Chapter 8: Aftermath

The newspapers were mercifully brief upon the subject of the unsupported accusation brought against Corrie Rose, although diffuse enough in accounts of the much-known Gerard’s disaster. The driver’s own explanation of his accident was accepted; his attitude towards the young amateur fixed the attitude of the public. Moreover, Jack Rupert was stricken suddenly dumb; no reportorial blandishments could obtain from him, on the second day, so much as an admission of the charges made by him on the day previous. Rupert surrendered like a gentleman: he laid down all his weapons. Dean’s appearance at his usual duties and explanation of his absence from the pink car quashed the last rumor, for the finding of a wrench beside a motor course meant nothing, considered alone.

The first things for which Mr. Rose looked each morning were the daily papers. After which, he invariably shot a glance of blended relief and smarting humiliation into the wide, earnest eyes of Flavia, as she sat opposite him behind the gold coffee-service, and addressed himself to his breakfast. He never looked towards his son at that moment, nor did Corrie ever break the ensuing silence. The change that had fallen upon Allan Gerard’s life was scarcely more absolute and strange than that which had come upon the Rose household of innocent ostentation and intimate gayety.

But the greatest outward alteration was in Isabel. Flavia and Mr. Rose maintained the usual calm routine of events at home and abroad, Corrie rigidly obeyed his father’s command to live so as to provoke no comment. But Isabel’s boasted, perfect nerves were shattered beyond such control. She moped all day in her own room, rejecting Flavia’s companionship, and fled from Corrie with unconcealed avoidance. Nor did she improve, as the days passed, but rather grew worse in condition.

It was in the sixth week after the accident whose echoes threatened to linger so long, that Isabel entered her cousin’s study, one afternoon.

“Flavia, I am going away,” she abruptly announced. “Mrs. Alexander has asked me to go South with Caroline and her, you know. Uncle says I may do as I like, and I am going. I can’t bear it here,” her full lip quivered.

Flavia turned from the window by which she had been standing, catching and crushing a fold of the drapery in her small fingers as she faced the other girl.

“You mean that you cannot bear Corrie,” she retorted, in swift reproach. “You treat him—how you treat him! You hardly speak to him, you hardly look at him. Oh, you are cruel, you will not see how he suffers for one moment’s fault.”

Isabel grasped a chair-back, commencing to tremble.

“I can’t bear to stay,” she repeated hysterically. “Don’t talk to me about Corrie.”

“I never will again,” Flavia assured, pale with extreme anger. “Yet you might remember that he loves you; a little kindness from you would help him so much. Do you know where he spent yesterday? He was out in his motor boat; out in November with a north gale blowing, alone in that speed-boat that is half under water all the time. You do not care, you have no pity.”