The Bridal Veil
"Where ancient forests widely spread,
Where bends the cataract's ocean fall,
On the lone mountain's silent head,
There are Thy temples, Lord of All!"
Andrews Norton.
As the trial and execution of J. C. P. Collins were the last acts in his
worthless career, so they were the last but one in the courtship of Mat
Bailey and Mamie Slocum. These comparatively young people were married
soon afterward. They were married and did not live happily ever after;
but they certainly enjoyed greater happiness than that which fell to the
lot of their friends, John Keeler and Dr. Mason only excepted.
During a long life John Keeler reaped the reward of sterling integrity.
To the end of his days he remained a poor man. But no one in all Nevada
County was more highly respected. Not that he was much interested in
what other people thought of him, as he strove simply to win the respect
of his own exacting conscience.
Dr. Mason, having at last had the satisfaction of seeing one murderer
brought to justice, felt that he might with dignity retire from the gold
fields, where good Anglo-Saxon ideas of law and order were beginning to
find acceptance. So he moved his family into the plains at the foot of
the Sierras, where in the town of Lincoln, Placer County, they enjoyed a
more genial and happy existence.
Mr. and Mrs. Mat Bailey also moved away from Nevada County. But Mat had
become so strongly addicted to stage-driving that he could not give it
up even to enjoy the continuous society of his bride. He might, for
instance, have become a florist, and employed Mamie as his chief
assistant. Instead of this he took her to what he considered the most
beautiful place on earth.
He established his home in the meadows of the Yosemite Valley, where the
clear waters of the Merced preserve the verdure of the fields the whole
summer through. In midsummer, the floor of the Yosemite Valley is like
an oasis in the desert. On all sides are rough, dry mountains; and if
you follow the river down to the San Joaquin Valley it becomes lost in a
vast parched plain. But between its mountain walls, where Mamie lived
and where Mat pursued his vocation, all is beautiful.
From the mountain height across the river thundered the Yosemite Fall in
all its glory, a sight that allures travelers from the uttermost parts
of the earth. And down the valley a ways was the Bridal Veil, where Mat
and Mamie paused to worship when first they entered that enchanted
valley together.
Their first drive after they went to house-keeping was to Artist Point.
Mamie felt that she never had loved Mat before as she did that day; for
as he exulted in the glories of the valley, with Half Dome at the end
and El Capitan standing in sublime magnificence before them, the scales
fell from her eyes, and she saw in her stage-driver husband the poet and
artist that he really was.
He was artist enough not to attempt to show his sweetheart all the
glories of the Yosemite at once. He took the keenest delight in having
them grow upon her. It was fully two months before they climbed up out
of the valley to Inspiration Point, renewing their acquaintance with
familiar scenes and experiencing more stupendous grandeur. It was two
years after they came into the valley that Mat disclosed the most
tremendous magnificence of all.
For years after it fairly took her breath away to think of it. First
they took the familiar road to Inspiration Point, then made their way
over the mountains where the Glacier Point Road now runs, and camped for
the night in the highlands of never-failing frost. Next morning they
pursued their way through the woods an interminable distance, as it
seemed to Mamie, until finally they stood upon the brink of a huge
cañon, with a snowy mountain range in the distance beyond, and in the
intervening space, a vast panorama of granite mountain sides, almost
white,--here and there covered with a sparse growth of timber. The
waters from these mountain reaches had cut a channel for themselves
known as Little Yosemite Valley, where pour the two wonderful cataracts
known as Nevada Falls and Vernal Falls. Their deep roar came up from the
valley. Mamie felt that she would be content to watch that scene the
whole day through.
But Mat took her on to Glacier Point, where you look straight down more
than three thousand feet to the level floor of the Yosemite Valley.
There below, more than half a mile below, she saw her neighbors'
cottages; and the thought occurred to her, as she clung to Mat, that if
she should fall over the precipice she might crash through the roof of
one of these. She actually saw the good neighbor who was caring for her
own child during his mother's absence. Before the day of aviators it
seemed strange enough to look straight down from half a mile up in the
sky.
Then came those scenes of terrifying magnificence when she followed Mat
over the trail cut along the perpendicular walls of the cañon five miles
down to the floor of the Valley. One who has not passed over that trail
can scarcely conceive of it; and one who has, brings away a sense of the
sublime and the beautiful mingled with terror. There against the blue
sky stands the perpendicular wall of Half Dome, almost within arm's
reach, seemingly, in that clear atmosphere. There stand El Capitan and
the Three Graces. And there at every turn of the trail pours the
glorious Yosemite Fall, at first too far away for the ear to notice its
distant thunder. Then on closer approach the faint roar is heard across
the cañon. The attention becomes fixed more and more upon this majestic
cataract, to set off which the wonderful mountain walls seem to have
been specially created. The trail from Glacier Point, beginning at an
altitude above the top of the fall opposite, reveals it in its whole
nakedness--shows its rise in the vast watershed of upland mountain
valleys, and then by degrees leads you closer and closer to it until, at
Union Point, its glory is perfect.
But why attempt to outline the wonders of that famous valley?
If Mr. and Mrs. Mat Bailey were not actually happy ever after, they
found life worth living. As only people of humble fortune are likely to
do, they lived the simple life. And they found it pleasant. They
realized, as many people of humble fortune do not, that the sweetest
pleasure can be derived from the cheerful performance of obvious and
commonplace duties. Mat had always taken pride in his unpretentious
calling, and his wife learned to love the blessed busy life of wife and
mother.
Her sons and daughters, knowing no better because of their peculiar
environment, grew up believing this old earth most beautiful, and the
nobility of their world seemed to create in them nobility of character.
The sheltered peace of that green valley entered into their souls.
THE END