Out of the Primitive Part 21

Genevieve rang for tea, and changed the conversation to impersonal topics. A footman brought in a Russian samovar and a service of eggsh.e.l.l china. They sipped their tea and chatted lightly about English acquaintances, but with frequent glances towards the hall entrance.

Each was wondering which one would be first to come, Blake or Mr.

Leslie.

The conversation had languished to a mere pretext when Blake was announced. The engineer entered slowly, his face red and moist from the fierce drive of the sleet off the lake. He had come afoot.

Genevieve placed a trembling hand on the cover of her samovar, and called to him gayly: "Hurry here at once and have a good hot cup of tea. You must be frozen."

Blake came to them across the waxed floor with an ease and a.s.surance of step in part due to his visit to Ruthby Castle and in part to his walk over the sleet-coated pavements.

"No tea for me, Miss Jenny," he replied with cheerful heartiness.

"Thanks, just the same. But I'm warm as toast--look it, too, eh?"

"Then take it to cool you off," suggested Lord James. "That's the Russian plan. When you're cold, hot tea to warm you; when you're hot, hot tea to cool you."

"Not when water tastes good to me," replied Blake with a significance that did not escape his friend. "Well, Jimmy, so you beat me to it."

"Waited till after three," said Lord James.

"Thought you'd hang back to give me the start? Went you one better, eh?" replied Blake. He stared fixedly into the handsome high-bred face of his friend and then at Genevieve's down-bent head. "Well? What's the good word? Is it--congratulations?"

"Not this time, old man," answered the Englishman lightly. He rose.

"Take my seat. Must be going."

Blake's eyes glowed. "You're the gamest ever, Jimmy boy."

"Don't crow till you're out of the woods," laughed his friend. "Can't wish you success, y'know. But it's to continue the same between us as it has been, if you're willing."

"That's like you, Jimmy!"

"To be sure. But I really must be going. Good-day, Miss Genevieve."

The girl looked up without attempting to conceal her affection and sympathy for him.

"Dear friend," she said, "before you go, I wish to tell you how highly I value and appreciate--"

"No more, no more, I beg of you," he protested, with genial insistence.

"Tom, I'll be dropping in on you at your office."

He bowed to Genevieve, and still cloaking his hurt with a cheerful smile, started to leave them. At the same moment Mr. Leslie came hurrying into the room. The sight of Lord James brought him to a stand.

"H'm!" he coughed. "So it's you, Lord Avondale? Hodges said--" His keen eyes glanced past the Englishman to the big form across the corner of the table from Genevieve. "What! Right, was he?--Genevieve."

"Yes, papa?" replied the girl, looking at Blake with a startled gaze.

She was very pale, but her delicately curved lips straightened with quiet determination. She did not rise.

"Er--glad to meet you again so soon, Mr. Leslie," said Lord James, deftly placing himself so that the other could not avoid his proffered hand without marked discourtesy. Mr. Leslie held out his flaccid fingers. They were caught fast and retained during a cordial and prolonged handshake.

"When we first met," went on his lords.h.i.+p suavely, "time was lacking for me to congratulate you on the fact that your daughter came through her terrible experience so well. She has a.s.sured me that she feels all the better for it. Only one, like myself, accustomed to knocking about the tropics, can fully realize the extraordinary resourcefulness and courage of the man who had the good fortune to bring her through it all safely and, as she says, bettered."

"Yes, yes, we all know that, and admit it," replied the captive, attempting to free his hand.

Lord James gave it a final wring. "To be sure! You, of all men, will bear in mind what he accomplished. Yet I must insist that my own appreciation is no less keen. It is the greatest satisfaction to me that I am privileged to call Thomas Blake my friend."

"Your friend has put me under obligations," answered Mr. Leslie. "I have acknowledged to him that I owe him a heavy debt for what he has done. I stand ready to pay him for his services, whenever he is ready to accept payment."

"Ah, indeed," murmured Lord James. "'Pon my word, now, that's what I call deuced generous."

"No; that's not the question at all. It's merely a matter of a business settlement for services rendered," replied Mr. Leslie.

"Yet one does not--er--value grat.i.tude in pounds and dollars, y' know."

"No, no, of course you do not, papa!" exclaimed Genevieve. "Please remember--please try to consider--"

She would better have remained silent. Her evident concern alarmed her father to the point of exasperation.

"I am considering how this friend of Lord Avondale's bore himself towards me, in my office, this morning," he interrupted her. He turned again to Lord James. "I should not need to tell you, sir, that the manner of expressing grat.i.tude depends altogether on the circ.u.mstances.

We are now, however, considering another matter. You were about to leave--You will always be welcome to my house, Lord Avondale, and so will be your friends, _when they come and go with you._"

"Father!" protested Genevieve, rising to face him.

"My mistake, Miss Jenny," said Blake, coolly drawing himself up beside her. "I thought it was _your_ house."

He swung about to Mr. Leslie, and said, with unexpected mildness: "Don't worry; I'm going. We don't want to fuss here, do we?--to make it any harder for her. But first, there's one thing. You're her father--I want to say I'm sorry I cut loose this morning."

"What! you apologize?"

"As to what I said about my bridge plans--yes. If you had left out about--If you hadn't rubbed it in so hard about me and--You know what I mean. It made me red-hot. I couldn't help cutting loose. But, just the same, I oughtn't to've said that about the plans, because--well, because, you see, I don't believe it."

"You don't? Then why--?"

"I did believe it before. I believed it this morning, when I was mad.

But I've had time to cool off and think it over. Queer thing--all the evidence and probabilities are there, just the same; but somehow I can't believe it of you any longer--simply can't. You're her father."

"H'm--this puts a different face on the matter," admitted Mr. Leslie.

"I begin to think that I may have been rather too hasty. Had you been more conciliatory, less--h'm--positive, I'm inclined to believe that we--"

"I don't care what _you_ believe," was Blake's brusque rejoinder. "I'm not trying to curry favor with you. Understand? Come on, Jimmy."

But Genevieve was at his elbow, between him and the door.

"You are not going now, Tom," she said.

"Genevieve," reproved her father. "This is most unlike you."

"Unlike my former frivolous, pampered self!" cried the girl. "I'm no longer a silly debutante, papa. I've lived the grim hard realities of life--there on that dreadful coast--with him. I'm a woman."

"You child! You're not even twenty-one."

"I am old--older than the centuries, papa--old enough to know my own mind." She turned to Blake. "You were right, Tom. This is my home--legally mine. You are welcome to stay."