A group of children playing on the “main street,” so-called, burst into
shouts of astonishment as they caught sight of the coach which three
times a week made the trip from the dam to Fuerte Sarmiento, for it
presented an extraordinary appearance.
These little ragamuffins, busy with their games in the ruts and holes of
the highway, presented all the racial diversities characteristic of the
settlement’s population. There were white children shuffling about in
their elders’ cast-off shoes, their small forms lost in the baggy folds
of their fathers’ trousers; and there were half-breed children whose
dress had been simplified to a mere shirt, short enough to expose their
little copper-colored bellies to the air.
As the travellers who arrived at the dam had rarely been known to bring
anything with them in the way of baggage save a canvas sack in which was
heaped whatever clothing they possessed, the young inhabitants were very
naturally excited and astonished at sight of the trunks and boxes heaped
on the top of the mail coach, as, drawn by four lean and clay-spattered
nags, it rattled up the road. So high was the pile of luggage roped on
to the coach roof that, as the stage lurched into and out of the ruts of
the clay road, the whole structure tipped over at such an angle that it
seemed about to upset.
The men who were out of work, attracted by the novel sight, stood
watching from the doorway of the tavern. The coach stopped finally in
front of the frame house occupied by Watson, who came out in front of
his door, his servants peering from the doorway behind him.
As soon as they saw that the passenger stepping down from the coach was
Robledo, men and women rushed forward to greet him, stretching out their
hands to him in the confident comradeship of the desert. But everyone
promptly forgot him at sight of the other passengers.
First came the Marquis de Torre Bianca, who turned around to help his
wife to alight from the clumsy steps.
The Marquise, dressed in a luxurious travelling suit which contrasted
oddly with her surroundings, wore the hard expression which disfigured
her beauty in her bad moments. In spite of her thick veil, the red dust
of the long road she had travelled covered her face and hair. With
scarcely restrained astonishment and ill-humor, she looked about her,
and her eyes betrayed the despair with which she was saying to herself,
“Is this what I have come to?”
“Well, here we are,” said Robledo cheerfully. “Two days and two nights
from Buenos Aires, and a couple of hours driving through a dust storm,
that isn’t so bad! The ends of the earth are quite a way off from here!”
Several of the workmen who had welcomed Robledo began, of their own
accord, to unload the baggage. These were Elena’s things sent on to her
at Barcelona by her maid, and she cherished them. They were the chests
and boxes saved from her shipwreck!
Meanwhile a group of children and ragged women had gathered around
Elena, gazing at her with amazement and admiration, as though she had
fallen into their midst from another planet. Some of the little girls
timidly felt of the cloth of her dress. Their fingers had never touched
anything so wonderful!
By this time the news of Robledo’s arrival had reached Canterac,
Pirovani, and Moreno, and the engineer was presenting them to his
friends.
Watson, seeing that the multitude of bags and boxes was being carried
into the house he occupied with Robledo, said to his partner,
“You don’t expect the lady to share our rough quarters, do you?”
“The lady,” Robledo replied, “is the wife of an old college friend of
mine. He is going to take pot luck with us, and so is she. You don’t
need to build a palace for her.”
But Elena found it difficult to conceal her distress as she looked about
at the rooms that she was henceforth to live in; rough wooden walls,
scanty and awkward furniture, and scattered about, on every side,
saddles, engineering instruments, and sacks of provisions; and
everything in this house, occupied by two busy men who had no thought
for anything except their work, was in disorder, and covered with dust.
Torre Bianca was never under any circumstances surprised. As Robledo
took him through the house, putting in a word of apology now and then
for its appearance, the Marquis smiled gently at his friend. Whatever
Manuel did seemed to him worthy of approbation.
“And here are the servants,” said Robledo, introducing to Elena a fat
half-breed, already well on in years, who acted as housekeeper, two
little barefooted _mestizas_, who served as errand girls, and the
Spanish peasant who took care of the horses. All of this ragged crew
expressed with incessant smiles the admiration they felt for the
beautiful lady, and Elena finally broke into a laugh as she remembered
the servants she had left in Paris.
After supper Robledo took his partner aside to discuss the progress of
the work with him.
As Watson showed him the plans and documents, he also mentioned what
Canterac had said to him that afternoon.
“He says that in six months we shall be irrigating....”
Robledo looked immensely pleased.
“Then we’ll see this hard baked soil that bears nothing but _matorrales_
now, turn into the kind of earth they must have had in the Garden of
Eden. Thousands of people will lead happier and better lives here than
they could ever do in the old world, and with all that, you and I,
Watson, are going to get rich. We’ll get rich because we’ll be helping
other people to get rich. That’s the way it goes. If you want progress,
you’ve got to make it profitable to somebody.”
The two friends sat silent, looking into the air before them as if they
saw there the lands eternally green, and gurgling canals in which
gleamed silver water, the roads bordered with tall trees, and the white
houses, which were to come to life on the arid mesa at the magic touch
of water. Watson, as he saw the picture unfold before him, was reminded
of his native California; to Robledo, the scene in his mind’s eye, was
very like his beloved Valencia.
It was Watson who came out of his day-dream first. He nodded towards the
adjoining room in which they had left the new arrivals. The Marquis was
dozing in a canvas chair; Elena sat at a little distance from him, her
head in her hands, in a tragic attitude which indicated plainly that the
question, “What have I come to?” was throbbing in her mind with
desperate persistence.
During the few days she had spent in Buenos Aires her exile had seemed
to her tolerable. The capital was like any large European city. It was
only after determined search that she had discovered a corner of the old
colonial town, a small remnant of earlier and more primitive times,
barely sufficient to convince her that she had actually reached America.
The only thing that had seemed really strange to her during her sojourn
in Buenos Aires, besides her quarters in a second-class hotel, was the
absence of her automobile; aside from this, her manner of living had
undergone no great change. But then came that terrible journey across
interminable plains through which the train crawled hour-long, and never
a house nor a living soul. It was as though the world had suddenly
become nothing but space! And then the arrival in this strange land
where the turn of a wheel or even a step started up clouds of dust;
where the soil which was dissolved and held in suspension in the air
clogged and irritated her nose and throat; where the people looked
ragged and unkempt, and yet treated everyone else with a certain
familiarity, as though they considered anyone who came there, their
equal! “What had she come to?”
Robledo answered the question he read in his partner’s eyes.
“My friend is going to help us. He’s an engineer. But don’t worry about
him. I am going to give him a share in our business, out of my half of
course.”
Then he told Watson the few facts he thought his partner should know
about the Marquis.
“As long as your friend is going to help us,” said the young American,
“you had better take his share out of my half as well as yours. He seems
a nice fellow. Anyway I feel sorry for his wife.”
Robledo took the boy’s hand in his, in quick response to his generosity,
and they dropped the subject.
On the very next morning, Elena, who showed a certain easy adaptability
to the diverse circumstances of her life, set out to win the admiration
of her hosts by her domestic talents, just as, a few weeks earlier, she
had sought distinction in Paris drawing rooms through quite other
attainments. Dressed in a tailored suit which she had cast aside in
Paris, but which caused a great sensation among the engineer’s servants,
she started out, with carefully gloved hands, to set the house in order.
The half-breed and her two little helpers submissively followed the
_señora_ around, until the moment came when Elena rashly ventured to add
example to precept; whereupon her ignorance of housework became
immediately apparent. It was only too clear that she did not at all know
how to do the things she had ordered to be done, and the half-breed’s
help was more than once required in order to get the Marquise out of the
difficulties her ignorance had plunged her into.
In the kitchen a stove, in which was burned the same oil as that used
for the dredging machines, served for cooking purposes. Elena, delighted
by the ease with which the flame could be lighted and put out,
determined to have something to do with the preparations of the next
meal. But she soon had to retire before the superior skill of the
half-breed, who was now frankly laughing at her pretensions as a
housekeeper.
Still trying to be useful, Elena took off her gloves in order to wash
the dishes, but she at once put them on again, fearful that the very hot
water might injure her delicate skin, and destroy the polish of her
nails--and she remembered that in her moments of despair, she had felt a
certain relief in contemplating her hands.
Torre Bianca, dressed in a tweed riding suit, accompanied Watson and
Robledo to the canals. He watched the pile drivers at work, saw what was
being done, and talked with the peons. It wasn’t long before he was
covered with dust from head to foot; his sunburned hands itched
painfully; and yet he already felt the happy tranquillity of the man who
knows that he can earn his daily bread.
At nightfall the three engineers returned to the house, where they found
dinner awaiting them. Elena had been complaining of the rustic
simplicity of the table covers and plates. The half-breed, at her
instigation, purchased for a modest price, some additional pieces of
china which had found their way from Buenos Aires to the “Galician’s
Resort.” The next day some flowers, brought in by the two little
copper-colored errand girls, appeared on the table, and it became more
evident from day to day that there was now a woman accustomed to the
refinements of life in the engineers’ house.
One evening, while the half-breed was serving the first course, Elena
threw off from about her shoulders an old evening wrap which, as it was
somewhat the worse for its previous services, she now used as a dressing
gown. As she emerged from this covering it was revealed that she was in
evening dress. Her gown was a little worn, but it was still a brilliant
relic of happier days.
Watson looked at her with astonishment, Robledo made a gesture which
indicated that he thought she had gone crazy, but the Marquis remained
impassive, as though nothing that Elena did could cause him any
surprise.
“I’ve always dressed for dinner,” observed Elena, “and I don’t see any
reason for changing my habits here. It would make me so uncomfortable!”
The hours after the evening meal were usually spent in long
conversations. Robledo did most of the talking. He liked to tell the
stories of the various interesting characters he had seen pass through
“the land of all the world.” Many of them had already wandered over a
great part of the planet before they landed in the port of Buenos Aires.
Others eager for adventure had fled to the new continent in order to
begin a new life there.
In the capital they had encountered the same obstacles as those they had
run away from in Europe. The big city was already old. Tenements and
slums had grown up there too, and it was as hard to make a living as
ever it was in Europe. Sometimes it was even harder, so great was the
competition between all professions in the crowd thronging into Buenos
Aires from every quarter of the globe.
So they sought the waste places of the republic, the territories that
were still arid plains, and began transforming them for the future
generations of immigrants.
“What a lot of strange characters I have seen pass through here!”
Robledo would begin. “I remember one fellow, a peon, who, in spite of
his angry-looking, bulbous nose, inflamed by long years of drinking,
still had something about him that suggested an interesting history.
When he came straggling through here he was nothing but a wreck; but he
was like those ruined palaces, the smallest fragment of which, a piece
of broken pillar, or a bit of pediment, picked up from among the
crumbled walls, evokes the splendors of the past. Yet this fellow would
stop at nothing, not even theft, when he craved drink, and would lie for
days on the ground dead drunk. But a gesture, a chance word would make
us suspect that he had not always been a dirty, drink-sodden vagabond.
“One day I found him brushing the foreman’s hair, just for the joke of
the thing, and shaping the fellow’s mustache, making it look like Kaiser
Wilhelm’s. So I gave him a drink, I gave him all the drinks he could
hold, because that’s the only way to make that kind of a fellow talk.
And so I learned that this broken-down old drunkard was a German baron,
once a captain of the Imperial Guard. He had gambled with some money
left in his charge by his superior officers, and instead of committing
suicide, as his family expected him to do, he came to America, where he
began his career as a general. He ended up a useless, drunken,
day-laborer.”
Seeing that Elena was interested, Robledo went on modestly,
“This German baron was a general in one of the revolutions in Venezuela.
I, too, was once a general in another South American republic. I was
even minister of war for ten days ... but they threw me out for being
too scientific, and for not knowing how to handle a _machete_ as well as
my aides.”
Then Robledo went on to speak of another peon, a drunkard also, a silent
gloomy sort of fellow, who had crawled into the camp up at the dam to
die. They had buried him near the river, and Robledo had found some of
the poor devil’s papers in the canvas sack the vagabond dragged along
with him. He had once been a well-known architect in Vienna. One of the
photographs among the papers was of a lady with an impressive head-dress
and long pendent earrings, who looked very much like the murdered
Empress. This was the architect’s wife. While her husband was
accompanying General Gordon on one of his expeditions she had been
killed in Khartoum, torn to pieces by the fanatics that the Mahdi was
leading through the Sudan. The other photograph, that of a handsome
Austrian officer, his white coat snugly fitted in at the waist, was the
vagabond’s son.
“And it’s no use trying to reform those fellows,” said Robledo. “You may
clean them up a bit, and make life a little more comfortable for them,
you may preach to them about drinking less, and try in every way to help
them ‘get back’--As soon as they are rested and begin to look a little
happier, they come up to you some fine morning with packs on their
backs. ‘Well, I’m off, boss! What’s due me?’ And it’s no use asking them
any questions. Everything is all right, they have no complaints to make;
but just the same they light out. No sooner do they get a few square
meals than the devil who drives them round and round the globe suddenly
remembers them and starts them off again. They know perfectly well that
beyond the horizon line out yonder are the Andes, and beyond the Andes,
Chile; and beyond that the Pacific and its islands, and then the
crowding masses of China.... And so their mania for wandering awakens
... they must always see what is beyond.... They pick up their bundles
and start out again, with hunger and exhaustion waiting for them out
there.... They die in hospitals, or in the desert; and if they do not
die but keep on, always following the ‘beyond’ that mocks and beguiles
them, they turn up here again--but only because they have made a
complete circuit of the globe.”
Now and then the two engineers spoke of their own lives. Watson’s
history was of the briefest. Leaving his native California after
graduating from Berkeley, he had taken up his engineering work in the
silver mines of Mexico, and from there he had gone to Peru. Finally he
had moved on to Buenos Aires where he had met Robledo, and it was there
the two men had gone into partnership in order to carry out their Rio
Negro enterprise.
The Spaniard did not like to recall his experiences in America before
his arrival in Argentina. In that earlier period he had taken part in
revolutions for which he felt nothing but contempt, becoming involved in
them merely because of his desire for activity. For the same reason he
had undertaken various business ventures only to discover in the course
of them that he was being deceived and robbed, sometimes by his
partners, sometimes by the government. Violent changes in his fortunes
had thrown him from absurd abundance into abject want. But he avoided
talking of all this, and most of his stories were about life in
Patagonia.
Once he had crossed the enormous plateau which begins at the cut of the
Black River and stretches toward the Strait of Magellan. He had started
out on this exploring expedition after resigning his position with the
Argentine government, and to avoid expense he had taken with him only a
native peon and a troup of six desert horses capable of feeding on the
rough weeds of the mesa. Robledo and the peon rode all day, changing
horses at frequent intervals. The engineer had, with the help of some of
his friends, made out a map indicating the springs, the only possible
camping places.
For several years there had been droughts. On reaching the first spring
Robledo found that it was very salty. He was accustomed to the brackish
water which the optimism of the desert explorers considers drinkable;
but the water in this spring was of saltiness that was more than he or
the Indian with him could stomach.
They went on, confident that they would come upon a spring the next day.
When they reached it they found that it did not contain salt water, for
the reason that there was no water in it at all. So they continued
across the plateau that was always endless and always the same. Steering
their course by the compass, they suffered a thirst which made them walk
with their lower jaws drooping, and through their eyes, starting from
their heads, passed now and then the terrifying glitter of madness. And
finally they had been forced to resort to a loathesome thing in order to
ease the torment of their swollen tongues and throats with a little
liquid.
“What tormented me,” said Robledo, “was the memory of all the times when
I had been asked to have a drink in some café or other, and had not
cared enough about what was set before me to drink it--beer, charged
waters, iced drinks--and then I was stricken with remorse at the memory
of certain parties I had been to, when I had passed by the buffet full
of decanters and bottles without taking any of their contents, for I
kept saying to myself, excited with fever as I was, and staggering along
under the hard merciless sun, ‘If you had drunk all the beers, and all
the soda waters, and all the iced drinks that were offered you and that
you didn’t appreciate, you would now have inside of you a reserve store
of liquids and you’d be able to stand this awful thirst much better!’
And this absurd idea tormented me like remorse for a crime, and at
times I wanted to punch my own head for my stupidity in not having drunk
everything that had once been within my reach so that I might have been
prepared for that awful desert trip.
“Finally, with only two of our six horses still stumbling along beside
us, we reached a well of fresh water. That was the most delicious drink
of my whole life! And after all our long hard pull through that desert
of death, we found nothing! The information I had been given, and to
confirm which I had started off on this expedition, proved to be
false.... But that’s the way you have to seek fortune now, for those of
us who go to the new world are half a century late. All the rich lands,
those easy to develop, have been taken up, and only those that are
remote and inhospitable, are left--and often all that they offer is ruin
and death.
“However,” Robledo continued, “men go right on coming to this corner of
the globe. Hope lives here among us, and without hope life is
intolerable. And just consider our own household for instance! Elena
there, a Russian, Federico, Italian, Watson from the United States, I a
Spaniard. And the people who come to see us are each of them of a
different nationality. As I say, it’s the land of all!”
Little by little it became the custom of the most important personages
of the settlement to call at the engineers’ house after supper. First to
appear was Canterac, in a suit of military cut, and still more carefully
brushed and polished than before the arrival of the Torre Biancas. Then
came Moreno, betraying a certain nervous agitation at greeting his
hostess, uttering a few stammerings instead of words, and almost biting
off his tongue in the tenseness of his embarrassment. And last came
Pirovani, displaying a new suit every other night, and always bringing
his hostess a present.
Canterac used to laugh at him, asserting that if Pirovani was late it
was because he had been polishing his watch charms, watch chain and cuff
buttons, so as to dazzle the rest of the company.
One evening the Italian appeared in a startling suit just arrived from
Bahia Blanca, bearing in his fat hand a bouquet of enormous roses.
“These were brought down to me today from Buenos Aires, _señora
marquesa_, and I hasten to lay them at your feet!”
Canterac glared at the Italian with mock indignation, and murmured in a
loud aside to Robledo,
“That’s a lie! These roses came by telegraph! Moreno, who knows
everything, told me so, and this afternoon Pirovani sent a man to get
them from the station. He had strict orders to gallop all the way!”
The housekeeper and the two little half-breeds cleared the table, and
the living room, in spite of its rough wooden partitions, began to look
suggestive of festivity, as the three callers grouped about Elena,
offering her compliments and conversation, according to their talents.
It was noticeable that they invariably repeated the word _marquesa_ at
every opportunity, as though they enjoyed being constantly reminded that
they were in such distinguished company.
Elena soon discovered a preference for Canterac which she made no
attempt to conceal. After all, he was of her world, although his circle
in Paris had not been the same as hers. Yet it had been adjacent, and
though they had never met, they discovered that they had mutual friends.
While the Frenchman and Elena talked, Moreno smoked resignedly,
exchanging a few words with Watson, or listening to Pirovani’s
discussions with Robledo and the Marquis. But he had little attention
for anyone save the Marquise and Canterac, whom he watched with anxious
eyes. However, the _tertulia_ underwent a transformation after the
arrival of Pirovani with his roses.
The next evening Elena and the men of her household were sitting at
table, more silent than usual. She was wearing one of her most startling
evening dresses, one which, even in Paris, would have been described as
daring. But the three engineers, still in their work clothes, appeared
to be exhausted by the day’s labors. Robledo yawned several times though
he was making valiant efforts to keep awake. The Marquis was quietly
nodding in his chair; and Elena meanwhile was looking at Watson as
though she had for the first time become aware of him, which caused the
young American considerable discomfort.
Suddenly Pirovani appeared at the door, carrying a large package, and
arrayed in a new suit of wide checked material whose many colors
resembled the mottled patterns of a python’s skin.
“_Señora marquesa_,” he began solemnly, “a friend of mine in Buenos
Aires has just sent me this box of caramels. Allow me to present them to
you!”
Elena, amused by the contractor’s new clothes, smilingly acknowledged
his present, rewarding him for his attentions with several glances full
of coquetry.
At that point, Moreno arrived, recklessly gotten up in patent leather
boots, a wide-skirted cutaway, and a high silk hat, just as though he
were about to call on his chief, the Minister of the Interior.
Robledo, rousing a little at these arrivals, observed ironically,
“What elegance, Moreno!”
“I was afraid,” exclaimed the latter “that these things would get moth
eaten in the trunk, so I put them on to give them an airing.”
Timidly he approached Elena. “Good evening, _señora marquesa_!”
Imitating the personages of elegant life and manners whom he had so
often admired in novels and on the stage, he bent over her hand. Then
unwilling to leave her side after this successful performance, he did
his utmost to keep up a conversation with her, to Pirovani’s intense
indignation. Finally the Italian got up, as a protest against this
intrusion, and could be heard inquiring of Robledo in his corner,
“Did you ever see anything like the get-up of that jackass?”
But the surprises of the evening were not yet over.
The door opened once more, and Canterac appeared on the threshold, where
he paused a moment, giving all his spectators the opportunity to get a
good look at him.
He wore a dinner coat, and a fine and exquisitely ironed dress shirt,
and when finally he stepped into the room, he did so with a certain
languid grace as though he were presenting himself in a Paris drawing
room. After a slight bow to the men, he bent over Elena and kissed her
hand.
“I too felt like dressing for dinner this evening, Marquesa, as in the
good old times.”
Elena, pleased by this homage, turned her back upon Moreno, and made the
new arrival sit down beside her. For the rest of the evening she devoted
most of her attentions to the Frenchman, while Pirovani sulked in a
corner, making small attempt to conceal his displeasure, though he was
obviously impressed by Canterac’s aristocratic appearance.
For several evenings after this the contractor failed to appear. Moreno,
curious about the reason for his absence, called at the Italian’s and
came back with some news.
“Pirovani’s gone to Bahia Blanca without telling anyone what for. He
must have some important business on.”
So the _tertulias_ continued. Canterac in his dinner coat still enjoyed
Elena’s preference, and Moreno got into his swallow-tail every evening
for no other purpose apparently than to carry on his desultory
conversations with Torre Bianca. Even the Marquis appeared one evening
in a dinner coat, and when Robledo made a gesture of astonishment, he
gave a shrug and a nod towards his wife.
On the fifth evening Moreno came rushing in to announce that Pirovani
had returned. “He may be here at any moment now!”
And since Pirovani had provided them all with a subject for speculation,
everyone had the sense of waiting for him to put in an appearance.
Then the door opened; and pausing on the threshold as Canterac had done,
in order to allow the onlookers to get the full effect of his attire,
Pirovani appeared, in a frock coat that was resplendent with lapels of a
heavily ribbed silk, the fibres of which were as thick as those of wood,
a white waistcoat richly embroidered, a white camelia in his buttonhole,
and a large ribbon from which dangled a monocle.... Needless to say, he
had never learned to wear one!
His aspect was solemn and magnificent, like that of a circus director,
or a world-famous prestidigitator. Making manful efforts to preserve his
calm and conceal his emotions, he nodded with masculine indifference to
the men, and bowed low before the _marquesa_, whose hand he raised to
his lips.
Elena’s eyes gleamed with suppressed amusement. Everything about
Pirovani always seemed to her humorous. But, perceiving that this
transformation had been accomplished in her honor, she welcomed him
affectionately, and made him sit down beside her. Canterac, visibly
offended by his rival’s triumph, abruptly left the group, while Moreno,
with a scandalized expression, made a gesture towards Pirovani and
muttered to Robledo,
“So that’s the important business he took a trip to Bahia Blanca for!
That’s what he made such a mystery about!”
Robledo, however, left him to mutter alone, and went on talking to
Watson, who, still dazed by the contractor’s theatrical entrance, was
watching him with considerable amusement.
“From dinner coats to swallow-tails,” growled Robledo. “We’ll be
holding carnival out on the desert soon, and this woman will be driving
us all crazy before we get through!”
He glanced with relief at the young American, who, like himself, still
wore his simple work clothes, and mentally compared his appearance with
that of the other men in the room.
“What a commotion that sort of woman stirs up in a frontier settlement,
where men live alone, and have no other distraction from their work!” he
thought. “And she’s only just begun.... Who knows what she’ll try next?
We may all end up by killing one another on her account! Perhaps this is
Helen of Troy in our midst....”
With a cynical shrug, Robledo turned his back on the group around Elena.
He had done his best to leave her in the old world--His conscience was
clear on that score!