The Savage Gentleman (14 page)

Finally he looked away.

They watched him. He was breathing slowly and deeply. He rubbed the arm of his chair with the palm of his hand. His eyes came back to her--a thirsty roan who drinks and halts a moment only to drink again.

At last, from the dim resources of his mind, the breeding which his father had instilled in him reasserted itself. He smiled.

"How does it seem--to see a woman for the first time?" She asked the question seriously, impersonally.

Henry's eyes were calmer.

"The sensation--is indescribable. But I believe I have been unduly fortunate--in that you are the first woman I have seen."

Marian looked at her grandfather.

"They said he was a savage."

Whitney chuckled. The crisis had passed.

"That was Sid's idea--he told it to Voorhees. And Voorhees made the most of it.

He wouldn't want anyone to know that Stephen's son was--"

Marian glanced at the man with the mustache, the man with the Prince Albert.

"Exactly," she said. Then she turned to Henry. "Talk to me."

"I'd rather listen to you."

"That's pretty--and it may even be true. But you've got to talk. Tell me about the time--oh--anything. Tell me about the island. What was it like? What did you eat? What did you wear? How did you amuse yourself?"

In her eyes he saw interest and something that was like adulation. His father's warnings flickered through his mind. Was not this--this attraction--the first step toward destruction?

Whitney intervened.

"Go ahead. Henry. Tell us."

He wanted the young nlan to talk. He wanted to listen to his voice and accent and judge his vocabulary and measure his mind.

Henry began painfully.

"It really wasn't anything, I should think, that would interest you. The island was about twenty miles long--from east to west--and fifteen miles wide at the widest part. The geology of it--"

No one interrupted him. No one looked at the time. Whitney had talked for two hours about modern civilization. Henry talked for three about the island. The fascination of his audience tricked him into forgetting himself.

"And I looked"--Henry found himself saying--"and it was a lifeboat full of men."

The silence was better than any applause.

Whitney took his watch from his vest pocket.

"Four?" Marian guessed.

"That's right. I'll take you to your rooms--mind if I call you Henry?"

"I'd be delighted--"

Marian stood and stretched.

"Good night--Henry."

"Good night, Miss Whitney."

"You don't mind if I fall in love with you, do you?"

"Ah—"

She was gone.

Henry looked blankly at her grandfather.

"That's Marian's way of having fun."

"Oh."

Henry was so weary, when he shut the door of his elaborate suite, that he had almost no strength to glean new impressions. He entered the bathroom, however, looked at its tile and metal, and laughed.

When he put on the pajamas which had been laid out for him and thrust himself between the sheets, he exclaimed aloud. He had not dreamed of such a bed.

He shut his eyes. For a few frantic moments his brain revolved. He was sure that he would spend a night as sleepless as his last night at sea. But in a few moments he was deep in slumber.

He opened his eyes and stared with bewilderment at the ceiling.

Memory of the last twenty-four hours rushed over him. He took his watch from beneath his pillow--a huge gold watch which had belonged to his father. Eleven-fifteen.

He sat up. From his bed he could look through wide windows over the summits of New York. They glittered in the sun and he walked toward the wind-stirred curtains as if he were hypnotized.

He saw the city, heard it and smelled it. A fairyland of shining chrome steel--lofty, fantastic, incredibly beautiful--palisades and terraces and mighty shafts that lost themselves in the haze. A dim and yet pervasive roar from which separate sounds occasionally emerged--the trumpeting of an automobile horn, the chatter of a rivet hammer, the basso of a river whistle. A scent of smoke and steam and gasoline fumes--vague, acrid, stimulating.

He looked down at traffic, watching it stop and start, more in the manner of a colossal machine than of individual vehicles with private destinations.

Someone knocked on his door.

"Come."

A man entered. He carried a large tray through the bedroom and into the living-room which Henry had not investigated on the previous night.

"Your breakfast, sir."

"Thanks."

"Mr. Whitney has been shopping for you, sir. I believe that he has purchased a brown suit and a gray one. Which shall I lay out?"

Henry blushed. "It doesn't matter."

"Very well, sir. I shall return with the brown suit in half an hour. Shall I draw a bath?"

Henry was afraid that he would not be able to manage a bath in the complicated tile room. He shook his head in embarrassment.

"No, thanks. I--no--thanks."

"Very well, sir."

Henry went into the living-room.

On the tray was an electric toaster and some bread. A patent egg-boiler which worked by electricity and used only a spoonful of water. A coffee machine made of two glass flasks. A grapefruit.

He stared at these things. The fruit, he had never seen. The little machines he could not operate. He saw ice under the grapefruit--a nest of ice--and while he realized what it was after a moment's thought--he did not know whether it was to be eaten or not.

He took a piece in his fingers, learned its slipperiness and the burning sensation caused by its temperature.

Another knock at his door:

"Come in."

It was Marian in blue pajamas.

Henry blushed again--not because of her costume--but because he remembered her last words of the previous night. He did not mind the unconventionality of their clothes because he was accustomed to few clothes and because he did not know the conventions of this decade.

"Good morning."

"Good morning, Miss Whitney."

"I came to have breakfast with you. My tray is on the way."

He bowed from the waist. "That will be delightful."

"Do you always talk like that--and bow?"

"I--" His embarrassment increased.

Marian laughed. "Never mind. It's sweet. I just found out that grandfather played a joke on you. He ordered, all the trick gadgets in the house on your tray to see what you'd do."

"Trick gadgets?"

"Those things. The toaster and the coffeemaker and the egg boiler."

She sat down and a maid brought her tray.

"How did you sleep?"

"Perfectly, thank you. And you?"

"Me? Well enough. Now. I'll show you what to do. That wire goes to the plug there. Here!"

She rose and arranged things for him.

"You turn the toast with that dingus."

"Oh. A dingus?"

"Slang, Henry. That handle. You see. Watch the coffee. When it comes up, you turn off the heat. Two times. Then you pour it."

"What is this?"

"That's a grapefruit. You eat it first."

"It's very kind of you to take the trouble to initiate me into these mysteries."

She smiled. "It's only a beginning, Henry. Everyone in the house is crazy to take you around. Father came in a half hour ago--he was up all night--and I had to use force to get him into bed. Grandfather is probably sneaking around in the hall right now, peering through keyholes and listening at cracks."

"Oh."

"You mustn't be annoyed. We're all pretty proud of our city and civilization--

except the way things are run."

Henry was digging into his grapefruit.

Marian's eye fell on the radio and she had an inspiration. She turned it on surreptitiously. In a moment a voice boomed softly:

"Are you listening?"

Henry jumped and turned around.

"Yes, indeed," he said.

Marian stifled her mirth.

Jud Jackson's California Clippers began to play
Lowdown
.

Henry put his grapefruit on the table. He found the source of the sound and walked to the radio cabinet. At last he looked at the girl. "What is it?"

"Jazz."

"A jazz?"

"Oh. The music is called jazz. It's for dancing."

"Sounds that way. Did Edison invent it? Is it the talking machine? Father used to tell me about that."

"It's a radio."

"Like the one on the ship?"

"Yes. But it brings sounds of all sorts--music and speeches--from all over the world. Without wires."

"How wonderful!"

Henry listened to the music for a while.

"I think I like it--and I think I don't. It's--it makes you feel strange."

"You're precocious."

He did not answer. The toast began to burn.

When they finished their breakfast, she rose.

"I've got to go and dress." She saw his color mount. "These--are pajamas--for house wear. Do you like them?"

"I--I--I think they are very--charming."

"The reporters are waiting for you downstairs. You'll have to see them, I guess."

"Oh."

"And--do me a favor--will you?"

"Anything."

"Shave off the mustache."

Chapter Eleven
: THE GENTLEMAN

HENRY had finished the adventure of dressing. The valet had initiated him in the business of modern clothes. He had shaved away his drooping mustache.

When he went into the library he afforded the twenty-odd men assembled there a breath-taking moment. He was taller than any of them--twice as broad as some, tan as walnut stain, and he walked with ease and pride.

His voice was deep and assured and his eyes moved candidly from face to face.

He even smiled a little.

"Gentlemen, I put myself at your disposal."

There was a murmur.

They had expected a man in a skin loin skirt with matted hair and bloodshot eyes-

-an animal exhibition of grunts and teeth-baring. Voorhees had assured the world of that.

"Are you--Henry Stone?"

"I am."

"Jeest! How come you can talk English? Been learning on the boat?"

Henry's lips twitched. He stood in their midst.

"My father taught me English when I was two or three--as your fathers did. You see, gentlemen, the
Record
, in publishing the description of me which you took as gospel, was somewhat misinformed. I am a savage--I suppose--according to your contemporary tenets. But--"

The
Record
feature writer began to make notes:
Shock of hair. Tree-climbing toes hidden under disguise of modern clothes. Talks
fairly well-stilted dialect.

A man at his side thought:

The scion of his father--old-worldish but cultured and brilliant--and one of the
most magnificent physical specimens this jaded metropolis has entertained for decades.

The first fifteen minutes of Henry's audience were felicitous. Then came a change.

Someone asked, "What are you going to do with your papers?"

"I haven't decided."

"What's your political affiliation?"

"I have made none as yet."

"What do you think of Capone?"

"I never heard of him."

"What’s your stand on prohibition?"

"Prohibition of what?"

They laughed.

"What do you think ought to be done with Muscle Shoals?"

"I don't know."

"How do you expect to manage anything when you don't know the difference between income tax and Liberty Bonds?"

"He means--Mr. Stone--"

Henry flushed. "I understand what he means. I shall have to inform myself as rapidly as possible."

"What do you think of necking?"

"Of what?"

They explained.

Henry was horrified.

"I can't see how my opinion would interest you. Or how--even--you could print it without a libel suit--"

"What about--"

They began to probe into Henry's private life. They asked him questions on topics which he had discussed with no one. They wrote answers for them all.

And Henry began to lose patience with them. Their vulgarity, their bad manners, their insistence on replies wore away his willingness to meet any new situation with an open mind. When they began to ask questions about his father's love life, Henry rebelled.

"That will be all, gentlemen."

"Is it true he never had kissed any woman except her? Is that so?"

Henry looked blackly at the questioner.

"Is it true she quit him because he beat her?"

Henry stalked from the room and slammed the door.

Elihu Whitney found him in his own living-room, sprawled in a chair, his face in his hands.

"What's the trouble?"

"The reporters!" Henry said furiously. "It was unspeakable! Malicious. Vulgar.

Good Lord--"

"Don't mind them, boy. You don't dare mind them. They'll print worse things than they said. But you can't worry about it."

' I'll stop them. They can't print what they said about father."

"They can and they will."

"But it wasn't true."

"That makes no difference."

Henry paced back and forth across his room.

"If that's what the newspaper business is--I don't want to be in it. I wouldn't have anything to do with it. It's filthy."

"Easy--son. By the way--it's twelve-thirty. We're taking you out to lunch and then for a tour of "the town."

"I don't want--" Henry controlled himself somewhat. "Very well. I regret my temper. But--"

Whitney pulled his beard and looked at the young man with grave attention.

"Forget it. Forget it."

Henry met Marian on the staircase. He was astonished again by her change in costume. As yet he had had no opportunity--even in hasty glances through the windows of the Whitney mansion--to observe the dress of modern woman.

Marian wore blue. A blue dress with a flimsy and meaningless blue jacket over it, and a blue hat. He realized that he was staring at her only when she laughed.

"You like my ensemble?"

"I beg your pardon?"

The sound of her laughter stopped but its accompanying smile lingered.