Роберт Фиш - Rough Diamond

Of course, there was also the good chance that she was in love with some tall, handsome fellow in Bultfontein — if she wasn’t married by this time. He was in the midst of picturing Fay Bees — her name wouldn’t still be Bees, of course — married and bent over a scrubbing board while her handsome husband sat around doing nothing but drinking and smoking — when he became aware that the horse had stopped. A sorter was looking at him curiously; they were in another yard. The sorter was a man he didn’t recognize, but the man apparently knew him.

“Hi, Barney.” A habitué of the Paris Hotel, no doubt. “The old man hire you to drive his rig today?”

“No,” Barney said, climbing down. He was aware that he’d probably say the same bloody thing that day and many other days until he was fully established. “It’s me own rig now. Bought it off the old man just yesterday…”

Barney finished his calculations and looked across the evening fire at Harry. His expression was anything but happy. “Eight quid four and tuppence,” he said, and sighed.

Harry stared at him in surprise. “Why the God-’elp-us face? Over eight pounds clear the first day? You ought to be jumping for joy!”

Barney shook his head stubbornly. “Well, I ain’t! Oh, sure, it’s a decent day’s pull; fifty quid a week if it keeps up. Maybe even work up to a hundred a week in time. That’s no money.”

“No money! One hundred pounds a week? That’s as much as Pa makes in six months! More!”

“Pa ain’t in Kimberley,” Barney said flatly. “One hundred pounds a week and we’ll be here a year or more before we can even think of buyin’ a decent claim.” He thought a minute and then came to a conclusion. “We’ll just have to start with a cheaper claim, or maybe rent one or two, and buy better ones as time goes on.”

Harry could hardly believe what he was hearing. “You’re quitting the walloping after just one day to go into the big hole? And what are you going to do about the horse?” he added sarcastically. “Supper for the two of us for the next six weeks?”

“I’m not quittin’,” Barney said almost in disgust for having to explain. “I’m goin’ on wallopin’, but we need claims, too. That’s where the diamonds all come from, and let’s not forget that! We need some help. How old are Kate and Sarah’s boys?” He was referring to the eldest sons of his two sisters.

“Jack and Solly?” Harry had to think. “Jack has to be seventeen now, and Solly almost that old.”

“They’re old enough,” Barney said flatly. “Write them a letter; tell them to come out here. Let them borrow the fare, or let Kate’s husband take a loan on the King of Prussia. We’ll pay it back.” He looked around the tent. “And when they come we’ll have to find a better place to live; a place in town. With some room.”

“Why don’t we buy the Paris Hotel?” Harry asked sarcastically.

Barney looked at him. “Maybe we will, someday. You just write the letter.” He thought a moment. “And tell them to come up from Cape Town by coach. I want to get started as soon as they get here. We’ve been wastin’ time.”

Harry sighed. He stared into the fire a few moments and then looked up. “Barney, you’re nineteen, aren’t you?”

“Turned it last month. You know that.”

“Well,” Harry said, “you act like you just turned forty. Why don’t you slow down?”

Barney slowly reddened. “I got my reasons,” he said half defiantly. “And, by the way, you’ll have to do your old act tonight at the Paris. I’m goin’ to be busy.”

“Why? Where are you going?” A sudden wise look came to Harry’s eyes. “Ah! I begin to see a light! So the girl is in Kimberley!” He became serious, frowning across the fire at his brother. “And you haven’t seen her in all the months you’ve been here? Why?”

Barney took a deep breath. He couldn’t keep Fay a secret forever, and after all, Harry was his brother and closer to him than anyone else in the world. And he suddenly wanted to talk of Fay.

“Because,” he said quietly, staring into the fire, “I wasn’t goin’ to see her until I was properly started on somethin’. I met her on the trail; her ma was sick and died up by the Orange and we buried her there. Her name’s Fay. She had enough trouble without me botherin’ her. Also, I’d told her you’d hit it big up here and she probably knows by now that that’s a potful. People talk around here. She probably knows we’re doin’ an act at the Paris and figures we’d be starvin’ otherwise. Maybe she even knows I was cullin’ already culled dirt for a shillin’ or two.” He shook his head. “I couldn’t see her like that.”

He kept staring into the fire as he spoke, avoiding Harry’s eyes.

“Well, I’m started, now. I got a horse and a cart and they’re beginnin’ to know me at the sortin’ sheds. Now I can go see her. It won’t be like I was goin’ with me hat in me hand.” He held up a hand abruptly, almost as if to forestall Harry from speaking. “But don’t get no wrong ideas. That don’t mean nothin’. She ain’t goin’ to look twice at a short, ugly mug like me, and havin’ to wear spectacles at me age.” He tapped the pocket where he kept his newly acquired eyeglasses, needed for reading or for examining stones except when he was using his loupe. He glanced over at Harry speculatively, as if considering him in a new light. “She’d look at you twice, though—”

Harry smiled. He moved around the fire and put an arm around his brother’s shoulder.

“I don’t want your girl,” he said gently. “I’m sure she’s beautiful and wonderful and all that, but I’ve got someone waiting for me back in London, and the day I can go back with some decent money in my pocket, that’s where I’m going. And that’s the girl I’m going back to.” He squeezed Barney’s shoulder. “And don’t run yourself down. You’ve got a lot to offer to any girl.”

Barney looked at his brother and smiled ruefully. “It’s a bloody pity you ain’t Fay. Or Fay ain’t you,” he said, and climbed to his feet. “Well, I got to get goin’ down to the stable and get Rhodes.”

“Rhodes?”

“That’s what I decided to call me horse, they look so much alike,” Barney said with a grin, and with a wave of his hand started down the road.

Bultfontein had not treated Gustave Bees very well; the first claim he had rented had produced a total of exactly six carats of diamonds in the month he had held the license, and he realized he had simply rented an unproductive claim. The thing was to be more ambitious, he decided. If one wished to be successful, one had to take risks. To this end, therefore, he let it be known in the area that he was in the market for a rich, diamond-producing claim, and was willing to pay a decent price for it. He was not without offers, but drawing at last upon a canniness that normally was missing from his nature, he insisted upon examining the claims before making the deal. Most of the ones offered looked unproductive, and Gustave Bees had no intention of buying anything that even looked as if it contained no diamonds.

One day, however, he was examining a claim with the owner at his side when he saw a glint of something in the yellowish soil at his feet, and was suddenly sure he had been correct in waiting for the right claim. He bent to pick the stone from the ground and found he was holding a diamond of at least four carats! He handed it over to the claim’s owner, being an honest man, but the owner, obviously equally honest, insisted that if he bought the claim the diamond should rightfully belong to him. Impressed by this evidence of probity on the part of the other, Gustave Bees could not wait until he had convinced the other to take his oxen and wagon for the claim, and immediately began digging, sure that in a very short time he would be back in Simonstown, the owner of an inn as posh as that of the greengrocer.