The Readjustment Part 17

"I always knew I wasn't a gentleman," he said, "but this is the first time it was ever shot straight at me that way."

"Bert Chester, as long as I'm a friend of yours don't you ever dare say to me that you're not a gentleman. You're one of the biggest and strongest gentlemen I ever knew. Anyone need only see you for five minutes to know you're that. But some people have certain things which they attribute to a gentleman--notions, as I've said. And Eleanor from her European experiences has some of these notions. Don't you see?"

The smile, which always broke so suddenly, came back to Bert Chester's face.

"Well, of course that's why I broke loose from the ranch and went to college in the first place. I wanted to be as good, every way, as the best there is!"

"And you are already!"

He shook his head.

"No, or this wouldn't have happened. I want to be good enough to marry any girl, no matter who. I'm going to amount to something. I'm going to be rich, too--and a darn sight quicker than most people know. I don't know that we came here to talk about that, though."

"Please go on. We came here to talk about you--anything about yourself."

"That part of it has something to do with the main issue. I'm going to pull out from Judge Tiffany as soon as I go up against the bar examinations next month. At least, I want to pull out, and I'm only wondering how the Judge will take it and how she will take it. You see, I might just as well get admitted, and then it is good-bye to law for me afterwards unless I use it in politics. Law--" Bertram rammed his finger on the table with each word that followed "law is too blame slow. Anyone could see that I couldn't be chasing about as I'm doing if I had to depend on what Judge Tiffany is paying me as a clerk. Why, I've made twice as much already whirling at business. I'll always have my admission to the bar, too. If I want to settle down on a law practice after I get rich, I can do it."

"That seems very promising to me."

"But here's the question. Is the Judge going to take it for a throw-down, and how is Eleanor going to like the program?"

Kate appeared to be considering. In fact, she was considering a great many more things than Bertram knew.

"I'm pretty sure Eleanor wouldn't care," she said at length. "Hers isn't a very practical mind. It's impossible to say about Judge Tiffany. He's crotchety. The right's on your side, for a man has a right to change his employment, hasn't he? And I'm sure you have more than returned your little salary. On the whole, I don't know but it would be better for you with Eleanor if the Judge did get angry with you. A girl with ideals like hers rather likes to have a man persecuted. And you can't let it stand in the way of your career."

"But--"

"Oh, it isn't as though it were a choice between the girl and the career. It isn't at all. The best way to win her is to build yourself up to the big, splendid man she'd like you to be. If you stay a little law clerk for five years or so, you won't have much inducement to offer her! When you consider marriage, you have to remember that a girl like Eleanor can't live on a trifle. I'd follow my own career. It isn't, you see, as though there were anyone else in the field. Other men come to the house, of course--men she's met at the Masters, old friends of the family--but I don't consider any of them as rivals. I did think for a time that Ned Greene was attracted, but he's crazy now over Katherine Herbert. So it isn't a case for immediate action."

"Do you think--have you ever heard her speak of me?"

Kate's answer came readily.

"She has spoken to me of you--the way women do, so that you see under what they say. We women are devils"--she smiled--"no, I can't tell you what she said. I'm in a peculiar position about it. You see, her talk, as it happens, is all twisted up in a confidence she made to me--something else in her life--nothing to do with you--and I can't break it. But I can do something without breaking any confidence. I can tell you what I think you ought to do."

"Well, I guess that's what I want--" with the air of one who would have liked a great deal more.

"The man who gets Eleanor Gray--and especially if Bertram Chester is the man--cannot take her by a.s.sault. If you reach out to grasp her--you who are so strong--it will only break something in that delicate nature of hers. Don't woo. Serve. Don't even see her too often. Don't renew that scene on the balcony--never make that mistake again. When you are with her, show by your att.i.tude how you feel, and show her--well, that you're learning the things you've asked me to teach you--the things I'm going to teach you."

"It's sure a pink tea program," said Bertram. Kate laughed.

"Bert Chester, when you make your dying speech from the scaffold you're going to say something original and funny. You can't help it.

Now can you?"

The smile broke again on Bertram's face.

"Well, it has its funny side," he admitted. "All right. If refinement's the game, me to it." His smile had caught Kate's laugh, and there came between them a kind of mental click. Soft grat.i.tude sprang into his heart and quivered on his lips.

"You're a bully girl! I don't know what I'd do if I didn't have you to talk it over with. And you really do understand lots about women and those things--where did you learn it?"

The smile went out of Kate. She drooped her eyes and let her pink nails flutter on the tablecloth.

"Suffering and experience, I suppose."

"Could I--would you tell me about it?"

She looked up with an air of sweet sincerity.

"I should like very much to tell you. You could help me as much as you say I'm helping you. Some other time, we'll have that all out together. You see, when one has held a thing in her heart for a long time--well, it's a struggle at first to get it out. But sometime when I'm in the mood!"

And then he discovered that an appointment at the office was overdue.

While they went through the formalities of checks and wraps, she talked foolish nothings. He parted with her hurriedly to run after a Market Street cable car.

"We're going to be the best chums in the world," he said as he shook hands.

"Indeed we are!"

She watched him as he ran after the car, swung on the platform with the easy economy of motion which belongs to the athlete. But just before he set his foot on the platform and looked back at her, she herself whirled and started down the street, so that he saw only her trim back-figure, the glint of her bronze hair, the easy grace of her walk.

CHAPTER XI

So Bertram Chester went on, the easy familiar of the Tiffany establishment, the contriver of Mrs. Tiffany's household a.s.sistances, and the devoted follower of Eleanor. He never referred in any way to the scene on the restaurant balcony; he did nothing formally to press his suit. Indeed, his occasional air of gentle diffidence puzzled and amused her. She had a queer sense, when she beheld him so, that she liked it in him less than some of his old uncouthness, and only a trifle better than such roughness of the heart as that pa.s.sage with the Chinese waiter. This new att.i.tude was loose in the back, tight across the shoulders, short in the seams--it was not made to fit Bertram Chester. When he launched out into rudimentary art criticism, stringing together the stock slang which he had picked up in the studios, when he tried to impress her with his refined acquaintance, his progress toward "society" of the conventional kind, her amus.e.m.e.nt took another turn in the circle of emotion, and became annoyance.

In general company, he reverted to type. At their home dinners, when wine and good fare had lit the fires of his animal spirits, he still told his rambling, half-boastful stories of the cow country and of College times, or laid before these home-stayers the gossip of the town. That manner of his, always more compelling than either his substance or his words, carried the plainest story; and he had at least the art of brevity. One laughed when he laughed, catching from his spirit the humorous idea, even when its expression failed on the tongue. Voice and gesture and an inner appreciation which he could flash instantly to his tongue contributed to these dazzling effects.

His new-made friends of the artistic set used to tell him, "If you could only write down your stories--what humor, what action!" Mark Heath, with the information of a room mate, the judging eye of a half-disillusionized friend and the cynicism of a young journalist, was first to perceive that a stenographer concealed to transcribe his talk would get only barren words.

In his fading and declining years, Judge Tiffany leaned more and more upon Eleanor, his business partner. Now it had come spring. The trees were in bud along the Santa Clara. They must begin preparing for the season. The family did not move to the ranch until apricot picking was afoot; but from now on either Judge Tiffany or Eleanor would run down every week to watch the trees and to oversee the Olsen preparations for harvest time. Purchase of supplies and the business of selling last year's stock, held over for a rise in German prices, kept Eleanor busy.

She dragged the Judge out of his library one March afternoon, that he might inspect with her a new set of sprayers which she was considering. The Judge went to his office all too seldom nowadays; Eleanor and Mrs. Tiffany used continually all kinds of diplomacies to keep him at his business, from which he stubbornly refused to retire.

When they had driven their bargain, Eleanor guided and wheedled him to the office. The methodical Attwood, having his man there, thumped a pile of papers down before the Judge, representing that this demurrer must be in on Tuesday, that case tried or continued next week. The Judge sighed as he pulled the papers toward him.

"They've nailed me, Nell," he said. "Here, I'll appoint a subst.i.tute.

Send for Mr. Chester, Attwood--dining anywhere, Chester? Then take pot luck with us and pay me by escorting my business conscience home. I'll overwork myself if someone doesn't carry her away!"

The afternoon fog, forerunner of another rain, floated in lances above Montgomery Street. The interior valleys had felt their first touch of baking summer, had issued their first call on their cooling plant--the Golden Gate, funnel for mist and rain-winds. The moisture fell in sleety drops; yet only the stranger and pilgrim took protection of raincoat or umbrella. The native knew well enough that it would go no further. On these afternoons, neither cold nor hot, wet nor wholly dry, the blood is champagne and the heart a dancing-floor.

At the moment when Eleanor stepped out into the home-going crowd, she, an instrument tuned to catch delicate vibrations from earth and sea and air, felt all this exhilaration. Life was right; the future was right; the display of a young female creature before the male--that most of all was right. And Bertram Chester, talking for the moment like his old, natural self, was a main eddy in the currents of joy-in-youth.

"You are bonny to-day!" she said quite naturally as she looked him over.

He blushed happily. And the blush helped restore him in her eyes as the natural Bertram Chester.

"And you're the bonniest of the bonny. I never saw you look so full of ginger except--" he hesitated there, and her words rushed in to meet the emergency.