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Title Page

Kinds of Love

A Novel

May Sarton

Contents

CONTENTS

Author’s Note

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The author wishes to thank the National Foundation of the Arts and the Humanities for a generous grant toward the writing of this novel, and Marjory Gane Harkness for permission to use Eliza Bunker’s letter, page 242 of The Tamworth Narrative (Freeport, Maine: The Bond Wheelright Company, 1958).

Chief Characters

CHIEF CHARACTERS

THE LIVING

Ellen Comstock (formerly Lockhart), a widow

Nick, her unmarried son

Christina Chapman (formerly Holt)

Cornelius Chapman

Cathy, youngest daughter of Marianne and Bruno Eben Fifield, native of Willard, retired businessman and

diplomat

Jem Grindell, town historian

Jim Heald, his friend, married to Sarie

Jane Tuttle, botanist, long-time resident of Willard

Susie Plummer, librarian and retired missionary

Mary Loveland, matriarch of the Loveland clan

Sally and Timothy Webster, summer people

Mamzelle, the Chapmans’ old governess

Ed Taggart, road agent

Dinnock Corey, mailman

Johnny Dole, policeman

Orin Gregg, warden

Mrs. Molly Goodnow, housekeeper for Eben

Hannah, housekeeper for Jane Turtle

Old Pete, jack of all trades

Joel Smith, a Dartmouth student

THE DEAD

Rufus Comstock, Ellen’s husband, a farmer

Seth Lockhart, Ellen’s grandfather, a schoolteacher

Judge Gordon Chapman, Cornelius’s father

Olive Fifield, Eben’s wife

Sophia Dole, his great-grandmother

Erica Portland, an artist

Miss Morse, General Morse’s daughter, a schoolteacher

The untameable, the live, the gentle.

Have you not known them? Whom? They carry

Time looped so river-wise about their house

There’s no way in by history’s road

To name or number them.

—ROBERT GRAVES, “Through Nightmare”

Part One: A Walk Through the Woods

PART ONE

A Walk Through the Woods

Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

Old Pete, out chopping wood beside his shack, saw the two women go past down the dirt road toward the brook and watched them, as he watched everything within range, with lively curiosity. Ellen must be seventy-five if she’s a day, and Christina Chapman can’t be much younger, he thought, but they walk like gazelles—“gazelles”—he savored the word. Christina was tall, lean as a beanpole; beside her Ellen looked like a skinny little kid. But whatever the difference in height, their stride was easy.

“Going to explore the old lumber road, I’ll bet. They’ll find it changed.”