Chapter 11

The stop was full. Gerard turned his attention to the street traffic, giving his companion liberty to evade continuing the theme. The evasion was not made.

"Father," Corrie resumed, clearly and steadily, "gave me this diamond I wear, when I told him, so that I might always have something with me to give as a bond for reappearance instead of having to be locked up until I got help. He said one might be caught without one's pocketbook along, but not without one's ring. I have never taken it off since."

There was a change in his tone that Gerard had heard before, and never had succeeded in analyzing; not the change from gayety to gravity, although that was present, but some more subtle alteration that stirred the hearer to a strange, illogical sense of discomfort and failure on his own part. The feeling was transient and most unreasonable; common-sense swept it aside almost as it was formed. He said nothing, nor did his companion speak again.

The sunset glow and color were gone, but the delicate after-light still remained as a luminous presence in the land when the automobile entered the boundaries of the Mercury Company's property. There was a gate before the private road to Allan Gerard's house. When Corrie halted the car there and descended to open the way, a ragged, unsavory figure rose from the grass before him.

"I'll open it, mister," the man volunteered. "Never mind it," as Corrie felt in his pocket for coin. "I want more than that. Forgotten me, have you?"

Astonished, Corrie scrutinized him, seeking the recollection implied.

"You're the man in the _Dear Me_!" he identified suddenly. "The man I threw overboard."

"Ah! You're it." He drew nearer, blinking intelligence. "I served you a square turn for your grub and clothes, too. Get rid of your friend; you an' me has got to talk."

Before the bearing of confident familiarity, the unclean personality and significant smile, Corrie slowly stiffened in rigid distaste.

"What do you want to say to me?" he demanded curtly. "What do you mean by serving me a square turn? Speak out. There is nothing concerning me that my friend doesn't already know."

The man projected his unshaven chin, cunningly interrogative. The intervening months had altered him, not pleasantly. The tramp of the _Dear Me_ had been unattractive; this man was repellent.

"Is he on to what happened on the day before the last Cup race? Given him the inside story of that, have you? Or was he there?"

The pause was not noticeably long.

"He is Allan Gerard," said Corrie, his voice suppressed. "Say what you wish."

"I saw you ridin' past without a hat on, a while ago, an' I knew you. Want? I want you to stand somethin' for me to live on, Mr. Rose, you bein' a millionaire. I was on the spot after the smash an' heard the talk an' saw your wrench picked up. You'd treated me right, so I just lifted a bunch of tools from one of the machines standin' empty, an' sprinkled them around that twelve-mile race track. The newspaper fellows found the things, too, an' kind of thought less of findin' the one where you smashed Mr. Gerard. One fellow help another, eh? No use of goin' to Sing Sing, neither."

Corrie's movement was swiftly accurate and uncalculated as the leap of some enraged primitive creature. His ungloved fist struck with an impact sounding like the slap of an open hand, and flung the man crashing through the hedge of lilac-bushes to roll over and over on the ground, clutching blindly at the turf strewn with broken leaf-buds.

"Corrie!" Gerard cried stern warning, too late, starting from his seat.

Corrie swung about, his blue eyes blazing in his flushed face, his lips parted in a scarlet line across the white gleam of his set teeth.

"If he comes near me again, I'll _kill_ him!" he panted savagely.

"It seems to me you have done enough of that sort of thing, already," Gerard retorted, equally angered.

The biting reminder was not premeditated; it leaped out of brief wrath and all the aching memories stirred by the episode. But it was none the less effective. Gerard himself did not realize how effective until he saw all the color and animation wiped from the young face and saw Corrie put his hand across his eyes.

"Corrie!" he exclaimed, cut deeply by his own cruelty, amazedly furious with himself. "Corrie----"

Corrie had turned his back to him, not in offence, but as a woman would cover her face. He answered without moving.

"It's--all right. I understand; it is--all right."

Gerard left the car, more humiliated in his own sight than he ever had been in his life. For the moment his own lack of self-control loomed larger than Corrie's, past or present.

"Corrie, I said what I did not mean," he appealed, laying his hand on the other's shoulder. "Forgive me. Don't take it like this!"

Corrie slowly turned to him.

"There isn't anything you can say to me, that I can complain of," he checked apology, quietly serious. "It is all right, of course. I--no one can understand just what it was like to hear him talk that way to me, no one can, ever. But I should not have struck him."

The expression in his eyes as they encountered Gerard's was not of remorse or shame, or resentment, was not any mingling of these, but simply of utter loneliness patiently accepted. Gerard stood back in silence, helplessly aware of having inflicted a hurt no contrition could heal.

The man was sitting up, dazed and bruised, his stupid gaze following his assailant. To him Corrie went, dragging forth a handful of paper money.

"Keep away from me," the victor cautioned with harsh dislike. "I mean it. Here, take this and go. I'm giving it to you because I knocked you down and not because of anything you claim, understand."

The man grasped the money eagerly, peering up with more admiration than sullenness.

"You've got a good punch, mister," he conceded. "I'll get out. I wouldn't have come, only I thought you'd really done what they said, that time."

Corrie drew back sharply, staring at the other. His right hand was cut and bleeding from the blow he had dealt, red drops trickled and fell as he stood, but he did not seem aware of the fact, either then or when he turned away to take his place at the steering-wheel. Gerard took the seat beside him without comment; he fancied he could imagine very exactly what Corrie Rose, gentleman, was enduring.

But whatever Corrie had to endure then or at any time, he was quite masculine enough to hurry it out of sight. At the house, he turned to Gerard his usual matter-of-fact glance.

"I will put the car in the garage and go over to the factory for a while," he said. "Mr. Edwards was going to examine that throttle which jarred open--on the Titan, I mean--so it would be ready for me to start early to-morrow. I told him I would be over, this evening."

"As you like. But do not stay too long; the house is lonely without you. And, do something for that cut hand, Corrie, or it may make you trouble."

They looked at each other.

"Thank you," acknowledged the younger.

The Titan was ready next morning, as due, and the early start was made.

The great machine had run for several days without especial incident, but this morning Devlin's nervous incompetency manifested itself in a new direction. He forgot to fill the oil-tank of the car he served as mechanician, before Corrie took it out. One of the testers drove into the busy courtyard, about ten o'clock, shouting the information that the Titan was stuck eight miles out on the back road and Rose wanted the emergency car to bring him oil.

Sardonic of eye, caustic of tongue, Rupert himself attended to the carrying out of the request and watched the rescuing car depart on its mission. Half an hour later the Titan rolled past, missing fire and running with a sound like a sick gatling gun. Bare-headed and without his mask, Corrie was driving with one hand and striving to aid his mechanician's efforts with the other, as they swept around the mile track. In gritting exasperation Rupert stared after them, then snatched up a red flag and ran to the edge of the road.

Gerard, notified of trouble with the big car, arrived from his office in time to see the Titan halt, flagged, and the lightning strike Devlin.

"Get out," snarled Rupert, his dark face black with scorn, swinging one small arm in a wide gesture. "I ain't had any explanation of what you're doing behind anything except a baby-carriage, and I don't want it. Get out and don't come back. Quick!"

Dazed, Devlin obeyed. Rupert dragged open the motor's hood, busied himself for thirty seconds and crashed the metal cover shut again. As he flung himself into the seat beside the stupefied Corrie, he first caught sight of Gerard standing on the stone portal.

"Better send someone to hold down the yard," he sharply advised. "I ain't going to be there. What?"

Corrie had sufficient presence of tact to send the car forward without pause or comment, not daring to look at his new companion. But he gathered a jumbled view of Gerard's mirthful face and of Devlin standing sulkily at bay before his grinning mates.

When the Mercury Titan returned from its morning's work, it was running with the velvet purr of a happy tiger, the flames from its exhausts shimmered in the violet tints of perfect mixture, and the indicating dial pointed to the fact that Corrie had found some stretch of road where he had passed the hundred mile an hour gait.

"She's in exact shape," approved Gerard, who had come out to meet them. "Good work, Rupert."

Rupert turned a hard dark eye upon him.

"I ain't pining for this," he signified measuredly. "But there's something coming to any decent car, and this one's suffered cruel."

Gerard nodded.

"I have been wondering where I could find a mechanician fit to race with Corrie this season," he confided, nonchalantly serene.

The double bombshell dealt full effect.

"Well, rest yourself," urged Rupert tartly, leaving his seat. "I'll do it. I know I'm a liar, I guess, but that won't hurt my work none."

"Race?" gasped Corrie. "Race? _I!_"

One rebel vanquished utterly, Gerard surveyed the other, preparing for his first conflict with the new Corrie Rose he had himself created; the Corrie Rose who in his twentieth year was a full-grown man.

"I have had you and the car entered for the Indianapolis meet, next month," he announced; "after that we are going to Georgia, then down to try the sea-beach along the Florida shore, where you can let out all the speed the machine has got. Of course you will race. What else have you been training for?"

Corrie's full red lips closed, his blue eyes braved Gerard's.

"I will not. Gerard, I cannot. To go back as the millionaire amateur of the pink car, to stand the toleration of the professional drivers, who cannot really handle their machines better than I can mine, to know that the story of how you were wrecked is being whispered after me--I'm not big enough to face it all! I might be challenged and sent off the track, for all I know."

"You will not go back as an amateur," Gerard corrected. "You are entered and registered as a professional automobile racer, enrolled on the books of the A.M.A., under their protection and subject to their rules and authority for the future. You will find your certificate of the fact lying on your table. Yes, I did it without consulting you. You signed the necessary papers yourself, without reading them, and you cannot undo this without a formal resignation--unless you contrive to get yourself suspended."

Corrie's fingers gripped the wheel, the varying expressions changing his face like storm-swept water, while the hunger of his gaze besought Gerard.

"You--it's _true_? Gerard, you've done _that_ for me? They, the A.M.A. officers, they accepted me?"

"Yes. Once for all, there are no whispers connecting you with my accident. That matter is dead. You go back to the racing as a recognized driver in the employ of the Mercury Company, I acting as your manager and Jack Rupert as your mechanician. Do you think it probable that anyone would credit the idea of trouble between us, Corrie?"

"Give me a moment, or I'll lose the only honor I've kept," said Corrie Rose, and turned away his face. "I shall do whatever you bid me, of course."

XIV

VAL DE ROSAS

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. "_Our_ castle. 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 a short 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, senor, 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 were blank, 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, senorita," the girl smiled, half-reassured, half-fearful. "He bites, no?"

"No, indeed. See."

"He loves the senorita. 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 senores 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, senorita?"

"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 senorita?"

Flavia's small fair hand guided the plump brown one tracing the legend upon the massive band.

"'_Federigo el Grande, que pertenece a 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, senorita. 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.

"Senorita, 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, senorita, 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?"

"Senorita, 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 you will not have to trouble at all. We will send a message to Luis so that he may meet you."

"Senorita!"

"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 fiancee. 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 Cardenas, 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 senorita; 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 equally placid 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 to Flavia, 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, boyish _Corwin B. Rose_ that slanted crookedly across the foot of the page. Holding the letter, she sat quite still.