A Prologue To Love (10 page)

Caroline pulled the brown and green wool tam-o’-shanter from her head so that the pungent wind could touch the thin black braids which she now wore bound tightly about her round skull. Her eyes were tawny and vivid under their black brows. When she smiled, her big white teeth flashed. The large freckles on her coarse nose gave a piquancy to her appearance which only Beth and Tom Sheldon appreciated. When she was alone like this, the clumsy stockiness of her body seemed to disappear; she walked swiftly and lightly. She saw a thousand shadings of entrancing color everywhere. She longed to capture them in her hands and hold them always. She wanted to fix them, not only in her mind, but in time.

Miss Brownley had taught her to paint correctly in water colors, but the tints were too anemic for Caroline, though she did not know why they distressed her. Somewhere, she knew, lived rich colors to match those she saw, colors so vivid that the soul would never tire of them. She had not as yet been to the Boston Museum. The only paintings she had ever seen were Miss Brownley’s pallid water colors framed on yellowish walls, depicting curiously bloodless butterflies hovering over deathly sprays of pale lilacs, or tiny landscapes so muted that it took considerable peering to distinguish them as more than feeble blurs. Caroline’s whole spirit yearned for intense hues and riot; she saw more than mere colors; she saw the joyous and powerful emotion in them. They were eloquent, singing, dazzling. All this was impossible to communicate to Beth.

Beth had bought the bow of bright scarlet ribbon which tied Caroline’s flat black braids to her head. Caroline took it off now, to hold it rapturously in her hand. She would lift it to compare it with a living red leaf. But she was never satisfied. The dead fabric could not duplicate the vital hue. However, she was grateful for the ribbon; it was a tongue of flame in her hand. She swung it like a narrow pennant about her.

Ugly and monstrous though her home was, Caroline, oddly, did not find it so. The browns and stained whites did not revolt her. Her father lived here, and he was enough to give all this a passion of its own. So the girl was humming and smiling when she opened the cracked door that led into the boxed hall with its gloomy oak staircase winding upward to the second, and then to the third, floor. There was no carpeting here, and Beth had long ago given up trying to polish the planked wood. There was a smell in the house like old raspberries, musty and pervading. The light of the autumn did not reach here; all was brown, chill, and dim. Caroline ran into the kitchen, where the heat from the huge black stove almost suffocated her. But there was a fragrance of soup and boiling meat and newly baked apple pie and cheese. Beth had become chronically sulky these past years, but when she saw Caroline her round face with its network of fine wrinkles smiled. She turned her plump body and waved at the girl with a big wooden spoon.

“You’re late, dear,” she said.

“Oh, I stopped in the woods for a while,” Caroline hesitated. Her eager eyes searched Beth’s face, and Beth stopped smiling. “There wasn’t a letter today, dear,” she said with regret. “But sometimes they’re late. There’ll be one tomorrow, you’ll see.”

“Tom must be up near Syracuse by now,” said Caroline, the hope gone from her strong young voice. She put her books on the bare wooden table and looked down at them.

“I’ve just made a pie,” said Beth encouragingly. “Our own apples.” She grimaced. “The birds and the bugs got at them worse this year than ever. But I did save a few, and the pie’s nice. Sit down and have a piece while it’s hot. And there’s some cheese for it. I bought the cheese to catch the mice, but it isn’t too bad. Old Tabby’s too rheumatic now to help out much.”

Caroline sat down. The sad lump in her breast was very heavy.

“I forgot to tell you,” said Beth grimly, though she had not forgotten at all. “Your dad’s home; got in unexpected an hour ago. He’s in the library. He wants to see you at five. Precisely, he said,” and Beth mimicked, without charity, John Ames’ sharp cold accents.

Joy broke over Caroline’s face like a brilliant wave, and for a few moments she was beautiful, her eyes like tawny light. “Papa!” she cried. “But he wasn’t expected back from New York for a week!” She paused and clutched the edges of the scarred table. “You said he wants to see me? He wants to — ”

“That’s what he said,” replied Beth with dryness. But she was full of pity.

“I wonder why,” Caroline marveled. The sadness was gone. “Beth, I do want some of that wonderful pie of yours; it smells like perfume.”

“And I have some hot coffee,” said Beth, glancing at the girl tenderly. “And even some cream.” She stopped in her bustling to touch Caroline’s big head. The braids had slipped when the ribbon was removed; now they fell down Caroline’s broad back. The high-buttoned collar of her brown frock obliterated what little there was of her short strong neck. The fold under her chin was as browned by the sun as was the rest of her square face. Caroline beamed at Beth. “How good you are to me, Beth. You’re just like a mother.”

Caroline felt with certainty that there would be a letter for her from Tom tomorrow. It was good to have another happiness waiting for her as well as the one in the library. She did not see the easy tears in Beth’s emotional eyes, nor hear her sigh. She ate the good pie and sighed with pleasure, for it was spiced with cinnamon and laced with honey and had a sugary crust. “Papa will like this,” she murmured through a mouthful.

“Papa’s going to Boston after he sees you,” said Beth shortly. “About six. On the train.”

“Oh,” said Caroline. She put down the fork and felt surfeited. “He has so much business in Boston,” she said valorously. “And he does so much for poor Aunt Cynthia and Timothy and Melinda.” She reflected that her father seemed particularly fond of Melinda, who was so beautiful.

“Especially for poor Aunt Cynthia,” said Beth wryly.

Caroline nodded vigorously. “That’s because she reminds him so much of poor Mama, Beth.”

“Of course,” said Beth.

Caroline glanced repeatedly at the old wooden clock on the brick wall. It was a quarter past four. Had it stopped? No, it was ticking loudly. The fire in the stove crackled; Caroline could see its redness in the cracks about the iron plates. “I haven’t seen Timothy since last Easter,” said Caroline, who was afraid of her cousin.

“Good thing,” said Beth, who had seen the boy several times. “I never did like that one. He’s like an ice splinter.”

“Well,” said Caroline. “I guess we just don’t understand people like Timothy. And doesn’t he look like Aunt Cynthia? Melinda does too.”

“Yes, doesn’t she?” muttered Beth, slapping the lid back on the soup. “You’d think she was her own daughter.”

“Even her eyes and the color of her hair!” said Caroline, who admired Melinda very much. “Aunt Cynthia dresses her beautifully.”

“Just like she was her daughter,” said Beth with an angry knot in her throat. “Yes indeed.”

“Melinda looks like the portrait of Mama and Aunt Cynthia in Aunt Cynthia’s house,” said Caroline, thinking of the lovely little girl and how wonderful it would be to paint her in living color.

“Yes indeed,” said Beth, and slammed the spoon on the iron sink which had a pump attached.

“I like Melinda,” said Caroline, drinking her steaming coffee. “She goes to a nice school, too.”

“The very best. Miss Stockington’s, Carrie. It would be nice if you could go there too.”

“Oh no,” said Caroline, shocked. “I’d be out of place.” She added, “And Papa can’t afford it.”

“Yes indeed,” said Beth sullenly, and crashed the oven door. “Papa can’t afford it. But Mrs. Winslow can afford Groton for Timothy and Miss Stockington’s for little Melinda, who isn’t yet five years old.”

“I saw Melinda in the school play last Christmas,” said Caroline. “I wish I were an artist! I’d paint Melinda in green light, with her yellow hair and her big gray eyes, with a black kitten on her lap, and there’d be sunshine sloping down through the trees and making the trees look emerald and very dark green with bright flecks of gold.”

Beth thought of the portrait lying in an old trunk at Lyme, and she turned and stared at Caroline, who was sipping her coffee and smiling.

“And Melinda would wear a dress of deep rose color,” said Caroline. “Not a sick, miserable pink. A rose like velvet, with a bright blue sash, and a rose ribbon in her hair.” Her face took on a dreaming expression which was close to ecstasy.

“All those colors wouldn’t match,” said Beth. “They’d clash.”

Caroline shook her head. “Oh no. Not the way I’d like to see it done. Not just painted on the — the paper. Laid on, Beth — you know, with a kind of knife or something, so it would be thick and radiant. Oh, I don’t suppose people paint like that. It would be sort of crude.”

Beth had been listening. She shook her head as Caroline had done. “I suppose you’re right,” she said slowly, thinking of the portrait again. “Only amateurs would do it that way.”

“No elegance,” said Caroline wistfully. “It — it would be like a shout.” She clasped her strong hands on the table. “It would be something different; it would mean something. It just wouldn’t be a pretty picture. But paints are so faint; do you know what I mean?”

“You mean water colors,” said Beth. “But water colors aren’t the only things there are. You’ve got to go to the Boston Museum.”

“Yes,” said Caroline vaguely, imagining endless rooms filled with dim paintings like Miss Brownley’s.

Beth threw a dish on the sink with violence, and Caroline jumped at the noise. Beth swung about, and her round face was flushed and full of emotion. “Carrie! Do you know you aren’t even educated, going to that miserable school? It’s a shame! A girl with a father like yours, going to Miss Brownley’s! You don’t know anything, Carrie! What do you learn there, anyway?”

“I don’t suppose I learn a great deal,” said Caroline, startled. “I learn history, and some things, and how to write nicely.”

“You are wonderful, Carrie, you’re wonderful!” cried Beth. “You are the most wonderful and the sweetest girl in the world!”

She ran to Caroline and gathered the girl to her breast fiercely. Caroline was accustomed to Beth’s occasional outbursts and patted the woman’s shoulder. “Um,” she murmured. “I don’t think I’m wonderful. You’re awfully good to me, Beth, and there’s no way I can tell you what I think about you.”

“Don’t try,” said Beth, wiping her eyes and going back to the stove. “Carrie, if I’d ever been blessed with a child I’d like her to’ve been like you. And I’ll never leave you, Carrie, never!”

John Ames looked at his big daughter as she came timidly into the room. He thought, I’m always surprised at what a monster she is, uncouth and uncivilized and as ugly as he was. He said in a distasteful voice without even first greeting her, “Why is your hair hanging down your back, Caroline? You’re a great girl now, going on sixteen. Aren’t you a little old for such things?”

He had not seen his daughter for nearly two months. Caroline, who could never accustom herself to her father’s abruptness and who always blamed herself for irritating him, turned red and looked at him humbly. She murmured, “I’m sorry, Papa. I took the ribbon off, and I was so glad to see you that I didn’t wait to comb my hair again.”

“I expect, at the very least, that my daughter should be a lady,” he said. It was painful not only to see Caroline but also to feel that sharp compunction when he was most disagreeable to her.

“Sit down, Caroline,” he said. “I have only an hour to talk to you. Then I must leave for Boston. But first I want to tell you that I’ve arranged for you to go to Miss Stockington’s school in Boston; you’ll stay with your Aunt Cynthia for five days, arriving at her home on Sunday night and returning the next Friday night. You’ll be a woman in about two years; it’s time for you to learn something more than you’re learning at Miss Brownley’s.”

Caroline, who had seated herself on the edge of a chair, was so stunned that she glared at her father. Always attuned to all things, she was even now aware of the damp and moldering smell of the long old library with its sifting books, its narrow windows dark with velvet draperies and the quick night outside, the odor of dust and soft decay and ancient carpet and the wan fire of soft coal in the grate. They intensified her overwhelming dismay. The cracked black leather chairs glimmered in dull lamplight and seemed to jeer at her from every wrinkled plane.

“You mean, Papa, that I’ll not be here for five days every week?” she stammered.

Not to walk any longer, except for two days a week, in the warm bronze autumn, in the lustrous white winter, in the golden spring — it was not possible. Not to see old Jim every day, and Beth, her only companions, was something she could not bear.

“You don’t have to look as if you’re about to be executed,” said John Ames with annoyance. “After all, it’s very kind of your Aunt Cynthia to offer this; in fact, she persuaded me that Miss Brownley isn’t adequate. Your aunt has a beautiful home; her son is away at school and Melinda” — at this point his face changed subtly — “is only a child. Perhaps she’s lonely. And she does have your interest at heart.”

Caroline wanted to burst into tears, but she knew that her father would then stand up in disgust and walk out as he had often done before. She put her hand helplessly on the heavy walnut table beside her; in spite of Beth’s efforts, the dust gathered daily like shifting sand. Caroline began to trace her initials in the dust and swallowed her tears and made her throat stiff. “It’s kind of Aunt Cynthia,” she murmured huskily. She kept her head bent.

“Listen to me, Caroline,” he said in a rising voice. “And don’t take up my time with foolish remarks.” He took out his big gold watch, glanced at it, and replaced it. “You are old enough to know some things, and I am here now to tell them to you, for tomorrow is Saturday and I want you ready that night to leave for Boston. Jim will drive you to the station. You don’t know what a sacrifice I am making,” he said, as if to himself.

“Yes, Papa.” Caroline lifted her head and looked at her father obediently, with the tears hanging on her long thick lashes and the lamplight shining in her golden eyes. John looked aside, and she thought how handsome he was and how he never grew any older, and how incredible it was, and marvelous, that she was his daughter.

“Caroline, you’re my only child, and it’s not likely that I’ll ever marry and have other children. I don’t think you’re a fool, though you always act like one. There were never any fools in my family, and there’s no reason for there to be one now.

“I’ve never told you about my family and yours. You know only that your mother was Ann Esmond of Boston. But my own mother was of a family much more distinguished than the Esmonds; one of her ancestors was a Virginian, a general in the army of George Washington. Don’t ask me her name; I won’t tell you. As for my father — ”

He stopped. Caroline was giving him her full and bewildered attention. She had never thought of her father’s having any family or even of his ever having had any parents.

John Ames stood up and went to the fire and kicked a coal back onto the hearth. The rug was sizzling, and the wet harsh smell of burning wool filled the air. John stamped at the smoldering spark and muttered. He said without turning to his daughter: