CHAPTER X

On the following day Orsino and San Giacinto descended from the train at the little station of Piedimonte d'Etna, 'the foot of Mount Etna,' as it would be translated. It is a small, well-kept station near the sea, surrounded by gardens of oranges and lemons, and orchards of fruit trees, and gay with vines and flowers, penetrated by the intense southern light. The sky was perfectly cloudless, the sea of a gem-like blue, the peach blossoms were out by thousands, and the red pomegranate flowers had lately burst out of the bud, in splendid contrast with the deep, sheeny green of the smooth orange leaves. The trees had an air of belonging to pleasure gardens rather than to business-like orchards, and the whole colouring was almost artificially magnificent. It was late spring in the far south, and Orsino had never seen it. He had been on the Riviera, and in Sorrento, when the orange blossoms were all out, scenting the sea more than a mile from land, and he had seen the spring in England, which, once in every four or five years, is worth seeing; but he had not dreamt of such dazzling glories of colour as filled the earth and sky and sea of Sicily. It was not tropical, for there was nothing uncultivated nor unfruitful in sight; it seemed as though the little belt of gardens he saw around him must be the richest in the whole world, and as though neither man nor beast nor flower nor fruit could die in the fluid life of the fragrant air. It was very unexpected. San Giacinto was not the kind of man to give enthusiastic descriptions of views, and the conversation on the previous evening had prepared Orsino's mind for the wild hill country above, but not for the belt of glory which Sicily wears like a jewelled baldric round her breast hidden here and there as it were, or obliterated, by great crags running far out into the sea, but coming into sight again instantly as each point is passed.

In the heap of traps and belongings that lay at his feet on the little platform, the two repeating rifles in their leathern cases were very good reminders of what the two men had before them on that day and for days and weeks afterwards.

'Winchesters,' observed the porter who took the things to the carriage behind the station.

'How did you know that?' asked Orsino, surprised at the man's remark.

'As if they were the first I have carried!' exclaimed the man with a grin. 'Almost all the signori have them nowadays. People say they will kill at half a kilometre.'

'Put them inside,' said San Giacinto, as they were arranging the things. 'Put them on the back seat with that case.'

'Yes, the cartridges,' said the porter knowingly, as he felt the weight of the package.

'And God send you no need of them!' exclaimed the coachman, a big dark man with a stubbly chin, a broad hat, and a shabby velvet jacket.

'Amen!' ejaculated the porter.

'Are you going with us all the way?' asked San Giacinto of the coachman, looking at him keenly.

'No, signore. The master will drive you up from Piedimonte. He is known up there, but I am of Messina. It is always better to be known--or else it is much worse. But the master is a much-respected man.'

'Since he has come back,' put in the porter, his shaven mouth stretching itself in a grim smile.

'Has he been in America?' asked Orsino, idly, knowing how many of the people made the journey to work, earn money, and return within a few years.

'He has been to the other America, which they call Ponza,' answered the man.

The coachman scowled at him, and poked him in the back with the stock of his whip, but San Giacinto laughed. Ponza is a small island off the Roman coast, used as a penitentiary and penal settlement.

'Did he kill his man?' inquired San Giacinto coolly.

'No, signore,' said the coachman, quickly. 'He only gave him a salutation with the knife. It was a bad knife,' he added, anxious for his employer's reputation. 'But for that--the master is a good man! He only got the knife a little way into the other's throat--so much--' he marked the second joint of his middle finger with the end of his whip--'and then it would not cut,' he concluded, with an apologetic air.

'The Romans always stab upwards under the ribs,' said San Giacinto.

'One knows that!' answered the man. 'So do we, of course. But it was only a pocket knife and would not have gone through the clothes, and the man was fat. That is why the master put it into his throat.'

Orsino laughed, and San Giacinto smiled. Then they got into the carriage and settled themselves for the long drive. In twenty minutes they had left behind them the beautiful garden down by the sea, and the lumbering vehicle drawn by three skinny horses was crawling up a steep but well-built road, on which the yellow dust lay two inches thick. The coachman cracked his long whip of twisted cord with a noise like a quick succession of pistol shots, the lean animals kicked themselves uphill, as it were, the bells jingling spasmodically at each effort, and the dust rose in thick puffs in the windless air, under the blazing sun, uniting in a long low cloud over the road behind.

San Giacinto smoked in silence, and Orsino kept his mouth shut and his eyes half closed against the suffocating dust. After the first half-mile, the horses settled down to a straining walk, and the coachman stopped cracking his whip, sinking into himself, round-shouldered, as southern coachmen do when it is hot and a hill is steep. From time to time he swore at the skinny beasts in a sort of patient, half-contemptuous way.

'May they slay you!' he said. 'May your vitals be torn out! May you be blinded! Curse you! Curse your fathers and mothers, and whoever made you! Curse the souls of your dead, your double-dead and your extra-dead, and the souls of all the horses that are yet to be born!'

There was a long pause between each imprecation, not as though the man were thinking over the next, but as if to give the poor beasts time to understand what he said. It was a kind of litany of southern abuse, but uttered in a perfunctory and indifferent manner, as many litanies are.

'Do you think your horses are Christians, that you revile them in that way?' asked Orsino, speaking from the back of the carriage, without moving.

The man's head turned upon his slouching shoulders, and he eyed Orsino with curiosity.

'We speak to them in this manner,' he said. 'They understand. In your country, how do you speak to them?'

'We feed them better, and they go faster.'

'Every country has its customs,' returned the man, stolidly. 'It is true that these beasts are not mine. I should feed them better, if I had the money. But these animals consist of a little straw and water. This they eat, and this they are. How can they draw a heavy carriage uphill? It is a miracle. The Madonna attends to it. If I beat them, what do I beat? Bones and air. Why should I fatigue myself? There are their souls, so I speak to them, and they understand. Do you see? Now that I talk with you, they stop.'

He turned as the carriage stood still, and addressed the spider-like animals again, in a dull, monotonous tone, that had something business-like in it.

'Ugly beasts! May you have apoplexy! May you be eaten alive!' And he went on with a whole string of similar expressions, till the unhappy brutes strained and threw themselves forward and back to kick themselves uphill again spasmodically, as before.

It seemed very long before they reached the town, dusty and white under the broad clear sun, and decidedly clean; spotless, indeed, compared with a Neapolitan or Calabrian village. Here and there among the whitewashed houses there were others built of almost black tufo, and some with old bits of effective carving in a bastard style of Norman-Saracen ornament.

The equine spiders entered the town at a jog-trot. Orsino fancied that but for the noise of the bells and the wheels he could have heard their bones rattle as their skeleton legs swung under them. They turned two or three corners and stopped suddenly before their stable.

'This is the master,' said the coachman as he got down, indicating a square-built, bony man of medium height who stood before the door, dressed in a clean white shirt and a decent brown velveteen jacket. He had a dark red carnation in his button-hole and wore his soft black hat a little on one side.

In the shadow of the street near the door stood five carabineers in their oddly old-fashioned yet oddly imposing uniforms and cocked hats, each with a big army revolver and a cartridge case at his belt, and a heavy cavalry sabre by his side. They were tall, quiet-eyed, sober-looking men, and they saluted San Giacinto and Orsino gravely, while one, who was the sergeant, came forward, holding out a note, which San Giacinto read, and put into his pocket.

'I am San Giacinto,' he said, 'and this gentleman is my cousin, Don Orsino Saracinesca, who goes with us.'

'Shall we saddle at once, Signor Marchese?' asked the sergeant, and as San Giacinto assented, he turned to his men and gave the necessary order in a low voice.

The phantom horses were taken out of the carriage, and the two gentlemen got out to stretch their legs while the others were put in. The carabineers had all disappeared, their quarters and stables being close by; so near, indeed, that the clattering of their big chargers' hoofs and the clanking of accoutrements could be plainly heard.

'The master is to drive us up to Camaldoli,' observed Orsino, lighting a cigarette.

'Yes,' replied his companion. 'He is a smart-looking fellow, but for my