The Title Market Part 30

The question he was almost ready to put, in spite of his resolution, remained unasked, and he said instead: "Look here, Nina, I don't think you are well! You're awfully jumpy. I never saw you like this at home.

Has anything happened?"

Nina shook her head.

"Honest and straight?"

She looked at him with a distracted expression that reminded him of a child afraid of losing its way.

"Jack"--she hesitated; her voice sounded constrained--"please don't look so--so serious. It is nothing--that I can tell you! Don't notice that I am any different. Really, I am not. You are my best friend, and the first I would go to if I needed help."

Yet, as she said the words, she felt with a sudden, poignant pain that they were no longer true. Her mind was in a turmoil, and at that very moment, had she followed her inclination, she would have screamed aloud.

She did not understand why she was so wretched; but one thing was certain--it was Giovanni who filled her thoughts!

Perhaps Derby interpreted the change in her. He put a question suddenly, "Nina, you couldn't really care for an Italian, could you?"

Nina flushed. "I don't know whether I could or not," she said. "I think there may be just as wonderful men over here as at home. I know there are some that are quite as brave."

Derby frowned. "Nina, Nina----"

But Nina did not even hear his interruption. "I wish you knew Don Giovanni, Jack," she said. "You would like Italians better, I think!"

"It is not that I think ill of Italians--quite the contrary; but--I should not like to think of your marrying Don Giovanni."

"And why shouldn't I?" The question came near to summing up the problem of her own meditations, and his opposition--with its carefully maintained impersonal quality--piqued her and made the smoldering consideration of marrying Giovanni suddenly flame into a definite intention.

"Well?" she repeated.

"Because I think American men make the best husbands."

Nina was brutal. "You say that because you are an American yourself!"

He let the injustice of her remark pa.s.s unnoticed. "I merely repeat," he said calmly, "that, married to the Marchese di Valdo, you would be a very unhappy woman. That is my straight opinion. If you don't like it, I can't help it."

"Why should I be unhappy?"

"Don't let's discuss it."

"That is just like an American. Do you wonder women care for Europeans?

A man over here would sit down sensibly and tell you every sort of reason."

"Yes, and one sort of reason as well as another. For, or against, whichever way the wind might happen to be blowing!"

In spite of herself, Nina was disagreeably conscious of the truth of his judgment. But she shut her mind to it, as she exclaimed, "And you say you don't dislike Italian men!"

"No, I don't! You are altogether wrong. I have been over here often enough to admire them tremendously, in a great many ways. But I don't like to see the girl I--the girl I have known all her life, marry a man that I feel sure will break her heart."

"Aunt Eleanor's heart is not broken!"

Derby walked up and down the floor, then stood still, stuffed his hands into his pockets, and looked down at his shoes as though their varnish were the only thing in life that interested him.

"Well? Is Aunt Eleanor's heart broken?"

"Perhaps not; but, even so, you and she are very different women. From her girlhood she was more or less trained for the life she leads. She went from a convent school to the house of a brother-in-law--in other words, from one dependence to another. She is the type of woman who weathers change and storm by bending to the wind."

"Aunt Eleanor! Hers is the strongest character I know!"

"Of course it is! But it is exactly because she is apparently unresisting and pliant to surrounding conditions that her spirit is una.s.sailable. You, on the contrary, would snap in the first tempest! Or, to change the simile, have you ever seen a young bull calf tied to a tree, and, in a frantic effort to get loose, wind itself up tighter, until its head was pulled close to the tree? That is exactly what you would be over here. No girl has ever had her own way all her life more than you! Believe me, you have no idea what it would mean to be tied to a rope of convention that would tighten like a noose at any struggle on your part. As the wife of a man like di Valdo, you would be bound by endless petty formalities. Another thing--which your aunt has made me realize--as an American, you would have to excel the Italians in dignity in order to be thought to equal them. Things perfectly pardonable for them would finish you. You need only take your aunt and Kate Masco for your examples. Kate's behavior is not any worse than that of plenty of the born countesses, even. But that's just it--she _isn't_ a countess born, and her ways won't do! Your aunt, on the other hand, is '_grande dame_' in every fiber of her being. Hardly another woman in Rome has her graciousness and dignity. These qualities were hers, doubtless, from the beginning, but you needn't tell me even she found it as easy to be a princess as it would seem!"

Nina looked up at Derby in open-eyed amazement. "Gracious, John! I never dreamed you were so observing! In a way, I imagine you are right, too.

But at least, if a woman has to follow conventions to earn a position over here, that position is real and worth while when she does get it.

And a woman like Aunt Eleanor is far more appreciated here than she would be at home."

"Humph!" was Derby's retort. "You needn't think that all the appreciating of women is done in Italy, though the men at home may not put things so gracefully as these over here, who have nothing else to do but learn to turn beautiful phrases. I don't think that I am flattering myself in saying that if I were to give up my life to the one accomplishment of artistic love-making, I might make good, too! However, that is pretty far out of my line. I'm a blunt sort of person, but I--well, I care a lot for you, Nina! I'd rather see you marry--Billy Dalton, any day!"

As Derby brought in Billy Dalton's name, Nina had a sense of flatness that she would have been at a loss to explain.

"Jack!" she cried suddenly, her surface vanity piqued, but before even the sentence which crowded back of her exclamation could frame itself, Giovanni's image flashed before her mind and pushed out every other impression. She seemed to see him racked with suffering, and all for her! She hated her own vacillation. She despised herself for a fickle flirt. What else was she? Here she was imagining all sorts of vague heartaches that were utterly unworthy of her loyalty either to Giovanni's love or to Jack's friendship. Jack was her best friend, almost her brother, and she had no right to feel so limp because--she did not finish the sentence even to herself; yet she was swept into such a turmoil of emotion--friendship, love, pique, doubt--that she could restore nothing to order. She knew Derby thought Giovanni wanted her money--instinctively her mouth hardened as she thought of it--but then--every one wanted it except Jack! And at once, with an unaccountable baffling ache, she was brought face to face with the fact that Jack, as it happened, did not want her at all!

Then, hating herself because she had for a moment thought of Jack as a possible suitor, and more especially because of the detestable and unworthy chagrin that his not being a suitor had caused her, she became hysterically erratic, aloof, and impossible, and began suddenly to talk like a paid guide about the sculptures at the Vatican! At the end of some minutes, during which Derby failed to get anything in the way of a natural remark from her, he arose to go. He left with a strong desire to send a doctor and a trained nurse to take Nina in hand.

Down at the entrance of the palace a very pretty woman was speaking with the porter. She was talking vehemently and with much accompanying gesticulation. As Derby pa.s.sed out, she looked up into his face. He put his hand to his hat, in a vague remembrance of her features, wondering where he had met her, and what her name might be. As he went through the archway into the street, the recognition came to him. She was the celebrated dancer, La Favorita.

CHAPTER XXV

"THY PEOPLE SHALL BE MY PEOPLE--"

The following morning, for the first time since his injury, Giovanni was brought into the princess's sitting-room, and propped up on a sofa. As occasionally happens in early spring, midsummer seemed to have arrived in one day, and the windows stood wide open to the morning breeze.

Sitting in the full light of the windows, and close by Giovanni's couch, Nina was making a necktie--a very smart one, of dull raspberry silk; but she was knitting rather because the occupation steadied her nerves than for any other reason, and the charmingly tranquil picture that she made was very far from representing her feelings. She had never been less happy or peaceful in her life.

The princess, within easy earshot, was busily writing at her desk. But after a while, in answer to an appealing look from Giovanni, she left the room. Nina felt no surprise either at Giovanni's appeal or at her aunt's response. She knew very well what he would say, and she had long been trying to make up her mind what her answer should be. Yet no sooner had the _portieres_ closed than an unaccountable dread took possession of her, and she had an overwhelming desire to escape.

She knitted industriously, her head bent, her eyes intent upon her needles. For a while Giovanni lay back against the pillows, idly watching her progress; then he raised himself on his unbandaged elbow and leaned forward. Even this exertion revealed his weakness: an increasing pallor overspread his transparent features, and he spoke as sick people do--with difficulty and as though out of breath: "Mademoiselle, you know--what I have in my heart--to say----"

"Don't, ah--please----" Nina sprang up and put out her hand in protest.

But he paid no heed. "Donna Nina," he implored, "will you do me the honor to be my wife? _Carissima mia_--" she heard his voice as though from afar, as he fell back against the pillow--"I love you! Even a portion of how much I love you would fill a life!" He took her hand as she stood beside him, and pressed it to his lips.

She felt how thin his hand was, and how it trembled. Her conscience smote her--it was all because of her! And for a moment the answer that he sought hung on the very tip of her tongue--hung, faltered--and then raced down her throat again. Her hand drew away from his clasp, and she almost sobbed, "I can't, I can't. Oh, I would if I could--but I can't!"

Then she heard him say gently: "Give me an answer later--I am not such, just now, that I can hold my own--I will wait till I am strong again.

Will you give me your answer then?" Half choking, she nodded her head in a.s.sent and hurried from the room.

St. Anthony, the great Dane, who, since Giovanni's illness, had attached himself to Nina, stalked after her. She went through the intervening rooms into the picture gallery, and there dropped down upon a low marble seat and took the big dog's head in her arms.