10-14 глава

X

SENTENCE OF ERROR


It was nearly twelve o'clock, that night, when Corrie arrived home.
Flavia ran down the wide staircase to meet him, finger on lip; a
childish figure in the creamy lace and silk of her negligee, with her
heavy braids of shining hair falling over her shoulders.

"You are so late," she grieved. "And so cold! Come near the hearth--papa
is in the library, still."

Corrie allowed her small urgent hands to draw him towards the fireplace
that filled the square hall with ruddy reflections and dancing shadows.
He was cold to the touch, ice clung to the rough cloth of his ulster,
but there was color and even light in the face he turned to her.

"It _is_ snowing," he recalled. "But I'm not cold. I am going to bed and
to sleep. I want you to sleep, too, Other Fellow, because the worst of
it all is over. I don't mean that things are right--they never can be
that again, I suppose--but I see my way clear to live, now."

She gazed up at him attentively, sensitively responsive to the vital
change she divined in him. Before he could continue or she question, Mr.
Rose came between the curtains of the arched library door, a massive,
dominant presence as he stood surveying the two in the fire-light. He
made no remark, yet Corrie at once moved to face him, gently putting
Flavia aside.

"I am sorry to be so late, sir; I have been arranging for my going
away," he gave simple account of himself. "I should like to leave the
day after to-morrow, if you do not object. I am going to stay with a
western friend. I know you would rather not hear much about me or from
me for a while, but I will leave an address where I can always be
reached."

It is not infrequently disconcerting to be taken promptly and literally
at one's word. Moreover, Corrie looked very young and pathetically
tired, with his wind-ruffled fair hair pushed back and in his bearing of
dignified self-dependence. A quiver passed over Mr. Rose's strong,
square-cut countenance, his stern light-gray eyes softened to a
contradiction of his set mouth.

"I'm not in the habit of saying things twice," he curtly replied. "I
gave you leave to go when and where you pleased. To-morrow I'll fix your
bank account so you can draw all the money you like."

"Thank you, sir," Corrie acknowledged.

"You've no call to thank me," his father corrected. "I guess that when I
own millions you've got the right to all you can spend. It won't help
anything for you to be pinched or uncomfortable. I've no wish to see it.
I am going to take your sister to Europe for the winter, as I told her
this evening, so we ourselves leave soon after you. Try to keep
straighter, this time."

There was no intentional cruelty in the concluding sentence, delivered
as the speaker stepped back into the inner room, but Corrie turned so
white that Flavia sprang to him with a low exclamation of pain.

"It's all right," he reassured her. And after a moment: "Flavia, I am
going with Allan Gerard, to work under him and help him in his factory."

"Corrie?"

"I have been with him to-night. I don't want father to know this because
he wouldn't understand; he might even forbid me to go. Unless he forces
an answer, I shall not say where I am to be. But Gerard said I must tell
you everything and write to you often--I would have done that, anyhow.
You won't mind my going away, now, when you know I am with him?"

She comprehended at last the change in him, the change from restless
uncertainty to steady fixity of purpose, from an objectless wanderer to
a traveller towards a known destination, comprehended with a passionate
outrush of gratitude to the man who had wrought this in a generosity too
broad to remember his own injury. The eyes she lifted to her brother's
were splendidly luminous.

"No," she confirmed, in the exhaustion of relief. "I can bear to let you
go from me, if you are to be with Mr. Gerard."

They nestled together--as each might have clung in such an hour to the
mother they had left so far down the path of years--on the hearth from
which one was self-exiled and the other about to be taken.

"Do you remember the story he told us?" Corrie asked, after a long
pause. "About that Arabian fellow's vase and the pearls, you know?
I--well, I meant what I said, about expecting to have lots of days like
that, pearl-days. I couldn't see any farther than that! Yet that
night--I don't expect now, what I did then; I've lost my chance for it.
But I would like to do something for Allan Gerard before I die. I'd like
to make all my pearls into one, and put it into his vase. Instead, he is
doing things for me."

Her clasping arms tightened about him. Heretofore she always had turned
a steady face to her brother, sparing him the reproach of grief, but
now she helplessly felt her eyes fill and overflow. One comfort, one
hope she had that he did not share. If he went with Allan Gerard, and if
Gerard took home the wife he had seemed to woo, brother and sister would
not be separated. Flavia Gerard would be in Allan Gerard's house, where
Corrie was going.

Had Gerard thought of that, also? Dared she tread on this nebulous
fairy-ground? Dared she lead Corrie to set foot there, with her?

"Dear," she essayed, her voice just audible, "dear, has Mr. Gerard ever
spoken to you of me?"

Surprised, Corrie looked down at the bent head resting against his rough
overcoat. Himself a lover, he yet had not suspected this other romance
flowering beside his own; he did not guess the obvious secret, now.

"Of you? Oh, yes; he asks if you are well, each day. He never forgets
such things. Why?"

She had no answer to that natural question. In spite of her reason,
Flavia was chilled by the flat conventionality of Gerard's apparent
attitude, as represented by those formal inquiries. Almost she would
have preferred that he had not spoken of her at all; silence could not
have implied indifference.

"Nothing," she faltered. It clearly was impossible to speak as she had
imagined. "Only, as his hostess, and your sister, I fancied that he
might----"

"He wouldn't say that sort of thing to me, Other Fellow. No doubt he
will come to pay a farewell call before he leaves. He isn't very fit,
you know; he hasn't been out yet. He _must_ be at his western factory
this week, he said, or he wouldn't try to travel."

Her color rushed back. Why had she not remembered that? Why should he
speak of her to anyone, since to-morrow he would come to see her?
To-morrow? The clocks had struck midnight, to-day they would see each
other.

"It is late," Corrie added, as if in answer to her thought. He sighed
wearily. "You are tired, I suppose we both are. Come up."

He passed his arm about her waist, and they went up the stairs together,
leaning on one another. But Allan Gerard was a third presence with them,
and in their sense of his guardianship brother and sister rested like
children comforted.

The following day was one filled with an atmosphere of disruption and
imminent departure. The very servants caught the contagion and hurried
uncomfortably about their tasks. Corrie's preparations were
unostentatious, but Isabel's agitated the entire household. Also, Mr.
Rose issued his instructions that Flavia should be ready to start for
France on the next steamer sailing. The house that had been rose-colored
within and without was become a gray place to be avoided.

Flavia thought all day of Allan Gerard. She knew her father went in the
afternoon to pay him a farewell visit, she knew Corrie was with him all
the morning, and when each returned home she suspended breath in
anticipation of hearing the step of a guest also--the step of Gerard
coming towards the goal which he had half-showed her in the fountain
arbor. But Corrie and Mr. Rose each entered alone.

Nevertheless, she chose to wear his color, that night; the pale,
glistening tea-rose yellow above which her warm hair showed burnished
gold. He must come that evening, if at all; she would be truly "Flavia
Rose" to him.

She was standing alone before her mirror, setting the last pearl comb in
place, when her cousin came into the room.

"You look as if you were happy enough," Isabel commented fretfully. "I
don't believe you care at all about Corrie's going away. Of course you
don't care about me. What are you putting on that old-fashioned thing
for?"

Flavia gravely turned her large eyes upon the other girl; the unjust
attack fell in harsh dissonance with her own mood of hushed
anticipation. She could not have robed herself for her wedding with more
serious care and earnest thoughtfulness than she had used in preparing
to receive Gerard to-night. This was no time for coquetry; as he came
for her, she would go to him, she knew, without evasion or pretense to
harass his weakness. She shrank, wincing sensitively, from this rough
criticism, but every member of the family had learned not to reply to
the new Isabel's peevish tartness.

"It was my mother's," she explained, to the last inquiry, tenderly
lifting the long chain of pearl and amber beads ending in a lace-fine
pearl cross. Never could she attempt to tell her cousin the blended
motives from which she had chosen to wear this rosary. "And her mother's
and again her's. It is very old Spanish work. Shall we go down?"

"What for? It is not time for dinner. Oh, Martin told me there was a
messenger waiting to deliver a letter, just now, as I came here."

The color flared up over Flavia's delicate face.

"A messenger, Isabel?"

"Yes, who would not send up his message. I told Martin that we would
ring."

Flavia slowly wound the chain around her throat. There was no escape
from Isabel's insistent companionship, she realized.

"Ring, then, please," she requested, and passed into her little
sitting-room, beyond.

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 anжsthetics 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.

"You will find your regular mechanician waiting for you when you go out
again," he observed. "You can learn much with him, if you choose,
Corrie, although he is no Rupert. Take your machine where and how you
please; it is all practice. I will see you again at dinner, unless you
grow tired before then and would like to come up to the draughting-room
to meet my chief engineer and designer."

Corrie looked down, crumpling a fold of the table cloth between nervous
fingers.

"Gerard, do they know?" he asked, his voice low. "I mean, how you were
hurt and what Rupert accuses me of?"

"Certainly not. You are no one to them but my new driver."

A still ruddier color tinged the young face, the fair head bent a little
lower.

"That is all I want to be, ever. Thank you, Gerard; I'll make good."




XII

THE MAKING GOOD


Corrie did not slip control during the weeks that followed. There was no
running wild to record. At first he used to come in from his driving
reddened by more than the cold wind, and there were rumors current of
certain vigorous word-duels between him and his sullen assistant,
Devlin. But he never complained to Gerard or exhibited any smart of
excoriated vanity. The testers accepted him as a little more than their
equal, after watching him drive, and he gladly met their comradeship
with his own. It was very easy to like Corrie; soon he was surrounded by
friends.

Only Jack Rupert never spoke to him. The thing was not done obtrusively,
but it was done. He never openly slighted Corrie Rose or showed him
discourtesy, he simply failed to come in contact with him. And Corrie
tacitly accepted the situation, avoiding the inflexible mechanician, on
his part. So winter shut in, with blizzards that frequently drove
everyone off the roads until snow-ploughs and shovels had accomplished
their work. Then Gerard would summon Corrie to the inside of the huge,
reverberant factory, where amid its lesser brothers the Titan racing
machine was slowly growing to completion; the Titan of Gerard's past
speed-visions, the dream-planned car that was now for another's control.
He taught, and Corrie learned hungrily.

It was in February Corrie first noticed that Gerard and Rupert
simultaneously disappeared for an hour and a half every morning. No one
knew why, or had interested enough to speculate, it seemed. Gerard
always sent Corrie off on some duty, at that time each day, and only
accidental circumstances awoke the young driver's attention to a custom
without an explanation.

Of course, Corrie asked no questions. He was not temperamentally curious
and he was well-bred. But, returning unexpectedly to the house, one
morning in early March, he passed Rupert going out and realized himself
encroaching on the tacitly established period of retirement. Sobered,
half-doubtful of his course, he ran up the stairs, and in the upper hall
came suddenly upon Gerard leaning against the wall.

"Gerard!" Corrie exclaimed; goggles and gloves fell to the floor as he
sprang to his friend. "Gerard, you're ill? Let me help you--lean on me!
I'm strong enough to _carry_ you."

"It is nothing," Gerard panted. "I tried to come after Rupert in too
much of a hurry, that's all. I remembered something I had forgotten to
tell him. What are you doing here? I sent you out."

Once Corrie would have flashed hot retort to a reproof certainly
undeserved, not now.

"I am sorry; I didn't understand," he apologized. "You never said I
_must_ stay out. Let me help you, get you something."

"I know; I'm unreasonable!" Gerard straightened himself. "Never mind me,
Corrie; I am all right now."

He was white with a singular pallor that Corrie was too inexperienced to
recognize, but he smiled reassurance to his assistant and himself led
the way to the room opposite.

"There is some dose in the glass on the table," he indicated, finding a
chair. "I might drink it, if I had it here. And, don't you want to get
me a cigarette?"

In silence Corrie complied with the requests. Beside the slight,
colorless Gerard, he radiated vigorous health and that scintillant
freshness drawn from days passed in sunlight and sweet air, but his
eyes at this moment held a desperate anxiety and unrest that left the
advantage of contrast to his companion's clear tranquillity of regard.

"You are getting worse," he declared abruptly. "There is no use of
trying to spare my feelings, Gerard; instead of gaining, you are losing
strength."

"I beg your pardon; I am getting better," Gerard corrected with perfect
assurance. He put aside his glass and leaned back in his chair. "You do
not in the least know what you are talking about. Since you are here, we
might get a bit of business done that I had meant to leave until you
came in to luncheon. You understand that the formalities must be
preserved; are you willing to sign one of our regular driver's
contracts, to drive for the Mercury Company this year, and for no one
else?"

"I will do," said Corrie, "whatever you want. Is this the paper?"

He took up a pen and, still standing, wrote his name across the foot of
the document, the other man's attentive gaze following his movements.

"Is that the way you sign legal papers, Corrie, without reading them?"

The blue eyes gave the questioner one expressive glance.

"You gave it to me," was the answer.

Gerard contemplated him, then drew another printed sheet from a pile on
the desk and pushed it across.

"All right. I want you to sign this, too," he signified.

As carelessly as before, Corrie set down his signature and turned away
from the half-folded page.

"I came back early because I had a letter from Flavia," he explained. "I
wanted to answer it right away. She says that father doesn't intend to
come home until autumn. I don't believe she likes it much, but of course
she wouldn't tell him so. He has enough to stand."

Gerard drew the two papers towards him and put them into a drawer. It is
hard to be consistent; the temptation of seeing Corrie read Flavia's
weekly letters had long since vanquished the resolution of the man whose
love for her seemed to himself to illustrate that the economies of
Nature do not include human passion. Corrie found a willing, if mute,
listener to all confidences in regard to his sister.

"She has never told Mr. Rose that you are with me?" Gerard asked,
to-day.

"No," he responded, surprised. "Oh no! She promised me that, the night
before I left home."

"Yet, living so close in thought with your father as she does, I should
have fancied----"

"That she couldn't help telling him? I don't know who started that story
that women can't keep secrets." Corrie laughed mirthlessly. "From what I
have seen, they can keep quiet a secret that would tear itself out of
any man I ever met, if the wrench killed him."

He unclasped the heavy fur coat he still wore and pushed it aside from
his throat with an impatient air of oppression.

"But Flavia could not hurt anyone, and she knows that would hurt me," he
added, more gently.

Flavia could not hurt anyone. Allan Gerard considered that statement,
not so much in bitterness as in a wonder that made all life uncertain.
He recalled the fountain arcade of rose-colored columns and delicate
lights, the sweetly demure girl who waited there for her brother, and
her last brief glance of virginal candor and innocently unconscious
confession. Flavia could not hurt anyone. Yet she had dismissed the man
who loved her, without even granting him the poor alms of courteous
sympathy, had left him to learn her decision from her silence. Long
since, he had decided that he had been condemned as the cause of her
beloved brother's downfall, and now he again excused her hardness to
himself as a result of her over-tenderness for Corrie. Either that, or
he himself had somehow failed, in some way had been found lacking.

He never did Flavia Rose so much wrong as to suppose her affected by the
physical injury he had suffered. If she had loved him, no such change
could have come between them. He knew that no marring of her beauty
would have had effect upon his steadfast love for her, and he rated her
far above himself in all good things.

It was quite a quarter-hour before Gerard looked up and saw that Corrie
had remained standing by the table in an abstraction complete as his
own, lips pressed shut and straight brows contracted. Startled out of
self-contemplation, the older man leaned forward to give his aid to a
moment whose bitterness he divined.

"Corrie, take off your furs and come to luncheon," he directed, crisply
energetic. "You have got to take out the Titan for its first run, this
afternoon."

Effectively aroused, Corrie swung around.

"The Titan?" he echoed. "To-day?"

"Yes. Come on."

In the thin, clear March sunshine, two hours later, the Mercury Titan
rolled out onto the mile track, shaking earth and air with its roar and
vibrant clamor. The force of testers and factory operatives crowded
about, busy men found time to cluster at the buildings' doors and
windows in keen interest.

Opposite Gerard and his little staff, the men who had designed and
evoked the winged monster, Corrie Rose was in his seat, flushed with
excitement, but collected and at home in the powerful machine which he
was to be the first to test and master. "Until you give it to its racing
driver, let no one except me take it?" he had begged of Gerard. And
Gerard had given the promise, smiling oddly.

But if Corrie was eager for the start, his mechanician palpably was not.
The place beside the driver remained vacant until the last moment, when
the reluctant Devlin slowly climbed into it.

"Devlin is nervous," Gerard gravely commented, to his own one-time
mechanician. "He is a very good factory man, but this is too big work
for him. If they were going on a longer trip, I should not like to send
Corrie out with him."

"I ain't denying anything," snapped Rupert, scowling after the departing
car as it leaped for the open track like an animal unleashed.

That first afternoon's trial of the Mercury Titan proved it much faster
than either the track or road would stand. Also, Corrie Rose was proved
fully capable of handling his wheeled projectile. When he came in, at
dusk, the testers regarded him with unconcealed respect; there was
genuine admiration mingled with the congratulations offered him by the
car's designers. He had become, after Gerard, the most conspicuous man
in the great automobile plant.

Devlin crawled out of his seat and complained of nausea.

On the third day of practice, when Corrie brought the car back to the
factory at noon, Rupert suddenly walked up to him and broke the silence
of months.

"What's the matter with your fifth cylinder?" he demanded.

Amazed, Corrie slipped off his mask and turned his fatigued face to the
questioner.

"I couldn't help it," he deprecated, quite humbly. "Devlin was too busy
holding on to do much, and I was driving."

Rupert darted a glance of blighting contempt at the sullen Devlin, and
walked away.

Gerard had not seen the episode, nor did it reach his ears. But he was
chatting with Corrie, late on the same afternoon, when Rupert emerged
from the factory and thrust an overcoat at the young driver who stood
beside his car.

"I ain't hanging out a diploma," he stated acridly, "but this ain't
summer by some months and you're qualifying for a hospital--which I
don't guess is what you were brought here for."

"Thank you," faltered Corrie, and wonderingly put on the garment.

Gerard continued to survey the machine before him, not a flicker
crossing his expression or betraying consciousness of any unusual event.
Rupert's swift look of blended defiance and embarrassment directed
towards his chief glided off an impenetrable surface.

Corrie followed with wistful eyes the mechanician's return to the
building.

"I knew a West Point fellow, once, who had been given the 'silence'
treatment--I used to wonder why he minded so much," he laughed, apropos
of nothing, but his voice caught.

It was the first time Corrie had ever admitted knowledge of Rupert's
ostracism of him, or revealed how deeply the hurt had been felt. Gerard
laid a caressing hand on his shoulder, wisely saying nothing. After a
moment Corrie grasped the Titan's steering-wheel and swung himself into
his seat behind it, but paused before summoning Devlin to start the
motor, and rewarded Gerard's tact by another impulsive confidence,
spoken just audibly:

"I miss my father all the time. I think I always will. And I would miss
him most if he came home and I had to live along side of him. He--well,
he stays in Europe. I'll put up the car for the night, if you're ready
to have me; it's getting pretty dark to run any more."

"The car is in your hands; put it where you please, when you please,"
responded Gerard; that mark of trust seemed the only comfort he could
offer, then; he was too fine not to ignore the other issues.




XIII

THE TITAN'S DRIVER


There was a letter for Corrie in the evening mail, next day. At least,
there was an envelope containing a gaudy picture-postal. It was at this
last that Corrie was gazing, when Gerard came to remind him that dinner
waited, and of it he first spoke.

"It's from Isabel. I--she need not have sent it!" He abruptly pushed the
card across the table toward Gerard and turned away to complete his
preparations.

"A postal?"

"Oh, yes. She used to be fond of writing long letters, but she has quit
the habit. Flavia tells me she has not received but three postal-cards
from Isabel since they parted, although they used to be such chums."

"I am to read?"

"If you like."

The red and green landscape represented, libellously, the Natural Bridge
of Virginia. Across the glazed surface ran a few blurred lines of
script:

      "Dear Corrie:
          May I marry someone else, if I want to, or do you
    say not?
                I.R."

Gerard laid down the card and regarded, troubled, his companion's
straight shoulders and the back of his erect head, the only view
afforded as Corrie stood before his mirror employing a pair of military
brushes upon his unruly blond hair.

"I did not know that the affair--that matters were so far arranged
between you and your cousin," he said.

He spoke with hesitation, uncertain of how to venture upon a subject
never before broached between them, yet feeling speech tacitly invited.
In the stress of his own suffering at the time following the accident,
preoccupied by the witnessing of Corrie's hard punishment of dishonor
and grief and his struggle to fall no lower under it, he had forgotten
that the boy-man also had to bear the loss of the girl upon whom he had
spent his first love. For it required no deep insight to recognize that
Isabel Rose was not the type of woman who is a refuge in time of
disaster.

But the embarrassment was his alone; Corrie answered without confusion:

"We were engaged, yes. But that is ended. She had no need to write. She
might have known, or have taken it for granted."

Gerard studied the view presented of his companion, striving to draw
some conclusion from pose or tone. He had no mind to have his work of
months marred and his driver distracted by an interlude of useless
sentimentality; the temptation to congratulate Corrie upon his freedom
from an unsuitable marriage was almost too strong. But what he actually
said was quite different, and escaped from his lips without
consideration of its effect.

"I should not have supposed your cousin had so fine and strict a sense
of honor."

The oval brush slipped through Corrie's fingers and fell to the floor,
rolling jerkily away with the light glinting on its silver mounting in a
series of heliographic flashes. The owner stooped to recover it, groping
for the conspicuous object as if the room were dark instead of flooded
with the brightness of late afternoon.

"What do you mean?" he demanded. "What did you say? Her sense of
honor----?"

"I beg your pardon," Gerard promptly apologized, aware of worse than
indiscretion. "I, really, Corrie, I hardly realized what I was saying.
Certainly I did not mean that the way it sounded. I only intended to
say----"

What had he intended to say? What could he substitute for the spoken
truth that would not wound the hearer either for himself or for the
girl he loved?

"I only meant," he recommenced, "that her asking your formal release
showed a careful punctiliousness not common."

Corrie had recovered his brush, now. He laid it on the chiffonier before
answering.

"How do we know what is common? What is honor, anyway; what other people
see or what you are? I fancy she wouldn't have written if she hadn't
been sure of what I'd say," he retorted, with the first cynicism Gerard
ever had seen in him. "She likes me to take the responsibility, that's
about all. Well, I've done it. Did you say I was keeping dinner
waiting?"

This of the once-adored Isabel! However much relief the older man felt,
there came with it a sensation of shock and regret. Had Corrie lost so
much of his youth, unsuspected by his daily companion? Where were the
old illusions which should have blurred this sharp judgment? He made
some brief reply, and presently they went downstairs.

The dinner was rather a silent affair.

"Do you want to drive me into town?" Gerard inquired, at its conclusion.
"I find that I must see Carruthers before he leaves for the East, and
he is stopping at the Hotel Marion. If you are tired, I will get my
chauffeur."

"I should like it," Corrie exclaimed, rising eagerly. "I'll get the car.
Your car?"

"I should think so. I am not exactly anxious to drive into town with
your racing machine, although we have got to make fair time in order to
catch him before his train leaves."

Corrie laughed, turning away.

"I'll make the time, all right," he promised. "Your roadster isn't so
pretty slow, considering. I'll be at the door in three minutes."

He was, driving hatless and without a motor-mask in the fresh spring
air.

"No overcoat?" Gerard disapproved. "What would Rupert say?"

Corrie flushed like a complimented girl; that the mechanician should
have admitted him to any intercourse, however cold and slight, moved him
so deeply that even Gerard's allusion was too much.

"I have it with me; I don't need it," he evaded hurriedly. "Ready?"

"Ready."

The car sprang forward.

The yellow country road merged into macadam, the macadam into asphalt.
They were in the city, presently, slowly rolling through streets filled
with playing children who garnered the last daylight moments. On one
corner a hand-organ was performing, and the group disporting itself to
the flat, tinkling music broke apart to shout after the car, waving
grimy hands.

"Hello, Mr. Corrie!" one shrill voice came to the motorists.

The driver lifted his hand in salute, glancing at his companion with a
blended mischief and diffidence so delightful, so much like the old
merry Corrie Rose, that Gerard laughed in sheer sympathy of pleasure.

"They seem to know you, Corrie?"

"They do. At least, what they call knowing me. You see, I blew out a
tire here, on the way home after you sent me in to the postoffice, last
week, and about three dozen kiddies gathered around to watch me change
it. Bully little frogs; they nearly lost all the kit of tools trying to
help me. And talk! So I--well, I gave them all a spin about the square,
in blocks of as many as could hang on at a time, and I set up the ice
creams all around. It seemed my treat. You don't mind? I suppose they
_are_ full of germs and want washing, but I just remembered they were
kids."

"I certainly do not mind," Gerard assured. He wanted to say something
more, but found his thoughts singularly inarticulate. There was a
certain verse commencing with "Inasmuch----" that he would have quoted
to Corrie, had they been of any blood but the reticent Saxon. "They
remembered part of your name," he added instead.

"That was all I told them. The Hotel Marion?"

"Yes. Speed up all you dare, our time is short."

The time was indeed short. As they came down the avenue, Gerard uttered
an exclamation, catching sight of a man who descended the hotel steps
toward a carriage.

"Cross the street! There he goes. Quick, or we'll lose him! Cross over."

He was promptly obeyed. The car shot across the street regardless of
traffic rules, and was brought shuddering to a halt beside the left-hand
curb. Gerard sprang out and went to join the man who had stopped beside
the carriage to wait for his pursuer.

Left in the car, Corrie took a leisurely survey of the street,
preparatory to withdrawing from his illegal situation. But it was
already too late. Even while he looked, a blue-garbed figure appeared
around a corner, perceived the south-bound automobile beside the east
curb and marched upon the offender.

To some temperaments there is an undeniable exhilaration in conflict.
Corrie puckered his lips to a soundless whistle, settled back in his
seat, and waited.

"What are you doing over here?" the officer challenged, arriving. "Don't
you know how to drive? You're under arrest."

"What for?" Corrie asked unmoved.

"What for? How did you get a chauffeur's license? For driving on the
wrong side of the street, of course."

"I'm not driving."

"Don't be funny, young fellow! For stopping on the wrong side, if you
like it better, then."

"I'm not stopping."

"You----?"

"I am stopped. You did not see me do it. I might have come out of one of
those buildings, or have come up on one of those sidewalk elevators, for
all you know. You can't arrest me for something you didn't see me do,
man. You wouldn't if you could; I can see you have a sweet disposition."

The officer stared, and took a more careful survey of his antagonist.

"You're no chauffeur, I guess," he pronounced dryly.

"Well, I've got a license."

"That may be. Anyway, chauffeur or college student, you can't stay here
with that machine."

"You want me to leave? Certainly, officer, I always obey the law. Here
comes my friend; I'll go now."

The policeman's face relaxed into a sour smile, the nonsense snaring him
into unwilling participation.

"Do," he recommended. "The minute your wheels move, you will be driving
on the wrong side of the street and I will pull you in."

"When I drive on the wrong side of the street, go ahead and do it. Are
you ready to start, Gerard?"

Gerard, who had come up in time to hear enough, had interpretation been
necessary, put an additional argument into the man's hand before
entering the car.

"My fault, Johnston," he stated, with the quiet serenity of one certain
of his ground. "You know I am not a law-breaker, I fancy; this was a
case of necessity."

"It was your friend, Mr. Gerard----"

Corrie reached for a lever, smiling ingenuously across as he interrupted
to reply.

"The rule says to keep to the right, officer?"

"Sure."

"Well, I am left-handed, that's all. Now look at this."

This was the execution of a movement that sent the automobile rolling
backwards.

"You see, I go north on the east side," the driver called, while the
machine slid away. "All right, yes? Nothing in the rules about which end
first you drive your car? No? I thought not. Good-by."

The car was at the corner, rounded it, and darted away in the customary
method of straightforward progression.

"But if this had been New York, I would be in jail," Corrie added placid
commentary, when security was attained. "I know all about it; I was
arrested in Manhattan, once, for driving without a license number
displayed. The cords must have broken and have let the number-plate fall
off. Much that policeman listened to me. He ordered Dean into the
tonneau with Flavia, stepped up into the seat beside me and ordered me
to drive to the nearest police station."

"What did you do?"

"I drove. It cost me twenty-five dollars, a week later, and I had to
'phone for the family lawyer with bail to keep me from spending that
night in a cell. Father----"

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

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

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

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

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

Astonished, Corrie scrutinized him, seeking the recollection implied.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The pause was not noticeably long.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Corrie slowly turned to him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They looked at each other.

"Thank you," acknowledged the younger.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rupert turned a hard dark eye upon him.

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

Gerard nodded.

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

The double bombshell dealt full effect.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




XIV

VAL DE ROSAS


On the day that Corrie in his American home consented to drive the
Mercury Titan through the racing season, Flavia and Mr. Rose arrived at
the tiny Spanish village of Val de Rosas--arrived, not so much through
design as through the bursting of a tire on their motor car.

"It seems as if the name of the place might be one of our lost titles,"
observed Mr. Rose idly. "And there is the castle to match, on the
hillside. Come stroll through the town, my girl, while Lenoir repairs
damages."

Smiling, Flavia stepped down beside him, throwing back her silk veils
and lifting her fair, almost too delicate face to the Andalusian
sunshine. After her stepped a great dog, with the sedate,
matter-of-course bearing of a constant attendant.

"I wonder who lives in the castle," she responded to his mood of
playfulness. "_Our_ castle. We should dispossess them."

"Lets," proposed her father.

There was an inn in the village, kept by a ravishingly plump landlord of
sixty who wore a short velvet jacket. He informed the travellers that
the diminutive white castle was not only vacant, but to let, being the
property of a mad Englishman who had bought it to live in while writing
a book, and having finished the book had departed. Mr. Rose regarded his
daughter speculatively.

"We have been going from one place to another for five months, and we
have got to put in six more," he said with brief decisiveness. "I mean
to stay on this side of the water until fall. Do you want to try living
here for a while, or would you rather keep moving?"

"Let us stay here," Flavia voted eagerly. "Dear, I am so tired of
hotels."

Mr. Rose studied her as she stood, slim and frail, before him, her large
eyes fixed on his.

"I guess we are tired of more than that, you and I," he pronounced. "But
I'll run up and see if the place can be made fit to live in. You had
better rest here, in the shade; Frederick will take care of you and
Lenoir is within call. Here, seсor, set a chair here under these trees."

She moved to the seat placed for her by the deferential host, and
watched her father's departure up the winding road. They were both
thinking of Corrie, lacking whom all places were blank, with whom, in
one winter's enthusiasm, they had studied this soft Spanish tongue they
now used without him. They had planned a trip to Puerto Rico, then, that
never had been taken. But Flavia also was thinking of Allan
Gerard--Allan Gerard, who loved Isabel and for whose sake Flavia carried
a double sorrow, his and her own. As he had found excuses in his mind
for her apparent failure of him, so she on her part never had blamed him
for what she considered her own misunderstanding of his purpose. They
were not given to the small vice of ready condemnation. There is no
comfort in blaming the one loved, where the love is great.

A murmur of wondering dismay aroused Flavia from her musing, a sound
scarcely louder than the murmur of the bees busied among the heavy
waxen-white lemon-blossoms overhead. She lifted her chin from her hand,
and saw a brown-haired, brown-skinned, brown-eyed girl standing on the
path, gazing at the huge dog that barred her passage.

"Pray do not be frightened," Flavia begged. "Come here, Frederick!
Indeed, he is only a young dog and very gentle."

"He is very large, seсorita," the girl smiled, half-reassured,
half-fearful. "He bites, no?"

"No, indeed. See."

"He loves the seсorita. That does not surprise," with Latin grace of
compliment.

Flavia smiled, too, drawing the Great Dane's bulky head against her
knee.

"I love him, perhaps."

"One sees it, since he voyages with the seсores in that splendid
automobile, where a man might find place with joy."

A wistfulness in the comment moved the listener to give explanation,
almost in apology for lavishing upon an animal what might have rejoiced
a human being.

"He is my brother's dog. But my brother went away, and the poor dog
grieved for him all the time, except with me. I could not leave him to
fret, without either of us, so he came abroad, too."

"Across the ocean, seсorita?"

"Across the ocean. From America."

The two young girls considered one another in a pause full of cordial
sympathy. Different in race, station and experience, the bond of
maidenhood drew them to each other with delicate lines of mutual
comprehension and accord.

"It is the dog's name which is on the great silver-and-leather collar,
or the name of the seсorita?"

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

"'_Federigo el Grande, que pertenece б Corwin Basil Rose, Long
Island_,'" she translated.

"Don Corwin--that does not say itself easily!"

"We called him Corrie."

"Ah, that I can say; Don Corrie."

The soft household name sounded yet softer in the Andalusian accents.
Flavia looked away, feeling her lips quiver.

"Will you tell me your name?" she asked, by way of diversion. "Mine is
Flavia Rose. Perhaps we shall see more of each other, if I stay here and
you do also."

"I am called Elvira Paredes, seсorita. And I shall be here--I cannot go
for so long, so long, perhaps never."

Flavia leaned forward, her clear eyes questioning.

"You want to go away? To leave this place for some other?"

The confidence came with an outrush of feeling, a wealth of expression
and expressive gestures.

"Seсorita, to join my betrothed. Ah, there never was one like him, so
beautiful, so brave, so constant like the sun in rising! You cannot
know. No one can know who has not seen it. And sing! Under my window he
would sing until the birds would hush, hush to listen. I have no
marriage-portion, I who am an orphan living with the sister of my
mother's cousin. Not for that did Luis hesitate. But the time came when
he must do military service; serve in Morocco, seсorita, serve among
savages who would torture him! And to come back poor as he went. So he
left. Far away he journeyed, to New York, which is in America, to find
peace and make a home."

"Where you will go to him?"

"Seсorita, we hope it. He works, I wait. We write long letters. But it
is three years. It costs much to cross the ocean, and one grows old."
The brown eyes looked the tragedy of hope deferred.

"For men must work and women must weep----" The old refrain came to
Flavia. But not this woman, not if her American sister could prevent.
And the preventing was so easy! She drew the girl down on the seat
beside her, impulsive as Corrie could have been.

"Listen, Elvira--I may call you Elvira? Let me help you. I have so much
money, so much more than I can spend, and I am not very happy. Let me
think that I have given you what I cannot have; let me send you to Luis.
My father will tell us how, he will arrange everything so that you will
not have to trouble at all. We will send a message to Luis so that he
may meet you."

"Seсorita!"

"You will let me? You will not say no? Why, Elvira!"

The girl dropped her face in Flavia's lap and burst into hysterical
tears, covering her hands with kisses.

When Mr. Rose returned, half an hour later, this time in the big
automobile whose rushing passage stirred whirlwinds of dust on the
age-old road, his daughter met him eagerly.

"Papa, I want to send Elvira Paredes to America, to her fiancйe. She is a
kinswoman of the inn-keeper, here. Will you arrange it for us? I think
she would be frightened if you sent her by first-class, but second-class
would be very nice. She knows how to go in the train to Malaga, if you
get the ticket, and ships sail from there, do they not? Oh, and would
you cable to Luis Cбrdenas, in New York, so he will know she is coming?
I will find the street and number from Elvira."

His children long since had trained Mr. Rose to be surprised at no
charming vagaries. He contemplated Flavia, amused, and well pleased with
her animation.

"Found something to play with, eh? Very good, we will fix it. But your
Elvira will have to wait until I get an answer from her lover through
the cable company; I'm sending no girls to New York without knowing
they'll land in the right hands. Now, I believe that house up there will
suit. We'll have some luncheon and then drive up for you to see it. I
like the place, myself. It opens well."

It opened well, if the happiness of Elvira Paredes was a good augury.

"All the rest is from my father," Flavia said, in parting from her. "But
take this from me, to wear or for a marriage portion, as you choose."

The gift was a sapphire ring slipped from Flavia's slim finger.

"It resembles the eyes of the seсorita; may they always be as bright and
clear," fervently returned Elvira, who was an Andalusian and therefore a
poet.

"That cost some money, when I bought it," Mr. Rose practically observed,
from his seat in the motor-car. "Tell her not to flash it in New York,
alone, if she wants to keep it. You can put that into classic Spanish
for me, my girl."

That was the beginning of an interlude whose placid monotony was
tempered by much equally placid incident. The Americans liked the
village, and the village rejoiced in the Americans, so that they came to
know each other very well. More than once Flavia thought of the legend
of Al-Mansor, and that if one of these days could be deemed happy enough
to record by a pearl, the vase could be filled with the gem-chronicles,
so much alike were the weeks.

For the white castle on the hill kept its visitors, and so it happened
that the summer most crowded and busy of any Corrie ever had known,
slipped drowsily by in drowsy Val de Rosas for the two most interested
in him.

He never told Flavia what he was doing. The new Corrie Rose was more
considerate than the self-centred thoughtlessness of youth had permitted
the boy Corrie to be. He would have remembered her anxiety for his
safety and dread of danger for him, of himself, but his silence was
further impelled by Gerard, who had pointed out--in a few brief
sentences that avoided Flavia's name--the responsibility she must feel
in keeping such a secret from her father. But, because it was so
difficult to write to his "Other Fellow" without telling her all,
Corrie's letters came with greater intervals and were less in length.

"I am still touring with Gerard," he wrote to Flavia, in the last note
of his that came to Val de Rosas. "Don't mind if my letters come slower,
please; I am pretty busy. I guess you will understand what it means to
me when I can say that I am doing some work for Gerard and that he calls
it good. I wish it cost me more to do. I hope father is well; you didn't
say, last time. Keep on writing often, you know, it's the next thing to
seeing you."

He wrote that note the night after he broke a track record in
California, wrote it on the chiffonier of the hotel bedroom while making
ready to attend a motor club dinner at which he was to be chief guest in
honor of the day's event. Four weeks later Flavia read it, under the
flowering almond trees that surrounded the house so closely as to
overhang the balcony on which she sat. Read it, then kissed the
careless, boyish _Corwin B. Rose_ that slanted crookedly across the foot
of the page. Holding the letter, she sat quite still.

From the room within drifted the voices of Mr. Rose and the mild Father
Bartolomй, 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."

"Seсor 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.