Soldiers of Fortune Part 7

MacWilliams b.u.t.toned a waterproof coat over his pajamas and stamped his bare feet into his boots. "Oh, I tell you, Clay," he said with a grim chuckle, "we're mixing right in with the four hundred, we are! I'm subst.i.tute and understudy when anybody gets ill. We're right in our own cla.s.s at last! Pure amateurs with no professional record against us. Me and President Langham, I guess!" He struck a match and lit the smoky wick in a tin lantern.

"But now," he said, cheerfully, "my time being too valuable for me to sleep, I will go wake up that n.i.g.g.e.r engine-driver and set his alarm clock at five-thirty. Five-thirty, I believe you said. All right; good-night." And whistling cheerfully to himself MacWilliams disappeared up the hill, his body hidden in the darkness and his legs showing fantastically in the light of the swinging lantern.

Clay walked out upon the veranda and stood with his back to one of the pillars. MacWilliams and his pleasantries disturbed and troubled him.

Perhaps, after all, the boy was right. It seemed absurd, but it was true. They were only employees of Langham--two of the thousands of young men who were working all over the United States to please him, to make him richer, to whom he was only a name and a power, which meant an increase of salary or the loss of place.

Clay laughed and shrugged his shoulders. He knew that he was not in that cla.s.s; if he did good work it was because his self-respect demanded it of him; he did not work for Langham or the Olancho Mining Company (Limited). And yet he turned with almost a feeling of resentment toward the white yacht lying calmly in magnificent repose a hundred yards from his porch.

He could see her as clearly in her circle of electric lights as though she were a picture and held in the light of a stereopticon on a screen.

He could see her white decks, and the rails of polished bra.s.s, and the comfortable wicker chairs and gay cus.h.i.+ons and flat coils of rope, and the tapering masts and intricate rigging. How easy it was made for some men! This one had come like the prince in the fairy tale on his magic carpet. If Alice Langham were to leave Valencia that next day, Clay could not follow her. He had his duties and responsibilities; he was at another man's bidding.

But this Prince Fortunatus had but to raise anchor and start in pursuit, knowing that he would be welcome wherever he found her. That was the worst of it to Clay, for he knew that men did not follow women from continent to continent without some a.s.surance of a friendly greeting. Clay's mind went back to the days when he was a boy, when his father was absent fighting for a lost cause; when his mother taught in a little schoolhouse under the shadow of Pike's Peak, and when Kit Carson was his hero. He thought of the poverty of those days poverty so mean and hopeless that it was almost something to feel shame for; of the days that followed when, an orphan and without a home, he had sailed away from New Orleans to the Cape. How the mind of the mathematician, which he had inherited from the Boston schoolmistress, had been swayed by the spirit of the soldier, which he had inherited from his father, and which led him from the mines of South Africa to little wars in Madagascar, Egypt, and Algiers. It had been a life as restless as the seaweed on a rock. But as he looked back to its poor beginnings and admitted to himself its later successes, he gave a sigh of content, and shaking off the mood stood up and paced the length of the veranda.

He looked up the hill to the low-roofed bungalow with the palm-leaves about it, outlined against the sky, and as motionless as patterns cut in tin. He had built that house. He had built it for her. That was her room where the light was s.h.i.+ning out from the black bulk of the house about it like a star. And beyond the house he saw his five great mountains, the knuckles of the giant hand, with its gauntlet of iron that lay shut and clenched in the face of the sea that swept up whimpering before it. Clay felt a boyish, foolish pride rise in his breast as he looked toward the great mines he had discovered and opened, at the iron mountains that were crumbling away before his touch.

He turned his eyes again to the blazing yacht, and this time there was no trace of envy in them. He laughed instead, partly with pleasure at the thought of the struggle he scented in the air, and partly at his own braggadocio.

"I'm not afraid," he said, smiling, and shaking his head at the white s.h.i.+p that loomed up like a man-of-war in the black waters. "I'm not afraid to fight you for anything worth fighting for."

He bowed his bared head in good-night toward the light on the hill, as he turned and walked back into his bedroom. "And I think," he murmured grimly, as he put out the light, "that she is worth fighting for."

IV

The work which had called Clay to the mines kept him there for some time, and it was not until the third day after the arrival of the Langhams that he returned again to the Palms. On the afternoon when he climbed the hill to the bungalow he found the Langhams as he had left them, with the difference that King now occupied a place in the family circle. Clay was made so welcome, and especially so by King, that he felt rather ashamed of his sentiments toward him, and considered his three days of absence to be well repaid by the heartiness of their greeting.

"For myself," said Mr. Langham, "I don't believe you had anything to do at the mines at all. I think you went away just to show us how necessary you are. But if you want me to make a good report of our resident director on my return, you had better devote yourself less to the mines while you are here and more to us." Clay said he was glad to find that his duties were to be of so pleasant a nature, and asked them what they had seen and what they had done.

They told him they had been nowhere, but had waited for his return in order that he might act as their guide.

"Then you should see the city at once," said Clay, "and I will have the volante brought to the door, and we can all go in this afternoon.

There is room for the four of you inside, and I can sit on the box-seat with the driver."

"No," said King, "let Hope or me sit on the box-seat. Then we can practise our Spanish on the driver."

"Not very well," Clay replied, "for the driver sits on the first horse, like a postilion. It's a sort of tandem without reins. Haven't you seen it yet? We consider the volante our proudest exhibit." So Clay ordered the volante to be brought out, and placed them facing each other in the open carriage, while he climbed to the box-seat, from which position of vantage he pointed out and explained the objects of interest they pa.s.sed, after the manner of a professional guide. It was a warm, beautiful afternoon, and the clear mists of the atmosphere intensified the rich blue of the sky, and the brilliant colors of the houses, and the different shades of green of the trees and bushes that lined the highroad to the capital.

"To the right, as we descend," said Clay, speaking over his shoulder, "you see a tin house. It is the home of the resident director of the Olancho Mining Company (Limited), and of his able lieutenants, Mr.

Theodore Langham and Mr. MacWilliams. The building on the extreme left is the round-house, in which Mr. MacWilliams stores his three locomotive engines, and in the far middle-distance is Mr. MacWilliams himself in the act of repairing a water-tank. He is the one in a suit of blue overalls, and as his language at such times is free, we will drive rapidly on and not embarra.s.s him. Besides," added the engineer, with the happy laugh of a boy who had been treated to a holiday, "I am sure that I am not setting him the example of fixity to duty which he should expect from his chief."

They pa.s.sed between high hedges of Spanish bayonet, and came to mud cabins thatched with palm-leaves, and alive with naked, little brown-bodied children, who laughed and cheered to them as they pa.s.sed.

"It's a very beautiful country for the pueblo," was Clay's comment.

"Different parts of the same tree furnish them with food, shelter, and clothing, and the sun gives them fuel, and the Government changes so often that they can always dodge the tax-collector."

From the mud cabins they came to more substantial one-story houses of adobe, with the walls painted in two distinct colors, blue, pink, or yellow, with red-tiled roofs, and the names with which they had been christened in bold black letters above the entrances. Then the carriage rattled over paved streets, and they drove between houses of two stories painted more decorously in pink and light blue, with wide-open windows, guarded by heavy bars of finely wrought iron and ornamented with scrollwork in stucco. The princ.i.p.al streets were given up to stores and cafes, all wide open to the pavement and protected from the sun by brilliantly striped awnings, and gay with the national colors of Olancho in flags and streamers. In front of them sat officers in uniform, and the dark-skinned dandies of Valencia, in white duck suits and Panama hats, toying with tortoise sh.e.l.l canes, which could be converted, if the occasion demanded, into blades of Toledo steel. In the streets were priests and bare-legged mule drivers, and ragged ranchmen with red-caped cloaks hanging to their sandals, and negro women, with bare shoulders and long trains, vending lottery tickets and rolling huge cigars between their lips. It was an old story to Clay and King, but none of the others had seen a Spanish-American city before; they were familiar with the Far East and the Mediterranean, but not with the fierce, hot tropics of their sister continent, and so their eyes were wide open, and they kept calling continually to one another to notice some new place or figure.

They in their turn did not escape from notice or comment. The two sisters would have been conspicuous anywhere--in a queen's drawing-room or on an Indian reservation. Theirs was a type that the caballeros and senoritas did not know. With them dark hair was always a.s.sociated with dark complexions, the rich duskiness of which was always vulgarized by a coat of powder, and this fair blending of pink and white skin under ma.s.ses of black hair was strangely new, so that each of the few women who were to be met on the street turned to look after the carriage, while the American women admired their mantillas, and felt that the straw sailor-hats they wore had become heavy and unfeminine.

Clay was very happy in picking out what was most characteristic and picturesque, and every street into which he directed the driver to take them seemed to possess some building or monument that was of peculiar interest. They did not know that he had mapped out this ride many times before, and was taking them over a route which he had already travelled with them in imagination. King knew what the capital would be like before he entered it, from his experience of other South American cities, but he acted as though it were all new to him, and allowed Clay to explain, and to give the reason for those features of the place that were unusual and characteristic. Clay noticed this and appealed to him from time to time, when he was in doubt; but the other only smiled back and shook his head, as much as to say, "This is your city; they would rather hear about it from you."

Clay took them to the princ.i.p.al shops, where the two girls held whispered consultations over lace mantillas, which they had at once determined to adopt, and bought the gorgeous paper fans, covered with brilliant pictures of bull-fighters in suits of silver tinsel; and from these open stores he led them to a dingy little shop, where there was old silver and precious hand-painted fans of mother-of-pearl that had been p.a.w.ned by families who had risked and lost all in some revolution; and then to another shop, where two old maiden ladies made a particularly good guava; and to tobacconists, where the men bought a few of the native cigars, which, as they were a monopoly of the Government, were as bad as Government monopolies always are.

Clay felt a sudden fondness for the city, so grateful was he to it for entertaining her as it did, and for putting its best front forward for her delectation. He wanted to thank some one for building the quaint old convent, with its yellow walls washed to an orange tint, and black in spots with dampness; and for the fountain covered with green moss that stood before its gate, and around which were gathered the girls and women of the neighborhood with red water-jars on their shoulders, and little donkeys buried under stacks of yellow sugar-cane, and the negro drivers of the city's green water-carts, and the blue wagons that carried the manufactured ice. Toward five o'clock they decided to spend the rest of the day in the city, and to telephone for the two boys to join them at La Venus, the great restaurant on the plaza, where Clay had invited them to dine.

He suggested that they should fill out the time meanwhile by a call on the President, and after a search for cards in various pocketbooks, they drove to the Government palace, which stood in an open square in the heart of the city.

As they arrived the President and his wife were leaving for their afternoon drive on the Alameda, the fas.h.i.+onable parade-ground of the city, and the state carriage and a squad of cavalry appeared from the side of the palace as the visitors drove up to the entrance. But at the sight of Clay, General Alvarez and his wife retreated to the house again and made them welcome. The President led the men into his reception-room and entertained them with champagne and cigarettes, not manufactured by his Government; and his wife, after first conducting the girls through the state drawing-room, where the late sunlight shone gloomily on strange old portraits of a.s.sa.s.sinated presidents and victorious generals, and garish yellow silk furniture, brought them to her own apartments, and gave them tea after a civilized fas.h.i.+on, and showed them how glad she was to see some one of her own world again.

During their short visit Madame Alvarez talked a greater part of the time herself, addressing what she said to Miss Langham, but looking at Hope. It was unusual for Hope to be singled out in this way when her sister was present, and both the sisters noticed it and spoke of it afterwards. They thought Madame Alvarez very beautiful and distinguished-looking, and she impressed them, even after that short knowledge of her, as a woman of great force of character.

"She was very well dressed for a Spanish woman," was Miss Langham's comment, later in the afternoon. "But everything she had on was just a year behind the fas.h.i.+ons, or twelve steamer days behind, as Mr.

MacWilliams puts it."

"She reminded me," said Hope, "of a black panther I saw once in a circus."

"Dear me!" exclaimed the sister, "I don't see that at all. Why?"

Hope said she did not know why; she was not given to a.n.a.lyzing her impressions or offering reasons for them. "Because the panther looked so unhappy," she explained, doubtfully, "and restless; and he kept pacing up and down all the time, and hitting his head against the bars as he walked as though he liked the pain. Madame Alvarez seemed to me to be just like that--as though she were shut up somewhere and wanted to be free."

When Madame Alvarez and the two sisters had joined the men, they all walked together to the terrace, and the visitors waited until the President and his wife should take their departure. Hope noticed, in advance of the escort of native cavalry, an auburn-haired, fair-skinned young man who was sitting an English saddle.

The officer's eyes were blue and frank and attractive-looking, even as they then were fixed ahead of him with a military lack of expression; but he came to life very suddenly when the President called to him, and prodded his horse up to the steps and dismounted. He was introduced by Alvarez as "Captain Stuart of my household troops, late of the Gordon Highlanders. Captain Stuart," said the President, laying his hand affectionately on the younger man's epaulette, "takes care of my life and the safety of my home and family. He could have the command of the army if he wished; but no, he is fond of us, and he tells me we are in more need of protection from our friends at home than from our enemies on the frontier. Perhaps he knows best. I trust him, Mr. Langham,"

added the President, solemnly, "as I trust no other man in all this country."

"I am very glad to meet Captain Stuart, I am sure," said Mr. Langham, smiling, and appreciating how the shyness of the Englishman must be suffering under the praises of the Spaniard. And Stuart was indeed so embarra.s.sed that he flushed under his tan, and a.s.sured Clay, while shaking hands with them all, that he was delighted to make his acquaintance; at which the others laughed, and Stuart came to himself sufficiently to laugh with them, and to accept Clay's invitation to dine with them later.

They found the two boys waiting in the cafe of the restaurant where they had arranged to meet, and they ascended the steps together to the table on the balcony that Clay had reserved for them.

The young engineer appeared at his best as host. The responsibility of seeing that a half-dozen others were amused and content sat well upon him; and as course followed course, and the wines changed, and the candles left the rest of the room in darkness and showed only the table and the faces around it, they all became rapidly more merry and the conversation intimately familiar.

Clay knew the kind of table-talk to which the Langhams were accustomed, and used the material around his table in such a way that the talk there was vastly different. From King he drew forth tales of the buried cities he had first explored, and then robbed of their ugliest idols. He urged MacWilliams to tell carefully edited stories of life along the Chagres before the Scandal came, and of the fastnesses of the Andes; and even Stuart grew braver and remembered "something of the same sort" he had seen at Fort Nilt, in Upper Burma.

"Of course," was Clay's comment at the conclusion of one of these narratives, "being an Englishman, Stuart left out the point of the story, which was that he blew in the gates of the fort with a charge of dynamite. He got a D. S. O. for doing it."

"Being an Englishman," said Hope, smiling encouragingly on the conscious Stuart, "he naturally would leave that out."

Mr. Langham and his daughters formed an eager audience. They had never before met at one table three men who had known such experiences, and who spoke of them as though they must be as familiar in the lives of the others as in their own--men who spoiled in the telling stories that would have furnished incidents for melodramas, and who impressed their hearers more with what they left unsaid, and what was only suggested, than what in their view was the most important point.

The dinner came to an end at last, and Mr. Langham proposed that they should go down and walk with the people in the plaza; but his two daughters preferred to remain as spectators on the balcony, and Clay and Stuart stayed with them.

"At last!" sighed Clay, under his breath, seating himself at Miss Langham's side as she sat leaning forward with her arms upon the railing and looking down into the plaza below. She made no sign at first that she had heard him, but as the voices of Stuart and Hope rose from the other end of the balcony she turned her head and asked, "Why at last?"

"Oh, you couldn't understand," laughed Clay. "You have not been looking forward to just one thing and then had it come true. It is the only thing that ever did come true to me, and I thought it never would."

"You don't try to make me understand," said the girl, smiling, but without turning her eyes from the moving spectacle below her. Clay considered her challenge silently. He did not know just how much it might mean from her, and the smile robbed it of all serious intent; so he, too, turned and looked down into the great square below them, content, now that she was alone with him, to take his time.