The Flying Mercury Part 10

But Lestrange had already recovered himself, his right arm crossed with a scorched and bleeding bar where it had touched the glittering wheel, and the two young men were standing opposite each other in safety.

"You are not hurt?" was the first question.

"_I?_ I ought to be, but I'm not. Come to a surgeon, Lestrange--Oh, you told me not to sit there!"

Lestrange glanced down at the surface-wound, then quickly back at the two pallid faces.

"Go on to your work, Peters," he directed. "I'm all right." And as the man slowly obeyed, "_Now_ will you take my advice and come to the race with me, Ffrench?"

"Race! You'd race with that arm?"

"Yes. Are you coming with me?"

Shaken and tremulous, d.i.c.k pa.s.sed a damp hand across his forehead.

"I think you're mad to stand talking here. Come to the office, for heaven's sake. And, I'd be ground up there, if you hadn't caught me,"

he looked toward the jaws sullenly shredding and reshredding a strip of cloth from his sleeve. "I'll do anything you want."

"Will you?" Lestrange flashed quickly. He flung back his head with the resolute setting of expression the other knew so well, his eyes brilliant with a resolve that took no heed of physical discomfort.

"Then give me your word that you'll stick to your work here. That is my fear; that the change in you is just a mood you'll tire of some day. I want you to stand up to your work and not drop out disqualified."

"I will," said d.i.c.k, subdued and earnest. "I couldn't help doing it--your arm--"

Lestrange impatiently dragged out his handkerchief and wound it around the cut.

"Go on."

"I can't help keeping on; I couldn't go back now. You've got me awake.

No one else ever tried, and I was having a good time. It began with liking you and thinking of all you did, and feeling funny alongside of you." He paused, struggling with Anglo-Saxon shyness. "I'm awfully fond of you, old fellow."

The other's gray eyes warmed and cleared. Smiling, he held out his left hand.

"It's mutual," he a.s.sured. "It isn't playing the game to trap you while you are upset like this. But I don't believe you'll be sorry.

Come find some one to tie this up for me; I can't have it stiff to-morrow."

But in spite of his professed haste, Lestrange stopped at the head of the stairs and went back to recover some small object lying on the floor beneath a pool of chilling metal. When he rejoined d.i.c.k, it was to linger yet a moment to look back across the teeming room.

"It's worth having, all this," he commented, with the first touch of sadness the other ever had seen in him. "Don't throw it away, Ffrench."

There is usually a surgeon within reach of a factory. When Mr. Ffrench pa.s.sed out to the cart where Emily waited, he pa.s.sed d.i.c.k and the village physician entering. The elder gentleman put on his gla.s.ses to survey his nephew's white face.

"An accident?" he inquired.

The casual curiosity was sufficiently exasperating, and d.i.c.k's nerves were badly gone.

"Nothing worth mentioning," he snapped. "Just that I nearly fell into the machinery and Lestrange has done up his arm pulling me out. That's all."

And he hurried the doctor on without further parley or excuse.

Lestrange was in the room behind the office, smoking one of Bailey's cigars and listening to that gentleman's vigorous remarks concerning managers who couldn't keep out of their own machinery, the patient not having considered it worth while to explain d.i.c.k's share in the mischance. An omission which d.i.c.k himself promptly remedied in his anxious contrition.

Later, when the arm was being swathed in white linen, its owner spoke to his companion of the morning:

"I hope you didn't annoy Miss Ffrench with this trifling matter, as you came in."

"I didn't speak to her at all, only to my uncle."

"Very good."

Something in the too-indolent tone roused d.i.c.k's usually dormant observation. Startled, he scrutinized Lestrange.

"Is that why you bothered yourself with me?" he stammered. "Is that why--"

"Shut up!" warned Lestrange forcibly and inelegantly. "That isn't tight enough, Doc. You know I'm experienced at this sort of thing, and I'm going to use this arm."

But d.i.c.k was not to be silenced in his new enlightenment. When the surgeon momentarily turned away, he leaned nearer, his plump face grim.

"If I brace up, it won't be for Emily, but for you, Darling Lestrange," he whispered viciously. "She don't want me and I don't want her, that way. I've got over that. And, and--oh, confound it, I'm sorry, old man!"

"Shut up!" said Lestrange again.

But though d.i.c.k's very sympathy unconsciously showed the hopeless 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 d.i.c.k 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?" d.i.c.k said oddly. "Maybe he will, too, before he gets through with us. We're a nasty lot, we Ffrenches; a lot of blue-blooded sn.o.bs 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?"

d.i.c.k 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, d.i.c.k; you look very nice."