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_THE TITLE MARKET_
_By_
_Emily Post_
_Author of "The Flight of a Moth,"_
_"Woven in the Tapestry," etc._
_With Illustrations by_
_J. H. Gardner Soper_
_New York_
_Dodd, Mead and Company_
_1909_
Copyright, 1909, by
THE RIDGWAY COMPANY
Copyright, 1909, by
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
Published, September, 1909
[Illustration:
"'WE OF ITALY,' HE WAS SAYING, 'LIVE, ENDURE, DIE,
IF NEED BE--ALWAYS FOR THE SAME
REASON--WOMAN AND LOVE!'"
(Page 65)]
As though you did not know each page,
each paragraph, each word;
as though for months and months the Sanseveros,
Nina, John, and all the rest, had not been
your daily companions--
MADRE MIA,
this book is dedicated
to you.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I PRINCE SANSEVERO DIMINISHES THE FORTUNES OF HIS HOUSE 1
II THE PRINCESS PLANS TO RECEIVE THE AMERICAN HEIRESS 14
III NINA 25
IV THE DUKE SCORPA MAKES A DEAL 42
V DON GIOVANNI ARRIVES 48
VI LOVE, AND A GARDEN 64
VII ROME 72
VIII OPENING DAY AT THE TITLE MARKET 86
IX A DOOR IS OPENED THAT GIOVANNI PREFERS TO KEEP CLOSED 97
X MR. RANDOLPH SENDS FOR JOHN DERBY 107
XI ROME GOES TO THE OPERA 116
XII A BALL AT COURT 136
XIII CORONETS FOR SALE 142
XIV APPLES OF SODOM 157
XV AN OPPOSITION BOOTH IS SET UP IN THE MARKET PLACE 163
XVI A MENACE 173
XVII NINA DUSTS BEHIND THE COUNTER 192
XVIII FAVORITA DRIVES A BARGAIN 214
XIX A CHALLENGE, AND AN ANSWER 221
XX HIS EMINENCE, THE ARCHBISHOP OF VENCATA 236
XXI THE SULPHUR MINES 246
XXII BEFORE DAYLIGHT 257
XXIII THE SPIDER'S WEB 269
XXIV WEIGHED IN THE BALANCE 289
XXV "THY PEOPLE SHALL BE MY PEOPLE--" 308
ILLUSTRATIONS
"'WE OF ITALY,' HE WAS SAYING, 'LIVE, ENDURE, DIE, IF NEED
BE--ALWAYS FOR THE SAME REASON--WOMEN AND LOVE!'"
Page 65 _Frontispiece_
"AS SHE SPOKE, A DOOR OPENED OPPOSITE, AND THE PRINCE CAME
IN" Facing page 4
"FOR THE SPACE OF A SECOND SHE FACED THE AUDIENCE, STANDING
STILL AND RIGID" 134
"NINA LOOKED AT HIM--'I WONDER IF YOU WOULD BE AMUSED IF
YOU KNEW WHY I LAUGHED'" 184
"HIS LIPS FRAMED 'GOOD-BY' AND HERS ANSWERED, BOTH SMILED
BRIGHTLY--AND THAT WAS THE PARTING" 232
"'YOU ARE AMERICANO, ARE YOU NOT? YOUR LAND HAS DONE MUCH
FOR MY PEOPLE!'" 239
CHAPTER I
PRINCE SANSEVERO DIMINISHES THE FORTUNES OF HIS HOUSE
Her excellency the Princess Sansevero sat up in bed. Reaching quickly
across the great width of mattress, she pulled the bell-rope twice,
then, shivering, slid back under the warmth of the covers. She drew them
close up over her shoulders, so far that only a heavy mass of golden
hair remained visible above the old crimson brocade of which the
counterpane was made. The room was still darkened so that the objects in
it were barely discernible, but presently one of the high, carved doors
opened and a maid entered, carrying a breakfast tray. Setting the tray
down, she crossed quickly to the windows and drew back the curtains.
Sunlight flooded the black and white marble of the floor, and brought
out in sharp detail the splendor of the apartment. The rich colors of
the frescoed walls, the mellow crimson damask upholstering, might have
suggested warmth and comfort, had not a little cloud of white vapor
floating before the maid's lips proclaimed the temperature.
She was a stocky peasant woman, this maid, with good red color in her
cheeks, but she wore a dress of heavy woolen material and a cardigan
jacket over that. Her thick felt slippers pattered briskly over the
stone floor as she went to a clothes-press, carved and beautifully
inlaid, took out a drab-colored woolen wrapper trimmed with common red
fox fur, and, picking up the tray again, mounted the dais of the huge
carved bed.
"If Excellency will make haste, the coffee is good and very hot."
The covers were pushed down just a little, and the princess peered out.
"What sort of a day have we, Marie? Isn't it very cold?"
"Oh, no! It is a beautiful day. But Excellency will say that the coffee
is cold unless it is soon taken."
So again the Princess Sansevero sat up in bed. Her maid placed the
coffee tray before her, and wrapped her quickly in the dressing-gown.
The plain woolen wrapper had looked ugly enough in the maid's hands, but
its drab color and fox fur so toned in with the red-gold hair and creamy
skin of its wearer that an artist, could he have beheld the picture,
would have been filled with delight. It would not in the least have
mattered to him that there was a chip in the cup into which she poured
her coffee, nor that the linen napkin was darned in three places. The
silver breakfast service belonged to a time when such things were
chiseled only for great personages and by master craftsmen. That it was
battered through several centuries of constant handling rather enhanced
than diminished its value. Of the same antiquity was the bed--seven
feet wide, its four posts elaborately carved with fruits and flowers,
and with cupids grouped in the corners of the framework supporting a
dome of crimson damask that matched the hangings. What difference could
it make to the artist that the springless mattress was as hard as a
rock, and lumpy as a ploughed field? With painted walls and vaulted
ceilings that were the apotheosis of luxury, what did it matter that the
raw chill from their stone surface penetrated to the very marrow of her
Exalted Excellency's bones? Unfortunately, however, it was she who had
to occupy the apartment and to her it did matter very much, for her
American blood never had grown used to the chill of unheated rooms.
"I think I can heat the bathroom sufficiently for Excellency's bath,"
ventured the maid.
The princess shivered at the mere suggestion. She knew only too well the
feeling of the water in a room that was like an unheated cellar in the
rainy season of late autumn. "No, no!" she exclaimed, "fill me the
little tub, in my sitting-room."
[Illustration: "AS SHE SPOKE, A DOOR OPENED OPPOSITE THE ONE THROUGH
WHICH THE MAID HAD ENTERED, AND THE PRINCE CAME IN"]
As she spoke, a door opened opposite the one through which the maid had
entered, and the prince came in. A fresh color glowed under his olive
skin, his hair was brushed until it was as polished as his nails; also
he was shaved, but here his toilet for the day ended. The open "V" of
his dressing-gown (his was made of a costly material, quite in contrast
to the one his wife wore) showed his throat; bare ankles were visible
above his slippers. With the raillery of a boy he cried:
"Can it really be possible that you are cold! No wonder they call yours
the nation of ice water! I know that is what you have in your veins!"
With a spring he threw himself full length across the bed.
"Sandro, be careful! See what you are doing! You have spilled the
coffee."
"Oh, that's nothing!" he said gaily; "it will wash out."
"On the contrary, it is a great deal. It makes unnecessary laundry and
uses up the linen--we can't get any more, you know."
At once his gay humor changed to sulkiness. "_Va bene, va bene!_ let us
drop that subject."
Immediately the princess softened, as though she had unthinkingly hurt
him, "I did not mean it as a complaint; but you know, dear, we do have
to be careful."
But the prince stared moodily at his finger-nails.
She began a new topic cheerfully. "I hope to get a letter from Nina
to-day; there has been time for an answer."
Sansevero had been quite interested in the idea of a possible visit from
Nina Randolph, his wife's niece, a much exploited American heiress. But
now he paid no attention. He still stared at his nails. The princess
scrutinized his face as though in the habit of reading its expression,
and at last she said gently:
"What have you in mind, dear? Tell me--come, out with it, I see quite
well there is something."
For answer he sat up, took a cigarette from his pocket, put it between
his lips, searched in both pockets for a match, and, failing to find
one, sat with the unlighted cigarette between his lips, sulkier than
ever.
He felt her looking at him, and swayed his shoulders exactly as though
some one were trying to hold him. "Really, Leonora," he burst out, "this
question of money all the time is far from pleasant!"
A helpless, frightened look came into her face. It grew suddenly
pinched; instinctively she put her hand over her heart.
"I have not mentioned money." She made an effort to speak lightly, but
there was a vibration in the tone. Then, as though gathering her
strength together, she made a direct demand:
"Alessandro, tell me at once, what have you done?"
For a moment he looked defiant, then shrugged his shoulders. "Well,
since you will know----" he sprang from the bed, pulled a letter out of
his pocket, and, quite as a small boy hands over the note that his
teacher has caught him passing in school, he tossed her the envelope,
and left the room.
Her fingers trembled a little in unfolding the paper; and she breathed
quickly as she read. For some time she sat staring at the few lines of
writing before her. Then suddenly thrusting her feet into fur slippers,
she ran into the next room. "Sandro," she said, "come into my
sitting-room; I must speak with you."
He followed her through her bedroom into an apartment much smaller and,
unlike the other two rooms, quite warm. Just now, all the articles of a
woman's toilet were spread out on a table upon which a dressing-mirror
had been placed; and close beside a brazier of glowing coals was a
portable English tub; the water for the bath was heating in the kitchen.
Seeing that there was no means of avoiding the inevitable, he said
doggedly: "I thought to make, of course, or I would not have gone into
the scheme." Then something in her face held him, and at the same time
his impulsive boyishness--a little dramatic, perhaps, but only so much
as is consistent with his race--carried him into a new mood.
"Leonora, I suppose I am in the wrong--indeed I am sure I am utterly at
fault; but help me. Don't you see, _carissima_, this time I did not
_wager_--it was a business venture!"
In the midst of her distress she could not help but smile at the
absurdity.
"Scorpa is doing it all," he continued--"not I. You know what a clever
business man _he_ is! He assured me that it was a rare chance--the
opportunity of a lifetime. It was because I wanted so to restore to you
what my gambling had cost, that I agreed. I did not think it possible to
lose. But help me this once; believe me, I do know, and with shame,
that were it not for my accursed ill luck we should be living in luxury
now. But just this once--you will help me, won't you?"
His wife seated herself in a big armchair, and looked at him wearily,
running her fingers through the heavy waves of her hair. She had
beautiful hands--beautiful because they seemed part of her expression;
capable hands with nothing helpless in her use of them; the kind that a
sick person dreams of as belonging to an ideal nurse; gentle and smooth,
but quick and firm.
"It is not a question of willingness, Sandro." Her voice was as smooth
and strong, as flexible, as her hands. "You know everything we have just
as well as I. I never kept anything from you, and what we have is ours
jointly--as much yours as mine. I have, as you know, only two jewels of
value left, and they would not bring half the amount of this debt."
"Leonora, no! you have sold too many already; I cannot ask such a thing
again."
His wife's smile was more sad than tears; it was not that she was making
up her mind for some one necessary sacrifice--it was a smile of absolute
helplessness. "If only I might believe you! We now have nothing but what
is held in trust for me. I am not reproaching you--what is gone is gone.
But Sandro! where will it end?"
The maid knocked and entered with two pails of hot water, which she
poured into the tub. She spread a bath towel over a chair, moved another
chair near, put out various articles of clothing, and left the room
again.
The princess threw off her slippers, and tried the temperature of the
water with her toes.
"I think, Sandro, we had better give up Rome," she said. "The money
saved for that will pay the greater part of the debt. It is the only way
I can see. But go now; I want to take my bath. We can talk more by and
by." She smiled quite brightly, and the prince, emboldened by her
cheerfulness, would have taken her in his arms. But she turned away, her
hand involuntarily put up as a barrier between herself and the kiss that
at the moment she shrank from. He took the hand instead and pressed it
to his lips.
When he had gone, she bathed quickly, partially dressed herself, and
called her maid to do her hair. Sitting before the improvised
dressing-table, she glanced in the mirror, and her reflection caught and
held her attention a long moment. A curious, half-wistful, half-pathetic
expression crept into her eyes as the realization came to her sharply
that she was fading. There were lines and shadows and pallor that ought
not to be in the face of a woman of thirty-five. She smoothed the
vertical lines in her forehead, and then let her hands remain over her
face, while behind their cool smoothness her mind resumed its
troublesome thoughts.
It was not like meeting some new difficulty for which the strength is
fresh; it was struggling again with emotions that have repeatedly
exhausted one's endurance. Just as she had every hope that her husband
was cured of the gambler's fever, here he was down again with an even
more dangerous form of it. The man who knowingly risks is bad enough;
but the man who cannot see that he risks, and cannot understand how he
has lost is the hardest victim to cure. All of her capital was gone
except a small property which her brother-in-law, J. B. Randolph, held
for her in trust and on the income of which they now lived. Ten years
before she had had considerable money, enough for them to live not only
in comfort but in luxury. A large amount had been sunk in a Sicilian
sulphur mine, and to this investment she had given her consent, not yet
realizing her husband's lack of judgment. But aside from this, cards and
horse races and trips to Monaco had limited their living in luxury to a
periodic pleasure of three or four months. Now in order to open the
palace in Rome, they had to practise the most rigid economics the other
eight or nine months in their villa in the country.
Yet in spite of all, her compassion went out to Sandro. He was so gay,
so boy-like, that he acquired ascendancy over her sympathies in spite of
her judgment. And by the time her maid had coiled her great golden waves
of hair and helped her into a short, heavy skirt, a pair of stout boots,
a plain shirt-waist, and a rough, short coat and cap, her feeling of
resentment against him had passed. She drew on a pair of dogskin gloves,
and went out.
In the stables she found the prince helping to harness a pony.
"Are you going to drive to the village?" she asked as cheerfully as
though there had been no topic of distress.
"Yes; will you come with me?" he returned eagerly. She nodded her assent
and as they started down the road they talked easily of various things.
It was the prince who finally came back to the topic that was uppermost
in their minds. He looked at her tenderly as he said:
"You do believe, my darling, don't you, that to have brought this
additional trouble to you breaks my heart? I have taken everything from
you--given you nothing in return. Yet--I do love you."
"Oh, _va bene, va bene, caro mio_; we will talk no more about it. Do you
really agree to stay in the country all winter and give up Rome?"
"Of course," he said, with the best grace in the world. "It is all far
too easy for me--but for you!--Ah, Leonora, no admiration, no new
interest! no amusement! a year of your beauty wasted on only me."
"Be still; you know very well that I care nothing for all that. It is
always this horrible fear of your leaping before you look. Sandro,
Sandro! can you really see that one more plunge--and we are done? Now
we can give up our savings, and the jewels; another time--don't let
there ever be another time!"
He looked up the road and down; there was not even a peasant in sight.
He put his arm about her and drew her to him. "Look at me, Leonora! On
the name of my family and on that which I hold most sacred in the world
I swear it: you will never again have to suffer from such a cause."
She inclined toward his kiss, and love dominated the sadness in her
eyes. Who could be angry with him--impulsive, affectionate, warm-hearted
child of the Sun, or Italy--since both are the same.
A turn in the road, around a high wall topped with orange trees, brought
them into the little town and the village life. A couple of ragged
urchins sitting before the door of one of the cave-like structures that
are called dwellings, grinned as the princess looked at them. An older
girl bobbed a courtesy and pulled one of the children to her feet,
bidding her do the same. The men uncovered their heads, as the noble
padrones passed.
Before one house the little trap stopped. Immediately the door opened
and a woman came out. She was young and handsome though the shadow of
maternity was blue-stenciled under her eyes. She courtesied, then looked
anxiously at the prince.
"Excellency would speak with me?" she asked, "has Excellency decided?"
"Yes," the prince answered, "Pedro will wed thee at the house of the
good father--to-night at eight." At his first words she clasped her
hands in thanksgiving, but when he continued that she was to wear no
veil or wreath, her joy gave way to a wail.
"Excellency would shame me," she sobbed, "I am a good girl and Pedro my
husband by promise."
Sansevero looked helpless for a moment and then seemed wavering. The
woman caught at the opportunity and repeated her cry, this time to the
princess, but there was no indecision in the latter's manner as she
spoke now in her husband's stead.
"Thou knowest, Marcella, that the veil and the wreath are only for such
as are maidens! Say no more, I speak not of goodness, Pedro comes to the
house of the padre--at eight. Be a faithful wife and mother, and so
shalt thou have honor--better than by the wearing of a wreath."
She put her hand on the girl's head, with a kindness that took away all
sting from her words. And Marcella made no further protest, although as
the pony-cart drove on, she remained weeping before the door.
Sansevero himself looked dejected. "Don't you think, dear one," he
protested, "that you were rather severe! What difference can it make
after all, whether the poor girl wears a few leaves in her hair or a bit
of tulle?"
But the princess was inflexible. "It would not be just to the others,"
she answered, "since we made this rule there has been a great difference
in the village. It is almost rare now that the family arrives before
the wedding. The question of irregularity never used trouble the girls
at all. The only disgrace they seem able to feel is that they may not
dress as brides; and that being the case, I think we have to be strict."
"All right, wise one," said the prince as he drew up at the post-office,
"I am sure you know best." He looked at her with such obvious
satisfaction that two urchins standing by the road-side grinned. The
post-master hurried out with the mail, and the princess looked through
the letters. One with an American stamp held her attention. As she read,
her cheeks flushed with pleasure, her eyes grew bright, a sweet and
tender expression came into her face.
"Nina is coming!" she cried. Gladness rang in her voice. "Coming for the
whole winter--let me see, the letter is dated the fifteenth--she will
sail this week. Oh, Sandro, I am so happy!"
For a moment it would have been hard to say which looked more pleased,
the prince or the princess. But then, as though by thought transference,
in blank consternation each stared at the other, and exclaimed in the
same breath, "But how about Rome?"
In silence the prince turned the pony about and slowly they drove back
up the hills.