The Argosy, Vol. 76, No. 3 — page 124: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

594 _ He put out his hands, and had barely time to close his fingers over hers when Hemingway came again to their chairs. What he had seen from the open door he did not of course say, but his eyes were a trifle clouded as he seated him- self in his long chair and, leaning for- ward, placed the silver box in the girl’s lap. “Thank you,” he said _ gently. “That box is the very one that La- valle brought to me on that awful night in Peking City nearly thirteen years ago. Open it.” Idly enough Marjorie obeyed, open- ing the lid, her eyes still upon Oakes’s face, so that she did not see what he saw. “ Look! Look, darling!” The word slipped out too late to be stopped. - Coloring again even more brightly than before, she dropped her eyes to her lap and gasped in disbelief as there cascaded out of the box a mass of color that made her draw her breath. “What did I tell you?” asked Hemingway exultingly. “Opals and rubies, didn’t I say?” He lifted gently a three-foot string of them. “ And pearls like seeds in a cacao-pod. See them!” His fingers lingered lovingly among the little, white, opalescent. jewels. “And rings—” “ But,” said Oakes, when he had got his breath, “I thought you said there was nothing in the cache? ”’ Hemingway roared with laughter. ‘“T never said a word about it. You jumped to the conclusion that I had been disappointed because I didn’t throw the stones at you as soon as I came aboard, and I couldn’t help keep- ing it for a surprise. “No. I got what I went for. I gave a ring to Felton, the sailor who helped me, but I lost the best jewel of all. Yes, it was the best. The very best in the world, I think; certainly the best I have ever seen. “T hold you to your promise, Oakes. I want that job in Mexico—or Peru, or Lapland, or anywhere else,” he went THE ARGOSY. on whimsically. “I’m tired of wan- dering through all the seas of all the world. “Did you ever read McAndrews’s hymn? It’s the finest poetry that I’ve read in ten years from the Bitter Seas’ to Ballarat. Thirty thousand pounds for each of us, Oakes, and a job for me. Don’t forget that. Oh, but this crack on the head does ache! “* Better the sight of eyes that see than the wanderin’s o’ desire.’ ” “How’d you hurt your head?” asked Oakes sympathetically. “A stone dropped on it while I was at work on the wall. Lock those stones up, will you, old man, when you and Miss Downs are tired of looking at them. I think [ll turn in for a bit. I’m all in.” They sat and looked, not at the stones that indeed lay unheeded in Marjorie’s lap, but straight into each other’s eyes, and in that look there was a wondrous dawning; and presently, without a word having been said, Oakes, rising gently from his.chair so that his movement was as soft as fall- ing feathers, leaned forward, his eyes still held by the glow in hers, and kissed her. Her hands flew to her face. “ Oh!” she said beneath her breath. And again: “ Oh! I never even dreamed it; I never—even—dreamed it—till now.” And inside his cabin, Hemingway, who had unwillingly seen the whole occurrence in his mirror as he lay upon the locker, striving not to see it, mur- mured softly to himself : “] was right about having lost the best of the lot, the finest jewel of the world; but I’m thinkin’, old man, that you didn’t losé it at Peking. You lost it before you ever started; and your friend and she have found it—the rose of the world and you; you, worthless remittance man, you can go to hades— or Mexico!” He closed the door softly and turned on the electric fan so that he should not hear the murmur of the low-toned talk outside that would have told him that COMicdoo S CO@