CHAPTER XII
One glorious morning, three weeks later, when the June sunshine bathed Fifth Avenue in a benevolent light and the staff of Dorning and Son edged over as near the doors and windows as possible and made lugubrious remarks about their luck at being shut up from the paradise outdoors, the door of Rodrigo's office was flung open and John Dorning burst in.
"Rodrigo!" he cried, and stood there near the door smiling happily and blushing furiously, looking wonderfully well and boyish.
Rodrigo sprang up at once and congratulated him heartily.
"I'm the happiest man in the world," John repeated the words of the fateful telegram, and, Rodrigo admitted, he looked it. His face was bronzed and suffused with health, the result of many hours upon the golf links and in the lake adjoining the elaborate Adirondack "lodge" where the Dornings had been spending their honeymoon. A feeling of relief for the moment and optimism for the future swept through Rodrigo. Perhaps, after all, he had misjudged Elise. Though, he told himself, it is a very rare marriage that does not at least survive the honeymoon.
"Sit right down and tell me how the elopement all happened," invited Rodrigo gayly, "you old scoundrel."
"Well, to begin at the beginning," said John exuberantly, "I had an engagement with Elise in the evening on that Saturday you wanted me to come to the apartment in the middle of afternoon, do you remember? Around noon-time Elise telephoned me and said she was sorry but she would have to cancel the evening engagement. She had to go to some charity committee meeting or other with her aunt. I insisted upon seeing her, and she finally agreed that we would have luncheon together and go for a short ride in my car. I told her of my mystery date with you, and we enjoyed a good laugh about it, old man, though, of course, she insisted upon my keeping it. And I assure you I had every intention in the world of doing so. But we got out on the Post Road, and it was such a wonderful afternoon—well, anyway, I guess I made love to her, and then miraculously she said she would marry me. I said 'When?' and she replied, 'Oh, it would be so romantic to do it at once.' She was set against a fussy wedding of any kind. Didn't even want to let my dad or sister know. I agreed, of course, being darned lucky to get her any way at all. So we stopped at Stamford. Afterward I telephoned Dad and sent you a telegram, and we started on our honeymoon."
"Great stuff!" Rodrigo enthused. "John, for a lad who has always fought shy of the ladies, you certainly put it over in whirlwind style. What are you going to do now?"
John hitched his chair nearer, beaming with high spirits. "My luck has kept right on rolling in, Rodrigo. I happened to meet a chap from home at the place we were staying. He mentioned that Ned Fernald was putting his new place on the market. It seems Ned isn't so well off as he's supposed to be, and building the place and outfitting it has strapped him so completely that now he's anxious to sell. It's a peach of a big house, with lots of ground, in the Millbank section, a new development. I'm going to get in touch with Ned, and Elise and I have agreed that if we can arrive at the proper price, we'll buy it."
Rodrigo averred that it sounded excellent. "But where is the blushing bride?" he added.
"She's on her way to Greenwich. I just said good-bye to her and her aunt at Grand Central. She's going to stop with Dad and Alice in Greenwich until we get a place of our own."
"She's never met your folks, has she?" asked Rodrigo. He wondered what Henry Dorning would think of his daughter-in-law, whether his experienced old eyes would penetrate to things in her that his infatuated son had never dreamed of.
"I'm sure they'll love her as much as I do," John enthused. "They can't help it. She's the greatest ever. Dad knows Mrs. Palmer, Elise's aunt, very well, so I got her to go along up."
Two hours later, he came back into Rodrigo's office to announce that he was leaving to subway down-town and seek out Edward Fernald, who was a minor partner in a brokerage house on Nassau Street. John confided further that he was, as yet, quite unable to settle down to the workaday problems of Dorning and Son. He was still walking upon air.
"You'll have to put up with my incompetence for a while, till I get used to the idea of being married to the world's greatest wife," he pleaded smilingly with Rodrigo.
"Take your time," soothed the latter. "I'll be indulgent. We don't have a marriage in the firm every day."
"I wish some nice girl like Elise would capture you," John offered seriously.
Rodrigo laughed. "Oh, that's what all you newlyweds preach to us happy old bachelors."
Nevertheless he dropped in to see what Mary thought of the returned and changed Dorning, after John had left.
"Mrs. Dorning is very lucky," said Mary. "John is the sort who will devote his whole life to making his wife happy."
She said it so positively that she put him a trifle on the defensive. "Any normal husband would do that, wouldn't he?" he asked a little challengingly.
She was silent a moment, and then she said, evidently out of a troubled mind and into her typewriter, "Some men aren't equipped to be normal husbands."
He looked at her gravely, his eyes full of love for her. Some day soon he was going to have it out with Mary, he told himself. He would have to. Things couldn't go on with them as they had been. He had called upon her many times now out of office hours, met her mother, taken Mary to the theatre, to art exhibitions, and to concerts and the opera. Always he had avoided making love to her, because he was desperately afraid of losing her through having his intentions misunderstood. He had wanted, on many occasions, to sweep her into his arms, to cover her face with kisses, to claim her for his own, but he was afraid. He could not risk kissing Mary until he was very sure she loved him. Before the Sophie Binner blackmailing episode, he had been optimistic about Mary's feelings toward him. But during the last few months the issue had been cast again into doubt.
Frequently he told himself almost bitterly that if Mary loved him she would be willing to forget utterly anything that had happened to him in the past. But this, in his more rational moments, he knew was asking too much. She was not the sort of girl who rushes blindly into love. Her whole character and training were influences in the opposite direction. Love must come upon her gradually. She must be very sure. Americanized though he was by this time, the very fact that Rodrigo was a man of another country from her own, with other ideals and up-bringing, made the process of falling in love with him for this serious-minded American girl groping and slow. But, once he had won her, he knew that she would be his forever, utterly, without question or regret. That was Mary Drake's way too.
Two weeks later John Dorning announced that he had bought the Fernald house, and he eagerly discussed with Rodrigo furnishing the place according to their high artistic standards. The Italian, on one pretext or another, declined several invitations to go to Greenwich and look over the Fernald property and the married Elise. John was insistent that Rodrigo rush up and congratulate Elise in person, and then just try and deny that John was the luckiest fellow ever born. Elise had been asking for Rodrigo, John said, had urged John to invite him up. Rodrigo smiled benevolently, and declined. He did not, for the time being, wish to face this clever, attractive, and triumphant young lady.
But, at last, when the John Dornings had actually moved into the Fernald house and the rare old furniture and objets d'art, which Rodrigo had helped to select, were installed to the young householder's liking, Rodrigo could no longer decline the invitation to spend a weekend with them without offending his friend.
Elise met them at the Greenwich station in a trim new little sedan. Rodrigo congratulated her heartily, and she gave him very pretty thanks. She was looking exceptionally alluring, lending an exotic distinction even to the tweedy sport clothes she was wearing.
"I am especially grateful to you, Rodrigo—I suppose I may call you that now," she added, "because you were instrumental in bringing John and me together." Rodrigo glanced at her a little sharply, wondering if there was a double meaning in this. But her smile was serene, though those enigmatic eyes were just a little narrower than normal.
"It is glorious out here. I love it," she tossed over her shoulder to him, as he sat, unusually quiet in the tonneau of the moving car beside his bag and golf sticks. And as she swept the car into the newly made driveway of their artistic home of field-stone and stucco, "Aren't we lucky to get this place? It is the first home of my own that I have ever had. I love every stone in it."
Rodrigo admitted to himself that she was giving an excellent imitation of a very happy young bride.
John showed him through the house later, and Rodrigo was very sincere in his praise of their dwelling and its broad, attractive surroundings. The close-cropped lawn sloped down gradually to a small lake, surrounded by willow trees, a body of fresh water that eventually found its way into the neighboring sound. John explained that there was a concrete dam below, with a private bathing beach of white sand and crystal-clear water. Millbank was a new development, very much restricted and exclusive, with a fine nine-hole golf course just across the lake. When Rodrigo cast pleased eyes upon the links, John recalled that Warren Pritchard, on learning of Rodrigo's coming, had immediately spoken for the guest's company on Sunday morning at the Greenwich Country Club.
"I believe Ben Bryon and Lon Sisson are anxious for a revenge match on account of the beating you and Warren gave them the last time," John explained, indicating by his tone of voice that he didn't consider the engagement so pressing as Warren evidently did, and that he would have preferred to retain Rodrigo's company himself.
"That will be fine," Rodrigo enthused. "That is, if you haven't other plans for me, John?" John shook his head in the negative.
He motored to Stamford that evening with his host and hostess and attended the first night of a polite comedy, destined for its New York premiere the following week. The play was not particularly interesting, and Rodrigo paid more attention to the audience than to the stage. It was a mixed crowd of typical small-towners, well dressed and highly sun-tanned people from adjacent Long Island Sound resorts, and professionals from Broadway who were either interested in the production or the players. He recognized the producer of the piece, a jolly, corpulent individual whom he had met at the Coffee House Club. They ran into each other in the outside lobby between the first and second act, and the theatrical admitted blithely that he had a "flop" and was debating whether to dismiss the company at once and forfeit his deposit on the lease of the Broadway theatre or chance a performance in New York.
To Rodrigo, walking down the aisle as the orchestra was playing the unmelodious prelude to the second act, came the realization anew that Elise was quite the most striking-looking woman he had ever known. Her creamy white shoulders billowing up from her black evening dress, her raven hair sleeked tightly against her skull, her dark eyes either feeling or feigning vivacious interest as she inclined her head to listen to John's animated conversation, she was easily the most beautiful person in front or behind the footlights. He sensed the strong magnetism of her presence as he took the seat on the other side of her, and she said smilingly to him, "I was telling John how bad this play is, but he seems only to have noticed that the settings are in atrocious taste."
"He's right," Rodrigo acknowledged, and, thinking this was rather curt, added, "And so are you."
"You find the audience more interesting?" she asked shrewdly.
"Yes, part of it," he said quickly, without thinking, and then cursed himself for betraying that she exerted some of her old spell over him. A sudden enigmatic smile crinkled her eyes and mouth as she gazed full at him an instant, then turned abruptly to John.
He played golf with John's brother-in-law and his two companions the next morning and had the satisfaction of being largely responsible for another victory for Pritchard and himself. The latter was as tickled as if he had captured a championship. "Come again next week-end, Rodrigo, and we'll give these birds a real ride," he proclaimed loudly for the defeated ones' benefit. But Rodrigo would not promise.
In the afternoon he pleaded pressure of work and an unbreakable dinner engagement as an excuse for leaving. John protested loudly, but his guest was adamant. At about five o'clock, they drove him to the station. Elise took the seat beside him in the tonneau and, just before they reached the station, she asked, "When are we to see you again? I was in town two or three times last week. Twice I telephoned John for lunch, and he was too busy or out or something. The next time, I warn you, I am going to invite you to give me luncheon, Rodrigo, and you mustn't refuse me." And as if to assure him that her intentions were innocent, she repeated the same thing to John in a louder voice. He laughed back and said, "Of course. I want you two to be great friends."
"Isn't she the most wonderful wife in the world?" John whispered to him as he grasped the step-rods of the train.
"Yes, she is a wonderful woman," Rodrigo replied sincerely, and looked over John's head to return her languid wave of good-bye.
Going back in the train, he thought of her and John, and of their chances for happiness. He recalled the conversation Warren Pritchard had hesitantly started on the way to the golf links that morning, and then dropped.
"I say, Rodrigo," Warren had begun, after fumbling around obviously for an opening, "I know it may sound caddish of me, and I shouldn't be talking this way, but what really do you know of this lady whom my brother-in-law has married?"
"Oh, I only know her slightly," Rodrigo had replied offhandedly. "She comes of an excellent San Francisco family, I believe, connected with the Palmers—your father-in-law knows the Palmers well."
"I wasn't thinking of her family. But will she make old John happy?"
"Why not?"
"Oh, I don't know. She isn't at all the sort I would have thought John would have picked for a wife. Very stunning woman, worldly wise, she must have had hundreds of men eager to marry her. John is a fine chap, we all know, but he's not the kind to knock a beautiful woman's eye out exactly."
"She seems to love him very much. And he's crazy about her, of course. Their marriage looks very promising to me."
Warren shrugged his broad shoulders. "Oh, well, it's as I thought. If you do know anything more about her, you're too damned much of a gentleman to spill it—and I'm not enough of a scoundrel to press you for it. I may add, though, in my own justification and with his sanction, that my honored father-in-law is the one who is slightly worried and who set me up to questioning you. Frankly, he is a bit suspicious of the lady. And his judgment is not to be slighted, you know; he has an uncanny faculty for fathoming folks."
The more praise for Henry Dorning's acumen, Rodrigo had thought, and the more pity too, for it is not pleasant to note rumblings of disaster from afar and to be unable either to warn or to confide.