Mr. American

by George MacDonald Fraser

  if you were his partner, he'd share his last drop of sweat with you. Fifty-fifty Davis, they used to call him. God, but he smelled something awful - I'm sorry, that's rather an indelicate thing to say.'

  'Go on', smiled Peggy. 'I rather like the sound of your old reprobate.'

  'Well, the sound of him is perhaps the best part. You sure wouldn't have liked the sight or scent. Anyway, we went to Tonopah together - it's a place you've never heard of, in Nevada. They mine silver in a big way there, nowadays; we went there because there was news of a strike, although old Davis wasn't too keen, at first. He was pretty old, and used up, and tired, and he reckoned we'd never raise the grubstake. But we got in a poker game, with some fellows we knew - a pretty rough crowd - and I struck some fair hands, and the long and short of it was we cleaned up enough to get us to the diggings. The fellows in the game laughed at us, and called Davis an old gopher - that's a burrowing animal out there - and said he'd just be digging his own grave, and that made him mad, and he vowed he'd strike it rich if it was the last thing he did. So the two of us got a mule, and grub, and shovels, and we went to Tonopah.

  'We got a claim, and we worked it - and nothing. So we worked another - and nothing. Oh, some were taking plenty out, but not us. We were down to the bare bones, and Davis was sick, and I thought we ought to quit. But no, he had the silver fever on him now, good and proper. "Let me get on my feet again and take a sniff at the gravel", he used to say; he was croaking under his blanket and shivering so hard his bones rattled. "I know just where to look", he would say. "These other dummies don't". Well, I humoured him along, and when he got better - or rather, less ill - he insisted we dig in the black rock along a place called North Slide. Everyone knew there was nothing there; the claims office almost died laughing when we staked a section. I guessed the old man's mind had given out at last, but I went along, and we registered our forty feet apiece, and then we grubbed away at rock and mud for six weeks, and turned up nothing but a quarter-dollar someone had dropped. And even it was counterfeit.

  "'Davis", I said, "we're crazy. I'm going to call it a day". "Go on, then, quit", said he. "I'll keep it all to myself, then you'll laugh the t'other side of your face. Young pup, you think it grows on trees?" So I said all right, I'd stick it another couple of days, and we plugged on through the black rock and came on this sticky blue clay that messed up our cradles and stuck to our boots and picks so hard you could barely move around. Filthy stuff, I'd never seen anything like it; neither had Davis, even.' Mr Franklin shook his head. 'No wonder. It was eighty per cent pure silver. And the other twenty per cent was pure gold.'

  Peggy gasped, her eyes shining, and automatically clapped her hands. 'How wonderful! Oh, what a marvellous moment! What did you say? What did he say? Oh, I bet you wanted to dance all over it!'

  'I'm afraid not. It doesn't happen like that. We didn't think it was anything, you see; old Davis only had it assayed because he wasn't sure what it was. Then, when the assayers told us that it was the richest reef since the Ophir Mine at Comstock - well, then old Davis just said: "Oh, my God! We got a whole parcel o' trouble here, Mark - a whole parcel o' trouble".'

  'Whatever did he mean?'

  'Well, finding a lode is one thing - getting it out, smelting, stamp-milling, that's another. We hadn't a hope of keeping it dark - especially after Davis insisted on going on the spree with our first big consignment.' Mr Franklin smiled ruefully. 'He blew most of it inside a week - and of course word got out, and suddenly there were more vultures around than you ever saw. Slickers trying to buy us out, big mining concerns trying to horn in - and they weren't the worst of it.' He thought of that night at the Bella Union, sitting with his Remingtons, waiting for the Kid. 'Yes - it was trouble. But we got it out, all we wanted. Half a hillside, at more than four thousand dollars a ton. It took us the best part of four years, because we did it all ourselves - just Davis and me. The worst of it was looking after those shipments of silver, getting them to the bank, not daring to go to sleep, hardly, knowing-the kind of scalpers who were ready to grab it if you batted an eye. But in the end - there it was. All of it. And old Davis was dead three weeks later, of delirium tremens, mostly.'

  A sudden gust of rain hit the panes, and Peggy shivered. Mr Franklin looked out at the wet garden, toying with his watch-chain; she wondered if he was seeing old Davis dying, and pictured to herself a funeral in some squalid field outside a mining-town; she had no idea what it could have been like, and envisaged men with lamps in their hats and pick-axes standing round an open grave into which a solid silver coffin was being lowered, while Mr Franklin stood by in his tweeds. But of course she knew it would look nothing like that.

  'I'm sorry,' she said. 'The poor old man - what awful luck! To find a fortune, and then ...' She shrugged and made a little gesture with her hands.

  'He wouldn't want you to feel sorry for him. He had four years of knowing he'd hit the big bonanza -and three weeks of living it up, in his own style, and that made him happy. It meant more to him to swagger around town, sticking his head into each saloon and hollering: "The drinks are on Davis!", until the whole community was swilling it down at his expense, and he was buying cigars for everyone he met, and throwing money from his hotel window, and bathing in champagne - I've seen him do that, in a hip-bath in the middle of the biggest saloon in the place, with everyone curling up with laughter - that was all he wanted. To be the man who'd made the big strike. It wasn't the money, or any idea of buying things with it, or saving; no, he just wanted to have done it, after a lifetime grubbing round the hills. Oh, he died happy, all right. And do you know what his will said? He'd made one, leaving a bar of silver to every saloon in town, to be drunk up by the customers. And for the rest it just said: "To my partner, Mark Franklin, I leave my hurricane lamp and all my goods". The "goods" was all the silver that had been in his share of the mine.'

  'His lamp? What a strange thing to leave. Why did he do that?'

  'He valued that lamp; he'd had it a long time.'

  'That must be a rather precious possession, I should think,' said Peggy.

  'I haven't got it,' said Mr Franklin. 'I gave it to the barkeep at the Bella Union - that was Davis's favourite watering-hole - so that he could hang it up over the main bar, between the chandeliers, and keep it lighted, day and night.'

  'As a memorial, you mean? That was a jolly good idea,' said Peggy warmly. 'I should think your old friend would have liked that. I hope the ... barkeep, did you call him? I hope he keeps it lit.'

  'The day he doesn't, he loses the Bella Union,' said Mr Franklin. 'I gave him the place on that condition.'

  Peggy caught her breath. Something in the casual, matter-of-fact tone, startled her, but she said nothing for a moment, and then asked: 'And what did you do after that?'

  'Well, nothing much, for a while. There was no point in going on mining, was there, or working around the way I had done? When people strike it rich, what do they do? Go home - but I didn't have one. I knew the West, but I didn't want to buy a spread, or settle there; I didn't know the East. And yet, I found I was tired of being on the move - where was there to move to? What was there to move for? It was all I had ever done, but you know, Peggy-' it was the first time he had used her name in a conversational way, she reflected ' – unless you have to move from necessity, to work or to live - why, you find you don't want to move at all. If you have the means to make a home, to settle, then that's what you feel you should do. It was then I thought of England. Of Norfolk, and Castle Lancing. At first I thought I would just visit; then, in London, I went to a real estate man, and there was this house-' he waved a hand at his surroundings '- and it seemed somehow that it had been waiting. So I bought it. And here I am.'

  Peggy sat thoughtfully, and then shook her head. 'And you think that's an ordinary story? I think it's the most exciting thing I've ever heard - and the strangest, too. But ... wasn't there anyone - no relatives, no friends. No one to ... well, share your fortune? Most people have someone, y
ou know?'

  'Not me.' He sighed gently. 'I don't seem to make friends easily. Perhaps it comes from being alone a long time - and then, after the strike - it's a shocking thing to say, but you get wary, you know. There are so many free-loaders and bar-flies - oh, and some of them look like anything but! Anyway, you tend to be suspicious. That was another reason for coming to England, I think. Here I could be quiet, and no one would know anything about me, or where I came from. And I'll say this for Castle Lancing - they've been very polite, and let me alone. They think I'm an odd fish, I suppose, but we get along just fine. At a distance, anyway. But, as I said, I don't make friends easily.'

  'That's nonsense! Of course you do!' Peggy stood up, smiling at him. 'You're one of the friendliest people I've met! Why, here we are - yesterday we hadn't even met, and today it's as though I'd known you for ages!'

  'Maybe it just seems like a long time,' he smiled. 'It's been a pretty busy twenty-four hours. First the fox, and then the King - and last night wasn't any too easy for you and your father, I know. But I guess the King went away happy, didn't he?'

  'Oh, I hope so! He's a sickening old pest, and I wish he'd never come - but naturally I hope he isn't going to go round the county saying how ghastly the Claytons are - when I saw him moping over that awful ptarmigan pie I wanted to curl up and die! Do you really think it went off well, though? I'd like to think it wasn't too bad, for Daddy's sake. He was awfully strung up about it all, poor old dear.'

  'Not this morning, he wasn't,' said Mr Franklin reassuringly. 'If ever there was a man with a load off his mind it was Sir Charles Clayton, Esquire.'

  'Not esquire, you goose! He's a baronet - so he can't be an esquire, too. Oh, I must tell him - he'll love it. Sir Charles Clayton, Esquire. Now, if you'd said that to the King . . .' She laughed outright. 'I wonder if he'd have been pleased or shocked? That's the trouble with the old bore... you never can tell. But he likes you. No, he really does. Mrs Keppel said this morning that she couldn't remember him taking to anyone so easily. That's why he's asked you to Sandringham.' She regarded him gravely. 'That's rather a score for you, you know. Only very special people are asked there. It could mean a great deal to you.'

  Mr Franklin frowned. 'I don't know about that. Oh, I know it's a great honour -and that's kind of uncomfortable, when I think about it - but it's not the sort of thing I want, exactly ...'

  'Not want? Good lord, listen to the man. Isn't Kingie good enough for you, then?'

  'Of course he is - I didn't mean that at all,' exclaimed Mr Franklin hastily. `It's just - well, he's the King, isn't he? And ... I don't mean to sound ungrateful, because you and your father couldn't have been kinder - but last night ... the dinner, and bridge, and everyone being so genteel around him. Well - it isn't my style. I don't feel I fit in, exactly.'

  'Oh, you fit. Exactly,' said Peggy, regarding him with wry amusement. 'Whether you like it or not. If the King likes you - then you're somebody, with a capital S. Heavens, when I think of the people I know, who'd give their right arm for the chance!'

  'The chance of what?'

  'Oh, really!' The little sneer was back again. 'The chance to be known in Society - really known! To be invited to Sandringham, to be talked about as the King's bridge partner - '

  'But I can't even play bridge!'

  'To be one of the inner circle, a friend of Mrs Keppel's, the man who went six hearts against the Blue Monkey, and beat him, who pinched a fox under the King's nose, and made him laugh '

  'I didn't pinch the fox. And I didn't even know it way the King.'

  'All the better, then.' She put her head on one side, as though examining him. 'Are you really as innocent as you make out? I mean, don't you know that after this people will talk about you, and want to know who the mysterious handsome American millionaire is, and send him invitations, and look for his picture in the Society papers, and ... and ... all that sort of thing? Heavens above, why, what you've been telling me, about your making a fortune as a miner - '

  'I shouldn't have said that. That was foolishness .. .

  'Well, I hope you don't think it was foolish to tell me! I'm not going to go babbling it about - but if you think that'll stop people from finding out, you've got another think coming. You can be in the social swim - that's what I mean. In fact, you're going to find it very difficult not to be.'

  'Well, I don't want to be,' said Mr Franklin firmly.

  'That's too bad,' said Peggy, and the Botticelli mouth curled a little at the corner. 'Would it surprise you to know that I expect a sudden rush of invitations in the next few weeks - as the lady who was the first hostess to have the newcomer at her dinner table?'

  'You don't mean that!'

  'Don't I, though?' Her laugh sounded hard in his ears. 'You don't know how things work, do you? It's a small world, and it's always eager for novelties. Of course, one doesn't know how long you'll last - but while you do, you'll find that you're quite a focus of attention.' She watched him with interest. 'Does that disturb you?'

  'It hadn't occurred to me. Well, I'm afraid that your. .. people, or Society, or whatever you call 'em, are going to be disappointed. I'm not - that kind.'

  'If they suspect that, it'll probably intrigue them all the more,' said Peggy drily, and then her expression softened into a smile. 'Anyway, I hope you don't find it all too much of a bore, or that people make themselves too much of a nuisance.' She laid a hand on his arm and said brightly: 'If it gets too much, you can always come and take refuge at Oxton Hall. I promise we shan't put you in the west wing next time.'

  'I might just do that, if you'll have me.'

  'Then we're not one of the invitations you're determined to refuse?'

  'You know darned well you're not,' laughed Mr Franklin, and in that moment he was conscious that her hand was still resting on his sleeve, and there was an odd look in her eyes that reminded him of the urge to kiss her, and it seemed the most natural thing in the world to put his hands on either side of her waist, and when she didn't move, it was equally natural to draw her to him and kiss her indeed, gently at first, and then rather more firmly, until her mouth opened just a little under his. That was all; she neither returned his kiss nor tried to move away, and again it seemed only reasonable to put his arms round her and kiss her with greater intensity, and again she accepted it but did not respond one way or the other.

  Finally, with natural curiosity, he desisted, to see how she was taking it; her eyes were half-closed, and there was the little smile at the corner of her mouth, that smile which seemed so out of place in the angelic perfection of her face, and yet added to its attraction.

  'Don't do that too often,' she said quietly. 'Or you'll find yourself married before you know it.' She kissed him lightly on the lips and moved away, touching a hand to her hair. 'I really must be getting back - oh, gosh, look at the car! The seats will be soaking wet! What a goose I am! I never thought about the rain - '

  Which changed the subject very neatly: Mr Franklin hastened to get a towel, and mopped the driver's seat while she replaced her hat and veil; fortunately the rain had stopped, and when he had got the seat reasonably dry he handed her up, and received instructions on how to crank the starting-handle to set her on her way. He swung vigorously, the engine coughed and roared at the third attempt, and he was moving round to express his thanks for his visit to Oxton Hall when she called: 'Come to lunch tomorrow!' and with a wave was chugging down the drive.

  Mr Franklin watched her out of sight, and then went back indoors, where he stood for several minutes, lost in thought. Very pretty little lady, he said to himself. Quite a straight edge to her, underneath, but bright, and lively, and capable - and pretty. No denying that. Graceful and cool and collected; a lot of character. A lady, of course. Very pretty.

  Peggy Clayton drove back from Castle Lancing as quickly and expertly as she had come, the Humber roaring round the bends and sending up showers from the puddles which filled the ruts after the rain. Once she was held up by a herd of cattle cr
ossing the road, mooing and lumbering round the car, to the alarm of the elderly cow-whacker, who was used to motorists fretting and swearing, and females who became agitated when cows approached. But the smart young lady was not in the least impatient or perturbed; in fact, when he touched his hat, she smiled at him most pleasantly before driving away.

  9

  Mr Franklin discovered that he must change his way of life. The realisation began to dawn on the following evening, when on returning from Oxton Hall where he had lunched in accordance with Peggy's invitation, he found Jake in a state of high excitement. Three parties, he was told, had called during the afternoon, and in Mr Franklin's absence, had left cards; Jake indicated with an earth-grimed finger the three little rectangles of pasteboard lying on the stone ledge under the bell.

  'There wasn't no'un to take 'em, 'cept me - an' they didn't 'alf fancy givin' me cards. "Put 'em on there, then" says I, an' they didn't like it, but they 'ad to,' Jake said smugly, while Mr Franklin examined the cards - Sir Peter Stringer, Major Aldridge, and a Mr Plowright. Who the devil were they? He had a vague notion that Stringer might be the name of the stout huntsman whom he had privately named 'Colonel Dammit'; possibly the others had been among the hunt also. Peggy had been right, then; he was being sought after already. He sighed. But what to do? He had no notion of card etiquette, or what notice, if any, he should take of these evidences that he had been called upon. He sought out Thornhill, and was enlightened.