On the day that Corrie in his American home consented to drive the Mercury Titan through the racing season, Flavia and Mr. Rose arrived at the tiny Spanish village of Val de Rosas—arrived, not so much through design as through the bursting of a tire on their motor car.
"It seems as if the name of the place might be one of our lost titles," observed Mr. Rose idly. "And there is the castle to match, on the hillside. Come stroll through the town, my girl, while Lenoir repairs damages."
Smiling, Flavia stepped down beside him, throwing back her silk veils and lifting her fair, almost too delicate face to the Andalusian sunshine. After her stepped a great dog, with the sedate, matter-of-course bearing of a constant attendant.
"I wonder who lives in the castle," she responded to his mood of playfulness. "Ourcastle. We should dispossess them."
"Lets," proposed her father.
There was an inn in the village, kept by a ravishingly plump landlord of sixty who wore ashort velvet jacket. He informed the travellers that the diminutive white castle was not only vacant, but to let, being the property of a mad Englishman who had bought it to live in while writing a book, and having finished the book had departed. Mr. Rose regarded his daughter speculatively.
"We have been going from one place to another for five months, and we have got to put in six more," he said with brief decisiveness. "I mean to stay on this side of the water until fall. Do you want to try living here for a while, or would you rather keep moving?"
"Let us stay here," Flavia voted eagerly. "Dear, I am so tired of hotels."
Mr. Rose studied her as she stood, slim and frail, before him, her large eyes fixed on his.
"I guess we are tired of more than that, you and I," he pronounced. "But I'll run up and see if the place can be made fit to live in. You had better rest here, in the shade; Frederick will take care of you and Lenoir is within call. Here, señor, set a chair here under these trees."
She moved to the seat placed for her by the deferential host, and watched her father's departure up the winding road. They were both thinking of Corrie, lacking whom all places wereblank, with whom, in one winter's enthusiasm, they had studied this soft Spanish tongue they now used without him. They had planned a trip to Puerto Rico, then, that never had been taken. But Flavia also was thinking of Allan Gerard—Allan Gerard, who loved Isabel and for whose sake Flavia carried a double sorrow, his and her own. As he had found excuses in his mind for her apparent failure of him, so she on her part never had blamed him for what she considered her own misunderstanding of his purpose. They were not given to the small vice of ready condemnation. There is no comfort in blaming the one loved, where the love is great.
A murmur of wondering dismay aroused Flavia from her musing, a sound scarcely louder than the murmur of the bees busied among the heavy waxen-white lemon-blossoms overhead. She lifted her chin from her hand, and saw a brown-haired, brown-skinned, brown-eyed girl standing on the path, gazing at the huge dog that barred her passage.
"Pray do not be frightened," Flavia begged. "Come here, Frederick! Indeed, he is only a young dog and very gentle."
"He is very large, señorita," the girl smiled, half-reassured, half-fearful. "He bites, no?"
"No, indeed. See."
"He loves the señorita. That does not surprise," with Latin grace of compliment.
Flavia smiled, too, drawing the Great Dane's bulky head against her knee.
"I love him, perhaps."
"One sees it, since he voyages with the señores in that splendid automobile, where a man might find place with joy."
A wistfulness in the comment moved the listener to give explanation, almost in apology for lavishing upon an animal what might have rejoiced a human being.
"He is my brother's dog. But my brother went away, and the poor dog grieved for him all the time, except with me. I could not leave him to fret, without either of us, so he came abroad, too."
"Across the ocean, señorita?"
"Across the ocean. From America."
The two young girls considered one another in a pause full of cordial sympathy. Different in race, station and experience, the bond of maidenhood drew them to each other with delicate lines of mutual comprehension and accord.
"It is the dog's name which is on the great silver-and-leather collar, or the name of the señorita?"
Flavia's small fair hand guided the plump brown one tracing the legend upon the massive band.
"'Federigo el Grande, que pertenece á Corwin Basil Rose, Long Island,'" she translated.
"Don Corwin—that does not say itself easily!"
"We called him Corrie."
"Ah, that I can say; Don Corrie."
The soft household name sounded yet softer in the Andalusian accents. Flavia looked away, feeling her lips quiver.
"Will you tell me your name?" she asked, by way of diversion. "Mine is Flavia Rose. Perhaps we shall see more of each other, if I stay here and you do also."
"I am called Elvira Paredes, señorita. And I shall be here—I cannot go for so long, so long, perhaps never."
Flavia leaned forward, her clear eyes questioning.
"You want to go away? To leave this place for some other?"
The confidence came with an outrush of feeling, a wealth of expression and expressive gestures.
"Señorita, to join my betrothed. Ah, there never was one like him, so beautiful, so brave, so constant like the sun in rising! You cannot know. No one can know who has not seen it. And sing!Under my window he would sing until the birds would hush, hush to listen. I have no marriage-portion, I who am an orphan living with the sister of my mother's cousin. Not for that did Luis hesitate. But the time came when he must do military service; serve in Morocco, señorita, serve among savages who would torture him! And to come back poor as he went. So he left. Far away he journeyed, to New York, which is in America, to find peace and make a home."
"Where you will go to him?"
"Señorita, we hope it. He works, I wait. We write long letters. But it is three years. It costs much to cross the ocean, and one grows old." The brown eyes looked the tragedy of hope deferred.
"For men must work and women must weep——" The old refrain came to Flavia. But not this woman, not if her American sister could prevent. And the preventing was so easy! She drew the girl down on the seat beside her, impulsive as Corrie could have been.
"Listen, Elvira—I may call you Elvira? Let me help you. I have so much money, so much more than I can spend, and I am not very happy. Let me think that I have given you what I cannot have; let me send you to Luis. My father will tell us how, he will arrange everything so that youwill not have to trouble at all. We will send a message to Luis so that he may meet you."
"Señorita!"
"You will let me? You will not say no? Why, Elvira!"
The girl dropped her face in Flavia's lap and burst into hysterical tears, covering her hands with kisses.
When Mr. Rose returned, half an hour later, this time in the big automobile whose rushing passage stirred whirlwinds of dust on the age-old road, his daughter met him eagerly.
"Papa, I want to send Elvira Paredes to America, to her fiancée. She is a kinswoman of the inn-keeper, here. Will you arrange it for us? I think she would be frightened if you sent her by first-class, but second-class would be very nice. She knows how to go in the train to Malaga, if you get the ticket, and ships sail from there, do they not? Oh, and would you cable to Luis Cárdenas, in New York, so he will know she is coming? I will find the street and number from Elvira."
His children long since had trained Mr. Rose to be surprised at no charming vagaries. He contemplated Flavia, amused, and well pleased with her animation.
"Found something to play with, eh? Very good, we will fix it. But your Elvira will have to wait until I get an answer from her lover through the cable company; I'm sending no girls to New York without knowing they'll land in the right hands. Now, I believe that house up there will suit. We'll have some luncheon and then drive up for you to see it. I like the place, myself. It opens well."
It opened well, if the happiness of Elvira Paredes was a good augury.
"All the rest is from my father," Flavia said, in parting from her. "But take this from me, to wear or for a marriage portion, as you choose."
The gift was a sapphire ring slipped from Flavia's slim finger.
"It resembles the eyes of the señorita; may they always be as bright and clear," fervently returned Elvira, who was an Andalusian and therefore a poet.
"That cost some money, when I bought it," Mr. Rose practically observed, from his seat in the motor-car. "Tell her not to flash it in New York, alone, if she wants to keep it. You can put that into classic Spanish for me, my girl."
That was the beginning of an interlude whose placid monotony was tempered by much equallyplacid incident. The Americans liked the village, and the village rejoiced in the Americans, so that they came to know each other very well. More than once Flavia thought of the legend of Al-Mansor, and that if one of these days could be deemed happy enough to record by a pearl, the vase could be filled with the gem-chronicles, so much alike were the weeks.
For the white castle on the hill kept its visitors, and so it happened that the summer most crowded and busy of any Corrie ever had known, slipped drowsily by in drowsy Val de Rosas for the two most interested in him.
He never told Flavia what he was doing. The new Corrie Rose was more considerate than the self-centred thoughtlessness of youth had permitted the boy Corrie to be. He would have remembered her anxiety for his safety and dread of danger for him, of himself, but his silence was further impelled by Gerard, who had pointed out—in a few brief sentences that avoided Flavia's name—the responsibility she must feel in keeping such a secret from her father. But, because it was so difficult to write to his "Other Fellow" without telling her all, Corrie's letters came with greater intervals and were less in length.
"I am still touring with Gerard," he wrote toFlavia, in the last note of his that came to Val de Rosas. "Don't mind if my letters come slower, please; I am pretty busy. I guess you will understand what it means to me when I can say that I am doing some work for Gerard and that he calls it good. I wish it cost me more to do. I hope father is well; you didn't say, last time. Keep on writing often, you know, it's the next thing to seeing you."
He wrote that note the night after he broke a track record in California, wrote it on the chiffonier of the hotel bedroom while making ready to attend a motor club dinner at which he was to be chief guest in honor of the day's event. Four weeks later Flavia read it, under the flowering almond trees that surrounded the house so closely as to overhang the balcony on which she sat. Read it, then kissed the careless, boyishCorwin B. Rosethat slanted crookedly across the foot of the page. Holding the letter, she sat quite still.
From the room within drifted the voices of Mr. Rose and the mild Father Bartolomé, between whom the last months had established a cordial basis of esteem. The village priest had dined with them; it was in deference to his presence that Flavia wore a gown whose lace collar came up to her round chin, and now had left the two gentlemen to after-dinner conversation instead of herself entertaining her father. She had the sense of being horribly alone; her longing for Corrie became physical pain, so that she crushed the letter in her fingers, catching her breath with difficulty. Close to one another they always had been, still closer together trouble had drawn them, but now half the world stretched its empty spaces between. The impulse that goaded her was to cry out to her father that she must see Corrie—to take her to him—yet she did not speak or move, resolute in endurance. To make that appeal to her father would be to separate Corrie from Allan Gerard, she knew, to bring her brother back to the atmosphere of constraint and reproach to escape which he had left the rose-colored Long Island villa they called home.
"Taxes are taxes," Mr. Rose's raised accents set forth. "Governments have to be maintained. If the tax collector is due to-morrow, Val de Rosas has got to pay up."
There was a murmured reply in the softer tones.
"No money?" the American echoed. "I suppose I could guess that." There came the crisp sound of parting paper. "Now, if you will make a figure for the total, Father, I'll give you this check to pay for the whole thing. I've lived in thistown five months, and I like the people—it's my treat. No, I haven't counted the chickens and measured the houses, but I can see the amount isn't exactly ruinous. Now, we won't talk any more about it; here you are."
"Señor Rose," solemnly said the old man, with inexpressible dignity and authority,—Flavia heard him rise,—"this will be repaid by the One to Whom you lend through the poor—repaid to you, and to your daughter."
There was a moment's pause.
"You might include my son in that; I've got one, you know," suggested Thomas Rose, carefully casual.
Flavia covered her eyes, and the tears trickled through her slender fingers.
When the moon was up and the pant of a distant motor announced that the guest was being conveyed to the village by Lenoir and the big automobile, Flavia went in to her father. Both of them maintained their usual composure, as they smiled at one another across the room, but the young girl's extreme pallor was not to be disguised when she came into the light. Mr. Rose looked at her, and continued to look.
"You're not well, my girl," he asserted, concerned. "Never mind drawing that curtain; comeover here. Don't you think it's time to tell me why you sent off Gerard? I know how hard it must have hit him, when he was down already, and I've felt sorry often enough, but a man has to take a woman's answer and I've said nothing. But I believed at home that you liked him, and I believe you have been fretting ever since."
Flavia grasped the heavy curtain, gazing at him in an utter confusion of thought that amounted to actual giddiness.
"I—I sent away Mr. Gerard?" she marvelled.
"Who else? Or if you accepted him, why was I not told?"
"Will you tell me what you mean?" she asked brokenly.
"Mean? I mean that the last time I saw Allan Gerard alone, on the day I met you and Corrie driving home together, he asked my permission to propose to you. I rather guess that hour with him didn't make me very easy on Corrie, although I was given no cause to be otherwise by Gerard. Gerard said frankly that he wouldn't have offered you such a wreck as he felt himself, much as he loved you, if he had not gone so far before he was hurt that he had no right to leave in silence. He said that as a matter of honorable justice he must lay the decision before you andabide by your will. Very quiet, he was—I told him that I would rather give you to him than to any other man on earth, and I meant it."
The room blurred before Flavia's dilated eyes.
"You never told me! Papa, you never told me!"
The passionate cry of grief brought Mr. Rose to his feet.
"Told you? Gerard was to tell you. I wanted to carry him home with me that afternoon, but he refused. In fact, he was not fit, nor I either, to stand any more sentiment just then. He said he would write and ask you to see him, if you cared to have him speak or come back at all. That trip West he had to take. Didn't he write?"
She saw the softly-lighted little room at home where Jack Rupert had come to her, and Isabel's suffused, desperate face as she snatched the letter from its owner. And as a pendant picture she saw the bleak, solitary railway station in the gray December morning, where Gerard, ill and reft of his splendid strength, had waited alone for the girl who did not come.
Mr. Rose reached her as she swayed forward.
"Take me home," she gasped, clinging to him with small fierce hands. "I never knew. Dear, take me home."
The next morning they left Val de Rosas.
It is a long journey from Andalusia to New York. But it was on the morning they boarded the ocean liner that Mr. Rose purchased a New York journal—and met a news item that gave him material for thought during the rest of the trip. The item was on the sporting page, and stated that the Cup race course was now open for practice; among the first of the cars to commence training being the Mercury Titan, driven by Corrie Rose—one of the cleverest young professionals in America, whose work with the Mercury Company's special racing machine had given the greatest satisfaction to its owner and designer, Mr. Allan Gerard.
There was no longer any cause for concealment. When Mr. Rose carried the journal to Flavia, she told him quite simply to whom Corrie had gone in his exile and what she knew of his life with Gerard. Of his racing she herself had been left ignorant; she could guess whose forgiving tenderness had spared her that anxiety.
"You are not angry with Corrie," she ventured, before her father's knit brow and squared jaw. "You did not forbid him to race or he would not have done so, I am sure."
"No, I did not. I didn't think I had to," wasthe dry response. "Angry? He and I are past that. The days are gone when we used to have our differences and shake hands on them. We'll get along together quietly enough, I dare say."
"Now, I would rather you said you were angry," she grieved.
Thomas Rose thrust his hands into his pockets, looking down at the newspaper page. He had altered during the last year in a way difficult to characterize. It was not that he looked older or more hard, there was no bitterness in the strong face, but he looked like a man who stood in the shadow instead of in the sun.
"So would Corrie, I fancy," he said heavily.
Corrie's sister folded her hands in her lap.
"Is there no chance if one falls once?" she rebelled in futile reproach. "He was so young, he has suffered so much—can he never pay?"
"I'm not much of a reader, as a rule, but I did a good deal of it at Val de Rosas, this summer," Mr. Rose slowly returned. "And a line from an Englishman's work stuck in my memory. He said that tears can wash out guilt, but not shame. I can give Corrie all I've got, I have always been fond of him and I am yet, but I can't give him my respect. It was a shameful thing to strike down an unprepared man from behind, because he waslosing in a game. Some things can't be paid for, because they are not bought and sold. Of course he will have every chance possible. He isn't what I supposed; well, there is no use of complaining, we will make the best of what he is. I sent him away while we settled down to living on the new basis; I guess we are as ready to go on, now, as we ever will be."
"If he heard you say that, I think he would die," she stated her hopeless conviction.
"People don't die so easily, my girl. I tell you he and I will get along well enough. Pass me those books over there."
Flavia obeyed, having no words. Mr. Rose sat down and compared the date of the steamer's probable arrival with that of the Cup race.
It had required more than eloquence or tact, it had required actual compulsion to bring Corrie Rose back to race at Long Island. All his successful work, all the cordiality that met him wherever he went, and the temptation to essay new conquest, failed to overcome his repugnance. But he could not defy Gerard.
"I don't see howyoucan bear to look at the place," he had flung, in his final defeat.
"My dear Corrie, I am not any further from that here than there," Gerard had quietly replied.
Corrie understood, and submitted dumbly thereafter. And, in spite of himself, his first day's practice on the course swept everything aside except eager exhilaration. He was too superbly healthy for morbidity, too masculine for continuous dwelling in memories; if Gerard had not been very certain of that fact, he would never have brought his ward there. When Corrie was driving, Corrie was happy. He drove with a sober intensity of devotion, his passion was serious, whereas Gerard had raced fire-ardent and won or lost laughing.
There was a small hotel near the course which the motor-men had made a rendezvous. Here Gerard established his party, during the two weeks of practice work. He did not choose to have Corrie in New York, although Rupert chafed and he himself was obliged to go in to the city frequently, at considerable inconvenience.
On the last afternoon before the race, he returned from such a trip, and arrived before the hotel just as Corrie rolled up with the Mercury Titan and halted it opposite him.
"It's five o'clock," the driver explained, stilling his roaring motor and leaning out. "Everyone is coming in, to get ready for to-morrow."
There was little trace left of the petulant, gaudily dressed boy who a year before had driven the pink car, in this serious young professional clad in the Mercury's racing gray and bearing the Mercury's silver insignia on his shoulder. The bend of his mouth was firmer, his dark-blue eyes had acquired the steady, all-embracing keenness of Gerard's—the gaze of all those men with whom the inopportune flicker of an eyelid may mean destruction. He was clothed with his virile youth as with a radiant garment, as he smiled across at Gerard.
"Yes, get some rest; you will be out at dawn,"approved Gerard, coming closer. "Where is Rupert? What is the matter, Corrie? You look disturbed."
"Rupert got off at the corner, back there. I suppose if I look rattled, thatheis what is the matter. He——" Corrie suddenly dropped his face in his folded arms as they rested upon the steering-wheel, his shoulders shaking.
"He? How? He has been talking to you?"
"He sure has been talking to me," Corrie affirmed, lifting his laughter-flushed face. "When I think that he once gave me the silence treatment! His tongue would take the starch out of a Chinese laundry and make a taxicab chauffeur feel he couldn't drive."
"You do not let him talk to you when you are driving!"
"Oh, when I am driving he is the perfect mechanician. He wouldn't open his lips if I hit a right-angle turn at ninety miles an hour or disobey if I told him to climb out and cut the tires off the rear wheels. No, it is when I am not officially driving that he gives me some remarks to study about. Good pointers, too! I like it, really. I only wish," his expression shadowed abruptly, "I only wish I didn't have to remember that nothing could bring him to shake hands with me."
"Corrie——"
"I know—I beg your pardon for speaking of that to you. But, Gerard," he bent to grasp a lever, "I'd take what you got last year, I'd consent to be picked up dead from under my car to-morrow, if I could that way buy one hour to stand clean before you and Jack Rupert. That's all—don't think I want to flinch, please. If you will go on in, I'll put this machine away and be back to dinner in fifteen minutes. I see Rupert coming to help me, now. We're starved to death and some tired. By the way, George shouted over to me that he would be in as soon as he got the Duplex canned for the night, and to order a few dozen eggs and a couple of hams fried for him. Would you attend to it on your way in?"
"I surely would," Gerard answered, the great gentleness of his tone mating oddly with the light words. "What do you want ordered for yourself?"
"Anything, and plenty of it."
Gerard did not smile as he went into the building. He too would have given much to spare Corrie Rose the memory of that October morning's fault. From all punishment except that memory he had sheltered him, further aid no one could give. But because he loved Corrie, he climbed the hotel stairs in slow abstraction and failed to perceive the limousine that came up before the Mercury Titan, and stopped.
He was standing by a table in the empty parlor of the hotel, when the door opened, and closed. Thinking some other guest had entered, he did not turn from the letters he was reading, nor was there any further movement or demand upon his attention. That which slowly invaded his consciousness was a summons more delicate than sound, a faint, distinctive flower-fragrance that proclaimed one individual presence. Flavia Rose was in the room; he knew it before he swung around and saw her standing there.
The shock that leaped along his pulses was less of hope than of renewed pain.
"Miss Rose!" he exclaimed.
She moved a little forward. Against her dark velvet gown, under her wide velvet hat, her soft, earnest face showed whitely lustrous and irradiated, her beautiful eyes dwelt on his.
"I never knew," she said, her clear voice like rippled water. "Your letter, the night before you went away, never came to me. I never knew you had sent for me, until last month."
The movement that brought Gerard across the room was as nakedly passionate as the incoherent simplicity of her speech.
"You never knew? Flavia, you would have come?"
"I would have come; I wanted to come long before, while you were so ill——"
They had waited a year on the verge of that moment; it was enough to touch one another in this security of understanding. There was no question between them, no doubt, now that they saw each other face to face; all their world flowered into light and fragrance, present and future one dazzling marvel.
But at last they drew slightly apart, gazing at each other with an incredulity of such happiness, both Flavia's little hands held in the firm clasp of Gerard's left. And then gradually awoke amazement that they could ever have been separated, who were so closely bound together.
"My dear, my dear, you knew I loved you," he wondered. "How did this happen to us?"
"How could I know? You had never said it."
"Did I need to? I thought the very stones in the fountain arcade must have seen it. And I trusted Rupert with the letter; he said he had given it to you, he even brought an answer."
"Do not blame him," she quickly defended. "He told you that he had given it to Miss Rose; he meant to Isabel, who claimed it."
"Your cousin? What had I to do with her? Why should I have written to her? Have writtenthat, Flavia!"
The tears rushed to her eyes.
"Your letter—Allan, if I had known that message was for me, I would have gone back with Rupert to you that evening. But Isabel took it, for some reason she expected a message from you, that night. I have not been able to understand that, although I have tried ever since papa told me, last month, that it was I whom you chose. She spoke of something Corrie had said. I—I think she believed you did care for her more seriously than she had meant you should. She was so very sure the letter was for her—and you did not call me Flavia once."
"I had no right, I dared not. Dear, I had had a bad month; I did not remember that any Miss Rose but you existed. I used to close my eyes, when things were worst, and see your eyes against the dark. There were days when I did not see much else. But they were not so bad, no day ever was so bad as the morning Corrie came to the station without you. Forgive me, I hurt you!"
She shook her fair head, wordless. Quiet from the very vehemence of feeling that possessed them both, Gerard stooped and kissed her.
"Will you marry me soon, Flavia? After this race, when Corrie can be with us? Let us waste no more time apart; I have wanted you so long, so very long."
The lovely color flushed her transparent face, but her fingers clung to his.
"All the way home from Spain, I have been remembering that I really was betrothed to you this whole year," she answered, not turning from him the innocent candor of her clear gaze. "Before that, before I knew the truth, I used to think how strange a thing it would have been if you had died in the accident and I had lived all the rest of my life believing myself promised to you, when in fact you had loved Isabel, not me. I used to think, often, of that first day when I fell on the stairs at the Beach race track—when you caught me and held me close to you—and how you would never again hold me like that or miss not doing so. I am quite sure that no one ever was wanted so much as I have wanted you. It may not be right to tell this even to you, but it is true. And I will marry you whenever you ask, Allan."
Allan Gerard, man of the practical world and the twentieth century, went to his knee on the floor of the hotel parlor and hid his face against her hand.
The room was rosy with the glow of sunset, when someone discreetly knocked. In response to Gerard's invitation to enter, the door opened and revealed the wiry, jersey-clad form of Rupert on the threshold. Grimy yet from his recent employment, he was engaged in deftly winding a strip of antiseptic gauze around his wrist while he spoke.
"I ain't one to invite li'l' Artha' Brownskin to meet the A.M.A. on Sunday," he began discontentedly, and broke off at sight of Flavia.
"I don't need to introduce you to Miss Rose," smiled Gerard. "What have you done to your wrist? Much?"
"Scratched it threading my sewing-machine; I'll be able to sit up in bed to-morrow," reassured the mechanician, his acute black eyes travelling from the young girl to his chief. "I didn't mean to run into this camp without being signalled. As I was saying, I ain't one to promote trouble, but there's a gentleman downstairs who's calling off our race."
"What?"
"Mr. Rose is explaining to our driver that he ain't fit to be allowed on a race course. And no one's opposing his remarks any."
Gerard divined the situation.
"Go down," Flavia begged, as he turned to her. "I have been selfish to keep you here; I might have known! But I saw Corrie just for a moment, then father sent me to you. Go to Corrie; Mr. Rupert will bring me."
"I can guess that I'm a fierce bad postman," Rupert dryly acknowledged. "But I ain't likely to confuse ladies on the way downstairs. You're sure needed below."
In the empty paved space before the hotel, the Mercury Titan still reposed its massive bulk, with its driver in his seat, his fair head uncovered in the pink-and-gold light and his face turned to the man who stood beside the car. There was neither heat nor resentment in either Mr. Rose's expression or his son's as the older man came over to shake hands with Gerard. Corrie did not move; his left arm was thrown about the neck of the huge dog reared up beside him against the machine.
"I'm glad to see you looking so well," Mr. Rose briefly greeted. "I have been talking to Corrie, here, while we waited for you, Gerard, but this thing won't do."
"What won't do, Mr. Rose?" Gerard questioned, equally matter-of-fact.
"You know, and Corrie knows. I appreciate the way you have stood by him and the way hehas kept to his work—I'm proud of it—but this isn't a question of how any of us three feel. I am sorry to hurt him, but we have got to face facts. A man who loses his temper is not fit for certain places; a race track is one."
"The Corrie Rose whom I know and who trained under me is fit for any place," Gerard gravely maintained. The work of months was on the verge of loss; he gauged very exactly what this sentence would result in for Flavia's brother.
Mr. Rose glanced towards his son; if his powerful, square-cut face was inflexible, it was without hardness.
"Gerard, I am sorry," he repeated. "It's like you to overlook what happened to yourself and try him again; he and I have got more to consider and to be responsible for. He might race straight for years, yes, forever; but his temper might slip him to-morrow. I know he means right, but it can't be chanced. I'll risk seeing no more men picked up as you were. Corrie, whenever I've said must—that hasn't been often—you've answered. I think you will now. Get off that machine and come home with me, my boy; we will try a fresh start, you and I."
Corrie stirred slightly; even his lips were gray and dark circles appeared suddenly stamped beneath his eyes. He offered no defence or demur, but before his movement could spell obedience Gerard had sprung across the intervening space and dropped his left hand on the driver's arm, forcing him to retain his seat.
"Stay there," he commanded curtly. "You are my employee, under contract to drive my cars this season; if you break your signed agreement I will bring you up before the A.M.A. board and have you suspended for unprofessional conduct."
Corrie gasped as from a dash of cold water in the face, the rough tonic effectually bringing him out of his daze of habitual submission.
"Mr. Rose, this is not sentiment, but business," Gerard continued in his usual tone. "Corrie is not racing to-morrow for the first time, or for the fifth or sixth, this season. He is the cordially liked and respected comrade of his fellow-drivers—there is not one who would not laugh in your face at the idea of fearing to have him among them. I tell you, for the rest, that any other man on the course might let his nerves trick his self-control; Corrie Rose never will. I know him, now, better than you yet can. But," he snatched a rapid survey of Corrie, then lifted hishand from the other's arm and drew back, "he is not a child; let him decide."
"Corrie——" his father recommenced, his voice choked.
But Corrie had found himself. He laid one firm, gauntleted hand on the beloved steering-wheel and turned to Mr. Rose the serious countenance and steadfast eyes of the new Corrie of the Mercury's making. With the other hand he pressed the dog's great head closer to him; perhaps only Allan Gerard saw and translated the pathos of that unconscious gesture.
"I would do anything else, sir," he stated simply. "But Gerard has stayed by me through the worst time I will ever have. I know—you gave me money; but he helped melive. Afterward I will do whatever you bid me, now I cannot leave him without a driver on the eve of a race. All the more," his speaking glance went to Gerard, "all the more I must stay, because he would rather hold me strictly to a business contract than remind me that I owe him anything or that it is through me that he is not driving this car himself."
There was a moment of absolute silence. Then the rustle of soft garments came with Flavia's swift crossing from the doorway where she andRupert had witnessed the contest. Straight to the side of the gray machine she went, and clasping her little hands over her brother's arm, raised to him the high trust and unchanging love of her regard.
"Dearest, I hope you win, to-morrow," she said bravely and sweetly. "But kiss me, Corrie, and come home afterward. We need you, papa and I—and Allan."
"Other Fellow," he thanked her, under his breath, and leaned down to give the caress.
Gerard and Mr. Rose were looking at each other.
"You win," conceded the older man, without rancor. "I hope we are not sorry. Bring him to the house after you get through, to-morrow, I guess we'll be a family party."
The snorting uproar of an arriving racing car crashed across reply.
"Hey, Rosie, did you rope those hams and eggs?" blithely shouted the masked driver, checking his machine. "If you didn't, I'll hook a wheel off your cart to-morrow when I pass you. Why haven't you canned your car yet? Oh, excuseme!" perceiving Flavia.
"I roped them, George," assured Corrie. "I'm coming in, now."
Rupert advanced to the front of the Mercury.
"You're giving orders," he signified to his driver. "Do I crank?"
The slight episode was the fitting period to Gerard's argument; he gave Mr. Rose his fine, cool smile to point it.
Frederick the Great did not go home to the pink villa. Not even Flavia could win him from the master he had refound. So it happened that when Gerard went to Corrie, after midnight, he discovered his driver seated beside an open window in the drab, cheerless hotel bedroom, his arms folded on the sill and the dog's head resting on his knee.
"Corrie, do you know it is past twelve o'clock?" he exclaimed, purposely authoritative in spite of his aching pity. "I saw the light over your door and came in to give you what Rupert describes as a calling down. How do you expect to be up fresh and fit for a race at dawn? You go to bed, young man, where I sent you two good hours ago."
"I am going," Corrie replied, without turning. "I'm—all right. Gerard——"
The pause was so long that Gerard came quietlyover and put his hand on the other's shoulder, waiting.
"Gerard, do you remember what Rupert once said, in the yacht club where we fed the tramp, about my getting just what I earned and that no luck would soften my brick walls? And I said I was content because I meant to earn what I wanted. I didn't know what I was talking about, but he was right. I'm not complaining, you know; it's fair enough. No, don't answer yet; that isn't what I meant to say."
The dog moved restlessly and whined, nestling closer to the master he loved. Corrie dropped a hand to the animal's neck.
"This good old chap and I will go to bed, presently. We've got to win, to-morrow; it's the last time. Gerard, did you ever read a poem Flavia and I used to like, I wonder? About a man having the strength of ten, because his heart was clean? Do you believe it—I mean, that a man can stand more if he knows he is right inside than if, if he could not think that?"
"Corrie, yes, I do believe it. But there are few stainless Galahads. Strength and rightness do not depend on the past, but the present. The finest strength I have seen, has been in men who, who——"
The intended conclusion died on his lips, before he found words to soften its intrinsically harsh implication. Corrie had turned to him a glance so clear, a face so startling in its white resolution and dignity of fearless candor, that Gerard drew back with a sensation of rebuked presumptuousness. What he had offered as a consolation suddenly loomed as an insult.
"Thank you," said Corrie, quite simply. "You're awfully good to me, Gerard. I don't know why I said all that—I, I guess something slipped. Good night; Fred and I will get some sleep. It's a short night, anyhow."
The ruddy dawn that flushed along the edge of the east illuminated a vast, waiting multitude. For its twelve miles of twisted length, the narrow ribbon of the Cup course was walled in on either side by the massed people and uncounted hundreds of automobiles. The neighboring States, the great cities of New York and Jersey, the countrysides far and near had emptied their motor-car enthusiasts and sport lovers into this strip of Long Island, for to-day. Laughing, eating picnic breakfasts, laying wagers and preparing score-cards, the crowd swayed tiptoe on the keen edge of expectancy; while up and down the course drove and pushed the hurrying hundreds who had not yet found satisfactory place.
As the dawn brightened into full, golden October day, the crush became greater, the haste and anticipation more intense. When a spluttering roar announced one of the arriving racers, the press would open, cheering, to leave his car passage and close in behind him with boisterous comment and criticism.
"That was the six Atlanta, Louis driving, wasn't it, Dick?"
"Rub your eyes, you're asleep yet—that was the Mercury, Rose up. Can't you tell a peach from a lemon? Quit shoving, there!"
"Bet you ten a foreign car wins."
"Take you. It'll be the Bluette or the Mercury. Get back, here comes another. They start in twenty minutes."
Opposite the grand-stand the excitement was greatest, but most orderly. Around the row of repair pits men ran in and out, hovering about their cars with solicitous final attentions and eager encouragement to the smiling drivers. The first machine was already at the starting-line, ready as an arrow on the cord, its pilot smoking a cigarette and chatting indolently with the official starter.
"I drew second for you, last night," Gerard reminded his driver, leaning against the Mercury to look up at him. "Of course, you have your numbers on. You will have to get into line in a moment; don't you want to get out and move about, first? You are going to have six or seven hours' grind."
"I'm rested best right here," responded Corrie placidly. He nestled himself more snugly intohis seat and proceeded to fasten on the mask and hood that quenched his blond youth into kinship of blank identity with every other driver on the course. "The crowd is pretty thick; I hope they get the people off."
"The police are clearing the way, now. Corrie——"
The thunderous voice of the car from the next camp interrupted speech as it went past them.
"Good luck, Rosie! I'll leave your rear wheels alone," shouted its driver. "By-by, Allan."
"If he's worried bad about his, I'll lend him a safety-pin from my shirtwaist," drawled Rupert, lounging up, hooking his own mask. "I ain't muck-raking, but he broke his rear axle at Indianapolis, last month, and lost two wheels."
"Corrie," Gerard pursued, "you are to bring yourself back safely. I do not want any victories at the price of your wreck. Remember that I am responsible for your being at this work, and remember Flavia."
"If I wreck my car there won't beanyvictory," Corrie practically returned. "Besides, I have got Rupert with me to be looked after; if I were making a speed dash by myself I might take a chance or two. You never let me out alone. It's all right. They are signalling."
Rupert sprang into his seat like a rubber ball, bracing one small legging-clad foot for support; not the least of a racing mechanician's arts being that of clinging at all times to his reeling post of duty. Gerard held out his hand for Corrie's parting clasp, then exchanged a warm grip with Rupert. Between the driver and mechanician who were to play the perilous game side by side, there passed no such friendly touch. Gerard never looked at the watching violet-blue eyes of the third man during that farewell ceremony.
"Take care of yourselves," he bade.
"It's a nice morning for a ramble," observed Rupert. "Don't worry, love, we'll be in to tea."
The Mercury Titan rolled into place in the line of flaming, panting machines. The driver of the first car threw away his cigarette and sat up. There was a pause while the group of officials poised, watches in hand, the people rose, then the starter leaned forward and the first car sprang from the line.
Amid the gay tumult of music and cheers, Corrie waited the half-minute interval, his eyes on the counting official, his hand on the lever, until the starter's hearty clap fell on his shoulder with the word:
"Go!"
With an explosive roar the Mercury shot acrossthe line and rushed, gathering speed in long leaps, down the white course. Under the first arched bridge, out of sight it flashed, followed by an answering roar from the countless throats of those between whose dense ranks it sped.
Gerard moved back a few paces. He had become rather pale and grave; his gaze remained fixed on the distant arch through which the Mercury had vanished, nor did he turn to watch the sending away of the other nineteen racers.
The touch laid on his sleeve was feather-light.
"I could not stay away," pleaded Flavia, beside him. "May I watch Corrie with you, Allan?"
He wheeled eagerly, catching her retreating hand before it escaped from his arm.
"I know why Corrie calls you 'Other Fellow,'" he welcomed. "It is because you always know the right thing to do."
They looked at each other in the morning brightness, revelling in the fresh wonder of mutual possession.
"This is hurting you," she grieved. "I saw you before you did me, when the cars started—you were thinking that last year you yourself would have been there."
He checked her with the warm brilliance of his smile.
"Not of myself," he denied. "If there wasanything to regret, do you think I could remember it since I have you? No, I was thinking that Corrie is barely twenty, that I had trained him and sent him out there in that machine in defiance of his father's wish—in fact, I believe I had an attack of remorseful panic."
"You did it for Corrie," she gave swift comfort. "Can you suppose that papa and I do not understand that? You could have found drivers already skilled, for your car; instead you troubled to take him and make him what he is now. He is so different from the desperate boy we left, Allan. Whatever happens out there to-day, you have done the best for Corrie."
The feverish activity of the camps was swirling around them. Gerard gently drew the young girl to the place where his private roadster waited, somewhat aside from the centre of action, and put her in the scarlet-cushioned seat. After her paced Corrie's dog and took its place beside her in stately guardianship.
"You can see everything here, and it is not so rough for you," he explained. "Flavia, a year ago I bought this, when I bought the yellow roses on the night before my last drive. Will you let me take off your little glove and put it on your finger, now?"
Her lashes sparkling wet, Flavia bent to him, and in the face of crowds and camps Gerard set his ring on her hand.
Men were leaning over railings, holding ready watches open. At the repair pit next but one to the Mercury's, the mechanics and men in charge had drawn together in whispering groups.
"Car coming!" the word passed suddenly from lip to lip.
On the summit of the white hill a mile distant, a red signal flag went up. A dark shape darted up over the rise, glanced with incredible swiftness down the incline, disappearing momentarily behind the packed angle, then again shot into view and sped past the grand-stand like a humming projectile; the driver a fixed statue of concentration on the road before him, the mechanician half-turned in his seat to watch for cars behind.
The place burst into uproar.
"Number two! Number two first!"
"Mercury leads!"
Horns were blown, handkerchiefs waved, the applause breaking out anew as a second car rushed past in hot pursuit of the flying Mercury.
"Three! Number three!"
"Oh you Bluette!"
"Here comes another—get back!"
Flavia stooped from her seat.
"Allan, that was Corrie—where is the car that started before him?"
"Tire trouble, perhaps. You are trembling, dear! Let my chauffeur take you home and wait quietly there until I bring Corrie to you after the race."
She shook her head.
"No, please no. Here I can see him each lap and know he is safe so far. Let me stay."
Two cars thundered past, struggling desperately for place. The noise of the excited people overwhelmed all conversation and left the two lovers silent. From time to time a telephone bell jingled across the tumult, blue-uniformed messengers hurried here and there. But when the last of twenty cars had passed, the twenty-first not appearing, there fell a lull and men settled back to wait for the second lap.
Five minutes passed, ten. The red flags went up again; two speeding shapes topped the rise and plunged out of sight.
"Two and three!"
"The Bluette—no—Mercury leads still!"
Excitement flared high as the two racers reappeared. But as they swept down the straight stretch, the mechanician of the Mercury raisedhis arms above his head in warning, the car slackened speed and drew to the side of the course. As the Bluette machine fled past him, Corrie brought his car to a halt opposite the judges' stand, leaning toward the official who sprang to his side.
"The America's off the second bridge—send the ambulance to the road below," he called, his ringing voice penetrating bell-clear through the heavier sounds.
Before his grim message was fairly comprehended, he had slammed into a gear and was off to regain the sacrificed moment.
There was a brief flurry in the official stand. One man seized the telephone while another went slowly to the lost car's camp. From lip to lip the news went.
"Harry was married last week," observed an oil-smeared mechanic, touching his cap to Gerard in going by. "I guess there's no show after that tumble; Rose might as well have saved his time."
"There is more than one prize in a contest," Gerard disagreed, meeting Flavia's awed eyes. "Corrie Rose may win better than a gold cup."
"Corrie——?" she faltered.
"Corrie has given his leading place and one of his hoarded fragments of time—these races arewon or lost by scant minutes—for the bare chance that his report might send aid to the injured men a little sooner than if that task were left to the frightened witnesses of the disaster."
Flavia's small head lifted proudly, bright color flashed into the countenance whose loving faith had never failed Corrie in his hours of disgrace.
"I wish papa had seen," she longed wistfully. And after a moment: "You yourself have done the same; he told me so, once. Now you have taught him to do what you never can do any more, poor Allan."
A curious expression crossed Gerard's mobile face; hesitation and doubt blended with a luminous radiance shining from some inward thought that leaped up like a clear flame. He moved as if to speak impulsively, but Flavia had turned to watch the approach of a rushing car, and he remained silent.
In the next hour, the Mercury passed the grand-stand five times; sometimes alone, sometimes the quarry of a coursing group of speed-hounds whose flaming breath was close behind, sometimes itself curving around some slower rival amid the wave-like succession of cheers. The bulletin-board showed Corrie running in third place when he passed for the sixth time, with Rupert stretchedalong the edge of the car to relieve his cramped limbs in an ease that suggested imminent death by falling.
The seventh time the Mercury did not come around. Gerard, who had been in front, returned to Flavia with his steadying reassurance.
"Tire trouble, no doubt," he told her. "He is due to have some; his luck has been astonishing in escaping it so far. He is driving to win; no car ever held the lead from start to finish."
Flavia folded her hands in her lap, not trusting herself far enough to reply. Gerard studied his watch in silent calculation, as the minutes ticked past.
"It must have been two tires," he at last hazarded. "When one blows out while actually on a turn, the other is almost certain to follow. Of course, they might have engine trouble."
A French car rolled up to its repair pit, stopped, and suddenly burst into flames. There was a wild scramble among its force of attendants, a rush with fire extinguishers and pails of sand. Before the danger was realized, it had ended and the mechanics were at work upon the choked pipe which had sent the car to its camp.
"Oh!" gasped the young girl, rising.
Gerard stopped her, pointing to the white hill.The roar of an approaching car filled the air; as Flavia looked, the Mercury shot past, running faultlessly, but carrying two spare tires where she had started with four.
"They will be in, next lap," Gerard predicted. "Rupert won't want to run with only two extra tires on board, and I don't think Corrie will overrule him."
He went forward to give some directions to prepare for the flying visit, Flavia watching. She made no demand for attention, no betrayal of feminine timidity to hamper this man's world into which she had been brought. Men looked curiously at the delicate, serious girl who sat so quietly in the Mercury camp, but gradually the information crept out that she was Rose's sister and Gerard's fiancée, so that wonder became merely admiration.
True to expectation, the Mercury halted before her repair pit, on the next circuit.
"Cases," commanded Rupert, tersely, out of his seat before the stop. "Move quick! Who's nailed fast now?"
The slur was undeserved; the waiting tires were flung on and secured by hurrying hands.
"Drink it," Gerard ordered, thrusting a cup at Corrie, as that young driver leaned wearilyback. "I don't care whether you want it or not."
"It's the people," Corrie explained, his blue eyes seeking Gerard's across the goggles. "I don't mind anything else. They're over the course so you can't see ahead. Jim hit a woman, on the back stretch, as we passed."
He put the heavy china cup to his lips, but dropped it with a crash to seize his levers as Rupert bounded in beside him.
"Have the people cleared off," he petitioned over his shoulder, while sending his car forward.
Gerard went to the judges' stand.
Corrie Rose was not the first or only driver to complain of the packed course. The Mercury had scarcely departed when the Marathon car came in, its experienced and steel-fibred pilot on the brink of nervous breakdown.
"I won't drive if the mob isn't put off the road," he defied his manager. "I've killed a woman back there—do you hear? Awoman! There are women and kids right against the wheels on the worst turns. Get 'em off!"
The Marathon force flocked around him in consternation, while his manager ran to the judges and the owner of the car implored and adjured the recalcitrant driver to go on without furtherloss of time. But it was Gerard who saved the situation for his rival.
"It's all right, Jim," he called across, issuing from the official stand and comprehending the deadlock at sight. "You only broke her leg—a telephone report came. Go on; everyone's with you, man!"
The Marathon's mechanician, wise in knowledge of his pilot, at this juncture leaned over and thrust between Jim's lips a lighted cigar.
"Buck up! We're losin'," he urged roughly.
The driver's teeth sullenly clamped shut upon the strong tobacco; he slammed viciously into a gear and hurled his machine down the course before the startled camp realized its victory. The stop had lasted exactly three minutes, but it cost the Marathon its hope of the race.
The morning advanced, gaining in sun-gilt beauty. In the next hour four racers were taken from the contest, three by mechanical difficulties, one as the result of an accident that sent both driver and mechanician to the hospital. The Mercury continued to run steadily and evenly, keeping a consistent pace.
"How much longer?" Flavia anxiously questioned, once. "Do you think everything can stay right to the very end, Allan?"
Gerard laid his warm left hand over her cold one, as it rested on the cushions, his loving eyes caressing her.
"Two hours more, my Flavia. Most surely I believe everything can stay right; why not? Remember Corrie delights in this. He is happier now than when he is what we call at rest. If," again that singular expression of blended shadow and inward illumination rose over his face, "if I were to be made myself and wholly cured, it would not change Corrie's position in Corrie's eyes. I cannot help him there in that hard part, but I have given him a way to forget for a while."
Her soft mouth bent grievedly; Flavia's attention was effectually distracted from contemplation of her brother's bodily peril.
Gerard turned aside. He had heard the reports arrive of one accident after another, he saw driver after driver come in gray-lipped and savage under the strain of racing on the crowded path, and he knew what Flavia did not—that this was proving the most disastrous affair ever held on the Cup course.
"I don't mind risking my own neck, I'm used to that," gritted an old-time comrade to Gerard, during a pause for refilling tanks. "It's the people under foot; —— them! Haven't they anysense? Jim's Marathon hit a man, ten minutes ago; he's still driving, half crazy, because he can't stop.Damnthe country police!"
"Rose——?"
"Rose is changing tires at the Westbury turn. I'm off."
That bit of news spared a bad quarter-hour to the two who loved Corrie.
Gerard was at the front of the camp, watching for his car, when he felt a hand lain on his shoulder.
"Some racer just went off the turnpike into the ditch," Mr. Rose's subdued tones informed him. "Where's Corrie?"
"Safe; changing tires on this side of the turnpike," Gerard gave quick assurance. "It's not he. But this has been a bad day; I'm not surprised that you couldn't keep away from here."
"I couldn't keep away," Mr. Rose assented heavily. He drew out his handkerchief and passed it across his forehead, damp under the line of reddish-gray hair, pushing open his overcoat with the abrupt gesture that was also a habit of his son's. "I've had a hell of an hour where I was, Gerard. This morning I got a letter from my niece, Isabel. It seems she is married and her husband made her write it."
The two men looked fully at each other; some quality in Thomas Rose's expression communicated its white reflection to Gerard's changing face.
"He never did it—Corrie, I mean. Gerard, Isabel Rose threw the wrench that struck you and wrecked your car, last year. He's been shielding her. God, how I've ground it into the boy!"
There was a tall pile of spare tires beside them; on it Gerard put his hand, steadying himself against the shock that was less of surprise than of poignant self-reproach for his own failure to divine this open riddle. In that moment of final understanding, he knew that he had seen the pitiful truth rise to the surface of Corrie's blue eyes a hundred times, and had left its appeal to die out, unanswered.
Far down the course a ripple of cheering started, running nearer in a wave of gathering volume. Out around the curve swooped a gray streak, fled toward the camps, was opposite, and past. The Mercury was unleashed and hunting down its lost lead in the fastest speed of the day.
Mr. Rose brought his eyes from following its flight to meet Gerard's gaze.
"You remember how Isabel nagged him to take her around the race course in his pink machine," he reminded. "I forbade it and thought no moreabout the thing. Well, she got him alone—you know, I guess, that he was wild with boy's near-love for her and would have let her drag the heart out of his body—and she got his promise to take her around once. She worked the plan all out; Corrie started without his mechanician, and she waited for him a mile down the course, dressed in her riding-habit and wearing a man's cap and motor-mask. She figured that no one would notice her much on the road and Corrie could drop her off after making the circuit, just before he reached the camps, so that he would come in alone as he started and no one would be the wiser. They were just a couple of fool kids on a kid lark."
A yellow car roared to a stop beside them, interrupting clamorously. From his seat its mechanician fell rather than stepped.
"He smashed his wrist cranking her," the driver raged. "Someone else—quick!"
A blue-clad factory mechanic flung himself into the vacant place, bare-headed, without coat or mask.
"Here's my chance!" he exulted. "Go on, I'm it."
The car leaped out, no second wasted in parley. Men gathered up the injured mechanician and hurried him away. Mr. Rose looked on as if ata stage scene which did not interest him, and dully resumed his narrative.
"It worked all right, Gerard, until they met you on the back stretch and you challenged Corrie to race. He didn't want to, with her along, but she devilled him to go on, and he did. I can guess it went to his head, having her beside him. When you began cutting Corrie off so he couldn't pass by, he caught the joke right enough. She says he was laughing when he began to pitch odd screws and bolts at your car—he was never angry for a moment, just playing, as you were. But she was all excited over losing; when she saw he had both hands busy and you were forcing them back again, she snatched something out of the open box Corrie had got the bolts from and threw it at you, herself. She didn't know what she had thrown or done, until she saw you fall stunned across your steering-wheel and your car plunge off the road."
"I might have known," said Gerard, and turned his face to the course he did not see.
"Youmight have known!" flared Mr. Rose. "What was the matter withme? Hadn't I lived with Corwin B. Rose since he was born and never had seen him cheat or play foul, win or lose? He was straight, always. I should have knownwhen he wouldn't talk—he never was afraid to speak out and take his licking. Oh yes, I belong to the brutal common people and Corrie wasn't brought up by moral suasion; he had more than one flogging before he was fourteen and we called him a man. And he never lied to dodge one. I went back on him; he never did on me."
The gay tumult of the tensely-strung multitude was in their ears, the band-music crashed blatant aid to the excitement. With a humming purr and rush the Mercury car shot past again, followed by the long roll of applause.
"We're leading by a minute and a half," one of Gerard's men triumphed, running past on some errand. "Oh you Rosie!"
"He stopped his machine as soon as he could, and put Isabel out," Mr. Rose continued sombrely. "She says herself that she was scared sick and begged him to save her. I can guess that part. Anyhow, he told her to go home and say nothing, that he would take care of her. He did. If it hadn't been for your protecting him, that morning, he might have ended in State's prison. I don't suppose she would ever have cleared him if she hadn't fallen in love with one of those Southerners she has been visiting, and blurted out the truth when he proposed, the other day. He puther in a buggy, drove over to the nearest clergyman, and married her then and there; then gave her paper and pen and made her write the whole story to me. He is a gentleman; he'd stand with her for whatever she had done, but he would not stand for her leaving Corrie to bear her blame. I'll make it up to him, yet!"