The Flying Mercury Part 3

"I sent for you when I sent for d.i.c.k, and for the same reason. I have tried three times to rear one of my name to fitness to bear it, and each one has failed except you. I wish you were a man, Emily; there is work for a Ffrench to do."

"When you say that, I wish I were. But--I'm not, I'm not." She flung out her slender, round arms in a gesture of helpless resignation. "I'm not even a strong-minded woman who might do instead. Uncle Ethan, may I ask--it was Mr. Bailey who made me think--my cousin whom I never saw, will he never come home?"

Her voice faltered on the last words, frightened at her own daring.

But her uncle answered evenly, if coldly:

"Never."

"He offended you so?"

"His whole life was an offense. School, college, at home, in each he went wrong. At twenty-one he left me and married a woman from the vaudeville stage. It is not of him you are to think, Emily, but of a subst.i.tute for him. For that I designed d.i.c.k; once I hoped you would marry him and sober his idleness."

"Please, no," she refused gently. "I am fond of d.i.c.k, but--please, no."

"I am not asking it of you. He is well enough, a good boy, not overwise, but not what is needed here. Failed, again; I am not fortunate. There is left only you."

"Me?"

Her startled dark eyes and his determined gray ones met, and so remained.

"You, and your husband. Are you going to marry a man who can take my place in this business, in the factory and the model village my brother and I built around it; a man whose name will be fit to join with ours and so in a fashion preserve it here? Will you wait until such a one is found and will you aid me to find him? Or will you too follow selfish, idle fancies of your own?"

"No!" she answered, quite pale. "I would not do that! I will try to help."

"You will take up the work the men of your name refuse, you will provide a subst.i.tute for them?"

Her earnestness sprang to meet his strength of will, she leaned nearer in her enthusiasm of self-abnegation, scarcely understood.

"I will find a subst.i.tute or accept yours. I, indeed I will try not to fail."

It was characteristic that he offered neither praise nor caress.

"You have relieved my mind," said Ethan Ffrench, and turned his face once more to the fire.

III

It was October when the consultation was held in the library of the old Ffrench house on the Hudson; December was very near on the sunny morning that Emily drove out to the factory and sought Bailey in his office.

"I wanted to talk with you," she explained, as that gentleman rose to receive her. "We have known each other for a long time, Mr. Bailey; ever since I came from the Sacred Heart to live with Uncle Ethan. That is a _very_ long time."

"It's a matter of five or six years," agreed the charmed Bailey, contemplating her with affectionate pride in her prettiness and grace.

"You used to drive out here with your pony and spend many an hour looking on and asking questions. You'll excuse me, Miss Emily, but there was many a man pa.s.sed the whisper that you'd have made a fine master of the works."

She shook her head, folding her small gloved hands upon the edge of the desk at the opposite sides of which they were seated.

"At least I would have tried. I am quite sure I would have tried. But I am only a girl. I came to ask you something regarding that," she lifted her candid eyes to his, her soft color rising. "Do you know--have you ever met any men who cared and understood about such factories as this? Men who could take charge of a business, the manufacturing and racing and selling, like my uncles? I have a reason for asking."

"Sure thing," said Bailey, unexpectedly prompt. "I've met one man who knows how to handle this factory better than I do, and I've been at it twelve years. And there he is--" he turned in his revolving chair and rolled up the shade covering the gla.s.s-set door into the next room, "my manager, Lestrange."

The scene thus suddenly opened to the startled Emily was sufficiently matter-of-fact, yet not lacking in a certain sober animation of its own. Around a drafting table central in the bare, systematic disorder of the apartment beyond, three or four blue-shirted men were grouped, bending over a set of drawings, which Lestrange was explaining.

Explaining with a vivid interest in his task that sparkled over his clear face in a changing play of expression almost mesmeric in its command of attention. The men watched and listened intently; they themselves no common laborers, but the intelligent workmen who were to carry out the ideas here set forth. Wherever Lestrange had been, he was coatless and the sleeves of his outing shirt were rolled back, leaving bare the arms whose smooth symmetry revealed little of the racing driver's strength; his thick brown hair was rumpled into boyish waves and across his forehead a fine black streak wrote of recent personal encounter with things practical.

"Oh!" exclaimed Emily faintly. And after a moment, "Close the curtain, please."

None of the group in the next room had noticed the movement of the shade, absorbed in one another; any sound being m.u.f.fled by the throb of adjacent machinery. Bailey obeyed the request, and leaned back in his chair.

"That's Darling Lestrange," he stated with satisfaction. "That's his own design for an oiling system he's busy with, and it's a beauty.

He's entered for every big race coming this season, starting next week in Georgia, and meantime he oversees every department in every building as it never was done before. The man for me, he is."

Emily made an unenthusiastic sign of agreement.

"I meant very different men from Mr. Lestrange," she replied, her dignity altogether Ffrench. "I have no doubt that he is all you say, but I was thinking of another cla.s.s. I meant--well, I meant a gentleman."

"Oh, you meant a gentleman," replied Bailey, surveying her oddly. "I didn't know, you see. No; I don't know any one like that."

"Thank you. Then I will go. I--it does not matter."

She did not go, however, but remained leaning on the arm of her chair in troubled reverie, her long lashes lowered. Bailey sat as quietly, watching her and waiting.

The murmur of voices came dully through the closed door, one, lighter and clearer in tone, most frequently rising above the roar pervading the whole building. It was not possible that Emily's glimpse of Lestrange across the gla.s.s should identify him absolutely with the man she had seen once in the flickering lights and shadows on the Long Island road; but he was not of a type easily forgotten, and she had been awakened to a doubting recognition.

Now, many little circ.u.mstances recurred to her; a strangeness in d.i.c.k's manner when the new manager was alluded to, the fact that her rescuer on that October night had been driving a racing car and had worn a racing costume; and lastly, when Bailey spoke of "Darling"

Lestrange there had flashed across her mind the mechanician's ridiculous answer to the request to aid her chauffeur in changing a tire: "I'll do it for you, Darling." And listening to that dominant voice in the next room, she slowly grew crimson before a vision of herself in the middle of a country road, appealing to a stranger for succor, like the heroine of melodramatic fiction. Decidedly, she would never see Lestrange, never let him discover Miss Ffrench.

"I will go," she reiterated, rising impetuously.

The gla.s.s-set door opened with unwarning abruptness.

"I'll see Mr. Bailey," declared some one. "He'll know."

Helpless, Emily stood still, and straightway found herself looking directly into Lestrange's gray eyes as he halted on the threshold.

It was Bailey who upheld the moment, all unconsciously.

"Come in," he invited heartily. "Miss Ffrench, this is our manager, Mr. Lestrange; the man who's going to double our sales this year."

Emily moved, then straightened herself proudly, lifting her small head. Lestrange had recognized her, she felt; the call was to courage, not flight.

"I think I have already met Mr. Lestrange," she said composedly. "I am pleased to meet him again."

"Met him!" cried Bailey. "Met him? Why--"

Neither heeded him. A gleaming surprise and warmth lit Lestrange's always brilliant face.