Chapter 9

Isabel followed curiously, ensconcing herself in one of the easy-chairs and idly twitching blossoms from the hyacinths in a bowl near her. All day she had been especially nervous and irritable, her least movements were characterized by an impatience almost feverish.

The messenger who appeared on the threshold was Jack Rupert, not in the familiar guise of the Mercury's mechanician, but Rupert at leisure; a small, immaculate figure as New Yorkese as Broadway itself. The movement that brought Flavia across to him was impulsive as a confident child's and accompanied by a candid radiance of glance and smile flashed straight into the visitor's black eyes. She had no attention to spare to the fact that Isabel also had risen.

"You have been so good as to bring a message to me, Mr. Rupert?" she questioned happily.

"I ain't denying it was a pleasure to come," he made gracious reply, with his slight drawl of speech. "I've been given this to deliver to Miss Rose, from Mr. Gerard, under orders to bring the answer back unless it was preferred to send it by Mr. Rose, junior, to-morrow."

"This" was a letter. As Flavia held out her hand to receive it, Isabel reached her side and seized her wrist so fiercely as to bruise the soft flesh.

"It is mine!" she panted. "Give it to me--it is mine!"

Flavia stood still, looking at the other girl with slow-gathering, incredulous resentment and wonder.

"Yours? You expected this from Mr. Gerard, Isabel?"

"I--no--yes--Corrie warned me he would," Isabel stammered. "You shall not read it, Flavia Rose, you shall not! It is for me, for me--no one must see it."

She was trembling in a vehement excitement half-hysteric. Very quietly Flavia disengaged her arm from the grasp holding it; for the moment Isabel's touch was loathsome to her.

"For whom is the letter, my cousin or me?" she asked the bearer.

"I guess there ain't any answer; I don't know," avowed Rupert, troubled and hesitant. "I was sent out to report to Miss Rose."

"But you, yourself, for whom did you suppose it?"

"I ain't certain I did any supposing. Mr. Gerard began it after Mr. Rose had been with him, yesterday, and it took from then till to-night to finish."

"It is _mine_," Isabel reiterated passionately.

The scene was utterly impossible, not to be prolonged. It was the strong, cool determination inherited from Thomas Rose that held Flavia equal to the demands of her mother's bequeathment of reticent pride.

"Pray give the letter to my cousin," she requested, her calm never more perfect. "I am sorry to have confused so simple a matter. She will of course recognize for which of us it is intended."

But she meant to see the letter. Even as she watched Isabel snatch the surrendered missive, Flavia told herself that this sentence of error could not be accepted without sight of the letter. Moving with deliberate stateliness, she crossed to a chair near a small table and sat down, taking up a book. She was conscious that Rupert watched her, and she would make no sign that might constitute a self-betrayal when recounted to Gerard if she were indeed so pitifully wrong and he had from the first chosen her cousin. What she was not in the least aware of, was the inevitable impression made upon the mechanician by the dazzling little room and her central figure of gold upon gold and pearl-and-amber, and by her still, colorless face set in all this sheen and lustre. Had he been as dull as he really was acute, this scene could not have been made casual to him.

Isabel's shaking fingers shredded the envelope in extracting the sheet of paper, her eyes scanned the page avidly. The result was unanticipated; there was a sharp cry, an instant of indecision, then as savagely as she had claimed the letter she sprang to thrust it into the startled Flavia's lap.

"I can't do it! Flavia, I can't see him--I can't bear it! Tell him no--to go away--it's all over, now."

The desperate terror and dread of the cry charged the atmosphere of the room with vibrant intensity. Flavia caught the letter.

"I am to read this?" she demanded.

"Yes; read it, help me."

Isabel had seen and still claimed as hers the message. Yes, and had expected it, so that there must have been other communication between her and the sender. The conviction of her own utter mistake struck Flavia down with a force that crushed reason under feeling. She was physically giddy as she unfolded the page.

The writing was uncertain and angular; different indeed from the firm smooth script that had accompanied the box of yellow roses in giving the "definition of the meaning of _Flavia Rose_." The mute evidence of that difficult left-handed task pierced the girl who loved Allan Gerard, before she read the words.

The letter commenced abruptly, without superscription.

"I think you will know how hard it is for me to speak to you calmly, even this way, across this distance, remembering how we last met. To you I can confess what I could to no one else, since there is now an end of concealment between us; that is, that Allan Gerard is so weak as to feel shame at being a cripple. So much so, that the idea is intolerable of first remeeting you amidst your household's pitying curiosity. I never used to know I had a personal vanity; I fancy it is not quite that, but rather the humiliation of the man who has always been well-dressed and who suddenly finds himself sent into public sight in a shabby, tattered garment. I had accepted my physical conventionality as part of my social equipment. I do not say this in reproach to anyone or to affect you; I am perfectly sure that you will not offer me the last insult of supposing so or of answering me from that viewpoint. I say it only to excuse my very great presumption in asking you to drive with Corrie to the little railway station, to-morrow morning, to take leave of him--and to tell me whether I am to come back. I want you to see me as I am now, before you determine. Perhaps, left to my own impulse of shielding you, I would have gone in silence, but justice is higher than sentiment; you have the right to hear what I must say and to answer it as you will.

"I am going to do my best for Corrie, whatever happens. Please trust me so far, and if I have offended or seemed to fail in this letter, remember my past months in excuse.

"Allan Gerard."

Flavia laid down the sheet of paper. In that moment she suffered less from the destruction of her own happiness than from the destruction of Gerard's. This cry out of his anguish to the one for whom alone he had broken the stoical muteness in which he had wrapped his endured pain of mind and body, this self-revelation that was the difficult baring of a heart not used to show itself and avowal of weakness at the core of so much strength, drew from her an outrush of maternal protectiveness that rolled its flood above personal grief. If she could have sent Isabel to him, then, an Isabel worthy of the high trust and pathetic dignity in humility of that letter, she could have accepted her own sorrow. But she knew Isabel Rose, knew the vanity of that hope even as she tried to realize it.

"You know what Mr. Gerard wishes to say to you, to-morrow?" she asked composedly. If the composure was overdone, it was the error of a novice in acting.

The other girl shrank back.

"Yes--I----"

"Then, why do you not answer him? Surely, if you expected him to write this, you must answer him."

"I will not!" Isabel cried loudly and rebelliously. "I will not go, I will not see him hurt like that and hear him, hear him----" she broke off, fighting for breath. "Tell him to go away. I can't help it now, I can't see him. It's all over!"

This was the woman Allan Gerard had chosen, Flavia thought in bitter wonder; this self-centred, hysterical girl whose love could not survive the marring of her lover's outward beauty. Isabel could not bear to go to him; the irony of it sank deep into the girl who could scarcely bear to stay away. But Flavia turned to the mute Rupert, holding her dignity steadily above her pitiful confusion of mind, striving, also, to ease this blow to Gerard, who was so little fit to receive it.

"Pray inform Mr. Gerard that Miss Rose is unwell and hardly able to answer his letter now," she directed. "I hope she will be able to accompany Mr. Corwin Rose, to-morrow morning, as he suggests."

"No!" Isabel denied.

"I'll report, Miss Rose," Rupert asserted with brevity.

The keen black eyes and the deep-blue ones met, and read each other. Flavia took a step forward and held out her hand.

"It is not probable that we shall meet again, ever. Thank you," she said.

It would not have been possible to bribe Rupert into silence, but Flavia had done better. She knew, and the mechanician knew, as he touched her soft fingers, that he would keep to himself the knowledge that she had elevated to a confidence--the knowledge that she loved Allan Gerard, and was not loved in return.

So it happened that when Rupert returned to the Westbury farmhouse, he literally repeated Flavia's dictated message and contributed nothing of additional information or detail--except that he made one dry comment before retiring for the night.

"There's just one of the Rose family that ain't got any yellow streaks," he volunteered.

"Who?" was asked absently.

The response to his letter had left Gerard paler than usual and very grave. He did not recognize in it the Flavia he knew; the girl who had watched her brother with such rich lavishness of affection, the girl whose most innocent eyes had held the possibilities of all Corrie's ardent young passion without his impulsive faults, and whose warmth of nature had drawn him as a fireside draws a wanderer. He would not doubt her for such slight cause, he would wait for morning and her further answer, but he felt a premonitory dread and discouragement. He had expected so much more than he would now admit to himself. He even had thought vaguely, unreasoningly eager as a wistful boy, that she might come to him with Corrie that evening, that he might see and touch her.

"The lady you didn't write to," answered his mechanician. "Good night."

The next morning Corrie Rose went to the little railway station, alone.

XI

GERARD'S MAN

The hard, glittering macadam track that swept around the huge western factory of the Mercury Automobile Company and curved off behind a mass of autumn-gray woodland, was swarming with dingy, roaring, nakedly bare cars. The spluttering explosions from the unmuffled exhausts, the voices of the testers and their mechanics as they called back and forth, the monotonous tones of the man who distributed numbers for identification and heard reports from his force, all blended into the cheery eight-o'clock din of a commencing work-day. Three brawny, perspiration-streaked young fellows were engaged in loading bags of sand on the stripped cars about to start out, to supply the weight of the missing bodies, and whistling rag-time melodies to enliven their labors.

In the shadow of one of the arched doorways Corrie Rose stood to watch the scene, drawing full, hungry breaths of the gasoline-scented, smoke-murked air. There was more than frost this December morning; ice glinted in the gutters and on the surface of buckets, the healthful lash of the wind flecked color into the men's faces as they pulled on heavy gloves and hooded caps. The spirit of the place was action; the lusty vigor of it tugged with kindred appeal at the inactive, wistful one who looked on.

The heavy throb of the machinery-crowded building smothered the sound of steps; a touch was necessary to arouse the absorbed watcher.

"You've been here for almost a week, Corrie. Don't you feel like getting to work?" queried Gerard's pleasant tones.

The boy swung around eagerly.

"Yes," he welcomed. "Give me something to do, anything."

Gerard nodded, his amber eyes sweeping courtyard and track until, finding the man he sought, he lifted a summoning finger.

"Have someone bring out my six-ninety, Rupert," he called across. "Right away." And to his companion, "Get into some warm things; you will find it cold, driving."

Corrie stiffened, flushing painfully and catching his lip in his white teeth.

"Gerard, you mean _me_ to drive?"

"Of course."

"I shall never drive a car again."

"You will drive the six-ninety Mercury for six hours a day, every day," Gerard corrected explicitly. "Until I get the big special racer built, and then you will drive it. You are going to work into the finest kind of training and drive until you can drive in your sleep. Too bad the winter is shutting in, but that will not stop you any more than it does the testers. In fact, driving in the snow is good practice."

Helpless, Corrie looked at the other man, his violet-blue eyes almost black with repressed feeling.

"Gerard, you must know how I want to; don't ask me! You know how I ache to get ahold of a wheel, but I've forfeited all that."

"You have placed yourself in my factory, under my orders," Gerard stated, with curt finality. "While you are here you will do what I tell you to do, precisely as does every other worker; precisely as does Rupert, for example, who is really tester at the eastern plant and ordinarily works under its master, David French. I have decided to give you a branch of the work that I once planned to do myself and now cannot. Go into the office and put on your driving togs."

"I ain't expecting to shove this ninety through a letter-slot," remonstrated caustic accents from across the busy courtyard. "Move over, girls, you're crowding the aisles! Say, Norris, this ain't a joy-ride down Riverside Drive, it's a testing run; reverse over there and take about six more sachet-bags of mud-pie aboard where your tonneau ain't, before you start. Don't it hurt you bad to hurry like that, you fellows?"

There was a drawing aside by the cars opposite a wide door, and the machine guided by Rupert rolled through, winding a devious course toward where its owner waited. Without a word, Corrie turned and went into the office.

Gerard remained still, following with his gaze the approach of the beloved car he would drive no more, until it came to a halt before him.

"If we're going out, I'll fetch my muff and veils," suggested the mechanician, leaning nearer.

"Thanks, Rupert. I am going with Rose, myself, this first time. You can be ready this afternoon, though."

Rupert's dark face twisted in a grimace, his black eyes narrowed.

"We're laboring under some classy mistake," he dryly signified. "I was inviting myself to go with you. As for Rose, he and I won't perch on the same branch unless we get lynched together for horse stealing--and you know how I don't love a horse."

The amusement underlying Gerard's expression rippled to the surface.

"All right," he acquiesced. "Detail someone else. But, Rupert----"

"Ma'am?"

"I think you will race next spring as Corrie Rose's mechanician."

Their glances encountered, equally cool and determined.

"I'll take in washing with a Chinese partner, if you and Darling French throw me out," assured Rupert kindly. "Don't worry about my future like that."

And he slipped across the levers out of his seat, eel-supple, as Corrie issued from the office.

There was a mile loop of the perfect macadam track circling the factory buildings, then the way ran off into the country roads, inches deep with heavy sand, littered with ugly stones, rising over and pitching down steep grades where holes and mud-patches abounded. Over this the new Mercury cars were driven at top speed, each one reckoning many miles before the makers allowed them to be clothed with bodies and gleaming enamels and to be sent to the purchasers. No flaw escaped unnoticed, no weakness passed. Jaws set under their masks, keen eyes on the road and keen ears listening for the least false note in the tone-harmony of their machines, the sturdy testers drove through a day's work that would have prostrated the average motorist. Out among these men went Corrie Rose, more self-conscious than he had ever been on race track or course.

"I never had a ninety before," he confided to Gerard, as they finished the mile circuit. "A sixty was my biggest. She's, she's a _beauty_!"

The car slammed violently off the macadam onto the sand road, skidded in a half-circle and righted itself with a writhing jerk.

"Mind your path," cautioned Gerard, in open mirth. "This isn't a motor parkway. Hello!"

One of the smaller cars was coming towards them, limping back to the shops with a broken front spring. The man driving it touched his cap to Gerard as they passed, swinging one arm behind him in a significant gesture and shouting a warning concerning the bridge ahead. Corrie checked his speed, and barely skirted the deep washed-out hole that had caused the other machine's disaster.

"There was rain yesterday and freezing weather last night," Gerard communicated, at his ear. "Now it is beginning to melt again and playing the mischief with the roads. There is a right-angle turn coming."

Corrie nodded, fully occupied. His blood sang through his veins, his fingers gripped the steering-wheel lovingly; he was revelling in the speed exhilaration he had never expected to feel again. The driver who hoped for no such commutation of sentence watched him with quietly sad eyes; eyes in which no one ever was allowed to surprise their present expression, least of all Corrie Rose.

Near noon a tire blew out. Gerard sat on the side of the Mercury and gave bits of ironical advice to the worker while Corrie changed a tire alone for the first time in his life. Corrie bore the teasing sweetly, even when a tool slipped and tore his cold-sensitized fingers.

"I know," he deprecated. "Dean always did it and I just helped. I never did anything thoroughly; an amateur isn't a professional. We would have lost time by that in a road race."

"You will learn. Rupert and I used to do it in two minutes from stop to restart," Gerard returned. "There--gather up your tools; we will go home to luncheon."

"To the factory, first?"

"No. Go slowly and I will show you a short cut."

But Corrie was not in a mood to go slowly, so that they almost missed the driveway that branched from the macadam track to curve around into a park set thickly with fragrant cedars, central in which grove stood the quaintly stiff house of dark brick and stone.

"Run around to the garage," Gerard directed. "Since you will want the car all the time, you might as well keep it here and use the short cut out to the road. I will get out here and go into the house."

Corrie obediently bent to his levers.

"All the time?" he repeated, with an indrawn breath of reluctant ecstasy. "All the time!"

As Gerard turned to the house, a small figure advanced to meet him.

"We've sent out a gang to massage some of the freckles defacing the speedway," Rupert informed him. "Briggs chugged in with a broken spring, Norris side-wiped a fence, and Phillips fell into a hole without publishing a notice, so that his mechanician got off over the bonnet and broke his collar-bone. That ain't testing cars, it's promoting funerals. It's easier to motor into heaven on that road than to drive a camel in New York. What?"

"Yes, have it put in order, of course. I supposed that Mr. Dalton would attend to the matter, since I was out. Rupert, who is the sharpest-tongued, most cross-grained and least ceremonious mechanician we have?"

"I am," was the prompt reply. "Were you wanting me?"

Gerard looked at him and laughed.

"You have ruled yourself off the list of eligibles," he declared. "I want a man to ride with Corrie Rose."

"Oh!" ejaculated Rupert. His malicious, shrewd face gained comprehension. "_Oh!_ Well, I ain't boasting, but I could do that job up pretty fine. Failing me, Devlin is the nastiest thing on the place. You couldn't pat his head without pricking your fingers."

"Very well. Tell him to report to Rose hereafter,--and do not tell him much else. Let all the men know that Rose is training to take my place in the racing work, but do not let them know anything about his millionaire father or his share in the Cup-race affair."

Rupert directed his gaze towards the inert right arm hanging by Gerard's side.

"Your place," he echoed. "Are you giving in without putting up a stiff fight?"

Gerard's chin lifted, his eyes sprang to meet the sharp challenge of the mechanician's.

"No. The fight will soon be on. Are you going to be my second in it?"

"I'm guessing I'll be there when you look for me."

Their eyes dwelt together for a long moment.

"I should like the men to treat Rose as they do each other, so far as possible," Gerard casually resumed his original theme. "It will be good for him. He needs roughing!"

Rupert ran his fingers through his crisp black locks, wheeling to depart.

"He'll slip control and run wild," he predicted, grimly vicious. "He needs the training you're planning for him, all right, but he ain't got the stuff in him to stand it. He'll slip control--here's hoping he smashes himself this time!"

Gerard moved his head in disagreement.

"Wait," he advised. "You once said he could not last out a certain twenty-four-hour race."

"He didn't."

"He finished in third place."

"Because you helped him through, that's why. He didn't have to do it alone."

"He doesn't have to do this alone, either," reminded Gerard.

Rupert looked at him, then walked away, every line of his body reiterating the prediction he could not sustain argumentatively.

It was half an hour later that Corrie came into the room to join his host, carrying a letter in his hand.

"It is from Flavia," he volunteered. "She promised to write as soon as they got across, but she did better; she wrote this on board the steamer so that it was all ready to send." He sat down in his place and rested his arms on the table in the boyish attitude so associated with the massively rich dining-room of his father's house and the light-hearted group who had gathered there. "It was like her to do better than her word,--she doesn't know how to do less. One, one can tie up to _her_."

Gerard continued to gaze out the window opposite, his expression setting as if under a sudden exertion of self-control.

"I--well, I was always fond of my sister, but one learns a good deal more of people when things go wrong than when they just run along right. She asks me about you, how you are now."

"Miss Rose is too kind."

Some quality in the brief acknowledgment compelled a pause. The once self-assertive Corrie had become acutely sensitive to any suggestion of rebuff or disapproval. He could not in any way divine this rebuke was not for him, or know of the bruise he innocently had touched.

When the first course of the luncheon was served, Gerard came over to his seat and opened a new subject with his usual kindness of manner. It was a curious fact that, although Gerard had felt the awakening of love for Flavia Rose from his first glimpse of her, he never had aided Corrie for his sister's sake. Even when he had dragged himself from the overwhelming blackness of pain and the numbing effects of anaesthetics to defend the driver whose foul blow had struck him down, it was of Corrie alone he thought, not of Flavia, Corrie whom he had shielded from disgrace and open punishment. Man to man they had dealt together, no woman, however dear, entered between them. So when Flavia had seemed to fail her lover, again the separateness had held and Gerard never even imagined visiting her desertion on her brother. He had not resented Corrie's natural speech of her, now, but he could not listen to it; not yet.