Chapter 7

"I've got it!" the leader called ahead. "I've got it where he said, beside the road!"

The thing in his hand was a small, heavy nickel wrench. The men on the porch and the men in the yard stared at each other, mute. After a moment Mr. Rose drew out his handkerchief, passed it across his forehead and lips, then went down to his limousine, got in and sank back against the cushions.

"Home," he issued his order.

"Mr. Corwin is not coming, sir?"

"Home."

VII

"THE GREATEST OF THESE"

It was nearly two hours after the Mercury car had crashed into ruin under the aromatic apple-trees, before knowledge of the disaster came to Flavia. Breakfast was over, at least the breakfast of Mr. Rose and his daughter; no other member of the family had appeared. A maid reported that Isabel had ordered her horse and had departed on an early ride to the neighboring golf club, where she was engaged to play with an equally athletic college girl, that morning. There was nothing to disturb the customary pleasant routine or to suggest uneasiness. At the usual hour Mr. Rose left for the city; he was on his way to New York when he first caught the rumor that sent him instead to the farmhouse at Westbury.

Flavia, roseate, softly irradiated, moving in an atmosphere of undefined expectation as difficult to breathe calmly as the rarefied air of a mountain-top, had held herself to the accomplishment of her daily charges. She was seated at her little white-and-gold desk in her white-and-gold study, setting the household affairs in order for the day with the dainty precision of all her methods, when Isabel came into the room and stopped upright and rigid, near the door.

"You had better hear it now," the younger girl dully announced. "There has been an accident on the course."

Flavia's hands flew over her heart, the room blackened.

"Corrie----" she gasped.

"No; Mr. Gerard. He is alive, that's all I know."

The scent of the yellow roses Flavia had put in her hair dilated to a stifling heaviness that hindered breath; she covered her eyes with her small cold fingers, seeking the dark, mute under torture. He was alive--that niggard concession was made to Allan Gerard, whose rich fullness of vigor and dominant presence last night had seemed the one firm reality in a world of pleasant vagueness. Weak, conscious of nothing but what her inward vision showed, she lay in her chair; questioning no more, making no sign.

Suddenly Isabel, the self-assured, evenly poised Isabel, was on the floor at her cousin's knees, burying her face in Flavia's pale-yellow dress and sobbing in frantic hysteria.

"Flavia, Flavia, I can't bear it! I am afraid, I am afraid--if he should die----"

Shocked back into strength, Flavia bent over her, soothing and caressing with soft touches and inarticulate phrases of affection.

"Hush, dear, hush! Put your head here. Let me call Martha; you frighten me, Isabel!"

The tempest did not last long. As abruptly as she had lost self-command, Isabel regained it. Rising to her feet, she swept back the disordered auburn curls from her flushed face and stood silent beside the desk, in a state approaching exhaustion. She was wearing a dark riding-habit soiled with dust and stained in several places with oil or grease, her high-laced boots were scratched and sand-covered. But Flavia was beyond notice of costume and saw only her cousin's sullen misery of expression.

"Dear, you loved him," escaped her, in her double compassion for the woman whom Gerard had not chosen.

Isabel's gray eyes were crossed by a spark.

"No--I _hate_ him!" she flared viciously. "What did he do it for? He had no right. He, he----" She pressed her drenched handkerchief hard against her lips. "Corrie, poor Corrie----"

Flavia shrank, commencing to tremble before a looming premonition of something still worse to be endured.

"What of Corrie? Isabel, what?"

"You will hear soon enough," she assured bitterly. "I've said all I can. No--don't ask me, don't follow me. They will tell you downstairs. I'm going."

Downstairs, meant the servants. Flavia Rose was, above all things, maiden-proud; as Gerard's fiancee, as Gerard's wife, no cost of pain or humiliation would have kept her from him. But she was neither. She had only her own interpretation of his mirthful glances and graceful speech, only a few yellow roses to hint that he did not regard her as the most casual of friends. Suppose she had been mistaken, suppose he had meant only courtesy to a hostess whose youth exacted gallantry?

Isabel had gone. Flavia turned her face to a diminutive mirror lying among the trifles on her desk. Could she go down to the curious servants so--pale, quivering and emotion-spent? Even as she looked into her own reflected eyes, the tears at last overflowed.

It was half an hour later before Flavia, quiet, dignified and only betrayed by her absolute pallor, trusted herself to descend the stairs.

The Rose house was too near the race course, too intimately concerned in the drama, for the information she sought not to be already rife gossip there. When Mr. Rose came home, near noon, he had little left to tell his daughter except Gerard's condition and his defense of Corrie.

"Then Corrie did not hurt him," she grasped the exquisite relief.

Mr. Rose shook his head, reluctantly discouraged and discouraging. He had not gone to the city during those intervening hours; he never, then or afterward, spoke of where he had been or what he had felt.

"There was the wrench," he heavily reminded her. "And where has he sent Dean, who must have seen all that happened and could have given Gerard's mechanician the lie? I've not seen Corrie except across the room," the recollection of that ghastly room broke the speech. "We have got to wait until he comes home to answer."

Flavia slipped her hand into his, nestling to him, and he put his arm about her. Both were remembering Corrie's brief, simoon-hot tempers, his hasty tongue and ready hand--and swift repentances. Had an occasion come when the repentance was too late, too vain! And what repentance! To the sister who knew with life-long knowledge the ardent, passionate Corrie, his young rigidity in honor and high pride, his tenacious affections, this menaced downfall was almost as appalling as his death. She thrust the possibility from her with revolted condemnation of herself for crediting this libel, this slander of her brother. What had he ever done to justify such a belief?

"Papa, he could not!" she defended. "Corrie could not. Not, not _Corrie_!"

"I hope not, my girl."

Something in his tone, some quality she did not recognize, brought her gaze to his face with a fresh dread. What would it mean to Thomas Rose, if this were true of his son? And what would the change in Thomas Rose mean to Corrie?

The early autumn dusk had fallen and the lamps were lit, when Corrie came home. The routine of the household had gone on through the long day; under the eye of convention, Flavia and Mr. Rose had dressed for dinner and now sat together in the drawing-room, each holding an unread book. But at the closing of the outer door both started erect, pretense forgotten.

"Corrie!" his father summoned. Not Corwin B.; by a trick of usage the nickname had become formal, the formal name a playfulness not to be spoken now.

Corrie came quietly between the velvet curtains. He still wore the pink racing costume, its hue in marked contrast to his worn young face. That one day had drawn white lines about his boyish mouth and set black circles under his blue eyes. As if feeling himself on trial, he stopped just within the room and stood with the quiescent endurance that he had shown in the farmhouse parlor and which sat so strangely upon him.

"First--Gerard?" required Mr. Rose hardly. "You've been there?"

"Yes, sir. They say he will live."

"Live! What----"

"They say he will never drive again."

Flavia cried out faintly, grasping the arms of her chair, and there was a pause.

"I've heard Rupert's story, and I've heard Gerard's," slowly pronounced Mr. Rose. "I haven't heard yours, yet. Nor I haven't learned that anyone has. What wrecked Gerard's car?"

There was no answer. Corrie's breathing quickened slightly, but he neither moved nor spoke, nor lifted his eyes to the two who watched him. After moments, Mr. Rose put out his hand and pushed away a tinted electric lamp from which the light fell too strongly on his face.

"Rupert isn't lying," he asserted. "He might be crazy. If he is, say so. I saw your nickel wrench picked up, myself, and a dozen people along the line saw you and Gerard racing just before the smash. Where is your mechanician, Dean? What has he got to say? It looks bad, your hiding him."

"He was not with me," Corrie replied, his voice oddly smothered.

"Not with you? Rupert talks of seeing him beside you in the car."

"Rupert is mistaken. Dean was not yet out at the course and I started alone. Ask the men at my camp and the race officials; they will tell you that I took out my machine without a mechanician."

"Then Rupert is crazy? Gerard told the truth? Speak out! Are you afraid or sulky?"

This time the lash took effect. Corrie moved sharply and spoke.

"I am not going to talk," he declared definitely. "Nor ought you to ask it of me, sir. If you don't know how I loved Allan Gerard, if you can't feel that I would rather have killed myself than hurt him and would have turned my car against a stone wall sooner than see to-day, there is no use of my saying it. I don't care what anyone thinks or says. I stood the worst that can come to me when I helped his surgeons to-day and heard him clear me----I'm going to my room; you needn't fear I'll run away."

Mr. Rose was across the room before his son could leave it, gripping the satin-clad shoulder.

"You'll keep what Gerard lied to give you," he promised with inexorable menace. "And that's what is left of your reputation. You'll neither run nor skulk in your room; you'll go dress for dinner and come down here and eat it. We'll have no scenes. The medicine you have got to take is nothing to the black dose Gerard has to swallow."

"Papa!" Flavia appealed, unheard.

"Yes, sir," Corrie answered simply.

On the wide landing of the staircase Flavia overtook her brother. There was just one thing she could say to him, must and would always have to say whatever his faults or the rest of the world's condemnation.

"I love you," she panted, clasping her little hands around his arm. "Corrie, it is hurting you so! I love you, let me come."

Under the soft hall-lights he turned to her, blue eyes meeting blue eyes; then for the first time in their lives he took her in his arms with a man's touch and kissed her.

"You stick close, Other Fellow," he said unsteadily. "I'm pretty lonesome; you're a help. But don't come now."

Pretty lonesome. Yes, that expressed the atmosphere of aloofness, the air of being suddenly walled around and set apart, that now marked the impulsive and social Corrie. It was with him when he came down to the dreary dinner, an hour later.

The one who failed to play out the wretched farce of customary life was Isabel. She kept her room, alleging illness, and did not appear to lend aid to the evening which the three spent in silent endurance of one another and their own thoughts. The very surroundings insisted on the image of Gerard; a book he had been reading lay open on the table, the music he preferred was waiting on the piano rack. At nine o'clock, unable to bear more, Flavia rose, hurriedly pleading fatigue. Corrie also rose with her to retire, or to escape.

"Wait," his father bade, at his movement, laying down a newspaper. "You will not be out with your automobile, to-morrow."

Corrie looked at him without rebellion or surprise, unflinching from the decision.

"I shall never drive a racing car again, sir," was his quiet statement.

And only Gerard could have gauged what that renunciation cost his fellow-driver.

Gerard, at that hour, was not conscious of many things. The night that was long at the rose-colored villa, was longer yet in the little farmhouse. But when the first pale light of dawn made the parlor windows grow into glimmering squares of gray, the patient suddenly spoke out of what was rather stupor than sleep.

"'And the greatest of these is charity?'" he said strongly and clearly.

The nurse hurried to his side, but it was many moments before he again aroused and asked for Rupert.

"Now, and alone," he insisted, when she demurred, urging rest.

Even in his helplessness he was compelling. The nurse went in search of Rupert, who had kept vigil in the kitchen, scoffing at the suggestion of bed while that battle was being waged in the other room.

Gerard turned his fever-burnished eyes upon his small mechanician's sullen face, when that visitor entered. Both men understood perfectly well the contest of wills about to ensue. Both were coolly determined and prepared with the fine weapon of mutual knowledge of one another.

"There's a silver case on the table; get me a cigarette and light it, will you?" requested Gerard, in his low, unsure voice.

Rupert complied. He had not altogether escaped, himself, with mere scratches; he limped as he came across to place the cigarette in the languid fingers.

"I guess there ain't any special need to ask if it's hurting bad, when you're wanting these dopes," he drew grim inference. "Here."

"It is, all the time. Thanks. I didn't bring you here to talk about that, when you should be asleep, though. Rupert, no more is to be said about Corrie Rose. There has been too much of that already, I can see."

Rupert's black eyes hardened and narrowed to lines of glinting jet.

"I've got the truth stripped down to running facts, carrying no trimmings, and I'm demonstrating it to everybody I meet," he imparted dryly. "And I mean to keep on. I know what you want, all right, and I ain't intending to do it. Let him stand for what is coming to him."

Gerard lifted his cigarette, seeking the narcotic smoke. His superb vitality and undrained youth had turned upon him like traitorous servants upon a fallen master, denying him surcease in unconsciousness and holding him as a sensitive instrument for pain to run its gamut upon.

"Why?" he queried.

"Because I want to see him get his. You don't? I do. I guess my say goes, this time. I ain't enjoying being sore wherever I ain't worse, but I'd go out and take another smash like we had to-day to see him wearing zebra clothes in a jail. Missing that, I'll make that pink millionaire palace red-hot and get him ruled off every race course in the country."

"Rupert----"

The mechanician's gesture cut off protest.

"There ain't any use! I mean it."

"You liked Corrie----"

"I ain't noticing it, now. When you were behind the steering-wheel, your say so was what happened--if you'd said to light the gasoline tank, I'd have struck a match. That's business. This ain't. Rose stands for what he did, for I'm free to put it through."

"Very true; I am helpless," Gerard acquiesced, his white lips compressed, and averted his head on the pillow.

Checked, Rupert stared at the other with many shifting expressions twitching his own angry dark face.

"Do you know what the doctors say?" he demanded, at last. "Are you knowing, when you ask me to let Rose off, what he's done to you?"

"Yes," was the laconic answer.

There was no retort to that all-sufficient brevity. None was attempted.

The windows had gradually paled from gray to white, streaks of gold caught and reflected in the glass panes as the sun drew up above the horizon. All night the air had been filled with a steady murmur and dull flow of sound, unobserved because of its very continuity. Now, across the hush of the sick room unexpectedly crashed a roar of rapid explosions, growing thunderous as it approached nearer; cheers of joyous excitement pealed from many throats. Gerard started, his eyes blazing wide.

"The race," flung the mechanician bitterly. "It's on."

Gerard slowly raised his left arm and dropped it across his face as those who yesterday were his mates rushed past the house. With the movement a spot of crimson sprang into view against the linen swathing his shoulder, enlarging ominously, but even the alarmed Rupert knew this was no time to summon doctor or nurse, whatever the physical cost.

"Don't you think?" Gerard presently asked, quite gently and naturally, "that I've got enough to stand, Rupert?"

The sound that broke from the vanquished mechanician was less cry than curse.

"I'll shut up!" he cast his submission before the victor. "I ain't going to lie--I'd choke--but I'll hold my tongue. Don't ask more or I'll take back that. You've got me down; I'll shut up."

VIII

AFTERMATH

The newspapers were mercifully brief upon the subject of the unsupported accusation brought against Corrie Rose, although diffuse enough in accounts of the much-known Gerard's disaster. The driver's own explanation of his accident was accepted; his attitude towards the young amateur fixed the attitude of the public. Moreover, Jack Rupert was stricken suddenly dumb; no reportorial blandishments could obtain from him, on the second day, so much as an admission of the charges made by him on the day previous. Rupert surrendered like a gentleman: he laid down all his weapons. Dean's appearance at his usual duties and explanation of his absence from the pink car quashed the last rumor, for the finding of a wrench beside a motor course meant nothing, considered alone.

The first things for which Mr. Rose looked each morning were the daily papers. After which, he invariably shot a glance of blended relief and smarting humiliation into the wide, earnest eyes of Flavia, as she sat opposite him behind the gold coffee-service, and addressed himself to his breakfast. He never looked towards his son at that moment, nor did Corrie ever break the ensuing silence. The change that had fallen upon Allan Gerard's life was scarcely more absolute and strange than that which had come upon the Rose household of innocent ostentation and intimate gayety.

But the greatest outward alteration was in Isabel. Flavia and Mr. Rose maintained the usual calm routine of events at home and abroad, Corrie rigidly obeyed his father's command to live so as to provoke no comment. But Isabel's boasted, perfect nerves were shattered beyond such control. She moped all day in her own room, rejecting Flavia's companionship, and fled from Corrie with unconcealed avoidance. Nor did she improve, as the days passed, but rather grew worse in condition.

It was in the sixth week after the accident whose echoes threatened to linger so long, that Isabel entered her cousin's study, one afternoon.

"Flavia, I am going away," she abruptly announced. "Mrs. Alexander has asked me to go South with Caroline and her, you know. Uncle says I may do as I like, and I am going. I can't bear it here," her full lip quivered.

Flavia turned from the window by which she had been standing, catching and crushing a fold of the drapery in her small fingers as she faced the other girl.

"You mean that you cannot bear Corrie," she retorted, in swift reproach. "You treat him--_how_ you treat him! You hardly speak to him, you hardly look at him. Oh, you are cruel, you will not see how he suffers for one moment's fault."

Isabel grasped a chair-back, commencing to tremble.

"I can't bear to stay," she repeated hysterically. "Don't talk to me about Corrie."

"I never will again," Flavia assured, pale with extreme anger. "Yet you might remember that he loves you; a little kindness from you would help him so much. Do you know where he spent yesterday? He was out in his motor boat; out in November with a north gale blowing, alone in that speed-boat that is half under water all the time. You do not care, you have no pity."

"I----"

Flavia imposed silence with a gesture, herself quite unconscious of how overwhelming was this contrast to her usual gentleness.

"He has done wrong--you have nothing to give him but more punishment. Yes, go away, that is best. But he would have been kinder to you, Isabel."

Isabel let go of the chair, her gray eyes dilating unnaturally. Her gaze dwelling on Flavia, she slowly retreated a few steps towards the door, then suddenly turned and fled, leaving no answer.

With her going, Flavia's passion died, something like fear taking its place. That was what Corrie had felt, reflected Corrie's sister; a sweep of flame-like anger that blinded judgment, a slipping of self-mastery that loosed hand or tongue. Only, she had not wanted to hurt Isabel, that was a point she could not conceive reaching, herself.

When she had somewhat recovered, Flavia went to find her furs and outdoor apparel. She knew where Corrie had gone; she would meet him and herself break the tidings of his cousin's coming departure. He would be walking; he had not touched an automobile since he left the seat of his pink racer to rescue Gerard from beneath the crushed Mercury, and he had no patience with horses.

It was on a bleak, sandy stretch of Long Island road that she met Corrie, a solitary figure against the flat landscape as he came towards her. At sight of her little carriage and the cream-colored ponies he himself long before had taught her to drive, he stopped, his boyish face brightening warmly.

"Other Fellow," was all he said, when she leaned towards him with her unaltering love of glance and smile.

There was no need to ask where he had been.

"How is Mr. Gerard, dear?" she ventured, after he was seated beside her and they had commenced the return.

"Better."

"You go there every day to ask?"

"Every day."

"And, he----"

"He has seen me every day, even the worst. He talks about politics, the aviation meet, the motor magazines,--about everything except himself or me. It is his right arm, now, the other hurts are almost well. To-day I met the doctor, going out as I was coming in. I asked about him----"

Flavia raised her eyes to meet his, shrinking from the verdict that speech must establish beyond the refuge of doubt. Very gently he laid his hand over hers upon the reins and brought the ponies to a standstill.

"Do you remember this place, Flavia? Well, all that is over for him."

Beside them sloped away a brown, frost-seared field; in its centre still showed the outline of a baseball diamond, with the bags forgotten at the bases. Flavia's heart contracted sharply, the reins escaped her grasp. For the moment memory and vision fused; she saw the straight, slender pitcher poised with arms raised above his brown head, saw his laughing glance go questing down the field, and the swift, graceful movement that launched the ball with unerring unexpectedness. And because she could not speak without inadvertently lashing Corrie, she sat mute.

She did not know how long it was before he spoke, with the new steady seriousness so strange to meet in him.

"Where are we getting to, Other Fellow? Because we have got to get somewheres, you know; we don't stand still. Gerard will go away to his own home, soon. You and father and Isabel and I can't just sit here looking at each other, like we've been doing."

Gerard would go away, soon. That was the sentence that gripped Flavia. Go, without seeing her, without pursuing the purpose he had shown her in the fountain arbor? It seemed so impossible that the thrill that shook her was not of fear, but of startled expectancy. Yet she answered Corrie with scarcely a pause, and with all tenderness.

"Dear, Isabel will not be here, for a little while," she told him, hesitatingly. "She is going South with Mrs. Alexander and Caroline. She, she needs the change."

"That's good," he approved. "She will be better off, away from here, and you will be better for her going. She worries us all with her fidgets."

Amazed, Flavia turned in her seat to regard him.

"Corrie!"