Part 23 (1/2)
”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.