A faint fragrance of roses haunted the mysterious "nighty," filled the
room, and mingled with Angela's dreams. All night long she walked in a
garden of sleeping flowers, "sweet shut mouths of rosebuds, and closed
white lids of lilies"; and it seemed but a short night, for in her dreams
she had half the garden still to explore--in searching for Nick, it
seemed--when a rap, sharp as the breaking of a tree branch, made her start
up in bed. A dim impression was in her mind that a voice had accompanied
the rap, and had made an unsympathetic announcement which meant the need
to get up. But the only really important thing was to run back into the
garden and find Nick Hilliard, as otherwise she might miss him forever. So
Angela shut her eyes, and hurried down dim labyrinths, where she had been
wandering before, and called to Nick: "I'm here again. Where are you?"
The rosebuds and lilies were still there, fast asleep, yet somehow the
garden was different and not so beautiful. A handsome woman, with black
hair, was gathering the flowers, pretending not to see Angela, and Nick
had gone. A girl's voice somewhere was saying, "Prince di Sereno! What a
romantic name."
It only seemed a minute since the first knock, but now there came
another; and this time the announcement was even more disturbing:
"Breakfast's ready!" Immediately after, as if to show that no arguing
would avail, steps went clanking along the veranda, heavy at first,
fainter with distance, and at last a convulsive banging on the door of
some other unfortunate.
Now Angela wished no longer to return to the garden of sleep. She was glad
to get up, bathe in haste and dress breathlessly, for she had asked to be
called at five in order to breakfast before six. In a strenuous quarter of
an hour she had arrived at the blouse-fastening stage of her toilet; and,
as luck would have it, the blouse concerned was one which did not approve
of hurry, and tolerated no liberties. It was of fine cambric,
hand-embroidered, fastening at the back, where on one side lived a
quantity of tiny pearl buttons, made to mate with an equal number of loops
on the other side, very little loops of linen thread. As works of art
these were admirable, but they liked to be waited upon respectfully by an
experienced lady's maid. Missing such attentions, not one would consent to
yoke itself with its appointed button.
Angela grew warm and flurried. She rang, but no one answered the bell, for
it was not yet six o'clock; and only a few of the hotel servants had come
on duty.
What should she do? Last night she had looked forward with interest to
dressing this morning, for Nick had got for her a costume suitable for
riding a trail pony, and fortunately she had it in her suit-case. It was
of khaki, with a divided skirt, and a peculiarly fetching jacket. But the
jacket must be worn over a thin blouse; and she could not go out to
breakfast with that blouse unbuttoned from neck to waist. No doubt by
this time Nick was waiting. A large party would start from the hotel to
drive to Mirror Lake, and they two were to be in the crowd--though not of
it--finding their trail ponies later. She might, of course, keep her
"forest creature" waiting indefinitely. He was inured to that treatment
and would not complain; but the others?
"Are you ready, Mrs. May?" Nick's voice inquired apologetically, outside
the door. "I hope you won't mind my bothering you, but I thought perhaps
your call had been forgotten, so----"
"_Can_ you do my blouse for me? Because I can't! And if you can't I shall
cry," moaned Angela in a voice of despair. She dashed the door open, and
stood on the threshold, in the sweet dawn, the river laughing at her
plight.
Nick did not laugh.
There was his Angel, in her short khaki skirt, and the thin cambric blouse
that would not button. Her face was flushed, her eyes sparkling with that
dress-rage than which no emotion known to woman is more fiercely
primitive. She was in an early morning "I don't care _what_ happens now!"
mood; but Nick cared.
In the first place, as his eyes took in the situation, he was overwhelmed
with a sense of vast responsibility. If he could not "do" the blouse, Mrs.
May had threatened to cry, and she looked as if she would keep her word.
So "do" the blouse he must, if the sky fell. And if he couldn't, it had
better fall!
Angela stood with her back to her victim, and the rosy light of sunrise
turned a small visible slip of white skin to pearl. A ring or two of
bright hair, moist from her bath, curled out from the turned-up mass of
gold, and hovered like little glittering bees just over the top buttons of
Mrs. May's collar, which Nick must now attack. What if some of that shiny
hair was twisted around the buttons? Good heavens! On closer inspection it
was!
The man's heart, which was beating fast, seemed suddenly to turn to
water--wild, rushing water, like that of the river below the fall.
"Can you do it?" asked Angela, anxiously.
"I sure will," answered Nick, with a hundred per cent, more confidence
than he felt. A confidence somewhat increased, however, by last evening's
success. "Do I begin at the neck or the waist?" he inquired in his most
matter-of-fact voice, as if he were about to cord a box, or nail up a
crate of oranges.
"At the neck," Angela instructed him.
The stricken young man had a curious sensation, as if his hands were
swelling to an immense size. He seemed to have as much control of his
fingers as though he wore a pair of boxing gloves.
He took hold gingerly of the delicately embroidered collar, a thumb and
finger on either side. "I guess it won't meet," he ventured, tentatively.
"Oh, yes, it will. Just pull it together firmly."
Nick pulled with resolution.
"Ugh! You're choking me!" she gurgled.
All that water which once had been his heart trickled vaguely and icily
through the wrong veins, upsetting his whole system.
"Forgive me this time!" he implored. "It's going to be right, just as soon
as--as--I find the buttonholes."
"There aren't any. They're loops."
"Oh, those tiny little stick-up things, like loosened threads?"
"Yes. You'll see it's _quite_ easy, after the first."
Oh, was it indeed? Nick suppressed a groan, not at his task, but at his
own oxlike awkwardness (so he anathematized it) that made a torture of a
delicious privilege. Evidently it was a much harder thing to lasso one of
these little pearl atrocities with its alleged "loop" than to rope a
vicious steer. And there were those tangling threads of gold. If he should
hurt her!
The ex-cowboy almost prayed, as, with the caution of a man treading upon
knife-blades on the edge of a precipice, he unwound the two little curls
from the top button of the collar. And perhaps his unconscious appeal for
mercy had its effect, for the tendrils yielded graciously to coaxing. He
would have given a year of his life to kiss one of those curls; a
comparatively worthless year it would be, since, in all probability, it
would be empty of Angela May! Yet no--now that he had touched her like
this, now that he had come so near to her, he felt with all his soul that
he could never let her go. He would have to keep her somehow.
"She may think there's a dead line between us," he told himself; "but
before we leave the Yosemite Valley together I'm going to do my best to
cross that line, if I get shot for my cheek. It's better to dare the dash
and die, than not to dare, and lose her."
Never, perhaps, was so desperate a resolve cemented while fastening a
woman's blouse; but there was a hint of triumph in Nick's voice as he
announced, "I've done it!" His signal success in two operations of extreme
difficulty seemed to him like two separate good omens.
Angela lightly thanked her knight for his services and bade him wait on
the veranda while she put on her jacket and hat. A minute later she came
out again, ready for breakfast; and now, having a mind released from
buttons, she saw that Nick was good to look upon in his khaki
riding-clothes.
"Am I all right?" she inquired modestly.
"Better than all right," he allowed himself to answer.
"I do think this hat of Hawaiian straw is a success. And you--well, I'm
rather proud of my trail guide. Used you to dress like that in your cowboy
days?"
Nick laughed. "Great Scot, no! I'd have been in rags in no time. Didn't
you ever see a cowpuncher's 'shaps'?"
"No; I don't even know what they are. Have you kept your cowboy things?"
"Oh, yes. They're knocking around somewhere. I have to put them on once in
a while."
"If I accept your invitation to come and see your place, will you 'dress
up' in them?"
"Of course, if it'd please you. But I'd feel a fool rigging myself out
just to show off, like an actor."
"Yet, that's the bribe you'll have to offer if you want me to pay you a
visit."
"It's settled then. I hope the moths haven't got my 'shaps' since I had
'em on last."
They both laughed and went to breakfast. What a good world it was! Angela
told Nick the tale of the mysterious apparition of a beauteous "nighty,"
and wondered how she could ever have felt unhappy, or depressingly grown
up.
The others who were going to Mirror Lake were almost ready to start, and
the "buckboard" which was to take Nick and Angela had come to the hotel
door. But these two, at all times small eaters, were exhilarated by the
wine of life, and a little milk and bread sufficed them. They did not keep
the party waiting, and so they were regarded with favour--the handsome
young man and the lovely girl about whose relations to each other people
were quite good-naturedly speculating. Angela saw that she was regarded
with interest, and that eyes turned from her to Nick. But she was "only
Mrs. May, whom nobody knows." After the drive on the buckboard she and
Nick would be separating from the rest. That night, at Glacier Point, she
would find Kate, already arrived from El Portal; and then she would never
see any of these pleasant questioning-eyed young people again. The most
reckless part of the adventure would be over with this day--and she was
rather sorry. After all, she did not much regret the wave of fate which
had swept her and her maid-chaperon temporarily apart. There was a certain
piquancy in travelling alone with this knight-errant.
Mirror Lake--well-named--was asleep still, and dreaming of the mountains
which imprisoned it as dragons used to imprison princesses in glass
retorts. There was the dream, lying deep down and visible under the clear
surface; and when every one else had gone off to the trail ponies, Nick
and Angela stayed to watch the water's waking. It was a darting fish
which, with a splash and a ripple, shattered the picture; but the ripple
died, and the lake slept again, taking up its dream where it had been
broken off, as Angela had tried to do. She had failed, for her picture had
changed for the worse when she found it again; but the second dream of
Mirror Lake was fairer than the first. Into it there stole a joyous
luminance which made saints' haloes for the reflected heads of mountains.
The sun rose, and stepped slowly into the water's dream. It flung the lake
a golden loving cup, thrilling it to the heart with that bright gift.
A little farther on, by the Happy Isles--small, lovely islands of rock in
the river's whirl--Nick and Angela found their trail ponies waiting in
charge of a boy. But Nick knew the trail well, and was to be the sole
guide, as they had always planned. He put Angela up on an intelligent
brown bronco, which had to be ridden Mexican fashion; and they set off
together, the boy looking after them as if he, too, would have liked to
follow the trail.
Far ahead they could see the procession of their lost companions, just
rounding a sharp corner. They were an admirable cavalcade in khaki, the
men wearing sombreros, the girls with brilliant blue or green veils tied
over big hats, and scarlet silk handkerchiefs knotted at their necks. The
gaily coloured figures on horse or mule back fitted the picture as
appropriately as if they had been Indians; and Angela gazed at them with
pleasure; but she felt no wish to join the band.
Nick led; she rode close behind, sometimes mounting, sometimes descending
the narrow trail toward Glacier Point. By and by Hall Dome, one of the
great granite mountains, began to dominate the world; but though the
cascades were in his kingdom they could not be governed by him, because
spirits are not ruled by earthly kings. There was Vernal Fall, gentle in
majesty; and Nevada, a wild and untamed water spirit; and retrospect
glimpses of the Yosemite Falls.
Close to Nevada, they reached a famous viewpoint, and Nick took Angela off
her pony that she might stand near the edge and see the white torrent
plunge over an unthinkable abyss. Always she had hated to look down from
heights, because they made her long to jump and end everything. But to-day
she was in love with life, and the leap of the waters quickened her heart
with a sense of power. On the pony again, as they went up and up, or down
steep rocky ways on the verge of sheer abysses, she had no fear. She
seemed to be learning a lesson of peace, a lesson such as only unspoiled
nature can teach.
[Illustration: "_The world was a sea, billowing with mountains_"]
From the high levels they had reached, they looked down on clouds that
glittered silver-white as snow-capped mountain-heads. Among the rocks,
where the ponies' hoofs picked their way, wild flowers sprang, strange and
lovely blossoms such as Angela had never seen; but Nick knew most of them
by name. Bird notes dropped like honey from fragrant shrubs and trees that
hid the singers. Squirrels with plumed tails, and chipmunks striped white,
gray, and brown, raced across the trail, or peered with the bright beads
they had for eyes from piles of dead wood that lay gray as skeletons among
the living green of the mountain forest. Far below, Silver Apron Fall
splashed into the Emerald Pool and turned its green jewels to diamonds.
The near forests and faraway waters sang in the different voices the same
song other waters and forests had sung yesterday; but this song of the
High Sierra had wilder notes, above and beyond all knowledge of fleeting
episodes such as human lives and civilizations. For the song had not
changed since the world was young. The air was not mere air, but seemingly
a conscious mingling of Divine Ether with the atmosphere. Though they
ascended always, it was as if they rode through the depths of a crystal
sea, unstirred by their presence, a sea as deep and as high as heaven, a
blue that took the solidity of turquoise between tree-trunks and paled to
opaline fire across the canon. Angela knew that never again, after these
spacious days, could she go back to her old self. She felt that she had
mounted one step higher on the stage of development, and gained an ampler
view. It was easier now than it had been to see how Nick Hilliard had
become what he was. Nature, on the grandest scale and with the "grand
manner," she thought, had given him his education; had been for him at
once schoolmistress, guide, and companion. And no college built by man
could give, for money, such knowledge as sky and wide spaces had given
Nick for love.
Early in the afternoon the ponies brought them to the high plateau of
Glacier Point, where, looking down, the world was a sea billowing with
mountains, foaming with cataracts.
Angela was deliciously tired; and the long low hotel, built of logs, with
a huge veranda, seemed to promise the welcome she wanted: a cool, clean
room, a warm bath, and afterward luncheon. Also, she expected to find
Kate. Nick had wired, or telephoned, she was uncertain which; and though
no answer had been received, Kate's silence might no doubt be easily
explained later. Angela felt confident that she would have precisely the
room she pictured; she rather hoped it would be white and green.
The manager met them on the veranda, but it was not the manager Nick had
known.
"My name's Hilliard," Nick began.
"Oh, yes. I 'phoned an answer to you at the Sentinel Hotel this morning.
Something wrong with the wire between us yesterday."
"We must have started before you 'phoned."
"Well, I'm sorry. You wanted two rooms. But the best we can do for you and
Mrs. Hilliard is one."
"Great Scot, you don't know what you're talking about!" gasped Nick. "This
is Mrs. May."
"Beg your pardon, Mr. May. I thought you said your name was Hilliard."
"It is. But hers isn't. We--I--I'm only her guide," stammered Nick, so
deeply embarrassed for Angela's sake that for the moment he lost his
presence of mind. "It's the last straw," he thought. "She'll never forgive
me." And he dared not look to see how she had taken the blow, until she
surprised him by laughing. She was blushing a little, too.
"Do you remember the laundry in New Orleans?" she asked. "I'm afraid it
will have to be the laundry for you again, or else a refrigerator."
Nick was of opinion that the refrigerator would better suit the state of
his complexion, which needed cooling, but his relief at seeing Angela
amused, not offended, was too great for words. He mumbled something vague
about any cupboard or cellar being good enough, and began to recover
himself; but his confusion had been contagious. The hotel manager caught
the disease, and hoped Mrs. Willard would excuse him--no, he meant Mrs.
Day--no, really he began to be afraid that he didn't remember rightly
_what_ he meant! He'd got Mrs. Milliard and Mr. Hay mixed up, and would
they sort themselves, please? Once he had them straightened out in his
mind, he'd try to keep them straight.
"Has my maid come on from El Portal?" Angela thought this a propitious
moment for a question on some other subject.
"Your maid? No, Mrs. Hill, she hasn't."
"And no message? How strange!"
"Nothing that I've heard of. But I'll let you know. If Mr. Mayard--Mr.
Mill, will come with me to the 'phone, when you're in his room--I mean,
when you're in yours--we may get on to El Portal."
Angela was still laughing to herself, when word was brought by a
chambermaid that Kate had telephoned from El Portal. She had hurt her
ankle in getting into the stage (Angela could quite imagine that!), and
had not been able to proceed. It was not, however, a regular sprain. She
was in bandages, but better; and it was now settled that, without fail,
she was to meet Mrs. May at Wawona to-morrow. "And your husband wants to
know," added the chambermaid, "what time you would like to have your
lunch."
"He is not my husband," said Angela.
The young woman froze.
"We are friends."
The scandalized muscles relaxed. There was a high nobility in friendship.
The chambermaid herself had a friend, who talked a great deal about Plato,
in the cheap edition.
"And will you please say I shall be ready in twenty minutes?"
Standing on the hotel veranda together, after luncheon, "Mrs. Mill and Mr.
Hayward"--he restored to calmness--could look thousands of feet down to
the floor of the valley. Exactly how many thousands of feet there were
Angela refused to be told, for the distance seemed illimitable, and cold
facts might dwarf imagination. They saw the Yosemite Falls, a quivering
white vein on a dark wall a million miles away. Mirror Lake was a splinter
of glass on a pavement of green tiles. Nevada and Vernal Falls were pale
yet bright as streaks of stardrift, in the blue haze of distance.
If it had not been for the episode of Mrs. Hilliard and Mr. May, Nick
might have felt tempted to try his fate, and dare the dash across the
"dead line," that evening of moonlight on the mountain-top. But it might,
he thought, seem like presuming on what had happened; and having come,
more or less safely, round an awkward turning, he was thankful to find
himself on a narrow ledge of security. The moonshine, that turned
mountains to marble and sky to pearl, was cold as it was pure; and in its
bleaching radiance Angela seemed less woman than spirit. He dared not let
that angel know how hot was his heart.
"I'll wait till we're among the Big Trees," he said to himself. "They're
great, as great as the mountains in their way, but they're friendly and
kind, as if they might help. That's where I'll risk it all: in the
Mariposa Forest, the place I like better than any other in the world. So
whatever happens, we shall have seen the best there is together, and all
that will be mine to remember, if I lose everything else."
The next day was a day of forest and flowers.
They were not travelling this time in an ordinary stage, for Nick had
secured a buckboard for themselves alone, with a driver who knew the
country, with its beauties and legends, as well as he knew his big
muscular gray horses.
Those never-ending, cathedral-forests of America's. National Park were
wilder than any that Angela had imagined. She hardly believed that the
great redwoods which she was to see to-morrow could be grander than these
immense fluted columns of cedar and pine. In the arms of the biggest and
most virile trees, many slender sapling shapes, storm-broken, or tired of
facing life alone, lay helplessly. But the driver's heart was proof
against a romantic view of this situation, as sketched by Angela. "It
oughtn't to be allowed," he said, sternly. "Think of the danger in fire.
That's what is called by the foresters, 'extra hazard,' as I guess Mr.
Hilliard knows."
Oh, yes, Nick knew. But, seeing with Angela's eyes, he envied the
lover-trees their peril. He, a lonely tree, had already taken fire, but he
would gladly risk the "extra hazard." What if--and his thoughts ran ahead
to the day in the redwoods, that day set apart by his mind as the _clou_
of the excursion--what if the thing her eyes seemed to say to him should
be true? What if she could love him, and give up her world, that world
which he saw vaguely, as a dazzling vision? What if, to-morrow, she too
should know the thrill of "extra hazard"?
No wonder, then, as he dreamed, that the glacier meadows encircled by
green walls of forest primeval should seem like fairy rings, visible to
mortal eyes only as a special privilege. In the sunlight-gold, the sheets
of azaleas, cyclamen, and violets, were embroidered tapestries of pink and
purple; the bright rivulets of melting snow that bathed the wild flowers'
roots became a network of diamonds.
Here and there, under the huge coniferous trees, lay patches of snow still
unmelted, though the month was June. Indian fire glowed red on the white
expanse, blood on marble, and scarlet snow-plant sent up lurid spouts like
flaming fountains. The tree-shadows were painted pools of lupin, azure
lakes; or they were purple seas of larkspur. Mountain-roses and wild lilac
tangled in a maze of pink and white and gold. Bear-clover crowned the bald
gray heads of rocks, or shone out like star-white strawberry blossoms from
under a thicket of deer-bush. Wild asters burned rosily, like small
Catherine wheels half extinguished. Small, mottled tiger lilies blazed
among the pale young fronds of growing bracken: the air was scented with
wild roses and the spicy fragrance of manzanita trees--the breath of
California. But loveliest and strangest of all things were the gardens
chosen for their own by the mariposa lilies. The trembling winged flowers
hovered airily just above the earth, like a flock of alighting
butterflies; and overhead poised real butterflies, of the self-same
delicate tints hardly strong enough to be named as colours; silvery white,
faint lilac, and a sunrise-hint of rose. Ground butterflies and air
butterflies seemed kin to one another, those rooted to the ground longing
for wings, those to whom earth offered no permanent foothold envying
their half-sister's rest and peace.
Here in the mountains it was spring, though down below in the valleys full
summer had come; and toward evening Angela and Nick descended once again
to the summer world.
The valley of Wawona was laid out on the plan of those fairy rings,
_alias_ glacier meadows, which they had seen in higher places, only this
was a fairy ring on a grander scale. It seemed so hidden by a belt of
mountains that its green lawns, its gardens, its fountains and flowers
might have been originally discovered only by some happy accident. But the
discoverer being of a practical turn of mind, he or his descendants had
built a delightful though unobtrusive hotel on a spot which might still
have been warm from the fairies. On the veranda of the hotel was Kate,
beaming with smiles of welcome as the buckboard coming down from Glacier
Point brought her mistress in sight.
"Oh, it was a lovely place!" said Kate. And sure, how happy she and Timmy
were to be there at last. She had arrived hours ago, and was nicely
rested, yes, thank you, ma'am.
There were saucers of white violets, and vases of iris and Washington
lilies in Mrs. May's bedroom. Here were no embarrassing complications
connected with "Mr." May and "Mrs." Hilliard. All was peace; and as the
dust which had turned Angela's golden hair to silver was being brushed
away by Kate, the tale of the maid's adventures was unfolded. Yet Angela,
smiling gently, as she inhaled the sweetness of violets, hardly listened.
She was glad that Kate was almost well and that Timmy was restored to the
bosom of his family. But it seemed to her that no one except herself had
had any adventures worth the name. No one else could ever have adventures
half as good! Even she--no, not for her could their like come again. She
began to grudge the passing of the hours, wishing that she had the power
to stop all the clocks of the world.