The Readjustment Part 26

"How are you, Bert?" said Chester senior.

"Pretty well, Dad," said Bertram. Then awkwardly, with embarra.s.sed 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 embarra.s.sment 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 a.s.sumption 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 grat.i.tude. 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, embarra.s.sed 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, a.s.sume 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 embarra.s.sment.

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."