CHAPTER II
THE Marquise de Torre Bianca, having come home in good humor, was disposed to find her husband’s friend very entertaining. For the moment she had forgotten her pressing need of money, quite as though she had found a means of satisfying her creditors.
At lunch Robledo had a great deal to do to satisfy her curiosity about him. She wanted to know all the thrilling episodes of his adventurous life! Nor could she possibly believe that he wasn’t rich. How unlikely that anyone from America—either North or South America, it didn’t matter which—should not be rich, shouldn’t have millions! It required an effort for the Marquise, as for most Europeans, to reason that even in the New World there must be people who are poor.
“But I’m not rich at all,” protested Robledo. “Of course I shall try to die a millionaire, just so as not to disillusion all the people who believe so firmly that whoever goes to America must by that very fact make a great fortune, so that he can leave it when he dies to his nieces and nephews in Europe!”
He began to talk about Patagonia and his undertakings there. With his partner, a young American from the States, whom he had met in Buenos Aires, he had tried to colonize several thousand acres near the Rio Negro. He had risked in this enterprise all his savings, and those of his partner, as well as whatever sums he could persuade the banks to advance to him; but he felt certain of the safety of the investment, and he believed that it would be the source of a great fortune.
It was his job to transform the desert lands of this tract, purchased at a low price because of their aridity, into irrigated fields. The Argentine government was carrying on extensive operations in the Rio Negro region, trying to divert some of its waters. Robledo, who had been one of the engineers first employed to carry out this scheme, resigned, in order to colonize the lands which he was buying up in the areas through which the government irrigation system was sure to be extended sooner or later.
“In a few years, or even in a few months, I may strike gold,” he was saying. “Everything depends of course on how the river behaves. If it amiably allows itself to be divided up, and doesn’t rise suddenly, in the grip of one of those violent convulsions which are so frequent there, and which destroy the work of years in a few hours.... Meanwhile my partner and I have been constructing with the strictest economy all the minor canals and the other arteries which are to irrigate our waste lands; and on the day when the dike is finished, and the Rio Negro waters flow outward into our desert property....”
Robledo stopped short, smiling.
“Then,” he went on, “I shall be a millionaire in regular American style. No one knows what the extent of our fortune may be. One square mile of irrigated land is worth several millions, and I own several square miles.”
Elena was listening breathlessly. But Robledo, as if made uneasy by the admiring glance Elena’s green gold eyes shot at him, hastened to add: