XIII. FOR THE SAKE OF DRAMATIC EFFECT
Somehow, Miss Dene got herself invited to spend the afternoon in seeing with Mrs. May and Hilliard all the things which Falconer and his sister had spent the whole morning in showing her. Exactly how she did this she herself might have told—with her occasional startling frankness—if she had chosen. But Mrs. May could not. Perhaps Angela had invited her, or said something which could be snapped up as an invitation; for Nick would hardly have suggested a second guest unless his first guest expressly wished for one. In any case, the fact remained that Theo Dene was going in the yellow car for a spin round Santa Barbara, to the Country Club, the Hope Ranch, and above all, to the Mission.
She stood talking on the veranda to Falconer and Mrs. Harland, as she waited for Angela to come down, and for Hilliard to bring round the car. Her host and hostess were laughing at her change of plans, for she had announced, early in the day, that she meant to "lie down all the afternoon and rest her features."
"Who is the beautiful Mrs. May?" asked Falconer.
Theo did not like this way of putting the question, because, quite sincerely, she herself admired no woman who was not of her own type. She was tempted to take advantage of Angela's desire not to be known, and say: "Oh, she's one of a thousand other pretty travelling women with intermittent husbands." This would have been epigrammatic, and at the same time it might have quenched dawning interest in the stranger. Neither the brother nor sister was of the sort who favoured flitting ladies with vague male belongings kept in the background. But suddenly a brilliant idea occurred to Miss Dene, who loved dramatic effects.
"Mrs. May chooses to be an ordinary tourist," Theo said, with just the right air of mystery, "but if she liked, she could travel as a personage. She has her own reasons for coming to America, just as I have mine, though hers are different. Don't you think she ought to see Shasta, and the McCloud River, if her impressions are to be complete?"
"Would she care to go?" said Mrs. Harland. "John and I would be delighted to take her, and put her up for a week-end—wouldn't we, John?"
"Of course," said Falconer. "From what I saw of her, she'd be a charming guest. But poor Hilliard——"
"Oh, do ask him, too, and give me a chance to flirt with him, please. I've had such poor success with you, I'm feeling crushed. Do you think Mrs. Gaylor too formidable for me?"
"If I were a betting man, I'd bet on you," Falconer laughed. "But I don't know how far matters have gone between Mrs. Gaylor and Hilliard. It may be gossip; all the world loves a lover, you know; and it's human nature to weave a romance around two interesting figures placed toward each other as these are."
"Well, I should like to try my hand, if his isn't pre-engaged," said Miss Dene; "and if it is, he won't be wasted on me, for I can always use him up in a book. What fun to have Mrs. Gaylor at the same time! We should soon see if they were engaged if we brought them together, shouldn't we? If not, I'd be free to get in as much deadly work as possible."
"Is Mrs. May's husband living?" asked Falconer, with a twinkle of mischief in his usually grave eyes.
"I think I mustn't tell even you anything about her private affairs," Miss Dene answered virtuously. "But I've reason to know that, for this race, anyhow, she's out of the running. As Mrs. May was telling you at luncheon, Mr. Hilliard is showing her a few things because the mutual friend who was to have done it, couldn't. He can't show her Shasta and McCloud, though, as you can; for a mere motor's no attraction compared to a private car. I'm sure she's never been in one as gorgeous as the kind in America—yours in particular."
"Well, we must give her the chance to try it," said Falconer.
"And you will think of inviting Mrs. Gaylor at the same time?" Theo turned her eyes from her host to his sister, beseechingly.
"I don't know Mrs. Gaylor well," Mrs. Harland demurred. "But if John wants you to see her ranch, and takes us there, I don't mind asking her to Rushing River Camp for a day or two. It's not very likely that she'd refuse"—the lady smiled—"as I'm afraid that socially she's more or less neglected, in spite of her beauty."
"Or because of it," said Falconer. "And here comes Mrs. May."
A moment later the car came too, and Angela realized that already she had reached the stage when she would miss taking her place beside Hilliard. She sat behind with Miss Dene, and Billy the "assistant" climbed into the seat next the chauffeur's.
Theo availed herself of the opportunity to tell what she had heard about Nick and Mrs. Gaylor, with embroideries of her own.
The air was balm of a thousand flowers, but for Angela it was no longer "Parfait d'Amour." The two battleships had long ago finished their speed trial; and trails of floating kelp lay like golden sea-serpents asleep under the blue ripple of the sea. Everything was very beautiful. But it was not yesterday!
In the town with the Mission still distant, she began to feel the "foreignness" of Santa Barbara. The streets had Spanish names, and the trees seemed musical, as she had thought that trees seemed in the South of Europe; as if they had heard and seen all the happiness of history, and had set them to music with their branches. Pretty girls rode bareheaded, with sunburned men in sombreros, just outside the straggling town, between hedges of roses that made boundaries for bungalows.
The beauty of the world sang a song in Angela's ears, with the rushing breeze the motor made; the wind in the trees, the flashing lights and shadows on the mountains. Clear-cut, lovely peaks sprang toward a sky that was like fire opal with turquoise glowing blue behind it. Still, this was not yesterday! The song of the world's beauty did not seem meant personally for her, as it had then.
Piles of grain in the fields were like plumed, golden helmets, laid down in rows to await the heads of resting warriors. The California oaks, different from all other oaks, were classic in shape as Greek temples sacred to forest deities, standing against a background of indigo sea. But Miss Dene would talk.
Theodora, in her books, made a speciality of describing the emotional souls of women, her favourite female thermometers being usually at freezing or boiling point—never temperate. Descriptions of scenery she "couldn't do," and what she called "landscape gazing" bored her. She was more interested in people, and big towns, than in wide spaces where Nature tried to lecture her. But because Angela admired the country she admired it, too, more audibly than Angela.
They saved the Mission for the last. Nick had set his heart on showing it to Mrs. May at sunset. As for Theo, though she said so much, he knew by instinct that it was not she who cared for the beauty of the magnolia hedges, the hay-gilded meadows, and the dark oaks that blotted the gold. He felt that he ought to admire Miss Dene, for she was handsome, and put herself out to be kind to him; but he wished the girl away, and was glad that to-morrow she would be travelling with her own friends. When she looked at him with her greenish eyes, she had the air of judging his points, as if he were a portrait she thought of adding to her collection, and of wishing him to look at her. Nick was not to be fascinated in this way.
Along the Cliff Drive they went to the Hope Ranch, and Angela tried to think of the brave old days of the "Roaring Forties," of barbecues, and wedding feasts for Spanish brides—days when the business of life was to love, and laugh, and dance, and spend the money yielded by thousands of rolling acres. According to the stories, all women had been beautiful, all men brave, and ready to fight for the ladies they loved; and though the world had changed since then, faster here than elsewhere, it seemed to her that at heart the men of America had kept to old traditions more closely than men in older countries. Then she smiled at herself for this impression; for, after all, what did she know of American men?
When they turned at last, coming back toward the Mission, to which, somehow, all the rest had been leading up, the setting sun was beating the dusk into sparks of fire.
At first glimpse, alighting before the steps of the restored Mission church, Angela compared it unfavourably in her mind with the lovely shabbiness of San Gabriel. She had a feeling that Santa Barbara the pleasure-place lived on Santa Barbara the Mission, with its history and romance. But she had only to go inside to beg pardon of the church for her first impression. It was easy to remember that there had never been the same stress of poverty here as among the missionary Fathers of San Gabriel, in the City of Angela. Yet in this place, too, there was the same pathetic effect which had brought tears to Angela's eyes in the dim little church at San Gabriel; an effect that once felt and understood, gives the old Spanish Missions their great, undying charm. At Santa Barbara—sweet name, ringing like the silver bells of the Franciscan Fathers—as at San Gabriel, there had been the same striving to copy the noble designs and proportions of the Spanish cathedrals, visioned in spirit by the homesick monks, who knew well they would never see them with bodily eyes again. With simple materials and unskilled Indian workers, these exiled men had striven to reproduce in the far, lonely West the architecture of the East, loved and lost by them forever. The very simplicity of the church made its beauty.
