第39章

``Does one man and a dance-card and three bonbons constitute your idea of a ball?''

``Doesn't it? You see, I am not out yet, I don't know.''

``I should think it might depend a good deal upon the man,'' Clay suggested.

``That sounds as though you were hinting,'' said Hope, doubtfully.``Now what would I say to that if I were out?''

``I don't know, but don't say it,'' Clay answered.``It would probably be something very unflattering or very forward, and in either case I should take you back to your chaperon and leave you there.''

Hope had not been listening.Her eyes were fixed on a level with his tie, and Clay raised his hand to it in some trepidation.

``Mr.Clay,'' she began abruptly and leaning eagerly forward, ``would you think me very rude if I asked you what you did to get all those crosses? I know they mean something, and I do so want to know what.Please tell me.''

``Oh, those!'' said Clay.``The reason I put them on to-night is because wearing them is supposed to be a sort of compliment to your host.I got in the habit abroad--''

``I didn't ask you that,'' said Hope, severely.``I asked you what you did to get them.Now begin with the Legion of Honor on the left, and go right on until you come to the end, and please don't skip anything.Leave in all the bloodthirsty parts, and please don't be modest.''

``Like Othello,'' suggested Clay.

``Yes,'' said Hope; ``I will be Desdemona.''

``Well, Desdemona, it was like this,'' said Clay, laughing.``Igot that medal and that star for serving in the Nile campaign, under Wolseley.After I left Egypt, I went up the coast to Algiers, where I took service under the French in a most disreputable organization known as the Foreign Legion--''

``Don't tell me,'' exclaimed Hope, in delight, ``that you have been a Chasseur d'Afrique! Not like the man in `Under Two Flags'?''

``No, not at all like that man,'' said Clay, emphatically.``Iwas just a plain, common, or garden, sappeur, and I showed the other good-for-nothings how to dig trenches.Well, Icontaminated the Foreign Legion for eight months, and then Iwent to Peru, where I--''

``You're skipping,'' said Hope.``How did you get the Legion of Honor?''

``Oh, that?'' said Clay.``That was a gallery play I made once when we were chasing some Arabs.They took the French flag away from our color-bearer, and I got it back again and waved it frantically around my head until I was quite certain the Colonel had seen me doing it, and then I stopped as soon as I knew that Iwas sure of promotion.''

``Oh, how can you?'' cried Hope.``You didn't do anything of the sort.You probably saved the entire regiment.''

``Well, perhaps I did,'' Clay returned.``Though I don't remember it, and nobody mentioned it at the time.''

``Go on about the others,'' said Hope.``And do try to be truthful.''

``Well, I got this one from Spain, because I was President of an International Congress of Engineers at Madrid.That was the ostensible reason, but the real reason was because I taught the Spanish Commissioners to play poker instead of baccarat.The German Emperor gave me this for designing a fort, and the Sultan of Zanzibar gave me this, and no one but the Sultan knows why, and he won't tell.I suppose he's ashamed.He gives them away instead of cigars.He was out of cigars the day I called.''

``What a lot of places you have seen,'' sighed Hope.``I have been in Cairo and Algiers, too, but I always had to walk about with a governess, and she wouldn't go to the mosques because she said they were full of fleas.We always go to Homburg and Paris in the summer, and to big hotels in London.I love to travel, but I don't love to travel that way, would you?''

``I travel because I have no home,'' said Clay.``I'm different from the chap that came home because all the other places were shut.I go to other places because there is no home open.''

``What do you mean?'' said Hope, shaking her head.``Why have you no home?''

``There was a ranch in Colorado that I used to call home,'' said Clay, ``but they've cut it up into town lots.I own a plot in the cemetery outside of the town, where my mother is buried, and I visit that whenever I am in the States, and that is the only piece of earth anywhere in the world that I have to go back to.''

Hope leaned forward with her hands clasped in front of her and her eyes wide open.

``And your father?'' she said, softly; ``is he--is he there, too--''

Clay looked at the lighted end of his cigar as he turned it between his fingers.

``My father, Miss Hope,'' he said, ``was a filibuster, and went out on the `Virginius' to help free Cuba, and was shot, against a stone wall.We never knew where he was buried.''

``Oh, forgive me; I beg your pardon,'' said Hope.There was such distress in her voice that Clay looked at her quickly and saw the tears in her eyes.She reached out her hand timidly, and touched for an instant his own rough, sunburned fist, as it lay clenched on his knee.``I am so sorry,'' she said, ``so sorry.'' For the first time in many years the tears came to Clay's eyes and blurred the moonlight and the scene before him, and he sat unmanned and silent before the simple touch of a young girl's sympathy.

An hour later, when his pony struck the gravel from beneath his hoofs on the race back to the city, and Clay turned to wave his hand to Hope in the doorway, she seemed, as she stood with the moonlight falling about her white figure, like a spirit beckoning the way to a new paradise.