“A little. It is not civilised life here. Yet—yet a few strong patriotic men—”
Lacey looked quizzically at David.
“Say,” he said, “I thought that about Mexico once. I said Manana—this Manana is the curse of Mexico. It’s always to-morrow—to-morrow—to-morrow. Let’s teach ‘em to do things to-day. Let’s show ‘em what business means. Two million dollars went into that experiment, but Manana won. We had good hands, but it had the joker. After five years I left, with a bald head at twenty-nine, and a little book of noble thoughts—Tips for the Tired, or Things you can say To-day on what you can do to-morrow. I lost my hair worrying, but I learned to be patient. The Dagos wanted to live in their own way, and they did. It’s one thing to be a missionary and say the little word in season; it’s another to run your soft red head against a hard stone wall. I went to Mexico a conquistador, I left it a child of time, who had learned to smile; and I left some millions behind me, too. I said to an old Padre down there that I knew—we used to meet in the Cafe Manrique and drink chocolate—I said to him, ‘Padre, the Lord’s Prayer is a mistake down here.’ ‘Si, senor,’ he said, and smiled his far-away smile at me. ‘Yes,’ said I, ‘for you say in the Lord’s Prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread.”’ ‘Si, senor,’ he says, ‘but we do not expect it till to-morrow!’ The Padre knew from the start, but I learned at great expense, and went out of business—closed up shop for ever, with a bald head and my Tips for the Tired. Well, I’ve had more out of it all, I guess, than if I’d trebled the millions and wiped Manana off the Mexican coat of arms.”
“You think it would be like that here?” David asked abstractedly.
Lacey whistled. “There the Government was all right and the people all wrong. Here the people are all right and the Government all wrong. Say, it makes my eyes water sometimes to see the fellah slogging away. He’s a Jim-dandy—works all day and half the night, and if the tax-gatherer isn’t at the door, wakes up laughing. I saw one”—his light blue eyes took on a sudden hardness—“laughing on the other side of his mouth one morning. They were ‘kourbashing’ his feet; I landed on them as the soles came away. I hit out.” His face became grave, he turned the cigar round in his mouth. “It made me feel better, but I had a close call. Lucky for me that in Mexico I got into the habit of carrying a pop-gun. It saved me then. But it isn’t any use going on these special missions. We Americans think a lot of ourselves. We want every land to do as we do; and we want to make ‘em do it. But a strong man here at the head, with a sword in his hand, peace in his heart, who’d be just and poor—how can you make officials honest when you take all you can get yourself—! But, no, I guess it’s no good. This is a rotten cotton show.”
Lacey had talked so much, not because he was garrulous only, but because the inquiry in David’s eyes was an encouragement to talk. Whatever his misfortunes in Mexico had been, his forty years sat lightly on him, and his expansive temperament, his childlike sentimentality, gave him an appearance of beaming, sophisticated youth. David was slowly apprehending these things as he talked—subconsciously, as it were; for he was seeing pictures of the things he himself had observed, through the lens of another mind, as primitive in some regards as his own, but influenced by different experiences.
“Say, you’re the best listener I ever saw,” added Lacey, with a laugh.
David held out his hand. “Thee sees things clearly,” he answered.
Lacey grasped his hand.
At that moment an orderly advanced towards them. “He’s after us—one of the Palace cavalry,” said Lacey.