“You have never shown me love,” she whispered, her voice fearful and tight. “I do not know why you should be so surprised that I run after it when it is offered to me.” And she left the room before Bathilda could scorn this sentiment.
So Caroline married with nobody to give her away and no family to represent her. She chose a gown of diaphanous white muslin, with a wide yoke of lace ruffles across the bust and crisp frills at the neck and cuffs. Her hair was piled high on her head and held with ivory combs, and pearl drop earrings were her only jewels. She wore no make-up, and her countenance, as she took a last look in the glass, was somewhat pale. Although the weather was not warm, she carried her mother’s silk fan on her wrist, fingering it nervously as she travelled to a small church on the Upper East Side, close to where Corin had lived as a boy. Sara the maid sat alone on the bride’s side; and as she entered the building, Caroline longed to see her parents there. Corin wore a borrowed suit and tie, his hair combed neatly back and his cheeks freshly shaven, the skin soft and slightly raw. He fidgeted with his collar as she began her approach along the aisle, but then he met her anxious gaze, and he smiled and fell still as though naught else mattered. His mother and two elder brothers were in attendance, solemn as the couple made their vows before the minister. Mrs. Massey still wore her mourning dress, and although she welcomed her new daughter-in-law, her grief was too fresh for her to feel truly glad. It was another wet day, and the church was quiet and dark, smelling of damp brick dust and candle wax. Caroline did not mind. Her world had contracted to include nothing but the man in front of her, the man taking her hand, the man who looked at her so possessively and spoke with such conviction as he made his promises. With their hands joined before God, Caroline felt such an irresistible surge of elation that she could not contain it, and it spilled from her in a storm of happy tears that Corin gathered on his fingertips and kissed away. With him she would start her real life at last.
But to his new wife’s dismay, Corin packed and made ready to leave New York the following day.
“We will have our wedding night in our home, in the house that I have built for us; not here in a place still sorrowing for my father. I came for a funeral, and I didn’t bank on finding a wife,” he smiled, kissing her hands. “I’ve got to sort a few things out, get the house ready for your arrival. I want it to be perfect.”
“It will be perfect, Corin,” she assured him, still unused to addressing any man by his first name alone. His kisses burned into her skin, made it hard to breathe. “Please let me come with you now.”
“Give me a month, that’s all, my sweetheart. Follow after me four weeks from today and I will have everything ready. You’ll have time to say goodbye to all your friends, and I’ll have time to boast to all of mine that I have married the most beautiful girl in the whole of America,” he said; and so she agreed even though his departure felt like the sky growing dark.
She called upon some of her old classmates to bid them farewell, but generally found them either occupied or not at home. Eventually, she understood herself persona non grata, so she spent the four weeks at home, suffering the uncomfortable silence between herself and her aunt, packing and repacking her luggage, writing letter after letter to Corin, and gazing out of the window at a view now dominated by the newly constructed Fuller Building-a wedge-shaped behemoth that towered nearly three hundred feet into the sky. Caroline had never imagined that man could build so high. She gazed at it, felt diminished by it, and the first doubts crept into her mind. With Corin gone, it almost seemed as though he had never been there at all, that she had dreamed the whole event. She turned the wedding ring on her finger and frowned, fighting to keep such thoughts at bay. But what could have been so terrible that he could not have taken her with him straight away? What had he to hide-regret for his hasty marriage to her? Sara sensed that she was troubled.
“It won’t be long now, miss,” she said, as she brought her tea.
“Sara… will you stay a moment?”
“Of course, miss.”
“Do you think… do you think it will be all right? In Oklahoma Territory?” Caroline asked, quietly.
“Of course, miss! That is… I do not rightly know, never having gone there. But… Mr. Massey will take good care of you, I do know that. He would not take you anywhere you would not wish to go, I am sure,” Sara assured her.
“Bathilda says I will have to work. Until I come into my money, that is… I will be a farmer’s wife,” she said.
“That you will, miss, but hardly the common sort of one.”
“Is the work so very hard? Keeping house and all? You do it so well, Sara-is it so very hard?” she asked, trying to keep her anxiety from sounding. Sara gazed at her with an odd mingling of amusement, pity and resentment.
“It can be hard enough, miss,” she said, somewhat flatly. “But you will be mistress of the house! You will be free to do things as you see fit, and I am sure you will have help. Oh, do not fret, miss! It may take you some while to grow accustomed to such a different kind of life to the one you have had, but you’ll be happy, I am sure of it.”
“Yes. I will be, won’t I?” Caroline smiled.
“Mr. Massey loves you. And you love him-how could you not be happy?”
“I do love him,” Caroline said, taking a deep breath and holding Sara’s hand tightly. “I do love him.”
“And I’m so happy for you, miss,” Sara said, her voice tightening, tears springing in her eyes.
“Oh, please don’t, Sara! How I wish you were coming with me!” Caroline cried.
“I wish it too, miss,” Sara said quietly, wiping her eyes with the hem of her apron.
When a letter from Corin did finally arrive, speaking words of love and encouragement, urging her to be patient for a little while longer, Caroline read and reread it twenty times a day, until she knew the words by heart and felt galvanized by them. When the four weeks were up, she kissed Bathilda’s florid cheek and tried to see some mark of regret in her aunt’s demeanor. But only Sara went with her to the station, sobbing inconsolably beside her young mistress as the bay horses trotted smartly along busy streets and avenues.
“I don’t know how it will be without you, miss. I don’t know that I’ll care for London!” the girl wept; and Caroline took her hand, winding their fingers tightly together, too full of clamoring feelings to speak. Only when confronted with the locomotive, which spat steam and soot with great vigor and filled her nose with the tang of hot iron and cinders, did she finally feel that she had found some other thing in the world as glad as she was to be making the journey. She shut her eyes as the train eased forward, and with its loud, solemn cough of steam, her old life ended and her new one began.
Chapter 2
My mother’s brother, my Uncle Clifford, and his wife, Mary, want the old linen press from the nursery, the round Queen Anne table from the study and the collection of miniatures that live in a glass-topped display case at the foot of the stairs. I’m not sure if this is what Meredith meant when she said her children could take a keepsake, but I really don’t care. I dare say a few more things will find their way into Clifford’s lorry at the end of the week, and if Meredith would be outraged, I will not be. It’s a grand house, but it’s not Chatsworth. There are no museum pieces, apart from a couple of the paintings perhaps. Just a big, old house full of big, old things; valuable, perhaps, but also unloved. Our mother has asked only for any family photographs I can find. I love her for her decency, and her heart.