Soldiers of Fortune Part 11

"What do you mean by that--this time?"

"Why, what have we to do with all of this?" cried MacWilliams. "It's what I keep telling you every day. We're not in that cla.s.s, and you're only making it harder for yourself when they've gone. I call it cruelty to animals myself, having women like that around. Up North, where everybody's white, you don't notice it so much, but down here--Lord!"

"That's absurd," Clay answered. "Why should you turn your back on civilization when it comes to you, just because you're not going back to civilization by the next steamer? Every person you meet either helps you or hurts you. Those girls help us, even if they do make the life here seem bare and mean."

"Bare and mean!" repeated MacWilliams incredulously. "I think that's just what they don't do. I like it all the better because they're mixed up in it. I never took so much interest in your mines until she took to riding over them, and I didn't think great shakes of my old ore-road, either, but now that she's got to acting as engineer, it's sort of nickel-plated the whole outfit. I'm going to name the new engine after her--when it gets here--if her old man will let me."

"What do you mean? Miss Langham hasn't been to the mines but once, has she?"

"Miss Langham!" exclaimed MacWilliams. "No, I mean the other, Miss Hope. She comes out with Ted nearly every day now, and she's learning how to run a locomotive. Just for fun, you know," he added, rea.s.suringly.

"I didn't suppose she had any intention of joining the Brotherhood,"

said Clay. "So she's been out every day, has she? I like that," he commented, enthusiastically. "She's a fine, sweet girl."

"Fine, sweet girl!" growled MacWilliams. "I should hope so. She's the best. They don't make them any better than that, and just think, if she's like that now, what will she be when she's grown up, when she's learned a few things? Now her sister. You can see just what her sister will be at thirty, and at fifty, and at eighty. She's thoroughbred and she's the most beautiful woman to look at I ever saw--but, my son--she is too careful. She hasn't any illusions, and no sense of humor. And a woman with no illusions and no sense of humor is going to be monotonous. You can't teach her anything. You can't imagine yourself telling her anything she doesn't know. The things we think important don't reach her at all. They're not in her line, and in everything else she knows more than we could ever guess at. But that Miss Hope! It's a privilege to show her about. She wants to see everything, and learn everything, and she goes poking her head into openings and down shafts like a little fox terrier. And she'll sit still and listen with her eyes wide open and tears in them, too, and she doesn't know it--until you can't talk yourself for just looking at her."

Clay rose and moved on to the house in silence. He was glad that MacWilliams had interrupted him when he did. He wondered whether he understood Alice Langham after all. He had seen many fine ladies before during his brief visits to London, and Berlin, and Vienna, and they had shown him favor. He had known other women not so fine.

Spanish-American senoritas through Central and South America, the wives and daughters of English merchants exiled along the Pacific coast, whose fair skin and yellow hair whitened and bleached under the hot tropical suns. He had known many women, and he could have quoted

"Trials and troubles amany, Have proved me; One or two women, G.o.d bless them!

Have loved me."

But the woman he was to marry must have all the things he lacked.

She must fill out and complete him where he was wanting. This woman possessed all of these things. She appealed to every ambition and to every taste he cherished, and yet he knew that he had hesitated and mistrusted her, when he should have declared himself eagerly and vehemently, and forced her to listen with all the strength of his will.

Miss Langham dropped among the soft cus.h.i.+ons of the launch with a sense of having been rescued from herself and of delight in finding refuge again in her own environment. The sight of King standing in the bow beside Hope with his cigarette hanging from his lips, and peering with half-closed eyes into the fading light, gave her a sense of restfulness and content. She did not know what she wished from that other strange young man. He was so bold, so handsome, and he looked at life and spoke of it in such a fresh, unhackneyed spirit. He might make himself anything he pleased. But here was a man who already had everything, or who could get it as easily as he could increase the speed of the launch, by pulling some wire with his finger.

She recalled one day when they were all on board of this same launch, and the machinery had broken down, and MacWilliams had gone forward to look at it. He had called Clay to help him, and she remembered how they had both gone down on their knees and asked the engineer and fireman to pa.s.s them wrenches and oil-cans, while King protested mildly, and the rest sat helplessly in the hot glare of the sea, as the boat rose and fell on the waves. She resented Clay's interest in the accident, and his pleasure when he had made the machinery right once more, and his appearance as he came back to them with oily hands and with his face glowing from the heat of the furnace, wiping his grimy fingers on a piece of packing. She had resented the equality with which he treated the engineer in asking his advice, and it rather surprised her that the crew saluted him when he stepped into the launch again that night as though he were the owner. She had expected that they would patronize him, and she imagined after this incident that she detected a shade of difference in the manner of the sailors toward Clay, as though he had cheapened himself to them--as he had to her.

VII

At ten o'clock that same evening Clay began to prepare himself for the ball at the Government palace, and MacWilliams, who was not invited, watched him dress with critical approval that showed no sign of envy.

The better to do honor to the President, Clay had brought out several foreign orders, and MacWilliams helped him to tie around his neck the collar of the Red Eagle which the German Emperor had given him, and to fasten the ribbon and cross of the Star of Olancho across his breast, and a Spanish Order and the Legion of Honor to the lapel of his coat.

MacWilliams surveyed the effect of the tiny enamelled crosses with his head on one side, and with the same air of affectionate pride and concern that a mother shows over her daughter's first ball-dress.

"Got any more?" he asked, anxiously.

"I have some war medals," Clay answered, smiling doubtfully. "But I'm not in uniform."

"Oh, that's all right," declared MacWilliams. "Put 'em on, put 'em all on. Give the girls a treat. Everybody will think they were given for feats of swimming, anyway; but they will show up well from the front.

Now, then, you look like a drum-major or a conjuring chap."

"I do not," said Clay. "I look like a French Amba.s.sador, and I hardly understand how you find courage to speak to me at all."

He went up the hill in high spirits, and found the carriage at the door and King, Mr. Langham, and Miss Langham sitting waiting for him. They were ready to depart, and Miss Langham had but just seated herself in the carriage when they heard hurrying across the tiled floor a quick, light step and the rustle of silk, and turning they saw Hope standing in the doorway, radiant and smiling. She wore a white frock that reached to the ground, and that left her arms and shoulders bare. Her hair was dressed high upon her head, and she was pulling vigorously at a pair of long, tan-colored gloves. The transformation was so complete, and the girl looked so much older and so stately and beautiful, that the two young men stared at her in silent admiration and astonishment.

"Why, Hope!" exclaimed her sister. "What does this mean?"

Hope stopped in some alarm, and clasped her hair with both hands.

"What is it?" she asked; "is anything wrong?"

"Why, my dear child," said her sister, "you're not thinking of going with us, are you?"

"Not going?" echoed the younger sister, in dismay. "Why, Alice, why not? I was asked."

"But, Hope-- Father," said the elder sister, stepping out of the carriage and turning to Mr. Langham, "you didn't intend that Hope should go, did you? She's not out yet."

"Oh, nonsense," said Hope, defiantly. But she drew in her breath quickly and blushed, as she saw the two young men moving away out of hearing of this family crisis. She felt that she was being made to look like a spoiled child. "It doesn't count down here," she said, "and I want to go. I thought you knew I was going all the time. Marie made this frock for me on purpose."

"I don't think Hope is old enough," the elder sister said, addressing her father, "and if she goes to dances here, there's no reason why she should not go to those at home."

"But I don't want to go to dances at home," interrupted Hope.

Mr. Langham looked exceedingly uncomfortable, and turned appealingly to his elder daughter. "What do you think, Alice?" he said, doubtfully.

"I'm sorry," Miss Langham replied, "but I know it would not be at all proper. I hate to seem horrid about it, Hope, but indeed you are too young, and the men here are not the men a young girl ought to meet."

"You meet them, Alice," said Hope, but pulling off her gloves in token of defeat.

"But, my dear child, I'm fifty years older than you are."

"Perhaps Alice knows best, Hope," Mr. Langham said. "I'm sorry if you are disappointed."

Hope held her head a little higher, and turned toward the door.

"I don't mind if you don't wish it, father," she said. "Good-night."

She moved away, but apparently thought better of it, and came back and stood smiling and nodding to them as they seated themselves in the carriage. Mr. Langham leaned forward and said, in a troubled voice, "We will tell you all about it in the morning. I'm very sorry. You won't be lonely, will you? I'll stay with you if you wish."

"Nonsense!" laughed Hope. "Why, it's given to you, father; don't bother about me. I'll read something or other and go to bed."

"Good-night, Cinderella," King called out to her.

"Good-night, Prince Charming," Hope answered.

Both Clay and King felt that the girl would not mind missing the ball so much as she would the fact of having been treated like a child in their presence, so they refrained from any expression of sympathy or regret, but raised their hats and bowed a little more impressively than usual as the carriage drove away.

The picture Hope made, as she stood deserted and forlorn on the steps of the empty house in her new finery, struck Clay as unnecessarily pathetic. He felt a strong sense of resentment against her sister and her father, and thanked heaven devoutly that he was out of their cla.s.s, and when Miss Langham continued to express her sorrow that she had been forced to act as she had done, he remained silent. It seemed to Clay such a simple thing to give children pleasure, and to remember that their woes were always out of all proportion to the cause. Children, dumb animals, and blind people were always grouped together in his mind as objects demanding the most tender and constant consideration. So the pleasure of the evening was spoiled for him while he remembered the hurt and disappointed look in Hope's face, and when Miss Langham asked him why he was so preoccupied, he told her bluntly that he thought she had been very unkind to Hope, and that her objections were absurd.

Miss Langham held herself a little more stiffly. "Perhaps you do not quite understand, Mr. Clay," she said. "Some of us have to conform to certain rules that the people with whom we best like to a.s.sociate have laid down for themselves. If we choose to be conventional, it is probably because we find it makes life easier for the greater number.

You cannot think it was a pleasant task for me. But I have given up things of much more importance than a dance for the sake of appearances, and Hope herself will see to-morrow that I acted for the best."

Clay said he trusted so, but doubted it, and by way of re-establis.h.i.+ng himself in Miss Langham's good favor, asked her if she could give him the next dance. But Miss Langham was not to be propitiated.