"I received a letter from Mary. She spoke of certain 'developments.'" Rodrigo said doggedly, anxious to have it over. "She urged me to return and talk with you."
John asked quietly, "Did she say what those 'developments' were?"
"No."
John smiled, "Wonderful, competent Mary! She insisted I write you to come back. I refused, because I felt you were coming soon anyway. She, strangely enough, was not so sure. So she wrote you herself? Well, perhaps she was wise."
"And the 'developments' she spoke of?" Rodrigo's voice sounded very small.
John tapped the ashes from his pipe, looked at his friend gravely. "Rodrigo," he said, "I have found out the truth about Elise."
Rodrigo started with the unexpectedness of the answer, a chaos of thoughts running suddenly riot within him.
"I know that she is dead," John continued. "And I know that you know she is dead, that you have always known it. But wait, I will begin at the beginning! You will remember that I spoke to you before you left about selling my house in Millbank. Well, I kept putting that off because I dreaded to enter the place. You see, I had left everything exactly the way it was before—she went. While my mental condition was still uncertain, I did not want to disturb things. I felt that the shock of going there, seeing her room, her clothes, everything that my happiness, my life, had depended upon, would be too much for me. Even after I came back from California feeling so much improved, I kept putting it off. I dreaded the ordeal. But three or four weeks after you left, I pulled myself together, told myself that those foolish fears were nonsense, a sign even that I had gone a little mad. So I went over there, and I spent two whole days in the house, alone. I put my house of memories in order. And, Rodrigo, I found out many terrible things."
Rodrigo, his eyes fixed intensely upon his friend, shuddered.
But John went on calmly. "Well, I had to break into her desk, among other things, and I found there letters, love-letters from other men. Among them were letters from you, showing me, Rodrigo, that she loved you and that you had had the courage to repulse her love. My idol crashed then and there down to the floor, and the whole world went black again. Rodrigo, there in that room alone I came as near going crazy as I hope ever to again in this world. I cursed God for letting me see that He had made life so hideous. I wanted to die. But I came through it. I think that it was those letters of yours—those letters were striking blows for my happiness—that brought me through. That is twice you have saved my life, Rodrigo—once from Rosner and once—from myself."
Rodrigo rose and cried suddenly, "Don't say that, John! I can't bear it!"
"Please, Rodrigo," John restrained him. "I understand. You have always tried to protect my happiness. You tried to keep me from knowing that I loved a woman who never existed. But she is dead now. After I came out of that house and went back to my father's and told them what I had found, they confessed to me that anonymous notes had come to me soon after Elise's disappearance hinting that I might learn something about her if it were possible to identify the victims of the Van Clair fire. My father and Warren had kept those notes from me. They felt it was time now to tell me about them. And it became clear to me. The woman who died in the Van Clair fire was Elise."
Rodrigo cried out, the secret wrenched from him almost without his volition, "I know she was! And I sent her there that night, John! You'll remember you went to Philadelphia and wired me to take the midnight train and meet you the next morning. Well, she came to me that night in the office, where I was working on the estimates. I was in a reckless mood, disappointed—but no matter, it was no excuse for me. I sent her to the Van Clair, intending to follow. Oh, I didn't go. I got my senses back, thank God! But I was responsible. I thought I had grown so good, and I knifed my best friend." He lifted his pale, stricken face to John, pleading for mercy, "I've been through an ordeal too, John. The difference between us is that—I deserved it and—the ordeal is going to go right on. Even though I've torn this awful secret out of me at last!"
John Dorning was silent, stunned, trying to realize the significance of his friend's confession.
And again Rodrigo cried out, pleadingly, "I couldn't tell you before, John. I had to let you go on driving yourself crazy from anxiety about her. I thought it would kill you to know. Mary begged me to tell you—but I couldn't." Tears were in his eyes. His strong body was shaken with emotion. Suddenly he flung himself at John's feet and no longer tried to control his weeping.
And finally John spoke, and Rodrigo wonderingly looked up and saw that John had a little smile on his face, that he was laying gentle hands upon the recumbent back. "I knew something was tearing at you," John said, "And I'm glad you told me about—Elise. Knowing her now for what she really was, I can forgive you, Rodrigo. None of us are perfect. God knows I have found that out. You were my friend even that night of the Van Clair—in the critical moment you were my friend. And you always will be."
Dorning helped Rodrigo to his feet, made him smile again, took his hand. Rodrigo clutched it, crying, "John, you are a saint. If you hadn't forgiven me, if you—" He turned his head and went slowly back to his chair.
"I told Mary what I had discovered about Elise," said John. A light of understanding burst upon him with these words. He ventured, "Rodrigo, had you told her already of—the Van Clair?"
Rodrigo nodded affirmatively.
John was thinking rapidly.
"What did Mary say?" he asked.
"She called me a coward for not telling you the truth, sick as you were. She said she could not—respect me, if I didn't."
John said almost to himself, "Mary thought a lot of you, Rodrigo—does yet."
"She loves you," Rodrigo answered softly, but he could not quite keep the despair out of his voice.
John glanced at him understandingly at last, but he said nothing. When, after a long silence, they resumed the conversation, Dorning strove to change its subject.
"I wish you'd take it easy for a while at the shop, Rodrigo. You don't look well," he said gently. "Rosner has things quite well in hand. We miss you, but I do want you well and perfectly happy when you come back to work."
"I was thinking of returning to Europe," Rodrigo replied, attempting to make his statement as matter-of-fact as possible.
"Not because of anything you have said here to-night, I hope," John urged at once. "I want you to believe me, old man, that your confession hasn't made any difference. It's rather relieved my mind, to tell the truth. I suspected something was up that I did not yet know about. It's made me love you more than ever, drawn us closer."
"I appreciate that, John. I feel the same way," Rodrigo said.
Nevertheless, he told himself, he was going away. He would see Mary; deliberately kill her love for him, throw her into John's arms. John needed her. John deserved happiness. It was the least he could do for John. But it was not a confession of weakness, his wanting to see Mary again. He must see her, must do something that would convince her he was unworthy of her love, that would strangle any desire in her to keep his memory alive after he was gone. He must disappear from her heart as well as from her sight.
Rodrigo walked slowly into the offices of the Italian-American Line late the next morning, like a man lately condemned to the scaffold, and booked passage on a vessel sailing for Naples the following Saturday. Then he took the subway uptown.
The warm sun drenching the exhibition rooms of Dorning and Son, the cheerful good mornings of the clerks, mocked at his mood. He summoned a masking smile on his face and held it while he opened the door of John's office and strode in. Mary was sitting beside John at the latter's desk, their heads quite close together. They had been talking confidentially, almost gayly. Their faces sobered as they looked up at the intruder. It seemed a warning to Rodrigo that he must go through with his program. The faint hope, conceived the night before, that the "developments" Mary had written him about, concerned the discovery of Elise's treachery only and had nothing to do with an announcement of a troth between Mary and John, vanished. It was unmistakable. They loved each other. It showed in the quick, warning glance that passed between them as he entered, in the way they almost sprang apart at the sight of a third person.
They greeted him warmly enough, and almost immediately John departed on the excuse of a conference with Henry Madison. Rodrigo took the seat that his partner had vacated. He did not have to urge Mary to remain.
His voice simulated a careless nonchalance as he smiled at her and said, "I hadn't a chance hardly to say a word to you yesterday, Mary."
"That wasn't my fault," she pouted. He was surprised to discover that Mary could pout. He thought she had never looked more adorable. Sophie, Rosa, Elise—never in their prime had they been as beautiful as Mary.
"Did you enjoy your vacation?" she asked unexpectedly.
"Very much," he replied, smiling as if in memory. "You know, Mary, there's no use pretending—I've never changed. I found it out when I got abroad. I can't play the hermit. It isn't in me. Over here, with you around, perhaps, I can hold myself in leash. But I am not like you or John, like Americans, at heart. There is something in my blood. I was torn up physically and emotionally when I left, and I had to forget somehow. That isn't an excuse, of course, but it may explain things to you a little. I—I sank into the old rut over there, Mary. The different environment, the different sort of women, the liquor, everything." He flung out his hands hopelessly, in a continental gesture.
"You saw some of your old friends?" she asked quietly.
"Many of them. And they were unchanged too. It was the same old story. I met a girl in Naples whose father had once blackmailed me for an affair with her—and now I suppose he'll be blackmailing me over again. In London, I ran across Sophie Binner. You remember Sophie? We became quite good friends again. She seems to be my sort. I'm what you called me—a coward." He sighed, and watched her face.
But her face, strangely enough, did not flinch. She asked him in the same quiet voice, "You are trying to tell me that you are the same man you were that first day here, when you tried to play sheik with me, flirted with me?"
He shrugged his shoulders.
"I shouldn't think you would have come back here—after playing fast and loose all over Europe, after betraying the trust John and I put in you."
"I came in response to your letter," he said with some dignity.
"Nevertheless, you shouldn't have come in that case. You should have stayed with your—friends."
"I know. You are right," he said. "And I am going back to—them. I booked my passage this morning. I am sailing in a week for Italy, and this time I am not coming back."
She started. Her face lost its imperturbability. She said, "And that is all you have to say to me?"
He leaned toward her, his throat filling with a storm of words. But then he fell back, lowering his head. "Yes," he said in a low voice. "That is all—that and—please think as well as you can of me, Mary. And go on—loving John and taking care of him."
Her lips were twitching a little now. "Do you want to know what I really think of you?" she asked suddenly.
He raised his tired eyes, his eyes that were saying what his lips were sealed against, and he nodded his head.
She suddenly left her chair and came to him, laid her hands upon his shoulders, and said clearly and proudly, "I think that you are a terrible fibber. I think you have a crazy notion that John and I are in love. And I know this—I love you, Rodrigo, and you are never going to leave me again."
And then he reached out and clutched her fiercely, devouringly into his arms, kissed her again and again, crying her name pitifully like a baby. And when at last he, still holding her tightly, raised her face so that he could look at it and prove he was not dreaming, he saw that she too was weeping.
He cried, "Mary! Mary! Oh, my dear," again and again. And again and again he kissed her.
Finally he let her go to adjust her disheveled hair and clothes into some semblance of order. She smiled at him and asked, "How could you think I could love anybody but you—coward or no coward? Oh, I found out while you were gone how foolish I was ever to risk losing you. I lay awake reviling myself that I had sent you away—yes, I did send you. And I had to have you back—or dash over to Europe and search for you."
"But John?" he asked. "I thought John and you——"
"I love John too, but as a brother. I always have. And he has felt the same towards me. But you—oh, my poor, poor boy!" He seized her greedily again, and his lips were upon hers as a knock sounded upon the door. He released her, looked at her so guiltily that she laughed aloud.
"It is only John," she said happily. "He knows—about us. He confirmed my suspicions that you were torturing yourself with this silly idea that he and I were in love. He even foretold that you would pretend to be the bold, bad man of old. John is wise, you see, wiser even than you. But not half so——"
And then John walked in and read their faces at a glance.
But, after all, Rodrigo sailed for Italy the next Saturday. Though he had changed his booking from a single to a double cabin and the passenger list read: The Count and Countess Rodrigo di Torriani.
John Dorning, looking almost as radiant as the bride and groom, saw them off at the pier. For a long time they stood chatting on the deck of the great vessel together, these three young people amid the throng of waving, shouting tourists. When the warning blasts sounded from the smokestack whistle, John whispered banteringly to Rodrigo, "This time you will not call upon any of your ex-lady friends, eh? Rosa or Sophie—you bet I was glad to get that good news of Sophie. Well, cable me when you land. And please come back on schedule. You are leaving Dorning and Son terribly handicapped, you know—my two best partners away at once." He kissed Mary and pressed Rodrigo's hand, and hurried down the gangplank. He stood there, a thin, but sturdy figure, waving to them while the great ship backed out into the channel and pointed her bow toward the east.
"John Dorning is the finest of all the men that ever lived," Rodrigo said solemnly.
"Almost," Mary replied.
Gliding through the magic moonlight over a mirror-like sea, they sat very close to each other that evening in deck-chairs, and she said to him, at the end of a long conversation, "And that is why I love you most, Rodrigo—because you have conquered yourself."
"And so has good old John," he replied.
"Yes, so has John. And both you—and I—have found joy because of that. It's the only way to win real happiness."