“Uncluttered? Clean?” he murmured. He opened a door in the hall, and Caroline entered a small dark parlor with wooden walls and spare furniture and brilliantly polished linoleum floor. “I never did like clutter,” said Caroline. “This is how I’d have liked a house if anyone had ever consulted me.” She looked at the great crucifix on the far wall, then walked firmly to it and looked up at it with intense concentration. After a moment she sat down on the edge of a stiff chair the priest indicated, and he sat down in a wooden armchair. He waited. He spent a great part of his life waiting for people to speak, to cry out to him, to weep, to ask him stammering questions.
Caroline looked at the calm face, the quietly folded hands. “I never had anything I really wanted,” she said. She thought of her grandfather’s paintings. “Except, perhaps, for a very few things. And now it’s too late to want anything — for me.” She stared at the crucifix.
“It’s not possible to get everything we want in this world,” said the priest tentatively. “Mrs. — ”
But Caroline ignored the question. “Too late,” she repeated.
“Poverty isn’t the worst state in the world,” said Father Bellamy.
Caroline was silent, looking at him. Then she smiled her dark, grim smile.
“I’m not poor,” she said.
Ah, thought the priest, the honest pride of the very poor! How pathetic it was, but how noble! He knew it very well; he had been born into it and still lived in it. He glanced at her hands, expecting to see the coarseness and broken nails of hard labor. But Caroline’s hands were well shaped, if large and broad, and now the priest understood that she was not poor and shelterless and afraid. Vaguely, then, he remembered the shining automobile which had stopped at the corner; someone had alighted from it — this woman?
“But you want my help?” he said in his confusion. “That is why I’m a priest — to help you.”
“I don’t know why I stopped you,” said Caroline after a frowning moment. “I don’t know why I’m here, not in the least. It was just an impulse, and I’m not an impulsive woman. It was perhaps because you stayed to speak to me one winter afternoon when I was in your church. You wanted to help me; you didn’t ask anything of me in return, understanding or money or response of any kind. I never forgot that. You were the only one.”
She stared at him. “I’m not a Roman Catholic,” she said. “I belong to no church. I was never taught any religion, except very briefly, by our housekeeper. I didn’t come to you now to hear about religion.”
She had large intelligent eyes, he saw, commanding yet very reserved, and once, no doubt, they had been extremely beautiful. Even now, as a thin thread of sunlight touched them, they became strongly hazel, touched with gold. She had, thought the priest, the immense dignity of a column, the immovable power of it.
“But you wanted help,” he said gently.
Caroline looked aside. “Yes. But I don’t know what the help could possibly be.”
He had heard this so many times in his life as a priest, but not with this cold puzzlement. He waited.
“I want to know, with all honesty, if you really believe that there is a God,” said Caroline.
“Would I be here if I didn’t have faith?” asked Father Bellamy.
She shook her head. “I don’t know. Habit, custom, helpless fixation in a certain sphere — they imprison us. I’m wretched where I am, but there is nothing I can do about it. How do I know that you, too, aren’t helpless where you are, and unable to free yourself?”
“I could free myself, as you call it, madam, by simply taking off these clerical clothes of mine, putting on others, and walking through that door. I’m not held by anything, except God and my faith.”
Caroline again shook her head. “When you were young, as I was, perhaps you were pushed into this mold, so it seems the only one acceptable to you, even if it may be a prison.”
“No,” said the priest. “My parents were against it; I was their only son. I should say that God chose me, and I did not choose Him. The ‘compulsion’, if there was any, came from Him, but there is no ‘compulsion’, because we have free will.”
“And you think that I ‘chose’ what I am?” said Caroline with some derision. “You think I did it deliberately, against other choices?”
“I don’t know, madam. Only God knows.”
“I did not choose it. I was lied into it, led into it.”
The priest smiled sadly. “That is one plea which is not acceptable to God. No matter the circumstance, we all can, by an act of free will, choose what to accept or what to reject, even if it is only in the silence of our hearts.”
Caroline was silent for a long time, her head bent. Then she looked up. “Certainly,” she said, “you are quite right. I think I always knew it. I’m sorry you told me the truth. However, there were other circumstances. I was only a young girl — a child, really — and my father lied to me and gave me a picture of the world that was only in his frightened and terrible mind. I loved him and I believed him. Can you understand?”
“But there must have been others,” said the priest.
“There were. But I didn’t believe them. I adored my father. Why should I have doubted him?”
“You became a woman. And,” repeated the priest, “there must have been others.”
“No one who really loved me,” said Caroline. There was a dull flush on her cheeks and over her forehead. What am I doing here, she asked herself, and saying what I am saying to a stranger who cannot possibly understand? She was ashamed of herself. She tightened her hold on her purse and started to rise.
“No one?” said the priest.
“I beg your pardon? Oh yes, our old housekeeper, a simple woman who thought that even I, and all I was and had, should fit into her simple conceptions of life.” Dear God, thought Caroline, what a fool I am! I must be going into my dotage.
“I had a grandmother like that,” said the priest, and Caroline paused in the very motion of rising. “A good old soul. She thought the highest calling in our village was to be a shoemaker, and I was rising above myself, she said, when I told her I wanted to be a priest.” He smiled at Caroline, and his worn face became tender and boyish. “Do I understand that your old — housekeeper? — thought you should be less than you were? That isn’t very peculiar, because none of us thinks of himself as a humble person; we all believe that what we are is the best possible state. Many of us couldn’t go on living if we didn’t think that.”
Now his human curiosity was aroused. “All I was and had,” this shabby and unprepossessing woman had said. He did not consider her mad; he knew that she was not only a lady but an extremely intelligent and honest one. Then he was concerned again with her look of distraction and despair. “There wasn’t anyone else but your old housekeeper?”
“My husband,” said Caroline. The pain became like a dark cobweb over her face. “He has been dead for many years. He, too, thought I should fit into some comfortable conception of his about me. When I didn’t, when I could not, it broke his heart. He wanted to divorce me. He told me so the night before he died.” She looked at the floor. “My daughter is dead too; she died a year ago. It was my fault, for I’d made her what she was, or I should say that as I had never had any resources of my own I was unable to give her resources to help her.”
“But you survived,” said the priest with pity. “You had no resources, as your daughter had none, yet you survived. Why didn’t she, then?”
Caroline did not move; she continued to look at the floor.
“You suffered as much, perhaps?” continued the priest in his gentle voice. “You lost your parents, your husband, your daughter, but you didn’t die. Are you reproaching yourself too much? It is very good to feel guilt and repent and do penance, but you can’t take the blame for everything on yourself, can you? Your daughter had a father also; perhaps he was to blame too.”
She lifted her head, and her eyes were large and searching and anxious. “That is possible?”
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“Yes. But then, I don’t know all the circumstances. Only your own conscience can tell you if what I’ve said applies to you.”
“I must think about it,” said Caroline. “I have a great deal to think about, and I don’t, I think, have much more time. You see, I have nowhere to go, and that is why I asked you if you really believe there is a God.”
“I know there is God,” said the priest with emphasis. “Even when I feel absolutely dry, I still know it. One of the greatest saints of the Church, St. Thérèse of Avila, wrote that she spent many years in ‘dryness’ and sometimes doubted heaven, but she did not doubt God. You have no pastor you can speak to?”
“No.” Caroline was coloring again. “I wish you to know that this isn’t like me at all. I’ve always shrunk from strangers all my life. I live the life of a recluse; I have no friends. I have two sons — ”
Looking at her intently, Father Bellamy had a sensation of familiarity. He had seen this lady somewhere. He said, “Two sons?”
“Two sons,” she repeated. “But they aren’t more than that to me, possibly because I was never really a mother to them. That is something else I must think about. One lives in Boston; I see him four or five times a year. The other lives in New York; we are estranged.”
Her large and lead-colored lips set themselves firmly, and he knew that she would not discuss her sons with him. The sense of familiarity became stronger.
“I wish,” said Caroline, “that I could believe there is a God. For, you see, I have nowhere to go; I think most of us are like that. It’s the human tragedy.” She stood up. “I destroyed a man today,” she said, and looked him sternly in the eye. “I began to destroy him a year ago, and today I finished it. You would not be able to understand it, but he was more your enemy than he was mine, though I’ve never had so terrible an enemy as he is in all my life. You will not be able to understand this, either, but someday you will, unfortunately.”
She waited for a look of incredulity to appear on his face, but it did not. He had heard too many strange things in his life to be incredulous of anything. He went to the door with her, and he said, “You’ve asked me about God. Faith is a grace which comes from Him; we cannot truly will it for ourselves. But if we ask for it in hope and longing, He will give it to us. Ask Him for that grace.” He stood on the doorstep with her and felt deep compassion. “And when you pray, pray that that dreadful war in Europe will end soon.”
“There is no use praying for that,” said Caroline. She frowned at Amanda’s chauffeur, who had driven the automobile fretfully around the block several times, looking for her. Seeing her, he stopped the vehicle at the curb and got out and stood at attention respectfully. The priest regarded him thoughtfully, then looked at Caroline.
She said, “It was planned a long time ago. I first heard of it in Geneva with my father when I was a very young woman. I listened to his associates. The war will go on, and America will enter it; it was planned. And this is only the beginning.”
“Surely not,” murmured Father Bellamy.
There had been very few times in Caroline’s life when she had noticed that others were suffering or were afraid or poor. All at once, in the strong summer sunshine, she saw the priest’s tired and wasted face, his shabbiness. She remembered the shining poverty of his house, the worn linoleum.
“Would you mind if I gave you some money?” she asked abruptly. “It’s all I ever had — money.”
The priest was astounded. “All I ever had,” said Caroline. “I’d like to give you what I have in my purse. I beg you to take it; it would give me some pleasure.” She turned her back to the street and opened her big purse and brought out a thick roll of yellow bills held together by a rubber band. She pushed it into the priest’s hand.
“I can’t,” began the priest, but she almost rudely pushed by him and went down the steps. He followed her helplessly. She stopped at the sidewalk and looked at him earnestly. “It’s all I ever had to give,” she said. “You mustn’t refuse it; you’d be refusing my life.”
She walked with quick if lumbering steps to the car, and the chauffeur said, “Mrs. Sheldon, I’m afraid you’ve missed your train.”
“No matter,” said Caroline impatiently. “There will be another in less than an hour.” The man closed the door briskly after her with deep respect, and then the automobile moved on, leaving the dumfounded priest still standing on the steps of his house.
“Mrs. Sheldon.” Then the amazed priest knew. His visitor had been Caroline Ames Sheldon, the famous tight-fisted recluse. He went slowly into his house. He put the roll of bills on his desk and counted them. Then he went to the telephone in the hall and called Dr. Clarendon of Sisters of Chanty Hospital, his friend, and told him.
“Well, well,” said Dr. Clarendon, marveling. “Old Caroline, eh? She was in the hospital for a few minutes around last Christmas; a heart seizure of some kind. But an indomitable woman, isn’t she? And she gave you — two thousand dollars? Congratulations, Francis. I’ll wager that was her first charitable donation in all her life. Now you can have those new bells you’ve wanted, or your organ, and then there are all your charities. Old Caroline! I must tell everybody. No one will believe it! And calling on you! What reason did she give? I must tell — ”
“No, please,” said the priest. “You don’t understand, I’m afraid. I only called you to verify that she was indeed Mrs. Sheldon and that I could keep the money. Your description of her was exact. But you mustn’t tell anyone, please. I never saw such despair. I think I know why she came, poor woman. She’s desperate.”
The doctor chuckled. “I’d like to have her three or four hundred million dollars, or it’s probably a lot more than that, and I’d take the despair along with it. Old Hag Caroline Ames! Did she leave a smell of brimstone behind? Better start sprinkling the holy water.”
The priest went into his church and he prayed for Caroline, remembering her face. She reminded him of his aunt, who had been blinded. He had seen Caroline before; he could remember now. He had not only seen her photograph; he had, as she had said, seen her in this church a long time ago. He prayed for her passionately and with all the strength of his soul.
Chapter 5
While Caroline waited for her son Ames, she picked her way through the great boulders covering the sea walk and reached the shingle. It was seldom hot near the sea, but now a steaming giant’s mouth seemed to be pressing over land and water, gaseous and fuming. It concealed the sun; it was the color of wet smoke. The long waves, rushing toward the land in uneasy thunder, were dark gray, ridged with breaking foam and splashes of turquoise, and the horizon was tumultuous. Here and there in the sky lavender clouds were forming in tormented patterns, and now, as Caroline watched, they were veined with branching lightning, and immediately steely paths flashed over the water in answer. But there was no wind; the air suffocated one’s lungs.
Caroline looked to the right and left; her high walls shut off any view of new neighbors, of any view at all but the sea. I should feel, she thought, now that I am released from an old evil lie, a sudden desire to see others besides myself. But that is romanticism. Sudden convulsions of feeling can occur only in the very young. I’ve grown old in my spirit; I’m only a speck of unwilling life still throbbing faintly deep inside the calcified, serrated, and thickened shell I have built about myself for many years, perhaps from the moment I was born. I am blinded by it, deafened by it, imprisoned by it, held immovable by it. I could not change if I wanted to, and I do not want to. What other life could there be for me but the one I know? It’s all such a weariness. If the shell were cracked open I should die in a different environment from the only one I’ve ever known. And I’m not ready to die — not yet — though there is no reason why I should live.
Her father had not really left her a ‘trust’. Yet she must continue as if her old fantasy were still with her. It was still a wall, all that money, which protected her from what could only destroy her.
She went back throu
gh the boulders, slowly, heavily, around the side of the dying house and into what had once been Tom’s cherished gardens. The brush and the wild trees and the knee-high grass murmured apprehensively, though there was still no wind. It was a gray-and-green jungle of struggling life, inhibited by its very profusion. The birds, usually so noisy, were silent. There was not even a bee or a wasp or a butterfly visible. They had all hidden themselves; they had all gone to shelter before the coming storm. But we, thought Caroline, have no shelter, we have no home, none of us. We are open to everything, like exiles pushed from safety. Even I, with all my money. We build our strong cities and they don’t shelter us. We formulate philosophies which do not comfort us. We make all the world clamorous, and nothing listens to us, and everything that is innocent avoids us as though we were death itself. I wonder why?