The Readjustment Part 24

"Did she--has she been nursing him?"

Judge Tiffany glanced at the other reporters, cl.u.s.tered about the conductor, at the photographers, holding animated wrangle with the physicians about flashlights.

"Keep her out of your story--you can do that. Say I found him on the train--put me in--that's a good story enough. Keep my niece out. Keep the others off. Keep those flashlights m.u.f.fled!"

Mark hurried forward. One look, a look which contorted his face, he bent on Bertram. Then he spoke puzzles to Eleanor.

"You're Miss Brown, a camper at Santa Eliza, if anyone asks you--and when we leave this train you stay by me and do everything I tell you."

"Very well."

Mark touched Bertram's face with a tenderness almost feminine. "Poor old man!" he whispered; and he hurried back.

A shock-headed youth accosted him.

"What's up there?" he asked.

"Good story," answered Mark. "I've got it all--don't you fellows bother. Bertram Chester, old California Varsity tackle, real estate manager for Northrup and Co., seriously injured, may not recover. Get his injuries from the doctor. His late employer, Judge Edward C.

Tiffany, reached this train at Santa Eliza and has been taking care of him."

A voice came from the group of reporters:

"Why, he's your roommate!"

"I know it--d.a.m.n it! Keep on. Judge Tiffany has been caring for him, holding him up so he could bear it, a.s.sisted by Miss Sadie Brown, a camper at Santa Eliza. She's the one I was talking to."

"Who is she? Any chance for a photograph?"

"I braced her for a picture. She wouldn't stand for it."

"Let me try! I'll get it."

"See here, you fellows, I'll attend to that. I'll let you all in if she gives up. I'll play you square. He's my roommate--can't you trust me to handle it? Keep on. Miss Sadie Brown, works at the Emporium, lives 2196 Valencia--" Mark was reading from a perfectly blank sheet of copy paper--"Judge Tiffany will take him home. He wired ahead for a private ambulance from Havens. That's all of that. Now what have you fellows got? Help me out; it's none too easy for me."

As he took notes, asked questions, formed his "story" in his mind, Mark never took his eyes off that group in the corner.

Now they were racing down the last stage of the trip, with full freeway. Now they were drawing into the ferry station. Under the lights stood a buzzing crowd, its blacks shot with the white coats of hospital orderlies. A dozen ambulances, their doors open, stood backed to the platform. Eleanor sagged down on the floor with a sigh as two orderlies lifted Bertram's arms from her shoulders, made s.h.i.+ft to get him upon their stretcher.

But the doctor stopped them.

"Get this old man first," he said, "and be careful. That young fellow ought to pull through."

CHAPTER XV

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-fas.h.i.+oned 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 circ.u.mstances. 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 pa.s.sage, 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.