Part 46

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 anæsthetics 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."

XII

THE MAKING GOOD

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.