Judge Tiffany turned from a consideration of the hillside to a closer consideration of Eleanor, who rode beside him in the Goodyear trap. She sat very straight, her hands folded in her lap, her grave, grey eyes staring not at hillsides nor spring skies, but into the far horizons.

Since he recovered from that purely human rage against this youth who had betrayed him to his dearest enemy, the Judge had been watching, with all his old interest, the surface indications of Eleanor’s moods. Last night, it had been a kind of gaiety; to-day the mood was quiet, but not at all despondent; there was life in it. Judge Tiffany held his own views on the relations between his niece and Bertram Chester, and on the right or convenience of interfering. Twice he had been on the point of telling her that his feeling toward Bertram Chester should not color hers; that his house was still open to the young 240 man. But the curiosity of philosophical age to see how things will turn out had prevented him.

It was just as well. They were on the eve of their summer flight to the ranch, where she would have other things to think about than young men. That was his half-expressed theme when he spoke:

“Well, girl, will you be glad to get back to work again? You missed last summer.”

Eleanor started as out of sleep.

“I think I am glad of everything!” she said cryptically. As though to turn the subject, she indicated a buckboard which was coming down an intersecting by-road at crazy speed.

“Why are they driving so fast?”

The Goodyear driver turned with the familiarity of a country henchman.

“That’s the doctor’s rig from Las Olivas,” he said, “and he’s sure going some!” Followed a monologue on the doctor and his habits.

About the next bend of the road, a little boy rushed from a wayside camp which looked strangely deserted for supper-time of Sunday afternoon. He waved both arms before his face. 241

“Hey, mister, take me to the wreck!”

“What wreck, kid?”

“The five-ten is over the trestle, and they went off and left me!”

Judge Tiffany took the information calmly, even selfishly. “I wonder if we’d better turn back and give it up to-night, or go on?”

Eleanor spoke with a catch of the breath, a drawn-in tone.

“Go on! Oh, tell him to go on!”

The Judge peered at her. She was pale, but, as always in her crises, the curtain of inscrutability made her face a mask. “Oh, do go on!” she repeated. Then, as though it all needed explanation, she added:

“We might be able to help!”

“Drive on, then—fast!”

Absolutely passive, Eleanor swayed a little with the trap, but made no motion of her own. Indeed, there was little motion within. The train had gone over the trestle, that was all. Bertram Chester was on that train. She must not try to think it out—must only hold tight to herself until she found how God had decided for her. Once it did occur that she had fretted her heart away over shadowy ills, toy troubles, while Bertram walked the earth 242 free and healthy. How trivial those troubles seemed beside this real apprehension! Once again, she wondered how she had been cruel enough to hold him at arm’s length so long. Was this to be the punishment for her folly?

A buckboard, driven furiously, came over the hill-rise before them—the doctor’s rig.

“Ask him—ask him!” she called to her driver. As they drew up alongside, the doctor’s driver began talking without need for inquiries.

“Spread rail! The rear car just bucked over the trestle—”

“Anybody dead?”

“Two that I saw—and everybody in the rear car hurt. They’re loading ’em on the front car to take ’em to town. Good bye—I’ve got to bring back medicine before they start!”

The chances were even—the chances were even. If he had been in the front car—relief. If he had been in the rear car—

The thing opened before them like a panorama as they topped the hill. The engine puffing regularly, normally, the baggage car and one coach on the rails behind it; a little crowd buzzing and rushing up and down the 243 trestle; a black, distorted mass of iron and splinters at the edge of the water below. Three or four heads appeared above the trestle, and the people swarmed in that direction. The heads grew to four men, carrying between them a bundle covered by a red blanket.

Judge Tiffany spoke for the first time.

“You’d better not see it, Nell!”

His words seemed to draw the curtain away from her self-control.

“Oh, go on—for God’s sake, go on!”

As they drew up beside the undamaged coach, the bearers had just arrived with another body. Eleanor jumped down, rushed to the platform. The thing under the blanket was a woman. She turned into the coach, apprehension growing into certainty. She had not seen him in the crowd. If he were unhurt, he must be first and foremost among the workers.

The coach was a hospital—limp, bandaged people propped up on every seat; in a little space by the further door, a row of quiet figures which lay as though sleeping. Above them bent two men. Their business-like calm showed that they were physicians. The 244 half of her which stood aloof, observing all things, wondering at all things, the half whose influence kept her now so calm and sane, marvelled that she heard no moaning, tormented sounds. They were in the second stage of injury; the blessed anÃsthesia of nature was upon them. For human speech, she heard only the low, quick voices of those who healed and nursed.

She saw a bare arm lifted from the press of huddled forms, saw that a physician had pressed a black bulb to it. The hand—the inevitable configuration of that arm which she had never seen bare—and she knew him.

Bertram lay on his side. His eyes were closed, his whole figure huddled; yet something more than the quiver of his body at the prick of the syringe told her that he was alive. His color had changed but little; hovering death showed mainly by a sharpening of all the lines of his face. Yet it did not seem to be Bertram, but rather some statue, some ghastly replica of him.

The physician stood up and stretched his back. She came close.

“Will he live?” 245

He turned impatiently, but he caught her eyes.

“He has a chance. He’s young and strong—Is he—yours?”

“Yes—yes! What shall I do for him?”

“Are you sure you’re strong enough—you won’t faint nor carry on?”

“No—no! I’m sure of that. What may I do?” Judge Tiffany was beside her now. He looked, understood, and said nothing.

“Thank God for you, then! With all the crowd we haven’t sane people enough to nurse one baby! Everything’s the matter with him—broken arm, broken collar-bone, shock, and maybe he’s injured internally. We can’t be sure about that yet. I’m trying to make him comfortable, but”—here the agitated man broke through the calm physician for a moment—“No braces, no slings, no anything! We’re going to town as soon as this company will let us. And he must be held. It’s the only way to keep him comfortable. Come!”

Judge Tiffany touched the doctor’s arm, but he spoke to Eleanor. 246

“Nell—you’d better let a man do that.”

“No. You may help. How shall I hold him?”

All her will concentrated on obedience to direction, she followed the doctor while he drew Bertram’s bare arm over her shoulder, set a cushion at his back, showed her how she must support his neck with her right hand.

“Hold him as long as you can, then have your friend relieve you. But change no more often than you find necessary. He’ll get jostled enough before we reach town.”

The Judge seated himself calmly. She was alone with the care of her dying. The necessity for comforting and reassuring him came into her mind.

“It’s all right, Bertram; it’s all right!” she whispered. He returned no answer, even of a flickering eyelash. He lay still, inert, a great bulk that tugged at the muscles of her arms.

After a time, her frame adjusted itself to the position. Her perceptions, still keenly alive, told her that her doctor was working over a woman in the corner. Just as the train started, she saw him rise, wipe his hands on his handkerchief, and motion calmly to 247 two of the men. They lifted the woman. Eleanor realized all at once what the motion signified. They had taken her to join the dead in the baggage car.

Next to Bertram lay an old man, his head so wrapped in bandages that she could see only the tip of his grey beard. A middle-aged woman—Eleanor recognized her as a camper whom they had passed on the road but yesterday—knelt beside him, talking into his ear about his soul. “Do you lean on your Savior?” she whispered. A kind of passing impatience touched Eleanor. So much had her sympathetic spirit absorbed the feelings of these dying ones, that she resented this as an intrusion, an unwelcome distraction from the business of sloughing off the flesh.

A little sag of Bertram’s body, which alarmed her for a moment until she saw that the movement came from relaxation of her own arms, called her back to responsibility. The realization that it had called her back brought with it the amazing, shameful realization that it had ever wandered away.

Why—

From the moment when she took him into her arms, she had never thought of him as 248 her dying lover—never as her lover at all!

A man in extremis, a thing so beaten and suffering that she called for it on her Christ—he was all that, in common with the other beaten and battered and senseless wrecks about them. But the feeling that he was her own, about to go from her, had never entered her heart. She was ashamed while she thought of it; but it persisted. Not hers? Why, she had suffered him to kiss her only yesterday! Must she think of such things with a life to save?

Now, her body was giving way with weariness; it seemed that she could hold him no longer. She nodded to Judge Tiffany, therefore; the old man rose and gently took her burden from her. She sank back on the empty seat. When the faintness of fatigue had passed, she fixed her eyes on the still face of him who had been her lover.

Why was it? The clear-cut profile, so refined and beautiful since suffering gave it the final touch, had thrilled her only yesterday and through a succession of yesterdays. It had no power to thrill her now. She tried to put back this unworthy thought, but it persisted. In spite of pity and all decency of 249 the heart, that outer self of hers kept saying it to her like an audible voice. Were he to die now, in her arms, she should work and weep and pray over his passing—but only as she would work and weep and pray over that alien old man who lay beside him, that woman whom they had just carried away.

The Judge was flagging. He glanced wearily over his shoulder, as though he hesitated to ask for relief. She rose; and without a word she took his place. And now, as she knelt with Bertram’s slight yet heavy breathing in her ear, her thoughts became uncontrollable nightmare—scattered visions and memories of old horrors, as when she saw her father drunk on the pavement; a multitude of those little shames which linger so long. One incident which was not quite a shame thrust itself forward most insistently of all. It was that episode under the bay tree, when she was only a little girl. Why did that memory start to the surface those tears which had been falling so long within? Her weeping seemed to lift her to a tremendous height of perception, as though that outer self had flowed in upon her.

That which had lured her and dragged her 250 to him in the end, was the life in him, the strong, vigorous body, the gestures, the smiles. That which had held her away from him was the soul within him—high and clean enough as souls go, but not one which she could ever know, and not one which could ever know hers. In this struggle of passing, he was all soul; the body was not in it.

She held the plan of her puzzle; it was necessary only to set the scattered blocks into place.

She found herself whispering to him; she checked herself until she remembered that he could not hear:

“O Bertram, you are not mine! O Bertram, you could never be mine!”

Now she could look straight at the possibility of his death or recovery. And she could weigh and choose, in case it was life, between telling him what she felt, or going on with him to the end—walking with a soul apart, yet choosing paths for it, too. That last might be the road of honor. That fine and heroic course, indeed, came to her with a high appeal. She had made her one resolve of duty. Perhaps it was her destiny to immolate herself for duty to the end. 251

The train bowled on, stopping for no stations. The old man in the corner was unconscious or asleep; the woman who tended him had stopped her spiritual ministrations. A child, propped up in one of the rear seats, had awakened to cry, fallen asleep, awakened and wept again. She had in her voice a thick, mucous note, which became to Eleanor the motif in that symphony of misery. Otherwise, no one seemed to be making sound except the two physicians. Her own doctor came up once, pressed a syringe again into the bare arm, whispered that it was all going well.

A whistle came muffled through the fog; they were slowing down. It was a station; the lights, the clamor of human voices, proved it. Eleanor looked out of the window. A knot of young men had broken for the platform; and she could distinguish the black boxes of cameras. There arose a sharp parley at the rear door; her doctor muttered “reporters—damn!” and hurried back. Judge Tiffany rose and followed him. Over her shoulder Eleanor caught the white, intent face of Mark Heath. “He knows; they have told him,” she thought. 252

Judge Tiffany, his mind on the practical necessities of the case, still had it in him to admire the control of that good soldier, the modern reporter. When he told simply what had happened, how the issue lay balanced between life and death, Mark only said:

“My God!—and me with the story to do!” Then his eye caught Eleanor.

“Did she—has she been nursing him?”

Judge Tiffany glanced at the other reporters, clustered 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 muffled!”

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 253 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—damn it! Keep on. Judge Tiffany has been caring for him, holding him up so he could bear it, assisted 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 254 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 shift 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.”