A Prologue to Love

by Taylor Caldwell

  Caroline stood up, and the doctor ceremoniously offered her his arm. But she shook her head. “I must see him alone.”

  Nurses were already shaving Ames’ pale fine hair when his mother entered his room. He hardly seemed aware of them; he was looking straight before him, and his white face had a dwindled appearance, tight and small and hard. Caroline said, “I should like to see my son alone for a few moments, if you please.” Ames did not look up or turn to her even when the nurses had left the room.

  Caroline stood beside his bed. She said, “All that can be done shall be done, Ames. The rest — ”

  “I know,” he said in a cramped and vicious tone, “is in the hands of God.”

  Very slowly he turned his suffering head on his long thin neck and looked at her, and he smiled his cold and mocking smile. “Really, Mama! Is this really you?”

  “Yes. It is I.”

  “Astonishing,” he said. “I’d not have believed it.”

  “Believe it,” said his mother.

  “But why this simple piety? If I remember correctly, you used to sneer at my father’s unsophistication, as you called it. You would not permit him to take us to church.”

  “I was a fool, and I was stupid,” said Caroline. “I don’t expect to be forgiven for it, not by God, and not by you. I can only confess it.”

  Ames narrowed his lilting eyes at her, and then he stopped smiling.

  “Mama, you’ve changed. I don’t know what it is, but you’re not the same. Astonishing. Have you been ‘born again’, as old Beth used to call it?”

  “I don’t know,” said Caroline heavily. “Laugh at me if it amuses you. I deserve it.”

  Ames pursed his lips judiciously and looked solemn, and Caroline sighed. What had she hoped for: that she might reach him? He was laughing inwardly at her, and she knew it. He rubbed his tortured left temple reflectively.

  “Is this sermon supposed to give me ‘courage’?” He leaned back on his pillows. His senses began to float as the drugs acted upon him.

  “I was a fool to think it might. But I do want you to know this: The blindness that threatened you opened my own eyes. I was blind; I am beginning to see again.”

  “Because of — this?”

  “Yes. Because of many other things too.”

  “It couldn’t just be approaching old age, could it?”

  “I think not,” said Caroline wearily. Ames yawned. The drugs were bemusing him, but his inner mirth still chuckled silently. Caroline said, “I’d like to kiss you, Ames.”

  “Kiss me?” He began to laugh a little. “Why?”

  “Because,” said Caroline, “I love you. I didn’t love you before, but I do now.”

  The slate-gray eyes fixed themselves in real surprise on her. “Could it be detestable pity?”

  “No. I don’t know. I think it is just — love.”

  “An interesting emotion, I’ve heard. Well, if you’d like, kiss me then.”

  Caroline bent stiffly. Her dry lips touched his forehead; it was cold with sweat, and she knew how afraid he was, and all at once she was stabbed with pain. She took his face in her hands and she kissed his cheek. “It will be all right!” she cried, and her eyes were wet. “Believe it. It will be all right! I’m here, Ames.”

  He started to say something, and then he stared at her. She could not understand that narrowed and thoughtful look. He said, really gently, “I hope so. I think you hope so too.”

  “I’d give you my life if I could,” said his mother, and left the room. The waiting nurses returned. She looked at them helplessly. When she went back to the sitting room Dr. Manz was not there. And now she must wait. She had such a fortune, and she could do nothing but wait in this pleasant room where all the furniture had taken on the distorted shapes and shadows of anguish. She heard them wheel Ames out; she heard his voice, humorous and light. A nurse answered with respectful laughter.

  Caroline had called John that morning. He had pretended great concern and solicitude. She knew he felt neither. He said he would come up that night or the next day. But Ames might be dead by then, she had thought. She could only wait in loneliness and torment, as she had waited all her life. All that waiting, in barrenness and emptiness, and without a point. At least she had a reason now. How did one pray? How did one ask God for mercy, for intimate compassion? What were the words, the always difficult words? She could only say in herself: Please let it be well. Please. I don’t even know how to ask You to be kind to my son, when I was never kind to him and never told him anything at all of importance.

  There was no one in all the world who would come to her, who would comfort her. She was absolutely alone. There was none she could call who would care about this, not one. She had no friends anywhere in the world. Nor, she thought, had Ames. Word about the children of Caroline Ames, or anything in connection with Caroline Ames, automatically flew about the world. But no one had called; no one had cared about Ames Sheldon or his mother.

  Caroline sat upright, thinking. But what of all Ames’ ‘friends’ in Boston, the members of his club, the First Families who knew him, and their sons and daughters? He was part of the ‘gay’ set, as they called themselves, and went ‘everywhere’. Yet none had called, none had cared. I can understand about myself, thought Caroline, for I have never pretended to be other than what I was; I was always indifferent to the thoughts or feelings or lives of others. Yet my son Ames, so popular everywhere — and now I see what an enormous effort he must have made! — is no more cherished than I. Who, then, has friends? Is that part of our tragedy, knowing that in reality no one really cares about us and that the hubbub of friendship is only a pathetic make-believe? A fantasy out of our eternal loneliness, a busy hurrah! In the eternal emptiness? There were magnificent stories told of undying friendships. Were this a common phenomenon, there would be no such tales, for legends are not made of the commonplace but only of the rare and unique, the very extraordinary.

  I have come to this place, thought Caroline, where I am alone and my son is alone. No doubt all men come to this place eventually. There was no one and nothing to wait for. That, Caroline said to herself, is everyone’s final epitaph, no matter the number of his ‘friends’. This is the end of all the watching and the hoping and the working and the fearing and the crying in the darkness: there is nothing to wait for. We can share nothing with anyone else, for no one will wait with us.

  She heard a rustle near her and started. The Reverend Mother was seating herself beside Caroline. She looked into Caroline’s eyes and smiled gently. “I thought I’d come and wait with you,” she said.

  Caroline did not reply. She looked at her hands clenched over her purse. The Reverend Mother followed her glance, and she was full of pity. “Forgive me,” she said, “but I must tell you something. When you came here last Christmas, Mrs. Sheldon, you would not let us help you. However, you suddenly opened your purse and poured out all you had at that time for us. Then it was like a revelation to me: your gesture, the way you looked at us. I don’t know how I knew or why, but all at once I knew you were our unknown benefactor who has done so much for us over all these years. I thought of your young daughter, who had run to us instinctively when she was taken so ill. She was in charge of all your affairs to a great extent. Did she know, that poor child, even if you hadn’t told her? And then Father Bellamy told us about your gift to him.”

  Caroline lifted her eyes and looked dumbly at the Reverend Mother.

  “We knew you didn’t want your identity known, so we never made any inquiries. But all through those years I prayed that somehow I’d know, so that if you needed me I could go to you and comfort you. Or wait with you in an extremity.”

  She put her long white fingers over Caroline’s cold hand. “You aren’t alone,” she said. “God is with you.” Caroline shook her head over and over.

  She said, “It is easy for you to say that, for you are young, but I’ve lived longer than you have.” She looked at the Reverend Mother’s calm alabaster f
ace, as smooth as marble and as unwrinkled, at the quiet forehead without furrows, at the full young eyes, clearly brown and serene, at the beautiful and faintly colored mouth.

  “I am old enough,” said the Reverend Mother, “to be your own mother. I am seventy-six.”

  Caroline stared at her incredulously, and in her mind’s eye she could see herself, prematurely old, haggard, gray of face and white of hair, flesh plowed with living, body heavy and weary, clothing dusty and wrinkled, hands withered.

  “I have been a nun for fifty-six years,” said the Reverend Mother. “I have worked very hard in God’s service, and I am grateful. In return, He has given me His peace and His joy. I am in the world, but not of it.”

  “I have always been in the world, but I was never of it,” said Caroline, able to speak now. “So we are the same, it seems.”

  The hand on hers remained, firm and comforting.

  “My son,” Caroline said. “I’m afraid for my son, and it’s not only about whether or not he’ll live. I can’t explain about Ames. It’s all the years — ”

  “Would you like to go into the chapel and pray with me for your son?”

  “No,” said Caroline. “I feel I must stay here. I feel I must just sit here and wait.” She became agitated. “I feel that if I leave here something will happen.”

  “I will wait with you,” said the Reverend Mother. She took her rosary in her hands. Caroline watched the tranquil face; this praying woman was indeed old enough to be her mother, and yet it was hard to believe. What gave her this eternal youthfulness and vitality? Peace, said Caroline to herself. Peace and faith. Then she saw that the Reverend Mother’s face was full of quiet shadows which could have come only from suffering in the past but which had been overcome steadfastly.

  Caroline looked at the door. She said, “You believe, don’t you?”

  “I know,” said the Reverend Mother. She hesitated. “I hope I haven’t offended you by guessing you are our benefactor. Would you like to tell me why?”

  She spoke with the gentle authority of a mother. Caroline said, “It happened a long time ago in Switzerland, when I was twenty-three years old.” She paused. “Do you think my son will live?” And she turned her eyes to the door again.

  “It’s in God’s hands,” said the Reverend Mother. “You’ve done all you could for him, as his mother.”

  “No,” said Caroline, “I’ve done nothing for Ames, for any of my children.”

  “It’s much easier for God to forgive us than for us to forgive ourselves, Mrs. Sheldon. We repent and are forgiven. But we hug our guilt to our breasts, forgetting that we alone are not the only guilty.”

  A nurse came in with a lunch tray. Caroline shook her head. “We’ll have tea together,” said the Reverend Mother with her authoritative calm. “I’ve often thought that those who can drink tea and eat a little in a crisis must have great faith.”

  Caroline filled the cups; her big hand trembled. The October sunshine lay on the polished floor and furniture. Then Caroline, who had never had a confidante, began to speak, her voice uncertain and sometimes incoherent, rusty and faltering. It was as if some abscess had opened and was draining in her. The Reverend Mother listened to the broken words; she heard the torment and the agony in the wavering sentences, the loneliness and pain, the bewilderment and despair. She saw Caroline’s face, shattered and gray and helpless, and the shaking lips. The nurse came and removed the tray; the sunlight slanted lower in the room. A great bell rang somewhere. Feet hurried in the corridor; there was a cry, a soft laugh, the sound of rubber wheels, the opening and shutting of doors, a quick murmur of voices. The sunlight became more and more level.

  “You see,” said Caroline finally, “there isn’t much to be told, after all. Nothing has happened to me that hasn’t happened to everyone else at my age.”

  The Reverend Mother gazed at her earnestly, and her face was full of compassion.

  “There was never anything to wait for,” said Caroline, staring at the door.

  “There is an end to waiting,” said the Reverend Mother. “I think you have come to that end, my child.”

  The door opened and Dr. Manz, still in his white coat and cap, came into the room, his face exhausted and drained. Caroline stood up speechlessly, her mouth dropping open. He went to her and took her hands and held them tightly. He looked up into her eyes and said firmly, “It was benign. It is removed. Your son will live. He will not be blind, thanks be to God.”

  Caroline became aware that someone was holding her strongly and that her head had fallen on a womanly shoulder, and she wept like a child.

  And I am waiting again, thought Caroline as she sat in her son’s suite. The door between the living room and his bedroom stood open now, as it always did. She slept in another room, for three days had gone by and Ames was still unconscious. She would not leave him. The whole world had stopped for her. John had come to Lyme. He came to the hospital every afternoon and evening. He spoke to his mother, but she hardly answered him. At least every ten minutes or so she would go into Ames’ room, where he lay as if dead, his nurses beside him. Caroline would look at him without speaking, and then at the nurses, who always smiled at her encouragingly. She would touch the thick white bandages on Ames’ head; somewhere deep in that hurt skull he lived and had his being, though the white sheet on his chest barely lifted with his shallow breath. Sometimes he groaned, but his face never changed; it lay ashen on his pillows, the eyes bruised and shut. Don’t go away, my son, Caroline would speak to him in her mind. Sometimes she would take his hand, thin and flaccid and as gray as his face, and very chill. What was he suffering, crouched in the shell of his skull, the frail cave that held his life? Did he dream? Was he frightened?

  Dr. Manz had promised to wait until his patient recovered consciousness. He was almost always there, gently examining, sitting and watching. “When will he wake up?” Caroline asked. “It’s three days.”

  “Sometimes, dear lady, it is longer. We must wait.”

  “We are always waiting,” Caroline would say, and would return to her chair in the living room, where John, uneasy about his young wife, who was now with her mother, and uneasy about his affairs in New York, would attempt to show proper gravity and solicitude. On the third day Caroline said wearily, “Don’t pretend any longer, John. You don’t care very much about your brother. I am not condemning you; I’m merely stating fact, It will be easier for us both if you don’t pretend.”

  His florid face flushed a deeper red. His mother looked at him sadly. “I know,” she said. “You’d honestly like to feel more about Ames. I think it’s upsetting you because you can’t. Mary has taught you what a lack there has always been in your life, and I’m glad that you know. If you hadn’t come to know that, I’d be afraid that there would never be any hope for you.”

  He looked away from her, his full mouth sullen yet uncertain. He almost jumped when his mother leaned toward him and put her hand on his arm. He turned to her in astonishment, and he saw that she was smiling a little.

  “You’ll soon be a father,” Caroline said. “I hope you’ll love your son or daughter very much. I won’t ask you to try to make the child happy, for happiness is something that doesn’t really exist, except for a flash of it occasionally. But if you love your child he will remember it all his life, and life won’t ever be too hard to endure when he remembers.”

  She folded her hands on her knee and looked at them. “When no one has really cared about you when you were a child and accepted you as you were and given you strength and self-respect through love, then life becomes progressively intolerable as the years pass. You are — unarmed. Anything can reach you and shatter you. You haven’t any resources. Each day just brings a new despair and new betrayals and losses.”

  He had never heard his mother talk like this before, quietly and steadily and freely. Why, the old girl seemed to be actually human! He wondered how he should respond to this. Gravely? Understandingly? Earnestly? Or with an expressio
n of sober humility?

  Caroline said, “You still don’t know what to say, do you, John? You’re so afraid of people, as I was, but in another way. You think you must always cajole and placate and please them. It may help you to remember that in their own way they are just as frightened as you are, no matter how they bluster or pretend.”

  John’s face felt hot. “I don’t think Mimi is afraid of anything,” he muttered.

  “Yes. She is. She’s afraid that you won’t ever understand how much she loves you, and that you won’t realize you’ll always be first in her life. She’s afraid of your fear.”

  John lit a cigarette. “If she thought that, she’d forget her damned art.”