From the Car Behind
Copyright© 2024 by Eleanor M. Ingram
Chapter 12: The Making Good
Corrie did not slip control during the weeks that followed. There was no running wild to record. At first he used to come in from his driving reddened by more than the cold wind, and there were rumors current of certain vigorous word-duels between him and his sullen assistant, Devlin. But he never complained to Gerard or exhibited any smart of excoriated vanity. The testers accepted him as a little more than their equal, after watching him drive, and he gladly met their comradeship with his own. It was very easy to like Corrie; soon he was surrounded by friends.
Only Jack Rupert never spoke to him. The thing was not done obtrusively, but it was done. He never openly slighted Corrie Rose or showed him discourtesy, he simply failed to come in contact with him. And Corrie tacitly accepted the situation, avoiding the inflexible mechanician, on his part. So winter shut in, with blizzards that frequently drove everyone off the roads until snow-ploughs and shovels had accomplished their work. Then Gerard would summon Corrie to the inside of the huge, reverberant factory, where amid its lesser brothers the Titan racing machine was slowly growing to completion; the Titan of Gerard’s past speed-visions, the dream-planned car that was now for another’s control. He taught, and Corrie learned hungrily.
It was in February Corrie first noticed that Gerard and Rupert simultaneously disappeared for an hour and a half every morning. No one knew why, or had interested enough to speculate, it seemed. Gerard always sent Corrie off on some duty, at that time each day, and only accidental circumstances awoke the young driver’s attention to a custom without an explanation.
Of course, Corrie asked no questions. He was not temperamentally curious and he was well-bred. But, returning unexpectedly to the house, one morning in early March, he passed Rupert going out and realized himself encroaching on the tacitly established period of retirement. Sobered, half-doubtful of his course, he ran up the stairs, and in the upper hall came suddenly upon Gerard leaning against the wall.
“Gerard!” Corrie exclaimed; goggles and gloves fell to the floor as he sprang to his friend. “Gerard, you’re ill? Let me help you—lean on me! I’m strong enough to carry you.”
“It is nothing,” Gerard panted. “I tried to come after Rupert in too much of a hurry, that’s all. I remembered something I had forgotten to tell him. What are you doing here? I sent you out.”
Once Corrie would have flashed hot retort to a reproof certainly undeserved, not now.
“I am sorry; I didn’t understand,” he apologized. “You never said I must stay out. Let me help you, get you something.”
“I know; I’m unreasonable!” Gerard straightened himself. “Never mind me, Corrie; I am all right now.”
He was white with a singular pallor that Corrie was too inexperienced to recognize, but he smiled reassurance to his assistant and himself led the way to the room opposite.
“There is some dose in the glass on the table,” he indicated, finding a chair. “I might drink it, if I had it here. And, don’t you want to get me a cigarette?”
In silence Corrie complied with the requests. Beside the slight, colorless Gerard, he radiated vigorous health and that scintillant freshness drawn from days passed in sunlight and sweet air, but his eyes at this moment held a desperate anxiety and unrest that left the advantage of contrast to his companion’s clear tranquillity of regard.
“You are getting worse,” he declared abruptly. “There is no use of trying to spare my feelings, Gerard; instead of gaining, you are losing strength.”
“I beg your pardon; I am getting better,” Gerard corrected with perfect assurance. He put aside his glass and leaned back in his chair. “You do not in the least know what you are talking about. Since you are here, we might get a bit of business done that I had meant to leave until you came in to luncheon. You understand that the formalities must be preserved; are you willing to sign one of our regular driver’s contracts, to drive for the Mercury Company this year, and for no one else?”
“I will do,” said Corrie, “whatever you want. Is this the paper?”
He took up a pen and, still standing, wrote his name across the foot of the document, the other man’s attentive gaze following his movements.
“Is that the way you sign legal papers, Corrie, without reading them?”
The blue eyes gave the questioner one expressive glance.
“You gave it to me,” was the answer.
Gerard contemplated him, then drew another printed sheet from a pile on the desk and pushed it across.
“All right. I want you to sign this, too,” he signified.
As carelessly as before, Corrie set down his signature and turned away from the half-folded page.
“I came back early because I had a letter from Flavia,” he explained. “I wanted to answer it right away. She says that father doesn’t intend to come home until autumn. I don’t believe she likes it much, but of course she wouldn’t tell him so. He has enough to stand.”
Gerard drew the two papers towards him and put them into a drawer. It is hard to be consistent; the temptation of seeing Corrie read Flavia’s weekly letters had long since vanquished the resolution of the man whose love for her seemed to himself to illustrate that the economies of Nature do not include human passion. Corrie found a willing, if mute, listener to all confidences in regard to his sister.
“She has never told Mr. Rose that you are with me?” Gerard asked, to-day.
“No,” he responded, surprised. “Oh no! She promised me that, the night before I left home.”
“Yet, living so close in thought with your father as she does, I should have fancied——”
“That she couldn’t help telling him? I don’t know who started that story that women can’t keep secrets.” Corrie laughed mirthlessly. “From what I have seen, they can keep quiet a secret that would tear itself out of any man I ever met, if the wrench killed him.”
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