THE DEEPENING OF DOUBT
Blake stood as motionless as a carved figure, his eyes glowing upon the
girl, blue and radiant with tenderness and compassion and profound love.
The clang of a heavy door told her that her father had left the house.
On the instant all her firmness left her. She hid her face in her hands
and sank into the nearest chair, quivering and weeping, in silent
anguish.
Blake came near and stood over her. He spoke to her in a voice that was
deep and low and very soft: "There, there, little girl, don't you mind!
Just cry it out. It'll do you good. You know I understand. Have a good
cry!"
The sympathetic urging to give way freely to her weeping almost
immediately soothed her grief and checked the flow of tears. She rose
uncertainly, dabbing at her eyes.
"I--I couldn't help it, Tom. It's the fi-first time papa's ever been so
cross with me!"
"My fault, I guess. Rubbed his fur the wrong way this morning pretty
hard. But don't you fret, girlie. It'll be all right. Only we mustn't
blame him. Think of what it means to him. You're all he has, and if he
thinks you're--if he thinks he's going to lose you--"
"But it was so cruel!--so unjust!--the way he treated you!"
"Oh, that's all right, little woman. I don't mind that. We'll all
forget it by to-morrow. He didn't mean half he said. It was just the
thought that I--that somebody might take you away from him. Jenny!" His
eyes glowed upon her blue as sapphires. "You're home now."
He held his arms open for her to come to him. She swayed forward as if
to give herself into the clasp of those strong arms, but instantly
checked the movement and shrank back a little way.
"Wait, Tom," she murmured hesitatingly. "We must first--"
"Wait longer, Jenny?" he exclaimed, his deep voice vibrant with the
intensity of his feeling. "No, I must say it! I've waited all these
weeks--good Lord!--when maybe you've thought it was because I didn't
want to--to do as you asked!"
"It's not that, Tom, truly it's not that. I was hurt and--shamed. But
even then I divined why you had done it and realized the nobility of
your motive."
"Nobility? That's a good joke! You know I was only trying to do the
square thing. Any man would have done the same."
"Any _man_ would. I'm not so certain as to some who call themselves
gentlemen."
"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 titled 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 passion. "My little
girl!--how I love you! God 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 passion. "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--bloody 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 class--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 bumps. 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 God! 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 bum."
"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. Nobody 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!_"
"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 compassion 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 passionate 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 God! 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. Nobody 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 passed 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.