The Title Market Part 11

CHAPTER X

MR. RANDOLPH SENDS FOR JOHN DERBY

Meanwhile, one morning in New York, the express elevator of the American Trust Building shot skyward without stop to the twentieth story, at which John Derby alighted. He emerged upon a broad s.p.a.ce of marble corridor, leading to the offices of J. B. Randolph & Co. Derby, being known--and, moreover, on the list of those expected--escaped the catechism to which visitors usually were subjected, and was shown into the waiting room without question. When, some minutes later, he was admitted to Mr. Randolph's private office, he caught the sign of battle in the ruffled effect of the great financier's hair, for he had a habit, when excited, of running his fingers up over his right temple until his iron gray locks bristled. But, whatever the cause of his annoyance, it was put aside as he held out his hand in unmistakable welcome to Derby.

"h.e.l.lo, John, good work! You have got here nearly a day ahead of the time I expected you. What is the latest news? Did you have any trouble in the swamp district?"

"None at all. We find the quick sands average only about thirty feet, and the tubes go easily below. Everything is going along splendidly.

Better than I had ever dared to hope."

Mr. Randolph nodded his satisfaction. "And now," he said, "I'll tell you why I wired for you. The Volcano Sulphur Company is buying every available mine, and it is time for us to look into the Sicilian possibility. How soon can you leave for Italy?"

"As soon as you say, sir."

"Have you secured your a.s.sistant engineers?"

"Jenkins came on with me, for one, and I am pretty sure I can get a man named Tiggs--a good mechanic, who was with me at Copper Rock."

"And how soon can you get your machinery? You'll have to take everything in that line with you. Otherwise, you might get off by--to-morrow? The _Lusitania_ sails in the afternoon." He added this last with impatient regret.

Derby pondered a moment, and then answered briskly: "I can make it.

Jenkins can follow with the machinery on a Mediterranean boat. There will be no delay over there, as I'll have time to make my arrangements."

"Good!" Mr. Randolph seemed pleased, then asked abruptly, "How well do you speak Italian?"

"Fluently, very; grammatically, not at all."

Mr. Randolph smiled. "Fluently will be good enough. Especially if you pick up an a.s.sortment of expletives in the Sicilian vernacular. Go to Rome first. Look about and get information on the Sicilian mines, especially those that are unproductive by the present mining system.

Lease one and try your process. If it works--we have the biggest thing in the way of a sulphur control imaginable. You'd better get an option on every sulphur mine you can, to lease on a royalty basis. Our Italian correspondent will be notified to honor your drafts. You will have to use your own discretion as to necessary expenses--of course, you are to send a weekly statement to the office. The royalty to you on your inventions will be ten per cent. on the net, not the gross, earnings.

Still, if it all turns out well, you ought to make a nice thing out of it."

A swift gleam of eagerness leaped into the young man's face. Mr.

Randolph looked at him sharply. "I did not know that you were so mercenary, John."

"In my place any man would want millions, or else that----" He broke off abruptly, leaving his meaning unexpressed. But his eyes had something wistful in their direct appeal, which perhaps the older man understood, for his expression was unusually kind as he asked with apparent irrelevancy, "Have you heard from Nina?"

Derby flushed even under his tan, but he answered frankly: "Yes, I have had letters regularly--bully ones--full of Italy and the high n.o.bility.

Isn't it just like her to remember her friends at home!" Then he added ardently, "There was never any one like Nina--never! Of course, every man in Italy is in love with her by now."

"Humph!" was Mr. Randolph's answer, as his hand went up through his hair until it stood straight on end. "Had she the disposition of Xantippe and the ugliness of Medusa she would be called a G.o.ddess divine by the t.i.tled sellers. But what can I do? I can't keep her locked up at home--for the matter of that, she is run after about as badly over here----" and he added gently in an altered tone, "My poor little girl!

Sometimes I think how much better off she would have been as the daughter of a man without money. At present, of course, she is beset with every possible danger. I don't think Nina will lose her heart easily, mind you, but there is an underlying excitement in her letters that gives me some uneasiness as to the state of her emotions. I do not relish the possibility of her marrying one of those ingratiating, cold-hearted, and seemingly ardent n.o.blemen." Then, as though to qualify his general statement, he continued, "My sister-in-law married a decent sort of a man, and I imagine they are happy--but she'd have done much better if she had married your uncle. He never cared for any one else, and I hoped it would be a match. But Alessandro Sansevero came along and swept her off her feet. She was a great beauty, and I believe he married her for love--which is more than I can hope in Nina's case."

Into Derby's face there came a look like that of the small boy who gazes hungrily into a bakery shop window as he protested. "No one could know Nina well and not love her. She is the squarest, the truest, just as she is the most beautiful, girl in the world."

"No,"--Mr. Randolph spoke quite slowly, for him--"Nina is not beautiful--sweet, and unspoiled, and lovable, yes; but she is not a beauty."

Derby's face kindled with indignation, and he retorted unguardedly, "I grant you she hasn't one of those pleased-with-itself, don't-disturb-the-placidity-of-my-peerless-perfection sort of faces; the valentine sort that strikes a man at first sight, but that at the end of a week he would do anything for the sake of varying its monotony. But Nina--the more you look at her the more lovely she becomes, _unless_ she gets the notion that some man wants to marry her money--and then it is time for me to take to the prairies! Her eyes get hard, her mouth goes up on one side and her features seem to set and freeze. She has only one hard side, but that is adamant! Poor girl, I can hardly blame her. As she says herself, there are proposals on her breakfast tray every morning--with all the other advertis.e.m.e.nts."

Mr. Randolph looked directly into the blue eyes before him, as though to probe their depths. "I want my girl to marry a man whom she can look up to because he is trying to accomplish something himself," he said emphatically, "and not one who will lay his hat down in the front hall of my house instead of at his own office. And," he added grimly, "a coronet in place of the hat is still less to my liking."

A curiously restrained, almost diffident, expression, which in no way suited his personality, came into Derby's face, and he abruptly rose to take leave.

Mr. Randolph rose also, but, instead of terminating the interview, crossed the room, saying, "Before you go, John, I want to show you a prize I have found." He turned a canvas that stood face to the wall, and lifted it to a sofa for a better view.

It was a marvelous picture: a Madonna and child; and on the shoulder of the Madonna was a dove.

"It is supposed to be a Raphael," said Randolph, "and I am convinced that it is. The story is rather interesting. Raphael painted two pictures that were almost identical. One is in the Sansevero family.

Their collection in Rome I have seen, but this picture has always hung at Torre Sansevero, their country estate, and I have never been there.

However, as I said, Raphael painted two. The second belonged to the Belluno family and was sold long ago into France. There it became the property of a Duc du Richeur, and during the Revolution it was supposedly destroyed. Some time ago Christopher Shayne, the dealer, bought among other things at an auction a nearly black canvas. On having it cleaned, this was the result--without doubt the lost Raphael!"

"Jove, that's interesting!" exclaimed Derby. "I'd like to see the other. Perhaps I'll have the chance, although Nina wrote that they were leaving for Rome, and that was several weeks ago. But now good-by, sir.

Tiggs and Jenkins are to meet me at the Engineers' Club at noon. I am sure I can get off to-morrow."

Mr. Randolph held the younger man's hand in a long clasp as he said, "Good-by, my boy, and--luck to you!"

As Derby left the office, the sudden prospect of seeing Nina so soon set his thoughts in a turmoil unusual to the condition in which he managed pretty steadily to keep them. Of all the things that this young man had accomplished, none had been more difficult than preserving the att.i.tude toward Nina that he had after careful deliberation determined upon. To his chagrin the task became more, instead of less, difficult, as time went on. In the long ago, it had been she who adored and he who accepted the adoration--in the way common with the big boy and the little girl.

He had taught her to swim, and to ride, and to shoot. And--though he did not realize it--from his own precepts she had acquired a directness of outlook and a sense of truth that embodied justice as well as candor, and that was in quality much more like that of a boy than a girl.

Then came the time when he was no longer a boy. He went out West, and work made him serious, and absence made him realize that he loved her as that rare type of man loves who loves but one woman in his life. But she, never dreaming of any change in his feelings, went on thinking of him always as of a brother. Often, when he returned from a long absence, and she ran to meet him with both hands outstretched, he looked for some sign from her--some fleeting gleam such as he had caught in other women's eyes. But always Nina's glance had met his own affectionately, but squarely and tranquilly. His coming, or his going, brought smiles or gravity to her lips, but her eyes showed no sudden veiling of feeling, no new consciousness of meaning unexpressed. When she laughed, they danced as though the sunlight were caught under their hazel surface.

When she was serious, they were velvety soft. To John hers was the sweetest, brightest, and a.s.suredly the most expressive face in the world. But he knew the distrust and coldness that would undoubtedly be his portion should he ever forget the role that up to the present he had played to perfection--that of her brotherly, affectionate friend. Her very expression, "Dear old John"--generally she said "Jack"--her entire lack of reserve or self-consciousness in his presence, put him where he belonged.

And the other women--undoubtedly there were lots of the every-day kind, waiting all along the stream, just as there always are when a man is young and fairly good to look upon. And there were the different, and far more dangerous, "other women," who wait at the whirlpools for a man who has that elusive but distinctly felt magnetism which some personalities exert, seemingly with indifference, and quite apart from any effort or intent. But John Derby lashed his heart to the mast of hard work and resolutely turned his eyes and ears from the sirens. And so he saw the years stretching on, always crammed with tasks that he was to accomplish, but without hope of ever winning the girl he loved, because of the barrier of her money.

Only a short time before, when a letter from her had come to Breakstone--a long letter full of the beauty and charm of Italy and the Italians--Derby had gone to the edge of the forest and--for no reason that any one could see, save the apparent joy of swinging an axe--chopped a tree into fire-wood.

"D--n it all," he muttered as the chips flew, "I could support a wife--if she wasn't so all-fired rich." Later he carried a load of his wood across the clearing to the camp and slammed it down. "Oh, h----, I hate money!" he exclaimed vehemently to Jenkins.

Jenkins, a Southerner, took the statement placidly. "Looks like you're workin' powerful hard to get what you don't care for. Some of that kindlin' 'd go good under this soup pot."

Derby laughed and fed the fire. But "Shut up, Jenkins, you a.s.s!" was all the latter got for a retort courteous.

CHAPTER XI

ROME GOES TO THE OPERA

On the evening of the first court ball, the Sanseveros gave a small dinner, after which they went to the opera. The guests were the Count and Countess Olisco, Count Tornik, Don Cesare Carpazzi, and Prince Minotti. Don Cesare Carpazzi, a thin swarthy youth, sat just across the corner of the table from Nina. Although his appearance was one of great neatness, it was all too evident, if one observed with good eyes, that the edges of his shirt had been trimmed with the scissors until the hem narrowed close to the line of st.i.tching; and his evening clothes in a strong light would have revealed not only the fatal gloss of long use, but also careful darning. The old saying that "Clothes make the man" was refuted in his case, however, as his arrogance was proclaimed in every gesture.

Sitting next to him was the Countess Olisco, the Russian whom Nina had noted and admired at her aunt's ball. As there were but nine at dinner, and the conversation was general, Nina had time to observe closely her appearance. She had the broad Russian brow, the Egyptian eyes and unbroken bridge of the nose. She was the most slender woman imaginable, and her slenderness was exaggerated by the fashion of wearing her hair piled up so high and so far forward that at a distance it might be taken for a small black fur toque tipped over her nose. She rarely wore colors, but to-night, because of the etiquette against wearing black at court, her long-trained dress was of sapphire blue velvet, as severe and as clinging as possible.