'MY DEAR CANON,'—it ran—'you must allow me to say what I think of your splendid conduct in regard to poor little Mrs. Avory. I had heard the story, of course, of her very indiscreet behaviour, but it was not till this morning that I knew how splendidly you had thrown yourself into the breach by allowing Mrs. Wrottesley to go over to Hulworth to stay and nurse the poor thing. I must tell you that I hear on all sides nothing but the kindest things said about your action in the matter. I do not often write so unreservedly as at present, but I do feel strongly on the subject, and on occasions such as this I may be allowed to say that it takes a good man and a broad-minded one to act promptly and generously—would that there were more of them in the English Church!'
Miss Abingdon used to fear afterwards that perhaps she had said too much; but to her also, as to Mrs. Wrottesley, the relief of speaking her mind once in a way was irresistible.
Of course it weakened the canon's position to show the letter to his wife. He ought to have relented gracefully and with dignity, and to have consented as a personal favour, even against his proper judgment, to his wife's remaining where she was. But Miss Abingdon's letter was too full of kind remarks to be kept to himself. He handed it to Henrietta, and when she had read it he folded it up carefully and put it in his pocket.
'That,' he said, 'is one of the best women that ever lived, and perhaps, who knows, there may be others who see this matter in the right light also.' All that he had previously said passed completely out of his mind as he talked of the insight and the complete understanding that some good women evinced. He began to speak with manly kindliness of the poor little invalid upstairs, and when at last he bade good-bye to his wife he kissed her affectionately and bade her—in his usual formula—not do too much.
Miss Abingdon's letter had shown the canon to himself in his true light; before he reached home he had come to believe that it was he who had urged his wife to go to Hulworth. As was usual with him when he felt strongly, he adopted a character rôle, and his handsome face wore a more than usually beneficent and great-minded expression upon it as he walked with his fine erect carriage through the village that night; while it would hardly have required a playbill ofdramatis personaeto indicate the fact that the canon was living the part of the Vicar of Wakefield in the supreme moment when he visits Olivia in prison. He had promised his wife before leaving to drive over often to see her during her stay at Hulworth; and the following Sunday he preached one of his most memorable sermons on the text—'And when they shall take up some deadly thing it shall not hurt them.'
Mrs. Wrottesley remained at Hulworth until her patient was better, and then the good-hearted canon joined her there for a few days and was altogether charming to poor little Mrs. Avory, who liked him far better than she liked his wife. Toffy went up to London to join Peter Ogilvie and to take ship for Argentine, and Peter went to say good-bye to Jane Erskine.
These two last-named, cheerful people were in a state of acute unhappiness which each was doing his and her best to conceal. It required some pluck to be perfectly even-spirited and to show good mettle in those days. The world contained for them nothing but a sense of parting and uncertainty, and a horrible feeling of disappointment. Their lives were to be severed, perhaps for years, and over all the uncertainty and the thought of separation hung the mystery of Mrs. Ogilvie's half-finished message. The memory of her was clouded by the thought of how much she had suffered, and the conviction intruded itself painfully that, if they had but known more, something might have been done for her. The burden of a secret lies in the sense of loneliness which it brings. A unique experience, dissimilarity of thought or knowledge that is not shared by others, makes a solitude with which no bodily isolation can be compared. Only one person knew—only one person had ever known: that seemed the intolerable thing to the two persons left behind to wonder what the message could mean.
'I sometimes wish she had been a Catholic,' Peter once said. 'It might have been some sort of comfort to her.'
Mrs. Ogilvie was a woman who could remain silent always, and perhaps it was the supreme effort involved by breaking through a lifetime of reserve that, in its added strain upon her heart, had caused her death.
The last few days that the lovers had together were spent in a very loyal and affectionate endeavour to make each other as happy as possible. They made no professions of love or confidence, nor ever dreamed of promising to be true, because they never for a moment could admit the possibility of being anything else; and they did not even promise to write to each other, or to say their prayers at the same time every evening—the difficulty of calculating the difference between Greenwich and local time on a westward voyage put a stop to anything of that sort. Nor did they talk of remembering each other as they looked at the stars; but they spoke of the future and of all the good things it was going to bring, and they even laughed sometimes over imaginary portraits of the brother whom Peter was to seek, and they told each other ridiculous little tales of what he would be like and what he would say and do.
One afternoon Jane gave Peter a gold cigarette case as a parting gift, with his name scrawled in her big handwriting across it; while Peter presented his fiancée with a very handsome diamond ring, and forgot altogether that perhaps he could not pay for it, and went back and told the jeweller so. The jeweller, having known Captain Ogilvie all his life, and being aware that he had lately succeeded to an immense property, thought the young man was joking, and said it did not matter in the least.
Then came the day of parting—drizzly, wet, and depressing—just such a day as people always seem to choose on which to leave England; there was the usual routine of departure; the 'special' from Waterloo, the crowd at the station, the plethora of bags, chairs, and hold-alls; the good-byes, the children held up to the carriage-windows to wave hands, the 'last looks,' and the tears stopped in their flow by anxiety about luggage and missing bags. Then came Southampton, the embarkation, and a sort of enforced cheerfulness and admiration of the ship. Those who had journeyed down to see friends off adopted a congratulatory tone, as though the fact of their having already travelled so far in safety was a sort of assurance that there could be little to fear for the rest of the voyage.
At last the ship began to move slowly away, and finally swung round and got out of dock. It was just then that many of the voyagers wished that they might have had a few minutes longer of that dismal scene in the drizzling rain, of those dear hand-waving, smiling, or weeping figures on shore. But the engines had started their solemn beats, the pilot was on the bridge. The voyage had begun for good or ill, and the Lord watch over all!
Nigel Christopherson, being a man of feeling, said to a Scot who leaned over the rails with him, watching a group of female figures dressed in black on the quay, 'These good-byes are rather beastly, ain't they?'
To which the Scot replied, 'They make no difference to me whatever;' and the remark, Toffy thought, was an extraordinary check to any emotional feeling.
Jane got her first letter from Peter dated at Vigo, which peaceful port, with its rows of white houses built along the shore, and its green hill with the ruined castle behind, is a haven where many sea-sick passengers would be. They had had a bit of a tossing, Peter said, in the Bay, and Toffy had been very seedy but was better. The captain was a very good sort of fellow, and full of yarns; his cabin was profusely decorated with foxes' masks and brushes, and a few of his admirers believed that when he was at home he hunted. The unfeeling Scot, who had declined to sympathize with Toffy's sensibility to partings, had turned out to be a very interesting sort of man, and not unamusing. He helped to make the evenings on deck pass rather pleasantly with his stories. If Mr. Dunbar, as he was called, had not had such an amazing Scottish accent Peter would have said that probably the stories were not true. It was a letter such as a schoolboy might have written, but Jane treasured the ill-expressed sentiments as maidens of a bygone age may have treasured their lovers' shields; and although she left the letter lying about on her dressing-table, after the manner of modern young women, it was none the less the dearest possession of her life until the next one arrived.
Toffy sat up in his bunk with a horribly bad headache, and wrote a long letter to Mrs. Avory, which he posted at Vigo; and he wrote another letter, not nearly so long, but one which cost him much more time to compose, and addressed it to Miss Kitty Sherard. And this he carefully tore into little pieces one night when the decks were dark and there was no moon overhead; and he watched the small white bits of paper, as they floated away into the black depths of the water, and then he walked up and down the deck until the small hours of the morning, when Peter—one of whose worst qualities was that he always fussed over people he cared about—appeared in pyjamas and overcoat, and asked him sternly if he was trying to get another chill.
At Lisbon the intelligent Scot suggested to the two travellers that they should join him in a trip ashore. The three had made friends in the smoking-room, and Peter hailed Mr. Dunbar as a fellow-countryman, and enjoyed his rugged accent and his amazing penetration. He abounded in useful information about the country to which they were going, gave statistics on all points, and teemed with information. He was an ardent and indefatigable sightseer, and never visited a building without seeming to investigate it. The most complicated currency of a foreign country never disturbed him for an instant, and he would make little sums with extraordinary rapidity on the edge of any bill that was given to him. The difference of price, as stated in Spanish coinage, between a bottle of claret and a whisky-and-soda, might have puzzled some people; but Dunbar worked it out to a fraction in a second of time, and without a moment's hesitation laid his own share of the expense on the luncheon-table of the Braganza hotel. He spoke Spanish better than he spoke English, though he thought he had got rid of his Scottish accent; but he still said 'I mind' for 'I remember,' and differentiated in the matter of pronouncing 'court' and 'caught.'
At St. Vincent Peter wrote home again, and felt a certain sense of insecurity at leaving letters on the rocky island. It was four o'clock in the morning when the ship got into port, and the sun was rising over the hills eastward, while to the west the bare, rugged, mountainous land was a solemn, chilly grey colour. The water was smooth and dark beneath the hills, but nearer the ship it was touched by the clear pale light of the rising sun. The hills rose jagged and sharp against the sky without a scrap of verdure on them; but the kindly atmosphere turned those in the distance to a soft and tender blue. It smoothed away the rugged lines and effaced the cruel-looking scars that seamed their sides, and covered them with a misty peace. It seemed to the young man as he looked at them that things became easier when viewed from a distance. He had suffered very deeply during the last few weeks, and with him had suffered the girl whom he had loved and cared for always, and whom he would love and care for until the end of his life. Looking back at the distant misty hills on Cape Verde Island this voyage seemed to him, in spite of all its horrible sense of separation, to be something of a lull in the midst of quick-happening events. When first he left home he had been plagued with thoughts which he had fought with almost savage fierceness, and he had wrestled to expel them from his mind; but that there could be any mystery in his mother's life had necessarily awakened endless questionings in his mind.
Why, if this little brother of his had not died, had he disappeared? And what was the reason for his disappearance? 'He did not die,' said the half-finished letter which his mother's hand had traced; 'he did not die.' Once, in the middle of the night, as he said the wearisome sentence over to himself, a word had come suddenly before him in letters of flame, and Peter had turned away from it with a cry. A child who had been deprived of his life might be said in a sense not to have died, and there was the word of six letters in front of him in the dark. He turned on the electric light in his cabin, and for a moment he had half a mind to go in next door and wake Toffy. The burden of the suggestion was too horrible to bear alone. 'He did not die!' His mother's mental state might not have been perfectly sound at the time of her husband's death; and her preference for him, Peter, was a fact that had been remarked by all who knew her. Had she begun to write a confession to her son, and stopped short in the middle? 'Don't hate me too much,' the letter said. Why should he hate her? He did not know.
In the morning he was able to put aside utterly the thought which had tormented him, but he lived in dread of being beset by it at night-time again. He began to fear going to bed, and would sit up talking to Toffy till the small hours of the morning, or playing picquet with Dunbar. Men began to say that he 'jawed' too much and would not let them go to bed, little knowing how he used to try to prolong a conversation so that he might not be left alone with a horrible fear always ready to pounce upon him when night fell, and when only the thud of the engines playing some maddening tune broke the silence.
He tried, with a baffling sense of impatience, to make his own memory act, and to recall the days when he was not quite three years old. But the thing was an impossibility, of course, and his brain refused to give up a single picture of that time.
It was only when the ship had left St. Vincent that a certain amount of peace came to establish itself in his heart, and the large and beautiful consolation of the sea began to make itself felt. The weather was calm and clear, and the monotonous slap and swish of the water against the ship's side was in itself soothing. The company on board were all strangers to him, and this helped to give him a feeling that he was starting anew in life. Also he was on his way to do the best he could to find his brother, if he were living, or to clear up the mystery of his death, if he were dead. There was no horrid feeling of having failed to do the best that was possible. He must find Edward Ogilvie, or discover the grave where he lay; and after that it would be time enough to think what would be the next thing to do.
When the ship steamed away from St. Vincent in the evening, and the lighthouse on Bird Rock made a luminous point in the gathering darkness, the sight of land and of the hills had done Peter good, and had restored him to the normal and natural man again. He turned to look back at the rugged island, with the one point of light high up in its lighthouse, and he thought that it was like some lamp which a woman sets in the window to guide her husband home. With that feeling came a deep sense of the love and the confidence which he and Jane had in each other; he knew that she would not fail him whether he were rich or poor, happy or unhappy, and that seemed the only thing in the world worth knowing for certain.
After leaving St. Vincent the weather became intensely hot, the wind was with the ship, and there was not a breath of air to be had. Dunbar never felt the heat at all; he had not an ounce of spare flesh on his body, and he always ate two chops and some curry for breakfast, because, he said, if you were paying for a thing you might as well have it. He played in bull tournaments, and had a habit, that was almost provoking, of doing everything better than any one else. His sharp-featured face, long keen nose, and eyes with an intelligent-looking pince-nez fixed in front of them, seemed to speak of a sleepless vigilance.
Peter, having a very small amount of information on any subject at his command, was impressed by Mr. Dunbar, and thought that he might make a fortune if he used his talents on the music-hall stage or at a bureau for the supply of general information. The man seemed able to answer any question that might be put to him.
'That is an extraordinary chap,' he said to Toffy. 'I wonder if he would be of any use to us in the way of finding out about my brother?' But eventually he decided that nothing ought to be done until they should see Sir John Falconer.
'We had rather a disappointment here,' he wrote from Rio, in one of his unliterary letters, 'because the yellow fever is so bad that we are not allowed to land. I don't suppose you have any idea how tiresome a day in port is if one does not go ashore. The heat is really terrific, and under the awnings it feels exactly like sitting in an oven.' In conclusion Peter wished he was at home again, and thought Toffy seemed rather down in his luck; and he remained Jane's ever-loving Peter.
'I will tell you a strange thing about Rio,' began Dunbar, as he walked up and down the ship that evening. 'If you make your fortune there, you always go back to England and say that by right you are a Castilian noble.'
'It would be a very large fortune that would tempt me to live in this beastly climate,' said Peter, who was in a grumbling mood.
'I believe,' said Toffy, 'that with luck one could make a lot of money in Argentine. I have got a scheme in my head now, which, if it comes off, should place me beyond the reach of want.'
Dunbar referred to the boom time, and gave an exhaustive statement of the fortunes which had been made in that glorious epoch and had been lost afterwards. 'I have known men without capital make a hundred thousand pounds in a few years,' he said; 'and when they lost it you simply could not find them.'
'People do seem to disappear in Argentine in a queer way,' said Peter with intention, and with a glance at Toffy. 'I know we had a gardener—one of the under-men—and he had a brother who disappeared altogether out there, so our man went to find him, and he, also, was never heard of again.'
'The reason for that is not very far to seek,' said Dunbar. 'The first thing you do when you come to Argentine is to leave off writing letters—at least if you are a camp man. You simply can't abide the sight of pen and ink.'
'But there must be some means of tracing a man who gets lost,' said Toffy. 'He can't disappear into space.'
'You'd wonder!' said the Scot laconically.
'Still, you know,' persisted Peter, 'if a man's alive at all, some one must know his whereabouts.'
'Obsairve,' said Dunbar, 'it doesn't require much imagination for a man to change his name as often as he likes; and I should like to know what police supervision there is over the Italian settlers, for instance, in some of the remoter estancias? Murderers are hardly ever caught out here, and murders used to be as common as a fight in a pulperia. Every man carries a knife, and if you go up-country you will find that half the peons are nearly covered with scars; and if once in a way the knife goes too deep it's just one of those things which cannot be helped, and the less said about it the better. Again,' he went on, 'suppose a man is murdered on his own estancia—a thing that used to be common enough—the peons are all in league, and they generally have had a hand in it. Their master has been giving themcarne flacca(lean meat) to eat, and that is enough to upset the whole rickmatick of them.'
'I suppose they are not likely to turn on a revolution for our benefit,' said Toffy, in a tone of disappointment.
'I haven't got the fighting instinct in me,' said Dunbar literally. 'Whenever there has been fighting where I have been, I have always sat indoors until it was over.'
Peter, with a desire to lead the subject back to the case of men who disappeared, turned in the deck-chair where he was sitting enjoying a light breeze which had sprung up after dark, and said tentatively: 'I can't quite understand, you know, a man disappearing altogether and leaving no traces behind him.'
'I shall never,' said Dunbar, 'believe in the final disappearance or even in the death of any one until I have seen the doctor's certificate or the man's corpse. Men have got a queer way of turning up, and even the sea may give up secrets when you least expect it. Take the case of theRosana,' he went on, 'and allow me to put the facts of the case before you. TheRosanawas a ship that used to do good a bit of trading on the coast, and there was a man on board of her whom I used to know, and who had been once a little too well known in Argentine. Well, this ship foundered with all hands on board, and was never heard of again, although two of her life-belts were picked up, and one or two pieces of her deck-gear.'
'Any ship might founder at sea,' said Peter, 'and not be heard of again. Go on with your story, Dunbar.'
The electric lights on deck went out suddenly overhead, leaving only one burning; the breeze blew soft and cool, and six bells sounded sharply and emphatically in the quiet of the night.
'I wouldn't,' said Dunbar, 'give you the benefit of my speculations on the subject of theRosanawere it not that E. W. Smith was on board. E. W. Smith couldn't die; he wasn't fit for it. But it's a long story. I 'll not bother you with it.'
Dunbar looked doubtfully at his tobacco pouch, pinched it, and then contemplated his pipe. Peter handed him a cigar-case, and Dunbar accepted a cigar, and slipping it into an old envelope, he deposited it in his pocket. 'I don't believe I should have time to smoke it through now,' he said, and he continued filling his pipe.
'I suppose you come across a good many queer tales, travelling about as much as you do,' said Toffy.
Dunbar nodded without speaking. 'You'd wonder,' he said at last. He finished his pipe, knocked out its ashes, and put it into a little case lined with red velvet, and stowed it in his pocket; he looked at his watch and announced that there was still another half-hour before he intended turning in.
'We might have the end of your story,' said Peter.
'A story is as good a way as any other of wiling away the evening, and you are welcome to hear the rest of this one,' admitted Dunbar. He was a grand talker, according to his compatriots, and he chiefly loved the engineers' mess-room, where he could sit by a table covered in oil-cloth, and sip a little weak whisky and water, and revert to his broadest Doric in company with some engineers from the Clyde. 'TheRosana,' continued Dunbar, clearing his throat, 'only carried one boat on her last journey. I happen to know that for a fact, but the Lord only knows the reason for it! Now, this boat was found, half-burnt, lying on a lonely bit of coast a few weeks after theRosanafoundered. This is a thing which I may remark is not generally known; but I happen to have had ocular demonstration of it. The boat was a smart built one, with her name in gold leaf on the bows. Tranter was the captain of theRosana, and he liked to have things nice. Now, why should this boat have been found half-burnt on the coast, but with a piece of her name in gold leaf still partially visible?'
'The boat probably drifted ashore,' said Peter, as if he were answering a question in a history class.
Dunbar hardly seemed to hear him, and went on with hardly a moment's interruption. 'I am a student,' he said, 'of the deductive method of reasoning, and I begin with thea prioriassumption that E. W. Smith could not die. I should hold the same belief even if I believed in Purgatory.' (Dunbar pronounced the word with an incalculable number of r's in it, and it came from his throat like the rattle of musketry.) 'Presuming,' he went on, 'that theRosanafoundered, was E. W. Smith the man to go down in her, or was he not?'
'I suppose some of them took to the boat,' said Toffy. 'In an affair of that sort it is a case ofsauve qui peut.'
'The whole crew would have swamped the boat,' said Dunbar, who liked giving small pieces of information at a time.
'Consequently——' said Peter.
'Consequently,' said Dunbar, 'I 'm just biding my time, and I 'll tell you more when there 's more to tell.'
'It's a queer story!' said Peter.
'It's queerer than you think!' said Dunbar.
'You can't believe,' said the other, 'that this man Smith went off in the boat by himself?'
'I don't,' said Dunbar, 'for E. W. Smith couldn't row, and with all his sea-going he was a landsman to his finger-tips.'
'So then,' said Peter, 'he must have had accomplices, and accomplices always tell tales.'
'There 's one very certain way of silencing men,' said the Scot.
Peter rose abruptly from his chair and threw his cigar end out over the water. 'It's a beastly suggestion,' he said briefly. His face was white, and he found himself hoping to God that this tale of Dunbar's would not bring back to him those horrible nights he had had at the beginning of the voyage.
'Tranter was the captain of the boat,' said Dunbar, 'and Tranter was about the worst sort of coward you are likely to meet on this side of Jordan. E. W. Smith, on the other hand, never lost his head.'
The story seemed finished, and Toffy got up and stretched himself lazily, and said he was going to turn in; but Peter still sat where he was in his deck-chair.
'There might be a hundred different endings to your tale, Dunbar,' he said, 'each one as likely as the other. The boat, for instance, might have capsized, with too many men crowded into her, and have drifted ashore and been burned accidentally or otherwise by the people who found her. Or the crew and captain of theRosanamay never have taken to the boat at all, and she may have foundered with all hands (as you say the newspaper reports had it at the time); or theRosanamay be sailing in another part of the world with her villainous captain and E. W. Smith and no end of swag on board. Or both men, again, may be sleeping very peacefully at the bottom of the sea at this moment; that, after all, seems to me the most likely ending to them. Of course,' he finished, 'I don't know what grounds you may have for making another suggestion about their probable fate.'
Dunbar looked at him keenly for a moment. 'I would not have made the suggestion,' he said quietly, 'only, you see, since the wreck of theRosanaI have seen E. W. Smith or his ghost, and that is why I do not believe in the final disappearance of a man till I have set eyes upon his corpse.'
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 ampasseandonow, 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 ofHymns 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.'
'There is a beastly bell for the out-of-door servants at Hulworth,' said Toffy, 'which is beside my window, and——'
'I know that bell,' said Peter. 'I tie it up regularly every time I am at Hulworth.'
'Have you also got a country seat?' asked Mr. Purvis.
'Oh, Hulworth is a mouldy old barrack,' replied Toffy. '"Country seat" is too fine a name for it.'
'Is it quite near Bowshott?' asked Purvis.
'No, it's nine miles off,' said Peter, 'unless you ride across country.'
'I wish,' he said to Ross that evening as they sat together in the corridor, 'that I had any one else to help me in this affair except Purvis.'
Ross knew the whole story, and was as trustworthy and straightforward a man as ever breathed. 'I wish you had,' he said cordially; 'but in his own creepy fashion I believe Purvis is working for you as well as he can, and he has an extraordinary knowledge of this country and its language. You see, it is not as if you were looking for your brother amongst the most respectable English colonists in the land. You may have to hunt for him in some remarkably queer places, and it is there, it strikes me, that Purvis will help you.'
'I wish the thing were settled one way or another,' said Peter, 'so that I might know where I stand. You see, if my brother is alive—— Well?'
'Nothing, only I thought I heard something moving outside the wire-netting, and I hate the way Purvis creeps about.'
'Purvis is putting his little boy to bed and hearing him say his prayers,' said Toffy. 'He is a queer mixture.'
Rosa rose, and walking to the edge of the corridor peered out into the pitch-black night.
'It 's so dark,' he said, 'I cannot see a thing.'
'Never mind,' said Peter, 'there are no wild beasts to spring at you unawares. Do you remember poor Cranley, who was in Pitt's house at Eton? Did you ever hear how he was killed in his veranda in India by a tiger?'
'Yes,' said Ross absently, 'awfully sad thing. Do you know, Peter, I believe I must walk round to the other side of the house and see if that chap is really putting his child to bed.'