Chapter XX. Heredity

by Edgar Rice Burroughs

　　When Jane realized that she was being borne away a captiveby the strange forest creature who had rescued her fromthe clutches of the ape she struggled desperately to escape,but the strong arms that held her as easily as though shehad been but a day-old babe only pressed a little more tightly.

　　So presently she gave up the futile effort and lay quietly,looking through half-closed lids at the faces of the man whostrode easily through the tangled undergrowth with her.

　　The face above her was one of extraordinary beauty.

　　A perfect type of the strongly masculine, unmarred bydissipation, or brutal or degrading passions. For, though Tarzanof the Apes was a killer of men and of beasts, he killed as thehunter kills, dispassionately, except on those rare occasionswhen he had killed for hate--though not the brooding, malevolenthate which marks the features of its own with hideous lines.

　　When Tarzan killed he more often smiled than scowled,and smiles are the foundation of beauty.

　　One thing the girl had noticed particularly when she hadseen Tarzan rushing upon Terkoz--the vivid scarlet bandupon his forehead, from above the left eye to the scalp; butnow as she scanned his features she noticed that it was gone,and only a thin white line marked the spot where it had been.

　　As she lay more quietly in his arms Tarzan slightly relaxedhis grip upon her.

　　Once he looked down into her eyes and smiled, and thegirl had to close her own to shut out the vision of thathandsome, winning face.

　　Presently Tarzan took to the trees, and Jane, wonderingthat she felt no fear, began to realize that in many respectsshe had never felt more secure in her whole life than now asshe lay in the arms of this strong, wild creature, being borne,God alone knew where or to what fate, deeper and deeperinto the savage fastness of the untamed forest.

　　When, with closed eyes, she commenced to speculate uponthe future, and terrifying fears were conjured by a vividimagination, she had but to raise her lids and look upon thatnoble face so close to hers to dissipate the last remnant ofapprehension.

　　No, he could never harm her; of that she was convincedwhen she translated the fine features and the frank, braveeyes above her into the chivalry which they proclaimed.

　　On and on they went through what seemed to Jane a solidmass of verdure, yet ever there appeared to open before thisforest god a passage, as by magic, which closed behind themas they passed.

　　Scarce a branch scraped against her, yet above and below,before and behind, the view presented naught but a solidmass of inextricably interwoven branches and creepers.

　　As Tarzan moved steadily onward his mind was occupiedwith many strange and new thoughts. Here was a problemthe like of which he had never encountered, and he feltrather than reasoned that he must meet it as a man and notas an ape.

　　The free movement through the middle terrace, which was theroute he had followed for the most part, had helped to coolthe ardor of the first fierce passion of his new found love.

　　Now he discovered himself speculating upon the fatewhich would have fallen to the girl had he not rescued herfrom Terkoz.

　　He knew why the ape had not killed her, and he commencedto compare his intentions with those of Terkoz.

　　True, it was the order of the jungle for the male to take hismate by force; but could Tarzan be guided by the laws of thebeasts? Was not Tarzan a Man? But what did men do? Hewas puzzled; for he did not know.

　　He wished that he might ask the girl, and then it came tohim that she had already answered him in the futile struggleshe had made to escape and to repulse him.

　　But now they had come to their destination, and Tarzan ofthe Apes with Jane in his strong arms, swung lightly to theturf of the arena where the great apes held their councilsand danced the wild orgy of the Dum-Dum.

　　Though they had come many miles, it was still butmidafternoon, and the amphitheater was bathed in the halflight which filtered through the maze of encircling foliage.

　　The green turf looked soft and cool and inviting. The myriadnoises of the jungle seemed far distant and hushed to amere echo of blurred sounds, rising and falling like the surfupon a remote shore.

　　A feeling of dreamy peacefulness stole over Jane as shesank down upon the grass where Tarzan had placed her, andas she looked up at his great figure towering above her, therewas added a strange sense of perfect security.

　　As she watched him from beneath half-closed lids, Tarzancrossed the little circular clearing toward the trees upon thefurther side. She noted the graceful majesty of his carriage,the perfect symmetry of his magnificent figure and the poiseof his well-shaped head upon his broad shoulders.

　　What a perfect creature! There could be naught of crueltyor baseness beneath that godlike exterior. Never, she thoughthad such a man strode the earth since God created the first inhis own image.

　　With a bound Tarzan sprang into the trees and disappeared.Jane wondered where he had gone. Had he left herthere to her fate in the lonely jungle?

　　She glanced nervously about. Every vine and bush seemed but thelurking-place of some huge and horrible beast waiting to burygleaming fangs into her soft flesh. Every sound she magnifiedinto the stealthy creeping of a sinuous and malignant body.

　　How different now that he had left her!

　　For a few minutes that seemed hours to the frightened girl,she sat with tense nerves waiting for the spring of thecrouching thing that was to end her misery of apprehension.

　　She almost prayed for the cruel teeth that would give herunconsciousness and surcease from the agony of fear.

　　She heard a sudden, slight sound behind her. With a cryshe sprang to her feet and turned to face her end.

　　There stood Tarzan, his arms filled with ripe and luscious fruit.

　　Jane reeled and would have fallen, had not Tarzan, droppinghis burden, caught her in his arms. She did not loseconsciousness, but she clung tightly to him, shuddering andtrembling like a frightened deer.

　　Tarzan of the Apes stroked her soft hair and tried to comfortand quiet her as Kala had him, when, as a little ape, he hadbeen frightened by Sabor, the lioness, or Histah, the snake.

　　Once he pressed his lips lightly upon her forehead, and shedid not move, but closed her eyes and sighed.

　　She could not analyze her feelings, nor did she wish to attemptit. She was satisfied to feel the safety of those strongarms, and to leave her future to fate; for the last few hourshad taught her to trust this strange wild creature of the forestas she would have trusted but few of the men of her acquaintance.

　　As she thought of the strangeness of it, there commencedto dawn upon her the realization that she had, possibly,learned something else which she had never really knownbefore--love. She wondered and then she smiled.

　　And still smiling, she pushed Tarzan gently away; andlooking at him with a half-smiling, half-quizzical expressionthat made her face wholly entrancing, she pointed to the fruitupon the ground, and seated herself upon the edge of theearthen drum of the anthropoids, for hunger was asserting itself.

　　Tarzan quickly gathered up the fruit, and, bringing it, laidit at her feet; and then he, too, sat upon the drum beside her,and with his knife opened and prepared the various fruits forher meal.

　　Together and in silence they ate, occasionally stealing slyglances at one another, until finally Jane broke into a merrylaugh in which Tarzan joined.

　　"I wish you spoke English," said the girl.

　　Tarzan shook his head, and an expression of wistful andpathetic longing sobered his laughing eyes.

　　Then Jane tried speaking to him in French, and then inGerman; but she had to laugh at her own blundering attemptat the latter tongue.

　　"Anyway," she said to him in English, "you understand myGerman as well as they did in Berlin."

　　Tarzan had long since reached a decision as to what hisfuture procedure should be. He had had time to recollect allthat he had read of the ways of men and women in the booksat the cabin. He would act as he imagined the men in thebooks would have acted were they in his place.

　　Again he rose and went into the trees, but first he tried toexplain by means of signs that he would return shortly, andhe did so well that Jane understood and was not afraid whenhe had gone.

　　Only a feeling of loneliness came over her and she watchedthe point where he had disappeared, with longing eyes, awaitinghis return. As before, she was appraised of his presenceby a soft sound behind her, and turned to see him comingacross the turf with a great armful of branches.

　　Then he went back again into the jungle and in a few minutesreappeared with a quantity of soft grasses and ferns.

　　Two more trips he made until he had quite a pile of materialat hand.

　　Then he spread the ferns and grasses upon the ground in asoft flat bed, and above it leaned many branches together sothat they met a few feet over its center. Upon these he spreadlayers of huge leaves of the great elephant's ear, and withmore branches and more leaves he closed one end of the littleshelter he had built.

　　Then they sat down together again upon the edge of thedrum and tried to talk by signs.

　　The magnificent diamond locket which hung about Tarzan'sneck, had been a source of much wonderment to Jane.She pointed to it now, and Tarzan removed it and handed thepretty bauble to her.

　　She saw that it was the work of a skilled artisan and thatthe diamonds were of great brilliancy and superbly set, butthe cutting of them denoted that they were of a former day.She noticed too that the locket opened, and, pressing thehidden clasp, she saw the two halves spring apart to reveal ineither section an ivory miniature.

　　One was of a beautiful woman and the other might havebeen a likeness of the man who sat beside her, except for asubtle difference of expression that was scarcely definable.

　　She looked up at Tarzan to find him leaning toward hergazing on the miniatures with an expression of astonishment.He reached out his hand for the locket and took it awayfrom her, examining the likenesses within with unmistakablesigns of surprise and new interest. His manner clearlydenoted that he had never before seen them, nor imagined thatthe locket opened.

　　This fact caused Jane to indulge in further speculation, andit taxed her imagination to picture how this beautiful ornamentcame into the possession of a wild and savage creatureof the unexplored jungles of Africa.

　　Still more wonderful was how it contained the likeness ofone who might be a brother, or, more likely, the father ofthis woodland demi-god who was even ignorant of the factthat the locket opened.

　　Tarzan was still gazing with fixity at the two faces.Presently he removed the quiver from his shoulder, andemptying the arrows upon the ground reached into the bottom ofthe bag-like receptacle and drew forth a flat object wrappedin many soft leaves and tied with bits of long grass.

　　Carefully he unwrapped it, removing layer after layer ofleaves until at length he held a photograph in his hand.

　　Pointing to the miniature of the man within the locket hehanded the photograph to Jane, holding the open locket beside it.

　　The photograph only served to puzzle the girl still more, forit was evidently another likeness of the same man whose picturerested in the locket beside that of the beautiful young woman.

　　Tarzan was looking at her with an expression of puzzledbewilderment in his eyes as she glanced up at him. Heseemed to be framing a question with his lips.

　　The girl pointed to the photograph and then to the miniatureand then to him, as though to indicate that she thoughtthe likenesses were of him, but he only shook his head, andthen shrugging his great shoulders, he took the photographfrom her and having carefully rewrapped it, placed it againin the bottom of his quiver.

　　For a few moments he sat in silence, his eyes bent uponthe ground, while Jane held the little locket in her hand,turning it over and over in an endeavor to find some furtherclue that might lead to the identity of its original owner.

　　At length a simple explanation occurred to her.

　　The locket had belonged to Lord Greystoke, and thelikenesses were of himself and Lady Alice.

　　This wild creature had simply found it in the cabin by the beach.How stupid of her not to have thought of that solution before.

　　But to account for the strange likeness between LordGreystoke and this forest god--that was quite beyond her,and it is not strange that she could not imagine that thisnaked savage was indeed an English nobleman.

　　At length Tarzan looked up to watch the girl as she examinedthe locket. He could not fathom the meaning of thefaces within, but he could read the interest and fascinationupon the face of the live young creature by his side.

　　She noticed that he was watching her and thinking that hewished his ornament again she held it out to him. He took itfrom her and taking the chain in his two hands he placed itabout her neck, smiling at her expression of surprise at hisunexpected gift.

　　Jane shook her head vehemently and would have removed thegolden links from about her throat, but Tarzan would not lether. Taking her hands in his, when she insisted upon it, heheld them tightly to prevent her.

　　At last she desisted and with a little laugh raised the locketto her lips.

　　Tarzan did not know precisely what she meant, but heguessed correctly that it was her way of acknowledging thegift, and so he rose, and taking the locket in his hand,stooped gravely like some courtier of old, and pressed hislips upon it where hers had rested.

　　It was a stately and gallant little compliment performedwith the grace and dignity of utter unconsciousness of self.It was the hall-mark of his aristocratic birth, the naturaloutcropping of many generations of fine breeding, an hereditaryinstinct of graciousness which a lifetime of uncouth and savagetraining and environment could not eradicate.

　　It was growing dark now, and so they ate again of the fruitwhich was both food and drink for them; then Tarzan rose,and leading Jane to the little bower he had erected, motionedher to go within.

　　For the first time in hours a feeling of fear swept over her,and Tarzan felt her draw away as though shrinking from him.

　　Contact with this girl for half a day had left a very diferentTarzan from the one on whom the morning's sun had risen.

　　Now, in every fiber of his being, heredity spoke louderthan training.

　　He had not in one swift transition become a polishedgentleman from a savage ape-man, but at last the instinctsof the former predominated, and over all was the desire toplease the woman he loved, and to appear well in her eyes.

　　So Tarzan of the Apes did the only thing he knew to assureJane of her safety. He removed his hunting knife from itssheath and handed it to her hilt first, again motioning herinto the bower.

　　The girl understood, and taking the long knife she enteredand lay down upon the soft grasses while Tarzan of the Apesstretched himself upon the ground across the entrance.

　　And thus the rising sun found them in the morning.

　　When Jane awoke, she did not at first recall the strangeevents of the preceding day, and so she wondered at her oddsurroundings--the little leafy bower, the soft grasses of herbed, the unfamiliar prospect from the opening at her feet.

　　Slowly the circumstances of her position crept one by oneinto her mind. And then a great wonderment arose in herheart--a mighty wave of thankfulness and gratitude thatthough she had been in such terrible danger, yet she was unharmed.

　　She moved to the entrance of the shelter to look for Tarzan.He was gone; but this time no fear assailed her for sheknew that he would return.

　　In the grass at the entrance to her bower she saw the imprintof his body where he had lain all night to guard her.She knew that the fact that he had been there was all thathad permitted her to sleep in such peaceful security.

　　With him near, who could entertain fear? She wondered ifthere was another man on earth with whom a girl could feelso safe in the heart of this savage African jungle. Even thelions and panthers had no fears for her now.

　　She looked up to see his lithe form drop softly from anear-by tree. As he caught her eyes upon him his face lightedwith that frank and radiant smile that had won her confidencethe day before.

　　As he approached her Jane's heart beat faster and her eyesbrightened as they had never done before at the approach of any man.

　　He had again been gathering fruit and this he laid at theentrance of her bower. Once more they sat down together to eat.

　　Jane commenced to wonder what his plans were. Would hetake her back to the beach or would he keep her here?Suddenly she realized that the matter did not seem togive her much concern. Could it be that she did not care!

　　She began to comprehend, also, that she was entirely contentedsitting here by the side of this smiling giant eating deliciousfruit in a sylvan paradise far within the remote depths ofan African jungle--that she was contented and very happy.

　　She could not understand it. Her reason told her that sheshould be torn by wild anxieties, weighted by dread fears,cast down by gloomy forebodings; but instead, her heart wassinging and she was smiling into the answering face of theman beside her.

　　When they had finished their breakfast Tarzan went to herbower and recovered his knife. The girl had entirely forgottenit. She realized that it was because she had forgotten thefear that prompted her to accept it.

　　Motioning her to follow, Tarzan walked toward the treesat the edge of the arena, and taking her in one strong armswung to the branches above.

　　The girl knew that he was taking her back to her people, andshe could not understand the sudden feeling of lonelinessand sorrow which crept over her.

　　For hours they swung slowly along.

　　Tarzan of the Apes did not hurry. He tried to draw out thesweet pleasure of that journey with those dear arms about hisneck as long as possible, and so he went far south of the directroute to the beach.

　　Several times they halted for brief rests, which Tarzan didnot need, and at noon they stopped for an hour at a littlebrook, where they quenched their thirst, and ate.

　　So it was nearly sunset when they came to the clearing, andTarzan, dropping to the ground beside a great tree, partedthe tall jungle grass and pointed out the little cabin to her.

　　She took him by the hand to lead him to it, that she mighttell her father that this man had saved her from death andworse than death, that he had watched over her as carefullyas a mother might have done.

　　But again the timidity of the wild thing in the face ofhuman habitation swept over Tarzan of the Apes. He drewback, shaking his head.

　　The girl came close to him, looking up with pleading eyes.Somehow she could not bear the thought of his going backinto the terrible jungle alone.

　　Still he shook his head, and finally he drew her to him verygently and stooped to kiss her, but first he looked into hereyes and waited to learn if she were pleased, or if she wouldrepulse him.

　　Just an instant the girl hesitated, and then she realized thetruth, and throwing her arms about his neck she drew hisface to hers and kissed him--unashamed.

　　"I love you--I love you," she murmured.

　　From far in the distance came the faint sound of manyguns. Tarzan and Jane raised their heads.

　　From the cabin came Mr. Philander and Esmeralda.

　　From where Tarzan and the girl stood they could not seethe two vessels lying at anchor in the harbor.

　　Tarzan pointed toward the sounds, touched his breast andpointed again. She understood. He was going, and somethingtold her that it was because he thought her people were in danger.

　　Again he kissed her.

　　"Come back to me," she whispered. "I shall wait for you--always."

　　He was gone--and Jane turned to walk across the clearingto the cabin.

　　Mr. Philander was the first to see her. It was dusk and Mr.Philander was very near sighted.

　　"Quickly, Esmeralda!" he cried. "Let us seek safety within;it is a lioness. Bless me!"

　　Esmeralda did not bother to verify Mr. Philander's vision.His tone was enough. She was within the cabin and hadslammed and bolted the door before he had finished pronouncingher name. The "Bless me" was startled out of Mr. Philanderby the discovery that Esmeralda, in the exuberanceof her haste, had fastened him upon the same side of thedoor as was the close-approaching lioness.

　　He beat furiously upon the heavy portal.

　　"Esmeralda! Esmeralda!" he shrieked. "Let me in. I ambeing devoured by a lion."

　　Esmeralda thought that the noise upon the door was madeby the lioness in her attempts to pursue her, so, after hercustom, she fainted.

　　Mr. Philander cast a frightened glance behind him.

　　Horrors! The thing was quite close now. He tried toscramble up the side of the cabin, and succeeded incatching a fleeting hold upon the thatched roof.

　　For a moment he hung there, clawing with his feet like acat on a clothesline, but presently a piece of the thatch cameaway, and Mr. Philander, preceding it, was precipitated uponhis back.

　　At the instant he fell a remarkable item of natural historyleaped to his mind. If one feigns death lions and lionesses aresupposed to ignore one, according to Mr. Philander's faulty memory.

　　So Mr. Philander lay as he had fallen, frozen into the horridsemblance of death. As his arms and legs had been extendedstiffly upward as he came to earth upon his back theattitude of death was anything but impressive.

　　Jane had been watching his antics in mild-eyed surprise.Now she laughed--a little choking gurgle of a laugh; but itwas enough. Mr. Philander rolled over upon his side andpeered about. At length he discovered her.

　　"Jane!" he cried. "Jane Porter. Bless me!"

　　He scrambled to his feet and rushed toward her. He couldnot believe that it was she, and alive.

　　"Bless me!" Where did you come from? Where in the worldhave you been? How--"

　　"Mercy, Mr. Philander," interrupted the girl, "I can neverremember so many questions."

　　"Well, well," said Mr. Philander. "Bless me! I am so filledwith surprise and exuberant delight at seeing you safe andwell again that I scarcely know what I am saying, really. Butcome, tell me all that has happened to you."