The Flying Mercury Part 4

"Thank you," he answered her. "You are more than good to recall me, Miss Ffrench. I owe an apology for breaking in this way, but I fancied Mr. Bailey alone--and he spoils me."

"It is nothing; I was about to go." She turned to give Bailey her hand, smiling involuntarily in her relief. With a glance, an inflection, Lestrange had stripped their former meeting of its embarra.s.sment and unconventionality, how, she neither a.n.a.lyzed nor cared.

"Good morning," said Bailey. "Shall I take you through, or--"

But Lestrange was already holding open the door, with a bright unconcern as to his workmanlike costume which impressed Emily pleasantly. She wondered if d.i.c.k would have borne the situation as well, in the impossible event of his being found at work.

The two walked together down an aisle of the huge, machinery-crowded room, the grimy men lifting their heads to gaze after Emily as she pa.s.sed. Once Lestrange paused to speak to a man who sat, note-book and pencil in hand, beside another who manipulated under a grinding wheel a delicate aluminum casting.

"Pardon," he apologized to Emily, who had lingered also. "Mathews would have let that go wrong in another moment. He," his smile glanced out, "he is not a Rupert at changing his tires, so to speak, but just a good chauffeur."

The gay and natural allusion delighted her. For the first time in her life Emily Ffrench laughed out in a genuine, mischievous sense of adventure.

"Yes? I wonder you could separate yourself from that Rupert to come here; he was a most bewildering person," she retorted.

"Separate from Rupert? Why, I would not think of racing a taxicab, as he would say, without Rupert beside me. He is here taking a post-graduate course in this type of car, in order to be up to his work when we go down to Georgia next week."

"Next week? You expect to win that race?"

"No. We are running a stock car against some heavy foreign racing machines; the chance of winning is slight. But I hope to outrun any other American car on the course, if nothing goes wrong."

She looked up.

"And if something does?" she wondered.

He shrugged his shoulders.

"Pray be careful of those moving belts behind you, Miss Ffrench. If something does--there is a chance in every game worth playing."

"A chance!" her feminine nerves recoiled from the implied consequences. "But only a chance, surely. You were never in an accident, never were hurt?"

Lestrange regarded her in surprise mingled with a dawning raillery infinitely indulgent.

"I had no accidents last season," he guardedly responded. "I've been quite lucky. At least Rupert and I play our game unhampered; there will be no broken hearts if we are picked up from under our car some day."

They had reached the door while he spoke; as he put his hand on the k.n.o.b to open it, Emily saw a long zigzag scar running up the extended arm from wrist to elbow, a mute commentary on the conversation. In silence she pa.s.sed out across the courtyard to where her red-wheeled cart waited. But when Lestrange had put her in and given her the reins, she held out her hand to him with more gravity.

"I shall wish you good luck for next week," she said.

Lestrange threw back his head, drawing a quick breath; here in the strong sunlight he showed even younger than she had thought him, young with a primitive intensity of just being alive.

"Thank you. I would like--if it were possible--to win this race."

"This one, especially?"

"Yes, because it is the next step toward a purpose I have set myself, and which I shall accomplish if I live. Not that I will halt if this step fails, no, nor for a score of such failures, but I am anxious to go on and finish."

Up to Emily's face rushed the answering color and fire to his; drawn by the bond of mutual earnestness, she leaned nearer.

"You live to do something? So do I, so do I! And every one else _plays_."

However Lestrange would have replied, he was checked by the crash of the courtyard gate. Abruptly recalled to herself, Emily turned, to see d.i.c.k Ffrench coming toward them.

Remembering how the three had last met, the situation suggested strain. But to Emily's astonishment the young men exchanged friendly nods, although d.i.c.k flushed pink.

"Good morning, Lestrange," he greeted. "I've just come up from the city, Emily, and there wasn't any carriage at the station, so when one of the testers told me you were here I came over to get a ride."

"I've been to see Mr. Bailey," she responded. "Get in."

As d.i.c.k climbed in beside her, she bent her head to Lestrange; if she had regretted her impulsive confidence, again the clear sanity and calm of the gray eyes she encountered established self-content.

When they were trotting down the road toward home, in the crisp air, Emily glanced at her cousin.

"I did not know you and Mr. Lestrange were so well acquainted," she remarked.

"I see him now and then," d.i.c.k answered uneasily. "He's too busy to want me bothering around him much. You--remembered him?"

"Yes."

He absently took the whip from its socket, flecking the horse with it as he spoke.

"It was awfully square of you, Emily, not to mention that night to Uncle Ethan. It wasn't like a girl, at all. I made an idiot of myself, and you've never said anything to me about it since. I never told you where Lestrange took me, because I didn't like to talk of the thing. I'm really awfully fond of you, cousin."

"Yes, d.i.c.kie," she said patiently.

"Well, Lestrange rubbed it in. Oh, he didn't say much. But he carried me down to where they were practising for a road race. Such a jolly lot of fellows, like a bunch of kids; teasing and calling jokes back and forth at one another half the night until daybreak, everything raw and chilly. Busy, and their mechanics busy, and one after another swinging into his car and going off like a rocket. By the time Lestrange went off, I was as much stirred up as anybody. When he made a record circuit at seventy-seven miles an hour average, I was shouting over the rail like a good one. And then, while he was off again, a big blue car rolled in and its driver yelled that Lestrange had gone over on the Eastbury turn, and to send around the ambulance.

It was like a nightmare; I sat down on a stone and felt sick."

"He--"

"He shook me up half an hour later, and stood laughing at me. 'Upset?'

he said. 'No; we shed a tire and went off into a field, but it didn't hurt the machine, so we righted her and came in.' He was limping and bruised and scratched, but he was laughing, while a crowd of people were trying to shake hands with him and say things. I felt--funny; as if I wasn't much good. I never felt like that before. 'This is only practise,' he said, when I was about to go. 'The race to-morrow will do better. We find it more exciting than c.o.c.ktails.' That was all, but I knew what he meant, all right. I've been careful ever since. He won the race next day, too."

"d.i.c.k, didn't it ever occur to you that you as well as Mr. Lestrange might do real things?" she asked, after a moment.

He turned his round, good-humored face to her in boundless amazement.

"I? I race cars and break my neck and call it fun, like Lestrange?

You're laughing at me, Emily."

"No, no," in spite of herself the picture evoked brought her smile.

"Not like that. But you might be interested in the factory. You might learn from Mr. Bailey and take charge of the business with Uncle Ethan. It would please uncle, _how_ it would please him, if you did!"

[Ill.u.s.tration]

d.i.c.k stirred unhappily.

"It would take a lot of grind," he objected. "I haven't the head for it, really. I'm not such an awfully bad lot, but I hate work. Let's not be serious, cousin. How pretty the frosty wind makes you look!"