The newspapers were mercifully brief upon the subject of the unsupported
accusation brought against Corrie Rose, although diffuse enough in
accounts of the much-known Gerard's disaster. The driver's own
explanation of his accident was accepted; his attitude towards the young
amateur fixed the attitude of the public. Moreover, Jack Rupert was
stricken suddenly dumb; no reportorial blandishments could obtain from
him, on the second day, so much as an admission of the charges made by
him on the day previous. Rupert surrendered like a gentleman: he laid
down all his weapons. Dean's appearance at his usual duties and
explanation of his absence from the pink car quashed the last rumor, for
the finding of a wrench beside a motor course meant nothing, considered
alone.
The first things for which Mr. Rose looked each morning were the daily
papers. After which, he invariably shot a glance of blended relief and
smarting humiliation into the wide, earnest eyes of Flavia, as she sat
opposite him behind the gold coffee-service, and addressed himself to
his breakfast. He never looked towards his son at that moment, nor did
Corrie ever break the ensuing silence. The change that had fallen upon
Allan Gerard's life was scarcely more absolute and strange than that
which had come upon the Rose household of innocent ostentation and
intimate gayety.
But the greatest outward alteration was in Isabel. Flavia and Mr. Rose
maintained the usual calm routine of events at home and abroad, Corrie
rigidly obeyed his father's command to live so as to provoke no comment.
But Isabel's boasted, perfect nerves were shattered beyond such control.
She moped all day in her own room, rejecting Flavia's companionship, and
fled from Corrie with unconcealed avoidance. Nor did she improve, as the
days passed, but rather grew worse in condition.
It was in the sixth week after the accident whose echoes threatened to
linger so long, that Isabel entered her cousin's study, one afternoon.
"Flavia, I am going away," she abruptly announced. "Mrs. Alexander has
asked me to go South with Caroline and her, you know. Uncle says I may
do as I like, and I am going. I can't bear it here," her full lip
quivered.
Flavia turned from the window by which she had been standing, catching
and crushing a fold of the drapery in her small fingers as she faced the
other girl.
"You mean that you cannot bear Corrie," she retorted, in swift reproach.
"You treat him--_how_ you treat him! You hardly speak to him, you hardly
look at him. Oh, you are cruel, you will not see how he suffers for one
moment's fault."
Isabel grasped a chair-back, commencing to tremble.
"I can't bear to stay," she repeated hysterically. "Don't talk to me
about Corrie."
"I never will again," Flavia assured, pale with extreme anger. "Yet you
might remember that he loves you; a little kindness from you would help
him so much. Do you know where he spent yesterday? He was out in his
motor boat; out in November with a north gale blowing, alone in that
speed-boat that is half under water all the time. You do not care, you
have no pity."
"I----"
Flavia imposed silence with a gesture, herself quite unconscious of how
overwhelming was this contrast to her usual gentleness.
"He has done wrong--you have nothing to give him but more punishment.
Yes, go away, that is best. But he would have been kinder to you,
Isabel."
Isabel let go of the chair, her gray eyes dilating unnaturally. Her gaze
dwelling on Flavia, she slowly retreated a few steps towards the door,
then suddenly turned and fled, leaving no answer.
With her going, Flavia's passion died, something like fear taking its
place. That was what Corrie had felt, reflected Corrie's sister; a sweep
of flame-like anger that blinded judgment, a slipping of self-mastery
that loosed hand or tongue. Only, she had not wanted to hurt Isabel,
that was a point she could not conceive reaching, herself.
When she had somewhat recovered, Flavia went to find her furs and
outdoor apparel. She knew where Corrie had gone; she would meet him and
herself break the tidings of his cousin's coming departure. He would be
walking; he had not touched an automobile since he left the seat of his
pink racer to rescue Gerard from beneath the crushed Mercury, and he had
no patience with horses.
It was on a bleak, sandy stretch of Long Island road that she met
Corrie, a solitary figure against the flat landscape as he came towards
her. At sight of her little carriage and the cream-colored ponies he
himself long before had taught her to drive, he stopped, his boyish
face brightening warmly.
"Other Fellow," was all he said, when she leaned towards him with her
unaltering love of glance and smile.
There was no need to ask where he had been.
"How is Mr. Gerard, dear?" she ventured, after he was seated beside her
and they had commenced the return.
"Better."
"You go there every day to ask?"
"Every day."
"And, he----"
"He has seen me every day, even the worst. He talks about politics, the
aviation meet, the motor magazines,--about everything except himself or
me. It is his right arm, now, the other hurts are almost well. To-day I
met the doctor, going out as I was coming in. I asked about him----"
Flavia raised her eyes to meet his, shrinking from the verdict that
speech must establish beyond the refuge of doubt. Very gently he laid
his hand over hers upon the reins and brought the ponies to a
standstill.
"Do you remember this place, Flavia? Well, all that is over for him."
Beside them sloped away a brown, frost-seared field; in its centre still
showed the outline of a baseball diamond, with the bags forgotten at the
bases. Flavia's heart contracted sharply, the reins escaped her grasp.
For the moment memory and vision fused; she saw the straight, slender
pitcher poised with arms raised above his brown head, saw his laughing
glance go questing down the field, and the swift, graceful movement that
launched the ball with unerring unexpectedness. And because she could
not speak without inadvertently lashing Corrie, she sat mute.
She did not know how long it was before he spoke, with the new steady
seriousness so strange to meet in him.
"Where are we getting to, Other Fellow? Because we have got to get
somewheres, you know; we don't stand still. Gerard will go away to his
own home, soon. You and father and Isabel and I can't just sit here
looking at each other, like we've been doing."
Gerard would go away, soon. That was the sentence that gripped Flavia.
Go, without seeing her, without pursuing the purpose he had shown her in
the fountain arbor? It seemed so impossible that the thrill that shook
her was not of fear, but of startled expectancy. Yet she answered
Corrie with scarcely a pause, and with all tenderness.
"Dear, Isabel will not be here, for a little while," she told him,
hesitatingly. "She is going South with Mrs. Alexander and Caroline. She,
she needs the change."
"That's good," he approved. "She will be better off, away from here, and
you will be better for her going. She worries us all with her fidgets."
Amazed, Flavia turned in her seat to regard him.
"Corrie!"
"You thought I would mind?" He smiled whimsically. "Flavia, I've had a
lot of nonsense knocked out of me. It took a bad shock to cure me of
Isabel, but I'm well. There's nothing left of that. In fact, I feel all
full of holes where ideas have been jolted out of me--I feel rather
empty."
The beautiful foreign motor car had stolen along the road so silently
that neither brother nor sister perceived its approach until the grind
of applied brakes sounded beside the stopped carriage.
"I should have supposed that there'd be views in the countryside more
pleasant to this family than that field," caustically observed Mr.
Rose. "You can take the machine on home, Lenoir; I'll drive with Miss
Rose."
He descended, the chauffeur stooping to open the door, while Corrie and
Flavia looked on, too much surprised to find reply.
"Keep your seat," he curtly ordered, as his son rose to yield the place
beside Flavia. "I'll get up here. Drive ahead, my girl."
He took the rear seat of the little carriage, resting his arm on the
cushioned back so that his strong, square-set head was between the two
who sat in front. The automobile obediently sped on, and only the beat
of the ponies' hoofs interrupted the chill afternoon hush for the first
half-mile.
"It's a long time since I found out that you had some points that I
didn't just understand, Corrie," Mr. Rose stated, his matter-of-fact
accents carrying a deliberate finality. "I didn't wonder, nor I didn't
try to force you to fit my pattern; we were solid friends and I was
willing to take on faith your ways of being different. Once in a while
I'd bring you on the carpet when you got across the line, not often. You
were given about everything you wanted and only told that you must keep
straight. You haven't done it."
An odd shiver ran through Corrie, but he said nothing.
"This isn't a theatre; there won't be any talk of cutting you off with a
shilling or any other kind of child's talk. What we have got to do is to
make the best of a bad thing. You will have to go away for a year or
two, keep apart from automobile racing and automobile people, and live
gossip down. Poor Gerard did his best for you--God knows why--but there
are rumors whispered around yet. It would have looked like running away
to go before; now, Gerard is out of danger. Well?"
"I have been thinking that I should like to go away for a time, sir,"
Corrie answered, gravely self-contained.
"Very good. To speak out, it will be better for our future living
together if you're not in my sight for a while now. If we stay
housemates, there is likely to be another kind of a crash, and two
crashes don't mend a break. You'll have all the money you want and I
don't care where you go or how much you spend. Just put in a year as
well as you can, until we all settle down and go on again. We have got a
lifetime before us to get through."
After a moment Corrie quietly took the reins from Flavia; blinded by
tears, she was letting the ponies stray at will.
The brief November day was ending; it was dusk when they reached the
house, and perhaps none of the three were ungrateful for the shadows
which veiled them from one another. On the veranda, Corrie detained his
sister, allowing Mr. Rose to enter alone.
"I'm not coming in just yet, Other Fellow," he said. "Ask father to
excuse me from dinner; I have an errand that cannot wait. I don't want
you to worry about me or to be unhappy. I did a lot of thinking
yesterday, out in the speed-boat by myself; I know what I am going to do
and that I will put up the best fight I can. Go help father; don't fret
over me."
He kissed her soft mouth with the man's firmness so different from his
former casual caresses, and went down the broad steps, walking across
the lawns in the direction from which they had just come.