CORDUROY
RUTH COMFORT MITCHELL
Books by
RUTH COMFORT MITCHELL
CORDUROY
NARRATIVES IN VERSE
JANE JOURNEYS ON
PLAY THE GAME
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
New York London
[Illustration: THE NEXT MORNING SHE WAS EARLY ON HER HORSE AND SHE WORE
HER WORN AND MELLOW CORDUROYS
[Page 31]]
CORDUROY
BY
RUTH COMFORT MITCHELL
AUTHOR OF “PLAY THE GAME,”
“JANE JOURNEYS ON,” ETC.
[Illustration]
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
NEW YORK : : LONDON : : 1923
COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
Copyright, 1922, by The Crowell Publishing Company
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TO
W. S. Y.
WHO HAS PUT ON CORDUROY
AND WEARS IT WELL
CORDUROY
CHAPTER I
FOR the first time in her life--she had been alive twenty-two vivid
and zestful years--Virginia Valdés McVeagh, nicknamed, descriptively,
“Ginger,” felt something like reverence for a male creature of her own
species.
Her father, that stolid Scot, had died while she was a hearty and
unimaginative child; Aleck, her only brother, killed on the last day of
fighting in the Great War, had been her pal and play-fellow, as were,
in lesser and varying degrees, the young ranchers of the miles-wide
neighborhood, while the _vaqueros_ and old Estrada, _mayordomo_ of her
cattle ranch, were her henchmen, loyal, admiring, unquestioning. Always
she had been able to divide the men of her world unhesitatingly into
two classes--her equals, her inferiors.
Dean Wolcott was different. He was framed in mystery and hallowed by
grief, coming to her--almost like a visitant from another world--in
the dawn of a Christmas Day she had vowed not to keep, bringing her
the word of her dead brother for which she had thirsted, and a stained
and crumpled letter in Aleck’s own hand. It was the first shred of
information she had had since the official communication, nearly four
months after the armistice. That had come on a delicate day of early
California spring; the rains had been late and the hills were only
faintly brushed with green, but the wild flowers were out, brilliant,
arresting, and the oaks were vocal with linnets and orioles; meadow
larks sank liltingly on the low ground; the narrow little creek was
lively and vehement, and the air was honey and wine. Everything was
awake and alive except Aleck, and Aleck was dead. The grave official
statement regretted to inform her that Lieutenant Alexander McVeagh was
dead. _Dead_; not alive any more; never coming back to Dos Pozos; never
to ride with her over the range again.
Something in Virginia Valdés McVeagh died likewise. When Aleck was
there she had seemed less than her age; now she was more. She ceased
at once to be “Ginger.” Swiftly, almost, it seemed, with a single
motion, she grew up. She had always been cognizant of every detail
of enterprise on the big cattle ranch, and now, with Estrada’s help,
she took competent charge. She rode with him over the rolling hills
on Aleck’s horse, brought in her cattle from remote pastures, saw to
the planting of her alfalfa crops and the harvesting of her wheat,
held _rodeos_, marketed her stock. Leaving off the mellow corduroys
which toned alluringly with her skin and eyes and hair, and the brave
scarlet sweaters and wine-red velvet dresses which sharply underlined
her Spanish coloring, she swathed herself in black as bitterly as her
Valdés grandmother would have done. She knew that it cut her beauty in
two and she was glad: there had been _flagelantes_ on her mother’s side
of the house, three generations earlier.
The slow and difficult year had crawled away; February ... December.
Virginia had refused to go to relatives in Los Angeles or San Francisco
and asked them not to come to her. This first black Christmas (the one
a year earlier had been vibrant with hope) she must be allowed to spend
alone, in the luxury of uninterrupted and unconsoled grief. Even the
servants--Estrada and his men, old Manuela, the housekeeper, Ling,
the moon-faced Chinese cook--were banished to San Luis Obispo on the
morning of the twenty-fourth, not to return until the twenty-sixth, but
her gift to herself of solitude had been snatched away from her. Dos
Pozos was five miles off the highway, but in good weather motorists
often took the dirt road for a short cut. This year Virginia had
neglected to have it kept up; the bridge, half a mile from the house,
was a frail and ancient structure. Aleck had meant to replace it with
a permanent one of concrete, and Estrada had begged her to carry out
the young _señor’s_ plan, but she would not. Later, perhaps; for the
present, she was thankful for anything which made for isolation.
And then, ironically enough, the very thing which was to have kept the
world away, brought it to her. It rained in torrents, lavish, riotous
California rain; the road sank down into a batter of soft mud; the
bridge whined in the storm; at seven o’clock on Christmas Eve four
machines and ten persons, wailing children among them, were stranded
and helpless. The telephone line was down; the _vaqueros_ spending
their holiday in town; and tradition was rigid; no one, gentle or
simple, ever lifted the latch of Dos Pozos in vain. Grudgingly, with
unadorned civility, Virginia had taken them into the old _adobe_ ranch
house and prepared to give them camp fare, for there was no way in
which she could summon her servants.
It immediately appeared, however, that her servants did not require
summoning; they were already there. The good creatures had merely
driven round the turn of the road in the morning, waited until she
had ridden off in the rain, and crept back again, hiding themselves
discreetly in their quarters. Their idea had been to feed her as the
ravens fed the prophet and to keep out of her sight, for they were on
intimate terms with her temper and her tongue. When the house party
enforced descended upon their mistress they had come boldly forth,
rather giving themselves airs; what--they wanted respectfully to
know--would she have done without them?
So it fell out that two brisk and cheerful school-teachers and a
forlorn widower and his shabby children and a couple of Stanford
students and a personage in a limousine made philosophically merry
beneath the roof which had fully intended to cover nothing but desolate
grief and decent silence, and Ling plied happily between his table and
his glowing range, his queue snapping smartly out behind him, and old
Manuela built fires and made up beds in the guest rooms, and Estrada
rode into San Luis Obispo to send telegrams to distracted families.
When she went to bed at midnight Virginia had worked out something of
her rebellion in weariness. She had resurrected toys for the pinched
children, helped the school-teachers and the Stanford students to trim
a tree for them and to decorate the big rooms with snowberries and
scarlet _toyon_--spurred herself to a civil semblance of hospitality.
As she fell asleep she was aware of a feeling she had sometimes had
when she was a rather bad and turbulent child--that, having been good,
unusually, laboriously good--something good should and must come to her.
It came at sunrise, when Estrada wakened her, calling excitedly in
front of her window. She slipped her feet into Indian moccasins and
threw a _serape_ about her and padded down the long corridor and out
on to the veranda. She heard people stirring as she passed the guest
rooms; one of the children was whimpering with eagerness to be dressed
and allowed to hunt for its Christmas stocking.
Behind the _mayordomo_ stood a tall man in uniform: for one mad moment
her heart stood still and her eyes dilated and blurred and the figure
in khaki swam dizzily in the keen morning light.
Then the old Spaniard stepped quickly forward and she saw that his
eyes were wet. “_Gracias a Dios, Señorita_--it is a friend of _Señor
Alejandrino_! At last he has come, over the sea and over the land, to
bring you the message!”
The stranger came slowly nearer, staring at her. She saw then that he
was a young man, but he did not look young. His eyes were intolerably
tired and tragic and he was weary with weakness. He blinked a little
as he looked at her; it was as if the brightness of her eyes and mouth
and the gay _serape_ hurt and dazed him. “You are--‘Ginger’?” he wanted
gravely to know.
He spoke in a hoarse whisper and in a whisper she answered him,
breathing fast. “Yes. I am Ginger. Aleck----”
He began to speak, very slowly and carefully, pushing the words before
him, one at a time, as a feeble invalid pushes his feet along the
floor. He had been with her brother for a month; they had come to
regard each other as friends, in the red intimacy of war; they had had
a feeling ... something ... that last day, that they would not both
come through it. They had written letters and exchanged them, promised
each other----
She cried out at that. “A letter? He wrote--you’ve brought me a
letter?” She held out her hands, shaking.
He was fumbling at a pocket and his fingers were likewise unsteady.
He explained, very humbly, why he had been so long in coming. He had
been wounded, too, not an hour later. Shattering wounds ... he moved
his thin body uncomfortably as if at a bad memory; shell shock; he had
forgotten everything, even to his own name. A month ago, in England,
he had started in to remember, and he had been traveling to her ever
since. He gave her a worn and soiled bit of paper, folded up like a
child’s letter. Estrada slipped softly into the house.
She snatched at it hungrily and read it three times through before she
looked up again. Aleck’s crude and boyish backhand; Aleck’s crude and
boyish words, hearty, heartening, lifting the black blanket of silence;
_Aleck_.
Then she looked up and caught her breath sharply. A strong shaft of
winter morning sunlight had fallen along the veranda, and it was
shining on his face and through his face. Virginia had never in all
her days harbored an eerie imagining, but she was harboring one now.
Her Valdés mother had died when she was a baby, and her upbringing
had been along the gray lines of the McVeagh Scotch Presbyterianism;
nevertheless, from old Manuela, the housekeeper, she had heard many a
colorful tale of the _santos_. Now, it flashed upon her swiftly, this
worn young soldier, more than a man in spirit, less than a man in body,
was like a saint; a warrior saint; a martyr saint. He swayed a little,
backward, away from her; it seemed entirely possible that he might
melt into the bar of sunlight, into the morning.... She had hoped and
imagined so many things for so many months ... it was conceivable that
she was only hoping and imagining _this_....
Estrada came out again. His quick Spanish cut into her phantasy.
“_Señorita_, this gentleman is very tired and ill--he must rest!” He
put a steadying hand under the young man’s arm and he sagged heavily
against him.
Virginia came out of her abstraction with a sharp sigh. “Yes, he
must rest. Come!” She caught the _serape_ together with one hand and
she was magnificently unaware of her bare brown ankles and her bare
brown throat, and the tumbled ropes of black hair swinging over her
shoulders, and held open the door. “Come,” she said again, smiling
mistily back at him.
The widower’s children were registering shrill rapture over their
stockings and the tree; the older members of the house party, having
been enlightened by Estrada, drew quietly back and watched with
leashed curiosity as the trio went through the room and down the long
corridor. Virginia halted before the door of the last bedroom, the
heavy old-fashioned iron latch in her hand. “This is Aleck’s room. No
one ever comes here but myself; no one else ever takes care of it.”
She flung open the door. Then, at the dim prompting of some Spanish
forbear, she made a little ritual of it, taking his hand and leading
him over the threshold. “Now I give it to you.” She led him gently
across the red tiled floor to a great armchair, cushioned with a
brilliant Navaho blanket. “This was Aleck’s chair.” She began quite
steadily. “He always sat here. And now you are sitting here. And you
saw him die, didn’t you? I saw him live, all the years of his life,
riding the range, in this house, in this room--and you saw him die. You
saw--Aleck--_die_.” Then she started to cry, very quietly. She slipped
down and sat huddled on the floor beside him, her forehead against the
big arm of the chair. He leaned over and laid his hand uncertainly on
her hair, but he could not manage to say anything to her. It was as if
the courage and energy which had driven and dragged him across an ocean
and a continent had left him utterly, now that his pledge was kept, his
message given.
So they stayed there, in silence, save for the slight sound of her
grief, until old Manuela bustled in and took soothing but competent
charge. Manuela was not unaware of her mistress’ bare ankles and
throat. She cast a scandalized black eye upon them, hurried her off
to her own room to dress, flung up a window to the quick morning air,
brought a footstool, tucked the Navaho snugly about the young soldier.
“And now, I go to bring the _señor_ something warm to drink. Would you
like coffee or chocolate, _Señor_?”
Dean Wolcott roused himself with a palpable effort. “I must not stay.
My cousin is waiting at San Obispo; he will be anxious--”
“Coffee or chocolate, _Señor_?” The old woman slipped a soft, small
pillow behind his head.
“Coffee, then,” said the stranger, wearily.
“Chocolate will be better, _Señor_.” She beamed approval on him, quite
as if he had chosen chocolate. “I go now to bring chocolate for the
_señor_.”
She was back in ten minutes with a steaming cup and stood over him
until he had drunk the last velvet drop of it. “And now the _señor_
will rest.”
The warm comfort of it went over him like a drug. He leaned his head
back acquiescently. “Yes; I will rest for a few moments.”
Manuela turned back the spread of delicate Mexican drawnwork and
patted the pillows. “The _señor_ would rest better upon the bed,” she
said silkily.
Dean Wolcott shook his head. “Thank you; I do not care to lie down. I
will sit here for a few moments....”
She was kneeling before him, swiftly and surely divesting him of his
shoes. “The _señor_ will rest better upon the bed,” she stated with
soft conviction. He got up out of the chair when it became clear that
she would lift him out if he did not, and at once he found himself
lying in utter lassitude on Aleck McVeagh’s bed. “For an hour ... no
longer ...” he said with drowsy dignity.
The old woman drew a light _serape_ up to his chin, nodded indulgently,
shaded the window, and went away, treading with heavy softness down the
corridor.
She met her mistress at the end of it. The girl had flung herself
swiftly into her riding clothes and her eyes were shining. “I must talk
to him, Manuela! There are a thousand things to ask!”
“Not yet, my heart,” said the old woman. “First he must sleep. He is
broken with weariness.”
Ginger turned reluctantly. Her house party enforced was at breakfast
and her place was with her motley guests. What she wanted to do was
to wait outside Aleck’s door until Dean Wolcott wakened, but she was
feeling amazingly gentle and good, so she went at once to the dining
room and presided with her best modern version of the Valdés tradition.
She kept on being gentle with the wayfarers; she was not annoyed with
them any longer for having mired down on her neglected road before her
neglected bridge. It seemed almost as if she would never be annoyed
with anything or anybody again, now that the black blanket of silence
was lifted; now that she had word--warm, human, close-range word--of
Aleck, and Aleck’s letter.
Her heart lifted when she thought of the messenger. Aleck had sent him
to her, and he had come--over the sea and over the land, as Estrada
said, fighting his weakness as he had fought the enemy. She summoned up
the echo of his tired voice, pushing the words before him slowly, one
by one, the memory of him there in the shaft of morning sunlight, the
austere beauty of his worn young face. Her guests, filled with lively,
kind curiosity, wanted to hear about him, but she let Estrada tell what
there was to tell. When she spoke of him it was in a hushed voice--as
if he might hear and be disturbed, the length of the rambling old house
away; as if he were something to be spoken of in deep respect. It was
that way in her own mind; she whispered about him in her thoughts.