Out of the Primitive Part 32

"You're not going away?" Calmly as she tried to speak, she could not entirely repress an under-note of apprehension. Slight as was the betrayal of feeling, it enheartened him immensely. He beamed up at the palm crests that brushed the glazed dome.

"Looks like they're going to raise the roof, doesn't it?" he said.

"Feel that way myself. Your father unloaded the Zariba project onto the Coville Construction Company, and they've offered a cool fifty thousand dollars to the man that figures out a feasible way to construct the dam. I spoke about it before, you may remember; but this bonus wasn't up then. If I put it through, I'll be recognized as a first-cla.s.s engineer."

"You will succeed, of course," said Genevieve with perfect confidence in his ability to overcome such a relatively easy difficulty.

"Hope so," responded Blake. "I'm still tunnelling in the dark, though.

Not a glimmer of a hole out."

"That is of small concern."

"Isn't it, though? I'm counting on that to boost me along on the other thing. Nothing like a little good luck to keep a fellow braced up."

"But I'm sure you have some Dutch blood,--and you know the Dutch never fight harder than when the odds are against them."

"Then it's too bad I'm not Hans Van Amsterdam. He'd have the sc.r.a.p of his life."

"Do you mean that the odds are so greatly against you?" asked Genevieve, with sudden gravity.

"What's the use of talking about it?" said Blake, almost brusquely. "If I win, I win; and I'm supposed to believe that is all it means. If I lose, you're rid of me for good."

Genevieve bit her lip and turned her head to hide her starting tears.

"I did not think you would be so bitter over it!" she half sobbed.

"Can't you take a joke?" he demanded. "Great joke!--me thinking I've a ghost of a show of winning you! No; the laugh's on me, all right. Idea of me dreaming I can down that d.a.m.nable thirst!"

"Tom, you'll not give up--you'll not!" she cried with a fierceness that shook him out of his bitter despondency.

"Give up?" he rejoined. "What d' you take me for? I'll fight--course I'll fight, till I'm down and out. People don't much believe in h.e.l.l nowadays, Jenny. I do. I've been there. I'm bound to go there again, I don't know how soon. Don't think I'm begging for help or whining.

n.o.body goes to h.e.l.l that hasn't got h.e.l.l in him. He always gets just what's coming to him."

"No, no! It's not fair. I can't bear to hear you blame yourself.

There's no justice in it. Both heredity and environment have been against you."

"Justice?" he repeated. He shook his head, with rather a grim smile.

"Told you once I worked in a pottery. Supposing the clay of a piece wasn't mixed right, it wasn't the dish's fault if it cracked in the firing. Just the same, it got heaved on the sc.r.a.p-heap."

Genevieve looked down at her clasped hands and whispered: "May not even a flawed piece prove so unique, so valuable in other respects, that it is cemented and kept?"

Blake laughed harshly. "Ever know a cracked dish to cement itself?"

"This is all wrong! The metaphor doesn't apply," protested the girl.

"You're not a lifeless piece of clay; you're a man--you have a free, powerful will."

"That's the question. Have I? Has anybody? Some scientists argue that we're nothing but automatons--the creatures of heredity and environment."

"It's not true. We're morally responsible for all we do--that is, unless we're insane."

"And I'm only dippy, eh?" said Blake.

He moved ahead around the screening fronds of a young areca palm, and came to an abrupt halt, his eyes fixed on an object in the midst of the tropical undergrowth.

"Look here!" he called in a hushed tone.

Genevieve hesitated, and came to him with reluctant slowness. But when she reached his side and saw what it was he was looking at so intently, her cold face warmed with a tender glow, and, unable to restrain her emotion, she pressed her cheek against his arm. He quivered, yet made no attempt to take advantage of her weakness.

"Tom! oh, Tom!" she whispered. "It's exactly the color of the other one!"

"Wish _this_ snake was as easy to smash!" he muttered.

"It will be!" she rea.s.sured him. He made no response. After a short silence, she said, "In memory of that, Tom, I wish you would kiss me."

He bent over and touched his lips to her forehead with reverent tenderness. That was all.

When Mrs. Gantry came in on them, they were still standing side by side, but apart, contemplating the great crimson amaryllis blossom.

Their att.i.tude and their silence were, however, sufficient to quicken her apprehensions.

"My dear child," she reproached Genevieve, "you should know that this damp mouldy air is not wholesome for you."

"She's right, Miss Jenny," agreed Blake. "It's too much like Mozambique--gets your thoughts muddled. You've failed to do as you said you would. I ought to've gone sooner. Good-day, Mrs. Gantry. Good-day, Miss Jenny."

He turned away with decisive quickness.

"Must you go?" asked Genevieve, with a trace of entreaty that did not escape her aunt.

"Yes," said Blake.

"You'll come to see me soon!"

"Not till I see daylight ahead on the dam. Don't know when that will be. Best I can say is Adios!"

"I trust it will be soon."

"Same here," he responded, and he left the palm room with head down-bent, as if he were already pondering the problem, the solving of which was to free him from the self-imposed taboo of her house.

"My dear Genevieve!" Mrs. Gantry hastened to exclaim. "Why must you encourage the man?"

The girl pointed to the gorgeous blossom of the amaryllis. "That is one reason, Aunt Amice."

"That? What do you mean?"

"Your amaryllis--not the flower itself, but what it stands for to me."

"Still, I do not--"

"Not when you recall what I told you about that frightful puff adder--that I was stooping to pick an amaryllis when the hideous creature struck at me?"