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 noble 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 passionate 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 Se[~n]or 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 distingu['e] looking--ees eet not?"
Of course daddy was a splendid-looking man! Thin and haggard as he was,
Janice thought nobody 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 assumption 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----"
And then there poured out of the girl's heart all the story of her
acquaintanceship with Nelson from the first time she had met him with
his motorcycle on the old lower Middletown road.
Did Mr. Broxton Day listen patiently? Imagine it! He was hearing from
the lips of this lovely girl-woman, whom he had seen last as a child,
all the tale of her romance; the sweetest, most endearing tale a
daughter can possibly narrate to a sympathetic and understanding father.
He saw, too, with her eyes those better qualities of the young
schoolmaster that did not, perhaps, appear on the surface--the deeper
moods and passions of his being that responded to the spur of the girl's
own character. Broxton Day realized that Janice's influence must mean
much to Nelson Haley; yet that the young man had in him that which made
it quite worth while for Janice to hold him in the strong regard she
did.
They talked of other matters that night, too--these two long separated
comrades. Uncle Jason's difficulties came in for their share of
attention. Mr. Day now for the first time learned of Jason Day's
trouble, for Janice's letter telling about it had failed to reach the
Alderdice Mine.
In his present crippled state Broxton Day was quite willing to go back
to Polktown with his daughter for the winter. And for his brother's
sake he would have gone in any case.
During his working of the mine since coming to Mexico, Broxton Day had
accumulated considerable money which he had immediately re-invested in
securities in the North.
"No more carrying of all the eggs in one basket, my dear," he said to
Janice. "I have enough elsewhere to help Jase out. So don't worry about
_that_ any more."
They might have talked all night; only Janice knew her father, in his
present weakened state, should have rest. She insisted that he roll up
in his blanket, as Marty had done hours before. When his regular
breathing assured her Mr. Day was asleep, the girl stole to his side and
tucked the blanket about his shoulders with maternal care.
"Dear Daddy!" she whispered, stooping to press her soft lips to his
wind-beaten cheek.
As she did so a sound outside startled her. Then came a cry and several
rifle shots, followed by the clatter of arms and the quick, staccato
orders of the officers calling the men to "fall in."