The Langhams were to arrive on Friday, and during the week before that
day Clay went about with a long slip of paper in his pocket which he
would consult earnestly in corners, and upon which he would note down
the things that they had left undone. At night he would sit staring at
it and turning it over in much concern, and would beg Langham to tell
him what he could have meant when he wrote "see Weimer," or "clean
brasses," or "S. Q. M." "Why should I see Weimer," he would exclaim,
"and which brasses, and what does S. Q. M. stand for, for heaven's
sake?"
They held a full-dress rehearsal in the bungalow to improve its state
of preparation, and drilled the servants and talked English to them, so
that they would know what was wanted when the young ladies came. It
was an interesting exercise, and had the three young men been less
serious in their anxiety to welcome the coming guests they would have
found themselves very amusing--as when Langham would lean over the
balcony in the court and shout back into the kitchen, in what was
supposed to be an imitation of his sister's manner, "Bring my coffee
and rolls--and don't take all day about it either," while Clay and
MacWilliams stood anxiously below to head off the servants when they
carried in a can of hot water instead of bringing the horses round to
the door, as they had been told to do.
"Of course it's a bit rough and all that," Clay would say, "but they
have only to tell us what they want changed and we can have it ready
for them in an hour."
"Oh, my sisters are all right," Langham would reassure him; "they'll
think it's fine. It will be like camping-out to them, or a picnic.
They'll understand."
But to make sure, and to "test his girders," as Clay put it, they gave
a dinner, and after that a breakfast. The President came to the first,
with his wife, the Countess Manuelata, Madame la Presidenta, and
Captain Stuart, late of the Gordon Highlanders, and now in command of
the household troops at the Government House and of the body-guard of
the President. He was a friend of Clay's and popular with every one
present, except for the fact that he occupied this position, instead of
serving his own Government in his own army. Some people said he had
been crossed in love, others, less sentimental, that he had forged a
check, or mixed up the mess accounts of his company. But Clay and
MacWilliams said it concerned no one why he was there, and then
emphasized the remark by picking a quarrel with a man who had given an
unpleasant reason for it. Stuart, so far as they were concerned, could
do no wrong.
The dinner went off very well, and the President consented to dine with
them in a week, on the invitation of young Langham to meet his father.
"Miss Langham is very beautiful, they tell me," Madame Alvarez said to
Clay. "I heard of her one winter in Rome; she was presented there and
much admired."
"Yes, I believe she is considered very beautiful," Clay said. "I have
only just met her, but she has travelled a great deal and knows every
one who is of interest, and I think you will like her very much."
"I mean to like her," said the woman. "There are very few of the
native ladies who have seen much of the world beyond a trip to Paris,
where they live in their hotels and at the dressmaker's while their
husbands enjoy themselves; and sometimes I am rather heart-sick for my
home and my own people. I was overjoyed when I heard Miss Langham was
to be with us this winter. But you must not keep her out here to
yourselves. It is too far and too selfish. She must spend some time
with me at the Government House."
"Yes," said Clay, "I am afraid of that. I am afraid the young ladies
will find it rather lonely out here."
"Ah, no," exclaimed the woman, quickly. "You have made it beautiful,
and it is only a half-hour's ride, except when it rains," she added,
laughing, "and then it is almost as easy to row as to ride."
"I will have the road repaired," interrupted the President. "It is my
wish, Mr. Clay, that you will command me in every way; I am most
desirous to make the visit of Mr. Langham agreeable to him, he is doing
so much for us."
The breakfast was given later in the week, and only men were present.
They were the rich planters and bankers of Valencia, generals in the
army, and members of the Cabinet, and officers from the tiny war-ship
in the harbor. The breeze from the bay touched them through the open
doors, the food and wine cheered them, and the eager courtesy and
hospitality of the three Americans pleased and flattered them. They
were of a people who better appreciate the amenities of life than its
sacrifices.
The breakfast lasted far into the afternoon, and, inspired by the
success of the banquet, Clay quite unexpectedly found himself on his
feet with his hand on his heart, thanking the guests for the good-will
and assistance which they had given him in his work. "I have tramped
down your coffee plants, and cut away your forests, and disturbed your
sleep with my engines, and you have not complained," he said, in his
best Spanish, "and we will show that we are not ungrateful."
Then Weimer, the Consul, spoke, and told them that in his Annual
Consular Report, which he had just forwarded to the State Department,
he had related how ready the Government of Olancho had been to assist
the American company. "And I hope," he concluded, "that you will allow
me, gentlemen, to propose the health of President Alvarez and the
members of his Cabinet."
The men rose to their feet, one by one, filling their glasses and
laughing and saying, "Viva el Gobernador," until they were all
standing. Then, as they looked at one another and saw only the faces
of friends, some one of them cried, suddenly, "To President Alvarez,
Dictator of Olancho!"
The cry was drowned in a yell of exultation, and men sprang cheering to
their chairs waving their napkins above their heads, and those who wore
swords drew them and flashed them in the air, and the quiet, lazy
good-nature of the breakfast was turned into an uproarious scene of
wild excitement. Clay pushed back his chair from the head of the table
with an anxious look at the servants gathered about the open door, and
Weimer clutched frantically at Langham's elbow and whispered, "What did
I say? For heaven's sake, how did it begin?"
The outburst ceased as suddenly as it had started, and old General
Rojas, the Vice-President, called out, "What is said is said, but it
must not be repeated."
Stuart waited until after the rest had gone, and Clay led him out to
the end of the veranda. "Now will you kindly tell me what that was?"
Clay asked. "It didn't sound like champagne."
"No," said the other, "I thought you knew. Alvarez means to proclaim
himself Dictator, if he can, before the spring elections."
"And are you going to help him?"
"Of course," said the Englishman, simply.
"Well, that's all right," said Clay, "but there's no use shouting the
fact all over the shop like that--and they shouldn't drag me into it."
Stuart laughed easily and shook his head. "It won't be long before
you'll be in it yourself," he said.
Clay awoke early Friday morning to hear the shutters beating viciously
against the side of the house, and the wind rushing through the palms,
and the rain beating in splashes on the zinc roof. It did not come
soothingly and in a steady downpour, but brokenly, like the rush of
waves sweeping over a rough beach. He turned on the pillow and shut
his eyes again with the same impotent and rebellious sense of
disappointment that he used to feel when he had wakened as a boy and
found it storming on his holiday, and he tried to sleep once more in
the hope that when he again awoke the sun would be shining in his eyes;
but the storm only slackened and did not cease, and the rain continued
to fall with dreary, relentless persistence. The men climbed the muddy
road to the Palms, and viewed in silence the wreck which the night had
brought to their plants and garden paths. Rivulets of muddy water had
cut gutters over the lawn and poured out from under the veranda, and
plants and palms lay bent and broken, with their broad leaves
bedraggled and coated with mud. The harbor and the encircling
mountains showed dimly through a curtain of warm, sticky rain. To
something that Langham said of making the best of it, MacWilliams
replied, gloomily, that he would not be at all surprised if the ladies
refused to leave the ship and demanded to be taken home immediately.
"I am sorry," Clay said, simply; "I wanted them to like it."
The men walked back to the office in grim silence, and took turns in
watching with a glass the arms of the semaphore, three miles below, at
the narrow opening of the bay. Clay smiled nervously at himself, with
a sudden sinking at the heart, and with a hot blush of pleasure, as he
thought of how often he had looked at its great arms out lined like a
mast against the sky, and thanked it in advance for telling him that
she was near. In the harbor below, the vessels lay with bare yards and
empty decks, the wharves were deserted, and only an occasional small
boat moved across the beaten surface of the bay.
But at twelve o'clock MacWilliams lowered the glass quickly, with a
little gasp of excitement, rubbed its moist lens on the inside of his
coat and turned it again toward a limp strip of bunting that was
crawling slowly up the halyards of the semaphore. A second dripping
rag answered it from the semaphore in front of the Custom-House, and
MacWilliams laughed nervously and shut the glass.
"It's red," he said; "they've come."
They had planned to wear white duck suits, and go out in a launch with
a flag flying, and they had made MacWilliams purchase a red cummerbund
and a pith helmet; but they tumbled into the launch now, wet and
bedraggled as they were, and raced Weimer in his boat, with the
American flag clinging to the pole, to the side of the big steamer as
she drew slowly into the bay. Other row-boats and launches and
lighters began to push out from the wharves, men appeared under the
sagging awnings of the bare houses along the river-front, and the
custom and health officers in shining oil-skins and puffing damp cigars
clambered over the side.
"I see them," cried Langham, jumping up and rocking the boat in his
excitement. "There they are in the bow. That's Hope waving. Hope!
hullo, Hope!" he shouted, "hullo!" Clay recognized her standing between
the younger sister and her father, with the rain beating on all of
them, and waving her hand to Langham. The men took off their hats, and
as they pulled up alongside she bowed to Clay and nodded brightly.
They sent Langham up the gangway first, and waited until he had made
his greetings to his family alone.
"We have had a terrible trip, Mr. Clay," Miss Langham said to him,
beginning, as people will, with the last few days, as though they were
of the greatest importance; "and we could see nothing of you at the
mines at all as we passed--only a wet flag, and a lot of very friendly
workmen, who cheered and fired off pans of dynamite."
"They did, did they?" said Clay, with a satisfied nod. "That's all
right, then. That was a royal salute in your honor. Kirkland had that
to do. He's the foreman of A opening. I am awfully sorry about this
rain--it spoils everything."
"I hope it hasn't spoiled our breakfast," said Mr. Langham. "We haven't
eaten anything this morning, because we wanted a change of diet, and
the captain told us we should be on shore before now."
"We have some carriages for you at the wharf, and we will drive you
right out to the Palms," said young Langham. "It's shorter by water,
but there's a hill that the girls couldn't climb today. That's the
house we built for you, Governor, with the flag-pole, up there on the
hill; and there's your ugly old pier; and that's where we live, in the
little shack above it, with the tin roof; and that opening to the right
is the terminus of the railroad MacWilliams built. Where's
MacWilliams? Here, Mac, I want you to know my father. This is
MacWilliams, sir, of whom I wrote you."
There was some delay about the baggage, and in getting the party
together in the boats that Langham and the Consul had brought; and
after they had stood for some time on the wet dock, hungry and damp, it
was rather aggravating to find that the carriages which Langham had
ordered to be at one pier had gone to another. So the new arrivals sat
rather silently under the shed of the levee on a row of cotton-bales,
while Clay and MacWilliams raced off after the carriages.
"I wish we didn't have to keep the hood down," young Langham said,
anxiously, as they at last proceeded heavily up the muddy streets; "it
makes it so hot, and you can't see anything. Not that it's worth
seeing in all this mud and muck, but it's great when the sun shines.
We had planned it all so differently."
He was alone with his family now in one carriage, and the other men and
the servants were before them in two others. It seemed an interminable
ride to them all--to the strangers, and to the men who were anxious
that they should be pleased. They left the city at last, and toiled
along the limestone road to the Palms, rocking from side to side and
sinking in ruts filled with rushing water. When they opened the flap
of the hood the rain beat in on them, and when they closed it they
stewed in a damp, warm atmosphere of wet leather and horse-hair.
"This is worse than a Turkish bath," said Hope, faintly. "Don't you
live anywhere, Ted?"
"Oh, it's not far now," said the younger brother, dismally; but even as
he spoke the carriage lurched forward and plunged to one side and came
to a halt, and they could hear the streams rushing past the wheels like
the water at the bow of a boat. A wet, black face appeared at the
opening of the hood, and a man spoke despondently in Spanish.
"He says we're stuck in the mud," explained Langham. He looked at them
so beseechingly and so pitifully, with the perspiration streaming down
his face, and his clothes damp and bedraggled, that Hope leaned back
and laughed, and his father patted him on the knee. "It can't be any
worse," he said, cheerfully; "it must mend now. It is not your fault,
Ted, that we're starving and lost in the mud."
Langham looked out to find Clay and MacWilliams knee-deep in the
running water, with their shoulders against the muddy wheels, and the
driver lashing at the horses and dragging at their bridles. He sprang
out to their assistance, and Hope, shaking off her sister's detaining
hands, jumped out after him, laughing. She splashed up the hill to the
horses' heads, motioning to the driver to release his hold on their
bridles.
"That is not the way to treat a horse," she said. "Let me have them.
Are you men all ready down there?" she called. Each of the three men
glued a shoulder to a wheel, and clenched his teeth and nodded. "All
right, then," Hope called back. She took hold of the huge Mexican bits
close to the mouth, where the pressure was not so cruel, and then
coaxing and tugging by turns, and slipping as often as the horses
themselves, she drew them out of the mud, and with the help of the men
back of the carriage pulled it clear until it stood free again at the
top of the hill. Then she released her hold on the bridles and looked
down, in dismay, at her frock and hands, and then up at the three men.
They appeared so utterly miserable and forlorn in their muddy garments,
and with their faces washed with the rain and perspiration, that the
girl gave way suddenly to an uncontrollable shriek of delight. The men
stared blankly at her for a moment, and then inquiringly at one
another, and as the humor of the situation struck them they burst into
an echoing shout of laughter, which rose above the noise of the wind
and rain, and before which the disappointments and trials of the
morning were swept away. Before they reached the Palms the sun was out
and shining with fierce brilliancy, reflecting its rays on every damp
leaf, and drinking up each glistening pool of water.
MacWilliams and Clay left the Langhams alone together, and returned to
the office, where they assured each other again and again that there
was no doubt, from what each had heard different members of the family
say, that they were greatly pleased with all that had been prepared for
them.
"They think it's fine!" said young Langham, who had run down the hill
to tell them about it. "I tell you, they are pleased. I took them all
over the house, and they just exclaimed every minute. Of course," he
said, dispassionately, "I thought they'd like it, but I had no idea it
would please them as much as it has. My Governor is so delighted with
the place that he's sitting out there on the veranda now, rocking
himself up and down and taking long breaths of sea-air, just as though
he owned the whole coast-line."
Langham dined with his people that night, Clay and MacWilliams having
promised to follow him up the hill later. It was a night of much
moment to them all, and the two men ate their dinner in silence, each
considering what the coming of the strangers might mean to him.
As he was leaving the room MacWilliams stopped and hovered uncertainly
in the doorway.
"Are you going to get yourself into a dress-suit to-night?" he asked.
Clay said that he thought he would; he wanted to feel quite clean once
more.
"Well, all right, then," the other returned, reluctantly. "I'll do it
for this once, if you mean to, but you needn't think I'm going to make
a practice of it, for I'm not. I haven't worn a dress-suit," he
continued, as though explaining his principles in the matter, "since
your spread when we opened the railroad--that's six months ago; and the
time before that I wore one at MacGolderick's funeral. MacGolderick
blew himself up at Puerto Truxillo, shooting rocks for the breakwater.
We never found all of him, but we gave what we could get together as
fine a funeral as those natives ever saw. The boys, they wanted to
make him look respectable, so they asked me to lend them my dress-suit,
but I told them I meant to wear it myself. That's how I came to wear a
dress-suit at a funeral. It was either me or MacGolderick."
"MacWilliams," said Clay, as he stuck the toe of one boot into the heel
of the other, "if I had your imagination I'd give up railroading and
take to writing war clouds for the newspapers."
"Do you mean you don't believe that story?" MacWilliams demanded,
sternly.
"I do," said Clay, "I mean I don't."
"Well, let it go," returned MacWilliams, gloomily; "but there's been
funerals for less than that, let me tell you."
A half-hour later MacWilliams appeared in the door and stood gazing
attentively at Clay arranging his tie before a hand-glass, and then at
himself in his unusual apparel.
"No wonder you voted to dress up," he exclaimed finally, in a tone of
personal injury. "That's not a dress-suit you've got on anyway. It
hasn't any tails. And I hope for your sake, Mr. Clay," he continued,
his voice rising in plaintive indignation, "that you are not going to
play that scarf on us for a vest. And you haven't got a high collar on,
either. That's only a rough blue print of a dress-suit. Why, you look
just as comfortable as though you were going to enjoy yourself--and you
look cool, too."
"Well, why not?" laughed Clay.
"Well, but look at me," cried the other. "Do I look cool? Do I look
happy or comfortable? No, I don't. I look just about the way I feel,
like a fool undertaker. I'm going to take this thing right off. You
and Ted Langham can wear your silk scarfs and bobtail coats, if you
like, but if they don't want me in white duck they don't get me."
When they reached the Palms, Clay asked Miss Langham if she did not
want to see his view. "And perhaps, if you appreciate it properly, I
will make you a present of it," he said, as he walked before her down
the length of the veranda.
"It would be very selfish to keep it all to my self," she said.
"Couldn't we share it?" They had left the others seated facing the
bay, with MacWilliams and young Langham on the broad steps of the
veranda, and the younger sister and her father sitting in long bamboo
steamer-chairs above them.
Clay and Miss Langham were quite alone. From the high cliff on which
the Palms stood they could look down the narrow inlet that joined the
ocean and see the moonlight turning the water into a rippling ladder of
light and gilding the dark green leaves of the palms near them with a
border of silver. Directly below them lay the waters of the bay,
reflecting the red and green lights of the ships at anchor, and beyond
them again were the yellow lights of the town, rising one above the
other as the city crept up the hill. And back of all were the
mountains, grim and mysterious, with white clouds sleeping in their
huge valleys, like masses of fog.
Except for the ceaseless murmur of the insect life about them the night
was absolutely still--so still that the striking of the ships' bells in
the harbor came to them sharply across the surface of the water, and
they could hear from time to time the splash of some great fish and the
steady creaking of an oar in a rowlock that grew fainter and fainter as
it grew further away, until it was drowned in the distance. Miss
Langham was for a long time silent. She stood with her hands clasped
behind her, gazing from side to side into the moonlight, and had
apparently forgotten that Clay was present.
"Well," he said at last, "I think you appreciate it properly. I was
afraid you would exclaim about it, and say it was fine, or charming, or
something."
Miss Langham turned to him and smiled slightly. "And you told me once
that you knew me so very well," she said.
Clay chose to forget much that he had said on that night when he had
first met her. He knew that he had been bold then, and had dared to be
so because he did not think he would see her again; but, now that he
was to meet her every day through several months, it seemed better to
him that they should grow to know each other as they really were,
simply and sincerely, and without forcing the situation in any way.
So he replied, "I don't know you so well now. You must remember I
haven't seen you for a year."
"Yes, but you hadn't seen me for twenty-two years then," she answered.
"I don't think you have changed much," she went on. "I expected to find
you gray with cares. Ted wrote us about the way you work all day at
the mines and sit up all night over calculations and plans and reports.
But you don't show it. When are you going to take us over the mines?
To-morrow? I am very anxious to see them, but I suppose father will
want to inspect them first. Hope knows all about them, I believe; she
knows their names, and how much you have taken out, and how much you
have put in, too, and what MacWilliams's railroad cost, and who got the
contract for the ore pier. Ted told us in his letters, and she used to
work it out on the map in father's study. She is a most energetic
child; I think sometimes she should have been a boy. I wish I could be
the help to any one that she is to my father and to me. Whenever I am
blue or down she makes fun of me, and--"
"Why should you ever be blue?" asked Clay, abruptly.
"There is no real reason, I suppose," the girl answered, smiling,
"except that life is so very easy for me that I have to invent some
woes. I should be better for a few reverses." And then she went on in
a lower voice, and turning her head away, "In our family there is no
woman older than I am to whom I can go with questions that trouble me.
Hope is like a boy, as I said, and plays with Ted, and my father is
very busy with his affairs, and since my mother died I have been very
much alone. A man cannot understand. And I cannot understand why I
should be speaking to you about myself and my troubles, except--" she
added, a little wistfully, "that you once said you were interested in
me, even if it was as long as a year ago. And because I want you to be
very kind to me, as you have been to Ted, and I hope that we are going
to be very good friends."
She was so beautiful, standing in the shadow with the moonlight about
her and with her hand held out to him, that Clay felt as though the
scene were hardly real. He took her hand in his and held it for a
moment. His pleasure in the sweet friendliness of her manner and in
her beauty was so great that it kept him silent.
"Friends!" he laughed under his breath. "I don't think there is much
danger of our not being friends. The danger lies," he went on,
smiling, "in my not being able to stop there."
Miss Langham made no sign that she had heard him, but turned and walked
out into the moonlight and down the porch to where the others were
sitting.
Young Langham had ordered a native orchestra of guitars and reed
instruments from the town to serenade his people, and they were
standing in front of the house in the moonlight as Miss Langham and
Clay came forward. They played the shrill, eerie music of their
country with a passion and feeling that filled out the strange tropical
scene around them; but Clay heard them only as an accompaniment to his
own thoughts, and as a part of the beautiful night and the tall,
beautiful girl who had dominated it. He watched her from the shadow as
she sat leaning easily forward and looking into the night. The
moonlight fell full upon her, and though she did not once look at him
or turn her head in his direction, he felt as though she must be
conscious of his presence, as though there were already an
understanding between them which she herself had established. She had
asked him to be her friend. That was only a pretty speech, perhaps;
but she had spoken of herself, and had hinted at her perplexities and
her loneliness, and he argued that while it was no compliment to be
asked to share another's pleasure, it must mean something when one was
allowed to learn a little of another's troubles.
And while his mind was flattered and aroused by this promise of
confidence between them, he was rejoicing in the rare quality of her
beauty, and in the thought that she was to be near him, and near him
here, of all places. It seemed a very wonderful thing to
Clay--something that could only have happened in a novel or a play.
For while the man and the hour frequently appeared together, he had
found that the one woman in the world and the place and the man was a
much more difficult combination to bring into effect. No one, he
assured himself thankfully, could have designed a more lovely setting
for his love-story, if it was to be a love-story, and he hoped it was,
than this into which she had come of her own free will. It was a land
of romance and adventure, of guitars and latticed windows, of warm
brilliant days and gorgeous silent nights, under purple heavens and
white stars. And he was to have her all to himself, with no one near
to interrupt, no other friends, even, and no possible rival. She was
not guarded now by a complex social system, with its responsibilities.
He was the most lucky of men. Others had only seen her in her
drawing-room or in an opera-box, but he was free to ford
mountain-streams at her side, or ride with her under arches of the
great palms, or to play a guitar boldly beneath her window. He was
free to come and go at any hour; not only free to do so, but the very
nature of his duties made it necessary that they should be thrown
constantly together.
The music of the violins moved him and touched him deeply, and stirred
depths at which he had not guessed. It made him humble and deeply
grateful, and he felt how mean and unworthy he was of such great
happiness. He had never loved any woman as he felt that he could love
this woman, as he hoped that he was to love her. For he was not so far
blinded by her beauty and by what he guessed her character to be, as to
imagine that he really knew her. He only knew what he hoped she was,
what he believed the soul must be that looked out of those kind,
beautiful eyes, and that found utterance in that wonderful voice which
could control him and move him by a word.
He felt, as he looked at the group before him, how lonely his own life
had been, how hard he had worked for so little--for what other men
found ready at hand when they were born into the world.
He felt almost a touch of self-pity at his own imperfectness; and the
power of his will and his confidence in himself, of which he was so
proud, seemed misplaced and little. And then he wondered if he had not
neglected chances; but in answer to this his injured self-love rose to
rebut the idea that he had wasted any portion of his time, and he
assured himself that he had done the work that he had cut out for
himself to do as best he could; no one but himself knew with what
courage and spirit. And so he sat combating with himself, hoping one
moment that she would prove what he believed her to be, and the next,
scandalized at his temerity in daring to think of her at all.
The spell lifted as the music ceased, and Clay brought himself back to
the moment and looked about him as though he were waking from a dream
and had expected to see the scene disappear and the figures near him
fade into the moonlight.
Young Langham had taken a guitar from one of the musicians and pressed
it upon MacWilliams, with imperative directions to sing such and such
songs, of which, in their isolation, they had grown to think most
highly, and MacWilliams was protesting in much embarrassment.
MacWilliams had a tenor voice which he maltreated in the most villanous
manner by singing directly through his nose. He had a taste for
sentimental songs, in which "kiss" rhymed with "bliss," and in which
"the people cry" was always sure to be followed with "as she goes by,
that's pretty Katie Moody," or "Rosie McIntyre." He had gathered his
songs at the side of camp-fires, and in canteens at the first
section-house of a new railroad, and his original collection of ballads
had had but few additions in several years. MacWilliams at first was
shy, which was quite a new development, until he made them promise to
laugh if they wanted to laugh, explaining that he would not mind that
so much as he would the idea that he thought he was serious.
The song of which he was especially fond was one called "He never cares
to wander from his own Fireside," which was especially appropriate in
coming from a man who had visited almost every spot in the three
Americas, except his home, in ten years. MacWilliams always ended the
evening's entertainment with this chorus, no matter how many times it
had been sung previously, and seemed to regard it with much the same
veneration that the true Briton feels for his national anthem.
The words of the chorus were:
"He never cares to wander from his own fireside,
He never cares to wander or to roam.
With his babies on his knee,
He's as happy as can be,
For there's no place like Home, Sweet Home."
MacWilliams loved accidentals, and what he called "barber-shop chords."
He used a beautiful accidental at the word "be," of which he was very
fond, and he used to hang on that note for a long time, so that those
in the extreme rear of the hall, as he was wont to explain, should get
the full benefit of it. And it was his custom to emphasize "for" in
the last line by speaking instead of singing it, and then coming to a
full stop before dashing on again with the excellent truth that "there
is NO place like Home, Sweet Home."
The men at the mines used to laugh at him and his song at first, but
they saw that it was not to be so laughed away, and that he regarded it
with some peculiar sentiment. So they suffered him to sing it in peace.
MacWilliams went through his repertoire to the unconcealed amusement of
young Langham and Hope. When he had finished he asked Hope if she knew
a comic song of which he had only heard by reputation. One of the men
at the mines had gained a certain celebrity by claiming to have heard
it in the States, but as he gave a completely new set of words to the
tune of the "Wearing of the Green" as the true version, his veracity
was doubted. Hope said she knew it, of course, and they all went into
the drawing-room, where the men grouped themselves about the piano. It
was a night they remembered long afterward. Hope sat at the piano
protesting and laughing, but singing the songs of which the new-comers
had become so weary, but which the three men heard open-eyed, and
hailed with shouts of pleasure. The others enjoyed them and their
delight, as though they were people in a play expressing themselves in
this extravagant manner for their entertainment, until they understood
how poverty-stricken their lives had been and that they were not only
enjoying the music for itself, but because it was characteristic of all
that they had left behind them. It was pathetic to hear them boast of
having read of a certain song in such a paper, and of the fact that
they knew the plot of a late comic opera and the names of those who had
played in it, and that it had or had not been acceptable to the New
York public.
"Dear me," Hope would cry, looking over her shoulder with a despairing
glance at her sister and father, "they don't even know 'Tommy Atkins'!"
It was a very happy evening for them all, foreshadowing, as it did, a
continuation of just such evenings. Young Langham was radiant with
pleasure at the good account which Clay had given of him to his father,
and Mr. Langham was gratified, and proud of the manner in which his son
and heir had conducted himself; and MacWilliams, who had never before
been taken so simply and sincerely by people of a class that he had
always held in humorous awe, felt a sudden accession of dignity, and an
unhappy fear that when they laughed at what he said, it was because its
sense was so utterly different from their point of view, and not
because they saw the humor of it. He did not know what the word "snob"
signified, and in his roughened, easy-going nature there was no touch
of false pride; but he could not help thinking how surprised his people
would be if they could see him, whom they regarded as a wanderer and
renegade on the face of the earth and the prodigal of the family, and
for that reason the best loved, leaning over a grand piano, while one
daughter of his much-revered president played comic songs for his
delectation, and the other, who according to the newspapers refused
princes daily, and who was the most wonderful creature he had ever
seen, poured out his coffee and brought it to him with her own hands.
The evening came to an end at last, and the new arrivals accompanied
their visitors to the veranda as they started to their cabin for the
night. Clay was asking Mr. Langham when he wished to visit the mines,
and the others were laughing over farewell speeches, when young Langham
startled them all by hurrying down the length of the veranda and
calling on them to follow.
"Look!" he cried, pointing down the inlet. "Here comes a man-of-war,
or a yacht. Isn't she smart-looking? What can she want here at this
hour of the night? They won't let them land. Can you make her out,
MacWilliams?"
A long, white ship was steaming slowly up the inlet, and passed within
a few hundred feet of the cliff on which they were standing.
"Why, it's the 'Vesta'!" exclaimed Hope, wonderingly. "I thought she
wasn't coming for a week?"
"It can't be the 'Vesta'!" said the elder sister; "she was not to have
sailed from Havana until to-day."
"What do you mean?" asked Langham. "Is it King's boat? Do you expect
him here? Oh, what fun! I say, Clay, here's the 'Vesta,' Reggie
King's yacht, and he's no end of a sport. We can go all over the place
now, and he can land us right at the door of the mines if we want to."
"Is it the King I met at dinner that night?" asked Clay, turning to
Miss Langham.
"Yes," she said. "He wanted us to come down on the yacht, but we
thought the steamer would be faster; so he sailed without us and was to
have touched at Havana, but he has apparently changed his course.
Doesn't she look like a phantom ship in the moonlight?"
Young Langham thought he could distinguish King among the white figures
on the bridge, and tossed his hat and shouted, and a man in the stern
of the yacht replied with a wave of his hand.
"That must be Mr. King," said Hope. "He didn't bring any one with him,
and he seems to be the only man aft."
They stood watching the yacht as she stopped with a rattle of
anchor-chains and a confusion of orders that came sharply across the
water, and then the party separated and the three men walked down the
hill, Langham eagerly assuring the other two that King was a very good
sort, and telling them what a treasure-house his yacht was, and how he
would have probably brought the latest papers, and that he would
certainly give a dance on board in their honor.
The men stood for some short time together, after they had reached the
office, discussing the great events of the day, and then with cheerful
good-nights disappeared into their separate rooms.
An hour later Clay stood without his coat, and with a pen in his hand,
at MacWilliams's bedside and shook him by the shoulder.
"I'm not asleep," said MacWilliams, sitting up; "what is it? What have
you been doing?" he demanded. "Not working?"
"There were some reports came in after we left," said Clay, "and I find
I will have to see Kirkland to-morrow morning. Send them word to run
me down on an engine at five-thirty, will you? I am sorry to have to
wake you, but I couldn't remember in which shack that engineer lives."
MacWilliams jumped from his bed and began kicking about the floor for
his boots. "Oh, that's all right," he said. "I wasn't asleep, I was
just--" he lowered his voice that Langham might not hear him through
the canvas partitions--"I was just lying awake playing duets with the
President, and racing for the International Cup in my new centre-board
yacht, that's all!"
MacWilliams buttoned 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
substitute and understudy when anybody gets ill. We're right in our
own class 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 nigger 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 class; 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 brass, and the
comfortable wicker chairs and gay cushions 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 assurance 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 shining 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
ship 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."