A Prologue to Love

by Taylor Caldwell

  But Mimi Bothwell loved her, did not find her peculiar, had no interest in her money, did not doubt or shrink from her, and accepted her with an ardent devotion. The affection between them was maternal and filial, sisterly, childlike, accepting, purely unselfish, and illuminated with their mutual passion for color and light. There was no demand between them, no false images, no distortions, no self-serving, no fear. For the first time in her life Caroline felt a love that was utterly free and unhampered and without awkwardness. When Mimi had told her that she was to leave for Paris almost immediately, Caroline was dismayed and sad, but at once she knew this was the best for the girl and had put aside her own dread of approaching loneliness and loss.

  So deep was Caroline’s love for the girl that she could feel something stir in herself at the thought of the girl’s going abroad and studying, and she did not know that this was pleasure and a kind of youthful anticipation. The projection of herself into the future of Mimi brought her a sense of well-being and hope, things she had never known since childhood. So when Elizabeth arrived home she was momentarily astonished at the color in her mother’s face, the confident ring in her voice, and the peculiar if abstracted gentleness. Elizabeth thought it was because she had returned. If the old hateful fool was really so dependent on her, so much the better. Now.

  Caroline, Elizabeth now fully believed, was the cause of her rejection by William, and she had spent the days on the ship in fits of incoherent vengefulness. Her mother would pay for what she had done to her daughter, though how this would be accomplished Elizabeth had only a few vague ideas at the best. But two of them were Ames and Amy Winslow, and not only would Elizabeth be revenged on her mother through them, but she would be revenged on Timothy also.

  She had overheard Timothy say to Amanda, “Thank God Amy never speaks of Ames Sheldon any longer since we came here. She’s gotten over that foolishness.” Elizabeth had been startled at this piece of news; she had not known that her secretive brother Ames and Amy, his cousin, had anything in common or even saw each other often. She had filed this news in her mind.

  Caroline was so contented because of Mimi that she did not immediately notice Elizabeth’s increased thinness, which had become almost emaciation, and the sharp brittleness in her young voice. There was a new maid in the house, who had attacked the hopeless grime of the years hopefully and then had given up. But she could cook to Caroline’s austere taste and with frugality, and that was sufficient. The only room in the house which the maid had been able to clean well was Elizabeth’s, for it had not been dirty at any time.

  Elizabeth neatly unpacked in her room. When she came on the fine dresses she had bought with William in mind, she suddenly, and for the first time, broke down. She clung to them and wept silently. She no longer hated William for her humiliation and frightful suffering. She sat on her hard white bed and cradled the dresses in her arms as a mother cradles a child. One of the dresses still held a white rose he had plucked for her and pinned on her shoulder. It was dry and crushed now and fell into fragments in her hand. She held them to her lips. She put them in a small box, then returned to cradling the dresses, pressing them to her breast. Her grief was more than she could endure. There was a blue ribbon at the sleeve of the white Swiss dress; it had loosened one night, and William had gently tied it, then kissed it. She kissed it now, and the tears ran down her cheeks. The dresses crackled in her arms; she smoothed their folds with a gentle hand as a mother soothes a complaining child.

  She had never loved before, and the emotion devastated her, exploded with agony in her. She had no philosophy for it, no strength or experience to bring to it. She would never be rid of the pain. All at once a convulsion stunned the side of her head and pulsed there like fire, and she put a hand to it. It took some time to subside, and when it did her flesh was prickled over with shivering moisture and she was dizzy and sick. She forced herself to put the dresses between sheets of tissue paper, then was struck by some strangeness. She looked about the room. Nothing was changed; the sunlight, reflecting from the sea, filled the room, glanced off the white walls. Yet something had changed, a faint distortion, perhaps, a shortening or lengthening of perspective, an ominous quality to the sun’s light. A slight glaze appeared to have settled on the few pieces of furniture, and there was a sensation in her as though she looked at everything through a sheet of glass which stood between herself and the world. But now her grief was more diffused, more bearable.

  She noticed that the gritty stairs appeared elongated as she went down them. Do I need spectacles? she thought, and then the thought was gone. She was conscious that she had a new strength and a new hardening. She had not slept all the way across the ocean; it was possible that sleeplessness was giving her a kind of hallucination. But she would sleep tonight. She had so much to do.

  Tea had never been served in this house since Beth’s death, and Elizabeth was coldly amused to find that her mother had prepared tea for them in the dank and moldering living room. The cups and saucers were of the original fine set Tom had bought, glowing Sèvres porcelain. They were all chipped, and there were stains in the larger crevices. Fresh from the fine mansion in Devon, Elizabeth looked at them with distaste, then she thought: Nothing matters. Only money. Only what money can do for you. Why waste it on trivialities? She sat down opposite Caroline, who, as always, was shy and uncertain even if massive and monumental. “There’re cakes too,” Caroline mumbled, pointing to a silver plate, very tarnished, on which stood some ‘store’ cookies hard with sprinkled sugar.

  “Can’t Jenny bake?” said Elizabeth, pushing one away with the tip of a finger.

  “She has a lot to do. Not only the house, but the laundry. There’s no time for baking,” said Caroline. She had never been able to look fully at anyone for long, not even her husband after the first year of their marriage. She peered under her thick black eyelashes at her daughter. Then she was apprehensive. What had happened to Elizabeth, sitting so rigidly opposite her, her blue eyes a little glassy and fixed, her body, in its white duck skirt and shirtwaist, so thin?

  “What’s wrong?” she asked bluntly as she poured tea for Elizabeth from a silver pot so tarnished that it was black along the handle and spout and yellowish all over. “Europe didn’t suit you?”

  “Not particularly.” The tea was weak and lukewarm and had a sickening taste to Elizabeth. She put down the cup. “But you’re not interested in my travels, I’m sure.”

  “You haven’t told me anything,” said Caroline. She bit into a cookie with her strong white teeth and appeared to enjoy it. “Who did you see? What did they say? But first, why did you come back to America so soon? I thought you were going to stay another month.”

  “I changed my mind,” said Elizabeth. The one sip of tea lingered with an odd taste on the back of her tongue, like some sweetened astringent.

  “Why?”

  “I was bored. You haven’t any idea how boring Amanda and her children can be.” Elizabeth laughed. Caroline quickened and glanced uneasily at her daughter. Elizabeth very seldom laughed, and even then it was more of a short light murmur. But now Elizabeth’s laughter was loud and abrupt, without mirth, and it had a ring of uncontrol, as though she had been profoundly amused beyond her expectations. Caroline listened to the sound, and she felt a sensation as if a cold finger had been laid on the back of her broad thick neck. She, too, put down her cup, and she stared at her daughter. As abruptly as she had laughed, Elizabeth stopped and looked beyond her mother at the smeared windows and the bright shadow of the sun on them.

  Even when she had believed Elizabeth understood her, even when she loved Elizabeth with the awful and helpless love she had felt for her father, Caroline had been diffident with the girl and oddly uneasy. Now she exclaimed with a dread that was without a name, “Elizabeth!”

  The girl still looked at the windows, and Caroline could see the grayish shadow under the beautifully formed cheekbones, the colorless lips still half open after the last burst of laughter, the froz
en blue eyes. It was the face of one in a trance, and Caroline half rose and cried again, “Elizabeth?”

  “Very boring,” said Elizabeth, as if she had not laughed at all and her mother had not spoken. “London, too, is dull; it was worse with my dear cousins. Amy is especially stupid.” A flicker appeared in her eyes for an instant. “We toured constantly, except when I had to be away from them.”

  She took a cake and bit into it, then threw it from her. “Why, these are horrible! Sawdust and flour! How can you eat them?”

  “You don’t look well,” Caroline said. “I thought Europe would do you good; it wasn’t only a matter of business.” Her throat had a weight in it.

  “I am well enough,” said Elizabeth. She looked at the windows again. It would be long dim twilight now in Devon. The family would be gathering for dinner. The scent of roses and the sea would be coming in the long french windows, and the firelight would be brightening the soft draperies. And beyond the window there were the dark gardens, the arbors, the hushed trees, voices coming across the grass, and joy in the windy air.

  “I don’t think you look well,” Caroline persisted.

  “There will be a war,” said Elizabeth. “That is what they told me, and that is what I heard; there was a rumble about it in parliament.”

  Her voice had never been particularly resonant and had never had any sweetness or eloquent intonations except in England. Now it was a mechanical voice. It was also precise, controlled, and reasonable and revealed Elizabeth’s great intelligence and awareness of what she was saying. If the eyes did not show any expression or the lips warm with any color, she appeared to have recovered from her trancelike condition.

  This reassured Caroline. She listened, nodding occasionally.

  “They talked of the Second Hague Peace Conference two years ago,” said the girl, reporting steadily and with no inflection. “Your friends thought that was amusing; they also thought former President Roosevelt even more so for asking for the conference. But I don’t think they were very much amused after all; there was too much venom in what they said about Mr. Roosevelt. They seemed to be afraid that he knew too much. They’re much better pleased with our present President, Mr. Taft.”

  She ran a finger absently over the chipped handle of her rejected cup. “Mr. Taft, they thought, was a man without suspicions. They wondered why Mr. Roosevelt had had any. It was finally decided with well-bred British laughter that he was a dolt.” She looked at her mother now, and Caroline had the impression that the girl really did not see her. “But of course Mr. Roosevelt isn’t a dolt.”

  “When?” asked Caroline.

  “When? Oh, the war. Soon, it is believed. I even heard the word ‘inevitable’.” She smiled a little. “There was one old man, Mr. Purvey, who said he had known you when you were a girl, and he implied that you were much more ‘conscious’, he said, of things than I am. They seemed to think I was a little young for consultations with them, and so I did not hear all that I should. Mr. Purvey merely sent you the message, to be prepared.”

  “Prepared?” Caroline pondered this. She remembered what her son had told her. She shifted her bulk on the frayed chair. “Yes, I see. Was it definitely decided it would be Germany?”

  Elizabeth continued to speak. Not only did the English hate Germany for her ‘invasion’ of British markets, they also hated America because of the passage of the Payne Tariff Bill. They also had contempt for America, especially since Mr. Roosevelt’s ‘attempts’ to get the red hat for Archbishop Ireland. They spoke of America’s ‘racism’ and said, “We can’t afford that in the empire, you know.” But it always came back to Mr. Roosevelt. One gentleman had remarked, “He’s too previous. Or, rather, blundering. When we move, it will not be with his sort of ‘public welfare’. It will have a design.”

  Caroline listened, and again she heard the voices in Switzerland so long ago. She shifted again on her chair and frowned. “A design,” she repeated.

  Then Elizabeth said, “I overheard — someone — call Timothy pusillanimous. And accuse him of wanting power.”

  The huge and terrible design was still shadowy, and it was even more shadowy to Elizabeth, who was merely reporting. It was not shadowy to Caroline. Little drops of sweat gathered on her dark forehead. Then she said, “Timothy? Pusillanimous? Wanting power? He has it, with his money.”

  “Apparently that isn’t all he wants,” said Elizabeth indifferently, “though I can’t imagine what else it is.”

  “I can,” said Caroline. She folded her big hands in her lap and looked down at them.

  Elizabeth shrugged delicately. The furniture had not been polished in nearly a quarter of a century, but it all had a glassy surface to her vision. It hurt her eyes; she stood up suddenly and pulled the ragged draperies across the windows, and immediately the room was plunged into dusk and there was a smell of dust in the air. The girl sat down again. Caroline said, “Why did you do that?”

  “The sun,” said Elizabeth irritably. She was a pale blurred image in the darkened room. Caroline averted her head and thought again.

  “Their recommendation,” said Elizabeth, “is that you begin at once to invest heavily in Robson-Strong in England, Kronk in Germany, and the other munitions firms in Europe.”

  “And that is all they told you?”

  “Yes.” Caroline’s associates had not found Elizabeth as alert and perceptive as Caroline had led them to believe in her letters. “Sad,” they had murmured to each other later. “She has an intelligent look, but girls these days are not what their mothers were, particularly not what Caroline Ames is.”

  “I have some confidential reports for you,” said Elizabeth. “They are sealed. I’ve put them on your study desk. Do you want to go up with me and look at them?”

  “Not yet,” said Caroline. The dusky room was full of ghosts. Shades were always pulled down firmly on the back of the house, which faced the distant public road. But on this side the windows were never covered. Caroline glanced at her daughter, and Elizabeth was no more substantial than the other silent ghosts here. Caroline was frightened, but she said, “Perhaps, as they are confidential, I’d better look at them alone.”

  “Please yourself,” said Elizabeth. Then her eyes glowed in the semidarkness. “You’ll have to do something about Timothy.”

  “Why?” asked Caroline, startled.

  “He hates you,” said the girl.

  “That’s nothing new,” answered Caroline with a dark smile. “I’ve always known that. It doesn’t matter.”

  “He’s dangerous.”

  “I’ve never denied it.” Caroline paused. She sat up straighter. “What is it, Elizabeth? Was he unpleasant to you?”

  “No. Not at all. He was much pleasanter than Amanda and her children. Mother, he doesn’t need you any longer. He’ll try to injure you one of these days. Perhaps soon.”

  “How? I don’t speculate wildly; I am safely invested in sound stocks. There is nothing he can do against me. I have several times his money. Even more. He’s not a fool; he knows there is no way.”

  “He’ll find one.” Now, for the first time, there was emotion in Elizabeth’s voice; and, hearing it, Caroline was pleased and stirred. She believed her daughter was concerned for her. She reached out and awkwardly patted Elizabeth’s stiff knee.

  “Don’t worry, child,” she said. She regarded Elizabeth with diffident affection. “Have you been worried?”

  “Yes,” said the girl. “Mother, I hate him.”

  “So there was something,” said Caroline slowly. “Why don’t you tell me?”

  “He despises you — me,” said Elizabeth, and clenched her hands on her knee.

  “Probably. Should that concern you?”

  “I want you to — ruin — him, Mother.”

  There was silence in the room. Caroline’s thick dark brows had drawn together. She had heard the high shrillness in her daughter’s voice, the sudden gasping pause.

  “I don’t do things like that,” said Ca
roline loudly. “What nonsense. ‘Ruin’ Timothy? Why? He’s been of much help to me. We are quite friendly. Elizabeth! You aren’t talking sanely.”

  Elizabeth did not answer. “How could I do such a thing even if I wanted to?” demanded Caroline, and again she was frightened.

  “You can find a way.” The girl spoke with a kind of dull and obstinate intensity. “You must.”

  Caroline nodded. She repeated, “There was something.”

  Again Elizabeth was silent. Caroline said, “If you won’t tell me, I’ll ask him.”

  Elizabeth said, “No. I tell you, there was nothing. I only think you should do to him what I honestly believe he will try to do to you.”

  “It must be very bad,” said Caroline. She had not been so alerted and uneasy in years. “If you won’t tell me, I am sure he won’t.” Then she was filled with outrage. What had Timothy done to this young girl, her daughter? If it had changed Elizabeth so drastically, then it must be very serious and unpardonable. She could not identify the sensation that rose violently in her now and made her teeth close together tightly. She thought of Timothy’s mother and exclaimed, “That woman!”