chasm between the racing driver and Miss Ffrench, the hurt did not
cloud the cordial smile Lestrange sent to mitigate his command.
VI
Emily first heard the full story of the accident that evening, when
Dick sat opposite her on the veranda and gave the account in frank
anxiety and dejection.
"We're going down to-night on the nine o'clock train," he added in
conclusion. "To-morrow morning he'll spend practising on the track,
and to-morrow evening at six the race starts. And Lestrange starts
crippled because I am a clumsy idiot. He laughs at me, but--he'd do
that anyhow."
"Yes," agreed Emily. "He would do that anyhow." Her eyes were wide and
terrified, the little hands she clasped in her lap were quite cold.
"I wish, I wish he had never come to this place."
"Oh, you do?" Dick said oddly. "Maybe he will, too, before he gets
through with us. We're a nasty lot, we Ffrenches; a lot of
blue-blooded snobs without any red blood in us. Are you going to say
good-by to me? I won't be home until it's over."
She looked at him, across the odorous dusk slowly silvering as the
moon rose.
"You are going to be with him?"
Dick smoothed his leggings before standing up, surveying his strict
motor costume with a gloomy pride not to be concealed.
"Yes; I'm representing our company. Lestrange might want some backing
if any disputes turned up. Uncle Ethan nearly had a fit when Bailey
told him what I was going to do; he called me Richard for the first
time in my life. I guess I'll be some good yet, if every one except
Lestrange did think I was a chump."
"I am very sure you will," she answered gently. "Good-by, Dick; you
look very nice."
When he reached the foot of the steps, her voice recalled him, as she
stood leaning over the rail.
"Dick, you could not make him give it up, not race this time?"
He stared up at her white figure.
"No, I could not. Don't you suppose I tried?"
"I suppose you did," she admitted, and went back to her seat.
The June night was very quiet. Once a sleepy bird stirred in the
honeysuckle vines and chirped through the dark. Far below the throb
of a motor passed down the road, dying away again to leave silence.
Suddenly Emily Ffrench hid her face on the arm of her chair and the
tears overflowed.
There was no consciousness of time while that inarticulate passion of
dread spent itself. But it was nearly half an hour later when she
started up at the echo of a light step on the gravel path, dashing her
handkerchief across her eyes.
It was incredible, but it was true: Lestrange himself was standing
before her at the foot of the low stairs, the moonlight glinting
across his uncovered bronze head and bright, clear face.
"I beg pardon for trespass, Miss Ffrench," he said, "but your cousin
tells me he has been saying a great deal of nonsense to you about
this race, and that you were so very good as to feel some concern
regarding it. Really, I had to run up and set that right; I couldn't
leave you to be annoyed by Mr. Ffrench's nerves. Will you forgive me?"
Like sun through a mist his blithe voice cleaved through her distress.
Before the tranquil sanity of his regard, her painted terrors suddenly
showed as the artificial canvas scenes of a stage, unreal, untrue.
"It was like you to come," she answered, with a shaking sigh that was
half sob. "I was frightened, yes."
"There is no cause. A dozen other men take the same chance as Rupert
and I; the driver who alternates with me, for instance. This is our
life."
"Your arm--"
"Is well enough." He laughed a little. "You will see many a bandaged
arm before the twenty-four hours are up; few of us finish without a
scratch or strain or blister. This is a man's game, but it's not half
so destructive as foot-ball. You wished me good luck for the Georgia
race; will you repeat the honor before I go back to Ffrench?"
"I wish you," she said unsteadily, "every kind of success, now and
always. You saved Dick to-day--of all else you have done for him and
for me I have not words to speak. But it made it harder to bear the
thought of your hurt and risk from the hurt, when I knew that I had
sent Dick there, who caused it."
Lestrange hesitated, himself troubled. Her soft loveliness in the
delicate light that left her eyes unreadable depths of shadow, her
timidity and anxiety for his safety, were from their very
unconsciousness most dangerous. And while he grasped at self-control,
she came still nearer to the head of the steps and held out her small
fair hand, mistaking his silence for leave-taking.
"Good night; and I thank you for coming. I am not used to so much
consideration."
Her accents were unsure when she would have made them most certain,
with her movement the handkerchief fell from her girdle to his feet.
Mechanically Lestrange recovered the bit of linen, and felt it lie wet
in his fingers. Wet--
"Emily!" he cried abruptly, and sprang the brief step between them.
Her white, terrified face turned to him in the moonlight, but he saw
her eyes. And seeing, he kissed her.
The moment left no time for speech. Some one was coming down the
drawing-room toward the long windows. Dick's impatient whistle sounded
shrilly from the park. Panting, quivering, Emily drew from the embrace
and fled within.
She had no doubt of Lestrange, no question of his serious meaning--he
had that force of sincerity which made his silence more convincing
than the protestations of others. But alone in her room she laid her
cheek against the hand his had touched.
"I wish I had died in the convent," she cried to her heart. "I wish I
had died before I made him unhappy too."
VII
Morning found a pale and languid Emily across the breakfast table from
Mr. Ffrench. Yet, by a contradiction of the heart, her pride in loving
and being loved so overbore the knowledge that only sorrow could
result to herself and Lestrange, that her eyes shone wide and lustrous
and her lips curved softly.
Mr. Ffrench was almost in high spirits.
"The boy was merely developing," he stated, over his grape-fruit. "I
have been unjust to Richard. For two months Bailey has been talking of
his interest in the business and attendance at the factory, but I was
incredulous. Although I fancied I observed a change--have you
observed a change in him, Emily?"
"Yes," Emily confirmed, "a very great change. He has grown up, at
last."
"Ah? I can not express to you how it gratifies me to have a Ffrench
representing me in public; have you seen the morning journals?"
"I have just come down-stairs."
He picked up the newspaper beside him and passed across the folded
page.
"_All in readiness for Beach Contest_," the head-lines ran. "_Last big
driver to arrive, Lestrange is in Mercury camp with R. Ffrench,
representative of Company._"
And there was a blurred picture of a speeding car with driver and
mechanician masked to goblinesque non-identity, with the legend
underneath: "'_Darling' Lestrange, in his Mercury on the Georgia
course._"
"Next year I shall make him part owner. It was always my poor
brother's desire to have the future name still Ffrench and Ffrench. He
was not thinking of Richard then; he had hope of--"
Emily lifted her gaze from the picture, recalled to attention by the
break.
"Of?" she echoed vaguely.
"Of one who is unworthy thought. Richard has redeemed our family from
extinction; that is at rest." He paused for an instant. "My dear
child, when you are married and established, I shall be content."
Her breathing quickened, her courage rose to the call of the moment.
"If Dick is here, if he is instead of a substitute," she said,
carefully quiet in manner, "would it matter, since I am only a girl,
whom I married, Uncle Ethan?"
The recollection of that evening when Emily had given her promise of
aid, stirred under Mr. Ffrench's self-absorbtion. He looked across the
table at her colorless, eager face with perhaps his first thought of
what that promise might have cost her.
"No," he replied kindly. "It is part of my satisfaction that you are
set free to follow your own choice, without thought of utility or
fortune. Of course, I need not say provided the man is of your own
class and associations. We will fear no more low marriages."
She had known it before, but it was hard to hear the sentence embodied
in words. Emily folded her hands over the paper in her lap and the
pleasant breakfast-room darkened before her. Mr. Ffrench continued
speaking of Dick, unheard.
When the long meal was ended and her uncle withdrew to meet Bailey in
the library, Emily escaped outdoors. There was a quaint summer-house
part way down the park, an ancient white pavilion standing beside the
brook that gurgled by on its way to the Hudson, where the young girl
often passed her hours. She went there now, carrying her little
work-basket and the newspaper containing the picture of Lestrange.
"I will save it," was her thought. "Perhaps I may find better
ones--this does not show his face--but I will have this now. It may be
a long time before I see him."
But she sat with the embroidery scissors in her hand, nevertheless,
without cutting the reprint. Lestrange would return to the factory,
she never doubted, and all would continue as before, except that she
must not see him. He would understand that it was not possible for
anything else to happen, at least for many years. Perhaps, after Dick
was married--
The green and gold beauty of the morning hurt her with the memory of
that other sunny morning, when he had so easily taken from her the
task she hated and strove to bear. And he had succeeded, how he had
succeeded! Who else in the world could have so transformed Dick?
Leaning on the table, her round chin in her palm as she gazed down at
the paper in her lap, her fancy slipped back to that night on the
Long Island road, when she had first seen his serene genius for
setting all things right. How like him that elimination of Dick,
instead of a romantic and impracticable attempt to escort her himself.
A bush crackled stiffly at some one's passage; a shadow fell across
her.
"Caught!" laughed Lestrange's glad, exultant voice. "Since you look at
the portrait, how shall the original fear to present himself? See, I
can match." He held out a card burned at the corners and streaked with
dull red, "The first time I saw your writing, and found my own name
there."
Amazed, Emily sat up, and met in his glowing face all incarnate joy of
life and youth.
"Oh!" she gasped piteously.
"You are surprised that I am here? My dear, my dear, after last night
did you think I could be anywhere else?"
"The race--"
"I know that track too well to need much practise, and I had the
machine out at dawn. My partner is busy practising this morning, and
I'll be back in a couple of hours. I was afraid," the gray eyes were
so gentle in their brilliancy, "I was afraid you might worry, Emily."
Serenely he assumed possession of her, and the assumption was very
sweet. He had not touched her, yet Emily had the sensation of brutally
thrusting him away when she spoke:
"How could I do anything else," she asked with desolation, "since we
must never meet each other any more? Only, you will not go far
away--you will stay where I can sometimes see you as we pass? I--I
think I could not bear it to have you go away."
"Emily!"
The scissors clinked sharply to the floor as she held out her white
hands in deprecation of his cry; the tears rushed to her eyes.
"You know, you know! I am not free; I am Emily Ffrench. I can not fail
my uncle and grieve him as his son did. Oh, I will never marry any one
else, and we will hear of each other; I can read in the papers and
Dick will tell me of you. It will be something to be so close, down
there and up here."
"Emily!"
"You are not angry? You will not be angry? You know I can do nothing
else, please say you know."
He came nearer and took both cold little hands in his clasp, bending
to her the shining gravity of his regard.
"Did you think me such a selfish animal, my dear, that I would have
kissed you when I could not claim you?" he asked. "Did you think I
could forget you were Emily Ffrench; even by moonlight?"
Her fair head fell back, her dark eyes questioned his.
"You--mean--"
"I mean that even your uncle can not deny my inherited quality of
gentleman. I am no millionaire incognito. I have driven racing cars
and managed this factory to earn my living, having no other dependence
than upon myself, but my blood is as old as yours, little girl, if
that means anything."
"Not to me," she cried, looking up into his eyes. "Not to me, but to
him. I cared for _you_--"
He drew her toward him, unresisting, their gaze still on each other.
As from the first, there was no shyness between them, but the strange,
exquisite understanding now made perfect.
"I was right to come to you," he declared, after a time. "Right to
fear that you were troubled, conscientious lady. But I must go back,
or there will be a fine disturbance at the Beach. And I have shattered
my other plans to insignificant fragments, or you have. If I did not
forget by moonlight that you were Emily Ffrench, I certainly forgot
everything else."
She looked up at him, her softly tinted face bright as his own, her
yellow hair rumpled into flossy tendrils under the black velvet
ribbon binding it.
"Everything else?" she echoed. "Is there anything else but this?"
"Nothing that counts, to me. You for my own, and this good world to
live in--I stand bareheaded before it all. But yet, I told you once
that I had a purpose to accomplish; a purpose now very near
completion. In a few months I meant to leave Ffrenchwood."
Emily gave a faint cry.
"Yes, for my work would have been done. Then I fell in love and upset
everything. When I tell Mr. Ffrench that I want you, I will have to
leave at once."
"Why? You said--"
"How brave are you, Emily?" he asked. "I said your uncle could not
question my name or birth, but I did not say he would want to give you
to me. Nor will he; unless I am mistaken. Are you going to be brave
enough to come to me, knowing he has no right to complain, since you
and I together have given him Dick?"
"He does not know you; how can you tell he does not like you?" she
urged.
"Do you think he likes 'Darling' Lestrange of the race course?"
The sudden keen demand disconcerted her.
"I hear a little down there," he added. "I have not been fortunate
with your kinsman. No, it is for you to say whether Ethan Ffrench's
unjust caprice is a bar between us. To me it is none."
"I thought there was to be no more trouble," she faltered,
distressed.
Lestrange looked down at her steadily, his gray eyes darkening to an
expression she had never seen.
"Have I no right?" was his question. "Is there no cancelling of a
claim, is there no subsequent freedom? Is it all no use, Emily?"
Vaguely awed and frightened, her fingers tightened on his arm in a
panic of surrender.
"I will come to you, I will come! You know best what is right--I trust
you to tell me. Forgive me, dear, I wanted to--"
He silenced her, all the light flashing back to his face.
"A promise; hush! Oh, I shall win to-night with that singing in my
ears. I have more to say to you, but not now. I must see Bailey,
somehow, before I go."
"He is at the house; let me send him here to you."
"If you come back with him."
They laughed together.
"I will--Do you know," her color deepened rosily, "they all call you
'Darling'; I have never heard your own name."
"My name is David," Lestrange said quietly, and kissed her for
farewell.
The earth danced under Emily's feet as she ran across the lawns, the
sun glowed warm, the brook tinkled over the cascades in a very madness
of mirth. At the head of the veranda steps she turned to look once
more at the roof of the white pavilion among the locust trees.
"Uncle will like you when he knows you," she laughed in her heart.
"Any one _must_ like you."
The servant she met in the hall said that Mr. Bailey had gone out, and
Mr. Ffrench also, but separately, the former having taken the short
route across toward the factory. That way Emily went in pursuit,
intending to overtake him with her pony cart.
But upon reaching the stables, past which the path ran, she found
Bailey himself engaged in an inspection of the limousine in company
with the chauffeur.
"You'll have to look into her differential, Anderson," he was
pronouncing, when the young girl came beside him.
"Come, please," she urged breathlessly.
"Come?" repeated Bailey, wheeling, with his slow benevolent smile.
"Sure, Miss Emily; where?"
She shook her head, not replying until they were safely outside;
then:
"To Mr. Lestrange; he is in the pavilion. He wants to see you."
"To Lestrange!" he almost shouted, halting. "Lestrange, here?"
"Yes. There is time; he says there is time. He is going back as soon
as he sees you."
"But what's he doing here? What does he mean by risking his neck
without any practice?"
"He came to see me," she whispered, and stood confessed.
"God!" said Bailey, quite reverently, after a moment of speechless
stupefaction. "You, and him!"
She lifted confiding eyes to him, moving nearer.
"It is a secret, but I wanted you to know because you like us both.
Dick said you loved Mr. Lestrange."
"Yes," was the dazed assent.
"Well, then--But come, he is waiting."
She was sufficiently unlike the usual Miss Ffrench to bewilder any
one. Bailey dumbly followed her back across the park, carrying his hat
in his hand.
A short distance from the pavilion Emily stopped abruptly, turning a
startled face to her companion.
"Some one is there," she said. "Some one is speaking. I forgot that
Uncle Ethan had gone out."
She heard Bailey catch his breath oddly. Her own pulses began to beat
with heavy irregularity, as a few steps farther brought the two
opposite the open arcade. There they halted, frozen.
In the place Emily had left, where all her feminine toys still lay,
Mr. Ffrench was seated as one exhausted by the force of overmastering
emotion; his hands clenched on the arms of the chair, his face drawn
with passion. Opposite him stood Lestrange, colorless and still as
Emily had never conceived him, listening in absolute silence to the
bitter address pouring from the other's lips with a low-toned violence
indescribable.
"I told you then, never again to come here," first fell upon Emily's
conscious hearing. "I supposed you were at least Ffrench enough to
take a dismissal. What do you want here, money? I warned you to live
upon the allowance sent every month to your bankers, for I would pay
no more even to escape the intolerable disgrace of your presence here.
Did you imagine me so deserted that I would accept even you as a
successor? Wrong; you are not missed. My nephew Richard takes your
place, and is fit to take it. Go back to Europe and your low-born
wife; there is no lack in my household."
The voice broke in an excess of savage triumph, and Lestrange took the
pause without movement or gesture.
"I am going, sir, and I shall never come back," he answered, never
more quietly. "I can take a dismissal, yes. If ever I have wished
peace or hoped for an accord that never existed between us, I go cured
of such folly. But hear this much, since I am arraigned at your bar: I
have never yet disgraced your name or mine unless by the boy's
mischief which sent me from college. The money you speak of, I have
never used; ask Bailey of it, if you will." He hesitated, and in the
empty moment there came across the mile of June air the roaring noon
whistle of the factory. Involuntarily he turned his head toward the
call, but as instantly recovered himself from the self-betrayal.
"There is another matter to be arranged, but there is no time now. Nor
even in concluding it will I come here again, sir."
There was that in his bearing, in the dignified carefulness of
courtesy with which he saluted the other before turning to go, that
checked even Ethan Ffrench. But as Lestrange crossed the threshold of
the little building, Emily ran from the thicket to meet him, her eyes
a dark splendor in her white face, her hands outstretched.
"Not like this!" she panted. "Not without seeing me! Oh, I might have
guessed--"
His vivid color and animation returned as he caught her to him,
heedless of witnesses.
"You dare? My dear, my dear, not even a question? There is no one like
you. Say, shall I take you now, or send Dick for you after the race?"
Mr. Ffrench exclaimed some inarticulate words, but neither heard him.
"Send Dick," Emily answered, her eyes on the gray eyes above her.
"Send Dick--I understand, I will come."
He kissed her once, then she drew back and he went down the terraces
toward the gates. As Emily sank down on the bench by the pavilion
door, Bailey brushed past her, running after the straight, lithe
figure that went steadily on out of sight among the huge trees planted
and tended by five generations of Ffrenches.
When the vistas of the park were empty, Emily slowly turned to face
her uncle.
"You love David Ffrench?" he asked, his voice thin and harsh.
"Yes," she answered. She had no need to ask if Lestrange were meant.
"He is married to some woman of the music-halls."
"No."
"How do you know? He has told you?"
She lifted to him the superb confidence of her glance, although
nervous tremors shook her in wavelike succession.
"If he had been married, he would not have made me care for him. He
has asked me to be his wife."
They were equally strange to each other in these new characters, and
equally spent by emotion. Neither moving, they sat opposite each other
in silence. So Bailey found them when he came back later, to take his
massive stand in the doorway, his hands in his pockets and his strong
jaw set.
"I think that things are kind of mixed up here, Mr. Ffrench," he
stated grimly. "I guess I'm the one to straighten them out a bit; I've
loved Mr. David from the time he was a kid and never saw him get a
square deal yet. You asked him what he was doing here--I'll tell you;
he is Lestrange."
There is a degree of amazement which precludes speech; Mr. Ffrench
looked back at his partner, mute.
"He is Lestrange. He never meant you to know; he'd have left without
your ever knowing, but for Miss Emily. I guess I don't need to remind
you of what he's done; if it hadn't been for him we might have closed
our doors some day. He understands the business as none of us
back-number, old-fashioned ones do; he took hold and shook some life
into it. We can make cars, but he can make people buy them.
Advertising! Why, just that fool picture he drew on the back of a pad,
one day, of a row of thermometers up to one hundred forty, with the
sign 'Mercuries are at the top,' made more people notice."
Bailey cleared his throat. "He was always making people notice, and
laughing while he did it. He's risked his neck on every course going,
to bring our cars in first, he's lent his fame as a racing driver to
help us along. And now everything is fixed the way we want, he's
thrown out. What did he do it for? He thought he needed to square
accounts with you, for being born, I suppose; so when he heard how
things were going with us he came to me and offered his help. At
least, that's what he said. I believe he came because he couldn't bear
to see the place go under."
There was a skein of blue silk swinging over the edge of the table.
Mr. Ffrench picked it up and replaced it in Emily's work-basket before
replying.
"If this remarkable story is true," he began, accurately precise in
accent.
"You don't need me to tell you it is," retorted Bailey. "You know what
my new manager's been doing; why, you disliked him without seeing him,
but you had to admit his good work. And I heard you talking about his
allowance, Mr. Ffrench. He never touched it, not from the first; it
piled up for six years. Last April, when we needed cash in a hurry, he
drew it out and gave it to me to buy aluminum. When he left here first
he drove a taxicab in New York City until he got into racing work and
made Darling Lestrange famous all over the continent. I guess it went
pretty hard for a while; if he'd been the things you called him, he'd
have gone to the devil alone in New York. But, he didn't."
An oriole darted in one arcade and out again with a musical whir of
wings. The clink of glass and silver sounded from the house windows
with a pleasant cheeriness and suggestion of comfort and plenty.