The Port of Adventure Part 13

"Fit to drive--ladies?"

"Fit to drive a queen."

"That's what I want to do," mumbled Nick under his breath.

X

WHEN ANGELA WENT SIGHTSEEING

The next five days Angela spent in seeing the country her father had helped to create, and in breaking down in the blue motor-car at brief and inconvenient intervals. At first they were unexpected intervals; but soon they were taken for granted; for the more she knew of Mr. Sealman's invention the less was Angela surprised at anything it chose to do. The Model was a model of all the vices. It smoked like a chimney, drank like a fish, and developed, one after another or all together, every malady to which motor-metal is heir. The stages of the way, even to the Mission of San Gabriel, in its sleepy old Mexican village on the fringe of Los Angeles, were punctuated with disasters. A burst tire was a comma; carburetor trouble a colon; nervous prostration of the sparking-plug a period. But Mr. Sealman never lost confidence. He explained everything, justified himself and the car; told anecdotes of his courage, and let fall pathetic words concerning an invalid mother dependent on him and his success.

"I'm a pioneer, I tell you," he said. "You and I are making history this minute."

Angela would gladly have turned from so lurid an occupation to any other pursuit; but Mr. Sealman looked as if his health were more fragile than that of the car. When he clawed obscurely at the crystallized sugar ornaments under the bright bonnet of the fainting Model, his air looked so dejected, his eyes so hollow, and his smile so wan that Angela's fury melted into pity. Pa.s.sionate resolves to shed him and his blue abomination died within her as she watched his struggles. His whole future depended, he said, on the Model. If Mrs. May should throw him over and hire another car, the news would fly like lightning from garage to garage of Los Angeles; indeed, from end to end of California. He would be ruined. His mother, who had been forbidden excitement, would, without doubt, die of heart failure.

The heart of Angela failed also, again and yet again. She began to see that Mr. Sealman had cast himself for the part of Old Man of the Sea, in a travel drama of which she was heroine. She felt alone in the world. "It will probably end in my having to buy the little blue brute and burn it,"

she thought. "But even then the codfish will probably insist on being my butler."

These gloomy forebodings shadowed her mind one morning when the Model broke down about half a mile from fantastic little Venice, the Coney Island of South California. In a rage she got out and walked, past a kaleidoscopic pattern of tiny bazaars, shooting-galleries, paper icebergs, and cardboard mountains. She threaded her way through a good-natured crowd of tall, tanned young Americans, pretty girls with wonderful erections of golden hair, dark-faced Mexicans, yellow-faced j.a.panese, a few Hindus and negroes. Then, by the pier, she saw an old Spanish galleon disguised as a restaurant, and drifted in to lunch on fried sand-dabs attractively advertised in big black letters. How old, how Spanish, and how galleon the craft might really be, none could tell--or would. But the sand-dabs were delicious; and from the queer window near her table--a window cut in the ship's side--she could see the Pacific, blue in distance, green where it tossed white foam-blossoms on a beach of gold.

"Breakdowns would be fun if I'd some one to laugh at them with me," she thought; and her mind conjured up the image of Nick Hilliard, seating him opposite her at the little table.

She had ordered him home and he had apparently obeyed; which seemed unkind and poor-spirited, and altogether unlike him. Ever until now he had been at hand to save her from all that was disagreeable. Even at Los Angeles he had jumped off the train to circ.u.mvent Mr. Millard. His ways had been like the ways of story-book heroes, who, by some extraordinary coincidence, invariably appear in time to rescue the heroine from a villain, a mad bull, a runaway horse or a burning house. The only difference was that Mr.

Hilliard could not possibly be the hero of this story, and his opportune arrival was, on his own confession, never a coincidence. He came on purpose; and that was bad taste. But as he had done it so often, why couldn't he have transgressed just once again, to rescue her from Sealman?

She thought of the tall forest creature with yearnings, which interfered with her appet.i.te for sand-dabs. He might un.o.btrusively have stayed, she thought, and put himself at her service. Not the most clinging Old Man of the Sea could continue to cling if that square-chinned bronze statue pointed out the wisdom of letting go. But no doubt _he_ was at home near Bakersfield, before this--Angela seldom named Nick in her mind--otherwise she must have run across him somewhere that first day at the City of the Angels when she had spun gaily from park to park, the Model for once behaving well. Almost, she had expected to see him the next morning when the car refused to move, and she had taken a trolley car, halfway to San Gabriel. It would have seemed appropriate, somehow, to meet him strolling in front of the Mission, his hands in his pockets, gazing up at the beautiful half-ruined facade, with its delicate chain-armour of gold lichen, its tower, and its flowers like blossoming barnacles.

Angela knew now that she had felt certain of meeting Hilliard "accidentally," in the Mission church. That while she walked beside the elderly Spanish verger, chatting of his native Cordova, listening to tales of Father Juniperra Serra, Father Somera, and the legend of the Indians with the miraculous portrait of the Madonna, she had started more than once at a footfall, fancying it that of her lost hero.

Of course, if he had ventured to show himself at any time she would have known that it was no coincidence; and she would have lifted her eyebrows in silent reproach, talking more earnestly to the verger, who had been happy because she knew Cordova and all his beloved Spanish cathedrals.

Nevertheless, the bronze statue would have fitted well into the scene, and something lacked because it was absent.

"I do think he might write from his ranch and acknowledge the money I sent him," she told herself now, neglecting the sand-dabs to stare through the galleon window at the floating seaweed on the tide-dark gold-green kelp, like lost laurel-wreaths torn from the brows of drowned divinities. "I posted the letter myself, that first day. He must have got it--if he _is_ at home."

Just then a tall, dark young man walked into the ship-restaurant, taking off a sombrero. Angela gathered herself together, ready to administer a gentle snub. But she might have saved herself the trouble. It was not Nick. She could have cried with disappointment. Snubs of the past were coming home to roost.

There was time to buy California jewels in the bazaars--tourmalines and pearl-blisters--before the car came up, purring sweetly, and looking innocent as a cat gorged with canary birds. Mr. Sealman was so sure that nothing could or would go wrong ever again that Angela had no heart to receive him coldly.

They started off for a run through bungalow-land, and the Model conducted itself like a newly converted sinner.

"I've been thinking out a dandy plan, while I was tinkering on the auto,"

remarked Mr. Sealman in an engaging manner. "What do you say to doing a tour of the Missions? You know, I guess, there's a chain of 'em, and the fine thing it would be to see the lot by road! I tell you, this little auto's going to be all right--all right. It'd be the best kind of a stunt for a lady from Europe; and if the papers got hold of it, I bet they'd give us a bang-up notice--a photo too, maybe, you could send your friends on the other side."

Angela shuddered. She could hardly bear even to hear this proposal from the codfish, for a pilgrimage to the Missions of California had been a dream of Franklin Merriam's. He and she were to have followed the footsteps of the Franciscan Fathers, stage by stage; and if a Mission here or there were falling into ruin, Merriam had talked of offering to restore it at his own expense. Now the money had gone to restore the Palazzo di Sereno, and to buy motors and aeroplanes and ladies' favours for the Prince of that name. Yet some day Angela meant to make the pilgrimage, when she had built her house and given herself a starting-point.

"I've other things to do," she replied coldly. "I shall see only the Missions I may happen to pa.s.s on this tour."

"Well, some folks'd ruther save this trip for a weddin' journey," Sealman suggested. "I suppose widows have weddin' trips, don't they?" He gazed thoughtfully at the gray coat and gray-veiled motor hat which Angela wore to protect her from the dust. She sat in front beside the chauffeur for the motion of the car was less there, but she decided that, if she were ever hypnotized into a.s.sociating with the Model again, she would take the back seat.

"The Missions for mine," he went on, when his pa.s.senger made no reply.

"There's some prefers the Yosemite, but there's no motorin' there. And if I was a girl I wouldn't feel married without a motor. In the Yosemite there's; so much honeymoonin', the minute you see a lady with a man you put 'em down for bride and groom."

Angela had cause to remember this remark later.

"Speakin' of honeymoons, looks as if there'd been some around here," the codfish continued chattily.

They were running about through the suburbs of Los Angeles, and if Sealman's pa.s.senger had deigned to answer she would have been compelled to agree. It was ideal honeymoon-land; a moving picture, painted in colours, seemingly by rival artists of different nations, for the mingling of effects was mysterious as the scenery of dreams.

Just as Angela told herself that it was like Holland in the jewel-box neatness of little streets and little houses--behold the Riviera, with groups of palms among tropical flowers, and feathery pepper-trees, graceful and large as giant willows! Then, when she had decided on Italy or Southern France as a simile, far-off, sharp mountain peaks, a dark, grotesquely branching pine in filmy distance, and a doll's house with a red pointed roof, suggested a sketch on a j.a.panese fan.

This was a spick-and-span little world for a perpetual honeymoon, and at the entrance of the streets there should have been signs, Angela thought, saying, "No one but brides and grooms need apply." It was all distractingly pretty; and though Angela had already admired the big handsome houses of Los Angeles and Pasadena, these rose-bowered bungalows caught her fancy more. After all, there is a sameness about millionaires'

mansions the whole world over; but here was something new, invented by California.

Cupid himself might have been the architect so daintily was each little dwelling planned for the happiness of two lovers; so, of course, all the women who lived in these houses must be young and beautiful. All the men must be handsome, and husbands and wives must adore each other. No creatures old or fat or inclined to be disagreeable would dare come house-hunting here; or if they did come, surely some wise suburban by-law would rule them out! Once in, as residents, the happy lovers would remain forever young.

"It's to be Riverside to-morrow, ain't it?" Sealman inquired, when, full two hours later than she had expected, he brought her back to the door of her hotel.

Angela hesitated. In California, at most times of year, it is hopeless to use the weather as a handle to hang an excuse upon. She looked at the sky.

It was a vast inverted cup of turquoise.

"Are you sure the car is equal to so long a run?" she asked mildly.

The likeness between Mr. Sealman and a codfish became so marked that Angela feared he was going to be ill.

"You don't know what the car can do," he answered reproachfully.

"Perhaps not," she admitted. "Very well, we'll start at eight."

"Better make it earlier."

She made it earlier, and was actually ready; but at half-past eight Sealman appeared on foot. Of the car's health he said nothing, but of his mother's health he said much. She had suffered a relapse. The doctor had been with her all night. How Sealman was going to pay the bill he did not know. Would Mrs. May go to Santa Catalina Island this morning, and to Riverside to-morrow? There was time to catch the boat.

The doctor's bill was a trump card. Angela consented to wait for Riverside, and she took Kate to that fair island loved by Californians, and by fishermen all over the world.

The name Avalon alone would have lured her; for who would not set sail for Avalon at a moment's notice?

Santa Catalina is Corsica in miniature, Corsica without Napoleon or vendetta. But it has sea-gardens, fathoms deep under green water, where flowers bloom and fish glitter in a dazzle of jewelled armour beneath the gla.s.s floors of flat-bottomed boats. The fishermen were catching yellow-tail that day, too, just as Franklin Merriam had caught them in his time; and his daughter went back to Los Angeles full of thoughts of him.

To-morrow was to be held sacred to her father's memory; for his old home, vanished off the face of the earth now, had been near Riverside. Angela wanted the day to be perfect, unmarred by trouble or vexation; and though she had her fears, when morning came the Model started off so well that hope began to rise.

Making a detour, they spun past the old Mission San Gabriel, where she had arrived ignominiously by trolley four days ago; and turning for a look at the facade, Angela saw a yellow car drawn up in the fleecy shadow of a pepper-tree. A chauffeur sat next the driver's empty seat, apparently half asleep.

"That's the motor I wanted to ask you about, a day or two ago," Angela said, bending forward to speak to Sealman--for she had kept her resolution to sit behind him. "It's the handsomest I've seen; and we've met it several times; two men in it always, in chauffeur's caps and goggles."