It was very dim in the Mission church. Angela had not realized how dim
until she heard the news announced through Billy's nose. They were locked
in!
Somebody had been to the door, somebody had locked it on the outside, and
it was deep twilight, almost night.
Suddenly it seemed completely night. The colours of the old vestments
still glowed in the dusk, like smouldering coals in a dying fire; but that
was because of the rich tints, and because the eyes gazing at them were
accustomed to darkness. Looking up at Nick to see what his silence meant,
and whether he were nonplussed or merely deciding on a plan of action,
Angela could hardly make out his features. She could see clearly only his
eyes, luminous and gray.
"What shall we do?" she asked. Her voice sounded appealing, like that of a
child.
"Don't worry, Mrs. May," said Nick, with sudden cheerfulness. "We'll get
out all right. I was just studying what must have happened. That's why I
was so mum. I reckon the Padre must have been away--though why he left the
key in the door beats me--and coming back he locked up for the night.
Unless he went around in the direction of the auto he wouldn't have seen
it. If he looked in here, of course he'd have thought the church empty,
we being in the gallery. And it's late in the day now, so late he wouldn't
expect visitors."
"It's so 'late in the day' that it's night!" cried Angela. "Another reason
for his not seeing the motor."
"Not quite night yet! And I'm going down to make all the noise I can at
the door, assisted by Billy. There'll be such a din, between the two of
us, you'll want to stop your ears, and as for the Padre, he'll come
trotting as fast as his legs will carry him, to stop the row." Nick
laughed so jovially that Angela began to be seriously concerned. If it
were necessary to assume such gaiety he must regard the situation as
desperate. She remembered how far away was the sole occupied room among
the many empty, echoing cells.
Nick helped her down the steep stairway, and the touch of his hand upon
her arm was comforting. It was cold in the darkening church, and she felt
the chill more in imagination than in body; yet she shivered.
"What if we have to stay here all night?" she thought. But she kept the
thought to herself.
Nick and Billy took turns in pounding on the door, shouting, "Hi, Padre!"
then doing it together; but the separate and combined noises,
ear-splitting inside the church, produced no result. The dreamy silence
was shattered in vain, and at last, when the two refused to be discouraged
by lack of success, Angela stopped them.
"It's no use," she said. "He isn't going to hear. And I shall have
hysterics or something idiotic if you keep on for one more minute."
"I was thinking of trying another way," said Nick, still painfully
cheerful.
"What other way?--since even Samson couldn't batter down the door."
"A lot simpler than battering. Climb out of a window."
"Too high," said Angela.
"No. I can manage all right. I'll get out, find the Padre, and----"
"And leave me here in the dark? No!"
"But there'll be Billy."
"Let Billy go," Angela half whispered, "and you stay with me. Supposing
you went, and the Padre wasn't there, and--and you weren't able to get
back. Oh, I couldn't bear _that_!"
Never had Nick known so exquisite a moment. He was sorry this queer,
mysterious accident had happened, because it seemed to reflect somehow on
his intelligence and foresight as a guide. And he hated to have Angela
distressed. But--after his strivings with jealousy, and his defeat--it was
balm that she should depend upon him, and want him with her in this
adventure.
"I thought, if worst came to worst, I might find a ladder outside," he
said, fearful of betraying his illicit happiness.
"Billy can find a ladder, if there is one," Angela persisted. "There's the
most weird, rustling sound, which comes every once in a while, and I can't
possibly stand it with only Billy."
Nick could hardly speak for joy, but he managed to reply, "All right;
Billy shall be the man to go."
The going was easier to propose than to carry out: for in bygone days,
when the Padres of Old Spain were building New Spain, Mission churches
had to protect their flocks against the devil incarnate as well as
excarnate. Windows were made few and high; and now, when the brave
builders sleep, it is nobody's business to worry about the free passage of
air. Such windows as San Miguel possesses were hermetically closed that
night when Angela di Sereno and Nick Hilliard were imprisoned; and Billy,
standing on Nick's shoulders, had to work a few tedious moments before he
could induce one of these windows to open. By the time the wiry, slim
figure was ready to straddle the window-sill, slip out, dangling, and drop
on the grass, night had closed in, fragrant and purple in the open, heavy
and black in the church.
Angela came and stood close to Nick. She had never been a timid girl; but
since the night when she had lain watching a thief who slowly, slowly
raised her window, twelve storeys above the ground, foolish and hitherto
unknown terrors crept through her veins if she happened to wake in the
dark. And now there certainly was a rustling which stirred the silence,
then died, as if it had never been.
"Don't go away from me," she said. "It's so dark that if we're separated
we may be ages finding each other."
This sounded like an allegory!
"No, we mustn't be separated," Nick answered, struck by her words, as if
by a prophecy. Then he, too, heard the rustling--faint, winged, and
mysterious.
They stood still and close together, listening. There was no sound from
outside--not a call for the Padre, not a reassuring shout that Billy had
succeeded in finding him.
Angela groped with her hand, and, by accident, touched Nick's. To save his
soul he could not have resisted pressing the small cold fingers!
Wonderful! She did not snatch them away! Often they had shaken hands, or
Nick had taken hers to help her in or out of the motor-car; but there had
been nothing like this. He felt the thrill of the touch go through him as
though electric wires flashed a message to his heart. He was afraid of
himself--afraid he should kiss her hand, or stammer out "I love you!" And
that would be fatal, for she would never trust herself to him again.
Besides, it would not be fair. She was like a child asking his protection,
here in the dark, and he must treat her as a man treats a child who has
come to him because it is afraid. But he could not think of her as a
child. He thought of the night in New York when she had knocked on his
door, and called to him, a stranger, for help. He thought how he had seen
her, drowned in the waves of her hair, like the angel of his dreams.
"Do you hear that?" she whispered, letting him keep her hand, even
clasping his with her fingers. "There's something alive in this church,
something besides ourselves."
Nick felt giddy. It was all he could do to keep himself from catching her
in his arms, no matter what might be the consequences, no matter how she
might hate him a moment afterward. But he resisted, and the strain of
temptation passed.
"A bird has got in, perhaps," he said.
"You--you--don't think it could be the Padre himself ill, or--or----"
Nick understood her hesitation and fear.
"No," he soothed her. "We'd have seen any but some small thing. I've got
two or three matches in my box, I guess. We'll have a look around." This
was supreme self-sacrifice on his part, for to find matches and "look
around" meant letting Angela's hand go. To let it go was tempting
Providence, since almost certainly she would never, of her own accord,
slip it into his again.
"Yes, do let us," she said, and drew the hand away. Nick supposed she had
hardly been conscious that he had held her fingers in his, and even
pressed them. But this was not the fact. True, Angela had mechanically
groped for a protecting touch. Nevertheless, she was aware of Nick's hand
on hers, and glad of it, with a gladness made up of several conflicting
feelings: such as surprise, some slight shame, and defiance of that shame.
She was afraid of the rustling in the dark, which might mean a lurking
thief, a man half murdered, or one of a dozen things each more unpleasant
than the other. Yet she half liked being afraid in the dark, with Nick
Hilliard to reassure her, though she would have hated it with Billy. No
unknown horror she could conjure up would have made her want to touch
Billy. She was almost sorry when Nick found his matches and together they
began moving about the church, she keeping a little behind.
The last match but one lit up something white that stirred beside the
altar; and as the flame died down, leaving only a red glowing point, a
pair of eyes like two points of fire stared up from the floor.
"Oh!" murmured Angela, and clutched Nick's coat sleeve, like a girl of
early Victorian days. But, after all, women have not changed in
essentials. They are much the same now in the dark, when pale things stir
or shine unexpectedly; and they are still glad to have with them at such
times a man, preferably a handsome man, they happen to like better than
any other.
"Great Scot, it's an owl!" said Nick, profiting by the last match of all.
It was, or appeared to be, a white owl; and it seemed to him for a second
or two as if the witch-bird of the Grapevine man at Los Angeles had come
to give the advice it had refused. But this was a childish idea, he knew!
The owl was a plain, ordinary owl, which no doubt lived in the
neighbourhood of San Miguel, and had flopped in, perhaps in search of the
proverbial church mouse. It was afraid of the other intruders, and afraid
of the match, so afraid that it flapped its wings and hooted dismally. It
hooted three times, which, if it had been the witch fortune-teller, might
really have meant something, though there was no time just then to think
what. Nick was somewhat alarmed lest, in its anger and fear, it should
dash at Angela's face, but she would not let him strike the creature with
his hat.
"No, poor thing, it's worse off than we are, because it's alone, and we're
together," she said. "We'll go, and leave it in peace now we know what it
is." And she kept beside Nick in the dark by holding daintily to his coat
sleeve.
He found the steps of the gallery, and made her sit down on the lower one,
rolling up for a cushion his coat, on which she had knelt as she looked at
the vestments. It began to seem odd that Billy had not come back, but it
was difficult for Nick to regret the delay as much as he ought, for
Angela's sake, to have regretted it.
When she shivered and confessed that she was cold, Nick fetched her a
priest's coat from the gallery, a rare piece of brocade, embroidered
perhaps by queen's fingers, and smelling of incense.
"What can have happened to Billy?" Angela wondered. "It's the strangest
thing that he doesn't come back. I begin to be frightened about him."
Nick reassured her once more. Things often seemed queer that were simple
when explained, as doubtless this would be. "I suppose you'd not like me
to go----" he began, only to be cut short before he could finish his
sentence.
"No--if you mean, would I like you to go and look. While you're here----"
"Yes, Mrs. May?"
"Why, of course, nothing matters so much. And I wish you wouldn't stand
where I can't see you. Do sit down on this step by me."
So Nick sat down on the step, and her shoulder touched his arm. They
talked in low voices, he telling her things to "keep her mind off" the
situation: things about the Mission and other Missions. Then the
conversation turned to Nick's ranch and the oil gusher which had given him
fortune out of threatening ruin; and he described the queer little oil
city which had grown up on his land.
"I should like to see it," Angela said, when he had pictured Lucky Star
City and ranch in a simple way, which was nevertheless curiously graphic.
He caught up her words eagerly. "Would you let me take you there?" he
begged. "Mrs. Gaylor'd invite you to stay at her house. You know I've told
you about that, and how----"
"Yes, I know." Angela could hardly have explained why, but somehow she
did not want to hear Mrs. Gaylor talked of just then. She was no longer
indifferent to the idea of seeing Nick's home, and the woman who had
helped him to make it, yet she was not sure that she wished to go there.
Certainly she did not wish to visit Mrs. Gaylor. But--she would like to
know whether the mistress of the Gaylor ranch was really so very
beautiful.
"What we must think about now, is how to get out of this church," she went
on, laughing faintly in the dark. "It seems as if we might have to stay
here all the rest of our lives."
"Are you hungry?" Nick inquired.
"A little."
In his enraged disgust at not being able to procure a meal, Nick would
gladly have killed and cooked the owl.
"Are _you?_" Angela asked.
"Am I--what?"
"Hungry."
"Good heavens, no!"
Time passed vaguely, as time does pass in the dark, when there are no
means of counting the minutes. They could hear their watches ticking, if
they listened, but they never listened long enough to know how the seconds
went by. And all the matches were gone.
"It's like being lost in a cave, or a mine, or the catacombs," Angela
reflected aloud, "with your only candle burnt out. You can't tell whether
it's minutes or hours."
"It must be mighty tedious for you, I'm afraid; though Billy's sure to
come back soon," said Nick.
"No, somehow it isn't tedious," she answered as if puzzled. "I suppose I'm
rather excited. And you----"
"Well, I suppose I'm rather excited, too," said Nick, in his low, quiet
voice, that did not betray what he felt. Angela's voice told more of what
went on in her soul. It was, as Nick often thought, a voice of lights and
shadows.
At last--what time it might be they could not tell--there came a sound of
a key turning in a lock. The door opened, and a yellow ray from a lantern
streamed into the church, making the owl in its corner flutter wildly.
Billy's face showed in a frame of dull gold, as he peered about, blinking.
Then, for the first time, Angela knew that Nick had been angry with the
chauffeur. There was something in his tone as he said, "Well! So you have
come!" which suggested that, if she had not been there, the "forest
creature" might have added some strong and primitive language.
"Couldn't help it, Mr. Hilliard. I done the best I could," Billy explained
hastily. "When I got out there, I was up against a tough proposition, and
I guess it would have been tougher yet if I'd stopped to do much
thinking."
"I don't know what your proposition was. But seems to me if it had been
mine I'd have found time to yell: 'All right--coming as soon as I can!' as
I passed the open window," Nick remarked dryly. "Mrs. May'll think we're a
nice lot."
But Billy broke into a flood of explanations, too proud to excuse himself
to Hilliard, after being, as he thought, unjustly reproached, yet willing
to justify himself in the eyes of the lady.
He had dropped from the window, he said, just in time to see a dim
figure, which looked like that of a Padre, disappearing in the distance.
He had started instantly in pursuit. If he had waited to call out under
the window the figure would have disappeared, and he might not have found
it again. As it was the old man had gone so far, and was going so fast,
that it had taken some time to catch up. He--Billy--had yelled. The
Padre--for the Padre it was--had eventually stopped. Then had followed
explanations why the key was in the church door, and the door open; why
the door was afterward locked, and why the Padre was hurrying away from
the Mission, late in the evening, with the key in his pocket. And all
these explanations were simple enough, simpler than Billy's own.
In the first place a gentleman in the hotel at Paso Robles--one who came
often to the Mission of San Miguel, and was a most important person--had
sent a message asking that the church might be opened for him in the
afternoon. He wished to drive out, and bring a lady to see the Mission.
The Padre, obliged to spend the afternoon at the bedside of a man dying at
a distant farmhouse, stuck the key in the church door, with a note
attached, asking the lady and gentleman to lock the door when ready to go
away, and hide the key under a big stone which the letter indicated. The
vestments and altar cloths, the great treasures of the church, had been
purposely left in an open box, that they might be inspected by the
visitors, and the Padre had departed with a growing uneasiness in his
mind, lest the instructions should be neglected. So strong was his
presentiment, "though the gentleman was not one to forget," that he felt
compelled to leave the sick man before nightfall, and hurry off to the
church to see if his fears were justified. He promised, however, to return
to the bedside immediately; and luckily meeting the gentleman, heard a
confession that indeed the key had been forgotten. Only a short time had
passed since the church was left empty, therefore the Padre had no further
fear for the safety of the vestments. He hurried on, missed seeing the
motor, found the key in the church door as he expected, gave it a quick
turn in the lock, took it out, put it in the pocket of his long gown, and
started back to the farm as fast as his legs would carry him.
"Well, wouldn't he give you the key?" Nick asked, when the story had
reached this point.
"Yes. He gave it to me. But it was pretty dark by that time, and a good
long way from the Mission. I lost myself, and thought I was never going to
get here," Billy admitted. "I guess I must have wandered all round Robin
Hood's Barn, when, just as I was ready to give up boat, the stars come out
through a lot of clouds, and showed me the roof of the church. I steered
by that, and here I am."
"I think we must be grateful, and not scold him," said Angela.
"I did my best, anyhow," Billy persisted, "and I brought this lantern out
of the auto. The worst is, I don't know how her lights'll work, for
thinkin' to be at the hotel before dark, I didn't bring no water."
Nick stifled a word or two he would have liked to say, reflecting that
perhaps he was as much as to blame as Billy. He ought to have left nothing
to chance where Angela's comfort and safety were concerned.
They got water, though finding it meant further delay, and after all, the
acetylene lamps obstinately refused to shine. It was the first time they
had been used since Nick bought the car, and he abused himself roundly for
not having tested their temper. Something was wrong, something which
neither his knowledge nor Billy's could set right; and after tinkering for
half an hour, they started with no other light than that of the lantern
which Billy proposed to hold while Hilliard drove.
By this time Angela was thankful for the cloak she had left in the car. It
was nearly twelve; and the eight miles which the Bright Angel would gaily
have gobbled up in the same number of minutes had she been able to use her
eyes, took an hour to negotiate. Like a wounded lioness the car crawled
along the dark road, illumined only by a fitful spot of yellow light; and
a deep-toned clock somewhere was striking one as she drew up before the
door of the hotel.
Most of the windows had gone to sleep, but a few near the front entrance
were twinkling wakefully, and the door flew open in response to the call
of the motor. A servant of the hotel came out, but behind the liveried man
appeared the tall figure of John Falconer, with a woman at his side.
"We've been anxious about you," Falconer said, coming forward.
That "we" was suggestive; and Angela's fancy sprang to a happy ending for
the marred romance. As she entered the hall, dazzled by the lights, her
first glance was for the woman who stood beside Falconer, smiling though a
little shy. It did not need Falconer's introduction to tell that this was
Mademoiselle Dobieski; and if the singer had lost her youth in Siberia,
Paso Robles, or the magic medicine of love, had given it back. Her pale
face, lit by immense dark eyes, was radiant, and though she leaned lightly
on a stick, it seemed that this was a mere concession to a doctor's order,
or a habit not quite forgotten.
"This is the lady I told you of," Falconer said to Angela, when he had
heard the story of the adventure. "I told her about you, too, and she
would sit up to see you. So would your maid, of course, who has been in a
great state of anxiety--and even the cat was depressed. Mademoiselle
Dobieski has been trying to console your poor Irish girl."
"I could not bear her to be unhappy," said the singer, in a voice of a
curiously thrilling quality. "I am so happy myself! This is the best day
of my life. I don't want it to end."
"The doctor has told her she will be cured," Falconer explained. "You can
guess whether it has been a happy day for me! And she has promised to be
my wife. It was in the Mission church of San Miguel, bless him!"
"Then it was you who forgot the key in the church door!" exclaimed Angela.
"I felt it was, somehow. And no wonder you forgot!" She threw a smiling
glance at Nick.
Nick said nothing, but he too blessed San Miguel. He knew nothing about
the bodily ailments which brought people to sulphur springs, but he
thought that no torture of the body could be worse than jealousy; and of
that pain San Miguel had in a moment cured him.
He blessed also the owl which had rustled and made Angela want him near
her.
"I believe I'll catch it, and have it tamed at my place," he said to
himself. "I'll give it a good time all the rest of its life."
And next morning early, while Angela slept, he motored out again to the
Mission, found the Padre, caught the owl which was young and dazed,
brought it to the hotel, and hired a boy to take it by train to
Bakersfield.