Out of the Primitive Part 12

CHAPTER VII

THE HERO EXPLAINS

For half a minute after his t.i.tled friend had bowed himself out, Blake stood glowering at the door. The sharp crackle of a blueprint under the thrumming fingers of Griffith caused him to start from his abstraction and cross to the desk, where he dropped heavily into his former seat.

"Well?" demanded Griffith. "Out with it."

"With what?"

"You called him your friend. He's a likely-looking youngster, even if he _is_ the son of a duke. Same time, there's something in the wind.

Cough it up. Haven't happened to smash any heads or windows, have you, while you were--"

"No!" broke in Blake harshly. "It's worse than that, ten times worse!

It's--it's Jenny--Miss Leslie!"

Griffith's thin lips puckered in a soundless whistle. "Well, I'll be--!

Don't tell me you've gone and--Why, you never cared a rap for girls."

"No, but this time, Grif--It began when I showed her through that Rand mine. Jimmy has told you what followed."

Griffith blinked, and discreetly said nothing as to what lie had heard from Miss Leslie's father. "H'm. I'd like to hear it all, straight from you."

"Can't now. Too long a yarn. I want to tell you about the results.

Couldn't do it to any one else," explained Blake, blushing darkly under his thick layer of tropical tan. He sought to beat around the bush.

"Well, I proved myself fit to survive in that environment, tough as it was--sort of cave-man's h.e.l.l. Queer thing, though, Jenny--Miss Leslie--proved fit, too; that is, she did after right at the start.

She's got a headpiece, and _grit!_"

"Takes after her dad," suggested Griffith.

"Him!"

"As to the brains and grit."

"Not in anything else, though. They're no more alike than garlic and roses."

"Getting poetic, eh?" cackled Griffith.

"Don't laugh, Grif. It's too serious a matter. I'd do anything in the world for her. She's the truest, grittiest girl alive. She told me straight out, there at the last, that she--she loved me."

"Crickey!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Griffith. "She told you that?--she?--Miss--"

"Hush! not so loud!" cautioned Blake. Again the color deepened in his bronzed cheeks. His pale eyes shone very blue and soft. "It was when we heard the siren of Jimmy's steamer. She--You'll forget this, Grif?

Never whisper a hint of it?"

"Sure! What you take me for?"

"Well, she wouldn't agree to wait. Wanted to be married as soon as we got aboard ship."

"She--!" Griffith lacked breath even for an expletive.

"I agreed. Couldn't help it, with her looking at me that way. Then we went down around through the cleft to the sh.o.r.e, where the boat was pulling in. Well, there was Jimmy in the sternsheets, in a white yachting suit--Me with my hyena pants, and Jenny in her leopard-skin dress!"

"Say, you _were_ doing the Crusoe business!" cackled Griffith.

"It shook me out of my dream all right, soon as I set eyes on Jimmy. I waded out with--Miss Leslie, and put her into the boat. Told him to hurry her aboard. I cut back to the cleft--the place where we'd been staying."

"Off your head, eh?"

"No. Don't you see? I had to save Jenny. I had proved myself a pretty good cave-man, and she had been living so close to that sort of thing that she had lost her perspective. Wasn't fair to her to let her tie herself up to me till she'd first had a chance to size me up with the men of her cla.s.s."

"You mean to say you pa.s.sed up your chance?"

"I'd have been a blackguard to 've let her marry me then!" cried Blake, his eyes flashing angrily. He checked himself, and went on in a monotone: "I waited till Jimmy came back to fetch me. Course I had to explain the situation. Asked him to pull out without me, and send down a boat from Port Mozambique. No go. Finally we fixed it up for me to slip aboard into the forecastle."

"Well, I'll be--switched!" croaked Griffith. "You did that, to escape marrying the daughter of a multi-millionaire!"

"It would have been the same if she'd been poor, Grif. She's a lady, through and through, and I--I love her! G.o.d! how I love her!"

"Guess that's no lie," commented Griffith in his dryest tone.

Blake relaxed the grip that seemed to be crushing the arms of his chair.

"Well, I went aboard and kept under cover. Jimmy managed to keep her diverted till we put into Port Mozambique. There I sent a note aft to her, letting on that I had already landed, and swearing that I was going to steer clear of her until after she got back to her father. But I kept aboard, in the forecastle, as Jimmy had made me promise to do.

At Aden, Jimmy put her on a P. and O. liner in the care of a friend of his, Lady Chetwynd, who was on her way home to England from India."

"He went along, too; leaving you to shift for yourself, eh?"

"Don't you think it! He had been spending half the time forward with me in that stew-hole of a forecastle. Soon as she was safe, I hiked aft and bunked with him. No; Jimmy's as square as they make 'em. To prove it--he had met Jenny before; greatly taken with her. There on the steamer was the very chance he had been after. But he played fair; didn't try to win her. Told me all about it, right at the first, and we came to an agreement. We were both to steer clear of her over on that side. That's why we stuck close to Ruthby Castle till Jenny sailed for home. No; Jimmy is white. He had invitations to more than one house-party where she was visiting around with Lady Chetwynd and Madam Gantry."

"So neither of you have seen her since there at Aden?"

"Yes, we have. Came on from New York with her and her aunt. They had stopped over when they landed, and we blundered into them before we could dodge."

"And Miss Leslie? You look glum. Guess you got what was coming to you, eh?"

Blake's face clouded. "Haven't seen her apart from her aunt yet. She has been kind but--mighty reserved. I'd give a lot to know whether--"

He paused, gripping his chair convulsively. "Just the same, I haven't quit. The agreement with Jimmy is off to-morrow afternoon. She's had plenty of time for comparisons. I'll make my try then."

"Don't fash yourself, Tom. If she's the sort you say, and went as far as you say, she's not likely to throw you over now."

"You don't savvy!" exclaimed Blake. "There on that infernal coast I was the real thing--and the only one, at that. Here I'm just T. Blake, ex-b.u.m, periodic drunkard, all around--"

"Stow that drivel!" ordered Griffith. "What if you were a kid hobo?

What are you now?--one of the best engineers in the country; one that's going to make the top in short order. I tell you, you're going to succeed. What's more, Mollie said--"