She felt that this Buenos Ayres, although the biggest city in the world if judged by extent, was not large enough to hold her joy. It flowed out from her beyond the vast chess-board of houses and far over the dusty plains; it danced with the sunlight on the water that she saw in flashes as they drove in their two-horse fly along the incredibly uneven pavement of the streets; it filled the whole summer night as they sat drinking their coffee under the palm-trees of Palermo’s park.
They were staying at one of the lesser hotels—a place built in the Spanish style about a garden-courtyard that was full of sweet-smelling flowers and shrubs; with the very modern addition of a wooden hall in which was set forth the one long table at which the guests assembled twice a day. There were fifty or sixty of them often at the table d’hôte dinner, a gathering of many races with representatives of many trades; German commercial travellers, Argentine farmers come from their estancias to pass a few days in the city; comfortable Chilian families en route for Europe, sea captains and their mates like Cairns and O’Donnell, Frenchmen travelling for pleasure; and generally some of the engineers and surveyors whose work related to the construction of the trans-Andine railway. The talk frequently ran on this wonderful railway that was soon to pierce the great mountain barrier and enable you to travel from one ocean to the other as easily as if you were going from London to Brighton. A Frenchman said that although the railway would be marvellous and admirable as an engineering feat, he regretted it as something which attacked one of nature’s last remaining strongholds, which would rob you of romance and mystery; but Dyke jovially laughed away this notion, vowing that the Andes were big enough and strong enough to withstand a hundred such inroads, and referring them to a certain book on the subject which it might not become him to particularise more fully.
Those of the hotel guests who did not know him already made his ripe acquaintance during the progress of a single meal; and they rarely failed to felicitate Emmie on her good fortune in having such a man to act as escort and guide.
“Yes, yes, Mrs. Fleming. Vairy well-known man throughout the Argentine Republic. Vairy well respected man to the populace and the government.”
Dyke had given out that she was Mrs. Fleming, a lady journalist, visiting South America for the purpose of gathering literary materials, and that it was his task to show her things of interest; but these chance friends drew their own conclusions as to the bond that subsisted between the two. Dyke was not really good at deception; after making those hidalgo bows when they met for dinner and ceremoniously standing by the door as she passed out, he would allow his far-reaching voice to be heard in the gardens as he called up to her in her room: “Emmie, my darling, come down for a stroll. It’s a perfect night.”
Moreover, they could not do otherwise than notice the meek adoration in her face as she looked at him. But this crowd did not mind. They liked her; they felt sure that Fleming, her husband, was a blackguard, and that she had been driven by his ill usage to place herself under the protection of the illustrious Don Antonio Dyke.
On the other hand the official people, with their wives, daughters, and young lady visitors, fought shy of Mrs. Fleming, dodging introduction to her and ignoring it afterwards if undodgable—more especially at the Lawn Tennis Club, where nothing could prevent him from taking her. Indeed one might say that just as he had been “that man” in Prince’s Gate, so she had become “that woman” in Buenos Ayres.
When he left her in the hired victoria outside consulates, ministries, or government offices—and necessarily he did thus leave her now and then,—frivolous clerks and minor officials peeped at her from behind sunblinds or even came forth to get a good stare at her. Aware both of this curiosity and its cause, she did not at all suffer because of them. The swarthy coachman drew the carriage into the shade of some gum trees, mounted the box seat again, and immediately fell asleep; and Emmie brought out her grammar or conversation book, and unconcernedly pursued her study of that Spanish tongue which Dyke lisped so fluently. She would not trouble to change the position of her flaming parasol when the silly young men passed to and fro, staring. Let them say what they pleased. She could not now bother even to think of such trivial matters as conventional etiquette or orthodox relationships. She was in another hemisphere—too far from the Albert Hall for it to be worth while.
From the Argentine government—a government that has always proved the most liberal in the world towards colonists and travellers—Dyke was obtaining every facility and authorisation that he required for his new journey to the Andes. Emeralds had not been mentioned, but it was understood that he would explore in search of mineral deposits, and if he found anything worth finding a full share of the value of the discovery would be secured to him. For the best of all reasons, he was going to make the trip alone and not in company with his associate, del Sarto.
To his great disappointment Pedro del Sarto had totally vanished. It seemed that his varied business had gone wrong, he himself was obviously dropping into low water, and then, of a sudden, more than a year and a half ago, he had left Buenos Ayres without a word to anybody. Dyke hunted throughout the city for a faithful underling of Pedro’s, a man called Juan Pombal. But this man had also disappeared. Then, after more hunting, he found an Indian woman who had been Pedro’s cook, housekeeper, and perhaps other things as well; but beyond confirming the fact of the departure she could supply no information. She expected to see her master again one of these days, and meantime she bore his absence philosophically.