“And who, knowing all that, applied for an officer’s commission immediately?” asked Melinda teasingly.
Alfred touched her hand and grinned. “Just an escape from domesticity. Besides, what man doesn’t like a show, and Teddy Roosevelt is better than Barnum. It’s America’s naïveté which is going to get her into one hot pot of trouble in the next few years. All drums and flags and freedom and nobility. Why, they’re already teaching the brats in the first form that the day of kings and ‘despots’ and czars are over, and we’ll all soon be wallowing in brotherly love together and kissing each other wetly all the time, and that the Century of the Common Man begins exactly on January 1, 1900.
“And that’s what interests me, funny enough,” said Alfred with unusual thoughtfulness. “The ‘Century of the Common Man’. What does that mean? Who is the Common Man? Never met a common man, myself; everybody you meet — your barber, shoeshiner, grocer, clerk, cook, blacksmith, tailor, lawyer, doctor, professor, merchant, or whoever — is a mighty uncommon feller, and he knows it and is proud of it. Stick a ‘common man’ label on him and he’s going to buck; everybody thinks he’s better than his neighbor, and so he is, damn it. I don’t like this Common Man thing; it smells like brimstone. And who’s behind it, I want to know?”
Tom was thinking of Caroline’s wild and incoherent revelations just before they were married, and his own revulsion and partial disbelief. He had come to believe in the truth of what she had told him; he had studied newspapers and publications for all these years since then.
“I think you’re right,” said Tom. “I haven’t any grounds for my belief, and you probably don’t have much more. But you can feel it in the air.”
Alfred refilled his glass and Tom’s, and he was extremely sober for so lighthearted a young man. “A funny thing has just occurred to me. I was at the Harvard Club in New York last week. Now, you know the Bristow, Kellem and Bishop law firm in Boston; one of the best; old family; all the money in the world. Well, I met young Bishop in New York, son of old Bishop, junior member of the firm. A brainy feller, but mean and sharp. Somehow he isn’t doing well in his dad’s firm; old man’s disappointed in him, if you can believe the rumors you hear. Was graduated summa cum laude and all that. I remember him from Groton; always thought himself better than anyone else; high and mighty. Quietly vicious and superior. After the summa cum laude, great things were expected of him. They fizzled out. He’s disgruntled. Looks at people with sparkling eyes, as if he’s thinking of something nasty only he knows.
“Well, I don’t like him, but after all, our families have always known each other and it’s noblesse oblige, you know. So I’m genial with him in my fatuous way and invite him for a drink, and the surly so-and-so accepts and then stares into the glass. I’m not noted for exceptional tact — at least Melinda is always saying so — so I ask him how the law business is doing. And he looks at me contemptuously and says, ‘A bourgeois occupation. There are more important things in the world now, and they’ll be more and more important in the next century. You’ll see’. And he gives me a yellow smile, looks me up and down, and then without another word he gets up with the drink I’d just bought him and goes away.
“I can’t,” said Alfred, “get him out of my mind for some reason. He’s a failure and he knows it, even if he has a great big mind and tries his hand at poetry every once in a while. Heard he gets some of it published, too.”
“You are making me uneasy, Alfred,” said Melinda. “I’m thinking of Nathaniel. He’s only five years old, but what if there are any real wars — not like the little opéra bouffe, the Spanish-American War? Oh no! America hates war; we’ve never had a real war since the War between the States, and that wasn’t with a foreign country. Why,” she said with more gentle cheerfulness, “the world hasn’t been so peaceful in centuries. And there’s The Hague, and all you hear is everlasting peace.”
“That, my sweet, is what is making me very, very uneasy,” said Alfred. But he touched her hand affectionately and smiled at her.
Tom thought of all the money Caroline had made in the Spanish-American War and the Philippine war through her munitions stocks. He had told her he considered profits from wars immoral and in violation of every decent principle, and she had looked at him coolly and had said, “Don’t be simple, Tom. My profits come from investments; I have nothing to do with war and war makers. If men want to kill each other for something or other, which is none of my business, then why shouldn’t I make a profit from their activities?”
And this was the woman who as a girl had expressed her wild loathing of the men who had been her father’s associates!
He became aware that Alfred and Melinda were looking at him, and this brought him back to himself.
He said, “I’ve been thinking. We’ve never had a Christmas tree at our house. Carrie never wanted one.” He paused. “So I am going to ask you if I can bring my children here a day or so before Christmas to let them see yours.”
“Why, yes. How nice,” said Melinda, who had never seen Tom’s children. Her gray eyes became as bright as the illuminated sea beyond the house. “And I do hope Caroline will come too. Timothy often speaks of her.” A subtle change came over her face for a moment.
“You know Carrie,” said Tom bluntly. “She doesn’t care for family or holidays. I’ve given up trying to change her. But we both have rights in our children. John’s going to Groton next September; Elizabeth is going to Miss Stockington’s. Ames is only ten, but I’m going to get him a young tutor; Carrie won’t listen about him going to the Lyme public school. Poor Mr. Burton is old and tired. Think of all the kids he’s had to manage and teach! So I am going to give him a pension for life, the same salary he’s had with us.”
“How kind of you, dear Tom,” said Melinda.
“Not kind at all,” said Tom. “He’s had a time with our kids. I’m only trying to compensate him.” Then he said, “We don’t appreciate teachers, any of us. They give their lives trying to make animals into men.”
He had announced to Caroline, after Beth’s death, that he would decide the future and the education of his children. She had said nothing. He had expected anger and arguments. He had been vaguely alarmed. He had sensed Caroline’s withdrawal from everything that concerned him. That she had also totally withdrawn from her children had dismayed him, and he had wanted some discussion, but it had not come. It was as if her children had no existence for her beyond their actual being. She will get over it, he desolately tried to reassure himself. Carrie would return to their mutual bedroom — sometime. Carrie would become radiant again at the sight of him, would lift her face for his kiss and cling to him. Sometime. She surely would forget his anger about Beth! After all, he had had reason to be angry and disgusted, and any reasonable person would understand that. It was just a matter of a little more time.
Alfred began to chuckle. “I can’t help remembering from time to time, for some totally malicious reason, what it must have meant to Caroline when that old lady, Mrs. Broome, left all her stock to Timothy Winslow. No offense, I hope, Tom, but in an adopted way Caroline’s my sister-in-law. I thought that would crack the cozy business relations between Timothy and Caroline, but it didn’t seem to, did it? She’s got the controlling stock, I hear from Timothy, but he’s sure got a nice fat lump himself, so I guess she couldn’t do anything else but make him president after she’d elbowed the Board a little. There, now, I’ve made you angry.”
“No,” said Tom, “you haven’t made me angry. You’ve always known what I thought of her cousin, and Carrie has too. He isn’t fooling me; one of these days he’ll knife Carrie, and I’ve told her so.”
He glanced at Melinda, remembering that Timothy Winslow was her brother through adoption, but she seemed abstracted and unaware of the conversation. The sunlight was dimming before another storm. It is probably that, he thought, which makes her mouth take on such a sad expression.
“He’ll try, anyway,” said Alfred agreeably. “I haven’t s
een Caroline since I was a kid, but from what I remember and from what I’ve heard, she’s more than a match for our avid boy. Never did like him.”
Melinda spoke in a constrained voice. “Dear Tom, please give my love to Caroline. I’ve written her often, you know, but she doesn’t answer. I understand that she’s very busy; all that responsibility. Sometimes I feel sorry for her.”
“Well, we all choose how to look at life,” said Alfred philosophically. “I guess Caroline’s as happy in her way as we are in ours, so don’t get sentimental, pet.”
He said to Tom, “Which party do you belong to, the party that insists that 1900 is the end of the nineteenth century or the party that insists it is the new century?”
“I never gave it a thought,” said Tom.
“The bigger party wants it to be considered the new century,” said Alfred, “and I’m with them. This one is all threadbare, though I suppose historians will find it interesting. The industrial revolution, you know, right after the so-called Age of Enlightenment. I have a theory that that age was directly responsible for the materialism of the industrial revolution. Voltaire; Rousseau; all the rest of the ‘reason’ boys. ‘Set high Reason in your heart and die with her.’ Who said that, Melinda?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” replied his wife with a faint smile. “I sometimes suspect you make up aphorisms yourself and ascribe them to someone else so that nobody will think you are really very intelligent.”
“I’m just the tripper of the light fantastic,” said Alfred. “Very helpful. You get some of those old legal boys believing that you, their opponent, are a gay half-wit, and they fail to pull up the heavy artillery until it’s too late. They’ve just been coasting along and yawning along, and there they are, suddenly looking at the heels of the defendant or the plaintiff and watching you thanking the jury and bowing to the judge. Well, anyway, we’re going in to Boston for the big once-every-hundred-years celebration. Even Boston will be excited, I hope.”
He went to the door with Tom, but in the hallway he stopped suddenly. “I’ve just thought of something else. After I’d had that drink with young Bishop, I went for a walk and I passed a Salvation Army band singing their hearts out and vigorously banging away and tooting horns and ringing their what-do-you-call-them. Good, hearty sight, earnest boys and girls really believing in something. And then an old gent, dressed up like an officer, began to speak, and he had a voice like William Jennings Bryan, all emotion and throbs and louder even than the band. He was shouting that we were coming on new and terrible days and that the ‘abomination of desolation’ mentioned by Daniel was at hand, and the nineteen-hundreds were spoke of by Matthew — the end of the world as we know it. ‘And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars — nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom — famines, earthquakes, pestilence.’ And great ‘tribulations,’ too, and the sun and the moon not giving their light, and pillars and clouds of fire, and practically everybody being killed off except the elect, or something. I was fascinated.”
He paused. “And then I remembered young Bishop, though for the life of me I can’t understand why I did. Funny thing. I can laugh at it now.”
“I’m not laughing,” said Tom.
They shook hands, and Tom went away. Alfred returned to his wife. She was sitting very still and looking out over the sea, and he could see her profile, quiet with a sorrow he could never understand and in which he only half believed. She turned to him and gave him a bright smile. “Perhaps the coming of Tom’s children will mean a reconciliation with poor Caroline,” she said as her husband came to her and took one of her hands.
“Don’t count on it, dear,” said Alfred. “I think this is all Tom’s idea. When he breaks the news to Caroline she’ll have a convulsion.” He bent down and kissed her cheek and thought, as he did so often, how lucky he was to have so lovely and gentle a wife. It had taken him almost three years of constant pursuit to make her marry him. Even then she had said, “I must be frank with you, Alfred. I think I love you, but I’m not in love with you. I’ll do the best I can, but don’t expect more of me than I can honestly give, will you?”
Alfred never expected more than that of anyone, and so they had a serene and contented life together. Alfred was very happy, for it was his nature to be so. He believed Melinda to be happy also, and so he always laughed at himself when he caught her in a grave mood, absent from him for a few moments.
Caroline said in a cold and bitter voice, “I’ve given in to you, Tom, about everything you decided for our children. But I must not permit their going to that house to meet their dear cousins! I want nothing to do with that family.”
“You want nothing to do with anyone,” said Tom. “But we’ve said these same things many times before, haven’t we? I’ve given in before, but not now. Alfred and Melinda are wonderful people; their children are kind and nice. I want my own children to have some experience with kindness and niceness even if you don’t. So I will take them.”
Caroline clenched her hands on her desk, and suddenly her face was extremely ugly. “If you knew!” she exclaimed. “But I shall never tell you. I don’t want them to see that woman or her children!”
“But that is just what they are going to do,” said Tom. “I mean this, Carrie.”
Then he said in a pleading and gentle voice, “Carrie. Can’t we both forget what happened to us for just that one day? I’ve told you a dozen times I am sorry. You never listen. How can you keep resentment alive so long? I’m your husband, Carrie.”
“Are you?” she said. She drew a new pile of papers to her. “I suppose there is nothing I can say to keep my children from that house and those people. Very well. I’m very busy.”
“Do you really hate me now that much. Carrie?”
Hate you? she thought. Oh, my God. “Don’t be absurd, Tom. I really must get to work.” When he had left her study she dropped the pen on the desk and put her hands over her face and sat there like that for a long time, desolate and alone.
Tom said to his son John, “Come outside with me and help me and Harry move some of those boulders from the sea walk. It’ll do you good.”
The boy was big, almost fourteen, of a heavy and clumsy build which did nothing to hinder his natural agility. He had a large round head covered with crisp curls as black as jet, and his eyes looked at his father with an unfriendly hazel glint. He had Caroline’s features, and they were usually either surly or malicious. Though naturally intelligent, he was careless of scholarship and impatient; he was also selfish and egotistic. Tom hoped Groton would improve him, for Tom naively believed much in environment.
John was at his desk, reading, when Tom came in and made his suggestion. “Moving boulders? I don’t want to.” Tom had once believed that children should not be forced to do what was not entirely necessary in the way of work and discipline. He had changed his mind. He said in a new hard voice that John had never heard before, “What does that matter? I said I need your help, so put on your coat and cap and come running. Hear?”
“But that’s Harry’s work,” John protested.
“And I say it’s yours too. Come on.”
John looked at him, and Tom saw his animosity and was saddened. Perhaps it was too late to change the boy’s opinion of him, but it was not too late to make him assume responsibility. “Come on,” Tom repeated. “I’ll be waiting on the sea walk, so hurry.”
Elizabeth, too, was in her closed room, and Tom reflected that everyone in this house seemed to live behind shut doors, secret and alone. He believed in privacy; he also believed in family love and exchange. A few weeks ago he had insisted that the children have dinner with their parents, and Caroline had contemptuously yielded. It was a fiasco. The children knew their mother’s disapproval, so they instinctively conspired to make the dinner a wretched hour. John sulked; Elizabeth made little sharp and goading comments to the housemaid and her brothers, and Ames sneered and merely mashed up his food. Tom’s hearty and affectionate remarks were
not even noted by Caroline, who was reading the evening Boston newspaper at the table. John glared at him, Elizabeth raised her eyebrows, and Ames regarded him chillily. Tom did not ask for their presence after that; the children had made it very plain that they preferred to eat upstairs together.
Tom knocked on Elizabeth’s door. She did not answer; he knocked again, and she murmured distastefully and Tom pretended to take this as permission to open the door and enter the extremely tidy and rather austere room.
The maids dusted and cleaned indifferently, for they were badly paid and ignored by everyone but Tom, whom they pityingly called ‘soft’. Elizabeth invariably cleaned after them, brightening smeared windows, scrubbing sills, rubbing the few pieces of furniture she would permit in her room. Her tester bed had a starched white counterpane and a white canopy; she insisted that they be washed every week. The floor was polished and bare, with only one small rug near the bed. Everything was cold and neat, and the fire was low.
A Prologue to Love Page 48