Just where the Santa Eliza trail commanded sight of the main travelled
road, Eleanor sat on a rock watching the hill-shadows lengthen on the
valley below, watching a mauve haze deepen on the dark-green tops of
redwood trees. The time was approaching when she must hurry back to
Mrs. Goodyear's bungalow for a dinner which she dreaded. Three weeks
of perplexity had bred in her a shrinking from people. She had found
excuse to wander away alone.
That lazy spring of the North woods, so like to early fall in other
climates, had given her at first the healing of spirit which she
needed. She wandered hither and yon as her fancy led her, following
this trail, pushing into that opening in the chapparal. She had come
out upon the Santa Eliza trail and gained sight of the road before she
realized with a kind of inner shame the way in which her feet of
flesh had been tending, the direction in which she had been turning
her eyes of the spirit.
Three miles away on the summit of the next ridge was the Masters
ranch, and there rested the centre of her soul-storm. Bertram Chester,
she knew by chance, was spending the week-end with the Masters.
She stopped by the rock, then; and immediately nature went out of her
heart and the world entered. For three intolerable weeks, this
heaviness had been descending upon her as by a whimsy of its own. Like
the water of those cupped wheels in her little irrigation plant at the
ranch, this black liquid, when it had filled its vessel to the brim,
would empty automatically without touch on the spring of her will.
When this came, she would feel rested, healed, in a state of dull
peace. Now the struggle of thought was on her again. As always before,
it began with an arraignment of the facts in the case, a search of
memory for any forgotten data which might lead to a conclusion.
The first crisis arrived on the evening when Judge Tiffany came home
in a plain mood of disgust, and announced baldly:
"Well, Mattie; our young friend did everything I expected of him."
He went on quite simply with the news. Bertram Chester had left him
almost without notice. But that was to be expected. The rest was the
worst. Bertram had gone to Senator Northrup--as manager of his real
estate interests. The name Northrup was as the name of the devil in
that household. Northrup's operations included not only law and
politics but latterly speculative and unprincipled ventures in
business. A dying flash of his old fire woke in Judge Tiffany when he
spoke as he felt about this young cub who had bitten his caressing
hand.
Eleanor left the dinner table as soon as she had a fair excuse. She
found herself unable to bear it. Had she remained, she must have
defended him. But alone in her living room she look counsel of this
treason and agreed in her heart with her uncle. The very manner in
which he had done it--never a hint, never a preliminary mention of
Northrup--appealed to her as the deepest treason of all.
The next evening, Bertram Chester had the superb impudence to call.
Eleanor was alone in the house that night. She hesitated when the
maid brought in his name, then shook herself together and went out to
face him.
He met her with an imitation of his old manner, an assumption that his
change in employment would make no difference in his social relations
with the Tiffanys. What words had she used to let him know her
feelings? She could not remember now. But it had come hard; for the
unmoral half of her perceptions was noting how big and beautiful he
looked, how his blush, as of a stripling facing reproof, became him.
He pleaded, he stormed, he presumed, he passed in and out of sulky
moods, he began to defend himself against the silent attack of her
look. Why hadn't he a right to do it? A man should look out for
himself. But he'd have stayed and rotted with the old law office if
he'd felt that she would take it that way.
"You mean more to me than success!" he said.
"No more of that, please!" she cried. After that cry, she fell into
dignified silence as the only defence against the double attack from
him and from the half of her that yearned for him. From her silence he
himself grew silent until, with a boyish shake of his
shoulders--lovable but comically inadequate--he bade her good night.
"You'll cool off!" he said at the door.
"Good bye," she responded simply.
"No, it's good night," he answered.
She woke next morning with a sense of vacancy in heart and mind.
Something was gone. She did nothing for a week but justify herself for
calling that something back, or nerve herself to let it go.
On the one hand, her mind told her that he had done the ungrateful,
the treasonable thing. It did not matter that he might have done it
through mere lack of finer perception. That was part of his
intolerability. On the other hand, her heart ran like a shuttle
through a web of his smiles, his illuminations, the shiver, as from a
weapon suddenly drawn, of his unexpected presence, even his look when
he stood at the door to receive her final good bye. The woof of that
web was the sense of vacancy in her--the unconquerable feeling that a
thing by which she had lived was utterly lost.
And where would he go if she let him go? Ah, the inn was ready, the
room was swept. He would go inevitably to Kate Waddington. That would
be hard to bear. Sense of justice was strong in Eleanor; she realized
the ungenerosity of this emotion while she continued to harbor it. But
was there not justice in it after all? Kate Waddington could grasp,
could guide, only the worst part of him. Kate Waddington had in her no
guidance for the better Bertram Chester, who must be in him somewhere.
She hugged this justification to herself. Perhaps it was not right to
let him go; perhaps her heart and her duty were as one.
A cock quail came out from the chapparal, saw her, and bobbed back;
the feet of his flock rustled the twigs. Now he was raising his spring
call--"muchacho!" "muchacho!" Clearer and slighter came the call of
his mate--"muchacho!" "muchacho!" A ground squirrel shook the
laurel-bush at her side, so that its buds brushed her shoulder. The
cock quail came back into the pathway, slanted his wise head, plumed
in splendor, to find whether she were friend or enemy, saw that she
made no move, and fell to foraging among the leaves. She had sat so
long and so quietly that the little people of the ground were
accepting her as part of the landscape. She began dimly to perceive
these things, to take joy in them. And then they colored her mood.
What was she but a young, female thing, a vessel of life universal?
What was her attraction toward Bertram Chester but a part of the
great, holy force which made and moved hills, trees, the little people
of hills and trees? What was she, to have resisted the impulse in her
because of a few imperfections, a little lack of development in
civilized morals?
Her perception of nature died away, but the slant which it had given
her thoughts persisted.
When she felt and spoke as she had done that night in the Man Far Low,
she was unwholesome, super-refined, super-civilized--she was
proceeding by the hothouse morals which she had learned in books and
in European studios. When she felt as she did on that first night
under the bay tree, she was wholesome and eternally right.
How much greater in her, after all, if she had followed the call, had
taken him for the man in him, to develop, to guide as a woman may
guide! Ah, by what token could she call him back?
Her gaze of meditation had been fixed on the road below. She had been
half-consciously aware for some time of a figure which lost itself
behind one of the hill-turns, reappeared again, became wholly visible
in a band of late afternoon sunshine.
It was Bertram Chester. The vision came without any shock of first
surprise. He had been so much part of her thoughts that it seemed the
most natural presence in the world. He was swinging along the road in
her direction, heaving his massive shoulders with every stride; he
stopped, took off his cap, wiped his forehead with a motion which,
seen even at that distance, conveyed all his masculinity, and strode
on again.
Would he keep on along the road, or would he turn toward her up the
Santa Eliza trail? And if he did keep on, would those roving eyes of
his perceive her sitting there? Why not leave everything to that
chance? If he looked up and saw her there on her rock, if he turned
into the trail and passed her--that was a sign. She found herself,
nevertheless, humanly striving to cheat fortune and the gods by
fixing all her mind and eyes upon him, as though she would hypnotize
him into looking up.
But her mind and eyes had no power over him. He kept on with his even
gait until he was lost behind the clump of trees which marked the
branching of the trail. One chance was gone; she might not know the
issue of the other until time and waiting informed her. How long
before she should know? She crouched low on the rock and tried not to
think.
The twigs and pebbles crunched under heavy feet; the branches shook
and rustled; a blue sweater became visible in the shadows. She looked
away.
"Well, I'll be--eternally blowed!" His voice came out like an
explosion. Much as she expected it, she started. When, after a moment,
she dared look up, he stood over her.
"Are you going to run away?" he asked. His voice, with its ripple like
laughter, showed that he expected nothing of the kind.
"No," she answered, superfluously.
He seemed, then, to feel the necessity for explanation.
"I hadn't an idea--"
"Neither had I." She broke in to anticipate his thought. Each was
lying a little; and both knew it. She rushed to commonplaces.
"Uncle Edward and I are at Mrs. Goodyear's bungalow over Sunday. It's
our last expedition out of town before we go down to the ranch."
"Well, I must have had a hunch! I'm at the Masters ranch over Sunday.
I got a freak idea to take a walk alone. It sure was a hunch!" Soft
sentiment tinged his voice. She answered nothing.
"A hunch that you were alone here, nobody to interrupt--say, are you
still sore on me?"
"I--I didn't run away--"
"Oh, I knew you'd get over it. I think even the Judge will get over
it. I don't believe he'd care anyhow, if it wasn't for his old grouch
on Senator Northrup."
"Perhaps. He's said nothing--to me--"
"But it's you I care about. Only you. I told you that and I mean it. I
don't want you to be sore--I'd go back and bury myself in the old
office for life if I thought it would make it different with you."
"Would you, Bertram?"
He leaned close to her; she could feel his compelling eyes burning
into her averted face. With one part of her, she was conscious that
here was a crisis too great for her fully to feel; with the other
part, she was aware that an ant, dragging a ridiculously heavy straw,
was toiling up her rock.
Now he had her hand, which lay inert in his; now his arm was about her
shoulder; and now he was speaking again:
"Can't you? Can't you stop looking down on me and believe I'm going to
be good enough for you?"
She found power of speech.
"I never--I don't think that I'm too good for you!" Her Rubicon was
crossed. It was a strangely long time before he kissed her, but the
silent interval after the kiss was stranger and longer still.
"Tell me what you plan for our future, Bertram, for I am afraid!" she
whispered at length.
"It's got to be a wait--that's the risk you take with a comer. I'll go
on twice as fast for you. What do you want--shall we tell about it,
girlikins?"
"As you wish, Bertram."
"I guess we'd better not, then--not until the old Judge gets his back
down. Let's have it just between me and my little girl.
"Say!" he added, the sentiment blowing out of his tone, "what was the
matter, anyhow, that night on the restaurant balcony? Why did you turn
me down then, and what made you so sore? I've never quite got to your
thoughts, you know. But I'm going to!" He drew her closer. "Every one
of them!"
She dropped her face on his shoulder.
"Ah, we've so many things to talk about, Bertram, and there's so much
time! I've been a girl that didn't know her mind. Shan't we let that
rest now? Shan't we be contented with what to-day has brought you and
me?"
A film clouded his face.
"Yes--if you want it that way."
"Hoo-ooo-ooo!" Clear and high, but quavering, a masculine voice was
calling across the ridge. Eleanor sprang up.
"That's Uncle Edward--it's dinner-time--do you want him to find
you--you'd better go!"
He stood as though considering.
"All right. When are you going back?"
"We catch the seven train to-morrow afternoon at Santa Eliza."
"Darn! I'd engaged to take on the five-ten at Las Olivas. I've half a
notion to change and join you and see what the old man says--"
"No, Bertram, it's better not. We'll find a way. Go now!"
"You bet we will--good bye, girlikins!" He made no move to kiss her
again; he turned and crashed down the trail.
Eleanor sped up the trail. Safe on the summit of the ridge, her secret
hidden behind her, she answered the call. Then she dared look back at
the figure vanishing in deep shadow below. Her expression and
attitude, soft-eyed and drooping though they were, showed other
emotions than unmixed happiness.