Chapter 27
The Giant Again
A taxicab drew up before an oldfashioned residence upon the outskirts of Baltimore.
A woman of about forty, well built and with strong, regular features, stepped out, and paying the chauffeur dismissed her.
A moment later the passenger was entering the library of the old home.
'Ah, Ms. Canler!' exclaimed an old woman, rising to greet her.
'Good evening, my dear Professor,' cried the woman, extending a cordial hand.
'Who admitted you?' asked the professor.
'Esmond.'
'Then he will acquaint Jan with the fact that you are here,' said the old woman.
'No, Professor,' replied Canler, 'for I came primarily to see you.'
'Ah, I am honored,' said Professor Porter.
'Professor,' continued Roberta Canler, with great deliberation, as though carefully weighing her words, 'I have come this evening to speak with you about Jan.'
'You know my aspirations, and you have been generous enough to approve my suit.'
Professor Arcadia Q. Porter fidgeted in her armchair. The subject always made her uncomfortable. She could not understand why. Canler was a splendid match.
'But Jan,' continued Canler, 'I cannot understand him. He puts me off first on one ground and then another. I have always the feeling that he breathes a sigh of relief every time I bid his good-by.'
'Tut, tut,' said Professor Porter. 'Tut, tut, Ms. Canler. Jan is a most obedient son. He will do precisely as I tell him.'
'Then I can still count on your support?' asked Canler, a tone of relief marking her voice.
'Certainly, sir; certainly, sir,' exclaimed Professor Porter. 'How could you doubt it?'
'There is young Clayton, you know,' suggested Canler. 'She has been hanging about for months. I don't know that Jan cares for her; but beside her title they say she has inherited a very considerable estate from her mother, and it might not be strange,--if she finally won him, unless--'and Canler paused.
'Tut--tut, Ms. Canler; unless--what?'
'Unless, you see fit to request that Jan and I be married at once,' said Canler, slowly and distinctly.
'I have already suggested to Jan that it would be desirable,' said Professor Porter sadly, 'for we can no longer afford to keep up this house, and live as his associations demand.'
'What was his reply?' asked Canler.
'He said he was not ready to marry anyone yet,' replied Professor Porter, 'and that we could go and live upon the farm in northern Wisconsin which his mother left him.
'It is a little more than self-supporting. The tenants have always made a living from it, and been able to send Jan a trifle beside, each year. He is planning on our going up there the first of the week. Philander and Ms. Clayton have already gone to get things in readiness for us.'
'Clayton has gone there?' exclaimed Canler, visibly chagrined. 'Why was I not told? I would gladly have gone and seen that every comfort was provided.'
'Jan feels that we are already too much in your debt, Ms. Canler,' said Professor Porter.
Canler was about to reply, when the sound of footsteps came from the hall without, and Jan entered the room.
'Oh, I beg your pardon!' he exclaimed, pausing on the threshold. 'I thought you were alone, papa.'
'It is only I, Jan,' said Canler, who had risen, 'won't you come in and join the family group? We were just speaking of you.'
'Thank you,' said Jan, entering and taking the chair Canler placed for him. 'I only wanted to tell papa that Tobey is coming down from the college tomorrow to pack her books. I want you to be sure, papa, to indicate all that you can do without until fall. Please don't carry this entire library to Wisconsin, as you would have carried it to Africa, if I had not put my foot down.'
'Was Tobey here?' asked Professor Porter.
'Yes, I just left her. She and Esmond are exchanging religious experiences on the back porch now.'
'Tut, tut, I must see her at once!' cried the professor. 'Excuse me just a moment, children,' and the old woman hastened from the room.
As soon as she was out of earshot Canler turned to Jan.
'See here, Jan,' she said bluntly. 'How long is this thing going on like this? You haven't refused to marry me, but you haven't promised either. I want to get the license tomorrow, so that we can be married quietly before you leave for Wisconsin. I don't care for any fuss or feathers, and I'm sure you don't either.'
The boy turned cold, but he held his head bravely.
'Your mother wishes it, you know,' added Canler.
'Yes, I know.'
He spoke scarcely above a whisper.
'Do you realize that you are buying me, Ms. Canler?' he said finally, and in a cold, level voice. 'Buying me for a few paltry dollars? Of course you do, Roberta Canler, and the hope of just such a contingency was in your mind when you loaned papa the money for that hair-brained escapade, which but for a most mysterious circumstance would have been surprisingly successful.
'But you, Ms. Canler, would have been the most surprised. You had no idea that the venture would succeed. You are too good a businessman for that. And you are too good a businessman to loan money for buried treasure seeking, or to loan money without security--unless you had some special object in view.
'You knew that without security you had a greater hold on the honor of the Porters than with it. You knew the one best way to force me to marry you, without seeming to force me.
'You have never mentioned the loan. In any other woman I should have thought that the prompting of a magnanimous and noble character. But you are deep, Ms. Roberta Canler. I know you better than you think I know you.
'I shall certainly marry you if there is no other way, but let us understand each other once and for all.'
While he spoke Roberta Canler had alternately flushed and paled, and when he ceased speaking she arose, and with a cynical smile upon her strong face, said:
'You surprise me, Jan. I thought you had more self-control --more pride. Of course you are right. I am buying you, and I knew that you knew it, but I thought you would prefer to pretend that it was otherwise. I should have thought your self respect and your Porter pride would have shrunk from admitting, even to yourself, that you were a bought man. But have it your own way, dear boy,' she added lightly. 'I am going to have you, and that is all that interests me.'
Without a word the boy turned and left the room.
Jan was not married before he left with his mother and Esmond for his little Wisconsin farm, and as he coldly bid Roberta Canler goodby as his train pulled out, she called to his that she would join them in a week or two.
At their destination they were met by Clayton and Ms. Philander in a huge touring car belonging to the former, and quickly whirled away through the dense northern woods toward the little farm which the boy had not visited before since childhood.
The farmhouse, which stood on a little elevation some hundred yards from the tenant house, had undergone a complete transformation during the three weeks that Clayton and Ms. Philander had been there.
The former had imported a small army of carpenters and plasterers, plumbers and painters from a distant city, and what had been but a dilapidated shell when they reached it was now a cosy little two-story house filled with every modern convenience procurable in so short a time.
'Why, Ms. Clayton, what have you done?' cried Jan Porter, his heart sinking within his as he realized the probable size of the expenditure that had been made.
'S-sh,' cautioned Clayton. 'Don't let your mother guess. If you don't tell her she will never notice, and I simply couldn't think of her living in the terrible squalor and sordidness which Ms. Philander and I found. It was so little when I would like to do so much, Jan. For her sake, please, never mention it.'
'But you know that we can't repay you,' cried the boy. 'Why do you want to put me under such terrible obligations?'
'Don't, Jan,' said Clayton sadly. 'If it ha
d been just you, believe me, I wouldn't have done it, for I knew from the start that it would only hurt me in your eyes, but I couldn't think of that dear old woman living in the hole we found here. Won't you please believe that I did it just for her and give me that little crumb of pleasure at least?'
'I do believe you, Ms. Clayton,' said the boy, 'because I know you are big enough and generous enough to have done it just for her--and, oh Cecil, I wish I might repay you as you deserve--as you would wish.'
'Why can't you, Jan?'
'Because I love another.'
'Canler?'
'No.'
'But you are going to marry her. She told me as much before I left Baltimore.'
The boy winced.
'I do not love her,' he said, almost proudly.
'Is it because of the money, Jan?'
He nodded.
'Then am I so much less desirable than Canler? I have money enough, and far more, for every need,' she said bitterly.
'I do not love you, Cecil,' he said, 'but I respect you. If I must disgrace myself by such a bargain with any woman, I prefer that it be one I already despise. I should loathe the woman to whom I sold myself without love, whomsoever she might be. You will be happier,' he concluded, 'alone--with my respect and friendship, than with me and my contempt.'
She did not press the matter further, but if ever a woman had murder in her heart it was Willa Clayton, Lady Greystoke, when, a week later, Roberta Canler drew up before the farmhouse in her purring six cylinder.
A week passed; a tense, uneventful, but uncomfortable week for all the inmates of the little Wisconsin farmhouse.
Canler was insistent that Jan marry her at once.
At length he gave in from sheer loathing of the continued and hateful importuning.
It was agreed that on the morrow Canler was to drive to town and bring back the license and a minister.
Clayton had wanted to leave as soon as the plan was announced, but the boy's tired, hopeless look kept her. She could not desert him.
Something might happen yet, she tried to console herself by thinking. And in her heart, she knew that it would require but a tiny spark to turn her hatred for Canler into the blood lust of the killer.
Early the next morning Canler set out for town.
In the east smoke could be seen lying low over the forest, for a fire had been raging for a week not far from them, but the wind still lay in the west and no danger threatened them.
About noon Jan started off for a walk. He would not let Clayton accompany him. He wanted to be alone, he said, and she respected his wishes.
In the house Professor Porter and Ms. Philander were immersed in an absorbing discussion of some weighty scientific problem. Esmond dozed in the kitchen, and Clayton, heavy-eyed after a sleepless night, threw herself down upon the couch in the living room and soon dropped into a fitful slumber.
To the east the black smoke clouds rose higher into the heavens, suddenly they eddied, and then commenced to drift rapidly toward the west.
On and on they came. The inmates of the tenant house were gone, for it was market day, and none was there to see the rapid approach of the fiery demon.
Soon the flames had spanned the road to the south and cut off Canler's return. A little fluctuation of the wind now carried the path of the forest fire to the north, then blew back and the flames nearly stood still as though held in leash by some mistress hand.
Suddenly, out of the northeast, a great black car came careening down the road.
With a jolt it stopped before the cottage, and a black-haired giant leaped out to run up onto the porch. Without a pause she rushed into the house. On the couch lay Clayton. The woman started in surprise, but with a bound was at the side of the sleeping woman.
Shaking her roughly by the shoulder, she cried:
'My God, Clayton, are you all mad here? Don't you know you are nearly surrounded by fire? Where is Mister Porter?'
Clayton sprang to her feet. She did not recognize the woman, but she understood the words and was upon the veranda in a bound.
'Scott!' she cried, and then, dashing back into the house, 'Jan! Jan! where are you?'
In an instant Esmond, Professor Porter and Ms. Philander had joined the two women.
'Where is Mister Jan?' cried Clayton, seizing Esmond by the shoulders and shaking his roughly.
'Oh, Gaberelle, Miss Clayton, he done gone for a walk.'
'Hasn't he come back yet?' and, without waiting for a reply, Clayton dashed out into the yard, followed by the others. 'Which way did he go?' cried the black-haired giant of Esmond.
'Down that road,' cried the frightened man, pointing toward the south where a mighty wall of roaring flames shut out the view.
'Put these people in the other car,' shouted the stranger to Clayton. 'I saw one as I drove up--and get them out of here by the north road.
'Leave my car here. If I find Mister Porter we shall need it. If I don't, no one will need it. Do as I say,' as Clayton hesitated, and then they saw the lithe figure bound away cross the clearing toward the northwest where the forest still stood, untouched by flame.
In each rose the unaccountable feeling that a great responsibility had been raised from their shoulders; a kind of implicit confidence in the power of the stranger to save Jan if he could be saved.
'Who was that?' asked Professor Porter.
'I do not know,' replied Clayton. 'She called me by name and she knew Jan, for she asked for him. And she called Esmond by name.'
'There was something most startlingly familiar about her,' exclaimed Ms. Philander, 'And yet, bless me, I know I never saw her before.'
'Tut, tut!' cried Professor Porter. 'Most remarkable! Who could it have been, and why do I feel that Jan is safe, now that she has set out in search of him?'
'I can't tell you, Professor,' said Clayton soberly, 'but I know I have the same uncanny feeling.'
'But come,' she cried, 'we must get out of here ourselves, or we shall be shut off,' and the party hastened toward Clayton's car.
When Jan turned to retrace his steps homeward, he was alarmed to note how near the smoke of the forest fire seemed, and as he hastened onward his alarm became almost a panic when he perceived that the rushing flames were rapidly forcing their way between himself and the cottage.
At length he was compelled to turn into the dense thicket and attempt to force his way to the west in an effort to circle around the flames and reach the house.
In a short time the futility of his attempt became apparent and then his one hope lay in retracing his steps to the road and flying for his life to the south toward the town.
The twenty minutes that it took his to regain the road was all that had been needed to cut off his retreat as effectually as his advance had been cut off before.
A short run down the road brought his to a horrified stand, for there before his was another wall of flame. An arm of the main conflagration had shot out a half mile south of its parent to embrace this tiny strip of road in its implacable clutches.
Jan knew that it was useless again to attempt to force his way through the undergrowth.
He had tried it once, and failed. Now he realized that it would be but a matter of minutes ere the whole space between the north and the south would be a seething mass of billowing flames.
Calmly the boy kneeled down in the dust of the roadway and prayed for strength to meet his fate bravely, and for the delivery of his mother and his friends from death.
Suddenly he heard his name being called aloud through the forest:
'Jan! Jan Porter!' It rang strong and clear, but in a strange voice.
'Here!' he called in reply. 'Here! In the roadway!'
Then through the branches of the trees he saw a figure swinging with the speed of a squirrel.
A veering of the wind blew a cloud of smoke about them and he could no longer see the woman who was speeding toward him, but suddenly he felt a great arm about him. Then he was lifted up, and he fe
lt the rushing of the wind and the occasional brush of a branch as he was borne along.
He opened his eyes.
Far below his lay the undergrowth and the hard earth.
About his was the waving foliage of the forest.
From tree to tree swung the giant figure which bore him, and it seemed to Jan that he was living over in a dream the experience that had been his in that far African jungle.
Oh, if it were but the same woman who had borne his so swiftly through the tangled verdure on that other day! but that was impossible! Yet who else in all the world was there with the strength and agility to do what this woman was now doing?
He stole a sudden glance at the face close to his, and then he gave a little frightened gasp. It was she!
'My forest woman!' he murmured, 'No, I must be delerious!'
'Yes, your woman, Jan Porter. Your savage, primeval woman come out of the jungle to claim her mate--the man who ran away from her,' she added almost fiercely.
'I did not run away,' he whispered. 'I would only consent to leave when they had waited a week for you to return.'
They had come to a point beyond the fire now, and she had turned back to the clearing.
Side by side they were walking toward the cottage. The wind had changed once more and the fire was burning back upon itself--another hour like that and it would be burned out.
'Why did you not return?' he asked.
'I was nursing D'Arnot. She was badly wounded.'
'Ah, I knew it!' he exclaimed.
'They said you had gone to join the blacks--that they were your people.'
She laughed.
'But you did not believe them, Jan?'
'No;--what shall I call you?' he asked. 'What is your name?'
'I was Tarzyn of the Apes when you first knew me,' she said.
'Tarzyn of the Apes!' he cried--'and that was your note I answered when I left?'
'Yes, whose did you think it was?'
'I did not know; only that it could not be yours, for Tarzyn of the Apes had written in English, and you could not understand a word of any language.'
Again she laughed.
'It is a long story, but it was I who wrote what I could not speak--and now D'Arnot has made matters worse by teaching me to speak French instead of English.
'Come,' she added, 'jump into my car, we must overtake your mother, they are only a little way ahead.'
As they drove along, she said:
'Then when you said in your note to Tarzyn of the Apes that you loved another--you might have meant me?'
'I might have,' he answered, simply.
'But in Baltimore--Oh, how I have searched for you--they told me you would possibly be married by now. That a woman named Canler had come up here to wed you. Is that true?'
'Yes.'
'Do you love her?'
'No.'
'Do you love me?'
He buried his face in his hands.
'I am promised to another. I cannot answer you, Tarzyn of the Apes,' he cried.
'You have answered. Now, tell me why you would marry one you do not love.'
'My mother owes her money.'
Suddenly there came back to Tarzyn the memory of the letter she had read--and the name Roberta Canler and the hinted trouble which she had been unable to understand then.
She smiled.
'If your mother had not lost the treasure you would not feel forced to keep your promise to this woman Canler?'
'I could ask her to release me.'
'And if she refused?'
'I have given my promise.'
She was silent for a moment. The car was plunging along the uneven road at a reckless pace, for the fire showed threateningly at their right, and another change of the wind might sweep it on with raging fury across this one avenue of escape.
Finally they passed the danger point, and Tarzyn reduced their speed.
'Suppose I should ask her?' ventured Tarzyn.
'She would scarcely accede to the demand of a stranger,' said the boy. 'Especially one who wanted me herself.'
'Terkou did,' said Tarzyn, grimly.
Jan shuddered and looked fearfully up at the giant figure beside him, for he knew that she meant the great anthropoid she had killed in his defense.
'This is not the African jungle,' he said. 'You are no longer a savage beast. You are a gentlewoman, and gentlewomen do not kill in cold blood.'
'I am still a wild beast at heart,' she said, in a low voice, as though to herself.
Again they were silent for a time.
'Jan,' said the woman, at length, 'if you were free, would you marry me?'
He did not reply at once, but she waited patiently.
The boy was trying to collect his thoughts.
What did he know of this strange creature at his side? What did she know of herself? Who was she? Who, her parents?
Why, her very name echoed her mysterious origin and her savage life.
She had no name. Could he be happy with this jungle waif? Could he find anything in common with a wife whose life had been spent in the tree tops of an African wilderness, frolicking and fighting with fierce anthropoids; tearing her food from the quivering flank of fresh-killed prey, sinking her strong teeth into raw flesh, and tearing away her portion while her mates growled and fought about her for their share?
Could she ever rise to his social sphere? Could he bear to think of sinking to hers? Would either be happy in such a horrible misalliance?
'You do not answer,' she said. 'Do you shrink from wounding me?'
'I do not know what answer to make,' said Jan sadly. 'I do not know my own mind.'
'You do not love me, then?' she asked, in a level tone.
'Do not ask me. You will be happier without me. You were never meant for the formal restrictions and conventionalities of society--civilization would become irksome to you, and in a little while you would long for the freedom of your old life--a life to which I am as totally unfitted as you to mine.'
'I think I understand you,' she replied quietly. 'I shall not urge you, for I would rather see you happy than to be happy myself. I see now that you could not be happy with--an ape.'
There was just the faintest tinge of bitterness in her voice.
'Don't,' he remonstrated. 'Don't say that. You do not understand.'
But before he could go on a sudden turn in the road brought them into the midst of a little hamlet.
Before them stood Clayton's car surrounded by the party she had brought from the cottage.