Chapter 3: The Household of Roses

“If there is one thing meaner than another, it’s rain,” Corrie announced generally. “I’m going out. Won’t you come, Gerard?”

“If rain is the meanest thing there is, it shows real sense to go out in it,” Isabel commented, from the window-seat opposite. “That is just like you, Corrie Rose. When I ask you to take me out on a perfectly fair day, you won’t do it.”

“I?” stunned. “I ever refused——”

“Yes. Yesterday, when I asked you to take me just once around the race course, while the cars were out practising. You know you would not. If it is safe for you, it is safe for me. But never mind; your old pink car won’t win, anyhow. He hasn’t a chance with the professional drivers, has he, Mr. Gerard?”

“A chance?” Gerard gravely echoed. “Why, several of our best drivers are thinking of withdrawing, since he is entered, because they feel it’s no use trying to win if he is racing.”

“Oh, you’re making fun! But I mean it; I could race that car he is so vain of, with my own little runabout machine.”

Corrie dragged a mandolin from beneath his chair and tinkled the opening chords of a popular melody.

“Get on your little girl’s racer,
And I’ll lead you for a chaser,
Down the good old Long Island course.
And before you’re half through it,
Your poor car will rue it,
And you’ll trade in the pieces for a horse.”
The provoking improvisation ended abruptly, as Isabel’s well-aimed sofa-pillow struck the singer.

“Do you call that a ladylike retort?” Corrie queried, freeing himself from the silken missile. “Tell her it isn’t, Flavia.”

“I am afraid,” Flavia excused herself. “There are more cushions on that window-seat.”

“It was a soft answer, at least,” Gerard laughed. “And a good shot.”

“Oh, I taught her to pitch, myself. Now I’m sorry,” deplored her cousin.

“Too late,” Isabel returned complacently. “I called that a cushion carom, Corrie. And my car would not fall to pieces. Flavia, he is feeding candy to Firdousi.”

Flavia looked over with the warm brightening of expression Allan Gerard had learned to watch for when she regarded her brother, and which never failed to stir in him the half-wistful envy of the first day when he had seen her so gazing at the driver of the pink racing car.

“If Corrie can teach a Persian kitten to eat candy, he probably can teach it to digest candy,” she offered serene reply. “Besides, he loves Firdousi, as much as I do.”

“I only gave him some fruit-paste to see his jaws work,” the culprit defended. “He needs exercise. And so do I.”

“Not that kind, yours work all the time. It is only an hour since breakfast and you have talked ever since,” corrected his cousin.

“I haven’t!”

“You have.”

Corrie ran his fingers through his heavy fair hair, carefully set the purring kitten on the floor, and stood up.

“All right, if you say so,” he submitted gracefully. “What you say, I stand for.”

The argument was pure sport, of course. But with that last playful sentence, Corrie suddenly turned his dark-blue eyes upon Isabel with an expression not playful, as if himself struck by some deeper force in the words.

“What you say, I stand for,” he repeated, and paused.

Flavia and Gerard both looked at him. All the fresh ardor of first love, all the impulsive faith of eighteen and its entire devotion invested Corrie Rose and illumined the shining regard in which he enveloped his cousin. There was in him a quality that lifted the moment above mere sentimentality, a young strength and straightforward earnestness at once dignified and pathetic with the pathos of all transient things that must go down before the battery of the years.

It would have been difficult to encounter a more enchanting family life than that into which Allan Gerard had been drawn. The Rose household was as redolent of simple fragrance as a household of roses, in spite of its costly luxury, its retinue of servants and lavish expenditure. Thomas Rose’s wealth had been made so long since, before the birth of the younger generation, that to one and all it was merely the natural condition of affairs, not in the least affecting them personally. Money was very nearly non-existent to them, since they never were obliged to consider its lack or abundance. They spent as they desired, precisely as they ate when hungry or drank according to thirst, without either stint or excess. It was Arcadian, it was improbable, but it was so. And the guard-wall that encircled their gilded Arcadia was a strong mutual affection not to be overthrown from without. Only by internal treason could that domain fall.

It was not in one day that Gerard had come to understand this in its fullness; he had learned bit by bit. For there was nothing at all angelic about the gay family. But now he first realized, as he watched Corrie, that Isabel Rose was placed here by circumstance and not by fittedness. She was too earthen a vessel, however handsome and wholesome, to contain that fine sun-shot essence distilled from the fountain of youth which her cousin poured out for her taking. Gerard knew it, as he saw her matter-of-fact acceptance of the gaze that should have moved even a woman who did not love Corrie.

Yet, they would probably marry one another, he reflected. There was nothing to interfere, if she consented. He felt an elder brother’s outrush of impatient protection for the boy; involuntarily he turned to Flavia with a movement of regretful irritation at the folly of it all, a folly he divined that she also recognized.

Flavia met his glance, and read its impatience and regret. How she applied it was a reflection less of her own mind than of Isabel’s; she fancied Gerard jealous of this open wooing of the other girl, and mutely asking her own intervention.

That intervention was not easy to give. In spite of herself, the days with Allan Gerard had affected her so far. Stooping, she lifted Firdousi to her lap, gaining a moment before breaking the silence that had fallen upon the group.

“Where are you going to take Mr. Gerard, Corrie?” she inquired. “Are not the possibilities storm-limited?”

“He isn’t going to take him anywhere,” Isabel calmly interpolated. “They are going to stay in and amuse us. At least, that is what I say, if he is going to stand for it. He said he would, but it’s some large order.”

Corrie threw back his head, all seriousness vanishing before his laughter.

“Just you let father catch you slinging Boweryese like that, Miss Rose,” he begged, moving aside to stuff a handful of candy into either coat-pocket. “He loves to hear girls talk slang. But it is some classy order, all right, if you come to think of it; I guess I won’t commence to-day. I’m going over to show the Dear Me to Jack Rupert, Flavia; he thinks he can tell me why her engine misses.”

“In the rain, dear?” his sister wondered.

“‘Snips and snails and gasoline tales, are what little boys are made of,’” Isabel quoted derisive Mother Goose. “He won’t melt; let him go. Mr. Gerard, you do not want to go out in a sloppy motor boat, do you?”

“If you will forgive my bad taste, I believe I shall go with Corrie,” Gerard deprecated, rising. He looked again at Flavia, but she offered no suggestion that he stay.

“That’s the idea,” approved the gentleman in question. “I’ll ring for our raincoats.”

There was a period of silence in the many-windowed, octagonal library, after the two young girls were left alone. Flavia continued to play with the drowsy kitten. Isabel, chin in hand, gazed across the rain-drenched window-panes, her full lips bent discontentedly. The first diversion was effected by the smart slap of a maple-leaf flattened against the glass by a gust of wind, directly across the watcher’s line of vision.

“P.P.C.,” interpreted Flavia, surveying the large pale-golden leaf, as it adhered to the wet pane opposite her cousin.

“Now, what may that mean?” Isabel demanded.

“Pour prendre congé, of course. Those are the farewell cards of departing summer. See her coat-of-arms on it: a gold-and-crimson sunset?”

Isabel eyed her companion with scornful superiority.

“You had better talk sense,” she counselled. “That is a good stiff north wind blowing, and Corrie is just as reckless with his motor boat as he is with his car. He and Mr. Gerard are likely to be half-drowned—and I am glad of it.”

“Isa!”

“I am glad. It serves them right for leaving me at home and going off with that mechanic. I know why Corrie did it, too; he didn’t want us to be together all day. He is jealous of Mr. Gerard because he likes me.”

“Corrie does?”

Isabel launched a glance of malicious comprehension over her shoulder, smilingly meaningly.

“Oh, Corrie! Of course! But I meant Mr. Gerard. Anyone can see how Corrie hates to have him with me.”

Flavia adjusted the blue-satin bow upon Firdousi’s neck, saying nothing for a moment. She did not intend to put the question hovering at her lips, yet suddenly the indiscreet words escaped her: