"I am going to. You needn't think I didn't mean what I said last night. I did mean it, every word. If sticking to a job is going to mean getting what I want, I'll stick tighter than a stamp."
There was a ring of determination in his voice which startled Sylvia a little, it sounded so alarmingly conclusive.
"Jack! I didn't promise," she protested.
"Oh, I know. I'm not such a cad as to throw it up at you if even the sticking isn't enough. But if it's the one chance I'm too good a gambler not to take it--or to kick if I fail in the end." And Jack's lips came together with a firmness which avouched the sincerity of his statement.
Sylvia watching the landscape flit by looked thoughtful. It suddenly occurred to her that her companion had spoken the literal truth. Jack Amidon was first and last a good gambler, ready to play high stakes, to win or lose like a gentleman, without vainglory or bitterness. If she had said yes to his impassioned plea last night Sylvia could not help wondering if a little of the ardor of his love might not have abated in spite of himself. Wasn't it the chase itself he loved? If so, he was only his father's own son. Jackson Amidon, Senior, went on quietly bagging his millions, not because he cared a snap of his fingers for the money but because the exhilaration of achieving it in the face of obstacles was the breath of life to him. Like the biblical war horses he metaphorically trumpeted "Ha Ha!" in the battle hour. With father and son the game itself was the thing. The nature of the stake did not matter so much. With one it was Power, with the other Love, as it happened, but with both the zest lay, not in the end, but in the pursuit. Of course Sylvia did not reason all this out clearly, but vaguely she sensed the truth which the boy's words had revealed. Many months later the revelation recurred to her and she wondered if Jack, too, had understood himself as clearly as for a moment she had understood him. She thought it possible with his keen power of intuition, he had always understood. Perhaps he had.
So through the deepening autumnal twilight sped Youth with its visions and its questionings, Youth unproved, pressing forward toward some unknown mark in challenging mood, knowing little of the eternal mystery of Life and less of that even more baffling mystery, the mystery of Self.
CHAPTER VI
OF MISSIONS, AND OMISSIONS
"H-mm!" Suzanne meditatively surveyed the depleted feast. "Thermos bottles! Silver spoons! Sophisticated salads! Is this your notion of roughing it, Mr. Jack Amidon? Of all Sybaritical picnics!"
"Same old bugs! Same old sticks in the lemonade!" retorted Jack, leaning forward to extract a leaf from Sylvia's cup with the prong of a salad fork. "The good old times aren't utterly gone."