Part 64

Gerard was at the front of the camp, watching for his car, when he felt a hand lain on his shoulder.

"Some racer just went off the turnpike into the ditch," Mr. Rose's subdued tones informed him. "Where's Corrie?"

"Safe; changing tires on this side of the turnpike," Gerard gave quick assurance. "It's not he. But this has been a bad day; I'm not surprised that you couldn't keep away from here."

"I couldn't keep away," Mr. Rose assented heavily. He drew out his handkerchief and passed it across his forehead, damp under the line of reddish-gray hair, pushing open his overcoat with the abrupt gesture that was also a habit of his son's. "I've had a hell of an hour where I was, Gerard. This morning I got a letter from my niece, Isabel. It seems she is married and her husband made her write it."

The two men looked fully at each other; some quality in Thomas Rose's expression communicated its white reflection to Gerard's changing face.

"He never did it--Corrie, I mean. Gerard, Isabel Rose threw the wrench that struck you and wrecked your car, last year. He's been shielding her. God, how I've ground it into the boy!"

There was a tall pile of spare tires beside them; on it Gerard put his hand, steadying himself against the shock that was less of surprise than of poignant self-reproach for his own failure to divine this open riddle. In that moment of final understanding, he knew that he had seen the pitiful truth rise to the surface of Corrie's blue eyes a hundred times, and had left its appeal to die out, unanswered.

Far down the course a ripple of cheering started, running nearer in a wave of gathering volume. Out around the curve swooped a gray streak, fled toward the camps, was opposite, and past. The Mercury was unleashed and hunting down its lost lead in the fastest speed of the day.

Mr. Rose brought his eyes from following its flight to meet Gerard's gaze.

"You remember how Isabel nagged him to take her around the race course in his pink machine," he reminded. "I forbade it and thought no more about the thing. Well, she got him alone--you know, I guess, that he was wild with boy's near-love for her and would have let her drag the heart out of his body--and she got his promise to take her around once. She worked the plan all out; Corrie started without his mechanician, and she waited for him a mile down the course, dressed in her riding-habit and wearing a man's cap and motor-mask. She figured that no one would notice her much on the road and Corrie could drop her off after making the circuit, just before he reached the camps, so that he would come in alone as he started and no one would be the wiser. They were just a couple of fool kids on a kid lark."

A yellow car roared to a stop beside them, interrupting clamorously. From his seat its mechanician fell rather than stepped.

"He smashed his wrist cranking her," the driver raged. "Someone else--quick!"

A blue-clad factory mechanic flung himself into the vacant place, bare-headed, without coat or mask.

"Here's my chance!" he exulted. "Go on, I'm it."

The car leaped out, no second wasted in parley. Men gathered up the injured mechanician and hurried him away. Mr. Rose looked on as if at a stage scene which did not interest him, and dully resumed his narrative.

"It worked all right, Gerard, until they met you on the back stretch and you challenged Corrie to race. He didn't want to, with her along, but she devilled him to go on, and he did. I can guess it went to his head, having her beside him. When you began cutting Corrie off so he couldn't pass by, he caught the joke right enough. She says he was laughing when he began to pitch odd screws and bolts at your car--he was never angry for a moment, just playing, as you were. But she was all excited over losing; when she saw he had both hands busy and you were forcing them back again, she snatched something out of the open box Corrie had got the bolts from and threw it at you, herself. She didn't know what she had thrown or done, until she saw you fall stunned across your steering-wheel and your car plunge off the road."

"I might have known," said Gerard, and turned his face to the course he did not see.

"You might have known!" flared Mr. Rose. "What was the matter with me? Hadn't I lived with Corwin B. Rose since he was born and never had seen him cheat or play foul, win or lose? He was straight, always. I should have known when he wouldn't talk--he never was afraid to speak out and take his licking. Oh yes, I belong to the brutal common people and Corrie wasn't brought up by moral suasion; he had more than one flogging before he was fourteen and we called him a man. And he never lied to dodge one. I went back on him; he never did on me."

The gay tumult of the tensely-strung multitude was in their ears, the band-music crashed blatant aid to the excitement. With a humming purr and rush the Mercury car shot past again, followed by the long roll of applause.

"We're leading by a minute and a half," one of Gerard's men triumphed, running past on some errand. "Oh you Rosie!"

"He stopped his machine as soon as he could, and put Isabel out," Mr. Rose continued sombrely. "She says herself that she was scared sick and begged him to save her. I can guess that part. Anyhow, he told her to go home and say nothing, that he would take care of her. He did. If it hadn't been for your protecting him, that morning, he might have ended in State's prison. I don't suppose she would ever have cleared him if she hadn't fallen in love with one of those Southerners she has been visiting, and blurted out the truth when he proposed, the other day. He put her in a buggy, drove over to the nearest clergyman, and married her then and there; then gave her paper and pen and made her write the whole story to me. He is a gentleman; he'd stand with her for whatever she had done, but he would not stand for her leaving Corrie to bear her blame. I'll make it up to him, yet!"

"Does Flavia know?" Gerard asked.

"I gave her Isabel's letter on the way across to you."

Flavia was sitting in the car with her wet handkerchief clasped in her folded hands, her veils drawn across the hushed beauty of her face. As Gerard came up, she bent to him.

"Corrie," she breathed. "Corrie, to do this! I am proud and glad and humbled. How could he, how could he?"

"He has more courage than I," Gerard gravely acknowledged. "I could not have done it. A superb folly, unjust to himself and us. He might safely have confided in his father or me and have trusted Isabel to our care."

"Allan, she had his promise to tell no one and she held him to it. She was ill and hysterical with terrified shame; Isabel never could endure to be found at fault even in little things. She was not bad or wicked, but just a coward."

"She found strength enough to watch Corrie under torture week after week," he retorted, his golden-brown eyes hardening to agate. "If I had been killed under my car, Flavia, do you realize that Rupert would have brought your brother face to face with the electric chair? And Corrie would have shut his lips and endured it all. Don't ask me to pity Isabel Rose--I've lived this year with her victim."