Out of the Primitive Part 30

"Tammas the quitter!"

Lord James started for the door, and Blake followed him, striving hard to maintain his surly look. At the street entrance he sought to postpone the coming ordeal by urging his need for exercise.

"Don't worry. I'll pay," said Lord James, pretending to misunderstand, and he raised his finger to the chauffeur of the nearest cab. "You can walk home, if you wish to save pennies. Now, you know, we desire to reach Mrs. Gantry's as soon as possible."

"Yes, we do!" growled Blake.

He seemed more than ever determined to remain in his glum mood, and the pleasant badinage of his friend during their run out to Lincoln Park Boulevard rather increased than lessened his surliness. When they entered through the old Colonial portal of the Gantry home, he jerked off his English topcoat unaided, contemptuously spurning the a.s.sistance of the buff-and-yellow liveried footman. But as they were announced, he a.s.sumed what Lord James termed his "poker face," and entered beside his friend, with head well up and shoulders squared.

"Good boy! Keep it up," murmured Lord James. "She'll take you for a distinguished personage."

Blake spoiled the effect by a grin, which, an instant later, was transformed into a radiant smile at sight of Genevieve beside Mrs.

Gantry.

Dolores came darting to meet them, her black eyes sparkling and her lithe young body aquiver with animation.

"Oh, Lord Avondale!" she cried. "So you _did_ make him come. Mr. Blake, why didn't you call at once?"

"Wasn't asked," answered Blake, his eyes twinkling.

"You are now. So please remember to come often. Never fear mamma. I'll protect you. Oh, I'm just on tiptoe to see you in those skin things you wore in Africa. I made Vievie put on her leopard-skin gown, and I think it's the most terrible romantic thing! And now I'm just dying to see your hyena-skin trousers and those awful poisoned arrows and--"

"Dolores!" admonished Mrs. Gantry.

"Oh, piffle!" complained the girl, drawing aside for the men to pa.s.s her.

Even Mrs. Gantry was not equal to the rudeness of snubbing a caller in her own house--when she had given an earl permission to bring him. But the contrast between her greetings of the two men was, to say the least, noticeable.

Blake met her supercilious bearing toward him with an impa.s.siveness that was intended to mask his contemptuous resentment. But Genevieve saw and understood. She rose and quietly remarked: "You'll excuse us, Aunt Amice. I wish Mr. Blake to see the palm room. I fancy it will carry him back to Mozambique."

Mrs. Gantry's look said that she wished Mr. Blake could be carried back to Mozambique and kept there. Her tongue said: "As you please, my dear.

Yet I should have thought you'd had quite enough of Africa for a lifetime."

"One never can tell," replied Genevieve with a coldness that chilled the glow in Blake's eyes.

They went out side by side yet perceptibly constrained in their bearing toward one another.

Dolores flung herself across the room and into a chair facing her mother and Lord James.

"Did you see that?" she demanded. "I do believe Vievie is the coldest blooded creature! When she knows he's just dying for love of her! Why, I never--"

"That will do!" interrupted Mrs. Gantry.

"I'll leave it to Lord Avondale. Isn't it the exact truth?"

"Er--he still looks rather robust," parried Lord James.

"You know what I mean. But I didn't think she'd behave in this dog-in-the-manger fashion. She might have at least given me a chance for a tete-a-tete with him, even if he is _her_ hero."

"I am only too well aware what Lord Avondale will think of _you_, going on in this silly way," observed Mrs. Gantry.

"If Lord Avondale doesn't like me and my manners, he needn't. Need you, Mr. Scarbridge?"

"But how can I help liking you?" asked the young Englishman with such evident sincerity that the girl was disconcerted. She flashed a bewildered glance into his earnest face, and turned quickly away, her cheeks scarlet with confusion.

"Ah, Earl," purred her mother, "I fully appreciate your kindness. She is Genevieve's cousin. You are therefore pleased to disregard her gaucheries."

"Ho! so that's it?" retorted Dolores. "Lord Avondale needn't trouble to disregard anything about me."

"Believe me, I do not, Miss Gantry," replied Lord James. "I find you most charming."

"Because I'm Vievie's cousin! Well, if you wish to know what I think, I think all Englishmen are simply detestable!" cried the girl, and she sprang up and flounced away, her face crimson with anger.

"You had better go straight to your room," reproved her mother.

The girl promptly dodged the doorway for which she was headed, and veered around to a window, where she turned her back on them and perched herself on the arm of a chair.

Mrs. Gantry sighed profoundly. "_A-a-ah!_ Was ever a mother so tried!

Such temper, such perversity! Her father, all over again!"

"If you'll permit me to offer a suggestion," ventured Lord James, "may it not be that you drive with rather too taut a rein?"

"Too taut! Can you not see? The slightest relaxation, and I should have a runaway."

"But a little freedom to canter? It's this chafing against the bit. So high spirited, you know. I must confess, it's that which I find most charming about her."

"Impossible! You cannot realize."

"Then, too, her candor--one of the rarest and most admirable traits in a woman."

"Simply terrible! That she should fling her--opinion of you in your face!"

"Better that than the usual insincerity in such cases of dislike. It gives me reason to hope that eventually I can win her friendship."

"Your kindness is more than I can ever repay!"

"You can by granting me a single favor."

"Indeed?" Mrs. Gantry raised her eyebrows in high arches.

"By receiving my friend as my friend."

"Ah! Had you not asked permission to bring him, he would not have been received at all."

"Not even as the man who saved your niece?"

"That is an obligation to be discharged by her father."

"I see. Very well, then. Regarding him simply as my friend, I ask you to consider that he is undergoing a most difficult, I may say, cruel test. He must overcome something that he has vainly fought for years--something that has crushed many of the greatest intellects the world has known."