Out of the Primitive Part 24

"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 compa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sionate 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 G.o.d! 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. n.o.body 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 pa.s.sed 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.

CHAPTER XIII

PLANS AND OTHER PLANS

A quarter after nine the next morning found Griffith at the door of Mr.

Leslie's sanctum. He stuffed his gauntlet gloves into a pocket of his old fur coat, and entered the office, his worn, dark eyes vague with habitual abstraction.

Mr. Leslie was in the midst of his phonographic dictation. He abruptly stopped the machine and whirled about in his swivel-chair to face the engineer.

"Sit down," he said. "How's the Zariba Dam?"

"No progress," answered Griffith with terse precision. He sat down with an air of complete absorption in the act, drew out an old knife and his pipe, and observed: "You didn't send for me for that."

"How's the bridge?"

"Same," croaked the engineer, beginning to sc.r.a.pe out the bowl of his pipe with the one unbroken blade of his knife.

"That young fool still running around town?"