CHAPTER XII
Peter sat on a cow's skull, bleached and white, at the Estancia Las Lomas, reading a letter from Jane Erskine. He had begun to think that the Royal Mail Steam Packet Service was run for the sole purpose of carrying correspondence between himself and her, and he felt pleased with its punctuality in delivering his letters.
'It feels a bit queer being here,' he said to himself, gazing round him as he spoke. It was the evening of a hot day, and there was a flame of crimson over to westward, where a few minutes ago the sun had sunk through great bars of flame. All round him was a vast, solitary land, but nearer the estancia were pleasant homely sights and sounds. A cart yoked with five horses abreast stood by the galpon; a flock of geese walked with disdainful, important gait across the potrero; and the viscashos popped in and out of their holes with busy importance, like children keeping house. The farm horses, turned out for the night, cropped the short grass near where he stood. Peons, their day's work over, loitered in the patio, and the major-domo's children rode by, all three of them on one horse, their arms round each other's waists. The little estancia house stood, red-roofed and homelike, with green paraiso trees about it. In the veranda Toffy was stretched in a hammock, a pile of letters and newspapers from home beside him; Hopwood appeared round the corner carrying cans of water for baths; while Ross, their host, in a dress as nearly as possible resembling that of a gaucho, was that moment disappearing indoors to make the evening cocktail. He came to the door presently and shouted to the two men to come in, and pointed out to them—as he had pointed out every evening since they had arrived—his own skill in swizzling.
It was a curious coincidence that had led Peter and Christopherson to Las Lomas. When they reached Buenos Ayres a very pleasant and unexpected meeting occurred, for Peter met Chance, a man who had been with him at Eton, on his way down to the river to go home. Chance had lost his young wife a little while before, and was returning to England to see what the voyage and a change would do to cure him of an almost overwhelming grief, and his partner Ross was left behind to look after the estancia. Ross was at the hotel also, and proved an excellent fellow. And Chance suggested that Ogilvie and Christopherson should return to Las Lomas with him and see something of the life in Argentine, staying as long as they could, to keep Ross company until he himself should return.
The invitation was accepted without hesitation, and it seemed that the two travellers were in luck's way. The estancia was a snug little place, amply watered by a river lying some miles above the last port where the small river-steamer called. This port was nearer the estancia than the railway station at Taco, and the last stage of the journey, therefore, was made by steamer. The river was a wide, shallow stream, very difficult of navigation. Nearly ten miles broad in some parts, at its deepest it never gave soundings of more than five fathoms of water. In dry weather it was possible in some places to drive a cart across it, while in others the current was quick and dangerous. It was full of shallows and sand-banks, and for some miles the course of the little steamer was marked out by boughs of trees stuck into its muddy bottom.
The steamer was a well-found craft compared with any others that had navigated the river before, and was a new venture on the part of one Purvis by name, who had lately acquired considerable property on the river-bank. He was a gentle-mannered, nervous-looking individual, with weak, pale eyes that watered incessantly, and he had a curious habit unknown except to town dwellers in Argentine of dressing like a City clerk. All the men in camp wore breeches and wide felt hats and polo boots, but Purvis was habitually dressed in dark tweed clothes and a bowler hat. Even on the steamer, and in the heat of the midday sun, he wore the same kit, and walked up and down the deck with an umbrella held over his head. He spoke half a dozen languages, but seemed to think in Spanish, for whenever he spoke quickly or impulsively that was the tongue which he used.
The crew of the steamer was composed of a queer mixture of elements; and, whatever their moral qualities may have been, their appearance would not have been altogether reassuring to a man, for instance, travelling with a good many valuables about him. There was Grant the engineer, who never spoke at all, and who loved his engines with a personal love; Pedro, a man with big, melancholy eyes, half Basque and half Italian; an old Belgian stoker and a nigger from South Carolina; and, lastly, John Lewis (or Black John, as he was always called), who came from a Danish West Indian island, and who said he was an Irishman and had been a cabinetmaker.
The little steamer was not uncomfortable. She was a flat-bottomed river-boat, and carried cargoes of hides and other Saladero produce. There were some live pigs with immense tusks, and some tasajo in the hold, and a raft of pipes of tallow which a hawser towed behind. The boat was supposed to draw only two feet of water, but in her present overloaded state she dragged heavily against the mud in the shallower parts of the river.
Sir John Falconer, who had come down to the river to see the two travellers off, drew Peter Ogilvie aside and had a considerable talk with him before saying good-bye.
'Don't attempt amateur detective work yourself,' he urged, 'but stay with Ross until proper official inquiries can be made into the case. There is nothing for it but to remain inactive for the present, but gather information quietly where you can. The law out here is a clumsy mover, and you may have to wait months before you hear anything. Keep your eyes and your ears open; travel about the country a little, and get into conversation with as many people as possible. News in Argentine is not carried by the newspapers but by the men who ride from place to place, and more particularly by scamps who have no fixed address for very long. My advice to you would be to say as little as possible about the business which you have in hand, but get into conversation with men who have lived long in the country.'
'I tried that sort of thing on the steamer coming out,' said Peter; 'but we didn't get very much information. The whole thing, you see, is a very old story.'
'This man Purvis, whom you are travelling with,' said Sir John, 'is the sort of person who might help you. He knows the country intimately, as far as I can gather, and depend upon it he hears more gossip on board his boat than is ever heard anywhere else in the whole country. Chance dislikes the man, but he may be useful.'
'He looks rather a worm,' said Peter.
'It is generally worms who turn king's evidence,' said Sir John, with a laugh at his own joke, and then added quickly, 'I don't speak personally, of course. Your captain is not exactly one's idea of an old sea-dog, but he is a gentle, intelligent little man.'
'Ross said something about there being trouble on his estancia,' said Peter. 'I don't know what it was all about.'
'He must have some difficult men to manage up there,' replied Sir John. 'There is always more or less trouble amongst these mixed nationalities out here. But that need not affect you, of course.'
'No,' said Peter. 'My cue seems to be to gossip like an old woman with every one I come across.'
'And to say as little as you can yourself,' concluded Sir John. 'The man who speaks very little and hears a great deal is always in a strong position.'
'Although an uninteresting beast to meet,' Peter remarked in parenthesis.
And then, as the voyage was about to begin, the two friends bade each other good-bye.
The steamer trip up the shallow river was thoroughly enjoyable, in spite of the amazing bad food which the travellers had to eat, and the ever-present smell of pigs and hides. The vegetation of the river-bank was beautiful in the extreme, and the smells on board the boat were often counteracted by the exquisite scents which were wafted from the shore. Mimosa-trees, air-plants, and every sort of creeper gave an almost tropical appearance to the low woods through which the river ran.
Purvis proved himself an agreeable companion in a timid, mild way. He pointed out his own estancia house by the river-bank, and invited Peter and Sir Nigel to come and stay with him some day.
The three passengers did not trouble to turn in when night fell, but lay on deck and leaned against bales of wool until the boat arrived at the little port of La Dorada at two o'clock in the morning. Moonlight and dawnlight lent an air of mystery and beauty to the solitary country; there was a sort of vast stillness over the land, as the boat glided to her moorings in the early morning. Nothing could be heard but the chirping of a bicho, or the desolate neigh of one of the horses that awaited them by the little quay. The stars shone and twinkled overhead, and the air was clear and cool and marvellously still. Black John woke the travellers up and told them it was time to disembark; and Purvis, to whom sleep seemed quite unnecessary, was awake and ready to give them a send-off.
'Anything I can do for you while you are out here,' he said to the two friends as he bade them good-bye, 'I will do most willingly. I am passeando now, but I hope to be at my own place shortly, and will ride over and see you. Ross has not been out here long, and perhaps does not know so much about the country as I do.'
The Englishmen thanked him and mounted their horses, while their luggage was put into a rough cart, and they then rode off in the mysterious dawn across the great silent country to the little estancia house amongst the paraiso trees.
Ross was a capital host, and as the only possible entertainment he could offer his guests was work upon the estancia he gave them plenty of it; and the out-of-door life, in spite of the heat and the want of newspapers, the mosquitoes, and other minor ills, was full of interest and touched with a sense of freedom and hardness.
Toffy was a man who could accommodate himself to every change of circumstance. His present life suited him, and he had seldom been in better health than in Argentine. He adopted Spanish phrases and spoke them glibly, threw the lasso with the air of a strong man, and tried to pick out a particular head of stock from the moving mass in the corral. He chatted with the peons, hunted wild mares in the monte, and drank cocktails as to the manner born. Ross had decided for an Argentine style of dress. He wore a beard, and his hands were hard from the strain of the lasso; but his old brown polo boots had been worn at Hurlingham and Ranelagh, and were shapelier than were generally seen in the corral. Ross was still at that enviable stage in life when to sleep out on the ground with one's head on a saddle is found preferable to a spring mattress and sheets. He enjoyed swimming rivers with his clothes on his head, and would have liked the sensation of fatigue described to him. Peter would probably always look like a cavalry officer, and would not have been easily mistaken for anything else, even if he had worn a garment of skins laced together with wire. He was burned a deep brown, some shades deeper than the colour of his moustache, and his eyes had come to have a certain fixed gravity in them which did not alter even when he laughed. His clothes, as Ross said, were still hopelessly clean and well cut, but he rode better than any man on the estancia, and did as good a day's work as any of the rest.
When the day's work was over Hopwood could be relied on to provide baths. Ross, as has been said, considered himself an expert at swizzling cocktails, and all three men had a fancy for playing the banjo, which they could never get in tune.
In spite of many drawbacks our two friends enjoyed the return to the primitive conditions of life. To be uncivilized has indeed considerable charm when the blood is young and the muscles are strong and wiry. Peter was for getting some of his own sheep out here, and a few good horses. And Toffy had schemes for an immense shipping industry, which would carry cattle at so low a rate to England that beef might be sold there at fourpence a pound, which, as he remarked, would benefit all classes. Ross gave his two years' experience with a weight of wisdom. He had a share in the estancia, and having tried to live in London in a Government office on two hundred a year, found Argentine by contrast the only country in the world for a white man.
Peter himself, as he sat on the cow's skull near the door, and saw the pleasant, simple life of the place, the major-domo's children ambling along on their horse, the flock of geese, and the peons loitering by the patio, was inclined for the time being to put a very low price on civilization, and to wonder how Jane would like a trip out here.
'Who knows,' he said to himself, 'my brother and I may do a deal. I may find him a patriarchal sort of cove, living the simple life and tending his own flocks and herds. He will migrate with his wives and little ones to Bowshott, and Jane and I will annex the flocks and herds in Argentine. The place might have its attractions for Jane; and, anyway, there would not be this beastly separation.'
Toffy appeared at the wire door of the corridor and shouted to them that breakfast was ready, and Peter strolled towards the house. It was an absurdly small dwelling, one story high, but with a number of low buildings round it, covering a considerable amount of ground. And withal it was a trim place which a man had furnished and fitted and made ready for his bride, and the poor little garden, now devoid of flowers, was another evidence of his care. The dining-room was a small whitewashed hall hung with guns and rifles, and furnished with a table and a deal cupboard which held some bottles of the rough red wine of the country. The room next to it, called by courtesy the drawing-room, had been built for Mrs. Chance when the rest of the house had been made ready for her, and it still bore upon it the impress of a lady's taste. There was a shelf running round the room furnished with photographs, and a sofa covered with a guanaco rug. In one corner of the room stood a piano, and upon it was a copy of Hymns Ancient and Modern, with music, for Mrs. Chance had been a parson's daughter at home, and she used to play to Chance and sing very sweetly on Sunday evenings.
The roughly built fireplace in the room was filled with logs, and a guitar always stood on a cretonne-covered box close by. It was on this little cretonne-covered box that Mrs. Chance had been wont to sit and play the guitar which Chance had purchased for her, and one of the peons had taught her to thrum Spanish airs upon it. It had been a pleasure to her during the brief year that she had spent in the estancia house, with its red roof and simple rooms, and the corridor that had been enclosed with wire-netting for her. It was she who had carved the blotter and paper-knife on the writing-table, and had made covers for the chairs. Mrs. Chance and her baby lie buried in the cemetery at Buenos Ayres, and the estancia house always has an unfinished look about it, for Chance likes to have it just as she left it.
Three or four sparsely furnished rooms opened out of the living-room, and the corridor made a cool resting-place for the wayfaring men who often rode up to the house at sundown, and for whose tired limbs a catre and a rug were sufficient for a night of dreamless slumber.
'All the same,' said Peter to himself, 'we don't seem to get much forrader in our search for the missing heir.'
Many weeks had gone by, and not a word had disturbed the impenetrable silence which surrounded the fate of Peter's brother. That the time had passed not unpleasantly did not alter the fact that no single thing had been done, nor a single clue discovered. Peter had ridden about, talked to all sorts and conditions of men, had taken one or two journeys, and was still as far as ever from any trace of his brother. Purvis had ridden over several times from his own estancia, bringing his little boy with him. His treatment of the boy was affectionate to the point of sentimentality. He looked after him with a woman's carefulness, was over-anxious about his health, and treated him as though he were much younger than his actual age.
Peter greeted Mr. Purvis's visits to Las Lomas with cordiality, induced by the feeling that even a chance word dropped by a man who knew the country and its people as intimately as Purvis did might throw some light on his quest. Added to this, the fair, mild-mannered man was an intelligent talker on the rare occasions when he spoke at any length; though for the most part he contented himself with regretting in his dismal way the existing state of commerce in South America, and asking naïve questions which exposed his ignorance on many subjects. The conversation of the three public-school men who knew the world of London, and still spoke its language and discussed its news, who knew moreover their friends' stories and jokes, and had stayed in a dozen country houses together, was widely different from Mr. Purvis's constant melancholy comments upon the state of Argentine finance. Still, there was no doubt about it, the man might be useful; and, after consulting with Ross and Toffy, Peter Ogilvie had decided to give him a hint of the reason which had brought him to Argentine. Without definitely stating that he had anything to discover, he had allowed Purvis to know that if he could pick up information about a child who had been lost sight of twenty-five years ago it would be of considerable interest to himself and others to hear it.
Purvis thought inquiries might be set on foot, but that it would cost money to do so; and, without actually adopting the case professionally, he promised to keep his eyes open, and had already made a journey to investigate what at first sight seemed like a clue to traces of the missing man.
He and his son rode over very early to Las Lomas to-day; and, the boy having been sent into the house to rest and get cool, Purvis crossed the bare little garden, passed the stout rough paling of the corral, and went towards the group of paraiso trees where Peter was sitting. He wore his bowler hat and had the appearance of being a very delicate, overworked City clerk.
'Ross is not at home, I suppose?' he said, sitting down beside Peter in the shade and removing his hat. The hat always left a painful-looking red line on Mr. Purvis's forehead, and it was removed whenever he sat down. The surprising thing was that he should ever have worn such an uncomfortable headgear.
'Oh, good morning, Purvis!' said Peter. 'No, Ross is not about, I think. Did you want him?'
No, Mr. Purvis would not trouble Ross; it really did not matter—it was nothing. Probably Mr. Purvis did not want to see Ross, and had no business with him, and actually wanted to see some one else. It was one of the wretched things about the little man that his conversation was nearly always ambiguous, and that he never asked straight-forwardly for anything he wanted. And yet, look what a head he had for business! He had made one immense fortune out of nothing at all in the boom-time, and had lost it when the slump came. Now he seemed on the way to make a fortune again. His estancia lay on the river-bank, and was independent of the old heart-breaking system of railway service in Argentine for the conveyance of his alfalfa and wheat. He had been successful where other men had failed. There must be an immense amount of grit somewhere in that delicate frame! Perhaps his chronic bad health and pathetically white appearance and the perpetual tear in his pale eyes had a good deal to do with giving the impression that he must necessarily be inefficient. His dreamy gaze and soft voice heightened the suggestion, and it was needful at the outset to discount Mr. Purvis's appearance altogether before accepting the fact that his mental powers were above the average.
Purvis sat down, wiped his pale forehead with the bar of red across it, and returned his handkerchief to the pocket of his dark tweed coat. He produced a small bottle of tabloids, and shaking a couple of them into the palm of his hand he proceeded to swallow them with a backward throw of his head. Tabloids were Mr. Purvis's only personal indulgence. He had been recommended them for his nerves, and he had swallowed so many that had they not been perfectly innocuous he must have died long ago.
Peter put down an English newspaper that he was reading, stretched his legs on a deck-chair, lighted a cigarette, and, as Mr. Purvis did not seem inclined to move off, made up his mind to submit to a talk with him under conditions as comfortable as possible. As an agent Purvis was possible; but as a companion his melancholy, his indistinct, soft voice, and the platitudes which he uttered were boring to more vigorous-minded men.
Purvis took a small and uncomfortable chair near the one in which Peter was stretched luxuriously, turned his wide-open pale eyes upon the young man and said, 'I have been thinking a good deal about the story which you told me some time ago about the child who disappeared out here in Argentine some twenty-five years since, and has not been heard of again. It sounds like a romance.'
'Yes,' assented Peter, 'it's an odd tale.'
'I have lived in many parts of Argentine,' said Purvis, 'and one hears a good deal of gossip amongst all classes of persons, more particularly I should say amongst a class with whom you and our friend Mr. Ross are not intimately acquainted.'
Mr. Ogilvie put on an air of detachment, and said he supposed Mr. Purvis met all sorts and sizes.
'At first,' said Mr. Purvis, 'I did not pay much attention to the story except to make a few inquiries, such as I thought might be useful to you. But the other day, by rather an odd coincidence involving matters which I am not at liberty to divulge, I came across a curious case of a child who was brought out to Rosario many years ago.'
'What did you hear?' said Peter; he spoke quickly, and with an impetuous movement sat upright in the deck-chair, and flung away the end of his cigarette.
'I cannot tell you,' said Purvis, 'how I am hedged about with difficulties in this matter. For, in the first place, neither you nor your friend, although you seem interested in the case, have entered into the matter very fully with me. With that, of course, I shall not quarrel,' said Mr. Purvis, spreading out his hands in a deprecatory fashion. 'I only mean to say that before taking any definite steps to trace this story to its source I must, if you will forgive me, ask certain questions about the child; and, further, these inquiries which I propose to make must be conducted with discretion, and are apt to entail a good deal of expense.'
He paused, and Peter said shortly, 'Of course all expenses will be paid.'
'It will require immense patience to prove anything about an unknown infant who came out here twenty-five years ago,' said Purvis.
'I always thought it was rather hopeless,' said Peter; 'but it seemed to me the right thing to do.'
'It seemed the right thing to do,' said Purvis like an echo. The dreamy look was in his lack-lustre, weak eyes again, and his soft voice was more than usually indistinct. 'I should like very much if you could tell me anything about the man's childhood,' he continued. 'It is important to know every detail you can possibly furnish for the clue.'
'I never even saw a picture or a photograph of him,' said Peter.
'It is perplexing,' said Purvis.
'Yes,' said Peter, 'it is rather annoying.'
'Old servants are proverbial for their long memories,' the clerkly visitor went on. 'Are there any such remaining in his old home who would know anything about the man? Even a birth-mark—although it is a thing most often connected with cheap romances nowadays—might help to establish a case.'
'Or disestablish it,' said Peter.
'Or disestablish it,' repeated the echo.
'As a matter of fact,' Peter said, relenting a little, 'the child was born abroad, and no evidence of that sort is forthcoming. The lawyers have followed every possible clue that could lead to information about him without any result whatever.'
'Singular!' said Purvis.
'Yes,' assented Peter, 'I suppose there are few cases in which a man has disappeared so completely, and left no trace behind him.'
'The property which is at stake is a large one, I understood you to say,' said Purvis.
'I don't think I said so,' Peter answered; 'but there is no harm in telling you that some money is involved.'
'I should certainly know if any considerable property had been willed away about here,' said Purvis quietly; 'and you see our richest men in camp have really not much else except landed property to leave. In Buenos Ayres, and Rosario too, a man of importance in the town dying and leaving money could easily be traced.'
'Well, I haven't exactly expectations from him,' said Peter, feeling that he was getting into a muddle. 'The fact is,' he said cordially, 'I shall be interested to hear news of the man if you can obtain any for me.'
So far he had always regarded his brother's existence as some remote and hardly possible contingency. Now he began to see plainly that the man might very possibly be alive, and not only so, but that it might also be possible to trace his whereabouts. The sudden realization of this staggered him for a moment; but he went on steadily, 'I want the man found, and I shall spare no trouble or expense in finding him. Even if he is dead I do not mind telling you that any definite information would be welcome to me; and if he is alive my object is to find him as soon as possible.'
Mr. Purvis took out his pocket-book. 'You will at least know whether the man was dark or fair?' he said.
'Fair, I suppose,' said Peter; 'all the portraits in the house are of fair men.'
'The man I spoke of is dark,' said Purvis, continuing his jottings in his notebook in a neat hand.
'Fair children often get dark as they grow older,' said Peter.
Purvis acquiesced. 'The singular thing about it all is,' he said, 'that no one now seems to be living who saw the boy when he was a baby.'
'No one can be traced,' said Peter.
'This affair of the child in Rosario is probably a mare's nest,' said Mr. Purvis in his hopeless way, as he closed his pocket-book and put a strap round it.
'Well, at least find out all you can about him,' said Peter, as Hopwood appeared with coffee, and Ross and Toffy joined them and sat down under the paraiso trees. There had been some heavy work on the estancia that morning, followed by a lazy afternoon.
'Can you tell me, Purvis,' said Toffy, breaking off an earnest conversation with Ross, 'why there should be such an enormous difficulty about getting a boiled shirt to wear? I suppose it really does cleanse one's linen to bang it with a stone in the river, but the appearance of greyness makes one doubtful.'
'You and Peter are both so beastly civilized!' said Ross, in a flannel shirt with baggy breeches and long boots. 'You don't even like killing cattle, and the way Hopwood polishes your boots makes them look much more fitted for St. James's Street than for the camp.'
'You ought to make friends with Juan Lara's wife,' said Purvis. 'She often washes Dick's little things for him, and does it very nicely.'
'I believe that Lara, on purely economical grounds, wears our shirts a week or two before he hands them over to his wife to wash,' said Ross, laughing.
'Ross,' said Peter, 'employs the gaucho's plan, and wears three shirts, and when the top one gets dirty he discloses the next one to view.'
'Remember, little man,' said Ross, stretching out a huge foot towards Peter's recumbent figure on the deck-chair, 'I 'm a head and shoulders taller than you are.'
'I 'm sure Mr. Ogilvie's remark was only in fun,' interposed Purvis. He rose and went to summon his boy to come and have coffee, and the three men left behind under the trees watched him disappearing into the house.
'If it were a matter of real necessity,' said Ross, 'I believe I could endure the loss of Purvis; he becomes a bore, and tears and tabloids combined are really very depressing.'
'Poor beast!' said Toffy charitably.
'I can't make out,' said Ross, 'what the trouble is at present on his estancia. I have only heard some native gossip, and I don't know what it is all about; but there seems to be an idea that Purvis is lying on the top of a mine which may "go off sudden."'
'I believe,' began Peter, 'that Purvis is going to be of use, as Sir John thought he might be. There is a very odd tale he was telling me just now.' He broke off suddenly as Purvis reappeared in his usual quiet, shadowy way. He brought a small saddle-bag with him when he travelled, which seemed to be filled for the most part with papers. His dark clothes were always neatly brushed and folded by himself, and he generally spent his days riding to and fro between the house and the nearest telegraph-office.
'You should take a holiday while you are here,' said Toffy, seeing Purvis sitting down immediately to write one of his interminable telegrams. 'It would do you good.'
'It's my nerves,' said Purvis hopelessly.
Ross laughed and said, 'If I lived on weak tea and tabloids as you do, Purvis, I should be in my grave in ten days.'
'I think,' said Purvis, 'that these new phospherine things are doing me some good. But I sleep so little now. I don't suppose there's an hour of the night when I 'm so sound asleep a whisper would not wake me.'
'It takes a good loud gong,' said Ross, 'to make me even realize that I am in bed.'
'At home,' said Peter, 'I once had an alarm-clock fixed above my bed to wake me, and at last I told the man who sold it to me that it never struck; and really I thought it did not until he showed me that it worked all right.'