"Do you think you will go to Shasta in Mr. Falconer's private car?" Nick
asked wistfully.
They were flying along together on the winds of the Bright Angel, Angela
by Nick's side, on the way to Paso Robles. It was afternoon of the next
day; Falconer and Mrs. Harland and Theo Dene had left Santa Barbara in the
morning; and the sister and brother had been so pressing in their
invitation that Angela had hardly known how to refuse, though not quite
willing to accept. Late that night, Mrs. Harland and Theo would arrive at
Del Monte, where Falconer would join them, and in a day or two they would
go on to San Francisco, where Miss Dene had already been visiting. In Mrs.
Harland's maid, Kate had found a friend from her own part of "the ould
country," who had "come over" three years ago, and who had known Tim. This
meeting was such a joy, that Angela had fallen in with Mrs. Harland's
suggestion that Kate should go on to Paso Robles in Mr. Falconer's car
McCloud. The girl would thus enjoy her friend's society for several hours,
and having arranged Mrs. May's things in the rooms already engaged at the
hotel, would await her mistress's arrival that evening. Therefore, Angela,
Nick, and the little chauffeur had the Bright Angel to themselves for a
run of a few hours through beautiful country, and a visit to the old
Mission of San Miguel before arriving at Paso Robles.
"Do I think I shall go?" Angela echoed the question lazily, for she was
happier this morning, and basking dreamily in the change, not troubling to
wonder what had brought it about. "I hardly know. They were very kind to
ask me. Californian people seem so warm-hearted to strangers, and so
hospitable, one can't help feeling one's known them for years instead of
days. _You_ are like that too--otherwise I shouldn't be here! And I've
almost forgotten to be surprised at myself for--anything. I like Mr.
Falconer; Mrs. Harland, too; but he is what you said--splendid. I
understand why you called him typically Californian."
"I'm glad," said Nick. And he tried to be glad. But he had not been told
the romance of Mademoiselle Dobieski. Falconer did not guess that Angela
or Theo Dene knew it, though he proposed introducing Mrs. May to a "Polish
lady, staying at Paso Robles." "Then, of course, you will go to Shasta,
and they'll take you to their place on the McCloud River. They say
Falconer's house is the prettiest place of the sort in California. Mrs.
Gaylor's never been, but she reads a lot about society folk and their
doings in the papers. You'll sure have a good time."
"Why do you say 'you'? They invited you, too."
"Yes, and that was _really_ kind," Nick said. "It isn't 'kindness' to ask
you, because 'twould be an honour to have your visit. But they don't want
me. I was asked only because I happened to be with you, and Mrs. Harland
was afraid my feelings would be hurt if I was left out."
"I'm sure you're mistaken," Angela insisted, laughing within herself
because he had not seen Theo's manoeuvres. "Of course they want you." She
could not add what was in her mind. "Anyway, Miss Dene does." As for
Carmen, Angela had no idea that the invitation was to be extended to her,
and the figure of Mrs. Gaylor, who, according to Theo, intended to marry
Hilliard, loomed less important than after listening to Miss Dene's
gossip. Of course, it would be a good thing for him to care for Mrs.
Gaylor, and if she were really nice, to marry her in the end. Only, when a
young woman is in a motor-car with a handsome "forest creature" who
appears to live only for her pleasure, she does not think much beyond the
hour. For that hour he may be hers, and hers alone, though to-morrow they
part; and she shuts her eyes to anything so far away, so out of the
picture, as an "end."
"I'm not Mrs. Harland's kind," Nick explained; "nor Falconer's, though
he's too big a man to care for what people call 'social distinctions.'
They'd be kind to me if I went, and wouldn't let me feel any difference
they could help. But there'd be a house-party, maybe, and I wouldn't know
any one. I'd be 'out of it.' I couldn't stand for that, Mrs. May."
"You're sensitive," Angela said.
"In some ways," Nick admitted. But he did not admit the truth; that he
could not, and would not, go to Rushing River Camp because he was jealous
of Falconer. To Nick it seemed impossible that any man, free to love,
could be five minutes in Angela's society without falling in love with
her.
He had had his moments of hope, but with Falconer for a rival the
handicap was too great. Not that Nick meant to give up the fight; but if
she went to Shasta it would be a knockdown blow. John Falconer was high
enough for a place in Mrs. May's own world. Nick despised jealousy as
common and shameful, and had always scorned men who yielded to so mean a
vice. Now, however, they had his pity. He knew what they suffered, and he
could not go with Mrs. May, in Falconer's car.
Nevertheless he beat down the desire to dissuade her from the trip.
"You oughtn't to miss McCloud River," he forced himself to say.
"I'll see," said Angela. "It's nice not to make up one's mind, but just to
enjoy the minute."
"Are you enjoying the minute?"
"Yes."
He was rewarded. For this minute was his. They were spinning along the
coast road, between sea and meadow, with the salt breeze in their faces.
The red-gold earth rose and fell in gracious curves, like the breasts of a
sleeping Indian girl, and now and then an azure inlet of the sea lit up a
meadow as eyes light a face. In the distance, mountains seemed to float
like spirit guardians of hill-children; and desert dunes billowed through
irrigated garden oases, like rivers of gold boiling up from magic mines.
Nick pointed out the two little mountains named after Louis the Bishop,
and told Angela tales of the country, of the people, and of the little
towns with Spanish names and faces, which gave her always that haunting
impression of the Old World. Some of the stories were her father's
stories, and she liked Hilliard the better for knowing them.
They had both forgotten Miss Sara Wilkins, who had "stopped off" at Santa
Barbara because all her life she had wanted to see the place. But just at
that moment, on her way to Bakersfield, she happened to be thinking of
them both.
At last the car plunged into a maze of folding hills, like giant dunes.
The motor road was woven in twisted strands while the railway overhead
strode across the gaps between height and height, on a vast trestle that
might have been built for an army of Martians. Rock-crested hills rose
gray in the sun above the soft night of oak forests; and as the road
ascended, its ribbons were looped from mountain to mountain like the
thrown lasso of a cowboy.
"Paso Robles means 'Pass of the Oaks,'" said Nick, as they came into a
stretch of billowing country where immense trees shadowed the summer gold
of meadows.
"Shall we go first to the Mission of San Miguel?" Nick asked. "Or are you
tired, and shall I take you to the hotel now?"
"I'm not tired," said Angela. She did not want this day to end yet.
"We'll hit the trail for the Mission, then," said Nick, "and see the
sunset, as we did from Santa Barbara."
"Can this be as beautiful?" Angela asked. "Surely not?"
"You, maybe, won't think so, but I know it will be more beautiful for me,"
he answered. "That imported young lady, with all those elegant fixings,
sort of jarred with the Mission architecture, to my mind."
Angela hoped that her laugh was not cattish. "But I'm imported, too," she
said. "Shall I jar on you at San Miguel?"
"You're _not_ imported!" Nick dared to contradict her. "Or, if you are,
you're the kind there oughtn't to be any duty on."
A rain of sunset colour poured over mountains, hills, and meadows as Nick
turned his car toward San Miguel. When they came in sight of the old
Mission (built far from the Springs because of hostile Indians), the
changing lights were like an illuminated fountain. At last, when they
began to fade, Angela said, "Let us go. If we stay longer we shan't
remember this at its best."
She would have been surprised if she had known what happiness there was
for Nick in the word "we," spoken as she often spoke it now: "We" must do
this; "We" mustn't forget that.
But it was a blow when she asked Billy, the chauffeur, if he would like to
see the Mission. "Nothing can hurt the car," she said; "and when we come
back it will be too late."
Nick was tempted to glare a warning and suppress the youth's interest in
objects of historical value: but he refrained. Billy must not get it into
his head that there was "anything going on." So the chauffeur was allowed
to follow Nick and Angela as they wandered, so it seemed to him,
sentimentally about the big Mission enclosure, between crumbling adobe
walls where the Franciscan Fathers had sheltered cattle in nights of
peace, and Indians in nights of danger. Billy could not feel the pathos of
the place--desolate, yet impressive in its simplicity; but as he
sauntered about, his hands in his pockets, whistling beneath his breath,
"I can't marry you!" his smart little modern mind began to work. The
strategic value of the position appealed to him, and he saw why "those old
Johnnies," as he irreverently styled the Padres, had planted the Mission
here. "Guess they knew their business 'most as well as if they'd been
soldiers," he said to himself.
Billy found pleasure in picturing the massacres which must have taken
place, imagining the great doors of the enclosure opened hastily to let in
an escaping band of "friendlies"; then the bursting in of the enemy, and
the death of the Fathers as they tried to protect their Indian children.
Many had died by fire and tomahawk, but always others had come to take
their place; and so the work had gone on through time, even as the
bell-signals had gone on sounding from Mission to Mission along El Camino
Reale, the highway of the Padres.
"One Father lives here; a dear old gentleman," said Nick. "I met him once,
but he mayn't remember me. I'll knock at his door to ask for the key of
the church. Somehow I think you're going to like it better than the church
of Santa Barbara. There's something special about this place, I hardly
know what, but you'll know. And they've got some vestments they're proud
of--made by Queen Isabella the Catholic and her ladies."
It rather surprised Angela to hear Nick speak of "Isabella the Catholic,"
for this way of naming the Queen showed knowledge of history; and Angela
had not yet discovered that history was Nick's favourite reading. Indeed,
she was only beginning to learn a few things about him. At first her
whole rather patronizing idea of the young man had been that he was an
"interesting type," a "picturesque figure." Then, when she heard him talk
with Falconer, and Falconer talk of him and of what he had done, she saw
that Hilliard was already a man of importance in his State: that the
"picturesque figure" was merely the woman's point of view. She was ceasing
to patronize him mentally now, and almost every hour he gave her some
surprise.
At a closed door in the white, deserted cloisters, Hilliard knocked, but
there was no answer. His face clouded, for he had set his heart on showing
Mrs. May this Mission church.
"This means we can't get the key," sighed Angela.
"I'm afraid so," he agreed. "But it's possible the Padre's showing some
one around, or having a look at his beloved vestments."
They walked to the church door and found it shut; but to their surprise
the big old-fashioned key was in the lock. Nick pushed the door open and
they both went in, followed by Billy. The Padre was not to be seen. So far
as they could tell in the dimness the church was empty.
"Queer!" exclaimed Nick. "I wonder what can have become of the Padre? It
isn't like him to leave his church open at this time of the evening. It's
late, and we'll have to light up before we start on, although we've only
eight miles to go."
"I'm sorry he's not here," Angela said. "I should have loved to see Queen
Isabella's vestments."
"Would you? Well, you shall, if I have to turn everything in the church
upside down. They must be somewhere."
The two wandered on, peering through the dusk at the primitive paintings
and decorations, made by Indians according to designs of Spanish monks.
"Do you suppose the vestments may be kept up in that gallery?" Angela
suggested. "It looks a safe sort of place for treasures. But if they're
there I'm afraid we shall find them in a locked box."
It was worth trying, and they climbed the narrow stairs that led up to a
gallery curtained with twilight. There sure enough was a box, and, like
the door, it was open, the key in the lock. Within, free to every hand,
were the embroideries, the great treasures of the church.
"Isn't it mysterious?" she asked, in a half-whisper, for loud tones would
make jarring notes in this haunt of silence. "Can anything have happened
to the Padre?"
"Things don't happen these days," Nick reassured her.
But he was not quite easy in his mind. "It's too dark for you to see the
vestments well. Shall I carry them downstairs?"
"No," said Angela. "I'd rather look at them here. It's like staring at
flowers in the night. The colours come up to your eyes in the most
wonderful way."
Seeing that she meant to kneel by the open chest Nick whipped off his coat
to lay under her knees, and she laughed as she named him Sir Walter
Raleigh. Hilliard and Billy stood behind her, Nick stooping sometimes to
examine a stole or altar-cloth she wished to show him, Billy frankly
bored, until a faint sound somewhere made him prick up his ears.
"Maybe that's the Padre now," said he. "Shall I go and look?" Then he
pattered down the steep stairway without waiting to be answered.
Angela and Nick forgot him for a moment, until his nasal young voice
called excitedly from below the gallery:
"Say, Mr. Hilliard, we're locked in!"
"What!" exclaimed Nick, straightening himself up and dropping the end of
an embroidered stole.
"Some fellow's been to the door and locked it on the outside."