VI

Clay believed that Alice Langham's visit to the mines had opened his

eyes fully to vast differences between them. He laughed and railed at

himself for having dared to imagine that he was in a position to care

for her. Confident as he was at times, and sure as he was of his

ability in certain directions, he was uneasy and fearful when he

matched himself against a man of gentle birth and gentle breeding, and

one who, like King, was part of a world of which he knew little, and to

which, in his ignorance concerning it, he attributed many advantages

that it did not possess. He believed that he would always lack the

mysterious something which these others held by right of inheritance.

He was still young and full of the illusions of youth, and so gave

false values to his own qualities, and values equally false to the

qualities he lacked. For the next week he avoided Miss Langham, unless

there were other people present, and whenever she showed him special

favor, he hastily recalled to his mind her failure to sympathize in his

work, and assured himself that if she could not interest herself in the

engineer, he did not care to have her interested in the man. Other

women had found him attractive in himself; they had cared for his

strength of will and mind, and because he was good to look at. But he

determined that this one must sympathize with his work in the world, no

matter how unpicturesque it might seem to her. His work was the best

of him, he assured himself, and he would stand or fall with it.

It was a week after the visit to the mines that President Alvarez gave

a great ball in honor of the Langhams, to which all of the important

people of Olancho, and the Foreign Ministers were invited. Miss

Langham met Clay on the afternoon of the day set for the ball, as she

was going down the hill to join Hope and her father at dinner on the

yacht.

"Are you not coming, too?" she asked.

"I wish I could," Clay answered. "King asked me, but a steamer-load of

new machinery arrived to-day, and I have to see it through the

Custom-House."

Miss Langham gave an impatient little laugh, and shook her head. "You

might wait until we were gone before you bother with your machinery,"

she said.

"When you are gone I won't be in a state of mind to attend to machinery

or anything else," Clay answered.

Miss Langham seemed so far encouraged by this speech that she seated

herself in the boathouse at the end of the wharf. She pushed her

mantilla back from her face and looked up at him, smiling brightly.

"'The time has come, the walrus said,'" she quoted, "'to talk of many

things.'"

Clay laughed and dropped down beside her. "Well?" he said.

"You have been rather unkind to me this last week," the girl began,

with her eyes fixed steadily on his. "And that day at the mines when I

counted on you so, you acted abominably."

Clay's face showed so plainly his surprise at this charge, which he

thought he only had the right to make, that Miss Langham stopped.

"I don't understand," said Clay, quietly. "How did I treat you

abominably?"

He had taken her so seriously that Miss Langham dropped her lighter

tone and spoke in one more kindly:

"I went out there to see your work at its best. I was only interested

in going because it was your work, and because it was you who had done

it all, and I expected that you would try to explain it to me and help

me to understand, but you didn't. You treated me as though I had no

interest in the matter at all, as though I was not capable of

understanding it. You did not seem to care whether I was interested or

not. In fact, you forgot me altogether."

Clay exhibited no evidence of a reproving conscience. "I am sorry you

had a stupid time," he said, gravely.

"I did not mean that, and you know I didn't mean that," the girl

answered. "I wanted to hear about it from you, because you did it. I

wasn't interested so much in what had been done, as I was in the man

who had accomplished it."

Clay shrugged his shoulders impatiently, and looked across at Miss

Langham with a troubled smile.

"But that's just what I don't want," he said. "Can't you see? These

mines and other mines like them are all I have in the world. They are

my only excuse for having lived in it so long. I want to feel that I've

done something outside of myself, and when you say that you like me

personally, it's as little satisfaction to me as it must be to a woman

to be congratulated on her beauty, or on her fine voice. That is

nothing she has done herself. I should like you to value what I have

done, not what I happen to be."

Miss Langham turned her eyes to the harbor, and it was some short time

before she answered.

"You are a very difficult person to please," she said, "and most

exacting. As a rule men are satisfied to be liked for any reason. I

confess frankly, since you insist upon it, that I do not rise to the

point of appreciating your work as the others do. I suppose it is a

fault," she continued, with an air that plainly said that she

considered it, on the contrary, something of a virtue. "And if I knew

more about it technically, I might see more in it to admire. But I am

looking farther on for better things from you. The friends who help us

the most are not always those who consider us perfect, are they?" she

asked, with a kindly smile. She raised her eyes to the great ore-pier

that stretched out across the water, the one ugly blot in the scene of

natural beauty about them. "I think that is all very well," she said;

"but I certainly expect you to do more than that. I have met many

remarkable men in all parts of the world, and I know what a strong man

is, and you have one of the strongest personalities I have known. But

you can't mean that you are content to stop with this. You should be

something bigger and more wide-reaching and more lasting. Indeed, it

hurts me to see you wasting your time here over my father's interests.

You should exert that same energy on a broader map. You could make

yourself anything you chose. At home you would be your party's leader

in politics, or you could be a great general, or a great financier. I

say this because I know there are better things in you, and because I

want you to make the most of your talents. I am anxious to see you put

your powers to something worth while."

Miss Langham's voice carried with it such a tone of sincerity that she

almost succeeded in deceiving herself. And yet she would have hardly

cared to explain just why she had reproached the man before her after

this fashion. For she knew that when she spoke as she had done, she

was beating about to find some reason that would justify her in not

caring for him, as she knew she could care--as she would not allow

herself to care. The man at her side had won her interest from the

first, and later had occupied her thoughts so entirely, that it

troubled her peace of mind. Yet she would not let her feeling for him

wax and grow stronger, but kept it down. And she was trying now to

persuade herself that she did this because there was something lacking

in him and not in her.

She was almost angry with him for being so much to her and for not

being more acceptable in little things, like the other men she knew.

So she found this fault with him in order that she might justify her

own lack of feeling.

But Clay, who only heard the words and could not go back of them to

find the motive, could not know this. He sat perfectly still when she

had finished and looked steadily out across the harbor. His eyes fell

on the ugly ore-pier, and he winced and uttered a short grim laugh.

"That's true, what you say," he began, "I haven't done much. You are

quite right. Only--" he looked up at her curiously and smiled--"only

you should not have been the one to tell me of it."

Miss Langham had been so far carried away by her own point of view that

she had not considered Clay, and now that she saw what mischief she had

done, she gave a quick gasp of regret, and leaned forward as though to

add some explanation to what she had said. But Clay stopped her. "I

mean by that," he said, "that the great part of the inspiration I have

had to do what little I have done came from you. You were a sort of

promise of something better to me. You were more of a type than an

individual woman, but your picture, the one I carry in my watch, meant

all that part of life that I have never known, the sweetness and the

nobleness and grace of civilization,--something I hoped I would some

day have time to enjoy. So you see," he added, with an uncertain

laugh, "it's less pleasant to hear that I have failed to make the most

of myself from you than from almost any one else."

"But, Mr. Clay," protested the girl, anxiously, "I think you have done

wonderfully well. I only said that I wanted you to do more. You are

so young and you have--"

Clay did not hear her. He was leaning forward looking moodily out

across the water, with his folded arms clasped across his knees.

"I have not made the most of myself," he repeated; "that is what you

said." He spoke the words as though she had delivered a sentence.

"You don't think well of what I have done, of what I am."

He drew in his breath and shook his head with a hopeless laugh, and

leaned back against the railing of the boat-house with the weariness in

his attitude of a man who has given up after a long struggle.

"No," he said with a bitter flippancy in his voice, "I don't amount to

much. But, my God!" he laughed, and turning his head away, "when you

think what I was! This doesn't seem much to you, and it doesn't seem

much to me now that I have your point of view on it, but when I

remember!" Clay stopped again and pressed his lips together and shook

his head. His half-closed eyes, that seemed to be looking back into

his past, lighted as they fell on King's white yacht, and he raised his

arm and pointed to it with a wave of the hand. "When I was sixteen I

was a sailor before the mast," he said, "the sort of sailor that King's

crew out there wouldn't recognize in the same profession. I was of so

little account that I've been knocked the length of the main deck at

the end of the mate's fist, and left to lie bleeding in the scuppers

for dead. I hadn't a thing to my name then but the clothes I wore, and

I've had to go aloft in a hurricane and cling to a swinging rope with

my bare toes and pull at a wet sheet until my finger-nails broke and

started in their sockets; and I've been a cowboy, with no companions

for six months of the year but eight thousand head of cattle and men as

dumb and untamed as the steers themselves. I've sat in my saddle night

after night, with nothing overhead but the stars, and no sound but the

noise of the steers breathing in their sleep. The women I knew were

Indian squaws, and the girls of the sailors' dance-houses and the

gambling-hells of Sioux City and Abilene, and Callao and Port Said.

That was what I was and those were my companions. Why!" he laughed,

rising and striding across the boat-house with his hands locked behind

him, "I've fought on the mud floor of a Mexican shack, with a naked

knife in my hand, for my last dollar. I was as low and as desperate as

that. And now--" Clay lifted his head and smiled. "Now," he said, in

a lower voice and addressing Miss Langham with a return of his usual

grave politeness, "I am able to sit beside you and talk to you. I have

risen to that. I am quite content."

He paused and looked at Miss Langham uncertainly for a few moments as

though in doubt as to whether she would understand him if he continued.

"And though it means nothing to you," he said, "and though as you say I

am here as your father's employee, there are other places, perhaps,

where I am better known. In Edinburgh or Berlin or Paris, if you were

to ask the people of my own profession, they could tell you something

of me. If I wished it, I could drop this active work tomorrow and

continue as an adviser, as an expert, but I like the active part

better. I like doing things myself. I don't say, 'I am a salaried

servant of Mr. Langham's;' I put it differently. I say, 'There are

five mountains of iron. You are to take them up and transport them from

South America to North America, where they will be turned into

railroads and ironclads.' That's my way of looking at it. It's better

to bind a laurel to the plough than to call yourself hard names. It

makes your work easier--almost noble. Cannot you see it that way, too?"

Before Miss Langham could answer, a deprecatory cough from one side of

the open boat-house startled them, and turning they saw MacWilliams

coming toward them. They had been so intent upon what Clay was saying

that he had approached them over the soft sand of the beach without

their knowing it. Miss Langham welcomed his arrival with evident

pleasure.

"The launch is waiting for you at the end of the pier," MacWilliams

said. Miss Langham rose and the three walked together down the length

of the wharf, MacWilliams moving briskly in advance in order to enable

them to continue the conversation he had interrupted, but they followed

close behind him, as though neither of them were desirous of such an

opportunity.

Hope and King had both come for Miss Langham, and while the latter was

helping her to a place on the cushions, and repeating his regrets that

the men were not coming also, Hope started the launch, with a brisk

ringing of bells and a whirl of the wheel and a smile over her shoulder

at the figures on the wharf.

"Why didn't you go?" said Clay; "you have no business at the

Custom-House."

"Neither have you," said MacWilliams. "But I guess we both understand.

There's no good pushing your luck too far."

"What do you mean by that--this time?"

"Why, what have we to do with all of this?" cried MacWilliams. "It's

what I keep telling you every day. We're not in that class, and you're

only making it harder for yourself when they've gone. I call it

cruelty to animals myself, having women like that around. Up North,

where everybody's white, you don't notice it so much, but down

here--Lord!"

"That's absurd," Clay answered. "Why should you turn your back on

civilization when it comes to you, just because you're not going back

to civilization by the next steamer? Every person you meet either

helps you or hurts you. Those girls help us, even if they do make the

life here seem bare and mean."

"Bare and mean!" repeated MacWilliams incredulously. "I think that's

just what they don't do. I like it all the better because they're

mixed up in it. I never took so much interest in your mines until she

took to riding over them, and I didn't think great shakes of my old

ore-road, either, but now that she's got to acting as engineer, it's

sort of nickel-plated the whole outfit. I'm going to name the new

engine after her--when it gets here--if her old man will let me."

"What do you mean? Miss Langham hasn't been to the mines but once, has

she?"

"Miss Langham!" exclaimed MacWilliams. "No, I mean the other, Miss

Hope. She comes out with Ted nearly every day now, and she's learning

how to run a locomotive. Just for fun, you know," he added,

reassuringly.

"I didn't suppose she had any intention of joining the Brotherhood,"

said Clay. "So she's been out every day, has she? I like that," he

commented, enthusiastically. "She's a fine, sweet girl."

"Fine, sweet girl!" growled MacWilliams. "I should hope so. She's the

best. They don't make them any better than that, and just think, if

she's like that now, what will she be when she's grown up, when she's

learned a few things? Now her sister. You can see just what her

sister will be at thirty, and at fifty, and at eighty. She's

thoroughbred and she's the most beautiful woman to look at I ever

saw--but, my son--she is too careful. She hasn't any illusions, and no

sense of humor. And a woman with no illusions and no sense of humor is

going to be monotonous. You can't teach her anything. You can't

imagine yourself telling her anything she doesn't know. The things we

think important don't reach her at all. They're not in her line, and

in everything else she knows more than we could ever guess at. But

that Miss Hope! It's a privilege to show her about. She wants to see

everything, and learn everything, and she goes poking her head into

openings and down shafts like a little fox terrier. And she'll sit

still and listen with her eyes wide open and tears in them, too, and

she doesn't know it--until you can't talk yourself for just looking at

her."

Clay rose and moved on to the house in silence. He was glad that

MacWilliams had interrupted him when he did. He wondered whether he

understood Alice Langham after all. He had seen many fine ladies

before during his brief visits to London, and Berlin, and Vienna, and

they had shown him favor. He had known other women not so fine.

Spanish-American senoritas through Central and South America, the wives

and daughters of English merchants exiled along the Pacific coast,

whose fair skin and yellow hair whitened and bleached under the hot

tropical suns. He had known many women, and he could have quoted

"Trials and troubles amany,

Have proved me;

One or two women, God bless them!

Have loved me."

But the woman he was to marry must have all the things he lacked.

She must fill out and complete him where he was wanting. This woman

possessed all of these things. She appealed to every ambition and to

every taste he cherished, and yet he knew that he had hesitated and

mistrusted her, when he should have declared himself eagerly and

vehemently, and forced her to listen with all the strength of his will.

Miss Langham dropped among the soft cushions of the launch with a sense

of having been rescued from herself and of delight in finding refuge

again in her own environment. The sight of King standing in the bow

beside Hope with his cigarette hanging from his lips, and peering with

half-closed eyes into the fading light, gave her a sense of restfulness

and content. She did not know what she wished from that other strange

young man. He was so bold, so handsome, and he looked at life and

spoke of it in such a fresh, unhackneyed spirit. He might make himself

anything he pleased. But here was a man who already had everything, or

who could get it as easily as he could increase the speed of the

launch, by pulling some wire with his finger.

She recalled one day when they were all on board of this same launch,

and the machinery had broken down, and MacWilliams had gone forward to

look at it. He had called Clay to help him, and she remembered how

they had both gone down on their knees and asked the engineer and

fireman to pass them wrenches and oil-cans, while King protested

mildly, and the rest sat helplessly in the hot glare of the sea, as the

boat rose and fell on the waves. She resented Clay's interest in the

accident, and his pleasure when he had made the machinery right once

more, and his appearance as he came back to them with oily hands and

with his face glowing from the heat of the furnace, wiping his grimy

fingers on a piece of packing. She had resented the equality with

which he treated the engineer in asking his advice, and it rather

surprised her that the crew saluted him when he stepped into the launch

again that night as though he were the owner. She had expected that

they would patronize him, and she imagined after this incident that she

detected a shade of difference in the manner of the sailors toward

Clay, as though he had cheapened himself to them--as he had to her.