Chapter 2

"It's like you to think of me," he acknowledged, with slow gratitude. "But that's all right. If any one else can get her, I'd better know it now. Of course he'll want her, she's just the kind of girl he'd like, such a sport herself about cars and things. If she likes him better than me, why I'll have to stand it, that's all."

"Then, I shall be very glad to have Mr. Gerard stay with us, dear; don't you and I always like the same things?"

"We sure do, Other Fellow?"

The childhood "play name" brought their cordial glances together, as Mr. Rose dropped into his seat.

"Game's over, Corwin B.; better run get your friend," he notified, cheerily imperious. "Hurry along."

Half-smiling, half-anxious, Corrie lingered on the verge of compliance.

"I--I feel a chill at the idea," he avowed. "I believe, after all, I'm shy of Gerard!"

"Now what's the matter?" Mr. Rose ejaculated, staring after his son. "Shy; and I've been trying ever since he was born--without succeeding--to teach him that there were one or two people on earth bigger than he is."

"Papa!"

"Isn't it so, then?"

She laughed with him, mutinously unanswering.

Whatever diffidence Corrie had felt promptly vanished when Gerard turned from the group of players and met him. Flushed with vigorous exercise and recent conquest, his smiling eyes warming to recognition as they fell upon the breathless young motorist, there certainly was nothing intimidating in the late pitcher's aspect.

"I'm Corrie Rose--you haven't forgotten? Come meet my father and sister, won't you?" was Corrie's eager greeting.

It was not at all the dignified self-introduction and invitation he had planned as he ran across the field, but Gerard had the gift of drawing sincerity to meet his own, like to like.

"You haven't forgotten me," countered the other, giving his hand. "And I should be delighted to meet your father and Miss Rose, if I were fit. Perhaps you'll give me another chance."

"Fit? Why, we've been watching you play ball! A fellow don't play ball in a frock coat. We want you to come home to dinner, now, and stay with us over the race. You know I'm practising for it, too. Don't say no," as Gerard moved. "We _want_ you."

The impulsive, italicized speech was very compelling.

"Thank you; I'll come over to your car, anyway," Gerard accepted. "But----What is it, Rupert?"

"I guess you'd call it a raincoat," was the drawled reply. "I'd feel bad to find you'd brought out your pajamas, for there ain't anything to do except wear it, now."

"I'm not cold."

The mechanician nodded a brief return to Corrie's laughing salute, and directed his sardonic black eyes to Gerard's right arm, which the rolled-back sleeve left bare to the elbow.

"I ain't specially timid," he submitted. "If rheumatism is part of the racing equipment you like to have with you, I'll just hurry home and make my will before we start."

With an impatient shrug Gerard slipped into the garment.

"Thanks; you're worse than a wife. Rose, you know Jack Rupert, who's sheer nerve when we're racing and sheer nerves when we're not."

"I surely do," Corrie warmly confirmed. "You rode with Mr. Gerard at the Beach when he drove my car for me. I'm not likely to forget _that_."

The small, malignly intelligent mechanician contemplated him, unsmiling, although far from unfriendly.

"I ride with Gerard," he acquiesced.

And only Gerard himself knew the history of service in the face of death comprehended in the simple statement.

Thomas Rose, repeatedly millionaire and genially absolute dictator in his circle of affairs, was not easy to gainsay. And he chose to assume prompt possession of Gerard, almost before the introduction was over.

"Get right in," he commanded. "Never mind anything, get in; and we'll talk about keeping you after we've had dinner. We'll stop at your hotel for your things, if you want them."

"You're very good," Gerard began, and stopped, encountering Flavia's eyes. Neither had spoken of their former meeting, indeed they had been given no opportunity for speech, yet the acute recollection was a bond between them.

"We do not wish to be insistent, Mr. Gerard," she said now, in her fresh, soft tones. "But we should be very glad to have you."

Gerard continued to look at her, gravely attentive as she herself. She was as exquisitely dressed as when he had caught her in his arms on the stairs of the Beach grand-stand, the fragile hand she laid on the car door carried the vivid flash of jewels. Somehow he divined that her father exacted this, that in his pride of self-made millionaire he would insist upon extravagance as other men might upon economy. And she would yield. He remembered her playful speech at their first meeting: "I am the only passive member of a strong-willed family." His impression was of her most feminine softness that was not in the least weak.

"Thank you," he answered. "I should have liked above all things to be your guest. But it happens that I have brought my mechanician with me and that I cannot desert him at the hotel. It does not matter at all about relative social position; we are down here together. Moreover, I have a ninety Mercury racing machine to look after, and I should be a most unrestful visitor, up at dawn and out until dark."

"If that's all," decided Mr. Rose, "this is a seven-passenger car and an architect said my house had ninety-five rooms. There's standing room in the garage, I guess, for a car or two. Corrie, turn loose your horn."

Corrie promptly put his finger on the button of the electric signal, and a raucous wail shattered the sunset hush.

"That's your man, looking this way? I like your sticking to him, Gerard. Here he comes. We're all fixed, then; get in."

Gerard got in, beside Flavia, who laughingly drew her velvet skirts to give him place.

"I think this bears a perilous resemblance to a kidnapping," she doubted. "Is it quite safe, I wonder? Shall you summon rescue when we reach a populated place?"

"If kidnapping means being taken against one's will, I haven't any case," he returned as seriously. "I don't believe I could be dislodged from here, now, if you tried."

"I had not contemplated the attempt--yet."

"Please do not! I look like a tramp, I know, but I will be exceedingly good."

"Not immoderately good; we are a frivolous family," she deprecated.

They looked at each other, and their eyes laughed together.

Radiant, Corrie was already behind the steering-wheel, an impatient hand poised to release the brake.

"Beside me, Rupert," he blithely invited, when the mechanician came up.

Rupert looked at Gerard, received his gesture of corroboration, and lifting his cap to Flavia, took the designated seat without comment.

"Don't you care where you're going?" presently demanded Corrie, moving up a speed. He respected Allan Gerard's little mechanician almost as much as he did Allan Gerard, knowing his reputation in racing circles; the glance he gave to accompany the query was an invitation to friendship.

Rupert braced one small tan shoe against the floor, as the car wrenched itself out of a tenacious sand rut.

"I ain't worrying," he kindly assured. "Any place that ain't New York is off the map, anyhow."

"I thought you belonged out west with Mr. Gerard."

"I guess I belong to the Mercury racer. But I'm officially chief tester at the eastern factory, up the Hudson, except when there's a race on. Since Darling French got married, I've raced with Gerard. Were you aiming to collect that horseshoe with a nail in it, ahead there on the course, or will it be an accident?"

"It's going to be an escape," smiled the driver, swerving deftly. "Tell me about the first part of the ball game, won't you? I missed it, going after my father and sister."

"Who, me? I ain't qualified. The curves I'm used to judging belong to a different game. I guess, if you listen to what's being said behind us, you'll get the better record. I'm enjoying the novelty of the automobile ride, myself."

"You must be," Corrie agreed ironically. "You get so little of it. They are not talking _real_ ball."

But he settled back to listen. In fact, it was the recent game that was being discussed in the tonneau, with Mr. Rose as chief speaker and Flavia as auditor. The party was of enchanting congeniality.

They drove first to the hotel where Gerard had been stopping.

It was quite six o'clock when the touring car rolled through Mr. Rose's lawns and landscape-garden scenery, to come to a stop before the large, pink stone house of many columns. Mr. Rose had a passion for columns. Across the rug-strewn veranda a girl advanced to meet the arriving motorists; an auburn-haired, high-colored girl who wore a tweed ulster over her light evening gown.

"I thought you were never coming," she reproached, imperiously aggrieved. "I hate waiting. And I want uncle to send Lenoir after my runabout----"

The sentence broke as she saw the man beside Flavia, her gray eyes widened in astonished interest.

"My niece Isabel Rose, Mr. Gerard," presented Mr. Rose. "And now you have met all of us. Come on, Corwin B."

Isabel Rose gave her hand to the guest. She had the slightly hard beauty of nineteen years and exuberant health; contrasted with Flavia, there was almost a boyishness in her air of assurance and athletic vigor. But in the studied coquetry of her glance at Gerard, the instant desire to allure in response to the allure of this man's good looks, she showed femininity of a type that her cousin never would understand.

"I should not have minded waiting," she declared, in her high-pitched, clear-cut speech, "if I had known something pleasant was going to happen."

"If that means me, Miss Rose----" Gerard laughingly doubted.

"I don't see anyone else who happens; the rest of them are just always here," she confirmed, shrugging her shoulders.

He regarded her with the gay indulgence one shows an agreeable child. "Then, all thanks for the welcome. I shall try to live up to it, if you will not expect too much."

"Oh, but I shall!"

"Then perhaps I had better retreat at once?"

"You might try, first. Don't you think so, Flavia?"

"I think we might go in," Flavia smilingly suggested from the threshold. "We could assume Mr. Gerard's safety so far."

"Come on, Corwin B.," his father summoned again.

But Corrie sat still in his place, leaning on his steering-wheel and gazing curiously at his cousin and Gerard. Nor did he follow the group into the house; instead, he took the car and Jack Rupert around to the garage.

A little later, when Flavia Rose went upstairs to make ready for dinner, Isabel followed her, frankly inquisitive.

"Is this Mr. Gerard the real Gerard, the Gerard who races cars?" the examination commenced, as soon as the cousins were alone.

"He is Allan Gerard," Flavia stated. "Did you have a nice game, this afternoon?"

The distraction was put aside.

"Oh, pretty fair. I walked home across the links and left the runabout at the club. Did you ever meet Mr. Gerard before? You seem to know each other pretty well."

Flavia's delicate color flushed over her face; for an instant she again felt Gerard's firm arm around her and encountered his concerned eyes bent upon her own, as they stood on the stairs of the grand-stand. Truthfulness was the atmosphere of the household, the truthfulness born of fearless affection and cordial sympathy of feeling, but now she used an evasion, almost for the first time in her life.

"It is Corrie who knows Mr. Gerard, Isabel," she explained, a trifle slowly. "You remember that race when he helped Corrie, last summer? To-day Corrie saw him playing ball, and brought him to meet us."

"Oh! Yes, I remember the race, of course; I was there. But I did not know Allan Gerard was--well, _looked_ like that. How long will he be here?"

"Papa and Corrie asked him to stay until the Cup race is over."

There was a pause. Isabel walked over to one of the long mirrors and studied her own vigorously handsome image, then turned her head and regarded Flavia with the perfect complacency and mischievous malice of a young kitten.

"Good sport," she anticipated.

Flavia carefully laid her brush upon the dressing table and proceeded to gather into a coil the shimmering mass of her fair hair. Suddenly she was afraid, quiveringly afraid of herself, of Gerard and the next two weeks, but most afraid of showing any change in expression to Isabel's sharp scrutiny.

III

THE HOUSEHOLD OF ROSES

"If there is one thing meaner than another, it's _rain_," Corrie announced generally. "I'm going out. Won't you come, Gerard?"

"If rain is the meanest thing there is, it shows real sense to go out in it," Isabel commented, from the window-seat opposite. "That is just like you, Corrie Rose. When I ask you to take me out on a perfectly fair day, you won't do it."

"I?" stunned. "I ever refused----"

"Yes. Yesterday, when I asked you to take me just once around the race course, while the cars were out practising. You know you would not. If it is safe for you, it is safe for me. But never mind; your old pink car won't win, anyhow. He hasn't a chance with the professional drivers, has he, Mr. Gerard?"

"A chance?" Gerard gravely echoed. "Why, several of our best drivers are thinking of withdrawing, since he is entered, because they feel it's no use trying to win if he is racing."

"Oh, you're making fun! But I mean it; _I_ could race that car he is so vain of, with my own little runabout machine."

Corrie dragged a mandolin from beneath his chair and tinkled the opening chords of a popular melody.

"Get on your little girl's racer, And I'll lead you for a chaser, Down the good old Long Island course. And before you're half through it, Your poor car will rue it, And you'll trade in the pieces for a horse."

The provoking improvisation ended abruptly, as Isabel's well-aimed sofa-pillow struck the singer.

"Do you call that a ladylike retort?" Corrie queried, freeing himself from the silken missile. "Tell her it isn't, Flavia."

"I am afraid," Flavia excused herself. "There are more cushions on that window-seat."

"It was a soft answer, at least," Gerard laughed. "And a good shot."

"Oh, I taught her to pitch, myself. Now I'm sorry," deplored her cousin.

"Too late," Isabel returned complacently. "I called that a cushion carom, Corrie. And my car would not fall to pieces. Flavia, he is feeding candy to Firdousi."

Flavia looked over with the warm brightening of expression Allan Gerard had learned to watch for when she regarded her brother, and which never failed to stir in him the half-wistful envy of the first day when he had seen her so gazing at the driver of the pink racing car.

"If Corrie can teach a Persian kitten to eat candy, he probably can teach it to digest candy," she offered serene reply. "Besides, he loves Firdousi, as much as I do."

"I only gave him some fruit-paste to see his jaws work," the culprit defended. "He needs exercise. And so do I."

"Not that kind, yours work all the time. It is only an hour since breakfast and you have talked ever since," corrected his cousin.

"I haven't!"

"You have."

Corrie ran his fingers through his heavy fair hair, carefully set the purring kitten on the floor, and stood up.

"All right, if you say so," he submitted gracefully. "What you say, I stand for."

The argument was pure sport, of course. But with that last playful sentence, Corrie suddenly turned his dark-blue eyes upon Isabel with an expression not playful, as if himself struck by some deeper force in the words.

"What you say, I stand for," he repeated, and paused.

Flavia and Gerard both looked at him. All the fresh ardor of first love, all the impulsive faith of eighteen and its entire devotion invested Corrie Rose and illumined the shining regard in which he enveloped his cousin. There was in him a quality that lifted the moment above mere sentimentality, a young strength and straightforward earnestness at once dignified and pathetic with the pathos of all transient things that must go down before the battery of the years.

It would have been difficult to encounter a more enchanting family life than that into which Allan Gerard had been drawn. The Rose household was as redolent of simple fragrance as a household of roses, in spite of its costly luxury, its retinue of servants and lavish expenditure. Thomas Rose's wealth had been made so long since, before the birth of the younger generation, that to one and all it was merely the natural condition of affairs, not in the least affecting them personally. Money was very nearly non-existent to them, since they never were obliged to consider its lack or abundance. They spent as they desired, precisely as they ate when hungry or drank according to thirst, without either stint or excess. It was Arcadian, it was improbable, but it was so. And the guard-wall that encircled their gilded Arcadia was a strong mutual affection not to be overthrown from without. Only by internal treason could that domain fall.

It was not in one day that Gerard had come to understand this in its fullness; he had learned bit by bit. For there was nothing at all angelic about the gay family. But now he first realized, as he watched Corrie, that Isabel Rose was placed here by circumstance and not by fittedness. She was too earthen a vessel, however handsome and wholesome, to contain that fine sun-shot essence distilled from the fountain of youth which her cousin poured out for her taking. Gerard knew it, as he saw her matter-of-fact acceptance of the gaze that should have moved even a woman who did not love Corrie.

Yet, they would probably marry one another, he reflected. There was nothing to interfere, if she consented. He felt an elder brother's outrush of impatient protection for the boy; involuntarily he turned to Flavia with a movement of regretful irritation at the folly of it all, a folly he divined that she also recognized.

Flavia met his glance, and read its impatience and regret. How she applied it was a reflection less of her own mind than of Isabel's; she fancied Gerard jealous of this open wooing of the other girl, and mutely asking her own intervention.

That intervention was not easy to give. In spite of herself, the days with Allan Gerard had affected her so far. Stooping, she lifted Firdousi to her lap, gaining a moment before breaking the silence that had fallen upon the group.

"Where are you going to take Mr. Gerard, Corrie?" she inquired. "Are not the possibilities storm-limited?"

"He isn't going to take him anywhere," Isabel calmly interpolated. "They are going to stay in and amuse us. At least, that is what I say, if he is going to stand for it. He said he would, but it's some large order."

Corrie threw back his head, all seriousness vanishing before his laughter.

"Just you let father catch you slinging Boweryese like that, Miss Rose," he begged, moving aside to stuff a handful of candy into either coat-pocket. "He loves to hear girls talk slang. But it _is_ some classy order, all right, if you come to think of it; I guess I won't commence to-day. I'm going over to show the _Dear Me_ to Jack Rupert, Flavia; he thinks he can tell me why her engine misses."

"In the rain, dear?" his sister wondered.

"'Snips and snails and gasoline tales, are what little boys are made of,'" Isabel quoted derisive _Mother Goose_. "He won't melt; let him go. Mr. Gerard, you do not want to go out in a sloppy motor boat, do you?"

"If you will forgive my bad taste, I believe I shall go with Corrie," Gerard deprecated, rising. He looked again at Flavia, but she offered no suggestion that he stay.

"That's the idea," approved the gentleman in question. "I'll ring for our raincoats."

There was a period of silence in the many-windowed, octagonal library, after the two young girls were left alone. Flavia continued to play with the drowsy kitten. Isabel, chin in hand, gazed across the rain-drenched window-panes, her full lips bent discontentedly. The first diversion was effected by the smart slap of a maple-leaf flattened against the glass by a gust of wind, directly across the watcher's line of vision.

"P.P.C.," interpreted Flavia, surveying the large pale-golden leaf, as it adhered to the wet pane opposite her cousin.

"Now, what may that mean?" Isabel demanded.

"_Pour prendre conge_, of course. Those are the farewell cards of departing summer. See her coat-of-arms on it: a gold-and-crimson sunset?"

Isabel eyed her companion with scornful superiority.

"You had better talk sense," she counselled. "That is a good stiff north wind blowing, and Corrie is just as reckless with his motor boat as he is with his car. He and Mr. Gerard are likely to be half-drowned--and I am glad of it."

"Isa!"

"I am glad. It serves them right for leaving me at home and going off with that mechanic. I know why Corrie did it, too; he didn't want us to be together all day. He is jealous of Mr. Gerard because he likes me."

"Corrie does?"

Isabel launched a glance of malicious comprehension over her shoulder, smilingly meaningly.

"Oh, Corrie! Of course! But I meant Mr. Gerard. Anyone can see how Corrie hates to have him with me."

Flavia adjusted the blue-satin bow upon Firdousi's neck, saying nothing for a moment. She did not intend to put the question hovering at her lips, yet suddenly the indiscreet words escaped her:

"Then, you think Mr. Gerard is--interested in you?"

"Did you ever know a man to come here without being interested in me, Flavia Rose?"

The superb arrogance was a trifle too much to escape retort, even from the considerate Flavia.

"Well, there was Mr. Stone," she recalled, with intention.

Isabel colored richly, her handsome light-gray eyes hardened. The recent episode of Mr. Ethan Stone had not been one of her triumphs in flirtation.

"He was almost as old as uncle," she exclaimed sharply. "He would have died of fright at the things Mr. Gerard and Corrie and I like to do, anyway, if he had stayed here. He was all nerves. So are you, for that matter. You are worried over Corrie now, you know you are."

Flavia never quarrelled; she had an abhorrence of scenes. But that did not imply a lack of capacity for anger. She rose, a straight, slim figure in her blue morning-frock, the kitten in her arms.

"If I were with him, I should not be worried," she stated with dignity. "I am never afraid when I am there to share what happens. I think I will go upstairs."

And she went, leaving the other girl to devise her own amusements.

In her own room, Flavia pushed aside the window-curtains to look out. In all the dripping landscape she saw no trace of her brother or their guest; the guest, half of whose visit was now past. The next day would be Sunday; one of the two weeks she had unreasoningly dreaded was gone, already. Was she glad, or sorry? She did not know. But she continued to look from the window; there was indeed a strong north wind blowing, and Corrie, if not reckless, certainly used the least margin of safety.

It was impossible to be more safe from drowning than Corrie was at that time. He was in fact on land as dry as the weather permitted, engaged in operating a small ciderpress for the benefit of himself and Gerard, at a certain old-fashioned farm where he was--as he himself explained--persona very grata indeed.

"They are used to me," he supplemented. "Wonderful what people can get used to, isn't it?"

"It surely is," Gerard agreed, from his seat on an overturned barrel. He contemplated interestedly the picture Corrie presented with his sleeves rolled to the elbow, his coat off and his bright hair flecked with ruby-hued drops of the flying liquid. "See here, Corrie, what are you planning to do with yourself?"

"Do? Meet Rupert and try out the _Dear Me_, of course. Why?"

"I didn't mean that way. College? Business?"

"Oh! Would you pitch over that tin-cup, please? Why, I am all through college."

"Through it! Before you are nineteen?"