Out of the Primitive Part 50

Most of his few dances were with Dolores, who discovered that, notwithstanding his evident weariness, he was astonis.h.i.+ngly light on his feet and by no means a poor waltzer. But after midnight she found it increasingly difficult to lure him out on the floor whenever she was seized with the whim to favor him by scratching the name--and feelings--of some other partner.

More than once Lord James urged him to go home and turn in. Blake's reply was that he knew he ought not to have come to the ball, but since he had come, he proposed to stick it out,--he would not be a quitter.

So he stayed on, hour after hour, weary-eyed and taciturn, but by no means ill-humored. Many of the wall-flowers and elderly guests poured their chatter into his unhearing ear, and thought him a most sympathetic listener.

Genevieve, however, with each glimpse that she caught of him, perceived how his fatigue was constantly verging toward exhaustion. At last, between three and four in the morning, she cut short a dance with young Ashton and asked Lord James to take her into the library for a few minutes' rest. He was with Dolores, but immediately relinquished her to Ashton, and went off with Genevieve.

They soon pa.s.sed out of the chatter and whirl of the crowd into the seclusion of the library. Genevieve led the way to her father's favorite table, but avoided the big high-backed armchair. Lord James placed a smaller chair for her at the other side of the table, facing the door of the cardroom, and as she sank into it he took the chair at the corner.

"Ah!" sighed Genevieve. "It's so restful to get away from them all for a few moments."

"I wonder you're not still more fatigued. Awful crush," replied Lord James. "I daresay you haven't had any chance all evening for a nibble of anything. Directed that something be brought to us here."

"That was very thoughtful of you. I do need something. I'm depressed--It's about Tom. I brought you in here to ask your opinion.

He has looked so haggard and worn to-night."

"Overwork," explained Lord James. "He's been hard at it, day and night, in that stuffy office. He could stand any amount of work out in the open. But this being cooped up indoors and grinding all the time at those bally figures!"

"If only it's nothing worse! I'm so afraid!"

"No. It hasn't come on again; though that may happen any time when he's so nearly pegged. Must confess, I blame myself for urging him to come to-night. But he said he had solved the big problem, and I thought the change would do him good--relax his mind, you know. Egregious mistake, I fear. I've urged him to go; but he insists upon sticking it out."

"But you're certain that he--has--done nothing as yet?"

"No, indeed, I a.s.sure you! This over-fatigue--I'm not even certain whether the craving is on him or not.... You'll pardon me, Miss Genevieve--but do you realize how hard you have made it for him, cutting him off from all help in his desperate struggle?"

"Then he _is_ fighting all alone?" she exclaimed.

"Yes. He won't allow even me to jolly him up now. He's given me the cold shoulder. Said the inference to be drawn from your conditions was that he should have no help whatever."

"Isn't that brave!--isn't that just like him!" cried the girl, her eyes sparkling and cheeks aglow. "He _will_ win! I feel sure he'll win!"

Lord James looked down at the table, and asked in rather an odd and hesitating tone: "We must hope it. But--if he does win--what then?"

Blake came slowly into the room through the doorway behind them, his head downbent as if he were pondering a problem.

Unaware of the newcomer, Genevieve looked regretfully into the troubled face of her companion, and answered him with absolute candor. "Dear friend, need I repeat? I am very fond of you, and I esteem you very highly. Yet if he succeeds, I must say 'no' to you."

As the young Englishman bent over, without replying, Blake roused from his abstraction and perceived that he was not alone in the room.

"h.e.l.lo--'scuse me!" he mumbled. Half startled, they turned to look at him. He met them with a rare smile. "So it's you, Jeems--and Miss Jenny. Didn't mean to cut in on your 'tates-an'-tay, as the Irishman put it."

He started to turn back. Genevieve sought to stop him. "Won't you join us, Tom?"

"Thanks, no. It's Jimmy's sit-out. I just stepped in here to see if I could find a book on the differential calculus. Been figuring a problem in my head all evening, and there's a formula I need to get my final solution. I know that formula well as I know you, but somehow my memory seems to've stopped working."

"Those bally figures! Can't you ever chop off?" remonstrated Lord James. "You're pegged. Come and join us. Miss Genevieve will be interested to hear about the dam."

"I'm interested, indeed I am, Tom. Papa says you are working out a piece of wonderful engineering."

Blake stared. "What does _he_ know about it?"

"I suppose his consulting engineer told him--your friend Mr. Griffith."

"Grif's not working for him now."

"Indeed? Then I misunderstood. Anyway, you must come and explain all about the dam."

"Well, if you insist," said Blake. He went around to the big armchair, across from Genevieve, and sat down wearily while explaining: "But the dam is a long way from being built. It's all on paper yet, and I've had to rely on the reports sent in by the field engineers."

A footman came in and set food and wine before Genevieve and Lord James. Blake went on, with quick-mounting enthusiasm, heedless of the coming and going of the soft-footed, un.o.btrusive servant.

"That's the only thing I'm afraid of. Would have liked to've gone over the ground myself first. But they had two surveys, and the field notes check fairly well. Barring mistakes in them, I've got the proposition worked out to a T. It's all done except some figuring of details that any good engineer could do. Just as well, for I'm about all in.

Stiffest proposition I ever went up against."

He sank back into the depths of the big chair, with a sudden giving way of enthusiasm to fatigue. Lord James reached out his plate to him.

"You _are_ pegged, old man," he said. "Have a sandwich."

"No," replied Blake. "I'm too played out to eat. Just want to rest."

Genevieve had been scrutinizing his face, and her deepening concern lent a note of sharpness to her reproach: "You're exhausted! You should not have come to-night!"

"Couldn't pa.s.s up a dance at your house, could I?" he smilingly rejoined. "Don't you worry about me. It's all right, long's I've got that whole d.a.m.n irrigation system worked out."

"Ha! ha! old man!" chuckled Lord James. "That expresses it to a T, as you put it. But wouldn't it be better form to say, 'the whole irrigation dam system'?"

Blake smiled shamefacedly. "Did I make a break like--such as that?

'Scuse me, Miss Jenny. I'm sort of--I'm rather muddled to-night."

"No wonder, after all you've done," said Genevieve. She added, with a radiant smile, "But isn't it glorious that you've finished such a great work! Papa says that you've actually invented a new kind of dam."

The silent footman had reappeared with another plate and gla.s.s of wine.

He glided around behind Blake, who had leaned forward again with the right arm upon the edge of the table. Unconscious of the servant, who placed the plate and wine gla.s.s near him on his left and quietly glided from the room, the engineer responded to Genevieve's remark with an animation that might have been likened to the last flare of a dying candle.

"No," he said, "it's not exactly a new kind of dam--not an invention. I did work out once a modification of bridge trusses which some might call an invention,--new principle in the application of trusses to bridge structure. Allows for a longer suspension span on cantilever bridges."

"But this Zariba Dam," remarked Lord James; "I've yet to learn, myself, just how you worked it out."

"Well, it wasn't any invention; just a sort of discovery how to combine a lot of well-known principles of construction to fit the particular case. You see, it's this way. There was only one available site for the dam, and the mid-section of that was bottomless bog; yet provision had to be made for a sixty-five foot head of water."

"You take him, Miss Genevieve," said Lord James. "They have no solid ground to build on, and the water above the dam is to be sixty-five feet deep."

"I should think the dam would sink into the bog," remarked Genevieve.

"That was one factor in the problem," said Blake. "Solved it by putting the steel reinforcement of the concrete in the form of my bridge-truss span. The whole central section could hang in midair and not buckle or drop. That was simple enough, long's I had my truss already invented.

The main difficulty was that deep bog. If you studied hydrostatics, you'd soon learn that a sixty-five foot head of water puts an enormous pressure on the bed of a reservoir."

Absorbed in his explanation, Blake unconsciously grasped the wine gla.s.s in his left hand, as he went on: