From the Car Behind. Eleanor M. Ingram

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СКАЧАТЬ countenance was a study in disgust, as he contemplated one of his polished tan boots, a high-heeled, ornate affair of the latest design labelled "smart." Off the race course and outside of hours, Rupert had one passion: clothes.

      "I ain't registering any complaints if the rest are satisfied," he acidly returned. "But stepping in a puddle of wringing rags that the town board of health ought to condemn for making a noisy demonstration ain't what I look forward to all day as a treat. As for going home, I'm ready, myself. The trip we're missing will keep awhile this weather. The water is mussed bad and the only time I ever was car-sick was on the boat to Savannah."

      "Did he spoil his pretty shoes?" Corrie teased, speculatively eyeing the heap of wet, unsavory clothing. "Never mind, Briggs shall make them good as new with his Transcendant Tan for Tasteful Tootsies; you haven't seen that darky of mine shine boots. I don't know what to do with those clothes, Gerard, so I think I won't do anything. Let's go home before we starve. Rupert, don't you approve of charity?"

      "I ain't fitted to say; nobody ever showed me any. I always got exactly what I worked for, measure evened off and loose-packed. If I sneaked into somebody's boat-garage without an invitation, I wouldn't get a bath and breakfast and a greenback; I'd get ten dollars or ten days from the first judge in the stand. And so would you."

      Corrie paused, struck.

      "I? Why?"

      "You. Why? What's the answer? I don't know, but I know the type. You keep your score-card and watch it happen; you'll find you get just what you enter for. Nothing more and nothing less."

      "'Nothing more and nothing less,'" Corrie repeated, unconsciously exact. "Well," his dancing smile flashed out, "we don't want any more than that, do we? I'll be content with the life I earn."

      "It's a good thing, for that's all we'll get," was the terse reply. "When some folks start to kick a brick wall, luck drops a feather pillow between. Other people stub their toes. I ain't crying bad luck, because I never had any; I'm just saying we'll stub our toes, if we kick the wall. We don't have to kick it."

      "Rupert is a philosopher," Gerard observed, not mockingly or in ridicule, but as one stating a fact.

      His mechanician nodded coolly.

      "Calling names don't count. I've raced long enough to know a type of car when I see it, and I've lived long enough to tell a type of man. The way their heads set does it, maybe. Did you know the ladies were upstairs?"

      "The ladies?" echoed Gerard, surprised. "They came with you?"

      "Not precisely, I guess I came with them. Miss Rose saw me starting and said she was coming over with her own little machine to see the launch off, if she could get her cousin to come, and they'd bring me. So she drove me over. I ain't used to that."

      "Ladies?"

      "Ladies' driving. My life's insured, so it was all right, though."

      "Bully for Isabel!" Corrie approved, pensiveness cast aside. "Come up to them, Gerard. I hear her tooting for us with the horn."

      From the little scarlet runabout—the largest motor vehicle Mr. Rose would allow his vigorous niece—Isabel and Flavia had descended.

      "We came to see what you were doing," Isabel welcomed the group who issued from the club-house. "I don't suppose Flavia would have come if she hadn't been wondering whether Corrie was drowning himself. Go ahead and start; don't wait on our account. But you had better eat your lunch first, if you haven't already, for you will have no time to eat in the boat on that sea."

      "We haven't any lunch," Corrie cheerfully declared. "I gave it to a tramp after I threw him overboard. You're just in time to take us home for luncheon and save our lives."

      "You look as if you had been fighting," Isabel criticized, with a scornful survey of his attire. "You are all splashed with dirty water, your cravat is pulled crooked and your coat is torn. We saw your tramp; he passed us a few moments ago and we recognized your blue flannel suit with the Dear Me's insignia on the lapel. Mr. Rupert guessed what you had been doing, when he saw the boat all in disorder and the pier all wet. The man's hairy, dirty face looked horrid above your clothes."

      "A contrast to my beauty, not so? Fix my cravat, please, ma'am; I can't see the thing. But his face wasn't dirty, for I washed it."

      "Why should I fix your wet cravat? Hold my gloves, then. Where is your scarf-pin? Stolen by your tramp, I suppose."

      Gerard had joined Flavia, but neither yet had spoken, watching the cousins. They had not the fluent familiarity of intercourse possessed by the two who looked and acted very like a pair of handsome boys. Moreover, Gerard distrusted himself, fearing to say too much, too soon. He was approaching Flavia carefully and delicately as a man striving to close his hand on some frail, elusive creature whose capture he scarcely dares hope possible. And she gave him no help. Her frank gentleness and impersonal cordiality gave neither encouragement nor discouragement, no foothold smooth or rough.

      The actual position he had never even conceived; the fact that she was completely unconscious of his desire to woo her. He had no way of knowing that it was his attitude toward Isabel she considered in all his words and acts, remembering her cousin's confident appropriation of the guest. It was of Isabel that she spoke now, while Gerard hesitated for the right word to offer the girl beside him.

      "The roads were very wet and slippery," she remarked. "If Isabel were not a good driver, I think we would have found ourselves in a ditch. Indeed," her soft mouth dimpled into a smile, "once I thought we were in one. One wheel was. But we wiggled out again. Mr. Rupert wanted to put the chains on the wheels, but she said we did not need them."

      The thought of Isabel over-ruling the judgment of his racing mechanician unsteadied Gerard's gravity.

      "A coarse masculine hand is needed on the wheel, to-day," he confirmed, with ulterior intention. "I believe we had better divide our party differently, on the way back. Let me drive one car and Corrie or Rupert the other. I'll promise not to take any ditches, if you consent."

      "Great scheme," Corrie called, overhearing. "I'll take the red near-car home, Isabel."

      "No, indeed," Isabel vetoed decidedly. "Mr. Gerard is going to take me home and I shall learn a lot from watching him drive. You can take Flavia in your roadster; Mr. Rupert will ride in the rumble seat."

      Being a gentleman, Gerard compelled his expression to evidence pleasant acquiescence. But he was not soothed by the unclouded smile Flavia sent her designated escort.

      "Corrie doesn't mind taking me, do you, dear?" she covered her brother's chagrin.

      "I surely don't, Other Fellow," he heartily corroborated, coming across to his sister, although the change in his transparent face betrayed his discomfiture at the slight. "You and I have had many a good spin. In you go! Come up behind, Rupert; there is more room here than on the other machine."

      "I think Mr. Rupert would rather ride with us, anyhow," Flavia declared, her laughing eyes questioning the mechanician. "I fancied, once or twice on the way over, that he would have preferred to have you or Mr. Gerard driving."

      "I ain't making any scornful denials," admitted Rupert, as he stepped in front to crank the motor for Corrie. "I've always looked forward to being killed in a larger machine, myself."

      Isabel СКАЧАТЬ