"HIS LIPS FRAMED 'GOOD-BY' AND HERS ANSWERED, BOTH SMILED BRIGHTLY—AND THAT WAS THE PARTING""HIS LIPS FRAMED 'GOOD-BY' AND HERS ANSWERED, BOTH SMILED BRIGHTLY—AND THAT WAS THE PARTING"
Derby was in many ways a fatalist—not one of those who thought that by sitting still the gifts from the horn of fortune would tumble into his lap; but one of those who believe (to use his own expression), in pegging away at the thing in hand; further than that, what was to be, would be.
As Derby descended the stairs he encountered the Countess Masco. "Hello, John!" she exclaimed, and then as she held him by the arm, her voice came down to what for her was a low whisper; at twenty feet any one could have overheard her, but fortunately the hall was deserted, save for a couple of footmen standing at the green baize door that led to the outer stairs of the courtyard. "Have you heard the news? Giovanni Sansevero agreed to go on a cruise to Malta with Rosso, and Rosso won't let him out of it! You may imagine he does not relish leaving Rome just now, especially with you again out of the field!"
Derby was not given an opportunity either to accept or to resent her intrusion into his affairs, for the dashing lady immediately fled, and Derby went on. As he waited for his cab, he felt inclined to go back and try to see Nina. He was letting her drift very, very far away. But while he was hesitating, his cab drove up, and without more ado he jumped into it and drove to his hotel. As soon as he reached his room, he began a letter to Nina; but all the things he had vowed to himself not to say, swarmed to the very tip of his pen. He threw it down, therefore, and tore up the paper that showed, under "Dear Nina," an erased "Darl—" After pacing the floor a while, he again picked up the pen, but this time he wrote to Mr. Randolph. At the end of a letter of details relating to the mines, he added:
"There are rumors now agitating people over here and likely to become public property, that the Sansevero Madonna has been smuggled out of the country. I have reason to believe that the Raphael you showed me in New York is not the duplicate you were led to suppose, but the Sansevero picture. How it was sold, I have not yet discovered, though I do not believe the prince guilty of violating the laws. But I know the Government has its secret agents at work upon the case because of the seeming luxury of the princess, whose new furs and automobile are known to be far beyond her present income. I more than suspect that these luxuries are the result of Nina's generosity, but if the Sansevero pictureisthe one you have, the affair will end badly for the prince. At all events, I consider it best to carry the matter direct to you."
"There are rumors now agitating people over here and likely to become public property, that the Sansevero Madonna has been smuggled out of the country. I have reason to believe that the Raphael you showed me in New York is not the duplicate you were led to suppose, but the Sansevero picture. How it was sold, I have not yet discovered, though I do not believe the prince guilty of violating the laws. But I know the Government has its secret agents at work upon the case because of the seeming luxury of the princess, whose new furs and automobile are known to be far beyond her present income. I more than suspect that these luxuries are the result of Nina's generosity, but if the Sansevero pictureisthe one you have, the affair will end badly for the prince. At all events, I consider it best to carry the matter direct to you."
While Derby was writing to Mr. Randolph, an animated conversation was taking place in a little room on the ground floor of the gigantic palace of the Scorpas. The doors were bolted, and the two inmates of the apartment talked in whispers.
"You understand your instructions?"
"Yes, Excellency."
"Repeat them."
"I take the boat to-morrow—go to Vencata. Keep watch upon the Americano—the one whose name I have here."
"John Derby, yes. But he is very big—a giant. Make no mistake, find the one who is thepadrone!And——? Continue!"
"I am to watch if it is true that he begins working the 'Little Devil,' and if so—I know the rest. It is nothing! A pig's skin is thick—a man's thin!" As he said this he glanced at the duke, and there was a sinister gleam in the man's deep-set eyes, and beneath the sharp nose the mouth was hard and straight, like a seam across the face.
The duke nodded as though satisfied. "It may be well for you to remember," he observed impressively, "that the reward will make you and yours easy for life."
The man saluted respectfully, but with a dogged surliness that revealed no loyalty. Yet there was in his look a hint of fanatical intensity. Outside in the passageway he smiled grimly. For once the errand on which the duke had sent him fell in withhis own inclinations. He opened a window and looked out through the gratings into the night. In his heart he bore no love for the duke, but he was by race and inheritance a dependent of the house of Scorpa. It had always been so—the dukes had been masters since time immemorial. The present duke had made the lives of Sicilians terrible enough, but he, Luigi Calluci, would have no stranger Americano forcing his people to work that hell-mine of the "Little Devil"!
Barely two days after the evening at the Palazzo Sansevero, Derby was driving up the Sicilian hills towards the palace—courtesy gave it the name—of the venerable Archbishop of Vencata. Porter, in company with Tiggs and Jenkins—Derby's American assistants—had been left at the inn in the town, but Derby was anxious to present his letter as soon as possible, in order that there might be no delay in commencing work at the mines.
The carriage in which Derby sat had at first sight seemed liable to tumble apart, like so many separate pieces of mosaic puzzle, and he had taken his place on the old cloth cushion rather dubiously. But the driver gayly, and with every appearance of confidence inhimselfand his equipage, had cracked his whip and shouted all the names in the calendar to the horses, whose muscles gradually became sufficiently taut to impel them onward. A few dozen yards having been made without mishap, Derby felt that the special protection of Providence must be over them, and he leaned back contentedly, puffing at his pipe and enjoying to the full the witchery of a Sicilian sunset. The rickety conveyance clattered slowly up a winding road that seemed like a white band tied about the mountainside, holding here little terraced vineyards, there a huddling group of houses that else would surely have slipped into the ravine. For a short distance it hung out over the sea, then cut inward, as though the band of white had been laced in and out among the silvery sprays of the olive leaves.
Below it all, and beyond, lay the Mediterranean, its blue waters now deepened to indigo, shading into wide lakes of purple, under the reflection of the setting sun, which, like a great red lantern, seemed sinking into the sea. A sharp turn inward and upward brought the conveyance shambling into a little courtyard. It halted before the doorway of a low, white-washed house smothered in semi-tropical vines, which extended from the eaves over a pergola built along the wall at the terrace edge. Beneath this arbor was a rustic seat, on the cushions of which a big gray cat sat up slowly, and stared at the intruders with insolent, unwinking eyes.
A woman's voice droned a dirgeful song that had a half Oriental, half negro suggestion in its monotonous pitch, while from afar, like an echo over the mountainside, came faintly the wailing cadence of thecaramellaof some shepherd boy, and the tinkle of goat bells, interrupted by the hoot of little owls crying through the dusk.
The bells of the flapping harness settled into silence, the droning sing-song ceased, and from thestone flagging within came the shuffle of wooden shoes. An old woman, in the inevitable dark stuff dress of her class, and the blue apron gay-bordered with red and white, stood in the doorway. Her big hoop earrings fell to her shoulders, but were partly hidden by the kerchief which she held over her head with one hand, as if in fear of a draught, while with the other she still grasped the door latch.
To Derby's inquiry as to whether His Eminence were at home, she responded suspiciously—almost contemptuously, as she looked him over from head to toe. Certainly, His Exaltedness was at home. What should one of his venerability be doing abroad at such an hour!
Derby's bow was apologetic. Would Signora have the kindness to deliver the letter which he tendered her?
She turned the envelope over in her hands, looked again at the stranger, and at last stood aside so that he might enter.
Derby waited in the dim, low-ceilinged passageway, which suggested anything but the antechamber of an archbishop's palace. Presently a door opened, a feeble yellow haze filtered into the corridor, and the old woman reappeared and led Derby into a small, stone-paved apartment illumined by a single flickering lamp of the most primitive design, by the light of which the archbishop had evidently been reading. As soon as Derby entered, the venerable prelate arose. In his longsottanaofviolet he looked strangely diminutive and feminine; his pale skin and mild eyes, and the soft white hair like a fringe beneath his velvet cap—all gave an impression of great gentleness, an impression heightened by contrast with the bare, white-washed walls and rigorously meager furnishing of the cell-like room. With the courteous manner of all southern countries, the archbishop placed the best chair for his guest, and said smilingly:
"Do you speak Italian? Ah—I am glad you understand that language! My French is very failing, and as for Inglese—non lo conosco. It is too difficult at my age. If I were younger I should like to learn your tongue." He said this with inimitable grace, and added with a gentle inclination: "You are Americano, are you not? Your land has done much for my people! But tell me, Signore, in what way may I serve you? Sua Eccellenza il Principe Sansevero places you under our protection, but he does not tell us what it is that has brought you to us." The archbishop, leaning back in his chair, might so have sat for his portrait—his white hands folded one over the other, and the great amethyst ring on the third finger of his right hand seeming to reflect the paler shadings in the folds of his gown.
"'YOU ARE AMERICANO, ARE YOU NOT? YOUR LAND HAS DONE MUCH FOR MY PEOPLE!'""'YOU ARE AMERICANO, ARE YOU NOT? YOUR LAND HAS DONE MUCH FOR MY PEOPLE!'"
"I have come, your Eminence," said Derby, going to the point at once, "to work the 'Little Devil' mine." Before the archbishop could utter a protest, he continued very quickly and distinctly:"I know just such mines as that which are being operated now without danger or suffering to the miners."
Then, briefly as possible, he went on to outline his system of mining. There was no necessity, he said, for miners to descend below the surface of the earth, and he would need only a dozen men—instead of the many workers, including women and children, that were now employed. To Derby's surprise, the old man seemed troubled.
"I grow old, Signore; one does not easily take in new ideas! By your method—am I right?—you will employ a dozen men in place of a hundred. That troubles me, though your plan seems good. If there are but a small handful needed, it must put the others out of work. The mines are hard. A harder existence cannot well be imagined—but the good God must know it is for the best, since he allows it to continue. To be sure," he interrupted himself sadly, "he calls them to him soon!"
"You mean they die young in the mines? That is what I have been told."
"Yes, Signore, in their twenty-eighth year the people are at the end of life; at the age of twelve they are already stooped and wrinkled old men and women. For the children it is most terrible; it is they who climb up the high ladders out of the pits in the earth—it gives one aforetasteof inferno to see such things.Cosi Dio, m' ajuti, it is true! Yet so they live—otherwise they must die. Whatcan we do? Since the Santa Maria does not intervene, the poor must work or starve. They have not the money to go away to the country beyond the sea, to America, the land of plenty! If some of the rich abundance might be brought to my people——" He shook his head, looking, it seemed, beyond the white walls of the room, as though he saw a vision.
Then slowly, carefully, Derby explained. It was to bring some of the customs of the land of plenty that he had come. He would pay the men—the father, the brother, the big son—more money than had been earned hitherto by the whole family. No, His Eminence did not understand—the work was not to be harder, but easier! And for the reason that he had already explained: Machinery would take the place of children's hands; steel pipes, and not human beings, would descend into the stifling fumes. He wanted to get a few intelligent men to go with their families to the deserted village clustered about the "Little Devil."
Still the old man sat, looking straight before him.
"All that you tell me, Signore," he said at last, his voice echoing a sweetness, a cheerful patience that was doubtless the keynote to his nature—"it all sounds very beautiful; but, indeed, it cannot be! The great Duke Scorpa has given the matter much thought. The mine owners cannot pay the people more—there is scarcely any profit as it is. Theduke has often told me this himself, so I know it to be true."
Derby thereupon said that the great Duke Scorpa had doubtless done everything possible, and that under the old method there had been no help for the conditions, but—and again he expressed himself as clearly as possible—with the new method and with machinery, one man could do the work of many. So the wages might be trebled and yet the mines be made to pay.
As Derby talked, a faint color mounted in the cheeks of the archbishop—his eyes grew eagerly wistful, and at last he leaned forward in his chair, his voice almost breathless as he asked, "Can such a thing be true—that in your country the father can earn sufficient that the little children need not work? Ah, Signore—who knows?—who knows?—may be at last the cry of thebambinoshas reached the throne of the Santa Vergine!" He sat again silent, but this time with a smile on his lips. Then the old woman appeared in the doorway and the archbishop arose.
"It is the hour for my supper," he said. "I shall esteem it an honor if you will break bread with me." Derby was about to decline, thinking it better to return later, but the manner of the old man left no doubt as to the genuineness of his invitation, and Derby accepted. In the adjoining room a small table was set with very few utensils. Two plates, two forks, two spoons, a cup, and a wineglass apiece—that was all. After the blessing, they were served a frugal meal of bread and goats' milk, a pudding of macaroni, and a plate of figs; there was also wine, acid and thin, which the good Marianna—for so the housekeeper was called—had doubtless pressed herself.
Her son Teobaldo, who waited at table, was dressed in some semblance of a livery—black broadcloth and a white tie. The archbishop ate sparingly—he drank a little of the milk, and tasted a piece of fruit, but his conversation with his guest seemed to satisfy him far more than food could do.
Full of the hope of relief for his people, he now turned to plans for the Signore Americano's protection. Throughout the mountains, the hard life had made a hard people, he said, and unfriendly to foreigners. What could they expect from the hands of strangers when their own nobility, even their priests, were powerless to help! But the Signore should be put under the guidance of Padre Filippo—and also there should be twocarabinierifor protection. Besides, Padre Filippo would recommend carpenters and mechanics of Vencata Minore—the village nearest the "Little Devil"—good men and honest, who would help in the work.
The meal ended, they returned to the living room. The old woman fussed at the wick of the lamp and then placed a book close to the light and opened it at the page marked by a bit of paper. The archbishop smiled. "She takes good care ofme, my Marianna. Once she lost my place, but she is very careful."
Derby looked at the page beneath the flickering dimness. "Does Your Eminence read by this light?"
"Oh, yes, a little. By day I can see nearly as well as ever, but in the evening I can read only the books that have large print—and only for a little time. But what would you have, Signore? My eyesight may not any longer be like that of a boy." Then he added: "The good sun brings now each day a longer time to read, and perhaps by the time another winter makes the days again grow short, I shall be near the Great Light that knows no setting."
"You might have a good lamp and see very well," suggested Derby.
"A lamp? But in this I burn olive oil. It is very good oil, Signore—no one makes it better than Marianna! The reading at night is only for young eyes." Again he smiled.
With difficulty he wrote a letter of direction to Padre Filippo and affixed his seal. Also he promised that twocarabinierishould be at the inn at eight o'clock on the following morning, to accompany the expedition to the mines. And they should carry a letter to Donna Marcella—in her house the Americans had better lodge. From there they could with ease go each day on muleback to the "Little Devil."
At last Derby arose to leave. And then, although he was not of the Roman faith, he swiftly bent and kissed the ring on the thin, white hand that had been placed in his own. Into the archbishop's eyes came a look of tenderness that yet seemed tinged by a vague fear, as he laid his free hand on the bent head and gave his blessing, "Deus te benedicet, meum filium.May you fulfil your hopes for my people in safety!" Very slightly the old man's voice broke.
Derby stood at his full height, towering by head and shoulders over the archbishop as he again thanked him for his hospitality and his protection. He walked back to the inn, his mind full of many things. At theufficio della postahe glanced up, hesitated, and then, with a smile, went in and wrote out the following telegram:
"Miss Nina Randolph,"Palazzo Sansevero,"Rome.
"Send immediately by express one good Rochester burner lamp and barrel of kerosene to
"Send immediately by express one good Rochester burner lamp and barrel of kerosene to
"Sua Eminenza,"L'Arcivescovo di Vencata,"John."
It was nearly nine o'clock the next morning before Derby's party was ready to start. The pack mules, with a bulging load on either side, looked like great bales on legs. Long steel pieces needed for the drills were strapped lengthwise between two mules. The saddled animals, which were to carry the members of the party were held at a short distance while the men were seeing to the final preparations. Four horses had been procured for Derby, Porter, Tiggs, and Jenkins; thecarabinierihad their own horses, and Padre Filippo his mule.
As it happened, the priest had come to Vencata the evening before, so that the archbishop had been able to turn over at once to his especial guidance the Americanos who had been sent by the Blessed Virgin to rescue thebambinosfrom the inferno of the mines. Padre Filippo was short, rotund, with a ruddy complexion and a cheerful crop of carrot-colored hair. The twocarabinieriwere splendid specimens of men, but after all, to saycarabinieriis enough: for the Italian cavalry must stand not only a physical, but also a moral examination that goes back three generations. It is not sufficient for acandidate to be above suspicion himself; his father and his father's father must have been so as well. These two men were both over six feet, lean and dark-skinned, with that trace of the Arab which one sees all through the people of Sicily; and they were silent and serious, in great contrast to another type of Sicilians who smile much. They wore thecarabiniereuniform for the mountain districts—a double-breasted coat with two rows of silver buttons, coat tails bordered with red, two strips of red down the trouser seams, a visored cap, and high black boots. They were mounted on magnificent black horses, with rifles hung across their saddles.
Finally, as the procession started and the hoofs clattered on the hard road leading up over the mountain, people crowded out on the little iron balconies, heads appeared at the windows—heads that seemed gigantic by comparison with the miniature houses, which were painted brilliant pink and blue, mauve and Naples yellow.
As the road ascended, it turned inward away from the sea, and after a short distance narrowed into a rocky mountain path that looked like the dry bed of a stream, winding through the wilderness. After an hour's ride the character of the landscape changed. The semi-tropical vegetation grew gradually sparse, and after a while in the distance, seemingly in the midst of the path, a great rock loomed gigantic and gaunt, cutting in two the blue dome of the sky. Still farther on, they came uponstretches of straggling wild peach, olive, and lemon trees. Beyond again, tangles of hawthorn were interspersed with patches of dried weeds and grass. But as they neared the mining district the soil was bleak and barren. The mountain rivers were dry, and their beds made yawning gaps as though the earth had violently shuddered at her own desolation.
At last, about noon, they came to the village of Vencata Minore, which stood in a little plain of green. The house of Donna Marcella was set on a slight eminence and, compared with the surrounding habitations, was quite pretentious. It was kalsomined white, had a courtyard of its own, and back of it was a little fruit and flower garden. Donna Marcella was a buxom, thrifty, and dominating woman. Had she been a man she would assuredly have migrated to America and become a captain of industry; however, circumstances having placed her under heavier responsibilities, she came smiling to the door, followed by a troop of brown-skinned and curly-haired babies. She courtesied and beamed and gesticulated her delighted welcome of the strangers and, upon being shown the archbishop's missive, kissed the red seal. A few words were intelligible to her, but the reading of a whole letter was beyond the measure of her accomplishments, and she looked to Padre Filippo to explain. She could write the few nouns and do sums quite well enough, though, to make out the bills for heroccasional guests,—if in doubt she added another figure.
Sometimes she had guests—ah, but illustrious! The Gran Signore, Sua Eccellenza il Duca di Scorpa—that name to be whispered, and yet to be dwelt upon—no less a personage than such an exaltedness had come to sleep a night under her humble roof! The distinguishedforestierishould have the very room HisEccellentissimohad occupied! She seemed to choose among the Americans by instinct, assigning to Derby and Porter this apartment in which she took such evident pride.
It was, in fact, airy and good sized, scantily furnished, but scrupulously clean, and with two great beds heaped high with the red and yellow flowered quilts which in Sicilian houses serve the double purpose of warmth and decoration: not alone do they lend supreme elegance to the bedrooms, but suspended from the windows, they most gayly embellish the house front on days offesta.
As soon as his belongings were unpacked, Porter, with an eye for beauty as well as a view to making himself popular, began to draw a pencil sketch of the little Marcella, a witch of five and beautiful as a doll. Tiggs and Jenkins saw to the unloading of the mules. But Derby and thecarabinieri, with Padre Filippo, after a hasty luncheon of bread, figs, and goats' milk, pushed on to the mines. Beyond the outskirts of the little village the land soon grew dead again—not a bird fluttered, not a livingthing was heard. A few patches of green had sprouted here and there in the lava blackness of the soil, but otherwise the country seemed under a curse.
A new bend in the road brought them close to a small abandoned settlement whose windowless houses gaped, staring like lidless eyes, at the pits which had been dug and left like caverns of the dead—as, in truth, they were. Yet nature had softened the graveyard with straggling spots of new green. A vapor rose from one of the pits as though a monster lay in wait below to destroy his victims with the poison of his breath. This was "Little Devil," the priest told Derby. Through the jaws of that yawning hole many had entered the gates of paradise! His lips muttered a fragment of the prayer for the dead; he crossed himself, and Derby noticed that thecarabinieridid the same.
During the day Derby had been slowly unfolding to Padre Filippo his plans, and now the priest looked anxiously into the American's face—could he still be hopeful of such a cemetery as this? Derby rode slowly, making a cursory survey of the conditions. It was much as he had expected to find it, he told the priest; he was not disheartened.
They did not stop, as Derby was anxious to go to the Scorpa mines, where he expected to secure his men. He had heard enough to know what lay before him; and even in anticipation he felt oppressed. Another sudden turn in the road gave them a nearview of the settlement. Over the arid earth spread a dense haze of smoke and yellow vapor, and down in it—in this vapor whose metallic fumes gripped lungs and throat and burned like fire—crawled human beings! Close to the earth they crept, so that the rising smoke might spend its worst above them.
Derby had thought himself prepared, but with the horrors actually before him, he shuddered uncontrollably; unconsciously, he gripped the pommel of the saddle so tensely that his knuckles whitened. The mine of "Golden Plenty!" From the horrible mockery of the name, the devil might well have taken notes in planning hell! Copper Rock was paradise indeed, compared to this inferno.
Little forms passed by him with faces wizened and wrinkled—were they gnomes?—or what? Surely not children! Small, narrow, stooped shoulders, backs bent under loads buckled to tottering legs. Ragged the creatures were to the point of nakedness, and on their arms and legs were scars fresh and scarlet from the torches of the overseers. Women and men crawled near the caldrons, and down the ladders into the hell pits went the children—up with the heavy loads past the torch and lash of the devil servers, whose duty it was to see that no panting being loitered. Day in, day out, these miserable wretches stumbled under the stinging pain of burning flesh—and once in a while a child's faltering feet slipped from the ladder rungs,his weak hands lost hold—a cry, a fall, and the "Golden Plenty" had swallowed one more victim.
As Derby's party drew near, a straggling group gathered around the strangers. They stared dully and without intelligence, and yet like animals in whom savagery is ever ready to burst restraints. The stronger men among them glowered at the intruders, turning against a strange face with the snarl they dared not show to one grown familiar. Beyond the mines, ranged at different heights on the barren mountain slope, were huts much like the abandoned ones at "Little Devil"—black caverns, smoke-stained and gaping, where stooping human beings moved in and out, maimed and broken like insects whose wings some brutal boy has pulled.
And yet the priest affirmed that to get half a dozen families to leave this place and go to the new settlement would be no easy task. They were too dull to grasp the promise of betterment, and the very mention of "Little Devil" filled them with alarm. It would need many days and much patient handling to convince them that theforestierimeant them good instead of harm.
Padre Filippo was the one who most persuaded them—he and a Sicilian workman, a native of Vencata who had lately returned from America. Between these two the miners' fears were partly allayed, and in less than a week's time Derby received a small company of men, women, and children into his new settlement. They came like prisoners, under the guard of thecarabinieri, and so feeble and debilitated were the wretched creatures that, for a few weeks after their arrival, Derby turned his settlement into a hospital.
Yet suspicion surrounded him on every side. It was one of thecarabinieri—the taller one—who ventured his opinions one day: "Signore does not know these people! Signore is letting them grow strong that they may the better use their fangs. They cannot believe that Signore is not the devil in paying such wages—in pretending to give them a life of ease. The great Duke Scorpa is their friend—he has been able to do nothing. The good and honorable His Eminence the Archbishop, not even he may help—none in this world; not even the Holy Virgin on her throne in heaven. If any one comes to interfere it must be the devil—since none but the devil comes to such a land."
"That's all right, my friend," Derby answered. "Just you wait and see. Animals never resent kindness, and that's all these poor creatures are—just animals."
In the meantime he and the engineers and the carpenters from Vencata Minore had worked day and night getting up the scaffolding for the first well. The first boiler was set up in a shanty, and pens were hammered together to hold the molten sulphur.
From the moment of Derby's arrival in the Vencata mines, thecarabinierikept him under theclosest guard and accompanied him wherever he went. But in spite of this there were a few mild outbreaks. One day a stone was hurled at him. Another time some half-crazed wretch tried to stab him; and once a pit was dug across the road, in which his horse broke a leg, so that it had to be shot. This last nearly brought Derby to the point of meting out punishment to the offenders. Yet when he realized again the sufferings of these people, his anger gradually subsided.
However, these disturbances had all taken place within the week after his arrival in Sicily, and at the end of the second week he strongly objected to being guarded. Each day he knew he gained in the confidence of the people, and each day he knew also that they must be improving. He felt sure that as their bodies were put in something like human condition, their intellects must follow. Thecarabinieriprotested that he would be making a needless target of himself should he attempt to ride alone in the early dawn from the village of Vencata Minore to the mines. The road led between rocks and underbrush where a man might hide with perfect safety. But the apprehension of thecarabinieridid not trouble Derby in the least. "Nonsense," he said. "Why, the miners are all beginning to like me—I can see it in their faces."
What he said was true, and under the new treatment the people were beginning to look and act like human beings. Even two weeks were enough toshow a settlement beyond Padre Filippo's highest hopes. No child was employed in the mines, neither were the women allowed to work outside their huts and plots of ground. They might dig and plant the soil, but they were barred out of the mines. With the elimination of the refining vats and the reduction of the scorching heat, and with the presence of moisture from the steam and water required in the new mining, conditions became favorable for luxuriant vegetation.
Besides, Derby had received by cable approval of certain quixotic measures: Each family was given a milk goat. The houses were furnished with cook stoves, beds, chairs, and tables. And although it would be some time before "Little Devil" would seem inappropriate as a name, less than three weeks had passed when Derby, sitting in the tent which served as his office, felt a real thrill as he footed up assets and liabilities. One well had been sunk, and the boilers and engines needed to operate it were going full blast. The scaffoldings for two more were nearly up.
In the doorway near him Porter lounged, drawing a picture of Padre Filippo, who, in turn, was writing on his knees, his fine penmanship covering page after page—all about the miracles of the Americano, and addressed to the archbishop.
But his Eminence needed no letters from Padre Filippo to announce miracles, since a miracle had happened in his own house—a marvel that had madeMarianna cross her hands in speechless wonder. The new lamp burned on the table, the green reading shade reflected almost as much light on the page as the sun itself, and His Eminence might now read any book he pleased. The archbishop thoughtfully stroked the cat that lay curled on his lap.
"It is not in this world," he mused, "that we shall journey, thou and I, to the land of the Americanos, the miracle workers; but assuredly the Santa Vergine sent the young Signore Americano to bless our people with his miracles—even as he has sent this one to thee and me."
But beyond the bright radius of the good archbishop's lamp a figure waited and watched in the darkness—the figure of a man with a sinister face and across it a mouth that looked like a seam.
In the purple dawn of a morning two or three days later, Derby emerged from the house of Donna Marcella, saddled his horse and for the first time without his attendantcarabinieri, started for the mines. The faint light showed him only a blurred and indistinct landscape; and in the crisp stillness the leather of his saddle creaked a monotonous accompaniment to the horse's hoofs, which struck the road with clean-cut staccato sharpness.
Meanwhile, in the big best room on the ground floor of Donna Marcella's house, Porter slept. A man's step outside and the fingering of a shutter-latch disturbed him not at all; even when there came a nervous tap on the window frame, Porter slept on. A moment of silence followed, and then a voice breathed stridently, "Signore!" Porter stirred in his sleep. A man's head and shoulders appeared over the sill of the open window. "Signore! Signore l'Americano!" The tone was louder and very urgent. Porter awoke with a start and seized his revolver. "Pax, pax!" came the voice as the man dropped out of sight.
"Signore, Signore.It is a friend who would speak to theSignore l'Americano!" The syllableswere whispered with ringing distinctness. Porter jumped out of bed, revolver in hand. Close to the window, he demanded who was there.
"It is a matter of life and death! May I show myself?"
"Certainly!" said Porter. "For heaven's sake, stand up and let me have a look at you! And give an account of why you are getting a Christian out of his bed at this unearthly hour!" In the glimmering dawn he could see the outline of the man's figure, but he could not recognize him.
"Signore, I would speak with the bigAmericano, the one who sent the daylight miracle to the palace of the archbishop. I am sent by His Eminence the Archbishop. I am Teobaldo his servant. See, I carry the archbishop's holy ring to show I speak the truth."
Porter saw the ring distinctly, held between the man's fingers—"Yes! I believe you. Be quick!"
"I have ridden through the night, but I arrive late because I lost my path in the blackness. Last night by chance it became known to the archbishop that there is a plot to assassinate the Americano. I am come secretly to warn him. The assassin is waiting along the road to the mine; it is to be there, and the hour is now!"
Porter sprang back into the room. "Jack, Jack! For God's sake, are you there?" He tore back the covers of Derby's bed, but it was empty. He remembered with horror that thecarabinieriwere not to accompany Derby that morning. He had insisted that they were no longer necessary. Scrambling into his clothes any fashion—his trousers over his pajamas, his shoes over stocking less feet—he strapped on his revolvers, and took the window ledge at a bound.
He jumped astride his horse without stopping for a saddle, and beat and kicked the poor beast along the road as though the very fiends were after him. The horse rocked on his legs and breathed hard, but Porter had no consideration for that. The pale dawn revealed an empty road, along which he sped at breakneck pace, while beads of perspiration gathered on his forehead in his impatience at the seeming slowness of his progress. At last the road cut through a tangled bit of forest with a sharp bend at the end. Just as he reached the turn two shots rang out in quick succession. With his heart almost frozen, he dashed around the corner in time to see Derby plunging into the underbrush. Like a wild man Porter shouted, "I'm coming, Jack, I'm coming!"—impelling his already spent horse to the spot where Derby had disappeared into the thicket.
Derby, like all men who live much in the woods, had almost an animal's instinct for danger, and his ears, supersensitive to wood sounds, had caught a moving in the bushes. To get his revolver in hand and drop forward behind his horse's shoulders had been the act of a second, and the bullet whistledover his head. But the immediate effect of the attack had been to enrage him out of all prudence. Firing point-blank at the smudge of smoke, he jumped from his horse and rushed in pursuit of his assailant.
A second shot Derby thought had grazed his coat; he emptied two barrels of his revolver in the direction from which it came. Another bullet whistled close to his ear, then two shots went entirely wide of him, and the next moment he reached a man lying prone—with blood gushing from his head. Derby knocked the rifle out of his hands, but there was no further danger of its being fired, for the man had fainted.
In a second Porter dashed up, in a frenzy of terror. When he found Derby safe, his fright turned to rage, and he was impatient to put the prisoner into the hands of thecarabinieri. "Our friend Basso will make short work of him, I'm thinking!" he said grimly.
But Derby had no intention of making such a disposition of his prisoner. "Not at all," he said deliberately; "we will hand him over to Padre Filippo. Priests are better for such creatures than police. Come, help me tie up his head—my shirt will do!" Suiting the action to his words, he pulled off his coat. His shirt was scarlet!
"Great Heavens, man, why didn't you say you were hit?" Porter gasped.
Derby looked down at his shirt and then quizzically at Porter. "Funny," he remarked indifferently; "I thought the bullet had only grazed my coat. It can't be much, as I didn't even feel it; however, you might tie me up, too." He pulled off his shirt. Porter tore it up and bound Derby's shoulder. Then together they made a bandage for the bandit's head.
"He's got an ugly mug!" said Porter, as he wiped the man's face. "By Jove—it's the brigand I noticed coming down on the boat! I told you he looked like a cutthroat."
"Your natural intuition for character?" Derby smiled, but the next minute added soberly enough: "If he came from the mainland we must be up against a good deal more than the poor devils here! Who the deuce can he be? He's no miner, that's certain!"
They had dragged their prisoner out to the side of the road and laid him down. And as Derby insisted, Porter rode off for the priest. Derby sat near his charge, who showed no signs of returning consciousness. His own shoulder ached now, and he gradually became aware of slight weakness. He felt in his pockets for a flask, but found he had forgotten to carry one, so he lit his pipe instead, and fell to scrutinizing the man before him. He was of small stature, but there was great endurance in the long, pointed nose, the strong, lantern jaw; and the face, sinister though it was, retained, even in unconsciousness, an expression of grimfortitude. The more Derby studied the man, the more certain he became that he was no mere skulking coward.
At last Porter and thepadreappeared over the hill. No sooner had the priest caught sight of the prisoner than he exclaimed, "Per l'amor di Dio!It is Luigi Calluci!" There was added horror in his tone as he whispered, "Signore, Signore, he is the body servant of the Duca di Scorpa!"
At this even Derby started, but he said quite calmly, "Poor devil! The question is, what will you do with him?"
"He must be put under the arrest——"
"Well, naturally," chimed in Porter.
But Derby interposed: "He shall be put under nothing of the kind until he can give an account of himself. There is no knowing what fancied grievance he may have against me. Wait until he has been heard. The question of punishment can be considered then. But in the meantime he must be nursed!"
"You have his brother in the settlement—Salvatore Calluci, the man to whom you have given special duty in the night shaft." The priest's red head wagged mournfully: "It was to the wife of Salvatore you gave an extra goat because of her children!" But then he added, brightening a little at the thought, "I am sure—of a truth I am sure, Signore, that the brother had no hand in this!"
"Very well, then; we will take him to the houseof Salvatore. We will say merely that an accident has happened—do you hear? I do not want the story of an attempted assassination to get about." Derby's voice had grown quite weak as he spoke, and the priest and Porter were both too concerned for him to think of opposing any wish he might express in regard to the prisoner. So they laid the man across the saddle of Padre Filippo's horse, and Porter and thepadrewalked on either side of him into camp. Derby rode his own horse, but by the time he reached the mine, he had lost so much blood that he was pretty fit for the doctor himself. Tiggs, a lean, wiry Yankee, sandy-haired and resourceful, was a tolerable surgeon, and he plastered Derby up, pronouncing the injury nothing more serious than a flesh wound.
Luigi Calluci meanwhile was carried into the hut of his brother and put to bed. If Salvatore and his wife had any idea of the cause of his "accident," they said nothing. They were among the most intelligent of the miners, and their gratitude to Derby for the change in their condition, was proportionate.
But it was not alone the Callucis who had made fast strides. The whole settlement had undergone a change that was nothing short of transformation. One reason for the rapid improvement was doubtless the influence exerted by the Sicilian carpenter who had been to America and who had returned a "great man" and rich. Through him asinterpreter, all things the American did were good; and the "land of plenty" lost nothing in the telling. The people began to look upon the new mining process as a miracle, and the American as sent by the Blessed Virgin. The wages were stupendous—as much as sixty cents a day! But best of all, they were wages for work that a human being could do. Around the miners' houses were the beginnings of gardens, and several families had, in addition to the goat, a few chickens.
Every day Derby went to the hut of the Calluci. Gradually consciousness came back to Luigi. Slowly, as reason returned, the events of the past weeks formed themselves in distinct sequence. He knew where he was now—at the "Little Devil." Had he not himself descended its ladders into the mine's burning pits? Was not that why he was undersized and weak of lungs? He bore scars that had seared even deeper than through the flesh. He knew the huts, too: caves in which men lived like beasts. It was all clear except the surroundings in which he found himself. The haggard faces of his brother and his sister-in-law were familiar, yet not as he remembered them. The withered bodies of the children seemed not nearly so pathetic! Then, full of bewilderment, he heard his sister-in-law singing. Singing! Could it be possible that a voice could sing in the "Little Devil" settlement! Distinctly he heard another sound, the voices of children at play.
Thinking all this must be merely the creation of his brain, he raised himself on his elbow and made a careful survey of the room. There was no doubt that he was in a good bed, covered by a thick new quilt, and the walls were cleanly white-washed. The air held none of the foul and strangling odors which never had been, and never could be, forgotten. That his brother had moved and had become a well-to-do peasant of the mountain slopes and vineyards was the only explanation possible. He tried to get out of bed, but fell back dizzy, and his mind wandered off again to the semi-conscious vagaries of illness.
In this state of mind, he had become used to a new presence—a very big, very kind personality that hauntingly resembled the Americano—it was, of course, one of those phantoms that appear before fevered imaginations. He realized that, and now he made an effort to detach the dream from the reality.
But even as he was trying to put his thoughts in order, the door opened—and he vividly saw the figure of his vision followed by his sister-in-law. Thinking that his mind was wandering, he lay quite still. Then he heard a kindly voice saying, "I have brought soup for him with me—in this jar. You have only to heat it."
Luigi felt a strong hand clasp his wrist and feel for his pulse. Then came the full belief that this was no dream, but reality, and that it was theTyrant, the Americano himself, who laid hands on him. With a frantic effort he sprang up and tried to close his fingers around his enemy's throat! But firm, powerful hands gripped his shoulders and forced him quietly down in his bed. Then he lost consciousness.
When he came to, he thought he had dreamed the whole occurrence. His brother and Padre Filippo were sitting beside him, and they would not let him talk. But gradually, as his strength returned, he took in the story. From his brother, from the neighbors, from the priest most of all, he heard, bit by bit, of the work that the Americano had accomplished—the Americano whom he, Luigi, had nearly slain. Slowly, slowly, he understood that the "Little Devil" mine had been re-christened "The Paradise"—not by the nobles who owned it, but by the people who worked in it. And then little by little the resentment, the bitterness, the grievances of his long, hard life turned him against the Duke Scorpa just as his realization of what Derby was doing won him over to the American.
That Scorpa should have sent a man to stab him was, curiously enough, a fact that did not seem to trouble Derby in the least. It was, after all, no more than he might have expected. Before he had left Rome, Scorpa had warned him. He rather admired him for that.
Derby was heart and soul interested in his settlement. In the short space of time since he had arrived in Sicily, the incredible had already come to pass—and to Derby, as he looked forward, there was every reason to feel assured that the settlement would develop as he had planned. The output of the mines promised to be up to the most sanguine expectation. The whole scheme was organized and started—there was nothing to do now but to keep it going.
In the meantime he received a cable which, when deciphered, ran: