The Port of Adventure Part 33

"The Yosemite!" Angela said, over and over to herself. "I'm in the Yosemite Valley!"

Once, in the heart of a forest, a deer sprang out on to the road and stood alert, quivering, as the stage lumbered heavily toward it through sparkling red dust like powdered rubies. Then, suddenly, when the horses were almost upon it, the delicate creature bounded away, vanis.h.i.+ng among the shadows which seemed to have given it birth, as a diving fish is swallowed up by water and lost to sight. This vision lingered in Angela's memory as one of the loveliest of the day; but the great cataracts did their startling best, later, to paint out the earlier pictures.

Even the first slender forerunners of the mighty torrents were unforgettable, and individual. Long, ethereal, floating white feathers drooped from the heads of tremendous boulders that were gray with the glossy grayness of old silver. Cascades were everywhere; and the weaving of many diamond-skeins of water behind a dark foreground of motionless trees was like the ceaseless play of human thought behind inscrutable faces whose expression never changed.

Yet these silver tapestries, pearl-embroidered, were but the binding for the Book of the Valley, the great poem of the waterfalls; and as the stage brought them near the home of the mighty cataracts, Nick and Angela noticed that the atmosphere became mysteriously different. The sky rolled down a blue curtain, to trail on the floor of the valley, like a veil suspended before an altar-piece. Through this curtain of exquisite texture--bright as spun gla.s.s, transparent as star-sapphires, and faintly s.h.i.+mmering--their gaze travelled toward soaring peaks and boulders, which seemed to rise behind the sky instead of against it. Then, suddenly, out gleamed the dome of the Bridal Veil, bright and high in the heavens as a comet sweeping a glittering tail earthward.

Later, as the stage wound along the road and brought them under the wall of the cataract, the rainbow diadem that pinned the topmost folds of the veil glittered against the noonday sun; and in the lacy woof of moving water, lovely kaleidoscopic patterns played with constant interchange of flowery designs. Invisible fingers wove the bridal lace, beading with diamonds the foliage of its design; or so Angela thought when first she saw the falls. But presently she made a discovery--one which Nick had made years ago, and kept the secret that Angela might have the joy of finding it for herself.

"Why, it isn't a veil, after all!" she exclaimed.

"I know," said Nick. "That effect's only for the first few minutes, like a stage curtain hiding the real thing."

"And the real thing is only for the elect, like us," said Angela, conceitedly. "Outsiders can't get behind the curtain. Let me tell you what I see."

"And if we see the same thing?"

"Why, it would be a sign that we'd been--friends in a former incarnation, wouldn't it?" But this was a question to leave unanswered, and she went on quickly to describe what she saw behind the "stage curtain" of the Bridal Veil. "A white witch falling----"

"Yes, from the saddle of a black horse----"

"A winged horse, like those the Valkyries ride. Oh, now the witch has turned her face to me, as she falls. She's putting me under a spell. I feel I shall never escape."

"I hope you never will," said Nick. "So we _did_ see the same thing in the Cascade! I found the falling witch when I was here before; but I came under the spell with you."

He watched her face fearfully, as he ventured this, never having dared as much before; and seeing that she turned away, he drew her attention to El Capitan, grandest of the near mountains. Nick had been reading _The Cid_, trying to "worry through it in the old Spanish," he explained; and the idea had come into his head that the mountain might have been named by some Spaniard for "El Gran Capitan." "You see, it's too big and important for an everyday Captain. But it's just right for El Gran Capitan: don't you think so?"

Angela did think so, as he suggested it, though she remembered next to nothing about _The Cid_. But Nick's knowledge of history, which had amazed her once, pleased without surprising her now. She began to take his knowledge of most things for granted. Here in the Yosemite Valley he could teach and show her much that she might have missed but for him, and his similes showed habits of thought with which a few weeks ago she would not have credited the ex-cowboy. He made the mountains take shape for her as G.o.ds and heroes of Indian legends; he told her of the Three Graces, and the Three Brothers, grim as gray monks, who threw glances over their round shoulders at the Graces; and there was no drama or tragedy of the valley that he did not know from its first act to the last.

In the afternoon the stage rushed them past a charming camp in the woods, to the Sentinel Hotel, at the foot of the Yosemite Falls. Angela was given a room opening on to a veranda, and waiting for Nick to bring her some word from Kate, by telephone, she stood looking up at the immeasurable height of the cataract, which loomed white across a brown sweep of trout-haunted river. "It's like a perpendicular road of marble going up to heaven," she thought; and as she gazed, down that precipice of snow came tumbling a white shape as of a giant bear, striving desperately to save itself, hanging for an instant on the brink of the vast gulf, then letting go hopelessly and plunging over.

Angela stepped out on the veranda to talk with Hilliard when he came, and though shocked to hear that Kate could not arrive that night, was glad to know her safe. Nick had arranged that Kate should meet her mistress at Glacier Point next day. "And so," he said, "there's nothing to bother about, if you can do without her for this one night. I hope you don't mind much, for I feel it was my fault. I ought to have managed better."

"I don't mind in the least," Angela was beginning to console him, when suddenly she broke off with an "Oh!" of dismay, clasping her hands together.

"What's the matter?" Nick questioned anxiously.

"Nothing. Nothing at all."

"But there is something, Mrs. May. You must tell me, and I'll try to make it right."

"What shops are there here?" she asked by way of answer.

"Oh, you can buy photographs and souvenirs, and candy and drugs, I expect."

Angela shook her head. "I don't want to buy them. Do you think--I could find--a--a--nighty?"

"A 'nighty'?"

"A nightgown. You see, I've just remembered--the cascades and mountains made me forget--my dressing-bag was left behind with Kate. I've a frock or two, and the new khaki things for to-morrow, in my suit-case, but--nothing else. Brushes and combs and so on, I can get here I'm sure. But--would the shops--if any--run to nighties?"

"No," said Nick, gloomily. "I'm afraid they wouldn't, anyhow not the sort that deserves a nice pet name like that. But--_I'll_ get you one."

"You can't," said Angela. "You can't create a 'nighty' or call it from the vasty deep."

"That's what I mean to do: call one from the vasty deep; hook it up like a rare fish."

She laughed. "What bait will you use?"

"I don't know yet. But I'm going to find out. And you shall have the 'nighty,' as you call it, by the time you want it."

"You'd better not pledge yourself."

"I do. I've failed you often enough since we started! I won't fail this time, you'll see. The thing you want must exist somewhere within a radius of ten miles, and I'm going to la.s.so it."

"But you didn't engage as a la.s.soer of nighties. You engaged as trail guide."

"If anything is wanted along the trail, why then it's the business of the trail guide to get it. Don't you worry about your arrangements, Mrs. May."

"I don't. Meanwhile, I may find some kind of a garment lurking on a forgotten shelf of the candy-drugs-grocery shop."

"If you do, it wouldn't be worthy of you. But you can try," said Nick dubiously. And after a late luncheon, she did try, in vain. Other necessaries were forthcoming, but nighties were things that you had to bring into the Yosemite Valley, it would seem, or do without. Angela said nothing of her failure. She supposed that Nick would forget her plight if she made little of it; but she did not know him thoroughly yet. They took a walk, and the momentous subject was not mentioned: nevertheless, it pressed upon Nick's thoughts. As he talked, the "nighty" that was not, and must be, weighed upon his mind as heavily as though it were a coat of mail instead of the gossamer creation he imagined.

"Now I've got to concentrate and figure out what's trumps," he said to himself, when Angela had gone to rest before dinner. "I've dealt myself a mighty queer card, but there's no good bluffing in this game."

The desired garment declared itself even to the untrained masculine intelligence as a dainty and dreamlike thing, which, to deserve its name and be worthy of a fastidious wearer, must be delicate as the outer petals of a white rose.

How then to obtain for this despoiled G.o.ddess such a marvel in a remote village, lost among Yosemite forests? There was the rub; a vaguely groping "rub" with no Aladdin's lamp to match.

Nick's thoughts ramped in the cage of his mind like a menagerie of hungry animals awaiting food. Where was that food--in other words, an inspiration--to be got? Then of a sudden it dropped at his feet.

He had been pacing uneasily up and down his room; but now, with all his customary decision, he touched the electric bell. A trim chambermaid of superior and intelligent appearance answered the call.

"Are you a Californian?" was the first question flung at the neat head, in place of an expected demand for hot water. She had brought the water, and was equally prepared for a want unforeseen. "Yes, sir," she said. "I'm a Native Daughter."

"Hurrah!" said Nick. "Then I know you won't fail me."

She was too well trained a girl to stare. "Are you a Native Son?" she ventured, seeing that a lead would be useful.

"No; but I ought to have been. My parents were Californian, and my heart is and always will be. I have to ask help from a Californian now, for the honour of California."

Usually, when gentlemen clamoured for help from this young person it was to find a collar stud. But not even the most cherished collar stud could concern the honour of the State. She waited, looking sympathetic; for Nick's eyes would have drawn sympathy from a stone, and Jessy Jones had not even a pebble in her composition.

"As a Californian, I'm showing California to a lady," he explained. "She's from Europe, and I don't want her to think the old civilization can produce anything better than ours."

"I should think not!" retorted the Native Daughter. "What is she looking for that _we_ can't produce, I'd like to know?"

"A nightgown," confessed Nick, boldly. "You see," he hurried on, "she's lost the bag she had it in."