The Danger Mark Part 61

"Duane! Do you think me a perfect ninny? Anyway, you're not _always_ painting Venus and Ariadne and horrid Ledas, are you?"

"Not always!" he managed to a.s.sure her; and her pretty, confused laughter mingled with his unembarra.s.sed mirth as the motor-car swung up to carry him and his traps to the station.

They said good-bye; her dark eyes became very tragic; her lips threatened to escape control.

Kathleen turned away, manoeuvring Scott out of earshot, who knowing nothing of any situation between Duane and his sister, protested mildly, but forgot when Kathleen led him to an orange-underwing moth asleep on the stone coping of the terrace.

And when the unfortunate Catocala had been safely bottled and they stood examining it in the library, Scott's rapidly diminis.h.i.+ng conceit found utterance:

"I say, Kathleen, it's all very well for me to collect these fascinating things, but any a.s.s can do that. One can't make a particular name for one's self by doing what a lot of cleverer men have already done, and what a lot of idle idiots are imitating."

She raised her violet eyes, astonished:

"Do _you_ want to make a name for yourself?"

"Yes," he said, reddening.

"Why not? I'm a n.o.body. I'm worse; I'm an amateur! You ought to hear what Duane has to say about amateurs!"

"But, Scott, you don't have to be anything in particular except what you are----"

"What am I?" he demanded.

"Why--yourself."

"And what's that?" He grew redder. "I'll tell you, Kathleen. I'm merely a painfully wealthy young man. Don't laugh; this is becoming deadly serious to me. By my own exertions I've never done one bally thing either useful or spectacular. I'm not distinguished by anything except an unfair share of wealth. I'm not eminent, let alone pre-eminent, even in that sordid cla.s.s; there are richer men, plenty of them--some even who have made their own fortunes and have not been hatched out in a suffocating plethora of affluence like the larva of the Carnifex tumble-bug----"

"Scott!"

"And I!" he ended savagely. "Why, I'm not even pre-eminent as far as my position in the social puddle is concerned; there are sets that wouldn't endure me; there's at least one club into which I couldn't possibly wriggle; there are drawing-rooms where I wouldn't be tolerated, because I've nothing on earth to recommend me or to distinguish me from Algernon FitzNoodle and Montmorency de Sansgallette except an inflated income!

What have I to offer anybody worth while for entertaining me? What have I to offer you, Kathleen, in exchange for yourself?"

He was becoming boyishly dramatic with sweeping gestures which amazed her; but she was conscious that it was all sincere and very real to him.

"Scott, dear," she began sweetly, uncertain how to take it all; "kindness, loyalty, and decent breeding are all that a woman cares for in a man----"

"You are ent.i.tled to more; you are ent.i.tled to a man of distinction, of attainment, of achievement----"

"Few women ask for that, Scott; few care for it; fewer still understand it----"

"You would. I've got a cheek to ask you to marry me--_me!_--before I wear any tag to identify me except the dollar mark----"

"Oh, hush, Scott! You are talking utter nonsense; don't you know it?"

He made a large and rather grandiose gesture:

"Around me lies opportunity, Kathleen--every stone; every brook----"

The mischievous laughter of his listener checked him. She said: "I'm sorry; only it made me think of

'Sermons in stones, Books in the running brooks,'

and the indignant gentleman who said: 'What d.a.m.n nonsense! It's "sermons in _books_, _stones_ in the running brooks!"' Do go on, Scott, dear, I don't mean to be frivolous; it is fine of you to wish for fame----"

"It isn't fame alone, although I wouldn't mind it if I deserved it. It's that I want to do just one thing that amounts to something. I wish you'd give me an idea, Kathleen, something useful in--say in entomology."

Together they walked back to the terrace. Duane had gone; Geraldine sat sideways on the parapet, her brown eyes fixed on the road along which her lover had departed.

"Geraldine," said Kathleen, who very seldom relapsed into the vernacular, "this brother of yours desires to perform some startling stunt in entomology and be awarded Carnegie medals."

"That's about it," said Scott, undaunted. "Some wise guy put it all over the Boll-weevil, and saved a few billions for the cotton growers; another gentleman full of scientific thinks studied out the San Jose scale; others have got in good licks at mosquitoes and house-flies. I'd like to tackle something of that sort."

"Rose-beetles," said his sister briefly. In her voice was a suspicion of tears, and she kept her head turned from them.

"n.o.body could ever get rid of Rose-beetles," said Kathleen. "But it _would_ be exciting, wouldn't it, Scott? Think of saving our roses and peonies and irises every year!"

"I _am_ thinking of it," said Scott gravely.

A few moments later he disappeared around the corner of the house, returning presently, pockets bulging with bottles and boxes, a field-microscope in one hand, and several volumes on Coleoptera in the other.

"They're gone," he said without further explanation.

"Who are gone?" inquired Kathleen.

"The Rose-beetles. They deposit their eggs in the soil. The larvae ought to be out by now. I'm going to begin this very minute, Kathleen." And he descended the terrace steps, entered the garden, and, seating himself under a rose-tree, spread out his paraphernalia and began a delicate and cautious burrowing process in the sun-dried soil.

"Fame is hidden under humble things," observed Geraldine with a resolute effort at lightness. "That excellent brother of mine may yet discover it in the garden dirt."

"Dirt breeds roses," said Kathleen. "Oh, look, dear, how earnest he is about it. What a boy he is, after all! So serious and intent, and so touchingly confident!"

Geraldine nodded listlessly, considering her brother's evolutions with his trowel and weeder where he lay flat on his stomach, absorbed in his investigations.

"Why does he get so grubby?" she said. "All his coat-pockets are permanently out of shape. The other day I was looking through them, at his request, to find one of my own handkerchiefs which he had taken, and oh, horrors! a caterpillar, forgotten, had spun a big coc.o.o.n in one of them!"

She shuddered, but in Kathleen's laughter there was a tremor of tenderness born of that shy pride which arises from possession. For it was now too late, if it had not always been too late, for any criticism of this boy of hers. Perfect he had always been, wondrous to her, as a child, for the glimpses of the man developing in him; perfect, wonderful, adorable now for the glimpses of the child which she caught so constantly through the man's character now forming day by day under her loyal eyes. Everything masculine in him she loved or pardoned proudly--even his egotism, his slapdash self-confidence, his bullying of her, his domination, his exacting demands. But this new humility--this sudden humble doubt that he might not be worthy of her, filled her heart with delicious laughter and a delight almost childish.

So she watched him from the parapet, chin cupped in both palms, bright hair blowing, one shoulder almost hidden under the drooping scarlet nasturtiums pendant from the carved stone urn above; a fair, sweet, youthful creature, young as her guiltless heart, sweet as her conscience, fair as the current of her stainless life.

And beside her, seated sideways, brown eyes brooding, sat a young girl, delicately lovely, already hara.s.sed, already perplexed, already bruised and wearied by her first skirmishes with life; not yet fully understanding what threatened, what lay before--alas! what lay behind her--even to the fifth generation.

They were to motor to Lenox after luncheon. Before that--and leaving Scott absorbed in his grubbing, and Kathleen absorbed in watching him--Geraldine wandered back into the library and took down a book--a book which had both beguiled and horrified the solitude of her self-imprisonment. It was called "Simpson on Heredity."

There were some very hideous ill.u.s.trated pages in that book; she turned to them with a fearful fascination which had never left her since she first read them. They dealt with the transmission of certain tendencies through successive generations.

That the volume was an old one and amusingly out of date she did not realise, as her brown eyes widened over terrifying paragraphs and the soft tendrils of her glossy hair almost bristled.

She had asked Kathleen about it, and Kathleen had asked Dr. Bailey, who became very irritated and told Geraldine that anybody except a physician who ever read medical works was a fool. Desperation gave her courage to ask him one more question; his well-meant reply silenced her. But she had the book under her pillow. It is better to answer such questions when the young ask them.

And over it all she pondered and pored, and used a dictionary and shuddered, frightening herself into a morbid condition until, desperately scared, she even thought of going to Duane about it; but could not find the hardihood to do it or the vocabulary necessary.