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, the chaparral were a clean and shining bronze; the distant alfalfa fields were emerald counterpanes and the toyon berries, 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, lost feeling 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. “Shall we 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 the commonplace 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.