________________________________________________
_ 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. _
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