A Prologue To Love (4 page)

“That’s nice,” said Tom, gentle again.

“She gave me a birthday present last April,” said Caroline. “A little doll; she made the clothes herself. It was the first doll I ever had.”

“Don’t you get Christmas presents?” asked Tom disbelievingly.

Caroline shook her large head. “No. Papa doesn’t believe in them. He says it’s a waste of money and foolish. But he gave me three dollars on my birthday.”

“Doesn’t he ever bring you anything when he comes home?”

“No,” said Caroline, surprised. “Why should he?”

“I’ll be damned,” said Tom.

Caroline twisted her hands together. She had heard anger in Tom’s voice. “My papa loves me very much,” she said. “And I love him more than anything. I don’t need presents.”

Beth came out on the rickety porch, her head wrapped in a shawl. “Carrie!” she shouted, taking a careful step or two toward the treacherous broken steps. “Carrie, you come in now and have your supper! And who’re you talking to?” She peered at the children in the sullen half-light.

Tom waved to her. “It’s just me, Mrs. Knowles!” he shouted back. “Tom Sheldon. Just talking to Carrie here. Mind?”

“Well, no,” she screamed, and smiled. “Come on, Carrie.” She returned to the house and shut the battered door. She went to the fire, still smiling. “Well, something’s happened I’m glad of. Carrie’s talking to the Sheldon boy. Real natural, like a child should.”

“She can’t talk to him,” said Kate. “He’ll never stand for it. You know what he thinks of the village people. I’ll give that girl a talking to.” She twitched her shawl. “Why doesn’t the brat come in?”

“I’ll be right here tomorrow,” Tom was promising Caroline. “Same time. I have to help my dad during the day.”

“Come back tomorrow,” said Caroline. “Be sure and come back!”

Kate never permitted anything to interfere with what she fondly called her ‘digestion’; she decided not to upbraid Caroline until after supper. But her expression was grim. As the two women and the child sat at the table in the bleak lamplight and firelight, she gave Caroline intimidating glances, of which Caroline was utterly unaware. Caroline was thinking of Tom as she ate. Her beautiful hazel eyes glowed in her plain, nearly ugly face. The thick lashes that sheltered them were like a hedge about golden pools. There was even some color on her square cheeks. She had a dreaming expression, soft and reminiscent. Beth watched her, her sentimental heart yearning and tender. Why, the poor little thing was almost pretty! And all that came from just once being natural and talking to another child!

The dinner was plentiful but poor in quality, for Kate ‘watched’ the bills scrupulously. Beth did the cooking, but there was little she could accomplish in the way of a fine meal under the circumstances of a restricted budget. And what, she would ask herself despairingly, could one do when the purse permitted only tough, boiled meat and boiled turnips and mashed potatoes without butter, and coarse bread and weak tea? She was certain that he fed himself well in all those foreign places and in Boston and New York and Washington, for he had a sleek look, and his skin was well tended and polished. But his child could eat like a beggar for all he cared.

Caroline ate absently and with her usual silence. She had never known excellent food in all her life. She was permitted but one cup of milk a day, and never any sweets or cakes except what Beth could bake her, the ingredients of which Beth bought herself from her meager wage. Caroline had never been truly hungry and had never relished any meal. Her palate was so blunted that on the twice-yearly occasions of her visits to her Aunt Cynthia on Beacon Street she could not enjoy the splendid and delicately flavored food. It seemed very odd to her that anyone could eat pheasant with chestnut dressing, wine-flavored sauces, roast meat and peculiar vegetables, such as artichokes under glass, and glacés, and rich fruit cakes, and coffee floating in cream touched with brandy.

In the way of old people, Kate became drowsy after supper and forgot that she must admonish Caroline. So at eight o’clock Beth took Caroline’s hand and led her from the room, carrying a half-burned candle in an old brass holder. The narrow hall outside the parlor was as black and cold as death, whistling with the wind that penetrated the thousand cracks in the ancient house. The faint candlelight shifted in these drafts, showing the unpolished floor, on which there was no carpeting, and the shut door of the dining room that reflected back no gleam of burnished wood. The woman and the child hurried up the echoing stairs, which trembled under their tread. They reached a long thin hall with closed doors; a mouse squeaked away from them, and Beth jumped. The little beams of the candle flickered in the musty gloom; the house smelled of mold and mice and bad drains and memories of boiled cabbage. The damp walls were peeling, the timeless wallpaper of roses and leaves dripping slightly with sea dampness. Beth opened a door, and the air that gushed out at her was bitterly arctic.

The room they entered was small, with a high cracked ceiling. The walls had been only plastered more than forty years ago; they were discolored with damp to a soiled gray. Here, also, there were no carpets; the small window was uncurtained, with only shutters to keep out the night and the early sun. A narrow bed with no counterpane stood in the center of the room, its thin cheap blankets smooth, its pillowcases very white from Beth’s scrubbing. A chest of drawers, with the varnish warped upon it, lurked against a wall, and there was one single rush chair near the bed. This was Caroline’s room, no better and no worse than the other bedrooms, and without heat of any kind.

Beth put the candlestick on the chair, for the room had no table. “Lord,” she said, “we’ll have to get to bed in a hurry, won’t we, dear? Now, let me help you get undressed.” Caroline was ten years old, but Beth loved these ministrations, which filled her lonely heart with affection. She stripped off Caroline’s wool plaid dress — an ugly plaid of serviceable serge bought two years ago — and then the girl’s knitted petticoats and woolen drawers and darned cotton stockings. The child stood before her, hugging her thick body for warmth, while Beth shook out the flannel nightgown which she had folded in the morning under the pillows. The flannel had once been white; it was now yellow from countless washings. “There,” said Beth, dropping the too short garment over Caroline’s shoulders and smoothing it down with the gentlest hands. “Now we’ll be comfortable. Get into bed, sweetheart, and I’ll hear your prayers.”

But Caroline, who seldom spoke, now wished to talk. “I like Tom,” she said shyly. “He’s awfully funny, but I like him. He swears. I like to hear him swear.”

“Boys shouldn’t swear,” said Beth, without reproof, however. “Tom’s a good boy. He was just bragging to you, the way boys brag to girls. I’m glad you like him.” Beth tucked the blankets closely about Caroline’s chin. Then she sat in the candlelight and smiled at the child, putting the candle on the floor, repressing her shivers.

“I do like him,” said Caroline, and her child’s voice, naturally husky and slow, trembled a little. “Not the way I like Papa.” Beth smoothed the long thin braids of dark hair. “Beth, do you think Papa will be home tomorrow?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Beth, and her voice hardened.

“Tom thinks he should bring me presents. Isn’t that funny?”

“Very funny,” said Beth. “Now, let’s pray and go to sleep.”

But Caroline was not prepared to pray yet. She studied Beth solemnly. Then she smiled, and those wonderful eyes of hers, so pure, so large, so absolutely beautiful, made the woman catch her breath. “You know what he said, Beth? He said I was pretty. Honest he did.”

“You are, you are!” said Beth fervently, as if defying someone. “You have eyes like an angel, and a lovely smile. Oh, my dear, do smile often! Do you know you seldom smile?”

“You mean I’m really pretty?” asked Caroline, her voice trembling again. “Cross your heart?”

Beth immediately crossed her heart, and her comely face shone as if fresh from tears. Caroline at once giggled. The child nestled on her starched cold pillows. She folded her hands and recited:

“Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,

Watch the night this sleeping child.”

It was too cold for the nightly Bible reading. Beth was already numb; her throat scratched, and she sneezed. She stood up and lifted the candle. Then Caroline put out her broad hand and caught Beth’s dress and she colored shyly.

“Beth,” she whispered, “you thought I didn’t know it was your birthday tomorrow. But I did!” She unclutched her other hand and revealed three dirty one-dollar bills. “They’re for you, for your birthday! I got them out of my bank.”

Beth took the old and rumpled bills and looked at them by the light of the candle. She could not speak.

Caroline sat up in alarm. “Beth!” she cried. “What’s the matter, Beth? Why are you crying? Beth, Beth, why are you crying?”

Kate received a letter from Boston and clicked her teeth. She said to Beth, “Well,
he
isn’t coming out here to take us to Lyndon, after all. We’re to pack, call a hack, get on the train ourselves, and open up the other house and close this. Better move, Beth. School’s already open in Lyndon, and the brat’s got to go.”

“He’s staying in Boston?” asked Beth.

“For a bit, a few extra days.”

Beth’s eyes brightened. She said, “Maybe he has a secret love there.”

“No secret love,” replied Kate with her crone’s chuckle. “He’s got an office there. How sentimental you are, my girl.”

“He’s handsome enough,” said Beth hopefully. “And not too old. And he dresses well.”

“Like a toff,” Kate agreed. “Well, you’d best get down the bags from the attic. There’s some old blankets there too. Better pack them; we’ll need ‘em in Lyndon. I’ve a feeling we’re in for a hard winter this time.”

“They’re just rags,” said Beth. She climbed the shaking narrow stairs to the gloomy attic, holding high her brown woolen skirts to keep them from the thick soft dust. Once in the attic, she shut the decrepit door and licked her lips, then tiptoed to one of the tiny windows at the end of the long cold room. She rubbed a spot in the dusty glass and peered out, smiling like a conspirator. Tom and Caroline, far behind the windowless lower back of the house — as Beth had advised — were tossing a ball to each other. Caroline was learning to run quite lightly for one of her bodily form. Beth could see her smile. The child jumped on the low dunes; now Tom was chasing her playfully. The wind blew her braids; there was a rosy color on her cheeks; she pushed Tom and he pretended to be overwhelmed and fell flat on his face. Caroline clapped her hands.

Sighing and smiling secretly to herself, Beth looked for the bags they had brought in June. Long black spiderwebs, like thick nets, hung from the rough wooden ceiling with its pitched roof; the dust on the floor was like a carpet. It was very cold here, and yet airless, and had the musty, almost evil, smell of shut old places. Mice squeaked constantly in hidden corners dark with age and shadows. After gathering the tattered bags and her own straw suitcases, Beth paused. She listened intently. But Kate never came up here on her arthritic and ancient legs. There was no sound but the heaving and incessant pulsing of the sea, like a gigantic and mysterious heart. Beth had bought a naked waxen doll in the village for Caroline’s Christmas present; she had spent the three dollars Caroline had given her for her birthday. It was very pretty and large, with blue glass eyes tangled in a thicket of spiky lashes, and it wore a perpetual rosy smile, and its arms and legs could be moved. Moreover, it had a mane of coarse yellow horsehair. It deserved the finest of satin and silk and velvet clothing. Thoughtfully the woman eyed some old trunks in the attic. Old trunks were famous for containing cast-off dresses and laces and ribbons. Beth tiptoed to the trunks and opened one. It held nothing but rusty iron tools and some chains. She closed it; the next one held not a thing but dust. What had become of the dead Ann’s dresses and mantles and hats? There was one last trunk, and the lid creaked loudly when Beth opened it.

A flat thin parcel, wrapped in newspaper so old that it was yellow and broken, lay in the bottom of the trunk. Beth curiously picked it up; she knew at once from the weight and the bumpy border of the parcel that it was a picture of some kind. The newspaper crackled and fell apart in her hands. The light in the attic was failing; Beth carried the parcel to the window and, holding it close to her eyes, peered at the newspaper. It had been published, not in Boston, but in a strange place called Genesee, New York, and the date was April 4, 1839. Thirty-one years ago! The paper drifted in crisp fragments from Beth’s hands. Then recklessly she tore the rest away.

It was a portrait, about twenty inches by twenty-eight. Beth held it closer to the gray and uncertain light. It was as if the young Caroline were looking up at her from the canvas. The shimmering golden eyes smiled at Beth from the square pale face with its big chin and coarse nose. Big ears flared from the sides of the too large head; that head appeared to be set, as Caroline’s was, almost solidly on the wide shoulders, with practically no neck. But the dark fine hair was very thin, appearing hardly more than a glimmering lacquer over the skull.

Then Beth, holding the portrait closer to the indistinct light, saw that this was a portrait, not of a girl or a woman, but of a man of about thirty-eight or a little younger. He was dressed in the fashion she remembered of her own father; he did not wear the modern wide black or crimson or dark blue cravat. He wore a white stock pierced with a simple golden pin. Beth knew nothing of art. She only knew that the face — especially the eyes — was very vivid and alive. She saw that some words had been brushed upon the lower right-hand corner of the canvas, and she had to squint to read them.

“Self-portrait. D.A. 1838.”

The canvas had been set in a carved wooden frame; flecks of gold still remained on it; they filtered on Beth’s hands. A gust of wind caused the fragments of paper on the floor to move and whisper like old dried leaves, and Beth started. Suddenly there was a harsh pattering on the wooden roof; it had begun to rain, and the large drops were stonelike on the thin shingles. Beth put the portrait back in the trunk. She brushed up the fragments of old paper and tossed them onto the portrait. But even in that dusk the eyes shone up at her, living and vital, and very kind, with a hint of shyness. Shivering, Beth closed the trunk with a feeling that she was shutting away, not a portrait, but a face that lived and understood. It was a kind of horror to her, thinking that those eyes now stared in darkness.

She gathered up the empty bags and lumbered down the stairs with them. Kate was drowsing before the low driftwood fire. She opened her eyes as Beth entered. “You took your time,” she grumbled. “I could do with some of your tea; my feet are like death.”

“Where is Carrie?” asked Beth.

“In the kitchen. Stuffing herself, as usual, the sly fox. I heard the cupboards opening.”

Beth sat down and absently brushed dust from her skirts and hands. “The kettle’s hot,” suggested Kate impatiently. Beth continued to dust herself.

“You never told me,” she murmured. “Did
he
have any brothers?”

“
Him
? Nary a one I ever heard of. Why?”

“I just wondered. Didn’t you say he was from Boston?”

“That’s what I heard, from Ann. Born in Boston. Dear me, are you never going to stop being curious about him? What’s he to you?”

“After all!” said Beth, looking up. “It’s natural to be curious about people! Am I a dead stick?” She paused while Kate peered at her humorously. “Never mind. Did you ever hear of a place called Genesee, New York State?”

“How you change subjects! No, I never did. Did your husband come from there?”

“I don’t know,” said Beth vaguely. “It just floated into my mind — Genesee. Did you ever see
his
father, Kate?”

“No, for goodness’ sake! Heard his parents died when he was almost a baby.”

Beth thought, 1839. She shook her head, baffled, then took the tea can from the mantelpiece. She stood with it in her hands and looked about her at the dreary walls with their peeling wallpaper. There were no pictures in this house. She thought of the portrait in its trunk, immured in the attic, and shivered again.

“Have you got a chill?” asked Kate in her sharp voice.

The man stood in the middle of the beautiful drawing room of the house on Beacon Street. The room was long but narrow, for the house itself was that shape, and of rosy brick with gleaming white shutters and a door of polished wood with a fine old fanlight above it. It was the first of October, but chilly, and a fire burned briskly in a white marble fireplace of Italian origin and excellently carved. The tall windows at each end of the room, framed by French draperies of blue and rose and gold brocade, let in the mellow sunshine of autumn. One window looked out at the brick-paved street with its opposite houses equally as well built and handsome as this; the other window showed a small garden. The golden leaves of an elm tree brushed the grass; each leaf was plated with gilt sunshine.

An Aubusson carpet covered the floor of the room in shades of gray, dim blue, muted yellow, and pale scarlet. These shades were repeated in the French chairs and sofas scattered about the room; little fragile tables with silver or glass lamps stood about, holding exquisite boxes of Florentine origin, or tiny ivory statuettes, or English dancing figures in swirls of porcelain lace, or small vases of flowers. The walls had been painted a soft ivory, and the high ceiling was ivory also, with moldings of gold. A great portrait of two young blond girls, dressed in identical dresses of blue velvet, hung over the mantelpiece.

The smoky eyes, set in faces like blush roses, smiled down at the man. It was impossible to discern any difference in the features of the girls, and it was apparent they were twins. Pearl necklaces curved about their long white throats, and pearls were fastened in their ears. Their lovely hair was parted in the center and then allowed to fall in cascades of curls about their dainty shoulders. One girl sat, the other leaned, standing, behind her.

The room had a rich odor of spice, burning wood, and flowery perfume. An occasional carriage rumbled on the bricks outside; the mellow light, almost tawny, brightened through the polished windows. It sprang back in colored light from the huge crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling.

The man frowned. A door near the fireplace opened, and a maid in black bombazine and a white frilled apron and cap entered the room, carrying a silver tray on which were a glass decanter filled with sherry and two small glasses of curious shape. She curtsied and then placed the tray on a table by the fire. “The mistress will be down in a moment, sir,” she murmured, and retreated from the room. The man lifted one of the glasses; it was as smooth as silk, and carved and heavy. He hesitated, then filled it with sherry. He stood and sipped. It reminded him of the mellow day and the mellow city. Ann had once said, “Boston is an autumn city, even in spring or summer. Like a topaz.” Another carriage rumbled past the house. The fire blazed stronger, and the scented air was pleasantly warm. No, thought the man, it isn’t like a topaz. It’s like this sherry, aged and matured. He opened a box on the table and took out a glac
é
chestnut and chewed it. Cynthia spared herself nothing. He frowned again.

He began to wander slowly about the room. But he finally came back to the fire. He studied the sherry bottle; it was really a carafe, and he had never seen it before. But Cynthia was extravagant; she was always buying beautiful things, though she could not afford them. This was eighteenth-century, he was certain; it was of the most gleaming crystal with an overlay of silver tracery, vines, bunches of grapes, tendrils, with little faunlike faces peeping mischievously through the broad leaves. What delicacy, what tenderness, what marvelous care to expend on a bottle! Americans spent their time and effort on larger and worthier things. Disdainfully the man turned from the bottle, thinking of blackened and bellowing factories and foundries and turning wheels. These had significance; beauty had not. A steaming ship filled with products of industry had more meaning than statuettes and silken rugs, poetry and paintings, literature and art. Science was the new god, and deservedly so; it was not decadent and perfumed. It was money, and there was nothing in the world but money. There never had been, really, in spite of unmanly and posturing fools who quoted Keats and Shelley and delighted in texture and shape.

He heard a soft gay trilling, and a door opened and a woman of thirty-one tripped gracefully into the room, lifting a pretty white hand in welcome. He never saw Cynthia without a catch in his gloomy heart. She was tall and slender, with a charming and youthful figure, like a girl’s; her dress of silvery satin had a tight bodice with little brilliant buttons undulating to her lissome waist; the front was smooth, daringly so, over her rounded hips and thighs, but the back puffed in an exaggerated bustle under which had been caught bunches of artificial violets. Her slippers were silver, pointed and traced with silver beads, and just appeared from under the flowing hem of her gown.

Her face was an older face than the one in the portrait, but it had retained its girlish bloom, dazzling and fair, and her white throat was unlined and the pearls of the portrait glimmered on it. Her blond hair had been cut into wavy bangs on her clear forehead, lifted high on the back of her small head, then permitted to float almost to her shoulders in glossy and gleaming curls. Her lips were a bright pink glow, and her large gray eyes, full and luminous, shone through heavy golden lashes. Unlike her innocent portrait, she now had a saucy but extremely intelligent expression, full of liveliness and very sprightly.