Nick refrained from mentioning this to Mrs. May, but when he had last seen
the Mission Inn at Riverside he had thought that he would like to come
there, next time, on his wedding trip. There had been no bride in view
then, or since; but now he remembered that wish. It was a good omen that
fate should have made the one woman of all the world his companion to-day.
He had not expected such a wonderful stroke of luck. The little blue auto
might actually have gone a whole day without mishap, or might not have
collapsed until after Mrs. May had lunched alone at the Glenwood. But here
they were, he and she, in his yellow car, sailing into Riverside together;
he driving, Angela by his side, talking as kindly as if she had forgiven
him his sins without being asked. If he had not thought it "wasn't playing
fair," he would have "made believe" like a small boy building air-castles,
pretending that it really was a wedding trip, and that he and his Angel
were about to have their first luncheon together.
"But she'd hate me even to make believe," he said to himself. "No! It
wouldn't be a fair dream to have, behind her back."
Yet it was difficult not to dream. Angela was so delighted with the
garden city watched by desert hills; and she said so innocently, "What
_sweet_ houses for brides and grooms! Oh, _no_ one except people in love
ought to live here!" that Nick had to bang the door of his dream-house
with violence. And for the first time since he had fallen in love with
Angela, he began to say, "Why not--why shouldn't I try to make her care?
There are folks who think you need only to want a thing enough to get it."
She appeared to him radiant as a being from a higher planet. Never could
she be content with his world, he had told himself. Dimly and wordlessly
he had felt that here was a creature who had reached an orchidlike
perfection through a long process of evolution, and generations of luxury.
The earth was her playground. Men in Greenland hunted seal, and in Russia
beautiful animals died, merely that she should have rich fur to fold round
her shoulders. In the South perfumes were distilled for her. There were
whole districts engaged in weaving velvets and silks that she might have
dresses worthy of her loveliness, and men spent their lives toiling in
mines to find jewels for her arms and fingers, or dived under deep waters
to bring up pearls for her pleasure. It was right and just that it should
be so, for there was nothing under heaven fairer than she. And since such
things must always have been part of her life, because she was born for
them and would take them for granted, was it reasonable to hope that she
would waste two thoughts on a man like Nick Hilliard, a fellow reared on
hardships, who had learned to read in night schools, and had considered it
promotion to punch cattle?
All this was as true to-day in Riverside as it had been in New York and
New Orleans. Angela was prettier than ever in the simple dress she wore
for motoring, and the gray silk cap that framed her face, making a halo of
her pale gold hair. Her dainty and expensive clothes were a part of her
individuality, as its petals are of a rose; and she appeared to think of
them no more than a nun thinks of her veil. But Nick felt this morning
that Angela had come down from her shining heights to be human with him.
She laughed like a schoolgirl, in sheer pleasure of motion which the big
car gave after martyrdom with the Model. She had travelled all over the
Old World, yet she said there was nothing anywhere prettier than
Riverside; no such petticoated palms as those that trailed the gray fans
of other years down to their feet like the feathers of giant owls; no such
pepper-trees; no such cypresses even in Italy, as these standing black as
burnt-out torches against the desert sky; no such rose-covered bungalows;
and, above all, no hotel so quaint as the Mission Inn.
The hour for luncheon was past, but Nick ordered flowers and a feast for a
dream-bride. Then, while it was preparing, the two walked in the garden
court and under pergolas where bunches of wistaria, lit from above by the
sun, hung like thousands of amethyst lanterns.
"I shall build a house like this in miniature," said Angela, half to
herself. "I can't have the shrines and the 'Mission' Arches with the
bell-windows; but I can have the court and the arcades and the pergolas;
and a well and lots of fountains. Inside there shall be walls of natural
wood, and great beams across the ceilings, and big brick
chimneys--'Mission' furniture too, and Indian rugs and pottery. I can
hardly wait to begin that house!"
"Where will it be?" Nick asked, afraid of the answer.
"In California somewhere," she said.
"You mean it?"
"Oh, yes! I don't know where, yet. I'm falling in love with the South now,
but I won't let myself fall too deep in, till I've seen the North."
"If you're in love, _can_ you keep yourself from falling deeper in?" said
Nick. "I don't think I could; I'd sure have to let myself go."
It had been so good to see the forest creature at the moment when he was
needed most, that Angela had melted toward him as snow melts in the spring
sun. She had not only forgiven, but forgotten--for the moment--that there
had been things to forgive; so she answered this question of his, humanly
and simply. "I wonder?" she said. "If it were not a question of a country,
but a person? I can't tell. I've never fallen deep in." Then she pulled
herself up abruptly. "Luncheon must be ready," she went on in a changed
voice. "I'm starving, aren't you?"
"Starving!" Nick answered mechanically. But he was saying in his heart,
"She's never been in love! Hooray!"
The thought shot new colour into existence. "I'll pull the world up by the
roots to get her," he thought. "And she wants to live in California!
Maybe, if I try to make myself all over again, a little worthier--a little
more like what she's used to, at last she----" It seemed sacrilege to
finish the sentence.
It was for this end, to "make himself more like what she was used to,"
that he had bought the new clothes in New York. They had not been a
success. But, luckily for his happiness to-day, he did not know how
Angela had laughed when she saw the shiny shoes outside his door.
Never was a luncheon like that which they ate together in the great cool
dining-room, whence everybody else had vanished long ago. Angela sat
facing one of the big windows, and a green light filtering through
rose-arbours gave her skin the luminous, pearly reflections that artists
love to paint. Up in the minstrels' gallery a harpist played, softly, old
Spanish airs.
"Before you decide where to live, will you come to my part of the
country?" Nick asked, his eyes drinking in the picture. "There's a ranch
you'd admire, I think. Not mine. I'd like you to see that, too. But the
one I mean is a show place. It belongs to Mrs. Gaylor, the widow of my old
boss. She's a mighty nice woman, and handsome as a picture. She's pretty
lonely and likes visitors. If she invites you, will you come?"
"Perhaps, some day," said Angela, in a mood to humour him, because
everything round her was so charming that to refuse a request would have
sounded a jarring note. Not that she had the slightest intention of
visiting Mrs. Gaylor, the widow of Mr. Hilliard's "old boss."
"But I've mapped out a programme for myself already," she went on, "which
may take a long time, for if I like a place very much I shan't want to
hurry away. For instance, maybe I shall have a whim to come back here and
stay a week or a fortnight. You see, some one I loved dearly, long ago,
lived in California, and there are parts of the country I want to visit,
for his sake as well as my own."
This was a blow in spite of her late confession. But in a moment he took
courage. If this girl (who looked eighteen and couldn't be much over
twenty) had loved a man long ago, that man must have been a father or an
uncle. And with a sense of relief he remembered the miniature frame.
"Would you tell me what parts you want to see most of all?" he asked, with
an air of humility which was engaging in a man so big, so strong, and
brown.
Angela's eyes smiled mischief.
"Why do you want to know?" she catechized him. "I think you'll admit that
after--after several things which have happened, I've a right to ask--a
question, before I answer yours."
"I know. You're afraid I'll want to be following you again," said Nick.
"But following wasn't in my mind. I want to _take_ you in my new
automobile."
She stared in amazement.
"You extraordinary person! As if I _could_ do such a thing!"
"Why not?" He asked it meekly, looking boyish, ready to be rebuked and
snubbed--and yet to make his point. "I expect, when you were at
home--wherever that was--you were used to travelling sometimes with your
maid, in a motor, and nobody else except your chauffeur?" (Nick pronounced
this word rather originally, but this was a detail.)
"Certainly. That's entirely different."
"Now you've got a cat too."
Angela broke into laughter. This man, and this day, were unique. She was
delighted with herself for forgiving Mr. Hilliard. Because, of course, she
could unforgive him again at any minute, if it seemed really best.
When a woman laughs at your _bon mot_, there is hope. There is also
happiness. Nick felt both. They came in a gust, like a spray of perfume in
his face, taking his breath away. "I believe she'll do it," he said to
that sympathetic chum--himself, who was taking the kindliest interest in
his love affairs. "It's up to me now."
"And in my car you'd have two shuvvers. What with us both, and your Irish
maid, and your black cat, wouldn't we be enough to take care of you?"
"You're not a real chauffeur," said Angela.
"I've been qualifying for the article, and if I do say it myself I'm as
smart a driver this minute as you could find in California."
Angela shook her head. "You amuse me, because you're quite, quite
different from any man I ever saw, but--I'm afraid I can't engage you as
my chauffeur."
"Not if I could give you a first-rate character, ma'am?"
"Don't call me 'ma'am'!" Angela reminded him. "It's too realistic, Mr.
Would-be-Chauffeur."
"I call you 'Angel' behind your back. You can't say you won't be an angel,
because 'twould be irreligious."
"I used to play at being one when I was a wee thing," said Angela, her
eyes far away. "Bed was the sky. The pillows and sheets were white clouds
tumbling all round me. I could bury myself in them. I made believe I was
disguised as a child by day, but the door of dreams let me into heaven."
"It mostly does," Nick mumbled. Then he said aloud, "If you used to like
making believe then, wouldn't you just try it for a little while now? Make
believe I'm going to take you round in my car, and I'll tell you some of
the things that will happen to us."
"Well--it couldn't do any harm to make believe just for a few minutes,
could it?" Angela wondered if she were flirting with the forest creature.
But no. Certainly not. She never flirted, not even with the men of her own
world, as most of the young women she knew were in the habit of doing.
This was not flirting. It was only playing--and letting him play a little
too--at "making believe."
"What would happen to us?" she asked.
"Well, shall we begin with to-day--what's left of it?--or skip on to
to-morrow?"
"I hate putting off things till to-morrow--if they're pleasant."
"So do I, and this would be pleasant. When you'd seen all you wanted of
the Mission Inn, I'd drive you along Magnolia Avenue, that's walled in
with those owl-palms in gray petticoats. As you go down it looks like a
high gray wall in a fort, with bunches of green at the top, and roses
trained over it. We'd run up Mount Rubidoux, that has a grand, curlycue
sort of road to the top, where there's one of the old Mission bells, and a
cross, and a plaque in memory of the best Father of 'em all, Juniperra
Serra. Rubidoux's one of those yellow desert mountains, the biggest of the
lot, with a view of Riverside, and miles of orange groves like a big
garden at its foot. We'd sit up there awhile, and I'd tell you a story of
General Fremont, when he passed in the grand old days. Then we'd spin on
to Redlands, and see the park and the millionaires' houses----"
"I like the lovers' bungalows best."
"Do you? Would you like one better for yourself?"
"A thousand times!" But she broke that silken thread quickly. "Go on. What
would we do next?"
"Oh, next an orange-packing factory. You'd enjoy seeing the oranges
running like mad down a sloping trough, pretending they're all equal, till
the boys watching spy out the bruised ones that are sneaking along, and
pitch 'em away before they can say 'knife.' By and by the small,
no-account oranges are sent about their business, which is to play second
fiddle, and the big, noble-fellows, who're worthy to succeed, fall first
into the hands of girls, who wrap them up in squares of white paper. My
faith, but those girls' hands go fast! It makes you feel like
heat-lightning just to watch 'em fly! Anybody who wants to can order a box
of picked oranges, each wrapped in paper, with a lady's name and a verse
in her honour printed on it. Lots of fellows do that. When you'd seen the
factory I'd drive you back to Los Angeles, and we'd get there after dark.
But there's a searchlight on my car equal to a light on a battleship, and
her name alone's enough to illuminate the road. I've christened her Bright
Angel."
He paused for half a second; but if the analogy meant anything to his
companion she did not choose that he should know. "And then?" she said.
"Then--if you'd seen enough of Los Angeles, I'd ask you to let your Irish
girl pack up. And I'd start off with you--for good. I mean, you and the
maid, and the cat, and Billy. Billy's the other shuvver, besides me. I'd
take you to Santa Barbara."
"That's one of the places on my programme."
"And Monterey."
"Another of my places. But I want to go to the Yosemite. You couldn't
motor me there."
"I could guide you. I've known horses longer than I've known motors. And I
know the Yosemite. Once I got hurt in a kind of accident. I wasn't good
for much, for a while afterward. And as I couldn't do any work I went and
loafed in the Yosemite Valley. I'd always wanted to go. It was grand. But
it would be heaven to see it again with y--with an angel."
Angela traced the steel embroidery on a gray _suède_ bag which lay on the
table. She had got it the other day to serve as understudy for the gold
bag which was "taboo" for public use at present. She was glad that the
forest creature did not know, and never would know, that she had secretly
bought back his gold bag. If he found out, it might be his turn to
misunderstand.
"How were you hurt in an accident?" she asked, for the sake of diverting
the talk from angels.
"It was in a fire," said Nick.
"Oh! On your ranch."
"No. In San Francisco."