Life and spirit came back to Bertram Chester with a sudden bound. By
the fourth day, he was so much alive, so insistent for company, that
it became a medical necessity to break the conventional regulations
for invalids, and let him see people. As it happened, his father was
the first visitor. Judge Tiffany, who thought of everything, had
telegraphed on the night of the accident, and had followed this
dispatch, as Bertram improved, with reassuring messages. Bert Chester
the elder, it appeared, was off on a long drive into Modoc; two days
elapsed before his vaqueros, left on the ranch, could reach him.
He arrived with his valise on the morning of that fourth day when
Bertram roared for company. He was a tall, calm man, with a sea-lion
mustache, a weather-beaten complexion and the Chester smile in grave
duplicate. He was obviously uncomfortable in his town clothes; and,
even at the moment when they were leading him solemnly to the sick
room, he stepped in awe through the Tiffany splendors. When Mrs.
Tiffany told him that Bert was doing well, would doubtless recover and
without disability, he said "That's good!" and never changed
expression. Mrs. Tiffany, lingering at the door, saw and heard their
greeting.
"How are you, Bert?" said Chester senior.
"Pretty well, Dad," said Bertram. Then awkwardly, with embarrassed
self-consciousness of the rite which he was performing, Mr. Chester
shook his son's hand.
After their short interview, Mr. Chester, a cat--or a bear rather--in
a strange garret, roamed the Tiffany home and entertained her who
would listen. He warmed to Kate especially, and that household fairy,
in her flights between errands of mercy, played him with all the
prettiness of her coquetry. At luncheon he quite lost his
embarrassment and responded to the advances of three friendly humans.
Yes ma-am, he had been glad to learn that Bertram was doing well in
the city. He had five sons, all doing well. He'd risked letting Bert
try college, and it had turned out all right. There wasn't much more
left in the cattle business; but he was an old dog to learn new
tricks. If he had it to do over again, he'd try fruit in the Santa
Clara Valley, just like they had done.
As the afternoon wore away bringing its callers, its telephone
messages and its consultations of doctors, his mood shifted to
uneasiness. He spent an hour walking back and forth in the garden.
Just before dinner-time he approached Mrs. Tiffany and Kate, who were
sewing in the living-room, and said simply:
"Well, I guess I've got to be going."
"Why, we're just getting acquainted!" cried Kate.
Mrs. Tiffany merely flickered an eyelash at the assumption of
privilege which this implied. But she answered, after a moment, "We
should like to have you stay. Even at that, don't consider us when it
is a case of being near your son."
"Well," answered the older Chester, ponderously, "you see it ain't
like I had only this one son and hadn't been through trouble. There's
Bob now. I worried quite a lot more than was necessary when the
Artiguez outfit shot him up, but he pulled through. And after Pete
got scrambled by a riata, and a few more things of that kind happened,
I stopped worrying any more than was necessary. He'll get well, and
you're handling him fine. You've been blame good to the boy," he said;
and the touch of sentimental softness in his voice showed how genuine
was his hardly expressed gratitude. He began talking rapidly, as
though ashamed of it. He hoped they all could come to see him on the
ranch some time, though there wasn't much there to attract a lady.
Still, the boys had pretty good times now and then. If the Tiffanys
liked fresh venison, the boys always got some deer in the season.
"It's lovely down there, I know. Bertram--your son--has told me so
much about it!" broke in Kate.
"We'd like to see you, too," said Mr. Chester. Then, catching the
implication, embarrassed by it, he retreated to his room and came back
in an incredibly short time with his valise. He had turned toward the
door when Mrs. Tiffany said:
"I think Bertram is well enough so that you might see him again."
"Oh, sure," replied Mr. Chester, as recalling a neglected trifle. He
dropped his valise and strode back to the sick-room for a short stay.
All that day, Eleanor harbored a dread, which turned toward night to a
relief--dread of the first interview, relief that Bertram had not sent
for her. Kate, waiting her chance, slipped secretly into the room
after Mr. Chester had gone. Bertram was awake. He smiled in a measured
imitation of his old smile when she entered, and extended his
uninjured hand. She did not take it; instead, she patted it with her
cool, long fingers, made to soothe. And considering that the nurse was
watching, she looked a long time into his eyes.
"They sure smashed me up some," he said. "But I'm a-knitting. How did
it happen that they swore you in?"
"I wanted to help!"
"That was being pretty good to little Bertie!" He withdrew his hand to
drop it above hers, and he looked long into her face. "Pretty good to
little Bertie," he repeated, "and now I want you to be better, and not
ask any questions about it. Is Miss Gray--Eleanor--about the house?"
"Yes."
"I thought she might have gone to the ranch. Well, just about
to-morrow, will you get her in here--alone?"
"Are you ready--to be agitated?"
"Now you don't know what I want--or you wouldn't be asking questions.
Will you?"
"Yes, Bertram."
"You mustn't talk any more," spoke the nurse from the corner. And Kate
withdrew.
When, next morning, the two girls met in the hall before breakfast,
Kate repeated the message simply, carelessly. Eleanor found herself
struggling to keep face and color. In spite of her long inner
preparation, the emergency came to her with a sense of surprise. How
should she carry off this interview? Though her respite had been long,
though she had thought much, she had no prepared plan of campaign.
Must she lie for the sake of his bodily health, assume the part which
she had been playing when he went out of life? Even the question how
to get rid of the nurse was a tiny embarrassment.
She mustered her voice to say:
"I think I'll look in now. Invalids are likely to be awake at this
hour of the day."
"Yes, you must be eager!" dabbed Kate.
The nurse was no obstacle. She looked up toward the figure in the
door, said: "A young lady to see you, Mr. Chester," and withdrew.
Eleanor stood alone by the foot of the bed, looking into the eyes of
her problem.
He made no motion. He did not even put out his hand. He regarded her
with the frown which usually broke into a smile. Now, it continued a
frown.
"Well, things happened, didn't they?" he said. His voice burst out of
him with almost its normal force.
"Yes, Bertram. A great deal."
"And I thank you. It was bully work. I don't see how you stood it,
holding me up the way you did--it ought to have killed off a man, let
alone a girl. Didn't hurt you anywhere, did it?"
"No--who told you?" Her voice was hard and constrained.
Now Bertram smiled. It was different, this smile, from the old
illumination of his features. She could not tell, in the moment she
had to think, whether it was his illness that changed it so, or
whether it really held a bitterness which, superficially, she read
into it.
"That's the answer," he said enigmatically. "You didn't know I was
onto everything, did you? I never went out but once--just after the
crash when the car turned over. I began to know things while they were
carrying me up the bank. From that time, I was just like a man with
his wind knocked out. It didn't hurt much, but I couldn't move a
finger or a toe. I didn't want to move if I could. I was too busy just
keeping alive. I couldn't open my eyes, but I heard everything. You
just bet I heard everything!"
This descent of the conversation into reminiscence and apparent
commonplace gave Eleanor an opening into which she leaped. It was
wonderful; she had read of such cases. Had he heard that child crying
in the corner, and had it bothered him? Had he been conscious that it
was Mark Heath and none other who was asking so many questions? Mark
Heath had done so much for them--she would tell him about it some
other time. But Bertram still lay there with his frown of a petulant
boy on his face, and her voice ran down into nothing for lack of
sympathy in her listener.
"Do you remember all you said?" he asked when she was quite silent.
"I think so--why?" The question had brought a little, warm jump of her
nerves.
"Everything? Something you said to me?"
"I think so, Bertram."
"Did I dream it, then?"
She made no answer to this, but her knees failed under her so that she
sat down on the bed. Had she--had she said it aloud?
"Something like this: 'Bertram, we don't belong to each other'?" He
laughed a little on this; even a certain blitheness came into his
laugh, as though he should say, "the joke is on you."
A sense of the shock she might give him moved her to temporize.
"Let us not talk of it now, Bertram. Let it be as it was until you're
better."
"I'll be a blame sight better after I get this off my system. You
see--well I couldn't think just then, but now, when my think tank has
resumed business, I savvey a heap of things. One is that you weren't
telling me any news."
"What makes you say that?" Eleanor bent her grave grey eyes on him.
"I had the signal already. I mightn't have seen it fully if this smash
hadn't come, but just the same I caught it away ahead of you. That
afternoon up on the Las Olivas trail when we came together. When I
kissed you."
Had she ever let him kiss her?
He made an incurved gesture of his free hand, as though joining two
wires.
"It didn't connect. That's all. I was acting on a hunch when I told
you to keep it dark. Told anyone?"
Not until afterward did she think to be offended by this question. At
the time, she answered with a simple negative.
"That's good. It is just between us now. I suppose the matter with me
was that I wanted to fly high, and you were about the highest thing in
sight--"
"Don't, Bertram. I'm not high. Am I hurting you? Oh, am I unkind when
you are ill?"
"Oh, if you think it's hurting me, you're off. This is a swell way to
talk, isn't it, considering that I'm here--" his eyes swept the
aristocratic comforts of the Tiffany spare room.
"We mustn't think of that. It's too big to think of that!"
"I guess you're right. Now that is finished, going to forgive me
because I walked over to Northrup?"
"I've nothing of any kind to forgive. It's you, I think, that must
forgive."
"Oh, it's all square, everything's all square. I want to be good
friends with you if you'll let me. I hope," his voice was almost
tender, "you connect with the right man. He won't have any too much
blood in his neck, but he'll have a lot of general culture in his
system."
Here she realized that she had something to forgive. She repeated,
mentally, her act of renunciation as she said:
"You're a great, strong, generous man. I can't tell you how much I
thank you for the course you've taken to-day. You're going to succeed
and--some woman--is going to be proud of you." She had avoided by a
thread naming the woman. "I shall be glad I knew you, and I shall be
your friend as long as you'll let me."
He smiled his old smile and his uninjured hand went out.
"Shake!" he said.
Yet it was a relief that the nurse came back and said quietly, "You've
talked enough." As she walked to the door, Eleanor found that her will
was focused on the operation of her feet, commanding them to move with
decent slowness. Had she obeyed her impulse, she should have run. She
forced herself to turn at the door and smile back, forced herself to
bridle her emotions and go quietly to breakfast and to her ordeal with
the lightning thrusts of Kate Waddington.
* * * * *
Two days later, Eleanor followed Judge Tiffany to the ranch. A
perplexing fruit season brought her fair excuse. The year before, the
Japanese, adventurers in minor labors, had begun to flood the Santa
Lucia tract. They drove out the Chinese; when that spring brought
picking contracts, no Oriental was to be had save a Japanese. In the
first rush of that season, the Japanese pickers on the Tiffany ranch,
in concert with all the other Japanese of Santa Lucia, had thrown down
their baskets, repudiated their agreements, and struck. It needed more
than Judge Tiffany's failing strength, more than Olsen's methodical
plodding, to conquer this situation.
She must be a post now, not a rail, Eleanor told Mrs. Tiffany. And
Kate would help until Mr. Chester could be moved. At further
acceptance of Kate, Mrs. Tiffany rebelled. Kate had foisted herself on
them. Goodness knew, Mrs. Tiffany couldn't tell why they had ever
accepted that situation. It didn't seem to her even decent.
"You'll perplex me greatly, dear Aunt Mattie, if you don't let her
remain now!" said Eleanor, looking up from her packing.
This remark, cryptic though it was, came as a fresh shower to Mrs.
Tiffany's curiosity. Never before had Eleanor so nearly committed
herself on the subject which lay like lead on her aunt's
responsibilities. It prompted Mrs. Tiffany to try for a wider
opening.
"Would you like it, dear, if we brought Mr. Chester down to the ranch
to recuperate when he is better? I'm sure Edward wouldn't object.
After all, he's ready to forgive the Northrup affair."
Eleanor looked up significantly.
"If you're consulting my wishes, certainly not!" she said.
The sigh which Mrs. Tiffany drew expressed deep relief. Thereafter,
they proceeded straight ahead with the arrangement. Eleanor went on to
the ranch. Kate, remaining, made herself so useful in a hundred ways
that Mrs. Tiffany's irritation wore itself away.
The old combination of Eleanor and an attractive though undesirable
young man had moved her to a perilous sympathy. Now that it was over,
now that she had no more responsibility in the matter, she transferred
some of that vivid and friendly interest to the new arrangement. She
caught herself resisting a temptation to spy on their conversations;
she watched Kate's face for tell-tale expression whenever Bertram's
name came up in their luncheon-time chats.
Kate usurped all the finer prerogatives of the nurse. Hers it was to
arrange the sick-room, to put finishing touches on bed and table, to
feed him at his meals. Her tawny hair made sunshine in the chamber,
her cool hands, in their ministration, had the caress of breezes. He
was getting to be an impatient invalid; he bore the confinement harder
than he did the ache of knitting bones. Kate's part it was to laugh
away these irritations, so that she always left him smiling.
He went on mending until they could get him out of bed; until, on an
afternoon when the sun was bright and the wind was low, they could
take him into the garden for a breath of air and view. He made the
journey out-of-doors with Kate supporting him unnecessarily by the
armpit. She set out a Morris chair for him by the lattice, so that he
could overlook the Bay, she tucked the robes about him, she parted the
vines that he might have better view.
For a moment he swept the bay with his eyes and opened his lungs to
the out-door room and air. Then his gaze returned to Kate's strong,
vigorous yet feminine back, as she stood, arms outstretched, hooking
vines on the trellis. The misty sunshine was making jewels in her
hair.
"Say!" He spoke so suddenly and with such meaning in the monosyllable
that Kate blushed as she turned. "Say! is that fellow still writing to
you--the one with the Eastern education and the money?"
Kate dropped her eyes.
"No," she said softly. "I told him--I have broken it off--lately."
Bertram laughed--his old, fresh laugh of a boy.
"You saved me trouble then. I was just about to serve notice on him
that henceforth no one but little Bertie was going to be allowed on
this ranch."
Kate did not speak. She continued to look down at the gravel walk.
"Now don't you go pretending you don't know what I mean," Bertram went
on. "Just for that, I won't tell you what I mean. But you know."
"What about Eleanor?" murmured Kate.
"You little devil!" answered Bertram. "Come over here."
Kate sank down on the edge of his chair, and dropped one arm about his
neck.
Mrs. Tiffany, viewing the morning from the window of her room, saw
them so. At first, she smiled; then a heavier expression drew down
all the lines of her face. She crossed to her dresser, where a long
frame of many divisions held the photographs of all whom she had
loved. The first in order was of a woman who had a face like
Eleanor's; a more beautiful Eleanor, perhaps, but with no such grave
light of the spirit in her eyes. This she touched with her finger
tips. But her look was bent upon the second, the portrait of a young
man whose attitude, defying the conventional pose of old-fashioned
photography, showed how blithe and merry and full of life he must have
been.
"Ah, Billy Gray!" she whispered, "Billy Gray, you know, _you_, how
sincerely Eleanor and I ought to thank God!"
THE END