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Out of the Primitive, a novel by Robert Ames Bennet |
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Chapter 12. The Deepening Of Doubt |
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_ CHAPTER XII. THE DEEPENING OF DOUBT Blake stood as motionless as a carved figure, his eyes glowing upon the girl, blue and radiant with tenderness and compassion and profound love. The clang of a heavy door told her that her father had left the house. On the instant all her firmness left her. She hid her face in her hands and sank into the nearest chair, quivering and weeping, in silent anguish. Blake came near and stood over her. He spoke to her in a voice that was deep and low and very soft: "There, there, little girl, don't you mind! Just cry it out. It'll do you good. You know I understand. Have a good cry!" The sympathetic urging to give way freely to her weeping almost immediately soothed her grief and checked the flow of tears. She rose uncertainly, dabbing at her eyes. "I--I couldn't help it, Tom. It's the fi-first time papa's ever been so cross with me!" "My fault, I guess. Rubbed his fur the wrong way this morning pretty hard. But don't you fret, girlie. It'll be all right. Only we mustn't blame him. Think of what it means to him. You're all he has, and if he thinks you're--if he thinks he's going to lose you--" "But it was so cruel!--so unjust!--the way he treated you!" "Oh, that's all right, little woman. I don't mind that. We'll all forget it by to-morrow. He didn't mean half he said. It was just the thought that I--that somebody might take you away from him. Jenny!" His eyes glowed upon her blue as sapphires. "You're home now." He held his arms open for her to come to him. She swayed forward as if to give herself into the clasp of those strong arms, but instantly checked the movement and shrank back a little way. "Wait, Tom," she murmured hesitatingly. "We must first--" "Wait longer, Jenny?" he exclaimed, his deep voice vibrant with the intensity of his feeling. "No, I must say it! I've waited all these weeks--good Lord!--when maybe you've thought it was because I didn't want to--to do as you asked!" "It's not that, Tom, truly it's not that. I was hurt and--shamed. But even then I divined why you had done it and realized the nobility of your motive." "Nobility? That's a good joke! You know I was only trying to do the square thing. Any man would have done the same." "Any man would. I'm not so certain as to some who call themselves gentlemen." "There're some who're real gentlemen--worse luck to me--Jimmy, for one. I can never catch up with him in that line, girlie, but I can make a stagger at it." "You can become anything you will, Tom," she said with calm conviction. "Maybe," he replied. "But, Jenny, I can't wait for that. Wish I could. I'm still only--what you know. Same time, you're back home now, and you've been visiting with your titled friends. Also you've seen how your father looks at it, and how--" "What does all that amount to--even papa's anger? If only that were all!" "Jenny! then you still--?" His voice quivered with passion. "My little girl!--how I love you! God I how I love you! I never thought much of girls, but I loved you the first time I ever set eyes on you, there in the Transvaal. That's why I threw up the management of the mine. I knew who your father was; I knew I hadn't a ghost of a show. But I followed you to Cape Town--couldn't help it!" "You--you old silly!" she murmured, half frightened by the greatness of his passion. "You should have known I was only a shallow society girl!" "Shallow?--you? You're deep as blue water!" "The ocean is fickle." "You're not; you're true! You've lived! I've seen you face with a smile what many a man would have run from." "Because with me was one who would have died sooner than that harm should come to me! Those weeks, those wonderful weeks that we lived, so close to primitive, savage Nature--bloody fanged Nature!--those weeks that I stood by your side and saw her paint for us her beautiful, terrible pictures of Life, pictures whose blue was the storm-wave and the sky veiled with fever-haze, whose white was the roaring surf and the glare of thunderbolts, whose red was fire and blood! And you saved me from all--all! I had never even dreamt that a man could be so courageous, so enduring, so strong!" His face clouded, and he gave back before her radiant look. "Strong?" he muttered. "That's the question. Am I?" "Of course you are! I'm sure you are. You must be. It was that which compelled my--which made me--" She paused, and a swift blush swept over her face from forehead to throat--"made me propose to you, there on the cliff, when the steamer came." "That a lady should have loved me like that!" he murmured. "I still can't believe it was true! My little girl, it's not possible--not possible!" "You say 'loved,'" she whispered. Her eyelids fluttered and drooped before his ardent gaze; her scarlet face bent downward; she held out her hands to him in timid surrender. He caught them between his big palms, but not to draw her to him. A jagged mark on her round wrist caught his eye. It was the scar of a vicious thorn. The last time he had seen it was on the cliff top,-- that other time when she put out her arms to him. He bent over and kissed the red scar. "Jenny," he replied in bitter self-reproach, "here's another time I've proved I'm not in your class--not a gentleman. You've raised a point-- the real point. Am I what you think me? You think I'm at least a man. Am I?" She looked up at him, her face suddenly gone white again. "Tom! You don't mean--?" "About my being strong. All that you've seen so far are my leading suits. There's that other to be reckoned with yet. I told your father I hadn't touched a drop since the wreck. But you know how it was before." "Yes, dear, but that was before!" "I know. Things are different now. I've something at stake that'll help me fight. You can't guess, though, how that craving--Lucky I'll have Jimmy, as well, to back me up. He's great when it comes to jollying a fellow over the bumps. He'll help." "It's little enough, after all you've done for him! He told me." "Just like him. But let's not get sidetracked. What I wanted to make clear is that I'm not so everlastingly strong as you seem to think." "Tom, you'll not give way! You'll fight!" "Yes, I'll fight," he responded soberly. "And you'll win!" "I hope so, girlie. I've fought it before, and it has downed me, time and again. But now it's different--unless you've found you were mistaken. But if you still feel as when you--as you did there on the cliff that morning--Good God! how could I lose out, with you backing me up?" She looked at him with a quick recurrence of doubt. "You ask help of me?" "If you care enough, Jenny. It's not going to be a joke. I've tried before, and gone under so many times that some people would say I've no show left. But let me tell you, girlie, I'm going to fight this time for all I'm worth. I'm going to break this curse if I can. It is a curse, you'll remember. I told you about my mother." "You should not think of that. What does heredity count as against environment!" "Environment?--heredity? By all accounts, my father was the man you've thought me, and a lot more--railroad engineer; nerviest man ever ran an engine out of Chicago on the Pennsylvania Line; American stock from way back--Scotch-Irish; sober as a church, steady, strong as a bull. Never an accident all the years he pulled the fast express till the one that smashed him. Could have jumped and saved himself--stayed by his throttle, and saved the train. They brought him home--what was left of him. Papers headlined him; you know how they do it. That was my father." "Oh, Tom! and with such a father!" "Wait a minute. You spoke of heredity and environment. I'm giving you all sides, except anything more about my mother. Her father was a cranky inventor ... Well, inside six months we were living in a tenement. I was a little shaver of six. The younger of my sisters was a baby. Talk about environment! Wasn't many years before I was known as the toughest kid in Rat Alley." "Don't dwell on that, Tom. Don't even speak of it," begged Genevieve. He shook his head. "I want you to know just what I've been. It's your right to know. I wasn't one of the nasty kind and I wasn't a sneak. But I was the leader of my gang. Maybe you know what that means. Of course the police got it in for me. Finally they made it so hot I had to get out of Chicago. I took to the road--became a bum." "Not that!--surely not that!" "Well, no, only a kid hobo. But I'd have slid on down if I hadn't dropped into a camp of surveyors who were heading off into the mountains and had need of another man. Griffith, the engineer in charge, talked me into joining the party as axman. I took a fancy to him. He proved himself the first real friend I'd ever had--or was to have till I met Jimmy Scarbridge." "A man's worth is measured by the friends he makes," she observed. "Not always. Well, Griffith got me interested. I joined the party. Whew!--seven months in the mountains, and not a saloon within fifty miles any of the time. But I stuck it out. Nobody ever called me a quitter." "And now, Tom, you'll not quit! You'll win!" "I'll try--for you, girlie! You can't guess how that braces me--the thought that it's for you! You see, I'm beginning to count on things now. I'm not even afraid of your money now. Good old Grif--Griffith, you know--has given me a shy at a peach of a proposition--toughest problem I was ever up against. It's a big irrigation dam that has feazed half a dozen good engineers." "But you'll solve the problem! You can do anything!" "I'm not so sure, Jenny. I've only begun to dig into the field books. Even if I do make a go of it in the end, chances are I'll have to work like--like blazes to get there. But that'll help me on this other fight--help choke down the craving when it comes. A whole lot turns on that dam. If I make good on it, I'm made myself. Tack up my ad. as consulting engineer, and I'll have all the work I want. Won't be ashamed to look your three millions in the face." "My money! Can you still believe that counts with me? Money! It is what we are ourselves that counts. If you acquired all the money in the world, yes, and all the fame, but failed to master yourself, you'd not be the man I thought you--the man whom I--whom I said I loved." "Jenny! Then it's gone--you no longer care?" "You have no right to ask anything of me until you've--" "I'm not, Jenny! Don't think it for a moment. I'm not asking anything now. I wanted to wait. It's only that I want you to know how I love you. I wouldn't dream of asking you to--to marry me now--no, not till I've won out, made good. Understand? All I want is for you to wait for me till I've made my name as an A-1 engineer and until I've downed that cursed craving for drink." "You will, Tom--you must!" "With you to back me, little woman! Yes, I guess I can make it this time, with you waiting for me!" Genevieve met his smile and enthused gaze with a look of firm decision. Her doubt and hesitancy had at last crystallized into a set purpose. She replied in a tone that rang with a hardness new to him: "No. It must be more than that." "More?" he asked, surprised. "More, much more. That morning, after I so shamelessly forced you to listen to me, nothing could have altered my purpose had you come aboard the steamer with me." "But I couldn't then. 'T wouldn't have been fair to you." "Yet it might have been wise. Who knows? At the least, the question would have been settled 'for better or for worse.' It is easier to face the trouble which one cannot escape than deliberately to make choice of entering into the state that may or may not bring about the dreaded misfortune. Had you married me then, Tom, I would surely have been happy for a time. But now--you have made me believe that you were right." Blake drew back from her, his head downbent in sudden despondency. "So you've found out you don't feel the same?" Her eyes dimmed with tears of compassion for him, but her voice was as firm as before. "I loved Tom Blake because he was so manly, so strong! I still love that Tom Blake. You are not sure that you are strong." "But if I knew I had your love back of me, Jenny!" "That's it--you wish to lean on me! It's weak; it's not like you. You won my love by your courage, your resolution, your strength! All my love for you is based on your strength. If that fails--if you prove weak--how am I to tell whether my love will endure?" "I'll win out. I know I can win out if I have you to fight for." "If you have me to lean on! No; you must prove yourself stronger than that. I had no doubts then. I urged you to marry me--flung myself at you. But now, after what I've been forced to realize since then--" She stopped short, leaving him to infer the rest. He took it at the worst. He replied despairingly yet without a trace of bitterness: "Yes, you'd better take Jimmy. He's your kind." "Tom! How can you? I've a great esteem for Lord James, I like him very much, but--" "He's the right sort. You could count on being happy with him," stated Blake, in seeming resignation. She looked at him, puzzled and hurt by his calmness. The look fired him to a passionate outburst. "Don't you think it, though! He's not going to have you! I can't give you up! I'm going to win you. My God! I love you so much I'd try to win you--I'd have to win you, even if I thought you'd be unhappy!" Her voice softened with responsive tenderness. "Oh, Tom, if only I knew we would have--would have and keep that great love that covers all things! I'd rather be miserable with you than happy without you!" "Jenny! you do love me!" he cried, advancing with outstretched arms. She drew back from him. "Not now--not now, Tom!" He smiled, only slightly dashed. "Not now, but when I've made good. You'll wait for me! I can count on that!" "No," she answered with utmost firmness. "Jenny!" "I'll make no promise--not even a conditional one. You must make this fight without leaning on any one. I must know whether you are strong, whether you are the real Tom Blake I love." "But I'm not asking anything--only in case I make good." "No; I'll not bind myself in any way. I'll not promise to marry you even if you should win. It was you who made me wait, and now I shall make sure. Unless I feel certain that we would be bound together for all time by the deepest, truest love, I know it would be a mistake. If I were certain, right now, that you lack the strength to conquer yourself for the sake of your own manhood, I would accept Lord James." Whether or not the girl was capable of such an act, there could be no doubt that she meant what she said, and her tone carried conviction to Blake. He was silent for a long moment. When he replied, it was in a voice dull and heavy with despondency. "You don't realize what you're putting me up against." "I realize that you must clear away all my doubt of your strength," she rejoined, with no lessening of her firmness. "You were strong there on that savage coast, in the primitive. But you must prove yourself strong enough to rise out of the primitive--to rise to your true, your higher self." He bent as if he were being crushed under a ponderous weight. His voice dulled to a half articulate murmur. "You--won't--help--me?" "I cannot--I dare not!" she insisted almost fiercely. "If I did I should doubt. This dreadful fear! You must prove you're strong! You must master yourself for the sake of your own manhood!" At last he was forced to realize that it was necessity, not desire, that impelled her to thrust him from her. He must fight his hard battle alone--he must fight without even the thought that he had her sympathy. He should have divined that she would be secretly hoping, perhaps praying for him, striving for him in spirit with all the might of her true love. But by her insistence she had at last compelled him to doubt her love. He thought of the many times that he had gone down in disgraceful defeat, and black despair fell upon him. His broad shoulders stooped yet more. "What's the use?" he muttered thickly. But the question itself served as the goad to quicken all his immense reserve of endurance. He looked up at Genevieve, heavy-eyed but grim with determination. "You don't know what you've put me up against," he said. "But I'll not lay down yet. Nobody ever called me a quitter. You've a right to ask me to make good. I'll make a stagger at it. Good-bye!" He turned from her and walked up the room with the steady deliberation of one who bears a heavy burden. It was almost more than she could endure. She started to dart after him, and her lips parted to utter an entreaty for him to come back to her. But her spirit had been tempered in that fierce struggle for life on the savage coast of Mozambique. She checked herself, and waited until, without a backward glance, he had passed out through the curtained doorway. Then, and not until then, she sank down in her chair and gave way to the anguish of her love and doubt and dread. _ |
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