The Readjustment Part 3

"But you have!" he persisted. "They're better than pretty. They're nice."

Again Eleanor said nothing. It seemed to her that there was nothing to say.

"I know why you've got it in for me," he burst out. "You have, you know. When I speak to you, you never talk back, and yesterday you wouldn't let me stay after I had corralled the bull. It's because I'm working for your uncle. It's because I'm making a living, not eating what someone else made for me like--" he swept his hand backward toward the company on the lawn--"like those people out there."

Stung, for a second, to a visible emotion, Eleanor raised her grey eyes and regarded him.

"You are a.s.suming a little, aren't you?" said she.

"Then why can't I come to see you sometime in the evening if that isn't so? I don't ask it of many nice girls."

She caught at the delimiting phrase, "nice girls," and glanced up again. By this time, they had pa.s.sed through the living room; and he had awkwardly opened the door into the kitchen.

"I haven't known you very long," she said.

"There isn't a lot to know about me," he grumbled. Then his face cleared like the sunshine breaking through. "I could teach you to savvey the whole works in an evening."

"There are the chocolate wafers up over the ice-chest--that brown tin box." He reached up and heaved the package down, putting into that simple and easy operation the energy of one lifting a trunk.

Annoyed, and a little amused, Eleanor watched him. All at once, she felt a catch in her throat, was aware of a vague, uncomprehended fear--fear of him, of her loneliness with him, of something further and greater which she could not understand, did not try to understand.

She wanted air; wanted to get away. When he turned about, she stood holding open the kitchen door, her eyes averted.

She felt that he was standing over her; she felt his smile as he looked down.

"You needn't be in such a terrible hurry," he said.

"They'll be waiting for us on the lawn," she forced herself to answer.

It required all her energy to keep her voice clear and firm. Then she hurried ahead into the open air. Once in sight of the lawn party, she made herself walk beside him, even smile up at him.

"It's just as I said--" he had gone back to his grumbling voice and his wholly presumptuous manner--"Either you don't like me, or you're sore on me because I'm working for your uncle."

To the great relief of Eleanor, Mrs. Tiffany came out to meet them, took the box from Bertram and accompanied them back to the tea table.

For the rest of the afternoon, Eleanor managed by one device or another to save the situation. When, in the shifting of group and group, she had no one else for protection, Teresa Morse, following her like a dog, ready to come to her side at a glance, played the involuntary chaperone.

Judge Tiffany had no word alone with his wife until the sun slanted low across the orchard and the company broke up. When he met her apart, he said:

"He ought to be a success, that protege of yours!"

"I have been dreadfully mortified!"

"Oh, not a social success, though that may come too, if he ever perceives the necessity for it. But a general success. Such simple and unturned directness as his ought to win out anywhere. It is more than enchanting. It is magnificent. I'm willing to risk discipline on the place just to study a specimen so unusual. Mattie, this time I am going to a.s.sist. I'm going to ask him to supper."

"Edward, are you laughing at me again?"

"For once, my dear, no; not at least on the main line. You'd better ask that Mr. Heath, too."

"And Eleanor?"

The Judge looked across to the oak tree, where Eleanor was ostentatiously tying up the brown braids of Teresa Morse. Bertram, talking athletics with Goodyear, had her under fire of his eyes.

"If any young person was ever capable to make that choice, it is your niece Eleanor," he said. "It might afford study. Yes, ask her, too."

Mr. Chester and Mr. Heath were delighted; though Mr. Chester said that he had an engagement for the evening. ("What engagement except with the cutting-women?" thought Mattie Tiffany.) But Eleanor declined.

Some of the chickens were sick; she was afraid that it might be the pip; she doubted if Antonio or Maria would attend to it; she would sup at home. Mrs. Tiffany, antic.i.p.ating the intention which she saw in Bertram's eyes, made a quick draft on her tact and asked:

"Mr. Chester, would you mind helping me in with the chairs?"

Seated at the supper table, Bertram Chester expanded. The Judge took him in hand at once; led him on into twenty channels of introspective talk. Presently, they were speaking direct to one another, the gulf that separates youth from age, employer from employed, bridged by interest on one side and supreme confidence on the other. This grouping left Mrs. Tiffany free to study Heath. It grew upon her that she had overlooked him and his needs through her interest in the more obvious Chester. She noticed with approval his finished table manners.

Mr. Chester, though he understood the proper use of knife and fork and napkin, paid slight attention to "pa.s.sing things"; Heath, on the contrary, was alert always, and especially to her needs. "He had a careful mother," she thought. Gently, and with a concealed approach, she led him on to his family and his worldly circ.u.mstances. He spoke freely and simply, and with a curious frank a.s.sumption that anything his people chose to do was right, because they did it. He had come down to the University from Tacoma; his father kept a wagon repair shop. His people had gone too heavily into the land boom, and lost everything.

"I felt that I could work my way through Berkeley or Stanford more easily than through an Eastern college," he said simply.

"And then I shouldn't be so far away from home. Mother likes to see me at least once a year."

He was going home after the apricot picking was over; he felt that in vacation he should earn at least his fare to Washington and back.

"I'm sure she must be a very good mother to deserve that devotion,"

said Mrs. Tiffany, warming to him.

"She deserves more," he said, a kind of inner glow rising to his white-and-pink boyish face. That same glow,--Mrs. Tiffany might have noticed this and did not--illuminated him whenever, from across the table, Chester's laugh or his energetic crack on a sentence called a forced attention. Mr. Heath deferred always to this louder personality; kept for him the anxious and eager interest of a mother toward her young. Gradually, this interest absorbed both Mr. Heath and Mrs. Tiffany. The table talk became a series of monologues by young Bertram Chester, Judge Tiffany throwing in just enough replies to spur and guide him.

"No, I don't belong to any fraternity," said the confident youth, "don't believe in them. They plenty beat me for football captain last year too. When I came to college, they didn't want me. After I made the team and got prominent, they began to rush me. Then I didn't want _them_."

"It might have been easier for Bert if he _had_ joined them," said Heath. "They don't like to have their members working at--with their hands; they always find them snap jobs if they are poor and prominent."

"Oh, I don't know," said Bertram. "The barbs elected me business manager of the _Occident_ last season--I didn't make the team until I was a Soph.o.m.ore, you know--and that more than paid my way. This year I've got a billiard hall with Sandy McCusick.

"He used to be a trainer for the track team," explained Bertram. "I steer him custom and he runs it. Ought to get me through next year over and above. That's one reason I'm picking fruit and resting my mind this summer instead of hustling for money in the city."

"And then?" asked the Judge.

"Law, I guess."

"I am an attorney myself."

"I guess I know that!"

"What school have you chosen?"

"None, I guess. I don't want to afford the time. Yes, I know you want good preparation, but I'd rather be preparing in an office, making a little and keeping my eye open for chances. I may find, before my three years are up, that it isn't law I want, but business."

"I'm not a college man myself," said the Judge, "I got my education by reading nights on the farm, and pounded out what law I knew in an office at Virginia City. One didn't need a great deal of law to practice in Comstock days--more nerve and mining sense. But I've regretted always that I didn't have a more thorough preparation.

Still, every man to his own way. This may be best for you."

"That's what I think," said Bertram Chester. "When I got through High School in Tulare, Dad said, 'Unless you want to stay on the ranch, you'd better foot it for college.' I didn't want to ranch it, and I saw that college must be the best place for a start. Dad put up for the first year. I might have stretched it out to cover a little of my Soph.o.m.ore year if I'd been careful. I was a pretty fresh Freshman," he added.

"And your mother?" asked Mrs. Tiffany. "I suppose she was crazy for you to go."

"Yes, I suppose she would have been. She's been dead ten years. How hard is it to get into a law office in San Francisco?" he added, shifting.