"He is conscious, then?"
"Just about," he shrugged, reaching for the door. "Here, if you care to go in."
The room was glaring with light, the lace curtains were dragged wide apart from the windows and the shades rolled high. Idle now in the presence of more skilled attendants, but recognized as one who had earned the right to bethere, Corrie stood near the foot of the improvised bed, leaning against the wall with his fair head slightly bent. At the sound of the door he turned that way, as Mr. Rose stopped on the threshold.
The snapping latch, or some more subtle influence, aroused someone else. Slowly Gerard's heavy lashes lifted, and he saw father and son looking at each other across the parlor strewn with the tragic litter of the last hour's work. There was nothing to interrupt the triple regard; it endured long, with steadfast intensity.
In a corner two surgeons were holding a subdued consultation, a third was busied at the marble table, the attention of all fully engaged.
"Put a pillow under my head, someone," suddenly bade the shadow of Allan Gerard's voice, across the hush. "And give me a cigarette."
There was a startled flurry in the room. Familiar enough with the last request from his masculine patients, the man at the table took a case from his own pocket and, lighting one of the cigarettes, stooped over the bed.
"Keep your grip on yourself," he approved brusquely. "But don't move."
It was in his left hand that Gerard took the tiny narcotic, his right arm and shoulder were a mere bulk of splints and linen bandages.
"Thanks," his difficult voice spoke again. "Now open that door and let everyone in—I want to talk to them."
"Mr. Gerard!"
His clear eyes, dark with suffering but absolutely collected, met the surgeon's.
"I've got to talk to them, doctor, and I may be out of my head or in a box, to-morrow. Let them in—the reporters, I mean."
The listeners gazed at each other, a shock ran through the group. Every man there knew Rupert's story of the accident, every man guessed that it was Gerard's own version that was to be given now. Someone offered Mr. Rose one of the horse-hair chairs, during the moment of rearrangement before the youngest of the doctors left the room. Only Corrie remained unmoved, not changing his position or looking at Gerard. There was a certain dignity of utter quiescence in his pose that comprehended neither defiance nor submission, but a strange, aloof patience.
The representative reporters from the city journals filed in, avidly expectant. With them came two officials of the racing association, and a metallic-eyed man whose plain clothes were contradicted by the badge visible under his coat. There was silent orderliness; the grim significanceof the room, the presence of the watchful surgeons, the central figure of the driver so well known to all of those who entered, were subduing to the least sensitive. Nor was the effect less hushing because of that other driver who attended in the background, the strong sunlight shining on his glistening pink garb and still face.
Gerard let fall the hand holding the cigarette, when the company was complete, and slowly turned his brown head on the pillow to face them.
"You newspaper men have been first-class to me for a good while; it's my chance to reciprocate now," he asserted. "Well, I'll give what copy I can. I know you want it, boys—you've often been after me for less."
The familiar gayety rippled above his aching effort of speech, his will locked to composure each rebellious line of expression. No one stirred in the room.
"I wish it were a better yarn. But when two tires blow out at the same time, while a car's turning——"
This time, there was a general sigh of quick-drawn breath. Mr. Rose stood up.
"When two tires let go, at ninety miles an hour, there's apt to be a wreck. I——" his lashes fell wearily. "I couldn't hold the machine to the road. The shock broke my control—there's noone to blame but me——" The cigarette crumpled in his clenching fingers, his straight brows knotted.
"Gerard," burst forth the racing official, excitedly urgent in his suspense. "Your tires wrecked you? That's your last word? Gerard, if you can speak, do!"
The amber eyes re-opened in answer, to meet the fixed gaze of the eager men who waited opposite.
"Yes," gasped Gerard, casually definite. "What else? Corrie, leave me your smokes, they're a better brand——"
If there had been any doubt left the witnesses, that comrade request beat it down. The surgeon flung out his hand in a sweeping gesture of dismissal, as he sprang toward his fainting patient. Gerard had finished.
Mr. Rose went out with the other men. Some of his florid color had come back, he walked more firmly and his face had relaxed to naturalness. On the narrow porch the referee from the racing association held out his hand with frank congratulation.
"Glad poor Gerard set matters right before they got any further, Mr. Rose. It sounded nasty, for a while. The mechanician struck his head in the upset, I fancy; I've seen a man run half a mile across country, crazy as a loon, afterbeing pitched out on his head in a sand-bank. They'd better get Jack Rupert into bed and keep him quiet; he'll wake up to-morrow sane as ever. Nice way your son took it."
"Oh, Corwin B. is straight," declared Mr. Rose, proudly self-contained in his relief. "I guess there wasn't much need to worry about that part. I'll wait here and take him home with me, now; he's had about all of that room he ought to stand, fond of Gerard as he is."
"He looked done up, yes. Well——"
A long shout sounded down the course, a clamor of excited speech. A troup of men appeared, running toward the house in the wake of a chauffeur who held up some object that glittered in the sun.
"I've got it!" the leader called ahead. "I've got it where he said, beside the road!"
The thing in his hand was a small, heavy nickel wrench. The men on the porch and the men in the yard stared at each other, mute. After a moment Mr. Rose drew out his handkerchief, passed it across his forehead and lips, then went down to his limousine, got in and sank back against the cushions.
"Home," he issued his order.
"Mr. Corwin is not coming, sir?"
"Home."
It was nearly two hours after the Mercury car had crashed into ruin under the aromatic apple-trees, before knowledge of the disaster came to Flavia. Breakfast was over, at least the breakfast of Mr. Rose and his daughter; no other member of the family had appeared. A maid reported that Isabel had ordered her horse and had departed on an early ride to the neighboring golf club, where she was engaged to play with an equally athletic college girl, that morning. There was nothing to disturb the customary pleasant routine or to suggest uneasiness. At the usual hour Mr. Rose left for the city; he was on his way to New York when he first caught the rumor that sent him instead to the farmhouse at Westbury.
Flavia, roseate, softly irradiated, moving in an atmosphere of undefined expectation as difficult to breathe calmly as the rarefied air of a mountain-top, had held herself to the accomplishment of her daily charges. She was seated at her little white-and-gold desk in her white-and-gold study,setting the household affairs in order for the day with the dainty precision of all her methods, when Isabel came into the room and stopped upright and rigid, near the door.
"You had better hear it now," the younger girl dully announced. "There has been an accident on the course."
Flavia's hands flew over her heart, the room blackened.
"Corrie——" she gasped.
"No; Mr. Gerard. He is alive, that's all I know."
The scent of the yellow roses Flavia had put in her hair dilated to a stifling heaviness that hindered breath; she covered her eyes with her small cold fingers, seeking the dark, mute under torture. He was alive—that niggard concession was made to Allan Gerard, whose rich fullness of vigor and dominant presence last night had seemed the one firm reality in a world of pleasant vagueness. Weak, conscious of nothing but what her inward vision showed, she lay in her chair; questioning no more, making no sign.
Suddenly Isabel, the self-assured, evenly poised Isabel, was on the floor at her cousin's knees, burying her face in Flavia's pale-yellow dress and sobbing in frantic hysteria.
"Flavia, Flavia, I can't bear it! I am afraid, I am afraid—if he should die——"
Shocked back into strength, Flavia bent over her, soothing and caressing with soft touches and inarticulate phrases of affection.
"Hush, dear, hush! Put your head here. Let me call Martha; you frighten me, Isabel!"
The tempest did not last long. As abruptly as she had lost self-command, Isabel regained it. Rising to her feet, she swept back the disordered auburn curls from her flushed face and stood silent beside the desk, in a state approaching exhaustion. She was wearing a dark riding-habit soiled with dust and stained in several places with oil or grease, her high-laced boots were scratched and sand-covered. But Flavia was beyond notice of costume and saw only her cousin's sullen misery of expression.
"Dear, you loved him," escaped her, in her double compassion for the woman whom Gerard had not chosen.
Isabel's gray eyes were crossed by a spark.
"No—Ihatehim!" she flared viciously. "What did he do it for? He had no right. He, he——" She pressed her drenched handkerchief hard against her lips. "Corrie, poor Corrie——"
Flavia shrank, commencing to tremble beforea looming premonition of something still worse to be endured.
"What of Corrie? Isabel, what?"
"You will hear soon enough," she assured bitterly. "I've said all I can. No—don't ask me, don't follow me. They will tell you downstairs. I'm going."
Downstairs, meant the servants. Flavia Rose was, above all things, maiden-proud; as Gerard's fiancée, as Gerard's wife, no cost of pain or humiliation would have kept her from him. But she was neither. She had only her own interpretation of his mirthful glances and graceful speech, only a few yellow roses to hint that he did not regard her as the most casual of friends. Suppose she had been mistaken, suppose he had meant only courtesy to a hostess whose youth exacted gallantry?
Isabel had gone. Flavia turned her face to a diminutive mirror lying among the trifles on her desk. Could she go down to the curious servants so—pale, quivering and emotion-spent? Even as she looked into her own reflected eyes, the tears at last overflowed.
It was half an hour later before Flavia, quiet, dignified and only betrayed by her absolute pallor, trusted herself to descend the stairs.
The Rose house was too near the race course, too intimately concerned in the drama, for the information she sought not to be already rife gossip there. When Mr. Rose came home, near noon, he had little left to tell his daughter except Gerard's condition and his defense of Corrie.
"Then Corrie did not hurt him," she grasped the exquisite relief.
Mr. Rose shook his head, reluctantly discouraged and discouraging. He had not gone to the city during those intervening hours; he never, then or afterward, spoke of where he had been or what he had felt.
"There was the wrench," he heavily reminded her. "And where has he sent Dean, who must have seen all that happened and could have given Gerard's mechanician the lie? I've not seen Corrie except across the room," the recollection of that ghastly room broke the speech. "We have got to wait until he comes home to answer."
Flavia slipped her hand into his, nestling to him, and he put his arm about her. Both were remembering Corrie's brief, simoon-hot tempers, his hasty tongue and ready hand—and swift repentances. Had an occasion come when the repentance was too late, too vain! And what repentance! To the sister who knew with life-longknowledge the ardent, passionate Corrie, his young rigidity in honor and high pride, his tenacious affections, this menaced downfall was almost as appalling as his death. She thrust the possibility from her with revolted condemnation of herself for crediting this libel, this slander of her brother. What had he ever done to justify such a belief?
"Papa, he could not!" she defended. "Corrie could not. Not, notCorrie!"
"I hope not, my girl."
Something in his tone, some quality she did not recognize, brought her gaze to his face with a fresh dread. What would it mean to Thomas Rose, if this were true of his son? And what would the change in Thomas Rose mean to Corrie?
The early autumn dusk had fallen and the lamps were lit, when Corrie came home. The routine of the household had gone on through the long day; under the eye of convention, Flavia and Mr. Rose had dressed for dinner and now sat together in the drawing-room, each holding an unread book. But at the closing of the outer door both started erect, pretense forgotten.
"Corrie!" his father summoned. Not Corwin B.; by a trick of usage the nickname had become formal, the formal name a playfulness not to be spoken now.
Corrie came quietly between the velvet curtains. He still wore the pink racing costume, its hue in marked contrast to his worn young face. That one day had drawn white lines about his boyish mouth and set black circles under his blue eyes. As if feeling himself on trial, he stopped just within the room and stood with the quiescent endurance that he had shown in the farmhouse parlor and which sat so strangely upon him.
"First—Gerard?" required Mr. Rose hardly. "You've been there?"
"Yes, sir. They say he will live."
"Live! What——"
"They say he will never drive again."
Flavia cried out faintly, grasping the arms of her chair, and there was a pause.
"I've heard Rupert's story, and I've heard Gerard's," slowly pronounced Mr. Rose. "I haven't heard yours, yet. Nor I haven't learned that anyone has. What wrecked Gerard's car?"
There was no answer. Corrie's breathing quickened slightly, but he neither moved nor spoke, nor lifted his eyes to the two who watched him. After moments, Mr. Rose put out his hand and pushed away a tinted electric lamp from which the light fell too strongly on his face.
"Rupert isn't lying," he asserted. "He mightbe crazy. If he is, say so. I saw your nickel wrench picked up, myself, and a dozen people along the line saw you and Gerard racing just before the smash. Where is your mechanician, Dean? What has he got to say? It looks bad, your hiding him."
"He was not with me," Corrie replied, his voice oddly smothered.
"Not with you? Rupert talks of seeing him beside you in the car."
"Rupert is mistaken. Dean was not yet out at the course and I started alone. Ask the men at my camp and the race officials; they will tell you that I took out my machine without a mechanician."
"Then Rupert is crazy? Gerard told the truth? Speak out! Are you afraid or sulky?"
This time the lash took effect. Corrie moved sharply and spoke.
"I am not going to talk," he declared definitely. "Nor ought you to ask it of me, sir. If you don't know how I loved Allan Gerard, if you can't feel that I would rather have killed myself than hurt him and would have turned my car against a stone wall sooner than see to-day, there is no use of my saying it. I don't care what anyone thinks or says. I stood the worst that can cometo me when I helped his surgeons to-day and heard him clear me——I'm going to my room; you needn't fear I'll run away."
Mr. Rose was across the room before his son could leave it, gripping the satin-clad shoulder.
"You'll keep what Gerard lied to give you," he promised with inexorable menace. "And that's what is left of your reputation. You'll neither run nor skulk in your room; you'll go dress for dinner and come down here and eat it. We'll have no scenes. The medicine you have got to take is nothing to the black dose Gerard has to swallow."
"Papa!" Flavia appealed, unheard.
"Yes, sir," Corrie answered simply.
On the wide landing of the staircase Flavia overtook her brother. There was just one thing she could say to him, must and would always have to say whatever his faults or the rest of the world's condemnation.
"I love you," she panted, clasping her little hands around his arm. "Corrie, it is hurting you so! I love you, let me come."
Under the soft hall-lights he turned to her, blue eyes meeting blue eyes; then for the first time in their lives he took her in his arms with a man's touch and kissed her.
"You stick close, Other Fellow," he said unsteadily. "I'm pretty lonesome; you're a help. But don't come now."
Pretty lonesome. Yes, that expressed the atmosphere of aloofness, the air of being suddenly walled around and set apart, that now marked the impulsive and social Corrie. It was with him when he came down to the dreary dinner, an hour later.
The one who failed to play out the wretched farce of customary life was Isabel. She kept her room, alleging illness, and did not appear to lend aid to the evening which the three spent in silent endurance of one another and their own thoughts. The very surroundings insisted on the image of Gerard; a book he had been reading lay open on the table, the music he preferred was waiting on the piano rack. At nine o'clock, unable to bear more, Flavia rose, hurriedly pleading fatigue. Corrie also rose with her to retire, or to escape.
"Wait," his father bade, at his movement, laying down a newspaper. "You will not be out with your automobile, to-morrow."
Corrie looked at him without rebellion or surprise, unflinching from the decision.
"I shall never drive a racing car again, sir," was his quiet statement.
And only Gerard could have gauged what that renunciation cost his fellow-driver.
Gerard, at that hour, was not conscious of many things. The night that was long at the rose-colored villa, was longer yet in the little farmhouse. But when the first pale light of dawn made the parlor windows grow into glimmering squares of gray, the patient suddenly spoke out of what was rather stupor than sleep.
"'And the greatest of these is charity?'" he said strongly and clearly.
The nurse hurried to his side, but it was many moments before he again aroused and asked for Rupert.
"Now, and alone," he insisted, when she demurred, urging rest.
Even in his helplessness he was compelling. The nurse went in search of Rupert, who had kept vigil in the kitchen, scoffing at the suggestion of bed while that battle was being waged in the other room.
Gerard turned his fever-burnished eyes upon his small mechanician's sullen face, when that visitor entered. Both men understood perfectly well the contest of wills about to ensue. Bothwere coolly determined and prepared with the fine weapon of mutual knowledge of one another.
"There's a silver case on the table; get me a cigarette and light it, will you?" requested Gerard, in his low, unsure voice.
Rupert complied. He had not altogether escaped, himself, with mere scratches; he limped as he came across to place the cigarette in the languid fingers.
"I guess there ain't any special need to ask if it's hurting bad, when you're wanting these dopes," he drew grim inference. "Here."
"It is, all the time. Thanks. I didn't bring you here to talk about that, when you should be asleep, though. Rupert, no more is to be said about Corrie Rose. There has been too much of that already, I can see."
Rupert's black eyes hardened and narrowed to lines of glinting jet.
"I've got the truth stripped down to running facts, carrying no trimmings, and I'm demonstrating it to everybody I meet," he imparted dryly. "And I mean to keep on. I know what you want, all right, and I ain't intending to do it. Let him stand for what is coming to him."
Gerard lifted his cigarette, seeking the narcotic smoke. His superb vitality and undrainedyouth had turned upon him like traitorous servants upon a fallen master, denying him surcease in unconsciousness and holding him as a sensitive instrument for pain to run its gamut upon.
"Why?" he queried.
"Because I want to see him get his. You don't? I do. I guess my say goes, this time. I ain't enjoying being sore wherever I ain't worse, but I'd go out and take another smash like we had to-day to see him wearing zebra clothes in a jail. Missing that, I'll make that pink millionaire palace red-hot and get him ruled off every race course in the country."
"Rupert——"
The mechanician's gesture cut off protest.
"There ain't any use! I mean it."
"You liked Corrie——"
"I ain't noticing it, now. When you were behind the steering-wheel, your say so was what happened—if you'd said to light the gasoline tank, I'd have struck a match. That's business. This ain't. Rose stands for what he did, for I'm free to put it through."
"Very true; I am helpless," Gerard acquiesced, his white lips compressed, and averted his head on the pillow.
Checked, Rupert stared at the other with manyshifting expressions twitching his own angry dark face.
"Do you know what the doctors say?" he demanded, at last. "Are you knowing, when you ask me to let Rose off, what he's done to you?"
"Yes," was the laconic answer.
There was no retort to that all-sufficient brevity. None was attempted.
The windows had gradually paled from gray to white, streaks of gold caught and reflected in the glass panes as the sun drew up above the horizon. All night the air had been filled with a steady murmur and dull flow of sound, unobserved because of its very continuity. Now, across the hush of the sick room unexpectedly crashed a roar of rapid explosions, growing thunderous as it approached nearer; cheers of joyous excitement pealed from many throats. Gerard started, his eyes blazing wide.
"The race," flung the mechanician bitterly. "It's on."
Gerard slowly raised his left arm and dropped it across his face as those who yesterday were his mates rushed past the house. With the movement a spot of crimson sprang into view against the linen swathing his shoulder, enlarging ominously, but even the alarmed Rupert knew this was no time to summon doctor or nurse, whatever the physical cost.
"Don't you think?" Gerard presently asked, quite gently and naturally, "that I've got enough to stand, Rupert?"
The sound that broke from the vanquished mechanician was less cry than curse.
"I'll shut up!" he cast his submission before the victor. "I ain't going to lie—I'd choke—but I'll hold my tongue. Don't ask more or I'll take back that. You've got me down; I'll shut up."
The newspapers were mercifully brief upon the subject of the unsupported accusation brought against Corrie Rose, although diffuse enough in accounts of the much-known Gerard's disaster. The driver's own explanation of his accident was accepted; his attitude towards the young amateur fixed the attitude of the public. Moreover, Jack Rupert was stricken suddenly dumb; no reportorial blandishments could obtain from him, on the second day, so much as an admission of the charges made by him on the day previous. Rupert surrendered like a gentleman: he laid down all his weapons. Dean's appearance at his usual duties and explanation of his absence from the pink car quashed the last rumor, for the finding of a wrench beside a motor course meant nothing, considered alone.
The first things for which Mr. Rose looked each morning were the daily papers. After which, he invariably shot a glance of blended relief and smarting humiliation into the wide, earnest eyes of Flavia, as she sat opposite him behind the goldcoffee-service, and addressed himself to his breakfast. He never looked towards his son at that moment, nor did Corrie ever break the ensuing silence. The change that had fallen upon Allan Gerard's life was scarcely more absolute and strange than that which had come upon the Rose household of innocent ostentation and intimate gayety.
But the greatest outward alteration was in Isabel. Flavia and Mr. Rose maintained the usual calm routine of events at home and abroad, Corrie rigidly obeyed his father's command to live so as to provoke no comment. But Isabel's boasted, perfect nerves were shattered beyond such control. She moped all day in her own room, rejecting Flavia's companionship, and fled from Corrie with unconcealed avoidance. Nor did she improve, as the days passed, but rather grew worse in condition.
It was in the sixth week after the accident whose echoes threatened to linger so long, that Isabel entered her cousin's study, one afternoon.
"Flavia, I am going away," she abruptly announced. "Mrs. Alexander has asked me to go South with Caroline and her, you know. Uncle says I may do as I like, and I am going. I can't bear it here," her full lip quivered.
Flavia turned from the window by which she had been standing, catching and crushing a fold of the drapery in her small fingers as she faced the other girl.
"You mean that you cannot bear Corrie," she retorted, in swift reproach. "You treat him—howyou treat him! You hardly speak to him, you hardly look at him. Oh, you are cruel, you will not see how he suffers for one moment's fault."
Isabel grasped a chair-back, commencing to tremble.
"I can't bear to stay," she repeated hysterically. "Don't talk to me about Corrie."
"I never will again," Flavia assured, pale with extreme anger. "Yet you might remember that he loves you; a little kindness from you would help him so much. Do you know where he spent yesterday? He was out in his motor boat; out in November with a north gale blowing, alone in that speed-boat that is half under water all the time. You do not care, you have no pity."
"I——"
Flavia imposed silence with a gesture, herself quite unconscious of how overwhelming was this contrast to her usual gentleness.
"He has done wrong—you have nothing to give him but more punishment. Yes, go away,that is best. But he would have been kinder to you, Isabel."
Isabel let go of the chair, her gray eyes dilating unnaturally. Her gaze dwelling on Flavia, she slowly retreated a few steps towards the door, then suddenly turned and fled, leaving no answer.
With her going, Flavia's passion died, something like fear taking its place. That was what Corrie had felt, reflected Corrie's sister; a sweep of flame-like anger that blinded judgment, a slipping of self-mastery that loosed hand or tongue. Only, she had not wanted to hurt Isabel, that was a point she could not conceive reaching, herself.
When she had somewhat recovered, Flavia went to find her furs and outdoor apparel. She knew where Corrie had gone; she would meet him and herself break the tidings of his cousin's coming departure. He would be walking; he had not touched an automobile since he left the seat of his pink racer to rescue Gerard from beneath the crushed Mercury, and he had no patience with horses.
It was on a bleak, sandy stretch of Long Island road that she met Corrie, a solitary figure against the flat landscape as he came towards her. At sight of her little carriage and the cream-colored ponies he himself long before had taught her todrive, he stopped, his boyish face brightening warmly.
"Other Fellow," was all he said, when she leaned towards him with her unaltering love of glance and smile.
There was no need to ask where he had been.
"How is Mr. Gerard, dear?" she ventured, after he was seated beside her and they had commenced the return.
"Better."
"You go there every day to ask?"
"Every day."
"And, he——"
"He has seen me every day, even the worst. He talks about politics, the aviation meet, the motor magazines,—about everything except himself or me. It is his right arm, now, the other hurts are almost well. To-day I met the doctor, going out as I was coming in. I asked about him——"
Flavia raised her eyes to meet his, shrinking from the verdict that speech must establish beyond the refuge of doubt. Very gently he laid his hand over hers upon the reins and brought the ponies to a standstill.
"Do you remember this place, Flavia? Well, all that is over for him."
Beside them sloped away a brown, frost-seared field; in its centre still showed the outline of a baseball diamond, with the bags forgotten at the bases. Flavia's heart contracted sharply, the reins escaped her grasp. For the moment memory and vision fused; she saw the straight, slender pitcher poised with arms raised above his brown head, saw his laughing glance go questing down the field, and the swift, graceful movement that launched the ball with unerring unexpectedness. And because she could not speak without inadvertently lashing Corrie, she sat mute.
She did not know how long it was before he spoke, with the new steady seriousness so strange to meet in him.
"Where are we getting to, Other Fellow? Because we have got to get somewheres, you know; we don't stand still. Gerard will go away to his own home, soon. You and father and Isabel and I can't just sit here looking at each other, like we've been doing."
Gerard would go away, soon. That was the sentence that gripped Flavia. Go, without seeing her, without pursuing the purpose he had shown her in the fountain arbor? It seemed so impossible that the thrill that shook her was not of fear, but of startled expectancy. Yet she answeredCorrie with scarcely a pause, and with all tenderness.
"Dear, Isabel will not be here, for a little while," she told him, hesitatingly. "She is going South with Mrs. Alexander and Caroline. She, she needs the change."
"That's good," he approved. "She will be better off, away from here, and you will be better for her going. She worries us all with her fidgets."
Amazed, Flavia turned in her seat to regard him.
"Corrie!"
"You thought I would mind?" He smiled whimsically. "Flavia, I've had a lot of nonsense knocked out of me. It took a bad shock to cure me of Isabel, but I'm well. There's nothing left of that. In fact, I feel all full of holes where ideas have been jolted out of me—I feel rather empty."
The beautiful foreign motor car had stolen along the road so silently that neither brother nor sister perceived its approach until the grind of applied brakes sounded beside the stopped carriage.
"I should have supposed that there'd be views in the countryside more pleasant to this familythan that field," caustically observed Mr. Rose. "You can take the machine on home, Lenoir; I'll drive with Miss Rose."
He descended, the chauffeur stooping to open the door, while Corrie and Flavia looked on, too much surprised to find reply.
"Keep your seat," he curtly ordered, as his son rose to yield the place beside Flavia. "I'll get up here. Drive ahead, my girl."
He took the rear seat of the little carriage, resting his arm on the cushioned back so that his strong, square-set head was between the two who sat in front. The automobile obediently sped on, and only the beat of the ponies' hoofs interrupted the chill afternoon hush for the first half-mile.
"It's a long time since I found out that you had some points that I didn't just understand, Corrie," Mr. Rose stated, his matter-of-fact accents carrying a deliberate finality. "I didn't wonder, nor I didn't try to force you to fit my pattern; we were solid friends and I was willing to take on faith your ways of being different. Once in a while I'd bring you on the carpet when you got across the line, not often. You were given about everything you wanted and only told that you must keep straight. You haven't done it."
An odd shiver ran through Corrie, but he said nothing.
"This isn't a theatre; there won't be any talk of cutting you off with a shilling or any other kind of child's talk. What we have got to do is to make the best of a bad thing. You will have to go away for a year or two, keep apart from automobile racing and automobile people, and live gossip down. Poor Gerard did his best for you—God knows why—but there are rumors whispered around yet. It would have looked like running away to go before; now, Gerard is out of danger. Well?"
"I have been thinking that I should like to go away for a time, sir," Corrie answered, gravely self-contained.
"Very good. To speak out, it will be better for our future living together if you're not in my sight for a while now. If we stay housemates, there is likely to be another kind of a crash, and two crashes don't mend a break. You'll have all the money you want and I don't care where you go or how much you spend. Just put in a year as well as you can, until we all settle down and go on again. We have got a lifetime before us to get through."
After a moment Corrie quietly took the reinsfrom Flavia; blinded by tears, she was letting the ponies stray at will.
The brief November day was ending; it was dusk when they reached the house, and perhaps none of the three were ungrateful for the shadows which veiled them from one another. On the veranda, Corrie detained his sister, allowing Mr. Rose to enter alone.
"I'm not coming in just yet, Other Fellow," he said. "Ask father to excuse me from dinner; I have an errand that cannot wait. I don't want you to worry about me or to be unhappy. I did a lot of thinking yesterday, out in the speed-boat by myself; I know what I am going to do and that I will put up the best fight I can. Go help father; don't fret over me."
He kissed her soft mouth with the man's firmness so different from his former casual caresses, and went down the broad steps, walking across the lawns in the direction from which they had just come.
Dinner at the Rose house took place about two hours after the corresponding meal occurred at the farmhouse near the Westbury Turn. So while Corrie was walking through his five miles of desolate, dark road, the evening became well under way in the country parlor; sick-room no longer.
There had been changes in the room since Gerard's occupancy of it. Bright rugs and coverings mitigated the severity of the horse-hair furniture, a couple of easy-chairs stood there like velvet-clad cavaliers in a Puritan meeting. If the hues ran to vivid scarlets and unexpected contrasts, why, Rupert had done the shopping and had consulted his own taste. In the midst of his artistic work, that one-time mechanician and self-installed nurse of Gerard's was now seated beside a red-shaded lamp, engaged in reading aloud to his companion from a classic found on the family book-shelf.
"'Thaddeus, his eyes cast down, glided from the room in a gentle suffusion of tears,'" he concluded a paragraph, and broke off, stunned. "Gee! And I was understanding that was a man! I ain't qualified for the judges' stand, but—did you ever strike this joy-promoting endurance run of language before?"
"Once. I didn't have you to read it to me, or I would have enjoyed it more," Gerard returned, stirring in his arm-chair opposite the ruddily glowing German stove. "Don't you want to give me a cigarette; I haven't had one since noon."
He was thinner and still colorless, otherwise there was little to show what the last month and a half had meant to Allan Gerard. Except when he rose or moved, the inert uselessness of his right arm was not obvious. And however hard the battles and rebellion he inwardly had passed through, tone or expression carried no outward intelligence of past conflict as he smiled across at his entertainer. Gerard possessed in full measure that Anglo-Saxon reticence which abhors the useless display of emotions. Rupert balanced the volume upon his knee and proceeded to comply with the request, twisting his dark little face sardonically.
"When I was racing with Darling French," he reminisced, "we gave out of oil, once, on a practice run across country. There was a houseby the busy curb representing itself as the only one combination garage and grocery store, so Darling contracted for a can of warranted cylinder oil in a speed dash that left the man all used up and rattling mad. Being in some haste, we didn't look up that can's inner life, but chucked the stuff where it would do the most good."
"Poor quality?"
"I ain't saying so. The complaint wasn't quality, it was kind. That can surrounded the finest brand of Koko Korn syrup, extra rich. They had to knock down our motor with a set of cooking utensils, and the man who did the job said it was a candied peach."
Gerard laughed.
"Well?" he anticipated.
"Here's your smoke. Well, that type of literature makes my thinks-motor feel as if molasses was being poured into it for lubrication—it sticks. Will you take it hard if I raise my voice over the sporting page of the evening paper, instead?"
Gerard nodded consent, but checked the reply on his lips, listening. The outer door had opened and closed, someone could be heard speaking to the mistress of the house.
"Corrie Rose!" he marvelled.
Rupert carefully laidThaddeuson the table and stood up, straightening his small, wiry figure.
"I'll crank up and run out," he observed nonchalantly. "Signal when you want me back."
There was no need of explanation; since the day of the Mercury's wreck, Rupert had never voluntarily remained in the same room with Corrie or had exchanged speech with him. The two passed at the doorway, now, with a curt nod on the part of the mechanician in response to the visitor's salute.
It was not a heartening reception, nor could Gerard's cordial greeting lift the shadow of it from Corrie's expression. That long solitary walk had left his young face drawn with a white fatigue not physical. But his eyes did not avoid Gerard's, and for the first time he spoke of the subject always present in the minds of both.
"You ought to hate the sight of me worse than Rupert does," he abruptly opened. "But—you don't. I don't know why, but you don't."
"No, I certainly do not," Gerard confirmed, his grave eyes on his guest.
Corrie rested one hand upon the narrow mantel, looking down at the fire-bright squares of the stove. He still wore his gray overcoat and held his cap, as if prepared to accept dismissal.
"You understand how easily things can go wrong," he said. "I never used to understand that, but I do now. You have seen drivers gowild in the race fever, more than once. We have both seen the nicest, sweetest fellows curse and strike their mechanicians because of a lost minute, seen men whose nerve never balked at a risk sit down and cry like girls when their car went out of a race. There is a mark on my car now where Ralph Stanton once scraped off the paint in passing because I was slow in getting out of his way. I suppose you judged mine such a case and forgave a moment's insanity. No one else ever will. You," his violet-blue eyes suddenly sought the other man's, "you won't think I am trying to excuse any such thing as was done to you or to justify my part."
"No," Gerard answered, compassionately translating the last weeks' writing on the candid face. "I am not likely to think that, Corrie. But do not give me credit not due; I am not unusually forgiving or wise, it is, indeed, merely that I understand fairly well. And when one understands the other man, there seldom is anything to forgive."
"Thank you. It's because you always understand one that I've come here to-night. I, I guess I've about realized that I'm not quite nineteen years old yet and pretty much a fool. I don't suppose anyone ever meant better than I did, or ever did worse at it. Gerard, my father has sent meoff. Oh, not like that!" as the other man moved, startled. "I mean, he has told me to go away for a year or two, anywhere I like, until people forget. He says he doesn't want to see me for a while. No one does, except my sister. There is no one on earth for whom I care who looks the same as before at me except her, and you. I'm sent off to live alone and I have never been alone in my life. I'm afraid of myself, sick, afraid to be alone—take me with you."
"Corrie?"
The boy's impetuous gesture interrupted.
"Don't say no! It ought to kill me to look at you, it almost does, but it's worse away. Let me go where you are going, let me work in your factory, if it's at shovelling coal. Don't send me off alone with more money than I can spend and nothing to do with myself. I can't stand it—I'd go under! You would better have let Rupert send me to prison for wrecking your car. I've tried to stand what seemed up to me, but I'm near my limit. Gerard, help me see it through."
There was a quality of desperation in the appeal that was like a clutching grasp. Gerard felt his own nerves draw tense while his answer leaped to the present and future need.
"You are the exact man I want at the factory,Corrie," he assured, with all steadying naturalness and calm. "Take off your overcoat and come sit down; you are not going right out again. I've got work for you that will keep you guessing, as Rupert says. Let me see, it's eight o'clock and you walked over; I'll wager you have had no dinner."
"I don't want anything," Corrie refused, his face averted, his fingers gripping the mantel-shelf until his nails showed white from pressure.
"All right; I do. I declined my coffee and some of Mrs. Carter's ambrosial apple pie, this evening, and I have been repenting ever since. You are a fine pretext for having them brought in to us now. Besides, I shall have to keep you in good shape if you are going to help me put through a scheme of mine. Of course, I am not altering my plan of living merely because I have got one arm to use in place of two. I have to have some things done for me instead of doing them myself, that's all. I need you," he paused, and lifted to his companion the cordial brilliancy of his smile, "and I am glad to have you, Corrie."
When, an hour later, the guest rose to depart, Gerard detained him for a final word.
"One thing before you go," he said, with a quiet force of command that belonged to the otherAllan Gerard whom Corrie had not yet encountered—the master of many men and affairs, instead of the racing driver and social playmate. "We will not speak again of the subject we have concluded to-night. I do not wish the accident to the Mercury recalled or discussed between us, ever. We are beyond that. Good night; I suppose you would rather start with me, day after to-morrow, than alone, later?"
Long afterward Gerard came to remember that straight glance of utter helplessness and struggling confusion from Corrie's tired eyes.
"I, I can'tthink," confessed Corrie Rose. "I'm in too deep to find a way out. I—my head——" he pushed back his heavy fair hair. "Yes, I'd rather start with you, if you will let me. Tell me whatever you want of me, Gerard; I'll always do it. Good night."
The closing of the outer door was the signal for Rupert's return to the parlor.
"Your time on the track is up," he reminded, "and you need your sleeps."
"I am not sleepy, Rupert. We will go home to the factory, day after to-morrow, and continue work on that special racing car of mine. Corrie Rose is going to drive it when it is done, since I cannot."
The mechanician slowly stiffened.
"Not precisely?" he refused credence.
"Oh, yes; for practice and testing, at first, and racing later. Until it is built I shall put him in training on one of the ninety Mercuries. He doesn't yet know anything about it, himself, and he isn't going to be told until I am ready. You are going to ride with him and break him in. He has to be taught a good deal to change him from a clever amateur to a professional driver."
"When I sit in a car beside Rose, it'll be because I'm taking him to be lynched," Rupert explicitly set forth.
"Really?"
"Yes, dearest."
Gerard rested his head against the cushioned chair-back and met the inflexible black eyes with the cool, mischievous resolution of his own regard, saying nothing at all.
It was nearly twelve o'clock, that night, when Corrie arrived home. Flavia ran down the wide staircase to meet him, finger on lip; a childish figure in the creamy lace and silk of her negligee, with her heavy braids of shining hair falling over her shoulders.
"You are so late," she grieved. "And so cold! Come near the hearth—papa is in the library, still."
Corrie allowed her small urgent hands to draw him towards the fireplace that filled the square hall with ruddy reflections and dancing shadows. He was cold to the touch, ice clung to the rough cloth of his ulster, but there was color and even light in the face he turned to her.
"Itissnowing," he recalled. "But I'm not cold. I am going to bed and to sleep. I want you to sleep, too, Other Fellow, because the worst of it all is over. I don't mean that things are right—they never can be that again, I suppose—but I see my way clear to live, now."
She gazed up at him attentively, sensitivelyresponsive to the vital change she divined in him. Before he could continue or she question, Mr. Rose came between the curtains of the arched library door, a massive, dominant presence as he stood surveying the two in the fire-light. He made no remark, yet Corrie at once moved to face him, gently putting Flavia aside.
"I am sorry to be so late, sir; I have been arranging for my going away," he gave simple account of himself. "I should like to leave the day after to-morrow, if you do not object. I am going to stay with a western friend. I know you would rather not hear much about me or from me for a while, but I will leave an address where I can always be reached."
It is not infrequently disconcerting to be taken promptly and literally at one's word. Moreover, Corrie looked very young and pathetically tired, with his wind-ruffled fair hair pushed back and in his bearing of dignified self-dependence. A quiver passed over Mr. Rose's strong, square-cut countenance, his stern light-gray eyes softened to a contradiction of his set mouth.
"I'm not in the habit of saying things twice," he curtly replied. "I gave you leave to go when and where you pleased. To-morrow I'll fix your bank account so you can draw all the money you like."
"Thank you, sir," Corrie acknowledged.
"You've no call to thank me," his father corrected. "I guess that when I own millions you've got the right to all you can spend. It won't help anything for you to be pinched or uncomfortable. I've no wish to see it. I am going to take your sister to Europe for the winter, as I told her this evening, so we ourselves leave soon after you. Try to keep straighter, this time."
There was no intentional cruelty in the concluding sentence, delivered as the speaker stepped back into the inner room, but Corrie turned so white that Flavia sprang to him with a low exclamation of pain.
"It's all right," he reassured her. And after a moment: "Flavia, I am going with Allan Gerard, to work under him and help him in his factory."
"Corrie?"
"I have been with him to-night. I don't want father to know this because he wouldn't understand; he might even forbid me to go. Unless he forces an answer, I shall not say where I am to be. But Gerard said I must tell you everything and write to you often—I would have done that, anyhow. You won't mind my going away, now, when you know I am with him?"
She comprehended at last the change in him, the change from restless uncertainty to steady fixityof purpose, from an objectless wanderer to a traveller towards a known destination, comprehended with a passionate outrush of gratitude to the man who had wrought this in a generosity too broad to remember his own injury. The eyes she lifted to her brother's were splendidly luminous.
"No," she confirmed, in the exhaustion of relief. "I can bear to let you go from me, if you are to be with Mr. Gerard."
They nestled together—as each might have clung in such an hour to the mother they had left so far down the path of years—on the hearth from which one was self-exiled and the other about to be taken.
"Do you remember the story he told us?" Corrie asked, after a long pause. "About that Arabian fellow's vase and the pearls, you know? I—well, I meant what I said, about expecting to have lots of days like that, pearl-days. I couldn't see any farther than that! Yet that night—I don't expect now, what I did then; I've lost my chance for it. But I would like to do something for Allan Gerard before I die. I'd like to make all my pearls into one, and put it into his vase. Instead, he is doing things for me."
Her clasping arms tightened about him. Heretofore she always had turned a steady face to herbrother, sparing him the reproach of grief, but now she helplessly felt her eyes fill and overflow. One comfort, one hope she had that he did not share. If he went with Allan Gerard, and if Gerard took home the wife he had seemed to woo, brother and sister would not be separated. Flavia Gerard would be in Allan Gerard's house, where Corrie was going.
Had Gerard thought of that, also? Dared she tread on this nebulous fairy-ground? Dared she lead Corrie to set foot there, with her?
"Dear," she essayed, her voice just audible, "dear, has Mr. Gerard ever spoken to you of me?"
Surprised, Corrie looked down at the bent head resting against his rough overcoat. Himself a lover, he yet had not suspected this other romance flowering beside his own; he did not guess the obvious secret, now.
"Of you? Oh, yes; he asks if you are well, each day. He never forgets such things. Why?"
She had no answer to that natural question. In spite of her reason, Flavia was chilled by the flat conventionality of Gerard's apparent attitude, as represented by those formal inquiries. Almost she would have preferred that he had not spoken ofher at all; silence could not have implied indifference.
"Nothing," she faltered. It clearly was impossible to speak as she had imagined. "Only, as his hostess, and your sister, I fancied that he might——"
"He wouldn't say that sort of thing to me, Other Fellow. No doubt he will come to pay a farewell call before he leaves. He isn't very fit, you know; he hasn't been out yet. Hemustbe at his western factory this week, he said, or he wouldn't try to travel."
Her color rushed back. Why had she not remembered that? Why should he speak of her to anyone, since to-morrow he would come to see her? To-morrow? The clocks had struck midnight, to-day they would see each other.
"It is late," Corrie added, as if in answer to her thought. He sighed wearily. "You are tired, I suppose we both are. Come up."
He passed his arm about her waist, and they went up the stairs together, leaning on one another. But Allan Gerard was a third presence with them, and in their sense of his guardianship brother and sister rested like children comforted.
The following day was one filled with an atmosphere of disruption and imminent departure. Thevery servants caught the contagion and hurried uncomfortably about their tasks. Corrie's preparations were unostentatious, but Isabel's agitated the entire household. Also, Mr. Rose issued his instructions that Flavia should be ready to start for France on the next steamer sailing. The house that had been rose-colored within and without was become a gray place to be avoided.
Flavia thought all day of Allan Gerard. She knew her father went in the afternoon to pay him a farewell visit, she knew Corrie was with him all the morning, and when each returned home she suspended breath in anticipation of hearing the step of a guest also—the step of Gerard coming towards the goal which he had half-showed her in the fountain arbor. But Corrie and Mr. Rose each entered alone.
Nevertheless, she chose to wear his color, that night; the pale, glistening tea-rose yellow above which her warm hair showed burnished gold. He must come that evening, if at all; she would be truly "Flavia Rose" to him.
She was standing alone before her mirror, setting the last pearl comb in place, when her cousin came into the room.
"You look as if you were happy enough," Isabel commented fretfully. "I don't believe you careat all about Corrie's going away. Of course you don't care about me. What are you putting on that old-fashioned thing for?"
Flavia gravely turned her large eyes upon the other girl; the unjust attack fell in harsh dissonance with her own mood of hushed anticipation. She could not have robed herself for her wedding with more serious care and earnest thoughtfulness than she had used in preparing to receive Gerard to-night. This was no time for coquetry; as he came for her, she would go to him, she knew, without evasion or pretense to harass his weakness. She shrank, wincing sensitively, from this rough criticism, but every member of the family had learned not to reply to the new Isabel's peevish tartness.
"It was my mother's," she explained, to the last inquiry, tenderly lifting the long chain of pearl and amber beads ending in a lace-fine pearl cross. Never could she attempt to tell her cousin the blended motives from which she had chosen to wear this rosary. "And her mother's and again her's. It is very old Spanish work. Shall we go down?"
"What for? It is not time for dinner. Oh, Martin told me there was a messenger waiting to deliver a letter, just now, as I came here."
The color flared up over Flavia's delicate face.
"A messenger, Isabel?"
"Yes, who would not send up his message. I told Martin that we would ring."
Flavia slowly wound the chain around her throat. There was no escape from Isabel's insistent companionship, she realized.
"Ring, then, please," she requested, and passed into her little sitting-room, beyond.
Isabel followed curiously, ensconcing herself in one of the easy-chairs and idly twitching blossoms from the hyacinths in a bowl near her. All day she had been especially nervous and irritable, her least movements were characterized by an impatience almost feverish.
The messenger who appeared on the threshold was Jack Rupert, not in the familiar guise of the Mercury's mechanician, but Rupert at leisure; a small, immaculate figure as New Yorkese as Broadway itself. The movement that brought Flavia across to him was impulsive as a confident child's and accompanied by a candid radiance of glance and smile flashed straight into the visitor's black eyes. She had no attention to spare to the fact that Isabel also had risen.
"You have been so good as to bring a message to me, Mr. Rupert?" she questioned happily.
"I ain't denying it was a pleasure to come," he made gracious reply, with his slight drawl of speech. "I've been given this to deliver to Miss Rose, from Mr. Gerard, under orders to bring the answer back unless it was preferred to send it by Mr. Rose, junior, to-morrow."
"This" was a letter. As Flavia held out her hand to receive it, Isabel reached her side and seized her wrist so fiercely as to bruise the soft flesh.
"It is mine!" she panted. "Give it to me—it is mine!"
Flavia stood still, looking at the other girl with slow-gathering, incredulous resentment and wonder.
"Yours? You expected this from Mr. Gerard, Isabel?"
"I—no—yes—Corrie warned me he would," Isabel stammered. "You shall not read it, Flavia Rose, you shall not! It is for me, for me—no one must see it."
She was trembling in a vehement excitement half-hysteric. Very quietly Flavia disengaged her arm from the grasp holding it; for the moment Isabel's touch was loathsome to her.
"For whom is the letter, my cousin or me?" she asked the bearer.
"I guess there ain't any answer; I don't know," avowed Rupert, troubled and hesitant. "I was sent out to report to Miss Rose."
"But you, yourself, for whom did you suppose it?"
"I ain't certain I did any supposing. Mr. Gerard began it after Mr. Rose had been with him, yesterday, and it took from then till to-night to finish."
"It ismine," Isabel reiterated passionately.
The scene was utterly impossible, not to be prolonged. It was the strong, cool determination inherited from Thomas Rose that held Flavia equal to the demands of her mother's bequeathment of reticent pride.
"Pray give the letter to my cousin," she requested, her calm never more perfect. "I am sorry to have confused so simple a matter. She will of course recognize for which of us it is intended."
But she meant to see the letter. Even as she watched Isabel snatch the surrendered missive, Flavia told herself that this sentence of error could not be accepted without sight of the letter. Moving with deliberate stateliness, she crossed to a chair near a small table and sat down, taking up a book. She was conscious that Rupert watchedher, and she would make no sign that might constitute a self-betrayal when recounted to Gerard if she were indeed so pitifully wrong and he had from the first chosen her cousin. What she was not in the least aware of, was the inevitable impression made upon the mechanician by the dazzling little room and her central figure of gold upon gold and pearl-and-amber, and by her still, colorless face set in all this sheen and lustre. Had he been as dull as he really was acute, this scene could not have been made casual to him.
Isabel's shaking fingers shredded the envelope in extracting the sheet of paper, her eyes scanned the page avidly. The result was unanticipated; there was a sharp cry, an instant of indecision, then as savagely as she had claimed the letter she sprang to thrust it into the startled Flavia's lap.
"I can't do it! Flavia, I can't see him—I can't bear it! Tell him no—to go away—it's all over, now."
The desperate terror and dread of the cry charged the atmosphere of the room with vibrant intensity. Flavia caught the letter.
"I am to read this?" she demanded.
"Yes; read it, help me."
Isabel had seen and still claimed as hers the message. Yes, and had expected it, so that theremust have been other communication between her and the sender. The conviction of her own utter mistake struck Flavia down with a force that crushed reason under feeling. She was physically giddy as she unfolded the page.
The writing was uncertain and angular; different indeed from the firm smooth script that had accompanied the box of yellow roses in giving the "definition of the meaning ofFlavia Rose." The mute evidence of that difficult left-handed task pierced the girl who loved Allan Gerard, before she read the words.
The letter commenced abruptly, without superscription.