A Prologue to Love Page 9

  Caroline pushed open the well-oiled iron gate, for it was always unlocked for her near the time of her return from school. Carefully she locked it behind her. She liked to walk alone to the house, especially on warm brown-and-golden autumn days like this. It was always damp under the arching trees, now yellow, ocher, and umbrous, with a flare now and again of some scarlet maple, like the beginning of a conflagration in this moldy and silent place. Caroline could smell the poignant and atavistic heaps of rotting leaves, the primeval earth sweating in its darkness, the sharp breath of an occasional spruce. Sometimes she would sit on a flat stone and watch squirrels and birds, or catch the flash of a skunk’s tail or the white fluff of a rabbit or the blur of a mouse rushing from one pile of leaves to another. It was so quiet here; the rumble of factories in the distance only increased the stillness, like thunder over a closed landscape.

  Sitting on the stone today, Caroline sighed and smiled a little. A soft wind, heavy with the pungent scent of decay and loneliness, brushed her face; her hands, lying on her knees, were dappled thinly by the leaves remaining on the trees which arched over her. Her solid feet rested on the dark and oily earth. She let herself luxuriate in the thought of the letter waiting for her in the house. Though she could not as yet see the house, she could smell the burning of wood.

  Poor Beth; it was warm today, but Beth, who was so fearful of the coming winter, had defiantly started fires. “You never know when the weather will change,” she would say with a challenge in her blue eyes. She was approaching fifty; her crisp and curling hair was almost gray, and, though plump, she shivered in a cool wind. Old Kate was dead, and Beth knew that only she would stay in this lonely and sifting house with all the dull and inexplicable echoes in the narrow halls, the tall and half-empty rooms and bedrooms, the brick-walled and brick-floored kitchen, the black iron fireplaces, the cracked and warped doors, the primitive facilities, the ceilings broken and yellowed, the walls papered with paper so old that the original patterns had gone, leaving only spidery tracings and no color except what age had given it, the floors carpeted with rugs that no amount of sweeping would clean, and all of the carpeting of a dim brownish tint as rough to a bare foot as gravel. So Beth had her fires sulkily, even when John Ames was at home, which was increasingly at longer intervals. She had even moved some of the furniture from several of the eight uninhabited bedrooms (Jim, by choice, slept in the loft in the barn) into the rooms used by Caroline and herself, and had shaken her head over chairs slippery with age and worn of fabric, and beds with towering carved headboards that reached to the ceilings. With Jim’s grumbling help she had tugged at marble-topped tables to move them into the two bedrooms and had looked with discouragement at stone cracked and filled with ancient dirt. But there were no ornaments anywhere. Eventually, out of her own money, Beth had bought two cheap green vases ‘in town’, one for herself and one for Caroline’s room, and she kept them filled with cattails, which she gilded or painted, or wild spring or autumn flowers she found on the land. When all but the cattails, which Caroline loathed, failed, Beth would make artificial flowers of coarse colored paper and dip them in paraffin to last through the dark winter. She thought it made matters cozy; Caroline would look at them and shudder, but she never told Beth, who had gone to such trouble for her.

  Beth had bullied John Ames into permitting her to buy clean cheap muslin for her bedroom windows and Caroline’s. These she had tinted pink, which Caroline also loathed. But all of the other windows were hung with decaying brown velveteen draperies, dejected and dusty and tattered. Finally Beth stopped her desperate work of mending them; let them rot, she would say grimly, then he’ll notice. But John Ames apparently did not notice, and no guests ever came to make invidious remarks. The house stood in its ugh’ decay, its breathless isolation, its silence, its utter abandonment. It was in this horrible place, Beth would reflect, that the young Ann Ames had died, far from family and friends, far from the beautiful house in which she had been born and in which she had lived for twenty years. How could she have endured it? Beth would ask herself.

  Beth could not understand Caroline’s love for the house and its snarled acres, and Caroline, who could never express herself well, could not tell her only confidante what this silent isolation meant to her and what relief and surcease there were among the desolate trees. For here, where no one came but her dreams and the remembrances of Jim’s eerie stories, she could be free, no longer stiff with awkwardness as she was in school, no longer frightened as she was on the streets of Lyndon. Here she could think of herself as beautiful and beloved, surrounded by creatures as shy as herself.

  “It’s bad for a young girl to have no friends,” Beth would say crossly. Caroline would not reply but would touch Beth’s plump arm quickly. She could not tell Beth that she had multitudes of companions in the small woods and endless multitudes of dreams.

  After a while Caroline left the stone and absently brushed some dried fragments of leaves from her coarse brown woolen frock and went toward the house on the winding and overgrown path. Dust followed her in a golden cloud; she looked back at it with delight. A blue jay, like an azure arrow, flashed across her way and perched on a tree limb and squawked at her. She nodded and spoke to him as to an old friend, and he yawned and began to groom himself, unafraid of this human creature who never shouted or threatened. Caroline stopped to look; the red of the maple leaves behind that quiveringly alive blue being enchanted her. He was bluer than the autumn sky shining through the leaves. He and his companions would remain here during the winter, a cerulean visitation flitting above the incandescent snow, calling attention to a rare fox with an outcry that strangely increased the cold fire of the immaculate day.

  Caroline pulled the brown and green wool tam-o’-shanter from her head so that the pungent wind could touch the thin black braids which she now wore bound tightly about her round skull. Her eyes were tawny and vivid under their black brows. When she smiled, her big white teeth flashed. The large freckles on her coarse nose gave a piquancy to her appearance which only Beth and Tom Sheldon appreciated. When she was alone like this, the clumsy stockiness of her body seemed to disappear; she walked swiftly and lightly. She saw a thousand shadings of entrancing color everywhere. She longed to capture them in her hands and hold them always. She wanted to fix them, not only in her mind, but in time.

  Miss Brownley had taught her to paint correctly in water colors, but the tints were too anemic for Caroline, though she did not know why they distressed her. Somewhere, she knew, lived rich colors to match those she saw, colors so vivid that the soul would never tire of them. She had not as yet been to the Boston Museum. The only paintings she had ever seen were Miss Brownley’s pallid water colors framed on yellowish walls, depicting curiously bloodless butterflies hovering over deathly sprays of pale lilacs, or tiny landscapes so muted that it took considerable peering to distinguish them as more than feeble blurs. Caroline’s whole spirit yearned for intense hues and riot; she saw more than mere colors; she saw the joyous and powerful emotion in them. They were eloquent, singing, dazzling. All this was impossible to communicate to Beth.

  Beth had bought the bow of bright scarlet ribbon which tied Caroline’s flat black braids to her head. Caroline took it off now, to hold it rapturously in her hand. She would lift it to compare it with a living red leaf. But she was never satisfied. The dead fabric could not duplicate the vital hue. However, she was grateful for the ribbon; it was a tongue of flame in her hand. She swung it like a narrow pennant about her.

  Ugly and monstrous though her home was, Caroline, oddly, did not find it so. The browns and stained whites did not revolt her. Her father lived here, and he was enough to give all this a passion of its own. So the girl was humming and smiling when she opened the cracked door that led into the boxed hall with its gloomy oak staircase winding upward to the second, and then to the third, floor. There was no carpeting here, and Beth had long ago given up trying to polish the planked wood. There was a smell in the house like o
ld raspberries, musty and pervading. The light of the autumn did not reach here; all was brown, chill, and dim. Caroline ran into the kitchen, where the heat from the huge black stove almost suffocated her. But there was a fragrance of soup and boiling meat and newly baked apple pie and cheese. Beth had become chronically sulky these past years, but when she saw Caroline her round face with its network of fine wrinkles smiled. She turned her plump body and waved at the girl with a big wooden spoon.

  “You’re late, dear,” she said.

  “Oh, I stopped in the woods for a while,” Caroline hesitated. Her eager eyes searched Beth’s face, and Beth stopped smiling. “There wasn’t a letter today, dear,” she said with regret. “But sometimes they’re late. There’ll be one tomorrow, you’ll see.”

  “Tom must be up near Syracuse by now,” said Caroline, the hope gone from her strong young voice. She put her books on the bare wooden table and looked down at them.

  “I’ve just made a pie,” said Beth encouragingly. “Our own apples.” She grimaced. “The birds and the bugs got at them worse this year than ever. But I did save a few, and the pie’s nice. Sit down and have a piece while it’s hot. And there’s some cheese for it. I bought the cheese to catch the mice, but it isn’t too bad. Old Tabby’s too rheumatic now to help out much.”

  Caroline sat down. The sad lump in her breast was very heavy.

  “I forgot to tell you,” said Beth grimly, though she had not forgotten at all. “Your dad’s home; got in unexpected an hour ago. He’s in the library. He wants to see you at five. Precisely, he said,” and Beth mimicked, without charity, John Ames’ sharp cold accents.

  Joy broke over Caroline’s face like a brilliant wave, and for a few moments she was beautiful, her eyes like tawny light. “Papa!” she cried. “But he wasn’t expected back from New York for a week!” She paused and clutched the edges of the scarred table. “You said he wants to see me? He wants to — ”

  “That’s what he said,” replied Beth with dryness. But she was full of pity.

  “I wonder why,” Caroline marveled. The sadness was gone. “Beth, I do want some of that wonderful pie of yours; it smells like perfume.”

  “And I have some hot coffee,” said Beth, glancing at the girl tenderly. “And even some cream.” She stopped in her bustling to touch Caroline’s big head. The braids had slipped when the ribbon was removed; now they fell down Caroline’s broad back. The high-buttoned collar of her brown frock obliterated what little there was of her short strong neck. The fold under her chin was as browned by the sun as was the rest of her square face. Caroline beamed at Beth. “How good you are to me, Beth. You’re just like a mother.”

  Caroline felt with certainty that there would be a letter for her from Tom tomorrow. It was good to have another happiness waiting for her as well as the one in the library. She did not see the easy tears in Beth’s emotional eyes, nor hear her sigh. She ate the good pie and sighed with pleasure, for it was spiced with cinnamon and laced with honey and had a sugary crust. “Papa will like this,” she murmured through a mouthful.

  “Papa’s going to Boston after he sees you,” said Beth shortly. “About six. On the train.”

  “Oh,” said Caroline. She put down the fork and felt surfeited. “He has so much business in Boston,” she said valorously. “And he does so much for poor Aunt Cynthia and Timothy and Melinda.” She reflected that her father seemed particularly fond of Melinda, who was so beautiful.

  “Especially for poor Aunt Cynthia,” said Beth wryly.

  Caroline nodded vigorously. “That’s because she reminds him so much of poor Mama, Beth.”

  “Of course,” said Beth.

  Caroline glanced repeatedly at the old wooden clock on the brick wall. It was a quarter past four. Had it stopped? No, it was ticking loudly. The fire in the stove crackled; Caroline could see its redness in the cracks about the iron plates. “I haven’t seen Timothy since last Easter,” said Caroline, who was afraid of her cousin.

  “Good thing,” said Beth, who had seen the boy several times. “I never did like that one. He’s like an ice splinter.”

  “Well,” said Caroline. “I guess we just don’t understand people like Timothy. And doesn’t he look like Aunt Cynthia? Melinda does too.”

  “Yes, doesn’t she?” muttered Beth, slapping the lid back on the soup. “You’d think she was her own daughter.”

  “Even her eyes and the color of her hair!” said Caroline, who admired Melinda very much. “Aunt Cynthia dresses her beautifully.”

  “Just like she was her daughter,” said Beth with an angry knot in her throat. “Yes indeed.”

  “Melinda looks like the portrait of Mama and Aunt Cynthia in Aunt Cynthia’s house,” said Caroline, thinking of the lovely little girl and how wonderful it would be to paint her in living color.

  “Yes indeed,” said Beth, and slammed the spoon on the iron sink which had a pump attached.

  “I like Melinda,” said Caroline, drinking her steaming coffee. “She goes to a nice school, too.”

  “The very best. Miss Stockington’s, Carrie. It would be nice if you could go there too.”

  “Oh no,” said Caroline, shocked. “I’d be out of place.” She added, “And Papa can’t afford it.”

  “Yes indeed,” said Beth sullenly, and crashed the oven door. “Papa can’t afford it. But Mrs. Winslow can afford Groton for Timothy and Miss Stockington’s for little Melinda, who isn’t yet five years old.”

  “I saw Melinda in the school play last Christmas,” said Caroline. “I wish I were an artist! I’d paint Melinda in green light, with her yellow hair and her big gray eyes, with a black kitten on her lap, and there’d be sunshine sloping down through the trees and making the trees look emerald and very dark green with bright flecks of gold.”

  Beth thought of the portrait lying in an old trunk at Lyme, and she turned and stared at Caroline, who was sipping her coffee and smiling.

  “And Melinda would wear a dress of deep rose color,” said Caroline. “Not a sick, miserable pink. A rose like velvet, with a bright blue sash, and a rose ribbon in her hair.” Her face took on a dreaming expression which was close to ecstasy.

  “All those colors wouldn’t match,” said Beth. “They’d clash.”

  Caroline shook her head. “Oh no. Not the way I’d like to see it done. Not just painted on the — the paper. Laid on, Beth — you know, with a kind of knife or something, so it would be thick and radiant. Oh, I don’t suppose people paint like that. It would be sort of crude.”

  Beth had been listening. She shook her head as Caroline had done. “I suppose you’re right,” she said slowly, thinking of the portrait again. “Only amateurs would do it that way.”

  “No elegance,” said Caroline wistfully. “It — it would be like a shout.” She clasped her strong hands on the table. “It would be something different; it would mean something. It just wouldn’t be a pretty picture. But paints are so faint; do you know what I mean?”

  “You mean water colors,” said Beth. “But water colors aren’t the only things there are. You’ve got to go to the Boston Museum.”

  “Yes,” said Caroline vaguely, imagining endless rooms filled with dim paintings like Miss Brownley’s.

  Beth threw a dish on the sink with violence, and Caroline jumped at the noise. Beth swung about, and her round face was flushed and full of emotion. “Carrie! Do you know you aren’t even educated, going to that miserable school? It’s a shame! A girl with a father like yours, going to Miss Brownley’s! You don’t know anything, Carrie! What do you learn there, anyway?”

  “I don’t suppose I learn a great deal,” said Caroline, startled. “I learn history, and some things, and how to write nicely.”

  “You are wonderful, Carrie, you’re wonderful!” cried Beth. “You are the most wonderful and the sweetest girl in the world!”

  She ran to Caroline and gathered the girl to her breast fiercely. Caroline was accustomed to Beth’s occasional outbursts and patted the woman’s s
houlder. “Um,” she murmured. “I don’t think I’m wonderful. You’re awfully good to me, Beth, and there’s no way I can tell you what I think about you.”

  “Don’t try,” said Beth, wiping her eyes and going back to the stove. “Carrie, if I’d ever been blessed with a child I’d like her to’ve been like you. And I’ll never leave you, Carrie, never!”

  John Ames looked at his big daughter as she came timidly into the room. He thought, I’m always surprised at what a monster she is, uncouth and uncivilized and as ugly as he was. He said in a distasteful voice without even first greeting her, “Why is your hair hanging down your back, Caroline? You’re a great girl now, going on sixteen. Aren’t you a little old for such things?”