The Title Market Part 27

"It must be good to be going back to Rome with the feeling that you have carried out what you started to do. It's a big feather in your cap, and now there is only one thing needed to make the whole episode a romance from start to finish!"

Derby interrogated good-humoredly, "And that is----?"

"You will probably go up in the air if I tell you."

Derby looked up from the water. "Go ahead--say what you like----"

"You ought to marry Miss Randolph!" Porter declared abruptly, and before Derby could protest he hurried on: "Yes, I know what you would say--she is too rich and she is scheduled to marry a t.i.tle. But I don't think she is the sort of girl that really puts as much stock in t.i.tles as it would seem; and as for money, by the time you have two or three mines like the 'Little Devil' going, you will be pretty rich yourself. Even with your present prospects, no one could accuse you of marrying her for her fortune."

"Prospects are very different from actual money, and compared to her I'm a pauper," Derby answered. "I don't care what people accuse me of, but to marry a girl like Nina Randolph--even a.s.suming the unlikelihood that she'd have me--would be a fatal mistake, unless I had a fortune to match her own. Every changing hour of the day would bring fresh doubt; she would never believe in a poor man's love. How could she!"

Derby stood up straight, thrust his hands into the pockets of his ulster, and as Porter tried to protest, he withdrew from the discussion by declaring that there was nothing to discuss. For himself--he was but a human machine that G.o.d had set upon the earth to bore holes in it, and to set swarms of human ants working.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE SPIDER'S WEB

In Rome, after Easter, society blossomed out afresh. Giovanni Sansevero had returned, and to Nina the commencement of the spring season promised a repet.i.tion of the winter.

Nina's antipathy to the Duke Scorpa remained unchanged, and to her annoyance it had happened frequently, when dining out, that he had taken her in to dinner. Each time his unctuous, "It is my pleasure, Signorina, to conduct you," gave her so strong a feeling of resentment that she had to exert a real effort to put her finger tips on his coat sleeve. She always kept the distance between them as wide as possible by the angle at which her arm was bent.

On looking back, however, she had to acknowledge that his manner had undergone a radical change. He no longer alarmed her by aggressive pursuit, nor sought to lead the conversation to those personal topics which she had found so repellent. Furthermore, he never alluded to the threat he had made to her that day at the hunt, nor even mentioned his rejected suit. And yet she felt apprehensively that he had not given up his original determination.

In the meantime he was untiring in his efforts to interest her, and evinced an ability to keep the conversation going with great skill--even more skill than Giovanni, whose natural attractiveness could afford to do without the effort that Scorpa found necessary. He flattered her by his a.s.sumption that she was a woman of the world, and he disguised the exaggeration of his expressions in such a way that she thought he was speaking but the barest truth. For instance, he dilated upon the particular qualities for which Nina herself adored the princess, until it became apparent to her that, after all, Scorpa must be a man of sensitive perceptions.

Nevertheless, the underlying feeling of terror with which he filled her at the first moment of each encounter was far worse than mere dislike.

Intuitively, she regarded him as a menace, and, through his unvarying politeness, she found herself trying to fathom his real intentions. What object could he have had in ranging himself with the suitors for her hand? He was very rich himself. Aside from his own fortune, "poor Jane"--as every one called his first wife--had left a handsome amount, which, according to European custom, was entirely in his control.

Perhaps he wanted still more money, and thought that he could find in her another source of supply to be exhausted and practically thrust aside. Many tales that Nina had heard, many things that she had observed were not good for the girl's all too ready cynicism--and the hard little lines around her mouth that the princess so disliked to see, were growing deeper.

The question of international marriage was one on which Nina found herself becoming quite skeptical. She admitted that there were happy examples. Her aunt, for instance. Surely no wife was ever more loved and appreciated than the princess, even though her husband had one serious failing. But then, did not some American husbands also gamble?

In the Masco household too, the bonny Kate was certainly in no need of sympathy. That her position was not as good as her husband's name should have given her was her own fault. She was not one of those gifted with the chameleon faculty of harmonizing with her background. Among the mellow pigments of the Roman canvas she was a glaring splotch of primary color. But she was far from unhappy.

Indeed, so far as Nina's observation could penetrate, the general impression of the average Americo-Italian marriage was of sympathetic comradeship between husband and wife; in nearly every household she had found the indescribably charming atmosphere of a harmonious home.

Yet proposals for the hand of the American heiress were so common that, in spite of the delightful households of her countrywomen, Nina had long since begun to think--first in fun and then more seriously--of the palaces of Italy as so many spider webs waiting for the American gilded fly. It was at the Palazzo Scorpa that her theory became actuality.

The princess had, very much against Nina's will, taken her to see the d.u.c.h.ess on the day after their own dance. But a serious indisposition had prevented the d.u.c.h.ess from receiving--not only on that particular day, but for the rest of the winter. Toward the end of March, however, in response to a note, Nina was finally obliged to enter the Palazzo Scorpa.

It was a rugged gray stone fortress of a place, "like a monster," Nina said, "of the dragon age, that sulkily remained asleep and hidden among the narrow, twisted streets that had crept around it."

Through the yawning gateway they entered a sunless courtyard. Even the porter at the door, notwithstanding his gold lace and crimson livery, was austere and forbidding. Within, the palace had been refurnished in the most lavish Florentine period, but the effect of the high-vaulted rooms was that of a prison.

One room, however, through which they pa.s.sed to reach the reception apartments of the d.u.c.h.ess, gave Nina a little thrill in spite of her antipathy. The Scorpas had belonged to the "Blacks," that is to the ecclesiasticals, and this room was not repaired in modern fashion, but hung in tattered purple silk. On one side stood a solitary piece of furniture--a great gilt throne upholstered in red velvet, and above it hung a portrait of Pope Alexander VI, the whole surmounted by a canopy of red velvet.

"Was he a relation of the duke?" Nina whispered, aghast at the resemblance.

"Who, child?" asked the princess.

"Rodrigo Borgia."

"No one knows. Hush!"

"But why the throne? Were the Scorpas kings--or what?"

"Before the secular unification of Italy," the princess answered, "the Holy Fathers used to visit the Scorpa cardinals. There has always been a Scorpa among the cardinals. The one now is Monsignore Gamba del Sati.

Del Sati is one of the numerous names of the Scorpa family."

Nina cast another glance at the portrait of Alexander VI. The sinister face was so like the present duke's that it made her shudder, and her imagination at once pictured slaves and prisoners being dragged along these same stone floors. At the end of ten or twelve rooms, each gloomy, yet over-rich with architectural adornments and modern elaboration, two lackeys lifted the hangings covering the last doorway, and announced:

"Sua Eccellenza la Principessa Sansevero!"

"Messa Randolph."

The d.u.c.h.ess Scorpa was very gracious to the American heiress. But, unaccountably, Nina had a strangled feeling, as though she were a bird and had been enticed into a cage. It was a ridiculous notion, for, even following out the simile, the door was open, she knew; and, for that matter, the bars were too far apart to hold her, as soon as she should choose to slip through. But the feeling of the cage was oppressively vivid, and she clung as closely to her aunt's side as she could. Friends of the princess rather monopolized her, however, while the d.u.c.h.ess neglected her other guests to talk to Nina. To add to the girl's distress, the duke, stroking his heavy chin with his fat hand, stood beside her chair with what seemed a proprietary air, and a smile that was intolerable. "Well, my guests," his manner seemed to say, "how do you like my choice? She is not all that I might ask for, but she will do--quite nicely."

Nina glanced appealingly at her aunt, but Eleanor's back was turned.

Involuntarily she looked toward the doorway--Giovanni was to meet them there, and she longed to see his slender figure appear between the _portieres_, to hear the announcement of the well-known name which was no less great than that of the odious man who was trying to compromise her by his air of proprietorship.

Nina could stand it no longer, and sprang to her feet, in the very midst of a long-winded story about--she had no idea what the d.u.c.h.ess was saying to her, but she realized that she had done an inexcusably _gauche_ thing, not only interrupting, but in starting to go before her chaperon made the move. And her discomfiture was increased by a quick sense of the Potensi's derisive criticism. Recovering herself, she exclaimed rapidly: "I am so much interested in sculpture; may I look at that statue?"

The d.u.c.h.ess, far from showing resentment at the interruption, was apparently delighted with the opportunity of impressing upon her guest the greatness of the palace and the family of the Scorpas. "Certainly,"

she cooed, as nearly as a snapping turtle can imitate a turtledove; "that is a genuine Niccola Pisano. The original doc.u.ment is still intact in which he agreed with the cardinal of our house to execute it himself.

The portrait of our ancestor who ordered the statue is in the gallery."

Before Nina could resist, she found herself being conducted between mother and son through the numerous rooms which terminated finally in the gallery. Unlike most of the collections of Italy, this included many modern canvases.

Before the portrait of a thin, heavy-boned, frightened-looking English girl, the duke a.s.sumed a deeply sentimental air, sighing as though out of breath. "That is the portrait of my beloved Jane," he said. "It was painted by Sargent while we were on our honeymoon." The artist, with his consummate skill of characterization, had transferred a crushed, fatalistic helplessness to the canvas. Nina found herself, partly in pity, partly in contempt, scrutinizing the face of the woman who had brought herself to marry such a man.

Suddenly an indescribable feeling of oppression seized her. She looked away from the picture, and then, glancing around to speak to the d.u.c.h.ess, she saw the edge of her dress disappearing through the hangings of the doorway, while between herself and her retreating hostess stood the stolid figure of the duke, with the most odious smile imaginable upon his horrid face.

With a flush of anger that made her temples throb, Nina realized that a dastardly trap had been sprung upon her. To leave a young girl even for a moment unchaperoned was against the strictest rule of Italian propriety. The d.u.c.h.ess had brought her all this distance on purpose to leave her with the villainous duke--in a situation that, should it become known, would so compromise an Italian girl that there would be no place for her in the social system of her world afterward outside of a convent. Her marriage with the duke would be almost inevitable.

Determined to give no evidence of the terror that gripped her, with the most fearless air she could a.s.sume she attempted to pa.s.s the duke; but he blocked her way so that her manoeuvres came down to the indignity of a game of blind man's buff. Nina held her head very high and looked straight at her tormentor. "Please allow me to pa.s.s." She tried hard to speak quietly and to keep the tremulousness out of her voice.

For answer Scorpa quickly closed the intervening distance between them, and the next thing she knew the grasp of his thick, hot hands burned through the sleeve of her coat, and his face was thrust near to her own. In a frenzy of fury she wrenched herself free, and without thought or even consciousness of what she was doing, she struck him full in the face.

Instead of recoiling, he caught and pinned her arms in a grip like a vice. "Ah, ha, so that is the mettle you are made of, is it, you little fiend! Don't think that I mind your fury--you will be a wife after my own heart when I have tamed you! I am a man of my word--I said I would marry you, and I will! Not many men would want to marry a woman of your temper, but you suit me!"

In her horror Nina felt her throat grow dry. She stared at the thick, red, cruel, animal lips of the man with a loathing that almost paralyzed her power to move; while his hands pressed numbingly into the flesh of her arms.

"Let me go! Do you hear"--her voice shook with fright and rage--"let me go! At once! You coward! You beast!"

And like a beast he snarled his answer: "Scream all you please! You could not be heard if you had a throat of bra.s.s!" Then mockingly he sneered, "Come, won't you dance with me, as you did with the pretty Giovanni? You had his arms around you lovingly enough! But, by Bacchus!