A Prologue to Love Read online

  Caroline, as usual, had been inarticulately joyful when her father had returned to Boston that afternoon from an unusually long absence. While she did not feel the curious and inexplicable security she felt when with Tom Sheldon, she always had the sensation that when her father was present he represented some kind of desperately needed shelter for her. She never doubted he loved her; she believed he was only as inarticulate as she in expressing his emotions, and as shy as she. In return, her love reached adoration, unquestioning, absolute. John Ames, to his daughter, was all-wise, omniscient, beyond good and beyond evil, to whom everything had been explained and to whom nothing was strange and without an answer.

  It was this fixed idea which Beth, in her simple way, and Tom Sheldon, in his love and anxiety, and Cynthia, in her wise sophistication, had tried to shake. They had failed. Beth thought Caroline’s adoration piteous; Tom recognized it as dangerous for the girl; Cynthia had considered it a crippling of the spirit and an absurdity. It was Cynthia who had given Caroline a copy of Dombey and Son, with the subtle hope that Caroline might find there something resembling herself and the tragic heroine who loved her father without reason, and stupidly. When Caroline had finished the book Cynthia asked her how she had liked it. To Cynthia’s wry despair, Caroline had answered seriously, “Poor Mr. Dombey!”

  It seemed quite natural to Caroline for John Ames to occupy the large and pleasant apartment on the third floor. She did not even ask herself how long he had occupied it or if he had been there before her own removal to this house. She was his daughter; for him to go to a hotel when in Boston would have been ridiculous. Moreover, Cynthia was his sister-in-law. Caroline had a jealous eye for evidence of affection; she saw that while her father had respect for Timothy, and interest in him, and advised him when the young man was at home — Timothy was to go to Harvard, of course, in the autumn — John Ames showed no other sign of any attachment. But Caroline, to her dismay and lonely fear, saw that her father loved little Melinda. A dull, sick resentment began to fill Caroline at the sight of the little girl. More and more, she avoided Melinda and muttered only short answers to the girl’s remarks. Sometimes she thought that Melinda was as trivial and as mindless as Cynthia; certainly the two enjoyed incomprehensible jokes together which bewildered her.

  She was not quite as naïve as both John Ames and Cynthia believed. Her wide reading had left her with a very solid idea of sensual attachments, and she had some dim understanding as to why she felt a throb of joy at the sight of Tom Sheldon and why his kind touch on her cheek was electrifying. She was innocent but not uninformed. There was a lack of specific detail in her mind, which often engrossed her wonder and conjecture at night, but that there were very specific details she had no doubt. Cynthia, in spite of her suavity and worldliness, was still of her era; she had attempted with what she had believed to be the utmost tact and delicacy to enlighten Caroline in some fashion. She had been quite astonished to see Caroline turn a bright, confused red; Caroline used to terminate these sessions abruptly. She was curious, but her dislike for Cynthia, which had become aversion since that malignant night last December, rejected Cynthia as a confidante.

  When John had returned that afternoon they had had what Cynthia referred to as an intimate family dinner. She and John spoke together politely and with friendly interest, avoiding any sign of intimacy in the presence of the obdurate Caroline, whose shining eyes were almost entirely fixed on John’s face, and in the presence of Melinda, to whose every childish remark John listened with faintly smiling attentiveness. The dinner, as usual, was loathsome to Caroline. She detested the taste of sherry in the fowl, the mushrooms on the fish, the exquisiteness of the little cakes, and the wine-flavored prepared fruit. One of the maids, who was almost a friend of hers, would leave a slice of cheese and some bread and milk on her bedside table and a round apple. These Caroline would devour with a lustiness that would have interested, if not revolted, Cynthia.

  John, admonished by Cynthia’s sparkling eyes, spoke to his daughter a few times at dinner. He remarked coldly but with approval that the last report received from Miss Stockington had indicated that Caroline was extremely proficient in mathematics. “The Apollonian Art,” he had added. “And the most utilitarian.”

  “I doubt bankers know it is an art — or anyone else connected with money,” Cynthia had said. But Caroline did not hear her. She was overwhelmed with joy at her father’s approval. She wanted to tell him how mathematics fascinated her, how there was a tempo, flow, and precision in it that were intensely musical, and how its order and clarity reminded her of color and harmony. But she could only stutter and look at him adoringly, and he turned away.

  It was then that he decided he must now undertake Caroline’s education himself. She had been expertly taught at her school; she spoke German and French well and with good accents. History had been another of her best subjects. If nothing else, Caroline had been an excellent scholar.

  Caroline was so happy over her father’s approval that she wished to talk to him after dinner, but he indicated that he was tired. He disappeared upstairs after a short interval in the drawing room. Caroline’s disappointment was very visible. Cynthia said, as she began to work on another square of gros point for her dining-room chairs, “Your father is a very busy man, you know, Caroline. He is going to stay for a few days, so don’t be too disappointed that he couldn’t remain with us tonight.”

  “I’m not disappointed,” said Caroline with hard coldness. Even the faintest criticism of her father outraged her. “I know he’s tired. And he has many responsibilities.”

  Cynthia shrugged. She knew that John was now with Melinda in the child’s bedroom. Caroline showed indications of leaving the room. She must not encounter her father leaving that pretty room with all its flounces and bright lamps, nor must she hear the muffled laughter. When Caroline began to pull herself to the edge of her chair Cynthia said coaxingly, “Dear, would you please refill my glass with that crème de menthe? My digestion is a little out of order tonight.”

  Caroline obeyed sullenly, but she watched the smooth green fluid flowing from the carafe into the crystal glass with pleasure. Lamplight flashed on it, deepening its running hues to emerald. “Won’t you try some, Caroline?” asked Cynthia. But Caroline put down the carafe with such speed that it clattered on the silver tray. “I don’t like spirits,” she mumbled.

  Cynthia sighed. “It isn’t ‘spirits’,” she said. “Dear me, why do you always try to make me look like a drunken trollop, Caroline?”

  Caroline was shocked, which was what Cynthia had intended. “Aunt Cynthia!” cried the girl, and flushed darkly.

  “Well, you do,” said Cynthia, smiling and sipping the liqueur.

  “You drink whiskey sometimes,” Caroline blurted.

  “So I do. I have a theory that many people would go mad without an occasional indulgence in alcohol. The world isn’t exactly a Garden of Eden, you know, Caroline, and there are some people who must retreat from it sometimes or lose their minds.”

  “You live in a kind of Garden of Eden,” said Caroline bluntly.

  “Do I?” Cynthia lifted a humorous eyebrow. “I’m glad you think so. I try to give that impression. It is very ill bred to show your troubles or your doubts or your illness or worries to the world. It is like undressing in public — indecent. Thank you, dear, for reassuring me.”

  Cynthia’s little witticisms always confused Caroline, who never knew whether her aunt was serious or not. She stared acutely at Cynthia and decided that the older woman was mocking her gently, and she colored again. “I’ve never known you to be ill, Aunt Cynthia,” she said in her somewhat loud and very direct voice, “and if you have troubles I’ve never seen any sign of them, and I’ve lived here a long time. What worries could you have?”

  Cynthia put down the square of canvas and looked at Caroline thoughtfully. She shook her head a little. “My dear child,” she said, “I do hope that you won’t be one of those obtuse women who see only the o
bvious and insist that there is nothing else in life but the obvious.”

  “I don’t,” said Caroline with harshness in her voice.

  Cynthia was surprised. She was also bored. Talks with Caroline were frustrating and unrewarding; they never seemed to be talking about the same thing. Besides, she had heard Melinda’s door open and close and John’s footsteps going to his room.

  “Good,” said Cynthia absently. She took up the gros point again. Her dress, of silk exquisitely printed in pale lilac and gold, was like a spring garden. Diamonds glowed and winked about her neck, her wrist, and her fingers. Her throat was white and smooth, her hands pearly. Caroline looked at her, her strong black eyebrows drawn together in a newly formidable fashion.

  “I’m not as stupid as you think I am,” said Caroline suddenly. Cynthia, again surprised, glanced up. “I never said you were stupid, Caroline,” she replied, “and I certainly never thought so. That’s another bad habit you have: you put things into people’s mouths and then accuse them of your own imaginings. You’re a very difficult girl.”

  “So you often say,” said Caroline. She got to her feet clumsily and left the room without another word. Again Cynthia shook her head. The ormolu clock on the mantel chimed half-past nine, tinkling musically. A carriage or two rumbled by on the cobbled street. The spring wind sighed at the windows. In half an hour Cynthia would go to her own rooms and John would join her.

  Caroline, in her bedroom, took up her schoolbooks. There was a sensation of tight excitement in her. Her father had remarked with approval on her scores in mathematics. She must apply herself even more intensively to them to gain more approval. She smiled a little, and a tender look appeared about her mouth and a brightness in her eyes. She stood up with an unaccountable restlessness and went to the window. The light from her father’s room shone down upon her. He would be busy with his papers tonight. All of the girl’s senses were acute; the spring night air blew into her face, stirred her dark hair, flowed on her cheeks. Her young body was suddenly and mysteriously aroused. All at once, powerfully and involuntarily, her thoughts turned like an eager face to Tom Sheldon, and her eyes filled with tears. A sensation of joy spread from her heart over all her flesh and nerves.

  She ran to her dressing table and stared at herself. Her cheeks were softly colored; her big mouth was red and unusually full and moist. And her large and beautiful eyes looked back at her with a startled and joyous expression, the irises swimming in gold. Her face was strongly molded; her artist’s eyes found a greatness and splendor of earth and vitality in it, and she marveled and thought again of Tom. Her fingers fumbled at her hair; she pulled down the long narrow braids, unwound the strands. Her hair flowed over her shoulders and down her back like rippling glass.

  I am not pretty, she thought. I’ll never be pretty, as people call it. But I think I see what Tom sees in me! I am not ugly at all!

  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.

  Chapter 8

  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 d
ress, 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.