A Prologue to Love

by Taylor Caldwell

  Mimi was dismayed. “I wanted to talk to you, dear Aunt Caroline.”

  “What for?” The voice was no longer wandering and vague, but loud and bitter.

  “Aren’t you going to invite me into the house?” asked Mimi.

  Caroline was silent. She studied the girl acutely. She said in anger, “I see you’re going to have a baby. What stupidity.”

  Mimi reached out to take the big arm in its fraying old bombazine, but Caroline moved back repudiatingly. “I told you not to come again,” she said. “But you are here. Very well. Come into the house.” She turned about and marched slowly but steadily away. Mimi sighed. Very carefully she picked her way over the lumpy gravel and followed her aunt. When she reached the steps of the house Caroline was not in sight. Mimi stopped for a moment to survey the rank jungle growth within the walls, the dead and tattered leaves mingling with fierce green ones, the waving grass, the weed-covered mounds which once were flower beds. Sticks of an old arbor pointed sharply against the blue sky. There was a stench of mold and death in this place. The walls resembled the walls of a prison.

  The girl, sighing, tested each splintered step before resting her weight upon it and entered the house. There were windows, but there was no sun in this silent dark place. Mimi could smell the rotting furniture and rugs and woodwork; she had glimpses of rags of old draperies. It was much worse than her memory of only a few months ago. The bleared windows shut out air and light. But the silence was the worst. Mimi went into the parlor and found her aunt sitting tall and stiff in a chair, her back to her visitor. So Mimi walked into the room, found a chair facing her aunt.

  “What do you want?” Caroline demanded. “I’m a busy person, so you must speak briefly.”

  She would not look at Mimi. Her eyes were fixed on the floor.

  “I came for two reasons,” said Mimi in a soft voice. “I’ve always wanted to come, but you never answered my letters or my telephone calls. You didn’t remember that you loved me one time, Aunt Caroline. And that I love you.”

  Caroline’s gray lips moved contemptuously. “Did you?” she said. She still would not look at the girl. “I told you not to marry my son John. You wouldn’t listen. You thought you knew more about him than I do. I suppose you are happy.”

  “Yes,” said Mimi. “I am. Aunt Caroline, don’t you wear the locket I gave you?”

  “No,” said Caroline. “Why should I? I’m not sentimental. Well?”

  “All right,” said Mimi sadly. “Now I’ll tell you my second reason for coming. Please listen to me. My cousin Amy, who’s married to your son Ames. I saw her yesterday in Boston. I went in to shop, for I’ve been visiting Mama the last two weeks. John thought I’d feel a little better at the seashore, and I did want to spend some time talking to Mama. Nathaniel can come home only on the weekends, you know, and so she is lonely, I’m afraid. She doesn’t go to Newport any more.” Mimi’s expression saddened. “Didn’t you know, Aunt Caroline? Mama had a heart attack two months ago.”

  “Heart?” said Caroline suddenly.

  “Yes.”

  Caroline said nothing. Her father; his daughters. But she would not look at Mimi. After a little she said, “What is this about Ames? What are you talking about?”

  “I was talking about Amy,” said Mimi, and her young voice hardened. “I didn’t know. I hope no one else knows! Ames’ man wouldn’t let me in at first to see her, but I insisted. Aunt Caroline, little Amy was in bed. Drunk.”

  “Drunk? What are you talking about?”

  “She was drunk, Aunt Caroline. Ames abuses her. His man, Griffith, brought her coffee and I made her drink it. Then she told me. Ames hates her. I always disliked him; there’s something wrong with him; perhaps you know.”

  Then Caroline looked up. Mimi expected to see indifference and coldness again, but Caroline’s eyes were suddenly alive. While Mimi looked into those eyes, expecting her aunt to speak harshly and furiously, Caroline shrank. She seemed to dwindle in her chair, to become old and feeble. Mimi paused, bewildered. Caroline averted her head; her profile became flabby, unreadable, not with inscrutability, but with blankness. Her skin was gray and had a peculiar shine.

  “Aunt Caroline!”

  “Go on,” said Caroline. Her ancient dress appeared too large for her.

  “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” said Mimi, distracted. “I just wanted to ask your help. For Amy. She overheard — something. Perhaps she was mistaken. But she thought she heard Ames talking to you and that he wanted to divorce her; she said you must have offered Ames money to stay with her.”

  “I did! I did!” cried Caroline. “I wanted to protect myself!”

  She began to wring her grimy hands together, folding her big fingers over and over each other in desperate gestures.

  “Yourself?” said Mimi. “From what, Aunt Caroline?”

  The young voice, suddenly loud, startled, and afraid, aroused Caroline from her old agony. She pulled herself up in her chair. Mimi was on her feet now, her face very pale. Mama had been right; she ought not to have come here. The very smell of the house was evil and deathly. When Caroline reached out her hand, pushing it forward, Mimi stumbled back and fell against her chair, her white face glimmering in the semidarkness.

  “I was talking about something else,” said Caroline, and her words came rapidly. “It happened a long time ago.” She began to stammer, and her hands groped blindly, as if feeling for something. “It doesn’t have anything to do with Ames and Amy. I — I was thinking of something else.”

  Mimi regarded her with fear.

  “Tell me about Amy!” shouted Caroline.

  “I’ve told you, Aunt Caroline.” The girl clumsily felt for the chair and sat on its edge, still frightened and also wary now. “Ames doesn’t want Amy. I don’t know why he ever married the poor little thing; she’s as gentle as a kitten and knows just as much about the world as a kitten. Then you — ” She stopped.

  “It’s so stupid. You are all stupid,” said Caroline abruptly, and she swung her head on her short neck as if to scatter buzzing insects. “Your Amy can’t have children. Ames wanted to divorce her, possibly so he could later on marry a woman who could have children.” She gave Mimi her surly and bitter smile. “To inherit my money. But — I thought about the girl. Washed out, no character, one of those puny little creatures, soft as butter. I can’t imagine why, but she wants my son. So I protected her. If any of you had thought of it for a moment you could see that I meant her no wrong. I protected her!”

  “I see,” said Mimi. She smoothed her gloves over and over. Again she wanted to cry.

  “And now the girl doesn’t want him. Is that it?” said Caroline accusingly.

  Mimi looked at the bleared windows through which little light could penetrate.

  “She still wants him, Aunt Caroline. He’ll stay with her for the money you gave him. But he hates her. He found out that she is drinking. You know how fastidious he is, like Uncle Timothy. He abused her.” Now Mimi could not prevent herself from crying.

  “What!” cried Caroline, and felt the bruises on her own flesh. “My son did that? No one ever hit him in all his life except a nursemaid, perhaps. Are you certain?”

  “Yes.” Mimi opened her purse, took out her handkerchief, and wiped her eyes.

  “Why does she drink? Drink!” said Caroline.

  “I thought I made it clear. Because she knows that Ames can’t stand her any longer. He very seldom speaks to her, she told me. She isn’t the Amy he married less than a year ago. She looks so small, so broken, so pale. She always had the nicest color; now she hasn’t any. Poor little Amy. Why, no one ever lifted a voice to her, not even Aunt Amanda. She’s like a little ghost. That’s what Ames did to her.”

  But Caroline was suddenly not hearing her. She was listening to what Ames had said to her a few days ago: “You were a fine model, dear Mama.” She said aloud, “Oh, dear God.”

  At that broken and wretched murmur Mimi became eager. “So I thought I’
d tell you about it and ask you to help Amy. She’ll die, one way or another, if she stays with Ames. If you tell Ames that you won’t withdraw the money” — and her young face became a dark younger replica of her aunt’s — “and that you want him to let Amy go home again, then there’s a chance that she’ll recover in time. And forget Ames.”

  Caroline regarded her niece, and Mimi looked back at her sternly. Caroline put up her hand and muttered, “What if the girl won’t leave him?”

  Mimi smiled with brilliant hope. “Amy hasn’t any will left. Aunt Amanda and the boys will take Amy home.”

  “Her father? Ames told me she never sees her father.”

  “No,” said Mimi, and she was stern again. “Amy adored him. I often wonder if Uncle Timothy ever cared about the child at all. A father doesn’t abandon his daughter; he doesn’t go away and leave her lonely and afraid. Forgive me, I shouldn’t — ”

  “He didn’t!” Caroline was trembling. “He had to go away when he did! It was all a lie that he didn’t care about me! He was the only one who ever did.”

  Mimi paled again. She could see Caroline’s trembling face and blindly motioning hands. “I don’t know what you mean,” said Mimi. “You are talking about Uncle Timothy?”

  Caroline pressed her hands over her eyes and did not reply. Mimi looked at her helplessly and then with loving compassion. She put her hand gently on Caroline’s knee, and Caroline started violently. She dropped her hands. Her eyes were vague and dim.

  “I was thinking of something else,” she said in that muttering voice of hers. “I wasn’t talking about Timothy.” She looked about her. “Would you get me that bottle on the table? I feel tired, I think. The spoon and glass are beside it.”

  Mimi went to the table; her heel caught in the ragged carpet and she almost fell. She clutched the table in alarm, thinking of her child.

  “What is it? What is it?” exclaimed Caroline.

  “Nothing,” said Mimi soothingly. She looked at the table, at its oily and dirty top, at the smeared lamp. She picked up a bottle of brown fluid. It was stoppered with a medicine dropper, and there was a warning on the label; “To be taken only as directed, three times a day, and once at night if in pain.” Now Mimi was alarmed for her aunt. She made her hand steady, counted out the meager drops into the glass which was half filled with water. She took the glass to Caroline. The gray shine was on Caroline’s face again. She drank the fluid slowly, as if it were difficult for her to swallow. Now Mimi was conscious of the gray-white hair. The hand, holding the empty glass, fell limply on the broad lap.

  Mimi took the glass and put it on the mantel. “Aunt Caroline, what is that medicine?”

  “A tonic,” said Caroline impatiently. She lay back in her chair, and her big breast rose and fell as if struggling. She closed her eyes. An expression of grim exhaustion and suffering ravaged her face. Mimi waited. Then Caroline said, so faintly that the girl could hardly hear, “It was all a lie. I’ve known it all my life. He didn’t want me at all.”

  Who? thought Mimi with intense pity.

  “All my life,” Caroline repeated. “But I hid away from it. It was just now that I knew it.” She opened her eyes. “I wonder how I came to know just now?”

  “I don’t know,” said Mimi, speaking softly. “I wish I knew what to do for you, Aunt Caroline.”

  But Caroline was staring beyond the girl. Her eyes were empty, and her face.

  “I think I began to know when I recognized him in the painting,” said Caroline. “I ran away from it. All these years — and I refused to recognize who he was. But my grandfather knew from the very first; he wasn’t a coward. As I am.”

  “Aunt Caroline!” said Mimi with sharp fear. She pushed herself to her feet and went to Caroline and rested both her pretty hands on the old woman’s shoulders. “Please don’t hurt yourself so, dear! Please. I can’t bear it!” Mimi cried again, without understanding and knowing only that Caroline was suffering.

  Caroline’s hands rose slowly and then closed on the young hands on her shoulders. But she shook her head over and over. “I mustn’t think about it all at once,” she said. “I must go over it very slowly, so I’ll know it all — all the years. “But what shall I do now, now that I know?” she pleaded. “What shall I do with my life and all the thoughts that will come?”

  She pressed Mimi’s hands fiercely into her flesh. She implored the girl with her eyes. “Tell me what I shall do with my life after that waste, after all those years?”

  “Let me help you to bed, dear Aunt Caroline,” said Mimi.

  “No, no,” said Caroline. “It doesn’t matter. Nothing ever matters, not truly. Except if someone loves you. No one ever did.” She coughed deeply, rackingly, but held to Mimi tighter than before, and the palms of her hands were cold and wet.

  “I did! I do! I love you, Aunt Caroline!” Mimi bent her head and pressed her cheek to Caroline’s, and then Caroline was still, and her furrowed cheek moved a little against Mimi’s as a tormented child’s would move.

  “I’m sorry I came,” said Mimi, crying. “Forgive me. I’ve upset you.”

  “No,” said Caroline. “It was waiting for me, all of it. It isn’t your fault. No, it was my fault, lying to myself ever since I can remember. Lying. A lying coward.”

  Then she said in a faint, wondering voice, “So was my father. We were cowards together. And I know now why he hated me. I look like his father. He couldn’t stand the truth that was my grandfather.” She paused. “He could never stand the truth. He ran away from it, always. He made me run too.”

  She raised one of her hands and lovingly placed it against Mimi’s wet cheek. “Don’t cry, love,” she said in a voice she had never used to anyone before, for now it was strong and gentle and not timid. “Don’t cry, little Mary. It isn’t any good at all.”

  With a strong gentleness like her voice she put Mimi away from her so that the girl could sit down. She smiled. Her haggard face became bright for an instant, and reassuring. She who had never consoled anyone before in her crippled life spoke consolingly. “You mustn’t cry. It’s very bad for you. And the baby. There’ll be plenty enough time to cry in the future when you are old and alone.” Her eyes became as warm and golden as Mimi’s and full of compassion. “But now you mustn’t let yourself be sad because an old woman was remembering too many things all at once. You have your mother and your brother.” She paused. “And you have your husband.”

  “Yes, I’m so happy, Aunt Caroline. John and I — we love each other so much. That’s why he’s so foolishly jealous of my painting. He says he wants all of me, everything I can give him, because — ” She bit her lip.

  “Because he didn’t have love here,” said Caroline. “Yes, I can see that.” Her eyes were blank and empty again. “I didn’t know how to love anyone except my father, I think. And even that wasn’t real love; it was just need. I couldn’t love my husband as he needed to be loved; I didn’t love my children at all. There is Elizabeth, all alone on the hill. But she isn’t more alone now than when she was in this house where she was born.”

  She folded her hands together and looked down at them, and Mimi could see the thin white crown of her head. “I believe it all began when I talked to Ames the other day about his wife. It was something he said. Yes, it began then.”

  She smiled at Mimi tenderly, and she herself had the sudden majesty and beauty of a worn statue.

  “I’ll tell Ames that he must let Amy go and that he’ll have the money I promised just the same. It is a kind of debt; yes, a debt.”

  She reached out and took Mimi’s hand like a mother. “I’ll talk to Amy’s father. He won’t dare send her away — as he sent my own daughter. Not after I’ve talked with him.”

  She considered that. “Yes, I’d have done it. Yes, I’ve waited a long time. But for Elizabeth, I’ll help Amy.”

  The maid came into the room surlily. “Your telephone was ringin’, Miz Sheldon. In the study. The door wasn’t locked, like usual, so I went in
. It’s a man saying that he wants to talk to you about Mr. Ames Sheldon. And three million dollars!” The pale eyes rounded, and the pale mouth. “He wants to come out to see you.”

  Caroline walked to the gate with Mimi, her hand on the girl’s arm. She unlocked the gate. Then she said, “There’s nothing I can do for John. It’s too late. Perhaps you can do something, Mary. I don’t know.”

  “If you’d just see him,” Mimi pleaded.

  But Caroline shook her head. “We have nothing to say to each other that would be kind. It could only be true. Truth is the most frightful thing in the world. There, love, you mustn’t cry again. No wonder we run away from truth; who can stand it? Your painting, Mary? You won’t abandon that? You mustn’t let John take everything from you just because his mother was no mother at all.”