The Title Market Part 16

Marry Carpazzi! It was ridiculous; she never had heard of such customs!

"Well, then, why not ask Tornik?" she suggested. "He is not an Italian."

The princess demurred. It might be possible to ask Tornik--still it was better not. Unless Nina wanted to marry Tornik? Apparently there was little use in pursuing this subject further, so she laughed and gave it up.

They were in the princess's room, at the time, and Nina, dressed for the street, was pulling on new gloves of fawn-colored _suede_. Her brown velvet and fox furs, her big hat with a fox band fastened with an osprey, were all that the modeste's art could achieve.

The princess fastened a little yellow mink collar around her throat over her black cloth dress, selected the better of two pairs of cleaned white kid gloves, picked up her hard, round, little yellow m.u.f.f, and then went over and sat on the sofa beside Nina. "By the way, darling, I have something to say to you. The Marchese Valdeste has approached your uncle in regard to a marriage between his son Carlo and you. Not being an Italian, I suppose you want to give your answer yourself. What do you say?"

"What do I say!" Nina's eyes and mouth opened together. "Why, I have never seen the man!"

The princess smiled. "The offer is made in the same way in which it would be if you were an Italian. Your parents not being here, I ask you in their stead--or as I might ask you if you were a widow. To begin, then,--no, I am perfectly in earnest--I am authorized to offer you a young man of unquestionable birth. He has in his own right three castles. Two will need a great deal of repair, but one is in excellent condition and contains three hundred rooms, more than half of which are furnished. He has an annual income of twenty thousand _lire_ and no--debts! That he is fairly good-looking, medium-sized, has black hair and brown eyes, and is said to have a very amiable disposition, are details."

As the princess concluded, Nina added: "And he has also a most charming mother. My answer is--my regret that I cannot marry her instead."

"You are sure you do not care to consider this offer?"

Nina looked steadily into her aunt's eyes. "I am sure you married Uncle Sandro through no such courtship as this!"

"I did not think you would accept, my dear child; yet such marriages often turn out for the best--at least it was my duty to ask for your answer. You have given it--and now let us go out. The carriage has been waiting some time."

Shortly afterward they were in the Pincio--for the custom still prevails among Roman ladies and gentlemen of slowly driving up and down or standing for a chat with friends. The dome of St. Peter's looked like a globe of gold set in the center of the celebrated frame of the Pincio trees, but as the sun went down it grew chilly, and the Sansevero landau rolled briskly up the Corso. At Nina's suggestion they stopped at a tea shop.

No sooner were they seated at a little table when they were joined by the d.u.c.h.ess Astarte. The d.u.c.h.ess had most graceful manners, but she talked to the princess across Nina, and about her, as though she were an article of furniture, or at least a small child who could not understand what was said. She spoke frankly of Nina's suitors. Scorpa's was an excellent t.i.tle, but Scorpa was a widower and no longer young. Then she begged the princess to consider her nephew, the young Prince Allegro.

It would be a brilliant match, for he was one of the mediatized princes and ranked with royalty. But his properties took such an immense amount of money to keep up that an added fortune would be a great relief to the whole family. Her consummate naturalness did away with much of the bluntness of her speech; but even so, this was too much for Nina's calmness.

"But, d.u.c.h.essa," she broke in, "have the Prince Allegro and I nothing to do with the arranging of our own future?"

The d.u.c.h.ess observed her in as much astonishment as though a baby of six months had broken into the conversation. A moment or two elapsed before she said smoothly: "Oh, the Prince is enchanted at the idea. He danced with you at Court and finds you _molto simpatica_. It is a great name, my dear, that he has to offer you----" and then with a condescension, yet a courteousness that prevented offense: "We shall all be willing, nay, delighted, to receive you with open arms. Your position will be in every way as though you had been born into the n.o.bility."

"Thank you," said Nina quietly, "but I don't think I am quite used to the European marriage of arrangement."

"Ah, but it need not be a marriage of arrangement. If you will permit Allegro to pay his addresses to you, he will consider himself the most fortunate of men. May I tell him?"

"Please not!" said Nina. Quite at bay, she longed wildly for some means of escape. To her relief, two Americans whom she knew, young Mrs. Davis and her sister, entered the shop. Nina rose abruptly, apologizing to the d.u.c.h.ess, and ran to them. How long had they been in Rome? Where were they stopping? What was the news from New York? They told her all they could think of. The Tony Stuarts had a son--they thought it the only baby that had ever been born; and as for old Mr. Stuart, he was nearly insane with joy. Billy Rivers had lost every cent of his money; and then--but, of course, Nina had heard about John Derby.

In her fear that some accident had happened to him, Nina's heart seemed to miss two beats. But Mrs. Davis merely meant his success in mining. By the way, she had seen him in New York, as she was driving to the steamer. He was striding up Fifth Avenue, and was "too good-looking for words."

The princess was leaving the shop and, as Nina followed her into the carriage, her mind was full of Derby. It was very strange--she had had a letter the day before from Arizona, in which John had said nothing about going to New York. Then she remembered that her father had hinted at a possibility that John might be sent to Italy later in the winter. Her pulse quickened at the thought, but with no consciousness of sentiment deepened or changed by absence.

Arrived at the palace, she found a note from Zoya Olisco, who was coming to spend the next day with her. Nina handed the note to the princess. "I thought we could go out in the car and lunch somewhere. Or is it not allowed?" Her eyes twinkled as she questioned.

"That depends," the princess answered in the same spirit, "upon whether you are counting upon including me. I am a very disagreeable tyrant when it comes to being left out of a party."

The automobile in question was Nina's. She had wanted one, and with her "to want" meant "to get." Nearly every one thought it belonged to the princess, as it would not have occurred to many in Rome to suppose it was owned by a young girl.

That night another extravagance of Nina's came to light. In the morning they had been at an exhibition of furs brought to Rome by a Russian dealer. Among them was a set of superb sables, and Nina, throwing the collar around her aunt's shoulders, had exclaimed at their becomingness.

The princess unconsciously stroked the furs as she put them down. "I have never seen anything more lovely," she said wistfully, and with no idea that she had sighed. A sable collar and m.u.f.f had been one of the desired things of her life, but it was utterly impossible now to think of so much as one skin, and in the piece and m.u.f.f in question there were more than thirty.

That evening, upon their return, the princess found the furs in her room when she went to dress. At first she felt that they were too much to accept, but when Nina's hazel eyes implored, and her lips begged her aunt to take "just one present to remember her by," the princess for once gave free reign to her emotions and was as wildly delighted as a child.

The very next afternoon, however, Scorpa saw the sables, and on a slip of paper made the following note:

Sables 80,000 lire 60 H. P. motor car 30,000 lire

With a smile that would have done no discredit to his Satanic Majesty, he put the paper in his pocket.

CHAPTER XIV

APPLES OF SODOM

"It amounts to this: do you take a fitting interest in the name you bear, or do you not?" Sansevero was the speaker, and beneath his usual volubility there was an unwonted eagerness. The two brothers were in Giovanni's apartment on the second floor, which in Roman palaces usually belongs to the eldest son, and Giovanni sat astride a chair, his arms crossed over the back.

"I don't think you can ask such a question," he retorted hotly. "I am as much a Sansevero as you! But I really see no reason why--just because you have got a notion in your head that a pile of gold dollars would look well in our strong box--I should tie myself up for life. I am well enough as I am. My income is not regal, but it suffices."

Sansevero, like many talkative persons, was too busy thinking of what he was going to say next himself, to listen attentively to his brother's responses. He was merely aware that Giovanni's manner proclaimed opposition, so, when the sound of his voice ceased, Sansevero continued: "Nina is all the most fastidious could ask. _n.o.blesse oblige_--are you going to keep our name among the greatest in Rome, or are you going to let it fall like that of the Carpazzi? Shall they say of us in the near future, as they say of them to-day: 'Ah, yes, the Sanseveros were a great family once, but they are all dead or beggared now'?"

"_Per Dio!_ What an orator we are becoming!" mocked Giovanni, looking out of half-shut eyes like a cat. But after a moment, also like a cat, he opened them wide and stared coolly at his brother. "Out of the mouth of babes----" he said impertinently. "My child, thou hast spoken much wisdom! It is, after all, a proposition that has, possibly, sense in it.

_La Nina_ is a woman such as any man might be glad to make his wife, and yet--this very fact that she is not an insignificant personality, is what I object to! I doubt her developing into either a blinded saint or a coquette with amiable complacence for others. We should lead a peppery life, I fear. But don't you think, my brother, that we are a bit hysterical over our family's extermination? After all, I am only twenty-eight; and in my opinion thirty-five is a suitable age for a man to marry. How old are you, Sandro--thirty-seven, is it not? And Leonora is nearly three years less. Of a truth, you are young!"

He rested his cheek in the hollow of his hand, looking up sideways. "It would be a great amus.e.m.e.nt if I should marry because I am the heir to the estates, and then you should have a large family--so----" He made steps with his unoccupied hand to indicate a succession of children.

Then he laughed, without seeming to consider the difference that the birth of an heir to his brother would make to himself. He arose, lit a cigarette, and, smoking, threw himself into an easy chair on the other side of the room. The great Dane, which had been lying beside him as usual, now slowly got up, crossed the room, and dropped down again at his master's feet.

Meanwhile the prince, hands in pockets, had unaccountably become as silent as he had before been talkative, and Giovanni, upon observing his brother's sulky expression, leaned forward.

"Well?" he questioned, with a new ring in his voice, for Sansevero's moodiness was never a good omen. "What are you thinking of? Come, say it!"

Sansevero paced the length of the room and back; then he burst out: "Very well, it is this--everything is as bad as can be--so bad that if you don't marry money, and at once, the Sansevero burial will take place before you and I are dead. _Nome di Dio!_ how are we to live with no money?"

"Since you ask my opinion, I have long wondered why you do not live better than you do," Giovanni answered. "Your income, added to Leonora's money, must make a very handsome sum. But one of the faults of the American women is that they are seldom good managers. Leonora is either no exception to the rule--or else she is getting very miserly. Why, an Italian on Leonora's income would live like a queen!"

"Be silent!" Sansevero, flushing darkly, flamed into speech. "Before you dare to criticise the woman who adorns our house! Here is the truth for you: I haven't one cent of private fortune--I gambled it all away long ago! More than half of Leonora's money is lost--I lost it. Some of it she paid out for my debts; the greater portion I put into the 'Little Devil' mine. I might much better have shoveled it into the Tiber. Do you know what she has done--the woman whom you criticise as a bad manager and stigmatize as mean--I would not care what you said, if you had not thought Leonora mean! _Dio mio_, MEAN! Know, then, that the very jewels she wears are false; that the real ones have been sold--to pay the debts of the man standing before you--the gambling debts of the head of one of the n.o.blest houses in Italy!"

Giovanni was deeply moved, for this was a wound in his one vulnerable point, his pride of birth. The cigarette dropped to the floor unheeded.

He moistened his lips as Alessandro continued:

"They were Leonora's own jewels that were sold, mark you. The Sansevero heirlooms will go to your son's wife intact, as they came to mine! But that is not all: I have given my oath to Leonora never again to go into a game of chance, and really I want to keep it! Yet you know--no, you don't; no one can who hasn't the fever in his veins--if I see a game, it is as though an unseen force had me in its grip, drawing me against my will; I can't resist! At Savini's I was dining, and I did not know they were going to play--I won a very little; enough to pay the interest on what I owe Meyer. But it makes me cold all over to think--_if_ I had lost! An enviable inheritance you will get, when it is known what a mess of things the present holder of the t.i.tle has made!" He dropped into a chair opposite his brother, and buried his face in his hands; between his slim fingers his forehead looked dark, and his temple veins swollen.

For a long time Giovanni sat immovable, staring fixedly, but when at last he broke the silence, he spoke almost lightly:

"It is not a very charming history that you have given me--even though it increases my admiration for the woman who has, it seems, been more worthy of the name she bears than has the man who conferred his t.i.tles upon her. I wish you had told me before." Then, with a queerly whimsical smile, he said musingly: "To marry the girl with the golden hair--and purse? Not such a terrible fate to look forward to, after all! She would demand a great deal, and I should have to keep the brakes on.

Still--that would do me no harm! You look as though you had been down a sulphur mine. Come, cheer up--all may yet be well." Suddenly he laughed out loud. "Funny thing," he observed further--"you know, I am not so sure that I am not rather in love."

He leaned to St. Anthony, and, putting his hand through the dog's collar beneath the throat, lifted the head on the back of his wrist. "Tell me, _padre_, am I in love? Do you advise the marriage?" The dog put his paw up, fanned the air once in missing, and let it rest on his master's knee.

Giovanni laughed aloud "_Ecco!_ Sandro, he consents!"