A Prologue To Love (2 page)

For Bernard and Ida Welt

*****

It is not possible for us to know each other except as we

manifest ourselves in distorted shadows to the eyes of others.

We do not even know ourselves; therefore, why should we judge a neighbor?

Who knows what pain is behind virtue and what fear behind vice?

No one, in short, knows what makes a man, and only

God knows his thoughts, his joys, his bitternesses, his agony,

the injustices committed against him and the injustices he commits.

. . . God is too inscrutable for our little understanding.

After sad meditation it comes to me that all that lives,

whether good or in error, mournful or joyous, obscure or of gilded reputation,

painful or happy, is only a prologue to love beyond the grave,

where all is understood and almost all forgiven.

Seneca

Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth . . .

Ecclesiastes

The child sat on a large black boulder and looked at the sea, and she was all alone under a sky the color of smoke and beside waters as angry as an intemperate man and grayer than death.

Gulls cried piercingly as they swirled in the harsh wind and dived to the leaden crests of the waves and threw themselves upward again as if despairing. Though it was only four o’clock in the afternoon of a late September day, the bitter air threatened winter, and there was no sun, only a pale silver blur in the gaseous heavens. There was no sound but the furious thunder of the ocean hurling itself on the dark and gleaming sand, the gulls, and the wind which assaulted the tall and dying clumps of sea grass on the dunes behind the child. Water and sky appeared to mingle together without a horizon; the gusts of wind lifted the child’s braids and blew wisps over her poor coat. But the child did not move; she huddled on her stone. It was as if she were waiting mournfully yet eagerly, as a woman waits for the return of her lover who has been long gone from her sight. She was unaware of her cold hands, which were reddened and without gloves, and of her cold feet in shabby buttoned boots, and her icy knees covered meagerly with darned black stockings. Occasionally she absently pulled the shawl about her neck and huddled deeper in her coat, which was too small for her. Nothing lived in that wild scene but the child and the gulls, and only the gulls moved. A long time had passed. The lonely girl, ten years old, waited with a vast patience beyond the patience of children, and her eyes never left the sea and her ears heard nothing but the savage voice of the tumultuous waters.

A considerable distance behind the child stood a very old and wind-scarred wooden house, tall and battered, its fretted woodwork sagging, its narrow windows unlighted except for a feeble lamp in the main room downstairs, its broken steps rough with blown sand, its chimneys without smoke but for one at the east end. The shingles on the roof curled. There were no gardens, no trees about the house, and only the sea grass in sandy clumps. The house stood alone, without neighbors, on a slight rise surrounded by outbuildings as dilapidated as itself, and with a tiny shanty behind it. An atmosphere of desolation and extreme poverty hung over the house like a mist, and an air of abandonment. Each surge of the wind beating on the gray and pock-marked walls threatened to blow the wretched building down, to scatter it on the sandy earth, there to be buried by the veils of sand streaming in the gale.

Two women, one very old, one middle-aged, sat by the only fire in the house, in the parlor. But the fire was of driftwood, thriftily gathered each day, and it smoked and burned fitfully. One single lamp, burning kerosene of a particularly bad odor, lighted the long and narrow room, which was furnished with miserable sticks of furniture as poor as the house itself, and as old. The floor was covered with a straw rug which had long lost its color; the few tables and chairs were splintered and unpolished, for they had been made of rough wood never stained or varnished. The wind entered here through cracks never mended, and the flame in the plain oil lamp flickered. The wood smoldered in the fireplace, which was built of stones gathered from the shore.

The women shivered. The old woman’s cheap black dress was covered with a number of afghans, and her thin shoulders by shawls which sent out an odor of peppermint and age and mold. She sat very close to the fire, holding out her hands to the vague heat and muttering under her breath discontentedly. Her face, in the uncertain light, had a kindly yet predatory expression, wise and disillusioned, with a touch of hard humor in the lines of her wrinkled and sunken mouth. The eyes, black and small, had an unusually sharp and youthful glance, which never overlooked anything. Her untidy white hair was heaped over her forehead; her big-knuckled hands were blue from chill. While she warmed them she rocked in the only rocker in the room, and the creaking sound was like a complaint. She chewed red-striped peppermint candies which she kept in a bag on her knees.

The younger woman was dressed more neatly; her gray woolen dress with its tight bodice and full draped skirt was old and carefully mended, but it fitted her fine and buxom figure as if made of the best satin. Her curled hair was ruddy, her manner vivacious as she set a table for a meager supper — the dining room, dark and somber, was too cold to be used today. Her face, round and pink, was both intelligent and good-tempered, and her blue eyes, alert and friendly, occasionally glanced at the old woman. Then her pink mouth would quirk, and one of her reddish eyebrows would raise. She often seemed about to speak; then, as if vexed, she would rattle a cracked plate made of the cheapest ironware, white and without a pattern. A kettle sluggishly began to hiss on the fire.

“I don’t care!” said the younger woman with a defiant lift of her plump shoulders. “I’m going to make myself some tea to warm up a little! You can have one cup with me, Kate, and don’t grumble about the waste again. I’m tired of all this.”

“Well, if you’re that tired, why don’t you leave, Beth?” asked the older woman, splintering a peppermint deftly with her false teeth.

Beth went to the sand-dusty window and looked at the child at a distance, sitting there motionless on the boulder. The woman grumbled, shaking her head as if exasperated by her own weakness. She said angrily, “Because of Carrie, and you know it.”

“That little monster is nothing to you,” said old Kate, and rocked as if laughing internally. “If I was in your place I wouldn’t stay because of her. No sir. Not that I don’t like the kid; maybe I don’t. But I promised her mother I’d stay, and it’s all arranged; was arranged a long time ago.” She sighed. “You’d never believe it, looking at Carrie, but her mother was a beauty, pretty as a painting, with yellow hair and big gray eyes and a lovely figure.” Kate’s voice held a hint of her early girlhood in the Midlands of England. “Best of all, she had a beautiful soul.” She cackled. “And better than all else, she had a lot of money. He got it, of course. There were some said he married her for her money. Maybe. But I think he cared for her too. Now, now, don’t go romantic on me again, Beth!”

Beth came back to the fire, her blue eyes bright with curiosity. “He’s still got the money, hasn’t he? He isn’t the kind to spend anything, God knows. Some say he’s rich — ”

Kate cackled again and rubbed her hands. “Never listen to strangers and the foolish gab they talk. As for me, I keep my own counsel.” She looked at Beth shrewdly. “Living here like this every summer, and then in that house in Lyndon, would you say he was rich? It’s bad enough here in Lyme; it’s worse in Lyndon in the winter. Colder than death, with hardly any fires, and the snow about like mountains. Would you say a rich gent would live like that, eh, Beth?”

“Not in my book, he wouldn’t,” said Beth vigorously. She paused, her big plump finger on her plump lips. “Yet he’s always in Europe, sailing or steaming away months in the year. Must have business in those foreign places. Poor men don’t have business anywhere.”

“Hum,” said Kate. “Well, I’ll have a cup of tea with you; always did like a nice cup of tea, though most times we have to buy it out of our own pockets when the can runs low — which it always does. You buy the tea this time, Beth?”

Beth sat down and looked with a frown at the kettle, which was refusing to come to a boil on the low and smoldering logs. “No. I charged it. Down at the village yesterday. Thirty cents a pound; not very good, but better than usual.”

“Mr. Ames did buy us some China tea last time he was in the old country,” said Kate. “Now, I’m not defending him, but you have to give a man justice sometimes.”

Beth snorted. She glanced at the window; she could just see the blurred and silent figure of little Caroline Ames; now, in this twilight, it seemed to be one with the gray sky and the sea, as if carved from the substance of the boulder itself. “I often wonder,” said Beth. “He hates that poor little girl; you can see that with half an eye. But she loves him to death, the poor mite. Worships him. She’s looking for the ship that’s supposed to bring him tonight or tomorrow. It’s a funny thing about love: you don’t need to have it returned to love somebody. Loving’s enough.”

Kate said, “There you are again! Romantic. You and your Charles Dickens and his books you’re always reading. Don’t be romantic, girl; no romance in real life.”

“I don’t know about that!” said Beth with spirit. “I was married; I loved Harry with all my heart.”

“And he ran off with a trollop, taking your savings, too, five years ago,” said Kate cynically. “That’s what you told me. Romance!”

“I loved him. That was enough, even if he didn’t love me.” She sighed, thinking of the house, the very little house, which had been hers in Lyndon, near Boston. She had had to sell it, for she had no money to maintain it. Well, there was no use thinking of the past; she, Beth, was forty-five years old, and women that age were still too young to sink themselves in useless memories. She turned her thoughts determinedly to the mystery which was John Ames and his little daughter Caroline. She had been with the family for five years and knew almost as little now as she had known on the evening of her arrival. She received eight dollars a month as an assistant to old Kate, who no longer could do much as a housekeeper. Beth had a very healthy and human curiosity. As she filled the tin teapot with hot water and took the can of tea from the mantelpiece, she became determined to learn something more from the taciturn Kate. Her blue eyes sharpened, but she was careful to use guile, for Kate was very cunning and any information was taken from her unawares and only when she was in a good temper. Beth made very strong, rich tea, not sparing the leaves this time. She poured it into two big thick cups. She reached to the mantelpiece and brought down a box of plain cookies. “There, we’ll have a feast,” she said.

Kate held the hot cup greedily in her worn hands and accepted three cookies. She placed them beside the bag of peppermints on her knee. She regarded Beth with kindness and gratitude. “You’re a good soul, Beth,” she said. “And being a good soul is very good, though stupid.”

The wind shrieked against the house; the small fire trembled and fell low. The flame in the lamp bent, almost expired. The women drew closer to the hearth.

“Carrie will take cold out there,” said Beth. “I think I’ll call her in soon. It’s silly for her to sit there, watching. All the ships dock down near Marblehead or in the port of Boston, not here.”

“But she can see them come in,” said Kate, smacking her lips over the tea. “Leave her be. She don’t have much amusement besides watching for her daddy’s ship.”

Beth sipped her tea delicately, watching the old woman under her red eyelashes. She said casually, “You took care of Carrie until I came four years ago. That’s six years you had of her, isn’t it? You said you stayed because of her mother.”

“True,” said Kate, sucking loudly at her cup. “I promised her mother. Ann Esmond, that was.”

“When the poor young thing was dying, after the baby’s birth?” suggested Beth.

Kate grinned. “Wrong again, you and your romance! You’re thinking of
Dombey and Son
. Nothing like that. Caroline was three years old, and healthy as a colt. My Ann caught cold.” She stopped grinning, and a dark and vengeful look crept over her face, and she stared at the fire. “I brought Ann up; I was her nanny, fresh from England; she was my own child, in my heart. Ann and her twin sister Cynthia. Pretty as pictures. Both of ‘em. Never married, never had a child of my own. They was my children. There’s a portrait of them in Cynthia’s house now. You should see it sometime. Well. Ann caught lung fever in that damned cold house in Lyndon, and
he
was too near to call a doctor in time, and so she died. I said to myself, said I: ‘If that girl dies, I’ll leave this house tomorrow, and be damned to him and his brat!’ Then Ann asked me, right on her deathbed. Loved that kid, she did. Never had any real feeling for her, myself.”

“Ah,” murmured Beth pitifully.

“ ‘Tisn’t that I despise her, as her dad does,” said Kate. “But she’s so ugly, and not like my Ann at all. Not even like
him
. Wonder, sometimes, who she does look like; somebody barmy, no doubt. Maybe that’s why he avoids her. Maybe she reminds him of somebody.”

“Perhaps,” insinuated Beth eagerly, “he doesn’t like Caroline because she’s a disappointment. He wanted a son?”

Kate grinned all over her wrinkled face. “Wrong again. You better stop reading Dickens. They wanted a daughter, especially
him
. ‘Give me a daughter, Ann,’ I used to hear him say. ‘Not a son. I don’t want a son’.”

“Why?”

Kate pulled her afghans tighter on her withered knees. “I don’t know. So, he got a daughter, and he hates her. No telling what people are like.”

“Perhaps he doesn’t like Caroline because she isn’t pretty like her mother.”

“Never heard him say anything about her looks. I’ve just got a feeling she reminds him of somebody he hates.”

“It’s a mystery,” said Beth, delighting in it.

“Nothing’s a mystery,” said Kate crossly. “Everything’s got an explanation, if you can find it. How you go on about mysteries! But lonely people love ‘em.” Her voice was thin and had a tone of crackling to it, tinged with malice.

A heavy gust of wind, massive as an avalanche of stone, fell against the house, and the gloomy light darkened at the windows. The walls trembled, and the ancient floor vibrated. Beth shuddered. “I’ve had five summers of this,” she said. “People who come to Lyme leave September first. But not us, dear me, no! We stay until the first snow flies. The house in Lyndon’s worse than this for cold, but at least I can go in on the train to Boston in twenty minutes and look at the shops and see somebody besides us. By the way” — and Beth poured another cup of tea for Kate — “why don’t we ever see the neighbors? Nearest one’s a mile away, but that isn’t too far. People by the name of Sheldon, I heard in the village, and they live here. They’ve got a boy, Tom, about twelve; could be a playmate for Carrie.”

“He don’t like neighbors; never did,” said Kate cryptically. “He hasn’t any friends; never had. How my Ann could put up with him I’ll never know. But he doted on her. And kept her locked up like a prisoner. Not that she ever minded; he was enough for her, poor child. Sometimes he’d take her to London and Paris and Berlin; it was a gala occasion for her, as if she’d never seen them places before with her father.”

“Well, he’s a dandy,” said Beth. “And dresses like a prince. Sometimes I could speak my mind to him and tell him about Carrie’s old worn clothing! Like a beggar.” She brightened. “I suppose he never got over his wife’s death. Mourned for her.”

“Not he,” said Kate. “There’s some made for mourning and some not. He’s not.” She rubbed her papery palms together and meditated. “It’s all business with him. Importing or something.” She looked slyly at Beth, as if amused at the younger woman’s unsatiated curiosity.

“Where did he meet your Ann?” asked Beth. “If you don’t mind me,” she added, bridling.

“Oh, I don’t mind telling,” said Kate indulgently. “In her father’s house; she had just come out; it was one of the grand parties. No mystery about it. Mr. Esmond had some business with him; don’t know what. But Ann looked at him, and he looked at her, as if he was a nob, and he wasn’t.”

“A nob?”

“Oh, that’s English for aristocrat; gentry. And he isn’t gentry. But never heard, even from Ann, where he came from, except that once she said Boston. He was an orphan, she said, since he was a little chap. That was all. No family.”

“And her father let her marry him!”

“Ann had a mind of her own, for all she looked so soft. And Mr. Esmond didn’t seem displeased. I heard him say once that he had a future. Anyway, Ann inherited two hundred thousand dollars when Mr. Esmond died, and Cynthia got the same. Two hundred thousand dollars. That’s a fortune. She turned it over to
him
.”

“So he’s rich, in spite of him living like a beggar and making us live like beggars too,” said Beth resentfully.

“Um. I didn’t say he was rich, now. Investments went down during the war; haven’t come back yet. Maybe he lost it all.” The old woman smiled under her long nose. “Well, you get eight dollars a month. That’s not a fine sum. You could get more elsewhere. With a warm room and a fire of your own, and better money, and a cheerful house around you.”