A Prologue to Love Read online

  Caroline did not answer. Old Kate was always warning her not to speak to strangers. “One never knows,” she would say wisely with a menacing gleam in her eyes. Caroline had come to believe, in spite of Beth’s fitful efforts, that those one did not know were in some way ominous. The little girl began to shift uneasily on the boulder. She glanced at the house; if the boy ‘did’ something, this terrible easy boy, she would scream and Beth would come running.

  “You scared?” said Tom, and laughed in her face. He studied her, his head held sideways. “Say, you’re not as homely as everybody says. Say, you’re almost nice-looking.” He peered at her, thrusting out his head. “Why don’t you ever come to the village? The old man keep you locked up?”

  Caroline, to her immense surprise, heard her voice answering with weak indignation. “He’s not an old man! Don’t you dare talk like that! I don’t know you. I’m going home.” She dropped to the shingle, then paused, for Tom was laughing at her. For some reason her anger vanished. He had said she wasn’t homely!

  She did not know how to talk with strangers, and her lips fumbled. She said proudly, “My papa is coming home. I just saw his ship.”

  “You mean that old ship that just went by?” asked Tom, waving his hand toward the sea. “Why, that was nothing but an old freighter. I can tell. Your pa on a freighter?”

  Caroline was silent a moment. She reflected. “I don’t know,” she said finally. “It’s suppertime. I’ve got to go in.”

  Tom put his cold hands in his pockets and eyed her with humor. “They say your pa is as rich as Croesus,” he remarked.

  “Who’s Croesus?” asked Caroline, preparing to run off.

  Tom shrugged. “Hell, I don’t know,” he replied. “But that’s what they say.”

  “You swore,” said Caroline reprovingly. She pulled the shawl closer about her broad shoulders. Then she did something she had never done before. She giggled. Tom regarded her with approval. “Hell,” he repeated, hoping to evoke another giggle. “You sure aren’t so damn homely.”

  He gazed at the stocky little girl, with her big shoulders and her very short neck, her heavy arms and heavier legs, her bulky body in its wretched dark red coat. She had a clumsy, slow manner. Her square face had a stolid look and was without color in spite of the bitter gale, and her mouth was large and without mobility, her nose almost square, with coarse nostrils and spattered with large brown freckles. Her solid chin would have suited a youth rather than a girl child, and so short was her neck that it forced a fold of pallid flesh under the chin. Her very fine dark hair, wisping out from its thin long braids, did not lighten her unprepossessing appearance. The wind dashed her braids in the air like whips.

  Caroline was tall for her age, but she was half a head shorter than Tom. The children stared at each other, face to face. Caroline with reluctance and fear, but also with a desire to learn again that she was not truly ugly. She gave her benefactor a shy smile, and when she did so her eyes lit up and sparkled. They were remarkably beautiful eyes, a golden hazel, large and well set under her broad, bare forehead and sharp black eyebrows, and they possessed lashes incredibly thick, and they were extremely soft and intelligent, limpid in the last light from the sky.

  “There!” said Tom. “Why, you’re real pretty when you smile. You’ve got real pretty eyes, and nice white teeth, too, though they’re kind of big.” He was pleased with himself; he had discovered something unknown to anyone else. He was naturally friendly. In spite of the poverty of his family, he felt no inferiority. He was without fear, for he was strong. He was also gentle in his heart and curious about all things. Caroline’s hands stopped clutching at her shawl. She basked in the memory of what this boy had told her. She lifted her head as if she were a beauty, and for the first time in her short life there was a curious lilting and warmth in her chest.

  “My mama was very pretty,” she said. “Aunt Cynthia’s got her picture. It was painted by a great artist. In New York.”

  “You must look like her,” said Tom with large kindness. Caroline shook her head and pulled down her whipping braids. “No, I don’t look like Mama at all. She’s dead.”

  “You must look like your old man, then,” said Tom.

  “Oh no,” said Caroline, as if this were an insult. “My papa’s very handsome. He’s tall and has blue eyes and curly brown hair and dresses very stylish. He buys all his clothes in New York. And he isn’t old. You mustn’t say that.”

  “Never saw him,” said Tom, eyeing her shrewdly.

  “He’s been away all summer, in Europe,” said Caroline. “He’s on business.”

  “He sure is rich, they say.”

  Caroline reflected on that. But it was a matter of indifference to her. She was not quite sure what it meant to be rich, or poor. “I don’t know,” she said.

  “You don’t know! Why, that’s funny,” said Tom. “Now, I know we’re poor. Sure know we’re poor! My dad does odd jobs around for the folks in the summer colony.” He examined the Ames house and the grounds with a critical eye. “Your pa could use my dad, but then the folks in the village say your pa is as tight as his skin. Tighter. Never spends a cent. He don’t even have a carriage.”

  “We don’t need one,” said Caroline. “Not here, anyway. But we’ve got a carriage in Lyndon. Old Jim drives it. Papa always says we’ve got to be careful.”

  “Bet you never have any fun,” said Tom suddenly. “You kind of look that way.”

  Caroline became confused at all these remarks. What did ‘fun’ mean?

  “Bet you never play with any other girls,” Tom continued.

  “Well, no,” said Caroline uncertainly. “Papa doesn’t like strangers in the house. He doesn’t want me to get diseases, either. I have to come right home from Public School Number 10. That’s eight streets from where we live in Lyndon.”

  “And you don’t play with the girls at school?” said Tom.

  “They don’t like me,” said Caroline, as if this were perfectly normal.

  “Why not? You look like a nice girl.”

  “I don’t know why. They don’t even speak to me. Only the teachers talk to me. I like Miss Crowley the best. She bought me a blue ribbon for Christmas last year. It was awful pretty.” Caroline looked at Tom. He was no longer smiling. “Hell,” he muttered, and kicked a stone viciously.

  Then he turned to Caroline again. “Your pa’s rich, and you go to a public school,” he said, as if accusing her. “The summer people who come here send their girls to private schools, and I’ll bet they don’t have half the money your pa has!”

  Caroline was confused again.

  “And they’ve got servants, too,” went on Tom wrathfully.

  “So do we,” said Caroline eagerly, wishing to please him. “We’ve got old Kate, who was my mother’s nurse, and she’s our housekeeper, and we’ve got Beth, who’s awful nice, and she helps Kate and takes care of me.”

  “Your clothes are terrible,” said Tom. “Like they come off a Salvation Army line, like mine. Why don’t your pa buy you some pretty dresses like other girls have, and a fur muff? Bet you look worse than even the girls in your public school.”

  “I guess we aren’t rich after all,” said Caroline with distress. Being rich suddenly seemed very desirable to her. “We have to be very, very careful, Papa always tells me.”

  “Ho!” snorted Tom.

  “I’ve got ten dollars in my tin bank in the house,” offered Caroline. She drew a deep breath and added over the bellowing of the wind: “I haven’t told her yet, but I’m going to give three of them tomorrow to Beth. It’s her birthday.”

  “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 fool
ish. 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 Be
th’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?”

  Chapter 2

  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.”