Part 42

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."