The Title Market Part 32

Nina was getting every moment more and more nervous--she could not understand Derby's delay. Why did he not come? Since she telephoned, he could have covered the distance from the Excelsior half a dozen times.

Every second of glancing at the door seemed a minute, and the minutes hours. After the disillusionments she had suffered she actually was beginning to think that he, too, would fail her in the crucial moment, when, at last, the _portieres_ parted, and Derby entered carrying--the celebrated Sansevero Madonna!

The princess and the marchese were so astonished that only Nina seemed to notice Derby himself. With a cry of "_Jack!_ How _did_ you do it?"

she sprang up, staring at him in bewilderment.

The sound of Nina's voice drew the princess's attention to Derby, and she, too, started toward him.

"John! What does it all mean?" she exclaimed, quite unconscious that she had called him by his first name.

"It means a rotten plot--neither more nor less--to ruin Prince Sansevero, concocted by a man whom the prince believed to be his friend!

The Duke Scorpa has just died, which ends the affair for him, but I have the whole chain of evidence that clears the prince. The picture was taken in exchange for a promissory note of the prince's, for one hundred thousand _lire_. The duke tore the paper up and threw it into the waste-paper basket. Luigi Callucci, who was his servant, gathered the sc.r.a.ps out of the basket and pasted them together. This same Luigi also wrapped up the picture and carried it to Shayne. That's all, officially.

Actually, there is a good deal more. The facts are that the duke sold it with perfect knowledge that it was to be smuggled out of the country. I have all the information necessary."

"It is incredible, incredible--the duke Scorpa!" exclaimed Valdeste.

"But that the Prince Sansevero is cleared is the main thing." Then, turning to Derby, he continued, "I hope you will allow me to express to you my admiration and congratulation for the way in which you have brought it about."

Upon this the princess joined the marchese by holding her hand out to Derby. "I never can thank you enough for what you have done! But for you, we should be in a very bad way. I quite agree with the Archbishop of Vencata that you must be a miracle worker!" Her voice was a little tremulous as she broke off. Then, including the marchese also, she added: "But now, my good, kind friends, go, please, and get Sandro out of his situation. My poor boy must be in a terrible state of nerves.

And--thank you both again!"

The marchese and Derby hurried out, Derby carrying the picture. Nina followed them out of the door and stood looking after them until they had disappeared down the vista of rooms. Then she exclaimed: "Really, John is wonderful, isn't he? Wasn't it just like him not to say a word all the time! So many people talk, and do nothing!" Then Nina noticed that the princess was holding her hands over her face. She hurried to her anxiously. "Aunt Eleanor, what is it?"

The princess put her hands down. "I am just thankful--that is all. It threatened to be so dreadful, I can scarcely realize the relief yet.

What a chain of circ.u.mstances! It is almost impossible to believe that even Scorpa would plan them! But it is true I never trusted him. When there is a race feud over here it seems never to die out." She paused a few moments, and then continued as though half to herself, "Although, in this case, I think it was chiefly on account of Giovanni. If you had married him, and the duke had lived, I believe he would have spent the rest of his life in scheming to injure you and everybody connected with us."

At the suggestion of the marriage which might have taken place, all the experiences of that varied day came rushing back to Nina--Giovanni's proposal, the revelation of his falseness, and the conversation with Zoya which had given her the true key to him who had until then been something of a mystery.

With a strained intensity of tone, she suddenly demanded, "Aunt Eleanor, tell me, supposing I had _wanted_ to marry Giovanni, would you have made no protest?"

The princess answered thoughtfully: "I am glad you are not to marry Giovanni--yes, I am glad. Yet even so, he might make a good husband."

Instantly the blood rushed to Nina's head, "Don't you love me more than to let me risk a life of wretchedness?" she exclaimed, but the look in her aunt's face brought from the girl an immediate apology, and presently the princess said:

"I don't think I should want you to marry over here at all. At first I hoped it might be possible--but I am afraid you would be unhappy. There are plenty of girls who might be content, but not you!" The princess took her sewing out of a near-by chest and began hemming a table cloth.

"You mean," said Nina, "that when one reads of the broken hearts and lost illusions of Americans married to Europeans, the accounts _are_ true? Why did you not tell me before?"

"I don't know, dear. Probably because such accounts are, to me, purely sensational writing--and yet at the bottom of them lies a certain amount of truth. In the majority of such cases of wretchedness, if you sift out the facts, you will wonder not so much at the outcome, as that such a marriage could ever have taken place. When it happens that a nice, sweet, wholesome girl marries a disreputable n.o.bleman, who is despised from one end of Europe to the other, American parents seem to feel no horror until she has become a mental, moral, and physical wreck. To us over here it was unbelievable that a decent girl could think of marrying him; that her parents could be so dazzled by the mere t.i.tle of 'Lady' or 'Marquise' or 'Grafin' or 'Principessa' that they were willing to give her into the keeping of an unspeakable cad, brute, or rake. Do you think that it is the fault of Europe if such girls know nothing but wretchedness?"

The princess paused, then continued: "On the other hand, if a girl marries in Europe as good a man, regardless of his t.i.tle, as the American she would probably have chosen at home; and, above all--for this is most essential--if she is adaptable enough to change herself into a European, rather than to expect Europe to pattern itself upon her, she will have as good a chance of happiness as comes to any one.

Marriage is a lottery in any event. Of course, _if_ it turns out badly abroad, it is worse for her than it would have been at home--much worse.

Everything over here is, in that case, against her: custom, language, law, religion; she is literally thrown upon her husband's indulgence. In a contest against him she would have no chance at all--there is no divorce; there is no redress.

"Yet, so far as my personal observation goes, numberless international marriages have been happy. The American wife of a European finds many compensations--for although her husband does not allow her freedom to follow her own whims, and may not even permit her to spend her own money, he gives her a ceaseless attentiveness that never relaxes into the careless indifference of the husbands across the sea.

"It is after all a question of choice--do you want the little things of life very perfectly polished or do you prefer rough edges and heroic sizes! European men know how to make themselves charming to their wives, because with them to be charming is an aim in itself. They have versatility, ease, and grace of intellect, where the American men are bound up in their one or two absorbing ideas, outside of which they take no interest. The Europeans are brilliant conversationalists, they make an effort to be agreeable and to take an interest in whatever occupies the person they are talking to--even though that person is a member of their family.

"But, of course, as in everything, there is a price one has to pay. One can't have rigidity and flexibility both in the same person. For the pliancy of understanding, the easy sympathy, one has to relinquish a certain moral steadfastness."

Suddenly the princess looked away and spoke very lightly, as though merely brushing over the surface of the thoughts in her mind: "What would you have, dear? Men are men--it is well not to question too far.

Even the best of them have to be forgiven sometimes." Under the light tone, there was an unwonted vibration, and though the princess's face was partly averted, Nina caught a shadow of pain in her eyes. But the next moment she smiled. "I can tell you a story," she said, "about a young bride whose husband was very fascinating to women. The young wife, with suspicions of his devotion to another lady, went in tears to her mother-in-law. But the old lady asked her, 'Is not Pietro an admirable husband? And is he not a most devoted and attentive lover as well?' And the bride sobbed, 'Oh, yes, that is the worst of it--it is almost impossible to believe in his faithlessness, he is so adorable.'

And her mother-in-law answered: 'Then, my child, be glad that you have in your husband one of the most accomplished lovers in the world, and do not inquire too closely where he gets his practice.'"

"Do you mean to say that a woman can be happy under such circ.u.mstances?"

Nina demanded. "If that is a typical foreigner, then I am glad American men are different! I'd rather my husband were less accomplished and more entirely mine."

"Yes, dear, I am sure you would," the princess rejoined. "That is one of the reasons why I told you. For you, I think a European marriage would be--not best." She looked up quickly. "You ought to marry some one--I'll describe him--some one quite strong, quite big, quite splendid. And his name is easy to guess--of course it's John."

"John!" echoed Nina dolefully. "John is just the one person above all others who does not want to marry me--or even my money!"

"Your money, no! But _you_, indeed yes."

Nina shook her head. "No--he is not in love with me. In nothing that he has said or even looked, has he indicated it."

"You are a little mole, then," said the princess, smiling. "Every look he gives you, even every expression of his face in speaking about you, tells the story."

Like a whirlwind Nina threw herself at her aunt's knees, pulled her sewing away, and claimed her whole attention. "Tell me everything you know," she demanded hungrily. "Why haven't you told me before? Why do you think so? What has he said to you? Dearest auntie princess, tell me every word he has said. Quick! Every word----"

The princess, between tears and laughter, looked down at Nina. "Every word? Oh, my very dear," she said tenderly, "his love is not of the little sort that spends itself in words."

And then suddenly they heard the sound of two men's voices, and the next moment the _portieres_ parted, admitting Sansevero and Derby. Both the princess and Nina sprang up; the princess in her joy ran straight to her husband's arms. It was like a meeting after a long separation that had been full of perils.

A little later she put out her hand to Derby. "I don't think I shall ever be able to thank you enough; it was quite worth all the anxiety and distress to have found such a friend." Her smile was entrancing. The charm of her was always not so much in what she said, as in the way she said it--in the way she gave her hand, in the way she looked at one, in the varying inflection of her voice, in her sweetness, her calm, her dignity, and, under all these attributes, always her heart. And never had she shown them all more vividly than now as she put her hand into Derby's.

Then they all four sat down--the princess in a big chair and her husband on the arm of it leaning half back of her. And nothing could stop his talk about his friend the American, and the effect upon the members of the committee when the picture was produced and Derby presented his chain of evidence. They had been more than polite and courteous to the prince, that was true, but they _had_ detained him; him, a Sansevero!--and in the telling he again grew indignant. And yet it had been a terrible chain of evidence, and he had not seen how it was to be broken.

Then he branched off from his own affair, and went into an account of all that he had just heard of the experience of Derby himself with Calluci; and the adventure, in spite of Derby's protests, certainly lost nothing in the recital. The princess and Nina had not heard of this, and Nina sat and gazed at the hero in mute rapture. In fact, the only one whose feelings were at all uncertain was Derby. Not but that it was pleasant to hear such praise of himself but it is very hard to be a hero unless one has no sense of humor at all. When the prince had used up half the adjectives of praise and admiration in the Italian language, and was about to begin on the other half, Derby succeeded in interrupting.

"By the way, princess," he said, "I have something I meant to show you this morning, but the other matter put it out of my mind." He drew a paper out of his pocket and handed it to her. She opened it, the prince looking over her shoulder. It was a sheet of foolscap covered with fine writing and many figures in groups and in columns.

"But what does it mean?" she asked.

"It is our first balance sheet at the mines. These are the tons of ore taken out," he answered, pointing to various totals, "this is the present market price paid for the first shipment, and this is the amount we are turning out now per day. At the same rate, the year's payment, at a conservative estimate, will be that amount. At all events I shall send you a check the first of August for fifty thousand _lire_."

"Fifty thousand _lire_! Oh, Sandro!" The instinct of the woman showed, in that her husband was her first thought; and her voice vibrated joyously. "Fifty thousand _lire_!" they both repeated as though unable to comprehend--and then, the full meaning of it dawning upon him, the prince threw his arms about her in wild exuberance.

"Oh, my dear one!"--he punctuated each phrase with kisses--"now you shall have everything . . . everything . . . your heart can wish! Stoves you shall have . . . servants and dresses. . . . Yes, and your emeralds!

And your pearls! You shall have . . . emeralds set in a footstool! Every _soldo_ is for you, _carissima_, it is all _yours_, YOURS!"

Gently she stopped him. "Sandro," she smiled, "Sandro _mio_, not the mines of the Indies could supply your plans for spending!" Then her voice broke, but she laughed through her tears and buried her face against his throat.

After a moment the princess recovered herself. She looked up, blushing like a girl--a little self-conscious that any one should have witnessed the scene between herself and her husband. "We are very foolish," she laughed. "But it is good to feel so joyous as that!" She got up and, as she pa.s.sed Nina, she put her hand caressingly under the girl's chin. "It has not been a bad day, after all, has it?" she said. "And when fortune begins to come, it always comes in waves--the difficulty is to make it begin." Then she looked back at her husband, "Sandro, come with me, will you? These children will not mind, I am sure, if we leave them for a little while, and I want very much to talk to you." She smiled her apology to Nina and Derby, who both stood up. Then she and the prince went out of the door together, his arm about her waist.

When they had gone, Nina said softly: "They are dears, aren't they! Oh, Jack, aren't you proud to think you are the cause of every bit of the gladness they are feeling to-day?" She glanced up at him, her eyes alight with a brilliant softness and tenderness. But he did not look at her, and so answered merely her words: "I guess it would have worked out all right, anyway." And then he seemed to study the pattern of the carpet, and there was silence.

Nina stood leaning against a heavy table, and Derby stood near her with his hands in his pockets and his attention engrossed on the floor. Both seemed incapable of speaking or moving, as though a hypnotic spell had fallen upon them. Twice, while her aunt and uncle were in the room, Derby had looked at her with an expression that set Nina's heart beating, but now they were alone it had entirely vanished and he kept his head persistently turned away. She wondered how she could ever have failed to find his profile splendid. But he seemed so detached, so bafflingly absorbed, that all the old ache that she had felt that day when he had advised her to marry Billy Dalton--and since--came suffocatingly back. The old doubt suddenly gripped her--could her aunt be mistaken?

Finally, it came to her, intuitively, that her whole future was hanging on this moment, and the impulse was overwhelming to forget that she was the woman. It seemed that she must herself force the issue and end the doubt, at all hazards--this doubt which hammered at the door of her intellect and yet which her heart refused stubbornly to accept.

"Jack"--she tried hard to carry out her resolve not to let the false pride of a moment perhaps spoil her whole life; but the inborn reserve of generations of womanhood rebelled. In her uncertainty and anguish each moment of silence seemed weighted into leaden despair, but she was utterly unable to say what she had intended. At last her lips parted and, like the wail of a lost child, "Jack----" she cried. It was all she could say before her eyes filled and a queer little gulp came into her throat; then, with superhuman effort yet hardly articulate, came the whisper, "H-ave you n-othing to say--to me?"