even lost my curiosity.”

  “Don’t go there any more,” said Caroline shortly. She paused, “Or at least not this time.”

  John pondered this remark.

  “What’s the inducement?” he asked lightly.

  “Inducement?”

  “Never mind. I do intend to go there, however.”

  “Why?” She was sitting up and staring hard at him.

  “I like Aunt Melinda,” he said. “And I hear that kid Mimi is going abroad in a few days and I want to say good-by to her.”

  “Stay away from her!” exclaimed Caroline almost fiercely.

  John pretended astonishment. “Why should I? That child? What does it matter? What do you know about Mimi, anyway? You’ve never even seen her.”

  “I don’t want to,” said Caroline. “I don’t want you to either.”

  “That’s unreasonable,” said John. “My father liked the whole family. I like them too. I particularly like Nat, Mimi’s twin brother. A fine boy.”

  “He can’t be, if you like him,” said Caroline with harsh rudeness.

  “Thank you,” said John. “Oh, come. I’m really a remarkable young man. I came to tell you the good news. I’ve had an increase in salary. Moreover, when I’m twenty-five I’m going to be a full partner in your dear old law concern.”

  Caroline was interested in spite of herself. But she scowled.

  “Moreover, again, I’ve just made five thousand dollars in a very keen investment,” said John. “Nothing you would touch. A new small concern making small arms. The stock was sold for ninety cents. It went up to two dollars in less than two weeks.”

  “Why?” Now Caroline did not hide her interest.

  “I don’t know. I sold out. At two dollars. Then a few days later it went down to one-fifty and I bought in again. Ten thousand shares. There’s a dividend, too, a juicy one, in December.”

  He leaned back in his chair, enjoying this. “It went up to three-ten yesterday. Possibly because of the rumor that Bouchard is trying to buy them out.”

  Now Caroline was intensely interested. “They’re the biggest munitions concern in the world, almost as large as Kronk in Germany. Why are the munitions stocks going up?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe we’re going to try some new forays in Mexico.”

  Caroline shook her head. “No. It can’t be that. I’ve never seen so much activity in munitions stocks and subsidiary concerns. Not even during the Spanish-American War. What’s the name of your little company?”

  “Enright Arms. They have a patent for an automatic pistol. Bouchard is definitely interested. If Bouchard buys, my stock will be worth a fortune, for Enright will sell out only to Bouchard.” He scrutinized his mother. “You don’t buy what you call fly-by-night stocks. But I definitely suggest you buy Enright. There’s some stock still on the market; some people are buying like mad.”

  Caroline thought. Then she stood up and left the room without a word, and John heard her mounting up to her study, and he ran to the bottom of the stairs and listened. She was telephoning New York. He nodded happily. If the rumor got out that the old lady was buying all the available stock of Enright there would be a boom, indeed, and Bouchard would pay more. And the dividends would be much, much juicier. He went back to his chair. In a few minutes Caroline returned.

  “I forgot,” said John. “While I was waiting in the depot the stationmaster came out and said there was a cable for you from England. Probably Elizabeth. Here it is.”

  He gave her the yellow envelope, and she opened it abstractedly. Then she uttered an exclamation. “Elizabeth’s on the way home! She’ll arrive in seven days. I thought she was going to stay with Timothy for the rest of the time — four weeks.”

  “Is she sick?” asked John with hope.

  “No. She says she’s decided to come home. Why, I wonder? She was so anxious to go. She has something to tell me, she says.”

  “Maybe she’s fallen in love with some blooming Englishman,” said John.

  “Nonsense. She’s too sensible. She knows I need her here.” Caroline frowned, looking at the cable.

  Then Caroline said, as if speaking to herself, “It must be very important. Elizabeth has been visiting my English associates.”

  Without warning, Caroline suddenly remembered the night of her father’s death. She could see the room in Switzerland; she could see all those faces, many of them dead now. She could hear the voices and what they said.

  “What’s the matter?” said John.

  “Nothing.” But Caroline felt both sick and excited. The girl she had been struggled with the woman she was now. The woman won, as usual. She looked at John. “If I were you I wouldn’t speculate with the Enright stock. I’d hold it, not sell it for a quick profit.”

  “I’ll hold it,” said John.

  John visited the Bothwells the next day. Mimi said never a word about his mother. He probed lightly, speaking of Caroline, but though Mimi flushed uneasily she was silent. Melinda, as usual, asked kindly about his mother, and he said, “She seems younger, somehow, and more alive. As if she had a new interest or something.”

  Mimi glanced at her mother unhappily.

  “I’m very glad to hear that,” said Melinda gently. “Poor Caroline, I wonder what interest it is. She never goes out.”

  John was more in love with young Mimi than ever. He had loved her for herself and had always intended to marry her. But now there was his mother’s interest in this girl. He kissed Mimi for the very first time that night when they were alone, and when she clung to him he was not only excited and happy, but exultant.

  “Don’t stay away too long from me, dear,” he said.

  “Not too long,” she said in return, and lifted her young face to his again. Aunt Caroline was wrong about John. He was the dearest thing in the world to her now, dearer even than her mother or her twin brother.

  Chapter 6

  It was not possible for Caroline to know that she loved Mary Bothwell with an absolutely unflawed devotion. For her father she had had fear and shyness and uncertainty, mixed with her headlong love — and he had never treated her with overt affection. To Beth she had been ‘that poor child’, and Beth had hated John Ames and had been a woman incapable of understanding that Caroline Ames, the woman, was not Carrie Ames, the child. Tom Sheldon, too, had seen Car
oline as he wished to see her. He had obstinately insisted on his own conception, and when it failed to materialize he was alienated and wounded, feeling himself cast out and rejected. No one had accepted her for what she was.

  Caroline’s children were her tragedy, and the tragedy was no less terrible because she was the author of their indifference, their exigency, and their greed. She did not honestly believe that Elizabeth loved her; that first illusion had withered several years ago. Caroline had too penetrating an eye to be deceived by her daughter, though she clung to Elizabeth out of her desperate need for love, given or received.