The hard, glittering macadam track that swept around the huge western
factory of the Mercury Automobile Company and curved off behind a mass
of autumn-gray woodland, was swarming with dingy, roaring, nakedly bare
cars. The spluttering explosions from the unmuffled exhausts, the voices
of the testers and their mechanics as they called back and forth, the
monotonous tones of the man who distributed numbers for identification
and heard reports from his force, all blended into the cheery
eight-o'clock din of a commencing work-day. Three brawny,
perspiration-streaked young fellows were engaged in loading bags of sand
on the stripped cars about to start out, to supply the weight of the
missing bodies, and whistling rag-time melodies to enliven their labors.
In the shadow of one of the arched doorways Corrie Rose stood to watch
the scene, drawing full, hungry breaths of the gasoline-scented,
smoke-murked air. There was more than frost this December morning; ice
glinted in the gutters and on the surface of buckets, the healthful
lash of the wind flecked color into the men's faces as they pulled on
heavy gloves and hooded caps. The spirit of the place was action; the
lusty vigor of it tugged with kindred appeal at the inactive, wistful
one who looked on.
The heavy throb of the machinery-crowded building smothered the sound of
steps; a touch was necessary to arouse the absorbed watcher.
"You've been here for almost a week, Corrie. Don't you feel like getting
to work?" queried Gerard's pleasant tones.
The boy swung around eagerly.
"Yes," he welcomed. "Give me something to do, anything."
Gerard nodded, his amber eyes sweeping courtyard and track until,
finding the man he sought, he lifted a summoning finger.
"Have someone bring out my six-ninety, Rupert," he called across. "Right
away." And to his companion, "Get into some warm things; you will find
it cold, driving."
Corrie stiffened, flushing painfully and catching his lip in his white
teeth.
"Gerard, you mean _me_ to drive?"
"Of course."
"I shall never drive a car again."
"You will drive the six-ninety Mercury for six hours a day, every day,"
Gerard corrected explicitly. "Until I get the big special racer built,
and then you will drive it. You are going to work into the finest kind
of training and drive until you can drive in your sleep. Too bad the
winter is shutting in, but that will not stop you any more than it does
the testers. In fact, driving in the snow is good practice."
Helpless, Corrie looked at the other man, his violet-blue eyes almost
black with repressed feeling.
"Gerard, you must know how I want to; don't ask me! You know how I ache
to get ahold of a wheel, but I've forfeited all that."
"You have placed yourself in my factory, under my orders," Gerard
stated, with curt finality. "While you are here you will do what I tell
you to do, precisely as does every other worker; precisely as does
Rupert, for example, who is really tester at the eastern plant and
ordinarily works under its master, David French. I have decided to give
you a branch of the work that I once planned to do myself and now
cannot. Go into the office and put on your driving togs."
"I ain't expecting to shove this ninety through a letter-slot,"
remonstrated caustic accents from across the busy courtyard. "Move over,
girls, you're crowding the aisles! Say, Norris, this ain't a joy-ride
down Riverside Drive, it's a testing run; reverse over there and take
about six more sachet-bags of mud-pie aboard where your tonneau ain't,
before you start. Don't it hurt you bad to hurry like that, you
fellows?"
There was a drawing aside by the cars opposite a wide door, and the
machine guided by Rupert rolled through, winding a devious course toward
where its owner waited. Without a word, Corrie turned and went into the
office.
Gerard remained still, following with his gaze the approach of the
beloved car he would drive no more, until it came to a halt before him.
"If we're going out, I'll fetch my muff and veils," suggested the
mechanician, leaning nearer.
"Thanks, Rupert. I am going with Rose, myself, this first time. You can
be ready this afternoon, though."
Rupert's dark face twisted in a grimace, his black eyes narrowed.
"We're laboring under some classy mistake," he dryly signified. "I was
inviting myself to go with you. As for Rose, he and I won't perch on the
same branch unless we get lynched together for horse stealing--and you
know how I don't love a horse."
The amusement underlying Gerard's expression rippled to the surface.
"All right," he acquiesced. "Detail someone else. But, Rupert----"
"Ma'am?"
"I think you will race next spring as Corrie Rose's mechanician."
Their glances encountered, equally cool and determined.
"I'll take in washing with a Chinese partner, if you and Darling French
throw me out," assured Rupert kindly. "Don't worry about my future like
that."
And he slipped across the levers out of his seat, eel-supple, as Corrie
issued from the office.
There was a mile loop of the perfect macadam track circling the factory
buildings, then the way ran off into the country roads, inches deep with
heavy sand, littered with ugly stones, rising over and pitching down
steep grades where holes and mud-patches abounded. Over this the new
Mercury cars were driven at top speed, each one reckoning many miles
before the makers allowed them to be clothed with bodies and gleaming
enamels and to be sent to the purchasers. No flaw escaped unnoticed, no
weakness passed. Jaws set under their masks, keen eyes on the road and
keen ears listening for the least false note in the tone-harmony of
their machines, the sturdy testers drove through a day's work that would
have prostrated the average motorist. Out among these men went Corrie
Rose, more self-conscious than he had ever been on race track or course.
"I never had a ninety before," he confided to Gerard, as they finished
the mile circuit. "A sixty was my biggest. She's, she's a _beauty_!"
The car slammed violently off the macadam onto the sand road, skidded in
a half-circle and righted itself with a writhing jerk.
"Mind your path," cautioned Gerard, in open mirth. "This isn't a motor
parkway. Hello!"
One of the smaller cars was coming towards them, limping back to the
shops with a broken front spring. The man driving it touched his cap to
Gerard as they passed, swinging one arm behind him in a significant
gesture and shouting a warning concerning the bridge ahead. Corrie
checked his speed, and barely skirted the deep washed-out hole that had
caused the other machine's disaster.
"There was rain yesterday and freezing weather last night," Gerard
communicated, at his ear. "Now it is beginning to melt again and
playing the mischief with the roads. There is a right-angle turn
coming."
Corrie nodded, fully occupied. His blood sang through his veins, his
fingers gripped the steering-wheel lovingly; he was revelling in the
speed exhilaration he had never expected to feel again. The driver who
hoped for no such commutation of sentence watched him with quietly sad
eyes; eyes in which no one ever was allowed to surprise their present
expression, least of all Corrie Rose.
Near noon a tire blew out. Gerard sat on the side of the Mercury and
gave bits of ironical advice to the worker while Corrie changed a tire
alone for the first time in his life. Corrie bore the teasing sweetly,
even when a tool slipped and tore his cold-sensitized fingers.
"I know," he deprecated. "Dean always did it and I just helped. I never
did anything thoroughly; an amateur isn't a professional. We would have
lost time by that in a road race."
"You will learn. Rupert and I used to do it in two minutes from stop to
restart," Gerard returned. "There--gather up your tools; we will go home
to luncheon."
"To the factory, first?"
"No. Go slowly and I will show you a short cut."
But Corrie was not in a mood to go slowly, so that they almost missed
the driveway that branched from the macadam track to curve around into a
park set thickly with fragrant cedars, central in which grove stood the
quaintly stiff house of dark brick and stone.
"Run around to the garage," Gerard directed. "Since you will want the
car all the time, you might as well keep it here and use the short cut
out to the road. I will get out here and go into the house."
Corrie obediently bent to his levers.
"All the time?" he repeated, with an indrawn breath of reluctant
ecstasy. "All the time!"
As Gerard turned to the house, a small figure advanced to meet him.
"We've sent out a gang to massage some of the freckles defacing the
speedway," Rupert informed him. "Briggs chugged in with a broken spring,
Norris side-wiped a fence, and Phillips fell into a hole without
publishing a notice, so that his mechanician got off over the bonnet and
broke his collar-bone. That ain't testing cars, it's promoting funerals.
It's easier to motor into heaven on that road than to drive a camel in
New York. What?"
"Yes, have it put in order, of course. I supposed that Mr. Dalton would
attend to the matter, since I was out. Rupert, who is the
sharpest-tongued, most cross-grained and least ceremonious mechanician
we have?"
"I am," was the prompt reply. "Were you wanting me?"
Gerard looked at him and laughed.
"You have ruled yourself off the list of eligibles," he declared. "I
want a man to ride with Corrie Rose."
"Oh!" ejaculated Rupert. His malicious, shrewd face gained
comprehension. "_Oh!_ Well, I ain't boasting, but I could do that job up
pretty fine. Failing me, Devlin is the nastiest thing on the place. You
couldn't pat his head without pricking your fingers."
"Very well. Tell him to report to Rose hereafter,--and do not tell him
much else. Let all the men know that Rose is training to take my place
in the racing work, but do not let them know anything about his
millionaire father or his share in the Cup-race affair."
Rupert directed his gaze towards the inert right arm hanging by Gerard's
side.
"Your place," he echoed. "Are you giving in without putting up a stiff
fight?"
Gerard's chin lifted, his eyes sprang to meet the sharp challenge of the
mechanician's.
"No. The fight will soon be on. Are you going to be my second in it?"
"I'm guessing I'll be there when you look for me."
Their eyes dwelt together for a long moment.
"I should like the men to treat Rose as they do each other, so far as
possible," Gerard casually resumed his original theme. "It will be good
for him. He needs roughing!"
Rupert ran his fingers through his crisp black locks, wheeling to
depart.
"He'll slip control and run wild," he predicted, grimly vicious. "He
needs the training you're planning for him, all right, but he ain't got
the stuff in him to stand it. He'll slip control--here's hoping he
smashes himself this time!"
Gerard moved his head in disagreement.
"Wait," he advised. "You once said he could not last out a certain
twenty-four-hour race."
"He didn't."
"He finished in third place."
"Because you helped him through, that's why. He didn't have to do it
alone."
"He doesn't have to do this alone, either," reminded Gerard.
Rupert looked at him, then walked away, every line of his body
reiterating the prediction he could not sustain argumentatively.
It was half an hour later that Corrie came into the room to join his
host, carrying a letter in his hand.
"It is from Flavia," he volunteered. "She promised to write as soon as
they got across, but she did better; she wrote this on board the steamer
so that it was all ready to send." He sat down in his place and rested
his arms on the table in the boyish attitude so associated with the
massively rich dining-room of his father's house and the light-hearted
group who had gathered there. "It was like her to do better than her
word,--she doesn't know how to do less. One, one can tie up to _her_."
Gerard continued to gaze out the window opposite, his expression setting
as if under a sudden exertion of self-control.
"I--well, I was always fond of my sister, but one learns a good deal
more of people when things go wrong than when they just run along right.
She asks me about you, how you are now."
"Miss Rose is too kind."
Some quality in the brief acknowledgment compelled a pause. The once
self-assertive Corrie had become acutely sensitive to any suggestion of
rebuff or disapproval. He could not in any way divine this rebuke was
not for him, or know of the bruise he innocently had touched.
When the first course of the luncheon was served, Gerard came over to
his seat and opened a new subject with his usual kindness of manner. It
was a curious fact that, although Gerard had felt the awakening of love
for Flavia Rose from his first glimpse of her, he never had aided Corrie
for his sister's sake. Even when he had dragged himself from the
overwhelming blackness of pain and the numbing effects of anaesthetics to
defend the driver whose foul blow had struck him down, it was of Corrie
alone he thought, not of Flavia, Corrie whom he had shielded from
disgrace and open punishment. Man to man they had dealt together, no
woman, however dear, entered between them. So when Flavia had seemed to
fail her lover, again the separateness had held and Gerard never even
imagined visiting her desertion on her brother. He had not resented
Corrie's natural speech of her, now, but he could not listen to it; not
yet.
"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."