Out of the Primitive Part 6

As she again looked up she met the ardent gaze and ingratiating smile of an elegant young man who was sauntering up the train-platform to the exit gate, fastidiously apart from his fellow pa.s.sengers. He raised his hat, and at the girl's curt nod of recognition, hastened through the gate for a more intimate greeting.

"My dear Dodie!" he exclaimed, reaching for her hand. "This is a most delightful surprise."

"My dear Laffie!" she mocked, deftly slipping both slender hands into her m.u.f.f. "I quite agree as to it's being a surprise."

"Then you didn't come down to meet me?"

"You?" she asked, with an irony too fine drawn for his conceit. "Come to meet you?"

"Yes. Didn't you get my note saying that all work on my bridge was stopped by the cold and that I would run down to see you?"

"To see me--plus the world, the flesh, and the devil!"

"Now, Dodie!" he protested, with a smirk on his handsome, richly colored face.

The girl's eyes hardened into black diamonds as she met his a.s.sured gaze. "Mr. Brice-Ashton, you will hereafter kindly address me as 'Miss Gantry.' You must be aware that I am now _out_."

"Oh, I've no objections, just so _we're_ not out," he punned.

She gave him her shoulder, and peered eagerly through the pickets of the iron fence at a train that was backing into the station. Ashton shrugged, lighted a gilt-tipped cigarette, and asked: "Permit me to inquire, Miss Gon-tray, if I'm not the happy man for whom you wait, who is?"

She replied without turning: "How can I tell until I see him? I think it will be the hero. If not, it will be the earl."

"Hero?--earl?" repeated Ashton.

"Yes, whichever one Vievie leaves for me."

"What! Genevieve? Miss Leslie? She's not--Is she really coming home so soon?--when she had such a chance for a gay season in London?"

"Don't give yourself away. The London season is in summer."

"You don't say! Well, in England, then. Why didn't you write me?"

"I'm not running a correspondence-school or news agency, Mr.

Brice-Ashton."

"Oh, cut it, Dodie! Post me up, that's a good girl! What I've heard has been so muddled. This hero business, for a starter--what about it? I thought it was an English duke that chartered the steamer to rescue Genevieve."

"No, only the son of a duke,--James Scarbridge, the Right Honorable the Earl of Avondale."

"My ante!"

"It's in the jack-pot, and as good as lost. What chance have you now to win Genevieve,--with a real earl and a real hero in the field?"

"Earl _and_ hero? I thought he was the hero."

"That's one of the jokes on mamma. Earl Jimmy had nothing to do with the rescue ships that Uncle Herbert cabled to search the Mozambique coast. No; Jeems chartered a tramp steamer on his own account, to look for friend Tommy. He found the heroic Thomas and, incidentally, the fair Genevieve--who wasn't so _very_ fair after weeks of broiling in that East African sun."

"It's wonderful--wonderful! To think that she alone of all aboard her steamer should have survived shipwreck on that savage coast!"

"She didn't survive alone--she couldn't have. That's where Tommy came in. There was another man, but he didn't count for much, I guess.

Vievie merely wrote that he died during the second cyclone."

"What an experience!--and for a girl like Genevieve!"

"She, of all girls!" chimed in Dolores enviously. "You remember she never went in for sports of any kind, not even riding. And for her to be flung out that way into the tropical jungles, among lions and crocodiles and snakes and things! Why can't I ever have romantic adventures?"

"You wouldn't give the man a chance to prove himself a hero," objected Ashton. "You'd shoot the lions yourself."

"I _am_ good at archery. A bow and arrows, you know, were all that Mr.

Blake had."

"Blake?" repeated Ashton in rather a peculiar tone.

"Yes, Tommy the hero, otherwise Mr. Thomas Blake."

"Blake--Thomas Blake?" echoed Ashton.

"I--rather odd--I once--seems to me I once knew a man of that name. You don't happen to know if he's a--that is, what his occupation is, do you?"

Ashton was not the kind of man from whom is expected hesitancy of speech. The girl spared him a swift glance from the out-flocking stream of pa.s.sengers. His fixed gaze and slack lower jaw betrayed even more uneasiness than had his voice.

"Don't be afraid," she mocked. "He's not a minister; so he couldn't marry her without help, and he's not done it since the rescue."

"Not done it?" repeated Ashton vaguely.

"No. According to mamma's letter, Earl Jimmy outgeneraled the low-browed hero. At Aden he put Vievie on a P. and O. steamer, in the charge of Lady Chetwynd. He and the hero followed in the tramp steamer to England, where he kept friend Thomas at his daddy's ducal castle until Vievie made mamma start home with her. You know mamma streaked it for London, at Uncle Herbert's expense, the moment Vievie cabled from Port Mozambique that she was safe. Uncle Herbert would have sent me, too, but mamma wouldn't have it. Just like her! It was her first chance to do England and crowd in on Vievie's n.o.ble friends. She said I might spoil the good impression she hoped to make, because I'm too much of a tomboy."

"But if it's your mother and Genevieve you're waiting for--I understood you to say the earl and that man Blake."

"Oh, they followed on the next steamer. Mamma wired that they are all coming on together from New York."

"Where's Mr. Leslie? Did he go to meet them?"

"He? You should know how busy Uncle Herbert always is. I called by his office for him. He sent out word to go on. He would follow."

"What! after all Genevieve went through, all those hardships and dangers? You'd think that even he--"

"Look I oh, look I there she is now!" cried the girl, pressing close against the fence and waving her handkerchief between the pickets.

"Where? Yes, I see! beside your mother!" exclaimed Ashton, and he lifted his hat on his cane.

The signals won them recognition from the approaching ladies, the younger of whom responded with a quietly upraised hand. Beside her walked a rosy-cheeked blonde young Englishman, while in front a big square-built man thrust the crowd forward ahead of them. They were followed by two maids, a valet, and two porters, with hand luggage.

As the party emerged from the gateway the younger lady leaned forward and spoke in a clear soft voice: "Turn to the left, Tom."

The big man in the lead swerved out of the crowd and across the corner past Miss Gantry, who was advancing with outstretched arms, her eyes sparkling with joyous excitement.