A Prologue To Love (14 page)

The men were listening to Aleck, the burly man. She heard his voice as from a far, vague distance and could not distinguish the words. Her staring eyes fixed themselves on him. And then he was pointing at her face. “Y’see what I mean, Mr. Fern, and why I brought her here? She’s funny; don’t act like the other thieves. And when I find somethin’ funny I don’t mess around with it. Had one bad experience, makin’ a mistake, and ended up behind bars. Aleck’s not goin’ to make another one. It’s right in your hands, Mr. Fern.”

Johnny came up to Caroline and took an edge of her coat; she shrank back from him. He roughly lifted the hem of her skirt and examined the cheap wool material. He pulled up her petticoats and looked at her cotton stockings. He fingered her old black velvet hat. He shook his head.

“Cheap-jack clothes,” he said. “We got better right out on our counters. Even the whores wouldn’t buy things like this; got more self-respect.” He lifted his hand and slapped Caroline’s cheek. It was an easy gesture, but it stung like a wasp, and Caroline put up her hand to shelter the spot. “All right, Katy,” said Johnny in a gentle voice, “let’s have your story. Why’d you come here to steal?”

“Steal?” repeated Caroline in a stupefied tone.

“Steal!” said Johnny, lifting a threatening hand, and Caroline stepped back. “See here, Katy, I’m losing patience. Be quick about your story or I’ll call the police and you’ll rot in jail.”

“My name isn’t Katy,” Caroline stammered. “My name is Caroline Ames. I wasn’t — ” But she could not say the infamous word.

Aleck had listened intently to her few words, and he shifted uneasily. “There’s her voice,” he said. “That ain’t a regular voice. Funny accent. Used to hear it on the docks. Beacon Hill accent. When they was goin’ on the big ships for Europe.”

“Now you hush, Aleck,” said Johnny, shaking his head at the other man. “You just imagine it. If this girl got a Beacon accent she picked it up. Now look here, Katy. We don’t want no trouble. You just pay up what you owe, and you get your nice packages, and you just leave nice, and we’ll forget it.”

“I haven’t any money,” said Caroline. She paused, and the abysmal terror roared in on her again, shouting in echoes, “No money! No money! No money! I haven’t any money!” She covered her ears convulsively with her hands but could not shut out the increasing thunderous and mocking chorus: “No money! No money! No money!”

“You see?” said Johnny to Aleck with resignation. “Just a plain thief. Came in here to steal and couldn’t get out with the things. She needs a good lesson.”

Aleck scratched his ear. “Eh, I don’t know, Johnny. She’s scared; people don’t use accents they picked up somewheres when they are scared. But, as you say, look at her clothes.”

“I think,” said Mr. Fern in a dry old voice of precision, “that I’d better talk to the girl. Now look, my dear” — and he turned on his wheezing swivel chair to look at Caroline directly — “you just tell the truth and you can go home. What’s your name? Where do you live?”

Caroline, in a shaking voice, told him. “My name’s Caroline Ames. I live on Beacon Street with my aunt, Mrs. Cynthia Winslow, and my father is John Ames.”

Johnny giggled, and Aleck scratched his ear and thrust out his under lip. Mr. Fern nodded encouragingly at Caroline, and his eyes twinkled behind his glasses.

“Very nice,” he said. “Mrs. Winslow gives nice parties; sometimes read about them in the newspapers. Very select. On all kinds of charity boards, too. Great lady, as my dad used to call her kind. And who doesn’t know about Mr. John Ames, him with his fleet of ships and clippers?” His cackle was a modulated shriek. “Reckon they’d be surprised, though, to find out they got a niece and a daughter. What do you do in their house, eh? Make beds and empty slops, maybe? Just tell the truth.”

“I go to Miss Stockington’s school,” said Caroline, her voice fainting. Why didn’t they believe her? What was wrong?

Johnny became hysterical. He stamped about the room, slapping his hands together in uncontrollable mirth. He leaned against a wall and gasped, “Miss Caroline Ames, she calls herself, in those clothes, goes to Miss Stockington’s delicate, exclusive school! And lives on Beacon Street. God, the girl’s got imagination, you’ve got to admit that!”

“Uh,” said Aleck, more and more uneasy. One of Caroline’s braids, loosened by the brutality inflicted upon her, had loosened and was now lying on one of her sturdy shoulders. It was clean hair, well brushed and cared for, Aleck noticed. “Say,” he said, “if you don’t mind, Mr. Fern, I’d like to keep out of this. I’ve heard about some of these rich folks. They don’t care a damn about fine clothes; wear worse than their servants. But still,” he added doubtfully, “what was she doing here, in this rat hole, and without any money?”

“That is exactly the point,” said Mr. Fern, shaking an admonishing finger. “She just wouldn’t have been here. Where’s her carriage? Where’s her money? Girls from good homes don’t run around loose like this and try to steal secondhand trash.”

“I lost my purse,” said Caroline feebly. “I had seventy-five dollars. I saved it from my allowance. I came to buy some stockings for our housekeeper in Lyndon, Beth Knowles, and some things for my Aunt Cynthia and my cousin Timothy, and Melinda.”

“Here in this place?” asked Mr. Fern in a fatherly tone of resignation. “Now, Katy!”

“Beth comes here,” said Caroline, crying again. “Our housekeeper. And I used to come with her.”

Aleck suddenly shouted, clenching his fists, “I tell you, I don’t like this! There’s something wrong! Keep me out of it!”

“You brought her here,” said the giggling Johnny. “We didn’t. You find something wrong now, but you didn’t find it when you dragged her back from the door when she was trying to run out with the stolen merchandise.”

“Johnny has a point,” sighed Mr. Fern. He turned to Caroline again. “Don’t you know it’s wrong, Katy, to steal things, to take things when you don’t have the money to pay for them?”

“Yes, yes,” said Caroline, looking with terrified longing at the door. “Of course. It’s wrong. But I did have money. I just lost it, on the horse car or somewhere in the shop.”

“And you came here on the horse car and not in a nice carriage?” asked Johnny, wetting his lips and grinning evilly.

“I — Aunt Cynthia wanted me to use the carriage,” Caroline stuttered. “But — ” She could not remember just now why she had refused the carriage. There was a dreadful rolling and shouting in her head. She put both hands up to her temples.

It never occurred to her, for she was so innocent, to ask these men to call a policeman or to send a messenger to her home. She was caught in something monstrous. She could not think. The chorus had begun again: “No money! No money! You have no money! If you had money you would not be here now! You would be safe at home! No money!”

She thought of something. Cynthia had given her a beautiful ring for her birthday, a large and fiery opal. The colors had entranced Caroline; she never wearied of holding the jewel in her hands, cupped under lamplight. The hues soothed her lonely spirit, gave it the flush of glowing life, filled her with the sense of promise beyond any promise in book or poetry or music. It was too magnificent for her to wear on her hand, for others to look at. She had it hung about her neck on a strong cord. She fumbled at it now, her golden eyes burning with dread and fear. She brought it out but held it tightly in her fingers. These terrible men might take it from her.

“My Aunt Cynthia gave this to me,” she whispered. “It’s mine. So, you see, I am telling you the truth.”

The men came to look at it. Even Mr. Fern got up from his desk to examine it. Caroline was never to know what thoughts occurred to two of them now. But Aleck knew. He put his hand on Caroline’s shoulder; it was a hard hand and she did not know it was protecting. He saw the rim of canary diamonds curving about the large stone. He, if not Caroline, knew the worth of this marvelous ring.

Then Mr. Fern and his son looked at each other inscrutably. As at a signal, Johnny rushed to his desk and began to write with scrawling haste. Mr. Fern gave Caroline his chair, tenderly. “Sit down, my dear. You must be tired. It is all a mistake. You understand this? We’re poor men, Johnny and me. We just try to make a living. And people come in and steal. We have to protect ourselves. You understand that?”

“Yes,” Caroline whispered, but her eyes were still large and bright with dread and shock. It was late. Night already pressed against the smudged windows. “I must go home,” she said. “They’ll be worrying about me.”

Mr. Fern looked at Aleck, who stood there near the door, huge and stolid, and exchanged hard look for hard look. There was to be no help from Aleck, Aleck who knew all about the police.

“So you’ll just sign this little paper,” said Mr. Fern. “Just a little paper showing it was all a misunderstanding. Between you and us. A mistake.”

“Yes, yes,” said Caroline hurriedly. Hope came to her.

“And as a token of our esteem, we’ll give you your purchases,” said Mr. Fern. “Gifts. From us to you.” He put the pen in her hand. “Just sign here, my dear Miss Ames. Just a formality.”

Caroline signed. She did not even read the paper, which absolved Fern and Son of any responsibility toward her, which agreed that Fern and Son had acted only in accordance with law and that an error had been made on her part. She had attempted, read the paper, to leave the shop without accounting for her purchases and had been questioned. All had been resolved to the satisfaction of all parties concerned. Signed, Caroline Ames.

They put her in a hack and paid for it and sent her on her way. Caroline knew she fainted in the hack. She came to when the old hack pulled up abruptly before the house on Beacon Street. But it was drawn before the servants’ entrance, at the side. “A little farther,” said Caroline in a new and shrinking voice. “The front door.”

“What?” growled the driver, who knew nothing but that an ill-clad girl had been thrust dazedly into his hack and that he had been given a fee and a meager tip.

Caroline scrambled from the cold and broken vehicle. If she did not move very fast, she thought numbly, something more terrible might happen to her. “Yes, yes,” she murmured, and fled up the flagged path to the servants’ entrance, and there she huddled in the shadows, not feeling the sleet and the rain or the bitter wind in her white face. It was not until the hack had moved on that she crept to the front door and rang the bell. She almost fell into the warm and luxurious hall, and the maid stared at her, at the dusty clothes, the bare hands — for Caroline had lost both her gloves — the battered hat, the streaked face and distended eyes, and the mean parcels that tumbled to the floor. Caroline said something incoherent and stumbled up the stairs with a kind of animal desperation which looked only for shelter. When she reached her room she closed the door behind her, then leaned against the door and panted audibly.

She looked about her calm and pleasant room — at the fire burning discreetly behind a brass screen, at the draperies, the rug, the bed, the desk, the chairs — and her slow gaze had a sudden searching in them, a wild relief, and, above all, a hungry fear. She was safe at last; she had been rescued from horror, the implacable horror of not having any money. But she was only momentarily safe from the world, which hated those who were poor and tormented them. Unless she had a great deal of money, and always had it, she would be open again and again, forever and forever, to what her father had called ‘the faces’, the loathing, the ignominy, inflicted on those who were destitute, who were helpless, and who had no golden armor to protect themselves even from their own ravenous kind.

For the first time in her own life Caroline now truly hated, grimly, icily, and with powerful revulsion. She clenched her hands into fists. What her father had told her had frightened her; she had believed him without doubt. But sometimes vague dissatisfactions and humble questionings had invaded her mind. She despised herself now. Her father had been only too right; he had known the truth. He had tried to teach her the truth, for her own protection, and she had not fully believed. Not until this frightful day, this frightful night.

Then she thought, “But we don’t have much money! What shall we do, Papa and I? We must have a lot of money, all the money we can get, or they’ll kill us, as I was almost killed tonight. A lot of money, all the money in the world — if we can get it. Then we’ll be safe.”

She began to cry without tears, and only with great heaving sobs of fright. She felt an almost crushing pity for her father and for what he had endured as a young boy and a young man. She remembered vividly all he had told her, all he had suffered, and only for the crime of not having money. “But it is a crime!” she cried to her elegant room and its subtle furnishings. She put out her hands and groped toward the bed and then sat on the edge of it, shuddering, feeling cold ripples on her flesh.

The door opened, and with a quick and pretty rustling of blue silk Cynthia entered, her well-bred nose wrinkling fastidiously as she looked down at the newspaper-wrapped parcels in her hand. “What on earth, Caroline!” she exclaimed. “Where did you get these, for goodness’ sake! Where have you been so late? I was almost frantic.”

She stopped at the sight of the silent girl sitting on the bed, shivering as if with influenza, still dressed in her hat and coat, her hands clenched on the woolen knees. “Caroline! What on earth! Why, you are wet and streaked with dirt! Caroline!”

The big hazel eyes regarded her silently; the dry lips were parted. Cynthia stared back. Then she placed the parcels on the floor and pushed them aside with her foot. Something had stricken the poor girl, something had most evidently scared her out of her wits. Where had she been? Why was she so late?

But Cynthia was a sensible woman and knew there was a time for questioning and a time for not questioning. She came to the bed and said gently, “Let me help you off with your things, dear. It is an awful night, isn’t it? Have you a chill?”

“Yes,” whispered Caroline. “I’ve had a chill.” She had never been sick in her life before, but now she felt physically broken, cold to the heart. She did not protest when Cynthia, who concealed her distaste, helped her to remove her clothing and to find one of her ugly flannel nightgowns. Cynthia considerately averted her head when Caroline, trembling, stood naked before her — a large, smooth, and impressive young statue — and slipped the nightgown over the big shoulders.

“There, there,” said Cynthia soothingly, as one speaks to a frightened child. “Now, we’ll just turn back the counterpane and we’ll get under the warm blankets and the puff and we’ll have our dinner in bed, a nice hot dinner of soup and a little fish and some chicken. We’ll just be quiet and see how we are tomorrow.”

Caroline lay stiff and straight in her bed, and silent, and looked at the fire. She said in a weak voice, “I lost my purse — somewhere. I had seventy-five dollars.” But she did not turn her head to her aunt.

“Oh, how unfortunate,” said Cynthia, bending over her anxiously and studying the girl’s pallor and the fixed bright distention of her eyes. “Well, it isn’t too much money, is it? I will give it to you tomorrow.”

“You don’t understand, Aunt Cynthia,” said Caroline, and her eyes fastened on her aunt’s face with what Cynthia almost believed was sharp dislike and aversion. “Seventy-five dollars is a lot of money. It is the difference between — between — ” But she could not tell Cynthia of what she had experienced.

“Certainly it is quite a sum of money,” said Cynthia, trying to smile away that afflicted expression on the girl’s face. “But if it is lost, then it is lost. Dear me, why do you wear that ring I gave you around your neck and not on your hand? Won’t the cord choke you in bed?”

“It’s too expensive to wear,” Caroline muttered. She had always been afraid of Cynthia’s sophistication and had always been shy with her, feeling clumsy in her presence. But she had never hated her before. Her aunt was a silly, spendthrift woman who did not know that money was the difference between ignominy and respect, slavery and freedom, life and death.