CHAPTER VI
The next few weeks were probably the most tranquil Rodrigo Torriani had ever known. To his own surprise, he enjoyed them. His liking for John Dorning deepened as he saw in what general admiration for his character and respect for his business ability his friend was held. In their private lives together, John displayed a simple unselfishness, a personal attractiveness, and an even temper that bound Rodrigo, who was used to far different associates, ever closer to him.
The Italian was given the center office, the one formerly occupied by John Dorning's father. To John's concealed amusement, Rodrigo thereupon hired the homeliest and oldest stenographer who answered his advertisement for an assistant. As the new executive's familiarity with the routine of Dorning and Son increased, he was given more and more important duties. At the end of the third week, he was dispatched to Philadelphia to conclude the sale of some pieces of Italian pottery to a rich private collector. It was in the nature of a try-out. Rodrigo's success there was rapid and complete. He was as elated as a schoolboy upon his return, and John no less so. Even Mary Drake, who was present when Rodrigo invaded Dorning's office and related the news, smiled with genuine pleasure and congratulated him.
Mary was gradually changing her mind about the newcomer. If the truth be known, her coldness at first meeting him had had an element of the defensive about it. He was far different from the men she usually encountered in the bustling world she had created for herself. In spite of herself, he, from the start, stirred something warm and vibrant within her. She did not like it, was afraid. She wanted to be free from everything of a personal nature that interfered with her making a living for herself and her mother, whom she loved passionately. Now that Rodrigo was attending strictly to business and avoiding any mention of the personal in his necessary daily dealings with her, she was more friendly with him. She was not sure but that, if he would ask her to go to the theatre with him now, she would accept.
Rodrigo was keeping strictly the good resolution he had made the day he landed in America. He was determined to reward John Dorning for the kindness he had shown him in pulling him out of a bad hole and setting him on the way to a business success by going straight, blinding himself to the lure of Broadway, only two blocks away, and the life of pleasure. Rodrigo did not deceive himself. He had not been suddenly transformed into a hermit. The tug of the old life was with him constantly. There were moments when he wanted to smash everything connected with Dorning and Son and run.
This would not be difficult, he knew. He had only to call up the Hotel Biltmore, for instance, and ask for Miss Sophie Binner. True, this attraction was removed after the first week. He read in the theatrical section of the paper that Christy's Revue had departed from New York for a preliminary seasoning on the road before opening on Broadway. Once, at least, during that week Sophie had called him at the office. At least his secretary had said that "a Miss Skinner caller," and he was sure the correct name had been "Binner." He had ignored the overture. With Sophie braving the March winds in Bridgeport and Stamford, gayety still had a local representative in the person of William Courtney Terhune, Rodrigo's Oxford classmate and his companion upon his other riotous sojourn in America. Bill Terhune always had time for the spending of large sums of time and money on pleasure. Rodrigo knew he had but to call him on the telephone, if he desired at any moment to shake off the austerity of Dorning and Son. He even looked up Bill's number in a weak moment and discovered the former Rhodes scholar had his office within five blocks of him.
John Dorning had generously installed Rodrigo in the comfortable bachelor apartment which he maintained on Park Avenue, almost directly east from his place of business. It was a roomy, immaculately kept establishment, furnished with Dorning's favorite pieces, picked up on many journeys to the art shrines of the world. A housekeeper came in once a day to lend the place the benefit of a feminine hand.
Rodrigo quickly discovered that John's private life was the direct antithesis of what his own had hitherto been. The man seemed to be unconscious that Broadway existed. On the occasions when he took Rodrigo out to his friends' houses for tea, the people present were the intensely refined sons and daughters of the house or colorless mutual acquaintances and their equally colorless wives.
He attended concerts and exhibitions with John. He talked gravely with the members of John's exclusive clubs, older men with their heads full of business and their thin, white lips full of black cigars, when John took him to dinner at these rather depressing places.
On two or three occasions John invited Rodrigo to luncheon at a small eating club located upon the second floor of a wooden structure which for some unknown reason had been left standing between two skyscrapers on Forty-Fifth street, just off Fifth Avenue. The club-rooms were skimpily furnished, draughty as a barn, and cried for the vacuum cleaner. The food was execrable. But the members made up for all that. They were authors and artists for the most part, most of them bearing well known names. They were colorful, interesting people, and among them was an informal camaraderie that intrigued Rodrigo at once. It was a rule at this club that guests must make speeches after luncheon. Rodrigo, who somehow felt almost immediately at home amid this witty talk, foolery, and, at times rather Rabelaisian repartee, obliged with a rapid, nonsense monologue regarding his impressions of America, that took at once. Later, the other guest, a famous pianist, protested in broken English that a speech was impossible. "Bang the box then!" shouted a raucous, good-natured, voice. The meaning was explained to him, and he allowed himself to be propelled gently to the battered piano. Deftly produced melody filled the ancient rooms. The company was silent, drinking it in. Eyes were half closed. Concentrated here was the finest audience in America for this sort of thing. The musician played an encore. Then he rose, bobbing his long hair back and forth to the clapping and shouts of applause, and waved away requests for more.
"You play—and the Count will sing!" was a loud-voiced happy thought from somewhere in the back of the room. Others took it up. They fairly pushed Rodrigo to the piano. John Dorning, who was a little out of place in the extremely informal turn the entertainment had taken, looked worried. He did not think Rodrigo could sing. But the latter was unruffled. He was thoroughly agreeable. He whispered to the dark man at the piano, who was himself an Italian. The pianist struck the opening chords of a Sicilian love song.
Rodrigo's voice was not strong, but it was a clear and pleasing baritone. He was extremely fond of the song, and he put into it a true Latin fervor. For the time being he seemed transported out of this shabby room in the teeming heart of New York. He was back beside the shining waters of the Bay of Naples. He was singing of moonlight and a warm, dark-eyed girl in his arms. All the repression of the past weeks was in his voice. He sang as one inspired. The song died away finally to clamorous applause. But he would not sing again. He resumed his seat beside John Dorning. John looked at him, a queer expression of mingled surprise and pride in his friend's achievement in his pale face. Rodrigo was flushed, a little excited, a little frightened that this simple little love song such as the Sicilian peasants sing could stir him so.
The following week-end, Rodrigo accepted John's invitation to journey to Greenwich and visit Dorning's father. They were met at the station by the Dorning limousine, containing a chauffeur and a pleasant-faced woman some five or six years older than John and looking very much like him. This was Alice Pritchard, John's married sister, who, with her husband, a Wall Street man, made their home with Henry Dorning. The latter was a widower, John's mother having died when the son was a boy of twelve. The same even disposition and reserve that were so integral a part of John's character were also possessed by his sister. She was almost the exact feminine counterpart of her brother in more than looks, Rodrigo decided during the brief ride to the Dorning home.
They drew up at a large rambling field-stone house set in several acres of well-kept lawn facing Long Island Sound. The elderly man seated in a rocking-chair on the broad front piazza, a steamer rug spread out upon his knees, did not rise as the trio from the car approached him. Henry Dorning was a semi-invalid. The Dornings were not a very robust family, committed as they were to the æsthetic rather than to the athletic life. Too close application to carrying on the tradition of his strong-willed father had done for Henry Dorning. He had quit five years too late.
John Dorning greeted his father cheerily and introduced Rodrigo. The latter had evidently been well heralded in advance. Henry Dorning welcomed him warmly. A three-cornered conversation upon an art subject engaged them almost immediately, Alice maintaining an interested silence and soon slipping into the house to supervise the preparation of dinner. Just before the meal, Warren Pritchard, Alice's husband, was driven up in the same car that had brought John and Rodrigo from the station. He was a breezy, square-jawed American type, a graduate of Yale who was already well established as one of the minor powers in the financial district. He swept up upon the porch like a gust of wind, kissed his wife, shook hands lustily with John, and had a cheery word with his father-in-law. Upon being introduced to Rodrigo, he shot a keen glance at the Italian and raised his dark bushy eyebrows slightly at the mention of the title. But was evidently ready to accept Rodrigo upon the Dorning's say-so, and was cordial enough.
Pritchard's aggressive materialism seemed at first incongruous in the midst of the Dornings. But Rodrigo quickly corrected his first surmise that the fellow had married Alice Dorning for her money. Pritchard had too evident a deep and abiding love for his wife, and respect for her family for that. Rodrigo liked him.
After dinner the men smoked and later adjourned to the softly lighted billiard room on the top floor of the house. Warren Pritchard assisted his fragile father-in-law up the stairs, and the latter was an interested spectator of the spirited game in which Alice and Rodrigo were partners against John and Pritchard. The family retired early. Rodrigo was assigned to a spacious bedroom in the front of the house. He closed his eyes in an almost rural stillness that was disturbed only by the April wind rustling gently through the leafing elm tree outside his window and the waters of the Sound plopping against the dock.
Following breakfast the next morning, Warren Pritchard who looked fresh and husky in a tweedy knickerbocker suit, asked briskly, "Well, who's for golf? How about you, Count Torriani?"
Rodrigo looked questioningly at John. He was himself very fond of the game and, having enjoyed a very restful sleep, was eager for the exercise.
"Rodrigo will go with you, Warren," suggested John. "He can use my clubs. I promised Ted Fernald I'd run over this morning to that house he's building in the Millbank section and look over his interior decoration plans with him."
Rodrigo offered at once, "I'll go along with you, John, if you like. Perhaps I can help."
Henry Dorning, who had been listening, put in to John, "Why don't you forget business for this morning, John, and play golf? You look a bit drawn. Fernald can wait."
"I'm sorry, Dad. I'd really like to play. But I promised Fernald over a week ago, and he'll be waiting for me. But you go ahead with Warren, Rodrigo. I can take care of Fernald all right, and there's no use spoiling your fun."
Rodrigo consented to be persuaded. Changing into his golf suit, which he had slipped into his bag at the last moment on the chance of getting an opportunity to play, and equipped with John's clubs, which looked very new and shiny, he slid into the seat of the roadster beside Pritchard.
"I'm sorry John couldn't come with us," Pritchard commented between puffs of his pipe as he swung the car rapidly from the bluestone drive onto the macadam road. "He sticks too close to the grind. A chap needs some sport over the week-end. I'd pass out cold if I didn't get in my eighteen holes Sundays."
Prichard was evidently well known and well liked at the Greenwich Country Club. He had no difficulty in making up a foursome from among the crowd clustered about the first tee. Rodrigo was introduced to a Mr. Bryon and a Mr. Sisson, men of about Pritchard's own age and standing. The latter and his guest teamed against the two other men at a dollar a hole. Rodrigo was quite aware that the eyes of the other three players were critically upon him as he mounted the tee. He made a special effort to drive his first ball as well as possible. He had learned golf at Oxford and was a good player. But he had not hit a ball for months and was uncertain how the lay-off and the strange clubs he was using would affect his game. However, he got off a very respectable drive straight down the fairway and was rewarded by the approbation of his mates.
After the first few holes, in which Rodrigo more than held his own, the other developed a more friendly and natural attitude toward the titled foreigner. Rodrigo, due to his English training, his predilection for Americans like Terhune at Oxford, and his previous visit to the States, together with his unaffectedness and adaptability, had few of the marked unfamiliar characteristics of the Latin. Soon he was accepted on a free and easy footing with the others. He laughed and chaffed with them and had a very good time indeed.
Warren Pritchard took golf too seriously to derive much diversion out of it. The money involved did not mean anything to him, but he was the sort of intensely ambitious young American who always strove his utmost to do even the most trivial things well. He whooped with childish joy at extraordinary good shots by either himself or Rodrigo. At the end of the match, which the Dorning representatives won by a substantial margin, he congratulated the Italian heartily and uttered an enthusiastic tribute to his game. Pritchard seemed more at home with average, go-getting Americans like Bryon and Sisson than he had with the Dornings, Rodrigo thought. On the way back from the links, they post-mortemed the match gayly. Warren Pritchard, who had been inclined to look a little askance at first at his brother-in-law's rather exotic acquaintance, was now ready to concede Rodrigo was very much all right.
Having taken a shower and changed his clothes, Rodrigo came down and pulled up a chair beside Henry Dorning on the front piazza. Alice had at the last moment joined John in his ride over to the Fernalds, it seemed, and Warren was down at the stables talking with the caretaker of the estate.
Henry Dorning remarked pleasantly that John and Alice had not returned as yet but would doubtless be back any moment. "I am somewhat worried about John," the elderly man continued. "He is not so very strong, you know, and he applies himself altogether too steadily to business. He tells me that you are rapidly taking hold and are of great assistance to him already." He looked intently at Rodrigo, as if debating with himself whether or not to make a confidant of him. Then he asked quietly, "You like my son very much, do you not?"
"Very much," Rodrigo said promptly.
"He is a young man of honor and of considerable artistic and business ability besides," said John's father. "Sometimes though, I wonder if he is not missing something in life. For a man of his age, he is singularly ignorant of some things. Of the world outside of his own business and family, for instance. I feel that I can speak freely to you, Rodrigo—if you will permit me to call you that upon such short acquaintance. He admires you very much, and I think you are destined to be even closer friends than you are now."
"I hope so," acknowledged Rodrigo.
"You are a man of the world. You can see for yourself that John's development has been—well, rather one-sided. It is largely my own fault, I admit. He has been reared upon Dorning and Son from the cradle. But there are other things in life. He has no predilection whatever, for instance, for feminine society. Oh, he adores his sister and he mingles with women and girls we know. But he takes no especial interest in any of them except Alice. That is wrong. Women can do a lot toward developing a man. They can do a lot of harm to a man, too, but that has to be risked. A man has not reached real maturity until he has been violently in love at least once. He does not acquire the ability to look upon life as a whole until he has been through that. Of that I am quite convinced."
Had John told his father of Rodrigo's former career of philandering? The Italian wondered. Then he decided that John was no tale-bearer. Henry Dorning must have deduced from his guest's general air of sophistication and his aristocratic extraction that he was worldly wise.
The elder Dorning went on, "I have sometimes wondered what will happen to John when he has his first love affair. Because sooner or later it will happen, and it will be all the more violent because of its long postponement. And the girl is quite likely to be of the wrong sort. I can imagine an unscrupulous, clever woman setting out deliberately to ensnare my son for his money and succeeding very handily. He is utterly inexperienced with that type of woman. He believes they are all angels. That's how much he knows about them. He is so much the soul of honor himself that, though he has developed a certain shrewdness in business matters, in the affairs of the heart he is an amateur.
"John is such a sensitive, high-strung boy. It is quite conceivable that an unfortunate love affair would ruin his whole life. He would be without the emotional resiliency to recover from such a catastrophe that the average man possesses. I am boring you with all this, Rodrigo, because I believe you can help him. Without in any way appointing yourself either his chaperon or his guide to worldly things, I think you can gradually draw him a little out of his present narrow way of life. You are a very attractive man, and John is not exactly unpleasing to the feminine eye. Together you could meet people who are engaged upon the lighter things of life. Frivolous, pleasure-loving people. People of Broadway. Enter into New York's night life. Go to Greenwich Village, Palm Beach, Newport. Loaf and play. It will do you both good.
"Of course I am very selfish in this as far as you are concerned. I am thinking primarily of my son and his future. As soon as he told me about you, I secretly rejoiced that he had made such a friend—a cosmopolitan, a man who presumably knew the world. I had hoped that my son-in-law, Warren, might prove such a companion for John. But Warren is too much in love with his wife and too engrossed in his business. In the matter of taking time to play, he is almost as bad as John."
Rodrigo smiled rather dourly to himself. He appreciated that Henry Dorning's diagnosis of John was correct. He was sensible of the honor paid him by the elderly man's confidence and request. But it impressed him as ironical that he should now be urged by John's father to resume his former mode of life, and to resume it to aid the very man for whom he had forsaken it.
Nevertheless, he was about to indicate his willingness to conspire with Mr. Dorning for the education of his son when the object of their discussion, accompanied by Alice, was whirled up the drive in the limousine. John joined the two men on the porch and Alice, with the object of speeding dinner, disappeared into the house.
With a significant and quite unnecessary glance at Rodrigo, Mr. Dorning changed the subject. John offered some laughing comment upon the eccentric ideas of his friend, Edward Fernard, as to interior decoration and inquired about Rodrigo's golf. The conversation lulled a bit and then Henry Dorning, as if recalling something that had for the time being escaped his mind, said, "Mark Rosner is back from Europe. He was up to see me the other day."
"Yes, I told you he crossed with us," John replied. "I understand he has bought a building on Forty-Seventh Street, a converted brown-stone front and intends opening up an antique shop very soon."
"That's what he came to see me about," Mr. Dorning commented dryly. "He wanted me to take a mortgage on the property, so that he could buy it."
"Did you do it?"
"Yes. Fifteen thousand dollars."
John frowned. "I wish he hadn't bothered you about that. He is such a nervous, irritating little man. He could just as well have come to me, and you wouldn't have been annoyed."
"I didn't mind. And you needn't either, John. I got in touch with Bates and he is taking care of the whole matter. We can both dismiss it from our minds." Emerson Bates was the Dornings' very efficient and very expensive lawyer. Mr. Dorning smiled reminiscently. "Rosner was always such a fretty, worried type, as you say. I tried diplomatically to dissuade him from attempting a big undertaking such as he is in for. He hasn't the temperament or the business ability to swing it. If anything goes wrong, he is liable to suffer a nervous breakdown or worse. This failure in London nearly did for him for a while, I understand. And he tells me he married over there, and they have two small children. Such men should be kept out of large business undertakings. They aren't built for it."
"And yet you advanced him fifteen thousand dollars," John smiled affectionately at his father. He knew this white-haired man's weakness for helping others. He had inherited it himself.
"Well, Rosner was with me quite a while at the shop. He is getting along in years now, and he is fearfully anxious to make a success. We old chaps have to stick together, you know."
As Alice appeared in the broad doorway, announcing dinner, John Dorning put a tender arm about his father to assist him from his chair. There was something touching and ennobling in the scene to Rodrigo, watching them, and something a little pathetic too.