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.
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.