Free A Prologue To Love by Taylor Caldwell Page B

royal family whose members were known to them, and also of the things which John Ames contemptuously labeled as ‘culture’.
     
    They had all met John Ames several times before, not only in Cynthia’s house, but in their own offices and in his. Many of them disliked, feared, or hated him. They often wondered among themselves why Cynthia could stand him. He was no asset to any conversation; his handsome but gloomy face rarely smiled. He showed no appreciation for a special dish at the table. He never complimented a lady. He did not talk easily to anyone. Outside of his potency and his power to make or break a man, he was a clod, in the opinion of the gentlemen.
     
    Gracious efforts at the table were made to draw him into the conversation for Cynthia’s sake. They failed. He ate the splendid meal, so marvelously prepared and served, as if it were bread and cheese. He barely touched the wine. He stared straight ahead of him, in somber silence, opposite Cynthia. Yet it seemed that he did not even see her, and she had never looked so beautiful. She was pale, sometimes a little abstracted. Yet someone had only to speak to her to bring a flash of joy and affection and pleasure to her eyes; she replied always with wit and lightness. Mr. Clark Brittingham, a very eligible bachelor in his late thirties, was more than ever entranced with her. He turned his intelligent eyes on John and bit the corner of his groomed mustache. It was a nuisance, but this fellow stood as a sort of brother to Cynthia, and he must be approached. Tonight.
     
    John, always so acutely perceptive, became aware of Mr. Brittingham’s distasteful glances thrown at him along the table. He turned his head abruptly and looked at the other man with his hard blue eyes. Mr. Brittingham smiled at him pleasantly, and John forced himself to smile. Brittingham, he reflected, was the richest man present, with the exception of himself. He had given a vast gift to the Louvre in Paris, and in consequence he wore the red, blue, and white ribbon of the Legion of Honor. A Rembrandt? Yes. It has cost Mr. Brittingham some seventy-six thousand dollars, John remembered. Something tightened in John’s throat, and for a moment the great and exquisite dining room was too hot for him, too airless. It reminded him of a fire; the fire hung before his eyes like a conflagration. He moved restlessly in his chair. He made himself think of the business he had done with Mr. Brittingham, one of the most prosperous pieces of business in his life.
     
    Now all at the table rose; the gentlemen were bowing, with the exception of John, for the ladies were preparing to ‘retire’ and leave the gentlemen alone with their brandy for a little while. The room rustled with silk; there was a fairy tinkling of bracelets, earrings, and necklaces. Then the ladies moved from the room like tall and sparkling birds of many colors, and the door closed after them. The gentlemen sat down. John sat among them like a statue. He hated this period. No one would talk business. It was not proper, according to these idiots. They would only eye him out of the corners of their eyes. Be sure they were thinking of business, though they would not mention it! John seethed with contempt. He would be visited by at least three tomorrow; he already had made appointments.
     
    It was very ridiculous. When these men sat in his office the elegance disappeared, the extreme courtesy, the oblique and graceful phrase. Then they were as blunt as stone and as avaricious as tigers, and even their faces were entirely different. It was as if their very flesh became heavier, their expressions grosser. There was no talk of art and ‘culture’ then! It was gold, and gold only, and be damned to know how it was to be acquired. Prentice, there, sitting down with a cultivated smile: he and his father had made most of their money ‘blackbirding’. Cynthia would call him a murderer, and it was quite true. And there was Vaughn: he had made