“What?” faltered Caroline, shrinking instinctively. “I — You don’t understand! I must have left my purse here when I was examining the stockings. You must have seen my purse!” she exclaimed to the clerk.
“No,” said the clerk, languidly patting her ‘waterfall’ of dirty yellow curls. “You didn’t have no purse. I was watchin’ you.”
“Then,” said Caroline, her panic growing, “I must have left it on the horse car!”
Blindly, urged again only by instinct, she turned and ran to the door, past the checker who tried without success to seize her arm, thrusting her way in terror through the staring mobs. Her one thought, glazed by anguish and so blurred beyond real thought, was to reach the street and somehow find the horse car, long gone over half an hour ago. She was caught at the very door by the burly man, who swung her about savagely, and even while she glared at him dazedly in her despair, still thinking of her purse, he slapped her face so brutally that the slap was heard above the hubbub of the customers.
No one had ever struck Caroline before in all her immured life. She staggered back under the blow, feeling the pain less than the stupefied bewilderment. Uppermost in her thoughts there still remained the loss of her purse. Recovering almost instantly, and never questioning why she had been assaulted — that was unimportant in view of her loss — she tried again to reach the door. She was seized by the shoulder and torn away and flung headlong into an aisle. Before she could fall she was caught by a powerful hand whose fingers clamped like crushing iron about her arm.
“Dirty, s — g thief!” said the burly man, shaking her furiously. “I’ll learn you ! Yessir, I’ll learn you!”
He fumbled for his club. The gaslights, the staring eyes, the giggling faces, the curses of the mob of customers, the joyful shriek of anticipating children dazed Caroline. And reality poured upon her with one appalling throb and roar. She stopped struggling. She saw the upraised club; she knew it would descend upon her head, crushing her to the floor. A vomitous fluid rushed into her mouth, and her legs stiffened, and sweat broke out on her pallid face. She stood rigid and waited for the final terror, the final ignominy, the final horror. She did not even tremble.
Perhaps it was the look in her eyes, wild and startled, or the fact that she did not fight and try to evade the impending blow, or perhaps it was the alien aura which hovered about her that made the burly man pause in the very act of bringing his club down upon her. A glove had fallen from her hand; he saw that her hand, though large and broad, was well shaped and smooth, not the hand of the usual servant girl. He saw that she was well fed. Glaring at her with mingled perplexity and hate, he pushed his club into his pocket and began to drag her toward the rear of the shop, parting a way for his passage with oaths and kicks. Caroline, gulping desperately and trying to keep her footing, began to cry feebly. But she had no words. It was a nightmare; she would wake up soon.
The burly man, who had a considerable retinue of the avid now, urging him eagerly to beat the girl, reached a double door and kicked it open and pulled Caroline inside. He flung her into the center of the room, where she fell heavily on her hands and knees. He shut the door against the hungry faces pressing toward it. Caroline remained in her fallen position, dimly shaking her head, a dimness in her mind and eyes. It was not until some moments had passed that she became aware of the gigantic boots and trunklike legs beside her. Then in abysmal fear beyond any fear she had ever known, she fell over on her side, sprawling, to put as much space between her and those menacing boots and legs as possible. She saw then that she was lying on a dirty floor smeared with the spittle from chewing tobacco and that everything about her was hot and stinking.
Trembling violently, she looked around her. Two other men were in this room, which was intensely heated by a pot-bellied black coal stove in the center. Large gaslights hanging from the ceiling filled the room with a light fearful to the girl. One man sat at a scarred roll-top desk heaped with papers; he was in his shirt sleeves, and Caroline, with the clarified vision of unrelieved fear, saw that his shirt was striped in red and white, that he was scrawny, withered, and wore steel-rimmed spectacles, and that he was old. Another man sat at a rickety table, also heaped with papers, and he was younger and had a pale, bloated face and mean little blue eyes. Green steel files lined the walls.
“What’s this, what’s this?” protested the old man in a querulous voice. “Can’t you handle thieves alone, Aleck?” He chewed, coughed, and spat on the floor.
“Mr. Fern, I don’t know about this one,” said Aleck, and made as if to kick Caroline. When she shrank back on the floor, he bellowed with laughter. “No sir, this one’s new to me. Kind of funny.”
“Funny, eh?” said the young man at the table. He got up languidly; his body was swollen.
“Sure is, Mr. Johnny. Maybe an amateur or something. But look at her hands. No kitchen drab or sewing girl from some factory. Don’t want to make mistakes, y’see. There’s always the police.”
He bent and grasped one of Caroline’s hands and displayed it to the two men. “See what I mean? Smooth. No burns; no pricks. No calluses. Like a lady’s hand. You’d think she was a lady ‘cept for her clothes and the looks of her.”
The young man giggled; it was a high and feminine sound. He bent over the cowering Caroline and stared at her. “That ain’t no lady,” he blatted. “And maybe she’s in some other work besides the kitchen or the shop. Maybe she works where she don’t have to use her hands. See? Maybe she uses somethin’ else, if you follow me.”
The old man cackled, and the burly man roared and slapped his thighs. Johnny lifted his hand in modest deprecation of this applause. “Corrected. She ain’t the type; look at her. Not my type anyways. But there is no accountin’ for tastes, as the old lady said when she kissed the cow. Get her up on her feet, Aleck.”
Aleck obligingly tugged at Caroline’s arm and pulled her upright. She made no sound. She had heard of nothing in her life that could act as a frame of reference for her now. She did not know why she was here, nor what she had done, nor why these evil men smirked at her. She had heard the word ‘thief’ but did not, in her dazed state, connect it remotely with herself. She knew only that she had been struck, that she had been prevented from trying to find her purse, that she had been dragged into this place. Was she to be murdered? And if so, why? Tears of primitive fear began to roll down her face; her voice was locked in her throat as in a nightmare. She tried to scream; the sound emerged as a whimper.
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 que
stioned. 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.
A Prologue to Love Page 13
