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.