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THE
READJUSTMENT
BY
WILL IRWIN
AUTHOR OF "THE CITY THAT WAS," ETC.
NEW YORK
B. W. HUEBSCH
1910
Copyright, 1910, by
B. W. HUEBSCH
PRINTED IN U. S. A.
THE READJUSTMENT
CHAPTER I
After luncheon they walked over from the ranch-house--more indeed a
country villa, what with its ceiled redwood walls, its prints, its
library, than the working house of a practical farm--and down the
dusty, sun-beaten lane to the apricot orchard. Picking was on full
blast, against the all too fast ripening of that early summer.
Judge Tiffany, pattern of a vigorous age, seemed to lean a little upon
his wife as she walked beside him, her arm tucked confidently into
his; but it was a leaning of the spirit rather than of the flesh. She,
younger than he by fifteen years, was a tiny woman, her hair white but
her waist still slim. She seemed to tinkle and twinkle. Her slight
hands,--the nail of the little finger was like a grain of
popcorn--moved with swift, accurate bird-motions. As she chattered of
the ranch and the picking, her voice, still sweet and controlled,
came from her lips like the pleasant music of a tea bell. He was
mainly silent; although he threw in a quiet, controlled answer here
and there. One could read, in the shadowy solicitude with which she
regarded him now and then, the relation between that welded old
couple--she the entertainer, the hoarder of trivial detail from her
days; he the fond, indulgent listener.
"I think Eleanor must be back from the city," Mrs. Tiffany was saying,
"I notice smoke from the big chimney; and I suppose she'll be over
before noon with the sulphur samples. It's amusing and homey in
her--her habit of flying to her own little nest before she comes to
us. She'll inspect the house, have dinner ordered, and know every
blessed detail of the picking before we catch a glimpse of her." Mrs.
Tiffany smiled sadly, as though this industry were somewhat tragic.
"I wonder how long Eleanor will be contented with such a way of life?"
put in Judge Tiffany.
"I've worried over that," answered his wife. "Suppose she should
settle down to it? It isn't as though Eleanor hadn't her chance at
travel and society and the things a girl of her breeding should have.
This is all her deliberate choice, and I've done nothing to help her
choose. Perhaps I should have decided for her. It's curious the guard
that girl keeps over her deeper feelings. How unlike she is to her
mother--and yet how like--" Her thought shifted suddenly with the
direction of her eyes. "Hasn't Olsen overloaded that little team?" she
said.
The cutting-shed stood midway of their course. Twenty women and girls,
their lips going as rapidly as their knives, sat on fruit crates at
long tables, slicing the red-and-gold balls apart, flicking out the
stones, laying the halves to dry in wooden trays. A wagon had just
arrived from the orchard. Olsen, the Swedish foreman, was heaving the
boxes to his Portuguese assistant, who passed them on into the cutting
shed. Further on stood the bleaching kilns; still further, the bright
green trees with no artistic irregularities of outline--trees born,
like a coolie, to bear burdens. Now the branches bent in arcs under
loads of summer-gilded fruit.
Long step-ladders straddling piles of boxes, beside this row or that,
showed where picking was going forward. Mrs. Tiffany halted under one
tree to call pleasantries up to a Portuguese, friend of many a harvest
before. Judge Tiffany proceeded on down the row, pausing to inspect
the boxes for any fruit gathered before it was ripe.
The first picker was a Chinese. His box, of course, showed only
perfection of workmanship. The Judge called up familiarly:
"Hello, Charlie!"
A yellow face grinned through the branches; the leaves rustled as
though some great bird were foraging, and the answer came back:
"Hello you Judge!" The Judge picked over the next two boxes without
comment; at the third, he stopped longer.
"Too much greenery, young man!" he cried at length. The branches of
this tree rustled, and a pair of good, sturdy legs, clad in corduroys,
appeared on the ladder; then the owner of the legs vaulted from four
feet high in the air, and hit the ground beside his box.
He was a stalwart boy of perhaps two and twenty, broad, though a bit
over-heavy, in the shoulders. That approach to over-heaviness
characterized his face, otherwise clean-cut and fair. His eyes, long,
brown and ingenuous, rather went to redeem this quality of face. Under
his wide and flapping sombrero peered the front lock of his straight,
black hair. Even before he smiled, Judge Tiffany marked him as a
pleasing youth withal; and when he did smile, eyes and mouth so
softened with good humor that stern authority went from the face of
Judge Tiffany. He stood in that embarrassment which an old man feels
sometimes in the presence of a younger one, struggled for a word to
cover his slight confusion, and said:
"You are one of the college outfit camped down by the arroyo, aren't
you?"
"I am," said the youth. "I also picked the fruit too green. I am here
to take my beating."
Judge Tiffany, who held (he thought) an old-fashioned distaste for
impudence, smiled back in spite of himself.
"If you don't attend to business in small matters, how can you hope to
succeed when you go out into life?" he asked with some pomposity. He
had intended, when he opened his mouth, to say something very
different. His pomposity, he felt, grew out of his embarrassment; he
had a dim feeling that he was making himself ridiculous.
"I can't," said the youth with mock meekness; and he smiled again. At
that moment, while the Judge struggled for a reply and while the youth
was turning back to the ladder as though to mount it and be done with
the conversation, two things happened. Up from one side came Mrs.
Tiffany; and from the other, where ran a road dividing the Tiffany
orchard from the next, approached a buckboard driven by a lolling
Portuguese. Beside him sat a girl all in brown, dust-resistant khaki,
who curtained her face with a parasol. Mrs. Tiffany ran, light as an
elderly fairy, down the rows.
"Eleanor!" she called.
"Dear, dear Aunt Mattie!" cried the girl. Judge Tiffany, too, was
hurrying forward to the road. The youth had his hand on the ladder,
prepared to mount, when the parasol dropped. He stopped short with
some nervous interruption in his breathing--which might have been a
catch in his throat--at the sight of her great, grey eyes; stood
still, watching. Mrs. Tiffany was greeting the girl with the pats and
caresses of aged fondness. Out of their chatter, presently, this came
in the girl's voice:
"And I was so excited about getting back that when Antonio left the
corral gate open I never thought to speak to him. And Ruggles's
Dynamo--they've let him run away again--just walked in and butted open
the orchard bars and he's loose now eating the prune trees!"
"Edward, you must go right over!" cried Mrs. Tiffany; and then stopped
on the thought of an old man trying to subdue a Jersey bull,
good-natured though that bull might be. The same thought struck Judge
Tiffany. Antonio, the Portuguese, lolling half-asleep against the
dashboard, was worse than useless; the nearest visible help was a
Chinaman, incompetent against horned cattle, and another Portuguese,
and--
"Let me corral your bull," said the easy, thrilling voice of the boy
who stood beside the step-ladder. Judge Tiffany turned in reproof, his
wife in annoyance, the girl in some surprise. The youth was already
walking toward the buckboard.
"I guess that lets you out, John," he said to the Portuguese.
Something in him, the same quality which had made the Judge smile back
through his rebuke concerning the green apricots, held them all. The
Judge spoke first:
"Very well, Mr.--"
"Chester--Bertram Chester," said the youth, throwing his
self-introduction straight at the girl.
"Mr. Chester is one of the University boys who are picking for us this
summer," said Judge Tiffany.
"Yes?" replied the girl in a balanced, incurious tone. Her eyes
followed Mr. Chester, while he took the reins from the deposed Antonio
and waited for her to mount the buckboard. As she sprang up, after a
final caution from Mrs. Tiffany, she perceived that he was going to
"help her in." With a motion both quick and slight, she evaded his
hand and sprang to the seat unaided.
Mr. Chester slapped the reins, clucked to the horse, and bent his gaze
down upon the girl. He had seated himself all too close. She crowded
herself against the iron seat-rail. It annoyed her a little; it
embarrassed her still more. She was slightly relieved when he made a
beginning of conversation.
"So you're Judge Tiffany's niece, the girl who runs her ranch herself.
I've heard heaps about you."
"Yes?" Embarrassment came back with the sound of her own voice. She
could talk to Judge Tiffany or to any man of Judge Tiffany's age, but
with her male contemporaries she felt always this same constraint. And
this young man was looking on her insistently, as though demanding
answers.
"They say you're one of the smartest ranchers in these parts," he went
on.
"Do they?" Her tone was even and inexpressive. But Mr. Chester kept
straight along the path he was treading.
"And that you're also the prettiest girl around Santa Lucia."
"That's very kind of them."
"I haven't seen your ranch, but about the rest of it they're dead
right."
To this, she made no answer.
"I'm just down for a few weeks," he went on, changing the subject when
he perceived that he had drawn no reply. "I'm a Senior next year at
Berkeley. Ever been over to Berkeley?"
"Yes."
"Ever go to any of the class dances?"
"No."
"Thought you might, being in the city winters. I'm not much on dances
myself. I'm a barb."
He peered, as though expecting that this last statement would evoke
some answer. But her eyes were fixed on the little group of
buildings--a bungalow, a barn and a corral--which had just come in
sight around a turn of the orchard road. For the first time, she spoke
with animation.
"There's the house--and there he is, just back of the stable!"
Dynamo, the bull, a black and tan patch amidst the greenery, stood
reaching with his tongue at an overhanging prune branch, bowed to the
breaking point with green beads of fruit. As they watched, he sucked
its tip between his blue lips, pulled at it with a twist of his head;
the branch cracked and broke. Dynamo, his eyes closed in meditative
enjoyment, started to absorb it from end to end.
"Oh, dear, he'll ruin it!" she cried. "Do hurry! Hadn't you better
send for help?"
"I figure I can handle him," said Bertram Chester, bristling at the
imputation. "Just give me that halter and drive in back of the
corral, will you?"
"Please don't let him trample any trees!" she called after her
champion as he vaulted the fence.
Dynamo, seeing the end of his picnic at hand, galloped awkwardly a few
rods, the branch trailing from his mouth. Then, with the ponderous but
sudden shift of bull psychology, indignation rose in his bosom. He
stopped himself so short that his fore-hoofs plowed two long furrows
in the soft earth; whirled, lifted his muzzle, and bellowed. One
fore-hoof tore up the dirt and showered it over his back. He dropped
to his knees and rubbed the ground with his neck in sheer abandonment
to the joy of his own abandoned wickedness. He rose up in the hollow
which he had dug, lowered his horns, and glowered at the youth, who
advanced with a kind of awkward bull-strength of his own.
"Chase yourself!" cried Bertram Chester, flicking the halter. For a
second, Dynamo's eyelids fluttered; then, unaccountably, his bull
pride rose up in him. He stopped midway of a bellow; his head went
down, his tail rose up--and he charged. The girl across the fence
gave a little scream. The youth, stepping aside with a quickness
marvelous considering the size of his frame, avoided the charge. As
Dynamo tore past him, he struck out--a mighty lash--with the halter.
The bull tore on until he smashed into a prune tree. The green fruit
flew like water splashing from a stone; and Dynamo checked his course,
turned again, began to paw and challenge as the preliminary to another
charge.
"Oh, let him go--please!" cried Eleanor. Whether he heard her or not
made little difference to the youth. Taking advantage of Dynamo's
slight hesitation, he sprang in close, caught him by the horn and the
tender, black nose; and back and forth, across the ruins of the prune
tree, which went flat at the first rally, they fought and tugged and
tossed. Through the agonized half-bellows of Dynamo, Eleanor caught a
slighter sound. Her champion was swearing! Raised a little above her
fears by the vicarious joy of fight, she took no offence at this; it
seemed part of the picture.
No one can account for the emotional processes of a bull. Just as
suddenly as it rose, Dynamo's courage evaporated. Once more was he
brother to the driven ox. He ceased to plant his fore feet; his bellow
became a moan; he gave backward; in one mighty toss, he threw off his
conqueror, turned, and galloped down the orchard with his tail curved
like a pretzel across his back. Behind him followed the youth, lashing
him with the halter as long as he could keep it up, pelting him with
rocks and clods as the retreat gained. So, in a cloud of dust, they
vanished into the Santa Clara road.
When Bertram Chester came back panting, to return the halter, Antonio
had arrived and was unhitching the bay mare from the buckboard.
Eleanor stood by the corral gate, her Panama hat fallen back from her
brown hair and a little of the excitement left in her grey eyes.
Bertram approached, grinning; he wore a swagger like that of a little
boy who has just turned a series of somersaults before the little
girls. Eleanor noticed this. Faintly--and in spite of the gratitude
she owed him for turning a neighborly service into a heroic deed--she
resented it. Also, Dynamo and Mr. Chester, between them, had wholly
ruined a good prune tree in the prime of bearing.
"Say, we didn't do a thing to that tree," said Bertram Chester, with
the air of one who deprecates himself that he may leave the road wide
open for praise.
"It doesn't matter. It--it was very brave of you. Thank you very
much--are you hurt?"
"Only mussed up a little." He blinked perceptibly at the coolness in
her tone. Then he leaned back against a fence-post with the settled
air of one who expects to continue the conversation. She swayed
slightly away from him.
"Kind of nice place," he said, sweeping his eye over the shingled
cottage whose rose-bushes were making a brave fight against the dry
summer dust, over the tiny lawn, over the Lombardy poplars.
"It's nice of you to say so."
Bertram turned his eye upon her again.
"Say," said he, "I don't believe the Judge expects me back right away!
Anything more I can do around the place?"
Eleanor smiled through her slight resentment.
"I don't think I care to take the responsibility." In that moment,
the butcher-wagon, making the rounds from farm-house to farm-house,
appeared quite suddenly at the bend of the road. Maria, wife of
Antonio and cook for Eleanor's haciendetta, ran out to meet it.
"Oh, Maria--tell Mr. Bowles I want to see him!" cried Eleanor, and
hurried toward the house. Bertram Chester stood deserted for a moment,
and then;
"Good bye!" he called after her.
"Good bye and thank you so much!" she answered over her shoulder.
* * * * *
Two minutes later, Mr. Bowles, driver of the meat wagon, was saying to
Eleanor:
"Which was it--rib or loin for Saturday, Miss Gray?"
"Was it?" said Eleanor, absently; and she fell to silence. Maria and
Mr. Bowles, waiting respectfully for her decision, followed her eyes.
She was looking at a dust cloud which trailed down the lane. When she
came out of her revery and beheld them both watching, silent and
open-mouthed, she flushed violently.
Bertram Chester, swinging between the green rows, was whistling
blithely:
"Say coons have you ebber ebber seen ma Angeline?
She am de swetes' swetes' coon you ebber seen."