by Mariska
This savoured so strongly of patronage that she retorted at once, "Well, the farm is ours, after all, and we can do what we like with it."
"No, I do not agree." She saw that his glance had sharpened. "Seemingly you have not heard of what are called prospectors' rights. Minerals are so valuable that one can search for them anywhere, at a certain distance from a house. If I wished, I could register a claim on your land and pay your father only what the portion is worth as farming acreage—until I should strike something of value."
"But that's grossly unfair!"
He shrugged, a deep, expressive shrug. "In the narrow view, yes. You and I look at life from opposing points, Miss Norton. You cling to the cosy, old-fashioned things, whether they be good or bad, and you let sentimentality distort your perspective."
"Sentimentality doesn't always distort," she said hardily. "It also softens."
He gave a brief laugh. "You should have lived two hundred years ago, Miss Norton, if you are so opposed to progress where it is badly needed."
Lesley never knew how she would have reacted to this challenge, for her father had come back while Fernando was talking, carrying the book he had sought. If he noticed a strain in the atmosphere he did not remark upon it. Their guest showed an immediate interest in the volume, though Lesley guessed that he possessed more modern and complete dissertations upon the subject of mineral ores.
What an extraordinary man he was! Almost machine-minded, and apparently with very definite ideas on most things, yet there was a deference and an extreme courtesy in his manner when dealing with her father. Probably he didn't care whether women liked him or not. Which was exasperating. He stood up now. "So we understand each other, Mr. Norton? I will arrange a meeting with the lawyer in Buenda and let you know about it. We will go there together. With your daughter, naturally," he tacked on as an afterthought.
"Next time we meet," said Edward Norton, "I shall have become accustomed to this news you've brought us. At the moment it hasn't much substance."
"The beryl on your land, amigo, has much more substance than wilting tobacco. We shall see!"
Lesley and her father walked down the path with him to the road. With one hand on the door of a long maroon car which glittered in the sunshine, Fernando bowed to her. "Perhaps we shall convert you," he said, a sudden and startling charm in his smile. "You may not believe it, but I,
too, can find pleasure in untrammelled nature!" After which he got into the car, gave them another distant but friendly nod, and drove off.
THEIR neighbours, the Pembertons, were the first to congratulate and to counsel caution. Anna said, "Bill's father prospected all over the land
and found traces of several valuable minerals. He even collected enough gold dust to make my wedding ring, but there was nothing in marketable quantities, and we've always made our living from tea. I hope the Spaniard is right about your land, Lesley, but don't count too much upon it."
Anna Pemberton was plumpish, nearly forty, heavily engaged in local affairs. Bill, who was fifty-five and something of a plodder, admired his wife tremendously. He had married late, only ten years ago, and it was a constant source of surprise and pleasure to him that he now possessed a fine-looking wife and a seven-year-old son.
Lesley had ridden over to Grey Ridge the day after Fernando del Cuero's visit, and found Anna Pemberton preparing a list of people she proposed to invite to a campfire supper one day next week. Anna had listened, made a few delighted comments, and called Bill from the sheds. After a talk, during which warnings and blessing were dispensed, Bill had gone back to his work and Anna had reconsidered the list on her writing-table. "What is he like, your senor?" she asked, her grey eyes bright and inquisitive,
"Tall and arrogant, quite the aristocrat."
"Really?" Anna gave her merry laugh. "I'd like to meet this Fernando. Do you suppose the campfire party would be in his line?"
"I'm sure he won't come. He's thirty miles away."
"So are the Hindleys and Macintoshes, but they'll be here. When do you see him again?"
"We had a note by messenger this morning saying he'd fixed an appointment with the lawyer for Saturday at nine. He's picking us up."
"Fine. Then you can invite him for me."
Lesley awoke on Saturday morning with a sensation of resignation. She put on a blue-and-white striped dress, and brushed back her honey-coloured hair till the waves shone. She stepped out on to the veranda and took a glass or orange juice and a piece of toast from her father's breakfast table. It was a golden morning. The grass was spattered with yellow petals from the silky oak, the cannas opened dozens of pale orange trumpets, and black-throated canaries were trilling in the jacarandas. There was even a yellow butterfly poised on the wooden veranda raiL Her father, in flannels and a navy blazer had drawn away from the table and was smoking his pipe while he contentedly surveyed the garden. Solomon cleared the breakfast things with a gloomy expression and sighed heavily as he went out to the kitchen.
Edward Norton looked up from prodding with a match at the bowl of his pipe. "What's Solomon upset about, do you think? His wife?"
"I imagine so. She was the belle of his village, and beauties are always difficult to live with."
"That's so. You didn't find your sister too easy, did you?"
"Virginia?" She paused to think a moment. "Virginia is lovely and admired. She could make a man happy, if she wanted to."
"Do you think she'll marry this man Boland whom she wrote about?" "She may. He sounds suitable."
"Virginia's definition of a husband is different from yours," he said, smiling gently. "She's so brilliant. I hope you'll both marry, but you can wait for a while. She's twenty-seven, though, and getting more difficult to please."
"It's odd that she should find so much satisfaction in travelling round England with that job of hers. It must be rather wearing." There was no time for further discussion. Both heard the car and saw dust rising above the hedge.
They met Fernando at the gate. Though prepared for his darkness and his distinctive features, Lesley caught herself staring. Everything about him was a little larger than life, and it occurred to her as really odd that her father took the man so much for granted.
"Good morning," Fernando said, his smile pleasantly aloof as his glance flickered over the fresh picture she made. He put Lesley into the back of his car and her father into the front, and from behind the wheel he asked, "No regrets from either of you?"
"None from me," answered Edward Norton.
"And your daughter? Has she forgiven me for tilting at her pretty ideals?"
"Ideals are apt to become stronger when they're opposed," Lesley said lightly. "Even if we could save the farm from being carved up, we couldn't afford it. You have us where you want us, I'm afraid."
"It will not be so bad," he said with a reasoning smile over his shoulder. "You have your gardens and rockeries, and who knows, even you may come to realise that it is better to pin your faith to something which damp rot and, eelworm cannot destroy."
They entered the town by the newly surfaced wide avenue which had a neat strip of grass down the centre, planted at regular intervals with the evergreen flowering shrubs of the tropics. On the whole it was a new town, sparkling clean and completely African in its mixture of white buildings and old, leaning palms left growing wherever possible. The chief necessity in an African town is shade for shop-windows and shoppers, and in Buenda the pavements were covered with wide cement porticoes which were pillared at the kerb. It was a pleasant, rather sleepy town.
Fernando drew in the big car alongside the office of the only lawyer in Buenda, and with a litheness which was remarkable in so tall a man, he came round to open the doors. The faintly mocking amusement on his lips irritated Lesley. She got the impression that this venture, which meant so much to her father, was an interesting and enjoyable experiment to the Señor del Cuero.
They were shown into a plain, book-lined room, and Fernando introduced the lawyer, a youngis
h man who showed more keenness about the existence
of the beryl than gravity over the legal aspects of the business. However, within half an hour or so his draft agreement had been amended and retyped, stamped, signed, and witnessed. Amanzi was now owned equally by Fernando del Cuero and Edward Norton.
Back in the car, Fernando said, "We should celebrate this partnership, should we not? This afternoon my cousin, Neville Madison, arrives here, and he will stay for the weekend with me. Mr. Norton, will you and your daughter have dinner with us tonight at the Falls?"
"We'd like to, but we haven't a car. It would be much easier if you came to us," said Mr. Norton.
Fernando half-turned to look at Lesley. Perhaps he was expecting her to back up her father's suggestion. Actually, her mind was darting swiftly over the contents of the modest paraffin refrigerator, and her hesitation was natural, though likely to be misconstrued. Belatedly she said, "Yes, do bring your cousin to have dinner with us."
Fernando's mouth had thinned and the humour gone from his eyes, leaving them cold and sardonic. His shoulders lifted, and he turned back to switch on the engine. "After all, we have nothing as yet to celebrate. Let us wait till we isolate the first good-sized beryl." And he eased the car out from the kerb and accelerated down the road.
Lesley sat back in the corner behind him. She felt foolish and angry. With an Englishman she would have laughed it off, telling him the truth: `Sorry I didn't seem to be bursting with hospitality, but you know how it is. It's Saturday, there are only the two of us, and I was just casting a mental eye over the pantry. Come along and take pot luck!' But you couldn't talk like that to Fernando del Cuero.
He took them straight back to Amanzi. Her father, fortunately, was too occupied with the fact of having sold a half share in the farm to notice her constraint, and Fernando talked naturally about the steps which would be taken within the next month. At the house, all three got out and Fernando pushed back the gate.
Edward Norton tapped the long official envelope he had been holding. "I'm apt to be absent-minded, so this had better be locked away at once." He smiled. "Goodbye for the present, partner."
Fernando answered and gave his smiling bow. As her father moved up the path Lesley hesitated, fervently wishing she had made no promise to Anna Pemberton. "I've a message for you," she said quickly and not very clearly. "Mrs. Pemberton, who lives at the next farm, Grey Ridge, is giving a campfire party on Tuesday. She would like you to be there. I told her you'd probably decline, but she insisted that I should ask you."
"And why did you conclude that I would decline?" he asked with cool deliberation. "What reason, apart from being otherwise engaged, would I have for doing that?"
"You've never met these people," she said confusedly. "You've been here a year or more without entering their circle, so I thought .. ."
"I know what you thought, but it is wrong. Please tell Mrs. Pemberton that it will make me very happy to meet her and her good friends on Tuesday. If you wish, you may also add that I find her kindness to someone she does not know distinctly refreshing. Good day to you, Miss Norton!"
Lesley did not stay to watch him go. She went straight into the house. Thank goodness, she thought, the house itself was still indisputably her father's, though she was coming round to the feeling that she wouldn't mind how soon they got out of it. In the long run her father might make more money by retaining an interest, but nothing could compensate for this frustration—being bound to a scheme with which neither she nor he had a real sympathy.
NEXT morning, Lesley and her father took a picnic lunch down to the river. A beneficent pioneer had once put rainbow trout into this particular reach of the Kalindi, and it was still possible, now and then, to hook out one or two good specimens. They wound in their first trout just before lunch, and the second at about three o'clock. Mr. Norton then sat with his back to a tree for a snooze, and Lesley took a stroll along the river bank, sometimes stopping to dip her toes into the clear water which purled among the stones and ran strongly for several miles to the Falls. She came to the bridge and ducked under it, shivering in the sudden delicious coolness, and she paused there, enthralled by the utter stillness of a long, pale green fish which seemed able to rest without discomfort upon the rocky and turbulent bed of the river.
She heard a car speed overhead and thought, idly, that the Pembertons were again having visitors for tea. She went on watching the fish, and presently she gently flicked a twig into the water to make it move. Then she heard the snapping of twigs on the other side of the bridge, and realised that she and her father no longer had possession of this part of the Kalindi. A man, who had apparently slithered down the bank at the side of the bridge, stood staring at the water as if it presented a problem. He was above average height and slimly built, probably in his early thirties, though on prolonged inspection he looked lined and cynical. A pleasant face, though, what Lesley could see of it; thin and aquiline, the mouth narrow but not ugly. He was darkish, and wore shorts and a white shirt. Lesley felt she ought to make her presence known. She moved sideways from under the bridge, and by the time she had straightened the man had seen her and was giving her a nonchalant, attractive smile, which crinkled the corners of his eyes.
"Well met," he said. "I'm needing some advice." She smiled back at him. "Mine?"
"A woman can sometimes offer a novel way out of a difficulty. My radiator's boiling and only half full. I should have attended to it before I started out, but I forgot. The position now is that here's plenty of water
and there's the car—" with a nod back over his shoulder at the road—"but
I've no means of carrying the one to the other. I didn't even bring a hat!"
"I can certainly be of help. My father's along the bank, taking a doze beside our picnic-basket. We have an empty milk bottle."
"Fine!" He looked her over appraisingly, from the top of her head to her shapely bare feet. "I've lived in different parts of Africa for eight years, but this is the first time I've ever come upon a sprite near an African river." He stopped, and added interestedly, "I say, you wouldn't be Lesley Norton, would you?"
"Yes, I would. Did the Pembertons tell you about us?"
"The Pembertons? Who are they?"
She laughed a little. "We're at cross-purposes. Let's go back to the beginning."
"Very well. I'm Neville Madison."
"Oh."
He gave her a cynical grin. "Does my name mean something not very palatable?"
"Of course not." Her smile had faded, though. "You're Senor del Cuero's cousin, the one who's taking a busman's holiday discovering minerals. You plan to hack beryls out of Amanzi."
"My dear girl, you don't know your luck!" he said. "At the present moment I'd give my ears to own Amanzi. Beryl is fetching a fabulous price, and even a small amount is worth quarrying. Aren't you pleased about it?"
"I'd rather have been a successful farmer. When are you going to start?"
"It depends to some extent on you and your father. That's why I came over this afternoon. As a matter of fact I was going to ask if you'd mind my converting one of your sheds into living quarters."
"They're log buildings, and not waterproof. Why not build a rondavel lower down, near where you're going to dig?"
He raised one eyebrow. "I will if you insist, though I'm not too keen on eating and breathing granite dust."
"I'm sorry, I didn't think of that," she said contritely. "We have a spare room, but it's unfurnished. I dare say we could fix it up for you."
"Wonderful. I was hoping you'd say something like that. I'll fix it up myself. A roving geologist carries his gear wherever he goes." He bent towards her conspiratorially. "I'll tell you something. The use of one of your sheds was Fernando's idea. He doesn't want you to be bothered any more than necessary."
"It won't be any bother, and my father will enjoy having another man in the house," she said. "You'd better come along and meet him."
NEVILLE Madison was as different from his Spani
sh cousin as even she could wish, Lesley discovered within the next half-hour. He took life
tolerantly and pleasurably. Between them they filled the radiator of his old
tourer, and then he drove Lesley and her father home to the farmhouse.
She made tea and brought it to the veranda, and joined in the general conversation.
It was not till nearly six, when Neville got up to leave them, that he again mentioned the purpose of his visit. "You're quite sure that I shan't be in the way here, living in the house?" he said to the older man.
"Glad to have you, my boy," was the cordial response. "Nothing like receiving a daily report on operations!"
"It'll be two or three weeks before I can do much. We've sent up-country for a new drill and some other plant. Still, I shall be able to uncover some of the surface. Do you mind if I move in with you soon?"
"Not at all," said Lesley. "I'll have the room cleaned tomorrow."
"Thanks. All my stuff is stored with some friends. I'll go along for it and be back on Thursday or Friday." He said goodbye to Edward Norton, and Lesley walked with him down the path to the road. At the car he held out his hand. "We're going to be friends, Lesley," he said. "I feel it in my bones. Shake on it." They did, smiling, and he added, "I believe it's going to be a profitable holiday for me, after all."
"How long is your leave?"
"I have four months, and there's still more than half to go." His hand on the door of the tourer, he openly considered her once more. "Fernando didn't tell me you were pretty."
"He probably prefers raven-haired lovelies in mantillas."
"Maybe," he agreed carelessly. "He's never had time to be much of a ladies' man, but he certainly has a way with women. What did you think of him?"
