E
mily first heard the full story of the accident that evening, when Dick sat opposite her on the veranda and gave the account in frank anxiety and dejection.
"We're going down to-night on the nine o'clock train," he added in conclusion. "To-morrow morning he'll spend practising on the track, and to-morrow evening at six the race starts. And Lestrange starts crippled because I am a clumsy idiot. He laughs at me, but—he'd do that anyhow."
"Yes," agreed Emily. "He would do that anyhow." Her eyes were wide and terrified, the little hands she clasped inher lap were quite cold. "I wish, I wish he had never come to this place."
"Oh, you do?" Dick said oddly. "Maybe he will, too, before he gets through with us. We're a nasty lot, we Ffrenches; a lot of blue-blooded snobs without any red blood in us. Are you going to say good-by to me? I won't be home until it's over."
She looked at him, across the odorous dusk slowly silvering as the moon rose.
"You are going to be with him?"
Dick smoothed his leggings before standing up, surveying his strict motor costume with a gloomy pride not to be concealed.
"Yes; I'm representing our company. Lestrange might want some backing if any disputes turned up. Uncle Ethan nearly had a fit when Bailey told himwhat I was going to do; he called me Richard for the first time in my life. I guess I'll be some good yet, if every one except Lestrange did think I was a chump."
"I am very sure you will," she answered gently. "Good-by, Dick; you look very nice."
When he reached the foot of the steps, her voice recalled him, as she stood leaning over the rail.
"Dick, you could not make him give it up, not race this time?"
He stared up at her white figure.
"No, I could not. Don't you suppose I tried?"
"I suppose you did," she admitted, and went back to her seat.
The June night was very quiet. Once a sleepy bird stirred in the honeysucklevines and chirped through the dark. Far below the throb of a motor passed down the road, dying away again to leave silence. Suddenly Emily Ffrench hid her face on the arm of her chair and the tears overflowed.
There was no consciousness of time while that inarticulate passion of dread spent itself. But it was nearly half an hour later when she started up at the echo of a light step on the gravel path, dashing her handkerchief across her eyes.
It was incredible, but it was true: Lestrange himself was standing before her at the foot of the low stairs, the moonlight glinting across his uncovered bronze head and bright, clear face.
"I beg pardon for trespass, Miss Ffrench," he said, "but your cousin tells me he has been saying a great deal of nonsense to you about this race, and that you were so very good as to feel some concern regarding it. Really, I had to run up and set that right; I couldn't leave you to be annoyed by Mr. Ffrench's nerves. Will you forgive me?"
Like sun through a mist his blithe voice cleaved through her distress. Before the tranquil sanity of his regard, her painted terrors suddenly showed as the artificial canvas scenes of a stage, unreal, untrue.
"It was like you to come," she answered, with a shaking sigh that was half sob. "I was frightened, yes."
"There is no cause. A dozen other men take the same chance as Rupert and I; the driver who alternates with me, for instance. This is our life."
"Your arm—"
"Is well enough." He laughed a little."You will see many a bandaged arm before the twenty-four hours are up; few of us finish without a scratch or strain or blister. This is a man's game, but it's not half so destructive as foot-ball. You wished me good luck for the Georgia race; will you repeat the honor before I go back to Ffrench?"
"I wish you," she said unsteadily, "every kind of success, now and always. You saved Dick to-day—of all else you have done for him and for me I have not words to speak. But it made it harder to bear the thought of your hurt and risk from the hurt, when I knew that I had sent Dick there, who caused it."
Lestrange hesitated, himself troubled. Her soft loveliness in the delicate light that left her eyes unreadable depths of shadow, her timidity and anxiety for hissafety, were from their very unconsciousness most dangerous. And while he grasped at self-control, she came still nearer to the head of the steps and held out her small fair hand, mistaking his silence for leave-taking.
"Good night; and I thank you for coming. I am not used to so much consideration."
Her accents were unsure when she would have made them most certain, with her movement the handkerchief fell from her girdle to his feet. Mechanically Lestrange recovered the bit of linen, and felt it lie wet in his fingers. Wet—
"Emily!" he cried abruptly, and sprang the brief step between them.
Her white, terrified face turned to him in the moonlight, but he saw her eyes. And seeing, he kissed her.
The moment left no time for speech. Some one was coming down the drawing-room toward the long windows. Dick's impatient whistle sounded shrilly from the park. Panting, quivering, Emily drew from the embrace and fled within.
She had no doubt of Lestrange, no question of his serious meaning—he had that force of sincerity which made his silence more convincing than the protestations of others. But alone in her room she laid her cheek against the hand his had touched.
"I wish I had died in the convent," she cried to her heart. "I wish I had died before I made him unhappy too."
M
orning found a pale and languid Emily across the breakfast table from Mr. Ffrench. Yet, by a contradiction of the heart, her pride in loving and being loved so overbore the knowledge that only sorrow could result to herself and Lestrange, that her eyes shone wide and lustrous and her lips curved softly.
Mr. Ffrench was almost in high spirits.
"The boy was merely developing," he stated, over his grape-fruit. "I have been unjust to Richard. For two months Bailey has been talking of his interest in the business and attendance at the factory, but I was incredulous. Although I fancied I observed a change—have you observed a change in him, Emily?"
"Yes," Emily confirmed, "a very great change. He has grown up, at last."
"Ah? I can not express to you how it gratifies me to have a Ffrench representing me in public; have you seen the morning journals?"
"I have just come down-stairs."
He picked up the newspaper beside him and passed across the folded page.
"All in readiness for Beach Contest," the head-lines ran. "Last big driver to arrive, Lestrange is in Mercury camp with R. Ffrench, representative of Company."
And there was a blurred picture of a speeding car with driver and mechanician masked to goblinesque non-identity, with the legend underneath: "'Darling' Lestrange,in his Mercury on the Georgia course."
"Next year I shall make him part owner. It was always my poor brother's desire to have the future name still Ffrench and Ffrench. He was not thinking of Richard then; he had hope of—"
Emily lifted her gaze from the picture, recalled to attention by the break.
"Of?" she echoed vaguely.
"Of one who is unworthy thought. Richard has redeemed our family from extinction; that is at rest." He paused for an instant. "My dear child, when you are married and established, I shall be content."
Her breathing quickened, her courage rose to the call of the moment.
"If Dick is here, if he is instead of asubstitute," she said, carefully quiet in manner, "would it matter, since I am only a girl, whom I married, Uncle Ethan?"
The recollection of that evening when Emily had given her promise of aid, stirred under Mr. Ffrench's self-absorbtion. He looked across the table at her colorless, eager face with perhaps his first thought of what that promise might have cost her.
"No," he replied kindly. "It is part of my satisfaction that you are set free to follow your own choice, without thought of utility or fortune. Of course, I need not say provided the man is of your own class and associations. We will fear no more low marriages."
She had known it before, but it was hard to hear the sentence embodied in words. Emily folded her hands over thepaper in her lap and the pleasant breakfast-room darkened before her. Mr. Ffrench continued speaking of Dick, unheard.
When the long meal was ended and her uncle withdrew to meet Bailey in the library, Emily escaped outdoors. There was a quaint summer-house part way down the park, an ancient white pavilion standing beside the brook that gurgled by on its way to the Hudson, where the young girl often passed her hours. She went there now, carrying her little work-basket and the newspaper containing the picture of Lestrange.
"I will save it," was her thought. "Perhaps I may find better ones—this does not show his face—but I will have this now. It may be a long time before I see him."
But she sat with the embroidery scissors in her hand, nevertheless, without cutting the reprint. Lestrange would return to the factory, she never doubted, and all would continue as before, except that she must not see him. He would understand that it was not possible for anything else to happen, at least for many years. Perhaps, after Dick was married—
The green and gold beauty of the morning hurt her with the memory of that other sunny morning, when he had so easily taken from her the task she hated and strove to bear. And he had succeeded, how he had succeeded! Who else in the world could have so transformed Dick? Leaning on the table, her round chin in her palm as she gazed down at the paper in her lap, her fancy slippedback to that night on the Long Island road, when she had first seen his serene genius for setting all things right. How like him that elimination of Dick, instead of a romantic and impracticable attempt to escort her himself.
A bush crackled stiffly at some one's passage; a shadow fell across her.
"Caught!" laughed Lestrange's glad, exultant voice. "Since you look at the portrait, how shall the original fear to present himself? See, I can match." He held out a card burned at the corners and streaked with dull red, "The first time I saw your writing, and found my own name there."
Amazed, Emily sat up, and met in his glowing face all incarnate joy of life and youth.
"Oh!" she gasped piteously.
"You are surprised that I am here? My dear, my dear, after last night did you think I could be anywhere else?"
"The race—"
"I know that track too well to need much practise, and I had the machine out at dawn. My partner is busy practising this morning, and I'll be back in a couple of hours. I was afraid," the gray eyes were so gentle in their brilliancy, "I was afraid you might worry, Emily."
Serenely he assumed possession of her, and the assumption was very sweet. He had not touched her, yet Emily had the sensation of brutally thrusting him away when she spoke:
"How could I do anything else," she asked with desolation, "since we must never meet each other any more? Only, you will not go far away—you will staywhere I can sometimes see you as we pass? I—I think I could not bear it to have you go away."
"Emily!"
The scissors clinked sharply to the floor as she held out her white hands in deprecation of his cry; the tears rushed to her eyes.
"You know, you know! I am not free; I am Emily Ffrench. I can not fail my uncle and grieve him as his son did. Oh, I will never marry any one else, and we will hear of each other; I can read in the papers and Dick will tell me of you. It will be something to be so close, down there and up here."
"Emily!"
"You are not angry? You will not be angry? You know I can do nothing else, please say you know."
He came nearer and took both cold little hands in his clasp, bending to her the shining gravity of his regard.
"Did you think me such a selfish animal, my dear, that I would have kissed you when I could not claim you?" he asked. "Did you think I could forget you were Emily Ffrench; even by moonlight?"
Her fair head fell back, her dark eyes questioned his.
"You—mean—"
"I mean that even your uncle can not deny my inherited quality of gentleman. I am no millionaire incognito. I have driven racing cars and managed this factory to earn my living, having no other dependence than upon myself, but my blood is as old as yours, little girl, if that means anything."
"Not to me," she cried, looking up into his eyes. "Not to me, but to him. I cared foryou—"
He drew her toward him, unresisting, their gaze still on each other. As from the first, there was no shyness between them, but the strange, exquisite understanding now made perfect.
"I was right to come to you," he declared, after a time. "Right to fear that you were troubled, conscientious lady. But I must go back, or there will be a fine disturbance at the Beach. And I have shattered my other plans to insignificant fragments, or you have. If I did not forget by moonlight that you were Emily Ffrench, I certainly forgot everything else."
She looked up at him, her softly tinted face bright as his own, her yellow hairrumpled into flossy tendrils under the black velvet ribbon binding it.
"Everything else?" she echoed. "Is there anything else but this?"
"Nothing that counts, to me. You for my own, and this good world to live in—I stand bareheaded before it all. But yet, I told you once that I had a purpose to accomplish; a purpose now very near completion. In a few months I meant to leave Ffrenchwood."
Emily gave a faint cry.
"Yes, for my work would have been done. Then I fell in love and upset everything. When I tell Mr. Ffrench that I want you, I will have to leave at once."
"Why? You said—"
"How brave are you, Emily?" he asked. "I said your uncle could notquestion my name or birth, but I did not say he would want to give you to me. Nor will he; unless I am mistaken. Are you going to be brave enough to come to me, knowing he has no right to complain, since you and I together have given him Dick?"
"He does not know you; how can you tell he does not like you?" she urged.
"Do you think he likes 'Darling' Lestrange of the race course?"
The sudden keen demand disconcerted her.
"I hear a little down there," he added. "I have not been fortunate with your kinsman. No, it is for you to say whether Ethan Ffrench's unjust caprice is a bar between us. To me it is none."
"I thought there was to be no more trouble," she faltered, distressed.
Lestrange looked down at her steadily, his gray eyes darkening to an expression she had never seen.
"Have I no right?" was his question. "Is there no cancelling of a claim, is there no subsequent freedom? Is it all no use, Emily?"
Vaguely awed and frightened, her fingers tightened on his arm in a panic of surrender.
"I will come to you, I will come! You know best what is right—I trust you to tell me. Forgive me, dear, I wanted to—"
He silenced her, all the light flashing back to his face.
"A promise; hush! Oh, I shall win to-night with that singing in my ears. I have more to say to you, but not now. I must see Bailey, somehow, before I go."
"He is at the house; let me send him here to you."
"If you come back with him."
They laughed together.
"I will—Do you know," her color deepened rosily, "they all call you 'Darling'; I have never heard your own name."
"My name is David," Lestrange said quietly, and kissed her for farewell.
The earth danced under Emily's feet as she ran across the lawns, the sun glowed warm, the brook tinkled over the cascades in a very madness of mirth. At the head of the veranda steps she turned to look once more at the roof of the white pavilion among the locust trees.
"Uncle will like you when he knows you," she laughed in her heart. "Any onemustlike you."
The servant she met in the hall said that Mr. Bailey had gone out, and Mr. Ffrench also, but separately, the former having taken the short route across toward the factory. That way Emily went in pursuit, intending to overtake him with her pony cart.
But upon reaching the stables, past which the path ran, she found Bailey himself engaged in an inspection of the limousine in company with the chauffeur.
"You'll have to look into her differential, Anderson," he was pronouncing, when the young girl came beside him.
"Come, please," she urged breathlessly.
"Come?" repeated Bailey, wheeling, with his slow benevolent smile. "Sure, Miss Emily; where?"
She shook her head, not replying until they were safely outside; then:
"To Mr. Lestrange; he is in the pavilion. He wants to see you."
"To Lestrange!" he almost shouted, halting. "Lestrange, here?"
"Yes. There is time; he says there is time. He is going back as soon as he sees you."
"But what's he doing here? What does he mean by risking his neck without any practice?"
"He came to see me," she whispered, and stood confessed.
"God!" said Bailey, quite reverently, after a moment of speechless stupefaction. "You, and him!"
She lifted confiding eyes to him, moving nearer.
"It is a secret, but I wanted you to know because you like us both. Dick said you loved Mr. Lestrange."
"Yes," was the dazed assent.
"Well, then—But come, he is waiting."
She was sufficiently unlike the usual Miss Ffrench to bewilder any one. Bailey dumbly followed her back across the park, carrying his hat in his hand.
A short distance from the pavilion Emily stopped abruptly, turning a startled face to her companion.
"Some one is there," she said. "Some one is speaking. I forgot that Uncle Ethan had gone out."
She heard Bailey catch his breath oddly. Her own pulses began to beat with heavy irregularity, as a few steps farther brought the two opposite the open arcade. There they halted, frozen.
In the place Emily had left, where all her feminine toys still lay, Mr. Ffrenchwas seated as one exhausted by the force of overmastering emotion; his hands clenched on the arms of the chair, his face drawn with passion. Opposite him stood Lestrange, colorless and still as Emily had never conceived him, listening in absolute silence to the bitter address pouring from the other's lips with a low-toned violence indescribable.
"I told you then, never again to come here," first fell upon Emily's conscious hearing. "I supposed you were at least Ffrench enough to take a dismissal. What do you want here, money? I warned you to live upon the allowance sent every month to your bankers, for I would pay no more even to escape the intolerable disgrace of your presence here. Did you imagine me so deserted that I would accept even you as a successor?Wrong; you are not missed. My nephew Richard takes your place, and is fit to take it. Go back to Europe and your low-born wife; there is no lack in my household."
The voice broke in an excess of savage triumph, and Lestrange took the pause without movement or gesture.
"I am going, sir, and I shall never come back," he answered, never more quietly. "I can take a dismissal, yes. If ever I have wished peace or hoped for an accord that never existed between us, I go cured of such folly. But hear this much, since I am arraigned at your bar: I have never yet disgraced your name or mine unless by the boy's mischief which sent me from college. The money you speak of, I have never used; ask Baileyof it, if you will." He hesitated, and in the empty moment there came across the mile of June air the roaring noon whistle of the factory. Involuntarily he turned his head toward the call, but as instantly recovered himself from the self-betrayal. "There is another matter to be arranged, but there is no time now. Nor even in concluding it will I come here again, sir."
There was that in his bearing, in the dignified carefulness of courtesy with which he saluted the other before turning to go, that checked even Ethan Ffrench. But as Lestrange crossed the threshold of the little building, Emily ran from the thicket to meet him, her eyes a dark splendor in her white face, her hands outstretched.
"Not like this!" she panted. "Not without seeing me! Oh, I might have guessed—"
His vivid color and animation returned as he caught her to him, heedless of witnesses.
"You dare? My dear, my dear, not even a question? There is no one like you. Say, shall I take you now, or send Dick for you after the race?"
Mr. Ffrench exclaimed some inarticulate words, but neither heard him.
"Send Dick," Emily answered, her eyes on the gray eyes above her. "Send Dick—I understand, I will come."
He kissed her once, then she drew back and he went down the terraces toward the gates. As Emily sank down on the bench by the pavilion door, Bailey brushed past her, running after thestraight, lithe figure that went steadily on out of sight among the huge trees planted and tended by five generations of Ffrenches.
When the vistas of the park were empty, Emily slowly turned to face her uncle.
"You love David Ffrench?" he asked, his voice thin and harsh.
"Yes," she answered. She had no need to ask if Lestrange were meant.
"He is married to some woman of the music-halls."
"No."
"How do you know? He has told you?"
She lifted to him the superb confidence of her glance, although nervous tremors shook her in wavelike succession.
"If he had been married, he would nothave made me care for him. He has asked me to be his wife."
They were equally strange to each other in these new characters, and equally spent by emotion. Neither moving, they sat opposite each other in silence. So Bailey found them when he came back later, to take his massive stand in the doorway, his hands in his pockets and his strong jaw set.
"I think that things are kind of mixed up here, Mr. Ffrench," he stated grimly. "I guess I'm the one to straighten them out a bit; I've loved Mr. David from the time he was a kid and never saw him get a square deal yet. You asked him what he was doing here—I'll tell you; he is Lestrange."
There is a degree of amazement whichprecludes speech; Mr. Ffrench looked back at his partner, mute.
"He is Lestrange. He never meant you to know; he'd have left without your ever knowing, but for Miss Emily. I guess I don't need to remind you of what he's done; if it hadn't been for him we might have closed our doors some day. He understands the business as none of us back-number, old-fashioned ones do; he took hold and shook some life into it. We can make cars, but he can make people buy them. Advertising! Why, just that fool picture he drew on the back of a pad, one day, of a row of thermometers up to one hundred forty, with the sign 'Mercuries are at the top,' made more people notice."
Bailey cleared his throat. "He was always making people notice, and laughing while he did it. He's risked his neck on every course going, to bring our cars in first, he's lent his fame as a racing driver to help us along. And now everything is fixed the way we want, he's thrown out. What did he do it for? He thought he needed to square accounts with you, for being born, I suppose; so when he heard how things were going with us he came to me and offered his help. At least, that's what he said. I believe he came because he couldn't bear to see the place go under."
There was a skein of blue silk swinging over the edge of the table. Mr. Ffrench picked it up and replaced it in Emily's work-basket before replying.
"If this remarkable story is true," he began, accurately precise in accent.
"You don't need me to tell you it is," retorted Bailey. "You know what my new manager's been doing; why, you disliked him without seeing him, but you had to admit his good work. And I heard you talking about his allowance, Mr. Ffrench. He never touched it, not from the first; it piled up for six years. Last April, when we needed cash in a hurry, he drew it out and gave it to me to buy aluminum. When he left here first he drove a taxicab in New York City until he got into racing work and made Darling Lestrange famous all over the continent. I guess it went pretty hard for a while; if he'd been the things you called him, he'd have gone to the devil alone in New York. But, he didn't."
An oriole darted in one arcade and out again with a musical whir of wings. Theclink of glass and silver sounded from the house windows with a pleasant cheeriness and suggestion of comfort and plenty.
"He made good," Bailey concluded thoughtfully. "But it sounded queer to me to hear you tell him you didn't want him around because Mr. Dick took his place. I know, and Miss Emily knows, that Dick Ffrench was no use on earth for any place until Mr. David took him in hand and made him fit to live. That's all, I guess, that I had to say; I'll get back to work." He turned, but paused to glance around. "It's going to be pretty dull at the factory for me. And between us we've sent Lestrange to the track with a nice set of nerves."
His retreating footsteps died away to leave the noon hush unbroken. As before, uncle and niece were left opposite each other, the crumpled newspaper where Lestrange's name showed in heavy type still lying on the floor between them.
The effect of Bailey's final sentence had been to leave Emily dizzied by apprehension. But when Mr. Ffrench rose and passed out, she aroused to look up at him eagerly.
"Uncle," she faltered.
Disregarding or unseeing her outstretched hand, he went on and left her there alone. And then Emily dared rescue the newspaper.
"A substitute," she whispered. "A substitute," and laid her wet cheek against the pictured driver.
No one lunched at the Ffrench home that day, except the servants. Near three o'clock in the afternoon Mr. Ffrenchcame back to the pavilion where Emily still sat.
"Go change your gown," he commanded, in his usual tone. "We will start now. I have sent for Bailey and ordered Anderson to bring the automobile."
"Start?" she wondered, bewildered.
He met her gaze with a stately repellence of comment.
"For the Beach. I understand this race lasts twenty-four hours. Have you any objection?"
Objection to being near David! Emily sprang to her feet.
S
ix o'clock was the hour set for the start of the Beach race. And it was just seventeen minutes past five when Dick Ffrench, hanging in a frenzy of anxiety over the paddock fence circling the inside of the mile oval, uttered something resembling a howl and rushed to the gate to signal his recreant driver. From the opposite side of the track Lestrange waved gay return, making his way through the officials and friends who pressed around him to shake hands or slap his shoulder caressingly, jesting and questioning, calling directions and advice. A brass band played noisily in the grand-stand, where the crowdheaved and surged; the racing machines were roaring in their camps.
"What's the matter? Where were you?" cried Dick, when at last Lestrange crossed the course to the central field. "The cars are going out now for the preliminary run. Rupert's nearly crazy, snarling at everybody, and the other man has been getting ready to start instead of you."
"Well, he can get unready," smiled Lestrange. "Keep cool, Ffrench; I've got half an hour and I could start now. I'm ready."
He was ready; clad in the close-fitting khaki costume whose immaculate daintiness gave no hint of the certainty that before the first six hours ended it would be a wreck of yellow dust and oil. As he paused in running an appraisingglance down the street-like row of tents, the white-clothed driver of a spotless white car shot out on his way to the track, but halted opposite the latest arrival to stretch down a cordial hand.
"I hoped a trolley-car had bitten you," he shouted. "The rest of us would have more show if you got lost on the way, Darling."
The boyish driver at the next tent looked up as they passed, and came over grinning to give his clasp.
"Get a move on; what you been doin' all day, dear child? They've been givin' your manager sal volatile to hold him still." He nodded at the agitated Dick in ironic commiseration.
"Go get out your car, Darling; I want to beat you," chaffed the next in line.
"'Strike up the band, here comes adriver,'" sang another, with an entrancing French accent.
Laughing, retorting, shaking hands with each comrade rival, Lestrange went down the row to his own tent. At his approach a swarm of mechanics from the factory stood back from the long, low, gray car, the driver who was to relieve him during the night and day ordeal slipped down from the seat and unmasked.
"He's here," announced Dick superfluously. "Rupert—where's Rupert? Don't tell mehe'sgone now! Lestrange—"
But Rupert was already emerging from the tent with Lestrange's gauntlets and cap, his expression a study in the sardonic.
"It hurts me fierce to think how youmust have hurried," he observed. "Did you walk both ways, or only all three? I'm no Eve, but I'd give a snake an apple to know where you've been all day."
"Would you?" queried Lestrange provokingly, clasping the goggles before his eyes. "Well, I've spent the last two hours on the Coney Island beach, about three squares from here, watching the kiddies play in the sand. I didn't feel like driving just then. It was mighty soothing, too."
Rupert stared at him, a dry unwilling smile slowly crinkling his dark face.
"Maybe, Darling," he drawled, and turned to make his own preparations.
Fascinated and useless, Dick looked on at the methodical flurry of the next few moments; until Lestrange was in his seatand Rupert swung in beside him. Then a gesture summoned him to the side of the machine.
"I'll run in again before we race, of course," said Lestrange to him, above the deafening noise of the motor. "Be around here; I want to see you."
Rupert leaned out, all good-humor once more as he pointed to the machine.
"Got a healthy talk, what?" he exulted.
The car darted forward.
A long round of applause welcomed Lestrange's swooping advent on the track. Handkerchiefs and scarfs were waved; his name passed from mouth to mouth.
"Popular, ain't he?" chuckled a mechanic next to Dick. "They don't forget that Georgia trick, no, sir."
It was not many times that the cars could circle the track. Quarter of sixblew from whistles and klaxons, signal flags sent the cars to their camps for the last time before the race.
"Come here," Lestrange beckoned to Dick, as he brought his machine shuddering to a standstill before the tent. "Here, close—we've got a moment while they fill tanks."
He unhooked his goggles and leaned over as Dick came beside the wheel, the face so revealed bright and quiet in the sunset glow of color.
"One never knows what may happen," he said. "I'd rather tell you now than chance your feeling afterward that I didn't treat you quite squarely in keeping still. I hope you won't take it as my father did; we've been good chums, you and I. I'm your cousin, David Ffrench."
The moment furnished no words. Dick leaned against the car, absolutely limp.
"Of course, I'm not going back to Ffrenchwood. After this race I shall go to the Duplex Company; I used to be with them and they've wanted me back. Your company can get along without me, now all is running well—indeed, Mr. Ffrench has dismissed me." His firm lip bent a little more firmly. "The work I was doing is in your hands and Bailey's; see it through. Unless you too want to break off with me, we'll have more time to talk over this."
"Break off!" Dick straightened his chubby figure. "Break off with you, Les—"
"Go on. My name is Lestrange now and always."
A shriek from the official klaxon summoned the racers, Rupert swung back to his seat. Dick reached up his hand to the other in the first really dignified moment of his life.
"I'm glad you're my kin, Lestrange," he said. "I've liked you anyhow, but I'm glad, just the same. And I don't care what rot they say of you. Take care of yourself."
Lestrange bared his hand to return the clasp, his warm smile flashing to his cousin; then the swirl of preparation swept between them and Dick next saw him as a part of one of the throbbing, flaming row of machines before the judges' stand.
It was not a tranquilizing experience for an amateur to witness the start, when the fourteen powerful cars sprang simultaneously for the first curve, struggling for possession of the narrow track in a wheel to wheel contest where one mistouch meant the wreck of many. After that first view, Dick sat weakly down on an oil barrel and watched the race in a state of fascinated endurance.
The golden and violet sunset melted pearl-like into the black cup of night. The glare of many searchlights made the track a glistening band of white around which circled the cars, themselves gemmed with white and crimson lamps. The cheers of the people as the lead was taken by one favorite or another, the hum of voices, the music and uproar of the machines blended into a web of sound indescribable. The spectacle was at once ultramodern and classic in antiquity of conception.
At eight o'clock Lestrange came flying in, sent off the track to have a lamp relighted.
"Water," he demanded tersely, in the sixty seconds of the stop, and laughed openly at Dick's expression while he took the cup.
"Why didn't you light it out there?" asked the novice, infected by the speed fever around him.
"Forgot our matches," Rupert flung over his shoulder, as they dashed out again.
An oil-smeared mechanic patronizingly explained:
"You can't have cars manicuring all over the track and people tripping over 'em. You get sent off to light up, and if you don't go they fine you laps made."
Machines darted in and out from theircamps at intervals, each waking a frenzy of excitement among its men. At ten o'clock the Mercury car came in again, this time limping with a flat tire, to be fallen on by its mechanics.
"We're leading, but we'll lose by this," said Lestrange, slipping out to relax and meditatively contemplating the alternate driver, who was standing across the camp. "Ffrench, at twelve I'll have to come in to rest some, and turn my machine over to the other man. And I won't have him wrecking it for me. I want you, as owner, to give him absolute orders to do no speeding; let him hold a fifty-two mile an hour average until I take the wheel again."
"Me?"
"I can't do it. You, of course."
"You could," Dick answered. "I'vebeen thinking how you and I will run that factory together. It's all stuff about your going away; why should you? You and your father take me as junior partner; you know I'm not big enough for anything else."
"You're man's size," Lestrange assured, a hand on his shoulder. "But—it won't do. I'll not forget the offer, though, never."
"All on!" a dozen voices signaled; men scattered in every direction as Lestrange sprang to his place.
The hours passed on the wheels of excitement and suspense. When Lestrange came in again, only a watch convinced Dick that it was midnight.
"You gave the order?" Lestrange asked.
"Yes."
He descended, taking off his mask and showing a face white with fatigue under the streaks of dust and grime.
"I'll be all right in half an hour," he nodded, in answer to Dick's exclamation. "Send one of the boys for coffee, will you, please? Rupert needs some, too. Here, one of you others, ask one of those idle doctor's apprentices to come over with a fresh bandage; my arm's a trifle untidy."
In fact, his right sleeve was wet and red, where the strain of driving had reopened the injury of the day before. But he would not allow Dick to speak of it.
"I'm going to spend an hour or two resting. Come in, Ffrench, and we'll chat in the intervals, if you like."
"And Rupert? Where's he?" Dick wondered, peering into the dark with avague impression of lurking dangers on every side.
"He's hurried in out of the night air," reassured familiar accents; a small figure lounged across into the light, making vigorous use of a dripping towel. "Tell Darling I feel faint and I'm going over to that grand-stand caféa lacar to get some pie. I'll be back in time to read over my last lesson from the chauffeurs' correspondence school. Oh, see what's here!"
A telegraph messenger boy had come up to Dick.
"Richard Ffrench?" he verified. "Sign, please."
The message was from New York.
"All coming down," Dick read. "Limousine making delay. Wire me St. Royal of race. Bailey."
Far from pleased, young Ffrench hurriedly wrote the desired answer and gave it to the boy to be sent. But he thrust the yellow envelope into his pocket before turning to the tent where Lestrange was drinking cheap black coffee while an impatient young surgeon hovered near.
The hour's rest was characteristically spent. Washed, bandaged, and refreshed, Lestrange dropped on a cot in the back of the tent and pushed a roll of motor garments beneath his head for a pillow. There he intermittently spoke to his companion of whatever the moment suggested; listening to every sound of the race and interspersing acute comment, starting up whenever the voice of his own machine hinted that the driver was disobeying instructions or the shrill klaxongave warning of trouble. But through it all Dick gathered much of the family story.
"My mother was a Californian," Lestrange once said, coming back from a tour of inspection. "She was twenty times as much alive as any Ffrench that ever existed, I've been told. I fancy she passed that quality on to me—you know she died when I was born—for I nearly drove the family mad. They expected the worst of me, and I gave the best worst I had. But," he turned to Dick the clear candor of his smile, "it was rather a decent worst, I honestly believe. The most outrageous thing I ever did was to lead a set of seniors in hoisting a cow into the Dean's library, one night, and so get myself expelled from college."
"A cow?" the other echoed.
"A fat cow, and it mooed," he stuffed the pillow into a more comfortable position. "Is that our car running in? No, it's just passing. If Frank doesn't wreck my machine, I'll get this race. And then, the same week, my chum and room-mate ran away with a Doraflora girl of some variety show and married her. I was romantic myself at twenty-one, so I helped him through with it. He was wealthy and she was pretty; it seemed to fit. I believe they've stayed married ever since, by the way. But somehow the reporters got affairs mixed and published me as the bridegroom. Have you got a cigar? I smoke about three times a year, and this is one of them. Yes, there was a fine scene when I went home that night, a Broadway melodrama. I lost my temper easier then; by the time my fatherand uncle gave me time to speak, I was too angry to defend myself and set them right. I supposed they would learn the truth by the next day, anyhow. And I left home for good in a dinner-coat and raglan, with something under ten dollars in odd change. What's that!"
"That" was the harsh alarm of the official klaxon, coupled with the cry of countless voices. The ambulance gong clanged as Lestrange sprang to his feet and reached the door.
"Which car?" he called.
Rupert answered first:
"Not ours. Number eight's burning up after a smash on the far turn."
"Jack's car," identified Lestrange, and stood for an instant. "Go flag Frank; I'll take the machine again myself. It's one o'clock, and I've got to win this race."
Several men ran across to the track in compliance. Lestrange turned to make ready, but paused beside the awed Dick to look over the infield toward the flaming blotch against the dark sky.
"He was in to change a tire ten minutes ago," observed Rupert, beside them. "'Tell Lestrange I'm doin' time catchin' him,' he yelled to me. Here's hoping his broncho machine pitched him clear from the fireworks."
When the Mercury car swung in, a few moments later, Lestrange lingered for a last word to Dick.
"I'm engaged to Emily," he said gravely. "I don't know what she will hear of me; if anything happens, I've told you the truth. I'm old enough to see it now. And I tried to square things."