Toward morning, Eleanor managed to get a little sleep. When full
daylight wakened her to the dull realization of her situation and
burdens, she hurried into clothes, crept to the solid, old-fashioned
best bedroom where they had put Bertram, and took counsel of the
nurse. Everything was hopeful; she got that from the professional
patter of temperatures and reactions. It seemed that there might be no
internal hurt. He had roused from his shock in the night; had seemed
to know where he was and what had happened. He lay now in a natural
sleep, but he must be kept very quiet.
On the way downstairs, Eleanor met face to face with her aunt. Mrs.
Tiffany had been awake since the ambulance brought responsibility; but
her eyes showed more than want of sleep. The two women stopped, looked
long at each other; then Mrs. Tiffany took Eleanor tenderly in her
arms and kissed her.
"Don't you worry, dear," she whispered, "he will get well, and
everything will be all right with Edward and me."
Eleanor did not answer at first. She drew a little away from her
aunt's embrace, before she found tongue to say:
"Please don't speak of that, Aunt Mattie--oh, not of that now!"
As she made her way out to the piazza, in an instinctive search for
air and room, she was crying.
In the limpness of reaction, she sank into a chair. Every joint and
muscle, she realized now, ached and creaked. She could lift her arms
only after taking long thought with herself; and the soul within was
as burned paper.
The front gate clicked. The first, doubtless, of those inquiring
visitors who would read a meaning into the adventures of last night.
That, too, was to be faced this day! The pattering, hurrying footsteps
sounded near to her before she looked up and recognized Kate
Waddington.
If Kate had been crying, the only evidence was a hasty powdering which
left streaks of white and pink before her ears. On first glance,
Eleanor marvelled at her appearance of control, at the lack of
emotion in her face. But insight rather than conscious vision told
Eleanor of the currents which were running under that mask. At the
bottom Eleanor detected a fear which was not only apprehension of the
news from Bertram Chester, but also a cowardly shrinking from the
situation. She fancied that she could even trace Kate's consideration
of the proper shade of acting in the circumstances. All this in the
moment before Kate sprang up the steps and asked:
"Oh, will he live?"
A baser nerve in Eleanor quivered with the desire to be cruel. She had
to put it down before she could tell the simple truth. One little
corner of Kate's mouth quivered and jerked for a second under her
teeth before she caught herself and resumed the impersonation of a
solicitous friend.
"Tell me all about it," she said.
"Ah, I am too tired!" Nevertheless, Eleanor did manage a plain tale,
ending with the nurse's report and with her own conviction that he
would live.
"Oh, of course he will live!" And then--"Who is nursing him?"
She looked up on this question, which was also an appeal, a begging.
"We have a nurse," answered Eleanor shortly. It gratified her a
little, in her low state of consciousness, to be thus abrupt. The
better part of her realized this; saw how she was wreaking the revenge
of an old emotion. A reaction of generosity prompted her next words;
but she spoke with an effort.
"You may help if you want to. Uncle Edward must go to the ranch this
week--unless--don't you want to come here and stay in my spare room?"
It seemed to Eleanor that she had never made a harder sacrifice than
the one which she sealed with that invitation.
This, too, brought Kate out of her impersonation. Her whole figure
straightened for a second, and--
"Oh, might I?" she said.
"I should be very glad. Will you come up to see him--one may look in
at the door. He is in Uncle Edward's spare chamber."
As they threaded the involved halls of that rambling dwelling, Kate
hurried on ahead. Eleanor, from the rear, threw out a word or two by
way of direction. At the door, opened to get air of a dull and heavy
morning, they peered into the grim order of the sick room. The nurse
had already stripped it to hospital equipment. His face, refined
almost into beauty by pain and low-running blood, lay tilted to one
side as he slept. The nurse touched her lips. Eleanor nodded. The
nurse turned back toward her patient. Eleanor dared look at Kate.
Her color had changed from pale, back to the pink of life; now it was
turning pale again. She noticed neither Eleanor nor the nurse; she
stood as one in a universe unpeopled save by herself and another.
Once, her two arms quivered with an involuntary outward motion, and
once she swayed against the lintel.
And Eleanor, watching her through this wordless passage, gathered all
the currents that had been running through her will into an
indeterminate determination. In that moment she realized the full
bitterness of a renunciation that does not mean renouncing a wholly
dear and desired thing, but does mean renouncing the beloved thing
which one is better without.
Kate turned at length. Eleanor, as their eyes met, could read in her
face and body the change as the actress took command once more. Kate
flew at once to her hollow conventional phrases.
"The poor, poor boy!" she said. "Oh, we must all help!"
Eleanor turned away with the feeling that this made it harder for her
to perform her renunciation--if real renunciation it were.
The day brought too much work, activity, purely material anxiety, for
a great deal of thought. They had cut off the telephone in the main
wing of the Tiffany house and switched the current to the instrument
in Eleanor's living-room. Most of the day she spent answering that
telephone. People of whom she had never even heard, made anxious
inquiries about the condition of Mr. Chester. Before night the
newspapers became a plague. For in the afternoon, winged reporters,
shot out in volleys for a "second day story," had called at 2196
Valencia and found there no Sadie Brown. Hurrying down the back trail
to the Emporium, they did discover an indignant little shop-girl of
that name. Those reporters who had been with the wreck the night
before found no resemblance in her to the mysterious lady. Then came
a bombardment, in person and by telephone, of the Tiffany house. The
Judge, meeting all callers at the front door, lied tactfully. The city
editors gave up sending reporters and took to bullying over the
telephone; so that the burden of an unaccustomed lying fell upon
Eleanor. At eleven o'clock, and after one voice had declared that the
_Journal_ had the whole account and would make it pretty peppery if
the Tiffanys did not confirm it, Eleanor took the telephone off the
hook and went to bed.
The morning papers did pretty well with what they had. "Mysterious
Woman Nurses Prominent Varsity Athlete"--"Who Is The Pretty Girl that
Nursed Society Man in Las Olivas Horror?"--"Modest Heroine of Las
Olivas Holocaust." But the secret, thanks to Mark Heath, was safe.
* * * * *
She slept that night. Far along in the morning she awoke to the
delicious sense of physical renewal. The situation crept into her mind
stage by stage, as such things do arrive in the awakening
consciousness. She was calm now, what with her rest of body, her
decision of soul. She could think it out; her course of action and how
she might accomplish it.
A knock at her door roused her from half-sleep and meditation to full
wakening. Kate Waddington had entered--Kate, transformed into a
picturesque imitation of a nurse. She was all in grass linen, the
collar rolled away to show her round, golden throat. Her flowing tie
was blue, and a blue bow completed the knot of her hair. She looked
cool, efficient, domestically business-like.
"He's better!" Kate burst out with the news as Eleanor turned her
head. "There's really no danger now. The nurse says that he roused
this morning and showed a positively vicious temper because they would
not let him see anyone."
"That's pleasant news. I was sure that he would recover." Eleanor
caught an unconsidered expression, no more than a glint and a
drooping, in Kate's eyes. This answer, so calm, so entirely
unemotional, had touched curiosity if nothing more. But Kate chirped
on:
"I'm playing Mama's little household fairy--how do you like the way I
dress the part? I sent for these clothes last night. Now you're to
lie abed and let me bring you your breakfast. Are you rested, dear? It
was enough to kill two women!"
"Quite rested, I think."
Kate opened the window, bustled about putting the room to rights.
"Shall I bring your coffee now?" she asked at last.
"Yes, thank you."
Kate was back in ten minutes with table and tray. Whatever she did had
an individuality, a touch. That tray, for example--nothing could have
been better conceived to tempt the appetite. She set out the breakfast
and remained to pour coffee and to talk.
"And isn't it good--mustn't you be thankful--that it won't leave him
lame or disfigured or anything like that! His shoulder may be weak,
but what does a man need of shoulders after he's quit football?"
Eleanor just glanced over her coffee-cup, but she made no answer. Kate
turned her course.
"Won't you let me open your egg for you?"
"No, thank you." Then, "You're very kind, Kate."
"I am the original ray of light. Do let me fix those pillows. You're
going to lie in bed all the morning, you know. Shall I bring you the
papers? You should see them! They've got you a heroine."
"Me!" Now Eleanor showed animation.
"Oh, not you. We've all kept the secret well. You're a mystery, a
pretty shop-girl to the rescue. I hope the weeklies don't find the
real story."
"I hope so."
Kate rose, made another pretense at setting things right in the room,
and moved toward the door. A relief, a lowering of tension, came over
Eleanor. But at the threshold, Kate turned.
"Oh, I nearly forgot! They sent up from Mr. Northrup's office this
morning for some documents or deeds or something which they thought
Mr. Chester might have in his pockets. The nurse brought out his
clothes so that Mrs. Tiffany and I might go through them--I felt like
a pickpocket. And we came across a package of proofs--photographs of
him. We opened it to see if the old deeds might be in there. And
they're such stunning likenesses--Muller, you know--that I thought it
would do you good to see them."
"Thank you, I should like to."
Kate drew the photographs from her bosom and handed them over. As
Eleanor took them and began mechanically to inspect them, she caught
an unconsidered trifle. Kate was not leaving the room. She had stepped
over to the cheval-mirror, which faced the bed, and was adjusting the
ribbon in her hair. Looking across the photographs through her lashes,
Eleanor saw that the counterfeit eyes of Kate in the mirror were
trained dead upon her.
She examined them, therefore, with indifference; she stopped in the
middle of her inspection to ask if Judge Tiffany were up yet.
"They're excellent likenesses," she went on indifferently. "That's a
good composition. I don't care so much for this one. That's a poor
pose." She had come now to the bottom of the pile. This last print was
one of those spirited profiles by which Muller, master-photographer,
so illuminates character.
"Oh, that's a wonder," cried Eleanor. "Such a profile!" Then, at the
thought how Kate might misinterpret this purely artistic enthusiasm,
she dropped her voice to indifference again.
"Won't you please tell Aunt Mattie that I will get up if I can be of
any use?" And she held out the package.
Kate packed up the tray and withdrew. Eleanor heard the muffled tap of
her heels in the hall. The sound stopped abruptly. It was fully a
minute before they went on again.
Kate, in fact, had rested the tray on a hall table, drawn out the
photographs, and run over them, looking at them with all her eyes. The
profile was at the bottom of the package. When she reached that, she
hesitated a moment; then, with a quivering motion that ran from her
fingers over her whole body, she tore it in two. Short as this
explosion was, her recovery was quicker. She glanced with apprehension
over her shoulder at the door of Eleanor's room, tucked the
photographs back in her bosom, and took up the tray again.
Eleanor, when the sound of the tapping heels had quite died away,
turned her face toward the wall and gave herself to thought. She had
gathered up the last strand of the tangled web. Nothing was left but
the unweaving.
First, his soul was not hers, as her soul was not his. That
impression, received in a crisis which, she felt, was to be the crisis
of her life, had grown to be an axiom. His youth, his vigor, the pull
of a stalwart vitality which made his coarseness almost beauty--that
had been the attraction. His spirit, so blazing but so full of
flaws--that had been the repulsion.
Did not her own spirit have its flaws? Doubtless. Who was she, then,
to judge him? Ah, but they did not fit into her flaws!
Kate Waddington now--Eleanor turned her thoughts in that direction
with difficulty--her flaws were akin to his. Kate could tolerate and
admire the whole of him. His lapses in finer standards, such as that
desertion to Northrup--did they not fit like the segments of a broken
coin with Kate's diplomacies of that very day, her subtle reaching to
discover if Eleanor were really a rival? Kate would weigh his
compromises with honor as lightly as he would weigh those pretty
treacheries. He would be successful; everyone had felt that in him
from his very first flash on the horizon. Kate would help him to the
kind of success he wanted. Her tact, her diplomacies, her _flair_ for
engrafting herself, would be the very best support to his direct
methods of assault. They belonged to each other; and since now Kate's
desires in the matter had become manifest, only one thing remained.
All this allowed, what should her own line of conduct be? How should
she bear herself in the days and weeks when pure human kindness must
inhibit her from delivering a shock? Would it be necessary to commit
the inner treason of posing to him as a secret fiancée? Well, that
must be lived out, step by step. She could at least take all possible
means, within the bounds of kindness, of withdrawing herself gradually
from him, of paving the way for the ultimate confession. Kate
Waddington would help in that. There, her own game and Kate's ran
parallel.
This discovery of Kate at the end of the tangled strings brought a tug
at her heart, a black cloud to her spirit. She hated Kate Waddington.
It made her grip the pillows to think how much she hated. Her mood
descending into a bitter, morbid jealousy which had no reason for
being, but which momentarily swept all her resolutions away, sent her
mind and body whirling back toward Bertram Chester.
That passed. The last trace of her wild animal hatred for Kate
Waddington was borne away on a prayer of the old faith which held her
instincts. She rose from her bed in a state of fixed determination
that never faltered again.
When Eleanor was dressed, she turned not to the front of the house
where the business of drawing back a life was afoot, but to the fresh
silences of her garden. She walked to the lattice whose view commanded
the bay and the distant Gate. It was a quiet, dull-gold morning on the
Roads. A tug fussed about the quarantine wharf; the lateen
fisher-boats were slipping out towards the Sacramento. And white and
stately, between the pillars of the Gate, a full-rigged ship was
making out to sea on a favoring breeze.
Eleanor watched the sea-birds bending toward it, the mists creeping
down to cover it. The soul within her leaped toward it and seized it
as a symbol.
"O ship," she whispered, "take this too away with you! I give it to
the pure seas. Take this little love away with you!"
That rite, with its poetry and its self-pity, brought exaltation into
her resolution. The sacrifice was complete.