The Title Market Part 15

She saw that he was gazing at the emerald she wore on her little finger.

"Is there reason to think I am engaged--because of _this_?"

"Certainly, what else? A young girl's wearing a ring can mean but one thing."

"On my little finger? How ridiculous! My father gave it to me.

Sometimes, at home, I wear several rings. Does that mean I am engaged to several men?"

"Then you are still free?"

He hesitated as though under an impulse to say something sentimental, then apparently changed his mind, and relapsed into his habitually detached indifference of manner.

"They have curious customs in your country," he said casually. "A friend of mine was in America last year. He told me many things!"

"Did he? What, for instance?"

"He said that the women sat in chairs that balanced back and forth----"

"Chairs that----" she interrupted. "Oh, you mean rocking-chairs! That's true, you don't have them over here, do you? I did not mean to interrupt. You said we rock----"

"Not you, it's the older women who balance all day on verandas, and let their daughters do whatever they please! In an American family, I am told, the young girl is supreme ruler. Is that true?"

Nina, laughing, shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know--I never thought about it! But over here I suppose a girl does not count at all? Tell me, according to your ideas, what her place should be."

"Oh, I do not say _should_. I merely state the fact: over here, a young girl plays a very small role. But then, for the matter of that, most people belong naturally in the background, and very few, whether they are women or men, have their names on the program."

"And you? What part do you play?"

For a moment his eyes gleamed. "That depends upon whether fate shall cast me to support a _diva_ or to occupy an empty stage."

"And if fate allowed you to choose, I could easily imagine that you would prefer a part with very little action and as few lines as possible."

"You are quite wrong. I do not object to saying all that a part calls for, and, above all, I like action."

"That's true; I had forgotten! You are a soldier! I wonder why you went into the army?"

"It is the only career open to me."

Nina was thinking of Giovanni and his point of view as she asked, "Why are you not content to be merely Count Tornik?"

"You mean that I, like Carpazzi, should live on the ill.u.s.triousness of my name? If I were very poor, perhaps I should."

"How curious!" Nina exclaimed. "Does not a career mean making money?"

"On the contrary, it means spending it! One must have a great deal of money to go to any height in diplomacy."

"Then you are rich?" Nina already had acquired a brutal frankness of direct interrogation through her Italian sojourn.

"Not exactly." He looked bored again. "But I have a little--though perhaps not enough for my ambition. If only there were a serious war, I'd have a good chance." Then he added simply, "I am a good soldier!"

The princess, who had been summoned to the telephone, now returned and seated herself beside Nina on the sofa. "I have just been talking with the Marchesa Valdeste, and she told me that the Queen said most gracious things of you, dear; called you the 'charming little American.'" The prince entered while the princess was speaking. He kissed his wife's hand and began, at great length, to tell her exactly where and how he had spent the afternoon. After a while, however, as one or two other friends dropped in, Sansevero talked aside with Tornik.

"You were not at Savini's last night, were you?" he asked.

Tornik looked interested. "No," he said, "but I hear they had a very high game."

"Yes. Young Allegro was practically cleaned out."

"Who won?"

"Who, indeed, but Scorpa! He has the luck, that man!"

"Were you there? I thought you never played any more; have you taken it up again?"

Sansevero, glancing apprehensively at his wife, answered quickly, "I never play." Fortunately, just then the dangerous conversation was ended by the arrival of the Contessa Potensi. She smiled graciously upon the prince as he pressed her hand to his lips, and bestowed the left-over remnant of the same smile, upon Tornik. She also kissed the air on either side of the princess with much affection, and shook hands cordially with two other ladies who were present, but she directed toward Nina the barest glance.

She and Nina, by the way, furnished at the moment a typical ill.u.s.tration of the difference in appearance between European and American women.

The contessa was wearing an untrimmed, black tailor-made costume with a very long train, a little fur toque to match a small neck piece, and a little sausage-shaped m.u.f.f. Her diamond earrings were enormous, but not very good stones. Nina's dress was of raspberry cloth, cut in the latest exaggeration of fashion--her skirt was short and skimp as her hat was huge. Her m.u.f.f of sables as big and soft as a pillow--she could easily have buried her arms in it to the shoulder. The elaborateness of Nina's clothes filled the contessa with satisfaction, for she thought them barbarously inappropriate, and she knew that Giovanni was a martinet so far as "fitness" went.

Presently, in spite of her more than rude greeting, she coolly sat down beside Nina. "Will you make me a cup of tea? I like it without sugar and with very little cream." She did not smile, and she did not say "please." Her bearing was a fair example of the cold, impersonal insolence of which Italian women of fashion are capable when antagonistic.

After a time she leaned over and scrutinized Nina's watch, as though it were in a show case. "Do many young girls in America wear jewels?"

Nina found herself congealing; instead of answering, she handed the contessa her tea, and expressed a hope that she had not put in too much cream.

Taking no notice of Nina's evasion, the contessa, talking indiscriminately about people, arrived finally at the subject of Giovanni. In her opinion, the Marchese di Valdo ought to marry money!

Unfortunately, however, she feared he had loved too many women to be capable now of caring for one alone. From this she went to generalities.

A man had but one grand pa.s.sion in a lifetime, didn't Nina think so?

Nina's thoughts were very hazy, indeed, about grand pa.s.sions, which were a.s.sociated dimly in her mind with the seven deadly sins--in the category of things one didn't speak of. So she answered vaguely, feeling like a stupid child being cross-examined by the school commissioner.

"Still, he is very attractive, don't you find? Of course, he says the same things to all of us--but then no one understands how to make love as well as he, so what does it matter whether he means it or not? It takes a woman of great experience," insinuated the contessa, "to parry Giovanni's fencing with the foils of love."

Nina was goaded into answering. "You seem to know a great deal about his love-making," she said at last, with the breathy calm of controlled temper.

Half shutting her eyes, the contessa replied: "It is common hearsay. One has only to follow the list of his conquests to know that he must be a past master in the art of making women care for him. That he is fickle is evident; he is constantly changing his attentions from one woman to another, and leaving with a crisis of the heart her whom he has lately adored. I am sorry for the woman he marries--still, perhaps she would not know the difference! He might even be devoted, from force of habit."

Nina, furious, told herself that she did not believe one word that this spiteful woman was saying, but it made an impression all the same, which was, of course, exactly what the contessa wanted.

"Tornik, too, needs a fortune badly," Maria Potensi went on piercing neatly. "It is hard, over here with us, that men acquire fortunes only by marriage. In America, it must be better, for there they can earn their money, and marry for love."

Nina felt her cheeks burn as she listened, but there was nothing she could say. She knew only too well how hard it would be to believe herself loved.

But not all of the women were like the Contessa Potensi, and by the time Nina had been a month in Rome, she had, with the responsiveness of youth, formed several friendships that were rapidly drifting into intimacies, though she chose as her a.s.sociates, for the most part, young married women rather than girls. Her particular friend was Zoya Olisco, really six months younger than herself, but of a precocious worldly experience that gave her at least ten years' advantage.

The young girls were to Nina quite incomprehensible. Their curiously negative behavior in public, their self-conscious diffidence, seemed to her stupid; but their education filled her with envy and shame. Nearly all spoke several languages, not in her own fashion of broken French, broken German, and baby-talk Italian, but with perfect facility and correctness of grammar. Nearly all were thoroughly grounded in mathematics, history, literature, and science. And yet their whole att.i.tude toward life seemed out of balance; they were like pedagogues never out of the schoolroom--one moment discoursing learnedly, the next prattling like little children. The end and aim of life to them was marriage. Each talked of her dot and of what it might buy her in the way of a husband, very much as girls in America might plan the spending of their Christmas money.

In spite of the unusual liberty allowed Nina, as an American, it seemed to her that she was very restricted. She had, for instance, suggested that they ask Carpazzi to dine with them alone and go to the opera. But the princess had said, "Impossible. Carpazzi, finding no one but the family, would naturally suppose we wish to arrange a marriage between you."