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

with caution until the thing is decided. Even now I can't be quite sure if this man's claim is valid; but once the story is out a dozen claimants may arise, and it would cost you a fortune to sift all the evidence which they might bring.'

'Yes, I see that,' said Peter.

'I am disappointed that the photograph conveys nothing to you,' said Purvis. 'I looked upon it as an important link in the chain of evidence, thinking there might be another like it amongst the old servants, perhaps, at your home.'

Peter looked at it again. 'The trouble is,' he said, 'that there are no old servants who knew us as children. He was handing the photograph back to Purvis when an idea struck him. 'I tell you what, though,' he exclaimed, 'I believe the sash round the child's waist is made of Ogilvie tartan.'

A bare-legged boy on a lean pony was seen approaching them in a cloud of dust. The pony's short canter made his pace as easy as a rocking-chair; and Lara's son, who rode him, was half asleep in the heat. The post-bag dangled from his saddle, and the reins lay on the pony's neck.

'Any letters?' said Peter in Spanish, and the boy handed the bag to him. The mail-boat from England, which was run on purpose to carry Jane's weekly letter to him, had brought the big square envelope with its usual commendable punctuality. Peter chose it out from the rest of the letters, and, handing Purvis a packet which belonged to him, he gave the bag back to the boy, who cantered along with his bare legs swinging until he disappeared into the level glare of the setting sun.

Peter let his horse amble on slowly, and read his letter while he rode.

'I must push on, I think,' said the quiet voice of Purvis beside him. 'There are one or two things which, I gather from my letters, I must put straight at the estancia. I hope to have definite news to communicate to you before long.'

'Thanks!' said Peter, giving him a nod. 'You will let me hear from you as soon as you know anything?' He turned his horse homewards, and Purvis rode on alone.

'If he has found my brother,' quoth Peter, 'Purvis has done his job, and I can't complain; but he has got to settle the thing up without all this confounded mystery, or else he can leave it alone. There is one thing perfectly clear. Edward himself knows nothing about his parents or his prospects, or he would have claimed the property long ago. Now, how has Purvis found out about the man what he doesn't know himself? Where has he got his clue? One thing is pretty certain—that he doesn't want me to meet my brother yet, which looks very much as if our friend Purvis was going to make some sort of bargain with the heir, whoever he is, before he allows him to know the truth about himself. Well, the affair will be judged by English lawyers when we get home, and if it is a case of blackmail, for instance, English people are not very fond of that sort of thing, so Purvis may not be able to make such a good bargain as he thinks.

'Of course the chain of evidence may be perfectly simple. Purvis has probably got hold of the name of whoever it was that brought Edward here, and has traced him somewhere, and has got the whole story from him. My mother had always an unlimited supply of money; she could have settled a large sum on the people who looked after him, and of course it is evident that some money must have been paid, though the lawyers could find no trace of it amongst her papers. The only other hypothesis is that it is a case of some extraordinary aberration of memory, and that, the child she disliked having been removed, she forgot about him altogether. All my life I never remember hearing him mentioned; and as my mother did not return to Bowshott until I was nearly eight years old, very little may have been said to her that would recall the fact of the boy's death.

'It is the beastly uncertainty of it,' he continued, as he rode slowly home on the dusty track which was the apology for a road across the camp. 'If the estate pays me sufficient to live upon I needn't grumble; but Purvis must give me an account of what he has been doing, and put me in possession of the facts of the case. One always distrusts the middleman, and wonders if he is making a good bargain on both sides. A small man like Purvis always tries to be important, and to make every one believe that he alone holds the key to mysteries, and that no one can get on without him. I don't at present see how he can defraud either me or my brother, even if he wants to; but I am not going to be content with hints or suggestions, as if I were living in a penny novelette.'

He rode slowly home through the heat that rose like a palpable gas from the scorched ground, until the little estancia house hove in sight again. He found that Toffy and Ross were still enjoying their afternoon siesta. There was not a bit of shade anywhere, and the heat seemed to burn through the roof until the very floor was hot to walk upon. His thoughts went back to Purvis in his tweed clothes and the bowler bat with the pugaree on it, and he wondered how he fared in the scorching heat. Probably the anaemic little man hardly knew what it was to be too hot. He used to ride over the camp when even the peons did not show their heads out of doors, and his hands were always cold and damp to the touch. Peter drank some tea and sat down at little Mrs. Chance's writing-table in the drawing-room, and wrote to Jane. There was a feeling of storm in the air, and he envied the two men sleeping luxuriously in the corridor.

'When you have been out here a year or two,' said the sleepy voice of Ross from the depths of a long cane chair, 'you will find that letters are not only impossible but unnecessary. No one expects to hear from one after the first month or two, and if one did write there would be nothing to say.'

'When my creditors get too troublesome,' said Toffy, also waking up, 'I shall emigrate here and lose my own address. With strict economy one might live very cheaply in Argentine.'

Lara's boy, who had come with the letters, had waited to ride back with the bag to the far distant post office; and the Englishmen at the estancia stood and watched him—a tiny figure on his tireless little Argentine pony—riding away eastward until once more a cloud of dust swallowed him up. The humble postman seemed to form a link with home, and in three weeks' time the letters which they had confided to him would be safely in the hands of those to whom they were written in England. The pony's unshod hoofs had made hardly any sound on the turf as he cantered off, and Lara's boy, in his loose shirt and shabby clothes, and his bare feet hanging stirrupless on each side of the pony, disappeared like a wraith. There was a week to wait before he would come with any more letters.

'I wish the storm would burst or blow over,' said Ross; 'the heat is worse than ever to-day, and it doesn't seem as though we were going to have a cool night.'

'Even the peons look curled up,' said Toffy, glancing at a group of men, picturesquely untidy, with loose shirts and scarlet boinas on their heads, who lounged against the palo á pique of the corral.

'What idle brutes they are, really!' said Ross; 'and they 're always ten times worse when Chance is away. Look at those bits of paper littering the place,' he went on fussily. 'Now I know that those men have been told thousands of times not to let things fly about like that. But it saves them trouble when they clean a room to sweep everything out of doors and then leave it lying about.'

Probably most men who own property have an inherent dislike to seeing scraps of paper lying about; the sight suggests trippers and visitors' days, and Peter stepped down from the raised corridor, and with his stick began poking the bits of paper into the powdery mud which was all that at present formed the estancia garden.

'I believe we might paper the whole house with Purvis's telegrams,' he said, laughing, as he shoved a bit of coloured paper under the ground.

'Salter,' he said to himself—'Salter. It sounds like the agony column at home. Well, Ross and I had better stop acting as scavengers for the household, or we may learn too much of Purvis's domestic affairs.'

He stopped poking with his stick; and, although he laughed, he was as much annoyed at having seen the name on the telegram as he would have been had he inadvertently overlooked another man's hand at cards.

The storm blew away in the night, and after the dawn the sky was a heavenly blue, so brilliant that it could not be overlooked. In the early morning the mimosa trees threw cool shadows to westward, and little parakeets, making their flights from bough to bough, screamed overhead. On the estancia work began early; some one had to lasso a novillo for the pot, and the rodeo looked like a seething, bubbling cauldron, with its moving mass of cattle. The easy paces of the horses on which all the work of the place was done made riding a matter not of exercise at all; and the only thing necessary was to duck heads to avoid the mimosa boughs, and to guide the horses round the holes and stumps in the ground at a gentle canter. The novillo was lassoed, and the sun began to be sultry when the three men rode back to breakfast, congratulating themselves that, as the day seemed likely to be as hot as usual, there was not a great deal of work to be done, at least until the cool of the evening.

'Is that Purvis?' asked Toffy, as they approached the house and tethered their horses by the simple expedient of throwing their reins over their heads and letting them trail upon the ground. 'When, in the name of the Prophet, does that fellow sleep?' It was barely ten o'clock when they rode back to breakfast, and Purvis must have started on his ride almost at dawn.

'Hallo!' said Ross, greeting him with a certain kindliness which a very big man will show to one who is small and weak, even if he has growled at his appearance a moment before. 'Hallo, Purvis, where have you come from, and when do you get any sleep?'

'I don't think that sleep is very necessary to me,' said Purvis; 'and I generally find that I work just as well when I have only two or three hours' rest.'

'That's very odd,' said Toffy amicably.

'I came back about my little boy,' said Purvis; 'I have to go down to Buenos Ayres, and I want to know if I may leave him here with you.'

Ross assented, and Toffy remarked that he believed with training he himself might make a very fair nursery-maid.

'Things are a little bit disturbed at my place,' said Purvis. 'I have so many mixed nationalities down there, and they don't get on well together, and are difficult to manage. I would rather not leave Dick, if you could have him—Dick will be a good boy—no?' he said, speaking in the questioning negative so common in Argentine, and addressing the pale-faced little boy in a manner far