Soldiers of Fortune Part 8

At one end of the plaza the President's band was playing native waltzes that came throbbing through the trees and beating softly above the rustling skirts and clinking spurs of the senoritas and officers, sweeping by in two opposite circles around the edges of the tessellated pavements. Above the palms around the square arose the dim, white facade of the cathedral, with the bronze statue of Anduella, the liberator of Olancho, who answered with his upraised arm and c.o.c.ked hat the cheers of an imaginary populace. Clay's had been an un.o.btrusive part in the evening's entertainment, but he saw that the others had been pleased, and felt a certain satisfaction in thinking that King himself could not have planned and carried out a dinner more admirable in every way. He was gratified that they should know him to be not altogether a barbarian. But what he best liked to remember was that whenever he had spoken she had listened, even when her eyes were turned away and she was pretending to listen to some one else. He tormented himself by wondering whether this was because he interested her only as a new and strange character, or whether she felt in some way how eagerly he was seeking her approbation. For the first time in his life he found himself considering what he was about to say, and he suited it for her possible liking. It was at least some satisfaction that she had, if only for the time being, singled him out as of especial interest, and he a.s.sured himself that the fault would be his if her interest failed. He no longer looked on himself as an outsider.

Stuart's voice arose from the farther end of the balcony, where the white figure of Hope showed dimly in the darkness.

"They are talking about you over there," said Miss Langham, turning toward him.

"Well, I don't mind," answered Clay, "as long as they talk about me--over there."

Miss Langham shook her head. "You are very frank and audacious," she replied, doubtfully, "but it is rather pleasant as a change."

"I don't call that audacious, to say I don't want to be interrupted when I am talking to you. Aren't the men you meet generally audacious?" he asked. "I can see why not--though," he continued, "you awe them."

"I can't think that's a nice way to affect people," protested Miss Langham, after a pause. "I don't awe you, do I?"

"Oh, you affect me in many different ways," returned Clay, cheerfully.

"Sometimes I am very much afraid of you, and then again my feelings are only those of unlimited admiration."

"There, again, what did I tell you?" said Miss Langham.

"Well, I can't help doing that," said Clay. "That is one of the few privileges that is left to a man in my position--it doesn't matter what I say. That is the advantage of being of no account and hopelessly detrimental. The eligible men of the world, you see, have to be so very careful. A Prime Minister, for instance, can't talk as he wishes, and call names if he wants to, or write letters, even. Whatever he says is so important, because he says it, that he must be very discreet. I am so unimportant that no one minds what I say, and so I say it. It's the only comfort I have."

"Are you in the habit of going around the world saying whatever you choose to every woman you happen to--to--" Miss Langham hesitated.

"To admire very much," suggested Clay.

"To meet," corrected Miss Langham. "Because, if you are, it is a very dangerous and selfish practice, and I think your theory of non-responsibility is a very wicked one."

"Well, I wouldn't say it to a child," mused Clay, "but to one who must have heard it before--"

"And who, you think, would like to hear it again, perhaps," interrupted Miss Langham.

"No, not at all," said Clay. "I don't say it to give her pleasure, but because it gives me pleasure to say what I think."

"If we are to continue good friends, Mr. Clay," said Miss Langham, in decisive tones, "we must keep our relationship on more of a social and less of a personal basis. It was all very well that first night I met you," she went on, in a kindly tone.

"You rushed in then and by a sort of tour de force made me think a great deal about myself and also about you. Your stories of cherished photographs and distant devotion and all that were very interesting; but now we are to be together a great deal, and if we are to talk about ourselves all the time, I for one shall grow very tired of it. As a matter of fact you don't know what your feelings are concerning me, and until you do we will talk less about them and more about the things you are certain of. When are you going to take us to the mines, for instance, and who was Anduella, the Liberator of Olancho, on that pedestal over there? Now, isn't that much more instructive?"

Clay smiled grimly and made no answer, but sat with knitted brows looking out across the trees of the plaza. His face was so serious and he was apparently giving such earnest consideration to what she had said that Miss Langham felt an uneasy sense of remorse. And, moreover, the young man's profile, as he sat looking away from her, was very fine, and the head on his broad shoulders was as well-modelled as the head of an Athenian statue.

Miss Langham was not insensible to beauty of any sort, and she regarded the profile with perplexity and with a softening spirit.

"You understand," she said, gently, being quite certain that she did not understand this new order of young man herself. "You are not offended with me?" she asked.

Clay turned and frowned, and then smiled in a puzzled way and stretched out his hand toward the equestrian statue in the plaza.

"Andulla or Anduella, the Treaty-Maker, as they call him, was born in 1700," he said; "he was a most picturesque sort of a chap, and freed this country from the yoke of Spain. One of the stories they tell of him gives you a good idea of his character." And so, without any change of expression or reference to what had just pa.s.sed between them, Clay continued through the remainder of their stay on the balcony to discourse in humorous, graphic phrases on the history of Olancho, its heroes, and its revolutions, the buccaneers and pirates of the old days, and the concession-hunters and filibusters of the present. It was some time before Miss Langham was able to give him her full attention, for she was considering whether he could be so foolish as to have taken offence at what she said, and whether he would speak of it again, and in wondering whether a personal basis for conversation was not, after all, more entertaining than anecdotes of the victories and heroism of dead and buried Spaniards.

"That Captain Stuart," said Hope to her sister, as they drove home together through the moonlight, "I like him very much. He seems to have such a simple idea of what is right and good. It is like a child talking. Why, I am really much older than he is in everything but years--why is that?"

"I suppose it's because we always talk before you as though you were a grown-up person," said her sister. "But I agree with you about Captain Stuart; only, why is he down here? If he is a gentleman, why is he not in his own army? Was he forced to leave it?"

"Oh, he seems to have a very good position here," said Mr. Langham.

"In England, at his age, he would be only a second-lieutenant. Don't you remember what the President said, that he would trust him with the command of his army? That's certainly a responsible position, and it shows great confidence in him."

"Not so great, it seems to me," said King, carelessly, "as he is showing him in making him the guardian of his hearth and home. Did you hear what he said to-day? 'He guards my home and my family.' I don't think a man's home and family are among the things he can afford to leave to the protection of stray English subalterns. From all I hear, it would be better if President Alvarez did less plotting and protected his own house himself."

"The young man did not strike me as the sort of person," said Mr.

Langham, warmly, "who would be likely to break his word to the man who is feeding him and sheltering him, and whose uniform he wears. I don't think the President's home is in any danger from within. Madame Alvarez--"

Clay turned suddenly in his place on the box-seat of the carriage, where he had been sitting, a silent, misty statue in the moonlight, and peered down on those in the carriage below him.

"Madame Alvarez needs no protection, as you were about to say, Mr.

Langham," he interrupted, quickly. "Those who know her could say nothing against her, and those who do not know her would not so far forget themselves as to dare to do it. Have you noticed the effect of the moonlight on the walls of the convent?" he continued, gently. "It makes them quite white."

"No," exclaimed Mr. Langham and King, hurriedly, as they both turned and gazed with absorbing interest at the convent on the hills above them.

Before the sisters went to sleep that night Hope came to the door of her sister's room and watched Alice admiringly as she sat before the mirror brushing out her hair.

"I think it's going to be fine down here; don't you, Alice?" she asked.

"Everything is so different from what it is at home, and so beautiful, and I like the men we've met. Isn't that Mr. MacWilliams funny--and he is so tough. And Captain Stuart--it is a pity he's shy. The only thing he seems to be able to talk about is Mr. Clay. He worships Mr.

Clay!"

"Yes," a.s.sented her sister, "I noticed on the balcony that you seemed to have found some way to make him speak."

"Well, that was it. He likes to talk about Mr. Clay, and I wanted to listen. Oh! he is a fine man. He has done more exciting things--"

"Who? Captain Stuart?"

"No--Mr. Clay. He's been in three real wars and about a dozen little ones, and he's built thousands of miles of railroads, I don't know how many thousands, but Captain Stuart knows; and he built the highest bridge in Peru. It swings in the air across a chasm, and it rocks when the wind blows. And the German Emperor made him a Baron."

"Why?"

"I don't know. I couldn't understand. It was something about plans for fortifications. He, Mr. Clay, put up a fort in the harbor of Rio Janeiro during a revolution, and the officers on a German man-of-war saw it and copied the plans, and the Germans built one just like it, only larger, on the Baltic, and when the Emperor found out whose design it was, he sent Mr. Clay the order of something-or-other, and made him a Baron."

"Really," exclaimed the elder sister, "isn't he afraid that some one will marry him for his t.i.tle?"

"Oh, well, you can laugh, but I think it's pretty fine, and so does Ted," added Hope, with the air of one who propounds a final argument.

"Oh, I beg your pardon," laughed Alice. "If Ted approves we must all go down and worship."

"And father, too," continued Hope. "He said he thought Mr. Clay was one of the most remarkable men for his years that he had ever met."

Miss Langham's eyes were hidden by the ma.s.ses of her black hair that she had shaken over her face, and she said nothing.

"And I liked the way he shut Reggie King up too," continued Hope, stoutly, "when he and father were talking that way about Madame Alvarez."

"Yes, upon my word," exclaimed her sister, impatiently tossing her hair back over her shoulders. "I really cannot see that Madame Alvarez is in need of any champion. I thought Mr. Clay made it very much worse by rushing in the way he did. Why should he take it upon himself to correct a man as old as my father?"

"I suppose because Madame Alvarez is a friend of his," Hope answered.