MR. RANDOLPH SENDS FOR JOHN DERBY
Meanwhile, one morning in New York, the express elevator of the American
Trust Building shot skyward without stop to the twentieth story, at
which John Derby alighted. He emerged upon a broad space of marble
corridor, leading to the offices of J. B. Randolph & Co. Derby, being
known--and, moreover, on the list of those expected--escaped the
catechism to which visitors usually were subjected, and was shown into
the waiting room without question. When, some minutes later, he was
admitted to Mr. Randolph's private office, he caught the sign of battle
in the ruffled effect of the great financier's hair, for he had a habit,
when excited, of running his fingers up over his right temple until his
iron gray locks bristled. But, whatever the cause of his annoyance, it
was put aside as he held out his hand in unmistakable welcome to Derby.
"Hello, John, good work! You have got here nearly a day ahead of the
time I expected you. What is the latest news? Did you have any trouble
in the swamp district?"
"None at all. We find the quick sands average only about thirty feet,
and the tubes go easily below. Everything is going along splendidly.
Better than I had ever dared to hope."
Mr. Randolph nodded his satisfaction. "And now," he said, "I'll tell you
why I wired for you. The Volcano Sulphur Company is buying every
available mine, and it is time for us to look into the Sicilian
possibility. How soon can you leave for Italy?"
"As soon as you say, sir."
"Have you secured your assistant engineers?"
"Jenkins came on with me, for one, and I am pretty sure I can get a man
named Tiggs--a good mechanic, who was with me at Copper Rock."
"And how soon can you get your machinery? You'll have to take everything
in that line with you. Otherwise, you might get off by--to-morrow? The
_Lusitania_ sails in the afternoon." He added this last with impatient
regret.
Derby pondered a moment, and then answered briskly: "I can make it.
Jenkins can follow with the machinery on a Mediterranean boat. There
will be no delay over there, as I'll have time to make my arrangements."
"Good!" Mr. Randolph seemed pleased, then asked abruptly, "How well do
you speak Italian?"
"Fluently, very; grammatically, not at all."
Mr. Randolph smiled. "Fluently will be good enough. Especially if you
pick up an assortment of expletives in the Sicilian vernacular. Go to
Rome first. Look about and get information on the Sicilian mines,
especially those that are unproductive by the present mining system.
Lease one and try your process. If it works--we have the biggest thing
in the way of a sulphur control imaginable. You'd better get an option
on every sulphur mine you can, to lease on a royalty basis. Our Italian
correspondent will be notified to honor your drafts. You will have to
use your own discretion as to necessary expenses--of course, you are to
send a weekly statement to the office. The royalty to you on your
inventions will be ten per cent. on the net, not the gross, earnings.
Still, if it all turns out well, you ought to make a nice thing out of
it."
A swift gleam of eagerness leaped into the young man's face. Mr.
Randolph looked at him sharply. "I did not know that you were so
mercenary, John."
"In my place any man would want millions, or else that----" He broke off
abruptly, leaving his meaning unexpressed. But his eyes had something
wistful in their direct appeal, which perhaps the older man understood,
for his expression was unusually kind as he asked with apparent
irrelevancy, "Have you heard from Nina?"
Derby flushed even under his tan, but he answered frankly: "Yes, I have
had letters regularly--bully ones--full of Italy and the high nobility.
Isn't it just like her to remember her friends at home!" Then he added
ardently, "There was never any one like Nina--never! Of course, every
man in Italy is in love with her by now."
"Humph!" was Mr. Randolph's answer, as his hand went up through his hair
until it stood straight on end. "Had she the disposition of Xantippe and
the ugliness of Medusa she would be called a goddess divine by the
titled sellers. But what can I do? I can't keep her locked up at
home--for the matter of that, she is run after about as badly over
here----" and he added gently in an altered tone, "My poor little girl!
Sometimes I think how much better off she would have been as the
daughter of a man without money. At present, of course, she is beset
with every possible danger. I don't think Nina will lose her heart
easily, mind you, but there is an underlying excitement in her letters
that gives me some uneasiness as to the state of her emotions. I do not
relish the possibility of her marrying one of those ingratiating,
cold-hearted, and seemingly ardent noblemen." Then, as though to qualify
his general statement, he continued, "My sister-in-law married a decent
sort of a man, and I imagine they are happy--but she'd have done much
better if she had married your uncle. He never cared for any one else,
and I hoped it would be a match. But Alessandro Sansevero came along and
swept her off her feet. She was a great beauty, and I believe he married
her for love--which is more than I can hope in Nina's case."
Into Derby's face there came a look like that of the small boy who gazes
hungrily into a bakery shop window as he protested. "No one could know
Nina well and not love her. She is the squarest, the truest, just as she
is the most beautiful, girl in the world."
"No,"--Mr. Randolph spoke quite slowly, for him--"Nina is not
beautiful--sweet, and unspoiled, and lovable, yes; but she is not a
beauty."
Derby's face kindled with indignation, and he retorted unguardedly,
"I grant you she hasn't one of those pleased-with-itself,
don't-disturb-the-placidity-of-my-peerless-perfection sort of faces; the
valentine sort that strikes a man at first sight, but that at the end of
a week he would do anything for the sake of varying its monotony. But
Nina--the more you look at her the more lovely she becomes, _unless_ she
gets the notion that some man wants to marry her money--and then it is
time for me to take to the prairies! Her eyes get hard, her mouth goes
up on one side and her features seem to set and freeze. She has only one
hard side, but that is adamant! Poor girl, I can hardly blame her. As
she says herself, there are proposals on her breakfast tray every
morning--with all the other advertisements."
Mr. Randolph looked directly into the blue eyes before him, as though to
probe their depths. "I want my girl to marry a man whom she can look up
to because he is trying to accomplish something himself," he said
emphatically, "and not one who will lay his hat down in the front hall
of my house instead of at his own office. And," he added grimly, "a
coronet in place of the hat is still less to my liking."
A curiously restrained, almost diffident, expression, which in no way
suited his personality, came into Derby's face, and he abruptly rose to
take leave.
Mr. Randolph rose also, but, instead of terminating the interview,
crossed the room, saying, "Before you go, John, I want to show you a
prize I have found." He turned a canvas that stood face to the wall, and
lifted it to a sofa for a better view.
It was a marvelous picture: a Madonna and child; and on the shoulder of
the Madonna was a dove.
"It is supposed to be a Raphael," said Randolph, "and I am convinced
that it is. The story is rather interesting. Raphael painted two
pictures that were almost identical. One is in the Sansevero family.
Their collection in Rome I have seen, but this picture has always hung
at Torre Sansevero, their country estate, and I have never been there.
However, as I said, Raphael painted two. The second belonged to the
Belluno family and was sold long ago into France. There it became the
property of a Duc du Richeur, and during the Revolution it was
supposedly destroyed. Some time ago Christopher Shayne, the dealer,
bought among other things at an auction a nearly black canvas. On having
it cleaned, this was the result--without doubt the lost Raphael!"
"Jove, that's interesting!" exclaimed Derby. "I'd like to see the
other. Perhaps I'll have the chance, although Nina wrote that they were
leaving for Rome, and that was several weeks ago. But now good-by, sir.
Tiggs and Jenkins are to meet me at the Engineers' Club at noon. I am
sure I can get off to-morrow."
Mr. Randolph held the younger man's hand in a long clasp as he said,
"Good-by, my boy, and--luck to you!"
* * * * *
As Derby left the office, the sudden prospect of seeing Nina so soon set
his thoughts in a turmoil unusual to the condition in which he managed
pretty steadily to keep them. Of all the things that this young man had
accomplished, none had been more difficult than preserving the attitude
toward Nina that he had after careful deliberation determined upon. To
his chagrin the task became more, instead of less, difficult, as time
went on. In the long ago, it had been she who adored and he who accepted
the adoration--in the way common with the big boy and the little girl.
He had taught her to swim, and to ride, and to shoot. And--though he did
not realize it--from his own precepts she had acquired a directness of
outlook and a sense of truth that embodied justice as well as candor,
and that was in quality much more like that of a boy than a girl.
Then came the time when he was no longer a boy. He went out West, and
work made him serious, and absence made him realize that he loved her as
that rare type of man loves who loves but one woman in his life. But
she, never dreaming of any change in his feelings, went on thinking of
him always as of a brother. Often, when he returned from a long absence,
and she ran to meet him with both hands outstretched, he looked for some
sign from her--some fleeting gleam such as he had caught in other
women's eyes. But always Nina's glance had met his own affectionately,
but squarely and tranquilly. His coming, or his going, brought smiles or
gravity to her lips, but her eyes showed no sudden veiling of feeling,
no new consciousness of meaning unexpressed. When she laughed, they
danced as though the sunlight were caught under their hazel surface.
When she was serious, they were velvety soft. To John hers was the
sweetest, brightest, and assuredly the most expressive face in the
world. But he knew the distrust and coldness that would undoubtedly be
his portion should he ever forget the rôle that up to the present he had
played to perfection--that of her brotherly, affectionate friend. Her
very expression, "Dear old John"--generally she said "Jack"--her entire
lack of reserve or self-consciousness in his presence, put him where he
belonged.
And the other women--undoubtedly there were lots of the every-day kind,
waiting all along the stream, just as there always are when a man is
young and fairly good to look upon. And there were the different, and
far more dangerous, "other women," who wait at the whirlpools for a man
who has that elusive but distinctly felt magnetism which some
personalities exert, seemingly with indifference, and quite apart from
any effort or intent. But John Derby lashed his heart to the mast of
hard work and resolutely turned his eyes and ears from the sirens. And
so he saw the years stretching on, always crammed with tasks that he was
to accomplish, but without hope of ever winning the girl he loved,
because of the barrier of her money.
Only a short time before, when a letter from her had come to
Breakstone--a long letter full of the beauty and charm of Italy and the
Italians--Derby had gone to the edge of the forest and--for no reason
that any one could see, save the apparent joy of swinging an
axe--chopped a tree into fire-wood.
"D--n it all," he muttered as the chips flew, "I could support a
wife--if she wasn't so all-fired rich." Later he carried a load of his
wood across the clearing to the camp and slammed it down. "Oh, h----, I
hate money!" he exclaimed vehemently to Jenkins.
Jenkins, a Southerner, took the statement placidly. "Looks like you're
workin' powerful hard to get what you don't care for. Some of that
kindlin' 'd go good under this soup pot."
Derby laughed and fed the fire. But "Shut up, Jenkins, you ass!" was all
the latter got for a retort courteous.