Soldiers of Fortune Part 12

"I'm sorry," she said, "but I believe I am engaged until supper-time.

Come and ask me then, and I'll have one saved for you. But there is something you can do," she added. "I left my fan in the carriage--do you think you could manage to get it for me without much trouble?"

"The carriage did not wait. I believe it was sent back," said Clay, "but I can borrow a horse from one of Stuart's men, and ride back and get it for you, if you like."

"How absurd!" laughed Miss Langham, but she looked pleased, notwithstanding.

"Oh, not at all," Clay answered. He was smiling down at her in some amus.e.m.e.nt, and was apparently much entertained at his idea. "Will you consider it an act of devotion?" he asked.

There was so little of devotion, and so much more of mischief in his eyes, that Miss Langham guessed he was only laughing at her, and shook her head.

"You won't go," she said, turning away. She followed him with her eyes, however, as he crossed the room, his head and shoulders towering above the native men and women. She had never seen him so resplendent, and she noted, with an eye that considered trifles, the orders, and his well-fitting white gloves, and his manner of bowing in the Continental fas.h.i.+on, holding his opera-hat on his thigh, as though his hand rested on a sword. She noticed that the little Olanchoans stopped and looked after him, as he pushed his way among them, and she could see that the men were telling the women who he was. Sir Julian Pindar, the old British Minister, stopped him, and she watched them as they laughed together over the English war medals on the American's breast, which Sir Julian touched with his finger. He called the French Minister and his pretty wife to look, too, and they all laughed and talked together in great spirits, and Miss Langham wondered if Clay was speaking in French to them.

Miss Langham did not enjoy the ball; she felt injured and aggrieved, and she a.s.sured herself that she had been hardly used.

She had only done her duty, and yet all the sympathy had gone to her sister, who had placed her in a trying position. She thought it was most inconsiderate.

Hope walked slowly across the veranda when the others had gone, and watched the carriage as long as it remained in sight. Then she threw herself into a big arm-chair, and looked down upon her pretty frock and her new dancing-slippers. She, too, felt badly used.

The moonlight fell all about her, as it had on the first night of their arrival, a month before, but now it seemed cold and cheerless, and gave an added sense of loneliness to the silent house. She did not go inside to read, as she had promised to do, but sat for the next hour looking out across the harbor. She could not blame Alice. She considered that Alice always moved by rules and precedents, like a queen in a game of chess, and she wondered why. It made life so tame and uninteresting, and yet people invariably admired Alice, and some one had spoken of her as the n.o.blest example of the modern gentlewoman.

She was sure she could not grow up to be any thing like that. She was quite confident that she was going to disappoint her family. She wondered if people would like her better if she were discreet like Alice, and less like her brother Ted. If Mr. Clay, for instance, would like her better? She wondered if he disapproved of her riding on the engine with MacWilliams, and of her tearing through the mines on her pony, and spearing with a lance of sugar-cane at the mongrel curs that ran to snap at his flanks. She remembered his look of astonished amus.e.m.e.nt the day he had caught her in this impromptu pig-sticking, and she felt herself growing red at the recollection. She was sure he thought her a tomboy. Probably he never thought of her at all.

Hope leaned back in the chair and looked up at the stars above the mountains and tried to think of any of her heroes and princes in fiction who had gone through such interesting experiences as had Mr.

Clay. Some of them had done so, but they were creatures in a book and this hero was alive, and she knew him, and had probably made him despise her as a silly little girl who was scolded and sent off to bed like a disobedient child. Hope felt a choking in her throat and something like a tear creep to her eyes: but she was surprised to find that the fact did not make her ashamed of herself. She owned that she was wounded and disappointed, and to make it harder she could not help picturing Alice and Clay laughing and talking together in some corner away from the ball-room, while she, who understood him so well, and who could not find the words to tell him how much she valued what he was and what he had done, was forgotten and sitting here alone, like Cinderella, by the empty fireplace.

The picture was so pathetic as Hope drew it, that for a moment she felt almost a touch of self-pity, but the next she laughed scornfully at her own foolishness, and rising with an impatient shrug, walked away in the direction of her room.

But before she had crossed the veranda she was stopped by the sound of a horse's hoofs galloping over the hard sun-baked road that led from the city, and before she had stepped forward out of the shadow in which she stood the horse had reached the steps and his rider had pulled him back on his haunches and swung himself off before the forefeet had touched the ground.

Hope had guessed that it was Clay by his riding, and she feared from his haste that some one of her people were ill. So she ran anxiously forward and asked if anything were wrong.

Clay started at her sudden appearance, and gave a short boyish laugh of pleasure.

"I'm so glad you're still up," he said. "No, nothing is wrong." He stopped in some embarra.s.sment. He had been moved to return by the fact that the little girl he knew was in trouble, and now that he was suddenly confronted by this older and statelier young person, his action seemed particularly silly, and he was at a loss to explain it in any way that would not give offence.

"No, nothing is wrong," he repeated. "I came after something."

Clay had borrowed one of the cloaks the troopers wore at night from the same man who had lent him the horse, and as he stood bareheaded before her, with the cloak hanging from his shoulders to the floor and the star and ribbon across his breast, Hope felt very grateful to him for being able to look like a Prince or a hero in a book, and to yet remain her Mr. Clay at the same time.

"I came to get your sister's fan," Clay explained. "She forgot it."

The young girl looked at him for a moment in surprise and then straightened herself slightly. She did not know whether she was the more indignant with Alice for sending such a man on so foolish an errand, or with Clay for submitting to such a service.

"Oh, is that it?" she said at last. "I will go and find you one." She gave him a dignified little bow and moved away toward the door, with every appearance of disapproval.

"Oh, I don't know," she heard Clay say, doubtfully; "I don't have to go just yet, do I? May I not stay here a little while?"

Hope stood and looked at him in some perplexity.

"Why, yes," she answered, wonderingly. "But don't you want to go back?

You came in a great hurry. And won't Alice want her fan?"

"Oh, she has it by this time. I told Stuart to find it. She left it in the carriage, and the carriage is waiting at the end of the plaza."

"Then why did you come?" asked Hope, with rising suspicion.

"Oh, I don't know," said Clay, helplessly. "I thought I'd just like a ride in the moonlight. I hate b.a.l.l.s and dances anyway, don't you? I think you were very wise not to go."

Hope placed her hands on the back of the big arm-chair and looked steadily at him as he stood where she could see his face in the moonlight. "You came back," she said, "because they thought I was crying, and they sent you to see. Is that it? Did Alice send you?"

she demanded.

Clay gave a gasp of consternation.

"You know that no one sent me," he said. "I thought they treated you abominably, and I wanted to come and say so. That's all. And I wanted to tell you that I missed you very much, and that your not coming had spoiled the evening for me, and I came also because I preferred to talk to you than to stay where I was. No one knows that I came to see you.

I said I was going to get the fan, and I told Stuart to find it after I'd left. I just wanted to see you, that's all. But I will go back again at once."

While he had been speaking Hope had lowered her eyes from his face and had turned and looked out across the harbor. There was a strange, happy tumult in her breast, and she was breathing so rapidly that she was afraid he would notice it. She also felt an absurd inclination to cry, and that frightened her. So she laughed and turned and looked up into his face again. Clay saw the same look in her eyes that he had seen there the day when she had congratulated him on his work at the mines. He had seen it before in the eyes of other women and it troubled him. Hope seated herself in the big chair, and Clay tossed his cloak on the floor at her feet and sat down with his shoulders against one of the pillars. He glanced up at her and found that the look that had troubled him was gone, and that her eyes were now smiling with excitement and pleasure.

"And did you bring me something from the ball in your pocket to comfort me," she asked, mockingly.

"Yes, I did," Clay answered, unabashed. "I brought you some bonbons."

"You didn't, really!" Hope cried, with a shriek of delight. "How absurd of you! The sort you pull?"

"The sort you pull," Clay repeated, gravely. "And also a dance-card, which is a relic of barbarism still existing in this Southern capital.

It has the arms of Olancho on it in gold, and I thought you might like to keep it as a souvenir." He pulled the card from his coat-pocket and said, "May I have this dance?"

"You may," Hope answered. "But you wouldn't mind if we sat it out, would you?"

"I should prefer it," Clay said, as he scrawled his name across the card. "It is so crowded inside, and the company is rather mixed."

They both laughed lightly at their own foolishness, and Hope smiled down upon him affectionately and proudly. "You may smoke, if you choose; and would you like something cool to drink?" she asked, anxiously. "After your ride, you know," she suggested, with hospitable intent. Clay said that he was very comfortable without a drink, but lighted a cigar and watched her covertly through the smoke, as she sat smiling happily and quite unconsciously upon the moonlit world around them. She caught Clay's eye fixed on her, and laughed lightly.

"What is it?" he said.

"Oh, I was just thinking," Hope replied, "that it was much better to have a dance come to you, than to go to the dance."

"Does one man and a dance-card and three bonbons const.i.tute your idea of a ball?"

"Doesn't it? You see, I am not out yet, I don't know."

"I should think it might depend a good deal upon the man," Clay suggested.

"That sounds as though you were hinting," said Hope, doubtfully. "Now what would I say to that if I were out?"

"I don't know, but don't say it," Clay answered. "It would probably be something very unflattering or very forward, and in either case I should take you back to your chaperon and leave you there."

Hope had not been listening. Her eyes were fixed on a level with his tie, and Clay raised his hand to it in some trepidation. "Mr. Clay,"

she began abruptly and leaning eagerly forward, "would you think me very rude if I asked you what you did to get all those crosses? I know they mean something, and I do so want to know what. Please tell me."