Chapter 12

From the room within drifted the voices of Mr. Rose and the mild Father Bartolome, 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 this town 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."

"Senor 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; come over 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 and abide 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," was the 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 was losing 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.

XV

THE STRENGTH OF TEN

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 how _you_ can 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, that _he_ is 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 written _that_, 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 he has 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 his hand 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 me _live_. 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 and Rupert 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."