CHAPTER II
BY three o’clock Estrada had mended the road and propped the bridge and gotten the four machines under way. Ginger saw them off very patiently. They were volubly grateful and expressive and she let them take all the time they wanted for the thanks and farewells, and waited to wave them out of sight. The last car to round the curve was the one containing the widower and his children—forlorn no longer but exuding sticky satiety and clutching their new treasures.
Then she hurried into the house. The soldier guest was still sleeping, the housekeeper reported. Ginger went on tiptoe to the door and listened. There were the countless questions to ask him about Aleck; she grudged every missed moment.
“We dare not wake him,” said Manuela with authority. “And he must eat before he talks again. Go away, my heart. I will keep watch.” She sat down again in a chair in the corridor andfolded her hard brown hands on her stomach. “Listen! Some one comes!”
There was the sound of a motor and Ginger went to see who it was—the house party might have found worse going beyond, and turned back. It was a car from the garage at San Luis Obispo, and before it reached the house she saw that it carried one person beside the driver—a young man who held himself singularly erect. He was, he announced, the cousin who had been waiting, waiting all day, at San Luis Obispo, for Mr. Dean Wolcott. He wanted to know where Mr. Wolcott was. His manner rather conveyed that Mr. Wolcott might have met with foul play; that almost anything might occur in a wilderness of this character.
Miss McVeagh explained that Mr. Dean Wolcott was sleeping; he was greatly exhausted and had been asleep since morning.
The other Mr. Wolcott was clearly annoyed. The trip from Boston to California, undertaken only a day after his cousin had landed from England, had been wholly against his advice and judgment. He had been unable to understand why hiscousin could not havemailedMiss McVeagh her brother’s letter, and written her any details.
Ginger, looking levelly at him, saw at once that he had been and always would be unable to understand. She said, very civilly, that she hoped they would both rest for a few days at Dos Pozos before making the return journey.
“Thank you, but that will be quite impossible,” said the young man, hastily. “It will be necessary to leave Los Angeles to-morrow. The entire Wolcott connection—” it was as if he had said—“The Allied Nations,” or “The Nordic Peoples”—“will postpone the holiday festivities until Mr. Dean Wolcott’s return.” He desired to be shown where his cousin was sleeping, and he went briskly in to rouse him, past the protesting Manuela.
Ginger went out of the house. Large as it was, there did not seem to be room enough in it for the newcomer and herself. He brought her sharply out of her mood of whispering gentleness, and she walked a little way toward the bridge and planned to begin work at once on the permanent structure of Aleck’s intention. A big and beautiful idea came to her; there was no way of marking Aleck’s grave, but this bridge should be built in hismemory, inscribed to him. It brought the tears to her eyes and she turned, at sound of feet on the path, and saw Dean Wolcott coming toward her, and now, as in the morning, the sun was on him—this time the evening sun, slipping swiftly down behind the hills.
He was faintly flushed with sleep and his voice was stronger and steadier. “I am ashamed,” he said. “I have slept away my one day with you. I had concentrated for so long on the single purpose of bringing Aleck’s message to you that, once it was done, everything seemed to be done. I sank into that sleep as if it were a bottomless pit. I must go back to-night. My mother—my people— You see, I spent only a day with them.”
“You must go,” said Ginger. “You were good—oh, you weregoodto come!”
They stood then without talking, looking at each other, gravely. They seemed to be groping toward each other through the mists of grief and tragedy and strangeness which encompassed them. The little scene had—and would always have in their memories—a lovely and lyric quality. It was a fresh-washed world; the hills, the roads, the trails, thechaparralwere a clean and shiningbronze; the distant alfalfa fields were emerald counterpanes and thetoyonberries, freed from the last stubborn summer dust, were little shouts of color.
He passed a hand across his troubled eyes. “There is so much to tell you.... Every day, every hour, things grow clearer; I remember more and more. But I will write to you. I will write you everything.”
“I don’t know, I can’t explain—” Ginger was whispering again—“but it almost seems as if you’d brought Aleck back to me. I can never see him again, but—it’s different, somehow. That dreadful, black,lostfeeling is gone. I won’t wear black any more; Aleck hated black. And I’m going to build that bridge, as he planned to build it, of stone, and—and put his name on it. It’s—all I can do for him.”
His tired eyes lighted. “Will you let me share it with you—let me design it? I do that sort of thing, you know. I should love helping you with Aleck’s bridge.” His voice was kindling to warmth now. “A bridge—there could be nothing better for a memorial.” He fumbled in his pocket and brought out a notebook and pencil. “Shallwe go a little nearer? I’ll make just a rough sketch of the situation.” They walked on.
The cousin came to the edge of the veranda and called a warning; there was very little time. Dean Wolcott frowned and kept steadily on, Ginger walking beside him in her strange new silence. He did not speak again until he had made the small, unsteady sketch on a leaf of his notebook. Then he came a little closer to her, peering at her through the fading light. The sun had gone and the brief afterglow was going. “I will send the design as soon as I am sure of doing it decently—within a few weeks, I hope.” It was as if he were seeing her—her—not merely the person to whom with incredible difficulty and delay he had delivered a message. “And after a while, when I am—myself—may I come again?” His voice was huskily eager. “May I come back? I want to know Aleck’s country; I want to know Aleck’s—you.”
She took his thin fingers into a warm brown grasp. “Please come! Please come and stay!” The other Mr. Wolcott was coming down the path, picking his way neatly through the mud,but she did not let Dean Wolcott’s hand go. “And please come—soon!”
The capable cousin took him away at dusk. They would get a train out of San Luis Obispo at midnight and leave Los Angeles for Boston the next forenoon. He had it all compactly figured out. If they made proper connections—and he looked as if trains rarely if ever trifled with him—they would reach home on the day and at the hour when he had planned to reach home.
Ling and Manuela had hastily cooked and served an early supper and Ginger sat across the table from her two guests, looking at them and listening to them, eating nothing herself. It was to be observed that the worn young soldier and his kinsman shared certain characteristics of face and figure—the same established look of race—but they were two distinct variations on the family theme.
For the first time in her assured and unquestioning life Ginger was acutely aware of her table—of the contrast between the fine old silver and glass which her mother, Rosalía Valdés, had brought with her to Dos Pozos as a bride and thecommonplace and stupid modern china which she herself had bought at San Luis Obispo; of old Manuela’s serene crudities of service. The other Mr. Wolcott was carefully civil, but he managed to make her stingingly conscious of the number and variety of miles between Boston and her ranch: he had rather the air of a cautious and tactful explorer among wild tribes. Whenever he looked at her, which was not often, she felt like a picture in a travel magazine—“native belle in holiday attire”—like a young savage princess with strings of wampum and a copper ring in her nose.
But she did feel, at any rate, like a princess: he aroused in her an absurd desire to talk about the McVeaghs in Scotland and the Valdés family in Spain; to drag out heirlooms and ancient treasures.
Dean Wolcott was very white again and said little. When they were in the machine he rallied himself with a visible effort. “I will send the sketch soon,” he said, rather hollowly, “and I will write you—everything.” Then he seemed to sink back into his weary weakness; even the glow died out of his eyes.
Ginger watched the machine’s little red tail light disappear around the curve. She was certain that, directly they were under way, the other Mr. Wolcott was telling him how very much wiser and more sensible, how much less exhausting and expensive it would have been to mail Aleck’s letter to her.
Then she went briskly into her own room and came out into the corridor presently with her arms overflowing with black clothing—black riding things, black waists and skirts, black dresses.
“Manuela,” she said, as the old woman came up to her, staring, “these are for you and your daughters. I’ve done with them.”
Manuela squealed with rapture. “Mil gracias y gracias a Dios, Señorita mía!” she purled. She had begged her mistress to leave off mourning, much as her Spanish soul approved it, and now she had her wish, and this bountiful precipitation of manna besides. She gathered it up gleefully and waddled off with her dark face creased into lines of supreme content.
Ginger was very much pleased with herself. This was the way in which she—Ginger McVeagh—did things. She decided to lay off black, andinstantly, with one gesture, she cleansed her wardrobe completely and forever of its somber presence.
The next morning she was early on her horse and she wore her worn and mellow brown corduroys and her seasoned old Stetson, and Estrada and his men nodded knowingly at each other and smiled shyly at her. It was curious how shy and how respectful they were, the hard-riding, hard-drinkingvaqueros. The Spanish and Mexican ones among them had a manner which was just as good and decidedly pleasanter than that of the other Mr. Wolcott, and the Americans, old grizzled chaps in the main who had ridden for her father, had a whimsical poise and a rugged picturesqueness of diction.
It was an oddly feudal life for a twenty-two-year-old girl in the up-to-the-minute days of the twentieth century, the more so, of course, because of her brother’s death, but it had been sufficiently so, even before he went to war. Her mother had died when she was a baby, her father when she was a child; Aleck had firmly sent her away to boarding school three times, and three times he had weakly let her come home. He was bleaklylonesome without her; he concurred, in his happy and simple soul, with the ranchers who laughed and said—“Oh, let her alone—she knows twice as much now as most young ones of her age!” Family connections in San Francisco and Los Angeles protested mildly, but they were busy with their own problems and Dos Pozos was a marvelous place to take the children and spend vacations, and Ginger had probably had about all the schooling she needed for that life and that was undoubtedly the life she meant always to lead. Thus, comfortably, they dismissed the matter, and sent her an occasional new novel for cultural purposes and came months later to find half the leaves uncut. Ginger would have read it with a good deal of enjoyment if she could have stayed indoors long enough; evenings she was apt to be sleepy very early.
Now the word went over the wide neighborhood that Aleck McVeagh’s buddy had come and brought a letter from him, and told his sister all about his life over there, and his death, and Ginger had given away all her mourning and put on her regular clothes and the ranchers rode over on their hard-mouthed, wind-swift horses or droveup in their comfortable, battered cars and asked her to barbecues androdeosagain.
’Rome Ojeda, who lived thirty miles away, heard the news, came the thirty miles at a Spanish canter in a little over four hours, flung the reins over the head of his lathered horse to the ground, walked with jingling spurs on to her veranda and made hearty love to her.
He had intended to marry her ever since she came home from boarding school for the last time and he saw her in a scarlet sport coat and a scarlet tam. He was Aleck’s best friend and Aleck had looked on with satisfaction; he wasn’t keen to give Ginger up to anybody, but it wouldn’t be really giving her up to have her marry old ’Rome, and she’d be mortally certain to marry somebody. Ginger, however, wasn’t at all sure that she was. By and by,perhaps; certainly not now, when she had many much more interesting things to do. So ’Rome Ojeda had bided his time good-naturedly; she was pretty young, and he wasn’t so old himself; just as well, probably, to play around awhile. He let it be rather well known, however, that she was going to marry him as soon as she was ready to marry anybody.
Now he was direct and forceful. “Ginger, look here! You’re old enough now, and you’re all alone, and I’ve waited the deuce of a while. No sense waiting any longer!” He showed his very white teeth in a sudden smile and flung a quick arm about her. He was a big and beautiful creature, Jerome Ojeda, Spanish-American, hot-headed, hot-tongued, warm-hearted. He had almost graduated from the High School at San Luis Obispo; there had been arodeoin which he wanted to ride, so he rode in it. He took a spectacular first place in the “Big Week” as the affair was called, and he had never experienced the palest pang of regret for the little white cylinder tied with a blue ribbon.
Ginger got herself promptly out of his arms. She wasn’t in the least shocked or resentful but she was disconcertingly cool. “I don’t want to marry—anybody, ’Rome,” she said.
He caught her shoulders in his dark hands and gave her a small shake. “Don’t be a little fool! Of course you want to marry somebody. It’s—what you’refor. You want to marry me, only you don’t know it yet. But you will.” He brought his brown face nearer. “When I make up my mind,I generally put it over, don’t I?” He gave her another little shake. “Don’t I?”
She considered him calmly. “Generally, yes,” she said.
He enveloped her swiftly in a rough, breathtaking hug, and as swiftly let her go again. “All right; I can wait a while longer.” He strode, spurs jingling, toward his horse.
Ginger called after him, hospitably: “Don’t go now,’Rome! Stay for dinner. Look at Pedro—he’s dead tired.”
He swung himself into the saddle without touching the stirrups and smiled back at her. His smile was very white and dazzling in his brown face. “When I stay,querida, I’ll stay—right. And Pedro’ll take me where I want to go; there’ll be horses when I’m gone.” He struck spurs into the dripping horse and was off at a smooth and rhythmic gallop.
Ginger frowned, looking after him. She did like old ’Rome a lot. She liked everything about him except the way he treated his stock. Still, he was no worse than most of them. But she didn’t want to marry him; she didn’t want to marry anybody; she was much too busy and happy.