A Prologue to Love Read online

  “All wheel traffic was halted several streets in a square around that church. Thousands of shabby people filled pavement and street like trees, men and women and children. They surged like waves about the church, breaking under the onslaughts of the police so that dignitaries from Washington could climb the steps, and statesmen and giant fellow thieves and ambassadors from a dozen powerful nations. Even the President was there, flanked by senators and generals. Flags hung at half mast all over the city. The big church was like a flower garden and stuffed to the walls with men and women who had come to do that scoundrel and murderer the last honor and obeisance. The choir thundered and wept. The clergymen — and there were five of them — knelt before the altar and prayed for that man’s soul, and women pressed handkerchiefs to their eyes.

  “It was as if a great and mighty and heroic king had died, and not a giant thief from the gutters of Pittsburgh, a murderer and a liar, a suborner of statesmen and rulers, a man who had helped to make a whole nation, China, desolate and opium-ridden, among many other crimes. Yet one had the feeling that the very seraphim were present in that church where the cross hung over the bronze and gilt coffin in which that man lay in state.”

  Caroline moistened lips that felt heavy. “Perhaps,” she said in a very faint voice, “he tried to do something good before he died. Charity?”

  “Not a penny. His fortune went to his sons and their families, and they were even more rapacious, if possible, than he was. He had left nothing to servants who had worn out their lives in their long service to him.”

  John looked broodingly at his glass. “I knew him well. He was a devil. And the very happiest of men. He lived to be very old and enjoyed every minute of his life. He had thousands of devoted friends.”

  Caroline felt as though she were hearing the most monstrous and most insane of blasphemies.

  “But why, Papa? Why all this for him?”

  “Because he had money. Because he had the enormous power which only money can give. And that is all the people ever worshiped. Christianity is over eighteen hundred years old. It has never been able to remove the people’s true god from them, nor cast out the devils who serve it, nor throw down the temples which house it. The people are responsible for their satans.

  “You’ve seen the men on my docks and on my ships. There isn’t one there who wouldn’t lay down his life for me and who wouldn’t thank me for the honor. Yet if I should suddenly lose all I have there isn’t a man there who wouldn’t crush my skull with his club.”

  Yes, thought Caroline. All the Alecks everywhere. They had made her father what he was. They, and not their masters, were the true devils. They deserved their demons. It was the people of England, she remembered, who had loved their horrible king, Henry VIII, and his enormities against them, and his crimes and his murders, and his executions of his wives. He had been Good King Hal to them, this monster, this vile creature. They had even adored Cromwell, who had brought drab dismalness and terror to them and who had had them whipped in their very streets and thrown into prison. History abounded with the adored demons whose tombs were now shrines.

  “Are you ill?” asked John with sincere anxiety. “Poor girl. I hope I haven’t frightened you.”

  “I do feel a little sick,” murmured Caroline.

  “I think you’ve had enough for today,” said John.

  “What have you done to Caroline?” Cynthia asked John that night. Her gray eyes stared at him inimically.

  “Don’t be a fool, Cynthia,” he said. “I did nothing but take her down to my docks.”

  “And that is why she didn’t come down to dinner and why she lies like a deaf-mute on her bed. Is that it, John?”

  “Perhaps,” he answered. “I think she is just a little tired.”

  “Don’t touch me,” said Cynthia. “I think I am a little tired, myself.”

  Chapter 9

  A year later on the last night she was ever to spend in Cynthia Winslow’s house, Caroline was called into her aunt’s sitting room. She came with sullen reluctance, and sat down in her usual fashion on the edge of a little chair while Cynthia half lay on her chaise longue in a drift of white silk and lace.

  “Caroline,” said Cynthia, “you are now going home to Lyndon and to Lyme; you’ve left Miss Stockington’s school forever. You are my sister’s child, my dear Ann’s girl, the daughter of my twin. You don’t know what it is to be a twin; a person’s twin is her other self and not apart from her as with just another sister. So, in a way, you are also my daughter.”

  Caroline did not reply. Cynthia took up her silver brush and began to brush her long loose hair. Then she flung the brush from her with a crash and sat up. “Caroline! I wish you wouldn’t sit there like a lump and just stare down at your hands. I used to think you were fond of me until just a short time ago. No matter. But you must listen to me. It’s very important.”

  “What is it?” muttered Caroline. She could never meet her aunt’s eyes any longer without blushing and feeling hot and hating.

  Cynthia studied her with despair. “Caroline, I must talk to you. You’ve been seeing a lot of your father this year. He has been taking you about; he has been talking to you. And each time when you’ve come home you’ve been ill and white, and you look like death. I know your father. I knew him before you did and before he married my sister. I have a great deal of respect for him; he’s a man, which is much more than you can say of many men these days; I know all about men.”

  “You should,” Caroline muttered.

  Cynthia paused and frowned. “What did you say?”

  But Caroline was silent. Cynthia rolled up her eyes and pressed her lips together for a few moments. “Though your father hasn’t told me, I have some pretty shrewd ideas of what he has been teaching you. He has a distorted view of life, and no doubt he has reasons to have that view which seem valid to him. He trusts no one; he dislikes almost everybody; he hates too much. I am not going to be a bonbon and say he is entirely wrong. I know what the world is. But it is not exclusively filled with liars, thieves, scoundrels, murderers, vipers, ingrates, slanderers, and brutes. Not every man and woman is detestable and loathsome; not everybody is spiritually diseased and cruel and merciless. And there are some who are so good that it is a joy to be with them and listen to their voices. They’re rare, but they do exist. In a larger measure than your father suspects. I’ve met them. My sister, your mother, was one. I had an aunt and an uncle who became Romans, one a nun, the other a priest, and they went away on foreign missions and died of awful diseases, trying to help the unfortunate in other lands. Just to be in their presence was to feel holiness. I’ve met devoted people all over the world who spoke nothing but truth and goodness. I’ve known heroes who would betray no one, not even a dog. Some of the most blessed people I’ve known had no money; some had a great deal. It is your father’s misfortune that he will not see these people or, if he sees them, he does not recognize them.”

  Caroline was outraged. She had heard nothing beyond Cynthia’s criticism of her father. Her cheeks burned and her eyes came up to meet her aunt’s with absolute ferocity. She jumped to her feet and cried out: “How dare you say such things of my father? You, you especially!”

  Cynthia got up slowly and moved a step or two closer to the girl.

  “Caroline,” said Cynthia. “Caroline, what is it?”

  But Caroline swung heavily about and ran from the room. When she reached her own room she sat down on the edge of her bed and beat the pillows fiercely with her fists and said over and over, aloud and passionately, “I hate her! Oh, how I hate her!”

  Caroline Ames sat on the boulder on the wet black shingle, where she had sat for so many summer mornings and days and evenings. The vast stone-colored Atlantic stretched before her, heaving sluggishly, and the pale opaline sky of pre-dawn sloped down to mingle with it. A cold salt wind gushed from the water and pressed like an invisible wall against the girl’s chilled body. She shivered and pulled Beth’s thick gray shawl over her
shoulders and stared at the east, only half seeing. She listened vaguely to the dull lap and gigantic breath of the ocean. Now the opaline sky brightened far over the water, flushed into delicate pearl and rose and clear green, and long streamers of it touched the farthest waves so that they quickened into color. Then a golden crescent of light lifted over the rim of the ocean, grew larger, more brilliant, and the sun strode over the sea toward the western land, and all about him pennants and banners of a hundred hues heralded him.

  Caroline did not know why she cried, why she always cried at seeing this ever-changing victorious march of the dawn sun over the water, and why she was always so stunningly moved. She fumbled for her handkerchief and found none in the pocket of her brown cotton frock. She wiped away the tears with the backs of her hands, childishly. It was foolish, she thought, to feel such sorrow, such yearning, and such passion at the sight of a phenomenon that had occurred every morning through the ages and would occur monotonously for ages more. But she continued to cry even while the shingle, black and wet, began to glimmer with pink and blue and heliotrope all about her, and the wind warmed and sea gulls chattered and shrilled and caught all that color on their wings and skimmed over the surging water.

  “Caroline,” said a man’s voice near her, and she started, then turned red with embarrassment. She did not turn. She knew that Tom Sheldon was here; her hands tightened together in her lap and she did not answer. She felt him move closer until he was at her shoulder.

  “You’ve been here over a week, and I haven’t seen you,” said Tom. “And so I thought you might come here in the early morning, and so I came.”

  Caroline was silent, but something in her leaned with a fierce and tender eagerness toward him, like thirst and hunger combined. He stood there; she could see, out of the corner of her eye, the height and strength of his tall body, his rough brown shirt and workman’s trousers, his tanned arms bare to his elbows, his big worn boots.

  “Didn’t you want to see me?” asked Tom.

  “Yes, yes,” she murmured. The last tears were icy on her cheeks. She turned to him now. He smiled down at her gravely. She had not seen him for a year, and her first thought was that he looked much older and that he was no longer a youth but a man of nearly twenty-one and that she loved him. Simply, like a very tired child, she drooped her head sideways and rested it against his upper arm and tried to keep from crying again. “Oh, Tom,” she said.

  He put his arm about her shoulders and held her to him tightly, and she said again, “Oh, Tom.”

  He kissed the top of her head, and then her forehead, and for the first time she turned her lips up to him and very gently he gave her the first kiss of love. She felt the kiss not only on her mouth but in her heart, and then through all her young body, and now she could not prevent sobbing.

  “Hush, dear,” said Tom, but he let her cry as she clung to him, her arms tight about his waist, her head on his chest. “Poor little Carrie. What’s wrong? You wouldn’t cry like this if there wasn’t something terribly wrong. Here, let me wipe your face and your poor eyes.” He pulled out a dark blue coarse handkerchief and lovingly patted her cheeks and her eyes, and she looked at him as if she could not get enough of seeing. She moved to give him room on the boulder, and he rested one buttock on the stone, and their arms clutched each other. His strong black hair ruffled in the wind, his blue eyes smiled, his browned face was all planes and angles, and his dimpled chin was hard and firm. A deep peace came to Caroline; she dropped her head on his shoulder and held off the pain which she felt climbing in her.

  They watched the sea and the sky and the sun. Behind them, in the old beaten house and behind a discreet old curtain, Beth Knowles watched them and smiled and cried a little herself. She had done the right thing to tell Tom in the village yesterday when he could find Caroline. Thank heavens, she thought, he wasn’t here; in a little she would call the children to come in and have a hearty breakfast of flapjacks and pork sausage and syrup and good hot coffee, and again there would be young voices in this dreadful house, and young laughter. Poor Carrie. How wretched she had been this past week, how lonely, how sad, how desolate, peeping through the window at sundown at Tom as he restlessly strolled up and down the shingle, waiting for her. Caroline no longer ‘talked’ to Beth; her remarks were few, her answers monosyllables, her face heavy and sullen, her mouth sulky, her eyes always shifting away. She spent most of the time in her room with endless books and went out only at dawn and at night, walking in loneliness up and down as Tom walked. What had he done to Carrie, that horrible monster, that fiend of a man? Carrie had been changing for a long time, but the change was more awful and more definite now, as if Carrie had been covered invincibly with stone.

  “Tell me all about it,” said Tom to Caroline, his arms warm and protecting about her.

  But I can’t tell you, thought Caroline desolately. How can I tell you that among so many other things my father is a smuggler, that he corrupts government tariff officials so that they don’t see what his ships are bringing in, that all his enterprises are built on people’s greed and hatred for each other, whether it is gun-running or opium or money manipulations or gaining control of them so that they are either ruined or pay him a huge profit, and that there isn’t a nation anywhere that doesn’t know my father or a government that doesn’t try to destroy him or court him, and that he knows generals and senators and kings and statesmen who help him at a price, and that he buys so many of them? Tom, you wouldn’t understand that my father could not be what he is unless others wanted his services or his money or his help. They corrupted him; he didn’t corrupt them. He only supplies what they want — for a profit.

  “Don’t cry again, dear,” said Tom, and again mopped with clumsy love at her cheeks and eyes. “Not unless you tell me what’s the matter.”

  Caroline thought of the promise she had made her father a year ago, and she cringed. She pushed aside the dabbing handkerchief, lifted her head from Tom’s shoulder, and dropped it on her chest. The wind stirred little wisps of her fine black hair about her cheeks and forehead. There were grayish shadows under her eyes and under her cheekbones. Tom looked at her with concern. “There’s something really wrong, isn’t there, Carrie?” he asked sternly. “And that’s why you’ve kept away from me.”

  “No, nol” she exclaimed, lifting her head but averting it from him. “There’s nothing wrong. I’m not a child any more, Tom. I have things to think about.”

  “Am I one of them, Carrie?” he asked in a softened voice. “Please tell me I am.”

  She waited, then nodded.

  “I see,” said Tom, and he sighed. “Well, that doesn’t matter. Just as long as I know you love me. And you do.”

  Caroline said, “How are you and your father doing, Tom?” Her voice was dull and low. Tom looked at her with sharpness. Then he made himself smile and speak with enthusiasm.

  “Oh, fine. Wonderful. We have orders for six more houses this summer, Carrie. We’re even hiring carpenters and bricklayers from Boston. All these new summer houses between here and the village. We’ve bought up most of the ocean-front land, and I can tell you they’ll bring a big price when the houses are built. Big for the kind of people who buy them. They’re people from all around who couldn’t afford the sort of houses real rich people buy, like at Newport and Marblehead, but they’re people who would like to have a place away from Boston for their wives and children when it’s hot in the city. We’re even thinking of buying land at Cape Cod; I’m sure there’s a future there for the houses we build, good sound summer houses, nicely designed and comfortable and airy, with plank floors and cool plastered walls, and porches and little gardens behind, and a little beach in front or on a bluff looking out to sea. America’s changing, thank God. Now we have a lot of small merchants and businessmen and manufacturers with nice shops or small factories of their own, and they’re thriving. There are a lot of people who don’t like industry. But what would they have, anyway? The old aristocratic society of grea
t landowners and people who just worked the land for them and were paid practically nothing?