THE AMARYLLIS
The constraint between Blake and Genevieve had rather increased than
lessened when they left the others. Neither spoke until they had passed
through the outer conservatory into the tropical heat of the palm room.
But there the first whiff of the odor from the moist warm mould brought
with it a flood of pungent memories.
"The river jungle," muttered Blake, sniffing. "Air was drier out under
the cocoanut palms."
"That first night, in the tree!" murmured Genevieve. "How easily you
hauled us up with the vine rope! Ah, then--and now!"
Blake drew away from her, his face darkening. "Hope you don't think I
expected to see you here? If Jimmy knew, he didn't tell me."
"How could he know? Dolores did not phone to me until mid-afternoon.
But even had you been told, I see no reason why you shouldn't have
come."
"You don't?" he asked, his face brightening. "I was afraid you might
think I was trying to dodge your conditions. Besides, I had promised
myself not to call on you till I thought I saw a way to work out a big
piece of engineering that I'm on."
"Then you have a good position? I'm so glad!"
"Not a regular position. But I've been given work and a chance at one
of the biggest things in hydraulics--the Zariba Dam, out in Arizona."
"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-class
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 scrap 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 damnable 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 hell
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.
Nobody goes to hell that hasn't got hell 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 scrap-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 reassured 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 attitude 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?"
"You mentioned something about a snake, but there was so much else--"
"Yes, it was only once of the many, many times when he proved himself a
man. Though the adder only struck the fold of my skirt, I stood
paralyzed with horror. Winthrope, as usual, was ineffectual. Tom came
running with his club--and then--" The girl paused until the vivid
blush that had leaped into her cheeks had ebbed away. "It was not alone
his courage but his resourcefulness. Most men would have turned away
from the writhing monster, full of loathing. He saw the opportunity to
convert what had been a most deadly peril into a source of safety. He
sent me away, and extracted the poison for his arrow tips."
"My dear child, I freely admit that he is an admirable savage,"
conceded Mrs. Gantry.
"Say rather that he was fit to survive in a savage environment. We
shall now see him adapt himself to the other extreme."
"Young girls always tend to idealize those whom they chance to fancy."
"Chance? Fancy? Dear Aunt Amice, you and papa do not, perhaps cannot,
realize that for those many weeks I lived with storm and starvation,
sun and fever, serpents and ferocious beasts all striving to destroy
me. I saw the hard realities of life, and learned to think. Mentally I
am no longer a young girl, but a woman, qualified to judge what her
future should be."
The glowing face of her usually composed niece warned Mrs. Gantry to be
discreet. She patted the coils of soft hair. "There, there, my dear.
Pray do not misunderstand me. All I ask is that you make sure before
you commit yourself,--a few months of delay, that you may compare him
with the men of our own class."
Genevieve smiled. "I have gone quite beyond that already, Aunt Amice."
"Indeed?" murmured the elder woman. Too tactful to venture further, she
placed a ring-crowded hand upon her ample bosom. "It is too close in
here. I feel oppressed."
Genevieve readily accompanied her from the conservatory.
Blake had gone, alone, for they found Lord James in the midst of a
lively tete-a-tete with Dolores.
At sight of the merry couple, Genevieve paused in the doorway to recall
to her companion some previous conversation. "You see, Aunty. Confess
now. They would make a perfect couple."
"Nonsense. He would never dream of such a thing, even were you out of
his thoughts. What is more, though he seems to have caught her in one
of her gay moods, I know that she simply abominates him. She told him
as much, within a minute after you left us."
"I'm so sorry!" sighed Genevieve. "At least let us slip out without
interrupting them. I must be going, anyway."
"My dear, I have you to consider before Dolores," replied Mrs. Gantry,
and she advanced upon the unconscious couple. "Genevieve is going."
Lord James looked about, for the slightest fraction of a moment
discomposed. Genevieve perceived the fleeting expression, and hastened
to interpose. "Do not trouble. It is so short a distance."
But the Englishman was already bowing to Dolores. The girl turned her
back upon him with deliberate rudeness.
"You see!" murmured Mrs. Gantry to Genevieve.
When Lord James and her niece had gone, the outraged dame wheeled upon
her daughter. But at the first word, Dolores faced her with such an
outblazing of rebellious anger that the mother thought best to defer
her lecture.