Out of the Primitive Part 23

"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 t.i.tled 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 pa.s.sion. "My little girl!--how I love you! G.o.d 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 pa.s.sion. "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--b.l.o.o.d.y 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 cla.s.s--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 b.u.mps. 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 G.o.d! 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 b.u.m."

"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. n.o.body 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!_"