The Readjustment Part 25

"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 gra.s.s 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 appet.i.te. 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 doc.u.ments 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 m.u.f.fled 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 coa.r.s.eness 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 a.s.sault. 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 fiancee? 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 pa.s.sed. 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 s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p," 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.

CHAPTER XVI

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 rea.s.suring 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.