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.