Peter and Jane - Sarah Macnaughtan (novels for students .TXT) 📗

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