第26章

``I am very glad to meet Captain Stuart, I am sure,'' said Mr.

Langham, smiling, and appreciating how the shyness of the Englishman must be suffering under the praises of the Spaniard.

And Stuart was indeed so embarrassed that he flushed under his tan, and assured Clay, while shaking hands with them all, that he was delighted to make his acquaintance; at which the others laughed, and Stuart came to himself sufficiently to laugh with them, and to accept Clay's invitation to dine with them later.

They found the two boys waiting in the cafe' of the restaurant where they had arranged to meet, and they ascended the steps together to the table on the balcony that Clay had reserved for them.

The young engineer appeared at his best as host.The responsibility of seeing that a half-dozen others were amused and content sat well upon him; and as course followed course, and the wines changed, and the candles left the rest of the room in darkness and showed only the table and the faces around it, they all became rapidly more merry and the conversation intimately familiar.

Clay knew the kind of table-talk to which the Langhams were accustomed, and used the material around his table in such a way that the talk there was vastly different.From King he drew forth tales of the buried cities he had first explored, and then robbed of their ugliest idols.He urged MacWilliams to tell carefully edited stories of life along the Chagres before the Scandal came, and of the fastnesses of the Andes; and even Stuart grew braver and remembered ``something of the same sort'' he had seen at Fort Nilt, in Upper Burma.

``Of course,'' was Clay's comment at the conclusion of one of these narratives, ``being an Englishman, Stuart left out the point of the story, which was that he blew in the gates of the fort with a charge of dynamite.He got a D.S.O.for doing it.''

``Being an Englishman,'' said Hope, smiling encouragingly on the conscious Stuart, ``he naturally would leave that out.''

Mr.Langham and his daughters formed an eager audience.They had never before met at one table three men who had known such experiences, and who spoke of them as though they must be as familiar in the lives of the others as in their own--men who spoiled in the telling stories that would have furnished incidents for melodramas, and who impressed their hearers more with what they left unsaid, and what was only suggested, than what in their view was the most important point.

The dinner came to an end at last, and Mr.Langham proposed that they should go down and walk with the people in the plaza; but his two daughters preferred to remain as spectators on the balcony, and Clay and Stuart stayed with them.

``At last!'' sighed Clay, under his breath, seating himself at Miss Langham's side as she sat leaning forward with her arms upon the railing and looking down into the plaza below.She made no sign at first that she had heard him, but as the voices of Stuart and Hope rose from the other end of the balcony she turned her head and asked, ``Why at last?''

``Oh, you couldn't understand,'' laughed Clay.``You have not been looking forward to just one thing and then had it come true.

It is the only thing that ever did come true to me, and I thought it never would.''

``You don't try to make me understand,'' said the girl, smiling, but without turning her eyes from the moving spectacle below her.Clay considered her challenge silently.He did not know just how much it might mean from her, and the smile robbed it of all serious intent; so he, too, turned and looked down into the great square below them, content, now that she was alone with him, to take his time.

At one end of the plaza the President's band was playing native waltzes that came throbbing through the trees and beating softly above the rustling skirts and clinking spurs of the senoritas and officers, sweeping by in two opposite circles around the edges of the tessellated pavements.Above the palms around the square arose the dim, white facade of the cathedral, with the bronze statue of Anduella, the liberator of Olancho, who answered with his upraised arm and cocked hat the cheers of an imaginary populace.Clay's had been an unobtrusive part in the evening's entertainment, but he saw that the others had been pleased, and felt a certain satisfaction in thinking that King himself could not have planned and carried out a dinner more admirable in every way.He was gratified that they should know him to be not altogether a barbarian.But what he best liked to remember was that whenever he had spoken she had listened, even when her eyes were turned away and she was pretending to listen to some one else.He tormented himself by wondering whether this was because he interested her only as a new and strange character, or whether she felt in some way how eagerly he was seeking her approbation.For the first time in his life he found himself considering what he was about to say, and he suited it for her possible liking.It was at least some satisfaction that she had, if only for the time being, singled him out as of especial interest, and he assured himself that the fault would be his if her interest failed.He no longer looked on himself as an outsider.

Stuart's voice arose from the farther end of the balcony, where the white figure of Hope showed dimly in the darkness.

``They are talking about you over there,'' said Miss Langham, turning toward him.

``Well, I don't mind,'' answered Clay, ``as long as they talk about me--over there.''

Miss Langham shook her head.``You are very frank and audacious,'' she replied, doubtfully, ``but it is rather pleasant as a change.''

``I don't call that audacious, to say I don't want to be interrupted when I am talking to you.Aren't the men you meet generally audacious?'' he asked.``I can see why not--though,''

he continued, ``you awe them.''

``I can't think that's a nice way to affect people,'' protested Miss Langham, after a pause.``I don't awe you, do I?''