Kinds of Love by May Sarton

Author:May Sarton
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781497685505
Publisher: Open Road Media

CHAPTER 5

Christmas was as quiet and beautiful as Christina’s dream of it—a tree decorated simply with a few red and white balls, brilliant sunshine on the snow outside, so Sybille and John were able to drive up unexpectedly for an hour or two, bringing presents of records and books, and two light, fluffy mohair throws in stained-glass colors, drawings and poems from the children; and Christina enjoyed the sweet sensation of feeling that she and Cornelius had become the cherished ones this year. The day ended with listening to Christmas music alone together, drinking a glass of champagne, and then eating a duck à l’orange that Cornelius pronounced as good as that at the Tour d’Argent in Paris. Long before midnight they were in bed, reading poems aloud from the Oxford Book of English Verse—Thomas Hardy, Herbert, and Traherne. Peace and joy, Christina thought, falling into a seamless sleep.

For the following days snow piled on snow. For the first time Christina felt really walled in for twenty-four hours. But she was beginning to understand the winter rhythm—if one did not panic, the plows did come finally, and when the lights went out for a few hours, candlelight cast beautiful shadows on the walls, and Cornelius and she went to bed at seven and lay in the dark and talked, hand in hand, startled when all the lights went on again at three in the morning.

As soon as she was movable again, on the Saturday after Christmas, exhilarated by the brilliance of the morning, Christina did what she had promised herself for ages—she left the car at Eben’s driveway and walked up to see him. It had been weeks since that first visit. But she felt lighthearted and at ease this time. They met halfway, as he was on his way down to pick up the mail. He would fetch it when he took her back to her car, he said. His orange cat sat licking her paws on the porch beside the storm door. Molly waved from the kitchen window, and the low-ceilinged, dark study felt welcoming after the stunning light outdoors.

“Well,” Eben said, “what about those letters? Find them interesting?”

“Not only I did, but Cornelius has been happily employed making all sorts of lists and charts so we can try to visualize exactly what livestock they had, what tools, how many oxen, and what they harvested.”

“Do you get the sense of a person at all? When I first glanced through them, they seemed so impersonal—so very impersonal, I tried to relate them to the portraits.”

Eben got up and moved piles of papers about on his desk, finally laying his hands on a small filing envelope tied with a piece of string. He laid it in Christina’s lap.

“Take a look at her!”

“Strong face. I’m not surprised.”

In the first photograph Christina took out, Sophia was standing in front of a barn door, in a tightly buttoned double-breasted jacket over a full skirt or, perhaps, apron—beneath it another skirt showed through. Her hair was parted in the middle and drawn tightly back from a wide brow.

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