A Prologue to Love Read online

  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.”

  “G
ood 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.

  John Ames stood near the victoria, elegant and as watchful as the private police he employed. His right hand idly swung his cane. His black bowler glittered in the sun. For all his fine clothing, his distinguished air, he was part of this scene. He was at one with his employees. The latter were not furtive; they had a look of savage arrogance, which was reflected in John himself in a more polished fashion. The men saw him, and the quiet muttering stopped at once, and a single bell sounded over the uneasy hissing of the water. Police and seamen came to attention, and even the wagons and the drays halted.

  “Papa,” Caroline murmured, feeling panic. John looked at her impatiently. “Well?” he said, and his voice was resonant in the quiet. “Why don’t you get down?”

  The coachman sat on his seat like a stuffed image, blind and deaf. After one glance at this homely figure, which did not even get down to assist her, Caroline scrambled from the vehicle, her sturdy shoes thumping on the hot wood of the dock. She rushed to her father’s side, instinctively clutching her purse, her shut parasol dangling from her wrist, her tired and reddened eyes blinking, baffled, in the dazzling sun. A freighter belched smoke and steam and cinders, and Caroline flinched. It was like a huge, ugly, derisive voice raised against her, calling attention to her unlikely presence in this place, demanding action and ridicule against her. John looked down at her, amused.

  “Well?” he said again. “What’s the matter, Caroline? Don’t you like all this? You should. It belongs to me. It will belong to you. It is all mine — the warehouses, the docks, the ships.”

  “Yours, Papa?” asked Caroline.

  “Mine. All mine.” Several of the private dock police were now approaching the two on cat feet, and Caroline moved closer to her father. They were all Aleck of Fern and Son. Caroline’s mouth became as dry as paper; she could not take her eyes from the clutched clubs. But the men were smiling obsequiously; they were removing their battered hats; they were touching their red foreheads; their feet were scraping now as they stood before their employer. They bowed to Caroline. The men on the ships stood as rigid as carved wood, their sea-and-sun-darkened faces expressionless, their ferocious eyes remote.

  Then Caroline, with one of her blinding flashes of intuition, understood. Money was not only a defense against the world, the strong Chinese Wall that kept out the barbarians who lusted and destroyed. It was power over the barbarians, over all the world. It was the invisible but mighty club over all the Alecks, over every man. It made humankind grovel and smile with servility as these brutes were smiling. It was power. Her eyes still shrank from the Alecks, but she did not fear them any longer. Her father owned them. In time, she would own them also. For the first time in her life she felt a hating exultation, born of her old fear.

  “Yes sir, Mr. Ames, yes sir!” one of the Alecks was exclaiming with the fervor of an abased slave. The other Alecks joined in, in a chorus of servility. Everything was in order. Captain Allstyn was on the Queen Ann. No, there had been no trouble. The Alecks snickered and scraped. Everything had been taken care of; not a single boat of the harbor police had even been sighted. No government official had appeared within a mile. Everything was taken care of, sir, if you please.

  John Ames put his long hand in his pocket and drew out a handful of glittering gold pieces. The police stretched out their hands eagerly, wetting their brutal mouths. They bowed; they scraped over and over. They bowed very deeply to Miss Ames and hoped she was well.

  “Can’t you say something to these men?” asked John with irritation.

  Caroline stared at them. They lifted their eyes reverently only to her chin. She wet her dry lips. “How do you do?” she murmured in the best Miss Stockington manner.

  The brutes became ecstatic. They bowed almost to her knees, their coarse hair tawny or black in the sunlight, their hats held against their thighs, their clubs dangling impotently from their thick wrists. It was one of these who had threatened to crush her skull in the shop of Fern and Son. She said to herself that if she struck one of these bobbing heads with her parasol the victim would chortle with delight and be happy to have been singled out from his fellows by the ‘little lady’.

  A piping s
ounded from somewhere in this sinister but urgent quiet. A man in a kind of disorderly uniform was bounding down a gangplank from the nearest freighter, which was also the largest and the blackest. The man had a huge bald head, like a ball, that glittered in the sun, and a huge red face like a baboon’s, and eyes like blue fire. He was short and immensely broad. His uniform, of a dark gray with brass buttons and braid, wrinkled about his body. As he ran, clumping, on the dock toward John Ames and Caroline, his cap in his hand, he fastened the last of his buttons. Caroline, accustomed to the military neatness of the captains of Boston Harbor far to the left, could not believe this man to be a captain, for he lacked compactness, tidiness, and stern precision. The Alecks fell away meekly. He grinned at John Ames, and his teeth were like the teeth of a shark, and his gums were red as the gums of a dog are red. He saluted casually, and John Ames, smiling, gave him a negligent salute in return.

  “Caroline,” he said, “this is my best captain, Captain Allstyn. An Englishman, and a veritable Union Jack.”

  Caroline had no way of knowing that Captain Allstyn was an illegal captain, that he had been permanently barred from all employment in the legitimate lines for murderous brutality to his crews and drunkenness and smuggling and general larceny. She had no way of knowing that her astute father had picked up this man in a state of poverty and sullen despair in a Liverpool public house, and that John Ames, having rescued this man from starvation and having restored him to the sea with an immense salary, had bound Captain Allstyn in gratitude to him forever. Moreover, Captain Allstyn shared in the spoils, for John knew that one might bind a man briefly to one by saving his life, but one bound him for all time with money and opportunities for loot.