The Flying Mercury Part 12

A bush crackled stiffly at some one's pa.s.sage; 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 a.s.sumed possession of her, and the a.s.sumption 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 pa.s.s? 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 d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k?"

"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.