A Prologue To Love (16 page)

Without illusion she saw her broad shoulders, her large full breasts, her thick waist, and the outline of her heavy thighs under her brown foulard dress. But even these had a splendor to her critical appraisal. For the first time in months she thought longingly of canvas and paint, and her fingers arched and trembled. If only I had them, she said to herself, I’d paint my own portrait and send it to Tom.

She forced herself away from the mirror. She had work to do. Her vital mind had infinite strength, and so she sat down and opened her books. She became engrossed, forgetting the fine, flowing cascade of her hair, and even Tom. She looked about for a volume of Pythagoras which she had brought with her from Lyndon, but she could not find it. There was an advanced problem she wanted to solve. Then she remembered leaving it in the little exotic library downstairs and ran to the door. She flung it open and looked cautiously down the hall, her hair spilling forward across her shoulders.

She heard a murmur of voices from somewhere. She did not want to encounter any servants on her way downstairs and waited. Then she became conscious that the voices were those of her father and her aunt. She frowned. What had he to say to frivolous Aunt Cynthia that would give his voice that deep and murmurous sound, that deep and caressing sound? He was laughing; he had never laughed that way before, to Caroline’s knowledge, and then his voice sharpened. Caroline heard his footsteps nearby, and then she knew that her father was not downstairs. He was in her aunt’s room.

For a moment or two her thoughts were stunned, and she stood there helplessly in her doorway. Then the thoughts came jumbling back. Of course, her father had been going over Aunt Cynthia’s household books; that sharpness was familiar to his daughter and was always connected with money. But Caroline’s hand was cold and a little damp as she pulled the door almost closed. She heard Cynthia’s voice quite clearly now, raised as if in vexation:

“No, you cannot stay with me tonight. Be understanding and go up to your own room. I’m tired.”

Caroline was freshly stunned; the dryness in her throat turned to parched sickness. “No, you cannot stay with me tonight.” But men ‘stayed’ only with their wives or, in the case of esoteric females in far countries, with their mistresses.

Stay! With Aunt Cynthia! Caroline, clutching the edge of the door, leaving it ajar but an inch or so, leaned against the side and closed her eyes tightly. She was wrong. She was stupid. She was evil. Her father . . . She heard Cynthia’s light laugh, and it sounded strange to Caroline, intimate and warm and mocking. The door to Cynthia’s room opened, and Caroline glanced through the small opening of her own door, her legs trembling.

A gush of light flooded out into the quiet dark hall. Cynthia believed her servants to be cozily in their beds, Melinda asleep, and Caroline absorbed in her solitary thoughts or asleep also. She stood on the threshold of her sitting room, all sparkling silver and bright hair, and John Ames was facing her and her arms were about his neck and she was kissing his chin, slowly, teasingly, deliberately, and avoiding his mouth archly. Caroline could even see the dancing flash of her eyes, the warmness of her evading mouth, and her half-naked breast. She could also see that her father was clasping Cynthia about her slender waist and pulling her close to him. Then he put up one hand, caught the teasing face, and kissed the laughing mouth hard and long.

Caroline slid her door shut. She felt weak and deathly ill. Bent like an old woman, she crept, one foot after another, to her bed and fell upon it. She buried her face in the rose-scented linen; it sickened her and she sat up, gasping. She pushed her hair back from her wet face; her fingers felt like wood.

Her Aunt Cynthia was not only a perfumed and spendthrift woman, she was also a bad woman. Mistress. She was John Ames’ mistress. She was not married to him. She was shameless, polluted, corrupt. In some way she had entangled Caroline’s father, against all his uprightness, his integrity.

Caroline’s violent thoughts immediately absolved her father, who had become involved with an unspeakable woman. For what else but money? That made her — a strumpet, a drab, a dreadful creature who sold herself like a trinket. Did she sell herself to other men also, like the women in Zola’s books? (Caroline had found those books in Cynthia’s small and cherished library and had read them with shrinking disgust and fascination.)

The specific details were still beyond Caroline; Zola had more than hinted at them, but they had slid over Caroline’s virginal mind like harmless aspic. There were things men and women did together; she averted her mind from them, feeling some curious disloyalty to her father.

We must get away from here, thought Caroline in numb shock. I must get Papa out of this house.

She jumped up. She was desperately sick. She vomited for a considerable time. Later, exhausted, drained of body, scarlet of eyelid from tears, she pulled a blanket from the bed and slept on the floor. But before that she braided her hair tightly into hard thin ropes.

As John Ames and his daughter drove off the next warm morning to the harbor in Cynthia’s smart victoria, John glanced sideways at Caroline and with his customary distaste. Caroline’s dress, very primly draped and somewhat too tight for her heroic figure, was of dull silk in an unbecoming brown printed over with large white roses. Her small bonnet of brown straw rode on the top of her tightly coiled braids. Her hands, in brown gloves, clutched her big leather bag. Cynthia had sighingly assured John that all that Caroline had was now expensive, except for the seamstress, who had no sense of style at all. John glanced down at Caroline’s feet; she did not wear the soft slippers now very fashionable; her shoes were hard and brown and stiff. John frowned, and then he was struck by a kind of heavy familiar sorrow which he never investigated.

Why did Caroline have to resemble
him
? John asked himself now, as he had asked himself thousands of times before. She had inherited nothing of the physical or mental features of her parents. In appearance, in character, she resembled only David Ames, who had starved his wife to death and had left his young son a pauper.

Caroline, as usual, was shyly silent. John was accustomed to this. He was also accustomed to large and adoring glances. Caroline was not looking at him as they bowled over the cobblestones of Commonwealth Avenue and the sun shone down upon them. She did not look at the ladies on the proper ‘sunny side’ of the avenue, who strolled together, enjoying the soft gentle air with its hint of the sea. And John noticed that his daughter was even paler than usual except for blotches about her mouth, and that her eyes were red-rimmed and cast down, the lids swollen.

“Are you sick?” he asked irritably.

“No, Papa,” she said, almost in a whisper. “I think I’m just a little tired.” He saw that her throat moved as if she were gulping on tears, and her thick black lashes glistened.

“I thought you would enjoy seeing something of what I have and what will be yours,” he said, folding his gloved hands on the top of his cane and trying to control his annoyance and the odd sadness that invariably followed it.

“Oh, I am enjoying it,” said Caroline. Now she looked at him for the first time, and in spite of their swollen appearance and red edges her eyes were arrestingly beautiful in the sunlight, and piteous. “It’s just — Papa,” she continued on a desperate burst, “I want to go back to Lyndon and then to Lyme!”

“So you shall,” he said. “Don’t you always in the summer? You’ll be going back next week for a little while. I have plans; I’ll tell you about them later.” He paused, then asked curiously, “Don’t you like living with your aunt in Boston?”

“No!” Her tone was so violent that John turned to her with deeper curiosity.

“I thought you did. You haven’t shown much anxiety to go to Lyndon on the weekends these last few years. And Beth worries because you seldom write to her.”

Caroline was silent. Her hands twisted on the purse which perched on her lap. “Don’t you like your aunt and Melinda?” asked John.

Caroline turned her eyes on him imploringly. “Papa,” she said, “I don’t have words to say the things I often want to say. No, I don’t like Aunt Cynthia. It’s not that she isn’t good to me. It — it’s just that we don’t understand each other; I feel a stranger in that house. I used to like little Melinda; I know it’s wrong not to like a child. But I don’t like Melinda any more. I’m terribly sorry, Papa.”

John’s face became cold and stiff, and he warily studied Caroline out of the corner of his eye. She was desolately struggling not to cry. He moved away from her a little on the soft cushions of the carriage and then stared before him. Cynthia was an astute woman; she had assured him that Caroline knew nothing of her relations with him. Then he was angry. How dared such a big lump of an unattractive girl dislike Melinda, who was not only lovely but of an almost angelic disposition? His anger became more intense, for it was spreading to Cynthia also, Cynthia who would not marry him and give him another acknowledged daughter in Melinda.

“I’ve offended you, Papa,” said Caroline miserably.

“Yes, you have. You express your dislike of two people who have never harmed you and who have tried to love you. I suppose you don’t like Timothy, either?”

“I detest him,” said Caroline helplessly. “That’s wrong too. But I really have reason not to like Timothy. He makes fun of me; he’s cruel in that smooth way of his. He doesn’t like anyone but Melinda. I want to go away before he comes home from school. Do you know what he calls me, Papa? The Gargoyle.”

John pressed his lips together to keep from smiling, then was annoyed at the recurring sadness that came to him increasingly when he thought of Caroline or talked to her.

“Frankly,” he said, “you’re not alone in disliking Timothy. I respect his mind; he will be a great lawyer, and I’ll have use for him later. But that is all. I’ll do what I can for him for his mother’s sake. Beyond that, nothing. At least you and I understand each other on that point, don’t we?”

Caroline was so grateful that she smiled, and her smile was brilliant and for an instant or two she had an intense charm. John was startled, and he frowned thoughtfully. With those eyes, he said to himself, and with that smile, if she’d just practice it more, there could be a husband for her, and children. Moreover, Boston men preferred money to beauty. He felt almost fond of Caroline and patted her hand.

“I, for one,” he said, “never underestimated your intelligence, Caroline. You are sometimes awkward, and you’re too shy and afraid of people. After all, you’ll be very wealthy someday, when I am dead.”

Caroline looked at him again with her eager and fascinating smile. “Papa, I know I’m very afraid of people. You see, I keep thinking that you have to have a lot of money so they can’t hurt you.”

“So you have,” he said, and smiled at her in return. “No one can hurt you if you are rich. Did you think we were poor? I think you’re old enough to know that I am a very wealthy man now.”

“So Aunt Cynthia said,” replied Caroline. “But I didn’t believe her.”

John meditated on this sardonically. “You can believe her,” he said.

Caroline gave a deep sigh; some of the rigidity left her body. She was like one who saw a threat removed.

John went on: “In your position it is very necessary to know many people. It will be even more necessary when you are alone. Not that I intend to die soon, so don’t look so stricken. Caroline, you aren’t a child now. Have you ever thought of the day when you’ll want to be married?”

He was taken aback at her sudden blush and the dropping away of her eyes.

“Have you?” he insisted.

“Oh yes, Papa. Oh yes,” she murmured.

John stroked the golden head of his cane and watched her narrowly, his interest increasing. “Anyone in particular, Caroline?”

“Yes, Papa.” She bent her chin until it almost touched her wide chest. “Please, Papa, don’t ask me any more just now.”

“Well, well,” he observed. “But I must ask you a few questions. I won’t ask the young man’s name, seeing you’re so disturbed. I only hope, though, that his family has plenty of money. Girls like yourself are often the victims of fortune hunters, men who marry for money and have no money of their own. That is one thing you must be on guard against. Now what is wrong? Why are you so pale?”

“Papa” — she spoke as if her throat pained her — “not every man who doesn’t have money marries a girl because she has money. Perhaps he may like her for herself.”

John was genuinely worried. “Caroline,” he said sharply, “don’t be a fool. And let’s be candid with each other. Men, poor or rich, often marry penniless girls if the girls are beautiful. But you are not beautiful, Caroline. A man without money would marry you only for your money — my money. You’ll see; you’ll be surrounded by paupers who want to marry a fortune rather than try to make fortunes for themselves. And paupers have a way of ingratiating themselves with girls who have money and no beauty. On the other hand, there are dozens of young Boston men who have a proper respect for property and wealth, having both themselves, and who will marry girls like you of good family and will make excellent husbands and increase both fortunes. Caroline, have you been having dreams of any particular young man who has no money and who is already flattering you in the hope of marrying you in the future?”

Caroline could not speak. She thought despairingly: Not Tom. Tom loves me.

John, seeing her face, was alarmed. He said in an even sharper voice, “Caroline! I want you to remember something. If you have any young man in mind, and I can’t think of any of the sons of the people who visit your aunt who are poor — First Families in Boston are never poor — just tell him this as a test. Tell him that you will inherit not a single cent of my money if he doesn’t have a fortune of his own. Promise me you’ll test him that way.”

Caroline lifted her head, and her father saw her profile, which had suddenly acquired both pain and dignity. “Yes, Papa,” she said. “I’ll tell him that. You see, I’d want to know, myself.”

“Good girl,” he said, relieved. He looked at her closely. She was no fool, his daughter.

“When you put him to the test he’ll run off as fast as his legs can carry him,” said John, smiling somberly.

Not Tom, Caroline repeated to herself with deeper despair. And then: Not Tom? Tom? A sick lethargy began to spread over her body, as if she had been poisoned.

She felt a strong cool wind on her face. She became aware that considerable time had passed and that she had not known it. The sunny streets and trees and pleasant houses had disappeared.

The sea, the harbor, the wharves, and the docks were nothing new to Caroline Ames. Miss Stockington, one of whose ancestors had been a pirate of no mean accomplishment who had been hanged in Liverpool when the Spaniards had tiresomely complained too loud and too long of him to the English government, insisted that her young ladies take a yearly expedition to the harbor ‘to see their inheritance’. Caroline considered Boston Harbor somewhat overwhelming, harsh, noisy, and too exuberant and too clangorous. She preferred the ocean at Lyme, with the cold blue waves leaping upon the black rocks and sprawling in white abandon over the bitter shingle, and with its thunderous voice which strangely seemed the very voice of silence. There was an order in wildness which was absent in the human order of the harbor, with its massed ships, its vessels waiting at anchor, its steam, the dirty grayish sails of clippers dipping in a sea which also appeared dirty, its warehouses dripping with a kind of salty black oil, its smells of fish and sweat and pungent spice and bananas, its stinking, tarry freighters, its coils of harsh rope, and its filthy stanchions. And, above all, its clamor of tongues.

She had expected to be here now, and she had some vague idea that her father owned, or partly owned, a clipper or a freighter. But her eyes opened on an unfamiliar scene. The ocean rolled beyond, uneasy on this June day, as if it carried with it memories of storms and battles far in the distance, and its swells glimmered as if oiled and its color was dull green. It did not thunder; it hissed. Two huge docks extruded into it, and everywhere stood the few familiar things: the great black freighters dripping and vomiting bilge, their decks slippery and filthy, their smokestacks rusty and oozing, and the unquiet clippers whose sails were being lowered. There was also the smell of tar and rope in the warm sunshine, and warehouses loomed near the docks, and there were the customary wagons and drays wheeling about on the quivering wood, the horses stamping.

But the unfamiliar things caught Caroline’s immediate and shrinking attention. Here there were no good-humored bawlings of seamen, no whistles, no singing, no laughter, no running of strong legs. A curious quiet hung over the docks, for all their busyness, a quiet that was swift and orderly but also dimly sinister even to Caroline. There were no regular dock police here, idly moving about and raucously chatting with the seamen. There were men — and now Caroline trembled — exactly like Aleck in the shop of Fern and Son, burly and savage men with brutally alert eyes and swinging clubs and quick, feline steps. Similar men, big and bulky, yet tensely aware, stood on the decks of the freighters, chewing tobacco and watching everything, and if they spoke it was in undertones to each other. They leaned on railings, spat, and muttered, and their eyes were sharp and watchful. Caroline, feeling exposed and vulnerable and open to attack, looked toward her father, but he had alighted from the victoria and was looking at the many great ships. The vehicle seemed grotesque on the dock, like a flounced lady in a foundry. Caroline, with a sensation of again being abandoned to violence, glanced over her shoulder to the warehouses. Their windows were barred and shuttered; only their great doors, like hungry mouths, stood open to receive the swift freight being carried into them under the eyes of the private police, who swung their clubs for instant action. And on the warehouses there were no familiar merchant names. Only one was painted on them: AMES.