The Port of Adventure Part 43

x.x.xI

THE BREAKING OF THE SPELL

The spell was broken for Angela. She knew now, if she had not known before, that it was Nick Hilliard who lit the world for her with the light never seen on land or sea, where love is not. Some quality was gone from the sunshine, and the glory of the golden poppies had withered.

Back in San Francisco, living in the rooms which he had helped to make beautiful with daily gifts of flowers, she realized how completely Nick had meant for her the spirit of the West. It was because he had been with her that, from morning till night, she had thrilled with the joy of life and excited antic.i.p.ation of each new day which had never failed or let her tire.

Every moment she missed him and wanted him, and would have given anything to call him back to her; but she had no right to call, for what had she to give worth his pain in coming?

Angela was an anxiety to Kate and a responsibility to Mr. Morehouse. The banker would have liked to send his friends to call upon Mrs. May, but she was in no mood to meet people. Then he suggested that she should go to Del Monte for the summer and watch the beginning of the new home, but she dismissed this idea, saying that as the architect had not yet even finished his plan it would be a long time before the house could reach an interesting stage.

"We all go somewhere in summer," Mr. Morehouse urged. Whereupon Angela merely shrugged her shoulders. "You who live here may want a change," she said. "I've had plenty of changes. I'm very happy where I am, thanks."

But she did not look happy, and Kate, who loved her, realized the alteration far more keenly than Mr. Morehouse, though even he felt vaguely that something had gone wrong with the Princess di Sereno. Kate, who knew well what a difference happiness could make in a woman's health and looks, guessed that the loss of her mistress's colour and spirits was connected with the disappearance of Hilliard. A paragraph she had read in that exciting number of the _Ill.u.s.trated London News_ had, together with some vague hints unconsciously dropped by Angela and a few words of the banker's overheard, set Kate's wits to working, and thus she arrived, through sympathy, at something like the truth. But Mr. Morehouse's diagnosis of the case had in it no such romantic ingredient as hopeless love.

He alone in America (since Theo Dene was gone, and Kate merely suspected) knew that Mrs. May was the Princess di Sereno, who had never been a wife to Paolo di Sereno except in name. He knew that the Princess had grievances, and that she had left her ident.i.ty in the Old World in the wish to forget the past completely. Knowing this, when a certain piece of news came his way he felt it his disagreeable duty to pa.s.s it on to Mrs.

May. And it was the very piece of news which had set Theo Dene wondering whether Angela "knew about the Prince."

Most California journals are apt to give local matters of interest precedence over affairs at a distance, and so it was that (though Angela usually glanced through a newspaper every day or two during her travels) she had never come upon Paolo di Sereno's name except in that old copy of the _Ill.u.s.trated London News_. There she learned how well he was amusing himself while Mrs. May saw California under Nick Hilliard's guidance. But after that came a blank. She knew only that he and a somewhat notorious woman were making ascents together in an aeroplane. But it remained for Mr. Morehouse to tell her of the sensation the pair were creating in Europe.

There was a woman--indeed, there was invariably a woman, though not always the same--whose flaunting friendship with the Prince had fixed Angela's resolve to turn her back on the old life. The woman had begun a career on the very humblest plane, had become an artist's model, then had learned to sing and dance, and at length her reputation as a beauty had made her name famous. A marquis had married her, and when his heart was broken and his money spent, had obligingly killed himself in an inconspicuous and gentlemanly manner. After that his widow had achieved an even greater popular success, and had attracted the attention of Paolo di Sereno.

It was about this time that Angela left Rome, and what Theo Dene wondered if Mrs. May "knew about the Prince," was his hope to break the record for distance in a new aeroplane. Mr. Morehouse, who took one or two French and English ill.u.s.trated weeklies as well as New York daily papers, saw these things as soon as Theo Dene saw them; and, when Angela returned to San Francisco from Bakersfield, he told her of the Prince's project.

"I reasoned," he said, "that it would be better for you to hear what is going on from me rather than be exposed to a surprise and shock from some London or Paris paper lying on a hotel table."

Angela interrupted him to reply that nothing the Prince di Sereno could do had power to shock her, for they had never been really in each other's lives, and had now pa.s.sed out of one another's...o...b..ts forever. In spite of this a.s.surance, however, when Mr. Morehouse saw the Princess looking pale and listless taking little interest in the plans for her new house, he attributed the change to humiliation, or possibly even to fears for the Prince's safety, for women are strange. Luckily she could not be annoyed in this new country where she would make her home, for n.o.body knew who she was or could a.s.sociate her with the Prince's eccentricities! Nevertheless, Mr. Morehouse thought it natural that her health and spirits should suffer; and because of his old and close friendship with Franklin Merriam he longed to find some wholesome distraction for Angela.

But after all it was Kate, not he, who succeeded in supplying it. Poor Kate, so near to, yet so far from, Oregon, dared in her insignificance to follow her mistress's example. Though she would have had a hand cut off rather than "give notice" to her beloved lady, as a matter of fact, she was pining; Tim was growing impatient. His affairs were marching well.

Something had been saved out of the disaster caused by his dishonest partner. He had got in with a "good man," and they believed that together they would some day "beat the world" with their apples. Already they had obtained a London market. There wasn't much ready money to spare yet; but Tim could manage to pay Kate's way from San Francisco to Portland, and on to his place, if she would come. Besides, there was her nest egg, her dowry, from the sale of the gold bag.

Of course, Kate was dying to go, but would not even tell her sad-eyed, pale-cheeked mistress that Tim was wanting her. It was only when, one day, Angela noticed how miserable poor Kate was looking, that little by little she drew out the whole truth. Then she was roused to interest, and forgetfulness of herself.

"I'll tell you what I will do, Kate," she said with more animation than she had shown for weeks. "I'll take Mr. Morehouse's very latest advice, and run up north to Lake Tahoe, to stay till my new house is born. Then, instead of your going to your Tim, he must come to you; and I'll give you a wedding--oh, a beautiful wedding, with a white silk dress and a veil and orange blossoms, and a cake big enough to last you the rest of your life.

You're not to make any objections, because I shouldn't be happy to have you stay with me now that Tim's ready, and you know the idea always was for you to go when I'd reached my farthest point north and nearest to Oregon. Besides, it will do me good to plan for a wedding. And I mean to give you your trousseau. You shall get the things here in San Francis...o...b..fore we start for Tahoe."

So that was why one evening Nick read in a San Francisco paper that "Mrs.

May, who has been staying at the Fairmont Hotel for several weeks, left last night for Lake Tahoe, where she has engaged rooms at the famous Tahoe Tavern, and may remain for some time."

Afterward, when he sent the paper on to Sara Wilkins, as he did send papers now, with parcels of books and magazines, she too noticed the paragraph.

"His star's gone as far north and as far from him as she can possibly go and be in California," thought the school-teacher. And because Nick was right, and her good little face hid a heart that was still better, she was not glad, but very, very sorry.

When Kate was married to her good-looking Irishman, and the little excitement of the wedding was over, Angela began to feel rather desolate.

There were a great many pleasant people at the tavern who would have been kind to the stranger if she had let them be kind, but they were all so merry and had so many intimate interests of their own that their goodness to her seemed only to emphasize her loneliness. Kate had insisted on "lending" her Timmy in fact, the bride and bridegroom both insisted, for there was no doubt in their minds that the black cat had brought them good fortune. Now they had all the fortune they wanted, to "go on with," and as poor, pretty Mrs. May seemed "a bit down on her luck," they would leave her Timmy to bring it back again. And really the topaz-eyed creature, in its becoming jade collar--a gift from Nick Hilliard--was often a comfort to Angela, curled up in her lap and purring cosily under her book as she read. It seemed curiously fond of her, even fonder than of Kate, and had "taken to" her from the first.

Angela had travelled through a region of snowsheds to reach the lake in the heart of the Sierra Nevada, and the scenery was as different from any she had met in California as was her mood from the mood of the south. At Tahoe she was a mile above sea-level, and ringed in by higher mountains which had not lost their dazzling crowns of snow.

On the sh.o.r.e of the long blue lake that mirrored eternally, a clear, cool sky and immense dark trees--pines and cedars--Angela felt that a line had been drawn between her and her California past, with its flame of golden, poppies and flowers of the forest. Here she had reached a high note of beauty which rang crystalline as a silver rod striking upon ice. The place gave Angela a sense of purity and remoteness which she had felt by no lake-sh.o.r.e of Europe. The charm of other lakes had been their villa-sprinkled sh.o.r.es, their historical a.s.sociations. The charm of Tahoe was loneliness. She liked to row out on the water alone, and rest on her oars to look down, down, through miles (it seemed) of liquid sapphire and emerald blending together.

Tahoe was not remote, really since luxurious trains had brought it into close touch with San Francisco and with the East; but Angela liked to cultivate the impression of remoteness as if she were a nun in retreat, and the beauty was of a kind that called to her spirit, making renunciation easier than in the luscious south, scented with lilies and roses. Tahoe had its roses, too; but its chief perfume was of pines and the pure freshness of breezes that blow over water and snow mountains.

The journey, too, had prepared her for the isolation that she craved; the glimpse of tragic Donner Lake, where the pioneers starved and agonized in 1848; the wild Truckee River sweeping its flood past thickets of pale sagebrush and forests of black pines; the tang of cold and the smell of snow in the air; the lonely farmhouses folded among green hills; and the primitive look of Truckee town with its little frame buildings called by pretentious foreign names; Firenze Saloon; Roma Hotel.

n.o.body else, however, seemed to have the half-sad, half-delicious sense of remoteness from the world, at Tahoe, which Angela had. That month was very gay, and the immense verandas of the tavern were flower-gardens of pretty girls--those American "summer girls," of whom Angela had often heard. They swam, and boated and fished, and, above all, flirted, for there were always plenty of men; and in the evenings they danced in the ballroom of the casino, built on the edge of the water.

Angela never tired of going from end to end of the lake in the steamboat that set out from the tavern jetty in the morning and returned in the afternoon. The captain, a great character, let her sit in a room behind the pilot-box, where her luncheon was brought by an eager-eyed youth working his way through college by serving as steward in the holidays. He was in love with a girl at his university, equally poor and equally plucky; but because she was earning dollars as a waitress at the tavern, the boy thought Tahoe a place "where you couldn't help being happy."

Angela thought it a place where, more than most others, it might be possible to find peace, though happiness was gone.

She no longer opened her diary. Never again, she told herself, would she keep a record of her days. But, some time--years from now, maybe--when she could read what she had written without a heartache, she would open the unfinished volume where she had broken off a sentence in the great redwood forest. She might be able to think of Nick Hilliard then without longing for him; but that time seemed far, very far away.

One August evening Angela came back from an excursion to the top of Mount Tallac. She was tired, and had made up her mind to dine in her own sitting-room, then to go immediately to bed; but asking for her key she was told that "a lady was waiting to see her; had been waiting nearly all day."

"A lady!" she echoed. Could it be Mrs. Gaylor? Angela hoped not; for, though she had not heard from Nick those things which Carmen had feared and expected her to hear, she guessed something of Carmen's hate. The fact that she had not been allowed to go back; that Kate had arrived in Bakersfield with a story of Mrs. Gaylor's being called suddenly away from home; that Carmen had never answered a short letter she wrote; all these things roused her suspicions. Indeed, she had even gone so far as to a.s.sociate the box of poison-oak leaves with Mrs. Gaylor; and now the thought that the Spanish woman might have followed her to Tahoe sent a shiver through her veins. Who could the lady be, if not Carmen Gaylor? Who but Carmen would wait patiently for her coming, through a whole day?

For an instant Angela was tempted to answer: "I'm too tired to see any one this evening." But that would be cowardly. Besides, she was curious to see her visitor, whoever it might be.

"The lady's waiting in the veranda now," said a hotel clerk. "She's been here ever since morning, but she went away at lunch time and came back afterward. I don't know what she means to do to-night, for the train for Truckee will be leaving in a few minutes, and she hasn't engaged a room."

Angela went out on the veranda, feeling' a little tense and excited, but when a small, blue-frocked, gray-hatted figure, dejectedly lost in a big rocking-chair, was pointed out to her, excitement died while bewilderment grew.

Her first thought was that she had never seen this countrified-looking person before, but as her guest turned, raising to hers a pair of singularly intelligent, rather frightened eyes, she knew that she had met the same glance from the same eyes somewhere before.

The little woman's face was so pale, so tired, her whole personality so pathetic yet indomitable, that Angela's heart softened.

"How do you do?" she asked kindly. "I hear you have come to see me, so we must know each other, I'm sure----"

The visitor was on her feet, the chair, from which she had sprung with a nervous jerk, rocking frantically as if a nervous ghost were sitting in it.

"We don't know each other exactly," Miss Wilkins hastened to explain, as though eager not to begin with false pretences. "The only time you ever saw me was at Santa Barbara last May, but you were very good to me and--and I found out your name----"

"Of course. I remember quite well!" Mrs. May smiled rea.s.suringly, for the poor little thing was certainly terrified and ill at ease as well as tired. Angela sprang to the conclusion that the young woman was in money difficulties, and having remembered the loan of the sitting-room at Santa Barbara had somehow found her way to Tahoe in the hope of getting help.

Well, she should have it. Angela was only too glad to be able to do something for any one in trouble. "I'm glad to see you again," she said, as if it were quite a commonplace thing for a stranger to have dropped apparently from the clouds in search of her. "But I'm so sorry you've had to wait. Perhaps you wrote and I haven't got the letter yet?"

"No, I didn't write. I couldn't have explained in a letter," said the weary-faced visitor; "and maybe you wouldn't have wanted me to come if you'd known before-hand. I thought if I'd travelled all this way though, just to speak to you, you wouldn't refuse. I've been two nights on the way."

"Oh, how dreadful!" exclaimed Angela. "You must let me get you a room at once. Some people are leaving to-night. They surely can put you up in the hotel."

"Thank you very much," returned the young woman, "but I couldn't impose on you as your guest. You'll see that when I've told you why I came. I can't get away to Truckee, I know, for the train goes too soon, but I'll take a room at some simpler place where it's cheaper than this."

"We'll talk of that later," said Angela soothingly. "Now I hope you'll come to my rooms and rest, and tell me about yourself. When we're both washed and refreshed we'll dine together in my sitting-room quietly."