The Mission of Janice Day Part 44

CHAPTER XXVII

MUCH TO TALK ABOUT

More than three years and a half! Can you imagine what such separation means to two people who love each other?

We read much, and hear much, about the strength of "mother-love." It is the most holy expression of the Creative Instinct--none doubt it.

Yet there is an emotion even deeper and wider than the affection of the mother for the child she has borne. Because through all these eras of advancing civilization man, the father, has shouldered the responsibility of caring for and protecting both the mother and the child.

Not enough thought is given to this. Father-love is often greater, more self-sacrificing, more n.o.ble than that given the offspring by the maternal parent. In this the mother follows instinct; she shares it with the female of all species.

When the child must depend upon the father for all--deprived of maternal parentage as was this girl, Janice Day--there is a bond between father and child that no other mortal tie can equal.

Never had this man gone to his couch at night without a thought of the daughter he had left in the North--growing from a child to womanhood out of his sight. Nor had Janice Day with all her manifold interests forgotten for one single day her father and his lonely existence in Mexico.

Janice went into her father's arms and clung to him without speech--not intelligible speech at least. Yet there were words wrenched from both of them--little intimate words of pa.s.sionate endearment like nothing Marty Day had ever heard before. Marty, steeled by the New England belief that the giving away to emotion, especially that of affection, was almost indecent, actually blushed for his relatives. Finally he drawled:

"Hi tunket! Give a feller a chance, will you, Janice? What d'you think, that I came clear down into Mexico here to play a dummy hand?"

"You're Marty!" cried Mr. Day, putting out his hand to his nephew.

"Surest thing you know," agreed Marty. "Dad and ma send their best regards."

At that Janice went off into a gale of laughter that was almost hysterical. Her cousin gazed upon her in mild surprise.

"Why, Janice!" he said. "You know they are always hounding me about my manners. What's wrong with _that_?"

Both father and daughter laughed at this and Marty grinned slowly.

Anyway, matters had got altogether too serious for the boy and he wanted somebody to laugh so that he could successfully gulp down his own deeper emotion.

The Madam came forward. She had to be introduced, and the tall, haggard man with his arm in a sling and his shoulder swathed in bandages very plainly impressed favorably the wife of Senor General De Soto Palo.

"Ach, my dear!" she confided to Janice later, "he is such a romantic-looking man! Now, to tell you the truth, as much as I adore the general, me, I could wish him the more distingue looking--ees eet not?"

Of course daddy was a splendid-looking man! Thin and haggard as he was, Janice thought n.o.body as interesting in appearance as daddy--not even Nelson!

She left it to Marty to relate in particular what had happened to them since they had left Polktown. And it lost nothing in the telling--trust Marty!

"It looks to me as though you two have had quite an adventurous career,"

Mr. Broxton Day said with twinkling eyes.

He had sat down in the sun, for he was still very weak. His own brief tale, Marty thought, savored of "the real thing."

Mr. Day had been treacherously attacked and shot, and had lain unattended for twenty-four hours at the mouth of the main shaft of the mine. He had lost much blood at this time and was now scarcely able to travel. Yet during all the time the rebels had hemmed them in he had planned the defense of the mine buildings and held his handful of guards to their task.

"I can't put you up decently, Janice," he said. "You see, they've wrecked my quarters," and he gestured toward the building that had served him as office and living rooms before the battle.

"Oh, but, Daddy, we're not going to stay!" she cried. "I want to take you away from here just as soon as you can go. Do you suppose you could travel in Madam's car?"

Her father looked ruefully about at the havoc wrought by the enemy.

"Well," he sighed. "It will take months, I suppose, to put things to rights again. And this will be the third time we have had to do it. I suppose my head foreman could do most of it alone----"

"Why!" cried Janice, "he'll just have to! Daddy, you're going home with me to Polktown to stay till you are well and strong again. I wish we could start now."

Had Mr. Day suspected what the next few hours would bring forth they would have started immediately for San Cristoval--even had they walked.

General Palo's victory, however, seemed so complete that the Americans did not suspect any menace of peril from a new quarter.

They took dinner with the general and "Madam," as Janice continued to call the woman, in the Pullman car that had been made over into a more or less luxurious "home" for the commander and his wife. There was a kitchen and a cook in it; and to Marty's unfeigned delight there were no beans on the bill-of-fare.

"Hi tunket!" he exploded when they came away from the Pullman coach to take possession of one of the sheds that Mr. Day's men had made habitable for the time being. "I don't know but these greasers would be more'n half human if they'd live on something besides _frijoles_. That little general is a nice little feller."

"Easy, nephew," advised his uncle, much amused after all by the boy's nonchalance and a.s.sumption of maturity. "Say nothing or do nothing to belittle a Mexican's dignity. They have a saying in their own tongue that means, 'If thou lose thy dignity thou hast lost that which thou wilt never find again.'

"The secret of half the trouble we Americans have in Mexico is in our failure to acknowledge this national trait. The poorest and most miserable peon often has in his heart a pride equal to that of a newly-made millionaire," and Mr. Broxton Day laughed.

"If you treat them cavalierly and as though they were beneath you, they may laugh. They are humble enough to their masters; ages of oppression have taught them sycophancy. But in their hearts is bitter hate--and it flames out in these uprisings. _Then_ they revenge themselves and, being profoundly ignorant, they seek that revenge from innocent and guilty alike."

This could not be said to interest Marty greatly. As soon as they were in the house he sought the couch prepared for him. But Janice and her father sat talking for half the night.

There was much for them to talk about. Until recently, of course, their letters to each other had fully and freely related personal happenings; but there were many intimate affairs to be discussed by Broxton Day and his grown-up daughter. For so she seemed to him. His little Janice had blossomed into womanhood. Yet she had not grown away from him; she was nearer and dearer.

"You can understand things now that you might not have appreciated three years or so ago," said her father. "Oh! I admit it was somewhat of a shock to me when I first saw you to-day--you are so tall and so much the woman, my dear. Your photographs haven't done you justice. I see you are quite the grown woman. Yet you had to run away to escape Jason's opposition to your plans? Good soul!" and he chuckled.

She laughed, then sighed. "Yes. I could not bear actually to defy him."

"Ah! And this young man you've told me so much about in your letters?

What about Nelson?" her father asked, scrutinizing her countenance keenly.

Janice could not altogether hide her feeling that, somehow, Nelson had failed her. The loyal girl found herself in the position of an apologist. She could not really explain why he had not come with her to Mexico.

"He--he did not believe I meant to come," she confessed.

"You told him?" asked her father.

"Yes. I told him I should."

"My dear," said Mr. Day thoughtfully, "the young man cannot know you very well, after all."

Janice sighed. "I _thought_ he did," she observed. "I've been so busy--so anxious--about you and all, Daddy--that I have not thought much about Nelson until now. I realize it would have been very difficult--indeed impossible--for him to have left his school in the middle of the term to come with me. But he did not believe I meant what I said. That--that is where it hurts, Daddy."

"Well! well!" murmured Broxton Day. "You're not like other girls, Janice. I can see that. And I imagine, for that very reason, you have picked out a young man for yourself that is quite your opposite. I have an idea Nelson Haley is a very common type of youth," and his eyes twinkled.

"Oh, but he isn't, Daddy! Not at all!" she cried, quick to defend. "He is quite remarkable. Why--listen----"