A Prologue to Love

  At sixteen she had developed the art of overhearing to a special degree. Life was evolving a pattern she could see very clearly. At the center of the pattern stood Elizabeth Josephine Sheldon (and one other), who was determined to use life and not permit life to use her. If Tom Sheldon still did not know the extent of his wife’s fortunes or of what her investments consisted, Elizabeth had a very extensive idea. She also knew that she was her father’s favorite, that he was bewildered and saddened by his sons, and that he lived in a state of chronic wretchedness and despair. She was not yet certain how she would manipulate these facts, but she was at least sure that she would one day.

  It was a very snowy Easter, and early, and Elizabeth was home for the holidays, as were her brothers. But all the doors, as usual, were shut. Elizabeth, in her schoolgirl’s navy serge with white collar and cuffs, sat and listened to the silence of the house. She was sitting in what her father had called the ‘drawing room’. It was very shabby now, and the draperies had dimmed and had been mended carelessly. The fine carpet had lost most of its pattern under grime, owing to the languid application of brushes on the part of ever-changing housemaids who rarely stayed for more than a month. The windows were blurred, and the winter sunlight could only smear them with a smudge of light; the wainscoting needed paint, and the floor about the rug was dull and splintered. Elizabeth, the fastidious, looked at the dinginess and pursed her mouth disdainfully. She did not sit here as a rule; she preferred her room. But this large, neglected room was a good central point from which she could hear any movement or voice.

  The small fire spluttered, and the room was chilly as well as drab. Elizabeth listened. She heard no voices. But she finally heard the door of her mother’s study open and close, and then another door open, close. She also heard the faint click of a lock. “Bluebeard’s Closet,” she murmured, and put aside her book and went up the stairs like a slim and graceful shadow, her light hair on her shoulders, her hard blue eyes intent. She often listened at the door when her mother entered her private art gallery. For in that room, which no one was ever permitted to enter but herself, the lonely woman talked aloud to something, and what she infrequently said was of immense interest to her daughter.

  Elizabeth paused at the top of the stairs. There was a large window at the end of the hallway, gray with dust, and the light filtered in feebly. The red carpeting had faded; it was worn and unkempt and thin. The doors along the hallway were all shut. The servants were enjoying their short rest period on the third floor. Elizabeth drifted over the carpet, which smelled of old grime, and stood by the door of the gallery.

  There was no sound inside. Caroline had apparently paused. Then the whisper of her footsteps on carpet began, up and down. Then she paused again. She began to speak in a monotone, and Elizabeth pressed her ear to the door.

  Caroline’s voice was still strong and sonorous, and she spoke in the cultured accents of Miss Stockington’s school. “I still think the tower is your best,” she said. “I don’t know why. The brushwork of the girl on a chair or the boy with an apple is superior. Yet I had to pay much more for the tower than for those and the others. Twenty thousand dollars. I have read that you sold it for fifteen dollars. How terrible.”

  Elizabeth knew, of course, that the secret room contained paintings. Her father had told her. But he too had never seen them. Once Elizabeth had suggested to her mother that she would like to see them. Caroline had looked at her thoughtfully, as if considering, and then had smiled oddly and said, “I think not. I really think not.” She carried the key to the room with her always. It was never to be found lying about, though Elizabeth had searched diligently. Her curiosity did not concern the paintings in the room but only what her mother said aloud before them. Once she had read that those who speak aloud when alone were mad. Elizabeth did not believe this; her mother was obviously not mad. She was only lonely. Her daughter was the single person in the household who understood that.

  The hall was very cold. Elizabeth hugged her slim body with her arms and bent to the door. Caroline was speaking again.

  “I dreamed about the tower once or twice,” Caroline said. “But I don’t remember the dreams except that they were frightful. Was the tower frightful to you? Yes, I think it must have been. It expresses some awfulness which I seem about to grasp, and then it vanishes. I wish I could see it; I wish I could remember the dreams I had. But they’ve gone from my mind, as if a dark door had been closed in my face. Perhaps it will open one of these days.”

  The footsteps whispered again. There was a sudden curious catch in the room, such as one makes when one tries not to weep. Elizabeth had never heard it before. Caroline spoke in a lower tone, almost halting, as if speaking without real volition. “I know all about you; I read everything there was to know. Your wife, her family. But nothing about your son; nothing about your parents. No one knows. Was there a reason you never told anyone of them? Yes, it must be so. If only you had lived! If only you had lived long enough to know your son. I know how you died. You were coming home and found the barn afire, with all your paintings, and you died of it. I can understand that. When your life is gone there is nothing else. Yes, I can understand that; my life is gone, and I live now because of my father and what he would want me to do. I live only for a dead man, for he was the only one who loved me. There was never anyone else; there never will be. Do you understand?”

  Elizabeth raised her eyebrows disdainfully. She knew of her mother’s violent obsession about her father, John Ames, for she had listened enough to furious exchanges between her own father, and her mother on the subject. “Why don’t you build a shrine to him?” Tom had once shouted in despair. “Or don’t people build shrines to devils?” Elizabeth had then begun to wonder about her grandfather, John Ames, and what manner of man he had been. Discreet questioning and listening had given her quite a comprehensive portrait, and she approved of him, even if she found her mother’s idolatry ridiculous.

  Then she listened even more acutely. Her mother was crying. She had never heard her mother cry before, had never seen her in tears.

  “If there was just someone,” Caroline was stammering. “Do we all really live alone like this, shut up in ourselves, unable to speak? Were you so alone? I believe you were. There is a terrible loneliness about this painting of a stream running through a mountain pass; no trees, no grass, only gray stone, and the stream is as green as ice, as if frozen. I can feel all the color in it, as if each tint were a separate emotion. That boulder looks as if it had never touched another boulder since it was thrown there. Are we all like this? I know I am. I never touched anyone but my father. How am I going to go on living, except to increase the trust he gave me?

  “I thought Tom loved me. I thought he understood. But he lied to me; he didn’t understand at all; he wouldn’t listen. He had his preconceived frame of reference, and he thought everyone should fit into it. I couldn’t, and he was outraged. Why does everyone believe his own particular reality is the only reality? They say reality is objective; it isn’t; it’s entirely subjective. But — if Tom had only listened while I tried to show him my own reality! But he could hear and see only himself and his own codes and convictions. It’s possible that I am this way too.” She paused, as if in wonderment, then exclaimed, “Yes, it’s very possible! But I did understand Tom’s reality, even if it made me impatient — at least, I understood a little. But he would never even approach mine. I was his wife, Carrie. He never wanted to understand Caroline Ames. Did I frighten him? Tom, frightened?” Her voice rose. “No, he was not frightened; he was only disapproving and angry. But I love him so, I love him so, and he never knows it. There are all the years in between. My children? They have their reason for being, as you know, but they care nothing for me. That doesn’t hurt me. I only want Tom, and he’s gone far away, and I can’t reach him any longer.”

  Her weeping was desperate now, and Elizabeth frowned. Her mother was committing a grave impropriety and showing foolish weakness. Then she thought
of her mother’s reference to her children, and her cool mind worked rapidly. She and her brothers had a tremendous respect for their mother, or rather for the mind that added constantly to the fortune that would be theirs one day. Their father, in their opinion, was a fool, to be used when necessary. He could not understand how important it was to be powerfully rich. Their mother understood only too well. She was polite to her children, demanded politeness and discipline, never varied in her aloof interest in their education and welfare. She gave them little or no money, never talked with them about themselves or any aspirations they might have. As her children, they were important; as persons, they had no importance at all to her. This had given her authority and power in their minds. A loving and solicitous mother would only have aroused their contempt.

  Elizabeth was annoyed now that a little of the profound respect she had for her mother had been washed away by Caroline’s tears in that room. She preferred to think of her mother as far above silly emotions and sentimentality. How could her mother really love a man like her husband, who dripped affection indiscriminately everywhere, as a dog drips saliva? He sought love from his children in an eager and servile way. They despised him. It was upsetting to overhear that Caroline loved so trivial a man.

  Elizabeth and her brothers knew their cousins fairly well by now, especially Timothy and Amanda Winslow’s children — Henry, now twelve; Harper, eleven; and Amy, ten years old. Elizabeth considered them all ordinary and of no consequence, not only because she was older than they, but because they were kind and gentle and considerate and loved their parents, which alone would have inspired Elizabeth’s contempt. She saw little Amy at Miss Stockington’s, a shy child with a pink-and-white face, sparkling dark eyes, and a mass of black ringlets. Elizabeth classed all girls younger than herself as ‘imbeciles’, but little Amy, she had concluded, had no wit or intelligence at all. She would cry over the slightest inconvenience; if some classmate spoke rudely to her she was devastated and had to be consoled in the arms of a teacher. Once she had sobbed a whole morning after finding a dead butterfly. All the teachers spoke tenderly of ‘the child’s sensitivity’, but the other children laughed at her readiness to burst into tears. There were times when Elizabeth, seeing the weeping Amy in some corner or in the halls, was angered if a classmate of her own would say to her slyly, “Isn’t that your cousin — that silly little girl?” As for Mary (Mimi) Bothwell, Elizabeth had some respect for her — an independent child who possessed considerable gentle fire and could be stern in the schoolyard when faced with some injustice. Nathaniel resembled his twin sister.

  Only the Winslow family came to the Sheldon house in Lyme on rare occasions. But the Bothwell family never came, though the Sheldon children did visit them on Tom’s insistence. Elizabeth knew that a strong antipathy existed in her mother for all the Bothwells, and she shared it emphatically. She thought they lived aimless lives. Melinda’s gravity and reserve would have won Elizabeth’s admiration if she had not shown such devotion to her children and such anxiety for them. She seemed especially kind to Elizabeth, which puzzled the girl and annoyed her, for she had no respect for Melinda with her ‘vague ways’. When Melinda visited the school and sometimes encountered Elizabeth, Melinda would think: How like her father she is! I am afraid for the girl. Elizabeth usually refused invitations to the Bothwell house, unlike her brothers, but since one Christmas when she was thirteen years old, she would call occasionally and in secrecy. For at that Christmas she had met a very old woman, Lady Halnes from England, her mother’s aunt, and she had also met young William Lord Halnes.

  She met him again when she was fourteen, the next Christmas, when they were both walking on the hard cold shingle between the two houses. She had said to him suddenly and loudly, “William?” Her voice had rung like a bell in the cold and silent air, and he had turned and looked at her with mild perplexity, not remembering. “I am your cousin Elizabeth Sheldon,” she said, feeling heat in her chill cheeks and a throbbing in her wrists and temple. “Don’t you remember?” He was nearly seventeen years old then, a mature and respectable young man, and he had smiled at her and said, “Of course. Elizabeth.” But he had entirely forgotten her. They had talked a few moments; Elizabeth never remembered of what. She watched for his smile, and when it came something lifted wings in her and her young body strained almost painfully. She had last seen him again only recently. He now filled all her secret thoughts and incomprehensible yearnings. She asked herself why, when she was most hungry, and could not answer her own questions. Though she knew that she had an extraordinary beauty, she had, in some measure, discounted it. The real treasure was money. Men preferred money to beauty, for money remained and beauty did not; money was rare; beauty was quite common. Elizabeth, like her mother, could not conceive that anyone could like or love her for herself and accept her without ulterior motives.

  In the pursuit of what was now the most precious thing to her but which was not yet attainable because she was still too young and had no fortune of her own, Elizabeth could doggedly put William Lord Halnes out of her mind when necessary in the pursuit of first things. As she listened to her mother’s weeping behind the locked door of the gallery she did not think of William consciously at all. She started when she heard Caroline unlock the door. Usually she was warned by approaching footsteps and could then flash into her own room or appear artlessly at the head of the stairs. She was not warned now. Her quick wits rescued her. She coughed loudly and repeatedly. The door opened and Caroline confronted her, majestic, frowning.

  “What is it?” asked Caroline roughly. “What are you doing, Elizabeth?”

  “I was just going into my room, Mother, and then I thought I heard you talking, or something, and I thought you might be sick.” She stared pointedly at her mother’s reddened eyes, and it was Caroline now, and not she, who was on the defensive.

  “Nonsense,” said Caroline. She frowned again. “Didn’t I hear you cough? Are you catching cold?”

  “No. It’s only the dust,” said Elizabeth with a slight and meaning smile.

  “What dust?” asked Caroline irritably. She looked down the long hall. “These servants. They never do their work properly.” She was closing the door behind her.

  Then Elizabeth said, “Mother, I know you have some wonderful paintings in the gallery. I’d like to see them. Truly I would.” She was curious to know what had made her mother cry in ‘Bluebeard’s Cabinet’. The information might be valuable someday. She looked at Caroline with large and innocent eyes. Caroline smiled tightly.

  “Would you? I doubt it, Elizabeth.” She hesitated, then pushed back the door. She paused. “A moment.” She partly closed the door, moved quickly into the room. Elizabeth tried to peer through the crack but could see nothing but her mother’s rusty black skirt. Caroline came to the door and said, “Come in, then.”

  Elizabeth entered and looked curiously about the long, well-lighted room. Here, at least, all was immaculate, the floor polished, the walls painted blue, the wide windows well washed and uncurtained. But it was very cold and very still. There were no seats except for a single straight-backed wooden chair. The walls held several paintings of good size; one of them faced the wall.

  Elizabeth moved slowly from picture to picture, examining in silence, and she thought: What hideous daubs! What impossible colors! What distortions! You’d never see anything like this in the Boston Museum or at Miss Stockington’s. I suppose this is what they call modern painting. No wonder our house is so dreadful and unkempt; Mother has no taste at all for anything, otherwise she would never have bought these horrors. But she said she paid twenty thousand dollars for one! Why? All that money! She has no right to waste our inheritance so!

  Caroline was standing near one of the windows, watching her daughter. She waited in silence for the girl’s verdict; she saw the serious, considering profile. Then Elizabeth turned her face to her mother, and the cold wintry light shone unshadowed upon it and Caroline saw her father’s face, with every plan
e and color and expression reproduced in the younger, softer lines of femininity. A strong shock ran through her. She put her hands beside her, against the wall, as if to support herself.

  Elizabeth looked at her mother and saw only a woman of nearly forty-five, broad, tall, impressive, with a crown of graying braids and an impassive wide face with large and brooding hazel eyes. She saw only a woman she thought excessively ugly, a little grimy, unfashionable in her old black bombazine with the raveled hem that swept the floor, too big of breast, too wide of shoulder. The dark skin was not lightened by any color on cheek or on sullen, heavy lip. Elizabeth stood again before the painting of the tower and pretended to be absorbed in it, for this was one her mother had mentioned in her monologue.