GINGER could understand bullets; she could understand a broken arm or
leg or collar bone; a broken neck was entirely comprehensible to her.
But she could not understand fainting; not, above all, a man’s fainting.
As soon as she was sure that he was not dead (she had heard of sudden
death by heart failure) she was not aware of any feeling but deep
chagrin. She did not follow when he was helped into the house and to
his room by Estrada and ’Rome Ojeda; she sent old Manuela to him but
she did not go herself. She went instead to her room and got out of her
dust-grimed riding things and under a cold shower, and into one of the
evening frocks which her Aunt Fan had made her buy. It was the scarlet
one, and she piled her dark hair high and put in her carved ivory comb
which had come down to her from her Valdés grandmother, and put a red
flower behind her ear, and regarded herself in her small mirror with
hearty and entire satisfaction. Not three times in her life had she
ever dressed herself so painstakingly, or been so pleased with the
result.
She went to the dining room and looked over the lavish supper and
summoned in her guests, and after the riotous meal she started the
dance with ’Rome Ojeda, and she was dancing with him for the fourth
time in an hour when her aunt came into the room and called her.
Mrs. Featherstone told her that she was annoyed beyond words, but this
seemed hardly a correct statement of her case, as she proceeded to emit
sharp staccato showers of them. She called her niece among other things
a heartless young savage and asked her what she thought of herself,
eating and dancing and flirting like that, when her sweetheart was
sick and suffering. Ginger, as a matter of fact, thought very well of
herself that evening; she was as hard and bright as polished metal
and no more tender. Presently--in the morning, perhaps--she would be
wretchedly aware of the crudeness and cruelty of her attitude; now she
was unyielding.
“Oh, does he want to see me?” She shrugged, and when she did that
she was all Valdés. Dean Wolcott would have been reminded of a Goya
painting, but Aunt Fan was too angry to be reminded of anything.
“Of course he wants to see you! Why shouldn’t he?”
“Did he ask you to bring me?” Her eyes were fathomless.
“No, he didn’t; he has too much pride, of course, but----”
“Pride!” said Ginger, bitterly. “I shouldn’t think he’d have much pride
left, after to-day!”
“Now, that just shows how childish and ridiculous your standards are,”
her aunt scolded. “Just because he happens not to be able to ride like
a buckeroo--because he’s lived a different sort of life----”
“You don’t understand,” said Ginger. Her voice was adamant, too. “You
don’t understand at all. Well--I’ll see him, for a minute.” She nodded
to a hovering partner and went down the long corridor to Aleck’s room.
Her aunt did not understand and she did not understand herself, all
that was swaying her. It wasn’t alone that her lover had cut a sorry
figure on horseback; it was that she, Ginger McVeagh, feudal lady of
the range, princess of the blood in the eyes of her henchmen, had said,
in effect--“There is no one among you all fit to be my mate; I must
have a stranger, an easterner, some one higher and finer. Now I have
found him! Wait until you see him--wait, and behold why I have chosen
him.” They had waited and they had beheld, and now, she knew, for all
their civility about it and their good-natured inquiries about him they
were amused and amazed that she should have picked Dean Wolcott; they
were aghast, as she was aghast.
Old Manuela was seated beside the bed but she rose at once and waddled
out into the hall. She had been waiting and watching anxiously for
her mistress for an hour, and she was sure, in her simple heart, that
everything would be all right now.
The big room was only dimly lit, but she could see how shockingly
white and ill he looked. Nevertheless, it roused in her no whispering
gentleness this time, as it had done on Christmas Day; healthy young
animal that she was--she had taken mumps and measles and chicken pox
on her feet and never spent an hour of daylight in bed in all her
life--it rather repelled her.
He opened his eyes in time to catch something of her mood in her
expression and his own face stiffened. “You shouldn’t have bothered to
come; I’m quite all right. Manuela and your aunt have looked after me.”
Again, he blinked his tired eyes a little, as he had at his first sight
of her, months ago; she was too bright, too vivid, too glowing.
It would not have been difficult to recapture the magic of the night
before; if Ginger had dropped to her knees and kissed him as she had
kissed him then--if Dean had managed a ragged sentence of regret for
disappointing her--’Rome Ojeda would have waited long for his next
dance. But instead, she stood looking down at his pallor and limpness
and he lay looking up at her scarlet cheeks and her incredible vigor,
and the moment got away from them. Presently, Ginger hoped with an edge
in her voice that he’d have a good night, and Dean trusted, with ice in
his, that she’d have a good time.
They did their best, in the week that followed. Dean was limping about
by noon and Ginger staying at home to be with him, and they were
gentle with each other, but it scared and sobered them to see that it
wasn’t any use. It was as if they had been blowing bubbles together,
lovely, shimmering iridescent ones, which had fallen and burst, and now
they were trying to gather up the little damp spots which were left and
make billowy, floating bubbles out of them again.
The truth was that they had arrived, simultaneously, at the third stage
of their knowledge of each other. The first had been her breathless
reverence for him, the messenger from her dead brother, the worn young
visitant from another world, and his dazed recognition of her warm
and vital beauty; next--when they had come together on Aleck’s bridge
and in the fortnight following--she had made him into a saint and
fairy prince and lover, and he--his senses smitten with loveliness,
his returning strength and virility leaping to meet hers, leaning
on it, mingling with it; now they were regarding each other quite
clearly, with detachment. She saw a rather pale and precise young man,
obviously out of drawing in her landscape, and he saw a highly colored
and careless young woman who fitted so snugly into the rough western
picture that he doubted the possibility of ever seeing her against a
different background.
For a little space they were painstakingly gentle with each other;
then, mysteriously, irritations sprang at them out of thin air. If it
made Ginger impatient to find him clumsy and inept at the things of her
world, it jarred increasingly upon him to have her say, “It sure does
look like we’re going to have a scorcher,” to find her utterly blank
about books and plays and music. In her milder moods it seemed as if
he might beguile her into reading, but the question of where to begin
appalled him. It was not what she should read, but what she should have
read. It was all summed up in that one sentence--the empty lack which
he found in her. In her swiftly melting moods of tenderness, when she
gave up a ride to stay with him in the cool old _adobe_, closed against
the hot air from eight o’clock in the morning, after the California
tradition, she was singularly unsatisfactory as a companion, what time
she was not in his arms. He discovered exactly why this was the case.
She might pull off her jingling spurs and fling aside her Stetson and
come into the big living room and sit down, and stay docilely for an
hour or more--but her _mind_ never came indoors. That was it. She might
sit as softly as her Valdés great-grandmother in Sevilla, but her whole
preoccupation was with the vigorous world outside.
He began to see, reluctantly, and with a chill sense of disaster, the
impermanence of their relation. While he was kissing Ginger there were
no questions and no problems, but life, he was cannily sure, could not
consist wholly of kissing Ginger. The house of their love had been
built upon the sands; shining, golden sands, but sands for all that,
and he told himself grimly--able, now and then, to stand away from his
situation and see it with a saving grain of humor--that the lasting
structure of his affection must be built not only upon the rock, but
upon Plymouth Rock. He found himself stressing his purity of speech,
professing even more ignorance than was really his with regard to
horses and cattle and crops; and Ginger, for her part, let the dresses
she had bought in San Francisco hang idle in her closet and strode in
to supper in her worn corduroy trousers and her brown shirt.
It needed, presently, only a small weight to tip the scales, and ’Rome
Ojeda supplied it. It was a day of dry and dazzling heat, and they had
planned a cool and quiet afternoon in the merciful sanctuary of the
house. Ginger had brought out the old Spanish chests which had come to
Dos Pozos with Rosalía Valdés and they were to revel in old Spanish
laces and embroideries and jewelry, and puzzle over yellowed Spanish
letters, and Dean was happier and more hopeful than he had been for
days. Ginger had changed her riding things for a thin thing in yellow,
and she was adorably gentle.
Then ’Rome Ojeda rode noisily up to the veranda and called them to come
for a ride. He was on Pedro, leading Snort, and he said he would slip
down to the corral and saddle Diablo while Ginger was changing her
clothes.
It was astonishing to see how quickly the cool old room, dimly shaded,
had changed into a field of hot battle. They were never able to
remember subsequently, either of them, just what went before the final
challenge; there must have been speeches ripe with bitterness on both
sides before Dean heard himself saying slowly--like a person in a
play--“Very well, then; if you go, this is the end.”
Ginger went, flinging herself into her riding suit and marching
through the house with her Scotch chin held high and her Spanish mouth
hard, slamming the door for good measure and springing into Snort’s
saddle and loping furiously away, but she didn’t really believe it
was the end. She had a very good time with ’Rome Ojeda and a wild and
satisfying ride, and when she came back, four hours later, she was
good-natured again. She wasn’t entirely ready to forgive Dean, but she
was ready to consider forgiving him, and she went into the house to
find him and tell him so.
She did not find him. She found, instead, an irate and voluble Aunt Fan
who had been generating rage for hours.
“You needn’t call him,” she said. “He won’t hear you, not unless you
can shout loud enough to make yourself heard at San Luis Obispo. I dare
say you could, if you put your mind to it--it’s simply horrible, the
way you yell to the men in the corral. Tomboys are all right and very
fetching, but let me tell you, Ginger McVeagh, you’ve grown up, and
tom-_women_ aren’t cunning at all, and if you can’t key down and act
more like a lady and less like a----”
“San Luis?” Ginger stood still and looked at her. She did not seem to
have heard anything else beside the name of the town. “_San Luis?_
What’s he doing there?”
“He’s catching the Coaster to Los Angeles to-night; that’s what he’s
doing there, Ginger McVeagh. And to-morrow morning he’ll be on his way
to Boston, and why he hasn’t gone before, heaven only knows--I don’t.
Now if you’ve got anything in your head but ’Rome Ojeda and long-horned
steers and alfalfa crops you’ll stop staring at me and get----”
“Did he _say_ anything?” she wanted to know in a mild and wondering
voice. “What did he say, Aunt Fan?”
“He said, ‘Tell her I’ve gone; she will understand,’ and he was white
as a sheet. If ever anybody in this world looked like death on a pale
horse, that boy did when he walked out of this house. He telephoned
into town for a machine and he was packed before it got here, and he
shook hands with me and with Manuela and Ling and out he marched, and
if you want my opinion, Ginger McVeagh----”
Ginger did not in the least want her opinion; she wanted Dean Wolcott,
sharply and imperatively. She walked out of the corridor and into
the living room where they had begun the afternoon together. The old
chests were there still, and the table was spread with a litter of
ancient treasures. She picked up a fichu of yellowed lace and put it
down again, and a fan with sticks of carved ivory and looked at it
gravely, as if she had never seen it before. It had surprised her and
worried her a little to find him so warmly interested in things of
that sort; she would have preferred having him clumsily ignorant about
them, good-humoredly tolerant. Now, she realized, it would never need
to worry her again. She stood staring down at the beautiful old things;
they looked mellow and very wise. Three generations of Valdés women had
used them before her, but she knew, suddenly, that she hated them and
never wanted to see them again. She began to stuff them hastily back
into the carved chests of dark and satiny wood, and called to Manuela
to put them away in the storeroom.
Her aunt followed her before she had finished. “If you hurry,” she said
urgently, “if you get out the car this minute and fly, you can catch
him at San Luis!”
Ginger did not answer her for an instant. Then she said, deliberately
and without passion, “I don’t want to catch him at San Luis, Aunt Fan.
I don’t want to catch him--anywhere.”
* * * * *
Mrs. Featherstone went home to San Francisco the next day, thoroughly
out of temper with her niece and heartily willing to wash her hands
of her. She told her, at parting, that she had missed the one golden
and handsome opportunity of her life which was far beyond her deserts,
and that she would never have another such and it served her right;
she sincerely hoped she would marry ’Rome Ojeda and have seven wild
children, all born with spurs on. It sounded like the laying on of a
robust old-fashioned curse.
Ginger let Estrada drive her aunt in to town to take her train. She was
very tired of being berated; she didn’t want to talk about Dean Wolcott
any more and she didn’t want to think about him any more. She went
steadily about the business of Dos Pozos in the days that followed;
old Manuela wiped her eyes furtively and burned three candles to the
saint of the impossible, and Estrada was gravely regretful.
“I miss very much that young _señor_,” he said to his silent mistress.
“That is a very fine gentleman, _Señorita_.”
There were many inquiries for him at first among her rancher neighbors,
but after she had said--“He has gone. No, he is not coming back,” to a
few of them, the word went over the whole vicinity; they stopped asking
for him, and they were immensely cordial and approving in their manner
to Ginger.
’Rome Ojeda showed less restraint; he was openly triumphant about it.
“Snappy work,” he said to Ginger, with his flashing grin. “I guess
maybe we didn’t show him up, between us, me’n Snort! Say, I’m a-goin’
to get that hawse a medal! He sure did spill the Boston beans!”
Ginger listened to him at first without comment, but she said,
presently, “’Rome, he was Aleck’s friend; I’m never going to forget
that.”
“Lord,” said ’Rome Ojeda, comfortably, “I guess a feller’d bunk in
with ’most anybody, over there.” But he stopped talking about Dean
Wolcott and he did not immediately urge his own claims. There was
something about Ginger, about her looks and her voice, that he didn’t
quite understand. He told himself that he’d better just let things loaf
along, “as was,” for the present.
* * * * *
Dr. Gurney Mayfield made a detour to take in Dos Pozos on his motor
trip next month. He was greatly surprised and disappointed not to find
his young friend, Dean Wolcott.
“Well, well,” he said, regretfully, “so Dean had to go home, did he?
Well, I expect he had to get back to business. How was he feeling?”
“He seemed to be feeling all right,” said Ginger briefly.
“That’s good,” said the doctor, heartily, “that’s _good_! You know,
Ginger, that boy isn’t out of the woods yet, not by a long sight. Shell
shock ... meanest thing in the world to get over, clear over! They’ll
think they are fit as a fiddle, and then let something out of the
ordinary happen--some slight shock, or strain or overexertion-- By the
way, Dean didn’t do any rough stuff here, did he? I thought afterward
that I should have warned him, but it never occurred to me that he’d
try it. Did he?”
“What do you mean by rough stuff?” said Ginger. Her voice was very low,
and she did not look at him.
“Oh--hard riding--all-day-in-the-saddle trips--anything that would tire
him beyond his strength, you know. It’ll be many a long day before he’s
absolutely himself again--body or brain. Was he pretty careful and
sensible? I know how hard it is to make these young chaps take care of
themselves, but I expect you could manage him, Ginger!” He twinkled
upon her, kindly. It was one of the dozen excellent reasons for his
belovedness that Dr. Gurney Mayfield always fitted people out with
the best possible motives and intentions. He presupposed them to have
justice and fairness and gentleness and good will, just as certainly as
they had tonsils and livers and lungs and spines, and he confidently
expected to see the manifestations of them.
“I don’t believe I--managed him--very carefully,” said Ginger. She did
not meet his eyes. “I expect he did--overdo, sometimes.”
Manuela came in, then, to say that dinner was waiting, and Ginger
jumped up thankfully and hurried the doctor in to the table, and
she began to talk briskly about her Aunt Fan and to ask interested
questions about his summer camp in Monterey County, and it was not
until he was well on his way again that Dr. Mayfield realized how
skillfully she had kept the talk away from the subject of Dean Wolcott.