The Title Market Part 1

The t.i.tle Market.

by Emily Post.

CHAPTER I

PRINCE SANSEVERO DIMINISHES THE FORTUNES OF HIS HOUSE

Her excellency the Princess Sansevero sat up in bed. Reaching quickly across the great width of mattress, she pulled the bell-rope twice, then, shivering, slid back under the warmth of the covers. She drew them close up over her shoulders, so far that only a heavy ma.s.s of golden hair remained visible above the old crimson brocade of which the counterpane was made. The room was still darkened so that the objects in it were barely discernible, but presently one of the high, carved doors opened and a maid entered, carrying a breakfast tray. Setting the tray down, she crossed quickly to the windows and drew back the curtains.

Sunlight flooded the black and white marble of the floor, and brought out in sharp detail the splendor of the apartment. The rich colors of the frescoed walls, the mellow crimson damask upholstering, might have suggested warmth and comfort, had not a little cloud of white vapor floating before the maid's lips proclaimed the temperature.

She was a stocky peasant woman, this maid, with good red color in her cheeks, but she wore a dress of heavy woolen material and a cardigan jacket over that. Her thick felt slippers pattered briskly over the stone floor as she went to a clothes-press, carved and beautifully inlaid, took out a drab-colored woolen wrapper trimmed with common red fox fur, and, picking up the tray again, mounted the dais of the huge carved bed.

"If Excellency will make haste, the coffee is good and very hot."

The covers were pushed down just a little, and the princess peered out.

"What sort of a day have we, Marie? Isn't it very cold?"

"Oh, no! It is a beautiful day. But Excellency will say that the coffee is cold unless it is soon taken."

So again the Princess Sansevero sat up in bed. Her maid placed the coffee tray before her, and wrapped her quickly in the dressing-gown.

The plain woolen wrapper had looked ugly enough in the maid's hands, but its drab color and fox fur so toned in with the red-gold hair and creamy skin of its wearer that an artist, could he have beheld the picture, would have been filled with delight. It would not in the least have mattered to him that there was a chip in the cup into which she poured her coffee, nor that the linen napkin was darned in three places. The silver breakfast service belonged to a time when such things were chiseled only for great personages and by master craftsmen. That it was battered through several centuries of constant handling rather enhanced than diminished its value. Of the same antiquity was the bed--seven feet wide, its four posts elaborately carved with fruits and flowers, and with cupids grouped in the corners of the framework supporting a dome of crimson damask that matched the hangings. What difference could it make to the artist that the springless mattress was as hard as a rock, and lumpy as a ploughed field? With painted walls and vaulted ceilings that were the apotheosis of luxury, what did it matter that the raw chill from their stone surface penetrated to the very marrow of her Exalted Excellency's bones? Unfortunately, however, it was she who had to occupy the apartment and to her it did matter very much, for her American blood never had grown used to the chill of unheated rooms.

"I think I can heat the bathroom sufficiently for Excellency's bath,"

ventured the maid.

The princess shivered at the mere suggestion. She knew only too well the feeling of the water in a room that was like an unheated cellar in the rainy season of late autumn. "No, no!" she exclaimed, "fill me the little tub, in my sitting-room."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "AS SHE SPOKE, A DOOR OPENED OPPOSITE THE ONE THROUGH WHICH THE MAID HAD ENTERED, AND THE PRINCE CAME IN"]

As she spoke, a door opened opposite the one through which the maid had entered, and the prince came in. A fresh color glowed under his olive skin, his hair was brushed until it was as polished as his nails; also he was shaved, but here his toilet for the day ended. The open "V" of his dressing-gown (his was made of a costly material, quite in contrast to the one his wife wore) showed his throat; bare ankles were visible above his slippers. With the raillery of a boy he cried:

"Can it really be possible that you are cold! No wonder they call yours the nation of ice water! I know that is what you have in your veins!"

With a spring he threw himself full length across the bed.

"Sandro, be careful! See what you are doing! You have spilled the coffee."

"Oh, that's nothing!" he said gaily; "it will wash out."

"On the contrary, it is a great deal. It makes unnecessary laundry and uses up the linen--we can't get any more, you know."

At once his gay humor changed to sulkiness. "_Va bene, va bene!_ let us drop that subject."

Immediately the princess softened, as though she had unthinkingly hurt him, "I did not mean it as a complaint; but you know, dear, we do have to be careful."

But the prince stared moodily at his finger-nails.

She began a new topic cheerfully. "I hope to get a letter from Nina to-day; there has been time for an answer."

Sansevero had been quite interested in the idea of a possible visit from Nina Randolph, his wife's niece, a much exploited American heiress. But now he paid no attention. He still stared at his nails. The princess scrutinized his face as though in the habit of reading its expression, and at last she said gently:

"What have you in mind, dear? Tell me--come, out with it, I see quite well there is something."

For answer he sat up, took a cigarette from his pocket, put it between his lips, searched in both pockets for a match, and, failing to find one, sat with the unlighted cigarette between his lips, sulkier than ever.

He felt her looking at him, and swayed his shoulders exactly as though some one were trying to hold him. "Really, Leonora," he burst out, "this question of money all the time is far from pleasant!"

A helpless, frightened look came into her face. It grew suddenly pinched; instinctively she put her hand over her heart.

"I have not mentioned money." She made an effort to speak lightly, but there was a vibration in the tone. Then, as though gathering her strength together, she made a direct demand:

"Alessandro, tell me at once, what have you done?"

For a moment he looked defiant, then shrugged his shoulders. "Well, since you will know----" he sprang from the bed, pulled a letter out of his pocket, and, quite as a small boy hands over the note that his teacher has caught him pa.s.sing in school, he tossed her the envelope, and left the room.

Her fingers trembled a little in unfolding the paper; and she breathed quickly as she read. For some time she sat staring at the few lines of writing before her. Then suddenly thrusting her feet into fur slippers, she ran into the next room. "Sandro," she said, "come into my sitting-room; I must speak with you."

He followed her through her bedroom into an apartment much smaller and, unlike the other two rooms, quite warm. Just now, all the articles of a woman's toilet were spread out on a table upon which a dressing-mirror had been placed; and close beside a brazier of glowing coals was a portable English tub; the water for the bath was heating in the kitchen.

Seeing that there was no means of avoiding the inevitable, he said doggedly: "I thought to make, of course, or I would not have gone into the scheme." Then something in her face held him, and at the same time his impulsive boyishness--a little dramatic, perhaps, but only so much as is consistent with his race--carried him into a new mood.

"Leonora, I suppose I am in the wrong--indeed I am sure I am utterly at fault; but help me. Don't you see, _carissima_, this time I did not _wager_--it was a business venture!"

In the midst of her distress she could not help but smile at the absurdity.

"Scorpa is doing it all," he continued--"not I. You know what a clever business man _he_ is! He a.s.sured me that it was a rare chance--the opportunity of a lifetime. It was because I wanted so to restore to you what my gambling had cost, that I agreed. I did not think it possible to lose. But help me this once; believe me, I do know, and with shame, that were it not for my accursed ill luck we should be living in luxury now. But just this once--you will help me, won't you?"

His wife seated herself in a big armchair, and looked at him wearily, running her fingers through the heavy waves of her hair. She had beautiful hands--beautiful because they seemed part of her expression; capable hands with nothing helpless in her use of them; the kind that a sick person dreams of as belonging to an ideal nurse; gentle and smooth, but quick and firm.

"It is not a question of willingness, Sandro." Her voice was as smooth and strong, as flexible, as her hands. "You know everything we have just as well as I. I never kept anything from you, and what we have is ours jointly--as much yours as mine. I have, as you know, only two jewels of value left, and they would not bring half the amount of this debt."

"Leonora, no! you have sold too many already; I cannot ask such a thing again."

His wife's smile was more sad than tears; it was not that she was making up her mind for some one necessary sacrifice--it was a smile of absolute helplessness. "If only I might believe you! We now have nothing but what is held in trust for me. I am not reproaching you--what is gone is gone.

But Sandro! where will it end?"

The maid knocked and entered with two pails of hot water, which she poured into the tub. She spread a bath towel over a chair, moved another chair near, put out various articles of clothing, and left the room again.

The princess threw off her slippers, and tried the temperature of the water with her toes.

"I think, Sandro, we had better give up Rome," she said. "The money saved for that will pay the greater part of the debt. It is the only way I can see. But go now; I want to take my bath. We can talk more by and by." She smiled quite brightly, and the prince, emboldened by her cheerfulness, would have taken her in his arms. But she turned away, her hand involuntarily put up as a barrier between herself and the kiss that at the moment she shrank from. He took the hand instead and pressed it to his lips.

When he had gone, she bathed quickly, partially dressed herself, and called her maid to do her hair. Sitting before the improvised dressing-table, she glanced in the mirror, and her reflection caught and held her attention a long moment. A curious, half-wistful, half-pathetic expression crept into her eyes as the realization came to her sharply that she was fading. There were lines and shadows and pallor that ought not to be in the face of a woman of thirty-five. She smoothed the vertical lines in her forehead, and then let her hands remain over her face, while behind their cool smoothness her mind resumed its troublesome thoughts.

It was not like meeting some new difficulty for which the strength is fresh; it was struggling again with emotions that have repeatedly exhausted one's endurance. Just as she had every hope that her husband was cured of the gambler's fever, here he was down again with an even more dangerous form of it. The man who knowingly risks is bad enough; but the man who cannot see that he risks, and cannot understand how he has lost is the hardest victim to cure. All of her capital was gone except a small property which her brother-in-law, J. B. Randolph, held for her in trust and on the income of which they now lived. Ten years before she had had considerable money, enough for them to live not only in comfort but in luxury. A large amount had been sunk in a Sicilian sulphur mine, and to this investment she had given her consent, not yet realizing her husband's lack of judgment. But aside from this, cards and horse races and trips to Monaco had limited their living in luxury to a periodic pleasure of three or four months. Now in order to open the palace in Rome, they had to practise the most rigid economics the other eight or nine months in their villa in the country.