Giovanni’s young lady had married the hall porter under his very nose, and Giovanni, from being a lighthearted fellow, had grown decidedly broody. He had slashed at a ham as though it were the porter, and when clients had sent messages regarding their beef—some preferring it well done, some pink, and others gory—Giovanni had been seen to scowl darkly at his knife as though he would have liked to carve the clients. Millo, walking softly through the restaurant one day, pausing now and then beside a table and bowing, had observed that his excellent trancheur, Giovanni, was not doing justice to his art; so that evening after dinner he had reasoned with Giovanni in the soft, deadly way that was Millo’s. He had said, gently stroking the restaurant cat that was given the freedom of his office:
“Here we have no hearts and no emotions; no passions—no bodies except to serve. Am I not right, my good Giovanni? Is not that how we have built up the Doric? All such things as I speak of we leave to our clients; in clients they are good, they encourage much spending, but you and I cannot afford to indulge them—if we do, why, then we must go.”
Giovanni had bowed and murmured in agreement, feeling that Millo was right; feeling that a ham must be worth more to Millo than Anna who had heartlessly married the hall porter; knowing indeed that had he been Millo he would probably have shown less forbearance. For in this lies the great good fortune of the Latin, he can nearly always put himself in your place. An enviable trait, but one that in the long run spoils his fun in his budding revolutions. So Giovanni had gone back to his well-stocked cold buffet and had carved once more like an angel. If his heart was really broken—which was doubtful, let us hope—he managed to hide this fact while at the Doric. What happened when he left there at night to go home was a matter of little importance.
IV
Gian-Luca still lived with Fabio and Teresa, still slept in Olga’s old bedroom. He had had it repainted and papered a bright yellow, so that now there remained not even the scars as witnesses to what had once been. He could well have afforded to take a room nearer Piccadilly and the Doric, but the people among whom he had been brought up never left home except to get married, and not always then, for the family tie is a ten-ton chain to the Latin. No feelings of affection or duty, however, kept Gian-Luca at home; he remained where he was from a sense of habit—he was like that now, a creature of habit, after nearly seven years at the Doric. Young as he was, he was slightly pedantic, with a little crop of cut-and-dried ideas about life. He read much in his spare time, believing in culture, and had quite a good knowledge of all sorts of books, English as well as Italian. Perhaps the fact that he had so few friends had driven him back on books.
He was vain in a harmless, painstaking way, and would fold his clothes neatly every night. His trousers were stretched in a smart walnut press, his ties suspended from a tape in his wardrobe, his jackets from carefully selected hangers, and his boots and shoes always well treed. Apart from the Doric, his one ruling passion, he enjoyed his books, he admired astuteness, especially in matters connected with his business, and he found recreation in women—he was kinder to his books than he was to his women, perhaps because they cost him more. For Gian-Luca understood the value of money even as old Teresa understood it, even as Nerone and Rocca understood it, and Millo, the Lord of the Doric.
He was now in a position to buy all Doria’s works, and he ordered each new volume as soon as it was published. These were the books that he loved above all others, and he kept them in a special little bookcase by themselves. A rebel among poets was Ugo Doria; a firebrand, an earthquake, a disaster. And then suddenly, a saint, a peak of pure whiteness, a lake in the heart of the mountains. And this latter was the mood in which Gian-Luca liked him best; when he would feel that he was reading something more than Ugo Doria, when Gian-Luca—who did not believe in a soul—would know moments of joy and complete contentment; moments when the Doric and Millo and food and money and success and even himself would seem just nothing at all. Whenever he was feeling particularly lonely, in spite of his astuteness and ability, he would take down the volume that contained his favorite poem, the immortal “Gioia della Luce.” And sometimes, not often it is true, but sometimes, would come visions of wide, cool places; and of shadows, green because of their trees, and of all sorts of simple things. Then Gian-Luca would begin to grow younger and younger, but happier far than when he was a child; and perhaps he would go all the way out to Putney on his next free evening to visit the Librarian. For there he was always a welcome guest—not because he was
