Read Online A Prologue To Love by Taylor Caldwell - Free Book Online Page B

the far solemnity of Carrie which infuriated her father, but a concentrated, adult seriousness. John knew that Timothy saved every penny he received as gifts. He had shown John, even at six, his big porcelain pig-bank. Once he had told John that he wanted to be just like his uncle. There had been respect and admiration in his gray eyes as he looked at John.
     
    John remembered that day last spring, as he stood looking at Timothy now. He remembered very acutely his sudden diffused revulsion, and then his sudden shocked awareness of his revulsion. Of course it had vanished almost instantly and had been replaced with approval. The boy had sensible values; he was no fool like his mother. Still, John disliked him.
     
    “How do you do, Timothy?” he asked in a formal voice. He felt restive.
     
    His thoughts did not fit the presence of a child whose mother he had just bought.
     
    Timothy had been well brought up in Boston. But then, his mother had been an Esmond, his father a Winslow. He said with the utmost balanced courtesy, “How do you do, Uncle John? And how is Caroline?” he asked, the question phrased in exquisite politeness; as if he cared a damn about Caroline, John commented to himself.
     
    “She is very well,” said John, still formal. Damn the boy. He made even men feel gauche and cumbersome. “How is school?”
     
    “Splendid,” said Timothy. His fair cheeks were faintly colored. He was very handsome and moved with grace. He bent and poked the fire, and his blond hair caught the light. There were no smudges on him, no griminess. When he looked up at John with deference, the eyes were almost his mother’s.
     
    “I have decided to be a lawyer,” said Timothy after he had fastidiously brushed up the hearth. “You remember, Uncle John, that you told me that even a boy should consider his future.”
     
    “But I thought you wanted to be a financier, Timothy.”
     
    Timothy smiled, a reserved and secret smile. “I think that I’ll be a lawyer for financiers,” he said.
     
    John thrust his hands into his pockets, a gesture he usually abhorred. But now it gave him a sense of lightness, of combativeness, of ease. He felt free.
     
    “Good,” he said, and did not mean it. He wished the boy would go. His presence was like something noxious in the room. His was not a clean ruthlessness. It reminded John of a place where quiet serpents lurked, of a place where discreet men talked in low voices, smoked expensive cigars, tried to outwit men like John Ames, and drank sherry and looked at each other with well-bred and evil glances, and had cuff links they had inherited from great-grandfathers. Oh yes, the Bourse, and the Reichsbank, and London. And of course St. Petersburg. But men like John Ames were not fooled by them and had weapons superior to theirs, forged of brutal iron.
     
    Timothy stood before John Ames, not stiffly or awkwardly as most young boys stand, but with an adult restraint and poise. John, all at once, was uneasily impressed by a kind of potency the boy had, a stillness. Timothy said, “I’ve been reading some of Uncle Carlton’s and Uncle Harper’s lawbooks. They brought them to me. Fundamentals of Law and Basic Law . I am also taking Latin in school.”
     
    His young voice had a dry precision in it, and John was reminded of the London, Boston, and New York lawyers he knew who spoke exactly with those intonations. There was a quick itch between John’s shoulders. The boy was definitely pernicious.
     
    “Good,” said John again. “But don’t boys in your school play cricket — and things?” He had not the slightest idea what well-to-do boys did in their exclusive private schools.
     
    “Yes. I am very good at those. Too,” said Timothy with a slight smile. “After all, the other boys will be my clients. They like me.”
     
    John said, “Well, grow up fast, Timothy. I may need you myself.”
     
    Why couldn’t the horrible boy smile as a boy smiled? Timothy did smile, but