GUISEPPE BARETTI’S THEORY
Regardless of her optimistic assertion to Robin and Peter Graham that
right must triumph in the end, Marjorie found it hard to resign herself
to watchful inaction in regard to the dormitory. The winter days came
and went with no change in the situation save perhaps the addition of a
dozen men to Peter Graham’s working force. It consisted of himself and
his quartette of carpenters. He scoured the region extending for
twenty-five miles about Hamilton for men. Labor happened to be scarce.
Workmen invariably demanded twice as much money for their services as he
would pay. The affair of the walk-out had been circulated far and wide
in that section. The numbers of workmen he talked with demanded as much
as “the Thorne and Foster crew” were receiving.
Miss Susanna Hamilton sputtered volubly to Jonas, Peter Graham and
Marjorie at the dire situation. She sent for Marjorie, Robin and the
builder on an average of once in every three or four days to discuss the
situation. She was at first for bringing in a crew of workmen from one
of the large cities and paying them their own price within a certain
limit to hurry the completion of the dormitory. She offered to pay the
sum needed to do this from her own resources. To this neither Page and
Dean nor Peter Graham would hear. In the end they won her over to their
way of thinking.
Marjorie’s chief private disappointment lay in the fact that she could
not conscientiously begin the compilation of Brooke Hamilton’s papers,
prior to writing his biography, until the dormitory question was settled
and off her mind. This had been the chief reason for Miss Susanna’s
generous proposal.
“I want you and Jerry to come to the Arms in March, sure and certain,”
she said more than once to Marjorie. “You are such a conscientious
child! You will not humor me at all. Suppose Peter should have to
cripple along all spring with a handful of men? Then you and Jerry will
miss the dawn of spring at the Arms. Let me tell you you will miss
something.”
“Miss Susanna, I’ve made up my mind to come to the Arms the first of
March, whether or not the dormitory business is settled.” Marjorie
finally made this concession one February afternoon while taking tea
with the old lady.
“You are my own Marvelous Manager, and a dear child.” Miss Susanna
unexpectedly left her chair, walked around the tea table to Marjorie and
hugged her.
“And you are the dearest of dears. I ought to come here by the first of
March. I feel it as my duty. And I shall love to be with you. The girls
are resigned to Jerry’s and my move. They’ll be here about half the
time. I give you warning beforehand. I’ve nothing but chemistry on my
list since the beginning of the semester. I only devote a few hours a
week to it now. I do wish something would happen to bring some more
workmen to the dormitory,” Marjorie ended wistfully.
“Yes, so do I. I could take that Cairns girl and treat her to a good
shaking with my own strength of arm.” Miss Susanna resentfully
straightened up from her embrace of Marjorie and vengefully worked her
arms. “And to think, I’ve never seen her except once, and at a
distance.” Miss Susanna resumed her chair and continued: “It is too bad
Baretti can do nothing with those Italians at the quarter. It’s the old
story. Money changes the color of everything.”
“I was hopeful of Signor Baretti,” Marjorie said, faint disappointment
in her reply. “He went over to the quarter several times. He said some
one besides Leslie Cairns herself had been influencing the Italians. He
thought she might have hired someone. The Italians swore that only
Thorne and Foster were responsible for the walk-out. They told Signor
Baretti the bosses had offered much money to have the work done quickly.
He says they are not telling the truth, but he can’t get at the truth
among them. I had a talk with him yesterday. Robin and I stopped at the
inn for ice cream. He says he will try again after a while to make the
Italians tell him the truth.”
“He is a fine little man,” Miss Susanna said, nodding approval of the
odd, whole-souled Italian. “He won’t forget that promise, either.”
Guiseppe Baretti had no intention of forgetting the, to him, solemn
promise he had made Page and Dean. The nearly perfect management of his
restaurant to which he had long since attained left him a good deal of
time to spend as he pleased. Usually he pleased to be busy in the inn
where he had achieved affluence. It was his workshop, and he loved it.
Now that the “dorm,” also grown into his peculiar affection, was in
difficulties it behoved him to become a knight errant.
Imbued with this high purpose he went again and again to the Italian
quarter, a patient, open-eared watchful little questioner or listener,
as the case might be. February was almost ended when he at last learned
something of importance. He came one evening upon Pedro Tomaso and
Francisco Vesseli engaged in heated argument. He gathered from the
torrent of angry words each hurled at the other the information he was
seeking. There had been a “Maestro” at the quarter, it seemed. He had
arranged the new scale of wages. Baretti heard over and over again the
name “Ravenzo.” When he left the quarter it was with four points fixed
in his mind. There had been a “Maestro” at the quarter. His name was
Ravenzo. He had come from New York. Then had come the desertion of the
“dorm” by the workmen.
What Baretti entertained as a positive belief, the Italians knew nothing
of. This was Leslie Cairns’s part in the dormitory trouble. They placed
the odium on Thorne and Foster. The long-headed Italian inn keeper laid
the primary blame upon Miss “Car-rins.” He firmly believed if “that one”
were made to “behave good” the troubles of the dorm would end. He had
gleaned here and there enough of Leslie’s past history to know that she
was the only child of Peter Cairns, a well-known financier, and that her
home was in New York.
After his fruitful visit to the quarter he sat down in his tiny private
office at the inn and wrote a long letter in Italian to a countryman of
his in New York connected with an Italian confidential agency. The
purpose of the letter was to establish the identity and business of one,
Ravenzo.
When he had finished the letter he sat very still for a long time and
thought about Leslie Cairns. Ever since he had first seen her as a
freshman at Hamilton, he had detested her. Now he put her through a
mental revue which did not redound to her credit. He wondered how her
father could allow her to “boss herself all wrong.” Perhaps her father
did not know half she did. There were many such cases. He reflected with
old-world wisdom that. “A father don’ want his childr’n do wrong.” He
was also of the conviction that, “A father, he can’t punish his childr’n
they do wrong, he don’ know they do it.” Guiseppe Baretti was sure that
Mr. Car-rins “don’ know much ’bout what his daughter do.”
His knowledge of Italian nature told him that if the scale of wages on
the Cairns’s garage was dropped to what it had been when begun by Thorne
and Foster, the men of the quarter as well as the American and Irish
workman would be glad to go back to the fair employ of Page and Dean
under the management of Peter Graham. If Miss Car-rins’s father knew her
as she really was perhaps he would come and take her away from Hamilton.
Miss Car-rins was of age, but a father was a father. Her father was a
“big” man. He probably would have ways to make his daughter behave.
Such was Baretti’s view of the problem he was trying to solve. The next
day he sat down and went over the same train of thought with the same
deliberation. On the third day thereafter he resigned himself to the
composition of a letter in Italian. It was a very long letter and the
first draft of it did not please him. For several days he kept patiently
at it, re-writing and re-vising. Finally he gave it into the keeping of
his Italian manager who was also a high school graduate. Two days
afterward the manager returned a neatly typed, well-phrased letter in
polite English to the little proprietor. Guiseppe had the pleasure of
addressing an envelope to Peter Cairns at his New York offices.
Baretti’s last thought in sending the letter was one of consideration
for Leslie’s father. He wrote on the lower, left-hand side of the
envelope: “For Peter Cairns only.”
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