The question startled Beth, and she looked up in the gray barrenness of Caroline’s room. October wind and rain marched past the windows. Beth was about to answer, then she stared thoughtfully at the girl, her eyes puckered. Simple, but astute, she felt something dangerous and alien in the room, something that had never been there before. “Well, no, not really. I save almost all my wages, and I have a pension, and the government’s just increased it.” Then, as her alarm sharpened, it suddenly drifted away. She smiled at Caroline, and easy tears came to her eyes; the girl was worried about her because she loved her. She put her scarred hand on the girl’s arm.
“I didn’t think it would mean anything to you, dear,” she said, “but poor old Kate left me all she had after her simple funeral expenses. I never told you. You never cared about money; you never even thought of it.”
Caroline did not smile. It was only the grayness of the day which gave her face a somber hardness, thought Beth. Caroline said, “I didn’t know. Was it much?”
Again Beth’s eyes wrinkled, and uneasiness returned to her. “Why — considerable. I thought she’d leave it to her sister’s children in England, but she left it to me. Why?”
“Perhaps she thought you’d save it or use it sensibly. Kate was very saving, Beth.”
Beth folded a knitted skirt very slowly. “I didn’t mean that, Carrie. When I asked you why, I meant why did you ask.”
But Caroline did not know herself. She only knew that since last night she had been afraid and that the fear was beginning to shape and solidify in her heart, like iron. “I’m glad you’re not poor, anyway,” she muttered. She looked about the room vaguely. “It must be terrible to be poor.”
Beth did not know what made her say sharply, “I don’t know that it’s so terrible. My own family was always poor. There were ten of us, and the farm wasn’t too good. Papa always had a very hard time grubbing up enough for us to eat and fill the silo for the horses and cows. But we were awful happy. Awful happy.”
“How could you be happy without money, Beth?”
Beth sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at her scarred palms. She felt a little sick as well as utterly baffled. What had happened to Carrie? Earnestly she lifted her eyes and gazed at the girl.
“My papa used to say that money helped everywhere,” she said, “whether it was when a new baby was born, or the cows got sick, or there was scarlet fever and we had to have the doctor, or whether anyone died. It was like grease on an axle wheel, Papa would say; it made the going smoother. Papa wasn’t one of those silly people who pretend that money doesn’t mean anything; he knew what it was to need it, you can be sure of that. But what he meant was that money made things roll better. Why, there was a family down the road with a good farm, a real rich farm, four times as big as ours, and there were only three big healthy boys — they went to school with our mess of children and they’d never speak. They never got sick. Mrs. Schiller always had a fine silk dress on Sundays, and India shawls — that pretty Paisley pattern, you know, Carrie — and a fur cape in winter. They had a surrey, too, all shiny and fringed, and it could seat all five of them and room to spare, and a horse kept just to pull it. They’d jingle up to church in fine style, and we’d pull in behind them in one of the farm wagons and all over hay.
“But the funny thing about it,” said Beth, “was that you never saw any of the Schillers smile, and nobody ever heard them laugh, and they had sour faces, thick around the nose, as if they were always mad at everybody all the time. They had a girl working for them, and they’d bicker every time they paid her her six dollars a month, and they’d lock up the food-safe at night and the pantry door so she couldn’t have a bite if she got hungry at night after working from dawn to dark. Bessie would tell us; she was a friend of my oldest sister. ‘It’s like working in an icehouse,’ she’d say, and we’d all laugh at her stories about the Schillers. They never got a single mite of happiness out of their lives, Carrie. They’d never speak to anyone who didn’t have as much money as they had, or more. Nobody liked them, but our house was full all the time with children, and on Sundays friends would come with fresh pumpkin pies or mince, and there was always a turkey on hand at Christmas, or a goose. And Papa never spared the fires; the boys always kept a lot of firewood ready.”
Caroline smiled slightly, but it was a sober smile. “Do you honestly think all the poor are happy and all the rich miserable, Beth?”
“No, no,” said Beth shaking her head. “I’m not that simple, Carrie. I mean, you can be happy without money and you can be wretched with it. It depends on what kind of a person you are. The Schillers were just awful people, that’s all.” Now she was becoming confused. “Carrie, I just don’t know! But I do know that our family never had any money and we were happy, and maybe we’d have been happier with it. I don’t know!”
“You see,” muttered Caroline.
Beth shook her head emphatically. “I don’t see, Carrie. You read my Bible sometimes. God is no respecter of persons, it says. There’s more to living than money. I’m not educated, Carrie. I can’t think very deep. But I do know that God isn’t interested more in a rich man than a poor one, except He expects more of the rich.”
Beth was perturbed when Caroline gave her a sly golden glance out of the corner of her eye.
“ ‘A rich man’s wealth is his strong city’,” quoted Caroline. “That’s what it says in the Bible. And the Bible classes the poor with the other dead: the blind, the childless, and the lepers.”
Beth sat upright on the bed. “Carrie, the Bible often comments on things as they are in the world. That doesn’t mean that it approves classing the poor, the childless, the lepers, and the blind together as dead. Carrie! I have no children of my own.”
Caroline turned away from her trunk and ran to Beth and knelt down before her and took her hands. “Beth, I’m terrible sorry. Please forgive me. Please — ” And she began to cry. Beth pulled the large head to her breast.
“Carrie, Carrie darling, what is it?” she asked. “What’s hurt my girl? Why, Carrie, you’re all the child I ever wanted. Don’t cry like that; you’ll be sick at your stomach. What’s the matter, Carrie?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know,” said Caroline, and clung to her friend with desperate arms. “I wish you were going with me, Beth. I’m awfully afraid.”
Beth sighed and smoothed the coronet of long thin braids. “Yes, dear. I understand. You don’t want to leave home.”
After Caroline had gone and the lonely, empty house thundered with dull far echoes, Beth discovered that the girl had not taken the Bible which she had bought for her three years ago. It was a fine Bible with a black leather cover stamped with gold, and Caroline’s name had been engraved on it, also in gold, and the pages were of thin silky India paper and the small print clear and sharp. It had cost Beth a whole month’s wages. Beth wrapped it up carefully and sent it to Boston to Caroline. The girl never opened the package. She put it away in her tin trunk. It was found forty years later, the leather moldering away, the pages matted, the gold obliterated, and what had cost Beth so much in love and money was thrown out.
Chapter 6
“You’re a difficult girl,” said Cynthia Winslow to her niece. “There was a time when I thought you had the disposition of your mother. You don’t look like Ann, of course, but you did have many of her traits of character. I must have been mistaken after all; children change. You’re seventeen, Caroline.”
“I can’t help it if I’m not stylish, Aunt Cynthia,” said Caroline sulkily. She looked at the portrait of her aunt and her mother.
“We aren’t talking about the same things,” said Cynthia with pettishness. “Dear me, Caroline. You are becoming more like your father every day. You are stiff like him and cold and too silent, and you keep yourself from any contact with people. Why? No one has ever hurt you, to my knowledge, to make you so distrustful and withdrawing. If you’d been hungry or homeless or lost or beaten or brought up in some dreadful slum, the
n I could understand. Dear me. I thought I was a very perspicacious person and understood people. But now I am beginning to think I’m really a fool and don’t understand anyone at all.”
She was exasperated. Her long and delicate hands were folded together on her blue velvet lap. She looked more Florentine than ever before, cool, polished, and chiseled, in her forty-first year. Her hairdresser came once a week to arrange her bright hair and to instruct her maid; if he brought a tint to conceal any gray, the maid never betrayed that fact to the other servants.
There were no lines in her long porcelain neck, no wrinkles about her pink lips. The smoky color of her eyes was as ardent as ever.
“What is it you want to know about me, Aunt Cynthia?” asked Caroline. She looked at her aunt warily.
“I don’t want to know anything, Caroline. What a person is, is God’s business and his own. But I do wish you’d be more cordial to the girls in your school. You’ve been going there two years, yet you never invite them here. Why can’t you laugh more? You’re a young lady, and though you say you aren’t stylish and I must admit that your figure could be improved — what a pig you are about chocolates and bonbons! — you do have a nice face when you smile, and your eyes are simply beautiful. Your complexion is sallow. That comes of being burned brown every summer at Lyme. Why don’t you go home to Lyndon more often? You used to count the days to the weekends, but in the last year you’ve never wanted to go there, and you hardly read poor Beth’s letters and hardly ever answer them. Never mind. I am, in a way, talking to myself and wondering. You must have your reasons, and I never pry.
“But I am interested in your making the best of yourself. I made your father give you a generous allowance. You could dress well, and a little restraint over the sweetmeat dishes would do wonders for your figure, even though your bones are broad and heavy. But you are tall enough and broad enough to be imposing. You could have presence. But what sort of clothes do you insist upon? Ugly dull browns, which call attention to your freckles; dark blues, which make you appear more sallow than you are; maroons fit only for old ladies. And your boots! Like a stableboy’s.”
“I’d look foolish in ruffles and fluffs and bangles,” said Caroline. She looked at the diamond bracelet on her aunt’s arm. Cynthia had told her that John Ames had given her the bracelet when she had adopted Melinda.
“I don’t mean such things,” said Cynthia. “They aren’t for you. But you could wear pleasant colors. You could be statuesque in the proper shaping and style of your clothes. Impressive. Even your father complains.”
Caroline, who was bored and resentful at this lecturing, became interested, “What does Papa want me to do?” she asked eagerly.
“He wants you to look like a young lady who will inherit a tremendous amount of money,” said Cynthia.
“But there isn’t a tremendous amount of money!” cried Caroline.
Cynthia was taken aback. There was more here, she reflected, than met the eye. She studied Caroline. Then she smiled a little. “Oh yes, my dear, there is an enormous amount of money. Your father is one of the richest men in America. He could buy up half the gentlemen in Boston. He can touch rubbish and it turns to gold. It’s a gift, and a very convenient one, though it must be dull at times.”
Caroline’s eyes glowed as though she had had a message from a lover, and Cynthia frowned.
“But why didn’t Papa ever tell me that, Aunt Cynthia?”
“Possibly because he is afraid you might get extravagant ideas,” said Cynthia dryly.
“Such as you have,” said Caroline with a candor that removed the innocent bite from her words. Cynthia laughed. “Very true,” she agreed. “Your papa is always accusing me of extravagance, as you know, it seems. Dear me, I am a Bostonian born and bred, as was my own papa, but I don’t have the Bostonian’s reverence for money. I consider that vulgar. The really fine and aristocratic families of Boston have disappeared, have gone away, or have been extinguished by poverty or no male heirs. Now we have the merchant princes and an absolute money society; your worth, in Boston, is judged by how much you actually weigh in gold. And what irritable people, and how truly mannerless and brutal! My papa would never have admitted them to our house.
“It’s very odd,” said Cynthia, meditatively looking at her pretty foot and apparently examining it. “The Bostonians adore the English, who at least pretend not to use money as the sole criterion of a man’s worth. But the Bostonians, except for their everlasting and tedious afternoon teas and an affected accent, are not like the English at all, who have manners and graces. There’s nothing so distinguished as a mannerly Englishman, and there’s nothing really so undistinguished as the Bostonian who loves the English and makes very little effort to imitate them.”
Cynthia paused. Caroline was restlessly playing with the wool fringe about her throat. The older woman laughed and shook her head. “My father didn’t really have a tremendous fortune. The clever diminished it very neatly for him. But he never let anyone know! He was of a great and gentle family, and he was very intelligent, and he loved his daughters. So he pretended to be extremely rich, knowing his neighbors, and he let them pretend to him that they admired family background. You see, he was kind, too, and he was sorry for them.”
She looked at Caroline briskly. “But here we are in Boston, and there are the Assemblies to consider and your presentation at a proper tea. I know your father doesn’t consider them important; there are times when I believe he is an authentic gentleman. Don’t stare that way, Caroline. It’s most disconcerting. What I am trying to say is that you live in Boston, and you will probably spend a great deal of your life here, and if you live in a certain society by your own choice — and it is your father’s choice — you should at least abide by some of their rules even if they appear ridiculous to you. As your father’s heiress you will have considerable importance in Boston, and you will meet young men — Do move back from the fire, my dear. You have suddenly turned a quite fiery red, and your eyes are watering.”
“Excuse me, please,” Caroline muttered, and jumped to her feet and ran heavily out of the room. Cynthia was accustomed to the girl’s sudden awkwardnesses, but they still annoyed her. Only all that money would get her a suitable husband; even then the effort would be formidable. Cynthia sighed, then smiled, thinking of Melinda. Cynthia reached out her beautiful rounded arm and pulled the bell rope, and Melinda came in as at a signal.
Cool and sunny spring wind had brightened Melinda’s cheeks, had ruffled the pale ashen gold of her hair, had made her gray eyes brilliant. She was a most beautiful child of nearly seven with a tender pink mouth, a dimpled white chin, and a forehead of touching purity. All her actions were graceful; she was grave by nature, but when she laughed everyone listened. She ran to Cynthia and kissed her and put her chilly cheek against Cynthia’s and murmured lovingly and wordlessly in her ear. Cynthia forgot the elegance of her dress and pulled the child on her knee and kissed her passionately. The resemblance between them was remarkable.
Though many frequently spoke of the child’s lack of ‘background’ — and this was spoken of the most frequently by those who had no true background at all but only one invented after the acquisition of money — all loved Melinda, the nameless, the adopted, who had lived for nearly four years in a very exclusive ‘home’ called ‘Miss Christie’s Nursery and Children’s Shelter’ much esteemed in Boston. It was not entirely an orphanage, though many of the children were of old and impoverished families. Boston society felt itself obligated to help care for these children, offspring of lifelong friends, and very often adopted them later or made themselves responsible for their higher education and ‘good’ marriages. Others were truly nameless but well financed from mysterious sources abroad as well as in Boston. It was a never-ending source of spirited conversation as to whom these children could really claim as parents, but tact and certain discretions did not permit of any real probings. Melinda was one of these children. Miss Christie, if she had sealed records, ne
ver mentioned them. Her high cold serenity when referring to ‘her’ children intimidated even the most curious and malevolent. Her standards were meticulous and inflexible, so few had any dubiousness when adopting a nameless child of unknown parentage.
Cynthia Winslow was on the Board which assisted the home, as were many of her friends. (But even the Board never had access to Miss Christie’s sealed files.) She had ostensibly first seen Melinda when the child was three years old. She adopted her a year later. “I could not resist the darling,” she had said to her friends with tears in her eyes. Others had wished to adopt Melinda, but in some way, never disclosed, John Ames had secured the child for Cynthia. Miss Christie answered no questions.
Timothy Winslow, to everyone’s surprise, loved Melinda. It was quite unusual for a young man approaching eighteen to care for a child, and especially one adopted by his mother. Timothy was called ‘aristocratic’ by his mother’s friends, with the after-remark ‘that of course it was to be expected, with the Esmond and Winslow blood’. No one particularly liked Timothy, in spite of the ‘blood’, for his monetary prospects were poor and he was at the mercy of his uncle’s well-known aversion to spending money. Moreover, he had a silent personality and a look of perpetual but polite disdain which others, while affecting to admire, found annoying.
A Prologue to Love Page 11
