The morning sun flooded the bedroom of the Torrianis. It glinted off
the massive antique furniture, revealing its beauty and the need of
an immediate dusting. It invaded the region of shadows and
comparative coolness underneath the canopy of the immense four-poster
bed.
Though a new day was confronting him, the heir of the Torrianis slept
on.
In a larger sense, a new and rather cloudy day had six months
previously dawned for young Count Rodrigo Torriani, and he had not
awakened to that either. It had brought the loss of his family
fortune, debts, Signor Minardi, and an uncertainty as to his future.
Rodrigo was vaguely aware of this new metaphorical day. He had
opened one eye to it sufficiently to dismiss all his servants save
Maria, who had sullenly refused to be dismissed. He had started
tentative negotiations to rent the palace that had been occupied by
his family for three centuries. But, beyond these gestures, he had
continued to pursue the same blithe, unproductive course as before.
Rodrigo was in this respect a great deal like his late father, Angelo
Torriani, the handsome, impulsive gentleman who was responsible
largely for the plight in which the young man now found himself.
Angelo Torriani too had been known even in the later years of his
life as a waster. To be sure, the elder Torriani had once mingled a
bit of politics with his pleasures. It was this unusual mixture of
interests that had led to Angelo Torriani's marriage.
For, sent upon a diplomatic mission by his government, the Italian
sportsman-politician, after twenty years of falling in and out of
love without jeopardizing his bachelorhood in the slightest, had
suddenly lost his heart utterly to the quiet, pretty and rather
puritanical daughter of a minor English title whom he encountered at
a social function in London.
Angelo, like his son after him, had always been selfish in his loves.
He was a taker rather than a giver. But when he found that his
accustomed sweeping and very Latin style of love-making was not
impressing the sensible Edythe Newbold, he became a suppliant. He
made solemn promises to abandon his manner of living and he neglected
his political duties. And, having at last carried the citadel of her
affections by this method, he found that he must also batter down
further defences in the form of a father who thoroughly disliked him.
Sir Henry Newbold had amassed his fortune and title in the Indian
trade. He distrusted foreigners. He particularly distrusted
foreigners who did not work. To obtain the hand of Edythe in
marriage, Angelo Torriani had to discard the habits and prejudices of
three centuries of idling Italian ancestors, enter Sir Henry's
business, and go to India.
During the second of the sixteen years which Angelo Torriani spent
intermittently in Calcutta as resident manager of Newbold and
Company, Rodrigo was born to Edythe. In the fifteenth year, Rodrigo
was sent to England to school. In the same year, Sir Henry Newbold
died, an elder son of the self-made knight succeeding to the
management of the business. For a year Angelo Torriani carried on in
an environment and trade which he had always hated. When, at the end
of that period, Edythe, never in robust health and of the type which
cannot become accustomed to the tropics, succumbed to a fever, Angelo
resigned his position and left India forever.
Returning, after those many years, to the palace of his fathers at
Naples, Angelo was for many weeks too much overcome with a very
sincere grief hardly to show himself outside the iron gates. But
then the reaction smote him. He became, after a few months, nearly
the adventuresome Angelo of old. He visited Florence, Rome, the
Riviera. He re-entered politics, tentatively at first, then more
boldly. He began to notice again that women were smiling at him and
then lowering lashes. He spent freely both money and energy. Still
a handsome, virile figure at forty-five, he discovered that life,
after all, was still good. He struck a rapid pace after a while and
maintained it until about six months before Rodrigo Torriani met John
Dorning at the Café Del Mare. Angelo Torriani then died quite as
suddenly as he had fallen in love with Edythe Newbold. The sixteen
years in India, busy but abstemious years, had probably prolonged his
life. But the blood of the Torrianis, which killed young, had done
for him at last.
Rodrigo was a lively, handsome child with large, snapping black eyes,
eyes such as friends of mothers jokingly say augur ill for the girls
they encounter when the child grows up. In this case, the prophecy
worked out. The boy grew up, energetic, quick-tempered, and very
attractive.
At Eton, and, later, at Oxford, whence he had been sent from India at
the insistence of his mother, Rodrigo was not Edythe Newbold's son,
but Angelo Torriani's. He was naturally more popular with his
fellows than with his instructors. The latter did not like it
because he apparently never studied. This was particularly
irritating to the plodding dons in view of the fact that Rodrigo
always passed his examinations with ease. He specialized in subjects
which he liked, and he did not like subjects for which he did not
possess a natural aptitude that made studying almost superfluous.
Moreover, he was quick-witted and he had had excellent English tutor
in India.
Rodrigo spent most of his vacation periods in the London town house
of his mother's brother, Sir William Newbold, and the
merchant-knight's rather stuffy family. The family consisted of
Rodrigo's prim aunt, who did not at all possess her late sister's
good looks or tolerance, and two weedy blond daughters. Though the
latter were both about his own age and his own experience among the
fair sex was at the time limited by his scholastic activities, he yet
treated Evelyn and Sylvia Newbold with a blasé condescension which
they did not fancy in the least. Neither did his Aunt Helen, who had
esteemed Angelo Torriani as quite unworthy of marrying into the
Newbolds and was continually urging Sir William to keep a tight leash
upon Angelo's son. Rodrigo, thus, during his leisure time from
Oxford found constant barriers in the way of his wandering very far
in London on pleasure bent.
It was the irony of fate that a social affair given under the
circumspect auspices of his uncle should have led to his acquaintance
with Sophie Binner.
Most of the Newbolds' acquaintances were people like
themselves--rich, self-satisfied, very respectable, and quite boring.
The entertainments given by this set for their very carefully
selected guests were for the most part the soul of convention.
Bridge for the usual useless prizes, musicales by visiting
celebrities, box parties at the opera. On the evening that Sir
William came home from the office and suggested that the Newbolds
give a Treasure Hunt, his wife was at first mystified and then
scandalized.
The Treasure Hunt was the fad of a rather fast set of London society.
It was in the nature of a hare and hounds chase, without the hares.
The participants started out from a central spot toward a distant
goal, aided at frequent intervals by clews posted upon trees, fences
and other places. The first to arrive at the goal was the winner.
The hunts were usually accompanied by considerable wining, dining and
hilarity of a rather rowdy type.
In answer to his wife's disapproval, Sir William announced that a
mutual and very respectable friend of theirs had been describing to
him a Treasure Hunt in which the friend had participated and which
had quite converted him to the sport.
"We have to give a party next month," Sir William urged in his fussy
voice. "I think our set needs a little stirring up. Why shouldn't
we have a Treasure Hunt! Many conservative people are going in for
them. George Trevor said he was quite charmed. And it is important
in a business way that I do something in his honor while he is in
London. What do you say?"
After several days of deliberation, Helen Newbold yielded. The date
was set and preparations were started. Rodrigo, who had just come
down from Oxford for three weeks, was interested at once. For the
first time since he had been familiar with his uncle's family, they
they were about to do something that seemed to promise him some
pleasure. He even asked permission to invite some of his Oxford
friends who were in town to share in the fun, and received the
permission after some questioning by his aunt as to the
respectability of these added guests. He invited William Terhune, a
Rhodes scholar from South Dakota, a raw-boned, husky chap, crew man
and born pleasure-seeker, and Leslie Bond, a classmate from London
whom Rodrigo admired for his witty tongue and suavity.
The Treasure Hunters were to travel in automobiles and Rodrigo
secured the use of his uncle's light sedan, neatly side-stepping the
suggestion that his two cousins travel along with Terhune, Bond and
himself.
A large crowd of colorless people gathered one June afternoon in the
drive of the Newbolds' town house and received a light collation and
their instructions for the hunt. The first directions were to take
them out to a London suburb, and the cavalcade started sedately
enough, most of the sojourners undecided whether or not the Newbolds
were attempting something revolutionary and not quite respectable in
this new type of entertainment.
Rodrigo and his two friends were in a chaffing, carefree mood.
Rodrigo was never a conservative driver and soon had the borrowed car
moving at a pace that started the bobbies at the street intersections
frowning and waving admonitory hands at him. Having attained the
open country and the little tea house, to which their instructions
had led them, in advance of the others, the young men did not stop to
partake of the refreshments arranged for them by their host, but set
off rapidly for the next rendezvous. This they never attained.
For a half mile or so beyond the tea house, they overtook an open
runabout containing two very attractive young ladies. The blonde who
was driving was particularly pretty in a bold, artificially arranged
way. The girl at the wheel glanced back at the rapidly approaching
car, flashed a friendly but taunting smile at it, and then stepped
upon the accelerator and attempted to pull away from it. Rodrigo and
his companions were interested and aroused at once. Rodrigo sped up
and the race was on.
The sedan's glittering radiator-cap was almost even with the left
rear wheel of the other car. Down a hill the cars swooped. Fifty
yards farther on, the car of Rodrigo was exactly abreast of the
runabout. Then came a sharp turn to the left, which the cars took
together and plunged up the grade leading to the little rustic bridge
neck and neck.
And here came catastrophe.
For the turn and the bridge were surprises to both drivers. It was a
small wooden bridge spanning a ravine and a narrow stream running
swiftly far below. A stout railing stretched along either side of
the road, across the bridge. There was room for two carefully driven
cars to pass each other. But not room enough for two speed maniacs.
The thunder of the flying cars across the loose planks was broken by
a splintering crash. When the dust cleared away, the hood and front
wheels of the runabout were disclosed suspended in mid-air over the
ravine, the glass of the front lights and wind-shield were no more.
Yet the motor of the runabout was still throbbing, and the two girls,
though dust-covered and with faces bleeding slightly from tiny bits
of glass that had pricked their skin, were unhurt. They discovered
this after moving cautiously around a little.
When Rodrigo and his companions drove slowly back to them, offering
succor, both girls were smiling, though a little uneasily to be sure,
and the girl at the wheel was showing disturbing signs of putting the
motor into reverse and seeking to back off the heavy piece of
bridge-railing that, jammed in between their rear mud-guard and the
side of the car, was the only thing preventing the machine from
plunging off into eternity.
"I say, leave the motor alone!" Rodrigo shouted at once and scrambled
hurriedly out from behind the wheel of the sedan, his companions
following.
"And whose motor is it, may I ask?" the pretty blonde in the driver's
seat came back promptly, at the same time jabbing furiously at levers.
Rodrigo was by this time at her side and, horrified, was clutching
for her wrist. "Lady, lady," he cried half in fear and half in
mockery. "Shut off the motor and get out quick. You're on the brink
of eternity."
"Yes, Sophie, do," the other girl, slightly older and a brunette,
agreed.
At first inclined to be stubborn, Sophie at length permitted herself
to be helped down from her precarious perch and her companion
followed, Terhune and Bond re-inforcing Rodrigo.
Thus the Oxonians made the acquaintance of Sophie Binner and Adele Du
Bois, ladies of the chorus in "The Golden Slipper," the current revue
at the Gayety. On the promise of stopping at the nearest garage and
having the wrecked machine sent for, the girls consented to enter the
sedan and be driven back to London. By the time the outskirts of the
city were reached, the party was a very gay one and Sir William
Newbold's Treasure Hunt was quite forgotten.
Rodrigo was especially interested in Sophie. He had at that time met
very few ladies of the stage informally. The frankness, sharp tongue
and cream-and-gold beauty of Sophie intrigued him. Rodrigo was
rather adroit with all types of women, even at twenty. He flattered
Sophie half seriously, half banteringly, exchanged _bon mots_, made
an engagement in a low voice to see her again. Bill Terhune told her
on the quiet that Rodrigo was the son of a real Count, thus
increasing many fold the force of the impression the good-looking
Latin had made upon her.
The Oxonians had dinner with Sophie and Adele, saw the show at the
Gayety, and took the girls later to a supper club. It was the first
of several parties in which Rodrigo's and Sophie's friends took part.
Having, following this adventure, made his apologies to his uncle and
aunt for having left the Treasure Hunt flat, the excuse being the
necessity of rescuing an automobile party in distress, Rodrigo
proceeded to cultivate the further acquaintance of Miss Binner
assiduously and without the knowledge of the Newbolds.
He was her constant cavalier. She taught him much--for instance,
that a baby-faced blonde can possess a wicked tongue, a sudden and
devastating temper and a compensating tenderness that made up for
both defects. He was thoroughly infatuated at first. Then his ardor
cooled as he realized that Sophie was professing to take his wooing
seriously. The idea of contracting an alliance with a future
nobleman seemed to appeal to her. Rodrigo did not think of her in
that regard at all, and he was alarmed. He began looking for a
loophole.
The climax came at a party arranged for after the show in Sophie's
Mayfair apartment. Rodrigo had recruited Bill Terhune, Bond and
three or four other Oxford friends for the fun. They had accumulated
Sophie, Adele and a quartet of their sister coryphees at the theatre
after the evening performance and whirled them through the London
streets in a fleet of taxicabs. At two o'clock in the morning the
party was in full swing. The tinpanny piano crashed out American
jazz under the nimble fingers of Sophie. Leslie Bond numbered
drumming among his numerous avocations and had brought along the
clamorous tools of his hobby. His hysterical efforts on drums,
cymbals and cowbells augmented the din and broke both drums.
The revelers sang, danced, drank and made love. Bill Terhune, under
the impetus of spirits, was especially boisterous.
There was a sharp knocking upon the door. A corpulent, red-faced
Englishman in a frayed and gaudy bathrobe announced that he occupied
the apartment below, had been awakened by plaster falling upon his
bed and his person, and that "this Donnybrook Fair must cease at
once." He was set upon joyously by three burly Oxonians and
good-naturedly propelled down the stairs.
Sophie, from the piano, however, did not share their enthusiasm. "It
may interest you impetuous lads to know that our killjoy friend is a
magistrate and will probably have a couple of bobbies here in five
minutes," she warned them. They laughed at her and the party went on.
In twenty minutes there was another knock. Two bobbies, each built
like Dempsey, confronted Rodrigo when he opened the door. The
policemen entered with that soft, authoritative tread that London
police have. One of them laid hands upon Bill Terhune. Bill, former
intercollegiate boxing champion, was in a flushed and pugnacious
mood. He promptly struck the officer in the face and sent him
reeling to the floor.
Immediately the party grew serious. Englishmen respect the police.
An American may attack a Broadway policeman, but hitting a London
bobby is something else again. The other bobby swung into action
with his club. There was a concerted rush for the door. Rodrigo
could have easily escaped. But he chose instead to stand by Sophie,
who, he knew, was due for trouble as the tenant of the apartment.
When the tumult and the shouting died, the room contained Sophie,
Rodrigo, one angry bobby with pencil raised over his book, and one
still bobby recumbent upon the floor.
"The names now--the right ones," commanded the erect bobby.
"First, don't you think we'd better revive your friend on the floor?"
Rodrigo suggested.
When they had brought the fallen one back to life, Rodrigo soothingly
and skillfully persuaded the officers to let Sophie alone, to allow
him to assume sole responsibility for the trouble. He asked only
permission to telephone his uncle, Sir William Newbold. The bobbies
generously consented to take him, without Sophie, to jail for the
rest of the night, but they declined to allow him the use of the
telephone.
The jail cell was cold, cramped and dirty. Rodrigo's cellmate was a
hairy navvy recovering from a debauch. Rodrigo had to listen to the
fellow's alternate snoring and maudlin murmurings until dawn. When,
around ten o'clock in the morning, he did succeed in getting in touch
with his uncle, the latter's influence was sufficient to secure his
release.
Sir William delivered to his nephew a severe lecture. Then he
telephoned the newspaper offices with the idea of having any possible
news of his nephew's incarceration suppressed. In this endeavor he
was unsuccessful. Two papers contained an account of the arrest, and
the more sensational sheet of the two declared that Rodrigo, son of
Count Angelo Torriani and nephew of "London's leading
merchant-knight, Sir William Newbold," was the fiancé of Sophie
Binner and that they were to be married shortly. Rodrigo denied this
vehemently to his uncle and was indeed just as angry about it as was
Sir William. He saw in it evidence that Sophie had prevaricated to
the newspapers, had used his ill fortune as a means of securing
notoriety and possibly of binding him publicly to an alliance that
did not exist.
He resolved to call upon her and break off any possible entanglement
with her.
He confronted her in her apartment in the middle of the next
afternoon. She looked especially lovely, her spun-gold tresses in
informal disarray and her beauty encased in a silken lounging gown.
But Rodrigo was firm. He accused her of exploiting last night's
episode in the papers, of giving out news of an engagement that was
false. Though she denied this, at first poutingly, then coyly and
finally with considerable vehemence not unmixed with vulgarity,
Rodrigo insisted. He worked her into a tempest and, at the climax,
dramatically walked out of the room and, as he thought, of her life.
During the two years following his graduation from Oxford, Rodrigo
had vague ambitions to become a painter and spent considerable time
browsing about the galleries of England, Spain, France and his native
Italy. He had a workroom fitted up in the palace of the Torrianis
and did some original work in oil that was not without merit. But he
worked spasmodically. His heart was not in it. He knew good
painting too well to believe that his was an outstanding talent, and
he lacked ambition therefore to concentrate upon developing it.
In the pursuit of pleasure and the spending of money he was more
whole-hearted. He skied and tobogganed at St. Moritz, gambled at
Monte Carlo, laughed at Montmartre's attempts to shock him, and
flirted in all three places. Upon the invitation of the
bobby-assaulting American Rhodes scholar, Terhune by name, now
squandering his South Dakotan father's money in New York under the
pretence of making a career in architecture, Rodrigo visited America.
America, to Rodrigo, was represented by the Broadway theatre and
nightclub belt between dusk and dawn. Having in a few weeks
exhausted his funds and finding his cabled requests for more greeted
with a strange reticence, Rodrigo started for home. Three days out
from New York he received the cable announcing to him Count Angelo
Torriani's sudden death.
Rodrigo had adored and respected his quiet, high-minded English
mother, from whom he had inherited the thin vein of pure gold
concealed deep down below the veneer of selfishness and recklessness
that coated his character. He loved his father, from whom he drew
the superficial and less desirable traits of his personality. Loved
him and, without respecting him particularly, treated him as he would
an older brother of kindred tastes and faults.
His father's death shook Rodrigo down considerably for a while. It
sobered him, made him suddenly aware of his appalling aloneness in a
world of many acquaintances but not an understanding relative nor
close friend. The secondary calamity of having been, out of a clear
sky, left penniless and in debt did not at first impress itself upon
him. When the late Count Torriani's will was read, revealing the
surprisingly devastated condition of the Torriani finances, and
debtors began to present their claims, Rodrigo, now Count Rodrigo
faced the realization that his whole mode of life must be changed.
He dismissed the servants, keeping Maria because she refused to go,
even after being informed that she would probably have to serve
without pay if she stayed. He finally brought himself to talking
with an agent at Naples about renting the palace and selling some of
the works of art which it contained. The agent was very brisk and
business-like. He jumped up and down from his chair and rubbed his
hands continually, like an American. Rodrigo was irritated by the
vulgarian. He abruptly left the matter and the realtor up in the air
and jumped into his car outside. As he swung along the shore of the
bay he was in very low spirits, lonesome and as nearly depressed with
life as he had ever been. In his preoccupation he paid only
subconscious attention to the road ahead and the swift speed at which
his car was traveling. He heard suddenly a shriek and flashed his
eyes in its direction just in time to avoid killing a girl.
In the flash he saw that the girl was dark, and beautiful in a
wildflower-like manner. She was also very dusty from walking. In
the torrent of oaths which she poured after him, she furthermore
revealed herself as charmingly coarse and unrestrained. Rodrigo
cheered up. After the weeks of grief and loneliness, and
particularly after the Naples realtor, he found himself wanting
ardently to talk to a woman, any woman. He stopped the car and
slowly backed up even with the approaching girl. She continued to
swear at him. He smiled. When she had gradually quieted, he
apologized and offered her a seat beside him. Her angry face
relaxed, she pouted, and ended by accepting.
In a few days he had drifted into a fast ripening friendship with
Rosa Minardi, who was childlike, was no tax upon his conversational
charms or ingenuity, and who liked him very much. Her mother was
dead, her father was away in Rome on some mysterious errand. Rodrigo
badly needed any sort of companionship, and Rosa filled the need.