A Prologue To Love (5 page)

So Ann would look now, thought the man, if she had lived. He had forgotten, however, that Ann had always been more gentle than her sister. Ann, her father often had said, was a dove. But Cynthia was a shining bird.

“Dear John,” she said now in a light but firmly pretty voice. She gave him her cool hand and smiled up at him. “How nice to see you again. Really. I was pleased to receive your letter. How well you look! Europe always renews you.” There was a tiny malice in her tone, and she tilted her head quizzically.

“I’m not too decrepit, even if I am forty-five,” he answered, trying to retain her hand. But she deftly removed it and patted her curls, continuing to look at him. She said thoughtfully, “Forty-five! I must admit you are well preserved.” She smiled again. “Do sit down. Have you had sherry? Dreadful thing, sherry, isn’t it? I prefer brandy.” She sat down with a silvery rustle and clasped her hands in her lap. One of her fingers bore a large diamond set in emeralds, and a bracelet of emeralds circled her slim wrist.

She lifted her beautifully formed arm and pulled at the bell rope, and when the maid entered she ordered brandy. John Ames watched her; he thought how perfect she was. He said, trying to be arch, “Brandy? Is that a lady’s drink?”

“Don’t be foolish, John. It doesn’t become you, with that heavy stiff voice of yours and your stiff manner.”

He frowned. “Am I that pompous, Cynthia?”

“Gracious, no. You’re never pompous, my dear. That’s one of your few charms. There, I am teasing you again.”

John Ames was very tall and lean, without gauntness, and though his posture and mannerisms were exceedingly stiff he had a certain grace. His black broadcloth suit had been excellently cut in London, and his brocaded vest of black and gray fitted him exactly. His polished boots had also been made for him in London, of the best of black leather. He had a long, well-shaped face and a strong, somewhat brutal mouth from which deep cleft lines extended downward. Cold blue eyes, very bold and merciless, looked out from under a forehead without wrinkles, and his brown hair, thick and slightly curled, had no gray in it. There was a diamond in his black cravat and another on his right hand.

He is almost a gentleman, thought Cynthia, regarding him pleasantly. But he is a man; there is no doubt of that! He makes me tingle, which is quite naughty of me, I am sure, for he is my brother-in-law. She sipped her brandy and looked up over the brim of the glass at him as he stood near her on the hearthrug. Her gray eyes twinkled with amusement.

“Do sit down,” she urged again. He sat down opposite her. The mellow sunlight heightened the colors in the rug and gilded Cynthia’s hair. “Tell me all about everything,” she said. “How was dull old London and my dear, lovely Paris?”

“You’ve forgotten that your ‘dear, lovely Paris’ and France are now engaged in a war. And ‘dull old London’ is making a pretty profit from it.” He smiled at her, and his somber lips parted to show square white teeth.

“I keep forgetting,” said Cynthia. Her face changed. She made a restless gesture with both hands. “I never look at the newspapers. I loathe wars. How terrible of Germany to attack France!”

“I believe it was mutual,” said John Ames. “But wars are in the nature of men; they spring out of their character. However, the French statesmen were fools; they knew it was inevitable that someday they must fight Germany, since Prussia defeated Austria in 1866. The French are penurious; they waited until it was too late to buy the munitions they needed. But now, when it is too late, they have the chassepot, a breech-loading rifle, far superior to the Prussian needle gun. They also have a machine gun, the mitrailleuse. English patents, sold for a very pretty price. This won’t help France, however. The war isn’t expected to last more than a year, if that.”

Cynthia gazed at the glass in her hand. She said almost abstractedly, “You must have made a lot of money from those armaments, John.”

“I always make a lot of money,” he said coldly. “But what do you know of these things, Cynthia?”

“My dear John, I may be a woman, but I’m not a fool! Do you know what I heard a friend say once about you? ‘John Ames is a bird of disaster. He always appears where there is carrion’.”

He laughed. “Complimentary! A profit is a profit. I dabble in anything profitable. I have a dozen investments and businesses.”

“Some legitimate, no doubt,” said Cynthia.

“True.”

Cynthia said nothing. He waited, but still she did not speak. Then he said, “Why didn’t you buy that land and properties in Virginia, as I advised you to? They could have been had for almost nothing; they were sold at a handsome profit just before I left for Europe.”

“You bought and sold them yourself?” asked Cynthia quietly.

“I did. But I gave you the first opportunity.”

“You don’t understand, John. I couldn’t have done it. The poor South!”

“Your ‘poor South’ killed your husband in Georgia,” he said with contempt. “Your husband, George Winslow.”

“It was stupid of him to apply for a commission and go to war,” said Cynthia, and her lovely eyes flashed. “I tried to dissuade him. But it was all bugles and drums and brass buttons and patriotism! Why didn’t Congress do as Lincoln first suggested: pay the southern plantation people for their slaves, then free them? Think of the tens of thousands of lives that would have been saved, and the money, and the calamity, and the ruin and destruction! Think of the sorrow that would have been spared, and the bitterness, and the crimes of the Reconstruction, and the undying enmity and hate, and the burned cities, and the widows and the orphaned children!”

John Ames did not speak. Cynthia’s eyes were full upon him. “You made a lot of money out of that war, didn’t you?”

“I did.”

“You never applied for a commission yourself, John.”

“No. I was not a fool like your husband.”

She put down her glass. “Let us talk of something else,” she said in a strained voice. “But first I wish to say this: I was offered a good pension by the government. I refused it. To me it was blood money.”

“A silly gesture.”

“The world, thank God, is full of what you call ‘silly gestures’, John.”

“And it can’t afford them. It is just an expensive pose.”

“I can’t afford expensive poses, John, either. I have exactly $23,598.13 left; I received my banker’s statement this morning. Aren’t you stunned?”

He was. Cynthia, like Ann, had inherited two hundred thousand dollars from her father, wisely invested so that even the War between the States had not depreciated it too radically. After the war her stock had risen in the general prosperity which always seemed to come like a fat beast after all wars, surfeited with dead flesh and blood and dead hearts. Her husband, George Winslow, had been a solid member of a solid law firm, and a Bostonian of a most impeccable if not wealthy family. He had probably left Cynthia at least fifty thousand dollars.

“How did you spend all that money?” exclaimed John Ames, completely aghast. He stared at her as though she were a murderess.

“I spent it — living. Something you would not understand,” she answered. She waved her hand about the room. “I buy precious things; I adorn life. I have four servants, and I pay them well. I spend a fortune on my clothing and jewels. I give expensive parties. I travel. Do you see that carafe, for instance? I paid two hundred dollars for it. I have fine pictures, originals. I go to New York and have a suite in the best hotels and enjoy the opera and invite friends to dine with me. I adore champagne, and champagne is expensive. Do you know what this dress cost me? It is actually silver thread and was made in France. My wardrobe is full of such dresses, and sables. My perfume, of which I use considerable, costs fifty dollars a vial.” She was becoming excited; she looked at him as if she hated him. “I imported an Italian bedroom set, seventeenth-century, and it cost three thousand dollars, not to mention the charges for shipping, which were enormous. I have lived as I wished to live, John, since the war. This is my house; George and I lived in a very ugly old barn which his parents left him; I loathed it. I paid twenty thousand dollars for this wonderful place.”

He could not believe this profligacy, even from Cynthia. He had known she was extravagant. But this was beyond belief. His hands clenched on the arms of his chair. She began to laugh at him, full of delight and gaiety.

“You resemble a waxwork of yourself!” she cried with genuine mirth. “Now you won’t be tormenting me all the time to marry you, dear John! A penniless woman!”

“And how long do you think what you have left will last you, Cynthia?”

She made a light gesture. “A year, at the most.”

“You have a son. Timothy. He is ten years old.”

“And what will become of him? I do not worry. For before the last of my fortune has run out I will marry. It may surprise you, John, but I have many suitors, and I’ll marry the richest and live as I like to live.”

“Marry me, Cynthia,” he said, and leaned toward her.

Her face became very strange, and she looked at him in silence for a long time. When she spoke her voice was quiet. “John, I did you an injustice. I thought that at least part of the reason for your marrying Ann was her money.”

“It was. I am not a liar except when it will serve my purpose. But I loved Ann too. Not as I am now afraid I love you, but still I loved her.”

His cold blue eyes had lost their mercilessness. He even stretched out a hand to her pleadingly. “Cynthia, I want you. Why? I don’t know. But, seeing you now, I understand that what I felt for Ann was as nothing to what I feel for you. You — you are a lightness in my life; I can’t put you out of my mind. You are reckless and frivolous; you are also intelligent, which Ann was not. Do you know what my life has been?” His voice suddenly took on icy violence. “I tell you, it has been unbearable — ”

“Even with Ann?” she asked gently. “Oh, even with Ann?”

“I had Ann for four years. Only four years. Before that, and since, there has been nothing for me.”

He pressed his lips together. “I never told anyone; I never told Ann. I shall not tell you. I need you to make me forget.”

She pitied him for the first time and was astonished at her pity. Who could feel compassion for John Ames? She laced her fingers together and looked down at them reflectively.

“You’re very mysterious, John. You always were. I think that’s part of your fascination.”

“Then I’ll continue to be fascinating; I’ll never tell you. Well, Cynthia?”

She shook her head slowly. “John, I’ve told you a thousand times. Your way of life is abhorrent to me. I have no objection to your money; I suppose some of the gentlemen who want to marry me have smears on their cash, too, one way or another.

“Our individual ways of life, John, are incompatible. I love my life and detest yours. Ann and I were brought up in a gracious and comfortable household, with every warm luxury possible, and laughter and dancing and many affectionate friends. Then you and Ann were married. She went to live in those appalling houses of yours, and her life became stringent and arduous, in spite of old Kate’s efforts to relieve the physical misery. I asked Ann one time how she could endure it. And she said, poor darling, that it was the kind of life you wished and that it made you happy, and so it was her wish and her happiness. I’m not like that, John. Perhaps I’m more selfish than Ann, but I shudder at the thought of living as Ann lived. It is possible I don’t — love — you as Ann loved you. But I love you enough not to make you miserable. And you’d be miserable with me, with my house, my friends, my way of life, and my appetites. Isn’t this house beautiful? But you never thought it was. You were frank enough to tell me it was meaningless, decadent, and expensive. To me, money is to be spent to make existence joyous and charming, to lift us above the level of animals, to surround us with beauty, which is the most precious thing in the world. To you, money is desirable for its own sake and should not be spent except in investments to make more money. I don’t understand that at all! It sounds like gibberish, and dangerous gibberish, to me. Yes, yes, I know you’ve tried to explain, but the more you explain, the more baffled I become. We could never understand each other, and that would be tragic, and we’d finally come to hatred. I don’t want that to happen.”

Her eyes filled with tears. “John, you dress very fine; you’ve told me that you do this only to make an impression on those who can assist you in adding to your fortune. You’ve even told me that if I marry you, you will be content to live here, in my house. But I know what would happen; over the years the servants, one by one, would be dismissed and not replaced. The house would never be repaired, never added to, and would decay. Slowly I would be squeezed and smothered to death. No, no. I don’t love money for the reasons you do. John, it’s your fear, translated into investments and businesses and bank accounts.”

“Don’t talk like a fool, Cynthia!”

“I don’t know what you’re afraid of, John,” she continued, as if he had not spoken. “You were very, very poor once, so Ann told me. You were almost penniless until ten years before you married her. But I know many men who were as poor as you were and who are now rich, and it is a joy to them to spend their hard-earned money. In fact, they’re more extravagant than those who inherited money. It’s as if they can’t get enough of what they had been deprived of in their youth.” She paused. “And they don’t hate people, as you hate them.”

He stood up and began to pace the room, his hands thrust in his pockets. “You are talking gibberish, Cynthia,” he said.

She threw out her hands hopelessly. “You see? We can never understand each other. Again, you find your meaning in life, and your pleasure, in having money. I find the meaning and pleasure in spending it. And when I marry, which I will after all my fortune is gone, I’ll marry a very, very rich man whose fortune I cannot exhaust and who loves life and beauty as I love them and will deny me nothing.”

“You’d sell yourself,” John Ames said. “Like a strumpet.”

She was not offended; she even smiled. “Oh no. I have three gentlemen in mind; I like them all. I’ll be a good wife, I will produce more children, I’ll be a charming hostess; I’ll embellish life for the man I marry; I’ll be devoted to him. We’ll be happy together.”

Her face became meditative. “Yes, I’ll want more children. Timothy is a disappointment to me. He has a generous allowance; he saves almost all of it, though he’s only ten years old and should have a child’s eager appetites. I want more normal children, John.”

He stopped before her. “You are thinking of Carrie, Cynthia,” he said accusingly. “You aren’t fond of her, though she’s your sister’s child.”

She replied candidly, “How could one be fond of Carrie? It is not her appearance at all, though you have tried to say it was. It’s something else; she is very queer, for a child. She makes me uncomfortable; she is wretched when she visits me. But imagine Caroline in this house! One has to think of children too. She would be absolutely miserable. What have you done to Caroline, John? Why do you hate her so, the poor thing?”