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.