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, Mr. Clayton, what have you done?" cried Jane Porter, her heart
sinking within her as she realized the probable size of the
expenditure that had been made.
"S-sh," cautioned Clayton. "Don't let your father guess. If you
don't tell him he will never notice, and I simply couldn't think of
him living in the terrible squalor and sordidness which Mr.
Philander and I found. It was so little when I would like to do so
much, Jane. For his sake, please, never mention it."
"But you know that we can't repay you," cried the girl. "Why do you
want to put me under such terrible obligations?"
"Don't, Jane," said Clayton sadly. "If it had 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 man
living in the hole we found here. Won't you please believe that I
did it just for him and give me that little crumb of pleasure at
least?"
"I do believe you, Mr. Clayton," said the girl, "because I know you
are big enough and generous enough to have done it just for
him--and, oh Cecil, I wish I might repay you as you deserve--as you
would wish."
"Why can't you, Jane?"
"Because I love another."
"Canler?"
"No."
"But you are going to marry him. He told me as much before I left
Baltimore."
The girl winced.
"I do not love him," she said, almost proudly.
"Is it because of the money, Jane?"
She nodded.
"Then am I so much less desirable than Canler? I have money enough,
and far more, for every need," he said bitterly.
"I do not love you, Cecil," she said, "but I respect you. If I must
disgrace myself by such a bargain with any man, I prefer that it be
one I already despise. I should loathe the man to whom I sold myself
without love, whomsoever he might be. You will be happier," she
concluded, "alone--with my respect and friendship, than with me and
my contempt."
He did not press the matter further, but if ever a man had murder in
his heart it was William Cecil Clayton, Lord Greystoke, when, a week
later, Robert Canler drew up before the farmhouse in his 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 Jane marry him at once.
At length she 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 girl's tired, hopeless look kept him. He could not desert her.
Something might happen yet, he tried to console himself by thinking.
And in his heart, he knew that it would require but a tiny spark to
turn his 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 Jane started off for a walk. She would not let Clayton
accompany her. She wanted to be alone, she said, and he respected
her wishes.
In the house Professor Porter and Mr. Philander were immersed in an
absorbing discussion of some weighty scientific problem. Esmeralda
dozed in the kitchen, and Clayton, heavy-eyed after a sleepless
night, threw himself 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 master 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 he rushed into
the house. On the couch lay Clayton. The man started in surprise,
but with a bound was at the side of the sleeping man.
Shaking him roughly by the shoulder, he cried:
"My God, Clayton, are you all mad here? Don't you know you are
nearly surrounded by fire? Where is Miss Porter?"
Clayton sprang to his feet. He did not recognize the man, but he
understood the words and was upon the veranda in a bound.
"Scott!" he cried, and then, dashing back into the house, "Jane!
Jane! where are you?"
In an instant Esmeralda, Professor Porter and Mr. Philander had
joined the two men.
"Where is Miss Jane?" cried Clayton, seizing Esmeralda by the
shoulders and shaking her roughly.
"Oh, Gaberelle, Mister Clayton, she done gone for a walk."
"Hasn't she come back yet?" and, without waiting for a reply,
Clayton dashed out into the yard, followed by the others. "Which way
did she go?" cried the black-haired giant of Esmeralda.
"Down that road," cried the frightened woman, 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 Miss 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 Jane if she could be saved.
"Who was that?" asked Professor Porter.
"I do not know," replied Clayton. "He called me by name and he knew
Jane, for he asked for her. And he called Esmeralda by name."
"There was something most startlingly familiar about him," exclaimed
Mr. Philander, "And yet, bless me, I know I never saw him before."
"Tut, tut!" cried Professor Porter. "Most remarkable! Who could it
have been, and why do I feel that Jane is safe, now that he has set
out in search of her?"
"I can't tell you, Professor," said Clayton soberly, "but I know I
have the same uncanny feeling."
"But come," he cried, "we must get out of here ourselves, or we
shall be shut off," and the party hastened toward Clayton's car.
When Jane turned to retrace her steps homeward, she was alarmed to
note how near the smoke of the forest fire seemed, and as she
hastened onward her alarm became almost a panic when she perceived
that the rushing flames were rapidly forcing their way between
herself and the cottage.
At length she was compelled to turn into the dense thicket and
attempt to force her way to the west in an effort to circle around
the flames and reach the house.
In a short time the futility of her attempt became apparent and then
her one hope lay in retracing her steps to the road and flying for
her life to the south toward the town.
The twenty minutes that it took her to regain the road was all that
had been needed to cut off her retreat as effectually as her advance
had been cut off before.
A short run down the road brought her to a horrified stand, for
there before her 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.
Jane knew that it was useless again to attempt to force her way
through the undergrowth.
She had tried it once, and failed. Now she 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 girl kneeled down in the dust of the roadway and prayed
for strength to meet her fate bravely, and for the delivery of her
father and her friends from death.
Suddenly she heard her name being called aloud through the forest:
"Jane! Jane Porter!" It rang strong and clear, but in a strange
voice.
"Here!" she called in reply. "Here! In the roadway!"
Then through the branches of the trees she saw a figure swinging
with the speed of a squirrel.
A veering of the wind blew a cloud of smoke about them and she could
no longer see the man who was speeding toward her, but suddenly she
felt a great arm about her. Then she was lifted up, and she felt the
rushing of the wind and the occasional brush of a branch as she was
borne along.
She opened her eyes.
Far below her lay the undergrowth and the hard earth.
About her was the waving foliage of the forest.
From tree to tree swung the giant figure which bore her, and it
seemed to Jane that she was living over in a dream the experience
that had been hers in that far African jungle.
Oh, if it were but the same man who had borne her 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 man was now doing?
She stole a sudden glance at the face close to hers, and then she
gave a little frightened gasp. It was he!
"My forest man!" she murmured, "No, I must be delerious!"
"Yes, your man, Jane Porter. Your savage, primeval man come out of
the jungle to claim his mate--the woman who ran away from him," he
added almost fiercely.
"I did not run away," she 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 he 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?" she asked.
"I was nursing D'Arnot. He was badly wounded."
"Ah, I knew it!" she exclaimed.
"They said you had gone to join the blacks--that they were your
people."
He laughed.
"But you did not believe them, Jane?"
"No;--what shall I call you?" she asked. "What is your name?"
"I was Tarzan of the Apes when you first knew me," he said.
"Tarzan of the Apes!" she 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 Tarzan of the
Apes had written in English, and you could not understand a word of
any language."
Again he 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," he added, "jump into my car, we must overtake your father,
they are only a little way ahead."
As they drove along, he said:
"Then when you said in your note to Tarzan of the Apes that you
loved another--you might have meant me?"
"I might have," she answered, simply.
"But in Baltimore--Oh, how I have searched for you--they told me you
would possibly be married by now. That a man named Canler had come
up here to wed you. Is that true?"
"Yes."
"Do you love him?"
"No."
"Do you love me?"
She buried her face in her hands.
"I am promised to another. I cannot answer you, Tarzan of the Apes,"
she cried.
"You have answered. Now, tell me why you would marry one you do not
love."
"My father owes him money."
Suddenly there came back to Tarzan the memory of the letter he had
read--and the name Robert Canler and the hinted trouble which he had
been unable to understand then.
He smiled.
"If your father had not lost the treasure you would not feel forced
to keep your promise to this man Canler?"
"I could ask him to release me."
"And if he refused?"
"I have given my promise."
He 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 Tarzan reduced their
speed.
"Suppose I should ask him?" ventured Tarzan.
"He would scarcely accede to the demand of a stranger," said the
girl. "Especially one who wanted me himself."
"Terkoz did," said Tarzan, grimly.
Jane shuddered and looked fearfully up at the giant figure beside
her, for she knew that he meant the great anthropoid he had killed
in her defense.
"This is not the African jungle," she said. "You are no longer a
savage beast. You are a gentleman, and gentlemen do not kill in cold
blood."
"I am still a wild beast at heart," he said, in a low voice, as
though to himself.
Again they were silent for a time.
"Jane," said the man, at length, "if you were free, would you marry
me?"
She did not reply at once, but he waited patiently.
The girl was trying to collect her thoughts.
What did she know of this strange creature at her side? What did he
know of himself? Who was he? Who, his parents?
Why, his very name echoed his mysterious origin and his savage life.
He had no name. Could she be happy with this jungle waif? Could she
find anything in common with a husband whose life had been spent in
the tree tops of an African wilderness, frolicking and fighting with
fierce anthropoids; tearing his food from the quivering flank of
fresh-killed prey, sinking his strong teeth into raw flesh, and
tearing away his portion while his mates growled and fought about
him for their share?
Could he ever rise to her social sphere? Could she bear to think of
sinking to his? Would either be happy in such a horrible
misalliance?
"You do not answer," he said. "Do you shrink from wounding me?"
"I do not know what answer to make," said Jane sadly. "I do not know
my own mind."
"You do not love me, then?" he 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," he 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 his voice.
"Don't," she remonstrated. "Don't say that. You do not understand."
But before she 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 he had
brought from the cottage.
