diff options
| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 05:27:36 -0700 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 05:27:36 -0700 |
| commit | bfe3aaed0aa2848c352ae86a90843044314cb73a (patch) | |
| tree | 3bed15910e2f5301ccfda88d4d903354df7524aa | |
| -rw-r--r-- | .gitattributes | 3 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 6455-8.txt | 12082 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 6455-8.zip | bin | 0 -> 235021 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 6455-h.zip | bin | 0 -> 282785 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 6455-h/6455-h.htm | 15030 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 6455-h/images/front.jpg | bin | 0 -> 37284 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 6455.txt | 12082 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 6455.zip | bin | 0 -> 234960 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | LICENSE.txt | 11 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | README.md | 2 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/ltlbh10.txt | 12173 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/ltlbh10.zip | bin | 0 -> 234725 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/ltlbh10h.zip | bin | 0 -> 282314 bytes |
13 files changed, 51383 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/6455-8.txt b/6455-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..78a184e --- /dev/null +++ b/6455-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,12082 @@ +Project Gutenberg's The Little Lady of the Big House, by Jack London + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Little Lady of the Big House + +Author: Jack London + +Posting Date: April 9, 2013 [EBook #6455] +Release Date: September, 2004 +First Posted: December 15, 2002 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LITTLE LADY OF THE BIG HOUSE *** + + + + +Produced by Curtis A. Weyant, David Maddock, Charles Franks +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. + + + + + + + + + + +[Illustration: ] + + + +THE LITTLE LADY OF THE BIG HOUSE + +BY + +JACK LONDON + + + +Author of "The Valley of the Moon," "The Star Rover," "The Sea Wolf," +Etc. + + + + + +CHAPTER I + + + +He awoke in the dark. His awakening was simple, easy, without movement +save for the eyes that opened and made him aware of darkness. Unlike +most, who must feel and grope and listen to, and contact with, the +world about them, he knew himself on the moment of awakening, instantly +identifying himself in time and place and personality. After the lapsed +hours of sleep he took up, without effort, the interrupted tale of his +days. He knew himself to be Dick Forrest, the master of broad acres, +who had fallen asleep hours before after drowsily putting a match +between the pages of "Road Town" and pressing off the electric reading +lamp. + +Near at hand there was the ripple and gurgle of some sleepy fountain. +From far off, so faint and far that only a keen ear could catch, he +heard a sound that made him smile with pleasure. He knew it for the +distant, throaty bawl of King Polo--King Polo, his champion Short Horn +bull, thrice Grand Champion also of all bulls at Sacramento at the +California State Fairs. The smile was slow in easing from Dick +Forrest's face, for he dwelt a moment on the new triumphs he had +destined that year for King Polo on the Eastern livestock circuits. He +would show them that a bull, California born and finished, could +compete with the cream of bulls corn-fed in Iowa or imported overseas +from the immemorial home of Short Horns. + +Not until the smile faded, which was a matter of seconds, did he reach +out in the dark and press the first of a row of buttons. There were +three rows of such buttons. The concealed lighting that spilled from +the huge bowl under the ceiling revealed a sleeping-porch, three sides +of which were fine-meshed copper screen. The fourth side was the house +wall, solid concrete, through which French windows gave access. + +He pressed the second button in the row and the bright light +concentered at a particular place on the concrete wall, illuminating, +in a row, a clock, a barometer, and centigrade and Fahrenheit +thermometers. Almost in a sweep of glance he read the messages of the +dials: time 4:30; air pressure, 29:80, which was normal at that +altitude and season; and temperature, Fahrenheit, 36°. With another +press, the gauges of time and heat and air were sent back into the +darkness. + +A third button turned on his reading lamp, so arranged that the light +fell from above and behind without shining into his eyes. The first +button turned off the concealed lighting overhead. He reached a mass of +proofsheets from the reading stand, and, pencil in hand, lighting a +cigarette, he began to correct. + +The place was clearly the sleeping quarters of a man who worked. +Efficiency was its key note, though comfort, not altogether Spartan, +was also manifest. The bed was of gray enameled iron to tone with the +concrete wall. Across the foot of the bed, an extra coverlet, hung a +gray robe of wolfskins with every tail a-dangle. On the floor, where +rested a pair of slippers, was spread a thick-coated skin of mountain +goat. + +Heaped orderly with books, magazines and scribble-pads, there was room +on the big reading stand for matches, cigarettes, an ash-tray, and a +thermos bottle. A phonograph, for purposes of dictation, stood on a +hinged and swinging bracket. On the wall, under the barometer and +thermometers, from a round wooden frame laughed the face of a girl. On +the wall, between the rows of buttons and a switchboard, from an open +holster, loosely projected the butt of a .44 Colt's automatic. + +At six o'clock, sharp, after gray light had begun to filter through the +wire netting, Dick Forrest, without raising his eyes from the +proofsheets, reached out his right hand and pressed a button in the +second row. Five minutes later a soft-slippered Chinese emerged on the +sleeping-porch. In his hands he bore a small tray of burnished copper +on which rested a cup and saucer, a tiny coffee pot of silver, and a +correspondingly tiny silver cream pitcher. + +"Good morning, Oh My," was Dick Forrest's greeting, and his eyes smiled +and his lips smiled as he uttered it. + +"Good morning, Master," Oh My returned, as he busied himself with +making room on the reading stand for the tray and with pouring the +coffee and cream. + +This done, without waiting further orders, noting that his master was +already sipping coffee with one hand while he made a correction on the +proof with the other, Oh My picked up a rosy, filmy, lacy boudoir cap +from the floor and departed. His exit was noiseless. He ebbed away like +a shadow through the open French windows. + +At six-thirty, sharp to the minute, he was back with a larger tray. +Dick Forrest put away the proofs, reached for a book entitled +"Commercial Breeding of Frogs," and prepared to eat. The breakfast was +simple yet fairly substantial--more coffee, a half grape-fruit, two +soft-boiled eggs made ready in a glass with a dab of butter and piping +hot, and a sliver of bacon, not over-cooked, that he knew was of his +own raising and curing. + +By this time the sunshine was pouring in through the screening and +across the bed. On the outside of the wire screen clung a number of +house-flies, early-hatched for the season and numb with the night's +cold. As Forrest ate he watched the hunting of the meat-eating +yellow-jackets. Sturdy, more frost-resistant than bees, they were +already on the wing and preying on the benumbed flies. Despite the +rowdy noise of their flight, these yellow hunters of the air, with +rarely ever a miss, pounced on their helpless victims and sailed away +with them. The last fly was gone ere Forrest had sipped his last sip of +coffee, marked "Commercial Breeding of Frogs" with a match, and taken +up his proofsheets. + +After a time, the liquid-mellow cry of the meadow-lark, first vocal for +the day, caused him to desist. He looked at the clock. It marked seven. +He set aside the proofs and began a series of conversations by means of +the switchboard, which he manipulated with a practiced hand. + +"Hello, Oh Joy," was his first talk. "Is Mr. Thayer up?... Very well. +Don't disturb him. I don't think he'll breakfast in bed, but find +out.... That's right, and show him how to work the hot water. Maybe he +doesn't know... Yes, that's right. Plan for one more boy as soon as you +can get him. There's always a crowd when the good weather comes on.... +Sure. Use your judgment. Good-by." + +"Mr. Hanley?... Yes," was his second conversation, over another switch. +"I've been thinking about the dam on the Buckeye. I want the figures on +the gravel-haul and on the rock-crushing.... Yes, that's it. I imagine +that the gravel-haul will cost anywhere between six and ten cents a +yard more than the crushed rock. That last pitch of hill is what eats +up the gravel-teams. Work out the figures. ... No, we won't be able to +start for a fortnight. ... Yes, yes; the new tractors, if they ever +deliver, will release the horses from the plowing, but they'll have to +go back for the checking.... No, you'll have to see Mr. Everan about +that. Good-by." + + And his third call: + +"Mr. Dawson? Ha! Ha! Thirty-six on my porch right now. It must be white +with frost down on the levels. But it's most likely the last this +year.... Yes, they swore the tractors would be delivered two days +ago.... Call up the station agent. ... By the way, you catch Hanley for +me. I forgot to tell him to start the 'rat-catchers' out with the +second instalment of fly-traps.... Yes, pronto. There were a couple of +dozen roosting on my screen this morning.... Yes.... Good-by." + +At this stage, Forrest slid out of bed in his pajamas, slipped his feet +into the slippers, and strode through the French windows to the bath, +already drawn by Oh My. A dozen minutes afterward, shaved as well, he +was back in bed, reading his frog book while Oh My, punctual to the +minute, massaged his legs. + +They were the well-formed legs of a well-built, five-foot-ten man who +weighed a hundred and eighty pounds. Further, they told a tale of the +man. The left thigh was marred by a scar ten inches in length. Across +the left ankle, from instep to heel, were scattered half a dozen scars +the size of half-dollars. When Oh My prodded and pulled the left knee a +shade too severely, Forrest was guilty of a wince. The right shin was +colored with several dark scars, while a big scar, just under the knee, +was a positive dent in the bone. Midway between knee and groin was the +mark of an ancient three-inch gash, curiously dotted with the minute +scars of stitches. + +A sudden, joyous nicker from without put the match between the pages of +the frog book, and, while Oh My proceeded partly to dress his master in +bed, including socks and shoes, the master, twisting partly on his +side, stared out in the direction of the nicker. Down the road, through +the swaying purple of the early lilacs, ridden by a picturesque cowboy, +paced a great horse, glinting ruddy in the morning sun-gold, flinging +free the snowy foam of his mighty fetlocks, his noble crest tossing, +his eyes roving afield, the trumpet of his love-call echoing through +the springing land. + +Dick Forrest was smitten at the same instant with joy and anxiety--joy +in the glorious beast pacing down between the lilac hedges; anxiety in +that the stallion might have awakened the girl who laughed from the +round wooden frame on his wall. He glanced quickly across the +two-hundred-foot court to the long, shadowy jut of her wing of the +house. The shades of her sleeping-porch were down. They did not stir. +Again the stallion nickered, and all that moved was a flock of wild +canaries, upspringing from the flowers and shrubs of the court, rising +like a green-gold spray of light flung from the sunrise. + +He watched the stallion out of sight through the lilacs, seeing visions +of fair Shire colts mighty of bone and frame and free from blemish, +then turned, as ever he turned to the immediate thing, and spoke to his +body servant. + +"How's that last boy, Oh My? Showing up?" + +"Him pretty good boy, I think," was the answer. "Him young boy. +Everything new. Pretty slow. All the same bime by him show up good." + +"Why? What makes you think so?" + +"I call him three, four morning now. Him sleep like baby. Him wake up +smiling just like you. That very good." + +"Do I wake up smiling?" Forrest queried. + +Oh My nodded his head violently. + +"Many times, many years, I call you. Always your eyes open, your eyes +smile, your mouth smile, your face smile, you smile all over, just like +that, right away quick. That very good. A man wake up that way got +plenty good sense. I know. This new boy like that. Bime by, pretty +soon, he make fine boy. You see. His name Chow Gam. What name you call +him this place?" + +Dick Forrest meditated. + +"What names have we already?" he asked. + +"Oh Joy, Ah Well, Ah Me, and me; I am Oh My," the Chinese rattled off. +"Oh Joy him say call new boy--" + +He hesitated and stared at his master with a challenging glint of eye. +Forrest nodded. + +"Oh Joy him say call new boy 'Oh Hell.'" + +"Oh ho!" Forrest laughed in appreciation. "Oh Joy is a josher. A good +name, but it won't do. There is the Missus. We've got to think another +name." + +"Oh Ho, that very good name." + +Forrest's exclamation was still ringing in his consciousness so that he +recognized the source of Oh My's inspiration. + +"Very well. The boy's name is Oh Ho." + +Oh My lowered his head, ebbed swiftly through the French windows, and +as swiftly returned with the rest of Forrest's clothes-gear, helping +him into undershirt and shirt, tossing a tie around his neck for him to +knot, and, kneeling, putting on his leggings and spurs. A Baden Powell +hat and a quirt completed his appareling--the quirt, Indian-braided of +rawhide, with ten ounces of lead braided into the butt that hung from +his wrist on a loop of leather. + +But Forrest was not yet free. Oh My handed him several letters, with +the explanation that they had come up from the station the previous +night after Forrest had gone to bed. He tore the right-hand ends across +and glanced at the contents of all but one with speed. The latter he +dwelt upon for a moment, with an irritated indrawing of brows, then +swung out the phonograph from the wall, pressed the button that made +the cylinder revolve, and swiftly dictated, without ever a pause for +word or idea: + +"In reply to yours of March 14, 1914, I am indeed sorry to learn that +you were hit with hog cholera. I am equally sorry that you have seen +fit to charge me with the responsibility. And just as equally am I +sorry that the boar we sent you is dead. + +"I can only assure you that we are quite clear of cholera here, and +that we have been clear of cholera for eight years, with the exception +of two Eastern importations, the last two years ago, both of which, +according to our custom, were segregated on arrival and were destroyed +before the contagion could be communicated to our herds. + +"I feel that I must inform you that in neither case did I charge the +sellers with having sent me diseased stock. On the contrary, as you +should know, the incubation of hog cholera being nine days, I consulted +the shipping dates of the animals and knew that they had been healthy +when shipped. + +"Has it ever entered your mind that the railroads are largely +responsible for the spread of cholera? Did you ever hear of a railroad +fumigating or disinfecting a car which had carried cholera? Consult the +dates: First, of shipment by me; second, of receipt of the boar by you; +and, third, of appearance of symptoms in the boar. As you say, because +of washouts, the boar was five days on the way. Not until the seventh +day after you receipted for same did the first symptoms appear. That +makes twelve days after it left my hands. + +"No; I must disagree with you. I am not responsible for the disaster +that overtook your herd. Furthermore, doubly to assure you, write to +the State Veterinary as to whether or not my place is free of cholera. + +"Very truly yours..." + + + + +CHAPTER II + + + +When Forrest went through the French windows from his sleeping-porch, +he crossed, first, a comfortable dressing room, window-divaned, +many-lockered, with a generous fireplace, out of which opened a +bathroom; and, second, a long office room, wherein was all the +paraphernalia of business--desks, dictaphones, filing cabinets, book +cases, magazine files, and drawer-pigeonholes that tiered to the low, +beamed ceiling. + +Midway in the office room, he pressed a button and a series of +book-freightened shelves swung on a pivot, revealing a tiny spiral +stairway of steel, which he descended with care that his spurs might +not catch, the bookshelves swinging into place behind him. + +At the foot of the stairway, a press on another button pivoted more +shelves of books and gave him entrance into a long low room shelved +with books from floor to ceiling. He went directly to a case, directly +to a shelf, and unerringly laid his hand on the book he sought. A +minute he ran the pages, found the passage he was after, nodded his +head to himself in vindication, and replaced the book. + +A door gave way to a pergola of square concrete columns spanned with +redwood logs and interlaced with smaller trunks of redwood, all rough +and crinkled velvet with the ruddy purple of the bark. + +It was evident, since he had to skirt several hundred feet of concrete +walls of wandering house, that he had not taken the short way out. +Under wide-spreading ancient oaks, where the long hitching-rails, +bark-chewed, and the hoof-beaten gravel showed the stamping place of +many horses, he found a pale-golden, almost tan-golden, sorrel mare. +Her well-groomed spring coat was alive and flaming in the morning sun +that slanted straight under the edge of the roof of trees. She was +herself alive and flaming. She was built like a stallion, and down her +backbone ran a narrow dark strip of hair that advertised an ancestry of +many range mustangs. + +"How's the Man-Eater this morning?" he queried, as he unsnapped the +tie-rope from her throat. + +She laid back the tiniest ears that ever a horse possessed--ears that +told of some thoroughbred's wild loves with wild mares among the +hills--and snapped at Forrest with wicked teeth and wicked-gleaming +eyes. + +She sidled and attempted to rear as he swung into the saddle, and, +sidling and attempting to rear, she went off down the graveled road. +And rear she would have, had it not been for the martingale that held +her head down and that, as well, saved the rider's nose from her +angry-tossing head. + +So used was he to the mare, that he was scarcely aware of her antics. +Automatically, with slightest touch of rein against arched neck, or +with tickle of spur or press of knee, he kept the mare to the way he +willed. Once, as she whirled and danced, he caught a glimpse of the Big +House. Big it was in all seeming, and yet, such was the vagrant nature +of it, it was not so big as it seemed. Eight hundred feet across the +front face, it stretched. But much of this eight hundred feet was +composed of mere corridors, concrete-walled, tile-roofed, that +connected and assembled the various parts of the building. There were +patios and pergolas in proportion, and all the walls, with their many +right-angled juts and recessions, arose out of a bed of greenery and +bloom. + +Spanish in character, the architecture of the Big House was not of the +California-Spanish type which had been introduced by way of Mexico a +hundred years before, and which had been modified by modern architects +to the California-Spanish architecture of the day. Hispano-Moresque +more technically classified the Big House in all its hybridness, +although there were experts who heatedly quarreled with the term. + +Spaciousness without austerity and beauty without ostentation were the +fundamental impressions the Big House gave. Its lines, long and +horizontal, broken only by lines that were vertical and by the lines of +juts and recesses that were always right-angled, were as chaste as +those of a monastery. The irregular roof-line, however, relieved the +hint of monotony. + +Low and rambling, without being squat, the square upthrusts of towers +and of towers over-topping towers gave just proportion of height +without being sky-aspiring. The sense of the Big House was solidarity. +It defied earthquakes. It was planted for a thousand years. The honest +concrete was overlaid by a cream-stucco of honest cement. Again, this +very sameness of color might have proved monotonous to the eye had it +not been saved by the many flat roofs of warm-red Spanish tile. + +In that one sweeping glance while the mare whirled unduly, Dick +Forrest's eyes, embracing all of the Big House, centered for a quick +solicitous instant on the great wing across the two-hundred-foot court, +where, under climbing groups of towers, red-snooded in the morning sun, +the drawn shades of the sleeping-porch tokened that his lady still +slept. + +About him, for three quadrants of the circle of the world, arose +low-rolling hills, smooth, fenced, cropped, and pastured, that melted +into higher hills and steeper wooded slopes that merged upward, +steeper, into mighty mountains. The fourth quadrant was unbounded by +mountain walls and hills. It faded away, descending easily to vast far +flatlands, which, despite the clear brittle air of frost, were too vast +and far to scan across. + +The mare under him snorted. His knees tightened as he straightened her +into the road and forced her to one side. Down upon him, with a +pattering of feet on the gravel, flowed a river of white shimmering +silk. He knew it at sight for his prize herd of Angora goats, each with +a pedigree, each with a history. There had to be a near two hundred of +them, and he knew, according to the rigorous selection he commanded, +not having been clipped in the fall, that the shining mohair draping +the sides of the least of them, as fine as any human new-born baby's +hair and finer, as white as any human albino's thatch and whiter, was +longer than the twelve-inch staple, and that the mohair of the best of +them would dye any color into twenty-inch switches for women's heads +and sell at prices unreasonable and profound. + +The beauty of the sight held him as well. The roadway had become a +flowing ribbon of silk, gemmed with yellow cat-like eyes that floated +past wary and curious in their regard for him and his nervous horse. +Two Basque herders brought up the rear. They were short, broad, swarthy +men, black-eyed, vivid-faced, contemplative and philosophic of +expression. They pulled off their hats and ducked their heads to him. +Forrest lifted his right hand, the quirt dangling from wrist, the +straight forefinger touching the rim of his Baden Powell in +semi-military salute. + +The mare, prancing and whirling again, he held her with a touch of rein +and threat of spur, and gazed after the four-footed silk that filled +the road with shimmering white. He knew the significance of their +presence. The time for kidding was approaching and they were being +brought down from their brush-pastures to the brood-pens and shelters +for jealous care and generous feed through the period of increase. And +as he gazed, in his mind, comparing, was a vision of all the best of +Turkish and South African mohair he had ever seen, and his flock bore +the comparison well. It looked good. It looked very good. + +He rode on. From all about arose the clacking whir of manure-spreaders. +In the distance, on the low, easy-sloping hills, he saw team after +team, and many teams, three to a team abreast, what he knew were his +Shire mares, drawing the plows back and forth across, contour-plowing, +turning the green sod of the hillsides to the rich dark brown of +humus-filled earth so organic and friable that it would almost melt by +gravity into fine-particled seed-bed. That was for the corn--and +sorghum-planting for his silos. Other hill-slopes, in the due course of +his rotation, were knee-high in barley; and still other slopes were +showing the good green of burr clover and Canada pea. + +Everywhere about him, large fields and small were arranged in a system +of accessibility and workability that would have warmed the heart of +the most meticulous efficiency-expert. Every fence was hog-tight and +bull-proof, and no weeds grew in the shelters of the fences. Many of +the level fields were in alfalfa. Others, following the rotations, bore +crops planted the previous fall, or were in preparation for the +spring-planting. Still others, close to the brood barns and pens, were +being grazed by rotund Shropshire and French-Merino ewes, or were being +hogged off by white Gargantuan brood-sows that brought a flash of +pleasure in his eyes as he rode past and gazed. + +He rode through what was almost a village, save that there were neither +shops nor hotels. The houses were bungalows, substantial, pleasing to +the eye, each set in the midst of gardens where stouter blooms, +including roses, were out and smiling at the threat of late frost. +Children were already astir, laughing and playing among the flowers or +being called in to breakfast by their mothers. + +Beyond, beginning at a half-mile distant to circle the Big House, he +passed a row of shops. He paused at the first and glanced in. One smith +was working at a forge. A second smith, a shoe fresh-nailed on the +fore-foot of an elderly Shire mare that would disturb the scales at +eighteen hundred weight, was rasping down the outer wall of the hoof to +smooth with the toe of the shoe. Forrest saw, saluted, rode on, and, a +hundred feet away, paused and scribbled a memorandum in the notebook he +drew from his hip-pocket. + +He passed other shops--a paint-shop, a wagon-shop, a plumbing shop, a +carpenter-shop. While he glanced at the last, a hybrid machine, +half-auto, half-truck, passed him at speed and took the main road for +the railroad station eight miles away. He knew it for the morning +butter-truck freighting from the separator house the daily output of +the dairy. + +The Big House was the hub of the ranch organization. Half a mile from +it, it was encircled by the various ranch centers. Dick Forrest, +saluting continually his people, passed at a gallop the dairy center, +which was almost a sea of buildings with batteries of silos and with +litter carriers emerging on overhead tracks and automatically dumping +into waiting manure-spreaders. Several times, business-looking men, +college-marked, astride horses or driving carts, stopped him and +conferred with him. They were foremen, heads of departments, and they +were as brief and to the point as was he. The last of them, astride a +Palomina three-year-old that was as graceful and wild as a half-broken +Arab, was for riding by with a bare salute, but was stopped by his +employer. + +"Good morning, Mr. Hennessy, and how soon will she be ready for Mrs. +Forrest?" Dick Forrest asked. + +"I'd like another week," was Hennessy's answer. "She's well broke now, +just the way Mrs. Forrest wanted, but she's over-strung and sensitive +and I'd like the week more to set her in her ways." + +Forrest nodded concurrence, and Hennessy, who was the veterinary, went +on: + +"There are two drivers in the alfalfa gang I'd like to send down the +hill." + +"What's the matter with them?" + +"One, a new man, Hopkins, is an ex-soldier. He may know government +mules, but he doesn't know Shires." + +Forrest nodded. + +"The other has worked for us two years, but he's drinking now, and he +takes his hang-overs out on his horses--" + +"That's Smith, old-type American, smooth-shaven, with a cast in his +left eye?" Forrest interrupted. + +The veterinary nodded. + +"I've been watching him," Forrest concluded. "He was a good man at +first, but he's slipped a cog recently. Sure, send him down the hill. +And send that other fellow--Hopkins, you said?--along with him. By the +way, Mr. Hennessy." As he spoke, Forrest drew forth his pad book, tore +off the last note scribbled, and crumpled it in his hand. "You've a new +horse-shoer in the shop. How does he strike you?" + +"He's too new to make up my mind yet." + +"Well, send him down the hill along with the other two. He can't take +your orders. I observed him just now fitting a shoe to old Alden Bessie +by rasping off half an inch of the toe of her hoof." + +"He knew better." + +"Send him down the hill," Forrest repeated, as he tickled his champing +mount with the slightest of spur-tickles and shot her out along the +road, sidling, head-tossing, and attempting to rear. + +Much he saw that pleased him. Once, he murmured aloud, "A fat land, a +fat land." Divers things he saw that did not please him and that won a +note in his scribble pad. Completing the circle about the Big House and +riding beyond the circle half a mile to an isolated group of sheds and +corrals, he reached the objective of the ride: the hospital. Here he +found but two young heifers being tested for tuberculosis, and a +magnificent Duroc Jersey boar in magnificent condition. Weighing fully +six hundred pounds, its bright eyes, brisk movements, and sheen of hair +shouted out that there was nothing the matter with it. Nevertheless, +according to the ranch practice, being a fresh importation from Iowa, +it was undergoing the regular period of quarantine. Burgess Premier was +its name in the herd books of the association, age two years, and it +had cost Forrest five hundred dollars laid down on the ranch. + +Proceeding at a hand gallop along a road that was one of the spokes +radiating from the Big House hub, Forrest overtook Crellin, his hog +manager, and, in a five-minute conference, outlined the next few months +of destiny of Burgess Premier, and learned that the brood sow, Lady +Isleton, the matron of all matrons of the O. I. C.'s and blue-ribboner +in all shows from Seattle to San Diego, was safely farrowed of eleven. +Crellin explained that he had sat up half the night with her and was +then bound home for bath and breakfast. + +"I hear your oldest daughter has finished high school and wants to +enter Stanford," Forrest said, curbing the mare just as he had +half-signaled departure at a gallop. + +Crellin, a young man of thirty-five, with the maturity of a long-time +father stamped upon him along with the marks of college and the +youthfulness of a man used to the open air and straight-living, showed +his appreciation of his employer's interest as he half-flushed under +his tan and nodded. + +"Think it over," Forrest advised. "Make a statistic of all the college +girls--yes, and State Normal girls--you know. How many of them follow +career, and how many of them marry within two years after their degrees +and take to baby farming." + +"Helen is very seriously bent on the matter," Crellin urged. + +"Do you remember when I had my appendix out?" Forrest queried. "Well, I +had as fine a nurse as I ever saw and as nice a girl as ever walked on +two nice legs. She was just six months a full-fledged nurse, then. And +four months after that I had to send her a wedding present. She married +an automobile agent. She's lived in hotels ever since. She's never had +a chance to nurse--never a child of her own to bring through a bout +with colic. But... she has hopes... and, whether or not her hopes +materialize, she's confoundedly happy. But... what good was her nursing +apprenticeship?" + +Just then an empty manure-spreader passed, forcing Crellin, on foot, +and Forrest, on his mare, to edge over to the side of the road. Forrest +glanced with kindling eye at the off mare of the machine, a huge, +symmetrical Shire whose own blue ribbons, and the blue ribbons of her +progeny, would have required an expert accountant to enumerate and +classify. + +"Look at the Fotherington Princess," Forrest said, nodding at the mare +that warmed his eye. "She is a normal female. Only incidentally, +through thousands of years of domestic selection, has man evolved her +into a draught beast breeding true to kind. But being a draught-beast +is secondary. Primarily she is a female. Take them by and large, our +own human females, above all else, love us men and are intrinsically +maternal. There is no biological sanction for all the hurly burly of +woman to-day for suffrage and career." + +"But there is an economic sanction," Crellin objected. + +"True," his employer agreed, then proceeded to discount. "Our present +industrial system prevents marriage and compels woman to career. But, +remember, industrial systems come, and industrial systems go, while +biology runs on forever." + +"It's rather hard to satisfy young women with marriage these days," the +hog-manager demurred. + +Dick Forrest laughed incredulously. + +"I don't know about that," he said. "There's your wife for an instance. +She with her sheepskin--classical scholar at that--well, what has she +done with it?... Two boys and three girls, I believe? As I remember +your telling me, she was engaged to you the whole last half of her +senior year." + +"True, but--" Crellin insisted, with an eye-twinkle of appreciation of +the point, "that was fifteen years ago, as well as a love-match. We +just couldn't help it. That far, I agree. She had planned unheard-of +achievements, while I saw nothing else than the deanship of the College +of Agriculture. We just couldn't help it. But that was fifteen years +ago, and fifteen years have made all the difference in the world in the +ambitions and ideals of our young women." + +"Don't you believe it for a moment. I tell you, Mr. Crellin, it's a +statistic. All contrary things are transient. Ever woman remains +Avoman, everlasting, eternal. Not until our girl-children cease from +playing with dolls and from looking at their own enticingness in +mirrors, will woman ever be otherwise than what she has always been: +first, the mother, second, the mate of man. It is a statistic. I've +been looking up the girls who graduate from the State Normal. You will +notice that those who marry by the way before graduation are excluded. +Nevertheless, the average length of time the graduates actually teach +school is little more than two years. And when you consider that a lot +of them, through ill looks and ill luck, are foredoomed old maids and +are foredoomed to teach all their lives, you can see how they cut down +the period of teaching of the marriageable ones." + +"A woman, even a girl-woman, will have her way where mere men are +concerned," Crellin muttered, unable to dispute his employer's figures +but resolved to look them up. + +"And your girl-woman will go to Stanford," Forrest laughed, as he +prepared to lift his mare into a gallop, "and you and I and all men, to +the end of time, will see to it that they do have their way." + +Crellin smiled to himself as his employer diminished down the road; for +Crellin knew his Kipling, and the thought that caused the smile was: +"But where's the kid of your own, Mr. Forrest?" He decided to repeat it +to Mrs. Crellin over the breakfast coffee. + +Once again Dick Forrest delayed ere he gained the Big House. The man he +stopped he addressed as Mendenhall, who was his horse-manager as well +as pasture expert, and who was reputed to know, not only every blade of +grass on the ranch, but the length of every blade of grass and its age +from seed-germination as well. + +At signal from Forrest, Mendenhall drew up the two colts he was driving +in a double breaking-cart. What had caused Forrest to signal was a +glance he had caught, across the northern edge of the valley, of great, +smooth-hill ranges miles beyond, touched by the sun and deeply green +where they projected into the vast flat of the Sacramento Valley. + +The talk that followed was quick and abbreviated to terms of +understanding between two men who knew. Grass was the subject. Mention +was made of the winter rainfall and of the chance for late spring rains +to come. Names occurred, such as the Little Coyote and Los Cuatos +creeks, the Yolo and the Miramar hills, the Big Basin, Round Valley, +and the San Anselmo and Los Banos ranges. Movements of herds and +droves, past, present, and to come, were discussed, as well as the +outlook for cultivated hay in far upland pastures and the estimates of +such hay that still remained over the winter in remote barns in the +sheltered mountain valleys where herds had wintered and been fed. + +Under the oaks, at the stamping posts, Forrest was saved the trouble of +tying the Man-Eater. A stableman came on the run to take the mare, and +Forrest, scarce pausing for a word about a horse by the name of Duddy, +was clanking his spurs into the Big House. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + + +Forrest entered a section of the Big House by way of a massive, +hewn-timber, iron-studded door that let in at the foot of what seemed a +donjon keep. The floor was cement, and doors let off in various +directions. One, opening to a Chinese in the white apron and starched +cap of a chef, emitted at the same time the low hum of a dynamo. It was +this that deflected Forrest from his straight path. He paused, holding +the door ajar, and peered into a cool, electric-lighted cement room +where stood a long, glass-fronted, glass-shelved refrigerator flanked +by an ice-machine and a dynamo. On the floor, in greasy overalls, +squatted a greasy little man to whom his employer nodded. + +"Anything wrong, Thompson?" he asked. + +"There _was,"_ was the answer, positive and complete. + +Forrest closed the door and went on along a passage that was like a +tunnel. Narrow, iron-barred openings, like the slits for archers in +medieval castles, dimly lighted the way. Another door gave access to a +long, low room, beam-ceilinged, with a fireplace in which an ox could +have been roasted. A huge stump, resting on a bed of coals, blazed +brightly. Two billiard tables, several card tables, lounging corners, +and a miniature bar constituted the major furnishing. Two young men +chalked their cues and returned Forrest's greeting. + +"Good morning, Mr. Naismith," he bantered. "--More material for the +_Breeders' Gazette?"_ + +Naismith, a youngish man of thirty, with glasses, smiled sheepishly and +cocked his head at his companion. + +"Wainwright challenged me," he explained. + +"Which means that Lute and Ernestine must still be beauty-sleeping," +Forrest laughed. + +Young Wainwright bristled to acceptance of the challenge, but before he +could utter the retort on his lips his host was moving on and +addressing Naismith over his shoulder. + +"Do you want to come along at eleven:thirty? Thayer and I are running +out in the machine to look over the Shropshires. He wants about ten +carloads of rams. You ought to find good stuff in this matter of Idaho +shipments. Bring your camera along.--Seen Thayer this morning?" + +"Just came in to breakfast as we were leaving," Bert Wainwright +volunteered. + +"Tell him to be ready at eleven-thirty if you see him. You're not +invited, Bert... out of kindness. The girls are sure to be up then." + +"Take Rita along with you anyway," Bert pleaded. + +"No fear," was Forrest's reply from the door. "We're on business. +Besides, you can't pry Rita from Ernestine with block-and-tackle." + +"That's why I wanted to see if you could," Bert grinned. + +"Funny how fellows never appreciate their own sisters." Forrest paused +for a perceptible moment. "I always thought Rita was a real nice +sister. What's the matter with her?" + +Before a reply could reach him, he had closed the door and was jingling +his spurs along the passage to a spiral stairway of broad concrete +steps. As he left the head of the stairway, a dance-time piano measure +and burst of laughter made him peep into a white morning room, flooded +with sunshine. A young girl, in rose-colored kimono and boudoir cap, +was at the instrument, while two others, similarly accoutered, in each +other's arms, were parodying a dance never learned at dancing school +nor intended by the participants for male eyes to see. + +The girl at the piano discovered him, winked, and played on. Not for +another minute did the dancers spy him. They gave startled cries, +collapsed, laughing, in each other's arms, and the music stopped. They +were gorgeous, healthy young creatures, the three of them, and +Forrest's eye kindled as he looked at them in quite the same way that +it had kindled when he regarded the Fotherington Princess. + +Persiflage, of the sort that obtains among young things of the human +kind, flew back and forth. + +"I've been here five minutes," Dick Forrest asserted. + +The two dancers, to cover their confusion, doubted his veracity and +instanced his many well-known and notorious guilts of mendacity. The +girl at the piano, Ernestine, his sister-in-law, insisted that pearls +of truth fell from his lips, that she had seen him from the moment he +began to look, and that as she estimated the passage of time he had +been looking much longer than five minutes. + +"Well, anyway," Forrest broke in on their babel, "Bert, the sweet +innocent, doesn't think you are up yet." + +"We're not... to him," one of the dancers, a vivacious young Venus, +retorted. "Nor are we to you either. So run along, little boy. Run +along." + +"Look here, Lute," Forrest began sternly. "Just because I am a decrepit +old man, and just because you are eighteen, just eighteen, and happen +to be my wife's sister, you needn't presume to put the high and mighty +over on me. Don't forget--and I state the fact, disagreeable as it may +be, for Rita's sake--don't forget that in the past ten years I've +paddled you more disgraceful times than you care to dare me to +enumerate. + +"It is true, I am not so young as I used to was, but--" He felt the +biceps of his right arm and made as if to roll up the sleeve. "--But, +I'm not all in yet, and for two cents..." + +"What?" the young woman challenged belligerently. + +"For two cents," he muttered darkly. "For two cents... Besides, and it +grieves me to inform you, your cap is not on straight. Also, it is not +a very tasteful creation at best. I could make a far more becoming cap +with my toes, asleep, and... yes, seasick as well." + +Lute tossed her blond head defiantly, glanced at her comrades in +solicitation of support, and said: + +"Oh, I don't know. It seems humanly reasonable that the three of us can +woman-handle a mere man of your elderly and insulting avoirdupois. What +do you say, girls? Let's rush him. He's not a minute under forty, and +he has an aneurism. Yes, and though loath to divulge family secrets, +he's got Meniere's Disease." + +Ernestine, a small but robust blonde of eighteen, sprang from the piano +and joined her two comrades in a raid on the cushions of the deep +window seats. Side by side, a cushion in each hand, and with proper +distance between them cannily established for the swinging of the +cushions, they advanced upon the foe. + +Forrest prepared for battle, then held up his hand for parley. + +"'Fraid cat!" they taunted, in several at first, and then in chorus. + +He shook his head emphatically. + +"Just for that, and for all the rest of your insolences, the three of +you are going to get yours. All the wrongs of a lifetime are rising now +in my brain in a dazzling brightness. I shall go Berserk in a moment. +But first, and I speak as an agriculturist, and I address myself to +you, Lute, in all humility, in heaven's name what is Meniere's Disease? +Do sheep catch it?" + +"Meniere's Disease is," Lute began,... "is what you've got. Sheep are +the only known living creatures that get it." + +Ensued red war and chaos. Forrest made a football rush of the sort that +obtained in California before the adoption of Rugby; and the girls +broke the line to let him through, turned upon him, flanked him on +either side, and pounded him with cushions. + +He turned, with widespread arms, extended fingers, each finger a hook, +and grappled the three. The battle became a whirlwind, a be-spurred man +the center, from which radiated flying draperies of flimsy silk, +disconnected slippers, boudoir caps, and hairpins. There were thuds +from the cushions, grunts from the man, squeals, yelps and giggles from +the girls, and from the totality of the combat inextinguishable +laughter and a ripping and tearing of fragile textures. + +Dick Forrest found himself sprawled on the floor, the wind half knocked +out of him by shrewdly delivered cushions, his head buzzing from the +buffeting, and, in one hand, a trailing, torn, and generally disrupted +girdle of pale blue silk and pink roses. + +In one doorway, cheeks flaming from the struggle, stood Rita, alert as +a fawn and ready to flee. In the other doorway, likewise flame-checked, +stood Ernestine in the commanding attitude of the Mother of the +Gracchi, the wreckage of her kimono wrapped severely about her and held +severely about her by her own waist-pressing arm. Lute, cornered behind +the piano, attempted to run but was driven back by the menace of +Forrest, who, on hands and knees, stamped loudly with the palms of his +hands on the hardwood floor, rolled his head savagely, and emitted +bull-like roars. + +"And they still believe that old prehistoric myth," Ernestine +proclaimed from safety, "that once he, that wretched semblance of a +man-thing prone in the dirt, captained Berkeley to victory over +Stanford." + +Her breasts heaved from the exertion, and he marked the pulsating of +the shimmering cherry-colored silk with delight as he flung his glance +around to the other two girls similarly breathing. + +The piano was a miniature grand--a dainty thing of rich white and gold +to match the morning room. It stood out from the wall, so that there +was possibility for Lute to escape around either way of it. Forrest +gained his feet and faced her across the broad, flat top of the +instrument. As he threatened to vault it, Lute cried out in horror: + +"But your spurs, Dick! Your spurs!" + +"Give me time to take them off," he offered. + +As he stooped to unbuckle them, Lute darted to escape, but was herded +back to the shelter of the piano. + +"All right," he growled. "On your head be it. If the piano's scratched +I'll tell Paula." + +"I've got witnesses," she panted, indicating with her blue joyous eyes +the young things in the doorways. + +"Very well, my dear." Forrest drew back his body and spread his resting +palms. "I'm coming over to you." + +Action and speech were simultaneous. His body, posited sidewise from +his hands, was vaulted across, the perilous spurs a full foot above the +glossy white surface. And simultaneously Lute ducked and went under the +piano on hands and knees. Her mischance lay in that she bumped her +head, and, before she could recover way, Forrest had circled the piano +and cornered her under it. + +"Come out!" he commanded. "Come out and take your medicine!" + +"A truce," she pleaded. "A truce, Sir Knight, for dear love's sake and +all damsels in distress." + +"I ain't no knight," Forrest announced in his deepest bass. "I'm an +ogre, a filthy, debased and altogether unregenerate ogre. I was born in +the tule-swamps. My father was an ogre and my mother was more so. I was +lulled to slumber on the squalls of infants dead, foreordained, and +predamned. I was nourished solely on the blood of maidens educated in +Mills Seminary. My favorite chophouse has ever been a hardwood floor, a +loaf of Mills Seminary maiden, and a roof of flat piano. My father, as +well as an ogre, was a California horse-thief. I am more reprehensible +than my father. I have more teeth. My mother, as well as an ogress, was +a Nevada book-canvasser. Let all her shame be told. She even solicited +subscriptions for ladies' magazines. I am more terrible than my mother. +I have peddled safety razors." + +"Can naught soothe and charm your savage breast?" Lute pleaded in +soulful tones while she studied her chances for escape. + +"One thing only, miserable female. One thing only, on the earth, over +the earth, and under its ruining waters--" + +A squawk of recognized plagiarism interrupted him from Ernestine. + +"See Ernest Dowson, page seventy-nine, a thin book of thin verse ladled +out with porridge to young women detentioned at Mills Seminary," +Forrest went on. "As I had already enunciated before I was so rudely +interrupted, the one thing only that can balm and embalm this savage +breast is the 'Maiden's Prayer.' Listen, with all your ears ere I chew +them off in multitude and gross! Listen, silly, unbeautiful, squat, +short-legged and ugly female under the piano! Can you recite the +'Maiden's Prayer'?" + +Screams of delight from the young things in the doorways prevented the +proper answer and Lute, from under the piano, cried out to young +Wainwright, who had appeared: + +"A rescue, Sir Knight! A rescue!" + +"Unhand the maiden!" was Bert's challenge. + +"Who art thou?" Forrest demanded. + +"King George, sirrah!--I mean, er, Saint George." + +"Then am I thy dragon," Forrest announced with due humility. "Spare +this ancient, honorable, and only neck I have." + +"Off with his head!" the young things encouraged. + +"Stay thee, maidens, I pray thee," Bert begged. "I am only a Small +Potato. Yet am I unafraid. I shall beard the dragon. I shall beard him +in his gullet, and, while he lingeringly chokes to death over my +unpalatableness and general spinefulness, do you, fair damsels, flee to +the mountains lest the valleys fall upon you. Yolo, Petaluma, and West +Sacramento are about to be overwhelmed by a tidal wave and many big +fishes." + +"Off with his head!" the young things chanted. "Slay him in his blood +and barbecue him!" + +"Thumbs down," Forrest groaned. "I am undone. Trust to the unstrained +quality of mercy possessed by Christian young women in the year 1914 +who will vote some day if ever they grow up and do not marry +foreigners. Consider my head off, Saint George. I am expired. Further +deponent sayeth not." + +And Forrest, with sobs and slubberings, with realistic shudders and +kicks and a great jingling of spurs, lay down on the floor and expired. + +Lute crawled out from under the piano, and was joined by Rita and +Ernestine in an extemporized dance of the harpies about the slain. + +In the midst of it, Forrest sat up, protesting. Also, he was guilty of +a significant and privy wink to Lute. + +"The hero!" he cried. "Forget him not. Crown him with flowers." + +And Bert was crowned with flowers from the vases, unchanged from the +day before. When a bunch of water-logged stems of early tulips, +propelled by Lute's vigorous arm, impacted soggily on his neck under +the ear, he fled. The riot of pursuit echoed along the hall and died +out down the stairway toward the stag room. Forrest gathered himself +together, and, grinning, went jingling on through the Big House. + +He crossed two patios on brick walks roofed with Spanish tile and +swamped with early foliage and blooms, and gained his wing of the +house, still breathing from the fun, to find, in the office, his +secretary awaiting him. + +"Good morning, Mr. Blake," he greeted. "Sorry I was delayed." He +glanced at his wrist-watch. "Only four minutes, however. I just +couldn't get away sooner." + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + + +From nine till ten Forrest gave himself up to his secretary, achieving +a correspondence that included learned societies and every sort of +breeding and agricultural organization and that would have compelled +the average petty business man, unaided, to sit up till midnight to +accomplish. + +For Dick Forrest was the center of a system which he himself had built +and of which he was secretly very proud. Important letters and +documents he signed with his ragged fist. All other letters were +rubber-stamped by Mr. Blake, who, also, in shorthand, in the course of +the hour, put down the indicated answers to many letters and received +the formula designations of reply to many other letters. Mr. Blake's +private opinion was that he worked longer hours than his employer, +although it was equally his private opinion that his employer was a +wonder for discovering work for others to perform. + +At ten, to the stroke of the clock, as Pittman, Forrest's show-manager, +entered the office, Blake, burdened with trays of correspondence, +sheafs of documents, and phonograph cylinders, faded away to his own +office. + +From ten to eleven a stream of managers and foremen flowed in and out. +All were well disciplined in terseness and time-saving. As Dick Forrest +had taught them, the minutes spent with him were not minutes of +cogitation. They must be prepared before they reported or suggested. +Bonbright, the assistant secretary, always arrived at ten to replace +Blake; and Bonbright, close to shoulder, with flying pencil, took down +the rapid-fire interchange of question and answer, statement and +proposal and plan. These shorthand notes, transcribed and typed in +duplicate, were the nightmare and, on occasion, the Nemesis, of the +managers and foremen. For, first, Forrest had a remarkable memory; and, +second, he was prone to prove its worth by reference to those same +notes of Bonbright. + +A manager, at the end of a five or ten minute session, often emerged +sweating, limp and frazzled. Yet for a swift hour, at high tension, +Forrest met all comers, with a master's grip handling them and all the +multifarious details of their various departments. He told Thompson, +the machinist, in four flashing minutes, where the fault lay in the +dynamo to the Big House refrigerator, laid the fault home to Thompson, +dictated a note to Bonbright, with citation by page and chapter to a +volume from the library to be drawn by Thompson, told Thompson that +Parkman, the dairy manager, was not satisfied with the latest wiring up +of milking machines, and that the refrigerating plant at the slaughter +house was balking at its accustomed load. + +Each man was a specialist, yet Forrest was the proved master of their +specialties. As Paulson, the head plowman, complained privily to +Dawson, the crop manager: "I've worked here twelve years and never have +I seen him put his hands to a plow, and yet, damn him, he somehow seems +to know. He's a genius, that's what he is. Why, d'ye know, I've seen +him tear by a piece of work, his hands full with that Man-Eater of his +a-threatenin' sudden funeral, an', next morning, had 'm mention +casually to a half-inch how deep it was plowed an' what plows'd done +the plowin'!--Take that plowin' of the Poppy Meadow, up above Little +Meadow, on Los Cuatos. I just couldn't see my way to it, an' had to cut +out the cross-sub-soiling, an' thought I could slip it over on him. +After it was all finished he kind of happened up that way--I was +lookin' an' he didn't seem to look--an', well, next A.M. I got mine in +the office. No; I didn't slip it over. I ain't tried to slip nothing +over since." + +At eleven sharp, Wardman, his sheep manager, departed with an +engagement scheduled at eleven: thirty to ride in the machine along +with Thayer, the Idaho buyer, to look over the Shropshire rams. At +eleven, Bonbright having departed with Wardman to work up his notes, +Forrest was left alone in the office. From a wire tray of unfinished +business--one of many wire trays superimposed in groups of five--he +drew a pamphlet issued by the State of Iowa on hog cholera and +proceeded to scan it. + +Five feet, ten inches in height, weighing a clean-muscled one hundred +and eighty pounds, Dick Forrest was anything but insignificant for a +forty years' old man. The eyes were gray, large, over-arched by bone of +brow, and lashes and brows were dark. The hair, above an ordinary +forehead, was light brown to chestnut. Under the forehead, the cheeks +showed high-boned, with underneath the slight hollows that necessarily +accompany such formation. The jaws were strong without massiveness, the +nose, large-nostriled, was straight enough and prominent enough without +being too straight or prominent, the chin square without harshness and +uncleft, and the mouth girlish and sweet to a degree that did not hide +the firmness to which the lips could set on due provocation. The skin +was smooth and well-tanned, although, midway between eyebrows and hair, +the tan of forehead faded in advertisement of the rim of the Baden +Powell interposed between him and the sun. + +Laughter lurked in the mouth corners and eye-corners, and there were +cheek lines about the mouth that would seem to have been formed by +laughter. Equally strong, however, every line of the face that meant +blended things carried a notice of surety. Dick Forrest was sure--sure, +when his hand reached out for any object on his desk, that the hand +would straightly attain the object without a fumble or a miss of a +fraction of an inch; sure, when his brain leaped the high places of the +hog cholera text, that it was not missing a point; sure, from his +balanced body in the revolving desk-chair to the balanced back-head of +him; sure, in heart and brain, of life and work, of all he possessed, +and of himself. + +He had reason to be sure. Body, brain, and career were long-proven +sure. A rich man's son, he had not played ducks and drakes with his +father's money. City born and reared, he had gone back to the land and +made such a success as to put his name on the lips of breeders wherever +breeders met and talked. He was the owner, without encumbrance, of two +hundred and fifty thousand acres of land--land that varied in value +from a thousand dollars an acre to a hundred dollars, that varied from +a hundred dollars to ten cents an acre, and that, in stretches, was not +worth a penny an acre. The improvements on that quarter of a million +acres, from drain-tiled meadows to dredge-drained tule swamps, from +good roads to developed water-rights, from farm buildings to the Big +House itself, constituted a sum gaspingly ungraspable to the +country-side. + +Everything was large-scale but modern to the last tick of the clock. +His managers lived, rent-free, with salaries commensurate to ability, +in five--and ten-thousand-dollar houses--but they were the cream of +specialists skimmed from the continent from the Atlantic to the +Pacific. When he ordered gasoline-tractors for the cultivation of the +flat lands, he ordered a round score. When he dammed water in his +mountains he dammed it by the hundreds of millions of gallons. When he +ditched his tule-swamps, instead of contracting the excavation, he +bought the huge dredgers outright, and, when there was slack work on +his own marshes, he contracted for the draining of the marshes of +neighboring big farmers, land companies, and corporations for a hundred +miles up and down the Sacramento River. + +He had brain sufficient to know the need of buying brains and to pay a +tidy bit over the current market price for the most capable brains. And +he had brain sufficient to direct the brains he bought to a profitable +conclusion. + +And yet, he was just turned forty was clear-eyed, calm-hearted, +hearty-pulsed, man-strong; and yet, his history, until he was thirty, +had been harum-scarum and erratic to the superlative. He had run away +from a millionaire home when he was thirteen. He had won enviable +college honors ere he was twenty-one and after that he had known all +the purple ports of the purple seas, and, with cool head, hot heart, +and laughter, played every risk that promised and provided in the wild +world of adventure that he had lived to see pass under the sobriety of +law. + +In the old days of San Francisco Forrest had been a name to conjure +with. The Forrest Mansion had been one of the pioneer palaces on Nob +Hill where dwelt the Floods, the Mackays, the Crockers, and the +O'Briens. "Lucky" Richard Forrest, the father, had arrived, via the +Isthmus, straight from old New England, keenly commercial, interested +before his departure in clipper ships and the building of clipper +ships, and interested immediately after his arrival in water-front real +estate, river steamboats, mines, of course, and, later, in the draining +of the Nevada Comstock and the construction of the Southern Pacific. + +He played big, he won big, he lost big; but he won always more than he +lost, and what he paid out at one game with one hand, he drew back with +his other hand at another game. His winnings from the Comstock he sank +into the various holes of the bottomless Daffodil Group in Eldorado +County. The wreckage from the Benicia Line he turned into the Napa +Consolidated, which was a quicksilver venture, and it earned him five +thousand per cent. What he lost in the collapse of the Stockton boom +was more than balanced by the realty appreciation of his key-holdings +at Sacramento and Oakland. + +And, to cap it all, when "Lucky" Richard Forrest had lost everything in +a series of calamities, so that San Francisco debated what price his +Nob Hill palace would fetch at auction, he grubstaked one, Del Nelson, +to a prospecting in Mexico. As soberly set down in history, the result +of the said Del Nelson's search for quartz was the Harvest Group, +including the fabulous and inexhaustible Tattlesnake, Voice, City, +Desdemona, Bullfrog, and Yellow Boy claims. Del Nelson, astounded by +his achievement, within the year drowned himself in an enormous +quantity of cheap whisky, and, the will being incontestible through +lack of kith and kin, left his half to Lucky Richard Forrest. + +Dick Forrest was the son of his father. Lucky Richard, a man of +boundless energy and enterprise, though twice married and twice +widowed, had not been blessed with children. His third marriage +occurred in 1872, when he was fifty-eight, and in 1874, although he +lost the mother, a twelve-pound boy, stout-barreled and husky-lunged, +remained to be brought up by a regiment of nurses in the palace on Nob +Hill. + +Young Dick was precocious. Lucky Richard was a democrat. Result: Young +Dick learned in a year from a private teacher what would have required +three years in the grammar school, and used all of the saved years in +playing in the open air. Also, result of precocity of son and democracy +of father, Young Dick was sent to grammar school for the last year in +order to learn shoulder-rubbing democracy with the sons and daughters +of workmen, tradesmen, saloon-keepers and politicians. + +In class recitation or spelling match his father's millions did not aid +him in competing with Patsy Halloran, the mathematical prodigy whose +father was a hod-carrier, nor with Mona Sanguinetti who was a wizard at +spelling and whose widowed mother ran a vegetable store. Nor were his +father's millions and the Nob Hill palace of the slightest assistance +to Young Dick when he peeled his jacket and, bareknuckled, without +rounds, licking or being licked, milled it to a finish with Jimmy +Botts, Jean Choyinsky, and the rest of the lads that went out over the +world to glory and cash a few years later, a generation of +prizefighters that only San Francisco, raw and virile and yeasty and +young, could have produced. + +The wisest thing Lucky Richard did for his boy was to give him this +democratic tutelage. In his secret heart, Young Dick never forgot that +he lived in a palace of many servants and that his father was a man of +power and honor. On the other hand, Young Dick learned two-legged, +two-fisted democracy. He learned it when Mona Sanguinetti spelled him +down in class. He learned it when Berney Miller out-dodged and out-ran +him when running across in Black Man. + +And when Tim Hagan, with straight left for the hundredth time to +bleeding nose and mangled mouth, and with ever reiterant right hook to +stomach, had him dazed and reeling, the breath whistling and sobbing +through his lacerated lips--was no time for succor from palaces and +bank accounts. On his two legs, with his two fists, it was either he or +Tim. And it was right there, in sweat and blood and iron of soul, that +Young Dick learned how not to lose a losing fight. It had been uphill +from the first blow, but he stuck it out until in the end it was agreed +that neither could best the other, although this agreement was not +reached until they had first lain on the ground in nausea and +exhaustion and with streaming eyes wept their rage and defiance at each +other. After that, they became chums and between them ruled the +schoolyard. + +Lucky Richard died the same month Young Dick emerged from grammar +school. Young Dick was thirteen years old, with twenty million dollars, +and without a relative in the world to trouble him. He was the master +of a palace of servants, a steam yacht, stables, and, as well, of a +summer palace down the Peninsula in the nabob colony at Menlo. One +thing, only, was he burdened with: guardians. + +On a summer afternoon, in the big library, he attended the first +session of his board of guardians. There were three of them, all +elderly, and successful, all legal, all business comrades of his +father. Dick's impression, as they explained things to him, was that, +although they meant well, he had no contacts with them. In his +judgment, their boyhood was too far behind them. Besides that, it was +patent that him, the particular boy they were so much concerned with, +they did not understand at all. Furthermore, in his own sure way he +decided that he was the one person in the world fitted to know what was +best for himself. + +Mr. Crockett made a long speech, to which Dick listened with alert and +becoming attention, nodding his head whenever he was directly addressed +or appealed to. Messrs. Davidson and Slocum also had their say and were +treated with equal consideration. Among other things, Dick learned what +a sterling, upright man his father had been, and the program already +decided upon by the three gentlemen which would make him into a +sterling and upright man. + +When they were quite done, Dick took it upon himself to say a few +things. + +"I have thought it over," he announced, "and first of all I shall go +traveling." + +"That will come afterward, my boy," Mr. Slocum explained soothingly. +"When--say--when you are ready to enter the university. At that time a +year abroad would be a very good thing... a very good thing indeed." + +"Of course," Mr. Davidson volunteered quickly, having noted the annoyed +light in the lad's eyes and the unconscious firm-drawing and setting of +the lips, "of course, in the meantime you could do some traveling, a +limited amount of traveling, during your school vacations. I am sure my +fellow guardians will agree--under the proper management and +safeguarding, of course--that such bits of travel sandwiched between +your school-terms, would be advisable and beneficial." + +"How much did you say I am worth?" Dick asked with apparent irrelevance. + +"Twenty millions--at a most conservative estimate--that is about the +sum," Mr. Crockett answered promptly. + +"Suppose I said right now that I wanted a hundred dollars!" Dick went +on. + +"Why--er--ahem." Mr. Slocum looked about him for guidance. + +"We would be compelled to ask what you wanted it for," answered Mr. +Crockett. + +"And suppose," Dick said very slowly, looking Mr. Crockett squarely in +the eyes, "suppose I said that I was very sorry, but that I did not +care to say what I wanted it for?" + +"Then you wouldn't get it," Mr. Crockett said so immediately that there +was a hint of testiness and snap in his manner. + +Dick nodded slowly, as if letting the information sink in. + +"But, of course, my boy," Mr. Slocum took up hastily, "you understand +you are too young to handle money yet. We must decide that for you." + +"You mean I can't touch a penny without your permission?" + +"Not a penny," Mr. Crockett snapped. + +Dick nodded his head thoughtfully and murmured, "Oh, I see." + +"Of course, and quite naturally, it would only be fair, you know, you +will have a small allowance for your personal spending," Mr. Davidson +said. "Say, a dollar, or, perhaps, two dollars, a week. As you grow +older this allowance will be increased. And by the time you are +twenty-one, doubtlessly you will be fully qualified--with advice, of +course--to handle your own affairs." + +"And until I am twenty-one my twenty million wouldn't buy me a hundred +dollars to do as I please with?" Dick queried very subduedly. + +Mr. Davidson started to corroborate in soothing phrases, but was waved +to silence by Dick, who continued: + +"As I understand it, whatever money I handle will be by agreement +between the four of us?" + +The Board of Guardians nodded. + +"That is, whatever we agree, goes?" + +Again the Board of Guardians nodded. + +"Well, I'd like to have a hundred right now," Dick announced. + +"What for?" Mr. Crockett demanded. + +"I don't mind telling you," was the lad's steady answer. "To go +traveling." + +"You'll go to bed at eight:thirty this evening," Mr. Crockett retorted. +"And you don't get any hundred. The lady we spoke to you about will be +here before six. She is to have, as we explained, daily and hourly +charge of you. At six-thirty, as usual, you will dine, and she will +dine with you and see you to bed. As we told you, she will have to +serve the place of a mother to you--see that your ears are clean, your +neck washed--" + +"And that I get my Saturday night bath," Dick amplified meekly for him. + +"Precisely." + +"How much are you--am I--paying the lady for her services?" Dick +questioned in the disconcerting, tangential way that was already +habitual to him, as his school companions and teachers had learned to +their cost. + +Mr. Crockett for the first time cleared his throat for pause. + +"I'm paying her, ain't I?" Dick prodded. "Out of the twenty million, +you know." + +"The spit of his father," said Mr. Slocum in an aside. + +"Mrs. Summerstone, the lady as you elect to call her, receives one +hundred and fifty a month, eighteen hundred a year in round sum," said +Mr. Crockett. + +"It's a waste of perfectly good money," Dick sighed. "And board and +lodging thrown in!" + +He stood up--not the born aristocrat of the generations, but the reared +aristocrat of thirteen years in the Nob Hill palace. He stood up with +such a manner that his Board of Guardians left their leather chairs to +stand up with him. But he stood up as no Lord Fauntleroy ever stood up; +for he was a mixer. He had knowledge that human life was many-faced and +many-placed. Not for nothing had he been spelled down by Mona +Sanguinetti. Not for nothing had he fought Tim Hagan to a standstill +and, co-equal, ruled the schoolyard roost with him. + +He was birthed of the wild gold-adventure of Forty-nine. He was a +reared aristocrat and a grammar-school-trained democrat. He knew, in +his precocious immature way, the differentiations between caste and +mass; and, behind it all, he was possessed of a will of his own and of +a quiet surety of self that was incomprehensible to the three elderly +gentlemen who had been given charge of his and his destiny and who had +pledged themselves to increase his twenty millions and make a man of +him in their own composite image. + +"Thank you for your kindness," Young Dick said generally to the three. +"I guess we'll get along all right. Of course, that twenty millions is +mine, and of course you've got to take care of it for me, seeing I know +nothing of business--" + +"And we'll increase it for you, my boy, we'll increase it for you in +safe, conservative ways," Mr. Slocum assured him. + +"No speculation," Young Dick warned. "Dad's just been lucky--I've heard +him say that times have changed and a fellow can't take the chances +everybody used to take." + +From which, and from much which has already passed, it might +erroneously be inferred that Young Dick was a mean and money-grubbing +soul. On the contrary, he was at that instant entertaining secret +thoughts and plans so utterly regardless and disdainful of his twenty +millions as to place him on a par with a drunken sailor sowing the +beach with a three years' pay-day. + +"I am only a boy," Young Dick went on. "But you don't know me very well +yet. We'll get better acquainted by and by, and, again thanking you...." + +He paused, bowed briefly and grandly as lords in Nob Hill palaces early +learn to bow, and, by the quality of the pause, signified that the +audience was over. Nor did the impact of dismissal miss his guardians. +They, who had been co-lords with his father, withdrew confused and +perplexed. Messrs. Davidson and Slocum were on the point of resolving +their perplexity into wrath, as they went down the great stone stairway +to the waiting carriage, but Mr. Crockett, the testy and snappish, +muttered ecstatically: "The son of a gun! The little son of a gun!" + +The carriage carried them down to the old Pacific Union Club, where, +for another hour, they gravely discussed the future of Young Dick +Forrest and pledged themselves anew to the faith reposed in them by +Lucky Richard Forrest. And down the hill, on foot, where grass grew on +the paved streets too steep for horse-traffic, Young Dick hurried. As +the height of land was left behind, almost immediately the palaces and +spacious grounds of the nabobs gave way to the mean streets and wooden +warrens of the working people. The San Francisco of 1887 as +incontinently intermingled its slums and mansions as did the old cities +of Europe. Nob Hill arose, like any medieval castle, from the mess and +ruck of common life that denned and laired at its base. + +Young Dick came to pause alongside a corner grocery, the second story +of which was rented to Timothy Hagan Senior, who, by virtue of being a +policeman with a wage of a hundred dollars a month, rented this high +place to dwell above his fellows who supported families on no more than +forty and fifty dollars a month. + +In vain Young Dick whistled up through the unscreened, open windows. +Tim Hagan Junior was not at home. But Young Dick wasted little wind in +the whistling. He was debating on possible adjacent places where Tim +Hagan might be, when Tim himself appeared around the corner, bearing a +lidless lard-can that foamed with steam beer. He grunted greeting, and +Young Dick grunted with equal roughness, just as if, a brief space +before, he had not, in most lordly fashion, terminated an audience with +three of the richest merchant-kings of an imperial city. Nor did his +possession of twenty increasing millions hint the slightest betrayal in +his voice or mitigate in the slightest the gruffness of his grunt. + +"Ain't seen yeh since yer old man died," Tim Hagan commented. + +"Well, you're seein' me now, ain't you?" was Young Dick's retort. "Say, +Tim, I come to see you on business." + +"Wait till I rush the beer to the old man," said Tim, inspecting the +state of the foam in the lard-can with an experienced eye. "He'll roar +his head off if it comes in flat." + +"Oh, you can shake it up," Young Dick assured him. "Only want to see +you a minute. I'm hitting the road to-night. Want to come along?" + +Tim's small, blue Irish eyes flashed with interest. + +"Where to?" he queried. + +"Don't know. Want to come? If you do, we can talk it over after we +start? You know the ropes. What d'ye say?" + +"The old man'll beat the stuffin' outa me," Tim demurred. + +"He's done that before, an' you don't seem to be much missing," Young +Dick callously rejoined. "Say the word, an' we'll meet at the Ferry +Building at nine to-night. What d'ye say? I'll be there." + +"Supposin' I don't show up?" Tim asked. + +"I'll be on my way just the same." Young Dick turned as if to depart, +paused casually, and said over his shoulder, "Better come along." + +Tim shook up the beer as he answered with equal casualness, "Aw right. +I'll be there." + +After parting from Tim Hagan Young Dick spent a busy hour or so looking +up one, Marcovich, a Slavonian schoolmate whose father ran a chop-house +in which was reputed to be served the finest twenty-cent meal in the +city. Young Marcovich owed Young Dick two dollars, and Young Dick +accepted the payment of a dollar and forty cents as full quittance of +the debt. + +Also, with shyness and perturbation, Young Dick wandered down +Montgomery Street and vacillated among the many pawnshops that graced +that thoroughfare. At last, diving desperately into one, he managed to +exchange for eight dollars and a ticket his gold watch that he knew was +worth fifty at the very least. + +Dinner in the Nob Hill palace was served at six-thirty. He arrived at +six-forty-five and encountered Mrs. Summerstone. She was a stout, +elderly, decayed gentlewoman, a daughter of the great Porter-Rickington +family that had shaken the entire Pacific Coast with its financial +crash in the middle seventies. Despite her stoutness, she suffered from +what she called shattered nerves. + +"This will never, never do, Richard," she censured. "Here is dinner +waiting fifteen minutes already, and you have not yet washed your face +and hands." + +"I am sorry, Mrs. Summerstone," Young Dick apologized. "I won't keep +you waiting ever again. And I won't bother you much ever." + +At dinner, in state, the two of them alone in the great dining room, +Young Dick strove to make things easy for the lady, whom, despite his +knowledge that she was on his pay-roll, he felt toward as a host must +feel toward a guest. + +"You'll be very comfortable here," he promised, "once you are settled +down. It's a good old house, and most of the servants have been here +for years." + +"But, Richard," she smiled seriously to him; "it is not the servants +who will determine my happiness here. It is you." + +"I'll do my best," he said graciously. "Better than that. I'm sorry I +came in late for dinner. In years and years you'll never see me late +again. I won't bother you at all. You'll see. It will be just as though +I wasn't in the house." + +When he bade her good night, on his way to bed, he added, as a last +thought: + +"I'll warn you of one thing: Ah Sing. He's the cook. He's been in our +house for years and years--oh, I don't know, maybe twenty-five or +thirty years he's cooked for father, from long before this house was +built or I was born. He's privileged. He's so used to having his own +way that you'll have to handle him with gloves. But once he likes you +he'll work his fool head off to please you. He likes me that way. You +get him to like you, and you'll have the time of your life here. And, +honest, I won't give you any trouble at all. It'll be a regular snap, +just as if I wasn't here at all." + + + + +CHAPTER V + + AT nine in the evening, sharp to the second, clad in his oldest +clothes, Young Dick met Tim Hagan at the Ferry Building. + +"No use headin' north," said Tim. "Winter'll come on up that way and +make the sleepin' crimpy. D'ye want to go East--that means Nevada and +the deserts." + +"Any other way?" queried Young Dick. "What's the matter with south? We +can head for Los Angeles, an' Arizona, an' New Mexico--oh, an' Texas." + +"How much money you got?" Tim demanded. + +"What for?" Young Dick countered. + +"We gotta get out quick, an' payin' our way at the start is quickest. +Me--I'm all hunkydory; but you ain't. The folks that's lookin' after +you'll raise a roar. They'll have more detectives out than you can +shake at stick at. We gotta dodge 'em, that's what." + +"Then we will dodge," said Young Dick. "We'll make short jumps this way +and that for a couple of days, layin' low most of the time, paying our +way, until we can get to Tracy. Then we'll quit payin' an' beat her +south." + +All of which program was carefully carried out. They eventually went +through Tracy as pay passengers, six hours after the local deputy +sheriff had given up his task of searching the trains. With an excess +of precaution Young Dick paid beyond Tracy and as far as Modesto. After +that, under the teaching of Tim, he traveled without paying, riding +blind baggage, box cars, and cow-catchers. Young Dick bought the +newspapers, and frightened Tim by reading to him the lurid accounts of +the kidnapping of the young heir to the Forrest millions. + +Back in San Francisco the Board of Guardians offered rewards that +totaled thirty thousand dollars for the recovery of their ward. And Tim +Hagan, reading the same while they lay in the grass by some water-tank, +branded forever the mind of Young Dick with the fact that honor beyond +price was a matter of neither place nor caste and might outcrop in the +palace on the height of land or in the dwelling over a grocery down on +the flat. + +"Gee!" Tim said to the general landscape. "The old man wouldn't raise a +roar if I snitched on you for that thirty thousand. It makes me scared +to think of it." + +And from the fact that Tim thus openly mentioned the matter, Young Dick +concluded that there was no possibility of the policeman's son +betraying him. + +Not until six weeks afterward, in Arizona, did Young Dick bring up the +subject. + +"You see, Tim," he said, "I've got slathers of money. It's growing all +the time, and I ain't spending a cent of it, not so as you can +notice... though that Mrs. Summerstone is getting a cold eighteen +hundred a year out of me, with board and carriages thrown in, while you +an' I are glad to get the leavings of firemen's pails in the +round-houses. Just the same, my money's growing. What's ten per cent, +on twenty dollars?" + +Tim Hagan stared at the shimmering heat-waves of the desert and tried +to solve the problem. + +"What's one-tenth of twenty million?" Young Dick demanded irritably. + +"Huh!--two million, of course." + +"Well, five per cent's half of ten per cent. What does twenty million +earn at five per cent, for one year?" + +Tim hesitated. + +"Half of it, half of two million!" Young Dick cried. "At that rate I'm +a million richer every year. Get that, and hang on to it, and listen to +me. When I'm good and willing to go back--but not for years an' +years--we'll fix it up, you and I. When I say the word, you'll write to +your father. He'll jump out to where we are waiting, pick me up, and +cart me back. Then he'll collect the thirty thousand reward from my +guardians, quit the police force, and most likely start a saloon." + +"Thirty thousand's a hell of a lot of money," was Tim's nonchalant way +of expressing his gratitude. + +"Not to me," Young Dick minimized his generosity. "Thirty thousand goes +into a million thirty-three times, and a million's only a year's +turnover of my money." + +But Tim Hagan never lived to see his father a saloon keeper. Two days +later, on a trestle, the lads were fired out of an empty box-car by a +brake-man who should have known better. The trestle spanned a dry +ravine. Young Dick looked down at the rocks seventy feet below and +demurred. + +"There's room on the trestle," he said; "but what if the train starts +up?" + +"It ain't goin' to start--beat it while you got time," the brakeman +insisted. "The engine's takin' water at the other side. She always +takes it here." + +But for once the engine did not take water. The evidence at the inquest +developed that the engineer had found no water in the tank and started +on. Scarcely had the two boys dropped from the side-door of the +box-car, and before they had made a score of steps along the narrow way +between the train and the abyss, than the train began to move. Young +Dick, quick and sure in all his perceptions and adjustments, dropped on +the instant to hands and knees on the trestle. This gave him better +holding and more space, because he crouched beneath the overhang of the +box-cars. Tim, not so quick in perceiving and adjusting, also overcome +with Celtic rage at the brakeman, instead of dropping to hands and +knees, remained upright to flare his opinion of the brakeman, to the +brakeman, in lurid and ancestral terms. + +"Get down!--drop!" Young Dick shouted. + +But the opportunity had passed. On a down grade, the engine picked up +the train rapidly. Facing the moving cars, with empty air at his back +and the depth beneath, Tim tried to drop on hands and knees. But the +first twist of his shoulders brought him in contact with the car and +nearly out-balanced him. By a miracle he recovered equilibrium. But he +stood upright. The train was moving faster and faster. It was +impossible to get down. + +Young Dick, kneeling and holding, watched. The train gathered way. The +cars moved more swiftly. Tim, with a cool head, his back to the fall, +his face to the passing cars, his arms by his sides, with nowhere save +under his feet a holding point, balanced and swayed. The faster the +train moved, the wider he swayed, until, exerting his will, he +controlled himself and ceased from swaying. + +And all would have been well with him, had it not been for one car. +Young Dick knew it, and saw it coming. It was a "palace horse-car," +projecting six inches wider than any car on the train. He saw Tim see +it coming. He saw Tim steel himself to meet the abrupt subtraction of +half a foot from the narrow space wherein he balanced. He saw Tim +slowly and deliberately sway out, sway out to the extremest limit, and +yet not sway out far enough. The thing was physically inevitable. An +inch more, and Tim would have escaped the car. An inch more and he +would have fallen without impact from the car. It caught him, in that +margin of an inch, and hurled him backward and side-twisting. Twice he +whirled sidewise, and two and a half times he turned over, ere he +struck on his head and neck on the rocks. + +He never moved after he struck. The seventy-foot fall broke his neck +and crushed his skull. And right there Young Dick learned death--not +the ordered, decent death of civilization, wherein doctors and nurses +and hypodermics ease the stricken one into the darkness, and ceremony +and function and flowers and undertaking institutions conspire to give +a happy leave-taking and send-off to the departing shade, but sudden +death, primitive death, ugly and ungarnished, like the death of a steer +in the shambles or a fat swine stuck in the jugular. + +And right there Young Dick learned more--the mischance of life and +fate; the universe hostile to man; the need to perceive and to act, to +see and know, to be sure and quick, to adjust instantly to all instant +shiftage of the balance of forces that bear upon the living. And right +there, beside the strangely crumpled and shrunken remnant of what had +been his comrade the moment before, Young Dick learned that illusion +must be discounted, and that reality never lied. + +In New Mexico, Young Dick drifted into the Jingle-bob Ranch, north of +Roswell, in the Pecos Valley. He was not yet fourteen, and he was +accepted as the mascot of the ranch and made into a "sure-enough" +cowboy by cowboys who, on legal papers, legally signed names such as +Wild Horse, Willie Buck, Boomer Deacon, and High Pockets. + +Here, during a stay of six months, Young Dick, soft of frame and +unbreakable, achieved a knowledge of horses and horsemanship, and of +men in the rough and raw, that became a life asset. More he learned. +There was John Chisum, owner of the Jingle-bob, the Bosque Grande, and +of other cattle ranches as far away as the Black River and beyond. John +Chisum was a cattle king who had foreseen the coming of the farmer and +adjusted from the open range to barbed wire, and who, in order to do +so, had purchased every forty acres carrying water and got for nothing +the use of the millions of acres of adjacent range that was worthless +without the water he controlled. And in the talk by the camp-fire and +chuck wagon, among forty-dollar-a-month cowboys who had not foreseen +what John Chisum foresaw, Young Dick learned precisely why and how John +Chisum had become a cattle king while a thousand of his contemporaries +worked for him on wages. + +But Young Dick was no cool-head. His blood was hot. He had passion, and +fire, and male pride. Ready to cry from twenty hours in the saddle, he +learned to ignore the thousand aching creaks in his body and with the +stoic brag of silence to withstain from his blankets until the +hard-bitten punchers led the way. By the same token he straddled the +horse that was apportioned him, insisted on riding night-herd, and knew +no hint of uncertainty when it came to him to turn the flank of a +stampede with a flying slicker. He could take a chance. It was his joy +to take a chance. But at such times he never failed of due respect for +reality. He was well aware that men were soft-shelled and cracked +easily on hard rocks or under pounding hoofs. And when he rejected a +mount that tangled its legs in quick action and stumbled, it was not +because he feared to be cracked, but because, when he took a chance on +being cracked, he wanted, as he told John Chisum himself, "an even +break for his money." + +It was while at the Jingle-bob, but mailed by a cattleman from Chicago, +that Young Dick wrote a letter to his guardians. Even then, so careful +was he, that the envelope was addressed to Ah Sing. Though unburdened +by his twenty millions, Young Dick never forgot them, and, fearing his +estate might be distributed among remote relatives who might possibly +inhabit New England, he warned his guardians that he was still alive +and that he would return home in several years. Also, he ordered them +to keep Mrs. Summerstone on at her regular salary. + +But Young Dick's feet itched. Half a year, he felt, was really more +than he should have spent at the Jingle-bob. As a boy hobo, or +road-kid, he drifted on across the United States, getting acquainted +with its peace officers, police judges, vagrancy laws, and jails. And +he learned vagrants themselves at first hand, and floating laborers and +petty criminals. Among other things, he got acquainted with farms and +farmers, and, in New York State, once picked berries for a week with a +Dutch farmer who was experimenting with one of the first silos erected +in the United States. Nothing of what he learned came to him in the +spirit of research. He had merely the human boy's curiosity about all +things, and he gained merely a huge mass of data concerning human +nature and social conditions that was to stand him in good stead in +later years, when, with the aid of the books, he digested and +classified it. + +His adventures did not harm him. Even when he consorted with jail-birds +in jungle camps, and listened to their codes of conduct and +measurements of life, he was not affected. He was a traveler, and they +were alien breeds. Secure in the knowledge of his twenty millions, +there was neither need nor temptation for him to steal or rob. All +things and all places interested him, but he never found a place nor a +situation that could hold him. He wanted to see, to see more and more, +and to go on seeing. + +At the end of three years, nearly sixteen, hard of body, weighing a +hundred and thirty pounds, he judged it time to go home and open the +books. So he took his first long voyage, signing on as boy on a +windjammer bound around the Horn from the Delaware Breakwater to San +Francisco. It was a hard voyage, of one hundred and eighty days, but at +the end he weighed ten pounds the more for having made it. + +Mrs. Summerstone screamed when he walked in on her, and Ah Sing had to +be called from the kitchen to identify him. Mrs. Summerstone screamed a +second time. It was when she shook hands with him and lacerated her +tender skin in the fisty grip of his rope-calloused palms. + +He was shy, almost embarrassed, as he greeted his guardians at the +hastily summoned meeting. But this did not prevent him from talking +straight to the point. + +"It's this way," he said. "I am not a fool. I know what I want, and I +want what I want. I am alone in the world, outside of good friends like +you, of course, and I have my own ideas of the world and what I want to +do in it. I didn't come home because of a sense of duty to anybody +here. I came home because it was time, because of my sense of duty to +myself. I'm all the better from my three years of wandering about, and +now it's up to me to go on with my education--my book education, I +mean." + +"The Belmont Academy," Mr. Slocum suggested. "That will fit you for the +university--" + +Dick shook his head decidedly. + +"And take three years to do it. So would a high school. I intend to be +in the University of California inside one year. That means work. But +my mind's like acid. It'll bite into the books. I shall hire a coach, +or half a dozen of them, and go to it. And I'll hire my coaches +myself--hire and fire them. And that means money to handle." + +"A hundred a month," Mr. Crockett suggested. + +Dick shook his head. + +"I've taken care of myself for three years without any of my money. I +guess. I can take care of myself along with some of my money here in +San Francisco. I don't care to handle my business affairs yet, but I do +want a bank account, a respectable-sized one. I want to spend it as I +see fit, for what I see fit." + +The guardians looked their dismay at one another. + +"It's ridiculous, impossible," Mr. Crockett began. "You are as +unreasonable as you were before you went away." + +"It's my way, I guess," Dick sighed. "The other disagreement was over +my money. It was a hundred dollars I wanted then." + +"Think of our position, Dick," Mr. Davidson urged. "As your guardians, +how would it be looked upon if we gave you, a lad of sixteen, a free +hand with money." + +"What's the _Freda_ worth, right now?" Dick demanded irrelevantly. + +"Can sell for twenty thousand any time," Mr. Crockett answered. + +"Then sell her. She's too large for me, and she's worth less every +year. I want a thirty-footer that I can handle myself for knocking +around the Bay, and that won't cost a thousand. Sell the _Freda_ and +put the money to my account. Now what you three are afraid of is that +I'll misspend my money--taking to drinking, horse-racing, and running +around with chorus girls. Here's my proposition to make you easy on +that: let it be a drawing account for the four of us. The moment any of +you decide I am misspending, that moment you can draw out the total +balance. I may as well tell you, that just as a side line I'm going to +get a business college expert to come here and cram me with the +mechanical side of the business game." + +Dick did not wait for their acquiescence, but went on as from a matter +definitely settled. + +"How about the horses down at Menlo?--never mind, I'll look them over +and decide what to keep. Mrs. Summerstone will stay on here in charge +of the house, because I've got too much work mapped out for myself +already. I promise you you won't regret giving me a free hand with my +directly personal affairs. And now, if you want to hear about the last +three years, I'll spin the yarn for you." + + Dick Forrest had been right when he told his guardians that his mind +was acid and would bite into the books. Never was there such an +education, and he directed it himself--but not without advice. He had +learned the trick of hiring brains from his father and from John Chisum +of the Jingle-bob. He had learned to sit silent and to think while cow +men talked long about the campfire and the chuck wagon. And, by virtue +of name and place, he sought and obtained interviews with professors +and college presidents and practical men of affairs; and he listened to +their talk through many hours, scarcely speaking, rarely asking a +question, merely listening to the best they had to offer, content to +receive from several such hours one idea, one fact, that would help him +to decide what sort of an education he would go in for and how. + +Then came the engaging of coaches. Never was there such an engaging and +discharging, such a hiring and firing. He was not frugal in the matter. +For one that he retained a month, or three months, he discharged a +dozen on the first day, or the first week. And invariably he paid such +dischargees a full month although their attempts to teach him might not +have consumed an hour. He did such things fairly and grandly, because +he could afford to be fair and grand. + +He, who had eaten the leavings from firemen's pails in round-houses and +"scoffed" mulligan-stews at water-tanks, had learned thoroughly the +worth of money. He bought the best with the sure knowledge that it was +the cheapest. A year of high school physics and a year of high school +chemistry were necessary to enter the university. When he had crammed +his algebra and geometry, he sought out the heads of the physics and +chemistry departments in the University of California. Professor Carey +laughed at him... at the first. + +"My dear boy," Professor Carey began. + +Dick waited patiently till he was through. Then Dick began, and +concluded. + +"I'm not a fool, Professor Carey. High school and academy students are +children. They don't know the world. They don't know what they want, or +why they want what is ladled out to them. I know the world. I know what +I want and why I want it. They do physics for an hour, twice a week, +for two terms, which, with two vacations, occupy one year. You are the +top teacher on the Pacific Coast in physics. The college year is just +ending. In the first week of your vacation, giving every minute of your +time to me, I can get the year's physics. What is that week worth to +you?" + +"You couldn't buy it for a thousand dollars," Professor Carey rejoined, +thinking he had settled the matter. + +"I know what your salary is--" Dick began. + +"What is it?" Professor Carey demanded sharply. + +"It's not a thousand a week," Dick retorted as sharply. "It's not five +hundred a week, nor two-fifty a week--" He held up his hand to stall +off interruption. "You've just told me I couldn't buy a week of your +time for a thousand dollars. I'm not going to. But I am going to buy +that week for two thousand. Heavens!--I've only got so many years to +live--" + +"And you can buy years?" Professor Carey queried slyly. + +"Sure. That's why I'm here. I buy three years in one, and the week from +you is part of the deal." + +"But I have not accepted," Professor Carey laughed. + +"If the sum is not sufficient," Dick said stiffly, "why name the sum +you consider fair." + +And Professor Carey surrendered. So did Professor Barsdale, head of the +department of chemistry. + +Already had Dick taken his coaches in mathematics duck hunting for +weeks in the sloughs of the Sacramento and the San Joaquin. After his +bout with physics and chemistry he took his two coaches in literature +and history into the Curry County hunting region of southwestern +Oregon. He had learned the trick from his father, and he worked, and +played, lived in the open air, and did three conventional years of +adolescent education in one year without straining himself. He fished, +hunted, swam, exercised, and equipped himself for the university at the +same time. And he made no mistake. He knew that he did it because his +father's twenty millions had invested him with mastery. Money was a +tool. He did not over-rate it, nor under-rate it. He used it to buy +what he wanted. + +"The weirdest form of dissipation I ever heard," said Mr. Crockett, +holding up Dick's account for the year. "Sixteen thousand for +education, all itemized, including railroad fares, porters' tips, and +shot-gun cartridges for his teachers." + +"He passed the examinations just the same," quoth Mr. Slocum. + +"And in a year," growled Mr. Davidson. "My daughter's boy entered +Belmont at the same time, and, if he's lucky, it will be two years yet +before he enters the university." + +"Well, all I've got to say," proclaimed Mr. Crockett, "is that from now +on what that boy says in the matter of spending his money goes." + +"And now I'll have a snap," Dick told his guardians. "Here I am, neck +and neck again, and years ahead of them in knowledge of the world. Why, +I know things, good and bad, big and little, about men and women and +life that sometimes I almost doubt myself that they're true. But I know +them. + +"From now on, I'm not going to rush. I've caught up, and I'm going +through regular. All I have to do is to keep the speed of the classes, +and I'll be graduated when I'm twenty-one. From now on I'll need less +money for education--no more coaches, you know--and more money for a +good time." + +Mr. Davidson was suspicious. + +"What do you mean by a good time?" + +"Oh, I'm going in for the frats, for football, hold my own, you +know--and I'm interested in gasoline engines. I'm going to build the +first ocean-going gasoline yacht in the world--" + +"You'll blow yourself up," Mr. Crockett demurred. "It's a fool notion +all these cranks are rushing into over gasoline." + +"I'll make myself safe," Dick answered, "and that means experimenting, +and it means money, so keep me a good drawing account--same old +way--all four of us can draw." + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + + +Dick Forrest proved himself no prodigy at the university, save that he +cut more lectures the first year than any other student. The reason for +this was that he did not need the lectures he cut, and he knew it. His +coaches, while preparing him for the entrance examinations, had carried +him nearly through the first college year. Incidentally, he made the +Freshman team, a very scrub team, that was beaten by every high school +and academy it played against. + +But Dick did put in work that nobody saw. His collateral reading was +wide and deep, and when he went on his first summer cruise in the +ocean-going gasoline yacht he had built no gay young crowd accompanied +him. Instead, his guests, with their families, were professors of +literature, history, jurisprudence, and philosophy. It was long +remembered in the university as the "high-brow" cruise. The professors, +on their return, reported a most enjoyable time. Dick returned with a +greater comprehension of the general fields of the particular +professors than he could have gained in years at their class-lectures. +And time thus gained, enabled him to continue to cut lectures and to +devote more time to laboratory work. + +Nor did he miss having his good college time. College widows made love +to him, and college girls loved him, and he was indefatigable in his +dancing. He never cut a smoker, a beer bust, or a rush, and he toured +the Pacific Coast with the Banjo and Mandolin Club. + +And yet he was no prodigy. He was brilliant at nothing. Half a dozen of +his fellows could out-banjo and out-mandolin him. A dozen fellows were +adjudged better dancers than he. In football, and he gained the Varsity +in his Sophomore year, he was considered a solid and dependable player, +and that was all. It seemed never his luck to take the ball and go down +the length of the field while the Blue and Gold host tore itself and +the grandstand to pieces. But it was at the end of heart-breaking, +grueling slog in mud and rain, the score tied, the second half imminent +to its close, Stanford on the five-yard line, Berkeley's ball, with two +downs and three yards to gain--it was then that the Blue and Gold arose +and chanted its demand for Forrest to hit the center and hit it hard. + +He never achieved super-excellence at anything. Big Charley Everson +drank him down at the beer busts. Harrison Jackson, at hammer-throwing, +always exceeded his best by twenty feet. Carruthers out-pointed him at +boxing. Anson Burge could always put his shoulders to the mat, two out +of three, but always only by the hardest work. In English composition a +fifth of his class excelled him. Edlin, the Russian Jew, out-debated +him on the contention that property was robbery. Schultz and Debret +left him with the class behind in higher mathematics; and Otsuki, the +Japanese, was beyond all comparison with him in chemistry. + +But if Dick Forrest did not excel at anything, he failed in nothing. He +displayed no superlative strength, he betrayed no weakness nor +deficiency. As he told his guardians, who, by his unrelenting good +conduct had been led into dreaming some great career for him; as he +told them, when they asked what he wanted to become: + +"Nothing. Just all around. You see, I don't have to be a specialist. My +father arranged that for me when he left me his money. Besides, I +couldn't be a specialist if I wanted to. It isn't me." + +And thus so well-keyed was he, that he expressed clearly his key. He +had no flare for anything. He was that rare individual, normal, +average, balanced, all-around. + +When Mr. Davidson, in the presence of his fellow guardians, stated his +pleasure in that Dick had shown no wildness since he had settled down, +Dick replied: + +"Oh, I can hold myself when I want to." + +"Yes," said Mr. Slocum gravely. "It's the finest thing in the world +that you sowed your wild oats early and learned control." + +Dick looked at him curiously. + +"Why, that boyish adventure doesn't count," he said. "That wasn't +wildness. I haven't gone wild yet. But watch me when I start. Do you +know Kipling's 'Song of Diego Valdez'? Let me quote you a bit of it. +You see, Diego Valdez, like me, had good fortune. He rose so fast to be +High Admiral of Spain that he found no time to take the pleasure he had +merely tasted. He was lusty and husky, but he had no time, being too +busy rising. But always, he thought, he fooled himself with the +thought, that his lustiness and huskiness would last, and, after he +became High Admiral he could then have his pleasure. Always he +remembered: + + "'--comrades-- + Old playmates on new seas-- + When as we traded orpiment + Among the savages-- + A thousand leagues to south'ard + And thirty years removed-- + They knew not noble Valdez, + But me they knew and loved. + + "'Then they that found good liquor + They drank it not alone, + And they that found fair plunder, + They told us every one, + Behind our chosen islands + Or secret shoals between, + When, walty from far voyage, + We gathered to careen. + + "'There burned our breaming-fagots, + All pale along the shore: + There rose our worn pavilions-- + A sail above an oar: + As flashed each yearning anchor + Through mellow seas afire, + So swift our careless captains + Rowed each to his desire. + + "'Where lay our loosened harness? + Where turned our naked feet? + Whose tavern mid the palm-trees? + What quenchings of what heat? + Oh fountain in the desert! + Oh cistern in the waste! + Oh bread we ate in secret! + Oh cup we spilled in haste! + + "'The youth new-taught of longing, + The widow curbed and wan-- + The good wife proud at season, + And the maid aware of man; + All souls, unslaked, consuming, + Defrauded in delays, + Desire not more than quittance + Than I those forfeit days!' + +"Oh, get him, get him, you three oldsters, as I've got him! Get what he +saws next: + + "'I dreamed to wait my pleasure, + Unchanged my spring would bide: + Wherefore, to wait my pleasure, + I put my spring aside, + Till, first in face of Fortune, + And last in mazed disdain, + I made Diego Valdez + High Admiral of Spain!' + +"Listen to me, guardians!" Dick cried on, his face a flame of passion. +"Don't forget for one moment that I am anything but unslaked, +consuming. I am. I burn. But I hold myself. Don't think I am a dead one +because I am a darn nice, meritorious boy at college. I am young. I am +alive. I am all lusty and husky. But I make no mistake. I hold myself. +I don't start out now to blow up on the first lap. I am just getting +ready. I am going to have my time. I am not going to spill my cup in +haste. And in the end I am not going to lament as Diego Valdez did: + + "'There walks no wind 'neath heaven + Nor wave that shall restore + The old careening riot + And the clamorous, crowded shore-- + The fountain in the desert, + The cistern in the waste, + The bread we ate in secret, + The cup we spilled in haste.' + +"Listen, guardians! Do you know what it is to hit your man, to hit him +in hot blood--square to the jaw--and drop him cold? I want that. And I +want to love, and kiss, and risk, and play the lusty, husky fool. I +want to take my chance. I want my careening riot, and I want it while I +am young, but not while I am too young. And I'm going to have it. And +in the meantime I play the game at college, I hold myself, I equip +myself, so that when I turn loose I am going to have the best chance of +my best. Oh, believe me, I do not always sleep well of nights." + +"You mean?" queried Mr. Crockett. + +"Sure. That's just what I mean. I haven't gone wild yet, but just watch +me when I start." + +"And you will start when you graduate?" + +The remarkable youngster shook his head. + +"After I graduate I'm going to take at least a year of post-graduate +courses in the College of Agriculture. You see, I'm developing a +hobby--farming. I want to do something ... something constructive. My +father wasn't constructive to amount to anything. Neither were you +fellows. You struck a new land in pioneer days, and you picked up money +like a lot of sailors shaking out nuggets from the grass roots in a +virgin placer--" + +"My lad, I've some little experience in Californian farming," Mr. +Crockett interrupted in a hurt way. + +"Sure you have, but you weren't constructive. You were--well, facts are +facts--you were destructive. You were a bonanza farmer. What did you +do? You took forty thousand acres of the finest Sacramento Valley soil +and you grew wheat on it year after year. You never dreamed of +rotation. You burned your straw. You exhausted your humus. You plowed +four inches and put a plow-sole like a cement sidewalk just four inches +under the surface. You exhausted that film of four inches and now you +can't get your seed back. + +"You've destroyed. That's what my father did. They all did it. Well, +I'm going to take my father's money and construct. I'm going to take +worked-out wheat-land that I can buy as at a fire-sale, rip out the +plow-sole, and make it produce more in the end than it did when you +fellows first farmed it." + +It was at the end of his Junior year that Mr. Crockett again mentioned +Dick's threatened period of wildness. + +"Soon as I'm done with cow college," was his answer. "Then I'm going to +buy, and stock, and start a ranch that'll be a ranch. And then I'll set +out after my careening riot." + +"About how large a ranch will you start with?" Mr. Davidson asked. + +"Maybe fifty thousand acres, maybe five hundred thousand. It all +depends. I'm going to play unearned increment to the limit. People +haven't begun to come to California yet. Without a tap of my hand or a +turn over, fifteen years from now land that I can buy for ten dollars +an acre will be worth fifty, and what I can buy for fifty will be worth +five hundred." + +"A half million acres at ten dollars an acre means five million +dollars," Mr. Crockett warned gravely. + +"And at fifty it means twenty-five million," Dick laughed. + +But his guardians never believed in the wild oats pilgrimage he +threatened. He might waste his fortune on new-fangled farming, but to +go literally wild after such years of self-restraint was an unthinkable +thing. + +Dick took his sheepskin with small honor. He was twenty-eighth in his +class, and he had not set the college world afire. His most notable +achievement had been his resistance and bafflement of many nice girls +and of the mothers of many nice girls. Next, after that, he had +signalized his Senior year by captaining the Varsity to its first +victory over Stanford in five years. It was in the day prior to +large-salaried football coaches, when individual play meant much; but +he hammered team-work and the sacrifice of the individual into his +team, so that on Thanksgiving Day, over a vastly more brilliant eleven, +the Blue and Gold was able to serpentine its triumph down Market Street +in San Francisco. + +In his post-graduate year in cow college, Dick devoted himself to +laboratory work and cut all lectures. In fact, he hired his own +lecturers, and spent a sizable fortune on them in mere traveling +expenses over California. Jacques Ribot, esteemed one of the greatest +world authorities on agricultural chemistry, who had been seduced from +his two thousand a year in France by the six thousand offered by the +University of California, who had been seduced to Hawaii by the ten +thousand of the sugar planters, Dick Forrest seduced with fifteen +thousand and the more delectable temperate climate of California on a +five years' contract. + +Messrs. Crockett, Slocum, and Davidson threw up their hands in horror +and knew that this was the wild career Dick Forrest had forecast. + +But this was only one of Dick Forrest's similar dissipations. He stole +from the Federal Government, at a prodigal increase of salary, its star +specialist in livestock breeding, and by similar misconduct he robbed +the University of Nebraska of its greatest milch cow professor, and +broke the heart of the Dean of the College of Agriculture of the +University of California by appropriating Professor Nirdenhammer, the +wizard of farm management. + +"Cheap at the price, cheap at the price," Dick explained to his +guardians. "Wouldn't you rather see me spend my money in buying +professors than in buying race horses and actresses? Besides, the +trouble with you fellows is that you don't know the game of buying +brains. I do. That's my specialty. I'm going to make money out of them, +and, better than that, I'm going to make a dozen blades of grass grow +where you fellows didn't leave room for half a blade in the soil you +gutted." + +So it can be understood how his guardians could not believe in his +promise of wild career, of kissing and risking, and hitting men hot on +the jaw. "One year more," he warned, while he delved in agricultural +chemistry, soil analysis, farm management, and traveled California with +his corps of high-salaried experts. And his guardians could only +apprehend a swift and wide dispersal of the Forrest millions when Dick +attained his majority, took charge of the totality of his fortune, and +actually embarked on his agricultural folly. + +The day he was twenty-one the purchase of his principality, that +extended west from the Sacramento River to the mountain tops, was +consummated. + +"An incredible price," said Mr. Crockett. + +"Incredibly cheap," said Dick. "You ought to see my soil reports. You +ought to see my water-reports. And you ought to hear me sing. Listen, +guardians, to a song that is a true song. I am the singer and the song." + +Whereupon, in the queer quavering falsetto that is the sense of song to +the North American Indian, the Eskimo, and the Mongol, Dick sang: + + "Hu'-tim yo'-kim koi-o-di'! + Wi'-hi yan'-ning koi-o-di'! + Lo'-whi yan'-ning koi-o-di'! + Yo-ho' Nai-ni', hal-u'-dom yo nai, yo-ho' nai-nim'!" + +"The music is my own," he murmured apologetically, "the way I think it +ought to have sounded. You see, no man lives who ever heard it sung. +The Nishinam got it from the Maidu, who got it from the Konkau, who +made it. But the Nishinam and the Maidu and the Konkau are gone. Their +last rancheria is not. You plowed it under, Mr. Crockett, with you +bonanza gang-plowing, plow-soling farming. And I got the song from a +certain ethnological report, volume three, of the United States Pacific +Coast Geographical and Geological Survey. Red Cloud, who was formed out +of the sky, first sang this song to the stars and the mountain flowers +in the morning of the world. I shall now sing it for you in English." + +And again, in Indian falsetto, ringing with triumph, vernal and +bursting, slapping his thighs and stamping his feet to the accent, Dick +sang: + + "The acorns come down from heaven! + I plant the short acorns in the valley! + I plant the long acorns in the valley! + I sprout, I, the black-oak acorn, sprout, I sprout!" + +Dick Forrest's name began to appear in the newspapers with appalling +frequency. He leaped to instant fame by being the first man in +California who paid ten thousand dollars for a single bull. His +livestock specialist, whom he had filched from the Federal Government, +in England outbid the Rothschilds' Shire farm for Hillcrest Chieftain, +quickly to be known as Forrest's Folly, paying for that kingly animal +no less than five thousand guineas. + +"Let them laugh," Dick told his ex-guardians. "I am importing forty +Shire mares. I'll write off half his price the first twelvemonth. He +will be the sire and grandsire of many sons and grandsons for which the +Californians will fall over themselves to buy of me at from three to +five thousand dollars a clatter." + +Dick Forrest was guilty of many similar follies in those first months +of his majority. But the most unthinkable folly of all was, after he +had sunk millions into his original folly, that he turned it over to +his experts personally to develop along the general broad lines laid +down by him, placed checks upon them that they might not go +catastrophically wrong, bought a ticket in a passenger brig to Tahiti, +and went away to run wild. + +Occasionally his guardians heard from him. At one time he was owner and +master of a four-masted steel sailing ship that carried the English +flag and coals from Newcastle. They knew that much, because they had +been called upon for the purchase price, because they read Dick's name +in the papers as master when his ship rescued the passengers of the +ill-fated _Orion_, and because they collected the insurance when Dick's +ship was lost with most of all hands in the great Fiji hurricane. In +1896, he was in the Klondike; in 1897, he was in Kamchatka and +scurvy-stricken; and, next, he erupted with the American flag into the +Philippines. Once, although they could never learn how nor why, he was +owner and master of a crazy tramp steamer, long since rejected by +Lloyd's, which sailed under the aegis of Siam. + +From time to time business correspondence compelled them to hear from +him from various purple ports of the purple seas. Once, they had to +bring the entire political pressure of the Pacific Coast to bear upon +Washington in order to get him out of a scrape in Russia, of which +affair not one line appeared in the daily press, but which affair was +secretly provocative of ticklish joy and delight in all the +chancellories of Europe. + +Incidentally, they knew that he lay wounded in Mafeking; that he pulled +through a bout with yellow fever in Guayaquil; and that he stood trial +for brutality on the high seas in New York City. Thrice they read in +the press dispatches that he was dead: once, in battle, in Mexico; and +twice, executed, in Venezuela. After such false flutterings, his +guardians refused longer to be thrilled when he crossed the Yellow Sea +in a sampan, was "rumored" to have died of beri-beri, was captured from +the Russians by the Japanese at Mukden, and endured military +imprisonment in Japan. + +The one thrill of which they were still capable, was when, true to +promise, thirty years of age, his wild oats sown, he returned to +California with a wife to whom, as he announced, he had been married +several years, and whom all his three guardians found they knew. Mr. +Slocum had dropped eight hundred thousand along with the totality of +her father's fortune in the final catastrophe at the Los Cocos mine in +Chihuahua when the United States demonetized silver. Mr. Davidson had +pulled a million out of the Last Stake along with her father when he +pulled eight millions from that sunken, man-resurrected, river bed in +Amador County. Mr. Crockett, a youth at the time, had "spooned" the +Merced bottom with her father in the late 'fifties, had stood up best +man with him at Stockton when he married her mother, and, at Grant's +Pass, had played poker with him and with the then Lieutenant U.S. Grant +when all the little the western world knew of that young lieutenant was +that he was a good Indian fighter but a poor poker player. + +And Dick Forrest had married the daughter of Philip Desten! It was not +a case of wishing Dick luck. It was a case of garrulous insistence on +the fact that he did not know how lucky he was. His guardians forgave +him all his wildness. He had made good. At last he had performed a +purely rational act. Better; it was a stroke of genius. Paula Desten! +Philip Desten's daughter! The Desten blood! The Destens and the +Forrests! It was enough. The three aged comrades of Forrest and Desten +of the old Gold Days, of the two who had played and passed on, were +even severe with Dick. They warned him of the extreme value of his +treasure, of the sacred duty such wedlock imposed on him, of all the +traditions and virtues of the Desten and Forrest blood, until Dick +laughed and broke in with the disconcerting statement that they were +talking like a bunch of fanciers or eugenics cranks--which was +precisely what they were talking like, although they did not care to be +told so crassly. + +At any rate, the simple fact that he had married a Desten made them nod +unqualified approbation when he showed them the plans and building +estimates of the Big House. Thanks to Paula Desten, for once they were +agreed that he was spending wisely and well. As for his farming, it was +incontestible that the Harvest Group was unfalteringly producing, and +he might be allowed his hobbies. Nevertheless, as Mr. Slocum put it: +"Twenty-five thousand dollars for a mere work-horse stallion is a +madness. Work-horses are work-horses; now had it been running stock...." + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + + +While Dick Forrest scanned the pamphlet on hog cholera issued by the +State of Iowa, through his open windows, across the wide court, began +to come sounds of the awakening of the girl who laughed from the wooden +frame by his bed and who had left on the floor of his sleeping porch, +not so many hours before, the rosy, filmy, lacy, boudoir cap so +circumspectly rescued by Oh My. + +Dick heard her voice, for she awoke, like a bird, with song. He heard +her trilling, in and out through open windows, all down the long wing +that was hers. And he heard her singing in the patio garden, where, +also, she desisted long enough to quarrel with her Airedale and scold +the collie pup unholily attracted by the red-orange, divers-finned, and +many-tailed Japanese goldfish in the fountain basin. + +He was aware of pleasure that she was awake. It was a pleasure that +never staled. Always, up himself for hours, he had a sense that the Big +House was not really awake until he heard Paula's morning song across +the patio. + +But having tasted the pleasure of knowing her to be awake, Dick, as +usual, forgot her in his own affairs. She went out of his consciousness +as he became absorbed again in the Iowa statistics on hog cholera. + +"Good morning, Merry Gentleman," was the next he heard, always adorable +music in his ears; and Paula flowed in upon him, all softness of +morning kimono and stayless body, as her arm passed around his neck and +she perched, half in his arms, on one accommodating knee of his. And he +pressed her, and advertised his awareness of her existence and +nearness, although his eyes lingered a full half minute longer on the +totals of results of Professor Kenealy's hog inoculations on Simon +Jones' farm at Washington, Iowa. + +"My!" she protested. "You are too fortunate. You are sated with riches. +Here is your Lady Boy, your 'little haughty moon,' and you haven't even +said, 'Good morning, Little Lady Boy, was your sleep sweet and gentle?'" + +And Dick Forrest forsook the statistical columns of Professor Kenealy's +inoculations, pressed his wife closer, kissed her, but with insistent +right fore-finger maintained his place in the pages of the pamphlet. + +Nevertheless, the very terms of her "reproof prevented him from asking +what he should have asked--the prosperity of her night since the +boudoir cap had been left upon his sleeping porch. He shut the pamphlet +on his right fore-finger, at the place he intended to resume, and added +his right arm to his left about her. + +"Oh!" she cried. "Oh! Oh! Listen!" + +From without came the flute-calls of quail. She quivered against him +with the joy she took in the mellow-sweet notes. + +"The coveys are breaking up," he said. + +"It means spring," Paula cried. + +"And the sign that good weather has come." + +"And love!" + +"And nest-building and egg-laying," Dick laughed. "Never has the world +seemed more fecund than this morning. Lady Isleton is farrowed of +eleven. The angoras were brought down this morning for the kidding. You +should have seen them. And the wild canaries have been discussing +matrimony in the patio for hours. I think some free lover is trying to +break up their monogamic heaven with modern love-theories. It's a +wonder you slept through the discussion. Listen! There they go now. Is +that applause? Or is it a riot?" + +Arose a thin twittering, like elfin pipings, with sharp pitches and +excited shrillnesses, to which Dick and Paula lent delighted ears, +till, suddenly, with the abruptness of the trump of doom, all the +microphonic chorus of the tiny golden lovers was swept away, +obliterated, in a Gargantuan blast of sound--no less wild, no less +musical, no less passionate with love, but immense, dominant, +compelling by very vastitude of volume. + +The eager eyes of the man and woman sought instantly the channel past +open French windows and the screen of the sleeping porch to the road +through the lilacs, while they waited breathlessly for the great +stallion to appear who trumpeted his love-call before him. Again, +unseen, he trumpeted, and Dick said: + +"I will sing you a song, my haughty moon. It is not my song. It is the +Mountain Lad's. It is what he nickers. Listen! He sings it again. This +is what he says: 'Hear me! I am Eros. I stamp upon the hills. I fill +the wide valleys. The mares hear me, and startle, in quiet pastures; +for they know me. The grass grows rich and richer, the land is filled +with fatness, and the sap is in the trees. It is the spring. The spring +is mine. I am monarch of my kingdom of the spring. The mares remember +my voice. They know me aforetime through their mothers before them. +Hear me! I am Eros. I stamp upon the hills, and the wide valleys are my +heralds, echoing the sound of my approach.'" + +And Paula pressed closer to her husband, and was pressed, as her lips +touched his forehead, and as the pair of them, gazing at the empty road +among the lilacs, saw it filled with the eruptive vision of Mountain +Lad, majestic and mighty, the gnat-creature of a man upon his back +absurdly small; his eyes wild and desirous, with the blue sheen that +surfaces the eyes of stallions; his mouth, flecked with the froth and +fret of high spirit, now brushed to burnished knees of impatience, now +tossed skyward to utterance of that vast, compelling call that shook +the air. + +Almost as an echo, from afar off, came a thin-sweet answering whinney. + +"It is the Fotherington Princess," Paula breathed softly. + +Again Mountain Lad trumpeted his call, and Dick chanted: + +"Hear me! I am Eros! I stamp upon the hills!" + +And almost, for a flash of an instant, circled soft and close in his +arms, Paula knew resentment of her husband's admiration for the +splendid beast. And the next instant resentment vanished, and, in +acknowledgment of due debt, she cried gaily: + +"And now, Red Cloud! the Song of the Acorn!" Dick glanced half absently +to her from the pamphlet folded on his finger, and then, with equal +pitch of gaiety, sang: + + "The acorns come down from heaven! + I plant the short acorns in the valley! + I plant the long acorns in the valley! + I sprout, I, the black-oak acorn, sprout, I sprout!" + +She had impressed herself very close against him during his moment of +chanting, but, in the first moments that succeeded she felt the +restless movement of the hand that held the finger-marked hog-pamphlet +and caught the swift though involuntary flash of his eye to the clock +on his desk that marked 11:25. Again she tried to hold him, although, +with equal involuntariness, her attempt was made in mild terms of +resentment. + +"You are a strange and wonderful Red Cloud," she said slowly. +"Sometimes almost am I convinced that you are utterly Red Cloud, +planting your acorns and singing your savage joy of the planting. And, +sometimes, almost you are to me the ultramodern man, the last word of +the two-legged, male human that finds Trojan adventures in sieges of +statistics, and, armed with test tubes and hypodermics, engages in +gladiatorial contests with weird microorganisms. Almost, at times, it +seems you should wear glasses and be bald-headed; almost, it seems...." + +"That I have no right of vigor to possess an armful of girl," he +completed for her, drawing her still closer. "That I am a silly +scientific brute who doesn't merit his 'vain little breath of sweet +rose-colored dust.' Well, listen, I have a plan. In a few days...." + +But his plan died in birth, for, at their backs, came a discreet cough +of warning, and, both heads turning as one they saw Bonbright, the +assistant secretary, with a sheaf of notes on yellow sheets in his hand. + +"Four telegrams," he murmured apologetically. "Mr. Blake is confident +that two of them are very important. One of them concerns that Chile +shipment of bulls...." + +And Paula, slowly drawing away from her husband and rising to her feet, +could feel him slipping from her toward his tables of statistics, bills +of lading, and secretaries, foremen, and managers. + +"Oh, Paula," Dick called, as she was fading through the doorway; "I've +christened the last boy--he's to be known as 'Oh Ho.' How do you like +it?" + +Her reply began with a hint of forlornness that vanished with her +smile, as she warned: + +"You _will_ play ducks and drakes with the house-boys' names." + +"I never do it with pedigreed stock," he assured her with a solemnity +belied by the challenging twinkle in his eyes. + +"I didn't mean that," was her retort. "I meant that you were exhausting +the possibilities of the language. Before long you'll have to be +calling them Oh Bel, Oh Hell, and Oh Go to Hell. Your 'Oh' was a +mistake. You should have started with 'Red.' Then you could have had +Red Bull, Red Horse, Red Dog, Red Frog, Red Fern--and, and all the rest +of the reds." + +She mingled her laughter with his, as she vanished, and, the next +moment, the telegram before him, he was immersed in the details of the +shipment, at two hundred and fifty dollars each, F. O. B., of three +hundred registered yearling bulls to the beef ranges of Chile. Even so, +vaguely, with vague pleasure, he heard Paula sing her way back across +the patio to her long wing of house; though he was unaware that her +voice was a trifle, just the merest trifle, subdued. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + + +Five minutes after Paula had left him, punctual to the second, the four +telegrams disposed of, Dick was getting into a ranch motor car, along +with Thayer, the Idaho buyer, and Naismith, the special correspondent +for the _Breeders' Gazette_. Wardman, the sheep manager, joined them at +the corrals where several thousand young Shropshire rams had been +assembled for inspection. + +There was little need for conversation. Thayer was distinctly +disappointed in this, for he felt that the purchase of ten carloads of +such expensive creatures was momentous enough to merit much +conversation. + +"They speak for themselves," Dick had assured him, and turned aside to +give data to Naismith for his impending article on Shropshires in +California and the Northwest. + +"I wouldn't advise you to bother to select them," Dick told Thayer ten +minutes later. "The average is all top. You could spend a week picking +your ten carloads and have no higher grade than if you had taken the +first to hand." + +This cool assumption that the sale was already consummated so perturbed +Thayer, that, along with the sure knowledge that he had never seen so +high a quality of rams, he was nettled into changing his order to +twenty carloads. + +As he told Naismith, after they had regained the Big House and as they +chalked their cues to finish the interrupted game: + +"It's my first visit to Forrest's. He's a wizard. I've been buying in +the East and importing. But those Shropshires won my judgment. You +noticed I doubled my order. Those Idaho buyers will be wild for them. I +only had buying orders straight for six carloads, and contingent on my +judgment for two carloads more; but if every buyer doesn't double his +order, straight and contingent, when he sees them rams, and if there +isn't a stampede for what's left, I don't know sheep. They're the +goods. If they don't jump up the sheep game of Idaho ... well, then +Forrest's no breeder and I'm no buyer, that's all." + +As the warning gong for lunch rang out--a huge bronze gong from Korea +that was never struck until it was first indubitably ascertained that +Paula was awake--Dick joined the young people at the goldfish fountain +in the big patio. Bert Wainwright, variously advised and commanded by +his sister, Rita, and by Paula and her sisters, Lute and Ernestine, was +striving with a dip-net to catch a particularly gorgeous flower of a +fish whose size and color and multiplicity of fins and tails had led +Paula to decide to segregate him for the special breeding tank in the +fountain of her own secret patio. Amid high excitement, and much +squealing and laughter, the deed was accomplished, the big fish +deposited in a can and carried away by the waiting Italian gardener. + +"And what have you to say for yourself?" Ernestine challenged, as Dick +joined them. + +"Nothing," he answered sadly. "The ranch is depleted. Three hundred +beautiful young bulls depart to-morrow for South America, and +Thayer--you met him last night--is taking twenty carloads of rams. All +I can say is that my congratulations are extended to Idaho and Chile." + +"Plant more acorns," Paula laughed, her arms about her sisters, the +three of them smilingly expectant of an inevitable antic. + +"Oh, Dick, sing your acorn song," Lute begged. + +He shook his head solemnly. + +"I've got a better one. It's purest orthodoxy. It's got Red Cloud and +his acorn song skinned to death. Listen! This is the song of the little +East-sider, on her first trip to the country under the auspices of her +Sunday School. She's quite young. Pay particular attention to her lisp." + +And then Dick chanted, lisping: + + "The goldfish thwimmeth in the bowl, + The robin thiths upon the tree; + What maketh them thit so eathily? + Who stuckth the fur upon their breasths? + God! God! He done it!" + +"Cribbed," was Ernestine's judgment, as the laughter died away. + +"Sure," Dick agreed. "I got it from the _Rancher and Stockman_, that +got it from the _Swine Breeders' Journal_, that got it from the +_Western Advocate_, that got it from _Public Opinion_, that got it, +undoubtedly, from the little girl herself, or, rather from her Sunday +School teacher. For that matter I am convinced it was first printed in +_Our Dumb Animals_." + +The bronze gong rang out its second call, and Paula, one arm around +Dick, the other around Rita, led the way into the house, while, +bringing up the rear, Bert Wainwright showed Lute Ernestine a new tango +step. + +"One thing, Thayer," Dick said in an aside, after releasing himself +from the girls, as they jostled in confusion where they met Thayer and +Naismith at the head of the stairway leading down to the dining room. +"Before you leave us, cast your eyes over those Merinos. I really have +to brag about them, and American sheepmen will have to come to them. Of +course, started with imported stock, but I've made a California strain +that will make the French breeders sit up. See Wardman and take your +pick. Get Naismith to look them over with you. Stick half a dozen of +them in your train-load, with my compliments, and let your Idaho +sheepmen get a line on them." + +They seated at a table, capable of indefinite extension, in a long, low +dining room that was a replica of the hacienda dining rooms of the +Mexican land-kings of old California. The floor was of large brown +tiles, the beamed ceiling and the walls were whitewashed, and the huge, +undecorated, cement fireplace was an achievement in massiveness and +simplicity. Greenery and blooms nodded from without the deep-embrasured +windows, and the room expressed the sense of cleanness, chastity, and +coolness. + +On the walls, but not crowded, were a number of canvases--most +ambitious of all, in the setting of honor, all in sad grays, a twilight +Mexican scene by Xavier Martinez, of a peon, with a crooked-stick plow +and two bullocks, turning a melancholy furrow across the foreground of +a sad, illimitable, Mexican plain. There were brighter pictures, of +early Mexican-Californian life, a pastel of twilight eucalyptus with a +sunset-tipped mountain beyond, by Reimers, a moonlight by Peters, and a +Griffin stubble-field across which gleamed and smoldered California +summer hills of tawny brown and purple-misted, wooded canyons. + +"Say," Thayer muttered in an undertone across to Naismith, while Dick +and the girls were in the thick of exclamatory and giggling banter, +"here's some stuff for that article of yours, if you touch upon the Big +House. I've seen the servants' dining room. Forty head sit down to it +every meal, including gardeners, chauffeurs, and outside help. It's a +boarding house in itself. Some head, some system, take it from me. That +Chiney boy, Oh Joy, is a wooz. He's housekeeper, or manager, of the +whole shebang, or whatever you want to call his job--and, say, it runs +that smooth you can't hear it." + +"Forrest's the real wooz," Naismith nodded. "He's the brains that picks +brains. He could run an army, a campaign, a government, or even a +three-ring circus." + +"Which last is some compliment," Thayer concurred heartily. + +"Oh, Paula," Dick said across to his wife. "I just got word that Graham +arrives to-morrow morning. Better tell Oh Joy to put him in the +watch-tower. It's man-size quarters, and it's possible he may carry out +his threat and work on his book." + +"Graham?--Graham?" Paula queried aloud of her memory. "Do I know him?" + +"You met him once two years ago, in Santiago, at the Café Venus. He had +dinner with us." + +"Oh, one of those naval officers?" + +Dick shook his head. + +"The civilian. Don't you remember that big blond fellow--you talked +music with him for half an hour while Captain Joyce talked our heads +off to prove that the United States should clean Mexico up and out with +the mailed fist." + +"Oh, to be sure," Paula vaguely recollected. "He'd met you somewhere +before... South Africa, wasn't it? Or the Philippines?" + +"That's the chap. South Africa, it was. Evan Graham. Next time we met +was on the _Times_ dispatch boat on the Yellow Sea. And we crossed +trails a dozen times after that, without meeting, until that night in +the Café Venus. + +"Heavens--he left Bora-Bora, going east, two days before I dropped +anchor bound west on my way to Samoa. I came out of Apia, with letters +for him from the American consul, the day before he came in. We missed +each other by three days at Levuka--I was sailing the _Wild Duck_ then. +He pulled out of Suva as guest on a British cruiser. Sir Everard Im +Thurm, British High Commissioner of the South Seas, gave me more +letters for Graham. I missed him at Port Resolution and at Vila in the +New Hebrides. The cruiser was junketing, you see. I beat her in and out +of the Santa Cruz Group. It was the same thing in the Solomons. The +cruiser, after shelling the cannibal villages at Langa-Langa, steamed +out in the morning. I sailed in that afternoon. I never did deliver +those letters in person, and the next time I laid eyes on him was at +the Café Venus two years ago." + +"But who about him, and what about him?" Paula queried. "And what's the +book?" + +"Well, first of all, beginning at the end, he's broke--that is, for +him, he's broke. He's got an income of several thousand a year left, +but all that his father left him is gone. No; he didn't blow it. He got +in deep, and the 'silent panic' several years ago just about cleaned +him. But he doesn't whimper. + +"He's good stuff, old American stock, a Yale man. The book--he expects +to make a bit on it--covers last year's trip across South America, west +coast to east coast. It was largely new ground. The Brazilian +government voluntarily voted him a honorarium of ten thousand dollars +for the information he brought out concerning unexplored portions of +Brazil. Oh, he's a man, all man. He delivers the goods. You know the +type--clean, big, strong, simple; been everywhere, seen everything, +knows most of a lot of things, straight, square, looks you in the +eyes--well, in short, a man's man." + +Ernestine clapped her hands, flung a tantalizing, man-challenging, +man-conquering glance at Bert Wainwright, and exclaimed: "And he comes +tomorrow!" + +Dick shook his head reprovingly. + +"Oh, nothing in that direction, Ernestine. Just as nice girls as you +have tried to hook Evan Graham before now. And, between ourselves, I +couldn't blame them. But he's had good wind and fast legs, and they've +always failed to run him down or get him into a corner, where, dazed +and breathless, he's mechanically muttered 'Yes' to certain +interrogatories and come out of the trance to find himself, roped, +thrown, branded, and married. Forget him, Ernestine. Stick by golden +youth and let it drop its golden apples. Pick them up, and golden youth +with them, making a noise like stupid failure all the time you are +snaring swift-legged youth. But Graham's out of the running. He's old +like me--just about the same age--and, like me, he's run a lot of those +queer races. He knows how to make a get-away. He's been cut by barbed +wire, nose-twitched, neck-burnt, cinched to a fare-you-well, and he +remains subdued but uncatchable. He doesn't care for young things. In +fact, you may charge him with being wobbly, but I plead guilty, by +proxy, that he is merely old, hard bitten, and very wise." + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + + +"Where's my Boy in Breeches?" Dick shouted, stamping with jingling +spurs through the Big House in quest of its Little Lady. + +He came to the door that gave entrance to her long wing. It was a door +without a knob, a huge panel of wood in a wood-paneled wall. But Dick +shared the secret of the hidden spring with his wife, pressed the +spring, and the door swung wide. + +"Where's my Boy in Breeches?" he called and stamped down the length of +her quarters. + +A glance into the bathroom, with its sunken Roman bath and descending +marble steps, was fruitless, as were the glances he sent into Paula's +wardrobe room and dressing room. He passed the short, broad stairway +that led to her empty window-seat divan in what she called her Juliet +Tower, and thrilled at sight of an orderly disarray of filmy, pretty, +lacy woman's things that he knew she had spread out for her own +sensuous delight of contemplation. He fetched up for a moment at a +drawing easel, his reiterant cry checked on his lips, and threw a laugh +of recognition and appreciation at the sketch, just outlined, of an +awkward, big-boned, knobby, weanling colt caught in the act of madly +whinneying for its mother. + +"Where's my Boy in Breeches?" he shouted before him, out to the +sleeping porch; and found only a demure, brow-troubled Chinese woman of +thirty, who smiled self-effacing embarrassment into his eyes. + +This was Paula's maid, Oh Dear, so named by Dick, many years before, +because of a certain solicitous contraction of her delicate brows that +made her appear as if ever on the verge of saying, "Oh dear!" In fact, +Dick had taken her, as a child almost, for Paula's service, from a +fishing village on the Yellow Sea where her widow-mother earned as much +as four dollars in a prosperous year at making nets for the fishermen. +Oh Dear's first service for Paula had been aboard the three-topmast +schooner, _All Away_, at the same time that Oh Joy, cabin-boy, had +begun to demonstrate the efficiency that enabled him, through the +years, to rise to the majordomoship of the Big House. + +"Where is your mistress, Oh Dear?" Dick asked. + +Oh Dear shrank away in an agony of bashfulness. + +Dick waited. + +"She maybe with 'm young ladies--I don't know," Oh Dear stammered; and +Dick, in very mercy, swung away on his heel. + +"Where's my Boy in Breeches?" he shouted, as he stamped out under the +porte cochère just as a ranch limousine swung around the curve among +the lilacs. + +"I'll be hanged if I know," a tall, blond man in a light summer suit +responded from the car; and the next moment Dick Forrest and Evan +Graham were shaking hands. + +Oh My and Oh Ho carried in the hand baggage, and Dick accompanied his +guest to the watch tower quarters. + +"You'll have to get used to us, old man," Dick was explaining. "We run +the ranch like clockwork, and the servants are wonders; but we allow +ourselves all sorts of loosenesses. If you'd arrived two minutes later +there'd have been no one to welcome you but the Chinese boys. I was +just going for a ride, and Paula--Mrs. Forrest--has disappeared." + +The two men were almost of a size, Graham topping his host by perhaps +an inch, but losing that inch in the comparative breadth of shoulders +and depth of chest. Graham was, if anything, a clearer blond than +Forrest, although both were equally gray of eye, equally clear in the +whites of the eyes, and equally and precisely similarly bronzed by sun +and weather-beat. Graham's features were in a slightly larger mold; his +eyes were a trifle longer, although this was lost again by a heavier +droop of lids. His nose hinted that it was a shade straighter as well +as larger than Dick's, and his lips were a shade thicker, a shade +redder, a shade more bowed with fulsome-ness. + +Forrest's hair was light brown to chestnut, while Graham's carried a +whispering advertisement that it would have been almost golden in its +silk had it not been burned almost to sandiness by the sun. The cheeks +of both were high-boned, although the hollows under Forrest's +cheek-bones were more pronounced. Both noses were large-nostriled and +sensitive. And both mouths, while generously proportioned, carried the +impression of girlish sweetness and chastity along with the muscles +that could draw the lips to the firmness and harshness that would not +give the lie to the square, uncleft chins beneath. + +But the inch more in height and the inch less in chest-girth gave Evan +Graham a grace of body and carriage that Dick Forrest did not possess. +In this particular of build, each served well as a foil to the other. +Graham was all light and delight, with a hint--but the slightest of +hints--of Prince Charming. Forrest's seemed a more efficient and +formidable organism, more dangerous to other life, stouter-gripped on +its own life. + +Forrest threw a glance at his wrist watch as he talked, but in that +glance, without pause or fumble of focus, with swift certainty of +correlation, he read the dial. + +"Eleven-thirty," he said. "Come along at once, Graham. We don't eat +till twelve-thirty. I am sending out a shipment of bulls, three hundred +of them, and I'm downright proud of them. You simply must see them. +Never mind your riding togs. Oh Ho--fetch a pair of my leggings. You, +Oh Joy, order Altadena saddled.--What saddle do you prefer, Graham?" + +"Oh, anything, old man." + +"English?--Australian?--McClellan?--Mexican?" Dick insisted. + +"McClellan, if it's no trouble," Graham surrendered. + + They sat their horses by the side of the road and watched the last of +the herd beginning its long journey to Chili disappear around the bend. + +"I see what you're doing--it's great," Graham said with sparkling eyes. +"I've fooled some myself with the critters, when I was a youngster, +down in the Argentine. If I'd had beef-blood like that to build on, I +mightn't have taken the cropper I did." + +"But that was before alfalfa and artesian wells," Dick smoothed for +him. "The time wasn't ripe for the Shorthorn. Only scrubs could survive +the droughts. They were strong in staying powers but light on the +scales. And refrigerator steamships hadn't been invented. That's what +revolutionized the game down there." + +"Besides, I was a mere youngster," Graham added. "Though that meant +nothing much. There was a young German tackled it at the same time I +did, with a tenth of my capital. He hung it out, lean years, dry years, +and all. He's rated in seven figures now." + +They turned their horses back for the Big House. Dick flirted his wrist +to see his watch. + +"Lots of time," he assured his guest. "I'm glad you saw those +yearlings. There was one reason why that young German stuck it out. He +had to. You had your father's money to fall back on, and, I imagine not +only that your feet itched, but that your chief weakness lay in that +you could afford to solace the itching." + + "Over there are the fish ponds," Dick said, indicating with a nod of +his head to the right an invisible area beyond the lilacs. "You'll have +plenty of opportunity to catch a mess of trout, or bass, or even +catfish. You see, I'm a miser. I love to make things work. There may be +a justification for the eight-hour labor day, but I make the work-day +of water just twenty-four hours' long. The ponds are in series, +according to the nature of the fish. But the water starts working up in +the mountains. It irrigates a score of mountain meadows before it makes +the plunge and is clarified to crystal clearness in the next few rugged +miles; and at the plunge from the highlands it generates half the power +and all the lighting used on the ranch. Then it sub-irrigates lower +levels, flows in here to the fish ponds, and runs out and irrigates +miles of alfalfa farther on. And, believe me, if by that time it hadn't +reached the flat of the Sacramento, I'd be pumping out the drainage for +more irrigation." + +"Man, man," Graham laughed, "you could make a poem on the wonder of +water. I've met fire-worshipers, but you're the first real +water-worshiper I've ever encountered. And you're no desert-dweller, +either. You live in a land of water--pardon the bull--but, as I was +saying..." + +Graham never completed his thought. From the right, not far away, came +the unmistakable ring of shod hoofs on concrete, followed by a mighty +splash and an outburst of women's cries and laughter. Quickly the cries +turned to alarm, accompanied by the sounds of a prodigious splashing +and floundering as of some huge, drowning beast. Dick bent his head and +leaped his horse through the lilacs, Graham, on Altadena, followed at +his heels. They emerged in a blaze of sunshine, on an open space among +the trees, and Graham came upon as unexpected a picture as he had ever +chanced upon in his life. + +Tree-surrounded, the heart of the open space was a tank, four-sided of +concrete. The upper end of the tank, full width, was a broad spillway, +sheened with an inch of smooth-slipping water. The sides were +perpendicular. The lower end, roughly corrugated, sloped out gently to +solid footing. Here, in distress that was consternation, and in fear +that was panic, excitedly bobbed up and down a cowboy in bearskin +chaps, vacuously repeating the exclamation, "Oh God! Oh God!"--the +first division of it rising in inflection, the second division +inflected fallingly with despair. On the edge of the farther side, +facing him, in bathing suits, legs dangling toward the water, sat three +terrified nymphs. + +And in the tank, the center of the picture, a great horse, bright bay +and wet and ruddy satin, vertical in the water, struck upward and +outward into the free air with huge fore-hoofs steel-gleaming in the +wet and sun, while on its back, slipping and clinging, was the white +form of what Graham took at first to be some glorious youth. Not until +the stallion, sinking, emerged again by means of the powerful beat of +his legs and hoofs, did Graham realize that it was a woman who rode +him--a woman as white as the white silken slip of a bathing suit that +molded to her form like a marble-carven veiling of drapery. As marble +was her back, save that the fine delicate muscles moved and crept under +the silken suit as she strove to keep her head above water. Her slim +round arms were twined in yards of half-drowned stallion-mane, while +her white round knees slipped on the sleek, wet, satin pads of the +great horse's straining shoulder muscles. The white toes of her dug for +a grip into the smooth sides of the animal, vainly seeking a hold on +the ribs beneath. + +In a breath, or the half of a breath, Graham saw the whole breathless +situation, realized that the white wonderful creature was a woman, and +sensed the smallness and daintiness of her despite her gladiatorial +struggles. She reminded him of some Dresden china figure set absurdly +small and light and strangely on the drowning back of a titanic beast. +So dwarfed was she by the bulk of the stallion that she was a midget, +or a tiny fairy from fairyland come true. + +As she pressed her cheek against the great arching neck, her +golden-brown hair, wet from being under, flowing and tangled, seemed +tangled in the black mane of the stallion. But it was her face that +smote Graham most of all. It was a boy's face; it was a woman's face; +it was serious and at the same time amused, expressing the pleasure it +found woven with the peril. It was a white woman's face--and modern; +and yet, to Graham, it was all-pagan. This was not a creature and a +situation one happened upon in the twentieth century. It was straight +out of old Greece. It was a Maxfield Parrish reminiscence from the +Arabian Nights. Genii might be expected to rise from those troubled +depths, or golden princes, astride winged dragons, to swoop down out of +the blue to the rescue. + +The stallion, forcing itself higher out of water, missed, by a shade, +from turning over backward as it sank. Glorious animal and glorious +rider disappeared together beneath the surface, to rise together, a +second later, the stallion still pawing the air with fore-hoofs the +size of dinner plates, the rider still clinging to the sleek, +satin-coated muscles. Graham thought, with a gasp, what might have +happened had the stallion turned over. A chance blow from any one of +those four enormous floundering hoofs could have put out and quenched +forever the light and sparkle of that superb, white-bodied, +fire-animated woman. + +"Ride his neck!" Dick shouted. "Catch his foretop and get on his neck +till he balances out!" + +The woman obeyed, digging her toes into the evasive muscle-pads for the +quick effort, and leaping upward, one hand twined in the wet mane, the +other hand free and up-stretched, darting between the ears and +clutching the foretop. The next moment, as the stallion balanced out +horizontally in obedience to her shiftage of weight, she had slipped +back to the shoulders. Holding with one hand to the mane, she waved a +white arm in the air and flashed a smile of acknowledgment to Forrest; +and, as Graham noted, she was cool enough to note him on his horse +beside Forrest. Also, Graham realized that the turning of her head and +the waving of her arm was only partly in bravado, was more in aesthetic +wisdom of the picture she composed, and was, most of all, sheer joy of +daring and emprise of the blood and the flesh and the life that was she. + +"Not many women'd tackle that," Dick said quietly, as Mountain Lad, +easily retaining his horizontal position once it had been attained, +swam to the lower end of the tank and floundered up the rough slope to +the anxious cowboy. + +The latter swiftly adjusted the halter with a turn of chain between the +jaws. But Paula, still astride, leaned forward, imperiously took the +lead-part from the cowboy, whirled Mountain Lad around to face Forrest, +and saluted. + +"Now you will have to go away," she called. "This is our hen party, and +the stag public is not admitted." + +Dick laughed, saluted acknowledgment, and led the way back through the +lilacs to the road. + +"Who ... who was it?" Graham queried. + +"Paula--Mrs. Forrest--the boy girl, the child that never grew up, the +grittiest puff of rose-dust that was ever woman." + +"My breath is quite taken away," Graham said. "Do your people do such +stunts frequently?" + +"First time she ever did that," Forrest replied. "That was Mountain +Lad. She rode him straight down the spill-way--tobogganed with him, +twenty-two hundred and forty pounds of him." + +"Risked his neck and legs as well as her own," was Graham's comment. + +"Thirty-five thousand dollars' worth of neck and legs," Dick smiled. +"That's what a pool of breeders offered me for him last year after he'd +cleaned up the Coast with his get as well as himself. And as for Paula, +she could break necks and legs at that price every day in the year +until I went broke--only she doesn't. She never has accidents." + +"I wouldn't have given tuppence for her chance if he'd turned over." + +"But he didn't," Dick answered placidly. "That's Paula's luck. She's +tough to kill. Why, I've had her under shell-fire where she was +actually disappointed because she didn't get hit, or killed, or +near-killed. Four batteries opened on us, shrapnel, at mile-range, and +we had to cover half a mile of smooth hill-brow for shelter. I really +felt I was justified in charging her with holding back. She did admit a +'trifle.' We've been married ten or a dozen years now, and, d'ye know, +sometimes it seems to me I don't know her at all, and that nobody knows +her, and that she doesn't know herself--just the same way as you and I +can look at ourselves in a mirror and wonder who the devil we are +anyway. Paula and I have one magic formula: _Damn the expense when fun +is selling_. And it doesn't matter whether the price is in dollars, +hide, or life. It's our way and our luck. It works. And, d'ye know, +we've never been gouged on the price yet." + + + + +CHAPTER X + + + +It was a stag lunch. As Forrest explained, the girls were +"hen-partying." + +"I doubt you'll see a soul of them till four o'clock, when Ernestine, +that's one of Paula's sisters, is going to wallop me at tennis--at +least so she's threatened and pledged." + +And Graham sat through the lunch, where only men sat, took his part in +the conversation on breeds and breeding, learned much, contributed a +mite from his own world-experiences, and was unable to shake from his +eyes the persistent image of his hostess, the vision of the rounded and +delicate white of her against the dark wet background of the swimming +stallion. And all the afternoon, looking over prize Merinos and +Berkshire gilts, continually that vision burned up under his eyelids. +Even at four, in the tennis court, himself playing against Ernestine, +he missed more than one stroke because the image of the flying ball +would suddenly be eclipsed by the image of a white marble figure of a +woman that strove and clung on the back of a great horse. + +Graham, although an outlander, knew his California, and, while every +girl of the swimming suits was gowned for dinner, was not surprised to +find no man similarly accoutered. Nor had he made the mistake of so +being himself, despite the Big House and the magnificent scale on which +it operated. + +Between the first and second gongs, all the guests drifted into the +long dining room. Sharp after the second gong, Dick Forrest arrived and +precipitated cocktails. And Graham impatiently waited the appearance of +the woman who had worried his eyes since noon. He was prepared for all +manner of disappointment. Too many gorgeous stripped athletes had he +seen slouched into conventional garmenting, to expect too much of the +marvelous creature in the white silken swimming suit when it should +appear garbed as civilized women garb. + +He caught his breath with an imperceptible gasp when she entered. She +paused, naturally, for just the right flash of an instant in the arched +doorway, limned against the darkness behind her, the soft glow of the +indirect lighting full upon her. Graham's lips gasped apart, and +remained apart, his eyes ravished with the beauty and surprise of her +he had deemed so small, so fairy-like. Here was no delicate midget of a +child-woman or boy-girl on a stallion, but a grand lady, as only a +small woman can be grand on occasion. + +Taller in truth was she, as well as in seeming, than he had judged her, +and as finely proportioned in her gown as in her swimming suit. He +noted her shining gold-brown hair piled high; the healthy tinge of her +skin that was clean and clear and white; the singing throat, full and +round, incomparably set on a healthy chest; and the gown, dull blue, a +sort of medieval thing with half-fitting, half-clinging body, with +flowing sleeves and trimmings of gold-jeweled bands. + +She smiled an embracing salutation and greeting. Graham recognized it +as kin to the one he had seen when she smiled from the back of the +stallion. When she started forward, he could not fail to see the +inimitable way she carried the cling and weight of her draperies with +her knees--round knees, he knew, that he had seen press desperately +into the round muscle-pads of Mountain Lad. Graham observed, also, that +she neither wore nor needed corseting. Nor could he fail, as she +crossed the floor, to see two women: one, the grand lady, the mistress +of the Big House; one, the lovely equestrienne statue beneath the +dull-blue, golden-trimmed gown, that no gowning could ever make his +memory forget. + +She was upon them, among them, and Graham's hand held hers in the +formal introduction as he was made welcome to the Big House and all the +hacienda in a voice that he knew was a singing voice and that could +proceed only from a throat that pillared, such as hers, from a chest +deep as hers despite her smallness. + +At table, across the corner from her, he could not help a surreptitious +studying of her. While he held his own in the general fun and +foolishness, it was his hostess that mostly filled the circle of his +eye and the content of his mind. + +It was as bizarre a company as Graham had ever sat down to dinner with. +The sheep-buyer and the correspondent for the _Breeders' Gazette_ were +still guests. Three machine-loads of men, women, and girls, totaling +fourteen, had arrived shortly before the first gong and had remained to +ride home in the moonlight. Graham could not remember their names; but +he made out that they came from some valley town thirty miles away +called Wickenberg, and that they were of the small-town banking, +professional, and wealthy-farmer class. They were full of spirits, +laughter, and the latest jokes and catches sprung in the latest slang. + +"I see right now," Graham told Paula, "if your place continues to be +the caravanserai which it has been since my arrival, that I might as +well give up trying to remember names and people." + +"I don't blame you," she laughed concurrence. "But these are neighbors. +They drop in any time. Mrs. Watson, there, next to Dick, is of the old +land-aristocracy. Her grandfather, Wicken, came across the Sierras in +1846. Wickenberg is named after him. And that pretty dark-eyed girl is +her daughter...." + +And while Paula gave him a running sketch of the chance guests, Graham +heard scarce half she said, so occupied was he in trying to sense his +way to an understanding of her. Naturalness was her keynote, was his +first judgment. In not many moments he had decided that her key-note +was joy. But he was dissatisfied with both conclusions, and knew he had +not put his finger on her. And then it came to him--pride. That was it! +It was in her eye, in the poise of her head, in the curling tendrils of +her hair, in her sensitive nostrils, in the mobile lips, in the very +pitch and angle of the rounded chin, in her hands, small, muscular and +veined, that he knew at sight to be the hard-worked hands of one who +had spent long hours at the piano. Pride it was, in every muscle, +nerve, and quiver of her--conscious, sentient, stinging pride. + +She might be joyous and natural, boy and woman, fun and frolic; but +always the pride was there, vibrant, tense, intrinsic, the basic stuff +of which she was builded. She was a woman, frank, outspoken, +straight-looking, plastic, democratic; but toy she was not. At times, +to him, she seemed to glint an impression of steel--thin, jewel-like +steel. She seemed strength in its most delicate terms and fabrics. He +fondled the impression of her as of silverspun wire, of fine leather, +of twisted hair-sennit from the heads of maidens such as the Marquesans +make, of carven pearl-shell for the lure of the bonita, and of barbed +ivory at the heads of sea-spears such as the Eskimos throw. + +"All right, Aaron," they heard Dick Forrest's voice rising, in a lull, +from the other end of the table. "Here's something from Phillips Brooks +for you to chew on. Brooks said that no man 'has come to true greatness +who has not felt in some degree that his life belongs to his race, and +that what God gives him, he gives him for mankind.'" + +"So at last you believe in God?" the man, addressed Aaron, genially +sneered back. He was a slender, long-faced olive-brunette, with +brilliant black eyes and the blackest of long black beards. + +"I'm hanged if I know," Dick answered. "Anyway, I quoted only +figuratively. Call it morality, call it good, call it evolution." + +"A man doesn't have to be intellectually correct in order to be great," +intruded a quiet, long-faced Irishman, whose sleeves were threadbare +and frayed. "And by the same token many men who are most correct in +sizing up the universe have been least great." + +"True for you, Terrence," Dick applauded. + +"It's a matter of definition," languidly spoke up an unmistakable +Hindoo, crumbling his bread with exquisitely slender and small-boned +fingers. "What shall we mean as _great?"_ + +"Shall we say _beauty?"_ softly queried a tragic-faced youth, sensitive +and shrinking, crowned with an abominably trimmed head of long hair. + +Ernestine rose suddenly at her place, hands on table, leaning forward +with a fine simulation of intensity. + + "They're off!" she cried. "They're off! Now we'll have the universe +settled all over again for the thousandth time. Theodore"--to the +youthful poet--"it's a poor start. Get into the running. Ride your +father ion and your mother ion, and you'll finish three lengths ahead." + +A roar of laughter was her reward, and the poet blushed and receded +into his sensitive shell. + +Ernestine turned on the black-bearded one: + +"Now, Aaron. He's not in form. You start it. You know how. Begin: 'As +Bergson so well has said, with the utmost refinement of philosophic +speech allied with the most comprehensive intellectual outlook +that....'" + +More laughter roared down the table, drowning Ernestine's conclusion as +well as the laughing retort of the black-bearded one. + +"Our philosophers won't have a chance to-night," Paula stole in an +aside to Graham. + +"Philosophers?" he questioned back. "They didn't come with the +Wickenberg crowd. Who and what are they? I'm all at sea." + +"They--" Paula hesitated. "They live here. They call themselves the +jungle-birds. They have a camp in the woods a couple of miles away, +where they never do anything except read and talk. I'll wager, right +now, you'll find fifty of Dick's latest, uncatalogued books in their +cabins. They have the run of the library, as well, and you'll see them +drifting in and out, any time of the day or night, with their arms full +of books--also, the latest magazines. Dick says they are responsible +for his possessing the most exhaustive and up-to-date library on +philosophy on the Pacific Coast. In a way, they sort of digest such +things for him. It's great fun for Dick, and, besides, it saves him +time. He's a dreadfully hard worker, you know." + +"I understand that they... that Dick takes care of them?" Graham asked, +the while he pleasured in looking straight into the blue eyes that +looked so straight into his. + +As she answered, he was occupied with noting the faintest hint of +bronze--perhaps a trick of the light--in her long, brown lashes. +Perforce, he lifted his gaze to her eyebrows, brown, delicately +stenciled, and made sure that the hint of bronze was there. Still +lifting his gaze to her high-piled hair, he again saw, but more +pronounced, the bronze note glinting from the brown-golden hair. Nor +did he fail to startle and thrill to a dazzlement of smile and teeth +and eye that frequently lived its life in her face. Hers was no thin +smile of restraint, he judged. When she smiled she smiled all of +herself, generously, joyously, throwing the largess of all her being +into the natural expression of what was herself and which domiciled +somewhere within that pretty head of hers. + +"Yes," she was saying. "They have never to worry, as long as they live, +over mere bread and butter. Dick is most generous, and, rather immoral, +in his encouragement of idleness on the part of men like them. It's a +funny place, as you'll find out until you come to understand us. +They... they are appurtenances, and--and hereditaments, and such +things. They will be with us always until we bury them or they bury us. +Once in a while one or another of them drifts away--for a time. Like +the cat, you know. Then it costs Dick real money to get them back. +Terrence, there--Terrence McFane--he's an epicurean anarchist, if you +know what that means. He wouldn't kill a flea. He has a pet cat I gave +him, a Persian of the bluest blue, and he carefully picks her fleas, +not injuring them, stores them in a vial, and turns them loose in the +forest on his long walks when he tires of human companionship and +communes with nature. + +"Well, only last year, he got a bee in his bonnet--the alphabet. He +started for Egypt--without a cent, of course--to run the alphabet down +in the home of its origin and thereby to win the formula that would +explain the cosmos. He got as far as Denver, traveling as tramps +travel, when he mixed up in some I. W. W. riot for free speech or +something. Dick had to hire lawyers, pay fines, and do just about +everything to get him safe home again. + +"And the one with a beard--Aaron Hancock. Like Terrence, he won't work. +Aaron's a Southerner. Says none of his people ever did work, and that +there have always been peasants and fools who just couldn't be +restrained from working. That's why he wears a beard. To shave, he +holds, is unnecessary work, and, therefore, immoral. I remember, at +Melbourne, when he broke in upon Dick and me, a sunburnt wild man from +out the Australian bush. It seems he'd been making original researches +in anthropology, or folk-lore-ology, or something like that. Dick had +known him years before in Paris, and Dick assured him, if he ever +drifted back to America, of food and shelter. So here he is." + +"And the poet?" Graham asked, glad that she must still talk for a +while, enabling him to study the quick dazzlement of smile that played +upon her face. + +"Oh, Theo--Theodore Malken, though we call him Leo. He won't work, +either. His people are old Californian stock and dreadfully wealthy; +but they disowned him and he disowned them when he was fifteen. They +say he is lunatic, and he says they are merely maddening. He really +writes some remarkable verse... when he does write; but he prefers to +dream and live in the jungle with Terrence and Aaron. He was tutoring +immigrant Jews in San Francisco, when Terrence and Aaron rescued him, +or captured him, I don't know which. He's been with us two years now, +and he's actually filling out, despite the facts that Dick is absurdly +generous in furnishing supplies and that they'd rather talk and read +and dream than cook. The only good meals they get is when they descend +upon us, like to-night." + +"And the Hindoo, there--who's he?" + +"That's Dar Hyal. He's their guest. The three of them invited him up, +just as Aaron first invited Terrence, and as Aaron and Terrence invited +Leo. Dick says, in time, three more are bound to appear, and then he'll +have his Seven Sages of the Madroño Grove. Their jungle camp is in a +madroño grove, you know. It's a most beautiful spot, with living +springs, a canyon--but I was telling you about Dar Hyal. + +"He's a revolutionist, of sorts. He's dabbled in our universities, +studied in France, Italy, Switzerland, is a political refugee from +India, and he's hitched his wagon to two stars: one, a new synthetic +system of philosophy; the other, rebellion against the tyranny of +British rule in India. He advocates individual terrorism and direct +mass action. That's why his paper, _Kadar,_ or _Badar,_ or something +like that, was suppressed here in California, and why he narrowly +escaped being deported; and that's why he's up here just now, devoting +himself to formulating his philosophy. + +"He and Aaron quarrel tremendously--that is, on philosophical matters. +And now--" Paula sighed and erased the sigh with her smile--"and now, +I'm done. Consider yourself acquainted. And, oh, if you encounter our +sages more intimately, a word of warning, especially if the encounter +be in the stag room: Dar Hyal is a total abstainer; Theodore Malken can +get poetically drunk, and usually does, on one cocktail; Aaron Hancock +is an expert wine-bibber; and Terrence McFane, knowing little of one +drink from another, and caring less, can put ninety-nine men out of a +hundred under the table and go right on lucidly expounding epicurean +anarchy." + +One thing Graham noted as the dinner proceeded. The sages called Dick +Forrest by his first name; but they always addressed Paula as "Mrs. +Forrest," although she called them by their first names. There was +nothing affected about it. Quite unconsciously did they, who respected +few things under the sun, and among such few things not even +work--quite unconsciously, and invariably, did they recognize the +certain definite aloofness in Dick Forrest's wife so that her given +name was alien to their lips. By such tokens Evan Graham was not slow +in learning that Dick Forrest's wife had a way with her, compounded of +sheerest democracy and equally sheer royalty. + +It was the same thing, after dinner, in the big living room. She dared +as she pleased, but nobody assumed. Before the company settled down, +Paula seemed everywhere, bubbling over with more outrageous spirits +than any of them. From this group or that, from one corner or another, +her laugh rang out. And her laugh fascinated Graham. There was a +fibrous thrill in it, most sweet to the ear, that differentiated it +from any laugh he had ever heard. It caused Graham to lose the thread +of young Mr. Wombold's contention that what California needed was not a +Japanese exclusion law but at least two hundred thousand Japanese +coolies to do the farm labor of California and knock in the head the +threatened eight-hour day for agricultural laborers. Young Mr. Wombold, +Graham gleaned, was an hereditary large land-owner in the vicinity of +Wickenberg who prided himself on not yielding to the trend of the times +by becoming an absentee landlord. + +From the piano, where Eddie Mason was the center of a group of girls, +came much noise of ragtime music and slangtime song. Terrence McFane +and Aaron Hancock fell into a heated argument over the music of +futurism. And Graham was saved from the Japanese situation with Mr. +Wombold by Dar Hyal, who proceeded to proclaim Asia for the Asiatics +and California for the Californians. + +Paula, catching up her skirts for speed, fled down the room in some +romp, pursued by Dick, who captured her as she strove to dodge around +the Wombold group. + +"Wicked woman," Dick reproved her in mock wrath; and, the next moment, +joined her in persuading Dar Hyal to dance. + +And Dar Hyal succumbed, flinging Asia and the Asiatics to the winds, +along with his arms and legs, as he weirdly parodied the tango in what +he declared to be the "blastic" culmination of modern dancing. + +"And now, Red Cloud, sing Mr. Graham your Acorn Song," Paula commanded +Dick. + +Forrest, his arm still about her, detaining her for the threatened +punishment not yet inflicted, shook his head somberly. + +"The Acorn Song!" Ernestine called from the piano; and the cry was +taken up by Eddie Mason and the girls. + +"Oh, do, Dick," Paula pleaded. "Mr. Graham is the only one who hasn't +heard it." + +Dick shook his head. + +"Then sing him your Goldfish Song." + +"I'll sing him Mountain Lad's song," Dick bullied, a whimsical sparkle +in his eyes. He stamped his feet, pranced, nickered a not bad imitation +of Mountain Lad, tossed an imaginary mane, and cried: + +"Hear me! I am Eros! I stamp upon the hills!" + +"The Acorn Song," Paula interrupted quickly and quietly, with just the +hint of steel in her voice. + +Dick obediently ceased his chant of Mountain Lad, but shook his head +like a stubborn colt. + +"I have a new song," he said solemnly. "It is about you and me, Paula. +I got it from the Nishinam." + +"The Nishinam are the extinct aborigines of this part of California," +Paula shot in a swift aside of explanation to Graham. + +Dick danced half a dozen steps, stiff-legged, as Indians dance, slapped +his thighs with his palms, and began a new chant, still retaining his +hold on his wife. + +"Me, I am Ai-kut, the first man of the Nishinam. Ai-kut is the short +for Adam, and my father and my mother were the coyote and the moon. And +this is Yo-to-to-wi, my wife. She is the first woman of the Nishinam. +Her father and her mother were the grasshopper and the ring-tailed cat. +They were the best father and mother left after my father and mother. +The coyote is very wise, the moon is very old; but who ever heard much +of anything of credit to the grasshopper and the ring-tailed cat? The +Nishinam are always right. The mother of all women had to be a cat, a +little, wizened, sad-faced, shrewd ring-tailed cat." + +Whereupon the song of the first man and woman was interrupted by +protests from the women and acclamations from the men. + +"This is Yo-to-to-wi, which is the short for Eve," Dick chanted on, +drawing Paula bruskly closer to his side with a semblance of savage +roughness. "Yo-to-to-wi is not much to look at. But be not hard upon +her. The fault is with the grasshopper and the ring-tailed cat. Me, I +am Ai-kut, the first man; but question not my taste. I was the first +man, and this, I saw, was the first woman. Where there is but one +choice, there is not much to choose. Adam was so circumstanced. He +chose Eve. Yo-to-to-wi was the one woman in all the world for me, so I +chose Yo-to-to-wi." + +And Evan Graham, listening, his eyes on that possessive, encircling arm +of all his hostess's fairness, felt an awareness of hurt, and arose +unsummoned the thought, to be dismissed angrily, "Dick Forrest is +lucky--too lucky." + +"Me, I am Ai-kut," Dick chanted on. "This is my dew of woman. She is my +honey-dew of woman. I have lied to you. Her father and her mother were +neither hopper nor cat. They were the Sierra dawn and the summer east +wind of the mountains. Together they conspired, and from the air and +earth they sweated all sweetness till in a mist of their own love the +leaves of the chaparral and the manzanita were dewed with the honey-dew. + +"Yo-to-to-wi is my honey-dew woman. Hear me! I am Ai-kut. Yo-to-to-wi +is my quail woman, my deer-woman, my lush-woman of all soft rain and +fat soil. She was born of the thin starlight and the brittle dawn-light +before the sun . . . + +"And," Forrest concluded, relapsing into his natural voice and +enunciation, having reached the limit of extemporization,--"and if you +think old, sweet, blue-eyed Solomon has anything on me in singing the +Song of Songs, just put your names down for the subscription edition of +_my_ Song of Songs." + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + + +It was Mrs. Mason who first asked that Paula play; but it was Terrence +McFane and Aaron Hancock who evicted the rag-time group from the piano +and sent Theodore Malken, a blushing ambassador, to escort Paula. + +"'Tis for the confounding of this pagan that I'm askin' you to play +'Reflections on the Water,'" Graham heard Terrence say to her. + +"And 'The Girl with Flaxen Hair,' after, please," begged Hancock, the +indicted pagan. "It will aptly prove my disputation. This wild Celt has +a bog-theory of music that predates the cave-man--and he has the +unadulterated stupidity to call himself ultra-modern." + +"Oh, Debussy!" Paula laughed. "Still wrangling over him, eh? I'll try +and get around to him. But I don't know with what I'll begin." + +Dar Hyal joined the three sages in seating Paula at the concert grand +which, Graham decided, was none too great for the great room. But no +sooner was she seated than the three sages slipped away to what were +evidently their chosen listening places. The young poet stretched +himself prone on a deep bearskin forty feet from the piano, his hands +buried in his hair. Terrence and Aaron lolled into a cushioned +embrasure of a window seat, sufficiently near to each other to nudge +the points of their respective contentions as Paula might expound them. +The girls were huddled in colored groups on wide couches or garlanded +in twos and threes on and in the big koa-wood chairs. + +Evan Graham half-started forward to take the honor of turning Paula's +music, but saw in time that Dar Hyal had already elected to himself +that office. Graham glimpsed the scene with quiet curious glances. The +grand piano, under a low arch at the far-end of the room, was cunningly +raised and placed as on and in a sounding board. All jollity and banter +had ceased. Evidently, he thought, the Little Lady had a way with her +and was accepted as a player of parts. And from this he was perversely +prepared for disappointment. + +Ernestine leaned across from a chair to whisper to him: + +"She can do anything she wants to do. And she doesn't work . . . much. +She studied under Leschetizky and Madame Carreno, you know, and she +abides by their methods. She doesn't play like a woman, either. Listen +to that!" + +Graham knew that he expected disappointment from her confident hands, +even as she rippled them over the keys in little chords and runs with +which he could not quarrel but which he had heard too often before from +technically brilliant but musically mediocre performers. But whatever +he might have fancied she would play, he was all unprepared for +Rachmaninoff's sheerly masculine Prelude, which he had heard only men +play when decently played. + +She took hold of the piano, with the first two ringing bars, +masterfully, like a man; she seemed to lift it, and its sounding wires, +with her two hands, with the strength and certitude of maleness. And +then, as only he had heard men do it, she sank, or leaped--he could +scarcely say which--to the sureness and pureness and ineffable softness +of the _Andante_ following. + +She played on, with the calm and power of anything but the little, +almost girlish woman he glimpsed through half-closed lids across the +ebony board of the enormous piano, which she commanded, as she +commanded herself, as she commanded the composer. Her touch was +definite, authoritative, was his judgment, as the Prelude faded away in +dying chords hauntingly reminiscent of its full vigor that seemed still +to linger in the air. + +While Aaron and Terrence debated in excited whispers in the window +seat, and while Dar Hyal sought other music at Paula's direction, she +glanced at Dick, who turned off bowl after bowl of mellow light till +Paula sat in an oasis of soft glow that brought out the dull gold +lights in her dress and hair. + +Graham watched the lofty room grow loftier in the increasing shadows. +Eighty feet in length, rising two stories and a half from masonry walls +to tree-trunked roof, flung across with a flying gallery from the rail +of which hung skins of wild animals, hand-woven blankets of Oaxaca and +Ecuador, and tapas, woman-pounded and vegetable-dyed, from the islands +of the South Pacific, Graham knew it for what it was--a feast-hall of +some medieval castle; and almost he felt a poignant sense of lack of +the long spread table, with pewter below the salt and silver above the +salt, and with huge hound-dogs scuffling beneath for bones. + +Later, when Paula had played sufficient Debussy to equip Terrence and +Aaron for fresh war, Graham talked with her about music for a few vivid +moments. So well did she prove herself aware of the philosophy of +music, that, ere he knew it, he was seduced into voicing his own pet +theory. + +"And so," he concluded, "the true psychic factor of music took nearly +three thousand years to impress itself on the Western mind. Debussy +more nearly attains the idea-engendering and suggestive serenity--say +of the time of Pythagoras--than any of his fore-runners--" + +Here, Paula put a pause in his summary by beckoning over Terrence and +Aaron from their battlefield in the windowseat. + +"Yes, and what of it?" Terrence was demanding, as they came up side by +side. "I defy you, Aaron, I defy you, to get one thought out of Bergson +on music that is more lucid than any thought he ever uttered in his +'Philosophy of Laughter,' which is not lucid at all." + +"Oh!--listen!" Paula cried, with sparkling eyes. "We have a new +prophet. Hear Mr. Graham. He's worthy of your steel, of both your +steel. He agrees with you that music is the refuge from blood and iron +and the pounding of the table. That weak souls, and sensitive souls, +and high-pitched souls flee from the crassness and the rawness of the +world to the drug-dreams of the over-world of rhythm and vibration--" + +"Atavistic!" Aaron Hancock snorted. "The cave-men, the monkey-folk, and +the ancestral bog-men of Terrence did that sort of thing--" + +"But wait," Paula urged. "It's his conclusions and methods and +processes. Also, there he disagrees with you, Aaron, fundamentally. He +quoted Pater's 'that all art aspires toward music'--" + +"Pure prehuman and micro-organic chemistry," Aaron broke in. "The +reactions of cell-elements to the doggerel punch of the wave-lengths of +sunlight, the foundation of all folk-songs and rag-times. Terrence +completes his circle right there and stultifies all his windiness. Now +listen to me, and I will present--" + +"But wait," Paula pleaded. "Mr. Graham argues that English puritanism +barred music, real music, for centuries...." + +"True," said Terrence. + +"And that England had to win to its sensuous delight in rhythm through +Milton and Shelley--" + +"Who was a metaphysician." Aaron broke in. + +"A lyrical metaphysician," Terrence defined instantly. "_That_ you must +acknowledge, Aaron." + +"And Swinburne?" Aaron demanded, with a significance that tokened +former arguments. + +"He says Offenbach was the fore-runner of Arthur Sullivan," Paula cried +challengingly. "And that Auber was before Offenbach. And as for Wagner, +ask him, just ask him--" + +And she slipped away, leaving Graham to his fate. He watched her, +watched the perfect knee-lift of her draperies as she crossed to Mrs. +Mason and set about arranging bridge quartets, while dimly he could +hear Terrence beginning: + +"It is agreed that music was the basis of inspiration of all the arts +of the Greeks...." + +Later, when the two sages were obliviously engrossed in a heated battle +as to whether Berlioz or Beethoven had exposited in their compositions +the deeper intellect, Graham managed his escape. Clearly, his goal was +to find his hostess again. But she had joined two of the girls in the +whispering, giggling seclusiveness of one of the big chairs, and, most +of the company being deep in bridge, Graham found himself drifted into +a group composed of Dick Forrest, Mr. Wombold, Dar Hyal, and the +correspondent of the _Breeders' Gazette_. + +"I'm sorry you won't be able to run over with me," Dick was saying to +the correspondent. "It would mean only one more day. I'll take you +tomorrow." + +"Sorry," was the reply. "But I must make Santa Rosa. Burbank has +promised me practically a whole morning, and you know what that means. +Yet I know the _Gazette_ would be glad for an account of the +experiment. Can't you outline it?--briefly, just briefly? Here's Mr. +Graham. It will interest him, I am sure." + +"More water-works?" Graham queried. + +"No; an asinine attempt to make good farmers out of hopelessly poor +ones," Mr. Wombold answered. "I contend that any farmer to-day who has +no land of his own, proves by his lack of it that he is an inefficient +farmer." + +"On the contrary," spoke up Dar Hyal, weaving his slender Asiatic +fingers in the air to emphasize his remarks. "Quite on the contrary. +Times have changed. Efficiency no longer implies the possession of +capital. It is a splendid experiment, an heroic experiment. And it will +succeed." + +"What is it, Dick?" Graham urged. "Tell us." + +"Oh, nothing, just a white chip on the table," Forrest answered +lightly. "Most likely it will never come to anything, although just the +same I have my hopes--" + +"A white chip!" Wombold broke in. "Five thousand acres of prime valley +land, all for a lot of failures to batten on, to farm, if you please, +on salary, with food thrown in!" + +"The food that is grown on the land only," Dick corrected. "Now I will +have to put it straight. I've set aside five thousand acres midway +between here and the Sacramento River." + +"Think of the alfalfa it grew, and that you need," Wombold again +interrupted. + +"My dredgers redeemed twice that acreage from the marshes in the past +year," Dick replied. "The thing is, I believe the West and the world +must come to intensive farming. I want to do my share toward blazing +the way. I've divided the five thousand acres into twenty-acre +holdings. I believe each twenty acres should support, comfortably, not +only a family, but pay at least six per cent." + +"When it is all allotted it will mean two hundred and fifty families," +the _Gazette_ man calculated; "and, say five to the family, it will +mean twelve hundred and fifty souls." + +"Not quite," Dick corrected. "The last holding is occupied, and we have +only a little over eleven hundred on the land." He smiled whimsically. +"But they promise, they promise. Several fat years and they'll average +six to the family." + +"Who is _we_?" Graham inquired. + +"Oh, I have a committee of farm experts on it--my own men, with the +exception of Professor Lieb, whom the Federal Government has loaned me. +The thing is: they _must_ farm, with individual responsibility, +according to the scientific methods embodied in our instructions. The +land is uniform. Every holding is like a pea in the pod to every other +holding. The results of each holding will speak in no uncertain terms. +The failure of any farmer, through laziness or stupidity, measured by +the average result of the entire two hundred and fifty farmers, will +not be tolerated. Out the failures must go, convicted by the average of +their fellows. + +"It's a fair deal. No farmer risks anything. With the food he may grow +and he and his family may consume, plus a cash salary of a thousand a +year, he is certain, good seasons and bad, stupid or intelligent, of at +least a hundred dollars a month. The stupid and the inefficient will be +bound to be eliminated by the intelligent and the efficient. That's +all. It will demonstrate intensive farming with a vengeance. And there +is more than the certain salary guaranty. After the salary is paid, the +adventure must yield six per cent, to me. If more than this is +achieved, then the entire hundred per cent, of the additional +achievement goes to the farmer." + +"Which means that each farmer with go in him will work nights to make +good--I see," said the _Gazette_ man. "And why not? Hundred-dollar jobs +aren't picked up for the asking. The average farmer in the United +States doesn't net fifty a month on his own land, especially when his +wages of superintendence and of direct personal labor are subtracted. +Of course able men will work their heads off to hold to such a +proposition, and they'll see to it that every member of the family does +the same." + +"'Tis the one objection I have to this place," Terrence McFane, who had +just joined the group, announced. "Ever one hears but the one +thing--work. 'Tis repulsive, the thought of the work, each on his +twenty acres, toilin' and moilin', daylight till dark, and after +dark--an' for what? A bit of meat, a bit of bread, and, maybe, a bit of +jam on the bread. An' to what end? Is meat an' bread an' jam the end of +it all, the meaning of life, the goal of existence? Surely the man will +die, like a work horse dies, after a life of toil. And what end has +been accomplished? Bread an' meat an' jam? Is that it? A full belly and +shelter from the cold till one's body drops apart in the dark moldiness +of the grave?" + +"But, Terrence, you, too, will die," Dick Forrest retorted. + +"But, oh, my glorious life of loafing," came the instant answer. "The +hours with the stars and the flowers, under the green trees with the +whisperings of breezes in the grass. My books, my thinkers and their +thoughts. Beauty, music, all the solaces of all the arts. What? When I +fade into the dark I shall have well lived and received my wage for +living. But these twenty-acre work-animals of two-legged men of yours! +Daylight till dark, toil and moil, sweat on the shirts on the backs of +them that dries only to crust, meat and bread in their bellies, roofs +that don't leak, a brood of youngsters to live after them, to live the +same beast-lives of toil, to fill their bellies with the same meat and +bread, to scratch their backs with the same sweaty shirts, and to go +into the dark knowing only meat and bread, and, mayhap, a bit of jam." + +"But somebody must do the work that enables you to loaf," Mr. Wombold +spoke up indignantly. + +"'Tis true, 'tis sad 'tis true," Terrence replied lugubriously. Then +his face beamed. "And I thank the good Lord for it, for the +work-beasties that drag and drive the plows up and down the fields, for +the bat-eyed miner-beasties that dig the coal and gold, for all the +stupid peasant-beasties that keep my hands soft, and give power to fine +fellows like Dick there, who smiles on me and shares the loot with me, +and buys the latest books for me, and gives me a place at his board +that is plenished by the two-legged work-beasties, and a place at his +fire that is builded by the same beasties, and a shack and a bed in the +jungle under the madroño trees where never work intrudes its monstrous +head." + +Evan Graham was slow in getting ready for bed that night. He was +unwontedly stirred both by the Big House and by the Little Lady who was +its mistress. As he sat on the edge of the bed, half-undressed, and +smoked out a pipe, he kept seeing her in memory, as he had seen her in +the flesh the past twelve hours, in her varied moods and guises--the +woman who had talked music with him, and who had expounded music to him +to his delight; who had enticed the sages into the discussion and +abandoned him to arrange the bridge tables for her guests; who had +nestled in the big chair as girlish as the two girls with her; who had, +with a hint of steel, quelled her husband's obstreperousness when he +had threatened to sing Mountain Lad's song; who, unafraid, had +bestridden the half-drowning stallion in the swimming tank; and who, a +few hours later, had dreamed into the dining room, distinctive in dress +and person, to meet her many guests. + +The Big House, with all its worthy marvels and bizarre novelties, +competed with the figure of Paula Forrest in filling the content of his +imagination. Once again, and yet again, many times, he saw the slender +fingers of Dar Hyal weaving argument in the air, the black whiskers of +Aaron Hancock enunciating Bergsonian dogmas, the frayed coat-cuffs of +Terrence McFane articulating thanks to God for the two-legged +work-beasties that enabled him to loaf at Dick Forrest's board and +under Dick Forrest's madroño trees. + +Graham knocked out his pipe, took a final sweeping survey of the +strange room which was the last word in comfort, pressed off the +lights, and found himself between cool sheets in the wakeful dark. +Again he heard Paula Forrest laugh; again he sensed her in terms of +silver and steel and strength; again, against the dark, he saw that +inimitable knee-lift of her gown. The bright vision of it was almost an +irk to him, so impossible was it for him to shake it from his eyes. +Ever it returned and burned before him, a moving image of light and +color that he knew to be subjective but that continually asserted the +illusion of reality. + +He saw stallion and rider sink beneath the water, and rise again, a +flurry of foam and floundering of hoofs, and a woman's face that +laughed while she drowned her hair in the drowning mane of the beast. +And the first ringing bars of the Prelude sounded in his ears as again +he saw the same hands that had guided the stallion lift the piano to +all Rachmaninoff's pure splendor of sound. + +And when Graham finally fell asleep, it was in the thick of marveling +over the processes of evolution that could produce from primeval mire +and dust the glowing, glorious flesh and spirit of woman. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + + +The next morning Graham learned further the ways of the Big House. Oh +My had partly initiated him in particular things the preceding day and +had learned that, after the waking cup of coffee, he preferred to +breakfast at table, rather than in bed. Also, Oh My had warned him that +breakfast at table was an irregular affair, anywhere between seven and +nine, and that the breakfasters merely drifted in at their convenience. +If he wanted a horse, or if he wanted a swim or a motor car, or any +ranch medium or utility he desired, Oh My informed him, all he had to +do was to call for it. + +Arriving in the breakfast room at half past seven, Graham found himself +just in time to say good-by to the _Gazette_ man and the Idaho buyer, +who, finishing, were just ready to catch the ranch machine that +connected at Eldorado with the morning train for San Francisco. He sat +alone, being perfectly invited by a perfect Chinese servant to order as +he pleased, and found himself served with his first desire--an +ice-cold, sherried grapefruit, which, the table-boy proudly informed +him, was "grown on the ranch." Declining variously suggested breakfast +foods, mushes, and porridges, Graham had just ordered his soft-boiled +eggs and bacon, when Bert Wainwright drifted in with a casualness that +Graham recognized as histrionic, when, five minutes later, in boudoir +cap and delectable negligee, Ernestine Desten drifted in and expressed +surprise at finding such a multitude of early risers. + +Later, as the three of them were rising from table, they greeted Lute +Desten and Rita Wainwright arriving. Over the billiard table with Bert, +Graham learned that Dick Forrest never appeared for breakfast, that he +worked in bed from terribly wee small hours, had coffee at six, and +only on unusual occasions appeared to his guests before the +twelve-thirty lunch. As for Paula Forrest, Bert explained, she was a +poor sleeper, a late riser, lived behind a door without a knob in a +spacious wing with a rare and secret patio that even he had seen but +once, and only on infrequent occasion was she known to appear before +twelve-thirty, and often not then. + +"You see, she's healthy and strong and all that," he explained, "but +she was born with insomnia. She never could sleep. She couldn't sleep +as a little baby even. But it's never hurt her any, because she's got a +will, and won't let it get on her nerves. She's just about as tense as +they make them, yet, instead of going wild when she can't sleep, she +just wills to relax, and she does relax. She calls them her `white +nights,' when she gets them. Maybe she'll fall asleep at daybreak, or +at nine or ten in the morning; and then she'll sleep the rest of the +clock around and get down to dinner as chipper as you please." + +"It's constitutional, I fancy," Graham suggested. + +Bert nodded. + +"It would be a handicap to nine hundred and ninety-nine women out of a +thousand. But not to her. She puts up with it, and if she can't sleep +one time--she should worry--she just sleeps some other time and makes +it up." + +More and other things Bert Wainwright told of his hostess, and Graham +was not slow in gathering that the young man, despite the privileges of +long acquaintance, stood a good deal in awe of her. + +"I never saw anybody whose goat she couldn't get if she went after it," +he confided. "Man or woman or servant, age, sex, and previous condition +of servitude--it's all one when she gets on the high and mighty. And I +don't see how she does it. Maybe it's just a kind of light that comes +into her eyes, or some kind of an expression on her lips, or, I don't +know what--anyway, she puts it across and nobody makes any mistake +about it." + +"She has a ... a way with her," Graham volunteered. + + "That's it!" Bert's face beamed. "It's a way she has. She just puts +it over. Kind of gives you a chilly feeling, you don't know why. Maybe +she's learned to be so quiet about it because of the control she's +learned by passing sleepless nights without squealing out or getting +sour. The chances are she didn't bat an eye all last night--excitement, +you know, the crowd, swimming Mountain Lad and such things. Now +ordinary things that'd keep most women awake, like danger, or storm at +sea, and such things, Dick says don't faze her. She can sleep like a +baby, he says, when the town she's in is being bombarded or when the +ship she's in is trying to claw off a lee shore. She's a wonder, and no +mistake. You ought to play billiards with her--the English game. She'll +go some." + +A little later, Graham, along with Bert, encountered the girls in the +morning room, where, despite an hour of rag-time song and dancing and +chatter, he was scarcely for a moment unaware of a loneliness, a lack, +and a desire to see his hostess, in some fresh and unguessed mood and +way, come in upon them through the open door. + +Still later, mounted on Altadena and accompanied by Bert on a +thoroughbred mare called Mollie, Graham made a two hours' exploration +of the dairy center of the ranch, and arrived back barely in time to +keep an engagement with Ernestine in the tennis court. + +He came to lunch with an eagerness for which his keen appetite could +not entirely account; and he knew definite disappointment when his +hostess did not appear. + +"A white night," Dick Forrest surmised for his guest's benefit, and +went into details additional to Bert's of her constitutional inaptitude +for normal sleep. "Do you know, we were married years before I ever saw +her sleep. I knew she did sleep, but I never saw her. I've seen her go +three days and nights without closing an eye and keep sweet and +cheerful all the time, and when she did sleep, it was out of +exhaustion. That was when the _All Away_ went ashore in the Carolines +and the whole population worked to get us off. It wasn't the danger, +for there wasn't any. It was the noise. Also, it was the excitement. +She was too busy living. And when it was almost all over, I actually +saw her asleep for the first time in my life." + +A new guest had arrived that morning, a Donald Ware, whom Graham met at +lunch. He seemed well acquainted with all, as if he had visited much in +the Big House; and Graham gathered that, despite his youth, he was a +violinist of note on the Pacific Coast. + +"He has conceived a grand passion for Paula," Ernestine told Graham as +they passed out from the dining room. + +Graham raised his eyebrows. + +"Oh, but she doesn't mind," Ernestine laughed. "Every man that comes +along does the same thing. She's used to it. She has just a charming +way of disregarding all their symptoms, and enjoys them, and gets the +best out of them in consequence. It's lots of fun to Dick. You'll be +doing the same before you're here a week. If you don't, we'll all be +surprised mightily. And if you don't, most likely you'll hurt Dick's +feelings. He's come to expect it as a matter of course. And when a +fond, proud husband gets a habit like that, it must hurt terribly to +see his wife not appreciated." + +"Oh, well, if I am expected to, I suppose I must," Graham sighed. "But +just the same I hate to do whatever everybody does just because +everybody does it. But if it's the custom--well, it's the custom, +that's all. But it's mighty hard on one with so many other nice girls +around." + +There was a quizzical light in his long gray eyes that affected +Ernestine so profoundly that she gazed into his eyes over long, became +conscious of what she was doing, dropped her own eyes away, and flushed. + +"Little Leo--the boy poet you remember last night," she rattled on in a +patent attempt to escape from her confusion. "He's madly in love with +Paula, too. I've heard Aaron Hancock chaffing him about some sonnet +cycle, and it isn't difficult to guess the inspiration. And +Terrence--the Irishman, you know--he's mildly in love with her. They +can't help it, you see; and can you blame them?" + +"She surely deserves it all," Graham murmured, although vaguely hurt in +that the addle-pated, alphabet-obsessed, epicurean anarchist of an +Irishman who gloried in being a loafer and a pensioner should even +mildly be in love with the Little Lady. "She is most deserving of all +men's admiration," he continued smoothly. "From the little I've seen of +her she's quite remarkable and most charming." + +"She's my half-sister," Ernestine vouchsafed, "although you wouldn't +dream a drop of the same blood ran in our veins. She's so different. +She's different from all the Destens, from any girl I ever knew--though +she isn't exactly a girl. She's thirty-eight, you know--" + +"Pussy, pussy," Graham whispered. + +The pretty young blonde looked at him in surprise and bewilderment, +taken aback by the apparent irrelevance of his interruption. + +"Cat," he censured in mock reproof. + +"Oh!" she cried. "I never meant it that way. You will find we are very +frank here. Everybody knows Paula's age. She tells it herself. I'm +eighteen--so, there. And now, just for your meanness, how old are you?" + +"As old as Dick," he replied promptly. + +"And he's forty," she laughed triumphantly. "Are you coming swimming? +--the water will be dreadfully cold." + +Graham shook his head. "I'm going riding with Dick." + +Her face fell with all the ingenuousness of eighteen. + +"Oh," she protested, "some of his eternal green manures, or hillside +terracing, or water-pocketing." + +"But he said something about swimming at five." + +Her face brightened joyously. + +"Then we'll meet at the tank. It must be the same party. Paula said +swimming at five." + +As they parted under a long arcade, where his way led to the tower room +for a change into riding clothes, she stopped suddenly and called: + +"Oh, Mr. Graham." + +He turned obediently. + +"You really are not compelled to fall in love with Paula, you know. It +was just my way of putting it." + +"I shall be very, very careful," he said solemnly, although there was a +twinkle in his eye as he concluded. + +Nevertheless, as he went on to his room, he could not but admit to +himself that the Paula Forrest charm, or the far fairy tentacles of it, +had already reached him and were wrapping around him. He knew, right +there, that he would prefer the engagement to ride to have been with +her than with his old-time friend, Dick. + +As he emerged from the house to the long hitching-rails under the +ancient oaks, he looked eagerly for his hostess. Only Dick was there, +and the stable-man, although the many saddled horses that stamped in +the shade promised possibilities. But Dick and he rode away alone. Dick +pointed out her horse, an alert bay thoroughbred, stallion at that, +under a small Australian saddle with steel stirrups, and double-reined +and single-bitted. + +"I don't know her plans," he said. "She hasn't shown up yet, but at any +rate she'll be swimming later. We'll meet her then." + +Graham appreciated and enjoyed the ride, although more than once he +found himself glancing at his wrist-watch to ascertain how far away +five o'clock might yet be. Lambing time was at hand, and through home +field after home field he rode with his host, now one and now the other +dismounting to turn over onto its feet rotund and glorious Shropshire +and Ramboullet-Merino ewes so hopelessly the product of man's selection +as to be unable to get off, of themselves, from their own broad backs, +once they were down with their four legs helplessly sky-aspiring. + +"I've really worked to make the American Merino," Dick was saying; "to +give it the developed leg, the strong back, the well-sprung rib, and +the stamina. The old-country breed lacked the stamina. It was too much +hand-reared and manicured." + +"You're doing things, big things," Graham assured him. "Think of +shipping rams to Idaho! That speaks for itself." + +Dick Forrest's eyes were sparkling, as he replied: + +"Better than Idaho. Incredible as it may sound, and asking forgiveness +for bragging, the great flocks to-day of Michigan and Ohio can trace +back to my California-bred Ramboullet rams. Take Australia. Twelve +years ago I sold three rams for three hundred each to a visiting +squatter. After he took them back and demonstrated them he sold them +for as many thousand each and ordered a shipload more from me. +Australia will never be the worse for my having been. Down there they +say that lucerne, artesian wells, refrigerator ships, and Forrest's +rams have tripled the wool and mutton production." + +Quite by chance, on the way back, meeting Mendenhall, the horse +manager, they were deflected by him to a wide pasture, broken by wooded +canyons and studded with oaks, to look over a herd of yearling Shires +that was to be dispatched next morning to the upland pastures and +feeding sheds of the Miramar Hills. There were nearly two hundred of +them, rough-coated, beginning to shed, large-boned and large for their +age. + +"We don't exactly crowd them," Dick Forrest explained, "but Mr. +Mendenhall sees to it that they never lack full nutrition from the time +they are foaled. Up there in the hills, where they are going, they'll +balance their grass with grain. This makes them assemble every night at +the feeding places and enables the feeders to keep track of them with a +minimum of effort. I've shipped fifty stallions, two-year-olds, every +year for the past five years, to Oregon alone. They're sort of +standardized, you know. The people up there know what they're getting. +They know my standard so well that they'll buy unsight and unseen." + +"You must cull a lot, then," Graham ventured. + +"And you'll see the culls draying on the streets of San Francisco," +Dick answered. + +"Yes, and on the streets of Denver," Mr. Mendenhall amplified, "and of +Los Angeles, and--why, two years ago, in the horse-famine, we shipped +twenty carloads of four-year geldings to Chicago, that averaged +seventeen hundred each. The lightest were sixteen, and there were +matched pairs up to nineteen hundred. Lord, Lord, that was a year for +horse-prices--blue sky, and then some." + +As Mr. Mendenhall rode away, a man, on a slender-legged, head-tossing +Palomina, rode up to them and was introduced to Graham as Mr. Hennessy, +the ranch veterinary. + +"I heard Mrs. Forrest was looking over the colts," he explained to his +employer, "and I rode across to give her a glance at The Fawn here. +She'll be riding her in less than a week. What horse is she on to-day?" + +"The Fop," Dick replied, as if expecting the comment that was prompt as +the disapproving shake of Mr. Hennessy's head. + +"I can never become converted to women riding stallions," muttered the +veterinary. "The Fop is dangerous. Worse--though I take my hat off to +his record--he's malicious and vicious. She--Mrs. Forrest ought to ride +him with a muzzle--but he's a striker as well, and I don't see how she +can put cushions on his hoofs." + +"Oh, well," Dick placated, "she has a bit that _is_ a bit in his mouth, +and she's not afraid to use it--" + +"If he doesn't fall over on her some day," Mr. Hennessy grumbled. +"Anyway, I'll breathe easier when she takes to The Fawn here. Now +_she's_ a lady's mount--all the spirit in the world, but nothing +vicious. She's a sweet mare, a sweet mare, and she'll steady down from +her friskiness. But she'll always be a gay handful--no riding academy +proposition." + +"Let's ride over," Dick suggested. "Mrs. Forrest'll have a gay handful +in The Fop if she's ridden him into that bunch of younglings.--It's her +territory, you know," he elucidated to Graham. "All the house horses +and lighter stock is her affair. And she gets grand results. I can't +understand it, myself. It's like a little girl straying into an +experimental laboratory of high explosives and mixing the stuff around +any old way and getting more powerful combinations than the graybeard +chemists." + +The three men took a cross-ranch road for half a mile, turned up a +wooded canyon where ran a spring-trickle of stream, and emerged on a +wide rolling terrace rich in pasture. Graham's first glimpse was of a +background of many curious yearling and two-year-old colts, against +which, in the middleground, he saw his hostess, on the back of the +bright bay thoroughbred, The Fop, who, on hind legs, was striking his +forefeet in the air and squealing shrilly. They reined in their mounts +and watched. + +"He'll get her yet," the veterinary muttered morosely. "That Fop isn't +safe." + +But at that moment Paula Forrest, unaware of her audience, with a sharp +cry of command and a cavalier thrust of sharp spurs into The Fop's +silken sides, checked him down to four-footedness on the ground and a +restless, champing quietness. + +"Taking chances?" Dick mildly reproached her, as the three rode up. + +"Oh, I can manage him," she breathed between tight teeth, as, with ears +back and vicious-gleaming eyes, The Fop bared his teeth in a bite that +would have been perilously near to Graham's leg had she not reined the +brute abruptly away across the neck and driven both spurs solidly into +his sides. + +The Fop quivered, squealed, and for the moment stood still. + +"It's the old game, the white man's game," Dick laughed. "She's not +afraid of him, and he knows it. She outgames him, out-savages him, +teaches him what savagery is in its intimate mood and tense." + +Three times, while they looked on, ready to whirl their own steeds away +if he got out of hand, The Fop attempted to burst into rampage, and +three times, solidly, with careful, delicate hand on the bitter bit, +Paula Forrest dealt him double spurs in the ribs, till he stood, +sweating, frothing, fretting, beaten, and in hand. + +"It's the way the white man has always done," Dick moralized, while +Graham suffered a fluttery, shivery sensation of admiration of the +beast-conquering Little Lady. "He's out-savaged the savage the world +around," Dick went on. "He's out-endured him, out-filthed him, +out-scalped him, out-tortured him, out-eaten him--yes, out-eaten him. +It's a fair wager that the white man, in extremis, has eaten more of +the genus homo, than the savage, in extremis, has eaten." + +"Good afternoon," Paula greeted her guest, the ranch veterinary, and +her husband. "I think I've got him now. Let's look over the colts. Just +keep an eye, Mr. Graham, on his mouth. He's a dreadful snapper. Ride +free from him, and you'll save your leg for old age." + +Now that The Fop's demonstration was over, the colts, startled into +flight by some impish spirit amongst them, galloped and frisked away +over the green turf, until, curious again, they circled back, halted at +gaze, and then, led by one particularly saucy chestnut filly, drew up +in half a circle before the riders, with alert pricking ears. + +Graham scarcely saw the colts at first. He was seeing his protean +hostess in a new role. Would her proteanness never end? he wondered, as +he glanced over the magnificent, sweating, mastered creature she +bestrode. Mountain Lad, despite his hugeness, was a mild-mannered pet +beside this squealing, biting, striking Fop who advertised all the +spirited viciousness of the most spirited vicious thoroughbred. + +"Look at her," Paula whispered to Dick, in order not to alarm the saucy +chestnut filly. "Isn't she wonderful! That's what I've been working +for." Paula turned to Evan. "Always they have some fault, some miss, at +the best an approximation rather than an achievement. But she's an +achievement. Look at her. She's as near right as I shall probably ever +get. Her sire is Big Chief, if you know our racing register. He sold +for sixty thousand when he was a cripple. We borrowed the use of him. +She was his only get of the season. But look at her! She's got his +chest and lungs. I had my choices--mares eligible for the register. Her +dam wasn't eligible, but I chose her. She was an obstinate old maid, +but she was the one mare for Big Chief. This is her first foal and she +was eighteen years old when she bred. But I knew it was there. All I +had to do was to look at Big Chief and her, and it just had to be +there." + +"The dam was only half thoroughbred," Dick explained. + +"But with a lot of Morgan on the other side," Paula added instantly, +"and a streak along the back of mustang. This shall be called Nymph, +even if she has no place in the books. She'll be my first unimpeachable +perfect saddle horse--I know it--the kind I like--my dream come true at +last." + +"A hoss has four legs, one on each corner," Mr. Hennessy uttered +profoundly. + +"And from five to seven gaits," Graham took up lightly, + +"And yet I don't care for those many-gaited Kentuckians," Paula said +quickly, "--except for park work. But for California, rough roads, +mountain trails, and all the rest, give me the fast walk, the fox trot, +the long trot that covers the ground, and the not too-long, +ground-covering gallop. Of course, the close-coupled, easy canter; but +I scarcely call that a gait--it's no more than the long lope reduced to +the adjustment of wind or rough ground." + +"She's a beauty," Dick admired, his eyes warm in contemplation of the +saucy chestnut filly, who was daringly close and alertly sniffing of +the subdued Fop's tremulous and nostril-dilated muzzle. + +"I prefer my own horses to be near thoroughbred rather than all +thoroughbred," Paula proclaimed. "The running horse has its place on +the track, but it's too specialized for mere human use." + +"Nicely coupled," Mr. Hennessy said, indicating the Nymph. "Short +enough for good running and long enough for the long trot. I'll admit I +didn't have any faith in the combination; but you've got a grand animal +out of it just the same." + +"I didn't have horses when I was a young girl," Paula said to Graham; +"and the fact that I can now not only have them but breed them and mold +them to my heart's desire is always too good to be true. Sometimes I +can't believe it myself, and have to ride out and look them over to +make sure." + +She turned her head and raised her eyes gratefully to Forrest; and +Graham watched them look into each other's eyes for a long half-minute. +Forrest's pleasure in his wife's pleasure, in her young enthusiasm and +joy of life, was clear to Graham's observation. "Lucky devil," was +Graham's thought, not because of his host's vast ranch and the success +and achievement of it, but because of the possession of a wonder-woman +who could look unabashed and appreciative into his eyes as the Little +Lady had looked. + +Graham was meditating, with skepticism, Ernestine's information that +Paula Forrest was thirty-eight, when she turned to the colts and +pointed her riding whip at a black yearling nibbling at the spring +green. + +"Look at that level rump, Dick," she said, "and those trotting feet and +pasterns." And, to Graham: "Rather different from Nymph's long wrists, +aren't they? But they're just what I was after." She laughed a little, +with just a shade of annoyance. "The dam was a bright sorrel--almost +like a fresh-minted twenty-dollar piece--and I did so want a pair out +of her, of the same color, for my own trap. Well, I can't say that I +exactly got them, although I bred her to a splendid, sorrel trotting +horse. And this is my reward, this black--and, wait till we get to the +brood mares and you'll see the other, a full brother and mahogany +brown. I'm so disappointed." + +She singled out a pair of dark bays, feeding together: "Those are two +of Guy Dillon's get--brother, you know, to Lou Dillon. They're out of +different mares, not quite the same bay, but aren't they splendidly +matched? And they both have Guy Dillon's coat." + +She moved her subdued steed on, skirting the flank of the herd quietly +in order not to alarm it; but a number of colts took flight. + +"Look at them!" she cried. "Five, there, are hackneys. Look at the lift +of their fore-legs as they run." + +"I'll be terribly disappointed if you don't get a prize-winning +four-in-hand out of them," Dick praised, and brought again the flash of +grateful eyes that hurt Graham as he noted it. + +"Two are out of heavier mares--see that one in the middle and the one +on the far left--and there's the other three to pick from for the +leaders. Same sire, five different dams, and a matched and balanced +four, out of five choices, all in the same season, is a stroke of luck, +isn't it?" + +She turned quickly to Mr. Hennessy: "I can begin to see the ones that +will have to sell for polo ponies--among the two-year-olds. You can +pick them." + +"If Mr. Mendenhall doesn't sell that strawberry roan for a clean +fifteen hundred, it'll be because polo has gone out of fashion," the +veterinary approved, with waxing enthusiasm. "I've had my eye on them. +That pale sorrel, there. You remember his set-back. Give him an extra +year and he'll--look at his coupling!--watch him turn!--a +cow-skin?--he'll turn on a silver dollar! Give him a year to make up, +and he'll stand a show for the international. Listen to me. I've had my +faith in him from the beginning. Cut out that Burlingame crowd. When +he's ripe, ship him straight East." + +Paula nodded and listened to Mr. Hennessy's judgment, her eyes kindling +with his in the warmth of the sight of the abounding young life for +which she was responsible. + +"It always hurts, though," she confessed to Graham, "selling such +beauties to have them knocked out on the field so quickly." + +Her sheer absorption in the animals robbed her speech of any hint of +affectation or show--so much so, that Dick was impelled to praise her +judgment to Evan. + +"I can dig through a whole library of horse practice, and muddle and +mull over the Mendelian Law until I'm dizzy, like the clod that I am; +but she is the genius. She doesn't have to study law. She just knows it +in some witch-like, intuitional way. All she has to do is size up a +bunch of mares with her eyes, and feel them over a little with her +hands, and hunt around till she finds the right sires, and get pretty +nearly what she wants in the result--except color, eh, Paul?" he teased. + +She showed her laughing teeth in the laugh at her expense, in which Mr. +Hennessy joined, and Dick continued: "Look at that filly there. We all +knew Paula was wrong. But look at it! She bred a rickety old +thoroughbred, that we wanted to put out of her old age, to a standard +stallion; got a filly; bred it back with a thoroughbred; bred its filly +foal with the same standard again; knocked all our prognostications +into a cocked hat, and--well, look at it, a world-beater polo pony. +There is one thing we have to take off our hats to her for: she doesn't +let any woman sentimentality interfere with her culling. Oh, she's +cold-blooded enough. She's as remorseless as any man when it comes to +throwing out the undesirables and selecting for what she wants. But she +hasn't mastered color yet. There's where her genius falls down, eh, +Paul? You'll have to put up with Duddy and Fuddy for a while longer for +your trap. By the way, how is Duddy?" + +"He's come around," she answered, "thanks to Mr. Hennessy." + +"Nothing serious," the veterinarian added. "He was just off his feed a +trifle. It was more a scare of the stableman than anything else." + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + + +From the colt pasture to the swimming tank Graham talked with his +hostess and rode as nearly beside her as The Fop's wickedness +permitted, while Dick and Hennessy, on ahead, were deep in ranch +business. + +"Insomnia has been a handicap all my life," she said, while she tickled +The Fop with a spur in order to check a threatened belligerence. "But I +early learned to keep the irritation of it off my nerves and the weight +of it off my mind. In fact, I early came to make a function of it and +actually to derive enjoyment from it. It was the only way to master a +thing I knew would persist as long as I persisted. Have you--of course +you have--learned to win through an undertow?" + +"Yes, by never fighting it," Graham answered, his eyes on the spray of +color in her cheeks and the tiny beads of sweat that arose from her +continuous struggle with the high-strung creature she rode. +Thirty-eight! He wondered if Ernestine had lied. Paula Forrest did not +look twenty-eight. Her skin was the skin of a girl, with all the +delicate, fine-pored and thin transparency of the skin of a girl. + +"Exactly," she went on. "By not fighting the undertow. By yielding to +its down-drag and out-drag, and working with it to reach air again. +Dick taught me that trick. So with my insomnia. If it is excitement +from immediate events that holds me back from the City of Sleep, I +yield to it and come quicker to unconsciousness from out the entangling +currents. I invite my soul to live over again, from the same and +different angles, the things that keep me from unconsciousness. + +"Take the swimming of Mountain Lad yesterday. I lived it over last +night as I had lived it in reality. Then I lived it as a spectator--as +the girls saw it, as you saw it, as the cowboy saw it, and, most of +all, as my husband saw it. Then I made up a picture of it, many +pictures of it, from all angles, and painted them, and framed them, and +hung them, and then, a spectator, looked at them as if for the first +time. And I made myself many kinds of spectators, from crabbed old +maids and lean pantaloons to girls in boarding school and Greek boys of +thousands of years ago. + +"After that I put it to music. I played it on the piano, and guessed +the playing of it on full orchestras and blaring bands. I chanted it, I +sang it-epic, lyric, comic; and, after a weary long while, of course I +slept in the midst of it, and knew not that I slept until I awoke at +twelve to-day. The last time I had heard the clock strike was six. Six +unbroken hours is a capital prize for me in the sleep lottery." + +As she finished, Mr. Hennessy rode away on a cross path, and Dick +Forrest dropped back to squire his wife on the other side. + +"Will you sport a bet, Evan?" he queried. + +"I'd like to hear the terms of it first," was the answer. + +"Cigars against cigars that you can't catch Paula in the tank inside +ten minutes--no, inside five, for I remember you're some swimmer." + +"Oh, give him a chance, Dick," Paula cried generously. "Ten minutes +will worry him." + +"But you don't know him," Dicked argued. "And you don't value my +cigars. I tell you he is a swimmer. He's drowned kanakas, and you know +what that means." + +"Perhaps I should reconsider. Maybe he'll slash a killing crawl-stroke +at me before I've really started. Tell me his history and prizes." + +"I'll just tell you one thing. They still talk of it in the Marquesas. +It was the big hurricane of 1892. He did forty miles in forty-five +hours, and only he and one other landed on the land. And they were all +kanakas. He was the only white man; yet he out-endured and drowned the +last kanaka of them--" + +"I thought you said there was one other?" Paula interrupted. + +"She was a woman," Dick answered. "He drowned the last kanaka." + +"And the woman was then a white woman?" Paula insisted. + +Graham looked quickly at her, and although she had asked the question +of her husband, her head turned to the turn of his head, so that he +found her eyes meeting his straightly and squarely in interrogation. +Graham held her gaze with equal straightness as he answered: "She was a +kanaka." + +"A queen, if you please," Dick took up. "A queen out of the ancient +chief stock. She was Queen of Huahoa." + +"Was it the chief stock that enabled her to out-endure the native men?" +Paula asked. "Or did you help her?" + +"I rather think we helped each other toward the end," Graham replied. +"We were both out of our heads for short spells and long spells. +Sometimes it was one, sometimes the other, that was all in. We made the +land at sunset--that is, a wall of iron coast, with the surf bursting +sky-high. She took hold of me and clawed me in the water to get some +sense in me. You see, I wanted to go in, which would have meant finish. + +"She got me to understand that she knew where she was; that the current +set westerly along shore and in two hours would drift us abreast of a +spot where we could land. I swear I either slept or was unconscious +most of those two hours; and I swear she was in one state or the other +when I chanced to come to and noted the absence of the roar of the +surf. Then it was my turn to claw and maul her back to consciousness. +It was three hours more before we made the sand. We slept where we +crawled out of the water. Next morning's sun burnt us awake, and we +crept into the shade of some wild bananas, found fresh water, and went +to sleep again. Next I awoke it was night. I took another drink, and +slept through till morning. She was still asleep when the bunch of +kanakas, hunting wild goats from the next valley, found us." + +"I'll wager, for a man who drowned a whole kanaka crew, it was you who +did the helping," Dick commented. + +"She must have been forever grateful," Paula challenged, her eyes +directly on Graham's. "Don't tell me she wasn't young, wasn't +beautiful, wasn't a golden brown young goddess." + +"Her mother was the Queen of Huahoa," Graham answered. "Her father was +a Greek scholar and an English gentleman. They were dead at the time of +the swim, and Nomare was queen herself. She _was_ young. She was +beautiful as any woman anywhere in the world may be beautiful. Thanks +to her father's skin, she as not golden brown. She was tawny golden. +But you've heard the story undoubtedly--" + +He broke off with a look of question to Dick, who shook his head. + +Calls and cries and splashings of water from beyond a screen of trees +warned them that they were near the tank. + +"You'll have to tell me the rest of the story some time," Paula said. + +"Dick knows it. I can't see why he hasn't told you." + +She shrugged her shoulders. + +"Perhaps because he's never had the time or the provocation." + +"God wot, it's had wide circulation," Graham laughed. "For know that I +was once morganatic--or whatever you call it--king of the cannibal +isles, or of a paradise of a Polynesian isle at any rate.--'By a purple +wave on an opal beach in the hush of the Mahim woods,'" he hummed +carelessly, in conclusion, and swung off from his horse. + +"'The white moth to the closing vine, the bee to the opening clover,'" +she hummed another line of the song, while The Fop nearly got his teeth +into her leg and she straightened him out with the spur, and waited for +Dick to help her off and tie him. + +"Cigars!--I'm in on that!--you can't catch her!" Bert Wainwright called +from the top of the high dive forty feet above. "Wait a minute! I'm +coming!" + +And come he did, in a swan dive that was almost professional and that +brought handclapping approval from the girls. + +"A sweet dive, balanced beautifully," Graham told him as he emerged +from the tank. + +Bert tried to appear unconscious of the praise, failed, and, to pass it +off, plunged into the wager. + +"I don't know what kind of a swimmer you are, Graham," he said, "but I +just want in with Dick on the cigars." + +"Me, too; me, too!" chorused Ernestine, and Lute, and Rita. + +"Boxes of candy, gloves, or any truck you care to risk," Ernestine +added. + +"But I don't know Mrs. Forrest's records, either," Graham protested, +after having taken on the bets. "However, if in five minutes--" + +"Ten minutes," Paula said, "and to start from opposite ends of the +tank. Is that fair? Any touch is a catch." Graham looked his hostess +over with secret approval. She was clad, not in the single white silk +slip she evidently wore only for girl parties, but in a coquettish +imitation of the prevailing fashion mode, a suit of changeable light +blue and green silk--almost the color of the pool; the skirt slightly +above the knees whose roundedness he recognized; with long stockings to +match, and tiny bathing shoes bound on with crossed ribbons. On her +head was a jaunty swimming cap no jauntier than herself when she urged +the ten minutes in place of five. + +Rita Wainwright held the watch, while Graham walked down to the other +end of the hundred-and-fifty-foot tank. + +"Paula, you'll be caught if you take any chances," Dick warned. "Evan +Graham is a real fish man." + +"I guess Paula'll show him a few, even without the pipe," Bert bragged +loyally. "And I'll bet she can out-dive him." + +"There you lose," Dick answered. "I saw the rock he dived from at +Huahoa. That was after his time, and after the death of Queen Nomare. +He was only a youngster--twenty-two; he had to be to do it. It was off +the peak of the Pau-wi Rock--one hundred and twenty-eight feet by +triangulation. And he couldn't do it legitimately or technically with a +swan-dive, because he had to clear two lower ledges while he was in the +air. The upper ledge of the two, by their own traditions, was the +highest the best of the kanakas had ever dared since their traditions +began. Well, he did it. He became tradition. As long as the kanakas of +Huahoa survive he will remain tradition--Get ready, Rita. Start on the +full minute." + +"It's almost a shame to play tricks on so reputable a swimmer," Paula +confided to them, as she faced her guest down the length of the tank +and while both waited the signal. + +"He may get you before you can turn the trick," Dick warned again. And +then, to Bert, with just a shade of anxiety: "Is it working all right? +Because if it isn't, Paula will have a bad five seconds getting out of +it." + +"All O.K.," Bert assured. "I went in myself. The pipe is working. +There's plenty of air." + +"Ready!" Rita called. "Go!" + +Graham ran toward their end like a foot-racer, while Paula darted up +the high dive. By the time she had gained the top platform, his hands +and feet were on the lower rungs. When he was half-way up she +threatened a dive, compelling him to cease from climbing and to get out +on the twenty-foot platform ready to follow her to the water. Whereupon +she laughed down at him and did not dive. "Time is passing--the +precious seconds are ticking off," Ernestine chanted. + +When he started to climb, Paula again chased him to the half-way +platform with a threat to dive. But not many seconds did Graham waste. +His next start was determined, and Paula, poised for her dive, could +not send him scuttling back. He raced upward to gain the thirty-foot +platform before she should dive, and she was too wise to linger. Out +into space she launched, head back, arms bent, hands close to chest, +legs straight and close together, her body balanced horizontally on the +air as it fell outward and downward. + +"Oh you Annette Kellerman!" Bert Wamwright's admiring cry floated up. + +Graham ceased pursuit to watch the completion of the dive, and saw his +hostess, a few feet above the water, bend her head forward, straighten +out her arms and lock the hands to form the arch before her head, and, +so shifting the balance of her body, change it from the horizontal to +the perfect, water-cleaving angle. + +The moment she entered the water, he swung out on the thirty-foot +platform and waited. From this height he could make out her body +beneath the surface swimming a full stroke straight for the far end of +the tank. Not till then did he dive. He was confident that he could +outspeed her, and his dive, far and flat, entered him in the water +twenty feet beyond her entrance. + +But at the instant he was in, Dick dipped two flat rocks into the water +and struck them together. This was the signal for Paula to change her +course. Graham heard the concussion and wondered. He broke surface in +the full swing of the crawl and went down the tank to the far end at a +killing pace. He pulled himself out and watched the surface of the +tank. A burst of handclapping from the girls drew his eyes to the +Little Lady drawing herself out of the tank at the other end. + +Again he ran down the side of the tank, and again she climbed the +scaffold. But this time his wind and endurance enabled him to cut down +her lead, so that she was driven to the twenty-foot platform. She took +no time for posturing or swanning, but tilted immediately off in a +stiff dive, angling toward the west side of the tank. Almost they were +in the air at the same time. In the water and under it, he could feel +against his face and arms the agitation left by her progress; but she +led into the deep shadow thrown by the low afternoon sun, where the +water was so dark he could see nothing. + +When he touched the side of the tank he came up. She was not in sight. +He drew himself out, panting, and stood ready to dive in at the first +sign of her. But there were no signs. + +"Seven minutes!" Rita called. "And a half! ... Eight!... And a half!" + +And no Paula Forrest broke surface. Graham refused to be alarmed +because he could see no alarm on the faces of the others. + +"I lose," he announced at Rita's "Nine minutes!" + +"She's been under over two minutes, and you're all too blessed calm +about it to get me excited," he said. "I've still a minute--maybe I +don't lose," he added quickly, as he stepped off feet first into the +tank. + +As he went down he turned over and explored the cement wall of tank +with his hands. Midway, possibly ten feet under the surface he +estimated, his hands encountered an opening in the wall. He felt about, +learned it Was unscreened, and boldly entered. Almost before he was in, +he found he could come up; but he came up slowly, breaking surface in +pitchy blackness and feeling about him without splashing. + +His fingers touched a cool smooth arm that shrank convulsively at +contact while the possessor of it cried sharply with the startle of +fright. He held on tightly and began to laugh, and Paula laughed with +him. A line from "The First Chanty" flashed into his +consciousness--"_Hearing her laugh in the gloom greatly I loved her._" + +"You did frighten me when you touched me," she said. "You came without +a sound, and I was a thousand miles away, dreaming..." + +"What?" Graham asked. + +"Well, honestly, I had just got an idea for a gown--a dusty, musty, +mulberry-wine velvet, with long, close lines, and heavy, tarnished gold +borders and cords and things. And the only jewelery a ring--one +enormous pigeon-blood ruby that Dick gave me years ago when we sailed +the _All Away_." + +"Is there anything you don't do?" he laughed. + +She joined with him, and their mirth sounded strangely hollow in the +pent and echoing dark. + +"Who told you?" she next asked. + +"No one. After you had been under two minutes I knew it had to be +something like this, and I came exploring." + +"It was Dick's idea. He had it built into the tank afterward. You will +find him full of whimsies. He delighted in scaring old ladies into fits +by stepping off into the tank with their sons or grandsons and hiding +away in here. But after one or two nearly died of shock--old ladies, I +mean--he put me up, as to-day, to fooling hardier persons like +yourself.--Oh, he had another accident. There was a Miss Coghlan, +friend of Ernestine, a little seminary girl. They artfully stood her +right beside the pipe that leads out, and Dick went off the high dive +and swam in here to the inside end of the pipe. After several minutes, +by the time she was in collapse over his drowning, he spoke up the pipe +to her in most horrible, sepulchral tones. And right there Miss Coghlan +fainted dead away." + +"She must have been a weak sister," Graham commented; while he +struggled with a wanton desire for a match so that he could strike it +and see how Paula Forrest looked paddling there beside him to keep +afloat. + +"She had a fair measure of excuse," Paula answered. "She was a young +thing--eighteen; and she had a sort of school-girl infatuation for +Dick. They all get it. You see, he's such a boy when he's playing that +they can't realize that he's a hard-bitten, hard-working, +deep-thinking, mature, elderly benedict. The embarrassing thing was +that the little girl, when she was first revived and before she could +gather her wits, exposed all her secret heart. Dick's face was a study +while she babbled her--" + +"Well?--going to stay there all night?" Bert Wainwright's voice came +down the pipe, sounding megaphonically close. + +"Heavens!" Graham sighed with relief; for he had startled and clutched +Paula's arm. "That's the time I got my fright. The little maiden is +avenged. Also, at last, I know what a lead-pipe cinch is." + +"And it's time we started for the outer world," she suggested. "It's +not the coziest gossiping place in the world. Shall I go first?" + +"By all means--and I'll be right behind; although it's a pity the water +isn't phosphorescent. Then I could follow your incandescent heel like +that chap Byron wrote about--don't you remember?" + +He heard her appreciative gurgle in the dark, and then her: "Well, I'm +going now." + +Unable to see the slightest glimmer, nevertheless, from the few sounds +she made he knew she had turned over and gone down head first, and he +was not beyond visioning with inner sight the graceful way in which she +had done it--an anything but graceful feat as the average swimming +woman accomplishes it. + +"Somebody gave it away to you," was Bert's prompt accusal, when Graham +rose to the surface of the tank and climbed out. + +"And you were the scoundrel who rapped stone under water," Graham +challenged. "If I'd lost I'd have protested the bet. It was a crooked +game, a conspiracy, and competent counsel, I am confident, would +declare it a felony. It's a case for the district attorney." + +"But you won," Ernestine cried. + +"I certainly did, and, therefore, I shall not prosecute you, nor any +one of your crooked gang--if the bets are paid promptly. Let me +see--you owe me a box of cigars--" + +"One cigar, sir!" + +"A box! A box!" "Cross tag!" Paula cried. "Let's play +cross-tag!--You're IT!" + +Suiting action to word, she tagged Graham on the shoulder and plunged +into the tank. Before he could follow, Bert seized him, whirled him in +a circle, was himself tagged, and tagged Dick before he could escape. +And while Dick pursued his wife through the tank and Bert and Graham +sought a chance to cross, the girls fled up the scaffold and stood in +an enticing row on the fifteen-foot diving platform. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. + + + +An indifferent swimmer, Donald Ware had avoided the afternoon sport in +the tank; but after dinner, somewhat to the irritation of Graham, the +violinist monopolized Paula at the piano. New guests, with the casual +expectedness of the Big House, had drifted in--a lawyer, by name Adolph +Well, who had come to confer with Dick over some big water-right suit; +Jeremy Braxton, straight from Mexico, Dick's general superintendent of +the Harvest Group, which bonanza, according to Jeremy Braxton, was as +"unpetering" as ever; Edwin O'Hay, a red-headed Irish musical and +dramatic critic; and Chauncey Bishop, editor and owner of the _San +Francisco Dispatch_, and a member of Dick's class and frat, as Graham +gleaned. + +Dick had started a boisterous gambling game which he called "Horrible +Fives," wherein, although excitement ran high and players plunged, the +limit was ten cents, and, on a lucky coup, the transient banker might +win or lose as high as ninety cents, such coup requiring at least ten +minutes to play out. This game went on at a big table at the far end of +the room, accompanied by much owing and borrowing of small sums and an +incessant clamor for change. + +With nine players, the game was crowded, and Graham, rather than draw +cards, casually and occasionally backed Ernestine's cards, the while he +glanced down the long room at the violinist and Paula Forrest absorbed +in Beethoven Symphonies and Delibes' Ballets. Jeremy Braxton was +demanding raising the limit to twenty cents, and Dick, the heaviest +loser, as he averred, to the tune of four dollars and sixty cents, was +plaintively suggesting the starting of a "kitty" in order that some one +should pay for the lights and the sweeping out of the place in the +morning, when Graham, with a profound sigh at the loss of his last +bet--a nickel which he had had to pay double--announced to Ernestine +that he was going to take a turn around the room to change his luck. + +"I prophesied you would," she told him under her breath. + +"What?" he asked. + +She glanced significantly in Paula's direction. + +"Just for that I simply must go down there now," he retorted. + +"Can't dast decline a dare," she taunted. + +"If it were a dare I wouldn't dare do it." + +"In which case I dare you," she took up. + +He shook his head: "I had already made up my mind to go right down +there to that one spot and cut that fiddler out of the running. You +can't dare me out of it at this late stage. Besides, there's Mr. O'Hay +waiting for you to make your bet." + +Ernestine rashly laid ten cents, and scarcely knew whether she won or +lost, so intent was she on watching Graham go down the room, although +she did know that Bert Wainwright had not been unobservant of her gaze +and its direction. On the other hand, neither she nor Bert, nor any +other at the table, knew that Dick's quick-glancing eyes, sparkling +with merriment while his lips chaffed absurdities that made them all +laugh, had missed no portion of the side play. + +Ernestine, but little taller than Paula, although hinting of a plus +roundness to come, was a sun-healthy, clear blonde, her skin sprayed +with the almost transparent flush of maidenhood at eighteen. To the +eye, it seemed almost that one could see through the pink daintiness of +fingers, hand, wrist, and forearm, neck and cheek. And to this +delicious transparency of rose and pink, was added a warmth of tone +that did not escape Dick's eyes as he glimpsed her watch Evan Graham +move down the length of room. Dick knew and classified her wild +imagined dream or guess, though the terms of it were beyond his +divination. + +What she saw was what she imagined was the princely walk of Graham, the +high, light, blooded carriage of his head, the delightful carelessness +of the gold-burnt, sun-sanded hair that made her fingers ache to be +into with caresses she for the first time knew were possible of her +fingers. + +Nor did Paula, during an interval of discussion with the violinist in +which she did not desist from stating her criticism of O'Hay's latest +criticism of Harold Bauer, fail to see and keep her eyes on Graham's +progress. She, too, noted with pleasure his grace of movement, the +high, light poise of head, the careless hair, the clear bronze of the +smooth cheeks, the splendid forehead, the long gray eyes with the hint +of drooping lids and boyish sullenness that fled before the smile with +which he greeted her. + +She had observed that smile often since her first meeting with him. It +was an irresistible smile, a smile that lighted the eyes with the +radiance of good fellowship and that crinkled the corners into tiny, +genial lines. It was provocative of smiles, for she found herself +smiling a silent greeting in return as she continued stating to Ware +her grievance against O'Hay's too-complacent praise of Bauer. + +But her engagement was tacitly with Donald Ware at the piano, and with +no more than passing speech, she was off and away in a series of +Hungarian dances that made Graham marvel anew as he loafed and smoked +in a window-seat. + +He marveled at the proteanness of her, at visions of those nimble +fingers guiding and checking The Fop, swimming and paddling in +submarine crypts, and, falling in swan-like flight through forty feet +of air, locking just above the water to make the diver's +head-protecting arch of arm. + +In decency, he lingered but few minutes, returned to the gamblers, and +put the entire table in a roar with a well-acted Yiddisher's chagrin +and passion at losing entire nickels every few minutes to the fortunate +and chesty mine superintendent from Mexico. + +Later, when the game of Horrible Fives broke up, Bert and Lute Desten +spoiled the Adagio from Beethoven's _Sonata Pathetique_ by +exaggeratedly ragging to it in what Dick immediately named "The Loving +Slow-Drag," till Paula broke down in a gale of laughter and ceased from +playing. + +New groupings occurred. A bridge table formed with Weil, Rita, Bishop, +and Dick. Donald Ware was driven from his monopoly of Paula by the +young people under the leadership of Jeremy Braxton; while Graham and +O'Hay paired off in a window-seat and O'Hay talked shop. + +After a time, in which all at the piano had sung Hawaiian _hulas_, +Paula sang alone to her own accompaniment. She sang several German +love-songs in succession, although it was merely for the group about +her and not for the room; and Evan Graham, almost to his delight, +decided that at last he had found a weakness in her. She might be a +magnificent pianist, horsewoman, diver, and swimmer, but it was patent, +despite her singing throat, that she was not a magnificent singer. This +conclusion he was quickly compelled to modify. A singer she was, a +consummate singer. Weakness was only comparative after all. She lacked +the magnificent voice. It was a sweet voice, a rich voice, with the +same warm-fibered thrill of her laugh; but the volume so essential to +the great voice was not there. Ear and voice seemed effortlessly true, +and in her singing were feeling, artistry, training, intelligence. But +volume--it was scarcely a fair average, was his judgment. + +But quality--there he halted. It was a woman's voice. It was haunted +with richness of sex. In it resided all the temperament in the +world--with all the restraint of discipline, was the next step of his +analysis. He had to admire the way she refused to exceed the +limitations of her voice. In this she achieved triumphs. + +And, while he nodded absently to O'Hay's lecturette on the state of +the--opera, Graham fell to wondering if Paula Forrest, thus so +completely the mistress of her temperament, might not be equally +mistress of her temperament in the deeper, passional ways. There was a +challenge there--based on curiosity, he conceded, but only partly so +based; and, over and beyond, and, deeper and far beneath, a challenge +to a man made in the immemorial image of man. + +It was a challenge that bade him pause, and even look up and down the +great room and to the tree-trunked roof far above, and to the flying +gallery hung with the spoils of the world, and to Dick Forrest, master +of all this material achievement and husband of the woman, playing +bridge, just as he worked, with all his heart, his laughter ringing +loud as he caught Rita in renig. For Graham had the courage not to shun +the ultimate connotations. Behind the challenge in his speculations +lurked the woman. Paula Forrest was splendidly, deliciously woman, all +woman, unusually woman. From the blow between the eyes of his first +striking sight of her, swimming the great stallion in the pool, she had +continued to witch-ride his man's imagination. He was anything but +unused to women; and his general attitude was that of being tired of +the mediocre sameness of them. To chance upon the unusual woman was +like finding the great pearl in a lagoon fished out by a generation of +divers. + +"Glad to see you're still alive," Paula laughed to him, a little later. + +She was prepared to depart with Lute for bed. A second bridge quartet +had been arranged--Ernestine, Bert, Jeremy Braxton, and Graham; while +O'Hay and Bishop were already deep in a bout of two-handed pinochle. + +"He's really a charming Irishman when he keeps off his one string," +Paula went on. + +"Which, I think I am fair, is music," Graham said. + +"And on music he is insufferable," Lute observed. "It's the only thing +he doesn't know the least thing about. He drives one frantic." + +"Never mind," Paula soothed, in gurgling tones. "You will all be +avenged. Dick just whispered to me to get the philosophers up to-morrow +night. You know how they talk music. A musical critic is their awful +prey." + +"Terrence said the other night that there was no closed season on +musical critics," Lute contributed. + +"Terrence and Aaron will drive him to drink," Paula laughed her joy of +anticipation. "And Dar Hyal, alone, with his blastic theory of art, can +specially apply it to music to the confutation of all the first words +and the last. He doesn't believe a thing he says about blastism, any +more than was he serious when he danced the other evening. It's his bit +of fun. He's such a deep philosopher that he has to get his fun +somehow." + +"And if O'Hay ever locks horns with Terrence," Lute prophesied, "I can +see Terrence tucking arm in arm with him, leading him down to the stag +room, and heating the argument with the absentest-minded variety of +drinks that ever O'Hay accomplished." + +"Which means a very sick O'Hay next day," Paula continued her gurgles +of anticipation. + +"I'll tell him to do it!" exclaimed Lute. + +"You mustn't think we're all bad," Paula protested to Graham. "It's +just the spirit of the house. Dick likes it. He's always playing jokes +himself. He relaxes that way. I'll wager, right now, it was Dick's +suggestion, to Lute, and for Lute to carry out, for Terrence to get +O'Hay into the stag room. Now, 'fess up, Lute." + +"Well, I will say," Lute answered with meticulous circumspection, "that +the idea was not entirely original with me." + +At this point, Ernestine joined them and appropriated Graham with: + +"We're all waiting for you. We've cut, and you and I are partners. +Besides, Paula's making her sleep noise. So say good night, and let her +go." + +Paula had left for bed at ten o'clock. Not till one did the bridge +break up. Dick, his arm about Ernestine in brotherly fashion, said good +night to Graham where one of the divided ways led to the watch tower, +and continued on with his pretty sister-in-law toward her quarters. + +"Just a tip, Ernestine," he said at parting, his gray eyes frankly and +genially on hers, but his voice sufficiently serious to warn her. + +"What have I been doing now?" she pouted laughingly. + +"Nothing... as yet. But don't get started, or you'll be laying up a +sore heart for yourself. You're only a kid yet--eighteen; and a darned +nice, likable kid at that. Enough to make 'most any man sit up and take +notice. But Evan Graham is not 'most any man--" + +"Oh, I can take care of myself," she blurted out in a fling of quick +resentment. + +"But listen to me just the same. There comes a time in the affairs of a +girl when the love-bee gets a buzzing with a very loud hum in her +pretty noddle. Then is the time she mustn't make a mistake and start in +loving the wrong man. You haven't fallen in love with Evan Graham yet, +and all you have to do is just not to fall in love with him. He's not +for you, nor for any young thing. He's an oldster, an ancient, and +possibly has forgotten more about love, romantic love, and young +things, than you'll ever learn in a dozen lives. If he ever marries +again--" + +"Again!" Ernestine broke in. + +"Why, he's been a widower, my dear, for over fifteen years." + +"Then what of it?" she demanded defiantly. + +"Just this," Dick continued quietly. "He's lived the young-thing +romance, and lived it wonderfully; and, from the fact that in fifteen +years he has not married again, means--" + +"That he's never recovered from his loss?" Ernestine interpolated. "But +that's no proof--" + +"--Means that he's got over his apprenticeship to wild young romance," +Dick held on steadily. "All you have to do is look at him and realize +that he has not lacked opportunities, and that, on occasion, some very +fine women, real wise women, mature women, have given him foot-races +that tested his wind and endurance. But so far they've not succeeded in +catching him. And as for young things, you know how filled the world is +with them for a man like him. Think it over, and just keep your +heart-thoughts away from him. If you don't let your heart start to warm +toward him, it will save your heart from a grievous chill later on." + +He took one of her hands in his, and drew her against him, an arm +soothingly about her shoulder. For several minutes of silence Dick idly +speculated on what her thoughts might be. + +"You know, we hard-bitten old fellows--" he began half-apologetically, +half-humorously. + +But she made a restless movement of distaste, and cried out: + +"Are the only ones worth while! The young men are all youngsters, and +that's what's the matter with them. They're full of life, and coltish +spirits, and dance, and song. But they're not serious. They're not big. +They're not--oh, they don't give a girl that sense of all-wiseness, of +proven strength, of, of... well, of manhood." + +"I understand," Dick murmured. "But please do not forget to glance at +the other side of the shield. You glowing young creatures of women must +affect the old fellows in precisely similar ways. They may look on you +as toys, playthings, delightful things to whom to teach a few fine +foolishnesses, but not as comrades, not as equals, not as sharers--full +sharers. Life is something to be learned. They have learned it... some +of it. But young things like you, Ernestine, have you learned any of it +yet?" + +"Tell me," she asked abruptly, almost tragically, "about this wild +young romance, about this young thing when he was young, fifteen years +ago." + +"Fifteen?" Dick replied promptly. "Eighteen. They were married three +years before she died. In fact--figure it out for yourself--they were +actually married, by a Church of England dominie, and living in +wedlock, about the same moment that you were squalling your first +post-birth squalls in this world." + +"Yes, yes--go on," she urged nervously. "What was she like?" + +"She was a resplendent, golden-brown, or tan-golden half-caste, a +Polynesian queen whose mother had been a queen before her, whose father +was an Oxford man, an English gentleman, and a real scholar. Her name +was Nomare. She was Queen of Huahoa. She was barbaric. He was young +enough to out-barbaric her. There was nothing sordid in their marriage. +He was no penniless adventurer. She brought him her island kingdom and +forty thousand subjects. He brought to that island his fortune--and it +was no inconsiderable fortune. He built a palace that no South Sea +island ever possessed before or will ever possess again. It was the +real thing, grass-thatched, hand-hewn beams that were lashed with +cocoanut sennit, and all the rest. It was rooted in the island; it +sprouted out of the island; it _belonged_, although he fetched Hopkins +out from New York to plan it. + +"Heavens! they had their own royal yacht, their mountain house, their +canoe house--the last a veritable palace in itself. I know. I have been +at great feasts in it--though it was after their time. Nomare was dead, +and no one knew where Graham was, and a king of collateral line was the +ruler. + +"I told you he out-barbaricked her. Their dinner service was gold.--Oh, +what's the use in telling any more. He was only a boy. She was +half-English, half-Polynesian, and a really and truly queen. They were +flowers of their races. They were a pair of wonderful children. They +lived a fairy tale. And... well, Ernestine, the years have passed, and +Evan Graham has passed from the realm of the young thing. It will be a +remarkable woman that will ever infatuate him now. Besides, he's +practically broke. Though he didn't wastrel his money. As much +misfortune, and more, than anything else." + +"Paula would be more his kind," Ernestine said meditatively. + +"Yes, indeed," Dick agreed. "Paula, or any woman as remarkable as +Paula, would attract him a thousand times more than all the sweet, +young, lovely things like you in the world. We oldsters have our +standards, you know." + +"And I'll have to put up with the youngsters," Ernestine sighed. + +"In the meantime, yes," he chuckled. "Remembering, always, that you, +too, in time, may grow into the remarkable, mature woman, who can +outfoot a man like Evan in a foot-race of love for possession." + +"But I shall be married long before that," she pouted. + +"Which will be your good fortune, my dear. And, now, good night. And +you are not angry with me?" + +She smiled pathetically and shook her head, put up her lips to be +kissed, then said as they parted: + +"I promise not to be angry if you will only show me the way that in the +end will lead me to ancient graybeards like you and Graham." + +Dick Forrest, turning off lights as he went, penetrated the library, +and, while selecting half a dozen reference volumes on mechanics and +physics, smiled as if pleased with himself at recollection of the +interview with his sister-in-law. He was confident that he had spoken +in time and not a moment too soon. But, half way up the book-concealed +spiral staircase that led to his work room, a remark of Ernestine, +echoing in his consciousness, made him stop from very suddenness to +lean his shoulder against the wall.--_"Paula would be more his kind."_ + +"Silly ass!" he laughed aloud, continuing on his way. "And married a +dozen years!" + +Nor did he think again about it, until, in bed, on his sleeping porch, +he took a glance at his barometers and thermometers, and prepared to +settle down to the solution of the electrical speculation that had been +puzzling him. Then it was, as he peered across the great court to his +wife's dark wing and dark sleeping porch to see if she were still +waking, that Ernestine's remark again echoed. He dismissed it with a +"Silly ass!" of scorn, lighted a cigarette, and began running, with +trained eye, the indexes of the books and marking the pages sought with +matches. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + + +It was long after ten in the morning, when Graham, straying about +restlessly and wondering if Paula Forrest ever appeared before the +middle of the day, wandered into the music room. Despite the fact that +he was a several days' guest in the Big House, so big was it that the +music room was new territory. It was an exquisite room, possibly +thirty-five by sixty and rising to a lofty trussed ceiling where a warm +golden light was diffused from a skylight of yellow glass. Red tones +entered largely into the walls and furnishing, and the place, to him, +seemed to hold the hush of music. + +Graham was lazily contemplating a Keith with its inevitable triumph of +sun-gloried atmosphere and twilight-shadowed sheep, when, from the tail +of his eye, he saw his hostess come in from the far entrance. Again, +the sight of her, that was a picture, gave him the little catch-breath +of gasp. She was clad entirely in white, and looked very young and +quite tall in the sweeping folds of a _holoku_ of elaborate simplicity +and apparent shapelessness. He knew the _holoku_ in the home of its +origin, where, on the _lanais_ of Hawaii, it gave charm to a plain +woman and double-folded the charm of a charming woman. + +While they smiled greeting across the room, he was noting the set of +her body, the poise of head and frankness of eyes--all of which seemed +articulate with a friendly, comradely, "Hello, friends." At least such +was the form Graham's fancy took as she came toward him. + +"You made a mistake with this room," he said gravely. + +"No, don't say that! But how?" + +"It should have been longer, much longer, twice as long at least." + +"Why?" she demanded, with a disapproving shake of head, while he +delighted in the girlish color in her cheeks that gave the lie to her +thirty-eight years. + +"Because, then," he answered, "you should have had to walk twice as far +this morning and my pleasure of watching you would have been +correspondingly increased. I've always insisted that the _holoku_ is +the most charming garment ever invented for women." + +"Then it was my _holoku_ and not I," she retorted. "I see you are like +Dick--always with a string on your compliments, and lo, when we poor +sillies start to nibble, back goes the compliment dragging at the end +of the string. + +"Now I want to show you the room," she hurried on, closing his +disclaimer. "Dick gave me a free hand with it. It's all mine, you see, +even to its proportions." + +"And the pictures?" + +"I selected them," she nodded, "every one of them, and loved them onto +the walls myself. Although Dick did quarrel with me over that +Vereschagin. He agreed on the two Millets and the Corot over there, and +on that Isabey; and even conceded that some Vereschagins might do in a +music room, but not that particular Vereschagin. He's jealous for our +local artists, you see. He wanted more of them, wanted to show his +appreciation of home talent." + +"I don't know your Pacific Coast men's work very well," Graham said. +"Tell me about them. Show me that--Of course, that's a Keith, there; +but whose is that next one? It's beautiful." + +"A McComas--" she was answering; and Graham, with a pleasant +satisfaction, was settling himself to a half-hour's talk on pictures, +when Donald Ware entered with questing eyes that lighted up at sight of +the Little Lady. + +His violin was under his arm, and he crossed to the piano in a brisk, +business-like way and proceeded to lay out music. + +"We're going to work till lunch," Paula explained to Graham. "He swears +I'm getting abominably rusty, and I think he's half right. We'll see +you at lunch. You can stay if you care, of course; but I warn you it's +really going to be work. And we're going swimming this afternoon. Four +o'clock at the tank, Dick says. Also, he says he's got a new song he's +going to sing then.--What time is it, Mr. Ware?" + +"Ten minutes to eleven," the musician answered briefly, with a touch of +sharpness. + +"You're ahead of time--the engagement was for eleven. And till eleven +you'll have to wait, sir. I must run and see Dick, first. I haven't +said good morning to him yet." + +Well Paula knew her husband's hours. Scribbled secretly in the back of +the note-book that lay always on the reading stand by her couch were +hieroglyphic notes that reminded her that he had coffee at six-thirty; +might possibly be caught in bed with proof-sheets or books till +eight-forty-five, if not out riding; was inaccessible between nine and +ten, dictating correspondence to Blake; was inaccessible between ten +and eleven, conferring with managers and foremen, while Bonbright, the +assistant secretary, took down, like any court reporter, every word +uttered by all parties in the rapid-fire interviews. + +At eleven, unless there were unexpected telegrams or business, she +could usually count on finding Dick alone for a space, although +invariably busy. Passing the secretaries' room, the click of a +typewriter informed her that one obstacle was removed. In the library, +the sight of Mr. Bonbright hunting a book for Mr. Manson, the Shorthorn +manager, told her that Dick's hour with his head men was over. + +She pressed the button that swung aside a section of filled +book-shelves and revealed the tiny spiral of steel steps that led up to +Dick's work room. At the top, a similar pivoting section of shelves +swung obediently to her press of button and let her noiselessly into +his room. A shade of vexation passed across her face as she recognized +Jeremy Braxton's voice. She paused in indecision, neither seeing nor +being seen. + +"If we flood we flood," the mine superintendent was saying. "It will +cost a mint--yes, half a dozen mints--to pump out again. And it's a +damned shame to drown the old Harvest that way." + +"But for this last year the books show that we've worked at a positive +loss," Paula heard Dick take up. "Every petty bandit from Huerta down +to the last peon who's stolen a horse has gouged us. It's getting too +stiff--taxes extraordinary--bandits, revolutionists, and federals. We +could survive it, if only the end were in sight; but we have no +guarantee that this disorder may not last a dozen or twenty years." + +"Just the same, the old Harvest--think of flooding her!" the +superintendent protested. + +"And think of Villa," Dick replied, with a sharp laugh the bitterness +of which did not escape Paula. "If he wins he says he's going to divide +all the land among the peons. The next logical step will be the mines. +How much do you think we've coughed up to the constitutionalists in the +past twelvemonth?" + +"Over a hundred and twenty thousand," Braxton answered promptly. "Not +counting that fifty thousand cold bullion to Torenas before he +retreated. He jumped his army at Guaymas and headed for Europe with +it--I wrote you all that." + +"If we keep the workings afloat, Jeremy, they'll go on gouging, gouge +without end, Amen. I think we'd better flood. If we can make wealth +more efficiently than those rapscallions, let us show them that we can +destroy wealth with the same facility." + +"That's what I tell them. And they smile and repeat that such and such +a free will offering, under exigent circumstances, would be very +acceptable to the revolutionary chiefs--meaning themselves. The big +chiefs never finger one peso in ten of it. Good Lord! I show them what +we've done. Steady work for five thousand peons. Wages raised from ten +centavos a day to a hundred and ten. I show them peons--ten-centavo men +when we took them, and five-peso men when I showed them. And the same +old smile and the same old itching palm, and the same old acceptability +of a free will offering from us to the sacred cause of the revolution. +By God! Old Diaz was a robber, but he was a decent robber. I said to +Arranzo: 'If we shut down, here's five thousand Mexicans out of a +job--what'll you do with them?' And Arranzo smiled and answered me pat. +'Do with them?' he said. 'Why, put guns in their hands and march 'em +down to take Mexico City.'" + +In imagination Paula could see Dick's disgusted shrug of shoulders as +she heard him say: + +"The curse of it is--that the stuff is there, and that we're the only +fellows that can get it out. The Mexicans can't do it. They haven't the +brains. All they've got is the guns, and they're making us shell out +more than we make. There's only one thing for us, Jeremy. We'll forget +profits for a year or so, lay off the men, and just keep the engineer +force on and the pumping going." + +"I threw that into Arranzo," Jeremy Braxton's voice boomed. "And what +was his comeback? That if we laid off the peons, he'd see to it that +the engineers laid off, too, and the mine could flood and be damned to +us.--No, he didn't say that last. He just smiled, but the smile meant +the same thing. For two cents I'd a-wrung his yellow neck, except that +there'd have been another patriot in his boots and in my office next +day proposing a stiffer gouge. + +"So Arranzo got his 'bit,' and, on top of it, before he went across to +join the main bunch around Juarez, he let his men run off three hundred +of our mules--thirty thousand dollars' worth of mule-flesh right there, +after I'd sweetened him, too. The yellow skunk!" + +"Who is revolutionary chief in our diggings right now?" Paula heard her +husband ask with one of his abrupt shifts that she knew of old time +tokened his drawing together the many threads of a situation and +proceeding to action. + +"Raoul Bena." + +"What's his rank?" + +"Colonel--he's got about seventy ragamuffins." + +"What did he do before he quit work?" + +"Sheep-herder." + +"Very well." Dick's utterance was quick and sharp. "You've got to +play-act. Become a patriot. Hike back as fast as God will let you. +Sweeten this Raoul Bena. He'll see through your play, or he's no +Mexican. Sweeten him and tell him you'll make him a general---a second +Villa." + +"Lord, Lord, yes, but how?" Jeremy Braxton demanded. + +"By putting him at the head of an army of five thousand. Lay off the +men. Make him make them volunteer. We're safe, because Huerta is +doomed. Tell him you're a real patriot. Give each man a rifle. We'll +stand that for a last gouge, and it will prove you a patriot. Promise +every man his job back when the war is over. Let them and Raoul Bena +depart with your blessing. Keep on the pumping force only. And if we +cut out profits for a year or so, at the same time we are cutting down +losses. And perhaps we won't have to flood old Harvest after all." + +Paula smiled to herself at Dick's solution as she stole back down the +spiral on her way to the music room. She was depressed, but not by the +Harvest Group situation. Ever since her marriage there had always been +trouble in the working of the Mexican mines Dick had inherited. Her +depression was due to her having missed her morning greeting to him. +But this depression vanished at meeting Graham, who had lingered with +Ware at the piano and who, at her coming, was evidencing signs of +departure. + +"Don't run away," she urged. "Stay and witness a spectacle of industry +that should nerve you up to starting on that book Dick has been telling +me about." + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + + +On Dick's face, at lunch, there was no sign of trouble over the Harvest +Group; nor could anybody have guessed that Jeremy Braxton's visit had +boded anything less gratifying than a report of unfailing earnings. +Although Adolph Weil had gone on the early morning train, which +advertised that the business which had brought him had been transacted +with Dick at some unheard of hour, Graham discovered a greater company +than ever at the table. Besides a Mrs. Tully, who seemed a stout and +elderly society matron, and whom Graham could not make out, there were +three new men, of whose identity he gleaned a little: a Mr. Gulhuss, +State Veterinary; a Mr. Deacon, a portrait painter of evident note on +the Coast; and a Captain Lester, then captain of a Pacific Mail liner, +who had sailed skipper for Dick nearly twenty years before and who had +helped Dick to his navigation. + +The meal was at its close, and the superintendent was glancing at his +watch, when Dick said: + +"Jeremy, I want to show you what I've been up to. We'll go right now. +You'll have time on your way to the train." + +"Let us all go," Paula suggested, "and make a party of it. I'm dying to +see it myself, Dick's been so obscure about it." + +Sanctioned by Dick's nod, she was ordering machines and saddle horses +the next moment. + +"What is it?" Graham queried, when she had finished. + +"Oh, one of Dick's stunts. He's always after something new. This is an +invention. He swears it will revolutionize farming--that is, small +farming. I have the general idea of it, but I haven't seen it set up +yet. It was ready a week ago, but there was some delay about a cable or +something concerning an adjustment." + +"There's billions in it... if it works," Dick smiled over the table. +"Billions for the farmers of the world, and perhaps a trifle of royalty +for me... if it works." + +"But what is it?" O'Hay asked. "Music in the dairy barns to make the +cows give down their milk more placidly?" + +"Every farmer his own plowman while sitting on his front porch," Dick +baffled back. "In fact, the labor-eliminating intermediate stage +between soil production and sheer laboratory production of food. But +wait till you see it. Gulhuss, this is where I kill my own business, if +it works, for it will do away with the one horse of every ten-acre +farmer between here and Jericho." + +In ranch machines and on saddle animals, the company was taken a mile +beyond the dairy center, where a level field was fenced squarely off +and contained, as Dick announced, just precisely ten acres. + +"Behold," he said, "the one-man and no-horse farm where the farmer sits +on the porch. Please imagine the porch." + +In the center of the field was a stout steel pole, at least twenty feet +in height and guyed very low. + +From a drum on top of the pole a thin wire cable ran to the extreme +edge of the field and was attached to the steering lever of a small +gasoline tractor. About the tractor two mechanics fluttered. At command +from Dick they cranked the motor and started it on its way. + +"This is the porch," Dick said. "Just imagine we're all that future +farmer sitting in the shade and reading the morning paper while the +manless, horseless plowing goes on." + +Alone, unguided, the drum on the head of the pole in the center winding +up the cable, the tractor, at the circumference permitted by the cable, +turned a single furrow as it described a circle, or, rather, an inward +trending spiral about the field. + +"No horse, no driver, no plowman, nothing but the farmer to crank the +tractor and start it on its way," Dick exulted, as the uncanny +mechanism turned up the brown soil and continued unguided, ever +spiraling toward the field's center. "Plow, harrow, roll, seed, +fertilize, cultivate, harvest--all from the front porch. And where the +farmer can buy juice from a power company, all he, or his wife, will +have to do is press the button, and he to his newspaper, and she to her +pie-crust." + +"All you need, now, to make it absolutely perfect," Graham praised, "is +to square the circle." + +"Yes," Mr. Gulhuss agreed. "As it is, a circle in a square field loses +some acreage." + +Graham's face advertised a mental arithmetic trance for a minute, when +he announced: "Loses, roughly, three acres out of every ten." + +"Sure," Dick concurred. "But the farmer has to have his front porch +somewhere on his ten acres. And the front porch represents the house, +the barn, the chicken yard and the various outbuildings. Very well. Let +him get tradition out of his mind, and, instead of building these +things in the center of his ten acres, let him build them on the three +acres of fringe. And let him plant his fruit and shade trees and berry +bushes on the fringe. When you come to consider it, the traditionary +method of erecting the buildings in the center of a rectangular ten +acres compels him to plow around the center in broken rectangles." + +Gulhuss nodded enthusiastically. "Sure. And there's always the roadway +from the center out to the county road or right of way. That breaks the +efficiency of his plowing. Break ten acres into the consequent smaller +rectangles, and it's expensive cultivation." + +"Wish navigation was as automatic," was Captain Lester's contribution. + +"Or portrait painting," laughed Rita Wainwright with a significant +glance at Mr. Deacon. + +"Or musical criticism," Lute remarked, with no glance at all, but with +a pointedness of present company that brought from O'Hay: + +"Or just being a charming young woman." + +"What price for the outfit?" Jeremy Braxton asked. + +"Right now, we could manufacture and lay down, at a proper profit, for +five hundred. If the thing came into general use, with up to date, +large-scale factory methods, three hundred. But say five hundred. And +write off fifteen per cent, for interest and constant, it would cost +the farmer seventy dollars a year. What ten-acre farmer, on +two-hundred-dollar land, who keeps books, can keep a horse for seventy +dollars a year? And on top of that, it would save him, in labor, +personal or hired, at the abjectest minimum, two hundred dollars a +year." + +"But what guides it?" Rita asked. + +"The drum on the post. The drum is graduated for the complete +radius--which took some tall figuring, I assure you--and the cable, +winding around the drum and shortening, draws the tractor in toward the +center." + +"There are lots of objections to its general introduction, even among +small farmers," Gulhuss said. + +Dick nodded affirmation. + +"Sure," he replied. "I have over forty noted down and classified. And +I've as many more for the machine itself. If the thing is a success, it +will take a long time to perfect it and introduce it." + +Graham found himself divided between watching the circling tractor and +casting glances at the picture Paula Forrest was on her mount. It was +her first day on The Fawn, which was the Palomina mare Hennessy had +trained for her. Graham smiled with secret approval of her femininity; +for Paula, whether she had designed her habit for the mare, or had +selected one most peculiarly appropriate, had achieved a triumph. + +In place of a riding coat, for the afternoon was warm, she wore a tan +linen blouse with white turnback collar. A short skirt, made like the +lower part of a riding coat, reached the knees, and from knees to +entrancing little bespurred champagne boots tight riding trousers +showed. Skirt and trousers were of fawn-colored silk corduroy. Soft +white gauntlets on her hands matched with the collar in the one +emphasis of color. Her head was bare, the hair done tight and low +around her ears and nape of neck. + +"I don't see how you can keep such a skin and expose yourself to the +sun this way," Graham ventured, in mild criticism. + +"I don't," she smiled with a dazzle of white teeth. "That is, I don't +expose my face this way more than a few times a year. I'd like to, +because I love the sun-gold burn in my hair; but I don't dare a +thorough tanning." + +The mare frisked, and a breeze of air blew back a flap of skirt, +showing an articulate knee where the trouser leg narrowed tightly over +it. Again Graham visioned the white round of knee pressed into the +round muscles of the swimming Mountain Lad, as he noted the firm +knee-grip on her pigskin English saddle, quite new and fawn-colored to +match costume and horse. + +When the magneto on the tractor went wrong, and the mechanics busied +themselves with it in the midst of the partly plowed field, the +company, under Paula's guidance, leaving Dick behind with his +invention, resolved itself into a pilgrimage among the brood-centers on +the way to the swimming tank. Mr. Crellin, the hog-manager, showed them +Lady Isleton, who, with her prodigious, fat, recent progeny of eleven, +won various naïve encomiums, while Mr. Crellin warmly proclaimed at +least four times, "And not a runt, not a runt, in the bunch." + +Other glorious brood-sows, of Berkshire, Duroc-Jersey, and O. I. C. +blood, they saw till they were wearied, and new-born kids and lambs, +and rotund does and ewes. From center to center, Paula kept the +telephones warning ahead of the party's coming, so that Mr. Manson +waited to exhibit the great King Polo, and his broad-backed Shorthorn +harem, and the Shorthorn harems of bulls that were only little less +than King Polo in magnificence and record; and Parkman, the Jersey +manager, was on hand, with staffed assistants, to parade Sensational +Drake, Golden Jolly, Fontaine Royal, Oxford Master, and Karnak's Fairy +Boy--blue ribbon bulls, all, and founders and scions of noble houses of +butter-fat renown, and Rosaire Queen, Standby's Dam, Golden Jolly's +Lass, Olga's Pride, and Gertie of Maitlands--equally blue-ribboned and +blue-blooded Jersey matrons in the royal realm of butter-fat; and Mr. +Mendenhall, who had charge of the Shires, proudly exhibited a string of +mighty stallions, led by the mighty Mountain Lad, and a longer string +of matrons, headed by the Fotherington Princess of the silver whinny. +Even old Alden Bessie, the Princess's dam, retired to but part-day's +work, he sent for that they might render due honor to so notable a dam. + +As four o'clock approached, Donald Ware, not keen on swimming, returned +in one of the machines to the Big House, and Mr. Gulhuss remained to +discuss Shires with Mr. Mendenhall. Dick was at the tank when the party +arrived, and the girls were immediately insistent for the new song. + +"It isn't exactly a new song," Dick explained, his gray eyes twinkling +roguery, "and it's not my song. It was sung in Japan before I was born, +and, I doubt not, before Columbus discovered America. Also, it is a +duet--a competitive duet with forfeit penalties attached. Paula will +have to sing it with me.--I'll teach you. Sit down there, that's +right.--Now all the rest of you gather around and sit down." + +Still in her riding habit, Paula sat down on the concrete, facing her +husband, in the center of the sitting audience. Under his direction, +timing her movements to his, she slapped her hands on her knees, +slapped her palms together, and slapped her palms against his palms +much in the fashion of the nursery game of "Bean Porridge Hot." Then he +sang the song, which was short and which she quickly picked up, singing +it with him and clapping the accent. While the air of it was orientally +catchy, it was chanted slowly, almost monotonously, but it was quickly +provocative of excitement to the spectators: + + "_Jong-Keena, Jong-Keena, + Jong-Jong, Keena-Keena, + Yo-ko-ham-a, Nag-a-sak-i, + Kobe-mar-o--hoy!!!_" + +The last syllable, _hoy_, was uttered suddenly, explosively, and an +octave and more higher than the pitch of the melody. At the same moment +that it was uttered, Paula's and Dick's hands were abruptly shot toward +each other's, either clenched or open. The point of the game was that +Paula's hands, open or closed, at the instant of uttering hoy, should +match Dick's. Thus, the first time, she did match him, both his and her +hands being closed, whereupon he took off his hat and tossed it into +Lute's lap. + +"My forfeit," he explained. "Come on, Paul, again." And again they sang +and clapped: + + "_Jong-Keena, Jong-Keena, + Jong-Jong, Keena-Keena, + Yo-ko-ham-a, Nag-a-sak-i, + Kobe-mar-o--hoy!!!_" + +This time, with the _hoy_, her hands were closed and his were open. + +"Forfeit!--forfeit!" the girls cried. + +She looked her costume over with alarm, asking, "What can I give?" + +"A hair pin," Dick advised; and one of her turtleshell hair pins joined +his hat in Lute's lap. + +"Bother it!" she exclaimed, when the last of her hair pins had gone the +same way, she having failed seven times to Dick's once. "I can't see +why I should be so slow and stupid. Besides, Dick, you're too clever. I +never could out-guess you or out-anticipate you." + +Again they sang the song. She lost, and, to Mrs. Tully's shocked +"Paula!" she forfeited a spur and threatened a boot when the remaining +spur should be gone. A winning streak of three compelled Dick to give +up his wrist watch and both spurs. Then she lost her wrist watch and +the remaining spur. + +"Jong-Keena, Jong-Keena," they began again, while Mrs. Tully +remonstrated, "Now, Paula, you simply must stop this.--Dick, you ought +to be ashamed of yourself." + +But Dick, emitting a triumphant "_Hoy!_" won, and joined in the +laughter as Paula took off one of her little champagne boots and added +it to the heap in Lute's lap. + +"It's all right, Aunt Martha," Paula assured Mrs. Tully. "Mr. Ware's +not here, and he's the only one who would be shocked.--Come on, Dick. +You can't win every time." + +"Jong-Keena, Jong-Keena," she chanted on with her husband. The +repetition, at first slow, had accelerated steadily, so that now they +fairly rippled through with it, while their slapping, striking palms +made a continuous patter. The exercise and excitement had added to the +sun's action on her skin, so that her laughing face was all a rosy glow. + +Evan Graham, a silent spectator, was aware of hurt and indignity. He +knew the "Jong-Keena" of old time from the geishas of the tea houses of +Nippon, and, despite the unconventionality that ruled the Forrests and +the Big House, he experienced shock in that Paula should take part in +such a game. It did not enter his head at the moment that he would have +been merely curious to see how far the madness would go had the player +been Lute, or Ernestine, or Rita. Not till afterward did he realize +that his concern and sense of outrage were due to the fact that the +player was Paula, and that, therefore, she was bulking bigger in his +imagination than he was conscious of. What he was conscious of at the +moment was that he was growing angry and that he had deliberately to +check himself from protesting. + +By this time Dick's cigarette case and matches and Paula's second boot, +belt, skirt-pin, and wedding ring had joined the mound of forfeits. +Mrs. Tully, her face set in stoic resignation, was silent. + +"Jong-Keena, Jong-Keena," Paula laughed and sang on, and Graham heard +Ernestine laugh to Bert, "I don't see what she can spare next." + +"Well, you know her," he heard Bert answer. "She's game once she gets +started, and it certainly looks like she's started." + +"_Hoy_!" Paula and Dick cried simultaneously, as they thrust out their +hands. + +But Dick's were closed, and hers were open. Graham watched her vainly +quest her person for the consequent forfeit. + +"Come on, Lady Godiva," Dick commanded. "You hae sung, you hae danced; +now pay the piper." + +"Was the man a fool?" was Graham's thought. "And a man with a wife like +that." + +"Well," Paula sighed, her fingers playing with the fastenings of her +blouse, "if I must, I must." + +Raging inwardly, Graham averted his gaze, and kept it averted. There +was a pause, in which he knew everybody must be hanging on what she +would do next. Then came a giggle from Ernestine, a burst of laughter +from all, and, "A frame-up!" from Bert, that overcame Graham's +resoluteness. He looked quickly. The Little Lady's blouse was off, and, +from the waist up, she appeared in her swimming suit. It was evident +that she had dressed over it for the ride. + +"Come on, Lute--you next," Dick was challenging. + + But Lute, not similarly prepared for _Jong-Keena_, blushingly +led the retreat of the girls to the dressing rooms. + +Graham watched Paula poise at the forty-foot top of the diving scaffold +and swan-dive beautifully into the tank; heard Bert's admiring "Oh, you +Annette Kellerman!" and, still chagrined by the trick that had +threatened to outrage him, fell to wondering about the wonder woman, +the Little Lady of the Big House, and how she had happened so +wonderfully to be. As he fetched down the length of tank, under water, +moving with leisurely strokes and with open eyes watching the shoaling +bottom, it came to him that he did not know anything about her. She was +Dick Forrest's wife. That was all he knew. How she had been born, how +she had lived, how and where her past had been--of all this he knew +nothing. + +Ernestine had told him that Lute and she were half sisters of Paula. +That was one bit of data, at any rate. (Warned by the increasing +brightness of the bottom that he had nearly reached the end of the +tank, and recognizing Dick's and Bert's legs intertwined in what must +be a wrestling bout, Graham turned about, still under water, and swam +back a score or so of feet.) There was that Mrs. Tully whom Paula had +addressed as Aunt Martha. Was she truly an aunt? Or was she a courtesy +Aunt through sisterhood with the mother of Lute and Ernestine? + +He broke surface, was hailed by the others to join in bull-in-the-ring; +in which strenuous sport, for the next half hour, he was compelled more +than once to marvel at the litheness and agility, as well as strategy, +of Paula in her successful efforts at escaping through the ring. +Concluding the game through weariness, breathing hard, the entire party +raced the length of the tank and crawled out to rest in the sunshine in +a circle about Mrs. Tully. + +Soon there was more fun afoot, and Paula was contending impossible +things with Mrs. Tully. + +"Now, Aunt Martha, just because you never learned to swim is no reason +for you to take such a position. I am a real swimmer, and I tell you I +can dive right into the tank here, and stay under for ten minutes." + +"Nonsense, child," Mrs. Tully beamed. "Your father, when he was young, +a great deal younger than you, my dear, could stay under water longer +than any other man; and his record, as I know, was three minutes and +forty seconds, as I very well know, for I held the watch myself and +kept the time when he won against Harry Selby on a wager." + +"Oh, I know my father was some man in his time," Paula swaggered; "but +times have changed. If I had the old dear here right now, in all his +youthful excellence, I'd drown him if he tried to stay under water with +me. Ten minutes? Of course I can do ten minutes. And I will. You hold +the watch, Aunt Martha, and time me. Why, it's as easy as--" + +"Shooting fish in a bucket," Dick completed for her. + +Paula climbed to the platform above the springboard. + +"Time me when I'm in the air," she said. + +"Make your turn and a half," Dick called. + +She nodded, smiled, and simulated a prodigious effort at filling her +lungs to their utmost capacity. Graham watched enchanted. A diver +himself, he had rarely seen the turn and a half attempted by women +other than professionals. Her wet suit of light blue and green silk +clung closely to her, showing the lines of her justly proportioned +body. With what appeared to be an agonized gulp for the last cubic inch +of air her lungs could contain, she sprang up, out, and down, her body +vertical and stiff, her legs straight, her feet close together as they +impacted on the springboard end. Flung into the air by the board, she +doubled her body into a ball, made a complete revolution, then +straightened out in perfect diver's form, and in a perfect dive, with +scarcely a ripple, entered the water. + +"A Toledo blade would have made more splash," was Graham's verdict. + +"If only I could dive like that," Ernestine breathed her admiration. +"But I never shall. Dick says diving is a matter of timing, and that's +why Paula does it so terribly well. She's got the sense of time--" + +"And of abandon," Graham added. + +"Of willed abandon," Dick qualified. + +"Of relaxation by effort," Graham agreed. "I've never seen a +professional do so perfect a turn and a half." + +"And I'm prouder of it than she is," Dick proclaimed. "You see, I +taught her, though I confess it was an easy task. She coordinates +almost effortlessly. And that, along with her will and sense of +time--why her first attempt was better than fair." + +"Paula is a remarkable woman," Mrs. Tully said proudly, her eyes +fluttering between the second hand of the watch and the unbroken +surface of the pool. "Women never swim so well as men. But she +does.--Three minutes and forty seconds! She's beaten her father!" + +"But she won't stay under any five minutes, much less ten," Dick +solemnly stated. "She'll burst her lungs first." + +At four minutes, Mrs. Tully began to show excitement and to look +anxiously from face to face. Captain Lester, not in the secret, +scrambled to his feet with an oath and dived into the tank. + +"Something has happened," Mrs. Tully said with controlled quietness. +"She hurt herself on that dive. Go in after her, you men." + +But Graham and Bert and Dick, meeting under water, gleefully grinned +and squeezed hands. Dick made signs for them to follow, and led the way +through the dark-shadowed water into the crypt, where, treading water, +they joined Paula in subdued whisperings and gigglings. + +"Just came to make sure you were all right," Dick explained. "And now +we've got to beat it.--You first, Bert. I'll follow Evan." + +And, one by one, they went down through the dark water and came up on +the surface of the pool. By this time Mrs. Tully was on her feet and +standing by the edge of the tank. + +"If I thought this was one of your tricks, Dick Forrest," she began. + +But Dick, paying no attention, acting preternaturally calmly, was +directing the men loudly enough for her to hear. + +"We've got to make this systematic, fellows. You, Bert, and you, Evan, +join with me. We start at this end, five feet apart, and search the +bottom across. Then move along and repeat it back." + +"Don't exert yourselves, gentlemen," Mrs. Tully called, beginning to +laugh. "As for you, Dick, you come right out. I want to box your ears." + +"Take care of her, you girls," Dick shouted. "She's got hysterics." + +"I haven't, but I will have," she laughed. + +"But damn it all, madam, this is no laughing matter!" Captain Lester +spluttered breathlessly, as he prepared for another trip to explore the +bottom. + +"Are you on, Aunt Martha, really and truly on?" Dick asked, after the +valiant mariner had gone down. + +Mrs. Tully nodded. "But keep it up, Dick, you've got one dupe. Elsie +Coghlan's mother told me about it in Honolulu last year." + +Not until eleven minutes had elapsed did the smiling face of Paula +break the surface. Simulating exhaustion, she slowly crawled out and +sank down panting near her aunt. Captain Lester, really exhausted by +his strenuous exertions at rescue, studied Paula keenly, then marched +to the nearest pillar and meekly bumped his head three times against +the concrete. + +"I'm afraid I didn't stay down ten minutes," Paula said. "But I wasn't +much under that, was I, Aunt Martha?" + +"You weren't much under at all," Mrs. Tully replied, "if it's my +opinion you were asking. I'm surprised that you are even wet.--There, +there, breathe naturally, child. The play-acting is unnecessary. I +remember, when I was a young girl, traveling in India, there was a +school of fakirs who leaped into deep wells and stayed down much longer +than you, child, much longer indeed." + +"You knew!" Paula charged. + +"But you didn't know I did," her Aunt retorted. "And therefore your +conduct was criminal. When you consider a woman of my age, with my +heart--" + +"And with your blessed, brass-tack head," Paula cried. + +"For two apples I'd box your ears." + +"And for one apple I'd hug you, wet as I am," Paula laughed back. +"Anyway, we did fool Captain Lester.--Didn't we, Captain?" + +"Don't speak to me," that doughty mariner muttered darkly. "I'm busy +with myself, meditating what form my vengeance shall take.--As for you, +Mr. Dick Forrest, I'm divided between blowing up your dairy, or +hamstringing Mountain Lad. Maybe I'll do both. In the meantime I am +going out to kick that mare you ride." + +Dick on The Outlaw, and Paula on The Fawn, rode back side by side to +the Big House. + +"How do you like Graham?" he asked. + +"Splendid," was her reply. "He's your type, Dick. He's universal, like +you, and he's got the same world-marks branded on him--the Seven Seas, +the books, and all the rest. He's an artist, too, and pretty well +all-around. And he's good fun. Have you noticed his smile? It's +irresistible. It makes one want to smile with him." + +"And he's got his serious scars, as well," Dick nodded concurrence. + +"Yes--right in the corners of the eyes, just after he has smiled, +you'll see them come. They're not tired marks exactly, but rather the +old eternal questions: Why? What for? What's it worth? What's it all +about?" + + * * * * * + +And bringing up the rear of the cavalcade, Ernestine and Graham talked. + +"Dick's deep," she was saying. "You don't know him any too well. He's +dreadfully deep. I know him a little. Paula knows him a lot. But very +few others ever get under the surface of him. He's a real philosopher, +and he has the control of a stoic or an Englishman, and he can play-act +to fool the world." + + * * * * * + +At the long hitching rails under the oaks, where the dismounting party +gathered, Paula was in gales of laughter. + +"Go on, go on," she urged Dick, "more, more." + +"She's been accusing me of exhausting my vocabulary in naming the +house-boys by my system," he explained. + +"And he's given me at least forty more names in a minute and a +half.--Go on, Dick, more." + +"Then," he said, striking a chant, "we can have Oh Sin and Oh Pshaw, Oh +Sing and Oh Song, Oh Sung and Oh Sang, Oh Last and Oh Least, Oh Ping +and Oh Pong, Oh Some, Oh More, and Oh Most, Oh Naught and Oh Nit..." + +And Dick jingled away into the house still chanting his extemporized +directory. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + + +A week of dissatisfaction and restlessness ensued for Graham. Tom +between belief that his business was to leave the Big House on the +first train, and desire to see, and see more of Paula, to be with her, +and to be more with her--he succeeded in neither leaving nor in seeing +as much of her as during the first days of his visit. + +At first, and for the five days that he lingered, the young violinist +monopolized nearly her entire time of visibility. Often Graham strayed +into the music room, and, quite neglected by the pair, sat for moody +half-hours listening to their "work." They were oblivious of his +presence, either flushed and absorbed with the passion of their music, +or wiping their foreheads and chatting and laughing companionably in +pauses to rest. That the young musician loved her with an ardency that +was almost painful, was patent to Graham; but what hurt him was the +abandon of devotion with which she sometimes looked at Ware after he +had done something exceptionally fine. In vain Graham tried to tell +himself that all this was mental on her part--purely delighted +appreciation of the other's artistry. Nevertheless, being man, it hurt, +and continued to hurt, until he could no longer suffer himself to +remain. + +Once, chancing into the room at the end of a Schumann song and just +after Ware had departed, Graham found Paula still seated at the piano, +an expression of rapt dreaming on her face. She regarded him almost +unrecognizingly, gathered herself mechanically together, uttered an +absent-minded commonplace or so, and left the room. Despite his +vexation and hurt, Graham tried to think it mere artist-dreaming on her +part, a listening to the echo of the just-played music in her soul. But +women were curious creatures, he could not help moralizing, and were +prone to lose their hearts most strangely and inconsequentially. Might +it not be that by his very music this youngster of a man was charming +the woman of her? + +With the departure of Ware, Paula Forrest retired almost completely +into her private wing behind the door without a knob. Nor did this seem +unusual, Graham gleaned from the household. + +"Paula is a woman who finds herself very good company," Ernestine +explained, "and she often goes in for periods of aloneness, when Dick +is the only person who sees her." + +"Which is not flattering to the rest of the company," Graham smiled. + +"Which makes her such good company whenever she is in company," +Ernestine retorted. + +The driftage through the Big House was decreasing. A few guests, on +business or friendship, continued to come, but more departed. Under Oh +Joy and his Chinese staff the Big House ran so frictionlessly and so +perfectly, that entertainment of guests seemed little part of the +host's duties. The guests largely entertained themselves and one +another. + +Dick rarely appeared, even for a moment, until lunch, and Paula, now +carrying out her seclusion program, never appeared before dinner. + +"Rest cure," Dick laughed one noon, and challenged Graham to a +tournament with boxing gloves, single-sticks, and foils. + +"And now's the time," he told Graham, as they breathed between bouts, +"for you to tackle your book. I'm only one of the many who are looking +forward to reading it, and I'm looking forward hard. Got a letter from +Havely yesterday--he mentioned it, and wondered how far along you were." + +So Graham, in his tower room, arranged his notes and photographs, +schemed out the work, and plunged into the opening chapters. So +immersed did he become that his nascent interest in Paula might have +languished, had it not been for meeting her each evening at dinner. +Then, too, until Ernestine and Lute left for Santa Barbara, there were +afternoon swims and rides and motor trips to the pastures of the +Miramar Hills and the upland ranges of the Anselmo Mountains. Other +trips they made, sometimes accompanied by Dick, to his great dredgers +working in the Sacramento basin, or his dam-building on the Little +Coyote and Los Cuatos creeks, or to his five-thousand-acre colony of +twenty-acre farmers, where he was trying to enable two hundred and +fifty heads of families, along with their families, to make good on the +soil. + +That Paula sometimes went for long solitary rides, Graham knew, and, +once, he caught her dismounting from the Fawn at the hitching rails. + +"Don't you think you are spoiling that mare for riding in company?" he +twitted. + +Paula laughed and shook her head. + +"Well, then," he asserted stoutly, "I'm spoiling for a ride with you." + +"There's Lute, and Ernestine, and Bert, and all the rest." + +"This is new country," he contended. "And one learns country through +the people who know it. I've seen it through the eyes of Lute, and +Ernestine and all the rest; but there is a lot I haven't seen and which +I can see only through your eyes." + +"A pleasant theory," she evaded. "A--a sort of landscape vampirism." + +"But without the ill effects of vampirism," he urged quickly. + +Her answer was slow in coming. Her look into his eyes was frank and +straight, and he could guess her words were weighed and gauged. + +"I don't know about that," was all she said finally; but his fancy +leaped at the several words, ranging and conjecturing their possible +connotations. + +"But we have so much we might be saying to each other," he tried again. +"So much we... ought to be saying to each other." + +"So I apprehend," she answered quietly; and again that frank, straight +look accompanied her speech. + +So she did apprehend--the thought of it was flame to him, but his +tongue was not quick enough to serve him to escape the cool, provoking +laugh as she turned into the house. + +Still the company of the Big House thinned. Paula's aunt, Mrs. Tully, +much to Graham's disappointment (for he had expected to learn from her +much that he wanted to know of Paula), had gone after only a several +days' stay. There was vague talk of her return for a longer stay; but, +just back from Europe, she declared herself burdened with a round of +duty visits which must be performed before her pleasure visiting began. + +O'Hay, the critic, had been compelled to linger several days in order +to live down the disastrous culmination of the musical raid made upon +him by the philosophers. The idea and the trick had been Dick's. Combat +had joined early in the evening, when a seeming chance remark of +Ernestine had enabled Aaron Hancock to fling the first bomb into the +thick of O'Hay's deepest convictions. Dar Hyal, a willing and eager +ally, had charged around the flank with his blastic theory of music and +taken O'Hay in reverse. And the battle had raged until the hot-headed +Irishman, beside himself with the grueling the pair of skilled +logomachists were giving him, accepted with huge relief the kindly +invitation of Terrence McFane to retire with him to the tranquillity +and repose of the stag room, where, over a soothing highball and far +from the barbarians, the two of them could have a heart to heart talk +on real music. At two in the morning, wild-eyed and befuddled, O'Hay +had been led to bed by the upright-walking and unshakably steady +Terrence. + +"Never mind," Ernestine had told O'Hay later, with a twinkle in her eye +that made him guess the plot. "It was only to be expected. Those +rattle-brained philosophers would drive even a saint to drink." + +"I thought you were safe in Terrence's hands," had been Dick's mock +apology. "A pair of Irishmen, you know. I'd forgot Terrence was +case-hardened. Do you know, after he said good night to you, he came up +to me for a yarn. And he was steady as a rock. He mentioned casually of +having had several sips, so I... I... never dreamed ... er... that he +had indisposed you." + +When Lute and Ernestine departed for Santa Barbara, Bert Wainwright and +his sister remembered their long-neglected home in Sacramento. A pair +of painters, proteges of Paula, arrived the same day. But they were +little in evidence, spending long days in the hills with a trap and +driver and smoking long pipes in the stag room. + +The free and easy life of the Big House went on in its frictionless +way. Dick worked. Graham worked. Paula maintained her seclusion. The +sages from the madrono grove strayed in for wordy dinners--and wordy +evenings, except when Paula played for them. Automobile parties, from +Sacramento, Wickenberg, and other valley towns, continued to drop in +unexpectedly, but never to the confusion of Oh Joy and the house boys, +whom Graham saw, on occasion, with twenty minutes' warning, seat a +score of unexpected guests to a perfect dinner. And there were even +nights--rare ones--when only Dick and Graham and Paula sat at dinner, +and when, afterward, the two men yarned for an hour before an early +bed, while she played soft things to herself or disappeared earlier +than they. + +But one moonlight evening, when the Watsons and Masons and Wombolds +arrived in force, Graham found himself out, when every bridge table was +made up. Paula was at the piano. As he approached he caught the quick +expression of pleasure in her eyes at sight of him, which as quickly +vanished. She made a slight movement as if to rise, which did not +escape his notice any more than did her quiet mastery of the impulse +that left her seated. + +She was immediately herself as he had always seen her--although it was +little enough he had seen of her, he thought, as he talked whatever +came into his head, and rummaged among her songs with her. Now one and +now another song he tried with her, subduing his high baritone to her +light soprano with such success as to win cries of more from the bridge +players. + +"Yes, I am positively aching to be out again over the world with Dick," +she told him in a pause. "If we could only start to-morrow! But Dick +can't start yet. He's in too deep with too many experiments and +adventures on the ranch here. Why, what do you think he's up to now? As +if he did not have enough on his hands, he's going to revolutionize the +sales end, or, at least, the California and Pacific Coast portion of +it, by making the buyers come to the ranch." + +"But they do do that," Graham said. "The first man I met here was a +buyer from Idaho." + +"Oh, but Dick means as an institution, you know--to make them come en +masse at a stated time. Not simple auction sales, either, though he +says he will bait them with a bit of that to excite interest. It will +be an annual fair, to last three days, in which he will be the only +exhibitor. He's spending half his mornings now in conference with Mr. +Agar and Mr. Pitts. Mr. Agar is his sales manager, and Mr. Pitts his +showman." + +She sighed and rippled her fingers along the keyboard. + +"But, oh, if only we could get away--Timbuctoo, Mokpo, or Jericho." + +"Don't tell me you've ever been to Mokpo," Graham laughed. + +She nodded. "Cross my heart, solemnly, hope to die. It was with Dick in +the _All Away_ and in the long ago. It might almost be said we +honeymooned in Mokpo." + +And while Graham exchanged reminiscences of Mokpo with her, he cudgeled +his brain to try and decide whether her continual reference to her +husband was deliberate. + +"I should imagine you found it such a paradise here," he was saying. + +"I do, I do," she assured him with what seemed unnecessary vehemence. +"But I don't know what's come over me lately. I feel it imperative to +be up and away. The spring fret, I suppose; the Red Gods and their +medicine. And if only Dick didn't insist on working his head off and +getting tied down with projects! Do you know, in all the years of our +marriage, the only really serious rival I have ever had has been this +ranch. He's pretty faithful, and the ranch _is_ his first love. He had +it all planned and started before he ever met me or knew I existed." + +"Here, let us try this together," Graham said abruptly, placing the +song on the rack before her. + +"Oh, but it's the 'Gypsy Trail,'" she protested. "It will only make my +mood worse." And she hummed: + + "'Follow the Romany patteran + West to the sinking sun, + Till the junk sails lift through the homeless drift, + And the East and the West are one.' + +"What is the Romany patteran?" she broke off to ask. "I've always +thought of it as patter, or patois, the Gypsy patois, and somehow it +strikes me as absurd to follow a language over the world--a sort of +philological excursion." + +"In a way the patteran is speech," he answered. "But it always says one +thing: 'This way I have passed.' Two sprigs, crossed in certain ways +and left upon the trail, compose the patteran. But they must always be +of different trees or shrubs. Thus, on the ranch here, a patteran could +be made of manzanita and madrono, of oak and spruce, of buckeye and +alder, of redwood and laurel, of huckleberry and lilac. It is a sign of +Gypsy comrade to Gypsy comrade, of Gypsy lover to Gypsy lover." And he +hummed: + + "'Back to the road again, again, + Out of a clear sea track; + Follow the cross of the Gypsy trail, + Over the world and back.'" + +She nodded comprehension, looked for a moment with troubled eyes down +the long room to the card-players, caught herself in her momentary +absentness, and said quickly: + +"Heaven knows there's a lot of Gypsy in some of us. I have more than +full share. In spite of his bucolic proclivities, Dick is a born Gypsy. +And from what he has told of you, you are hopelessly one." + +"After all, the white man is the real Gypsy, the king Gypsy," Graham +propounded. "He has wandered wider, wilder, and with less equipment, +than any Gypsy. The Gypsy has followed in his trails, but never made +trail for him.--Come; let us try it." + +And as they sang the reckless words to their merry, careless lilt, he +looked down at her and wondered--wondered at her--at himself. This was +no place for him by this woman's side, under her husband's roof-tree. +Yet here he was, and he should have gone days before. After the years +he was just getting acquainted with himself. This was enchantment, +madness. He should tear himself away at once. He had known enchantments +and madnesses before, and had torn himself away. Had he softened with +the years? he questioned himself. Or was this a profounder madness than +he had experienced? This meant the violation of dear things--things so +dear, so jealously cherished and guarded in his secret life, that never +yet had they suffered violation. + +And still he did not tear himself away. He stood there beside her, +looking down on her brown crown of hair glinting gold and bronze and +bewitchingly curling into tendrils above her ears, singing a song that +was fire to him--that must be fire to her, she being what she was and +feeling what she had already, in flashes, half-unwittingly, hinted to +him. + +She is a witch, and her voice is not the least of her witchery, he +thought, as _her_ voice, so richly a woman's voice, so essentially her +voice in contradistinction to all women's voices in the world, sang and +throbbed in his ear. And he knew, beyond shade of doubt, that she felt +some touch of this madness that afflicted him; that she sensed, as he +sensed, that the man and the woman were met. + +They thrilled together as they sang, and the thought and the sure +knowledge of it added fuel to his own madness till his voice warmed +unconsciously to the daring of the last lines, as, voices and thrills +blending, they sang: + + "'The wild hawk to the wind-swept sky, + The deer to the wholesome wold, + And the heart of a man to the heart of a maid + As it was in the days of old-- + The heart of a man to the heart of a maid, + Light of my tents be fleet, + Morning waits at the end of the world, + And the world is all at our feet.'" + +He looked for her to look up as the last notes died away, but she +remained quiet a moment, her eyes bent on the keys. And then the face +that was turned to his was the face of the Little Lady of the Big +House, the mouth smiling mischievously, the eyes filled with roguery, +as she said: + +"Let us go and devil Dick--he's losing. I've never seen him lose his +temper at cards, but he gets ridiculously blue after a long siege of +losing. + +"And he does love gambling," she continued, as she led the way to the +tables. "It's one of his modes of relaxing. It does him good. About +once or twice a year, if it's a good poker game, he'll sit in all night +to it and play to the blue sky if they take off the limit." + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + + + +Almost immediately after the singing of the "Gypsy Trail," Paula +emerged from her seclusion, and Graham found himself hard put, in the +tower room, to keep resolutely to his work when all the morning he +could hear snatches of song and opera from her wing, or laughter and +scolding of dogs from the great patio, or the continuous pulse for +hours of the piano from the distant music room. But Graham, patterning +after Dick, devoted his mornings to work, so that he rarely encountered +Paula before lunch. + +She made announcement that her spell of insomnia was over and that she +was ripe for all gaieties and excursions Dick had to offer her. +Further, she threatened, in case Dick grudged these personal +diversions, to fill the house with guests and teach him what liveliness +was. It was at this time that her Aunt Martha--Mrs. Tully--returned for +a several days' visit, and that Paula resumed the driving of Duddy and +Fuddy in the high, one-seated Stude-baker trap. Duddy and Fuddy were +spirited trotters, but Mrs. Tully, despite her elderliness and +avoirdupois, was without timidity when Paula held the reins. + +As Mrs. Tully told Graham: "And that is a concession I make to no woman +save Paula. She is the only woman I can trust myself to with horses. +She has the horse-way about her. When she was a child she was wild over +horses. It's a wonder she didn't become a circus rider." + +More, much more, Graham learned about Paula in various chats with her +aunt. Of Philip Desten, Paula's father, Mrs. Tully could never say +enough. Her eldest brother, and older by many years, he had been her +childhood prince. His ways had been big ways, princely ways--ways that +to commoner folk had betokened a streak of madness. He was continually +guilty of the wildest things and the most chivalrous things. It was +this streak that had enabled him to win various fortunes, and with +equal facility to lose them, in the great gold adventure of Forty-nine. +Himself of old New England stock, he had had for great grandfather a +Frenchman--a trifle of flotsam from a mid-ocean wreck and landed to +grow up among the farmer-sailormen of the coast of Maine. + +"And once, and once only, in each generation, that French Desten crops +out," Mrs. Tully assured Graham. "Philip was that Frenchman in his +generation, and who but Paula, and in full measure, received that same +inheritance in her generation. Though Lute and Ernestine are her +half-sisters, no one would imagine one drop of the common blood was +shared. That's why Paula, instead of going circus-riding, drifted +inevitably to France. It was that old original Desten that drew her +over." + +And of the adventure in France, Graham learned much. Philip Desten's +luck had been to die when the wheel of his fortune had turned over and +down. Ernestine and Lute, little tots, had been easy enough for +Desten's sisters to manage. But Paula, who had fallen to Mrs. Tully, +had been the problem--"because of that Frenchman." + +"Oh, she is rigid New England," Mrs. Tully insisted, "the solidest of +creatures as to honor and rectitude, dependableness and faithfulness. +As a girl she really couldn't bring herself to lie, except to save +others. In which case all her New England ancestry took flight and she +would lie as magnificently as her father before her. And he had the +same charm of manner, the same daring, the same ready laughter, the +same vivacity. But what is lightsome and blithe in her, was debonaire +in him. He won men's hearts always, or, failing that, their bitterest +enmity. No one was left cold by him in passing. Contact with him +quickened them to love or hate. Therein Paula differs, being a woman, I +suppose, and not enjoying man's prerogative of tilting at windmills. I +don't know that she has an enemy in the world. All love her, unless, it +may well be, there are cat-women who envy her her nice husband." + +And as Graham listened, Paula's singing came through the open window +from somewhere down the long arcades, and there was that ever-haunting +thrill in her voice that he could not escape remembering afterward. She +burst into laughter, and Mrs. Tully beamed to him and nodded at the +sound. + +"There laughs Philip Desten," she murmured, "and all the Frenchwomen +behind the original Frenchman who was brought into Penobscot, dressed +in homespun, and sent to meeting. Have you noticed how Paula's laugh +invariably makes everybody look up and smile? Philip's laugh did the +same thing." + +"Paula had always been passionately fond of music, painting, drawing. +As a little girl she could be traced around the house and grounds by +the trail she left behind her of images and shapes, made in whatever +medium she chanced upon--drawn on scraps of paper, scratched on bits of +wood, modeled in mud and sand. + +"She loved everything, and everything loved her," said Mrs. Tully. "She +was never timid of animals. And yet she always stood in awe of them; +but she was born sense-struck, and her awe was beauty-awe. Yes, she was +an incorrigible hero-worshiper, whether the person was merely beautiful +or did things. And she never will outgrow that beauty--awe of anything +she loves, whether it is a grand piano, a great painting, a beautiful +mare, or a bit of landscape. + +"And Paula had wanted to do, to make beauty herself. But she was sorely +puzzled whether she should devote herself to music or painting. In the +full swing of work under the best masters in Boston, she could not +refrain from straying back to her drawing. From her easel she was lured +to modeling. + + "And so, with her love of the best, her soul and heart full of +beauty, she grew quite puzzled and worried over herself, as to which +talent was the greater and if she had genius at all. I suggested a +complete rest from work and took her abroad for a year. And of all +things, she developed a talent for dancing. But always she harked back +to her music and painting. No, she was not flighty. Her trouble was +that she was too talented--" + +"Too diversely talented," Graham amplified. + +"Yes, that is better," Mrs. Tully nodded. "But from talent to genius is +a far cry, and to save my life, at this late day, I don't know whether +the child ever had a trace of genius in her. She has certainly not done +anything big in any of her chosen things." + +"Except to be herself," Graham added. + +"Which _is_ the big thing," Mrs. Tully accepted with a smile of +enthusiasm. "She is a splendid, unusual woman, very unspoiled, very +natural. And after all, what does doing things amount to? I'd give more +for one of Paula's madcap escapades--oh, I heard all about swimming the +big stallion--than for all her pictures if every one was a masterpiece. +But she was hard for me to understand at first. Dick often calls her +the girl that never grew up. But gracious, she can put on the grand air +when she needs to. I call her the most mature child I have ever seen. +Dick was the finest thing that ever happened to her. It was then that +she really seemed for the first time to find herself. It was this way." + +And Mrs. Tully went on to sketch the year of travel in Europe, the +resumption of Paula's painting in Paris, and the conviction she finally +reached that success could be achieved only by struggle and that her +aunt's money was a handicap. + +"And she had her way," Mrs. Tully sighed. "She--why, she dismissed me, +sent me home. She would accept no more than the meagerest allowance, +and went down into the Latin Quarter on her own, batching with two +other American girls. And she met Dick. Dick was a rare one. You +couldn't guess what he was doing then. Running a cabaret--oh, not these +modern cabarets, but a real students' cabaret of sorts. It was very +select. They were a lot of madmen. You see, he was just back from some +of his wild adventuring at the ends of the earth, and, as he stated it, +he wanted to stop living life for a while and to talk about life +instead. + +"Paula took me there once. Oh, they were engaged--the day before, and +he had called on me and all that. I had known 'Lucky' Richard Forrest, +and I knew all about his son. From a worldly standpoint, Paula couldn't +have made a finer marriage. It was quite a romance. Paula had seen him +captain the University of California eleven to victory over Stanford. +And the next time she saw him was in the studio she shared with the two +girls. She didn't know whether Dick was worth millions or whether he +was running a cabaret because he was hard up, and she cared less. She +always followed her heart. Fancy the situation: Dick the uncatchable, +and Paula who never flirted. They must have sprung forthright into each +other's arms, for inside the week it was all arranged, and Dick made +his call on me, as if my decision meant anything one way or the other. + +"But Dick's cabaret. It was the Cabaret of the Philosophers--a small +pokey place, down in a cellar, in the heart of the Quarter, and it had +only one table. Fancy that for a cabaret! But such a table! A big round +one, of plain boards, without even an oil-cloth, the wood stained with +the countless drinks spilled by the table-pounding of the philosophers, +and it could seat thirty. Women were not permitted. An exception was +made for Paula and me. + +"You've met Aaron Hancock here. He was one of the philosophers, and to +this day he swaggers that he owed Dick a bigger bill that never was +paid than any of his customers. And there they used to meet, all those +wild young thinkers, and pound the table, and talk philosophy in all +the tongues of Europe. Dick always had a penchant for philosophers. + +"But Paula spoiled that little adventure. No sooner were they married +than Dick fitted out his schooner, the All Away, and away the blessed +pair of them went, honeymooning from Bordeaux to Hongkong." + +"And the cabaret was closed, and the philosophers left homeless and +discussionless," Graham remarked. + +Mrs. Tully laughed heartily and shook her head. + +"He endowed it for them," she gasped, her hand to her side. "Or +partially endowed it, or something. I don't know what the arrangement +was. And within the month it was raided by the police for an anarchist +club." + +After having learned the wide scope of her interests and talents, +Graham was nevertheless surprised one day at finding Paula all by +herself in a corner of a window-seat, completely absorbed in her work +on a piece of fine embroidery. + +"I love it," she explained. "All the costly needlework of the shops +means nothing to me alongside of my own work on my own designs. Dick +used to fret at my sewing. He's all for efficiency, you know, +elimination of waste energy and such things. He thought sewing was a +wasting of time. Peasants could be hired for a song to do what I was +doing. But I succeeded in making my viewpoint clear to him. + +"It's like the music one makes oneself. Of course I can buy better +music than I make; but to sit down at an instrument and evoke the music +oneself, with one's own fingers and brain, is an entirely different and +dearer satisfaction. Whether one tries to emulate another's +performance, or infuses the performance with one's own personality and +interpretation, it's all the same. It is soul-joy and fulfilment. + +"Take this little embroidered crust of lilies on the edge of this +flounce--there is nothing like it in the world. Mine the idea, all +mine, and mine the delight of giving form and being to the idea. There +are better ideas and better workmanship in the shops; but this is +different. It is mine. I visioned it, and I made it. And who is to say +that embroidery is not art?" + +She ceased speaking and with her eyes laughed the insistence of her +question. + +"And who is to say," Graham agreed, "that the adorning of beautiful +womankind is not the worthiest of all the arts as well as the sweetest?" + +"I rather stand in awe of a good milliner or modiste," she nodded +gravely. "They really are artists, and important ones, as Dick would +phrase it, in the world's economy." + + * * * * * + +Another time, seeking the library for Andean reference, Graham came +upon Paula, sprawled gracefully over a sheet of paper on a big table +and flanked by ponderous architectural portfolios, engaged in drawing +plans of a log bungalow or camp for the sages of the madroño grove. + +"It's a problem," she sighed. "Dick says that if I build it I must +build it for seven. We've got four sages now, and his heart is set on +seven. He says never mind showers and such things, because what +philosopher ever bathes? And he has suggested seriously seven stoves +and seven kitchens, because it is just over such mundane things that +philosophers always quarrel." + +"Wasn't it Voltaire who quarreled with a king over candle-ends?" Graham +queried, pleasuring in the sight of her graceful abandon. Thirty-eight! +It was impossible. She seemed almost a girl, petulant and flushed over +some school task. Then he remembered Mrs. Tully's remark that Paula was +the most mature child she had ever known. + +It made him wonder. Was she the one, who, under the oaks at the +hitching rails, with two brief sentences had cut to the heart of an +impending situation? "So I apprehend," she had said. What had she +apprehended? Had she used the phrase glibly, without meaning? Yet she +it was who had thrilled and fluttered to him and with him when they had +sung the "Gypsy Trail." _That_ he knew. But again, had he not seen her +warm and glow to the playing of Donald Ware? But here Graham's ego had +its will of him, for he told himself that with Donald Ware it was +different. And he smiled to himself and at himself at the thought. + +"What amuses you?" Paula was asking. + +"Heaven knows I am no architect. And I challenge you to house seven +philosophers according to all the absurd stipulations laid down by +Dick." + +Back in his tower room with his Andean books unopened before him, +Graham gnawed his lip and meditated. The woman was no woman. She was +the veriest child. Or--and he hesitated at the thought--was this +naturalness that was overdone? Did she in truth apprehend? It must be. +It had to be. She was of the world. She knew the world. She was very +wise. No remembered look of her gray eyes but gave the impression of +poise and power. That was it--strength! He recalled her that first +night when she had seemed at times to glint an impression of steel, of +thin and jewel-like steel. In his fancy, at the time, he remembered +likening her strength to ivory, to carven pearl shell, to sennit +twisted of maidens' hair. + +And he knew, now, ever since the brief words at the hitching rails and +the singing of the "Gypsy Trail," that whenever their eyes looked into +each other's it was with a mutual knowledge of unsaid things. + +In vain he turned the pages of the books for the information he sought. +He tried to continue his chapter without the information, but no words +flowed from his pen. A maddening restlessness was upon him. He seized a +time table and pondered the departure of trains, changed his mind, +switched the room telephone to the house barn, and asked to have +Altadena saddled. + +It was a perfect morning of California early summer. No breath of wind +stirred over the drowsing fields, from which arose the calls of quail +and the notes of meadowlarks. The air was heavy with lilac fragrance, +and from the distance, as he rode between the lilac hedges, Graham +heard the throaty nicker of Mountain Lad and the silvery answering +whinney of the Fotherington Princess. + +Why was he here astride Dick Forrest's horse? Graham asked himself. Why +was he not even then on the way to the station to catch that first +train he had noted on the time table? This unaccustomed weakness of +decision and action was a new rôle for him, he considered bitterly. +But--and he was on fire with the thought of it--this was his one life, +and this was the one woman in the world. + +He reined aside to let a herd of Angora goats go by. Each was a doe, +and there were several hundred of them; and they were moved slowly by +the Basque herdsmen, with frequent pauses, for each doe was accompanied +by a young kid. In the paddock were many mares with new-born colts; and +once, receiving warning in time, Graham raced into a crossroad to +escape a drove of thirty yearling stallions being moved somewhere +across the ranch. Their excitement was communicated to that entire +portion of the ranch, so that the air was filled with shrill nickerings +and squealings and answering whinneys, while Mountain Lad, beside +himself at sight and sound of so many rivals, raged up and down his +paddock, and again and again trumpeted his challenging conviction that +he was the most amazing and mightiest thing that had ever occurred on +earth in the way of horse flesh. + +Dick Forrest pranced and sidled into the cross road on the Outlaw, his +face beaming with delight at the little tempest among his many +creatures. + +"Fecundity! Fecundity!"--he chanted in greeting, as he reined in to a +halt, if halt it might be called, with his tan-golden sorrel mare +a-fret and a-froth, wickedly reaching with her teeth now for his leg +and next for Graham's, one moment pawing the roadway, the next moment, +in sheer impotence of resentfulness, kicking the empty air with one +hind leg and kicking the air repeatedly, a dozen times. + +"Those youngsters certainly put Mountain Lad on his mettle," Dick +laughed. "Listen to his song: + +"'Hear me! I am Eros. I stamp upon the hills. I fill the wide valleys. +The mares hear me, and startle, in quiet pastures; for they know me. +The land is filled with fatness, and the sap is in the trees. It is the +spring. The spring is mine. I am monarch of my kingdom of the spring. +The mares remember my voice. They knew me aforetime through their +mothers before them. Hear me! I am Eros. I stamp upon the hills, and +the wide valleys are my heralds, echoing the sound of my approach.'" + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + + + +After Mrs. Tully's departure, Paula, true to her threat, filled the +house with guests. She seemed to have remembered all who had been +waiting an invitation, and the limousine that met the trains eight +miles away was rarely empty coming or going. There were more singers +and musicians and artist folk, and bevies of young girls with their +inevitable followings of young men, while mammas and aunts and +chaperons seemed to clutter all the ways of the Big House and to fill a +couple of motor cars when picnics took place. + +And Graham wondered if this surrounding of herself by many people was +not deliberate on Paula's part. As for himself, he definitely abandoned +work on his book, and joined in the before-breakfast swims of the +hardier younger folk, in the morning rides over the ranch, and in +whatever fun was afoot indoors and out. + +Late hours and early were kept; and one night, Dick, who adhered to his +routine and never appeared to his guests before midday, made a night of +it at poker in the stag-room. Graham had sat in, and felt well repaid +when, at dawn, the players received an unexpected visit from +Paula--herself past one of her white nights, she said, although no sign +of it showed on her fresh skin and color. Graham had to struggle to +keep his eyes from straying too frequently to her as she mixed golden +fizzes to rejuvenate the wan-eyed, jaded players. Then she made them +start the round of "jacks" that closed the game, and sent them off for +a cold swim before breakfast and the day's work or frolic. + +Never was Paula alone. Graham could only join in the groups that were +always about her. Although the young people ragged and tangoed +incessantly, she rarely danced, and then it was with the young men. +Once, however, she favored him with an old-fashioned waltz. "Your +ancestors in an antediluvian dance," she mocked the young people, as +she stepped out; for she and Graham had the floor to themselves. + +Once down the length of the room, the two were in full accord. Paula, +with the sympathy Graham recognized that made her the exceptional +accompanist or rider, subdued herself to the masterful art of the man, +until the two were as parts of a sentient machine that operated without +jar or friction. After several minutes, finding their perfect mutual +step and pace, and Graham feeling the absolute giving of Paula to the +dance, they essayed rhythmical pauses and dips, their feet never +leaving the floor, yet affecting the onlookers in the way Dick voiced +it when he cried out: "They float! They float!" The music was the +"Waltz of Salomé," and with its slow-fading end they postured slower +and slower to a perfect close. + +There was no need to speak. In silence, without a glance at each other, +they returned to the company where Dick was proclaiming: + +"Well, younglings, codlings, and other fry, that's the way we old folks +used to dance. I'm not saying anything against the new dances, mind +you. They're all right and dandy fine. But just the same it wouldn't +injure you much to learn to waltz properly. The way you waltz, when you +do attempt it, is a scream. We old folks do know a thing or two that is +worth while." + +"For instance?" queried one of the girls. + +"I'll tell you. I don't mind the young generation smelling of gasoline +the way it does--" + +Cries and protests drowned Dick out for a moment. + +"I know I smell of it myself," he went on. "But you've all failed to +learn the good old modes of locomotion. There isn't a girl of you that +Paula can't walk into the ground. There isn't a fellow of you that +Graham and I can't walk into a receiving hospital.--Oh, I know you can +all crank engines and shift gears to the queen's taste. But there isn't +one of you that can properly ride a horse--a real horse, in the only +way, I mean. As for driving a smart pair of roadsters, it's a screech. +And how many of you husky lads, hell-scooting on the bay in your +speed-boats, can take the wheel of an old-time sloop or schooner, +without an auxiliary, and get out of your own way in her?" + +"But we get there just the same," the same girl retorted. + +"And I don't deny it," Dick answered. "But you are not always pretty. +I'll tell you a pretty sight that no one of you can ever +present--Paula, there, with the reins of four slashing horses in her +hands, her foot on the brake, swinging tally-ho along a mountain road." + + On a warm morning, in the cool arcade of the great patio, a chance +group of four or five, among whom was Paula, formed about Graham, who +had been reading alone. After a time he returned to his magazine with +such absorption that he forgot those about him until an awareness of +silence penetrated to his consciousness. He looked up. All the others +save Paula had strayed off. He could hear their distant laughter from +across the patio. But Paula! He surprised the look on her face, in her +eyes. It was a look bent on him, concerning him. Doubt, speculation, +almost fear, were in her eyes; and yet, in that swift instant, he had +time to note that it was a look deep and searching--almost, his quick +fancy prompted, the look of one peering into the just-opened book of +fate. Her eyes fluttered and fell, and the color increased in her +cheeks in an unmistakable blush. Twice her lips moved to the verge of +speech; yet, caught so arrantly in the act, she was unable to phrase +any passing thought. Graham saved the painful situation by saying +casually: + +"Do you know, I've just been reading De Vries' eulogy of Luther +Burbank's work, and it seems to me that Dick is to the domestic animal +world what Burbank is to the domestic vegetable world. You are +life-makers here--thumbing the stuff into new forms of utility and +beauty." + +Paula, by this time herself again, laughed and accepted the compliment. + +"I fear me," Graham continued with easy seriousness, "as I watch your +achievements, that I can only look back on a misspent life. Why didn't +I get in and _make_ things? I'm horribly envious of both of you." + +"We _are_ responsible for a dreadful lot of creatures being born," she +said. "It makes one breathless to think of the responsibility." + +"The ranch certainly spells fecundity," Graham smiled. "I never before +was so impressed with the flowering and fruiting of life. Everything +here prospers and multiplies--" + +"Oh!" Paula cried, breaking in with a sudden thought. "Some day I'll +show you my goldfish. I breed them, too--yea, and commercially. I +supply the San Francisco dealers with their rarest strains, and I even +ship to New York. And, best of all, I actually make money--profits, I +mean. Dick's books show it, and he is the most rigid of bookkeepers. +There isn't a tack-hammer on the place that isn't inventoried; nor a +horse-shoe nail unaccounted for. That's why he has such a staff of +bookkeepers. Why, do you know, calculating every last least item of +expense, including average loss of time for colic and lameness, out of +fearfully endless columns of figures he has worked the cost of an +hour's labor for a draught horse to the third decimal place." + +"But your goldfish," Graham suggested, irritated by her constant +dwelling on her husband. + +"Well, Dick makes his bookkeepers keep track of my goldfish in the same +way. I'm charged every hour of any of the ranch or house labor I use on +the fish--postage stamps and stationery, too, if you please. I have to +pay interest on the plant. He even charges me for the water, just as if +he were a city water company and I a householder. And still I net ten +per cent., and have netted as high as thirty. But Dick laughs and says +when I've deducted the wages of superintendence--my superintendence, he +means--that I'll find I am poorly paid or else am operating at a loss; +that with my net I couldn't hire so capable a superintendent. + +"Just the same, that's why Dick succeeds in his undertakings. Unless +it's sheer experiment, he never does anything without knowing +precisely, to the last microscopic detail, what it is he is doing." + +"He is very sure," Graham observed. + +"I never knew a man to be so sure of himself," Paula replied warmly; +"and I never knew a man with half the warrant. I know him. He is a +genius--but only in the most paradoxical sense. He is a genius because +he is so balanced and normal that he hasn't the slightest particle of +genius in him. Such men are rarer and greater than geniuses. I like to +think of Abraham Lincoln as such a type." + +"I must admit I don't quite get you," Graham said. + +"Oh, I don't dare to say that Dick is as good, as cosmically good, as +Lincoln," she hurried on. "Dick _is_ good, but it is not that. It is in +their excessive balance, normality, lack of flare, that they are of the +same type. Now I am a genius. For, see, I do things without knowing how +I do them. I just do them. I get effects in my music that way. Take my +diving. To save my life I couldn't tell how I swan-dive, or jump, or do +the turn and a half. + +"Dick, on the other hand, can't do anything unless he clearly knows in +advance _how_ he is going to do it. He does everything with balance and +foresight. He's a general, all-around wonder, without ever having been +a particular wonder at any one thing.--Oh, I know him. He's never been +a champion or a record-breaker in any line of athletics. Nor has he +been mediocre in any line. And so with everything else, mentally, +intellectually. He is an evenly forged chain. He has no massive links, +no weak links." + +"I'm afraid I'm like you," Graham said, "that commoner and lesser +creature, a genius. For I, too, on occasion, flare and do the most +unintentional things. And I am not above falling on my knees before +mystery." + +"And Dick hates mystery--or it would seem he does. Not content with +knowing _how_--he is eternally seeking the _why_ of the _how_. Mystery +is a challenge to him. It excites him like a red rag does a bull. At +once he is for ripping the husks and the heart from mystery, so that he +will know the _how_ and the _why_, when it will be no longer mystery +but a generalization and a scientifically demonstrable fact." + + Much of the growing situation was veiled to the three figures of it. +Graham did not know of Paula's desperate efforts to cling close to her +husband, who, himself desperately busy with his thousand plans and +projects, was seeing less and less of his company. He always appeared +at lunch, but it was a rare afternoon when he could go out with his +guests. Paula did know, from the multiplicity of long, code telegrams +from Mexico, that things were in a parlous state with the Harvest +Group. Also, she saw the agents and emissaries of foreign investors in +Mexico, always in haste and often inopportune, arriving at the ranch to +confer with Dick. Beyond his complaint that they ate the heart out of +his time, he gave her no clew to the matters discussed. + +"My! I wish you weren't so busy," she sighed in his arms, on his knees, +one fortunate morning, when, at eleven o'clock, she had caught him +alone. + +It was true, she had interrupted the dictation of a letter into the +phonograph; and the sigh had been evoked by the warning cough of +Bonbright, whom she saw entering with more telegrams in his hand. + +"Won't you let me drive you this afternoon, behind Duddy and Fuddy, +just you and me, and cut the crowd?" she begged. + +He shook his head and smiled. + +"You'll meet at lunch a weird combination," he explained. "Nobody else +needs to know, but I'll tell you." He lowered his voice, while +Bonbright discreetly occupied himself at the filing cabinets. "They're +Tampico oil folk. Samuels himself, President of the Nacisco; and +Wishaar, the big inside man of the Pearson-Brooks crowd--the chap that +engineered the purchase of the East Coast railroad and the Tiuana +Central when they tried to put the Nacisco out of business; and +Matthewson--he's the _hi-yu-skookum_ big chief this side the Atlantic +of the Palmerston interests--you know, the English crowd that fought +the Nacisco and the Pearson-Brooks bunch so hard; and, oh, there'll be +several others. It shows you that things are rickety down Mexico way +when such a bunch stops scrapping and gets together. + +"You see, they are oil, and I'm important in my way down there, and +they want me to swing the mining interests in with the oil. Truly, big +things are in the air, and we've got to hang together and do something +or get out of Mexico. And I'll admit, after they gave me the turn-down +in the trouble three years ago, that I've sulked in my tent and made +them come to see me." + +He caressed her and called her his armful of dearest woman, although +she detected his eye roving impatiently to the phonograph with its +unfinished letter. + +"And so," he concluded, with a pressure of his arms about her that +seemed to hint that her moment with him was over and she must go, "that +means the afternoon. None will stop over. And they'll be off and away +before dinner." + +She slipped off his knees and out of his arms with unusual abruptness, +and stood straight up before him, her eyes flashing, her cheeks white, +her face set with determination, as if about to say something of grave +importance. But a bell tinkled softly, and he reached for the desk +telephone. + +Paula drooped, and sighed inaudibly, and, as she went down the room and +out the door, and as Bonbright stepped eagerly forward with the +telegrams, she could hear the beginning of her husband's conversation: + +"No. It is impossible. He's got to come through, or I'll put him out of +business. That gentleman's agreement is all poppycock. If it were only +that, of course he could break it. But I've got some mighty interesting +correspondence that he's forgotten about.... Yes, yes; it will clinch +it in any court of law. I'll have the file in your office by five this +afternoon. And tell him, for me, that if he tries to put through this +trick, I'll break him. I'll put a competing line on, and his steamboats +will be in the receiver's hands inside a year.... And... hello, are you +there?... And just look up that point I suggested. I am rather +convinced you'll find the Interstate Commerce has got him on two +counts...." + +Nor did Graham, nor even Paula, imagine that Dick--the keen one, the +deep one, who could see and sense things yet to occur and out of +intangible nuances and glimmerings build shrewd speculations and +hypotheses that subsequent events often proved correct--was already +sensing what had not happened but what might happen. He had not heard +Paula's brief significant words at the hitching post; nor had he seen +Graham catch her in that deep scrutiny of him under the arcade. Dick +had heard nothing, seen little, but sensed much; and, even in advance +of Paula, had he apprehended in vague ways what she afterward had come +to apprehend. + +The most tangible thing he had to build on was the night, immersed in +bridge, when he had not been unaware of the abrupt leaving of the piano +after the singing of the "Gypsy Trail"; nor when, in careless smiling +greeting of them when they came down the room to devil him over his +losing, had he failed to receive a hint or feeling of something unusual +in Paula's roguish teasing face. On the moment, laughing retorts, +giving as good as she sent, Dick's own laughing eyes had swept over +Graham beside her and likewise detected the unusual. The man was +overstrung, had been Dick's mental note at the time. But why should he +be overstrung? Was there any connection between his overstrungness and +the sudden desertion by Paula of the piano? And all the while these +questions were slipping through his thoughts, he had laughed at their +sallies, dealt, sorted his hand, and won the bid on no trumps. + +Yet to himself he had continued to discount as absurd and preposterous +the possibility of his vague apprehension ever being realized. It was a +chance guess, a silly speculation, based upon the most trivial data, he +sagely concluded. It merely connoted the attractiveness of his wife and +of his friend. But--and on occasional moments he could not will the +thought from coming uppermost in his mind--why had they broken off from +singing that evening? Why had he received the feeling that there was +something unusual about it? Why had Graham been overstrung? + + * * * * * + +Nor did Bonbright, one morning, taking dictation of a telegram in the +last hour before noon, know that Dick's casual sauntering to the +window, still dictating, had been caused by the faint sound of hoofs on +the driveway. It was not the first of recent mornings that Dick had so +sauntered to the window, to glance out with apparent absentness at the +rush of the morning riding party in the last dash home to the hitching +rails. But he knew, on this morning, before the first figures came in +sight whose those figures would be. + +"Braxton is safe," he went on with the dictation without change of +tone, his eyes on the road where the riders must first come into view. +"If things break he can get out across the mountains into Arizona. See +Connors immediately. Braxton left Connors complete instructions. +Connors to-morrow in Washington. Give me fullest details any +move--signed." + +Up the driveway the Fawn and Altadena clattered neck and neck. Dick had +not been disappointed in the figures he expected to see. From the rear, +cries and laughter and the sound of many hoofs tokened that the rest of +the party was close behind. + +"And the next one, Mr. Bonbright, please put in the Harvest code," Dick +went on steadily, while to himself he was commenting that Graham was a +passable rider but not an excellent one, and that it would have to be +seen to that he was given a heavier horse than Altadena. "It is to +Jeremy Braxton. Send it both ways. There is a chance one or the other +may get through..." + + + + +CHAPTER XX + + + +Once again the tide of guests ebbed from the Big House, and more than +one lunch and dinner found only the two men and Paula at the table. On +such evenings, while Graham and Dick yarned for their hour before bed, +Paula no longer played soft things to herself at the piano, but sat +with them doing fine embroidery and listening to the talk. + +Both men had much in common, had lived life in somewhat similar ways, +and regarded life from the same angles. Their philosophy was harsh +rather than sentimental, and both were realists. Paula made a practice +of calling them the pair of "Brass Tacks." + +"Oh, yes," she laughed to them, "I understand your attitude. You are +successes, the pair of you--physical successes, I mean. You have +health. You are resistant. You can stand things. You have survived +where men less resistant have gone down. You pull through African +fevers and bury the other fellows. This poor chap gets pneumonia in +Cripple Creek and cashes in before you can get him to sea level. Now +why didn't you get pneumonia? Because you were more deserving? Because +you had lived more virtuously? Because you were more careful of risks +and took more precautions?" + +She shook her head. + +"No. Because you were luckier--I mean by birth, by possession of +constitution and stamina. Why, Dick buried his three mates and two +engineers at Guayaquil. Yellow fever. Why didn't the yellow fever germ, +or whatever it is, kill Dick? And the same with you, Mr. +Broad-shouldered Deep-chested Graham. In this last trip of yours, why +didn't you die in the swamps instead of your photographer? Come. +Confess. How heavy was he? How broad were his shoulders? How deep his +chest?--wide his nostrils?--tough his resistance?" + +"He weighed a hundred and thirty-five," Graham admitted ruefully. "But +he looked all right and fit at the start. I think I was more surprised +than he when he turned up his toes." Graham shook his head. "It wasn't +because he was a light weight and small. The small men are usually the +toughest, other things being equal. But you've put your finger on the +reason just the same. He didn't have the physical stamina, the +resistance,--You know what I mean, Dick?" + +"In a way it's like the quality of muscle and heart that enables some +prizefighters to go the distance--twenty, thirty, forty rounds, say," +Dick concurred. "Right now, in San Francisco, there are several hundred +youngsters dreaming of success in the ring. I've watched them trying +out. All look good, fine-bodied, healthy, fit as fiddles, and young. +And their spirits are most willing. And not one in ten of them can last +ten rounds. I don't mean they get knocked out. I mean they blow up. +Their muscles and their hearts are not made out of first-grade fiber. +They simply are not made to move at high speed and tension for ten +rounds. And some of them blow up in four or five rounds. And not one in +forty can go the twenty-round route, give and take, hammer and tongs, +one minute of rest to three of fight, for a full hour of fighting. And +the lad who can last forty rounds is one in ten thousand--lads like +Nelson, Gans, and Wolgast. + +"You understand the point I am making," Paula took up. "Here are the +pair of you. Neither will see forty again. You're a pair of hard-bitten +sinners. You've gone through hardship and exposure that dropped others +all along the way. You've had your fun and folly. You've roughed and +rowdied over the world--" + +"Played the wild ass," Graham laughed in. + +"And drunk deep," Paula added. "Why, even alcohol hasn't burned you. +You were too tough. You put the other fellows under the table, or into +the hospital or the grave, and went your gorgeous way, a song on your +lips, with tissues uncorroded, and without even the morning-after +headache. And the point is that you are successes. Your muscles are +blond-beast muscles, your vital organs are blond-beast organs. And from +all this emanates your blond-beast philosophy. That's why you are brass +tacks, and preach realism, and practice realism, shouldering and +shoving and walking over lesser and unluckier creatures, who don't dare +talk back, who, like Dick's prizefighting boys, would blow up in the +first round if they resorted to the arbitrament of force." + +Dick whistled a long note of mock dismay. + +"And that's why you preach the gospel of the strong," Paula went on. +"If you had been weaklings, you'd have preached the gospel of the weak +and turned the other cheek. But you--you pair of big-muscled +giants--when you are struck, being what you are, you don't turn the +other cheek--" + +"No," Dick interrupted quietly. "We immediately roar, 'Knock his block +off!' and then do it.--She's got us, Evan, hip and thigh. Philosophy, +like religion, is what the man is, and is by him made in his own image." + +And while the talk led over the world, Paula sewed on, her eyes filled +with the picture of the two big men, admiring, wondering, pondering, +without the surety of self that was theirs, aware of a slipping and +giving of convictions so long accepted that they had seemed part of her. + +Later in the evening she gave voice to her trouble. + +"The strangest part of it," she said, taking up a remark Dick had just +made, "is that too much philosophizing about life gets one worse than +nowhere. A philosophic atmosphere is confusing--at least to a woman. +One hears so much about everything, and against everything, that +nothing is sure. For instance, Mendenhall's wife is a Lutheran. She +hasn't a doubt about anything. All is fixed, ordained, immovable. +Star-drifts and ice-ages she knows nothing about, and if she did they +would not alter in the least her rules of conduct for men and women in +this world and in relation to the next. + +"But here, with us, you two pound your brass tacks, Terrence does a +Greek dance of epicurean anarchism, Hancock waves the glittering veils +of Bergsonian metaphysics, Leo makes solemn obeisance at the altar of +Beauty, and Dar Hyal juggles his sophistic blastism to no end save all +your applause for his cleverness. Don't you see? The effect is that +there is nothing solid in any human judgment. Nothing is right. Nothing +is wrong. One is left compassless, rudderless, chartless on a sea of +ideas. Shall I do this? Must I refrain from that? Will it be wrong? Is +there any virtue in it? Mrs. Mendenhall has her instant answer for +every such question. But do the philosophers?" + +Paula shook her head. + +"No. All they have is ideas. They immediately proceed to talk about it, +and talk and talk and talk, and with all their erudition reach no +conclusion whatever. And I am just as bad. I listen and listen, and +talk and talk, as I am talking now, and remain convictionless. There is +no test--" + +"But there is," Dick said. "The old, eternal test of truth--_Will it +work?_" + +"Ah, now you are pounding your favorite brass tack," Paula smiled. "And +Dar Hyal, with a few arm-wavings and word-whirrings, will show that all +brass tacks are illusions; and Terrence, that brass tacks are sordid, +irrelevant and non-essential things at best; and Hancock, that the +overhanging heaven of Bergson is paved with brass tacks, only that they +are a much superior article to yours; and Leo, that there is only one +brass tack in the universe, and that it is Beauty, and that it isn't +brass at all but gold." + + * * * * * + +"Come on, Red Cloud, go riding this afternoon," Paula asked her +husband. "Get the cobwebs out of your brain, and let lawyers and mines +and livestock go hang." + +"I'd like to, Paul," he answered. "But I can't. I've got to rush in a +machine all the way to the Buckeye. Word came in just before lunch. +They're in trouble at the dam. There must have been a fault in the +under-strata, and too-heavy dynamiting has opened it. In short, what's +the good of a good dam when the bottom of the reservoir won't hold +water?" + +Three hours later, returning from the Buckeye, Dick noted that for the +first time Paula and Graham had gone riding together alone. + + * * * * * + +The Wainwrights and the Coghlans, in two machines, out for a week's +trip to the Russian River, rested over for a day at the Big House, and +were the cause of Paula's taking out the tally-ho for a picnic into the +Los Baños Hills. Starting in the morning, it was impossible for Dick to +accompany them, although he left Blake in the thick of dictation to go +out and see them off. He assured himself that no detail was amiss in +the harnessing and hitching, and reseated the party, insisting on +Graham coming forward into the box-seat beside Paula. + +"Just must have a reserve of man's strength alongside of Paula in case +of need," Dick explained. "I've known a brake-rod to carry away on a +down grade somewhat to the inconvenience of the passengers. Some of +them broke their necks. And now, to reassure you, with Paula at the +helm, I'll sing you a song: + + "What can little Paula do? + Why, drive a phaeton and two. + Can little Paula do no more? + Yes, drive a tally-ho and four." + +All were in laughter as Paula nodded to the grooms to release the +horses' heads, took the feel of the four mouths on her hands, and +shortened and slipped the reins to adjustment of four horses into the +collars and taut on the traces. + +In the babel of parting gibes to Dick, none of the guests was aware of +aught else than a bright morning, the promise of a happy day, and a +genial host bidding them a merry going. But Paula, despite the keen +exhilaration that should have arisen with the handling of four such +horses, was oppressed by a vague sadness in which, somehow, Dick's +being left behind figured. Through Graham's mind Dick's merry face had +flashed a regret of conscience that, instead of being seated there +beside this one woman, he should be on train and steamer fleeing to the +other side of the world. + +But the merriness died on Dick's face the moment he turned on his heel +to enter the house. It was a few minutes later than ten when he +finished his dictation and Mr. Blake rose to go. He hesitated, then +said a trifle apologetically: + +"You told me, Mr. Forrest, to remind you of the proofs of your +Shorthorn book. They wired their second hurry-up yesterday." + +"I won't be able to tackle it myself," Dick replied. "Will you please +correct the typographical, submit the proofs to Mr. Manson for +correction of fact--tell him be sure to verify that pedigree of King of +Devon--and ship them off." + +Until eleven Dick received his managers and foremen. But not for a +quarter of an hour after that did he get rid of his show manager, Mr. +Pitts, with the tentative make-up of the catalogue for the first annual +stock-sale on the ranch. By that time Mr. Bonbright was on hand with +his sheaf of telegrams, and the lunch-hour was at hand ere they were +cleaned up. + +For the first time alone since he had seen the tally-ho off, Dick +stepped out on his sleeping porch to the row of barometers and +thermometers on the wall. But he had come to consult, not them, but the +girl's face that laughed from the round wooden frame beneath them. + +"Paula, Paula," he said aloud, "are you surprising yourself and me +after all these years? Are you turning madcap at sober middle age?" + +He put on leggings and spurs to be ready for riding after lunch, and +what his thoughts had been while buckling on the gear he epitomized to +the girl in the frame. + +"Play the game," he muttered. And then, after a pause, as he turned to +go: "A free field and no favor ... and no favor." + + * * * * * + +"Really, if I don't go soon, I'll have to become a pensioner and join +the philosophers of the madroño grove," Graham said laughingly to Dick. + +It was the time of cocktail assembling, and Paula, in addition to +Graham, was the only one of the driving party as yet to put in an +appearance. + +"If all the philosophers together would just make one book!" Dick +demurred. "Good Lord, man, you've just got to complete your book here. +I got you started and I've got to see you through with it." + +Paula's encouragement to Graham to stay on--mere stereotyped, +uninterested phrases--was music to Dick. His heart leapt. After all, +might he not be entirely mistaken? For two such mature, wise, +middle-aged individuals as Paula and Graham any such foolishness was +preposterous and unthinkable. They were not young things with their +hearts on their sleeves. + +"To the book!" he toasted. He turned to Paula. "A good cocktail," he +praised. "Paul, you excel yourself, and you fail to teach Oh Joy the +art. His never quite touch yours.--Yes, another, please." + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + + + +Graham, riding solitary through the redwood canyons among the hills +that overlooked the ranch center, was getting acquainted with Selim, +the eleven-hundred-pound, coal-black gelding which Dick had furnished +him in place of the lighter Altadena. As he rode along, learning the +good nature, the roguishness and the dependableness of the animal, +Graham hummed the words of the "Gypsy Trail" and allowed them to lead +his thoughts. Quite carelessly, foolishly, thinking of bucolic lovers +carving their initials on forest trees, he broke a spray of laurel and +another of redwood. He had to stand in the stirrups to pluck a +long-stemmed, five-fingered fern with which to bind the sprays into a +cross. When the patteran was fashioned, he tossed it on the trail +before him and noted that Selim passed over without treading upon it. +Glancing back, Graham watched it to the next turn of the trail. A good +omen, was his thought, that it had not been trampled. + +More five-fingered ferns to be had for the reaching, more branches of +redwood and laurel brushing his face as he rode, invited him to +continue the manufacture of patterans, which he dropped as he fashioned +them. An hour later, at the head of the canyon, where he knew the trail +over the divide was difficult and stiff, he debated his course and +turned back. + +Selim warned him by nickering. Came an answering nicker from close at +hand. The trail was wide and easy, and Graham put his mount into a fox +trot, swung a wide bend, and overtook Paula on the Fawn. + +"Hello!" he called. "Hello! Hello!" + +She reined in till he was alongside. + +"I was just turning back," she said. "Why did you turn back? I thought +you were going over the divide to Little Grizzly." + +"You knew I was ahead of you?" he asked, admiring the frank, boyish way +of her eyes straight-gazing into his. + +"Why shouldn't I? I had no doubt at the second patteran." + +"Oh, I'd forgotten about them," he laughed guiltily. "Why did _you_ +turn back?" + +She waited until the Fawn and Selim had stepped over a fallen alder +across the trail, so that she could look into Graham's eyes when she +answered: + +"Because I did not care to follow your trail.--To follow anybody's +trail," she quickly amended. "I turned back at the second one." + +He failed of a ready answer, and an awkward silence was between them. +Both were aware of this awkwardness, due to the known but unspoken +things. + +"Do you make a practice of dropping patterans?" Paula asked. + +"The first I ever left," he replied, with a shake of the head. "But +there was such a generous supply of materials it seemed a pity, and, +besides, the song was haunting me." + +"It was haunting me this morning when I woke up," she said, this time +her face straight ahead so that she might avoid a rope of wild +grapevine that hung close to her side of the trail. + +And Graham, gazing at her face in profile, at her crown of gold-brown +hair, at her singing throat, felt the old ache at the heart, the hunger +and the yearning. The nearness of her was a provocation. The sight of +her, in her fawn-colored silk corduroy, tormented him with a rush of +visions of that form of hers--swimming Mountain Lad, swan-diving +through forty feet of air, moving down the long room in the dull-blue +dress of medieval fashion with the maddening knee-lift of the clinging +draperies. + +"A penny for them," she interrupted his visioning. His answer was +prompt. + +"Praise to the Lord for one thing: you haven't once mentioned Dick." + +"Do you so dislike him?" + +"Be fair," he commanded, almost sternly. "It is because I like him. +Otherwise..." + +"What?" she queried. + +Her voice was brave, although she looked straight before her at the +Fawn's pricking ears. + +"I can't understand why I remain. I should have been gone long ago." + +"Why?" she asked, her gaze still on the pricking ears. + +"Be fair, be fair," he warned. "You and I scarcely need speech for +understanding." + +She turned full upon him, her cheeks warming with color, and, without +speech, looked at him. Her whip-hand rose quickly, half way, as if to +press her breast, and half way paused irresolutely, then dropped down +to her side. But her eyes, he saw, were glad and startled. There was no +mistake. The startle lay in them, and also the gladness. And he, +knowing as it is given some men to know, changed the bridle rein to his +other hand, reined close to her, put his arm around her, drew her till +the horses rocked, and, knee to knee and lips on lips, kissed his +desire to hers. There was no mistake--pressure to pressure, warmth to +warmth, and with an elate thrill he felt her breathe against him. + +The next moment she had torn herself loose. The blood had left her +face. Her eyes were blazing. Her riding-whip rose as if to strike him, +then fell on the startled Fawn. Simultaneously she drove in both spurs +with such suddenness and force as to fetch a groan and a leap from the +mare. + +He listened to the soft thuds of hoofs die away along the forest path, +himself dizzy in the saddle from the pounding of his blood. When the +last hoof-beat had ceased, he half-slipped, half-sank from his saddle +to the ground, and sat on a mossy boulder. He was hard hit--harder than +he had deemed possible until that one great moment when he had held her +in his arms. Well, the die was cast. + +He straightened up so abruptly as to alarm Selim, who sprang back the +length of his bridle rein and snorted. + +What had just occurred had been unpremeditated. It was one of those +inevitable things. It had to happen. He had not planned it, although he +knew, now, that had he not procrastinated his going, had he not +drifted, he could have foreseen it. And now, going could not mend +matters. The madness of it, the hell of it and the joy of it, was that +no longer was there any doubt. Speech beyond speech, his lips still +tingling with the memory of hers, she had told him. He dwelt over that +kiss returned, his senses swimming deliciously in the sea of +remembrance. + +He laid his hand caressingly on the knee that had touched hers, and was +grateful with the humility of the true lover. Wonderful it was that so +wonderful a woman should love him. This was no girl. This was a woman, +knowing her own will and wisdom. And she had breathed quickly in his +arms, and her lips had been live to his. He had evoked what he had +given, and he had not dreamed, after the years, that he had had so much +to give. + +He stood up, made as if to mount Selim, who nozzled his shoulder, then +paused to debate. + +It was no longer a question of going. That was definitely settled. Dick +had certain rights, true. But Paula had her rights, and did he have the +right to go, after what had happened, unless ... unless she went with +him? To go now was to kiss and ride away. Surely, since the world of +sex decreed that often the same men should love the one woman, and +therefore that perfidy should immediately enter into such a +triangle--surely, it was the lesser evil to be perfidious to the man +than to the woman. + +It was a real world, he pondered as he rode slowly along; and Paula, +and Dick, and he were real persons in it, were themselves conscious +realists who looked the facts of life squarely in the face. This was no +affair of priest and code, of other wisdoms and decisions. Of +themselves must it be settled. Some one would be hurt. But life was +hurt. Success in living was the minimizing of pain. Dick believed that +himself, thanks be. The three of them believed it. And it was nothing +new under the sun. The countless triangles of the countless generations +had all been somehow solved. This, then, would be solved. All human +affairs reached some solution. + +He shook sober thought from his brain and returned to the bliss of +memory, reaching his hand to another caress of his knee, his lips +breathing again to the breathing of hers against them. He even reined +Selim to a halt in order to gaze at the hollow resting place of his +bent arm which she had filled. + +Not until dinner did Graham see Paula again, and he found her the very +usual Paula. Not even his eye, keen with knowledge, could detect any +sign of the day's great happening, nor of the anger that had whitened +her face and blazed in her eyes when she half-lifted her whip to strike +him. In everything she was the same Little Lady of the Big House. Even +when it chanced that her eyes met his, they were serene, untroubled, +with no hint of any secret in them. What made the situation easier was +the presence of several new guests, women, friends of Dick and her, +come for a couple of days. + +Next morning, in the music room, he encountered them and Paula at the +piano. + +"Don't you sing, Mr. Graham?" a Miss Hoffman asked. + +She was the editor of a woman's magazine published in San Francisco, +Graham had learned. + +"Oh, adorably," he assured her. "Don't I, Mrs. Forrest?" he appealed. + +"It is quite true," Paula smiled, "if for no other reason that he is +kind enough not to drown me quite." + +"And nothing remains but to prove our words," he volunteered. "There's +a duet we sang the other evening--" He glanced at Paula for a sign. +"--Which is particularly good for my kind of singing." Again he gave +her a passing glance and received no cue to her will or wish. "The +music is in the living room. I'll go and get it." + +"It's the 'Gypsy Trail,' a bright, catchy thing," he heard her saying +to the others as he passed out. + +They did not sing it so recklessly as on that first occasion, and much +of the thrill and some of the fire they kept out of their voices; but +they sang it more richly, more as the composer had intended it and with +less of their own particular interpretation. But Graham was thinking as +he sang, and he knew, too, that Paula was thinking, that in their +hearts another duet was pulsing all unguessed by the several women who +applauded the song's close. + +"You never sang it better, I'll wager," he told Paula. + +For he had heard a new note in her voice. It had been fuller, rounder, +with a generousness of volume that had vindicated that singing throat. + +"And now, because I know you don't know, I'll tell you what a patteran +is," she was saying.... + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + + + +"Dick, boy, your position is distinctly Carlylean," Terrence McFane +said in fatherly tones. + +The sages of the madrono grove were at table, and, with Paula, Dick and +Graham, made up the dinner party of seven. + +"Mere naming of one's position does not settle it, Terrence," Dick +replied. "I know my point is Carlylean, but that does not invalidate +it. Hero-worship is a very good thing. I am talking, not as a mere +scholastic, but as a practical breeder with whom the application of +Mendelian methods is an every-day commonplace." + +"And I am to conclude," Hancock broke in, "that a Hottentot is as good +as a white man?" + +"Now the South speaks, Aaron," Dick retorted with a smile. "Prejudice, +not of birth, but of early environment, is too strong for all your +philosophy to shake. It is as bad as Herbert Spencer's handicap of the +early influence of the Manchester School." + +"And Spencer is on a par with the Hottentot?" Dar Hyal challenged. + +Dick shook his head. + +"Let me say this, Hyal. I think I can make it clear. The average +Hottentot, or the average Melanesian, is pretty close to being on a par +with the average white man. The difference lies in that there are +proportionately so many more Hottentots and negroes who are merely +average, while there is such a heavy percentage of white men who are +not average, who are above average. These are what I called the +pace-makers that bring up the speed of their own race average-men. Note +that they do not change the nature or develop the intelligence of the +average-men. But they give them better equipment, better facilities, +enable them to travel a faster collective pace. + +"Give an Indian a modern rifle in place of his bow and arrows and he +will become a vastly more efficient game-getter. The Indian hunter +himself has not changed in the slightest. But his entire Indian race +sported so few of the above-average men, that all of them, in ten +thousand generations, were unable to equip him with a rifle." + +"Go on, Dick, develop the idea," Terrence encouraged. "I begin to +glimpse your drive, and you'll soon have Aaron on the run with his race +prejudices and silly vanities of superiority." + +"These above-average men," Dick continued, "these pace-makers, are the +inventors, the discoverers, the constructionists, the sporting +dominants. A race that sports few such dominants is classified as a +lower race, as an inferior race. It still hunts with bows and arrows. +It is not equipped. Now the average white man, per se, is just as +bestial, just as stupid, just as inelastic, just as stagnative, just as +retrogressive, as the average savage. But the average white man has a +faster pace. The large number of sporting dominants in his society give +him the equipment, the organization, and impose the law. + +"What great man, what hero--and by that I mean what sporting +dominant--has the Hottentot race produced? The Hawaiian race produced +only one--Kamehameha. The negro race in America, at the outside only +two, Booker T. Washington and Du Bois--and both with white blood in +them...." + +Paula feigned a cheerful interest while the exposition went on. She did +not appear bored, but to Graham's sympathetic eyes she seemed inwardly +to droop. And in an interval of tilt between Terrence and Hancock, she +said in a low voice to Graham: + +"Words, words, words, so much and so many of them! I suppose Dick is +right--he so nearly always is; but I confess to my old weakness of +inability to apply all these floods of words to life--to my life, I +mean, to my living, to what I should do, to what I must do." Her eyes +were unfalteringly fixed on his while she spoke, leaving no doubt in +his mind to what she referred. "I don't know what bearing sporting +dominants and race-paces have on my life. They show me no right or +wrong or way for my particular feet. And now that they've started they +are liable to talk the rest of the evening.... + +"Oh, I do understand what they say," she hastily assured him; "but it +doesn't mean anything to me. Words, words, words--and I want to know +what to do, what to do with myself, what to do with you, what to do +with Dick." + +But the devil of speech was in Dick Forrest's tongue, and before Graham +could murmur a reply to Paula, Dick was challenging him for data on the +subject from the South American tribes among which he had traveled. To +look at Dick's face it would have been unguessed that he was aught but +a carefree, happy arguer. Nor did Graham, nor did Paula, Dick's dozen +years' wife, dream that his casual careless glances were missing no +movement of a hand, no change of position on a chair, no shade of +expression on their faces. + +What's up? was Dick's secret interrogation. Paula's not herself. She's +positively nervous, and all the discussion is responsible. And Graham's +off color. His brain isn't working up to mark. He's thinking about +something else, rather than about what he is saying. What is that +something else? + +And the devil of speech behind which Dick hid his secret thoughts +impelled him to urge the talk wider and wilder. + +"For once I could almost hate the four sages," Paula broke out in an +undertone to Graham, who had finished furnishing the required data. + +Dick, himself talking, in cool sentences amplifying his thesis, +apparently engrossed in his subject, saw Paula make the aside, although +no word of it reached his ears, saw her increasing nervousness, saw the +silent sympathy of Graham, and wondered what had been the few words she +uttered, while to the listening table he was saying: + +"Fischer and Speiser are both agreed on the paucity of unit-characters +that circulate in the heredity of the lesser races as compared with the +immense variety of unit-characters in say the French, or German, or +English...." + +No one at the table suspected that Dick deliberately dangled the bait +of a new trend to the conversation, nor did Leo dream afterward that it +was the master-craft and deviltry of Dick rather than his own question +that changed the subject when he demanded to know what part the female +sporting dominants played in the race. + +"Females don't sport, Leo, my lad," Terrence, with a wink to the +others, answered him. "Females are conservative. They keep the type +true. They fix it and hold it, and are the everlasting clog on the +chariot of progress. If it wasn't for the females every blessed +mother's son of us would be a sporting dominant. I refer to our +distinguished breeder and practical Mendelian whom we have with us this +evening to verify my random statements." + +"Let us get down first of all to bedrock and find out what we are +talking about," Dick was prompt on the uptake. "What is woman?" he +demanded with an air of earnestness. + +"The ancient Greeks said woman was nature's failure to make a man," Dar +Hyal answered, the while the imp of mockery laughed in the corners of +his mouth and curled his thin cynical lips derisively. + +Leo was shocked. His face flushed. There was pain in his eyes and his +lips were trembling as he looked wistful appeal to Dick. + +"The half-sex," Hancock gibed. "As if the hand of God had been +withdrawn midway in the making, leaving her but a half-soul, a groping +soul at best." + +"No I no!" the boy cried out. "You must not say such things!--Dick, you +know. Tell them, tell them." + +"I wish I could," Dick replied. "But this soul discussion is vague as +souls themselves. We all know, of our selves, that we often grope, are +often lost, and are never so much lost as when we think we know where +we are and all about ourselves. What is the personality of a lunatic +but a personality a little less, or very much less, coherent than ours? +What is the personality of a moron? Of an idiot? Of a feeble-minded +child? Of a horse? A dog? A mosquito? A bullfrog? A woodtick? A garden +snail? And, Leo, what is your own personality when you sleep and dream? +When you are seasick? When you are in love? When you have colic? When +you have a cramp in the leg? When you are smitten abruptly with the +fear of death? When you are angry? When you are exalted with the sense +of the beauty of the world and think you think all inexpressible +unutterable thoughts? + +"I say _think you think_ intentionally. Did you really think, then your +sense of the beauty of the world would not be inexpressible, +unutterable. It would be clear, sharp, definite. You could put it into +words. Your personality would be clear, sharp, and definite as your +thoughts and words. Ergo, Leo, when you deem, in exalted moods, that +you are at the summit of existence, in truth you are thrilling, +vibrating, dancing a mad orgy of the senses and not knowing a step of +the dance or the meaning of the orgy. You don't know yourself. Your +soul, your personality, at that moment, is a vague and groping thing. +Possibly the bullfrog, inflating himself on the edge of a pond and +uttering hoarse croaks through the darkness to a warty mate, possesses +also, at that moment, a vague and groping personality. + +"No, Leo, personality is too vague for any of our vague personalities +to grasp. There are seeming men with the personalities of women. There +are plural personalities. There are two-legged human creatures that are +neither fish, flesh, nor fowl. We, as personalities, float like +fog-wisps through glooms and darknesses and light-flashings. It is all +fog and mist, and we are all foggy and misty in the thick of the +mystery." + +"Maybe it's mystification instead of mystery--man-made mystification," +Paula said. + +"There talks the true woman that Leo thinks is not a half-soul," Dick +retorted. "The point is, Leo, sex and soul are all interwoven and +tangled together, and we know little of one and less of the other." + +"But women are beautiful," the boy stammered. + +"Oh, ho!" Hancock broke in, his black eyes gleaming wickedly. "So, Leo, +you identify woman with beauty?" + +The young poet's lips moved, but he could only nod. + +"Very well, then, let us take the testimony of painting, during the +last thousand years, as a reflex of economic conditions and political +institutions, and by it see how man has molded and daubed woman into +the image of his desire, and how she has permitted him--" + +"You must stop baiting Leo," Paula interfered, "and be truthful, all of +you, and say what you do know or do believe." + +"Woman is a very sacred subject," Dar Hyal enunciated solemnly. + +"There is the Madonna," Graham suggested, stepping into the breach to +Paula's aid. + +"And the cérébrale," Terrence added, winning a nod of approval from Dar +Hyal. + +"One at a time," Hancock said. "Let us consider the Madonna-worship, +which was a particular woman-worship in relation to the general +woman-worship of all women to-day and to which Leo subscribes. Man is a +lazy, loafing savage. He dislikes to be pestered. He likes +tranquillity, repose. And he finds himself, ever since man began, +saddled to a restless, nervous, irritable, hysterical traveling +companion, and her name is woman. She has moods, tears, vanities, +angers, and moral irresponsibilities. He couldn't destroy her. He had +to have her, although she was always spoiling his peace. What was he to +do?" + +"Trust him to find a way--the cunning rascal," Terrence interjected. + +"He made a heavenly image of her," Hancock kept on. "He idealized her +good qualities, and put her so far away that her bad qualities couldn't +get on his nerves and prevent him from smoking his quiet lazy pipe of +peace and meditating upon the stars. And when the ordinary every-day +woman tried to pester, he brushed her aside from his thoughts and +remembered his heaven-woman, the perfect woman, the bearer of life and +custodian of immortality. + +"Then came the Reformation. Down went the worship of the Mother. And +there was man still saddled to his repose-destroyer. What did he do +then?" + +"Ah, the rascal," Terrence grinned. + +"He said: 'I will make of you a dream and an illusion.' And he did. The +Madonna was his heavenly woman, his highest conception of woman. He +transferred all his idealized qualities of her to the earthly woman, to +every woman, and he has fooled himself into believing in them and in +her ever since... like Leo does." + +"For an unmarried man you betray an amazing intimacy with the +pestiferousness of woman," Dick commented. "Or is it all purely +theoretical?" Terrence began to laugh. + +"Dick, boy, it's Laura Marholm Aaron's been just reading. He can spout +her chapter and verse." + +"And with all this talk about woman we have not yet touched the hem of +her garment," Graham said, winning a grateful look from Paula and Leo. + +"There is love," Leo breathed. "No one has said one word about love." + +"And marriage laws, and divorces, and polygamy, and monogamy, and free +love," Hancock rattled off. + +"And why, Leo," Dar Hyal queried, "is woman, in the game of love, +always the pursuer, the huntress?" + +"Oh, but she isn't," the boy answered quietly, with an air of superior +knowledge. "That is just some of your Shaw nonsense." + +"Bravo, Leo," Paula applauded. + +"Then Wilde was wrong when he said woman attacks by sudden and strange +surrenders?" Dar Hyal asked. + +"But don't you see," protested Leo, "all such talk makes woman a +monster, a creature of prey." As he turned to Dick, he stole a side +glance at Paula and love welled in his eyes. "Is she a creature of +prey, Dick?" + +"No," Dick answered slowly, with a shake of head, and gentleness was in +his voice for sake of what he had just seen in the boy's eyes. "I +cannot say that woman is a creature of prey. Nor can I say she is a +creature preyed upon. Nor will I say she is a creature of unfaltering +joy to man. But I will say that she is a creature of much joy to man--" + +"And of much foolishness," Hancock added. + +"Of much fine foolishness," Dick gravely amended. + +"Let me ask Leo something," Dar Hyal said. "Leo, why is it that a woman +loves the man who beats her?" + +"And doesn't love the man who doesn't beat her?" Leo countered. + +"Precisely." + +"Well, Dar, you are partly right and mostly wrong.--Oh, I have learned +about definitions from you fellows. You've cunningly left them out of +your two propositions. Now I'll put them in for you. A man who beats a +woman he loves is a low type man. A woman who loves the man who beats +her is a low type woman. No high type man beats the woman he loves. No +high type woman," and all unconsciously Leo's eyes roved to Paula, +"could love a man who beats her." + +"No, Leo," Dick said, "I assure you I have never, never beaten Paula." + +"So you see, Dar," Leo went on with flushing cheeks, "you are wrong. +Paula loves Dick without being beaten." + +With what seemed pleased amusement beaming on his face, Dick turned to +Paula as if to ask her silent approval of the lad's words; but what +Dick sought was the effect of the impact of such words under the +circumstances he apprehended. In Paula's eyes he thought he detected a +flicker of something he knew not what. Graham's face he found +expressionless insofar as there was no apparent change of the +expression of interest that had been there. + +"Woman has certainly found her St. George tonight," Graham +complimented. "Leo, you shame me. Here I sit quietly by while you fight +three dragons." + +"And such dragons," Paula joined in. "If they drove O'Hay to drink, +what will they do to you, Leo?" + +"No knight of love can ever be discomfited by all the dragons in the +world," Dick said. "And the best of it, Leo, is in this case the +dragons are more right than you think, and you are more right than they +just the same." + +"Here's a dragon that's a good dragon, Leo, lad," Terrence spoke up. +"This dragon is going to desert his disreputable companions and come +over on your side and be a Saint Terrence. And this Saint Terrence has +a lovely question to ask you." + +"Let this dragon roar first," Hancock interposed. "Leo, by all in love +that is sweet and lovely, I ask you: why do lovers, out of jealousy, so +often kill the woman they love?" + +"Because they are hurt, because they are insane," came the answer, "and +because they have been unfortunate enough to love a woman so low in +type that she could be guilty of making them jealous." + +"But, Leo, love will stray," Dick prompted. "You must give a more +sufficient answer." + +"True for Dick," Terrence supplemented. "And it's helping you I am to +the full stroke of your sword. Love will stray among the highest types, +and when it does in steps the green-eyed monster. Suppose the most +perfect woman you can imagine should cease to love the man who does not +beat her and come to love another man who loves her and will not beat +her--what then? All highest types, mind you. Now up with your sword and +slash into the dragons." + +"The first man will not kill her nor injure her in any way," Leo +asserted stoutly. "Because if he did he would not be the man you +describe. He would not be high type, but low type." + +"You mean, he would get out of the way?" Dick asked, at the same time +busying himself with a cigarette so that he might glance at no one's +face. + +Leo nodded gravely. + +"He would get out of the way, and he would make the way easy for her, +and he would be very gentle with her." + +"Let us bring the argument right home," Hancock said. "We'll suppose +you're in love with Mrs. Forrest, and Mrs. Forrest is in love with you, +and you run away together in the big limousine--" + +"Oh, but I wouldn't," the boy blurted out, his cheeks burning. + +"Leo, you are not complimentary," Paula encouraged. + +"It's just supposing, Leo," Hancock urged. + +The boy's embarrassment was pitiful, and his voice quivered, but he +turned bravely to Dick and said: + +"That is for Dick to answer." + +"And I'll answer," Dick said. "I wouldn't kill Paula. Nor would I kill +you, Leo. That wouldn't be playing the game. No matter what I felt at +heart, I'd say, 'Bless you, my children.' But just the same--" He +paused, and the laughter signals in the corners of his eyes advertised +a whimsey--"I'd say to myself that Leo was making a sad mistake. You +see, he doesn't know Paula." + +"She would be for interrupting his meditations on the stars," Terrence +smiled. + +"Never, never, Leo, I promise you," Paula exclaimed. + +"There do you belie yourself, Mrs. Forrest," Terrence assured her. "In +the first place, you couldn't help doing it. Besides, it'd be your +bounden duty to do it. And, finally, if I may say so, as somewhat of an +authority, when I was a mad young lover of a man, with my heart full of +a woman and my eyes full of the stars, 'twas ever the dearest delight +to be loved away from them by the woman out of my heart." + +"Terrence, if you keep on saying such lovely things," cried Paula," +I'll run away with both you and Leo in the limousine." + +"Hurry the day," said Terrence gallantly. "But leave space among your +fripperies for a few books on the stars that Leo and I may be studying +in odd moments." + +The combat ebbed away from Leo, and Dar Hyal and Hancock beset Dick. + +"What do you mean by 'playing the game'?" Dar Hyal asked. + +"Just what I said, just what Leo said," Dick answered; and he knew that +Paula's boredom and nervousness had been banished for some time and +that she was listening with an interest almost eager. "In my way of +thinking, and in accord with my temperament, the most horrible +spiritual suffering I can imagine would be to kiss a woman who endured +my kiss." + +"Suppose she fooled you, say for old sake's sake, or through desire not +to hurt you, or pity for you?" Hancock propounded. + +"It would be, to me, the unforgivable sin," came Dick's reply. "It +would not be playing the game--for her. I cannot conceive the fairness, +nor the satisfaction, of holding the woman one loves a moment longer +than she loves to be held. Leo is very right. The drunken artisan, with +his fists, may arouse and keep love alive in the breast of his stupid +mate. But the higher human males, the males with some shadow of +rationality, some glimmer of spirituality, cannot lay rough hands on +love. With Leo, I would make the way easy for the woman, and I would be +very gentle with her." + +"Then what becomes of your boasted monogamic marriage institution of +Western civilization?" Dar Hyal asked. + +And Hancock: "You argue for free love, then?" + +"I can only answer with a hackneyed truism," Dick said. "There can be +no love that is not free. Always, please, remember the point of view is +that of the higher types. And the point of view answers you, Dar. The +vast majority of individuals must be held to law and labor by the +monogamic institution, or by a stern, rigid marriage institution of +some sort. They are unfit for marriage freedom or love freedom. Freedom +of love, for them, would be merely license of promiscuity. Only such +nations have risen and endured where God and the State have kept the +people's instincts in discipline and order." + +"Then you don't believe in the marriage laws for say yourself," Dar +Hyal inquired, "while you do believe in them for other men?" + +"I believe in them for all men. Children, family, career, society, the +State--all these things make marriage, legal marriage, imperative. And +by the same token that is why I believe in divorce. Men, all men, and +women, all women, are capable of loving more than once, of having the +old love die and of finding a new love born. The State cannot control +love any more than can a man or a woman. When one falls in love one +falls in love, and that's all he knows about it. There it +is--throbbing, sighing, singing, thrilling love. But the State can +control license." + +"It is a complicated free love that you stand for," Hancock criticised. +"True, and for the reason that man, living in society, is a most +complicated animal." + +"But there are men, lovers, who would die at the loss of their loved +one," Leo surprised the table by his initiative. "They would die if she +died, they would die--oh so more quickly--if she lived and loved +another." + +"Well, they'll have to keep on dying as they have always died in the +past," Dick answered grimly. "And no blame attaches anywhere for their +deaths. We are so made that our hearts sometimes stray." + +"My heart would never stray," Leo asserted proudly, unaware that all at +the table knew his secret. "I could never love twice, I know." + +"True for you, lad," Terrence approved. "The voice of all true lovers +is in your throat. 'Tis the absoluteness of love that is its joy--how +did Shelley put it?--or was it Keats?--'All a wonder and a wild +delight.' Sure, a miserable skinflint of a half-baked lover would it be +that could dream there was aught in woman form one-thousandth part as +sweet, as ravishing and enticing, as glorious and wonderful as his own +woman that he could ever love again." + + * * * * * + +And as they passed out from the dining room, Dick, continuing the +conversation with Dar Hyal, was wondering whether Paula would kiss him +good night or slip off to bed from the piano. And Paula, talking to Leo +about his latest sonnet which he had shown her, was wondering if she +could kiss Dick, and was suddenly greatly desirous to kiss him, she +knew not why. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + + + +There was little talk that same evening after dinner. Paula, singing at +the piano, disconcerted Terrence in the midst of an apostrophe on love. +He quit a phrase midmost to listen to the something new he heard in her +voice, then slid noiselessly across the room to join Leo at full length +on the bearskin. Dar Hyal and Hancock likewise abandoned the +discussion, each isolating himself in a capacious chair. Graham, +seeming least attracted, browsed in a current magazine, but Dick +observed that he quickly ceased turning the pages. Nor did Dick fail to +catch the new note in Paula's voice and to endeavor to sense its +meaning. + +When she finished the song the three sages strove to tell her all at +the same time that for once she had forgotten herself and sung out as +they had always claimed she could. Leo lay without movement or speech, +his chin on his two hands, his face transfigured. + +"It's all this talk on love," Paula laughed, "and all the lovely +thoughts Leo and Terrence ... and Dick have put into my head." + +Terrence shook his long mop of iron-gray hair. + +"Into your heart you'd be meaning," he corrected. "'Tis the very heart +and throat of love that are yours this night. And for the first time, +dear lady, have I heard the full fair volume that is yours. Never again +plaint that your voice is thin. Thick it is, and round it is, as a +great rope, a great golden rope for the mooring of argosies in the +harbors of the Happy Isles." + +"And for that I shall sing you the _Gloria,"_ she answered, "to +celebrate the slaying of the dragons by Saint Leo, by Saint Terrence +... and, of course, by Saint Richard." + +Dick, missing nothing of the talk, saved himself from speech by +crossing to the concealed sideboard and mixing for himself a Scotch and +soda. + +While Paula sang the _Gloria,_ he sat on one of the couches, sipping +his drink and remembering keenly. Once before he had heard her sing +like that--in Paris, during their swift courtship, and directly +afterward, during their honeymoon on the _All Away._ + +A little later, using his empty glass in silent invitation to Graham, +he mixed highballs for both of them, and, when Graham had finished his, +suggested to Paula that she and Graham sing the "Gypsy Trail." + +She shook her head and began _Das Kraut Ver-gessenheit._ + +"She was not a true woman, she was a terrible woman," the song's close +wrung from Leo. "And he was a true lover. She broke his heart, but +still he loved her. He cannot love again because he cannot forget his +love for her." + +"And now, Red Cloud, the Song of the Acorn," Paula said, smiling over +to her husband. "Put down your glass, and be good, and plant the +acorns." + +Dick lazily hauled himself off the couch and stood up, shaking his head +mutinously, as if tossing a mane, and stamping ponderously with his +feet in simulation of Mountain Lad. + +"I'll have Leo know that he is not the only poet and love-knight on the +ranch. Listen to Mountain Lad's song, all wonder and wild delight, +Terrence, and more. Mountain Lad doesn't moon about the loved one. He +doesn't moon at all. He incarnates love, and rears right up in meeting +and tells them so. Listen to him!" + +Dick filled the room and shook the air with wild, glad, stallion +nickering; and then, with mane-tossing and foot-pawing, chanted: + +"Hear me! I am Eros! I stamp upon the hills. I fill the wide valleys. +The mares hear me, and startle, in quiet pastures; for they know me. +The land is filled with fatness, and the sap is in the trees. It is the +spring. The spring is mine. I am monarch of my kingdom of the spring. +The mares remember my voice. They knew me aforetimes through their +mothers before them. Hear me! I am Eros. I stamp upon the hills, and +the wide valleys are my heralds, echoing the sound of my approach." + +It was the first time the sages of the madrono grove had heard Dick's +song, and they were loud in applause. Hancock took it for a fresh start +in the discussion, and was beginning to elaborate a biologic Bergsonian +definition of love, when he was stopped by Terrence, who had noticed +the pain that swept across Leo's face. + +"Go on, please, dear lady," Terrence begged. "And sing of love, only of +love; for it is my experience that I meditate best upon the stars to +the accompaniment of a woman's voice." + +A little later, Oh Joy, entering the room, waited till Paula finished a +song, then moved noiselessly to Graham and handed him a telegram. Dick +scowled at the interruption. + +"Very important--I think," the Chinese explained to him. + +"Who took it?" Dick demanded. + +"Me--I took it," was the answer. "Night clerk at Eldorado call on +telephone. He say important. I take it." + +"It is, fairly so," Graham spoke up, having finished reading the +message. "Can I get a train out to-night for San Francisco, Dick?" + +"Oh Joy, come back a moment," Dick called, looking at his watch. "What +train for San Francisco stops at Eldorado?" + +"Eleven-ten," came the instant information. "Plenty time. Not too much. +I call chauffeur?" + +Dick nodded. + +"You really must jump out to-night?" he asked Graham. + +"Really. It is quite important. Will I have time to pack?" + +Dick gave a confirmatory nod to Oh Joy, and said to Graham: + +"Just time to throw the needful into a grip." He turned to Oh Joy. "Is +Oh My up yet?" + +"Yessr." + +"Send him to Mr. Graham's room to help, and let me know as soon as the +machine is ready. No limousine. Tell Saunders to take the racer." + +"One fine big strapping man, that," Terrence commented, after Graham +had left the room. + +They had gathered about Dick, with the exception of Paula, who remained +at the piano, listening. + +"One of the few men I'd care to go along with, hell for leather, on a +forlorn hope or anything of that sort," Dick said. "He was on the +_Nethermere_ when she went ashore at Pango in the '97 hurricane. Pango +is just a strip of sand, twelve feet above high water mark, a lot of +cocoanuts, and uninhabited. Forty women among the passengers, English +officers' wives and such. Graham had a bad arm, big as a leg--snake +bite. + +"It was a thundering sea. Boats couldn't live. They smashed two and +lost both crews. Four sailors volunteered in succession to carry a +light line ashore. And each man, in turn, dead at the end of it, was +hauled back on board. While they were untying the last one, Graham, +with an arm like a leg, stripped for it and went to it. And he did it, +although the pounding he got on the sand broke his bad arm and staved +in three ribs. But he made the line fast before he quit. In order to +haul the hawser ashore, six more volunteered to go in on Evan's line to +the beach. Four of them arrived. And only one woman of the forty was +lost--she died of heart disease and fright. + +"I asked him about it once. He was as bad as an Englishman. All I could +get out of the beggar was that the recovery was uneventful. Thought +that the salt water, the exercise, and the breaking of the bone had +served as counter-irritants and done the arm good." + +Oh Joy and Graham entered the room from opposite ends. Dick saw that +Graham's first questing glance was for Paula. + +"All ready, sir," Oh Joy announced. + +Dick prepared to accompany his guest outside to the car; but Paula +evidenced her intention of remaining in the house. Graham started over +to her to murmur perfunctory regrets and good-by. + +And she, warm with what Dick had just told of him, pleasured at the +goodly sight of him, dwelling with her eyes on the light, high poise of +head, the careless, sun-sanded hair, and the lightness, almost +debonaireness, of his carriage despite his weight of body and breadth +of shoulders. As he drew near to her, she centered her gaze on the long +gray eyes whose hint of drooping lids hinted of boyish sullenness. She +waited for the expression of sullenness to vanish as the eyes lighted +with the smile she had come to know so well. + +What he said was ordinary enough, as were her regrets; but in his eyes, +as he held her hand a moment, was the significance which she had +unconsciously expected and to which she replied with her own eyes. The +same significance was in the pressure of the momentary handclasp. All +unpremeditated, she responded to that quick pressure. As he had said, +there was little need for speech between them. + +As their hands fell apart, she glanced swiftly at Dick; for she had +learned much, in their dozen years together, of his flashes of +observance, and had come to stand in awe of his almost uncanny powers +of guessing facts from nuances, and of linking nuances into conclusions +often startling in their thoroughness and correctness. But Dick, his +shoulder toward her, laughing over some quip of Hancock, was just +turning his laughter-crinkled eyes toward her as he started to +accompany Graham. + +No, was her thought; surely Dick had seen nothing of the secret little +that had been exchanged between them. It had been very little, very +quick--a light in the eyes, a muscular quiver of the fingers, and no +lingering. How could Dick have seen or sensed? Their eyes had certainly +been hidden from Dick, likewise their clasped hands, for Graham's back +had been toward him. + +Just the same, she wished she had not made that swift glance at Dick. +She was conscious of a feeling of guilt, and the thought of it hurt her +as she watched the two big men, of a size and blondness, go down the +room side by side. Of what had she been guilty? she asked herself. Why +should she have anything to hide? Yet she was honest enough to face the +fact and accept, without quibble, that she had something to hide. And +her cheeks burned at the thought that she was being drifted into +deception. + +"I won't be but a couple of days," Graham was saying as he shook hands +with Dick at the car. + +Dick saw the square, straight look of his eyes, and recognized the +firmness and heartiness of his gripping hand. Graham half began to say +something, then did not; and Dick knew he had changed his mind when he +said: + +"I think, when I get back, that I'll have to pack." + +"But the book," Dick protested, inwardly cursing himself for the leap +of joy which had been his at the other's words. + +"That's just why," Graham answered. "I've got to get it finished. It +doesn't seem I can work like you do. The ranch is too alluring. I can't +get down to the book. I sit over it, and sit over it, but the +confounded meadowlarks keep echoing in my ears, and I begin to see the +fields, and the redwood canyons, and Selim. And after I waste an hour, +I give up and ring for Selim. And if it isn't that, it's any one of a +thousand other enchantments." + +He put his foot on the running-board of the pulsing car and said, +"Well, so long, old man." + +"Come back and make a stab at it," urged Dick. "If necessary, we'll +frame up a respectable daily grind, and I'll lock you in every morning +until you've done it. And if you don't do your work all day, all day +you'll stay locked in. I'll make you work.--Got cigarettes?--matches?" + +"Right O." + +"Let her go, Saunders," Dick ordered the chauffeur; and the car seemed +to leap out into the darkness from the brilliantly lighted porte +cochére. + +Back in the house, Dick found Paula playing to the madrono sages, and +ensconced himself on the couch to wait and wonder if she would kiss him +good night when bedtime came. It was not, he recognized, as if they +made a regular schedule of kissing. It had never been like that. Often +and often he did not see her until midday, and then in the presence of +guests. And often and often, she slipped away to bed early, disturbing +no one with a good night kiss to her husband which might well hint to +them that their bedtime had come. + +No, Dick concluded, whether or not she kissed him on this particular +night it would be equally without significance. But still he wondered. + +She played on and sang on interminably, until at last he fell asleep. +When he awoke he was alone in the room. Paula and the sages had gone +out quietly. He looked at his watch. It marked one o'clock. She had +played unusually late, he knew; for he knew she had just gone. It was +the cessation of music and movement that had awakened him. + +And still he wondered. Often he napped there to her playing, and +always, when she had finished, she kissed him awake and sent him to +bed. But this night she had not. Perhaps, after all, she was coming +back. He lay and drowsed and waited. The next time he looked at his +watch, it was two o'clock. She had not come back. + +He turned off the lights, and as he crossed the house, pressed off the +hall lights as he went, while the many unimportant little nothings, +almost of themselves, ranged themselves into an ordered text of doubt +and conjecture that he could not refrain from reading. + +On his sleeping porch, glancing at his barometers and thermometers, her +laughing face in the round frame caught his eyes, and, standing before +it, even bending closer to it, he studied her long. + +"Oh, well," he muttered, as he drew up the bedcovers, propped the +pillows behind him and reached for a stack of proofsheets, "whatever it +is I'll have to play it." + +He looked sidewise at her picture. + +"But, oh, Little Woman, I wish you wouldn't," was the sighed good night. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + + + +As luck would have it, beyond chance guests for lunch or dinner, the +Big House was empty. In vain, on the first and second days, did Dick +lay out his work, or defer it, so as to be ready for any suggestion +from Paula to go for an afternoon swim or drive. + +He noted that she managed always to avoid the possibility of being +kissed. From her sleeping porch she called good night to him across the +wide patio. In the morning he prepared himself for her eleven o'clock +greeting. Mr. Agar and Mr. Pitts, with important matters concerning the +forthcoming ranch sale of stock still unsettled, Dick promptly cleared +out at the stroke of eleven. Up she was, he knew, for he had heard her +singing. As he waited, seated at his desk, for once he was idle. A tray +of letters before him continued to need his signature. He remembered +this morning pilgrimage of hers had been originated by her, and by her, +somewhat persistently, had been kept up. And an adorable thing it was, +he decided--that soft call of "Good morning, merry gentleman," and the +folding of her kimono-clad figure in his arms. + +He remembered, further, that he had often cut that little visit short, +conveying the impression to her, even while he clasped her, of how busy +he was. And he remembered, more than once, the certain little wistful +shadow on her face as she slipped away. + +Quarter past eleven, and she had not come. He took down the receiver to +telephone the dairy, and in the swift rush of women's conversation, ere +he hung up, he caught Paula's voice: + +"--Bother Mr. Wade. Bring all the little Wades and come, if only for a +couple of days--" + +Which was very strange of Paula. She had invariably welcomed the +intervals of no guests, when she and he were left alone with each other +for a day or for several days. And now she was trying to persuade Mrs. +Wade to come down from Sacramento. It would seem that Paula did not +wish to be alone with him, and was seeking to protect herself with +company. + +He smiled as he realized that that morning embrace, now that it was not +tendered him, had become suddenly desirable. The thought came to him of +taking her away with him on one of their travel-jaunts. That would +solve the problem, perhaps. And he would hold her very close to him and +draw her closer. Why not an Alaskan hunting trip? She had always wanted +to go. Or back to their old sailing grounds in the days of the _All +Away_--the South Seas. Steamers ran direct between San Francisco and +Tahiti. In twelve days they could be ashore in Papeete. He wondered if +Lavaina still ran her boarding house, and his quick vision caught a +picture of Paula and himself at breakfast on Lavaina's porch in the +shade of the mango trees. + +He brought his fist down on the desk. No, by God, he was no coward to +run away with his wife for fear of any man. And would it be fair to her +to take her away possibly from where her desire lay? True, he did not +know where her desire lay, nor how far it had gone between her and +Graham. Might it not be a spring madness with her that would vanish +with the spring? Unfortunately, he decided, in the dozen years of their +marriage she had never evidenced any predisposition toward spring +madness. She had never given his heart a moment's doubt. Herself +tremendously attractive to men, seeing much of them, receiving their +admiration and even court, she had remained always her equable and +serene self, Dick Forrest's wife-- + +"Good morning, merry gentleman." + +She was peeping in on him, quite naturally from the hall, her eyes and +lips smiling to him, blowing him a kiss from her finger tips. + +"And good morning, my little haughty moon," he called back, himself +equally his natural self. + +And now she would come in, he thought; and he would fold her in his +arms, and put her to the test of the kiss. + +He opened his arms in invitation. But she did not enter. Instead, she +startled, with one hand gathered her kimono at her breast, with the +other picked up the trailing skirt as if for flight, at the same time +looking apprehensively down the hall. Yet his keen ears had caught no +sound. She smiled back at him, blew him another kiss, and was gone. + +Ten minutes later he had no ears for Bonbright, who, telegrams in hand, +startled him as he sat motionless at his desk, as he had sat, without +movement, for ten minutes. + +And yet she was happy. Dick knew her too long in all the expressions of +her moods not to realize the significance of her singing over the +house, in the arcades, and out in the patio. He did not leave his +workroom till the stroke of lunch; nor did she, as she sometimes did, +come to gather him up on the way. At the lunch gong, from across the +patio, he heard her trilling die away into the house in the direction +of the dining room. + +A Colonel Harrison Stoddard--colonel from younger service in the +National Guard, himself a retired merchant prince whose hobby was +industrial relations and social unrest--held the table most of the meal +upon the extension of the Employers' Liability Act so as to include +agricultural laborers. But Paula found a space in which casually to +give the news to Dick that she was running away for the afternoon on a +jaunt up to Wickenberg to the Masons. + +"Of course I don't know when I'll be back--you know what the Masons +are. And I don't dare ask you to come, though I'd like you along." + +Dick shook his head. + +"And so," she continued, "if you're not using Saunders--" + +Dick nodded acquiescence. + +"I'm using Callahan this afternoon," he explained, on the instant +planning his own time now that Paula was out of the question. "I never +can make out, Paul, why you prefer Saunders. Callahan is the better +driver, and of course the safest." + +"Perhaps that's why," she said with a smile. "Safety first means +slowest most." + +"Just the same I'd back Callahan against Saunders on a speed-track," +Dick championed. + +"Where are you bound?" she asked. + +"Oh, to show Colonel Stoddard my one-man and no-horse farm--you know, +the automatically cultivated ten-acre stunt I've been frivoling with. A +lot of changes have been made that have been waiting a week for me to +see tried out. I've been too busy. And after that, I'm going to take +him over the colony--what do you think?--five additions the last week." + +"I thought the membership was full," Paula said. + +"It was, and still is," Dick beamed. "But these are babies. And the +least hopeful of the families had the rashness to have twins." + +"A lot of wiseacres are shaking their heads over that experiment of +yours, and I make free to say that I am merely holding my +judgment--you've got to show me by bookkeeping," Colonel Stoddard was +saying, immensely pleased at the invitation to be shown over in person. + +Dick scarcely heard him, such was the rush of other thoughts. Paula had +not mentioned whether Mrs. Wade and the little Wades were coming, much +less mentioned that she had invited them. Yet this Dick tried to +consider no lapse on her part, for often and often, like himself, she +had guests whose arrival was the first he knew of their coming. + +It was, however, evident that Mrs. Wade was not coming that day, else +Paula would not be running away thirty miles up the valley. That was +it, and there was no blinking it. She was running away, and from him. +She could not face being alone with him with the consequent perils of +intimacy--and perilous, in such circumstances, could have but the +significance he feared. And further, she was making the evening sure. +She would not be back for dinner, or till long after dinner, it was a +safe wager, unless she brought the whole Wickenberg crowd with her. She +would be back late enough to expect him to be in bed. Well, he would +not disappoint her, he decided grimly, as he replied to Colonel +Stoddard: + +"The experiment works out splendidly on paper, with decently wide +margins for human nature. And there I admit is the doubt and the +danger--the human nature. But the only way to test it is to test it, +which is what I am doing." + +"It won't be the first Dick has charged to profit and loss," Paula said. + +"But five thousand acres, all the working capital for two hundred and +fifty farmers, and a cash salary of a thousand dollars each a year!" +Colonel Stoddard protested. "A few such failures--if it fails--would +put a heavy drain on the Harvest." + +"That's what the Harvest needs," Dick answered lightly. + +Colonel Stoddard looked blank. + +"Precisely," Dick confirmed. "Drainage, you know. The mines are +flooded--the Mexican situation." + +It was during the morning of the second day--the day of Graham's +expected return--that Dick, who, by being on horseback at eleven, had +avoided a repetition of the hurt of the previous day's "Good morning, +merry gentleman" across the distance of his workroom, encountered Ah Ha +in a hall with an armful of fresh-cut lilacs. The house-boy's way led +toward the tower room, but Dick made sure. + +"Where are you taking them, Ah Ha?" he asked. + +"Mr. Graham's room--he come to-day." + +Now whose thought was that? Dick pondered. Ah Ha's?--Oh Joy's--or +Paula's? He remembered having heard Graham more than once express his +fancy for their lilacs. + +He deflected his course from the library and strolled out through the +flowers near the tower room. Through the open windows of it came +Paula's happy humming. Dick pressed his lower lip with tight quickness +between his teeth and strolled on. + +Some great, as well as many admirable, men and women had occupied that +room, and for them Paula had never supervised the flower arrangement, +Dick meditated. Oh Joy, himself a master of flowers, usually attended +to that, or had his house-staff ably drilled to do it. + +Among the telegrams Bonbright handed him, was one from Graham, which +Dick read twice, although it was simple and unmomentous, being merely a +postponement of his return. + +Contrary to custom, Dick did not wait for the second lunch-gong. At the +sound of the first he started, for he felt the desire for one of Oh +Joy's cocktails--the need of a prod of courage, after the lilacs, to +meet Paula. But she was ahead of him. He found her--who rarely drank, +and never alone--just placing an empty cocktail glass back on the tray. + +So she, too, had needed courage for the meal, was his deduction, as he +nodded to Oh Joy and held up one finger. + +"Caught you at it!" he reproved gaily. "Secret tippling. The gravest of +symptoms. Little I thought, the day I stood up with you, that the wife +I was marrying was doomed to fill an alcoholic's grave." + +Before she could retort, a young man strolled in whom she and Dick +greeted as Mr. Winters, and who also must have a cocktail. Dick tried +to believe that it was not relief he sensed in Paula's manner as she +greeted the newcomer. He had never seen her quite so cordial to him +before, although often enough she had met him. At any rate, there would +be three at lunch. + +Mr. Winters, an agricultural college graduate and special writer for +the _Pacific Rural Press,_ as well as a sort of protégé of Dick, had +come for data for an article on California fish-ponds, and Dick +mentally arranged his afternoon's program for him. + +"Got a telegram from Evan," he told Paula. "Won't be back till the four +o'clock day after to-morrow." + +"And after all my trouble!" she exclaimed. "Now the lilacs will be +wilted and spoiled." + +Dick felt a warm glow of pleasure. There spoke his frank, +straightforward Paula. No matter what the game was, or its outcome, at +least she would play it without the petty deceptions. She had always +been that way--too transparent to make a success of deceit. + +Nevertheless, he played his own part by a glance of scarcely interested +interrogation. + +"Why, in Graham's room," she explained. "I had the boys bring a big +armful and I arranged them all myself. He's so fond of them, you know." + +Up to the end of lunch, she had made no mention of Mrs. Wade's coming, +and Dick knew definitely she was not coming when Paula queried casually: + +"Expecting anybody?" + +He shook his head, and asked, "Are you doing anything this afternoon?" + +"Haven't thought about anything," she answered. "And now I suppose I +can't plan upon you with Mr. Winters to be told all about fish." + +"But you can," Dick assured her. "I'm turning him over to Mr. Hanley, +who's got the trout counted down to the last egg hatched and who knows +all the grandfather bass by name. I'll tell you what--" He paused and +considered. Then his face lighted as with a sudden idea. "It's a +loafing afternoon. Let's take the rifles and go potting squirrels. I +noticed the other day they've become populous on that hill above the +Little Meadow." + +But he had not failed to observe the flutter of alarm that shadowed her +eyes so swiftly, and that so swiftly was gone as she clapped her hands +and was herself. + +"But don't take a rifle for me," she said. + +"If you'd rather not--" he began gently. + +"Oh, I want to go, but I don't feel up to shooting. I'll take Le +Gallienne's last book along--it just came in--and read to you in +betweenwhiles. Remember, the last time I did that when we went +squirreling it was his 'Quest of the Golden Girl' I read to you." + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + + + +Paula on the Fawn, and Dick on the Outlaw, rode out from the Big House +as nearly side by side as the Outlaw's wicked perversity permitted. The +conversation she permitted was fragmentary. With tiny ears laid back +and teeth exposed, she would attempt to evade Dick's restraint of rein +and spur and win to a bite of Paula's leg or the Fawn's sleek flank, +and with every defeat the pink flushed and faded in the whites of her +eyes. Her restless head-tossing and pitching attempts to rear (thwarted +by the martingale) never ceased, save when she pranced and sidled and +tried to whirl. + +"This is the last year of her," Dick announced. "She's indomitable. +I've worked two years on her without the slightest improvement. She +knows me, knows my ways, knows I am her master, knows when she has to +give in, but is never satisfied. She nourishes the perennial hope that +some time she'll catch me napping, and for fear she'll miss that time +she never lets any time go by." + +"And some time she may catch you," Paula said. + +"That's why I'm giving her up. It isn't exactly a strain on me, but +soon or late she's bound to get me if there's anything in the law of +probability. It may be a million-to-one shot, but heaven alone knows +where in the series of the million that fatal one is going to pop up." + +"You're a wonder, Red Cloud," Paula smiled. + +"Why?" + +"You think in statistics and percentages, averages and exceptions. I +wonder, when we first met, what particular formula you measured me up +by." + +"I'll be darned if I did," he laughed back. "There was where all signs +failed. I didn't have a statistic that applied to you. I merely +acknowledged to myself that here was the most wonderful female woman +ever born with two good legs, and I knew that I wanted her more than I +had ever wanted anything. I just had to have her--" + +"And got her," Paula completed for him. "But since, Red Cloud, since. +Surely you've accumulated enough statistics on me." + +"A few, quite a few," he admitted. "But I hope never to get the last +one--" + +He broke off at sound of the unmistakable nicker of Mountain Lad. The +stallion appeared, the cowboy on his back, and Dick gazed for a moment +at the perfect action of the beast's great swinging trot. + +"We've got to get out of this," he warned, as Mountain Lad, at sight of +them, broke into a gallop. + +Together they pricked their mares, whirled them about, and fled, while +from behind they heard the soothing "Whoas" of the rider, the thuds of +the heavy hoofs on the roadway, and a wild imperative neigh. The Outlaw +answered, and the Fawn was but a moment behind her. From the commotion +they knew Mountain Lad was getting tempestuous. + +Leaning to the curve, they swept into a cross-road and in fifty paces +pulled up, where they waited till the danger was past. + +"He's never really injured anybody yet," Paula said, as they started +back. + +"Except when he casually stepped on Cowley's toes. You remember he was +laid up in bed for a month," Dick reminded her, straightening out the +Outlaw from a sidle and with a flicker of glance catching the strange +look with which Paula was regarding him. + +There was question in it, he could see, and love in it, and fear--yes, +almost fear, or at least apprehension that bordered on dismay; but, +most of all, a seeking, a searching, a questioning. Not entirely +ungermane to her mood, was his thought, had been that remark of his +thinking in statistics. + +But he made that he had not seen, whipping out his pad, and, with an +interested glance at a culvert they were passing, making a note. + +"They missed it," he said. "It should have been repaired a month ago." + +"What has become of all those Nevada mustangs?" Paula inquired. + +This was a flyer Dick had taken, when a bad season for Nevada pasture +had caused mustangs to sell for a song with the alternative of starving +to death. He had shipped a trainload down and ranged them in his wilder +mountain pastures to the west. + +"It's time to break them," he answered. "And I'm thinking of a real +old-fashioned rodeo next week. What do you say? Have a barbecue and all +the rest, and invite the country side?" + +"And then you won't be there," Paula objected. + +"I'll take a day off. Is it a go?" + +They reined to one side of the road, as she agreed, to pass three farm +tractors, all with their trailage of ganged discs and harrows. + +"Moving them across to the Rolling Meadows," he explained. "They pay +over horses on the right ground." + +Rising from the home valley, passing through cultivated fields and +wooded knolls, they took a road busy with many wagons hauling +road-dressing from the rock-crusher they could hear growling and +crunching higher up. + +"Needs more exercise than I've been giving her," Dick remarked, jerking +the Outlaw's bared teeth away from dangerous proximity to the Fawn's +flank. + +"And it's disgraceful the way I've neglected Duddy and Fuddy," Paula +said. "I've kept their feed down like a miser, but they're a lively +handful just the same." + +Dick heard her idly, but within forty-eight hours he was to remember +with hurt what she had said. + +They continued on till the crunch of the rock-crusher died away, +penetrated a belt of woodland, crossed a tiny divide where the +afternoon sunshine was wine-colored by the manzanita and rose-colored +by madronos, and dipped down through a young planting of eucalyptus to +the Little Meadow. But before they reached it, they dismounted and tied +their horses. Dick took the .22 automatic rifle from his +saddle-holster, and with Paula advanced softly to a clump of redwoods +on the edge of the meadow. They disposed themselves in the shade and +gazed out across the meadow to the steep slope of hill that came down +to it a hundred and fifty yards away. + +"There they are--three--four of them," Paula whispered, as her keen +eyes picked the squirrels out amongst the young grain. + +These were the wary ones, the sports in the direction of infinite +caution who had shunned the poisoned grain and steel traps of Dick's +vermin catchers. They were the survivors, each of a score of their +fellows not so cautious, themselves fit to repopulate the hillside. + +Dick filled the chamber and magazine with tiny cartridges, examined the +silencer, and, lying at full length, leaning on his elbow, sighted +across the meadow. There was no sound of explosion when he fired, only +the click of the mechanism as the bullet was sped, the empty cartridge +ejected, a fresh cartridge flipped into the chamber, and the trigger +re-cocked. A big, dun-colored squirrel leaped in the air, fell over, +and disappeared in the grain. Dick waited, his eye along the rifle and +directed toward several holes around which the dry earth showed widely +as evidence of the grain which had been destroyed. When the wounded +squirrel appeared, scrambling across the exposed ground to safety, the +rifle clicked again and he rolled over on his side and lay still. + +At the first click, every squirrel but the stricken one, had made into +its burrow. Remained nothing to do but wait for their curiosity to +master caution. This was the interval Dick had looked forward to. As he +lay and scanned the hillside for curious heads to appear, he wondered +if Paula would have something to say to him. In trouble she was, but +would she keep this trouble to herself? It had never been her way. +Always, soon or late, she brought her troubles to him. But, then, he +reflected, she had never had a trouble of this nature before. It was +just the one thing that she would be least prone to discuss with him. +On the other hand, he reasoned, there was her everlasting frankness. He +had marveled at it, and joyed in it, all their years together. Was it +to fail her now? + +So he lay and pondered. She did not speak. She was not restless. He +could hear no movement. When he glanced to the side at her he saw her +lying on her back, eyes closed, arms outstretched, as if tired. + +A small head, the color of the dry soil of its home, peeped from a +hole. Dick waited long minutes, until, assured that no danger lurked, +the owner of the head stood full up on its hind legs to seek the cause +of the previous click that had startled it. Again the rifle clicked. + +"Did you get him?" Paula queried, without opening her eyes. + +"Yea, and a fat one," Dick answered. "I stopped a line of generations +right there." + +An hour passed. The afternoon sun beat down but was not uncomfortable +in the shade. A gentle breeze fanned the young grain into lazy wavelets +at times, and stirred the redwood boughs above them. Dick added a third +squirrel to the score. Paula's book lay beside her, but she had not +offered to read. + +"Anything the matter?" he finally nerved himself to ask. + +"No; headache--a beastly little neuralgic hurt across the eyes, that's +all." + +"Too much embroidery," he teased. + +"Not guilty," was her reply. + +All was natural enough in all seeming; but Dick, as he permitted an +unusually big squirrel to leave its burrow and crawl a score of feet +across the bare earth toward the grain, thought to himself: No, there +will be no talk between us this day. Nor will we nestle and kiss lying +here in the grass. + +His victim was now at the edge of the grain. He pulled trigger. The +creature fell over, lay still a moment, then ran in quick awkward +fashion toward its hole. Click, click, click, went the mechanism. Puffs +of dust leaped from the earth close about the fleeing squirrel, showing +the closeness of the misses. Dick fired as rapidly as he could twitch +his forefinger on the trigger, so that it was as if he played a stream +of lead from a hose. + +He had nearly finished refilling the magazine when Paula spoke. + +"My! What a fusillade.--Get him?" + +"Yea, grandfather of all squirrels, a mighty graineater and destroyer +of sustenance for young calves. But nine long smokeless cartridges on +one squirrel doesn't pay. I'll have to do better." + +The sun dropped lower. The breeze died out. Dick managed another +squirrel and sadly watched the hillside for more. He had arranged the +time and made his bid for confidence. The situation was as grave as he +had feared. Graver it might be, for all he knew, for his world was +crumbling about him. Old landmarks were shifting their places. He was +bewildered, shaken. Had it been any other woman than Paula! He had been +so sure. There had been their dozen years to vindicate his surety.... + +"Five o'clock, sun he get low," he announced, rising to his feet and +preparing to help her up. + +"It did me so much good--just resting," she said, as they started for +the horses. "My eyes feel much better. It's just as well I didn't try +to read to you." + +"And don't be piggy," Dick warned, as lightly as if nothing were amiss +with him. "Don't dare steal the tiniest peek into Le Gallienne. You've +got to share him with me later on. Hold up your hand.--Now, honest to +God, Paul." + +"Honest to God," she obeyed. + +"And may jackasses dance on your grandmother's grave--" + +"And may jackasses dance on my grandmother's grave," she solemnly +repeated. + +The third morning of Graham's absence, Dick saw to it that he was +occupied with his dairy manager when Paula made her eleven o'clock +pilgrimage, peeped in upon him, and called her "Good morning, merry +gentleman," from the door. The Masons, arriving in several machines +with their boisterous crowd of young people, saved Paula for lunch and +the afternoon; and, on her urging, Dick noted, she made the evening +safe by holding them over for bridge and dancing. + +But the fourth morning, the day of Graham's expected return, Dick was +alone in his workroom at eleven. Bending over his desk, signing +letters, he heard Paula tiptoe into the room. He did not look up, but +while he continued writing his signature he listened with all his soul +to the faint, silken swish of her kimono. He knew when she was bending +over him, and all but held his breath. But when she had softly kissed +his hair and called her "Good morning, merry gentleman," she evaded the +hungry sweep of his arm and laughed her way out. What affected him as +strongly as the disappointment was the happiness he had seen in her +face. She, who so poorly masked her moods, was bright-eyed and eager as +a child. And it was on this afternoon that Graham was expected, Dick +could not escape making the connection. + +He did not care to ascertain if she had replenished the lilacs in the +tower room, and, at lunch, which was shared with three farm college +students from Davis, he found himself forced to extemporize a busy +afternoon for himself when Paula tentatively suggested that she would +drive Graham up from Eldorado. + +"Drive?" Dick asked. + +"Duddy and Fuddy," she explained. "They're all on edge, and I just feel +like exercising them and myself. Of course, if you'll share the +exercise, we'll drive anywhere you say, and let him come up in the +machine." + +Dick strove not to think there was anxiety in her manner while she +waited for him to accept or decline her invitation. + +"Poor Duddy and Fuddy would be in the happy hunting grounds if they had +to cover my ground this afternoon," he laughed, at the same time +mapping his program. "Between now and dinner I've got to do a hundred +and twenty miles. I'm taking the racer, and it's going to be some dust +and bump and only an occasional low place. I haven't the heart to ask +you along. You go on and take it out of Duddy and Fuddy." + +Paula sighed, but so poor an actress was she that in the sigh, intended +for him as a customary reluctant yielding of his company, he could not +fail to detect the relief at his decision. + +"Whither away?" she asked brightly, and again he noticed the color in +her face, the happiness, and the brilliance of her eyes. + +"Oh, I'm shooting away down the river to the dredging work--Carlson +insists I must advise him--and then up in to Sacramento, running over +the Teal Slough land on the way, to see Wing Fo Wong." + +"And in heaven's name who is this Wing Fo Wong?" she laughingly +queried, "that you must trot and see him?" + +"A very important personage, my dear. Worth all of two millions--made +in potatoes and asparagus down in the Delta country. I'm leasing three +hundred acres of the Teal Slough land to him." Dick addressed himself +to the farm students. "That land lies just out of Sacramento on the +west side of the river. It's a good example of the land famine that is +surely coming. It was tule swamp when I bought it, and I was well +laughed at by the old-timers. I even had to buy out a dozen hunting +preserves. It averaged me eighteen dollars an acre, and not so many +years ago either. + +"You know the tule swamps. Worthless, save for ducks and low-water +pasturage. It cost over three hundred an acre to dredge and drain and +to pay my quota of the river reclamation work. And on what basis of +value do you think I am making a ten years' lease to old Wing Fo Wong? +TWO thousand an acre. I couldn't net more than that if I truck-farmed +it myself. Those Chinese are wizards with vegetables, and gluttons for +work. No eight hours for them. It's eighteen hours. The last coolie is +a partner with a microscopic share. That's the way Wing Fo Wong gets +around the eight hour law." + + * * * * * + +Twice warned and once arrested, was Dick through the long afternoon. He +drove alone, and though he drove with speed he drove with safety. +Accidents, for which he personally might be responsible, were things he +did not tolerate. And they never occurred. That same sureness and +definiteness of adjustment with which, without fumbling or +approximating, he picked up a pencil or reached for a door-knob, was +his in the more complicated adjustments, with which, as instance, he +drove a high-powered machine at high speed over busy country roads. + +But drive as he would, transact business as he would, at high pressure +with Carlson and Wing Fo Wong, continually, in the middle ground of his +consciousness, persisted the thought that Paula had gone out of her way +and done the most unusual in driving Graham the long eight miles from +Eldorado to the ranch. + +"Phew!" he started to mutter a thought aloud, then suspended utterance +and thought as he jumped the racer from forty-five to seventy miles an +hour, swept past to the left of a horse and buggy going in the same +direction, and slanted back to the right side of the road with margin +to spare but seemingly under the nose of a run-about coming from the +opposite direction. He reduced his speed to fifty and took up his +thought: + +"Phew! Imagine little Paul's thoughts if I dared that drive with some +charming girl!" + +He laughed at the fancy as he pictured it, for, most early in their +marriage, he had gauged Paula's capacity for quiet jealousy. Never had +she made a scene, or dropped a direct remark, or raised a question; but +from the first, quietly but unmistakably, she had conveyed the +impression of hurt that was hers if he at all unduly attended upon any +woman. + +He grinned with remembrance of Mrs. Dehameny, the pretty little +brunette widow--Paula's friend, not his--who had visited in the long +ago in the Big House. Paula had announced that she was not riding that +afternoon and, at lunch, had heard him and Mrs. Dehameny arrange to +ride into the redwood canyons beyond the grove of the philosophers. And +who but Paula, not long after their start, should overtake them and +make the party three! He had smiled to himself at the time, and felt +immensely tickled with Paula, for neither Mrs. Dehameny nor the ride +with her had meant anything to him. + +So it was, from the beginning, that he had restricted his attentions to +other women. Ever since he had been far more circumspect than Paula. He +had even encouraged her, given her a free hand always, had been proud +that his wife did attract fine fellows, had been glad that she was glad +to be amused or entertained by them. And with reason, he mused. He had +been so safe, so sure of her--more so, he acknowledged, than had she +any right to be of him. And the dozen years had vindicated his +attitude, so that he was as sure of her as he was of the diurnal +rotation of the earth. And now, was the form his fancy took, the +rotation of the earth was a shaky proposition and old Oom Paul's flat +world might be worth considering. + +He lifted the gauntlet from his left wrist to snatch a glimpse at his +watch, In five minutes Graham would be getting off the train at +Eldorado. Dick, himself homeward bound west from Sacramento, was eating +up the miles. In a quarter of an hour the train that he identified as +having brought Graham, went by. Not until he was well past Eldorado did +he overtake Duddy and Fuddy and the trap. Graham sat beside Paula, who +was driving. Dick slowed down as he passed, waved a hello to Graham, +and, as he jumped into speed again, called cheerily: + +"Sorry I've got to give you my dust. I'll beat you a game of billiards +before dinner, Evan, if you ever get in." + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + + + +"This can't go on. We must do something--at once." + +They were in the music room, Paula at the piano, her face turned up to +Graham who stood close to her, almost over her. + +"You must decide," Graham continued. + +Neither face showed happiness in the great thing that had come upon +them, now that they considered what they must do. + +"But I don't want you to go," Paula urged. "I don't know what I want. +You must bear with me. I am not considering myself. I am past +considering myself. But I must consider Dick. I must consider you. I... +I am so unused to such a situation," she concluded with a wan smile. + +"But it must be settled, dear love. Dick is not blind." + +"What has there been for him to see?" she demanded. "Nothing, except +that one kiss in the canyon, and he couldn't have seen that. Do you +think of anything else--I challenge you, sir." + +"Would that there were," he met the lighter touch in her mood, then +immediately relapsed. "I am mad over you, mad for you. And there I +stop. I do not know if you are equally mad. I do not know if you are +mad at all." + +As he spoke, he dropped his hand to hers on the keys, and she gently +withdrew it. + +"Don't you see?" he complained. "Yet you wanted me to come back?" + +"I wanted you to come back," she acknowledged, with her straight look +into his eyes. "I wanted you to come back," she repeated, more softly, +as if musing. + +"And I'm all at sea," he exclaimed impatiently. "You do love me?" + +"I do love you, Evan--you know that. But..." She paused and seemed to +be weighing the matter judicially. + +"But what?" he commanded. "Go on." + +"But I love Dick, too. Isn't it ridiculous?" + +He did not respond to her smile, and her eyes delightedly warmed to the +boyish sullenness that vexed his own eyes. A thought was hot on his +tongue, but he restrained the utterance of it while she wondered what +it was, disappointed not to have had it. + +"It will work out," she assured him gravely. "It will have to work out +somehow. Dick says all things work out. All is change. What is static +is dead, and we're not dead, any of us... are we?" + +"I don't blame you for loving Dick, for... for continuing to love +Dick," he answered impatiently. "And for that matter, I don't see what +you find in me compared with him. This is honest. He is a great man to +me, and Great Heart is his name--" she rewarded him with a smile and +nod of approval. "But if you continue to love Dick, how about me?" + +"But I love you, too." + +"It can't be," he cried, tearing himself from the piano to make a hasty +march across the room and stand contemplating the Keith on the opposite +wall as if he had never seen it before. + +She waited with a quiet smile, pleasuring in his unruly impetuousness. + +"You can't love two men at once," he flung at her. + +"Oh, but I do, Evan. That's what I am trying to work out. Only I don't +know which I love more. Dick I have known a long time. You... you are +a--" + +"Recent acquaintance," he broke in, returning to her with the same +angry stride. + +"Not that, no, not that, Evan. You have made a revelation to me of +myself. I love you as much as Dick. I love you more. I--I don't know." + +She broke down and buried her face in her hands, permitting his hand to +rest tenderly on her shoulder. + +"You see it is not easy for me," she went on. "There is so much +involved, so much that I cannot understand. You say you are all at sea. +Then think of me all at sea and worse confounded. You--oh, why talk +about it--you are a man with a man's experiences, with a man's nature. +It is all very simple to you. 'She loves me, she loves me not.' But I +am tangled, confused. I--and I wasn't born yesterday--have had no +experience in loving variously. I have never had affairs. I loved only +one man... and now you. You, and this love for you, have broken into a +perfect marriage, Evan--" + +"I know--" he said. + +"--I don't know," she went on. "I must have time, either to work it out +myself or to let it work itself out. If it only weren't for Dick..." +her voice trailed off pathetically. + +Unconsciously, Graham's hand went farther about her shoulder. + +"No, no--not yet," she said softly, as softly she removed it, her own +lingering caressingly on his a moment ere she released it. "When you +touch me, I can't think," she begged. "I--I can't think." + +"Then I must go," he threatened, without any sense of threatening. She +made a gesture of protest. "The present situation is impossible, +unbearable. I feel like a cur, and all the time I know I am not a cur. +I hate deception--oh, I can lie with the Pathan, to the Pathan--but I +can't deceive a man like Great Heart. I'd prefer going right up to him +and saying: 'Dick, I love your wife. She loves me. What are you going +to do about it?'" + +"Do so," Paula said, fired for the moment. + +Graham straightened up with resolution. + +"I will. And now." + +"No, no," she cried in sudden panic. "You must go away." Again her +voice trailed off, as she said, "But I can't let you go." + + * * * * * + +If Dick had had any reason to doubt his suspicion of the state of +Paula's heart, that reason vanished with the return of Graham. He need +look nowhere for confirmation save to Paula. She was in a flushed +awakening, burgeoning like the full spring all about them, a happier +tone in her happy laugh, a richer song in her throat, a warmness of +excitement and a continuous energy of action animating her. She was up +early and to bed late. She did not conserve herself, but seemed to live +on the champagne of her spirits, until Dick wondered if it was because +she did not dare allow herself time to think. + +He watched her lose flesh, and acknowledged to himself that the one +result was to make her look lovelier than ever, to take on an almost +spiritual delicacy under her natural vividness of color and charm. + +And the Big House ran on in its frictionless, happy, and remorseless +way. Dick sometimes speculated how long it would continue so to run on, +and recoiled from contemplation of a future in which it might not so +run on. As yet, he was confident, no one knew, no one guessed, but +himself. But how long could that continue? Not long, he was certain. +Paula was not sufficiently the actress. And were she a master at +concealment of trivial, sordid detail, yet the new note and flush of +her would be beyond the power of any woman to hide. + +He knew his Asiatic servants were marvels of discernment--and +discretion, he had to add. But there were the women. Women were cats. +To the best of them it would be great joy to catch the radiant, +unimpeachable Paula as clay as any daughter of Eve. And any chance +woman in the house, for a day, or an evening, might glimpse the +situation--Paula's situation, at least, for he could not make out +Graham's attitude yet. Trust a woman to catch a woman. + +But Paula, different in other ways, was different in this. He had never +seen her display cattishness, never known her to be on the lookout for +other women on the chance of catching them tripping--except in relation +to him. And he grinned again at the deliciousness of the affair with +Mrs. Dehameney which had been an affair only in Paula's apprehension. + +Among other things of wonderment, Dick speculated if Paula wondered if +he knew. + +And Paula did wonder, and for a time without avail. She could detect no +change in his customary ways and moods or treatment of her. He turned +off his prodigious amount of work as usual, played as usual, chanted +his songs, and was the happy good fellow. She tried to imagine an added +sweetness toward her, but vexed herself with the fear that it was +imagined. + +But it was not for long that she was in doubt. Sometimes in a crowd, at +table, in the living room in the evening, or at cards, she would gaze +at him through half-veiled lashes when he was unaware, until she was +certain she saw the knowledge in his eyes and face. But no hint of this +did she give to Graham. His knowing would not help matters. It might +even send him away, which she frankly admitted to herself was the last +thing she should want to happen. + +But when she came to a realization that she was almost certain Dick +knew or guessed, she hardened, deliberately dared to play with the +fire. If Dick knew--since he knew, she framed it to herself--why did he +not speak? He was ever a straight talker. She both desired and feared +that he might, until the fear faded and her earnest hope was that he +would. He was the one who acted, did things, no matter what they were. +She had always depended upon him as the doer. Graham had called the +situation a triangle. Well, Dick could solve it. He could solve +anything. Then why didn't he? + +In the meantime, she persisted in her ardent recklessness, trying not +to feel the conscience-pricks of her divided allegiance, refusing to +think too deeply, riding the top of the wave of her life--as she +assured herself, living, living, living. At times she scarcely knew +what she thought, save that she was very proud in having two such men +at heel. Pride had always been one of her dominant key-notes--pride of +accomplishment, achievement, mastery, as with her music, her +appearance, her swimming. It was all one--to dance, as she well knew, +beautifully; to dress with distinction and beauty; to swan-dive, all +grace and courage, as few women dared; or, all fragility, to avalanche +down the spill-way on the back of Mountain Lad and by the will and +steel of her swim the huge beast across the tank. + +She was proud, a woman of their own race and type, to watch these two +gray-eyed blond men together. She was excited, feverish, but not +nervous. Quite coldly, sometimes, she compared the two when they were +together, and puzzled to know for which of them she made herself more +beautiful, more enticing. Graham she held, and she had held Dick and +strove still to hold him. + +There was almost a touch of cruelty in the tingles of pride that were +hers at thought of these two royal men suffering for her and because of +her; for she did not hide from herself the conviction that if Dick +knew, or, rather, since he did know, he, too, must be suffering. She +assured herself that she was a woman of imagination and purpose in sex +matters, and that no part of her attraction toward Graham lay merely in +his freshness, newness, difference. And she denied to herself that +passion played more than the most minor part. Deep down she was +conscious of her own recklessness and madness, and of an end to it all +that could not but be dreadful to some one of them or all of them. But +she was content willfully to flutter far above such deeps and to refuse +to consider their existence. Alone, looking at herself in her mirror, +she would shake her head in mock reproof and cry out, "Oh, you +huntress! You huntress!" And when she did permit herself to think a +little gravely, it was to admit that Shaw and the sages of the madrono +grove might be right in their diatribes on the hunting proclivities of +women. + +She denied Dar Hyal's statement that woman was nature's failure to make +a man; but again and again came to her Wilde's, "Woman attacks by +sudden and strange surrenders." Had she so attacked Graham? she asked +herself. Sudden and strange, to her, were the surrenders she had +already made. Were there to be more? He wanted to go. With her, or +without her, he wanted to go. But she held him--how? Was there a tacit +promise of surrenders to come? And she would laugh away further +consideration, confine herself to the fleeting present, and make her +body more beautiful, and mood herself to be more fascinating, and glow +with happiness in that she was living, thrilling, as she had never +dreamed to live and thrill. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + + + +But it is not the way for a man and a woman, in propinquity, to +maintain a definite, unwavering distance asunder. Imperceptibly Paula +and Graham drew closer. From lingering eye-gazings and hand-touchings +the way led to permitted caresses, until there was a second clasping in +the arms and a second kiss long on the lips. Nor this time did Paula +flame in anger. Instead, she commanded: + +"You must not go." + +"I must not stay," Graham reiterated for the thousandth time. "Oh, I +have kissed behind doors, and been guilty of all the rest of the silly +rubbish," he complained. "But this is you, and this is Dick." + +"It will work out, I tell you, Evan." + +"Come with me then and of ourselves work it out. Come now." + +She recoiled. + +"Remember," Graham encouraged, "what Dick said at dinner the night Leo +fought the dragons--that if it were you, Paula, his wife, who ran away, +he would say 'Bless you, my children.'" + +"And that is just why it is so hard, Evan. He _is_ Great Heart. You +named him well. Listen--you watch him now. He is as gentle as he said +he would be that night--gentle toward me, I mean. And more. You watch +him--" + +"He knows?--he has spoken?" Graham broke in. + +"He has not spoken, but I am sure he knows, or guesses. You watch him. +He won't compete against you--" + +"Compete!" + +"Just that. He won't compete. Remember at the rodeo yesterday. He was +breaking mustangs when our party arrived, but he never mounted again. +Now he is a wonderful horse-breaker. You tried your hand. Frankly, +while you did fairly well, you couldn't touch him. But he wouldn't show +off against you. That alone would make me certain that he guesses. + +"Listen. Of late haven't you noticed that he never questions a +statement you make, as he used to question, as he questions every one +else. He continues to play billiards with you, because there you best +him. He fences and singlesticks with you--there you are even. But he +won't box or wrestle with you." + +"He _can_ out-box and out-wrestle me," Graham muttered ruefully. + +"You watch and you will see what I mean by not competing. He is +treating me like a spirited colt, giving me my head to make a mess of +things if I want to. Not for the world would he interfere. Oh, trust +me, I know him. It is his own code that he is living up to. He could +teach the philosophers what applied philosophy is. + +"No, no; listen," she rushed over Graham's attempt to interrupt. "I +want to tell you more. There is a secret staircase that goes up from +the library to Dick's work room. Only he and I use it, and his +secretaries. When you arrive at the head of it, you are right in his +room, surrounded by shelves of books. I have just come from there. I +was going in to see him when I heard voices. Of course it was ranch +business, I thought, and they would soon be gone. So I waited. It _was_ +ranch business, but it was so interesting, so, what Hancock would call, +illuminating, that I remained and eavesdropped. It was illuminating of +Dick, I mean. + +"It was the wife of one of the workmen Dick had on the carpet. Such +things do arise on a large place like this. I wouldn't know the woman +if I saw her, and I didn't recognize her name. She was whimpering out +her trouble when Dick stopped her. 'Never mind all that,' he said. +'What I want to know is, did you give Smith any encouragement?' + +"Smith isn't his name, but he is one of our foremen and has worked +eight years for Dick. + +"'Oh, no, sir,' I could hear her answer. 'He went out of his way from +the first to bother me. I've tried to keep out of his way, always. +Besides, my husband's a violent-tempered man, and I did so want him to +hold his job here. He's worked nearly a year for you now, and there +aren't any complaints, are there? Before that it was irregular work for +a long time, and we had real hard times. It wasn't his fault. He ain't +a drinking man. He always--' + +"'That's all right,' Dick stopped her. 'His work and habits have +nothing to do with the matter. Now you are sure you have never +encouraged Mr. Smith in any way?' And she was so sure that she talked +for ten minutes, detailing the foreman's persedition of her. She had a +pleasant voice--one of those sweet, timid, woman's voices, and +undoubtedly is quite attractive. It was all I could do to resist +peeping. I wanted to see what she looked like. + +"'Now this trouble, yesterday morning,' Dick said. 'Was it general? I +mean, outside of your husband, and Mr. Smith, was the scene such that +those who live around you knew of it?' + +"'Yes, sir. You see, he had no right to come into my kitchen. My +husband doesn't work under him anyway. And he had his arm around me and +was trying to kiss me when my husband came in. My husband has a temper, +but he ain't overly strong. Mr. Smith would make two of him. So he +pulled a knife, and Mr. Smith got him by the arms, and they fought all +over the kitchen. I knew there was murder going to be done and I run +out screaming for help. The folks in the other cottages'd heard the +racket already. They'd smashed the window and the cook stove, and the +place was filled with smoke and ashes when the neighbors dragged them +away from each other. I'd done nothing to deserve all that disgrace. +You know, sir, the way the women will talk--' + +"And Dick hushed her up there, and took all of five minutes more in +getting rid of her. Her great fear was that her husband would lose his +place. From what Dick told her, I waited. He had made no decision, and +I knew the foreman was next on the carpet. In he came. I'd have given +the world to see him. But I could only listen. + +"Dick jumped right into the thick of it. He described the scene and +uproar, and Smith acknowledged that it had been riotous for a while. +'She says she gave you no encouragement,' Dick said next. + +"'Then she lies,' said Smith. 'She has that way of looking with her +eyes that's an invitation. She looked at me that way from the first. +But it was by word-of-mouth invitation that I was in her kitchen +yesterday morning. We didn't expect the husband. But she began to +struggle when he hove in sight. When she says she gave me no +encouragement--' + +"'Never mind all that,' Dick stopped him. 'It's not essential.' 'But it +is, Mr. Forrest, if I am to clear myself,' Smith insisted. + +"'No; it is not essential to the thing you can't clear yourself of,' +Dick answered, and I could hear that cold, hard, judicial note come +into his voice. Smith could not understand. Dick told him. 'The thing +you have been guilty of, Mr. Smith, is the scene, the disturbance, the +scandal, the wagging of the women's tongues now going on forty to the +minute, the impairment of the discipline and order of the ranch, all of +which is boiled down to the one grave thing, the hurt to the ranch +efficiency.' + +"And still Smith couldn't see. He thought the charge was of violating +social morality by pursuing a married woman, and tried to mitigate the +offense by showing the woman encouraged him and by pleading: 'And after +all, Mr. Forrest, a man is only a man, and I admit she made a fool of +me and I made a fool of myself.' "'Mr. Smith,' Dick said. 'You've +worked for me eight years. You've been a foreman six years of that +time. I have no complaint against your work. You certainly do know how +to handle labor. About your personal morality I don't care a damn. You +can be a Mormon or a Turk for all it matters to me. Your private acts +are your private acts, and are no concern of mine as long as they do +not interfere with your work or my ranch. Any one of my drivers can +drink his head off Saturday night, and every Saturday night. That's his +business. But the minute he shows a hold-over on Monday morning that is +taken out on my horses, that excites them, or injures them, or +threatens to injure them, or that decreases in the slightest the work +they should perform on Monday, that moment it is my business and the +driver goes down the hill.' + +"'You, you mean, Mr. Forrest,' Smith stuttered, 'that, that I'm to go +down the hill?' 'That is just what I mean, Mr. Smith. You are to go +down the hill, not because you climbed over another man's fence--that's +your business and his; but because you were guilty of causing a +disturbance that is an impairment of ranch efficiency.' + +"Do you know, Evan," Paula broke in on her recital, "Dick can nose more +human tragedy out of columns of ranch statistics than can the average +fiction writer out of the whirl of a great city. Take the milk +reports--the individual reports of the milkers--so many pounds of milk, +morning and night, from cow so-and-so, so many pounds from cow +so-and-so. He doesn't have to know the man. But there is a decrease in +the weight of milk. 'Mr. Parkman,' he'll say to the head dairyman, 'is +Barchi Peratta married?' 'Yes, sir.' 'Is he having trouble with his +wife?' 'Yes, sir.' + +"Or it will be: 'Mr. Parkman, Simpkins has the best long-time record of +any of our milkers. Now he's slumped. What's up?' Mr. Parkman doesn't +know. 'Investigate,' says Dick. 'There's something on his chest. Talk +to him like an uncle and find out. We've got to get it off his chest.' +And Mr. Parkman finds out. Simpkins' boy; working his way through +Stanford University, has elected the joy-ride path and is in jail +waiting trial for forgery. Dick put his own lawyers on the case, +smoothed it over, got the boy out on probation, and Simpkins' milk +reports came back to par. And the best of it is, the boy made good, +Dick kept an eye on him, saw him through the college of engineering, +and he's now working for Dick on the dredging end, earning a hundred +and fifty a month, married, with a future before him, and his father +still milks." + +"You are right," Graham murmured sympathetically. "I well named him +when I named him Great Heart." + +"I call him my Rock of Ages," Paula said gratefully. "He is so solid. +He stands in any storm.--Oh, you don't really know him. He is so sure. +He stands right up. He's never taken a cropper in his life. God smiles +on him. God has always smiled on him. He's never been beaten down to +his knees... yet. I... I should not care to see that sight. It would be +heartbreaking. And, Evan--" Her hand went out to his in a pleading +gesture that merged into a half-caress. "--I am afraid for him now. +That is why I don't know what to do. It is not for myself that I back +and fill and hesitate. If he were ignoble, if he were narrow, if he +were weak or had one tiniest shred of meanness, if he had ever been +beaten to his knees before, why, my dear, my dear, I should have been +gone with you long ago." + +Her eyes filled with sudden moisture. She stilled him with a pressure +of her hand, and, to regain herself, she went back to her recital: + +"'Your little finger, Mr. Smith, I consider worth more to me and to the +world,' Dick, told him, 'than the whole body of this woman's husband. +Here's the report on him: willing, eager to please, not bright, not +strong, an indifferent workman at best. Yet you have to go down the +hill, and I am very, very sorry.' + +"Oh, yes, there was more. But I've given you the main of it. You see +Dick's code there. And he lives his code. He accords latitude to the +individual. Whatever the individual may do, so long as it does not hurt +the group of individuals in which he lives, is his own affair. He +believed Smith had a perfect right to love the woman, and to be loved +by her if it came to that. I have heard him always say that love could +not be held nor enforced. Truly, did I go with you, he would say, +'Bless you, my children.' Though it broke his heart he would say it. +Past love, he believes, gives no hold over the present. And every hour +of love, I have heard him say, pays for itself, on both sides, +quittance in full. He claims there can be no such thing as a love-debt, +laughs at the absurdity of love-claims." + +"And I agree with him," Graham said. "'You promised to love me always,' +says the jilted one, and then strives to collect as if it were a +promissory note for so many dollars. Dollars are dollars, but love +lives or dies. When it is dead how can it be collected? We are all +agreed, and the way is simple. We love. It is enough. Why delay another +minute?" + +His fingers strayed along her fingers on the keyboard as he bent to +her, first kissing her hair, then slowly turning her face up to his and +kissing her willing lips. + +"Dick does not love me like you," she said; "not madly, I mean. He has +had me so long, I think I have become a habit to him. And often and +often, before I knew you, I used to puzzle whether he cared more for +the ranch or more for me." + +"It is so simple," Graham urged. "All we have to do is to be +straightforward. Let us go." + +He drew her to her feet and made as if to start. + +But she drew away from him suddenly, sat down, and buried her flushed +face in her hands. + +"You do not understand, Evan. I love Dick. I shall always love him." + +"And me?" Graham demanded sharply. + +"Oh, without saying," she smiled. "You are the only man, besides Dick, +that has ever kissed me this... way, and that I have kissed this way. +But I can't make up my mind. The triangle, as you call it, must be +solved for me. I can't solve it myself. I compare the two of you, weigh +you, measure you. I remember Dick and all our past years. And I consult +my heart for you. And I don't know. I don't know. You are a great man, +my great lover. But Dick is a greater man than you. You--you are more +clay, more--I grope to describe you--more human, I fancy. And that is +why I love you more... or at least I think perhaps I do. + +"But wait," she resisted him, prisoning his eager hand in hers. "There +is more I want to say. I remember Dick and all our past years. But I +remember him to-day, as well, and to-morrow. I cannot bear the thought +that any man should pity my husband, that you should pity him, and pity +him you must when I confess that I love you more. That is why I am not +sure. That is why I so quickly take it back and do not know. + +"I'd die of shame if through act of mine any man pitied Dick. Truly, I +would. Of all things ghastly, I can think of none so ghastly as Dick +being pitied. He has never been pitied in his life. He has always been +top-dog--bright, light, strong, unassailable. And more, he doesn't +deserve pity. And it's my fault... and yours, Evan." + +She abruptly thrust Evan's hand away. + +"And every act, every permitted touch of you, does make him pitiable. +Don't you see how tangled it is for me? And then there is my own pride. +That you should see me disloyal to him in little things, such as +this--" (she caught his hand again and caressed it with soft +finger-tips) "--hurts me in my love for you, diminishes me, must +diminish me in your eyes. I shrink from the thought that my disloyalty +to him in this I do--" (she laid his hand against her cheek) "--gives +you reason to pity him and censure me." + +She soothed the impatience of the hand on her cheek, and, almost +absently, musingly scrutinizing it without consciously seeing it, +turned it over and slowly kissed the palm. The next moment she was +drawn to her feet and into his arms. + +"There, you see," was her reproach as she disengaged herself. + + * * * * * + +"Why do you tell me all this about Dick?" Graham demanded another time, +as they walked their horses side by side. "To keep me away? To protect +yourself from me?" + +Paula nodded, then quickly added, "No, not quite that. Because you know +I don't want to keep you away ... too far. I say it because Dick is so +much in my mind. For twelve years, you realize, he filled my mind. I +say it because ... because I think it, I suppose. Think! The situation! +You are trespassing on a perfect marriage." + +"I know it," he answered. "And I do not like the role of trespasser. It +is your insistence, instead of going away with me, that I should +trespass. And I can't help it. I think away from you, try to force my +thoughts elsewhere. I did half a chapter this morning, and I know it's +rotten and will have to be rewritten. For I can't succeed in thinking +away from you. What is South America and its ethnology compared to you? +And when I come near you my arms go about you before I know what I am +doing. And, by God, you want them there, you want them there, you know +it." + +Paula gathered her reins in signal for a gallop, but first, with a +roguish smile, she acknowledged. + +"I do want them there, dear trespasser." + +Paula yielded and fought at the same time. + +"I love my husband--never forget that," she would warn Graham, and +within the minute be in his arms. + + * * * * * + +"There are only the three of us for once, thank goodness," Paula cried, +seizing Dick and Graham by the hands and leading them toward Dick's +favorite lounging couch in the big room. "Come, let us sit upon the +ground and tell sad stories of the deaths of kings. Come, milords, and +lordly perishers, and we will talk of Armageddon when the last sun goes +down." + +She was in a merry mood, and with surprise Dick observed her light a +cigarette. He could count on his fingers the cigarettes she had smoked +in a dozen years, and then, only under a hostess's provocation to give +countenance to some smoking woman guest. Later, when he mixed a +highball for himself and Graham, she again surprised him by asking him +to mix her a "wee" one. + +"This is Scotch," he warned. + +"Oh, a very wee one," she insisted, "and then we'll be three good +fellows together, winding up the world. And when you've got it all +wound up and ready, I'll sing you the song of the Valkyries." + +She took more part in the talk than usual, and strove to draw her +husband out. Nor was Dick unaware of this, although he yielded and +permitted himself to let go full tilt on the theme of the blond +sun-perishers. + +She is trying to make him compete--was Graham's thought. But Paula +scarcely thought of that phase of it, her pleasure consisting in the +spectacle of two such splendid men who were hers. They talk of big game +hunting, she mused once to herself; but did ever one small woman +capture bigger game than this? + +She sat cross-legged on the couch, where, by a turn of the head, she +could view Graham lounging comfortably in the big chair, or Dick, on +his elbow, sprawled among the cushions. And ever, as they talked, her +eyes roved from one to the other; and, as they spoke of struggle and +battle, always in the cold iron terms of realists, her own thoughts +became so colored, until she could look coolly at Dick with no further +urge of the pity that had intermittently ached her heart for days. + +She was proud of him--a goodly, eye-filling figure of a man to any +woman; but she no longer felt sorry for him. They were right. It was a +game. The race was to the swift, the battle to the strong. They had run +such races, fought such battles. Then why not she? And as she continued +to look, that self-query became reiterant. + +They were not anchorites, these two men. Liberal-lived they must have +been in that past out of which, like mysteries, they had come to her. +They had had the days and nights that women were denied--women such as +she. As for Dick, beyond all doubt--even had she heard whispers--there +had been other women in that wild career of his over the world. Men +were men, and they were two such men. She felt a burn of jealousy +against those unknown women who must have been, and her heart hardened. +They had taken their fun where they found it--Kipling's line ran +through her head. + +Pity? Why should she pity, any more than she should be pitied? The +whole thing was too big, too natural, for pity. They were taking a hand +in a big game, and all could not be winners. Playing with the fancy, +she wandered on to a consideration of the outcome. Always she had +avoided such consideration, but the tiny highball had given her daring. +It came to her that she saw doom ahead, doom vague and formless but +terrible. + +She was brought back to herself by Dick's hand before her eyes and +apparently plucking from the empty air the something upon which she +steadfastly stared. + +"Seeing things?" he teased, as her eyes turned to meet his. + +His were laughing, but she glimpsed in them what, despite herself, made +her veil her own with her long lashes. He knew. Beyond all possibility +of error she knew now that he knew. That was what she had seen in his +eyes and what had made her veil her own. + +"'Cynthia, Cynthia, I've been a-thinking,'" she gayly hummed to him; +and, as he resumed his talk, she reached and took a sip from his +part-empty glass. + +Let come what would, she asserted to herself, she would play it out. It +was all a madness, but it was life, it was living. She had never so +lived before, and it was worth it, no matter what inevitable payment +must be made in the end. Love?--had she ever really loved Dick as she +now felt herself capable of loving? Had she mistaken the fondness of +affection for love all these years? Her eyes warmed as they rested on +Graham, and she admitted that he had swept her as Dick never had. + +Unused to alcohol in such strength, her heart was accelerated; and +Dick, with casual glances, noted and knew the cause of the added +brilliance, the flushed vividness of cheeks and lips. + +He talked less and less, and the discussion of the sun-perishers died +of mutual agreement as to its facts. Finally, glancing at his watch, he +straightened up, yawned, stretched his arms and announced: + +"Bed-time he stop. Head belong this fellow white man too much sleepy +along him.--Nightcap, Evan?" + +Graham nodded, for both felt the need of a stiffener. + +"Mrs. Toper--nightcap?" Dick queried of Paula. + +But she shook her head and busied herself at the piano putting away the +music, while the men had their drink. + +Graham closed down the piano for her, while Dick waited in the doorway, +so that when they left he led them by a dozen feet. As they came along, +Graham, under her instructions, turned off the lights in the halls. +Dick waited where the ways diverged and where Graham would have to say +good night on his way to the tower room. + +The one remaining light was turned off. + +"Oh, not that one, silly," Dick heard Paula cry out. "We keep it on all +night." + +Dick heard nothing, but the dark was fervent to him. He cursed himself +for his own past embraces in the dark, for so the wisdom was given him +to know the quick embrace that had occurred, ere, the next moment, the +light flashed on again. + +He found himself lacking the courage to look at their faces as they +came toward him. He did not want to see Paula's frank eyes veiled by +her lashes, and he fumbled to light a cigarette while he cudgeled his +wits for the wording of an ordinary good night. + +"How goes the book?--what chapter?" he called after Graham down his +hall, as Paula put her hand in his. + +Her hand in his, swinging his, hopping and skipping and all a-chatter +in simulation of a little girl with a grown-up, Paula went on with +Dick; while he sadly pondered what ruse she had in mind by which to +avoid the long-avoided, good night kiss. + +Evidently she had not found it when they reached the dividing of the +ways that led to her quarters and to his. Still swinging his hand, +still buoyantly chattering fun, she continued with him into his +workroom. Here he surrendered. He had neither heart nor energy to wait +for her to develop whatever she contemplated. + +He feigned sudden recollection, deflected her by the hand to his desk, +and picked up a letter. + +"I'd promised myself to get a reply off on the first machine in the +morning," he explained, as he pressed on the phonograph and began +dictating. + +For a paragraph she still held his hand. Then he felt the parting +pressure of her fingers and her whispered good night. + +"Good night, little woman," he answered mechanically, and continued +dictating as if oblivious to her going. + +Nor did he cease until he knew she was well out of hearing. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII + + + +A dozen times that morning, dictating to Blake or indicating answers, +Dick had been on the verge of saying to let the rest of the +correspondence go. + +"Call up Hennessy and Mendenhall," he told Blake, when, at ten, the +latter gathered up his notes and rose to go. "You ought to catch them +at the stallion barn. Tell them not to come this morning but to-morrow +morning." + +Bonbright entered, prepared to shorthand Dick's conversations with his +managers for the next hour. + +"And--oh, Mr. Blake," Dick called. "Ask Hennessy about Alden +Bessie.--The old mare was pretty bad last night," he explained to +Bonbright. + +"Mr. Hanley must see you right away, Mr. Forrest," Bonbright said, and +added, at sight of the irritated drawing up of his employer's brows, +"It's the piping from Buckeye Dam. Something's wrong with the plans--a +serious mistake, he says." + +Dick surrendered, and for an hour discussed ranch business with his +foremen and managers. + +Once, in the middle of a hot discussion over sheep-dips with Wardman, +he left his desk and paced over to the window. The sound of voices and +horses, and of Paula's laugh, had attracted him. + +"Take that Montana report--I'll send you a copy to-day," he continued, +as he gazed out. "They found the formula didn't get down to it. It was +more a sedative than a germicide. There wasn't enough kick in it..." + +Four horses, bunched, crossed his field of vision. Paula, teasing the +pair of them, was between Martinez and Froelig, old friends of Dick, a +painter and sculptor respectively, who had arrived on an early train. +Graham, on Selim, made the fourth, and was slightly edged toward the +rear. So the party went by, but Dick reflected that quickly enough it +would resolve itself into two and two. + +Shortly after eleven, restless and moody, he wandered out with a +cigarette into the big patio, where he smiled grim amusement at the +various tell-tale signs of Paula's neglect of her goldfish. The sight +of them suggested her secret patio in whose fountain pools she kept her +selected and more gorgeous blooms of fish. Thither he went, through +doors without knobs, by ways known only to Paula and the servants. + +This had been Dick's one great gift to Paula. It was love-lavish as +only a king of fortune could make it. He had given her a free hand with +it, and insisted on her wildest extravagance; and it had been his +delight to tease his quondam guardians with the stubs of the checkbook +she had used. It bore no relation to the scheme and architecture of the +Big House, and, for that matter, so deeply hidden was it that it played +no part in jar of line or color. A show-place of show-places, it was +not often shown. Outside Paula's sisters and intimates, on rare +occasions some artist was permitted to enter and catch his breath. +Graham had heard of its existence, but not even him had she invited to +see. + +It was round, and small enough to escape giving any cold hint of +spaciousness. The Big House was of sturdy concrete, but here was marble +in exquisite delicacy. The arches of the encircling arcade were of +fretted white marble that had taken on just enough tender green to +prevent any glare of reflected light. Palest of pink roses bloomed up +the pillars and over the low flat roof they upheld, where Puck-like, +humorous, and happy faces took the place of grinning gargoyles. Dick +strolled the rosy marble pavement of the arcade and let the beauty of +the place slowly steal in upon him and gentle his mood. + +The heart and key of the fairy patio was the fountain, consisting of +three related shallow basins at different levels, of white marble and +delicate as shell. Over these basins rollicked and frolicked life-sized +babies wrought from pink marble by no mean hand. Some peered over the +edges into lower basins, one reached arms covetously toward the +goldfish; one, on his back, laughed at the sky, another stood with +dimpled legs apart stretching himself, others waded, others were on the +ground amongst the roses white and blush, but all were of the fountain +and touched it at some point. So good was the color of the marble, so +true had been the sculptor, that the illusion was of life. No cherubs +these, but live warm human babies. + +Dick regarded the rosy fellowship pleasantly and long, finishing his +cigarette and retaining it dead in his hand. That was what she had +needed, he mused--babies, children. It had been her passion. Had she +realized it... He sighed, and, struck by a fresh thought, looked to her +favorite seat with certitude that he would not see the customary sewing +lying on it in a pretty heap. She did not sew these days. + +He did not enter the tiny gallery behind the arcade, which contained +her chosen paintings and etchings, and copies in marble and bronze of +her favorites of the European galleries. Instead he went up the +stairway, past the glorious Winged Victory on the landing where the +staircase divided, and on and up into her quarters that occupied the +entire upper wing. But first, pausing by the Victory, he turned and +gazed down into the fairy patio. The thing was a cut jewel in its +perfectness and color, and he acknowledged, although he had made it +possible for her, that it was entirely her own creation--her one +masterpiece. It had long been her dream, and he had realized it for +her. And yet now, he meditated, it meant nothing to her. She was not +mercenary, that he knew; and if he could not hold her, mere baubles +such as that would weigh nothing in the balance against her heart. + +He wandered idly through her rooms, scarcely noting at what he gazed, +but gazing with fondness at it all. Like everything else of hers, it +was distinctive, different, eloquent of her. But when he glanced into +the bathroom with its sunken Roman bath, for the life of him he was +unable to avoid seeing a tiny drip and making a mental note for the +ranch plumber. + +As a matter of course, he looked to her easel with the expectation of +finding no new work, but was disappointed; for a portrait of himself +confronted him. He knew her trick of copying the pose and lines from a +photograph and filling in from memory. The particular photograph she +was using had been a fortunate snapshop of him on horseback. The +Outlaw, for once and for a moment, had been at peace, and Dick, hat in +hand, hair just nicely rumpled, face in repose, unaware of the +impending snap, had at the instant looked squarely into the camera. No +portrait photographer could have caught a better likeness. The head and +shoulders Paula had had enlarged, and it was from this that she was +working. But the portrait had already gone beyond the photograph, for +Dick could see her own touches. + +With a start he looked more closely. Was that expression of the eyes, +of the whole face, his? He glanced at the photograph. It was not there. +He walked over to one of the mirrors, relaxed his face, and led his +thoughts to Paula and Graham. Slowly the expression came into his eyes +and face. Not content, he returned to the easel and verified it. Paula +knew. Paula knew that he knew. She had learned it from him, stolen it +from him some time when it was unwittingly on his face, and carried it +in her memory to the canvas. + +Paula's Chinese maid, Oh Dear, entered from the wardrobe room, and Dick +watched her unobserved as she came down the room toward him. Her eyes +were down, and she seemed deep in thought. Dick remarked the sadness of +her face, and that the little, solicitous contraction of the brows that +had led to her naming was gone. She was not solicitous, that was +patent. But cast down, she was, in heavy depression. + +It would seem that all our faces are beginning to say things, he +commented to himself. + +"Good morning, Oh Dear," he startled her. + +And as she returned the greeting, he saw compassion in her eyes as they +dwelt on him. She knew. The first outside themselves. Trust her, a +woman, so much in Paula's company when Paula was alone, to divine +Paula's secret. + +Oh Dear's lips trembled, and she wrung her trembling hands, nerving +herself, as he could see, to speech. + +"Mister Forrest," she began haltingly, "maybe you think me fool, but I +like say something. You very kind man. You very kind my old mother. You +very kind me long long time..." + +She hesitated, moistening her frightened lips with her tongue, then +braved her eyes to his and proceeded. + +"Mrs. Forrest, she, I think..." + +But so forbidding did Dick's face become that she broke off in +confusion and blushed, as Dick surmised, with shame at the thoughts she +had been about to utter. + +"Very nice picture Mrs. Forrest make," he put her at her ease. + +The Chinese girl sighed, and the same compassion returned into her eyes +as she looked long at Dick's portrait. + +She sighed again, but the coldness in her voice was not lost on Dick as +she answered: "Yes, very nice picture Mrs. Forrest make." + +She looked at him with sudden sharp scrutiny, studying his face, then +turned to the canvas and pointed at the eyes. + +"No good," she condemned. + +Her voice was harsh, touched with anger. + +"No good," she flung over her shoulder, more loudly, still more +harshly, as she continued down the room and out of sight on Paula's +sleeping porch. + +Dick stiffened his shoulders, unconsciously bracing himself to face +what was now soon to happen. Well, it was the beginning of the end. Oh +Dear knew. Soon more would know, all would know. And in a way he was +glad of it, glad that the torment of suspense would endure but little +longer. + +But when he started to leave he whistled a merry jingle to advertise to +Oh Dear that the world wagged very well with him so far as he knew +anything about it. + + * * * * * + +The same afternoon, while Dick was out and away with Froelig and +Martinez and Graham, Paula stole a pilgrimage to Dick's quarters. Out +on his sleeping porch she looked over his rows of press buttons, his +switchboard that from his bed connected him with every part of the +ranch and most of the rest of California, his phonograph on the hinged +and swinging bracket, the orderly array of books and magazines and +agricultural bulletins waiting to be read, the ash tray, cigarettes, +scribble pads, and thermos bottle. + +Her photograph, the only picture on the porch, held her attention. It +hung under his barometers and thermometers, which, she knew, was where +he looked oftenest. A fancy came to her, and she turned the laughing +face to the wall and glanced from the blankness of the back of the +frame to the bed and back again. With a quick panic movement, she +turned the laughing face out. It belonged, was her thought; it did +belong. + +The big automatic pistol in the holster on the wall, handy to one's +hand from the bed, caught her eye. She reached to it and lifted gently +at the butt. It was as she had expected--loose--Dick's way. Trust him, +no matter how long unused, never to let a pistol freeze in its holster. + +Back in the work room she wandered solemnly about, glancing now at the +prodigious filing system, at the chart and blue-print cabinets, at the +revolving shelves of reference books, and at the long rows of stoutly +bound herd registers. At last she came to his books--a goodly row of +pamphlets, bound magazine articles, and an even dozen ambitious tomes. +She read the titles painstakingly: "Corn in California," "Silage +Practice," "Farm Organization," "Farm Book-keeping," "The Shire in +America," "Humus Destruction," "Soilage," "Alfalfa in California," +"Cover Crops for California," "The Shorthorn in America"--at this last +she smiled affectionately with memory of the great controversy he had +waged for the beef cow and the milch cow as against the dual purpose +cow. + +She caressed, the backs of the books with her palm, pressed her cheek +against them and leaned with closed eyes. Oh, Dick, Dick--a thought +began that faded to a vagueness of sorrow and died because she did not +dare to think it. + +The desk was so typically Dick. There was no litter. Clean it was of +all work save the wire tray with typed letters waiting his signature +and an unusual pile of the flat yellow sheets on which his secretaries +typed the telegrams relayed by telephone from Eldorado. Carelessly she +ran her eyes over the opening lines of the uppermost sheet and chanced +upon a reference that puzzled and interested her. She read closely, +with in-drawn brows, then went deeper into the heap till she found +confirmation. Jeremy Braxton was dead--big, genial, kindly Jeremy +Braxton. A Mexican mob of pulque-crazed peons had killed him in the +mountains through which he had been trying to escape from the Harvest +into Arizona. The date of the telegram was two days old. Dick had known +it for two days and never worried her with it. And it meant more. It +meant money. It meant that the affairs of the Harvest Group were going +from bad to worse. And it was Dick's way. + +And Jeremy was dead. The room seemed suddenly to have grown cold. She +shivered. It was the way of life--death always at the end of the road. +And her own nameless dread came back upon her. Doom lay ahead. Doom for +whom? She did not attempt to guess. Sufficient that it was doom. Her +mind was heavy with it, and the quiet room was heavy with it as she +passed slowly out. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX + + + +"'Tis a birdlike sensuousness that is all the Little Lady's own," +Terrence was saying, as he helped himself to a cocktail from the tray +Ah Ha was passing around. + +It was the hour before dinner, and Graham, Leo and Terrence McFane had +chanced together in the stag-room. + +"No, Leo," the Irishman warned the young poet. "Let the one suffice +you. Your cheeks are warm with it. A second one and you'll conflagrate. +'Tis no right you have to be mixing beauty and strong drink in that +lad's head of yours. Leave the drink to your elders. There is such a +thing as consanguinity for drink. You have it not. As for me--" + +He emptied the glass and paused to turn the cocktail reminiscently on +his tongue. + +"'Tis women's drink," he shook his head in condemnation. "It likes me +not. It bites me not. And devil a bit of a taste is there to it.--Ah +Ha, my boy," he called to the Chinese, "mix me a highball in a long, +long glass--a stiff one." + +He held up four fingers horizontally to indicate the measure of liquor +he would have in the glass, and, to Ah Ha's query as to what kind of +whiskey, answered, "Scotch or Irish, bourbon or rye--whichever comes +nearest to hand." + +Graham shook his head to the Chinese, and laughed to the Irishman. +"You'll never drink me down, Terrence. I've not forgotten what you did +to O'Hay." + +"'Twas an accident I would have you think," was the reply. "They say +when a man's not feeling any too fit a bit of drink will hit him like a +club." + +"And you?" Graham questioned. + +"Have never been hit by a club. I am a man of singularly few +experiences." + +"But, Terrence, you were saying... about Mrs. Forrest?" Leo begged. "It +sounded as if it were going to be nice." + +"As if it could be otherwise," Terrence censured. "But as I was saying, +'tis a bird-like sensuousness--oh, not the little, hoppy, wagtail kind, +nor yet the sleek and solemn dove, but a merry sort of bird, like the +wild canaries you see bathing in the fountains, always twittering and +singing, flinging the water in the sun, and glowing the golden hearts +of them on their happy breasts. 'Tis like that the Little Lady is. I +have observed her much. + +"Everything on the earth and under the earth and in the sky contributes +to the passion of her days--the untoward purple of the ground myrtle +when it has no right to aught more than pale lavender, a single red +rose tossing in the bathing wind, one perfect Duchesse rose bursting +from its bush into the sunshine, as she said to me, 'pink as the dawn, +Terrence, and shaped like a kiss.' + +"'Tis all one with her--the Princess's silver neigh, the sheep bells of +a frosty morn, the pretty Angora goats making silky pictures on the +hillside all day long, the drifts of purple lupins along the fences, +the long hot grass on slope and roadside, the summer-burnt hills tawny +as crouching lions--and even have I seen the sheer sensuous pleasure of +the Little Lady with bathing her arms and neck in the blessed sun." + +"She is the soul of beauty," Leo murmured. "One understands how men can +die for women such as she." + +"And how men can live for them, and love them, the lovely things," +Terrence added. "Listen, Mr. Graham, and I'll tell you a secret. We +philosophers of the madroño grove, we wrecks and wastages of life here +in the quiet backwater and easement of Dick's munificence, are a +brotherhood of lovers. And the lady of our hearts is all the one--the +Little Lady. We, who merely talk and dream our days away, and who would +lift never a hand for God, or country, or the devil, are pledged +knights of the Little Lady." + +"We would die for her," Leo affirmed, slowly nodding his head. + +"Nay, lad, we would live for her and fight for her, dying is that easy." + +Graham missed nothing of it. The boy did not understand, but in the +blue eyes of the Celt, peering from under the mop of iron-gray hair, +there was no mistaking the knowledge of the situation. + +Voices of men were heard coming down the stairs, and, as Martinez and +Dar Hyal entered, Terrence was saying: + +"'Tis fine weather they say they're having down at Catalina now, and I +hear the tunny fish are biting splendid." + +Ah Ha served cocktails around, and was kept busy, for Hancock and +Froelig followed along. Terrence impartially drank stiff highballs of +whatever liquor the immobile-faced Chinese elected to serve him, and +discoursed fatherly to Leo on the iniquities and abominations of the +flowing bowl. + +Oh My entered, a folded note in his hand, and looked about in doubt as +to whom to give it. + +"Hither, wing-heeled Celestial," Terrence waved him up. + +"'Tis a petition, couched in very proper terms," Terrence explained, +after a glance at its contents. "And Ernestine and Lute have arrived, +for 'tis they that petition. Listen." And he read: "'Oh, noble and +glorious stags, two poor and lowly meek-eyed does, wandering lonely in +the forest, do humbly entreat admission for the brief time before +dinner to the stamping ground of the herd.' + +"The metaphor is mixed," said Terrence. "Yet have they acted well. 'Tis +the rule--Dick's rule--and a good rule it is: no petticoats in the +stag-room save by the stags' unanimous consent.--Is the herd ready for +the question? All those in favor will say 'Aye.'--Contrary minded?--The +ayes have it. + +"Oh My, fleet with thy heels and bring in the ladies." + +"'With sandals beaten from the crowns of kings,'" Leo added, murmuring +the words reverently, loving them with his lips as his lips formed them +and uttered them. + +"'Shall he tread down the altars of their night,'" Terrence completed +the passage. "The man who wrote that is a great man. He is Leo's +friend, and Dick's friend, and proud am I that he is my friend." + +"And that other line," Leo said. "From the same sonnet," he explained +to Graham. "Listen to the sound of it: 'To hear what song the star of +morning sings'--oh, listen," the boy went on, his voice hushed low with +beauty-love for the words: "'With perished beauty in his hands as clay, +Shall he restore futurity its dream--'" + +He broke off as Paula's sisters entered, and rose shyly to greet them. + + * * * * * + +Dinner that night was as any dinner at which the madroño sages were +present. Dick was as robustly controversial as usual, locking horns +with Aaron Hancock on Bergson, attacking the latter's metaphysics in +sharp realistic fashion. + +"Your Bergson is a charlatan philosopher, Aaron," Dick concluded. "He +has the same old medicine-man's bag of metaphysical tricks, all decked +out and frilled with the latest ascertained facts of science." + +"'Tis true," Terrence agreed. "Bergson is a charlatan thinker. 'Tis why +he is so popular--" + +"I deny--" Hancock broke in. + +"Wait a wee, Aaron. 'Tis a thought I have glimmered. Let me catch it +before it flutters away into the azure. Dick's caught Bergson with the +goods on him, filched straight from the treasure-house of science. His +very cocksureness is filched from Darwin's morality of strength based +on the survival of the fittest. And what did Bergson do with it? +Touched it up with a bit of James' pragmatism, rosied it over with the +eternal hope in man's breast that he will live again, and made it all +a-shine with Nietzsche's 'nothing succeeds like excess--'" + +"Wilde's, you mean," corrected Ernestine. + +"Heaven knows I should have filched it for myself had you not been +present," Terrence sighed, with a bow to her. "Some day the +antiquarians will decide the authorship. Personally I would say it +smacked of Methuselah--But as I was saying, before I was delightfully +interrupted..." + +"Who more cocksure than Dick?" Aaron was challenging a little later; +while Paula glanced significantly to Graham. + +"I was looking at the herd of yearling stallions but yesterday," +Terrence replied, "and with the picture of the splendid beasties still +in my eyes I'll ask: And who more delivers the goods?" + +"But Hancock's objection is solid," Martinez ventured. "It would be a +mean and profitless world without mystery. Dick sees no mystery." + +"There you wrong him," Terrence defended. "I know him well. Dick +recognizes mystery, but not of the nursery-child variety. No +cock-and-bull stories for him, such as you romanticists luxuriate in." + +"Terrence gets me," Dick nodded. "The world will always be mystery. To +me man's consciousness is no greater mystery than the reaction of the +gases that make a simple drop of water. Grant that mystery, and all the +more complicated phenomena cease to be mysteries. That simple chemical +reaction is like one of the axioms on which the edifice of geometry is +reared. Matter and force are the everlasting mysteries, manifesting +themselves in the twin mysteries of space and time. The manifestations +are not mysteries--only the stuff of the manifestations, matter and +force; and the theater of the manifestations, space and time." + +Dick ceased and idly watched the expressionless Ah Ha and Ah Me who +chanced at the moment to be serving opposite him. Their faces did not +talk, was his thought; although ten to one was a fair bet that they +were informed with the same knowledge that had perturbed Oh Dear. + +"And there you are," Terrence was triumphing. "'Tis the perfect joy of +him--never up in the air with dizzy heels. Flat on the good ground he +stands, four square to fact and law, set against all airy fancies and +bubbly speculations...." + + * * * * * + +And as at table, so afterward that evening no one could have guessed +from Dick that all was not well with him. He seemed bent on celebrating +Lute's and Ernestine's return, refused to tolerate the heavy talk of +the philosophers, and bubbled over with pranks and tricks. Paula +yielded to the contagion, and aided and abetted him in his practical +jokes which none escaped. + +Choicest among these was the kiss of welcome. No man escaped it. To +Graham was accorded the honor of receiving it first so that he might +witness the discomfiture of the others, who, one by one, were ushered +in by Dick from the patio. + +Hancock, Dick's arm guiding him, came down the room to confront Paula +and her sisters standing in a row on three chairs in the middle of the +floor. He scanned them suspiciously, and insisted upon walking around +behind them. But there seemed nothing unusual about them save that each +wore a man's felt hat. + +"Looks good to me," Hancock announced, as he stood on the floor before +them and looked up at them. + +"And it is good," Dick assured him. "As representing the ranch in its +fairest aspects, they are to administer the kiss of welcome. Make your +choice, Aaron." + +Aaron, with a quick whirl to catch some possible lurking disaster at +his back, demanded, "They are all three to kiss me?" + +"No, make your choice which is to give you the kiss." + +"The two I do not choose will not feel that I have discriminated +against them?" Aaron insisted. + +"Whiskers no objection?" was his next query. + +"Not in the way at all," Lute told him. "I have always wondered what it +would be like to kiss black whiskers." + +"Here's where all the philosophers get kissed tonight, so hurry up," +Ernestine said. "The others are waiting. I, too, have yet to be kissed +by an alfalfa field." + +"Whom do you choose?" Dick urged. + +"As if, after that, there were any choice about it," Hancock returned +jauntily. "I kiss my lady--the Little Lady." + +As he put up his lips, Paula bent her head forward, and, nicely +directed, from the indented crown of her hat canted a glassful of water +into his face. + +When Leo's turn came, he bravely made his choice of Paula and nearly +spoiled the show by reverently bending and kissing the hem of her gown. + +"It will never do," Ernestine told him. "It must be a real kiss. Put up +your lips to be kissed." + +"Let the last be first and kiss me, Leo," Lute begged, to save him from +his embarrassment. + +He looked his gratitude, put up his lips, but without enough tilt of +his head, so that he received the water from Lute's hat down the back +of his neck. + +"All three shall kiss me and thus shall paradise be thrice multiplied," +was Terrence's way out of the difficulty; and simultaneously he +received three crowns of water for his gallantry. + +Dick's boisterousness waxed apace. His was the most care-free seeming +in the world as he measured Froelig and Martinez against the door to +settle the dispute that had arisen as to whether Froelig or Martinez +was the taller. + +"Knees straight and together, heads back," Dick commanded. + +And as their heads touched the wood, from the other side came a rousing +thump that jarred them. The door swung open, revealing Ernestine with a +padded gong-stick in either hand. + +Dick, a high-heeled satin slipper in his hand, was under a sheet with +Terrence, teaching him "Brother Bob I'm bobbed" to the uproarious joy +of the others, when the Masons and Watsons and all their Wickenberg +following entered upon the scene. + +Whereupon Dick insisted that the young men of their party receive the +kiss of welcome. Nor did he miss, in the hubbub of a dozen persons +meeting as many more, Lottie Mason's: "Oh, good evening, Mr. Graham. I +thought you had gone." + +And Dick, in the midst of the confusion of settling such an influx of +guests, still maintaining his exuberant jolly pose, waited for that +sharp scrutiny that women have only for women. Not many moments later +he saw Lottie Mason steal such a look, keen with speculation, at Paula +as she chanced face to face with Graham, saying something to him. + +Not yet, was Dick's conclusion. Lottie did not know. But suspicion was +rife, and nothing, he was certain, under the circumstances, would +gladden her woman's heart more than to discover the unimpeachable Paula +as womanly weak as herself. + +Lottie Mason was a tall, striking brunette of twenty-five, undeniably +beautiful, and, as Dick had learned, undeniably daring. In the not +remote past, attracted by her, and, it must be submitted, subtly +invited by her, he had been guilty of a philandering that he had not +allowed to go as far as her wishes. The thing had not been serious on +his part. Nor had he permitted it to become serious on her side. +Nevertheless, sufficient flirtatious passages had taken place to impel +him this night to look to her, rather than to the other Wickenberg +women, for the first signals of suspicion. + +"Oh, yes, he's a beautiful dancer," Dick, as he came up to them half an +hour later, heard Lottie Mason telling little Miss Maxwell. "Isn't he, +Dick?" she appealed to him, with innocent eyes of candor through which +disguise he knew she was studying him. + +"Who?--Graham, you must mean," he answered with untroubled directness. +"He certainly is. What do you say we start dancing and let Miss Maxwell +see? Though there's only one woman here who can give him full swing to +show his paces." + +"Paula, of course," said Lottie. + +"Paula, of course. Why, you young chits don't know how to waltz. You +never had a chance to learn."--Lottie tossed her fine head. "Perhaps +you learned a little before the new dancing came in," he amended. +"Anyway, I'll get Evan and Paula started, you take me on, and I'll +wager we'll be the only couples on the floor." + +Half through the waltz, he broke it off with: "Let them have the floor +to themselves. It's worth seeing." + +And, glowing with appreciation, he stood and watched his wife and +Graham finish the dance, while he knew that Lottie, beside him, +stealing side glances at him, was having her suspicions allayed. + +The dancing became general, and, the evening being warm, the big doors +to the patio were thrown open. Now one couple, and now another, danced +out and down the long arcades where the moonlight streamed, until it +became the general thing. + +"What a boy he is," Paula said to Graham, as they listened to Dick +descanting to all and sundry on the virtues of his new night camera. +"You heard Aaron complaining at table, and Terrence explaining, his +sureness. Nothing terrible has ever happened to him in his life. He has +never been overthrown. His sureness has always been vindicated. As +Terrence said, it has always delivered the goods. He does know, he does +know, and yet he is so sure of himself, so sure of me." + +Graham taken away to dance with Miss Maxwell, Paula continued her train +of thought to herself. Dick was not suffering so much after all. And +she might have expected it. He was the cool-head, the philosopher. He +would take her loss with the same equanimity as he would take the loss +of Mountain Lad, as he had taken the death of Jeremy Braxton and the +flooding of the Harvest mines. It was difficult, she smiled to herself, +aflame as she was toward Graham, to be married to a philosopher who +would not lift a hand to hold her. And it came to her afresh that one +phase of Graham's charm for her was his humanness, his flamingness. +They met on common ground. At any rate, even in the heyday of their +coming together in Paris, Dick had not so inflamed her. A wonderful +lover he had been, too, with his gift of speech and lover's phrases, +with his love-chants that had so delighted her; but somehow it was +different from this what she felt for Graham and what Graham must feel +for her. Besides, she had been most young in experience of love and +lovers in that long ago when Dick had burst so magnificently upon her. + +And so thinking, she hardened toward him and recklessly permitted +herself to flame toward Graham. The crowd, the gayety, the excitement, +the closeness and tenderness of contact in the dancing, the summer-warm +of the evening, the streaming moonlight, and the night-scents of +flowers--all fanned her ardency, and she looked forward eagerly to the +at least one more dance she might dare with Graham. + +"No flash light is necessary," Dick was explaining. "It's a German +invention. Half a minute exposure under the ordinary lighting is +sufficient. And the best of it is that the plate can be immediately +developed just like an ordinary blue print. Of course, the drawback is +one cannot print from the plate." + +"But if it's good, an ordinary plate can be copied from it from which +prints can be made," Ernestine amplified. + +She knew the huge, twenty-foot, spring snake coiled inside the camera +and ready to leap out like a jack-in-the-box when Dick squeezed the +bulb. And there were others who knew and who urged Dick to get the +camera and make an exposure. + +He was gone longer than he expected, for Bonbright had left on his desk +several telegrams concerning the Mexican situation that needed +immediate replies. Trick camera in hand, Dick returned by a short cut +across the house and patio. The dancing couples were ebbing down the +arcade and disappearing into the hall, and he leaned against a pillar +and watched them go by. Last of all came Paula and Evan, passing so +close that he could have reached out and touched them. But, though the +moon shone full on him, they did not see him. They saw only each other +in the tender sport of gazing. + +The last preceding couple was already inside when the music ceased. +Graham and Paula paused, and he was for giving her his arm and leading +her inside, but she clung to him in sudden impulse. Man-like, cautious, +he slightly resisted for a moment, but with one arm around his neck she +drew his head willingly down to the kiss. It was a flash of quick +passion. The next instant, Paula on his arm, they were passing in and +Paula's laugh was ringing merrily and naturally. + +Dick clutched at the pillar and eased himself down abruptly until he +sat flat on the pavement. Accompanying violent suffocation, or causing +it, his heart seemed rising in his chest. He panted for air. The cursed +thing rose and choked and stifled him until, in the grim turn his fancy +took, it seemed to him that he chewed it between his teeth and gulped +it back and down his throat along with the reviving air. He felt +chilled, and was aware that he was wet with sudden sweat. + +"And who ever heard of heart disease in the Forrests?" he muttered, as, +still sitting, leaning against the pillar for support, he mopped his +face dry. His hand was shaking, and he felt a slight nausea from an +internal quivering that still persisted. + +It was not as if Graham had kissed her, he pondered. It was Paula who +had kissed Graham. That was love, and passion. He had seen it, and as +it burned again before his eyes, he felt his heart surge, and the +premonitory sensation of suffocation seized him. With a sharp effort of +will he controlled himself and got to his feet. + +"By God, it came up in my mouth and I chewed it," he muttered. "I +chewed it." + +Returning across the patio by the round-about way, he entered the +lighted room jauntily enough, camera in hand, and unprepared for the +reception he received. + +"Seen a ghost?" Lute greeted. + +"Are you sick?"--"What's the matter?" were other questions. + +"What _is_ the matter?" he countered. + +"Your face--the look of it," Ernestine said. "Something has happened. +What is it?" + +And while he oriented himself he did not fail to note Lottie Mason's +quick glance at the faces of Graham and Paula, nor to note that +Ernestine had observed Lottie's glance and followed it up for herself. + +"Yes," he lied. "Bad news. Just got the word. Jeremy Braxton is dead. +Murdered. The Mexicans got him while he was trying to escape into +Arizona." + +"Old Jeremy, God love him for the fine man he was," Terrence said, +tucking his arm in Dick's. "Come on, old man, 'tis a stiffener you're +wanting and I'm the lad to lead you to it." + +"Oh, I'm all right," Dick smiled, shaking his shoulders and squaring +himself as if gathering himself together. "It did hit me hard for the +moment. I hadn't a doubt in the world but Jeremy would make it out all +right. But they got him, and two engineers with him. They put up a +devil of a fight first. They got under a cliff and stood off a mob of +half a thousand for a day and night. And then the Mexicans tossed +dynamite down from above. Oh, well, all flesh is grass, and there is no +grass of yesteryear. Terrence, your suggestion is a good one. Lead on." + +After a few steps he turned his head over his shoulder and called back: +"Now this isn't to stop the fun. I'll be right back to take that +photograph. You arrange the group, Ernestine, and be sure to have them +under the strongest light." + +Terrence pressed open the concealed buffet at the far end of the room +and set out the glasses, while Dick turned on a wall light and studied +his face in the small mirror inside the buffet door. + +"It's all right now, quite natural," he announced. + +"'Twas only a passing shade," Terrence agreed, pouring the whiskey. +"And man has well the right to take it hard the going of old friends." + +They toasted and drank silently. + +"Another one," Dick said, extending his glass. + +"Say 'when,'" said the Irishman, and with imperturbable eyes he watched +the rising tide of liquor in the glass. + +Dick waited till it was half full. + +Again they toasted and drank silently, eyes to eyes, and Dick was +grateful for the offer of all his heart that he read in Terrence's eyes. + +Back in the middle of the hall, Ernestine was gayly grouping the +victims, and privily, from the faces of Lottie, Paula, and Graham, +trying to learn more of the something untoward that she sensed. Why had +Lottie looked so immediately and searchingly at Graham and Paula? --she +asked herself. And something was wrong with Paula now. She was worried, +disturbed, and not in the way to be expected from the announcement of +Jeremy Braxton's death. From Graham, Ernestine could glean nothing. He +was quite his ordinary self, his facetiousness the cause of much +laughter to Miss Maxwell and Mrs. Watson. + +Paula was disturbed. What had happened? Why had Dick lied? He had known +of Jeremy's death for two days. And she had never known anybody's death +so to affect him. She wondered if he had been drinking unduly. In the +course of their married life she had seen him several times in liquor. +He carried it well, the only noticeable effects being a flush in his +eyes and a loosening of his tongue to whimsical fancies and +extemporized chants. Had he, in his trouble, been drinking with the +iron-headed Terrence down in the stag room? She had found them all +assembled there just before dinner. The real cause for Dick's +strangeness never crossed her mind, if, for no other reason, than that +he was not given to spying. + +He came back, laughing heartily at a joke of Terrence's, and beckoned +Graham to join them while Terrence repeated it. And when the three had +had their laugh, he prepared to take the picture. The burst of the huge +snake from the camera and the genuine screams of the startled women +served to dispel the gloom that threatened, and next Dick was arranging +a tournament of peanut-carrying. + +From chair to chair, placed a dozen yards apart, the feat was with a +table knife to carry the most peanuts in five minutes. After the +preliminary try-out, Dick chose Paula for his partner, and challenged +the world, Wickenberg and the madroño grove included. Many boxes of +candy were wagered, and in the end he and Paula won out against Graham +and Ernestine, who had proved the next best couple. Demands for a +speech changed to clamor for a peanut song. Dick complied, beating the +accent, Indian fashion, with stiff-legged hops and hand-slaps on thighs. + +"I am Dick Forrest, son of Richard the Lucky, Son of Jonathan the +Puritan, son of John who was a sea-rover, as his father Albert before +him, who was the son of Mortimer, a pirate who was hanged in chains and +died without issue. + +"I am the last of the Forrests, but first of the peanut-carriers. +Neither Nimrod nor Sandow has anything on me. I carry the peanuts on a +knife, a silver knife. The peanuts are animated by the devil. I carry +the peanuts with grace and celerity and in quantity. The peanut never +sprouted that can best me. + +"The peanuts roll. The peanuts roll. Like Atlas who holds the world, I +never let them fall. Not every one can carry peanuts. I am God-gifted. +I am master of the art. It is a fine art. The peanuts roll, the peanuts +roll, and I carry them on forever. + +"Aaron is a philosopher. He cannot carry peanuts. Ernestine is a +blonde. She cannot carry peanuts. Evan is a sportsman. He drops +peanuts. Paula is my partner. She fumbles peanuts. Only I, I, by the +grace of God and my own cleverness, carry peanuts. + +"When anybody has had enough of my song, throw something at me. I am +proud. I am tireless. I can sing on forever. I shall sing on forever. + +"Here beginneth the second canto. When I die, bury me in a peanut +patch. While I live--" + +The expected avalanche of cushions quenched his song but not his +ebullient spirits, for he was soon in a corner with Lottie Mason and +Paula concocting a conspiracy against Terrence. + +And so the evening continued to be danced and joked and played away. At +midnight supper was served, and not till two in the morning were the +Wickenbergers ready to depart. While they were getting on their wraps, +Paula was proposing for the following afternoon a trip down to the +Sacramento River to look over Dick's experiment in rice-raising. + +"I had something else in view," he told her. "You know the mountain +pasture above Sycamore Creek. Three yearlings have been killed there in +the last ten days." + +"Mountain lions!" Paula cried. + +"Two at least.--Strayed in from the north," he explained to Graham. +"They sometimes do that. We got three five years ago.--Moss and Hartley +will be there with the dogs waiting. They've located two of the beasts. +What do you say all of you join me. We can leave right after lunch." + +"Let me have Mollie?" Lute asked. + +"And you can ride Altadena," Paula told Ernestine. + +Quickly the mounts were decided upon, Froelig and Martinez agreeing to +go, but promising neither to shoot well nor ride well. + +All went out to see the Wickenbergers off, and, after the machines were +gone, lingered to make arrangements for the hunting. + +"Good night, everybody," Dick said, as they started to move inside. +"I'm going to take a look at Alden Bessie before I turn in. Hennessy is +sitting up with her. Remember, you girls, come to lunch in your riding +togs, and curses on the head of whoever's late." + +The ancient dam of the Fotherington Princess was in a serious way, but +Dick would not have made the visit at such an hour, save that he wanted +to be by himself and that he could not nerve himself for a chance +moment alone with Paula so soon after what he had overseen in the patio. + +Light steps in the gravel made him turn his head. Ernestine caught up +with him and took his arm. + +"Poor old Alden Bessie," she explained. "I thought I'd go along." + +Dick, still acting up to his night's rôle, recalled to her various +funny incidents of the evening, and laughed and chuckled with +reminiscent glee. + +"Dick," she said in the first pause, "you are in trouble." She could +feel him stiffen, and hurried on: "What can I do? You know you can +depend on me. Tell me." + +"Yes, I'll tell you," he answered. "Just one thing." She pressed his +arm gratefully. "I'll have a telegram sent you to-morrow. It will be +urgent enough, though not too serious. You will just bundle up and +depart with Lute." + +"Is that all?" she faltered. + +"It will be a great favor." + +"You won't talk with me?" she protested, quivering under the rebuff. + +"I'll have the telegram come so as to rout you out of bed. And now +never mind Alden Bessie. You run a long in. Good night." + +He kissed her, gently thrust her toward the house, and went on his way. + + + + +CHAPTER XXX + + + +On the way back from the sick mare, Dick paused once to listen to the +restless stamp of Mountain Lad and his fellows in the stallion barn. In +the quiet air, from somewhere up the hills, came the ringing of a +single bell from some grazing animal. A cat's-paw of breeze fanned him +with sudden balmy warmth. All the night was balmy with the faint and +almost aromatic scent of ripening grain and drying grass. The stallion +stamped again, and Dick, with a deep breath and realization that never +had he more loved it all, looked up and circled the sky-line where the +crests of the mountains blotted the field of stars. + +"No, Cato," he mused aloud. "One cannot agree with you. Man does not +depart from life as from an inn. He departs as from a dwelling, the one +dwelling he will ever know. He departs ... nowhere. It is good night. +For him the Noiseless One ... and the dark." + +He made as if to start, but once again the stamp of the stallions held +him, and the hillside bell rang out. He drew a deep inhalation through +his nostrils of the air of balm, and loved it, and loved the fair land +of his devising. + +"'I looked into time and saw none of me there,'" he quoted, then capped +it, smiling, with a second quotation: "'She gat me nine great sons.... +The other nine were daughters.'" + +Back at the house, he did not immediately go in, but stood a space +gazing at the far flung lines of it. Nor, inside, did he immediately go +to his own quarters. Instead, he wandered through the silent rooms, +across the patios, and along the dim-lit halls. His frame of mind was +as of one about to depart on a journey. He pressed on the lights in +Paula's fairy patio, and, sitting in an austere Roman seat of marble, +smoked a cigarette quite through while he made his plans. + +Oh, he would do it nicely enough. He could pull off a hunting accident +that would fool the world. Trust him not to bungle it. Next day would +be the day, in the woods above Sycamore Creek. Grandfather Jonathan +Forrest, the straight-laced Puritan, had died of a hunting accident. +For the first time Dick doubted that accident. Well, if it hadn't been +an accident, the old fellow had done it well. It had never been hinted +in the family that it was aught but an accident. + +His hand on the button to turn off the lights, Dick delayed a moment +for a last look at the marble babies that played in the fountain and +among the roses. + +"So long, younglings," he called softly to them. "You're the nearest I +ever came to it." + +From his sleeping porch he looked across the big patio to Paula's +porch. There was no light. The chance was she slept. + +On the edge of the bed, he found himself with one shoe unlaced, and, +smiling at his absentness, relaced it. What need was there for him to +sleep? It was already four in the morning. He would at least watch his +last sunrise. Last things were coming fast. Already had he not dressed +for the last time? And the bath of the previous morning would be his +last. Mere water could not stay the corruption of death. He would have +to shave, however--a last vanity, for the hair did continue to grow for +a time on dead men's faces. + +He brought a copy of his will from the wall-safe to his desk and read +it carefully. Several minor codicils suggested themselves, and he wrote +them out in long-hand, pre-dating them six months as a precaution. The +last was the endowment of the sages of the madroño grove with a +fellowship of seven. + +He ran through his life insurance policies, verifying the permitted +suicide clause in each one; signed the tray of letters that had waited +his signature since the previous morning; and dictated a letter into +the phonograph to the publisher of his books. His desk cleaned, he +scrawled a quick summary of income and expense, with all earnings from +the Harvest mines deducted. He transposed the summary into a second +summary, increasing the expense margins, and cutting down the income +items to an absurdest least possible. Still the result was satisfactory. + +He tore up the sheets of figures and wrote out a program for the future +handling of the Harvest situation. He did it sketchily, with casual +tentativeness, so that when it was found among the papers there would +be no suspicions. In the same fashion he worked out a line-breeding +program for the Shires, and an in-breeding table, up and down, for +Mountain Lad and the Fotherington Princess and certain selected +individuals of their progeny. + +When Oh My came in with coffee at six, Dick was on his last paragraph +of his scheme for rice-growing. + +"Although the Italian rice may be worth experimenting with for quick +maturity," he wrote, "I shall for a time confine the main plantings in +equal proportions to Moti, Ioko, and the Wateribune. Thus, with +different times of maturing, the same crews and the same machinery, +with the same overhead, can work a larger acreage than if only one +variety is planted." + +Oh My served the coffee at his desk, and made no sign even after a +glance to the porch at the bed which had not been slept in--all of +which control Dick permitted himself privily to admire. + +At six-thirty the telephone rang and he heard Hennessy's tired voice: +"I knew you'd be up and glad to know Alden Bessie's pulled through. It +was a squeak, though. And now it's me for the hay." + +When Dick had shaved, he looked at the shower, hesitated a moment, then +his face set stubbornly. I'm darned if I will, was his thought; a sheer +waste of time. He did, however, change his shoes to a pair of heavy, +high-laced ones fit for the roughness of hunting. He was at his desk +again, looking over the notes in his scribble pads for the morning's +work, when Paula entered. She did not call her "Good morning, merry +gentleman"; but came quite close to him before she greeted him softly +with: + +"The Acorn-planter. Ever tireless, never weary Red Cloud." + +He noted the violet-blue shadows under her eyes, as he arose, without +offering to touch her. Nor did she offer invitation. + +"A white night?" he asked, as he placed a chair. + +"A white night," she answered wearily. "Not a second's sleep, though I +tried so hard." + +Both were reluctant of speech, and they labored under a mutual +inability to draw their eyes away from each other. + +"You ... you don't look any too fit yourself," she said. + +"Yes, my face," he nodded. "I was looking at it while I shaved. The +expression won't come off." + +"Something happened to you last night," she probed, and he could not +fail to see the same compassion in her eyes that he had seen in Oh +Dear's. "Everybody remarked your expression. What was it?" + +He shrugged his shoulders. "It has been coming on for some time," he +evaded, remembering that the first hint of it had been given him by +Paula's portrait of him. "You've noticed it?" he inquired casually. + +She nodded, then was struck by a sudden thought. He saw the idea leap +to life ere her words uttered it. + +"Dick, you haven't an affair?" + +It was a way out. It would straighten all the tangle. And hope was in +her voice and in her face. + +He smiled, shook his head slowly, and watched her disappointment. + +"I take it back," he said. "I have an affair." + +"Of the heart?" + +She was eager, as he answered, "Of the heart." + +But she was not prepared for what came next. He abruptly drew his chair +close, till his knees touched hers, and, leaning forward, quickly but +gently prisoned her hands in his resting on her knees. + +"Don't be alarmed, little bird-woman," he quieted her. "I shall not +kiss you. It is a long time since I have. I want to tell you about that +affair. But first I want to tell you how proud I am--proud of myself. I +am proud that I am a lover. At my age, a lover! It is unbelievable, and +it is wonderful. And such a lover! Such a curious, unusual, and quite +altogether remarkable lover. In fact, I have laughed all the books and +all biology in the face. I am a monogamist. I love the woman, the one +woman. After a dozen years of possession I love her quite madly, oh, so +sweetly madly." + +Her hands communicated her disappointment to him, making a slight, +impulsive flutter to escape; but he held them more firmly. + +"I know her every weakness, and, weakness and strength and all, I love +her as madly as I loved her at the first, in those mad moments when I +first held her in my arms." + +Her hands were mutinous of the restraint he put upon them, and +unconsciously she was beginning to pull and tug to be away from him. +Also, there was fear in her eyes. He knew her fastidiousness, and he +guessed, with the other man's lips recent on hers, that she feared a +more ardent expression on his part. + +"And please, please be not frightened, timid, sweet, beautiful, proud, +little bird-woman. See. I release you. Know that I love you most +dearly, and that I am considering you as well as myself, and before +myself, all the while." + +He drew his chair away from her, leaned back, and saw confidence grow +in her eyes. + +"I shall tell you all my heart," he continued, "and I shall want you to +tell me all your heart." + +"This love for me is something new?" she asked. "A recrudescence?" + +"Yes, a recrudescence, and no." + +"I thought that for a long time I had been a habit to you," she said. + +"But I was loving you all the time." + +"Not madly." + +"No," he acknowledged. "But with certainty. I was so sure of you, of +myself. It was, to me, all a permanent and forever established thing. I +plead guilty. But when that permanency was shaken, all my love for you +fired up. It was there all the time, a steady, long-married flame." + +"But about me?" she demanded. + +"That is what we are coming to. I know your worry right now, and of a +minute ago. You are so intrinsically honest, so intrinsically true, +that the thought of sharing two men is abhorrent to you. I have not +misread you. It is a long time since you have permitted me any +love-touch." He shrugged his shoulders "And an equally long time since +I offered you a love-touch." + +"Then you _have_ known from the first?" she asked quickly. + +He nodded. + +"Possibly," he added, with an air of judicious weighing, "I sensed it +coming before even you knew it. But we will not go into that or other +things." + +"You have seen..." she attempted to ask, stung almost to shame at +thought of her husband having witnessed any caress of hers and Graham's. + +"We will not demean ourselves with details, Paula. Besides, there was +and is nothing wrong about any of it. Also, it was not necessary for me +to see anything. I have my memories of when I, too, kissed stolen +kisses in the pause of the seconds between the frank, outspoken 'Good +nights.' When all the signs of ripeness are visible--the love-shades +and love-notes that cannot be hidden, the unconscious caress of the +eyes in a fleeting glance, the involuntary softening of voices, the +cuckoo-sob in the throat--why, the night-parting kiss does not need to +be seen. It has to be. Still further, oh my woman, know that I justify +you in everything." + +"It... it was not ever... much," she faltered. + +"I should have been surprised if it had been. It couldn't have been +you. As it is, I have been surprised. After our dozen years it was +unexpected--" + +"Dick," she interrupted him, leaning toward him and searching him. She +paused to frame her thought, and then went on with directness. "In our +dozen years, will you say it has never been any more with you?" + +"I have told you that I justify you in everything," he softened his +reply. + +"But you have not answered my question," she insisted. "Oh, I do not +mean mere flirtatious passages, bits of primrose philandering. I mean +unfaithfulness and I mean it technically. In the past you have?" + +"In the past," he answered, "not much, and not for a long, long time." + +"I often wondered," she mused. + +"And I have told you I justify you in everything," he reiterated. "And +now you know where lies the justification." + +"Then by the same token I had a similar right," she said. "Though I +haven't, Dick, I haven't," she hastened to add. "Well, anyway, you +always did preach the single standard." + +"Alas, not any longer," he smiled. "One's imagination will conjure, and +in the past few weeks I've been forced to change my mind." + +"You mean that you demand I must be faithful?" + +He nodded and said, "So long as you live with me." + +"But where's the equity?" + +"There isn't any equity," he shook his head. "Oh, I know it seems a +preposterous change of view. But at this late day I have made the +discovery of the ancient truth that women are different from men. All I +have learned of book and theory goes glimmering before the everlasting +fact that the women are the mothers of our children. I... I still had +my hopes of children with you, you see. But that's all over and done +with. The question now is, what's in your heart? I have told you mine. +And afterward we can determine what is to be done." + +"Oh, Dick," she breathed, after silence had grown painful, "I do love +you, I shall always love you. You are my Red Cloud. Why, do you know, +only yesterday, out on your sleeping porch, I turned my face to the +wall. It was terrible. It didn't seem right. I turned it out again, oh +so quickly." + +He lighted a cigarette and waited. + +"But you have not told me what is in your heart, all of it," he chided +finally. + +"I do love you," she repeated. + +"And Evan?" + +"That is different. It is horrible to have to talk this way to you. +Besides, I don't know. I can't make up my mind what is in my heart." + +"Love? Or amorous adventure? It must be one or the other." + +She shook her head. + +"Can't you understand?" she asked. "That I don't understand? You see, I +am a woman. I have never sown any wild oats. And now that all this has +happened, I don't know what to make of it. Shaw and the rest must be +right. Women are hunting animals. You are both big game. I can't help +it. It is a challenge to me. And I find I am a puzzle to myself. All my +concepts have been toppled over by my conduct. I want you. I want Evan. +I want both of you. It is not amorous adventure, oh believe me. And if +by any chance it is, and I do not know it--no, it isn't, I know it +isn't." + +"Then it is love." + +"But I do love you, Red Cloud." + +"And you say you love him. You can't love both of us." + +"But I can. I do. I do love both of you.--Oh, I am straight. I shall be +straight. I must work this out. I thought you might help me. That is +why I came to you this morning. There must be some solution." + +She looked at him appealingly as he answered, "It is one or the other, +Evan or me. I cannot imagine any other solution." + +"That's what he says. But I can't bring myself to it. He was for coming +straight to you. I would not permit him. He has wanted to go, but I +held him here, hard as it was on both of you, in order to have you +together, to compare you two, to weigh you in my heart. And I get +nowhere. I want you both. I can't give either of you up." + +"Unfortunately, as you see," Dick began, a slight twinkle in his eyes, +"while you may be polyandrously inclined, we stupid male men cannot +reconcile ourselves to such a situation." + +"Don't be cruel, Dick," she protested. + +"Forgive me. It was not so meant. It was out of my own hurt--an effort +to bear it with philosophical complacence." + +"I have told him that he was the only man I had ever met who is as +great as my husband, and that my husband is greater." + +"That was loyalty to me, yes, and loyalty to yourself," Dick explained. +"You were mine until I ceased being the greatest man in the world. He +then became the greatest man in the world." + +She shook her head. + +"Let me try to solve it for you," he continued. "You don't know your +mind, your desire. You can't decide between us because you equally want +us both?" + +"Yes," she whispered. "Only, rather, differently want you both." + +"Then the thing is settled," he concluded shortly. + +"What do you mean?" + +"This, Paula. I lose. Graham is the winner. Don't you see. Here am I, +even with him, even and no more, while my advantage over him is our +dozen years together--the dozen years of past love, the ties and bonds +of heart and memory. Heavens! If all this weight were thrown in the +balance on Evan's side, you wouldn't hesitate an instant in your +decision. It is the first time you have ever been bowled over in your +life, and the experience, coming so late, makes it hard for you to +realize." + +"But, Dick, you bowled me over." + +He shook his head. + +"I have always liked to think so, and sometimes I have believed--but +never really. I never took you off your feet, not even in the very +beginning, whirlwind as the affair was. You may have been glamoured. +You were never mad as I was mad, never swept as I was swept. I loved +you first--" + +"And you were a royal lover." + +"I loved you first, Paula, and, though you did respond, it was not in +the same way. I never took you off your feet. It seems pretty clear +that Evan has." + +"I wish I could be sure," she mused. "I have a feeling of being bowled +over, and yet I hesitate. The two are not compatible. Perhaps I never +shall be bowled over by any man. And you don't seem to help me in the +least." + +"You, and you alone, can solve it, Paula," he said gravely. + +"But if you would help, if you would try--oh, such a little, to hold +me," she persisted. + +"But I am helpless. My hands are tied. I can't put an arm to hold you. +You can't share two. You have been in his arms--" He put up his hand to +hush her protest. "Please, please, dear, don't. You have been in his +arms. You flutter like a frightened bird at thought of my caressing +you. Don't you see? Your actions decide against me. You have decided, +though you may not know it. Your very flesh has decided. You can bear +his arms. The thought of mine you cannot bear." + +She shook her head with slow resoluteness. + +"And still I do not, cannot, make up my mind," she persisted. + +"But you must. The present situation is intolerable. You must decide +quickly, for Evan must go. You realize that. Or you must go. You both +cannot continue on here. Take all the time in the world. Send Evan +away. Or, suppose you go and visit Aunt Martha for a while. Being away +from both of us might aid you to get somewhere. Perhaps it will be +better to call off the hunting. I'll go alone, and you stay and talk it +over with Evan. Or come on along and talk it over with him as you ride. +Whichever way, I won't be in till late. I may sleep out all night in +one of the herder's cabins. When I come back, Evan must be gone. +Whether or not you are gone with him will also have been decided." + +"And if I should go?" she queried. + +Dick shrugged his shoulders, and stood up, glancing at his wrist-watch. + +"I have sent word to Blake to come earlier this morning," he explained, +taking a step toward the door in invitation for her to go. + +At the door she paused and leaned toward him. + +"Kiss me, Dick," she said, and, afterward: "This is not a... +love-touch." Her voice had become suddenly husky. "It's just in case I +do decide to... to go." + +The secretary approached along the hall, but Paula lingered. + +"Good morning, Mr. Blake," Dick greeted him. "Sorry to rout you out so +early. First of all, will you please telephone Mr. Agar and Mr. Pitts. +I won't be able to see them this morning. Oh, and put the rest off till +to-morrow, too. Make a point of getting Mr. Hanley. Tell him I approve +of his plan for the Buckeye spillway, and to go right ahead. I will see +Mr. Mendenhall, though, and Mr. Manson. Tell them nine-thirty." + +"One thing, Dick," Paula said. "Remember, I made him stay. It was not +his fault or wish. I wouldn't let him go." + +"You've bowled _him_ over right enough," Dick smiled. "I could not +reconcile his staying on, under the circumstances, with what I knew of +him. But with you not permitting him to go, and he as mad as a man has +a right to be where you are concerned, I can understand. He's a whole +lot better than a good sort. They don't make many like him. He will +make you happy--" + +She held up her hand. + +"I don't know that I shall ever be happy again, Red Cloud. When I see +what I have brought into your face.... And I was so happy and contented +all our dozen years. I can't forget it. That is why I have been unable +to decide. But you are right. The time has come for me to solve the +..." She hesitated and could not utter the word "triangle" which he saw +forming on her lips. "The situation," her voice trailed away. "We'll +all go hunting. I'll talk with him as we ride, and I'll send him away, +no matter what I do." + +"I shouldn't be precipitate, Paul," Dick advised. "You know I don't +care a hang for morality except when it is useful. And in this case it +is exceedingly useful. There may be children.--Please, please," he +hushed her. "And in such case even old scandal is not exactly good for +them. Desertion takes too long. I'll arrange to give you the real +statutory grounds, which will save a year in the divorce." + +"If I so make up my mind," she smiled wanly. + +He nodded. + +"But I may not make up my mind that way. I don't know it myself. +Perhaps it's all a dream, and soon I shall wake up, and Oh Dear will +come in and tell me how soundly and long I have slept." + +She turned away reluctantly, and paused suddenly when she had made half +a dozen steps. + +"Dick," she called. "You have told me your heart, but not what's in +your mind. Don't do anything foolish. Remember Denny Holbrook--no +hunting accident, mind." + +He shook his head, and twinkled his eyes in feigned amusement, and +marveled to himself that her intuition should have so squarely hit the +mark. + +"And leave all this?" he lied, with a gesture that embraced the ranch +and all its projects. "And that book on in-and-in-breeding? And my +first annual home sale of stock just ripe to come off?" + +"It would be preposterous," she agreed with brightening face. "But, +Dick, in this difficulty of making up my mind, please, please know +that--" She paused for the phrase, then made a gesture in mimicry of +his, that included the Big House and its treasures, and said, "All this +does not influence me a particle. Truly not." + +"As if I did not know it," he assured her. "Of all unmercenary women--" + +"Why, Dick," she interrupted him, fired by a new thought, "if I loved +Evan as madly as you think, you would mean so little that I'd be +content, if it were the only way out, for you to have a hunting +accident. But you see, I don't. Anyway, there's a brass tack for you to +ponder." + +She made another reluctant step away, then called back in a whisper, +her face over her shoulder: + +"Red Cloud, I'm dreadfully sorry.... And through it all I'm so glad +that you do still love me." + +Before Blake returned, Dick found time to study his face in the glass. +Printed there was the expression that had startled his company the +preceding evening. It had come to stay. Oh, well, was his thought, one +cannot chew his heart between his teeth without leaving some sign of it. + +He strolled out on the sleeping porch and looked at Paula's picture +under the barometers. He turned it to the wall, and sat on the bed and +regarded the blankness for a space. Then he turned it back again. + +"Poor little kid," he murmured, "having a hard time of it just waking +up at this late day." + +But as he continued to gaze, abruptly there leaped before his eyes the +vision of her in the moonlight, clinging to Graham and drawing his lips +down to hers. + +Dick got up quickly, with a shake of head to shake the vision from his +eyes. + +By half past nine his correspondence was finished and his desk cleaned +save for certain data to be used in his talks with his Shorthorn and +Shire managers. He was over at the window and waving a smiling farewell +to Lute and Ernestine in the limousine, as Mendenhall entered. And to +him, and to Manson next, Dick managed, in casual talk, to impress much +of his bigger breeding plans. + +"We've got to keep an eagle eye on the bull-get of King Polo," he told +Manson. "There's all the promise in the world for a greater than he +from Bleakhouse Fawn, or Alberta Maid, or Moravia's Nellie Signal. We +missed it this year so far, but next year, or the year after, soon or +late, King Polo is going to be responsible for a real humdinger of +winner." + +And as with Manson, with much more talk, so with Mendenhall, Dick +succeeded in emphasizing the far application of his breeding theories. + +With their departure, he got Oh Joy on the house 'phone and told him to +take Graham to the gun room to choose a rifle and any needed gear. + +At eleven he did not know that Paula had come up the secret stairway +from the library and was standing behind the shelves of books +listening. She had intended coming in but had been deterred by the +sound of his voice. She could hear him talking over the telephone to +Hanley about the spillway of the Buckeye dam. + +"And by the way," Dick's voice went on, "you've been over the reports +on the Big Miramar?... Very good. Discount them. I disagree with them +flatly. The water is there. I haven't a doubt we'll find a fairly +shallow artesian supply. Send up the boring outfit at once and start +prospecting. The soil's ungodly rich, and if we don't make that dry +hole ten times as valuable in the next five years ..." + +Paula sighed, and turned back down the spiral to the library. + +Red Cloud the incorrigible, always planting his acorns--was her +thought. There he was, with his love-world crashing around him, calmly +considering dams and well-borings so that he might, in the years to +come, plant more acorns. + +Nor was Dick ever to know that Paula had come so near to him with her +need and gone away. Again, not aimlessly, but to run through for the +last time the notes of the scribble pad by his bed, he was out on his +sleeping porch. His house was in order. There was nothing left but to +sign up the morning's dictation, answer several telegrams, then would +come lunch and the hunting in the Sycamore hills. Oh, he would do it +well. The Outlaw would bear the blame. And he would have an +eye-witness, either Froelig or Martinez. But not both of them. One pair +of eyes would be enough to satisfy when the martingale parted and the +mare reared and toppled backward upon him into the brush. And from that +screen of brush, swiftly linking accident to catastrophe, the witness +would hear the rifle go off. + +Martinez was more emotional than the sculptor and would therefore make +a more satisfactory witness, Dick decided. Him would he maneuver to +have with him in the narrow trail when the Outlaw should be made the +scapegoat. Martinez was no horseman. All the better. It would be well, +Dick judged, to make the Outlaw act up in real devilishness for a +minute or two before the culmination. It would give verisimilitude. +Also, it would excite Martinez's horse, and, therefore, excite Martinez +so that he would not see occurrences too clearly. + +He clenched his hands with sudden hurt. The Little Lady was mad, she +must be mad; on no other ground could he understand such arrant +cruelty, listening to her voice and Graham's from the open windows of +the music room as they sang together the "Gypsy Trail." + +Nor did he unclench his hands during all the time they sang. And they +sang the mad, reckless song clear through to its mad reckless end. And +he continued to stand, listening to her laugh herself merrily away from +Graham and on across the house to her wing, from the porches of which +she continued to laugh as she teased and chided Oh Dear for fancied +derelictions. + +From far off came the dim but unmistakable trumpeting of Mountain Lad. +King Polo asserted his lordly self, and the harems of mares and heifers +sent back their answering calls. Dick listened to all the whinnying and +nickering and bawling of sex, and sighed aloud: "Well, the land is +better for my having been. It is a good thought to take to bed." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI + + + +A ring of his bed 'phone made Dick sit on the bed to take up the +receiver. As he listened, he looked out across the patio to Paula's +porches. Bonbright was explaining that it was a call from Chauncey +Bishop who was at Eldorado in a machine. Chauncey Bishop, editor and +owner of the San Francisco _Dispatch_, was sufficiently important a +person, in Bonbright's mind, as well as old friend of Dick's, to be +connected directly to him. + +"You can get here for lunch," Dick told the newspaper owner. "And, say, +suppose you put up for the night.... Never mind your special writers. +We're going hunting mountain lions this afternoon, and there's sure to +be a kill. Got them located.... Who? What's she write?... What of it? +She can stick around the ranch and get half a dozen columns out of any +of half a dozen subjects, while the writer chap can get the dope on +lion-hunting.... Sure, sure. I'll put him on a horse a child can ride." + +The more the merrier, especially newspaper chaps, Dick grinned to +himself--and grandfather Jonathan Forrest would have nothing on him +when it came to pulling off a successful finish. + +But how could Paula have been so wantonly cruel as to sing the "Gypsy +Trail" so immediately afterward? Dick asked himself, as, receiver near +to ear, he could distantly hear Chauncey Bishop persuading his writer +man to the hunting. + +"All right then, come a running," Dick told Bishop in conclusion. "I'm +giving orders now for the horses, and you can have that bay you rode +last time." + +Scarcely had he hung up, when the bell rang again. This time it was +Paula. + +"Red Cloud, dear Red Cloud," she said, "your reasoning is all wrong. I +think I love you best. I am just about making up my mind, and it's for +you. And now, just to help me to be sure, tell me what you told me a +little while ago--you know--' I love the woman, the one woman. After a +dozen years of possession I love her quite madly, oh, so sweetly +madly.' Say it to me, Red Cloud." + +"I do truly love the woman, the one woman," Dick repeated. "After a +dozen years of possession I do love her quite madly, oh, so sweetly +madly." + +There was a pause when he had finished, which, waiting, he did not dare +to break. + +"There is one little thing I almost forgot to tell you," she said, very +softly, very slowly, very clearly. "I do love you. I have never loved +you so much as right now. After our dozen years you've bowled me over +at last. And I was bowled over from the beginning, although I did not +know it. I have made up my mind now, once and for all." + +She hung up abruptly. + +With the thought that he knew how a man felt receiving a reprieve at +the eleventh hour, Dick sat on, thinking, forgetful that he had not +hooked the receiver, until Bonbright came in from the secretaries' room +to remind him. + +"It was from Mr. Bishop," Bonbright explained. "Sprung an axle. I took +the liberty of sending one of our machines to bring them in." + +"And see what our men can do with repairing theirs," Dick nodded. + +Alone again, he got up and stretched, walked absently the length of the +room and back. + +"Well, Martinez, old man," he addressed the empty air, "this afternoon +you'll be defrauded out of as fine a histrionic stunt as you will never +know you've missed." + +He pressed the switch for Paula's telephone and rang her up. + +Oh Dear answered, and quickly brought her mistress. + +"I've a little song I want to sing to you, Paul," he said, then chanted +the old negro 'spiritual': + + "'Fer itself, fer itself, + Fer itself, fer itself, + Every soul got ter confess + Fer itself.' + +"And I want you to tell me again, fer yourself, fer yourself, what you +just told me." + +Her laughter came in a merry gurgle that delighted him. + +"Red Cloud, I do love you," she said. "My mind is made up. I shall +never have any man but you in all this world. Now be good, and let me +dress. I'll have to rush for lunch as it is." + +"May I come over?--for a moment?" he begged. + +"Not yet, eager one. In ten minutes. Let me finish with Oh Dear first. +Then I'll be all ready for the hunt. I'm putting on my Robin Hood +outfit--you know, the greens and russets and the long feather. And I'm +taking my 30-30. It's heavy enough for mountain lions." + +"You've made me very happy," Dick continued. + +"And you're making me late. Ring off.--Red Cloud, I love you more this +minute--" + +He heard her hang up, and was surprised, the next moment, that somehow +he was reluctant to yield to the happiness that he had claimed was his. +Rather, did it seem that he could still hear her voice and Graham's +recklessly singing the "Gypsy Trail." + +Had she been playing with Graham? Or had she been playing with him? +Such conduct, for her, was unprecedented and incomprehensible. As he +groped for a solution, he saw her again in the moonlight, clinging to +Graham with upturned lips, drawing Graham's lips down to hers. + +Dick shook his head in bafflement, and glanced at his watch. At any +rate, in ten minutes, in less than ten minutes, he would hold her in +his arms and know. + +So tedious was the brief space of time that he strolled slowly on the +way, pausing to light a cigarette, throwing it away with the first +inhalation, pausing again to listen to the busy click of typewriters +from the secretaries' room. With still two minutes to spare, and +knowing that one minute would take him to the door without a knob, he +stopped in the patio and gazed at the wild canaries bathing in the +fountain. + +When they startled into the air, a cloud of fluttering gold and crystal +droppings in the sunshine, Dick startled. The report of the rifle had +come from Paula's wing above, and he identified it as her 30-30 as he +dashed across the patio. _She beat me to it,_ was his next thought, and +what had been incomprehensible the moment before was as sharply +definite as the roar of her rifle. + +And across the patio, up the stairs, through the door left wide-flung +behind him, continued to pulse in his brain: _She beat me to it. She +beat me to it._ + +She lay, crumpled and quivering, in hunting costume complete, save for +the pair of tiny bronze spurs held over her in anguished impotence by +the frightened maid. + +His examination was quick. Paula breathed, although she was +unconscious. From front to back, on the left side, the bullet had torn +through. His next spring was to the telephone, and as he waited the +delay of connecting through the house central he prayed that Hennessy +would be at the stallion barn. A stable boy answered, and, while he ran +to fetch the veterinary, Dick ordered Oh Joy to stay by the switches, +and to send Oh My to him at once. + +From the tail of his eye he saw Graham rush into the room and on to +Paula. + +"Hennessy," Dick commanded. "Come on the jump. Bring the needful for +first aid. It's a rifle shot through the lungs or heart or both. Come +right to Mrs. Forrest's rooms. Now jump." + +"Don't touch her," he said sharply to Graham. "It might make it worse, +start a worse hemorrhage." + +Next he was back at Oh Joy. + +"Start Callahan with the racing car for Eldorado. Tell him he'll meet +Doctor Robinson on the way, and that he is to bring Doctor Robinson +back with him on the jump. Tell him to jump like the devil was after +him. Tell him Mrs. Forrest is hurt and that if he makes time he'll save +her life." + +Receiver to ear, he turned to look at Paula. Graham, bending over her +but not touching her, met his eyes. + +"Forrest," he began, "if you have done--" + +But Dick hushed him with a warning glance directed toward Oh Dear who +still held the bronze spurs in speechless helplessness. + +"It can be discussed later," Dick said shortly, as he turned his mouth +to the transmitter. + +"Doctor Robinson?... Good. Mrs. Forrest has a rifle-shot through lungs +or heart or maybe both. Callahan is on his way to meet you in the +racing car. Keep coming as fast as God'll let you till you meet +Callahan. Good-by." + +Back to Paula, Graham stepped aside as Dick, on his knees, bent over +her. His examination was brief. He looked up at Graham with a shake of +the head and said: + +"It's too ticklish to fool with." + +He turned to Oh Dear. + +"Put down those spurs and bring pillows.--Evan, lend a hand on the +other side, and lift gently and steadily.--Oh Dear, shove that pillow +under--easy, easy." + +He looked up and saw Oh My standing silently, awaiting orders. + +"Get Mr. Bonbright to relieve Oh Joy at the switches," Dick commanded. +"Tell Oh Joy to stand near to Mr. Bonbright to rush orders. Tell Oh Joy +to have all the house boys around him to rush the orders. As soon as +Saunders comes back with Mr. Bishop's crowd, tell Oh Joy to start him +out on the jump to Eldorado to look for Callahan in case Callahan has a +smash up. Tell Oh Joy to get hold of Mr. Manson, and Mr. Pitts or any +two of the managers who have machines and have them, with their +machines, waiting here at the house. Tell Oh Joy to take care of Mr. +Bishop's crowd as usual. And you come back here where I can call you." + +Dick turned to Oh Dear. + +"Now tell me how it happened." + +Oh Dear shook her head and wrung her hands. + +"Where were you when the rifle went off?" + +The Chinese girl swallowed and pointed toward the wardrobe room. + +"Go on, talk," Dick commanded harshly. + +"Mrs. Forrest tell me to get spurs. I forget before. I go quick. I hear +gun. I come back quick. I run." + +She pointed to Paula to show what she had found. + +"But the gun?" Dick asked. + +"Some trouble. Maybe gun no work. Maybe four minutes, maybe five +minutes, Mrs. Forrest try make gun work." + +"Was she trying to make the gun work when you went for the spurs?" + +Oh Dear nodded. + +"Before that I say maybe Oh Joy can fix gun. Mrs. Forrest say never +mind. She say you can fix. She put gun down. Then she try once more fix +gun. Then she tell me get spurs. Then... gun go off." + +Hennessy's arrival shut off further interrogation. His examination was +scarcely less brief than Dick's. He looked up with a shake of the head. + +"Nothing I can dare tackle, Mr. Forrest. The hemorrhage has eased of +itself, though it must be gathering inside. You've sent for a doctor?" + +"Robinson. I caught him in his office.--He's young, a good surgeon," +Dick explained to Graham. "He's nervy and daring, and I'd trust him in +this farther than some of the old ones with reputations.--What do you +think, Mr. Hennessy? What chance has she?" + +"Looks pretty bad, though I'm no judge, being only a horse doctor. +Robinson'll know. Nothing to do but wait." + +Dick nodded and walked out on Paula's sleeping porch to listen for the +exhaust of the racing machine Callahan drove. He heard the ranch +limousine arrive leisurely and swiftly depart. Graham came out on the +porch to him. + +"I want to apologize, Forrest," he said. "I was rather off for the +moment. I found you here, and I thought you were here when it happened. +It must have been an accident.'" + +"Poor little kid," Dick agreed. "And she so prided herself on never +being careless with guns." + +"I've looked at the rifle," Graham said, "but I couldn't find anything +wrong with it." + +"And that's how it happened. Whatever was wrong got right. That's how +it went off." + +And while Dick talked, building the fabric of the lie so that even +Graham should be fooled, to himself he was understanding how well Paula +had played the trick. That last singing of the "Gypsy Trail" had been +her farewell to Graham and at the same time had provided against any +suspicion on his part of what she had intended directly to do. It had +been the same with him. She had had her farewell with him, and, the +last thing, over the telephone, had assured him that she would never +have any man but him in all the world. + +He walked away from Graham to the far end of the porch. + +"She had the grit, she had the grit," he muttered to himself with +quivering lips. "Poor kid. She couldn't decide between the two, and so +she solved it this way." + +The noise of the racing machine drew him and Graham together, and +together they entered the room to wait for the doctor. Graham betrayed +unrest, reluctant to go, yet feeling that he must. + +"Please stay on, Evan," Dick told him. "She liked you much, and if she +does open her eyes she'll be glad to see you." + +Dick and Graham stood apart from Paula while Doctor Robinson made his +examination. When he arose with an air of finality, Dick looked his +question. Robinson shook his head. + +"Nothing to be done," he said. "It is a matter of hours, maybe of +minutes." He hesitated, studying Dick's face for a moment. "I can ease +her off if you say the word. She might possibly recover consciousness +and suffer for a space." + +Dick took a turn down the room and back, and when he spoke it was to +Graham. + +"Why not let her live again, brief as the time may be? The pain is +immaterial. It will have its inevitable quick anodyne. It is what I +would wish, what you would wish. She loved life, every moment of it. +Why should we deny her any of the little left her?" + +Graham bent his head in agreement, and Dick turned to the doctor. + +"Perhaps you can stir her, stimulate her, to a return of consciousness. +If you can, do so. And if the pain proves too severe, then you can ease +her." + + * * * * * + +When her eyes fluttered open, Dick nodded Graham up beside him. At +first bewilderment was all she betrayed, then her eyes focused first on +Dick's face, then on Graham's, and, with recognition, her lips parted +in a pitiful smile. + +"I... I thought at first that I was dead," she said. + +But quickly another thought was in her mind, and Dick divined it in her +eyes as they searched him. The question was if he knew it was no +accident. He gave no sign. She had planned it so, and she must pass +believing it so. + +"I... was... wrong," she said. She spoke slowly, faintly, in evident +pain, with a pause for strength of utterance between each word. "I was +always so cocksure I'd never have an accident, and look what I've gone +and done." + +"It's a darn shame," Dick said, sympathetically. "What was it? A jam?" + +She nodded, and again her lips parted in the pitiful brave smile as she +said whimsically: "Oh, Dick, go call the neighbors in and show them +what little Paula's din. + +"How serious is it?" she asked. "Be honest, Red Cloud, you know _me,"_ +she added, after the briefest of pauses in which Dick had not replied. + +He shook his head. + +"How long?" she queried. + +"Not long," came his answer. "You can ease off any time." + +"You mean...?" She glanced aside curiously at the doctor and back to +Dick, who nodded. + +"It's only what I should have expected from you, Red Cloud," she +murmured gratefully. "But is Doctor Robinson game for it?" + +The doctor stepped around so that she could see him, and nodded. + +"Thank you, doctor. And remember, I am to say when." + +"Is there much pain?" Dick queried. + +Her eyes were wide and brave and dreadful, and her lips quivered for +the moment ere she replied, "Not much, but dreadful, quite dreadful. I +won't care to stand it very long. I'll say when." + +Once more the smile on her lips announced a whimsey. + +"Life is queer, most queer, isn't it? And do you know, I want to go out +with love-songs in my ears. You first, Evan, sing the 'Gypsy +Trail.'--Why, I was singing it with you less than an hour ago. Think of +it! Do, Evan, please." + +Graham looked to Dick for permission, and Dick gave it with his eyes. + +"Oh, and sing it robustly, gladly, madly, just as a womaning Gypsy man +should sing it," she urged. "And stand back there, so, where I can see +you." + +And while Graham sang the whole song through to its: + + "The heart of a man to the heart of a maid, light of my + tents be fleet, + Morning waits at the end of the world and the world is + all at our feet," + +Oh My, immobile-faced, a statue, stood in the far doorway awaiting +commands. Oh Dear, grief-stricken, stood at her mistress's head, no +longer wringing her hands, but holding them so tightly clasped that the +finger-tips and nails showed white. To the rear, at Paula's dressing +table, Doctor Robinson noiselessly dissolved in a glass the anodyne +pellets and filled his hypodermic. + +When Graham had finished, Paula thanked him with her eyes, closed them, +and lay still for a space. + +"And now, Red Cloud," she said when next she opened them, "the song of +Ai-kut, and of the Dew-Woman, the Lush-Woman. Stand where Evan did, so +that I can see you well." + +And Dick chanted: + +"I am Ai-kut, the first man of the Nishinam. Ai-kut is the short for +Adam, and my father and my mother were the coyote and the moon. And +this is Yo-to-to-wi, my wife. Yo-to-to-wi is the short for Eve. She is +the first woman of the Nishinam. + +"Me, I am Ai-kut. This is my dew of women. This is my honey-dew of +women. Her father and her mother were the Sierra dawn and the summer +east wind of the mountains. Together they conspired, and from the air +and earth they sweated all sweetness till in a mist of their own love +the leaves of the chaparral and the manzanita were dewed with the honey +dew. + +"Yo-to-to-wi is my honey-dew woman. Hear me! I am Ai-kut! Yo-to-to-wi +is my quail-woman, my deer-woman, my lush-woman of all soft rain and +fat soil. She was born of the thin starlight and the brittle +dawn-light, in the morning of the world, and she is the one woman of +all women to me." + +Again, with closed eyes, she lay silent for a while. Once she attempted +to draw a deeper breath, which caused her to cough slightly several +times. + +"Try not to cough," Dick said. + +They could see her brows contract with the effort of will to control +the irritating tickle that might precipitate a paroxysm. + +"Oh Dear, come around where I can see you," she said, when she opened +her eyes. + +The Chinese girl obeyed, moving blindly, so that Robinson, with a hand +on her arm, was compelled to guide her. + +"Good-by, Oh Dear. You've been very good to me always. And sometimes, +maybe, I have not been good to you. I am sorry. Remember, Mr. Forrest +will always be your father and your mother.... And all my jade is +yours." + +She closed her eyes in token that the brief audience was over. + +Again she was vexed by the tickling cough that threatened to grow more +pronounced. + +"I am ready, Dick," she said faintly, still with closed eyes. "I want +to make my sleepy, sleepy noise. Is the doctor ready? Come closer. Hold +my hand like you did before in the little death." + +She turned her eyes to Graham, and Dick did not look, for he knew love +was in that last look of hers, as he knew it would be when she looked +into his eyes at the last. + +"Once," she explained to Graham, "I had to go on the table, and I made +Dick go with me into the anaesthetic chamber and hold my hand until I +went under. You remember, Henley called it the drunken dark, the little +death in life. It was very easy." + +In the silence she continued her look, then turned her face and eyes +back to Dick, who knelt close to her, holding her hand. + +With a pressure of her fingers on his and a beckoning of her eyes, she +drew his ear down to her lips. + +"Red Cloud," she whispered, "I love you best. And I am proud I belonged +to you for such a long, long time." Still closer she drew him with the +pressure of her fingers. "I'm sorry there were no babies, Red Cloud." + +With the relaxing of her fingers she eased him from her so that she +could look from one to the other. + +"Two bonnie, bonnie men. Good-by, bonnie men. Good-by, Red Cloud." + +In the pause, they waited, while the doctor bared her arm for the +needle. + +"Sleepy, sleepy," she twittered in mimicry of drowsy birds. "I am +ready, doctor. Stretch the skin tight, first. You know I don't like to +be hurt.--Hold me tight, Dick." + +Robinson, receiving the eye permission from Dick, easily and quickly +thrust the needle through the stretched skin, with steady hand sank the +piston home, and with the ball of the finger soothingly rubbed the +morphine into circulation. + +"Sleepy, sleepy, boo'ful sleepy," she murmured drowsily, after a time. + +Semi-consciously she half-turned on her side, curved her free arm on +the pillow and nestled her head on it, and drew her body up in nestling +curves in the way Dick knew she loved to sleep. + +After a long time, she sighed faintly, and began so easily to go that +she was gone before they guessed. From without, the twittering of the +canaries bathing in the fountain penetrated the silence of the room, +and from afar came the trumpeting of Mountain Lad and the silver whinny +of the Fotherington Princess. + + + + +THE END + + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Little Lady of the Big House, by Jack London + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LITTLE LADY OF THE BIG HOUSE *** + +***** This file should be named 6455-8.txt or 6455-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/6/4/5/6455/ + +Produced by Curtis A. Weyant, David Maddock, Charles Franks +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at + www.gutenberg.org/license. + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at 809 +North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email +contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the +Foundation's web site and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. +To donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For forty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/6455-8.zip b/6455-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..1c19784 --- /dev/null +++ b/6455-8.zip diff --git a/6455-h.zip b/6455-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..ddbeb42 --- /dev/null +++ b/6455-h.zip diff --git a/6455-h/6455-h.htm b/6455-h/6455-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..cd8ac92 --- /dev/null +++ b/6455-h/6455-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,15030 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> +<html> + +<head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"> + <title>The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Little Lady of the Big House, by Jack London</title> +</head> + +<body> + + +<pre> + +Project Gutenberg's The Little Lady of the Big House, by Jack London + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Little Lady of the Big House + +Author: Jack London + +Posting Date: April 9, 2013 [EBook #6455] +Release Date: September, 2004 +First Posted: December 15, 2002 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LITTLE LADY OF THE BIG HOUSE *** + + + + +Produced by Curtis A. Weyant, David Maddock, Charles Franks +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. + + + + + + +</pre> + + + +<p align="center"><img src="images/front.jpg" alt="[Image: Frontispiece]" ></p> + +<h1 align="center" style="font-variant: small-caps">The Little Lady of the Big House</h1> + +<p align="center" style="font-variant: small-caps">by</p> + +<h2 align="center" style="font-variant: small-caps">Jack London</h2> + +<p align="center">Author of “The Valley of the Moon,”<br> +“The Star Rover,” “The Sea Wolf,”<br> +<i>Etc</i>.</p> + +<h1 align="center" style="margin-top: 2em;font-variant: small-caps">Chapter I</h1> + +<p>He awoke in the dark. His awakening was simple, easy, +without movement save for the eyes that opened and +made him aware of darkness. Unlike most, who must +feel and grope and listen to, and contact with, the +world about them, he knew himself on the moment of +awakening, instantly identifying himself in time and +place and personality. After the lapsed hours of sleep +he took up, without effort, the interrupted tale of +his days. He knew himself to be Dick Forrest, the master +of broad acres, who had fallen asleep hours before +after drowsily putting a match between the pages of +“Road Town” and pressing off the electric +reading lamp.</p> + +<p>Near at hand there was the ripple and gurgle of some +sleepy fountain. From far off, so faint and far that +only a keen ear could catch, he heard a sound that +made him smile with pleasure. He knew it for the distant, +throaty bawl of King Polo—­King Polo, his +champion Short Horn bull, thrice Grand Champion also +of all bulls at Sacramento at the California State +Fairs. The smile was slow in easing from Dick Forrest’s +face, for he dwelt a moment on the new triumphs he +had destined that year for King Polo on the Eastern +livestock circuits. He would show them that a bull, +California born and finished, could compete with the +cream of bulls corn-fed in Iowa or imported overseas +from the immemorial home of Short Horns.</p> + +<p>Not until the smile faded, which was a matter of seconds, +did he reach out in the dark and press the first of +a row of buttons. There were three rows of such buttons. +The concealed lighting that spilled from the huge +bowl under the ceiling revealed a sleeping-porch, three +sides of which were fine-meshed copper screen. The +fourth side was the house wall, solid concrete, through +which French windows gave access.</p> + +<p>He pressed the second button in the row and the bright +light concentered at a particular place on the concrete +wall, illuminating, in a row, a clock, a barometer, +and centigrade and Fahrenheit thermometers. Almost +in a sweep of glance he read the messages of the dials: +time 4:30; air pressure, 29:80, which was normal at +that altitude and season; and temperature, Fahrenheit, +36°. With another press, the gauges of time and heat +and air were sent back into the darkness.</p> + +<p>A third button turned on his reading lamp, so arranged +that the light fell from above and behind without +shining into his eyes. The first button turned off +the concealed lighting overhead. He reached a mass +of proofsheets from the reading stand, and, pencil +in hand, lighting a cigarette, he began to correct.</p> + +<p>The place was clearly the sleeping quarters of a man +who worked. Efficiency was its key note, though comfort, +not altogether Spartan, was also manifest. The bed +was of gray enameled iron to tone with the concrete +wall. Across the foot of the bed, an extra coverlet, +hung a gray robe of wolfskins with every tail a-dangle. +On the floor, where rested a pair of slippers, was +spread a thick-coated skin of mountain goat.</p> + +<p>Heaped orderly with books, magazines and scribble-pads, +there was room on the big reading stand for matches, +cigarettes, an ash-tray, and a thermos bottle. A phonograph, +for purposes of dictation, stood on a hinged and swinging +bracket. On the wall, under the barometer and thermometers, +from a round wooden frame laughed the face of a girl. +On the wall, between the rows of buttons and a switchboard, +from an open holster, loosely projected the butt of +a .44 Colt’s automatic.</p> + +<p>At six o’clock, sharp, after gray light had +begun to filter through the wire netting, Dick Forrest, +without raising his eyes from the proofsheets, reached +out his right hand and pressed a button in the second +row. Five minutes later a soft-slippered Chinese emerged +on the sleeping-porch. In his hands he bore a small +tray of burnished copper on which rested a cup and +saucer, a tiny coffee pot of silver, and a correspondingly +tiny silver cream pitcher.</p> + +<p>“Good morning, Oh My,” was Dick Forrest’s +greeting, and his eyes smiled and his lips smiled +as he uttered it.</p> + +<p>“Good morning, Master,” Oh My returned, +as he busied himself with making room on the reading +stand for the tray and with pouring the coffee and +cream.</p> + +<p>This done, without waiting further orders, noting +that his master was already sipping coffee with one +hand while he made a correction on the proof with +the other, Oh My picked up a rosy, filmy, lacy boudoir +cap from the floor and departed. His exit was noiseless. +He ebbed away like a shadow through the open French +windows.</p> + +<p>At six-thirty, sharp to the minute, he was back with +a larger tray. Dick Forrest put away the proofs, reached +for a book entitled “Commercial Breeding of +Frogs,” and prepared to eat. The breakfast was +simple yet fairly substantial—­more coffee, +a half grape-fruit, two soft-boiled eggs made ready +in a glass with a dab of butter and piping hot, and +a sliver of bacon, not over-cooked, that he knew was +of his own raising and curing.</p> + +<p>By this time the sunshine was pouring in through the +screening and across the bed. On the outside of the +wire screen clung a number of house-flies, early-hatched +for the season and numb with the night’s cold. +As Forrest ate he watched the hunting of the meat-eating +yellow-jackets. Sturdy, more frost-resistant than +bees, they were already on the wing and preying on +the benumbed flies. Despite the rowdy noise of their +flight, these yellow hunters of the air, with rarely +ever a miss, pounced on their helpless victims and +sailed away with them. The last fly was gone ere Forrest +had sipped his last sip of coffee, marked “Commercial +Breeding of Frogs” with a match, and taken up +his proofsheets.</p> + +<p>After a time, the liquid-mellow cry of the meadow-lark, +first vocal for the day, caused him to desist. He +looked at the clock. It marked seven. He set aside +the proofs and began a series of conversations by +means of the switchboard, which he manipulated with +a practiced hand.</p> + +<p>“Hello, Oh Joy,” was his first talk. “Is +Mr. Thayer up?... Very well. Don’t disturb him. +I don’t think he’ll breakfast in bed, but +find out.... That’s right, and show him how +to work the hot water. Maybe he doesn’t know... +Yes, that’s right. Plan for one more boy as soon +as you can get him. There’s always a crowd when +the good weather comes on.... Sure. Use your judgment. +Good-by.”</p> + +<p>“Mr. Hanley?... Yes,” was his second conversation, +over another switch. “I’ve been thinking +about the dam on the Buckeye. I want the figures on +the gravel-haul and on the rock-crushing.... Yes, that’s +it. I imagine that the gravel-haul will cost anywhere +between six and ten cents a yard more than the crushed +rock. That last pitch of hill is what eats up the +gravel-teams. Work out the figures. ... No, we won’t +be able to start for a fortnight. ... Yes, yes; the +new tractors, if they ever deliver, will release the +horses from the plowing, but they’ll have to +go back for the checking.... No, you’ll have +to see Mr. Everan about that. Good-by.”</p> + +<p> And his third call:</p> + +<p>“Mr. Dawson? Ha! Ha! Thirty-six on my porch +right now. It must be white with frost down on the +levels. But it’s most likely the last this year.... +Yes, they swore the tractors would be delivered two +days ago.... Call up the station agent. ... By the +way, you catch Hanley for me. I forgot to tell him +to start the ‘rat-catchers’ out with the +second instalment of fly-traps.... Yes, pronto. There +were a couple of dozen roosting on my screen this +morning.... Yes.... Good-by.”</p> + +<p>At this stage, Forrest slid out of bed in his pajamas, +slipped his feet into the slippers, and strode through +the French windows to the bath, already drawn by Oh +My. A dozen minutes afterward, shaved as well, he +was back in bed, reading his frog book while Oh My, +punctual to the minute, massaged his legs.</p> + +<p>They were the well-formed legs of a well-built, five-foot-ten +man who weighed a hundred and eighty pounds. Further, +they told a tale of the man. The left thigh was marred +by a scar ten inches in length. Across the left ankle, +from instep to heel, were scattered half a dozen scars +the size of half-dollars. When Oh My prodded and pulled +the left knee a shade too severely, Forrest was guilty +of a wince. The right shin was colored with several +dark scars, while a big scar, just under the knee, +was a positive dent in the bone. Midway between knee +and groin was the mark of an ancient three-inch gash, +curiously dotted with the minute scars of stitches.</p> + +<p>A sudden, joyous nicker from without put the match +between the pages of the frog book, and, while Oh +My proceeded partly to dress his master in bed, including +socks and shoes, the master, twisting partly on his +side, stared out in the direction of the nicker. Down +the road, through the swaying purple of the early +lilacs, ridden by a picturesque cowboy, paced a great +horse, glinting ruddy in the morning sun-gold, flinging +free the snowy foam of his mighty fetlocks, his noble +crest tossing, his eyes roving afield, the trumpet +of his love-call echoing through the springing land.</p> + +<p>Dick Forrest was smitten at the same instant with +joy and anxiety—­joy in the glorious beast +pacing down between the lilac hedges; anxiety in that +the stallion might have awakened the girl who laughed +from the round wooden frame on his wall. He glanced +quickly across the two-hundred-foot court to the +long, shadowy jut of her wing of the house. The shades +of her sleeping-porch were down. They did not stir. +Again the stallion nickered, and all that moved was +a flock of wild canaries, upspringing from the flowers +and shrubs of the court, rising like a green-gold +spray of light flung from the sunrise.</p> + +<p>He watched the stallion out of sight through the lilacs, +seeing visions of fair Shire colts mighty of bone +and frame and free from blemish, then turned, as ever +he turned to the immediate thing, and spoke to his +body servant.</p> + +<p>“How’s that last boy, Oh My? Showing up?”</p> + +<p>“Him pretty good boy, I think,” was the +answer. “Him young boy. Everything new. Pretty +slow. All the same bime by him show up good.”</p> + +<p>“Why? What makes you think so?”</p> + +<p>“I call him three, four morning now. Him sleep +like baby. Him wake up smiling just like you. That +very good.”</p> + +<p>“Do I wake up smiling?” Forrest queried.</p> + +<p>Oh My nodded his head violently.</p> + +<p>“Many times, many years, I call you. Always +your eyes open, your eyes smile, your mouth smile, +your face smile, you smile all over, just like that, +right away quick. That very good. A man wake up that +way got plenty good sense. I know. This new boy like +that. Bime by, pretty soon, he make fine boy. You +see. His name Chow Gam. What name you call him this +place?”</p> + +<p>Dick Forrest meditated.</p> + +<p>“What names have we already?” he asked.</p> + +<p>“Oh Joy, Ah Well, Ah Me, and me; I am Oh My,” +the Chinese rattled off. “Oh Joy him say call +new boy—­”</p> + +<p>He hesitated and stared at his master with a challenging +glint of eye. Forrest nodded.</p> + +<p>“Oh Joy him say call new boy ‘Oh Hell.’”</p> + +<p>“Oh ho!” Forrest laughed in appreciation. +“Oh Joy is a josher. A good name, but it won’t +do. There is the Missus. We’ve got to think another +name.”</p> + +<p>“Oh Ho, that very good name.”</p> + +<p>Forrest’s exclamation was still ringing in his +consciousness so that he recognized the source of +Oh My’s inspiration.</p> + +<p>“Very well. The boy’s name is Oh Ho.”</p> + +<p>Oh My lowered his head, ebbed swiftly through the +French windows, and as swiftly returned with the rest +of Forrest’s clothes-gear, helping him into +undershirt and shirt, tossing a tie around his neck +for him to knot, and, kneeling, putting on his leggings +and spurs. A Baden Powell hat and a quirt completed +his appareling—­the quirt, Indian-braided +of rawhide, with ten ounces of lead braided into the +butt that hung from his wrist on a loop of leather.</p> + +<p>But Forrest was not yet free. Oh My handed him several +letters, with the explanation that they had come up +from the station the previous night after Forrest +had gone to bed. He tore the right-hand ends across +and glanced at the contents of all but one with speed. +The latter he dwelt upon for a moment, with an irritated +indrawing of brows, then swung out the phonograph +from the wall, pressed the button that made the cylinder +revolve, and swiftly dictated, without ever a pause +for word or idea:</p> + +<p>“In reply to yours of March 14, 1914, I am indeed +sorry to learn that you were hit with hog cholera. +I am equally sorry that you have seen fit to charge +me with the responsibility. And just as equally am +I sorry that the boar we sent you is dead.</p> + +<p>“I can only assure you that we are quite clear +of cholera here, and that we have been clear of cholera +for eight years, with the exception of two Eastern +importations, the last two years ago, both of which, +according to our custom, were segregated on arrival +and were destroyed before the contagion could be communicated +to our herds.</p> + +<p>“I feel that I must inform you that in neither +case did I charge the sellers with having sent me +diseased stock. On the contrary, as you should know, +the incubation of hog cholera being nine days, I consulted +the shipping dates of the animals and knew that they +had been healthy when shipped.</p> + +<p>“Has it ever entered your mind that the railroads +are largely responsible for the spread of cholera? +Did you ever hear of a railroad fumigating or disinfecting +a car which had carried cholera? Consult the dates: +First, of shipment by me; second, of receipt of the +boar by you; and, third, of appearance of symptoms +in the boar. As you say, because of washouts, the +boar was five days on the way. Not until the seventh +day after you receipted for same did the first symptoms +appear. That makes twelve days after it left my hands.</p> + +<p>“No; I must disagree with you. I am not responsible +for the disaster that overtook your herd. Furthermore, +doubly to assure you, write to the State Veterinary +as to whether or not my place is free of cholera.</p> + +<p>“Very truly yours...”</p> + +<h1 align="center" style="margin-top: 2em;font-variant: small-caps">Chapter II</h1> + +<p>When Forrest went through the French windows from +his sleeping-porch, he crossed, first, a comfortable +dressing room, window-divaned, many-lockered, with +a generous fireplace, out of which opened a bathroom; +and, second, a long office room, wherein was all the +paraphernalia of business—­desks, dictaphones, +filing cabinets, book cases, magazine files, and drawer-pigeonholes +that tiered to the low, beamed ceiling.</p> + +<p>Midway in the office room, he pressed a button and +a series of book-freightened shelves swung on a pivot, +revealing a tiny spiral stairway of steel, which he +descended with care that his spurs might not catch, +the bookshelves swinging into place behind him.</p> + +<p>At the foot of the stairway, a press on another button +pivoted more shelves of books and gave him entrance +into a long low room shelved with books from floor +to ceiling. He went directly to a case, directly to +a shelf, and unerringly laid his hand on the book he +sought. A minute he ran the pages, found the passage +he was after, nodded his head to himself in vindication, +and replaced the book.</p> + +<p>A door gave way to a pergola of square concrete columns +spanned with redwood logs and interlaced with smaller +trunks of redwood, all rough and crinkled velvet with +the ruddy purple of the bark.</p> + +<p>It was evident, since he had to skirt several hundred +feet of concrete walls of wandering house, that he +had not taken the short way out. Under wide-spreading +ancient oaks, where the long hitching-rails, bark-chewed, +and the hoof-beaten gravel showed the stamping place +of many horses, he found a pale-golden, almost tan-golden, +sorrel mare. Her well-groomed spring coat was alive +and flaming in the morning sun that slanted straight +under the edge of the roof of trees. She was herself +alive and flaming. She was built like a stallion, and +down her backbone ran a narrow dark strip of hair +that advertised an ancestry of many range mustangs.</p> + +<p>“How’s the Man-Eater this morning?” +he queried, as he unsnapped the tie-rope from her +throat.</p> + +<p>She laid back the tiniest ears that ever a horse possessed—­ears +that told of some thoroughbred’s wild loves +with wild mares among the hills—­and snapped +at Forrest with wicked teeth and wicked-gleaming eyes.</p> + +<p>She sidled and attempted to rear as he swung into +the saddle, and, sidling and attempting to rear, she +went off down the graveled road. And rear she would +have, had it not been for the martingale that held +her head down and that, as well, saved the rider’s +nose from her angry-tossing head.</p> + +<p>So used was he to the mare, that he was scarcely aware +of her antics. Automatically, with slightest touch +of rein against arched neck, or with tickle of spur +or press of knee, he kept the mare to the way he willed. +Once, as she whirled and danced, he caught a glimpse +of the Big House. Big it was in all seeming, and yet, +such was the vagrant nature of it, it was not so big +as it seemed. Eight hundred feet across the front +face, it stretched. But much of this eight hundred +feet was composed of mere corridors, concrete-walled, +tile-roofed, that connected and assembled the various +parts of the building. There were patios and pergolas +in proportion, and all the walls, with their many +right-angled juts and recessions, arose out of a bed +of greenery and bloom.</p> + +<p>Spanish in character, the architecture of the Big +House was not of the California-Spanish type which +had been introduced by way of Mexico a hundred years +before, and which had been modified by modern architects +to the California-Spanish architecture of the day. +Hispano-Moresque more technically classified the Big +House in all its hybridness, although there were experts +who heatedly quarreled with the term.</p> + +<p>Spaciousness without austerity and beauty without +ostentation were the fundamental impressions the Big +House gave. Its lines, long and horizontal, broken +only by lines that were vertical and by the lines +of juts and recesses that were always right-angled, +were as chaste as those of a monastery. The irregular +roof-line, however, relieved the hint of monotony.</p> + +<p>Low and rambling, without being squat, the square +upthrusts of towers and of towers over-topping towers +gave just proportion of height without being sky-aspiring. +The sense of the Big House was solidarity. It defied +earthquakes. It was planted for a thousand years. The +honest concrete was overlaid by a cream-stucco of +honest cement. Again, this very sameness of color +might have proved monotonous to the eye had it not +been saved by the many flat roofs of warm-red Spanish +tile.</p> + +<p>In that one sweeping glance while the mare whirled +unduly, Dick Forrest’s eyes, embracing all of +the Big House, centered for a quick solicitous instant +on the great wing across the two-hundred-foot court, +where, under climbing groups of towers, red-snooded +in the morning sun, the drawn shades of the sleeping-porch +tokened that his lady still slept.</p> + +<p>About him, for three quadrants of the circle of the +world, arose low-rolling hills, smooth, fenced, cropped, +and pastured, that melted into higher hills and steeper +wooded slopes that merged upward, steeper, into mighty +mountains. The fourth quadrant was unbounded by mountain +walls and hills. It faded away, descending easily to +vast far flatlands, which, despite the clear brittle +air of frost, were too vast and far to scan across.</p> + +<p>The mare under him snorted. His knees tightened as +he straightened her into the road and forced her to +one side. Down upon him, with a pattering of feet +on the gravel, flowed a river of white shimmering +silk. He knew it at sight for his prize herd of Angora +goats, each with a pedigree, each with a history. +There had to be a near two hundred of them, and he +knew, according to the rigorous selection he commanded, +not having been clipped in the fall, that the shining +mohair draping the sides of the least of them, as fine +as any human new-born baby’s hair and finer, +as white as any human albino’s thatch and whiter, +was longer than the twelve-inch staple, and that the +mohair of the best of them would dye any color into +twenty-inch switches for women’s heads and sell +at prices unreasonable and profound.</p> + +<p>The beauty of the sight held him as well. The roadway +had become a flowing ribbon of silk, gemmed with yellow +cat-like eyes that floated past wary and curious in +their regard for him and his nervous horse. Two Basque +herders brought up the rear. They were short, broad, +swarthy men, black-eyed, vivid-faced, contemplative +and philosophic of expression. They pulled off their +hats and ducked their heads to him. Forrest lifted +his right hand, the quirt dangling from wrist, the +straight forefinger touching the rim of his Baden Powell +in semi-military salute.</p> + +<p>The mare, prancing and whirling again, he held her +with a touch of rein and threat of spur, and gazed +after the four-footed silk that filled the road with +shimmering white. He knew the significance of their +presence. The time for kidding was approaching and +they were being brought down from their brush-pastures +to the brood-pens and shelters for jealous care and +generous feed through the period of increase. And +as he gazed, in his mind, comparing, was a vision of +all the best of Turkish and South African mohair he +had ever seen, and his flock bore the comparison well. +It looked good. It looked very good.</p> + +<p>He rode on. From all about arose the clacking whir +of manure-spreaders. In the distance, on the low, +easy-sloping hills, he saw team after team, and many +teams, three to a team abreast, what he knew were +his Shire mares, drawing the plows back and forth across, +contour-plowing, turning the green sod of the hillsides +to the rich dark brown of humus-filled earth so organic +and friable that it would almost melt by gravity into +fine-particled seed-bed. That was for the corn—­and +sorghum-planting for his silos. Other hill-slopes, +in the due course of his rotation, were knee-high +in barley; and still other slopes were showing the +good green of burr clover and Canada pea.</p> + +<p>Everywhere about him, large fields and small were +arranged in a system of accessibility and workability +that would have warmed the heart of the most meticulous +efficiency-expert. Every fence was hog-tight and bull-proof, +and no weeds grew in the shelters of the fences. Many +of the level fields were in alfalfa. Others, following +the rotations, bore crops planted the previous fall, +or were in preparation for the spring-planting. Still +others, close to the brood barns and pens, were being +grazed by rotund Shropshire and French-Merino ewes, +or were being hogged off by white Gargantuan brood-sows +that brought a flash of pleasure in his eyes as he +rode past and gazed.</p> + +<p>He rode through what was almost a village, save that +there were neither shops nor hotels. The houses were +bungalows, substantial, pleasing to the eye, each +set in the midst of gardens where stouter blooms, +including roses, were out and smiling at the threat +of late frost. Children were already astir, laughing +and playing among the flowers or being called in to +breakfast by their mothers.</p> + +<p>Beyond, beginning at a half-mile distant to circle +the Big House, he passed a row of shops. He paused +at the first and glanced in. One smith was working +at a forge. A second smith, a shoe fresh-nailed on +the fore-foot of an elderly Shire mare that would disturb +the scales at eighteen hundred weight, was rasping +down the outer wall of the hoof to smooth with the +toe of the shoe. Forrest saw, saluted, rode on, and, +a hundred feet away, paused and scribbled a memorandum +in the notebook he drew from his hip-pocket.</p> + +<p>He passed other shops—­a paint-shop, a wagon-shop, +a plumbing shop, a carpenter-shop. While he glanced +at the last, a hybrid machine, half-auto, half-truck, +passed him at speed and took the main road for the +railroad station eight miles away. He knew it for the +morning butter-truck freighting from the separator +house the daily output of the dairy.</p> + +<p>The Big House was the hub of the ranch organization. +Half a mile from it, it was encircled by the various +ranch centers. Dick Forrest, saluting continually +his people, passed at a gallop the dairy center, which +was almost a sea of buildings with batteries of silos +and with litter carriers emerging on overhead tracks +and automatically dumping into waiting manure-spreaders. +Several times, business-looking men, college-marked, +astride horses or driving carts, stopped him and conferred +with him. They were foremen, heads of departments, +and they were as brief and to the point as was he. +The last of them, astride a Palomina three-year-old +that was as graceful and wild as a half-broken Arab, +was for riding by with a bare salute, but was stopped +by his employer.</p> + +<p>“Good morning, Mr. Hennessy, and how soon will +she be ready for Mrs. Forrest?” Dick Forrest +asked.</p> + +<p>“I’d like another week,” was Hennessy’s +answer. “She’s well broke now, just the +way Mrs. Forrest wanted, but she’s over-strung +and sensitive and I’d like the week more to +set her in her ways.”</p> + +<p>Forrest nodded concurrence, and Hennessy, who was +the veterinary, went on:</p> + +<p>“There are two drivers in the alfalfa gang I’d +like to send down the hill.”</p> + +<p>“What’s the matter with them?”</p> + +<p>“One, a new man, Hopkins, is an ex-soldier. +He may know government mules, but he doesn’t +know Shires.”</p> + +<p>Forrest nodded.</p> + +<p>“The other has worked for us two years, but +he’s drinking now, and he takes his hang-overs +out on his horses—­”</p> + +<p>“That’s Smith, old-type American, smooth-shaven, +with a cast in his left eye?” Forrest interrupted.</p> + +<p>The veterinary nodded.</p> + +<p>“I’ve been watching him,” Forrest +concluded. “He was a good man at first, but +he’s slipped a cog recently. Sure, send him down +the hill. And send that other fellow—­Hopkins, +you said?—­along with him. By the way, Mr. +Hennessy.” As he spoke, Forrest drew forth his +pad book, tore off the last note scribbled, and crumpled +it in his hand. “You’ve a new horse-shoer +in the shop. How does he strike you?”</p> + +<p>“He’s too new to make up my mind yet.”</p> + +<p>“Well, send him down the hill along with the +other two. He can’t take your orders. I observed +him just now fitting a shoe to old Alden Bessie by +rasping off half an inch of the toe of her hoof.”</p> + +<p>“He knew better.”</p> + +<p>“Send him down the hill,” Forrest repeated, +as he tickled his champing mount with the slightest +of spur-tickles and shot her out along the road, sidling, +head-tossing, and attempting to rear.</p> + +<p>Much he saw that pleased him. Once, he murmured aloud, +“A fat land, a fat land.” Divers things +he saw that did not please him and that won a note +in his scribble pad. Completing the circle about the +Big House and riding beyond the circle half a mile +to an isolated group of sheds and corrals, he reached +the objective of the ride: the hospital. Here he found +but two young heifers being tested for tuberculosis, +and a magnificent Duroc Jersey boar in magnificent +condition. Weighing fully six hundred pounds, its +bright eyes, brisk movements, and sheen of hair shouted +out that there was nothing the matter with it. Nevertheless, +according to the ranch practice, being a fresh importation +from Iowa, it was undergoing the regular period of +quarantine. Burgess Premier was its name in the herd +books of the association, age two years, and it had +cost Forrest five hundred dollars laid down on the +ranch.</p> + +<p>Proceeding at a hand gallop along a road that was +one of the spokes radiating from the Big House hub, +Forrest overtook Crellin, his hog manager, and, in +a five-minute conference, outlined the next few months +of destiny of Burgess Premier, and learned that the +brood sow, Lady Isleton, the matron of all matrons +of the O. I. C.’s and blue-ribboner in all +shows from Seattle to San Diego, was safely farrowed +of eleven. Crellin explained that he had sat up half +the night with her and was then bound home for bath +and breakfast.</p> + +<p>“I hear your oldest daughter has finished high +school and wants to enter Stanford,” Forrest +said, curbing the mare just as he had half-signaled +departure at a gallop.</p> + +<p>Crellin, a young man of thirty-five, with the maturity +of a long-time father stamped upon him along with +the marks of college and the youthfulness of a man +used to the open air and straight-living, showed his +appreciation of his employer’s interest as he +half-flushed under his tan and nodded.</p> + +<p>“Think it over,” Forrest advised. “Make +a statistic of all the college girls—­yes, +and State Normal girls—­you know. How many +of them follow career, and how many of them marry +within two years after their degrees and take to baby +farming.”</p> + +<p>“Helen is very seriously bent on the matter,” +Crellin urged.</p> + +<p>“Do you remember when I had my appendix out?” +Forrest queried. “Well, I had as fine a nurse +as I ever saw and as nice a girl as ever walked on +two nice legs. She was just six months a full-fledged +nurse, then. And four months after that I had to send +her a wedding present. She married an automobile agent. +She’s lived in hotels ever since. She’s +never had a chance to nurse—­never a child +of her own to bring through a bout with colic. But... +she has hopes... and, whether or not her hopes materialize, +she’s confoundedly happy. But... what good was +her nursing apprenticeship?”</p> + +<p>Just then an empty manure-spreader passed, forcing +Crellin, on foot, and Forrest, on his mare, to edge +over to the side of the road. Forrest glanced with +kindling eye at the off mare of the machine, a huge, +symmetrical Shire whose own blue ribbons, and the blue +ribbons of her progeny, would have required an expert +accountant to enumerate and classify.</p> + +<p>“Look at the Fotherington Princess,” Forrest +said, nodding at the mare that warmed his eye. “She +is a normal female. Only incidentally, through thousands +of years of domestic selection, has man evolved her +into a draught beast breeding true to kind. But being +a draught-beast is secondary. Primarily she is a female. +Take them by and large, our own human females, above +all else, love us men and are intrinsically maternal. +There is no biological sanction for all the hurly burly +of woman to-day for suffrage and career.”</p> + +<p>“But there is an economic sanction,” Crellin +objected.</p> + +<p>“True,” his employer agreed, then proceeded +to discount. “Our present industrial system +prevents marriage and compels woman to career. But, +remember, industrial systems come, and industrial systems +go, while biology runs on forever.”</p> + +<p>“It’s rather hard to satisfy young women +with marriage these days,” the hog-manager demurred.</p> + +<p>Dick Forrest laughed incredulously.</p> + +<p>“I don’t know about that,” he said. +“There’s your wife for an instance. She +with her sheepskin—­classical scholar at +that—­well, what has she done with it?... +Two boys and three girls, I believe? As I remember +your telling me, she was engaged to you the whole last +half of her senior year.”</p> + +<p>“True, but—­” Crellin insisted, +with an eye-twinkle of appreciation of the point, +“that was fifteen years ago, as well as a love-match. +We just couldn’t help it. That far, I agree. +She had planned unheard-of achievements, while I saw +nothing else than the deanship of the College of Agriculture. +We just couldn’t help it. But that was fifteen +years ago, and fifteen years have made all the difference +in the world in the ambitions and ideals of our young +women.”</p> + +<p>“Don’t you believe it for a moment. I +tell you, Mr. Crellin, it’s a statistic. All +contrary things are transient. Ever woman remains +Avoman, everlasting, eternal. Not until our girl-children +cease from playing with dolls and from looking at +their own enticingness in mirrors, will woman ever +be otherwise than what she has always been: first, +the mother, second, the mate of man. It is a statistic. +I’ve been looking up the girls who graduate +from the State Normal. You will notice that those +who marry by the way before graduation are excluded. +Nevertheless, the average length of time the graduates +actually teach school is little more than two years. +And when you consider that a lot of them, through +ill looks and ill luck, are foredoomed old maids and +are foredoomed to teach all their lives, you can see +how they cut down the period of teaching of the marriageable +ones.”</p> + +<p>“A woman, even a girl-woman, will have her way +where mere men are concerned,” Crellin muttered, +unable to dispute his employer’s figures but +resolved to look them up.</p> + +<p>“And your girl-woman will go to Stanford,” +Forrest laughed, as he prepared to lift his mare into +a gallop, “and you and I and all men, to the +end of time, will see to it that they do have their +way.”</p> + +<p>Crellin smiled to himself as his employer diminished +down the road; for Crellin knew his Kipling, and the +thought that caused the smile was: “But where’s +the kid of your own, Mr. Forrest?” He decided +to repeat it to Mrs. Crellin over the breakfast coffee.</p> + +<p>Once again Dick Forrest delayed ere he gained the +Big House. The man he stopped he addressed as Mendenhall, +who was his horse-manager as well as pasture expert, +and who was reputed to know, not only every blade +of grass on the ranch, but the length of every blade +of grass and its age from seed-germination as well.</p> + +<p>At signal from Forrest, Mendenhall drew up the two +colts he was driving in a double breaking-cart. What +had caused Forrest to signal was a glance he had caught, +across the northern edge of the valley, of great, +smooth-hill ranges miles beyond, touched by the sun +and deeply green where they projected into the vast +flat of the Sacramento Valley.</p> + +<p>The talk that followed was quick and abbreviated to +terms of understanding between two men who knew. Grass +was the subject. Mention was made of the winter rainfall +and of the chance for late spring rains to come. Names +occurred, such as the Little Coyote and Los Cuatos +creeks, the Yolo and the Miramar hills, the Big Basin, +Round Valley, and the San Anselmo and Los Banos ranges. +Movements of herds and droves, past, present, and +to come, were discussed, as well as the outlook for +cultivated hay in far upland pastures and the estimates +of such hay that still remained over the winter in +remote barns in the sheltered mountain valleys where +herds had wintered and been fed.</p> + +<p>Under the oaks, at the stamping posts, Forrest was +saved the trouble of tying the Man-Eater. A stableman +came on the run to take the mare, and Forrest, scarce +pausing for a word about a horse by the name of Duddy, +was clanking his spurs into the Big House.</p> + +<h1 align="center" style="margin-top: 2em;font-variant: small-caps">Chapter III</h1> + +<p>Forrest entered a section of the Big House by way +of a massive, hewn-timber, iron-studded door that +let in at the foot of what seemed a donjon keep. The +floor was cement, and doors let off in various directions. +One, opening to a Chinese in the white apron and starched +cap of a chef, emitted at the same time the low hum +of a dynamo. It was this that deflected Forrest from +his straight path. He paused, holding the door ajar, +and peered into a cool, electric-lighted cement room +where stood a long, glass-fronted, glass-shelved refrigerator +flanked by an ice-machine and a dynamo. On the floor, +in greasy overalls, squatted a greasy little man to +whom his employer nodded.</p> + +<p>“Anything wrong, Thompson?” he asked.</p> + +<p>“There <i>was,"</i> was the answer, positive +and complete.</p> + +<p>Forrest closed the door and went on along a passage +that was like a tunnel. Narrow, iron-barred openings, +like the slits for archers in medieval castles, dimly +lighted the way. Another door gave access to a long, +low room, beam-ceilinged, with a fireplace in which +an ox could have been roasted. A huge stump, resting +on a bed of coals, blazed brightly. Two billiard tables, +several card tables, lounging corners, and a miniature +bar constituted the major furnishing. Two young men +chalked their cues and returned Forrest’s greeting.</p> + +<p>“Good morning, Mr. Naismith,” he bantered. +“—­More material for the <i>Breeders’ +Gazette?"</i></p> + +<p>Naismith, a youngish man of thirty, with glasses, +smiled sheepishly and cocked his head at his companion.</p> + +<p>“Wainwright challenged me,” he explained.</p> + +<p>“Which means that Lute and Ernestine must still +be beauty-sleeping,” Forrest laughed.</p> + +<p>Young Wainwright bristled to acceptance of the challenge, +but before he could utter the retort on his lips his +host was moving on and addressing Naismith over his +shoulder.</p> + +<p>“Do you want to come along at eleven:thirty? +Thayer and I are running out in the machine to look +over the Shropshires. He wants about ten carloads +of rams. You ought to find good stuff in this matter +of Idaho shipments. Bring your camera along.—­Seen +Thayer this morning?”</p> + +<p>“Just came in to breakfast as we were leaving,” +Bert Wainwright volunteered.</p> + +<p>“Tell him to be ready at eleven-thirty if you +see him. You’re not invited, Bert... out of +kindness. The girls are sure to be up then.”</p> + +<p>“Take Rita along with you anyway,” Bert +pleaded.</p> + +<p>“No fear,” was Forrest’s reply from +the door. “We’re on business. Besides, +you can’t pry Rita from Ernestine with block-and-tackle.”</p> + +<p>“That’s why I wanted to see if you could,” +Bert grinned.</p> + +<p>“Funny how fellows never appreciate their own +sisters.” Forrest paused for a perceptible moment. +“I always thought Rita was a real nice sister. +What’s the matter with her?”</p> + +<p>Before a reply could reach him, he had closed the +door and was jingling his spurs along the passage +to a spiral stairway of broad concrete steps. As he +left the head of the stairway, a dance-time piano +measure and burst of laughter made him peep into a +white morning room, flooded with sunshine. A young +girl, in rose-colored kimono and boudoir cap, was +at the instrument, while two others, similarly accoutered, +in each other’s arms, were parodying a dance +never learned at dancing school nor intended by the +participants for male eyes to see.</p> + +<p>The girl at the piano discovered him, winked, and +played on. Not for another minute did the dancers +spy him. They gave startled cries, collapsed, laughing, +in each other’s arms, and the music stopped. +They were gorgeous, healthy young creatures, the three +of them, and Forrest’s eye kindled as he looked +at them in quite the same way that it had kindled +when he regarded the Fotherington Princess.</p> + +<p>Persiflage, of the sort that obtains among young things +of the human kind, flew back and forth.</p> + +<p>“I’ve been here five minutes,” Dick +Forrest asserted.</p> + +<p>The two dancers, to cover their confusion, doubted +his veracity and instanced his many well-known and +notorious guilts of mendacity. The girl at the piano, +Ernestine, his sister-in-law, insisted that pearls +of truth fell from his lips, that she had seen him +from the moment he began to look, and that as she +estimated the passage of time he had been looking +much longer than five minutes.</p> + +<p>“Well, anyway,” Forrest broke in on their +babel, “Bert, the sweet innocent, doesn’t +think you are up yet.”</p> + +<p>“We’re not... to him,” one of the +dancers, a vivacious young Venus, retorted. “Nor +are we to you either. So run along, little boy. Run +along.”</p> + +<p>“Look here, Lute,” Forrest began sternly. +“Just because I am a decrepit old man, and just +because you are eighteen, just eighteen, and happen +to be my wife’s sister, you needn’t presume +to put the high and mighty over on me. Don’t +forget—­and I state the fact, disagreeable +as it may be, for Rita’s sake—­don’t +forget that in the past ten years I’ve paddled +you more disgraceful times than you care to dare me +to enumerate.</p> + +<p>“It is true, I am not so young as I used to +was, but—­” He felt the biceps of +his right arm and made as if to roll up the sleeve. +“—­But, I’m not all in yet, +and for two cents...”</p> + +<p>“What?” the young woman challenged belligerently.</p> + +<p>“For two cents,” he muttered darkly. “For +two cents... Besides, and it grieves me to inform +you, your cap is not on straight. Also, it is not +a very tasteful creation at best. I could make a far +more becoming cap with my toes, asleep, and... yes, +seasick as well.”</p> + +<p>Lute tossed her blond head defiantly, glanced at her +comrades in solicitation of support, and said:</p> + +<p>“Oh, I don’t know. It seems humanly reasonable +that the three of us can woman-handle a mere man of +your elderly and insulting avoirdupois. What do you +say, girls? Let’s rush him. He’s not a +minute under forty, and he has an aneurism. Yes, and +though loath to divulge family secrets, he’s +got Meniere’s Disease.”</p> + +<p>Ernestine, a small but robust blonde of eighteen, +sprang from the piano and joined her two comrades +in a raid on the cushions of the deep window seats. +Side by side, a cushion in each hand, and with proper +distance between them cannily established for the swinging +of the cushions, they advanced upon the foe.</p> + +<p>Forrest prepared for battle, then held up his hand +for parley.</p> + +<p>“’Fraid cat!” they taunted, in several +at first, and then in chorus.</p> + +<p>He shook his head emphatically.</p> + +<p>“Just for that, and for all the rest of your +insolences, the three of you are going to get yours. +All the wrongs of a lifetime are rising now in my +brain in a dazzling brightness. I shall go Berserk +in a moment. But first, and I speak as an agriculturist, +and I address myself to you, Lute, in all humility, +in heaven’s name what is Meniere’s Disease? +Do sheep catch it?”</p> + +<p>“Meniere’s Disease is,” Lute began,... +“is what you’ve got. Sheep are the only +known living creatures that get it.”</p> + +<p>Ensued red war and chaos. Forrest made a football +rush of the sort that obtained in California before +the adoption of Rugby; and the girls broke the line +to let him through, turned upon him, flanked him on +either side, and pounded him with cushions.</p> + +<p>He turned, with widespread arms, extended fingers, +each finger a hook, and grappled the three. The battle +became a whirlwind, a be-spurred man the center, from +which radiated flying draperies of flimsy silk, disconnected +slippers, boudoir caps, and hairpins. There were thuds +from the cushions, grunts from the man, squeals, yelps +and giggles from the girls, and from the totality +of the combat inextinguishable laughter and a ripping +and tearing of fragile textures.</p> + +<p>Dick Forrest found himself sprawled on the floor, +the wind half knocked out of him by shrewdly delivered +cushions, his head buzzing from the buffeting, and, +in one hand, a trailing, torn, and generally disrupted +girdle of pale blue silk and pink roses.</p> + +<p>In one doorway, cheeks flaming from the struggle, +stood Rita, alert as a fawn and ready to flee. In +the other doorway, likewise flame-checked, stood +Ernestine in the commanding attitude of the Mother +of the Gracchi, the wreckage of her kimono wrapped +severely about her and held severely about her by +her own waist-pressing arm. Lute, cornered behind +the piano, attempted to run but was driven back by +the menace of Forrest, who, on hands and knees, stamped +loudly with the palms of his hands on the hardwood +floor, rolled his head savagely, and emitted bull-like +roars.</p> + +<p>“And they still believe that old prehistoric +myth,” Ernestine proclaimed from safety, “that +once he, that wretched semblance of a man-thing prone +in the dirt, captained Berkeley to victory over Stanford.”</p> + +<p>Her breasts heaved from the exertion, and he marked +the pulsating of the shimmering cherry-colored silk +with delight as he flung his glance around to the +other two girls similarly breathing.</p> + +<p>The piano was a miniature grand—­a dainty +thing of rich white and gold to match the morning +room. It stood out from the wall, so that there was +possibility for Lute to escape around either way of +it. Forrest gained his feet and faced her across the +broad, flat top of the instrument. As he threatened +to vault it, Lute cried out in horror:</p> + +<p>“But your spurs, Dick! Your spurs!”</p> + +<p>“Give me time to take them off,” he offered.</p> + +<p>As he stooped to unbuckle them, Lute darted to escape, +but was herded back to the shelter of the piano.</p> + +<p>“All right,” he growled. “On your +head be it. If the piano’s scratched I’ll +tell Paula.”</p> + +<p>“I’ve got witnesses,” she panted, +indicating with her blue joyous eyes the young things +in the doorways.</p> + +<p>“Very well, my dear.” Forrest drew back +his body and spread his resting palms. “I’m +coming over to you.”</p> + +<p>Action and speech were simultaneous. His body, posited +sidewise from his hands, was vaulted across, the perilous +spurs a full foot above the glossy white surface. +And simultaneously Lute ducked and went under the +piano on hands and knees. Her mischance lay in that +she bumped her head, and, before she could recover +way, Forrest had circled the piano and cornered her +under it.</p> + +<p>“Come out!” he commanded. “Come +out and take your medicine!”</p> + +<p>“A truce,” she pleaded. “A truce, +Sir Knight, for dear love’s sake and all damsels +in distress.”</p> + +<p>“I ain’t no knight,” Forrest announced +in his deepest bass. “I’m an ogre, a filthy, +debased and altogether unregenerate ogre. I was born +in the tule-swamps. My father was an ogre and my mother +was more so. I was lulled to slumber on the squalls +of infants dead, foreordained, and predamned. I was +nourished solely on the blood of maidens educated +in Mills Seminary. My favorite chophouse has ever been +a hardwood floor, a loaf of Mills Seminary maiden, +and a roof of flat piano. My father, as well as an +ogre, was a California horse-thief. I am more reprehensible +than my father. I have more teeth. My mother, as well +as an ogress, was a Nevada book-canvasser. Let all +her shame be told. She even solicited subscriptions +for ladies’ magazines. I am more terrible than +my mother. I have peddled safety razors.”</p> + +<p>“Can naught soothe and charm your savage breast?” +Lute pleaded in soulful tones while she studied her +chances for escape.</p> + +<p>“One thing only, miserable female. One thing +only, on the earth, over the earth, and under its +ruining waters—­”</p> + +<p>A squawk of recognized plagiarism interrupted him +from Ernestine.</p> + +<p>“See Ernest Dowson, page seventy-nine, a thin +book of thin verse ladled out with porridge to young +women detentioned at Mills Seminary,” Forrest +went on. “As I had already enunciated before +I was so rudely interrupted, the one thing only that +can balm and embalm this savage breast is the ‘Maiden’s +Prayer.’ Listen, with all your ears ere I chew +them off in multitude and gross! Listen, silly, unbeautiful, +squat, short-legged and ugly female under the piano! +Can you recite the ’Maiden’s Prayer’?”</p> + +<p>Screams of delight from the young things in the doorways +prevented the proper answer and Lute, from under the +piano, cried out to young Wainwright, who had appeared:</p> + +<p>“A rescue, Sir Knight! A rescue!”</p> + +<p>“Unhand the maiden!” was Bert’s +challenge.</p> + +<p>“Who art thou?” Forrest demanded.</p> + +<p>“King George, sirrah!—­I mean, er, +Saint George.”</p> + +<p>“Then am I thy dragon,” Forrest announced +with due humility. “Spare this ancient, honorable, +and only neck I have.”</p> + +<p>“Off with his head!” the young things +encouraged.</p> + +<p>“Stay thee, maidens, I pray thee,” Bert +begged. “I am only a Small Potato. Yet am I +unafraid. I shall beard the dragon. I shall beard him +in his gullet, and, while he lingeringly chokes to +death over my unpalatableness and general spinefulness, +do you, fair damsels, flee to the mountains lest the +valleys fall upon you. Yolo, Petaluma, and West Sacramento +are about to be overwhelmed by a tidal wave and many +big fishes.”</p> + +<p>“Off with his head!” the young things +chanted. “Slay him in his blood and barbecue +him!”</p> + +<p>“Thumbs down,” Forrest groaned. “I +am undone. Trust to the unstrained quality of mercy +possessed by Christian young women in the year 1914 +who will vote some day if ever they grow up and do +not marry foreigners. Consider my head off, Saint +George. I am expired. Further deponent sayeth not.”</p> + +<p>And Forrest, with sobs and slubberings, with realistic +shudders and kicks and a great jingling of spurs, +lay down on the floor and expired.</p> + +<p>Lute crawled out from under the piano, and was joined +by Rita and Ernestine in an extemporized dance of +the harpies about the slain.</p> + +<p>In the midst of it, Forrest sat up, protesting. Also, +he was guilty of a significant and privy wink to Lute.</p> + +<p>“The hero!” he cried. “Forget him +not. Crown him with flowers.”</p> + +<p>And Bert was crowned with flowers from the vases, +unchanged from the day before. When a bunch of water-logged +stems of early tulips, propelled by Lute’s vigorous +arm, impacted soggily on his neck under the ear, he +fled. The riot of pursuit echoed along the hall and +died out down the stairway toward the stag room. Forrest +gathered himself together, and, grinning, went jingling +on through the Big House.</p> + +<p>He crossed two patios on brick walks roofed with Spanish +tile and swamped with early foliage and blooms, and +gained his wing of the house, still breathing from +the fun, to find, in the office, his secretary awaiting +him.</p> + +<p>“Good morning, Mr. Blake,” he greeted. +“Sorry I was delayed.” He glanced at his +wrist-watch. “Only four minutes, however. I just +couldn’t get away sooner.”</p> + +<h1 align="center" style="margin-top: 2em;font-variant: small-caps">Chapter IV</h1> + +<p>From nine till ten Forrest gave himself up to his +secretary, achieving a correspondence that included +learned societies and every sort of breeding and agricultural +organization and that would have compelled the average +petty business man, unaided, to sit up till midnight +to accomplish.</p> + +<p>For Dick Forrest was the center of a system which +he himself had built and of which he was secretly +very proud. Important letters and documents he signed +with his ragged fist. All other letters were rubber-stamped +by Mr. Blake, who, also, in shorthand, in the course +of the hour, put down the indicated answers to many +letters and received the formula designations of reply +to many other letters. Mr. Blake’s private opinion +was that he worked longer hours than his employer, +although it was equally his private opinion that his +employer was a wonder for discovering work for others +to perform.</p> + +<p>At ten, to the stroke of the clock, as Pittman, Forrest’s +show-manager, entered the office, Blake, burdened +with trays of correspondence, sheafs of documents, +and phonograph cylinders, faded away to his own office.</p> + +<p>From ten to eleven a stream of managers and foremen +flowed in and out. All were well disciplined in terseness +and time-saving. As Dick Forrest had taught them, +the minutes spent with him were not minutes of cogitation. +They must be prepared before they reported or suggested. +Bonbright, the assistant secretary, always arrived +at ten to replace Blake; and Bonbright, close to shoulder, +with flying pencil, took down the rapid-fire interchange +of question and answer, statement and proposal and +plan. These shorthand notes, transcribed and typed +in duplicate, were the nightmare and, on occasion, +the Nemesis, of the managers and foremen. For, first, +Forrest had a remarkable memory; and, second, he was +prone to prove its worth by reference to those same +notes of Bonbright.</p> + +<p>A manager, at the end of a five or ten minute session, +often emerged sweating, limp and frazzled. Yet for +a swift hour, at high tension, Forrest met all comers, +with a master’s grip handling them and all the +multifarious details of their various departments. +He told Thompson, the machinist, in four flashing +minutes, where the fault lay in the dynamo to the +Big House refrigerator, laid the fault home to Thompson, +dictated a note to Bonbright, with citation by page +and chapter to a volume from the library to be drawn +by Thompson, told Thompson that Parkman, the dairy +manager, was not satisfied with the latest wiring +up of milking machines, and that the refrigerating +plant at the slaughter house was balking at its accustomed +load.</p> + +<p>Each man was a specialist, yet Forrest was the proved +master of their specialties. As Paulson, the head +plowman, complained privily to Dawson, the crop manager: +“I’ve worked here twelve years and never +have I seen him put his hands to a plow, and yet, damn +him, he somehow seems to know. He’s a genius, +that’s what he is. Why, d’ye know, I’ve +seen him tear by a piece of work, his hands full with +that Man-Eater of his a-threatenin’ sudden funeral, +an’, next morning, had ’m mention casually +to a half-inch how deep it was plowed an’ what +plows’d done the plowin’!—­Take +that plowin’ of the Poppy Meadow, up above Little +Meadow, on Los Cuatos. I just couldn’t see my +way to it, an’ had to cut out the cross-sub-soiling, +an’ thought I could slip it over on him. After +it was all finished he kind of happened up that way—­I +was lookin’ an’ he didn’t seem to +look—­an’, well, next A.M. I got mine +in the office. No; I didn’t slip it over. I +ain’t tried to slip nothing over since.”</p> + +<p>At eleven sharp, Wardman, his sheep manager, departed +with an engagement scheduled at eleven: thirty to +ride in the machine along with Thayer, the Idaho buyer, +to look over the Shropshire rams. At eleven, Bonbright +having departed with Wardman to work up his notes, +Forrest was left alone in the office. From a wire tray +of unfinished business—­one of many wire +trays superimposed in groups of five—­he +drew a pamphlet issued by the State of Iowa on hog +cholera and proceeded to scan it.</p> + +<p>Five feet, ten inches in height, weighing a clean-muscled +one hundred and eighty pounds, Dick Forrest was anything +but insignificant for a forty years’ old man. +The eyes were gray, large, over-arched by bone of +brow, and lashes and brows were dark. The hair, above +an ordinary forehead, was light brown to chestnut. +Under the forehead, the cheeks showed high-boned, +with underneath the slight hollows that necessarily +accompany such formation. The jaws were strong without +massiveness, the nose, large-nostriled, was straight +enough and prominent enough without being too straight +or prominent, the chin square without harshness and +uncleft, and the mouth girlish and sweet to a degree +that did not hide the firmness to which the lips could +set on due provocation. The skin was smooth and well-tanned, +although, midway between eyebrows and hair, the tan +of forehead faded in advertisement of the rim of the +Baden Powell interposed between him and the sun.</p> + +<p>Laughter lurked in the mouth corners and eye-corners, +and there were cheek lines about the mouth that would +seem to have been formed by laughter. Equally strong, +however, every line of the face that meant blended +things carried a notice of surety. Dick Forrest was +sure—­ sure, when his hand reached out for +any object on his desk, that the hand would straightly +attain the object without a fumble or a miss of a +fraction of an inch; sure, when his brain leaped the +high places of the hog cholera text, that it was not +missing a point; sure, from his balanced body in the +revolving desk-chair to the balanced back-head of +him; sure, in heart and brain, of life and work, of +all he possessed, and of himself.</p> + +<p>He had reason to be sure. Body, brain, and career +were long-proven sure. A rich man’s son, he +had not played ducks and drakes with his father’s +money. City born and reared, he had gone back to the +land and made such a success as to put his name on +the lips of breeders wherever breeders met and talked. +He was the owner, without encumbrance, of two hundred +and fifty thousand acres of land—­land that +varied in value from a thousand dollars an acre to +a hundred dollars, that varied from a hundred dollars +to ten cents an acre, and that, in stretches, was +not worth a penny an acre. The improvements on that +quarter of a million acres, from drain-tiled meadows +to dredge-drained tule swamps, from good roads to +developed water-rights, from farm buildings to the +Big House itself, constituted a sum gaspingly ungraspable +to the country-side.</p> + +<p>Everything was large-scale but modern to the last +tick of the clock. His managers lived, rent-free, +with salaries commensurate to ability, in five—­and +ten-thousand-dollar houses—­but they were +the cream of specialists skimmed from the continent +from the Atlantic to the Pacific. When he ordered +gasoline-tractors for the cultivation of the flat +lands, he ordered a round score. When he dammed water +in his mountains he dammed it by the hundreds of millions +of gallons. When he ditched his tule-swamps, instead +of contracting the excavation, he bought the huge +dredgers outright, and, when there was slack work on +his own marshes, he contracted for the draining of +the marshes of neighboring big farmers, land companies, +and corporations for a hundred miles up and down the +Sacramento River.</p> + +<p>He had brain sufficient to know the need of buying +brains and to pay a tidy bit over the current market +price for the most capable brains. And he had brain +sufficient to direct the brains he bought to a profitable +conclusion.</p> + +<p>And yet, he was just turned forty was clear-eyed, +calm-hearted, hearty-pulsed, man-strong; and yet, +his history, until he was thirty, had been harum-scarum +and erratic to the superlative. He had run away from +a millionaire home when he was thirteen. He had won +enviable college honors ere he was twenty-one and +after that he had known all the purple ports of the +purple seas, and, with cool head, hot heart, and laughter, +played every risk that promised and provided in the +wild world of adventure that he had lived to see pass +under the sobriety of law.</p> + +<p>In the old days of San Francisco Forrest had been +a name to conjure with. The Forrest Mansion had been +one of the pioneer palaces on Nob Hill where dwelt +the Floods, the Mackays, the Crockers, and the O’Briens. +“Lucky” Richard Forrest, the father, had +arrived, via the Isthmus, straight from old New England, +keenly commercial, interested before his departure +in clipper ships and the building of clipper ships, +and interested immediately after his arrival in water-front +real estate, river steamboats, mines, of course, and, +later, in the draining of the Nevada Comstock and +the construction of the Southern Pacific.</p> + +<p>He played big, he won big, he lost big; but he won +always more than he lost, and what he paid out at +one game with one hand, he drew back with his other +hand at another game. His winnings from the Comstock +he sank into the various holes of the bottomless Daffodil +Group in Eldorado County. The wreckage from the Benicia +Line he turned into the Napa Consolidated, which was +a quicksilver venture, and it earned him five thousand +per cent. What he lost in the collapse of the Stockton +boom was more than balanced by the realty appreciation +of his key-holdings at Sacramento and Oakland.</p> + +<p>And, to cap it all, when “Lucky” Richard +Forrest had lost everything in a series of calamities, +so that San Francisco debated what price his Nob Hill +palace would fetch at auction, he grubstaked one, Del +Nelson, to a prospecting in Mexico. As soberly set +down in history, the result of the said Del Nelson’s +search for quartz was the Harvest Group, including +the fabulous and inexhaustible Tattlesnake, Voice, +City, Desdemona, Bullfrog, and Yellow Boy claims. Del +Nelson, astounded by his achievement, within the year +drowned himself in an enormous quantity of cheap whisky, +and, the will being incontestible through lack of +kith and kin, left his half to Lucky Richard Forrest.</p> + +<p>Dick Forrest was the son of his father. Lucky Richard, +a man of boundless energy and enterprise, though twice +married and twice widowed, had not been blessed with +children. His third marriage occurred in 1872, when +he was fifty-eight, and in 1874, although he lost +the mother, a twelve-pound boy, stout-barreled and +husky-lunged, remained to be brought up by a regiment +of nurses in the palace on Nob Hill.</p> + +<p>Young Dick was precocious. Lucky Richard was a democrat. +Result: Young Dick learned in a year from a private +teacher what would have required three years in the +grammar school, and used all of the saved years in +playing in the open air. Also, result of precocity +of son and democracy of father, Young Dick was sent +to grammar school for the last year in order to learn +shoulder-rubbing democracy with the sons and daughters +of workmen, tradesmen, saloon-keepers and politicians.</p> + +<p>In class recitation or spelling match his father’s +millions did not aid him in competing with Patsy Halloran, +the mathematical prodigy whose father was a hod-carrier, +nor with Mona Sanguinetti who was a wizard at spelling +and whose widowed mother ran a vegetable store. Nor +were his father’s millions and the Nob Hill palace +of the slightest assistance to Young Dick when he +peeled his jacket and, bareknuckled, without rounds, +licking or being licked, milled it to a finish with +Jimmy Botts, Jean Choyinsky, and the rest of the lads +that went out over the world to glory and cash a few +years later, a generation of prizefighters that only +San Francisco, raw and virile and yeasty and young, +could have produced.</p> + +<p>The wisest thing Lucky Richard did for his boy was +to give him this democratic tutelage. In his secret +heart, Young Dick never forgot that he lived in a +palace of many servants and that his father was a man +of power and honor. On the other hand, Young Dick +learned two-legged, two-fisted democracy. He learned +it when Mona Sanguinetti spelled him down in class. +He learned it when Berney Miller out-dodged and out-ran +him when running across in Black Man.</p> + +<p>And when Tim Hagan, with straight left for the hundredth +time to bleeding nose and mangled mouth, and with +ever reiterant right hook to stomach, had him dazed +and reeling, the breath whistling and sobbing through +his lacerated lips—­was no time for succor +from palaces and bank accounts. On his two legs, with +his two fists, it was either he or Tim. And it was +right there, in sweat and blood and iron of soul, +that Young Dick learned how not to lose a losing fight. +It had been uphill from the first blow, but he stuck +it out until in the end it was agreed that neither +could best the other, although this agreement was +not reached until they had first lain on the ground +in nausea and exhaustion and with streaming eyes wept +their rage and defiance at each other. After that, +they became chums and between them ruled the schoolyard.</p> + +<p>Lucky Richard died the same month Young Dick emerged +from grammar school. Young Dick was thirteen years +old, with twenty million dollars, and without a relative +in the world to trouble him. He was the master of +a palace of servants, a steam yacht, stables, and, +as well, of a summer palace down the Peninsula in +the nabob colony at Menlo. One thing, only, was he +burdened with: guardians.</p> + +<p>On a summer afternoon, in the big library, he attended +the first session of his board of guardians. There +were three of them, all elderly, and successful, all +legal, all business comrades of his father. Dick’s +impression, as they explained things to him, was that, +although they meant well, he had no contacts with them. +In his judgment, their boyhood was too far behind +them. Besides that, it was patent that him, the particular +boy they were so much concerned with, they did not +understand at all. Furthermore, in his own sure way +he decided that he was the one person in the world +fitted to know what was best for himself.</p> + +<p>Mr. Crockett made a long speech, to which Dick listened +with alert and becoming attention, nodding his head +whenever he was directly addressed or appealed to. +Messrs. Davidson and Slocum also had their say and +were treated with equal consideration. Among other +things, Dick learned what a sterling, upright man +his father had been, and the program already decided +upon by the three gentlemen which would make him into +a sterling and upright man.</p> + +<p>When they were quite done, Dick took it upon himself +to say a few things.</p> + +<p>“I have thought it over,” he announced, +“and first of all I shall go traveling.”</p> + +<p>“That will come afterward, my boy,” Mr. +Slocum explained soothingly. “When—­say—­when +you are ready to enter the university. At that time +a year abroad would be a very good thing... a very +good thing indeed.”</p> + +<p>“Of course,” Mr. Davidson volunteered +quickly, having noted the annoyed light in the lad’s +eyes and the unconscious firm-drawing and setting +of the lips, “of course, in the meantime you +could do some traveling, a limited amount of traveling, +during your school vacations. I am sure my fellow +guardians will agree—­under the proper management +and safeguarding, of course—­that such bits +of travel sandwiched between your school-terms, would +be advisable and beneficial.”</p> + +<p>“How much did you say I am worth?” Dick +asked with apparent irrelevance.</p> + +<p>“Twenty millions—­at a most conservative +estimate—­that is about the sum,” +Mr. Crockett answered promptly.</p> + +<p>“Suppose I said right now that I wanted a hundred +dollars!” Dick went on.</p> + +<p>“Why—­er—­ahem.” Mr. +Slocum looked about him for guidance.</p> + +<p>“We would be compelled to ask what you wanted +it for,” answered Mr. Crockett.</p> + +<p>“And suppose,” Dick said very slowly, +looking Mr. Crockett squarely in the eyes, “suppose +I said that I was very sorry, but that I did not care +to say what I wanted it for?”</p> + +<p>“Then you wouldn’t get it,” Mr. +Crockett said so immediately that there was a hint +of testiness and snap in his manner.</p> + +<p>Dick nodded slowly, as if letting the information +sink in.</p> + +<p>“But, of course, my boy,” Mr. Slocum took +up hastily, “you understand you are too young +to handle money yet. We must decide that for you.”</p> + +<p>“You mean I can’t touch a penny without +your permission?”</p> + +<p>“Not a penny,” Mr. Crockett snapped.</p> + +<p>Dick nodded his head thoughtfully and murmured, “Oh, +I see.”</p> + +<p>“Of course, and quite naturally, it would only +be fair, you know, you will have a small allowance +for your personal spending,” Mr. Davidson said. +“Say, a dollar, or, perhaps, two dollars, a week. +As you grow older this allowance will be increased. +And by the time you are twenty-one, doubtlessly you +will be fully qualified—­with advice, of +course—­to handle your own affairs.”</p> + +<p>“And until I am twenty-one my twenty million +wouldn’t buy me a hundred dollars to do as I +please with?” Dick queried very subduedly.</p> + +<p>Mr. Davidson started to corroborate in soothing phrases, +but was waved to silence by Dick, who continued:</p> + +<p>“As I understand it, whatever money I handle +will be by agreement between the four of us?”</p> + +<p>The Board of Guardians nodded.</p> + +<p>“That is, whatever we agree, goes?”</p> + +<p>Again the Board of Guardians nodded.</p> + +<p>“Well, I’d like to have a hundred right +now,” Dick announced.</p> + +<p>“What for?” Mr. Crockett demanded.</p> + +<p>“I don’t mind telling you,” was +the lad’s steady answer. “To go traveling.”</p> + +<p>“You’ll go to bed at eight:thirty this +evening,” Mr. Crockett retorted. “And +you don’t get any hundred. The lady we spoke +to you about will be here before six. She is to have, +as we explained, daily and hourly charge of you. At +six-thirty, as usual, you will dine, and she will +dine with you and see you to bed. As we told you, she +will have to serve the place of a mother to you—­see +that your ears are clean, your neck washed—­”</p> + +<p>“And that I get my Saturday night bath,” +Dick amplified meekly for him.</p> + +<p>“Precisely.”</p> + +<p>“How much are you—­am I—­paying +the lady for her services?” Dick questioned +in the disconcerting, tangential way that was already +habitual to him, as his school companions and teachers +had learned to their cost.</p> + +<p>Mr. Crockett for the first time cleared his throat +for pause.</p> + +<p>“I’m paying her, ain’t I?” +Dick prodded. “Out of the twenty million, you +know.”</p> + +<p>“The spit of his father,” said Mr. Slocum +in an aside.</p> + +<p>“Mrs. Summerstone, the lady as you elect to +call her, receives one hundred and fifty a month, +eighteen hundred a year in round sum,” said +Mr. Crockett.</p> + +<p>“It’s a waste of perfectly good money,” +Dick sighed. “And board and lodging thrown in!”</p> + +<p>He stood up—­not the born aristocrat of +the generations, but the reared aristocrat of thirteen +years in the Nob Hill palace. He stood up with such +a manner that his Board of Guardians left their leather +chairs to stand up with him. But he stood up as no +Lord Fauntleroy ever stood up; for he was a mixer. +He had knowledge that human life was many-faced and +many-placed. Not for nothing had he been spelled down +by Mona Sanguinetti. Not for nothing had he fought +Tim Hagan to a standstill and, co-equal, ruled the +schoolyard roost with him.</p> + +<p>He was birthed of the wild gold-adventure of Forty-nine. +He was a reared aristocrat and a grammar-school-trained +democrat. He knew, in his precocious immature way, +the differentiations between caste and mass; and, +behind it all, he was possessed of a will of his own +and of a quiet surety of self that was incomprehensible +to the three elderly gentlemen who had been given +charge of his and his destiny and who had pledged +themselves to increase his twenty millions and make +a man of him in their own composite image.</p> + +<p>“Thank you for your kindness,” Young Dick +said generally to the three. “I guess we’ll +get along all right. Of course, that twenty millions +is mine, and of course you’ve got to take care +of it for me, seeing I know nothing of business—­”</p> + +<p>“And we’ll increase it for you, my boy, +we’ll increase it for you in safe, conservative +ways,” Mr. Slocum assured him.</p> + +<p>“No speculation,” Young Dick warned. “Dad’s +just been lucky—­I’ve heard him say +that times have changed and a fellow can’t take +the chances everybody used to take.”</p> + +<p>From which, and from much which has already passed, +it might erroneously be inferred that Young Dick was +a mean and money-grubbing soul. On the contrary, he +was at that instant entertaining secret thoughts and +plans so utterly regardless and disdainful of his twenty +millions as to place him on a par with a drunken sailor +sowing the beach with a three years’ pay-day.</p> + +<p>“I am only a boy,” Young Dick went on. +“But you don’t know me very well yet. +We’ll get better acquainted by and by, and, again +thanking you....”</p> + +<p>He paused, bowed briefly and grandly as lords in Nob +Hill palaces early learn to bow, and, by the quality +of the pause, signified that the audience was over. +Nor did the impact of dismissal miss his guardians. +They, who had been co-lords with his father, withdrew +confused and perplexed. Messrs. Davidson and Slocum +were on the point of resolving their perplexity into +wrath, as they went down the great stone stairway +to the waiting carriage, but Mr. Crockett, the testy +and snappish, muttered ecstatically: “The son +of a gun! The little son of a gun!”</p> + +<p>The carriage carried them down to the old Pacific +Union Club, where, for another hour, they gravely +discussed the future of Young Dick Forrest and pledged +themselves anew to the faith reposed in them by Lucky +Richard Forrest. And down the hill, on foot, where +grass grew on the paved streets too steep for horse-traffic, +Young Dick hurried. As the height of land was left +behind, almost immediately the palaces and spacious +grounds of the nabobs gave way to the mean streets +and wooden warrens of the working people. The San +Francisco of 1887 as incontinently intermingled its +slums and mansions as did the old cities of Europe. +Nob Hill arose, like any medieval castle, from the + mess and ruck of common life that denned and laired +at its base.</p> + +<p>Young Dick came to pause alongside a corner grocery, +the second story of which was rented to Timothy Hagan +Senior, who, by virtue of being a policeman with a +wage of a hundred dollars a month, rented this high +place to dwell above his fellows who supported families +on no more than forty and fifty dollars a month.</p> + +<p>In vain Young Dick whistled up through the unscreened, +open windows. Tim Hagan Junior was not at home. But +Young Dick wasted little wind in the whistling. He +was debating on possible adjacent places where Tim +Hagan might be, when Tim himself appeared around the +corner, bearing a lidless lard-can that foamed with +steam beer. He grunted greeting, and Young Dick grunted +with equal roughness, just as if, a brief space before, +he had not, in most lordly fashion, terminated an audience +with three of the richest merchant-kings of an imperial +city. Nor did his possession of twenty increasing +millions hint the slightest betrayal in his voice +or mitigate in the slightest the gruffness of his +grunt.</p> + +<p>“Ain’t seen yeh since yer old man died,” +Tim Hagan commented.</p> + +<p>“Well, you’re seein’ me now, ain’t +you?” was Young Dick’s retort. “Say, +Tim, I come to see you on business.”</p> + +<p>“Wait till I rush the beer to the old man,” +said Tim, inspecting the state of the foam in the +lard-can with an experienced eye. “He’ll +roar his head off if it comes in flat.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, you can shake it up,” Young Dick +assured him. “Only want to see you a minute. +I’m hitting the road to-night. Want to come along?”</p> + +<p>Tim’s small, blue Irish eyes flashed with interest.</p> + +<p>“Where to?” he queried.</p> + +<p>“Don’t know. Want to come? If you do, +we can talk it over after we start? You know the ropes. +What d’ye say?”</p> + +<p>“The old man’ll beat the stuffin’ +outa me,” Tim demurred.</p> + +<p>“He’s done that before, an’ you +don’t seem to be much missing,” Young +Dick callously rejoined. “Say the word, an’ +we’ll meet at the Ferry Building at nine to-night. +What d’ye say? I’ll be there.”</p> + +<p>“Supposin’ I don’t show up?” +Tim asked.</p> + +<p>“I’ll be on my way just the same.” +Young Dick turned as if to depart, paused casually, +and said over his shoulder, “Better come along.”</p> + +<p>Tim shook up the beer as he answered with equal casualness, +“Aw right.<br> +I’ll be there.”</p> + +<p>After parting from Tim Hagan Young Dick spent a busy +hour or so looking up one, Marcovich, a Slavonian +schoolmate whose father ran a chop-house in which +was reputed to be served the finest twenty-cent meal +in the city. Young Marcovich owed Young Dick two dollars, +and Young Dick accepted the payment of a dollar and +forty cents as full quittance of the debt.</p> + +<p>Also, with shyness and perturbation, Young Dick wandered +down Montgomery Street and vacillated among the many +pawnshops that graced that thoroughfare. At last, +diving desperately into one, he managed to exchange +for eight dollars and a ticket his gold watch that +he knew was worth fifty at the very least.</p> + +<p>Dinner in the Nob Hill palace was served at six-thirty. +He arrived at six-forty-five and encountered Mrs. +Summerstone. She was a stout, elderly, decayed gentlewoman, +a daughter of the great Porter-Rickington family +that had shaken the entire Pacific Coast with its +financial crash in the middle seventies. Despite her +stoutness, she suffered from what she called shattered +nerves.</p> + +<p>“This will never, never do, Richard,” +she censured. “Here is dinner waiting fifteen +minutes already, and you have not yet washed your face +and hands.”</p> + +<p>“I am sorry, Mrs. Summerstone,” Young +Dick apologized. “I won’t keep you waiting +ever again. And I won’t bother you much ever.”</p> + +<p>At dinner, in state, the two of them alone in the +great dining room, Young Dick strove to make things +easy for the lady, whom, despite his knowledge that +she was on his pay-roll, he felt toward as a host must +feel toward a guest.</p> + +<p>“You’ll be very comfortable here,” +he promised, “once you are settled down. It’s +a good old house, and most of the servants have been +here for years.”</p> + +<p>“But, Richard,” she smiled seriously to +him; “it is not the servants who will determine +my happiness here. It is you.”</p> + +<p>“I’ll do my best,” he said graciously. +“Better than that. I’m sorry I came in +late for dinner. In years and years you’ll never +see me late again. I won’t bother you at all. +You’ll see. It will be just as though I wasn’t +in the house.”</p> + +<p>When he bade her good night, on his way to bed, he +added, as a last thought:</p> + +<p>“I’ll warn you of one thing: Ah Sing. +He’s the cook. He’s been in our house +for years and years—­oh, I don’t know, +maybe twenty-five or thirty years he’s cooked +for father, from long before this house was built +or I was born. He’s privileged. He’s so +used to having his own way that you’ll have +to handle him with gloves. But once he likes you he’ll +work his fool head off to please you. He likes me that +way. You get him to like you, and you’ll have +the time of your life here. And, honest, I won’t +give you any trouble at all. It’ll be a regular +snap, just as if I wasn’t here at all.”</p> + +<h1 align="center" style="margin-top: 2em;font-variant: small-caps">Chapter V</h1> + +<p><i>At</i> nine in the evening, sharp to the second, +clad in his oldest clothes, Young Dick met Tim Hagan +at the Ferry Building.</p> + +<p>“No use headin’ north,” said Tim. +“Winter’ll come on up that way and make +the sleepin’ crimpy. D’ye want to go East—­that +means Nevada and the deserts.”</p> + +<p>“Any other way?” queried Young Dick. “What’s +the matter with south? We can head for Los Angeles, +an’ Arizona, an’ New Mexico—­oh, +an’ Texas.”</p> + +<p>“How much money you got?” Tim demanded.</p> + +<p>“What for?” Young Dick countered.</p> + +<p>“We gotta get out quick, an’ payin’ +our way at the start is quickest. Me—­I’m +all hunkydory; but you ain’t. The folks that’s +lookin’ after you’ll raise a roar. They’ll +have more detectives out than you can shake at stick +at. We gotta dodge ’em, that’s what.”</p> + +<p>“Then we will dodge,” said Young Dick. +“We’ll make short jumps this way and that +for a couple of days, layin’ low most of the +time, paying our way, until we can get to Tracy. Then +we’ll quit payin’ an’ beat her south.”</p> + +<p>All of which program was carefully carried out. They +eventually went through Tracy as pay passengers, six +hours after the local deputy sheriff had given up +his task of searching the trains. With an excess of +precaution Young Dick paid beyond Tracy and as far +as Modesto. After that, under the teaching of Tim, +he traveled without paying, riding blind baggage, +box cars, and cow-catchers. Young Dick bought the +newspapers, and frightened Tim by reading to him the +lurid accounts of the kidnapping of the young heir +to the Forrest millions.</p> + +<p>Back in San Francisco the Board of Guardians offered +rewards that totaled thirty thousand dollars for the +recovery of their ward. And Tim Hagan, reading the +same while they lay in the grass by some water-tank, +branded forever the mind of Young Dick with the fact +that honor beyond price was a matter of neither place +nor caste and might outcrop in the palace on the height +of land or in the dwelling over a grocery down on +the flat.</p> + +<p>“Gee!” Tim said to the general landscape. +“The old man wouldn’t raise a roar if +I snitched on you for that thirty thousand. It makes +me scared to think of it.”</p> + +<p>And from the fact that Tim thus openly mentioned the +matter, Young Dick concluded that there was no possibility +of the policeman’s son betraying him.</p> + +<p>Not until six weeks afterward, in Arizona, did Young +Dick bring up the subject.</p> + +<p>“You see, Tim,” he said, “I’ve +got slathers of money. It’s growing all the +time, and I ain’t spending a cent of it, not +so as you can notice... though that Mrs. Summerstone +is getting a cold eighteen hundred a year out of me, +with board and carriages thrown in, while you an’ +I are glad to get the leavings of firemen’s pails +in the round-houses. Just the same, my money’s +growing. What’s ten per cent, on twenty dollars?”</p> + +<p>Tim Hagan stared at the shimmering heat-waves of the +desert and tried to solve the problem.</p> + +<p>“What’s one-tenth of twenty million?” +Young Dick demanded irritably.</p> + +<p>“Huh!—­two million, of course.”</p> + +<p>“Well, five per cent’s half of ten per +cent. What does twenty million earn at five per cent, +for one year?”</p> + +<p>Tim hesitated.</p> + +<p>“Half of it, half of two million!” Young +Dick cried. “At that rate I’m a million +richer every year. Get that, and hang on to it, and +listen to me. When I’m good and willing to go +back—­but not for years an’ years—­we’ll +fix it up, you and I. When I say the word, you’ll +write to your father. He’ll jump out to where +we are waiting, pick me up, and cart me back. Then +he’ll collect the thirty thousand reward from +my guardians, quit the police force, and most likely +start a saloon.”</p> + +<p>“Thirty thousand’s a hell of a lot of +money,” was Tim’s nonchalant way of expressing +his gratitude.</p> + +<p>“Not to me,” Young Dick minimized his +generosity. “Thirty thousand goes into a million +thirty-three times, and a million’s only a year’s +turnover of my money.”</p> + +<p>But Tim Hagan never lived to see his father a saloon +keeper. Two days later, on a trestle, the lads were +fired out of an empty box-car by a brake-man who should +have known better. The trestle spanned a dry ravine. +Young Dick looked down at the rocks seventy feet below +and demurred.</p> + +<p>“There’s room on the trestle,” he +said; “but what if the train starts up?”</p> + +<p>“It ain’t goin’ to start—­beat +it while you got time,” the brakeman insisted. +“The engine’s takin’ water at the +other side. She always takes it here.”</p> + +<p>But for once the engine did not take water. The evidence +at the inquest developed that the engineer had found +no water in the tank and started on. Scarcely had +the two boys dropped from the side-door of the box-car, +and before they had made a score of steps along the +narrow way between the train and the abyss, than the +train began to move. Young Dick, quick and sure in +all his perceptions and adjustments, dropped on the +instant to hands and knees on the trestle. This gave +him better holding and more space, because he crouched +beneath the overhang of the box-cars. Tim, not so quick +in perceiving and adjusting, also overcome with Celtic +rage at the brakeman, instead of dropping to hands +and knees, remained upright to flare his opinion of +the brakeman, to the brakeman, in lurid and ancestral +terms.</p> + +<p>“Get down!—­drop!” Young Dick +shouted.</p> + +<p>But the opportunity had passed. On a down grade, the +engine picked up the train rapidly. Facing the moving +cars, with empty air at his back and the depth beneath, +Tim tried to drop on hands and knees. But the first +twist of his shoulders brought him in contact with +the car and nearly out-balanced him. By a miracle +he recovered equilibrium. But he stood upright. The +train was moving faster and faster. It was impossible +to get down.</p> + +<p>Young Dick, kneeling and holding, watched. The train +gathered way. The cars moved more swiftly. Tim, with +a cool head, his back to the fall, his face to the +passing cars, his arms by his sides, with nowhere save +under his feet a holding point, balanced and swayed. +The faster the train moved, the wider he swayed, until, +exerting his will, he controlled himself and ceased +from swaying.</p> + +<p>And all would have been well with him, had it not +been for one car. Young Dick knew it, and saw it coming. +It was a “palace horse-car,” projecting +six inches wider than any car on the train. He saw +Tim see it coming. He saw Tim steel himself to meet +the abrupt subtraction of half a foot from the narrow +space wherein he balanced. He saw Tim slowly and deliberately +sway out, sway out to the extremest limit, and yet +not sway out far enough. The thing was physically inevitable. +An inch more, and Tim would have escaped the car. +An inch more and he would have fallen without impact +from the car. It caught him, in that margin of an +inch, and hurled him backward and side-twisting. Twice +he whirled sidewise, and two and a half times he turned +over, ere he struck on his head and neck on the rocks.</p> + +<p>He never moved after he struck. The seventy-foot fall +broke his neck and crushed his skull. And right there +Young Dick learned death—­not the ordered, +decent death of civilization, wherein doctors and nurses +and hypodermics ease the stricken one into the darkness, +and ceremony and function and flowers and undertaking +institutions conspire to give a happy leave-taking +and send-off to the departing shade, but sudden death, +primitive death, ugly and ungarnished, like the death +of a steer in the shambles or a fat swine stuck in +the jugular.</p> + +<p>And right there Young Dick learned more—­the +mischance of life and fate; the universe hostile to +man; the need to perceive and to act, to see and know, +to be sure and quick, to adjust instantly to all instant +shiftage of the balance of forces that bear upon the +living. And right there, beside the strangely crumpled +and shrunken remnant of what had been his comrade +the moment before, Young Dick learned that illusion +must be discounted, and that reality never lied.</p> + +<p>In New Mexico, Young Dick drifted into the Jingle-bob +Ranch, north of Roswell, in the Pecos Valley. He was +not yet fourteen, and he was accepted as the mascot +of the ranch and made into a “sure-enough” +cowboy by cowboys who, on legal papers, legally signed +names such as Wild Horse, Willie Buck, Boomer Deacon, +and High Pockets.</p> + +<p>Here, during a stay of six months, Young Dick, soft +of frame and unbreakable, achieved a knowledge of +horses and horsemanship, and of men in the rough and +raw, that became a life asset. More he learned. There +was John Chisum, owner of the Jingle-bob, the Bosque +Grande, and of other cattle ranches as far away as +the Black River and beyond. John Chisum was a cattle +king who had foreseen the coming of the farmer and +adjusted from the open range to barbed wire, and who, +in order to do so, had purchased every forty acres +carrying water and got for nothing the use of the +millions of acres of adjacent range that was worthless +without the water he controlled. And in the talk by +the camp-fire and chuck wagon, among forty-dollar-a-month +cowboys who had not foreseen what John Chisum foresaw, +Young Dick learned precisely why and how John Chisum +had become a cattle king while a thousand of his contemporaries +worked for him on wages.</p> + +<p>But Young Dick was no cool-head. His blood was hot. +He had passion, and fire, and male pride. Ready to +cry from twenty hours in the saddle, he learned to +ignore the thousand aching creaks in his body and +with the stoic brag of silence to withstrain from his +blankets until the hard-bitten punchers led the way. +By the same token he straddled the horse that was +apportioned him, insisted on riding night-herd, and +knew no hint of uncertainty when it came to him to +turn the flank of a stampede with a flying slicker. +He could take a chance. It was his joy to take a chance. +But at such times he never failed of due respect for +reality. He was well aware that men were soft-shelled +and cracked easily on hard rocks or under pounding +hoofs. And when he rejected a mount that tangled its +legs in quick action and stumbled, it was not because +he feared to be cracked, but because, when he took +a chance on being cracked, he wanted, as he told John +Chisum himself, “an even break for his money.”</p> + +<p>It was while at the Jingle-bob, but mailed by a cattleman +from Chicago, that Young Dick wrote a letter to his +guardians. Even then, so careful was he, that the +envelope was addressed to Ah Sing. Though unburdened +by his twenty millions, Young Dick never forgot them, +and, fearing his estate might be distributed among +remote relatives who might possibly inhabit New England, +he warned his guardians that he was still alive and +that he would return home in several years. Also, +he ordered them to keep Mrs. Summerstone on at her +regular salary.</p> + +<p>But Young Dick’s feet itched. Half a year, he +felt, was really more than he should have spent at +the Jingle-bob. As a boy hobo, or road-kid, he drifted +on across the United States, getting acquainted with +its peace officers, police judges, vagrancy laws, and +jails. And he learned vagrants themselves at first +hand, and floating laborers and petty criminals. Among +other things, he got acquainted with farms and farmers, +and, in New York State, once picked berries for a week +with a Dutch farmer who was experimenting with one +of the first silos erected in the United States. Nothing +of what he learned came to him in the spirit of research. +He had merely the human boy’s curiosity about +all things, and he gained merely a huge mass of data +concerning human nature and social conditions that +was to stand him in good stead in later years, when, +with the aid of the books, he digested and classified +it.</p> + +<p>His adventures did not harm him. Even when he consorted +with jail-birds in jungle camps, and listened to +their codes of conduct and measurements of life, he +was not affected. He was a traveler, and they were +alien breeds. Secure in the knowledge of his twenty +millions, there was neither need nor temptation for +him to steal or rob. All things and all places interested +him, but he never found a place nor a situation that +could hold him. He wanted to see, to see more and more, +and to go on seeing.</p> + +<p>At the end of three years, nearly sixteen, hard of +body, weighing a hundred and thirty pounds, he judged +it time to go home and open the books. So he took +his first long voyage, signing on as boy on a windjammer +bound around the Horn from the Delaware Breakwater +to San Francisco. It was a hard voyage, of one hundred +and eighty days, but at the end he weighed ten pounds +the more for having made it.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Summerstone screamed when he walked in on her, +and Ah Sing had to be called from the kitchen to identify +him. Mrs. Summerstone screamed a second time. It was +when she shook hands with him and lacerated her tender +skin in the fisty grip of his rope-calloused palms.</p> + +<p>He was shy, almost embarrassed, as he greeted his +guardians at the hastily summoned meeting. But this +did not prevent him from talking straight to the point.</p> + +<p>“It’s this way,” he said. “I +am not a fool. I know what I want, and I want what +I want. I am alone in the world, outside of good friends +like you, of course, and I have my own ideas of the +world and what I want to do in it. I didn’t +come home because of a sense of duty to anybody here. +I came home because it was time, because of my sense +of duty to myself. I’m all the better from my +three years of wandering about, and now it’s +up to me to go on with my education—­my book +education, I mean.”</p> + +<p>“The Belmont Academy,” Mr. Slocum suggested. +“That will fit you for the university—­”</p> + +<p>Dick shook his head decidedly.</p> + +<p>“And take three years to do it. So would a high +school. I intend to be in the University of California +inside one year. That means work. But my mind’s +like acid. It’ll bite into the books. I shall +hire a coach, or half a dozen of them, and go to it. +And I’ll hire my coaches myself—­hire +and fire them. And that means money to handle.”</p> + +<p>“A hundred a month,” Mr. Crockett suggested.</p> + +<p>Dick shook his head.</p> + +<p>“I’ve taken care of myself for three years +without any of my money. I guess. I can take care +of myself along with some of my money here in San +Francisco. I don’t care to handle my business +affairs yet, but I do want a bank account, a respectable-sized +one. I want to spend it as I see fit, for what I see +fit.”</p> + +<p>The guardians looked their dismay at one another.</p> + +<p>“It’s ridiculous, impossible,” Mr. +Crockett began. “You are as unreasonable as +you were before you went away.”</p> + +<p>“It’s my way, I guess,” Dick sighed. +“The other disagreement was over my money. It +was a hundred dollars I wanted then.”</p> + +<p>“Think of our position, Dick,” Mr. Davidson +urged. “As your guardians, how would it be looked +upon if we gave you, a lad of sixteen, a free hand +with money.”</p> + +<p>“What’s the <i>Freda</i> worth, right +now?” Dick demanded irrelevantly.</p> + +<p>“Can sell for twenty thousand any time,” +Mr. Crockett answered.</p> + +<p>“Then sell her. She’s too large for me, +and she’s worth less every year. I want a thirty-footer +that I can handle myself for knocking around the Bay, +and that won’t cost a thousand. Sell the <i>Freda</i> +and put the money to my account. Now what you three +are afraid of is that I’ll misspend my money—­taking +to drinking, horse-racing, and running around with +chorus girls. Here’s my proposition to make you +easy on that: let it be a drawing account for the four +of us. The moment any of you decide I am misspending, +that moment you can draw out the total balance. I +may as well tell you, that just as a side line I’m +going to get a business college expert to come here +and cram me with the mechanical side of the business +game.”</p> + +<p>Dick did not wait for their acquiescence, but went +on as from a matter definitely settled.</p> + +<p>“How about the horses down at Menlo?—­never +mind, I’ll look them over and decide what to +keep. Mrs. Summerstone will stay on here in charge +of the house, because I’ve got too much work +mapped out for myself already. I promise you you won’t +regret giving me a free hand with my directly personal +affairs. And now, if you want to hear about the last +three years, I’ll spin the yarn for you.”</p> + +<p>Dick Forrest had been right when he told his guardians +that his mind was acid and would bite into the books. +Never was there such an education, and he directed +it himself—­but not without advice. He had +learned the trick of hiring brains from his father +and from John Chisum of the Jingle-bob. He had learned +to sit silent and to think while cow men talked long +about the campfire and the chuck wagon. And, by virtue +of name and place, he sought and obtained interviews +with professors and college presidents and practical +men of affairs; and he listened to their talk through +many hours, scarcely speaking, rarely asking a question, +merely listening to the best they had to offer, content +to receive from several such hours one idea, one fact, +that would help him to decide what sort of an education +he would go in for and how.</p> + +<p>Then came the engaging of coaches. Never was there +such an engaging and discharging, such a hiring and +firing. He was not frugal in the matter. For one that +he retained a month, or three months, he discharged +a dozen on the first day, or the first week. And invariably +he paid such dischargees a full month although their +attempts to teach him might not have consumed an hour. +He did such things fairly and grandly, because he +could afford to be fair and grand.</p> + +<p>He, who had eaten the leavings from firemen’s +pails in round-houses and “scoffed” mulligan-stews +at water-tanks, had learned thoroughly the worth of +money. He bought the best with the sure knowledge that +it was the cheapest. A year of high school physics +and a year of high school chemistry were necessary +to enter the university. When he had crammed his algebra +and geometry, he sought out the heads of the physics +and chemistry departments in the University of California. +Professor Carey laughed at him... at the first.</p> + +<p>“My dear boy,” Professor Carey began.</p> + +<p>Dick waited patiently till he was through. Then Dick +began, and concluded.</p> + +<p>“I’m not a fool, Professor Carey. High +school and academy students are children. They don’t +know the world. They don’t know what they want, +or why they want what is ladled out to them. I know +the world. I know what I want and why I want it. They +do physics for an hour, twice a week, for two terms, +which, with two vacations, occupy one year. You are +the top teacher on the Pacific Coast in physics. The +college year is just ending. In the first week of +your vacation, giving every minute of your time to +me, I can get the year’s physics. What is that +week worth to you?”</p> + +<p>“You couldn’t buy it for a thousand dollars,” +Professor Carey rejoined, thinking he had settled +the matter.</p> + +<p>“I know what your salary is—­” +Dick began.</p> + +<p>“What is it?” Professor Carey demanded +sharply.</p> + +<p>“It’s not a thousand a week,” Dick +retorted as sharply. “It’s not five hundred +a week, nor two-fifty a week—­” He +held up his hand to stall off interruption. “You’ve +just told me I couldn’t buy a week of your time +for a thousand dollars. I’m not going to. But +I am going to buy that week for two thousand. Heavens!—­I’ve +only got so many years to live—­”</p> + +<p>“And you can buy years?” Professor Carey +queried slyly.</p> + +<p>“Sure. That’s why I’m here. I buy +three years in one, and the week from you is part +of the deal.”</p> + +<p>“But I have not accepted,” Professor Carey +laughed.</p> + +<p>“If the sum is not sufficient,” Dick said +stiffly, “why name the sum you consider fair.”</p> + +<p>And Professor Carey surrendered. So did Professor +Barsdale, head of the department of chemistry.</p> + +<p>Already had Dick taken his coaches in mathematics +duck hunting for weeks in the sloughs of the Sacramento +and the San Joaquin. After his bout with physics and +chemistry he took his two coaches in literature and +history into the Curry County hunting region of southwestern +Oregon. He had learned the trick from his father, and +he worked, and played, lived in the open air, and +did three conventional years of adolescent education +in one year without straining himself. He fished, +hunted, swam, exercised, and equipped himself for the +university at the same time. And he made no mistake. +He knew that he did it because his father’s +twenty millions had invested him with mastery. Money +was a tool. He did not over-rate it, nor under-rate +it. He used it to buy what he wanted.</p> + +<p>“The weirdest form of dissipation I ever heard,” +said Mr. Crockett, holding up Dick’s account +for the year. “Sixteen thousand for education, +all itemized, including railroad fares, porters’ +tips, and shot-gun cartridges for his teachers.”</p> + +<p>“He passed the examinations just the same,” +quoth Mr. Slocum.</p> + +<p>“And in a year,” growled Mr. Davidson. +“My daughter’s boy entered Belmont at +the same time, and, if he’s lucky, it will be +two years yet before he enters the university.”</p> + +<p>“Well, all I’ve got to say,” proclaimed +Mr. Crockett, “is that from now on what that +boy says in the matter of spending his money goes.”</p> + +<p>“And now I’ll have a snap,” Dick +told his guardians. “Here I am, neck and neck +again, and years ahead of them in knowledge of the +world. Why, I know things, good and bad, big and little, +about men and women and life that sometimes I almost +doubt myself that they’re true. But I know them.</p> + +<p>“From now on, I’m not going to rush. I’ve +caught up, and I’m going through regular. All +I have to do is to keep the speed of the classes, +and I’ll be graduated when I’m twenty-one. +From now on I’ll need less money for education—­no +more coaches, you know—­and more money for +a good time.”</p> + +<p>Mr. Davidson was suspicious.</p> + +<p>“What do you mean by a good time?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, I’m going in for the frats, for football, +hold my own, you know—­ and I’m interested +in gasoline engines. I’m going to build the first +ocean-going gasoline yacht in the world—­”</p> + +<p>“You’ll blow yourself up,” Mr. Crockett +demurred. “It’s a fool notion all these +cranks are rushing into over gasoline.”</p> + +<p>“I’ll make myself safe,” Dick answered, +“and that means experimenting, and it means +money, so keep me a good drawing account—­same +old way—­ all four of us can draw.”</p> + +<h1 align="center" style="margin-top: 2em;font-variant: small-caps">Chapter VI</h1> + +<p>Dick Forrest proved himself no prodigy at the university, +save that he cut more lectures the first year than +any other student. The reason for this was that he +did not need the lectures he cut, and he knew it. +His coaches, while preparing him for the entrance examinations, +had carried him nearly through the first college year. +Incidentally, he made the Freshman team, a very scrub +team, that was beaten by every high school and academy +it played against.</p> + +<p>But Dick did put in work that nobody saw. His collateral +reading was wide and deep, and when he went on his +first summer cruise in the ocean-going gasoline yacht +he had built no gay young crowd accompanied him. Instead, +his guests, with their families, were professors of +literature, history, jurisprudence, and philosophy. +It was long remembered in the university as the “high-brow” +cruise. The professors, on their return, reported +a most enjoyable time. Dick returned with a greater +comprehension of the general fields of the particular +professors than he could have gained in years at their +class-lectures. And time thus gained, enabled him to +continue to cut lectures and to devote more time to +laboratory work.</p> + +<p>Nor did he miss having his good college time. College +widows made love to him, and college girls loved him, +and he was indefatigable in his dancing. He never +cut a smoker, a beer bust, or a rush, and he toured +the Pacific Coast with the Banjo and Mandolin Club.</p> + +<p>And yet he was no prodigy. He was brilliant at nothing. +Half a dozen of his fellows could out-banjo and out-mandolin +him. A dozen fellows were adjudged better dancers +than he. In football, and he gained the Varsity in +his Sophomore year, he was considered a solid and +dependable player, and that was all. It seemed never +his luck to take the ball and go down the length of +the field while the Blue and Gold host tore itself +and the grandstand to pieces. But it was at the end +of heart-breaking, grueling slog in mud and rain, the +score tied, the second half imminent to its close, +Stanford on the five-yard line, Berkeley’s ball, +with two downs and three yards to gain—­it +was then that the Blue and Gold arose and chanted +its demand for Forrest to hit the center and hit it +hard.</p> + +<p>He never achieved super-excellence at anything. Big +Charley Everson drank him down at the beer busts. +Harrison Jackson, at hammer-throwing, always exceeded +his best by twenty feet. Carruthers out-pointed him +at boxing. Anson Burge could always put his shoulders +to the mat, two out of three, but always only by the +hardest work. In English composition a fifth of his +class excelled him. Edlin, the Russian Jew, out-debated +him on the contention that property was robbery. Schultz +and Debret left him with the class behind in higher +mathematics; and Otsuki, the Japanese, was beyond all +comparison with him in chemistry.</p> + +<p>But if Dick Forrest did not excel at anything, he +failed in nothing. He displayed no superlative strength, +he betrayed no weakness nor deficiency. As he told +his guardians, who, by his unrelenting good conduct +had been led into dreaming some great career for him; +as he told them, when they asked what he wanted to +become:</p> + +<p>“Nothing. Just all around. You see, I don’t +have to be a specialist. My father arranged that for +me when he left me his money. Besides, I couldn’t +be a specialist if I wanted to. It isn’t me.”</p> + +<p>And thus so well-keyed was he, that he expressed clearly +his key. He had no flare for anything. He was that +rare individual, normal, average, balanced, all-around.</p> + +<p>When Mr. Davidson, in the presence of his fellow guardians, +stated his pleasure in that Dick had shown no wildness +since he had settled down, Dick replied:</p> + +<p>“Oh, I can hold myself when I want to.”</p> + +<p>“Yes,” said Mr. Slocum gravely. “It’s +the finest thing in the world that you sowed your +wild oats early and learned control.”</p> + +<p>Dick looked at him curiously.</p> + +<p>“Why, that boyish adventure doesn’t count,” +he said. “That wasn’t wildness. I haven’t +gone wild yet. But watch me when I start. Do you know +Kipling’s ‘Song of Diego Valdez’? +Let me quote you a bit of it. You see, Diego Valdez, +like me, had good fortune. He rose so fast to be High +Admiral of Spain that he found no time to take the +pleasure he had merely tasted. He was lusty and husky, +but he had no time, being too busy rising. But always, +he thought, he fooled himself with the thought, that +his lustiness and huskiness would last, and, after +he became High Admiral he could then have his pleasure. +Always he remembered:</p> + +<p>  “’—­comrades—­<br> +       Old playmates +on new seas—­<br> +     When as we traded orpiment<br> +       Among the +savages—­<br> +     A thousand leagues to +south’ard<br> +       And thirty +years removed—­<br> +     They knew not noble +Valdez,<br> +       But me they +knew and loved.</p> + +<p>  “’Then they that found good +liquor<br> +       They drank +it not alone,<br> +    And they that found fair plunder,<br> +       They told +us every one,<br> +    Behind our chosen islands<br> +       Or secret +shoals between,<br> +     When, walty from far +voyage,<br> +       We gathered +to careen.</p> + +<p>  “’There burned our breaming-fagots,<br> +       All pale +along the shore:<br> +    There rose our worn pavilions—­<br> +       A sail above +an oar:<br> +    As flashed each yearning anchor<br> +       Through +mellow seas afire,<br> +     So swift our careless +captains<br> +       Rowed each +to his desire.</p> + +<p>  “’Where lay our loosened harness?<br> +       Where turned +our naked feet?<br> +    Whose tavern mid the palm-trees?<br> +       What quenchings +of what heat?<br> +    Oh fountain in the desert!<br> +       Oh cistern +in the waste!<br> +     Oh bread we ate in secret!<br> +       Oh cup we +spilled in haste!</p> + +<p>  “’The youth new-taught of +longing,<br> +       The widow +curbed and wan—­<br> +    The good wife proud at season,<br> +       And the +maid aware of man;<br> +     All souls, unslaked, +consuming,<br> +       Defrauded +in delays,<br> +     Desire not more than +quittance<br> +       Than I those +forfeit days!’</p> + +<p>“Oh, get him, get him, you three oldsters, as +I’ve got him! Get what he saws next:</p> + +<p>  “’I dreamed to wait my pleasure,<br> +       Unchanged +my spring would bide:<br> +     Wherefore, to wait my +pleasure,<br> +       I put my +spring aside,<br> +    Till, first in face of Fortune,<br> +       And last +in mazed disdain,<br> +     I made Diego Valdez<br> +       High Admiral +of Spain!’</p> + +<p>“Listen to me, guardians!” Dick cried +on, his face a flame of passion. “Don’t +forget for one moment that I am anything but unslaked, +consuming. I am. I burn. But I hold myself. Don’t +think I am a dead one because I am a darn nice, meritorious +boy at college. I am young. I am alive. I am all lusty +and husky. But I make no mistake. I hold myself. I +don’t start out now to blow up on the first lap. +I am just getting ready. I am going to have my time. +I am not going to spill my cup in haste. And in the +end I am not going to lament as Diego Valdez did:</p> + +<p>  “’There walks no wind ’neath +heaven<br> +       Nor wave +that shall restore<br> +     The old careening riot<br> +       And the +clamorous, crowded shore—­<br> +     The fountain in the +desert,<br> +       The cistern +in the waste,<br> +     The bread we ate in +secret,<br> +       The cup +we spilled in haste.’</p> + +<p>“Listen, guardians! Do you know what it is to +hit your man, to hit him in hot blood—­square +to the jaw—­and drop him cold? I want that. +And I want to love, and kiss, and risk, and play the +lusty, husky fool. I want to take my chance. I want +my careening riot, and I want it while I am young, +but not while I am too young. And I’m going to +have it. And in the meantime I play the game at college, +I hold myself, I equip myself, so that when I turn +loose I am going to have the best chance of my best. +Oh, believe me, I do not always sleep well of nights.”</p> + +<p>“You mean?” queried Mr. Crockett.</p> + +<p>“Sure. That’s just what I mean. I haven’t +gone wild yet, but just watch me when I start.”</p> + +<p>“And you will start when you graduate?”</p> + +<p>The remarkable youngster shook his head.</p> + +<p>“After I graduate I’m going to take at +least a year of post-graduate courses in the College +of Agriculture. You see, I’m developing a hobby—­farming. +I want to do something ... something constructive. +My father wasn’t constructive to amount to anything. +Neither were you fellows. You struck a new land in +pioneer days, and you picked up money like a lot of +sailors shaking out nuggets from the grass roots in +a virgin placer—­”</p> + +<p>“My lad, I’ve some little experience in +Californian farming,” Mr. Crockett interrupted +in a hurt way.</p> + +<p>“Sure you have, but you weren’t constructive. +You were—­well, facts are facts—­you +were destructive. You were a bonanza farmer. What did +you do? You took forty thousand acres of the finest +Sacramento Valley soil and you grew wheat on it year +after year. You never dreamed of rotation. You burned +your straw. You exhausted your humus. You plowed four +inches and put a plow-sole like a cement sidewalk just +four inches under the surface. You exhausted that +film of four inches and now you can’t get your +seed back.</p> + +<p>“You’ve destroyed. That’s what my +father did. They all did it. Well, I’m going +to take my father’s money and construct. I’m +going to take worked-out wheat-land that I can buy +as at a fire-sale, rip out the plow-sole, and make +it produce more in the end than it did when you fellows +first farmed it.”</p> + +<p>It was at the end of his Junior year that Mr. Crockett +again mentioned Dick’s threatened period of +wildness.</p> + +<p>“Soon as I’m done with cow college,” +was his answer. “Then I’m going to buy, +and stock, and start a ranch that’ll be a ranch. +And then I’ll set out after my careening riot.”</p> + +<p>“About how large a ranch will you start with?” +Mr. Davidson asked.</p> + +<p>“Maybe fifty thousand acres, maybe five hundred +thousand. It all depends. I’m going to play +unearned increment to the limit. People haven’t +begun to come to California yet. Without a tap of my +hand or a turn over, fifteen years from now land that +I can buy for ten dollars an acre will be worth fifty, +and what I can buy for fifty will be worth five hundred.”</p> + +<p>“A half million acres at ten dollars an acre +means five million dollars,” Mr. Crockett warned +gravely.</p> + +<p>“And at fifty it means twenty-five million,” +Dick laughed.</p> + +<p>But his guardians never believed in the wild oats +pilgrimage he threatened. He might waste his fortune +on new-fangled farming, but to go literally wild after +such years of self-restraint was an unthinkable thing.</p> + +<p>Dick took his sheepskin with small honor. He was twenty-eighth +in his class, and he had not set the college world +afire. His most notable achievement had been his resistance +and bafflement of many nice girls and of the mothers +of many nice girls. Next, after that, he had signalized +his Senior year by captaining the Varsity to its first +victory over Stanford in five years. It was in the +day prior to large-salaried football coaches, when +individual play meant much; but he hammered team-work +and the sacrifice of the individual into his team, +so that on Thanksgiving Day, over a vastly more brilliant +eleven, the Blue and Gold was able to serpentine its +triumph down Market Street in San Francisco.</p> + +<p>In his post-graduate year in cow college, Dick devoted +himself to laboratory work and cut all lectures. In +fact, he hired his own lecturers, and spent a sizable +fortune on them in mere traveling expenses over California. +Jacques Ribot, esteemed one of the greatest world +authorities on agricultural chemistry, who had been +seduced from his two thousand a year in France by +the six thousand offered by the University of California, +who had been seduced to Hawaii by the ten thousand +of the sugar planters, Dick Forrest seduced with fifteen +thousand and the more delectable temperate climate +of California on a five years’ contract.</p> + +<p>Messrs. Crockett, Slocum, and Davidson threw up their +hands in horror and knew that this was the wild career +Dick Forrest had forecast.</p> + +<p>But this was only one of Dick Forrest’s similar +dissipations. He stole from the Federal Government, +at a prodigal increase of salary, its star specialist +in livestock breeding, and by similar misconduct he +robbed the University of Nebraska of its greatest milch +cow professor, and broke the heart of the Dean of +the College of Agriculture of the University of California +by appropriating Professor Nirdenhammer, the wizard +of farm management.</p> + +<p>“Cheap at the price, cheap at the price,” +Dick explained to his guardians. “Wouldn’t +you rather see me spend my money in buying professors +than in buying race horses and actresses? Besides, +the trouble with you fellows is that you don’t +know the game of buying brains. I do. That’s +my specialty. I’m going to make money out of +them, and, better than that, I’m going to make +a dozen blades of grass grow where you fellows didn’t +leave room for half a blade in the soil you gutted.”</p> + +<p>So it can be understood how his guardians could not +believe in his promise of wild career, of kissing +and risking, and hitting men hot on the jaw. “One +year more,” he warned, while he delved in agricultural +chemistry, soil analysis, farm management, and traveled +California with his corps of high-salaried experts. +And his guardians could only apprehend a swift and +wide dispersal of the Forrest millions when Dick attained +his majority, took charge of the totality of his fortune, +and actually embarked on his agricultural folly.</p> + +<p>The day he was twenty-one the purchase of his principality, +that extended west from the Sacramento River to the +mountain tops, was consummated.</p> + +<p>“An incredible price,” said Mr. Crockett.</p> + +<p>“Incredibly cheap,” said Dick. “You +ought to see my soil reports. You ought to see my +water-reports. And you ought to hear me sing. Listen, +guardians, to a song that is a true song. I am the +singer and the song.”</p> + +<p>Whereupon, in the queer quavering falsetto that is +the sense of song to the North American Indian, the +Eskimo, and the Mongol, Dick sang:</p> + +<p>  “Hu’-tim yo’-kim koi-o-di’!<br> +    Wi’-hi yan’-ning +koi-o-di’!<br> +    Lo’-whi yan’-ning +koi-o-di’!<br> +    Yo-ho’ Nai-ni’, +hal-u’-dom yo nai, yo-ho’ nai-nim’!”</p> + +<p>“The music is my own,” he murmured apologetically, +“the way I think it ought to have sounded. You +see, no man lives who ever heard it sung. The Nishinam +got it from the Maidu, who got it from the Konkau, +who made it. But the Nishinam and the Maidu and the +Konkau are gone. Their last rancheria is not. You +plowed it under, Mr. Crockett, with you bonanza gang-plowing, +plow-soling farming. And I got the song from a certain +ethnological report, volume three, of the United States +Pacific Coast Geographical and Geological Survey. Red +Cloud, who was formed out of the sky, first sang this +song to the stars and the mountain flowers in the +morning of the world. I shall now sing it for you +in English.”</p> + +<p>And again, in Indian falsetto, ringing with triumph, +vernal and bursting, slapping his thighs and stamping +his feet to the accent, Dick sang:</p> + +<p>  “The acorns come down from heaven!<br> +    I plant the short acorns in +the valley!<br> +    I plant the long acorns in +the valley!<br> +    I sprout, I, the black-oak +acorn, sprout, I sprout!”</p> + +<p>Dick Forrest’s name began to appear in the newspapers +with appalling frequency. He leaped to instant fame +by being the first man in California who paid ten +thousand dollars for a single bull. His livestock +specialist, whom he had filched from the Federal Government, +in England outbid the Rothschilds’ Shire farm +for Hillcrest Chieftain, quickly to be known as Forrest’s +Folly, paying for that kingly animal no less than +five thousand guineas.</p> + +<p>“Let them laugh,” Dick told his ex-guardians. +“I am importing forty Shire mares. I’ll +write off half his price the first twelvemonth. He +will be the sire and grandsire of many sons and grandsons +for which the Californians will fall over themselves +to buy of me at from three to five thousand dollars +a clatter.”</p> + +<p>Dick Forrest was guilty of many similar follies in +those first months of his majority. But the most unthinkable +folly of all was, after he had sunk millions into +his original folly, that he turned it over to his +experts personally to develop along the general broad +lines laid down by him, placed checks upon them that +they might not go catastrophically wrong, bought a +ticket in a passenger brig to Tahiti, and went away +to run wild.</p> + +<p>Occasionally his guardians heard from him. At one +time he was owner and master of a four-masted steel +sailing ship that carried the English flag and coals +from Newcastle. They knew that much, because they +had been called upon for the purchase price, because +they read Dick’s name in the papers as master +when his ship rescued the passengers of the ill-fated +<i>Orion</i>, and because they collected the +insurance when Dick’s ship was lost with most +of all hands in the great Fiji hurricane. In 1896, +he was in the Klondike; in 1897, he was in Kamchatka +and scurvy-stricken; and, next, he erupted with the +American flag into the Philippines. Once, although +they could never learn how nor why, he was owner and +master of a crazy tramp steamer, long since rejected +by Lloyd’s, which sailed under the aegis of Siam.</p> + +<p>From time to time business correspondence compelled +them to hear from him from various purple ports of +the purple seas. Once, they had to bring the entire +political pressure of the Pacific Coast to bear upon +Washington in order to get him out of a scrape in Russia, +of which affair not one line appeared in the daily +press, but which affair was secretly provocative of +ticklish joy and delight in all the chancellories +of Europe.</p> + +<p>Incidentally, they knew that he lay wounded in Mafeking; +that he pulled through a bout with yellow fever in +Guayaquil; and that he stood trial for brutality on +the high seas in New York City. Thrice they read in +the press dispatches that he was dead: once, in battle, +in Mexico; and twice, executed, in Venezuela. After +such false flutterings, his guardians refused longer +to be thrilled when he crossed the Yellow Sea in a +sampan, was “rumored” to have died of +beri-beri, was captured from the Russians by the Japanese +at Mukden, and endured military imprisonment in Japan.</p> + +<p>The one thrill of which they were still capable, was +when, true to promise, thirty years of age, his wild +oats sown, he returned to California with a wife to +whom, as he announced, he had been married several +years, and whom all his three guardians found they +knew. Mr. Slocum had dropped eight hundred thousand +along with the totality of her father’s fortune +in the final catastrophe at the Los Cocos mine in +Chihuahua when the United States demonetized silver. +Mr. Davidson had pulled a million out of the Last +Stake along with her father when he pulled eight millions +from that sunken, man-resurrected, river bed in Amador +County. Mr. Crockett, a youth at the time, had “spooned” +the Merced bottom with her father in the late ’fifties, +had stood up best man with him at Stockton when he +married her mother, and, at Grant’s Pass, had +played poker with him and with the then Lieutenant +U.S. Grant when all the little the western world knew +of that young lieutenant was that he was a good Indian +fighter but a poor poker player.</p> + +<p>And Dick Forrest had married the daughter of Philip +Desten! It was not a case of wishing Dick luck. It +was a case of garrulous insistence on the fact that +he did not know how lucky he was. His guardians forgave +him all his wildness. He had made good. At last he +had performed a purely rational act. Better; it was +a stroke of genius. Paula Desten! Philip Desten’s +daughter! The Desten blood! The Destens and the Forrests! +It was enough. The three aged comrades of Forrest and +Desten of the old Gold Days, of the two who had played +and passed on, were even severe with Dick. They warned +him of the extreme value of his treasure, of the sacred +duty such wedlock imposed on him, of all the traditions +and virtues of the Desten and Forrest blood, until +Dick laughed and broke in with the disconcerting statement +that they were talking like a bunch of fanciers or +eugenics cranks—­which was precisely what +they were talking like, although they did not care +to be told so crassly.</p> + +<p>At any rate, the simple fact that he had married a +Desten made them nod unqualified approbation when +he showed them the plans and building estimates of +the Big House. Thanks to Paula Desten, for once they +were agreed that he was spending wisely and well. +As for his farming, it was incontestible that the +Harvest Group was unfalteringly producing, and he +might be allowed his hobbies. Nevertheless, as Mr. +Slocum put it: “Twenty-five thousand dollars +for a mere work-horse stallion is a madness. Work-horses +are work-horses; now had it been running stock....”</p> + +<h1 align="center" style="margin-top: 2em;font-variant: small-caps">Chapter VII</h1> + +<p>While Dick Forrest scanned the pamphlet on hog cholera +issued by the State of Iowa, through his open windows, +across the wide court, began to come sounds of the +awakening of the girl who laughed from the wooden +frame by his bed and who had left on the floor of his +sleeping porch, not so many hours before, the rosy, +filmy, lacy, boudoir cap so circumspectly rescued +by Oh My.</p> + +<p>Dick heard her voice, for she awoke, like a bird, +with song. He heard her trilling, in and out through +open windows, all down the long wing that was hers. +And he heard her singing in the patio garden, where, +also, she desisted long enough to quarrel with her +Airedale and scold the collie pup unholily attracted +by the red-orange, divers-finned, and many-tailed +Japanese goldfish in the fountain basin.</p> + +<p>He was aware of pleasure that she was awake. It was +a pleasure that never staled. Always, up himself for +hours, he had a sense that the Big House was not really +awake until he heard Paula’s morning song across +the patio.</p> + +<p>But having tasted the pleasure of knowing her to be +awake, Dick, as usual, forgot her in his own affairs. +She went out of his consciousness as he became absorbed +again in the Iowa statistics on hog cholera.</p> + +<p>“Good morning, Merry Gentleman,” was the +next he heard, always adorable music in his ears; +and Paula flowed in upon him, all softness of morning +kimono and stayless body, as her arm passed around +his neck and she perched, half in his arms, on one +accommodating knee of his. And he pressed her, and +advertised his awareness of her existence and nearness, +although his eyes lingered a full half minute longer +on the totals of results of Professor Kenealy’s +hog inoculations on Simon Jones’ farm at Washington, +Iowa.</p> + +<p>“My!” she protested. “You are too +fortunate. You are sated with riches. Here is your +Lady Boy, your ‘little haughty moon,’ and +you haven’t even said, ’Good morning, +Little Lady Boy, was your sleep sweet and gentle?’”</p> + +<p>And Dick Forrest forsook the statistical columns of +Professor Kenealy’s inoculations, pressed his +wife closer, kissed her, but with insistent right +fore-finger maintained his place in the pages of the +pamphlet.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, the very terms of her “reproof +prevented him from asking what he should have asked—­the +prosperity of her night since the boudoir cap had +been left upon his sleeping porch. He shut the pamphlet +on his right fore-finger, at the place he intended +to resume, and added his right arm to his left about +her.</p> + +<p>“Oh!” she cried. “Oh! Oh! Listen!”</p> + +<p>From without came the flute-calls of quail. She quivered +against him with the joy she took in the mellow-sweet +notes.</p> + +<p>“The coveys are breaking up,” he said.</p> + +<p>“It means spring,” Paula cried.</p> + +<p>“And the sign that good weather has come.”</p> + +<p>“And love!”</p> + +<p>“And nest-building and egg-laying,” Dick +laughed. “Never has the world seemed more fecund +than this morning. Lady Isleton is farrowed of eleven. +The angoras were brought down this morning for the +kidding. You should have seen them. And the wild canaries +have been discussing matrimony in the patio for hours. +I think some free lover is trying to break up their +monogamic heaven with modern love-theories. It’s +a wonder you slept through the discussion. Listen! +There they go now. Is that applause? Or is it a riot?”</p> + +<p>Arose a thin twittering, like elfin pipings, with +sharp pitches and excited shrillnesses, to which Dick +and Paula lent delighted ears, till, suddenly, with +the abruptness of the trump of doom, all the microphonic +chorus of the tiny golden lovers was swept away, obliterated, +in a Gargantuan blast of sound—­no less wild, +no less musical, no less passionate with love, but +immense, dominant, compelling by very vastitude of +volume.</p> + +<p>The eager eyes of the man and woman sought instantly +the channel past open French windows and the screen +of the sleeping porch to the road through the lilacs, +while they waited breathlessly for the great stallion +to appear who trumpeted his love-call before him. Again, +unseen, he trumpeted, and Dick said:</p> + +<p>“I will sing you a song, my haughty moon. It +is not my song. It is the Mountain Lad’s. It +is what he nickers. Listen! He sings it again. This +is what he says: ’Hear me! I am Eros. I stamp +upon the hills. I fill the wide valleys. The mares +hear me, and startle, in quiet pastures; for they +know me. The grass grows rich and richer, the land +is filled with fatness, and the sap is in the trees. +It is the spring. The spring is mine. I am monarch +of my kingdom of the spring. The mares remember my +voice. They know me aforetime through their mothers +before them. Hear me! I am Eros. I stamp upon the +hills, and the wide valleys are my heralds, echoing +the sound of my approach.’”</p> + +<p>And Paula pressed closer to her husband, and was pressed, +as her lips touched his forehead, and as the pair +of them, gazing at the empty road among the lilacs, +saw it filled with the eruptive vision of Mountain +Lad, majestic and mighty, the gnat-creature of a man +upon his back absurdly small; his eyes wild and desirous, +with the blue sheen that surfaces the eyes of stallions; +his mouth, flecked with the froth and fret of high +spirit, now brushed to burnished knees of impatience, +now tossed skyward to utterance of that vast, compelling +call that shook the air.</p> + +<p>Almost as an echo, from afar off, came a thin-sweet +answering whinney.</p> + +<p>“It is the Fotherington Princess,” Paula +breathed softly.</p> + +<p>Again Mountain Lad trumpeted his call, and Dick chanted:</p> + +<p>“Hear me! I am Eros! I stamp upon the hills!”</p> + +<p>And almost, for a flash of an instant, circled soft +and close in his arms, Paula knew resentment of her +husband’s admiration for the splendid beast. +And the next instant resentment vanished, and, in +acknowledgment of due debt, she cried gaily:</p> + +<p>“And now, Red Cloud! the Song of the Acorn!” +Dick glanced half absently to her from the pamphlet +folded on his finger, and then, with equal pitch of +gaiety, sang:</p> + +<p>   “The acorns come down from +heaven!<br> +    I plant the short acorns in +the valley!<br> +    I plant the long acorns in +the valley!<br> +    I sprout, I, the black-oak +acorn, sprout, I sprout!”</p> + +<p>She had impressed herself very close against him during +his moment of chanting, but, in the first moments +that succeeded she felt the restless movement of the +hand that held the finger-marked hog-pamphlet and +caught the swift though involuntary flash of his eye +to the clock on his desk that marked 11:25. Again +she tried to hold him, although, with equal involuntariness, +her attempt was made in mild terms of resentment.</p> + +<p>“You are a strange and wonderful Red Cloud,” +she said slowly. “Sometimes almost am I convinced +that you are utterly Red Cloud, planting your acorns +and singing your savage joy of the planting. And, +sometimes, almost you are to me the ultramodern man, +the last word of the two-legged, male human that finds +Trojan adventures in sieges of statistics, and, armed +with test tubes and hypodermics, engages in gladiatorial +contests with weird microorganisms. Almost, at times, +it seems you should wear glasses and be bald-headed; +almost, it seems....”</p> + +<p>“That I have no right of vigor to possess an +armful of girl,” he completed for her, drawing +her still closer. ”That I am a silly scientific +brute who doesn’t merit his ’vain little +breath of sweet rose-colored dust.’ Well, listen, +I have a plan. In a few days....”</p> + +<p>But his plan died in birth, for, at their backs, came +a discreet cough of warning, and, both heads turning +as one they saw Bonbright, the assistant secretary, +with a sheaf of notes on yellow sheets in his hand.</p> + +<p>“Four telegrams,” he murmured apologetically. +“Mr. Blake is confident that two of them are +very important. One of them concerns that Chile shipment +of bulls....”</p> + +<p>And Paula, slowly drawing away from her husband and +rising to her feet, could feel him slipping from her +toward his tables of statistics, bills of lading, +and secretaries, foremen, and managers.</p> + +<p>“Oh, Paula,” Dick called, as she was fading +through the doorway; “I’ve christened +the last boy—­he’s to be known as ‘Oh +Ho.’ How do you like it?”</p> + +<p>Her reply began with a hint of forlornness that vanished +with her smile, as she warned:</p> + +<p>“You <i>will</i> play ducks and drakes +with the house-boys’ names.”</p> + +<p>“I never do it with pedigreed stock,” +he assured her with a solemnity belied by the challenging +twinkle in his eyes.</p> + +<p>“I didn’t mean that,” was her retort. +“I meant that you were exhausting the possibilities +of the language. Before long you’ll have to +be calling them Oh Bel, Oh Hell, and Oh Go to Hell. +Your ‘Oh’ was a mistake. You should have +started with ‘Red.’ Then you could have +had Red Bull, Red Horse, Red Dog, Red Frog, Red Fern—­and, +and all the rest of the reds.”</p> + +<p>She mingled her laughter with his, as she vanished, +and, the next moment, the telegram before him, he +was immersed in the details of the shipment, at two +hundred and fifty dollars each, F. O. B., of three +hundred registered yearling bulls to the beef ranges +of Chile. Even so, vaguely, with vague pleasure, he +heard Paula sing her way back across the patio to +her long wing of house; though he was unaware that +her voice was a trifle, just the merest trifle, subdued.</p> + +<h1 align="center" style="margin-top: 2em;font-variant: small-caps">Chapter VIII</h1> + +<p>Five minutes after Paula had left him, punctual to +the second, the four telegrams disposed of, Dick was +getting into a ranch motor car, along with Thayer, +the Idaho buyer, and Naismith, the special correspondent +for the <i>Breeders’ Gazette</i>. Wardman, +the sheep manager, joined them at the corrals where +several thousand young Shropshire rams had been assembled +for inspection.</p> + +<p>There was little need for conversation. Thayer was +distinctly disappointed in this, for he felt that +the purchase of ten carloads of such expensive creatures +was momentous enough to merit much conversation.</p> + +<p>“They speak for themselves,” Dick had +assured him, and turned aside to give data to Naismith +for his impending article on Shropshires in California +and the Northwest.</p> + +<p>“I wouldn’t advise you to bother to select +them,” Dick told Thayer ten minutes later. “The +average is all top. You could spend a week picking +your ten carloads and have no higher grade than if +you had taken the first to hand.”</p> + +<p>This cool assumption that the sale was already consummated +so perturbed Thayer, that, along with the sure knowledge +that he had never seen so high a quality of rams, +he was nettled into changing his order to twenty carloads.</p> + +<p>As he told Naismith, after they had regained the Big +House and as they chalked their cues to finish the +interrupted game:</p> + +<p>“It’s my first visit to Forrest’s. +He’s a wizard. I’ve been buying in the +East and importing. But those Shropshires won my judgment. +You noticed I doubled my order. Those Idaho buyers +will be wild for them. I only had buying orders straight +for six carloads, and contingent on my judgment for +two carloads more; but if every buyer doesn’t +double his order, straight and contingent, when he +sees them rams, and if there isn’t a stampede +for what’s left, I don’t know sheep. They’re +the goods. If they don’t jump up the sheep game +of Idaho ... well, then Forrest’s no breeder +and I’m no buyer, that’s all.”</p> + +<p>As the warning gong for lunch rang out—­a +huge bronze gong from Korea that was never struck +until it was first indubitably ascertained that Paula +was awake—­Dick joined the young people at +the goldfish fountain in the big patio. Bert Wainwright, +variously advised and commanded by his sister, Rita, +and by Paula and her sisters, Lute and Ernestine, +was striving with a dip-net to catch a particularly +gorgeous flower of a fish whose size and color and +multiplicity of fins and tails had led Paula to decide +to segregate him for the special breeding tank in the +fountain of her own secret patio. Amid high excitement, +and much squealing and laughter, the deed was accomplished, +the big fish deposited in a can and carried away by +the waiting Italian gardener.</p> + +<p>“And what have you to say for yourself?” +Ernestine challenged, as Dick joined them.</p> + +<p>“Nothing,” he answered sadly. “The +ranch is depleted. Three hundred beautiful young bulls +depart to-morrow for South America, and Thayer—­ +you met him last night—­is taking twenty +carloads of rams. All I can say is that my congratulations +are extended to Idaho and Chile.”</p> + +<p>“Plant more acorns,” Paula laughed, her +arms about her sisters, the three of them smilingly +expectant of an inevitable antic.</p> + +<p>“Oh, Dick, sing your acorn song,” Lute +begged.</p> + +<p>He shook his head solemnly.</p> + +<p>“I’ve got a better one. It’s purest +orthodoxy. It’s got Red Cloud and his acorn +song skinned to death. Listen! This is the song of +the little East-sider, on her first trip to the country +under the auspices of her Sunday School. She’s +quite young. Pay particular attention to her lisp.”</p> + +<p>And then Dick chanted, lisping:</p> + +<p>  “The goldfish thwimmeth in the bowl,<br> +    The robin thiths upon the +tree;<br> +    What maketh them thit so eathily?<br> +    Who stuckth the fur upon their +breasths?<br> +      God! God! He done +it!”</p> + +<p>“Cribbed,” was Ernestine’s judgment, +as the laughter died away.</p> + +<p>“Sure,” Dick agreed. “I got it from +the <i>Rancher and Stockman</i>, that got it +from the <i>Swine Breeders’ Journal</i>, +that got it from the <i>Western Advocate</i>, +that got it from <i>Public Opinion</i>, that +got it, undoubtedly, from the little girl herself, +or, rather from her Sunday School teacher. For that +matter I am convinced it was first printed in <i>Our +Dumb Animals</i>.”</p> + +<p>The bronze gong rang out its second call, and Paula, +one arm around Dick, the other around Rita, led the +way into the house, while, bringing up the rear, Bert +Wainwright showed Lute Ernestine a new tango step.</p> + +<p>“One thing, Thayer,” Dick said in an aside, +after releasing himself from the girls, as they jostled +in confusion where they met Thayer and Naismith at +the head of the stairway leading down to the dining +room. “Before you leave us, cast your eyes over +those Merinos. I really have to brag about them, and +American sheepmen will have to come to them. Of course, +started with imported stock, but I’ve made a +California strain that will make the French breeders +sit up. See Wardman and take your pick. Get Naismith +to look them over with you. Stick half a dozen of +them in your train-load, with my compliments, and let +your Idaho sheepmen get a line on them.”</p> + +<p>They seated at a table, capable of indefinite extension, +in a long, low dining room that was a replica of the +hacienda dining rooms of the Mexican land-kings of +old California. The floor was of large brown tiles, +the beamed ceiling and the walls were whitewashed, +and the huge, undecorated, cement fireplace was an +achievement in massiveness and simplicity. Greenery +and blooms nodded from without the deep-embrasured +windows, and the room expressed the sense of cleanness, +chastity, and coolness.</p> + +<p>On the walls, but not crowded, were a number of canvases—­most +ambitious of all, in the setting of honor, all in sad +grays, a twilight Mexican scene by Xavier Martinez, +of a peon, with a crooked-stick plow and two bullocks, +turning a melancholy furrow across the foreground +of a sad, illimitable, Mexican plain. There were brighter +pictures, of early Mexican-Californian life, a pastel +of twilight eucalyptus with a sunset-tipped mountain +beyond, by Reimers, a moonlight by Peters, and a Griffin +stubble-field across which gleamed and smoldered California +summer hills of tawny brown and purple-misted, wooded +canyons.</p> + +<p>“Say,” Thayer muttered in an undertone +across to Naismith, while Dick and the girls were +in the thick of exclamatory and giggling banter, “here’s +some stuff for that article of yours, if you touch +upon the Big House. I’ve seen the servants’ +dining room. Forty head sit down to it every meal, +including gardeners, chauffeurs, and outside help. +It’s a boarding house in itself. Some head, +some system, take it from me. That Chiney boy, Oh +Joy, is a wooz. He’s housekeeper, or manager, +of the whole shebang, or whatever you want to call +his job—­and, say, it runs that smooth you +can’t hear it.”</p> + +<p>“Forrest’s the real wooz,” Naismith +nodded. “He’s the brains that picks brains. +He could run an army, a campaign, a government, or +even a three-ring circus.”</p> + +<p>“Which last is some compliment,” Thayer +concurred heartily.</p> + +<p>“Oh, Paula,” Dick said across to his wife. +“I just got word that Graham arrives to-morrow +morning. Better tell Oh Joy to put him in the watch-tower. +It’s man-size quarters, and it’s possible +he may carry out his threat and work on his book.”</p> + +<p>“Graham?—­Graham?” Paula queried +aloud of her memory. “Do I know him?”</p> + +<p>“You met him once two years ago, in Santiago, +at the Café Venus. He had dinner with us.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, one of those naval officers?”</p> + +<p>Dick shook his head.</p> + +<p>“The civilian. Don’t you remember that +big blond fellow—­you talked music with +him for half an hour while Captain Joyce talked our +heads off to prove that the United States should clean +Mexico up and out with the mailed fist.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, to be sure,” Paula vaguely recollected. +“He’d met you somewhere before... South +Africa, wasn’t it? Or the Philippines?”</p> + +<p>“That’s the chap. South Africa, it was. +Evan Graham. Next time we met was on the <i>Times</i> +dispatch boat on the Yellow Sea. And we crossed trails +a dozen times after that, without meeting, until that +night in the Café Venus.</p> + +<p>“Heavens—­he left Bora-Bora, going +east, two days before I dropped anchor bound west +on my way to Samoa. I came out of Apia, with letters +for him from the American consul, the day before he +came in. We missed each other by three days at Levuka—­I +was sailing the <i>Wild Duck</i> then. He pulled +out of Suva as guest on a British cruiser. Sir Everard +Im Thurm, British High Commissioner of the South Seas, +gave me more letters for Graham. I missed him at Port +Resolution and at Vila in the New Hebrides. The cruiser +was junketing, you see. I beat her in and out of the +Santa Cruz Group. It was the same thing in the Solomons. +The cruiser, after shelling the cannibal villages at +Langa-Langa, steamed out in the morning. I sailed +in that afternoon. I never did deliver those letters +in person, and the next time I laid eyes on him was +at the Café Venus two years ago.”</p> + +<p>“But who about him, and what about him?” +Paula queried. “And what’s the book?”</p> + +<p>“Well, first of all, beginning at the end, he’s +broke—­that is, for him, he’s broke. +He’s got an income of several thousand a year +left, but all that his father left him is gone. No; +he didn’t blow it. He got in deep, and the ‘silent +panic’ several years ago just about cleaned +him. But he doesn’t whimper.</p> + +<p>“He’s good stuff, old American stock, +a Yale man. The book—­he expects to make +a bit on it—­covers last year’s trip +across South America, west coast to east coast. It +was largely new ground. The Brazilian government voluntarily +voted him a honorarium of ten thousand dollars for +the information he brought out concerning unexplored +portions of Brazil. Oh, he’s a man, all man. +He delivers the goods. You know the type—­clean, +big, strong, simple; been everywhere, seen everything, +knows most of a lot of things, straight, square, looks +you in the eyes—­well, in short, a man’s +man.”</p> + +<p>Ernestine clapped her hands, flung a tantalizing, +man-challenging, man-conquering glance at Bert Wainwright, +and exclaimed: “And he comes tomorrow!”</p> + +<p>Dick shook his head reprovingly.</p> + +<p>“Oh, nothing in that direction, Ernestine. Just +as nice girls as you have tried to hook Evan Graham +before now. And, between ourselves, I couldn’t +blame them. But he’s had good wind and fast legs, +and they’ve always failed to run him down or +get him into a corner, where, dazed and breathless, +he’s mechanically muttered ‘Yes’ +to certain interrogatories and come out of the trance +to find himself, roped, thrown, branded, and married. +Forget him, Ernestine. Stick by golden youth and let +it drop its golden apples. Pick them up, and golden +youth with them, making a noise like stupid failure +all the time you are snaring swift-legged youth. But +Graham’s out of the running. He’s old +like me—­just about the same age—­and, +like me, he’s run a lot of those queer races. +He knows how to make a get-away. He’s been cut +by barbed wire, nose-twitched, neck-burnt, cinched +to a fare-you-well, and he remains subdued but uncatchable. +He doesn’t care for young things. In fact, you +may charge him with being wobbly, but I plead guilty, +by proxy, that he is merely old, hard bitten, and very +wise.”</p> + +<h1 align="center" style="margin-top: 2em;font-variant: small-caps">Chapter IX</h1> + +<p>“Where’s my Boy in Breeches?” Dick +shouted, stamping with jingling spurs through the +Big House in quest of its Little Lady.</p> + +<p>He came to the door that gave entrance to her long +wing. It was a door without a knob, a huge panel of +wood in a wood-paneled wall. But Dick shared the secret +of the hidden spring with his wife, pressed the spring, +and the door swung wide.</p> + +<p>“Where’s my Boy in Breeches?” he +called and stamped down the length of her quarters.</p> + +<p>A glance into the bathroom, with its sunken Roman +bath and descending marble steps, was fruitless, as +were the glances he sent into Paula’s wardrobe +room and dressing room. He passed the short, broad +stairway that led to her empty window-seat divan in +what she called her Juliet Tower, and thrilled at +sight of an orderly disarray of filmy, pretty, lacy +woman’s things that he knew she had spread out +for her own sensuous delight of contemplation. He +fetched up for a moment at a drawing easel, his reiterant +cry checked on his lips, and threw a laugh of recognition +and appreciation at the sketch, just outlined, of +an awkward, big-boned, knobby, weanling colt caught +in the act of madly whinneying for its mother.</p> + +<p>“Where’s my Boy in Breeches?” he +shouted before him, out to the sleeping porch; and +found only a demure, brow-troubled Chinese woman of +thirty, who smiled self-effacing embarrassment into +his eyes.</p> + +<p>This was Paula’s maid, Oh Dear, so named by +Dick, many years before, because of a certain solicitous +contraction of her delicate brows that made her appear +as if ever on the verge of saying, “Oh dear!” +In fact, Dick had taken her, as a child almost, for +Paula’s service, from a fishing village on the +Yellow Sea where her widow-mother earned as much as +four dollars in a prosperous year at making nets for +the fishermen. Oh Dear’s first service for Paula +had been aboard the three-topmast schooner, <i>All +Away</i>, at the same time that Oh Joy, cabin-boy, +had begun to demonstrate the efficiency that enabled +him, through the years, to rise to the majordomoship +of the Big House.</p> + +<p>“Where is your mistress, Oh Dear?” Dick +asked.</p> + +<p>Oh Dear shrank away in an agony of bashfulness.</p> + +<p>Dick waited.</p> + +<p>“She maybe with ’m young ladies—­I +don’t know,” Oh Dear stammered; and Dick, +in very mercy, swung away on his heel.</p> + +<p>“Where’s my Boy in Breeches?” he +shouted, as he stamped out under the porte cochère +just as a ranch limousine swung around the curve among +the lilacs.</p> + +<p>“I’ll be hanged if I know,” a tall, +blond man in a light summer suit responded from the +car; and the next moment Dick Forrest and Evan Graham +were shaking hands.</p> + +<p>Oh My and Oh Ho carried in the hand baggage, and Dick +accompanied his guest to the watch tower quarters.</p> + +<p>“You’ll have to get used to us, old man,” +Dick was explaining. “We run the ranch like +clockwork, and the servants are wonders; but we allow +ourselves all sorts of loosenesses. If you’d +arrived two minutes later there’d have been +no one to welcome you but the Chinese boys. I was +just going for a ride, and Paula—­Mrs. Forrest—­has +disappeared.”</p> + +<p>The two men were almost of a size, Graham topping +his host by perhaps an inch, but losing that inch +in the comparative breadth of shoulders and depth +of chest. Graham was, if anything, a clearer blond +than Forrest, although both were equally gray of eye, +equally clear in the whites of the eyes, and equally +and precisely similarly bronzed by sun and weather-beat. +Graham’s features were in a slightly larger mold; +his eyes were a trifle longer, although this was lost +again by a heavier droop of lids. His nose hinted +that it was a shade straighter as well as larger than +Dick’s, and his lips were a shade thicker, a +shade redder, a shade more bowed with fulsome-ness.</p> + +<p>Forrest’s hair was light brown to chestnut, +while Graham’s carried a whispering advertisement +that it would have been almost golden in its silk +had it not been burned almost to sandiness by the sun. +The cheeks of both were high-boned, although the hollows +under Forrest’s cheek-bones were more pronounced. +Both noses were large-nostriled and sensitive. And +both mouths, while generously proportioned, carried +the impression of girlish sweetness and chastity along +with the muscles that could draw the lips to the firmness +and harshness that would not give the lie to the square, +uncleft chins beneath.</p> + +<p>But the inch more in height and the inch less in chest-girth +gave Evan Graham a grace of body and carriage that +Dick Forrest did not possess. In this particular of +build, each served well as a foil to the other. Graham +was all light and delight, with a hint—­but +the slightest of hints—­of Prince Charming. +Forrest’s seemed a more efficient and formidable +organism, more dangerous to other life, stouter-gripped +on its own life.</p> + +<p>Forrest threw a glance at his wrist watch as he talked, +but in that glance, without pause or fumble of focus, +with swift certainty of correlation, he read the dial.</p> + +<p>“Eleven-thirty,” he said. “Come +along at once, Graham. We don’t eat till twelve-thirty. +I am sending out a shipment of bulls, three hundred +of them, and I’m downright proud of them. You +simply must see them. Never mind your riding togs. +Oh Ho—­fetch a pair of my leggings. You, +Oh Joy, order Altadena saddled.—­What saddle +do you prefer, Graham?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, anything, old man.”</p> + +<p>“English?—­Australian?—­McClellan?—­Mexican?” +Dick insisted.</p> + +<p>“McClellan, if it’s no trouble,” +Graham surrendered.</p> + +<p>They sat their horses by the side of the road and +watched the last of the herd beginning its long journey +to Chili disappear around the bend.</p> + +<p>“I see what you’re doing—­it’s +great,” Graham said with sparkling eyes. “I’ve +fooled some myself with the critters, when I was a +youngster, down in the Argentine. If I’d had +beef-blood like that to build on, I mightn’t +have taken the cropper I did.”</p> + +<p>“But that was before alfalfa and artesian wells,” +Dick smoothed for him. “The time wasn’t +ripe for the Shorthorn. Only scrubs could survive +the droughts. They were strong in staying powers but +light on the scales. And refrigerator steamships hadn’t +been invented. That’s what revolutionized the +game down there.”</p> + +<p>“Besides, I was a mere youngster,” Graham +added. “Though that meant nothing much. There +was a young German tackled it at the same time I did, +with a tenth of my capital. He hung it out, lean years, +dry years, and all. He’s rated in seven figures +now.”</p> + +<p>They turned their horses back for the Big House. Dick +flirted his wrist to see his watch.</p> + +<p>“Lots of time,” he assured his guest. +“I’m glad you saw those yearlings. There +was one reason why that young German stuck it out. +He had to. You had your father’s money to fall +back on, and, I imagine not only that your feet itched, +but that your chief weakness lay in that you could +afford to solace the itching.”</p> + +<p>“Over there are the fish ponds,” Dick +said, indicating with a nod of his head to the right +an invisible area beyond the lilacs. “You’ll +have plenty of opportunity to catch a mess of trout, +or bass, or even catfish. You see, I’m a miser. +I love to make things work. There may be a justification +for the eight-hour labor day, but I make the work-day +of water just twenty-four hours’ long. The ponds +are in series, according to the nature of the fish. +But the water starts working up in the mountains. +It irrigates a score of mountain meadows before it +makes the plunge and is clarified to crystal clearness +in the next few rugged miles; and at the plunge from +the highlands it generates half the power and all +the lighting used on the ranch. Then it sub-irrigates +lower levels, flows in here to the fish ponds, and +runs out and irrigates miles of alfalfa farther on. +And, believe me, if by that time it hadn’t reached +the flat of the Sacramento, I’d be pumping out +the drainage for more irrigation.”</p> + +<p>“Man, man,” Graham laughed, “you +could make a poem on the wonder of water. I’ve +met fire-worshipers, but you’re the first real +water-worshiper I’ve ever encountered. And +you’re no desert-dweller, either. You live in +a land of water—­pardon the bull—­but, +as I was saying...”</p> + +<p>Graham never completed his thought. From the right, +not far away, came the unmistakable ring of shod hoofs +on concrete, followed by a mighty splash and an outburst +of women’s cries and laughter. Quickly the cries +turned to alarm, accompanied by the sounds of a prodigious +splashing and floundering as of some huge, drowning +beast. Dick bent his head and leaped his horse through +the lilacs, Graham, on Altadena, followed at his heels. +They emerged in a blaze of sunshine, on an open space +among the trees, and Graham came upon as unexpected +a picture as he had ever chanced upon in his life.</p> + +<p>Tree-surrounded, the heart of the open space was a +tank, four-sided of concrete. The upper end of the +tank, full width, was a broad spillway, sheened with +an inch of smooth-slipping water. The sides were perpendicular. +The lower end, roughly corrugated, sloped out gently +to solid footing. Here, in distress that was consternation, +and in fear that was panic, excitedly bobbed up and +down a cowboy in bearskin chaps, vacuously repeating +the exclamation, “Oh God! Oh God!"—­the +first division of it rising in inflection, the second +division inflected fallingly with despair. On the +edge of the farther side, facing him, in bathing suits, +legs dangling toward the water, sat three terrified +nymphs.</p> + +<p>And in the tank, the center of the picture, a great +horse, bright bay and wet and ruddy satin, vertical +in the water, struck upward and outward into the free +air with huge fore-hoofs steel-gleaming in the wet +and sun, while on its back, slipping and clinging, +was the white form of what Graham took at first to +be some glorious youth. Not until the stallion, sinking, +emerged again by means of the powerful beat of his +legs and hoofs, did Graham realize that it was a woman +who rode him—­a woman as white as the white +silken slip of a bathing suit that molded to her form +like a marble-carven veiling of drapery. As marble +was her back, save that the fine delicate muscles moved +and crept under the silken suit as she strove to keep +her head above water. Her slim round arms were twined +in yards of half-drowned stallion-mane, while her +white round knees slipped on the sleek, wet, satin +pads of the great horse’s straining shoulder +muscles. The white toes of her dug for a grip into +the smooth sides of the animal, vainly seeking a hold +on the ribs beneath.</p> + +<p>In a breath, or the half of a breath, Graham saw the +whole breathless situation, realized that the white +wonderful creature was a woman, and sensed the smallness +and daintiness of her despite her gladiatorial struggles. +She reminded him of some Dresden china figure set absurdly +small and light and strangely on the drowning back +of a titanic beast. So dwarfed was she by the bulk +of the stallion that she was a midget, or a tiny fairy +from fairyland come true.</p> + +<p>As she pressed her cheek against the great arching +neck, her golden-brown hair, wet from being under, +flowing and tangled, seemed tangled in the black mane +of the stallion. But it was her face that smote Graham +most of all. It was a boy’s face; it was a woman’s +face; it was serious and at the same time amused, +expressing the pleasure it found woven with the peril. +It was a white woman’s face—­and modern; +and yet, to Graham, it was all-pagan. This was not +a creature and a situation one happened upon in the +twentieth century. It was straight out of old Greece. +It was a Maxfield Parrish reminiscence from the Arabian +Nights. Genii might be expected to rise from those +troubled depths, or golden princes, astride winged +dragons, to swoop down out of the blue to the rescue.</p> + +<p>The stallion, forcing itself higher out of water, +missed, by a shade, from turning over backward as +it sank. Glorious animal and glorious rider disappeared +together beneath the surface, to rise together, a +second later, the stallion still pawing the air with +fore-hoofs the size of dinner plates, the rider still +clinging to the sleek, satin-coated muscles. Graham +thought, with a gasp, what might have happened had +the stallion turned over. A chance blow from any one +of those four enormous floundering hoofs could have +put out and quenched forever the light and sparkle +of that superb, white-bodied, fire-animated woman.</p> + +<p>“Ride his neck!” Dick shouted. “Catch +his foretop and get on his neck till he balances out!”</p> + +<p>The woman obeyed, digging her toes into the evasive +muscle-pads for the quick effort, and leaping upward, +one hand twined in the wet mane, the other hand free +and up-stretched, darting between the ears and clutching +the foretop. The next moment, as the stallion balanced +out horizontally in obedience to her shiftage of weight, +she had slipped back to the shoulders. Holding with +one hand to the mane, she waved a white arm in the +air and flashed a smile of acknowledgment to Forrest; +and, as Graham noted, she was cool enough to note him +on his horse beside Forrest. Also, Graham realized +that the turning of her head and the waving of her +arm was only partly in bravado, was more in aesthetic +wisdom of the picture she composed, and was, most of +all, sheer joy of daring and emprise of the blood +and the flesh and the life that was she.</p> + +<p>“Not many women’d tackle that,” +Dick said quietly, as Mountain Lad, easily retaining +his horizontal position once it had been attained, +swam to the lower end of the tank and floundered up +the rough slope to the anxious cowboy.</p> + +<p>The latter swiftly adjusted the halter with a turn +of chain between the jaws. But Paula, still astride, +leaned forward, imperiously took the lead-part from +the cowboy, whirled Mountain Lad around to face Forrest, +and saluted.</p> + +<p>“Now you will have to go away,” she called. +“This is our hen party, and the stag public +is not admitted.”</p> + +<p>Dick laughed, saluted acknowledgment, and led the +way back through the lilacs to the road.</p> + +<p>“Who ... who was it?” Graham queried.</p> + +<p>“Paula—­Mrs. Forrest—­the +boy girl, the child that never grew up, the grittiest +puff of rose-dust that was ever woman.”</p> + +<p>“My breath is quite taken away,” Graham +said. “Do your people do such stunts frequently?”</p> + +<p>“First time she ever did that,” Forrest +replied. “That was Mountain Lad. She rode him +straight down the spill-way—­tobogganed with +him, twenty-two hundred and forty pounds of him.”</p> + +<p>“Risked his neck and legs as well as her own,” +was Graham’s comment.</p> + +<p>“Thirty-five thousand dollars’ worth of +neck and legs,” Dick smiled. “That’s +what a pool of breeders offered me for him last year +after he’d cleaned up the Coast with his get +as well as himself. And as for Paula, she could break +necks and legs at that price every day in the year +until I went broke—­only she doesn’t. +She never has accidents.”</p> + +<p>“I wouldn’t have given tuppence for her +chance if he’d turned over.”</p> + +<p>“But he didn’t,” Dick answered placidly. +“That’s Paula’s luck. She’s +tough to kill. Why, I’ve had her under shell-fire +where she was actually disappointed because she didn’t +get hit, or killed, or near-killed. Four batteries +opened on us, shrapnel, at mile-range, and we had +to cover half a mile of smooth hill-brow for shelter. +I really felt I was justified in charging her with +holding back. She did admit a ‘trifle.’ +We’ve been married ten or a dozen years now, +and, d’ye know, sometimes it seems to me I don’t +know her at all, and that nobody knows her, and that +she doesn’t know herself—­just the +same way as you and I can look at ourselves in a mirror +and wonder who the devil we are anyway. Paula and +I have one magic formula: <i>Damn the expense when +fun is selling</i>. And it doesn’t matter +whether the price is in dollars, hide, or life. It’s +our way and our luck. It works. And, d’ye know, +we’ve never been gouged on the price yet.”</p> + +<h1 align="center" style="margin-top: 2em;font-variant: small-caps">Chapter X</h1> + +<p>It was a stag lunch. As Forrest explained, the girls +were “hen-partying.”</p> + +<p>“I doubt you’ll see a soul of them till +four o’clock, when Ernestine, that’s one +of Paula’s sisters, is going to wallop me at +tennis—­at least so she’s threatened +and pledged.”</p> + +<p>And Graham sat through the lunch, where only men sat, +took his part in the conversation on breeds and breeding, +learned much, contributed a mite from his own world-experiences, +and was unable to shake from his eyes the persistent +image of his hostess, the vision of the rounded and +delicate white of her against the dark wet background +of the swimming stallion. And all the afternoon, looking +over prize Merinos and Berkshire gilts, continually +that vision burned up under his eyelids. Even at four, +in the tennis court, himself playing against Ernestine, +he missed more than one stroke because the image of +the flying ball would suddenly be eclipsed by the +image of a white marble figure of a woman that strove +and clung on the back of a great horse.</p> + +<p>Graham, although an outlander, knew his California, +and, while every girl of the swimming suits was gowned +for dinner, was not surprised to find no man similarly +accoutered. Nor had he made the mistake of so being +himself, despite the Big House and the magnificent +scale on which it operated.</p> + +<p>Between the first and second gongs, all the guests +drifted into the long dining room. Sharp after the +second gong, Dick Forrest arrived and precipitated +cocktails. And Graham impatiently waited the appearance +of the woman who had worried his eyes since noon. He +was prepared for all manner of disappointment. Too +many gorgeous stripped athletes had he seen slouched +into conventional garmenting, to expect too much of +the marvelous creature in the white silken swimming +suit when it should appear garbed as civilized women +garb.</p> + +<p>He caught his breath with an imperceptible gasp when +she entered. She paused, naturally, for just the right +flash of an instant in the arched doorway, limned +against the darkness behind her, the soft glow of +the indirect lighting full upon her. Graham’s +lips gasped apart, and remained apart, his eyes ravished +with the beauty and surprise of her he had deemed +so small, so fairy-like. Here was no delicate midget +of a child-woman or boy-girl on a stallion, but a grand +lady, as only a small woman can be grand on occasion.</p> + +<p>Taller in truth was she, as well as in seeming, than +he had judged her, and as finely proportioned in her +gown as in her swimming suit. He noted her shining +gold-brown hair piled high; the healthy tinge of her +skin that was clean and clear and white; the singing +throat, full and round, incomparably set on a healthy +chest; and the gown, dull blue, a sort of medieval +thing with half-fitting, half-clinging body, with +flowing sleeves and trimmings of gold-jeweled bands.</p> + +<p>She smiled an embracing salutation and greeting. Graham +recognized it as kin to the one he had seen when she +smiled from the back of the stallion. When she started +forward, he could not fail to see the inimitable way +she carried the cling and weight of her draperies with +her knees—­round knees, he knew, that he +had seen press desperately into the round muscle-pads +of Mountain Lad. Graham observed, also, that she neither +wore nor needed corseting. Nor could he fail, as she +crossed the floor, to see two women: one, the grand +lady, the mistress of the Big House; one, the lovely +equestrienne statue beneath the dull-blue, golden-trimmed +gown, that no gowning could ever make his memory forget.</p> + +<p>She was upon them, among them, and Graham’s +hand held hers in the formal introduction as he was +made welcome to the Big House and all the hacienda +in a voice that he knew was a singing voice and that +could proceed only from a throat that pillared, such +as hers, from a chest deep as hers despite her smallness.</p> + +<p>At table, across the corner from her, he could not +help a surreptitious studying of her. While he held +his own in the general fun and foolishness, it was +his hostess that mostly filled the circle of his eye +and the content of his mind.</p> + +<p>It was as bizarre a company as Graham had ever sat +down to dinner with. The sheep-buyer and the correspondent +for the <i>Breeders’ Gazette</i> were still +guests. Three machine-loads of men, women, and girls, +totaling fourteen, had arrived shortly before the first +gong and had remained to ride home in the moonlight. +Graham could not remember their names; but he made +out that they came from some valley town thirty miles +away called Wickenberg, and that they were of the +small-town banking, professional, and wealthy-farmer +class. They were full of spirits, laughter, and the +latest jokes and catches sprung in the latest slang.</p> + +<p>“I see right now,” Graham told Paula, +“if your place continues to be the caravanserai +which it has been since my arrival, that I might as +well give up trying to remember names and people.”</p> + +<p>“I don’t blame you,” she laughed +concurrence. “But these are neighbors. They +drop in any time. Mrs. Watson, there, next to Dick, +is of the old land-aristocracy. Her grandfather, Wicken, +came across the Sierras in 1846. Wickenberg is named +after him. And that pretty dark-eyed girl is her +daughter....”</p> + +<p>And while Paula gave him a running sketch of the chance +guests, Graham heard scarce half she said, so occupied +was he in trying to sense his way to an understanding +of her. Naturalness was her keynote, was his first +judgment. In not many moments he had decided that her +key-note was joy. But he was dissatisfied with both +conclusions, and knew he had not put his finger on +her. And then it came to him—­pride. That +was it! It was in her eye, in the poise of her head, +in the curling tendrils of her hair, in her sensitive +nostrils, in the mobile lips, in the very pitch and +angle of the rounded chin, in her hands, small, muscular +and veined, that he knew at sight to be the hard-worked +hands of one who had spent long hours at the piano. +Pride it was, in every muscle, nerve, and quiver of +her—­conscious, sentient, stinging pride.</p> + +<p>She might be joyous and natural, boy and woman, fun +and frolic; but always the pride was there, vibrant, +tense, intrinsic, the basic stuff of which she was +builded. She was a woman, frank, outspoken, straight-looking, +plastic, democratic; but toy she was not. At times, +to him, she seemed to glint an impression of steel—­thin, +jewel-like steel. She seemed strength in its most +delicate terms and fabrics. He fondled the impression +of her as of silverspun wire, of fine leather, of +twisted hair-sennit from the heads of maidens such +as the Marquesans make, of carven pearl-shell for +the lure of the bonita, and of barbed ivory at the +heads of sea-spears such as the Eskimos throw.</p> + +<p>“All right, Aaron,” they heard Dick Forrest’s +voice rising, in a lull, from the other end of the +table. “Here’s something from Phillips +Brooks for you to chew on. Brooks said that no man +’has come to true greatness who has not felt +in some degree that his life belongs to his race, +and that what God gives him, he gives him for mankind.’”</p> + +<p>“So at last you believe in God?” the man, +addressed Aaron, genially sneered back. He was a slender, +long-faced olive-brunette, with brilliant black eyes +and the blackest of long black beards.</p> + +<p>“I’m hanged if I know,” Dick answered. +“Anyway, I quoted only figuratively. Call it +morality, call it good, call it evolution.”</p> + +<p>“A man doesn’t have to be intellectually +correct in order to be great,” intruded a quiet, +long-faced Irishman, whose sleeves were threadbare +and frayed. “And by the same token many men who +are most correct in sizing up the universe have been +least great.”</p> + +<p>“True for you, Terrence,” Dick applauded.</p> + +<p>“It’s a matter of definition,” languidly +spoke up an unmistakable Hindoo, crumbling his bread +with exquisitely slender and small-boned fingers. +“What shall we mean as <i>great?"</i></p> + +<p>“Shall we say <i>beauty?"</i> softly queried +a tragic-faced youth, sensitive and shrinking, crowned +with an abominably trimmed head of long hair.</p> + +<p>Ernestine rose suddenly at her place, hands on table, +leaning forward with a fine simulation of intensity.</p> + +<p>“They’re off!” she cried. “They’re +off! Now we’ll have the universe settled all +over again for the thousandth time. Theodore"—­to +the youthful poet—­"it’s a poor start. +Get into the running. Ride your father ion and your +mother ion, and you’ll finish three lengths +ahead.”</p> + +<p>A roar of laughter was her reward, and the poet blushed +and receded into his sensitive shell.</p> + +<p>Ernestine turned on the black-bearded one:</p> + +<p>“Now, Aaron. He’s not in form. You start +it. You know how. Begin: ’As Bergson so well +has said, with the utmost refinement of philosophic +speech allied with the most comprehensive intellectual +outlook that....’”</p> + +<p>More laughter roared down the table, drowning Ernestine’s +conclusion as well as the laughing retort of the black-bearded +one.</p> + +<p>“Our philosophers won’t have a chance +to-night,” Paula stole in an aside to Graham.</p> + +<p>“Philosophers?” he questioned back. “They +didn’t come with the Wickenberg crowd. Who and +what are they? I’m all at sea.”</p> + +<p>“They—­” Paula hesitated. “They +live here. They call themselves the jungle-birds. +They have a camp in the woods a couple of miles away, +where they never do anything except read and talk. +I’ll wager, right now, you’ll find fifty +of Dick’s latest, uncatalogued books in their +cabins. They have the run of the library, as well, +and you’ll see them drifting in and out, any +time of the day or night, with their arms full of +books—­also, the latest magazines. Dick says +they are responsible for his possessing the most exhaustive +and up-to-date library on philosophy on the Pacific +Coast. In a way, they sort of digest such things for +him. It’s great fun for Dick, and, besides, it +saves him time. He’s a dreadfully hard worker, +you know.”</p> + +<p>“I understand that they... that Dick takes care +of them?” Graham asked, the while he pleasured +in looking straight into the blue eyes that looked +so straight into his.</p> + +<p>As she answered, he was occupied with noting the faintest +hint of bronze—­perhaps a trick of the light—­in +her long, brown lashes. Perforce, he lifted his gaze +to her eyebrows, brown, delicately stenciled, and +made sure that the hint of bronze was there. Still +lifting his gaze to her high-piled hair, he again saw, +but more pronounced, the bronze note glinting from +the brown-golden hair. Nor did he fail to startle +and thrill to a dazzlement of smile and teeth and +eye that frequently lived its life in her face. Hers +was no thin smile of restraint, he judged. When she +smiled she smiled all of herself, generously, joyously, +throwing the largess of all her being into the natural +expression of what was herself and which domiciled +somewhere within that pretty head of hers.</p> + +<p>“Yes,” she was saying. “They have +never to worry, as long as they live, over mere bread +and butter. Dick is most generous, and, rather immoral, +in his encouragement of idleness on the part of men +like them. It’s a funny place, as you’ll +find out until you come to understand us. They... +they are appurtenances, and—­and hereditaments, +and such things. They will be with us always until +we bury them or they bury us. Once in a while one +or another of them drifts away—­for a time. +Like the cat, you know. Then it costs Dick real money +to get them back. Terrence, there—­Terrence +McFane—­he’s an epicurean anarchist, +if you know what that means. He wouldn’t kill +a flea. He has a pet cat I gave him, a Persian of +the bluest blue, and he carefully picks her fleas, +not injuring them, stores them in a vial, and turns +them loose in the forest on his long walks when he +tires of human companionship and communes with nature.</p> + +<p>“Well, only last year, he got a bee in his bonnet—­the +alphabet. He started for Egypt—­without +a cent, of course—­to run the alphabet down +in the home of its origin and thereby to win the formula +that would explain the cosmos. He got as far as Denver, +traveling as tramps travel, when he mixed up in some +I. W. W. riot for free speech or something. Dick had +to hire lawyers, pay fines, and do just about everything +to get him safe home again.</p> + +<p>“And the one with a beard—­Aaron Hancock. +Like Terrence, he won’t work. Aaron’s +a Southerner. Says none of his people ever did work, +and that there have always been peasants and fools +who just couldn’t be restrained from working. +That’s why he wears a beard. To shave, he holds, +is unnecessary work, and, therefore, immoral. I remember, +at Melbourne, when he broke in upon Dick and me, a +sunburnt wild man from out the Australian bush. It +seems he’d been making original researches in +anthropology, or folk-lore-ology, or something like +that. Dick had known him years before in Paris, and +Dick assured him, if he ever drifted back to America, +of food and shelter. So here he is.”</p> + +<p>“And the poet?” Graham asked, glad that +she must still talk for a while, enabling him to study +the quick dazzlement of smile that played upon her +face.</p> + +<p>“Oh, Theo—­Theodore Malken, though +we call him Leo. He won’t work, either. His +people are old Californian stock and dreadfully wealthy; +but they disowned him and he disowned them when he +was fifteen. They say he is lunatic, and he says they +are merely maddening. He really writes some remarkable +verse... when he does write; but he prefers to dream +and live in the jungle with Terrence and Aaron. He +was tutoring immigrant Jews in San Francisco, when +Terrence and Aaron rescued him, or captured him, I +don’t know which. He’s been with us two +years now, and he’s actually filling out, despite +the facts that Dick is absurdly generous in furnishing +supplies and that they’d rather talk and read +and dream than cook. The only good meals they get is +when they descend upon us, like to-night.”</p> + +<p>“And the Hindoo, there—­who’s +he?”</p> + +<p>“That’s Dar Hyal. He’s their guest. +The three of them invited him up, just as Aaron first +invited Terrence, and as Aaron and Terrence invited +Leo. Dick says, in time, three more are bound to appear, +and then he’ll have his Seven Sages of the Madroño +Grove. Their jungle camp is in a madroño grove, you +know. It’s a most beautiful spot, with living +springs, a canyon—­but I was telling you +about Dar Hyal.</p> + +<p>“He’s a revolutionist, of sorts. He’s +dabbled in our universities, studied in France, Italy, +Switzerland, is a political refugee from India, and +he’s hitched his wagon to two stars: one, a new +synthetic system of philosophy; the other, rebellion +against the tyranny of British rule in India. He advocates +individual terrorism and direct mass action. That’s +why his paper, <i>Kadar,</i> or <i>Badar,</i> +or something like that, was suppressed here in California, +and why he narrowly escaped being deported; and that’s +why he’s up here just now, devoting himself +to formulating his philosophy.</p> + +<p>“He and Aaron quarrel tremendously—­that +is, on philosophical matters. And now—­” +Paula sighed and erased the sigh with her smile—­"and +now, I’m done. Consider yourself acquainted. +And, oh, if you encounter our sages more intimately, +a word of warning, especially if the encounter be +in the stag room: Dar Hyal is a total abstainer; Theodore +Malken can get poetically drunk, and usually does, +on one cocktail; Aaron Hancock is an expert wine-bibber; +and Terrence McFane, knowing little of one drink from +another, and caring less, can put ninety-nine men +out of a hundred under the table and go right on lucidly +expounding epicurean anarchy.”</p> + +<p>One thing Graham noted as the dinner proceeded. The +sages called Dick Forrest by his first name; but they +always addressed Paula as “Mrs. Forrest,” +although she called them by their first names. There +was nothing affected about it. Quite unconsciously +did they, who respected few things under the sun, +and among such few things not even work—­ +quite unconsciously, and invariably, did they recognize +the certain definite aloofness in Dick Forrest’s +wife so that her given name was alien to their lips. +By such tokens Evan Graham was not slow in learning +that Dick Forrest’s wife had a way with her, +compounded of sheerest democracy and equally sheer +royalty.</p> + +<p>It was the same thing, after dinner, in the big living +room. She dared as she pleased, but nobody assumed. +Before the company settled down, Paula seemed everywhere, +bubbling over with more outrageous spirits than any +of them. From this group or that, from one corner or +another, her laugh rang out. And her laugh fascinated +Graham. There was a fibrous thrill in it, most sweet +to the ear, that differentiated it from any laugh +he had ever heard. It caused Graham to lose the thread +of young Mr. Wombold’s contention that what California +needed was not a Japanese exclusion law but at least +two hundred thousand Japanese coolies to do the farm +labor of California and knock in the head the threatened +eight-hour day for agricultural laborers. Young Mr. +Wombold, Graham gleaned, was an hereditary large land-owner +in the vicinity of Wickenberg who prided himself on +not yielding to the trend of the times by becoming +an absentee landlord.</p> + +<p>From the piano, where Eddie Mason was the center of +a group of girls, came much noise of ragtime music +and slangtime song. Terrence McFane and Aaron Hancock +fell into a heated argument over the music of futurism. +And Graham was saved from the Japanese situation with +Mr. Wombold by Dar Hyal, who proceeded to proclaim +Asia for the Asiatics and California for the Californians.</p> + +<p>Paula, catching up her skirts for speed, fled down +the room in some romp, pursued by Dick, who captured +her as she strove to dodge around the Wombold group.</p> + +<p>“Wicked woman,” Dick reproved her in mock +wrath; and, the next moment, joined her in persuading +Dar Hyal to dance.</p> + +<p>And Dar Hyal succumbed, flinging Asia and the Asiatics +to the winds, along with his arms and legs, as he +weirdly parodied the tango in what he declared to +be the “blastic” culmination of modern +dancing.</p> + +<p>“And now, Red Cloud, sing Mr. Graham your Acorn +Song,” Paula commanded Dick.</p> + +<p>Forrest, his arm still about her, detaining her for +the threatened punishment not yet inflicted, shook +his head somberly.</p> + +<p>“The Acorn Song!” Ernestine called from +the piano; and the cry was taken up by Eddie Mason +and the girls.</p> + +<p>“Oh, do, Dick,” Paula pleaded. “Mr. +Graham is the only one who hasn’t heard it.”</p> + +<p>Dick shook his head.</p> + +<p>“Then sing him your Goldfish Song.”</p> + +<p>“I’ll sing him Mountain Lad’s song,” +Dick bullied, a whimsical sparkle in his eyes. He +stamped his feet, pranced, nickered a not bad imitation +of Mountain Lad, tossed an imaginary mane, and cried:</p> + +<p>“Hear me! I am Eros! I stamp upon the hills!”</p> + +<p>“The Acorn Song,” Paula interrupted quickly +and quietly, with just the hint of steel in her voice.</p> + +<p>Dick obediently ceased his chant of Mountain Lad, +but shook his head like a stubborn colt.</p> + +<p>“I have a new song,” he said solemnly. +“It is about you and me, Paula. I got it from +the Nishinam.”</p> + +<p>“The Nishinam are the extinct aborigines of +this part of California,” Paula shot in a swift +aside of explanation to Graham.</p> + +<p>Dick danced half a dozen steps, stiff-legged, as Indians +dance, slapped his thighs with his palms, and began +a new chant, still retaining his hold on his wife.</p> + +<p>“Me, I am Ai-kut, the first man of the Nishinam. +Ai-kut is the short for Adam, and my father and my +mother were the coyote and the moon. And this is Yo-to-to-wi, +my wife. She is the first woman of the Nishinam. Her +father and her mother were the grasshopper and the +ring-tailed cat. They were the best father and mother +left after my father and mother. The coyote is very +wise, the moon is very old; but who ever heard much +of anything of credit to the grasshopper and the ring-tailed +cat? The Nishinam are always right. The mother of all +women had to be a cat, a little, wizened, sad-faced, +shrewd ring-tailed cat.”</p> + +<p>Whereupon the song of the first man and woman was +interrupted by protests from the women and acclamations +from the men.</p> + +<p>“This is Yo-to-to-wi, which is the short for +Eve,” Dick chanted on, drawing Paula bruskly +closer to his side with a semblance of savage roughness. +“Yo-to-to-wi is not much to look at. But be not +hard upon her. The fault is with the grasshopper and +the ring-tailed cat. Me, I am Ai-kut, the first man; +but question not my taste. I was the first man, and +this, I saw, was the first woman. Where there is but +one choice, there is not much to choose. Adam was +so circumstanced. He chose Eve. Yo-to-to-wi was the +one woman in all the world for me, so I chose Yo-to-to-wi.”</p> + +<p>And Evan Graham, listening, his eyes on that possessive, +encircling arm of all his hostess’s fairness, +felt an awareness of hurt, and arose unsummoned the +thought, to be dismissed angrily, “Dick Forrest +is lucky—­too lucky.”</p> + +<p>“Me, I am Ai-kut,” Dick chanted on. “This +is my dew of woman. She is my honey-dew of woman. +I have lied to you. Her father and her mother were +neither hopper nor cat. They were the Sierra dawn and +the summer east wind of the mountains. Together they +conspired, and from the air and earth they sweated +all sweetness till in a mist of their own love the +leaves of the chaparral and the manzanita were dewed +with the honey-dew.</p> + +<p>“Yo-to-to-wi is my honey-dew woman. Hear me! +I am Ai-kut. Yo-to-to-wi is my quail woman, my deer-woman, +my lush-woman of all soft rain and fat soil. She was +born of the thin starlight and the brittle dawn-light +before the sun . . .</p> + +<p>“And,” Forrest concluded, relapsing into +his natural voice and enunciation, having reached +the limit of extemporization,—­"and if you +think old, sweet, blue-eyed Solomon has anything on +me in singing the Song of Songs, just put your names +down for the subscription edition of <i>my</i> +Song of Songs.”</p> + +<h1 align="center" style="margin-top: 2em;font-variant: small-caps">Chapter XI</h1> + +<p>It was Mrs. Mason who first asked that Paula play; +but it was Terrence McFane and Aaron Hancock who evicted +the rag-time group from the piano and sent Theodore +Malken, a blushing ambassador, to escort Paula.</p> + +<p>“‘Tis for the confounding of this pagan +that I’m askin’ you to play ‘Reflections +on the Water,’” Graham heard Terrence say +to her.</p> + +<p>“And ‘The Girl with Flaxen Hair,’ +after, please,” begged Hancock, the indicted +pagan. “It will aptly prove my disputation. This +wild Celt has a bog-theory of music that predates +the cave-man—­and he has the unadulterated +stupidity to call himself ultra-modern.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, Debussy!” Paula laughed. “Still +wrangling over him, eh? I’ll try and get around +to him. But I don’t know with what I’ll +begin.”</p> + +<p>Dar Hyal joined the three sages in seating Paula at +the concert grand which, Graham decided, was none +too great for the great room. But no sooner was she +seated than the three sages slipped away to what were +evidently their chosen listening places. The young +poet stretched himself prone on a deep bearskin forty +feet from the piano, his hands buried in his hair. +Terrence and Aaron lolled into a cushioned embrasure +of a window seat, sufficiently near to each other to +nudge the points of their respective contentions as +Paula might expound them. The girls were huddled in +colored groups on wide couches or garlanded in twos +and threes on and in the big koa-wood chairs.</p> + +<p>Evan Graham half-started forward to take the honor +of turning Paula’s music, but saw in time that +Dar Hyal had already elected to himself that office. +Graham glimpsed the scene with quiet curious glances. +The grand piano, under a low arch at the far-end +of the room, was cunningly raised and placed as on +and in a sounding board. All jollity and banter had +ceased. Evidently, he thought, the Little Lady had +a way with her and was accepted as a player of parts. +And from this he was perversely prepared for disappointment.</p> + +<p>Ernestine leaned across from a chair to whisper to +him:</p> + +<p>“She can do anything she wants to do. And she +doesn’t work . . . much. She studied under Leschetizky +and Madame Carreno, you know, and she abides by their +methods. She doesn’t play like a woman, either. +Listen to that!”</p> + +<p>Graham knew that he expected disappointment from her +confident hands, even as she rippled them over the +keys in little chords and runs with which he could +not quarrel but which he had heard too often before +from technically brilliant but musically mediocre performers. +But whatever he might have fancied she would play, +he was all unprepared for Rachmaninoff’s sheerly +masculine Prelude, which he had heard only men play +when decently played.</p> + +<p>She took hold of the piano, with the first two ringing +bars, masterfully, like a man; she seemed to lift +it, and its sounding wires, with her two hands, with +the strength and certitude of maleness. And then, +as only he had heard men do it, she sank, or leaped—­he +could scarcely say which—­to the sureness +and pureness and ineffable softness of the <i>Andante</i> +following.</p> + +<p>She played on, with the calm and power of anything +but the little, almost girlish woman he glimpsed through +half-closed lids across the ebony board of the enormous +piano, which she commanded, as she commanded herself, +as she commanded the composer. Her touch was definite, +authoritative, was his judgment, as the Prelude faded +away in dying chords hauntingly reminiscent of its +full vigor that seemed still to linger in the air.</p> + +<p>While Aaron and Terrence debated in excited whispers +in the window seat, and while Dar Hyal sought other +music at Paula’s direction, she glanced at Dick, +who turned off bowl after bowl of mellow light till +Paula sat in an oasis of soft glow that brought out +the dull gold lights in her dress and hair.</p> + +<p>Graham watched the lofty room grow loftier in the +increasing shadows. Eighty feet in length, rising +two stories and a half from masonry walls to tree-trunked +roof, flung across with a flying gallery from the +rail of which hung skins of wild animals, hand-woven +blankets of Oaxaca and Ecuador, and tapas, woman-pounded +and vegetable-dyed, from the islands of the South +Pacific, Graham knew it for what it was—­a +feast-hall of some medieval castle; and almost he felt +a poignant sense of lack of the long spread table, +with pewter below the salt and silver above the salt, +and with huge hound-dogs scuffling beneath for bones.</p> + +<p>Later, when Paula had played sufficient Debussy to +equip Terrence and Aaron for fresh war, Graham talked +with her about music for a few vivid moments. So well +did she prove herself aware of the philosophy of music, +that, ere he knew it, he was seduced into voicing his +own pet theory.</p> + +<p>“And so,” he concluded, “the true +psychic factor of music took nearly three thousand +years to impress itself on the Western mind. Debussy +more nearly attains the idea-engendering and suggestive +serenity—­say of the time of Pythagoras—­than +any of his fore-runners—­”</p> + +<p>Here, Paula put a pause in his summary by beckoning +over Terrence and Aaron from their battlefield in +the windowseat.</p> + +<p>“Yes, and what of it?” Terrence was demanding, +as they came up side by side. “I defy you, Aaron, +I defy you, to get one thought out of Bergson on music +that is more lucid than any thought he ever uttered +in his ‘Philosophy of Laughter,’ which +is not lucid at all.”</p> + +<p>“Oh!—­listen!” Paula cried, +with sparkling eyes. “We have a new prophet. +Hear Mr. Graham. He’s worthy of your steel, of +both your steel. He agrees with you that music is +the refuge from blood and iron and the pounding of +the table. That weak souls, and sensitive souls, and +high-pitched souls flee from the crassness and the +rawness of the world to the drug-dreams of the over-world +of rhythm and vibration—­”</p> + +<p>“Atavistic!” Aaron Hancock snorted. “The +cave-men, the monkey-folk, and the ancestral bog-men +of Terrence did that sort of thing—­”</p> + +<p>“But wait,” Paula urged. “It’s +his conclusions and methods and processes. Also, there +he disagrees with you, Aaron, fundamentally. He quoted +Pater’s ’that all art aspires toward music’—­”</p> + +<p>“Pure prehuman and micro-organic chemistry,” +Aaron broke in. “The reactions of cell-elements +to the doggerel punch of the wave-lengths of sunlight, +the foundation of all folk-songs and rag-times. Terrence +completes his circle right there and stultifies all +his windiness. Now listen to me, and I will present—­”</p> + +<p>“But wait,” Paula pleaded. “Mr. +Graham argues that English puritanism barred music, +real music, for centuries....”</p> + +<p>“True,” said Terrence.</p> + +<p>“And that England had to win to its sensuous +delight in rhythm through Milton and Shelley—­”</p> + +<p>“Who was a metaphysician.” Aaron broke +in.</p> + +<p>“A lyrical metaphysician,” Terrence defined +instantly. “<i>That</i> you must acknowledge, +Aaron.”</p> + +<p>“And Swinburne?” Aaron demanded, with +a significance that tokened former arguments.</p> + +<p>“He says Offenbach was the fore-runner of Arthur +Sullivan,” Paula cried challengingly. “And +that Auber was before Offenbach. And as for Wagner, +ask him, just ask him—­”</p> + +<p>And she slipped away, leaving Graham to his fate. +He watched her, watched the perfect knee-lift of her +draperies as she crossed to Mrs. Mason and set about +arranging bridge quartets, while dimly he could hear +Terrence beginning:</p> + +<p>“It is agreed that music was the basis of inspiration +of all the arts of the Greeks....”</p> + +<p>Later, when the two sages were obliviously engrossed +in a heated battle as to whether Berlioz or Beethoven +had exposited in their compositions the deeper intellect, +Graham managed his escape. Clearly, his goal was to +find his hostess again. But she had joined two of the +girls in the whispering, giggling seclusiveness of +one of the big chairs, and, most of the company being +deep in bridge, Graham found himself drifted into +a group composed of Dick Forrest, Mr. Wombold, Dar +Hyal, and the correspondent of the <i>Breeders’ +Gazette</i>.</p> + +<p>“I’m sorry you won’t be able to +run over with me,” Dick was saying to the correspondent. +“It would mean only one more day. I’ll +take you tomorrow.”</p> + +<p>“Sorry,” was the reply. “But I must +make Santa Rosa. Burbank has promised me practically +a whole morning, and you know what that means. Yet +I know the <i>Gazette</i> would be glad for an +account of the experiment. Can’t you outline +it?—­briefly, just briefly? Here’s +Mr. Graham. It will interest him, I am sure.”</p> + +<p>“More water-works?” Graham queried.</p> + +<p>“No; an asinine attempt to make good farmers +out of hopelessly poor ones,” Mr. Wombold answered. +“I contend that any farmer to-day who has no +land of his own, proves by his lack of it that he is +an inefficient farmer.”</p> + +<p>“On the contrary,” spoke up Dar Hyal, +weaving his slender Asiatic fingers in the air to +emphasize his remarks. “Quite on the contrary. +Times have changed. Efficiency no longer implies the +possession of capital. It is a splendid experiment, +an heroic experiment. And it will succeed.”</p> + +<p>“What is it, Dick?” Graham urged. “Tell +us.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, nothing, just a white chip on the table,” +Forrest answered lightly. “Most likely it will +never come to anything, although just the same I have +my hopes—­”</p> + +<p>“A white chip!” Wombold broke in. “Five +thousand acres of prime valley land, all for a lot +of failures to batten on, to farm, if you please, +on salary, with food thrown in!”</p> + +<p>“The food that is grown on the land only,” +Dick corrected. “Now I will have to put it straight. +I’ve set aside five thousand acres midway between +here and the Sacramento River.”</p> + +<p>“Think of the alfalfa it grew, and that you +need,” Wombold again interrupted.</p> + +<p>“My dredgers redeemed twice that acreage from +the marshes in the past year,” Dick replied. +“The thing is, I believe the West and the world +must come to intensive farming. I want to do my share +toward blazing the way. I’ve divided the five +thousand acres into twenty-acre holdings. I believe +each twenty acres should support, comfortably, not +only a family, but pay at least six per cent.”</p> + +<p>“When it is all allotted it will mean two hundred +and fifty families,” the <i>Gazette</i> +man calculated; “and, say five to the family, +it will mean twelve hundred and fifty souls.”</p> + +<p>“Not quite,” Dick corrected. “The +last holding is occupied, and we have only a little +over eleven hundred on the land.” He smiled +whimsically. “But they promise, they promise. +Several fat years and they’ll average six to +the family.”</p> + +<p>“Who is <i>we</i>?” Graham inquired.</p> + +<p>“Oh, I have a committee of farm experts on it—­my +own men, with the exception of Professor Lieb, whom +the Federal Government has loaned me. The thing is: +they <i>must</i> farm, with individual responsibility, +according to the scientific methods embodied in our +instructions. The land is uniform. Every holding is +like a pea in the pod to every other holding. The +results of each holding will speak in no uncertain +terms. The failure of any farmer, through laziness +or stupidity, measured by the average result of the +entire two hundred and fifty farmers, will not be +tolerated. Out the failures must go, convicted by +the average of their fellows.</p> + +<p>“It’s a fair deal. No farmer risks anything. +With the food he may grow and he and his family may +consume, plus a cash salary of a thousand a year, +he is certain, good seasons and bad, stupid or intelligent, +of at least a hundred dollars a month. The stupid +and the inefficient will be bound to be eliminated +by the intelligent and the efficient. That’s +all. It will demonstrate intensive farming with a vengeance. +And there is more than the certain salary guaranty. +After the salary is paid, the adventure must yield +six per cent, to me. If more than this is achieved, +then the entire hundred per cent, of the additional +achievement goes to the farmer.”</p> + +<p>“Which means that each farmer with go in him +will work nights to make good—­I see,” +said the <i>Gazette</i> man. “And why not? +Hundred-dollar jobs aren’t picked up for the +asking. The average farmer in the United States doesn’t +net fifty a month on his own land, especially when +his wages of superintendence and of direct personal +labor are subtracted. Of course able men will work +their heads off to hold to such a proposition, and +they’ll see to it that every member of the family +does the same.”</p> + +<p>“’Tis the one objection I have to this +place,” Terrence McFane, who had just joined +the group, announced. “Ever one hears but the +one thing—­work. ’Tis repulsive, the +thought of the work, each on his twenty acres, toilin’ +and moilin’, daylight till dark, and after dark—­ +an’ for what? A bit of meat, a bit of bread, +and, maybe, a bit of jam on the bread. An’ to +what end? Is meat an’ bread an’ jam the +end of it all, the meaning of life, the goal of existence? +Surely the man will die, like a work horse dies, after +a life of toil. And what end has been accomplished? +Bread an’ meat an’ jam? Is that it? A full +belly and shelter from the cold till one’s body +drops apart in the dark moldiness of the grave?”</p> + +<p>“But, Terrence, you, too, will die,” Dick +Forrest retorted.</p> + +<p>“But, oh, my glorious life of loafing,” +came the instant answer. “The hours with the +stars and the flowers, under the green trees with the +whisperings of breezes in the grass. My books, my thinkers +and their thoughts. Beauty, music, all the solaces +of all the arts. What? When I fade into the dark I +shall have well lived and received my wage for living. +But these twenty-acre work-animals of two-legged men +of yours! Daylight till dark, toil and moil, sweat +on the shirts on the backs of them that dries only +to crust, meat and bread in their bellies, roofs that +don’t leak, a brood of youngsters to live after +them, to live the same beast-lives of toil, to fill +their bellies with the same meat and bread, to scratch +their backs with the same sweaty shirts, and to go +into the dark knowing only meat and bread, and, mayhap, +a bit of jam.”</p> + +<p>“But somebody must do the work that enables +you to loaf,” Mr. Wombold spoke up indignantly.</p> + +<p>“’Tis true, ’tis sad ’tis +true,” Terrence replied lugubriously. Then his +face beamed. “And I thank the good Lord for it, +for the work-beasties that drag and drive the plows +up and down the fields, for the bat-eyed miner-beasties +that dig the coal and gold, for all the stupid peasant-beasties +that keep my hands soft, and give power to fine fellows +like Dick there, who smiles on me and shares the loot +with me, and buys the latest books for me, and gives +me a place at his board that is plenished by the two-legged +work-beasties, and a place at his fire that is builded +by the same beasties, and a shack and a bed in the +jungle under the madroño trees where never work intrudes +its monstrous head.”</p> + +<p>Evan Graham was slow in getting ready for bed that +night. He was unwontedly stirred both by the Big House +and by the Little Lady who was its mistress. As he +sat on the edge of the bed, half-undressed, and smoked +out a pipe, he kept seeing her in memory, as he had +seen her in the flesh the past twelve hours, in her +varied moods and guises—­the woman who had +talked music with him, and who had expounded music +to him to his delight; who had enticed the sages into +the discussion and abandoned him to arrange the bridge +tables for her guests; who had nestled in the big +chair as girlish as the two girls with her; who had, +with a hint of steel, quelled her husband’s +obstreperousness when he had threatened to sing Mountain +Lad’s song; who, unafraid, had bestridden the +half-drowning stallion in the swimming tank; and who, +a few hours later, had dreamed into the dining room, +distinctive in dress and person, to meet her many guests.</p> + +<p>The Big House, with all its worthy marvels and bizarre +novelties, competed with the figure of Paula Forrest +in filling the content of his imagination. Once again, +and yet again, many times, he saw the slender fingers +of Dar Hyal weaving argument in the air, the black +whiskers of Aaron Hancock enunciating Bergsonian dogmas, +the frayed coat-cuffs of Terrence McFane articulating +thanks to God for the two-legged work-beasties that +enabled him to loaf at Dick Forrest’s board +and under Dick Forrest’s madroño trees.</p> + +<p>Graham knocked out his pipe, took a final sweeping +survey of the strange room which was the last word +in comfort, pressed off the lights, and found himself +between cool sheets in the wakeful dark. Again he +heard Paula Forrest laugh; again he sensed her in terms +of silver and steel and strength; again, against the +dark, he saw that inimitable knee-lift of her gown. +The bright vision of it was almost an irk to him, +so impossible was it for him to shake it from his eyes. +Ever it returned and burned before him, a moving image +of light and color that he knew to be subjective but +that continually asserted the illusion of reality.</p> + +<p>He saw stallion and rider sink beneath the water, +and rise again, a flurry of foam and floundering of +hoofs, and a woman’s face that laughed while +she drowned her hair in the drowning mane of the beast. +And the first ringing bars of the Prelude sounded in +his ears as again he saw the same hands that had guided +the stallion lift the piano to all Rachmaninoff’s +pure splendor of sound.</p> + +<p>And when Graham finally fell asleep, it was in the +thick of marveling over the processes of evolution +that could produce from primeval mire and dust the +glowing, glorious flesh and spirit of woman.</p> + +<h1 align="center" style="margin-top: 2em;font-variant: small-caps">Chapter XII</h1> + +<p>The next morning Graham learned further the ways of +the Big House. Oh My had partly initiated him in particular +things the preceding day and had learned that, after +the waking cup of coffee, he preferred to breakfast +at table, rather than in bed. Also, Oh My had warned +him that breakfast at table was an irregular affair, +anywhere between seven and nine, and that the breakfasters +merely drifted in at their convenience. If he wanted +a horse, or if he wanted a swim or a motor car, or +any ranch medium or utility he desired, Oh My informed +him, all he had to do was to call for it.</p> + +<p>Arriving in the breakfast room at half past seven, +Graham found himself just in time to say good-by to +the <i>Gazette</i> man and the Idaho buyer, who, +finishing, were just ready to catch the ranch machine +that connected at Eldorado with the morning train for +San Francisco. He sat alone, being perfectly invited +by a perfect Chinese servant to order as he pleased, +and found himself served with his first desire—­an +ice-cold, sherried grapefruit, which, the table-boy +proudly informed him, was “grown on the ranch.” +Declining variously suggested breakfast foods, mushes, +and porridges, Graham had just ordered his soft-boiled +eggs and bacon, when Bert Wainwright drifted in with +a casualness that Graham recognized as histrionic, +when, five minutes later, in boudoir cap and delectable +negligee, Ernestine Desten drifted in and expressed +surprise at finding such a multitude of early risers.</p> + +<p>Later, as the three of them were rising from table, +they greeted Lute Desten and Rita Wainwright arriving. +Over the billiard table with Bert, Graham learned +that Dick Forrest never appeared for breakfast, that +he worked in bed from terribly wee small hours, had +coffee at six, and only on unusual occasions appeared +to his guests before the twelve-thirty lunch. As for +Paula Forrest, Bert explained, she was a poor sleeper, +a late riser, lived behind a door without a knob in +a spacious wing with a rare and secret patio that +even he had seen but once, and only on infrequent +occasion was she known to appear before twelve-thirty, +and often not then.</p> + +<p>“You see, she’s healthy and strong and +all that,” he explained, “but she was +born with insomnia. She never could sleep. She couldn’t +sleep as a little baby even. But it’s never +hurt her any, because she’s got a will, and +won’t let it get on her nerves. She’s just +about as tense as they make them, yet, instead of +going wild when she can’t sleep, she just wills +to relax, and she does relax. She calls them her `white +nights,’ when she gets them. Maybe she’ll +fall asleep at daybreak, or at nine or ten in the +morning; and then she’ll sleep the rest of the +clock around and get down to dinner as chipper as you +please.”</p> + +<p>“It’s constitutional, I fancy,” +Graham suggested.</p> + +<p>Bert nodded.</p> + +<p>“It would be a handicap to nine hundred and +ninety-nine women out of a thousand. But not to her. +She puts up with it, and if she can’t sleep +one time—­she should worry—­she +just sleeps some other time and makes it up.”</p> + +<p>More and other things Bert Wainwright told of his +hostess, and Graham was not slow in gathering that +the young man, despite the privileges of long acquaintance, +stood a good deal in awe of her.</p> + +<p>“I never saw anybody whose goat she couldn’t +get if she went after it,” he confided. “Man +or woman or servant, age, sex, and previous condition +of servitude—­it’s all one when she +gets on the high and mighty. And I don’t see +how she does it. Maybe it’s just a kind of light +that comes into her eyes, or some kind of an expression +on her lips, or, I don’t know what—­anyway, +she puts it across and nobody makes any mistake about +it.”</p> + +<p>“She has a ... a way with her,” Graham +volunteered.</p> + +<p>“That’s it!” Bert’s face +beamed. “It’s a way she has. She just puts +it over. Kind of gives you a chilly feeling, you don’t +know why. Maybe she’s learned to be so quiet +about it because of the control she’s learned +by passing sleepless nights without squealing out or +getting sour. The chances are she didn’t bat +an eye all last night—­ excitement, you +know, the crowd, swimming Mountain Lad and such things. +Now ordinary things that’d keep most women awake, +like danger, or storm at sea, and such things, Dick +says don’t faze her. She can sleep like a baby, +he says, when the town she’s in is being bombarded +or when the ship she’s in is trying to claw off +a lee shore. She’s a wonder, and no mistake. +You ought to play billiards with her—­the +English game. She’ll go some.”</p> + +<p>A little later, Graham, along with Bert, encountered +the girls in the morning room, where, despite an hour +of rag-time song and dancing and chatter, he was scarcely +for a moment unaware of a loneliness, a lack, and +a desire to see his hostess, in some fresh and unguessed +mood and way, come in upon them through the open door.</p> + +<p>Still later, mounted on Altadena and accompanied by +Bert on a thoroughbred mare called Mollie, Graham +made a two hours’ exploration of the dairy center +of the ranch, and arrived back barely in time to keep +an engagement with Ernestine in the tennis court.</p> + +<p>He came to lunch with an eagerness for which his keen +appetite could not entirely account; and he knew definite +disappointment when his hostess did not appear.</p> + +<p>“A white night,” Dick Forrest surmised +for his guest’s benefit, and went into details +additional to Bert’s of her constitutional inaptitude +for normal sleep. “Do you know, we were married +years before I ever saw her sleep. I knew she did +sleep, but I never saw her. I’ve seen her go +three days and nights without closing an eye and keep +sweet and cheerful all the time, and when she did sleep, +it was out of exhaustion. That was when the <i>All +Away</i> went ashore in the Carolines and the whole +population worked to get us off. It wasn’t the +danger, for there wasn’t any. It was the noise. +Also, it was the excitement. She was too busy living. +And when it was almost all over, I actually saw her +asleep for the first time in my life.”</p> + +<p>A new guest had arrived that morning, a Donald Ware, +whom Graham met at lunch. He seemed well acquainted +with all, as if he had visited much in the Big House; +and Graham gathered that, despite his youth, he was +a violinist of note on the Pacific Coast.</p> + +<p>“He has conceived a grand passion for Paula,” +Ernestine told Graham as they passed out from the +dining room.</p> + +<p>Graham raised his eyebrows.</p> + +<p>“Oh, but she doesn’t mind,” Ernestine +laughed. “Every man that comes along does the +same thing. She’s used to it. She has just a +charming way of disregarding all their symptoms, and +enjoys them, and gets the best out of them in consequence. +It’s lots of fun to Dick. You’ll be doing +the same before you’re here a week. If you don’t, +we’ll all be surprised mightily. And if you +don’t, most likely you’ll hurt Dick’s +feelings. He’s come to expect it as a matter +of course. And when a fond, proud huband gets a habit +like that, it must hurt terribly to see his wife not +appreciated.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, well, if I am expected to, I suppose I +must,” Graham sighed. “But just the same +I hate to do whatever everybody does just because +everybody does it. But if it’s the custom—­well, +it’s the custom, that’s all. But it’s +mighty hard on one with so many other nice girls around.”</p> + +<p>There was a quizzical light in his long gray eyes +that affected Ernestine so profoundly that she gazed +into his eyes over long, became conscious of what +she was doing, dropped her own eyes away, and flushed.</p> + +<p>“Little Leo—­the boy poet you remember +last night,” she rattled on in a patent attempt +to escape from her confusion. “He’s madly +in love with Paula, too. I’ve heard Aaron Hancock +chaffing him about some sonnet cycle, and it isn’t +difficult to guess the inspiration. And Terrence—­the +Irishman, you know—­he’s mildly in +love with her. They can’t help it, you see; +and can you blame them?”</p> + +<p>“She surely deserves it all,” Graham murmured, +although vaguely hurt in that the addle-pated, alphabet-obsessed, +epicurean anarchist of an Irishman who gloried in +being a loafer and a pensioner should even mildly +be in love with the Little Lady. “She is most +deserving of all men’s admiration,” he +continued smoothly. “From the little I’ve +seen of her she’s quite remarkable and most +charming.”</p> + +<p>“She’s my half-sister,” Ernestine +vouchsafed, “although you wouldn’t dream +a drop of the same blood ran in our veins. She’s +so different. She’s different from all the Destens, +from any girl I ever knew—­ though she isn’t +exactly a girl. She’s thirty-eight, you know—­”</p> + +<p>“Pussy, pussy,” Graham whispered.</p> + +<p>The pretty young blonde looked at him in surprise +and bewilderment, taken aback by the apparent irrelevance +of his interruption.</p> + +<p>“Cat,” he censured in mock reproof.</p> + +<p>“Oh!” she cried. “I never meant +it that way. You will find we are very frank +here. Everybody knows Paula’s age. She tells +it herself. I’m eighteen—­so, there. +And now, just for your meanness, how old are you?”</p> + +<p>“As old as Dick,” he replied promptly.</p> + +<p>“And he’s forty,” she laughed triumphantly. +“Are you coming swimming? —­the water +will be dreadfully cold.”</p> + +<p>Graham shook his head. “I’m going riding +with Dick.”</p> + +<p>Her face fell with all the ingenuousness of eighteen.</p> + +<p>“Oh,” she protested, “some of his +eternal green manures, or hillside terracing, or water-pocketing.”</p> + +<p>“But he said something about swimming at five.”</p> + +<p>Her face brightened joyously.</p> + +<p>“Then we’ll meet at the tank. It must +be the same party. Paula said swimming at five.”</p> + +<p>As they parted under a long arcade, where his way +led to the tower room for a change into riding clothes, +she stopped suddenly and called:</p> + +<p>“Oh, Mr. Graham.”</p> + +<p>He turned obediently.</p> + +<p>“You really are not compelled to fall in love +with Paula, you know. It was just my way of putting +it.”</p> + +<p>“I shall be very, very careful,” he said +solemnly, although there was a twinkle in his eye +as he concluded.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, as he went on to his room, he could +not but admit to himself that the Paula Forrest charm, +or the far fairy tentacles of it, had already reached +him and were wrapping around him. He knew, right there, +that he would prefer the engagement to ride to have +been with her than with his old-time friend, Dick.</p> + +<p>As he emerged from the house to the long hitching-rails +under the ancient oaks, he looked eagerly for his +hostess. Only Dick was there, and the stable-man, +although the many saddled horses that stamped in the +shade promised possibilities. But Dick and he rode +away alone. Dick pointed out her horse, an alert bay +thoroughbred, stallion at that, under a small Australian +saddle with steel stirrups, and double-reined and +single-bitted.</p> + +<p>“I don’t know her plans,” he said. +“She hasn’t shown up yet, but at any rate +she’ll be swimming later. We’ll meet her +then.”</p> + +<p>Graham appreciated and enjoyed the ride, although +more than once he found himself glancing at his wrist-watch +to ascertain how far away five o’clock might +yet be. Lambing time was at hand, and through home +field after home field he rode with his host, now one +and now the other dismounting to turn over onto its +feet rotund and glorious Shropshire and Ramboullet-Merino +ewes so hopelessly the product of man’s selection +as to be unable to get off, of themselves, from their +own broad backs, once they were down with their four +legs helplessly sky-aspiring.</p> + +<p>“I’ve really worked to make the American +Merino,” Dick was saying; “to give it +the developed leg, the strong back, the well-sprung +rib, and the stamina. The old-country breed lacked +the stamina. It was too much hand-reared and manicured.”</p> + +<p>“You’re doing things, big things,” +Graham assured him. “Think of shipping rams +to Idaho! That speaks for itself.”</p> + +<p>Dick Forrest’s eyes were sparkling, as he replied:</p> + +<p>“Better than Idaho. Incredible as it may sound, +and asking forgiveness for bragging, the great flocks +to-day of Michigan and Ohio can trace back to my California-bred +Ramboullet rams. Take Australia. Twelve years ago +I sold three rams for three hundred each to a visiting +squatter. After he took them back and demonstrated +them he sold them for as many thousand each and ordered +a shipload more from me. Australia will never be the +worse for my having been. Down there they say that +lucerne, artesian wells, refrigerator ships, and Forrest’s +rams have tripled the wool and mutton production.”</p> + +<p>Quite by chance, on the way back, meeting Mendenhall, +the horse manager, they were deflected by him to a +wide pasture, broken by wooded canyons and studded +with oaks, to look over a herd of yearling Shires +that was to be dispatched next morning to the upland +pastures and feeding sheds of the Miramar Hills. There +were nearly two hundred of them, rough-coated, beginning +to shed, large-boned and large for their age.</p> + +<p>“We don’t exactly crowd them,” Dick +Forrest explained, “but Mr. Mendenhall sees +to it that they never lack full nutrition from the +time they are foaled. Up there in the hills, where +they are going, they’ll balance their grass +with grain. This makes them assemble every night at +the feeding places and enables the feeders to keep +track of them with a minimum of effort. I’ve +shipped fifty stallions, two-year-olds, every year +for the past five years, to Oregon alone. They’re +sort of standardized, you know. The people up there +know what they’re getting. They know my standard +so well that they’ll buy unsight and unseen.”</p> + +<p>“You must cull a lot, then,” Graham ventured.</p> + +<p>“And you’ll see the culls draying on the +streets of San Francisco,” Dick answered.</p> + +<p>“Yes, and on the streets of Denver,” Mr. +Mendenhall amplified, “and of Los Angeles, and—­why, +two years ago, in the horse-famine, we shipped twenty +carloads of four-year geldings to Chicago, that averaged +seventeen hundred each. The lightest were sixteen, +and there were matched pairs up to nineteen hundred. +Lord, Lord, that was a year for horse-prices—­blue +sky, and then some.”</p> + +<p>As Mr. Mendenhall rode away, a man, on a slender-legged, +head-tossing Palomina, rode up to them and was introduced +to Graham as Mr. Hennessy, the ranch veterinary.</p> + +<p>“I heard Mrs. Forrest was looking over the colts,” +he explained to his employer, “and I rode across +to give her a glance at The Fawn here. She’ll +be riding her in less than a week. What horse is she +on to-day?”</p> + +<p>“The Fop,” Dick replied, as if expecting +the comment that was prompt as the disapproving shake +of Mr. Hennessy’s head.</p> + +<p>“I can never become converted to women riding +stallions,” muttered the veterinary. “The +Fop is dangerous. Worse—­though I take my +hat off to his record—­he’s malicious +and vicious. She—­Mrs. Forrest ought to +ride him with a muzzle—­but he’s a +striker as well, and I don’t see how she can +put cushions on his hoofs.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, well,” Dick placated, “she +has a bit that <i>is</i> a bit in his mouth, +and she’s not afraid to use it—­”</p> + +<p>“If he doesn’t fall over on her some day,” +Mr. Hennessy grumbled. “Anyway, I’ll breathe +easier when she takes to The Fawn here. Now <i>she’s</i> +a lady’s mount—­all the spirit in the +world, but nothing vicious. She’s a sweet mare, +a sweet mare, and she’ll steady down from her +friskiness. But she’ll always be a gay handful—­no +riding academy proposition.”</p> + +<p>“Let’s ride over,” Dick suggested. +“Mrs. Forrest’ll have a gay handful in +The Fop if she’s ridden him into that bunch of +younglings.—­It’s her territory, you +know,” he elucidated to Graham. “All the +house horses and lighter stock is her affair. And +she gets grand results. I can’t understand it, +myself. It’s like a little girl straying into +an experimental laboratory of high explosives and +mixing the stuff around any old way and getting more +powerful combinations than the graybeard chemists.”</p> + +<p>The three men took a cross-ranch road for half a mile, +turned up a wooded canyon where ran a spring-trickle +of stream, and emerged on a wide rolling terrace rich +in pasture. Graham’s first glimpse was of a +background of many curious yearling and two-year-old +colts, against which, in the middleground, he saw +his hostess, on the back of the bright bay thoroughbred, +The Fop, who, on hind legs, was striking his forefeet +in the air and squealing shrilly. They reined in their +mounts and watched.</p> + +<p>“He’ll get her yet,” the veterinary +muttered morosely. “That Fop isn’t safe.”</p> + +<p>But at that moment Paula Forrest, unaware of her audience, +with a sharp cry of command and a cavalier thrust +of sharp spurs into The Fop’s silken sides, +checked him down to four-footedness on the ground +and a restless, champing quietness.</p> + +<p>“Taking chances?” Dick mildly reproached +her, as the three rode up.</p> + +<p>“Oh, I can manage him,” she breathed between +tight teeth, as, with ears back and vicious-gleaming +eyes, The Fop bared his teeth in a bite that would +have been perilously near to Graham’s leg had +she not reined the brute abruptly away across the +neck and driven both spurs solidly into his sides.</p> + +<p>The Fop quivered, squealed, and for the moment stood +still.</p> + +<p>“It’s the old game, the white man’s +game,” Dick laughed. “She’s not +afraid of him, and he knows it. She outgames him, out-savages +him, teaches him what savagery is in its intimate +mood and tense.”</p> + +<p>Three times, while they looked on, ready to whirl +their own steeds away if he got out of hand, The Fop +attempted to burst into rampage, and three times, +solidly, with careful, delicate hand on the bitter +bit, Paula Forrest dealt him double spurs in the ribs, +till he stood, sweating, frothing, fretting, beaten, +and in hand.</p> + +<p>“It’s the way the white man has always +done,” Dick moralized, while Graham suffered +a fluttery, shivery sensation of admiration of the +beast-conquering Little Lady. “He’s out-savaged +the savage the world around,” Dick went on. +“He’s out-endured him, out-filthed him, +out-scalped him, out-tortured him, out-eaten him—­yes, +out-eaten him. It’s a fair wager that the white +man, in extremis, has eaten more of the genus homo, +than the savage, in extremis, has eaten.”</p> + +<p>“Good afternoon,” Paula greeted her guest, +the ranch veterinary, and her husband. “I think +I’ve got him now. Let’s look over the colts. +Just keep an eye, Mr. Graham, on his mouth. He’s +a dreadful snapper. Ride free from him, and you’ll +save your leg for old age.”</p> + +<p>Now that The Fop’s demonstration was over, the +colts, startled into flight by some impish spirit +amongst them, galloped and frisked away over the green +turf, until, curious again, they circled back, halted +at gaze, and then, led by one particularly saucy chestnut +filly, drew up in half a circle before the riders, +with alert pricking ears.</p> + +<p>Graham scarcely saw the colts at first. He was seeing +his protean hostess in a new role. Would her proteanness +never end? he wondered, as he glanced over the magnificent, +sweating, mastered creature she bestrode. Mountain +Lad, despite his hugeness, was a mild-mannered pet +beside this squealing, biting, striking Fop who advertised +all the spirited viciousness of the most spirited +vicious thoroughbred.</p> + +<p>“Look at her,” Paula whispered to Dick, +in order not to alarm the saucy chestnut filly. “Isn’t +she wonderful! That’s what I’ve been working +for.” Paula turned to Evan. “Always they +have some fault, some miss, at the best an approximation +rather than an achievement. But she’s an achievement. +Look at her. She’s as near right as I shall +probably ever get. Her sire is Big Chief, if you know +our racing register. He sold for sixty thousand when +he was a cripple. We borrowed the use of him. She +was his only get of the season. But look at her! She’s +got his chest and lungs. I had my choices—­mares +eligible for the register. Her dam wasn’t eligible, +but I chose her. She was an obstinate old maid, but +she was the one mare for Big Chief. This is her first +foal and she was eighteen years old when she bred. +But I knew it was there. All I had to do was to look +at Big Chief and her, and it just had to be there.”</p> + +<p>“The dam was only half thoroughbred,” +Dick explained.</p> + +<p>“But with a lot of Morgan on the other side,” +Paula added instantly, “and a streak along the +back of mustang. This shall be called Nymph, even +if she has no place in the books. She’ll be my +first unimpeachable perfect saddle horse—­I +know it—­the kind I like—­my dream +come true at last.”</p> + +<p>“A hoss has four legs, one on each corner,” +Mr. Hennessy uttered profoundly.</p> + +<p>“And from five to seven gaits,” Graham +took up lightly,</p> + +<p>“And yet I don’t care for those many-gaited +Kentuckians,” Paula said quickly, “—­except +for park work. But for California, rough roads, mountain +trails, and all the rest, give me the fast walk, the +fox trot, the long trot that covers the ground, and +the not too-long, ground-covering gallop. Of course, +the close-coupled, easy canter; but I scarcely call +that a gait—­it’s no more than the +long lope reduced to the adjustment of wind or rough +ground.”</p> + +<p>“She’s a beauty,” Dick admired, +his eyes warm in contemplation of the saucy chestnut +filly, who was daringly close and alertly sniffing +of the subdued Fop’s tremulous and nostril-dilated +muzzle.</p> + +<p>“I prefer my own horses to be near thoroughbred +rather than all thoroughbred,” Paula proclaimed. +“The running horse has its place on the track, +but it’s too specialized for mere human use.”</p> + +<p>“Nicely coupled,” Mr. Hennessy said, indicating +the Nymph. “Short enough for good running and +long enough for the long trot. I’ll admit I +didn’t have any faith in the combination; but +you’ve got a grand animal out of it just the +same.”</p> + +<p>“I didn’t have horses when I was a young +girl,” Paula said to Graham; “and the +fact that I can now not only have them but breed them +and mold them to my heart’s desire is always +too good to be true. Sometimes I can’t believe +it myself, and have to ride out and look them over +to make sure.”</p> + +<p>She turned her head and raised her eyes gratefully +to Forrest; and Graham watched them look into each +other’s eyes for a long half-minute. Forrest’s +pleasure in his wife’s pleasure, in her young +enthusiasm and joy of life, was clear to Graham’s +observation. “Lucky devil,” was Graham’s +thought, not because of his host’s vast ranch +and the success and achievement of it, but because +of the possession of a wonder-woman who could look +unabashed and appreciative into his eyes as the Little +Lady had looked.</p> + +<p>Graham was meditating, with skepticism, Ernestine’s +information that Paula Forrest was thirty-eight, when +she turned to the colts and pointed her riding whip +at a black yearling nibbling at the spring green.</p> + +<p>“Look at that level rump, Dick,” she said, +“and those trotting feet and pasterns.” +And, to Graham: “Rather different from Nymph’s +long wrists, aren’t they? But they’re +just what I was after.” She laughed a little, +with just a shade of annoyance. “The dam was +a bright sorrel—­ almost like a fresh-minted +twenty-dollar piece—­and I did so want a +pair out of her, of the same color, for my own trap. +Well, I can’t say that I exactly got them, although +I bred her to a splendid, sorrel trotting horse. And +this is my reward, this black—­and, wait +till we get to the brood mares and you’ll see +the other, a full brother and mahogany brown. I’m +so disappointed.”</p> + +<p>She singled out a pair of dark bays, feeding together: +“Those are two of Guy Dillon’s get—­brother, +you know, to Lou Dillon. They’re out of different +mares, not quite the same bay, but aren’t they +splendidly matched? And they both have Guy Dillon’s +coat.”</p> + +<p>She moved her subdued steed on, skirting the flank +of the herd quietly in order not to alarm it; but +a number of colts took flight.</p> + +<p>“Look at them!” she cried. “Five, +there, are hackneys. Look at the lift of their fore-legs +as they run.”</p> + +<p>“I’ll be terribly disappointed if you +don’t get a prize-winning four-in-hand out +of them,” Dick praised, and brought again the +flash of grateful eyes that hurt Graham as he noted +it.</p> + +<p>“Two are out of heavier mares—­see +that one in the middle and the one on the far left—­and +there’s the other three to pick from for the +leaders. Same sire, five different dams, and a matched +and balanced four, out of five choices, all in the +same season, is a stroke of luck, isn’t it?”</p> + +<p>She turned quickly to Mr. Hennessy: “I can begin +to see the ones that will have to sell for polo ponies—­among +the two-year-olds. You can pick them.”</p> + +<p>“If Mr. Mendenhall doesn’t sell that strawberry +roan for a clean fifteen hundred, it’ll be because +polo has gone out of fashion,” the veterinary +approved, with waxing enthusiasm. “I’ve +had my eye on them. That pale sorrel, there. You remember +his set-back. Give him an extra year and he’ll—­look +at his coupling!—­watch him turn!—­a +cow-skin?—­ he’ll turn on a silver +dollar! Give him a year to make up, and he’ll +stand a show for the international. Listen to me. I’ve +had my faith in him from the beginning. Cut out that +Burlingame crowd. When he’s ripe, ship him straight +East.”</p> + +<p>Paula nodded and listened to Mr. Hennessy’s +judgment, her eyes kindling with his in the warmth +of the sight of the abounding young life for which +she was responsible.</p> + +<p>“It always hurts, though,” she confessed +to Graham, “selling such beauties to have them +knocked out on the field so quickly.”</p> + +<p>Her sheer absorption in the animals robbed her speech +of any hint of affectation or show—­so much +so, that Dick was impelled to praise her judgment +to Evan.</p> + +<p>“I can dig through a whole library of horse +practice, and muddle and mull over the Mendelian Law +until I’m dizzy, like the clod that I am; but +she is the genius. She doesn’t have to study +law. She just knows it in some witch-like, intuitional +way. All she has to do is size up a bunch of mares +with her eyes, and feel them over a little with her +hands, and hunt around till she finds the right sires, +and get pretty nearly what she wants in the result—­except +color, eh, Paul?” he teased.</p> + +<p>She showed her laughing teeth in the laugh at her +expense, in which Mr. Hennessy joined, and Dick continued: +“Look at that filly there. We all knew Paula +was wrong. But look at it! She bred a rickety old +thoroughbred, that we wanted to put out of her old +age, to a standard stallion; got a filly; bred it +back with a thoroughbred; bred its filly foal with +the same standard again; knocked all our prognostications +into a cocked hat, and—­well, look at it, +a world-beater polo pony. There is one thing we have +to take off our hats to her for: she doesn’t +let any woman sentimentality interfere with her culling. +Oh, she’s cold-blooded enough. She’s as +remorseless as any man when it comes to throwing out +the undesirables and selecting for what she wants. +But she hasn’t mastered color yet. There’s +where her genius falls down, eh, Paul? You’ll +have to put up with Duddy and Fuddy for a while longer +for your trap. By the way, how is Duddy?”</p> + +<p>“He’s come around,” she answered, +“thanks to Mr. Hennessy.”</p> + +<p>“Nothing serious,” the veterinarian added. +“He was just off his feed a trifle. It was more +a scare of the stableman than anything else.”</p> + +<h1 align="center" style="margin-top: 2em;font-variant: small-caps">Chapter XIII</h1> + +<p>From the colt pasture to the swimming tank Graham +talked with his hostess and rode as nearly beside +her as The Fop’s wickedness permitted, while +Dick and Hennessy, on ahead, were deep in ranch business.</p> + +<p>“Insomnia has been a handicap all my life,” +she said, while she tickled The Fop with a spur in +order to check a threatened belligerence. “But +I early learned to keep the irritation of it off my +nerves and the weight of it off my mind. In fact, I +early came to make a function of it and actually to +derive enjoyment from it. It was the only way to master +a thing I knew would persist as long as I persisted. +Have you—­of course you have—­learned +to win through an undertow?”</p> + +<p>“Yes, by never fighting it,” Graham answered, +his eyes on the spray of color in her cheeks and the +tiny beads of sweat that arose from her continuous +struggle with the high-strung creature she rode. Thirty-eight! +He wondered if Ernestine had lied. Paula Forrest did +not look twenty-eight. Her skin was the skin of a +girl, with all the delicate, fine-pored and thin transparency +of the skin of a girl.</p> + +<p>“Exactly,” she went on. “By not +fighting the undertow. By yielding to its down-drag +and out-drag, and working with it to reach air again. +Dick taught me that trick. So with my insomnia. If +it is excitement from immediate events that holds +me back from the City of Sleep, I yield to it and +come quicker to unconsciousness from out the entangling +currents. I invite my soul to live over again, from +the same and different angles, the things that keep +me from unconsciousness.</p> + +<p>“Take the swimming of Mountain Lad yesterday. +I lived it over last night as I had lived it in reality. +Then I lived it as a spectator—­as the girls +saw it, as you saw it, as the cowboy saw it, and, most +of all, as my husband saw it. Then I made up a picture +of it, many pictures of it, from all angles, and painted +them, and framed them, and hung them, and then, a +spectator, looked at them as if for the first time. +And I made myself many kinds of spectators, from crabbed +old maids and lean pantaloons to girls in boarding +school and Greek boys of thousands of years ago.</p> + +<p>“After that I put it to music. I played it on +the piano, and guessed the playing of it on full orchestras +and blaring bands. I chanted it, I sang it-epic, lyric, +comic; and, after a weary long while, of course I +slept in the midst of it, and knew not that I slept +until I awoke at twelve to-day. The last time I had +heard the clock strike was six. Six unbroken hours +is a capital prize for me in the sleep lottery.”</p> + +<p>As she finished, Mr. Hennessy rode away on a cross +path, and Dick Forrest dropped back to squire his +wife on the other side.</p> + +<p>“Will you sport a bet, Evan?” he queried.</p> + +<p>“I’d like to hear the terms of it first,” +was the answer.</p> + +<p>“Cigars against cigars that you can’t +catch Paula in the tank inside ten minutes—­no, +inside five, for I remember you’re some swimmer.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, give him a chance, Dick,” Paula cried +generously. “Ten minutes will worry him.”</p> + +<p>“But you don’t know him,” Dicked +argued. “And you don’t value my cigars. +I tell you he is a swimmer. He’s drowned kanakas, +and you know what that means.”</p> + +<p>“Perhaps I should reconsider. Maybe he’ll +slash a killing crawl-stroke at me before I’ve +really started. Tell me his history and prizes.”</p> + +<p>“I’ll just tell you one thing. They still +talk of it in the Marquesas. It was the big hurricane +of 1892. He did forty miles in forty-five hours, and +only he and one other landed on the land. And they +were all kanakas. He was the only white man; yet he +out-endured and drowned the last kanaka of them—­”</p> + +<p>“I thought you said there was one other?” +Paula interrupted.</p> + +<p>“She was a woman,” Dick answered. “He +drowned the last kanaka.”</p> + +<p>“And the woman was then a white woman?” +Paula insisted.</p> + +<p>Graham looked quickly at her, and although she had +asked the question of her husband, her head turned +to the turn of his head, so that he found her eyes +meeting his straightly and squarely in interrogation. +Graham held her gaze with equal straightness as he +answered: “She was a kanaka.”</p> + +<p>“A queen, if you please,” Dick took up. +“A queen out of the ancient chief stock. She +was Queen of Huahoa.”</p> + +<p>“Was it the chief stock that enabled her to +out-endure the native men?” Paula asked. “Or +did you help her?”</p> + +<p>“I rather think we helped each other toward +the end,” Graham replied. “We were both +out of our heads for short spells and long spells. +Sometimes it was one, sometimes the other, that was +all in. We made the land at sunset—­that +is, a wall of iron coast, with the surf bursting sky-high. +She took hold of me and clawed me in the water to +get some sense in me. You see, I wanted to go in, which +would have meant finish.</p> + +<p>“She got me to understand that she knew where +she was; that the current set westerly along shore +and in two hours would drift us abreast of a spot +where we could land. I swear I either slept or was +unconscious most of those two hours; and I swear she +was in one state or the other when I chanced to come +to and noted the absence of the roar of the surf. +Then it was my turn to claw and maul her back to consciousness. +It was three hours more before we made the sand. We +slept where we crawled out of the water. Next morning’s +sun burnt us awake, and we crept into the shade of +some wild bananas, found fresh water, and went to +sleep again. Next I awoke it was night. I took another +drink, and slept through till morning. She was still +asleep when the bunch of kanakas, hunting wild goats +from the next valley, found us.”</p> + +<p>“I’ll wager, for a man who drowned a whole +kanaka crew, it was you who did the helping,” +Dick commented.</p> + +<p>“She must have been forever grateful,” +Paula challenged, her eyes directly on Graham’s. +“Don’t tell me she wasn’t young, +wasn’t beautiful, wasn’t a golden brown +young goddess.”</p> + +<p>“Her mother was the Queen of Huahoa,” +Graham answered. “Her father was a Greek scholar +and an English gentleman. They were dead at the time +of the swim, and Nomare was queen herself. She <i>was</i> +young. She was beautiful as any woman anywhere in +the world may be beautiful. Thanks to her father’s +skin, she as not golden brown. She was tawny golden. +But you’ve heard the story undoubtedly—­”</p> + +<p>He broke off with a look of question to Dick, who +shook his head.</p> + +<p>Calls and cries and splashings of water from beyond +a screen of trees warned them that they were near +the tank.</p> + +<p>“You’ll have to tell me the rest of the +story some time,” Paula said.</p> + +<p>“Dick knows it. I can’t see why he hasn’t +told you.”</p> + +<p>She shrugged her shoulders.</p> + +<p>“Perhaps because he’s never had the time +or the provocation.”</p> + +<p>“God wot, it’s had wide circulation,” +Graham laughed. “For know that I was once morganatic—­or +whatever you call it—­king of the cannibal +isles, or of a paradise of a Polynesian isle at any +rate.—­’By a purple wave on an opal +beach in the hush of the Mahim woods,’” +he hummed carelessly, in conclusion, and swung off +from his horse.</p> + +<p>“‘The white moth to the closing vine, +the bee to the opening clover,’” she hummed +another line of the song, while The Fop nearly got +his teeth into her leg and she straightened him out +with the spur, and waited for Dick to help her off +and tie him.</p> + +<p>“Cigars!—­I’m in on that!—­you +can’t catch her!” Bert Wainwright called +from the top of the high dive forty feet above. “Wait +a minute! I’m coming!”</p> + +<p>And come he did, in a swan dive that was almost professional +and that brought handclapping approval from the girls.</p> + +<p>“A sweet dive, balanced beautifully,” +Graham told him as he emerged from the tank.</p> + +<p>Bert tried to appear unconscious of the praise, failed, +and, to pass it off, plunged into the wager.</p> + +<p>“I don’t know what kind of a swimmer you +are, Graham,” he said, “but I just want +in with Dick on the cigars.”</p> + +<p>“Me, too; me, too!” chorused Ernestine, +and Lute, and Rita.</p> + +<p>“Boxes of candy, gloves, or any truck you care +to risk,” Ernestine added.</p> + +<p>“But I don’t know Mrs. Forrest’s +records, either,” Graham protested, after having +taken on the bets. “However, if in five minutes—­”</p> + +<p>“Ten minutes,” Paula said, “and +to start from opposite ends of the tank. Is that fair? +Any touch is a catch.” Graham looked his hostess +over with secret approval. She was clad, not in the +single white silk slip she evidently wore only for +girl parties, but in a coquettish imitation of the +prevailing fashion mode, a suit of changeable light +blue and green silk—­almost the color of +the pool; the skirt slightly above the knees whose +roundedness he recognized; with long stockings to +match, and tiny bathing shoes bound on with crossed +ribbons. On her head was a jaunty swimming cap no +jauntier than herself when she urged the ten minutes +in place of five.</p> + +<p>Rita Wainwright held the watch, while Graham walked +down to the other end of the hundred-and-fifty-foot +tank.</p> + +<p>“Paula, you’ll be caught if you take any +chances,” Dick warned. “Evan Graham is +a real fish man.”</p> + +<p>“I guess Paula’ll show him a few, even +without the pipe,” Bert bragged loyally. “And +I’ll bet she can out-dive him.”</p> + +<p>“There you lose,” Dick answered. “I +saw the rock he dived from at Huahoa. That was after +his time, and after the death of Queen Nomare. He +was only a youngster—­twenty-two; he had +to be to do it. It was off the peak of the Pau-wi +Rock—­one hundred and twenty-eight feet by +triangulation. And he couldn’t do it legitimately +or technically with a swan-dive, because he had to +clear two lower ledges while he was in the air. The +upper ledge of the two, by their own traditions, was +the highest the best of the kanakas had ever dared +since their traditions began. Well, he did it. He +became tradition. As long as the kanakas of Huahoa +survive he will remain tradition—­Get ready, +Rita. Start on the full minute.”</p> + +<p>“It’s almost a shame to play tricks on +so reputable a swimmer,” Paula confided to them, +as she faced her guest down the length of the tank +and while both waited the signal.</p> + +<p>“He may get you before you can turn the trick,” +Dick warned again. And then, to Bert, with just a +shade of anxiety: “Is it working all right? +Because if it isn’t, Paula will have a bad five +seconds getting out of it.”</p> + +<p>“All O.K.,” Bert assured. “I went +in myself. The pipe is working. There’s plenty +of air.”</p> + +<p>“Ready!” Rita called. “Go!”</p> + +<p>Graham ran toward their end like a foot-racer, while +Paula darted up the high dive. By the time she had +gained the top platform, his hands and feet were on +the lower rungs. When he was half-way up she threatened +a dive, compelling him to cease from climbing and to +get out on the twenty-foot platform ready to follow +her to the water. Whereupon she laughed down at him +and did not dive. “Time is passing—­ +the precious seconds are ticking off,” Ernestine +chanted.</p> + +<p>When he started to climb, Paula again chased him to +the half-way platform with a threat to dive. But not +many seconds did Graham waste. His next start was +determined, and Paula, poised for her dive, could +not send him scuttling back. He raced upward to gain +the thirty-foot platform before she should dive, and +she was too wise to linger. Out into space she launched, +head back, arms bent, hands close to chest, legs straight +and close together, her body balanced horizontally +on the air as it fell outward and downward.</p> + +<p>“Oh you Annette Kellerman!” Bert Wamwright’s +admiring cry floated up.</p> + +<p>Graham ceased pursuit to watch the completion of the +dive, and saw his hostess, a few feet above the water, +bend her head forward, straighten out her arms and +lock the hands to form the arch before her head, and, +so shifting the balance of her body, change it from +the horizontal to the perfect, water-cleaving angle.</p> + +<p>The moment she entered the water, he swung out on +the thirty-foot platform and waited. From this height +he could make out her body beneath the surface swimming +a full stroke straight for the far end of the tank. +Not till then did he dive. He was confident that he +could outspeed her, and his dive, far and flat, entered +him in the water twenty feet beyond her entrance.</p> + +<p>But at the instant he was in, Dick dipped two flat +rocks into the water and struck them together. This +was the signal for Paula to change her course. Graham +heard the concussion and wondered. He broke surface +in the full swing of the crawl and went down the tank +to the far end at a killing pace. He pulled himself +out and watched the surface of the tank. A burst of +handclapping from the girls drew his eyes to the Little +Lady drawing herself out of the tank at the other +end.</p> + +<p>Again he ran down the side of the tank, and again +she climbed the scaffold. But this time his wind and +endurance enabled him to cut down her lead, so that +she was driven to the twenty-foot platform. She took +no time for posturing or swanning, but tilted immediately +off in a stiff dive, angling toward the west side +of the tank. Almost they were in the air at the same +time. In the water and under it, he could feel against +his face and arms the agitation left by her progress; +but she led into the deep shadow thrown by the low +afternoon sun, where the water was so dark he could +see nothing.</p> + +<p>When he touched the side of the tank he came up. She +was not in sight. He drew himself out, panting, and +stood ready to dive in at the first sign of her. But +there were no signs.</p> + +<p>“Seven minutes!” Rita called. “And +a half! ... Eight!... And a half!”</p> + +<p>And no Paula Forrest broke surface. Graham refused +to be alarmed because he could see no alarm on the +faces of the others.</p> + +<p>“I lose,” he announced at Rita’s +“Nine minutes!”</p> + +<p>“She’s been under over two minutes, and +you’re all too blessed calm about it to get +me excited,” he said. “I’ve still +a minute—­maybe I don’t lose,” +he added quickly, as he stepped off feet first into +the tank.</p> + +<p>As he went down he turned over and explored the cement +wall of tank with his hands. Midway, possibly ten +feet under the surface he estimated, his hands encountered +an opening in the wall. He felt about, learned it +Was unscreened, and boldly entered. Almost before he +was in, he found he could come up; but he came up slowly, +breaking surface in pitchy blackness and feeling about +him without splashing.</p> + +<p>His fingers touched a cool smooth arm that shrank +convulsively at contact while the possessor of it +cried sharply with the startle of fright. He held +on tightly and began to laugh, and Paula laughed with +him. A line from “The First Chanty” flashed +into his consciousness—­ “<i>Hearing +her laugh in the gloom greatly I loved her.</i>”</p> + +<p>“You did frighten me when you touched me,” +she said. “You came without a sound, and I was +a thousand miles away, dreaming...”</p> + +<p>“What?” Graham asked.</p> + +<p>“Well, honestly, I had just got an idea for +a gown—­a dusty, musty, mulberry-wine velvet, +with long, close lines, and heavy, tarnished gold +borders and cords and things. And the only jewelery +a ring—­one enormous pigeon-blood ruby that +Dick gave me years ago when we sailed the <i>All +Away</i>.”</p> + +<p>“Is there anything you don’t do?” +he laughed.</p> + +<p>She joined with him, and their mirth sounded strangely +hollow in the pent and echoing dark.</p> + +<p>“Who told you?” she next asked.</p> + +<p>“No one. After you had been under two minutes +I knew it had to be something like this, and I came +exploring.”</p> + +<p>“It was Dick’s idea. He had it built into +the tank afterward. You will find him full of whimsies. +He delighted in scaring old ladies into fits by stepping +off into the tank with their sons or grandsons and +hiding away in here. But after one or two nearly died +of shock—­old ladies, I mean—­he +put me up, as to-day, to fooling hardier persons like +yourself.—­Oh, he had another accident. There +was a Miss Coghlan, friend of Ernestine, a little +seminary girl. They artfully stood her right beside +the pipe that leads out, and Dick went off the high +dive and swam in here to the inside end of the pipe. +After several minutes, by the time she was in collapse +over his drowning, he spoke up the pipe to her in +most horrible, sepulchral tones. And right there Miss +Coghlan fainted dead away.”</p> + +<p>“She must have been a weak sister,” Graham +commented; while he struggled with a wanton desire +for a match so that he could strike it and see how +Paula Forrest looked paddling there beside him to keep +afloat.</p> + +<p>“She had a fair measure of excuse,” Paula +answered. “She was a young thing—­eighteen; +and she had a sort of school-girl infatuation for +Dick. They all get it. You see, he’s such a boy +when he’s playing that they can’t realize +that he’s a hard-bitten, hard-working, deep-thinking, +mature, elderly benedict. The embarrassing thing was +that the little girl, when she was first revived and +before she could gather her wits, exposed all her +secret heart. Dick’s face was a study while +she babbled her—­”</p> + +<p>“Well?—­going to stay there all night?” +Bert Wainwright’s voice came down the pipe, +sounding megaphonically close.</p> + +<p>“Heavens!” Graham sighed with relief; +for he had startled and clutched Paula’s arm. +“That’s the time I got my fright. The little +maiden is avenged. Also, at last, I know what a lead-pipe +cinch is.”</p> + +<p>“And it’s time we started for the outer +world,” she suggested. “It’s not +the coziest gossiping place in the world. Shall I go +first?”</p> + +<p>“By all means—­and I’ll be right +behind; although it’s a pity the water isn’t +phosphorescent. Then I could follow your incandescent +heel like that chap Byron wrote about—­don’t +you remember?”</p> + +<p>He heard her appreciative gurgle in the dark, and +then her: “Well, I’m going now.”</p> + +<p>Unable to see the slightest glimmer, nevertheless, +from the few sounds she made he knew she had turned +over and gone down head first, and he was not beyond +visioning with inner sight the graceful way in which +she had done it—­an anything but graceful +feat as the average swimming woman accomplishes it.</p> + +<p>“Somebody gave it away to you,” was Bert’s +prompt accusal, when Graham rose to the surface of +the tank and climbed out.</p> + +<p>“And you were the scoundrel who rapped stone +under water,” Graham challenged. “If I’d +lost I’d have protested the bet. It was a crooked +game, a conspiracy, and competent counsel, I am confident, +would declare it a felony. It’s a case for the +district attorney.”</p> + +<p>“But you won,” Ernestine cried.</p> + +<p>“I certainly did, and, therefore, I shall not +prosecute you, nor any one of your crooked gang—­if +the bets are paid promptly. Let me see—­ +you owe me a box of cigars—­”</p> + +<p>“One cigar, sir!”</p> + +<p>“A box! A box!” “Cross tag!” +Paula cried. “Let’s play cross-tag!—­ +You’re <i>it</i>!”</p> + +<p>Suiting action to word, she tagged Graham on the shoulder +and plunged into the tank. Before he could follow, +Bert seized him, whirled him in a circle, was himself +tagged, and tagged Dick before he could escape. And +while Dick pursued his wife through the tank and Bert +and Graham sought a chance to cross, the girls fled +up the scaffold and stood in an enticing row on the +fifteen-foot diving platform.</p> + +<h1 align="center" style="margin-top: 2em;font-variant: small-caps">Chapter XIV.</h1> + +<p>An indifferent swimmer, Donald Ware had avoided the +afternoon sport in the tank; but after dinner, somewhat +to the irritation of Graham, the violinist monopolized +Paula at the piano. New guests, with the casual expectedness +of the Big House, had drifted in—­a lawyer, +by name Adolph Well, who had come to confer with Dick +over some big water-right suit; Jeremy Braxton, straight +from Mexico, Dick’s general superintendent of +the Harvest Group, which bonanza, according to Jeremy +Braxton, was as “unpetering” as ever; Edwin +O’Hay, a red-headed Irish musical and dramatic +critic; and Chauncey Bishop, editor and owner of the +<i>San Francisco Dispatch</i>, and a member of +Dick’s class and frat, as Graham gleaned.</p> + +<p>Dick had started a boisterous gambling game which +he called “Horrible Fives,” wherein, although +excitement ran high and players plunged, the limit +was ten cents, and, on a lucky coup, the transient +banker might win or lose as high as ninety cents, +such coup requiring at least ten minutes to play out. +This game went on at a big table at the far end of +the room, accompanied by much owing and borrowing of +small sums and an incessant clamor for change.</p> + +<p>With nine players, the game was crowded, and Graham, +rather than draw cards, casually and occasionally +backed Ernestine’s cards, the while he glanced +down the long room at the violinist and Paula Forrest +absorbed in Beethoven Symphonies and Delibes’ +Ballets. Jeremy Braxton was demanding raising the +limit to twenty cents, and Dick, the heaviest loser, +as he averred, to the tune of four dollars and sixty +cents, was plaintively suggesting the starting of a +“kitty” in order that some one should +pay for the lights and the sweeping out of the place +in the morning, when Graham, with a profound sigh at +the loss of his last bet—­a nickel which +he had had to pay double—­announced to Ernestine +that he was going to take a turn around the room to +change his luck.</p> + +<p>“I prophesied you would,” she told him +under her breath.</p> + +<p>“What?” he asked.</p> + +<p>She glanced significantly in Paula’s direction.</p> + +<p>“Just for that I simply must go down there now,” +he retorted.</p> + +<p>“Can’t dast decline a dare,” she +taunted.</p> + +<p>“If it were a dare I wouldn’t dare do +it.”</p> + +<p>“In which case I dare you,” she took up.</p> + +<p>He shook his head: “I had already made up my +mind to go right down there to that one spot and cut +that fiddler out of the running. You can’t dare +me out of it at this late stage. Besides, there’s +Mr. O’Hay waiting for you to make your bet.”</p> + +<p>Ernestine rashly laid ten cents, and scarcely knew +whether she won or lost, so intent was she on watching +Graham go down the room, although she did know that +Bert Wainwright had not been unobservant of her gaze +and its direction. On the other hand, neither she nor +Bert, nor any other at the table, knew that Dick’s +quick-glancing eyes, sparkling with merriment while +his lips chaffed absurdities that made them all laugh, +had missed no portion of the side play.</p> + +<p>Ernestine, but little taller than Paula, although +hinting of a plus roundness to come, was a sun-healthy, +clear blonde, her skin sprayed with the almost transparent +flush of maidenhood at eighteen. To the eye, it seemed +almost that one could see through the pink daintiness +of fingers, hand, wrist, and forearm, neck and cheek. +And to this delicious transparency of rose and pink, +was added a warmth of tone that did not escape Dick’s +eyes as he glimpsed her watch Evan Graham move down +the length of room. Dick knew and classified her wild +imagined dream or guess, though the terms of it were +beyond his divination.</p> + +<p>What she saw was what she imagined was the princely +walk of Graham, the high, light, blooded carriage +of his head, the delightful carelessness of the gold-burnt, +sun-sanded hair that made her fingers ache to be into +with caresses she for the first time knew were possible +of her fingers.</p> + +<p>Nor did Paula, during an interval of discussion with +the violinist in which she did not desist from stating +her criticism of O’Hay’s latest criticism +of Harold Bauer, fail to see and keep her eyes on Graham’s +progress. She, too, noted with pleasure his grace of +movement, the high, light poise of head, the careless +hair, the clear bronze of the smooth cheeks, the splendid +forehead, the long gray eyes with the hint of drooping +lids and boyish sullenness that fled before the smile +with which he greeted her.</p> + +<p>She had observed that smile often since her first +meeting with him. It was an irresistible smile, a +smile that lighted the eyes with the radiance of good +fellowship and that crinkled the corners into tiny, +genial lines. It was provocative of smiles, for she +found herself smiling a silent greeting in return +as she continued stating to Ware her grievance against +O’Hay’s too-complacent praise of Bauer.</p> + +<p>But her engagement was tacitly with Donald Ware at +the piano, and with no more than passing speech, she +was off and away in a series of Hungarian dances that +made Graham marvel anew as he loafed and smoked in +a window-seat.</p> + +<p>He marveled at the proteanness of her, at visions +of those nimble fingers guiding and checking The Fop, +swimming and paddling in submarine crypts, and, falling +in swan-like flight through forty feet of air, locking +just above the water to make the diver’s head-protecting +arch of arm.</p> + +<p>In decency, he lingered but few minutes, returned +to the gamblers, and put the entire table in a roar +with a well-acted Yiddisher’s chagrin and passion +at losing entire nickels every few minutes to the +fortunate and chesty mine superintendent from Mexico.</p> + +<p>Later, when the game of Horrible Fives broke up, Bert +and Lute Desten spoiled the Adagio from Beethoven’s +<i>Sonata Pathetique</i> by exaggeratedly ragging +to it in what Dick immediately named “The Loving +Slow-Drag,” till Paula broke down in a gale of +laughter and ceased from playing.</p> + +<p>New groupings occurred. A bridge table formed with +Weil, Rita, Bishop, and Dick. Donald Ware was driven +from his monopoly of Paula by the young people under +the leadership of Jeremy Braxton; while Graham and +O’Hay paired off in a window-seat and O’Hay +talked shop.</p> + +<p>After a time, in which all at the piano had sung Hawaiian +<i>hulas</i>, Paula sang alone to her own accompaniment. +She sang several German love-songs in succession, +although it was merely for the group about her and +not for the room; and Evan Graham, almost to his delight, +decided that at last he had found a weakness in her. +She might be a magnificent pianist, horsewoman, diver, +and swimmer, but it was patent, despite her singing +throat, that she was not a magnificent singer. This +conclusion he was quickly compelled to modify. A singer +she was, a consummate singer. Weakness was only comparative +after all. She lacked the magnificent voice. It was +a sweet voice, a rich voice, with the same warm-fibered +thrill of her laugh; but the volume so essential to +the great voice was not there. Ear and voice seemed +effortlessly true, and in her singing were feeling, +artistry, training, intelligence. But volume—­it +was scarcely a fair average, was his judgment.</p> + +<p>But quality—­there he halted. It was a woman’s +voice. It was haunted with richness of sex. In it +resided all the temperament in the world—­ +with all the restraint of discipline, was the next +step of his analysis. He had to admire the way she +refused to exceed the limitations of her voice. In +this she achieved triumphs.</p> + +<p>And, while he nodded absently to O’Hay’s +lecturette on the state of the—­opera, Graham +fell to wondering if Paula Forrest, thus so completely +the mistress of her temperament, might not be equally +mistress of her temperament in the deeper, passional +ways. There was a challenge there—­based +on curiosity, he conceded, but only partly so based; +and, over and beyond, and, deeper and far beneath, +a challenge to a man made in the immemorial image +of man.</p> + +<p>It was a challenge that bade him pause, and even look +up and down the great room and to the tree-trunked +roof far above, and to the flying gallery hung with +the spoils of the world, and to Dick Forrest, master +of all this material achievement and husband of the +woman, playing bridge, just as he worked, with all +his heart, his laughter ringing loud as he caught +Rita in renig. For Graham had the courage not to shun +the ultimate connotations. Behind the challenge in +his speculations lurked the woman. Paula Forrest was +splendidly, deliciously woman, all woman, unusually +woman. From the blow between the eyes of his first +striking sight of her, swimming the great stallion +in the pool, she had continued to witch-ride his man’s +imagination. He was anything but unused to women; and +his general attitude was that of being tired of the +mediocre sameness of them. To chance upon the unusual +woman was like finding the great pearl in a lagoon +fished out by a generation of divers.</p> + +<p>“Glad to see you’re still alive,” +Paula laughed to him, a little later.</p> + +<p>She was prepared to depart with Lute for bed. A second +bridge quartet had been arranged—­Ernestine, +Bert, Jeremy Braxton, and Graham; while O’Hay +and Bishop were already deep in a bout of two-handed +pinochle.</p> + +<p>“He’s really a charming Irishman when +he keeps off his one string,” Paula went on.</p> + +<p>“Which, I think I am fair, is music,” +Graham said.</p> + +<p>“And on music he is insufferable,” Lute +observed. “It’s the only thing he doesn’t +know the least thing about. He drives one frantic.”</p> + +<p>“Never mind,” Paula soothed, in gurgling +tones. “You will all be avenged. Dick just whispered +to me to get the philosophers up to-morrow night. +You know how they talk music. A musical critic is their +awful prey.”</p> + +<p>“Terrence said the other night that there was +no closed season on musical critics,” Lute contributed.</p> + +<p>“Terrence and Aaron will drive him to drink,” +Paula laughed her joy of anticipation. “And +Dar Hyal, alone, with his blastic theory of art, can +specially apply it to music to the confutation of all +the first words and the last. He doesn’t believe +a thing he says about blastism, any more than was +he serious when he danced the other evening. It’s +his bit of fun. He’s such a deep philosopher +that he has to get his fun somehow.”</p> + +<p>“And if O’Hay ever locks horns with Terrence,” +Lute prophesied, “I can see Terrence tucking +arm in arm with him, leading him down to the stag +room, and heating the argument with the absentest-minded +variety of drinks that ever O’Hay accomplished.”</p> + +<p>“Which means a very sick O’Hay next day,” +Paula continued her gurgles of anticipation.</p> + +<p>“I’ll tell him to do it!” exclaimed +Lute.</p> + +<p>“You mustn’t think we’re all bad,” +Paula protested to Graham. “It’s just +the spirit of the house. Dick likes it. He’s +always playing jokes himself. He relaxes that way. +I’ll wager, right now, it was Dick’s suggestion, +to Lute, and for Lute to carry out, for Terrence to +get O’Hay into the stag room. Now, ’fess +up, Lute.”</p> + +<p>“Well, I will say,” Lute answered with +meticulous circumspection, “that the idea was +not entirely original with me.”</p> + +<p>At this point, Ernestine joined them and appropriated +Graham with:</p> + +<p>“We’re all waiting for you. We’ve +cut, and you and I are partners. Besides, Paula’s +making her sleep noise. So say good night, and let +her go.”</p> + +<p>Paula had left for bed at ten o’clock. Not till +one did the bridge break up. Dick, his arm about Ernestine +in brotherly fashion, said good night to Graham where +one of the divided ways led to the watch tower, and +continued on with his pretty sister-in-law toward her +quarters.</p> + +<p>“Just a tip, Ernestine,” he said at parting, +his gray eyes frankly and genially on hers, but his +voice sufficiently serious to warn her.</p> + +<p>“What have I been doing now?” she pouted +laughingly.</p> + +<p>“Nothing... as yet. But don’t get started, +or you’ll be laying up a sore heart for yourself. +You’re only a kid yet—­eighteen; and +a darned nice, likable kid at that. Enough to make +’most any man sit up and take notice. But Evan +Graham is not ’most any man—­”</p> + +<p>“Oh, I can take care of myself,” she blurted +out in a fling of quick resentment.</p> + +<p>“But listen to me just the same. There comes +a time in the affairs of a girl when the love-bee +gets a buzzing with a very loud hum in her pretty +noddle. Then is the time she mustn’t make a mistake +and start in loving the wrong man. You haven’t +fallen in love with Evan Graham yet, and all you have +to do is just not to fall in love with him. He’s +not for you, nor for any young thing. He’s an +oldster, an ancient, and possibly has forgotten more +about love, romantic love, and young things, than +you’ll ever learn in a dozen lives. If he ever +marries again—­”</p> + +<p>“Again!” Ernestine broke in.</p> + +<p>“Why, he’s been a widower, my dear, for +over fifteen years.”</p> + +<p>“Then what of it?” she demanded defiantly.</p> + +<p>“Just this,” Dick continued quietly. “He’s +lived the young-thing romance, and lived it wonderfully; +and, from the fact that in fifteen years he has not +married again, means—­”</p> + +<p>“That he’s never recovered from his loss?” +Ernestine interpolated. “But that’s no +proof—­”</p> + +<p>“—­Means that he’s got over +his apprenticeship to wild young romance,” Dick +held on steadily. “All you have to do is look +at him and realize that he has not lacked opportunities, +and that, on occasion, some very fine women, real +wise women, mature women, have given him foot-races +that tested his wind and endurance. But so far they’ve +not succeeded in catching him. And as for young things, +you know how filled the world is with them for a man +like him. Think it over, and just keep your heart-thoughts +away from him. If you don’t let your heart start +to warm toward him, it will save your heart from a +grievous chill later on.”</p> + +<p>He took one of her hands in his, and drew her against +him, an arm soothingly about her shoulder. For several +minutes of silence Dick idly speculated on what her +thoughts might be.</p> + +<p>“You know, we hard-bitten old fellows—­” +he began half-apologetically, half-humorously.</p> + +<p>But she made a restless movement of distaste, and +cried out:</p> + +<p>“Are the only ones worth while! The young men +are all youngsters, and that’s what’s +the matter with them. They’re full of life, and +coltish spirits, and dance, and song. But they’re +not serious. They’re not big. They’re +not—­oh, they don’t give a girl that +sense of all-wiseness, of proven strength, of, of... +well, of manhood.”</p> + +<p>“I understand,” Dick murmured. “But +please do not forget to glance at the other side of +the shield. You glowing young creatures of women must +affect the old fellows in precisely similar ways. They +may look on you as toys, playthings, delightful things +to whom to teach a few fine foolishnesses, but not +as comrades, not as equals, not as sharers—­full +sharers. Life is something to be learned. They have +learned it... some of it. But young things like you, +Ernestine, have you learned any of it yet?”</p> + +<p>“Tell me,” she asked abruptly, almost +tragically, “about this wild young romance, +about this young thing when he was young, fifteen years +ago.”</p> + +<p>“Fifteen?” Dick replied promptly. “Eighteen. +They were married three years before she died. In +fact—­figure it out for yourself—­they +were actually married, by a Church of England dominie, +and living in wedlock, about the same moment that +you were squalling your first post-birth squalls in +this world.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, yes—­go on,” she urged +nervously. “What was she like?”</p> + +<p>“She was a resplendent, golden-brown, or tan-golden +half-caste, a Polynesian queen whose mother had been +a queen before her, whose father was an Oxford man, +an English gentleman, and a real scholar. Her name +was Nomare. She was Queen of Huahoa. She was barbaric. +He was young enough to out-barbaric her. There was +nothing sordid in their marriage. He was no penniless +adventurer. She brought him her island kingdom and +forty thousand subjects. He brought to that island +his fortune—­and it was no inconsiderable +fortune. He built a palace that no South Sea island +ever possessed before or will ever possess again. +It was the real thing, grass-thatched, hand-hewn beams +that were lashed with cocoanut sennit, and all the +rest. It was rooted in the island; it sprouted out +of the island; it <i>belonged</i>, although he +fetched Hopkins out from New York to plan it.</p> + +<p>“Heavens! they had their own royal yacht, their +mountain house, their canoe house—­the last +a veritable palace in itself. I know. I have been +at great feasts in it—­though it was after +their time. Nomare was dead, and no one knew where +Graham was, and a king of collateral line was the +ruler.</p> + +<p>“I told you he out-barbaricked her. Their dinner +service was gold.—­ Oh, what’s the +use in telling any more. He was only a boy. She was +half-English, half-Polynesian, and a really and truly +queen. They were flowers of their races. They were +a pair of wonderful children. They lived a fairy tale. +And... well, Ernestine, the years have passed, and +Evan Graham has passed from the realm of the young +thing. It will be a remarkable woman that will ever +infatuate him now. Besides, he’s practically +broke. Though he didn’t wastrel his money. As +much misfortune, and more, than anything else.”</p> + +<p>“Paula would be more his kind,” Ernestine +said meditatively.</p> + +<p>“Yes, indeed,” Dick agreed. “Paula, +or any woman as remarkable as Paula, would attract +him a thousand times more than all the sweet, young, +lovely things like you in the world. We oldsters have +our standards, you know.”</p> + +<p>“And I’ll have to put up with the youngsters,” +Ernestine sighed.</p> + +<p>“In the meantime, yes,” he chuckled. “Remembering, +always, that you, too, in time, may grow into the +remarkable, mature woman, who can outfoot a man like +Evan in a foot-race of love for possession.”</p> + +<p>“But I shall be married long before that,” +she pouted.</p> + +<p>“Which will be your good fortune, my dear. And, +now, good night. And you are not angry with me?”</p> + +<p>She smiled pathetically and shook her head, put up +her lips to be kissed, then said as they parted:</p> + +<p>“I promise not to be angry if you will only +show me the way that in the end will lead me to ancient +graybeards like you and Graham.”</p> + +<p>Dick Forrest, turning off lights as he went, penetrated +the library, and, while selecting half a dozen reference +volumes on mechanics and physics, smiled as if pleased +with himself at recollection of the interview with +his sister-in-law. He was confident that he had spoken +in time and not a moment too soon. But, half way up +the book-concealed spiral staircase that led to his +work room, a remark of Ernestine, echoing in his consciousness, +made him stop from very suddenness to lean his shoulder +against the wall.—­<i>"Paula would be more +his kind."</i></p> + +<p>“Silly ass!” he laughed aloud, continuing +on his way. “And married a dozen years!”</p> + +<p>Nor did he think again about it, until, in bed, on +his sleeping porch, he took a glance at his barometers +and thermometers, and prepared to settle down to the +solution of the electrical speculation that had been +puzzling him. Then it was, as he peered across the +great court to his wife’s dark wing and dark +sleeping porch to see if she were still waking, that +Ernestine’s remark again echoed. He dismissed +it with a “Silly ass!” of scorn, lighted +a cigarette, and began running, with trained eye, +the indexes of the books and marking the pages sought +with matches.</p> + +<h1 align="center" style="margin-top: 2em;font-variant: small-caps">Chapter XV</h1> + +<p>It was long after ten in the morning, when Graham, +straying about restlessly and wondering if Paula Forrest +ever appeared before the middle of the day, wandered +into the music room. Despite the fact that he was +a several days’ guest in the Big House, so big +was it that the music room was new territory. It was +an exquisite room, possibly thirty-five by sixty and +rising to a lofty trussed ceiling where a warm golden +light was diffused from a skylight of yellow glass. +Red tones entered largely into the walls and furnishing, +and the place, to him, seemed to hold the hush of +music.</p> + +<p>Graham was lazily contemplating a Keith with its inevitable +triumph of sun-gloried atmosphere and twilight-shadowed +sheep, when, from the tail of his eye, he saw his +hostess come in from the far entrance. Again, the +sight of her, that was a picture, gave him the little +catch-breath of gasp. She was clad entirely in white, +and looked very young and quite tall in the sweeping +folds of a <i>holoku</i> of elaborate simplicity +and apparent shapelessness. He knew the <i>holoku</i> +in the home of its origin, where, on the <i>lanais</i> +of Hawaii, it gave charm to a plain woman and double-folded +the charm of a charming woman.</p> + +<p>While they smiled greeting across the room, he was +noting the set of her body, the poise of head and +frankness of eyes—­all of which seemed articulate +with a friendly, comradely, “Hello, friends.” +At least such was the form Graham’s fancy took +as she came toward him.</p> + +<p>“You made a mistake with this room,” he +said gravely.</p> + +<p>“No, don’t say that! But how?”</p> + +<p>“It should have been longer, much longer, twice +as long at least.”</p> + +<p>“Why?” she demanded, with a disapproving +shake of head, while he delighted in the girlish color +in her cheeks that gave the lie to her thirty-eight +years.</p> + +<p>“Because, then,” he answered, “you +should have had to walk twice as far this morning +and my pleasure of watching you would have been correspondingly +increased. I’ve always insisted that the <i>holoku</i> +is the most charming garment ever invented for women.”</p> + +<p>“Then it was my <i>holoku</i> and not I,” +she retorted. “I see you are like Dick—­always +with a string on your compliments, and lo, when we +poor sillies start to nibble, back goes the compliment +dragging at the end of the string.</p> + +<p>“Now I want to show you the room,” she +hurried on, closing his disclaimer. “Dick gave +me a free hand with it. It’s all mine, you see, +even to its proportions.”</p> + +<p>“And the pictures?”</p> + +<p>“I selected them,” she nodded, “every +one of them, and loved them onto the walls myself. +Although Dick did quarrel with me over that Vereschagin. +He agreed on the two Millets and the Corot over there, +and on that Isabey; and even conceded that some Vereschagins +might do in a music room, but not that particular +Vereschagin. He’s jealous for our local artists, +you see. He wanted more of them, wanted to show his +appreciation of home talent.”</p> + +<p>“I don’t know your Pacific Coast men’s +work very well,” Graham said. “Tell me +about them. Show me that—­Of course, that’s +a Keith, there; but whose is that next one? It’s +beautiful.”</p> + +<p>“A McComas—­” she was answering; +and Graham, with a pleasant satisfaction, was settling +himself to a half-hour’s talk on pictures, when +Donald Ware entered with questing eyes that lighted +up at sight of the Little Lady.</p> + +<p>His violin was under his arm, and he crossed to the +piano in a brisk, business-like way and proceeded +to lay out music.</p> + +<p>“We’re going to work till lunch,” +Paula explained to Graham. “He swears I’m +getting abominably rusty, and I think he’s half +right. We’ll see you at lunch. You can stay +if you care, of course; but I warn you it’s +really going to be work. And we’re going swimming +this afternoon. Four o’clock at the tank, Dick +says. Also, he says he’s got a new song he’s +going to sing then.—­What time is it, Mr. +Ware?”</p> + +<p>“Ten minutes to eleven,” the musician +answered briefly, with a touch of sharpness.</p> + +<p>“You’re ahead of time—­the engagement +was for eleven. And till eleven you’ll have +to wait, sir. I must run and see Dick, first. I haven’t +said good morning to him yet.”</p> + +<p>Well Paula knew her husband’s hours. Scribbled +secretly in the back of the note-book that lay always +on the reading stand by her couch were hieroglyphic +notes that reminded her that he had coffee at six-thirty; +might possibly be caught in bed with proof-sheets or +books till eight-forty-five, if not out riding; was +inaccessible between nine and ten, dictating correspondence +to Blake; was inaccessible between ten and eleven, +conferring with managers and foremen, while Bonbright, +the assistant secretary, took down, like any court +reporter, every word uttered by all parties in the +rapid-fire interviews.</p> + +<p>At eleven, unless there were unexpected telegrams +or business, she could usually count on finding Dick +alone for a space, although invariably busy. Passing +the secretaries’ room, the click of a typewriter +informed her that one obstacle was removed. In the +library, the sight of Mr. Bonbright hunting a book +for Mr. Manson, the Shorthorn manager, told her that +Dick’s hour with his head men was over.</p> + +<p>She pressed the button that swung aside a section +of filled book-shelves and revealed the tiny spiral +of steel steps that led up to Dick’s work room. +At the top, a similar pivoting section of shelves +swung obediently to her press of button and let her +noiselessly into his room. A shade of vexation passed +across her face as she recognized Jeremy Braxton’s +voice. She paused in indecision, neither seeing nor +being seen.</p> + +<p>“If we flood we flood,” the mine superintendent +was saying. “It will cost a mint—­yes, +half a dozen mints—­to pump out again. And +it’s a damned shame to drown the old Harvest +that way.”</p> + +<p>“But for this last year the books show that +we’ve worked at a positive loss,” Paula +heard Dick take up. “Every petty bandit from +Huerta down to the last peon who’s stolen a +horse has gouged us. It’s getting too stiff—­taxes +extraordinary—­bandits, revolutionists, and +federals. We could survive it, if only the end were +in sight; but we have no guarantee that this disorder +may not last a dozen or twenty years.”</p> + +<p>“Just the same, the old Harvest—­think +of flooding her!” the superintendent protested.</p> + +<p>“And think of Villa,” Dick replied, with +a sharp laugh the bitterness of which did not escape +Paula. “If he wins he says he’s going to +divide all the land among the peons. The next logical +step will be the mines. How much do you think we’ve +coughed up to the constitutionalists in the past twelvemonth?”</p> + +<p>“Over a hundred and twenty thousand,” +Braxton answered promptly. “Not counting that +fifty thousand cold bullion to Torenas before he retreated. +He jumped his army at Guaymas and headed for Europe +with it—­I wrote you all that.”</p> + +<p>“If we keep the workings afloat, Jeremy, they’ll +go on gouging, gouge without end, Amen. I think we’d +better flood. If we can make wealth more efficiently +than those rapscallions, let us show them that we can +destroy wealth with the same facility.”</p> + +<p>“That’s what I tell them. And they smile +and repeat that such and such a free will offering, +under exigent circumstances, would be very acceptable +to the revolutionary chiefs—­meaning themselves. +The big chiefs never finger one peso in ten of it. +Good Lord! I show them what we’ve done. Steady +work for five thousand peons. Wages raised from ten +centavos a day to a hundred and ten. I show them peons—­ten-centavo +men when we took them, and five-peso men when I showed +them. And the same old smile and the same old itching +palm, and the same old acceptability of a free will +offering from us to the sacred cause of the revolution. +By God! Old Diaz was a robber, but he was a decent +robber. I said to Arranzo: ’If we shut down, +here’s five thousand Mexicans out of a job—­what’ll +you do with them?’ And Arranzo smiled and answered +me pat. ‘Do with them?’ he said. ’Why, +put guns in their hands and march ‘em down to +take Mexico City.’”</p> + +<p>In imagination Paula could see Dick’s disgusted +shrug of shoulders as she heard him say:</p> + +<p>“The curse of it is—­that the stuff +is there, and that we’re the only fellows that +can get it out. The Mexicans can’t do it. They +haven’t the brains. All they’ve got is +the guns, and they’re making us shell out more +than we make. There’s only one thing for us, +Jeremy. We’ll forget profits for a year or so, +lay off the men, and just keep the engineer force +on and the pumping going.”</p> + +<p>“I threw that into Arranzo,” Jeremy Braxton’s +voice boomed. “And what was his comeback? That +if we laid off the peons, he’d see to it that +the engineers laid off, too, and the mine could flood +and be damned to us.—­No, he didn’t +say that last. He just smiled, but the smile meant +the same thing. For two cents I’d a-wrung his +yellow neck, except that there’d have been another +patriot in his boots and in my office next day proposing +a stiffer gouge.</p> + +<p>“So Arranzo got his ‘bit,’ and, on top +of it, before he went across to join the main bunch +around Juarez, he let his men run off three hundred +of our mules—­thirty thousand dollars’ +worth of mule-flesh right there, after I’d sweetened +him, too. The yellow skunk!”</p> + +<p>“Who is revolutionary chief in our diggings +right now?” Paula heard her husband ask with +one of his abrupt shifts that she knew of old time +tokened his drawing together the many threads of a +situation and proceeding to action.</p> + +<p>“Raoul Bena.”</p> + +<p>“What’s his rank?”</p> + +<p>“Colonel—­he’s got about seventy +ragamuffins.”</p> + +<p>“What did he do before he quit work?”</p> + +<p>“Sheep-herder.”</p> + +<p>“Very well.” Dick’s utterance was +quick and sharp. “You’ve got to play-act. +Become a patriot. Hike back as fast as God will let +you. Sweeten this Raoul Bena. He’ll see through +your play, or he’s no Mexican. Sweeten him and +tell him you’ll make him a general—–­a +second Villa.”</p> + +<p>“Lord, Lord, yes, but how?” Jeremy Braxton +demanded.</p> + +<p>“By putting him at the head of an army of five +thousand. Lay off the men. Make him make them volunteer. +We’re safe, because Huerta is doomed. Tell him +you’re a real patriot. Give each man a rifle. +We’ll stand that for a last gouge, and it will +prove you a patriot. Promise every man his job back +when the war is over. Let them and Raoul Bena depart +with your blessing. Keep on the pumping force only. +And if we cut out profits for a year or so, at the +same time we are cutting down losses. And perhaps +we won’t have to flood old Harvest after all.”</p> + +<p>Paula smiled to herself at Dick’s solution as +she stole back down the spiral on her way to the music +room. She was depressed, but not by the Harvest Group +situation. Ever since her marriage there had always +been trouble in the working of the Mexican mines Dick +had inherited. Her depression was due to her having +missed her morning greeting to him. But this depression +vanished at meeting Graham, who had lingered with +Ware at the piano and who, at her coming, was evidencing +signs of departure.</p> + +<p>“Don’t run away,” she urged. “Stay +and witness a spectacle of industry that should nerve +you up to starting on that book Dick has been telling +me about.”</p> + +<h1 align="center" style="margin-top: 2em;font-variant: small-caps">Chapter XVI</h1> + +<p>On Dick’s face, at lunch, there was no sign +of trouble over the Harvest Group; nor could anybody +have guessed that Jeremy Braxton’s visit had +boded anything less gratifying than a report of unfailing +earnings. Although Adolph Weil had gone on the early +morning train, which advertised that the business +which had brought him had been transacted with Dick +at some unheard of hour, Graham discovered a greater +company than ever at the table. Besides a Mrs. Tully, +who seemed a stout and elderly society matron, and +whom Graham could not make out, there were three new +men, of whose identity he gleaned a little: a Mr. +Gulhuss, State Veterinary; a Mr. Deacon, a portrait +painter of evident note on the Coast; and a Captain +Lester, then captain of a Pacific Mail liner, who +had sailed skipper for Dick nearly twenty years before +and who had helped Dick to his navigation.</p> + +<p>The meal was at its close, and the superintendent +was glancing at his watch, when Dick said:</p> + +<p>“Jeremy, I want to show you what I’ve +been up to. We’ll go right now. You’ll +have time on your way to the train.”</p> + +<p>“Let us all go,” Paula suggested, “and +make a party of it. I’m dying to see it myself, +Dick’s been so obscure about it.”</p> + +<p>Sanctioned by Dick’s nod, she was ordering machines +and saddle horses the next moment.</p> + +<p>“What is it?” Graham queried, when she +had finished.</p> + +<p>“Oh, one of Dick’s stunts. He’s +always after something new. This is an invention. +He swears it will revolutionize farming—­that +is, small farming. I have the general idea of it, +but I haven’t seen it set up yet. It was ready +a week ago, but there was some delay about a cable +or something concerning an adjustment.”</p> + +<p>“There’s billions in it... if it works,” +Dick smiled over the table. “Billions for the +farmers of the world, and perhaps a trifle of royalty +for me... if it works.”</p> + +<p>“But what is it?” O’Hay asked. “Music +in the dairy barns to make the cows give down their +milk more placidly?”</p> + +<p>“Every farmer his own plowman while sitting +on his front porch,” Dick baffled back. “In +fact, the labor-eliminating intermediate stage between +soil production and sheer laboratory production of +food. But wait till you see it. Gulhuss, this is where +I kill my own business, if it works, for it will do +away with the one horse of every ten-acre farmer between +here and Jericho.”</p> + +<p>In ranch machines and on saddle animals, the company +was taken a mile beyond the dairy center, where a +level field was fenced squarely off and contained, +as Dick announced, just precisely ten acres.</p> + +<p>“Behold,” he said, “the one-man +and no-horse farm where the farmer sits on the porch. +Please imagine the porch.”</p> + +<p>In the center of the field was a stout steel pole, +at least twenty feet in height and guyed very low.</p> + +<p>From a drum on top of the pole a thin wire cable ran +to the extreme edge of the field and was attached +to the steering lever of a small gasoline tractor. +About the tractor two mechanics fluttered. At command +from Dick they cranked the motor and started it on +its way.</p> + +<p>“This is the porch,” Dick said. “Just +imagine we’re all that future farmer sitting +in the shade and reading the morning paper while the +manless, horseless plowing goes on.”</p> + +<p>Alone, unguided, the drum on the head of the pole +in the center winding up the cable, the tractor, at +the circumference permitted by the cable, turned a +single furrow as it described a circle, or, rather, +an inward trending spiral about the field.</p> + +<p>“No horse, no driver, no plowman, nothing but +the farmer to crank the tractor and start it on its +way,” Dick exulted, as the uncanny mechanism +turned up the brown soil and continued unguided, ever +spiraling toward the field’s center. “Plow, +harrow, roll, seed, fertilize, cultivate, harvest—­all +from the front porch. And where the farmer can buy +juice from a power company, all he, or his wife, will +have to do is press the button, and he to his newspaper, +and she to her pie-crust.”</p> + +<p>“All you need, now, to make it absolutely perfect,” +Graham praised, “is to square the circle.”</p> + +<p>“Yes,” Mr. Gulhuss agreed. “As it +is, a circle in a square field loses some acreage.”</p> + +<p>Graham’s face advertised a mental arithmetic +trance for a minute, when he announced: “Loses, +roughly, three acres out of every ten.”</p> + +<p>“Sure,” Dick concurred. “But the +farmer has to have his front porch somewhere on his +ten acres. And the front porch represents the house, +the barn, the chicken yard and the various outbuildings. +Very well. Let him get tradition out of his mind, +and, instead of building these things in the center +of his ten acres, let him build them on the three +acres of fringe. And let him plant his fruit and shade +trees and berry bushes on the fringe. When you come +to consider it, the traditionary method of erecting +the buildings in the center of a rectangular ten acres +compels him to plow around the center in broken rectangles.”</p> + +<p>Gulhuss nodded enthusiastically. “Sure. And +there’s always the roadway from the center out +to the county road or right of way. That breaks the +efficiency of his plowing. Break ten acres into the +consequent smaller rectangles, and it’s expensive +cultivation.”</p> + +<p>“Wish navigation was as automatic,” was +Captain Lester’s contribution.</p> + +<p>“Or portrait painting,” laughed Rita Wainwright +with a significant glance at Mr. Deacon.</p> + +<p>“Or musical criticism,” Lute remarked, +with no glance at all, but with a pointedness of present +company that brought from O’Hay:</p> + +<p>“Or just being a charming young woman.”</p> + +<p>“What price for the outfit?” Jeremy Braxton +asked.</p> + +<p>“Right now, we could manufacture and lay down, +at a proper profit, for five hundred. If the thing +came into general use, with up to date, large-scale +factory methods, three hundred. But say five hundred. +And write off fifteen per cent, for interest and constant, +it would cost the farmer seventy dollars a year. What +ten-acre farmer, on two-hundred-dollar land, who +keeps books, can keep a horse for seventy dollars +a year? And on top of that, it would save him, in labor, +personal or hired, at the abjectest minimum, two hundred +dollars a year.”</p> + +<p>“But what guides it?” Rita asked.</p> + +<p>“The drum on the post. The drum is graduated +for the complete radius—­ which took some +tall figuring, I assure you—­and the cable, +winding around the drum and shortening, draws the +tractor in toward the center.”</p> + +<p>“There are lots of objections to its general +introduction, even among small farmers,” Gulhuss +said.</p> + +<p>Dick nodded affirmation.</p> + +<p>“Sure,” he replied. “I have over +forty noted down and classified. And I’ve as +many more for the machine itself. If the thing is a +success, it will take a long time to perfect it and +introduce it.”</p> + +<p>Graham found himself divided between watching the +circling tractor and casting glances at the picture +Paula Forrest was on her mount. It was her first day +on The Fawn, which was the Palomina mare Hennessy had +trained for her. Graham smiled with secret approval +of her femininity; for Paula, whether she had designed +her habit for the mare, or had selected one most peculiarly +appropriate, had achieved a triumph.</p> + +<p>In place of a riding coat, for the afternoon was warm, +she wore a tan linen blouse with white turnback collar. +A short skirt, made like the lower part of a riding +coat, reached the knees, and from knees to entrancing +little bespurred champagne boots tight riding trousers +showed. Skirt and trousers were of fawn-colored silk +corduroy. Soft white gauntlets on her hands matched +with the collar in the one emphasis of color. Her +head was bare, the hair done tight and low around +her ears and nape of neck.</p> + +<p>“I don’t see how you can keep such a skin +and expose yourself to the sun this way,” Graham +ventured, in mild criticism.</p> + +<p>“I don’t,” she smiled with a dazzle +of white teeth. “That is, I don’t expose +my face this way more than a few times a year. I’d +like to, because I love the sun-gold burn in my hair; +but I don’t dare a thorough tanning.”</p> + +<p>The mare frisked, and a breeze of air blew back a +flap of skirt, showing an articulate knee where the +trouser leg narrowed tightly over it. Again Graham +visioned the white round of knee pressed into the +round muscles of the swimming Mountain Lad, as he noted +the firm knee-grip on her pigskin English saddle, +quite new and fawn-colored to match costume and horse.</p> + +<p>When the magneto on the tractor went wrong, and the +mechanics busied themselves with it in the midst of +the partly plowed field, the company, under Paula’s +guidance, leaving Dick behind with his invention, +resolved itself into a pilgrimage among the brood-centers +on the way to the swimming tank. Mr. Crellin, the hog-manager, +showed them Lady Isleton, who, with her prodigious, +fat, recent progeny of eleven, won various naïve encomiums, +while Mr. Crellin warmly proclaimed at least four +times, “And not a runt, not a runt, in the bunch.”</p> + +<p>Other glorious brood-sows, of Berkshire, Duroc-Jersey, +and O. I. C. blood, they saw till they were wearied, +and new-born kids and lambs, and rotund does and ewes. +From center to center, Paula kept the telephones warning +ahead of the party’s coming, so that Mr. Manson +waited to exhibit the great King Polo, and his broad-backed +Shorthorn harem, and the Shorthorn harems of bulls +that were only little less than King Polo in magnificence +and record; and Parkman, the Jersey manager, was on +hand, with staffed assistants, to parade Sensational +Drake, Golden Jolly, Fontaine Royal, Oxford Master, +and Karnak’s Fairy Boy—­blue ribbon +bulls, all, and founders and scions of noble houses +of butter-fat renown, and Rosaire Queen, Standby’s +Dam, Golden Jolly’s Lass, Olga’s Pride, +and Gertie of Maitlands—­equally blue-ribboned +and blue-blooded Jersey matrons in the royal realm +of butter-fat; and Mr. Mendenhall, who had charge +of the Shires, proudly exhibited a string of mighty +stallions, led by the mighty Mountain Lad, and a longer +string of matrons, headed by the Fotherington Princess +of the silver whinny. Even old Alden Bessie, the Princess’s +dam, retired to but part-day’s work, he sent +for that they might render due honor to so notable +a dam.</p> + +<p>As four o’clock approached, Donald Ware, not +keen on swimming, returned in one of the machines +to the Big House, and Mr. Gulhuss remained to discuss +Shires with Mr. Mendenhall. Dick was at the tank when +the party arrived, and the girls were immediately insistent +for the new song.</p> + +<p>“It isn’t exactly a new song,” Dick +explained, his gray eyes twinkling roguery, “and +it’s not my song. It was sung in Japan before +I was born, and, I doubt not, before Columbus discovered +America. Also, it is a duet—­a competitive +duet with forfeit penalties attached. Paula will have +to sing it with me.—­I’ll teach you. +Sit down there, that’s right.—­Now +all the rest of you gather around and sit down.”</p> + +<p>Still in her riding habit, Paula sat down on the concrete, +facing her husband, in the center of the sitting audience. +Under his direction, timing her movements to his, +she slapped her hands on her knees, slapped her palms +together, and slapped her palms against his palms +much in the fashion of the nursery game of “Bean +Porridge Hot.” Then he sang the song, which +was short and which she quickly picked up, singing +it with him and clapping the accent. While the air +of it was orientally catchy, it was chanted slowly, +almost monotonously, but it was quickly provocative +of excitement to the spectators:</p> + +<p>  “<i>Jong-Keena, Jong-Keena,<br> +    Jong-Jong, Keena-Keena,<br> +    Yo-ko-ham-a, Nag-a-sak-i,<br> +    Kobe-mar-o—­hoy!!!</i>”</p> + +<p>The last syllable, <i>hoy</i>, was uttered suddenly, +explosively, and an octave and more higher than the +pitch of the melody. At the same moment that it was +uttered, Paula’s and Dick’s hands were +abruptly shot toward each other’s, either clenched +or open. The point of the game was that Paula’s +hands, open or closed, at the instant of uttering +hoy, should match Dick’s. Thus, the first time, +she did match him, both his and her hands being closed, +whereupon he took off his hat and tossed it into Lute’s +lap.</p> + +<p>“My forfeit,” he explained. “Come +on, Paul, again.” And again they sang and clapped:</p> + +<p>  “<i>Jong-Keena, Jong-Keena,<br> +    Jong-Jong, Keena-Keena,<br> +    Yo-ko-ham-a, Nag-a-sak-i,<br> +    Kobe-mar-o—­hoy!!!</i>”</p> + +<p>This time, with the <i>hoy</i>, her hands were +closed and his were open.</p> + +<p>“Forfeit!—­forfeit!” the girls +cried.</p> + +<p>She looked her costume over with alarm, asking, “What +can I give?”</p> + +<p>“A hair pin,” Dick advised; and one of +her turtleshell hair pins joined his hat in Lute’s +lap.</p> + +<p>“Bother it!” she exclaimed, when the last +of her hair pins had gone the same way, she having +failed seven times to Dick’s once. “I can’t +see why I should be so slow and stupid. Besides, Dick, +you’re too clever. I never could out-guess you +or out-anticipate you.”</p> + +<p>Again they sang the song. She lost, and, to Mrs. Tully’s +shocked “Paula!” she forfeited a spur +and threatened a boot when the remaining spur should +be gone. A winning streak of three compelled Dick to +give up his wrist watch and both spurs. Then she lost +her wrist watch and the remaining spur.</p> + +<p>“Jong-Keena, Jong-Keena,” they began again, +while Mrs. Tully remonstrated, “Now, Paula, +you simply must stop this.—­Dick, you ought +to be ashamed of yourself.”</p> + +<p>But Dick, emitting a triumphant “<i>Hoy!</i>” +won, and joined in the laughter as Paula took off +one of her little champagne boots and added it to +the heap in Lute’s lap.</p> + +<p>“It’s all right, Aunt Martha,” Paula +assured Mrs. Tully. “Mr. Ware’s not here, +and he’s the only one who would be shocked.—­Come +on, Dick. You can’t win every time.”</p> + +<p>“Jong-Keena, Jong-Keena,” she chanted +on with her husband. The repetition, at first slow, +had accelerated steadily, so that now they fairly +rippled through with it, while their slapping, striking +palms made a continuous patter. The exercise and excitement +had added to the sun’s action on her skin, so +that her laughing face was all a rosy glow.</p> + +<p>Evan Graham, a silent spectator, was aware of hurt +and indignity. He knew the “Jong-Keena” +of old time from the geishas of the tea houses of +Nippon, and, despite the unconventionality that ruled +the Forrests and the Big House, he experienced shock +in that Paula should take part in such a game. It +did not enter his head at the moment that he would +have been merely curious to see how far the madness +would go had the player been Lute, or Ernestine, or +Rita. Not till afterward did he realize that his concern +and sense of outrage were due to the fact that the +player was Paula, and that, therefore, she was bulking +bigger in his imagination than he was conscious of. +What he was conscious of at the moment was that he +was growing angry and that he had deliberately to +check himself from protesting.</p> + +<p>By this time Dick’s cigarette case and matches +and Paula’s second boot, belt, skirt-pin, and +wedding ring had joined the mound of forfeits. Mrs. +Tully, her face set in stoic resignation, was silent.</p> + +<p>“Jong-Keena, Jong-Keena,” Paula laughed +and sang on, and Graham heard Ernestine laugh to Bert, +“I don’t see what she can spare next.”</p> + +<p>“Well, you know her,” he heard Bert answer. +“She’s game once she gets started, and +it certainly looks like she’s started.”</p> + +<p>“<i>Hoy</i>!” Paula and Dick cried +simultaneously, as they thrust out their hands.</p> + +<p>But Dick’s were closed, and hers were open. +Graham watched her vainly quest her person for the +consequent forfeit.</p> + +<p>“Come on, Lady Godiva,” Dick commanded. +“You hae sung, you hae danced; now pay the piper.”</p> + +<p>“Was the man a fool?” was Graham’s +thought. “And a man with a wife like that.”</p> + +<p>“Well,” Paula sighed, her fingers playing +with the fastenings of her blouse, “if I must, +I must.”</p> + +<p>Raging inwardly, Graham averted his gaze, and kept +it averted. There was a pause, in which he knew everybody +must be hanging on what she would do next. Then came +a giggle from Ernestine, a burst of laughter from +all, and, “A frame-up!” from Bert, that +overcame Graham’s resoluteness. He looked quickly. +The Little Lady’s blouse was off, and, from +the waist up, she appeared in her swimming suit. It +was evident that she had dressed over it for the ride.</p> + +<p>“Come on, Lute—­you next,” Dick +was challenging.</p> + +<p>But Lute, not similarly prepared for <i>Jong-Keena</i>, +blushingly led the retreat of the girls to the dressing +rooms.</p> + +<p>Graham watched Paula poise at the forty-foot top of +the diving scaffold and swan-dive beautifully into +the tank; heard Bert’s admiring “Oh, you +Annette Kellerman!” and, still chagrined by the +trick that had threatened to outrage him, fell to wondering +about the wonder woman, the Little Lady of the Big +House, and how she had happened so wonderfully to +be. As he fetched down the length of tank, under water, +moving with leisurely strokes and with open eyes watching +the shoaling bottom, it came to him that he did not +know anything about her. She was Dick Forrest’s +wife. That was all he knew. How she had been born, +how she had lived, how and where her past had been—­of +all this he knew nothing.</p> + +<p>Ernestine had told him that Lute and she were half +sisters of Paula. That was one bit of data, at any +rate. (Warned by the increasing brightness of the +bottom that he had nearly reached the end of the tank, +and recognizing Dick’s and Bert’s legs +intertwined in what must be a wrestling bout, Graham +turned about, still under water, and swam back a score +or so of feet.) There was that Mrs. Tully whom Paula +had addressed as Aunt Martha. Was she truly an aunt? +Or was she a courtesy Aunt through sisterhood with +the mother of Lute and Ernestine?</p> + +<p>He broke surface, was hailed by the others to join +in bull-in-the-ring; in which strenuous sport, for +the next half hour, he was compelled more than once +to marvel at the litheness and agility, as well as +strategy, of Paula in her successful efforts at escaping +through the ring. Concluding the game through weariness, +breathing hard, the entire party raced the length +of the tank and crawled out to rest in the sunshine +in a circle about Mrs. Tully.</p> + +<p>Soon there was more fun afoot, and Paula was contending +impossible things with Mrs. Tully.</p> + +<p>“Now, Aunt Martha, just because you never learned +to swim is no reason for you to take such a position. +I am a real swimmer, and I tell you I can dive right +into the tank here, and stay under for ten minutes.”</p> + +<p>“Nonsense, child,” Mrs. Tully beamed. +“Your father, when he was young, a great deal +younger than you, my dear, could stay under water longer +than any other man; and his record, as I know, was +three minutes and forty seconds, as I very well know, +for I held the watch myself and kept the time when +he won against Harry Selby on a wager.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, I know my father was some man in his time,” +Paula swaggered; “but times have changed. If +I had the old dear here right now, in all his youthful +excellence, I’d drown him if he tried to stay +under water with me. Ten minutes? Of course I can +do ten minutes. And I will. You hold the watch, Aunt +Martha, and time me. Why, it’s as easy as—­”</p> + +<p>“Shooting fish in a bucket,” Dick completed +for her.</p> + +<p>Paula climbed to the platform above the springboard.</p> + +<p>“Time me when I’m in the air,” she +said.</p> + +<p>“Make your turn and a half,” Dick called.</p> + +<p>She nodded, smiled, and simulated a prodigious effort +at filling her lungs to their utmost capacity. Graham +watched enchanted. A diver himself, he had rarely +seen the turn and a half attempted by women other +than professionals. Her wet suit of light blue and +green silk clung closely to her, showing the lines +of her justly proportioned body. With what appeared +to be an agonized gulp for the last cubic inch of +air her lungs could contain, she sprang up, out, and +down, her body vertical and stiff, her legs straight, +her feet close together as they impacted on the springboard +end. Flung into the air by the board, she doubled +her body into a ball, made a complete revolution, then +straightened out in perfect diver’s form, and +in a perfect dive, with scarcely a ripple, entered +the water.</p> + +<p>“A Toledo blade would have made more splash,” +was Graham’s verdict.</p> + +<p>“If only I could dive like that,” Ernestine +breathed her admiration. “But I never shall. +Dick says diving is a matter of timing, and that’s +why Paula does it so terribly well. She’s got +the sense of time—­”</p> + +<p>“And of abandon,” Graham added.</p> + +<p>“Of willed abandon,” Dick qualified.</p> + +<p>“Of relaxation by effort,” Graham agreed. +“I’ve never seen a professional do so +perfect a turn and a half.”</p> + +<p>“And I’m prouder of it than she is,” +Dick proclaimed. “You see, I taught her, though +I confess it was an easy task. She coordinates almost +effortlessly. And that, along with her will and sense +of time—­ why her first attempt was better +than fair.”</p> + +<p>“Paula is a remarkable woman,” Mrs. Tully +said proudly, her eyes fluttering between the second +hand of the watch and the unbroken surface of the +pool. “Women never swim so well as men. But she +does.—­ Three minutes and forty seconds! +She’s beaten her father!”</p> + +<p>“But she won’t stay under any five minutes, +much less ten,” Dick solemnly stated. “She’ll +burst her lungs first.”</p> + +<p>At four minutes, Mrs. Tully began to show excitement +and to look anxiously from face to face. Captain Lester, +not in the secret, scrambled to his feet with an oath +and dived into the tank.</p> + +<p>“Something has happened,” Mrs. Tully said +with controlled quietness. “She hurt herself +on that dive. Go in after her, you men.”</p> + +<p>But Graham and Bert and Dick, meeting under water, +gleefully grinned and squeezed hands. Dick made signs +for them to follow, and led the way through the dark-shadowed +water into the crypt, where, treading water, they +joined Paula in subdued whisperings and gigglings.</p> + +<p>“Just came to make sure you were all right,” +Dick explained. “And now we’ve got to +beat it.—­You first, Bert. I’ll follow +Evan.”</p> + +<p>And, one by one, they went down through the dark water +and came up on the surface of the pool. By this time +Mrs. Tully was on her feet and standing by the edge +of the tank.</p> + +<p>“If I thought this was one of your tricks, Dick +Forrest,” she began.</p> + +<p>But Dick, paying no attention, acting preternaturally +calmly, was directing the men loudly enough for her +to hear.</p> + +<p>“We’ve got to make this systematic, fellows. +You, Bert, and you, Evan, join with me. We start at +this end, five feet apart, and search the bottom across. +Then move along and repeat it back.”</p> + +<p>“Don’t exert yourselves, gentlemen,” +Mrs. Tully called, beginning to laugh. “As for +you, Dick, you come right out. I want to box your +ears.”</p> + +<p>“Take care of her, you girls,” Dick shouted. +“She’s got hysterics.”</p> + +<p>“I haven’t, but I will have,” she +laughed.</p> + +<p>“But damn it all, madam, this is no laughing +matter!” Captain Lester spluttered breathlessly, +as he prepared for another trip to explore the bottom.</p> + +<p>“Are you on, Aunt Martha, really and truly on?” +Dick asked, after the valiant mariner had gone down.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Tully nodded. “But keep it up, Dick, you’ve +got one dupe. Elsie Coghlan’s mother told me +about it in Honolulu last year.”</p> + +<p>Not until eleven minutes had elapsed did the smiling +face of Paula break the surface. Simulating exhaustion, +she slowly crawled out and sank down panting near +her aunt. Captain Lester, really exhausted by his +strenuous exertions at rescue, studied Paula keenly, +then marched to the nearest pillar and meekly bumped +his head three times against the concrete.</p> + +<p>“I’m afraid I didn’t stay down ten +minutes,” Paula said. “But I wasn’t +much under that, was I, Aunt Martha?”</p> + +<p>“You weren’t much under at all,” +Mrs. Tully replied, “if it’s my opinion +you were asking. I’m surprised that you are even +wet.—­There, there, breathe naturally, child. +The play-acting is unnecessary. I remember, when I +was a young girl, traveling in India, there was a +school of fakirs who leaped into deep wells and stayed +down much longer than you, child, much longer indeed.”</p> + +<p>“You knew!” Paula charged.</p> + +<p>“But you didn’t know I did,” her +Aunt retorted. “And therefore your conduct was +criminal. When you consider a woman of my age, with +my heart—­”</p> + +<p>“And with your blessed, brass-tack head,” +Paula cried.</p> + +<p>“For two apples I’d box your ears.”</p> + +<p>“And for one apple I’d hug you, wet as +I am,” Paula laughed back. “Anyway, we +did fool Captain Lester.—­Didn’t we, +Captain?”</p> + +<p>“Don’t speak to me,” that doughty +mariner muttered darkly. “I’m busy with +myself, meditating what form my vengeance shall take.—­As +for you, Mr. Dick Forrest, I’m divided between +blowing up your dairy, or hamstringing Mountain Lad. +Maybe I’ll do both. In the meantime I am going +out to kick that mare you ride.”</p> + +<p>Dick on The Outlaw, and Paula on The Fawn, rode back +side by side to the Big House.</p> + +<p>“How do you like Graham?” he asked.</p> + +<p>“Splendid,” was her reply. “He’s +your type, Dick. He’s universal, like you, and +he’s got the same world-marks branded on him—­the +Seven Seas, the books, and all the rest. He’s +an artist, too, and pretty well all-around. And he’s +good fun. Have you noticed his smile? It’s irresistible. +It makes one want to smile with him.”</p> + +<p>“And he’s got his serious scars, as well,” +Dick nodded concurrence.</p> + +<p>“Yes—­right in the corners of the +eyes, just after he has smiled, you’ll see them +come. They’re not tired marks exactly, but rather +the old eternal questions: Why? What for? What’s +it worth? What’s it all about?”</p> + +<hr width="75%" size="1" > + +<p>And bringing up the rear of the cavalcade, Ernestine +and Graham talked.</p> + +<p>“Dick’s deep,” she was saying. “You +don’t know him any too well. He’s dreadfully +deep. I know him a little. Paula knows him a lot. But +very few others ever get under the surface of him. +He’s a real philosopher, and he has the control +of a stoic or an Englishman, and he can play-act +to fool the world.”</p> + +<hr width="75%" size="1" > + +<p>At the long hitching rails under the oaks, where the +dismounting party gathered, Paula was in gales of +laughter.</p> + +<p>“Go on, go on,” she urged Dick, “more, +more.”</p> + +<p>“She’s been accusing me of exhausting +my vocabulary in naming the house-boys by my system,” +he explained.</p> + +<p>“And he’s given me at least forty more +names in a minute and a half.—­ Go on, Dick, +more.”</p> + +<p>“Then,” he said, striking a chant, “we +can have Oh Sin and Oh Pshaw, Oh Sing and Oh Song, +Oh Sung and Oh Sang, Oh Last and Oh Least, Oh Ping +and Oh Pong, Oh Some, Oh More, and Oh Most, Oh Naught +and Oh Nit...”</p> + +<p>And Dick jingled away into the house still chanting +his extemporized directory.</p> + +<h1 align="center" style="margin-top: 2em;font-variant: small-caps">Chapter XVII</h1> + +<p>A week of dissatisfaction and restlessness ensued +for Graham. Tom between belief that his business was +to leave the Big House on the first train, and desire +to see, and see more of Paula, to be with her, and +to be more with her—­he succeeded in neither +leaving nor in seeing as much of her as during the +first days of his visit.</p> + +<p>At first, and for the five days that he lingered, +the young violinist monopolized nearly her entire +time of visibility. Often Graham strayed into the +music room, and, quite neglected by the pair, sat for +moody half-hours listening to their “work.” +They were oblivious of his presence, either flushed +and absorbed with the passion of their music, or wiping +their foreheads and chatting and laughing companionably +in pauses to rest. That the young musician loved her +with an ardency that was almost painful, was patent +to Graham; but what hurt him was the abandon of devotion +with which she sometimes looked at Ware after he had +done something exceptionally fine. In vain Graham tried +to tell himself that all this was mental on her part—­purely +delighted appreciation of the other’s artistry. +Nevertheless, being man, it hurt, and continued to +hurt, until he could no longer suffer himself to remain.</p> + +<p>Once, chancing into the room at the end of a Schumann +song and just after Ware had departed, Graham found +Paula still seated at the piano, an expression of +rapt dreaming on her face. She regarded him almost +unrecognizingly, gathered herself mechanically together, +uttered an absent-minded commonplace or so, and left +the room. Despite his vexation and hurt, Graham tried +to think it mere artist-dreaming on her part, a listening +to the echo of the just-played music in her soul. +But women were curious creatures, he could not help +moralizing, and were prone to lose their hearts most +strangely and inconsequentially. Might it not be that +by his very music this youngster of a man was charming +the woman of her?</p> + +<p>With the departure of Ware, Paula Forrest retired +almost completely into her private wing behind the +door without a knob. Nor did this seem unusual, Graham +gleaned from the household.</p> + +<p>“Paula is a woman who finds herself very good +company,” Ernestine explained, “and she +often goes in for periods of aloneness, when Dick +is the only person who sees her.”</p> + +<p>“Which is not flattering to the rest of the +company,” Graham smiled.</p> + +<p>“Which makes her such good company whenever +she is in company,” Ernestine retorted.</p> + +<p>The driftage through the Big House was decreasing. +A few guests, on business or friendship, continued +to come, but more departed. Under Oh Joy and his Chinese +staff the Big House ran so frictionlessly and so perfectly, +that entertainment of guests seemed little part of +the host’s duties. The guests largely entertained +themselves and one another.</p> + +<p>Dick rarely appeared, even for a moment, until lunch, +and Paula, now carrying out her seclusion program, +never appeared before dinner.</p> + +<p>“Rest cure,” Dick laughed one noon, and +challenged Graham to a tournament with boxing gloves, +single-sticks, and foils.</p> + +<p>“And now’s the time,” he told Graham, +as they breathed between bouts, “for you to +tackle your book. I’m only one of the many who +are looking forward to reading it, and I’m looking +forward hard. Got a letter from Havely yesterday—­he +mentioned it, and wondered how far along you were.”</p> + +<p>So Graham, in his tower room, arranged his notes and +photographs, schemed out the work, and plunged into +the opening chapters. So immersed did he become that +his nascent interest in Paula might have languished, +had it not been for meeting her each evening at dinner. +Then, too, until Ernestine and Lute left for Santa +Barbara, there were afternoon swims and rides and +motor trips to the pastures of the Miramar Hills and +the upland ranges of the Anselmo Mountains. Other +trips they made, sometimes accompanied by Dick, to +his great dredgers working in the Sacramento basin, +or his dam-building on the Little Coyote and Los Cuatos +creeks, or to his five-thousand-acre colony of twenty-acre +farmers, where he was trying to enable two hundred +and fifty heads of families, along with their families, +to make good on the soil.</p> + +<p>That Paula sometimes went for long solitary rides, +Graham knew, and, once, he caught her dismounting +from the Fawn at the hitching rails.</p> + +<p>“Don’t you think you are spoiling that +mare for riding in company?” he twitted.</p> + +<p>Paula laughed and shook her head.</p> + +<p>“Well, then,” he asserted stoutly, “I’m +spoiling for a ride with you.”</p> + +<p>“There’s Lute, and Ernestine, and Bert, +and all the rest.”</p> + +<p>“This is new country,” he contended. “And +one learns country through the people who know it. +I’ve seen it through the eyes of Lute, and Ernestine +and all the rest; but there is a lot I haven’t +seen and which I can see only through your eyes.”</p> + +<p>“A pleasant theory,” she evaded. “A—­a +sort of landscape vampirism.”</p> + +<p>“But without the ill effects of vampirism,” +he urged quickly.</p> + +<p>Her answer was slow in coming. Her look into his eyes +was frank and straight, and he could guess her words +were weighed and gauged.</p> + +<p>“I don’t know about that,” was all +she said finally; but his fancy leaped at the several +words, ranging and conjecturing their possible connotations.</p> + +<p>“But we have so much we might be saying to each +other,” he tried again. “So much we... +ought to be saying to each other.”</p> + +<p>“So I apprehend,” she answered quietly; +and again that frank, straight look accompanied her +speech.</p> + +<p>So she did apprehend—­the thought of it +was flame to him, but his tongue was not quick enough +to serve him to escape the cool, provoking laugh as +she turned into the house.</p> + +<p>Still the company of the Big House thinned. Paula’s +aunt, Mrs. Tully, much to Graham’s disappointment +(for he had expected to learn from her much that he +wanted to know of Paula), had gone after only a several +days’ stay. There was vague talk of her return +for a longer stay; but, just back from Europe, she +declared herself burdened with a round of duty visits +which must be performed before her pleasure visiting +began.</p> + +<p>O’Hay, the critic, had been compelled to linger +several days in order to live down the disastrous +culmination of the musical raid made upon him by the +philosophers. The idea and the trick had been Dick’s. +Combat had joined early in the evening, when a seeming +chance remark of Ernestine had enabled Aaron Hancock +to fling the first bomb into the thick of O’Hay’s +deepest convictions. Dar Hyal, a willing and eager +ally, had charged around the flank with his blastic +theory of music and taken O’Hay in reverse. +And the battle had raged until the hot-headed Irishman, +beside himself with the grueling the pair of skilled +logomachists were giving him, accepted with huge relief +the kindly invitation of Terrence McFane to retire +with him to the tranquillity and repose of the stag +room, where, over a soothing highball and far from +the barbarians, the two of them could have a heart +to heart talk on real music. At two in the morning, +wild-eyed and befuddled, O’Hay had been led +to bed by the upright-walking and unshakably steady +Terrence.</p> + +<p>“Never mind,” Ernestine had told O’Hay +later, with a twinkle in her eye that made him guess +the plot. “It was only to be expected. Those +rattle-brained philosophers would drive even a saint +to drink.”</p> + +<p>“I thought you were safe in Terrence’s +hands,” had been Dick’s mock apology. +“A pair of Irishmen, you know. I’d forgot +Terrence was case-hardened. Do you know, after he +said good night to you, he came up to me for a yarn. +And he was steady as a rock. He mentioned casually +of having had several sips, so I... I... never dreamed +... er... that he had indisposed you.”</p> + +<p>When Lute and Ernestine departed for Santa Barbara, +Bert Wainwright and his sister remembered their long-neglected +home in Sacramento. A pair of painters, proteges of +Paula, arrived the same day. But they were little +in evidence, spending long days in the hills with a +trap and driver and smoking long pipes in the stag +room.</p> + +<p>The free and easy life of the Big House went on in +its frictionless way. Dick worked. Graham worked. +Paula maintained her seclusion. The sages from the +madrono grove strayed in for wordy dinners—­and +wordy evenings, except when Paula played for them. +Automobile parties, from Sacramento, Wickenberg, and +other valley towns, continued to drop in unexpectedly, +but never to the confusion of Oh Joy and the house +boys, whom Graham saw, on occasion, with twenty minutes’ +warning, seat a score of unexpected guests to a perfect +dinner. And there were even nights—­rare +ones—­when only Dick and Graham and Paula +sat at dinner, and when, afterward, the two men yarned +for an hour before an early bed, while she played +soft things to herself or disappeared earlier than +they.</p> + +<p>But one moonlight evening, when the Watsons and Masons +and Wombolds arrived in force, Graham found himself +out, when every bridge table was made up. Paula was +at the piano. As he approached he caught the quick +expression of pleasure in her eyes at sight of him, +which as quickly vanished. She made a slight movement +as if to rise, which did not escape his notice any +more than did her quiet mastery of the impulse that +left her seated.</p> + +<p>She was immediately herself as he had always seen +her—­although it was little enough he had +seen of her, he thought, as he talked whatever came +into his head, and rummaged among her songs with her. +Now one and now another song he tried with her, subduing +his high baritone to her light soprano with such success +as to win cries of more from the bridge players.</p> + +<p>“Yes, I am positively aching to be out again +over the world with Dick,” she told him in a +pause. “If we could only start to-morrow! But +Dick can’t start yet. He’s in too deep +with too many experiments and adventures on the ranch +here. Why, what do you think he’s up to now? +As if he did not have enough on his hands, he’s +going to revolutionize the sales end, or, at least, +the California and Pacific Coast portion of it, by +making the buyers come to the ranch.”</p> + +<p>“But they do do that,” Graham said. “The +first man I met here was a buyer from Idaho.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, but Dick means as an institution, you know—­to +make them come en masse at a stated time. Not simple +auction sales, either, though he says he will bait +them with a bit of that to excite interest. It will +be an annual fair, to last three days, in which he +will be the only exhibitor. He’s spending half +his mornings now in conference with Mr. Agar and Mr. +Pitts. Mr. Agar is his sales manager, and Mr. Pitts +his showman.”</p> + +<p>She sighed and rippled her fingers along the keyboard.</p> + +<p>“But, oh, if only we could get away—­Timbuctoo, +Mokpo, or Jericho.”</p> + +<p>“Don’t tell me you’ve ever been +to Mokpo,” Graham laughed.</p> + +<p>She nodded. “Cross my heart, solemnly, hope +to die. It was with Dick in the <i>All Away</i> +and in the long ago. It might almost be said we honeymooned +in Mokpo.”</p> + +<p>And while Graham exchanged reminiscences of Mokpo +with her, he cudgeled his brain to try and decide +whether her continual reference to her husband was +deliberate.</p> + +<p>“I should imagine you found it such a paradise +here,” he was saying.</p> + +<p>“I do, I do,” she assured him with what +seemed unnecessary vehemence. “But I don’t +know what’s come over me lately. I feel it imperative +to be up and away. The spring fret, I suppose; the +Red Gods and their medicine. And if only Dick didn’t +insist on working his head off and getting tied down +with projects! Do you know, in all the years of our +marriage, the only really serious rival I have ever +had has been this ranch. He’s pretty faithful, +and the ranch <i>is</i> his first love. He had +it all planned and started before he ever met me or +knew I existed.”</p> + +<p>“Here, let us try this together,” Graham +said abruptly, placing the song on the rack before +her.</p> + +<p>“Oh, but it’s the ‘Gypsy Trail,’” +she protested. “It will only make my mood worse.” +And she hummed:</p> + +<p>  “’Follow the Romany patteran<br> +     West to the sinking +sun,<br> +     Till the junk sails +lift through the homeless drift,<br> +     And the East and the +West are one.’</p> + +<p>“What is the Romany patteran?” she broke +off to ask. “I’ve always thought of it +as patter, or patois, the Gypsy patois, and somehow +it strikes me as absurd to follow a language over +the world—­a sort of philological excursion.”</p> + +<p>“In a way the patteran is speech,” he +answered. “But it always says one thing: ‘This +way I have passed.’ Two sprigs, crossed in certain +ways and left upon the trail, compose the patteran. +But they must always be of different trees or shrubs. +Thus, on the ranch here, a patteran could be made +of manzanita and madrono, of oak and spruce, of buckeye +and alder, of redwood and laurel, of huckleberry and +lilac. It is a sign of Gypsy comrade to Gypsy comrade, +of Gypsy lover to Gypsy lover.” And he hummed:</p> + +<p>  “’Back to the road again, +again,<br> +      Out of a clear +sea track;<br> +    Follow the cross of the Gypsy +trail,<br> +      Over the world +and back.’”</p> + +<p>She nodded comprehension, looked for a moment with +troubled eyes down the long room to the card-players, +caught herself in her momentary absentness, and said +quickly:</p> + +<p>“Heaven knows there’s a lot of Gypsy in +some of us. I have more than full share. In spite +of his bucolic proclivities, Dick is a born Gypsy. +And from what he has told of you, you are hopelessly +one.”</p> + +<p>“After all, the white man is the real Gypsy, +the king Gypsy,” Graham propounded. “He +has wandered wider, wilder, and with less equipment, +than any Gypsy. The Gypsy has followed in his trails, +but never made trail for him.—­Come; let +us try it.”</p> + +<p>And as they sang the reckless words to their merry, +careless lilt, he looked down at her and wondered—­wondered +at her—­at himself. This was no place for +him by this woman’s side, under her husband’s +roof-tree. Yet here he was, and he should have gone +days before. After the years he was just getting acquainted +with himself. This was enchantment, madness. He should +tear himself away at once. He had known enchantments +and madnesses before, and had torn himself away. Had +he softened with the years? he questioned himself. +Or was this a profounder madness than he had experienced? +This meant the violation of dear things—­things +so dear, so jealously cherished and guarded in his +secret life, that never yet had they suffered violation.</p> + +<p>And still he did not tear himself away. He stood there +beside her, looking down on her brown crown of hair +glinting gold and bronze and bewitchingly curling +into tendrils above her ears, singing a song that +was fire to him—­that must be fire to her, +she being what she was and feeling what she had already, +in flashes, half-unwittingly, hinted to him.</p> + +<p>She is a witch, and her voice is not the least of +her witchery, he thought, as <i>her</i> voice, +so richly a woman’s voice, so essentially her +voice in contradistinction to all women’s voices +in the world, sang and throbbed in his ear. And he +knew, beyond shade of doubt, that she felt some touch +of this madness that afflicted him; that she sensed, +as he sensed, that the man and the woman were met.</p> + +<p>They thrilled together as they sang, and the thought +and the sure knowledge of it added fuel to his own +madness till his voice warmed unconsciously to the +daring of the last lines, as, voices and thrills blending, +they sang:</p> + +<p>  “’The wild hawk to the wind-swept +sky,<br> +      The deer to the +wholesome wold,<br> +      And the heart +of a man to the heart of a maid<br> +      As it was in the +days of old—­<br> +      The heart of a +man to the heart of a maid,<br> +    Light of my tents be fleet,<br> +      Morning waits +at the end of the world,<br> +    And the world is all at our +feet.’”</p> + +<p>He looked for her to look up as the last notes died +away, but she remained quiet a moment, her eyes bent +on the keys. And then the face that was turned to +his was the face of the Little Lady of the Big House, +the mouth smiling mischievously, the eyes filled with +roguery, as she said:</p> + +<p>“Let us go and devil Dick—­he’s +losing. I’ve never seen him lose his temper +at cards, but he gets ridiculously blue after a long +siege of losing.</p> + +<p>“And he does love gambling,” she continued, +as she led the way to the tables. “It’s +one of his modes of relaxing. It does him good. About +once or twice a year, if it’s a good poker game, +he’ll sit in all night to it and play to the +blue sky if they take off the limit.”</p> + +<h1 align="center" style="margin-top: 2em;font-variant: small-caps">Chapter XVIII</h1> + +<p>Almost immediately after the singing of the “Gypsy +Trail,” Paula emerged from her seclusion, and +Graham found himself hard put, in the tower room, +to keep resolutely to his work when all the morning +he could hear snatches of song and opera from her +wing, or laughter and scolding of dogs from the great +patio, or the continuous pulse for hours of the piano +from the distant music room. But Graham, patterning +after Dick, devoted his mornings to work, so that he +rarely encountered Paula before lunch.</p> + +<p>She made announcement that her spell of insomnia was +over and that she was ripe for all gaieties and excursions +Dick had to offer her. Further, she threatened, in +case Dick grudged these personal diversions, to fill +the house with guests and teach him what liveliness +was. It was at this time that her Aunt Martha—­Mrs. +Tully—­ returned for a several days’ +visit, and that Paula resumed the driving of Duddy +and Fuddy in the high, one-seated Stude-baker trap. +Duddy and Fuddy were spirited trotters, but Mrs. Tully, +despite her elderliness and avoirdupois, was without +timidity when Paula held the reins.</p> + +<p>As Mrs. Tully told Graham: “And that is a concession +I make to no woman save Paula. She is the only woman +I can trust myself to with horses. She has the horse-way +about her. When she was a child she was wild over +horses. It’s a wonder she didn’t become +a circus rider.”</p> + +<p>More, much more, Graham learned about Paula in various +chats with her aunt. Of Philip Desten, Paula’s +father, Mrs. Tully could never say enough. Her eldest +brother, and older by many years, he had been her +childhood prince. His ways had been big ways, princely +ways—ways that to commoner folk had betokened +a streak of madness. He was continually guilty of +the wildest things and the most chivalrous things. +It was this streak that had enabled him to win various +fortunes, and with equal facility to lose them, in +the great gold adventure of Forty-nine. Himself of +old New England stock, he had had for great grandfather +a Frenchman—a trifle of flotsam from a mid-ocean +wreck and landed to grow up among the farmer-sailormen +of the coast of Maine.</p> + +<p>“And once, and once only, in each generation, +that French Desten crops out,” Mrs. Tully assured +Graham. “Philip was that Frenchman in his generation, +and who but Paula, and in full measure, received that +same inheritance in her generation. Though Lute and +Ernestine are her half-sisters, no one would imagine +one drop of the common blood was shared. That’s +why Paula, instead of going circus-riding, drifted +inevitably to France. It was that old original Desten +that drew her over.”</p> + +<p>And of the adventure in France, Graham learned much. +Philip Desten’s luck had been to die when the +wheel of his fortune had turned over and down. Ernestine +and Lute, little tots, had been easy enough for Desten’s +sisters to manage. But Paula, who had fallen to Mrs. +Tully, had been the problem—­"because of +that Frenchman.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, she is rigid New England,” Mrs. Tully +insisted, “the solidest of creatures as to honor +and rectitude, dependableness and faithfulness. As +a girl she really couldn’t bring herself to lie, +except to save others. In which case all her New England +ancestry took flight and she would lie as magnificently +as her father before her. And he had the same charm +of manner, the same daring, the same ready laughter, +the same vivacity. But what is lightsome and blithe +in her, was debonaire in him. He won men’s hearts +always, or, failing that, their bitterest enmity. +No one was left cold by him in passing. Contact with +him quickened them to love or hate. Therein Paula +differs, being a woman, I suppose, and not enjoying +man’s prerogative of tilting at windmills. I +don’t know that she has an enemy in the world. +All love her, unless, it may well be, there are cat-women +who envy her her nice husband.”</p> + +<p>And as Graham listened, Paula’s singing came +through the open window from somewhere down the long +arcades, and there was that ever-haunting thrill in +her voice that he could not escape remembering afterward. +She burst into laughter, and Mrs. Tully beamed to him +and nodded at the sound.</p> + +<p>“There laughs Philip Desten,” she murmured, +“and all the Frenchwomen behind the original +Frenchman who was brought into Penobscot, dressed +in homespun, and sent to meeting. Have you noticed +how Paula’s laugh invariably makes everybody +look up and smile? Philip’s laugh did the same +thing.”</p> + +<p>“Paula had always been passionately fond of +music, painting, drawing. As a little girl she could +be traced around the house and grounds by the trail +she left behind her of images and shapes, made in whatever +medium she chanced upon—­drawn on scraps +of paper, scratched on bits of wood, modeled in mud +and sand.</p> + +<p>“She loved everything, and everything loved +her,” said Mrs. Tully. “She was never +timid of animals. And yet she always stood in awe of +them; but she was born sense-struck, and her awe was +beauty-awe. Yes, she was an incorrigible hero-worshiper, +whether the person was merely beautiful or did things. +And she never will outgrow that beauty—­awe +of anything she loves, whether it is a grand piano, +a great painting, a beautiful mare, or a bit of landscape.</p> + +<p>“And Paula had wanted to do, to make beauty +herself. But she was sorely puzzled whether she should +devote herself to music or painting. In the full swing +of work under the best masters in Boston, she could +not refrain from straying back to her drawing. From +her easel she was lured to modeling.</p> + +<p>“And so, with her love of the best, her soul +and heart full of beauty, she grew quite puzzled and +worried over herself, as to which talent was the greater +and if she had genius at all. I suggested a complete +rest from work and took her abroad for a year. And +of all things, she developed a talent for dancing. +But always she harked back to her music and painting. +No, she was not flighty. Her trouble was that she +was too talented—­”</p> + +<p>“Too diversely talented,” Graham amplified.</p> + +<p>“Yes, that is better,” Mrs. Tully nodded. +“But from talent to genius is a far cry, and +to save my life, at this late day, I don’t know +whether the child ever had a trace of genius in her. +She has certainly not done anything big in any of +her chosen things.”</p> + +<p>“Except to be herself,” Graham added.</p> + +<p>“Which <i>is</i> the big thing,” +Mrs. Tully accepted with a smile of enthusiasm. “She +is a splendid, unusual woman, very unspoiled, very +natural. And after all, what does doing things amount +to? I’d give more for one of Paula’s madcap +escapades—­oh, I heard all about swimming +the big stallion—­than for all her pictures +if every one was a masterpiece. But she was hard for +me to understand at first. Dick often calls her the +girl that never grew up. But gracious, she can put +on the grand air when she needs to. I call her the +most mature child I have ever seen. Dick was the finest +thing that ever happened to her. It was then that +she really seemed for the first time to find herself. +It was this way.”</p> + +<p>And Mrs. Tully went on to sketch the year of travel +in Europe, the resumption of Paula’s painting +in Paris, and the conviction she finally reached that +success could be achieved only by struggle and that +her aunt’s money was a handicap.</p> + +<p>“And she had her way,” Mrs. Tully sighed. +“She—­why, she dismissed me, sent +me home. She would accept no more than the meagerest +allowance, and went down into the Latin Quarter on +her own, batching with two other American girls. And +she met Dick. Dick was a rare one. You couldn’t +guess what he was doing then. Running a cabaret—­oh, +not these modern cabarets, but a real students’ +cabaret of sorts. It was very select. They were a +lot of madmen. You see, he was just back from some +of his wild adventuring at the ends of the earth, and, +as he stated it, he wanted to stop living life for +a while and to talk about life instead.</p> + +<p>“Paula took me there once. Oh, they were engaged—­the +day before, and he had called on me and all that. +I had known ‘Lucky’ Richard Forrest, and +I knew all about his son. From a worldly standpoint, +Paula couldn’t have made a finer marriage. It +was quite a romance. Paula had seen him captain the +University of California eleven to victory over Stanford. +And the next time she saw him was in the studio she +shared with the two girls. She didn’t know whether +Dick was worth millions or whether he was running +a cabaret because he was hard up, and she cared less. +She always followed her heart. Fancy the situation: +Dick the uncatchable, and Paula who never flirted. +They must have sprung forthright into each other’s +arms, for inside the week it was all arranged, and +Dick made his call on me, as if my decision meant +anything one way or the other.</p> + +<p>“But Dick’s cabaret. It was the Cabaret +of the Philosophers—­a small pokey place, +down in a cellar, in the heart of the Quarter, and +it had only one table. Fancy that for a cabaret! But +such a table! A big round one, of plain boards, without +even an oil-cloth, the wood stained with the countless +drinks spilled by the table-pounding of the philosophers, +and it could seat thirty. Women were not permitted. +An exception was made for Paula and me.</p> + +<p>“You’ve met Aaron Hancock here. He was +one of the philosophers, and to this day he swaggers +that he owed Dick a bigger bill that never was paid +than any of his customers. And there they used to meet, +all those wild young thinkers, and pound the table, +and talk philosophy in all the tongues of Europe. +Dick always had a penchant for philosophers.</p> + +<p>“But Paula spoiled that little adventure. No +sooner were they married than Dick fitted out his +schooner, the All Away, and away the blessed pair +of them went, honeymooning from Bordeaux to Hongkong.”</p> + +<p>“And the cabaret was closed, and the philosophers +left homeless and discussionless,” Graham remarked.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Tully laughed heartily and shook her head.</p> + +<p>“He endowed it for them,” she gasped, +her hand to her side. “Or partially endowed +it, or something. I don’t know what the arrangement +was. And within the month it was raided by the police +for an anarchist club.”</p> + +<p>After having learned the wide scope of her interests +and talents, Graham was nevertheless surprised one +day at finding Paula all by herself in a corner of +a window-seat, completely absorbed in her work on +a piece of fine embroidery.</p> + +<p>“I love it,” she explained. “All +the costly needlework of the shops means nothing to +me alongside of my own work on my own designs. Dick +used to fret at my sewing. He’s all for efficiency, +you know, elimination of waste energy and such things. +He thought sewing was a wasting of time. Peasants +could be hired for a song to do what I was doing. +But I succeeded in making my viewpoint clear to him.</p> + +<p>“It’s like the music one makes oneself. +Of course I can buy better music than I make; but +to sit down at an instrument and evoke the music oneself, +with one’s own fingers and brain, is an entirely +different and dearer satisfaction. Whether one tries +to emulate another’s performance, or infuses +the performance with one’s own personality and +interpretation, it’s all the same. It is soul-joy +and fulfilment.</p> + +<p>“Take this little embroidered crust of lilies +on the edge of this flounce—­there is nothing +like it in the world. Mine the idea, all mine, and +mine the delight of giving form and being to the idea. +There are better ideas and better workmanship in the +shops; but this is different. It is mine. I visioned +it, and I made it. And who is to say that embroidery +is not art?”</p> + +<p>She ceased speaking and with her eyes laughed the +insistence of her question.</p> + +<p>“And who is to say,” Graham agreed, “that +the adorning of beautiful womankind is not the worthiest +of all the arts as well as the sweetest?”</p> + +<p>“I rather stand in awe of a good milliner or +modiste,” she nodded gravely. “They really +are artists, and important ones, as Dick would phrase +it, in the world’s economy.”</p> + +<hr width="75%" size="1" > + +<p>Another time, seeking the library for Andean reference, +Graham came upon Paula, sprawled gracefully over a +sheet of paper on a big table and flanked by ponderous +architectural portfolios, engaged in drawing plans +of a log bungalow or camp for the sages of the madroño +grove.</p> + +<p>“It’s a problem,” she sighed. “Dick +says that if I build it I must build it for seven. +We’ve got four sages now, and his heart is set +on seven. He says never mind showers and such things, +because what philosopher ever bathes? And he has suggested +seriously seven stoves and seven kitchens, because +it is just over such mundane things that philosophers +always quarrel.”</p> + +<p>“Wasn’t it Voltaire who quarreled with +a king over candle-ends?” Graham queried, pleasuring +in the sight of her graceful abandon. Thirty-eight! +It was impossible. She seemed almost a girl, petulant +and flushed over some school task. Then he remembered +Mrs. Tully’s remark that Paula was the most +mature child she had ever known.</p> + +<p>It made him wonder. Was she the one, who, under the +oaks at the hitching rails, with two brief sentences +had cut to the heart of an impending situation? “So +I apprehend,” she had said. What had she apprehended? +Had she used the phrase glibly, without meaning? Yet +she it was who had thrilled and fluttered to him and +with him when they had sung the “Gypsy Trail.” +<i>That</i> he knew. But again, had he not seen +her warm and glow to the playing of Donald Ware? But +here Graham’s ego had its will of him, for he +told himself that with Donald Ware it was different. +And he smiled to himself and at himself at the thought.</p> + +<p>“What amuses you?” Paula was asking.</p> + +<p>“Heaven knows I am no architect. And I challenge +you to house seven philosophers according to all the +absurd stipulations laid down by Dick.”</p> + +<p>Back in his tower room with his Andean books unopened +before him, Graham gnawed his lip and meditated. The +woman was no woman. She was the veriest child. Or—­and +he hesitated at the thought—­was this naturalness +that was overdone? Did she in truth apprehend? It must +be. It had to be. She was of the world. She knew the +world. She was very wise. No remembered look of her +gray eyes but gave the impression of poise and power. +That was it—­strength! He recalled her that +first night when she had seemed at times to glint +an impression of steel, of thin and jewel-like steel. +In his fancy, at the time, he remembered likening +her strength to ivory, to carven pearl shell, to sennit +twisted of maidens’ hair.</p> + +<p>And he knew, now, ever since the brief words at the +hitching rails and the singing of the “Gypsy +Trail,” that whenever their eyes looked into +each other’s it was with a mutual knowledge of +unsaid things.</p> + +<p>In vain he turned the pages of the books for the information +he sought. He tried to continue his chapter without +the information, but no words flowed from his pen. +A maddening restlessness was upon him. He seized a +time table and pondered the departure of trains, changed +his mind, switched the room telephone to the house +barn, and asked to have Altadena saddled.</p> + +<p>It was a perfect morning of California early summer. +No breath of wind stirred over the drowsing fields, +from which arose the calls of quail and the notes +of meadowlarks. The air was heavy with lilac fragrance, +and from the distance, as he rode between the lilac +hedges, Graham heard the throaty nicker of Mountain +Lad and the silvery answering whinney of the Fotherington +Princess.</p> + +<p>Why was he here astride Dick Forrest’s horse? +Graham asked himself. Why was he not even then on +the way to the station to catch that first train he +had noted on the time table? This unaccustomed weakness +of decision and action was a new rôle for him, he +considered bitterly. But—­and he was on +fire with the thought of it—­this was his +one life, and this was the one woman in the world.</p> + +<p>He reined aside to let a herd of Angora goats go by. +Each was a doe, and there were several hundred of +them; and they were moved slowly by the Basque herdsmen, +with frequent pauses, for each doe was accompanied +by a young kid. In the paddock were many mares with +new-born colts; and once, receiving warning in time, +Graham raced into a crossroad to escape a drove of +thirty yearling stallions being moved somewhere across +the ranch. Their excitement was communicated to that +entire portion of the ranch, so that the air was filled +with shrill nickerings and squealings and answering +whinneys, while Mountain Lad, beside himself at sight +and sound of so many rivals, raged up and down his +paddock, and again and again trumpeted his challenging +conviction that he was the most amazing and mightiest +thing that had ever occurred on earth in the way of +horse flesh.</p> + +<p>Dick Forrest pranced and sidled into the cross road +on the Outlaw, his face beaming with delight at the +little tempest among his many creatures.</p> + +<p>“Fecundity! Fecundity!"—­he chanted +in greeting, as he reined in to a halt, if halt it +might be called, with his tan-golden sorrel mare a-fret +and a-froth, wickedly reaching with her teeth now for +his leg and next for Graham’s, one moment pawing +the roadway, the next moment, in sheer impotence of +resentfulness, kicking the empty air with one hind +leg and kicking the air repeatedly, a dozen times.</p> + +<p>“Those youngsters certainly put Mountain Lad +on his mettle,” Dick laughed. “Listen +to his song:</p> + +<p>“’Hear me! I am Eros. I stamp upon the +hills. I fill the wide valleys. The mares hear me, +and startle, in quiet pastures; for they know me. +The land is filled with fatness, and the sap is in +the trees. It is the spring. The spring is mine. I +am monarch of my kingdom of the spring. The mares +remember my voice. They knew me aforetime through +their mothers before them. Hear me! I am Eros. I stamp +upon the hills, and the wide valleys are my heralds, +echoing the sound of my approach.’”</p> + +<h1 align="center" style="margin-top: 2em;font-variant: small-caps">Chapter XIX</h1> + +<p>After Mrs. Tully’s departure, Paula, true to +her threat, filled the house with guests. She seemed +to have remembered all who had been waiting an invitation, +and the limousine that met the trains eight miles +away was rarely empty coming or going. There were more +singers and musicians and artist folk, and bevies +of young girls with their inevitable followings of +young men, while mammas and aunts and chaperons seemed +to clutter all the ways of the Big House and to fill +a couple of motor cars when picnics took place.</p> + +<p>And Graham wondered if this surrounding of herself +by many people was not deliberate on Paula’s +part. As for himself, he definitely abandoned work +on his book, and joined in the before-breakfast swims +of the hardier younger folk, in the morning rides over +the ranch, and in whatever fun was afoot indoors and +out.</p> + +<p>Late hours and early were kept; and one night, Dick, +who adhered to his routine and never appeared to his +guests before midday, made a night of it at poker +in the stag-room. Graham had sat in, and felt well +repaid when, at dawn, the players received an unexpected +visit from Paula—­herself past one of her +white nights, she said, although no sign of it showed +on her fresh skin and color. Graham had to struggle +to keep his eyes from straying too frequently to her +as she mixed golden fizzes to rejuvenate the wan-eyed, +jaded players. Then she made them start the round +of “jacks” that closed the game, and sent +them off for a cold swim before breakfast and the day’s +work or frolic.</p> + +<p>Never was Paula alone. Graham could only join in the +groups that were always about her. Although the young +people ragged and tangoed incessantly, she rarely +danced, and then it was with the young men. Once, +however, she favored him with an old-fashioned waltz. +“Your ancestors in an antediluvian dance,” +she mocked the young people, as she stepped out; for +she and Graham had the floor to themselves.</p> + +<p>Once down the length of the room, the two were in +full accord. Paula, with the sympathy Graham recognized +that made her the exceptional accompanist or rider, +subdued herself to the masterful art of the man, until +the two were as parts of a sentient machine that operated +without jar or friction. After several minutes, finding +their perfect mutual step and pace, and Graham feeling +the absolute giving of Paula to the dance, they essayed +rhythmical pauses and dips, their feet never leaving +the floor, yet affecting the onlookers in the way Dick +voiced it when he cried out: “They float! They +float!” The music was the “Waltz of Salomé,” +and with its slow-fading end they postured slower +and slower to a perfect close.</p> + +<p>There was no need to speak. In silence, without a +glance at each other, they returned to the company +where Dick was proclaiming:</p> + +<p>“Well, younglings, codlings, and other fry, +that’s the way we old folks used to dance. I’m +not saying anything against the new dances, mind you. +They’re all right and dandy fine. But just the +same it wouldn’t injure you much to learn to +waltz properly. The way you waltz, when you do attempt +it, is a scream. We old folks do know a thing or two +that is worth while.”</p> + +<p>“For instance?” queried one of the girls.</p> + +<p>“I’ll tell you. I don’t mind the +young generation smelling of gasoline the way it does—­”</p> + +<p>Cries and protests drowned Dick out for a moment.</p> + +<p>“I know I smell of it myself,” he went +on. “But you’ve all failed to learn the +good old modes of locomotion. There isn’t a girl +of you that Paula can’t walk into the ground. +There isn’t a fellow of you that Graham and +I can’t walk into a receiving hospital.—­Oh, +I know you can all crank engines and shift gears to +the queen’s taste. But there isn’t one +of you that can properly ride a horse—­a +real horse, in the only way, I mean. As for driving +a smart pair of roadsters, it’s a screech. And +how many of you husky lads, hell-scooting on the bay +in your speed-boats, can take the wheel of an old-time +sloop or schooner, without an auxiliary, and get out +of your own way in her?”</p> + +<p>“But we get there just the same,” the +same girl retorted.</p> + +<p>“And I don’t deny it,” Dick answered. +“But you are not always pretty. I’ll tell +you a pretty sight that no one of you can ever present—­ +Paula, there, with the reins of four slashing horses +in her hands, her foot on the brake, swinging tally-ho +along a mountain road.”</p> + +<p>On a warm morning, in the cool arcade of the great +patio, a chance group of four or five, among whom +was Paula, formed about Graham, who had been reading +alone. After a time he returned to his magazine with +such absorption that he forgot those about him until +an awareness of silence penetrated to his consciousness. +He looked up. All the others save Paula had strayed +off. He could hear their distant laughter from across +the patio. But Paula! He surprised the look on her +face, in her eyes. It was a look bent on him, concerning +him. Doubt, speculation, almost fear, were in her +eyes; and yet, in that swift instant, he had time +to note that it was a look deep and searching—­almost, +his quick fancy prompted, the look of one peering +into the just-opened book of fate. Her eyes fluttered +and fell, and the color increased in her cheeks in +an unmistakable blush. Twice her lips moved to the +verge of speech; yet, caught so arrantly in the act, +she was unable to phrase any passing thought. Graham +saved the painful situation by saying casually:</p> + +<p>“Do you know, I’ve just been reading De +Vries’ eulogy of Luther Burbank’s work, +and it seems to me that Dick is to the domestic animal +world what Burbank is to the domestic vegetable world. +You are life-makers here—­thumbing the +stuff into new forms of utility and beauty.”</p> + +<p>Paula, by this time herself again, laughed and accepted +the compliment.</p> + +<p>“I fear me,” Graham continued with easy +seriousness, “as I watch your achievements, +that I can only look back on a misspent life. Why didn’t +I get in and <i>make</i> things? I’m horribly +envious of both of you.”</p> + +<p>“We <i>are</i> responsible for a dreadful +lot of creatures being born,” she said. “It +makes one breathless to think of the responsibility.”</p> + +<p>“The ranch certainly spells fecundity,” +Graham smiled. “I never before was so impressed +with the flowering and fruiting of life. Everything +here prospers and multiplies—­”</p> + +<p>“Oh!” Paula cried, breaking in with a +sudden thought. “Some day I’ll show you +my goldfish. I breed them, too—­yea, and +commercially. I supply the San Francisco dealers with +their rarest strains, and I even ship to New York. +And, best of all, I actually make money—­profits, +I mean. Dick’s books show it, and he is the +most rigid of bookkeepers. There isn’t a tack-hammer +on the place that isn’t inventoried; nor a horse-shoe +nail unaccounted for. That’s why he has such +a staff of bookkeepers. Why, do you know, calculating +every last least item of expense, including average +loss of time for colic and lameness, out of fearfully +endless columns of figures he has worked the cost of +an hour’s labor for a draught horse to the third +decimal place.”</p> + +<p>“But your goldfish,” Graham suggested, +irritated by her constant dwelling on her husband.</p> + +<p>“Well, Dick makes his bookkeepers keep track +of my goldfish in the same way. I’m charged +every hour of any of the ranch or house labor I use +on the fish—­postage stamps and stationery, +too, if you please. I have to pay interest on the +plant. He even charges me for the water, just as if +he were a city water company and I a householder. And +still I net ten per cent., and have netted as high +as thirty. But Dick laughs and says when I’ve +deducted the wages of superintendence—­my +superintendence, he means—­that I’ll +find I am poorly paid or else am operating at a loss; +that with my net I couldn’t hire so capable a +superintendent.</p> + +<p>“Just the same, that’s why Dick succeeds +in his undertakings. Unless it’s sheer experiment, +he never does anything without knowing precisely, +to the last microscopic detail, what it is he is doing.”</p> + +<p>“He is very sure,” Graham observed.</p> + +<p>“I never knew a man to be so sure of himself,” +Paula replied warmly; “and I never knew a man +with half the warrant. I know him. He is a genius—­but +only in the most paradoxical sense. He is a genius +because he is so balanced and normal that he hasn’t +the slightest particle of genius in him. Such men +are rarer and greater than geniuses. I like to think +of Abraham Lincoln as such a type.”</p> + +<p>“I must admit I don’t quite get you,” +Graham said.</p> + +<p>“Oh, I don’t dare to say that Dick is +as good, as cosmically good, as Lincoln,” she +hurried on. “Dick <i>is</i> good, but it +is not that. It is in their excessive balance, normality, +lack of flare, that they are of the same type. Now +I am a genius. For, see, I do things without knowing +how I do them. I just do them. I get effects in my +music that way. Take my diving. To save my life I +couldn’t tell how I swan-dive, or jump, or +do the turn and a half.</p> + +<p>“Dick, on the other hand, can’t do anything +unless he clearly knows in advance <i>how</i> +he is going to do it. He does everything with balance +and foresight. He’s a general, all-around wonder, +without ever having been a particular wonder at any +one thing.—­Oh, I know him. He’s never +been a champion or a record-breaker in any line of +athletics. Nor has he been mediocre in any line. And +so with everything else, mentally, intellectually. +He is an evenly forged chain. He has no massive links, +no weak links.”</p> + +<p>“I’m afraid I’m like you,” +Graham said, “that commoner and lesser creature, +a genius. For I, too, on occasion, flare and do the +most unintentional things. And I am not above falling +on my knees before mystery.”</p> + +<p>“And Dick hates mystery—­or it would +seem he does. Not content with knowing <i>how</i>—­he +is eternally seeking the <i>why</i> of the <i>how</i>. +Mystery is a challenge to him. It excites him like +a red rag does a bull. At once he is for ripping the +husks and the heart from mystery, so that he will +know the <i>how</i> and the <i>why</i>, +when it will be no longer mystery but a generalization +and a scientifically demonstrable fact.”</p> + +<p>Much of the growing situation was veiled to the three +figures of it. Graham did not know of Paula’s +desperate efforts to cling close to her husband, who, +himself desperately busy with his thousand plans and +projects, was seeing less and less of his company. +He always appeared at lunch, but it was a rare afternoon +when he could go out with his guests. Paula did know, +from the multiplicity of long, code telegrams from +Mexico, that things were in a parlous state with the +Harvest Group. Also, she saw the agents and emissaries +of foreign investors in Mexico, always in haste and +often inopportune, arriving at the ranch to confer +with Dick. Beyond his complaint that they ate the heart +out of his time, he gave her no clew to the matters +discussed.</p> + +<p>“My! I wish you weren’t so busy,” +she sighed in his arms, on his knees, one fortunate +morning, when, at eleven o’clock, she had caught +him alone.</p> + +<p>It was true, she had interrupted the dictation of +a letter into the phonograph; and the sigh had been +evoked by the warning cough of Bonbright, whom she +saw entering with more telegrams in his hand.</p> + +<p>“Won’t you let me drive you this afternoon, +behind Duddy and Fuddy, just you and me, and cut the +crowd?” she begged.</p> + +<p>He shook his head and smiled.</p> + +<p>“You’ll meet at lunch a weird combination,” +he explained. “Nobody else needs to know, but +I’ll tell you.” He lowered his voice, while +Bonbright discreetly occupied himself at the filing +cabinets. “They’re Tampico oil folk. Samuels +himself, President of the Nacisco; and Wishaar, the +big inside man of the Pearson-Brooks crowd—­the +chap that engineered the purchase of the East Coast +railroad and the Tiuana Central when they tried to +put the Nacisco out of business; and Matthewson—­he’s +the <i>hi-yu-skookum</i> big chief this side the +Atlantic of the Palmerston interests—­you +know, the English crowd that fought the Nacisco and +the Pearson-Brooks bunch so hard; and, oh, there’ll +be several others. It shows you that things are rickety +down Mexico way when such a bunch stops scrapping +and gets together.</p> + +<p>“You see, they are oil, and I’m important +in my way down there, and they want me to swing the +mining interests in with the oil. Truly, big things +are in the air, and we’ve got to hang together +and do something or get out of Mexico. And I’ll +admit, after they gave me the turn-down in the trouble +three years ago, that I’ve sulked in my tent +and made them come to see me.”</p> + +<p>He caressed her and called her his armful of dearest +woman, although she detected his eye roving impatiently +to the phonograph with its unfinished letter.</p> + +<p>“And so,” he concluded, with a pressure +of his arms about her that seemed to hint that her +moment with him was over and she must go, “that +means the afternoon. None will stop over. And they’ll +be off and away before dinner.”</p> + +<p>She slipped off his knees and out of his arms with +unusual abruptness, and stood straight up before him, +her eyes flashing, her cheeks white, her face set +with determination, as if about to say something of +grave importance. But a bell tinkled softly, and he +reached for the desk telephone.</p> + +<p>Paula drooped, and sighed inaudibly, and, as she went +down the room and out the door, and as Bonbright stepped +eagerly forward with the telegrams, she could hear +the beginning of her husband’s conversation:</p> + +<p>“No. It is impossible. He’s got to come +through, or I’ll put him out of business. That +gentleman’s agreement is all poppycock. If it +were only that, of course he could break it. But I’ve +got some mighty interesting correspondence that he’s +forgotten about.... Yes, yes; it will clinch it in +any court of law. I’ll have the file in your +office by five this afternoon. And tell him, for me, +that if he tries to put through this trick, I’ll +break him. I’ll put a competing line on, and +his steamboats will be in the receiver’s hands +inside a year.... And... hello, are you there?... +And just look up that point I suggested. I am rather +convinced you’ll find the Interstate Commerce +has got him on two counts....”</p> + +<p>Nor did Graham, nor even Paula, imagine that Dick—­the +keen one, the deep one, who could see and sense things +yet to occur and out of intangible nuances and glimmerings +build shrewd speculations and hypotheses that subsequent +events often proved correct—­was already +sensing what had not happened but what might happen. +He had not heard Paula’s brief significant words +at the hitching post; nor had he seen Graham catch +her in that deep scrutiny of him under the arcade. +Dick had heard nothing, seen little, but sensed much; +and, even in advance of Paula, had he apprehended +in vague ways what she afterward had come to apprehend.</p> + +<p>The most tangible thing he had to build on was the +night, immersed in bridge, when he had not been unaware +of the abrupt leaving of the piano after the singing +of the “Gypsy Trail”; nor when, in careless +smiling greeting of them when they came down the room +to devil him over his losing, had he failed to receive +a hint or feeling of something unusual in Paula’s +roguish teasing face. On the moment, laughing retorts, +giving as good as she sent, Dick’s own laughing +eyes had swept over Graham beside her and likewise +detected the unusual. The man was overstrung, had +been Dick’s mental note at the time. But why +should he be overstrung? Was there any connection between +his overstrungness and the sudden desertion by Paula +of the piano? And all the while these questions were +slipping through his thoughts, he had laughed at their +sallies, dealt, sorted his hand, and won the bid on +no trumps.</p> + +<p>Yet to himself he had continued to discount as absurd +and preposterous the possibility of his vague apprehension +ever being realized. It was a chance guess, a silly +speculation, based upon the most trivial data, he +sagely concluded. It merely connoted the attractiveness +of his wife and of his friend. But—­and +on occasional moments he could not will the thought +from coming uppermost in his mind—­why had +they broken off from singing that evening? Why had +he received the feeling that there was something unusual +about it? Why had Graham been overstrung?</p> + +<hr width="75%" size="1" > + +<p>Nor did Bonbright, one morning, taking dictation of +a telegram in the last hour before noon, know that +Dick’s casual sauntering to the window, still +dictating, had been caused by the faint sound of hoofs +on the driveway. It was not the first of recent mornings +that Dick had so sauntered to the window, to glance +out with apparent absentness at the rush of the morning +riding party in the last dash home to the hitching +rails. But he knew, on this morning, before the first +figures came in sight whose those figures would be.</p> + +<p>“Braxton is safe,” he went on with the +dictation without change of tone, his eyes on the +road where the riders must first come into view. “If +things break he can get out across the mountains into +Arizona. See Connors immediately. Braxton left Connors +complete instructions. Connors to-morrow in Washington. +Give me fullest details any move—­ signed.”</p> + +<p>Up the driveway the Fawn and Altadena clattered neck +and neck. Dick had not been disappointed in the figures +he expected to see. From the rear, cries and laughter +and the sound of many hoofs tokened that the rest +of the party was close behind.</p> + +<p>“And the next one, Mr. Bonbright, please put +in the Harvest code,” Dick went on steadily, +while to himself he was commenting that Graham was +a passable rider but not an excellent one, and that +it would have to be seen to that he was given a heavier +horse than Altadena. “It is to Jeremy Braxton. +Send it both ways. There is a chance one or the other +may get through...”</p> + +<h1 align="center" style="margin-top: 2em;font-variant: small-caps">Chapter XX</h1> + +<p>Once again the tide of guests ebbed from the Big House, +and more than one lunch and dinner found only the +two men and Paula at the table. On such evenings, +while Graham and Dick yarned for their hour before +bed, Paula no longer played soft things to herself +at the piano, but sat with them doing fine embroidery +and listening to the talk.</p> + +<p>Both men had much in common, had lived life in somewhat +similar ways, and regarded life from the same angles. +Their philosophy was harsh rather than sentimental, +and both were realists. Paula made a practice of calling +them the pair of “Brass Tacks.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, yes,” she laughed to them, “I +understand your attitude. You are successes, the pair +of you—­physical successes, I mean. You have +health. You are resistant. You can stand things. You +have survived where men less resistant have gone down. +You pull through African fevers and bury the other +fellows. This poor chap gets pneumonia in Cripple +Creek and cashes in before you can get him to sea level. +Now why didn’t you get pneumonia? Because you +were more deserving? Because you had lived more virtuously? +Because you were more careful of risks and took more +precautions?”</p> + +<p>She shook her head.</p> + +<p>“No. Because you were luckier—­I mean +by birth, by possession of constitution and stamina. +Why, Dick buried his three mates and two engineers +at Guayaquil. Yellow fever. Why didn’t the yellow +fever germ, or whatever it is, kill Dick? And the +same with you, Mr. Broad-shouldered Deep-chested +Graham. In this last trip of yours, why didn’t +you die in the swamps instead of your photographer? +Come. Confess. How heavy was he? How broad were his +shoulders? How deep his chest?—­wide his +nostrils?—­tough his resistance?”</p> + +<p>“He weighed a hundred and thirty-five,” +Graham admitted ruefully. “But he looked all +right and fit at the start. I think I was more surprised +than he when he turned up his toes.” Graham shook +his head. “It wasn’t because he was a +light weight and small. The small men are usually the +toughest, other things being equal. But you’ve +put your finger on the reason just the same. He didn’t +have the physical stamina, the resistance,—­You +know what I mean, Dick?”</p> + +<p>“In a way it’s like the quality of muscle +and heart that enables some prizefighters to go the +distance—­twenty, thirty, forty rounds, say,” +Dick concurred. “Right now, in San Francisco, +there are several hundred youngsters dreaming of success +in the ring. I’ve watched them trying out. All +look good, fine-bodied, healthy, fit as fiddles, and +young. And their spirits are most willing. And not +one in ten of them can last ten rounds. I don’t +mean they get knocked out. I mean they blow up. Their +muscles and their hearts are not made out of first-grade +fiber. They simply are not made to move at high speed +and tension for ten rounds. And some of them blow +up in four or five rounds. And not one in forty can +go the twenty-round route, give and take, hammer and +tongs, one minute of rest to three of fight, for a +full hour of fighting. And the lad who can last forty +rounds is one in ten thousand—­lads like +Nelson, Gans, and Wolgast.</p> + +<p>“You understand the point I am making,” +Paula took up. “Here are the pair of you. Neither +will see forty again. You’re a pair of hard-bitten +sinners. You’ve gone through hardship and exposure +that dropped others all along the way. You’ve +had your fun and folly. You’ve roughed and rowdied +over the world—­”</p> + +<p>“Played the wild ass,” Graham laughed +in.</p> + +<p>“And drunk deep,” Paula added. “Why, +even alcohol hasn’t burned you. You were too +tough. You put the other fellows under the table, or +into the hospital or the grave, and went your gorgeous +way, a song on your lips, with tissues uncorroded, +and without even the morning-after headache. And the +point is that you are successes. Your muscles are +blond-beast muscles, your vital organs are blond-beast +organs. And from all this emanates your blond-beast +philosophy. That’s why you are brass tacks, +and preach realism, and practice realism, shouldering +and shoving and walking over lesser and unluckier +creatures, who don’t dare talk back, who, like +Dick’s prizefighting boys, would blow up in +the first round if they resorted to the arbitrament +of force.”</p> + +<p>Dick whistled a long note of mock dismay.</p> + +<p>“And that’s why you preach the gospel +of the strong,” Paula went on. “If you +had been weaklings, you’d have preached the gospel +of the weak and turned the other cheek. But you—­you +pair of big-muscled giants—­ when you are +struck, being what you are, you don’t turn the +other cheek—­”</p> + +<p>“No,” Dick interrupted quietly. “We +immediately roar, ’Knock his block off!’ +and then do it.—­She’s got us, Evan, +hip and thigh. Philosophy, like religion, is what +the man is, and is by him made in his own image.”</p> + +<p>And while the talk led over the world, Paula sewed +on, her eyes filled with the picture of the two big +men, admiring, wondering, pondering, without the surety +of self that was theirs, aware of a slipping and giving +of convictions so long accepted that they had seemed +part of her.</p> + +<p>Later in the evening she gave voice to her trouble.</p> + +<p>“The strangest part of it,” she said, +taking up a remark Dick had just made, “is that +too much philosophizing about life gets one worse than +nowhere. A philosophic atmosphere is confusing—­at +least to a woman. One hears so much about everything, +and against everything, that nothing is sure. For +instance, Mendenhall’s wife is a Lutheran. She +hasn’t a doubt about anything. All is fixed, +ordained, immovable. Star-drifts and ice-ages she +knows nothing about, and if she did they would not +alter in the least her rules of conduct for men and +women in this world and in relation to the next.</p> + +<p>“But here, with us, you two pound your brass +tacks, Terrence does a Greek dance of epicurean anarchism, +Hancock waves the glittering veils of Bergsonian metaphysics, +Leo makes solemn obeisance at the altar of Beauty, +and Dar Hyal juggles his sophistic blastism to no end +save all your applause for his cleverness. Don’t +you see? The effect is that there is nothing solid +in any human judgment. Nothing is right. Nothing is +wrong. One is left compassless, rudderless, chartless +on a sea of ideas. Shall I do this? Must I refrain +from that? Will it be wrong? Is there any virtue in +it? Mrs. Mendenhall has her instant answer for every +such question. But do the philosophers?”</p> + +<p>Paula shook her head.</p> + +<p>“No. All they have is ideas. They immediately +proceed to talk about it, and talk and talk and talk, +and with all their erudition reach no conclusion whatever. +And I am just as bad. I listen and listen, and talk +and talk, as I am talking now, and remain convictionless. +There is no test—­”</p> + +<p>“But there is,” Dick said. “The +old, eternal test of truth—­<i>Will it +work?</i>”</p> + +<p>“Ah, now you are pounding your favorite brass +tack,” Paula smiled. “And Dar Hyal, with +a few arm-wavings and word-whirrings, will show that +all brass tacks are illusions; and Terrence, that brass +tacks are sordid, irrelevant and non-essential things +at best; and Hancock, that the overhanging heaven +of Bergson is paved with brass tacks, only that they +are a much superior article to yours; and Leo, that +there is only one brass tack in the universe, and +that it is Beauty, and that it isn’t brass at +all but gold.”</p> + +<hr width="75%" size="1" > + +<p>“Come on, Red Cloud, go riding this afternoon,” +Paula asked her husband. “Get the cobwebs out +of your brain, and let lawyers and mines and livestock +go hang.”</p> + +<p>“I’d like to, Paul,” he answered. +“But I can’t. I’ve got to rush in +a machine all the way to the Buckeye. Word came in +just before lunch. They’re in trouble at the +dam. There must have been a fault in the under-strata, +and too-heavy dynamiting has opened it. In short, what’s +the good of a good dam when the bottom of the reservoir +won’t hold water?”</p> + +<p>Three hours later, returning from the Buckeye, Dick +noted that for the first time Paula and Graham had +gone riding together alone.</p> + +<hr width="75%" size="1" > + +<p>The Wainwrights and the Coghlans, in two machines, +out for a week’s trip to the Russian River, +rested over for a day at the Big House, and were the +cause of Paula’s taking out the tally-ho for +a picnic into the Los Baños Hills. Starting in the +morning, it was impossible for Dick to accompany them, +although he left Blake in the thick of dictation to +go out and see them off. He assured himself that no +detail was amiss in the harnessing and hitching, and +reseated the party, insisting on Graham coming forward +into the box-seat beside Paula.</p> + +<p>“Just must have a reserve of man’s strength +alongside of Paula in case of need,” Dick explained. +“I’ve known a brake-rod to carry away on +a down grade somewhat to the inconvenience of the +passengers. Some of them broke their necks. And now, +to reassure you, with Paula at the helm, I’ll +sing you a song:</p> + +<p>  “What can little Paula do?<br> +    Why, drive a phaeton and two.<br> +    Can little Paula do no more?<br> +    Yes, drive a tally-ho and +four.”</p> + +<p>All were in laughter as Paula nodded to the grooms +to release the horses’ heads, took the feel +of the four mouths on her hands, and shortened and +slipped the reins to adjustment of four horses into +the collars and taut on the traces.</p> + +<p>In the babel of parting gibes to Dick, none of the +guests was aware of aught else than a bright morning, +the promise of a happy day, and a genial host bidding +them a merry going. But Paula, despite the keen exhilaration +that should have arisen with the handling of four such +horses, was oppressed by a vague sadness in which, +somehow, Dick’s being left behind figured. Through +Graham’s mind Dick’s merry face had flashed +a regret of conscience that, instead of being seated +there beside this one woman, he should be on train +and steamer fleeing to the other side of the world.</p> + +<p>But the merriness died on Dick’s face the moment +he turned on his heel to enter the house. It was a +few minutes later than ten when he finished his dictation +and Mr. Blake rose to go. He hesitated, then said +a trifle apologetically:</p> + +<p>“You told me, Mr. Forrest, to remind you of +the proofs of your Shorthorn book. They wired their +second hurry-up yesterday.”</p> + +<p>“I won’t be able to tackle it myself,” +Dick replied. “Will you please correct the typographical, +submit the proofs to Mr. Manson for correction of +fact—­tell him be sure to verify that pedigree +of King of Devon—­and ship them off.”</p> + +<p>Until eleven Dick received his managers and foremen. +But not for a quarter of an hour after that did he +get rid of his show manager, Mr. Pitts, with the tentative +make-up of the catalogue for the first annual stock-sale +on the ranch. By that time Mr. Bonbright was on hand +with his sheaf of telegrams, and the lunch-hour was +at hand ere they were cleaned up.</p> + +<p>For the first time alone since he had seen the tally-ho +off, Dick stepped out on his sleeping porch to the +row of barometers and thermometers on the wall. But +he had come to consult, not them, but the girl’s +face that laughed from the round wooden frame beneath +them.</p> + +<p>“Paula, Paula,” he said aloud, “are +you surprising yourself and me after all these years? +Are you turning madcap at sober middle age?”</p> + +<p>He put on leggings and spurs to be ready for riding +after lunch, and what his thoughts had been while +buckling on the gear he epitomized to the girl in +the frame.</p> + +<p>“Play the game,” he muttered. And then, +after a pause, as he turned to go: “A free field +and no favor ... and no favor.”</p> + +<hr width="75%" size="1" > + +<p>“Really, if I don’t go soon, I’ll +have to become a pensioner and join the philosophers +of the madroño grove,” Graham said laughingly +to Dick.</p> + +<p>It was the time of cocktail assembling, and Paula, +in addition to Graham, was the only one of the driving +party as yet to put in an appearance.</p> + +<p>“If all the philosophers together would just +make one book!” Dick demurred. “Good Lord, +man, you’ve just got to complete your book here. +I got you started and I’ve got to see you through +with it.”</p> + +<p>Paula’s encouragement to Graham to stay on—­mere +stereotyped, uninterested phrases—­was music +to Dick. His heart leapt. After all, might he not +be entirely mistaken? For two such mature, wise, middle-aged +individuals as Paula and Graham any such foolishness +was preposterous and unthinkable. They were not young +things with their hearts on their sleeves.</p> + +<p>“To the book!” he toasted. He turned to +Paula. “A good cocktail,” he praised. +“Paul, you excel yourself, and you fail to teach +Oh Joy the art. His never quite touch yours.—­Yes, +another, please.”</p> + +<h1 align="center" style="margin-top: 2em;font-variant: small-caps">Chapter XXI</h1> + +<p>Graham, riding solitary through the redwood canyons +among the hills that overlooked the ranch center, +was getting acquainted with Selim, the eleven-hundred-pound, +coal-black gelding which Dick had furnished him in +place of the lighter Altadena. As he rode along, learning +the good nature, the roguishness and the dependableness +of the animal, Graham hummed the words of the “Gypsy +Trail” and allowed them to lead his thoughts. +Quite carelessly, foolishly, thinking of bucolic lovers +carving their initials on forest trees, he broke a +spray of laurel and another of redwood. He had to +stand in the stirrups to pluck a long-stemmed, five-fingered +fern with which to bind the sprays into a cross. When +the patteran was fashioned, he tossed it on the trail +before him and noted that Selim passed over without +treading upon it. Glancing back, Graham watched it +to the next turn of the trail. A good omen, was his +thought, that it had not been trampled.</p> + +<p>More five-fingered ferns to be had for the reaching, +more branches of redwood and laurel brushing his face +as he rode, invited him to continue the manufacture +of patterans, which he dropped as he fashioned them. +An hour later, at the head of the canyon, where he +knew the trail over the divide was difficult and stiff, +he debated his course and turned back.</p> + +<p>Selim warned him by nickering. Came an answering nicker +from close at hand. The trail was wide and easy, and +Graham put his mount into a fox trot, swung a wide +bend, and overtook Paula on the Fawn.</p> + +<p>“Hello!” he called. “Hello! Hello!”</p> + +<p>She reined in till he was alongside.</p> + +<p>“I was just turning back,” she said. “Why +did you turn back? I thought you were going over the +divide to Little Grizzly.”</p> + +<p>“You knew I was ahead of you?” he asked, +admiring the frank, boyish way of her eyes straight-gazing +into his.</p> + +<p>“Why shouldn’t I? I had no doubt at the +second patteran.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, I’d forgotten about them,” +he laughed guiltily. “Why did <i>you</i> +turn back?”</p> + +<p>She waited until the Fawn and Selim had stepped over +a fallen alder across the trail, so that she could +look into Graham’s eyes when she answered:</p> + +<p>“Because I did not care to follow your trail.—­To +follow anybody’s trail,” she quickly amended. +“I turned back at the second one.”</p> + +<p>He failed of a ready answer, and an awkward silence +was between them. Both were aware of this awkwardness, +due to the known but unspoken things.</p> + +<p>“Do you make a practice of dropping patterans?” +Paula asked.</p> + +<p>“The first I ever left,” he replied, with +a shake of the head. “But there was such a generous +supply of materials it seemed a pity, and, besides, +the song was haunting me.”</p> + +<p>“It was haunting me this morning when I woke +up,” she said, this time her face straight ahead +so that she might avoid a rope of wild grapevine that +hung close to her side of the trail.</p> + +<p>And Graham, gazing at her face in profile, at her +crown of gold-brown hair, at her singing throat, felt +the old ache at the heart, the hunger and the yearning. +The nearness of her was a provocation. The sight of +her, in her fawn-colored silk corduroy, tormented him +with a rush of visions of that form of hers—­swimming +Mountain Lad, swan-diving through forty feet of air, +moving down the long room in the dull-blue dress of +medieval fashion with the maddening knee-lift of the +clinging draperies.</p> + +<p>“A penny for them,” she interrupted his +visioning. His answer was prompt.</p> + +<p>“Praise to the Lord for one thing: you haven’t +once mentioned Dick.”</p> + +<p>“Do you so dislike him?”</p> + +<p>“Be fair,” he commanded, almost sternly. +“It is because I like him. Otherwise...”</p> + +<p>“What?” she queried.</p> + +<p>Her voice was brave, although she looked straight +before her at the Fawn’s pricking ears.</p> + +<p>“I can’t understand why I remain. I should +have been gone long ago.”</p> + +<p>“Why?” she asked, her gaze still on the +pricking ears.</p> + +<p>“Be fair, be fair,” he warned. “You +and I scarcely need speech for understanding.”</p> + +<p>She turned full upon him, her cheeks warming with +color, and, without speech, looked at him. Her whip-hand +rose quickly, half way, as if to press her breast, +and half way paused irresolutely, then dropped down +to her side. But her eyes, he saw, were glad and startled. +There was no mistake. The startle lay in them, and +also the gladness. And he, knowing as it is given +some men to know, changed the bridle rein to his other +hand, reined close to her, put his arm around her, +drew her till the horses rocked, and, knee to knee +and lips on lips, kissed his desire to hers. There +was no mistake—­pressure to pressure, warmth +to warmth, and with an elate thrill he felt her breathe +against him.</p> + +<p>The next moment she had torn herself loose. The blood +had left her face. Her eyes were blazing. Her riding-whip +rose as if to strike him, then fell on the startled +Fawn. Simultaneously she drove in both spurs with +such suddenness and force as to fetch a groan and a +leap from the mare.</p> + +<p>He listened to the soft thuds of hoofs die away along +the forest path, himself dizzy in the saddle from +the pounding of his blood. When the last hoof-beat +had ceased, he half-slipped, half-sank from his saddle +to the ground, and sat on a mossy boulder. He was hard +hit—­harder than he had deemed possible +until that one great moment when he had held her in +his arms. Well, the die was cast.</p> + +<p>He straightened up so abruptly as to alarm Selim, +who sprang back the length of his bridle rein and +snorted.</p> + +<p>What had just occurred had been unpremeditated. It +was one of those inevitable things. It had to happen. +He had not planned it, although he knew, now, that +had he not procrastinated his going, had he not drifted, +he could have foreseen it. And now, going could not +mend matters. The madness of it, the hell of it and +the joy of it, was that no longer was there any doubt. +Speech beyond speech, his lips still tingling with +the memory of hers, she had told him. He dwelt over +that kiss returned, his senses swimming deliciously +in the sea of remembrance.</p> + +<p>He laid his hand caressingly on the knee that had +touched hers, and was grateful with the humility of +the true lover. Wonderful it was that so wonderful +a woman should love him. This was no girl. This was +a woman, knowing her own will and wisdom. And she had +breathed quickly in his arms, and her lips had been +live to his. He had evoked what he had given, and +he had not dreamed, after the years, that he had had +so much to give.</p> + +<p>He stood up, made as if to mount Selim, who nozzled +his shoulder, then paused to debate.</p> + +<p>It was no longer a question of going. That was definitely +settled. Dick had certain rights, true. But Paula +had her rights, and did he have the right to go, after +what had happened, unless ... unless she went with +him? To go now was to kiss and ride away. Surely, since +the world of sex decreed that often the same men should +love the one woman, and therefore that perfidy should +immediately enter into such a triangle—­surely, +it was the lesser evil to be perfidious to the man +than to the woman.</p> + +<p>It was a real world, he pondered as he rode slowly +along; and Paula, and Dick, and he were real persons +in it, were themselves conscious realists who looked +the facts of life squarely in the face. This was no +affair of priest and code, of other wisdoms and decisions. +Of themselves must it be settled. Some one would be +hurt. But life was hurt. Success in living was the +minimizing of pain. Dick believed that himself, thanks +be. The three of them believed it. And it was nothing +new under the sun. The countless triangles of the countless +generations had all been somehow solved. This, then, +would be solved. All human affairs reached some solution.</p> + +<p>He shook sober thought from his brain and returned +to the bliss of memory, reaching his hand to another +caress of his knee, his lips breathing again to the +breathing of hers against them. He even reined Selim +to a halt in order to gaze at the hollow resting place +of his bent arm which she had filled.</p> + +<p>Not until dinner did Graham see Paula again, and he +found her the very usual Paula. Not even his eye, +keen with knowledge, could detect any sign of the +day’s great happening, nor of the anger that +had whitened her face and blazed in her eyes when +she half-lifted her whip to strike him. In everything +she was the same Little Lady of the Big House. Even +when it chanced that her eyes met his, they were serene, +untroubled, with no hint of any secret in them. What +made the situation easier was the presence of several +new guests, women, friends of Dick and her, come for +a couple of days.</p> + +<p>Next morning, in the music room, he encountered them +and Paula at the piano.</p> + +<p>“Don’t you sing, Mr. Graham?” a +Miss Hoffman asked.</p> + +<p>She was the editor of a woman’s magazine published +in San Francisco, Graham had learned.</p> + +<p>“Oh, adorably,” he assured her. “Don’t +I, Mrs. Forrest?” he appealed.</p> + +<p>“It is quite true,” Paula smiled, “if +for no other reason that he is kind enough not to +drown me quite.”</p> + +<p>“And nothing remains but to prove our words,” +he volunteered. “There’s a duet we sang +the other evening—­” He glanced at +Paula for a sign. “—­Which is particularly +good for my kind of singing.” Again he gave her +a passing glance and received no cue to her will or +wish. “The music is in the living room. I’ll +go and get it.”</p> + +<p>“It’s the ‘Gypsy Trail,’ a +bright, catchy thing,” he heard her saying to +the others as he passed out.</p> + +<p>They did not sing it so recklessly as on that first +occasion, and much of the thrill and some of the fire +they kept out of their voices; but they sang it more +richly, more as the composer had intended it and with +less of their own particular interpretation. But Graham +was thinking as he sang, and he knew, too, that Paula +was thinking, that in their hearts another duet was +pulsing all unguessed by the several women who applauded +the song’s close.</p> + +<p>“You never sang it better, I’ll wager,” +he told Paula.</p> + +<p>For he had heard a new note in her voice. It had been +fuller, rounder, with a generousness of volume that +had vindicated that singing throat.</p> + +<p>“And now, because I know you don’t know, +I’ll tell you what a patteran is,” she +was saying....</p> + +<h1 align="center" style="margin-top: 2em;font-variant: small-caps">Chapter XXII</h1> + +<p>“Dick, boy, your position is distinctly Carlylean,” +Terrence McFane said in fatherly tones.</p> + +<p>The sages of the madrono grove were at table, and, +with Paula, Dick and Graham, made up the dinner party +of seven.</p> + +<p>“Mere naming of one’s position does not +settle it, Terrence,” Dick replied. “I +know my point is Carlylean, but that does not invalidate +it. Hero-worship is a very good thing. I am talking, +not as a mere scholastic, but as a practical breeder +with whom the application of Mendelian methods is +an every-day commonplace.”</p> + +<p>“And I am to conclude,” Hancock broke +in, “that a Hottentot is as good as a white +man?”</p> + +<p>“Now the South speaks, Aaron,” Dick retorted +with a smile. “Prejudice, not of birth, but +of early environment, is too strong for all your philosophy +to shake. It is as bad as Herbert Spencer’s handicap +of the early influence of the Manchester School.”</p> + +<p>“And Spencer is on a par with the Hottentot?” +Dar Hyal challenged.</p> + +<p>Dick shook his head.</p> + +<p>“Let me say this, Hyal. I think I can make it +clear. The average Hottentot, or the average Melanesian, +is pretty close to being on a par with the average +white man. The difference lies in that there are proportionately +so many more Hottentots and negroes who are merely +average, while there is such a heavy percentage of +white men who are not average, who are above average. +These are what I called the pace-makers that bring +up the speed of their own race average-men. Note that +they do not change the nature or develop the intelligence +of the average-men. But they give them better equipment, +better facilities, enable them to travel a faster +collective pace.</p> + +<p>“Give an Indian a modern rifle in place of his +bow and arrows and he will become a vastly more efficient +game-getter. The Indian hunter himself has not changed +in the slightest. But his entire Indian race sported +so few of the above-average men, that all of them, +in ten thousand generations, were unable to equip +him with a rifle.”</p> + +<p>“Go on, Dick, develop the idea,” Terrence +encouraged. “I begin to glimpse your drive, +and you’ll soon have Aaron on the run with his +race prejudices and silly vanities of superiority.”</p> + +<p>“These above-average men,” Dick continued, +“these pace-makers, are the inventors, the discoverers, +the constructionists, the sporting dominants. A race +that sports few such dominants is classified as a +lower race, as an inferior race. It still hunts with +bows and arrows. It is not equipped. Now the average +white man, per se, is just as bestial, just as stupid, +just as inelastic, just as stagnative, just as retrogressive, +as the average savage. But the average white man has +a faster pace. The large number of sporting dominants +in his society give him the equipment, the organization, +and impose the law.</p> + +<p>“What great man, what hero—­and by +that I mean what sporting dominant—­ has +the Hottentot race produced? The Hawaiian race produced +only one—­ Kamehameha. The negro race in +America, at the outside only two, Booker T. Washington +and Du Bois—­and both with white blood in +them....”</p> + +<p>Paula feigned a cheerful interest while the exposition +went on. She did not appear bored, but to Graham’s +sympathetic eyes she seemed inwardly to droop. And +in an interval of tilt between Terrence and Hancock, +she said in a low voice to Graham:</p> + +<p>“Words, words, words, so much and so many of +them! I suppose Dick is right—­he so nearly +always is; but I confess to my old weakness of inability +to apply all these floods of words to life—­to +my life, I mean, to my living, to what I should do, +to what I must do.” Her eyes were unfalteringly +fixed on his while she spoke, leaving no doubt in +his mind to what she referred. “I don’t +know what bearing sporting dominants and race-paces +have on my life. They show me no right or wrong or +way for my particular feet. And now that they’ve +started they are liable to talk the rest of the evening....</p> + +<p>“Oh, I do understand what they say,” she +hastily assured him; “but it doesn’t mean +anything to me. Words, words, words—­and +I want to know what to do, what to do with myself, +what to do with you, what to do with Dick.”</p> + +<p>But the devil of speech was in Dick Forrest’s +tongue, and before Graham could murmur a reply to +Paula, Dick was challenging him for data on the subject +from the South American tribes among which he had +traveled. To look at Dick’s face it would have +been unguessed that he was aught but a carefree, happy +arguer. Nor did Graham, nor did Paula, Dick’s +dozen years’ wife, dream that his casual careless +glances were missing no movement of a hand, no change +of position on a chair, no shade of expression on +their faces.</p> + +<p>What’s up? was Dick’s secret interrogation. +Paula’s not herself. She’s positively +nervous, and all the discussion is responsible. And +Graham’s off color. His brain isn’t working +up to mark. He’s thinking about something else, +rather than about what he is saying. What is that +something else?</p> + +<p>And the devil of speech behind which Dick hid his +secret thoughts impelled him to urge the talk wider +and wilder.</p> + +<p>“For once I could almost hate the four sages,” +Paula broke out in an undertone to Graham, who had +finished furnishing the required data.</p> + +<p>Dick, himself talking, in cool sentences amplifying +his thesis, apparently engrossed in his subject, saw +Paula make the aside, although no word of it reached +his ears, saw her increasing nervousness, saw the +silent sympathy of Graham, and wondered what had been +the few words she uttered, while to the listening table +he was saying:</p> + +<p>“Fischer and Speiser are both agreed on the +paucity of unit-characters that circulate in the heredity +of the lesser races as compared with the immense variety +of unit-characters in say the French, or German, or +English....”</p> + +<p>No one at the table suspected that Dick deliberately +dangled the bait of a new trend to the conversation, +nor did Leo dream afterward that it was the master-craft +and deviltry of Dick rather than his own question +that changed the subject when he demanded to know what +part the female sporting dominants played in the race.</p> + +<p>“Females don’t sport, Leo, my lad,” +Terrence, with a wink to the others, answered him. +“Females are conservative. They keep the type +true. They fix it and hold it, and are the everlasting +clog on the chariot of progress. If it wasn’t +for the females every blessed mother’s son of +us would be a sporting dominant. I refer to our distinguished +breeder and practical Mendelian whom we have with us +this evening to verify my random statements.”</p> + +<p>“Let us get down first of all to bedrock and +find out what we are talking about,” Dick was +prompt on the uptake. “What is woman?” +he demanded with an air of earnestness.</p> + +<p>“The ancient Greeks said woman was nature’s +failure to make a man,” Dar Hyal answered, the +while the imp of mockery laughed in the corners of +his mouth and curled his thin cynical lips derisively.</p> + +<p>Leo was shocked. His face flushed. There was pain +in his eyes and his lips were trembling as he looked +wistful appeal to Dick.</p> + +<p>“The half-sex,” Hancock gibed. “As +if the hand of God had been withdrawn midway in the +making, leaving her but a half-soul, a groping soul +at best.”</p> + +<p>“No I no!” the boy cried out. “You +must not say such things!—­Dick, you know. +Tell them, tell them.”</p> + +<p>“I wish I could,” Dick replied. “But +this soul discussion is vague as souls themselves. +We all know, of our selves, that we often grope, are +often lost, and are never so much lost as when we think +we know where we are and all about ourselves. What +is the personality of a lunatic but a personality +a little less, or very much less, coherent than ours? +What is the personality of a moron? Of an idiot? Of +a feeble-minded child? Of a horse? A dog? A mosquito? +A bullfrog? A woodtick? A garden snail? And, Leo, +what is your own personality when you sleep and dream? +When you are seasick? When you are in love? When you +have colic? When you have a cramp in the leg? When +you are smitten abruptly with the fear of death? When +you are angry? When you are exalted with the sense +of the beauty of the world and think you think all +inexpressible unutterable thoughts?</p> + +<p>“I say <i>think you think</i> intentionally. +Did you really think, then your sense of the beauty +of the world would not be inexpressible, unutterable. +It would be clear, sharp, definite. You could put it +into words. Your personality would be clear, sharp, +and definite as your thoughts and words. Ergo, Leo, +when you deem, in exalted moods, that you are at the +summit of existence, in truth you are thrilling, vibrating, +dancing a mad orgy of the senses and not knowing a +step of the dance or the meaning of the orgy. You +don’t know yourself. Your soul, your personality, +at that moment, is a vague and groping thing. Possibly +the bullfrog, inflating himself on the edge of a pond +and uttering hoarse croaks through the darkness to +a warty mate, possesses also, at that moment, a vague +and groping personality.</p> + +<p>“No, Leo, personality is too vague for any of +our vague personalities to grasp. There are seeming +men with the personalities of women. There are plural +personalities. There are two-legged human creatures +that are neither fish, flesh, nor fowl. We, as personalities, +float like fog-wisps through glooms and darknesses +and light-flashings. It is all fog and mist, and we +are all foggy and misty in the thick of the mystery.”</p> + +<p>“Maybe it’s mystification instead of mystery—­man-made +mystification,” Paula said.</p> + +<p>“There talks the true woman that Leo thinks +is not a half-soul,” Dick retorted. “The +point is, Leo, sex and soul are all interwoven and +tangled together, and we know little of one and less +of the other.”</p> + +<p>“But women are beautiful,” the boy stammered.</p> + +<p>“Oh, ho!” Hancock broke in, his black +eyes gleaming wickedly. “So, Leo, you identify +woman with beauty?”</p> + +<p>The young poet’s lips moved, but he could only +nod.</p> + +<p>“Very well, then, let us take the testimony +of painting, during the last thousand years, as a +reflex of economic conditions and political institutions, +and by it see how man has molded and daubed woman into +the image of his desire, and how she has permitted +him—­”</p> + +<p>“You must stop baiting Leo,” Paula interfered, +“and be truthful, all of you, and say what +you do know or do believe.”</p> + +<p>“Woman is a very sacred subject,” Dar +Hyal enunciated solemnly.</p> + +<p>“There is the Madonna,” Graham suggested, +stepping into the breach to Paula’s aid.</p> + +<p>“And the cérébrale,” Terrence added, winning +a nod of approval from Dar Hyal.</p> + +<p>“One at a time,” Hancock said. “Let +us consider the Madonna-worship, which was a particular +woman-worship in relation to the general woman-worship +of all women to-day and to which Leo subscribes. Man +is a lazy, loafing savage. He dislikes to be pestered. +He likes tranquillity, repose. And he finds himself, +ever since man began, saddled to a restless, nervous, +irritable, hysterical traveling companion, and her +name is woman. She has moods, tears, vanities, angers, +and moral irresponsibilities. He couldn’t destroy +her. He had to have her, although she was always spoiling +his peace. What was he to do?”</p> + +<p>“Trust him to find a way—­the cunning +rascal,” Terrence interjected.</p> + +<p>“He made a heavenly image of her,” Hancock +kept on. “He idealized her good qualities, and +put her so far away that her bad qualities couldn’t +get on his nerves and prevent him from smoking his +quiet lazy pipe of peace and meditating upon the stars. +And when the ordinary every-day woman tried to pester, +he brushed her aside from his thoughts and remembered +his heaven-woman, the perfect woman, the bearer of +life and custodian of immortality.</p> + +<p>“Then came the Reformation. Down went the worship +of the Mother. And there was man still saddled to +his repose-destroyer. What did he do then?”</p> + +<p>“Ah, the rascal,” Terrence grinned.</p> + +<p>“He said: ‘I will make of you a dream +and an illusion.’ And he did. The Madonna was +his heavenly woman, his highest conception of woman. +He transferred all his idealized qualities of her to +the earthly woman, to every woman, and he has fooled +himself into believing in them and in her ever since... +like Leo does.”</p> + +<p>“For an unmarried man you betray an amazing +intimacy with the pestiferousness of woman,” +Dick commented. “Or is it all purely theoretical?” +Terrence began to laugh.</p> + +<p>“Dick, boy, it’s Laura Marholm Aaron’s +been just reading. He can spout her chapter and verse.”</p> + +<p>“And with all this talk about woman we have +not yet touched the hem of her garment,” Graham +said, winning a grateful look from Paula and Leo.</p> + +<p>“There is love,” Leo breathed. “No +one has said one word about love.”</p> + +<p>“And marriage laws, and divorces, and polygamy, +and monogamy, and free love,” Hancock rattled +off.</p> + +<p>“And why, Leo,” Dar Hyal queried, “is +woman, in the game of love, always the pursuer, the +huntress?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, but she isn’t,” the boy answered +quietly, with an air of superior knowledge. “That +is just some of your Shaw nonsense.”</p> + +<p>“Bravo, Leo,” Paula applauded.</p> + +<p>“Then Wilde was wrong when he said woman attacks +by sudden and strange surrenders?” Dar Hyal +asked.</p> + +<p>“But don’t you see,” protested Leo, +“all such talk makes woman a monster, a creature +of prey.” As he turned to Dick, he stole a side +glance at Paula and love welled in his eyes. “Is +she a creature of prey, Dick?”</p> + +<p>“No,” Dick answered slowly, with a shake +of head, and gentleness was in his voice for sake +of what he had just seen in the boy’s eyes. “I +cannot say that woman is a creature of prey. Nor can +I say she is a creature preyed upon. Nor will I say +she is a creature of unfaltering joy to man. But I +will say that she is a creature of much joy to man—­ +"</p> + +<p>“And of much foolishness,” Hancock added.</p> + +<p>“Of much fine foolishness,” Dick gravely +amended.</p> + +<p>“Let me ask Leo something,” Dar Hyal said. +“Leo, why is it that a woman loves the man who +beats her?”</p> + +<p>“And doesn’t love the man who doesn’t +beat her?” Leo countered.</p> + +<p>“Precisely.”</p> + +<p>“Well, Dar, you are partly right and mostly +wrong.—­Oh, I have learned about definitions +from you fellows. You’ve cunningly left them +out of your two propositions. Now I’ll put them +in for you. A man who beats a woman he loves is a +low type man. A woman who loves the man who beats +her is a low type woman. No high type man beats the +woman he loves. No high type woman,” and all +unconsciously Leo’s eyes roved to Paula, “could +love a man who beats her.”</p> + +<p>“No, Leo,” Dick said, “I assure +you I have never, never beaten Paula.”</p> + +<p>“So you see, Dar,” Leo went on with flushing +cheeks, “you are wrong. Paula loves Dick without +being beaten.”</p> + +<p>With what seemed pleased amusement beaming on his +face, Dick turned to Paula as if to ask her silent +approval of the lad’s words; but what Dick +sought was the effect of the impact of such words under +the circumstances he apprehended. In Paula’s +eyes he thought he detected a flicker of something +he knew not what. Graham’s face he found expressionless +insofar as there was no apparent change of the expression +of interest that had been there.</p> + +<p>“Woman has certainly found her St. George tonight,” +Graham complimented. “Leo, you shame me. Here +I sit quietly by while you fight three dragons.”</p> + +<p>“And such dragons,” Paula joined in. “If +they drove O’Hay to drink, what will they do +to you, Leo?”</p> + +<p>“No knight of love can ever be discomfited by +all the dragons in the world,” Dick said. “And +the best of it, Leo, is in this case the dragons are +more right than you think, and you are more right than +they just the same.”</p> + +<p>“Here’s a dragon that’s a good dragon, +Leo, lad,” Terrence spoke up. “This dragon +is going to desert his disreputable companions and +come over on your side and be a Saint Terrence. And +this Saint Terrence has a lovely question to ask you.”</p> + +<p>“Let this dragon roar first,” Hancock +interposed. “Leo, by all in love that is sweet +and lovely, I ask you: why do lovers, out of jealousy, +so often kill the woman they love?”</p> + +<p>“Because they are hurt, because they are insane,” +came the answer, “and because they have been +unfortunate enough to love a woman so low in type +that she could be guilty of making them jealous.”</p> + +<p>“But, Leo, love will stray,” Dick prompted. +“You must give a more sufficient answer.”</p> + +<p>“True for Dick,” Terrence supplemented. +“And it’s helping you I am to the full +stroke of your sword. Love will stray among the highest +types, and when it does in steps the green-eyed monster. +Suppose the most perfect woman you can imagine should +cease to love the man who does not beat her and come +to love another man who loves her and will not beat +her—­what then? All highest types, mind you. +Now up with your sword and slash into the dragons.”</p> + +<p>“The first man will not kill her nor injure +her in any way,” Leo asserted stoutly. “Because +if he did he would not be the man you describe. He +would not be high type, but low type.”</p> + +<p>“You mean, he would get out of the way?” +Dick asked, at the same time busying himself with +a cigarette so that he might glance at no one’s +face.</p> + +<p>Leo nodded gravely.</p> + +<p>“He would get out of the way, and he would make +the way easy for her, and he would be very gentle +with her.”</p> + +<p>“Let us bring the argument right home,” +Hancock said. “We’ll suppose you’re +in love with Mrs. Forrest, and Mrs. Forrest is in love +with you, and you run away together in the big limousine—­”</p> + +<p>“Oh, but I wouldn’t,” the boy blurted +out, his cheeks burning.</p> + +<p>“Leo, you are not complimentary,” Paula +encouraged.</p> + +<p>“It’s just supposing, Leo,” Hancock +urged.</p> + +<p>The boy’s embarrassment was pitiful, and his +voice quivered, but he turned bravely to Dick and +said:</p> + +<p>“That is for Dick to answer.”</p> + +<p>“And I’ll answer,” Dick said. “I +wouldn’t kill Paula. Nor would I kill you, Leo. +That wouldn’t be playing the game. No matter +what I felt at heart, I’d say, ‘Bless +you, my children.’ But just the same—­” +He paused, and the laughter signals in the corners +of his eyes advertised a whimsey—­"I’d +say to myself that Leo was making a sad mistake. You +see, he doesn’t know Paula.”</p> + +<p>“She would be for interrupting his meditations +on the stars,” Terrence smiled.</p> + +<p>“Never, never, Leo, I promise you,” Paula +exclaimed.</p> + +<p>“There do you belie yourself, Mrs. Forrest,” +Terrence assured her. “In the first place, you +couldn’t help doing it. Besides, it’d be +your bounden duty to do it. And, finally, if I may +say so, as somewhat of an authority, when I was a +mad young lover of a man, with my heart full of a +woman and my eyes full of the stars, ’twas ever +the dearest delight to be loved away from them by +the woman out of my heart.”</p> + +<p>“Terrence, if you keep on saying such lovely +things,” cried Paula, ”I’ll run +away with both you and Leo in the limousine.”</p> + +<p>“Hurry the day,” said Terrence gallantly. +“But leave space among your fripperies for a +few books on the stars that Leo and I may be studying +in odd moments.”</p> + +<p>The combat ebbed away from Leo, and Dar Hyal and Hancock +beset Dick.</p> + +<p>“What do you mean by ’playing the game’?” +Dar Hyal asked.</p> + +<p>“Just what I said, just what Leo said,” +Dick answered; and he knew that Paula’s boredom +and nervousness had been banished for some time and +that she was listening with an interest almost eager. +“In my way of thinking, and in accord with my +temperament, the most horrible spiritual suffering +I can imagine would be to kiss a woman who endured +my kiss.”</p> + +<p>“Suppose she fooled you, say for old sake’s +sake, or through desire not to hurt you, or pity for +you?” Hancock propounded.</p> + +<p>“It would be, to me, the unforgivable sin,” +came Dick’s reply. “It would not be playing +the game—­for her. I cannot conceive the +fairness, nor the satisfaction, of holding the woman +one loves a moment longer than she loves to be held. +Leo is very right. The drunken artisan, with his fists, +may arouse and keep love alive in the breast of his +stupid mate. But the higher human males, the males +with some shadow of rationality, some glimmer of spirituality, +cannot lay rough hands on love. With Leo, I would +make the way easy for the woman, and I would be very +gentle with her.”</p> + +<p>“Then what becomes of your boasted monogamic +marriage institution of Western civilization?” +Dar Hyal asked.</p> + +<p>And Hancock: “You argue for free love, then?”</p> + +<p>“I can only answer with a hackneyed truism,” +Dick said. “There can be no love that is not +free. Always, please, remember the point of view is +that of the higher types. And the point of view answers +you, Dar. The vast majority of individuals must be +held to law and labor by the monogamic institution, +or by a stern, rigid marriage institution of some +sort. They are unfit for marriage freedom or love freedom. +Freedom of love, for them, would be merely license +of promiscuity. Only such nations have risen and endured +where God and the State have kept the people’s +instincts in discipline and order.”</p> + +<p>“Then you don’t believe in the marriage +laws for say yourself,” Dar Hyal inquired, “while +you do believe in them for other men?”</p> + +<p>“I believe in them for all men. Children, family, +career, society, the State—­all these things +make marriage, legal marriage, imperative. And by +the same token that is why I believe in divorce. Men, +all men, and women, all women, are capable of loving +more than once, of having the old love die and of +finding a new love born. The State cannot control +love any more than can a man or a woman. When one falls +in love one falls in love, and that’s all he +knows about it. There it is—­ throbbing, +sighing, singing, thrilling love. But the State can +control license.”</p> + +<p>“It is a complicated free love that you stand +for,” Hancock criticised. “True, and for +the reason that man, living in society, is a most +complicated animal.”</p> + +<p>“But there are men, lovers, who would die at +the loss of their loved one,” Leo surprised +the table by his initiative. “They would die +if she died, they would die—­oh so more +quickly—­if she lived and loved another.”</p> + +<p>“Well, they’ll have to keep on dying as +they have always died in the past,” Dick answered +grimly. “And no blame attaches anywhere for their +deaths. We are so made that our hearts sometimes stray.”</p> + +<p>“My heart would never stray,” Leo asserted +proudly, unaware that all at the table knew his secret. +“I could never love twice, I know.”</p> + +<p>“True for you, lad,” Terrence approved. +“The voice of all true lovers is in your throat. +’Tis the absoluteness of love that is its joy—­how +did Shelley put it?—­or was it Keats?—­’All +a wonder and a wild delight.’ Sure, a miserable +skinflint of a half-baked lover would it be that could +dream there was aught in woman form one-thousandth +part as sweet, as ravishing and enticing, as glorious +and wonderful as his own woman that he could ever +love again.”</p> + +<hr width="75%" size="1" > + +<p>And as they passed out from the dining room, Dick, +continuing the conversation with Dar Hyal, was wondering +whether Paula would kiss him good night or slip off +to bed from the piano. And Paula, talking to Leo about +his latest sonnet which he had shown her, was wondering +if she could kiss Dick, and was suddenly greatly desirous +to kiss him, she knew not why.</p> + +<h1 align="center" style="margin-top: 2em;font-variant: small-caps">Chapter XXIII</h1> + +<p>There was little talk that same evening after dinner. +Paula, singing at the piano, disconcerted Terrence +in the midst of an apostrophe on love. He quit a phrase +midmost to listen to the something new he heard in +her voice, then slid noiselessly across the room to +join Leo at full length on the bearskin. Dar Hyal +and Hancock likewise abandoned the discussion, each +isolating himself in a capacious chair. Graham, seeming +least attracted, browsed in a current magazine, but +Dick observed that he quickly ceased turning the pages. +Nor did Dick fail to catch the new note in Paula’s +voice and to endeavor to sense its meaning.</p> + +<p>When she finished the song the three sages strove +to tell her all at the same time that for once she +had forgotten herself and sung out as they had always +claimed she could. Leo lay without movement or speech, +his chin on his two hands, his face transfigured.</p> + +<p>“It’s all this talk on love,” Paula +laughed, “and all the lovely thoughts Leo and +Terrence ... and Dick have put into my head.”</p> + +<p>Terrence shook his long mop of iron-gray hair.</p> + +<p>“Into your heart you’d be meaning,” +he corrected. “’Tis the very heart and +throat of love that are yours this night. And for the +first time, dear lady, have I heard the full fair +volume that is yours. Never again plaint that your +voice is thin. Thick it is, and round it is, as a +great rope, a great golden rope for the mooring of +argosies in the harbors of the Happy Isles.”</p> + +<p>“And for that I shall sing you the <i>Gloria,"</i> +she answered, “to celebrate the slaying of the +dragons by Saint Leo, by Saint Terrence ... and, of +course, by Saint Richard.”</p> + +<p>Dick, missing nothing of the talk, saved himself from +speech by crossing to the concealed sideboard and +mixing for himself a Scotch and soda.</p> + +<p>While Paula sang the <i>Gloria,</i> he sat on +one of the couches, sipping his drink and remembering +keenly. Once before he had heard her sing like that—­in +Paris, during their swift courtship, and directly +afterward, during their honeymoon on the <i>All Away.</i></p> + +<p>A little later, using his empty glass in silent invitation +to Graham, he mixed highballs for both of them, and, +when Graham had finished his, suggested to Paula that +she and Graham sing the “Gypsy Trail.”</p> + +<p>She shook her head and began <i>Das Kraut Ver-gessenheit.</i></p> + +<p>“She was not a true woman, she was a terrible +woman,” the song’s close wrung from Leo. +“And he was a true lover. She broke his heart, +but still he loved her. He cannot love again because +he cannot forget his love for her.”</p> + +<p>“And now, Red Cloud, the Song of the Acorn,” +Paula said, smiling over to her husband. “Put +down your glass, and be good, and plant the acorns.”</p> + +<p>Dick lazily hauled himself off the couch and stood +up, shaking his head mutinously, as if tossing a mane, +and stamping ponderously with his feet in simulation +of Mountain Lad.</p> + +<p>“I’ll have Leo know that he is not the +only poet and love-knight on the ranch. Listen to +Mountain Lad’s song, all wonder and wild delight, +Terrence, and more. Mountain Lad doesn’t moon +about the loved one. He doesn’t moon at all. +He incarnates love, and rears right up in meeting +and tells them so. Listen to him!”</p> + +<p>Dick filled the room and shook the air with wild, +glad, stallion nickering; and then, with mane-tossing +and foot-pawing, chanted:</p> + +<p>“Hear me! I am Eros! I stamp upon the hills. +I fill the wide valleys. The mares hear me, and startle, +in quiet pastures; for they know me. The land is filled +with fatness, and the sap is in the trees. It is the +spring. The spring is mine. I am monarch of my kingdom +of the spring. The mares remember my voice. They knew +me aforetimes through their mothers before them. Hear +me! I am Eros. I stamp upon the hills, and the wide +valleys are my heralds, echoing the sound of my approach.”</p> + +<p>It was the first time the sages of the madrono grove +had heard Dick’s song, and they were loud in +applause. Hancock took it for a fresh start in the +discussion, and was beginning to elaborate a biologic +Bergsonian definition of love, when he was stopped +by Terrence, who had noticed the pain that swept across +Leo’s face.</p> + +<p>“Go on, please, dear lady,” Terrence begged. +“And sing of love, only of love; for it is my +experience that I meditate best upon the stars to +the accompaniment of a woman’s voice.”</p> + +<p>A little later, Oh Joy, entering the room, waited +till Paula finished a song, then moved noiselessly +to Graham and handed him a telegram. Dick scowled +at the interruption.</p> + +<p>“Very important—­I think,” the +Chinese explained to him.</p> + +<p>“Who took it?” Dick demanded.</p> + +<p>“Me—­I took it,” was the answer. +“Night clerk at Eldorado call on telephone. +He say important. I take it.”</p> + +<p>“It is, fairly so,” Graham spoke up, having +finished reading the message. “Can I get a train +out to-night for San Francisco, Dick?”</p> + +<p>“Oh Joy, come back a moment,” Dick called, +looking at his watch. “What train for San Francisco +stops at Eldorado?”</p> + +<p>“Eleven-ten,” came the instant information. +“Plenty time. Not too much. I call chauffeur?”</p> + +<p>Dick nodded.</p> + +<p>“You really must jump out to-night?” he +asked Graham.</p> + +<p>“Really. It is quite important. Will I have +time to pack?”</p> + +<p>Dick gave a confirmatory nod to Oh Joy, and said to +Graham:</p> + +<p>“Just time to throw the needful into a grip.” +He turned to Oh Joy. “Is Oh My up yet?”</p> + +<p>“Yessr.”</p> + +<p>“Send him to Mr. Graham’s room to help, +and let me know as soon as the machine is ready. No +limousine. Tell Saunders to take the racer.”</p> + +<p>“One fine big strapping man, that,” Terrence +commented, after Graham had left the room.</p> + +<p>They had gathered about Dick, with the exception of +Paula, who remained at the piano, listening.</p> + +<p>“One of the few men I’d care to go along +with, hell for leather, on a forlorn hope or anything +of that sort,” Dick said. “He was on the +<i>Nethermere</i> when she went ashore at Pango +in the ’97 hurricane. Pango is just a strip +of sand, twelve feet above high water mark, a lot +of cocoanuts, and uninhabited. Forty women among the +passengers, English officers’ wives and such. +Graham had a bad arm, big as a leg—­ snake +bite.</p> + +<p>“It was a thundering sea. Boats couldn’t +live. They smashed two and lost both crews. Four sailors +volunteered in succession to carry a light line ashore. +And each man, in turn, dead at the end of it, was +hauled back on board. While they were untying the last +one, Graham, with an arm like a leg, stripped for +it and went to it. And he did it, although the pounding +he got on the sand broke his bad arm and staved in +three ribs. But he made the line fast before he quit. +In order to haul the hawser ashore, six more volunteered +to go in on Evan’s line to the beach. Four of +them arrived. And only one woman of the forty was +lost—­she died of heart disease and fright.</p> + +<p>“I asked him about it once. He was as bad as +an Englishman. All I could get out of the beggar was +that the recovery was uneventful. Thought that the +salt water, the exercise, and the breaking of the +bone had served as counter-irritants and done the arm +good.”</p> + +<p>Oh Joy and Graham entered the room from opposite ends. +Dick saw that Graham’s first questing glance +was for Paula.</p> + +<p>“All ready, sir,” Oh Joy announced.</p> + +<p>Dick prepared to accompany his guest outside to the +car; but Paula evidenced her intention of remaining +in the house. Graham started over to her to murmur +perfunctory regrets and good-by.</p> + +<p>And she, warm with what Dick had just told of him, +pleasured at the goodly sight of him, dwelling with +her eyes on the light, high poise of head, the careless, +sun-sanded hair, and the lightness, almost debonaireness, +of his carriage despite his weight of body and breadth +of shoulders. As he drew near to her, she centered +her gaze on the long gray eyes whose hint of drooping +lids hinted of boyish sullenness. She waited for the +expression of sullenness to vanish as the eyes lighted +with the smile she had come to know so well.</p> + +<p>What he said was ordinary enough, as were her regrets; +but in his eyes, as he held her hand a moment, was +the significance which she had unconsciously expected +and to which she replied with her own eyes. The same +significance was in the pressure of the momentary handclasp. +All unpremeditated, she responded to that quick pressure. +As he had said, there was little need for speech between +them.</p> + +<p>As their hands fell apart, she glanced swiftly at +Dick; for she had learned much, in their dozen years +together, of his flashes of observance, and had come +to stand in awe of his almost uncanny powers of guessing +facts from nuances, and of linking nuances into conclusions +often startling in their thoroughness and correctness. +But Dick, his shoulder toward her, laughing over some +quip of Hancock, was just turning his laughter-crinkled +eyes toward her as he started to accompany Graham.</p> + +<p>No, was her thought; surely Dick had seen nothing +of the secret little that had been exchanged between +them. It had been very little, very quick—­a +light in the eyes, a muscular quiver of the fingers, +and no lingering. How could Dick have seen or sensed? +Their eyes had certainly been hidden from Dick, likewise +their clasped hands, for Graham’s back had been +toward him.</p> + +<p>Just the same, she wished she had not made that swift +glance at Dick. She was conscious of a feeling of +guilt, and the thought of it hurt her as she watched +the two big men, of a size and blondness, go down +the room side by side. Of what had she been guilty? +she asked herself. Why should she have anything to +hide? Yet she was honest enough to face the fact and +accept, without quibble, that she had something to +hide. And her cheeks burned at the thought that she +was being drifted into deception.</p> + +<p>“I won’t be but a couple of days,” +Graham was saying as he shook hands with Dick at the +car.</p> + +<p>Dick saw the square, straight look of his eyes, and +recognized the firmness and heartiness of his gripping +hand. Graham half began to say something, then did +not; and Dick knew he had changed his mind when he +said:</p> + +<p>“I think, when I get back, that I’ll have +to pack.”</p> + +<p>“But the book,” Dick protested, inwardly +cursing himself for the leap of joy which had been +his at the other’s words.</p> + +<p>“That’s just why,” Graham answered. +“I’ve got to get it finished. It doesn’t +seem I can work like you do. The ranch is too alluring. +I can’t get down to the book. I sit over it, +and sit over it, but the confounded meadowlarks keep +echoing in my ears, and I begin to see the fields, +and the redwood canyons, and Selim. And after I waste +an hour, I give up and ring for Selim. And if it isn’t +that, it’s any one of a thousand other enchantments.”</p> + +<p>He put his foot on the running-board of the pulsing +car and said, “Well, so long, old man.”</p> + +<p>“Come back and make a stab at it,” urged +Dick. “If necessary, we’ll frame up a +respectable daily grind, and I’ll lock you in +every morning until you’ve done it. And if you +don’t do your work all day, all day you’ll +stay locked in. I’ll make you work.—­Got +cigarettes?—­matches?”</p> + +<p>“Right O.”</p> + +<p>“Let her go, Saunders,” Dick ordered the +chauffeur; and the car seemed to leap out into the +darkness from the brilliantly lighted porte cochére.</p> + +<p>Back in the house, Dick found Paula playing to the +madrono sages, and ensconced himself on the couch +to wait and wonder if she would kiss him good night +when bedtime came. It was not, he recognized, as if +they made a regular schedule of kissing. It had never +been like that. Often and often he did not see her +until midday, and then in the presence of guests. +And often and often, she slipped away to bed early, +disturbing no one with a good night kiss to her husband +which might well hint to them that their bedtime had +come.</p> + +<p>No, Dick concluded, whether or not she kissed him +on this particular night it would be equally without +significance. But still he wondered.</p> + +<p>She played on and sang on interminably, until at last +he fell asleep. When he awoke he was alone in the +room. Paula and the sages had gone out quietly. He +looked at his watch. It marked one o’clock. She +had played unusually late, he knew; for he knew she +had just gone. It was the cessation of music and movement +that had awakened him.</p> + +<p>And still he wondered. Often he napped there to her +playing, and always, when she had finished, she kissed +him awake and sent him to bed. But this night she +had not. Perhaps, after all, she was coming back. +He lay and drowsed and waited. The next time he looked +at his watch, it was two o’clock. She had not +come back.</p> + +<p>He turned off the lights, and as he crossed the house, +pressed off the hall lights as he went, while the +many unimportant little nothings, almost of themselves, +ranged themselves into an ordered text of doubt and +conjecture that he could not refrain from reading.</p> + +<p>On his sleeping porch, glancing at his barometers +and thermometers, her laughing face in the round frame +caught his eyes, and, standing before it, even bending +closer to it, he studied her long.</p> + +<p>“Oh, well,” he muttered, as he drew up +the bedcovers, propped the pillows behind him and +reached for a stack of proofsheets, “whatever +it is I’ll have to play it.”</p> + +<p>He looked sidewise at her picture.</p> + +<p>“But, oh, Little Woman, I wish you wouldn’t,” +was the sighed good night.</p> + +<h1 align="center" style="margin-top: 2em;font-variant: small-caps">Chapter XXIV</h1> + +<p>As luck would have it, beyond chance guests for lunch +or dinner, the Big House was empty. In vain, on the +first and second days, did Dick lay out his work, +or defer it, so as to be ready for any suggestion +from Paula to go for an afternoon swim or drive.</p> + +<p>He noted that she managed always to avoid the possibility +of being kissed. From her sleeping porch she called +good night to him across the wide patio. In the morning +he prepared himself for her eleven o’clock greeting. +Mr. Agar and Mr. Pitts, with important matters concerning +the forthcoming ranch sale of stock still unsettled, +Dick promptly cleared out at the stroke of eleven. +Up she was, he knew, for he had heard her singing. +As he waited, seated at his desk, for once he was +idle. A tray of letters before him continued to need +his signature. He remembered this morning pilgrimage +of hers had been originated by her, and by her, somewhat +persistently, had been kept up. And an adorable thing +it was, he decided—­that soft call of “Good +morning, merry gentleman,” and the folding of +her kimono-clad figure in his arms.</p> + +<p>He remembered, further, that he had often cut that +little visit short, conveying the impression to her, +even while he clasped her, of how busy he was. And +he remembered, more than once, the certain little +wistful shadow on her face as she slipped away.</p> + +<p>Quarter past eleven, and she had not come. He took +down the receiver to telephone the dairy, and in the +swift rush of women’s conversation, ere he hung +up, he caught Paula’s voice:</p> + +<p>“—­Bother Mr. Wade. Bring all the +little Wades and come, if only for a couple of days—­”</p> + +<p>Which was very strange of Paula. She had invariably +welcomed the intervals of no guests, when she and +he were left alone with each other for a day or for +several days. And now she was trying to persuade Mrs. +Wade to come down from Sacramento. It would seem that +Paula did not wish to be alone with him, and was seeking +to protect herself with company.</p> + +<p>He smiled as he realized that that morning embrace, +now that it was not tendered him, had become suddenly +desirable. The thought came to him of taking her away +with him on one of their travel-jaunts. That would +solve the problem, perhaps. And he would hold her very +close to him and draw her closer. Why not an Alaskan +hunting trip? She had always wanted to go. Or back +to their old sailing grounds in the days of the <i>All +Away</i>—­the South Seas. Steamers ran +direct between San Francisco and Tahiti. In twelve +days they could be ashore in Papeete. He wondered +if Lavaina still ran her boarding house, and his quick +vision caught a picture of Paula and himself at breakfast +on Lavaina’s porch in the shade of the mango +trees.</p> + +<p>He brought his fist down on the desk. No, by God, +he was no coward to run away with his wife for fear +of any man. And would it be fair to her to take her +away possibly from where her desire lay? True, he did +not know where her desire lay, nor how far it had gone +between her and Graham. Might it not be a spring madness +with her that would vanish with the spring? Unfortunately, +he decided, in the dozen years of their marriage she +had never evidenced any predisposition toward spring +madness. She had never given his heart a moment’s +doubt. Herself tremendously attractive to men, seeing +much of them, receiving their admiration and even +court, she had remained always her equable and serene +self, Dick Forrest’s wife—­</p> + +<p>“Good morning, merry gentleman.”</p> + +<p>She was peeping in on him, quite naturally from the +hall, her eyes and lips smiling to him, blowing him +a kiss from her finger tips.</p> + +<p>“And good morning, my little haughty moon,” +he called back, himself equally his natural self.</p> + +<p>And now she would come in, he thought; and he would +fold her in his arms, and put her to the test of the +kiss.</p> + +<p>He opened his arms in invitation. But she did not +enter. Instead, she startled, with one hand gathered +her kimono at her breast, with the other picked up +the trailing skirt as if for flight, at the same time +looking apprehensively down the hall. Yet his keen +ears had caught no sound. She smiled back at him, +blew him another kiss, and was gone.</p> + +<p>Ten minutes later he had no ears for Bonbright, who, +telegrams in hand, startled him as he sat motionless +at his desk, as he had sat, without movement, for +ten minutes.</p> + +<p>And yet she was happy. Dick knew her too long in all +the expressions of her moods not to realize the significance +of her singing over the house, in the arcades, and +out in the patio. He did not leave his workroom till +the stroke of lunch; nor did she, as she sometimes +did, come to gather him up on the way. At the lunch +gong, from across the patio, he heard her trilling +die away into the house in the direction of the dining +room.</p> + +<p>A Colonel Harrison Stoddard—­colonel from +younger service in the National Guard, himself a retired +merchant prince whose hobby was industrial relations +and social unrest—­held the table most of +the meal upon the extension of the Employers’ +Liability Act so as to include agricultural laborers. +But Paula found a space in which casually to give +the news to Dick that she was running away for the +afternoon on a jaunt up to Wickenberg to the Masons.</p> + +<p>“Of course I don’t know when I’ll +be back—­you know what the Masons are. And +I don’t dare ask you to come, though I’d +like you along.”</p> + +<p>Dick shook his head.</p> + +<p>“And so,” she continued, “if you’re +not using Saunders—­”</p> + +<p>Dick nodded acquiescence.</p> + +<p>“I’m using Callahan this afternoon,” +he explained, on the instant planning his own time +now that Paula was out of the question. “I never +can make out, Paul, why you prefer Saunders. Callahan +is the better driver, and of course the safest.”</p> + +<p>“Perhaps that’s why,” she said with +a smile. “Safety first means slowest most.”</p> + +<p>“Just the same I’d back Callahan against +Saunders on a speed-track,” Dick championed.</p> + +<p>“Where are you bound?” she asked.</p> + +<p>“Oh, to show Colonel Stoddard my one-man and +no-horse farm—­you know, the automatically +cultivated ten-acre stunt I’ve been frivoling +with. A lot of changes have been made that have been +waiting a week for me to see tried out. I’ve +been too busy. And after that, I’m going to +take him over the colony—­what do you think?—­five +additions the last week.”</p> + +<p>“I thought the membership was full,” Paula +said.</p> + +<p>“It was, and still is,” Dick beamed. “But +these are babies. And the least hopeful of the families +had the rashness to have twins.”</p> + +<p>“A lot of wiseacres are shaking their heads +over that experiment of yours, and I make free to +say that I am merely holding my judgment—­ +you’ve got to show me by bookkeeping,” +Colonel Stoddard was saying, immensely pleased at +the invitation to be shown over in person.</p> + +<p>Dick scarcely heard him, such was the rush of other +thoughts. Paula had not mentioned whether Mrs. Wade +and the little Wades were coming, much less mentioned +that she had invited them. Yet this Dick tried to +consider no lapse on her part, for often and often, +like himself, she had guests whose arrival was the +first he knew of their coming.</p> + +<p>It was, however, evident that Mrs. Wade was not coming +that day, else Paula would not be running away thirty +miles up the valley. That was it, and there was no +blinking it. She was running away, and from him. She +could not face being alone with him with the consequent +perils of intimacy—­and perilous, in such +circumstances, could have but the significance he +feared. And further, she was making the evening sure. +She would not be back for dinner, or till long after +dinner, it was a safe wager, unless she brought the +whole Wickenberg crowd with her. She would be back +late enough to expect him to be in bed. Well, he would +not disappoint her, he decided grimly, as he replied +to Colonel Stoddard:</p> + +<p>“The experiment works out splendidly on paper, +with decently wide margins for human nature. And there +I admit is the doubt and the danger—­the +human nature. But the only way to test it is to test +it, which is what I am doing.”</p> + +<p>“It won’t be the first Dick has charged +to profit and loss,” Paula said.</p> + +<p>“But five thousand acres, all the working capital +for two hundred and fifty farmers, and a cash salary +of a thousand dollars each a year!” Colonel +Stoddard protested. “A few such failures—­if +it fails—­would put a heavy drain on the +Harvest.”</p> + +<p>“That’s what the Harvest needs,” +Dick answered lightly.</p> + +<p>Colonel Stoddard looked blank.</p> + +<p>“Precisely,” Dick confirmed. “Drainage, +you know. The mines are flooded—­the Mexican +situation.”</p> + +<p>It was during the morning of the second day—­the +day of Graham’s expected return—­that +Dick, who, by being on horseback at eleven, had avoided +a repetition of the hurt of the previous day’s +“Good morning, merry gentleman” across +the distance of his workroom, encountered Ah Ha in +a hall with an armful of fresh-cut lilacs. The house-boy’s +way led toward the tower room, but Dick made sure.</p> + +<p>“Where are you taking them, Ah Ha?” he +asked.</p> + +<p>“Mr. Graham’s room—­he come +to-day.”</p> + +<p>Now whose thought was that? Dick pondered. Ah Ha’s?—­Oh +Joy’s—­or Paula’s? He remembered +having heard Graham more than once express his fancy +for their lilacs.</p> + +<p>He deflected his course from the library and strolled +out through the flowers near the tower room. Through +the open windows of it came Paula’s happy humming. +Dick pressed his lower lip with tight quickness between +his teeth and strolled on.</p> + +<p>Some great, as well as many admirable, men and women +had occupied that room, and for them Paula had never +supervised the flower arrangement, Dick meditated. +Oh Joy, himself a master of flowers, usually attended +to that, or had his house-staff ably drilled to do +it.</p> + +<p>Among the telegrams Bonbright handed him, was one +from Graham, which Dick read twice, although it was +simple and unmomentous, being merely a postponement +of his return.</p> + +<p>Contrary to custom, Dick did not wait for the second +lunch-gong. At the sound of the first he started, +for he felt the desire for one of Oh Joy’s cocktails—­the +need of a prod of courage, after the lilacs, to meet +Paula. But she was ahead of him. He found her—­who +rarely drank, and never alone—­just placing +an empty cocktail glass back on the tray.</p> + +<p>So she, too, had needed courage for the meal, was +his deduction, as he nodded to Oh Joy and held up +one finger.</p> + +<p>“Caught you at it!” he reproved gaily. +“Secret tippling. The gravest of symptoms. Little +I thought, the day I stood up with you, that the wife +I was marrying was doomed to fill an alcoholic’s +grave.”</p> + +<p>Before she could retort, a young man strolled in whom +she and Dick greeted as Mr. Winters, and who also +must have a cocktail. Dick tried to believe that it +was not relief he sensed in Paula’s manner as +she greeted the newcomer. He had never seen her quite +so cordial to him before, although often enough she +had met him. At any rate, there would be three at +lunch.</p> + +<p>Mr. Winters, an agricultural college graduate and +special writer for the <i>Pacific Rural Press,</i> +as well as a sort of protégé of Dick, had come for +data for an article on California fish-ponds, and Dick +mentally arranged his afternoon’s program for +him.</p> + +<p>“Got a telegram from Evan,” he told Paula. +“Won’t be back till the four o’clock +day after to-morrow.”</p> + +<p>“And after all my trouble!” she exclaimed. +“Now the lilacs will be wilted and spoiled.”</p> + +<p>Dick felt a warm glow of pleasure. There spoke his +frank, straightforward Paula. No matter what the game +was, or its outcome, at least she would play it without +the petty deceptions. She had always been that way—­too +transparent to make a success of deceit.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, he played his own part by a glance of +scarcely interested interrogation.</p> + +<p>“Why, in Graham’s room,” she explained. +“I had the boys bring a big armful and I arranged +them all myself. He’s so fond of them, you know.”</p> + +<p>Up to the end of lunch, she had made no mention of +Mrs. Wade’s coming, and Dick knew definitely +she was not coming when Paula queried casually:</p> + +<p>“Expecting anybody?”</p> + +<p>He shook his head, and asked, “Are you doing +anything this afternoon?”</p> + +<p>“Haven’t thought about anything,” +she answered. “And now I suppose I can’t +plan upon you with Mr. Winters to be told all about +fish.”</p> + +<p>“But you can,” Dick assured her. “I’m +turning him over to Mr. Hanley, who’s got the +trout counted down to the last egg hatched and who +knows all the grandfather bass by name. I’ll +tell you what—­” He paused and considered. +Then his face lighted as with a sudden idea. “It’s +a loafing afternoon. Let’s take the rifles and +go potting squirrels. I noticed the other day they’ve +become populous on that hill above the Little Meadow.”</p> + +<p>But he had not failed to observe the flutter of alarm +that shadowed her eyes so swiftly, and that so swiftly +was gone as she clapped her hands and was herself.</p> + +<p>“But don’t take a rifle for me,” +she said.</p> + +<p>“If you’d rather not—­” +he began gently.</p> + +<p>“Oh, I want to go, but I don’t feel up +to shooting. I’ll take Le Gallienne’s +last book along—­it just came in—­and +read to you in betweenwhiles. Remember, the last time +I did that when we went squirreling it was his ‘Quest +of the Golden Girl’ I read to you.”</p> + +<h1 align="center" style="margin-top: 2em;font-variant: small-caps">Chapter XXV</h1> + +<p>Paula on the Fawn, and Dick on the Outlaw, rode out +from the Big House as nearly side by side as the Outlaw’s +wicked perversity permitted. The conversation she +permitted was fragmentary. With tiny ears laid back +and teeth exposed, she would attempt to evade Dick’s +restraint of rein and spur and win to a bite of Paula’s +leg or the Fawn’s sleek flank, and with every +defeat the pink flushed and faded in the whites of +her eyes. Her restless head-tossing and pitching attempts +to rear (thwarted by the martingale) never ceased, +save when she pranced and sidled and tried to whirl.</p> + +<p>“This is the last year of her,” Dick announced. +“She’s indomitable. I’ve worked +two years on her without the slightest improvement. +She knows me, knows my ways, knows I am her master, +knows when she has to give in, but is never satisfied. +She nourishes the perennial hope that some time she’ll +catch me napping, and for fear she’ll miss that +time she never lets any time go by.”</p> + +<p>“And some time she may catch you,” Paula +said.</p> + +<p>“That’s why I’m giving her up. It +isn’t exactly a strain on me, but soon or late +she’s bound to get me if there’s anything +in the law of probability. It may be a million-to-one +shot, but heaven alone knows where in the series of +the million that fatal one is going to pop up.”</p> + +<p>“You’re a wonder, Red Cloud,” Paula +smiled.</p> + +<p>“Why?”</p> + +<p>“You think in statistics and percentages, averages +and exceptions. I wonder, when we first met, what +particular formula you measured me up by.”</p> + +<p>“I’ll be darned if I did,” he laughed +back. “There was where all signs failed. I didn’t +have a statistic that applied to you. I merely acknowledged +to myself that here was the most wonderful female woman +ever born with two good legs, and I knew that I wanted +her more than I had ever wanted anything. I just had +to have her—­”</p> + +<p>“And got her,” Paula completed for him. +“But since, Red Cloud, since. Surely you’ve +accumulated enough statistics on me.”</p> + +<p>“A few, quite a few,” he admitted. “But +I hope never to get the last one—­”</p> + +<p>He broke off at sound of the unmistakable nicker of +Mountain Lad. The stallion appeared, the cowboy on +his back, and Dick gazed for a moment at the perfect +action of the beast’s great swinging trot.</p> + +<p>“We’ve got to get out of this,” +he warned, as Mountain Lad, at sight of them, broke +into a gallop.</p> + +<p>Together they pricked their mares, whirled them about, +and fled, while from behind they heard the soothing +“Whoas” of the rider, the thuds of the +heavy hoofs on the roadway, and a wild imperative neigh. +The Outlaw answered, and the Fawn was but a moment +behind her. From the commotion they knew Mountain +Lad was getting tempestuous.</p> + +<p>Leaning to the curve, they swept into a cross-road +and in fifty paces pulled up, where they waited till +the danger was past.</p> + +<p>“He’s never really injured anybody yet,” +Paula said, as they started back.</p> + +<p>“Except when he casually stepped on Cowley’s +toes. You remember he was laid up in bed for a month,” +Dick reminded her, straightening out the Outlaw from +a sidle and with a flicker of glance catching the strange +look with which Paula was regarding him.</p> + +<p>There was question in it, he could see, and love in +it, and fear—­yes, almost fear, or at least +apprehension that bordered on dismay; but, most of +all, a seeking, a searching, a questioning. Not entirely +ungermane to her mood, was his thought, had been that +remark of his thinking in statistics.</p> + +<p>But he made that he had not seen, whipping out his +pad, and, with an interested glance at a culvert they +were passing, making a note.</p> + +<p>“They missed it,” he said. “It should +have been repaired a month ago.”</p> + +<p>“What has become of all those Nevada mustangs?” +Paula inquired.</p> + +<p>This was a flyer Dick had taken, when a bad season +for Nevada pasture had caused mustangs to sell for +a song with the alternative of starving to death. +He had shipped a trainload down and ranged them in +his wilder mountain pastures to the west.</p> + +<p>“It’s time to break them,” he answered. +“And I’m thinking of a real old-fashioned +rodeo next week. What do you say? Have a barbecue and +all the rest, and invite the country side?”</p> + +<p>“And then you won’t be there,” Paula +objected.</p> + +<p>“I’ll take a day off. Is it a go?”</p> + +<p>They reined to one side of the road, as she agreed, +to pass three farm tractors, all with their trailage +of ganged discs and harrows.</p> + +<p>“Moving them across to the Rolling Meadows,” +he explained. “They pay over horses on the right +ground.”</p> + +<p>Rising from the home valley, passing through cultivated +fields and wooded knolls, they took a road busy with +many wagons hauling road-dressing from the rock-crusher +they could hear growling and crunching higher up.</p> + +<p>“Needs more exercise than I’ve been giving +her,” Dick remarked, jerking the Outlaw’s +bared teeth away from dangerous proximity to the Fawn’s +flank.</p> + +<p>“And it’s disgraceful the way I’ve +neglected Duddy and Fuddy,” Paula said. “I’ve +kept their feed down like a miser, but they’re +a lively handful just the same.”</p> + +<p>Dick heard her idly, but within forty-eight hours +he was to remember with hurt what she had said.</p> + +<p>They continued on till the crunch of the rock-crusher +died away, penetrated a belt of woodland, crossed +a tiny divide where the afternoon sunshine was wine-colored +by the manzanita and rose-colored by madronos, and +dipped down through a young planting of eucalyptus +to the Little Meadow. But before they reached it, +they dismounted and tied their horses. Dick took the +.22 automatic rifle from his saddle-holster, and +with Paula advanced softly to a clump of redwoods on +the edge of the meadow. They disposed themselves in +the shade and gazed out across the meadow to the steep +slope of hill that came down to it a hundred and fifty +yards away.</p> + +<p>“There they are—­three—­four +of them,” Paula whispered, as her keen eyes +picked the squirrels out amongst the young grain.</p> + +<p>These were the wary ones, the sports in the direction +of infinite caution who had shunned the poisoned grain +and steel traps of Dick’s vermin catchers. They +were the survivors, each of a score of their fellows +not so cautious, themselves fit to repopulate the hillside.</p> + +<p>Dick filled the chamber and magazine with tiny cartridges, +examined the silencer, and, lying at full length, +leaning on his elbow, sighted across the meadow. There +was no sound of explosion when he fired, only the +click of the mechanism as the bullet was sped, the +empty cartridge ejected, a fresh cartridge flipped +into the chamber, and the trigger re-cocked. A big, +dun-colored squirrel leaped in the air, fell over, +and disappeared in the grain. Dick waited, his eye +along the rifle and directed toward several holes +around which the dry earth showed widely as evidence +of the grain which had been destroyed. When the wounded +squirrel appeared, scrambling across the exposed ground +to safety, the rifle clicked again and he rolled over +on his side and lay still.</p> + +<p>At the first click, every squirrel but the stricken +one, had made into its burrow. Remained nothing to +do but wait for their curiosity to master caution. +This was the interval Dick had looked forward to. As +he lay and scanned the hillside for curious heads to +appear, he wondered if Paula would have something +to say to him. In trouble she was, but would she keep +this trouble to herself? It had never been her way. +Always, soon or late, she brought her troubles to him. +But, then, he reflected, she had never had a trouble +of this nature before. It was just the one thing that +she would be least prone to discuss with him. On the +other hand, he reasoned, there was her everlasting +frankness. He had marveled at it, and joyed in it, +all their years together. Was it to fail her now?</p> + +<p>So he lay and pondered. She did not speak. She was +not restless. He could hear no movement. When he glanced +to the side at her he saw her lying on her back, eyes +closed, arms outstretched, as if tired.</p> + +<p>A small head, the color of the dry soil of its home, +peeped from a hole. Dick waited long minutes, until, +assured that no danger lurked, the owner of the head +stood full up on its hind legs to seek the cause of +the previous click that had startled it. Again the +rifle clicked.</p> + +<p>“Did you get him?” Paula queried, without +opening her eyes.</p> + +<p>“Yea, and a fat one,” Dick answered. “I +stopped a line of generations right there.”</p> + +<p>An hour passed. The afternoon sun beat down but was +not uncomfortable in the shade. A gentle breeze fanned +the young grain into lazy wavelets at times, and stirred +the redwood boughs above them. Dick added a third +squirrel to the score. Paula’s book lay beside +her, but she had not offered to read.</p> + +<p>“Anything the matter?” he finally nerved +himself to ask.</p> + +<p>“No; headache—­a beastly little neuralgic +hurt across the eyes, that’s all.”</p> + +<p>“Too much embroidery,” he teased.</p> + +<p>“Not guilty,” was her reply.</p> + +<p>All was natural enough in all seeming; but Dick, as +he permitted an unusually big squirrel to leave its +burrow and crawl a score of feet across the bare earth +toward the grain, thought to himself: No, there will +be no talk between us this day. Nor will we nestle +and kiss lying here in the grass.</p> + +<p>His victim was now at the edge of the grain. He pulled +trigger. The creature fell over, lay still a moment, +then ran in quick awkward fashion toward its hole. +Click, click, click, went the mechanism. Puffs of +dust leaped from the earth close about the fleeing +squirrel, showing the closeness of the misses. Dick +fired as rapidly as he could twitch his forefinger +on the trigger, so that it was as if he played a stream +of lead from a hose.</p> + +<p>He had nearly finished refilling the magazine when +Paula spoke.</p> + +<p>“My! What a fusillade.—­Get him?”</p> + +<p>“Yea, grandfather of all squirrels, a mighty +graineater and destroyer of sustenance for young calves. +But nine long smokeless cartridges on one squirrel +doesn’t pay. I’ll have to do better.”</p> + +<p>The sun dropped lower. The breeze died out. Dick managed +another squirrel and sadly watched the hillside for +more. He had arranged the time and made his bid for +confidence. The situation was as grave as he had feared. +Graver it might be, for all he knew, for his world +was crumbling about him. Old landmarks were shifting +their places. He was bewildered, shaken. Had it been +any other woman than Paula! He had been so sure. There +had been their dozen years to vindicate his surety....</p> + +<p>“Five o’clock, sun he get low,” +he announced, rising to his feet and preparing to +help her up.</p> + +<p>“It did me so much good—­just resting,” +she said, as they started for the horses. “My +eyes feel much better. It’s just as well I didn’t +try to read to you.”</p> + +<p>“And don’t be piggy,” Dick warned, +as lightly as if nothing were amiss with him. “Don’t +dare steal the tiniest peek into Le Gallienne. You’ve +got to share him with me later on. Hold up your hand.—­Now, +honest to God, Paul.”</p> + +<p>“Honest to God,” she obeyed.</p> + +<p>“And may jackasses dance on your grandmother’s +grave—­”</p> + +<p>“And may jackasses dance on my grandmother’s +grave,” she solemnly repeated.</p> + +<p>The third morning of Graham’s absence, Dick +saw to it that he was occupied with his dairy manager +when Paula made her eleven o’clock pilgrimage, +peeped in upon him, and called her “Good morning, +merry gentleman,” from the door. The Masons, +arriving in several machines with their boisterous +crowd of young people, saved Paula for lunch and the +afternoon; and, on her urging, Dick noted, she made +the evening safe by holding them over for bridge and +dancing.</p> + +<p>But the fourth morning, the day of Graham’s +expected return, Dick was alone in his workroom at +eleven. Bending over his desk, signing letters, he +heard Paula tiptoe into the room. He did not look up, +but while he continued writing his signature he listened +with all his soul to the faint, silken swish of her +kimono. He knew when she was bending over him, and +all but held his breath. But when she had softly kissed +his hair and called her “Good morning, merry +gentleman,” she evaded the hungry sweep of his +arm and laughed her way out. What affected him as +strongly as the disappointment was the happiness he +had seen in her face. She, who so poorly masked her +moods, was bright-eyed and eager as a child. And it +was on this afternoon that Graham was expected, Dick +could not escape making the connection.</p> + +<p>He did not care to ascertain if she had replenished +the lilacs in the tower room, and, at lunch, which +was shared with three farm college students from Davis, +he found himself forced to extemporize a busy afternoon +for himself when Paula tentatively suggested that she +would drive Graham up from Eldorado.</p> + +<p>“Drive?” Dick asked.</p> + +<p>“Duddy and Fuddy,” she explained. “They’re +all on edge, and I just feel like exercising them +and myself. Of course, if you’ll share the exercise, +we’ll drive anywhere you say, and let him come +up in the machine.”</p> + +<p>Dick strove not to think there was anxiety in her +manner while she waited for him to accept or decline +her invitation.</p> + +<p>“Poor Duddy and Fuddy would be in the happy +hunting grounds if they had to cover my ground this +afternoon,” he laughed, at the same time mapping +his program. “Between now and dinner I’ve +got to do a hundred and twenty miles. I’m taking +the racer, and it’s going to be some dust and +bump and only an occasional low place. I haven’t +the heart to ask you along. You go on and take it +out of Duddy and Fuddy.”</p> + +<p>Paula sighed, but so poor an actress was she that +in the sigh, intended for him as a customary reluctant +yielding of his company, he could not fail to detect +the relief at his decision.</p> + +<p>“Whither away?” she asked brightly, and +again he noticed the color in her face, the happiness, +and the brilliance of her eyes.</p> + +<p>“Oh, I’m shooting away down the river +to the dredging work—­Carlson insists I +must advise him—­and then up in to Sacramento, +running over the Teal Slough land on the way, to see +Wing Fo Wong.”</p> + +<p>“And in heaven’s name who is this Wing +Fo Wong?” she laughingly queried, “that +you must trot and see him?”</p> + +<p>“A very important personage, my dear. Worth +all of two millions—­made in potatoes and +asparagus down in the Delta country. I’m leasing +three hundred acres of the Teal Slough land to him.” +Dick addressed himself to the farm students. “That +land lies just out of Sacramento on the west side +of the river. It’s a good example of the land +famine that is surely coming. It was tule swamp when +I bought it, and I was well laughed at by the old-timers. +I even had to buy out a dozen hunting preserves. It +averaged me eighteen dollars an acre, and not so many +years ago either.</p> + +<p>“You know the tule swamps. Worthless, save for +ducks and low-water pasturage. It cost over three +hundred an acre to dredge and drain and to pay my +quota of the river reclamation work. And on what basis +of value do you think I am making a ten years’ +lease to old Wing Fo Wong? <i>Two</i> thousand an acre. +I couldn’t net more than that if I truck-farmed +it myself. Those Chinese are wizards with vegetables, +and gluttons for work. No eight hours for them. It’s +eighteen hours. The last coolie is a partner with +a microscopic share. That’s the way Wing Fo Wong +gets around the eight hour law.”</p> + +<hr width="75%" size="1" > + +<p>Twice warned and once arrested, was Dick through the +long afternoon. He drove alone, and though he drove +with speed he drove with safety. Accidents, for which +he personally might be responsible, were things he +did not tolerate. And they never occurred. That same +sureness and definiteness of adjustment with which, +without fumbling or approximating, he picked up a +pencil or reached for a door-knob, was his in the +more complicated adjustments, with which, as instance, +he drove a high-powered machine at high speed over +busy country roads.</p> + +<p>But drive as he would, transact business as he would, +at high pressure with Carlson and Wing Fo Wong, continually, +in the middle ground of his consciousness, persisted +the thought that Paula had gone out of her way and +done the most unusual in driving Graham the long eight +miles from Eldorado to the ranch.</p> + +<p>“Phew!” he started to mutter a thought +aloud, then suspended utterance and thought as he +jumped the racer from forty-five to seventy miles an +hour, swept past to the left of a horse and buggy going +in the same direction, and slanted back to the right +side of the road with margin to spare but seemingly +under the nose of a run-about coming from the opposite +direction. He reduced his speed to fifty and took up +his thought:</p> + +<p>“Phew! Imagine little Paul’s thoughts +if I dared that drive with some charming girl!”</p> + +<p>He laughed at the fancy as he pictured it, for, most +early in their marriage, he had gauged Paula’s +capacity for quiet jealousy. Never had she made a +scene, or dropped a direct remark, or raised a question; +but from the first, quietly but unmistakably, she had +conveyed the impression of hurt that was hers if he +at all unduly attended upon any woman.</p> + +<p>He grinned with remembrance of Mrs. Dehameny, the +pretty little brunette widow—­Paula’s +friend, not his—­who had visited in the long +ago in the Big House. Paula had announced that she +was not riding that afternoon and, at lunch, had heard +him and Mrs. Dehameny arrange to ride into the redwood +canyons beyond the grove of the philosophers. And +who but Paula, not long after their start, should overtake +them and make the party three! He had smiled to himself +at the time, and felt immensely tickled with Paula, +for neither Mrs. Dehameny nor the ride with her had +meant anything to him.</p> + +<p>So it was, from the beginning, that he had restricted +his attentions to other women. Ever since he had been +far more circumspect than Paula. He had even encouraged +her, given her a free hand always, had been proud +that his wife did attract fine fellows, had been glad +that she was glad to be amused or entertained by them. +And with reason, he mused. He had been so safe, so +sure of her—­more so, he acknowledged, than +had she any right to be of him. And the dozen years +had vindicated his attitude, so that he was as sure +of her as he was of the diurnal rotation of the earth. +And now, was the form his fancy took, the rotation +of the earth was a shaky proposition and old Oom Paul’s +flat world might be worth considering.</p> + +<p>He lifted the gauntlet from his left wrist to snatch +a glimpse at his watch, In five minutes Graham would +be getting off the train at Eldorado. Dick, himself +homeward bound west from Sacramento, was eating up +the miles. In a quarter of an hour the train that he +identified as having brought Graham, went by. Not until +he was well past Eldorado did he overtake Duddy and +Fuddy and the trap. Graham sat beside Paula, who was +driving. Dick slowed down as he passed, waved a hello +to Graham, and, as he jumped into speed again, called +cheerily:</p> + +<p>“Sorry I’ve got to give you my dust. I’ll +beat you a game of billiards before dinner, Evan, +if you ever get in.”</p> + +<h1 align="center" style="margin-top: 2em;font-variant: small-caps">Chapter XXVI</h1> + +<p>“This can’t go on. We must do something—­at +once.”</p> + +<p>They were in the music room, Paula at the piano, her +face turned up to Graham who stood close to her, almost +over her.</p> + +<p>“You must decide,” Graham continued.</p> + +<p>Neither face showed happiness in the great thing that +had come upon them, now that they considered what +they must do.</p> + +<p>“But I don’t want you to go,” Paula +urged. “I don’t know what I want. You +must bear with me. I am not considering myself. I am +past considering myself. But I must consider Dick. +I must consider you. I... I am so unused to such a +situation,” she concluded with a wan smile.</p> + +<p>“But it must be settled, dear love. Dick is +not blind.”</p> + +<p>“What has there been for him to see?” +she demanded. “Nothing, except that one kiss +in the canyon, and he couldn’t have seen that. +Do you think of anything else—­I challenge +you, sir.”</p> + +<p>“Would that there were,” he met the lighter +touch in her mood, then immediately relapsed. “I +am mad over you, mad for you. And there I stop. I +do not know if you are equally mad. I do not know if +you are mad at all.”</p> + +<p>As he spoke, he dropped his hand to hers on the keys, +and she gently withdrew it.</p> + +<p>“Don’t you see?” he complained. +“Yet you wanted me to come back?”</p> + +<p>“I wanted you to come back,” she acknowledged, +with her straight look into his eyes. “I wanted +you to come back,” she repeated, more softly, +as if musing.</p> + +<p>“And I’m all at sea,” he exclaimed +impatiently. “You do love me?”</p> + +<p>“I do love you, Evan—­you know that. +But...” She paused and seemed to be weighing +the matter judicially.</p> + +<p>“But what?” he commanded. “Go on.”</p> + +<p>“But I love Dick, too. Isn’t it ridiculous?”</p> + +<p>He did not respond to her smile, and her eyes delightedly +warmed to the boyish sullenness that vexed his own +eyes. A thought was hot on his tongue, but he restrained +the utterance of it while she wondered what it was, +disappointed not to have had it.</p> + +<p>“It will work out,” she assured him gravely. +“It will have to work out somehow. Dick says +all things work out. All is change. What is static +is dead, and we’re not dead, any of us... are +we?”</p> + +<p>“I don’t blame you for loving Dick, for... +for continuing to love Dick,” he answered impatiently. +“And for that matter, I don’t see what +you find in me compared with him. This is honest. He +is a great man to me, and Great Heart is his name—­” +she rewarded him with a smile and nod of approval. +“But if you continue to love Dick, how about +me?”</p> + +<p>“But I love you, too.”</p> + +<p>“It can’t be,” he cried, tearing +himself from the piano to make a hasty march across +the room and stand contemplating the Keith on the +opposite wall as if he had never seen it before.</p> + +<p>She waited with a quiet smile, pleasuring in his unruly +impetuousness.</p> + +<p>“You can’t love two men at once,” +he flung at her.</p> + +<p>“Oh, but I do, Evan. That’s what I am +trying to work out. Only I don’t know which +I love more. Dick I have known a long time. You... +you are a—­”</p> + +<p>“Recent acquaintance,” he broke in, returning +to her with the same angry stride.</p> + +<p>“Not that, no, not that, Evan. You have made +a revelation to me of myself. I love you as much as +Dick. I love you more. I—­I don’t know.”</p> + +<p>She broke down and buried her face in her hands, permitting +his hand to rest tenderly on her shoulder.</p> + +<p>“You see it is not easy for me,” she went +on. “There is so much involved, so much that +I cannot understand. You say you are all at sea. Then +think of me all at sea and worse confounded. You—­oh, +why talk about it—­you are a man with a +man’s experiences, with a man’s nature. +It is all very simple to you. ’She loves me, +she loves me not.’ But I am tangled, confused. +I—­and I wasn’t born yesterday—­have +had no experience in loving variously. I have never +had affairs. I loved only one man... and now you. +You, and this love for you, have broken into a perfect +marriage, Evan—­”</p> + +<p>“I know—­” he said.</p> + +<p>“—­I don’t know,” she +went on. “I must have time, either to work it +out myself or to let it work itself out. If it only +weren’t for Dick...” her voice trailed +off pathetically.</p> + +<p>Unconsciously, Graham’s hand went farther about +her shoulder.</p> + +<p>“No, no—­not yet,” she said +softly, as softly she removed it, her own lingering +caressingly on his a moment ere she released it. “When +you touch me, I can’t think,” she begged. +“I—­I can’t think.”</p> + +<p>“Then I must go,” he threatened, without +any sense of threatening. She made a gesture of protest. +“The present situation is impossible, unbearable. +I feel like a cur, and all the time I know I am not +a cur. I hate deception—­oh, I can lie with +the Pathan, to the Pathan—­but I can’t +deceive a man like Great Heart. I’d prefer going +right up to him and saying: ’Dick, I love your +wife. She loves me. What are you going to do about +it?’”</p> + +<p>“Do so,” Paula said, fired for the moment.</p> + +<p>Graham straightened up with resolution.</p> + +<p>“I will. And now.”</p> + +<p>“No, no,” she cried in sudden panic. “You +must go away.” Again her voice trailed off, +as she said, “But I can’t let you go.”</p> + +<hr width="75%" size="1" > + +<p>If Dick had had any reason to doubt his suspicion +of the state of Paula’s heart, that reason vanished +with the return of Graham. He need look nowhere for +confirmation save to Paula. She was in a flushed awakening, +burgeoning like the full spring all about them, a happier +tone in her happy laugh, a richer song in her throat, +a warmness of excitement and a continuous energy of +action animating her. She was up early and to bed +late. She did not conserve herself, but seemed to +live on the champagne of her spirits, until Dick wondered +if it was because she did not dare allow herself time +to think.</p> + +<p>He watched her lose flesh, and acknowledged to himself +that the one result was to make her look lovelier +than ever, to take on an almost spiritual delicacy +under her natural vividness of color and charm.</p> + +<p>And the Big House ran on in its frictionless, happy, +and remorseless way. Dick sometimes speculated how +long it would continue so to run on, and recoiled +from contemplation of a future in which it might not +so run on. As yet, he was confident, no one knew, no +one guessed, but himself. But how long could that +continue? Not long, he was certain. Paula was not +sufficiently the actress. And were she a master at +concealment of trivial, sordid detail, yet the new +note and flush of her would be beyond the power of +any woman to hide.</p> + +<p>He knew his Asiatic servants were marvels of discernment—­and +discretion, he had to add. But there were the women. +Women were cats. To the best of them it would be great +joy to catch the radiant, unimpeachable Paula as clay +as any daughter of Eve. And any chance woman in the +house, for a day, or an evening, might glimpse the +situation—­Paula’s situation, at least, +for he could not make out Graham’s attitude +yet. Trust a woman to catch a woman.</p> + +<p>But Paula, different in other ways, was different +in this. He had never seen her display cattishness, +never known her to be on the lookout for other women +on the chance of catching them tripping—­ +except in relation to him. And he grinned again at +the deliciousness of the affair with Mrs. Dehameney +which had been an affair only in Paula’s apprehension.</p> + +<p>Among other things of wonderment, Dick speculated +if Paula wondered if he knew.</p> + +<p>And Paula did wonder, and for a time without avail. +She could detect no change in his customary ways and +moods or treatment of her. He turned off his prodigious +amount of work as usual, played as usual, chanted +his songs, and was the happy good fellow. She tried +to imagine an added sweetness toward her, but vexed +herself with the fear that it was imagined.</p> + +<p>But it was not for long that she was in doubt. Sometimes +in a crowd, at table, in the living room in the evening, +or at cards, she would gaze at him through half-veiled +lashes when he was unaware, until she was certain +she saw the knowledge in his eyes and face. But no +hint of this did she give to Graham. His knowing would +not help matters. It might even send him away, which +she frankly admitted to herself was the last thing +she should want to happen.</p> + +<p>But when she came to a realization that she was almost +certain Dick knew or guessed, she hardened, deliberately +dared to play with the fire. If Dick knew—­since +he knew, she framed it to herself—­why did +he not speak? He was ever a straight talker. She both +desired and feared that he might, until the fear faded +and her earnest hope was that he would. He was the +one who acted, did things, no matter what they were. +She had always depended upon him as the doer. Graham +had called the situation a triangle. Well, Dick could +solve it. He could solve anything. Then why didn’t +he?</p> + +<p>In the meantime, she persisted in her ardent recklessness, +trying not to feel the conscience-pricks of her divided +allegiance, refusing to think too deeply, riding the +top of the wave of her life—­as she assured +herself, living, living, living. At times she scarcely +knew what she thought, save that she was very proud +in having two such men at heel. Pride had always been +one of her dominant key-notes—­pride of +accomplishment, achievement, mastery, as with her music, +her appearance, her swimming. It was all one—­to +dance, as she well knew, beautifully; to dress with +distinction and beauty; to swan-dive, all grace and +courage, as few women dared; or, all fragility, to +avalanche down the spill-way on the back of Mountain +Lad and by the will and steel of her swim the huge +beast across the tank.</p> + +<p>She was proud, a woman of their own race and type, +to watch these two gray-eyed blond men together. She +was excited, feverish, but not nervous. Quite coldly, +sometimes, she compared the two when they were together, +and puzzled to know for which of them she made herself +more beautiful, more enticing. Graham she held, and +she had held Dick and strove still to hold him.</p> + +<p>There was almost a touch of cruelty in the tingles +of pride that were hers at thought of these two royal +men suffering for her and because of her; for she +did not hide from herself the conviction that if Dick +knew, or, rather, since he did know, he, too, must +be suffering. She assured herself that she was a woman +of imagination and purpose in sex matters, and that +no part of her attraction toward Graham lay merely +in his freshness, newness, difference. And she denied +to herself that passion played more than the most +minor part. Deep down she was conscious of her own +recklessness and madness, and of an end to it all +that could not but be dreadful to some one of them +or all of them. But she was content willfully +to flutter far above such deeps and to refuse to consider +their existence. Alone, looking at herself in her +mirror, she would shake her head in mock reproof and +cry out, “Oh, you huntress! You huntress!” +And when she did permit herself to think a little +gravely, it was to admit that Shaw and the sages of +the madrono grove might be right in their diatribes +on the hunting proclivities of women.</p> + +<p>She denied Dar Hyal’s statement that woman was +nature’s failure to make a man; but again and +again came to her Wilde’s, “Woman attacks +by sudden and strange surrenders.” Had she so +attacked Graham? she asked herself. Sudden and strange, +to her, were the surrenders she had already made. +Were there to be more? He wanted to go. With her, or +without her, he wanted to go. But she held him—­how? +Was there a tacit promise of surrenders to come? And +she would laugh away further consideration, confine +herself to the fleeting present, and make her body +more beautiful, and mood herself to be more fascinating, +and glow with happiness in that she was living, thrilling, +as she had never dreamed to live and thrill.</p> + +<h1 align="center" style="margin-top: 2em;font-variant: small-caps">Chapter XXVII</h1> + +<p>But it is not the way for a man and a woman, in propinquity, +to maintain a definite, unwavering distance asunder. +Imperceptibly Paula and Graham drew closer. From lingering +eye-gazings and hand-touchings the way led to permitted +caresses, until there was a second clasping in the +arms and a second kiss long on the lips. Nor this time +did Paula flame in anger. Instead, she commanded:</p> + +<p>“You must not go.”</p> + +<p>“I must not stay,” Graham reiterated for +the thousandth time. “Oh, I have kissed behind +doors, and been guilty of all the rest of the silly +rubbish,” he complained. “But this is you, +and this is Dick.”</p> + +<p>“It will work out, I tell you, Evan.”</p> + +<p>“Come with me then and of ourselves work it +out. Come now.”</p> + +<p>She recoiled.</p> + +<p>“Remember,” Graham encouraged, “what +Dick said at dinner the night Leo fought the dragons—­that +if it were you, Paula, his wife, who ran away, he +would say ‘Bless you, my children.’”</p> + +<p>“And that is just why it is so hard, Evan. He +<i>is</i> Great Heart. You named him well. Listen—­you +watch him now. He is as gentle as he said he would +be that night—­gentle toward me, I mean. +And more. You watch him—­”</p> + +<p>“He knows?—­he has spoken?” +Graham broke in.</p> + +<p>“He has not spoken, but I am sure he knows, +or guesses. You watch him. He won’t compete +against you—­”</p> + +<p>“Compete!”</p> + +<p>“Just that. He won’t compete. Remember +at the rodeo yesterday. He was breaking mustangs when +our party arrived, but he never mounted again. Now +he is a wonderful horse-breaker. You tried your hand. +Frankly, while you did fairly well, you couldn’t +touch him. But he wouldn’t show off against +you. That alone would make me certain that he guesses.</p> + +<p>“Listen. Of late haven’t you noticed that +he never questions a statement you make, as he used +to question, as he questions every one else. He continues +to play billiards with you, because there you best +him. He fences and singlesticks with you—­there +you are even. But he won’t box or wrestle with +you.”</p> + +<p>“He <i>can</i> out-box and out-wrestle +me,” Graham muttered ruefully.</p> + +<p>“You watch and you will see what I mean by not +competing. He is treating me like a spirited colt, +giving me my head to make a mess of things if I want +to. Not for the world would he interfere. Oh, trust +me, I know him. It is his own code that he is living +up to. He could teach the philosophers what applied +philosophy is.</p> + +<p>“No, no; listen,” she rushed over Graham’s +attempt to interrupt. “I want to tell you more. +There is a secret staircase that goes up from the +library to Dick’s work room. Only he and I use +it, and his secretaries. When you arrive at the head +of it, you are right in his room, surrounded by shelves +of books. I have just come from there. I was going +in to see him when I heard voices. Of course it was +ranch business, I thought, and they would soon be +gone. So I waited. It <i>was</i> ranch business, +but it was so interesting, so, what Hancock would +call, illuminating, that I remained and eavesdropped. +It was illuminating of Dick, I mean.</p> + +<p>“It was the wife of one of the workmen Dick +had on the carpet. Such things do arise on a large +place like this. I wouldn’t know the woman if +I saw her, and I didn’t recognize her name. She +was whimpering out her trouble when Dick stopped her. +‘Never mind all that,’ he said. ‘What +I want to know is, did you give Smith any encouragement?’</p> + +<p>“Smith isn’t his name, but he is one of +our foremen and has worked eight years for Dick.</p> + +<p>“‘Oh, no, sir,’ I could hear her +answer. ’He went out of his way from the first +to bother me. I’ve tried to keep out of his way, +always. Besides, my husband’s a violent-tempered +man, and I did so want him to hold his job here. He’s +worked nearly a year for you now, and there aren’t +any complaints, are there? Before that it was irregular +work for a long time, and we had real hard times. +It wasn’t his fault. He ain’t a drinking +man. He always—­’</p> + +<p>“‘That’s all right,’ Dick +stopped her. ’His work and habits have nothing +to do with the matter. Now you are sure you have never +encouraged Mr. Smith in any way?’ And she was +so sure that she talked for ten minutes, detailing +the foreman’s persedition of her. She had a +pleasant voice—­one of those sweet, timid, +woman’s voices, and undoubtedly is quite attractive. +It was all I could do to resist peeping. I wanted +to see what she looked like.</p> + +<p>“‘Now this trouble, yesterday morning,’ +Dick said. ’Was it general? I mean, outside +of your husband, and Mr. Smith, was the scene such +that those who live around you knew of it?’</p> + +<p>“’Yes, sir. You see, he had no right to +come into my kitchen. My husband doesn’t work +under him anyway. And he had his arm around me and +was trying to kiss me when my husband came in. My husband +has a temper, but he ain’t overly strong. Mr. +Smith would make two of him. So he pulled a knife, +and Mr. Smith got him by the arms, and they fought +all over the kitchen. I knew there was murder going +to be done and I run out screaming for help. The folks +in the other cottages’d heard the racket already. +They’d smashed the window and the cook stove, +and the place was filled with smoke and ashes when +the neighbors dragged them away from each other. I’d +done nothing to deserve all that disgrace. You know, +sir, the way the women will talk—­’</p> + +<p>“And Dick hushed her up there, and took all +of five minutes more in getting rid of her. Her great +fear was that her husband would lose his place. From +what Dick told her, I waited. He had made no decision, +and I knew the foreman was next on the carpet. In +he came. I’d have given the world to see him. +But I could only listen.</p> + +<p>“Dick jumped right into the thick of it. He +described the scene and uproar, and Smith acknowledged +that it had been riotous for a while. ‘She says +she gave you no encouragement,’ Dick said next.</p> + +<p>“‘Then she lies,’ said Smith. ’She +has that way of looking with her eyes that’s +an invitation. She looked at me that way from the first. +But it was by word-of-mouth invitation that I was in +her kitchen yesterday morning. We didn’t expect +the husband. But she began to struggle when he hove +in sight. When she says she gave me no encouragement—­’</p> + +<p>“‘Never mind all that,’ Dick stopped +him. ‘It’s not essential.’ ’But +it is, Mr. Forrest, if I am to clear myself,’ +Smith insisted.</p> + +<p>“‘No; it is not essential to the thing +you can’t clear yourself of,’ Dick answered, +and I could hear that cold, hard, judicial note come +into his voice. Smith could not understand. Dick told +him. ’The thing you have been guilty of, Mr. +Smith, is the scene, the disturbance, the scandal, +the wagging of the women’s tongues now going +on forty to the minute, the impairment of the discipline +and order of the ranch, all of which is boiled down +to the one grave thing, the hurt to the ranch efficiency.’</p> + +<p>“And still Smith couldn’t see. He thought +the charge was of violating social morality by pursuing +a married woman, and tried to mitigate the offense +by showing the woman encouraged him and by pleading: +’And after all, Mr. Forrest, a man is only a +man, and I admit she made a fool of me and I made +a fool of myself.’ “‘Mr. Smith,’ +Dick said. ’You’ve worked for me eight +years. You’ve been a foreman six years of that +time. I have no complaint against your work. You certainly +do know how to handle labor. About your personal morality +I don’t care a damn. You can be a Mormon or +a Turk for all it matters to me. Your private acts +are your private acts, and are no concern of mine as +long as they do not interfere with your work or my +ranch. Any one of my drivers can drink his head off +Saturday night, and every Saturday night. That’s +his business. But the minute he shows a hold-over on +Monday morning that is taken out on my horses, that +excites them, or injures them, or threatens to injure +them, or that decreases in the slightest the work +they should perform on Monday, that moment it is my +business and the driver goes down the hill.’</p> + +<p>“‘You, you mean, Mr. Forrest,’ Smith +stuttered, ’that, that I’m to go down +the hill?’ ’That is just what I mean, Mr. +Smith. You are to go down the hill, not because you +climbed over another man’s fence—­ +that’s your business and his; but because you +were guilty of causing a disturbance that is an impairment +of ranch efficiency.’</p> + +<p>“Do you know, Evan,” Paula broke in on +her recital, “Dick can nose more human tragedy +out of columns of ranch statistics than can the average +fiction writer out of the whirl of a great city. Take +the milk reports—­the individual reports +of the milkers—­so many pounds of milk, +morning and night, from cow so-and-so, so many pounds +from cow so-and-so. He doesn’t have to know +the man. But there is a decrease in the weight of +milk. ‘Mr. Parkman,’ he’ll say to +the head dairyman, ’is Barchi Peratta married?’ +‘Yes, sir.’ ’Is he having trouble +with his wife?’ ‘Yes, sir.’</p> + +<p>“Or it will be: ’Mr. Parkman, Simpkins +has the best long-time record of any of our milkers. +Now he’s slumped. What’s up?’ Mr. +Parkman doesn’t know. ‘Investigate,’ +says Dick. ’There’s something on his chest. +Talk to him like an uncle and find out. We’ve +got to get it off his chest.’ And Mr. Parkman +finds out. Simpkins’ boy; working his way through +Stanford University, has elected the joy-ride path +and is in jail waiting trial for forgery. Dick put +his own lawyers on the case, smoothed it over, got +the boy out on probation, and Simpkins’ milk +reports came back to par. And the best of it is, the +boy made good, Dick kept an eye on him, saw him through +the college of engineering, and he’s now working +for Dick on the dredging end, earning a hundred and +fifty a month, married, with a future before him, and +his father still milks.”</p> + +<p>“You are right,” Graham murmured sympathetically. +“I well named him when I named him Great Heart.”</p> + +<p>“I call him my Rock of Ages,” Paula said +gratefully. “He is so solid. He stands in any +storm.—­Oh, you don’t really know him. +He is so sure. He stands right up. He’s never +taken a cropper in his life. God smiles on him. God +has always smiled on him. He’s never been beaten +down to his knees... yet. I... I should not care to +see that sight. It would be heartbreaking. And, Evan—­” +Her hand went out to his in a pleading gesture that +merged into a half-caress. “—­I am +afraid for him now. That is why I don’t know +what to do. It is not for myself that I back and fill +and hesitate. If he were ignoble, if he were narrow, +if he were weak or had one tiniest shred of meanness, +if he had ever been beaten to his knees before, why, +my dear, my dear, I should have been gone with you +long ago.”</p> + +<p>Her eyes filled with sudden moisture. She stilled +him with a pressure of her hand, and, to regain herself, +she went back to her recital:</p> + +<p>“’Your little finger, Mr. Smith, I consider +worth more to me and to the world,’ Dick, told +him, ’than the whole body of this woman’s +husband. Here’s the report on him: willing, eager +to please, not bright, not strong, an indifferent +workman at best. Yet you have to go down the hill, +and I am very, very sorry.’</p> + +<p>“Oh, yes, there was more. But I’ve given +you the main of it. You see Dick’s code there. +And he lives his code. He accords latitude to the +individual. Whatever the individual may do, so long +as it does not hurt the group of individuals in which +he lives, is his own affair. He believed Smith had +a perfect right to love the woman, and to be loved +by her if it came to that. I have heard him always +say that love could not be held nor enforced. Truly, +did I go with you, he would say, ‘Bless you, +my children.’ Though it broke his heart he would +say it. Past love, he believes, gives no hold over +the present. And every hour of love, I have heard +him say, pays for itself, on both sides, quittance +in full. He claims there can be no such thing as a +love-debt, laughs at the absurdity of love-claims.”</p> + +<p>“And I agree with him,” Graham said. “’You +promised to love me always,’ says the jilted +one, and then strives to collect as if it were a promissory +note for so many dollars. Dollars are dollars, but +love lives or dies. When it is dead how can it be collected? +We are all agreed, and the way is simple. We love. +It is enough. Why delay another minute?”</p> + +<p>His fingers strayed along her fingers on the keyboard +as he bent to her, first kissing her hair, then slowly +turning her face up to his and kissing her willing +lips.</p> + +<p>“Dick does not love me like you,” she +said; “not madly, I mean. He has had me so long, +I think I have become a habit to him. And often and +often, before I knew you, I used to puzzle whether +he cared more for the ranch or more for me.”</p> + +<p>“It is so simple,” Graham urged. “All +we have to do is to be straightforward. Let us go.”</p> + +<p>He drew her to her feet and made as if to start.</p> + +<p>But she drew away from him suddenly, sat down, and +buried her flushed face in her hands.</p> + +<p>“You do not understand, Evan. I love Dick. I +shall always love him.”</p> + +<p>“And me?” Graham demanded sharply.</p> + +<p>“Oh, without saying,” she smiled. “You +are the only man, besides Dick, that has ever kissed +me this... way, and that I have kissed this way. But +I can’t make up my mind. The triangle, as you +call it, must be solved for me. I can’t solve +it myself. I compare the two of you, weigh you, measure +you. I remember Dick and all our past years. And I +consult my heart for you. And I don’t know. I +don’t know. You are a great man, my great lover. +But Dick is a greater man than you. You—­ +you are more clay, more—­I grope to describe +you—­more human, I fancy. And that is why +I love you more... or at least I think perhaps I do.</p> + +<p>“But wait,” she resisted him, prisoning +his eager hand in hers. “There is more I want +to say. I remember Dick and all our past years. But +I remember him to-day, as well, and to-morrow. I cannot +bear the thought that any man should pity my husband, +that you should pity him, and pity him you must when +I confess that I love you more. That is why I am not +sure. That is why I so quickly take it back and do +not know.</p> + +<p>“I’d die of shame if through act of mine +any man pitied Dick. Truly, I would. Of all things +ghastly, I can think of none so ghastly as Dick being +pitied. He has never been pitied in his life. He has +always been top-dog—­bright, light, strong, +unassailable. And more, he doesn’t deserve pity. +And it’s my fault... and yours, Evan.”</p> + +<p>She abruptly thrust Evan’s hand away.</p> + +<p>“And every act, every permitted touch of you, +does make him pitiable. Don’t you see how tangled +it is for me? And then there is my own pride. That +you should see me disloyal to him in little things, +such as this—­” (she caught his hand +again and caressed it with soft finger-tips) “—­hurts +me in my love for you, diminishes me, must diminish +me in your eyes. I shrink from the thought that my +disloyalty to him in this I do—­” +(she laid his hand against her cheek) “—­gives +you reason to pity him and censure me.”</p> + +<p>She soothed the impatience of the hand on her cheek, +and, almost absently, musingly scrutinizing it without +consciously seeing it, turned it over and slowly kissed +the palm. The next moment she was drawn to her feet +and into his arms.</p> + +<p>“There, you see,” was her reproach as +she disengaged herself.</p> + +<hr width="75%" size="1" > + +<p>“Why do you tell me all this about Dick?” +Graham demanded another time, as they walked their +horses side by side. “To keep me away? To protect +yourself from me?”</p> + +<p>Paula nodded, then quickly added, “No, not quite +that. Because you know I don’t want to keep +you away ... too far. I say it because Dick is so +much in my mind. For twelve years, you realize, he +filled my mind. I say it because ... because I think +it, I suppose. Think! The situation! You are trespassing +on a perfect marriage.”</p> + +<p>“I know it,” he answered. “And I +do not like the role of trespasser. It is your insistence, +instead of going away with me, that I should trespass. +And I can’t help it. I think away from you, try +to force my thoughts elsewhere. I did half a chapter +this morning, and I know it’s rotten and will +have to be rewritten. For I can’t succeed in +thinking away from you. What is South America and +its ethnology compared to you? And when I come near +you my arms go about you before I know what I am doing. +And, by God, you want them there, you want them there, +you know it.”</p> + +<p>Paula gathered her reins in signal for a gallop, but +first, with a roguish smile, she acknowledged.</p> + +<p>“I do want them there, dear trespasser.”</p> + +<p>Paula yielded and fought at the same time.</p> + +<p>“I love my husband—­never forget that,” +she would warn Graham, and within the minute be in +his arms.</p> + +<hr width="75%" size="1" > + +<p>“There are only the three of us for once, thank +goodness,” Paula cried, seizing Dick and Graham +by the hands and leading them toward Dick’s +favorite lounging couch in the big room. “Come, +let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of +the deaths of kings. Come, milords, and lordly perishers, +and we will talk of Armageddon when the last sun goes +down.”</p> + +<p>She was in a merry mood, and with surprise Dick observed +her light a cigarette. He could count on his fingers +the cigarettes she had smoked in a dozen years, and +then, only under a hostess’s provocation to give +countenance to some smoking woman guest. Later, when +he mixed a highball for himself and Graham, she again +surprised him by asking him to mix her a “wee” +one.</p> + +<p>“This is Scotch,” he warned.</p> + +<p>“Oh, a very wee one,” she insisted, “and +then we’ll be three good fellows together, winding +up the world. And when you’ve got it all wound +up and ready, I’ll sing you the song of the Valkyries.”</p> + +<p>She took more part in the talk than usual, and strove +to draw her husband out. Nor was Dick unaware of this, +although he yielded and permitted himself to let go +full tilt on the theme of the blond sun-perishers.</p> + +<p>She is trying to make him compete—­was Graham’s +thought. But Paula scarcely thought of that phase +of it, her pleasure consisting in the spectacle of +two such splendid men who were hers. They talk of big +game hunting, she mused once to herself; but did ever +one small woman capture bigger game than this?</p> + +<p>She sat cross-legged on the couch, where, by a turn +of the head, she could view Graham lounging comfortably +in the big chair, or Dick, on his elbow, sprawled +among the cushions. And ever, as they talked, her +eyes roved from one to the other; and, as they spoke +of struggle and battle, always in the cold iron terms +of realists, her own thoughts became so colored, until +she could look coolly at Dick with no further urge +of the pity that had intermittently ached her heart +for days.</p> + +<p>She was proud of him—­a goodly, eye-filling +figure of a man to any woman; but she no longer felt +sorry for him. They were right. It was a game. The +race was to the swift, the battle to the strong. They +had run such races, fought such battles. Then why +not she? And as she continued to look, that self-query +became reiterant.</p> + +<p>They were not anchorites, these two men. Liberal-lived +they must have been in that past out of which, like +mysteries, they had come to her. They had had the +days and nights that women were denied—­women +such as she. As for Dick, beyond all doubt—­even +had she heard whispers—­there had been other +women in that wild career of his over the world. Men +were men, and they were two such men. She felt a burn +of jealousy against those unknown women who must have +been, and her heart hardened. They had taken their +fun where they found it—­Kipling’s +line ran through her head.</p> + +<p>Pity? Why should she pity, any more than she should +be pitied? The whole thing was too big, too natural, +for pity. They were taking a hand in a big game, and +all could not be winners. Playing with the fancy, +she wandered on to a consideration of the outcome. +Always she had avoided such consideration, but the +tiny highball had given her daring. It came to her +that she saw doom ahead, doom vague and formless but +terrible.</p> + +<p>She was brought back to herself by Dick’s hand +before her eyes and apparently plucking from the empty +air the something upon which she steadfastly stared.</p> + +<p>“Seeing things?” he teased, as her eyes +turned to meet his.</p> + +<p>His were laughing, but she glimpsed in them what, +despite herself, made her veil her own with her long +lashes. He knew. Beyond all possibility of error she +knew now that he knew. That was what she had seen +in his eyes and what had made her veil her own.</p> + +<p>“‘Cynthia, Cynthia, I’ve been a-thinking,’” +she gayly hummed to him; and, as he resumed his talk, +she reached and took a sip from his part-empty glass.</p> + +<p>Let come what would, she asserted to herself, she +would play it out. It was all a madness, but it was +life, it was living. She had never so lived before, +and it was worth it, no matter what inevitable payment +must be made in the end. Love?—­had she ever +really loved Dick as she now felt herself capable +of loving? Had she mistaken the fondness of affection +for love all these years? Her eyes warmed as they rested +on Graham, and she admitted that he had swept her +as Dick never had.</p> + +<p>Unused to alcohol in such strength, her heart was +accelerated; and Dick, with casual glances, noted +and knew the cause of the added brilliance, the flushed +vividness of cheeks and lips.</p> + +<p>He talked less and less, and the discussion of the +sun-perishers died of mutual agreement as to its facts. +Finally, glancing at his watch, he straightened up, +yawned, stretched his arms and announced:</p> + +<p>“Bed-time he stop. Head belong this fellow white +man too much sleepy along him.—­Nightcap, +Evan?”</p> + +<p>Graham nodded, for both felt the need of a stiffener.</p> + +<p>“Mrs. Toper—­nightcap?” Dick +queried of Paula.</p> + +<p>But she shook her head and busied herself at the piano +putting away the music, while the men had their drink.</p> + +<p>Graham closed down the piano for her, while Dick waited +in the doorway, so that when they left he led them +by a dozen feet. As they came along, Graham, under +her instructions, turned off the lights in the halls. +Dick waited where the ways diverged and where Graham +would have to say good night on his way to the tower +room.</p> + +<p>The one remaining light was turned off.</p> + +<p>“Oh, not that one, silly,” Dick heard +Paula cry out. “We keep it on all night.”</p> + +<p>Dick heard nothing, but the dark was fervent to him. +He cursed himself for his own past embraces in the +dark, for so the wisdom was given him to know the +quick embrace that had occurred, ere, the next moment, +the light flashed on again.</p> + +<p>He found himself lacking the courage to look at their +faces as they came toward him. He did not want to +see Paula’s frank eyes veiled by her lashes, +and he fumbled to light a cigarette while he cudgeled +his wits for the wording of an ordinary good night.</p> + +<p>“How goes the book?—­what chapter?” +he called after Graham down his hall, as Paula put +her hand in his.</p> + +<p>Her hand in his, swinging his, hopping and skipping +and all a-chatter in simulation of a little girl with +a grown-up, Paula went on with Dick; while he sadly +pondered what ruse she had in mind by which to avoid +the long-avoided, good night kiss.</p> + +<p>Evidently she had not found it when they reached the +dividing of the ways that led to her quarters and +to his. Still swinging his hand, still buoyantly chattering +fun, she continued with him into his workroom. Here +he surrendered. He had neither heart nor energy to +wait for her to develop whatever she contemplated.</p> + +<p>He feigned sudden recollection, deflected her by the +hand to his desk, and picked up a letter.</p> + +<p>“I’d promised myself to get a reply off +on the first machine in the morning,” he explained, +as he pressed on the phonograph and began dictating.</p> + +<p>For a paragraph she still held his hand. Then he felt +the parting pressure of her fingers and her whispered +good night.</p> + +<p>“Good night, little woman,” he answered +mechanically, and continued dictating as if oblivious +to her going.</p> + +<p>Nor did he cease until he knew she was well out of +hearing.</p> + +<h1 align="center" style="margin-top: 2em;font-variant: small-caps">Chapter XXVIII</h1> + +<p>A dozen times that morning, dictating to Blake or +indicating answers, Dick had been on the verge of +saying to let the rest of the correspondence go.</p> + +<p>“Call up Hennessy and Mendenhall,” he +told Blake, when, at ten, the latter gathered up his +notes and rose to go. “You ought to catch them +at the stallion barn. Tell them not to come this morning +but to-morrow morning.”</p> + +<p>Bonbright entered, prepared to shorthand Dick’s +conversations with his managers for the next hour.</p> + +<p>“And—­oh, Mr. Blake,” Dick called. +“Ask Hennessy about Alden Bessie.—­ +The old mare was pretty bad last night,” he explained +to Bonbright.</p> + +<p>“Mr. Hanley must see you right away, Mr. Forrest,” +Bonbright said, and added, at sight of the irritated +drawing up of his employer’s brows, “It’s +the piping from Buckeye Dam. Something’s wrong +with the plans—­a serious mistake, he says.”</p> + +<p>Dick surrendered, and for an hour discussed ranch +business with his foremen and managers.</p> + +<p>Once, in the middle of a hot discussion over sheep-dips +with Wardman, he left his desk and paced over to the +window. The sound of voices and horses, and of Paula’s +laugh, had attracted him.</p> + +<p>“Take that Montana report—­I’ll +send you a copy to-day,” he continued, as he +gazed out. “They found the formula didn’t +get down to it. It was more a sedative than a germicide. +There wasn’t enough kick in it...”</p> + +<p>Four horses, bunched, crossed his field of vision. +Paula, teasing the pair of them, was between Martinez +and Froelig, old friends of Dick, a painter and sculptor +respectively, who had arrived on an early train. Graham, +on Selim, made the fourth, and was slightly edged toward +the rear. So the party went by, but Dick reflected +that quickly enough it would resolve itself into two +and two.</p> + +<p>Shortly after eleven, restless and moody, he wandered +out with a cigarette into the big patio, where he +smiled grim amusement at the various tell-tale signs +of Paula’s neglect of her goldfish. The sight +of them suggested her secret patio in whose fountain +pools she kept her selected and more gorgeous blooms +of fish. Thither he went, through doors without knobs, +by ways known only to Paula and the servants.</p> + +<p>This had been Dick’s one great gift to Paula. +It was love-lavish as only a king of fortune could +make it. He had given her a free hand with it, and +insisted on her wildest extravagance; and it had been +his delight to tease his quondam guardians with the +stubs of the checkbook she had used. It bore no relation +to the scheme and architecture of the Big House, and, +for that matter, so deeply hidden was it that it played +no part in jar of line or color. A show-place of show-places, +it was not often shown. Outside Paula’s sisters +and intimates, on rare occasions some artist was permitted +to enter and catch his breath. Graham had heard of +its existence, but not even him had she invited to +see.</p> + +<p>It was round, and small enough to escape giving any +cold hint of spaciousness. The Big House was of sturdy +concrete, but here was marble in exquisite delicacy. +The arches of the encircling arcade were of fretted +white marble that had taken on just enough tender green +to prevent any glare of reflected light. Palest of +pink roses bloomed up the pillars and over the low +flat roof they upheld, where Puck-like, humorous, +and happy faces took the place of grinning gargoyles. +Dick strolled the rosy marble pavement of the arcade +and let the beauty of the place slowly steal in upon +him and gentle his mood.</p> + +<p>The heart and key of the fairy patio was the fountain, +consisting of three related shallow basins at different +levels, of white marble and delicate as shell. Over +these basins rollicked and frolicked life-sized babies +wrought from pink marble by no mean hand. Some peered +over the edges into lower basins, one reached arms +covetously toward the goldfish; one, on his back, +laughed at the sky, another stood with dimpled legs +apart stretching himself, others waded, others were +on the ground amongst the roses white and blush, but +all were of the fountain and touched it at some point. +So good was the color of the marble, so true had been +the sculptor, that the illusion was of life. No cherubs +these, but live warm human babies.</p> + +<p>Dick regarded the rosy fellowship pleasantly and long, +finishing his cigarette and retaining it dead in his +hand. That was what she had needed, he mused—­babies, +children. It had been her passion. Had she realized +it... He sighed, and, struck by a fresh thought, looked +to her favorite seat with certitude that he would +not see the customary sewing lying on it in a pretty +heap. She did not sew these days.</p> + +<p>He did not enter the tiny gallery behind the arcade, +which contained her chosen paintings and etchings, +and copies in marble and bronze of her favorites of +the European galleries. Instead he went up the stairway, +past the glorious Winged Victory on the landing where +the staircase divided, and on and up into her quarters +that occupied the entire upper wing. But first, pausing +by the Victory, he turned and gazed down into the +fairy patio. The thing was a cut jewel in its perfectness +and color, and he acknowledged, although he had made +it possible for her, that it was entirely her own +creation—­her one masterpiece. It had long +been her dream, and he had realized it for her. And +yet now, he meditated, it meant nothing to her. She +was not mercenary, that he knew; and if he could not +hold her, mere baubles such as that would weigh nothing +in the balance against her heart.</p> + +<p>He wandered idly through her rooms, scarcely noting +at what he gazed, but gazing with fondness at it all. +Like everything else of hers, it was distinctive, +different, eloquent of her. But when he glanced into +the bathroom with its sunken Roman bath, for the life +of him he was unable to avoid seeing a tiny drip and +making a mental note for the ranch plumber.</p> + +<p>As a matter of course, he looked to her easel with +the expectation of finding no new work, but was disappointed; +for a portrait of himself confronted him. He knew +her trick of copying the pose and lines from a photograph +and filling in from memory. The particular photograph +she was using had been a fortunate snapshop of him +on horseback. The Outlaw, for once and for a moment, +had been at peace, and Dick, hat in hand, hair just +nicely rumpled, face in repose, unaware of the impending +snap, had at the instant looked squarely into the camera. +No portrait photographer could have caught a better +likeness. The head and shoulders Paula had had enlarged, +and it was from this that she was working. But the +portrait had already gone beyond the photograph, for +Dick could see her own touches.</p> + +<p>With a start he looked more closely. Was that expression +of the eyes, of the whole face, his? He glanced at +the photograph. It was not there. He walked over to +one of the mirrors, relaxed his face, and led his +thoughts to Paula and Graham. Slowly the expression +came into his eyes and face. Not content, he returned +to the easel and verified it. Paula knew. Paula knew +that he knew. She had learned it from him, stolen +it from him some time when it was unwittingly on his +face, and carried it in her memory to the canvas.</p> + +<p>Paula’s Chinese maid, Oh Dear, entered from +the wardrobe room, and Dick watched her unobserved +as she came down the room toward him. Her eyes were +down, and she seemed deep in thought. Dick remarked +the sadness of her face, and that the little, solicitous +contraction of the brows that had led to her naming +was gone. She was not solicitous, that was patent. +But cast down, she was, in heavy depression.</p> + +<p>It would seem that all our faces are beginning to +say things, he commented to himself.</p> + +<p>“Good morning, Oh Dear,” he startled her.</p> + +<p>And as she returned the greeting, he saw compassion +in her eyes as they dwelt on him. She knew. The first +outside themselves. Trust her, a woman, so much in +Paula’s company when Paula was alone, to divine +Paula’s secret.</p> + +<p>Oh Dear’s lips trembled, and she wrung her trembling +hands, nerving herself, as he could see, to speech.</p> + +<p>“Mister Forrest,” she began haltingly, +“maybe you think me fool, but I like say something. +You very kind man. You very kind my old mother. You +very kind me long long time...”</p> + +<p>She hesitated, moistening her frightened lips with +her tongue, then braved her eyes to his and proceeded.</p> + +<p>“Mrs. Forrest, she, I think...”</p> + +<p>But so forbidding did Dick’s face become that +she broke off in confusion and blushed, as Dick surmised, +with shame at the thoughts she had been about to utter.</p> + +<p>“Very nice picture Mrs. Forrest make,” +he put her at her ease.</p> + +<p>The Chinese girl sighed, and the same compassion returned +into her eyes as she looked long at Dick’s portrait.</p> + +<p>She sighed again, but the coldness in her voice was +not lost on Dick as she answered: “Yes, very +nice picture Mrs. Forrest make.”</p> + +<p>She looked at him with sudden sharp scrutiny, studying +his face, then turned to the canvas and pointed at +the eyes.</p> + +<p>“No good,” she condemned.</p> + +<p>Her voice was harsh, touched with anger.</p> + +<p>“No good,” she flung over her shoulder, +more loudly, still more harshly, as she continued +down the room and out of sight on Paula’s sleeping +porch.</p> + +<p>Dick stiffened his shoulders, unconsciously bracing +himself to face what was now soon to happen. Well, +it was the beginning of the end. Oh Dear knew. Soon +more would know, all would know. And in a way he was +glad of it, glad that the torment of suspense would +endure but little longer.</p> + +<p>But when he started to leave he whistled a merry jingle +to advertise to Oh Dear that the world wagged very +well with him so far as he knew anything about it.</p> + +<hr width="75%" size="1" > + +<p>The same afternoon, while Dick was out and away with +Froelig and Martinez and Graham, Paula stole a pilgrimage +to Dick’s quarters. Out on his sleeping porch +she looked over his rows of press buttons, his switchboard +that from his bed connected him with every part of +the ranch and most of the rest of California, his +phonograph on the hinged and swinging bracket, the +orderly array of books and magazines and agricultural +bulletins waiting to be read, the ash tray, cigarettes, +scribble pads, and thermos bottle.</p> + +<p>Her photograph, the only picture on the porch, held +her attention. It hung under his barometers and thermometers, +which, she knew, was where he looked oftenest. A fancy +came to her, and she turned the laughing face to the +wall and glanced from the blankness of the back of +the frame to the bed and back again. With a quick +panic movement, she turned the laughing face out. +It belonged, was her thought; it did belong.</p> + +<p>The big automatic pistol in the holster on the wall, +handy to one’s hand from the bed, caught her +eye. She reached to it and lifted gently at the butt. +It was as she had expected—­loose—­Dick’s +way. Trust him, no matter how long unused, never to +let a pistol freeze in its holster.</p> + +<p>Back in the work room she wandered solemnly about, +glancing now at the prodigious filing system, at the +chart and blue-print cabinets, at the revolving shelves +of reference books, and at the long rows of stoutly +bound herd registers. At last she came to his books—­a +goodly row of pamphlets, bound magazine articles, +and an even dozen ambitious tomes. She read the titles +painstakingly: “Corn in California,” “Silage +Practice,” “Farm Organization,” “Farm +Book-keeping,” “The Shire in America,” +“Humus Destruction,” “Soilage,” +“Alfalfa in California,” “Cover +Crops for California,” “The Shorthorn in +America"—­at this last she smiled affectionately +with memory of the great controversy he had waged +for the beef cow and the milch cow as against the dual +purpose cow.</p> + +<p>She caressed, the backs of the books with her palm, +pressed her cheek against them and leaned with closed +eyes. Oh, Dick, Dick—­a thought began that +faded to a vagueness of sorrow and died because she +did not dare to think it.</p> + +<p>The desk was so typically Dick. There was no litter. +Clean it was of all work save the wire tray with typed +letters waiting his signature and an unusual pile +of the flat yellow sheets on which his secretaries +typed the telegrams relayed by telephone from Eldorado. +Carelessly she ran her eyes over the opening lines +of the uppermost sheet and chanced upon a reference +that puzzled and interested her. She read closely, +with in-drawn brows, then went deeper into the heap +till she found confirmation. Jeremy Braxton was dead—­big, +genial, kindly Jeremy Braxton. A Mexican mob of pulque-crazed +peons had killed him in the mountains through which +he had been trying to escape from the Harvest into +Arizona. The date of the telegram was two days old. +Dick had known it for two days and never worried her +with it. And it meant more. It meant money. It meant +that the affairs of the Harvest Group were going from +bad to worse. And it was Dick’s way.</p> + +<p>And Jeremy was dead. The room seemed suddenly to have +grown cold. She shivered. It was the way of life—­death +always at the end of the road. And her own nameless +dread came back upon her. Doom lay ahead. Doom for +whom? She did not attempt to guess. Sufficient that +it was doom. Her mind was heavy with it, and the quiet +room was heavy with it as she passed slowly out.</p> + +<h1 align="center" style="margin-top: 2em;font-variant: small-caps">Chapter XXIX</h1> + +<p>“’Tis a birdlike sensuousness that is +all the Little Lady’s own,” Terrence was +saying, as he helped himself to a cocktail from the +tray Ah Ha was passing around.</p> + +<p>It was the hour before dinner, and Graham, Leo and +Terrence McFane had chanced together in the stag-room.</p> + +<p>“No, Leo,” the Irishman warned the young +poet. “Let the one suffice you. Your cheeks +are warm with it. A second one and you’ll conflagrate. +’Tis no right you have to be mixing beauty and +strong drink in that lad’s head of yours. Leave +the drink to your elders. There is such a thing as +consanguinity for drink. You have it not. As for me—­”</p> + +<p>He emptied the glass and paused to turn the cocktail +reminiscently on his tongue.</p> + +<p>“’Tis women’s drink,” he shook +his head in condemnation. “It likes me not. +It bites me not. And devil a bit of a taste is there +to it.—­Ah Ha, my boy,” he called +to the Chinese, “mix me a highball in a long, +long glass—­a stiff one.”</p> + +<p>He held up four fingers horizontally to indicate the +measure of liquor he would have in the glass, and, +to Ah Ha’s query as to what kind of whiskey, +answered, “Scotch or Irish, bourbon or rye—­whichever +comes nearest to hand.”</p> + +<p>Graham shook his head to the Chinese, and laughed +to the Irishman. “You’ll never drink me +down, Terrence. I’ve not forgotten what you did +to O’Hay.”</p> + +<p>“’Twas an accident I would have you think,” +was the reply. “They say when a man’s +not feeling any too fit a bit of drink will hit him +like a club.”</p> + +<p>“And you?” Graham questioned.</p> + +<p>“Have never been hit by a club. I am a man of +singularly few experiences.”</p> + +<p>“But, Terrence, you were saying... about Mrs. +Forrest?” Leo begged. “It sounded as if +it were going to be nice.”</p> + +<p>“As if it could be otherwise,” Terrence +censured. “But as I was saying, ’tis a +bird-like sensuousness—­oh, not the little, +hoppy, wagtail kind, nor yet the sleek and solemn +dove, but a merry sort of bird, like the wild canaries +you see bathing in the fountains, always twittering +and singing, flinging the water in the sun, and glowing +the golden hearts of them on their happy breasts. +’Tis like that the Little Lady is. I have observed +her much.</p> + +<p>“Everything on the earth and under the earth +and in the sky contributes to the passion of her days—­the +untoward purple of the ground myrtle when it has no +right to aught more than pale lavender, a single red +rose tossing in the bathing wind, one perfect Duchesse +rose bursting from its bush into the sunshine, as +she said to me, ’pink as the dawn, Terrence, +and shaped like a kiss.’</p> + +<p>“’Tis all one with her—­the +Princess’s silver neigh, the sheep bells of +a frosty morn, the pretty Angora goats making silky +pictures on the hillside all day long, the drifts +of purple lupins along the fences, the long hot grass +on slope and roadside, the summer-burnt hills tawny +as crouching lions—­and even have I seen +the sheer sensuous pleasure of the Little Lady with +bathing her arms and neck in the blessed sun.”</p> + +<p>“She is the soul of beauty,” Leo murmured. +“One understands how men can die for women such +as she.”</p> + +<p>“And how men can live for them, and love them, +the lovely things,” Terrence added. “Listen, +Mr. Graham, and I’ll tell you a secret. We philosophers +of the madroño grove, we wrecks and wastages of life +here in the quiet backwater and easement of Dick’s +munificence, are a brotherhood of lovers. And the +lady of our hearts is all the one—­the Little +Lady. We, who merely talk and dream our days away, +and who would lift never a hand for God, or country, +or the devil, are pledged knights of the Little Lady.”</p> + +<p>“We would die for her,” Leo affirmed, +slowly nodding his head.</p> + +<p>“Nay, lad, we would live for her and fight for +her, dying is that easy.”</p> + +<p>Graham missed nothing of it. The boy did not understand, +but in the blue eyes of the Celt, peering from under +the mop of iron-gray hair, there was no mistaking +the knowledge of the situation.</p> + +<p>Voices of men were heard coming down the stairs, and, +as Martinez and Dar Hyal entered, Terrence was saying:</p> + +<p>“’Tis fine weather they say they’re +having down at Catalina now, and I hear the tunny +fish are biting splendid.”</p> + +<p>Ah Ha served cocktails around, and was kept busy, +for Hancock and Froelig followed along. Terrence impartially +drank stiff highballs of whatever liquor the immobile-faced +Chinese elected to serve him, and discoursed fatherly +to Leo on the iniquities and abominations of the flowing +bowl.</p> + +<p>Oh My entered, a folded note in his hand, and looked +about in doubt as to whom to give it.</p> + +<p>“Hither, wing-heeled Celestial,” Terrence +waved him up.</p> + +<p>“’Tis a petition, couched in very proper +terms,” Terrence explained, after a glance at +its contents. “And Ernestine and Lute have arrived, +for ’tis they that petition. Listen.” And +he read: “’Oh, noble and glorious stags, +two poor and lowly meek-eyed does, wandering lonely +in the forest, do humbly entreat admission for the +brief time before dinner to the stamping ground of +the herd.’</p> + +<p>“The metaphor is mixed,” said Terrence. +“Yet have they acted well. ’Tis the rule—­Dick’s +rule—­and a good rule it is: no petticoats +in the stag-room save by the stags’ unanimous +consent.—­Is the herd ready for the question? +All those in favor will say ’Aye.’—­Contrary +minded?—­The ayes have it.</p> + +<p>“Oh My, fleet with thy heels and bring in the +ladies.”</p> + +<p>“‘With sandals beaten from the crowns +of kings,’” Leo added, murmuring the words +reverently, loving them with his lips as his lips formed +them and uttered them.</p> + +<p>“‘Shall he tread down the altars of their +night,’” Terrence completed the passage. +“The man who wrote that is a great man. He is +Leo’s friend, and Dick’s friend, and proud +am I that he is my friend.”</p> + +<p>“And that other line,” Leo said. “From +the same sonnet,” he explained to Graham. “Listen +to the sound of it: ’To hear what song the star +of morning sings’—­oh, listen,” +the boy went on, his voice hushed low with beauty-love +for the words: “’With perished beauty in +his hands as clay, Shall he restore futurity its dream—­’”</p> + +<p>He broke off as Paula’s sisters entered, and +rose shyly to greet them.</p> + +<hr width="75%" size="1" > + +<p>Dinner that night was as any dinner at which the madroño +sages were present. Dick was as robustly controversial +as usual, locking horns with Aaron Hancock on Bergson, +attacking the latter’s metaphysics in sharp +realistic fashion.</p> + +<p>“Your Bergson is a charlatan philosopher, Aaron,” +Dick concluded. “He has the same old medicine-man’s +bag of metaphysical tricks, all decked out and frilled +with the latest ascertained facts of science.”</p> + +<p>“’Tis true,” Terrence agreed. “Bergson +is a charlatan thinker. ’Tis why he is so popular—­”</p> + +<p>“I deny—­” Hancock broke in.</p> + +<p>“Wait a wee, Aaron. ’Tis a thought I have +glimmered. Let me catch it before it flutters away +into the azure. Dick’s caught Bergson with the +goods on him, filched straight from the treasure-house +of science. His very cocksureness is filched from +Darwin’s morality of strength based on the survival +of the fittest. And what did Bergson do with it? Touched +it up with a bit of James’ pragmatism, rosied +it over with the eternal hope in man’s breast +that he will live again, and made it all a-shine with +Nietzsche’s ‘nothing succeeds like excess—­’”</p> + +<p>“Wilde’s, you mean,” corrected Ernestine.</p> + +<p>“Heaven knows I should have filched it for myself +had you not been present,” Terrence sighed, +with a bow to her. “Some day the antiquarians +will decide the authorship. Personally I would say +it smacked of Methuselah—­But as I was saying, +before I was delightfully interrupted...”</p> + +<p>“Who more cocksure than Dick?” Aaron was +challenging a little later; while Paula glanced significantly +to Graham.</p> + +<p>“I was looking at the herd of yearling stallions +but yesterday,” Terrence replied, “and +with the picture of the splendid beasties still in +my eyes I’ll ask: And who more delivers the goods?”</p> + +<p>“But Hancock’s objection is solid,” +Martinez ventured. “It would be a mean and profitless +world without mystery. Dick sees no mystery.”</p> + +<p>“There you wrong him,” Terrence defended. +“I know him well. Dick recognizes mystery, but +not of the nursery-child variety. No cock-and-bull +stories for him, such as you romanticists luxuriate +in.”</p> + +<p>“Terrence gets me,” Dick nodded. “The +world will always be mystery. To me man’s consciousness +is no greater mystery than the reaction of the gases +that make a simple drop of water. Grant that mystery, +and all the more complicated phenomena cease to be +mysteries. That simple chemical reaction is like one +of the axioms on which the edifice of geometry is +reared. Matter and force are the everlasting mysteries, +manifesting themselves in the twin mysteries of space +and time. The manifestations are not mysteries—­only +the stuff of the manifestations, matter and force; +and the theater of the manifestations, space and time.”</p> + +<p>Dick ceased and idly watched the expressionless Ah +Ha and Ah Me who chanced at the moment to be serving +opposite him. Their faces did not talk, was his thought; +although ten to one was a fair bet that they were +informed with the same knowledge that had perturbed +Oh Dear.</p> + +<p>“And there you are,” Terrence was triumphing. +“’Tis the perfect joy of him—­never +up in the air with dizzy heels. Flat on the good ground +he stands, four square to fact and law, set against +all airy fancies and bubbly speculations....”</p> + +<hr width="75%" size="1" > + +<p>And as at table, so afterward that evening no one +could have guessed from Dick that all was not well +with him. He seemed bent on celebrating Lute’s +and Ernestine’s return, refused to tolerate the +heavy talk of the philosophers, and bubbled over with +pranks and tricks. Paula yielded to the contagion, +and aided and abetted him in his practical jokes which +none escaped.</p> + +<p>Choicest among these was the kiss of welcome. No man +escaped it. To Graham was accorded the honor of receiving +it first so that he might witness the discomfiture +of the others, who, one by one, were ushered in by +Dick from the patio.</p> + +<p>Hancock, Dick’s arm guiding him, came down the +room to confront Paula and her sisters standing in +a row on three chairs in the middle of the floor. +He scanned them suspiciously, and insisted upon walking +around behind them. But there seemed nothing unusual +about them save that each wore a man’s felt +hat.</p> + +<p>“Looks good to me,” Hancock announced, +as he stood on the floor before them and looked up +at them.</p> + +<p>“And it is good,” Dick assured him. “As +representing the ranch in its fairest aspects, they +are to administer the kiss of welcome. Make your choice, +Aaron.”</p> + +<p>Aaron, with a quick whirl to catch some possible lurking +disaster at his back, demanded, “They are all +three to kiss me?”</p> + +<p>“No, make your choice which is to give you the +kiss.”</p> + +<p>“The two I do not choose will not feel that +I have discriminated against them?” Aaron insisted.</p> + +<p>“Whiskers no objection?” was his next +query.</p> + +<p>“Not in the way at all,” Lute told him. +“I have always wondered what it would be like +to kiss black whiskers.”</p> + +<p>“Here’s where all the philosophers get +kissed tonight, so hurry up,” Ernestine said. +“The others are waiting. I, too, have yet to +be kissed by an alfalfa field.”</p> + +<p>“Whom do you choose?” Dick urged.</p> + +<p>“As if, after that, there were any choice about +it,” Hancock returned jauntily. “I kiss +my lady—­the Little Lady.”</p> + +<p>As he put up his lips, Paula bent her head forward, +and, nicely directed, from the indented crown of her +hat canted a glassful of water into his face.</p> + +<p>When Leo’s turn came, he bravely made his choice +of Paula and nearly spoiled the show by reverently +bending and kissing the hem of her gown.</p> + +<p>“It will never do,” Ernestine told him. +“It must be a real kiss. Put up your lips to +be kissed.”</p> + +<p>“Let the last be first and kiss me, Leo,” +Lute begged, to save him from his embarrassment.</p> + +<p>He looked his gratitude, put up his lips, but without +enough tilt of his head, so that he received the water +from Lute’s hat down the back of his neck.</p> + +<p>“All three shall kiss me and thus shall paradise +be thrice multiplied,” was Terrence’s +way out of the difficulty; and simultaneously he received +three crowns of water for his gallantry.</p> + +<p>Dick’s boisterousness waxed apace. His was the +most care-free seeming in the world as he measured +Froelig and Martinez against the door to settle the +dispute that had arisen as to whether Froelig or Martinez +was the taller.</p> + +<p>“Knees straight and together, heads back,” +Dick commanded.</p> + +<p>And as their heads touched the wood, from the other +side came a rousing thump that jarred them. The door +swung open, revealing Ernestine with a padded gong-stick +in either hand.</p> + +<p>Dick, a high-heeled satin slipper in his hand, was +under a sheet with Terrence, teaching him “Brother +Bob I’m bobbed” to the uproarious joy +of the others, when the Masons and Watsons and all +their Wickenberg following entered upon the scene.</p> + +<p>Whereupon Dick insisted that the young men of their +party receive the kiss of welcome. Nor did he miss, +in the hubbub of a dozen persons meeting as many more, +Lottie Mason’s: “Oh, good evening, Mr. +Graham. I thought you had gone.”</p> + +<p>And Dick, in the midst of the confusion of settling +such an influx of guests, still maintaining his exuberant +jolly pose, waited for that sharp scrutiny that women +have only for women. Not many moments later he saw +Lottie Mason steal such a look, keen with speculation, +at Paula as she chanced face to face with Graham, +saying something to him.</p> + +<p>Not yet, was Dick’s conclusion. Lottie did not +know. But suspicion was rife, and nothing, he was +certain, under the circumstances, would gladden her +woman’s heart more than to discover the unimpeachable +Paula as womanly weak as herself.</p> + +<p>Lottie Mason was a tall, striking brunette of twenty-five, +undeniably beautiful, and, as Dick had learned, undeniably +daring. In the not remote past, attracted by her, +and, it must be submitted, subtly invited by her, +he had been guilty of a philandering that he had not +allowed to go as far as her wishes. The thing had not +been serious on his part. Nor had he permitted it +to become serious on her side. Nevertheless, sufficient +flirtatious passages had taken place to impel him +this night to look to her, rather than to the other +Wickenberg women, for the first signals of suspicion.</p> + +<p>“Oh, yes, he’s a beautiful dancer,” +Dick, as he came up to them half an hour later, heard +Lottie Mason telling little Miss Maxwell. “Isn’t +he, Dick?” she appealed to him, with innocent +eyes of candor through which disguise he knew she +was studying him.</p> + +<p>“Who?—­Graham, you must mean,” +he answered with untroubled directness. “He +certainly is. What do you say we start dancing and +let Miss Maxwell see? Though there’s only one +woman here who can give him full swing to show his +paces.”</p> + +<p>“Paula, of course,” said Lottie.</p> + +<p>“Paula, of course. Why, you young chits don’t +know how to waltz. You never had a chance to learn."—­Lottie +tossed her fine head. “Perhaps you learned a +little before the new dancing came in,” he amended. +“Anyway, I’ll get Evan and Paula started, +you take me on, and I’ll wager we’ll be +the only couples on the floor.”</p> + +<p>Half through the waltz, he broke it off with: “Let +them have the floor to themselves. It’s worth +seeing.”</p> + +<p>And, glowing with appreciation, he stood and watched +his wife and Graham finish the dance, while he knew +that Lottie, beside him, stealing side glances at +him, was having her suspicions allayed.</p> + +<p>The dancing became general, and, the evening being +warm, the big doors to the patio were thrown open. +Now one couple, and now another, danced out and down +the long arcades where the moonlight streamed, until +it became the general thing.</p> + +<p>“What a boy he is,” Paula said to Graham, +as they listened to Dick descanting to all and sundry +on the virtues of his new night camera. “You +heard Aaron complaining at table, and Terrence explaining, +his sureness. Nothing terrible has ever happened to +him in his life. He has never been overthrown. His +sureness has always been vindicated. As Terrence said, +it has always delivered the goods. He does know, he +does know, and yet he is so sure of himself, so sure +of me.”</p> + +<p>Graham taken away to dance with Miss Maxwell, Paula +continued her train of thought to herself. Dick was +not suffering so much after all. And she might have +expected it. He was the cool-head, the philosopher. +He would take her loss with the same equanimity as +he would take the loss of Mountain Lad, as he had +taken the death of Jeremy Braxton and the flooding +of the Harvest mines. It was difficult, she smiled +to herself, aflame as she was toward Graham, to be +married to a philosopher who would not lift a hand +to hold her. And it came to her afresh that one phase +of Graham’s charm for her was his humanness, +his flamingness. They met on common ground. At any +rate, even in the heyday of their coming together +in Paris, Dick had not so inflamed her. A wonderful +lover he had been, too, with his gift of speech and +lover’s phrases, with his love-chants that had +so delighted her; but somehow it was different from +this what she felt for Graham and what Graham must +feel for her. Besides, she had been most young in +experience of love and lovers in that long ago when +Dick had burst so magnificently upon her.</p> + +<p>And so thinking, she hardened toward him and recklessly +permitted herself to flame toward Graham. The crowd, +the gayety, the excitement, the closeness and tenderness +of contact in the dancing, the summer-warm of the +evening, the streaming moonlight, and the night-scents +of flowers—­all fanned her ardency, and +she looked forward eagerly to the at least one more +dance she might dare with Graham.</p> + +<p>“No flash light is necessary,” Dick was +explaining. “It’s a German invention. +Half a minute exposure under the ordinary lighting +is sufficient. And the best of it is that the plate +can be immediately developed just like an ordinary +blue print. Of course, the drawback is one cannot +print from the plate.”</p> + +<p>“But if it’s good, an ordinary plate can +be copied from it from which prints can be made,” +Ernestine amplified.</p> + +<p>She knew the huge, twenty-foot, spring snake coiled +inside the camera and ready to leap out like a jack-in-the-box +when Dick squeezed the bulb. And there were others +who knew and who urged Dick to get the camera and +make an exposure.</p> + +<p>He was gone longer than he expected, for Bonbright +had left on his desk several telegrams concerning +the Mexican situation that needed immediate replies. +Trick camera in hand, Dick returned by a short cut +across the house and patio. The dancing couples were +ebbing down the arcade and disappearing into the hall, +and he leaned against a pillar and watched them go +by. Last of all came Paula and Evan, passing so close +that he could have reached out and touched them. But, +though the moon shone full on him, they did not see +him. They saw only each other in the tender sport +of gazing.</p> + +<p>The last preceding couple was already inside when +the music ceased. Graham and Paula paused, and he +was for giving her his arm and leading her inside, +but she clung to him in sudden impulse. Man-like, +cautious, he slightly resisted for a moment, but with +one arm around his neck she drew his head willingly +down to the kiss. It was a flash of quick passion. +The next instant, Paula on his arm, they were passing +in and Paula’s laugh was ringing merrily and +naturally.</p> + +<p>Dick clutched at the pillar and eased himself down +abruptly until he sat flat on the pavement. Accompanying +violent suffocation, or causing it, his heart seemed +rising in his chest. He panted for air. The cursed +thing rose and choked and stifled him until, in the +grim turn his fancy took, it seemed to him that he +chewed it between his teeth and gulped it back and +down his throat along with the reviving air. He felt +chilled, and was aware that he was wet with sudden +sweat.</p> + +<p>“And who ever heard of heart disease in the +Forrests?” he muttered, as, still sitting, leaning +against the pillar for support, he mopped his face +dry. His hand was shaking, and he felt a slight nausea +from an internal quivering that still persisted.</p> + +<p>It was not as if Graham had kissed her, he pondered. +It was Paula who had kissed Graham. That was love, +and passion. He had seen it, and as it burned again +before his eyes, he felt his heart surge, and the +premonitory sensation of suffocation seized him. With +a sharp effort of will he controlled himself and got +to his feet.</p> + +<p>“By God, it came up in my mouth and I chewed +it,” he muttered. “I chewed it.”</p> + +<p>Returning across the patio by the round-about way, +he entered the lighted room jauntily enough, camera +in hand, and unprepared for the reception he received.</p> + +<p>“Seen a ghost?” Lute greeted.</p> + +<p>“Are you sick?"—­"What’s the +matter?” were other questions.</p> + +<p>“What <i>is</i> the matter?” he countered.</p> + +<p>“Your face—­the look of it,” +Ernestine said. “Something has happened. What +is it?”</p> + +<p>And while he oriented himself he did not fail to note +Lottie Mason’s quick glance at the faces of +Graham and Paula, nor to note that Ernestine had observed +Lottie’s glance and followed it up for herself.</p> + +<p>“Yes,” he lied. “Bad news. Just +got the word. Jeremy Braxton is dead. Murdered. The +Mexicans got him while he was trying to escape into +Arizona.”</p> + +<p>“Old Jeremy, God love him for the fine man he +was,” Terrence said, tucking his arm in Dick’s. +“Come on, old man, ’tis a stiffener you’re +wanting and I’m the lad to lead you to it.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, I’m all right,” Dick smiled, +shaking his shoulders and squaring himself as if gathering +himself together. “It did hit me hard for the +moment. I hadn’t a doubt in the world but Jeremy +would make it out all right. But they got him, and +two engineers with him. They put up a devil of a fight +first. They got under a cliff and stood off a mob of +half a thousand for a day and night. And then the Mexicans +tossed dynamite down from above. Oh, well, all flesh +is grass, and there is no grass of yesteryear. Terrence, +your suggestion is a good one. Lead on.”</p> + +<p>After a few steps he turned his head over his shoulder +and called back: “Now this isn’t to stop +the fun. I’ll be right back to take that photograph. +You arrange the group, Ernestine, and be sure to have +them under the strongest light.”</p> + +<p>Terrence pressed open the concealed buffet at the +far end of the room and set out the glasses, while +Dick turned on a wall light and studied his face in +the small mirror inside the buffet door.</p> + +<p>“It’s all right now, quite natural,” +he announced.</p> + +<p>“’Twas only a passing shade,” Terrence +agreed, pouring the whiskey. “And man has well +the right to take it hard the going of old friends.”</p> + +<p>They toasted and drank silently.</p> + +<p>“Another one,” Dick said, extending his +glass.</p> + +<p>“Say ‘when,’” said the Irishman, +and with imperturbable eyes he watched the rising +tide of liquor in the glass.</p> + +<p>Dick waited till it was half full.</p> + +<p>Again they toasted and drank silently, eyes to eyes, +and Dick was grateful for the offer of all his heart +that he read in Terrence’s eyes.</p> + +<p>Back in the middle of the hall, Ernestine was gayly +grouping the victims, and privily, from the faces +of Lottie, Paula, and Graham, trying to learn more +of the something untoward that she sensed. Why had +Lottie looked so immediately and searchingly at Graham +and Paula?—­she asked herself. And something +was wrong with Paula now. She was worried, disturbed, +and not in the way to be expected from the announcement +of Jeremy Braxton’s death. From Graham, Ernestine +could glean nothing. He was quite his ordinary self, +his facetiousness the cause of much laughter to Miss +Maxwell and Mrs. Watson.</p> + +<p>Paula was disturbed. What had happened? Why had Dick +lied? He had known of Jeremy’s death for two +days. And she had never known anybody’s death +so to affect him. She wondered if he had been drinking +unduly. In the course of their married life she had +seen him several times in liquor. He carried it well, +the only noticeable effects being a flush in his eyes +and a loosening of his tongue to whimsical fancies +and extemporized chants. Had he, in his trouble, been +drinking with the iron-headed Terrence down in the +stag room? She had found them all assembled there +just before dinner. The real cause for Dick’s +strangeness never crossed her mind, if, for no other +reason, than that he was not given to spying.</p> + +<p>He came back, laughing heartily at a joke of Terrence’s, +and beckoned Graham to join them while Terrence repeated +it. And when the three had had their laugh, he prepared +to take the picture. The burst of the huge snake from +the camera and the genuine screams of the startled +women served to dispel the gloom that threatened, and +next Dick was arranging a tournament of peanut-carrying.</p> + +<p>From chair to chair, placed a dozen yards apart, the +feat was with a table knife to carry the most peanuts +in five minutes. After the preliminary try-out, Dick +chose Paula for his partner, and challenged the world, +Wickenberg and the madroño grove included. Many boxes +of candy were wagered, and in the end he and Paula +won out against Graham and Ernestine, who had proved +the next best couple. Demands for a speech changed +to clamor for a peanut song. Dick complied, beating +the accent, Indian fashion, with stiff-legged hops +and hand-slaps on thighs.</p> + +<p>“I am Dick Forrest, son of Richard the Lucky, +Son of Jonathan the Puritan, son of John who was a +sea-rover, as his father Albert before him, who was +the son of Mortimer, a pirate who was hanged in chains +and died without issue.</p> + +<p>“I am the last of the Forrests, but first of +the peanut-carriers. Neither Nimrod nor Sandow has +anything on me. I carry the peanuts on a knife, a +silver knife. The peanuts are animated by the devil. +I carry the peanuts with grace and celerity and in +quantity. The peanut never sprouted that can best +me.</p> + +<p>“The peanuts roll. The peanuts roll. Like Atlas +who holds the world, I never let them fall. Not every +one can carry peanuts. I am God-gifted. I am master +of the art. It is a fine art. The peanuts roll, the +peanuts roll, and I carry them on forever.</p> + +<p>“Aaron is a philosopher. He cannot carry peanuts. +Ernestine is a blonde. She cannot carry peanuts. Evan +is a sportsman. He drops peanuts. Paula is my partner. +She fumbles peanuts. Only I, I, by the grace of God +and my own cleverness, carry peanuts.</p> + +<p>“When anybody has had enough of my song, throw +something at me. I am proud. I am tireless. I can +sing on forever. I shall sing on forever.</p> + +<p>“Here beginneth the second canto. When I die, +bury me in a peanut patch. While I live—­”</p> + +<p>The expected avalanche of cushions quenched his song +but not his ebullient spirits, for he was soon in +a corner with Lottie Mason and Paula concocting a +conspiracy against Terrence.</p> + +<p>And so the evening continued to be danced and joked +and played away. At midnight supper was served, and +not till two in the morning were the Wickenbergers +ready to depart. While they were getting on their +wraps, Paula was proposing for the following afternoon +a trip down to the Sacramento River to look over Dick’s +experiment in rice-raising.</p> + +<p>“I had something else in view,” he told +her. “You know the mountain pasture above Sycamore +Creek. Three yearlings have been killed there in the +last ten days.”</p> + +<p>“Mountain lions!” Paula cried.</p> + +<p>“Two at least.—­Strayed in from the +north,” he explained to Graham. “They +sometimes do that. We got three five years ago.—­Moss +and Hartley will be there with the dogs waiting. They’ve +located two of the beasts. What do you say all of +you join me. We can leave right after lunch.”</p> + +<p>“Let me have Mollie?” Lute asked.</p> + +<p>“And you can ride Altadena,” Paula told +Ernestine.</p> + +<p>Quickly the mounts were decided upon, Froelig and +Martinez agreeing to go, but promising neither to +shoot well nor ride well.</p> + +<p>All went out to see the Wickenbergers off, and, after +the machines were gone, lingered to make arrangements +for the hunting.</p> + +<p>“Good night, everybody,” Dick said, as +they started to move inside. “I’m going +to take a look at Alden Bessie before I turn in. Hennessy +is sitting up with her. Remember, you girls, come to +lunch in your riding togs, and curses on the head +of whoever’s late.”</p> + +<p>The ancient dam of the Fotherington Princess was in +a serious way, but Dick would not have made the visit +at such an hour, save that he wanted to be by himself +and that he could not nerve himself for a chance moment +alone with Paula so soon after what he had overseen +in the patio.</p> + +<p>Light steps in the gravel made him turn his head. +Ernestine caught up with him and took his arm.</p> + +<p>“Poor old Alden Bessie,” she explained. +“I thought I’d go along.”</p> + +<p>Dick, still acting up to his night’s rôle, recalled +to her various funny incidents of the evening, and +laughed and chuckled with reminiscent glee.</p> + +<p>“Dick,” she said in the first pause, “you +are in trouble.” She could feel him stiffen, +and hurried on: “What can I do? You know you +can depend on me. Tell me.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, I’ll tell you,” he answered. +“Just one thing.” She pressed his arm +gratefully. “I’ll have a telegram sent +you to-morrow. It will be urgent enough, though not +too serious. You will just bundle up and depart with +Lute.”</p> + +<p>“Is that all?” she faltered.</p> + +<p>“It will be a great favor.”</p> + +<p>“You won’t talk with me?” she protested, +quivering under the rebuff.</p> + +<p>“I’ll have the telegram come so as to +rout you out of bed. And now never mind Alden Bessie. +You run a long in. Good night.”</p> + +<p>He kissed her, gently thrust her toward the house, +and went on his way.</p> + +<h1 align="center" style="margin-top: 2em;font-variant: small-caps">Chapter XXX</h1> + +<p>On the way back from the sick mare, Dick paused once +to listen to the restless stamp of Mountain Lad and +his fellows in the stallion barn. In the quiet air, +from somewhere up the hills, came the ringing of a +single bell from some grazing animal. A cat’s-paw +of breeze fanned him with sudden balmy warmth. All +the night was balmy with the faint and almost aromatic +scent of ripening grain and drying grass. The stallion +stamped again, and Dick, with a deep breath and realization +that never had he more loved it all, looked up and +circled the sky-line where the crests of the mountains +blotted the field of stars.</p> + +<p>“No, Cato,” he mused aloud. “One +cannot agree with you. Man does not depart from life +as from an inn. He departs as from a dwelling, the +one dwelling he will ever know. He departs ... nowhere. +It is good night. For him the Noiseless One ... and +the dark.”</p> + +<p>He made as if to start, but once again the stamp of +the stallions held him, and the hillside bell rang +out. He drew a deep inhalation through his nostrils +of the air of balm, and loved it, and loved the fair +land of his devising.</p> + +<p>“‘I looked into time and saw none of me +there,’” he quoted, then capped it, smiling, +with a second quotation: “’She gat me nine +great sons.... The other nine were daughters.’”</p> + +<p>Back at the house, he did not immediately go in, but +stood a space gazing at the far flung lines of it. +Nor, inside, did he immediately go to his own quarters. +Instead, he wandered through the silent rooms, across +the patios, and along the dim-lit halls. His frame +of mind was as of one about to depart on a journey. +He pressed on the lights in Paula’s fairy patio, +and, sitting in an austere Roman seat of marble, smoked +a cigarette quite through while he made his plans.</p> + +<p>Oh, he would do it nicely enough. He could pull off +a hunting accident that would fool the world. Trust +him not to bungle it. Next day would be the day, in +the woods above Sycamore Creek. Grandfather Jonathan +Forrest, the straight-laced Puritan, had died of a +hunting accident. For the first time Dick doubted +that accident. Well, if it hadn’t been an accident, +the old fellow had done it well. It had never been +hinted in the family that it was aught but an accident.</p> + +<p>His hand on the button to turn off the lights, Dick +delayed a moment for a last look at the marble babies +that played in the fountain and among the roses.</p> + +<p>“So long, younglings,” he called softly +to them. “You’re the nearest I ever came +to it.”</p> + +<p>From his sleeping porch he looked across the big patio +to Paula’s porch. There was no light. The chance +was she slept.</p> + +<p>On the edge of the bed, he found himself with one +shoe unlaced, and, smiling at his absentness, relaced +it. What need was there for him to sleep? It was already +four in the morning. He would at least watch his last +sunrise. Last things were coming fast. Already had +he not dressed for the last time? And the bath of +the previous morning would be his last. Mere water +could not stay the corruption of death. He would have +to shave, however—­a last vanity, for the +hair did continue to grow for a time on dead men’s +faces.</p> + +<p>He brought a copy of his will from the wall-safe to +his desk and read it carefully. Several minor codicils +suggested themselves, and he wrote them out in long-hand, +pre-dating them six months as a precaution. The last +was the endowment of the sages of the madroño grove +with a fellowship of seven.</p> + +<p>He ran through his life insurance policies, verifying +the permitted suicide clause in each one; signed the +tray of letters that had waited his signature since +the previous morning; and dictated a letter into the +phonograph to the publisher of his books. His desk +cleaned, he scrawled a quick summary of income and +expense, with all earnings from the Harvest mines +deducted. He transposed the summary into a second +summary, increasing the expense margins, and cutting +down the income items to an absurdest least possible. +Still the result was satisfactory.</p> + +<p>He tore up the sheets of figures and wrote out a program +for the future handling of the Harvest situation. +He did it sketchily, with casual tentativeness, so +that when it was found among the papers there would +be no suspicions. In the same fashion he worked out +a line-breeding program for the Shires, and an in-breeding +table, up and down, for Mountain Lad and the Fotherington +Princess and certain selected individuals of their +progeny.</p> + +<p>When Oh My came in with coffee at six, Dick was on +his last paragraph of his scheme for rice-growing.</p> + +<p>“Although the Italian rice may be worth experimenting +with for quick maturity,” he wrote, “I +shall for a time confine the main plantings in equal +proportions to Moti, Ioko, and the Wateribune. Thus, +with different times of maturing, the same crews and +the same machinery, with the same overhead, can work +a larger acreage than if only one variety is planted.”</p> + +<p>Oh My served the coffee at his desk, and made no sign +even after a glance to the porch at the bed which +had not been slept in—­all of which control +Dick permitted himself privily to admire.</p> + +<p>At six-thirty the telephone rang and he heard Hennessy’s +tired voice: “I knew you’d be up and glad +to know Alden Bessie’s pulled through. It was +a squeak, though. And now it’s me for the hay.”</p> + +<p>When Dick had shaved, he looked at the shower, hesitated +a moment, then his face set stubbornly. I’m +darned if I will, was his thought; a sheer waste of +time. He did, however, change his shoes to a pair of +heavy, high-laced ones fit for the roughness of hunting. +He was at his desk again, looking over the notes in +his scribble pads for the morning’s work, when +Paula entered. She did not call her “Good morning, +merry gentleman”; but came quite close to him +before she greeted him softly with:</p> + +<p>“The Acorn-planter. Ever tireless, never weary +Red Cloud.”</p> + +<p>He noted the violet-blue shadows under her eyes, as +he arose, without offering to touch her. Nor did she +offer invitation.</p> + +<p>“A white night?” he asked, as he placed +a chair.</p> + +<p>“A white night,” she answered wearily. +“Not a second’s sleep, though I tried +so hard.”</p> + +<p>Both were reluctant of speech, and they labored under +a mutual inability to draw their eyes away from each +other.</p> + +<p>“You ... you don’t look any too fit yourself,” +she said.</p> + +<p>“Yes, my face,” he nodded. “I was +looking at it while I shaved. The expression won’t +come off.”</p> + +<p>“Something happened to you last night,” +she probed, and he could not fail to see the same +compassion in her eyes that he had seen in Oh Dear’s. +“Everybody remarked your expression. What was +it?”</p> + +<p>He shrugged his shoulders. “It has been coming +on for some time,” he evaded, remembering that +the first hint of it had been given him by Paula’s +portrait of him. “You’ve noticed it?” +he inquired casually.</p> + +<p>She nodded, then was struck by a sudden thought. He +saw the idea leap to life ere her words uttered it.</p> + +<p>“Dick, you haven’t an affair?”</p> + +<p>It was a way out. It would straighten all the tangle. +And hope was in her voice and in her face.</p> + +<p>He smiled, shook his head slowly, and watched her +disappointment.</p> + +<p>“I take it back,” he said. “I have +an affair.”</p> + +<p>“Of the heart?”</p> + +<p>She was eager, as he answered, “Of the heart.”</p> + +<p>But she was not prepared for what came next. He abruptly +drew his chair close, till his knees touched hers, +and, leaning forward, quickly but gently prisoned +her hands in his resting on her knees.</p> + +<p>“Don’t be alarmed, little bird-woman,” +he quieted her. “I shall not kiss you. It is +a long time since I have. I want to tell you about +that affair. But first I want to tell you how proud +I am—­proud of myself. I am proud that I +am a lover. At my age, a lover! It is unbelievable, +and it is wonderful. And such a lover! Such a curious, +unusual, and quite altogether remarkable lover. In +fact, I have laughed all the books and all biology +in the face. I am a monogamist. I love the woman, +the one woman. After a dozen years of possession I +love her quite madly, oh, so sweetly madly.”</p> + +<p>Her hands communicated her disappointment to him, +making a slight, impulsive flutter to escape; but +he held them more firmly.</p> + +<p>“I know her every weakness, and, weakness and +strength and all, I love her as madly as I loved her +at the first, in those mad moments when I first held +her in my arms.”</p> + +<p>Her hands were mutinous of the restraint he put upon +them, and unconsciously she was beginning to pull +and tug to be away from him. Also, there was fear +in her eyes. He knew her fastidiousness, and he guessed, +with the other man’s lips recent on hers, that +she feared a more ardent expression on his part.</p> + +<p>“And please, please be not frightened, timid, +sweet, beautiful, proud, little bird-woman. See. I +release you. Know that I love you most dearly, and +that I am considering you as well as myself, and before +myself, all the while.”</p> + +<p>He drew his chair away from her, leaned back, and +saw confidence grow in her eyes.</p> + +<p>“I shall tell you all my heart,” he continued, +“and I shall want you to tell me all your heart.”</p> + +<p>“This love for me is something new?” she +asked. “A recrudescence?”</p> + +<p>“Yes, a recrudescence, and no.”</p> + +<p>“I thought that for a long time I had been a +habit to you,” she said.</p> + +<p>“But I was loving you all the time.”</p> + +<p>“Not madly.”</p> + +<p>“No,” he acknowledged. “But with +certainty. I was so sure of you, of myself. It was, +to me, all a permanent and forever established thing. +I plead guilty. But when that permanency was shaken, +all my love for you fired up. It was there all the +time, a steady, long-married flame.”</p> + +<p>“But about me?” she demanded.</p> + +<p>“That is what we are coming to. I know your +worry right now, and of a minute ago. You are so intrinsically +honest, so intrinsically true, that the thought of +sharing two men is abhorrent to you. I have not misread +you. It is a long time since you have permitted me +any love-touch.” He shrugged his shoulders +“And an equally long time since I offered you +a love-touch.”</p> + +<p>“Then you <i>have</i> known from the first?” +she asked quickly.</p> + +<p>He nodded.</p> + +<p>“Possibly,” he added, with an air of judicious +weighing, “I sensed it coming before even you +knew it. But we will not go into that or other things.”</p> + +<p>“You have seen...” she attempted to ask, +stung almost to shame at thought of her husband having +witnessed any caress of hers and Graham’s.</p> + +<p>“We will not demean ourselves with details, +Paula. Besides, there was and is nothing wrong about +any of it. Also, it was not necessary for me to see +anything. I have my memories of when I, too, kissed +stolen kisses in the pause of the seconds between +the frank, outspoken ’Good nights.’ When +all the signs of ripeness are visible—­the +love-shades and love-notes that cannot be hidden, +the unconscious caress of the eyes in a fleeting glance, +the involuntary softening of voices, the cuckoo-sob +in the throat—­why, the night-parting kiss +does not need to be seen. It has to be. Still further, +oh my woman, know that I justify you in everything.”</p> + +<p>“It... it was not ever... much,” she faltered.</p> + +<p>“I should have been surprised if it had been. +It couldn’t have been you. As it is, I have +been surprised. After our dozen years it was unexpected—­”</p> + +<p>“Dick,” she interrupted him, leaning toward +him and searching him. She paused to frame her thought, +and then went on with directness. “In our dozen +years, will you say it has never been any more with +you?”</p> + +<p>“I have told you that I justify you in everything,” +he softened his reply.</p> + +<p>“But you have not answered my question,” +she insisted. “Oh, I do not mean mere flirtatious +passages, bits of primrose philandering. I mean unfaithfulness +and I mean it technically. In the past you have?”</p> + +<p>“In the past,” he answered, “not +much, and not for a long, long time.”</p> + +<p>“I often wondered,” she mused.</p> + +<p>“And I have told you I justify you in everything,” +he reiterated. “And now you know where lies +the justification.”</p> + +<p>“Then by the same token I had a similar right,” +she said. “Though I haven’t, Dick, I haven’t,” +she hastened to add. “Well, anyway, you always +did preach the single standard.”</p> + +<p>“Alas, not any longer,” he smiled. “One’s +imagination will conjure, and in the past few weeks +I’ve been forced to change my mind.”</p> + +<p>“You mean that you demand I must be faithful?”</p> + +<p>He nodded and said, “So long as you live with +me.”</p> + +<p>“But where’s the equity?”</p> + +<p>“There isn’t any equity,” he shook +his head. “Oh, I know it seems a preposterous +change of view. But at this late day I have made the +discovery of the ancient truth that women are different +from men. All I have learned of book and theory goes +glimmering before the everlasting fact that the women +are the mothers of our children. I... I still had +my hopes of children with you, you see. But that’s +all over and done with. The question now is, what’s +in your heart? I have told you mine. And afterward +we can determine what is to be done.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, Dick,” she breathed, after silence +had grown painful, “I do love you, I shall always +love you. You are my Red Cloud. Why, do you know, +only yesterday, out on your sleeping porch, I turned +my face to the wall. It was terrible. It didn’t +seem right. I turned it out again, oh so quickly.”</p> + +<p>He lighted a cigarette and waited.</p> + +<p>“But you have not told me what is in your heart, +all of it,” he chided finally.</p> + +<p>“I do love you,” she repeated.</p> + +<p>“And Evan?”</p> + +<p>“That is different. It is horrible to have to +talk this way to you. Besides, I don’t know. +I can’t make up my mind what is in my heart.”</p> + +<p>“Love? Or amorous adventure? It must be one +or the other.”</p> + +<p>She shook her head.</p> + +<p>“Can’t you understand?” she asked. +“That I don’t understand? You see, I am +a woman. I have never sown any wild oats. And now that +all this has happened, I don’t know what to +make of it. Shaw and the rest must be right. Women +are hunting animals. You are both big game. I can’t +help it. It is a challenge to me. And I find I am a +puzzle to myself. All my concepts have been toppled +over by my conduct. I want you. I want Evan. I want +both of you. It is not amorous adventure, oh believe +me. And if by any chance it is, and I do not know it—­no, +it isn’t, I know it isn’t.”</p> + +<p>“Then it is love.”</p> + +<p>“But I do love you, Red Cloud.”</p> + +<p>“And you say you love him. You can’t love +both of us.”</p> + +<p>“But I can. I do. I do love both of you.—­Oh, +I am straight. I shall be straight. I must work this +out. I thought you might help me. That is why I came +to you this morning. There must be some solution.”</p> + +<p>She looked at him appealingly as he answered, “It +is one or the other, Evan or me. I cannot imagine +any other solution.”</p> + +<p>“That’s what he says. But I can’t +bring myself to it. He was for coming straight to +you. I would not permit him. He has wanted to go, +but I held him here, hard as it was on both of you, +in order to have you together, to compare you two, +to weigh you in my heart. And I get nowhere. I want +you both. I can’t give either of you up.”</p> + +<p>“Unfortunately, as you see,” Dick began, +a slight twinkle in his eyes, “while you may +be polyandrously inclined, we stupid male men cannot +reconcile ourselves to such a situation.”</p> + +<p>“Don’t be cruel, Dick,” she protested.</p> + +<p>“Forgive me. It was not so meant. It was out +of my own hurt—­an effort to bear it with +philosophical complacence.”</p> + +<p>“I have told him that he was the only man I +had ever met who is as great as my husband, and that +my husband is greater.”</p> + +<p>“That was loyalty to me, yes, and loyalty to +yourself,” Dick explained. “You were mine +until I ceased being the greatest man in the world. +He then became the greatest man in the world.”</p> + +<p>She shook her head.</p> + +<p>“Let me try to solve it for you,” he continued. +“You don’t know your mind, your desire. +You can’t decide between us because you equally +want us both?”</p> + +<p>“Yes,” she whispered. “Only, rather, +differently want you both.”</p> + +<p>“Then the thing is settled,” he concluded +shortly.</p> + +<p>“What do you mean?”</p> + +<p>“This, Paula. I lose. Graham is the winner. +Don’t you see. Here am I, even with him, even +and no more, while my advantage over him is our dozen +years together—­the dozen years of past love, +the ties and bonds of heart and memory. Heavens! If +all this weight were thrown in the balance on Evan’s +side, you wouldn’t hesitate an instant in your +decision. It is the first time you have ever been bowled +over in your life, and the experience, coming so late, +makes it hard for you to realize.”</p> + +<p>“But, Dick, you bowled me over.”</p> + +<p>He shook his head.</p> + +<p>“I have always liked to think so, and sometimes +I have believed—­but never really. I never +took you off your feet, not even in the very beginning, +whirlwind as the affair was. You may have been glamoured. +You were never mad as I was mad, never swept as I was +swept. I loved you first—­”</p> + +<p>“And you were a royal lover.”</p> + +<p>“I loved you first, Paula, and, though you did +respond, it was not in the same way. I never took +you off your feet. It seems pretty clear that Evan +has.”</p> + +<p>“I wish I could be sure,” she mused. “I +have a feeling of being bowled over, and yet I hesitate. +The two are not compatible. Perhaps I never shall +be bowled over by any man. And you don’t seem +to help me in the least.”</p> + +<p>“You, and you alone, can solve it, Paula,” +he said gravely.</p> + +<p>“But if you would help, if you would try—­oh, +such a little, to hold me,” she persisted.</p> + +<p>“But I am helpless. My hands are tied. I can’t +put an arm to hold you. You can’t share two. +You have been in his arms—­” He put +up his hand to hush her protest. “Please, please, +dear, don’t. You have been in his arms. You +flutter like a frightened bird at thought of my caressing +you. Don’t you see? Your actions decide against +me. You have decided, though you may not know it. +Your very flesh has decided. You can bear his arms. +The thought of mine you cannot bear.”</p> + +<p>She shook her head with slow resoluteness.</p> + +<p>“And still I do not, cannot, make up my mind,” +she persisted.</p> + +<p>“But you must. The present situation is intolerable. +You must decide quickly, for Evan must go. You realize +that. Or you must go. You both cannot continue on +here. Take all the time in the world. Send Evan away. +Or, suppose you go and visit Aunt Martha for a while. +Being away from both of us might aid you to get somewhere. +Perhaps it will be better to call off the hunting. +I’ll go alone, and you stay and talk it over +with Evan. Or come on along and talk it over with him +as you ride. Whichever way, I won’t be in till +late. I may sleep out all night in one of the herder’s +cabins. When I come back, Evan must be gone. Whether +or not you are gone with him will also have been decided.”</p> + +<p>“And if I should go?” she queried.</p> + +<p>Dick shrugged his shoulders, and stood up, glancing +at his wrist-watch.</p> + +<p>“I have sent word to Blake to come earlier this +morning,” he explained, taking a step toward +the door in invitation for her to go.</p> + +<p>At the door she paused and leaned toward him.</p> + +<p>“Kiss me, Dick,” she said, and, afterward: +“This is not a... love-touch.” Her voice +had become suddenly husky. “It’s just in +case I do decide to... to go.”</p> + +<p>The secretary approached along the hall, but Paula +lingered.</p> + +<p>“Good morning, Mr. Blake,” Dick greeted +him. “Sorry to rout you out so early. First +of all, will you please telephone Mr. Agar and Mr. +Pitts. I won’t be able to see them this morning. +Oh, and put the rest off till to-morrow, too. Make +a point of getting Mr. Hanley. Tell him I approve +of his plan for the Buckeye spillway, and to go right +ahead. I will see Mr. Mendenhall, though, and Mr. +Manson. Tell them nine-thirty.”</p> + +<p>“One thing, Dick,” Paula said. “Remember, +I made him stay. It was not his fault or wish. I wouldn’t +let him go.”</p> + +<p>“You’ve bowled <i>him</i> over right +enough,” Dick smiled. “I could not reconcile +his staying on, under the circumstances, with what +I knew of him. But with you not permitting him to +go, and he as mad as a man has a right to be where +you are concerned, I can understand. He’s a +whole lot better than a good sort. They don’t +make many like him. He will make you happy—­”</p> + +<p>She held up her hand.</p> + +<p>“I don’t know that I shall ever be happy +again, Red Cloud. When I see what I have brought into +your face.... And I was so happy and contented all +our dozen years. I can’t forget it. That is why +I have been unable to decide. But you are right. The +time has come for me to solve the ...” She hesitated +and could not utter the word “triangle” +which he saw forming on her lips. “The situation,” +her voice trailed away. “We’ll all go +hunting. I’ll talk with him as we ride, and I’ll +send him away, no matter what I do.”</p> + +<p>“I shouldn’t be precipitate, Paul,” +Dick advised. “You know I don’t care a +hang for morality except when it is useful. And in +this case it is exceedingly useful. There may be children.—­Please, +please,” he hushed her. “And in such case +even old scandal is not exactly good for them. Desertion +takes too long. I’ll arrange to give you the +real statutory grounds, which will save a year in +the divorce.”</p> + +<p>“If I so make up my mind,” she smiled +wanly.</p> + +<p>He nodded.</p> + +<p>“But I may not make up my mind that way. I don’t +know it myself. Perhaps it’s all a dream, and +soon I shall wake up, and Oh Dear will come in and +tell me how soundly and long I have slept.”</p> + +<p>She turned away reluctantly, and paused suddenly when +she had made half a dozen steps.</p> + +<p>“Dick,” she called. “You have told +me your heart, but not what’s in your mind. +Don’t do anything foolish. Remember Denny Holbrook—­no +hunting accident, mind.”</p> + +<p>He shook his head, and twinkled his eyes in feigned +amusement, and marveled to himself that her intuition +should have so squarely hit the mark.</p> + +<p>“And leave all this?” he lied, with a +gesture that embraced the ranch and all its projects. +“And that book on in-and-in-breeding? And my +first annual home sale of stock just ripe to come off?”</p> + +<p>“It would be preposterous,” she agreed +with brightening face. “But, Dick, in this difficulty +of making up my mind, please, please know that—­” +She paused for the phrase, then made a gesture in mimicry +of his, that included the Big House and its treasures, +and said, “All this does not influence me a +particle. Truly not.”</p> + +<p>“As if I did not know it,” he assured +her. “Of all unmercenary women—­ "</p> + +<p>“Why, Dick,” she interrupted him, fired +by a new thought, “if I loved Evan as madly +as you think, you would mean so little that I’d +be content, if it were the only way out, for you to +have a hunting accident. But you see, I don’t. +Anyway, there’s a brass tack for you to ponder.”</p> + +<p>She made another reluctant step away, then called +back in a whisper, her face over her shoulder:</p> + +<p>“Red Cloud, I’m dreadfully sorry.... And +through it all I’m so glad that you do still +love me.”</p> + +<p>Before Blake returned, Dick found time to study his +face in the glass. Printed there was the expression +that had startled his company the preceding evening. +It had come to stay. Oh, well, was his thought, one +cannot chew his heart between his teeth without leaving +some sign of it.</p> + +<p>He strolled out on the sleeping porch and looked at +Paula’s picture under the barometers. He turned +it to the wall, and sat on the bed and regarded the +blankness for a space. Then he turned it back again.</p> + +<p>“Poor little kid,” he murmured, “having +a hard time of it just waking up at this late day.”</p> + +<p>But as he continued to gaze, abruptly there leaped +before his eyes the vision of her in the moonlight, +clinging to Graham and drawing his lips down to hers.</p> + +<p>Dick got up quickly, with a shake of head to shake +the vision from his eyes.</p> + +<p>By half past nine his correspondence was finished +and his desk cleaned save for certain data to be used +in his talks with his Shorthorn and Shire managers. +He was over at the window and waving a smiling farewell +to Lute and Ernestine in the limousine, as Mendenhall +entered. And to him, and to Manson next, Dick managed, +in casual talk, to impress much of his bigger breeding +plans.</p> + +<p>“We’ve got to keep an eagle eye on the +bull-get of King Polo,” he told Manson. “There’s +all the promise in the world for a greater than he +from Bleakhouse Fawn, or Alberta Maid, or Moravia’s +Nellie Signal. We missed it this year so far, but +next year, or the year after, soon or late, King Polo +is going to be responsible for a real humdinger of +winner.”</p> + +<p>And as with Manson, with much more talk, so with Mendenhall, +Dick succeeded in emphasizing the far application +of his breeding theories.</p> + +<p>With their departure, he got Oh Joy on the house ’phone +and told him to take Graham to the gun room to choose +a rifle and any needed gear.</p> + +<p>At eleven he did not know that Paula had come up the +secret stairway from the library and was standing +behind the shelves of books listening. She had intended +coming in but had been deterred by the sound of his +voice. She could hear him talking over the telephone +to Hanley about the spillway of the Buckeye dam.</p> + +<p>“And by the way,” Dick’s voice went +on, “you’ve been over the reports on the +Big Miramar?... Very good. Discount them. I disagree +with them flatly. The water is there. I haven’t +a doubt we’ll find a fairly shallow artesian +supply. Send up the boring outfit at once and start +prospecting. The soil’s ungodly rich, and if +we don’t make that dry hole ten times as valuable +in the next five years ...”</p> + +<p>Paula sighed, and turned back down the spiral to the +library.</p> + +<p>Red Cloud the incorrigible, always planting his acorns—­was +her thought. There he was, with his love-world crashing +around him, calmly considering dams and well-borings +so that he might, in the years to come, plant more +acorns.</p> + +<p>Nor was Dick ever to know that Paula had come so near +to him with her need and gone away. Again, not aimlessly, +but to run through for the last time the notes of +the scribble pad by his bed, he was out on his sleeping +porch. His house was in order. There was nothing left +but to sign up the morning’s dictation, answer +several telegrams, then would come lunch and the hunting +in the Sycamore hills. Oh, he would do it well. The +Outlaw would bear the blame. And he would have an eye-witness, +either Froelig or Martinez. But not both of them. One +pair of eyes would be enough to satisfy when the martingale +parted and the mare reared and toppled backward upon +him into the brush. And from that screen of brush, +swiftly linking accident to catastrophe, the witness +would hear the rifle go off.</p> + +<p>Martinez was more emotional than the sculptor and +would therefore make a more satisfactory witness, +Dick decided. Him would he maneuver to have with him +in the narrow trail when the Outlaw should be made +the scapegoat. Martinez was no horseman. All the better. +It would be well, Dick judged, to make the Outlaw +act up in real devilishness for a minute or two before +the culmination. It would give verisimilitude. Also, +it would excite Martinez’s horse, and, therefore, +excite Martinez so that he would not see occurrences +too clearly.</p> + +<p>He clenched his hands with sudden hurt. The Little +Lady was mad, she must be mad; on no other ground +could he understand such arrant cruelty, listening +to her voice and Graham’s from the open windows +of the music room as they sang together the “Gypsy +Trail.”</p> + +<p>Nor did he unclench his hands during all the time +they sang. And they sang the mad, reckless song clear +through to its mad reckless end. And he continued +to stand, listening to her laugh herself merrily away +from Graham and on across the house to her wing, from +the porches of which she continued to laugh as she +teased and chided Oh Dear for fancied derelictions.</p> + +<p>From far off came the dim but unmistakable trumpeting +of Mountain Lad. King Polo asserted his lordly self, +and the harems of mares and heifers sent back their +answering calls. Dick listened to all the whinnying +and nickering and bawling of sex, and sighed aloud: +“Well, the land is better for my having been. +It is a good thought to take to bed.”</p> + +<h1 align="center" style="margin-top: 2em;font-variant: small-caps">Chapter XXXI</h1> + +<p>A ring of his bed ’phone made Dick sit on the +bed to take up the receiver. As he listened, he looked +out across the patio to Paula’s porches. Bonbright +was explaining that it was a call from Chauncey Bishop +who was at Eldorado in a machine. Chauncey Bishop, +editor and owner of the San Francisco <i>Dispatch</i>, +was sufficiently important a person, in Bonbright’s +mind, as well as old friend of Dick’s, to be +connected directly to him.</p> + +<p>“You can get here for lunch,” Dick told +the newspaper owner. “And, say, suppose you +put up for the night.... Never mind your special writers. +We’re going hunting mountain lions this afternoon, +and there’s sure to be a kill. Got them located.... +Who? What’s she write?... What of it? She can +stick around the ranch and get half a dozen columns +out of any of half a dozen subjects, while the writer +chap can get the dope on lion-hunting.... Sure, sure. +I’ll put him on a horse a child can ride.”</p> + +<p>The more the merrier, especially newspaper chaps, +Dick grinned to himself—­and grandfather +Jonathan Forrest would have nothing on him when it +came to pulling off a successful finish.</p> + +<p>But how could Paula have been so wantonly cruel as +to sing the “Gypsy Trail” so immediately +afterward? Dick asked himself, as, receiver near +to ear, he could distantly hear Chauncey Bishop persuading +his writer man to the hunting.</p> + +<p>“All right then, come a running,” Dick +told Bishop in conclusion. “I’m giving +orders now for the horses, and you can have that bay +you rode last time.”</p> + +<p>Scarcely had he hung up, when the bell rang again. +This time it was Paula.</p> + +<p>“Red Cloud, dear Red Cloud,” she said, +“your reasoning is all wrong. I think I love +you best. I am just about making up my mind, and it’s +for you. And now, just to help me to be sure, tell +me what you told me a little while ago—­you +know—­’ I love the woman, the one woman. +After a dozen years of possession I love her quite +madly, oh, so sweetly madly.’ Say it to me, +Red Cloud.”</p> + +<p>“I do truly love the woman, the one woman,” +Dick repeated. “After a dozen years of possession +I do love her quite madly, oh, so sweetly madly.”</p> + +<p>There was a pause when he had finished, which, waiting, +he did not dare to break.</p> + +<p>“There is one little thing I almost forgot to +tell you,” she said, very softly, very slowly, +very clearly. “I do love you. I have never loved +you so much as right now. After our dozen years you’ve +bowled me over at last. And I was bowled over from +the beginning, although I did not know it. I have +made up my mind now, once and for all.”</p> + +<p>She hung up abruptly.</p> + +<p>With the thought that he knew how a man felt receiving +a reprieve at the eleventh hour, Dick sat on, thinking, +forgetful that he had not hooked the receiver, until +Bonbright came in from the secretaries’ room +to remind him.</p> + +<p>“It was from Mr. Bishop,” Bonbright explained. +“Sprung an axle. I took the liberty of sending +one of our machines to bring them in.”</p> + +<p>“And see what our men can do with repairing +theirs,” Dick nodded.</p> + +<p>Alone again, he got up and stretched, walked absently +the length of the room and back.</p> + +<p>“Well, Martinez, old man,” he addressed +the empty air, “this afternoon you’ll +be defrauded out of as fine a histrionic stunt as you +will never know you’ve missed.”</p> + +<p>He pressed the switch for Paula’s telephone +and rang her up.</p> + +<p>Oh Dear answered, and quickly brought her mistress.</p> + +<p>“I’ve a little song I want to sing to +you, Paul,” he said, then chanted the old negro +‘spiritual’:</p> + +<p>  “’Fer itself, fer itself,<br> +     Fer itself, fer itself,<br> +     Every soul got ter confess<br> +     Fer itself.’</p> + +<p>“And I want you to tell me again, fer yourself, +fer yourself, what you just told me.”</p> + +<p>Her laughter came in a merry gurgle that delighted +him.</p> + +<p>“Red Cloud, I do love you,” she said. +“My mind is made up. I shall never have any +man but you in all this world. Now be good, and let +me dress. I’ll have to rush for lunch as it +is.”</p> + +<p>“May I come over?—­for a moment?” +he begged.</p> + +<p>“Not yet, eager one. In ten minutes. Let me +finish with Oh Dear first. Then I’ll be all +ready for the hunt. I’m putting on my Robin Hood +outfit—­you know, the greens and russets +and the long feather. And I’m taking my 30-30. +It’s heavy enough for mountain lions.”</p> + +<p>“You’ve made me very happy,” Dick +continued.</p> + +<p>“And you’re making me late. Ring off.—­Red +Cloud, I love you more this minute—­”</p> + +<p>He heard her hang up, and was surprised, the next +moment, that somehow he was reluctant to yield to +the happiness that he had claimed was his. Rather, +did it seem that he could still hear her voice and +Graham’s recklessly singing the “Gypsy +Trail.”</p> + +<p>Had she been playing with Graham? Or had she been +playing with him? Such conduct, for her, was unprecedented +and incomprehensible. As he groped for a solution, +he saw her again in the moonlight, clinging to Graham +with upturned lips, drawing Graham’s lips down +to hers.</p> + +<p>Dick shook his head in bafflement, and glanced at +his watch. At any rate, in ten minutes, in less than +ten minutes, he would hold her in his arms and know.</p> + +<p>So tedious was the brief space of time that he strolled +slowly on the way, pausing to light a cigarette, throwing +it away with the first inhalation, pausing again to +listen to the busy click of typewriters from the secretaries’ +room. With still two minutes to spare, and knowing +that one minute would take him to the door without +a knob, he stopped in the patio and gazed at the wild +canaries bathing in the fountain.</p> + +<p>When they startled into the air, a cloud of fluttering +gold and crystal droppings in the sunshine, Dick startled. +The report of the rifle had come from Paula’s +wing above, and he identified it as her 30-30 as he +dashed across the patio. <i>She beat me to it,</i> +was his next thought, and what had been incomprehensible +the moment before was as sharply definite as the roar +of her rifle.</p> + +<p>And across the patio, up the stairs, through the door +left wide-flung behind him, continued to pulse in +his brain: <i>She beat me to it. She beat me to +it.</i></p> + +<p>She lay, crumpled and quivering, in hunting costume +complete, save for the pair of tiny bronze spurs held +over her in anguished impotence by the frightened +maid.</p> + +<p>His examination was quick. Paula breathed, although +she was unconscious. From front to back, on the left +side, the bullet had torn through. His next spring +was to the telephone, and as he waited the delay of +connecting through the house central he prayed that +Hennessy would be at the stallion barn. A stable boy +answered, and, while he ran to fetch the veterinary, +Dick ordered Oh Joy to stay by the switches, and to +send Oh My to him at once.</p> + +<p>From the tail of his eye he saw Graham rush into the +room and on to Paula.</p> + +<p>“Hennessy,” Dick commanded. “Come +on the jump. Bring the needful for first aid. It’s +a rifle shot through the lungs or heart or both. Come +right to Mrs. Forrest’s rooms. Now jump.”</p> + +<p>“Don’t touch her,” he said sharply +to Graham. “It might make it worse, start a +worse hemorrhage.”</p> + +<p>Next he was back at Oh Joy.</p> + +<p>“Start Callahan with the racing car for Eldorado. +Tell him he’ll meet Doctor Robinson on the way, +and that he is to bring Doctor Robinson back with +him on the jump. Tell him to jump like the devil was +after him. Tell him Mrs. Forrest is hurt and that +if he makes time he’ll save her life.”</p> + +<p>Receiver to ear, he turned to look at Paula. Graham, +bending over her but not touching her, met his eyes.</p> + +<p>“Forrest,” he began, “if you have +done—­”</p> + +<p>But Dick hushed him with a warning glance directed +toward Oh Dear who still held the bronze spurs in +speechless helplessness.</p> + +<p>“It can be discussed later,” Dick said +shortly, as he turned his mouth to the transmitter.</p> + +<p>“Doctor Robinson?... Good. Mrs. Forrest has +a rifle-shot through lungs or heart or maybe both. +Callahan is on his way to meet you in the racing car. +Keep coming as fast as God’ll let you till you +meet Callahan. Good-by.”</p> + +<p>Back to Paula, Graham stepped aside as Dick, on his +knees, bent over her. His examination was brief. He +looked up at Graham with a shake of the head and said:</p> + +<p>“It’s too ticklish to fool with.”</p> + +<p>He turned to Oh Dear.</p> + +<p>“Put down those spurs and bring pillows.—­Evan, +lend a hand on the other side, and lift gently and +steadily.—­Oh Dear, shove that pillow under—­easy, +easy.”</p> + +<p>He looked up and saw Oh My standing silently, awaiting +orders.</p> + +<p>“Get Mr. Bonbright to relieve Oh Joy at the +switches,” Dick commanded. “Tell Oh Joy +to stand near to Mr. Bonbright to rush orders. Tell +Oh Joy to have all the house boys around him to rush +the orders. As soon as Saunders comes back with Mr. +Bishop’s crowd, tell Oh Joy to start him out +on the jump to Eldorado to look for Callahan in case +Callahan has a smash up. Tell Oh Joy to get hold of +Mr. Manson, and Mr. Pitts or any two of the managers +who have machines and have them, with their machines, +waiting here at the house. Tell Oh Joy to take care +of Mr. Bishop’s crowd as usual. And you come +back here where I can call you.”</p> + +<p>Dick turned to Oh Dear.</p> + +<p>“Now tell me how it happened.”</p> + +<p>Oh Dear shook her head and wrung her hands.</p> + +<p>“Where were you when the rifle went off?”</p> + +<p>The Chinese girl swallowed and pointed toward the +wardrobe room.</p> + +<p>“Go on, talk,” Dick commanded harshly.</p> + +<p>“Mrs. Forrest tell me to get spurs. I forget +before. I go quick. I hear gun. I come back quick. +I run.”</p> + +<p>She pointed to Paula to show what she had found.</p> + +<p>“But the gun?” Dick asked.</p> + +<p>“Some trouble. Maybe gun no work. Maybe four +minutes, maybe five minutes, Mrs. Forrest try make +gun work.”</p> + +<p>“Was she trying to make the gun work when you +went for the spurs?”</p> + +<p>Oh Dear nodded.</p> + +<p>“Before that I say maybe Oh Joy can fix gun. +Mrs. Forrest say never mind. She say you can fix. +She put gun down. Then she try once more fix gun. +Then she tell me get spurs. Then... gun go off.”</p> + +<p>Hennessy’s arrival shut off further interrogation. +His examination was scarcely less brief than Dick’s. +He looked up with a shake of the head.</p> + +<p>“Nothing I can dare tackle, Mr. Forrest. The +hemorrhage has eased of itself, though it must be +gathering inside. You’ve sent for a doctor?”</p> + +<p>“Robinson. I caught him in his office.—­He’s +young, a good surgeon,” Dick explained to Graham. +“He’s nervy and daring, and I’d trust +him in this farther than some of the old ones with +reputations.—­What do you think, Mr. Hennessy? +What chance has she?”</p> + +<p>“Looks pretty bad, though I’m no judge, +being only a horse doctor. Robinson’ll know. +Nothing to do but wait.”</p> + +<p>Dick nodded and walked out on Paula’s sleeping +porch to listen for the exhaust of the racing machine +Callahan drove. He heard the ranch limousine arrive +leisurely and swiftly depart. Graham came out on the +porch to him.</p> + +<p>“I want to apologize, Forrest,” he said. +“I was rather off for the moment. I found you +here, and I thought you were here when it happened. +It must have been an accident.’”</p> + +<p>“Poor little kid,” Dick agreed. “And +she so prided herself on never being careless with +guns.”</p> + +<p>“I’ve looked at the rifle,” Graham +said, “but I couldn’t find anything wrong +with it.”</p> + +<p>“And that’s how it happened. Whatever +was wrong got right. That’s how it went off.”</p> + +<p>And while Dick talked, building the fabric of the +lie so that even Graham should be fooled, to himself +he was understanding how well Paula had played the +trick. That last singing of the “Gypsy Trail” +had been her farewell to Graham and at the same time +had provided against any suspicion on his part of +what she had intended directly to do. It had been +the same with him. She had had her farewell with him, +and, the last thing, over the telephone, had assured +him that she would never have any man but him in all +the world.</p> + +<p>He walked away from Graham to the far end of the porch.</p> + +<p>“She had the grit, she had the grit,” +he muttered to himself with quivering lips. “Poor +kid. She couldn’t decide between the two, and +so she solved it this way.”</p> + +<p>The noise of the racing machine drew him and Graham +together, and together they entered the room to wait +for the doctor. Graham betrayed unrest, reluctant +to go, yet feeling that he must.</p> + +<p>“Please stay on, Evan,” Dick told him. +“She liked you much, and if she does open her +eyes she’ll be glad to see you.”</p> + +<p>Dick and Graham stood apart from Paula while Doctor +Robinson made his examination. When he arose with +an air of finality, Dick looked his question. Robinson +shook his head.</p> + +<p>“Nothing to be done,” he said. “It +is a matter of hours, maybe of minutes.” He +hesitated, studying Dick’s face for a moment. +“I can ease her off if you say the word. She +might possibly recover consciousness and suffer for +a space.”</p> + +<p>Dick took a turn down the room and back, and when +he spoke it was to Graham.</p> + +<p>“Why not let her live again, brief as the time +may be? The pain is immaterial. It will have its inevitable +quick anodyne. It is what I would wish, what you would +wish. She loved life, every moment of it. Why should +we deny her any of the little left her?”</p> + +<p>Graham bent his head in agreement, and Dick turned +to the doctor.</p> + +<p>“Perhaps you can stir her, stimulate her, to +a return of consciousness. If you can, do so. And +if the pain proves too severe, then you can ease her.”</p> + +<hr width="75%" size="1" > + +<p>When her eyes fluttered open, Dick nodded Graham up +beside him. At first bewilderment was all she betrayed, +then her eyes focused first on Dick’s face, +then on Graham’s, and, with recognition, her +lips parted in a pitiful smile.</p> + +<p>“I... I thought at first that I was dead,” +she said.</p> + +<p>But quickly another thought was in her mind, and Dick +divined it in her eyes as they searched him. The question +was if he knew it was no accident. He gave no sign. +She had planned it so, and she must pass believing +it so.</p> + +<p>“I... was... wrong,” she said. She spoke +slowly, faintly, in evident pain, with a pause for +strength of utterance between each word. “I was +always so cocksure I’d never have an accident, +and look what I’ve gone and done.”</p> + +<p>“It’s a darn shame,” Dick said, +sympathetically. “What was it? A jam?”</p> + +<p>She nodded, and again her lips parted in the pitiful +brave smile as she said whimsically: “Oh, Dick, +go call the neighbors in and show them what little +Paula’s din.</p> + +<p>“How serious is it?” she asked. “Be +honest, Red Cloud, you know <i>me,"</i> she added, +after the briefest of pauses in which Dick had not +replied.</p> + +<p>He shook his head.</p> + +<p>“How long?” she queried.</p> + +<p>“Not long,” came his answer. “You +can ease off any time.”</p> + +<p>“You mean...?” She glanced aside curiously +at the doctor and back to Dick, who nodded.</p> + +<p>“It’s only what I should have expected +from you, Red Cloud,” she murmured gratefully. +“But is Doctor Robinson game for it?”</p> + +<p>The doctor stepped around so that she could see him, +and nodded.</p> + +<p>“Thank you, doctor. And remember, I am to say +when.”</p> + +<p>“Is there much pain?” Dick queried.</p> + +<p>Her eyes were wide and brave and dreadful, and her +lips quivered for the moment ere she replied, “Not +much, but dreadful, quite dreadful. I won’t +care to stand it very long. I’ll say when.”</p> + +<p>Once more the smile on her lips announced a whimsey.</p> + +<p>“Life is queer, most queer, isn’t it? +And do you know, I want to go out with love-songs +in my ears. You first, Evan, sing the ’Gypsy +Trail.’—­Why, I was singing it with +you less than an hour ago. Think of it! Do, Evan, +please.”</p> + +<p>Graham looked to Dick for permission, and Dick gave +it with his eyes.</p> + +<p>“Oh, and sing it robustly, gladly, madly, just +as a womaning Gypsy man should sing it,” she +urged. “And stand back there, so, where I can +see you.”</p> + +<p>And while Graham sang the whole song through to its:</p> + +<p>  “The heart of a man to the heart +of a maid, light of my<br> +        tents +be fleet,<br> +   Morning waits at the end of the +world and the world is<br> +       all at our +feet,”</p> + +<p>Oh My, immobile-faced, a statue, stood in the far +doorway awaiting commands. Oh Dear, grief-stricken, +stood at her mistress’s head, no longer wringing +her hands, but holding them so tightly clasped that +the finger-tips and nails showed white. To the rear, +at Paula’s dressing table, Doctor Robinson noiselessly +dissolved in a glass the anodyne pellets and filled +his hypodermic.</p> + +<p>When Graham had finished, Paula thanked him with her +eyes, closed them, and lay still for a space.</p> + +<p>“And now, Red Cloud,” she said when next +she opened them, “the song of Ai-kut, and of +the Dew-Woman, the Lush-Woman. Stand where Evan did, +so that I can see you well.”</p> + +<p>And Dick chanted:</p> + +<p>“I am Ai-kut, the first man of the Nishinam. +Ai-kut is the short for Adam, and my father and my +mother were the coyote and the moon. And this is Yo-to-to-wi, +my wife. Yo-to-to-wi is the short for Eve. She is +the first woman of the Nishinam.</p> + +<p>“Me, I am Ai-kut. This is my dew of women. This +is my honey-dew of women. Her father and her mother +were the Sierra dawn and the summer east wind of the +mountains. Together they conspired, and from the air +and earth they sweated all sweetness till in a mist +of their own love the leaves of the chaparral and +the manzanita were dewed with the honey dew.</p> + +<p>“Yo-to-to-wi is my honey-dew woman. Hear me! +I am Ai-kut! Yo-to-to-wi is my quail-woman, my deer-woman, +my lush-woman of all soft rain and fat soil. She was +born of the thin starlight and the brittle dawn-light, +in the morning of the world, and she is the one woman +of all women to me.”</p> + +<p>Again, with closed eyes, she lay silent for a while. +Once she attempted to draw a deeper breath, which +caused her to cough slightly several times.</p> + +<p>“Try not to cough,” Dick said.</p> + +<p>They could see her brows contract with the effort +of will to control the irritating tickle that might +precipitate a paroxysm.</p> + +<p>“Oh Dear, come around where I can see you,” +she said, when she opened her eyes.</p> + +<p>The Chinese girl obeyed, moving blindly, so that Robinson, +with a hand on her arm, was compelled to guide her.</p> + +<p>“Good-by, Oh Dear. You’ve been very good +to me always. And sometimes, maybe, I have not been +good to you. I am sorry. Remember, Mr. Forrest will +always be your father and your mother.... And all my +jade is yours.”</p> + +<p>She closed her eyes in token that the brief audience +was over.</p> + +<p>Again she was vexed by the tickling cough that threatened +to grow more pronounced.</p> + +<p>“I am ready, Dick,” she said faintly, +still with closed eyes. “I want to make my sleepy, +sleepy noise. Is the doctor ready? Come closer. Hold +my hand like you did before in the little death.”</p> + +<p>She turned her eyes to Graham, and Dick did not look, +for he knew love was in that last look of hers, as +he knew it would be when she looked into his eyes +at the last.</p> + +<p>“Once,” she explained to Graham, “I +had to go on the table, and I made Dick go with me +into the anaesthetic chamber and hold my hand until +I went under. You remember, Henley called it the drunken +dark, the little death in life. It was very easy.”</p> + +<p>In the silence she continued her look, then turned +her face and eyes back to Dick, who knelt close to +her, holding her hand.</p> + +<p>With a pressure of her fingers on his and a beckoning +of her eyes, she drew his ear down to her lips.</p> + +<p>“Red Cloud,” she whispered, “I love +you best. And I am proud I belonged to you for such +a long, long time.” Still closer she drew him +with the pressure of her fingers. “I’m +sorry there were no babies, Red Cloud.”</p> + +<p>With the relaxing of her fingers she eased him from +her so that she could look from one to the other.</p> + +<p>“Two bonnie, bonnie men. Good-by, bonnie men. +Good-by, Red Cloud.”</p> + +<p>In the pause, they waited, while the doctor bared +her arm for the needle.</p> + +<p>“Sleepy, sleepy,” she twittered in mimicry +of drowsy birds. “I am ready, doctor. Stretch +the skin tight, first. You know I don’t like +to be hurt.—­Hold me tight, Dick.”</p> + +<p>Robinson, receiving the eye permission from Dick, +easily and quickly thrust the needle through the stretched +skin, with steady hand sank the piston home, and with +the ball of the finger soothingly rubbed the morphine +into circulation.</p> + +<p>“Sleepy, sleepy, boo’ful sleepy,” +she murmured drowsily, after a time.</p> + +<p>Semi-consciously she half-turned on her side, curved +her free arm on the pillow and nestled her head on +it, and drew her body up in nestling curves in the +way Dick knew she loved to sleep.</p> + +<p>After a long time, she sighed faintly, and began so +easily to go that she was gone before they guessed. +From without, the twittering of the canaries bathing +in the fountain penetrated the silence of the room, +and from afar came the trumpeting of Mountain Lad and +the silver whinny of the Fotherington Princess.</p> + +<p> +THE END +</p> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Little Lady of the Big House, by Jack London + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LITTLE LADY OF THE BIG HOUSE *** + +***** This file should be named 6455-h.htm or 6455-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/6/4/5/6455/ + +Produced by Curtis A. Weyant, David Maddock, Charles Franks +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at + www.gutenberg.org/license. + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at 809 +North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email +contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the +Foundation's web site and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. +To donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For forty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + + +</pre> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/6455-h/images/front.jpg b/6455-h/images/front.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..e104fc6 --- /dev/null +++ b/6455-h/images/front.jpg diff --git a/6455.txt b/6455.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c4727c7 --- /dev/null +++ b/6455.txt @@ -0,0 +1,12082 @@ +Project Gutenberg's The Little Lady of the Big House, by Jack London + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Little Lady of the Big House + +Author: Jack London + +Posting Date: April 9, 2013 [EBook #6455] +Release Date: September, 2004 +First Posted: December 15, 2002 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LITTLE LADY OF THE BIG HOUSE *** + + + + +Produced by Curtis A. Weyant, David Maddock, Charles Franks +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. + + + + + + + + + + +[Illustration: ] + + + +THE LITTLE LADY OF THE BIG HOUSE + +BY + +JACK LONDON + + + +Author of "The Valley of the Moon," "The Star Rover," "The Sea Wolf," +Etc. + + + + + +CHAPTER I + + + +He awoke in the dark. His awakening was simple, easy, without movement +save for the eyes that opened and made him aware of darkness. Unlike +most, who must feel and grope and listen to, and contact with, the +world about them, he knew himself on the moment of awakening, instantly +identifying himself in time and place and personality. After the lapsed +hours of sleep he took up, without effort, the interrupted tale of his +days. He knew himself to be Dick Forrest, the master of broad acres, +who had fallen asleep hours before after drowsily putting a match +between the pages of "Road Town" and pressing off the electric reading +lamp. + +Near at hand there was the ripple and gurgle of some sleepy fountain. +From far off, so faint and far that only a keen ear could catch, he +heard a sound that made him smile with pleasure. He knew it for the +distant, throaty bawl of King Polo--King Polo, his champion Short Horn +bull, thrice Grand Champion also of all bulls at Sacramento at the +California State Fairs. The smile was slow in easing from Dick +Forrest's face, for he dwelt a moment on the new triumphs he had +destined that year for King Polo on the Eastern livestock circuits. He +would show them that a bull, California born and finished, could +compete with the cream of bulls corn-fed in Iowa or imported overseas +from the immemorial home of Short Horns. + +Not until the smile faded, which was a matter of seconds, did he reach +out in the dark and press the first of a row of buttons. There were +three rows of such buttons. The concealed lighting that spilled from +the huge bowl under the ceiling revealed a sleeping-porch, three sides +of which were fine-meshed copper screen. The fourth side was the house +wall, solid concrete, through which French windows gave access. + +He pressed the second button in the row and the bright light +concentered at a particular place on the concrete wall, illuminating, +in a row, a clock, a barometer, and centigrade and Fahrenheit +thermometers. Almost in a sweep of glance he read the messages of the +dials: time 4:30; air pressure, 29:80, which was normal at that +altitude and season; and temperature, Fahrenheit, 36 deg.. With another +press, the gauges of time and heat and air were sent back into the +darkness. + +A third button turned on his reading lamp, so arranged that the light +fell from above and behind without shining into his eyes. The first +button turned off the concealed lighting overhead. He reached a mass of +proofsheets from the reading stand, and, pencil in hand, lighting a +cigarette, he began to correct. + +The place was clearly the sleeping quarters of a man who worked. +Efficiency was its key note, though comfort, not altogether Spartan, +was also manifest. The bed was of gray enameled iron to tone with the +concrete wall. Across the foot of the bed, an extra coverlet, hung a +gray robe of wolfskins with every tail a-dangle. On the floor, where +rested a pair of slippers, was spread a thick-coated skin of mountain +goat. + +Heaped orderly with books, magazines and scribble-pads, there was room +on the big reading stand for matches, cigarettes, an ash-tray, and a +thermos bottle. A phonograph, for purposes of dictation, stood on a +hinged and swinging bracket. On the wall, under the barometer and +thermometers, from a round wooden frame laughed the face of a girl. On +the wall, between the rows of buttons and a switchboard, from an open +holster, loosely projected the butt of a .44 Colt's automatic. + +At six o'clock, sharp, after gray light had begun to filter through the +wire netting, Dick Forrest, without raising his eyes from the +proofsheets, reached out his right hand and pressed a button in the +second row. Five minutes later a soft-slippered Chinese emerged on the +sleeping-porch. In his hands he bore a small tray of burnished copper +on which rested a cup and saucer, a tiny coffee pot of silver, and a +correspondingly tiny silver cream pitcher. + +"Good morning, Oh My," was Dick Forrest's greeting, and his eyes smiled +and his lips smiled as he uttered it. + +"Good morning, Master," Oh My returned, as he busied himself with +making room on the reading stand for the tray and with pouring the +coffee and cream. + +This done, without waiting further orders, noting that his master was +already sipping coffee with one hand while he made a correction on the +proof with the other, Oh My picked up a rosy, filmy, lacy boudoir cap +from the floor and departed. His exit was noiseless. He ebbed away like +a shadow through the open French windows. + +At six-thirty, sharp to the minute, he was back with a larger tray. +Dick Forrest put away the proofs, reached for a book entitled +"Commercial Breeding of Frogs," and prepared to eat. The breakfast was +simple yet fairly substantial--more coffee, a half grape-fruit, two +soft-boiled eggs made ready in a glass with a dab of butter and piping +hot, and a sliver of bacon, not over-cooked, that he knew was of his +own raising and curing. + +By this time the sunshine was pouring in through the screening and +across the bed. On the outside of the wire screen clung a number of +house-flies, early-hatched for the season and numb with the night's +cold. As Forrest ate he watched the hunting of the meat-eating +yellow-jackets. Sturdy, more frost-resistant than bees, they were +already on the wing and preying on the benumbed flies. Despite the +rowdy noise of their flight, these yellow hunters of the air, with +rarely ever a miss, pounced on their helpless victims and sailed away +with them. The last fly was gone ere Forrest had sipped his last sip of +coffee, marked "Commercial Breeding of Frogs" with a match, and taken +up his proofsheets. + +After a time, the liquid-mellow cry of the meadow-lark, first vocal for +the day, caused him to desist. He looked at the clock. It marked seven. +He set aside the proofs and began a series of conversations by means of +the switchboard, which he manipulated with a practiced hand. + +"Hello, Oh Joy," was his first talk. "Is Mr. Thayer up?... Very well. +Don't disturb him. I don't think he'll breakfast in bed, but find +out.... That's right, and show him how to work the hot water. Maybe he +doesn't know... Yes, that's right. Plan for one more boy as soon as you +can get him. There's always a crowd when the good weather comes on.... +Sure. Use your judgment. Good-by." + +"Mr. Hanley?... Yes," was his second conversation, over another switch. +"I've been thinking about the dam on the Buckeye. I want the figures on +the gravel-haul and on the rock-crushing.... Yes, that's it. I imagine +that the gravel-haul will cost anywhere between six and ten cents a +yard more than the crushed rock. That last pitch of hill is what eats +up the gravel-teams. Work out the figures. ... No, we won't be able to +start for a fortnight. ... Yes, yes; the new tractors, if they ever +deliver, will release the horses from the plowing, but they'll have to +go back for the checking.... No, you'll have to see Mr. Everan about +that. Good-by." + + And his third call: + +"Mr. Dawson? Ha! Ha! Thirty-six on my porch right now. It must be white +with frost down on the levels. But it's most likely the last this +year.... Yes, they swore the tractors would be delivered two days +ago.... Call up the station agent. ... By the way, you catch Hanley for +me. I forgot to tell him to start the 'rat-catchers' out with the +second instalment of fly-traps.... Yes, pronto. There were a couple of +dozen roosting on my screen this morning.... Yes.... Good-by." + +At this stage, Forrest slid out of bed in his pajamas, slipped his feet +into the slippers, and strode through the French windows to the bath, +already drawn by Oh My. A dozen minutes afterward, shaved as well, he +was back in bed, reading his frog book while Oh My, punctual to the +minute, massaged his legs. + +They were the well-formed legs of a well-built, five-foot-ten man who +weighed a hundred and eighty pounds. Further, they told a tale of the +man. The left thigh was marred by a scar ten inches in length. Across +the left ankle, from instep to heel, were scattered half a dozen scars +the size of half-dollars. When Oh My prodded and pulled the left knee a +shade too severely, Forrest was guilty of a wince. The right shin was +colored with several dark scars, while a big scar, just under the knee, +was a positive dent in the bone. Midway between knee and groin was the +mark of an ancient three-inch gash, curiously dotted with the minute +scars of stitches. + +A sudden, joyous nicker from without put the match between the pages of +the frog book, and, while Oh My proceeded partly to dress his master in +bed, including socks and shoes, the master, twisting partly on his +side, stared out in the direction of the nicker. Down the road, through +the swaying purple of the early lilacs, ridden by a picturesque cowboy, +paced a great horse, glinting ruddy in the morning sun-gold, flinging +free the snowy foam of his mighty fetlocks, his noble crest tossing, +his eyes roving afield, the trumpet of his love-call echoing through +the springing land. + +Dick Forrest was smitten at the same instant with joy and anxiety--joy +in the glorious beast pacing down between the lilac hedges; anxiety in +that the stallion might have awakened the girl who laughed from the +round wooden frame on his wall. He glanced quickly across the +two-hundred-foot court to the long, shadowy jut of her wing of the +house. The shades of her sleeping-porch were down. They did not stir. +Again the stallion nickered, and all that moved was a flock of wild +canaries, upspringing from the flowers and shrubs of the court, rising +like a green-gold spray of light flung from the sunrise. + +He watched the stallion out of sight through the lilacs, seeing visions +of fair Shire colts mighty of bone and frame and free from blemish, +then turned, as ever he turned to the immediate thing, and spoke to his +body servant. + +"How's that last boy, Oh My? Showing up?" + +"Him pretty good boy, I think," was the answer. "Him young boy. +Everything new. Pretty slow. All the same bime by him show up good." + +"Why? What makes you think so?" + +"I call him three, four morning now. Him sleep like baby. Him wake up +smiling just like you. That very good." + +"Do I wake up smiling?" Forrest queried. + +Oh My nodded his head violently. + +"Many times, many years, I call you. Always your eyes open, your eyes +smile, your mouth smile, your face smile, you smile all over, just like +that, right away quick. That very good. A man wake up that way got +plenty good sense. I know. This new boy like that. Bime by, pretty +soon, he make fine boy. You see. His name Chow Gam. What name you call +him this place?" + +Dick Forrest meditated. + +"What names have we already?" he asked. + +"Oh Joy, Ah Well, Ah Me, and me; I am Oh My," the Chinese rattled off. +"Oh Joy him say call new boy--" + +He hesitated and stared at his master with a challenging glint of eye. +Forrest nodded. + +"Oh Joy him say call new boy 'Oh Hell.'" + +"Oh ho!" Forrest laughed in appreciation. "Oh Joy is a josher. A good +name, but it won't do. There is the Missus. We've got to think another +name." + +"Oh Ho, that very good name." + +Forrest's exclamation was still ringing in his consciousness so that he +recognized the source of Oh My's inspiration. + +"Very well. The boy's name is Oh Ho." + +Oh My lowered his head, ebbed swiftly through the French windows, and +as swiftly returned with the rest of Forrest's clothes-gear, helping +him into undershirt and shirt, tossing a tie around his neck for him to +knot, and, kneeling, putting on his leggings and spurs. A Baden Powell +hat and a quirt completed his appareling--the quirt, Indian-braided of +rawhide, with ten ounces of lead braided into the butt that hung from +his wrist on a loop of leather. + +But Forrest was not yet free. Oh My handed him several letters, with +the explanation that they had come up from the station the previous +night after Forrest had gone to bed. He tore the right-hand ends across +and glanced at the contents of all but one with speed. The latter he +dwelt upon for a moment, with an irritated indrawing of brows, then +swung out the phonograph from the wall, pressed the button that made +the cylinder revolve, and swiftly dictated, without ever a pause for +word or idea: + +"In reply to yours of March 14, 1914, I am indeed sorry to learn that +you were hit with hog cholera. I am equally sorry that you have seen +fit to charge me with the responsibility. And just as equally am I +sorry that the boar we sent you is dead. + +"I can only assure you that we are quite clear of cholera here, and +that we have been clear of cholera for eight years, with the exception +of two Eastern importations, the last two years ago, both of which, +according to our custom, were segregated on arrival and were destroyed +before the contagion could be communicated to our herds. + +"I feel that I must inform you that in neither case did I charge the +sellers with having sent me diseased stock. On the contrary, as you +should know, the incubation of hog cholera being nine days, I consulted +the shipping dates of the animals and knew that they had been healthy +when shipped. + +"Has it ever entered your mind that the railroads are largely +responsible for the spread of cholera? Did you ever hear of a railroad +fumigating or disinfecting a car which had carried cholera? Consult the +dates: First, of shipment by me; second, of receipt of the boar by you; +and, third, of appearance of symptoms in the boar. As you say, because +of washouts, the boar was five days on the way. Not until the seventh +day after you receipted for same did the first symptoms appear. That +makes twelve days after it left my hands. + +"No; I must disagree with you. I am not responsible for the disaster +that overtook your herd. Furthermore, doubly to assure you, write to +the State Veterinary as to whether or not my place is free of cholera. + +"Very truly yours..." + + + + +CHAPTER II + + + +When Forrest went through the French windows from his sleeping-porch, +he crossed, first, a comfortable dressing room, window-divaned, +many-lockered, with a generous fireplace, out of which opened a +bathroom; and, second, a long office room, wherein was all the +paraphernalia of business--desks, dictaphones, filing cabinets, book +cases, magazine files, and drawer-pigeonholes that tiered to the low, +beamed ceiling. + +Midway in the office room, he pressed a button and a series of +book-freightened shelves swung on a pivot, revealing a tiny spiral +stairway of steel, which he descended with care that his spurs might +not catch, the bookshelves swinging into place behind him. + +At the foot of the stairway, a press on another button pivoted more +shelves of books and gave him entrance into a long low room shelved +with books from floor to ceiling. He went directly to a case, directly +to a shelf, and unerringly laid his hand on the book he sought. A +minute he ran the pages, found the passage he was after, nodded his +head to himself in vindication, and replaced the book. + +A door gave way to a pergola of square concrete columns spanned with +redwood logs and interlaced with smaller trunks of redwood, all rough +and crinkled velvet with the ruddy purple of the bark. + +It was evident, since he had to skirt several hundred feet of concrete +walls of wandering house, that he had not taken the short way out. +Under wide-spreading ancient oaks, where the long hitching-rails, +bark-chewed, and the hoof-beaten gravel showed the stamping place of +many horses, he found a pale-golden, almost tan-golden, sorrel mare. +Her well-groomed spring coat was alive and flaming in the morning sun +that slanted straight under the edge of the roof of trees. She was +herself alive and flaming. She was built like a stallion, and down her +backbone ran a narrow dark strip of hair that advertised an ancestry of +many range mustangs. + +"How's the Man-Eater this morning?" he queried, as he unsnapped the +tie-rope from her throat. + +She laid back the tiniest ears that ever a horse possessed--ears that +told of some thoroughbred's wild loves with wild mares among the +hills--and snapped at Forrest with wicked teeth and wicked-gleaming +eyes. + +She sidled and attempted to rear as he swung into the saddle, and, +sidling and attempting to rear, she went off down the graveled road. +And rear she would have, had it not been for the martingale that held +her head down and that, as well, saved the rider's nose from her +angry-tossing head. + +So used was he to the mare, that he was scarcely aware of her antics. +Automatically, with slightest touch of rein against arched neck, or +with tickle of spur or press of knee, he kept the mare to the way he +willed. Once, as she whirled and danced, he caught a glimpse of the Big +House. Big it was in all seeming, and yet, such was the vagrant nature +of it, it was not so big as it seemed. Eight hundred feet across the +front face, it stretched. But much of this eight hundred feet was +composed of mere corridors, concrete-walled, tile-roofed, that +connected and assembled the various parts of the building. There were +patios and pergolas in proportion, and all the walls, with their many +right-angled juts and recessions, arose out of a bed of greenery and +bloom. + +Spanish in character, the architecture of the Big House was not of the +California-Spanish type which had been introduced by way of Mexico a +hundred years before, and which had been modified by modern architects +to the California-Spanish architecture of the day. Hispano-Moresque +more technically classified the Big House in all its hybridness, +although there were experts who heatedly quarreled with the term. + +Spaciousness without austerity and beauty without ostentation were the +fundamental impressions the Big House gave. Its lines, long and +horizontal, broken only by lines that were vertical and by the lines of +juts and recesses that were always right-angled, were as chaste as +those of a monastery. The irregular roof-line, however, relieved the +hint of monotony. + +Low and rambling, without being squat, the square upthrusts of towers +and of towers over-topping towers gave just proportion of height +without being sky-aspiring. The sense of the Big House was solidarity. +It defied earthquakes. It was planted for a thousand years. The honest +concrete was overlaid by a cream-stucco of honest cement. Again, this +very sameness of color might have proved monotonous to the eye had it +not been saved by the many flat roofs of warm-red Spanish tile. + +In that one sweeping glance while the mare whirled unduly, Dick +Forrest's eyes, embracing all of the Big House, centered for a quick +solicitous instant on the great wing across the two-hundred-foot court, +where, under climbing groups of towers, red-snooded in the morning sun, +the drawn shades of the sleeping-porch tokened that his lady still +slept. + +About him, for three quadrants of the circle of the world, arose +low-rolling hills, smooth, fenced, cropped, and pastured, that melted +into higher hills and steeper wooded slopes that merged upward, +steeper, into mighty mountains. The fourth quadrant was unbounded by +mountain walls and hills. It faded away, descending easily to vast far +flatlands, which, despite the clear brittle air of frost, were too vast +and far to scan across. + +The mare under him snorted. His knees tightened as he straightened her +into the road and forced her to one side. Down upon him, with a +pattering of feet on the gravel, flowed a river of white shimmering +silk. He knew it at sight for his prize herd of Angora goats, each with +a pedigree, each with a history. There had to be a near two hundred of +them, and he knew, according to the rigorous selection he commanded, +not having been clipped in the fall, that the shining mohair draping +the sides of the least of them, as fine as any human new-born baby's +hair and finer, as white as any human albino's thatch and whiter, was +longer than the twelve-inch staple, and that the mohair of the best of +them would dye any color into twenty-inch switches for women's heads +and sell at prices unreasonable and profound. + +The beauty of the sight held him as well. The roadway had become a +flowing ribbon of silk, gemmed with yellow cat-like eyes that floated +past wary and curious in their regard for him and his nervous horse. +Two Basque herders brought up the rear. They were short, broad, swarthy +men, black-eyed, vivid-faced, contemplative and philosophic of +expression. They pulled off their hats and ducked their heads to him. +Forrest lifted his right hand, the quirt dangling from wrist, the +straight forefinger touching the rim of his Baden Powell in +semi-military salute. + +The mare, prancing and whirling again, he held her with a touch of rein +and threat of spur, and gazed after the four-footed silk that filled +the road with shimmering white. He knew the significance of their +presence. The time for kidding was approaching and they were being +brought down from their brush-pastures to the brood-pens and shelters +for jealous care and generous feed through the period of increase. And +as he gazed, in his mind, comparing, was a vision of all the best of +Turkish and South African mohair he had ever seen, and his flock bore +the comparison well. It looked good. It looked very good. + +He rode on. From all about arose the clacking whir of manure-spreaders. +In the distance, on the low, easy-sloping hills, he saw team after +team, and many teams, three to a team abreast, what he knew were his +Shire mares, drawing the plows back and forth across, contour-plowing, +turning the green sod of the hillsides to the rich dark brown of +humus-filled earth so organic and friable that it would almost melt by +gravity into fine-particled seed-bed. That was for the corn--and +sorghum-planting for his silos. Other hill-slopes, in the due course of +his rotation, were knee-high in barley; and still other slopes were +showing the good green of burr clover and Canada pea. + +Everywhere about him, large fields and small were arranged in a system +of accessibility and workability that would have warmed the heart of +the most meticulous efficiency-expert. Every fence was hog-tight and +bull-proof, and no weeds grew in the shelters of the fences. Many of +the level fields were in alfalfa. Others, following the rotations, bore +crops planted the previous fall, or were in preparation for the +spring-planting. Still others, close to the brood barns and pens, were +being grazed by rotund Shropshire and French-Merino ewes, or were being +hogged off by white Gargantuan brood-sows that brought a flash of +pleasure in his eyes as he rode past and gazed. + +He rode through what was almost a village, save that there were neither +shops nor hotels. The houses were bungalows, substantial, pleasing to +the eye, each set in the midst of gardens where stouter blooms, +including roses, were out and smiling at the threat of late frost. +Children were already astir, laughing and playing among the flowers or +being called in to breakfast by their mothers. + +Beyond, beginning at a half-mile distant to circle the Big House, he +passed a row of shops. He paused at the first and glanced in. One smith +was working at a forge. A second smith, a shoe fresh-nailed on the +fore-foot of an elderly Shire mare that would disturb the scales at +eighteen hundred weight, was rasping down the outer wall of the hoof to +smooth with the toe of the shoe. Forrest saw, saluted, rode on, and, a +hundred feet away, paused and scribbled a memorandum in the notebook he +drew from his hip-pocket. + +He passed other shops--a paint-shop, a wagon-shop, a plumbing shop, a +carpenter-shop. While he glanced at the last, a hybrid machine, +half-auto, half-truck, passed him at speed and took the main road for +the railroad station eight miles away. He knew it for the morning +butter-truck freighting from the separator house the daily output of +the dairy. + +The Big House was the hub of the ranch organization. Half a mile from +it, it was encircled by the various ranch centers. Dick Forrest, +saluting continually his people, passed at a gallop the dairy center, +which was almost a sea of buildings with batteries of silos and with +litter carriers emerging on overhead tracks and automatically dumping +into waiting manure-spreaders. Several times, business-looking men, +college-marked, astride horses or driving carts, stopped him and +conferred with him. They were foremen, heads of departments, and they +were as brief and to the point as was he. The last of them, astride a +Palomina three-year-old that was as graceful and wild as a half-broken +Arab, was for riding by with a bare salute, but was stopped by his +employer. + +"Good morning, Mr. Hennessy, and how soon will she be ready for Mrs. +Forrest?" Dick Forrest asked. + +"I'd like another week," was Hennessy's answer. "She's well broke now, +just the way Mrs. Forrest wanted, but she's over-strung and sensitive +and I'd like the week more to set her in her ways." + +Forrest nodded concurrence, and Hennessy, who was the veterinary, went +on: + +"There are two drivers in the alfalfa gang I'd like to send down the +hill." + +"What's the matter with them?" + +"One, a new man, Hopkins, is an ex-soldier. He may know government +mules, but he doesn't know Shires." + +Forrest nodded. + +"The other has worked for us two years, but he's drinking now, and he +takes his hang-overs out on his horses--" + +"That's Smith, old-type American, smooth-shaven, with a cast in his +left eye?" Forrest interrupted. + +The veterinary nodded. + +"I've been watching him," Forrest concluded. "He was a good man at +first, but he's slipped a cog recently. Sure, send him down the hill. +And send that other fellow--Hopkins, you said?--along with him. By the +way, Mr. Hennessy." As he spoke, Forrest drew forth his pad book, tore +off the last note scribbled, and crumpled it in his hand. "You've a new +horse-shoer in the shop. How does he strike you?" + +"He's too new to make up my mind yet." + +"Well, send him down the hill along with the other two. He can't take +your orders. I observed him just now fitting a shoe to old Alden Bessie +by rasping off half an inch of the toe of her hoof." + +"He knew better." + +"Send him down the hill," Forrest repeated, as he tickled his champing +mount with the slightest of spur-tickles and shot her out along the +road, sidling, head-tossing, and attempting to rear. + +Much he saw that pleased him. Once, he murmured aloud, "A fat land, a +fat land." Divers things he saw that did not please him and that won a +note in his scribble pad. Completing the circle about the Big House and +riding beyond the circle half a mile to an isolated group of sheds and +corrals, he reached the objective of the ride: the hospital. Here he +found but two young heifers being tested for tuberculosis, and a +magnificent Duroc Jersey boar in magnificent condition. Weighing fully +six hundred pounds, its bright eyes, brisk movements, and sheen of hair +shouted out that there was nothing the matter with it. Nevertheless, +according to the ranch practice, being a fresh importation from Iowa, +it was undergoing the regular period of quarantine. Burgess Premier was +its name in the herd books of the association, age two years, and it +had cost Forrest five hundred dollars laid down on the ranch. + +Proceeding at a hand gallop along a road that was one of the spokes +radiating from the Big House hub, Forrest overtook Crellin, his hog +manager, and, in a five-minute conference, outlined the next few months +of destiny of Burgess Premier, and learned that the brood sow, Lady +Isleton, the matron of all matrons of the O. I. C.'s and blue-ribboner +in all shows from Seattle to San Diego, was safely farrowed of eleven. +Crellin explained that he had sat up half the night with her and was +then bound home for bath and breakfast. + +"I hear your oldest daughter has finished high school and wants to +enter Stanford," Forrest said, curbing the mare just as he had +half-signaled departure at a gallop. + +Crellin, a young man of thirty-five, with the maturity of a long-time +father stamped upon him along with the marks of college and the +youthfulness of a man used to the open air and straight-living, showed +his appreciation of his employer's interest as he half-flushed under +his tan and nodded. + +"Think it over," Forrest advised. "Make a statistic of all the college +girls--yes, and State Normal girls--you know. How many of them follow +career, and how many of them marry within two years after their degrees +and take to baby farming." + +"Helen is very seriously bent on the matter," Crellin urged. + +"Do you remember when I had my appendix out?" Forrest queried. "Well, I +had as fine a nurse as I ever saw and as nice a girl as ever walked on +two nice legs. She was just six months a full-fledged nurse, then. And +four months after that I had to send her a wedding present. She married +an automobile agent. She's lived in hotels ever since. She's never had +a chance to nurse--never a child of her own to bring through a bout +with colic. But... she has hopes... and, whether or not her hopes +materialize, she's confoundedly happy. But... what good was her nursing +apprenticeship?" + +Just then an empty manure-spreader passed, forcing Crellin, on foot, +and Forrest, on his mare, to edge over to the side of the road. Forrest +glanced with kindling eye at the off mare of the machine, a huge, +symmetrical Shire whose own blue ribbons, and the blue ribbons of her +progeny, would have required an expert accountant to enumerate and +classify. + +"Look at the Fotherington Princess," Forrest said, nodding at the mare +that warmed his eye. "She is a normal female. Only incidentally, +through thousands of years of domestic selection, has man evolved her +into a draught beast breeding true to kind. But being a draught-beast +is secondary. Primarily she is a female. Take them by and large, our +own human females, above all else, love us men and are intrinsically +maternal. There is no biological sanction for all the hurly burly of +woman to-day for suffrage and career." + +"But there is an economic sanction," Crellin objected. + +"True," his employer agreed, then proceeded to discount. "Our present +industrial system prevents marriage and compels woman to career. But, +remember, industrial systems come, and industrial systems go, while +biology runs on forever." + +"It's rather hard to satisfy young women with marriage these days," the +hog-manager demurred. + +Dick Forrest laughed incredulously. + +"I don't know about that," he said. "There's your wife for an instance. +She with her sheepskin--classical scholar at that--well, what has she +done with it?... Two boys and three girls, I believe? As I remember +your telling me, she was engaged to you the whole last half of her +senior year." + +"True, but--" Crellin insisted, with an eye-twinkle of appreciation of +the point, "that was fifteen years ago, as well as a love-match. We +just couldn't help it. That far, I agree. She had planned unheard-of +achievements, while I saw nothing else than the deanship of the College +of Agriculture. We just couldn't help it. But that was fifteen years +ago, and fifteen years have made all the difference in the world in the +ambitions and ideals of our young women." + +"Don't you believe it for a moment. I tell you, Mr. Crellin, it's a +statistic. All contrary things are transient. Ever woman remains +Avoman, everlasting, eternal. Not until our girl-children cease from +playing with dolls and from looking at their own enticingness in +mirrors, will woman ever be otherwise than what she has always been: +first, the mother, second, the mate of man. It is a statistic. I've +been looking up the girls who graduate from the State Normal. You will +notice that those who marry by the way before graduation are excluded. +Nevertheless, the average length of time the graduates actually teach +school is little more than two years. And when you consider that a lot +of them, through ill looks and ill luck, are foredoomed old maids and +are foredoomed to teach all their lives, you can see how they cut down +the period of teaching of the marriageable ones." + +"A woman, even a girl-woman, will have her way where mere men are +concerned," Crellin muttered, unable to dispute his employer's figures +but resolved to look them up. + +"And your girl-woman will go to Stanford," Forrest laughed, as he +prepared to lift his mare into a gallop, "and you and I and all men, to +the end of time, will see to it that they do have their way." + +Crellin smiled to himself as his employer diminished down the road; for +Crellin knew his Kipling, and the thought that caused the smile was: +"But where's the kid of your own, Mr. Forrest?" He decided to repeat it +to Mrs. Crellin over the breakfast coffee. + +Once again Dick Forrest delayed ere he gained the Big House. The man he +stopped he addressed as Mendenhall, who was his horse-manager as well +as pasture expert, and who was reputed to know, not only every blade of +grass on the ranch, but the length of every blade of grass and its age +from seed-germination as well. + +At signal from Forrest, Mendenhall drew up the two colts he was driving +in a double breaking-cart. What had caused Forrest to signal was a +glance he had caught, across the northern edge of the valley, of great, +smooth-hill ranges miles beyond, touched by the sun and deeply green +where they projected into the vast flat of the Sacramento Valley. + +The talk that followed was quick and abbreviated to terms of +understanding between two men who knew. Grass was the subject. Mention +was made of the winter rainfall and of the chance for late spring rains +to come. Names occurred, such as the Little Coyote and Los Cuatos +creeks, the Yolo and the Miramar hills, the Big Basin, Round Valley, +and the San Anselmo and Los Banos ranges. Movements of herds and +droves, past, present, and to come, were discussed, as well as the +outlook for cultivated hay in far upland pastures and the estimates of +such hay that still remained over the winter in remote barns in the +sheltered mountain valleys where herds had wintered and been fed. + +Under the oaks, at the stamping posts, Forrest was saved the trouble of +tying the Man-Eater. A stableman came on the run to take the mare, and +Forrest, scarce pausing for a word about a horse by the name of Duddy, +was clanking his spurs into the Big House. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + + +Forrest entered a section of the Big House by way of a massive, +hewn-timber, iron-studded door that let in at the foot of what seemed a +donjon keep. The floor was cement, and doors let off in various +directions. One, opening to a Chinese in the white apron and starched +cap of a chef, emitted at the same time the low hum of a dynamo. It was +this that deflected Forrest from his straight path. He paused, holding +the door ajar, and peered into a cool, electric-lighted cement room +where stood a long, glass-fronted, glass-shelved refrigerator flanked +by an ice-machine and a dynamo. On the floor, in greasy overalls, +squatted a greasy little man to whom his employer nodded. + +"Anything wrong, Thompson?" he asked. + +"There _was,"_ was the answer, positive and complete. + +Forrest closed the door and went on along a passage that was like a +tunnel. Narrow, iron-barred openings, like the slits for archers in +medieval castles, dimly lighted the way. Another door gave access to a +long, low room, beam-ceilinged, with a fireplace in which an ox could +have been roasted. A huge stump, resting on a bed of coals, blazed +brightly. Two billiard tables, several card tables, lounging corners, +and a miniature bar constituted the major furnishing. Two young men +chalked their cues and returned Forrest's greeting. + +"Good morning, Mr. Naismith," he bantered. "--More material for the +_Breeders' Gazette?"_ + +Naismith, a youngish man of thirty, with glasses, smiled sheepishly and +cocked his head at his companion. + +"Wainwright challenged me," he explained. + +"Which means that Lute and Ernestine must still be beauty-sleeping," +Forrest laughed. + +Young Wainwright bristled to acceptance of the challenge, but before he +could utter the retort on his lips his host was moving on and +addressing Naismith over his shoulder. + +"Do you want to come along at eleven:thirty? Thayer and I are running +out in the machine to look over the Shropshires. He wants about ten +carloads of rams. You ought to find good stuff in this matter of Idaho +shipments. Bring your camera along.--Seen Thayer this morning?" + +"Just came in to breakfast as we were leaving," Bert Wainwright +volunteered. + +"Tell him to be ready at eleven-thirty if you see him. You're not +invited, Bert... out of kindness. The girls are sure to be up then." + +"Take Rita along with you anyway," Bert pleaded. + +"No fear," was Forrest's reply from the door. "We're on business. +Besides, you can't pry Rita from Ernestine with block-and-tackle." + +"That's why I wanted to see if you could," Bert grinned. + +"Funny how fellows never appreciate their own sisters." Forrest paused +for a perceptible moment. "I always thought Rita was a real nice +sister. What's the matter with her?" + +Before a reply could reach him, he had closed the door and was jingling +his spurs along the passage to a spiral stairway of broad concrete +steps. As he left the head of the stairway, a dance-time piano measure +and burst of laughter made him peep into a white morning room, flooded +with sunshine. A young girl, in rose-colored kimono and boudoir cap, +was at the instrument, while two others, similarly accoutered, in each +other's arms, were parodying a dance never learned at dancing school +nor intended by the participants for male eyes to see. + +The girl at the piano discovered him, winked, and played on. Not for +another minute did the dancers spy him. They gave startled cries, +collapsed, laughing, in each other's arms, and the music stopped. They +were gorgeous, healthy young creatures, the three of them, and +Forrest's eye kindled as he looked at them in quite the same way that +it had kindled when he regarded the Fotherington Princess. + +Persiflage, of the sort that obtains among young things of the human +kind, flew back and forth. + +"I've been here five minutes," Dick Forrest asserted. + +The two dancers, to cover their confusion, doubted his veracity and +instanced his many well-known and notorious guilts of mendacity. The +girl at the piano, Ernestine, his sister-in-law, insisted that pearls +of truth fell from his lips, that she had seen him from the moment he +began to look, and that as she estimated the passage of time he had +been looking much longer than five minutes. + +"Well, anyway," Forrest broke in on their babel, "Bert, the sweet +innocent, doesn't think you are up yet." + +"We're not... to him," one of the dancers, a vivacious young Venus, +retorted. "Nor are we to you either. So run along, little boy. Run +along." + +"Look here, Lute," Forrest began sternly. "Just because I am a decrepit +old man, and just because you are eighteen, just eighteen, and happen +to be my wife's sister, you needn't presume to put the high and mighty +over on me. Don't forget--and I state the fact, disagreeable as it may +be, for Rita's sake--don't forget that in the past ten years I've +paddled you more disgraceful times than you care to dare me to +enumerate. + +"It is true, I am not so young as I used to was, but--" He felt the +biceps of his right arm and made as if to roll up the sleeve. "--But, +I'm not all in yet, and for two cents..." + +"What?" the young woman challenged belligerently. + +"For two cents," he muttered darkly. "For two cents... Besides, and it +grieves me to inform you, your cap is not on straight. Also, it is not +a very tasteful creation at best. I could make a far more becoming cap +with my toes, asleep, and... yes, seasick as well." + +Lute tossed her blond head defiantly, glanced at her comrades in +solicitation of support, and said: + +"Oh, I don't know. It seems humanly reasonable that the three of us can +woman-handle a mere man of your elderly and insulting avoirdupois. What +do you say, girls? Let's rush him. He's not a minute under forty, and +he has an aneurism. Yes, and though loath to divulge family secrets, +he's got Meniere's Disease." + +Ernestine, a small but robust blonde of eighteen, sprang from the piano +and joined her two comrades in a raid on the cushions of the deep +window seats. Side by side, a cushion in each hand, and with proper +distance between them cannily established for the swinging of the +cushions, they advanced upon the foe. + +Forrest prepared for battle, then held up his hand for parley. + +"'Fraid cat!" they taunted, in several at first, and then in chorus. + +He shook his head emphatically. + +"Just for that, and for all the rest of your insolences, the three of +you are going to get yours. All the wrongs of a lifetime are rising now +in my brain in a dazzling brightness. I shall go Berserk in a moment. +But first, and I speak as an agriculturist, and I address myself to +you, Lute, in all humility, in heaven's name what is Meniere's Disease? +Do sheep catch it?" + +"Meniere's Disease is," Lute began,... "is what you've got. Sheep are +the only known living creatures that get it." + +Ensued red war and chaos. Forrest made a football rush of the sort that +obtained in California before the adoption of Rugby; and the girls +broke the line to let him through, turned upon him, flanked him on +either side, and pounded him with cushions. + +He turned, with widespread arms, extended fingers, each finger a hook, +and grappled the three. The battle became a whirlwind, a be-spurred man +the center, from which radiated flying draperies of flimsy silk, +disconnected slippers, boudoir caps, and hairpins. There were thuds +from the cushions, grunts from the man, squeals, yelps and giggles from +the girls, and from the totality of the combat inextinguishable +laughter and a ripping and tearing of fragile textures. + +Dick Forrest found himself sprawled on the floor, the wind half knocked +out of him by shrewdly delivered cushions, his head buzzing from the +buffeting, and, in one hand, a trailing, torn, and generally disrupted +girdle of pale blue silk and pink roses. + +In one doorway, cheeks flaming from the struggle, stood Rita, alert as +a fawn and ready to flee. In the other doorway, likewise flame-checked, +stood Ernestine in the commanding attitude of the Mother of the +Gracchi, the wreckage of her kimono wrapped severely about her and held +severely about her by her own waist-pressing arm. Lute, cornered behind +the piano, attempted to run but was driven back by the menace of +Forrest, who, on hands and knees, stamped loudly with the palms of his +hands on the hardwood floor, rolled his head savagely, and emitted +bull-like roars. + +"And they still believe that old prehistoric myth," Ernestine +proclaimed from safety, "that once he, that wretched semblance of a +man-thing prone in the dirt, captained Berkeley to victory over +Stanford." + +Her breasts heaved from the exertion, and he marked the pulsating of +the shimmering cherry-colored silk with delight as he flung his glance +around to the other two girls similarly breathing. + +The piano was a miniature grand--a dainty thing of rich white and gold +to match the morning room. It stood out from the wall, so that there +was possibility for Lute to escape around either way of it. Forrest +gained his feet and faced her across the broad, flat top of the +instrument. As he threatened to vault it, Lute cried out in horror: + +"But your spurs, Dick! Your spurs!" + +"Give me time to take them off," he offered. + +As he stooped to unbuckle them, Lute darted to escape, but was herded +back to the shelter of the piano. + +"All right," he growled. "On your head be it. If the piano's scratched +I'll tell Paula." + +"I've got witnesses," she panted, indicating with her blue joyous eyes +the young things in the doorways. + +"Very well, my dear." Forrest drew back his body and spread his resting +palms. "I'm coming over to you." + +Action and speech were simultaneous. His body, posited sidewise from +his hands, was vaulted across, the perilous spurs a full foot above the +glossy white surface. And simultaneously Lute ducked and went under the +piano on hands and knees. Her mischance lay in that she bumped her +head, and, before she could recover way, Forrest had circled the piano +and cornered her under it. + +"Come out!" he commanded. "Come out and take your medicine!" + +"A truce," she pleaded. "A truce, Sir Knight, for dear love's sake and +all damsels in distress." + +"I ain't no knight," Forrest announced in his deepest bass. "I'm an +ogre, a filthy, debased and altogether unregenerate ogre. I was born in +the tule-swamps. My father was an ogre and my mother was more so. I was +lulled to slumber on the squalls of infants dead, foreordained, and +predamned. I was nourished solely on the blood of maidens educated in +Mills Seminary. My favorite chophouse has ever been a hardwood floor, a +loaf of Mills Seminary maiden, and a roof of flat piano. My father, as +well as an ogre, was a California horse-thief. I am more reprehensible +than my father. I have more teeth. My mother, as well as an ogress, was +a Nevada book-canvasser. Let all her shame be told. She even solicited +subscriptions for ladies' magazines. I am more terrible than my mother. +I have peddled safety razors." + +"Can naught soothe and charm your savage breast?" Lute pleaded in +soulful tones while she studied her chances for escape. + +"One thing only, miserable female. One thing only, on the earth, over +the earth, and under its ruining waters--" + +A squawk of recognized plagiarism interrupted him from Ernestine. + +"See Ernest Dowson, page seventy-nine, a thin book of thin verse ladled +out with porridge to young women detentioned at Mills Seminary," +Forrest went on. "As I had already enunciated before I was so rudely +interrupted, the one thing only that can balm and embalm this savage +breast is the 'Maiden's Prayer.' Listen, with all your ears ere I chew +them off in multitude and gross! Listen, silly, unbeautiful, squat, +short-legged and ugly female under the piano! Can you recite the +'Maiden's Prayer'?" + +Screams of delight from the young things in the doorways prevented the +proper answer and Lute, from under the piano, cried out to young +Wainwright, who had appeared: + +"A rescue, Sir Knight! A rescue!" + +"Unhand the maiden!" was Bert's challenge. + +"Who art thou?" Forrest demanded. + +"King George, sirrah!--I mean, er, Saint George." + +"Then am I thy dragon," Forrest announced with due humility. "Spare +this ancient, honorable, and only neck I have." + +"Off with his head!" the young things encouraged. + +"Stay thee, maidens, I pray thee," Bert begged. "I am only a Small +Potato. Yet am I unafraid. I shall beard the dragon. I shall beard him +in his gullet, and, while he lingeringly chokes to death over my +unpalatableness and general spinefulness, do you, fair damsels, flee to +the mountains lest the valleys fall upon you. Yolo, Petaluma, and West +Sacramento are about to be overwhelmed by a tidal wave and many big +fishes." + +"Off with his head!" the young things chanted. "Slay him in his blood +and barbecue him!" + +"Thumbs down," Forrest groaned. "I am undone. Trust to the unstrained +quality of mercy possessed by Christian young women in the year 1914 +who will vote some day if ever they grow up and do not marry +foreigners. Consider my head off, Saint George. I am expired. Further +deponent sayeth not." + +And Forrest, with sobs and slubberings, with realistic shudders and +kicks and a great jingling of spurs, lay down on the floor and expired. + +Lute crawled out from under the piano, and was joined by Rita and +Ernestine in an extemporized dance of the harpies about the slain. + +In the midst of it, Forrest sat up, protesting. Also, he was guilty of +a significant and privy wink to Lute. + +"The hero!" he cried. "Forget him not. Crown him with flowers." + +And Bert was crowned with flowers from the vases, unchanged from the +day before. When a bunch of water-logged stems of early tulips, +propelled by Lute's vigorous arm, impacted soggily on his neck under +the ear, he fled. The riot of pursuit echoed along the hall and died +out down the stairway toward the stag room. Forrest gathered himself +together, and, grinning, went jingling on through the Big House. + +He crossed two patios on brick walks roofed with Spanish tile and +swamped with early foliage and blooms, and gained his wing of the +house, still breathing from the fun, to find, in the office, his +secretary awaiting him. + +"Good morning, Mr. Blake," he greeted. "Sorry I was delayed." He +glanced at his wrist-watch. "Only four minutes, however. I just +couldn't get away sooner." + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + + +From nine till ten Forrest gave himself up to his secretary, achieving +a correspondence that included learned societies and every sort of +breeding and agricultural organization and that would have compelled +the average petty business man, unaided, to sit up till midnight to +accomplish. + +For Dick Forrest was the center of a system which he himself had built +and of which he was secretly very proud. Important letters and +documents he signed with his ragged fist. All other letters were +rubber-stamped by Mr. Blake, who, also, in shorthand, in the course of +the hour, put down the indicated answers to many letters and received +the formula designations of reply to many other letters. Mr. Blake's +private opinion was that he worked longer hours than his employer, +although it was equally his private opinion that his employer was a +wonder for discovering work for others to perform. + +At ten, to the stroke of the clock, as Pittman, Forrest's show-manager, +entered the office, Blake, burdened with trays of correspondence, +sheafs of documents, and phonograph cylinders, faded away to his own +office. + +From ten to eleven a stream of managers and foremen flowed in and out. +All were well disciplined in terseness and time-saving. As Dick Forrest +had taught them, the minutes spent with him were not minutes of +cogitation. They must be prepared before they reported or suggested. +Bonbright, the assistant secretary, always arrived at ten to replace +Blake; and Bonbright, close to shoulder, with flying pencil, took down +the rapid-fire interchange of question and answer, statement and +proposal and plan. These shorthand notes, transcribed and typed in +duplicate, were the nightmare and, on occasion, the Nemesis, of the +managers and foremen. For, first, Forrest had a remarkable memory; and, +second, he was prone to prove its worth by reference to those same +notes of Bonbright. + +A manager, at the end of a five or ten minute session, often emerged +sweating, limp and frazzled. Yet for a swift hour, at high tension, +Forrest met all comers, with a master's grip handling them and all the +multifarious details of their various departments. He told Thompson, +the machinist, in four flashing minutes, where the fault lay in the +dynamo to the Big House refrigerator, laid the fault home to Thompson, +dictated a note to Bonbright, with citation by page and chapter to a +volume from the library to be drawn by Thompson, told Thompson that +Parkman, the dairy manager, was not satisfied with the latest wiring up +of milking machines, and that the refrigerating plant at the slaughter +house was balking at its accustomed load. + +Each man was a specialist, yet Forrest was the proved master of their +specialties. As Paulson, the head plowman, complained privily to +Dawson, the crop manager: "I've worked here twelve years and never have +I seen him put his hands to a plow, and yet, damn him, he somehow seems +to know. He's a genius, that's what he is. Why, d'ye know, I've seen +him tear by a piece of work, his hands full with that Man-Eater of his +a-threatenin' sudden funeral, an', next morning, had 'm mention +casually to a half-inch how deep it was plowed an' what plows'd done +the plowin'!--Take that plowin' of the Poppy Meadow, up above Little +Meadow, on Los Cuatos. I just couldn't see my way to it, an' had to cut +out the cross-sub-soiling, an' thought I could slip it over on him. +After it was all finished he kind of happened up that way--I was +lookin' an' he didn't seem to look--an', well, next A.M. I got mine in +the office. No; I didn't slip it over. I ain't tried to slip nothing +over since." + +At eleven sharp, Wardman, his sheep manager, departed with an +engagement scheduled at eleven: thirty to ride in the machine along +with Thayer, the Idaho buyer, to look over the Shropshire rams. At +eleven, Bonbright having departed with Wardman to work up his notes, +Forrest was left alone in the office. From a wire tray of unfinished +business--one of many wire trays superimposed in groups of five--he +drew a pamphlet issued by the State of Iowa on hog cholera and +proceeded to scan it. + +Five feet, ten inches in height, weighing a clean-muscled one hundred +and eighty pounds, Dick Forrest was anything but insignificant for a +forty years' old man. The eyes were gray, large, over-arched by bone of +brow, and lashes and brows were dark. The hair, above an ordinary +forehead, was light brown to chestnut. Under the forehead, the cheeks +showed high-boned, with underneath the slight hollows that necessarily +accompany such formation. The jaws were strong without massiveness, the +nose, large-nostriled, was straight enough and prominent enough without +being too straight or prominent, the chin square without harshness and +uncleft, and the mouth girlish and sweet to a degree that did not hide +the firmness to which the lips could set on due provocation. The skin +was smooth and well-tanned, although, midway between eyebrows and hair, +the tan of forehead faded in advertisement of the rim of the Baden +Powell interposed between him and the sun. + +Laughter lurked in the mouth corners and eye-corners, and there were +cheek lines about the mouth that would seem to have been formed by +laughter. Equally strong, however, every line of the face that meant +blended things carried a notice of surety. Dick Forrest was sure--sure, +when his hand reached out for any object on his desk, that the hand +would straightly attain the object without a fumble or a miss of a +fraction of an inch; sure, when his brain leaped the high places of the +hog cholera text, that it was not missing a point; sure, from his +balanced body in the revolving desk-chair to the balanced back-head of +him; sure, in heart and brain, of life and work, of all he possessed, +and of himself. + +He had reason to be sure. Body, brain, and career were long-proven +sure. A rich man's son, he had not played ducks and drakes with his +father's money. City born and reared, he had gone back to the land and +made such a success as to put his name on the lips of breeders wherever +breeders met and talked. He was the owner, without encumbrance, of two +hundred and fifty thousand acres of land--land that varied in value +from a thousand dollars an acre to a hundred dollars, that varied from +a hundred dollars to ten cents an acre, and that, in stretches, was not +worth a penny an acre. The improvements on that quarter of a million +acres, from drain-tiled meadows to dredge-drained tule swamps, from +good roads to developed water-rights, from farm buildings to the Big +House itself, constituted a sum gaspingly ungraspable to the +country-side. + +Everything was large-scale but modern to the last tick of the clock. +His managers lived, rent-free, with salaries commensurate to ability, +in five--and ten-thousand-dollar houses--but they were the cream of +specialists skimmed from the continent from the Atlantic to the +Pacific. When he ordered gasoline-tractors for the cultivation of the +flat lands, he ordered a round score. When he dammed water in his +mountains he dammed it by the hundreds of millions of gallons. When he +ditched his tule-swamps, instead of contracting the excavation, he +bought the huge dredgers outright, and, when there was slack work on +his own marshes, he contracted for the draining of the marshes of +neighboring big farmers, land companies, and corporations for a hundred +miles up and down the Sacramento River. + +He had brain sufficient to know the need of buying brains and to pay a +tidy bit over the current market price for the most capable brains. And +he had brain sufficient to direct the brains he bought to a profitable +conclusion. + +And yet, he was just turned forty was clear-eyed, calm-hearted, +hearty-pulsed, man-strong; and yet, his history, until he was thirty, +had been harum-scarum and erratic to the superlative. He had run away +from a millionaire home when he was thirteen. He had won enviable +college honors ere he was twenty-one and after that he had known all +the purple ports of the purple seas, and, with cool head, hot heart, +and laughter, played every risk that promised and provided in the wild +world of adventure that he had lived to see pass under the sobriety of +law. + +In the old days of San Francisco Forrest had been a name to conjure +with. The Forrest Mansion had been one of the pioneer palaces on Nob +Hill where dwelt the Floods, the Mackays, the Crockers, and the +O'Briens. "Lucky" Richard Forrest, the father, had arrived, via the +Isthmus, straight from old New England, keenly commercial, interested +before his departure in clipper ships and the building of clipper +ships, and interested immediately after his arrival in water-front real +estate, river steamboats, mines, of course, and, later, in the draining +of the Nevada Comstock and the construction of the Southern Pacific. + +He played big, he won big, he lost big; but he won always more than he +lost, and what he paid out at one game with one hand, he drew back with +his other hand at another game. His winnings from the Comstock he sank +into the various holes of the bottomless Daffodil Group in Eldorado +County. The wreckage from the Benicia Line he turned into the Napa +Consolidated, which was a quicksilver venture, and it earned him five +thousand per cent. What he lost in the collapse of the Stockton boom +was more than balanced by the realty appreciation of his key-holdings +at Sacramento and Oakland. + +And, to cap it all, when "Lucky" Richard Forrest had lost everything in +a series of calamities, so that San Francisco debated what price his +Nob Hill palace would fetch at auction, he grubstaked one, Del Nelson, +to a prospecting in Mexico. As soberly set down in history, the result +of the said Del Nelson's search for quartz was the Harvest Group, +including the fabulous and inexhaustible Tattlesnake, Voice, City, +Desdemona, Bullfrog, and Yellow Boy claims. Del Nelson, astounded by +his achievement, within the year drowned himself in an enormous +quantity of cheap whisky, and, the will being incontestible through +lack of kith and kin, left his half to Lucky Richard Forrest. + +Dick Forrest was the son of his father. Lucky Richard, a man of +boundless energy and enterprise, though twice married and twice +widowed, had not been blessed with children. His third marriage +occurred in 1872, when he was fifty-eight, and in 1874, although he +lost the mother, a twelve-pound boy, stout-barreled and husky-lunged, +remained to be brought up by a regiment of nurses in the palace on Nob +Hill. + +Young Dick was precocious. Lucky Richard was a democrat. Result: Young +Dick learned in a year from a private teacher what would have required +three years in the grammar school, and used all of the saved years in +playing in the open air. Also, result of precocity of son and democracy +of father, Young Dick was sent to grammar school for the last year in +order to learn shoulder-rubbing democracy with the sons and daughters +of workmen, tradesmen, saloon-keepers and politicians. + +In class recitation or spelling match his father's millions did not aid +him in competing with Patsy Halloran, the mathematical prodigy whose +father was a hod-carrier, nor with Mona Sanguinetti who was a wizard at +spelling and whose widowed mother ran a vegetable store. Nor were his +father's millions and the Nob Hill palace of the slightest assistance +to Young Dick when he peeled his jacket and, bareknuckled, without +rounds, licking or being licked, milled it to a finish with Jimmy +Botts, Jean Choyinsky, and the rest of the lads that went out over the +world to glory and cash a few years later, a generation of +prizefighters that only San Francisco, raw and virile and yeasty and +young, could have produced. + +The wisest thing Lucky Richard did for his boy was to give him this +democratic tutelage. In his secret heart, Young Dick never forgot that +he lived in a palace of many servants and that his father was a man of +power and honor. On the other hand, Young Dick learned two-legged, +two-fisted democracy. He learned it when Mona Sanguinetti spelled him +down in class. He learned it when Berney Miller out-dodged and out-ran +him when running across in Black Man. + +And when Tim Hagan, with straight left for the hundredth time to +bleeding nose and mangled mouth, and with ever reiterant right hook to +stomach, had him dazed and reeling, the breath whistling and sobbing +through his lacerated lips--was no time for succor from palaces and +bank accounts. On his two legs, with his two fists, it was either he or +Tim. And it was right there, in sweat and blood and iron of soul, that +Young Dick learned how not to lose a losing fight. It had been uphill +from the first blow, but he stuck it out until in the end it was agreed +that neither could best the other, although this agreement was not +reached until they had first lain on the ground in nausea and +exhaustion and with streaming eyes wept their rage and defiance at each +other. After that, they became chums and between them ruled the +schoolyard. + +Lucky Richard died the same month Young Dick emerged from grammar +school. Young Dick was thirteen years old, with twenty million dollars, +and without a relative in the world to trouble him. He was the master +of a palace of servants, a steam yacht, stables, and, as well, of a +summer palace down the Peninsula in the nabob colony at Menlo. One +thing, only, was he burdened with: guardians. + +On a summer afternoon, in the big library, he attended the first +session of his board of guardians. There were three of them, all +elderly, and successful, all legal, all business comrades of his +father. Dick's impression, as they explained things to him, was that, +although they meant well, he had no contacts with them. In his +judgment, their boyhood was too far behind them. Besides that, it was +patent that him, the particular boy they were so much concerned with, +they did not understand at all. Furthermore, in his own sure way he +decided that he was the one person in the world fitted to know what was +best for himself. + +Mr. Crockett made a long speech, to which Dick listened with alert and +becoming attention, nodding his head whenever he was directly addressed +or appealed to. Messrs. Davidson and Slocum also had their say and were +treated with equal consideration. Among other things, Dick learned what +a sterling, upright man his father had been, and the program already +decided upon by the three gentlemen which would make him into a +sterling and upright man. + +When they were quite done, Dick took it upon himself to say a few +things. + +"I have thought it over," he announced, "and first of all I shall go +traveling." + +"That will come afterward, my boy," Mr. Slocum explained soothingly. +"When--say--when you are ready to enter the university. At that time a +year abroad would be a very good thing... a very good thing indeed." + +"Of course," Mr. Davidson volunteered quickly, having noted the annoyed +light in the lad's eyes and the unconscious firm-drawing and setting of +the lips, "of course, in the meantime you could do some traveling, a +limited amount of traveling, during your school vacations. I am sure my +fellow guardians will agree--under the proper management and +safeguarding, of course--that such bits of travel sandwiched between +your school-terms, would be advisable and beneficial." + +"How much did you say I am worth?" Dick asked with apparent irrelevance. + +"Twenty millions--at a most conservative estimate--that is about the +sum," Mr. Crockett answered promptly. + +"Suppose I said right now that I wanted a hundred dollars!" Dick went +on. + +"Why--er--ahem." Mr. Slocum looked about him for guidance. + +"We would be compelled to ask what you wanted it for," answered Mr. +Crockett. + +"And suppose," Dick said very slowly, looking Mr. Crockett squarely in +the eyes, "suppose I said that I was very sorry, but that I did not +care to say what I wanted it for?" + +"Then you wouldn't get it," Mr. Crockett said so immediately that there +was a hint of testiness and snap in his manner. + +Dick nodded slowly, as if letting the information sink in. + +"But, of course, my boy," Mr. Slocum took up hastily, "you understand +you are too young to handle money yet. We must decide that for you." + +"You mean I can't touch a penny without your permission?" + +"Not a penny," Mr. Crockett snapped. + +Dick nodded his head thoughtfully and murmured, "Oh, I see." + +"Of course, and quite naturally, it would only be fair, you know, you +will have a small allowance for your personal spending," Mr. Davidson +said. "Say, a dollar, or, perhaps, two dollars, a week. As you grow +older this allowance will be increased. And by the time you are +twenty-one, doubtlessly you will be fully qualified--with advice, of +course--to handle your own affairs." + +"And until I am twenty-one my twenty million wouldn't buy me a hundred +dollars to do as I please with?" Dick queried very subduedly. + +Mr. Davidson started to corroborate in soothing phrases, but was waved +to silence by Dick, who continued: + +"As I understand it, whatever money I handle will be by agreement +between the four of us?" + +The Board of Guardians nodded. + +"That is, whatever we agree, goes?" + +Again the Board of Guardians nodded. + +"Well, I'd like to have a hundred right now," Dick announced. + +"What for?" Mr. Crockett demanded. + +"I don't mind telling you," was the lad's steady answer. "To go +traveling." + +"You'll go to bed at eight:thirty this evening," Mr. Crockett retorted. +"And you don't get any hundred. The lady we spoke to you about will be +here before six. She is to have, as we explained, daily and hourly +charge of you. At six-thirty, as usual, you will dine, and she will +dine with you and see you to bed. As we told you, she will have to +serve the place of a mother to you--see that your ears are clean, your +neck washed--" + +"And that I get my Saturday night bath," Dick amplified meekly for him. + +"Precisely." + +"How much are you--am I--paying the lady for her services?" Dick +questioned in the disconcerting, tangential way that was already +habitual to him, as his school companions and teachers had learned to +their cost. + +Mr. Crockett for the first time cleared his throat for pause. + +"I'm paying her, ain't I?" Dick prodded. "Out of the twenty million, +you know." + +"The spit of his father," said Mr. Slocum in an aside. + +"Mrs. Summerstone, the lady as you elect to call her, receives one +hundred and fifty a month, eighteen hundred a year in round sum," said +Mr. Crockett. + +"It's a waste of perfectly good money," Dick sighed. "And board and +lodging thrown in!" + +He stood up--not the born aristocrat of the generations, but the reared +aristocrat of thirteen years in the Nob Hill palace. He stood up with +such a manner that his Board of Guardians left their leather chairs to +stand up with him. But he stood up as no Lord Fauntleroy ever stood up; +for he was a mixer. He had knowledge that human life was many-faced and +many-placed. Not for nothing had he been spelled down by Mona +Sanguinetti. Not for nothing had he fought Tim Hagan to a standstill +and, co-equal, ruled the schoolyard roost with him. + +He was birthed of the wild gold-adventure of Forty-nine. He was a +reared aristocrat and a grammar-school-trained democrat. He knew, in +his precocious immature way, the differentiations between caste and +mass; and, behind it all, he was possessed of a will of his own and of +a quiet surety of self that was incomprehensible to the three elderly +gentlemen who had been given charge of his and his destiny and who had +pledged themselves to increase his twenty millions and make a man of +him in their own composite image. + +"Thank you for your kindness," Young Dick said generally to the three. +"I guess we'll get along all right. Of course, that twenty millions is +mine, and of course you've got to take care of it for me, seeing I know +nothing of business--" + +"And we'll increase it for you, my boy, we'll increase it for you in +safe, conservative ways," Mr. Slocum assured him. + +"No speculation," Young Dick warned. "Dad's just been lucky--I've heard +him say that times have changed and a fellow can't take the chances +everybody used to take." + +From which, and from much which has already passed, it might +erroneously be inferred that Young Dick was a mean and money-grubbing +soul. On the contrary, he was at that instant entertaining secret +thoughts and plans so utterly regardless and disdainful of his twenty +millions as to place him on a par with a drunken sailor sowing the +beach with a three years' pay-day. + +"I am only a boy," Young Dick went on. "But you don't know me very well +yet. We'll get better acquainted by and by, and, again thanking you...." + +He paused, bowed briefly and grandly as lords in Nob Hill palaces early +learn to bow, and, by the quality of the pause, signified that the +audience was over. Nor did the impact of dismissal miss his guardians. +They, who had been co-lords with his father, withdrew confused and +perplexed. Messrs. Davidson and Slocum were on the point of resolving +their perplexity into wrath, as they went down the great stone stairway +to the waiting carriage, but Mr. Crockett, the testy and snappish, +muttered ecstatically: "The son of a gun! The little son of a gun!" + +The carriage carried them down to the old Pacific Union Club, where, +for another hour, they gravely discussed the future of Young Dick +Forrest and pledged themselves anew to the faith reposed in them by +Lucky Richard Forrest. And down the hill, on foot, where grass grew on +the paved streets too steep for horse-traffic, Young Dick hurried. As +the height of land was left behind, almost immediately the palaces and +spacious grounds of the nabobs gave way to the mean streets and wooden +warrens of the working people. The San Francisco of 1887 as +incontinently intermingled its slums and mansions as did the old cities +of Europe. Nob Hill arose, like any medieval castle, from the mess and +ruck of common life that denned and laired at its base. + +Young Dick came to pause alongside a corner grocery, the second story +of which was rented to Timothy Hagan Senior, who, by virtue of being a +policeman with a wage of a hundred dollars a month, rented this high +place to dwell above his fellows who supported families on no more than +forty and fifty dollars a month. + +In vain Young Dick whistled up through the unscreened, open windows. +Tim Hagan Junior was not at home. But Young Dick wasted little wind in +the whistling. He was debating on possible adjacent places where Tim +Hagan might be, when Tim himself appeared around the corner, bearing a +lidless lard-can that foamed with steam beer. He grunted greeting, and +Young Dick grunted with equal roughness, just as if, a brief space +before, he had not, in most lordly fashion, terminated an audience with +three of the richest merchant-kings of an imperial city. Nor did his +possession of twenty increasing millions hint the slightest betrayal in +his voice or mitigate in the slightest the gruffness of his grunt. + +"Ain't seen yeh since yer old man died," Tim Hagan commented. + +"Well, you're seein' me now, ain't you?" was Young Dick's retort. "Say, +Tim, I come to see you on business." + +"Wait till I rush the beer to the old man," said Tim, inspecting the +state of the foam in the lard-can with an experienced eye. "He'll roar +his head off if it comes in flat." + +"Oh, you can shake it up," Young Dick assured him. "Only want to see +you a minute. I'm hitting the road to-night. Want to come along?" + +Tim's small, blue Irish eyes flashed with interest. + +"Where to?" he queried. + +"Don't know. Want to come? If you do, we can talk it over after we +start? You know the ropes. What d'ye say?" + +"The old man'll beat the stuffin' outa me," Tim demurred. + +"He's done that before, an' you don't seem to be much missing," Young +Dick callously rejoined. "Say the word, an' we'll meet at the Ferry +Building at nine to-night. What d'ye say? I'll be there." + +"Supposin' I don't show up?" Tim asked. + +"I'll be on my way just the same." Young Dick turned as if to depart, +paused casually, and said over his shoulder, "Better come along." + +Tim shook up the beer as he answered with equal casualness, "Aw right. +I'll be there." + +After parting from Tim Hagan Young Dick spent a busy hour or so looking +up one, Marcovich, a Slavonian schoolmate whose father ran a chop-house +in which was reputed to be served the finest twenty-cent meal in the +city. Young Marcovich owed Young Dick two dollars, and Young Dick +accepted the payment of a dollar and forty cents as full quittance of +the debt. + +Also, with shyness and perturbation, Young Dick wandered down +Montgomery Street and vacillated among the many pawnshops that graced +that thoroughfare. At last, diving desperately into one, he managed to +exchange for eight dollars and a ticket his gold watch that he knew was +worth fifty at the very least. + +Dinner in the Nob Hill palace was served at six-thirty. He arrived at +six-forty-five and encountered Mrs. Summerstone. She was a stout, +elderly, decayed gentlewoman, a daughter of the great Porter-Rickington +family that had shaken the entire Pacific Coast with its financial +crash in the middle seventies. Despite her stoutness, she suffered from +what she called shattered nerves. + +"This will never, never do, Richard," she censured. "Here is dinner +waiting fifteen minutes already, and you have not yet washed your face +and hands." + +"I am sorry, Mrs. Summerstone," Young Dick apologized. "I won't keep +you waiting ever again. And I won't bother you much ever." + +At dinner, in state, the two of them alone in the great dining room, +Young Dick strove to make things easy for the lady, whom, despite his +knowledge that she was on his pay-roll, he felt toward as a host must +feel toward a guest. + +"You'll be very comfortable here," he promised, "once you are settled +down. It's a good old house, and most of the servants have been here +for years." + +"But, Richard," she smiled seriously to him; "it is not the servants +who will determine my happiness here. It is you." + +"I'll do my best," he said graciously. "Better than that. I'm sorry I +came in late for dinner. In years and years you'll never see me late +again. I won't bother you at all. You'll see. It will be just as though +I wasn't in the house." + +When he bade her good night, on his way to bed, he added, as a last +thought: + +"I'll warn you of one thing: Ah Sing. He's the cook. He's been in our +house for years and years--oh, I don't know, maybe twenty-five or +thirty years he's cooked for father, from long before this house was +built or I was born. He's privileged. He's so used to having his own +way that you'll have to handle him with gloves. But once he likes you +he'll work his fool head off to please you. He likes me that way. You +get him to like you, and you'll have the time of your life here. And, +honest, I won't give you any trouble at all. It'll be a regular snap, +just as if I wasn't here at all." + + + + +CHAPTER V + + AT nine in the evening, sharp to the second, clad in his oldest +clothes, Young Dick met Tim Hagan at the Ferry Building. + +"No use headin' north," said Tim. "Winter'll come on up that way and +make the sleepin' crimpy. D'ye want to go East--that means Nevada and +the deserts." + +"Any other way?" queried Young Dick. "What's the matter with south? We +can head for Los Angeles, an' Arizona, an' New Mexico--oh, an' Texas." + +"How much money you got?" Tim demanded. + +"What for?" Young Dick countered. + +"We gotta get out quick, an' payin' our way at the start is quickest. +Me--I'm all hunkydory; but you ain't. The folks that's lookin' after +you'll raise a roar. They'll have more detectives out than you can +shake at stick at. We gotta dodge 'em, that's what." + +"Then we will dodge," said Young Dick. "We'll make short jumps this way +and that for a couple of days, layin' low most of the time, paying our +way, until we can get to Tracy. Then we'll quit payin' an' beat her +south." + +All of which program was carefully carried out. They eventually went +through Tracy as pay passengers, six hours after the local deputy +sheriff had given up his task of searching the trains. With an excess +of precaution Young Dick paid beyond Tracy and as far as Modesto. After +that, under the teaching of Tim, he traveled without paying, riding +blind baggage, box cars, and cow-catchers. Young Dick bought the +newspapers, and frightened Tim by reading to him the lurid accounts of +the kidnapping of the young heir to the Forrest millions. + +Back in San Francisco the Board of Guardians offered rewards that +totaled thirty thousand dollars for the recovery of their ward. And Tim +Hagan, reading the same while they lay in the grass by some water-tank, +branded forever the mind of Young Dick with the fact that honor beyond +price was a matter of neither place nor caste and might outcrop in the +palace on the height of land or in the dwelling over a grocery down on +the flat. + +"Gee!" Tim said to the general landscape. "The old man wouldn't raise a +roar if I snitched on you for that thirty thousand. It makes me scared +to think of it." + +And from the fact that Tim thus openly mentioned the matter, Young Dick +concluded that there was no possibility of the policeman's son +betraying him. + +Not until six weeks afterward, in Arizona, did Young Dick bring up the +subject. + +"You see, Tim," he said, "I've got slathers of money. It's growing all +the time, and I ain't spending a cent of it, not so as you can +notice... though that Mrs. Summerstone is getting a cold eighteen +hundred a year out of me, with board and carriages thrown in, while you +an' I are glad to get the leavings of firemen's pails in the +round-houses. Just the same, my money's growing. What's ten per cent, +on twenty dollars?" + +Tim Hagan stared at the shimmering heat-waves of the desert and tried +to solve the problem. + +"What's one-tenth of twenty million?" Young Dick demanded irritably. + +"Huh!--two million, of course." + +"Well, five per cent's half of ten per cent. What does twenty million +earn at five per cent, for one year?" + +Tim hesitated. + +"Half of it, half of two million!" Young Dick cried. "At that rate I'm +a million richer every year. Get that, and hang on to it, and listen to +me. When I'm good and willing to go back--but not for years an' +years--we'll fix it up, you and I. When I say the word, you'll write to +your father. He'll jump out to where we are waiting, pick me up, and +cart me back. Then he'll collect the thirty thousand reward from my +guardians, quit the police force, and most likely start a saloon." + +"Thirty thousand's a hell of a lot of money," was Tim's nonchalant way +of expressing his gratitude. + +"Not to me," Young Dick minimized his generosity. "Thirty thousand goes +into a million thirty-three times, and a million's only a year's +turnover of my money." + +But Tim Hagan never lived to see his father a saloon keeper. Two days +later, on a trestle, the lads were fired out of an empty box-car by a +brake-man who should have known better. The trestle spanned a dry +ravine. Young Dick looked down at the rocks seventy feet below and +demurred. + +"There's room on the trestle," he said; "but what if the train starts +up?" + +"It ain't goin' to start--beat it while you got time," the brakeman +insisted. "The engine's takin' water at the other side. She always +takes it here." + +But for once the engine did not take water. The evidence at the inquest +developed that the engineer had found no water in the tank and started +on. Scarcely had the two boys dropped from the side-door of the +box-car, and before they had made a score of steps along the narrow way +between the train and the abyss, than the train began to move. Young +Dick, quick and sure in all his perceptions and adjustments, dropped on +the instant to hands and knees on the trestle. This gave him better +holding and more space, because he crouched beneath the overhang of the +box-cars. Tim, not so quick in perceiving and adjusting, also overcome +with Celtic rage at the brakeman, instead of dropping to hands and +knees, remained upright to flare his opinion of the brakeman, to the +brakeman, in lurid and ancestral terms. + +"Get down!--drop!" Young Dick shouted. + +But the opportunity had passed. On a down grade, the engine picked up +the train rapidly. Facing the moving cars, with empty air at his back +and the depth beneath, Tim tried to drop on hands and knees. But the +first twist of his shoulders brought him in contact with the car and +nearly out-balanced him. By a miracle he recovered equilibrium. But he +stood upright. The train was moving faster and faster. It was +impossible to get down. + +Young Dick, kneeling and holding, watched. The train gathered way. The +cars moved more swiftly. Tim, with a cool head, his back to the fall, +his face to the passing cars, his arms by his sides, with nowhere save +under his feet a holding point, balanced and swayed. The faster the +train moved, the wider he swayed, until, exerting his will, he +controlled himself and ceased from swaying. + +And all would have been well with him, had it not been for one car. +Young Dick knew it, and saw it coming. It was a "palace horse-car," +projecting six inches wider than any car on the train. He saw Tim see +it coming. He saw Tim steel himself to meet the abrupt subtraction of +half a foot from the narrow space wherein he balanced. He saw Tim +slowly and deliberately sway out, sway out to the extremest limit, and +yet not sway out far enough. The thing was physically inevitable. An +inch more, and Tim would have escaped the car. An inch more and he +would have fallen without impact from the car. It caught him, in that +margin of an inch, and hurled him backward and side-twisting. Twice he +whirled sidewise, and two and a half times he turned over, ere he +struck on his head and neck on the rocks. + +He never moved after he struck. The seventy-foot fall broke his neck +and crushed his skull. And right there Young Dick learned death--not +the ordered, decent death of civilization, wherein doctors and nurses +and hypodermics ease the stricken one into the darkness, and ceremony +and function and flowers and undertaking institutions conspire to give +a happy leave-taking and send-off to the departing shade, but sudden +death, primitive death, ugly and ungarnished, like the death of a steer +in the shambles or a fat swine stuck in the jugular. + +And right there Young Dick learned more--the mischance of life and +fate; the universe hostile to man; the need to perceive and to act, to +see and know, to be sure and quick, to adjust instantly to all instant +shiftage of the balance of forces that bear upon the living. And right +there, beside the strangely crumpled and shrunken remnant of what had +been his comrade the moment before, Young Dick learned that illusion +must be discounted, and that reality never lied. + +In New Mexico, Young Dick drifted into the Jingle-bob Ranch, north of +Roswell, in the Pecos Valley. He was not yet fourteen, and he was +accepted as the mascot of the ranch and made into a "sure-enough" +cowboy by cowboys who, on legal papers, legally signed names such as +Wild Horse, Willie Buck, Boomer Deacon, and High Pockets. + +Here, during a stay of six months, Young Dick, soft of frame and +unbreakable, achieved a knowledge of horses and horsemanship, and of +men in the rough and raw, that became a life asset. More he learned. +There was John Chisum, owner of the Jingle-bob, the Bosque Grande, and +of other cattle ranches as far away as the Black River and beyond. John +Chisum was a cattle king who had foreseen the coming of the farmer and +adjusted from the open range to barbed wire, and who, in order to do +so, had purchased every forty acres carrying water and got for nothing +the use of the millions of acres of adjacent range that was worthless +without the water he controlled. And in the talk by the camp-fire and +chuck wagon, among forty-dollar-a-month cowboys who had not foreseen +what John Chisum foresaw, Young Dick learned precisely why and how John +Chisum had become a cattle king while a thousand of his contemporaries +worked for him on wages. + +But Young Dick was no cool-head. His blood was hot. He had passion, and +fire, and male pride. Ready to cry from twenty hours in the saddle, he +learned to ignore the thousand aching creaks in his body and with the +stoic brag of silence to withstain from his blankets until the +hard-bitten punchers led the way. By the same token he straddled the +horse that was apportioned him, insisted on riding night-herd, and knew +no hint of uncertainty when it came to him to turn the flank of a +stampede with a flying slicker. He could take a chance. It was his joy +to take a chance. But at such times he never failed of due respect for +reality. He was well aware that men were soft-shelled and cracked +easily on hard rocks or under pounding hoofs. And when he rejected a +mount that tangled its legs in quick action and stumbled, it was not +because he feared to be cracked, but because, when he took a chance on +being cracked, he wanted, as he told John Chisum himself, "an even +break for his money." + +It was while at the Jingle-bob, but mailed by a cattleman from Chicago, +that Young Dick wrote a letter to his guardians. Even then, so careful +was he, that the envelope was addressed to Ah Sing. Though unburdened +by his twenty millions, Young Dick never forgot them, and, fearing his +estate might be distributed among remote relatives who might possibly +inhabit New England, he warned his guardians that he was still alive +and that he would return home in several years. Also, he ordered them +to keep Mrs. Summerstone on at her regular salary. + +But Young Dick's feet itched. Half a year, he felt, was really more +than he should have spent at the Jingle-bob. As a boy hobo, or +road-kid, he drifted on across the United States, getting acquainted +with its peace officers, police judges, vagrancy laws, and jails. And +he learned vagrants themselves at first hand, and floating laborers and +petty criminals. Among other things, he got acquainted with farms and +farmers, and, in New York State, once picked berries for a week with a +Dutch farmer who was experimenting with one of the first silos erected +in the United States. Nothing of what he learned came to him in the +spirit of research. He had merely the human boy's curiosity about all +things, and he gained merely a huge mass of data concerning human +nature and social conditions that was to stand him in good stead in +later years, when, with the aid of the books, he digested and +classified it. + +His adventures did not harm him. Even when he consorted with jail-birds +in jungle camps, and listened to their codes of conduct and +measurements of life, he was not affected. He was a traveler, and they +were alien breeds. Secure in the knowledge of his twenty millions, +there was neither need nor temptation for him to steal or rob. All +things and all places interested him, but he never found a place nor a +situation that could hold him. He wanted to see, to see more and more, +and to go on seeing. + +At the end of three years, nearly sixteen, hard of body, weighing a +hundred and thirty pounds, he judged it time to go home and open the +books. So he took his first long voyage, signing on as boy on a +windjammer bound around the Horn from the Delaware Breakwater to San +Francisco. It was a hard voyage, of one hundred and eighty days, but at +the end he weighed ten pounds the more for having made it. + +Mrs. Summerstone screamed when he walked in on her, and Ah Sing had to +be called from the kitchen to identify him. Mrs. Summerstone screamed a +second time. It was when she shook hands with him and lacerated her +tender skin in the fisty grip of his rope-calloused palms. + +He was shy, almost embarrassed, as he greeted his guardians at the +hastily summoned meeting. But this did not prevent him from talking +straight to the point. + +"It's this way," he said. "I am not a fool. I know what I want, and I +want what I want. I am alone in the world, outside of good friends like +you, of course, and I have my own ideas of the world and what I want to +do in it. I didn't come home because of a sense of duty to anybody +here. I came home because it was time, because of my sense of duty to +myself. I'm all the better from my three years of wandering about, and +now it's up to me to go on with my education--my book education, I +mean." + +"The Belmont Academy," Mr. Slocum suggested. "That will fit you for the +university--" + +Dick shook his head decidedly. + +"And take three years to do it. So would a high school. I intend to be +in the University of California inside one year. That means work. But +my mind's like acid. It'll bite into the books. I shall hire a coach, +or half a dozen of them, and go to it. And I'll hire my coaches +myself--hire and fire them. And that means money to handle." + +"A hundred a month," Mr. Crockett suggested. + +Dick shook his head. + +"I've taken care of myself for three years without any of my money. I +guess. I can take care of myself along with some of my money here in +San Francisco. I don't care to handle my business affairs yet, but I do +want a bank account, a respectable-sized one. I want to spend it as I +see fit, for what I see fit." + +The guardians looked their dismay at one another. + +"It's ridiculous, impossible," Mr. Crockett began. "You are as +unreasonable as you were before you went away." + +"It's my way, I guess," Dick sighed. "The other disagreement was over +my money. It was a hundred dollars I wanted then." + +"Think of our position, Dick," Mr. Davidson urged. "As your guardians, +how would it be looked upon if we gave you, a lad of sixteen, a free +hand with money." + +"What's the _Freda_ worth, right now?" Dick demanded irrelevantly. + +"Can sell for twenty thousand any time," Mr. Crockett answered. + +"Then sell her. She's too large for me, and she's worth less every +year. I want a thirty-footer that I can handle myself for knocking +around the Bay, and that won't cost a thousand. Sell the _Freda_ and +put the money to my account. Now what you three are afraid of is that +I'll misspend my money--taking to drinking, horse-racing, and running +around with chorus girls. Here's my proposition to make you easy on +that: let it be a drawing account for the four of us. The moment any of +you decide I am misspending, that moment you can draw out the total +balance. I may as well tell you, that just as a side line I'm going to +get a business college expert to come here and cram me with the +mechanical side of the business game." + +Dick did not wait for their acquiescence, but went on as from a matter +definitely settled. + +"How about the horses down at Menlo?--never mind, I'll look them over +and decide what to keep. Mrs. Summerstone will stay on here in charge +of the house, because I've got too much work mapped out for myself +already. I promise you you won't regret giving me a free hand with my +directly personal affairs. And now, if you want to hear about the last +three years, I'll spin the yarn for you." + + Dick Forrest had been right when he told his guardians that his mind +was acid and would bite into the books. Never was there such an +education, and he directed it himself--but not without advice. He had +learned the trick of hiring brains from his father and from John Chisum +of the Jingle-bob. He had learned to sit silent and to think while cow +men talked long about the campfire and the chuck wagon. And, by virtue +of name and place, he sought and obtained interviews with professors +and college presidents and practical men of affairs; and he listened to +their talk through many hours, scarcely speaking, rarely asking a +question, merely listening to the best they had to offer, content to +receive from several such hours one idea, one fact, that would help him +to decide what sort of an education he would go in for and how. + +Then came the engaging of coaches. Never was there such an engaging and +discharging, such a hiring and firing. He was not frugal in the matter. +For one that he retained a month, or three months, he discharged a +dozen on the first day, or the first week. And invariably he paid such +dischargees a full month although their attempts to teach him might not +have consumed an hour. He did such things fairly and grandly, because +he could afford to be fair and grand. + +He, who had eaten the leavings from firemen's pails in round-houses and +"scoffed" mulligan-stews at water-tanks, had learned thoroughly the +worth of money. He bought the best with the sure knowledge that it was +the cheapest. A year of high school physics and a year of high school +chemistry were necessary to enter the university. When he had crammed +his algebra and geometry, he sought out the heads of the physics and +chemistry departments in the University of California. Professor Carey +laughed at him... at the first. + +"My dear boy," Professor Carey began. + +Dick waited patiently till he was through. Then Dick began, and +concluded. + +"I'm not a fool, Professor Carey. High school and academy students are +children. They don't know the world. They don't know what they want, or +why they want what is ladled out to them. I know the world. I know what +I want and why I want it. They do physics for an hour, twice a week, +for two terms, which, with two vacations, occupy one year. You are the +top teacher on the Pacific Coast in physics. The college year is just +ending. In the first week of your vacation, giving every minute of your +time to me, I can get the year's physics. What is that week worth to +you?" + +"You couldn't buy it for a thousand dollars," Professor Carey rejoined, +thinking he had settled the matter. + +"I know what your salary is--" Dick began. + +"What is it?" Professor Carey demanded sharply. + +"It's not a thousand a week," Dick retorted as sharply. "It's not five +hundred a week, nor two-fifty a week--" He held up his hand to stall +off interruption. "You've just told me I couldn't buy a week of your +time for a thousand dollars. I'm not going to. But I am going to buy +that week for two thousand. Heavens!--I've only got so many years to +live--" + +"And you can buy years?" Professor Carey queried slyly. + +"Sure. That's why I'm here. I buy three years in one, and the week from +you is part of the deal." + +"But I have not accepted," Professor Carey laughed. + +"If the sum is not sufficient," Dick said stiffly, "why name the sum +you consider fair." + +And Professor Carey surrendered. So did Professor Barsdale, head of the +department of chemistry. + +Already had Dick taken his coaches in mathematics duck hunting for +weeks in the sloughs of the Sacramento and the San Joaquin. After his +bout with physics and chemistry he took his two coaches in literature +and history into the Curry County hunting region of southwestern +Oregon. He had learned the trick from his father, and he worked, and +played, lived in the open air, and did three conventional years of +adolescent education in one year without straining himself. He fished, +hunted, swam, exercised, and equipped himself for the university at the +same time. And he made no mistake. He knew that he did it because his +father's twenty millions had invested him with mastery. Money was a +tool. He did not over-rate it, nor under-rate it. He used it to buy +what he wanted. + +"The weirdest form of dissipation I ever heard," said Mr. Crockett, +holding up Dick's account for the year. "Sixteen thousand for +education, all itemized, including railroad fares, porters' tips, and +shot-gun cartridges for his teachers." + +"He passed the examinations just the same," quoth Mr. Slocum. + +"And in a year," growled Mr. Davidson. "My daughter's boy entered +Belmont at the same time, and, if he's lucky, it will be two years yet +before he enters the university." + +"Well, all I've got to say," proclaimed Mr. Crockett, "is that from now +on what that boy says in the matter of spending his money goes." + +"And now I'll have a snap," Dick told his guardians. "Here I am, neck +and neck again, and years ahead of them in knowledge of the world. Why, +I know things, good and bad, big and little, about men and women and +life that sometimes I almost doubt myself that they're true. But I know +them. + +"From now on, I'm not going to rush. I've caught up, and I'm going +through regular. All I have to do is to keep the speed of the classes, +and I'll be graduated when I'm twenty-one. From now on I'll need less +money for education--no more coaches, you know--and more money for a +good time." + +Mr. Davidson was suspicious. + +"What do you mean by a good time?" + +"Oh, I'm going in for the frats, for football, hold my own, you +know--and I'm interested in gasoline engines. I'm going to build the +first ocean-going gasoline yacht in the world--" + +"You'll blow yourself up," Mr. Crockett demurred. "It's a fool notion +all these cranks are rushing into over gasoline." + +"I'll make myself safe," Dick answered, "and that means experimenting, +and it means money, so keep me a good drawing account--same old +way--all four of us can draw." + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + + +Dick Forrest proved himself no prodigy at the university, save that he +cut more lectures the first year than any other student. The reason for +this was that he did not need the lectures he cut, and he knew it. His +coaches, while preparing him for the entrance examinations, had carried +him nearly through the first college year. Incidentally, he made the +Freshman team, a very scrub team, that was beaten by every high school +and academy it played against. + +But Dick did put in work that nobody saw. His collateral reading was +wide and deep, and when he went on his first summer cruise in the +ocean-going gasoline yacht he had built no gay young crowd accompanied +him. Instead, his guests, with their families, were professors of +literature, history, jurisprudence, and philosophy. It was long +remembered in the university as the "high-brow" cruise. The professors, +on their return, reported a most enjoyable time. Dick returned with a +greater comprehension of the general fields of the particular +professors than he could have gained in years at their class-lectures. +And time thus gained, enabled him to continue to cut lectures and to +devote more time to laboratory work. + +Nor did he miss having his good college time. College widows made love +to him, and college girls loved him, and he was indefatigable in his +dancing. He never cut a smoker, a beer bust, or a rush, and he toured +the Pacific Coast with the Banjo and Mandolin Club. + +And yet he was no prodigy. He was brilliant at nothing. Half a dozen of +his fellows could out-banjo and out-mandolin him. A dozen fellows were +adjudged better dancers than he. In football, and he gained the Varsity +in his Sophomore year, he was considered a solid and dependable player, +and that was all. It seemed never his luck to take the ball and go down +the length of the field while the Blue and Gold host tore itself and +the grandstand to pieces. But it was at the end of heart-breaking, +grueling slog in mud and rain, the score tied, the second half imminent +to its close, Stanford on the five-yard line, Berkeley's ball, with two +downs and three yards to gain--it was then that the Blue and Gold arose +and chanted its demand for Forrest to hit the center and hit it hard. + +He never achieved super-excellence at anything. Big Charley Everson +drank him down at the beer busts. Harrison Jackson, at hammer-throwing, +always exceeded his best by twenty feet. Carruthers out-pointed him at +boxing. Anson Burge could always put his shoulders to the mat, two out +of three, but always only by the hardest work. In English composition a +fifth of his class excelled him. Edlin, the Russian Jew, out-debated +him on the contention that property was robbery. Schultz and Debret +left him with the class behind in higher mathematics; and Otsuki, the +Japanese, was beyond all comparison with him in chemistry. + +But if Dick Forrest did not excel at anything, he failed in nothing. He +displayed no superlative strength, he betrayed no weakness nor +deficiency. As he told his guardians, who, by his unrelenting good +conduct had been led into dreaming some great career for him; as he +told them, when they asked what he wanted to become: + +"Nothing. Just all around. You see, I don't have to be a specialist. My +father arranged that for me when he left me his money. Besides, I +couldn't be a specialist if I wanted to. It isn't me." + +And thus so well-keyed was he, that he expressed clearly his key. He +had no flare for anything. He was that rare individual, normal, +average, balanced, all-around. + +When Mr. Davidson, in the presence of his fellow guardians, stated his +pleasure in that Dick had shown no wildness since he had settled down, +Dick replied: + +"Oh, I can hold myself when I want to." + +"Yes," said Mr. Slocum gravely. "It's the finest thing in the world +that you sowed your wild oats early and learned control." + +Dick looked at him curiously. + +"Why, that boyish adventure doesn't count," he said. "That wasn't +wildness. I haven't gone wild yet. But watch me when I start. Do you +know Kipling's 'Song of Diego Valdez'? Let me quote you a bit of it. +You see, Diego Valdez, like me, had good fortune. He rose so fast to be +High Admiral of Spain that he found no time to take the pleasure he had +merely tasted. He was lusty and husky, but he had no time, being too +busy rising. But always, he thought, he fooled himself with the +thought, that his lustiness and huskiness would last, and, after he +became High Admiral he could then have his pleasure. Always he +remembered: + + "'--comrades-- + Old playmates on new seas-- + When as we traded orpiment + Among the savages-- + A thousand leagues to south'ard + And thirty years removed-- + They knew not noble Valdez, + But me they knew and loved. + + "'Then they that found good liquor + They drank it not alone, + And they that found fair plunder, + They told us every one, + Behind our chosen islands + Or secret shoals between, + When, walty from far voyage, + We gathered to careen. + + "'There burned our breaming-fagots, + All pale along the shore: + There rose our worn pavilions-- + A sail above an oar: + As flashed each yearning anchor + Through mellow seas afire, + So swift our careless captains + Rowed each to his desire. + + "'Where lay our loosened harness? + Where turned our naked feet? + Whose tavern mid the palm-trees? + What quenchings of what heat? + Oh fountain in the desert! + Oh cistern in the waste! + Oh bread we ate in secret! + Oh cup we spilled in haste! + + "'The youth new-taught of longing, + The widow curbed and wan-- + The good wife proud at season, + And the maid aware of man; + All souls, unslaked, consuming, + Defrauded in delays, + Desire not more than quittance + Than I those forfeit days!' + +"Oh, get him, get him, you three oldsters, as I've got him! Get what he +saws next: + + "'I dreamed to wait my pleasure, + Unchanged my spring would bide: + Wherefore, to wait my pleasure, + I put my spring aside, + Till, first in face of Fortune, + And last in mazed disdain, + I made Diego Valdez + High Admiral of Spain!' + +"Listen to me, guardians!" Dick cried on, his face a flame of passion. +"Don't forget for one moment that I am anything but unslaked, +consuming. I am. I burn. But I hold myself. Don't think I am a dead one +because I am a darn nice, meritorious boy at college. I am young. I am +alive. I am all lusty and husky. But I make no mistake. I hold myself. +I don't start out now to blow up on the first lap. I am just getting +ready. I am going to have my time. I am not going to spill my cup in +haste. And in the end I am not going to lament as Diego Valdez did: + + "'There walks no wind 'neath heaven + Nor wave that shall restore + The old careening riot + And the clamorous, crowded shore-- + The fountain in the desert, + The cistern in the waste, + The bread we ate in secret, + The cup we spilled in haste.' + +"Listen, guardians! Do you know what it is to hit your man, to hit him +in hot blood--square to the jaw--and drop him cold? I want that. And I +want to love, and kiss, and risk, and play the lusty, husky fool. I +want to take my chance. I want my careening riot, and I want it while I +am young, but not while I am too young. And I'm going to have it. And +in the meantime I play the game at college, I hold myself, I equip +myself, so that when I turn loose I am going to have the best chance of +my best. Oh, believe me, I do not always sleep well of nights." + +"You mean?" queried Mr. Crockett. + +"Sure. That's just what I mean. I haven't gone wild yet, but just watch +me when I start." + +"And you will start when you graduate?" + +The remarkable youngster shook his head. + +"After I graduate I'm going to take at least a year of post-graduate +courses in the College of Agriculture. You see, I'm developing a +hobby--farming. I want to do something ... something constructive. My +father wasn't constructive to amount to anything. Neither were you +fellows. You struck a new land in pioneer days, and you picked up money +like a lot of sailors shaking out nuggets from the grass roots in a +virgin placer--" + +"My lad, I've some little experience in Californian farming," Mr. +Crockett interrupted in a hurt way. + +"Sure you have, but you weren't constructive. You were--well, facts are +facts--you were destructive. You were a bonanza farmer. What did you +do? You took forty thousand acres of the finest Sacramento Valley soil +and you grew wheat on it year after year. You never dreamed of +rotation. You burned your straw. You exhausted your humus. You plowed +four inches and put a plow-sole like a cement sidewalk just four inches +under the surface. You exhausted that film of four inches and now you +can't get your seed back. + +"You've destroyed. That's what my father did. They all did it. Well, +I'm going to take my father's money and construct. I'm going to take +worked-out wheat-land that I can buy as at a fire-sale, rip out the +plow-sole, and make it produce more in the end than it did when you +fellows first farmed it." + +It was at the end of his Junior year that Mr. Crockett again mentioned +Dick's threatened period of wildness. + +"Soon as I'm done with cow college," was his answer. "Then I'm going to +buy, and stock, and start a ranch that'll be a ranch. And then I'll set +out after my careening riot." + +"About how large a ranch will you start with?" Mr. Davidson asked. + +"Maybe fifty thousand acres, maybe five hundred thousand. It all +depends. I'm going to play unearned increment to the limit. People +haven't begun to come to California yet. Without a tap of my hand or a +turn over, fifteen years from now land that I can buy for ten dollars +an acre will be worth fifty, and what I can buy for fifty will be worth +five hundred." + +"A half million acres at ten dollars an acre means five million +dollars," Mr. Crockett warned gravely. + +"And at fifty it means twenty-five million," Dick laughed. + +But his guardians never believed in the wild oats pilgrimage he +threatened. He might waste his fortune on new-fangled farming, but to +go literally wild after such years of self-restraint was an unthinkable +thing. + +Dick took his sheepskin with small honor. He was twenty-eighth in his +class, and he had not set the college world afire. His most notable +achievement had been his resistance and bafflement of many nice girls +and of the mothers of many nice girls. Next, after that, he had +signalized his Senior year by captaining the Varsity to its first +victory over Stanford in five years. It was in the day prior to +large-salaried football coaches, when individual play meant much; but +he hammered team-work and the sacrifice of the individual into his +team, so that on Thanksgiving Day, over a vastly more brilliant eleven, +the Blue and Gold was able to serpentine its triumph down Market Street +in San Francisco. + +In his post-graduate year in cow college, Dick devoted himself to +laboratory work and cut all lectures. In fact, he hired his own +lecturers, and spent a sizable fortune on them in mere traveling +expenses over California. Jacques Ribot, esteemed one of the greatest +world authorities on agricultural chemistry, who had been seduced from +his two thousand a year in France by the six thousand offered by the +University of California, who had been seduced to Hawaii by the ten +thousand of the sugar planters, Dick Forrest seduced with fifteen +thousand and the more delectable temperate climate of California on a +five years' contract. + +Messrs. Crockett, Slocum, and Davidson threw up their hands in horror +and knew that this was the wild career Dick Forrest had forecast. + +But this was only one of Dick Forrest's similar dissipations. He stole +from the Federal Government, at a prodigal increase of salary, its star +specialist in livestock breeding, and by similar misconduct he robbed +the University of Nebraska of its greatest milch cow professor, and +broke the heart of the Dean of the College of Agriculture of the +University of California by appropriating Professor Nirdenhammer, the +wizard of farm management. + +"Cheap at the price, cheap at the price," Dick explained to his +guardians. "Wouldn't you rather see me spend my money in buying +professors than in buying race horses and actresses? Besides, the +trouble with you fellows is that you don't know the game of buying +brains. I do. That's my specialty. I'm going to make money out of them, +and, better than that, I'm going to make a dozen blades of grass grow +where you fellows didn't leave room for half a blade in the soil you +gutted." + +So it can be understood how his guardians could not believe in his +promise of wild career, of kissing and risking, and hitting men hot on +the jaw. "One year more," he warned, while he delved in agricultural +chemistry, soil analysis, farm management, and traveled California with +his corps of high-salaried experts. And his guardians could only +apprehend a swift and wide dispersal of the Forrest millions when Dick +attained his majority, took charge of the totality of his fortune, and +actually embarked on his agricultural folly. + +The day he was twenty-one the purchase of his principality, that +extended west from the Sacramento River to the mountain tops, was +consummated. + +"An incredible price," said Mr. Crockett. + +"Incredibly cheap," said Dick. "You ought to see my soil reports. You +ought to see my water-reports. And you ought to hear me sing. Listen, +guardians, to a song that is a true song. I am the singer and the song." + +Whereupon, in the queer quavering falsetto that is the sense of song to +the North American Indian, the Eskimo, and the Mongol, Dick sang: + + "Hu'-tim yo'-kim koi-o-di'! + Wi'-hi yan'-ning koi-o-di'! + Lo'-whi yan'-ning koi-o-di'! + Yo-ho' Nai-ni', hal-u'-dom yo nai, yo-ho' nai-nim'!" + +"The music is my own," he murmured apologetically, "the way I think it +ought to have sounded. You see, no man lives who ever heard it sung. +The Nishinam got it from the Maidu, who got it from the Konkau, who +made it. But the Nishinam and the Maidu and the Konkau are gone. Their +last rancheria is not. You plowed it under, Mr. Crockett, with you +bonanza gang-plowing, plow-soling farming. And I got the song from a +certain ethnological report, volume three, of the United States Pacific +Coast Geographical and Geological Survey. Red Cloud, who was formed out +of the sky, first sang this song to the stars and the mountain flowers +in the morning of the world. I shall now sing it for you in English." + +And again, in Indian falsetto, ringing with triumph, vernal and +bursting, slapping his thighs and stamping his feet to the accent, Dick +sang: + + "The acorns come down from heaven! + I plant the short acorns in the valley! + I plant the long acorns in the valley! + I sprout, I, the black-oak acorn, sprout, I sprout!" + +Dick Forrest's name began to appear in the newspapers with appalling +frequency. He leaped to instant fame by being the first man in +California who paid ten thousand dollars for a single bull. His +livestock specialist, whom he had filched from the Federal Government, +in England outbid the Rothschilds' Shire farm for Hillcrest Chieftain, +quickly to be known as Forrest's Folly, paying for that kingly animal +no less than five thousand guineas. + +"Let them laugh," Dick told his ex-guardians. "I am importing forty +Shire mares. I'll write off half his price the first twelvemonth. He +will be the sire and grandsire of many sons and grandsons for which the +Californians will fall over themselves to buy of me at from three to +five thousand dollars a clatter." + +Dick Forrest was guilty of many similar follies in those first months +of his majority. But the most unthinkable folly of all was, after he +had sunk millions into his original folly, that he turned it over to +his experts personally to develop along the general broad lines laid +down by him, placed checks upon them that they might not go +catastrophically wrong, bought a ticket in a passenger brig to Tahiti, +and went away to run wild. + +Occasionally his guardians heard from him. At one time he was owner and +master of a four-masted steel sailing ship that carried the English +flag and coals from Newcastle. They knew that much, because they had +been called upon for the purchase price, because they read Dick's name +in the papers as master when his ship rescued the passengers of the +ill-fated _Orion_, and because they collected the insurance when Dick's +ship was lost with most of all hands in the great Fiji hurricane. In +1896, he was in the Klondike; in 1897, he was in Kamchatka and +scurvy-stricken; and, next, he erupted with the American flag into the +Philippines. Once, although they could never learn how nor why, he was +owner and master of a crazy tramp steamer, long since rejected by +Lloyd's, which sailed under the aegis of Siam. + +From time to time business correspondence compelled them to hear from +him from various purple ports of the purple seas. Once, they had to +bring the entire political pressure of the Pacific Coast to bear upon +Washington in order to get him out of a scrape in Russia, of which +affair not one line appeared in the daily press, but which affair was +secretly provocative of ticklish joy and delight in all the +chancellories of Europe. + +Incidentally, they knew that he lay wounded in Mafeking; that he pulled +through a bout with yellow fever in Guayaquil; and that he stood trial +for brutality on the high seas in New York City. Thrice they read in +the press dispatches that he was dead: once, in battle, in Mexico; and +twice, executed, in Venezuela. After such false flutterings, his +guardians refused longer to be thrilled when he crossed the Yellow Sea +in a sampan, was "rumored" to have died of beri-beri, was captured from +the Russians by the Japanese at Mukden, and endured military +imprisonment in Japan. + +The one thrill of which they were still capable, was when, true to +promise, thirty years of age, his wild oats sown, he returned to +California with a wife to whom, as he announced, he had been married +several years, and whom all his three guardians found they knew. Mr. +Slocum had dropped eight hundred thousand along with the totality of +her father's fortune in the final catastrophe at the Los Cocos mine in +Chihuahua when the United States demonetized silver. Mr. Davidson had +pulled a million out of the Last Stake along with her father when he +pulled eight millions from that sunken, man-resurrected, river bed in +Amador County. Mr. Crockett, a youth at the time, had "spooned" the +Merced bottom with her father in the late 'fifties, had stood up best +man with him at Stockton when he married her mother, and, at Grant's +Pass, had played poker with him and with the then Lieutenant U.S. Grant +when all the little the western world knew of that young lieutenant was +that he was a good Indian fighter but a poor poker player. + +And Dick Forrest had married the daughter of Philip Desten! It was not +a case of wishing Dick luck. It was a case of garrulous insistence on +the fact that he did not know how lucky he was. His guardians forgave +him all his wildness. He had made good. At last he had performed a +purely rational act. Better; it was a stroke of genius. Paula Desten! +Philip Desten's daughter! The Desten blood! The Destens and the +Forrests! It was enough. The three aged comrades of Forrest and Desten +of the old Gold Days, of the two who had played and passed on, were +even severe with Dick. They warned him of the extreme value of his +treasure, of the sacred duty such wedlock imposed on him, of all the +traditions and virtues of the Desten and Forrest blood, until Dick +laughed and broke in with the disconcerting statement that they were +talking like a bunch of fanciers or eugenics cranks--which was +precisely what they were talking like, although they did not care to be +told so crassly. + +At any rate, the simple fact that he had married a Desten made them nod +unqualified approbation when he showed them the plans and building +estimates of the Big House. Thanks to Paula Desten, for once they were +agreed that he was spending wisely and well. As for his farming, it was +incontestible that the Harvest Group was unfalteringly producing, and +he might be allowed his hobbies. Nevertheless, as Mr. Slocum put it: +"Twenty-five thousand dollars for a mere work-horse stallion is a +madness. Work-horses are work-horses; now had it been running stock...." + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + + +While Dick Forrest scanned the pamphlet on hog cholera issued by the +State of Iowa, through his open windows, across the wide court, began +to come sounds of the awakening of the girl who laughed from the wooden +frame by his bed and who had left on the floor of his sleeping porch, +not so many hours before, the rosy, filmy, lacy, boudoir cap so +circumspectly rescued by Oh My. + +Dick heard her voice, for she awoke, like a bird, with song. He heard +her trilling, in and out through open windows, all down the long wing +that was hers. And he heard her singing in the patio garden, where, +also, she desisted long enough to quarrel with her Airedale and scold +the collie pup unholily attracted by the red-orange, divers-finned, and +many-tailed Japanese goldfish in the fountain basin. + +He was aware of pleasure that she was awake. It was a pleasure that +never staled. Always, up himself for hours, he had a sense that the Big +House was not really awake until he heard Paula's morning song across +the patio. + +But having tasted the pleasure of knowing her to be awake, Dick, as +usual, forgot her in his own affairs. She went out of his consciousness +as he became absorbed again in the Iowa statistics on hog cholera. + +"Good morning, Merry Gentleman," was the next he heard, always adorable +music in his ears; and Paula flowed in upon him, all softness of +morning kimono and stayless body, as her arm passed around his neck and +she perched, half in his arms, on one accommodating knee of his. And he +pressed her, and advertised his awareness of her existence and +nearness, although his eyes lingered a full half minute longer on the +totals of results of Professor Kenealy's hog inoculations on Simon +Jones' farm at Washington, Iowa. + +"My!" she protested. "You are too fortunate. You are sated with riches. +Here is your Lady Boy, your 'little haughty moon,' and you haven't even +said, 'Good morning, Little Lady Boy, was your sleep sweet and gentle?'" + +And Dick Forrest forsook the statistical columns of Professor Kenealy's +inoculations, pressed his wife closer, kissed her, but with insistent +right fore-finger maintained his place in the pages of the pamphlet. + +Nevertheless, the very terms of her "reproof prevented him from asking +what he should have asked--the prosperity of her night since the +boudoir cap had been left upon his sleeping porch. He shut the pamphlet +on his right fore-finger, at the place he intended to resume, and added +his right arm to his left about her. + +"Oh!" she cried. "Oh! Oh! Listen!" + +From without came the flute-calls of quail. She quivered against him +with the joy she took in the mellow-sweet notes. + +"The coveys are breaking up," he said. + +"It means spring," Paula cried. + +"And the sign that good weather has come." + +"And love!" + +"And nest-building and egg-laying," Dick laughed. "Never has the world +seemed more fecund than this morning. Lady Isleton is farrowed of +eleven. The angoras were brought down this morning for the kidding. You +should have seen them. And the wild canaries have been discussing +matrimony in the patio for hours. I think some free lover is trying to +break up their monogamic heaven with modern love-theories. It's a +wonder you slept through the discussion. Listen! There they go now. Is +that applause? Or is it a riot?" + +Arose a thin twittering, like elfin pipings, with sharp pitches and +excited shrillnesses, to which Dick and Paula lent delighted ears, +till, suddenly, with the abruptness of the trump of doom, all the +microphonic chorus of the tiny golden lovers was swept away, +obliterated, in a Gargantuan blast of sound--no less wild, no less +musical, no less passionate with love, but immense, dominant, +compelling by very vastitude of volume. + +The eager eyes of the man and woman sought instantly the channel past +open French windows and the screen of the sleeping porch to the road +through the lilacs, while they waited breathlessly for the great +stallion to appear who trumpeted his love-call before him. Again, +unseen, he trumpeted, and Dick said: + +"I will sing you a song, my haughty moon. It is not my song. It is the +Mountain Lad's. It is what he nickers. Listen! He sings it again. This +is what he says: 'Hear me! I am Eros. I stamp upon the hills. I fill +the wide valleys. The mares hear me, and startle, in quiet pastures; +for they know me. The grass grows rich and richer, the land is filled +with fatness, and the sap is in the trees. It is the spring. The spring +is mine. I am monarch of my kingdom of the spring. The mares remember +my voice. They know me aforetime through their mothers before them. +Hear me! I am Eros. I stamp upon the hills, and the wide valleys are my +heralds, echoing the sound of my approach.'" + +And Paula pressed closer to her husband, and was pressed, as her lips +touched his forehead, and as the pair of them, gazing at the empty road +among the lilacs, saw it filled with the eruptive vision of Mountain +Lad, majestic and mighty, the gnat-creature of a man upon his back +absurdly small; his eyes wild and desirous, with the blue sheen that +surfaces the eyes of stallions; his mouth, flecked with the froth and +fret of high spirit, now brushed to burnished knees of impatience, now +tossed skyward to utterance of that vast, compelling call that shook +the air. + +Almost as an echo, from afar off, came a thin-sweet answering whinney. + +"It is the Fotherington Princess," Paula breathed softly. + +Again Mountain Lad trumpeted his call, and Dick chanted: + +"Hear me! I am Eros! I stamp upon the hills!" + +And almost, for a flash of an instant, circled soft and close in his +arms, Paula knew resentment of her husband's admiration for the +splendid beast. And the next instant resentment vanished, and, in +acknowledgment of due debt, she cried gaily: + +"And now, Red Cloud! the Song of the Acorn!" Dick glanced half absently +to her from the pamphlet folded on his finger, and then, with equal +pitch of gaiety, sang: + + "The acorns come down from heaven! + I plant the short acorns in the valley! + I plant the long acorns in the valley! + I sprout, I, the black-oak acorn, sprout, I sprout!" + +She had impressed herself very close against him during his moment of +chanting, but, in the first moments that succeeded she felt the +restless movement of the hand that held the finger-marked hog-pamphlet +and caught the swift though involuntary flash of his eye to the clock +on his desk that marked 11:25. Again she tried to hold him, although, +with equal involuntariness, her attempt was made in mild terms of +resentment. + +"You are a strange and wonderful Red Cloud," she said slowly. +"Sometimes almost am I convinced that you are utterly Red Cloud, +planting your acorns and singing your savage joy of the planting. And, +sometimes, almost you are to me the ultramodern man, the last word of +the two-legged, male human that finds Trojan adventures in sieges of +statistics, and, armed with test tubes and hypodermics, engages in +gladiatorial contests with weird microorganisms. Almost, at times, it +seems you should wear glasses and be bald-headed; almost, it seems...." + +"That I have no right of vigor to possess an armful of girl," he +completed for her, drawing her still closer. "That I am a silly +scientific brute who doesn't merit his 'vain little breath of sweet +rose-colored dust.' Well, listen, I have a plan. In a few days...." + +But his plan died in birth, for, at their backs, came a discreet cough +of warning, and, both heads turning as one they saw Bonbright, the +assistant secretary, with a sheaf of notes on yellow sheets in his hand. + +"Four telegrams," he murmured apologetically. "Mr. Blake is confident +that two of them are very important. One of them concerns that Chile +shipment of bulls...." + +And Paula, slowly drawing away from her husband and rising to her feet, +could feel him slipping from her toward his tables of statistics, bills +of lading, and secretaries, foremen, and managers. + +"Oh, Paula," Dick called, as she was fading through the doorway; "I've +christened the last boy--he's to be known as 'Oh Ho.' How do you like +it?" + +Her reply began with a hint of forlornness that vanished with her +smile, as she warned: + +"You _will_ play ducks and drakes with the house-boys' names." + +"I never do it with pedigreed stock," he assured her with a solemnity +belied by the challenging twinkle in his eyes. + +"I didn't mean that," was her retort. "I meant that you were exhausting +the possibilities of the language. Before long you'll have to be +calling them Oh Bel, Oh Hell, and Oh Go to Hell. Your 'Oh' was a +mistake. You should have started with 'Red.' Then you could have had +Red Bull, Red Horse, Red Dog, Red Frog, Red Fern--and, and all the rest +of the reds." + +She mingled her laughter with his, as she vanished, and, the next +moment, the telegram before him, he was immersed in the details of the +shipment, at two hundred and fifty dollars each, F. O. B., of three +hundred registered yearling bulls to the beef ranges of Chile. Even so, +vaguely, with vague pleasure, he heard Paula sing her way back across +the patio to her long wing of house; though he was unaware that her +voice was a trifle, just the merest trifle, subdued. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + + +Five minutes after Paula had left him, punctual to the second, the four +telegrams disposed of, Dick was getting into a ranch motor car, along +with Thayer, the Idaho buyer, and Naismith, the special correspondent +for the _Breeders' Gazette_. Wardman, the sheep manager, joined them at +the corrals where several thousand young Shropshire rams had been +assembled for inspection. + +There was little need for conversation. Thayer was distinctly +disappointed in this, for he felt that the purchase of ten carloads of +such expensive creatures was momentous enough to merit much +conversation. + +"They speak for themselves," Dick had assured him, and turned aside to +give data to Naismith for his impending article on Shropshires in +California and the Northwest. + +"I wouldn't advise you to bother to select them," Dick told Thayer ten +minutes later. "The average is all top. You could spend a week picking +your ten carloads and have no higher grade than if you had taken the +first to hand." + +This cool assumption that the sale was already consummated so perturbed +Thayer, that, along with the sure knowledge that he had never seen so +high a quality of rams, he was nettled into changing his order to +twenty carloads. + +As he told Naismith, after they had regained the Big House and as they +chalked their cues to finish the interrupted game: + +"It's my first visit to Forrest's. He's a wizard. I've been buying in +the East and importing. But those Shropshires won my judgment. You +noticed I doubled my order. Those Idaho buyers will be wild for them. I +only had buying orders straight for six carloads, and contingent on my +judgment for two carloads more; but if every buyer doesn't double his +order, straight and contingent, when he sees them rams, and if there +isn't a stampede for what's left, I don't know sheep. They're the +goods. If they don't jump up the sheep game of Idaho ... well, then +Forrest's no breeder and I'm no buyer, that's all." + +As the warning gong for lunch rang out--a huge bronze gong from Korea +that was never struck until it was first indubitably ascertained that +Paula was awake--Dick joined the young people at the goldfish fountain +in the big patio. Bert Wainwright, variously advised and commanded by +his sister, Rita, and by Paula and her sisters, Lute and Ernestine, was +striving with a dip-net to catch a particularly gorgeous flower of a +fish whose size and color and multiplicity of fins and tails had led +Paula to decide to segregate him for the special breeding tank in the +fountain of her own secret patio. Amid high excitement, and much +squealing and laughter, the deed was accomplished, the big fish +deposited in a can and carried away by the waiting Italian gardener. + +"And what have you to say for yourself?" Ernestine challenged, as Dick +joined them. + +"Nothing," he answered sadly. "The ranch is depleted. Three hundred +beautiful young bulls depart to-morrow for South America, and +Thayer--you met him last night--is taking twenty carloads of rams. All +I can say is that my congratulations are extended to Idaho and Chile." + +"Plant more acorns," Paula laughed, her arms about her sisters, the +three of them smilingly expectant of an inevitable antic. + +"Oh, Dick, sing your acorn song," Lute begged. + +He shook his head solemnly. + +"I've got a better one. It's purest orthodoxy. It's got Red Cloud and +his acorn song skinned to death. Listen! This is the song of the little +East-sider, on her first trip to the country under the auspices of her +Sunday School. She's quite young. Pay particular attention to her lisp." + +And then Dick chanted, lisping: + + "The goldfish thwimmeth in the bowl, + The robin thiths upon the tree; + What maketh them thit so eathily? + Who stuckth the fur upon their breasths? + God! God! He done it!" + +"Cribbed," was Ernestine's judgment, as the laughter died away. + +"Sure," Dick agreed. "I got it from the _Rancher and Stockman_, that +got it from the _Swine Breeders' Journal_, that got it from the +_Western Advocate_, that got it from _Public Opinion_, that got it, +undoubtedly, from the little girl herself, or, rather from her Sunday +School teacher. For that matter I am convinced it was first printed in +_Our Dumb Animals_." + +The bronze gong rang out its second call, and Paula, one arm around +Dick, the other around Rita, led the way into the house, while, +bringing up the rear, Bert Wainwright showed Lute Ernestine a new tango +step. + +"One thing, Thayer," Dick said in an aside, after releasing himself +from the girls, as they jostled in confusion where they met Thayer and +Naismith at the head of the stairway leading down to the dining room. +"Before you leave us, cast your eyes over those Merinos. I really have +to brag about them, and American sheepmen will have to come to them. Of +course, started with imported stock, but I've made a California strain +that will make the French breeders sit up. See Wardman and take your +pick. Get Naismith to look them over with you. Stick half a dozen of +them in your train-load, with my compliments, and let your Idaho +sheepmen get a line on them." + +They seated at a table, capable of indefinite extension, in a long, low +dining room that was a replica of the hacienda dining rooms of the +Mexican land-kings of old California. The floor was of large brown +tiles, the beamed ceiling and the walls were whitewashed, and the huge, +undecorated, cement fireplace was an achievement in massiveness and +simplicity. Greenery and blooms nodded from without the deep-embrasured +windows, and the room expressed the sense of cleanness, chastity, and +coolness. + +On the walls, but not crowded, were a number of canvases--most +ambitious of all, in the setting of honor, all in sad grays, a twilight +Mexican scene by Xavier Martinez, of a peon, with a crooked-stick plow +and two bullocks, turning a melancholy furrow across the foreground of +a sad, illimitable, Mexican plain. There were brighter pictures, of +early Mexican-Californian life, a pastel of twilight eucalyptus with a +sunset-tipped mountain beyond, by Reimers, a moonlight by Peters, and a +Griffin stubble-field across which gleamed and smoldered California +summer hills of tawny brown and purple-misted, wooded canyons. + +"Say," Thayer muttered in an undertone across to Naismith, while Dick +and the girls were in the thick of exclamatory and giggling banter, +"here's some stuff for that article of yours, if you touch upon the Big +House. I've seen the servants' dining room. Forty head sit down to it +every meal, including gardeners, chauffeurs, and outside help. It's a +boarding house in itself. Some head, some system, take it from me. That +Chiney boy, Oh Joy, is a wooz. He's housekeeper, or manager, of the +whole shebang, or whatever you want to call his job--and, say, it runs +that smooth you can't hear it." + +"Forrest's the real wooz," Naismith nodded. "He's the brains that picks +brains. He could run an army, a campaign, a government, or even a +three-ring circus." + +"Which last is some compliment," Thayer concurred heartily. + +"Oh, Paula," Dick said across to his wife. "I just got word that Graham +arrives to-morrow morning. Better tell Oh Joy to put him in the +watch-tower. It's man-size quarters, and it's possible he may carry out +his threat and work on his book." + +"Graham?--Graham?" Paula queried aloud of her memory. "Do I know him?" + +"You met him once two years ago, in Santiago, at the Cafe Venus. He had +dinner with us." + +"Oh, one of those naval officers?" + +Dick shook his head. + +"The civilian. Don't you remember that big blond fellow--you talked +music with him for half an hour while Captain Joyce talked our heads +off to prove that the United States should clean Mexico up and out with +the mailed fist." + +"Oh, to be sure," Paula vaguely recollected. "He'd met you somewhere +before... South Africa, wasn't it? Or the Philippines?" + +"That's the chap. South Africa, it was. Evan Graham. Next time we met +was on the _Times_ dispatch boat on the Yellow Sea. And we crossed +trails a dozen times after that, without meeting, until that night in +the Cafe Venus. + +"Heavens--he left Bora-Bora, going east, two days before I dropped +anchor bound west on my way to Samoa. I came out of Apia, with letters +for him from the American consul, the day before he came in. We missed +each other by three days at Levuka--I was sailing the _Wild Duck_ then. +He pulled out of Suva as guest on a British cruiser. Sir Everard Im +Thurm, British High Commissioner of the South Seas, gave me more +letters for Graham. I missed him at Port Resolution and at Vila in the +New Hebrides. The cruiser was junketing, you see. I beat her in and out +of the Santa Cruz Group. It was the same thing in the Solomons. The +cruiser, after shelling the cannibal villages at Langa-Langa, steamed +out in the morning. I sailed in that afternoon. I never did deliver +those letters in person, and the next time I laid eyes on him was at +the Cafe Venus two years ago." + +"But who about him, and what about him?" Paula queried. "And what's the +book?" + +"Well, first of all, beginning at the end, he's broke--that is, for +him, he's broke. He's got an income of several thousand a year left, +but all that his father left him is gone. No; he didn't blow it. He got +in deep, and the 'silent panic' several years ago just about cleaned +him. But he doesn't whimper. + +"He's good stuff, old American stock, a Yale man. The book--he expects +to make a bit on it--covers last year's trip across South America, west +coast to east coast. It was largely new ground. The Brazilian +government voluntarily voted him a honorarium of ten thousand dollars +for the information he brought out concerning unexplored portions of +Brazil. Oh, he's a man, all man. He delivers the goods. You know the +type--clean, big, strong, simple; been everywhere, seen everything, +knows most of a lot of things, straight, square, looks you in the +eyes--well, in short, a man's man." + +Ernestine clapped her hands, flung a tantalizing, man-challenging, +man-conquering glance at Bert Wainwright, and exclaimed: "And he comes +tomorrow!" + +Dick shook his head reprovingly. + +"Oh, nothing in that direction, Ernestine. Just as nice girls as you +have tried to hook Evan Graham before now. And, between ourselves, I +couldn't blame them. But he's had good wind and fast legs, and they've +always failed to run him down or get him into a corner, where, dazed +and breathless, he's mechanically muttered 'Yes' to certain +interrogatories and come out of the trance to find himself, roped, +thrown, branded, and married. Forget him, Ernestine. Stick by golden +youth and let it drop its golden apples. Pick them up, and golden youth +with them, making a noise like stupid failure all the time you are +snaring swift-legged youth. But Graham's out of the running. He's old +like me--just about the same age--and, like me, he's run a lot of those +queer races. He knows how to make a get-away. He's been cut by barbed +wire, nose-twitched, neck-burnt, cinched to a fare-you-well, and he +remains subdued but uncatchable. He doesn't care for young things. In +fact, you may charge him with being wobbly, but I plead guilty, by +proxy, that he is merely old, hard bitten, and very wise." + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + + +"Where's my Boy in Breeches?" Dick shouted, stamping with jingling +spurs through the Big House in quest of its Little Lady. + +He came to the door that gave entrance to her long wing. It was a door +without a knob, a huge panel of wood in a wood-paneled wall. But Dick +shared the secret of the hidden spring with his wife, pressed the +spring, and the door swung wide. + +"Where's my Boy in Breeches?" he called and stamped down the length of +her quarters. + +A glance into the bathroom, with its sunken Roman bath and descending +marble steps, was fruitless, as were the glances he sent into Paula's +wardrobe room and dressing room. He passed the short, broad stairway +that led to her empty window-seat divan in what she called her Juliet +Tower, and thrilled at sight of an orderly disarray of filmy, pretty, +lacy woman's things that he knew she had spread out for her own +sensuous delight of contemplation. He fetched up for a moment at a +drawing easel, his reiterant cry checked on his lips, and threw a laugh +of recognition and appreciation at the sketch, just outlined, of an +awkward, big-boned, knobby, weanling colt caught in the act of madly +whinneying for its mother. + +"Where's my Boy in Breeches?" he shouted before him, out to the +sleeping porch; and found only a demure, brow-troubled Chinese woman of +thirty, who smiled self-effacing embarrassment into his eyes. + +This was Paula's maid, Oh Dear, so named by Dick, many years before, +because of a certain solicitous contraction of her delicate brows that +made her appear as if ever on the verge of saying, "Oh dear!" In fact, +Dick had taken her, as a child almost, for Paula's service, from a +fishing village on the Yellow Sea where her widow-mother earned as much +as four dollars in a prosperous year at making nets for the fishermen. +Oh Dear's first service for Paula had been aboard the three-topmast +schooner, _All Away_, at the same time that Oh Joy, cabin-boy, had +begun to demonstrate the efficiency that enabled him, through the +years, to rise to the majordomoship of the Big House. + +"Where is your mistress, Oh Dear?" Dick asked. + +Oh Dear shrank away in an agony of bashfulness. + +Dick waited. + +"She maybe with 'm young ladies--I don't know," Oh Dear stammered; and +Dick, in very mercy, swung away on his heel. + +"Where's my Boy in Breeches?" he shouted, as he stamped out under the +porte cochere just as a ranch limousine swung around the curve among +the lilacs. + +"I'll be hanged if I know," a tall, blond man in a light summer suit +responded from the car; and the next moment Dick Forrest and Evan +Graham were shaking hands. + +Oh My and Oh Ho carried in the hand baggage, and Dick accompanied his +guest to the watch tower quarters. + +"You'll have to get used to us, old man," Dick was explaining. "We run +the ranch like clockwork, and the servants are wonders; but we allow +ourselves all sorts of loosenesses. If you'd arrived two minutes later +there'd have been no one to welcome you but the Chinese boys. I was +just going for a ride, and Paula--Mrs. Forrest--has disappeared." + +The two men were almost of a size, Graham topping his host by perhaps +an inch, but losing that inch in the comparative breadth of shoulders +and depth of chest. Graham was, if anything, a clearer blond than +Forrest, although both were equally gray of eye, equally clear in the +whites of the eyes, and equally and precisely similarly bronzed by sun +and weather-beat. Graham's features were in a slightly larger mold; his +eyes were a trifle longer, although this was lost again by a heavier +droop of lids. His nose hinted that it was a shade straighter as well +as larger than Dick's, and his lips were a shade thicker, a shade +redder, a shade more bowed with fulsome-ness. + +Forrest's hair was light brown to chestnut, while Graham's carried a +whispering advertisement that it would have been almost golden in its +silk had it not been burned almost to sandiness by the sun. The cheeks +of both were high-boned, although the hollows under Forrest's +cheek-bones were more pronounced. Both noses were large-nostriled and +sensitive. And both mouths, while generously proportioned, carried the +impression of girlish sweetness and chastity along with the muscles +that could draw the lips to the firmness and harshness that would not +give the lie to the square, uncleft chins beneath. + +But the inch more in height and the inch less in chest-girth gave Evan +Graham a grace of body and carriage that Dick Forrest did not possess. +In this particular of build, each served well as a foil to the other. +Graham was all light and delight, with a hint--but the slightest of +hints--of Prince Charming. Forrest's seemed a more efficient and +formidable organism, more dangerous to other life, stouter-gripped on +its own life. + +Forrest threw a glance at his wrist watch as he talked, but in that +glance, without pause or fumble of focus, with swift certainty of +correlation, he read the dial. + +"Eleven-thirty," he said. "Come along at once, Graham. We don't eat +till twelve-thirty. I am sending out a shipment of bulls, three hundred +of them, and I'm downright proud of them. You simply must see them. +Never mind your riding togs. Oh Ho--fetch a pair of my leggings. You, +Oh Joy, order Altadena saddled.--What saddle do you prefer, Graham?" + +"Oh, anything, old man." + +"English?--Australian?--McClellan?--Mexican?" Dick insisted. + +"McClellan, if it's no trouble," Graham surrendered. + + They sat their horses by the side of the road and watched the last of +the herd beginning its long journey to Chili disappear around the bend. + +"I see what you're doing--it's great," Graham said with sparkling eyes. +"I've fooled some myself with the critters, when I was a youngster, +down in the Argentine. If I'd had beef-blood like that to build on, I +mightn't have taken the cropper I did." + +"But that was before alfalfa and artesian wells," Dick smoothed for +him. "The time wasn't ripe for the Shorthorn. Only scrubs could survive +the droughts. They were strong in staying powers but light on the +scales. And refrigerator steamships hadn't been invented. That's what +revolutionized the game down there." + +"Besides, I was a mere youngster," Graham added. "Though that meant +nothing much. There was a young German tackled it at the same time I +did, with a tenth of my capital. He hung it out, lean years, dry years, +and all. He's rated in seven figures now." + +They turned their horses back for the Big House. Dick flirted his wrist +to see his watch. + +"Lots of time," he assured his guest. "I'm glad you saw those +yearlings. There was one reason why that young German stuck it out. He +had to. You had your father's money to fall back on, and, I imagine not +only that your feet itched, but that your chief weakness lay in that +you could afford to solace the itching." + + "Over there are the fish ponds," Dick said, indicating with a nod of +his head to the right an invisible area beyond the lilacs. "You'll have +plenty of opportunity to catch a mess of trout, or bass, or even +catfish. You see, I'm a miser. I love to make things work. There may be +a justification for the eight-hour labor day, but I make the work-day +of water just twenty-four hours' long. The ponds are in series, +according to the nature of the fish. But the water starts working up in +the mountains. It irrigates a score of mountain meadows before it makes +the plunge and is clarified to crystal clearness in the next few rugged +miles; and at the plunge from the highlands it generates half the power +and all the lighting used on the ranch. Then it sub-irrigates lower +levels, flows in here to the fish ponds, and runs out and irrigates +miles of alfalfa farther on. And, believe me, if by that time it hadn't +reached the flat of the Sacramento, I'd be pumping out the drainage for +more irrigation." + +"Man, man," Graham laughed, "you could make a poem on the wonder of +water. I've met fire-worshipers, but you're the first real +water-worshiper I've ever encountered. And you're no desert-dweller, +either. You live in a land of water--pardon the bull--but, as I was +saying..." + +Graham never completed his thought. From the right, not far away, came +the unmistakable ring of shod hoofs on concrete, followed by a mighty +splash and an outburst of women's cries and laughter. Quickly the cries +turned to alarm, accompanied by the sounds of a prodigious splashing +and floundering as of some huge, drowning beast. Dick bent his head and +leaped his horse through the lilacs, Graham, on Altadena, followed at +his heels. They emerged in a blaze of sunshine, on an open space among +the trees, and Graham came upon as unexpected a picture as he had ever +chanced upon in his life. + +Tree-surrounded, the heart of the open space was a tank, four-sided of +concrete. The upper end of the tank, full width, was a broad spillway, +sheened with an inch of smooth-slipping water. The sides were +perpendicular. The lower end, roughly corrugated, sloped out gently to +solid footing. Here, in distress that was consternation, and in fear +that was panic, excitedly bobbed up and down a cowboy in bearskin +chaps, vacuously repeating the exclamation, "Oh God! Oh God!"--the +first division of it rising in inflection, the second division +inflected fallingly with despair. On the edge of the farther side, +facing him, in bathing suits, legs dangling toward the water, sat three +terrified nymphs. + +And in the tank, the center of the picture, a great horse, bright bay +and wet and ruddy satin, vertical in the water, struck upward and +outward into the free air with huge fore-hoofs steel-gleaming in the +wet and sun, while on its back, slipping and clinging, was the white +form of what Graham took at first to be some glorious youth. Not until +the stallion, sinking, emerged again by means of the powerful beat of +his legs and hoofs, did Graham realize that it was a woman who rode +him--a woman as white as the white silken slip of a bathing suit that +molded to her form like a marble-carven veiling of drapery. As marble +was her back, save that the fine delicate muscles moved and crept under +the silken suit as she strove to keep her head above water. Her slim +round arms were twined in yards of half-drowned stallion-mane, while +her white round knees slipped on the sleek, wet, satin pads of the +great horse's straining shoulder muscles. The white toes of her dug for +a grip into the smooth sides of the animal, vainly seeking a hold on +the ribs beneath. + +In a breath, or the half of a breath, Graham saw the whole breathless +situation, realized that the white wonderful creature was a woman, and +sensed the smallness and daintiness of her despite her gladiatorial +struggles. She reminded him of some Dresden china figure set absurdly +small and light and strangely on the drowning back of a titanic beast. +So dwarfed was she by the bulk of the stallion that she was a midget, +or a tiny fairy from fairyland come true. + +As she pressed her cheek against the great arching neck, her +golden-brown hair, wet from being under, flowing and tangled, seemed +tangled in the black mane of the stallion. But it was her face that +smote Graham most of all. It was a boy's face; it was a woman's face; +it was serious and at the same time amused, expressing the pleasure it +found woven with the peril. It was a white woman's face--and modern; +and yet, to Graham, it was all-pagan. This was not a creature and a +situation one happened upon in the twentieth century. It was straight +out of old Greece. It was a Maxfield Parrish reminiscence from the +Arabian Nights. Genii might be expected to rise from those troubled +depths, or golden princes, astride winged dragons, to swoop down out of +the blue to the rescue. + +The stallion, forcing itself higher out of water, missed, by a shade, +from turning over backward as it sank. Glorious animal and glorious +rider disappeared together beneath the surface, to rise together, a +second later, the stallion still pawing the air with fore-hoofs the +size of dinner plates, the rider still clinging to the sleek, +satin-coated muscles. Graham thought, with a gasp, what might have +happened had the stallion turned over. A chance blow from any one of +those four enormous floundering hoofs could have put out and quenched +forever the light and sparkle of that superb, white-bodied, +fire-animated woman. + +"Ride his neck!" Dick shouted. "Catch his foretop and get on his neck +till he balances out!" + +The woman obeyed, digging her toes into the evasive muscle-pads for the +quick effort, and leaping upward, one hand twined in the wet mane, the +other hand free and up-stretched, darting between the ears and +clutching the foretop. The next moment, as the stallion balanced out +horizontally in obedience to her shiftage of weight, she had slipped +back to the shoulders. Holding with one hand to the mane, she waved a +white arm in the air and flashed a smile of acknowledgment to Forrest; +and, as Graham noted, she was cool enough to note him on his horse +beside Forrest. Also, Graham realized that the turning of her head and +the waving of her arm was only partly in bravado, was more in aesthetic +wisdom of the picture she composed, and was, most of all, sheer joy of +daring and emprise of the blood and the flesh and the life that was she. + +"Not many women'd tackle that," Dick said quietly, as Mountain Lad, +easily retaining his horizontal position once it had been attained, +swam to the lower end of the tank and floundered up the rough slope to +the anxious cowboy. + +The latter swiftly adjusted the halter with a turn of chain between the +jaws. But Paula, still astride, leaned forward, imperiously took the +lead-part from the cowboy, whirled Mountain Lad around to face Forrest, +and saluted. + +"Now you will have to go away," she called. "This is our hen party, and +the stag public is not admitted." + +Dick laughed, saluted acknowledgment, and led the way back through the +lilacs to the road. + +"Who ... who was it?" Graham queried. + +"Paula--Mrs. Forrest--the boy girl, the child that never grew up, the +grittiest puff of rose-dust that was ever woman." + +"My breath is quite taken away," Graham said. "Do your people do such +stunts frequently?" + +"First time she ever did that," Forrest replied. "That was Mountain +Lad. She rode him straight down the spill-way--tobogganed with him, +twenty-two hundred and forty pounds of him." + +"Risked his neck and legs as well as her own," was Graham's comment. + +"Thirty-five thousand dollars' worth of neck and legs," Dick smiled. +"That's what a pool of breeders offered me for him last year after he'd +cleaned up the Coast with his get as well as himself. And as for Paula, +she could break necks and legs at that price every day in the year +until I went broke--only she doesn't. She never has accidents." + +"I wouldn't have given tuppence for her chance if he'd turned over." + +"But he didn't," Dick answered placidly. "That's Paula's luck. She's +tough to kill. Why, I've had her under shell-fire where she was +actually disappointed because she didn't get hit, or killed, or +near-killed. Four batteries opened on us, shrapnel, at mile-range, and +we had to cover half a mile of smooth hill-brow for shelter. I really +felt I was justified in charging her with holding back. She did admit a +'trifle.' We've been married ten or a dozen years now, and, d'ye know, +sometimes it seems to me I don't know her at all, and that nobody knows +her, and that she doesn't know herself--just the same way as you and I +can look at ourselves in a mirror and wonder who the devil we are +anyway. Paula and I have one magic formula: _Damn the expense when fun +is selling_. And it doesn't matter whether the price is in dollars, +hide, or life. It's our way and our luck. It works. And, d'ye know, +we've never been gouged on the price yet." + + + + +CHAPTER X + + + +It was a stag lunch. As Forrest explained, the girls were +"hen-partying." + +"I doubt you'll see a soul of them till four o'clock, when Ernestine, +that's one of Paula's sisters, is going to wallop me at tennis--at +least so she's threatened and pledged." + +And Graham sat through the lunch, where only men sat, took his part in +the conversation on breeds and breeding, learned much, contributed a +mite from his own world-experiences, and was unable to shake from his +eyes the persistent image of his hostess, the vision of the rounded and +delicate white of her against the dark wet background of the swimming +stallion. And all the afternoon, looking over prize Merinos and +Berkshire gilts, continually that vision burned up under his eyelids. +Even at four, in the tennis court, himself playing against Ernestine, +he missed more than one stroke because the image of the flying ball +would suddenly be eclipsed by the image of a white marble figure of a +woman that strove and clung on the back of a great horse. + +Graham, although an outlander, knew his California, and, while every +girl of the swimming suits was gowned for dinner, was not surprised to +find no man similarly accoutered. Nor had he made the mistake of so +being himself, despite the Big House and the magnificent scale on which +it operated. + +Between the first and second gongs, all the guests drifted into the +long dining room. Sharp after the second gong, Dick Forrest arrived and +precipitated cocktails. And Graham impatiently waited the appearance of +the woman who had worried his eyes since noon. He was prepared for all +manner of disappointment. Too many gorgeous stripped athletes had he +seen slouched into conventional garmenting, to expect too much of the +marvelous creature in the white silken swimming suit when it should +appear garbed as civilized women garb. + +He caught his breath with an imperceptible gasp when she entered. She +paused, naturally, for just the right flash of an instant in the arched +doorway, limned against the darkness behind her, the soft glow of the +indirect lighting full upon her. Graham's lips gasped apart, and +remained apart, his eyes ravished with the beauty and surprise of her +he had deemed so small, so fairy-like. Here was no delicate midget of a +child-woman or boy-girl on a stallion, but a grand lady, as only a +small woman can be grand on occasion. + +Taller in truth was she, as well as in seeming, than he had judged her, +and as finely proportioned in her gown as in her swimming suit. He +noted her shining gold-brown hair piled high; the healthy tinge of her +skin that was clean and clear and white; the singing throat, full and +round, incomparably set on a healthy chest; and the gown, dull blue, a +sort of medieval thing with half-fitting, half-clinging body, with +flowing sleeves and trimmings of gold-jeweled bands. + +She smiled an embracing salutation and greeting. Graham recognized it +as kin to the one he had seen when she smiled from the back of the +stallion. When she started forward, he could not fail to see the +inimitable way she carried the cling and weight of her draperies with +her knees--round knees, he knew, that he had seen press desperately +into the round muscle-pads of Mountain Lad. Graham observed, also, that +she neither wore nor needed corseting. Nor could he fail, as she +crossed the floor, to see two women: one, the grand lady, the mistress +of the Big House; one, the lovely equestrienne statue beneath the +dull-blue, golden-trimmed gown, that no gowning could ever make his +memory forget. + +She was upon them, among them, and Graham's hand held hers in the +formal introduction as he was made welcome to the Big House and all the +hacienda in a voice that he knew was a singing voice and that could +proceed only from a throat that pillared, such as hers, from a chest +deep as hers despite her smallness. + +At table, across the corner from her, he could not help a surreptitious +studying of her. While he held his own in the general fun and +foolishness, it was his hostess that mostly filled the circle of his +eye and the content of his mind. + +It was as bizarre a company as Graham had ever sat down to dinner with. +The sheep-buyer and the correspondent for the _Breeders' Gazette_ were +still guests. Three machine-loads of men, women, and girls, totaling +fourteen, had arrived shortly before the first gong and had remained to +ride home in the moonlight. Graham could not remember their names; but +he made out that they came from some valley town thirty miles away +called Wickenberg, and that they were of the small-town banking, +professional, and wealthy-farmer class. They were full of spirits, +laughter, and the latest jokes and catches sprung in the latest slang. + +"I see right now," Graham told Paula, "if your place continues to be +the caravanserai which it has been since my arrival, that I might as +well give up trying to remember names and people." + +"I don't blame you," she laughed concurrence. "But these are neighbors. +They drop in any time. Mrs. Watson, there, next to Dick, is of the old +land-aristocracy. Her grandfather, Wicken, came across the Sierras in +1846. Wickenberg is named after him. And that pretty dark-eyed girl is +her daughter...." + +And while Paula gave him a running sketch of the chance guests, Graham +heard scarce half she said, so occupied was he in trying to sense his +way to an understanding of her. Naturalness was her keynote, was his +first judgment. In not many moments he had decided that her key-note +was joy. But he was dissatisfied with both conclusions, and knew he had +not put his finger on her. And then it came to him--pride. That was it! +It was in her eye, in the poise of her head, in the curling tendrils of +her hair, in her sensitive nostrils, in the mobile lips, in the very +pitch and angle of the rounded chin, in her hands, small, muscular and +veined, that he knew at sight to be the hard-worked hands of one who +had spent long hours at the piano. Pride it was, in every muscle, +nerve, and quiver of her--conscious, sentient, stinging pride. + +She might be joyous and natural, boy and woman, fun and frolic; but +always the pride was there, vibrant, tense, intrinsic, the basic stuff +of which she was builded. She was a woman, frank, outspoken, +straight-looking, plastic, democratic; but toy she was not. At times, +to him, she seemed to glint an impression of steel--thin, jewel-like +steel. She seemed strength in its most delicate terms and fabrics. He +fondled the impression of her as of silverspun wire, of fine leather, +of twisted hair-sennit from the heads of maidens such as the Marquesans +make, of carven pearl-shell for the lure of the bonita, and of barbed +ivory at the heads of sea-spears such as the Eskimos throw. + +"All right, Aaron," they heard Dick Forrest's voice rising, in a lull, +from the other end of the table. "Here's something from Phillips Brooks +for you to chew on. Brooks said that no man 'has come to true greatness +who has not felt in some degree that his life belongs to his race, and +that what God gives him, he gives him for mankind.'" + +"So at last you believe in God?" the man, addressed Aaron, genially +sneered back. He was a slender, long-faced olive-brunette, with +brilliant black eyes and the blackest of long black beards. + +"I'm hanged if I know," Dick answered. "Anyway, I quoted only +figuratively. Call it morality, call it good, call it evolution." + +"A man doesn't have to be intellectually correct in order to be great," +intruded a quiet, long-faced Irishman, whose sleeves were threadbare +and frayed. "And by the same token many men who are most correct in +sizing up the universe have been least great." + +"True for you, Terrence," Dick applauded. + +"It's a matter of definition," languidly spoke up an unmistakable +Hindoo, crumbling his bread with exquisitely slender and small-boned +fingers. "What shall we mean as _great?"_ + +"Shall we say _beauty?"_ softly queried a tragic-faced youth, sensitive +and shrinking, crowned with an abominably trimmed head of long hair. + +Ernestine rose suddenly at her place, hands on table, leaning forward +with a fine simulation of intensity. + + "They're off!" she cried. "They're off! Now we'll have the universe +settled all over again for the thousandth time. Theodore"--to the +youthful poet--"it's a poor start. Get into the running. Ride your +father ion and your mother ion, and you'll finish three lengths ahead." + +A roar of laughter was her reward, and the poet blushed and receded +into his sensitive shell. + +Ernestine turned on the black-bearded one: + +"Now, Aaron. He's not in form. You start it. You know how. Begin: 'As +Bergson so well has said, with the utmost refinement of philosophic +speech allied with the most comprehensive intellectual outlook +that....'" + +More laughter roared down the table, drowning Ernestine's conclusion as +well as the laughing retort of the black-bearded one. + +"Our philosophers won't have a chance to-night," Paula stole in an +aside to Graham. + +"Philosophers?" he questioned back. "They didn't come with the +Wickenberg crowd. Who and what are they? I'm all at sea." + +"They--" Paula hesitated. "They live here. They call themselves the +jungle-birds. They have a camp in the woods a couple of miles away, +where they never do anything except read and talk. I'll wager, right +now, you'll find fifty of Dick's latest, uncatalogued books in their +cabins. They have the run of the library, as well, and you'll see them +drifting in and out, any time of the day or night, with their arms full +of books--also, the latest magazines. Dick says they are responsible +for his possessing the most exhaustive and up-to-date library on +philosophy on the Pacific Coast. In a way, they sort of digest such +things for him. It's great fun for Dick, and, besides, it saves him +time. He's a dreadfully hard worker, you know." + +"I understand that they... that Dick takes care of them?" Graham asked, +the while he pleasured in looking straight into the blue eyes that +looked so straight into his. + +As she answered, he was occupied with noting the faintest hint of +bronze--perhaps a trick of the light--in her long, brown lashes. +Perforce, he lifted his gaze to her eyebrows, brown, delicately +stenciled, and made sure that the hint of bronze was there. Still +lifting his gaze to her high-piled hair, he again saw, but more +pronounced, the bronze note glinting from the brown-golden hair. Nor +did he fail to startle and thrill to a dazzlement of smile and teeth +and eye that frequently lived its life in her face. Hers was no thin +smile of restraint, he judged. When she smiled she smiled all of +herself, generously, joyously, throwing the largess of all her being +into the natural expression of what was herself and which domiciled +somewhere within that pretty head of hers. + +"Yes," she was saying. "They have never to worry, as long as they live, +over mere bread and butter. Dick is most generous, and, rather immoral, +in his encouragement of idleness on the part of men like them. It's a +funny place, as you'll find out until you come to understand us. +They... they are appurtenances, and--and hereditaments, and such +things. They will be with us always until we bury them or they bury us. +Once in a while one or another of them drifts away--for a time. Like +the cat, you know. Then it costs Dick real money to get them back. +Terrence, there--Terrence McFane--he's an epicurean anarchist, if you +know what that means. He wouldn't kill a flea. He has a pet cat I gave +him, a Persian of the bluest blue, and he carefully picks her fleas, +not injuring them, stores them in a vial, and turns them loose in the +forest on his long walks when he tires of human companionship and +communes with nature. + +"Well, only last year, he got a bee in his bonnet--the alphabet. He +started for Egypt--without a cent, of course--to run the alphabet down +in the home of its origin and thereby to win the formula that would +explain the cosmos. He got as far as Denver, traveling as tramps +travel, when he mixed up in some I. W. W. riot for free speech or +something. Dick had to hire lawyers, pay fines, and do just about +everything to get him safe home again. + +"And the one with a beard--Aaron Hancock. Like Terrence, he won't work. +Aaron's a Southerner. Says none of his people ever did work, and that +there have always been peasants and fools who just couldn't be +restrained from working. That's why he wears a beard. To shave, he +holds, is unnecessary work, and, therefore, immoral. I remember, at +Melbourne, when he broke in upon Dick and me, a sunburnt wild man from +out the Australian bush. It seems he'd been making original researches +in anthropology, or folk-lore-ology, or something like that. Dick had +known him years before in Paris, and Dick assured him, if he ever +drifted back to America, of food and shelter. So here he is." + +"And the poet?" Graham asked, glad that she must still talk for a +while, enabling him to study the quick dazzlement of smile that played +upon her face. + +"Oh, Theo--Theodore Malken, though we call him Leo. He won't work, +either. His people are old Californian stock and dreadfully wealthy; +but they disowned him and he disowned them when he was fifteen. They +say he is lunatic, and he says they are merely maddening. He really +writes some remarkable verse... when he does write; but he prefers to +dream and live in the jungle with Terrence and Aaron. He was tutoring +immigrant Jews in San Francisco, when Terrence and Aaron rescued him, +or captured him, I don't know which. He's been with us two years now, +and he's actually filling out, despite the facts that Dick is absurdly +generous in furnishing supplies and that they'd rather talk and read +and dream than cook. The only good meals they get is when they descend +upon us, like to-night." + +"And the Hindoo, there--who's he?" + +"That's Dar Hyal. He's their guest. The three of them invited him up, +just as Aaron first invited Terrence, and as Aaron and Terrence invited +Leo. Dick says, in time, three more are bound to appear, and then he'll +have his Seven Sages of the Madrono Grove. Their jungle camp is in a +madrono grove, you know. It's a most beautiful spot, with living +springs, a canyon--but I was telling you about Dar Hyal. + +"He's a revolutionist, of sorts. He's dabbled in our universities, +studied in France, Italy, Switzerland, is a political refugee from +India, and he's hitched his wagon to two stars: one, a new synthetic +system of philosophy; the other, rebellion against the tyranny of +British rule in India. He advocates individual terrorism and direct +mass action. That's why his paper, _Kadar,_ or _Badar,_ or something +like that, was suppressed here in California, and why he narrowly +escaped being deported; and that's why he's up here just now, devoting +himself to formulating his philosophy. + +"He and Aaron quarrel tremendously--that is, on philosophical matters. +And now--" Paula sighed and erased the sigh with her smile--"and now, +I'm done. Consider yourself acquainted. And, oh, if you encounter our +sages more intimately, a word of warning, especially if the encounter +be in the stag room: Dar Hyal is a total abstainer; Theodore Malken can +get poetically drunk, and usually does, on one cocktail; Aaron Hancock +is an expert wine-bibber; and Terrence McFane, knowing little of one +drink from another, and caring less, can put ninety-nine men out of a +hundred under the table and go right on lucidly expounding epicurean +anarchy." + +One thing Graham noted as the dinner proceeded. The sages called Dick +Forrest by his first name; but they always addressed Paula as "Mrs. +Forrest," although she called them by their first names. There was +nothing affected about it. Quite unconsciously did they, who respected +few things under the sun, and among such few things not even +work--quite unconsciously, and invariably, did they recognize the +certain definite aloofness in Dick Forrest's wife so that her given +name was alien to their lips. By such tokens Evan Graham was not slow +in learning that Dick Forrest's wife had a way with her, compounded of +sheerest democracy and equally sheer royalty. + +It was the same thing, after dinner, in the big living room. She dared +as she pleased, but nobody assumed. Before the company settled down, +Paula seemed everywhere, bubbling over with more outrageous spirits +than any of them. From this group or that, from one corner or another, +her laugh rang out. And her laugh fascinated Graham. There was a +fibrous thrill in it, most sweet to the ear, that differentiated it +from any laugh he had ever heard. It caused Graham to lose the thread +of young Mr. Wombold's contention that what California needed was not a +Japanese exclusion law but at least two hundred thousand Japanese +coolies to do the farm labor of California and knock in the head the +threatened eight-hour day for agricultural laborers. Young Mr. Wombold, +Graham gleaned, was an hereditary large land-owner in the vicinity of +Wickenberg who prided himself on not yielding to the trend of the times +by becoming an absentee landlord. + +From the piano, where Eddie Mason was the center of a group of girls, +came much noise of ragtime music and slangtime song. Terrence McFane +and Aaron Hancock fell into a heated argument over the music of +futurism. And Graham was saved from the Japanese situation with Mr. +Wombold by Dar Hyal, who proceeded to proclaim Asia for the Asiatics +and California for the Californians. + +Paula, catching up her skirts for speed, fled down the room in some +romp, pursued by Dick, who captured her as she strove to dodge around +the Wombold group. + +"Wicked woman," Dick reproved her in mock wrath; and, the next moment, +joined her in persuading Dar Hyal to dance. + +And Dar Hyal succumbed, flinging Asia and the Asiatics to the winds, +along with his arms and legs, as he weirdly parodied the tango in what +he declared to be the "blastic" culmination of modern dancing. + +"And now, Red Cloud, sing Mr. Graham your Acorn Song," Paula commanded +Dick. + +Forrest, his arm still about her, detaining her for the threatened +punishment not yet inflicted, shook his head somberly. + +"The Acorn Song!" Ernestine called from the piano; and the cry was +taken up by Eddie Mason and the girls. + +"Oh, do, Dick," Paula pleaded. "Mr. Graham is the only one who hasn't +heard it." + +Dick shook his head. + +"Then sing him your Goldfish Song." + +"I'll sing him Mountain Lad's song," Dick bullied, a whimsical sparkle +in his eyes. He stamped his feet, pranced, nickered a not bad imitation +of Mountain Lad, tossed an imaginary mane, and cried: + +"Hear me! I am Eros! I stamp upon the hills!" + +"The Acorn Song," Paula interrupted quickly and quietly, with just the +hint of steel in her voice. + +Dick obediently ceased his chant of Mountain Lad, but shook his head +like a stubborn colt. + +"I have a new song," he said solemnly. "It is about you and me, Paula. +I got it from the Nishinam." + +"The Nishinam are the extinct aborigines of this part of California," +Paula shot in a swift aside of explanation to Graham. + +Dick danced half a dozen steps, stiff-legged, as Indians dance, slapped +his thighs with his palms, and began a new chant, still retaining his +hold on his wife. + +"Me, I am Ai-kut, the first man of the Nishinam. Ai-kut is the short +for Adam, and my father and my mother were the coyote and the moon. And +this is Yo-to-to-wi, my wife. She is the first woman of the Nishinam. +Her father and her mother were the grasshopper and the ring-tailed cat. +They were the best father and mother left after my father and mother. +The coyote is very wise, the moon is very old; but who ever heard much +of anything of credit to the grasshopper and the ring-tailed cat? The +Nishinam are always right. The mother of all women had to be a cat, a +little, wizened, sad-faced, shrewd ring-tailed cat." + +Whereupon the song of the first man and woman was interrupted by +protests from the women and acclamations from the men. + +"This is Yo-to-to-wi, which is the short for Eve," Dick chanted on, +drawing Paula bruskly closer to his side with a semblance of savage +roughness. "Yo-to-to-wi is not much to look at. But be not hard upon +her. The fault is with the grasshopper and the ring-tailed cat. Me, I +am Ai-kut, the first man; but question not my taste. I was the first +man, and this, I saw, was the first woman. Where there is but one +choice, there is not much to choose. Adam was so circumstanced. He +chose Eve. Yo-to-to-wi was the one woman in all the world for me, so I +chose Yo-to-to-wi." + +And Evan Graham, listening, his eyes on that possessive, encircling arm +of all his hostess's fairness, felt an awareness of hurt, and arose +unsummoned the thought, to be dismissed angrily, "Dick Forrest is +lucky--too lucky." + +"Me, I am Ai-kut," Dick chanted on. "This is my dew of woman. She is my +honey-dew of woman. I have lied to you. Her father and her mother were +neither hopper nor cat. They were the Sierra dawn and the summer east +wind of the mountains. Together they conspired, and from the air and +earth they sweated all sweetness till in a mist of their own love the +leaves of the chaparral and the manzanita were dewed with the honey-dew. + +"Yo-to-to-wi is my honey-dew woman. Hear me! I am Ai-kut. Yo-to-to-wi +is my quail woman, my deer-woman, my lush-woman of all soft rain and +fat soil. She was born of the thin starlight and the brittle dawn-light +before the sun . . . + +"And," Forrest concluded, relapsing into his natural voice and +enunciation, having reached the limit of extemporization,--"and if you +think old, sweet, blue-eyed Solomon has anything on me in singing the +Song of Songs, just put your names down for the subscription edition of +_my_ Song of Songs." + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + + +It was Mrs. Mason who first asked that Paula play; but it was Terrence +McFane and Aaron Hancock who evicted the rag-time group from the piano +and sent Theodore Malken, a blushing ambassador, to escort Paula. + +"'Tis for the confounding of this pagan that I'm askin' you to play +'Reflections on the Water,'" Graham heard Terrence say to her. + +"And 'The Girl with Flaxen Hair,' after, please," begged Hancock, the +indicted pagan. "It will aptly prove my disputation. This wild Celt has +a bog-theory of music that predates the cave-man--and he has the +unadulterated stupidity to call himself ultra-modern." + +"Oh, Debussy!" Paula laughed. "Still wrangling over him, eh? I'll try +and get around to him. But I don't know with what I'll begin." + +Dar Hyal joined the three sages in seating Paula at the concert grand +which, Graham decided, was none too great for the great room. But no +sooner was she seated than the three sages slipped away to what were +evidently their chosen listening places. The young poet stretched +himself prone on a deep bearskin forty feet from the piano, his hands +buried in his hair. Terrence and Aaron lolled into a cushioned +embrasure of a window seat, sufficiently near to each other to nudge +the points of their respective contentions as Paula might expound them. +The girls were huddled in colored groups on wide couches or garlanded +in twos and threes on and in the big koa-wood chairs. + +Evan Graham half-started forward to take the honor of turning Paula's +music, but saw in time that Dar Hyal had already elected to himself +that office. Graham glimpsed the scene with quiet curious glances. The +grand piano, under a low arch at the far-end of the room, was cunningly +raised and placed as on and in a sounding board. All jollity and banter +had ceased. Evidently, he thought, the Little Lady had a way with her +and was accepted as a player of parts. And from this he was perversely +prepared for disappointment. + +Ernestine leaned across from a chair to whisper to him: + +"She can do anything she wants to do. And she doesn't work . . . much. +She studied under Leschetizky and Madame Carreno, you know, and she +abides by their methods. She doesn't play like a woman, either. Listen +to that!" + +Graham knew that he expected disappointment from her confident hands, +even as she rippled them over the keys in little chords and runs with +which he could not quarrel but which he had heard too often before from +technically brilliant but musically mediocre performers. But whatever +he might have fancied she would play, he was all unprepared for +Rachmaninoff's sheerly masculine Prelude, which he had heard only men +play when decently played. + +She took hold of the piano, with the first two ringing bars, +masterfully, like a man; she seemed to lift it, and its sounding wires, +with her two hands, with the strength and certitude of maleness. And +then, as only he had heard men do it, she sank, or leaped--he could +scarcely say which--to the sureness and pureness and ineffable softness +of the _Andante_ following. + +She played on, with the calm and power of anything but the little, +almost girlish woman he glimpsed through half-closed lids across the +ebony board of the enormous piano, which she commanded, as she +commanded herself, as she commanded the composer. Her touch was +definite, authoritative, was his judgment, as the Prelude faded away in +dying chords hauntingly reminiscent of its full vigor that seemed still +to linger in the air. + +While Aaron and Terrence debated in excited whispers in the window +seat, and while Dar Hyal sought other music at Paula's direction, she +glanced at Dick, who turned off bowl after bowl of mellow light till +Paula sat in an oasis of soft glow that brought out the dull gold +lights in her dress and hair. + +Graham watched the lofty room grow loftier in the increasing shadows. +Eighty feet in length, rising two stories and a half from masonry walls +to tree-trunked roof, flung across with a flying gallery from the rail +of which hung skins of wild animals, hand-woven blankets of Oaxaca and +Ecuador, and tapas, woman-pounded and vegetable-dyed, from the islands +of the South Pacific, Graham knew it for what it was--a feast-hall of +some medieval castle; and almost he felt a poignant sense of lack of +the long spread table, with pewter below the salt and silver above the +salt, and with huge hound-dogs scuffling beneath for bones. + +Later, when Paula had played sufficient Debussy to equip Terrence and +Aaron for fresh war, Graham talked with her about music for a few vivid +moments. So well did she prove herself aware of the philosophy of +music, that, ere he knew it, he was seduced into voicing his own pet +theory. + +"And so," he concluded, "the true psychic factor of music took nearly +three thousand years to impress itself on the Western mind. Debussy +more nearly attains the idea-engendering and suggestive serenity--say +of the time of Pythagoras--than any of his fore-runners--" + +Here, Paula put a pause in his summary by beckoning over Terrence and +Aaron from their battlefield in the windowseat. + +"Yes, and what of it?" Terrence was demanding, as they came up side by +side. "I defy you, Aaron, I defy you, to get one thought out of Bergson +on music that is more lucid than any thought he ever uttered in his +'Philosophy of Laughter,' which is not lucid at all." + +"Oh!--listen!" Paula cried, with sparkling eyes. "We have a new +prophet. Hear Mr. Graham. He's worthy of your steel, of both your +steel. He agrees with you that music is the refuge from blood and iron +and the pounding of the table. That weak souls, and sensitive souls, +and high-pitched souls flee from the crassness and the rawness of the +world to the drug-dreams of the over-world of rhythm and vibration--" + +"Atavistic!" Aaron Hancock snorted. "The cave-men, the monkey-folk, and +the ancestral bog-men of Terrence did that sort of thing--" + +"But wait," Paula urged. "It's his conclusions and methods and +processes. Also, there he disagrees with you, Aaron, fundamentally. He +quoted Pater's 'that all art aspires toward music'--" + +"Pure prehuman and micro-organic chemistry," Aaron broke in. "The +reactions of cell-elements to the doggerel punch of the wave-lengths of +sunlight, the foundation of all folk-songs and rag-times. Terrence +completes his circle right there and stultifies all his windiness. Now +listen to me, and I will present--" + +"But wait," Paula pleaded. "Mr. Graham argues that English puritanism +barred music, real music, for centuries...." + +"True," said Terrence. + +"And that England had to win to its sensuous delight in rhythm through +Milton and Shelley--" + +"Who was a metaphysician." Aaron broke in. + +"A lyrical metaphysician," Terrence defined instantly. "_That_ you must +acknowledge, Aaron." + +"And Swinburne?" Aaron demanded, with a significance that tokened +former arguments. + +"He says Offenbach was the fore-runner of Arthur Sullivan," Paula cried +challengingly. "And that Auber was before Offenbach. And as for Wagner, +ask him, just ask him--" + +And she slipped away, leaving Graham to his fate. He watched her, +watched the perfect knee-lift of her draperies as she crossed to Mrs. +Mason and set about arranging bridge quartets, while dimly he could +hear Terrence beginning: + +"It is agreed that music was the basis of inspiration of all the arts +of the Greeks...." + +Later, when the two sages were obliviously engrossed in a heated battle +as to whether Berlioz or Beethoven had exposited in their compositions +the deeper intellect, Graham managed his escape. Clearly, his goal was +to find his hostess again. But she had joined two of the girls in the +whispering, giggling seclusiveness of one of the big chairs, and, most +of the company being deep in bridge, Graham found himself drifted into +a group composed of Dick Forrest, Mr. Wombold, Dar Hyal, and the +correspondent of the _Breeders' Gazette_. + +"I'm sorry you won't be able to run over with me," Dick was saying to +the correspondent. "It would mean only one more day. I'll take you +tomorrow." + +"Sorry," was the reply. "But I must make Santa Rosa. Burbank has +promised me practically a whole morning, and you know what that means. +Yet I know the _Gazette_ would be glad for an account of the +experiment. Can't you outline it?--briefly, just briefly? Here's Mr. +Graham. It will interest him, I am sure." + +"More water-works?" Graham queried. + +"No; an asinine attempt to make good farmers out of hopelessly poor +ones," Mr. Wombold answered. "I contend that any farmer to-day who has +no land of his own, proves by his lack of it that he is an inefficient +farmer." + +"On the contrary," spoke up Dar Hyal, weaving his slender Asiatic +fingers in the air to emphasize his remarks. "Quite on the contrary. +Times have changed. Efficiency no longer implies the possession of +capital. It is a splendid experiment, an heroic experiment. And it will +succeed." + +"What is it, Dick?" Graham urged. "Tell us." + +"Oh, nothing, just a white chip on the table," Forrest answered +lightly. "Most likely it will never come to anything, although just the +same I have my hopes--" + +"A white chip!" Wombold broke in. "Five thousand acres of prime valley +land, all for a lot of failures to batten on, to farm, if you please, +on salary, with food thrown in!" + +"The food that is grown on the land only," Dick corrected. "Now I will +have to put it straight. I've set aside five thousand acres midway +between here and the Sacramento River." + +"Think of the alfalfa it grew, and that you need," Wombold again +interrupted. + +"My dredgers redeemed twice that acreage from the marshes in the past +year," Dick replied. "The thing is, I believe the West and the world +must come to intensive farming. I want to do my share toward blazing +the way. I've divided the five thousand acres into twenty-acre +holdings. I believe each twenty acres should support, comfortably, not +only a family, but pay at least six per cent." + +"When it is all allotted it will mean two hundred and fifty families," +the _Gazette_ man calculated; "and, say five to the family, it will +mean twelve hundred and fifty souls." + +"Not quite," Dick corrected. "The last holding is occupied, and we have +only a little over eleven hundred on the land." He smiled whimsically. +"But they promise, they promise. Several fat years and they'll average +six to the family." + +"Who is _we_?" Graham inquired. + +"Oh, I have a committee of farm experts on it--my own men, with the +exception of Professor Lieb, whom the Federal Government has loaned me. +The thing is: they _must_ farm, with individual responsibility, +according to the scientific methods embodied in our instructions. The +land is uniform. Every holding is like a pea in the pod to every other +holding. The results of each holding will speak in no uncertain terms. +The failure of any farmer, through laziness or stupidity, measured by +the average result of the entire two hundred and fifty farmers, will +not be tolerated. Out the failures must go, convicted by the average of +their fellows. + +"It's a fair deal. No farmer risks anything. With the food he may grow +and he and his family may consume, plus a cash salary of a thousand a +year, he is certain, good seasons and bad, stupid or intelligent, of at +least a hundred dollars a month. The stupid and the inefficient will be +bound to be eliminated by the intelligent and the efficient. That's +all. It will demonstrate intensive farming with a vengeance. And there +is more than the certain salary guaranty. After the salary is paid, the +adventure must yield six per cent, to me. If more than this is +achieved, then the entire hundred per cent, of the additional +achievement goes to the farmer." + +"Which means that each farmer with go in him will work nights to make +good--I see," said the _Gazette_ man. "And why not? Hundred-dollar jobs +aren't picked up for the asking. The average farmer in the United +States doesn't net fifty a month on his own land, especially when his +wages of superintendence and of direct personal labor are subtracted. +Of course able men will work their heads off to hold to such a +proposition, and they'll see to it that every member of the family does +the same." + +"'Tis the one objection I have to this place," Terrence McFane, who had +just joined the group, announced. "Ever one hears but the one +thing--work. 'Tis repulsive, the thought of the work, each on his +twenty acres, toilin' and moilin', daylight till dark, and after +dark--an' for what? A bit of meat, a bit of bread, and, maybe, a bit of +jam on the bread. An' to what end? Is meat an' bread an' jam the end of +it all, the meaning of life, the goal of existence? Surely the man will +die, like a work horse dies, after a life of toil. And what end has +been accomplished? Bread an' meat an' jam? Is that it? A full belly and +shelter from the cold till one's body drops apart in the dark moldiness +of the grave?" + +"But, Terrence, you, too, will die," Dick Forrest retorted. + +"But, oh, my glorious life of loafing," came the instant answer. "The +hours with the stars and the flowers, under the green trees with the +whisperings of breezes in the grass. My books, my thinkers and their +thoughts. Beauty, music, all the solaces of all the arts. What? When I +fade into the dark I shall have well lived and received my wage for +living. But these twenty-acre work-animals of two-legged men of yours! +Daylight till dark, toil and moil, sweat on the shirts on the backs of +them that dries only to crust, meat and bread in their bellies, roofs +that don't leak, a brood of youngsters to live after them, to live the +same beast-lives of toil, to fill their bellies with the same meat and +bread, to scratch their backs with the same sweaty shirts, and to go +into the dark knowing only meat and bread, and, mayhap, a bit of jam." + +"But somebody must do the work that enables you to loaf," Mr. Wombold +spoke up indignantly. + +"'Tis true, 'tis sad 'tis true," Terrence replied lugubriously. Then +his face beamed. "And I thank the good Lord for it, for the +work-beasties that drag and drive the plows up and down the fields, for +the bat-eyed miner-beasties that dig the coal and gold, for all the +stupid peasant-beasties that keep my hands soft, and give power to fine +fellows like Dick there, who smiles on me and shares the loot with me, +and buys the latest books for me, and gives me a place at his board +that is plenished by the two-legged work-beasties, and a place at his +fire that is builded by the same beasties, and a shack and a bed in the +jungle under the madrono trees where never work intrudes its monstrous +head." + +Evan Graham was slow in getting ready for bed that night. He was +unwontedly stirred both by the Big House and by the Little Lady who was +its mistress. As he sat on the edge of the bed, half-undressed, and +smoked out a pipe, he kept seeing her in memory, as he had seen her in +the flesh the past twelve hours, in her varied moods and guises--the +woman who had talked music with him, and who had expounded music to him +to his delight; who had enticed the sages into the discussion and +abandoned him to arrange the bridge tables for her guests; who had +nestled in the big chair as girlish as the two girls with her; who had, +with a hint of steel, quelled her husband's obstreperousness when he +had threatened to sing Mountain Lad's song; who, unafraid, had +bestridden the half-drowning stallion in the swimming tank; and who, a +few hours later, had dreamed into the dining room, distinctive in dress +and person, to meet her many guests. + +The Big House, with all its worthy marvels and bizarre novelties, +competed with the figure of Paula Forrest in filling the content of his +imagination. Once again, and yet again, many times, he saw the slender +fingers of Dar Hyal weaving argument in the air, the black whiskers of +Aaron Hancock enunciating Bergsonian dogmas, the frayed coat-cuffs of +Terrence McFane articulating thanks to God for the two-legged +work-beasties that enabled him to loaf at Dick Forrest's board and +under Dick Forrest's madrono trees. + +Graham knocked out his pipe, took a final sweeping survey of the +strange room which was the last word in comfort, pressed off the +lights, and found himself between cool sheets in the wakeful dark. +Again he heard Paula Forrest laugh; again he sensed her in terms of +silver and steel and strength; again, against the dark, he saw that +inimitable knee-lift of her gown. The bright vision of it was almost an +irk to him, so impossible was it for him to shake it from his eyes. +Ever it returned and burned before him, a moving image of light and +color that he knew to be subjective but that continually asserted the +illusion of reality. + +He saw stallion and rider sink beneath the water, and rise again, a +flurry of foam and floundering of hoofs, and a woman's face that +laughed while she drowned her hair in the drowning mane of the beast. +And the first ringing bars of the Prelude sounded in his ears as again +he saw the same hands that had guided the stallion lift the piano to +all Rachmaninoff's pure splendor of sound. + +And when Graham finally fell asleep, it was in the thick of marveling +over the processes of evolution that could produce from primeval mire +and dust the glowing, glorious flesh and spirit of woman. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + + +The next morning Graham learned further the ways of the Big House. Oh +My had partly initiated him in particular things the preceding day and +had learned that, after the waking cup of coffee, he preferred to +breakfast at table, rather than in bed. Also, Oh My had warned him that +breakfast at table was an irregular affair, anywhere between seven and +nine, and that the breakfasters merely drifted in at their convenience. +If he wanted a horse, or if he wanted a swim or a motor car, or any +ranch medium or utility he desired, Oh My informed him, all he had to +do was to call for it. + +Arriving in the breakfast room at half past seven, Graham found himself +just in time to say good-by to the _Gazette_ man and the Idaho buyer, +who, finishing, were just ready to catch the ranch machine that +connected at Eldorado with the morning train for San Francisco. He sat +alone, being perfectly invited by a perfect Chinese servant to order as +he pleased, and found himself served with his first desire--an +ice-cold, sherried grapefruit, which, the table-boy proudly informed +him, was "grown on the ranch." Declining variously suggested breakfast +foods, mushes, and porridges, Graham had just ordered his soft-boiled +eggs and bacon, when Bert Wainwright drifted in with a casualness that +Graham recognized as histrionic, when, five minutes later, in boudoir +cap and delectable negligee, Ernestine Desten drifted in and expressed +surprise at finding such a multitude of early risers. + +Later, as the three of them were rising from table, they greeted Lute +Desten and Rita Wainwright arriving. Over the billiard table with Bert, +Graham learned that Dick Forrest never appeared for breakfast, that he +worked in bed from terribly wee small hours, had coffee at six, and +only on unusual occasions appeared to his guests before the +twelve-thirty lunch. As for Paula Forrest, Bert explained, she was a +poor sleeper, a late riser, lived behind a door without a knob in a +spacious wing with a rare and secret patio that even he had seen but +once, and only on infrequent occasion was she known to appear before +twelve-thirty, and often not then. + +"You see, she's healthy and strong and all that," he explained, "but +she was born with insomnia. She never could sleep. She couldn't sleep +as a little baby even. But it's never hurt her any, because she's got a +will, and won't let it get on her nerves. She's just about as tense as +they make them, yet, instead of going wild when she can't sleep, she +just wills to relax, and she does relax. She calls them her `white +nights,' when she gets them. Maybe she'll fall asleep at daybreak, or +at nine or ten in the morning; and then she'll sleep the rest of the +clock around and get down to dinner as chipper as you please." + +"It's constitutional, I fancy," Graham suggested. + +Bert nodded. + +"It would be a handicap to nine hundred and ninety-nine women out of a +thousand. But not to her. She puts up with it, and if she can't sleep +one time--she should worry--she just sleeps some other time and makes +it up." + +More and other things Bert Wainwright told of his hostess, and Graham +was not slow in gathering that the young man, despite the privileges of +long acquaintance, stood a good deal in awe of her. + +"I never saw anybody whose goat she couldn't get if she went after it," +he confided. "Man or woman or servant, age, sex, and previous condition +of servitude--it's all one when she gets on the high and mighty. And I +don't see how she does it. Maybe it's just a kind of light that comes +into her eyes, or some kind of an expression on her lips, or, I don't +know what--anyway, she puts it across and nobody makes any mistake +about it." + +"She has a ... a way with her," Graham volunteered. + + "That's it!" Bert's face beamed. "It's a way she has. She just puts +it over. Kind of gives you a chilly feeling, you don't know why. Maybe +she's learned to be so quiet about it because of the control she's +learned by passing sleepless nights without squealing out or getting +sour. The chances are she didn't bat an eye all last night--excitement, +you know, the crowd, swimming Mountain Lad and such things. Now +ordinary things that'd keep most women awake, like danger, or storm at +sea, and such things, Dick says don't faze her. She can sleep like a +baby, he says, when the town she's in is being bombarded or when the +ship she's in is trying to claw off a lee shore. She's a wonder, and no +mistake. You ought to play billiards with her--the English game. She'll +go some." + +A little later, Graham, along with Bert, encountered the girls in the +morning room, where, despite an hour of rag-time song and dancing and +chatter, he was scarcely for a moment unaware of a loneliness, a lack, +and a desire to see his hostess, in some fresh and unguessed mood and +way, come in upon them through the open door. + +Still later, mounted on Altadena and accompanied by Bert on a +thoroughbred mare called Mollie, Graham made a two hours' exploration +of the dairy center of the ranch, and arrived back barely in time to +keep an engagement with Ernestine in the tennis court. + +He came to lunch with an eagerness for which his keen appetite could +not entirely account; and he knew definite disappointment when his +hostess did not appear. + +"A white night," Dick Forrest surmised for his guest's benefit, and +went into details additional to Bert's of her constitutional inaptitude +for normal sleep. "Do you know, we were married years before I ever saw +her sleep. I knew she did sleep, but I never saw her. I've seen her go +three days and nights without closing an eye and keep sweet and +cheerful all the time, and when she did sleep, it was out of +exhaustion. That was when the _All Away_ went ashore in the Carolines +and the whole population worked to get us off. It wasn't the danger, +for there wasn't any. It was the noise. Also, it was the excitement. +She was too busy living. And when it was almost all over, I actually +saw her asleep for the first time in my life." + +A new guest had arrived that morning, a Donald Ware, whom Graham met at +lunch. He seemed well acquainted with all, as if he had visited much in +the Big House; and Graham gathered that, despite his youth, he was a +violinist of note on the Pacific Coast. + +"He has conceived a grand passion for Paula," Ernestine told Graham as +they passed out from the dining room. + +Graham raised his eyebrows. + +"Oh, but she doesn't mind," Ernestine laughed. "Every man that comes +along does the same thing. She's used to it. She has just a charming +way of disregarding all their symptoms, and enjoys them, and gets the +best out of them in consequence. It's lots of fun to Dick. You'll be +doing the same before you're here a week. If you don't, we'll all be +surprised mightily. And if you don't, most likely you'll hurt Dick's +feelings. He's come to expect it as a matter of course. And when a +fond, proud husband gets a habit like that, it must hurt terribly to +see his wife not appreciated." + +"Oh, well, if I am expected to, I suppose I must," Graham sighed. "But +just the same I hate to do whatever everybody does just because +everybody does it. But if it's the custom--well, it's the custom, +that's all. But it's mighty hard on one with so many other nice girls +around." + +There was a quizzical light in his long gray eyes that affected +Ernestine so profoundly that she gazed into his eyes over long, became +conscious of what she was doing, dropped her own eyes away, and flushed. + +"Little Leo--the boy poet you remember last night," she rattled on in a +patent attempt to escape from her confusion. "He's madly in love with +Paula, too. I've heard Aaron Hancock chaffing him about some sonnet +cycle, and it isn't difficult to guess the inspiration. And +Terrence--the Irishman, you know--he's mildly in love with her. They +can't help it, you see; and can you blame them?" + +"She surely deserves it all," Graham murmured, although vaguely hurt in +that the addle-pated, alphabet-obsessed, epicurean anarchist of an +Irishman who gloried in being a loafer and a pensioner should even +mildly be in love with the Little Lady. "She is most deserving of all +men's admiration," he continued smoothly. "From the little I've seen of +her she's quite remarkable and most charming." + +"She's my half-sister," Ernestine vouchsafed, "although you wouldn't +dream a drop of the same blood ran in our veins. She's so different. +She's different from all the Destens, from any girl I ever knew--though +she isn't exactly a girl. She's thirty-eight, you know--" + +"Pussy, pussy," Graham whispered. + +The pretty young blonde looked at him in surprise and bewilderment, +taken aback by the apparent irrelevance of his interruption. + +"Cat," he censured in mock reproof. + +"Oh!" she cried. "I never meant it that way. You will find we are very +frank here. Everybody knows Paula's age. She tells it herself. I'm +eighteen--so, there. And now, just for your meanness, how old are you?" + +"As old as Dick," he replied promptly. + +"And he's forty," she laughed triumphantly. "Are you coming swimming? +--the water will be dreadfully cold." + +Graham shook his head. "I'm going riding with Dick." + +Her face fell with all the ingenuousness of eighteen. + +"Oh," she protested, "some of his eternal green manures, or hillside +terracing, or water-pocketing." + +"But he said something about swimming at five." + +Her face brightened joyously. + +"Then we'll meet at the tank. It must be the same party. Paula said +swimming at five." + +As they parted under a long arcade, where his way led to the tower room +for a change into riding clothes, she stopped suddenly and called: + +"Oh, Mr. Graham." + +He turned obediently. + +"You really are not compelled to fall in love with Paula, you know. It +was just my way of putting it." + +"I shall be very, very careful," he said solemnly, although there was a +twinkle in his eye as he concluded. + +Nevertheless, as he went on to his room, he could not but admit to +himself that the Paula Forrest charm, or the far fairy tentacles of it, +had already reached him and were wrapping around him. He knew, right +there, that he would prefer the engagement to ride to have been with +her than with his old-time friend, Dick. + +As he emerged from the house to the long hitching-rails under the +ancient oaks, he looked eagerly for his hostess. Only Dick was there, +and the stable-man, although the many saddled horses that stamped in +the shade promised possibilities. But Dick and he rode away alone. Dick +pointed out her horse, an alert bay thoroughbred, stallion at that, +under a small Australian saddle with steel stirrups, and double-reined +and single-bitted. + +"I don't know her plans," he said. "She hasn't shown up yet, but at any +rate she'll be swimming later. We'll meet her then." + +Graham appreciated and enjoyed the ride, although more than once he +found himself glancing at his wrist-watch to ascertain how far away +five o'clock might yet be. Lambing time was at hand, and through home +field after home field he rode with his host, now one and now the other +dismounting to turn over onto its feet rotund and glorious Shropshire +and Ramboullet-Merino ewes so hopelessly the product of man's selection +as to be unable to get off, of themselves, from their own broad backs, +once they were down with their four legs helplessly sky-aspiring. + +"I've really worked to make the American Merino," Dick was saying; "to +give it the developed leg, the strong back, the well-sprung rib, and +the stamina. The old-country breed lacked the stamina. It was too much +hand-reared and manicured." + +"You're doing things, big things," Graham assured him. "Think of +shipping rams to Idaho! That speaks for itself." + +Dick Forrest's eyes were sparkling, as he replied: + +"Better than Idaho. Incredible as it may sound, and asking forgiveness +for bragging, the great flocks to-day of Michigan and Ohio can trace +back to my California-bred Ramboullet rams. Take Australia. Twelve +years ago I sold three rams for three hundred each to a visiting +squatter. After he took them back and demonstrated them he sold them +for as many thousand each and ordered a shipload more from me. +Australia will never be the worse for my having been. Down there they +say that lucerne, artesian wells, refrigerator ships, and Forrest's +rams have tripled the wool and mutton production." + +Quite by chance, on the way back, meeting Mendenhall, the horse +manager, they were deflected by him to a wide pasture, broken by wooded +canyons and studded with oaks, to look over a herd of yearling Shires +that was to be dispatched next morning to the upland pastures and +feeding sheds of the Miramar Hills. There were nearly two hundred of +them, rough-coated, beginning to shed, large-boned and large for their +age. + +"We don't exactly crowd them," Dick Forrest explained, "but Mr. +Mendenhall sees to it that they never lack full nutrition from the time +they are foaled. Up there in the hills, where they are going, they'll +balance their grass with grain. This makes them assemble every night at +the feeding places and enables the feeders to keep track of them with a +minimum of effort. I've shipped fifty stallions, two-year-olds, every +year for the past five years, to Oregon alone. They're sort of +standardized, you know. The people up there know what they're getting. +They know my standard so well that they'll buy unsight and unseen." + +"You must cull a lot, then," Graham ventured. + +"And you'll see the culls draying on the streets of San Francisco," +Dick answered. + +"Yes, and on the streets of Denver," Mr. Mendenhall amplified, "and of +Los Angeles, and--why, two years ago, in the horse-famine, we shipped +twenty carloads of four-year geldings to Chicago, that averaged +seventeen hundred each. The lightest were sixteen, and there were +matched pairs up to nineteen hundred. Lord, Lord, that was a year for +horse-prices--blue sky, and then some." + +As Mr. Mendenhall rode away, a man, on a slender-legged, head-tossing +Palomina, rode up to them and was introduced to Graham as Mr. Hennessy, +the ranch veterinary. + +"I heard Mrs. Forrest was looking over the colts," he explained to his +employer, "and I rode across to give her a glance at The Fawn here. +She'll be riding her in less than a week. What horse is she on to-day?" + +"The Fop," Dick replied, as if expecting the comment that was prompt as +the disapproving shake of Mr. Hennessy's head. + +"I can never become converted to women riding stallions," muttered the +veterinary. "The Fop is dangerous. Worse--though I take my hat off to +his record--he's malicious and vicious. She--Mrs. Forrest ought to ride +him with a muzzle--but he's a striker as well, and I don't see how she +can put cushions on his hoofs." + +"Oh, well," Dick placated, "she has a bit that _is_ a bit in his mouth, +and she's not afraid to use it--" + +"If he doesn't fall over on her some day," Mr. Hennessy grumbled. +"Anyway, I'll breathe easier when she takes to The Fawn here. Now +_she's_ a lady's mount--all the spirit in the world, but nothing +vicious. She's a sweet mare, a sweet mare, and she'll steady down from +her friskiness. But she'll always be a gay handful--no riding academy +proposition." + +"Let's ride over," Dick suggested. "Mrs. Forrest'll have a gay handful +in The Fop if she's ridden him into that bunch of younglings.--It's her +territory, you know," he elucidated to Graham. "All the house horses +and lighter stock is her affair. And she gets grand results. I can't +understand it, myself. It's like a little girl straying into an +experimental laboratory of high explosives and mixing the stuff around +any old way and getting more powerful combinations than the graybeard +chemists." + +The three men took a cross-ranch road for half a mile, turned up a +wooded canyon where ran a spring-trickle of stream, and emerged on a +wide rolling terrace rich in pasture. Graham's first glimpse was of a +background of many curious yearling and two-year-old colts, against +which, in the middleground, he saw his hostess, on the back of the +bright bay thoroughbred, The Fop, who, on hind legs, was striking his +forefeet in the air and squealing shrilly. They reined in their mounts +and watched. + +"He'll get her yet," the veterinary muttered morosely. "That Fop isn't +safe." + +But at that moment Paula Forrest, unaware of her audience, with a sharp +cry of command and a cavalier thrust of sharp spurs into The Fop's +silken sides, checked him down to four-footedness on the ground and a +restless, champing quietness. + +"Taking chances?" Dick mildly reproached her, as the three rode up. + +"Oh, I can manage him," she breathed between tight teeth, as, with ears +back and vicious-gleaming eyes, The Fop bared his teeth in a bite that +would have been perilously near to Graham's leg had she not reined the +brute abruptly away across the neck and driven both spurs solidly into +his sides. + +The Fop quivered, squealed, and for the moment stood still. + +"It's the old game, the white man's game," Dick laughed. "She's not +afraid of him, and he knows it. She outgames him, out-savages him, +teaches him what savagery is in its intimate mood and tense." + +Three times, while they looked on, ready to whirl their own steeds away +if he got out of hand, The Fop attempted to burst into rampage, and +three times, solidly, with careful, delicate hand on the bitter bit, +Paula Forrest dealt him double spurs in the ribs, till he stood, +sweating, frothing, fretting, beaten, and in hand. + +"It's the way the white man has always done," Dick moralized, while +Graham suffered a fluttery, shivery sensation of admiration of the +beast-conquering Little Lady. "He's out-savaged the savage the world +around," Dick went on. "He's out-endured him, out-filthed him, +out-scalped him, out-tortured him, out-eaten him--yes, out-eaten him. +It's a fair wager that the white man, in extremis, has eaten more of +the genus homo, than the savage, in extremis, has eaten." + +"Good afternoon," Paula greeted her guest, the ranch veterinary, and +her husband. "I think I've got him now. Let's look over the colts. Just +keep an eye, Mr. Graham, on his mouth. He's a dreadful snapper. Ride +free from him, and you'll save your leg for old age." + +Now that The Fop's demonstration was over, the colts, startled into +flight by some impish spirit amongst them, galloped and frisked away +over the green turf, until, curious again, they circled back, halted at +gaze, and then, led by one particularly saucy chestnut filly, drew up +in half a circle before the riders, with alert pricking ears. + +Graham scarcely saw the colts at first. He was seeing his protean +hostess in a new role. Would her proteanness never end? he wondered, as +he glanced over the magnificent, sweating, mastered creature she +bestrode. Mountain Lad, despite his hugeness, was a mild-mannered pet +beside this squealing, biting, striking Fop who advertised all the +spirited viciousness of the most spirited vicious thoroughbred. + +"Look at her," Paula whispered to Dick, in order not to alarm the saucy +chestnut filly. "Isn't she wonderful! That's what I've been working +for." Paula turned to Evan. "Always they have some fault, some miss, at +the best an approximation rather than an achievement. But she's an +achievement. Look at her. She's as near right as I shall probably ever +get. Her sire is Big Chief, if you know our racing register. He sold +for sixty thousand when he was a cripple. We borrowed the use of him. +She was his only get of the season. But look at her! She's got his +chest and lungs. I had my choices--mares eligible for the register. Her +dam wasn't eligible, but I chose her. She was an obstinate old maid, +but she was the one mare for Big Chief. This is her first foal and she +was eighteen years old when she bred. But I knew it was there. All I +had to do was to look at Big Chief and her, and it just had to be +there." + +"The dam was only half thoroughbred," Dick explained. + +"But with a lot of Morgan on the other side," Paula added instantly, +"and a streak along the back of mustang. This shall be called Nymph, +even if she has no place in the books. She'll be my first unimpeachable +perfect saddle horse--I know it--the kind I like--my dream come true at +last." + +"A hoss has four legs, one on each corner," Mr. Hennessy uttered +profoundly. + +"And from five to seven gaits," Graham took up lightly, + +"And yet I don't care for those many-gaited Kentuckians," Paula said +quickly, "--except for park work. But for California, rough roads, +mountain trails, and all the rest, give me the fast walk, the fox trot, +the long trot that covers the ground, and the not too-long, +ground-covering gallop. Of course, the close-coupled, easy canter; but +I scarcely call that a gait--it's no more than the long lope reduced to +the adjustment of wind or rough ground." + +"She's a beauty," Dick admired, his eyes warm in contemplation of the +saucy chestnut filly, who was daringly close and alertly sniffing of +the subdued Fop's tremulous and nostril-dilated muzzle. + +"I prefer my own horses to be near thoroughbred rather than all +thoroughbred," Paula proclaimed. "The running horse has its place on +the track, but it's too specialized for mere human use." + +"Nicely coupled," Mr. Hennessy said, indicating the Nymph. "Short +enough for good running and long enough for the long trot. I'll admit I +didn't have any faith in the combination; but you've got a grand animal +out of it just the same." + +"I didn't have horses when I was a young girl," Paula said to Graham; +"and the fact that I can now not only have them but breed them and mold +them to my heart's desire is always too good to be true. Sometimes I +can't believe it myself, and have to ride out and look them over to +make sure." + +She turned her head and raised her eyes gratefully to Forrest; and +Graham watched them look into each other's eyes for a long half-minute. +Forrest's pleasure in his wife's pleasure, in her young enthusiasm and +joy of life, was clear to Graham's observation. "Lucky devil," was +Graham's thought, not because of his host's vast ranch and the success +and achievement of it, but because of the possession of a wonder-woman +who could look unabashed and appreciative into his eyes as the Little +Lady had looked. + +Graham was meditating, with skepticism, Ernestine's information that +Paula Forrest was thirty-eight, when she turned to the colts and +pointed her riding whip at a black yearling nibbling at the spring +green. + +"Look at that level rump, Dick," she said, "and those trotting feet and +pasterns." And, to Graham: "Rather different from Nymph's long wrists, +aren't they? But they're just what I was after." She laughed a little, +with just a shade of annoyance. "The dam was a bright sorrel--almost +like a fresh-minted twenty-dollar piece--and I did so want a pair out +of her, of the same color, for my own trap. Well, I can't say that I +exactly got them, although I bred her to a splendid, sorrel trotting +horse. And this is my reward, this black--and, wait till we get to the +brood mares and you'll see the other, a full brother and mahogany +brown. I'm so disappointed." + +She singled out a pair of dark bays, feeding together: "Those are two +of Guy Dillon's get--brother, you know, to Lou Dillon. They're out of +different mares, not quite the same bay, but aren't they splendidly +matched? And they both have Guy Dillon's coat." + +She moved her subdued steed on, skirting the flank of the herd quietly +in order not to alarm it; but a number of colts took flight. + +"Look at them!" she cried. "Five, there, are hackneys. Look at the lift +of their fore-legs as they run." + +"I'll be terribly disappointed if you don't get a prize-winning +four-in-hand out of them," Dick praised, and brought again the flash of +grateful eyes that hurt Graham as he noted it. + +"Two are out of heavier mares--see that one in the middle and the one +on the far left--and there's the other three to pick from for the +leaders. Same sire, five different dams, and a matched and balanced +four, out of five choices, all in the same season, is a stroke of luck, +isn't it?" + +She turned quickly to Mr. Hennessy: "I can begin to see the ones that +will have to sell for polo ponies--among the two-year-olds. You can +pick them." + +"If Mr. Mendenhall doesn't sell that strawberry roan for a clean +fifteen hundred, it'll be because polo has gone out of fashion," the +veterinary approved, with waxing enthusiasm. "I've had my eye on them. +That pale sorrel, there. You remember his set-back. Give him an extra +year and he'll--look at his coupling!--watch him turn!--a +cow-skin?--he'll turn on a silver dollar! Give him a year to make up, +and he'll stand a show for the international. Listen to me. I've had my +faith in him from the beginning. Cut out that Burlingame crowd. When +he's ripe, ship him straight East." + +Paula nodded and listened to Mr. Hennessy's judgment, her eyes kindling +with his in the warmth of the sight of the abounding young life for +which she was responsible. + +"It always hurts, though," she confessed to Graham, "selling such +beauties to have them knocked out on the field so quickly." + +Her sheer absorption in the animals robbed her speech of any hint of +affectation or show--so much so, that Dick was impelled to praise her +judgment to Evan. + +"I can dig through a whole library of horse practice, and muddle and +mull over the Mendelian Law until I'm dizzy, like the clod that I am; +but she is the genius. She doesn't have to study law. She just knows it +in some witch-like, intuitional way. All she has to do is size up a +bunch of mares with her eyes, and feel them over a little with her +hands, and hunt around till she finds the right sires, and get pretty +nearly what she wants in the result--except color, eh, Paul?" he teased. + +She showed her laughing teeth in the laugh at her expense, in which Mr. +Hennessy joined, and Dick continued: "Look at that filly there. We all +knew Paula was wrong. But look at it! She bred a rickety old +thoroughbred, that we wanted to put out of her old age, to a standard +stallion; got a filly; bred it back with a thoroughbred; bred its filly +foal with the same standard again; knocked all our prognostications +into a cocked hat, and--well, look at it, a world-beater polo pony. +There is one thing we have to take off our hats to her for: she doesn't +let any woman sentimentality interfere with her culling. Oh, she's +cold-blooded enough. She's as remorseless as any man when it comes to +throwing out the undesirables and selecting for what she wants. But she +hasn't mastered color yet. There's where her genius falls down, eh, +Paul? You'll have to put up with Duddy and Fuddy for a while longer for +your trap. By the way, how is Duddy?" + +"He's come around," she answered, "thanks to Mr. Hennessy." + +"Nothing serious," the veterinarian added. "He was just off his feed a +trifle. It was more a scare of the stableman than anything else." + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + + +From the colt pasture to the swimming tank Graham talked with his +hostess and rode as nearly beside her as The Fop's wickedness +permitted, while Dick and Hennessy, on ahead, were deep in ranch +business. + +"Insomnia has been a handicap all my life," she said, while she tickled +The Fop with a spur in order to check a threatened belligerence. "But I +early learned to keep the irritation of it off my nerves and the weight +of it off my mind. In fact, I early came to make a function of it and +actually to derive enjoyment from it. It was the only way to master a +thing I knew would persist as long as I persisted. Have you--of course +you have--learned to win through an undertow?" + +"Yes, by never fighting it," Graham answered, his eyes on the spray of +color in her cheeks and the tiny beads of sweat that arose from her +continuous struggle with the high-strung creature she rode. +Thirty-eight! He wondered if Ernestine had lied. Paula Forrest did not +look twenty-eight. Her skin was the skin of a girl, with all the +delicate, fine-pored and thin transparency of the skin of a girl. + +"Exactly," she went on. "By not fighting the undertow. By yielding to +its down-drag and out-drag, and working with it to reach air again. +Dick taught me that trick. So with my insomnia. If it is excitement +from immediate events that holds me back from the City of Sleep, I +yield to it and come quicker to unconsciousness from out the entangling +currents. I invite my soul to live over again, from the same and +different angles, the things that keep me from unconsciousness. + +"Take the swimming of Mountain Lad yesterday. I lived it over last +night as I had lived it in reality. Then I lived it as a spectator--as +the girls saw it, as you saw it, as the cowboy saw it, and, most of +all, as my husband saw it. Then I made up a picture of it, many +pictures of it, from all angles, and painted them, and framed them, and +hung them, and then, a spectator, looked at them as if for the first +time. And I made myself many kinds of spectators, from crabbed old +maids and lean pantaloons to girls in boarding school and Greek boys of +thousands of years ago. + +"After that I put it to music. I played it on the piano, and guessed +the playing of it on full orchestras and blaring bands. I chanted it, I +sang it-epic, lyric, comic; and, after a weary long while, of course I +slept in the midst of it, and knew not that I slept until I awoke at +twelve to-day. The last time I had heard the clock strike was six. Six +unbroken hours is a capital prize for me in the sleep lottery." + +As she finished, Mr. Hennessy rode away on a cross path, and Dick +Forrest dropped back to squire his wife on the other side. + +"Will you sport a bet, Evan?" he queried. + +"I'd like to hear the terms of it first," was the answer. + +"Cigars against cigars that you can't catch Paula in the tank inside +ten minutes--no, inside five, for I remember you're some swimmer." + +"Oh, give him a chance, Dick," Paula cried generously. "Ten minutes +will worry him." + +"But you don't know him," Dicked argued. "And you don't value my +cigars. I tell you he is a swimmer. He's drowned kanakas, and you know +what that means." + +"Perhaps I should reconsider. Maybe he'll slash a killing crawl-stroke +at me before I've really started. Tell me his history and prizes." + +"I'll just tell you one thing. They still talk of it in the Marquesas. +It was the big hurricane of 1892. He did forty miles in forty-five +hours, and only he and one other landed on the land. And they were all +kanakas. He was the only white man; yet he out-endured and drowned the +last kanaka of them--" + +"I thought you said there was one other?" Paula interrupted. + +"She was a woman," Dick answered. "He drowned the last kanaka." + +"And the woman was then a white woman?" Paula insisted. + +Graham looked quickly at her, and although she had asked the question +of her husband, her head turned to the turn of his head, so that he +found her eyes meeting his straightly and squarely in interrogation. +Graham held her gaze with equal straightness as he answered: "She was a +kanaka." + +"A queen, if you please," Dick took up. "A queen out of the ancient +chief stock. She was Queen of Huahoa." + +"Was it the chief stock that enabled her to out-endure the native men?" +Paula asked. "Or did you help her?" + +"I rather think we helped each other toward the end," Graham replied. +"We were both out of our heads for short spells and long spells. +Sometimes it was one, sometimes the other, that was all in. We made the +land at sunset--that is, a wall of iron coast, with the surf bursting +sky-high. She took hold of me and clawed me in the water to get some +sense in me. You see, I wanted to go in, which would have meant finish. + +"She got me to understand that she knew where she was; that the current +set westerly along shore and in two hours would drift us abreast of a +spot where we could land. I swear I either slept or was unconscious +most of those two hours; and I swear she was in one state or the other +when I chanced to come to and noted the absence of the roar of the +surf. Then it was my turn to claw and maul her back to consciousness. +It was three hours more before we made the sand. We slept where we +crawled out of the water. Next morning's sun burnt us awake, and we +crept into the shade of some wild bananas, found fresh water, and went +to sleep again. Next I awoke it was night. I took another drink, and +slept through till morning. She was still asleep when the bunch of +kanakas, hunting wild goats from the next valley, found us." + +"I'll wager, for a man who drowned a whole kanaka crew, it was you who +did the helping," Dick commented. + +"She must have been forever grateful," Paula challenged, her eyes +directly on Graham's. "Don't tell me she wasn't young, wasn't +beautiful, wasn't a golden brown young goddess." + +"Her mother was the Queen of Huahoa," Graham answered. "Her father was +a Greek scholar and an English gentleman. They were dead at the time of +the swim, and Nomare was queen herself. She _was_ young. She was +beautiful as any woman anywhere in the world may be beautiful. Thanks +to her father's skin, she as not golden brown. She was tawny golden. +But you've heard the story undoubtedly--" + +He broke off with a look of question to Dick, who shook his head. + +Calls and cries and splashings of water from beyond a screen of trees +warned them that they were near the tank. + +"You'll have to tell me the rest of the story some time," Paula said. + +"Dick knows it. I can't see why he hasn't told you." + +She shrugged her shoulders. + +"Perhaps because he's never had the time or the provocation." + +"God wot, it's had wide circulation," Graham laughed. "For know that I +was once morganatic--or whatever you call it--king of the cannibal +isles, or of a paradise of a Polynesian isle at any rate.--'By a purple +wave on an opal beach in the hush of the Mahim woods,'" he hummed +carelessly, in conclusion, and swung off from his horse. + +"'The white moth to the closing vine, the bee to the opening clover,'" +she hummed another line of the song, while The Fop nearly got his teeth +into her leg and she straightened him out with the spur, and waited for +Dick to help her off and tie him. + +"Cigars!--I'm in on that!--you can't catch her!" Bert Wainwright called +from the top of the high dive forty feet above. "Wait a minute! I'm +coming!" + +And come he did, in a swan dive that was almost professional and that +brought handclapping approval from the girls. + +"A sweet dive, balanced beautifully," Graham told him as he emerged +from the tank. + +Bert tried to appear unconscious of the praise, failed, and, to pass it +off, plunged into the wager. + +"I don't know what kind of a swimmer you are, Graham," he said, "but I +just want in with Dick on the cigars." + +"Me, too; me, too!" chorused Ernestine, and Lute, and Rita. + +"Boxes of candy, gloves, or any truck you care to risk," Ernestine +added. + +"But I don't know Mrs. Forrest's records, either," Graham protested, +after having taken on the bets. "However, if in five minutes--" + +"Ten minutes," Paula said, "and to start from opposite ends of the +tank. Is that fair? Any touch is a catch." Graham looked his hostess +over with secret approval. She was clad, not in the single white silk +slip she evidently wore only for girl parties, but in a coquettish +imitation of the prevailing fashion mode, a suit of changeable light +blue and green silk--almost the color of the pool; the skirt slightly +above the knees whose roundedness he recognized; with long stockings to +match, and tiny bathing shoes bound on with crossed ribbons. On her +head was a jaunty swimming cap no jauntier than herself when she urged +the ten minutes in place of five. + +Rita Wainwright held the watch, while Graham walked down to the other +end of the hundred-and-fifty-foot tank. + +"Paula, you'll be caught if you take any chances," Dick warned. "Evan +Graham is a real fish man." + +"I guess Paula'll show him a few, even without the pipe," Bert bragged +loyally. "And I'll bet she can out-dive him." + +"There you lose," Dick answered. "I saw the rock he dived from at +Huahoa. That was after his time, and after the death of Queen Nomare. +He was only a youngster--twenty-two; he had to be to do it. It was off +the peak of the Pau-wi Rock--one hundred and twenty-eight feet by +triangulation. And he couldn't do it legitimately or technically with a +swan-dive, because he had to clear two lower ledges while he was in the +air. The upper ledge of the two, by their own traditions, was the +highest the best of the kanakas had ever dared since their traditions +began. Well, he did it. He became tradition. As long as the kanakas of +Huahoa survive he will remain tradition--Get ready, Rita. Start on the +full minute." + +"It's almost a shame to play tricks on so reputable a swimmer," Paula +confided to them, as she faced her guest down the length of the tank +and while both waited the signal. + +"He may get you before you can turn the trick," Dick warned again. And +then, to Bert, with just a shade of anxiety: "Is it working all right? +Because if it isn't, Paula will have a bad five seconds getting out of +it." + +"All O.K.," Bert assured. "I went in myself. The pipe is working. +There's plenty of air." + +"Ready!" Rita called. "Go!" + +Graham ran toward their end like a foot-racer, while Paula darted up +the high dive. By the time she had gained the top platform, his hands +and feet were on the lower rungs. When he was half-way up she +threatened a dive, compelling him to cease from climbing and to get out +on the twenty-foot platform ready to follow her to the water. Whereupon +she laughed down at him and did not dive. "Time is passing--the +precious seconds are ticking off," Ernestine chanted. + +When he started to climb, Paula again chased him to the half-way +platform with a threat to dive. But not many seconds did Graham waste. +His next start was determined, and Paula, poised for her dive, could +not send him scuttling back. He raced upward to gain the thirty-foot +platform before she should dive, and she was too wise to linger. Out +into space she launched, head back, arms bent, hands close to chest, +legs straight and close together, her body balanced horizontally on the +air as it fell outward and downward. + +"Oh you Annette Kellerman!" Bert Wamwright's admiring cry floated up. + +Graham ceased pursuit to watch the completion of the dive, and saw his +hostess, a few feet above the water, bend her head forward, straighten +out her arms and lock the hands to form the arch before her head, and, +so shifting the balance of her body, change it from the horizontal to +the perfect, water-cleaving angle. + +The moment she entered the water, he swung out on the thirty-foot +platform and waited. From this height he could make out her body +beneath the surface swimming a full stroke straight for the far end of +the tank. Not till then did he dive. He was confident that he could +outspeed her, and his dive, far and flat, entered him in the water +twenty feet beyond her entrance. + +But at the instant he was in, Dick dipped two flat rocks into the water +and struck them together. This was the signal for Paula to change her +course. Graham heard the concussion and wondered. He broke surface in +the full swing of the crawl and went down the tank to the far end at a +killing pace. He pulled himself out and watched the surface of the +tank. A burst of handclapping from the girls drew his eyes to the +Little Lady drawing herself out of the tank at the other end. + +Again he ran down the side of the tank, and again she climbed the +scaffold. But this time his wind and endurance enabled him to cut down +her lead, so that she was driven to the twenty-foot platform. She took +no time for posturing or swanning, but tilted immediately off in a +stiff dive, angling toward the west side of the tank. Almost they were +in the air at the same time. In the water and under it, he could feel +against his face and arms the agitation left by her progress; but she +led into the deep shadow thrown by the low afternoon sun, where the +water was so dark he could see nothing. + +When he touched the side of the tank he came up. She was not in sight. +He drew himself out, panting, and stood ready to dive in at the first +sign of her. But there were no signs. + +"Seven minutes!" Rita called. "And a half! ... Eight!... And a half!" + +And no Paula Forrest broke surface. Graham refused to be alarmed +because he could see no alarm on the faces of the others. + +"I lose," he announced at Rita's "Nine minutes!" + +"She's been under over two minutes, and you're all too blessed calm +about it to get me excited," he said. "I've still a minute--maybe I +don't lose," he added quickly, as he stepped off feet first into the +tank. + +As he went down he turned over and explored the cement wall of tank +with his hands. Midway, possibly ten feet under the surface he +estimated, his hands encountered an opening in the wall. He felt about, +learned it Was unscreened, and boldly entered. Almost before he was in, +he found he could come up; but he came up slowly, breaking surface in +pitchy blackness and feeling about him without splashing. + +His fingers touched a cool smooth arm that shrank convulsively at +contact while the possessor of it cried sharply with the startle of +fright. He held on tightly and began to laugh, and Paula laughed with +him. A line from "The First Chanty" flashed into his +consciousness--"_Hearing her laugh in the gloom greatly I loved her._" + +"You did frighten me when you touched me," she said. "You came without +a sound, and I was a thousand miles away, dreaming..." + +"What?" Graham asked. + +"Well, honestly, I had just got an idea for a gown--a dusty, musty, +mulberry-wine velvet, with long, close lines, and heavy, tarnished gold +borders and cords and things. And the only jewelery a ring--one +enormous pigeon-blood ruby that Dick gave me years ago when we sailed +the _All Away_." + +"Is there anything you don't do?" he laughed. + +She joined with him, and their mirth sounded strangely hollow in the +pent and echoing dark. + +"Who told you?" she next asked. + +"No one. After you had been under two minutes I knew it had to be +something like this, and I came exploring." + +"It was Dick's idea. He had it built into the tank afterward. You will +find him full of whimsies. He delighted in scaring old ladies into fits +by stepping off into the tank with their sons or grandsons and hiding +away in here. But after one or two nearly died of shock--old ladies, I +mean--he put me up, as to-day, to fooling hardier persons like +yourself.--Oh, he had another accident. There was a Miss Coghlan, +friend of Ernestine, a little seminary girl. They artfully stood her +right beside the pipe that leads out, and Dick went off the high dive +and swam in here to the inside end of the pipe. After several minutes, +by the time she was in collapse over his drowning, he spoke up the pipe +to her in most horrible, sepulchral tones. And right there Miss Coghlan +fainted dead away." + +"She must have been a weak sister," Graham commented; while he +struggled with a wanton desire for a match so that he could strike it +and see how Paula Forrest looked paddling there beside him to keep +afloat. + +"She had a fair measure of excuse," Paula answered. "She was a young +thing--eighteen; and she had a sort of school-girl infatuation for +Dick. They all get it. You see, he's such a boy when he's playing that +they can't realize that he's a hard-bitten, hard-working, +deep-thinking, mature, elderly benedict. The embarrassing thing was +that the little girl, when she was first revived and before she could +gather her wits, exposed all her secret heart. Dick's face was a study +while she babbled her--" + +"Well?--going to stay there all night?" Bert Wainwright's voice came +down the pipe, sounding megaphonically close. + +"Heavens!" Graham sighed with relief; for he had startled and clutched +Paula's arm. "That's the time I got my fright. The little maiden is +avenged. Also, at last, I know what a lead-pipe cinch is." + +"And it's time we started for the outer world," she suggested. "It's +not the coziest gossiping place in the world. Shall I go first?" + +"By all means--and I'll be right behind; although it's a pity the water +isn't phosphorescent. Then I could follow your incandescent heel like +that chap Byron wrote about--don't you remember?" + +He heard her appreciative gurgle in the dark, and then her: "Well, I'm +going now." + +Unable to see the slightest glimmer, nevertheless, from the few sounds +she made he knew she had turned over and gone down head first, and he +was not beyond visioning with inner sight the graceful way in which she +had done it--an anything but graceful feat as the average swimming +woman accomplishes it. + +"Somebody gave it away to you," was Bert's prompt accusal, when Graham +rose to the surface of the tank and climbed out. + +"And you were the scoundrel who rapped stone under water," Graham +challenged. "If I'd lost I'd have protested the bet. It was a crooked +game, a conspiracy, and competent counsel, I am confident, would +declare it a felony. It's a case for the district attorney." + +"But you won," Ernestine cried. + +"I certainly did, and, therefore, I shall not prosecute you, nor any +one of your crooked gang--if the bets are paid promptly. Let me +see--you owe me a box of cigars--" + +"One cigar, sir!" + +"A box! A box!" "Cross tag!" Paula cried. "Let's play +cross-tag!--You're IT!" + +Suiting action to word, she tagged Graham on the shoulder and plunged +into the tank. Before he could follow, Bert seized him, whirled him in +a circle, was himself tagged, and tagged Dick before he could escape. +And while Dick pursued his wife through the tank and Bert and Graham +sought a chance to cross, the girls fled up the scaffold and stood in +an enticing row on the fifteen-foot diving platform. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. + + + +An indifferent swimmer, Donald Ware had avoided the afternoon sport in +the tank; but after dinner, somewhat to the irritation of Graham, the +violinist monopolized Paula at the piano. New guests, with the casual +expectedness of the Big House, had drifted in--a lawyer, by name Adolph +Well, who had come to confer with Dick over some big water-right suit; +Jeremy Braxton, straight from Mexico, Dick's general superintendent of +the Harvest Group, which bonanza, according to Jeremy Braxton, was as +"unpetering" as ever; Edwin O'Hay, a red-headed Irish musical and +dramatic critic; and Chauncey Bishop, editor and owner of the _San +Francisco Dispatch_, and a member of Dick's class and frat, as Graham +gleaned. + +Dick had started a boisterous gambling game which he called "Horrible +Fives," wherein, although excitement ran high and players plunged, the +limit was ten cents, and, on a lucky coup, the transient banker might +win or lose as high as ninety cents, such coup requiring at least ten +minutes to play out. This game went on at a big table at the far end of +the room, accompanied by much owing and borrowing of small sums and an +incessant clamor for change. + +With nine players, the game was crowded, and Graham, rather than draw +cards, casually and occasionally backed Ernestine's cards, the while he +glanced down the long room at the violinist and Paula Forrest absorbed +in Beethoven Symphonies and Delibes' Ballets. Jeremy Braxton was +demanding raising the limit to twenty cents, and Dick, the heaviest +loser, as he averred, to the tune of four dollars and sixty cents, was +plaintively suggesting the starting of a "kitty" in order that some one +should pay for the lights and the sweeping out of the place in the +morning, when Graham, with a profound sigh at the loss of his last +bet--a nickel which he had had to pay double--announced to Ernestine +that he was going to take a turn around the room to change his luck. + +"I prophesied you would," she told him under her breath. + +"What?" he asked. + +She glanced significantly in Paula's direction. + +"Just for that I simply must go down there now," he retorted. + +"Can't dast decline a dare," she taunted. + +"If it were a dare I wouldn't dare do it." + +"In which case I dare you," she took up. + +He shook his head: "I had already made up my mind to go right down +there to that one spot and cut that fiddler out of the running. You +can't dare me out of it at this late stage. Besides, there's Mr. O'Hay +waiting for you to make your bet." + +Ernestine rashly laid ten cents, and scarcely knew whether she won or +lost, so intent was she on watching Graham go down the room, although +she did know that Bert Wainwright had not been unobservant of her gaze +and its direction. On the other hand, neither she nor Bert, nor any +other at the table, knew that Dick's quick-glancing eyes, sparkling +with merriment while his lips chaffed absurdities that made them all +laugh, had missed no portion of the side play. + +Ernestine, but little taller than Paula, although hinting of a plus +roundness to come, was a sun-healthy, clear blonde, her skin sprayed +with the almost transparent flush of maidenhood at eighteen. To the +eye, it seemed almost that one could see through the pink daintiness of +fingers, hand, wrist, and forearm, neck and cheek. And to this +delicious transparency of rose and pink, was added a warmth of tone +that did not escape Dick's eyes as he glimpsed her watch Evan Graham +move down the length of room. Dick knew and classified her wild +imagined dream or guess, though the terms of it were beyond his +divination. + +What she saw was what she imagined was the princely walk of Graham, the +high, light, blooded carriage of his head, the delightful carelessness +of the gold-burnt, sun-sanded hair that made her fingers ache to be +into with caresses she for the first time knew were possible of her +fingers. + +Nor did Paula, during an interval of discussion with the violinist in +which she did not desist from stating her criticism of O'Hay's latest +criticism of Harold Bauer, fail to see and keep her eyes on Graham's +progress. She, too, noted with pleasure his grace of movement, the +high, light poise of head, the careless hair, the clear bronze of the +smooth cheeks, the splendid forehead, the long gray eyes with the hint +of drooping lids and boyish sullenness that fled before the smile with +which he greeted her. + +She had observed that smile often since her first meeting with him. It +was an irresistible smile, a smile that lighted the eyes with the +radiance of good fellowship and that crinkled the corners into tiny, +genial lines. It was provocative of smiles, for she found herself +smiling a silent greeting in return as she continued stating to Ware +her grievance against O'Hay's too-complacent praise of Bauer. + +But her engagement was tacitly with Donald Ware at the piano, and with +no more than passing speech, she was off and away in a series of +Hungarian dances that made Graham marvel anew as he loafed and smoked +in a window-seat. + +He marveled at the proteanness of her, at visions of those nimble +fingers guiding and checking The Fop, swimming and paddling in +submarine crypts, and, falling in swan-like flight through forty feet +of air, locking just above the water to make the diver's +head-protecting arch of arm. + +In decency, he lingered but few minutes, returned to the gamblers, and +put the entire table in a roar with a well-acted Yiddisher's chagrin +and passion at losing entire nickels every few minutes to the fortunate +and chesty mine superintendent from Mexico. + +Later, when the game of Horrible Fives broke up, Bert and Lute Desten +spoiled the Adagio from Beethoven's _Sonata Pathetique_ by +exaggeratedly ragging to it in what Dick immediately named "The Loving +Slow-Drag," till Paula broke down in a gale of laughter and ceased from +playing. + +New groupings occurred. A bridge table formed with Weil, Rita, Bishop, +and Dick. Donald Ware was driven from his monopoly of Paula by the +young people under the leadership of Jeremy Braxton; while Graham and +O'Hay paired off in a window-seat and O'Hay talked shop. + +After a time, in which all at the piano had sung Hawaiian _hulas_, +Paula sang alone to her own accompaniment. She sang several German +love-songs in succession, although it was merely for the group about +her and not for the room; and Evan Graham, almost to his delight, +decided that at last he had found a weakness in her. She might be a +magnificent pianist, horsewoman, diver, and swimmer, but it was patent, +despite her singing throat, that she was not a magnificent singer. This +conclusion he was quickly compelled to modify. A singer she was, a +consummate singer. Weakness was only comparative after all. She lacked +the magnificent voice. It was a sweet voice, a rich voice, with the +same warm-fibered thrill of her laugh; but the volume so essential to +the great voice was not there. Ear and voice seemed effortlessly true, +and in her singing were feeling, artistry, training, intelligence. But +volume--it was scarcely a fair average, was his judgment. + +But quality--there he halted. It was a woman's voice. It was haunted +with richness of sex. In it resided all the temperament in the +world--with all the restraint of discipline, was the next step of his +analysis. He had to admire the way she refused to exceed the +limitations of her voice. In this she achieved triumphs. + +And, while he nodded absently to O'Hay's lecturette on the state of +the--opera, Graham fell to wondering if Paula Forrest, thus so +completely the mistress of her temperament, might not be equally +mistress of her temperament in the deeper, passional ways. There was a +challenge there--based on curiosity, he conceded, but only partly so +based; and, over and beyond, and, deeper and far beneath, a challenge +to a man made in the immemorial image of man. + +It was a challenge that bade him pause, and even look up and down the +great room and to the tree-trunked roof far above, and to the flying +gallery hung with the spoils of the world, and to Dick Forrest, master +of all this material achievement and husband of the woman, playing +bridge, just as he worked, with all his heart, his laughter ringing +loud as he caught Rita in renig. For Graham had the courage not to shun +the ultimate connotations. Behind the challenge in his speculations +lurked the woman. Paula Forrest was splendidly, deliciously woman, all +woman, unusually woman. From the blow between the eyes of his first +striking sight of her, swimming the great stallion in the pool, she had +continued to witch-ride his man's imagination. He was anything but +unused to women; and his general attitude was that of being tired of +the mediocre sameness of them. To chance upon the unusual woman was +like finding the great pearl in a lagoon fished out by a generation of +divers. + +"Glad to see you're still alive," Paula laughed to him, a little later. + +She was prepared to depart with Lute for bed. A second bridge quartet +had been arranged--Ernestine, Bert, Jeremy Braxton, and Graham; while +O'Hay and Bishop were already deep in a bout of two-handed pinochle. + +"He's really a charming Irishman when he keeps off his one string," +Paula went on. + +"Which, I think I am fair, is music," Graham said. + +"And on music he is insufferable," Lute observed. "It's the only thing +he doesn't know the least thing about. He drives one frantic." + +"Never mind," Paula soothed, in gurgling tones. "You will all be +avenged. Dick just whispered to me to get the philosophers up to-morrow +night. You know how they talk music. A musical critic is their awful +prey." + +"Terrence said the other night that there was no closed season on +musical critics," Lute contributed. + +"Terrence and Aaron will drive him to drink," Paula laughed her joy of +anticipation. "And Dar Hyal, alone, with his blastic theory of art, can +specially apply it to music to the confutation of all the first words +and the last. He doesn't believe a thing he says about blastism, any +more than was he serious when he danced the other evening. It's his bit +of fun. He's such a deep philosopher that he has to get his fun +somehow." + +"And if O'Hay ever locks horns with Terrence," Lute prophesied, "I can +see Terrence tucking arm in arm with him, leading him down to the stag +room, and heating the argument with the absentest-minded variety of +drinks that ever O'Hay accomplished." + +"Which means a very sick O'Hay next day," Paula continued her gurgles +of anticipation. + +"I'll tell him to do it!" exclaimed Lute. + +"You mustn't think we're all bad," Paula protested to Graham. "It's +just the spirit of the house. Dick likes it. He's always playing jokes +himself. He relaxes that way. I'll wager, right now, it was Dick's +suggestion, to Lute, and for Lute to carry out, for Terrence to get +O'Hay into the stag room. Now, 'fess up, Lute." + +"Well, I will say," Lute answered with meticulous circumspection, "that +the idea was not entirely original with me." + +At this point, Ernestine joined them and appropriated Graham with: + +"We're all waiting for you. We've cut, and you and I are partners. +Besides, Paula's making her sleep noise. So say good night, and let her +go." + +Paula had left for bed at ten o'clock. Not till one did the bridge +break up. Dick, his arm about Ernestine in brotherly fashion, said good +night to Graham where one of the divided ways led to the watch tower, +and continued on with his pretty sister-in-law toward her quarters. + +"Just a tip, Ernestine," he said at parting, his gray eyes frankly and +genially on hers, but his voice sufficiently serious to warn her. + +"What have I been doing now?" she pouted laughingly. + +"Nothing... as yet. But don't get started, or you'll be laying up a +sore heart for yourself. You're only a kid yet--eighteen; and a darned +nice, likable kid at that. Enough to make 'most any man sit up and take +notice. But Evan Graham is not 'most any man--" + +"Oh, I can take care of myself," she blurted out in a fling of quick +resentment. + +"But listen to me just the same. There comes a time in the affairs of a +girl when the love-bee gets a buzzing with a very loud hum in her +pretty noddle. Then is the time she mustn't make a mistake and start in +loving the wrong man. You haven't fallen in love with Evan Graham yet, +and all you have to do is just not to fall in love with him. He's not +for you, nor for any young thing. He's an oldster, an ancient, and +possibly has forgotten more about love, romantic love, and young +things, than you'll ever learn in a dozen lives. If he ever marries +again--" + +"Again!" Ernestine broke in. + +"Why, he's been a widower, my dear, for over fifteen years." + +"Then what of it?" she demanded defiantly. + +"Just this," Dick continued quietly. "He's lived the young-thing +romance, and lived it wonderfully; and, from the fact that in fifteen +years he has not married again, means--" + +"That he's never recovered from his loss?" Ernestine interpolated. "But +that's no proof--" + +"--Means that he's got over his apprenticeship to wild young romance," +Dick held on steadily. "All you have to do is look at him and realize +that he has not lacked opportunities, and that, on occasion, some very +fine women, real wise women, mature women, have given him foot-races +that tested his wind and endurance. But so far they've not succeeded in +catching him. And as for young things, you know how filled the world is +with them for a man like him. Think it over, and just keep your +heart-thoughts away from him. If you don't let your heart start to warm +toward him, it will save your heart from a grievous chill later on." + +He took one of her hands in his, and drew her against him, an arm +soothingly about her shoulder. For several minutes of silence Dick idly +speculated on what her thoughts might be. + +"You know, we hard-bitten old fellows--" he began half-apologetically, +half-humorously. + +But she made a restless movement of distaste, and cried out: + +"Are the only ones worth while! The young men are all youngsters, and +that's what's the matter with them. They're full of life, and coltish +spirits, and dance, and song. But they're not serious. They're not big. +They're not--oh, they don't give a girl that sense of all-wiseness, of +proven strength, of, of... well, of manhood." + +"I understand," Dick murmured. "But please do not forget to glance at +the other side of the shield. You glowing young creatures of women must +affect the old fellows in precisely similar ways. They may look on you +as toys, playthings, delightful things to whom to teach a few fine +foolishnesses, but not as comrades, not as equals, not as sharers--full +sharers. Life is something to be learned. They have learned it... some +of it. But young things like you, Ernestine, have you learned any of it +yet?" + +"Tell me," she asked abruptly, almost tragically, "about this wild +young romance, about this young thing when he was young, fifteen years +ago." + +"Fifteen?" Dick replied promptly. "Eighteen. They were married three +years before she died. In fact--figure it out for yourself--they were +actually married, by a Church of England dominie, and living in +wedlock, about the same moment that you were squalling your first +post-birth squalls in this world." + +"Yes, yes--go on," she urged nervously. "What was she like?" + +"She was a resplendent, golden-brown, or tan-golden half-caste, a +Polynesian queen whose mother had been a queen before her, whose father +was an Oxford man, an English gentleman, and a real scholar. Her name +was Nomare. She was Queen of Huahoa. She was barbaric. He was young +enough to out-barbaric her. There was nothing sordid in their marriage. +He was no penniless adventurer. She brought him her island kingdom and +forty thousand subjects. He brought to that island his fortune--and it +was no inconsiderable fortune. He built a palace that no South Sea +island ever possessed before or will ever possess again. It was the +real thing, grass-thatched, hand-hewn beams that were lashed with +cocoanut sennit, and all the rest. It was rooted in the island; it +sprouted out of the island; it _belonged_, although he fetched Hopkins +out from New York to plan it. + +"Heavens! they had their own royal yacht, their mountain house, their +canoe house--the last a veritable palace in itself. I know. I have been +at great feasts in it--though it was after their time. Nomare was dead, +and no one knew where Graham was, and a king of collateral line was the +ruler. + +"I told you he out-barbaricked her. Their dinner service was gold.--Oh, +what's the use in telling any more. He was only a boy. She was +half-English, half-Polynesian, and a really and truly queen. They were +flowers of their races. They were a pair of wonderful children. They +lived a fairy tale. And... well, Ernestine, the years have passed, and +Evan Graham has passed from the realm of the young thing. It will be a +remarkable woman that will ever infatuate him now. Besides, he's +practically broke. Though he didn't wastrel his money. As much +misfortune, and more, than anything else." + +"Paula would be more his kind," Ernestine said meditatively. + +"Yes, indeed," Dick agreed. "Paula, or any woman as remarkable as +Paula, would attract him a thousand times more than all the sweet, +young, lovely things like you in the world. We oldsters have our +standards, you know." + +"And I'll have to put up with the youngsters," Ernestine sighed. + +"In the meantime, yes," he chuckled. "Remembering, always, that you, +too, in time, may grow into the remarkable, mature woman, who can +outfoot a man like Evan in a foot-race of love for possession." + +"But I shall be married long before that," she pouted. + +"Which will be your good fortune, my dear. And, now, good night. And +you are not angry with me?" + +She smiled pathetically and shook her head, put up her lips to be +kissed, then said as they parted: + +"I promise not to be angry if you will only show me the way that in the +end will lead me to ancient graybeards like you and Graham." + +Dick Forrest, turning off lights as he went, penetrated the library, +and, while selecting half a dozen reference volumes on mechanics and +physics, smiled as if pleased with himself at recollection of the +interview with his sister-in-law. He was confident that he had spoken +in time and not a moment too soon. But, half way up the book-concealed +spiral staircase that led to his work room, a remark of Ernestine, +echoing in his consciousness, made him stop from very suddenness to +lean his shoulder against the wall.--_"Paula would be more his kind."_ + +"Silly ass!" he laughed aloud, continuing on his way. "And married a +dozen years!" + +Nor did he think again about it, until, in bed, on his sleeping porch, +he took a glance at his barometers and thermometers, and prepared to +settle down to the solution of the electrical speculation that had been +puzzling him. Then it was, as he peered across the great court to his +wife's dark wing and dark sleeping porch to see if she were still +waking, that Ernestine's remark again echoed. He dismissed it with a +"Silly ass!" of scorn, lighted a cigarette, and began running, with +trained eye, the indexes of the books and marking the pages sought with +matches. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + + +It was long after ten in the morning, when Graham, straying about +restlessly and wondering if Paula Forrest ever appeared before the +middle of the day, wandered into the music room. Despite the fact that +he was a several days' guest in the Big House, so big was it that the +music room was new territory. It was an exquisite room, possibly +thirty-five by sixty and rising to a lofty trussed ceiling where a warm +golden light was diffused from a skylight of yellow glass. Red tones +entered largely into the walls and furnishing, and the place, to him, +seemed to hold the hush of music. + +Graham was lazily contemplating a Keith with its inevitable triumph of +sun-gloried atmosphere and twilight-shadowed sheep, when, from the tail +of his eye, he saw his hostess come in from the far entrance. Again, +the sight of her, that was a picture, gave him the little catch-breath +of gasp. She was clad entirely in white, and looked very young and +quite tall in the sweeping folds of a _holoku_ of elaborate simplicity +and apparent shapelessness. He knew the _holoku_ in the home of its +origin, where, on the _lanais_ of Hawaii, it gave charm to a plain +woman and double-folded the charm of a charming woman. + +While they smiled greeting across the room, he was noting the set of +her body, the poise of head and frankness of eyes--all of which seemed +articulate with a friendly, comradely, "Hello, friends." At least such +was the form Graham's fancy took as she came toward him. + +"You made a mistake with this room," he said gravely. + +"No, don't say that! But how?" + +"It should have been longer, much longer, twice as long at least." + +"Why?" she demanded, with a disapproving shake of head, while he +delighted in the girlish color in her cheeks that gave the lie to her +thirty-eight years. + +"Because, then," he answered, "you should have had to walk twice as far +this morning and my pleasure of watching you would have been +correspondingly increased. I've always insisted that the _holoku_ is +the most charming garment ever invented for women." + +"Then it was my _holoku_ and not I," she retorted. "I see you are like +Dick--always with a string on your compliments, and lo, when we poor +sillies start to nibble, back goes the compliment dragging at the end +of the string. + +"Now I want to show you the room," she hurried on, closing his +disclaimer. "Dick gave me a free hand with it. It's all mine, you see, +even to its proportions." + +"And the pictures?" + +"I selected them," she nodded, "every one of them, and loved them onto +the walls myself. Although Dick did quarrel with me over that +Vereschagin. He agreed on the two Millets and the Corot over there, and +on that Isabey; and even conceded that some Vereschagins might do in a +music room, but not that particular Vereschagin. He's jealous for our +local artists, you see. He wanted more of them, wanted to show his +appreciation of home talent." + +"I don't know your Pacific Coast men's work very well," Graham said. +"Tell me about them. Show me that--Of course, that's a Keith, there; +but whose is that next one? It's beautiful." + +"A McComas--" she was answering; and Graham, with a pleasant +satisfaction, was settling himself to a half-hour's talk on pictures, +when Donald Ware entered with questing eyes that lighted up at sight of +the Little Lady. + +His violin was under his arm, and he crossed to the piano in a brisk, +business-like way and proceeded to lay out music. + +"We're going to work till lunch," Paula explained to Graham. "He swears +I'm getting abominably rusty, and I think he's half right. We'll see +you at lunch. You can stay if you care, of course; but I warn you it's +really going to be work. And we're going swimming this afternoon. Four +o'clock at the tank, Dick says. Also, he says he's got a new song he's +going to sing then.--What time is it, Mr. Ware?" + +"Ten minutes to eleven," the musician answered briefly, with a touch of +sharpness. + +"You're ahead of time--the engagement was for eleven. And till eleven +you'll have to wait, sir. I must run and see Dick, first. I haven't +said good morning to him yet." + +Well Paula knew her husband's hours. Scribbled secretly in the back of +the note-book that lay always on the reading stand by her couch were +hieroglyphic notes that reminded her that he had coffee at six-thirty; +might possibly be caught in bed with proof-sheets or books till +eight-forty-five, if not out riding; was inaccessible between nine and +ten, dictating correspondence to Blake; was inaccessible between ten +and eleven, conferring with managers and foremen, while Bonbright, the +assistant secretary, took down, like any court reporter, every word +uttered by all parties in the rapid-fire interviews. + +At eleven, unless there were unexpected telegrams or business, she +could usually count on finding Dick alone for a space, although +invariably busy. Passing the secretaries' room, the click of a +typewriter informed her that one obstacle was removed. In the library, +the sight of Mr. Bonbright hunting a book for Mr. Manson, the Shorthorn +manager, told her that Dick's hour with his head men was over. + +She pressed the button that swung aside a section of filled +book-shelves and revealed the tiny spiral of steel steps that led up to +Dick's work room. At the top, a similar pivoting section of shelves +swung obediently to her press of button and let her noiselessly into +his room. A shade of vexation passed across her face as she recognized +Jeremy Braxton's voice. She paused in indecision, neither seeing nor +being seen. + +"If we flood we flood," the mine superintendent was saying. "It will +cost a mint--yes, half a dozen mints--to pump out again. And it's a +damned shame to drown the old Harvest that way." + +"But for this last year the books show that we've worked at a positive +loss," Paula heard Dick take up. "Every petty bandit from Huerta down +to the last peon who's stolen a horse has gouged us. It's getting too +stiff--taxes extraordinary--bandits, revolutionists, and federals. We +could survive it, if only the end were in sight; but we have no +guarantee that this disorder may not last a dozen or twenty years." + +"Just the same, the old Harvest--think of flooding her!" the +superintendent protested. + +"And think of Villa," Dick replied, with a sharp laugh the bitterness +of which did not escape Paula. "If he wins he says he's going to divide +all the land among the peons. The next logical step will be the mines. +How much do you think we've coughed up to the constitutionalists in the +past twelvemonth?" + +"Over a hundred and twenty thousand," Braxton answered promptly. "Not +counting that fifty thousand cold bullion to Torenas before he +retreated. He jumped his army at Guaymas and headed for Europe with +it--I wrote you all that." + +"If we keep the workings afloat, Jeremy, they'll go on gouging, gouge +without end, Amen. I think we'd better flood. If we can make wealth +more efficiently than those rapscallions, let us show them that we can +destroy wealth with the same facility." + +"That's what I tell them. And they smile and repeat that such and such +a free will offering, under exigent circumstances, would be very +acceptable to the revolutionary chiefs--meaning themselves. The big +chiefs never finger one peso in ten of it. Good Lord! I show them what +we've done. Steady work for five thousand peons. Wages raised from ten +centavos a day to a hundred and ten. I show them peons--ten-centavo men +when we took them, and five-peso men when I showed them. And the same +old smile and the same old itching palm, and the same old acceptability +of a free will offering from us to the sacred cause of the revolution. +By God! Old Diaz was a robber, but he was a decent robber. I said to +Arranzo: 'If we shut down, here's five thousand Mexicans out of a +job--what'll you do with them?' And Arranzo smiled and answered me pat. +'Do with them?' he said. 'Why, put guns in their hands and march 'em +down to take Mexico City.'" + +In imagination Paula could see Dick's disgusted shrug of shoulders as +she heard him say: + +"The curse of it is--that the stuff is there, and that we're the only +fellows that can get it out. The Mexicans can't do it. They haven't the +brains. All they've got is the guns, and they're making us shell out +more than we make. There's only one thing for us, Jeremy. We'll forget +profits for a year or so, lay off the men, and just keep the engineer +force on and the pumping going." + +"I threw that into Arranzo," Jeremy Braxton's voice boomed. "And what +was his comeback? That if we laid off the peons, he'd see to it that +the engineers laid off, too, and the mine could flood and be damned to +us.--No, he didn't say that last. He just smiled, but the smile meant +the same thing. For two cents I'd a-wrung his yellow neck, except that +there'd have been another patriot in his boots and in my office next +day proposing a stiffer gouge. + +"So Arranzo got his 'bit,' and, on top of it, before he went across to +join the main bunch around Juarez, he let his men run off three hundred +of our mules--thirty thousand dollars' worth of mule-flesh right there, +after I'd sweetened him, too. The yellow skunk!" + +"Who is revolutionary chief in our diggings right now?" Paula heard her +husband ask with one of his abrupt shifts that she knew of old time +tokened his drawing together the many threads of a situation and +proceeding to action. + +"Raoul Bena." + +"What's his rank?" + +"Colonel--he's got about seventy ragamuffins." + +"What did he do before he quit work?" + +"Sheep-herder." + +"Very well." Dick's utterance was quick and sharp. "You've got to +play-act. Become a patriot. Hike back as fast as God will let you. +Sweeten this Raoul Bena. He'll see through your play, or he's no +Mexican. Sweeten him and tell him you'll make him a general---a second +Villa." + +"Lord, Lord, yes, but how?" Jeremy Braxton demanded. + +"By putting him at the head of an army of five thousand. Lay off the +men. Make him make them volunteer. We're safe, because Huerta is +doomed. Tell him you're a real patriot. Give each man a rifle. We'll +stand that for a last gouge, and it will prove you a patriot. Promise +every man his job back when the war is over. Let them and Raoul Bena +depart with your blessing. Keep on the pumping force only. And if we +cut out profits for a year or so, at the same time we are cutting down +losses. And perhaps we won't have to flood old Harvest after all." + +Paula smiled to herself at Dick's solution as she stole back down the +spiral on her way to the music room. She was depressed, but not by the +Harvest Group situation. Ever since her marriage there had always been +trouble in the working of the Mexican mines Dick had inherited. Her +depression was due to her having missed her morning greeting to him. +But this depression vanished at meeting Graham, who had lingered with +Ware at the piano and who, at her coming, was evidencing signs of +departure. + +"Don't run away," she urged. "Stay and witness a spectacle of industry +that should nerve you up to starting on that book Dick has been telling +me about." + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + + +On Dick's face, at lunch, there was no sign of trouble over the Harvest +Group; nor could anybody have guessed that Jeremy Braxton's visit had +boded anything less gratifying than a report of unfailing earnings. +Although Adolph Weil had gone on the early morning train, which +advertised that the business which had brought him had been transacted +with Dick at some unheard of hour, Graham discovered a greater company +than ever at the table. Besides a Mrs. Tully, who seemed a stout and +elderly society matron, and whom Graham could not make out, there were +three new men, of whose identity he gleaned a little: a Mr. Gulhuss, +State Veterinary; a Mr. Deacon, a portrait painter of evident note on +the Coast; and a Captain Lester, then captain of a Pacific Mail liner, +who had sailed skipper for Dick nearly twenty years before and who had +helped Dick to his navigation. + +The meal was at its close, and the superintendent was glancing at his +watch, when Dick said: + +"Jeremy, I want to show you what I've been up to. We'll go right now. +You'll have time on your way to the train." + +"Let us all go," Paula suggested, "and make a party of it. I'm dying to +see it myself, Dick's been so obscure about it." + +Sanctioned by Dick's nod, she was ordering machines and saddle horses +the next moment. + +"What is it?" Graham queried, when she had finished. + +"Oh, one of Dick's stunts. He's always after something new. This is an +invention. He swears it will revolutionize farming--that is, small +farming. I have the general idea of it, but I haven't seen it set up +yet. It was ready a week ago, but there was some delay about a cable or +something concerning an adjustment." + +"There's billions in it... if it works," Dick smiled over the table. +"Billions for the farmers of the world, and perhaps a trifle of royalty +for me... if it works." + +"But what is it?" O'Hay asked. "Music in the dairy barns to make the +cows give down their milk more placidly?" + +"Every farmer his own plowman while sitting on his front porch," Dick +baffled back. "In fact, the labor-eliminating intermediate stage +between soil production and sheer laboratory production of food. But +wait till you see it. Gulhuss, this is where I kill my own business, if +it works, for it will do away with the one horse of every ten-acre +farmer between here and Jericho." + +In ranch machines and on saddle animals, the company was taken a mile +beyond the dairy center, where a level field was fenced squarely off +and contained, as Dick announced, just precisely ten acres. + +"Behold," he said, "the one-man and no-horse farm where the farmer sits +on the porch. Please imagine the porch." + +In the center of the field was a stout steel pole, at least twenty feet +in height and guyed very low. + +From a drum on top of the pole a thin wire cable ran to the extreme +edge of the field and was attached to the steering lever of a small +gasoline tractor. About the tractor two mechanics fluttered. At command +from Dick they cranked the motor and started it on its way. + +"This is the porch," Dick said. "Just imagine we're all that future +farmer sitting in the shade and reading the morning paper while the +manless, horseless plowing goes on." + +Alone, unguided, the drum on the head of the pole in the center winding +up the cable, the tractor, at the circumference permitted by the cable, +turned a single furrow as it described a circle, or, rather, an inward +trending spiral about the field. + +"No horse, no driver, no plowman, nothing but the farmer to crank the +tractor and start it on its way," Dick exulted, as the uncanny +mechanism turned up the brown soil and continued unguided, ever +spiraling toward the field's center. "Plow, harrow, roll, seed, +fertilize, cultivate, harvest--all from the front porch. And where the +farmer can buy juice from a power company, all he, or his wife, will +have to do is press the button, and he to his newspaper, and she to her +pie-crust." + +"All you need, now, to make it absolutely perfect," Graham praised, "is +to square the circle." + +"Yes," Mr. Gulhuss agreed. "As it is, a circle in a square field loses +some acreage." + +Graham's face advertised a mental arithmetic trance for a minute, when +he announced: "Loses, roughly, three acres out of every ten." + +"Sure," Dick concurred. "But the farmer has to have his front porch +somewhere on his ten acres. And the front porch represents the house, +the barn, the chicken yard and the various outbuildings. Very well. Let +him get tradition out of his mind, and, instead of building these +things in the center of his ten acres, let him build them on the three +acres of fringe. And let him plant his fruit and shade trees and berry +bushes on the fringe. When you come to consider it, the traditionary +method of erecting the buildings in the center of a rectangular ten +acres compels him to plow around the center in broken rectangles." + +Gulhuss nodded enthusiastically. "Sure. And there's always the roadway +from the center out to the county road or right of way. That breaks the +efficiency of his plowing. Break ten acres into the consequent smaller +rectangles, and it's expensive cultivation." + +"Wish navigation was as automatic," was Captain Lester's contribution. + +"Or portrait painting," laughed Rita Wainwright with a significant +glance at Mr. Deacon. + +"Or musical criticism," Lute remarked, with no glance at all, but with +a pointedness of present company that brought from O'Hay: + +"Or just being a charming young woman." + +"What price for the outfit?" Jeremy Braxton asked. + +"Right now, we could manufacture and lay down, at a proper profit, for +five hundred. If the thing came into general use, with up to date, +large-scale factory methods, three hundred. But say five hundred. And +write off fifteen per cent, for interest and constant, it would cost +the farmer seventy dollars a year. What ten-acre farmer, on +two-hundred-dollar land, who keeps books, can keep a horse for seventy +dollars a year? And on top of that, it would save him, in labor, +personal or hired, at the abjectest minimum, two hundred dollars a +year." + +"But what guides it?" Rita asked. + +"The drum on the post. The drum is graduated for the complete +radius--which took some tall figuring, I assure you--and the cable, +winding around the drum and shortening, draws the tractor in toward the +center." + +"There are lots of objections to its general introduction, even among +small farmers," Gulhuss said. + +Dick nodded affirmation. + +"Sure," he replied. "I have over forty noted down and classified. And +I've as many more for the machine itself. If the thing is a success, it +will take a long time to perfect it and introduce it." + +Graham found himself divided between watching the circling tractor and +casting glances at the picture Paula Forrest was on her mount. It was +her first day on The Fawn, which was the Palomina mare Hennessy had +trained for her. Graham smiled with secret approval of her femininity; +for Paula, whether she had designed her habit for the mare, or had +selected one most peculiarly appropriate, had achieved a triumph. + +In place of a riding coat, for the afternoon was warm, she wore a tan +linen blouse with white turnback collar. A short skirt, made like the +lower part of a riding coat, reached the knees, and from knees to +entrancing little bespurred champagne boots tight riding trousers +showed. Skirt and trousers were of fawn-colored silk corduroy. Soft +white gauntlets on her hands matched with the collar in the one +emphasis of color. Her head was bare, the hair done tight and low +around her ears and nape of neck. + +"I don't see how you can keep such a skin and expose yourself to the +sun this way," Graham ventured, in mild criticism. + +"I don't," she smiled with a dazzle of white teeth. "That is, I don't +expose my face this way more than a few times a year. I'd like to, +because I love the sun-gold burn in my hair; but I don't dare a +thorough tanning." + +The mare frisked, and a breeze of air blew back a flap of skirt, +showing an articulate knee where the trouser leg narrowed tightly over +it. Again Graham visioned the white round of knee pressed into the +round muscles of the swimming Mountain Lad, as he noted the firm +knee-grip on her pigskin English saddle, quite new and fawn-colored to +match costume and horse. + +When the magneto on the tractor went wrong, and the mechanics busied +themselves with it in the midst of the partly plowed field, the +company, under Paula's guidance, leaving Dick behind with his +invention, resolved itself into a pilgrimage among the brood-centers on +the way to the swimming tank. Mr. Crellin, the hog-manager, showed them +Lady Isleton, who, with her prodigious, fat, recent progeny of eleven, +won various naive encomiums, while Mr. Crellin warmly proclaimed at +least four times, "And not a runt, not a runt, in the bunch." + +Other glorious brood-sows, of Berkshire, Duroc-Jersey, and O. I. C. +blood, they saw till they were wearied, and new-born kids and lambs, +and rotund does and ewes. From center to center, Paula kept the +telephones warning ahead of the party's coming, so that Mr. Manson +waited to exhibit the great King Polo, and his broad-backed Shorthorn +harem, and the Shorthorn harems of bulls that were only little less +than King Polo in magnificence and record; and Parkman, the Jersey +manager, was on hand, with staffed assistants, to parade Sensational +Drake, Golden Jolly, Fontaine Royal, Oxford Master, and Karnak's Fairy +Boy--blue ribbon bulls, all, and founders and scions of noble houses of +butter-fat renown, and Rosaire Queen, Standby's Dam, Golden Jolly's +Lass, Olga's Pride, and Gertie of Maitlands--equally blue-ribboned and +blue-blooded Jersey matrons in the royal realm of butter-fat; and Mr. +Mendenhall, who had charge of the Shires, proudly exhibited a string of +mighty stallions, led by the mighty Mountain Lad, and a longer string +of matrons, headed by the Fotherington Princess of the silver whinny. +Even old Alden Bessie, the Princess's dam, retired to but part-day's +work, he sent for that they might render due honor to so notable a dam. + +As four o'clock approached, Donald Ware, not keen on swimming, returned +in one of the machines to the Big House, and Mr. Gulhuss remained to +discuss Shires with Mr. Mendenhall. Dick was at the tank when the party +arrived, and the girls were immediately insistent for the new song. + +"It isn't exactly a new song," Dick explained, his gray eyes twinkling +roguery, "and it's not my song. It was sung in Japan before I was born, +and, I doubt not, before Columbus discovered America. Also, it is a +duet--a competitive duet with forfeit penalties attached. Paula will +have to sing it with me.--I'll teach you. Sit down there, that's +right.--Now all the rest of you gather around and sit down." + +Still in her riding habit, Paula sat down on the concrete, facing her +husband, in the center of the sitting audience. Under his direction, +timing her movements to his, she slapped her hands on her knees, +slapped her palms together, and slapped her palms against his palms +much in the fashion of the nursery game of "Bean Porridge Hot." Then he +sang the song, which was short and which she quickly picked up, singing +it with him and clapping the accent. While the air of it was orientally +catchy, it was chanted slowly, almost monotonously, but it was quickly +provocative of excitement to the spectators: + + "_Jong-Keena, Jong-Keena, + Jong-Jong, Keena-Keena, + Yo-ko-ham-a, Nag-a-sak-i, + Kobe-mar-o--hoy!!!_" + +The last syllable, _hoy_, was uttered suddenly, explosively, and an +octave and more higher than the pitch of the melody. At the same moment +that it was uttered, Paula's and Dick's hands were abruptly shot toward +each other's, either clenched or open. The point of the game was that +Paula's hands, open or closed, at the instant of uttering hoy, should +match Dick's. Thus, the first time, she did match him, both his and her +hands being closed, whereupon he took off his hat and tossed it into +Lute's lap. + +"My forfeit," he explained. "Come on, Paul, again." And again they sang +and clapped: + + "_Jong-Keena, Jong-Keena, + Jong-Jong, Keena-Keena, + Yo-ko-ham-a, Nag-a-sak-i, + Kobe-mar-o--hoy!!!_" + +This time, with the _hoy_, her hands were closed and his were open. + +"Forfeit!--forfeit!" the girls cried. + +She looked her costume over with alarm, asking, "What can I give?" + +"A hair pin," Dick advised; and one of her turtleshell hair pins joined +his hat in Lute's lap. + +"Bother it!" she exclaimed, when the last of her hair pins had gone the +same way, she having failed seven times to Dick's once. "I can't see +why I should be so slow and stupid. Besides, Dick, you're too clever. I +never could out-guess you or out-anticipate you." + +Again they sang the song. She lost, and, to Mrs. Tully's shocked +"Paula!" she forfeited a spur and threatened a boot when the remaining +spur should be gone. A winning streak of three compelled Dick to give +up his wrist watch and both spurs. Then she lost her wrist watch and +the remaining spur. + +"Jong-Keena, Jong-Keena," they began again, while Mrs. Tully +remonstrated, "Now, Paula, you simply must stop this.--Dick, you ought +to be ashamed of yourself." + +But Dick, emitting a triumphant "_Hoy!_" won, and joined in the +laughter as Paula took off one of her little champagne boots and added +it to the heap in Lute's lap. + +"It's all right, Aunt Martha," Paula assured Mrs. Tully. "Mr. Ware's +not here, and he's the only one who would be shocked.--Come on, Dick. +You can't win every time." + +"Jong-Keena, Jong-Keena," she chanted on with her husband. The +repetition, at first slow, had accelerated steadily, so that now they +fairly rippled through with it, while their slapping, striking palms +made a continuous patter. The exercise and excitement had added to the +sun's action on her skin, so that her laughing face was all a rosy glow. + +Evan Graham, a silent spectator, was aware of hurt and indignity. He +knew the "Jong-Keena" of old time from the geishas of the tea houses of +Nippon, and, despite the unconventionality that ruled the Forrests and +the Big House, he experienced shock in that Paula should take part in +such a game. It did not enter his head at the moment that he would have +been merely curious to see how far the madness would go had the player +been Lute, or Ernestine, or Rita. Not till afterward did he realize +that his concern and sense of outrage were due to the fact that the +player was Paula, and that, therefore, she was bulking bigger in his +imagination than he was conscious of. What he was conscious of at the +moment was that he was growing angry and that he had deliberately to +check himself from protesting. + +By this time Dick's cigarette case and matches and Paula's second boot, +belt, skirt-pin, and wedding ring had joined the mound of forfeits. +Mrs. Tully, her face set in stoic resignation, was silent. + +"Jong-Keena, Jong-Keena," Paula laughed and sang on, and Graham heard +Ernestine laugh to Bert, "I don't see what she can spare next." + +"Well, you know her," he heard Bert answer. "She's game once she gets +started, and it certainly looks like she's started." + +"_Hoy_!" Paula and Dick cried simultaneously, as they thrust out their +hands. + +But Dick's were closed, and hers were open. Graham watched her vainly +quest her person for the consequent forfeit. + +"Come on, Lady Godiva," Dick commanded. "You hae sung, you hae danced; +now pay the piper." + +"Was the man a fool?" was Graham's thought. "And a man with a wife like +that." + +"Well," Paula sighed, her fingers playing with the fastenings of her +blouse, "if I must, I must." + +Raging inwardly, Graham averted his gaze, and kept it averted. There +was a pause, in which he knew everybody must be hanging on what she +would do next. Then came a giggle from Ernestine, a burst of laughter +from all, and, "A frame-up!" from Bert, that overcame Graham's +resoluteness. He looked quickly. The Little Lady's blouse was off, and, +from the waist up, she appeared in her swimming suit. It was evident +that she had dressed over it for the ride. + +"Come on, Lute--you next," Dick was challenging. + + But Lute, not similarly prepared for _Jong-Keena_, blushingly +led the retreat of the girls to the dressing rooms. + +Graham watched Paula poise at the forty-foot top of the diving scaffold +and swan-dive beautifully into the tank; heard Bert's admiring "Oh, you +Annette Kellerman!" and, still chagrined by the trick that had +threatened to outrage him, fell to wondering about the wonder woman, +the Little Lady of the Big House, and how she had happened so +wonderfully to be. As he fetched down the length of tank, under water, +moving with leisurely strokes and with open eyes watching the shoaling +bottom, it came to him that he did not know anything about her. She was +Dick Forrest's wife. That was all he knew. How she had been born, how +she had lived, how and where her past had been--of all this he knew +nothing. + +Ernestine had told him that Lute and she were half sisters of Paula. +That was one bit of data, at any rate. (Warned by the increasing +brightness of the bottom that he had nearly reached the end of the +tank, and recognizing Dick's and Bert's legs intertwined in what must +be a wrestling bout, Graham turned about, still under water, and swam +back a score or so of feet.) There was that Mrs. Tully whom Paula had +addressed as Aunt Martha. Was she truly an aunt? Or was she a courtesy +Aunt through sisterhood with the mother of Lute and Ernestine? + +He broke surface, was hailed by the others to join in bull-in-the-ring; +in which strenuous sport, for the next half hour, he was compelled more +than once to marvel at the litheness and agility, as well as strategy, +of Paula in her successful efforts at escaping through the ring. +Concluding the game through weariness, breathing hard, the entire party +raced the length of the tank and crawled out to rest in the sunshine in +a circle about Mrs. Tully. + +Soon there was more fun afoot, and Paula was contending impossible +things with Mrs. Tully. + +"Now, Aunt Martha, just because you never learned to swim is no reason +for you to take such a position. I am a real swimmer, and I tell you I +can dive right into the tank here, and stay under for ten minutes." + +"Nonsense, child," Mrs. Tully beamed. "Your father, when he was young, +a great deal younger than you, my dear, could stay under water longer +than any other man; and his record, as I know, was three minutes and +forty seconds, as I very well know, for I held the watch myself and +kept the time when he won against Harry Selby on a wager." + +"Oh, I know my father was some man in his time," Paula swaggered; "but +times have changed. If I had the old dear here right now, in all his +youthful excellence, I'd drown him if he tried to stay under water with +me. Ten minutes? Of course I can do ten minutes. And I will. You hold +the watch, Aunt Martha, and time me. Why, it's as easy as--" + +"Shooting fish in a bucket," Dick completed for her. + +Paula climbed to the platform above the springboard. + +"Time me when I'm in the air," she said. + +"Make your turn and a half," Dick called. + +She nodded, smiled, and simulated a prodigious effort at filling her +lungs to their utmost capacity. Graham watched enchanted. A diver +himself, he had rarely seen the turn and a half attempted by women +other than professionals. Her wet suit of light blue and green silk +clung closely to her, showing the lines of her justly proportioned +body. With what appeared to be an agonized gulp for the last cubic inch +of air her lungs could contain, she sprang up, out, and down, her body +vertical and stiff, her legs straight, her feet close together as they +impacted on the springboard end. Flung into the air by the board, she +doubled her body into a ball, made a complete revolution, then +straightened out in perfect diver's form, and in a perfect dive, with +scarcely a ripple, entered the water. + +"A Toledo blade would have made more splash," was Graham's verdict. + +"If only I could dive like that," Ernestine breathed her admiration. +"But I never shall. Dick says diving is a matter of timing, and that's +why Paula does it so terribly well. She's got the sense of time--" + +"And of abandon," Graham added. + +"Of willed abandon," Dick qualified. + +"Of relaxation by effort," Graham agreed. "I've never seen a +professional do so perfect a turn and a half." + +"And I'm prouder of it than she is," Dick proclaimed. "You see, I +taught her, though I confess it was an easy task. She coordinates +almost effortlessly. And that, along with her will and sense of +time--why her first attempt was better than fair." + +"Paula is a remarkable woman," Mrs. Tully said proudly, her eyes +fluttering between the second hand of the watch and the unbroken +surface of the pool. "Women never swim so well as men. But she +does.--Three minutes and forty seconds! She's beaten her father!" + +"But she won't stay under any five minutes, much less ten," Dick +solemnly stated. "She'll burst her lungs first." + +At four minutes, Mrs. Tully began to show excitement and to look +anxiously from face to face. Captain Lester, not in the secret, +scrambled to his feet with an oath and dived into the tank. + +"Something has happened," Mrs. Tully said with controlled quietness. +"She hurt herself on that dive. Go in after her, you men." + +But Graham and Bert and Dick, meeting under water, gleefully grinned +and squeezed hands. Dick made signs for them to follow, and led the way +through the dark-shadowed water into the crypt, where, treading water, +they joined Paula in subdued whisperings and gigglings. + +"Just came to make sure you were all right," Dick explained. "And now +we've got to beat it.--You first, Bert. I'll follow Evan." + +And, one by one, they went down through the dark water and came up on +the surface of the pool. By this time Mrs. Tully was on her feet and +standing by the edge of the tank. + +"If I thought this was one of your tricks, Dick Forrest," she began. + +But Dick, paying no attention, acting preternaturally calmly, was +directing the men loudly enough for her to hear. + +"We've got to make this systematic, fellows. You, Bert, and you, Evan, +join with me. We start at this end, five feet apart, and search the +bottom across. Then move along and repeat it back." + +"Don't exert yourselves, gentlemen," Mrs. Tully called, beginning to +laugh. "As for you, Dick, you come right out. I want to box your ears." + +"Take care of her, you girls," Dick shouted. "She's got hysterics." + +"I haven't, but I will have," she laughed. + +"But damn it all, madam, this is no laughing matter!" Captain Lester +spluttered breathlessly, as he prepared for another trip to explore the +bottom. + +"Are you on, Aunt Martha, really and truly on?" Dick asked, after the +valiant mariner had gone down. + +Mrs. Tully nodded. "But keep it up, Dick, you've got one dupe. Elsie +Coghlan's mother told me about it in Honolulu last year." + +Not until eleven minutes had elapsed did the smiling face of Paula +break the surface. Simulating exhaustion, she slowly crawled out and +sank down panting near her aunt. Captain Lester, really exhausted by +his strenuous exertions at rescue, studied Paula keenly, then marched +to the nearest pillar and meekly bumped his head three times against +the concrete. + +"I'm afraid I didn't stay down ten minutes," Paula said. "But I wasn't +much under that, was I, Aunt Martha?" + +"You weren't much under at all," Mrs. Tully replied, "if it's my +opinion you were asking. I'm surprised that you are even wet.--There, +there, breathe naturally, child. The play-acting is unnecessary. I +remember, when I was a young girl, traveling in India, there was a +school of fakirs who leaped into deep wells and stayed down much longer +than you, child, much longer indeed." + +"You knew!" Paula charged. + +"But you didn't know I did," her Aunt retorted. "And therefore your +conduct was criminal. When you consider a woman of my age, with my +heart--" + +"And with your blessed, brass-tack head," Paula cried. + +"For two apples I'd box your ears." + +"And for one apple I'd hug you, wet as I am," Paula laughed back. +"Anyway, we did fool Captain Lester.--Didn't we, Captain?" + +"Don't speak to me," that doughty mariner muttered darkly. "I'm busy +with myself, meditating what form my vengeance shall take.--As for you, +Mr. Dick Forrest, I'm divided between blowing up your dairy, or +hamstringing Mountain Lad. Maybe I'll do both. In the meantime I am +going out to kick that mare you ride." + +Dick on The Outlaw, and Paula on The Fawn, rode back side by side to +the Big House. + +"How do you like Graham?" he asked. + +"Splendid," was her reply. "He's your type, Dick. He's universal, like +you, and he's got the same world-marks branded on him--the Seven Seas, +the books, and all the rest. He's an artist, too, and pretty well +all-around. And he's good fun. Have you noticed his smile? It's +irresistible. It makes one want to smile with him." + +"And he's got his serious scars, as well," Dick nodded concurrence. + +"Yes--right in the corners of the eyes, just after he has smiled, +you'll see them come. They're not tired marks exactly, but rather the +old eternal questions: Why? What for? What's it worth? What's it all +about?" + + * * * * * + +And bringing up the rear of the cavalcade, Ernestine and Graham talked. + +"Dick's deep," she was saying. "You don't know him any too well. He's +dreadfully deep. I know him a little. Paula knows him a lot. But very +few others ever get under the surface of him. He's a real philosopher, +and he has the control of a stoic or an Englishman, and he can play-act +to fool the world." + + * * * * * + +At the long hitching rails under the oaks, where the dismounting party +gathered, Paula was in gales of laughter. + +"Go on, go on," she urged Dick, "more, more." + +"She's been accusing me of exhausting my vocabulary in naming the +house-boys by my system," he explained. + +"And he's given me at least forty more names in a minute and a +half.--Go on, Dick, more." + +"Then," he said, striking a chant, "we can have Oh Sin and Oh Pshaw, Oh +Sing and Oh Song, Oh Sung and Oh Sang, Oh Last and Oh Least, Oh Ping +and Oh Pong, Oh Some, Oh More, and Oh Most, Oh Naught and Oh Nit..." + +And Dick jingled away into the house still chanting his extemporized +directory. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + + +A week of dissatisfaction and restlessness ensued for Graham. Tom +between belief that his business was to leave the Big House on the +first train, and desire to see, and see more of Paula, to be with her, +and to be more with her--he succeeded in neither leaving nor in seeing +as much of her as during the first days of his visit. + +At first, and for the five days that he lingered, the young violinist +monopolized nearly her entire time of visibility. Often Graham strayed +into the music room, and, quite neglected by the pair, sat for moody +half-hours listening to their "work." They were oblivious of his +presence, either flushed and absorbed with the passion of their music, +or wiping their foreheads and chatting and laughing companionably in +pauses to rest. That the young musician loved her with an ardency that +was almost painful, was patent to Graham; but what hurt him was the +abandon of devotion with which she sometimes looked at Ware after he +had done something exceptionally fine. In vain Graham tried to tell +himself that all this was mental on her part--purely delighted +appreciation of the other's artistry. Nevertheless, being man, it hurt, +and continued to hurt, until he could no longer suffer himself to +remain. + +Once, chancing into the room at the end of a Schumann song and just +after Ware had departed, Graham found Paula still seated at the piano, +an expression of rapt dreaming on her face. She regarded him almost +unrecognizingly, gathered herself mechanically together, uttered an +absent-minded commonplace or so, and left the room. Despite his +vexation and hurt, Graham tried to think it mere artist-dreaming on her +part, a listening to the echo of the just-played music in her soul. But +women were curious creatures, he could not help moralizing, and were +prone to lose their hearts most strangely and inconsequentially. Might +it not be that by his very music this youngster of a man was charming +the woman of her? + +With the departure of Ware, Paula Forrest retired almost completely +into her private wing behind the door without a knob. Nor did this seem +unusual, Graham gleaned from the household. + +"Paula is a woman who finds herself very good company," Ernestine +explained, "and she often goes in for periods of aloneness, when Dick +is the only person who sees her." + +"Which is not flattering to the rest of the company," Graham smiled. + +"Which makes her such good company whenever she is in company," +Ernestine retorted. + +The driftage through the Big House was decreasing. A few guests, on +business or friendship, continued to come, but more departed. Under Oh +Joy and his Chinese staff the Big House ran so frictionlessly and so +perfectly, that entertainment of guests seemed little part of the +host's duties. The guests largely entertained themselves and one +another. + +Dick rarely appeared, even for a moment, until lunch, and Paula, now +carrying out her seclusion program, never appeared before dinner. + +"Rest cure," Dick laughed one noon, and challenged Graham to a +tournament with boxing gloves, single-sticks, and foils. + +"And now's the time," he told Graham, as they breathed between bouts, +"for you to tackle your book. I'm only one of the many who are looking +forward to reading it, and I'm looking forward hard. Got a letter from +Havely yesterday--he mentioned it, and wondered how far along you were." + +So Graham, in his tower room, arranged his notes and photographs, +schemed out the work, and plunged into the opening chapters. So +immersed did he become that his nascent interest in Paula might have +languished, had it not been for meeting her each evening at dinner. +Then, too, until Ernestine and Lute left for Santa Barbara, there were +afternoon swims and rides and motor trips to the pastures of the +Miramar Hills and the upland ranges of the Anselmo Mountains. Other +trips they made, sometimes accompanied by Dick, to his great dredgers +working in the Sacramento basin, or his dam-building on the Little +Coyote and Los Cuatos creeks, or to his five-thousand-acre colony of +twenty-acre farmers, where he was trying to enable two hundred and +fifty heads of families, along with their families, to make good on the +soil. + +That Paula sometimes went for long solitary rides, Graham knew, and, +once, he caught her dismounting from the Fawn at the hitching rails. + +"Don't you think you are spoiling that mare for riding in company?" he +twitted. + +Paula laughed and shook her head. + +"Well, then," he asserted stoutly, "I'm spoiling for a ride with you." + +"There's Lute, and Ernestine, and Bert, and all the rest." + +"This is new country," he contended. "And one learns country through +the people who know it. I've seen it through the eyes of Lute, and +Ernestine and all the rest; but there is a lot I haven't seen and which +I can see only through your eyes." + +"A pleasant theory," she evaded. "A--a sort of landscape vampirism." + +"But without the ill effects of vampirism," he urged quickly. + +Her answer was slow in coming. Her look into his eyes was frank and +straight, and he could guess her words were weighed and gauged. + +"I don't know about that," was all she said finally; but his fancy +leaped at the several words, ranging and conjecturing their possible +connotations. + +"But we have so much we might be saying to each other," he tried again. +"So much we... ought to be saying to each other." + +"So I apprehend," she answered quietly; and again that frank, straight +look accompanied her speech. + +So she did apprehend--the thought of it was flame to him, but his +tongue was not quick enough to serve him to escape the cool, provoking +laugh as she turned into the house. + +Still the company of the Big House thinned. Paula's aunt, Mrs. Tully, +much to Graham's disappointment (for he had expected to learn from her +much that he wanted to know of Paula), had gone after only a several +days' stay. There was vague talk of her return for a longer stay; but, +just back from Europe, she declared herself burdened with a round of +duty visits which must be performed before her pleasure visiting began. + +O'Hay, the critic, had been compelled to linger several days in order +to live down the disastrous culmination of the musical raid made upon +him by the philosophers. The idea and the trick had been Dick's. Combat +had joined early in the evening, when a seeming chance remark of +Ernestine had enabled Aaron Hancock to fling the first bomb into the +thick of O'Hay's deepest convictions. Dar Hyal, a willing and eager +ally, had charged around the flank with his blastic theory of music and +taken O'Hay in reverse. And the battle had raged until the hot-headed +Irishman, beside himself with the grueling the pair of skilled +logomachists were giving him, accepted with huge relief the kindly +invitation of Terrence McFane to retire with him to the tranquillity +and repose of the stag room, where, over a soothing highball and far +from the barbarians, the two of them could have a heart to heart talk +on real music. At two in the morning, wild-eyed and befuddled, O'Hay +had been led to bed by the upright-walking and unshakably steady +Terrence. + +"Never mind," Ernestine had told O'Hay later, with a twinkle in her eye +that made him guess the plot. "It was only to be expected. Those +rattle-brained philosophers would drive even a saint to drink." + +"I thought you were safe in Terrence's hands," had been Dick's mock +apology. "A pair of Irishmen, you know. I'd forgot Terrence was +case-hardened. Do you know, after he said good night to you, he came up +to me for a yarn. And he was steady as a rock. He mentioned casually of +having had several sips, so I... I... never dreamed ... er... that he +had indisposed you." + +When Lute and Ernestine departed for Santa Barbara, Bert Wainwright and +his sister remembered their long-neglected home in Sacramento. A pair +of painters, proteges of Paula, arrived the same day. But they were +little in evidence, spending long days in the hills with a trap and +driver and smoking long pipes in the stag room. + +The free and easy life of the Big House went on in its frictionless +way. Dick worked. Graham worked. Paula maintained her seclusion. The +sages from the madrono grove strayed in for wordy dinners--and wordy +evenings, except when Paula played for them. Automobile parties, from +Sacramento, Wickenberg, and other valley towns, continued to drop in +unexpectedly, but never to the confusion of Oh Joy and the house boys, +whom Graham saw, on occasion, with twenty minutes' warning, seat a +score of unexpected guests to a perfect dinner. And there were even +nights--rare ones--when only Dick and Graham and Paula sat at dinner, +and when, afterward, the two men yarned for an hour before an early +bed, while she played soft things to herself or disappeared earlier +than they. + +But one moonlight evening, when the Watsons and Masons and Wombolds +arrived in force, Graham found himself out, when every bridge table was +made up. Paula was at the piano. As he approached he caught the quick +expression of pleasure in her eyes at sight of him, which as quickly +vanished. She made a slight movement as if to rise, which did not +escape his notice any more than did her quiet mastery of the impulse +that left her seated. + +She was immediately herself as he had always seen her--although it was +little enough he had seen of her, he thought, as he talked whatever +came into his head, and rummaged among her songs with her. Now one and +now another song he tried with her, subduing his high baritone to her +light soprano with such success as to win cries of more from the bridge +players. + +"Yes, I am positively aching to be out again over the world with Dick," +she told him in a pause. "If we could only start to-morrow! But Dick +can't start yet. He's in too deep with too many experiments and +adventures on the ranch here. Why, what do you think he's up to now? As +if he did not have enough on his hands, he's going to revolutionize the +sales end, or, at least, the California and Pacific Coast portion of +it, by making the buyers come to the ranch." + +"But they do do that," Graham said. "The first man I met here was a +buyer from Idaho." + +"Oh, but Dick means as an institution, you know--to make them come en +masse at a stated time. Not simple auction sales, either, though he +says he will bait them with a bit of that to excite interest. It will +be an annual fair, to last three days, in which he will be the only +exhibitor. He's spending half his mornings now in conference with Mr. +Agar and Mr. Pitts. Mr. Agar is his sales manager, and Mr. Pitts his +showman." + +She sighed and rippled her fingers along the keyboard. + +"But, oh, if only we could get away--Timbuctoo, Mokpo, or Jericho." + +"Don't tell me you've ever been to Mokpo," Graham laughed. + +She nodded. "Cross my heart, solemnly, hope to die. It was with Dick in +the _All Away_ and in the long ago. It might almost be said we +honeymooned in Mokpo." + +And while Graham exchanged reminiscences of Mokpo with her, he cudgeled +his brain to try and decide whether her continual reference to her +husband was deliberate. + +"I should imagine you found it such a paradise here," he was saying. + +"I do, I do," she assured him with what seemed unnecessary vehemence. +"But I don't know what's come over me lately. I feel it imperative to +be up and away. The spring fret, I suppose; the Red Gods and their +medicine. And if only Dick didn't insist on working his head off and +getting tied down with projects! Do you know, in all the years of our +marriage, the only really serious rival I have ever had has been this +ranch. He's pretty faithful, and the ranch _is_ his first love. He had +it all planned and started before he ever met me or knew I existed." + +"Here, let us try this together," Graham said abruptly, placing the +song on the rack before her. + +"Oh, but it's the 'Gypsy Trail,'" she protested. "It will only make my +mood worse." And she hummed: + + "'Follow the Romany patteran + West to the sinking sun, + Till the junk sails lift through the homeless drift, + And the East and the West are one.' + +"What is the Romany patteran?" she broke off to ask. "I've always +thought of it as patter, or patois, the Gypsy patois, and somehow it +strikes me as absurd to follow a language over the world--a sort of +philological excursion." + +"In a way the patteran is speech," he answered. "But it always says one +thing: 'This way I have passed.' Two sprigs, crossed in certain ways +and left upon the trail, compose the patteran. But they must always be +of different trees or shrubs. Thus, on the ranch here, a patteran could +be made of manzanita and madrono, of oak and spruce, of buckeye and +alder, of redwood and laurel, of huckleberry and lilac. It is a sign of +Gypsy comrade to Gypsy comrade, of Gypsy lover to Gypsy lover." And he +hummed: + + "'Back to the road again, again, + Out of a clear sea track; + Follow the cross of the Gypsy trail, + Over the world and back.'" + +She nodded comprehension, looked for a moment with troubled eyes down +the long room to the card-players, caught herself in her momentary +absentness, and said quickly: + +"Heaven knows there's a lot of Gypsy in some of us. I have more than +full share. In spite of his bucolic proclivities, Dick is a born Gypsy. +And from what he has told of you, you are hopelessly one." + +"After all, the white man is the real Gypsy, the king Gypsy," Graham +propounded. "He has wandered wider, wilder, and with less equipment, +than any Gypsy. The Gypsy has followed in his trails, but never made +trail for him.--Come; let us try it." + +And as they sang the reckless words to their merry, careless lilt, he +looked down at her and wondered--wondered at her--at himself. This was +no place for him by this woman's side, under her husband's roof-tree. +Yet here he was, and he should have gone days before. After the years +he was just getting acquainted with himself. This was enchantment, +madness. He should tear himself away at once. He had known enchantments +and madnesses before, and had torn himself away. Had he softened with +the years? he questioned himself. Or was this a profounder madness than +he had experienced? This meant the violation of dear things--things so +dear, so jealously cherished and guarded in his secret life, that never +yet had they suffered violation. + +And still he did not tear himself away. He stood there beside her, +looking down on her brown crown of hair glinting gold and bronze and +bewitchingly curling into tendrils above her ears, singing a song that +was fire to him--that must be fire to her, she being what she was and +feeling what she had already, in flashes, half-unwittingly, hinted to +him. + +She is a witch, and her voice is not the least of her witchery, he +thought, as _her_ voice, so richly a woman's voice, so essentially her +voice in contradistinction to all women's voices in the world, sang and +throbbed in his ear. And he knew, beyond shade of doubt, that she felt +some touch of this madness that afflicted him; that she sensed, as he +sensed, that the man and the woman were met. + +They thrilled together as they sang, and the thought and the sure +knowledge of it added fuel to his own madness till his voice warmed +unconsciously to the daring of the last lines, as, voices and thrills +blending, they sang: + + "'The wild hawk to the wind-swept sky, + The deer to the wholesome wold, + And the heart of a man to the heart of a maid + As it was in the days of old-- + The heart of a man to the heart of a maid, + Light of my tents be fleet, + Morning waits at the end of the world, + And the world is all at our feet.'" + +He looked for her to look up as the last notes died away, but she +remained quiet a moment, her eyes bent on the keys. And then the face +that was turned to his was the face of the Little Lady of the Big +House, the mouth smiling mischievously, the eyes filled with roguery, +as she said: + +"Let us go and devil Dick--he's losing. I've never seen him lose his +temper at cards, but he gets ridiculously blue after a long siege of +losing. + +"And he does love gambling," she continued, as she led the way to the +tables. "It's one of his modes of relaxing. It does him good. About +once or twice a year, if it's a good poker game, he'll sit in all night +to it and play to the blue sky if they take off the limit." + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + + + +Almost immediately after the singing of the "Gypsy Trail," Paula +emerged from her seclusion, and Graham found himself hard put, in the +tower room, to keep resolutely to his work when all the morning he +could hear snatches of song and opera from her wing, or laughter and +scolding of dogs from the great patio, or the continuous pulse for +hours of the piano from the distant music room. But Graham, patterning +after Dick, devoted his mornings to work, so that he rarely encountered +Paula before lunch. + +She made announcement that her spell of insomnia was over and that she +was ripe for all gaieties and excursions Dick had to offer her. +Further, she threatened, in case Dick grudged these personal +diversions, to fill the house with guests and teach him what liveliness +was. It was at this time that her Aunt Martha--Mrs. Tully--returned for +a several days' visit, and that Paula resumed the driving of Duddy and +Fuddy in the high, one-seated Stude-baker trap. Duddy and Fuddy were +spirited trotters, but Mrs. Tully, despite her elderliness and +avoirdupois, was without timidity when Paula held the reins. + +As Mrs. Tully told Graham: "And that is a concession I make to no woman +save Paula. She is the only woman I can trust myself to with horses. +She has the horse-way about her. When she was a child she was wild over +horses. It's a wonder she didn't become a circus rider." + +More, much more, Graham learned about Paula in various chats with her +aunt. Of Philip Desten, Paula's father, Mrs. Tully could never say +enough. Her eldest brother, and older by many years, he had been her +childhood prince. His ways had been big ways, princely ways--ways that +to commoner folk had betokened a streak of madness. He was continually +guilty of the wildest things and the most chivalrous things. It was +this streak that had enabled him to win various fortunes, and with +equal facility to lose them, in the great gold adventure of Forty-nine. +Himself of old New England stock, he had had for great grandfather a +Frenchman--a trifle of flotsam from a mid-ocean wreck and landed to +grow up among the farmer-sailormen of the coast of Maine. + +"And once, and once only, in each generation, that French Desten crops +out," Mrs. Tully assured Graham. "Philip was that Frenchman in his +generation, and who but Paula, and in full measure, received that same +inheritance in her generation. Though Lute and Ernestine are her +half-sisters, no one would imagine one drop of the common blood was +shared. That's why Paula, instead of going circus-riding, drifted +inevitably to France. It was that old original Desten that drew her +over." + +And of the adventure in France, Graham learned much. Philip Desten's +luck had been to die when the wheel of his fortune had turned over and +down. Ernestine and Lute, little tots, had been easy enough for +Desten's sisters to manage. But Paula, who had fallen to Mrs. Tully, +had been the problem--"because of that Frenchman." + +"Oh, she is rigid New England," Mrs. Tully insisted, "the solidest of +creatures as to honor and rectitude, dependableness and faithfulness. +As a girl she really couldn't bring herself to lie, except to save +others. In which case all her New England ancestry took flight and she +would lie as magnificently as her father before her. And he had the +same charm of manner, the same daring, the same ready laughter, the +same vivacity. But what is lightsome and blithe in her, was debonaire +in him. He won men's hearts always, or, failing that, their bitterest +enmity. No one was left cold by him in passing. Contact with him +quickened them to love or hate. Therein Paula differs, being a woman, I +suppose, and not enjoying man's prerogative of tilting at windmills. I +don't know that she has an enemy in the world. All love her, unless, it +may well be, there are cat-women who envy her her nice husband." + +And as Graham listened, Paula's singing came through the open window +from somewhere down the long arcades, and there was that ever-haunting +thrill in her voice that he could not escape remembering afterward. She +burst into laughter, and Mrs. Tully beamed to him and nodded at the +sound. + +"There laughs Philip Desten," she murmured, "and all the Frenchwomen +behind the original Frenchman who was brought into Penobscot, dressed +in homespun, and sent to meeting. Have you noticed how Paula's laugh +invariably makes everybody look up and smile? Philip's laugh did the +same thing." + +"Paula had always been passionately fond of music, painting, drawing. +As a little girl she could be traced around the house and grounds by +the trail she left behind her of images and shapes, made in whatever +medium she chanced upon--drawn on scraps of paper, scratched on bits of +wood, modeled in mud and sand. + +"She loved everything, and everything loved her," said Mrs. Tully. "She +was never timid of animals. And yet she always stood in awe of them; +but she was born sense-struck, and her awe was beauty-awe. Yes, she was +an incorrigible hero-worshiper, whether the person was merely beautiful +or did things. And she never will outgrow that beauty--awe of anything +she loves, whether it is a grand piano, a great painting, a beautiful +mare, or a bit of landscape. + +"And Paula had wanted to do, to make beauty herself. But she was sorely +puzzled whether she should devote herself to music or painting. In the +full swing of work under the best masters in Boston, she could not +refrain from straying back to her drawing. From her easel she was lured +to modeling. + + "And so, with her love of the best, her soul and heart full of +beauty, she grew quite puzzled and worried over herself, as to which +talent was the greater and if she had genius at all. I suggested a +complete rest from work and took her abroad for a year. And of all +things, she developed a talent for dancing. But always she harked back +to her music and painting. No, she was not flighty. Her trouble was +that she was too talented--" + +"Too diversely talented," Graham amplified. + +"Yes, that is better," Mrs. Tully nodded. "But from talent to genius is +a far cry, and to save my life, at this late day, I don't know whether +the child ever had a trace of genius in her. She has certainly not done +anything big in any of her chosen things." + +"Except to be herself," Graham added. + +"Which _is_ the big thing," Mrs. Tully accepted with a smile of +enthusiasm. "She is a splendid, unusual woman, very unspoiled, very +natural. And after all, what does doing things amount to? I'd give more +for one of Paula's madcap escapades--oh, I heard all about swimming the +big stallion--than for all her pictures if every one was a masterpiece. +But she was hard for me to understand at first. Dick often calls her +the girl that never grew up. But gracious, she can put on the grand air +when she needs to. I call her the most mature child I have ever seen. +Dick was the finest thing that ever happened to her. It was then that +she really seemed for the first time to find herself. It was this way." + +And Mrs. Tully went on to sketch the year of travel in Europe, the +resumption of Paula's painting in Paris, and the conviction she finally +reached that success could be achieved only by struggle and that her +aunt's money was a handicap. + +"And she had her way," Mrs. Tully sighed. "She--why, she dismissed me, +sent me home. She would accept no more than the meagerest allowance, +and went down into the Latin Quarter on her own, batching with two +other American girls. And she met Dick. Dick was a rare one. You +couldn't guess what he was doing then. Running a cabaret--oh, not these +modern cabarets, but a real students' cabaret of sorts. It was very +select. They were a lot of madmen. You see, he was just back from some +of his wild adventuring at the ends of the earth, and, as he stated it, +he wanted to stop living life for a while and to talk about life +instead. + +"Paula took me there once. Oh, they were engaged--the day before, and +he had called on me and all that. I had known 'Lucky' Richard Forrest, +and I knew all about his son. From a worldly standpoint, Paula couldn't +have made a finer marriage. It was quite a romance. Paula had seen him +captain the University of California eleven to victory over Stanford. +And the next time she saw him was in the studio she shared with the two +girls. She didn't know whether Dick was worth millions or whether he +was running a cabaret because he was hard up, and she cared less. She +always followed her heart. Fancy the situation: Dick the uncatchable, +and Paula who never flirted. They must have sprung forthright into each +other's arms, for inside the week it was all arranged, and Dick made +his call on me, as if my decision meant anything one way or the other. + +"But Dick's cabaret. It was the Cabaret of the Philosophers--a small +pokey place, down in a cellar, in the heart of the Quarter, and it had +only one table. Fancy that for a cabaret! But such a table! A big round +one, of plain boards, without even an oil-cloth, the wood stained with +the countless drinks spilled by the table-pounding of the philosophers, +and it could seat thirty. Women were not permitted. An exception was +made for Paula and me. + +"You've met Aaron Hancock here. He was one of the philosophers, and to +this day he swaggers that he owed Dick a bigger bill that never was +paid than any of his customers. And there they used to meet, all those +wild young thinkers, and pound the table, and talk philosophy in all +the tongues of Europe. Dick always had a penchant for philosophers. + +"But Paula spoiled that little adventure. No sooner were they married +than Dick fitted out his schooner, the All Away, and away the blessed +pair of them went, honeymooning from Bordeaux to Hongkong." + +"And the cabaret was closed, and the philosophers left homeless and +discussionless," Graham remarked. + +Mrs. Tully laughed heartily and shook her head. + +"He endowed it for them," she gasped, her hand to her side. "Or +partially endowed it, or something. I don't know what the arrangement +was. And within the month it was raided by the police for an anarchist +club." + +After having learned the wide scope of her interests and talents, +Graham was nevertheless surprised one day at finding Paula all by +herself in a corner of a window-seat, completely absorbed in her work +on a piece of fine embroidery. + +"I love it," she explained. "All the costly needlework of the shops +means nothing to me alongside of my own work on my own designs. Dick +used to fret at my sewing. He's all for efficiency, you know, +elimination of waste energy and such things. He thought sewing was a +wasting of time. Peasants could be hired for a song to do what I was +doing. But I succeeded in making my viewpoint clear to him. + +"It's like the music one makes oneself. Of course I can buy better +music than I make; but to sit down at an instrument and evoke the music +oneself, with one's own fingers and brain, is an entirely different and +dearer satisfaction. Whether one tries to emulate another's +performance, or infuses the performance with one's own personality and +interpretation, it's all the same. It is soul-joy and fulfilment. + +"Take this little embroidered crust of lilies on the edge of this +flounce--there is nothing like it in the world. Mine the idea, all +mine, and mine the delight of giving form and being to the idea. There +are better ideas and better workmanship in the shops; but this is +different. It is mine. I visioned it, and I made it. And who is to say +that embroidery is not art?" + +She ceased speaking and with her eyes laughed the insistence of her +question. + +"And who is to say," Graham agreed, "that the adorning of beautiful +womankind is not the worthiest of all the arts as well as the sweetest?" + +"I rather stand in awe of a good milliner or modiste," she nodded +gravely. "They really are artists, and important ones, as Dick would +phrase it, in the world's economy." + + * * * * * + +Another time, seeking the library for Andean reference, Graham came +upon Paula, sprawled gracefully over a sheet of paper on a big table +and flanked by ponderous architectural portfolios, engaged in drawing +plans of a log bungalow or camp for the sages of the madrono grove. + +"It's a problem," she sighed. "Dick says that if I build it I must +build it for seven. We've got four sages now, and his heart is set on +seven. He says never mind showers and such things, because what +philosopher ever bathes? And he has suggested seriously seven stoves +and seven kitchens, because it is just over such mundane things that +philosophers always quarrel." + +"Wasn't it Voltaire who quarreled with a king over candle-ends?" Graham +queried, pleasuring in the sight of her graceful abandon. Thirty-eight! +It was impossible. She seemed almost a girl, petulant and flushed over +some school task. Then he remembered Mrs. Tully's remark that Paula was +the most mature child she had ever known. + +It made him wonder. Was she the one, who, under the oaks at the +hitching rails, with two brief sentences had cut to the heart of an +impending situation? "So I apprehend," she had said. What had she +apprehended? Had she used the phrase glibly, without meaning? Yet she +it was who had thrilled and fluttered to him and with him when they had +sung the "Gypsy Trail." _That_ he knew. But again, had he not seen her +warm and glow to the playing of Donald Ware? But here Graham's ego had +its will of him, for he told himself that with Donald Ware it was +different. And he smiled to himself and at himself at the thought. + +"What amuses you?" Paula was asking. + +"Heaven knows I am no architect. And I challenge you to house seven +philosophers according to all the absurd stipulations laid down by +Dick." + +Back in his tower room with his Andean books unopened before him, +Graham gnawed his lip and meditated. The woman was no woman. She was +the veriest child. Or--and he hesitated at the thought--was this +naturalness that was overdone? Did she in truth apprehend? It must be. +It had to be. She was of the world. She knew the world. She was very +wise. No remembered look of her gray eyes but gave the impression of +poise and power. That was it--strength! He recalled her that first +night when she had seemed at times to glint an impression of steel, of +thin and jewel-like steel. In his fancy, at the time, he remembered +likening her strength to ivory, to carven pearl shell, to sennit +twisted of maidens' hair. + +And he knew, now, ever since the brief words at the hitching rails and +the singing of the "Gypsy Trail," that whenever their eyes looked into +each other's it was with a mutual knowledge of unsaid things. + +In vain he turned the pages of the books for the information he sought. +He tried to continue his chapter without the information, but no words +flowed from his pen. A maddening restlessness was upon him. He seized a +time table and pondered the departure of trains, changed his mind, +switched the room telephone to the house barn, and asked to have +Altadena saddled. + +It was a perfect morning of California early summer. No breath of wind +stirred over the drowsing fields, from which arose the calls of quail +and the notes of meadowlarks. The air was heavy with lilac fragrance, +and from the distance, as he rode between the lilac hedges, Graham +heard the throaty nicker of Mountain Lad and the silvery answering +whinney of the Fotherington Princess. + +Why was he here astride Dick Forrest's horse? Graham asked himself. Why +was he not even then on the way to the station to catch that first +train he had noted on the time table? This unaccustomed weakness of +decision and action was a new role for him, he considered bitterly. +But--and he was on fire with the thought of it--this was his one life, +and this was the one woman in the world. + +He reined aside to let a herd of Angora goats go by. Each was a doe, +and there were several hundred of them; and they were moved slowly by +the Basque herdsmen, with frequent pauses, for each doe was accompanied +by a young kid. In the paddock were many mares with new-born colts; and +once, receiving warning in time, Graham raced into a crossroad to +escape a drove of thirty yearling stallions being moved somewhere +across the ranch. Their excitement was communicated to that entire +portion of the ranch, so that the air was filled with shrill nickerings +and squealings and answering whinneys, while Mountain Lad, beside +himself at sight and sound of so many rivals, raged up and down his +paddock, and again and again trumpeted his challenging conviction that +he was the most amazing and mightiest thing that had ever occurred on +earth in the way of horse flesh. + +Dick Forrest pranced and sidled into the cross road on the Outlaw, his +face beaming with delight at the little tempest among his many +creatures. + +"Fecundity! Fecundity!"--he chanted in greeting, as he reined in to a +halt, if halt it might be called, with his tan-golden sorrel mare +a-fret and a-froth, wickedly reaching with her teeth now for his leg +and next for Graham's, one moment pawing the roadway, the next moment, +in sheer impotence of resentfulness, kicking the empty air with one +hind leg and kicking the air repeatedly, a dozen times. + +"Those youngsters certainly put Mountain Lad on his mettle," Dick +laughed. "Listen to his song: + +"'Hear me! I am Eros. I stamp upon the hills. I fill the wide valleys. +The mares hear me, and startle, in quiet pastures; for they know me. +The land is filled with fatness, and the sap is in the trees. It is the +spring. The spring is mine. I am monarch of my kingdom of the spring. +The mares remember my voice. They knew me aforetime through their +mothers before them. Hear me! I am Eros. I stamp upon the hills, and +the wide valleys are my heralds, echoing the sound of my approach.'" + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + + + +After Mrs. Tully's departure, Paula, true to her threat, filled the +house with guests. She seemed to have remembered all who had been +waiting an invitation, and the limousine that met the trains eight +miles away was rarely empty coming or going. There were more singers +and musicians and artist folk, and bevies of young girls with their +inevitable followings of young men, while mammas and aunts and +chaperons seemed to clutter all the ways of the Big House and to fill a +couple of motor cars when picnics took place. + +And Graham wondered if this surrounding of herself by many people was +not deliberate on Paula's part. As for himself, he definitely abandoned +work on his book, and joined in the before-breakfast swims of the +hardier younger folk, in the morning rides over the ranch, and in +whatever fun was afoot indoors and out. + +Late hours and early were kept; and one night, Dick, who adhered to his +routine and never appeared to his guests before midday, made a night of +it at poker in the stag-room. Graham had sat in, and felt well repaid +when, at dawn, the players received an unexpected visit from +Paula--herself past one of her white nights, she said, although no sign +of it showed on her fresh skin and color. Graham had to struggle to +keep his eyes from straying too frequently to her as she mixed golden +fizzes to rejuvenate the wan-eyed, jaded players. Then she made them +start the round of "jacks" that closed the game, and sent them off for +a cold swim before breakfast and the day's work or frolic. + +Never was Paula alone. Graham could only join in the groups that were +always about her. Although the young people ragged and tangoed +incessantly, she rarely danced, and then it was with the young men. +Once, however, she favored him with an old-fashioned waltz. "Your +ancestors in an antediluvian dance," she mocked the young people, as +she stepped out; for she and Graham had the floor to themselves. + +Once down the length of the room, the two were in full accord. Paula, +with the sympathy Graham recognized that made her the exceptional +accompanist or rider, subdued herself to the masterful art of the man, +until the two were as parts of a sentient machine that operated without +jar or friction. After several minutes, finding their perfect mutual +step and pace, and Graham feeling the absolute giving of Paula to the +dance, they essayed rhythmical pauses and dips, their feet never +leaving the floor, yet affecting the onlookers in the way Dick voiced +it when he cried out: "They float! They float!" The music was the +"Waltz of Salome," and with its slow-fading end they postured slower +and slower to a perfect close. + +There was no need to speak. In silence, without a glance at each other, +they returned to the company where Dick was proclaiming: + +"Well, younglings, codlings, and other fry, that's the way we old folks +used to dance. I'm not saying anything against the new dances, mind +you. They're all right and dandy fine. But just the same it wouldn't +injure you much to learn to waltz properly. The way you waltz, when you +do attempt it, is a scream. We old folks do know a thing or two that is +worth while." + +"For instance?" queried one of the girls. + +"I'll tell you. I don't mind the young generation smelling of gasoline +the way it does--" + +Cries and protests drowned Dick out for a moment. + +"I know I smell of it myself," he went on. "But you've all failed to +learn the good old modes of locomotion. There isn't a girl of you that +Paula can't walk into the ground. There isn't a fellow of you that +Graham and I can't walk into a receiving hospital.--Oh, I know you can +all crank engines and shift gears to the queen's taste. But there isn't +one of you that can properly ride a horse--a real horse, in the only +way, I mean. As for driving a smart pair of roadsters, it's a screech. +And how many of you husky lads, hell-scooting on the bay in your +speed-boats, can take the wheel of an old-time sloop or schooner, +without an auxiliary, and get out of your own way in her?" + +"But we get there just the same," the same girl retorted. + +"And I don't deny it," Dick answered. "But you are not always pretty. +I'll tell you a pretty sight that no one of you can ever +present--Paula, there, with the reins of four slashing horses in her +hands, her foot on the brake, swinging tally-ho along a mountain road." + + On a warm morning, in the cool arcade of the great patio, a chance +group of four or five, among whom was Paula, formed about Graham, who +had been reading alone. After a time he returned to his magazine with +such absorption that he forgot those about him until an awareness of +silence penetrated to his consciousness. He looked up. All the others +save Paula had strayed off. He could hear their distant laughter from +across the patio. But Paula! He surprised the look on her face, in her +eyes. It was a look bent on him, concerning him. Doubt, speculation, +almost fear, were in her eyes; and yet, in that swift instant, he had +time to note that it was a look deep and searching--almost, his quick +fancy prompted, the look of one peering into the just-opened book of +fate. Her eyes fluttered and fell, and the color increased in her +cheeks in an unmistakable blush. Twice her lips moved to the verge of +speech; yet, caught so arrantly in the act, she was unable to phrase +any passing thought. Graham saved the painful situation by saying +casually: + +"Do you know, I've just been reading De Vries' eulogy of Luther +Burbank's work, and it seems to me that Dick is to the domestic animal +world what Burbank is to the domestic vegetable world. You are +life-makers here--thumbing the stuff into new forms of utility and +beauty." + +Paula, by this time herself again, laughed and accepted the compliment. + +"I fear me," Graham continued with easy seriousness, "as I watch your +achievements, that I can only look back on a misspent life. Why didn't +I get in and _make_ things? I'm horribly envious of both of you." + +"We _are_ responsible for a dreadful lot of creatures being born," she +said. "It makes one breathless to think of the responsibility." + +"The ranch certainly spells fecundity," Graham smiled. "I never before +was so impressed with the flowering and fruiting of life. Everything +here prospers and multiplies--" + +"Oh!" Paula cried, breaking in with a sudden thought. "Some day I'll +show you my goldfish. I breed them, too--yea, and commercially. I +supply the San Francisco dealers with their rarest strains, and I even +ship to New York. And, best of all, I actually make money--profits, I +mean. Dick's books show it, and he is the most rigid of bookkeepers. +There isn't a tack-hammer on the place that isn't inventoried; nor a +horse-shoe nail unaccounted for. That's why he has such a staff of +bookkeepers. Why, do you know, calculating every last least item of +expense, including average loss of time for colic and lameness, out of +fearfully endless columns of figures he has worked the cost of an +hour's labor for a draught horse to the third decimal place." + +"But your goldfish," Graham suggested, irritated by her constant +dwelling on her husband. + +"Well, Dick makes his bookkeepers keep track of my goldfish in the same +way. I'm charged every hour of any of the ranch or house labor I use on +the fish--postage stamps and stationery, too, if you please. I have to +pay interest on the plant. He even charges me for the water, just as if +he were a city water company and I a householder. And still I net ten +per cent., and have netted as high as thirty. But Dick laughs and says +when I've deducted the wages of superintendence--my superintendence, he +means--that I'll find I am poorly paid or else am operating at a loss; +that with my net I couldn't hire so capable a superintendent. + +"Just the same, that's why Dick succeeds in his undertakings. Unless +it's sheer experiment, he never does anything without knowing +precisely, to the last microscopic detail, what it is he is doing." + +"He is very sure," Graham observed. + +"I never knew a man to be so sure of himself," Paula replied warmly; +"and I never knew a man with half the warrant. I know him. He is a +genius--but only in the most paradoxical sense. He is a genius because +he is so balanced and normal that he hasn't the slightest particle of +genius in him. Such men are rarer and greater than geniuses. I like to +think of Abraham Lincoln as such a type." + +"I must admit I don't quite get you," Graham said. + +"Oh, I don't dare to say that Dick is as good, as cosmically good, as +Lincoln," she hurried on. "Dick _is_ good, but it is not that. It is in +their excessive balance, normality, lack of flare, that they are of the +same type. Now I am a genius. For, see, I do things without knowing how +I do them. I just do them. I get effects in my music that way. Take my +diving. To save my life I couldn't tell how I swan-dive, or jump, or do +the turn and a half. + +"Dick, on the other hand, can't do anything unless he clearly knows in +advance _how_ he is going to do it. He does everything with balance and +foresight. He's a general, all-around wonder, without ever having been +a particular wonder at any one thing.--Oh, I know him. He's never been +a champion or a record-breaker in any line of athletics. Nor has he +been mediocre in any line. And so with everything else, mentally, +intellectually. He is an evenly forged chain. He has no massive links, +no weak links." + +"I'm afraid I'm like you," Graham said, "that commoner and lesser +creature, a genius. For I, too, on occasion, flare and do the most +unintentional things. And I am not above falling on my knees before +mystery." + +"And Dick hates mystery--or it would seem he does. Not content with +knowing _how_--he is eternally seeking the _why_ of the _how_. Mystery +is a challenge to him. It excites him like a red rag does a bull. At +once he is for ripping the husks and the heart from mystery, so that he +will know the _how_ and the _why_, when it will be no longer mystery +but a generalization and a scientifically demonstrable fact." + + Much of the growing situation was veiled to the three figures of it. +Graham did not know of Paula's desperate efforts to cling close to her +husband, who, himself desperately busy with his thousand plans and +projects, was seeing less and less of his company. He always appeared +at lunch, but it was a rare afternoon when he could go out with his +guests. Paula did know, from the multiplicity of long, code telegrams +from Mexico, that things were in a parlous state with the Harvest +Group. Also, she saw the agents and emissaries of foreign investors in +Mexico, always in haste and often inopportune, arriving at the ranch to +confer with Dick. Beyond his complaint that they ate the heart out of +his time, he gave her no clew to the matters discussed. + +"My! I wish you weren't so busy," she sighed in his arms, on his knees, +one fortunate morning, when, at eleven o'clock, she had caught him +alone. + +It was true, she had interrupted the dictation of a letter into the +phonograph; and the sigh had been evoked by the warning cough of +Bonbright, whom she saw entering with more telegrams in his hand. + +"Won't you let me drive you this afternoon, behind Duddy and Fuddy, +just you and me, and cut the crowd?" she begged. + +He shook his head and smiled. + +"You'll meet at lunch a weird combination," he explained. "Nobody else +needs to know, but I'll tell you." He lowered his voice, while +Bonbright discreetly occupied himself at the filing cabinets. "They're +Tampico oil folk. Samuels himself, President of the Nacisco; and +Wishaar, the big inside man of the Pearson-Brooks crowd--the chap that +engineered the purchase of the East Coast railroad and the Tiuana +Central when they tried to put the Nacisco out of business; and +Matthewson--he's the _hi-yu-skookum_ big chief this side the Atlantic +of the Palmerston interests--you know, the English crowd that fought +the Nacisco and the Pearson-Brooks bunch so hard; and, oh, there'll be +several others. It shows you that things are rickety down Mexico way +when such a bunch stops scrapping and gets together. + +"You see, they are oil, and I'm important in my way down there, and +they want me to swing the mining interests in with the oil. Truly, big +things are in the air, and we've got to hang together and do something +or get out of Mexico. And I'll admit, after they gave me the turn-down +in the trouble three years ago, that I've sulked in my tent and made +them come to see me." + +He caressed her and called her his armful of dearest woman, although +she detected his eye roving impatiently to the phonograph with its +unfinished letter. + +"And so," he concluded, with a pressure of his arms about her that +seemed to hint that her moment with him was over and she must go, "that +means the afternoon. None will stop over. And they'll be off and away +before dinner." + +She slipped off his knees and out of his arms with unusual abruptness, +and stood straight up before him, her eyes flashing, her cheeks white, +her face set with determination, as if about to say something of grave +importance. But a bell tinkled softly, and he reached for the desk +telephone. + +Paula drooped, and sighed inaudibly, and, as she went down the room and +out the door, and as Bonbright stepped eagerly forward with the +telegrams, she could hear the beginning of her husband's conversation: + +"No. It is impossible. He's got to come through, or I'll put him out of +business. That gentleman's agreement is all poppycock. If it were only +that, of course he could break it. But I've got some mighty interesting +correspondence that he's forgotten about.... Yes, yes; it will clinch +it in any court of law. I'll have the file in your office by five this +afternoon. And tell him, for me, that if he tries to put through this +trick, I'll break him. I'll put a competing line on, and his steamboats +will be in the receiver's hands inside a year.... And... hello, are you +there?... And just look up that point I suggested. I am rather +convinced you'll find the Interstate Commerce has got him on two +counts...." + +Nor did Graham, nor even Paula, imagine that Dick--the keen one, the +deep one, who could see and sense things yet to occur and out of +intangible nuances and glimmerings build shrewd speculations and +hypotheses that subsequent events often proved correct--was already +sensing what had not happened but what might happen. He had not heard +Paula's brief significant words at the hitching post; nor had he seen +Graham catch her in that deep scrutiny of him under the arcade. Dick +had heard nothing, seen little, but sensed much; and, even in advance +of Paula, had he apprehended in vague ways what she afterward had come +to apprehend. + +The most tangible thing he had to build on was the night, immersed in +bridge, when he had not been unaware of the abrupt leaving of the piano +after the singing of the "Gypsy Trail"; nor when, in careless smiling +greeting of them when they came down the room to devil him over his +losing, had he failed to receive a hint or feeling of something unusual +in Paula's roguish teasing face. On the moment, laughing retorts, +giving as good as she sent, Dick's own laughing eyes had swept over +Graham beside her and likewise detected the unusual. The man was +overstrung, had been Dick's mental note at the time. But why should he +be overstrung? Was there any connection between his overstrungness and +the sudden desertion by Paula of the piano? And all the while these +questions were slipping through his thoughts, he had laughed at their +sallies, dealt, sorted his hand, and won the bid on no trumps. + +Yet to himself he had continued to discount as absurd and preposterous +the possibility of his vague apprehension ever being realized. It was a +chance guess, a silly speculation, based upon the most trivial data, he +sagely concluded. It merely connoted the attractiveness of his wife and +of his friend. But--and on occasional moments he could not will the +thought from coming uppermost in his mind--why had they broken off from +singing that evening? Why had he received the feeling that there was +something unusual about it? Why had Graham been overstrung? + + * * * * * + +Nor did Bonbright, one morning, taking dictation of a telegram in the +last hour before noon, know that Dick's casual sauntering to the +window, still dictating, had been caused by the faint sound of hoofs on +the driveway. It was not the first of recent mornings that Dick had so +sauntered to the window, to glance out with apparent absentness at the +rush of the morning riding party in the last dash home to the hitching +rails. But he knew, on this morning, before the first figures came in +sight whose those figures would be. + +"Braxton is safe," he went on with the dictation without change of +tone, his eyes on the road where the riders must first come into view. +"If things break he can get out across the mountains into Arizona. See +Connors immediately. Braxton left Connors complete instructions. +Connors to-morrow in Washington. Give me fullest details any +move--signed." + +Up the driveway the Fawn and Altadena clattered neck and neck. Dick had +not been disappointed in the figures he expected to see. From the rear, +cries and laughter and the sound of many hoofs tokened that the rest of +the party was close behind. + +"And the next one, Mr. Bonbright, please put in the Harvest code," Dick +went on steadily, while to himself he was commenting that Graham was a +passable rider but not an excellent one, and that it would have to be +seen to that he was given a heavier horse than Altadena. "It is to +Jeremy Braxton. Send it both ways. There is a chance one or the other +may get through..." + + + + +CHAPTER XX + + + +Once again the tide of guests ebbed from the Big House, and more than +one lunch and dinner found only the two men and Paula at the table. On +such evenings, while Graham and Dick yarned for their hour before bed, +Paula no longer played soft things to herself at the piano, but sat +with them doing fine embroidery and listening to the talk. + +Both men had much in common, had lived life in somewhat similar ways, +and regarded life from the same angles. Their philosophy was harsh +rather than sentimental, and both were realists. Paula made a practice +of calling them the pair of "Brass Tacks." + +"Oh, yes," she laughed to them, "I understand your attitude. You are +successes, the pair of you--physical successes, I mean. You have +health. You are resistant. You can stand things. You have survived +where men less resistant have gone down. You pull through African +fevers and bury the other fellows. This poor chap gets pneumonia in +Cripple Creek and cashes in before you can get him to sea level. Now +why didn't you get pneumonia? Because you were more deserving? Because +you had lived more virtuously? Because you were more careful of risks +and took more precautions?" + +She shook her head. + +"No. Because you were luckier--I mean by birth, by possession of +constitution and stamina. Why, Dick buried his three mates and two +engineers at Guayaquil. Yellow fever. Why didn't the yellow fever germ, +or whatever it is, kill Dick? And the same with you, Mr. +Broad-shouldered Deep-chested Graham. In this last trip of yours, why +didn't you die in the swamps instead of your photographer? Come. +Confess. How heavy was he? How broad were his shoulders? How deep his +chest?--wide his nostrils?--tough his resistance?" + +"He weighed a hundred and thirty-five," Graham admitted ruefully. "But +he looked all right and fit at the start. I think I was more surprised +than he when he turned up his toes." Graham shook his head. "It wasn't +because he was a light weight and small. The small men are usually the +toughest, other things being equal. But you've put your finger on the +reason just the same. He didn't have the physical stamina, the +resistance,--You know what I mean, Dick?" + +"In a way it's like the quality of muscle and heart that enables some +prizefighters to go the distance--twenty, thirty, forty rounds, say," +Dick concurred. "Right now, in San Francisco, there are several hundred +youngsters dreaming of success in the ring. I've watched them trying +out. All look good, fine-bodied, healthy, fit as fiddles, and young. +And their spirits are most willing. And not one in ten of them can last +ten rounds. I don't mean they get knocked out. I mean they blow up. +Their muscles and their hearts are not made out of first-grade fiber. +They simply are not made to move at high speed and tension for ten +rounds. And some of them blow up in four or five rounds. And not one in +forty can go the twenty-round route, give and take, hammer and tongs, +one minute of rest to three of fight, for a full hour of fighting. And +the lad who can last forty rounds is one in ten thousand--lads like +Nelson, Gans, and Wolgast. + +"You understand the point I am making," Paula took up. "Here are the +pair of you. Neither will see forty again. You're a pair of hard-bitten +sinners. You've gone through hardship and exposure that dropped others +all along the way. You've had your fun and folly. You've roughed and +rowdied over the world--" + +"Played the wild ass," Graham laughed in. + +"And drunk deep," Paula added. "Why, even alcohol hasn't burned you. +You were too tough. You put the other fellows under the table, or into +the hospital or the grave, and went your gorgeous way, a song on your +lips, with tissues uncorroded, and without even the morning-after +headache. And the point is that you are successes. Your muscles are +blond-beast muscles, your vital organs are blond-beast organs. And from +all this emanates your blond-beast philosophy. That's why you are brass +tacks, and preach realism, and practice realism, shouldering and +shoving and walking over lesser and unluckier creatures, who don't dare +talk back, who, like Dick's prizefighting boys, would blow up in the +first round if they resorted to the arbitrament of force." + +Dick whistled a long note of mock dismay. + +"And that's why you preach the gospel of the strong," Paula went on. +"If you had been weaklings, you'd have preached the gospel of the weak +and turned the other cheek. But you--you pair of big-muscled +giants--when you are struck, being what you are, you don't turn the +other cheek--" + +"No," Dick interrupted quietly. "We immediately roar, 'Knock his block +off!' and then do it.--She's got us, Evan, hip and thigh. Philosophy, +like religion, is what the man is, and is by him made in his own image." + +And while the talk led over the world, Paula sewed on, her eyes filled +with the picture of the two big men, admiring, wondering, pondering, +without the surety of self that was theirs, aware of a slipping and +giving of convictions so long accepted that they had seemed part of her. + +Later in the evening she gave voice to her trouble. + +"The strangest part of it," she said, taking up a remark Dick had just +made, "is that too much philosophizing about life gets one worse than +nowhere. A philosophic atmosphere is confusing--at least to a woman. +One hears so much about everything, and against everything, that +nothing is sure. For instance, Mendenhall's wife is a Lutheran. She +hasn't a doubt about anything. All is fixed, ordained, immovable. +Star-drifts and ice-ages she knows nothing about, and if she did they +would not alter in the least her rules of conduct for men and women in +this world and in relation to the next. + +"But here, with us, you two pound your brass tacks, Terrence does a +Greek dance of epicurean anarchism, Hancock waves the glittering veils +of Bergsonian metaphysics, Leo makes solemn obeisance at the altar of +Beauty, and Dar Hyal juggles his sophistic blastism to no end save all +your applause for his cleverness. Don't you see? The effect is that +there is nothing solid in any human judgment. Nothing is right. Nothing +is wrong. One is left compassless, rudderless, chartless on a sea of +ideas. Shall I do this? Must I refrain from that? Will it be wrong? Is +there any virtue in it? Mrs. Mendenhall has her instant answer for +every such question. But do the philosophers?" + +Paula shook her head. + +"No. All they have is ideas. They immediately proceed to talk about it, +and talk and talk and talk, and with all their erudition reach no +conclusion whatever. And I am just as bad. I listen and listen, and +talk and talk, as I am talking now, and remain convictionless. There is +no test--" + +"But there is," Dick said. "The old, eternal test of truth--_Will it +work?_" + +"Ah, now you are pounding your favorite brass tack," Paula smiled. "And +Dar Hyal, with a few arm-wavings and word-whirrings, will show that all +brass tacks are illusions; and Terrence, that brass tacks are sordid, +irrelevant and non-essential things at best; and Hancock, that the +overhanging heaven of Bergson is paved with brass tacks, only that they +are a much superior article to yours; and Leo, that there is only one +brass tack in the universe, and that it is Beauty, and that it isn't +brass at all but gold." + + * * * * * + +"Come on, Red Cloud, go riding this afternoon," Paula asked her +husband. "Get the cobwebs out of your brain, and let lawyers and mines +and livestock go hang." + +"I'd like to, Paul," he answered. "But I can't. I've got to rush in a +machine all the way to the Buckeye. Word came in just before lunch. +They're in trouble at the dam. There must have been a fault in the +under-strata, and too-heavy dynamiting has opened it. In short, what's +the good of a good dam when the bottom of the reservoir won't hold +water?" + +Three hours later, returning from the Buckeye, Dick noted that for the +first time Paula and Graham had gone riding together alone. + + * * * * * + +The Wainwrights and the Coghlans, in two machines, out for a week's +trip to the Russian River, rested over for a day at the Big House, and +were the cause of Paula's taking out the tally-ho for a picnic into the +Los Banos Hills. Starting in the morning, it was impossible for Dick to +accompany them, although he left Blake in the thick of dictation to go +out and see them off. He assured himself that no detail was amiss in +the harnessing and hitching, and reseated the party, insisting on +Graham coming forward into the box-seat beside Paula. + +"Just must have a reserve of man's strength alongside of Paula in case +of need," Dick explained. "I've known a brake-rod to carry away on a +down grade somewhat to the inconvenience of the passengers. Some of +them broke their necks. And now, to reassure you, with Paula at the +helm, I'll sing you a song: + + "What can little Paula do? + Why, drive a phaeton and two. + Can little Paula do no more? + Yes, drive a tally-ho and four." + +All were in laughter as Paula nodded to the grooms to release the +horses' heads, took the feel of the four mouths on her hands, and +shortened and slipped the reins to adjustment of four horses into the +collars and taut on the traces. + +In the babel of parting gibes to Dick, none of the guests was aware of +aught else than a bright morning, the promise of a happy day, and a +genial host bidding them a merry going. But Paula, despite the keen +exhilaration that should have arisen with the handling of four such +horses, was oppressed by a vague sadness in which, somehow, Dick's +being left behind figured. Through Graham's mind Dick's merry face had +flashed a regret of conscience that, instead of being seated there +beside this one woman, he should be on train and steamer fleeing to the +other side of the world. + +But the merriness died on Dick's face the moment he turned on his heel +to enter the house. It was a few minutes later than ten when he +finished his dictation and Mr. Blake rose to go. He hesitated, then +said a trifle apologetically: + +"You told me, Mr. Forrest, to remind you of the proofs of your +Shorthorn book. They wired their second hurry-up yesterday." + +"I won't be able to tackle it myself," Dick replied. "Will you please +correct the typographical, submit the proofs to Mr. Manson for +correction of fact--tell him be sure to verify that pedigree of King of +Devon--and ship them off." + +Until eleven Dick received his managers and foremen. But not for a +quarter of an hour after that did he get rid of his show manager, Mr. +Pitts, with the tentative make-up of the catalogue for the first annual +stock-sale on the ranch. By that time Mr. Bonbright was on hand with +his sheaf of telegrams, and the lunch-hour was at hand ere they were +cleaned up. + +For the first time alone since he had seen the tally-ho off, Dick +stepped out on his sleeping porch to the row of barometers and +thermometers on the wall. But he had come to consult, not them, but the +girl's face that laughed from the round wooden frame beneath them. + +"Paula, Paula," he said aloud, "are you surprising yourself and me +after all these years? Are you turning madcap at sober middle age?" + +He put on leggings and spurs to be ready for riding after lunch, and +what his thoughts had been while buckling on the gear he epitomized to +the girl in the frame. + +"Play the game," he muttered. And then, after a pause, as he turned to +go: "A free field and no favor ... and no favor." + + * * * * * + +"Really, if I don't go soon, I'll have to become a pensioner and join +the philosophers of the madrono grove," Graham said laughingly to Dick. + +It was the time of cocktail assembling, and Paula, in addition to +Graham, was the only one of the driving party as yet to put in an +appearance. + +"If all the philosophers together would just make one book!" Dick +demurred. "Good Lord, man, you've just got to complete your book here. +I got you started and I've got to see you through with it." + +Paula's encouragement to Graham to stay on--mere stereotyped, +uninterested phrases--was music to Dick. His heart leapt. After all, +might he not be entirely mistaken? For two such mature, wise, +middle-aged individuals as Paula and Graham any such foolishness was +preposterous and unthinkable. They were not young things with their +hearts on their sleeves. + +"To the book!" he toasted. He turned to Paula. "A good cocktail," he +praised. "Paul, you excel yourself, and you fail to teach Oh Joy the +art. His never quite touch yours.--Yes, another, please." + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + + + +Graham, riding solitary through the redwood canyons among the hills +that overlooked the ranch center, was getting acquainted with Selim, +the eleven-hundred-pound, coal-black gelding which Dick had furnished +him in place of the lighter Altadena. As he rode along, learning the +good nature, the roguishness and the dependableness of the animal, +Graham hummed the words of the "Gypsy Trail" and allowed them to lead +his thoughts. Quite carelessly, foolishly, thinking of bucolic lovers +carving their initials on forest trees, he broke a spray of laurel and +another of redwood. He had to stand in the stirrups to pluck a +long-stemmed, five-fingered fern with which to bind the sprays into a +cross. When the patteran was fashioned, he tossed it on the trail +before him and noted that Selim passed over without treading upon it. +Glancing back, Graham watched it to the next turn of the trail. A good +omen, was his thought, that it had not been trampled. + +More five-fingered ferns to be had for the reaching, more branches of +redwood and laurel brushing his face as he rode, invited him to +continue the manufacture of patterans, which he dropped as he fashioned +them. An hour later, at the head of the canyon, where he knew the trail +over the divide was difficult and stiff, he debated his course and +turned back. + +Selim warned him by nickering. Came an answering nicker from close at +hand. The trail was wide and easy, and Graham put his mount into a fox +trot, swung a wide bend, and overtook Paula on the Fawn. + +"Hello!" he called. "Hello! Hello!" + +She reined in till he was alongside. + +"I was just turning back," she said. "Why did you turn back? I thought +you were going over the divide to Little Grizzly." + +"You knew I was ahead of you?" he asked, admiring the frank, boyish way +of her eyes straight-gazing into his. + +"Why shouldn't I? I had no doubt at the second patteran." + +"Oh, I'd forgotten about them," he laughed guiltily. "Why did _you_ +turn back?" + +She waited until the Fawn and Selim had stepped over a fallen alder +across the trail, so that she could look into Graham's eyes when she +answered: + +"Because I did not care to follow your trail.--To follow anybody's +trail," she quickly amended. "I turned back at the second one." + +He failed of a ready answer, and an awkward silence was between them. +Both were aware of this awkwardness, due to the known but unspoken +things. + +"Do you make a practice of dropping patterans?" Paula asked. + +"The first I ever left," he replied, with a shake of the head. "But +there was such a generous supply of materials it seemed a pity, and, +besides, the song was haunting me." + +"It was haunting me this morning when I woke up," she said, this time +her face straight ahead so that she might avoid a rope of wild +grapevine that hung close to her side of the trail. + +And Graham, gazing at her face in profile, at her crown of gold-brown +hair, at her singing throat, felt the old ache at the heart, the hunger +and the yearning. The nearness of her was a provocation. The sight of +her, in her fawn-colored silk corduroy, tormented him with a rush of +visions of that form of hers--swimming Mountain Lad, swan-diving +through forty feet of air, moving down the long room in the dull-blue +dress of medieval fashion with the maddening knee-lift of the clinging +draperies. + +"A penny for them," she interrupted his visioning. His answer was +prompt. + +"Praise to the Lord for one thing: you haven't once mentioned Dick." + +"Do you so dislike him?" + +"Be fair," he commanded, almost sternly. "It is because I like him. +Otherwise..." + +"What?" she queried. + +Her voice was brave, although she looked straight before her at the +Fawn's pricking ears. + +"I can't understand why I remain. I should have been gone long ago." + +"Why?" she asked, her gaze still on the pricking ears. + +"Be fair, be fair," he warned. "You and I scarcely need speech for +understanding." + +She turned full upon him, her cheeks warming with color, and, without +speech, looked at him. Her whip-hand rose quickly, half way, as if to +press her breast, and half way paused irresolutely, then dropped down +to her side. But her eyes, he saw, were glad and startled. There was no +mistake. The startle lay in them, and also the gladness. And he, +knowing as it is given some men to know, changed the bridle rein to his +other hand, reined close to her, put his arm around her, drew her till +the horses rocked, and, knee to knee and lips on lips, kissed his +desire to hers. There was no mistake--pressure to pressure, warmth to +warmth, and with an elate thrill he felt her breathe against him. + +The next moment she had torn herself loose. The blood had left her +face. Her eyes were blazing. Her riding-whip rose as if to strike him, +then fell on the startled Fawn. Simultaneously she drove in both spurs +with such suddenness and force as to fetch a groan and a leap from the +mare. + +He listened to the soft thuds of hoofs die away along the forest path, +himself dizzy in the saddle from the pounding of his blood. When the +last hoof-beat had ceased, he half-slipped, half-sank from his saddle +to the ground, and sat on a mossy boulder. He was hard hit--harder than +he had deemed possible until that one great moment when he had held her +in his arms. Well, the die was cast. + +He straightened up so abruptly as to alarm Selim, who sprang back the +length of his bridle rein and snorted. + +What had just occurred had been unpremeditated. It was one of those +inevitable things. It had to happen. He had not planned it, although he +knew, now, that had he not procrastinated his going, had he not +drifted, he could have foreseen it. And now, going could not mend +matters. The madness of it, the hell of it and the joy of it, was that +no longer was there any doubt. Speech beyond speech, his lips still +tingling with the memory of hers, she had told him. He dwelt over that +kiss returned, his senses swimming deliciously in the sea of +remembrance. + +He laid his hand caressingly on the knee that had touched hers, and was +grateful with the humility of the true lover. Wonderful it was that so +wonderful a woman should love him. This was no girl. This was a woman, +knowing her own will and wisdom. And she had breathed quickly in his +arms, and her lips had been live to his. He had evoked what he had +given, and he had not dreamed, after the years, that he had had so much +to give. + +He stood up, made as if to mount Selim, who nozzled his shoulder, then +paused to debate. + +It was no longer a question of going. That was definitely settled. Dick +had certain rights, true. But Paula had her rights, and did he have the +right to go, after what had happened, unless ... unless she went with +him? To go now was to kiss and ride away. Surely, since the world of +sex decreed that often the same men should love the one woman, and +therefore that perfidy should immediately enter into such a +triangle--surely, it was the lesser evil to be perfidious to the man +than to the woman. + +It was a real world, he pondered as he rode slowly along; and Paula, +and Dick, and he were real persons in it, were themselves conscious +realists who looked the facts of life squarely in the face. This was no +affair of priest and code, of other wisdoms and decisions. Of +themselves must it be settled. Some one would be hurt. But life was +hurt. Success in living was the minimizing of pain. Dick believed that +himself, thanks be. The three of them believed it. And it was nothing +new under the sun. The countless triangles of the countless generations +had all been somehow solved. This, then, would be solved. All human +affairs reached some solution. + +He shook sober thought from his brain and returned to the bliss of +memory, reaching his hand to another caress of his knee, his lips +breathing again to the breathing of hers against them. He even reined +Selim to a halt in order to gaze at the hollow resting place of his +bent arm which she had filled. + +Not until dinner did Graham see Paula again, and he found her the very +usual Paula. Not even his eye, keen with knowledge, could detect any +sign of the day's great happening, nor of the anger that had whitened +her face and blazed in her eyes when she half-lifted her whip to strike +him. In everything she was the same Little Lady of the Big House. Even +when it chanced that her eyes met his, they were serene, untroubled, +with no hint of any secret in them. What made the situation easier was +the presence of several new guests, women, friends of Dick and her, +come for a couple of days. + +Next morning, in the music room, he encountered them and Paula at the +piano. + +"Don't you sing, Mr. Graham?" a Miss Hoffman asked. + +She was the editor of a woman's magazine published in San Francisco, +Graham had learned. + +"Oh, adorably," he assured her. "Don't I, Mrs. Forrest?" he appealed. + +"It is quite true," Paula smiled, "if for no other reason that he is +kind enough not to drown me quite." + +"And nothing remains but to prove our words," he volunteered. "There's +a duet we sang the other evening--" He glanced at Paula for a sign. +"--Which is particularly good for my kind of singing." Again he gave +her a passing glance and received no cue to her will or wish. "The +music is in the living room. I'll go and get it." + +"It's the 'Gypsy Trail,' a bright, catchy thing," he heard her saying +to the others as he passed out. + +They did not sing it so recklessly as on that first occasion, and much +of the thrill and some of the fire they kept out of their voices; but +they sang it more richly, more as the composer had intended it and with +less of their own particular interpretation. But Graham was thinking as +he sang, and he knew, too, that Paula was thinking, that in their +hearts another duet was pulsing all unguessed by the several women who +applauded the song's close. + +"You never sang it better, I'll wager," he told Paula. + +For he had heard a new note in her voice. It had been fuller, rounder, +with a generousness of volume that had vindicated that singing throat. + +"And now, because I know you don't know, I'll tell you what a patteran +is," she was saying.... + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + + + +"Dick, boy, your position is distinctly Carlylean," Terrence McFane +said in fatherly tones. + +The sages of the madrono grove were at table, and, with Paula, Dick and +Graham, made up the dinner party of seven. + +"Mere naming of one's position does not settle it, Terrence," Dick +replied. "I know my point is Carlylean, but that does not invalidate +it. Hero-worship is a very good thing. I am talking, not as a mere +scholastic, but as a practical breeder with whom the application of +Mendelian methods is an every-day commonplace." + +"And I am to conclude," Hancock broke in, "that a Hottentot is as good +as a white man?" + +"Now the South speaks, Aaron," Dick retorted with a smile. "Prejudice, +not of birth, but of early environment, is too strong for all your +philosophy to shake. It is as bad as Herbert Spencer's handicap of the +early influence of the Manchester School." + +"And Spencer is on a par with the Hottentot?" Dar Hyal challenged. + +Dick shook his head. + +"Let me say this, Hyal. I think I can make it clear. The average +Hottentot, or the average Melanesian, is pretty close to being on a par +with the average white man. The difference lies in that there are +proportionately so many more Hottentots and negroes who are merely +average, while there is such a heavy percentage of white men who are +not average, who are above average. These are what I called the +pace-makers that bring up the speed of their own race average-men. Note +that they do not change the nature or develop the intelligence of the +average-men. But they give them better equipment, better facilities, +enable them to travel a faster collective pace. + +"Give an Indian a modern rifle in place of his bow and arrows and he +will become a vastly more efficient game-getter. The Indian hunter +himself has not changed in the slightest. But his entire Indian race +sported so few of the above-average men, that all of them, in ten +thousand generations, were unable to equip him with a rifle." + +"Go on, Dick, develop the idea," Terrence encouraged. "I begin to +glimpse your drive, and you'll soon have Aaron on the run with his race +prejudices and silly vanities of superiority." + +"These above-average men," Dick continued, "these pace-makers, are the +inventors, the discoverers, the constructionists, the sporting +dominants. A race that sports few such dominants is classified as a +lower race, as an inferior race. It still hunts with bows and arrows. +It is not equipped. Now the average white man, per se, is just as +bestial, just as stupid, just as inelastic, just as stagnative, just as +retrogressive, as the average savage. But the average white man has a +faster pace. The large number of sporting dominants in his society give +him the equipment, the organization, and impose the law. + +"What great man, what hero--and by that I mean what sporting +dominant--has the Hottentot race produced? The Hawaiian race produced +only one--Kamehameha. The negro race in America, at the outside only +two, Booker T. Washington and Du Bois--and both with white blood in +them...." + +Paula feigned a cheerful interest while the exposition went on. She did +not appear bored, but to Graham's sympathetic eyes she seemed inwardly +to droop. And in an interval of tilt between Terrence and Hancock, she +said in a low voice to Graham: + +"Words, words, words, so much and so many of them! I suppose Dick is +right--he so nearly always is; but I confess to my old weakness of +inability to apply all these floods of words to life--to my life, I +mean, to my living, to what I should do, to what I must do." Her eyes +were unfalteringly fixed on his while she spoke, leaving no doubt in +his mind to what she referred. "I don't know what bearing sporting +dominants and race-paces have on my life. They show me no right or +wrong or way for my particular feet. And now that they've started they +are liable to talk the rest of the evening.... + +"Oh, I do understand what they say," she hastily assured him; "but it +doesn't mean anything to me. Words, words, words--and I want to know +what to do, what to do with myself, what to do with you, what to do +with Dick." + +But the devil of speech was in Dick Forrest's tongue, and before Graham +could murmur a reply to Paula, Dick was challenging him for data on the +subject from the South American tribes among which he had traveled. To +look at Dick's face it would have been unguessed that he was aught but +a carefree, happy arguer. Nor did Graham, nor did Paula, Dick's dozen +years' wife, dream that his casual careless glances were missing no +movement of a hand, no change of position on a chair, no shade of +expression on their faces. + +What's up? was Dick's secret interrogation. Paula's not herself. She's +positively nervous, and all the discussion is responsible. And Graham's +off color. His brain isn't working up to mark. He's thinking about +something else, rather than about what he is saying. What is that +something else? + +And the devil of speech behind which Dick hid his secret thoughts +impelled him to urge the talk wider and wilder. + +"For once I could almost hate the four sages," Paula broke out in an +undertone to Graham, who had finished furnishing the required data. + +Dick, himself talking, in cool sentences amplifying his thesis, +apparently engrossed in his subject, saw Paula make the aside, although +no word of it reached his ears, saw her increasing nervousness, saw the +silent sympathy of Graham, and wondered what had been the few words she +uttered, while to the listening table he was saying: + +"Fischer and Speiser are both agreed on the paucity of unit-characters +that circulate in the heredity of the lesser races as compared with the +immense variety of unit-characters in say the French, or German, or +English...." + +No one at the table suspected that Dick deliberately dangled the bait +of a new trend to the conversation, nor did Leo dream afterward that it +was the master-craft and deviltry of Dick rather than his own question +that changed the subject when he demanded to know what part the female +sporting dominants played in the race. + +"Females don't sport, Leo, my lad," Terrence, with a wink to the +others, answered him. "Females are conservative. They keep the type +true. They fix it and hold it, and are the everlasting clog on the +chariot of progress. If it wasn't for the females every blessed +mother's son of us would be a sporting dominant. I refer to our +distinguished breeder and practical Mendelian whom we have with us this +evening to verify my random statements." + +"Let us get down first of all to bedrock and find out what we are +talking about," Dick was prompt on the uptake. "What is woman?" he +demanded with an air of earnestness. + +"The ancient Greeks said woman was nature's failure to make a man," Dar +Hyal answered, the while the imp of mockery laughed in the corners of +his mouth and curled his thin cynical lips derisively. + +Leo was shocked. His face flushed. There was pain in his eyes and his +lips were trembling as he looked wistful appeal to Dick. + +"The half-sex," Hancock gibed. "As if the hand of God had been +withdrawn midway in the making, leaving her but a half-soul, a groping +soul at best." + +"No I no!" the boy cried out. "You must not say such things!--Dick, you +know. Tell them, tell them." + +"I wish I could," Dick replied. "But this soul discussion is vague as +souls themselves. We all know, of our selves, that we often grope, are +often lost, and are never so much lost as when we think we know where +we are and all about ourselves. What is the personality of a lunatic +but a personality a little less, or very much less, coherent than ours? +What is the personality of a moron? Of an idiot? Of a feeble-minded +child? Of a horse? A dog? A mosquito? A bullfrog? A woodtick? A garden +snail? And, Leo, what is your own personality when you sleep and dream? +When you are seasick? When you are in love? When you have colic? When +you have a cramp in the leg? When you are smitten abruptly with the +fear of death? When you are angry? When you are exalted with the sense +of the beauty of the world and think you think all inexpressible +unutterable thoughts? + +"I say _think you think_ intentionally. Did you really think, then your +sense of the beauty of the world would not be inexpressible, +unutterable. It would be clear, sharp, definite. You could put it into +words. Your personality would be clear, sharp, and definite as your +thoughts and words. Ergo, Leo, when you deem, in exalted moods, that +you are at the summit of existence, in truth you are thrilling, +vibrating, dancing a mad orgy of the senses and not knowing a step of +the dance or the meaning of the orgy. You don't know yourself. Your +soul, your personality, at that moment, is a vague and groping thing. +Possibly the bullfrog, inflating himself on the edge of a pond and +uttering hoarse croaks through the darkness to a warty mate, possesses +also, at that moment, a vague and groping personality. + +"No, Leo, personality is too vague for any of our vague personalities +to grasp. There are seeming men with the personalities of women. There +are plural personalities. There are two-legged human creatures that are +neither fish, flesh, nor fowl. We, as personalities, float like +fog-wisps through glooms and darknesses and light-flashings. It is all +fog and mist, and we are all foggy and misty in the thick of the +mystery." + +"Maybe it's mystification instead of mystery--man-made mystification," +Paula said. + +"There talks the true woman that Leo thinks is not a half-soul," Dick +retorted. "The point is, Leo, sex and soul are all interwoven and +tangled together, and we know little of one and less of the other." + +"But women are beautiful," the boy stammered. + +"Oh, ho!" Hancock broke in, his black eyes gleaming wickedly. "So, Leo, +you identify woman with beauty?" + +The young poet's lips moved, but he could only nod. + +"Very well, then, let us take the testimony of painting, during the +last thousand years, as a reflex of economic conditions and political +institutions, and by it see how man has molded and daubed woman into +the image of his desire, and how she has permitted him--" + +"You must stop baiting Leo," Paula interfered, "and be truthful, all of +you, and say what you do know or do believe." + +"Woman is a very sacred subject," Dar Hyal enunciated solemnly. + +"There is the Madonna," Graham suggested, stepping into the breach to +Paula's aid. + +"And the cerebrale," Terrence added, winning a nod of approval from Dar +Hyal. + +"One at a time," Hancock said. "Let us consider the Madonna-worship, +which was a particular woman-worship in relation to the general +woman-worship of all women to-day and to which Leo subscribes. Man is a +lazy, loafing savage. He dislikes to be pestered. He likes +tranquillity, repose. And he finds himself, ever since man began, +saddled to a restless, nervous, irritable, hysterical traveling +companion, and her name is woman. She has moods, tears, vanities, +angers, and moral irresponsibilities. He couldn't destroy her. He had +to have her, although she was always spoiling his peace. What was he to +do?" + +"Trust him to find a way--the cunning rascal," Terrence interjected. + +"He made a heavenly image of her," Hancock kept on. "He idealized her +good qualities, and put her so far away that her bad qualities couldn't +get on his nerves and prevent him from smoking his quiet lazy pipe of +peace and meditating upon the stars. And when the ordinary every-day +woman tried to pester, he brushed her aside from his thoughts and +remembered his heaven-woman, the perfect woman, the bearer of life and +custodian of immortality. + +"Then came the Reformation. Down went the worship of the Mother. And +there was man still saddled to his repose-destroyer. What did he do +then?" + +"Ah, the rascal," Terrence grinned. + +"He said: 'I will make of you a dream and an illusion.' And he did. The +Madonna was his heavenly woman, his highest conception of woman. He +transferred all his idealized qualities of her to the earthly woman, to +every woman, and he has fooled himself into believing in them and in +her ever since... like Leo does." + +"For an unmarried man you betray an amazing intimacy with the +pestiferousness of woman," Dick commented. "Or is it all purely +theoretical?" Terrence began to laugh. + +"Dick, boy, it's Laura Marholm Aaron's been just reading. He can spout +her chapter and verse." + +"And with all this talk about woman we have not yet touched the hem of +her garment," Graham said, winning a grateful look from Paula and Leo. + +"There is love," Leo breathed. "No one has said one word about love." + +"And marriage laws, and divorces, and polygamy, and monogamy, and free +love," Hancock rattled off. + +"And why, Leo," Dar Hyal queried, "is woman, in the game of love, +always the pursuer, the huntress?" + +"Oh, but she isn't," the boy answered quietly, with an air of superior +knowledge. "That is just some of your Shaw nonsense." + +"Bravo, Leo," Paula applauded. + +"Then Wilde was wrong when he said woman attacks by sudden and strange +surrenders?" Dar Hyal asked. + +"But don't you see," protested Leo, "all such talk makes woman a +monster, a creature of prey." As he turned to Dick, he stole a side +glance at Paula and love welled in his eyes. "Is she a creature of +prey, Dick?" + +"No," Dick answered slowly, with a shake of head, and gentleness was in +his voice for sake of what he had just seen in the boy's eyes. "I +cannot say that woman is a creature of prey. Nor can I say she is a +creature preyed upon. Nor will I say she is a creature of unfaltering +joy to man. But I will say that she is a creature of much joy to man--" + +"And of much foolishness," Hancock added. + +"Of much fine foolishness," Dick gravely amended. + +"Let me ask Leo something," Dar Hyal said. "Leo, why is it that a woman +loves the man who beats her?" + +"And doesn't love the man who doesn't beat her?" Leo countered. + +"Precisely." + +"Well, Dar, you are partly right and mostly wrong.--Oh, I have learned +about definitions from you fellows. You've cunningly left them out of +your two propositions. Now I'll put them in for you. A man who beats a +woman he loves is a low type man. A woman who loves the man who beats +her is a low type woman. No high type man beats the woman he loves. No +high type woman," and all unconsciously Leo's eyes roved to Paula, +"could love a man who beats her." + +"No, Leo," Dick said, "I assure you I have never, never beaten Paula." + +"So you see, Dar," Leo went on with flushing cheeks, "you are wrong. +Paula loves Dick without being beaten." + +With what seemed pleased amusement beaming on his face, Dick turned to +Paula as if to ask her silent approval of the lad's words; but what +Dick sought was the effect of the impact of such words under the +circumstances he apprehended. In Paula's eyes he thought he detected a +flicker of something he knew not what. Graham's face he found +expressionless insofar as there was no apparent change of the +expression of interest that had been there. + +"Woman has certainly found her St. George tonight," Graham +complimented. "Leo, you shame me. Here I sit quietly by while you fight +three dragons." + +"And such dragons," Paula joined in. "If they drove O'Hay to drink, +what will they do to you, Leo?" + +"No knight of love can ever be discomfited by all the dragons in the +world," Dick said. "And the best of it, Leo, is in this case the +dragons are more right than you think, and you are more right than they +just the same." + +"Here's a dragon that's a good dragon, Leo, lad," Terrence spoke up. +"This dragon is going to desert his disreputable companions and come +over on your side and be a Saint Terrence. And this Saint Terrence has +a lovely question to ask you." + +"Let this dragon roar first," Hancock interposed. "Leo, by all in love +that is sweet and lovely, I ask you: why do lovers, out of jealousy, so +often kill the woman they love?" + +"Because they are hurt, because they are insane," came the answer, "and +because they have been unfortunate enough to love a woman so low in +type that she could be guilty of making them jealous." + +"But, Leo, love will stray," Dick prompted. "You must give a more +sufficient answer." + +"True for Dick," Terrence supplemented. "And it's helping you I am to +the full stroke of your sword. Love will stray among the highest types, +and when it does in steps the green-eyed monster. Suppose the most +perfect woman you can imagine should cease to love the man who does not +beat her and come to love another man who loves her and will not beat +her--what then? All highest types, mind you. Now up with your sword and +slash into the dragons." + +"The first man will not kill her nor injure her in any way," Leo +asserted stoutly. "Because if he did he would not be the man you +describe. He would not be high type, but low type." + +"You mean, he would get out of the way?" Dick asked, at the same time +busying himself with a cigarette so that he might glance at no one's +face. + +Leo nodded gravely. + +"He would get out of the way, and he would make the way easy for her, +and he would be very gentle with her." + +"Let us bring the argument right home," Hancock said. "We'll suppose +you're in love with Mrs. Forrest, and Mrs. Forrest is in love with you, +and you run away together in the big limousine--" + +"Oh, but I wouldn't," the boy blurted out, his cheeks burning. + +"Leo, you are not complimentary," Paula encouraged. + +"It's just supposing, Leo," Hancock urged. + +The boy's embarrassment was pitiful, and his voice quivered, but he +turned bravely to Dick and said: + +"That is for Dick to answer." + +"And I'll answer," Dick said. "I wouldn't kill Paula. Nor would I kill +you, Leo. That wouldn't be playing the game. No matter what I felt at +heart, I'd say, 'Bless you, my children.' But just the same--" He +paused, and the laughter signals in the corners of his eyes advertised +a whimsey--"I'd say to myself that Leo was making a sad mistake. You +see, he doesn't know Paula." + +"She would be for interrupting his meditations on the stars," Terrence +smiled. + +"Never, never, Leo, I promise you," Paula exclaimed. + +"There do you belie yourself, Mrs. Forrest," Terrence assured her. "In +the first place, you couldn't help doing it. Besides, it'd be your +bounden duty to do it. And, finally, if I may say so, as somewhat of an +authority, when I was a mad young lover of a man, with my heart full of +a woman and my eyes full of the stars, 'twas ever the dearest delight +to be loved away from them by the woman out of my heart." + +"Terrence, if you keep on saying such lovely things," cried Paula," +I'll run away with both you and Leo in the limousine." + +"Hurry the day," said Terrence gallantly. "But leave space among your +fripperies for a few books on the stars that Leo and I may be studying +in odd moments." + +The combat ebbed away from Leo, and Dar Hyal and Hancock beset Dick. + +"What do you mean by 'playing the game'?" Dar Hyal asked. + +"Just what I said, just what Leo said," Dick answered; and he knew that +Paula's boredom and nervousness had been banished for some time and +that she was listening with an interest almost eager. "In my way of +thinking, and in accord with my temperament, the most horrible +spiritual suffering I can imagine would be to kiss a woman who endured +my kiss." + +"Suppose she fooled you, say for old sake's sake, or through desire not +to hurt you, or pity for you?" Hancock propounded. + +"It would be, to me, the unforgivable sin," came Dick's reply. "It +would not be playing the game--for her. I cannot conceive the fairness, +nor the satisfaction, of holding the woman one loves a moment longer +than she loves to be held. Leo is very right. The drunken artisan, with +his fists, may arouse and keep love alive in the breast of his stupid +mate. But the higher human males, the males with some shadow of +rationality, some glimmer of spirituality, cannot lay rough hands on +love. With Leo, I would make the way easy for the woman, and I would be +very gentle with her." + +"Then what becomes of your boasted monogamic marriage institution of +Western civilization?" Dar Hyal asked. + +And Hancock: "You argue for free love, then?" + +"I can only answer with a hackneyed truism," Dick said. "There can be +no love that is not free. Always, please, remember the point of view is +that of the higher types. And the point of view answers you, Dar. The +vast majority of individuals must be held to law and labor by the +monogamic institution, or by a stern, rigid marriage institution of +some sort. They are unfit for marriage freedom or love freedom. Freedom +of love, for them, would be merely license of promiscuity. Only such +nations have risen and endured where God and the State have kept the +people's instincts in discipline and order." + +"Then you don't believe in the marriage laws for say yourself," Dar +Hyal inquired, "while you do believe in them for other men?" + +"I believe in them for all men. Children, family, career, society, the +State--all these things make marriage, legal marriage, imperative. And +by the same token that is why I believe in divorce. Men, all men, and +women, all women, are capable of loving more than once, of having the +old love die and of finding a new love born. The State cannot control +love any more than can a man or a woman. When one falls in love one +falls in love, and that's all he knows about it. There it +is--throbbing, sighing, singing, thrilling love. But the State can +control license." + +"It is a complicated free love that you stand for," Hancock criticised. +"True, and for the reason that man, living in society, is a most +complicated animal." + +"But there are men, lovers, who would die at the loss of their loved +one," Leo surprised the table by his initiative. "They would die if she +died, they would die--oh so more quickly--if she lived and loved +another." + +"Well, they'll have to keep on dying as they have always died in the +past," Dick answered grimly. "And no blame attaches anywhere for their +deaths. We are so made that our hearts sometimes stray." + +"My heart would never stray," Leo asserted proudly, unaware that all at +the table knew his secret. "I could never love twice, I know." + +"True for you, lad," Terrence approved. "The voice of all true lovers +is in your throat. 'Tis the absoluteness of love that is its joy--how +did Shelley put it?--or was it Keats?--'All a wonder and a wild +delight.' Sure, a miserable skinflint of a half-baked lover would it be +that could dream there was aught in woman form one-thousandth part as +sweet, as ravishing and enticing, as glorious and wonderful as his own +woman that he could ever love again." + + * * * * * + +And as they passed out from the dining room, Dick, continuing the +conversation with Dar Hyal, was wondering whether Paula would kiss him +good night or slip off to bed from the piano. And Paula, talking to Leo +about his latest sonnet which he had shown her, was wondering if she +could kiss Dick, and was suddenly greatly desirous to kiss him, she +knew not why. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + + + +There was little talk that same evening after dinner. Paula, singing at +the piano, disconcerted Terrence in the midst of an apostrophe on love. +He quit a phrase midmost to listen to the something new he heard in her +voice, then slid noiselessly across the room to join Leo at full length +on the bearskin. Dar Hyal and Hancock likewise abandoned the +discussion, each isolating himself in a capacious chair. Graham, +seeming least attracted, browsed in a current magazine, but Dick +observed that he quickly ceased turning the pages. Nor did Dick fail to +catch the new note in Paula's voice and to endeavor to sense its +meaning. + +When she finished the song the three sages strove to tell her all at +the same time that for once she had forgotten herself and sung out as +they had always claimed she could. Leo lay without movement or speech, +his chin on his two hands, his face transfigured. + +"It's all this talk on love," Paula laughed, "and all the lovely +thoughts Leo and Terrence ... and Dick have put into my head." + +Terrence shook his long mop of iron-gray hair. + +"Into your heart you'd be meaning," he corrected. "'Tis the very heart +and throat of love that are yours this night. And for the first time, +dear lady, have I heard the full fair volume that is yours. Never again +plaint that your voice is thin. Thick it is, and round it is, as a +great rope, a great golden rope for the mooring of argosies in the +harbors of the Happy Isles." + +"And for that I shall sing you the _Gloria,"_ she answered, "to +celebrate the slaying of the dragons by Saint Leo, by Saint Terrence +... and, of course, by Saint Richard." + +Dick, missing nothing of the talk, saved himself from speech by +crossing to the concealed sideboard and mixing for himself a Scotch and +soda. + +While Paula sang the _Gloria,_ he sat on one of the couches, sipping +his drink and remembering keenly. Once before he had heard her sing +like that--in Paris, during their swift courtship, and directly +afterward, during their honeymoon on the _All Away._ + +A little later, using his empty glass in silent invitation to Graham, +he mixed highballs for both of them, and, when Graham had finished his, +suggested to Paula that she and Graham sing the "Gypsy Trail." + +She shook her head and began _Das Kraut Ver-gessenheit._ + +"She was not a true woman, she was a terrible woman," the song's close +wrung from Leo. "And he was a true lover. She broke his heart, but +still he loved her. He cannot love again because he cannot forget his +love for her." + +"And now, Red Cloud, the Song of the Acorn," Paula said, smiling over +to her husband. "Put down your glass, and be good, and plant the +acorns." + +Dick lazily hauled himself off the couch and stood up, shaking his head +mutinously, as if tossing a mane, and stamping ponderously with his +feet in simulation of Mountain Lad. + +"I'll have Leo know that he is not the only poet and love-knight on the +ranch. Listen to Mountain Lad's song, all wonder and wild delight, +Terrence, and more. Mountain Lad doesn't moon about the loved one. He +doesn't moon at all. He incarnates love, and rears right up in meeting +and tells them so. Listen to him!" + +Dick filled the room and shook the air with wild, glad, stallion +nickering; and then, with mane-tossing and foot-pawing, chanted: + +"Hear me! I am Eros! I stamp upon the hills. I fill the wide valleys. +The mares hear me, and startle, in quiet pastures; for they know me. +The land is filled with fatness, and the sap is in the trees. It is the +spring. The spring is mine. I am monarch of my kingdom of the spring. +The mares remember my voice. They knew me aforetimes through their +mothers before them. Hear me! I am Eros. I stamp upon the hills, and +the wide valleys are my heralds, echoing the sound of my approach." + +It was the first time the sages of the madrono grove had heard Dick's +song, and they were loud in applause. Hancock took it for a fresh start +in the discussion, and was beginning to elaborate a biologic Bergsonian +definition of love, when he was stopped by Terrence, who had noticed +the pain that swept across Leo's face. + +"Go on, please, dear lady," Terrence begged. "And sing of love, only of +love; for it is my experience that I meditate best upon the stars to +the accompaniment of a woman's voice." + +A little later, Oh Joy, entering the room, waited till Paula finished a +song, then moved noiselessly to Graham and handed him a telegram. Dick +scowled at the interruption. + +"Very important--I think," the Chinese explained to him. + +"Who took it?" Dick demanded. + +"Me--I took it," was the answer. "Night clerk at Eldorado call on +telephone. He say important. I take it." + +"It is, fairly so," Graham spoke up, having finished reading the +message. "Can I get a train out to-night for San Francisco, Dick?" + +"Oh Joy, come back a moment," Dick called, looking at his watch. "What +train for San Francisco stops at Eldorado?" + +"Eleven-ten," came the instant information. "Plenty time. Not too much. +I call chauffeur?" + +Dick nodded. + +"You really must jump out to-night?" he asked Graham. + +"Really. It is quite important. Will I have time to pack?" + +Dick gave a confirmatory nod to Oh Joy, and said to Graham: + +"Just time to throw the needful into a grip." He turned to Oh Joy. "Is +Oh My up yet?" + +"Yessr." + +"Send him to Mr. Graham's room to help, and let me know as soon as the +machine is ready. No limousine. Tell Saunders to take the racer." + +"One fine big strapping man, that," Terrence commented, after Graham +had left the room. + +They had gathered about Dick, with the exception of Paula, who remained +at the piano, listening. + +"One of the few men I'd care to go along with, hell for leather, on a +forlorn hope or anything of that sort," Dick said. "He was on the +_Nethermere_ when she went ashore at Pango in the '97 hurricane. Pango +is just a strip of sand, twelve feet above high water mark, a lot of +cocoanuts, and uninhabited. Forty women among the passengers, English +officers' wives and such. Graham had a bad arm, big as a leg--snake +bite. + +"It was a thundering sea. Boats couldn't live. They smashed two and +lost both crews. Four sailors volunteered in succession to carry a +light line ashore. And each man, in turn, dead at the end of it, was +hauled back on board. While they were untying the last one, Graham, +with an arm like a leg, stripped for it and went to it. And he did it, +although the pounding he got on the sand broke his bad arm and staved +in three ribs. But he made the line fast before he quit. In order to +haul the hawser ashore, six more volunteered to go in on Evan's line to +the beach. Four of them arrived. And only one woman of the forty was +lost--she died of heart disease and fright. + +"I asked him about it once. He was as bad as an Englishman. All I could +get out of the beggar was that the recovery was uneventful. Thought +that the salt water, the exercise, and the breaking of the bone had +served as counter-irritants and done the arm good." + +Oh Joy and Graham entered the room from opposite ends. Dick saw that +Graham's first questing glance was for Paula. + +"All ready, sir," Oh Joy announced. + +Dick prepared to accompany his guest outside to the car; but Paula +evidenced her intention of remaining in the house. Graham started over +to her to murmur perfunctory regrets and good-by. + +And she, warm with what Dick had just told of him, pleasured at the +goodly sight of him, dwelling with her eyes on the light, high poise of +head, the careless, sun-sanded hair, and the lightness, almost +debonaireness, of his carriage despite his weight of body and breadth +of shoulders. As he drew near to her, she centered her gaze on the long +gray eyes whose hint of drooping lids hinted of boyish sullenness. She +waited for the expression of sullenness to vanish as the eyes lighted +with the smile she had come to know so well. + +What he said was ordinary enough, as were her regrets; but in his eyes, +as he held her hand a moment, was the significance which she had +unconsciously expected and to which she replied with her own eyes. The +same significance was in the pressure of the momentary handclasp. All +unpremeditated, she responded to that quick pressure. As he had said, +there was little need for speech between them. + +As their hands fell apart, she glanced swiftly at Dick; for she had +learned much, in their dozen years together, of his flashes of +observance, and had come to stand in awe of his almost uncanny powers +of guessing facts from nuances, and of linking nuances into conclusions +often startling in their thoroughness and correctness. But Dick, his +shoulder toward her, laughing over some quip of Hancock, was just +turning his laughter-crinkled eyes toward her as he started to +accompany Graham. + +No, was her thought; surely Dick had seen nothing of the secret little +that had been exchanged between them. It had been very little, very +quick--a light in the eyes, a muscular quiver of the fingers, and no +lingering. How could Dick have seen or sensed? Their eyes had certainly +been hidden from Dick, likewise their clasped hands, for Graham's back +had been toward him. + +Just the same, she wished she had not made that swift glance at Dick. +She was conscious of a feeling of guilt, and the thought of it hurt her +as she watched the two big men, of a size and blondness, go down the +room side by side. Of what had she been guilty? she asked herself. Why +should she have anything to hide? Yet she was honest enough to face the +fact and accept, without quibble, that she had something to hide. And +her cheeks burned at the thought that she was being drifted into +deception. + +"I won't be but a couple of days," Graham was saying as he shook hands +with Dick at the car. + +Dick saw the square, straight look of his eyes, and recognized the +firmness and heartiness of his gripping hand. Graham half began to say +something, then did not; and Dick knew he had changed his mind when he +said: + +"I think, when I get back, that I'll have to pack." + +"But the book," Dick protested, inwardly cursing himself for the leap +of joy which had been his at the other's words. + +"That's just why," Graham answered. "I've got to get it finished. It +doesn't seem I can work like you do. The ranch is too alluring. I can't +get down to the book. I sit over it, and sit over it, but the +confounded meadowlarks keep echoing in my ears, and I begin to see the +fields, and the redwood canyons, and Selim. And after I waste an hour, +I give up and ring for Selim. And if it isn't that, it's any one of a +thousand other enchantments." + +He put his foot on the running-board of the pulsing car and said, +"Well, so long, old man." + +"Come back and make a stab at it," urged Dick. "If necessary, we'll +frame up a respectable daily grind, and I'll lock you in every morning +until you've done it. And if you don't do your work all day, all day +you'll stay locked in. I'll make you work.--Got cigarettes?--matches?" + +"Right O." + +"Let her go, Saunders," Dick ordered the chauffeur; and the car seemed +to leap out into the darkness from the brilliantly lighted porte +cochere. + +Back in the house, Dick found Paula playing to the madrono sages, and +ensconced himself on the couch to wait and wonder if she would kiss him +good night when bedtime came. It was not, he recognized, as if they +made a regular schedule of kissing. It had never been like that. Often +and often he did not see her until midday, and then in the presence of +guests. And often and often, she slipped away to bed early, disturbing +no one with a good night kiss to her husband which might well hint to +them that their bedtime had come. + +No, Dick concluded, whether or not she kissed him on this particular +night it would be equally without significance. But still he wondered. + +She played on and sang on interminably, until at last he fell asleep. +When he awoke he was alone in the room. Paula and the sages had gone +out quietly. He looked at his watch. It marked one o'clock. She had +played unusually late, he knew; for he knew she had just gone. It was +the cessation of music and movement that had awakened him. + +And still he wondered. Often he napped there to her playing, and +always, when she had finished, she kissed him awake and sent him to +bed. But this night she had not. Perhaps, after all, she was coming +back. He lay and drowsed and waited. The next time he looked at his +watch, it was two o'clock. She had not come back. + +He turned off the lights, and as he crossed the house, pressed off the +hall lights as he went, while the many unimportant little nothings, +almost of themselves, ranged themselves into an ordered text of doubt +and conjecture that he could not refrain from reading. + +On his sleeping porch, glancing at his barometers and thermometers, her +laughing face in the round frame caught his eyes, and, standing before +it, even bending closer to it, he studied her long. + +"Oh, well," he muttered, as he drew up the bedcovers, propped the +pillows behind him and reached for a stack of proofsheets, "whatever it +is I'll have to play it." + +He looked sidewise at her picture. + +"But, oh, Little Woman, I wish you wouldn't," was the sighed good night. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + + + +As luck would have it, beyond chance guests for lunch or dinner, the +Big House was empty. In vain, on the first and second days, did Dick +lay out his work, or defer it, so as to be ready for any suggestion +from Paula to go for an afternoon swim or drive. + +He noted that she managed always to avoid the possibility of being +kissed. From her sleeping porch she called good night to him across the +wide patio. In the morning he prepared himself for her eleven o'clock +greeting. Mr. Agar and Mr. Pitts, with important matters concerning the +forthcoming ranch sale of stock still unsettled, Dick promptly cleared +out at the stroke of eleven. Up she was, he knew, for he had heard her +singing. As he waited, seated at his desk, for once he was idle. A tray +of letters before him continued to need his signature. He remembered +this morning pilgrimage of hers had been originated by her, and by her, +somewhat persistently, had been kept up. And an adorable thing it was, +he decided--that soft call of "Good morning, merry gentleman," and the +folding of her kimono-clad figure in his arms. + +He remembered, further, that he had often cut that little visit short, +conveying the impression to her, even while he clasped her, of how busy +he was. And he remembered, more than once, the certain little wistful +shadow on her face as she slipped away. + +Quarter past eleven, and she had not come. He took down the receiver to +telephone the dairy, and in the swift rush of women's conversation, ere +he hung up, he caught Paula's voice: + +"--Bother Mr. Wade. Bring all the little Wades and come, if only for a +couple of days--" + +Which was very strange of Paula. She had invariably welcomed the +intervals of no guests, when she and he were left alone with each other +for a day or for several days. And now she was trying to persuade Mrs. +Wade to come down from Sacramento. It would seem that Paula did not +wish to be alone with him, and was seeking to protect herself with +company. + +He smiled as he realized that that morning embrace, now that it was not +tendered him, had become suddenly desirable. The thought came to him of +taking her away with him on one of their travel-jaunts. That would +solve the problem, perhaps. And he would hold her very close to him and +draw her closer. Why not an Alaskan hunting trip? She had always wanted +to go. Or back to their old sailing grounds in the days of the _All +Away_--the South Seas. Steamers ran direct between San Francisco and +Tahiti. In twelve days they could be ashore in Papeete. He wondered if +Lavaina still ran her boarding house, and his quick vision caught a +picture of Paula and himself at breakfast on Lavaina's porch in the +shade of the mango trees. + +He brought his fist down on the desk. No, by God, he was no coward to +run away with his wife for fear of any man. And would it be fair to her +to take her away possibly from where her desire lay? True, he did not +know where her desire lay, nor how far it had gone between her and +Graham. Might it not be a spring madness with her that would vanish +with the spring? Unfortunately, he decided, in the dozen years of their +marriage she had never evidenced any predisposition toward spring +madness. She had never given his heart a moment's doubt. Herself +tremendously attractive to men, seeing much of them, receiving their +admiration and even court, she had remained always her equable and +serene self, Dick Forrest's wife-- + +"Good morning, merry gentleman." + +She was peeping in on him, quite naturally from the hall, her eyes and +lips smiling to him, blowing him a kiss from her finger tips. + +"And good morning, my little haughty moon," he called back, himself +equally his natural self. + +And now she would come in, he thought; and he would fold her in his +arms, and put her to the test of the kiss. + +He opened his arms in invitation. But she did not enter. Instead, she +startled, with one hand gathered her kimono at her breast, with the +other picked up the trailing skirt as if for flight, at the same time +looking apprehensively down the hall. Yet his keen ears had caught no +sound. She smiled back at him, blew him another kiss, and was gone. + +Ten minutes later he had no ears for Bonbright, who, telegrams in hand, +startled him as he sat motionless at his desk, as he had sat, without +movement, for ten minutes. + +And yet she was happy. Dick knew her too long in all the expressions of +her moods not to realize the significance of her singing over the +house, in the arcades, and out in the patio. He did not leave his +workroom till the stroke of lunch; nor did she, as she sometimes did, +come to gather him up on the way. At the lunch gong, from across the +patio, he heard her trilling die away into the house in the direction +of the dining room. + +A Colonel Harrison Stoddard--colonel from younger service in the +National Guard, himself a retired merchant prince whose hobby was +industrial relations and social unrest--held the table most of the meal +upon the extension of the Employers' Liability Act so as to include +agricultural laborers. But Paula found a space in which casually to +give the news to Dick that she was running away for the afternoon on a +jaunt up to Wickenberg to the Masons. + +"Of course I don't know when I'll be back--you know what the Masons +are. And I don't dare ask you to come, though I'd like you along." + +Dick shook his head. + +"And so," she continued, "if you're not using Saunders--" + +Dick nodded acquiescence. + +"I'm using Callahan this afternoon," he explained, on the instant +planning his own time now that Paula was out of the question. "I never +can make out, Paul, why you prefer Saunders. Callahan is the better +driver, and of course the safest." + +"Perhaps that's why," she said with a smile. "Safety first means +slowest most." + +"Just the same I'd back Callahan against Saunders on a speed-track," +Dick championed. + +"Where are you bound?" she asked. + +"Oh, to show Colonel Stoddard my one-man and no-horse farm--you know, +the automatically cultivated ten-acre stunt I've been frivoling with. A +lot of changes have been made that have been waiting a week for me to +see tried out. I've been too busy. And after that, I'm going to take +him over the colony--what do you think?--five additions the last week." + +"I thought the membership was full," Paula said. + +"It was, and still is," Dick beamed. "But these are babies. And the +least hopeful of the families had the rashness to have twins." + +"A lot of wiseacres are shaking their heads over that experiment of +yours, and I make free to say that I am merely holding my +judgment--you've got to show me by bookkeeping," Colonel Stoddard was +saying, immensely pleased at the invitation to be shown over in person. + +Dick scarcely heard him, such was the rush of other thoughts. Paula had +not mentioned whether Mrs. Wade and the little Wades were coming, much +less mentioned that she had invited them. Yet this Dick tried to +consider no lapse on her part, for often and often, like himself, she +had guests whose arrival was the first he knew of their coming. + +It was, however, evident that Mrs. Wade was not coming that day, else +Paula would not be running away thirty miles up the valley. That was +it, and there was no blinking it. She was running away, and from him. +She could not face being alone with him with the consequent perils of +intimacy--and perilous, in such circumstances, could have but the +significance he feared. And further, she was making the evening sure. +She would not be back for dinner, or till long after dinner, it was a +safe wager, unless she brought the whole Wickenberg crowd with her. She +would be back late enough to expect him to be in bed. Well, he would +not disappoint her, he decided grimly, as he replied to Colonel +Stoddard: + +"The experiment works out splendidly on paper, with decently wide +margins for human nature. And there I admit is the doubt and the +danger--the human nature. But the only way to test it is to test it, +which is what I am doing." + +"It won't be the first Dick has charged to profit and loss," Paula said. + +"But five thousand acres, all the working capital for two hundred and +fifty farmers, and a cash salary of a thousand dollars each a year!" +Colonel Stoddard protested. "A few such failures--if it fails--would +put a heavy drain on the Harvest." + +"That's what the Harvest needs," Dick answered lightly. + +Colonel Stoddard looked blank. + +"Precisely," Dick confirmed. "Drainage, you know. The mines are +flooded--the Mexican situation." + +It was during the morning of the second day--the day of Graham's +expected return--that Dick, who, by being on horseback at eleven, had +avoided a repetition of the hurt of the previous day's "Good morning, +merry gentleman" across the distance of his workroom, encountered Ah Ha +in a hall with an armful of fresh-cut lilacs. The house-boy's way led +toward the tower room, but Dick made sure. + +"Where are you taking them, Ah Ha?" he asked. + +"Mr. Graham's room--he come to-day." + +Now whose thought was that? Dick pondered. Ah Ha's?--Oh Joy's--or +Paula's? He remembered having heard Graham more than once express his +fancy for their lilacs. + +He deflected his course from the library and strolled out through the +flowers near the tower room. Through the open windows of it came +Paula's happy humming. Dick pressed his lower lip with tight quickness +between his teeth and strolled on. + +Some great, as well as many admirable, men and women had occupied that +room, and for them Paula had never supervised the flower arrangement, +Dick meditated. Oh Joy, himself a master of flowers, usually attended +to that, or had his house-staff ably drilled to do it. + +Among the telegrams Bonbright handed him, was one from Graham, which +Dick read twice, although it was simple and unmomentous, being merely a +postponement of his return. + +Contrary to custom, Dick did not wait for the second lunch-gong. At the +sound of the first he started, for he felt the desire for one of Oh +Joy's cocktails--the need of a prod of courage, after the lilacs, to +meet Paula. But she was ahead of him. He found her--who rarely drank, +and never alone--just placing an empty cocktail glass back on the tray. + +So she, too, had needed courage for the meal, was his deduction, as he +nodded to Oh Joy and held up one finger. + +"Caught you at it!" he reproved gaily. "Secret tippling. The gravest of +symptoms. Little I thought, the day I stood up with you, that the wife +I was marrying was doomed to fill an alcoholic's grave." + +Before she could retort, a young man strolled in whom she and Dick +greeted as Mr. Winters, and who also must have a cocktail. Dick tried +to believe that it was not relief he sensed in Paula's manner as she +greeted the newcomer. He had never seen her quite so cordial to him +before, although often enough she had met him. At any rate, there would +be three at lunch. + +Mr. Winters, an agricultural college graduate and special writer for +the _Pacific Rural Press,_ as well as a sort of protege of Dick, had +come for data for an article on California fish-ponds, and Dick +mentally arranged his afternoon's program for him. + +"Got a telegram from Evan," he told Paula. "Won't be back till the four +o'clock day after to-morrow." + +"And after all my trouble!" she exclaimed. "Now the lilacs will be +wilted and spoiled." + +Dick felt a warm glow of pleasure. There spoke his frank, +straightforward Paula. No matter what the game was, or its outcome, at +least she would play it without the petty deceptions. She had always +been that way--too transparent to make a success of deceit. + +Nevertheless, he played his own part by a glance of scarcely interested +interrogation. + +"Why, in Graham's room," she explained. "I had the boys bring a big +armful and I arranged them all myself. He's so fond of them, you know." + +Up to the end of lunch, she had made no mention of Mrs. Wade's coming, +and Dick knew definitely she was not coming when Paula queried casually: + +"Expecting anybody?" + +He shook his head, and asked, "Are you doing anything this afternoon?" + +"Haven't thought about anything," she answered. "And now I suppose I +can't plan upon you with Mr. Winters to be told all about fish." + +"But you can," Dick assured her. "I'm turning him over to Mr. Hanley, +who's got the trout counted down to the last egg hatched and who knows +all the grandfather bass by name. I'll tell you what--" He paused and +considered. Then his face lighted as with a sudden idea. "It's a +loafing afternoon. Let's take the rifles and go potting squirrels. I +noticed the other day they've become populous on that hill above the +Little Meadow." + +But he had not failed to observe the flutter of alarm that shadowed her +eyes so swiftly, and that so swiftly was gone as she clapped her hands +and was herself. + +"But don't take a rifle for me," she said. + +"If you'd rather not--" he began gently. + +"Oh, I want to go, but I don't feel up to shooting. I'll take Le +Gallienne's last book along--it just came in--and read to you in +betweenwhiles. Remember, the last time I did that when we went +squirreling it was his 'Quest of the Golden Girl' I read to you." + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + + + +Paula on the Fawn, and Dick on the Outlaw, rode out from the Big House +as nearly side by side as the Outlaw's wicked perversity permitted. The +conversation she permitted was fragmentary. With tiny ears laid back +and teeth exposed, she would attempt to evade Dick's restraint of rein +and spur and win to a bite of Paula's leg or the Fawn's sleek flank, +and with every defeat the pink flushed and faded in the whites of her +eyes. Her restless head-tossing and pitching attempts to rear (thwarted +by the martingale) never ceased, save when she pranced and sidled and +tried to whirl. + +"This is the last year of her," Dick announced. "She's indomitable. +I've worked two years on her without the slightest improvement. She +knows me, knows my ways, knows I am her master, knows when she has to +give in, but is never satisfied. She nourishes the perennial hope that +some time she'll catch me napping, and for fear she'll miss that time +she never lets any time go by." + +"And some time she may catch you," Paula said. + +"That's why I'm giving her up. It isn't exactly a strain on me, but +soon or late she's bound to get me if there's anything in the law of +probability. It may be a million-to-one shot, but heaven alone knows +where in the series of the million that fatal one is going to pop up." + +"You're a wonder, Red Cloud," Paula smiled. + +"Why?" + +"You think in statistics and percentages, averages and exceptions. I +wonder, when we first met, what particular formula you measured me up +by." + +"I'll be darned if I did," he laughed back. "There was where all signs +failed. I didn't have a statistic that applied to you. I merely +acknowledged to myself that here was the most wonderful female woman +ever born with two good legs, and I knew that I wanted her more than I +had ever wanted anything. I just had to have her--" + +"And got her," Paula completed for him. "But since, Red Cloud, since. +Surely you've accumulated enough statistics on me." + +"A few, quite a few," he admitted. "But I hope never to get the last +one--" + +He broke off at sound of the unmistakable nicker of Mountain Lad. The +stallion appeared, the cowboy on his back, and Dick gazed for a moment +at the perfect action of the beast's great swinging trot. + +"We've got to get out of this," he warned, as Mountain Lad, at sight of +them, broke into a gallop. + +Together they pricked their mares, whirled them about, and fled, while +from behind they heard the soothing "Whoas" of the rider, the thuds of +the heavy hoofs on the roadway, and a wild imperative neigh. The Outlaw +answered, and the Fawn was but a moment behind her. From the commotion +they knew Mountain Lad was getting tempestuous. + +Leaning to the curve, they swept into a cross-road and in fifty paces +pulled up, where they waited till the danger was past. + +"He's never really injured anybody yet," Paula said, as they started +back. + +"Except when he casually stepped on Cowley's toes. You remember he was +laid up in bed for a month," Dick reminded her, straightening out the +Outlaw from a sidle and with a flicker of glance catching the strange +look with which Paula was regarding him. + +There was question in it, he could see, and love in it, and fear--yes, +almost fear, or at least apprehension that bordered on dismay; but, +most of all, a seeking, a searching, a questioning. Not entirely +ungermane to her mood, was his thought, had been that remark of his +thinking in statistics. + +But he made that he had not seen, whipping out his pad, and, with an +interested glance at a culvert they were passing, making a note. + +"They missed it," he said. "It should have been repaired a month ago." + +"What has become of all those Nevada mustangs?" Paula inquired. + +This was a flyer Dick had taken, when a bad season for Nevada pasture +had caused mustangs to sell for a song with the alternative of starving +to death. He had shipped a trainload down and ranged them in his wilder +mountain pastures to the west. + +"It's time to break them," he answered. "And I'm thinking of a real +old-fashioned rodeo next week. What do you say? Have a barbecue and all +the rest, and invite the country side?" + +"And then you won't be there," Paula objected. + +"I'll take a day off. Is it a go?" + +They reined to one side of the road, as she agreed, to pass three farm +tractors, all with their trailage of ganged discs and harrows. + +"Moving them across to the Rolling Meadows," he explained. "They pay +over horses on the right ground." + +Rising from the home valley, passing through cultivated fields and +wooded knolls, they took a road busy with many wagons hauling +road-dressing from the rock-crusher they could hear growling and +crunching higher up. + +"Needs more exercise than I've been giving her," Dick remarked, jerking +the Outlaw's bared teeth away from dangerous proximity to the Fawn's +flank. + +"And it's disgraceful the way I've neglected Duddy and Fuddy," Paula +said. "I've kept their feed down like a miser, but they're a lively +handful just the same." + +Dick heard her idly, but within forty-eight hours he was to remember +with hurt what she had said. + +They continued on till the crunch of the rock-crusher died away, +penetrated a belt of woodland, crossed a tiny divide where the +afternoon sunshine was wine-colored by the manzanita and rose-colored +by madronos, and dipped down through a young planting of eucalyptus to +the Little Meadow. But before they reached it, they dismounted and tied +their horses. Dick took the .22 automatic rifle from his +saddle-holster, and with Paula advanced softly to a clump of redwoods +on the edge of the meadow. They disposed themselves in the shade and +gazed out across the meadow to the steep slope of hill that came down +to it a hundred and fifty yards away. + +"There they are--three--four of them," Paula whispered, as her keen +eyes picked the squirrels out amongst the young grain. + +These were the wary ones, the sports in the direction of infinite +caution who had shunned the poisoned grain and steel traps of Dick's +vermin catchers. They were the survivors, each of a score of their +fellows not so cautious, themselves fit to repopulate the hillside. + +Dick filled the chamber and magazine with tiny cartridges, examined the +silencer, and, lying at full length, leaning on his elbow, sighted +across the meadow. There was no sound of explosion when he fired, only +the click of the mechanism as the bullet was sped, the empty cartridge +ejected, a fresh cartridge flipped into the chamber, and the trigger +re-cocked. A big, dun-colored squirrel leaped in the air, fell over, +and disappeared in the grain. Dick waited, his eye along the rifle and +directed toward several holes around which the dry earth showed widely +as evidence of the grain which had been destroyed. When the wounded +squirrel appeared, scrambling across the exposed ground to safety, the +rifle clicked again and he rolled over on his side and lay still. + +At the first click, every squirrel but the stricken one, had made into +its burrow. Remained nothing to do but wait for their curiosity to +master caution. This was the interval Dick had looked forward to. As he +lay and scanned the hillside for curious heads to appear, he wondered +if Paula would have something to say to him. In trouble she was, but +would she keep this trouble to herself? It had never been her way. +Always, soon or late, she brought her troubles to him. But, then, he +reflected, she had never had a trouble of this nature before. It was +just the one thing that she would be least prone to discuss with him. +On the other hand, he reasoned, there was her everlasting frankness. He +had marveled at it, and joyed in it, all their years together. Was it +to fail her now? + +So he lay and pondered. She did not speak. She was not restless. He +could hear no movement. When he glanced to the side at her he saw her +lying on her back, eyes closed, arms outstretched, as if tired. + +A small head, the color of the dry soil of its home, peeped from a +hole. Dick waited long minutes, until, assured that no danger lurked, +the owner of the head stood full up on its hind legs to seek the cause +of the previous click that had startled it. Again the rifle clicked. + +"Did you get him?" Paula queried, without opening her eyes. + +"Yea, and a fat one," Dick answered. "I stopped a line of generations +right there." + +An hour passed. The afternoon sun beat down but was not uncomfortable +in the shade. A gentle breeze fanned the young grain into lazy wavelets +at times, and stirred the redwood boughs above them. Dick added a third +squirrel to the score. Paula's book lay beside her, but she had not +offered to read. + +"Anything the matter?" he finally nerved himself to ask. + +"No; headache--a beastly little neuralgic hurt across the eyes, that's +all." + +"Too much embroidery," he teased. + +"Not guilty," was her reply. + +All was natural enough in all seeming; but Dick, as he permitted an +unusually big squirrel to leave its burrow and crawl a score of feet +across the bare earth toward the grain, thought to himself: No, there +will be no talk between us this day. Nor will we nestle and kiss lying +here in the grass. + +His victim was now at the edge of the grain. He pulled trigger. The +creature fell over, lay still a moment, then ran in quick awkward +fashion toward its hole. Click, click, click, went the mechanism. Puffs +of dust leaped from the earth close about the fleeing squirrel, showing +the closeness of the misses. Dick fired as rapidly as he could twitch +his forefinger on the trigger, so that it was as if he played a stream +of lead from a hose. + +He had nearly finished refilling the magazine when Paula spoke. + +"My! What a fusillade.--Get him?" + +"Yea, grandfather of all squirrels, a mighty graineater and destroyer +of sustenance for young calves. But nine long smokeless cartridges on +one squirrel doesn't pay. I'll have to do better." + +The sun dropped lower. The breeze died out. Dick managed another +squirrel and sadly watched the hillside for more. He had arranged the +time and made his bid for confidence. The situation was as grave as he +had feared. Graver it might be, for all he knew, for his world was +crumbling about him. Old landmarks were shifting their places. He was +bewildered, shaken. Had it been any other woman than Paula! He had been +so sure. There had been their dozen years to vindicate his surety.... + +"Five o'clock, sun he get low," he announced, rising to his feet and +preparing to help her up. + +"It did me so much good--just resting," she said, as they started for +the horses. "My eyes feel much better. It's just as well I didn't try +to read to you." + +"And don't be piggy," Dick warned, as lightly as if nothing were amiss +with him. "Don't dare steal the tiniest peek into Le Gallienne. You've +got to share him with me later on. Hold up your hand.--Now, honest to +God, Paul." + +"Honest to God," she obeyed. + +"And may jackasses dance on your grandmother's grave--" + +"And may jackasses dance on my grandmother's grave," she solemnly +repeated. + +The third morning of Graham's absence, Dick saw to it that he was +occupied with his dairy manager when Paula made her eleven o'clock +pilgrimage, peeped in upon him, and called her "Good morning, merry +gentleman," from the door. The Masons, arriving in several machines +with their boisterous crowd of young people, saved Paula for lunch and +the afternoon; and, on her urging, Dick noted, she made the evening +safe by holding them over for bridge and dancing. + +But the fourth morning, the day of Graham's expected return, Dick was +alone in his workroom at eleven. Bending over his desk, signing +letters, he heard Paula tiptoe into the room. He did not look up, but +while he continued writing his signature he listened with all his soul +to the faint, silken swish of her kimono. He knew when she was bending +over him, and all but held his breath. But when she had softly kissed +his hair and called her "Good morning, merry gentleman," she evaded the +hungry sweep of his arm and laughed her way out. What affected him as +strongly as the disappointment was the happiness he had seen in her +face. She, who so poorly masked her moods, was bright-eyed and eager as +a child. And it was on this afternoon that Graham was expected, Dick +could not escape making the connection. + +He did not care to ascertain if she had replenished the lilacs in the +tower room, and, at lunch, which was shared with three farm college +students from Davis, he found himself forced to extemporize a busy +afternoon for himself when Paula tentatively suggested that she would +drive Graham up from Eldorado. + +"Drive?" Dick asked. + +"Duddy and Fuddy," she explained. "They're all on edge, and I just feel +like exercising them and myself. Of course, if you'll share the +exercise, we'll drive anywhere you say, and let him come up in the +machine." + +Dick strove not to think there was anxiety in her manner while she +waited for him to accept or decline her invitation. + +"Poor Duddy and Fuddy would be in the happy hunting grounds if they had +to cover my ground this afternoon," he laughed, at the same time +mapping his program. "Between now and dinner I've got to do a hundred +and twenty miles. I'm taking the racer, and it's going to be some dust +and bump and only an occasional low place. I haven't the heart to ask +you along. You go on and take it out of Duddy and Fuddy." + +Paula sighed, but so poor an actress was she that in the sigh, intended +for him as a customary reluctant yielding of his company, he could not +fail to detect the relief at his decision. + +"Whither away?" she asked brightly, and again he noticed the color in +her face, the happiness, and the brilliance of her eyes. + +"Oh, I'm shooting away down the river to the dredging work--Carlson +insists I must advise him--and then up in to Sacramento, running over +the Teal Slough land on the way, to see Wing Fo Wong." + +"And in heaven's name who is this Wing Fo Wong?" she laughingly +queried, "that you must trot and see him?" + +"A very important personage, my dear. Worth all of two millions--made +in potatoes and asparagus down in the Delta country. I'm leasing three +hundred acres of the Teal Slough land to him." Dick addressed himself +to the farm students. "That land lies just out of Sacramento on the +west side of the river. It's a good example of the land famine that is +surely coming. It was tule swamp when I bought it, and I was well +laughed at by the old-timers. I even had to buy out a dozen hunting +preserves. It averaged me eighteen dollars an acre, and not so many +years ago either. + +"You know the tule swamps. Worthless, save for ducks and low-water +pasturage. It cost over three hundred an acre to dredge and drain and +to pay my quota of the river reclamation work. And on what basis of +value do you think I am making a ten years' lease to old Wing Fo Wong? +TWO thousand an acre. I couldn't net more than that if I truck-farmed +it myself. Those Chinese are wizards with vegetables, and gluttons for +work. No eight hours for them. It's eighteen hours. The last coolie is +a partner with a microscopic share. That's the way Wing Fo Wong gets +around the eight hour law." + + * * * * * + +Twice warned and once arrested, was Dick through the long afternoon. He +drove alone, and though he drove with speed he drove with safety. +Accidents, for which he personally might be responsible, were things he +did not tolerate. And they never occurred. That same sureness and +definiteness of adjustment with which, without fumbling or +approximating, he picked up a pencil or reached for a door-knob, was +his in the more complicated adjustments, with which, as instance, he +drove a high-powered machine at high speed over busy country roads. + +But drive as he would, transact business as he would, at high pressure +with Carlson and Wing Fo Wong, continually, in the middle ground of his +consciousness, persisted the thought that Paula had gone out of her way +and done the most unusual in driving Graham the long eight miles from +Eldorado to the ranch. + +"Phew!" he started to mutter a thought aloud, then suspended utterance +and thought as he jumped the racer from forty-five to seventy miles an +hour, swept past to the left of a horse and buggy going in the same +direction, and slanted back to the right side of the road with margin +to spare but seemingly under the nose of a run-about coming from the +opposite direction. He reduced his speed to fifty and took up his +thought: + +"Phew! Imagine little Paul's thoughts if I dared that drive with some +charming girl!" + +He laughed at the fancy as he pictured it, for, most early in their +marriage, he had gauged Paula's capacity for quiet jealousy. Never had +she made a scene, or dropped a direct remark, or raised a question; but +from the first, quietly but unmistakably, she had conveyed the +impression of hurt that was hers if he at all unduly attended upon any +woman. + +He grinned with remembrance of Mrs. Dehameny, the pretty little +brunette widow--Paula's friend, not his--who had visited in the long +ago in the Big House. Paula had announced that she was not riding that +afternoon and, at lunch, had heard him and Mrs. Dehameny arrange to +ride into the redwood canyons beyond the grove of the philosophers. And +who but Paula, not long after their start, should overtake them and +make the party three! He had smiled to himself at the time, and felt +immensely tickled with Paula, for neither Mrs. Dehameny nor the ride +with her had meant anything to him. + +So it was, from the beginning, that he had restricted his attentions to +other women. Ever since he had been far more circumspect than Paula. He +had even encouraged her, given her a free hand always, had been proud +that his wife did attract fine fellows, had been glad that she was glad +to be amused or entertained by them. And with reason, he mused. He had +been so safe, so sure of her--more so, he acknowledged, than had she +any right to be of him. And the dozen years had vindicated his +attitude, so that he was as sure of her as he was of the diurnal +rotation of the earth. And now, was the form his fancy took, the +rotation of the earth was a shaky proposition and old Oom Paul's flat +world might be worth considering. + +He lifted the gauntlet from his left wrist to snatch a glimpse at his +watch, In five minutes Graham would be getting off the train at +Eldorado. Dick, himself homeward bound west from Sacramento, was eating +up the miles. In a quarter of an hour the train that he identified as +having brought Graham, went by. Not until he was well past Eldorado did +he overtake Duddy and Fuddy and the trap. Graham sat beside Paula, who +was driving. Dick slowed down as he passed, waved a hello to Graham, +and, as he jumped into speed again, called cheerily: + +"Sorry I've got to give you my dust. I'll beat you a game of billiards +before dinner, Evan, if you ever get in." + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + + + +"This can't go on. We must do something--at once." + +They were in the music room, Paula at the piano, her face turned up to +Graham who stood close to her, almost over her. + +"You must decide," Graham continued. + +Neither face showed happiness in the great thing that had come upon +them, now that they considered what they must do. + +"But I don't want you to go," Paula urged. "I don't know what I want. +You must bear with me. I am not considering myself. I am past +considering myself. But I must consider Dick. I must consider you. I... +I am so unused to such a situation," she concluded with a wan smile. + +"But it must be settled, dear love. Dick is not blind." + +"What has there been for him to see?" she demanded. "Nothing, except +that one kiss in the canyon, and he couldn't have seen that. Do you +think of anything else--I challenge you, sir." + +"Would that there were," he met the lighter touch in her mood, then +immediately relapsed. "I am mad over you, mad for you. And there I +stop. I do not know if you are equally mad. I do not know if you are +mad at all." + +As he spoke, he dropped his hand to hers on the keys, and she gently +withdrew it. + +"Don't you see?" he complained. "Yet you wanted me to come back?" + +"I wanted you to come back," she acknowledged, with her straight look +into his eyes. "I wanted you to come back," she repeated, more softly, +as if musing. + +"And I'm all at sea," he exclaimed impatiently. "You do love me?" + +"I do love you, Evan--you know that. But..." She paused and seemed to +be weighing the matter judicially. + +"But what?" he commanded. "Go on." + +"But I love Dick, too. Isn't it ridiculous?" + +He did not respond to her smile, and her eyes delightedly warmed to the +boyish sullenness that vexed his own eyes. A thought was hot on his +tongue, but he restrained the utterance of it while she wondered what +it was, disappointed not to have had it. + +"It will work out," she assured him gravely. "It will have to work out +somehow. Dick says all things work out. All is change. What is static +is dead, and we're not dead, any of us... are we?" + +"I don't blame you for loving Dick, for... for continuing to love +Dick," he answered impatiently. "And for that matter, I don't see what +you find in me compared with him. This is honest. He is a great man to +me, and Great Heart is his name--" she rewarded him with a smile and +nod of approval. "But if you continue to love Dick, how about me?" + +"But I love you, too." + +"It can't be," he cried, tearing himself from the piano to make a hasty +march across the room and stand contemplating the Keith on the opposite +wall as if he had never seen it before. + +She waited with a quiet smile, pleasuring in his unruly impetuousness. + +"You can't love two men at once," he flung at her. + +"Oh, but I do, Evan. That's what I am trying to work out. Only I don't +know which I love more. Dick I have known a long time. You... you are +a--" + +"Recent acquaintance," he broke in, returning to her with the same +angry stride. + +"Not that, no, not that, Evan. You have made a revelation to me of +myself. I love you as much as Dick. I love you more. I--I don't know." + +She broke down and buried her face in her hands, permitting his hand to +rest tenderly on her shoulder. + +"You see it is not easy for me," she went on. "There is so much +involved, so much that I cannot understand. You say you are all at sea. +Then think of me all at sea and worse confounded. You--oh, why talk +about it--you are a man with a man's experiences, with a man's nature. +It is all very simple to you. 'She loves me, she loves me not.' But I +am tangled, confused. I--and I wasn't born yesterday--have had no +experience in loving variously. I have never had affairs. I loved only +one man... and now you. You, and this love for you, have broken into a +perfect marriage, Evan--" + +"I know--" he said. + +"--I don't know," she went on. "I must have time, either to work it out +myself or to let it work itself out. If it only weren't for Dick..." +her voice trailed off pathetically. + +Unconsciously, Graham's hand went farther about her shoulder. + +"No, no--not yet," she said softly, as softly she removed it, her own +lingering caressingly on his a moment ere she released it. "When you +touch me, I can't think," she begged. "I--I can't think." + +"Then I must go," he threatened, without any sense of threatening. She +made a gesture of protest. "The present situation is impossible, +unbearable. I feel like a cur, and all the time I know I am not a cur. +I hate deception--oh, I can lie with the Pathan, to the Pathan--but I +can't deceive a man like Great Heart. I'd prefer going right up to him +and saying: 'Dick, I love your wife. She loves me. What are you going +to do about it?'" + +"Do so," Paula said, fired for the moment. + +Graham straightened up with resolution. + +"I will. And now." + +"No, no," she cried in sudden panic. "You must go away." Again her +voice trailed off, as she said, "But I can't let you go." + + * * * * * + +If Dick had had any reason to doubt his suspicion of the state of +Paula's heart, that reason vanished with the return of Graham. He need +look nowhere for confirmation save to Paula. She was in a flushed +awakening, burgeoning like the full spring all about them, a happier +tone in her happy laugh, a richer song in her throat, a warmness of +excitement and a continuous energy of action animating her. She was up +early and to bed late. She did not conserve herself, but seemed to live +on the champagne of her spirits, until Dick wondered if it was because +she did not dare allow herself time to think. + +He watched her lose flesh, and acknowledged to himself that the one +result was to make her look lovelier than ever, to take on an almost +spiritual delicacy under her natural vividness of color and charm. + +And the Big House ran on in its frictionless, happy, and remorseless +way. Dick sometimes speculated how long it would continue so to run on, +and recoiled from contemplation of a future in which it might not so +run on. As yet, he was confident, no one knew, no one guessed, but +himself. But how long could that continue? Not long, he was certain. +Paula was not sufficiently the actress. And were she a master at +concealment of trivial, sordid detail, yet the new note and flush of +her would be beyond the power of any woman to hide. + +He knew his Asiatic servants were marvels of discernment--and +discretion, he had to add. But there were the women. Women were cats. +To the best of them it would be great joy to catch the radiant, +unimpeachable Paula as clay as any daughter of Eve. And any chance +woman in the house, for a day, or an evening, might glimpse the +situation--Paula's situation, at least, for he could not make out +Graham's attitude yet. Trust a woman to catch a woman. + +But Paula, different in other ways, was different in this. He had never +seen her display cattishness, never known her to be on the lookout for +other women on the chance of catching them tripping--except in relation +to him. And he grinned again at the deliciousness of the affair with +Mrs. Dehameney which had been an affair only in Paula's apprehension. + +Among other things of wonderment, Dick speculated if Paula wondered if +he knew. + +And Paula did wonder, and for a time without avail. She could detect no +change in his customary ways and moods or treatment of her. He turned +off his prodigious amount of work as usual, played as usual, chanted +his songs, and was the happy good fellow. She tried to imagine an added +sweetness toward her, but vexed herself with the fear that it was +imagined. + +But it was not for long that she was in doubt. Sometimes in a crowd, at +table, in the living room in the evening, or at cards, she would gaze +at him through half-veiled lashes when he was unaware, until she was +certain she saw the knowledge in his eyes and face. But no hint of this +did she give to Graham. His knowing would not help matters. It might +even send him away, which she frankly admitted to herself was the last +thing she should want to happen. + +But when she came to a realization that she was almost certain Dick +knew or guessed, she hardened, deliberately dared to play with the +fire. If Dick knew--since he knew, she framed it to herself--why did he +not speak? He was ever a straight talker. She both desired and feared +that he might, until the fear faded and her earnest hope was that he +would. He was the one who acted, did things, no matter what they were. +She had always depended upon him as the doer. Graham had called the +situation a triangle. Well, Dick could solve it. He could solve +anything. Then why didn't he? + +In the meantime, she persisted in her ardent recklessness, trying not +to feel the conscience-pricks of her divided allegiance, refusing to +think too deeply, riding the top of the wave of her life--as she +assured herself, living, living, living. At times she scarcely knew +what she thought, save that she was very proud in having two such men +at heel. Pride had always been one of her dominant key-notes--pride of +accomplishment, achievement, mastery, as with her music, her +appearance, her swimming. It was all one--to dance, as she well knew, +beautifully; to dress with distinction and beauty; to swan-dive, all +grace and courage, as few women dared; or, all fragility, to avalanche +down the spill-way on the back of Mountain Lad and by the will and +steel of her swim the huge beast across the tank. + +She was proud, a woman of their own race and type, to watch these two +gray-eyed blond men together. She was excited, feverish, but not +nervous. Quite coldly, sometimes, she compared the two when they were +together, and puzzled to know for which of them she made herself more +beautiful, more enticing. Graham she held, and she had held Dick and +strove still to hold him. + +There was almost a touch of cruelty in the tingles of pride that were +hers at thought of these two royal men suffering for her and because of +her; for she did not hide from herself the conviction that if Dick +knew, or, rather, since he did know, he, too, must be suffering. She +assured herself that she was a woman of imagination and purpose in sex +matters, and that no part of her attraction toward Graham lay merely in +his freshness, newness, difference. And she denied to herself that +passion played more than the most minor part. Deep down she was +conscious of her own recklessness and madness, and of an end to it all +that could not but be dreadful to some one of them or all of them. But +she was content willfully to flutter far above such deeps and to refuse +to consider their existence. Alone, looking at herself in her mirror, +she would shake her head in mock reproof and cry out, "Oh, you +huntress! You huntress!" And when she did permit herself to think a +little gravely, it was to admit that Shaw and the sages of the madrono +grove might be right in their diatribes on the hunting proclivities of +women. + +She denied Dar Hyal's statement that woman was nature's failure to make +a man; but again and again came to her Wilde's, "Woman attacks by +sudden and strange surrenders." Had she so attacked Graham? she asked +herself. Sudden and strange, to her, were the surrenders she had +already made. Were there to be more? He wanted to go. With her, or +without her, he wanted to go. But she held him--how? Was there a tacit +promise of surrenders to come? And she would laugh away further +consideration, confine herself to the fleeting present, and make her +body more beautiful, and mood herself to be more fascinating, and glow +with happiness in that she was living, thrilling, as she had never +dreamed to live and thrill. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + + + +But it is not the way for a man and a woman, in propinquity, to +maintain a definite, unwavering distance asunder. Imperceptibly Paula +and Graham drew closer. From lingering eye-gazings and hand-touchings +the way led to permitted caresses, until there was a second clasping in +the arms and a second kiss long on the lips. Nor this time did Paula +flame in anger. Instead, she commanded: + +"You must not go." + +"I must not stay," Graham reiterated for the thousandth time. "Oh, I +have kissed behind doors, and been guilty of all the rest of the silly +rubbish," he complained. "But this is you, and this is Dick." + +"It will work out, I tell you, Evan." + +"Come with me then and of ourselves work it out. Come now." + +She recoiled. + +"Remember," Graham encouraged, "what Dick said at dinner the night Leo +fought the dragons--that if it were you, Paula, his wife, who ran away, +he would say 'Bless you, my children.'" + +"And that is just why it is so hard, Evan. He _is_ Great Heart. You +named him well. Listen--you watch him now. He is as gentle as he said +he would be that night--gentle toward me, I mean. And more. You watch +him--" + +"He knows?--he has spoken?" Graham broke in. + +"He has not spoken, but I am sure he knows, or guesses. You watch him. +He won't compete against you--" + +"Compete!" + +"Just that. He won't compete. Remember at the rodeo yesterday. He was +breaking mustangs when our party arrived, but he never mounted again. +Now he is a wonderful horse-breaker. You tried your hand. Frankly, +while you did fairly well, you couldn't touch him. But he wouldn't show +off against you. That alone would make me certain that he guesses. + +"Listen. Of late haven't you noticed that he never questions a +statement you make, as he used to question, as he questions every one +else. He continues to play billiards with you, because there you best +him. He fences and singlesticks with you--there you are even. But he +won't box or wrestle with you." + +"He _can_ out-box and out-wrestle me," Graham muttered ruefully. + +"You watch and you will see what I mean by not competing. He is +treating me like a spirited colt, giving me my head to make a mess of +things if I want to. Not for the world would he interfere. Oh, trust +me, I know him. It is his own code that he is living up to. He could +teach the philosophers what applied philosophy is. + +"No, no; listen," she rushed over Graham's attempt to interrupt. "I +want to tell you more. There is a secret staircase that goes up from +the library to Dick's work room. Only he and I use it, and his +secretaries. When you arrive at the head of it, you are right in his +room, surrounded by shelves of books. I have just come from there. I +was going in to see him when I heard voices. Of course it was ranch +business, I thought, and they would soon be gone. So I waited. It _was_ +ranch business, but it was so interesting, so, what Hancock would call, +illuminating, that I remained and eavesdropped. It was illuminating of +Dick, I mean. + +"It was the wife of one of the workmen Dick had on the carpet. Such +things do arise on a large place like this. I wouldn't know the woman +if I saw her, and I didn't recognize her name. She was whimpering out +her trouble when Dick stopped her. 'Never mind all that,' he said. +'What I want to know is, did you give Smith any encouragement?' + +"Smith isn't his name, but he is one of our foremen and has worked +eight years for Dick. + +"'Oh, no, sir,' I could hear her answer. 'He went out of his way from +the first to bother me. I've tried to keep out of his way, always. +Besides, my husband's a violent-tempered man, and I did so want him to +hold his job here. He's worked nearly a year for you now, and there +aren't any complaints, are there? Before that it was irregular work for +a long time, and we had real hard times. It wasn't his fault. He ain't +a drinking man. He always--' + +"'That's all right,' Dick stopped her. 'His work and habits have +nothing to do with the matter. Now you are sure you have never +encouraged Mr. Smith in any way?' And she was so sure that she talked +for ten minutes, detailing the foreman's persedition of her. She had a +pleasant voice--one of those sweet, timid, woman's voices, and +undoubtedly is quite attractive. It was all I could do to resist +peeping. I wanted to see what she looked like. + +"'Now this trouble, yesterday morning,' Dick said. 'Was it general? I +mean, outside of your husband, and Mr. Smith, was the scene such that +those who live around you knew of it?' + +"'Yes, sir. You see, he had no right to come into my kitchen. My +husband doesn't work under him anyway. And he had his arm around me and +was trying to kiss me when my husband came in. My husband has a temper, +but he ain't overly strong. Mr. Smith would make two of him. So he +pulled a knife, and Mr. Smith got him by the arms, and they fought all +over the kitchen. I knew there was murder going to be done and I run +out screaming for help. The folks in the other cottages'd heard the +racket already. They'd smashed the window and the cook stove, and the +place was filled with smoke and ashes when the neighbors dragged them +away from each other. I'd done nothing to deserve all that disgrace. +You know, sir, the way the women will talk--' + +"And Dick hushed her up there, and took all of five minutes more in +getting rid of her. Her great fear was that her husband would lose his +place. From what Dick told her, I waited. He had made no decision, and +I knew the foreman was next on the carpet. In he came. I'd have given +the world to see him. But I could only listen. + +"Dick jumped right into the thick of it. He described the scene and +uproar, and Smith acknowledged that it had been riotous for a while. +'She says she gave you no encouragement,' Dick said next. + +"'Then she lies,' said Smith. 'She has that way of looking with her +eyes that's an invitation. She looked at me that way from the first. +But it was by word-of-mouth invitation that I was in her kitchen +yesterday morning. We didn't expect the husband. But she began to +struggle when he hove in sight. When she says she gave me no +encouragement--' + +"'Never mind all that,' Dick stopped him. 'It's not essential.' 'But it +is, Mr. Forrest, if I am to clear myself,' Smith insisted. + +"'No; it is not essential to the thing you can't clear yourself of,' +Dick answered, and I could hear that cold, hard, judicial note come +into his voice. Smith could not understand. Dick told him. 'The thing +you have been guilty of, Mr. Smith, is the scene, the disturbance, the +scandal, the wagging of the women's tongues now going on forty to the +minute, the impairment of the discipline and order of the ranch, all of +which is boiled down to the one grave thing, the hurt to the ranch +efficiency.' + +"And still Smith couldn't see. He thought the charge was of violating +social morality by pursuing a married woman, and tried to mitigate the +offense by showing the woman encouraged him and by pleading: 'And after +all, Mr. Forrest, a man is only a man, and I admit she made a fool of +me and I made a fool of myself.' "'Mr. Smith,' Dick said. 'You've +worked for me eight years. You've been a foreman six years of that +time. I have no complaint against your work. You certainly do know how +to handle labor. About your personal morality I don't care a damn. You +can be a Mormon or a Turk for all it matters to me. Your private acts +are your private acts, and are no concern of mine as long as they do +not interfere with your work or my ranch. Any one of my drivers can +drink his head off Saturday night, and every Saturday night. That's his +business. But the minute he shows a hold-over on Monday morning that is +taken out on my horses, that excites them, or injures them, or +threatens to injure them, or that decreases in the slightest the work +they should perform on Monday, that moment it is my business and the +driver goes down the hill.' + +"'You, you mean, Mr. Forrest,' Smith stuttered, 'that, that I'm to go +down the hill?' 'That is just what I mean, Mr. Smith. You are to go +down the hill, not because you climbed over another man's fence--that's +your business and his; but because you were guilty of causing a +disturbance that is an impairment of ranch efficiency.' + +"Do you know, Evan," Paula broke in on her recital, "Dick can nose more +human tragedy out of columns of ranch statistics than can the average +fiction writer out of the whirl of a great city. Take the milk +reports--the individual reports of the milkers--so many pounds of milk, +morning and night, from cow so-and-so, so many pounds from cow +so-and-so. He doesn't have to know the man. But there is a decrease in +the weight of milk. 'Mr. Parkman,' he'll say to the head dairyman, 'is +Barchi Peratta married?' 'Yes, sir.' 'Is he having trouble with his +wife?' 'Yes, sir.' + +"Or it will be: 'Mr. Parkman, Simpkins has the best long-time record of +any of our milkers. Now he's slumped. What's up?' Mr. Parkman doesn't +know. 'Investigate,' says Dick. 'There's something on his chest. Talk +to him like an uncle and find out. We've got to get it off his chest.' +And Mr. Parkman finds out. Simpkins' boy; working his way through +Stanford University, has elected the joy-ride path and is in jail +waiting trial for forgery. Dick put his own lawyers on the case, +smoothed it over, got the boy out on probation, and Simpkins' milk +reports came back to par. And the best of it is, the boy made good, +Dick kept an eye on him, saw him through the college of engineering, +and he's now working for Dick on the dredging end, earning a hundred +and fifty a month, married, with a future before him, and his father +still milks." + +"You are right," Graham murmured sympathetically. "I well named him +when I named him Great Heart." + +"I call him my Rock of Ages," Paula said gratefully. "He is so solid. +He stands in any storm.--Oh, you don't really know him. He is so sure. +He stands right up. He's never taken a cropper in his life. God smiles +on him. God has always smiled on him. He's never been beaten down to +his knees... yet. I... I should not care to see that sight. It would be +heartbreaking. And, Evan--" Her hand went out to his in a pleading +gesture that merged into a half-caress. "--I am afraid for him now. +That is why I don't know what to do. It is not for myself that I back +and fill and hesitate. If he were ignoble, if he were narrow, if he +were weak or had one tiniest shred of meanness, if he had ever been +beaten to his knees before, why, my dear, my dear, I should have been +gone with you long ago." + +Her eyes filled with sudden moisture. She stilled him with a pressure +of her hand, and, to regain herself, she went back to her recital: + +"'Your little finger, Mr. Smith, I consider worth more to me and to the +world,' Dick, told him, 'than the whole body of this woman's husband. +Here's the report on him: willing, eager to please, not bright, not +strong, an indifferent workman at best. Yet you have to go down the +hill, and I am very, very sorry.' + +"Oh, yes, there was more. But I've given you the main of it. You see +Dick's code there. And he lives his code. He accords latitude to the +individual. Whatever the individual may do, so long as it does not hurt +the group of individuals in which he lives, is his own affair. He +believed Smith had a perfect right to love the woman, and to be loved +by her if it came to that. I have heard him always say that love could +not be held nor enforced. Truly, did I go with you, he would say, +'Bless you, my children.' Though it broke his heart he would say it. +Past love, he believes, gives no hold over the present. And every hour +of love, I have heard him say, pays for itself, on both sides, +quittance in full. He claims there can be no such thing as a love-debt, +laughs at the absurdity of love-claims." + +"And I agree with him," Graham said. "'You promised to love me always,' +says the jilted one, and then strives to collect as if it were a +promissory note for so many dollars. Dollars are dollars, but love +lives or dies. When it is dead how can it be collected? We are all +agreed, and the way is simple. We love. It is enough. Why delay another +minute?" + +His fingers strayed along her fingers on the keyboard as he bent to +her, first kissing her hair, then slowly turning her face up to his and +kissing her willing lips. + +"Dick does not love me like you," she said; "not madly, I mean. He has +had me so long, I think I have become a habit to him. And often and +often, before I knew you, I used to puzzle whether he cared more for +the ranch or more for me." + +"It is so simple," Graham urged. "All we have to do is to be +straightforward. Let us go." + +He drew her to her feet and made as if to start. + +But she drew away from him suddenly, sat down, and buried her flushed +face in her hands. + +"You do not understand, Evan. I love Dick. I shall always love him." + +"And me?" Graham demanded sharply. + +"Oh, without saying," she smiled. "You are the only man, besides Dick, +that has ever kissed me this... way, and that I have kissed this way. +But I can't make up my mind. The triangle, as you call it, must be +solved for me. I can't solve it myself. I compare the two of you, weigh +you, measure you. I remember Dick and all our past years. And I consult +my heart for you. And I don't know. I don't know. You are a great man, +my great lover. But Dick is a greater man than you. You--you are more +clay, more--I grope to describe you--more human, I fancy. And that is +why I love you more... or at least I think perhaps I do. + +"But wait," she resisted him, prisoning his eager hand in hers. "There +is more I want to say. I remember Dick and all our past years. But I +remember him to-day, as well, and to-morrow. I cannot bear the thought +that any man should pity my husband, that you should pity him, and pity +him you must when I confess that I love you more. That is why I am not +sure. That is why I so quickly take it back and do not know. + +"I'd die of shame if through act of mine any man pitied Dick. Truly, I +would. Of all things ghastly, I can think of none so ghastly as Dick +being pitied. He has never been pitied in his life. He has always been +top-dog--bright, light, strong, unassailable. And more, he doesn't +deserve pity. And it's my fault... and yours, Evan." + +She abruptly thrust Evan's hand away. + +"And every act, every permitted touch of you, does make him pitiable. +Don't you see how tangled it is for me? And then there is my own pride. +That you should see me disloyal to him in little things, such as +this--" (she caught his hand again and caressed it with soft +finger-tips) "--hurts me in my love for you, diminishes me, must +diminish me in your eyes. I shrink from the thought that my disloyalty +to him in this I do--" (she laid his hand against her cheek) "--gives +you reason to pity him and censure me." + +She soothed the impatience of the hand on her cheek, and, almost +absently, musingly scrutinizing it without consciously seeing it, +turned it over and slowly kissed the palm. The next moment she was +drawn to her feet and into his arms. + +"There, you see," was her reproach as she disengaged herself. + + * * * * * + +"Why do you tell me all this about Dick?" Graham demanded another time, +as they walked their horses side by side. "To keep me away? To protect +yourself from me?" + +Paula nodded, then quickly added, "No, not quite that. Because you know +I don't want to keep you away ... too far. I say it because Dick is so +much in my mind. For twelve years, you realize, he filled my mind. I +say it because ... because I think it, I suppose. Think! The situation! +You are trespassing on a perfect marriage." + +"I know it," he answered. "And I do not like the role of trespasser. It +is your insistence, instead of going away with me, that I should +trespass. And I can't help it. I think away from you, try to force my +thoughts elsewhere. I did half a chapter this morning, and I know it's +rotten and will have to be rewritten. For I can't succeed in thinking +away from you. What is South America and its ethnology compared to you? +And when I come near you my arms go about you before I know what I am +doing. And, by God, you want them there, you want them there, you know +it." + +Paula gathered her reins in signal for a gallop, but first, with a +roguish smile, she acknowledged. + +"I do want them there, dear trespasser." + +Paula yielded and fought at the same time. + +"I love my husband--never forget that," she would warn Graham, and +within the minute be in his arms. + + * * * * * + +"There are only the three of us for once, thank goodness," Paula cried, +seizing Dick and Graham by the hands and leading them toward Dick's +favorite lounging couch in the big room. "Come, let us sit upon the +ground and tell sad stories of the deaths of kings. Come, milords, and +lordly perishers, and we will talk of Armageddon when the last sun goes +down." + +She was in a merry mood, and with surprise Dick observed her light a +cigarette. He could count on his fingers the cigarettes she had smoked +in a dozen years, and then, only under a hostess's provocation to give +countenance to some smoking woman guest. Later, when he mixed a +highball for himself and Graham, she again surprised him by asking him +to mix her a "wee" one. + +"This is Scotch," he warned. + +"Oh, a very wee one," she insisted, "and then we'll be three good +fellows together, winding up the world. And when you've got it all +wound up and ready, I'll sing you the song of the Valkyries." + +She took more part in the talk than usual, and strove to draw her +husband out. Nor was Dick unaware of this, although he yielded and +permitted himself to let go full tilt on the theme of the blond +sun-perishers. + +She is trying to make him compete--was Graham's thought. But Paula +scarcely thought of that phase of it, her pleasure consisting in the +spectacle of two such splendid men who were hers. They talk of big game +hunting, she mused once to herself; but did ever one small woman +capture bigger game than this? + +She sat cross-legged on the couch, where, by a turn of the head, she +could view Graham lounging comfortably in the big chair, or Dick, on +his elbow, sprawled among the cushions. And ever, as they talked, her +eyes roved from one to the other; and, as they spoke of struggle and +battle, always in the cold iron terms of realists, her own thoughts +became so colored, until she could look coolly at Dick with no further +urge of the pity that had intermittently ached her heart for days. + +She was proud of him--a goodly, eye-filling figure of a man to any +woman; but she no longer felt sorry for him. They were right. It was a +game. The race was to the swift, the battle to the strong. They had run +such races, fought such battles. Then why not she? And as she continued +to look, that self-query became reiterant. + +They were not anchorites, these two men. Liberal-lived they must have +been in that past out of which, like mysteries, they had come to her. +They had had the days and nights that women were denied--women such as +she. As for Dick, beyond all doubt--even had she heard whispers--there +had been other women in that wild career of his over the world. Men +were men, and they were two such men. She felt a burn of jealousy +against those unknown women who must have been, and her heart hardened. +They had taken their fun where they found it--Kipling's line ran +through her head. + +Pity? Why should she pity, any more than she should be pitied? The +whole thing was too big, too natural, for pity. They were taking a hand +in a big game, and all could not be winners. Playing with the fancy, +she wandered on to a consideration of the outcome. Always she had +avoided such consideration, but the tiny highball had given her daring. +It came to her that she saw doom ahead, doom vague and formless but +terrible. + +She was brought back to herself by Dick's hand before her eyes and +apparently plucking from the empty air the something upon which she +steadfastly stared. + +"Seeing things?" he teased, as her eyes turned to meet his. + +His were laughing, but she glimpsed in them what, despite herself, made +her veil her own with her long lashes. He knew. Beyond all possibility +of error she knew now that he knew. That was what she had seen in his +eyes and what had made her veil her own. + +"'Cynthia, Cynthia, I've been a-thinking,'" she gayly hummed to him; +and, as he resumed his talk, she reached and took a sip from his +part-empty glass. + +Let come what would, she asserted to herself, she would play it out. It +was all a madness, but it was life, it was living. She had never so +lived before, and it was worth it, no matter what inevitable payment +must be made in the end. Love?--had she ever really loved Dick as she +now felt herself capable of loving? Had she mistaken the fondness of +affection for love all these years? Her eyes warmed as they rested on +Graham, and she admitted that he had swept her as Dick never had. + +Unused to alcohol in such strength, her heart was accelerated; and +Dick, with casual glances, noted and knew the cause of the added +brilliance, the flushed vividness of cheeks and lips. + +He talked less and less, and the discussion of the sun-perishers died +of mutual agreement as to its facts. Finally, glancing at his watch, he +straightened up, yawned, stretched his arms and announced: + +"Bed-time he stop. Head belong this fellow white man too much sleepy +along him.--Nightcap, Evan?" + +Graham nodded, for both felt the need of a stiffener. + +"Mrs. Toper--nightcap?" Dick queried of Paula. + +But she shook her head and busied herself at the piano putting away the +music, while the men had their drink. + +Graham closed down the piano for her, while Dick waited in the doorway, +so that when they left he led them by a dozen feet. As they came along, +Graham, under her instructions, turned off the lights in the halls. +Dick waited where the ways diverged and where Graham would have to say +good night on his way to the tower room. + +The one remaining light was turned off. + +"Oh, not that one, silly," Dick heard Paula cry out. "We keep it on all +night." + +Dick heard nothing, but the dark was fervent to him. He cursed himself +for his own past embraces in the dark, for so the wisdom was given him +to know the quick embrace that had occurred, ere, the next moment, the +light flashed on again. + +He found himself lacking the courage to look at their faces as they +came toward him. He did not want to see Paula's frank eyes veiled by +her lashes, and he fumbled to light a cigarette while he cudgeled his +wits for the wording of an ordinary good night. + +"How goes the book?--what chapter?" he called after Graham down his +hall, as Paula put her hand in his. + +Her hand in his, swinging his, hopping and skipping and all a-chatter +in simulation of a little girl with a grown-up, Paula went on with +Dick; while he sadly pondered what ruse she had in mind by which to +avoid the long-avoided, good night kiss. + +Evidently she had not found it when they reached the dividing of the +ways that led to her quarters and to his. Still swinging his hand, +still buoyantly chattering fun, she continued with him into his +workroom. Here he surrendered. He had neither heart nor energy to wait +for her to develop whatever she contemplated. + +He feigned sudden recollection, deflected her by the hand to his desk, +and picked up a letter. + +"I'd promised myself to get a reply off on the first machine in the +morning," he explained, as he pressed on the phonograph and began +dictating. + +For a paragraph she still held his hand. Then he felt the parting +pressure of her fingers and her whispered good night. + +"Good night, little woman," he answered mechanically, and continued +dictating as if oblivious to her going. + +Nor did he cease until he knew she was well out of hearing. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII + + + +A dozen times that morning, dictating to Blake or indicating answers, +Dick had been on the verge of saying to let the rest of the +correspondence go. + +"Call up Hennessy and Mendenhall," he told Blake, when, at ten, the +latter gathered up his notes and rose to go. "You ought to catch them +at the stallion barn. Tell them not to come this morning but to-morrow +morning." + +Bonbright entered, prepared to shorthand Dick's conversations with his +managers for the next hour. + +"And--oh, Mr. Blake," Dick called. "Ask Hennessy about Alden +Bessie.--The old mare was pretty bad last night," he explained to +Bonbright. + +"Mr. Hanley must see you right away, Mr. Forrest," Bonbright said, and +added, at sight of the irritated drawing up of his employer's brows, +"It's the piping from Buckeye Dam. Something's wrong with the plans--a +serious mistake, he says." + +Dick surrendered, and for an hour discussed ranch business with his +foremen and managers. + +Once, in the middle of a hot discussion over sheep-dips with Wardman, +he left his desk and paced over to the window. The sound of voices and +horses, and of Paula's laugh, had attracted him. + +"Take that Montana report--I'll send you a copy to-day," he continued, +as he gazed out. "They found the formula didn't get down to it. It was +more a sedative than a germicide. There wasn't enough kick in it..." + +Four horses, bunched, crossed his field of vision. Paula, teasing the +pair of them, was between Martinez and Froelig, old friends of Dick, a +painter and sculptor respectively, who had arrived on an early train. +Graham, on Selim, made the fourth, and was slightly edged toward the +rear. So the party went by, but Dick reflected that quickly enough it +would resolve itself into two and two. + +Shortly after eleven, restless and moody, he wandered out with a +cigarette into the big patio, where he smiled grim amusement at the +various tell-tale signs of Paula's neglect of her goldfish. The sight +of them suggested her secret patio in whose fountain pools she kept her +selected and more gorgeous blooms of fish. Thither he went, through +doors without knobs, by ways known only to Paula and the servants. + +This had been Dick's one great gift to Paula. It was love-lavish as +only a king of fortune could make it. He had given her a free hand with +it, and insisted on her wildest extravagance; and it had been his +delight to tease his quondam guardians with the stubs of the checkbook +she had used. It bore no relation to the scheme and architecture of the +Big House, and, for that matter, so deeply hidden was it that it played +no part in jar of line or color. A show-place of show-places, it was +not often shown. Outside Paula's sisters and intimates, on rare +occasions some artist was permitted to enter and catch his breath. +Graham had heard of its existence, but not even him had she invited to +see. + +It was round, and small enough to escape giving any cold hint of +spaciousness. The Big House was of sturdy concrete, but here was marble +in exquisite delicacy. The arches of the encircling arcade were of +fretted white marble that had taken on just enough tender green to +prevent any glare of reflected light. Palest of pink roses bloomed up +the pillars and over the low flat roof they upheld, where Puck-like, +humorous, and happy faces took the place of grinning gargoyles. Dick +strolled the rosy marble pavement of the arcade and let the beauty of +the place slowly steal in upon him and gentle his mood. + +The heart and key of the fairy patio was the fountain, consisting of +three related shallow basins at different levels, of white marble and +delicate as shell. Over these basins rollicked and frolicked life-sized +babies wrought from pink marble by no mean hand. Some peered over the +edges into lower basins, one reached arms covetously toward the +goldfish; one, on his back, laughed at the sky, another stood with +dimpled legs apart stretching himself, others waded, others were on the +ground amongst the roses white and blush, but all were of the fountain +and touched it at some point. So good was the color of the marble, so +true had been the sculptor, that the illusion was of life. No cherubs +these, but live warm human babies. + +Dick regarded the rosy fellowship pleasantly and long, finishing his +cigarette and retaining it dead in his hand. That was what she had +needed, he mused--babies, children. It had been her passion. Had she +realized it... He sighed, and, struck by a fresh thought, looked to her +favorite seat with certitude that he would not see the customary sewing +lying on it in a pretty heap. She did not sew these days. + +He did not enter the tiny gallery behind the arcade, which contained +her chosen paintings and etchings, and copies in marble and bronze of +her favorites of the European galleries. Instead he went up the +stairway, past the glorious Winged Victory on the landing where the +staircase divided, and on and up into her quarters that occupied the +entire upper wing. But first, pausing by the Victory, he turned and +gazed down into the fairy patio. The thing was a cut jewel in its +perfectness and color, and he acknowledged, although he had made it +possible for her, that it was entirely her own creation--her one +masterpiece. It had long been her dream, and he had realized it for +her. And yet now, he meditated, it meant nothing to her. She was not +mercenary, that he knew; and if he could not hold her, mere baubles +such as that would weigh nothing in the balance against her heart. + +He wandered idly through her rooms, scarcely noting at what he gazed, +but gazing with fondness at it all. Like everything else of hers, it +was distinctive, different, eloquent of her. But when he glanced into +the bathroom with its sunken Roman bath, for the life of him he was +unable to avoid seeing a tiny drip and making a mental note for the +ranch plumber. + +As a matter of course, he looked to her easel with the expectation of +finding no new work, but was disappointed; for a portrait of himself +confronted him. He knew her trick of copying the pose and lines from a +photograph and filling in from memory. The particular photograph she +was using had been a fortunate snapshop of him on horseback. The +Outlaw, for once and for a moment, had been at peace, and Dick, hat in +hand, hair just nicely rumpled, face in repose, unaware of the +impending snap, had at the instant looked squarely into the camera. No +portrait photographer could have caught a better likeness. The head and +shoulders Paula had had enlarged, and it was from this that she was +working. But the portrait had already gone beyond the photograph, for +Dick could see her own touches. + +With a start he looked more closely. Was that expression of the eyes, +of the whole face, his? He glanced at the photograph. It was not there. +He walked over to one of the mirrors, relaxed his face, and led his +thoughts to Paula and Graham. Slowly the expression came into his eyes +and face. Not content, he returned to the easel and verified it. Paula +knew. Paula knew that he knew. She had learned it from him, stolen it +from him some time when it was unwittingly on his face, and carried it +in her memory to the canvas. + +Paula's Chinese maid, Oh Dear, entered from the wardrobe room, and Dick +watched her unobserved as she came down the room toward him. Her eyes +were down, and she seemed deep in thought. Dick remarked the sadness of +her face, and that the little, solicitous contraction of the brows that +had led to her naming was gone. She was not solicitous, that was +patent. But cast down, she was, in heavy depression. + +It would seem that all our faces are beginning to say things, he +commented to himself. + +"Good morning, Oh Dear," he startled her. + +And as she returned the greeting, he saw compassion in her eyes as they +dwelt on him. She knew. The first outside themselves. Trust her, a +woman, so much in Paula's company when Paula was alone, to divine +Paula's secret. + +Oh Dear's lips trembled, and she wrung her trembling hands, nerving +herself, as he could see, to speech. + +"Mister Forrest," she began haltingly, "maybe you think me fool, but I +like say something. You very kind man. You very kind my old mother. You +very kind me long long time..." + +She hesitated, moistening her frightened lips with her tongue, then +braved her eyes to his and proceeded. + +"Mrs. Forrest, she, I think..." + +But so forbidding did Dick's face become that she broke off in +confusion and blushed, as Dick surmised, with shame at the thoughts she +had been about to utter. + +"Very nice picture Mrs. Forrest make," he put her at her ease. + +The Chinese girl sighed, and the same compassion returned into her eyes +as she looked long at Dick's portrait. + +She sighed again, but the coldness in her voice was not lost on Dick as +she answered: "Yes, very nice picture Mrs. Forrest make." + +She looked at him with sudden sharp scrutiny, studying his face, then +turned to the canvas and pointed at the eyes. + +"No good," she condemned. + +Her voice was harsh, touched with anger. + +"No good," she flung over her shoulder, more loudly, still more +harshly, as she continued down the room and out of sight on Paula's +sleeping porch. + +Dick stiffened his shoulders, unconsciously bracing himself to face +what was now soon to happen. Well, it was the beginning of the end. Oh +Dear knew. Soon more would know, all would know. And in a way he was +glad of it, glad that the torment of suspense would endure but little +longer. + +But when he started to leave he whistled a merry jingle to advertise to +Oh Dear that the world wagged very well with him so far as he knew +anything about it. + + * * * * * + +The same afternoon, while Dick was out and away with Froelig and +Martinez and Graham, Paula stole a pilgrimage to Dick's quarters. Out +on his sleeping porch she looked over his rows of press buttons, his +switchboard that from his bed connected him with every part of the +ranch and most of the rest of California, his phonograph on the hinged +and swinging bracket, the orderly array of books and magazines and +agricultural bulletins waiting to be read, the ash tray, cigarettes, +scribble pads, and thermos bottle. + +Her photograph, the only picture on the porch, held her attention. It +hung under his barometers and thermometers, which, she knew, was where +he looked oftenest. A fancy came to her, and she turned the laughing +face to the wall and glanced from the blankness of the back of the +frame to the bed and back again. With a quick panic movement, she +turned the laughing face out. It belonged, was her thought; it did +belong. + +The big automatic pistol in the holster on the wall, handy to one's +hand from the bed, caught her eye. She reached to it and lifted gently +at the butt. It was as she had expected--loose--Dick's way. Trust him, +no matter how long unused, never to let a pistol freeze in its holster. + +Back in the work room she wandered solemnly about, glancing now at the +prodigious filing system, at the chart and blue-print cabinets, at the +revolving shelves of reference books, and at the long rows of stoutly +bound herd registers. At last she came to his books--a goodly row of +pamphlets, bound magazine articles, and an even dozen ambitious tomes. +She read the titles painstakingly: "Corn in California," "Silage +Practice," "Farm Organization," "Farm Book-keeping," "The Shire in +America," "Humus Destruction," "Soilage," "Alfalfa in California," +"Cover Crops for California," "The Shorthorn in America"--at this last +she smiled affectionately with memory of the great controversy he had +waged for the beef cow and the milch cow as against the dual purpose +cow. + +She caressed, the backs of the books with her palm, pressed her cheek +against them and leaned with closed eyes. Oh, Dick, Dick--a thought +began that faded to a vagueness of sorrow and died because she did not +dare to think it. + +The desk was so typically Dick. There was no litter. Clean it was of +all work save the wire tray with typed letters waiting his signature +and an unusual pile of the flat yellow sheets on which his secretaries +typed the telegrams relayed by telephone from Eldorado. Carelessly she +ran her eyes over the opening lines of the uppermost sheet and chanced +upon a reference that puzzled and interested her. She read closely, +with in-drawn brows, then went deeper into the heap till she found +confirmation. Jeremy Braxton was dead--big, genial, kindly Jeremy +Braxton. A Mexican mob of pulque-crazed peons had killed him in the +mountains through which he had been trying to escape from the Harvest +into Arizona. The date of the telegram was two days old. Dick had known +it for two days and never worried her with it. And it meant more. It +meant money. It meant that the affairs of the Harvest Group were going +from bad to worse. And it was Dick's way. + +And Jeremy was dead. The room seemed suddenly to have grown cold. She +shivered. It was the way of life--death always at the end of the road. +And her own nameless dread came back upon her. Doom lay ahead. Doom for +whom? She did not attempt to guess. Sufficient that it was doom. Her +mind was heavy with it, and the quiet room was heavy with it as she +passed slowly out. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX + + + +"'Tis a birdlike sensuousness that is all the Little Lady's own," +Terrence was saying, as he helped himself to a cocktail from the tray +Ah Ha was passing around. + +It was the hour before dinner, and Graham, Leo and Terrence McFane had +chanced together in the stag-room. + +"No, Leo," the Irishman warned the young poet. "Let the one suffice +you. Your cheeks are warm with it. A second one and you'll conflagrate. +'Tis no right you have to be mixing beauty and strong drink in that +lad's head of yours. Leave the drink to your elders. There is such a +thing as consanguinity for drink. You have it not. As for me--" + +He emptied the glass and paused to turn the cocktail reminiscently on +his tongue. + +"'Tis women's drink," he shook his head in condemnation. "It likes me +not. It bites me not. And devil a bit of a taste is there to it.--Ah +Ha, my boy," he called to the Chinese, "mix me a highball in a long, +long glass--a stiff one." + +He held up four fingers horizontally to indicate the measure of liquor +he would have in the glass, and, to Ah Ha's query as to what kind of +whiskey, answered, "Scotch or Irish, bourbon or rye--whichever comes +nearest to hand." + +Graham shook his head to the Chinese, and laughed to the Irishman. +"You'll never drink me down, Terrence. I've not forgotten what you did +to O'Hay." + +"'Twas an accident I would have you think," was the reply. "They say +when a man's not feeling any too fit a bit of drink will hit him like a +club." + +"And you?" Graham questioned. + +"Have never been hit by a club. I am a man of singularly few +experiences." + +"But, Terrence, you were saying... about Mrs. Forrest?" Leo begged. "It +sounded as if it were going to be nice." + +"As if it could be otherwise," Terrence censured. "But as I was saying, +'tis a bird-like sensuousness--oh, not the little, hoppy, wagtail kind, +nor yet the sleek and solemn dove, but a merry sort of bird, like the +wild canaries you see bathing in the fountains, always twittering and +singing, flinging the water in the sun, and glowing the golden hearts +of them on their happy breasts. 'Tis like that the Little Lady is. I +have observed her much. + +"Everything on the earth and under the earth and in the sky contributes +to the passion of her days--the untoward purple of the ground myrtle +when it has no right to aught more than pale lavender, a single red +rose tossing in the bathing wind, one perfect Duchesse rose bursting +from its bush into the sunshine, as she said to me, 'pink as the dawn, +Terrence, and shaped like a kiss.' + +"'Tis all one with her--the Princess's silver neigh, the sheep bells of +a frosty morn, the pretty Angora goats making silky pictures on the +hillside all day long, the drifts of purple lupins along the fences, +the long hot grass on slope and roadside, the summer-burnt hills tawny +as crouching lions--and even have I seen the sheer sensuous pleasure of +the Little Lady with bathing her arms and neck in the blessed sun." + +"She is the soul of beauty," Leo murmured. "One understands how men can +die for women such as she." + +"And how men can live for them, and love them, the lovely things," +Terrence added. "Listen, Mr. Graham, and I'll tell you a secret. We +philosophers of the madrono grove, we wrecks and wastages of life here +in the quiet backwater and easement of Dick's munificence, are a +brotherhood of lovers. And the lady of our hearts is all the one--the +Little Lady. We, who merely talk and dream our days away, and who would +lift never a hand for God, or country, or the devil, are pledged +knights of the Little Lady." + +"We would die for her," Leo affirmed, slowly nodding his head. + +"Nay, lad, we would live for her and fight for her, dying is that easy." + +Graham missed nothing of it. The boy did not understand, but in the +blue eyes of the Celt, peering from under the mop of iron-gray hair, +there was no mistaking the knowledge of the situation. + +Voices of men were heard coming down the stairs, and, as Martinez and +Dar Hyal entered, Terrence was saying: + +"'Tis fine weather they say they're having down at Catalina now, and I +hear the tunny fish are biting splendid." + +Ah Ha served cocktails around, and was kept busy, for Hancock and +Froelig followed along. Terrence impartially drank stiff highballs of +whatever liquor the immobile-faced Chinese elected to serve him, and +discoursed fatherly to Leo on the iniquities and abominations of the +flowing bowl. + +Oh My entered, a folded note in his hand, and looked about in doubt as +to whom to give it. + +"Hither, wing-heeled Celestial," Terrence waved him up. + +"'Tis a petition, couched in very proper terms," Terrence explained, +after a glance at its contents. "And Ernestine and Lute have arrived, +for 'tis they that petition. Listen." And he read: "'Oh, noble and +glorious stags, two poor and lowly meek-eyed does, wandering lonely in +the forest, do humbly entreat admission for the brief time before +dinner to the stamping ground of the herd.' + +"The metaphor is mixed," said Terrence. "Yet have they acted well. 'Tis +the rule--Dick's rule--and a good rule it is: no petticoats in the +stag-room save by the stags' unanimous consent.--Is the herd ready for +the question? All those in favor will say 'Aye.'--Contrary minded?--The +ayes have it. + +"Oh My, fleet with thy heels and bring in the ladies." + +"'With sandals beaten from the crowns of kings,'" Leo added, murmuring +the words reverently, loving them with his lips as his lips formed them +and uttered them. + +"'Shall he tread down the altars of their night,'" Terrence completed +the passage. "The man who wrote that is a great man. He is Leo's +friend, and Dick's friend, and proud am I that he is my friend." + +"And that other line," Leo said. "From the same sonnet," he explained +to Graham. "Listen to the sound of it: 'To hear what song the star of +morning sings'--oh, listen," the boy went on, his voice hushed low with +beauty-love for the words: "'With perished beauty in his hands as clay, +Shall he restore futurity its dream--'" + +He broke off as Paula's sisters entered, and rose shyly to greet them. + + * * * * * + +Dinner that night was as any dinner at which the madrono sages were +present. Dick was as robustly controversial as usual, locking horns +with Aaron Hancock on Bergson, attacking the latter's metaphysics in +sharp realistic fashion. + +"Your Bergson is a charlatan philosopher, Aaron," Dick concluded. "He +has the same old medicine-man's bag of metaphysical tricks, all decked +out and frilled with the latest ascertained facts of science." + +"'Tis true," Terrence agreed. "Bergson is a charlatan thinker. 'Tis why +he is so popular--" + +"I deny--" Hancock broke in. + +"Wait a wee, Aaron. 'Tis a thought I have glimmered. Let me catch it +before it flutters away into the azure. Dick's caught Bergson with the +goods on him, filched straight from the treasure-house of science. His +very cocksureness is filched from Darwin's morality of strength based +on the survival of the fittest. And what did Bergson do with it? +Touched it up with a bit of James' pragmatism, rosied it over with the +eternal hope in man's breast that he will live again, and made it all +a-shine with Nietzsche's 'nothing succeeds like excess--'" + +"Wilde's, you mean," corrected Ernestine. + +"Heaven knows I should have filched it for myself had you not been +present," Terrence sighed, with a bow to her. "Some day the +antiquarians will decide the authorship. Personally I would say it +smacked of Methuselah--But as I was saying, before I was delightfully +interrupted..." + +"Who more cocksure than Dick?" Aaron was challenging a little later; +while Paula glanced significantly to Graham. + +"I was looking at the herd of yearling stallions but yesterday," +Terrence replied, "and with the picture of the splendid beasties still +in my eyes I'll ask: And who more delivers the goods?" + +"But Hancock's objection is solid," Martinez ventured. "It would be a +mean and profitless world without mystery. Dick sees no mystery." + +"There you wrong him," Terrence defended. "I know him well. Dick +recognizes mystery, but not of the nursery-child variety. No +cock-and-bull stories for him, such as you romanticists luxuriate in." + +"Terrence gets me," Dick nodded. "The world will always be mystery. To +me man's consciousness is no greater mystery than the reaction of the +gases that make a simple drop of water. Grant that mystery, and all the +more complicated phenomena cease to be mysteries. That simple chemical +reaction is like one of the axioms on which the edifice of geometry is +reared. Matter and force are the everlasting mysteries, manifesting +themselves in the twin mysteries of space and time. The manifestations +are not mysteries--only the stuff of the manifestations, matter and +force; and the theater of the manifestations, space and time." + +Dick ceased and idly watched the expressionless Ah Ha and Ah Me who +chanced at the moment to be serving opposite him. Their faces did not +talk, was his thought; although ten to one was a fair bet that they +were informed with the same knowledge that had perturbed Oh Dear. + +"And there you are," Terrence was triumphing. "'Tis the perfect joy of +him--never up in the air with dizzy heels. Flat on the good ground he +stands, four square to fact and law, set against all airy fancies and +bubbly speculations...." + + * * * * * + +And as at table, so afterward that evening no one could have guessed +from Dick that all was not well with him. He seemed bent on celebrating +Lute's and Ernestine's return, refused to tolerate the heavy talk of +the philosophers, and bubbled over with pranks and tricks. Paula +yielded to the contagion, and aided and abetted him in his practical +jokes which none escaped. + +Choicest among these was the kiss of welcome. No man escaped it. To +Graham was accorded the honor of receiving it first so that he might +witness the discomfiture of the others, who, one by one, were ushered +in by Dick from the patio. + +Hancock, Dick's arm guiding him, came down the room to confront Paula +and her sisters standing in a row on three chairs in the middle of the +floor. He scanned them suspiciously, and insisted upon walking around +behind them. But there seemed nothing unusual about them save that each +wore a man's felt hat. + +"Looks good to me," Hancock announced, as he stood on the floor before +them and looked up at them. + +"And it is good," Dick assured him. "As representing the ranch in its +fairest aspects, they are to administer the kiss of welcome. Make your +choice, Aaron." + +Aaron, with a quick whirl to catch some possible lurking disaster at +his back, demanded, "They are all three to kiss me?" + +"No, make your choice which is to give you the kiss." + +"The two I do not choose will not feel that I have discriminated +against them?" Aaron insisted. + +"Whiskers no objection?" was his next query. + +"Not in the way at all," Lute told him. "I have always wondered what it +would be like to kiss black whiskers." + +"Here's where all the philosophers get kissed tonight, so hurry up," +Ernestine said. "The others are waiting. I, too, have yet to be kissed +by an alfalfa field." + +"Whom do you choose?" Dick urged. + +"As if, after that, there were any choice about it," Hancock returned +jauntily. "I kiss my lady--the Little Lady." + +As he put up his lips, Paula bent her head forward, and, nicely +directed, from the indented crown of her hat canted a glassful of water +into his face. + +When Leo's turn came, he bravely made his choice of Paula and nearly +spoiled the show by reverently bending and kissing the hem of her gown. + +"It will never do," Ernestine told him. "It must be a real kiss. Put up +your lips to be kissed." + +"Let the last be first and kiss me, Leo," Lute begged, to save him from +his embarrassment. + +He looked his gratitude, put up his lips, but without enough tilt of +his head, so that he received the water from Lute's hat down the back +of his neck. + +"All three shall kiss me and thus shall paradise be thrice multiplied," +was Terrence's way out of the difficulty; and simultaneously he +received three crowns of water for his gallantry. + +Dick's boisterousness waxed apace. His was the most care-free seeming +in the world as he measured Froelig and Martinez against the door to +settle the dispute that had arisen as to whether Froelig or Martinez +was the taller. + +"Knees straight and together, heads back," Dick commanded. + +And as their heads touched the wood, from the other side came a rousing +thump that jarred them. The door swung open, revealing Ernestine with a +padded gong-stick in either hand. + +Dick, a high-heeled satin slipper in his hand, was under a sheet with +Terrence, teaching him "Brother Bob I'm bobbed" to the uproarious joy +of the others, when the Masons and Watsons and all their Wickenberg +following entered upon the scene. + +Whereupon Dick insisted that the young men of their party receive the +kiss of welcome. Nor did he miss, in the hubbub of a dozen persons +meeting as many more, Lottie Mason's: "Oh, good evening, Mr. Graham. I +thought you had gone." + +And Dick, in the midst of the confusion of settling such an influx of +guests, still maintaining his exuberant jolly pose, waited for that +sharp scrutiny that women have only for women. Not many moments later +he saw Lottie Mason steal such a look, keen with speculation, at Paula +as she chanced face to face with Graham, saying something to him. + +Not yet, was Dick's conclusion. Lottie did not know. But suspicion was +rife, and nothing, he was certain, under the circumstances, would +gladden her woman's heart more than to discover the unimpeachable Paula +as womanly weak as herself. + +Lottie Mason was a tall, striking brunette of twenty-five, undeniably +beautiful, and, as Dick had learned, undeniably daring. In the not +remote past, attracted by her, and, it must be submitted, subtly +invited by her, he had been guilty of a philandering that he had not +allowed to go as far as her wishes. The thing had not been serious on +his part. Nor had he permitted it to become serious on her side. +Nevertheless, sufficient flirtatious passages had taken place to impel +him this night to look to her, rather than to the other Wickenberg +women, for the first signals of suspicion. + +"Oh, yes, he's a beautiful dancer," Dick, as he came up to them half an +hour later, heard Lottie Mason telling little Miss Maxwell. "Isn't he, +Dick?" she appealed to him, with innocent eyes of candor through which +disguise he knew she was studying him. + +"Who?--Graham, you must mean," he answered with untroubled directness. +"He certainly is. What do you say we start dancing and let Miss Maxwell +see? Though there's only one woman here who can give him full swing to +show his paces." + +"Paula, of course," said Lottie. + +"Paula, of course. Why, you young chits don't know how to waltz. You +never had a chance to learn."--Lottie tossed her fine head. "Perhaps +you learned a little before the new dancing came in," he amended. +"Anyway, I'll get Evan and Paula started, you take me on, and I'll +wager we'll be the only couples on the floor." + +Half through the waltz, he broke it off with: "Let them have the floor +to themselves. It's worth seeing." + +And, glowing with appreciation, he stood and watched his wife and +Graham finish the dance, while he knew that Lottie, beside him, +stealing side glances at him, was having her suspicions allayed. + +The dancing became general, and, the evening being warm, the big doors +to the patio were thrown open. Now one couple, and now another, danced +out and down the long arcades where the moonlight streamed, until it +became the general thing. + +"What a boy he is," Paula said to Graham, as they listened to Dick +descanting to all and sundry on the virtues of his new night camera. +"You heard Aaron complaining at table, and Terrence explaining, his +sureness. Nothing terrible has ever happened to him in his life. He has +never been overthrown. His sureness has always been vindicated. As +Terrence said, it has always delivered the goods. He does know, he does +know, and yet he is so sure of himself, so sure of me." + +Graham taken away to dance with Miss Maxwell, Paula continued her train +of thought to herself. Dick was not suffering so much after all. And +she might have expected it. He was the cool-head, the philosopher. He +would take her loss with the same equanimity as he would take the loss +of Mountain Lad, as he had taken the death of Jeremy Braxton and the +flooding of the Harvest mines. It was difficult, she smiled to herself, +aflame as she was toward Graham, to be married to a philosopher who +would not lift a hand to hold her. And it came to her afresh that one +phase of Graham's charm for her was his humanness, his flamingness. +They met on common ground. At any rate, even in the heyday of their +coming together in Paris, Dick had not so inflamed her. A wonderful +lover he had been, too, with his gift of speech and lover's phrases, +with his love-chants that had so delighted her; but somehow it was +different from this what she felt for Graham and what Graham must feel +for her. Besides, she had been most young in experience of love and +lovers in that long ago when Dick had burst so magnificently upon her. + +And so thinking, she hardened toward him and recklessly permitted +herself to flame toward Graham. The crowd, the gayety, the excitement, +the closeness and tenderness of contact in the dancing, the summer-warm +of the evening, the streaming moonlight, and the night-scents of +flowers--all fanned her ardency, and she looked forward eagerly to the +at least one more dance she might dare with Graham. + +"No flash light is necessary," Dick was explaining. "It's a German +invention. Half a minute exposure under the ordinary lighting is +sufficient. And the best of it is that the plate can be immediately +developed just like an ordinary blue print. Of course, the drawback is +one cannot print from the plate." + +"But if it's good, an ordinary plate can be copied from it from which +prints can be made," Ernestine amplified. + +She knew the huge, twenty-foot, spring snake coiled inside the camera +and ready to leap out like a jack-in-the-box when Dick squeezed the +bulb. And there were others who knew and who urged Dick to get the +camera and make an exposure. + +He was gone longer than he expected, for Bonbright had left on his desk +several telegrams concerning the Mexican situation that needed +immediate replies. Trick camera in hand, Dick returned by a short cut +across the house and patio. The dancing couples were ebbing down the +arcade and disappearing into the hall, and he leaned against a pillar +and watched them go by. Last of all came Paula and Evan, passing so +close that he could have reached out and touched them. But, though the +moon shone full on him, they did not see him. They saw only each other +in the tender sport of gazing. + +The last preceding couple was already inside when the music ceased. +Graham and Paula paused, and he was for giving her his arm and leading +her inside, but she clung to him in sudden impulse. Man-like, cautious, +he slightly resisted for a moment, but with one arm around his neck she +drew his head willingly down to the kiss. It was a flash of quick +passion. The next instant, Paula on his arm, they were passing in and +Paula's laugh was ringing merrily and naturally. + +Dick clutched at the pillar and eased himself down abruptly until he +sat flat on the pavement. Accompanying violent suffocation, or causing +it, his heart seemed rising in his chest. He panted for air. The cursed +thing rose and choked and stifled him until, in the grim turn his fancy +took, it seemed to him that he chewed it between his teeth and gulped +it back and down his throat along with the reviving air. He felt +chilled, and was aware that he was wet with sudden sweat. + +"And who ever heard of heart disease in the Forrests?" he muttered, as, +still sitting, leaning against the pillar for support, he mopped his +face dry. His hand was shaking, and he felt a slight nausea from an +internal quivering that still persisted. + +It was not as if Graham had kissed her, he pondered. It was Paula who +had kissed Graham. That was love, and passion. He had seen it, and as +it burned again before his eyes, he felt his heart surge, and the +premonitory sensation of suffocation seized him. With a sharp effort of +will he controlled himself and got to his feet. + +"By God, it came up in my mouth and I chewed it," he muttered. "I +chewed it." + +Returning across the patio by the round-about way, he entered the +lighted room jauntily enough, camera in hand, and unprepared for the +reception he received. + +"Seen a ghost?" Lute greeted. + +"Are you sick?"--"What's the matter?" were other questions. + +"What _is_ the matter?" he countered. + +"Your face--the look of it," Ernestine said. "Something has happened. +What is it?" + +And while he oriented himself he did not fail to note Lottie Mason's +quick glance at the faces of Graham and Paula, nor to note that +Ernestine had observed Lottie's glance and followed it up for herself. + +"Yes," he lied. "Bad news. Just got the word. Jeremy Braxton is dead. +Murdered. The Mexicans got him while he was trying to escape into +Arizona." + +"Old Jeremy, God love him for the fine man he was," Terrence said, +tucking his arm in Dick's. "Come on, old man, 'tis a stiffener you're +wanting and I'm the lad to lead you to it." + +"Oh, I'm all right," Dick smiled, shaking his shoulders and squaring +himself as if gathering himself together. "It did hit me hard for the +moment. I hadn't a doubt in the world but Jeremy would make it out all +right. But they got him, and two engineers with him. They put up a +devil of a fight first. They got under a cliff and stood off a mob of +half a thousand for a day and night. And then the Mexicans tossed +dynamite down from above. Oh, well, all flesh is grass, and there is no +grass of yesteryear. Terrence, your suggestion is a good one. Lead on." + +After a few steps he turned his head over his shoulder and called back: +"Now this isn't to stop the fun. I'll be right back to take that +photograph. You arrange the group, Ernestine, and be sure to have them +under the strongest light." + +Terrence pressed open the concealed buffet at the far end of the room +and set out the glasses, while Dick turned on a wall light and studied +his face in the small mirror inside the buffet door. + +"It's all right now, quite natural," he announced. + +"'Twas only a passing shade," Terrence agreed, pouring the whiskey. +"And man has well the right to take it hard the going of old friends." + +They toasted and drank silently. + +"Another one," Dick said, extending his glass. + +"Say 'when,'" said the Irishman, and with imperturbable eyes he watched +the rising tide of liquor in the glass. + +Dick waited till it was half full. + +Again they toasted and drank silently, eyes to eyes, and Dick was +grateful for the offer of all his heart that he read in Terrence's eyes. + +Back in the middle of the hall, Ernestine was gayly grouping the +victims, and privily, from the faces of Lottie, Paula, and Graham, +trying to learn more of the something untoward that she sensed. Why had +Lottie looked so immediately and searchingly at Graham and Paula? --she +asked herself. And something was wrong with Paula now. She was worried, +disturbed, and not in the way to be expected from the announcement of +Jeremy Braxton's death. From Graham, Ernestine could glean nothing. He +was quite his ordinary self, his facetiousness the cause of much +laughter to Miss Maxwell and Mrs. Watson. + +Paula was disturbed. What had happened? Why had Dick lied? He had known +of Jeremy's death for two days. And she had never known anybody's death +so to affect him. She wondered if he had been drinking unduly. In the +course of their married life she had seen him several times in liquor. +He carried it well, the only noticeable effects being a flush in his +eyes and a loosening of his tongue to whimsical fancies and +extemporized chants. Had he, in his trouble, been drinking with the +iron-headed Terrence down in the stag room? She had found them all +assembled there just before dinner. The real cause for Dick's +strangeness never crossed her mind, if, for no other reason, than that +he was not given to spying. + +He came back, laughing heartily at a joke of Terrence's, and beckoned +Graham to join them while Terrence repeated it. And when the three had +had their laugh, he prepared to take the picture. The burst of the huge +snake from the camera and the genuine screams of the startled women +served to dispel the gloom that threatened, and next Dick was arranging +a tournament of peanut-carrying. + +From chair to chair, placed a dozen yards apart, the feat was with a +table knife to carry the most peanuts in five minutes. After the +preliminary try-out, Dick chose Paula for his partner, and challenged +the world, Wickenberg and the madrono grove included. Many boxes of +candy were wagered, and in the end he and Paula won out against Graham +and Ernestine, who had proved the next best couple. Demands for a +speech changed to clamor for a peanut song. Dick complied, beating the +accent, Indian fashion, with stiff-legged hops and hand-slaps on thighs. + +"I am Dick Forrest, son of Richard the Lucky, Son of Jonathan the +Puritan, son of John who was a sea-rover, as his father Albert before +him, who was the son of Mortimer, a pirate who was hanged in chains and +died without issue. + +"I am the last of the Forrests, but first of the peanut-carriers. +Neither Nimrod nor Sandow has anything on me. I carry the peanuts on a +knife, a silver knife. The peanuts are animated by the devil. I carry +the peanuts with grace and celerity and in quantity. The peanut never +sprouted that can best me. + +"The peanuts roll. The peanuts roll. Like Atlas who holds the world, I +never let them fall. Not every one can carry peanuts. I am God-gifted. +I am master of the art. It is a fine art. The peanuts roll, the peanuts +roll, and I carry them on forever. + +"Aaron is a philosopher. He cannot carry peanuts. Ernestine is a +blonde. She cannot carry peanuts. Evan is a sportsman. He drops +peanuts. Paula is my partner. She fumbles peanuts. Only I, I, by the +grace of God and my own cleverness, carry peanuts. + +"When anybody has had enough of my song, throw something at me. I am +proud. I am tireless. I can sing on forever. I shall sing on forever. + +"Here beginneth the second canto. When I die, bury me in a peanut +patch. While I live--" + +The expected avalanche of cushions quenched his song but not his +ebullient spirits, for he was soon in a corner with Lottie Mason and +Paula concocting a conspiracy against Terrence. + +And so the evening continued to be danced and joked and played away. At +midnight supper was served, and not till two in the morning were the +Wickenbergers ready to depart. While they were getting on their wraps, +Paula was proposing for the following afternoon a trip down to the +Sacramento River to look over Dick's experiment in rice-raising. + +"I had something else in view," he told her. "You know the mountain +pasture above Sycamore Creek. Three yearlings have been killed there in +the last ten days." + +"Mountain lions!" Paula cried. + +"Two at least.--Strayed in from the north," he explained to Graham. +"They sometimes do that. We got three five years ago.--Moss and Hartley +will be there with the dogs waiting. They've located two of the beasts. +What do you say all of you join me. We can leave right after lunch." + +"Let me have Mollie?" Lute asked. + +"And you can ride Altadena," Paula told Ernestine. + +Quickly the mounts were decided upon, Froelig and Martinez agreeing to +go, but promising neither to shoot well nor ride well. + +All went out to see the Wickenbergers off, and, after the machines were +gone, lingered to make arrangements for the hunting. + +"Good night, everybody," Dick said, as they started to move inside. +"I'm going to take a look at Alden Bessie before I turn in. Hennessy is +sitting up with her. Remember, you girls, come to lunch in your riding +togs, and curses on the head of whoever's late." + +The ancient dam of the Fotherington Princess was in a serious way, but +Dick would not have made the visit at such an hour, save that he wanted +to be by himself and that he could not nerve himself for a chance +moment alone with Paula so soon after what he had overseen in the patio. + +Light steps in the gravel made him turn his head. Ernestine caught up +with him and took his arm. + +"Poor old Alden Bessie," she explained. "I thought I'd go along." + +Dick, still acting up to his night's role, recalled to her various +funny incidents of the evening, and laughed and chuckled with +reminiscent glee. + +"Dick," she said in the first pause, "you are in trouble." She could +feel him stiffen, and hurried on: "What can I do? You know you can +depend on me. Tell me." + +"Yes, I'll tell you," he answered. "Just one thing." She pressed his +arm gratefully. "I'll have a telegram sent you to-morrow. It will be +urgent enough, though not too serious. You will just bundle up and +depart with Lute." + +"Is that all?" she faltered. + +"It will be a great favor." + +"You won't talk with me?" she protested, quivering under the rebuff. + +"I'll have the telegram come so as to rout you out of bed. And now +never mind Alden Bessie. You run a long in. Good night." + +He kissed her, gently thrust her toward the house, and went on his way. + + + + +CHAPTER XXX + + + +On the way back from the sick mare, Dick paused once to listen to the +restless stamp of Mountain Lad and his fellows in the stallion barn. In +the quiet air, from somewhere up the hills, came the ringing of a +single bell from some grazing animal. A cat's-paw of breeze fanned him +with sudden balmy warmth. All the night was balmy with the faint and +almost aromatic scent of ripening grain and drying grass. The stallion +stamped again, and Dick, with a deep breath and realization that never +had he more loved it all, looked up and circled the sky-line where the +crests of the mountains blotted the field of stars. + +"No, Cato," he mused aloud. "One cannot agree with you. Man does not +depart from life as from an inn. He departs as from a dwelling, the one +dwelling he will ever know. He departs ... nowhere. It is good night. +For him the Noiseless One ... and the dark." + +He made as if to start, but once again the stamp of the stallions held +him, and the hillside bell rang out. He drew a deep inhalation through +his nostrils of the air of balm, and loved it, and loved the fair land +of his devising. + +"'I looked into time and saw none of me there,'" he quoted, then capped +it, smiling, with a second quotation: "'She gat me nine great sons.... +The other nine were daughters.'" + +Back at the house, he did not immediately go in, but stood a space +gazing at the far flung lines of it. Nor, inside, did he immediately go +to his own quarters. Instead, he wandered through the silent rooms, +across the patios, and along the dim-lit halls. His frame of mind was +as of one about to depart on a journey. He pressed on the lights in +Paula's fairy patio, and, sitting in an austere Roman seat of marble, +smoked a cigarette quite through while he made his plans. + +Oh, he would do it nicely enough. He could pull off a hunting accident +that would fool the world. Trust him not to bungle it. Next day would +be the day, in the woods above Sycamore Creek. Grandfather Jonathan +Forrest, the straight-laced Puritan, had died of a hunting accident. +For the first time Dick doubted that accident. Well, if it hadn't been +an accident, the old fellow had done it well. It had never been hinted +in the family that it was aught but an accident. + +His hand on the button to turn off the lights, Dick delayed a moment +for a last look at the marble babies that played in the fountain and +among the roses. + +"So long, younglings," he called softly to them. "You're the nearest I +ever came to it." + +From his sleeping porch he looked across the big patio to Paula's +porch. There was no light. The chance was she slept. + +On the edge of the bed, he found himself with one shoe unlaced, and, +smiling at his absentness, relaced it. What need was there for him to +sleep? It was already four in the morning. He would at least watch his +last sunrise. Last things were coming fast. Already had he not dressed +for the last time? And the bath of the previous morning would be his +last. Mere water could not stay the corruption of death. He would have +to shave, however--a last vanity, for the hair did continue to grow for +a time on dead men's faces. + +He brought a copy of his will from the wall-safe to his desk and read +it carefully. Several minor codicils suggested themselves, and he wrote +them out in long-hand, pre-dating them six months as a precaution. The +last was the endowment of the sages of the madrono grove with a +fellowship of seven. + +He ran through his life insurance policies, verifying the permitted +suicide clause in each one; signed the tray of letters that had waited +his signature since the previous morning; and dictated a letter into +the phonograph to the publisher of his books. His desk cleaned, he +scrawled a quick summary of income and expense, with all earnings from +the Harvest mines deducted. He transposed the summary into a second +summary, increasing the expense margins, and cutting down the income +items to an absurdest least possible. Still the result was satisfactory. + +He tore up the sheets of figures and wrote out a program for the future +handling of the Harvest situation. He did it sketchily, with casual +tentativeness, so that when it was found among the papers there would +be no suspicions. In the same fashion he worked out a line-breeding +program for the Shires, and an in-breeding table, up and down, for +Mountain Lad and the Fotherington Princess and certain selected +individuals of their progeny. + +When Oh My came in with coffee at six, Dick was on his last paragraph +of his scheme for rice-growing. + +"Although the Italian rice may be worth experimenting with for quick +maturity," he wrote, "I shall for a time confine the main plantings in +equal proportions to Moti, Ioko, and the Wateribune. Thus, with +different times of maturing, the same crews and the same machinery, +with the same overhead, can work a larger acreage than if only one +variety is planted." + +Oh My served the coffee at his desk, and made no sign even after a +glance to the porch at the bed which had not been slept in--all of +which control Dick permitted himself privily to admire. + +At six-thirty the telephone rang and he heard Hennessy's tired voice: +"I knew you'd be up and glad to know Alden Bessie's pulled through. It +was a squeak, though. And now it's me for the hay." + +When Dick had shaved, he looked at the shower, hesitated a moment, then +his face set stubbornly. I'm darned if I will, was his thought; a sheer +waste of time. He did, however, change his shoes to a pair of heavy, +high-laced ones fit for the roughness of hunting. He was at his desk +again, looking over the notes in his scribble pads for the morning's +work, when Paula entered. She did not call her "Good morning, merry +gentleman"; but came quite close to him before she greeted him softly +with: + +"The Acorn-planter. Ever tireless, never weary Red Cloud." + +He noted the violet-blue shadows under her eyes, as he arose, without +offering to touch her. Nor did she offer invitation. + +"A white night?" he asked, as he placed a chair. + +"A white night," she answered wearily. "Not a second's sleep, though I +tried so hard." + +Both were reluctant of speech, and they labored under a mutual +inability to draw their eyes away from each other. + +"You ... you don't look any too fit yourself," she said. + +"Yes, my face," he nodded. "I was looking at it while I shaved. The +expression won't come off." + +"Something happened to you last night," she probed, and he could not +fail to see the same compassion in her eyes that he had seen in Oh +Dear's. "Everybody remarked your expression. What was it?" + +He shrugged his shoulders. "It has been coming on for some time," he +evaded, remembering that the first hint of it had been given him by +Paula's portrait of him. "You've noticed it?" he inquired casually. + +She nodded, then was struck by a sudden thought. He saw the idea leap +to life ere her words uttered it. + +"Dick, you haven't an affair?" + +It was a way out. It would straighten all the tangle. And hope was in +her voice and in her face. + +He smiled, shook his head slowly, and watched her disappointment. + +"I take it back," he said. "I have an affair." + +"Of the heart?" + +She was eager, as he answered, "Of the heart." + +But she was not prepared for what came next. He abruptly drew his chair +close, till his knees touched hers, and, leaning forward, quickly but +gently prisoned her hands in his resting on her knees. + +"Don't be alarmed, little bird-woman," he quieted her. "I shall not +kiss you. It is a long time since I have. I want to tell you about that +affair. But first I want to tell you how proud I am--proud of myself. I +am proud that I am a lover. At my age, a lover! It is unbelievable, and +it is wonderful. And such a lover! Such a curious, unusual, and quite +altogether remarkable lover. In fact, I have laughed all the books and +all biology in the face. I am a monogamist. I love the woman, the one +woman. After a dozen years of possession I love her quite madly, oh, so +sweetly madly." + +Her hands communicated her disappointment to him, making a slight, +impulsive flutter to escape; but he held them more firmly. + +"I know her every weakness, and, weakness and strength and all, I love +her as madly as I loved her at the first, in those mad moments when I +first held her in my arms." + +Her hands were mutinous of the restraint he put upon them, and +unconsciously she was beginning to pull and tug to be away from him. +Also, there was fear in her eyes. He knew her fastidiousness, and he +guessed, with the other man's lips recent on hers, that she feared a +more ardent expression on his part. + +"And please, please be not frightened, timid, sweet, beautiful, proud, +little bird-woman. See. I release you. Know that I love you most +dearly, and that I am considering you as well as myself, and before +myself, all the while." + +He drew his chair away from her, leaned back, and saw confidence grow +in her eyes. + +"I shall tell you all my heart," he continued, "and I shall want you to +tell me all your heart." + +"This love for me is something new?" she asked. "A recrudescence?" + +"Yes, a recrudescence, and no." + +"I thought that for a long time I had been a habit to you," she said. + +"But I was loving you all the time." + +"Not madly." + +"No," he acknowledged. "But with certainty. I was so sure of you, of +myself. It was, to me, all a permanent and forever established thing. I +plead guilty. But when that permanency was shaken, all my love for you +fired up. It was there all the time, a steady, long-married flame." + +"But about me?" she demanded. + +"That is what we are coming to. I know your worry right now, and of a +minute ago. You are so intrinsically honest, so intrinsically true, +that the thought of sharing two men is abhorrent to you. I have not +misread you. It is a long time since you have permitted me any +love-touch." He shrugged his shoulders "And an equally long time since +I offered you a love-touch." + +"Then you _have_ known from the first?" she asked quickly. + +He nodded. + +"Possibly," he added, with an air of judicious weighing, "I sensed it +coming before even you knew it. But we will not go into that or other +things." + +"You have seen..." she attempted to ask, stung almost to shame at +thought of her husband having witnessed any caress of hers and Graham's. + +"We will not demean ourselves with details, Paula. Besides, there was +and is nothing wrong about any of it. Also, it was not necessary for me +to see anything. I have my memories of when I, too, kissed stolen +kisses in the pause of the seconds between the frank, outspoken 'Good +nights.' When all the signs of ripeness are visible--the love-shades +and love-notes that cannot be hidden, the unconscious caress of the +eyes in a fleeting glance, the involuntary softening of voices, the +cuckoo-sob in the throat--why, the night-parting kiss does not need to +be seen. It has to be. Still further, oh my woman, know that I justify +you in everything." + +"It... it was not ever... much," she faltered. + +"I should have been surprised if it had been. It couldn't have been +you. As it is, I have been surprised. After our dozen years it was +unexpected--" + +"Dick," she interrupted him, leaning toward him and searching him. She +paused to frame her thought, and then went on with directness. "In our +dozen years, will you say it has never been any more with you?" + +"I have told you that I justify you in everything," he softened his +reply. + +"But you have not answered my question," she insisted. "Oh, I do not +mean mere flirtatious passages, bits of primrose philandering. I mean +unfaithfulness and I mean it technically. In the past you have?" + +"In the past," he answered, "not much, and not for a long, long time." + +"I often wondered," she mused. + +"And I have told you I justify you in everything," he reiterated. "And +now you know where lies the justification." + +"Then by the same token I had a similar right," she said. "Though I +haven't, Dick, I haven't," she hastened to add. "Well, anyway, you +always did preach the single standard." + +"Alas, not any longer," he smiled. "One's imagination will conjure, and +in the past few weeks I've been forced to change my mind." + +"You mean that you demand I must be faithful?" + +He nodded and said, "So long as you live with me." + +"But where's the equity?" + +"There isn't any equity," he shook his head. "Oh, I know it seems a +preposterous change of view. But at this late day I have made the +discovery of the ancient truth that women are different from men. All I +have learned of book and theory goes glimmering before the everlasting +fact that the women are the mothers of our children. I... I still had +my hopes of children with you, you see. But that's all over and done +with. The question now is, what's in your heart? I have told you mine. +And afterward we can determine what is to be done." + +"Oh, Dick," she breathed, after silence had grown painful, "I do love +you, I shall always love you. You are my Red Cloud. Why, do you know, +only yesterday, out on your sleeping porch, I turned my face to the +wall. It was terrible. It didn't seem right. I turned it out again, oh +so quickly." + +He lighted a cigarette and waited. + +"But you have not told me what is in your heart, all of it," he chided +finally. + +"I do love you," she repeated. + +"And Evan?" + +"That is different. It is horrible to have to talk this way to you. +Besides, I don't know. I can't make up my mind what is in my heart." + +"Love? Or amorous adventure? It must be one or the other." + +She shook her head. + +"Can't you understand?" she asked. "That I don't understand? You see, I +am a woman. I have never sown any wild oats. And now that all this has +happened, I don't know what to make of it. Shaw and the rest must be +right. Women are hunting animals. You are both big game. I can't help +it. It is a challenge to me. And I find I am a puzzle to myself. All my +concepts have been toppled over by my conduct. I want you. I want Evan. +I want both of you. It is not amorous adventure, oh believe me. And if +by any chance it is, and I do not know it--no, it isn't, I know it +isn't." + +"Then it is love." + +"But I do love you, Red Cloud." + +"And you say you love him. You can't love both of us." + +"But I can. I do. I do love both of you.--Oh, I am straight. I shall be +straight. I must work this out. I thought you might help me. That is +why I came to you this morning. There must be some solution." + +She looked at him appealingly as he answered, "It is one or the other, +Evan or me. I cannot imagine any other solution." + +"That's what he says. But I can't bring myself to it. He was for coming +straight to you. I would not permit him. He has wanted to go, but I +held him here, hard as it was on both of you, in order to have you +together, to compare you two, to weigh you in my heart. And I get +nowhere. I want you both. I can't give either of you up." + +"Unfortunately, as you see," Dick began, a slight twinkle in his eyes, +"while you may be polyandrously inclined, we stupid male men cannot +reconcile ourselves to such a situation." + +"Don't be cruel, Dick," she protested. + +"Forgive me. It was not so meant. It was out of my own hurt--an effort +to bear it with philosophical complacence." + +"I have told him that he was the only man I had ever met who is as +great as my husband, and that my husband is greater." + +"That was loyalty to me, yes, and loyalty to yourself," Dick explained. +"You were mine until I ceased being the greatest man in the world. He +then became the greatest man in the world." + +She shook her head. + +"Let me try to solve it for you," he continued. "You don't know your +mind, your desire. You can't decide between us because you equally want +us both?" + +"Yes," she whispered. "Only, rather, differently want you both." + +"Then the thing is settled," he concluded shortly. + +"What do you mean?" + +"This, Paula. I lose. Graham is the winner. Don't you see. Here am I, +even with him, even and no more, while my advantage over him is our +dozen years together--the dozen years of past love, the ties and bonds +of heart and memory. Heavens! If all this weight were thrown in the +balance on Evan's side, you wouldn't hesitate an instant in your +decision. It is the first time you have ever been bowled over in your +life, and the experience, coming so late, makes it hard for you to +realize." + +"But, Dick, you bowled me over." + +He shook his head. + +"I have always liked to think so, and sometimes I have believed--but +never really. I never took you off your feet, not even in the very +beginning, whirlwind as the affair was. You may have been glamoured. +You were never mad as I was mad, never swept as I was swept. I loved +you first--" + +"And you were a royal lover." + +"I loved you first, Paula, and, though you did respond, it was not in +the same way. I never took you off your feet. It seems pretty clear +that Evan has." + +"I wish I could be sure," she mused. "I have a feeling of being bowled +over, and yet I hesitate. The two are not compatible. Perhaps I never +shall be bowled over by any man. And you don't seem to help me in the +least." + +"You, and you alone, can solve it, Paula," he said gravely. + +"But if you would help, if you would try--oh, such a little, to hold +me," she persisted. + +"But I am helpless. My hands are tied. I can't put an arm to hold you. +You can't share two. You have been in his arms--" He put up his hand to +hush her protest. "Please, please, dear, don't. You have been in his +arms. You flutter like a frightened bird at thought of my caressing +you. Don't you see? Your actions decide against me. You have decided, +though you may not know it. Your very flesh has decided. You can bear +his arms. The thought of mine you cannot bear." + +She shook her head with slow resoluteness. + +"And still I do not, cannot, make up my mind," she persisted. + +"But you must. The present situation is intolerable. You must decide +quickly, for Evan must go. You realize that. Or you must go. You both +cannot continue on here. Take all the time in the world. Send Evan +away. Or, suppose you go and visit Aunt Martha for a while. Being away +from both of us might aid you to get somewhere. Perhaps it will be +better to call off the hunting. I'll go alone, and you stay and talk it +over with Evan. Or come on along and talk it over with him as you ride. +Whichever way, I won't be in till late. I may sleep out all night in +one of the herder's cabins. When I come back, Evan must be gone. +Whether or not you are gone with him will also have been decided." + +"And if I should go?" she queried. + +Dick shrugged his shoulders, and stood up, glancing at his wrist-watch. + +"I have sent word to Blake to come earlier this morning," he explained, +taking a step toward the door in invitation for her to go. + +At the door she paused and leaned toward him. + +"Kiss me, Dick," she said, and, afterward: "This is not a... +love-touch." Her voice had become suddenly husky. "It's just in case I +do decide to... to go." + +The secretary approached along the hall, but Paula lingered. + +"Good morning, Mr. Blake," Dick greeted him. "Sorry to rout you out so +early. First of all, will you please telephone Mr. Agar and Mr. Pitts. +I won't be able to see them this morning. Oh, and put the rest off till +to-morrow, too. Make a point of getting Mr. Hanley. Tell him I approve +of his plan for the Buckeye spillway, and to go right ahead. I will see +Mr. Mendenhall, though, and Mr. Manson. Tell them nine-thirty." + +"One thing, Dick," Paula said. "Remember, I made him stay. It was not +his fault or wish. I wouldn't let him go." + +"You've bowled _him_ over right enough," Dick smiled. "I could not +reconcile his staying on, under the circumstances, with what I knew of +him. But with you not permitting him to go, and he as mad as a man has +a right to be where you are concerned, I can understand. He's a whole +lot better than a good sort. They don't make many like him. He will +make you happy--" + +She held up her hand. + +"I don't know that I shall ever be happy again, Red Cloud. When I see +what I have brought into your face.... And I was so happy and contented +all our dozen years. I can't forget it. That is why I have been unable +to decide. But you are right. The time has come for me to solve the +..." She hesitated and could not utter the word "triangle" which he saw +forming on her lips. "The situation," her voice trailed away. "We'll +all go hunting. I'll talk with him as we ride, and I'll send him away, +no matter what I do." + +"I shouldn't be precipitate, Paul," Dick advised. "You know I don't +care a hang for morality except when it is useful. And in this case it +is exceedingly useful. There may be children.--Please, please," he +hushed her. "And in such case even old scandal is not exactly good for +them. Desertion takes too long. I'll arrange to give you the real +statutory grounds, which will save a year in the divorce." + +"If I so make up my mind," she smiled wanly. + +He nodded. + +"But I may not make up my mind that way. I don't know it myself. +Perhaps it's all a dream, and soon I shall wake up, and Oh Dear will +come in and tell me how soundly and long I have slept." + +She turned away reluctantly, and paused suddenly when she had made half +a dozen steps. + +"Dick," she called. "You have told me your heart, but not what's in +your mind. Don't do anything foolish. Remember Denny Holbrook--no +hunting accident, mind." + +He shook his head, and twinkled his eyes in feigned amusement, and +marveled to himself that her intuition should have so squarely hit the +mark. + +"And leave all this?" he lied, with a gesture that embraced the ranch +and all its projects. "And that book on in-and-in-breeding? And my +first annual home sale of stock just ripe to come off?" + +"It would be preposterous," she agreed with brightening face. "But, +Dick, in this difficulty of making up my mind, please, please know +that--" She paused for the phrase, then made a gesture in mimicry of +his, that included the Big House and its treasures, and said, "All this +does not influence me a particle. Truly not." + +"As if I did not know it," he assured her. "Of all unmercenary women--" + +"Why, Dick," she interrupted him, fired by a new thought, "if I loved +Evan as madly as you think, you would mean so little that I'd be +content, if it were the only way out, for you to have a hunting +accident. But you see, I don't. Anyway, there's a brass tack for you to +ponder." + +She made another reluctant step away, then called back in a whisper, +her face over her shoulder: + +"Red Cloud, I'm dreadfully sorry.... And through it all I'm so glad +that you do still love me." + +Before Blake returned, Dick found time to study his face in the glass. +Printed there was the expression that had startled his company the +preceding evening. It had come to stay. Oh, well, was his thought, one +cannot chew his heart between his teeth without leaving some sign of it. + +He strolled out on the sleeping porch and looked at Paula's picture +under the barometers. He turned it to the wall, and sat on the bed and +regarded the blankness for a space. Then he turned it back again. + +"Poor little kid," he murmured, "having a hard time of it just waking +up at this late day." + +But as he continued to gaze, abruptly there leaped before his eyes the +vision of her in the moonlight, clinging to Graham and drawing his lips +down to hers. + +Dick got up quickly, with a shake of head to shake the vision from his +eyes. + +By half past nine his correspondence was finished and his desk cleaned +save for certain data to be used in his talks with his Shorthorn and +Shire managers. He was over at the window and waving a smiling farewell +to Lute and Ernestine in the limousine, as Mendenhall entered. And to +him, and to Manson next, Dick managed, in casual talk, to impress much +of his bigger breeding plans. + +"We've got to keep an eagle eye on the bull-get of King Polo," he told +Manson. "There's all the promise in the world for a greater than he +from Bleakhouse Fawn, or Alberta Maid, or Moravia's Nellie Signal. We +missed it this year so far, but next year, or the year after, soon or +late, King Polo is going to be responsible for a real humdinger of +winner." + +And as with Manson, with much more talk, so with Mendenhall, Dick +succeeded in emphasizing the far application of his breeding theories. + +With their departure, he got Oh Joy on the house 'phone and told him to +take Graham to the gun room to choose a rifle and any needed gear. + +At eleven he did not know that Paula had come up the secret stairway +from the library and was standing behind the shelves of books +listening. She had intended coming in but had been deterred by the +sound of his voice. She could hear him talking over the telephone to +Hanley about the spillway of the Buckeye dam. + +"And by the way," Dick's voice went on, "you've been over the reports +on the Big Miramar?... Very good. Discount them. I disagree with them +flatly. The water is there. I haven't a doubt we'll find a fairly +shallow artesian supply. Send up the boring outfit at once and start +prospecting. The soil's ungodly rich, and if we don't make that dry +hole ten times as valuable in the next five years ..." + +Paula sighed, and turned back down the spiral to the library. + +Red Cloud the incorrigible, always planting his acorns--was her +thought. There he was, with his love-world crashing around him, calmly +considering dams and well-borings so that he might, in the years to +come, plant more acorns. + +Nor was Dick ever to know that Paula had come so near to him with her +need and gone away. Again, not aimlessly, but to run through for the +last time the notes of the scribble pad by his bed, he was out on his +sleeping porch. His house was in order. There was nothing left but to +sign up the morning's dictation, answer several telegrams, then would +come lunch and the hunting in the Sycamore hills. Oh, he would do it +well. The Outlaw would bear the blame. And he would have an +eye-witness, either Froelig or Martinez. But not both of them. One pair +of eyes would be enough to satisfy when the martingale parted and the +mare reared and toppled backward upon him into the brush. And from that +screen of brush, swiftly linking accident to catastrophe, the witness +would hear the rifle go off. + +Martinez was more emotional than the sculptor and would therefore make +a more satisfactory witness, Dick decided. Him would he maneuver to +have with him in the narrow trail when the Outlaw should be made the +scapegoat. Martinez was no horseman. All the better. It would be well, +Dick judged, to make the Outlaw act up in real devilishness for a +minute or two before the culmination. It would give verisimilitude. +Also, it would excite Martinez's horse, and, therefore, excite Martinez +so that he would not see occurrences too clearly. + +He clenched his hands with sudden hurt. The Little Lady was mad, she +must be mad; on no other ground could he understand such arrant +cruelty, listening to her voice and Graham's from the open windows of +the music room as they sang together the "Gypsy Trail." + +Nor did he unclench his hands during all the time they sang. And they +sang the mad, reckless song clear through to its mad reckless end. And +he continued to stand, listening to her laugh herself merrily away from +Graham and on across the house to her wing, from the porches of which +she continued to laugh as she teased and chided Oh Dear for fancied +derelictions. + +From far off came the dim but unmistakable trumpeting of Mountain Lad. +King Polo asserted his lordly self, and the harems of mares and heifers +sent back their answering calls. Dick listened to all the whinnying and +nickering and bawling of sex, and sighed aloud: "Well, the land is +better for my having been. It is a good thought to take to bed." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI + + + +A ring of his bed 'phone made Dick sit on the bed to take up the +receiver. As he listened, he looked out across the patio to Paula's +porches. Bonbright was explaining that it was a call from Chauncey +Bishop who was at Eldorado in a machine. Chauncey Bishop, editor and +owner of the San Francisco _Dispatch_, was sufficiently important a +person, in Bonbright's mind, as well as old friend of Dick's, to be +connected directly to him. + +"You can get here for lunch," Dick told the newspaper owner. "And, say, +suppose you put up for the night.... Never mind your special writers. +We're going hunting mountain lions this afternoon, and there's sure to +be a kill. Got them located.... Who? What's she write?... What of it? +She can stick around the ranch and get half a dozen columns out of any +of half a dozen subjects, while the writer chap can get the dope on +lion-hunting.... Sure, sure. I'll put him on a horse a child can ride." + +The more the merrier, especially newspaper chaps, Dick grinned to +himself--and grandfather Jonathan Forrest would have nothing on him +when it came to pulling off a successful finish. + +But how could Paula have been so wantonly cruel as to sing the "Gypsy +Trail" so immediately afterward? Dick asked himself, as, receiver near +to ear, he could distantly hear Chauncey Bishop persuading his writer +man to the hunting. + +"All right then, come a running," Dick told Bishop in conclusion. "I'm +giving orders now for the horses, and you can have that bay you rode +last time." + +Scarcely had he hung up, when the bell rang again. This time it was +Paula. + +"Red Cloud, dear Red Cloud," she said, "your reasoning is all wrong. I +think I love you best. I am just about making up my mind, and it's for +you. And now, just to help me to be sure, tell me what you told me a +little while ago--you know--' I love the woman, the one woman. After a +dozen years of possession I love her quite madly, oh, so sweetly +madly.' Say it to me, Red Cloud." + +"I do truly love the woman, the one woman," Dick repeated. "After a +dozen years of possession I do love her quite madly, oh, so sweetly +madly." + +There was a pause when he had finished, which, waiting, he did not dare +to break. + +"There is one little thing I almost forgot to tell you," she said, very +softly, very slowly, very clearly. "I do love you. I have never loved +you so much as right now. After our dozen years you've bowled me over +at last. And I was bowled over from the beginning, although I did not +know it. I have made up my mind now, once and for all." + +She hung up abruptly. + +With the thought that he knew how a man felt receiving a reprieve at +the eleventh hour, Dick sat on, thinking, forgetful that he had not +hooked the receiver, until Bonbright came in from the secretaries' room +to remind him. + +"It was from Mr. Bishop," Bonbright explained. "Sprung an axle. I took +the liberty of sending one of our machines to bring them in." + +"And see what our men can do with repairing theirs," Dick nodded. + +Alone again, he got up and stretched, walked absently the length of the +room and back. + +"Well, Martinez, old man," he addressed the empty air, "this afternoon +you'll be defrauded out of as fine a histrionic stunt as you will never +know you've missed." + +He pressed the switch for Paula's telephone and rang her up. + +Oh Dear answered, and quickly brought her mistress. + +"I've a little song I want to sing to you, Paul," he said, then chanted +the old negro 'spiritual': + + "'Fer itself, fer itself, + Fer itself, fer itself, + Every soul got ter confess + Fer itself.' + +"And I want you to tell me again, fer yourself, fer yourself, what you +just told me." + +Her laughter came in a merry gurgle that delighted him. + +"Red Cloud, I do love you," she said. "My mind is made up. I shall +never have any man but you in all this world. Now be good, and let me +dress. I'll have to rush for lunch as it is." + +"May I come over?--for a moment?" he begged. + +"Not yet, eager one. In ten minutes. Let me finish with Oh Dear first. +Then I'll be all ready for the hunt. I'm putting on my Robin Hood +outfit--you know, the greens and russets and the long feather. And I'm +taking my 30-30. It's heavy enough for mountain lions." + +"You've made me very happy," Dick continued. + +"And you're making me late. Ring off.--Red Cloud, I love you more this +minute--" + +He heard her hang up, and was surprised, the next moment, that somehow +he was reluctant to yield to the happiness that he had claimed was his. +Rather, did it seem that he could still hear her voice and Graham's +recklessly singing the "Gypsy Trail." + +Had she been playing with Graham? Or had she been playing with him? +Such conduct, for her, was unprecedented and incomprehensible. As he +groped for a solution, he saw her again in the moonlight, clinging to +Graham with upturned lips, drawing Graham's lips down to hers. + +Dick shook his head in bafflement, and glanced at his watch. At any +rate, in ten minutes, in less than ten minutes, he would hold her in +his arms and know. + +So tedious was the brief space of time that he strolled slowly on the +way, pausing to light a cigarette, throwing it away with the first +inhalation, pausing again to listen to the busy click of typewriters +from the secretaries' room. With still two minutes to spare, and +knowing that one minute would take him to the door without a knob, he +stopped in the patio and gazed at the wild canaries bathing in the +fountain. + +When they startled into the air, a cloud of fluttering gold and crystal +droppings in the sunshine, Dick startled. The report of the rifle had +come from Paula's wing above, and he identified it as her 30-30 as he +dashed across the patio. _She beat me to it,_ was his next thought, and +what had been incomprehensible the moment before was as sharply +definite as the roar of her rifle. + +And across the patio, up the stairs, through the door left wide-flung +behind him, continued to pulse in his brain: _She beat me to it. She +beat me to it._ + +She lay, crumpled and quivering, in hunting costume complete, save for +the pair of tiny bronze spurs held over her in anguished impotence by +the frightened maid. + +His examination was quick. Paula breathed, although she was +unconscious. From front to back, on the left side, the bullet had torn +through. His next spring was to the telephone, and as he waited the +delay of connecting through the house central he prayed that Hennessy +would be at the stallion barn. A stable boy answered, and, while he ran +to fetch the veterinary, Dick ordered Oh Joy to stay by the switches, +and to send Oh My to him at once. + +From the tail of his eye he saw Graham rush into the room and on to +Paula. + +"Hennessy," Dick commanded. "Come on the jump. Bring the needful for +first aid. It's a rifle shot through the lungs or heart or both. Come +right to Mrs. Forrest's rooms. Now jump." + +"Don't touch her," he said sharply to Graham. "It might make it worse, +start a worse hemorrhage." + +Next he was back at Oh Joy. + +"Start Callahan with the racing car for Eldorado. Tell him he'll meet +Doctor Robinson on the way, and that he is to bring Doctor Robinson +back with him on the jump. Tell him to jump like the devil was after +him. Tell him Mrs. Forrest is hurt and that if he makes time he'll save +her life." + +Receiver to ear, he turned to look at Paula. Graham, bending over her +but not touching her, met his eyes. + +"Forrest," he began, "if you have done--" + +But Dick hushed him with a warning glance directed toward Oh Dear who +still held the bronze spurs in speechless helplessness. + +"It can be discussed later," Dick said shortly, as he turned his mouth +to the transmitter. + +"Doctor Robinson?... Good. Mrs. Forrest has a rifle-shot through lungs +or heart or maybe both. Callahan is on his way to meet you in the +racing car. Keep coming as fast as God'll let you till you meet +Callahan. Good-by." + +Back to Paula, Graham stepped aside as Dick, on his knees, bent over +her. His examination was brief. He looked up at Graham with a shake of +the head and said: + +"It's too ticklish to fool with." + +He turned to Oh Dear. + +"Put down those spurs and bring pillows.--Evan, lend a hand on the +other side, and lift gently and steadily.--Oh Dear, shove that pillow +under--easy, easy." + +He looked up and saw Oh My standing silently, awaiting orders. + +"Get Mr. Bonbright to relieve Oh Joy at the switches," Dick commanded. +"Tell Oh Joy to stand near to Mr. Bonbright to rush orders. Tell Oh Joy +to have all the house boys around him to rush the orders. As soon as +Saunders comes back with Mr. Bishop's crowd, tell Oh Joy to start him +out on the jump to Eldorado to look for Callahan in case Callahan has a +smash up. Tell Oh Joy to get hold of Mr. Manson, and Mr. Pitts or any +two of the managers who have machines and have them, with their +machines, waiting here at the house. Tell Oh Joy to take care of Mr. +Bishop's crowd as usual. And you come back here where I can call you." + +Dick turned to Oh Dear. + +"Now tell me how it happened." + +Oh Dear shook her head and wrung her hands. + +"Where were you when the rifle went off?" + +The Chinese girl swallowed and pointed toward the wardrobe room. + +"Go on, talk," Dick commanded harshly. + +"Mrs. Forrest tell me to get spurs. I forget before. I go quick. I hear +gun. I come back quick. I run." + +She pointed to Paula to show what she had found. + +"But the gun?" Dick asked. + +"Some trouble. Maybe gun no work. Maybe four minutes, maybe five +minutes, Mrs. Forrest try make gun work." + +"Was she trying to make the gun work when you went for the spurs?" + +Oh Dear nodded. + +"Before that I say maybe Oh Joy can fix gun. Mrs. Forrest say never +mind. She say you can fix. She put gun down. Then she try once more fix +gun. Then she tell me get spurs. Then... gun go off." + +Hennessy's arrival shut off further interrogation. His examination was +scarcely less brief than Dick's. He looked up with a shake of the head. + +"Nothing I can dare tackle, Mr. Forrest. The hemorrhage has eased of +itself, though it must be gathering inside. You've sent for a doctor?" + +"Robinson. I caught him in his office.--He's young, a good surgeon," +Dick explained to Graham. "He's nervy and daring, and I'd trust him in +this farther than some of the old ones with reputations.--What do you +think, Mr. Hennessy? What chance has she?" + +"Looks pretty bad, though I'm no judge, being only a horse doctor. +Robinson'll know. Nothing to do but wait." + +Dick nodded and walked out on Paula's sleeping porch to listen for the +exhaust of the racing machine Callahan drove. He heard the ranch +limousine arrive leisurely and swiftly depart. Graham came out on the +porch to him. + +"I want to apologize, Forrest," he said. "I was rather off for the +moment. I found you here, and I thought you were here when it happened. +It must have been an accident.'" + +"Poor little kid," Dick agreed. "And she so prided herself on never +being careless with guns." + +"I've looked at the rifle," Graham said, "but I couldn't find anything +wrong with it." + +"And that's how it happened. Whatever was wrong got right. That's how +it went off." + +And while Dick talked, building the fabric of the lie so that even +Graham should be fooled, to himself he was understanding how well Paula +had played the trick. That last singing of the "Gypsy Trail" had been +her farewell to Graham and at the same time had provided against any +suspicion on his part of what she had intended directly to do. It had +been the same with him. She had had her farewell with him, and, the +last thing, over the telephone, had assured him that she would never +have any man but him in all the world. + +He walked away from Graham to the far end of the porch. + +"She had the grit, she had the grit," he muttered to himself with +quivering lips. "Poor kid. She couldn't decide between the two, and so +she solved it this way." + +The noise of the racing machine drew him and Graham together, and +together they entered the room to wait for the doctor. Graham betrayed +unrest, reluctant to go, yet feeling that he must. + +"Please stay on, Evan," Dick told him. "She liked you much, and if she +does open her eyes she'll be glad to see you." + +Dick and Graham stood apart from Paula while Doctor Robinson made his +examination. When he arose with an air of finality, Dick looked his +question. Robinson shook his head. + +"Nothing to be done," he said. "It is a matter of hours, maybe of +minutes." He hesitated, studying Dick's face for a moment. "I can ease +her off if you say the word. She might possibly recover consciousness +and suffer for a space." + +Dick took a turn down the room and back, and when he spoke it was to +Graham. + +"Why not let her live again, brief as the time may be? The pain is +immaterial. It will have its inevitable quick anodyne. It is what I +would wish, what you would wish. She loved life, every moment of it. +Why should we deny her any of the little left her?" + +Graham bent his head in agreement, and Dick turned to the doctor. + +"Perhaps you can stir her, stimulate her, to a return of consciousness. +If you can, do so. And if the pain proves too severe, then you can ease +her." + + * * * * * + +When her eyes fluttered open, Dick nodded Graham up beside him. At +first bewilderment was all she betrayed, then her eyes focused first on +Dick's face, then on Graham's, and, with recognition, her lips parted +in a pitiful smile. + +"I... I thought at first that I was dead," she said. + +But quickly another thought was in her mind, and Dick divined it in her +eyes as they searched him. The question was if he knew it was no +accident. He gave no sign. She had planned it so, and she must pass +believing it so. + +"I... was... wrong," she said. She spoke slowly, faintly, in evident +pain, with a pause for strength of utterance between each word. "I was +always so cocksure I'd never have an accident, and look what I've gone +and done." + +"It's a darn shame," Dick said, sympathetically. "What was it? A jam?" + +She nodded, and again her lips parted in the pitiful brave smile as she +said whimsically: "Oh, Dick, go call the neighbors in and show them +what little Paula's din. + +"How serious is it?" she asked. "Be honest, Red Cloud, you know _me,"_ +she added, after the briefest of pauses in which Dick had not replied. + +He shook his head. + +"How long?" she queried. + +"Not long," came his answer. "You can ease off any time." + +"You mean...?" She glanced aside curiously at the doctor and back to +Dick, who nodded. + +"It's only what I should have expected from you, Red Cloud," she +murmured gratefully. "But is Doctor Robinson game for it?" + +The doctor stepped around so that she could see him, and nodded. + +"Thank you, doctor. And remember, I am to say when." + +"Is there much pain?" Dick queried. + +Her eyes were wide and brave and dreadful, and her lips quivered for +the moment ere she replied, "Not much, but dreadful, quite dreadful. I +won't care to stand it very long. I'll say when." + +Once more the smile on her lips announced a whimsey. + +"Life is queer, most queer, isn't it? And do you know, I want to go out +with love-songs in my ears. You first, Evan, sing the 'Gypsy +Trail.'--Why, I was singing it with you less than an hour ago. Think of +it! Do, Evan, please." + +Graham looked to Dick for permission, and Dick gave it with his eyes. + +"Oh, and sing it robustly, gladly, madly, just as a womaning Gypsy man +should sing it," she urged. "And stand back there, so, where I can see +you." + +And while Graham sang the whole song through to its: + + "The heart of a man to the heart of a maid, light of my + tents be fleet, + Morning waits at the end of the world and the world is + all at our feet," + +Oh My, immobile-faced, a statue, stood in the far doorway awaiting +commands. Oh Dear, grief-stricken, stood at her mistress's head, no +longer wringing her hands, but holding them so tightly clasped that the +finger-tips and nails showed white. To the rear, at Paula's dressing +table, Doctor Robinson noiselessly dissolved in a glass the anodyne +pellets and filled his hypodermic. + +When Graham had finished, Paula thanked him with her eyes, closed them, +and lay still for a space. + +"And now, Red Cloud," she said when next she opened them, "the song of +Ai-kut, and of the Dew-Woman, the Lush-Woman. Stand where Evan did, so +that I can see you well." + +And Dick chanted: + +"I am Ai-kut, the first man of the Nishinam. Ai-kut is the short for +Adam, and my father and my mother were the coyote and the moon. And +this is Yo-to-to-wi, my wife. Yo-to-to-wi is the short for Eve. She is +the first woman of the Nishinam. + +"Me, I am Ai-kut. This is my dew of women. This is my honey-dew of +women. Her father and her mother were the Sierra dawn and the summer +east wind of the mountains. Together they conspired, and from the air +and earth they sweated all sweetness till in a mist of their own love +the leaves of the chaparral and the manzanita were dewed with the honey +dew. + +"Yo-to-to-wi is my honey-dew woman. Hear me! I am Ai-kut! Yo-to-to-wi +is my quail-woman, my deer-woman, my lush-woman of all soft rain and +fat soil. She was born of the thin starlight and the brittle +dawn-light, in the morning of the world, and she is the one woman of +all women to me." + +Again, with closed eyes, she lay silent for a while. Once she attempted +to draw a deeper breath, which caused her to cough slightly several +times. + +"Try not to cough," Dick said. + +They could see her brows contract with the effort of will to control +the irritating tickle that might precipitate a paroxysm. + +"Oh Dear, come around where I can see you," she said, when she opened +her eyes. + +The Chinese girl obeyed, moving blindly, so that Robinson, with a hand +on her arm, was compelled to guide her. + +"Good-by, Oh Dear. You've been very good to me always. And sometimes, +maybe, I have not been good to you. I am sorry. Remember, Mr. Forrest +will always be your father and your mother.... And all my jade is +yours." + +She closed her eyes in token that the brief audience was over. + +Again she was vexed by the tickling cough that threatened to grow more +pronounced. + +"I am ready, Dick," she said faintly, still with closed eyes. "I want +to make my sleepy, sleepy noise. Is the doctor ready? Come closer. Hold +my hand like you did before in the little death." + +She turned her eyes to Graham, and Dick did not look, for he knew love +was in that last look of hers, as he knew it would be when she looked +into his eyes at the last. + +"Once," she explained to Graham, "I had to go on the table, and I made +Dick go with me into the anaesthetic chamber and hold my hand until I +went under. You remember, Henley called it the drunken dark, the little +death in life. It was very easy." + +In the silence she continued her look, then turned her face and eyes +back to Dick, who knelt close to her, holding her hand. + +With a pressure of her fingers on his and a beckoning of her eyes, she +drew his ear down to her lips. + +"Red Cloud," she whispered, "I love you best. And I am proud I belonged +to you for such a long, long time." Still closer she drew him with the +pressure of her fingers. "I'm sorry there were no babies, Red Cloud." + +With the relaxing of her fingers she eased him from her so that she +could look from one to the other. + +"Two bonnie, bonnie men. Good-by, bonnie men. Good-by, Red Cloud." + +In the pause, they waited, while the doctor bared her arm for the +needle. + +"Sleepy, sleepy," she twittered in mimicry of drowsy birds. "I am +ready, doctor. Stretch the skin tight, first. You know I don't like to +be hurt.--Hold me tight, Dick." + +Robinson, receiving the eye permission from Dick, easily and quickly +thrust the needle through the stretched skin, with steady hand sank the +piston home, and with the ball of the finger soothingly rubbed the +morphine into circulation. + +"Sleepy, sleepy, boo'ful sleepy," she murmured drowsily, after a time. + +Semi-consciously she half-turned on her side, curved her free arm on +the pillow and nestled her head on it, and drew her body up in nestling +curves in the way Dick knew she loved to sleep. + +After a long time, she sighed faintly, and began so easily to go that +she was gone before they guessed. From without, the twittering of the +canaries bathing in the fountain penetrated the silence of the room, +and from afar came the trumpeting of Mountain Lad and the silver whinny +of the Fotherington Princess. + + + + +THE END + + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Little Lady of the Big House, by Jack London + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LITTLE LADY OF THE BIG HOUSE *** + +***** This file should be named 6455.txt or 6455.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/6/4/5/6455/ + +Produced by Curtis A. Weyant, David Maddock, Charles Franks +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at + www.gutenberg.org/license. + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at 809 +North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email +contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the +Foundation's web site and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. +To donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For forty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/6455.zip b/6455.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..6e891ac --- /dev/null +++ b/6455.zip diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5df5d72 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #6455 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6455) diff --git a/old/ltlbh10.txt b/old/ltlbh10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b7216 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/ltlbh10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,12173 @@ +Project Gutenberg's The Little Lady of the Big House, by Jack London +#51 in our series by Jack London + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: The Little Lady of the Big House + +Author: Jack London + +Release Date: September, 2004 [EBook #6455] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on December 15, 2002] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII (with a few ISO-8859-1 characters) + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITTLE LADY OF THE BIG HOUSE *** + + + + +Produced by Curtis A. Weyant, David Maddock, Charles Franks +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. + + + + +[Illustration: ] + + + +THE LITTLE LADY OF THE BIG HOUSE + +BY + +JACK LONDON + + + +Author of "The Valley of the Moon," +"The Star Rover," "The Sea Wolf," +Etc. + + + + + +CHAPTER I + + + +He awoke in the dark. His awakening was simple, easy, without movement +save for the eyes that opened and made him aware of darkness. Unlike +most, who must feel and grope and listen to, and contact with, the +world about them, he knew himself on the moment of awakening, +instantly identifying himself in time and place and personality. After +the lapsed hours of sleep he took up, without effort, the interrupted +tale of his days. He knew himself to be Dick Forrest, the master of +broad acres, who had fallen asleep hours before after drowsily putting +a match between the pages of "Road Town" and pressing off the electric +reading lamp. + +Near at hand there was the ripple and gurgle of some sleepy fountain. +From far off, so faint and far that only a keen ear could catch, he +heard a sound that made him smile with pleasure. He knew it for the +distant, throaty bawl of King Polo--King Polo, his champion Short Horn +bull, thrice Grand Champion also of all bulls at Sacramento at the +California State Fairs. The smile was slow in easing from Dick +Forrest's face, for he dwelt a moment on the new triumphs he had +destined that year for King Polo on the Eastern livestock circuits. He +would show them that a bull, California born and finished, could +compete with the cream of bulls corn-fed in Iowa or imported overseas +from the immemorial home of Short Horns. + +Not until the smile faded, which was a matter of seconds, did he reach +out in the dark and press the first of a row of buttons. There were +three rows of such buttons. The concealed lighting that spilled from +the huge bowl under the ceiling revealed a sleeping-porch, three sides +of which were fine-meshed copper screen. The fourth side was the house +wall, solid concrete, through which French windows gave access. + +He pressed the second button in the row and the bright light +concentered at a particular place on the concrete wall, illuminating, +in a row, a clock, a barometer, and centigrade and Fahrenheit +thermometers. Almost in a sweep of glance he read the messages of the +dials: time 4:30; air pressure, 29:80, which was normal at that +altitude and season; and temperature, Fahrenheit, 36°. With another +press, the gauges of time and heat and air were sent back into the +darkness. + +A third button turned on his reading lamp, so arranged that the light +fell from above and behind without shining into his eyes. The first +button turned off the concealed lighting overhead. He reached a mass +of proofsheets from the reading stand, and, pencil in hand, lighting a +cigarette, he began to correct. + +The place was clearly the sleeping quarters of a man who worked. +Efficiency was its key note, though comfort, not altogether Spartan, +was also manifest. The bed was of gray enameled iron to tone with the +concrete wall. Across the foot of the bed, an extra coverlet, hung a +gray robe of wolfskins with every tail a-dangle. On the floor, where +rested a pair of slippers, was spread a thick-coated skin of mountain +goat. + +Heaped orderly with books, magazines and scribble-pads, there was room +on the big reading stand for matches, cigarettes, an ash-tray, and a +thermos bottle. A phonograph, for purposes of dictation, stood on a +hinged and swinging bracket. On the wall, under the barometer and +thermometers, from a round wooden frame laughed the face of a girl. On +the wall, between the rows of buttons and a switchboard, from an open +holster, loosely projected the butt of a .44 Colt's automatic. + +At six o'clock, sharp, after gray light had begun to filter through +the wire netting, Dick Forrest, without raising his eyes from the +proofsheets, reached out his right hand and pressed a button in the +second row. Five minutes later a soft-slippered Chinese emerged on the +sleeping-porch. In his hands he bore a small tray of burnished copper +on which rested a cup and saucer, a tiny coffee pot of silver, and a +correspondingly tiny silver cream pitcher. + +"Good morning, Oh My," was Dick Forrest's greeting, and his eyes +smiled and his lips smiled as he uttered it. + +"Good morning, Master," Oh My returned, as he busied himself with +making room on the reading stand for the tray and with pouring the +coffee and cream. + +This done, without waiting further orders, noting that his master was +already sipping coffee with one hand while he made a correction on the +proof with the other, Oh My picked up a rosy, filmy, lacy boudoir cap +from the floor and departed. His exit was noiseless. He ebbed away +like a shadow through the open French windows. + +At six-thirty, sharp to the minute, he was back with a larger tray. +Dick Forrest put away the proofs, reached for a book entitled +"Commercial Breeding of Frogs," and prepared to eat. The breakfast was +simple yet fairly substantial--more coffee, a half grape-fruit, two +soft-boiled eggs made ready in a glass with a dab of butter and piping +hot, and a sliver of bacon, not over-cooked, that he knew was of his +own raising and curing. + +By this time the sunshine was pouring in through the screening and +across the bed. On the outside of the wire screen clung a number of +house-flies, early-hatched for the season and numb with the night's +cold. As Forrest ate he watched the hunting of the meat-eating yellow- +jackets. Sturdy, more frost-resistant than bees, they were already on +the wing and preying on the benumbed flies. Despite the rowdy noise of +their flight, these yellow hunters of the air, with rarely ever a +miss, pounced on their helpless victims and sailed away with them. The +last fly was gone ere Forrest had sipped his last sip of coffee, +marked "Commercial Breeding of Frogs" with a match, and taken up his +proofsheets. + +After a time, the liquid-mellow cry of the meadow-lark, first vocal +for the day, caused him to desist. He looked at the clock. It marked +seven. He set aside the proofs and began a series of conversations by +means of the switchboard, which he manipulated with a practiced hand. + +"Hello, Oh Joy," was his first talk. "Is Mr. Thayer up?... Very well. +Don't disturb him. I don't think he'll breakfast in bed, but find +out.... That's right, and show him how to work the hot water. Maybe he +doesn't know... Yes, that's right. Plan for one more boy as soon as +you can get him. There's always a crowd when the good weather comes +on.... Sure. Use your judgment. Good-by." + +"Mr. Hanley?... Yes," was his second conversation, over another +switch. "I've been thinking about the dam on the Buckeye. I want the +figures on the gravel-haul and on the rock-crushing.... Yes, that's +it. I imagine that the gravel-haul will cost anywhere between six and +ten cents a yard more than the crushed rock. That last pitch of hill +is what eats up the gravel-teams. Work out the figures. ... No, we +won't be able to start for a fortnight. ... Yes, yes; the new +tractors, if they ever deliver, will release the horses from the +plowing, but they'll have to go back for the checking.... No, you'll +have to see Mr. Everan about that. Good-by." + + And his third call: + +"Mr. Dawson? Ha! Ha! Thirty-six on my porch right now. It must be +white with frost down on the levels. But it's most likely the last +this year.... Yes, they swore the tractors would be delivered two days +ago.... Call up the station agent. ... By the way, you catch Hanley +for me. I forgot to tell him to start the 'rat-catchers' out with +the second instalment of fly-traps.... Yes, pronto. There were a +couple of dozen roosting on my screen this morning.... Yes.... Good- +by." + +At this stage, Forrest slid out of bed in his pajamas, slipped his +feet into the slippers, and strode through the French windows to the +bath, already drawn by Oh My. A dozen minutes afterward, shaved as +well, he was back in bed, reading his frog book while Oh My, punctual +to the minute, massaged his legs. + +They were the well-formed legs of a well-built, five-foot-ten man who +weighed a hundred and eighty pounds. Further, they told a tale of the +man. The left thigh was marred by a scar ten inches in length. Across +the left ankle, from instep to heel, were scattered half a dozen scars +the size of half-dollars. When Oh My prodded and pulled the left knee +a shade too severely, Forrest was guilty of a wince. The right shin +was colored with several dark scars, while a big scar, just under the +knee, was a positive dent in the bone. Midway between knee and groin +was the mark of an ancient three-inch gash, curiously dotted with the +minute scars of stitches. + +A sudden, joyous nicker from without put the match between the pages +of the frog book, and, while Oh My proceeded partly to dress his +master in bed, including socks and shoes, the master, twisting partly +on his side, stared out in the direction of the nicker. Down the road, +through the swaying purple of the early lilacs, ridden by a +picturesque cowboy, paced a great horse, glinting ruddy in the morning +sun-gold, flinging free the snowy foam of his mighty fetlocks, his +noble crest tossing, his eyes roving afield, the trumpet of his love- +call echoing through the springing land. + +Dick Forrest was smitten at the same instant with joy and anxiety--joy +in the glorious beast pacing down between the lilac hedges; anxiety in +that the stallion might have awakened the girl who laughed from the +round wooden frame on his wall. He glanced quickly across the two- +hundred-foot court to the long, shadowy jut of her wing of the house. +The shades of her sleeping-porch were down. They did not stir. Again +the stallion nickered, and all that moved was a flock of wild +canaries, upspringing from the flowers and shrubs of the court, rising +like a green-gold spray of light flung from the sunrise. + +He watched the stallion out of sight through the lilacs, seeing +visions of fair Shire colts mighty of bone and frame and free from +blemish, then turned, as ever he turned to the immediate thing, and +spoke to his body servant. + +"How's that last boy, Oh My? Showing up?" + +"Him pretty good boy, I think," was the answer. "Him young boy. +Everything new. Pretty slow. All the same bime by him show up good." + +"Why? What makes you think so?" + +"I call him three, four morning now. Him sleep like baby. Him wake up +smiling just like you. That very good." + +"Do I wake up smiling?" Forrest queried. + +Oh My nodded his head violently. + +"Many times, many years, I call you. Always your eyes open, your eyes +smile, your mouth smile, your face smile, you smile all over, just +like that, right away quick. That very good. A man wake up that way +got plenty good sense. I know. This new boy like that. Bime by, pretty +soon, he make fine boy. You see. His name Chow Gam. What name you call +him this place?" + +Dick Forrest meditated. + +"What names have we already?" he asked. + +"Oh Joy, Ah Well, Ah Me, and me; I am Oh My," the Chinese rattled off. +"Oh Joy him say call new boy--" + +He hesitated and stared at his master with a challenging glint of eye. +Forrest nodded. + +"Oh Joy him say call new boy 'Oh Hell.'" + +"Oh ho!" Forrest laughed in appreciation. "Oh Joy is a josher. A good +name, but it won't do. There is the Missus. We've got to think another +name." + +"Oh Ho, that very good name." + +Forrest's exclamation was still ringing in his consciousness so that +he recognized the source of Oh My's inspiration. + +"Very well. The boy's name is Oh Ho." + +Oh My lowered his head, ebbed swiftly through the French windows, and +as swiftly returned with the rest of Forrest's clothes-gear, helping +him into undershirt and shirt, tossing a tie around his neck for him +to knot, and, kneeling, putting on his leggings and spurs. A Baden +Powell hat and a quirt completed his appareling--the quirt, Indian- +braided of rawhide, with ten ounces of lead braided into the butt that +hung from his wrist on a loop of leather. + +But Forrest was not yet free. Oh My handed him several letters, with +the explanation that they had come up from the station the previous +night after Forrest had gone to bed. He tore the right-hand ends +across and glanced at the contents of all but one with speed. The +latter he dwelt upon for a moment, with an irritated indrawing of +brows, then swung out the phonograph from the wall, pressed the button +that made the cylinder revolve, and swiftly dictated, without ever a +pause for word or idea: + +"In reply to yours of March 14, 1914, I am indeed sorry to learn that +you were hit with hog cholera. I am equally sorry that you have seen +fit to charge me with the responsibility. And just as equally am I +sorry that the boar we sent you is dead. + +"I can only assure you that we are quite clear of cholera here, and +that we have been clear of cholera for eight years, with the exception +of two Eastern importations, the last two years ago, both of which, +according to our custom, were segregated on arrival and were destroyed +before the contagion could be communicated to our herds. + +"I feel that I must inform you that in neither case did I charge the +sellers with having sent me diseased stock. On the contrary, as you +should know, the incubation of hog cholera being nine days, I +consulted the shipping dates of the animals and knew that they had +been healthy when shipped. + +"Has it ever entered your mind that the railroads are largely +responsible for the spread of cholera? Did you ever hear of a railroad +fumigating or disinfecting a car which had carried cholera? Consult +the dates: First, of shipment by me; second, of receipt of the boar by +you; and, third, of appearance of symptoms in the boar. As you say, +because of washouts, the boar was five days on the way. Not until the +seventh day after you receipted for same did the first symptoms +appear. That makes twelve days after it left my hands. + +"No; I must disagree with you. I am not responsible for the disaster +that overtook your herd. Furthermore, doubly to assure you, write to +the State Veterinary as to whether or not my place is free of cholera. + +"Very truly yours..." + + + + +CHAPTER II + + + +When Forrest went through the French windows from his sleeping-porch, +he crossed, first, a comfortable dressing room, window-divaned, many- +lockered, with a generous fireplace, out of which opened a bathroom; +and, second, a long office room, wherein was all the paraphernalia of +business--desks, dictaphones, filing cabinets, book cases, magazine +files, and drawer-pigeonholes that tiered to the low, beamed ceiling. + +Midway in the office room, he pressed a button and a series of book- +freightened shelves swung on a pivot, revealing a tiny spiral stairway +of steel, which he descended with care that his spurs might not catch, +the bookshelves swinging into place behind him. + +At the foot of the stairway, a press on another button pivoted more +shelves of books and gave him entrance into a long low room shelved +with books from floor to ceiling. He went directly to a case, directly +to a shelf, and unerringly laid his hand on the book he sought. A +minute he ran the pages, found the passage he was after, nodded his +head to himself in vindication, and replaced the book. + +A door gave way to a pergola of square concrete columns spanned with +redwood logs and interlaced with smaller trunks of redwood, all rough +and crinkled velvet with the ruddy purple of the bark. + +It was evident, since he had to skirt several hundred feet of concrete +walls of wandering house, that he had not taken the short way out. +Under wide-spreading ancient oaks, where the long hitching-rails, +bark-chewed, and the hoof-beaten gravel showed the stamping place of +many horses, he found a pale-golden, almost tan-golden, sorrel mare. +Her well-groomed spring coat was alive and flaming in the morning sun +that slanted straight under the edge of the roof of trees. She was +herself alive and flaming. She was built like a stallion, and down her +backbone ran a narrow dark strip of hair that advertised an ancestry +of many range mustangs. + +"How's the Man-Eater this morning?" he queried, as he unsnapped the +tie-rope from her throat. + +She laid back the tiniest ears that ever a horse possessed--ears that +told of some thoroughbred's wild loves with wild mares among the +hills--and snapped at Forrest with wicked teeth and wicked-gleaming +eyes. + +She sidled and attempted to rear as he swung into the saddle, and, +sidling and attempting to rear, she went off down the graveled road. +And rear she would have, had it not been for the martingale that held +her head down and that, as well, saved the rider's nose from her +angry-tossing head. + +So used was he to the mare, that he was scarcely aware of her antics. +Automatically, with slightest touch of rein against arched neck, or +with tickle of spur or press of knee, he kept the mare to the way he +willed. Once, as she whirled and danced, he caught a glimpse of the +Big House. Big it was in all seeming, and yet, such was the vagrant +nature of it, it was not so big as it seemed. Eight hundred feet +across the front face, it stretched. But much of this eight hundred +feet was composed of mere corridors, concrete-walled, tile-roofed, +that connected and assembled the various parts of the building. There +were patios and pergolas in proportion, and all the walls, with their +many right-angled juts and recessions, arose out of a bed of greenery +and bloom. + +Spanish in character, the architecture of the Big House was not of the +California-Spanish type which had been introduced by way of Mexico a +hundred years before, and which had been modified by modern architects +to the California-Spanish architecture of the day. Hispano-Moresque +more technically classified the Big House in all its hybridness, +although there were experts who heatedly quarreled with the term. + +Spaciousness without austerity and beauty without ostentation were the +fundamental impressions the Big House gave. Its lines, long and +horizontal, broken only by lines that were vertical and by the lines +of juts and recesses that were always right-angled, were as chaste as +those of a monastery. The irregular roof-line, however, relieved the +hint of monotony. + +Low and rambling, without being squat, the square upthrusts of towers +and of towers over-topping towers gave just proportion of height +without being sky-aspiring. The sense of the Big House was solidarity. +It defied earthquakes. It was planted for a thousand years. The honest +concrete was overlaid by a cream-stucco of honest cement. Again, this +very sameness of color might have proved monotonous to the eye had it +not been saved by the many flat roofs of warm-red Spanish tile. + +In that one sweeping glance while the mare whirled unduly, Dick +Forrest's eyes, embracing all of the Big House, centered for a quick +solicitous instant on the great wing across the two-hundred-foot +court, where, under climbing groups of towers, red-snooded in the +morning sun, the drawn shades of the sleeping-porch tokened that his +lady still slept. + +About him, for three quadrants of the circle of the world, arose low- +rolling hills, smooth, fenced, cropped, and pastured, that melted into +higher hills and steeper wooded slopes that merged upward, steeper, +into mighty mountains. The fourth quadrant was unbounded by mountain +walls and hills. It faded away, descending easily to vast far flatlands, +which, despite the clear brittle air of frost, were too vast and far +to scan across. + +The mare under him snorted. His knees tightened as he straightened her +into the road and forced her to one side. Down upon him, with a +pattering of feet on the gravel, flowed a river of white shimmering +silk. He knew it at sight for his prize herd of Angora goats, each +with a pedigree, each with a history. There had to be a near two +hundred of them, and he knew, according to the rigorous selection he +commanded, not having been clipped in the fall, that the shining +mohair draping the sides of the least of them, as fine as any human +new-born baby's hair and finer, as white as any human albino's thatch +and whiter, was longer than the twelve-inch staple, and that the +mohair of the best of them would dye any color into twenty-inch +switches for women's heads and sell at prices unreasonable and +profound. + +The beauty of the sight held him as well. The roadway had become a +flowing ribbon of silk, gemmed with yellow cat-like eyes that floated +past wary and curious in their regard for him and his nervous horse. +Two Basque herders brought up the rear. They were short, broad, +swarthy men, black-eyed, vivid-faced, contemplative and philosophic of +expression. They pulled off their hats and ducked their heads to him. +Forrest lifted his right hand, the quirt dangling from wrist, the +straight forefinger touching the rim of his Baden Powell in semi- +military salute. + +The mare, prancing and whirling again, he held her with a touch of +rein and threat of spur, and gazed after the four-footed silk that +filled the road with shimmering white. He knew the significance of +their presence. The time for kidding was approaching and they were +being brought down from their brush-pastures to the brood-pens and +shelters for jealous care and generous feed through the period of +increase. And as he gazed, in his mind, comparing, was a vision of all +the best of Turkish and South African mohair he had ever seen, and his +flock bore the comparison well. It looked good. It looked very good. + +He rode on. From all about arose the clacking whir of manure- +spreaders. In the distance, on the low, easy-sloping hills, he saw +team after team, and many teams, three to a team abreast, what he knew +were his Shire mares, drawing the plows back and forth across, +contour-plowing, turning the green sod of the hillsides to the rich +dark brown of humus-filled earth so organic and friable that it would +almost melt by gravity into fine-particled seed-bed. That was for the +corn--and sorghum-planting for his silos. Other hill-slopes, in the +due course of his rotation, were knee-high in barley; and still other +slopes were showing the good green of burr clover and Canada pea. + +Everywhere about him, large fields and small were arranged in a system +of accessibility and workability that would have warmed the heart of +the most meticulous efficiency-expert. Every fence was hog-tight and +bull-proof, and no weeds grew in the shelters of the fences. Many of +the level fields were in alfalfa. Others, following the rotations, +bore crops planted the previous fall, or were in preparation for the +spring-planting. Still others, close to the brood barns and pens, were +being grazed by rotund Shropshire and French-Merino ewes, or were +being hogged off by white Gargantuan brood-sows that brought a flash +of pleasure in his eyes as he rode past and gazed. + +He rode through what was almost a village, save that there were +neither shops nor hotels. The houses were bungalows, substantial, +pleasing to the eye, each set in the midst of gardens where stouter +blooms, including roses, were out and smiling at the threat of late +frost. Children were already astir, laughing and playing among the +flowers or being called in to breakfast by their mothers. + +Beyond, beginning at a half-mile distant to circle the Big House, he +passed a row of shops. He paused at the first and glanced in. One +smith was working at a forge. A second smith, a shoe fresh-nailed on +the fore-foot of an elderly Shire mare that would disturb the scales +at eighteen hundred weight, was rasping down the outer wall of the +hoof to smooth with the toe of the shoe. Forrest saw, saluted, rode +on, and, a hundred feet away, paused and scribbled a memorandum in the +notebook he drew from his hip-pocket. + +He passed other shops--a paint-shop, a wagon-shop, a plumbing shop, a +carpenter-shop. While he glanced at the last, a hybrid machine, half- +auto, half-truck, passed him at speed and took the main road for the +railroad station eight miles away. He knew it for the morning butter- +truck freighting from the separator house the daily output of the +dairy. + +The Big House was the hub of the ranch organization. Half a mile from +it, it was encircled by the various ranch centers. Dick Forrest, +saluting continually his people, passed at a gallop the dairy center, +which was almost a sea of buildings with batteries of silos and with +litter carriers emerging on overhead tracks and automatically dumping +into waiting manure-spreaders. Several times, business-looking men, +college-marked, astride horses or driving carts, stopped him and +conferred with him. They were foremen, heads of departments, and they +were as brief and to the point as was he. The last of them, astride a +Palomina three-year-old that was as graceful and wild as a half-broken +Arab, was for riding by with a bare salute, but was stopped by his +employer. + +"Good morning, Mr. Hennessy, and how soon will she be ready for Mrs. +Forrest?" Dick Forrest asked. + +"I'd like another week," was Hennessy's answer. "She's well broke now, +just the way Mrs. Forrest wanted, but she's over-strung and sensitive +and I'd like the week more to set her in her ways." + +Forrest nodded concurrence, and Hennessy, who was the veterinary, went +on: + +"There are two drivers in the alfalfa gang I'd like to send down the +hill." + +"What's the matter with them?" + +"One, a new man, Hopkins, is an ex-soldier. He may know government +mules, but he doesn't know Shires." + +Forrest nodded. + +"The other has worked for us two years, but he's drinking now, and he +takes his hang-overs out on his horses--" + +"That's Smith, old-type American, smooth-shaven, with a cast in his +left eye?" Forrest interrupted. + +The veterinary nodded. + +"I've been watching him," Forrest concluded. "He was a good man at +first, but he's slipped a cog recently. Sure, send him down the hill. +And send that other fellow--Hopkins, you said?--along with him. By the +way, Mr. Hennessy." As he spoke, Forrest drew forth his pad book, tore +off the last note scribbled, and crumpled it in his hand. "You've a +new horse-shoer in the shop. How does he strike you?" + +"He's too new to make up my mind yet." + +"Well, send him down the hill along with the other two. He can't take +your orders. I observed him just now fitting a shoe to old Alden +Bessie by rasping off half an inch of the toe of her hoof." + +"He knew better." + +"Send him down the hill," Forrest repeated, as he tickled his champing +mount with the slightest of spur-tickles and shot her out along the +road, sidling, head-tossing, and attempting to rear. + +Much he saw that pleased him. Once, he murmured aloud, "A fat land, a +fat land." Divers things he saw that did not please him and that won a +note in his scribble pad. Completing the circle about the Big House +and riding beyond the circle half a mile to an isolated group of sheds +and corrals, he reached the objective of the ride: the hospital. Here +he found but two young heifers being tested for tuberculosis, and a +magnificent Duroc Jersey boar in magnificent condition. Weighing fully +six hundred pounds, its bright eyes, brisk movements, and sheen of +hair shouted out that there was nothing the matter with it. +Nevertheless, according to the ranch practice, being a fresh +importation from Iowa, it was undergoing the regular period of +quarantine. Burgess Premier was its name in the herd books of the +association, age two years, and it had cost Forrest five hundred +dollars laid down on the ranch. + +Proceeding at a hand gallop along a road that was one of the spokes +radiating from the Big House hub, Forrest overtook Crellin, his hog +manager, and, in a five-minute conference, outlined the next few +months of destiny of Burgess Premier, and learned that the brood sow, +Lady Isleton, the matron of all matrons of the O. I. C.'s and blue- +ribboner in all shows from Seattle to San Diego, was safely farrowed +of eleven. Crellin explained that he had sat up half the night with +her and was then bound home for bath and breakfast. + +"I hear your oldest daughter has finished high school and wants to +enter Stanford," Forrest said, curbing the mare just as he had half- +signaled departure at a gallop. + +Crellin, a young man of thirty-five, with the maturity of a long-time +father stamped upon him along with the marks of college and the +youthfulness of a man used to the open air and straight-living, showed +his appreciation of his employer's interest as he half-flushed under +his tan and nodded. + +"Think it over," Forrest advised. "Make a statistic of all the college +girls--yes, and State Normal girls--you know. How many of them follow +career, and how many of them marry within two years after their +degrees and take to baby farming." + +"Helen is very seriously bent on the matter," Crellin urged. + +"Do you remember when I had my appendix out?" Forrest queried. "Well, +I had as fine a nurse as I ever saw and as nice a girl as ever walked +on two nice legs. She was just six months a full-fledged nurse, then. +And four months after that I had to send her a wedding present. She +married an automobile agent. She's lived in hotels ever since. She's +never had a chance to nurse--never a child of her own to bring through +a bout with colic. But... she has hopes... and, whether or not her +hopes materialize, she's confoundedly happy. But... what good was her +nursing apprenticeship?" + +Just then an empty manure-spreader passed, forcing Crellin, on foot, +and Forrest, on his mare, to edge over to the side of the road. +Forrest glanced with kindling eye at the off mare of the machine, a +huge, symmetrical Shire whose own blue ribbons, and the blue ribbons +of her progeny, would have required an expert accountant to enumerate +and classify. + +"Look at the Fotherington Princess," Forrest said, nodding at the mare +that warmed his eye. "She is a normal female. Only incidentally, +through thousands of years of domestic selection, has man evolved her +into a draught beast breeding true to kind. But being a draught-beast +is secondary. Primarily she is a female. Take them by and large, our +own human females, above all else, love us men and are intrinsically +maternal. There is no biological sanction for all the hurly burly of +woman to-day for suffrage and career." + +"But there is an economic sanction," Crellin objected. + +"True," his employer agreed, then proceeded to discount. "Our present +industrial system prevents marriage and compels woman to career. But, +remember, industrial systems come, and industrial systems go, while +biology runs on forever." + +"It's rather hard to satisfy young women with marriage these days," +the hog-manager demurred. + +Dick Forrest laughed incredulously. + +"I don't know about that," he said. "There's your wife for an +instance. She with her sheepskin--classical scholar at that--well, +what has she done with it?... Two boys and three girls, I believe? As +I remember your telling me, she was engaged to you the whole last half +of her senior year." + +"True, but--" Crellin insisted, with an eye-twinkle of appreciation of +the point, "that was fifteen years ago, as well as a love-match. We +just couldn't help it. That far, I agree. She had planned unheard-of +achievements, while I saw nothing else than the deanship of the +College of Agriculture. We just couldn't help it. But that was fifteen +years ago, and fifteen years have made all the difference in the world +in the ambitions and ideals of our young women." + +"Don't you believe it for a moment. I tell you, Mr. Crellin, it's a +statistic. All contrary things are transient. Ever woman remains +Avoman, everlasting, eternal. Not until our girl-children cease from +playing with dolls and from looking at their own enticingness in +mirrors, will woman ever be otherwise than what she has always been: +first, the mother, second, the mate of man. It is a statistic. I've +been looking up the girls who graduate from the State Normal. You will +notice that those who marry by the way before graduation are excluded. +Nevertheless, the average length of time the graduates actually teach +school is little more than two years. And when you consider that a lot +of them, through ill looks and ill luck, are foredoomed old maids and +are foredoomed to teach all their lives, you can see how they cut down +the period of teaching of the marriageable ones." + +"A woman, even a girl-woman, will have her way where mere men are +concerned," Crellin muttered, unable to dispute his employer's figures +but resolved to look them up. + +"And your girl-woman will go to Stanford," Forrest laughed, as he +prepared to lift his mare into a gallop, "and you and I and all men, +to the end of time, will see to it that they do have their way." + +Crellin smiled to himself as his employer diminished down the road; +for Crellin knew his Kipling, and the thought that caused the smile +was: "But where's the kid of your own, Mr. Forrest?" He decided to +repeat it to Mrs. Crellin over the breakfast coffee. + +Once again Dick Forrest delayed ere he gained the Big House. The man +he stopped he addressed as Mendenhall, who was his horse-manager as +well as pasture expert, and who was reputed to know, not only every +blade of grass on the ranch, but the length of every blade of grass +and its age from seed-germination as well. + +At signal from Forrest, Mendenhall drew up the two colts he was +driving in a double breaking-cart. What had caused Forrest to signal +was a glance he had caught, across the northern edge of the valley, of +great, smooth-hill ranges miles beyond, touched by the sun and deeply +green where they projected into the vast flat of the Sacramento +Valley. + +The talk that followed was quick and abbreviated to terms of +understanding between two men who knew. Grass was the subject. Mention +was made of the winter rainfall and of the chance for late spring +rains to come. Names occurred, such as the Little Coyote and Los +Cuatos creeks, the Yolo and the Miramar hills, the Big Basin, Round +Valley, and the San Anselmo and Los Banos ranges. Movements of herds +and droves, past, present, and to come, were discussed, as well as the +outlook for cultivated hay in far upland pastures and the estimates of +such hay that still remained over the winter in remote barns in the +sheltered mountain valleys where herds had wintered and been fed. + +Under the oaks, at the stamping posts, Forrest was saved the trouble +of tying the Man-Eater. A stableman came on the run to take the mare, +and Forrest, scarce pausing for a word about a horse by the name of +Duddy, was clanking his spurs into the Big House. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + + +Forrest entered a section of the Big House by way of a massive, hewn- +timber, iron-studded door that let in at the foot of what seemed a +donjon keep. The floor was cement, and doors let off in various +directions. One, opening to a Chinese in the white apron and starched +cap of a chef, emitted at the same time the low hum of a dynamo. It +was this that deflected Forrest from his straight path. He paused, +holding the door ajar, and peered into a cool, electric-lighted cement +room where stood a long, glass-fronted, glass-shelved refrigerator +flanked by an ice-machine and a dynamo. On the floor, in greasy +overalls, squatted a greasy little man to whom his employer nodded. + +"Anything wrong, Thompson?" he asked. + +"There _was,"_ was the answer, positive and complete. + +Forrest closed the door and went on along a passage that was like a +tunnel. Narrow, iron-barred openings, like the slits for archers in +medieval castles, dimly lighted the way. Another door gave access to a +long, low room, beam-ceilinged, with a fireplace in which an ox could +have been roasted. A huge stump, resting on a bed of coals, blazed +brightly. Two billiard tables, several card tables, lounging corners, +and a miniature bar constituted the major furnishing. Two young men +chalked their cues and returned Forrest's greeting. + +"Good morning, Mr. Naismith," he bantered. "--More material for the +_Breeders' Gazette?"_ + +Naismith, a youngish man of thirty, with glasses, smiled sheepishly +and cocked his head at his companion. + +"Wainwright challenged me," he explained. + +"Which means that Lute and Ernestine must still be beauty-sleeping," +Forrest laughed. + +Young Wainwright bristled to acceptance of the challenge, but before +he could utter the retort on his lips his host was moving on and +addressing Naismith over his shoulder. + +"Do you want to come along at eleven:thirty? Thayer and I are running +out in the machine to look over the Shropshires. He wants about ten +carloads of rams. You ought to find good stuff in this matter of Idaho +shipments. Bring your camera along.--Seen Thayer this morning?" + +"Just came in to breakfast as we were leaving," Bert Wainwright +volunteered. + +"Tell him to be ready at eleven-thirty if you see him. You're not +invited, Bert... out of kindness. The girls are sure to be up then." + +"Take Rita along with you anyway," Bert pleaded. + +"No fear," was Forrest's reply from the door. "We're on business. +Besides, you can't pry Rita from Ernestine with block-and-tackle." + +"That's why I wanted to see if you could," Bert grinned. + +"Funny how fellows never appreciate their own sisters." Forrest paused +for a perceptible moment. "I always thought Rita was a real nice +sister. What's the matter with her?" + +Before a reply could reach him, he had closed the door and was +jingling his spurs along the passage to a spiral stairway of broad +concrete steps. As he left the head of the stairway, a dance-time +piano measure and burst of laughter made him peep into a white morning +room, flooded with sunshine. A young girl, in rose-colored kimono and +boudoir cap, was at the instrument, while two others, similarly +accoutered, in each other's arms, were parodying a dance never learned +at dancing school nor intended by the participants for male eyes to +see. + +The girl at the piano discovered him, winked, and played on. Not for +another minute did the dancers spy him. They gave startled cries, +collapsed, laughing, in each other's arms, and the music stopped. They +were gorgeous, healthy young creatures, the three of them, and +Forrest's eye kindled as he looked at them in quite the same way that +it had kindled when he regarded the Fotherington Princess. + +Persiflage, of the sort that obtains among young things of the human +kind, flew back and forth. + +"I've been here five minutes," Dick Forrest asserted. + +The two dancers, to cover their confusion, doubted his veracity and +instanced his many well-known and notorious guilts of mendacity. The +girl at the piano, Ernestine, his sister-in-law, insisted that pearls +of truth fell from his lips, that she had seen him from the moment he +began to look, and that as she estimated the passage of time he had +been looking much longer than five minutes. + +"Well, anyway," Forrest broke in on their babel, "Bert, the sweet +innocent, doesn't think you are up yet." + +"We're not... to him," one of the dancers, a vivacious young Venus, +retorted. "Nor are we to you either. So run along, little boy. Run +along." + +"Look here, Lute," Forrest began sternly. "Just because I am a +decrepit old man, and just because you are eighteen, just eighteen, +and happen to be my wife's sister, you needn't presume to put the high +and mighty over on me. Don't forget--and I state the fact, +disagreeable as it may be, for Rita's sake--don't forget that in the +past ten years I've paddled you more disgraceful times than you care +to dare me to enumerate. + +"It is true, I am not so young as I used to was, but--" He felt the +biceps of his right arm and made as if to roll up the sleeve. "--But, +I'm not all in yet, and for two cents..." + +"What?" the young woman challenged belligerently. + +"For two cents," he muttered darkly. "For two cents... Besides, and it +grieves me to inform you, your cap is not on straight. Also, it is not +a very tasteful creation at best. I could make a far more becoming cap +with my toes, asleep, and... yes, seasick as well." + +Lute tossed her blond head defiantly, glanced at her comrades in +solicitation of support, and said: + +"Oh, I don't know. It seems humanly reasonable that the three of us +can woman-handle a mere man of your elderly and insulting avoirdupois. +What do you say, girls? Let's rush him. He's not a minute under forty, +and he has an aneurism. Yes, and though loath to divulge family +secrets, he's got Meniere's Disease." + +Ernestine, a small but robust blonde of eighteen, sprang from the +piano and joined her two comrades in a raid on the cushions of the +deep window seats. Side by side, a cushion in each hand, and with +proper distance between them cannily established for the swinging of +the cushions, they advanced upon the foe. + +Forrest prepared for battle, then held up his hand for parley. + +"'Fraid cat!" they taunted, in several at first, and then in chorus. + +He shook his head emphatically. + +"Just for that, and for all the rest of your insolences, the three of +you are going to get yours. All the wrongs of a lifetime are rising +now in my brain in a dazzling brightness. I shall go Berserk in a +moment. But first, and I speak as an agriculturist, and I address +myself to you, Lute, in all humility, in heaven's name what is +Meniere's Disease? Do sheep catch it?" + +"Meniere's Disease is," Lute began,... "is what you've got. Sheep are +the only known living creatures that get it." + +Ensued red war and chaos. Forrest made a football rush of the sort +that obtained in California before the adoption of Rugby; and the +girls broke the line to let him through, turned upon him, flanked him +on either side, and pounded him with cushions. + +He turned, with widespread arms, extended fingers, each finger a hook, +and grappled the three. The battle became a whirlwind, a be-spurred +man the center, from which radiated flying draperies of flimsy silk, +disconnected slippers, boudoir caps, and hairpins. There were thuds +from the cushions, grunts from the man, squeals, yelps and giggles +from the girls, and from the totality of the combat inextinguishable +laughter and a ripping and tearing of fragile textures. + +Dick Forrest found himself sprawled on the floor, the wind half +knocked out of him by shrewdly delivered cushions, his head buzzing +from the buffeting, and, in one hand, a trailing, torn, and generally +disrupted girdle of pale blue silk and pink roses. + +In one doorway, cheeks flaming from the struggle, stood Rita, alert as +a fawn and ready to flee. In the other doorway, likewise flame- +checked, stood Ernestine in the commanding attitude of the Mother of +the Gracchi, the wreckage of her kimono wrapped severely about her and +held severely about her by her own waist-pressing arm. Lute, cornered +behind the piano, attempted to run but was driven back by the menace +of Forrest, who, on hands and knees, stamped loudly with the palms of +his hands on the hardwood floor, rolled his head savagely, and emitted +bull-like roars. + +"And they still believe that old prehistoric myth," Ernestine +proclaimed from safety, "that once he, that wretched semblance of a +man-thing prone in the dirt, captained Berkeley to victory over +Stanford." + +Her breasts heaved from the exertion, and he marked the pulsating of +the shimmering cherry-colored silk with delight as he flung his glance +around to the other two girls similarly breathing. + +The piano was a miniature grand--a dainty thing of rich white and gold +to match the morning room. It stood out from the wall, so that there +was possibility for Lute to escape around either way of it. Forrest +gained his feet and faced her across the broad, flat top of the +instrument. As he threatened to vault it, Lute cried out in horror: + +"But your spurs, Dick! Your spurs!" + +"Give me time to take them off," he offered. + +As he stooped to unbuckle them, Lute darted to escape, but was herded +back to the shelter of the piano. + +"All right," he growled. "On your head be it. If the piano's scratched +I'll tell Paula." + +"I've got witnesses," she panted, indicating with her blue joyous eyes +the young things in the doorways. + +"Very well, my dear." Forrest drew back his body and spread his +resting palms. "I'm coming over to you." + +Action and speech were simultaneous. His body, posited sidewise from +his hands, was vaulted across, the perilous spurs a full foot above +the glossy white surface. And simultaneously Lute ducked and went +under the piano on hands and knees. Her mischance lay in that she +bumped her head, and, before she could recover way, Forrest had +circled the piano and cornered her under it. + +"Come out!" he commanded. "Come out and take your medicine!" + +"A truce," she pleaded. "A truce, Sir Knight, for dear love's sake and +all damsels in distress." + +"I ain't no knight," Forrest announced in his deepest bass. "I'm an +ogre, a filthy, debased and altogether unregenerate ogre. I was born +in the tule-swamps. My father was an ogre and my mother was more so. I +was lulled to slumber on the squalls of infants dead, foreordained, +and predamned. I was nourished solely on the blood of maidens educated +in Mills Seminary. My favorite chophouse has ever been a hardwood +floor, a loaf of Mills Seminary maiden, and a roof of flat piano. My +father, as well as an ogre, was a California horse-thief. I am more +reprehensible than my father. I have more teeth. My mother, as well as +an ogress, was a Nevada book-canvasser. Let all her shame be told. She +even solicited subscriptions for ladies' magazines. I am more terrible +than my mother. I have peddled safety razors." + +"Can naught soothe and charm your savage breast?" Lute pleaded in +soulful tones while she studied her chances for escape. + +"One thing only, miserable female. One thing only, on the earth, over +the earth, and under its ruining waters--" + +A squawk of recognized plagiarism interrupted him from Ernestine. + +"See Ernest Dowson, page seventy-nine, a thin book of thin verse +ladled out with porridge to young women detentioned at Mills +Seminary," Forrest went on. "As I had already enunciated before I was +so rudely interrupted, the one thing only that can balm and embalm +this savage breast is the 'Maiden's Prayer.' Listen, with all your +ears ere I chew them off in multitude and gross! Listen, silly, +unbeautiful, squat, short-legged and ugly female under the piano! Can +you recite the 'Maiden's Prayer'?" + +Screams of delight from the young things in the doorways prevented the +proper answer and Lute, from under the piano, cried out to young +Wainwright, who had appeared: + +"A rescue, Sir Knight! A rescue!" + +"Unhand the maiden!" was Bert's challenge. + +"Who art thou?" Forrest demanded. + +"King George, sirrah!--I mean, er, Saint George." + +"Then am I thy dragon," Forrest announced with due humility. "Spare +this ancient, honorable, and only neck I have." + +"Off with his head!" the young things encouraged. + +"Stay thee, maidens, I pray thee," Bert begged. "I am only a Small +Potato. Yet am I unafraid. I shall beard the dragon. I shall beard him +in his gullet, and, while he lingeringly chokes to death over my +unpalatableness and general spinefulness, do you, fair damsels, flee +to the mountains lest the valleys fall upon you. Yolo, Petaluma, and +West Sacramento are about to be overwhelmed by a tidal wave and many +big fishes." + +"Off with his head!" the young things chanted. "Slay him in his blood +and barbecue him!" + +"Thumbs down," Forrest groaned. "I am undone. Trust to the unstrained +quality of mercy possessed by Christian young women in the year 1914 +who will vote some day if ever they grow up and do not marry +foreigners. Consider my head off, Saint George. I am expired. Further +deponent sayeth not." + +And Forrest, with sobs and slubberings, with realistic shudders and +kicks and a great jingling of spurs, lay down on the floor and +expired. + +Lute crawled out from under the piano, and was joined by Rita and +Ernestine in an extemporized dance of the harpies about the slain. + +In the midst of it, Forrest sat up, protesting. Also, he was guilty of +a significant and privy wink to Lute. + +"The hero!" he cried. "Forget him not. Crown him with flowers." + +And Bert was crowned with flowers from the vases, unchanged from the +day before. When a bunch of water-logged stems of early tulips, +propelled by Lute's vigorous arm, impacted soggily on his neck under +the ear, he fled. The riot of pursuit echoed along the hall and died +out down the stairway toward the stag room. Forrest gathered himself +together, and, grinning, went jingling on through the Big House. + +He crossed two patios on brick walks roofed with Spanish tile and +swamped with early foliage and blooms, and gained his wing of the +house, still breathing from the fun, to find, in the office, his +secretary awaiting him. + +"Good morning, Mr. Blake," he greeted. "Sorry I was delayed." He +glanced at his wrist-watch. "Only four minutes, however. I just +couldn't get away sooner." + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + + +From nine till ten Forrest gave himself up to his secretary, achieving +a correspondence that included learned societies and every sort of +breeding and agricultural organization and that would have compelled +the average petty business man, unaided, to sit up till midnight to +accomplish. + +For Dick Forrest was the center of a system which he himself had built +and of which he was secretly very proud. Important letters and +documents he signed with his ragged fist. All other letters were +rubber-stamped by Mr. Blake, who, also, in shorthand, in the course of +the hour, put down the indicated answers to many letters and received +the formula designations of reply to many other letters. Mr. Blake's +private opinion was that he worked longer hours than his employer, +although it was equally his private opinion that his employer was a +wonder for discovering work for others to perform. + +At ten, to the stroke of the clock, as Pittman, Forrest's show- +manager, entered the office, Blake, burdened with trays of +correspondence, sheafs of documents, and phonograph cylinders, faded +away to his own office. + +From ten to eleven a stream of managers and foremen flowed in and out. +All were well disciplined in terseness and time-saving. As Dick +Forrest had taught them, the minutes spent with him were not minutes +of cogitation. They must be prepared before they reported or +suggested. Bonbright, the assistant secretary, always arrived at ten +to replace Blake; and Bonbright, close to shoulder, with flying +pencil, took down the rapid-fire interchange of question and answer, +statement and proposal and plan. These shorthand notes, transcribed +and typed in duplicate, were the nightmare and, on occasion, the +Nemesis, of the managers and foremen. For, first, Forrest had a +remarkable memory; and, second, he was prone to prove its worth by +reference to those same notes of Bonbright. + +A manager, at the end of a five or ten minute session, often emerged +sweating, limp and frazzled. Yet for a swift hour, at high tension, +Forrest met all comers, with a master's grip handling them and all the +multifarious details of their various departments. He told Thompson, +the machinist, in four flashing minutes, where the fault lay in the +dynamo to the Big House refrigerator, laid the fault home to Thompson, +dictated a note to Bonbright, with citation by page and chapter to a +volume from the library to be drawn by Thompson, told Thompson that +Parkman, the dairy manager, was not satisfied with the latest wiring +up of milking machines, and that the refrigerating plant at the +slaughter house was balking at its accustomed load. + +Each man was a specialist, yet Forrest was the proved master of their +specialties. As Paulson, the head plowman, complained privily to +Dawson, the crop manager: "I've worked here twelve years and never +have I seen him put his hands to a plow, and yet, damn him, he somehow +seems to know. He's a genius, that's what he is. Why, d'ye know, I've +seen him tear by a piece of work, his hands full with that Man-Eater +of his a-threatenin' sudden funeral, an', next morning, had 'm mention +casually to a half-inch how deep it was plowed an' what plows'd done +the plowin'!--Take that plowin' of the Poppy Meadow, up above Little +Meadow, on Los Cuatos. I just couldn't see my way to it, an' had to +cut out the cross-sub-soiling, an' thought I could slip it over on +him. After it was all finished he kind of happened up that way--I was +lookin' an' he didn't seem to look--an', well, next A.M. I got mine in +the office. No; I didn't slip it over. I ain't tried to slip nothing +over since." + +At eleven sharp, Wardman, his sheep manager, departed with an +engagement scheduled at eleven: thirty to ride in the machine along +with Thayer, the Idaho buyer, to look over the Shropshire rams. At +eleven, Bonbright having departed with Wardman to work up his notes, +Forrest was left alone in the office. From a wire tray of unfinished +business--one of many wire trays superimposed in groups of five--he +drew a pamphlet issued by the State of Iowa on hog cholera and +proceeded to scan it. + +Five feet, ten inches in height, weighing a clean-muscled one hundred +and eighty pounds, Dick Forrest was anything but insignificant for a +forty years' old man. The eyes were gray, large, over-arched by bone +of brow, and lashes and brows were dark. The hair, above an ordinary +forehead, was light brown to chestnut. Under the forehead, the cheeks +showed high-boned, with underneath the slight hollows that necessarily +accompany such formation. The jaws were strong without massiveness, +the nose, large-nostriled, was straight enough and prominent enough +without being too straight or prominent, the chin square without +harshness and uncleft, and the mouth girlish and sweet to a degree +that did not hide the firmness to which the lips could set on due +provocation. The skin was smooth and well-tanned, although, midway +between eyebrows and hair, the tan of forehead faded in advertisement +of the rim of the Baden Powell interposed between him and the sun. + +Laughter lurked in the mouth corners and eye-corners, and there were +cheek lines about the mouth that would seem to have been formed by +laughter. Equally strong, however, every line of the face that meant +blended things carried a notice of surety. Dick Forrest was sure-- +sure, when his hand reached out for any object on his desk, that the +hand would straightly attain the object without a fumble or a miss of +a fraction of an inch; sure, when his brain leaped the high places of +the hog cholera text, that it was not missing a point; sure, from his +balanced body in the revolving desk-chair to the balanced back-head of +him; sure, in heart and brain, of life and work, of all he possessed, +and of himself. + +He had reason to be sure. Body, brain, and career were long-proven +sure. A rich man's son, he had not played ducks and drakes with his +father's money. City born and reared, he had gone back to the land and +made such a success as to put his name on the lips of breeders +wherever breeders met and talked. He was the owner, without +encumbrance, of two hundred and fifty thousand acres of land--land +that varied in value from a thousand dollars an acre to a hundred +dollars, that varied from a hundred dollars to ten cents an acre, and +that, in stretches, was not worth a penny an acre. The improvements on +that quarter of a million acres, from drain-tiled meadows to dredge- +drained tule swamps, from good roads to developed water-rights, from +farm buildings to the Big House itself, constituted a sum gaspingly +ungraspable to the country-side. + +Everything was large-scale but modern to the last tick of the clock. +His managers lived, rent-free, with salaries commensurate to ability, +in five--and ten-thousand-dollar houses--but they were the cream of +specialists skimmed from the continent from the Atlantic to the +Pacific. When he ordered gasoline-tractors for the cultivation of the +flat lands, he ordered a round score. When he dammed water in his +mountains he dammed it by the hundreds of millions of gallons. When he +ditched his tule-swamps, instead of contracting the excavation, he +bought the huge dredgers outright, and, when there was slack work on +his own marshes, he contracted for the draining of the marshes of +neighboring big farmers, land companies, and corporations for a +hundred miles up and down the Sacramento River. + +He had brain sufficient to know the need of buying brains and to pay a +tidy bit over the current market price for the most capable brains. +And he had brain sufficient to direct the brains he bought to a +profitable conclusion. + +And yet, he was just turned forty was clear-eyed, calm-hearted, +hearty-pulsed, man-strong; and yet, his history, until he was thirty, +had been harum-scarum and erratic to the superlative. He had run away +from a millionaire home when he was thirteen. He had won enviable +college honors ere he was twenty-one and after that he had known all +the purple ports of the purple seas, and, with cool head, hot heart, +and laughter, played every risk that promised and provided in the wild +world of adventure that he had lived to see pass under the sobriety of +law. + +In the old days of San Francisco Forrest had been a name to conjure +with. The Forrest Mansion had been one of the pioneer palaces on Nob +Hill where dwelt the Floods, the Mackays, the Crockers, and the +O'Briens. "Lucky" Richard Forrest, the father, had arrived, via the +Isthmus, straight from old New England, keenly commercial, interested +before his departure in clipper ships and the building of clipper +ships, and interested immediately after his arrival in water-front +real estate, river steamboats, mines, of course, and, later, in the +draining of the Nevada Comstock and the construction of the Southern +Pacific. + +He played big, he won big, he lost big; but he won always more than he +lost, and what he paid out at one game with one hand, he drew back +with his other hand at another game. His winnings from the Comstock he +sank into the various holes of the bottomless Daffodil Group in +Eldorado County. The wreckage from the Benicia Line he turned into the +Napa Consolidated, which was a quicksilver venture, and it earned him +five thousand per cent. What he lost in the collapse of the Stockton +boom was more than balanced by the realty appreciation of his key- +holdings at Sacramento and Oakland. + +And, to cap it all, when "Lucky" Richard Forrest had lost everything +in a series of calamities, so that San Francisco debated what price +his Nob Hill palace would fetch at auction, he grubstaked one, Del +Nelson, to a prospecting in Mexico. As soberly set down in history, +the result of the said Del Nelson's search for quartz was the Harvest +Group, including the fabulous and inexhaustible Tattlesnake, Voice, +City, Desdemona, Bullfrog, and Yellow Boy claims. Del Nelson, +astounded by his achievement, within the year drowned himself in an +enormous quantity of cheap whisky, and, the will being incontestible +through lack of kith and kin, left his half to Lucky Richard Forrest. + +Dick Forrest was the son of his father. Lucky Richard, a man of +boundless energy and enterprise, though twice married and twice +widowed, had not been blessed with children. His third marriage +occurred in 1872, when he was fifty-eight, and in 1874, although he +lost the mother, a twelve-pound boy, stout-barreled and husky-lunged, +remained to be brought up by a regiment of nurses in the palace on Nob +Hill. + +Young Dick was precocious. Lucky Richard was a democrat. Result: Young +Dick learned in a year from a private teacher what would have required +three years in the grammar school, and used all of the saved years in +playing in the open air. Also, result of precocity of son and +democracy of father, Young Dick was sent to grammar school for the +last year in order to learn shoulder-rubbing democracy with the sons +and daughters of workmen, tradesmen, saloon-keepers and politicians. + +In class recitation or spelling match his father's millions did not +aid him in competing with Patsy Halloran, the mathematical prodigy +whose father was a hod-carrier, nor with Mona Sanguinetti who was a +wizard at spelling and whose widowed mother ran a vegetable store. Nor +were his father's millions and the Nob Hill palace of the slightest +assistance to Young Dick when he peeled his jacket and, bareknuckled, +without rounds, licking or being licked, milled it to a finish with +Jimmy Botts, Jean Choyinsky, and the rest of the lads that went out +over the world to glory and cash a few years later, a generation of +prizefighters that only San Francisco, raw and virile and yeasty and +young, could have produced. + +The wisest thing Lucky Richard did for his boy was to give him this +democratic tutelage. In his secret heart, Young Dick never forgot that +he lived in a palace of many servants and that his father was a man of +power and honor. On the other hand, Young Dick learned two-legged, +two-fisted democracy. He learned it when Mona Sanguinetti spelled him +down in class. He learned it when Berney Miller out-dodged and out-ran +him when running across in Black Man. + +And when Tim Hagan, with straight left for the hundredth time to +bleeding nose and mangled mouth, and with ever reiterant right hook to +stomach, had him dazed and reeling, the breath whistling and sobbing +through his lacerated lips--was no time for succor from palaces and +bank accounts. On his two legs, with his two fists, it was either he +or Tim. And it was right there, in sweat and blood and iron of soul, +that Young Dick learned how not to lose a losing fight. It had been +uphill from the first blow, but he stuck it out until in the end it +was agreed that neither could best the other, although this agreement +was not reached until they had first lain on the ground in nausea and +exhaustion and with streaming eyes wept their rage and defiance at +each other. After that, they became chums and between them ruled the +schoolyard. + +Lucky Richard died the same month Young Dick emerged from grammar +school. Young Dick was thirteen years old, with twenty million +dollars, and without a relative in the world to trouble him. He was +the master of a palace of servants, a steam yacht, stables, and, as +well, of a summer palace down the Peninsula in the nabob colony at +Menlo. One thing, only, was he burdened with: guardians. + +On a summer afternoon, in the big library, he attended the first +session of his board of guardians. There were three of them, all +elderly, and successful, all legal, all business comrades of his +father. Dick's impression, as they explained things to him, was that, +although they meant well, he had no contacts with them. In his +judgment, their boyhood was too far behind them. Besides that, it was +patent that him, the particular boy they were so much concerned with, +they did not understand at all. Furthermore, in his own sure way he +decided that he was the one person in the world fitted to know what +was best for himself. + +Mr. Crockett made a long speech, to which Dick listened with alert and +becoming attention, nodding his head whenever he was directly +addressed or appealed to. Messrs. Davidson and Slocum also had their +say and were treated with equal consideration. Among other things, +Dick learned what a sterling, upright man his father had been, and the +program already decided upon by the three gentlemen which would make +him into a sterling and upright man. + +When they were quite done, Dick took it upon himself to say a few +things. + +"I have thought it over," he announced, "and first of all I shall go +traveling." + +"That will come afterward, my boy," Mr. Slocum explained soothingly. +"When--say--when you are ready to enter the university. At that time a +year abroad would be a very good thing... a very good thing indeed." + +"Of course," Mr. Davidson volunteered quickly, having noted the +annoyed light in the lad's eyes and the unconscious firm-drawing and +setting of the lips, "of course, in the meantime you could do some +traveling, a limited amount of traveling, during your school +vacations. I am sure my fellow guardians will agree--under the proper +management and safeguarding, of course--that such bits of travel +sandwiched between your school-terms, would be advisable and +beneficial." + +"How much did you say I am worth?" Dick asked with apparent +irrelevance. + +"Twenty millions--at a most conservative estimate--that is about the +sum," Mr. Crockett answered promptly. + +"Suppose I said right now that I wanted a hundred dollars!" Dick went +on. + +"Why--er--ahem." Mr. Slocum looked about him for guidance. + +"We would be compelled to ask what you wanted it for," answered Mr. +Crockett. + +"And suppose," Dick said very slowly, looking Mr. Crockett squarely in +the eyes, "suppose I said that I was very sorry, but that I did not +care to say what I wanted it for?" + +"Then you wouldn't get it," Mr. Crockett said so immediately that +there was a hint of testiness and snap in his manner. + +Dick nodded slowly, as if letting the information sink in. + +"But, of course, my boy," Mr. Slocum took up hastily, "you understand +you are too young to handle money yet. We must decide that for you." + +"You mean I can't touch a penny without your permission?" + +"Not a penny," Mr. Crockett snapped. + +Dick nodded his head thoughtfully and murmured, "Oh, I see." + +"Of course, and quite naturally, it would only be fair, you know, you +will have a small allowance for your personal spending," Mr. Davidson +said. "Say, a dollar, or, perhaps, two dollars, a week. As you grow +older this allowance will be increased. And by the time you are +twenty-one, doubtlessly you will be fully qualified--with advice, of +course--to handle your own affairs." + +"And until I am twenty-one my twenty million wouldn't buy me a hundred +dollars to do as I please with?" Dick queried very subduedly. + +Mr. Davidson started to corroborate in soothing phrases, but was waved +to silence by Dick, who continued: + +"As I understand it, whatever money I handle will be by agreement +between the four of us?" + +The Board of Guardians nodded. + +"That is, whatever we agree, goes?" + +Again the Board of Guardians nodded. + +"Well, I'd like to have a hundred right now," Dick announced. + +"What for?" Mr. Crockett demanded. + +"I don't mind telling you," was the lad's steady answer. "To go +traveling." + +"You'll go to bed at eight:thirty this evening," Mr. Crockett +retorted. "And you don't get any hundred. The lady we spoke to you +about will be here before six. She is to have, as we explained, daily +and hourly charge of you. At six-thirty, as usual, you will dine, and +she will dine with you and see you to bed. As we told you, she will +have to serve the place of a mother to you--see that your ears are +clean, your neck washed--" + +"And that I get my Saturday night bath," Dick amplified meekly for +him. + +"Precisely." + +"How much are you--am I--paying the lady for her services?" Dick +questioned in the disconcerting, tangential way that was already +habitual to him, as his school companions and teachers had learned to +their cost. + +Mr. Crockett for the first time cleared his throat for pause. + +"I'm paying her, ain't I?" Dick prodded. "Out of the twenty million, +you know." + +"The spit of his father," said Mr. Slocum in an aside. + +"Mrs. Summerstone, the lady as you elect to call her, receives one +hundred and fifty a month, eighteen hundred a year in round sum," said +Mr. Crockett. + +"It's a waste of perfectly good money," Dick sighed. "And board and +lodging thrown in!" + +He stood up--not the born aristocrat of the generations, but the +reared aristocrat of thirteen years in the Nob Hill palace. He stood +up with such a manner that his Board of Guardians left their leather +chairs to stand up with him. But he stood up as no Lord Fauntleroy +ever stood up; for he was a mixer. He had knowledge that human life +was many-faced and many-placed. Not for nothing had he been spelled +down by Mona Sanguinetti. Not for nothing had he fought Tim Hagan to a +standstill and, co-equal, ruled the schoolyard roost with him. + +He was birthed of the wild gold-adventure of Forty-nine. He was a +reared aristocrat and a grammar-school-trained democrat. He knew, in +his precocious immature way, the differentiations between caste and +mass; and, behind it all, he was possessed of a will of his own and of +a quiet surety of self that was incomprehensible to the three elderly +gentlemen who had been given charge of his and his destiny and who had +pledged themselves to increase his twenty millions and make a man of +him in their own composite image. + +"Thank you for your kindness," Young Dick said generally to the three. +"I guess we'll get along all right. Of course, that twenty millions is +mine, and of course you've got to take care of it for me, seeing I +know nothing of business--" + +"And we'll increase it for you, my boy, we'll increase it for you in +safe, conservative ways," Mr. Slocum assured him. + +"No speculation," Young Dick warned. "Dad's just been lucky--I've +heard him say that times have changed and a fellow can't take the +chances everybody used to take." + +From which, and from much which has already passed, it might +erroneously be inferred that Young Dick was a mean and money-grubbing +soul. On the contrary, he was at that instant entertaining secret +thoughts and plans so utterly regardless and disdainful of his twenty +millions as to place him on a par with a drunken sailor sowing the +beach with a three years' pay-day. + +"I am only a boy," Young Dick went on. "But you don't know me very +well yet. We'll get better acquainted by and by, and, again thanking +you...." + +He paused, bowed briefly and grandly as lords in Nob Hill palaces +early learn to bow, and, by the quality of the pause, signified that +the audience was over. Nor did the impact of dismissal miss his +guardians. They, who had been co-lords with his father, withdrew +confused and perplexed. Messrs. Davidson and Slocum were on the point +of resolving their perplexity into wrath, as they went down the great +stone stairway to the waiting carriage, but Mr. Crockett, the testy +and snappish, muttered ecstatically: "The son of a gun! The little son +of a gun!" + +The carriage carried them down to the old Pacific Union Club, where, +for another hour, they gravely discussed the future of Young Dick +Forrest and pledged themselves anew to the faith reposed in them by +Lucky Richard Forrest. And down the hill, on foot, where grass grew on +the paved streets too steep for horse-traffic, Young Dick hurried. As +the height of land was left behind, almost immediately the palaces and +spacious grounds of the nabobs gave way to the mean streets and wooden +warrens of the working people. The San Francisco of 1887 as +incontinently intermingled its slums and mansions as did the old +cities of Europe. Nob Hill arose, like any medieval castle, from the +mess and ruck of common life that denned and laired at its base. + +Young Dick came to pause alongside a corner grocery, the second story +of which was rented to Timothy Hagan Senior, who, by virtue of being a +policeman with a wage of a hundred dollars a month, rented this high +place to dwell above his fellows who supported families on no more +than forty and fifty dollars a month. + +In vain Young Dick whistled up through the unscreened, open windows. +Tim Hagan Junior was not at home. But Young Dick wasted little wind in +the whistling. He was debating on possible adjacent places where Tim +Hagan might be, when Tim himself appeared around the corner, bearing a +lidless lard-can that foamed with steam beer. He grunted greeting, and +Young Dick grunted with equal roughness, just as if, a brief space +before, he had not, in most lordly fashion, terminated an audience +with three of the richest merchant-kings of an imperial city. Nor did +his possession of twenty increasing millions hint the slightest +betrayal in his voice or mitigate in the slightest the gruffness of +his grunt. + +"Ain't seen yeh since yer old man died," Tim Hagan commented. + +"Well, you're seein' me now, ain't you?" was Young Dick's retort. +"Say, Tim, I come to see you on business." + +"Wait till I rush the beer to the old man," said Tim, inspecting the +state of the foam in the lard-can with an experienced eye. "He'll roar +his head off if it comes in flat." + +"Oh, you can shake it up," Young Dick assured him. "Only want to see +you a minute. I'm hitting the road to-night. Want to come along?" + +Tim's small, blue Irish eyes flashed with interest. + +"Where to?" he queried. + +"Don't know. Want to come? If you do, we can talk it over after we +start? You know the ropes. What d'ye say?" + +"The old man'll beat the stuffin' outa me," Tim demurred. + +"He's done that before, an' you don't seem to be much missing," Young +Dick callously rejoined. "Say the word, an' we'll meet at the Ferry +Building at nine to-night. What d'ye say? I'll be there." + +"Supposin' I don't show up?" Tim asked. + +"I'll be on my way just the same." Young Dick turned as if to depart, +paused casually, and said over his shoulder, "Better come along." + +Tim shook up the beer as he answered with equal casualness, "Aw right. +I'll be there." + +After parting from Tim Hagan Young Dick spent a busy hour or so +looking up one, Marcovich, a Slavonian schoolmate whose father ran a +chop-house in which was reputed to be served the finest twenty-cent +meal in the city. Young Marcovich owed Young Dick two dollars, and +Young Dick accepted the payment of a dollar and forty cents as full +quittance of the debt. + +Also, with shyness and perturbation, Young Dick wandered down +Montgomery Street and vacillated among the many pawnshops that graced +that thoroughfare. At last, diving desperately into one, he managed to +exchange for eight dollars and a ticket his gold watch that he knew +was worth fifty at the very least. + +Dinner in the Nob Hill palace was served at six-thirty. He arrived at +six-forty-five and encountered Mrs. Summerstone. She was a stout, +elderly, decayed gentlewoman, a daughter of the great Porter- +Rickington family that had shaken the entire Pacific Coast with its +financial crash in the middle seventies. Despite her stoutness, she +suffered from what she called shattered nerves. + +"This will never, never do, Richard," she censured. "Here is dinner +waiting fifteen minutes already, and you have not yet washed your face +and hands." + +"I am sorry, Mrs. Summerstone," Young Dick apologized. "I won't keep +you waiting ever again. And I won't bother you much ever." + +At dinner, in state, the two of them alone in the great dining room, +Young Dick strove to make things easy for the lady, whom, despite his +knowledge that she was on his pay-roll, he felt toward as a host must +feel toward a guest. + +"You'll be very comfortable here," he promised, "once you are settled +down. It's a good old house, and most of the servants have been here +for years." + +"But, Richard," she smiled seriously to him; "it is not the servants +who will determine my happiness here. It is you." + +"I'll do my best," he said graciously. "Better than that. I'm sorry I +came in late for dinner. In years and years you'll never see me late +again. I won't bother you at all. You'll see. It will be just as +though I wasn't in the house." + +When he bade her good night, on his way to bed, he added, as a last +thought: + +"I'll warn you of one thing: Ah Sing. He's the cook. He's been in our +house for years and years--oh, I don't know, maybe twenty-five or +thirty years he's cooked for father, from long before this house was +built or I was born. He's privileged. He's so used to having his own +way that you'll have to handle him with gloves. But once he likes you +he'll work his fool head off to please you. He likes me that way. You +get him to like you, and you'll have the time of your life here. And, +honest, I won't give you any trouble at all. It'll be a regular snap, +just as if I wasn't here at all." + + + + +CHAPTER V + + AT nine in the evening, sharp to the second, clad in his oldest +clothes, Young Dick met Tim Hagan at the Ferry Building. + +"No use headin' north," said Tim. "Winter'll come on up that way and +make the sleepin' crimpy. D'ye want to go East--that means Nevada and +the deserts." + +"Any other way?" queried Young Dick. "What's the matter with south? We +can head for Los Angeles, an' Arizona, an' New Mexico--oh, an' Texas." + +"How much money you got?" Tim demanded. + +"What for?" Young Dick countered. + +"We gotta get out quick, an' payin' our way at the start is quickest. +Me--I'm all hunkydory; but you ain't. The folks that's lookin' after +you'll raise a roar. They'll have more detectives out than you can +shake at stick at. We gotta dodge 'em, that's what." + +"Then we will dodge," said Young Dick. "We'll make short jumps this +way and that for a couple of days, layin' low most of the time, paying +our way, until we can get to Tracy. Then we'll quit payin' an' beat +her south." + +All of which program was carefully carried out. They eventually went +through Tracy as pay passengers, six hours after the local deputy +sheriff had given up his task of searching the trains. With an excess +of precaution Young Dick paid beyond Tracy and as far as Modesto. +After that, under the teaching of Tim, he traveled without paying, +riding blind baggage, box cars, and cow-catchers. Young Dick bought +the newspapers, and frightened Tim by reading to him the lurid +accounts of the kidnapping of the young heir to the Forrest millions. + +Back in San Francisco the Board of Guardians offered rewards that +totaled thirty thousand dollars for the recovery of their ward. And +Tim Hagan, reading the same while they lay in the grass by some water- +tank, branded forever the mind of Young Dick with the fact that honor +beyond price was a matter of neither place nor caste and might outcrop +in the palace on the height of land or in the dwelling over a grocery +down on the flat. + +"Gee!" Tim said to the general landscape. "The old man wouldn't raise +a roar if I snitched on you for that thirty thousand. It makes me +scared to think of it." + +And from the fact that Tim thus openly mentioned the matter, Young +Dick concluded that there was no possibility of the policeman's son +betraying him. + +Not until six weeks afterward, in Arizona, did Young Dick bring up the +subject. + +"You see, Tim," he said, "I've got slathers of money. It's growing all +the time, and I ain't spending a cent of it, not so as you can +notice... though that Mrs. Summerstone is getting a cold eighteen +hundred a year out of me, with board and carriages thrown in, while +you an' I are glad to get the leavings of firemen's pails in the +round-houses. Just the same, my money's growing. What's ten per cent, +on twenty dollars?" + +Tim Hagan stared at the shimmering heat-waves of the desert and tried +to solve the problem. + +"What's one-tenth of twenty million?" Young Dick demanded irritably. + +"Huh!--two million, of course." + +"Well, five per cent's half of ten per cent. What does twenty million +earn at five per cent, for one year?" + +Tim hesitated. + +"Half of it, half of two million!" Young Dick cried. "At that rate I'm +a million richer every year. Get that, and hang on to it, and listen +to me. When I'm good and willing to go back--but not for years an' +years--we'll fix it up, you and I. When I say the word, you'll write +to your father. He'll jump out to where we are waiting, pick me up, +and cart me back. Then he'll collect the thirty thousand reward from +my guardians, quit the police force, and most likely start a saloon." + +"Thirty thousand's a hell of a lot of money," was Tim's nonchalant way +of expressing his gratitude. + +"Not to me," Young Dick minimized his generosity. "Thirty thousand +goes into a million thirty-three times, and a million's only a year's +turnover of my money." + +But Tim Hagan never lived to see his father a saloon keeper. Two days +later, on a trestle, the lads were fired out of an empty box-car by a +brake-man who should have known better. The trestle spanned a dry +ravine. Young Dick looked down at the rocks seventy feet below and +demurred. + +"There's room on the trestle," he said; "but what if the train starts +up?" + +"It ain't goin' to start--beat it while you got time," the brakeman +insisted. "The engine's takin' water at the other side. She always +takes it here." + +But for once the engine did not take water. The evidence at the +inquest developed that the engineer had found no water in the tank and +started on. Scarcely had the two boys dropped from the side-door of +the box-car, and before they had made a score of steps along the +narrow way between the train and the abyss, than the train began to +move. Young Dick, quick and sure in all his perceptions and +adjustments, dropped on the instant to hands and knees on the trestle. +This gave him better holding and more space, because he crouched +beneath the overhang of the box-cars. Tim, not so quick in perceiving +and adjusting, also overcome with Celtic rage at the brakeman, instead +of dropping to hands and knees, remained upright to flare his opinion +of the brakeman, to the brakeman, in lurid and ancestral terms. + +"Get down!--drop!" Young Dick shouted. + +But the opportunity had passed. On a down grade, the engine picked up +the train rapidly. Facing the moving cars, with empty air at his back +and the depth beneath, Tim tried to drop on hands and knees. But the +first twist of his shoulders brought him in contact with the car and +nearly out-balanced him. By a miracle he recovered equilibrium. But he +stood upright. The train was moving faster and faster. It was +impossible to get down. + +Young Dick, kneeling and holding, watched. The train gathered way. The +cars moved more swiftly. Tim, with a cool head, his back to the fall, +his face to the passing cars, his arms by his sides, with nowhere save +under his feet a holding point, balanced and swayed. The faster the +train moved, the wider he swayed, until, exerting his will, he +controlled himself and ceased from swaying. + +And all would have been well with him, had it not been for one car. +Young Dick knew it, and saw it coming. It was a "palace horse-car," +projecting six inches wider than any car on the train. He saw Tim see +it coming. He saw Tim steel himself to meet the abrupt subtraction of +half a foot from the narrow space wherein he balanced. He saw Tim +slowly and deliberately sway out, sway out to the extremest limit, and +yet not sway out far enough. The thing was physically inevitable. An +inch more, and Tim would have escaped the car. An inch more and he +would have fallen without impact from the car. It caught him, in that +margin of an inch, and hurled him backward and side-twisting. Twice he +whirled sidewise, and two and a half times he turned over, ere he +struck on his head and neck on the rocks. + +He never moved after he struck. The seventy-foot fall broke his neck +and crushed his skull. And right there Young Dick learned death--not +the ordered, decent death of civilization, wherein doctors and nurses +and hypodermics ease the stricken one into the darkness, and ceremony +and function and flowers and undertaking institutions conspire to give +a happy leave-taking and send-off to the departing shade, but sudden +death, primitive death, ugly and ungarnished, like the death of a +steer in the shambles or a fat swine stuck in the jugular. + +And right there Young Dick learned more--the mischance of life and +fate; the universe hostile to man; the need to perceive and to act, to +see and know, to be sure and quick, to adjust instantly to all instant +shiftage of the balance of forces that bear upon the living. And right +there, beside the strangely crumpled and shrunken remnant of what had +been his comrade the moment before, Young Dick learned that illusion +must be discounted, and that reality never lied. + +In New Mexico, Young Dick drifted into the Jingle-bob Ranch, north of +Roswell, in the Pecos Valley. He was not yet fourteen, and he was +accepted as the mascot of the ranch and made into a "sure-enough" +cowboy by cowboys who, on legal papers, legally signed names such as +Wild Horse, Willie Buck, Boomer Deacon, and High Pockets. + +Here, during a stay of six months, Young Dick, soft of frame and +unbreakable, achieved a knowledge of horses and horsemanship, and of +men in the rough and raw, that became a life asset. More he learned. +There was John Chisum, owner of the Jingle-bob, the Bosque Grande, and +of other cattle ranches as far away as the Black River and beyond. +John Chisum was a cattle king who had foreseen the coming of the +farmer and adjusted from the open range to barbed wire, and who, in +order to do so, had purchased every forty acres carrying water and got +for nothing the use of the millions of acres of adjacent range that +was worthless without the water he controlled. And in the talk by the +camp-fire and chuck wagon, among forty-dollar-a-month cowboys who had +not foreseen what John Chisum foresaw, Young Dick learned precisely +why and how John Chisum had become a cattle king while a thousand of +his contemporaries worked for him on wages. + +But Young Dick was no cool-head. His blood was hot. He had passion, +and fire, and male pride. Ready to cry from twenty hours in the +saddle, he learned to ignore the thousand aching creaks in his body +and with the stoic brag of silence to withstain from his blankets +until the hard-bitten punchers led the way. By the same token he +straddled the horse that was apportioned him, insisted on riding +night-herd, and knew no hint of uncertainty when it came to him to +turn the flank of a stampede with a flying slicker. He could take a +chance. It was his joy to take a chance. But at such times he never +failed of due respect for reality. He was well aware that men were +soft-shelled and cracked easily on hard rocks or under pounding hoofs. +And when he rejected a mount that tangled its legs in quick action and +stumbled, it was not because he feared to be cracked, but because, +when he took a chance on being cracked, he wanted, as he told John +Chisum himself, "an even break for his money." + +It was while at the Jingle-bob, but mailed by a cattleman from +Chicago, that Young Dick wrote a letter to his guardians. Even then, +so careful was he, that the envelope was addressed to Ah Sing. Though +unburdened by his twenty millions, Young Dick never forgot them, and, +fearing his estate might be distributed among remote relatives who +might possibly inhabit New England, he warned his guardians that he +was still alive and that he would return home in several years. Also, +he ordered them to keep Mrs. Summerstone on at her regular salary. + +But Young Dick's feet itched. Half a year, he felt, was really more +than he should have spent at the Jingle-bob. As a boy hobo, or road- +kid, he drifted on across the United States, getting acquainted with +its peace officers, police judges, vagrancy laws, and jails. And he +learned vagrants themselves at first hand, and floating laborers and +petty criminals. Among other things, he got acquainted with farms and +farmers, and, in New York State, once picked berries for a week with a +Dutch farmer who was experimenting with one of the first silos erected +in the United States. Nothing of what he learned came to him in the +spirit of research. He had merely the human boy's curiosity about all +things, and he gained merely a huge mass of data concerning human +nature and social conditions that was to stand him in good stead in +later years, when, with the aid of the books, he digested and +classified it. + +His adventures did not harm him. Even when he consorted with jail- +birds in jungle camps, and listened to their codes of conduct and +measurements of life, he was not affected. He was a traveler, and they +were alien breeds. Secure in the knowledge of his twenty millions, +there was neither need nor temptation for him to steal or rob. All +things and all places interested him, but he never found a place nor a +situation that could hold him. He wanted to see, to see more and more, +and to go on seeing. + +At the end of three years, nearly sixteen, hard of body, weighing a +hundred and thirty pounds, he judged it time to go home and open the +books. So he took his first long voyage, signing on as boy on a +windjammer bound around the Horn from the Delaware Breakwater to San +Francisco. It was a hard voyage, of one hundred and eighty days, but +at the end he weighed ten pounds the more for having made it. + +Mrs. Summerstone screamed when he walked in on her, and Ah Sing had to +be called from the kitchen to identify him. Mrs. Summerstone screamed +a second time. It was when she shook hands with him and lacerated her +tender skin in the fisty grip of his rope-calloused palms. + +He was shy, almost embarrassed, as he greeted his guardians at the +hastily summoned meeting. But this did not prevent him from talking +straight to the point. + +"It's this way," he said. "I am not a fool. I know what I want, and I +want what I want. I am alone in the world, outside of good friends +like you, of course, and I have my own ideas of the world and what I +want to do in it. I didn't come home because of a sense of duty to +anybody here. I came home because it was time, because of my sense of +duty to myself. I'm all the better from my three years of wandering +about, and now it's up to me to go on with my education--my book +education, I mean." + +"The Belmont Academy," Mr. Slocum suggested. "That will fit you for +the university--" + +Dick shook his head decidedly. + +"And take three years to do it. So would a high school. I intend to be +in the University of California inside one year. That means work. But +my mind's like acid. It'll bite into the books. I shall hire a coach, +or half a dozen of them, and go to it. And I'll hire my coaches +myself--hire and fire them. And that means money to handle." + +"A hundred a month," Mr. Crockett suggested. + +Dick shook his head. + +"I've taken care of myself for three years without any of my money. I +guess. I can take care of myself along with some of my money here in +San Francisco. I don't care to handle my business affairs yet, but I +do want a bank account, a respectable-sized one. I want to spend it as +I see fit, for what I see fit." + +The guardians looked their dismay at one another. + +"It's ridiculous, impossible," Mr. Crockett began. "You are as +unreasonable as you were before you went away." + +"It's my way, I guess," Dick sighed. "The other disagreement was over +my money. It was a hundred dollars I wanted then." + +"Think of our position, Dick," Mr. Davidson urged. "As your guardians, +how would it be looked upon if we gave you, a lad of sixteen, a free +hand with money." + +"What's the _Freda_ worth, right now?" Dick demanded irrelevantly. + +"Can sell for twenty thousand any time," Mr. Crockett answered. + +"Then sell her. She's too large for me, and she's worth less every +year. I want a thirty-footer that I can handle myself for knocking +around the Bay, and that won't cost a thousand. Sell the _Freda_ +and put the money to my account. Now what you three are afraid of is +that I'll misspend my money--taking to drinking, horse-racing, and +running around with chorus girls. Here's my proposition to make you +easy on that: let it be a drawing account for the four of us. The +moment any of you decide I am misspending, that moment you can draw +out the total balance. I may as well tell you, that just as a side +line I'm going to get a business college expert to come here and cram +me with the mechanical side of the business game." + +Dick did not wait for their acquiescence, but went on as from a matter +definitely settled. + +"How about the horses down at Menlo?--never mind, I'll look them over +and decide what to keep. Mrs. Summerstone will stay on here in charge +of the house, because I've got too much work mapped out for myself +already. I promise you you won't regret giving me a free hand with my +directly personal affairs. And now, if you want to hear about the last +three years, I'll spin the yarn for you." + + Dick Forrest had been right when he told his guardians that his mind +was acid and would bite into the books. Never was there such an +education, and he directed it himself--but not without advice. He had +learned the trick of hiring brains from his father and from John +Chisum of the Jingle-bob. He had learned to sit silent and to think +while cow men talked long about the campfire and the chuck wagon. And, +by virtue of name and place, he sought and obtained interviews with +professors and college presidents and practical men of affairs; and he +listened to their talk through many hours, scarcely speaking, rarely +asking a question, merely listening to the best they had to offer, +content to receive from several such hours one idea, one fact, that +would help him to decide what sort of an education he would go in for +and how. + +Then came the engaging of coaches. Never was there such an engaging +and discharging, such a hiring and firing. He was not frugal in the +matter. For one that he retained a month, or three months, he +discharged a dozen on the first day, or the first week. And invariably +he paid such dischargees a full month although their attempts to teach +him might not have consumed an hour. He did such things fairly and +grandly, because he could afford to be fair and grand. + +He, who had eaten the leavings from firemen's pails in round-houses +and "scoffed" mulligan-stews at water-tanks, had learned thoroughly +the worth of money. He bought the best with the sure knowledge that it +was the cheapest. A year of high school physics and a year of high +school chemistry were necessary to enter the university. When he had +crammed his algebra and geometry, he sought out the heads of the +physics and chemistry departments in the University of California. +Professor Carey laughed at him... at the first. + +"My dear boy," Professor Carey began. + +Dick waited patiently till he was through. Then Dick began, and +concluded. + +"I'm not a fool, Professor Carey. High school and academy students are +children. They don't know the world. They don't know what they want, +or why they want what is ladled out to them. I know the world. I know +what I want and why I want it. They do physics for an hour, twice a +week, for two terms, which, with two vacations, occupy one year. You +are the top teacher on the Pacific Coast in physics. The college year +is just ending. In the first week of your vacation, giving every +minute of your time to me, I can get the year's physics. What is that +week worth to you?" + +"You couldn't buy it for a thousand dollars," Professor Carey +rejoined, thinking he had settled the matter. + +"I know what your salary is--" Dick began. + +"What is it?" Professor Carey demanded sharply. + +"It's not a thousand a week," Dick retorted as sharply. "It's not five +hundred a week, nor two-fifty a week--" He held up his hand to stall +off interruption. "You've just told me I couldn't buy a week of your +time for a thousand dollars. I'm not going to. But I am going to buy +that week for two thousand. Heavens!--I've only got so many years to +live--" + +"And you can buy years?" Professor Carey queried slyly. + +"Sure. That's why I'm here. I buy three years in one, and the week +from you is part of the deal." + +"But I have not accepted," Professor Carey laughed. + +"If the sum is not sufficient," Dick said stiffly, "why name the sum +you consider fair." + +And Professor Carey surrendered. So did Professor Barsdale, head of +the department of chemistry. + +Already had Dick taken his coaches in mathematics duck hunting for +weeks in the sloughs of the Sacramento and the San Joaquin. After his +bout with physics and chemistry he took his two coaches in literature +and history into the Curry County hunting region of southwestern +Oregon. He had learned the trick from his father, and he worked, and +played, lived in the open air, and did three conventional years of +adolescent education in one year without straining himself. He fished, +hunted, swam, exercised, and equipped himself for the university at +the same time. And he made no mistake. He knew that he did it because +his father's twenty millions had invested him with mastery. Money was +a tool. He did not over-rate it, nor under-rate it. He used it to buy +what he wanted. + +"The weirdest form of dissipation I ever heard," said Mr. Crockett, +holding up Dick's account for the year. "Sixteen thousand for +education, all itemized, including railroad fares, porters' tips, and +shot-gun cartridges for his teachers." + +"He passed the examinations just the same," quoth Mr. Slocum. + +"And in a year," growled Mr. Davidson. "My daughter's boy entered +Belmont at the same time, and, if he's lucky, it will be two years yet +before he enters the university." + +"Well, all I've got to say," proclaimed Mr. Crockett, "is that from +now on what that boy says in the matter of spending his money goes." + +"And now I'll have a snap," Dick told his guardians. "Here I am, neck +and neck again, and years ahead of them in knowledge of the world. +Why, I know things, good and bad, big and little, about men and women +and life that sometimes I almost doubt myself that they're true. But I +know them. + +"From now on, I'm not going to rush. I've caught up, and I'm going +through regular. All I have to do is to keep the speed of the classes, +and I'll be graduated when I'm twenty-one. From now on I'll need less +money for education--no more coaches, you know--and more money for a +good time." + +Mr. Davidson was suspicious. + +"What do you mean by a good time?" + +"Oh, I'm going in for the frats, for football, hold my own, you know-- +and I'm interested in gasoline engines. I'm going to build the first +ocean-going gasoline yacht in the world--" + +"You'll blow yourself up," Mr. Crockett demurred. "It's a fool notion +all these cranks are rushing into over gasoline." + +"I'll make myself safe," Dick answered, "and that means experimenting, +and it means money, so keep me a good drawing account--same old way-- +all four of us can draw." + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + + +Dick Forrest proved himself no prodigy at the university, save that he +cut more lectures the first year than any other student. The reason +for this was that he did not need the lectures he cut, and he knew it. +His coaches, while preparing him for the entrance examinations, had +carried him nearly through the first college year. Incidentally, he +made the Freshman team, a very scrub team, that was beaten by every +high school and academy it played against. + +But Dick did put in work that nobody saw. His collateral reading was +wide and deep, and when he went on his first summer cruise in the +ocean-going gasoline yacht he had built no gay young crowd accompanied +him. Instead, his guests, with their families, were professors of +literature, history, jurisprudence, and philosophy. It was long +remembered in the university as the "high-brow" cruise. The +professors, on their return, reported a most enjoyable time. Dick +returned with a greater comprehension of the general fields of the +particular professors than he could have gained in years at their +class-lectures. And time thus gained, enabled him to continue to cut +lectures and to devote more time to laboratory work. + +Nor did he miss having his good college time. College widows made love +to him, and college girls loved him, and he was indefatigable in his +dancing. He never cut a smoker, a beer bust, or a rush, and he toured +the Pacific Coast with the Banjo and Mandolin Club. + +And yet he was no prodigy. He was brilliant at nothing. Half a dozen +of his fellows could out-banjo and out-mandolin him. A dozen fellows +were adjudged better dancers than he. In football, and he gained the +Varsity in his Sophomore year, he was considered a solid and +dependable player, and that was all. It seemed never his luck to take +the ball and go down the length of the field while the Blue and Gold +host tore itself and the grandstand to pieces. But it was at the end +of heart-breaking, grueling slog in mud and rain, the score tied, the +second half imminent to its close, Stanford on the five-yard line, +Berkeley's ball, with two downs and three yards to gain--it was then +that the Blue and Gold arose and chanted its demand for Forrest to hit +the center and hit it hard. + +He never achieved super-excellence at anything. Big Charley Everson +drank him down at the beer busts. Harrison Jackson, at hammer- +throwing, always exceeded his best by twenty feet. Carruthers out- +pointed him at boxing. Anson Burge could always put his shoulders to +the mat, two out of three, but always only by the hardest work. In +English composition a fifth of his class excelled him. Edlin, the +Russian Jew, out-debated him on the contention that property was +robbery. Schultz and Debret left him with the class behind in higher +mathematics; and Otsuki, the Japanese, was beyond all comparison with +him in chemistry. + +But if Dick Forrest did not excel at anything, he failed in nothing. +He displayed no superlative strength, he betrayed no weakness nor +deficiency. As he told his guardians, who, by his unrelenting good +conduct had been led into dreaming some great career for him; as he +told them, when they asked what he wanted to become: + +"Nothing. Just all around. You see, I don't have to be a specialist. +My father arranged that for me when he left me his money. Besides, I +couldn't be a specialist if I wanted to. It isn't me." + +And thus so well-keyed was he, that he expressed clearly his key. He +had no flare for anything. He was that rare individual, normal, +average, balanced, all-around. + +When Mr. Davidson, in the presence of his fellow guardians, stated his +pleasure in that Dick had shown no wildness since he had settled down, +Dick replied: + +"Oh, I can hold myself when I want to." + +"Yes," said Mr. Slocum gravely. "It's the finest thing in the world +that you sowed your wild oats early and learned control." + +Dick looked at him curiously. + +"Why, that boyish adventure doesn't count," he said. "That wasn't +wildness. I haven't gone wild yet. But watch me when I start. Do you +know Kipling's 'Song of Diego Valdez'? Let me quote you a bit of it. +You see, Diego Valdez, like me, had good fortune. He rose so fast to +be High Admiral of Spain that he found no time to take the pleasure he +had merely tasted. He was lusty and husky, but he had no time, being +too busy rising. But always, he thought, he fooled himself with the +thought, that his lustiness and huskiness would last, and, after he +became High Admiral he could then have his pleasure. Always he +remembered: + + "'--comrades-- + Old playmates on new seas-- + When as we traded orpiment + Among the savages-- + A thousand leagues to south'ard + And thirty years removed-- + They knew not noble Valdez, + But me they knew and loved. + + "'Then they that found good liquor + They drank it not alone, + And they that found fair plunder, + They told us every one, + Behind our chosen islands + Or secret shoals between, + When, walty from far voyage, + We gathered to careen. + + "'There burned our breaming-fagots, + All pale along the shore: + There rose our worn pavilions-- + A sail above an oar: + As flashed each yearning anchor + Through mellow seas afire, + So swift our careless captains + Rowed each to his desire. + + "'Where lay our loosened harness? + Where turned our naked feet? + Whose tavern mid the palm-trees? + What quenchings of what heat? + Oh fountain in the desert! + Oh cistern in the waste! + Oh bread we ate in secret! + Oh cup we spilled in haste! + + "'The youth new-taught of longing, + The widow curbed and wan-- + The good wife proud at season, + And the maid aware of man; + All souls, unslaked, consuming, + Defrauded in delays, + Desire not more than quittance + Than I those forfeit days!' + +"Oh, get him, get him, you three oldsters, as I've got him! Get what +he saws next: + + "'I dreamed to wait my pleasure, + Unchanged my spring would bide: + Wherefore, to wait my pleasure, + I put my spring aside, + Till, first in face of Fortune, + And last in mazed disdain, + I made Diego Valdez + High Admiral of Spain!' + +"Listen to me, guardians!" Dick cried on, his face a flame of passion. +"Don't forget for one moment that I am anything but unslaked, +consuming. I am. I burn. But I hold myself. Don't think I am a dead +one because I am a darn nice, meritorious boy at college. I am young. +I am alive. I am all lusty and husky. But I make no mistake. I hold +myself. I don't start out now to blow up on the first lap. I am just +getting ready. I am going to have my time. I am not going to spill my +cup in haste. And in the end I am not going to lament as Diego Valdez +did: + + "'There walks no wind 'neath heaven + Nor wave that shall restore + The old careening riot + And the clamorous, crowded shore-- + The fountain in the desert, + The cistern in the waste, + The bread we ate in secret, + The cup we spilled in haste.' + +"Listen, guardians! Do you know what it is to hit your man, to hit him +in hot blood--square to the jaw--and drop him cold? I want that. And I +want to love, and kiss, and risk, and play the lusty, husky fool. I +want to take my chance. I want my careening riot, and I want it while +I am young, but not while I am too young. And I'm going to have it. +And in the meantime I play the game at college, I hold myself, I equip +myself, so that when I turn loose I am going to have the best chance +of my best. Oh, believe me, I do not always sleep well of nights." + +"You mean?" queried Mr. Crockett. + +"Sure. That's just what I mean. I haven't gone wild yet, but just +watch me when I start." + +"And you will start when you graduate?" + +The remarkable youngster shook his head. + +"After I graduate I'm going to take at least a year of post-graduate +courses in the College of Agriculture. You see, I'm developing a +hobby--farming. I want to do something ... something constructive. My +father wasn't constructive to amount to anything. Neither were you +fellows. You struck a new land in pioneer days, and you picked up +money like a lot of sailors shaking out nuggets from the grass roots +in a virgin placer--" + +"My lad, I've some little experience in Californian farming," Mr. +Crockett interrupted in a hurt way. + +"Sure you have, but you weren't constructive. You were--well, facts +are facts--you were destructive. You were a bonanza farmer. What did +you do? You took forty thousand acres of the finest Sacramento Valley +soil and you grew wheat on it year after year. You never dreamed of +rotation. You burned your straw. You exhausted your humus. You plowed +four inches and put a plow-sole like a cement sidewalk just four +inches under the surface. You exhausted that film of four inches and +now you can't get your seed back. + +"You've destroyed. That's what my father did. They all did it. Well, +I'm going to take my father's money and construct. I'm going to take +worked-out wheat-land that I can buy as at a fire-sale, rip out the +plow-sole, and make it produce more in the end than it did when you +fellows first farmed it." + +It was at the end of his Junior year that Mr. Crockett again mentioned +Dick's threatened period of wildness. + +"Soon as I'm done with cow college," was his answer. "Then I'm going +to buy, and stock, and start a ranch that'll be a ranch. And then I'll +set out after my careening riot." + +"About how large a ranch will you start with?" Mr. Davidson asked. + +"Maybe fifty thousand acres, maybe five hundred thousand. It all +depends. I'm going to play unearned increment to the limit. People +haven't begun to come to California yet. Without a tap of my hand or a +turn over, fifteen years from now land that I can buy for ten dollars +an acre will be worth fifty, and what I can buy for fifty will be +worth five hundred." + +"A half million acres at ten dollars an acre means five million +dollars," Mr. Crockett warned gravely. + +"And at fifty it means twenty-five million," Dick laughed. + +But his guardians never believed in the wild oats pilgrimage he +threatened. He might waste his fortune on new-fangled farming, but to +go literally wild after such years of self-restraint was an +unthinkable thing. + +Dick took his sheepskin with small honor. He was twenty-eighth in his +class, and he had not set the college world afire. His most notable +achievement had been his resistance and bafflement of many nice girls +and of the mothers of many nice girls. Next, after that, he had +signalized his Senior year by captaining the Varsity to its first +victory over Stanford in five years. It was in the day prior to large- +salaried football coaches, when individual play meant much; but he +hammered team-work and the sacrifice of the individual into his team, +so that on Thanksgiving Day, over a vastly more brilliant eleven, the +Blue and Gold was able to serpentine its triumph down Market Street in +San Francisco. + +In his post-graduate year in cow college, Dick devoted himself to +laboratory work and cut all lectures. In fact, he hired his own +lecturers, and spent a sizable fortune on them in mere traveling +expenses over California. Jacques Ribot, esteemed one of the greatest +world authorities on agricultural chemistry, who had been seduced from +his two thousand a year in France by the six thousand offered by the +University of California, who had been seduced to Hawaii by the ten +thousand of the sugar planters, Dick Forrest seduced with fifteen +thousand and the more delectable temperate climate of California on a +five years' contract. + +Messrs. Crockett, Slocum, and Davidson threw up their hands in horror +and knew that this was the wild career Dick Forrest had forecast. + +But this was only one of Dick Forrest's similar dissipations. He stole +from the Federal Government, at a prodigal increase of salary, its +star specialist in livestock breeding, and by similar misconduct he +robbed the University of Nebraska of its greatest milch cow professor, +and broke the heart of the Dean of the College of Agriculture of the +University of California by appropriating Professor Nirdenhammer, the +wizard of farm management. + +"Cheap at the price, cheap at the price," Dick explained to his +guardians. "Wouldn't you rather see me spend my money in buying +professors than in buying race horses and actresses? Besides, the +trouble with you fellows is that you don't know the game of buying +brains. I do. That's my specialty. I'm going to make money out of +them, and, better than that, I'm going to make a dozen blades of grass +grow where you fellows didn't leave room for half a blade in the soil +you gutted." + +So it can be understood how his guardians could not believe in his +promise of wild career, of kissing and risking, and hitting men hot on +the jaw. "One year more," he warned, while he delved in agricultural +chemistry, soil analysis, farm management, and traveled California +with his corps of high-salaried experts. And his guardians could only +apprehend a swift and wide dispersal of the Forrest millions when Dick +attained his majority, took charge of the totality of his fortune, and +actually embarked on his agricultural folly. + +The day he was twenty-one the purchase of his principality, that +extended west from the Sacramento River to the mountain tops, was +consummated. + +"An incredible price," said Mr. Crockett. + +"Incredibly cheap," said Dick. "You ought to see my soil reports. You +ought to see my water-reports. And you ought to hear me sing. Listen, +guardians, to a song that is a true song. I am the singer and the +song." + +Whereupon, in the queer quavering falsetto that is the sense of song +to the North American Indian, the Eskimo, and the Mongol, Dick sang: + + "Hu'-tim yo'-kim koi-o-di'! + Wi'-hi yan'-ning koi-o-di'! + Lo'-whi yan'-ning koi-o-di'! + Yo-ho' Nai-ni', hal-u'-dom yo nai, yo-ho' nai-nim'!" + +"The music is my own," he murmured apologetically, "the way I think it +ought to have sounded. You see, no man lives who ever heard it sung. +The Nishinam got it from the Maidu, who got it from the Konkau, who +made it. But the Nishinam and the Maidu and the Konkau are gone. Their +last rancheria is not. You plowed it under, Mr. Crockett, with you +bonanza gang-plowing, plow-soling farming. And I got the song from a +certain ethnological report, volume three, of the United States +Pacific Coast Geographical and Geological Survey. Red Cloud, who was +formed out of the sky, first sang this song to the stars and the +mountain flowers in the morning of the world. I shall now sing it for +you in English." + +And again, in Indian falsetto, ringing with triumph, vernal and +bursting, slapping his thighs and stamping his feet to the accent, +Dick sang: + + "The acorns come down from heaven! + I plant the short acorns in the valley! + I plant the long acorns in the valley! + I sprout, I, the black-oak acorn, sprout, I sprout!" + +Dick Forrest's name began to appear in the newspapers with appalling +frequency. He leaped to instant fame by being the first man in +California who paid ten thousand dollars for a single bull. His +livestock specialist, whom he had filched from the Federal Government, +in England outbid the Rothschilds' Shire farm for Hillcrest Chieftain, +quickly to be known as Forrest's Folly, paying for that kingly animal +no less than five thousand guineas. + +"Let them laugh," Dick told his ex-guardians. "I am importing forty +Shire mares. I'll write off half his price the first twelvemonth. He +will be the sire and grandsire of many sons and grandsons for which +the Californians will fall over themselves to buy of me at from three +to five thousand dollars a clatter." + +Dick Forrest was guilty of many similar follies in those first months +of his majority. But the most unthinkable folly of all was, after he +had sunk millions into his original folly, that he turned it over to +his experts personally to develop along the general broad lines laid +down by him, placed checks upon them that they might not go +catastrophically wrong, bought a ticket in a passenger brig to Tahiti, +and went away to run wild. + +Occasionally his guardians heard from him. At one time he was owner +and master of a four-masted steel sailing ship that carried the +English flag and coals from Newcastle. They knew that much, because +they had been called upon for the purchase price, because they read +Dick's name in the papers as master when his ship rescued the +passengers of the ill-fated _Orion_, and because they collected +the insurance when Dick's ship was lost with most of all hands in the +great Fiji hurricane. In 1896, he was in the Klondike; in 1897, he was +in Kamchatka and scurvy-stricken; and, next, he erupted with the +American flag into the Philippines. Once, although they could never +learn how nor why, he was owner and master of a crazy tramp steamer, +long since rejected by Lloyd's, which sailed under the aegis of Siam. + +From time to time business correspondence compelled them to hear from +him from various purple ports of the purple seas. Once, they had to +bring the entire political pressure of the Pacific Coast to bear upon +Washington in order to get him out of a scrape in Russia, of which +affair not one line appeared in the daily press, but which affair was +secretly provocative of ticklish joy and delight in all the +chancellories of Europe. + +Incidentally, they knew that he lay wounded in Mafeking; that he +pulled through a bout with yellow fever in Guayaquil; and that he +stood trial for brutality on the high seas in New York City. Thrice +they read in the press dispatches that he was dead: once, in battle, +in Mexico; and twice, executed, in Venezuela. After such false +flutterings, his guardians refused longer to be thrilled when he +crossed the Yellow Sea in a sampan, was "rumored" to have died of +beri-beri, was captured from the Russians by the Japanese at Mukden, +and endured military imprisonment in Japan. + +The one thrill of which they were still capable, was when, true to +promise, thirty years of age, his wild oats sown, he returned to +California with a wife to whom, as he announced, he had been married +several years, and whom all his three guardians found they knew. Mr. +Slocum had dropped eight hundred thousand along with the totality of +her father's fortune in the final catastrophe at the Los Cocos mine in +Chihuahua when the United States demonetized silver. Mr. Davidson had +pulled a million out of the Last Stake along with her father when he +pulled eight millions from that sunken, man-resurrected, river bed in +Amador County. Mr. Crockett, a youth at the time, had "spooned" the +Merced bottom with her father in the late 'fifties, had stood up best +man with him at Stockton when he married her mother, and, at Grant's +Pass, had played poker with him and with the then Lieutenant U.S. +Grant when all the little the western world knew of that young +lieutenant was that he was a good Indian fighter but a poor poker +player. + +And Dick Forrest had married the daughter of Philip Desten! It was not +a case of wishing Dick luck. It was a case of garrulous insistence on +the fact that he did not know how lucky he was. His guardians forgave +him all his wildness. He had made good. At last he had performed a +purely rational act. Better; it was a stroke of genius. Paula Desten! +Philip Desten's daughter! The Desten blood! The Destens and the +Forrests! It was enough. The three aged comrades of Forrest and Desten +of the old Gold Days, of the two who had played and passed on, were +even severe with Dick. They warned him of the extreme value of his +treasure, of the sacred duty such wedlock imposed on him, of all the +traditions and virtues of the Desten and Forrest blood, until Dick +laughed and broke in with the disconcerting statement that they were +talking like a bunch of fanciers or eugenics cranks--which was +precisely what they were talking like, although they did not care to +be told so crassly. + +At any rate, the simple fact that he had married a Desten made them +nod unqualified approbation when he showed them the plans and building +estimates of the Big House. Thanks to Paula Desten, for once they were +agreed that he was spending wisely and well. As for his farming, it +was incontestible that the Harvest Group was unfalteringly producing, +and he might be allowed his hobbies. Nevertheless, as Mr. Slocum put +it: "Twenty-five thousand dollars for a mere work-horse stallion is a +madness. Work-horses are work-horses; now had it been running +stock...." + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + + +While Dick Forrest scanned the pamphlet on hog cholera issued by the +State of Iowa, through his open windows, across the wide court, began +to come sounds of the awakening of the girl who laughed from the +wooden frame by his bed and who had left on the floor of his sleeping +porch, not so many hours before, the rosy, filmy, lacy, boudoir cap so +circumspectly rescued by Oh My. + +Dick heard her voice, for she awoke, like a bird, with song. He heard +her trilling, in and out through open windows, all down the long wing +that was hers. And he heard her singing in the patio garden, where, +also, she desisted long enough to quarrel with her Airedale and scold +the collie pup unholily attracted by the red-orange, divers-finned, +and many-tailed Japanese goldfish in the fountain basin. + +He was aware of pleasure that she was awake. It was a pleasure that +never staled. Always, up himself for hours, he had a sense that the +Big House was not really awake until he heard Paula's morning song +across the patio. + +But having tasted the pleasure of knowing her to be awake, Dick, as +usual, forgot her in his own affairs. She went out of his +consciousness as he became absorbed again in the Iowa statistics on +hog cholera. + +"Good morning, Merry Gentleman," was the next he heard, always +adorable music in his ears; and Paula flowed in upon him, all softness +of morning kimono and stayless body, as her arm passed around his neck +and she perched, half in his arms, on one accommodating knee of his. +And he pressed her, and advertised his awareness of her existence and +nearness, although his eyes lingered a full half minute longer on the +totals of results of Professor Kenealy's hog inoculations on Simon +Jones' farm at Washington, Iowa. + +"My!" she protested. "You are too fortunate. You are sated with +riches. Here is your Lady Boy, your 'little haughty moon,' and you +haven't even said, 'Good morning, Little Lady Boy, was your sleep +sweet and gentle?'" + +And Dick Forrest forsook the statistical columns of Professor +Kenealy's inoculations, pressed his wife closer, kissed her, but with +insistent right fore-finger maintained his place in the pages of the +pamphlet. + +Nevertheless, the very terms of her "reproof prevented him from asking +what he should have asked--the prosperity of her night since the +boudoir cap had been left upon his sleeping porch. He shut the +pamphlet on his right fore-finger, at the place he intended to resume, +and added his right arm to his left about her. + +"Oh!" she cried. "Oh! Oh! Listen!" + +From without came the flute-calls of quail. She quivered against him +with the joy she took in the mellow-sweet notes. + +"The coveys are breaking up," he said. + +"It means spring," Paula cried. + +"And the sign that good weather has come." + +"And love!" + +"And nest-building and egg-laying," Dick laughed. "Never has the world +seemed more fecund than this morning. Lady Isleton is farrowed of +eleven. The angoras were brought down this morning for the kidding. +You should have seen them. And the wild canaries have been discussing +matrimony in the patio for hours. I think some free lover is trying to +break up their monogamic heaven with modern love-theories. It's a +wonder you slept through the discussion. Listen! There they go now. Is +that applause? Or is it a riot?" + +Arose a thin twittering, like elfin pipings, with sharp pitches and +excited shrillnesses, to which Dick and Paula lent delighted ears, +till, suddenly, with the abruptness of the trump of doom, all the +microphonic chorus of the tiny golden lovers was swept away, +obliterated, in a Gargantuan blast of sound--no less wild, no less +musical, no less passionate with love, but immense, dominant, +compelling by very vastitude of volume. + +The eager eyes of the man and woman sought instantly the channel past +open French windows and the screen of the sleeping porch to the road +through the lilacs, while they waited breathlessly for the great +stallion to appear who trumpeted his love-call before him. Again, +unseen, he trumpeted, and Dick said: + +"I will sing you a song, my haughty moon. It is not my song. It is the +Mountain Lad's. It is what he nickers. Listen! He sings it again. This +is what he says: 'Hear me! I am Eros. I stamp upon the hills. I fill +the wide valleys. The mares hear me, and startle, in quiet pastures; +for they know me. The grass grows rich and richer, the land is filled +with fatness, and the sap is in the trees. It is the spring. The +spring is mine. I am monarch of my kingdom of the spring. The mares +remember my voice. They know me aforetime through their mothers before +them. Hear me! I am Eros. I stamp upon the hills, and the wide valleys +are my heralds, echoing the sound of my approach.'" + +And Paula pressed closer to her husband, and was pressed, as her lips +touched his forehead, and as the pair of them, gazing at the empty +road among the lilacs, saw it filled with the eruptive vision of +Mountain Lad, majestic and mighty, the gnat-creature of a man upon his +back absurdly small; his eyes wild and desirous, with the blue sheen +that surfaces the eyes of stallions; his mouth, flecked with the froth +and fret of high spirit, now brushed to burnished knees of impatience, +now tossed skyward to utterance of that vast, compelling call that +shook the air. + +Almost as an echo, from afar off, came a thin-sweet answering whinney. + +"It is the Fotherington Princess," Paula breathed softly. + +Again Mountain Lad trumpeted his call, and Dick chanted: + +"Hear me! I am Eros! I stamp upon the hills!" + +And almost, for a flash of an instant, circled soft and close in his +arms, Paula knew resentment of her husband's admiration for the +splendid beast. And the next instant resentment vanished, and, in +acknowledgment of due debt, she cried gaily: + +"And now, Red Cloud! the Song of the Acorn!" Dick glanced half +absently to her from the pamphlet folded on his finger, and then, with +equal pitch of gaiety, sang: + + "The acorns come down from heaven! + I plant the short acorns in the valley! + I plant the long acorns in the valley! + I sprout, I, the black-oak acorn, sprout, I sprout!" + +She had impressed herself very close against him during his moment of +chanting, but, in the first moments that succeeded she felt the +restless movement of the hand that held the finger-marked hog-pamphlet +and caught the swift though involuntary flash of his eye to the clock +on his desk that marked 11:25. Again she tried to hold him, although, +with equal involuntariness, her attempt was made in mild terms of +resentment. + +"You are a strange and wonderful Red Cloud," she said slowly. +"Sometimes almost am I convinced that you are utterly Red Cloud, +planting your acorns and singing your savage joy of the planting. And, +sometimes, almost you are to me the ultramodern man, the last word of +the two-legged, male human that finds Trojan adventures in sieges of +statistics, and, armed with test tubes and hypodermics, engages in +gladiatorial contests with weird microorganisms. Almost, at times, it +seems you should wear glasses and be bald-headed; almost, it +seems...." + +"That I have no right of vigor to possess an armful of girl," he +completed for her, drawing her still closer. "That I am a silly +scientific brute who doesn't merit his 'vain little breath of sweet +rose-colored dust.' Well, listen, I have a plan. In a few days...." + +But his plan died in birth, for, at their backs, came a discreet cough +of warning, and, both heads turning as one they saw Bonbright, the +assistant secretary, with a sheaf of notes on yellow sheets in his +hand. + +"Four telegrams," he murmured apologetically. "Mr. Blake is confident +that two of them are very important. One of them concerns that Chile +shipment of bulls...." + +And Paula, slowly drawing away from her husband and rising to her +feet, could feel him slipping from her toward his tables of +statistics, bills of lading, and secretaries, foremen, and managers. + +"Oh, Paula," Dick called, as she was fading through the doorway; "I've +christened the last boy--he's to be known as 'Oh Ho.' How do you like +it?" + +Her reply began with a hint of forlornness that vanished with her +smile, as she warned: + +"You _will_ play ducks and drakes with the house-boys' names." + +"I never do it with pedigreed stock," he assured her with a solemnity +belied by the challenging twinkle in his eyes. + +"I didn't mean that," was her retort. "I meant that you were +exhausting the possibilities of the language. Before long you'll have +to be calling them Oh Bel, Oh Hell, and Oh Go to Hell. Your 'Oh' was a +mistake. You should have started with 'Red.' Then you could have had +Red Bull, Red Horse, Red Dog, Red Frog, Red Fern--and, and all the +rest of the reds." + +She mingled her laughter with his, as she vanished, and, the next +moment, the telegram before him, he was immersed in the details of the +shipment, at two hundred and fifty dollars each, F. O. B., of three +hundred registered yearling bulls to the beef ranges of Chile. Even +so, vaguely, with vague pleasure, he heard Paula sing her way back +across the patio to her long wing of house; though he was unaware that +her voice was a trifle, just the merest trifle, subdued. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + + +Five minutes after Paula had left him, punctual to the second, the +four telegrams disposed of, Dick was getting into a ranch motor car, +along with Thayer, the Idaho buyer, and Naismith, the special +correspondent for the _Breeders' Gazette_. Wardman, the sheep +manager, joined them at the corrals where several thousand young +Shropshire rams had been assembled for inspection. + +There was little need for conversation. Thayer was distinctly +disappointed in this, for he felt that the purchase of ten carloads of +such expensive creatures was momentous enough to merit much +conversation. + +"They speak for themselves," Dick had assured him, and turned aside to +give data to Naismith for his impending article on Shropshires in +California and the Northwest. + +"I wouldn't advise you to bother to select them," Dick told Thayer ten +minutes later. "The average is all top. You could spend a week picking +your ten carloads and have no higher grade than if you had taken the +first to hand." + +This cool assumption that the sale was already consummated so +perturbed Thayer, that, along with the sure knowledge that he had +never seen so high a quality of rams, he was nettled into changing his +order to twenty carloads. + +As he told Naismith, after they had regained the Big House and as they +chalked their cues to finish the interrupted game: + +"It's my first visit to Forrest's. He's a wizard. I've been buying in +the East and importing. But those Shropshires won my judgment. You +noticed I doubled my order. Those Idaho buyers will be wild for them. +I only had buying orders straight for six carloads, and contingent on +my judgment for two carloads more; but if every buyer doesn't double +his order, straight and contingent, when he sees them rams, and if +there isn't a stampede for what's left, I don't know sheep. They're +the goods. If they don't jump up the sheep game of Idaho ... well, +then Forrest's no breeder and I'm no buyer, that's all." + +As the warning gong for lunch rang out--a huge bronze gong from Korea +that was never struck until it was first indubitably ascertained that +Paula was awake--Dick joined the young people at the goldfish fountain +in the big patio. Bert Wainwright, variously advised and commanded by +his sister, Rita, and by Paula and her sisters, Lute and Ernestine, +was striving with a dip-net to catch a particularly gorgeous flower of +a fish whose size and color and multiplicity of fins and tails had led +Paula to decide to segregate him for the special breeding tank in the +fountain of her own secret patio. Amid high excitement, and much +squealing and laughter, the deed was accomplished, the big fish +deposited in a can and carried away by the waiting Italian gardener. + +"And what have you to say for yourself?" Ernestine challenged, as Dick +joined them. + +"Nothing," he answered sadly. "The ranch is depleted. Three hundred +beautiful young bulls depart to-morrow for South America, and Thayer-- +you met him last night--is taking twenty carloads of rams. All I can +say is that my congratulations are extended to Idaho and Chile." + +"Plant more acorns," Paula laughed, her arms about her sisters, the +three of them smilingly expectant of an inevitable antic. + +"Oh, Dick, sing your acorn song," Lute begged. + +He shook his head solemnly. + +"I've got a better one. It's purest orthodoxy. It's got Red Cloud and +his acorn song skinned to death. Listen! This is the song of the +little East-sider, on her first trip to the country under the auspices +of her Sunday School. She's quite young. Pay particular attention to +her lisp." + +And then Dick chanted, lisping: + + "The goldfish thwimmeth in the bowl, + The robin thiths upon the tree; + What maketh them thit so eathily? + Who stuckth the fur upon their breasths? + God! God! He done it!" + +"Cribbed," was Ernestine's judgment, as the laughter died away. + +"Sure," Dick agreed. "I got it from the _Rancher and Stockman_, +that got it from the _Swine Breeders' Journal_, that got it from +the _Western Advocate_, that got it from _Public Opinion_, +that got it, undoubtedly, from the little girl herself, or, rather +from her Sunday School teacher. For that matter I am convinced it was +first printed in _Our Dumb Animals_." + +The bronze gong rang out its second call, and Paula, one arm around +Dick, the other around Rita, led the way into the house, while, +bringing up the rear, Bert Wainwright showed Lute Ernestine a new +tango step. + +"One thing, Thayer," Dick said in an aside, after releasing himself +from the girls, as they jostled in confusion where they met Thayer and +Naismith at the head of the stairway leading down to the dining room. +"Before you leave us, cast your eyes over those Merinos. I really have +to brag about them, and American sheepmen will have to come to them. +Of course, started with imported stock, but I've made a California +strain that will make the French breeders sit up. See Wardman and take +your pick. Get Naismith to look them over with you. Stick half a dozen +of them in your train-load, with my compliments, and let your Idaho +sheepmen get a line on them." + +They seated at a table, capable of indefinite extension, in a long, +low dining room that was a replica of the hacienda dining rooms of the +Mexican land-kings of old California. The floor was of large brown +tiles, the beamed ceiling and the walls were whitewashed, and the +huge, undecorated, cement fireplace was an achievement in massiveness +and simplicity. Greenery and blooms nodded from without the deep- +embrasured windows, and the room expressed the sense of cleanness, +chastity, and coolness. + +On the walls, but not crowded, were a number of canvases--most +ambitious of all, in the setting of honor, all in sad grays, a +twilight Mexican scene by Xavier Martinez, of a peon, with a crooked- +stick plow and two bullocks, turning a melancholy furrow across the +foreground of a sad, illimitable, Mexican plain. There were brighter +pictures, of early Mexican-Californian life, a pastel of twilight +eucalyptus with a sunset-tipped mountain beyond, by Reimers, a +moonlight by Peters, and a Griffin stubble-field across which gleamed +and smoldered California summer hills of tawny brown and purple- +misted, wooded canyons. + +"Say," Thayer muttered in an undertone across to Naismith, while Dick +and the girls were in the thick of exclamatory and giggling banter, +"here's some stuff for that article of yours, if you touch upon the +Big House. I've seen the servants' dining room. Forty head sit down to +it every meal, including gardeners, chauffeurs, and outside help. It's +a boarding house in itself. Some head, some system, take it from me. +That Chiney boy, Oh Joy, is a wooz. He's housekeeper, or manager, of +the whole shebang, or whatever you want to call his job--and, say, it +runs that smooth you can't hear it." + +"Forrest's the real wooz," Naismith nodded. "He's the brains that +picks brains. He could run an army, a campaign, a government, or even +a three-ring circus." + +"Which last is some compliment," Thayer concurred heartily. + +"Oh, Paula," Dick said across to his wife. "I just got word that +Graham arrives to-morrow morning. Better tell Oh Joy to put him in the +watch-tower. It's man-size quarters, and it's possible he may carry +out his threat and work on his book." + +"Graham?--Graham?" Paula queried aloud of her memory. "Do I know him?" + +"You met him once two years ago, in Santiago, at the Café Venus. He +had dinner with us." + +"Oh, one of those naval officers?" + +Dick shook his head. + +"The civilian. Don't you remember that big blond fellow--you talked +music with him for half an hour while Captain Joyce talked our heads +off to prove that the United States should clean Mexico up and out +with the mailed fist." + +"Oh, to be sure," Paula vaguely recollected. "He'd met you somewhere +before... South Africa, wasn't it? Or the Philippines?" + +"That's the chap. South Africa, it was. Evan Graham. Next time we met +was on the _Times_ dispatch boat on the Yellow Sea. And we +crossed trails a dozen times after that, without meeting, until that +night in the Café Venus. + +"Heavens--he left Bora-Bora, going east, two days before I dropped +anchor bound west on my way to Samoa. I came out of Apia, with letters +for him from the American consul, the day before he came in. We missed +each other by three days at Levuka--I was sailing the _Wild Duck_ +then. He pulled out of Suva as guest on a British cruiser. Sir Everard +Im Thurm, British High Commissioner of the South Seas, gave me more +letters for Graham. I missed him at Port Resolution and at Vila in the +New Hebrides. The cruiser was junketing, you see. I beat her in and +out of the Santa Cruz Group. It was the same thing in the Solomons. +The cruiser, after shelling the cannibal villages at Langa-Langa, +steamed out in the morning. I sailed in that afternoon. I never did +deliver those letters in person, and the next time I laid eyes on him +was at the Café Venus two years ago." + +"But who about him, and what about him?" Paula queried. "And what's +the book?" + +"Well, first of all, beginning at the end, he's broke--that is, for +him, he's broke. He's got an income of several thousand a year left, +but all that his father left him is gone. No; he didn't blow it. He +got in deep, and the 'silent panic' several years ago just about +cleaned him. But he doesn't whimper. + +"He's good stuff, old American stock, a Yale man. The book--he expects +to make a bit on it--covers last year's trip across South America, +west coast to east coast. It was largely new ground. The Brazilian +government voluntarily voted him a honorarium of ten thousand dollars +for the information he brought out concerning unexplored portions of +Brazil. Oh, he's a man, all man. He delivers the goods. You know the +type--clean, big, strong, simple; been everywhere, seen everything, +knows most of a lot of things, straight, square, looks you in the +eyes--well, in short, a man's man." + +Ernestine clapped her hands, flung a tantalizing, man-challenging, +man-conquering glance at Bert Wainwright, and exclaimed: "And he comes +tomorrow!" + +Dick shook his head reprovingly. + +"Oh, nothing in that direction, Ernestine. Just as nice girls as you +have tried to hook Evan Graham before now. And, between ourselves, I +couldn't blame them. But he's had good wind and fast legs, and they've +always failed to run him down or get him into a corner, where, dazed +and breathless, he's mechanically muttered 'Yes' to certain +interrogatories and come out of the trance to find himself, roped, +thrown, branded, and married. Forget him, Ernestine. Stick by golden +youth and let it drop its golden apples. Pick them up, and golden +youth with them, making a noise like stupid failure all the time you +are snaring swift-legged youth. But Graham's out of the running. He's +old like me--just about the same age--and, like me, he's run a lot of +those queer races. He knows how to make a get-away. He's been cut by +barbed wire, nose-twitched, neck-burnt, cinched to a fare-you-well, +and he remains subdued but uncatchable. He doesn't care for young +things. In fact, you may charge him with being wobbly, but I plead +guilty, by proxy, that he is merely old, hard bitten, and very wise." + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + + +"Where's my Boy in Breeches?" Dick shouted, stamping with jingling +spurs through the Big House in quest of its Little Lady. + +He came to the door that gave entrance to her long wing. It was a door +without a knob, a huge panel of wood in a wood-paneled wall. But Dick +shared the secret of the hidden spring with his wife, pressed the +spring, and the door swung wide. + +"Where's my Boy in Breeches?" he called and stamped down the length of +her quarters. + +A glance into the bathroom, with its sunken Roman bath and descending +marble steps, was fruitless, as were the glances he sent into Paula's +wardrobe room and dressing room. He passed the short, broad stairway +that led to her empty window-seat divan in what she called her Juliet +Tower, and thrilled at sight of an orderly disarray of filmy, pretty, +lacy woman's things that he knew she had spread out for her own +sensuous delight of contemplation. He fetched up for a moment at a +drawing easel, his reiterant cry checked on his lips, and threw a +laugh of recognition and appreciation at the sketch, just outlined, of +an awkward, big-boned, knobby, weanling colt caught in the act of +madly whinneying for its mother. + +"Where's my Boy in Breeches?" he shouted before him, out to the +sleeping porch; and found only a demure, brow-troubled Chinese woman +of thirty, who smiled self-effacing embarrassment into his eyes. + +This was Paula's maid, Oh Dear, so named by Dick, many years before, +because of a certain solicitous contraction of her delicate brows that +made her appear as if ever on the verge of saying, "Oh dear!" In fact, +Dick had taken her, as a child almost, for Paula's service, from a +fishing village on the Yellow Sea where her widow-mother earned as +much as four dollars in a prosperous year at making nets for the +fishermen. Oh Dear's first service for Paula had been aboard the +three-topmast schooner, _All Away_, at the same time that Oh Joy, +cabin-boy, had begun to demonstrate the efficiency that enabled him, +through the years, to rise to the majordomoship of the Big House. + +"Where is your mistress, Oh Dear?" Dick asked. + +Oh Dear shrank away in an agony of bashfulness. + +Dick waited. + +"She maybe with 'm young ladies--I don't know," Oh Dear stammered; and +Dick, in very mercy, swung away on his heel. + +"Where's my Boy in Breeches?" he shouted, as he stamped out under the +porte cochère just as a ranch limousine swung around the curve among +the lilacs. + +"I'll be hanged if I know," a tall, blond man in a light summer suit +responded from the car; and the next moment Dick Forrest and Evan +Graham were shaking hands. + +Oh My and Oh Ho carried in the hand baggage, and Dick accompanied his +guest to the watch tower quarters. + +"You'll have to get used to us, old man," Dick was explaining. "We run +the ranch like clockwork, and the servants are wonders; but we allow +ourselves all sorts of loosenesses. If you'd arrived two minutes later +there'd have been no one to welcome you but the Chinese boys. I was +just going for a ride, and Paula--Mrs. Forrest--has disappeared." + +The two men were almost of a size, Graham topping his host by perhaps +an inch, but losing that inch in the comparative breadth of shoulders +and depth of chest. Graham was, if anything, a clearer blond than +Forrest, although both were equally gray of eye, equally clear in the +whites of the eyes, and equally and precisely similarly bronzed by sun +and weather-beat. Graham's features were in a slightly larger mold; +his eyes were a trifle longer, although this was lost again by a +heavier droop of lids. His nose hinted that it was a shade straighter +as well as larger than Dick's, and his lips were a shade thicker, a +shade redder, a shade more bowed with fulsome-ness. + +Forrest's hair was light brown to chestnut, while Graham's carried a +whispering advertisement that it would have been almost golden in its +silk had it not been burned almost to sandiness by the sun. The cheeks +of both were high-boned, although the hollows under Forrest's cheek- +bones were more pronounced. Both noses were large-nostriled and +sensitive. And both mouths, while generously proportioned, carried the +impression of girlish sweetness and chastity along with the muscles +that could draw the lips to the firmness and harshness that would not +give the lie to the square, uncleft chins beneath. + +But the inch more in height and the inch less in chest-girth gave Evan +Graham a grace of body and carriage that Dick Forrest did not possess. +In this particular of build, each served well as a foil to the other. +Graham was all light and delight, with a hint--but the slightest of +hints--of Prince Charming. Forrest's seemed a more efficient and +formidable organism, more dangerous to other life, stouter-gripped on +its own life. + +Forrest threw a glance at his wrist watch as he talked, but in that +glance, without pause or fumble of focus, with swift certainty of +correlation, he read the dial. + +"Eleven-thirty," he said. "Come along at once, Graham. We don't eat +till twelve-thirty. I am sending out a shipment of bulls, three +hundred of them, and I'm downright proud of them. You simply must see +them. Never mind your riding togs. Oh Ho--fetch a pair of my leggings. +You, Oh Joy, order Altadena saddled.--What saddle do you prefer, +Graham?" + +"Oh, anything, old man." + +"English?--Australian?--McClellan?--Mexican?" Dick insisted. + +"McClellan, if it's no trouble," Graham surrendered. + + They sat their horses by the side of the road and watched the last of +the herd beginning its long journey to Chili disappear around the +bend. + +"I see what you're doing--it's great," Graham said with sparkling +eyes. "I've fooled some myself with the critters, when I was a +youngster, down in the Argentine. If I'd had beef-blood like that to +build on, I mightn't have taken the cropper I did." + +"But that was before alfalfa and artesian wells," Dick smoothed for +him. "The time wasn't ripe for the Shorthorn. Only scrubs could +survive the droughts. They were strong in staying powers but light on +the scales. And refrigerator steamships hadn't been invented. That's +what revolutionized the game down there." + +"Besides, I was a mere youngster," Graham added. "Though that meant +nothing much. There was a young German tackled it at the same time I +did, with a tenth of my capital. He hung it out, lean years, dry +years, and all. He's rated in seven figures now." + +They turned their horses back for the Big House. Dick flirted his +wrist to see his watch. + +"Lots of time," he assured his guest. "I'm glad you saw those +yearlings. There was one reason why that young German stuck it out. He +had to. You had your father's money to fall back on, and, I imagine +not only that your feet itched, but that your chief weakness lay in +that you could afford to solace the itching." + + "Over there are the fish ponds," Dick said, indicating with a nod of +his head to the right an invisible area beyond the lilacs. "You'll +have plenty of opportunity to catch a mess of trout, or bass, or even +catfish. You see, I'm a miser. I love to make things work. There may +be a justification for the eight-hour labor day, but I make the work- +day of water just twenty-four hours' long. The ponds are in series, +according to the nature of the fish. But the water starts working up +in the mountains. It irrigates a score of mountain meadows before it +makes the plunge and is clarified to crystal clearness in the next few +rugged miles; and at the plunge from the highlands it generates half +the power and all the lighting used on the ranch. Then it sub- +irrigates lower levels, flows in here to the fish ponds, and runs out +and irrigates miles of alfalfa farther on. And, believe me, if by that +time it hadn't reached the flat of the Sacramento, I'd be pumping out +the drainage for more irrigation." + +"Man, man," Graham laughed, "you could make a poem on the wonder of +water. I've met fire-worshipers, but you're the first real water- +worshiper I've ever encountered. And you're no desert-dweller, either. +You live in a land of water--pardon the bull--but, as I was saying..." + +Graham never completed his thought. From the right, not far away, came +the unmistakable ring of shod hoofs on concrete, followed by a mighty +splash and an outburst of women's cries and laughter. Quickly the +cries turned to alarm, accompanied by the sounds of a prodigious +splashing and floundering as of some huge, drowning beast. Dick bent +his head and leaped his horse through the lilacs, Graham, on Altadena, +followed at his heels. They emerged in a blaze of sunshine, on an open +space among the trees, and Graham came upon as unexpected a picture as +he had ever chanced upon in his life. + +Tree-surrounded, the heart of the open space was a tank, four-sided of +concrete. The upper end of the tank, full width, was a broad spillway, +sheened with an inch of smooth-slipping water. The sides were +perpendicular. The lower end, roughly corrugated, sloped out gently to +solid footing. Here, in distress that was consternation, and in fear +that was panic, excitedly bobbed up and down a cowboy in bearskin +chaps, vacuously repeating the exclamation, "Oh God! Oh God!"--the +first division of it rising in inflection, the second division +inflected fallingly with despair. On the edge of the farther side, +facing him, in bathing suits, legs dangling toward the water, sat +three terrified nymphs. + +And in the tank, the center of the picture, a great horse, bright bay +and wet and ruddy satin, vertical in the water, struck upward and +outward into the free air with huge fore-hoofs steel-gleaming in the +wet and sun, while on its back, slipping and clinging, was the white +form of what Graham took at first to be some glorious youth. Not until +the stallion, sinking, emerged again by means of the powerful beat of +his legs and hoofs, did Graham realize that it was a woman who rode +him--a woman as white as the white silken slip of a bathing suit that +molded to her form like a marble-carven veiling of drapery. As marble +was her back, save that the fine delicate muscles moved and crept +under the silken suit as she strove to keep her head above water. Her +slim round arms were twined in yards of half-drowned stallion-mane, +while her white round knees slipped on the sleek, wet, satin pads of +the great horse's straining shoulder muscles. The white toes of her +dug for a grip into the smooth sides of the animal, vainly seeking a +hold on the ribs beneath. + +In a breath, or the half of a breath, Graham saw the whole breathless +situation, realized that the white wonderful creature was a woman, and +sensed the smallness and daintiness of her despite her gladiatorial +struggles. She reminded him of some Dresden china figure set absurdly +small and light and strangely on the drowning back of a titanic beast. +So dwarfed was she by the bulk of the stallion that she was a midget, +or a tiny fairy from fairyland come true. + +As she pressed her cheek against the great arching neck, her golden- +brown hair, wet from being under, flowing and tangled, seemed tangled +in the black mane of the stallion. But it was her face that smote +Graham most of all. It was a boy's face; it was a woman's face; it was +serious and at the same time amused, expressing the pleasure it found +woven with the peril. It was a white woman's face--and modern; and +yet, to Graham, it was all-pagan. This was not a creature and a +situation one happened upon in the twentieth century. It was straight +out of old Greece. It was a Maxfield Parrish reminiscence from the +Arabian Nights. Genii might be expected to rise from those troubled +depths, or golden princes, astride winged dragons, to swoop down out +of the blue to the rescue. + +The stallion, forcing itself higher out of water, missed, by a shade, +from turning over backward as it sank. Glorious animal and glorious +rider disappeared together beneath the surface, to rise together, a +second later, the stallion still pawing the air with fore-hoofs the +size of dinner plates, the rider still clinging to the sleek, satin- +coated muscles. Graham thought, with a gasp, what might have happened +had the stallion turned over. A chance blow from any one of those four +enormous floundering hoofs could have put out and quenched forever the +light and sparkle of that superb, white-bodied, fire-animated woman. + +"Ride his neck!" Dick shouted. "Catch his foretop and get on his neck +till he balances out!" + +The woman obeyed, digging her toes into the evasive muscle-pads for +the quick effort, and leaping upward, one hand twined in the wet mane, +the other hand free and up-stretched, darting between the ears and +clutching the foretop. The next moment, as the stallion balanced out +horizontally in obedience to her shiftage of weight, she had slipped +back to the shoulders. Holding with one hand to the mane, she waved a +white arm in the air and flashed a smile of acknowledgment to Forrest; +and, as Graham noted, she was cool enough to note him on his horse +beside Forrest. Also, Graham realized that the turning of her head and +the waving of her arm was only partly in bravado, was more in +aesthetic wisdom of the picture she composed, and was, most of all, +sheer joy of daring and emprise of the blood and the flesh and the +life that was she. + +"Not many women'd tackle that," Dick said quietly, as Mountain Lad, +easily retaining his horizontal position once it had been attained, +swam to the lower end of the tank and floundered up the rough slope to +the anxious cowboy. + +The latter swiftly adjusted the halter with a turn of chain between +the jaws. But Paula, still astride, leaned forward, imperiously took +the lead-part from the cowboy, whirled Mountain Lad around to face +Forrest, and saluted. + +"Now you will have to go away," she called. "This is our hen party, +and the stag public is not admitted." + +Dick laughed, saluted acknowledgment, and led the way back through the +lilacs to the road. + +"Who ... who was it?" Graham queried. + +"Paula--Mrs. Forrest--the boy girl, the child that never grew up, the +grittiest puff of rose-dust that was ever woman." + +"My breath is quite taken away," Graham said. "Do your people do such +stunts frequently?" + +"First time she ever did that," Forrest replied. "That was Mountain +Lad. She rode him straight down the spill-way--tobogganed with him, +twenty-two hundred and forty pounds of him." + +"Risked his neck and legs as well as her own," was Graham's comment. + +"Thirty-five thousand dollars' worth of neck and legs," Dick smiled. +"That's what a pool of breeders offered me for him last year after +he'd cleaned up the Coast with his get as well as himself. And as for +Paula, she could break necks and legs at that price every day in the +year until I went broke--only she doesn't. She never has accidents." + +"I wouldn't have given tuppence for her chance if he'd turned over." + +"But he didn't," Dick answered placidly. "That's Paula's luck. She's +tough to kill. Why, I've had her under shell-fire where she was +actually disappointed because she didn't get hit, or killed, or near- +killed. Four batteries opened on us, shrapnel, at mile-range, and we +had to cover half a mile of smooth hill-brow for shelter. I really +felt I was justified in charging her with holding back. She did admit +a 'trifle.' We've been married ten or a dozen years now, and, d'ye +know, sometimes it seems to me I don't know her at all, and that +nobody knows her, and that she doesn't know herself--just the same way +as you and I can look at ourselves in a mirror and wonder who the +devil we are anyway. Paula and I have one magic formula: _Damn the +expense when fun is selling_. And it doesn't matter whether the +price is in dollars, hide, or life. It's our way and our luck. It +works. And, d'ye know, we've never been gouged on the price yet." + + + + +CHAPTER X + + + +It was a stag lunch. As Forrest explained, the girls were "hen- +partying." + +"I doubt you'll see a soul of them till four o'clock, when Ernestine, +that's one of Paula's sisters, is going to wallop me at tennis--at +least so she's threatened and pledged." + +And Graham sat through the lunch, where only men sat, took his part in +the conversation on breeds and breeding, learned much, contributed a +mite from his own world-experiences, and was unable to shake from his +eyes the persistent image of his hostess, the vision of the rounded +and delicate white of her against the dark wet background of the +swimming stallion. And all the afternoon, looking over prize Merinos +and Berkshire gilts, continually that vision burned up under his +eyelids. Even at four, in the tennis court, himself playing against +Ernestine, he missed more than one stroke because the image of the +flying ball would suddenly be eclipsed by the image of a white marble +figure of a woman that strove and clung on the back of a great horse. + +Graham, although an outlander, knew his California, and, while every +girl of the swimming suits was gowned for dinner, was not surprised to +find no man similarly accoutered. Nor had he made the mistake of so +being himself, despite the Big House and the magnificent scale on which +it operated. + +Between the first and second gongs, all the guests drifted into the +long dining room. Sharp after the second gong, Dick Forrest arrived +and precipitated cocktails. And Graham impatiently waited the +appearance of the woman who had worried his eyes since noon. He was +prepared for all manner of disappointment. Too many gorgeous stripped +athletes had he seen slouched into conventional garmenting, to expect +too much of the marvelous creature in the white silken swimming suit +when it should appear garbed as civilized women garb. + +He caught his breath with an imperceptible gasp when she entered. She +paused, naturally, for just the right flash of an instant in the +arched doorway, limned against the darkness behind her, the soft glow +of the indirect lighting full upon her. Graham's lips gasped apart, +and remained apart, his eyes ravished with the beauty and surprise of +her he had deemed so small, so fairy-like. Here was no delicate midget +of a child-woman or boy-girl on a stallion, but a grand lady, as only +a small woman can be grand on occasion. + +Taller in truth was she, as well as in seeming, than he had judged +her, and as finely proportioned in her gown as in her swimming suit. +He noted her shining gold-brown hair piled high; the healthy tinge of +her skin that was clean and clear and white; the singing throat, full +and round, incomparably set on a healthy chest; and the gown, dull +blue, a sort of medieval thing with half-fitting, half-clinging body, +with flowing sleeves and trimmings of gold-jeweled bands. + +She smiled an embracing salutation and greeting. Graham recognized it +as kin to the one he had seen when she smiled from the back of the +stallion. When she started forward, he could not fail to see the +inimitable way she carried the cling and weight of her draperies with +her knees--round knees, he knew, that he had seen press desperately +into the round muscle-pads of Mountain Lad. Graham observed, also, +that she neither wore nor needed corseting. Nor could he fail, as she +crossed the floor, to see two women: one, the grand lady, the mistress +of the Big House; one, the lovely equestrienne statue beneath the +dull-blue, golden-trimmed gown, that no gowning could ever make his +memory forget. + +She was upon them, among them, and Graham's hand held hers in the +formal introduction as he was made welcome to the Big House and all +the hacienda in a voice that he knew was a singing voice and that +could proceed only from a throat that pillared, such as hers, from a +chest deep as hers despite her smallness. + +At table, across the corner from her, he could not help a +surreptitious studying of her. While he held his own in the general +fun and foolishness, it was his hostess that mostly filled the circle +of his eye and the content of his mind. + +It was as bizarre a company as Graham had ever sat down to dinner +with. The sheep-buyer and the correspondent for the _Breeders' +Gazette_ were still guests. Three machine-loads of men, women, and +girls, totaling fourteen, had arrived shortly before the first gong +and had remained to ride home in the moonlight. Graham could not +remember their names; but he made out that they came from some valley +town thirty miles away called Wickenberg, and that they were of the +small-town banking, professional, and wealthy-farmer class. They were +full of spirits, laughter, and the latest jokes and catches sprung in +the latest slang. + +"I see right now," Graham told Paula, "if your place continues to be +the caravanserai which it has been since my arrival, that I might as +well give up trying to remember names and people." + +"I don't blame you," she laughed concurrence. "But these are +neighbors. They drop in any time. Mrs. Watson, there, next to Dick, is +of the old land-aristocracy. Her grandfather, Wicken, came across the +Sierras in 1846. Wickenberg is named after him. And that pretty dark- +eyed girl is her daughter...." + +And while Paula gave him a running sketch of the chance guests, Graham +heard scarce half she said, so occupied was he in trying to sense his +way to an understanding of her. Naturalness was her keynote, was his +first judgment. In not many moments he had decided that her key-note +was joy. But he was dissatisfied with both conclusions, and knew he +had not put his finger on her. And then it came to him--pride. That +was it! It was in her eye, in the poise of her head, in the curling +tendrils of her hair, in her sensitive nostrils, in the mobile lips, +in the very pitch and angle of the rounded chin, in her hands, small, +muscular and veined, that he knew at sight to be the hard-worked hands +of one who had spent long hours at the piano. Pride it was, in every +muscle, nerve, and quiver of her--conscious, sentient, stinging pride. + +She might be joyous and natural, boy and woman, fun and frolic; but +always the pride was there, vibrant, tense, intrinsic, the basic stuff +of which she was builded. She was a woman, frank, outspoken, straight- +looking, plastic, democratic; but toy she was not. At times, to him, +she seemed to glint an impression of steel--thin, jewel-like steel. +She seemed strength in its most delicate terms and fabrics. He fondled +the impression of her as of silverspun wire, of fine leather, of +twisted hair-sennit from the heads of maidens such as the Marquesans +make, of carven pearl-shell for the lure of the bonita, and of barbed +ivory at the heads of sea-spears such as the Eskimos throw. + +"All right, Aaron," they heard Dick Forrest's voice rising, in a lull, +from the other end of the table. "Here's something from Phillips +Brooks for you to chew on. Brooks said that no man 'has come to true +greatness who has not felt in some degree that his life belongs to his +race, and that what God gives him, he gives him for mankind.'" + +"So at last you believe in God?" the man, addressed Aaron, genially +sneered back. He was a slender, long-faced olive-brunette, with +brilliant black eyes and the blackest of long black beards. + +"I'm hanged if I know," Dick answered. "Anyway, I quoted only +figuratively. Call it morality, call it good, call it evolution." + +"A man doesn't have to be intellectually correct in order to be +great," intruded a quiet, long-faced Irishman, whose sleeves were +threadbare and frayed. "And by the same token many men who are most +correct in sizing up the universe have been least great." + +"True for you, Terrence," Dick applauded. + +"It's a matter of definition," languidly spoke up an unmistakable +Hindoo, crumbling his bread with exquisitely slender and small-boned +fingers. "What shall we mean as _great?"_ + +"Shall we say _beauty?"_ softly queried a tragic-faced youth, +sensitive and shrinking, crowned with an abominably trimmed head of +long hair. + +Ernestine rose suddenly at her place, hands on table, leaning forward +with a fine simulation of intensity. + + "They're off!" she cried. "They're off! Now we'll have the universe +settled all over again for the thousandth time. Theodore"--to the +youthful poet--"it's a poor start. Get into the running. Ride your +father ion and your mother ion, and you'll finish three lengths +ahead." + +A roar of laughter was her reward, and the poet blushed and receded +into his sensitive shell. + +Ernestine turned on the black-bearded one: + +"Now, Aaron. He's not in form. You start it. You know how. Begin: 'As +Bergson so well has said, with the utmost refinement of philosophic +speech allied with the most comprehensive intellectual outlook +that....'" + +More laughter roared down the table, drowning Ernestine's conclusion +as well as the laughing retort of the black-bearded one. + +"Our philosophers won't have a chance to-night," Paula stole in an +aside to Graham. + +"Philosophers?" he questioned back. "They didn't come with the +Wickenberg crowd. Who and what are they? I'm all at sea." + +"They--" Paula hesitated. "They live here. They call themselves the +jungle-birds. They have a camp in the woods a couple of miles away, +where they never do anything except read and talk. I'll wager, right +now, you'll find fifty of Dick's latest, uncatalogued books in their +cabins. They have the run of the library, as well, and you'll see them +drifting in and out, any time of the day or night, with their arms +full of books--also, the latest magazines. Dick says they are +responsible for his possessing the most exhaustive and up-to-date +library on philosophy on the Pacific Coast. In a way, they sort of +digest such things for him. It's great fun for Dick, and, besides, it +saves him time. He's a dreadfully hard worker, you know." + +"I understand that they... that Dick takes care of them?" Graham +asked, the while he pleasured in looking straight into the blue eyes +that looked so straight into his. + +As she answered, he was occupied with noting the faintest hint of +bronze--perhaps a trick of the light--in her long, brown lashes. +Perforce, he lifted his gaze to her eyebrows, brown, delicately +stenciled, and made sure that the hint of bronze was there. Still +lifting his gaze to her high-piled hair, he again saw, but more +pronounced, the bronze note glinting from the brown-golden hair. Nor +did he fail to startle and thrill to a dazzlement of smile and teeth +and eye that frequently lived its life in her face. Hers was no thin +smile of restraint, he judged. When she smiled she smiled all of +herself, generously, joyously, throwing the largess of all her being +into the natural expression of what was herself and which domiciled +somewhere within that pretty head of hers. + +"Yes," she was saying. "They have never to worry, as long as they +live, over mere bread and butter. Dick is most generous, and, rather +immoral, in his encouragement of idleness on the part of men like +them. It's a funny place, as you'll find out until you come to +understand us. They... they are appurtenances, and--and hereditaments, +and such things. They will be with us always until we bury them or +they bury us. Once in a while one or another of them drifts away--for +a time. Like the cat, you know. Then it costs Dick real money to get +them back. Terrence, there--Terrence McFane--he's an epicurean +anarchist, if you know what that means. He wouldn't kill a flea. He +has a pet cat I gave him, a Persian of the bluest blue, and he +carefully picks her fleas, not injuring them, stores them in a vial, +and turns them loose in the forest on his long walks when he tires of +human companionship and communes with nature. + +"Well, only last year, he got a bee in his bonnet--the alphabet. He +started for Egypt--without a cent, of course--to run the alphabet down +in the home of its origin and thereby to win the formula that would +explain the cosmos. He got as far as Denver, traveling as tramps +travel, when he mixed up in some I. W. W. riot for free speech or +something. Dick had to hire lawyers, pay fines, and do just about +everything to get him safe home again. + +"And the one with a beard--Aaron Hancock. Like Terrence, he won't +work. Aaron's a Southerner. Says none of his people ever did work, and +that there have always been peasants and fools who just couldn't be +restrained from working. That's why he wears a beard. To shave, he +holds, is unnecessary work, and, therefore, immoral. I remember, at +Melbourne, when he broke in upon Dick and me, a sunburnt wild man from +out the Australian bush. It seems he'd been making original researches +in anthropology, or folk-lore-ology, or something like that. Dick had +known him years before in Paris, and Dick assured him, if he ever +drifted back to America, of food and shelter. So here he is." + +"And the poet?" Graham asked, glad that she must still talk for a +while, enabling him to study the quick dazzlement of smile that played +upon her face. + +"Oh, Theo--Theodore Malken, though we call him Leo. He won't work, +either. His people are old Californian stock and dreadfully wealthy; +but they disowned him and he disowned them when he was fifteen. They +say he is lunatic, and he says they are merely maddening. He really +writes some remarkable verse... when he does write; but he prefers to +dream and live in the jungle with Terrence and Aaron. He was tutoring +immigrant Jews in San Francisco, when Terrence and Aaron rescued him, +or captured him, I don't know which. He's been with us two years now, +and he's actually filling out, despite the facts that Dick is absurdly +generous in furnishing supplies and that they'd rather talk and read +and dream than cook. The only good meals they get is when they descend +upon us, like to-night." + +"And the Hindoo, there--who's he?" + +"That's Dar Hyal. He's their guest. The three of them invited him up, +just as Aaron first invited Terrence, and as Aaron and Terrence +invited Leo. Dick says, in time, three more are bound to appear, and +then he'll have his Seven Sages of the Madroño Grove. Their jungle +camp is in a madroño grove, you know. It's a most beautiful spot, with +living springs, a canyon--but I was telling you about Dar Hyal. + +"He's a revolutionist, of sorts. He's dabbled in our universities, +studied in France, Italy, Switzerland, is a political refugee from +India, and he's hitched his wagon to two stars: one, a new synthetic +system of philosophy; the other, rebellion against the tyranny of +British rule in India. He advocates individual terrorism and direct +mass action. That's why his paper, _Kadar,_ or _Badar,_ or +something like that, was suppressed here in California, and why he +narrowly escaped being deported; and that's why he's up here just now, +devoting himself to formulating his philosophy. + +"He and Aaron quarrel tremendously--that is, on philosophical matters. +And now--" Paula sighed and erased the sigh with her smile--"and now, +I'm done. Consider yourself acquainted. And, oh, if you encounter our +sages more intimately, a word of warning, especially if the encounter +be in the stag room: Dar Hyal is a total abstainer; Theodore Malken +can get poetically drunk, and usually does, on one cocktail; Aaron +Hancock is an expert wine-bibber; and Terrence McFane, knowing little +of one drink from another, and caring less, can put ninety-nine men +out of a hundred under the table and go right on lucidly expounding +epicurean anarchy." + +One thing Graham noted as the dinner proceeded. The sages called Dick +Forrest by his first name; but they always addressed Paula as "Mrs. +Forrest," although she called them by their first names. There was +nothing affected about it. Quite unconsciously did they, who respected +few things under the sun, and among such few things not even work-- +quite unconsciously, and invariably, did they recognize the certain +definite aloofness in Dick Forrest's wife so that her given name was +alien to their lips. By such tokens Evan Graham was not slow in +learning that Dick Forrest's wife had a way with her, compounded of +sheerest democracy and equally sheer royalty. + +It was the same thing, after dinner, in the big living room. She dared +as she pleased, but nobody assumed. Before the company settled down, +Paula seemed everywhere, bubbling over with more outrageous spirits +than any of them. From this group or that, from one corner or another, +her laugh rang out. And her laugh fascinated Graham. There was a +fibrous thrill in it, most sweet to the ear, that differentiated it +from any laugh he had ever heard. It caused Graham to lose the thread +of young Mr. Wombold's contention that what California needed was not +a Japanese exclusion law but at least two hundred thousand Japanese +coolies to do the farm labor of California and knock in the head the +threatened eight-hour day for agricultural laborers. Young Mr. +Wombold, Graham gleaned, was an hereditary large land-owner in the +vicinity of Wickenberg who prided himself on not yielding to the trend +of the times by becoming an absentee landlord. + +From the piano, where Eddie Mason was the center of a group of girls, +came much noise of ragtime music and slangtime song. Terrence McFane +and Aaron Hancock fell into a heated argument over the music of +futurism. And Graham was saved from the Japanese situation with Mr. +Wombold by Dar Hyal, who proceeded to proclaim Asia for the Asiatics +and California for the Californians. + +Paula, catching up her skirts for speed, fled down the room in some +romp, pursued by Dick, who captured her as she strove to dodge around +the Wombold group. + +"Wicked woman," Dick reproved her in mock wrath; and, the next moment, +joined her in persuading Dar Hyal to dance. + +And Dar Hyal succumbed, flinging Asia and the Asiatics to the winds, +along with his arms and legs, as he weirdly parodied the tango in what +he declared to be the "blastic" culmination of modern dancing. + +"And now, Red Cloud, sing Mr. Graham your Acorn Song," Paula commanded +Dick. + +Forrest, his arm still about her, detaining her for the threatened +punishment not yet inflicted, shook his head somberly. + +"The Acorn Song!" Ernestine called from the piano; and the cry was +taken up by Eddie Mason and the girls. + +"Oh, do, Dick," Paula pleaded. "Mr. Graham is the only one who hasn't +heard it." + +Dick shook his head. + +"Then sing him your Goldfish Song." + +"I'll sing him Mountain Lad's song," Dick bullied, a whimsical sparkle +in his eyes. He stamped his feet, pranced, nickered a not bad +imitation of Mountain Lad, tossed an imaginary mane, and cried: + +"Hear me! I am Eros! I stamp upon the hills!" + +"The Acorn Song," Paula interrupted quickly and quietly, with just the +hint of steel in her voice. + +Dick obediently ceased his chant of Mountain Lad, but shook his head +like a stubborn colt. + +"I have a new song," he said solemnly. "It is about you and me, Paula. +I got it from the Nishinam." + +"The Nishinam are the extinct aborigines of this part of California," +Paula shot in a swift aside of explanation to Graham. + +Dick danced half a dozen steps, stiff-legged, as Indians dance, +slapped his thighs with his palms, and began a new chant, still +retaining his hold on his wife. + +"Me, I am Ai-kut, the first man of the Nishinam. Ai-kut is the short +for Adam, and my father and my mother were the coyote and the moon. +And this is Yo-to-to-wi, my wife. She is the first woman of the +Nishinam. Her father and her mother were the grasshopper and the ring- +tailed cat. They were the best father and mother left after my father +and mother. The coyote is very wise, the moon is very old; but who +ever heard much of anything of credit to the grasshopper and the ring- +tailed cat? The Nishinam are always right. The mother of all women had +to be a cat, a little, wizened, sad-faced, shrewd ring-tailed cat." + +Whereupon the song of the first man and woman was interrupted by +protests from the women and acclamations from the men. + +"This is Yo-to-to-wi, which is the short for Eve," Dick chanted on, +drawing Paula bruskly closer to his side with a semblance of savage +roughness. "Yo-to-to-wi is not much to look at. But be not hard upon +her. The fault is with the grasshopper and the ring-tailed cat. Me, I +am Ai-kut, the first man; but question not my taste. I was the first +man, and this, I saw, was the first woman. Where there is but one +choice, there is not much to choose. Adam was so circumstanced. He +chose Eve. Yo-to-to-wi was the one woman in all the world for me, so I +chose Yo-to-to-wi." + +And Evan Graham, listening, his eyes on that possessive, encircling +arm of all his hostess's fairness, felt an awareness of hurt, and +arose unsummoned the thought, to be dismissed angrily, "Dick Forrest +is lucky--too lucky." + +"Me, I am Ai-kut," Dick chanted on. "This is my dew of woman. She is +my honey-dew of woman. I have lied to you. Her father and her mother +were neither hopper nor cat. They were the Sierra dawn and the summer +east wind of the mountains. Together they conspired, and from the air +and earth they sweated all sweetness till in a mist of their own love +the leaves of the chaparral and the manzanita were dewed with the +honey-dew. + +"Yo-to-to-wi is my honey-dew woman. Hear me! I am Ai-kut. Yo-to-to-wi +is my quail woman, my deer-woman, my lush-woman of all soft rain and +fat soil. She was born of the thin starlight and the brittle dawn- +light before the sun . . . + +"And," Forrest concluded, relapsing into his natural voice and +enunciation, having reached the limit of extemporization,--"and if you +think old, sweet, blue-eyed Solomon has anything on me in singing the +Song of Songs, just put your names down for the subscription edition +of _my_ Song of Songs." + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + + +It was Mrs. Mason who first asked that Paula play; but it was Terrence +McFane and Aaron Hancock who evicted the rag-time group from the piano +and sent Theodore Malken, a blushing ambassador, to escort Paula. + +"'Tis for the confounding of this pagan that I'm askin' you to play +'Reflections on the Water,'" Graham heard Terrence say to her. + +"And 'The Girl with Flaxen Hair,' after, please," begged Hancock, the +indicted pagan. "It will aptly prove my disputation. This wild Celt +has a bog-theory of music that predates the cave-man--and he has the +unadulterated stupidity to call himself ultra-modern." + +"Oh, Debussy!" Paula laughed. "Still wrangling over him, eh? I'll try +and get around to him. But I don't know with what I'll begin." + +Dar Hyal joined the three sages in seating Paula at the concert grand +which, Graham decided, was none too great for the great room. But no +sooner was she seated than the three sages slipped away to what were +evidently their chosen listening places. The young poet stretched +himself prone on a deep bearskin forty feet from the piano, his hands +buried in his hair. Terrence and Aaron lolled into a cushioned +embrasure of a window seat, sufficiently near to each other to nudge +the points of their respective contentions as Paula might expound +them. The girls were huddled in colored groups on wide couches or +garlanded in twos and threes on and in the big koa-wood chairs. + +Evan Graham half-started forward to take the honor of turning Paula's +music, but saw in time that Dar Hyal had already elected to himself +that office. Graham glimpsed the scene with quiet curious glances. The +grand piano, under a low arch at the far-end of the room, was +cunningly raised and placed as on and in a sounding board. All jollity +and banter had ceased. Evidently, he thought, the Little Lady had a +way with her and was accepted as a player of parts. And from this he +was perversely prepared for disappointment. + +Ernestine leaned across from a chair to whisper to him: + +"She can do anything she wants to do. And she doesn't work . . . much. +She studied under Leschetizky and Madame Carreno, you know, and she +abides by their methods. She doesn't play like a woman, either. Listen +to that!" + +Graham knew that he expected disappointment from her confident hands, +even as she rippled them over the keys in little chords and runs with +which he could not quarrel but which he had heard too often before +from technically brilliant but musically mediocre performers. But +whatever he might have fancied she would play, he was all unprepared +for Rachmaninoff's sheerly masculine Prelude, which he had heard only +men play when decently played. + +She took hold of the piano, with the first two ringing bars, +masterfully, like a man; she seemed to lift it, and its sounding +wires, with her two hands, with the strength and certitude of +maleness. And then, as only he had heard men do it, she sank, or +leaped--he could scarcely say which--to the sureness and pureness and +ineffable softness of the _Andante_ following. + +She played on, with the calm and power of anything but the little, +almost girlish woman he glimpsed through half-closed lids across the +ebony board of the enormous piano, which she commanded, as she +commanded herself, as she commanded the composer. Her touch was +definite, authoritative, was his judgment, as the Prelude faded away +in dying chords hauntingly reminiscent of its full vigor that seemed +still to linger in the air. + +While Aaron and Terrence debated in excited whispers in the window +seat, and while Dar Hyal sought other music at Paula's direction, she +glanced at Dick, who turned off bowl after bowl of mellow light till +Paula sat in an oasis of soft glow that brought out the dull gold +lights in her dress and hair. + +Graham watched the lofty room grow loftier in the increasing shadows. +Eighty feet in length, rising two stories and a half from masonry +walls to tree-trunked roof, flung across with a flying gallery from +the rail of which hung skins of wild animals, hand-woven blankets of +Oaxaca and Ecuador, and tapas, woman-pounded and vegetable-dyed, from +the islands of the South Pacific, Graham knew it for what it was--a +feast-hall of some medieval castle; and almost he felt a poignant +sense of lack of the long spread table, with pewter below the salt and +silver above the salt, and with huge hound-dogs scuffling beneath for +bones. + +Later, when Paula had played sufficient Debussy to equip Terrence and +Aaron for fresh war, Graham talked with her about music for a few +vivid moments. So well did she prove herself aware of the philosophy +of music, that, ere he knew it, he was seduced into voicing his own +pet theory. + +"And so," he concluded, "the true psychic factor of music took nearly +three thousand years to impress itself on the Western mind. Debussy +more nearly attains the idea-engendering and suggestive serenity--say +of the time of Pythagoras--than any of his fore-runners--" + +Here, Paula put a pause in his summary by beckoning over Terrence and +Aaron from their battlefield in the windowseat. + +"Yes, and what of it?" Terrence was demanding, as they came up side by +side. "I defy you, Aaron, I defy you, to get one thought out of +Bergson on music that is more lucid than any thought he ever uttered +in his 'Philosophy of Laughter,' which is not lucid at all." + +"Oh!--listen!" Paula cried, with sparkling eyes. "We have a new +prophet. Hear Mr. Graham. He's worthy of your steel, of both your +steel. He agrees with you that music is the refuge from blood and iron +and the pounding of the table. That weak souls, and sensitive souls, +and high-pitched souls flee from the crassness and the rawness of the +world to the drug-dreams of the over-world of rhythm and vibration--" + +"Atavistic!" Aaron Hancock snorted. "The cave-men, the monkey-folk, +and the ancestral bog-men of Terrence did that sort of thing--" + +"But wait," Paula urged. "It's his conclusions and methods and +processes. Also, there he disagrees with you, Aaron, fundamentally. He +quoted Pater's 'that all art aspires toward music'--" + +"Pure prehuman and micro-organic chemistry," Aaron broke in. "The +reactions of cell-elements to the doggerel punch of the wave-lengths +of sunlight, the foundation of all folk-songs and rag-times. Terrence +completes his circle right there and stultifies all his windiness. Now +listen to me, and I will present--" + +"But wait," Paula pleaded. "Mr. Graham argues that English puritanism +barred music, real music, for centuries...." + +"True," said Terrence. + +"And that England had to win to its sensuous delight in rhythm through +Milton and Shelley--" + +"Who was a metaphysician." Aaron broke in. + +"A lyrical metaphysician," Terrence defined instantly. "_That_ +you must acknowledge, Aaron." + +"And Swinburne?" Aaron demanded, with a significance that tokened +former arguments. + +"He says Offenbach was the fore-runner of Arthur Sullivan," Paula +cried challengingly. "And that Auber was before Offenbach. And as for +Wagner, ask him, just ask him--" + +And she slipped away, leaving Graham to his fate. He watched her, +watched the perfect knee-lift of her draperies as she crossed to Mrs. +Mason and set about arranging bridge quartets, while dimly he could +hear Terrence beginning: + +"It is agreed that music was the basis of inspiration of all the arts +of the Greeks...." + +Later, when the two sages were obliviously engrossed in a heated +battle as to whether Berlioz or Beethoven had exposited in their +compositions the deeper intellect, Graham managed his escape. Clearly, +his goal was to find his hostess again. But she had joined two of the +girls in the whispering, giggling seclusiveness of one of the big +chairs, and, most of the company being deep in bridge, Graham found +himself drifted into a group composed of Dick Forrest, Mr. Wombold, +Dar Hyal, and the correspondent of the _Breeders' Gazette_. + +"I'm sorry you won't be able to run over with me," Dick was saying to +the correspondent. "It would mean only one more day. I'll take you +tomorrow." + +"Sorry," was the reply. "But I must make Santa Rosa. Burbank has +promised me practically a whole morning, and you know what that means. +Yet I know the _Gazette_ would be glad for an account of the +experiment. Can't you outline it?--briefly, just briefly? Here's Mr. +Graham. It will interest him, I am sure." + +"More water-works?" Graham queried. + +"No; an asinine attempt to make good farmers out of hopelessly poor +ones," Mr. Wombold answered. "I contend that any farmer to-day who has +no land of his own, proves by his lack of it that he is an inefficient +farmer." + +"On the contrary," spoke up Dar Hyal, weaving his slender Asiatic +fingers in the air to emphasize his remarks. "Quite on the contrary. +Times have changed. Efficiency no longer implies the possession of +capital. It is a splendid experiment, an heroic experiment. And it +will succeed." + +"What is it, Dick?" Graham urged. "Tell us." + +"Oh, nothing, just a white chip on the table," Forrest answered +lightly. "Most likely it will never come to anything, although just +the same I have my hopes--" + +"A white chip!" Wombold broke in. "Five thousand acres of prime valley +land, all for a lot of failures to batten on, to farm, if you please, +on salary, with food thrown in!" + +"The food that is grown on the land only," Dick corrected. "Now I will +have to put it straight. I've set aside five thousand acres midway +between here and the Sacramento River." + +"Think of the alfalfa it grew, and that you need," Wombold again +interrupted. + +"My dredgers redeemed twice that acreage from the marshes in the past +year," Dick replied. "The thing is, I believe the West and the world +must come to intensive farming. I want to do my share toward blazing +the way. I've divided the five thousand acres into twenty-acre +holdings. I believe each twenty acres should support, comfortably, not +only a family, but pay at least six per cent." + +"When it is all allotted it will mean two hundred and fifty families," +the _Gazette_ man calculated; "and, say five to the family, it +will mean twelve hundred and fifty souls." + +"Not quite," Dick corrected. "The last holding is occupied, and we +have only a little over eleven hundred on the land." He smiled +whimsically. "But they promise, they promise. Several fat years and +they'll average six to the family." + +"Who is _we_?" Graham inquired. + +"Oh, I have a committee of farm experts on it--my own men, with the +exception of Professor Lieb, whom the Federal Government has loaned +me. The thing is: they _must_ farm, with individual responsibility, +according to the scientific methods embodied in our instructions. The +land is uniform. Every holding is like a pea in the pod to every other +holding. The results of each holding will speak in no uncertain terms. +The failure of any farmer, through laziness or stupidity, measured by +the average result of the entire two hundred and fifty farmers, will +not be tolerated. Out the failures must go, convicted by the average +of their fellows. + +"It's a fair deal. No farmer risks anything. With the food he may grow +and he and his family may consume, plus a cash salary of a thousand a +year, he is certain, good seasons and bad, stupid or intelligent, of +at least a hundred dollars a month. The stupid and the inefficient +will be bound to be eliminated by the intelligent and the efficient. +That's all. It will demonstrate intensive farming with a vengeance. +And there is more than the certain salary guaranty. After the salary +is paid, the adventure must yield six per cent, to me. If more than +this is achieved, then the entire hundred per cent, of the additional +achievement goes to the farmer." + +"Which means that each farmer with go in him will work nights to make +good--I see," said the _Gazette_ man. "And why not? Hundred- +dollar jobs aren't picked up for the asking. The average farmer in the +United States doesn't net fifty a month on his own land, especially +when his wages of superintendence and of direct personal labor are +subtracted. Of course able men will work their heads off to hold to +such a proposition, and they'll see to it that every member of the +family does the same." + +"'Tis the one objection I have to this place," Terrence McFane, who +had just joined the group, announced. "Ever one hears but the one +thing--work. 'Tis repulsive, the thought of the work, each on his +twenty acres, toilin' and moilin', daylight till dark, and after dark-- +an' for what? A bit of meat, a bit of bread, and, maybe, a bit of jam +on the bread. An' to what end? Is meat an' bread an' jam the end of it +all, the meaning of life, the goal of existence? Surely the man will +die, like a work horse dies, after a life of toil. And what end has +been accomplished? Bread an' meat an' jam? Is that it? A full belly +and shelter from the cold till one's body drops apart in the dark +moldiness of the grave?" + +"But, Terrence, you, too, will die," Dick Forrest retorted. + +"But, oh, my glorious life of loafing," came the instant answer. "The +hours with the stars and the flowers, under the green trees with the +whisperings of breezes in the grass. My books, my thinkers and their +thoughts. Beauty, music, all the solaces of all the arts. What? When I +fade into the dark I shall have well lived and received my wage for +living. But these twenty-acre work-animals of two-legged men of yours! +Daylight till dark, toil and moil, sweat on the shirts on the backs of +them that dries only to crust, meat and bread in their bellies, roofs +that don't leak, a brood of youngsters to live after them, to live the +same beast-lives of toil, to fill their bellies with the same meat and +bread, to scratch their backs with the same sweaty shirts, and to go +into the dark knowing only meat and bread, and, mayhap, a bit of jam." + +"But somebody must do the work that enables you to loaf," Mr. Wombold +spoke up indignantly. + +"'Tis true, 'tis sad 'tis true," Terrence replied lugubriously. Then +his face beamed. "And I thank the good Lord for it, for the work- +beasties that drag and drive the plows up and down the fields, for the +bat-eyed miner-beasties that dig the coal and gold, for all the stupid +peasant-beasties that keep my hands soft, and give power to fine +fellows like Dick there, who smiles on me and shares the loot with me, +and buys the latest books for me, and gives me a place at his board +that is plenished by the two-legged work-beasties, and a place at his +fire that is builded by the same beasties, and a shack and a bed in +the jungle under the madroño trees where never work intrudes its +monstrous head." + +Evan Graham was slow in getting ready for bed that night. He was +unwontedly stirred both by the Big House and by the Little Lady who +was its mistress. As he sat on the edge of the bed, half-undressed, +and smoked out a pipe, he kept seeing her in memory, as he had seen +her in the flesh the past twelve hours, in her varied moods and +guises--the woman who had talked music with him, and who had expounded +music to him to his delight; who had enticed the sages into the +discussion and abandoned him to arrange the bridge tables for her +guests; who had nestled in the big chair as girlish as the two girls +with her; who had, with a hint of steel, quelled her husband's +obstreperousness when he had threatened to sing Mountain Lad's song; +who, unafraid, had bestridden the half-drowning stallion in the +swimming tank; and who, a few hours later, had dreamed into the dining +room, distinctive in dress and person, to meet her many guests. + +The Big House, with all its worthy marvels and bizarre novelties, +competed with the figure of Paula Forrest in filling the content of +his imagination. Once again, and yet again, many times, he saw the +slender fingers of Dar Hyal weaving argument in the air, the black +whiskers of Aaron Hancock enunciating Bergsonian dogmas, the frayed +coat-cuffs of Terrence McFane articulating thanks to God for the two- +legged work-beasties that enabled him to loaf at Dick Forrest's board +and under Dick Forrest's madroño trees. + +Graham knocked out his pipe, took a final sweeping survey of the +strange room which was the last word in comfort, pressed off the +lights, and found himself between cool sheets in the wakeful dark. +Again he heard Paula Forrest laugh; again he sensed her in terms of +silver and steel and strength; again, against the dark, he saw that +inimitable knee-lift of her gown. The bright vision of it was almost +an irk to him, so impossible was it for him to shake it from his eyes. +Ever it returned and burned before him, a moving image of light and +color that he knew to be subjective but that continually asserted the +illusion of reality. + +He saw stallion and rider sink beneath the water, and rise again, a +flurry of foam and floundering of hoofs, and a woman's face that +laughed while she drowned her hair in the drowning mane of the beast. +And the first ringing bars of the Prelude sounded in his ears as again +he saw the same hands that had guided the stallion lift the piano to +all Rachmaninoff's pure splendor of sound. + +And when Graham finally fell asleep, it was in the thick of marveling +over the processes of evolution that could produce from primeval mire +and dust the glowing, glorious flesh and spirit of woman. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + + +The next morning Graham learned further the ways of the Big House. Oh +My had partly initiated him in particular things the preceding day and +had learned that, after the waking cup of coffee, he preferred to +breakfast at table, rather than in bed. Also, Oh My had warned him +that breakfast at table was an irregular affair, anywhere between +seven and nine, and that the breakfasters merely drifted in at their +convenience. If he wanted a horse, or if he wanted a swim or a motor +car, or any ranch medium or utility he desired, Oh My informed him, +all he had to do was to call for it. + +Arriving in the breakfast room at half past seven, Graham found +himself just in time to say good-by to the _Gazette_ man and the +Idaho buyer, who, finishing, were just ready to catch the ranch +machine that connected at Eldorado with the morning train for San +Francisco. He sat alone, being perfectly invited by a perfect Chinese +servant to order as he pleased, and found himself served with his +first desire--an ice-cold, sherried grapefruit, which, the table-boy +proudly informed him, was "grown on the ranch." Declining variously +suggested breakfast foods, mushes, and porridges, Graham had just +ordered his soft-boiled eggs and bacon, when Bert Wainwright drifted +in with a casualness that Graham recognized as histrionic, when, five +minutes later, in boudoir cap and delectable negligee, Ernestine +Desten drifted in and expressed surprise at finding such a multitude +of early risers. + +Later, as the three of them were rising from table, they greeted Lute +Desten and Rita Wainwright arriving. Over the billiard table with +Bert, Graham learned that Dick Forrest never appeared for breakfast, +that he worked in bed from terribly wee small hours, had coffee at +six, and only on unusual occasions appeared to his guests before the +twelve-thirty lunch. As for Paula Forrest, Bert explained, she was a +poor sleeper, a late riser, lived behind a door without a knob in a +spacious wing with a rare and secret patio that even he had seen but +once, and only on infrequent occasion was she known to appear before +twelve-thirty, and often not then. + +"You see, she's healthy and strong and all that," he explained, "but +she was born with insomnia. She never could sleep. She couldn't sleep +as a little baby even. But it's never hurt her any, because she's got +a will, and won't let it get on her nerves. She's just about as tense +as they make them, yet, instead of going wild when she can't sleep, +she just wills to relax, and she does relax. She calls them her `white +nights,' when she gets them. Maybe she'll fall asleep at daybreak, or +at nine or ten in the morning; and then she'll sleep the rest of the +clock around and get down to dinner as chipper as you please." + +"It's constitutional, I fancy," Graham suggested. + +Bert nodded. + +"It would be a handicap to nine hundred and ninety-nine women out of a +thousand. But not to her. She puts up with it, and if she can't sleep +one time--she should worry--she just sleeps some other time and makes +it up." + +More and other things Bert Wainwright told of his hostess, and Graham +was not slow in gathering that the young man, despite the privileges +of long acquaintance, stood a good deal in awe of her. + +"I never saw anybody whose goat she couldn't get if she went after +it," he confided. "Man or woman or servant, age, sex, and previous +condition of servitude--it's all one when she gets on the high and +mighty. And I don't see how she does it. Maybe it's just a kind of +light that comes into her eyes, or some kind of an expression on her +lips, or, I don't know what--anyway, she puts it across and nobody +makes any mistake about it." + +"She has a ... a way with her," Graham volunteered. + + "That's it!" Bert's face beamed. "It's a way she has. She just puts +it over. Kind of gives you a chilly feeling, you don't know why. Maybe +she's learned to be so quiet about it because of the control she's +learned by passing sleepless nights without squealing out or getting +sour. The chances are she didn't bat an eye all last night-- +excitement, you know, the crowd, swimming Mountain Lad and such +things. Now ordinary things that'd keep most women awake, like danger, +or storm at sea, and such things, Dick says don't faze her. She can +sleep like a baby, he says, when the town she's in is being bombarded +or when the ship she's in is trying to claw off a lee shore. She's a +wonder, and no mistake. You ought to play billiards with her--the +English game. She'll go some." + +A little later, Graham, along with Bert, encountered the girls in the +morning room, where, despite an hour of rag-time song and dancing and +chatter, he was scarcely for a moment unaware of a loneliness, a lack, +and a desire to see his hostess, in some fresh and unguessed mood and +way, come in upon them through the open door. + +Still later, mounted on Altadena and accompanied by Bert on a +thoroughbred mare called Mollie, Graham made a two hours' exploration +of the dairy center of the ranch, and arrived back barely in time to +keep an engagement with Ernestine in the tennis court. + +He came to lunch with an eagerness for which his keen appetite could +not entirely account; and he knew definite disappointment when his +hostess did not appear. + +"A white night," Dick Forrest surmised for his guest's benefit, and +went into details additional to Bert's of her constitutional +inaptitude for normal sleep. "Do you know, we were married years +before I ever saw her sleep. I knew she did sleep, but I never saw +her. I've seen her go three days and nights without closing an eye and +keep sweet and cheerful all the time, and when she did sleep, it was +out of exhaustion. That was when the _All Away_ went ashore in +the Carolines and the whole population worked to get us off. It wasn't +the danger, for there wasn't any. It was the noise. Also, it was the +excitement. She was too busy living. And when it was almost all over, +I actually saw her asleep for the first time in my life." + +A new guest had arrived that morning, a Donald Ware, whom Graham met +at lunch. He seemed well acquainted with all, as if he had visited +much in the Big House; and Graham gathered that, despite his youth, he +was a violinist of note on the Pacific Coast. + +"He has conceived a grand passion for Paula," Ernestine told Graham as +they passed out from the dining room. + +Graham raised his eyebrows. + +"Oh, but she doesn't mind," Ernestine laughed. "Every man that comes +along does the same thing. She's used to it. She has just a charming +way of disregarding all their symptoms, and enjoys them, and gets the +best out of them in consequence. It's lots of fun to Dick. You'll be +doing the same before you're here a week. If you don't, we'll all be +surprised mightily. And if you don't, most likely you'll hurt Dick's +feelings. He's come to expect it as a matter of course. And when a +fond, proud husband gets a habit like that, it must hurt terribly to +see his wife not appreciated." + +"Oh, well, if I am expected to, I suppose I must," Graham sighed. "But +just the same I hate to do whatever everybody does just because +everybody does it. But if it's the custom--well, it's the custom, +that's all. But it's mighty hard on one with so many other nice girls +around." + +There was a quizzical light in his long gray eyes that affected +Ernestine so profoundly that she gazed into his eyes over long, became +conscious of what she was doing, dropped her own eyes away, and +flushed. + +"Little Leo--the boy poet you remember last night," she rattled on in +a patent attempt to escape from her confusion. "He's madly in love +with Paula, too. I've heard Aaron Hancock chaffing him about some +sonnet cycle, and it isn't difficult to guess the inspiration. And +Terrence--the Irishman, you know--he's mildly in love with her. They +can't help it, you see; and can you blame them?" + +"She surely deserves it all," Graham murmured, although vaguely hurt +in that the addle-pated, alphabet-obsessed, epicurean anarchist of an +Irishman who gloried in being a loafer and a pensioner should even +mildly be in love with the Little Lady. "She is most deserving of all +men's admiration," he continued smoothly. "From the little I've seen +of her she's quite remarkable and most charming." + +"She's my half-sister," Ernestine vouchsafed, "although you wouldn't +dream a drop of the same blood ran in our veins. She's so different. +She's different from all the Destens, from any girl I ever knew-- +though she isn't exactly a girl. She's thirty-eight, you know--" + +"Pussy, pussy," Graham whispered. + +The pretty young blonde looked at him in surprise and bewilderment, +taken aback by the apparent irrelevance of his interruption. + +"Cat," he censured in mock reproof. + +"Oh!" she cried. "I never meant it that way. You will find we are +very frank here. Everybody knows Paula's age. She tells it herself. +I'm eighteen--so, there. And now, just for your meanness, how old are +you?" + +"As old as Dick," he replied promptly. + +"And he's forty," she laughed triumphantly. "Are you coming swimming? +--the water will be dreadfully cold." + +Graham shook his head. "I'm going riding with Dick." + +Her face fell with all the ingenuousness of eighteen. + +"Oh," she protested, "some of his eternal green manures, or hillside +terracing, or water-pocketing." + +"But he said something about swimming at five." + +Her face brightened joyously. + +"Then we'll meet at the tank. It must be the same party. Paula said +swimming at five." + +As they parted under a long arcade, where his way led to the tower +room for a change into riding clothes, she stopped suddenly and +called: + +"Oh, Mr. Graham." + +He turned obediently. + +"You really are not compelled to fall in love with Paula, you know. It +was just my way of putting it." + +"I shall be very, very careful," he said solemnly, although there was +a twinkle in his eye as he concluded. + +Nevertheless, as he went on to his room, he could not but admit to +himself that the Paula Forrest charm, or the far fairy tentacles of +it, had already reached him and were wrapping around him. He knew, +right there, that he would prefer the engagement to ride to have been +with her than with his old-time friend, Dick. + +As he emerged from the house to the long hitching-rails under the +ancient oaks, he looked eagerly for his hostess. Only Dick was there, +and the stable-man, although the many saddled horses that stamped in +the shade promised possibilities. But Dick and he rode away alone. +Dick pointed out her horse, an alert bay thoroughbred, stallion at +that, under a small Australian saddle with steel stirrups, and double- +reined and single-bitted. + +"I don't know her plans," he said. "She hasn't shown up yet, but at +any rate she'll be swimming later. We'll meet her then." + +Graham appreciated and enjoyed the ride, although more than once he +found himself glancing at his wrist-watch to ascertain how far away +five o'clock might yet be. Lambing time was at hand, and through home +field after home field he rode with his host, now one and now the +other dismounting to turn over onto its feet rotund and glorious +Shropshire and Ramboullet-Merino ewes so hopelessly the product of +man's selection as to be unable to get off, of themselves, from their +own broad backs, once they were down with their four legs helplessly +sky-aspiring. + +"I've really worked to make the American Merino," Dick was saying; "to +give it the developed leg, the strong back, the well-sprung rib, and +the stamina. The old-country breed lacked the stamina. It was too much +hand-reared and manicured." + +"You're doing things, big things," Graham assured him. "Think of +shipping rams to Idaho! That speaks for itself." + +Dick Forrest's eyes were sparkling, as he replied: + +"Better than Idaho. Incredible as it may sound, and asking forgiveness +for bragging, the great flocks to-day of Michigan and Ohio can trace +back to my California-bred Ramboullet rams. Take Australia. Twelve +years ago I sold three rams for three hundred each to a visiting +squatter. After he took them back and demonstrated them he sold them +for as many thousand each and ordered a shipload more from me. +Australia will never be the worse for my having been. Down there they +say that lucerne, artesian wells, refrigerator ships, and Forrest's +rams have tripled the wool and mutton production." + +Quite by chance, on the way back, meeting Mendenhall, the horse +manager, they were deflected by him to a wide pasture, broken by +wooded canyons and studded with oaks, to look over a herd of yearling +Shires that was to be dispatched next morning to the upland pastures +and feeding sheds of the Miramar Hills. There were nearly two hundred +of them, rough-coated, beginning to shed, large-boned and large for +their age. + +"We don't exactly crowd them," Dick Forrest explained, "but Mr. +Mendenhall sees to it that they never lack full nutrition from the +time they are foaled. Up there in the hills, where they are going, +they'll balance their grass with grain. This makes them assemble every +night at the feeding places and enables the feeders to keep track of +them with a minimum of effort. I've shipped fifty stallions, two-year- +olds, every year for the past five years, to Oregon alone. They're +sort of standardized, you know. The people up there know what they're +getting. They know my standard so well that they'll buy unsight and +unseen." + +"You must cull a lot, then," Graham ventured. + +"And you'll see the culls draying on the streets of San Francisco," +Dick answered. + +"Yes, and on the streets of Denver," Mr. Mendenhall amplified, "and of +Los Angeles, and--why, two years ago, in the horse-famine, we shipped +twenty carloads of four-year geldings to Chicago, that averaged +seventeen hundred each. The lightest were sixteen, and there were +matched pairs up to nineteen hundred. Lord, Lord, that was a year for +horse-prices--blue sky, and then some." + +As Mr. Mendenhall rode away, a man, on a slender-legged, head-tossing +Palomina, rode up to them and was introduced to Graham as Mr. +Hennessy, the ranch veterinary. + +"I heard Mrs. Forrest was looking over the colts," he explained to his +employer, "and I rode across to give her a glance at The Fawn here. +She'll be riding her in less than a week. What horse is she on to-day?" + +"The Fop," Dick replied, as if expecting the comment that was prompt +as the disapproving shake of Mr. Hennessy's head. + +"I can never become converted to women riding stallions," muttered the +veterinary. "The Fop is dangerous. Worse--though I take my hat off to +his record--he's malicious and vicious. She--Mrs. Forrest ought to +ride him with a muzzle--but he's a striker as well, and I don't see +how she can put cushions on his hoofs." + +"Oh, well," Dick placated, "she has a bit that _is_ a bit in his +mouth, and she's not afraid to use it--" + +"If he doesn't fall over on her some day," Mr. Hennessy grumbled. +"Anyway, I'll breathe easier when she takes to The Fawn here. Now +_she's_ a lady's mount--all the spirit in the world, but nothing +vicious. She's a sweet mare, a sweet mare, and she'll steady down from +her friskiness. But she'll always be a gay handful--no riding academy +proposition." + +"Let's ride over," Dick suggested. "Mrs. Forrest'll have a gay handful +in The Fop if she's ridden him into that bunch of younglings.--It's +her territory, you know," he elucidated to Graham. "All the house +horses and lighter stock is her affair. And she gets grand results. I +can't understand it, myself. It's like a little girl straying into an +experimental laboratory of high explosives and mixing the stuff around +any old way and getting more powerful combinations than the graybeard +chemists." + +The three men took a cross-ranch road for half a mile, turned up a +wooded canyon where ran a spring-trickle of stream, and emerged on a +wide rolling terrace rich in pasture. Graham's first glimpse was of a +background of many curious yearling and two-year-old colts, against +which, in the middleground, he saw his hostess, on the back of the +bright bay thoroughbred, The Fop, who, on hind legs, was striking his +forefeet in the air and squealing shrilly. They reined in their mounts +and watched. + +"He'll get her yet," the veterinary muttered morosely. "That Fop isn't +safe." + +But at that moment Paula Forrest, unaware of her audience, with a +sharp cry of command and a cavalier thrust of sharp spurs into The +Fop's silken sides, checked him down to four-footedness on the ground +and a restless, champing quietness. + +"Taking chances?" Dick mildly reproached her, as the three rode up. + +"Oh, I can manage him," she breathed between tight teeth, as, with +ears back and vicious-gleaming eyes, The Fop bared his teeth in a bite +that would have been perilously near to Graham's leg had she not +reined the brute abruptly away across the neck and driven both spurs +solidly into his sides. + +The Fop quivered, squealed, and for the moment stood still. + +"It's the old game, the white man's game," Dick laughed. "She's not +afraid of him, and he knows it. She outgames him, out-savages him, +teaches him what savagery is in its intimate mood and tense." + +Three times, while they looked on, ready to whirl their own steeds +away if he got out of hand, The Fop attempted to burst into rampage, +and three times, solidly, with careful, delicate hand on the bitter +bit, Paula Forrest dealt him double spurs in the ribs, till he stood, +sweating, frothing, fretting, beaten, and in hand. + +"It's the way the white man has always done," Dick moralized, while +Graham suffered a fluttery, shivery sensation of admiration of the +beast-conquering Little Lady. "He's out-savaged the savage the world +around," Dick went on. "He's out-endured him, out-filthed him, out- +scalped him, out-tortured him, out-eaten him--yes, out-eaten him. It's +a fair wager that the white man, in extremis, has eaten more of the +genus homo, than the savage, in extremis, has eaten." + +"Good afternoon," Paula greeted her guest, the ranch veterinary, and +her husband. "I think I've got him now. Let's look over the colts. +Just keep an eye, Mr. Graham, on his mouth. He's a dreadful snapper. +Ride free from him, and you'll save your leg for old age." + +Now that The Fop's demonstration was over, the colts, startled into +flight by some impish spirit amongst them, galloped and frisked away +over the green turf, until, curious again, they circled back, halted +at gaze, and then, led by one particularly saucy chestnut filly, drew +up in half a circle before the riders, with alert pricking ears. + +Graham scarcely saw the colts at first. He was seeing his protean +hostess in a new role. Would her proteanness never end? he wondered, +as he glanced over the magnificent, sweating, mastered creature she +bestrode. Mountain Lad, despite his hugeness, was a mild-mannered pet +beside this squealing, biting, striking Fop who advertised all the +spirited viciousness of the most spirited vicious thoroughbred. + +"Look at her," Paula whispered to Dick, in order not to alarm the +saucy chestnut filly. "Isn't she wonderful! That's what I've been +working for." Paula turned to Evan. "Always they have some fault, some +miss, at the best an approximation rather than an achievement. But +she's an achievement. Look at her. She's as near right as I shall +probably ever get. Her sire is Big Chief, if you know our racing +register. He sold for sixty thousand when he was a cripple. We +borrowed the use of him. She was his only get of the season. But look +at her! She's got his chest and lungs. I had my choices--mares +eligible for the register. Her dam wasn't eligible, but I chose her. +She was an obstinate old maid, but she was the one mare for Big Chief. +This is her first foal and she was eighteen years old when she bred. +But I knew it was there. All I had to do was to look at Big Chief and +her, and it just had to be there." + +"The dam was only half thoroughbred," Dick explained. + +"But with a lot of Morgan on the other side," Paula added instantly, +"and a streak along the back of mustang. This shall be called Nymph, +even if she has no place in the books. She'll be my first +unimpeachable perfect saddle horse--I know it--the kind I like--my +dream come true at last." + +"A hoss has four legs, one on each corner," Mr. Hennessy uttered +profoundly. + +"And from five to seven gaits," Graham took up lightly, + +"And yet I don't care for those many-gaited Kentuckians," Paula said +quickly, "--except for park work. But for California, rough roads, +mountain trails, and all the rest, give me the fast walk, the fox +trot, the long trot that covers the ground, and the not too-long, +ground-covering gallop. Of course, the close-coupled, easy canter; but +I scarcely call that a gait--it's no more than the long lope reduced +to the adjustment of wind or rough ground." + +"She's a beauty," Dick admired, his eyes warm in contemplation of the +saucy chestnut filly, who was daringly close and alertly sniffing of +the subdued Fop's tremulous and nostril-dilated muzzle. + +"I prefer my own horses to be near thoroughbred rather than all +thoroughbred," Paula proclaimed. "The running horse has its place on +the track, but it's too specialized for mere human use." + +"Nicely coupled," Mr. Hennessy said, indicating the Nymph. "Short +enough for good running and long enough for the long trot. I'll admit +I didn't have any faith in the combination; but you've got a grand +animal out of it just the same." + +"I didn't have horses when I was a young girl," Paula said to Graham; +"and the fact that I can now not only have them but breed them and +mold them to my heart's desire is always too good to be true. +Sometimes I can't believe it myself, and have to ride out and look +them over to make sure." + +She turned her head and raised her eyes gratefully to Forrest; and +Graham watched them look into each other's eyes for a long half- +minute. Forrest's pleasure in his wife's pleasure, in her young +enthusiasm and joy of life, was clear to Graham's observation. "Lucky +devil," was Graham's thought, not because of his host's vast ranch and +the success and achievement of it, but because of the possession of a +wonder-woman who could look unabashed and appreciative into his eyes +as the Little Lady had looked. + +Graham was meditating, with skepticism, Ernestine's information that +Paula Forrest was thirty-eight, when she turned to the colts and +pointed her riding whip at a black yearling nibbling at the spring +green. + +"Look at that level rump, Dick," she said, "and those trotting feet +and pasterns." And, to Graham: "Rather different from Nymph's long +wrists, aren't they? But they're just what I was after." She laughed a +little, with just a shade of annoyance. "The dam was a bright sorrel-- +almost like a fresh-minted twenty-dollar piece--and I did so want a +pair out of her, of the same color, for my own trap. Well, I can't say +that I exactly got them, although I bred her to a splendid, sorrel +trotting horse. And this is my reward, this black--and, wait till we +get to the brood mares and you'll see the other, a full brother and +mahogany brown. I'm so disappointed." + +She singled out a pair of dark bays, feeding together: "Those are two +of Guy Dillon's get--brother, you know, to Lou Dillon. They're out of +different mares, not quite the same bay, but aren't they splendidly +matched? And they both have Guy Dillon's coat." + +She moved her subdued steed on, skirting the flank of the herd quietly +in order not to alarm it; but a number of colts took flight. + +"Look at them!" she cried. "Five, there, are hackneys. Look at the +lift of their fore-legs as they run." + +"I'll be terribly disappointed if you don't get a prize-winning four- +in-hand out of them," Dick praised, and brought again the flash of +grateful eyes that hurt Graham as he noted it. + +"Two are out of heavier mares--see that one in the middle and the one +on the far left--and there's the other three to pick from for the +leaders. Same sire, five different dams, and a matched and balanced +four, out of five choices, all in the same season, is a stroke of +luck, isn't it?" + +She turned quickly to Mr. Hennessy: "I can begin to see the ones that +will have to sell for polo ponies--among the two-year-olds. You can +pick them." + +"If Mr. Mendenhall doesn't sell that strawberry roan for a clean +fifteen hundred, it'll be because polo has gone out of fashion," the +veterinary approved, with waxing enthusiasm. "I've had my eye on them. +That pale sorrel, there. You remember his set-back. Give him an extra +year and he'll--look at his coupling!--watch him turn!--a cow-skin?-- +he'll turn on a silver dollar! Give him a year to make up, and he'll +stand a show for the international. Listen to me. I've had my faith in +him from the beginning. Cut out that Burlingame crowd. When he's ripe, +ship him straight East." + +Paula nodded and listened to Mr. Hennessy's judgment, her eyes +kindling with his in the warmth of the sight of the abounding young +life for which she was responsible. + +"It always hurts, though," she confessed to Graham, "selling such +beauties to have them knocked out on the field so quickly." + +Her sheer absorption in the animals robbed her speech of any hint of +affectation or show--so much so, that Dick was impelled to praise her +judgment to Evan. + +"I can dig through a whole library of horse practice, and muddle and +mull over the Mendelian Law until I'm dizzy, like the clod that I am; +but she is the genius. She doesn't have to study law. She just knows +it in some witch-like, intuitional way. All she has to do is size up a +bunch of mares with her eyes, and feel them over a little with her +hands, and hunt around till she finds the right sires, and get pretty +nearly what she wants in the result--except color, eh, Paul?" he +teased. + +She showed her laughing teeth in the laugh at her expense, in which +Mr. Hennessy joined, and Dick continued: "Look at that filly there. We +all knew Paula was wrong. But look at it! She bred a rickety old +thoroughbred, that we wanted to put out of her old age, to a standard +stallion; got a filly; bred it back with a thoroughbred; bred its +filly foal with the same standard again; knocked all our +prognostications into a cocked hat, and--well, look at it, a world- +beater polo pony. There is one thing we have to take off our hats to +her for: she doesn't let any woman sentimentality interfere with her +culling. Oh, she's cold-blooded enough. She's as remorseless as any +man when it comes to throwing out the undesirables and selecting for +what she wants. But she hasn't mastered color yet. There's where her +genius falls down, eh, Paul? You'll have to put up with Duddy and +Fuddy for a while longer for your trap. By the way, how is Duddy?" + +"He's come around," she answered, "thanks to Mr. Hennessy." + +"Nothing serious," the veterinarian added. "He was just off his feed a +trifle. It was more a scare of the stableman than anything else." + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + + +From the colt pasture to the swimming tank Graham talked with his +hostess and rode as nearly beside her as The Fop's wickedness +permitted, while Dick and Hennessy, on ahead, were deep in ranch +business. + +"Insomnia has been a handicap all my life," she said, while she +tickled The Fop with a spur in order to check a threatened +belligerence. "But I early learned to keep the irritation of it off my +nerves and the weight of it off my mind. In fact, I early came to make +a function of it and actually to derive enjoyment from it. It was the +only way to master a thing I knew would persist as long as I +persisted. Have you--of course you have--learned to win through an +undertow?" + +"Yes, by never fighting it," Graham answered, his eyes on the spray of +color in her cheeks and the tiny beads of sweat that arose from her +continuous struggle with the high-strung creature she rode. Thirty- +eight! He wondered if Ernestine had lied. Paula Forrest did not look +twenty-eight. Her skin was the skin of a girl, with all the delicate, +fine-pored and thin transparency of the skin of a girl. + +"Exactly," she went on. "By not fighting the undertow. By yielding to +its down-drag and out-drag, and working with it to reach air again. +Dick taught me that trick. So with my insomnia. If it is excitement +from immediate events that holds me back from the City of Sleep, I +yield to it and come quicker to unconsciousness from out the +entangling currents. I invite my soul to live over again, from the +same and different angles, the things that keep me from +unconsciousness. + +"Take the swimming of Mountain Lad yesterday. I lived it over last +night as I had lived it in reality. Then I lived it as a spectator--as +the girls saw it, as you saw it, as the cowboy saw it, and, most of +all, as my husband saw it. Then I made up a picture of it, many +pictures of it, from all angles, and painted them, and framed them, +and hung them, and then, a spectator, looked at them as if for the +first time. And I made myself many kinds of spectators, from crabbed +old maids and lean pantaloons to girls in boarding school and Greek +boys of thousands of years ago. + +"After that I put it to music. I played it on the piano, and guessed +the playing of it on full orchestras and blaring bands. I chanted it, +I sang it-epic, lyric, comic; and, after a weary long while, of course +I slept in the midst of it, and knew not that I slept until I awoke at +twelve to-day. The last time I had heard the clock strike was six. Six +unbroken hours is a capital prize for me in the sleep lottery." + +As she finished, Mr. Hennessy rode away on a cross path, and Dick +Forrest dropped back to squire his wife on the other side. + +"Will you sport a bet, Evan?" he queried. + +"I'd like to hear the terms of it first," was the answer. + +"Cigars against cigars that you can't catch Paula in the tank inside +ten minutes--no, inside five, for I remember you're some swimmer." + +"Oh, give him a chance, Dick," Paula cried generously. "Ten minutes +will worry him." + +"But you don't know him," Dicked argued. "And you don't value my +cigars. I tell you he is a swimmer. He's drowned kanakas, and you know +what that means." + +"Perhaps I should reconsider. Maybe he'll slash a killing crawl-stroke +at me before I've really started. Tell me his history and prizes." + +"I'll just tell you one thing. They still talk of it in the Marquesas. +It was the big hurricane of 1892. He did forty miles in forty-five +hours, and only he and one other landed on the land. And they were all +kanakas. He was the only white man; yet he out-endured and drowned the +last kanaka of them--" + +"I thought you said there was one other?" Paula interrupted. + +"She was a woman," Dick answered. "He drowned the last kanaka." + +"And the woman was then a white woman?" Paula insisted. + +Graham looked quickly at her, and although she had asked the question +of her husband, her head turned to the turn of his head, so that he +found her eyes meeting his straightly and squarely in interrogation. +Graham held her gaze with equal straightness as he answered: "She was +a kanaka." + +"A queen, if you please," Dick took up. "A queen out of the ancient +chief stock. She was Queen of Huahoa." + +"Was it the chief stock that enabled her to out-endure the native +men?" Paula asked. "Or did you help her?" + +"I rather think we helped each other toward the end," Graham replied. +"We were both out of our heads for short spells and long spells. +Sometimes it was one, sometimes the other, that was all in. We made +the land at sunset--that is, a wall of iron coast, with the surf +bursting sky-high. She took hold of me and clawed me in the water to +get some sense in me. You see, I wanted to go in, which would have +meant finish. + +"She got me to understand that she knew where she was; that the +current set westerly along shore and in two hours would drift us +abreast of a spot where we could land. I swear I either slept or was +unconscious most of those two hours; and I swear she was in one state +or the other when I chanced to come to and noted the absence of the +roar of the surf. Then it was my turn to claw and maul her back to +consciousness. It was three hours more before we made the sand. We +slept where we crawled out of the water. Next morning's sun burnt us +awake, and we crept into the shade of some wild bananas, found fresh +water, and went to sleep again. Next I awoke it was night. I took +another drink, and slept through till morning. She was still asleep +when the bunch of kanakas, hunting wild goats from the next valley, +found us." + +"I'll wager, for a man who drowned a whole kanaka crew, it was you who +did the helping," Dick commented. + +"She must have been forever grateful," Paula challenged, her eyes +directly on Graham's. "Don't tell me she wasn't young, wasn't +beautiful, wasn't a golden brown young goddess." + +"Her mother was the Queen of Huahoa," Graham answered. "Her father was +a Greek scholar and an English gentleman. They were dead at the time +of the swim, and Nomare was queen herself. She _was_ young. She +was beautiful as any woman anywhere in the world may be beautiful. +Thanks to her father's skin, she as not golden brown. She was tawny +golden. But you've heard the story undoubtedly--" + +He broke off with a look of question to Dick, who shook his head. + +Calls and cries and splashings of water from beyond a screen of trees +warned them that they were near the tank. + +"You'll have to tell me the rest of the story some time," Paula said. + +"Dick knows it. I can't see why he hasn't told you." + +She shrugged her shoulders. + +"Perhaps because he's never had the time or the provocation." + +"God wot, it's had wide circulation," Graham laughed. "For know that I +was once morganatic--or whatever you call it--king of the cannibal +isles, or of a paradise of a Polynesian isle at any rate.--'By a +purple wave on an opal beach in the hush of the Mahim woods,'" he +hummed carelessly, in conclusion, and swung off from his horse. + +"'The white moth to the closing vine, the bee to the opening clover,'" +she hummed another line of the song, while The Fop nearly got his +teeth into her leg and she straightened him out with the spur, and +waited for Dick to help her off and tie him. + +"Cigars!--I'm in on that!--you can't catch her!" Bert Wainwright +called from the top of the high dive forty feet above. "Wait a minute! +I'm coming!" + +And come he did, in a swan dive that was almost professional and that +brought handclapping approval from the girls. + +"A sweet dive, balanced beautifully," Graham told him as he emerged +from the tank. + +Bert tried to appear unconscious of the praise, failed, and, to pass +it off, plunged into the wager. + +"I don't know what kind of a swimmer you are, Graham," he said, "but I +just want in with Dick on the cigars." + +"Me, too; me, too!" chorused Ernestine, and Lute, and Rita. + +"Boxes of candy, gloves, or any truck you care to risk," Ernestine +added. + +"But I don't know Mrs. Forrest's records, either," Graham protested, +after having taken on the bets. "However, if in five minutes--" + +"Ten minutes," Paula said, "and to start from opposite ends of the +tank. Is that fair? Any touch is a catch." Graham looked his hostess +over with secret approval. She was clad, not in the single white silk +slip she evidently wore only for girl parties, but in a coquettish +imitation of the prevailing fashion mode, a suit of changeable light +blue and green silk--almost the color of the pool; the skirt slightly +above the knees whose roundedness he recognized; with long stockings +to match, and tiny bathing shoes bound on with crossed ribbons. On her +head was a jaunty swimming cap no jauntier than herself when she urged +the ten minutes in place of five. + +Rita Wainwright held the watch, while Graham walked down to the other +end of the hundred-and-fifty-foot tank. + +"Paula, you'll be caught if you take any chances," Dick warned. "Evan +Graham is a real fish man." + +"I guess Paula'll show him a few, even without the pipe," Bert bragged +loyally. "And I'll bet she can out-dive him." + +"There you lose," Dick answered. "I saw the rock he dived from at +Huahoa. That was after his time, and after the death of Queen Nomare. +He was only a youngster--twenty-two; he had to be to do it. It was off +the peak of the Pau-wi Rock--one hundred and twenty-eight feet by +triangulation. And he couldn't do it legitimately or technically with +a swan-dive, because he had to clear two lower ledges while he was in +the air. The upper ledge of the two, by their own traditions, was the +highest the best of the kanakas had ever dared since their traditions +began. Well, he did it. He became tradition. As long as the kanakas of +Huahoa survive he will remain tradition--Get ready, Rita. Start on the +full minute." + +"It's almost a shame to play tricks on so reputable a swimmer," Paula +confided to them, as she faced her guest down the length of the tank +and while both waited the signal. + +"He may get you before you can turn the trick," Dick warned again. And +then, to Bert, with just a shade of anxiety: "Is it working all right? +Because if it isn't, Paula will have a bad five seconds getting out of +it." + +"All O.K.," Bert assured. "I went in myself. The pipe is working. +There's plenty of air." + +"Ready!" Rita called. "Go!" + +Graham ran toward their end like a foot-racer, while Paula darted up +the high dive. By the time she had gained the top platform, his hands +and feet were on the lower rungs. When he was half-way up she +threatened a dive, compelling him to cease from climbing and to get +out on the twenty-foot platform ready to follow her to the water. +Whereupon she laughed down at him and did not dive. "Time is passing-- +the precious seconds are ticking off," Ernestine chanted. + +When he started to climb, Paula again chased him to the half-way +platform with a threat to dive. But not many seconds did Graham waste. +His next start was determined, and Paula, poised for her dive, could +not send him scuttling back. He raced upward to gain the thirty-foot +platform before she should dive, and she was too wise to linger. Out +into space she launched, head back, arms bent, hands close to chest, +legs straight and close together, her body balanced horizontally on +the air as it fell outward and downward. + +"Oh you Annette Kellerman!" Bert Wamwright's admiring cry floated up. + +Graham ceased pursuit to watch the completion of the dive, and saw his +hostess, a few feet above the water, bend her head forward, straighten +out her arms and lock the hands to form the arch before her head, and, +so shifting the balance of her body, change it from the horizontal to +the perfect, water-cleaving angle. + +The moment she entered the water, he swung out on the thirty-foot +platform and waited. From this height he could make out her body +beneath the surface swimming a full stroke straight for the far end of +the tank. Not till then did he dive. He was confident that he could +outspeed her, and his dive, far and flat, entered him in the water +twenty feet beyond her entrance. + +But at the instant he was in, Dick dipped two flat rocks into the +water and struck them together. This was the signal for Paula to +change her course. Graham heard the concussion and wondered. He broke +surface in the full swing of the crawl and went down the tank to the +far end at a killing pace. He pulled himself out and watched the +surface of the tank. A burst of handclapping from the girls drew his +eyes to the Little Lady drawing herself out of the tank at the other +end. + +Again he ran down the side of the tank, and again she climbed the +scaffold. But this time his wind and endurance enabled him to cut down +her lead, so that she was driven to the twenty-foot platform. She took +no time for posturing or swanning, but tilted immediately off in a +stiff dive, angling toward the west side of the tank. Almost they were +in the air at the same time. In the water and under it, he could feel +against his face and arms the agitation left by her progress; but she +led into the deep shadow thrown by the low afternoon sun, where the +water was so dark he could see nothing. + +When he touched the side of the tank he came up. She was not in sight. +He drew himself out, panting, and stood ready to dive in at the first +sign of her. But there were no signs. + +"Seven minutes!" Rita called. "And a half! ... Eight!... And a half!" + +And no Paula Forrest broke surface. Graham refused to be alarmed +because he could see no alarm on the faces of the others. + +"I lose," he announced at Rita's "Nine minutes!" + +"She's been under over two minutes, and you're all too blessed calm +about it to get me excited," he said. "I've still a minute--maybe I +don't lose," he added quickly, as he stepped off feet first into the +tank. + +As he went down he turned over and explored the cement wall of tank +with his hands. Midway, possibly ten feet under the surface he +estimated, his hands encountered an opening in the wall. He felt +about, learned it Was unscreened, and boldly entered. Almost before he +was in, he found he could come up; but he came up slowly, breaking +surface in pitchy blackness and feeling about him without splashing. + +His fingers touched a cool smooth arm that shrank convulsively at +contact while the possessor of it cried sharply with the startle of +fright. He held on tightly and began to laugh, and Paula laughed with +him. A line from "The First Chanty" flashed into his consciousness-- +"_Hearing her laugh in the gloom greatly I loved her._" + +"You did frighten me when you touched me," she said. "You came without +a sound, and I was a thousand miles away, dreaming..." + +"What?" Graham asked. + +"Well, honestly, I had just got an idea for a gown--a dusty, musty, +mulberry-wine velvet, with long, close lines, and heavy, tarnished +gold borders and cords and things. And the only jewelery a ring--one +enormous pigeon-blood ruby that Dick gave me years ago when we sailed +the _All Away_." + +"Is there anything you don't do?" he laughed. + +She joined with him, and their mirth sounded strangely hollow in the +pent and echoing dark. + +"Who told you?" she next asked. + +"No one. After you had been under two minutes I knew it had to be +something like this, and I came exploring." + +"It was Dick's idea. He had it built into the tank afterward. You will +find him full of whimsies. He delighted in scaring old ladies into +fits by stepping off into the tank with their sons or grandsons and +hiding away in here. But after one or two nearly died of shock--old +ladies, I mean--he put me up, as to-day, to fooling hardier persons +like yourself.--Oh, he had another accident. There was a Miss +Coghlan, friend of Ernestine, a little seminary girl. They artfully +stood her right beside the pipe that leads out, and Dick went off the +high dive and swam in here to the inside end of the pipe. After +several minutes, by the time she was in collapse over his drowning, he +spoke up the pipe to her in most horrible, sepulchral tones. And right +there Miss Coghlan fainted dead away." + +"She must have been a weak sister," Graham commented; while he +struggled with a wanton desire for a match so that he could strike it +and see how Paula Forrest looked paddling there beside him to keep +afloat. + +"She had a fair measure of excuse," Paula answered. "She was a young +thing--eighteen; and she had a sort of school-girl infatuation for +Dick. They all get it. You see, he's such a boy when he's playing that +they can't realize that he's a hard-bitten, hard-working, deep- +thinking, mature, elderly benedict. The embarrassing thing was that +the little girl, when she was first revived and before she could +gather her wits, exposed all her secret heart. Dick's face was a study +while she babbled her--" + +"Well?--going to stay there all night?" Bert Wainwright's voice came +down the pipe, sounding megaphonically close. + +"Heavens!" Graham sighed with relief; for he had startled and clutched +Paula's arm. "That's the time I got my fright. The little maiden is +avenged. Also, at last, I know what a lead-pipe cinch is." + +"And it's time we started for the outer world," she suggested. "It's +not the coziest gossiping place in the world. Shall I go first?" + +"By all means--and I'll be right behind; although it's a pity the +water isn't phosphorescent. Then I could follow your incandescent heel +like that chap Byron wrote about--don't you remember?" + +He heard her appreciative gurgle in the dark, and then her: "Well, I'm +going now." + +Unable to see the slightest glimmer, nevertheless, from the few sounds +she made he knew she had turned over and gone down head first, and he +was not beyond visioning with inner sight the graceful way in which +she had done it--an anything but graceful feat as the average swimming +woman accomplishes it. + +"Somebody gave it away to you," was Bert's prompt accusal, when Graham +rose to the surface of the tank and climbed out. + +"And you were the scoundrel who rapped stone under water," Graham +challenged. "If I'd lost I'd have protested the bet. It was a crooked +game, a conspiracy, and competent counsel, I am confident, would +declare it a felony. It's a case for the district attorney." + +"But you won," Ernestine cried. + +"I certainly did, and, therefore, I shall not prosecute you, nor any +one of your crooked gang--if the bets are paid promptly. Let me see-- +you owe me a box of cigars--" + +"One cigar, sir!" + +"A box! A box!" "Cross tag!" Paula cried. "Let's play cross-tag!-- +You're IT!" + +Suiting action to word, she tagged Graham on the shoulder and plunged +into the tank. Before he could follow, Bert seized him, whirled him in +a circle, was himself tagged, and tagged Dick before he could escape. +And while Dick pursued his wife through the tank and Bert and Graham +sought a chance to cross, the girls fled up the scaffold and stood in +an enticing row on the fifteen-foot diving platform. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. + + + +An indifferent swimmer, Donald Ware had avoided the afternoon sport in +the tank; but after dinner, somewhat to the irritation of Graham, the +violinist monopolized Paula at the piano. New guests, with the casual +expectedness of the Big House, had drifted in--a lawyer, by name +Adolph Well, who had come to confer with Dick over some big water- +right suit; Jeremy Braxton, straight from Mexico, Dick's general +superintendent of the Harvest Group, which bonanza, according to +Jeremy Braxton, was as "unpetering" as ever; Edwin O'Hay, a red-headed +Irish musical and dramatic critic; and Chauncey Bishop, editor and +owner of the _San Francisco Dispatch_, and a member of Dick's +class and frat, as Graham gleaned. + +Dick had started a boisterous gambling game which he called "Horrible +Fives," wherein, although excitement ran high and players plunged, the +limit was ten cents, and, on a lucky coup, the transient banker might +win or lose as high as ninety cents, such coup requiring at least ten +minutes to play out. This game went on at a big table at the far end +of the room, accompanied by much owing and borrowing of small sums and +an incessant clamor for change. + +With nine players, the game was crowded, and Graham, rather than draw +cards, casually and occasionally backed Ernestine's cards, the while +he glanced down the long room at the violinist and Paula Forrest +absorbed in Beethoven Symphonies and Delibes' Ballets. Jeremy Braxton +was demanding raising the limit to twenty cents, and Dick, the +heaviest loser, as he averred, to the tune of four dollars and sixty +cents, was plaintively suggesting the starting of a "kitty" in order +that some one should pay for the lights and the sweeping out of the +place in the morning, when Graham, with a profound sigh at the loss of +his last bet--a nickel which he had had to pay double--announced to +Ernestine that he was going to take a turn around the room to change +his luck. + +"I prophesied you would," she told him under her breath. + +"What?" he asked. + +She glanced significantly in Paula's direction. + +"Just for that I simply must go down there now," he retorted. + +"Can't dast decline a dare," she taunted. + +"If it were a dare I wouldn't dare do it." + +"In which case I dare you," she took up. + +He shook his head: "I had already made up my mind to go right down +there to that one spot and cut that fiddler out of the running. You +can't dare me out of it at this late stage. Besides, there's Mr. O'Hay +waiting for you to make your bet." + +Ernestine rashly laid ten cents, and scarcely knew whether she won or +lost, so intent was she on watching Graham go down the room, although +she did know that Bert Wainwright had not been unobservant of her gaze +and its direction. On the other hand, neither she nor Bert, nor any +other at the table, knew that Dick's quick-glancing eyes, sparkling +with merriment while his lips chaffed absurdities that made them all +laugh, had missed no portion of the side play. + +Ernestine, but little taller than Paula, although hinting of a plus +roundness to come, was a sun-healthy, clear blonde, her skin sprayed +with the almost transparent flush of maidenhood at eighteen. To the +eye, it seemed almost that one could see through the pink daintiness +of fingers, hand, wrist, and forearm, neck and cheek. And to this +delicious transparency of rose and pink, was added a warmth of tone +that did not escape Dick's eyes as he glimpsed her watch Evan Graham +move down the length of room. Dick knew and classified her wild +imagined dream or guess, though the terms of it were beyond his +divination. + +What she saw was what she imagined was the princely walk of Graham, +the high, light, blooded carriage of his head, the delightful +carelessness of the gold-burnt, sun-sanded hair that made her fingers +ache to be into with caresses she for the first time knew were +possible of her fingers. + +Nor did Paula, during an interval of discussion with the violinist in +which she did not desist from stating her criticism of O'Hay's latest +criticism of Harold Bauer, fail to see and keep her eyes on Graham's +progress. She, too, noted with pleasure his grace of movement, the +high, light poise of head, the careless hair, the clear bronze of the +smooth cheeks, the splendid forehead, the long gray eyes with the hint +of drooping lids and boyish sullenness that fled before the smile with +which he greeted her. + +She had observed that smile often since her first meeting with him. It +was an irresistible smile, a smile that lighted the eyes with the +radiance of good fellowship and that crinkled the corners into tiny, +genial lines. It was provocative of smiles, for she found herself +smiling a silent greeting in return as she continued stating to Ware +her grievance against O'Hay's too-complacent praise of Bauer. + +But her engagement was tacitly with Donald Ware at the piano, and with +no more than passing speech, she was off and away in a series of +Hungarian dances that made Graham marvel anew as he loafed and smoked +in a window-seat. + +He marveled at the proteanness of her, at visions of those nimble +fingers guiding and checking The Fop, swimming and paddling in +submarine crypts, and, falling in swan-like flight through forty feet +of air, locking just above the water to make the diver's head- +protecting arch of arm. + +In decency, he lingered but few minutes, returned to the gamblers, and +put the entire table in a roar with a well-acted Yiddisher's chagrin +and passion at losing entire nickels every few minutes to the +fortunate and chesty mine superintendent from Mexico. + +Later, when the game of Horrible Fives broke up, Bert and Lute Desten +spoiled the Adagio from Beethoven's _Sonata Pathetique_ by +exaggeratedly ragging to it in what Dick immediately named "The Loving +Slow-Drag," till Paula broke down in a gale of laughter and ceased +from playing. + +New groupings occurred. A bridge table formed with Weil, Rita, Bishop, +and Dick. Donald Ware was driven from his monopoly of Paula by the +young people under the leadership of Jeremy Braxton; while Graham and +O'Hay paired off in a window-seat and O'Hay talked shop. + +After a time, in which all at the piano had sung Hawaiian +_hulas_, Paula sang alone to her own accompaniment. She sang +several German love-songs in succession, although it was merely for +the group about her and not for the room; and Evan Graham, almost to +his delight, decided that at last he had found a weakness in her. She +might be a magnificent pianist, horsewoman, diver, and swimmer, but it +was patent, despite her singing throat, that she was not a magnificent +singer. This conclusion he was quickly compelled to modify. A singer +she was, a consummate singer. Weakness was only comparative after all. +She lacked the magnificent voice. It was a sweet voice, a rich voice, +with the same warm-fibered thrill of her laugh; but the volume so +essential to the great voice was not there. Ear and voice seemed +effortlessly true, and in her singing were feeling, artistry, +training, intelligence. But volume--it was scarcely a fair average, +was his judgment. + +But quality--there he halted. It was a woman's voice. It was haunted +with richness of sex. In it resided all the temperament in the world-- +with all the restraint of discipline, was the next step of his +analysis. He had to admire the way she refused to exceed the +limitations of her voice. In this she achieved triumphs. + +And, while he nodded absently to O'Hay's lecturette on the state of +the--opera, Graham fell to wondering if Paula Forrest, thus so +completely the mistress of her temperament, might not be equally +mistress of her temperament in the deeper, passional ways. There was a +challenge there--based on curiosity, he conceded, but only partly so +based; and, over and beyond, and, deeper and far beneath, a challenge +to a man made in the immemorial image of man. + +It was a challenge that bade him pause, and even look up and down the +great room and to the tree-trunked roof far above, and to the flying +gallery hung with the spoils of the world, and to Dick Forrest, master +of all this material achievement and husband of the woman, playing +bridge, just as he worked, with all his heart, his laughter ringing +loud as he caught Rita in renig. For Graham had the courage not to +shun the ultimate connotations. Behind the challenge in his +speculations lurked the woman. Paula Forrest was splendidly, +deliciously woman, all woman, unusually woman. From the blow between +the eyes of his first striking sight of her, swimming the great +stallion in the pool, she had continued to witch-ride his man's +imagination. He was anything but unused to women; and his general +attitude was that of being tired of the mediocre sameness of them. To +chance upon the unusual woman was like finding the great pearl in a +lagoon fished out by a generation of divers. + +"Glad to see you're still alive," Paula laughed to him, a little +later. + +She was prepared to depart with Lute for bed. A second bridge quartet +had been arranged--Ernestine, Bert, Jeremy Braxton, and Graham; while +O'Hay and Bishop were already deep in a bout of two-handed pinochle. + +"He's really a charming Irishman when he keeps off his one string," +Paula went on. + +"Which, I think I am fair, is music," Graham said. + +"And on music he is insufferable," Lute observed. "It's the only thing +he doesn't know the least thing about. He drives one frantic." + +"Never mind," Paula soothed, in gurgling tones. "You will all be +avenged. Dick just whispered to me to get the philosophers up to- +morrow night. You know how they talk music. A musical critic is their +awful prey." + +"Terrence said the other night that there was no closed season on +musical critics," Lute contributed. + +"Terrence and Aaron will drive him to drink," Paula laughed her joy of +anticipation. "And Dar Hyal, alone, with his blastic theory of art, +can specially apply it to music to the confutation of all the first +words and the last. He doesn't believe a thing he says about blastism, +any more than was he serious when he danced the other evening. It's +his bit of fun. He's such a deep philosopher that he has to get his +fun somehow." + +"And if O'Hay ever locks horns with Terrence," Lute prophesied, "I can +see Terrence tucking arm in arm with him, leading him down to the stag +room, and heating the argument with the absentest-minded variety of +drinks that ever O'Hay accomplished." + +"Which means a very sick O'Hay next day," Paula continued her gurgles +of anticipation. + +"I'll tell him to do it!" exclaimed Lute. + +"You mustn't think we're all bad," Paula protested to Graham. "It's +just the spirit of the house. Dick likes it. He's always playing jokes +himself. He relaxes that way. I'll wager, right now, it was Dick's +suggestion, to Lute, and for Lute to carry out, for Terrence to get +O'Hay into the stag room. Now, 'fess up, Lute." + +"Well, I will say," Lute answered with meticulous circumspection, +"that the idea was not entirely original with me." + +At this point, Ernestine joined them and appropriated Graham with: + +"We're all waiting for you. We've cut, and you and I are partners. +Besides, Paula's making her sleep noise. So say good night, and let +her go." + +Paula had left for bed at ten o'clock. Not till one did the bridge +break up. Dick, his arm about Ernestine in brotherly fashion, said +good night to Graham where one of the divided ways led to the watch +tower, and continued on with his pretty sister-in-law toward her +quarters. + +"Just a tip, Ernestine," he said at parting, his gray eyes frankly and +genially on hers, but his voice sufficiently serious to warn her. + +"What have I been doing now?" she pouted laughingly. + +"Nothing... as yet. But don't get started, or you'll be laying up a +sore heart for yourself. You're only a kid yet--eighteen; and a darned +nice, likable kid at that. Enough to make 'most any man sit up and +take notice. But Evan Graham is not 'most any man--" + +"Oh, I can take care of myself," she blurted out in a fling of quick +resentment. + +"But listen to me just the same. There comes a time in the affairs of +a girl when the love-bee gets a buzzing with a very loud hum in her +pretty noddle. Then is the time she mustn't make a mistake and start +in loving the wrong man. You haven't fallen in love with Evan Graham +yet, and all you have to do is just not to fall in love with him. He's +not for you, nor for any young thing. He's an oldster, an ancient, and +possibly has forgotten more about love, romantic love, and young +things, than you'll ever learn in a dozen lives. If he ever marries +again--" + +"Again!" Ernestine broke in. + +"Why, he's been a widower, my dear, for over fifteen years." + +"Then what of it?" she demanded defiantly. + +"Just this," Dick continued quietly. "He's lived the young-thing +romance, and lived it wonderfully; and, from the fact that in fifteen +years he has not married again, means--" + +"That he's never recovered from his loss?" Ernestine interpolated. +"But that's no proof--" + +"--Means that he's got over his apprenticeship to wild young romance," +Dick held on steadily. "All you have to do is look at him and realize +that he has not lacked opportunities, and that, on occasion, some very +fine women, real wise women, mature women, have given him foot-races +that tested his wind and endurance. But so far they've not succeeded +in catching him. And as for young things, you know how filled the +world is with them for a man like him. Think it over, and just keep +your heart-thoughts away from him. If you don't let your heart start +to warm toward him, it will save your heart from a grievous chill +later on." + +He took one of her hands in his, and drew her against him, an arm +soothingly about her shoulder. For several minutes of silence Dick +idly speculated on what her thoughts might be. + +"You know, we hard-bitten old fellows--" he began half-apologetically, +half-humorously. + +But she made a restless movement of distaste, and cried out: + +"Are the only ones worth while! The young men are all youngsters, and +that's what's the matter with them. They're full of life, and coltish +spirits, and dance, and song. But they're not serious. They're not +big. They're not--oh, they don't give a girl that sense of all- +wiseness, of proven strength, of, of... well, of manhood." + +"I understand," Dick murmured. "But please do not forget to glance at +the other side of the shield. You glowing young creatures of women +must affect the old fellows in precisely similar ways. They may look +on you as toys, playthings, delightful things to whom to teach a few +fine foolishnesses, but not as comrades, not as equals, not as +sharers--full sharers. Life is something to be learned. They have +learned it... some of it. But young things like you, Ernestine, have +you learned any of it yet?" + +"Tell me," she asked abruptly, almost tragically, "about this wild +young romance, about this young thing when he was young, fifteen years +ago." + +"Fifteen?" Dick replied promptly. "Eighteen. They were married three +years before she died. In fact--figure it out for yourself--they were +actually married, by a Church of England dominie, and living in +wedlock, about the same moment that you were squalling your first +post-birth squalls in this world." + +"Yes, yes--go on," she urged nervously. "What was she like?" + +"She was a resplendent, golden-brown, or tan-golden half-caste, a +Polynesian queen whose mother had been a queen before her, whose +father was an Oxford man, an English gentleman, and a real scholar. +Her name was Nomare. She was Queen of Huahoa. She was barbaric. He was +young enough to out-barbaric her. There was nothing sordid in their +marriage. He was no penniless adventurer. She brought him her island +kingdom and forty thousand subjects. He brought to that island his +fortune--and it was no inconsiderable fortune. He built a palace that +no South Sea island ever possessed before or will ever possess again. +It was the real thing, grass-thatched, hand-hewn beams that were +lashed with cocoanut sennit, and all the rest. It was rooted in the +island; it sprouted out of the island; it _belonged_, although he +fetched Hopkins out from New York to plan it. + +"Heavens! they had their own royal yacht, their mountain house, their +canoe house--the last a veritable palace in itself. I know. I have +been at great feasts in it--though it was after their time. Nomare was +dead, and no one knew where Graham was, and a king of collateral line +was the ruler. + +"I told you he out-barbaricked her. Their dinner service was gold.-- +Oh, what's the use in telling any more. He was only a boy. She was +half-English, half-Polynesian, and a really and truly queen. They were +flowers of their races. They were a pair of wonderful children. They +lived a fairy tale. And... well, Ernestine, the years have passed, and +Evan Graham has passed from the realm of the young thing. It will be a +remarkable woman that will ever infatuate him now. Besides, he's +practically broke. Though he didn't wastrel his money. As much +misfortune, and more, than anything else." + +"Paula would be more his kind," Ernestine said meditatively. + +"Yes, indeed," Dick agreed. "Paula, or any woman as remarkable as +Paula, would attract him a thousand times more than all the sweet, +young, lovely things like you in the world. We oldsters have our +standards, you know." + +"And I'll have to put up with the youngsters," Ernestine sighed. + +"In the meantime, yes," he chuckled. "Remembering, always, that you, +too, in time, may grow into the remarkable, mature woman, who can +outfoot a man like Evan in a foot-race of love for possession." + +"But I shall be married long before that," she pouted. + +"Which will be your good fortune, my dear. And, now, good night. And +you are not angry with me?" + +She smiled pathetically and shook her head, put up her lips to be +kissed, then said as they parted: + +"I promise not to be angry if you will only show me the way that in +the end will lead me to ancient graybeards like you and Graham." + +Dick Forrest, turning off lights as he went, penetrated the library, +and, while selecting half a dozen reference volumes on mechanics and +physics, smiled as if pleased with himself at recollection of the +interview with his sister-in-law. He was confident that he had spoken +in time and not a moment too soon. But, half way up the book-concealed +spiral staircase that led to his work room, a remark of Ernestine, +echoing in his consciousness, made him stop from very suddenness to +lean his shoulder against the wall.--_"Paula would be more his +kind."_ + +"Silly ass!" he laughed aloud, continuing on his way. "And married a +dozen years!" + +Nor did he think again about it, until, in bed, on his sleeping porch, +he took a glance at his barometers and thermometers, and prepared to +settle down to the solution of the electrical speculation that had +been puzzling him. Then it was, as he peered across the great court to +his wife's dark wing and dark sleeping porch to see if she were still +waking, that Ernestine's remark again echoed. He dismissed it with a +"Silly ass!" of scorn, lighted a cigarette, and began running, with +trained eye, the indexes of the books and marking the pages sought +with matches. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + + +It was long after ten in the morning, when Graham, straying about +restlessly and wondering if Paula Forrest ever appeared before the +middle of the day, wandered into the music room. Despite the fact that +he was a several days' guest in the Big House, so big was it that the +music room was new territory. It was an exquisite room, possibly +thirty-five by sixty and rising to a lofty trussed ceiling where a +warm golden light was diffused from a skylight of yellow glass. Red +tones entered largely into the walls and furnishing, and the place, to +him, seemed to hold the hush of music. + +Graham was lazily contemplating a Keith with its inevitable triumph of +sun-gloried atmosphere and twilight-shadowed sheep, when, from the +tail of his eye, he saw his hostess come in from the far entrance. +Again, the sight of her, that was a picture, gave him the little +catch-breath of gasp. She was clad entirely in white, and looked very +young and quite tall in the sweeping folds of a _holoku_ of +elaborate simplicity and apparent shapelessness. He knew the +_holoku_ in the home of its origin, where, on the _lanais_ +of Hawaii, it gave charm to a plain woman and double-folded the charm +of a charming woman. + +While they smiled greeting across the room, he was noting the set of +her body, the poise of head and frankness of eyes--all of which seemed +articulate with a friendly, comradely, "Hello, friends." At least such +was the form Graham's fancy took as she came toward him. + +"You made a mistake with this room," he said gravely. + +"No, don't say that! But how?" + +"It should have been longer, much longer, twice as long at least." + +"Why?" she demanded, with a disapproving shake of head, while he +delighted in the girlish color in her cheeks that gave the lie to her +thirty-eight years. + +"Because, then," he answered, "you should have had to walk twice as +far this morning and my pleasure of watching you would have been +correspondingly increased. I've always insisted that the _holoku_ +is the most charming garment ever invented for women." + +"Then it was my _holoku_ and not I," she retorted. "I see you are +like Dick--always with a string on your compliments, and lo, when we +poor sillies start to nibble, back goes the compliment dragging at the +end of the string. + +"Now I want to show you the room," she hurried on, closing his +disclaimer. "Dick gave me a free hand with it. It's all mine, you see, +even to its proportions." + +"And the pictures?" + +"I selected them," she nodded, "every one of them, and loved them onto +the walls myself. Although Dick did quarrel with me over that +Vereschagin. He agreed on the two Millets and the Corot over there, +and on that Isabey; and even conceded that some Vereschagins might do +in a music room, but not that particular Vereschagin. He's jealous for +our local artists, you see. He wanted more of them, wanted to show his +appreciation of home talent." + +"I don't know your Pacific Coast men's work very well," Graham said. +"Tell me about them. Show me that--Of course, that's a Keith, there; +but whose is that next one? It's beautiful." + +"A McComas--" she was answering; and Graham, with a pleasant +satisfaction, was settling himself to a half-hour's talk on pictures, +when Donald Ware entered with questing eyes that lighted up at sight +of the Little Lady. + +His violin was under his arm, and he crossed to the piano in a brisk, +business-like way and proceeded to lay out music. + +"We're going to work till lunch," Paula explained to Graham. "He +swears I'm getting abominably rusty, and I think he's half right. +We'll see you at lunch. You can stay if you care, of course; but I +warn you it's really going to be work. And we're going swimming this +afternoon. Four o'clock at the tank, Dick says. Also, he says he's got +a new song he's going to sing then.--What time is it, Mr. Ware?" + +"Ten minutes to eleven," the musician answered briefly, with a touch +of sharpness. + +"You're ahead of time--the engagement was for eleven. And till eleven +you'll have to wait, sir. I must run and see Dick, first. I haven't +said good morning to him yet." + +Well Paula knew her husband's hours. Scribbled secretly in the back of +the note-book that lay always on the reading stand by her couch were +hieroglyphic notes that reminded her that he had coffee at six-thirty; +might possibly be caught in bed with proof-sheets or books till eight- +forty-five, if not out riding; was inaccessible between nine and ten, +dictating correspondence to Blake; was inaccessible between ten and +eleven, conferring with managers and foremen, while Bonbright, the +assistant secretary, took down, like any court reporter, every word +uttered by all parties in the rapid-fire interviews. + +At eleven, unless there were unexpected telegrams or business, she +could usually count on finding Dick alone for a space, although +invariably busy. Passing the secretaries' room, the click of a +typewriter informed her that one obstacle was removed. In the library, +the sight of Mr. Bonbright hunting a book for Mr. Manson, the +Shorthorn manager, told her that Dick's hour with his head men was +over. + +She pressed the button that swung aside a section of filled book- +shelves and revealed the tiny spiral of steel steps that led up to +Dick's work room. At the top, a similar pivoting section of shelves +swung obediently to her press of button and let her noiselessly into +his room. A shade of vexation passed across her face as she recognized +Jeremy Braxton's voice. She paused in indecision, neither seeing nor +being seen. + +"If we flood we flood," the mine superintendent was saying. "It will +cost a mint--yes, half a dozen mints--to pump out again. And it's a +damned shame to drown the old Harvest that way." + +"But for this last year the books show that we've worked at a positive +loss," Paula heard Dick take up. "Every petty bandit from Huerta down +to the last peon who's stolen a horse has gouged us. It's getting too +stiff--taxes extraordinary--bandits, revolutionists, and federals. We +could survive it, if only the end were in sight; but we have no +guarantee that this disorder may not last a dozen or twenty years." + +"Just the same, the old Harvest--think of flooding her!" the +superintendent protested. + +"And think of Villa," Dick replied, with a sharp laugh the bitterness +of which did not escape Paula. "If he wins he says he's going to +divide all the land among the peons. The next logical step will be the +mines. How much do you think we've coughed up to the constitutionalists +in the past twelvemonth?" + +"Over a hundred and twenty thousand," Braxton answered promptly. "Not +counting that fifty thousand cold bullion to Torenas before he +retreated. He jumped his army at Guaymas and headed for Europe with +it--I wrote you all that." + +"If we keep the workings afloat, Jeremy, they'll go on gouging, gouge +without end, Amen. I think we'd better flood. If we can make wealth +more efficiently than those rapscallions, let us show them that we can +destroy wealth with the same facility." + +"That's what I tell them. And they smile and repeat that such and such +a free will offering, under exigent circumstances, would be very +acceptable to the revolutionary chiefs--meaning themselves. The big +chiefs never finger one peso in ten of it. Good Lord! I show them what +we've done. Steady work for five thousand peons. Wages raised from ten +centavos a day to a hundred and ten. I show them peons--ten-centavo +men when we took them, and five-peso men when I showed them. And the +same old smile and the same old itching palm, and the same old +acceptability of a free will offering from us to the sacred cause of +the revolution. By God! Old Diaz was a robber, but he was a decent +robber. I said to Arranzo: 'If we shut down, here's five thousand +Mexicans out of a job--what'll you do with them?' And Arranzo smiled +and answered me pat. 'Do with them?' he said. 'Why, put guns in their +hands and march 'em down to take Mexico City.'" + +In imagination Paula could see Dick's disgusted shrug of shoulders as +she heard him say: + +"The curse of it is--that the stuff is there, and that we're the only +fellows that can get it out. The Mexicans can't do it. They haven't +the brains. All they've got is the guns, and they're making us shell +out more than we make. There's only one thing for us, Jeremy. We'll +forget profits for a year or so, lay off the men, and just keep the +engineer force on and the pumping going." + +"I threw that into Arranzo," Jeremy Braxton's voice boomed. "And what +was his comeback? That if we laid off the peons, he'd see to it that +the engineers laid off, too, and the mine could flood and be damned to +us.--No, he didn't say that last. He just smiled, but the smile meant +the same thing. For two cents I'd a-wrung his yellow neck, except that +there'd have been another patriot in his boots and in my office next +day proposing a stiffer gouge. + +"So Arranzo got his 'bit,' and, on top of it, before he went across to +join the main bunch around Juarez, he let his men run off three +hundred of our mules--thirty thousand dollars' worth of mule-flesh +right there, after I'd sweetened him, too. The yellow skunk!" + +"Who is revolutionary chief in our diggings right now?" Paula heard +her husband ask with one of his abrupt shifts that she knew of old +time tokened his drawing together the many threads of a situation and +proceeding to action. + +"Raoul Bena." + +"What's his rank?" + +"Colonel--he's got about seventy ragamuffins." + +"What did he do before he quit work?" + +"Sheep-herder." + +"Very well." Dick's utterance was quick and sharp. "You've got to +play-act. Become a patriot. Hike back as fast as God will let you. +Sweeten this Raoul Bena. He'll see through your play, or he's no +Mexican. Sweeten him and tell him you'll make him a general---a second +Villa." + +"Lord, Lord, yes, but how?" Jeremy Braxton demanded. + +"By putting him at the head of an army of five thousand. Lay off the +men. Make him make them volunteer. We're safe, because Huerta is +doomed. Tell him you're a real patriot. Give each man a rifle. We'll +stand that for a last gouge, and it will prove you a patriot. Promise +every man his job back when the war is over. Let them and Raoul Bena +depart with your blessing. Keep on the pumping force only. And if we +cut out profits for a year or so, at the same time we are cutting down +losses. And perhaps we won't have to flood old Harvest after all." + +Paula smiled to herself at Dick's solution as she stole back down the +spiral on her way to the music room. She was depressed, but not by the +Harvest Group situation. Ever since her marriage there had always been +trouble in the working of the Mexican mines Dick had inherited. Her +depression was due to her having missed her morning greeting to him. +But this depression vanished at meeting Graham, who had lingered with +Ware at the piano and who, at her coming, was evidencing signs of +departure. + +"Don't run away," she urged. "Stay and witness a spectacle of industry +that should nerve you up to starting on that book Dick has been +telling me about." + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + + +On Dick's face, at lunch, there was no sign of trouble over the +Harvest Group; nor could anybody have guessed that Jeremy Braxton's +visit had boded anything less gratifying than a report of unfailing +earnings. Although Adolph Weil had gone on the early morning train, +which advertised that the business which had brought him had been +transacted with Dick at some unheard of hour, Graham discovered a +greater company than ever at the table. Besides a Mrs. Tully, who +seemed a stout and elderly society matron, and whom Graham could not +make out, there were three new men, of whose identity he gleaned a +little: a Mr. Gulhuss, State Veterinary; a Mr. Deacon, a portrait +painter of evident note on the Coast; and a Captain Lester, then +captain of a Pacific Mail liner, who had sailed skipper for Dick +nearly twenty years before and who had helped Dick to his navigation. + +The meal was at its close, and the superintendent was glancing at his +watch, when Dick said: + +"Jeremy, I want to show you what I've been up to. We'll go right now. +You'll have time on your way to the train." + +"Let us all go," Paula suggested, "and make a party of it. I'm dying +to see it myself, Dick's been so obscure about it." + +Sanctioned by Dick's nod, she was ordering machines and saddle horses +the next moment. + +"What is it?" Graham queried, when she had finished. + +"Oh, one of Dick's stunts. He's always after something new. This is an +invention. He swears it will revolutionize farming--that is, small +farming. I have the general idea of it, but I haven't seen it set up +yet. It was ready a week ago, but there was some delay about a cable +or something concerning an adjustment." + +"There's billions in it... if it works," Dick smiled over the table. +"Billions for the farmers of the world, and perhaps a trifle of +royalty for me... if it works." + +"But what is it?" O'Hay asked. "Music in the dairy barns to make the +cows give down their milk more placidly?" + +"Every farmer his own plowman while sitting on his front porch," Dick +baffled back. "In fact, the labor-eliminating intermediate stage +between soil production and sheer laboratory production of food. But +wait till you see it. Gulhuss, this is where I kill my own business, +if it works, for it will do away with the one horse of every ten-acre +farmer between here and Jericho." + +In ranch machines and on saddle animals, the company was taken a mile +beyond the dairy center, where a level field was fenced squarely off +and contained, as Dick announced, just precisely ten acres. + +"Behold," he said, "the one-man and no-horse farm where the farmer +sits on the porch. Please imagine the porch." + +In the center of the field was a stout steel pole, at least twenty +feet in height and guyed very low. + +From a drum on top of the pole a thin wire cable ran to the extreme +edge of the field and was attached to the steering lever of a small +gasoline tractor. About the tractor two mechanics fluttered. At +command from Dick they cranked the motor and started it on its way. + +"This is the porch," Dick said. "Just imagine we're all that future +farmer sitting in the shade and reading the morning paper while the +manless, horseless plowing goes on." + +Alone, unguided, the drum on the head of the pole in the center +winding up the cable, the tractor, at the circumference permitted by +the cable, turned a single furrow as it described a circle, or, +rather, an inward trending spiral about the field. + +"No horse, no driver, no plowman, nothing but the farmer to crank the +tractor and start it on its way," Dick exulted, as the uncanny +mechanism turned up the brown soil and continued unguided, ever +spiraling toward the field's center. "Plow, harrow, roll, seed, +fertilize, cultivate, harvest--all from the front porch. And where the +farmer can buy juice from a power company, all he, or his wife, will +have to do is press the button, and he to his newspaper, and she to +her pie-crust." + +"All you need, now, to make it absolutely perfect," Graham praised, +"is to square the circle." + +"Yes," Mr. Gulhuss agreed. "As it is, a circle in a square field loses +some acreage." + +Graham's face advertised a mental arithmetic trance for a minute, when +he announced: "Loses, roughly, three acres out of every ten." + +"Sure," Dick concurred. "But the farmer has to have his front porch +somewhere on his ten acres. And the front porch represents the house, +the barn, the chicken yard and the various outbuildings. Very well. +Let him get tradition out of his mind, and, instead of building these +things in the center of his ten acres, let him build them on the three +acres of fringe. And let him plant his fruit and shade trees and berry +bushes on the fringe. When you come to consider it, the traditionary +method of erecting the buildings in the center of a rectangular ten +acres compels him to plow around the center in broken rectangles." + +Gulhuss nodded enthusiastically. "Sure. And there's always the roadway +from the center out to the county road or right of way. That breaks +the efficiency of his plowing. Break ten acres into the consequent +smaller rectangles, and it's expensive cultivation." + +"Wish navigation was as automatic," was Captain Lester's contribution. + +"Or portrait painting," laughed Rita Wainwright with a significant +glance at Mr. Deacon. + +"Or musical criticism," Lute remarked, with no glance at all, but with +a pointedness of present company that brought from O'Hay: + +"Or just being a charming young woman." + +"What price for the outfit?" Jeremy Braxton asked. + +"Right now, we could manufacture and lay down, at a proper profit, for +five hundred. If the thing came into general use, with up to date, +large-scale factory methods, three hundred. But say five hundred. And +write off fifteen per cent, for interest and constant, it would cost +the farmer seventy dollars a year. What ten-acre farmer, on two- +hundred-dollar land, who keeps books, can keep a horse for seventy +dollars a year? And on top of that, it would save him, in labor, +personal or hired, at the abjectest minimum, two hundred dollars a +year." + +"But what guides it?" Rita asked. + +"The drum on the post. The drum is graduated for the complete radius-- +which took some tall figuring, I assure you--and the cable, winding +around the drum and shortening, draws the tractor in toward the +center." + +"There are lots of objections to its general introduction, even among +small farmers," Gulhuss said. + +Dick nodded affirmation. + +"Sure," he replied. "I have over forty noted down and classified. And +I've as many more for the machine itself. If the thing is a success, +it will take a long time to perfect it and introduce it." + +Graham found himself divided between watching the circling tractor and +casting glances at the picture Paula Forrest was on her mount. It was +her first day on The Fawn, which was the Palomina mare Hennessy had +trained for her. Graham smiled with secret approval of her femininity; +for Paula, whether she had designed her habit for the mare, or had +selected one most peculiarly appropriate, had achieved a triumph. + +In place of a riding coat, for the afternoon was warm, she wore a tan +linen blouse with white turnback collar. A short skirt, made like the +lower part of a riding coat, reached the knees, and from knees to +entrancing little bespurred champagne boots tight riding trousers +showed. Skirt and trousers were of fawn-colored silk corduroy. Soft +white gauntlets on her hands matched with the collar in the one +emphasis of color. Her head was bare, the hair done tight and low +around her ears and nape of neck. + +"I don't see how you can keep such a skin and expose yourself to the +sun this way," Graham ventured, in mild criticism. + +"I don't," she smiled with a dazzle of white teeth. "That is, I don't +expose my face this way more than a few times a year. I'd like to, +because I love the sun-gold burn in my hair; but I don't dare a +thorough tanning." + +The mare frisked, and a breeze of air blew back a flap of skirt, +showing an articulate knee where the trouser leg narrowed tightly over +it. Again Graham visioned the white round of knee pressed into the +round muscles of the swimming Mountain Lad, as he noted the firm knee- +grip on her pigskin English saddle, quite new and fawn-colored to +match costume and horse. + +When the magneto on the tractor went wrong, and the mechanics busied +themselves with it in the midst of the partly plowed field, the +company, under Paula's guidance, leaving Dick behind with his +invention, resolved itself into a pilgrimage among the brood-centers +on the way to the swimming tank. Mr. Crellin, the hog-manager, showed +them Lady Isleton, who, with her prodigious, fat, recent progeny of +eleven, won various naïve encomiums, while Mr. Crellin warmly +proclaimed at least four times, "And not a runt, not a runt, in the +bunch." + +Other glorious brood-sows, of Berkshire, Duroc-Jersey, and O. I. C. +blood, they saw till they were wearied, and new-born kids and lambs, +and rotund does and ewes. From center to center, Paula kept the +telephones warning ahead of the party's coming, so that Mr. Manson +waited to exhibit the great King Polo, and his broad-backed Shorthorn +harem, and the Shorthorn harems of bulls that were only little less +than King Polo in magnificence and record; and Parkman, the Jersey +manager, was on hand, with staffed assistants, to parade Sensational +Drake, Golden Jolly, Fontaine Royal, Oxford Master, and Karnak's Fairy +Boy--blue ribbon bulls, all, and founders and scions of noble houses +of butter-fat renown, and Rosaire Queen, Standby's Dam, Golden Jolly's +Lass, Olga's Pride, and Gertie of Maitlands--equally blue-ribboned +and blue-blooded Jersey matrons in the royal realm of butter-fat; and +Mr. Mendenhall, who had charge of the Shires, proudly exhibited a +string of mighty stallions, led by the mighty Mountain Lad, and a +longer string of matrons, headed by the Fotherington Princess of the +silver whinny. Even old Alden Bessie, the Princess's dam, retired to +but part-day's work, he sent for that they might render due honor to +so notable a dam. + +As four o'clock approached, Donald Ware, not keen on swimming, +returned in one of the machines to the Big House, and Mr. Gulhuss +remained to discuss Shires with Mr. Mendenhall. Dick was at the tank +when the party arrived, and the girls were immediately insistent for +the new song. + +"It isn't exactly a new song," Dick explained, his gray eyes twinkling +roguery, "and it's not my song. It was sung in Japan before I was +born, and, I doubt not, before Columbus discovered America. Also, it +is a duet--a competitive duet with forfeit penalties attached. Paula +will have to sing it with me.--I'll teach you. Sit down there, that's +right.--Now all the rest of you gather around and sit down." + +Still in her riding habit, Paula sat down on the concrete, facing her +husband, in the center of the sitting audience. Under his direction, +timing her movements to his, she slapped her hands on her knees, +slapped her palms together, and slapped her palms against his palms +much in the fashion of the nursery game of "Bean Porridge Hot." Then +he sang the song, which was short and which she quickly picked up, +singing it with him and clapping the accent. While the air of it was +orientally catchy, it was chanted slowly, almost monotonously, but it +was quickly provocative of excitement to the spectators: + + "_Jong-Keena, Jong-Keena, + Jong-Jong, Keena-Keena, + Yo-ko-ham-a, Nag-a-sak-i, + Kobe-mar-o--hoy!!!_" + +The last syllable, _hoy_, was uttered suddenly, explosively, and +an octave and more higher than the pitch of the melody. At the same +moment that it was uttered, Paula's and Dick's hands were abruptly +shot toward each other's, either clenched or open. The point of the +game was that Paula's hands, open or closed, at the instant of +uttering hoy, should match Dick's. Thus, the first time, she did match +him, both his and her hands being closed, whereupon he took off his +hat and tossed it into Lute's lap. + +"My forfeit," he explained. "Come on, Paul, again." And again they +sang and clapped: + + "_Jong-Keena, Jong-Keena, + Jong-Jong, Keena-Keena, + Yo-ko-ham-a, Nag-a-sak-i, + Kobe-mar-o--hoy!!!_" + +This time, with the _hoy_, her hands were closed and his were +open. + +"Forfeit!--forfeit!" the girls cried. + +She looked her costume over with alarm, asking, "What can I give?" + +"A hair pin," Dick advised; and one of her turtleshell hair pins +joined his hat in Lute's lap. + +"Bother it!" she exclaimed, when the last of her hair pins had gone +the same way, she having failed seven times to Dick's once. "I can't +see why I should be so slow and stupid. Besides, Dick, you're too +clever. I never could out-guess you or out-anticipate you." + +Again they sang the song. She lost, and, to Mrs. Tully's shocked +"Paula!" she forfeited a spur and threatened a boot when the remaining +spur should be gone. A winning streak of three compelled Dick to give +up his wrist watch and both spurs. Then she lost her wrist watch and +the remaining spur. + +"Jong-Keena, Jong-Keena," they began again, while Mrs. Tully +remonstrated, "Now, Paula, you simply must stop this.--Dick, you ought +to be ashamed of yourself." + +But Dick, emitting a triumphant "_Hoy!_" won, and joined in the +laughter as Paula took off one of her little champagne boots and added +it to the heap in Lute's lap. + +"It's all right, Aunt Martha," Paula assured Mrs. Tully. "Mr. Ware's +not here, and he's the only one who would be shocked.--Come on, Dick. +You can't win every time." + +"Jong-Keena, Jong-Keena," she chanted on with her husband. The +repetition, at first slow, had accelerated steadily, so that now they +fairly rippled through with it, while their slapping, striking palms +made a continuous patter. The exercise and excitement had added to the +sun's action on her skin, so that her laughing face was all a rosy +glow. + +Evan Graham, a silent spectator, was aware of hurt and indignity. He +knew the "Jong-Keena" of old time from the geishas of the tea houses +of Nippon, and, despite the unconventionality that ruled the Forrests +and the Big House, he experienced shock in that Paula should take part +in such a game. It did not enter his head at the moment that he would +have been merely curious to see how far the madness would go had the +player been Lute, or Ernestine, or Rita. Not till afterward did he +realize that his concern and sense of outrage were due to the fact +that the player was Paula, and that, therefore, she was bulking bigger +in his imagination than he was conscious of. What he was conscious of +at the moment was that he was growing angry and that he had +deliberately to check himself from protesting. + +By this time Dick's cigarette case and matches and Paula's second +boot, belt, skirt-pin, and wedding ring had joined the mound of +forfeits. Mrs. Tully, her face set in stoic resignation, was silent. + +"Jong-Keena, Jong-Keena," Paula laughed and sang on, and Graham heard +Ernestine laugh to Bert, "I don't see what she can spare next." + +"Well, you know her," he heard Bert answer. "She's game once she gets +started, and it certainly looks like she's started." + +"_Hoy_!" Paula and Dick cried simultaneously, as they thrust out +their hands. + +But Dick's were closed, and hers were open. Graham watched her vainly +quest her person for the consequent forfeit. + +"Come on, Lady Godiva," Dick commanded. "You hae sung, you hae danced; +now pay the piper." + +"Was the man a fool?" was Graham's thought. "And a man with a wife +like that." + +"Well," Paula sighed, her fingers playing with the fastenings of her +blouse, "if I must, I must." + +Raging inwardly, Graham averted his gaze, and kept it averted. There +was a pause, in which he knew everybody must be hanging on what she +would do next. Then came a giggle from Ernestine, a burst of laughter +from all, and, "A frame-up!" from Bert, that overcame Graham's +resoluteness. He looked quickly. The Little Lady's blouse was off, +and, from the waist up, she appeared in her swimming suit. It was +evident that she had dressed over it for the ride. + +"Come on, Lute--you next," Dick was challenging. + + But Lute, not similarly prepared for _Jong-Keena_, blushingly +led the retreat of the girls to the dressing rooms. + +Graham watched Paula poise at the forty-foot top of the diving +scaffold and swan-dive beautifully into the tank; heard Bert's +admiring "Oh, you Annette Kellerman!" and, still chagrined by the +trick that had threatened to outrage him, fell to wondering about the +wonder woman, the Little Lady of the Big House, and how she had +happened so wonderfully to be. As he fetched down the length of tank, +under water, moving with leisurely strokes and with open eyes watching +the shoaling bottom, it came to him that he did not know anything +about her. She was Dick Forrest's wife. That was all he knew. How she +had been born, how she had lived, how and where her past had been--of +all this he knew nothing. + +Ernestine had told him that Lute and she were half sisters of Paula. +That was one bit of data, at any rate. (Warned by the increasing +brightness of the bottom that he had nearly reached the end of the +tank, and recognizing Dick's and Bert's legs intertwined in what must +be a wrestling bout, Graham turned about, still under water, and swam +back a score or so of feet.) There was that Mrs. Tully whom Paula had +addressed as Aunt Martha. Was she truly an aunt? Or was she a courtesy +Aunt through sisterhood with the mother of Lute and Ernestine? + +He broke surface, was hailed by the others to join in bull-in-the- +ring; in which strenuous sport, for the next half hour, he was +compelled more than once to marvel at the litheness and agility, as +well as strategy, of Paula in her successful efforts at escaping +through the ring. Concluding the game through weariness, breathing +hard, the entire party raced the length of the tank and crawled out to +rest in the sunshine in a circle about Mrs. Tully. + +Soon there was more fun afoot, and Paula was contending impossible +things with Mrs. Tully. + +"Now, Aunt Martha, just because you never learned to swim is no reason +for you to take such a position. I am a real swimmer, and I tell you I +can dive right into the tank here, and stay under for ten minutes." + +"Nonsense, child," Mrs. Tully beamed. "Your father, when he was young, +a great deal younger than you, my dear, could stay under water longer +than any other man; and his record, as I know, was three minutes and +forty seconds, as I very well know, for I held the watch myself and +kept the time when he won against Harry Selby on a wager." + +"Oh, I know my father was some man in his time," Paula swaggered; "but +times have changed. If I had the old dear here right now, in all his +youthful excellence, I'd drown him if he tried to stay under water +with me. Ten minutes? Of course I can do ten minutes. And I will. You +hold the watch, Aunt Martha, and time me. Why, it's as easy as--" + +"Shooting fish in a bucket," Dick completed for her. + +Paula climbed to the platform above the springboard. + +"Time me when I'm in the air," she said. + +"Make your turn and a half," Dick called. + +She nodded, smiled, and simulated a prodigious effort at filling her +lungs to their utmost capacity. Graham watched enchanted. A diver +himself, he had rarely seen the turn and a half attempted by women +other than professionals. Her wet suit of light blue and green silk +clung closely to her, showing the lines of her justly proportioned +body. With what appeared to be an agonized gulp for the last cubic +inch of air her lungs could contain, she sprang up, out, and down, her +body vertical and stiff, her legs straight, her feet close together as +they impacted on the springboard end. Flung into the air by the board, +she doubled her body into a ball, made a complete revolution, then +straightened out in perfect diver's form, and in a perfect dive, with +scarcely a ripple, entered the water. + +"A Toledo blade would have made more splash," was Graham's verdict. + +"If only I could dive like that," Ernestine breathed her admiration. +"But I never shall. Dick says diving is a matter of timing, and that's +why Paula does it so terribly well. She's got the sense of time--" + +"And of abandon," Graham added. + +"Of willed abandon," Dick qualified. + +"Of relaxation by effort," Graham agreed. "I've never seen a +professional do so perfect a turn and a half." + +"And I'm prouder of it than she is," Dick proclaimed. "You see, I +taught her, though I confess it was an easy task. She coordinates +almost effortlessly. And that, along with her will and sense of time-- +why her first attempt was better than fair." + +"Paula is a remarkable woman," Mrs. Tully said proudly, her eyes +fluttering between the second hand of the watch and the unbroken +surface of the pool. "Women never swim so well as men. But she does.-- +Three minutes and forty seconds! She's beaten her father!" + +"But she won't stay under any five minutes, much less ten," Dick +solemnly stated. "She'll burst her lungs first." + +At four minutes, Mrs. Tully began to show excitement and to look +anxiously from face to face. Captain Lester, not in the secret, +scrambled to his feet with an oath and dived into the tank. + +"Something has happened," Mrs. Tully said with controlled quietness. +"She hurt herself on that dive. Go in after her, you men." + +But Graham and Bert and Dick, meeting under water, gleefully grinned +and squeezed hands. Dick made signs for them to follow, and led the +way through the dark-shadowed water into the crypt, where, treading +water, they joined Paula in subdued whisperings and gigglings. + +"Just came to make sure you were all right," Dick explained. "And now +we've got to beat it.--You first, Bert. I'll follow Evan." + +And, one by one, they went down through the dark water and came up on +the surface of the pool. By this time Mrs. Tully was on her feet and +standing by the edge of the tank. + +"If I thought this was one of your tricks, Dick Forrest," she began. + +But Dick, paying no attention, acting preternaturally calmly, was +directing the men loudly enough for her to hear. + +"We've got to make this systematic, fellows. You, Bert, and you, Evan, +join with me. We start at this end, five feet apart, and search the +bottom across. Then move along and repeat it back." + +"Don't exert yourselves, gentlemen," Mrs. Tully called, beginning to +laugh. "As for you, Dick, you come right out. I want to box your +ears." + +"Take care of her, you girls," Dick shouted. "She's got hysterics." + +"I haven't, but I will have," she laughed. + +"But damn it all, madam, this is no laughing matter!" Captain Lester +spluttered breathlessly, as he prepared for another trip to explore +the bottom. + +"Are you on, Aunt Martha, really and truly on?" Dick asked, after the +valiant mariner had gone down. + +Mrs. Tully nodded. "But keep it up, Dick, you've got one dupe. Elsie +Coghlan's mother told me about it in Honolulu last year." + +Not until eleven minutes had elapsed did the smiling face of Paula +break the surface. Simulating exhaustion, she slowly crawled out and +sank down panting near her aunt. Captain Lester, really exhausted by +his strenuous exertions at rescue, studied Paula keenly, then marched +to the nearest pillar and meekly bumped his head three times against +the concrete. + +"I'm afraid I didn't stay down ten minutes," Paula said. "But I wasn't +much under that, was I, Aunt Martha?" + +"You weren't much under at all," Mrs. Tully replied, "if it's my +opinion you were asking. I'm surprised that you are even wet.--There, +there, breathe naturally, child. The play-acting is unnecessary. I +remember, when I was a young girl, traveling in India, there was a +school of fakirs who leaped into deep wells and stayed down much +longer than you, child, much longer indeed." + +"You knew!" Paula charged. + +"But you didn't know I did," her Aunt retorted. "And therefore your +conduct was criminal. When you consider a woman of my age, with my +heart--" + +"And with your blessed, brass-tack head," Paula cried. + +"For two apples I'd box your ears." + +"And for one apple I'd hug you, wet as I am," Paula laughed back. +"Anyway, we did fool Captain Lester.--Didn't we, Captain?" + +"Don't speak to me," that doughty mariner muttered darkly. "I'm busy +with myself, meditating what form my vengeance shall take.--As for +you, Mr. Dick Forrest, I'm divided between blowing up your dairy, or +hamstringing Mountain Lad. Maybe I'll do both. In the meantime I am +going out to kick that mare you ride." + +Dick on The Outlaw, and Paula on The Fawn, rode back side by side to +the Big House. + +"How do you like Graham?" he asked. + +"Splendid," was her reply. "He's your type, Dick. He's universal, like +you, and he's got the same world-marks branded on him--the Seven +Seas, the books, and all the rest. He's an artist, too, and pretty +well all-around. And he's good fun. Have you noticed his smile? It's +irresistible. It makes one want to smile with him." + +"And he's got his serious scars, as well," Dick nodded concurrence. + +"Yes--right in the corners of the eyes, just after he has smiled, +you'll see them come. They're not tired marks exactly, but rather the +old eternal questions: Why? What for? What's it worth? What's it all +about?" + + * * * * * + +And bringing up the rear of the cavalcade, Ernestine and Graham +talked. + +"Dick's deep," she was saying. "You don't know him any too well. He's +dreadfully deep. I know him a little. Paula knows him a lot. But very +few others ever get under the surface of him. He's a real philosopher, +and he has the control of a stoic or an Englishman, and he can play- +act to fool the world." + + * * * * * + +At the long hitching rails under the oaks, where the dismounting party +gathered, Paula was in gales of laughter. + +"Go on, go on," she urged Dick, "more, more." + +"She's been accusing me of exhausting my vocabulary in naming the +house-boys by my system," he explained. + +"And he's given me at least forty more names in a minute and a half.-- +Go on, Dick, more." + +"Then," he said, striking a chant, "we can have Oh Sin and Oh Pshaw, +Oh Sing and Oh Song, Oh Sung and Oh Sang, Oh Last and Oh Least, Oh +Ping and Oh Pong, Oh Some, Oh More, and Oh Most, Oh Naught and Oh +Nit..." + +And Dick jingled away into the house still chanting his extemporized +directory. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + + +A week of dissatisfaction and restlessness ensued for Graham. Tom +between belief that his business was to leave the Big House on the +first train, and desire to see, and see more of Paula, to be with her, +and to be more with her--he succeeded in neither leaving nor in +seeing as much of her as during the first days of his visit. + +At first, and for the five days that he lingered, the young violinist +monopolized nearly her entire time of visibility. Often Graham strayed +into the music room, and, quite neglected by the pair, sat for moody +half-hours listening to their "work." They were oblivious of his +presence, either flushed and absorbed with the passion of their music, +or wiping their foreheads and chatting and laughing companionably in +pauses to rest. That the young musician loved her with an ardency that +was almost painful, was patent to Graham; but what hurt him was the +abandon of devotion with which she sometimes looked at Ware after he +had done something exceptionally fine. In vain Graham tried to tell +himself that all this was mental on her part--purely delighted +appreciation of the other's artistry. Nevertheless, being man, it +hurt, and continued to hurt, until he could no longer suffer himself +to remain. + +Once, chancing into the room at the end of a Schumann song and just +after Ware had departed, Graham found Paula still seated at the piano, +an expression of rapt dreaming on her face. She regarded him almost +unrecognizingly, gathered herself mechanically together, uttered an +absent-minded commonplace or so, and left the room. Despite his +vexation and hurt, Graham tried to think it mere artist-dreaming on +her part, a listening to the echo of the just-played music in her +soul. But women were curious creatures, he could not help moralizing, +and were prone to lose their hearts most strangely and +inconsequentially. Might it not be that by his very music this +youngster of a man was charming the woman of her? + +With the departure of Ware, Paula Forrest retired almost completely +into her private wing behind the door without a knob. Nor did this +seem unusual, Graham gleaned from the household. + +"Paula is a woman who finds herself very good company," Ernestine +explained, "and she often goes in for periods of aloneness, when Dick +is the only person who sees her." + +"Which is not flattering to the rest of the company," Graham smiled. + +"Which makes her such good company whenever she is in company," +Ernestine retorted. + +The driftage through the Big House was decreasing. A few guests, on +business or friendship, continued to come, but more departed. Under Oh +Joy and his Chinese staff the Big House ran so frictionlessly and so +perfectly, that entertainment of guests seemed little part of the +host's duties. The guests largely entertained themselves and one +another. + +Dick rarely appeared, even for a moment, until lunch, and Paula, now +carrying out her seclusion program, never appeared before dinner. + +"Rest cure," Dick laughed one noon, and challenged Graham to a +tournament with boxing gloves, single-sticks, and foils. + +"And now's the time," he told Graham, as they breathed between bouts, +"for you to tackle your book. I'm only one of the many who are looking +forward to reading it, and I'm looking forward hard. Got a letter from +Havely yesterday--he mentioned it, and wondered how far along you +were." + +So Graham, in his tower room, arranged his notes and photographs, +schemed out the work, and plunged into the opening chapters. So +immersed did he become that his nascent interest in Paula might have +languished, had it not been for meeting her each evening at dinner. +Then, too, until Ernestine and Lute left for Santa Barbara, there were +afternoon swims and rides and motor trips to the pastures of the +Miramar Hills and the upland ranges of the Anselmo Mountains. Other +trips they made, sometimes accompanied by Dick, to his great dredgers +working in the Sacramento basin, or his dam-building on the Little +Coyote and Los Cuatos creeks, or to his five-thousand-acre colony of +twenty-acre farmers, where he was trying to enable two hundred and +fifty heads of families, along with their families, to make good on +the soil. + +That Paula sometimes went for long solitary rides, Graham knew, and, +once, he caught her dismounting from the Fawn at the hitching rails. + +"Don't you think you are spoiling that mare for riding in company?" he +twitted. + +Paula laughed and shook her head. + +"Well, then," he asserted stoutly, "I'm spoiling for a ride with you." + +"There's Lute, and Ernestine, and Bert, and all the rest." + +"This is new country," he contended. "And one learns country through +the people who know it. I've seen it through the eyes of Lute, and +Ernestine and all the rest; but there is a lot I haven't seen and +which I can see only through your eyes." + +"A pleasant theory," she evaded. "A--a sort of landscape vampirism." + +"But without the ill effects of vampirism," he urged quickly. + +Her answer was slow in coming. Her look into his eyes was frank and +straight, and he could guess her words were weighed and gauged. + +"I don't know about that," was all she said finally; but his fancy +leaped at the several words, ranging and conjecturing their possible +connotations. + +"But we have so much we might be saying to each other," he tried +again. "So much we... ought to be saying to each other." + +"So I apprehend," she answered quietly; and again that frank, straight +look accompanied her speech. + +So she did apprehend--the thought of it was flame to him, but his +tongue was not quick enough to serve him to escape the cool, provoking +laugh as she turned into the house. + +Still the company of the Big House thinned. Paula's aunt, Mrs. Tully, +much to Graham's disappointment (for he had expected to learn from her +much that he wanted to know of Paula), had gone after only a several +days' stay. There was vague talk of her return for a longer stay; but, +just back from Europe, she declared herself burdened with a round of +duty visits which must be performed before her pleasure visiting +began. + +O'Hay, the critic, had been compelled to linger several days in order +to live down the disastrous culmination of the musical raid made upon +him by the philosophers. The idea and the trick had been Dick's. +Combat had joined early in the evening, when a seeming chance remark +of Ernestine had enabled Aaron Hancock to fling the first bomb into +the thick of O'Hay's deepest convictions. Dar Hyal, a willing and +eager ally, had charged around the flank with his blastic theory of +music and taken O'Hay in reverse. And the battle had raged until the +hot-headed Irishman, beside himself with the grueling the pair of +skilled logomachists were giving him, accepted with huge relief the +kindly invitation of Terrence McFane to retire with him to the +tranquillity and repose of the stag room, where, over a soothing +highball and far from the barbarians, the two of them could have a +heart to heart talk on real music. At two in the morning, wild-eyed +and befuddled, O'Hay had been led to bed by the upright-walking and +unshakably steady Terrence. + +"Never mind," Ernestine had told O'Hay later, with a twinkle in her +eye that made him guess the plot. "It was only to be expected. Those +rattle-brained philosophers would drive even a saint to drink." + +"I thought you were safe in Terrence's hands," had been Dick's mock +apology. "A pair of Irishmen, you know. I'd forgot Terrence was case- +hardened. Do you know, after he said good night to you, he came up to +me for a yarn. And he was steady as a rock. He mentioned casually of +having had several sips, so I... I... never dreamed ... er... that he +had indisposed you." + +When Lute and Ernestine departed for Santa Barbara, Bert Wainwright +and his sister remembered their long-neglected home in Sacramento. A +pair of painters, proteges of Paula, arrived the same day. But they +were little in evidence, spending long days in the hills with a trap +and driver and smoking long pipes in the stag room. + +The free and easy life of the Big House went on in its frictionless +way. Dick worked. Graham worked. Paula maintained her seclusion. The +sages from the madrono grove strayed in for wordy dinners--and wordy +evenings, except when Paula played for them. Automobile parties, from +Sacramento, Wickenberg, and other valley towns, continued to drop in +unexpectedly, but never to the confusion of Oh Joy and the house boys, +whom Graham saw, on occasion, with twenty minutes' warning, seat a +score of unexpected guests to a perfect dinner. And there were even +nights--rare ones--when only Dick and Graham and Paula sat at dinner, +and when, afterward, the two men yarned for an hour before an early +bed, while she played soft things to herself or disappeared earlier +than they. + +But one moonlight evening, when the Watsons and Masons and Wombolds +arrived in force, Graham found himself out, when every bridge table +was made up. Paula was at the piano. As he approached he caught the +quick expression of pleasure in her eyes at sight of him, which as +quickly vanished. She made a slight movement as if to rise, which did +not escape his notice any more than did her quiet mastery of the +impulse that left her seated. + +She was immediately herself as he had always seen her--although it was +little enough he had seen of her, he thought, as he talked whatever +came into his head, and rummaged among her songs with her. Now one and +now another song he tried with her, subduing his high baritone to her +light soprano with such success as to win cries of more from the +bridge players. + +"Yes, I am positively aching to be out again over the world with +Dick," she told him in a pause. "If we could only start to-morrow! But +Dick can't start yet. He's in too deep with too many experiments and +adventures on the ranch here. Why, what do you think he's up to now? +As if he did not have enough on his hands, he's going to revolutionize +the sales end, or, at least, the California and Pacific Coast portion +of it, by making the buyers come to the ranch." + +"But they do do that," Graham said. "The first man I met here was a +buyer from Idaho." + +"Oh, but Dick means as an institution, you know--to make them come en +masse at a stated time. Not simple auction sales, either, though he +says he will bait them with a bit of that to excite interest. +It will be an annual fair, to last three days, in which he will be the +only exhibitor. He's spending half his mornings now in conference with +Mr. Agar and Mr. Pitts. Mr. Agar is his sales manager, and Mr. Pitts +his showman." + +She sighed and rippled her fingers along the keyboard. + +"But, oh, if only we could get away--Timbuctoo, Mokpo, or Jericho." + +"Don't tell me you've ever been to Mokpo," Graham laughed. + +She nodded. "Cross my heart, solemnly, hope to die. It was with Dick +in the _All Away_ and in the long ago. It might almost be said we +honeymooned in Mokpo." + +And while Graham exchanged reminiscences of Mokpo with her, he +cudgeled his brain to try and decide whether her continual reference +to her husband was deliberate. + +"I should imagine you found it such a paradise here," he was saying. + +"I do, I do," she assured him with what seemed unnecessary vehemence. +"But I don't know what's come over me lately. I feel it imperative to +be up and away. The spring fret, I suppose; the Red Gods and their +medicine. And if only Dick didn't insist on working his head off and +getting tied down with projects! Do you know, in all the years of our +marriage, the only really serious rival I have ever had has been this +ranch. He's pretty faithful, and the ranch _is_ his first love. +He had it all planned and started before he ever met me or knew I +existed." + +"Here, let us try this together," Graham said abruptly, placing the +song on the rack before her. + +"Oh, but it's the 'Gypsy Trail,'" she protested. "It will only make my +mood worse." And she hummed: + + "'Follow the Romany patteran + West to the sinking sun, + Till the junk sails lift through the homeless drift, + And the East and the West are one.' + +"What is the Romany patteran?" she broke off to ask. "I've always +thought of it as patter, or patois, the Gypsy patois, and somehow it +strikes me as absurd to follow a language over the world--a sort of +philological excursion." + +"In a way the patteran is speech," he answered. "But it always says +one thing: 'This way I have passed.' Two sprigs, crossed in certain +ways and left upon the trail, compose the patteran. But they must +always be of different trees or shrubs. Thus, on the ranch here, a +patteran could be made of manzanita and madrono, of oak and spruce, of +buckeye and alder, of redwood and laurel, of huckleberry and lilac. It +is a sign of Gypsy comrade to Gypsy comrade, of Gypsy lover to Gypsy +lover." And he hummed: + + "'Back to the road again, again, + Out of a clear sea track; + Follow the cross of the Gypsy trail, + Over the world and back.'" + +She nodded comprehension, looked for a moment with troubled eyes down +the long room to the card-players, caught herself in her momentary +absentness, and said quickly: + +"Heaven knows there's a lot of Gypsy in some of us. I have more than +full share. In spite of his bucolic proclivities, Dick is a born +Gypsy. And from what he has told of you, you are hopelessly one." + +"After all, the white man is the real Gypsy, the king Gypsy," Graham +propounded. "He has wandered wider, wilder, and with less equipment, +than any Gypsy. The Gypsy has followed in his trails, but never made +trail for him.--Come; let us try it." + +And as they sang the reckless words to their merry, careless lilt, he +looked down at her and wondered--wondered at her--at himself. This +was no place for him by this woman's side, under her husband's roof- +tree. Yet here he was, and he should have gone days before. After the +years he was just getting acquainted with himself. This was +enchantment, madness. He should tear himself away at once. He had +known enchantments and madnesses before, and had torn himself away. +Had he softened with the years? he questioned himself. Or was this a +profounder madness than he had experienced? This meant the violation +of dear things--things so dear, so jealously cherished and guarded in +his secret life, that never yet had they suffered violation. + +And still he did not tear himself away. He stood there beside her, +looking down on her brown crown of hair glinting gold and bronze and +bewitchingly curling into tendrils above her ears, singing a song that +was fire to him--that must be fire to her, she being what she was and +feeling what she had already, in flashes, half-unwittingly, hinted to +him. + +She is a witch, and her voice is not the least of her witchery, he +thought, as _her_ voice, so richly a woman's voice, so +essentially her voice in contradistinction to all women's voices in +the world, sang and throbbed in his ear. And he knew, beyond shade of +doubt, that she felt some touch of this madness that afflicted him; +that she sensed, as he sensed, that the man and the woman were met. + +They thrilled together as they sang, and the thought and the sure +knowledge of it added fuel to his own madness till his voice warmed +unconsciously to the daring of the last lines, as, voices and thrills +blending, they sang: + + "'The wild hawk to the wind-swept sky, + The deer to the wholesome wold, + And the heart of a man to the heart of a maid + As it was in the days of old-- + The heart of a man to the heart of a maid, + Light of my tents be fleet, + Morning waits at the end of the world, + And the world is all at our feet.'" + +He looked for her to look up as the last notes died away, but she +remained quiet a moment, her eyes bent on the keys. And then the face +that was turned to his was the face of the Little Lady of the Big +House, the mouth smiling mischievously, the eyes filled with roguery, +as she said: + +"Let us go and devil Dick--he's losing. I've never seen him lose his +temper at cards, but he gets ridiculously blue after a long siege of +losing. + +"And he does love gambling," she continued, as she led the way to the +tables. "It's one of his modes of relaxing. It does him good. About +once or twice a year, if it's a good poker game, he'll sit in all +night to it and play to the blue sky if they take off the limit." + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + + + +Almost immediately after the singing of the "Gypsy Trail," Paula +emerged from her seclusion, and Graham found himself hard put, in the +tower room, to keep resolutely to his work when all the morning he +could hear snatches of song and opera from her wing, or laughter and +scolding of dogs from the great patio, or the continuous pulse for +hours of the piano from the distant music room. But Graham, patterning +after Dick, devoted his mornings to work, so that he rarely +encountered Paula before lunch. + +She made announcement that her spell of insomnia was over and that she +was ripe for all gaieties and excursions Dick had to offer her. +Further, she threatened, in case Dick grudged these personal +diversions, to fill the house with guests and teach him what +liveliness was. It was at this time that her Aunt Martha--Mrs. Tully-- +returned for a several days' visit, and that Paula resumed the driving +of Duddy and Fuddy in the high, one-seated Stude-baker trap. Duddy and +Fuddy were spirited trotters, but Mrs. Tully, despite her elderliness +and avoirdupois, was without timidity when Paula held the reins. + +As Mrs. Tully told Graham: "And that is a concession I make to no +woman save Paula. She is the only woman I can trust myself to with +horses. She has the horse-way about her. When she was a child she was +wild over horses. It's a wonder she didn't become a circus rider." + +More, much more, Graham learned about Paula in various chats with her +aunt. Of Philip Desten, Paula's father, Mrs. Tully could never say +enough. Her eldest brother, and older by many years, he had been her +childhood prince. His ways had been big ways, princely ways--ways +that to commoner folk had betokened a streak of madness. He was +continually guilty of the wildest things and the most chivalrous +things. It was this streak that had enabled him to win various +fortunes, and with equal facility to lose them, in the great gold +adventure of Forty-nine. Himself of old New England stock, he had had +for great grandfather a Frenchman--a trifle of flotsam from a mid- +ocean wreck and landed to grow up among the farmer-sailormen of the +coast of Maine. + +"And once, and once only, in each generation, that French Desten crops +out," Mrs. Tully assured Graham. "Philip was that Frenchman in his +generation, and who but Paula, and in full measure, received that same +inheritance in her generation. Though Lute and Ernestine are her half- +sisters, no one would imagine one drop of the common blood was shared. +That's why Paula, instead of going circus-riding, drifted inevitably +to France. It was that old original Desten that drew her over." + +And of the adventure in France, Graham learned much. Philip Desten's +luck had been to die when the wheel of his fortune had turned over and +down. Ernestine and Lute, little tots, had been easy enough for +Desten's sisters to manage. But Paula, who had fallen to Mrs. Tully, +had been the problem--"because of that Frenchman." + +"Oh, she is rigid New England," Mrs. Tully insisted, "the solidest of +creatures as to honor and rectitude, dependableness and faithfulness. +As a girl she really couldn't bring herself to lie, except to save +others. In which case all her New England ancestry took flight and she +would lie as magnificently as her father before her. And he had the +same charm of manner, the same daring, the same ready laughter, the +same vivacity. But what is lightsome and blithe in her, was debonaire +in him. He won men's hearts always, or, failing that, their bitterest +enmity. No one was left cold by him in passing. Contact with him +quickened them to love or hate. Therein Paula differs, being a woman, +I suppose, and not enjoying man's prerogative of tilting at windmills. +I don't know that she has an enemy in the world. All love her, unless, +it may well be, there are cat-women who envy her her nice husband." + +And as Graham listened, Paula's singing came through the open window +from somewhere down the long arcades, and there was that ever-haunting +thrill in her voice that he could not escape remembering afterward. +She burst into laughter, and Mrs. Tully beamed to him and nodded at +the sound. + +"There laughs Philip Desten," she murmured, "and all the Frenchwomen +behind the original Frenchman who was brought into Penobscot, dressed +in homespun, and sent to meeting. Have you noticed how Paula's laugh +invariably makes everybody look up and smile? Philip's laugh did the +same thing." + +"Paula had always been passionately fond of music, painting, drawing. +As a little girl she could be traced around the house and grounds by +the trail she left behind her of images and shapes, made in whatever +medium she chanced upon--drawn on scraps of paper, scratched on bits +of wood, modeled in mud and sand. + +"She loved everything, and everything loved her," said Mrs. Tully. +"She was never timid of animals. And yet she always stood in awe of +them; but she was born sense-struck, and her awe was beauty-awe. Yes, +she was an incorrigible hero-worshiper, whether the person was merely +beautiful or did things. And she never will outgrow that beauty--awe +of anything she loves, whether it is a grand piano, a great painting, +a beautiful mare, or a bit of landscape. + +"And Paula had wanted to do, to make beauty herself. But she was +sorely puzzled whether she should devote herself to music or painting. +In the full swing of work under the best masters in Boston, she could +not refrain from straying back to her drawing. From her easel she was +lured to modeling. + + "And so, with her love of the best, her soul and heart full of +beauty, she grew quite puzzled and worried over herself, as to which +talent was the greater and if she had genius at all. I suggested a +complete rest from work and took her abroad for a year. And of all +things, she developed a talent for dancing. But always she harked back +to her music and painting. No, she was not flighty. Her trouble was +that she was too talented--" + +"Too diversely talented," Graham amplified. + +"Yes, that is better," Mrs. Tully nodded. "But from talent to genius +is a far cry, and to save my life, at this late day, I don't know +whether the child ever had a trace of genius in her. She has certainly +not done anything big in any of her chosen things." + +"Except to be herself," Graham added. + +"Which _is_ the big thing," Mrs. Tully accepted with a smile of +enthusiasm. "She is a splendid, unusual woman, very unspoiled, very +natural. And after all, what does doing things amount to? I'd give +more for one of Paula's madcap escapades--oh, I heard all about +swimming the big stallion--than for all her pictures if every one was +a masterpiece. But she was hard for me to understand at first. Dick +often calls her the girl that never grew up. But gracious, she can put +on the grand air when she needs to. I call her the most mature child I +have ever seen. Dick was the finest thing that ever happened to her. +It was then that she really seemed for the first time to find herself. +It was this way." + +And Mrs. Tully went on to sketch the year of travel in Europe, the +resumption of Paula's painting in Paris, and the conviction she +finally reached that success could be achieved only by struggle and +that her aunt's money was a handicap. + +"And she had her way," Mrs. Tully sighed. "She--why, she dismissed me, +sent me home. She would accept no more than the meagerest allowance, +and went down into the Latin Quarter on her own, batching with two +other American girls. And she met Dick. Dick was a rare one. You +couldn't guess what he was doing then. Running a cabaret--oh, not +these modern cabarets, but a real students' cabaret of sorts. It was +very select. They were a lot of madmen. You see, he was just back from +some of his wild adventuring at the ends of the earth, and, as he +stated it, he wanted to stop living life for a while and to talk about +life instead. + +"Paula took me there once. Oh, they were engaged--the day before, and +he had called on me and all that. I had known 'Lucky' Richard Forrest, +and I knew all about his son. From a worldly standpoint, Paula +couldn't have made a finer marriage. It was quite a romance. Paula had +seen him captain the University of California eleven to victory over +Stanford. And the next time she saw him was in the studio she shared +with the two girls. She didn't know whether Dick was worth millions or +whether he was running a cabaret because he was hard up, and she cared +less. She always followed her heart. Fancy the situation: Dick the +uncatchable, and Paula who never flirted. They must have sprung +forthright into each other's arms, for inside the week it was all +arranged, and Dick made his call on me, as if my decision meant +anything one way or the other. + +"But Dick's cabaret. It was the Cabaret of the Philosophers--a small +pokey place, down in a cellar, in the heart of the Quarter, and it had +only one table. Fancy that for a cabaret! But such a table! A big +round one, of plain boards, without even an oil-cloth, the wood +stained with the countless drinks spilled by the table-pounding of the +philosophers, and it could seat thirty. Women were not permitted. An +exception was made for Paula and me. + +"You've met Aaron Hancock here. He was one of the philosophers, and to +this day he swaggers that he owed Dick a bigger bill that never was +paid than any of his customers. And there they used to meet, all those +wild young thinkers, and pound the table, and talk philosophy in all +the tongues of Europe. Dick always had a penchant for philosophers. + +"But Paula spoiled that little adventure. No sooner were they married +than Dick fitted out his schooner, the All Away, and away the blessed +pair of them went, honeymooning from Bordeaux to Hongkong." + +"And the cabaret was closed, and the philosophers left homeless and +discussionless," Graham remarked. + +Mrs. Tully laughed heartily and shook her head. + +"He endowed it for them," she gasped, her hand to her side. "Or +partially endowed it, or something. I don't know what the arrangement +was. And within the month it was raided by the police for an anarchist +club." + +After having learned the wide scope of her interests and talents, +Graham was nevertheless surprised one day at finding Paula all by +herself in a corner of a window-seat, completely absorbed in her work +on a piece of fine embroidery. + +"I love it," she explained. "All the costly needlework of the shops +means nothing to me alongside of my own work on my own designs. Dick +used to fret at my sewing. He's all for efficiency, you know, +elimination of waste energy and such things. He thought sewing was a +wasting of time. Peasants could be hired for a song to do what I was +doing. But I succeeded in making my viewpoint clear to him. + +"It's like the music one makes oneself. Of course I can buy better +music than I make; but to sit down at an instrument and evoke the +music oneself, with one's own fingers and brain, is an entirely +different and dearer satisfaction. Whether one tries to emulate +another's performance, or infuses the performance with one's own +personality and interpretation, it's all the same. It is soul-joy and +fulfilment. + +"Take this little embroidered crust of lilies on the edge of this +flounce--there is nothing like it in the world. Mine the idea, all +mine, and mine the delight of giving form and being to the idea. There +are better ideas and better workmanship in the shops; but this is +different. It is mine. I visioned it, and I made it. And who is to say +that embroidery is not art?" + +She ceased speaking and with her eyes laughed the insistence of her +question. + +"And who is to say," Graham agreed, "that the adorning of beautiful +womankind is not the worthiest of all the arts as well as the +sweetest?" + +"I rather stand in awe of a good milliner or modiste," she nodded +gravely. "They really are artists, and important ones, as Dick would +phrase it, in the world's economy." + + * * * * * + +Another time, seeking the library for Andean reference, Graham came +upon Paula, sprawled gracefully over a sheet of paper on a big table +and flanked by ponderous architectural portfolios, engaged in drawing +plans of a log bungalow or camp for the sages of the madroño grove. + +"It's a problem," she sighed. "Dick says that if I build it I must +build it for seven. We've got four sages now, and his heart is set on +seven. He says never mind showers and such things, because what +philosopher ever bathes? And he has suggested seriously seven stoves +and seven kitchens, because it is just over such mundane things that +philosophers always quarrel." + +"Wasn't it Voltaire who quarreled with a king over candle-ends?" +Graham queried, pleasuring in the sight of her graceful abandon. +Thirty-eight! It was impossible. She seemed almost a girl, petulant +and flushed over some school task. Then he remembered Mrs. Tully's +remark that Paula was the most mature child she had ever known. + +It made him wonder. Was she the one, who, under the oaks at the +hitching rails, with two brief sentences had cut to the heart of an +impending situation? "So I apprehend," she had said. What had she +apprehended? Had she used the phrase glibly, without meaning? Yet she +it was who had thrilled and fluttered to him and with him when they +had sung the "Gypsy Trail." _That_ he knew. But again, had he not +seen her warm and glow to the playing of Donald Ware? But here +Graham's ego had its will of him, for he told himself that with Donald +Ware it was different. And he smiled to himself and at himself at the +thought. + +"What amuses you?" Paula was asking. + +"Heaven knows I am no architect. And I challenge you to house seven +philosophers according to all the absurd stipulations laid down by +Dick." + +Back in his tower room with his Andean books unopened before him, +Graham gnawed his lip and meditated. The woman was no woman. She was +the veriest child. Or--and he hesitated at the thought--was this +naturalness that was overdone? Did she in truth apprehend? It must be. +It had to be. She was of the world. She knew the world. She was very +wise. No remembered look of her gray eyes but gave the impression of +poise and power. That was it--strength! He recalled her that first +night when she had seemed at times to glint an impression of steel, of +thin and jewel-like steel. In his fancy, at the time, he remembered +likening her strength to ivory, to carven pearl shell, to sennit +twisted of maidens' hair. + +And he knew, now, ever since the brief words at the hitching rails and +the singing of the "Gypsy Trail," that whenever their eyes looked into +each other's it was with a mutual knowledge of unsaid things. + +In vain he turned the pages of the books for the information he +sought. He tried to continue his chapter without the information, but +no words flowed from his pen. A maddening restlessness was upon him. +He seized a time table and pondered the departure of trains, changed +his mind, switched the room telephone to the house barn, and asked to +have Altadena saddled. + +It was a perfect morning of California early summer. No breath of wind +stirred over the drowsing fields, from which arose the calls of quail +and the notes of meadowlarks. The air was heavy with lilac fragrance, +and from the distance, as he rode between the lilac hedges, Graham +heard the throaty nicker of Mountain Lad and the silvery answering +whinney of the Fotherington Princess. + +Why was he here astride Dick Forrest's horse? Graham asked himself. +Why was he not even then on the way to the station to catch that first +train he had noted on the time table? This unaccustomed weakness of +decision and action was a new rôle for him, he considered bitterly. +But--and he was on fire with the thought of it--this was his one life, +and this was the one woman in the world. + +He reined aside to let a herd of Angora goats go by. Each was a doe, +and there were several hundred of them; and they were moved slowly by +the Basque herdsmen, with frequent pauses, for each doe was +accompanied by a young kid. In the paddock were many mares with new- +born colts; and once, receiving warning in time, Graham raced into a +crossroad to escape a drove of thirty yearling stallions being moved +somewhere across the ranch. Their excitement was communicated to that +entire portion of the ranch, so that the air was filled with shrill +nickerings and squealings and answering whinneys, while Mountain Lad, +beside himself at sight and sound of so many rivals, raged up and down +his paddock, and again and again trumpeted his challenging conviction +that he was the most amazing and mightiest thing that had ever +occurred on earth in the way of horse flesh. + +Dick Forrest pranced and sidled into the cross road on the Outlaw, his +face beaming with delight at the little tempest among his many +creatures. + +"Fecundity! Fecundity!"--he chanted in greeting, as he reined in to a +halt, if halt it might be called, with his tan-golden sorrel mare a-fret +and a-froth, wickedly reaching with her teeth now for his leg and next +for Graham's, one moment pawing the roadway, the next moment, in sheer +impotence of resentfulness, kicking the empty air with one hind leg and +kicking the air repeatedly, a dozen times. + +"Those youngsters certainly put Mountain Lad on his mettle," Dick +laughed. "Listen to his song: + +"'Hear me! I am Eros. I stamp upon the hills. I fill the wide valleys. +The mares hear me, and startle, in quiet pastures; for they know me. +The land is filled with fatness, and the sap is in the trees. It is +the spring. The spring is mine. I am monarch of my kingdom of the +spring. The mares remember my voice. They knew me aforetime through +their mothers before them. Hear me! I am Eros. I stamp upon the hills, +and the wide valleys are my heralds, echoing the sound of my +approach.'" + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + + + +After Mrs. Tully's departure, Paula, true to her threat, filled the +house with guests. She seemed to have remembered all who had been +waiting an invitation, and the limousine that met the trains eight +miles away was rarely empty coming or going. There were more singers +and musicians and artist folk, and bevies of young girls with their +inevitable followings of young men, while mammas and aunts and +chaperons seemed to clutter all the ways of the Big House and to fill +a couple of motor cars when picnics took place. + +And Graham wondered if this surrounding of herself by many people was +not deliberate on Paula's part. As for himself, he definitely +abandoned work on his book, and joined in the before-breakfast swims +of the hardier younger folk, in the morning rides over the ranch, and +in whatever fun was afoot indoors and out. + +Late hours and early were kept; and one night, Dick, who adhered to +his routine and never appeared to his guests before midday, made a +night of it at poker in the stag-room. Graham had sat in, and felt +well repaid when, at dawn, the players received an unexpected visit +from Paula--herself past one of her white nights, she said, although +no sign of it showed on her fresh skin and color. Graham had to +struggle to keep his eyes from straying too frequently to her as she +mixed golden fizzes to rejuvenate the wan-eyed, jaded players. Then +she made them start the round of "jacks" that closed the game, and +sent them off for a cold swim before breakfast and the day's work or +frolic. + +Never was Paula alone. Graham could only join in the groups that were +always about her. Although the young people ragged and tangoed +incessantly, she rarely danced, and then it was with the young men. +Once, however, she favored him with an old-fashioned waltz. "Your +ancestors in an antediluvian dance," she mocked the young people, as +she stepped out; for she and Graham had the floor to themselves. + +Once down the length of the room, the two were in full accord. Paula, +with the sympathy Graham recognized that made her the exceptional +accompanist or rider, subdued herself to the masterful art of the man, +until the two were as parts of a sentient machine that operated +without jar or friction. After several minutes, finding their perfect +mutual step and pace, and Graham feeling the absolute giving of Paula +to the dance, they essayed rhythmical pauses and dips, their feet +never leaving the floor, yet affecting the onlookers in the way Dick +voiced it when he cried out: "They float! They float!" The music was +the "Waltz of Salomé," and with its slow-fading end they postured +slower and slower to a perfect close. + +There was no need to speak. In silence, without a glance at each +other, they returned to the company where Dick was proclaiming: + +"Well, younglings, codlings, and other fry, that's the way we old +folks used to dance. I'm not saying anything against the new dances, +mind you. They're all right and dandy fine. But just the same it +wouldn't injure you much to learn to waltz properly. The way you +waltz, when you do attempt it, is a scream. We old folks do know a +thing or two that is worth while." + +"For instance?" queried one of the girls. + +"I'll tell you. I don't mind the young generation smelling of gasoline +the way it does--" + +Cries and protests drowned Dick out for a moment. + +"I know I smell of it myself," he went on. "But you've all failed to +learn the good old modes of locomotion. There isn't a girl of you that +Paula can't walk into the ground. There isn't a fellow of you that +Graham and I can't walk into a receiving hospital.--Oh, I know you can +all crank engines and shift gears to the queen's taste. But there +isn't one of you that can properly ride a horse--a real horse, in the +only way, I mean. As for driving a smart pair of roadsters, it's a +screech. And how many of you husky lads, hell-scooting on the bay in +your speed-boats, can take the wheel of an old-time sloop or schooner, +without an auxiliary, and get out of your own way in her?" + +"But we get there just the same," the same girl retorted. + +"And I don't deny it," Dick answered. "But you are not always pretty. +I'll tell you a pretty sight that no one of you can ever present-- +Paula, there, with the reins of four slashing horses in her hands, her +foot on the brake, swinging tally-ho along a mountain road." + + On a warm morning, in the cool arcade of the great patio, a chance +group of four or five, among whom was Paula, formed about Graham, who +had been reading alone. After a time he returned to his magazine with +such absorption that he forgot those about him until an awareness of +silence penetrated to his consciousness. He looked up. All the others +save Paula had strayed off. He could hear their distant laughter from +across the patio. But Paula! He surprised the look on her face, in her +eyes. It was a look bent on him, concerning him. Doubt, speculation, +almost fear, were in her eyes; and yet, in that swift instant, he had +time to note that it was a look deep and searching--almost, his quick +fancy prompted, the look of one peering into the just-opened book of +fate. Her eyes fluttered and fell, and the color increased in her +cheeks in an unmistakable blush. Twice her lips moved to the verge of +speech; yet, caught so arrantly in the act, she was unable to phrase +any passing thought. Graham saved the painful situation by saying +casually: + +"Do you know, I've just been reading De Vries' eulogy of Luther +Burbank's work, and it seems to me that Dick is to the domestic animal +world what Burbank is to the domestic vegetable world. You are life- +makers here--thumbing the stuff into new forms of utility and beauty." + +Paula, by this time herself again, laughed and accepted the +compliment. + +"I fear me," Graham continued with easy seriousness, "as I watch your +achievements, that I can only look back on a misspent life. Why didn't +I get in and _make_ things? I'm horribly envious of both of you." + +"We _are_ responsible for a dreadful lot of creatures being +born," she said. "It makes one breathless to think of the +responsibility." + +"The ranch certainly spells fecundity," Graham smiled. "I never before +was so impressed with the flowering and fruiting of life. Everything +here prospers and multiplies--" + +"Oh!" Paula cried, breaking in with a sudden thought. "Some day I'll +show you my goldfish. I breed them, too--yea, and commercially. I +supply the San Francisco dealers with their rarest strains, and I even +ship to New York. And, best of all, I actually make money--profits, I +mean. Dick's books show it, and he is the most rigid of bookkeepers. +There isn't a tack-hammer on the place that isn't inventoried; nor a +horse-shoe nail unaccounted for. That's why he has such a staff of +bookkeepers. Why, do you know, calculating every last least item of +expense, including average loss of time for colic and lameness, out of +fearfully endless columns of figures he has worked the cost of an +hour's labor for a draught horse to the third decimal place." + +"But your goldfish," Graham suggested, irritated by her constant +dwelling on her husband. + +"Well, Dick makes his bookkeepers keep track of my goldfish in the +same way. I'm charged every hour of any of the ranch or house labor I +use on the fish--postage stamps and stationery, too, if you please. I +have to pay interest on the plant. He even charges me for the water, +just as if he were a city water company and I a householder. And still +I net ten per cent., and have netted as high as thirty. But Dick +laughs and says when I've deducted the wages of superintendence--my +superintendence, he means--that I'll find I am poorly paid or else am +operating at a loss; that with my net I couldn't hire so capable a +superintendent. + +"Just the same, that's why Dick succeeds in his undertakings. Unless +it's sheer experiment, he never does anything without knowing +precisely, to the last microscopic detail, what it is he is doing." + +"He is very sure," Graham observed. + +"I never knew a man to be so sure of himself," Paula replied warmly; +"and I never knew a man with half the warrant. I know him. He is a +genius--but only in the most paradoxical sense. He is a genius because +he is so balanced and normal that he hasn't the slightest particle of +genius in him. Such men are rarer and greater than geniuses. I like to +think of Abraham Lincoln as such a type." + +"I must admit I don't quite get you," Graham said. + +"Oh, I don't dare to say that Dick is as good, as cosmically good, as +Lincoln," she hurried on. "Dick _is_ good, but it is not that. It +is in their excessive balance, normality, lack of flare, that they are +of the same type. Now I am a genius. For, see, I do things without +knowing how I do them. I just do them. I get effects in my music that +way. Take my diving. To save my life I couldn't tell how I swan-dive, +or jump, or do the turn and a half. + +"Dick, on the other hand, can't do anything unless he clearly knows in +advance _how_ he is going to do it. He does everything with +balance and foresight. He's a general, all-around wonder, without ever +having been a particular wonder at any one thing.--Oh, I know him. +He's never been a champion or a record-breaker in any line of +athletics. Nor has he been mediocre in any line. And so with +everything else, mentally, intellectually. He is an evenly forged +chain. He has no massive links, no weak links." + +"I'm afraid I'm like you," Graham said, "that commoner and lesser +creature, a genius. For I, too, on occasion, flare and do the most +unintentional things. And I am not above falling on my knees before +mystery." + +"And Dick hates mystery--or it would seem he does. Not content with +knowing _how_--he is eternally seeking the _why_ of the +_how_. Mystery is a challenge to him. It excites him like a red +rag does a bull. At once he is for ripping the husks and the heart +from mystery, so that he will know the _how_ and the _why_, +when it will be no longer mystery but a generalization and a +scientifically demonstrable fact." + + Much of the growing situation was veiled to the three figures of it. +Graham did not know of Paula's desperate efforts to cling close to her +husband, who, himself desperately busy with his thousand plans and +projects, was seeing less and less of his company. He always appeared +at lunch, but it was a rare afternoon when he could go out with his +guests. Paula did know, from the multiplicity of long, code telegrams +from Mexico, that things were in a parlous state with the Harvest +Group. Also, she saw the agents and emissaries of foreign investors in +Mexico, always in haste and often inopportune, arriving at the ranch +to confer with Dick. Beyond his complaint that they ate the heart out +of his time, he gave her no clew to the matters discussed. + +"My! I wish you weren't so busy," she sighed in his arms, on his +knees, one fortunate morning, when, at eleven o'clock, she had caught +him alone. + +It was true, she had interrupted the dictation of a letter into the +phonograph; and the sigh had been evoked by the warning cough of +Bonbright, whom she saw entering with more telegrams in his hand. + +"Won't you let me drive you this afternoon, behind Duddy and Fuddy, +just you and me, and cut the crowd?" she begged. + +He shook his head and smiled. + +"You'll meet at lunch a weird combination," he explained. "Nobody else +needs to know, but I'll tell you." He lowered his voice, while +Bonbright discreetly occupied himself at the filing cabinets. "They're +Tampico oil folk. Samuels himself, President of the Nacisco; and +Wishaar, the big inside man of the Pearson-Brooks crowd--the chap that +engineered the purchase of the East Coast railroad and the Tiuana +Central when they tried to put the Nacisco out of business; and +Matthewson--he's the _hi-yu-skookum_ big chief this side the +Atlantic of the Palmerston interests--you know, the English crowd that +fought the Nacisco and the Pearson-Brooks bunch so hard; and, oh, +there'll be several others. It shows you that things are rickety down +Mexico way when such a bunch stops scrapping and gets together. + +"You see, they are oil, and I'm important in my way down there, and +they want me to swing the mining interests in with the oil. Truly, big +things are in the air, and we've got to hang together and do something +or get out of Mexico. And I'll admit, after they gave me the turn-down +in the trouble three years ago, that I've sulked in my tent and made +them come to see me." + +He caressed her and called her his armful of dearest woman, although +she detected his eye roving impatiently to the phonograph with its +unfinished letter. + +"And so," he concluded, with a pressure of his arms about her that +seemed to hint that her moment with him was over and she must go, +"that means the afternoon. None will stop over. And they'll be off and +away before dinner." + +She slipped off his knees and out of his arms with unusual abruptness, +and stood straight up before him, her eyes flashing, her cheeks white, +her face set with determination, as if about to say something of grave +importance. But a bell tinkled softly, and he reached for the desk +telephone. + +Paula drooped, and sighed inaudibly, and, as she went down the room +and out the door, and as Bonbright stepped eagerly forward with the +telegrams, she could hear the beginning of her husband's conversation: + +"No. It is impossible. He's got to come through, or I'll put him out +of business. That gentleman's agreement is all poppycock. If it were +only that, of course he could break it. But I've got some mighty +interesting correspondence that he's forgotten about.... Yes, yes; it +will clinch it in any court of law. I'll have the file in your office +by five this afternoon. And tell him, for me, that if he tries to put +through this trick, I'll break him. I'll put a competing line on, and +his steamboats will be in the receiver's hands inside a year.... And... +hello, are you there?... And just look up that point I suggested. I +am rather convinced you'll find the Interstate Commerce has got him on +two counts...." + +Nor did Graham, nor even Paula, imagine that Dick--the keen one, the +deep one, who could see and sense things yet to occur and out of +intangible nuances and glimmerings build shrewd speculations and +hypotheses that subsequent events often proved correct--was already +sensing what had not happened but what might happen. He had not heard +Paula's brief significant words at the hitching post; nor had he seen +Graham catch her in that deep scrutiny of him under the arcade. Dick +had heard nothing, seen little, but sensed much; and, even in advance +of Paula, had he apprehended in vague ways what she afterward had come +to apprehend. + +The most tangible thing he had to build on was the night, immersed in +bridge, when he had not been unaware of the abrupt leaving of the +piano after the singing of the "Gypsy Trail"; nor when, in careless +smiling greeting of them when they came down the room to devil him +over his losing, had he failed to receive a hint or feeling of +something unusual in Paula's roguish teasing face. On the moment, +laughing retorts, giving as good as she sent, Dick's own laughing eyes +had swept over Graham beside her and likewise detected the unusual. +The man was overstrung, had been Dick's mental note at the time. But +why should he be overstrung? Was there any connection between his +overstrungness and the sudden desertion by Paula of the piano? And all +the while these questions were slipping through his thoughts, he had +laughed at their sallies, dealt, sorted his hand, and won the bid on +no trumps. + +Yet to himself he had continued to discount as absurd and preposterous +the possibility of his vague apprehension ever being realized. It was +a chance guess, a silly speculation, based upon the most trivial data, +he sagely concluded. It merely connoted the attractiveness of his wife +and of his friend. But--and on occasional moments he could not will +the thought from coming uppermost in his mind--why had they broken off +from singing that evening? Why had he received the feeling that there +was something unusual about it? Why had Graham been overstrung? + + * * * * * + +Nor did Bonbright, one morning, taking dictation of a telegram in the +last hour before noon, know that Dick's casual sauntering to the +window, still dictating, had been caused by the faint sound of hoofs +on the driveway. It was not the first of recent mornings that Dick had +so sauntered to the window, to glance out with apparent absentness at +the rush of the morning riding party in the last dash home to the +hitching rails. But he knew, on this morning, before the first figures +came in sight whose those figures would be. + +"Braxton is safe," he went on with the dictation without change of +tone, his eyes on the road where the riders must first come into view. +"If things break he can get out across the mountains into Arizona. See +Connors immediately. Braxton left Connors complete instructions. +Connors to-morrow in Washington. Give me fullest details any move-- +signed." + +Up the driveway the Fawn and Altadena clattered neck and neck. Dick +had not been disappointed in the figures he expected to see. From the +rear, cries and laughter and the sound of many hoofs tokened that the +rest of the party was close behind. + +"And the next one, Mr. Bonbright, please put in the Harvest code," +Dick went on steadily, while to himself he was commenting that Graham +was a passable rider but not an excellent one, and that it would have +to be seen to that he was given a heavier horse than Altadena. "It is +to Jeremy Braxton. Send it both ways. There is a chance one or the +other may get through..." + + + + +CHAPTER XX + + + +Once again the tide of guests ebbed from the Big House, and more than +one lunch and dinner found only the two men and Paula at the table. On +such evenings, while Graham and Dick yarned for their hour before bed, +Paula no longer played soft things to herself at the piano, but sat +with them doing fine embroidery and listening to the talk. + +Both men had much in common, had lived life in somewhat similar ways, +and regarded life from the same angles. Their philosophy was harsh +rather than sentimental, and both were realists. Paula made a practice +of calling them the pair of "Brass Tacks." + +"Oh, yes," she laughed to them, "I understand your attitude. You are +successes, the pair of you--physical successes, I mean. You have +health. You are resistant. You can stand things. You have survived +where men less resistant have gone down. You pull through African +fevers and bury the other fellows. This poor chap gets pneumonia in +Cripple Creek and cashes in before you can get him to sea level. Now +why didn't you get pneumonia? Because you were more deserving? Because +you had lived more virtuously? Because you were more careful of risks +and took more precautions?" + +She shook her head. + +"No. Because you were luckier--I mean by birth, by possession of +constitution and stamina. Why, Dick buried his three mates and two +engineers at Guayaquil. Yellow fever. Why didn't the yellow fever +germ, or whatever it is, kill Dick? And the same with you, Mr. Broad- +shouldered Deep-chested Graham. In this last trip of yours, why didn't +you die in the swamps instead of your photographer? Come. Confess. How +heavy was he? How broad were his shoulders? How deep his chest?--wide +his nostrils?--tough his resistance?" + +"He weighed a hundred and thirty-five," Graham admitted ruefully. "But +he looked all right and fit at the start. I think I was more surprised +than he when he turned up his toes." Graham shook his head. "It wasn't +because he was a light weight and small. The small men are usually the +toughest, other things being equal. But you've put your finger on the +reason just the same. He didn't have the physical stamina, the +resistance,--You know what I mean, Dick?" + +"In a way it's like the quality of muscle and heart that enables some +prizefighters to go the distance--twenty, thirty, forty rounds, say," +Dick concurred. "Right now, in San Francisco, there are several +hundred youngsters dreaming of success in the ring. I've watched them +trying out. All look good, fine-bodied, healthy, fit as fiddles, and +young. And their spirits are most willing. And not one in ten of them +can last ten rounds. I don't mean they get knocked out. I mean they +blow up. Their muscles and their hearts are not made out of first- +grade fiber. They simply are not made to move at high speed and +tension for ten rounds. And some of them blow up in four or five +rounds. And not one in forty can go the twenty-round route, give and +take, hammer and tongs, one minute of rest to three of fight, for a +full hour of fighting. And the lad who can last forty rounds is one +in ten thousand--lads like Nelson, Gans, and Wolgast. + +"You understand the point I am making," Paula took up. "Here are the +pair of you. Neither will see forty again. You're a pair of hard- +bitten sinners. You've gone through hardship and exposure that dropped +others all along the way. You've had your fun and folly. You've +roughed and rowdied over the world--" + +"Played the wild ass," Graham laughed in. + +"And drunk deep," Paula added. "Why, even alcohol hasn't burned you. +You were too tough. You put the other fellows under the table, or into +the hospital or the grave, and went your gorgeous way, a song on your +lips, with tissues uncorroded, and without even the morning-after +headache. And the point is that you are successes. Your muscles are +blond-beast muscles, your vital organs are blond-beast organs. And +from all this emanates your blond-beast philosophy. That's why you are +brass tacks, and preach realism, and practice realism, shouldering and +shoving and walking over lesser and unluckier creatures, who don't +dare talk back, who, like Dick's prizefighting boys, would blow up in +the first round if they resorted to the arbitrament of force." + +Dick whistled a long note of mock dismay. + +"And that's why you preach the gospel of the strong," Paula went on. +"If you had been weaklings, you'd have preached the gospel of the weak +and turned the other cheek. But you--you pair of big-muscled giants-- +when you are struck, being what you are, you don't turn the other +cheek--" + +"No," Dick interrupted quietly. "We immediately roar, 'Knock his block +off!' and then do it.--She's got us, Evan, hip and thigh. Philosophy, +like religion, is what the man is, and is by him made in his own +image." + +And while the talk led over the world, Paula sewed on, her eyes filled +with the picture of the two big men, admiring, wondering, pondering, +without the surety of self that was theirs, aware of a slipping and +giving of convictions so long accepted that they had seemed part of +her. + +Later in the evening she gave voice to her trouble. + +"The strangest part of it," she said, taking up a remark Dick had just +made, "is that too much philosophizing about life gets one worse than +nowhere. A philosophic atmosphere is confusing--at least to a woman. +One hears so much about everything, and against everything, that +nothing is sure. For instance, Mendenhall's wife is a Lutheran. She +hasn't a doubt about anything. All is fixed, ordained, immovable. +Star-drifts and ice-ages she knows nothing about, and if she did they +would not alter in the least her rules of conduct for men and women in +this world and in relation to the next. + +"But here, with us, you two pound your brass tacks, Terrence does a +Greek dance of epicurean anarchism, Hancock waves the glittering veils +of Bergsonian metaphysics, Leo makes solemn obeisance at the altar of +Beauty, and Dar Hyal juggles his sophistic blastism to no end save all +your applause for his cleverness. Don't you see? The effect is that +there is nothing solid in any human judgment. Nothing is right. +Nothing is wrong. One is left compassless, rudderless, chartless on a +sea of ideas. Shall I do this? Must I refrain from that? Will it be +wrong? Is there any virtue in it? Mrs. Mendenhall has her instant +answer for every such question. But do the philosophers?" + +Paula shook her head. + +"No. All they have is ideas. They immediately proceed to talk about +it, and talk and talk and talk, and with all their erudition reach no +conclusion whatever. And I am just as bad. I listen and listen, and +talk and talk, as I am talking now, and remain convictionless. There +is no test--" + +"But there is," Dick said. "The old, eternal test of truth--_Will it +work?_" + +"Ah, now you are pounding your favorite brass tack," Paula smiled. +"And Dar Hyal, with a few arm-wavings and word-whirrings, will show +that all brass tacks are illusions; and Terrence, that brass tacks are +sordid, irrelevant and non-essential things at best; and Hancock, that +the overhanging heaven of Bergson is paved with brass tacks, only that +they are a much superior article to yours; and Leo, that there is only +one brass tack in the universe, and that it is Beauty, and that it +isn't brass at all but gold." + + * * * * * + +"Come on, Red Cloud, go riding this afternoon," Paula asked her +husband. "Get the cobwebs out of your brain, and let lawyers and mines +and livestock go hang." + +"I'd like to, Paul," he answered. "But I can't. I've got to rush in a +machine all the way to the Buckeye. Word came in just before lunch. +They're in trouble at the dam. There must have been a fault in the +under-strata, and too-heavy dynamiting has opened it. In short, what's +the good of a good dam when the bottom of the reservoir won't hold +water?" + +Three hours later, returning from the Buckeye, Dick noted that for the +first time Paula and Graham had gone riding together alone. + + * * * * * + +The Wainwrights and the Coghlans, in two machines, out for a week's +trip to the Russian River, rested over for a day at the Big House, and +were the cause of Paula's taking out the tally-ho for a picnic into +the Los Baños Hills. Starting in the morning, it was impossible for +Dick to accompany them, although he left Blake in the thick of +dictation to go out and see them off. He assured himself that no +detail was amiss in the harnessing and hitching, and reseated the +party, insisting on Graham coming forward into the box-seat beside +Paula. + +"Just must have a reserve of man's strength alongside of Paula in case +of need," Dick explained. "I've known a brake-rod to carry away on a +down grade somewhat to the inconvenience of the passengers. Some of +them broke their necks. And now, to reassure you, with Paula at the +helm, I'll sing you a song: + + "What can little Paula do? + Why, drive a phaeton and two. + Can little Paula do no more? + Yes, drive a tally-ho and four." + +All were in laughter as Paula nodded to the grooms to release the +horses' heads, took the feel of the four mouths on her hands, and +shortened and slipped the reins to adjustment of four horses into the +collars and taut on the traces. + +In the babel of parting gibes to Dick, none of the guests was aware of +aught else than a bright morning, the promise of a happy day, and a +genial host bidding them a merry going. But Paula, despite the keen +exhilaration that should have arisen with the handling of four such +horses, was oppressed by a vague sadness in which, somehow, Dick's +being left behind figured. Through Graham's mind Dick's merry face had +flashed a regret of conscience that, instead of being seated there +beside this one woman, he should be on train and steamer fleeing to +the other side of the world. + +But the merriness died on Dick's face the moment he turned on his heel +to enter the house. It was a few minutes later than ten when he +finished his dictation and Mr. Blake rose to go. He hesitated, then +said a trifle apologetically: + +"You told me, Mr. Forrest, to remind you of the proofs of your +Shorthorn book. They wired their second hurry-up yesterday." + +"I won't be able to tackle it myself," Dick replied. "Will you please +correct the typographical, submit the proofs to Mr. Manson for +correction of fact--tell him be sure to verify that pedigree of King +of Devon--and ship them off." + +Until eleven Dick received his managers and foremen. But not for a +quarter of an hour after that did he get rid of his show manager, Mr. +Pitts, with the tentative make-up of the catalogue for the first +annual stock-sale on the ranch. By that time Mr. Bonbright was on hand +with his sheaf of telegrams, and the lunch-hour was at hand ere they +were cleaned up. + +For the first time alone since he had seen the tally-ho off, Dick +stepped out on his sleeping porch to the row of barometers and +thermometers on the wall. But he had come to consult, not them, but +the girl's face that laughed from the round wooden frame beneath them. + +"Paula, Paula," he said aloud, "are you surprising yourself and me +after all these years? Are you turning madcap at sober middle age?" + +He put on leggings and spurs to be ready for riding after lunch, and +what his thoughts had been while buckling on the gear he epitomized to +the girl in the frame. + +"Play the game," he muttered. And then, after a pause, as he turned to +go: "A free field and no favor ... and no favor." + + * * * * * + +"Really, if I don't go soon, I'll have to become a pensioner and join +the philosophers of the madroño grove," Graham said laughingly to +Dick. + +It was the time of cocktail assembling, and Paula, in addition to +Graham, was the only one of the driving party as yet to put in an +appearance. + +"If all the philosophers together would just make one book!" Dick +demurred. "Good Lord, man, you've just got to complete your book here. +I got you started and I've got to see you through with it." + +Paula's encouragement to Graham to stay on--mere stereotyped, +uninterested phrases--was music to Dick. His heart leapt. After all, +might he not be entirely mistaken? For two such mature, wise, middle- +aged individuals as Paula and Graham any such foolishness was +preposterous and unthinkable. They were not young things with their +hearts on their sleeves. + +"To the book!" he toasted. He turned to Paula. "A good cocktail," he +praised. "Paul, you excel yourself, and you fail to teach Oh Joy the +art. His never quite touch yours.--Yes, another, please." + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + + + +Graham, riding solitary through the redwood canyons among the hills +that overlooked the ranch center, was getting acquainted with Selim, +the eleven-hundred-pound, coal-black gelding which Dick had furnished +him in place of the lighter Altadena. As he rode along, learning the +good nature, the roguishness and the dependableness of the animal, +Graham hummed the words of the "Gypsy Trail" and allowed them to lead +his thoughts. Quite carelessly, foolishly, thinking of bucolic lovers +carving their initials on forest trees, he broke a spray of laurel and +another of redwood. He had to stand in the stirrups to pluck a long- +stemmed, five-fingered fern with which to bind the sprays into a +cross. When the patteran was fashioned, he tossed it on the trail +before him and noted that Selim passed over without treading upon it. +Glancing back, Graham watched it to the next turn of the trail. A good +omen, was his thought, that it had not been trampled. + +More five-fingered ferns to be had for the reaching, more branches of +redwood and laurel brushing his face as he rode, invited him to +continue the manufacture of patterans, which he dropped as he +fashioned them. An hour later, at the head of the canyon, where he +knew the trail over the divide was difficult and stiff, he debated his +course and turned back. + +Selim warned him by nickering. Came an answering nicker from close at +hand. The trail was wide and easy, and Graham put his mount into a fox +trot, swung a wide bend, and overtook Paula on the Fawn. + +"Hello!" he called. "Hello! Hello!" + +She reined in till he was alongside. + +"I was just turning back," she said. "Why did you turn back? I thought +you were going over the divide to Little Grizzly." + +"You knew I was ahead of you?" he asked, admiring the frank, boyish +way of her eyes straight-gazing into his. + +"Why shouldn't I? I had no doubt at the second patteran." + +"Oh, I'd forgotten about them," he laughed guiltily. "Why did +_you_ turn back?" + +She waited until the Fawn and Selim had stepped over a fallen alder +across the trail, so that she could look into Graham's eyes when she +answered: + +"Because I did not care to follow your trail.--To follow anybody's +trail," she quickly amended. "I turned back at the second one." + +He failed of a ready answer, and an awkward silence was between them. +Both were aware of this awkwardness, due to the known but unspoken +things. + +"Do you make a practice of dropping patterans?" Paula asked. + +"The first I ever left," he replied, with a shake of the head. "But +there was such a generous supply of materials it seemed a pity, and, +besides, the song was haunting me." + +"It was haunting me this morning when I woke up," she said, this time +her face straight ahead so that she might avoid a rope of wild +grapevine that hung close to her side of the trail. + +And Graham, gazing at her face in profile, at her crown of gold-brown +hair, at her singing throat, felt the old ache at the heart, the +hunger and the yearning. The nearness of her was a provocation. The +sight of her, in her fawn-colored silk corduroy, tormented him with a +rush of visions of that form of hers--swimming Mountain Lad, swan- +diving through forty feet of air, moving down the long room in the +dull-blue dress of medieval fashion with the maddening knee-lift of +the clinging draperies. + +"A penny for them," she interrupted his visioning. His answer was +prompt. + +"Praise to the Lord for one thing: you haven't once mentioned Dick." + +"Do you so dislike him?" + +"Be fair," he commanded, almost sternly. "It is because I like him. +Otherwise..." + +"What?" she queried. + +Her voice was brave, although she looked straight before her at the +Fawn's pricking ears. + +"I can't understand why I remain. I should have been gone long ago." + +"Why?" she asked, her gaze still on the pricking ears. + +"Be fair, be fair," he warned. "You and I scarcely need speech for +understanding." + +She turned full upon him, her cheeks warming with color, and, without +speech, looked at him. Her whip-hand rose quickly, half way, as if to +press her breast, and half way paused irresolutely, then dropped down +to her side. But her eyes, he saw, were glad and startled. There was +no mistake. The startle lay in them, and also the gladness. And he, +knowing as it is given some men to know, changed the bridle rein to +his other hand, reined close to her, put his arm around her, drew her +till the horses rocked, and, knee to knee and lips on lips, kissed his +desire to hers. There was no mistake--pressure to pressure, warmth to +warmth, and with an elate thrill he felt her breathe against him. + +The next moment she had torn herself loose. The blood had left her +face. Her eyes were blazing. Her riding-whip rose as if to strike him, +then fell on the startled Fawn. Simultaneously she drove in both spurs +with such suddenness and force as to fetch a groan and a leap from the +mare. + +He listened to the soft thuds of hoofs die away along the forest path, +himself dizzy in the saddle from the pounding of his blood. When the +last hoof-beat had ceased, he half-slipped, half-sank from his saddle +to the ground, and sat on a mossy boulder. He was hard hit--harder +than he had deemed possible until that one great moment when he had +held her in his arms. Well, the die was cast. + +He straightened up so abruptly as to alarm Selim, who sprang back the +length of his bridle rein and snorted. + +What had just occurred had been unpremeditated. It was one of those +inevitable things. It had to happen. He had not planned it, although +he knew, now, that had he not procrastinated his going, had he not +drifted, he could have foreseen it. And now, going could not mend +matters. The madness of it, the hell of it and the joy of it, was that +no longer was there any doubt. Speech beyond speech, his lips still +tingling with the memory of hers, she had told him. He dwelt over that +kiss returned, his senses swimming deliciously in the sea of +remembrance. + +He laid his hand caressingly on the knee that had touched hers, and +was grateful with the humility of the true lover. Wonderful it was +that so wonderful a woman should love him. This was no girl. This was +a woman, knowing her own will and wisdom. And she had breathed quickly +in his arms, and her lips had been live to his. He had evoked what he +had given, and he had not dreamed, after the years, that he had had so +much to give. + +He stood up, made as if to mount Selim, who nozzled his shoulder, then +paused to debate. + +It was no longer a question of going. That was definitely settled. +Dick had certain rights, true. But Paula had her rights, and did he +have the right to go, after what had happened, unless ... unless she +went with him? To go now was to kiss and ride away. Surely, since the +world of sex decreed that often the same men should love the one +woman, and therefore that perfidy should immediately enter into such a +triangle--surely, it was the lesser evil to be perfidious to the man +than to the woman. + +It was a real world, he pondered as he rode slowly along; and Paula, +and Dick, and he were real persons in it, were themselves conscious +realists who looked the facts of life squarely in the face. This was +no affair of priest and code, of other wisdoms and decisions. Of +themselves must it be settled. Some one would be hurt. But life was +hurt. Success in living was the minimizing of pain. Dick believed that +himself, thanks be. The three of them believed it. And it was nothing +new under the sun. The countless triangles of the countless +generations had all been somehow solved. This, then, would be solved. +All human affairs reached some solution. + +He shook sober thought from his brain and returned to the bliss of +memory, reaching his hand to another caress of his knee, his lips +breathing again to the breathing of hers against them. He even reined +Selim to a halt in order to gaze at the hollow resting place of his +bent arm which she had filled. + +Not until dinner did Graham see Paula again, and he found her the very +usual Paula. Not even his eye, keen with knowledge, could detect any +sign of the day's great happening, nor of the anger that had whitened +her face and blazed in her eyes when she half-lifted her whip to +strike him. In everything she was the same Little Lady of the Big +House. Even when it chanced that her eyes met his, they were serene, +untroubled, with no hint of any secret in them. What made the +situation easier was the presence of several new guests, women, +friends of Dick and her, come for a couple of days. + +Next morning, in the music room, he encountered them and Paula at the +piano. + +"Don't you sing, Mr. Graham?" a Miss Hoffman asked. + +She was the editor of a woman's magazine published in San Francisco, +Graham had learned. + +"Oh, adorably," he assured her. "Don't I, Mrs. Forrest?" he appealed. + +"It is quite true," Paula smiled, "if for no other reason that he is +kind enough not to drown me quite." + +"And nothing remains but to prove our words," he volunteered. "There's +a duet we sang the other evening--" He glanced at Paula for a sign. +"--Which is particularly good for my kind of singing." Again he gave her +a passing glance and received no cue to her will or wish. "The music +is in the living room. I'll go and get it." + +"It's the 'Gypsy Trail,' a bright, catchy thing," he heard her saying +to the others as he passed out. + +They did not sing it so recklessly as on that first occasion, and much +of the thrill and some of the fire they kept out of their voices; but +they sang it more richly, more as the composer had intended it and +with less of their own particular interpretation. But Graham was +thinking as he sang, and he knew, too, that Paula was thinking, that +in their hearts another duet was pulsing all unguessed by the several +women who applauded the song's close. + +"You never sang it better, I'll wager," he told Paula. + +For he had heard a new note in her voice. It had been fuller, rounder, +with a generousness of volume that had vindicated that singing throat. + +"And now, because I know you don't know, I'll tell you what a patteran +is," she was saying.... + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + + + +"Dick, boy, your position is distinctly Carlylean," Terrence McFane +said in fatherly tones. + +The sages of the madrono grove were at table, and, with Paula, Dick +and Graham, made up the dinner party of seven. + +"Mere naming of one's position does not settle it, Terrence," Dick +replied. "I know my point is Carlylean, but that does not invalidate +it. Hero-worship is a very good thing. I am talking, not as a mere +scholastic, but as a practical breeder with whom the application of +Mendelian methods is an every-day commonplace." + +"And I am to conclude," Hancock broke in, "that a Hottentot is as good +as a white man?" + +"Now the South speaks, Aaron," Dick retorted with a smile. "Prejudice, +not of birth, but of early environment, is too strong for all your +philosophy to shake. It is as bad as Herbert Spencer's handicap of the +early influence of the Manchester School." + +"And Spencer is on a par with the Hottentot?" Dar Hyal challenged. + +Dick shook his head. + +"Let me say this, Hyal. I think I can make it clear. The average +Hottentot, or the average Melanesian, is pretty close to being on a +par with the average white man. The difference lies in that there are +proportionately so many more Hottentots and negroes who are merely +average, while there is such a heavy percentage of white men who are +not average, who are above average. These are what I called the pace- +makers that bring up the speed of their own race average-men. Note +that they do not change the nature or develop the intelligence of the +average-men. But they give them better equipment, better facilities, +enable them to travel a faster collective pace. + +"Give an Indian a modern rifle in place of his bow and arrows and he +will become a vastly more efficient game-getter. The Indian hunter +himself has not changed in the slightest. But his entire Indian race +sported so few of the above-average men, that all of them, in ten +thousand generations, were unable to equip him with a rifle." + +"Go on, Dick, develop the idea," Terrence encouraged. "I begin to +glimpse your drive, and you'll soon have Aaron on the run with his +race prejudices and silly vanities of superiority." + +"These above-average men," Dick continued, "these pace-makers, are the +inventors, the discoverers, the constructionists, the sporting +dominants. A race that sports few such dominants is classified as a +lower race, as an inferior race. It still hunts with bows and arrows. +It is not equipped. Now the average white man, per se, is just as +bestial, just as stupid, just as inelastic, just as stagnative, just +as retrogressive, as the average savage. But the average white man has +a faster pace. The large number of sporting dominants in his society +give him the equipment, the organization, and impose the law. + +"What great man, what hero--and by that I mean what sporting dominant-- +has the Hottentot race produced? The Hawaiian race produced only one-- +Kamehameha. The negro race in America, at the outside only two, Booker +T. Washington and Du Bois--and both with white blood in them...." + +Paula feigned a cheerful interest while the exposition went on. She +did not appear bored, but to Graham's sympathetic eyes she seemed +inwardly to droop. And in an interval of tilt between Terrence and +Hancock, she said in a low voice to Graham: + +"Words, words, words, so much and so many of them! I suppose Dick is +right--he so nearly always is; but I confess to my old weakness of +inability to apply all these floods of words to life--to my life, I +mean, to my living, to what I should do, to what I must do." Her eyes +were unfalteringly fixed on his while she spoke, leaving no doubt in +his mind to what she referred. "I don't know what bearing sporting +dominants and race-paces have on my life. They show me no right or +wrong or way for my particular feet. And now that they've started they +are liable to talk the rest of the evening.... + +"Oh, I do understand what they say," she hastily assured him; "but it +doesn't mean anything to me. Words, words, words--and I want to know +what to do, what to do with myself, what to do with you, what to do +with Dick." + +But the devil of speech was in Dick Forrest's tongue, and before +Graham could murmur a reply to Paula, Dick was challenging him for +data on the subject from the South American tribes among which he had +traveled. To look at Dick's face it would have been unguessed that he +was aught but a carefree, happy arguer. Nor did Graham, nor did Paula, +Dick's dozen years' wife, dream that his casual careless glances were +missing no movement of a hand, no change of position on a chair, no +shade of expression on their faces. + +What's up? was Dick's secret interrogation. Paula's not herself. She's +positively nervous, and all the discussion is responsible. And +Graham's off color. His brain isn't working up to mark. He's thinking +about something else, rather than about what he is saying. What is +that something else? + +And the devil of speech behind which Dick hid his secret thoughts +impelled him to urge the talk wider and wilder. + +"For once I could almost hate the four sages," Paula broke out in an +undertone to Graham, who had finished furnishing the required data. + +Dick, himself talking, in cool sentences amplifying his thesis, +apparently engrossed in his subject, saw Paula make the aside, +although no word of it reached his ears, saw her increasing +nervousness, saw the silent sympathy of Graham, and wondered what had +been the few words she uttered, while to the listening table he was +saying: + +"Fischer and Speiser are both agreed on the paucity of unit-characters +that circulate in the heredity of the lesser races as compared with +the immense variety of unit-characters in say the French, or German, +or English...." + +No one at the table suspected that Dick deliberately dangled the bait +of a new trend to the conversation, nor did Leo dream afterward that +it was the master-craft and deviltry of Dick rather than his own +question that changed the subject when he demanded to know what part +the female sporting dominants played in the race. + +"Females don't sport, Leo, my lad," Terrence, with a wink to the +others, answered him. "Females are conservative. They keep the type +true. They fix it and hold it, and are the everlasting clog on the +chariot of progress. If it wasn't for the females every blessed +mother's son of us would be a sporting dominant. I refer to our +distinguished breeder and practical Mendelian whom we have with us +this evening to verify my random statements." + +"Let us get down first of all to bedrock and find out what we are +talking about," Dick was prompt on the uptake. "What is woman?" he +demanded with an air of earnestness. + +"The ancient Greeks said woman was nature's failure to make a man," +Dar Hyal answered, the while the imp of mockery laughed in the corners +of his mouth and curled his thin cynical lips derisively. + +Leo was shocked. His face flushed. There was pain in his eyes and his +lips were trembling as he looked wistful appeal to Dick. + +"The half-sex," Hancock gibed. "As if the hand of God had been +withdrawn midway in the making, leaving her but a half-soul, a groping +soul at best." + +"No I no!" the boy cried out. "You must not say such things!--Dick, +you know. Tell them, tell them." + +"I wish I could," Dick replied. "But this soul discussion is vague as +souls themselves. We all know, of our selves, that we often grope, are +often lost, and are never so much lost as when we think we know where +we are and all about ourselves. What is the personality of a lunatic +but a personality a little less, or very much less, coherent than +ours? What is the personality of a moron? Of an idiot? Of a feeble- +minded child? Of a horse? A dog? A mosquito? A bullfrog? A woodtick? A +garden snail? And, Leo, what is your own personality when you sleep +and dream? When you are seasick? When you are in love? When you have +colic? When you have a cramp in the leg? When you are smitten abruptly +with the fear of death? When you are angry? When you are exalted with +the sense of the beauty of the world and think you think all +inexpressible unutterable thoughts? + +"I say _think you think_ intentionally. Did you really think, +then your sense of the beauty of the world would not be inexpressible, +unutterable. It would be clear, sharp, definite. You could put it into +words. Your personality would be clear, sharp, and definite as your +thoughts and words. Ergo, Leo, when you deem, in exalted moods, that +you are at the summit of existence, in truth you are thrilling, +vibrating, dancing a mad orgy of the senses and not knowing a step of +the dance or the meaning of the orgy. You don't know yourself. Your +soul, your personality, at that moment, is a vague and groping thing. +Possibly the bullfrog, inflating himself on the edge of a pond and +uttering hoarse croaks through the darkness to a warty mate, possesses +also, at that moment, a vague and groping personality. + +"No, Leo, personality is too vague for any of our vague personalities +to grasp. There are seeming men with the personalities of women. There +are plural personalities. There are two-legged human creatures that +are neither fish, flesh, nor fowl. We, as personalities, float like +fog-wisps through glooms and darknesses and light-flashings. It is all +fog and mist, and we are all foggy and misty in the thick of the +mystery." + +"Maybe it's mystification instead of mystery--man-made mystification," +Paula said. + +"There talks the true woman that Leo thinks is not a half-soul," Dick +retorted. "The point is, Leo, sex and soul are all interwoven and +tangled together, and we know little of one and less of the other." + +"But women are beautiful," the boy stammered. + +"Oh, ho!" Hancock broke in, his black eyes gleaming wickedly. "So, +Leo, you identify woman with beauty?" + +The young poet's lips moved, but he could only nod. + +"Very well, then, let us take the testimony of painting, during the +last thousand years, as a reflex of economic conditions and political +institutions, and by it see how man has molded and daubed woman into +the image of his desire, and how she has permitted him--" + +"You must stop baiting Leo," Paula interfered, "and be truthful, all +of you, and say what you do know or do believe." + +"Woman is a very sacred subject," Dar Hyal enunciated solemnly. + +"There is the Madonna," Graham suggested, stepping into the breach to +Paula's aid. + +"And the cérébrale," Terrence added, winning a nod of approval from +Dar Hyal. + +"One at a time," Hancock said. "Let us consider the Madonna-worship, +which was a particular woman-worship in relation to the general woman- +worship of all women to-day and to which Leo subscribes. Man is a +lazy, loafing savage. He dislikes to be pestered. He likes +tranquillity, repose. And he finds himself, ever since man began, +saddled to a restless, nervous, irritable, hysterical traveling +companion, and her name is woman. She has moods, tears, vanities, +angers, and moral irresponsibilities. He couldn't destroy her. He had +to have her, although she was always spoiling his peace. What was he +to do?" + +"Trust him to find a way--the cunning rascal," Terrence interjected. + +"He made a heavenly image of her," Hancock kept on. "He idealized her +good qualities, and put her so far away that her bad qualities +couldn't get on his nerves and prevent him from smoking his quiet lazy +pipe of peace and meditating upon the stars. And when the ordinary +every-day woman tried to pester, he brushed her aside from his +thoughts and remembered his heaven-woman, the perfect woman, the +bearer of life and custodian of immortality. + +"Then came the Reformation. Down went the worship of the Mother. And +there was man still saddled to his repose-destroyer. What did he do +then?" + +"Ah, the rascal," Terrence grinned. + +"He said: 'I will make of you a dream and an illusion.' And he did. +The Madonna was his heavenly woman, his highest conception of woman. +He transferred all his idealized qualities of her to the earthly +woman, to every woman, and he has fooled himself into believing in +them and in her ever since... like Leo does." + +"For an unmarried man you betray an amazing intimacy with the +pestiferousness of woman," Dick commented. "Or is it all purely +theoretical?" Terrence began to laugh. + +"Dick, boy, it's Laura Marholm Aaron's been just reading. He can spout +her chapter and verse." + +"And with all this talk about woman we have not yet touched the hem of +her garment," Graham said, winning a grateful look from Paula and Leo. + +"There is love," Leo breathed. "No one has said one word about love." + +"And marriage laws, and divorces, and polygamy, and monogamy, and free +love," Hancock rattled off. + +"And why, Leo," Dar Hyal queried, "is woman, in the game of love, +always the pursuer, the huntress?" + +"Oh, but she isn't," the boy answered quietly, with an air of superior +knowledge. "That is just some of your Shaw nonsense." + +"Bravo, Leo," Paula applauded. + +"Then Wilde was wrong when he said woman attacks by sudden and strange +surrenders?" Dar Hyal asked. + +"But don't you see," protested Leo, "all such talk makes woman a +monster, a creature of prey." As he turned to Dick, he stole a side +glance at Paula and love welled in his eyes. "Is she a creature of +prey, Dick?" + +"No," Dick answered slowly, with a shake of head, and gentleness was +in his voice for sake of what he had just seen in the boy's eyes. "I +cannot say that woman is a creature of prey. Nor can I say she is a +creature preyed upon. Nor will I say she is a creature of unfaltering +joy to man. But I will say that she is a creature of much joy to man-- +" + +"And of much foolishness," Hancock added. + +"Of much fine foolishness," Dick gravely amended. + +"Let me ask Leo something," Dar Hyal said. "Leo, why is it that a +woman loves the man who beats her?" + +"And doesn't love the man who doesn't beat her?" Leo countered. + +"Precisely." + +"Well, Dar, you are partly right and mostly wrong.--Oh, I have learned +about definitions from you fellows. You've cunningly left them out of +your two propositions. Now I'll put them in for you. A man who beats a +woman he loves is a low type man. A woman who loves the man who beats +her is a low type woman. No high type man beats the woman he loves. No +high type woman," and all unconsciously Leo's eyes roved to Paula, +"could love a man who beats her." + +"No, Leo," Dick said, "I assure you I have never, never beaten Paula." + +"So you see, Dar," Leo went on with flushing cheeks, "you are wrong. +Paula loves Dick without being beaten." + +With what seemed pleased amusement beaming on his face, Dick turned to +Paula as if to ask her silent approval of the lad's words; but what +Dick sought was the effect of the impact of such words under the +circumstances he apprehended. In Paula's eyes he thought he detected a +flicker of something he knew not what. Graham's face he found +expressionless insofar as there was no apparent change of the +expression of interest that had been there. + +"Woman has certainly found her St. George tonight," Graham +complimented. "Leo, you shame me. Here I sit quietly by while you +fight three dragons." + +"And such dragons," Paula joined in. "If they drove O'Hay to drink, +what will they do to you, Leo?" + +"No knight of love can ever be discomfited by all the dragons in the +world," Dick said. "And the best of it, Leo, is in this case the +dragons are more right than you think, and you are more right than +they just the same." + +"Here's a dragon that's a good dragon, Leo, lad," Terrence spoke up. +"This dragon is going to desert his disreputable companions and come +over on your side and be a Saint Terrence. And this Saint Terrence has +a lovely question to ask you." + +"Let this dragon roar first," Hancock interposed. "Leo, by all in love +that is sweet and lovely, I ask you: why do lovers, out of jealousy, +so often kill the woman they love?" + +"Because they are hurt, because they are insane," came the answer, +"and because they have been unfortunate enough to love a woman so low +in type that she could be guilty of making them jealous." + +"But, Leo, love will stray," Dick prompted. "You must give a more +sufficient answer." + +"True for Dick," Terrence supplemented. "And it's helping you I am to +the full stroke of your sword. Love will stray among the highest +types, and when it does in steps the green-eyed monster. Suppose the +most perfect woman you can imagine should cease to love the man who +does not beat her and come to love another man who loves her and will +not beat her--what then? All highest types, mind you. Now up with your +sword and slash into the dragons." + +"The first man will not kill her nor injure her in any way," Leo +asserted stoutly. "Because if he did he would not be the man you +describe. He would not be high type, but low type." + +"You mean, he would get out of the way?" Dick asked, at the same time +busying himself with a cigarette so that he might glance at no one's +face. + +Leo nodded gravely. + +"He would get out of the way, and he would make the way easy for her, +and he would be very gentle with her." + +"Let us bring the argument right home," Hancock said. "We'll suppose +you're in love with Mrs. Forrest, and Mrs. Forrest is in love with +you, and you run away together in the big limousine--" + +"Oh, but I wouldn't," the boy blurted out, his cheeks burning. + +"Leo, you are not complimentary," Paula encouraged. + +"It's just supposing, Leo," Hancock urged. + +The boy's embarrassment was pitiful, and his voice quivered, but he +turned bravely to Dick and said: + +"That is for Dick to answer." + +"And I'll answer," Dick said. "I wouldn't kill Paula. Nor would I kill +you, Leo. That wouldn't be playing the game. No matter what I felt at +heart, I'd say, 'Bless you, my children.' But just the same--" He +paused, and the laughter signals in the corners of his eyes advertised +a whimsey--"I'd say to myself that Leo was making a sad mistake. You +see, he doesn't know Paula." + +"She would be for interrupting his meditations on the stars," Terrence +smiled. + +"Never, never, Leo, I promise you," Paula exclaimed. + +"There do you belie yourself, Mrs. Forrest," Terrence assured her. "In +the first place, you couldn't help doing it. Besides, it'd be your +bounden duty to do it. And, finally, if I may say so, as somewhat of +an authority, when I was a mad young lover of a man, with my heart +full of a woman and my eyes full of the stars, 'twas ever the dearest +delight to be loved away from them by the woman out of my heart." + +"Terrence, if you keep on saying such lovely things," cried Paula," +I'll run away with both you and Leo in the limousine." + +"Hurry the day," said Terrence gallantly. "But leave space among your +fripperies for a few books on the stars that Leo and I may be studying +in odd moments." + +The combat ebbed away from Leo, and Dar Hyal and Hancock beset Dick. + +"What do you mean by 'playing the game'?" Dar Hyal asked. + +"Just what I said, just what Leo said," Dick answered; and he knew +that Paula's boredom and nervousness had been banished for some time +and that she was listening with an interest almost eager. "In my way +of thinking, and in accord with my temperament, the most horrible +spiritual suffering I can imagine would be to kiss a woman who endured +my kiss." + +"Suppose she fooled you, say for old sake's sake, or through desire +not to hurt you, or pity for you?" Hancock propounded. + +"It would be, to me, the unforgivable sin," came Dick's reply. "It +would not be playing the game--for her. I cannot conceive the +fairness, nor the satisfaction, of holding the woman one loves a +moment longer than she loves to be held. Leo is very right. The +drunken artisan, with his fists, may arouse and keep love alive in the +breast of his stupid mate. But the higher human males, the males with +some shadow of rationality, some glimmer of spirituality, cannot lay +rough hands on love. With Leo, I would make the way easy for the +woman, and I would be very gentle with her." + +"Then what becomes of your boasted monogamic marriage institution of +Western civilization?" Dar Hyal asked. + +And Hancock: "You argue for free love, then?" + +"I can only answer with a hackneyed truism," Dick said. "There can be +no love that is not free. Always, please, remember the point of view +is that of the higher types. And the point of view answers you, Dar. +The vast majority of individuals must be held to law and labor by the +monogamic institution, or by a stern, rigid marriage institution of +some sort. They are unfit for marriage freedom or love freedom. +Freedom of love, for them, would be merely license of promiscuity. +Only such nations have risen and endured where God and the State have +kept the people's instincts in discipline and order." + +"Then you don't believe in the marriage laws for say yourself," Dar +Hyal inquired, "while you do believe in them for other men?" + +"I believe in them for all men. Children, family, career, society, the +State--all these things make marriage, legal marriage, imperative. And +by the same token that is why I believe in divorce. Men, all men, and +women, all women, are capable of loving more than once, of having the +old love die and of finding a new love born. The State cannot control +love any more than can a man or a woman. When one falls in love one +falls in love, and that's all he knows about it. There it is-- +throbbing, sighing, singing, thrilling love. But the State can control +license." + +"It is a complicated free love that you stand for," Hancock +criticised. "True, and for the reason that man, living in society, is +a most complicated animal." + +"But there are men, lovers, who would die at the loss of their loved +one," Leo surprised the table by his initiative. "They would die if +she died, they would die--oh so more quickly--if she lived and loved +another." + +"Well, they'll have to keep on dying as they have always died in the +past," Dick answered grimly. "And no blame attaches anywhere for their +deaths. We are so made that our hearts sometimes stray." + +"My heart would never stray," Leo asserted proudly, unaware that all +at the table knew his secret. "I could never love twice, I know." + +"True for you, lad," Terrence approved. "The voice of all true lovers +is in your throat. 'Tis the absoluteness of love that is its joy--how +did Shelley put it?--or was it Keats?--'All a wonder and a wild +delight.' Sure, a miserable skinflint of a half-baked lover would it +be that could dream there was aught in woman form one-thousandth part +as sweet, as ravishing and enticing, as glorious and wonderful as his +own woman that he could ever love again." + + * * * * * + +And as they passed out from the dining room, Dick, continuing the +conversation with Dar Hyal, was wondering whether Paula would kiss him +good night or slip off to bed from the piano. And Paula, talking to +Leo about his latest sonnet which he had shown her, was wondering if +she could kiss Dick, and was suddenly greatly desirous to kiss him, +she knew not why. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + + + +There was little talk that same evening after dinner. Paula, singing +at the piano, disconcerted Terrence in the midst of an apostrophe on +love. He quit a phrase midmost to listen to the something new he heard +in her voice, then slid noiselessly across the room to join Leo at +full length on the bearskin. Dar Hyal and Hancock likewise abandoned +the discussion, each isolating himself in a capacious chair. Graham, +seeming least attracted, browsed in a current magazine, but Dick +observed that he quickly ceased turning the pages. Nor did Dick fail +to catch the new note in Paula's voice and to endeavor to sense its +meaning. + +When she finished the song the three sages strove to tell her all at +the same time that for once she had forgotten herself and sung out as +they had always claimed she could. Leo lay without movement or speech, +his chin on his two hands, his face transfigured. + +"It's all this talk on love," Paula laughed, "and all the lovely +thoughts Leo and Terrence ... and Dick have put into my head." + +Terrence shook his long mop of iron-gray hair. + +"Into your heart you'd be meaning," he corrected. "'Tis the very heart +and throat of love that are yours this night. And for the first time, +dear lady, have I heard the full fair volume that is yours. Never +again plaint that your voice is thin. Thick it is, and round it is, as +a great rope, a great golden rope for the mooring of argosies in the +harbors of the Happy Isles." + +"And for that I shall sing you the _Gloria,"_ she answered, "to +celebrate the slaying of the dragons by Saint Leo, by Saint Terrence +... and, of course, by Saint Richard." + +Dick, missing nothing of the talk, saved himself from speech by +crossing to the concealed sideboard and mixing for himself a Scotch +and soda. + +While Paula sang the _Gloria,_ he sat on one of the couches, +sipping his drink and remembering keenly. Once before he had heard her +sing like that--in Paris, during their swift courtship, and directly +afterward, during their honeymoon on the _All Away._ + +A little later, using his empty glass in silent invitation to Graham, +he mixed highballs for both of them, and, when Graham had finished +his, suggested to Paula that she and Graham sing the "Gypsy Trail." + +She shook her head and began _Das Kraut Ver-gessenheit._ + +"She was not a true woman, she was a terrible woman," the song's close +wrung from Leo. "And he was a true lover. She broke his heart, but +still he loved her. He cannot love again because he cannot forget his +love for her." + +"And now, Red Cloud, the Song of the Acorn," Paula said, smiling over +to her husband. "Put down your glass, and be good, and plant the +acorns." + +Dick lazily hauled himself off the couch and stood up, shaking his +head mutinously, as if tossing a mane, and stamping ponderously with +his feet in simulation of Mountain Lad. + +"I'll have Leo know that he is not the only poet and love-knight on +the ranch. Listen to Mountain Lad's song, all wonder and wild delight, +Terrence, and more. Mountain Lad doesn't moon about the loved one. He +doesn't moon at all. He incarnates love, and rears right up in meeting +and tells them so. Listen to him!" + +Dick filled the room and shook the air with wild, glad, stallion +nickering; and then, with mane-tossing and foot-pawing, chanted: + +"Hear me! I am Eros! I stamp upon the hills. I fill the wide valleys. +The mares hear me, and startle, in quiet pastures; for they know me. +The land is filled with fatness, and the sap is in the trees. It is +the spring. The spring is mine. I am monarch of my kingdom of the +spring. The mares remember my voice. They knew me aforetimes through +their mothers before them. Hear me! I am Eros. I stamp upon the hills, +and the wide valleys are my heralds, echoing the sound of my +approach." + +It was the first time the sages of the madrono grove had heard Dick's +song, and they were loud in applause. Hancock took it for a fresh +start in the discussion, and was beginning to elaborate a biologic +Bergsonian definition of love, when he was stopped by Terrence, who +had noticed the pain that swept across Leo's face. + +"Go on, please, dear lady," Terrence begged. "And sing of love, only +of love; for it is my experience that I meditate best upon the stars +to the accompaniment of a woman's voice." + +A little later, Oh Joy, entering the room, waited till Paula finished +a song, then moved noiselessly to Graham and handed him a telegram. +Dick scowled at the interruption. + +"Very important--I think," the Chinese explained to him. + +"Who took it?" Dick demanded. + +"Me--I took it," was the answer. "Night clerk at Eldorado call on +telephone. He say important. I take it." + +"It is, fairly so," Graham spoke up, having finished reading the +message. "Can I get a train out to-night for San Francisco, Dick?" + +"Oh Joy, come back a moment," Dick called, looking at his watch. "What +train for San Francisco stops at Eldorado?" + +"Eleven-ten," came the instant information. "Plenty time. Not too +much. I call chauffeur?" + +Dick nodded. + +"You really must jump out to-night?" he asked Graham. + +"Really. It is quite important. Will I have time to pack?" + +Dick gave a confirmatory nod to Oh Joy, and said to Graham: + +"Just time to throw the needful into a grip." He turned to Oh Joy. "Is +Oh My up yet?" + +"Yessr." + +"Send him to Mr. Graham's room to help, and let me know as soon as the +machine is ready. No limousine. Tell Saunders to take the racer." + +"One fine big strapping man, that," Terrence commented, after Graham +had left the room. + +They had gathered about Dick, with the exception of Paula, who +remained at the piano, listening. + +"One of the few men I'd care to go along with, hell for leather, on a +forlorn hope or anything of that sort," Dick said. "He was on the +_Nethermere_ when she went ashore at Pango in the '97 hurricane. +Pango is just a strip of sand, twelve feet above high water mark, a +lot of cocoanuts, and uninhabited. Forty women among the passengers, +English officers' wives and such. Graham had a bad arm, big as a leg-- +snake bite. + +"It was a thundering sea. Boats couldn't live. They smashed two and +lost both crews. Four sailors volunteered in succession to carry a +light line ashore. And each man, in turn, dead at the end of it, was +hauled back on board. While they were untying the last one, Graham, +with an arm like a leg, stripped for it and went to it. And he did it, +although the pounding he got on the sand broke his bad arm and staved +in three ribs. But he made the line fast before he quit. In order to +haul the hawser ashore, six more volunteered to go in on Evan's line +to the beach. Four of them arrived. And only one woman of the forty +was lost--she died of heart disease and fright. + +"I asked him about it once. He was as bad as an Englishman. All I +could get out of the beggar was that the recovery was uneventful. +Thought that the salt water, the exercise, and the breaking of the +bone had served as counter-irritants and done the arm good." + +Oh Joy and Graham entered the room from opposite ends. Dick saw that +Graham's first questing glance was for Paula. + +"All ready, sir," Oh Joy announced. + +Dick prepared to accompany his guest outside to the car; but Paula +evidenced her intention of remaining in the house. Graham started over +to her to murmur perfunctory regrets and good-by. + +And she, warm with what Dick had just told of him, pleasured at the +goodly sight of him, dwelling with her eyes on the light, high poise +of head, the careless, sun-sanded hair, and the lightness, almost +debonaireness, of his carriage despite his weight of body and breadth +of shoulders. As he drew near to her, she centered her gaze on the +long gray eyes whose hint of drooping lids hinted of boyish +sullenness. She waited for the expression of sullenness to vanish as +the eyes lighted with the smile she had come to know so well. + +What he said was ordinary enough, as were her regrets; but in his +eyes, as he held her hand a moment, was the significance which she had +unconsciously expected and to which she replied with her own eyes. The +same significance was in the pressure of the momentary handclasp. All +unpremeditated, she responded to that quick pressure. As he had said, +there was little need for speech between them. + +As their hands fell apart, she glanced swiftly at Dick; for she had +learned much, in their dozen years together, of his flashes of +observance, and had come to stand in awe of his almost uncanny powers +of guessing facts from nuances, and of linking nuances into +conclusions often startling in their thoroughness and correctness. But +Dick, his shoulder toward her, laughing over some quip of Hancock, was +just turning his laughter-crinkled eyes toward her as he started to +accompany Graham. + +No, was her thought; surely Dick had seen nothing of the secret little +that had been exchanged between them. It had been very little, very +quick--a light in the eyes, a muscular quiver of the fingers, and no +lingering. How could Dick have seen or sensed? Their eyes had +certainly been hidden from Dick, likewise their clasped hands, for +Graham's back had been toward him. + +Just the same, she wished she had not made that swift glance at Dick. +She was conscious of a feeling of guilt, and the thought of it hurt +her as she watched the two big men, of a size and blondness, go down +the room side by side. Of what had she been guilty? she asked herself. +Why should she have anything to hide? Yet she was honest enough to +face the fact and accept, without quibble, that she had something to +hide. And her cheeks burned at the thought that she was being drifted +into deception. + +"I won't be but a couple of days," Graham was saying as he shook hands +with Dick at the car. + +Dick saw the square, straight look of his eyes, and recognized the +firmness and heartiness of his gripping hand. Graham half began to say +something, then did not; and Dick knew he had changed his mind when he +said: + +"I think, when I get back, that I'll have to pack." + +"But the book," Dick protested, inwardly cursing himself for the leap +of joy which had been his at the other's words. + +"That's just why," Graham answered. "I've got to get it finished. It +doesn't seem I can work like you do. The ranch is too alluring. I +can't get down to the book. I sit over it, and sit over it, but the +confounded meadowlarks keep echoing in my ears, and I begin to see the +fields, and the redwood canyons, and Selim. And after I waste an hour, +I give up and ring for Selim. And if it isn't that, it's any one of a +thousand other enchantments." + +He put his foot on the running-board of the pulsing car and said, +"Well, so long, old man." + +"Come back and make a stab at it," urged Dick. "If necessary, we'll +frame up a respectable daily grind, and I'll lock you in every morning +until you've done it. And if you don't do your work all day, all day +you'll stay locked in. I'll make you work.--Got cigarettes?--matches?" + +"Right O." + +"Let her go, Saunders," Dick ordered the chauffeur; and the car seemed +to leap out into the darkness from the brilliantly lighted porte +cochére. + +Back in the house, Dick found Paula playing to the madrono sages, and +ensconced himself on the couch to wait and wonder if she would kiss +him good night when bedtime came. It was not, he recognized, as if +they made a regular schedule of kissing. It had never been like that. +Often and often he did not see her until midday, and then in the +presence of guests. And often and often, she slipped away to bed +early, disturbing no one with a good night kiss to her husband which +might well hint to them that their bedtime had come. + +No, Dick concluded, whether or not she kissed him on this particular +night it would be equally without significance. But still he wondered. + +She played on and sang on interminably, until at last he fell asleep. +When he awoke he was alone in the room. Paula and the sages had gone +out quietly. He looked at his watch. It marked one o'clock. She had +played unusually late, he knew; for he knew she had just gone. It was +the cessation of music and movement that had awakened him. + +And still he wondered. Often he napped there to her playing, and +always, when she had finished, she kissed him awake and sent him to +bed. But this night she had not. Perhaps, after all, she was coming +back. He lay and drowsed and waited. The next time he looked at his +watch, it was two o'clock. She had not come back. + +He turned off the lights, and as he crossed the house, pressed off the +hall lights as he went, while the many unimportant little nothings, +almost of themselves, ranged themselves into an ordered text of doubt +and conjecture that he could not refrain from reading. + +On his sleeping porch, glancing at his barometers and thermometers, +her laughing face in the round frame caught his eyes, and, standing +before it, even bending closer to it, he studied her long. + +"Oh, well," he muttered, as he drew up the bedcovers, propped the +pillows behind him and reached for a stack of proofsheets, "whatever +it is I'll have to play it." + +He looked sidewise at her picture. + +"But, oh, Little Woman, I wish you wouldn't," was the sighed good +night. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + + + +As luck would have it, beyond chance guests for lunch or dinner, the +Big House was empty. In vain, on the first and second days, did Dick +lay out his work, or defer it, so as to be ready for any suggestion +from Paula to go for an afternoon swim or drive. + +He noted that she managed always to avoid the possibility of being +kissed. From her sleeping porch she called good night to him across +the wide patio. In the morning he prepared himself for her eleven +o'clock greeting. Mr. Agar and Mr. Pitts, with important matters +concerning the forthcoming ranch sale of stock still unsettled, Dick +promptly cleared out at the stroke of eleven. Up she was, he knew, for +he had heard her singing. As he waited, seated at his desk, for once +he was idle. A tray of letters before him continued to need his +signature. He remembered this morning pilgrimage of hers had been +originated by her, and by her, somewhat persistently, had been kept +up. And an adorable thing it was, he decided--that soft call of "Good +morning, merry gentleman," and the folding of her kimono-clad figure +in his arms. + +He remembered, further, that he had often cut that little visit short, +conveying the impression to her, even while he clasped her, of how +busy he was. And he remembered, more than once, the certain little +wistful shadow on her face as she slipped away. + +Quarter past eleven, and she had not come. He took down the receiver +to telephone the dairy, and in the swift rush of women's conversation, +ere he hung up, he caught Paula's voice: + +"--Bother Mr. Wade. Bring all the little Wades and come, if only for a +couple of days--" + +Which was very strange of Paula. She had invariably welcomed the +intervals of no guests, when she and he were left alone with each +other for a day or for several days. And now she was trying to +persuade Mrs. Wade to come down from Sacramento. It would seem that +Paula did not wish to be alone with him, and was seeking to protect +herself with company. + +He smiled as he realized that that morning embrace, now that it was +not tendered him, had become suddenly desirable. The thought came to +him of taking her away with him on one of their travel-jaunts. That +would solve the problem, perhaps. And he would hold her very close to +him and draw her closer. Why not an Alaskan hunting trip? She had +always wanted to go. Or back to their old sailing grounds in the days +of the _All Away_--the South Seas. Steamers ran direct between +San Francisco and Tahiti. In twelve days they could be ashore in +Papeete. He wondered if Lavaina still ran her boarding house, and his +quick vision caught a picture of Paula and himself at breakfast on +Lavaina's porch in the shade of the mango trees. + +He brought his fist down on the desk. No, by God, he was no coward to +run away with his wife for fear of any man. And would it be fair to +her to take her away possibly from where her desire lay? True, he did +not know where her desire lay, nor how far it had gone between her and +Graham. Might it not be a spring madness with her that would vanish +with the spring? Unfortunately, he decided, in the dozen years of +their marriage she had never evidenced any predisposition toward +spring madness. She had never given his heart a moment's doubt. +Herself tremendously attractive to men, seeing much of them, receiving +their admiration and even court, she had remained always her equable +and serene self, Dick Forrest's wife-- + +"Good morning, merry gentleman." + +She was peeping in on him, quite naturally from the hall, her eyes and +lips smiling to him, blowing him a kiss from her finger tips. + +"And good morning, my little haughty moon," he called back, himself +equally his natural self. + +And now she would come in, he thought; and he would fold her in his +arms, and put her to the test of the kiss. + +He opened his arms in invitation. But she did not enter. Instead, she +startled, with one hand gathered her kimono at her breast, with the +other picked up the trailing skirt as if for flight, at the same time +looking apprehensively down the hall. Yet his keen ears had caught no +sound. She smiled back at him, blew him another kiss, and was gone. + +Ten minutes later he had no ears for Bonbright, who, telegrams in +hand, startled him as he sat motionless at his desk, as he had sat, +without movement, for ten minutes. + +And yet she was happy. Dick knew her too long in all the expressions +of her moods not to realize the significance of her singing over the +house, in the arcades, and out in the patio. He did not leave his +workroom till the stroke of lunch; nor did she, as she sometimes did, +come to gather him up on the way. At the lunch gong, from across the +patio, he heard her trilling die away into the house in the direction +of the dining room. + +A Colonel Harrison Stoddard--colonel from younger service in the +National Guard, himself a retired merchant prince whose hobby was +industrial relations and social unrest--held the table most of the +meal upon the extension of the Employers' Liability Act so as to +include agricultural laborers. But Paula found a space in which +casually to give the news to Dick that she was running away for the +afternoon on a jaunt up to Wickenberg to the Masons. + +"Of course I don't know when I'll be back--you know what the Masons +are. And I don't dare ask you to come, though I'd like you along." + +Dick shook his head. + +"And so," she continued, "if you're not using Saunders--" + +Dick nodded acquiescence. + +"I'm using Callahan this afternoon," he explained, on the instant +planning his own time now that Paula was out of the question. "I never +can make out, Paul, why you prefer Saunders. Callahan is the better +driver, and of course the safest." + +"Perhaps that's why," she said with a smile. "Safety first means +slowest most." + +"Just the same I'd back Callahan against Saunders on a speed-track," +Dick championed. + +"Where are you bound?" she asked. + +"Oh, to show Colonel Stoddard my one-man and no-horse farm--you know, +the automatically cultivated ten-acre stunt I've been frivoling with. +A lot of changes have been made that have been waiting a week for me +to see tried out. I've been too busy. And after that, I'm going to +take him over the colony--what do you think?--five additions the last +week." + +"I thought the membership was full," Paula said. + +"It was, and still is," Dick beamed. "But these are babies. And the +least hopeful of the families had the rashness to have twins." + +"A lot of wiseacres are shaking their heads over that experiment of +yours, and I make free to say that I am merely holding my judgment-- +you've got to show me by bookkeeping," Colonel Stoddard was saying, +immensely pleased at the invitation to be shown over in person. + +Dick scarcely heard him, such was the rush of other thoughts. Paula +had not mentioned whether Mrs. Wade and the little Wades were coming, +much less mentioned that she had invited them. Yet this Dick tried to +consider no lapse on her part, for often and often, like himself, she +had guests whose arrival was the first he knew of their coming. + +It was, however, evident that Mrs. Wade was not coming that day, else +Paula would not be running away thirty miles up the valley. That was +it, and there was no blinking it. She was running away, and from him. +She could not face being alone with him with the consequent perils of +intimacy--and perilous, in such circumstances, could have but the +significance he feared. And further, she was making the evening sure. +She would not be back for dinner, or till long after dinner, it was a +safe wager, unless she brought the whole Wickenberg crowd with her. +She would be back late enough to expect him to be in bed. Well, he +would not disappoint her, he decided grimly, as he replied to Colonel +Stoddard: + +"The experiment works out splendidly on paper, with decently wide +margins for human nature. And there I admit is the doubt and the +danger--the human nature. But the only way to test it is to test it, +which is what I am doing." + +"It won't be the first Dick has charged to profit and loss," Paula +said. + +"But five thousand acres, all the working capital for two hundred and +fifty farmers, and a cash salary of a thousand dollars each a year!" +Colonel Stoddard protested. "A few such failures--if it fails--would +put a heavy drain on the Harvest." + +"That's what the Harvest needs," Dick answered lightly. + +Colonel Stoddard looked blank. + +"Precisely," Dick confirmed. "Drainage, you know. The mines are +flooded--the Mexican situation." + +It was during the morning of the second day--the day of Graham's +expected return--that Dick, who, by being on horseback at eleven, had +avoided a repetition of the hurt of the previous day's "Good morning, +merry gentleman" across the distance of his workroom, encountered Ah +Ha in a hall with an armful of fresh-cut lilacs. The house-boy's way +led toward the tower room, but Dick made sure. + +"Where are you taking them, Ah Ha?" he asked. + +"Mr. Graham's room--he come to-day." + +Now whose thought was that? Dick pondered. Ah Ha's?--Oh Joy's--or +Paula's? He remembered having heard Graham more than once express his +fancy for their lilacs. + +He deflected his course from the library and strolled out through the +flowers near the tower room. Through the open windows of it came +Paula's happy humming. Dick pressed his lower lip with tight quickness +between his teeth and strolled on. + +Some great, as well as many admirable, men and women had occupied that +room, and for them Paula had never supervised the flower arrangement, +Dick meditated. Oh Joy, himself a master of flowers, usually attended +to that, or had his house-staff ably drilled to do it. + +Among the telegrams Bonbright handed him, was one from Graham, which +Dick read twice, although it was simple and unmomentous, being merely +a postponement of his return. + +Contrary to custom, Dick did not wait for the second lunch-gong. At +the sound of the first he started, for he felt the desire for one of +Oh Joy's cocktails--the need of a prod of courage, after the lilacs, +to meet Paula. But she was ahead of him. He found her--who rarely +drank, and never alone--just placing an empty cocktail glass back on +the tray. + +So she, too, had needed courage for the meal, was his deduction, as he +nodded to Oh Joy and held up one finger. + +"Caught you at it!" he reproved gaily. "Secret tippling. The gravest +of symptoms. Little I thought, the day I stood up with you, that the +wife I was marrying was doomed to fill an alcoholic's grave." + +Before she could retort, a young man strolled in whom she and Dick +greeted as Mr. Winters, and who also must have a cocktail. Dick tried +to believe that it was not relief he sensed in Paula's manner as she +greeted the newcomer. He had never seen her quite so cordial to him +before, although often enough she had met him. At any rate, there +would be three at lunch. + +Mr. Winters, an agricultural college graduate and special writer for +the _Pacific Rural Press,_ as well as a sort of protégé of Dick, +had come for data for an article on California fish-ponds, and Dick +mentally arranged his afternoon's program for him. + +"Got a telegram from Evan," he told Paula. "Won't be back till the +four o'clock day after to-morrow." + +"And after all my trouble!" she exclaimed. "Now the lilacs will be +wilted and spoiled." + +Dick felt a warm glow of pleasure. There spoke his frank, +straightforward Paula. No matter what the game was, or its outcome, at +least she would play it without the petty deceptions. She had always +been that way--too transparent to make a success of deceit. + +Nevertheless, he played his own part by a glance of scarcely +interested interrogation. + +"Why, in Graham's room," she explained. "I had the boys bring a big +armful and I arranged them all myself. He's so fond of them, you +know." + +Up to the end of lunch, she had made no mention of Mrs. Wade's coming, +and Dick knew definitely she was not coming when Paula queried +casually: + +"Expecting anybody?" + +He shook his head, and asked, "Are you doing anything this afternoon?" + +"Haven't thought about anything," she answered. "And now I suppose I +can't plan upon you with Mr. Winters to be told all about fish." + +"But you can," Dick assured her. "I'm turning him over to Mr. Hanley, +who's got the trout counted down to the last egg hatched and who knows +all the grandfather bass by name. I'll tell you what--" He paused and +considered. Then his face lighted as with a sudden idea. "It's a +loafing afternoon. Let's take the rifles and go potting squirrels. I +noticed the other day they've become populous on that hill above the +Little Meadow." + +But he had not failed to observe the flutter of alarm that shadowed +her eyes so swiftly, and that so swiftly was gone as she clapped her +hands and was herself. + +"But don't take a rifle for me," she said. + +"If you'd rather not--" he began gently. + +"Oh, I want to go, but I don't feel up to shooting. I'll take Le +Gallienne's last book along--it just came in--and read to you in +betweenwhiles. Remember, the last time I did that when we went +squirreling it was his 'Quest of the Golden Girl' I read to you." + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + + + +Paula on the Fawn, and Dick on the Outlaw, rode out from the Big House +as nearly side by side as the Outlaw's wicked perversity permitted. +The conversation she permitted was fragmentary. With tiny ears laid +back and teeth exposed, she would attempt to evade Dick's restraint of +rein and spur and win to a bite of Paula's leg or the Fawn's sleek +flank, and with every defeat the pink flushed and faded in the whites +of her eyes. Her restless head-tossing and pitching attempts to rear +(thwarted by the martingale) never ceased, save when she pranced and +sidled and tried to whirl. + +"This is the last year of her," Dick announced. "She's indomitable. +I've worked two years on her without the slightest improvement. She +knows me, knows my ways, knows I am her master, knows when she has to +give in, but is never satisfied. She nourishes the perennial hope that +some time she'll catch me napping, and for fear she'll miss that time +she never lets any time go by." + +"And some time she may catch you," Paula said. + +"That's why I'm giving her up. It isn't exactly a strain on me, but +soon or late she's bound to get me if there's anything in the law of +probability. It may be a million-to-one shot, but heaven alone knows +where in the series of the million that fatal one is going to pop up." + +"You're a wonder, Red Cloud," Paula smiled. + +"Why?" + +"You think in statistics and percentages, averages and exceptions. I +wonder, when we first met, what particular formula you measured me up +by." + +"I'll be darned if I did," he laughed back. "There was where all signs +failed. I didn't have a statistic that applied to you. I merely +acknowledged to myself that here was the most wonderful female woman +ever born with two good legs, and I knew that I wanted her more than I +had ever wanted anything. I just had to have her--" + +"And got her," Paula completed for him. "But since, Red Cloud, since. +Surely you've accumulated enough statistics on me." + +"A few, quite a few," he admitted. "But I hope never to get the last +one--" + +He broke off at sound of the unmistakable nicker of Mountain Lad. The +stallion appeared, the cowboy on his back, and Dick gazed for a moment +at the perfect action of the beast's great swinging trot. + +"We've got to get out of this," he warned, as Mountain Lad, at sight +of them, broke into a gallop. + +Together they pricked their mares, whirled them about, and fled, while +from behind they heard the soothing "Whoas" of the rider, the thuds of +the heavy hoofs on the roadway, and a wild imperative neigh. The +Outlaw answered, and the Fawn was but a moment behind her. From the +commotion they knew Mountain Lad was getting tempestuous. + +Leaning to the curve, they swept into a cross-road and in fifty paces +pulled up, where they waited till the danger was past. + +"He's never really injured anybody yet," Paula said, as they started +back. + +"Except when he casually stepped on Cowley's toes. You remember he was +laid up in bed for a month," Dick reminded her, straightening out the +Outlaw from a sidle and with a flicker of glance catching the strange +look with which Paula was regarding him. + +There was question in it, he could see, and love in it, and fear--yes, +almost fear, or at least apprehension that bordered on dismay; but, +most of all, a seeking, a searching, a questioning. Not entirely +ungermane to her mood, was his thought, had been that remark of his +thinking in statistics. + +But he made that he had not seen, whipping out his pad, and, with an +interested glance at a culvert they were passing, making a note. + +"They missed it," he said. "It should have been repaired a month ago." + +"What has become of all those Nevada mustangs?" Paula inquired. + +This was a flyer Dick had taken, when a bad season for Nevada pasture +had caused mustangs to sell for a song with the alternative of +starving to death. He had shipped a trainload down and ranged them in +his wilder mountain pastures to the west. + +"It's time to break them," he answered. "And I'm thinking of a real +old-fashioned rodeo next week. What do you say? Have a barbecue and +all the rest, and invite the country side?" + +"And then you won't be there," Paula objected. + +"I'll take a day off. Is it a go?" + +They reined to one side of the road, as she agreed, to pass three farm +tractors, all with their trailage of ganged discs and harrows. + +"Moving them across to the Rolling Meadows," he explained. "They pay +over horses on the right ground." + +Rising from the home valley, passing through cultivated fields and +wooded knolls, they took a road busy with many wagons hauling road- +dressing from the rock-crusher they could hear growling and crunching +higher up. + +"Needs more exercise than I've been giving her," Dick remarked, +jerking the Outlaw's bared teeth away from dangerous proximity to the +Fawn's flank. + +"And it's disgraceful the way I've neglected Duddy and Fuddy," Paula +said. "I've kept their feed down like a miser, but they're a lively +handful just the same." + +Dick heard her idly, but within forty-eight hours he was to remember +with hurt what she had said. + +They continued on till the crunch of the rock-crusher died away, +penetrated a belt of woodland, crossed a tiny divide where the +afternoon sunshine was wine-colored by the manzanita and rose-colored +by madronos, and dipped down through a young planting of eucalyptus to +the Little Meadow. But before they reached it, they dismounted and +tied their horses. Dick took the .22 automatic rifle from his saddle- +holster, and with Paula advanced softly to a clump of redwoods on the +edge of the meadow. They disposed themselves in the shade and gazed +out across the meadow to the steep slope of hill that came down to it +a hundred and fifty yards away. + +"There they are--three--four of them," Paula whispered, as her keen +eyes picked the squirrels out amongst the young grain. + +These were the wary ones, the sports in the direction of infinite +caution who had shunned the poisoned grain and steel traps of Dick's +vermin catchers. They were the survivors, each of a score of their +fellows not so cautious, themselves fit to repopulate the hillside. + +Dick filled the chamber and magazine with tiny cartridges, examined +the silencer, and, lying at full length, leaning on his elbow, sighted +across the meadow. There was no sound of explosion when he fired, only +the click of the mechanism as the bullet was sped, the empty cartridge +ejected, a fresh cartridge flipped into the chamber, and the trigger +re-cocked. A big, dun-colored squirrel leaped in the air, fell over, +and disappeared in the grain. Dick waited, his eye along the rifle and +directed toward several holes around which the dry earth showed widely +as evidence of the grain which had been destroyed. When the wounded +squirrel appeared, scrambling across the exposed ground to safety, the +rifle clicked again and he rolled over on his side and lay still. + +At the first click, every squirrel but the stricken one, had made into +its burrow. Remained nothing to do but wait for their curiosity to +master caution. This was the interval Dick had looked forward to. As +he lay and scanned the hillside for curious heads to appear, he +wondered if Paula would have something to say to him. In trouble she +was, but would she keep this trouble to herself? It had never been her +way. Always, soon or late, she brought her troubles to him. But, then, +he reflected, she had never had a trouble of this nature before. It +was just the one thing that she would be least prone to discuss with +him. On the other hand, he reasoned, there was her everlasting +frankness. He had marveled at it, and joyed in it, all their years +together. Was it to fail her now? + +So he lay and pondered. She did not speak. She was not restless. He +could hear no movement. When he glanced to the side at her he saw her +lying on her back, eyes closed, arms outstretched, as if tired. + +A small head, the color of the dry soil of its home, peeped from a +hole. Dick waited long minutes, until, assured that no danger lurked, +the owner of the head stood full up on its hind legs to seek the cause +of the previous click that had startled it. Again the rifle clicked. + +"Did you get him?" Paula queried, without opening her eyes. + +"Yea, and a fat one," Dick answered. "I stopped a line of generations +right there." + +An hour passed. The afternoon sun beat down but was not uncomfortable +in the shade. A gentle breeze fanned the young grain into lazy +wavelets at times, and stirred the redwood boughs above them. Dick +added a third squirrel to the score. Paula's book lay beside her, but +she had not offered to read. + +"Anything the matter?" he finally nerved himself to ask. + +"No; headache--a beastly little neuralgic hurt across the eyes, that's +all." + +"Too much embroidery," he teased. + +"Not guilty," was her reply. + +All was natural enough in all seeming; but Dick, as he permitted an +unusually big squirrel to leave its burrow and crawl a score of feet +across the bare earth toward the grain, thought to himself: No, there +will be no talk between us this day. Nor will we nestle and kiss lying +here in the grass. + +His victim was now at the edge of the grain. He pulled trigger. The +creature fell over, lay still a moment, then ran in quick awkward +fashion toward its hole. Click, click, click, went the mechanism. +Puffs of dust leaped from the earth close about the fleeing squirrel, +showing the closeness of the misses. Dick fired as rapidly as he could +twitch his forefinger on the trigger, so that it was as if he played a +stream of lead from a hose. + +He had nearly finished refilling the magazine when Paula spoke. + +"My! What a fusillade.--Get him?" + +"Yea, grandfather of all squirrels, a mighty graineater and destroyer +of sustenance for young calves. But nine long smokeless cartridges on +one squirrel doesn't pay. I'll have to do better." + +The sun dropped lower. The breeze died out. Dick managed another +squirrel and sadly watched the hillside for more. He had arranged the +time and made his bid for confidence. The situation was as grave as he +had feared. Graver it might be, for all he knew, for his world was +crumbling about him. Old landmarks were shifting their places. He was +bewildered, shaken. Had it been any other woman than Paula! He had +been so sure. There had been their dozen years to vindicate his +surety.... + +"Five o'clock, sun he get low," he announced, rising to his feet and +preparing to help her up. + +"It did me so much good--just resting," she said, as they started for +the horses. "My eyes feel much better. It's just as well I didn't try +to read to you." + +"And don't be piggy," Dick warned, as lightly as if nothing were amiss +with him. "Don't dare steal the tiniest peek into Le Gallienne. You've +got to share him with me later on. Hold up your hand.--Now, honest to +God, Paul." + +"Honest to God," she obeyed. + +"And may jackasses dance on your grandmother's grave--" + +"And may jackasses dance on my grandmother's grave," she solemnly +repeated. + +The third morning of Graham's absence, Dick saw to it that he was +occupied with his dairy manager when Paula made her eleven o'clock +pilgrimage, peeped in upon him, and called her "Good morning, merry +gentleman," from the door. The Masons, arriving in several machines +with their boisterous crowd of young people, saved Paula for lunch and +the afternoon; and, on her urging, Dick noted, she made the evening +safe by holding them over for bridge and dancing. + +But the fourth morning, the day of Graham's expected return, Dick was +alone in his workroom at eleven. Bending over his desk, signing +letters, he heard Paula tiptoe into the room. He did not look up, but +while he continued writing his signature he listened with all his soul +to the faint, silken swish of her kimono. He knew when she was bending +over him, and all but held his breath. But when she had softly kissed +his hair and called her "Good morning, merry gentleman," she evaded +the hungry sweep of his arm and laughed her way out. What affected him +as strongly as the disappointment was the happiness he had seen in her +face. She, who so poorly masked her moods, was bright-eyed and eager +as a child. And it was on this afternoon that Graham was expected, +Dick could not escape making the connection. + +He did not care to ascertain if she had replenished the lilacs in the +tower room, and, at lunch, which was shared with three farm college +students from Davis, he found himself forced to extemporize a busy +afternoon for himself when Paula tentatively suggested that she would +drive Graham up from Eldorado. + +"Drive?" Dick asked. + +"Duddy and Fuddy," she explained. "They're all on edge, and I just +feel like exercising them and myself. Of course, if you'll share the +exercise, we'll drive anywhere you say, and let him come up in the +machine." + +Dick strove not to think there was anxiety in her manner while she +waited for him to accept or decline her invitation. + +"Poor Duddy and Fuddy would be in the happy hunting grounds if they +had to cover my ground this afternoon," he laughed, at the same time +mapping his program. "Between now and dinner I've got to do a hundred +and twenty miles. I'm taking the racer, and it's going to be some dust +and bump and only an occasional low place. I haven't the heart to ask +you along. You go on and take it out of Duddy and Fuddy." + +Paula sighed, but so poor an actress was she that in the sigh, +intended for him as a customary reluctant yielding of his company, he +could not fail to detect the relief at his decision. + +"Whither away?" she asked brightly, and again he noticed the color in +her face, the happiness, and the brilliance of her eyes. + +"Oh, I'm shooting away down the river to the dredging work--Carlson +insists I must advise him--and then up in to Sacramento, running over +the Teal Slough land on the way, to see Wing Fo Wong." + +"And in heaven's name who is this Wing Fo Wong?" she laughingly +queried, "that you must trot and see him?" + +"A very important personage, my dear. Worth all of two millions--made +in potatoes and asparagus down in the Delta country. I'm leasing three +hundred acres of the Teal Slough land to him." Dick addressed himself +to the farm students. "That land lies just out of Sacramento on the +west side of the river. It's a good example of the land famine that is +surely coming. It was tule swamp when I bought it, and I was well +laughed at by the old-timers. I even had to buy out a dozen hunting +preserves. It averaged me eighteen dollars an acre, and not so many +years ago either. + +"You know the tule swamps. Worthless, save for ducks and low-water +pasturage. It cost over three hundred an acre to dredge and drain and +to pay my quota of the river reclamation work. And on what basis of +value do you think I am making a ten years' lease to old Wing Fo Wong? +TWO thousand an acre. I couldn't net more than that if I truck-farmed +it myself. Those Chinese are wizards with vegetables, and gluttons for +work. No eight hours for them. It's eighteen hours. The last coolie is +a partner with a microscopic share. That's the way Wing Fo Wong gets +around the eight hour law." + + * * * * * + +Twice warned and once arrested, was Dick through the long afternoon. +He drove alone, and though he drove with speed he drove with safety. +Accidents, for which he personally might be responsible, were things +he did not tolerate. And they never occurred. That same sureness and +definiteness of adjustment with which, without fumbling or +approximating, he picked up a pencil or reached for a door-knob, was +his in the more complicated adjustments, with which, as instance, he +drove a high-powered machine at high speed over busy country roads. + +But drive as he would, transact business as he would, at high pressure +with Carlson and Wing Fo Wong, continually, in the middle ground of +his consciousness, persisted the thought that Paula had gone out of +her way and done the most unusual in driving Graham the long eight +miles from Eldorado to the ranch. + +"Phew!" he started to mutter a thought aloud, then suspended utterance +and thought as he jumped the racer from forty-five to seventy miles an +hour, swept past to the left of a horse and buggy going in the same +direction, and slanted back to the right side of the road with margin +to spare but seemingly under the nose of a run-about coming from the +opposite direction. He reduced his speed to fifty and took up his +thought: + +"Phew! Imagine little Paul's thoughts if I dared that drive with some +charming girl!" + +He laughed at the fancy as he pictured it, for, most early in their +marriage, he had gauged Paula's capacity for quiet jealousy. Never had +she made a scene, or dropped a direct remark, or raised a question; +but from the first, quietly but unmistakably, she had conveyed the +impression of hurt that was hers if he at all unduly attended upon any +woman. + +He grinned with remembrance of Mrs. Dehameny, the pretty little +brunette widow--Paula's friend, not his--who had visited in the long +ago in the Big House. Paula had announced that she was not riding that +afternoon and, at lunch, had heard him and Mrs. Dehameny arrange to +ride into the redwood canyons beyond the grove of the philosophers. +And who but Paula, not long after their start, should overtake them +and make the party three! He had smiled to himself at the time, and +felt immensely tickled with Paula, for neither Mrs. Dehameny nor the +ride with her had meant anything to him. + +So it was, from the beginning, that he had restricted his attentions +to other women. Ever since he had been far more circumspect than +Paula. He had even encouraged her, given her a free hand always, had +been proud that his wife did attract fine fellows, had been glad that +she was glad to be amused or entertained by them. And with reason, he +mused. He had been so safe, so sure of her--more so, he acknowledged, +than had she any right to be of him. And the dozen years had +vindicated his attitude, so that he was as sure of her as he was of +the diurnal rotation of the earth. And now, was the form his fancy +took, the rotation of the earth was a shaky proposition and old Oom +Paul's flat world might be worth considering. + +He lifted the gauntlet from his left wrist to snatch a glimpse at his +watch, In five minutes Graham would be getting off the train at +Eldorado. Dick, himself homeward bound west from Sacramento, was +eating up the miles. In a quarter of an hour the train that he +identified as having brought Graham, went by. Not until he was well +past Eldorado did he overtake Duddy and Fuddy and the trap. Graham sat +beside Paula, who was driving. Dick slowed down as he passed, waved a +hello to Graham, and, as he jumped into speed again, called cheerily: + +"Sorry I've got to give you my dust. I'll beat you a game of billiards +before dinner, Evan, if you ever get in." + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + + + +"This can't go on. We must do something--at once." + +They were in the music room, Paula at the piano, her face turned up to +Graham who stood close to her, almost over her. + +"You must decide," Graham continued. + +Neither face showed happiness in the great thing that had come upon +them, now that they considered what they must do. + +"But I don't want you to go," Paula urged. "I don't know what I want. +You must bear with me. I am not considering myself. I am past +considering myself. But I must consider Dick. I must consider you. +I... I am so unused to such a situation," she concluded with a wan +smile. + +"But it must be settled, dear love. Dick is not blind." + +"What has there been for him to see?" she demanded. "Nothing, except +that one kiss in the canyon, and he couldn't have seen that. Do you +think of anything else--I challenge you, sir." + +"Would that there were," he met the lighter touch in her mood, then +immediately relapsed. "I am mad over you, mad for you. And there I +stop. I do not know if you are equally mad. I do not know if you are +mad at all." + +As he spoke, he dropped his hand to hers on the keys, and she gently +withdrew it. + +"Don't you see?" he complained. "Yet you wanted me to come back?" + +"I wanted you to come back," she acknowledged, with her straight look +into his eyes. "I wanted you to come back," she repeated, more softly, +as if musing. + +"And I'm all at sea," he exclaimed impatiently. "You do love me?" + +"I do love you, Evan--you know that. But..." She paused and seemed to +be weighing the matter judicially. + +"But what?" he commanded. "Go on." + +"But I love Dick, too. Isn't it ridiculous?" + +He did not respond to her smile, and her eyes delightedly warmed to +the boyish sullenness that vexed his own eyes. A thought was hot on +his tongue, but he restrained the utterance of it while she wondered +what it was, disappointed not to have had it. + +"It will work out," she assured him gravely. "It will have to work out +somehow. Dick says all things work out. All is change. What is static +is dead, and we're not dead, any of us... are we?" + +"I don't blame you for loving Dick, for... for continuing to love +Dick," he answered impatiently. "And for that matter, I don't see what +you find in me compared with him. This is honest. He is a great man to +me, and Great Heart is his name--" she rewarded him with a smile and +nod of approval. "But if you continue to love Dick, how about me?" + +"But I love you, too." + +"It can't be," he cried, tearing himself from the piano to make a +hasty march across the room and stand contemplating the Keith on the +opposite wall as if he had never seen it before. + +She waited with a quiet smile, pleasuring in his unruly impetuousness. + +"You can't love two men at once," he flung at her. + +"Oh, but I do, Evan. That's what I am trying to work out. Only I don't +know which I love more. Dick I have known a long time. You... you are +a--" + +"Recent acquaintance," he broke in, returning to her with the same +angry stride. + +"Not that, no, not that, Evan. You have made a revelation to me of +myself. I love you as much as Dick. I love you more. I--I don't know." + +She broke down and buried her face in her hands, permitting his hand +to rest tenderly on her shoulder. + +"You see it is not easy for me," she went on. "There is so much +involved, so much that I cannot understand. You say you are all at +sea. Then think of me all at sea and worse confounded. You--oh, why +talk about it--you are a man with a man's experiences, with a man's +nature. It is all very simple to you. 'She loves me, she loves me +not.' But I am tangled, confused. I--and I wasn't born yesterday--have +had no experience in loving variously. I have never had affairs. I +loved only one man... and now you. You, and this love for you, have +broken into a perfect marriage, Evan--" + +"I know--" he said. + +"--I don't know," she went on. "I must have time, either to work it +out myself or to let it work itself out. If it only weren't for +Dick..." her voice trailed off pathetically. + +Unconsciously, Graham's hand went farther about her shoulder. + +"No, no--not yet," she said softly, as softly she removed it, her own +lingering caressingly on his a moment ere she released it. "When you +touch me, I can't think," she begged. "I--I can't think." + +"Then I must go," he threatened, without any sense of threatening. She +made a gesture of protest. "The present situation is impossible, +unbearable. I feel like a cur, and all the time I know I am not a cur. +I hate deception--oh, I can lie with the Pathan, to the Pathan--but I +can't deceive a man like Great Heart. I'd prefer going right up to him +and saying: 'Dick, I love your wife. She loves me. What are you going +to do about it?'" + +"Do so," Paula said, fired for the moment. + +Graham straightened up with resolution. + +"I will. And now." + +"No, no," she cried in sudden panic. "You must go away." Again her +voice trailed off, as she said, "But I can't let you go." + + * * * * * + +If Dick had had any reason to doubt his suspicion of the state of +Paula's heart, that reason vanished with the return of Graham. He need +look nowhere for confirmation save to Paula. She was in a flushed +awakening, burgeoning like the full spring all about them, a happier +tone in her happy laugh, a richer song in her throat, a warmness of +excitement and a continuous energy of action animating her. She was up +early and to bed late. She did not conserve herself, but seemed to +live on the champagne of her spirits, until Dick wondered if it was +because she did not dare allow herself time to think. + +He watched her lose flesh, and acknowledged to himself that the one +result was to make her look lovelier than ever, to take on an almost +spiritual delicacy under her natural vividness of color and charm. + +And the Big House ran on in its frictionless, happy, and remorseless +way. Dick sometimes speculated how long it would continue so to run +on, and recoiled from contemplation of a future in which it might not +so run on. As yet, he was confident, no one knew, no one guessed, but +himself. But how long could that continue? Not long, he was certain. +Paula was not sufficiently the actress. And were she a master at +concealment of trivial, sordid detail, yet the new note and flush of +her would be beyond the power of any woman to hide. + +He knew his Asiatic servants were marvels of discernment--and +discretion, he had to add. But there were the women. Women were cats. +To the best of them it would be great joy to catch the radiant, +unimpeachable Paula as clay as any daughter of Eve. And any chance +woman in the house, for a day, or an evening, might glimpse the +situation--Paula's situation, at least, for he could not make out +Graham's attitude yet. Trust a woman to catch a woman. + +But Paula, different in other ways, was different in this. He had +never seen her display cattishness, never known her to be on the +lookout for other women on the chance of catching them tripping-- +except in relation to him. And he grinned again at the deliciousness +of the affair with Mrs. Dehameney which had been an affair only in +Paula's apprehension. + +Among other things of wonderment, Dick speculated if Paula wondered if +he knew. + +And Paula did wonder, and for a time without avail. She could detect +no change in his customary ways and moods or treatment of her. He +turned off his prodigious amount of work as usual, played as usual, +chanted his songs, and was the happy good fellow. She tried to imagine +an added sweetness toward her, but vexed herself with the fear that it +was imagined. + +But it was not for long that she was in doubt. Sometimes in a crowd, +at table, in the living room in the evening, or at cards, she would +gaze at him through half-veiled lashes when he was unaware, until she +was certain she saw the knowledge in his eyes and face. But no hint of +this did she give to Graham. His knowing would not help matters. It +might even send him away, which she frankly admitted to herself was +the last thing she should want to happen. + +But when she came to a realization that she was almost certain Dick +knew or guessed, she hardened, deliberately dared to play with the +fire. If Dick knew--since he knew, she framed it to herself--why did +he not speak? He was ever a straight talker. She both desired and +feared that he might, until the fear faded and her earnest hope was +that he would. He was the one who acted, did things, no matter what +they were. She had always depended upon him as the doer. Graham had +called the situation a triangle. Well, Dick could solve it. He could +solve anything. Then why didn't he? + +In the meantime, she persisted in her ardent recklessness, trying not +to feel the conscience-pricks of her divided allegiance, refusing to +think too deeply, riding the top of the wave of her life--as she +assured herself, living, living, living. At times she scarcely knew +what she thought, save that she was very proud in having two such men +at heel. Pride had always been one of her dominant key-notes--pride +of accomplishment, achievement, mastery, as with her music, her +appearance, her swimming. It was all one--to dance, as she well knew, +beautifully; to dress with distinction and beauty; to swan-dive, all +grace and courage, as few women dared; or, all fragility, to avalanche +down the spill-way on the back of Mountain Lad and by the will and +steel of her swim the huge beast across the tank. + +She was proud, a woman of their own race and type, to watch these two +gray-eyed blond men together. She was excited, feverish, but not +nervous. Quite coldly, sometimes, she compared the two when they were +together, and puzzled to know for which of them she made herself more +beautiful, more enticing. Graham she held, and she had held Dick and +strove still to hold him. + +There was almost a touch of cruelty in the tingles of pride that were +hers at thought of these two royal men suffering for her and because +of her; for she did not hide from herself the conviction that if Dick +knew, or, rather, since he did know, he, too, must be suffering. She +assured herself that she was a woman of imagination and purpose in sex +matters, and that no part of her attraction toward Graham lay merely +in his freshness, newness, difference. And she denied to herself that +passion played more than the most minor part. Deep down she was +conscious of her own recklessness and madness, and of an end to it all +that could not but be dreadful to some one of them or all of them. +But she was content willfully to flutter far above such deeps and to +refuse to consider their existence. Alone, looking at herself in her +mirror, she would shake her head in mock reproof and cry out, "Oh, you +huntress! You huntress!" And when she did permit herself to think a +little gravely, it was to admit that Shaw and the sages of the madrono +grove might be right in their diatribes on the hunting proclivities of +women. + +She denied Dar Hyal's statement that woman was nature's failure to +make a man; but again and again came to her Wilde's, "Woman attacks by +sudden and strange surrenders." Had she so attacked Graham? she asked +herself. Sudden and strange, to her, were the surrenders she had +already made. Were there to be more? He wanted to go. With her, or +without her, he wanted to go. But she held him--how? Was there a tacit +promise of surrenders to come? And she would laugh away further +consideration, confine herself to the fleeting present, and make her +body more beautiful, and mood herself to be more fascinating, and glow +with happiness in that she was living, thrilling, as she had never +dreamed to live and thrill. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + + + +But it is not the way for a man and a woman, in propinquity, to +maintain a definite, unwavering distance asunder. Imperceptibly Paula +and Graham drew closer. From lingering eye-gazings and hand-touchings +the way led to permitted caresses, until there was a second clasping +in the arms and a second kiss long on the lips. Nor this time did +Paula flame in anger. Instead, she commanded: + +"You must not go." + +"I must not stay," Graham reiterated for the thousandth time. "Oh, I +have kissed behind doors, and been guilty of all the rest of the silly +rubbish," he complained. "But this is you, and this is Dick." + +"It will work out, I tell you, Evan." + +"Come with me then and of ourselves work it out. Come now." + +She recoiled. + +"Remember," Graham encouraged, "what Dick said at dinner the night Leo +fought the dragons--that if it were you, Paula, his wife, who ran +away, he would say 'Bless you, my children.'" + +"And that is just why it is so hard, Evan. He _is_ Great Heart. +You named him well. Listen--you watch him now. He is as gentle as he +said he would be that night--gentle toward me, I mean. And more. You +watch him--" + +"He knows?--he has spoken?" Graham broke in. + +"He has not spoken, but I am sure he knows, or guesses. You watch him. +He won't compete against you--" + +"Compete!" + +"Just that. He won't compete. Remember at the rodeo yesterday. He was +breaking mustangs when our party arrived, but he never mounted again. +Now he is a wonderful horse-breaker. You tried your hand. Frankly, +while you did fairly well, you couldn't touch him. But he wouldn't +show off against you. That alone would make me certain that he +guesses. + +"Listen. Of late haven't you noticed that he never questions a +statement you make, as he used to question, as he questions every one +else. He continues to play billiards with you, because there you best +him. He fences and singlesticks with you--there you are even. But he +won't box or wrestle with you." + +"He _can_ out-box and out-wrestle me," Graham muttered ruefully. + +"You watch and you will see what I mean by not competing. He is +treating me like a spirited colt, giving me my head to make a mess of +things if I want to. Not for the world would he interfere. Oh, trust +me, I know him. It is his own code that he is living up to. He could +teach the philosophers what applied philosophy is. + +"No, no; listen," she rushed over Graham's attempt to interrupt. "I +want to tell you more. There is a secret staircase that goes up from +the library to Dick's work room. Only he and I use it, and his +secretaries. When you arrive at the head of it, you are right in his +room, surrounded by shelves of books. I have just come from there. I +was going in to see him when I heard voices. Of course it was ranch +business, I thought, and they would soon be gone. So I waited. It +_was_ ranch business, but it was so interesting, so, what Hancock +would call, illuminating, that I remained and eavesdropped. It was +illuminating of Dick, I mean. + +"It was the wife of one of the workmen Dick had on the carpet. Such +things do arise on a large place like this. I wouldn't know the woman +if I saw her, and I didn't recognize her name. She was whimpering out +her trouble when Dick stopped her. 'Never mind all that,' he said. +'What I want to know is, did you give Smith any encouragement?' + +"Smith isn't his name, but he is one of our foremen and has worked +eight years for Dick. + +"'Oh, no, sir,' I could hear her answer. 'He went out of his way from +the first to bother me. I've tried to keep out of his way, always. +Besides, my husband's a violent-tempered man, and I did so want him to +hold his job here. He's worked nearly a year for you now, and there +aren't any complaints, are there? Before that it was irregular work +for a long time, and we had real hard times. It wasn't his fault. He +ain't a drinking man. He always--' + +"'That's all right,' Dick stopped her. 'His work and habits have +nothing to do with the matter. Now you are sure you have never +encouraged Mr. Smith in any way?' And she was so sure that she talked +for ten minutes, detailing the foreman's persedition of her. She had a +pleasant voice--one of those sweet, timid, woman's voices, and +undoubtedly is quite attractive. It was all I could do to resist +peeping. I wanted to see what she looked like. + +"'Now this trouble, yesterday morning,' Dick said. 'Was it general? I +mean, outside of your husband, and Mr. Smith, was the scene such that +those who live around you knew of it?' + +"'Yes, sir. You see, he had no right to come into my kitchen. My +husband doesn't work under him anyway. And he had his arm around me +and was trying to kiss me when my husband came in. My husband has a +temper, but he ain't overly strong. Mr. Smith would make two of him. +So he pulled a knife, and Mr. Smith got him by the arms, and they +fought all over the kitchen. I knew there was murder going to be done +and I run out screaming for help. The folks in the other cottages'd +heard the racket already. They'd smashed the window and the cook +stove, and the place was filled with smoke and ashes when the +neighbors dragged them away from each other. I'd done nothing to +deserve all that disgrace. You know, sir, the way the women will +talk--' + +"And Dick hushed her up there, and took all of five minutes more in +getting rid of her. Her great fear was that her husband would lose his +place. From what Dick told her, I waited. He had made no decision, and +I knew the foreman was next on the carpet. In he came. I'd have given +the world to see him. But I could only listen. + +"Dick jumped right into the thick of it. He described the scene and +uproar, and Smith acknowledged that it had been riotous for a while. +'She says she gave you no encouragement,' Dick said next. + +"'Then she lies,' said Smith. 'She has that way of looking with her +eyes that's an invitation. She looked at me that way from the first. +But it was by word-of-mouth invitation that I was in her kitchen +yesterday morning. We didn't expect the husband. But she began to +struggle when he hove in sight. When she says she gave me no +encouragement--' + +"'Never mind all that,' Dick stopped him. 'It's not essential.' 'But +it is, Mr. Forrest, if I am to clear myself,' Smith insisted. + +"'No; it is not essential to the thing you can't clear yourself of,' +Dick answered, and I could hear that cold, hard, judicial note come +into his voice. Smith could not understand. Dick told him. 'The thing +you have been guilty of, Mr. Smith, is the scene, the disturbance, the +scandal, the wagging of the women's tongues now going on forty to the +minute, the impairment of the discipline and order of the ranch, all +of which is boiled down to the one grave thing, the hurt to the ranch +efficiency.' + +"And still Smith couldn't see. He thought the charge was of violating +social morality by pursuing a married woman, and tried to mitigate the +offense by showing the woman encouraged him and by pleading: 'And +after all, Mr. Forrest, a man is only a man, and I admit she made a +fool of me and I made a fool of myself.' "'Mr. Smith,' Dick said. +'You've worked for me eight years. You've been a foreman six years of +that time. I have no complaint against your work. You certainly do +know how to handle labor. About your personal morality I don't care a +damn. You can be a Mormon or a Turk for all it matters to me. Your +private acts are your private acts, and are no concern of mine as long +as they do not interfere with your work or my ranch. Any one of my +drivers can drink his head off Saturday night, and every Saturday +night. That's his business. But the minute he shows a hold-over on +Monday morning that is taken out on my horses, that excites them, or +injures them, or threatens to injure them, or that decreases in the +slightest the work they should perform on Monday, that moment it is my +business and the driver goes down the hill.' + +"'You, you mean, Mr. Forrest,' Smith stuttered, 'that, that I'm to go +down the hill?' 'That is just what I mean, Mr. Smith. You are to go +down the hill, not because you climbed over another man's fence-- +that's your business and his; but because you were guilty of causing a +disturbance that is an impairment of ranch efficiency.' + +"Do you know, Evan," Paula broke in on her recital, "Dick can nose +more human tragedy out of columns of ranch statistics than can the +average fiction writer out of the whirl of a great city. Take the milk +reports--the individual reports of the milkers--so many pounds of +milk, morning and night, from cow so-and-so, so many pounds from cow +so-and-so. He doesn't have to know the man. But there is a decrease in +the weight of milk. 'Mr. Parkman,' he'll say to the head dairyman, 'is +Barchi Peratta married?' 'Yes, sir.' 'Is he having trouble with his +wife?' 'Yes, sir.' + +"Or it will be: 'Mr. Parkman, Simpkins has the best long-time record +of any of our milkers. Now he's slumped. What's up?' Mr. Parkman +doesn't know. 'Investigate,' says Dick. 'There's something on his +chest. Talk to him like an uncle and find out. We've got to get it off +his chest.' And Mr. Parkman finds out. Simpkins' boy; working his way +through Stanford University, has elected the joy-ride path and is in +jail waiting trial for forgery. Dick put his own lawyers on the case, +smoothed it over, got the boy out on probation, and Simpkins' milk +reports came back to par. And the best of it is, the boy made good, +Dick kept an eye on him, saw him through the college of engineering, +and he's now working for Dick on the dredging end, earning a hundred +and fifty a month, married, with a future before him, and his father +still milks." + +"You are right," Graham murmured sympathetically. "I well named him +when I named him Great Heart." + +"I call him my Rock of Ages," Paula said gratefully. "He is so solid. +He stands in any storm.--Oh, you don't really know him. He is so sure. +He stands right up. He's never taken a cropper in his life. God smiles +on him. God has always smiled on him. He's never been beaten down to +his knees... yet. I... I should not care to see that sight. It would +be heartbreaking. And, Evan--" Her hand went out to his in a pleading +gesture that merged into a half-caress. "--I am afraid for him now. +That is why I don't know what to do. It is not for myself that I back +and fill and hesitate. If he were ignoble, if he were narrow, if he +were weak or had one tiniest shred of meanness, if he had ever been +beaten to his knees before, why, my dear, my dear, I should have been +gone with you long ago." + +Her eyes filled with sudden moisture. She stilled him with a pressure +of her hand, and, to regain herself, she went back to her recital: + +"'Your little finger, Mr. Smith, I consider worth more to me and to +the world,' Dick, told him, 'than the whole body of this woman's +husband. Here's the report on him: willing, eager to please, not +bright, not strong, an indifferent workman at best. Yet you have to go +down the hill, and I am very, very sorry.' + +"Oh, yes, there was more. But I've given you the main of it. You see +Dick's code there. And he lives his code. He accords latitude to the +individual. Whatever the individual may do, so long as it does not +hurt the group of individuals in which he lives, is his own affair. He +believed Smith had a perfect right to love the woman, and to be loved +by her if it came to that. I have heard him always say that love could +not be held nor enforced. Truly, did I go with you, he would say, +'Bless you, my children.' Though it broke his heart he would say it. +Past love, he believes, gives no hold over the present. And every hour +of love, I have heard him say, pays for itself, on both sides, +quittance in full. He claims there can be no such thing as a love- +debt, laughs at the absurdity of love-claims." + +"And I agree with him," Graham said. "'You promised to love me +always,' says the jilted one, and then strives to collect as if it +were a promissory note for so many dollars. Dollars are dollars, but +love lives or dies. When it is dead how can it be collected? We are +all agreed, and the way is simple. We love. It is enough. Why delay +another minute?" + +His fingers strayed along her fingers on the keyboard as he bent to +her, first kissing her hair, then slowly turning her face up to his +and kissing her willing lips. + +"Dick does not love me like you," she said; "not madly, I mean. He has +had me so long, I think I have become a habit to him. And often and +often, before I knew you, I used to puzzle whether he cared more for +the ranch or more for me." + +"It is so simple," Graham urged. "All we have to do is to be +straightforward. Let us go." + +He drew her to her feet and made as if to start. + +But she drew away from him suddenly, sat down, and buried her flushed +face in her hands. + +"You do not understand, Evan. I love Dick. I shall always love him." + +"And me?" Graham demanded sharply. + +"Oh, without saying," she smiled. "You are the only man, besides Dick, +that has ever kissed me this... way, and that I have kissed this way. +But I can't make up my mind. The triangle, as you call it, must be +solved for me. I can't solve it myself. I compare the two of you, +weigh you, measure you. I remember Dick and all our past years. And I +consult my heart for you. And I don't know. I don't know. You are a +great man, my great lover. But Dick is a greater man than you. You-- +you are more clay, more--I grope to describe you--more human, I fancy. +And that is why I love you more... or at least I think perhaps I do. + +"But wait," she resisted him, prisoning his eager hand in hers. "There +is more I want to say. I remember Dick and all our past years. But I +remember him to-day, as well, and to-morrow. I cannot bear the thought +that any man should pity my husband, that you should pity him, and +pity him you must when I confess that I love you more. That is why I +am not sure. That is why I so quickly take it back and do not know. + +"I'd die of shame if through act of mine any man pitied Dick. Truly, I +would. Of all things ghastly, I can think of none so ghastly as Dick +being pitied. He has never been pitied in his life. He has always been +top-dog--bright, light, strong, unassailable. And more, he doesn't +deserve pity. And it's my fault... and yours, Evan." + +She abruptly thrust Evan's hand away. + +"And every act, every permitted touch of you, does make him pitiable. +Don't you see how tangled it is for me? And then there is my own +pride. That you should see me disloyal to him in little things, such +as this--" (she caught his hand again and caressed it with soft +finger-tips) "--hurts me in my love for you, diminishes me, must +diminish me in your eyes. I shrink from the thought that my disloyalty +to him in this I do--" (she laid his hand against her cheek) "--gives +you reason to pity him and censure me." + +She soothed the impatience of the hand on her cheek, and, almost +absently, musingly scrutinizing it without consciously seeing it, +turned it over and slowly kissed the palm. The next moment she was +drawn to her feet and into his arms. + +"There, you see," was her reproach as she disengaged herself. + + * * * * * + +"Why do you tell me all this about Dick?" Graham demanded another +time, as they walked their horses side by side. "To keep me away? To +protect yourself from me?" + +Paula nodded, then quickly added, "No, not quite that. Because you +know I don't want to keep you away ... too far. I say it because Dick +is so much in my mind. For twelve years, you realize, he filled my +mind. I say it because ... because I think it, I suppose. Think! The +situation! You are trespassing on a perfect marriage." + +"I know it," he answered. "And I do not like the role of trespasser. +It is your insistence, instead of going away with me, that I should +trespass. And I can't help it. I think away from you, try to force my +thoughts elsewhere. I did half a chapter this morning, and I know it's +rotten and will have to be rewritten. For I can't succeed in thinking +away from you. What is South America and its ethnology compared to +you? And when I come near you my arms go about you before I know what +I am doing. And, by God, you want them there, you want them there, you +know it." + +Paula gathered her reins in signal for a gallop, but first, with a +roguish smile, she acknowledged. + +"I do want them there, dear trespasser." + +Paula yielded and fought at the same time. + +"I love my husband--never forget that," she would warn Graham, and +within the minute be in his arms. + + * * * * * + +"There are only the three of us for once, thank goodness," Paula +cried, seizing Dick and Graham by the hands and leading them toward +Dick's favorite lounging couch in the big room. "Come, let us sit upon +the ground and tell sad stories of the deaths of kings. Come, milords, +and lordly perishers, and we will talk of Armageddon when the last sun +goes down." + +She was in a merry mood, and with surprise Dick observed her light a +cigarette. He could count on his fingers the cigarettes she had smoked +in a dozen years, and then, only under a hostess's provocation to give +countenance to some smoking woman guest. Later, when he mixed a +highball for himself and Graham, she again surprised him by asking him +to mix her a "wee" one. + +"This is Scotch," he warned. + +"Oh, a very wee one," she insisted, "and then we'll be three good +fellows together, winding up the world. And when you've got it all +wound up and ready, I'll sing you the song of the Valkyries." + +She took more part in the talk than usual, and strove to draw her +husband out. Nor was Dick unaware of this, although he yielded and +permitted himself to let go full tilt on the theme of the blond sun- +perishers. + +She is trying to make him compete--was Graham's thought. But Paula +scarcely thought of that phase of it, her pleasure consisting in the +spectacle of two such splendid men who were hers. They talk of big +game hunting, she mused once to herself; but did ever one small woman +capture bigger game than this? + +She sat cross-legged on the couch, where, by a turn of the head, she +could view Graham lounging comfortably in the big chair, or Dick, on +his elbow, sprawled among the cushions. And ever, as they talked, her +eyes roved from one to the other; and, as they spoke of struggle and +battle, always in the cold iron terms of realists, her own thoughts +became so colored, until she could look coolly at Dick with no further +urge of the pity that had intermittently ached her heart for days. + +She was proud of him--a goodly, eye-filling figure of a man to any +woman; but she no longer felt sorry for him. They were right. It was a +game. The race was to the swift, the battle to the strong. They had +run such races, fought such battles. Then why not she? And as she +continued to look, that self-query became reiterant. + +They were not anchorites, these two men. Liberal-lived they must have +been in that past out of which, like mysteries, they had come to her. +They had had the days and nights that women were denied--women such as +she. As for Dick, beyond all doubt--even had she heard whispers--there +had been other women in that wild career of his over the world. Men +were men, and they were two such men. She felt a burn of jealousy +against those unknown women who must have been, and her heart +hardened. They had taken their fun where they found it--Kipling's line +ran through her head. + +Pity? Why should she pity, any more than she should be pitied? The +whole thing was too big, too natural, for pity. They were taking a +hand in a big game, and all could not be winners. Playing with the +fancy, she wandered on to a consideration of the outcome. Always she +had avoided such consideration, but the tiny highball had given her +daring. It came to her that she saw doom ahead, doom vague and +formless but terrible. + +She was brought back to herself by Dick's hand before her eyes and +apparently plucking from the empty air the something upon which she +steadfastly stared. + +"Seeing things?" he teased, as her eyes turned to meet his. + +His were laughing, but she glimpsed in them what, despite herself, +made her veil her own with her long lashes. He knew. Beyond all +possibility of error she knew now that he knew. That was what she had +seen in his eyes and what had made her veil her own. + +"'Cynthia, Cynthia, I've been a-thinking,'" she gayly hummed to him; +and, as he resumed his talk, she reached and took a sip from his part- +empty glass. + +Let come what would, she asserted to herself, she would play it out. +It was all a madness, but it was life, it was living. She had never so +lived before, and it was worth it, no matter what inevitable payment +must be made in the end. Love?--had she ever really loved Dick as she +now felt herself capable of loving? Had she mistaken the fondness of +affection for love all these years? Her eyes warmed as they rested on +Graham, and she admitted that he had swept her as Dick never had. + +Unused to alcohol in such strength, her heart was accelerated; and +Dick, with casual glances, noted and knew the cause of the added +brilliance, the flushed vividness of cheeks and lips. + +He talked less and less, and the discussion of the sun-perishers died +of mutual agreement as to its facts. Finally, glancing at his watch, +he straightened up, yawned, stretched his arms and announced: + +"Bed-time he stop. Head belong this fellow white man too much sleepy +along him.--Nightcap, Evan?" + +Graham nodded, for both felt the need of a stiffener. + +"Mrs. Toper--nightcap?" Dick queried of Paula. + +But she shook her head and busied herself at the piano putting away +the music, while the men had their drink. + +Graham closed down the piano for her, while Dick waited in the +doorway, so that when they left he led them by a dozen feet. As they +came along, Graham, under her instructions, turned off the lights in +the halls. Dick waited where the ways diverged and where Graham would +have to say good night on his way to the tower room. + +The one remaining light was turned off. + +"Oh, not that one, silly," Dick heard Paula cry out. "We keep it on +all night." + +Dick heard nothing, but the dark was fervent to him. He cursed himself +for his own past embraces in the dark, for so the wisdom was given him +to know the quick embrace that had occurred, ere, the next moment, the +light flashed on again. + +He found himself lacking the courage to look at their faces as they +came toward him. He did not want to see Paula's frank eyes veiled by +her lashes, and he fumbled to light a cigarette while he cudgeled his +wits for the wording of an ordinary good night. + +"How goes the book?--what chapter?" he called after Graham down his +hall, as Paula put her hand in his. + +Her hand in his, swinging his, hopping and skipping and all a-chatter +in simulation of a little girl with a grown-up, Paula went on with +Dick; while he sadly pondered what ruse she had in mind by which to +avoid the long-avoided, good night kiss. + +Evidently she had not found it when they reached the dividing of the +ways that led to her quarters and to his. Still swinging his hand, +still buoyantly chattering fun, she continued with him into his +workroom. Here he surrendered. He had neither heart nor energy to wait +for her to develop whatever she contemplated. + +He feigned sudden recollection, deflected her by the hand to his desk, +and picked up a letter. + +"I'd promised myself to get a reply off on the first machine in the +morning," he explained, as he pressed on the phonograph and began +dictating. + +For a paragraph she still held his hand. Then he felt the parting +pressure of her fingers and her whispered good night. + +"Good night, little woman," he answered mechanically, and continued +dictating as if oblivious to her going. + +Nor did he cease until he knew she was well out of hearing. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII + + + +A dozen times that morning, dictating to Blake or indicating answers, +Dick had been on the verge of saying to let the rest of the +correspondence go. + +"Call up Hennessy and Mendenhall," he told Blake, when, at ten, the +latter gathered up his notes and rose to go. "You ought to catch them +at the stallion barn. Tell them not to come this morning but to-morrow +morning." + +Bonbright entered, prepared to shorthand Dick's conversations with his +managers for the next hour. + +"And--oh, Mr. Blake," Dick called. "Ask Hennessy about Alden Bessie.-- +The old mare was pretty bad last night," he explained to Bonbright. + +"Mr. Hanley must see you right away, Mr. Forrest," Bonbright said, and +added, at sight of the irritated drawing up of his employer's brows, +"It's the piping from Buckeye Dam. Something's wrong with the plans--a +serious mistake, he says." + +Dick surrendered, and for an hour discussed ranch business with his +foremen and managers. + +Once, in the middle of a hot discussion over sheep-dips with Wardman, +he left his desk and paced over to the window. The sound of voices and +horses, and of Paula's laugh, had attracted him. + +"Take that Montana report--I'll send you a copy to-day," he continued, +as he gazed out. "They found the formula didn't get down to it. It was +more a sedative than a germicide. There wasn't enough kick in it..." + +Four horses, bunched, crossed his field of vision. Paula, teasing the +pair of them, was between Martinez and Froelig, old friends of Dick, a +painter and sculptor respectively, who had arrived on an early train. +Graham, on Selim, made the fourth, and was slightly edged toward the +rear. So the party went by, but Dick reflected that quickly enough it +would resolve itself into two and two. + +Shortly after eleven, restless and moody, he wandered out with a +cigarette into the big patio, where he smiled grim amusement at the +various tell-tale signs of Paula's neglect of her goldfish. The sight +of them suggested her secret patio in whose fountain pools she kept +her selected and more gorgeous blooms of fish. Thither he went, +through doors without knobs, by ways known only to Paula and the +servants. + +This had been Dick's one great gift to Paula. It was love-lavish as +only a king of fortune could make it. He had given her a free hand +with it, and insisted on her wildest extravagance; and it had been his +delight to tease his quondam guardians with the stubs of the checkbook +she had used. It bore no relation to the scheme and architecture of +the Big House, and, for that matter, so deeply hidden was it that it +played no part in jar of line or color. A show-place of show-places, +it was not often shown. Outside Paula's sisters and intimates, on rare +occasions some artist was permitted to enter and catch his breath. +Graham had heard of its existence, but not even him had she invited to +see. + +It was round, and small enough to escape giving any cold hint of +spaciousness. The Big House was of sturdy concrete, but here was +marble in exquisite delicacy. The arches of the encircling arcade were +of fretted white marble that had taken on just enough tender green to +prevent any glare of reflected light. Palest of pink roses bloomed up +the pillars and over the low flat roof they upheld, where Puck-like, +humorous, and happy faces took the place of grinning gargoyles. Dick +strolled the rosy marble pavement of the arcade and let the beauty of +the place slowly steal in upon him and gentle his mood. + +The heart and key of the fairy patio was the fountain, consisting of +three related shallow basins at different levels, of white marble and +delicate as shell. Over these basins rollicked and frolicked life- +sized babies wrought from pink marble by no mean hand. Some peered +over the edges into lower basins, one reached arms covetously toward +the goldfish; one, on his back, laughed at the sky, another stood with +dimpled legs apart stretching himself, others waded, others were on +the ground amongst the roses white and blush, but all were of the +fountain and touched it at some point. So good was the color of the +marble, so true had been the sculptor, that the illusion was of life. +No cherubs these, but live warm human babies. + +Dick regarded the rosy fellowship pleasantly and long, finishing his +cigarette and retaining it dead in his hand. That was what she had +needed, he mused--babies, children. It had been her passion. Had she +realized it... He sighed, and, struck by a fresh thought, looked to +her favorite seat with certitude that he would not see the customary +sewing lying on it in a pretty heap. She did not sew these days. + +He did not enter the tiny gallery behind the arcade, which contained +her chosen paintings and etchings, and copies in marble and bronze of +her favorites of the European galleries. Instead he went up the +stairway, past the glorious Winged Victory on the landing where the +staircase divided, and on and up into her quarters that occupied the +entire upper wing. But first, pausing by the Victory, he turned and +gazed down into the fairy patio. The thing was a cut jewel in its +perfectness and color, and he acknowledged, although he had made it +possible for her, that it was entirely her own creation--her one +masterpiece. It had long been her dream, and he had realized it for +her. And yet now, he meditated, it meant nothing to her. She was not +mercenary, that he knew; and if he could not hold her, mere baubles +such as that would weigh nothing in the balance against her heart. + +He wandered idly through her rooms, scarcely noting at what he gazed, +but gazing with fondness at it all. Like everything else of hers, it +was distinctive, different, eloquent of her. But when he glanced into +the bathroom with its sunken Roman bath, for the life of him he was +unable to avoid seeing a tiny drip and making a mental note for the +ranch plumber. + +As a matter of course, he looked to her easel with the expectation of +finding no new work, but was disappointed; for a portrait of himself +confronted him. He knew her trick of copying the pose and lines from a +photograph and filling in from memory. The particular photograph she +was using had been a fortunate snapshop of him on horseback. The +Outlaw, for once and for a moment, had been at peace, and Dick, hat in +hand, hair just nicely rumpled, face in repose, unaware of the +impending snap, had at the instant looked squarely into the camera. No +portrait photographer could have caught a better likeness. The head +and shoulders Paula had had enlarged, and it was from this that she +was working. But the portrait had already gone beyond the photograph, +for Dick could see her own touches. + +With a start he looked more closely. Was that expression of the eyes, +of the whole face, his? He glanced at the photograph. It was not +there. He walked over to one of the mirrors, relaxed his face, and led +his thoughts to Paula and Graham. Slowly the expression came into his +eyes and face. Not content, he returned to the easel and verified it. +Paula knew. Paula knew that he knew. She had learned it from him, +stolen it from him some time when it was unwittingly on his face, and +carried it in her memory to the canvas. + +Paula's Chinese maid, Oh Dear, entered from the wardrobe room, and +Dick watched her unobserved as she came down the room toward him. Her +eyes were down, and she seemed deep in thought. Dick remarked the +sadness of her face, and that the little, solicitous contraction of +the brows that had led to her naming was gone. She was not solicitous, +that was patent. But cast down, she was, in heavy depression. + +It would seem that all our faces are beginning to say things, he +commented to himself. + +"Good morning, Oh Dear," he startled her. + +And as she returned the greeting, he saw compassion in her eyes as +they dwelt on him. She knew. The first outside themselves. Trust her, +a woman, so much in Paula's company when Paula was alone, to divine +Paula's secret. + +Oh Dear's lips trembled, and she wrung her trembling hands, nerving +herself, as he could see, to speech. + +"Mister Forrest," she began haltingly, "maybe you think me fool, but I +like say something. You very kind man. You very kind my old mother. +You very kind me long long time..." + +She hesitated, moistening her frightened lips with her tongue, then +braved her eyes to his and proceeded. + +"Mrs. Forrest, she, I think..." + +But so forbidding did Dick's face become that she broke off in +confusion and blushed, as Dick surmised, with shame at the thoughts +she had been about to utter. + +"Very nice picture Mrs. Forrest make," he put her at her ease. + +The Chinese girl sighed, and the same compassion returned into her +eyes as she looked long at Dick's portrait. + +She sighed again, but the coldness in her voice was not lost on Dick +as she answered: "Yes, very nice picture Mrs. Forrest make." + +She looked at him with sudden sharp scrutiny, studying his face, then +turned to the canvas and pointed at the eyes. + +"No good," she condemned. + +Her voice was harsh, touched with anger. + +"No good," she flung over her shoulder, more loudly, still more +harshly, as she continued down the room and out of sight on Paula's +sleeping porch. + +Dick stiffened his shoulders, unconsciously bracing himself to face +what was now soon to happen. Well, it was the beginning of the end. Oh +Dear knew. Soon more would know, all would know. And in a way he was +glad of it, glad that the torment of suspense would endure but little +longer. + +But when he started to leave he whistled a merry jingle to advertise +to Oh Dear that the world wagged very well with him so far as he knew +anything about it. + + * * * * * + +The same afternoon, while Dick was out and away with Froelig and +Martinez and Graham, Paula stole a pilgrimage to Dick's quarters. Out +on his sleeping porch she looked over his rows of press buttons, his +switchboard that from his bed connected him with every part of the +ranch and most of the rest of California, his phonograph on the hinged +and swinging bracket, the orderly array of books and magazines and +agricultural bulletins waiting to be read, the ash tray, cigarettes, +scribble pads, and thermos bottle. + +Her photograph, the only picture on the porch, held her attention. It +hung under his barometers and thermometers, which, she knew, was where +he looked oftenest. A fancy came to her, and she turned the laughing +face to the wall and glanced from the blankness of the back of the +frame to the bed and back again. With a quick panic movement, she +turned the laughing face out. It belonged, was her thought; it did +belong. + +The big automatic pistol in the holster on the wall, handy to one's +hand from the bed, caught her eye. She reached to it and lifted gently +at the butt. It was as she had expected--loose--Dick's way. Trust him, +no matter how long unused, never to let a pistol freeze in its +holster. + +Back in the work room she wandered solemnly about, glancing now at the +prodigious filing system, at the chart and blue-print cabinets, at the +revolving shelves of reference books, and at the long rows of stoutly +bound herd registers. At last she came to his books--a goodly row of +pamphlets, bound magazine articles, and an even dozen ambitious tomes. +She read the titles painstakingly: "Corn in California," "Silage +Practice," "Farm Organization," "Farm Book-keeping," "The Shire in +America," "Humus Destruction," "Soilage," "Alfalfa in California," +"Cover Crops for California," "The Shorthorn in America"--at this last +she smiled affectionately with memory of the great controversy he had +waged for the beef cow and the milch cow as against the dual purpose +cow. + +She caressed, the backs of the books with her palm, pressed her cheek +against them and leaned with closed eyes. Oh, Dick, Dick--a thought +began that faded to a vagueness of sorrow and died because she did not +dare to think it. + +The desk was so typically Dick. There was no litter. Clean it was of +all work save the wire tray with typed letters waiting his signature +and an unusual pile of the flat yellow sheets on which his secretaries +typed the telegrams relayed by telephone from Eldorado. Carelessly she +ran her eyes over the opening lines of the uppermost sheet and chanced +upon a reference that puzzled and interested her. She read closely, +with in-drawn brows, then went deeper into the heap till she found +confirmation. Jeremy Braxton was dead--big, genial, kindly Jeremy +Braxton. A Mexican mob of pulque-crazed peons had killed him in the +mountains through which he had been trying to escape from the Harvest +into Arizona. The date of the telegram was two days old. Dick had +known it for two days and never worried her with it. And it meant +more. It meant money. It meant that the affairs of the Harvest Group +were going from bad to worse. And it was Dick's way. + +And Jeremy was dead. The room seemed suddenly to have grown cold. She +shivered. It was the way of life--death always at the end of the road. +And her own nameless dread came back upon her. Doom lay ahead. Doom +for whom? She did not attempt to guess. Sufficient that it was doom. +Her mind was heavy with it, and the quiet room was heavy with it as +she passed slowly out. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX + + + +"'Tis a birdlike sensuousness that is all the Little Lady's own," +Terrence was saying, as he helped himself to a cocktail from the tray +Ah Ha was passing around. + +It was the hour before dinner, and Graham, Leo and Terrence McFane had +chanced together in the stag-room. + +"No, Leo," the Irishman warned the young poet. "Let the one suffice +you. Your cheeks are warm with it. A second one and you'll +conflagrate. 'Tis no right you have to be mixing beauty and strong +drink in that lad's head of yours. Leave the drink to your elders. +There is such a thing as consanguinity for drink. You have it not. As +for me--" + +He emptied the glass and paused to turn the cocktail reminiscently on +his tongue. + +"'Tis women's drink," he shook his head in condemnation. "It likes me +not. It bites me not. And devil a bit of a taste is there to it.--Ah +Ha, my boy," he called to the Chinese, "mix me a highball in a long, +long glass--a stiff one." + +He held up four fingers horizontally to indicate the measure of liquor +he would have in the glass, and, to Ah Ha's query as to what kind of +whiskey, answered, "Scotch or Irish, bourbon or rye--whichever comes +nearest to hand." + +Graham shook his head to the Chinese, and laughed to the Irishman. +"You'll never drink me down, Terrence. I've not forgotten what you did +to O'Hay." + +"'Twas an accident I would have you think," was the reply. "They say +when a man's not feeling any too fit a bit of drink will hit him like +a club." + +"And you?" Graham questioned. + +"Have never been hit by a club. I am a man of singularly few +experiences." + +"But, Terrence, you were saying... about Mrs. Forrest?" Leo begged. +"It sounded as if it were going to be nice." + +"As if it could be otherwise," Terrence censured. "But as I was +saying, 'tis a bird-like sensuousness--oh, not the little, hoppy, +wagtail kind, nor yet the sleek and solemn dove, but a merry sort of +bird, like the wild canaries you see bathing in the fountains, always +twittering and singing, flinging the water in the sun, and glowing the +golden hearts of them on their happy breasts. 'Tis like that the +Little Lady is. I have observed her much. + +"Everything on the earth and under the earth and in the sky +contributes to the passion of her days--the untoward purple of the +ground myrtle when it has no right to aught more than pale lavender, a +single red rose tossing in the bathing wind, one perfect Duchesse rose +bursting from its bush into the sunshine, as she said to me, 'pink as +the dawn, Terrence, and shaped like a kiss.' + +"'Tis all one with her--the Princess's silver neigh, the sheep bells +of a frosty morn, the pretty Angora goats making silky pictures on the +hillside all day long, the drifts of purple lupins along the fences, +the long hot grass on slope and roadside, the summer-burnt hills tawny +as crouching lions--and even have I seen the sheer sensuous pleasure +of the Little Lady with bathing her arms and neck in the blessed sun." + +"She is the soul of beauty," Leo murmured. "One understands how men +can die for women such as she." + +"And how men can live for them, and love them, the lovely things," +Terrence added. "Listen, Mr. Graham, and I'll tell you a secret. We +philosophers of the madroño grove, we wrecks and wastages of life here +in the quiet backwater and easement of Dick's munificence, are a +brotherhood of lovers. And the lady of our hearts is all the one--the +Little Lady. We, who merely talk and dream our days away, and who +would lift never a hand for God, or country, or the devil, are pledged +knights of the Little Lady." + +"We would die for her," Leo affirmed, slowly nodding his head. + +"Nay, lad, we would live for her and fight for her, dying is that +easy." + +Graham missed nothing of it. The boy did not understand, but in the +blue eyes of the Celt, peering from under the mop of iron-gray hair, +there was no mistaking the knowledge of the situation. + +Voices of men were heard coming down the stairs, and, as Martinez and +Dar Hyal entered, Terrence was saying: + +"'Tis fine weather they say they're having down at Catalina now, and I +hear the tunny fish are biting splendid." + +Ah Ha served cocktails around, and was kept busy, for Hancock and +Froelig followed along. Terrence impartially drank stiff highballs of +whatever liquor the immobile-faced Chinese elected to serve him, and +discoursed fatherly to Leo on the iniquities and abominations of the +flowing bowl. + +Oh My entered, a folded note in his hand, and looked about in doubt as +to whom to give it. + +"Hither, wing-heeled Celestial," Terrence waved him up. + +"'Tis a petition, couched in very proper terms," Terrence explained, +after a glance at its contents. "And Ernestine and Lute have arrived, +for 'tis they that petition. Listen." And he read: "'Oh, noble and +glorious stags, two poor and lowly meek-eyed does, wandering lonely in +the forest, do humbly entreat admission for the brief time before +dinner to the stamping ground of the herd.' + +"The metaphor is mixed," said Terrence. "Yet have they acted well. +'Tis the rule--Dick's rule--and a good rule it is: no petticoats in +the stag-room save by the stags' unanimous consent.--Is the herd ready +for the question? All those in favor will say 'Aye.'--Contrary +minded?--The ayes have it. + +"Oh My, fleet with thy heels and bring in the ladies." + +"'With sandals beaten from the crowns of kings,'" Leo added, murmuring +the words reverently, loving them with his lips as his lips formed +them and uttered them. + +"'Shall he tread down the altars of their night,'" Terrence completed +the passage. "The man who wrote that is a great man. He is Leo's +friend, and Dick's friend, and proud am I that he is my friend." + +"And that other line," Leo said. "From the same sonnet," he explained +to Graham. "Listen to the sound of it: 'To hear what song the star of +morning sings'--oh, listen," the boy went on, his voice hushed low +with beauty-love for the words: "'With perished beauty in his hands as +clay, Shall he restore futurity its dream--'" + +He broke off as Paula's sisters entered, and rose shyly to greet them. + + * * * * * + +Dinner that night was as any dinner at which the madroño sages were +present. Dick was as robustly controversial as usual, locking horns +with Aaron Hancock on Bergson, attacking the latter's metaphysics in +sharp realistic fashion. + +"Your Bergson is a charlatan philosopher, Aaron," Dick concluded. "He +has the same old medicine-man's bag of metaphysical tricks, all decked +out and frilled with the latest ascertained facts of science." + +"'Tis true," Terrence agreed. "Bergson is a charlatan thinker. 'Tis +why he is so popular--" + +"I deny--" Hancock broke in. + +"Wait a wee, Aaron. 'Tis a thought I have glimmered. Let me catch it +before it flutters away into the azure. Dick's caught Bergson with the +goods on him, filched straight from the treasure-house of science. His +very cocksureness is filched from Darwin's morality of strength based +on the survival of the fittest. And what did Bergson do with it? +Touched it up with a bit of James' pragmatism, rosied it over with the +eternal hope in man's breast that he will live again, and made it all +a-shine with Nietzsche's 'nothing succeeds like excess--'" + +"Wilde's, you mean," corrected Ernestine. + +"Heaven knows I should have filched it for myself had you not been +present," Terrence sighed, with a bow to her. "Some day the +antiquarians will decide the authorship. Personally I would say it +smacked of Methuselah--But as I was saying, before I was delightfully +interrupted..." + +"Who more cocksure than Dick?" Aaron was challenging a little later; +while Paula glanced significantly to Graham. + +"I was looking at the herd of yearling stallions but yesterday," +Terrence replied, "and with the picture of the splendid beasties still +in my eyes I'll ask: And who more delivers the goods?" + +"But Hancock's objection is solid," Martinez ventured. "It would be a +mean and profitless world without mystery. Dick sees no mystery." + +"There you wrong him," Terrence defended. "I know him well. Dick +recognizes mystery, but not of the nursery-child variety. No cock-and- +bull stories for him, such as you romanticists luxuriate in." + +"Terrence gets me," Dick nodded. "The world will always be mystery. To +me man's consciousness is no greater mystery than the reaction of the +gases that make a simple drop of water. Grant that mystery, and all +the more complicated phenomena cease to be mysteries. That simple +chemical reaction is like one of the axioms on which the edifice of +geometry is reared. Matter and force are the everlasting mysteries, +manifesting themselves in the twin mysteries of space and time. The +manifestations are not mysteries--only the stuff of the +manifestations, matter and force; and the theater of the +manifestations, space and time." + +Dick ceased and idly watched the expressionless Ah Ha and Ah Me who +chanced at the moment to be serving opposite him. Their faces did not +talk, was his thought; although ten to one was a fair bet that they +were informed with the same knowledge that had perturbed Oh Dear. + +"And there you are," Terrence was triumphing. "'Tis the perfect joy of +him--never up in the air with dizzy heels. Flat on the good ground he +stands, four square to fact and law, set against all airy fancies and +bubbly speculations...." + + * * * * * + +And as at table, so afterward that evening no one could have guessed +from Dick that all was not well with him. He seemed bent on +celebrating Lute's and Ernestine's return, refused to tolerate the +heavy talk of the philosophers, and bubbled over with pranks and +tricks. Paula yielded to the contagion, and aided and abetted him in +his practical jokes which none escaped. + +Choicest among these was the kiss of welcome. No man escaped it. To +Graham was accorded the honor of receiving it first so that he might +witness the discomfiture of the others, who, one by one, were ushered +in by Dick from the patio. + +Hancock, Dick's arm guiding him, came down the room to confront Paula +and her sisters standing in a row on three chairs in the middle of the +floor. He scanned them suspiciously, and insisted upon walking around +behind them. But there seemed nothing unusual about them save that +each wore a man's felt hat. + +"Looks good to me," Hancock announced, as he stood on the floor before +them and looked up at them. + +"And it is good," Dick assured him. "As representing the ranch in its +fairest aspects, they are to administer the kiss of welcome. Make your +choice, Aaron." + +Aaron, with a quick whirl to catch some possible lurking disaster at +his back, demanded, "They are all three to kiss me?" + +"No, make your choice which is to give you the kiss." + +"The two I do not choose will not feel that I have discriminated +against them?" Aaron insisted. + +"Whiskers no objection?" was his next query. + +"Not in the way at all," Lute told him. "I have always wondered what +it would be like to kiss black whiskers." + +"Here's where all the philosophers get kissed tonight, so hurry up," +Ernestine said. "The others are waiting. I, too, have yet to be kissed +by an alfalfa field." + +"Whom do you choose?" Dick urged. + +"As if, after that, there were any choice about it," Hancock returned +jauntily. "I kiss my lady--the Little Lady." + +As he put up his lips, Paula bent her head forward, and, nicely +directed, from the indented crown of her hat canted a glassful of +water into his face. + +When Leo's turn came, he bravely made his choice of Paula and nearly +spoiled the show by reverently bending and kissing the hem of her +gown. + +"It will never do," Ernestine told him. "It must be a real kiss. Put +up your lips to be kissed." + +"Let the last be first and kiss me, Leo," Lute begged, to save him +from his embarrassment. + +He looked his gratitude, put up his lips, but without enough tilt of +his head, so that he received the water from Lute's hat down the back +of his neck. + +"All three shall kiss me and thus shall paradise be thrice +multiplied," was Terrence's way out of the difficulty; and +simultaneously he received three crowns of water for his gallantry. + +Dick's boisterousness waxed apace. His was the most care-free seeming +in the world as he measured Froelig and Martinez against the door to +settle the dispute that had arisen as to whether Froelig or Martinez +was the taller. + +"Knees straight and together, heads back," Dick commanded. + +And as their heads touched the wood, from the other side came a +rousing thump that jarred them. The door swung open, revealing +Ernestine with a padded gong-stick in either hand. + +Dick, a high-heeled satin slipper in his hand, was under a sheet with +Terrence, teaching him "Brother Bob I'm bobbed" to the uproarious joy +of the others, when the Masons and Watsons and all their Wickenberg +following entered upon the scene. + +Whereupon Dick insisted that the young men of their party receive the +kiss of welcome. Nor did he miss, in the hubbub of a dozen persons +meeting as many more, Lottie Mason's: "Oh, good evening, Mr. Graham. I +thought you had gone." + +And Dick, in the midst of the confusion of settling such an influx of +guests, still maintaining his exuberant jolly pose, waited for that +sharp scrutiny that women have only for women. Not many moments later +he saw Lottie Mason steal such a look, keen with speculation, at Paula +as she chanced face to face with Graham, saying something to him. + +Not yet, was Dick's conclusion. Lottie did not know. But suspicion was +rife, and nothing, he was certain, under the circumstances, would +gladden her woman's heart more than to discover the unimpeachable +Paula as womanly weak as herself. + +Lottie Mason was a tall, striking brunette of twenty-five, undeniably +beautiful, and, as Dick had learned, undeniably daring. In the not +remote past, attracted by her, and, it must be submitted, subtly +invited by her, he had been guilty of a philandering that he had not +allowed to go as far as her wishes. The thing had not been serious on +his part. Nor had he permitted it to become serious on her side. +Nevertheless, sufficient flirtatious passages had taken place to impel +him this night to look to her, rather than to the other Wickenberg +women, for the first signals of suspicion. + +"Oh, yes, he's a beautiful dancer," Dick, as he came up to them half +an hour later, heard Lottie Mason telling little Miss Maxwell. "Isn't +he, Dick?" she appealed to him, with innocent eyes of candor through +which disguise he knew she was studying him. + +"Who?--Graham, you must mean," he answered with untroubled directness. +"He certainly is. What do you say we start dancing and let Miss +Maxwell see? Though there's only one woman here who can give him full +swing to show his paces." + +"Paula, of course," said Lottie. + +"Paula, of course. Why, you young chits don't know how to waltz. You +never had a chance to learn."--Lottie tossed her fine head. "Perhaps +you learned a little before the new dancing came in," he amended. +"Anyway, I'll get Evan and Paula started, you take me on, and I'll +wager we'll be the only couples on the floor." + +Half through the waltz, he broke it off with: "Let them have the floor +to themselves. It's worth seeing." + +And, glowing with appreciation, he stood and watched his wife and +Graham finish the dance, while he knew that Lottie, beside him, +stealing side glances at him, was having her suspicions allayed. + +The dancing became general, and, the evening being warm, the big doors +to the patio were thrown open. Now one couple, and now another, danced +out and down the long arcades where the moonlight streamed, until it +became the general thing. + +"What a boy he is," Paula said to Graham, as they listened to Dick +descanting to all and sundry on the virtues of his new night camera. +"You heard Aaron complaining at table, and Terrence explaining, his +sureness. Nothing terrible has ever happened to him in his life. He +has never been overthrown. His sureness has always been vindicated. As +Terrence said, it has always delivered the goods. He does know, he +does know, and yet he is so sure of himself, so sure of me." + +Graham taken away to dance with Miss Maxwell, Paula continued her +train of thought to herself. Dick was not suffering so much after all. +And she might have expected it. He was the cool-head, the philosopher. +He would take her loss with the same equanimity as he would take the +loss of Mountain Lad, as he had taken the death of Jeremy Braxton and +the flooding of the Harvest mines. It was difficult, she smiled to +herself, aflame as she was toward Graham, to be married to a +philosopher who would not lift a hand to hold her. And it came to her +afresh that one phase of Graham's charm for her was his humanness, his +flamingness. They met on common ground. At any rate, even in the +heyday of their coming together in Paris, Dick had not so inflamed +her. A wonderful lover he had been, too, with his gift of speech and +lover's phrases, with his love-chants that had so delighted her; but +somehow it was different from this what she felt for Graham and what +Graham must feel for her. Besides, she had been most young in +experience of love and lovers in that long ago when Dick had burst so +magnificently upon her. + +And so thinking, she hardened toward him and recklessly permitted +herself to flame toward Graham. The crowd, the gayety, the excitement, +the closeness and tenderness of contact in the dancing, the summer- +warm of the evening, the streaming moonlight, and the night-scents of +flowers--all fanned her ardency, and she looked forward eagerly to the +at least one more dance she might dare with Graham. + +"No flash light is necessary," Dick was explaining. "It's a German +invention. Half a minute exposure under the ordinary lighting is +sufficient. And the best of it is that the plate can be immediately +developed just like an ordinary blue print. Of course, the drawback is +one cannot print from the plate." + +"But if it's good, an ordinary plate can be copied from it from which +prints can be made," Ernestine amplified. + +She knew the huge, twenty-foot, spring snake coiled inside the camera +and ready to leap out like a jack-in-the-box when Dick squeezed the +bulb. And there were others who knew and who urged Dick to get the +camera and make an exposure. + +He was gone longer than he expected, for Bonbright had left on his +desk several telegrams concerning the Mexican situation that needed +immediate replies. Trick camera in hand, Dick returned by a short cut +across the house and patio. The dancing couples were ebbing down the +arcade and disappearing into the hall, and he leaned against a pillar +and watched them go by. Last of all came Paula and Evan, passing so +close that he could have reached out and touched them. But, though the +moon shone full on him, they did not see him. They saw only each other +in the tender sport of gazing. + +The last preceding couple was already inside when the music ceased. +Graham and Paula paused, and he was for giving her his arm and leading +her inside, but she clung to him in sudden impulse. Man-like, +cautious, he slightly resisted for a moment, but with one arm around +his neck she drew his head willingly down to the kiss. It was a flash +of quick passion. The next instant, Paula on his arm, they were +passing in and Paula's laugh was ringing merrily and naturally. + +Dick clutched at the pillar and eased himself down abruptly until he +sat flat on the pavement. Accompanying violent suffocation, or causing +it, his heart seemed rising in his chest. He panted for air. The +cursed thing rose and choked and stifled him until, in the grim turn +his fancy took, it seemed to him that he chewed it between his teeth +and gulped it back and down his throat along with the reviving air. He +felt chilled, and was aware that he was wet with sudden sweat. + +"And who ever heard of heart disease in the Forrests?" he muttered, +as, still sitting, leaning against the pillar for support, he mopped +his face dry. His hand was shaking, and he felt a slight nausea from +an internal quivering that still persisted. + +It was not as if Graham had kissed her, he pondered. It was Paula who +had kissed Graham. That was love, and passion. He had seen it, and as +it burned again before his eyes, he felt his heart surge, and the +premonitory sensation of suffocation seized him. With a sharp effort +of will he controlled himself and got to his feet. + +"By God, it came up in my mouth and I chewed it," he muttered. "I +chewed it." + +Returning across the patio by the round-about way, he entered the +lighted room jauntily enough, camera in hand, and unprepared for the +reception he received. + +"Seen a ghost?" Lute greeted. + +"Are you sick?"--"What's the matter?" were other questions. + +"What _is_ the matter?" he countered. + +"Your face--the look of it," Ernestine said. "Something has happened. +What is it?" + +And while he oriented himself he did not fail to note Lottie Mason's +quick glance at the faces of Graham and Paula, nor to note that +Ernestine had observed Lottie's glance and followed it up for herself. + +"Yes," he lied. "Bad news. Just got the word. Jeremy Braxton is dead. +Murdered. The Mexicans got him while he was trying to escape into +Arizona." + +"Old Jeremy, God love him for the fine man he was," Terrence said, +tucking his arm in Dick's. "Come on, old man, 'tis a stiffener you're +wanting and I'm the lad to lead you to it." + +"Oh, I'm all right," Dick smiled, shaking his shoulders and squaring +himself as if gathering himself together. "It did hit me hard for the +moment. I hadn't a doubt in the world but Jeremy would make it out all +right. But they got him, and two engineers with him. They put up a +devil of a fight first. They got under a cliff and stood off a mob of +half a thousand for a day and night. And then the Mexicans tossed +dynamite down from above. Oh, well, all flesh is grass, and there is +no grass of yesteryear. Terrence, your suggestion is a good one. Lead +on." + +After a few steps he turned his head over his shoulder and called +back: "Now this isn't to stop the fun. I'll be right back to take that +photograph. You arrange the group, Ernestine, and be sure to have them +under the strongest light." + +Terrence pressed open the concealed buffet at the far end of the room +and set out the glasses, while Dick turned on a wall light and studied +his face in the small mirror inside the buffet door. + +"It's all right now, quite natural," he announced. + +"'Twas only a passing shade," Terrence agreed, pouring the whiskey. +"And man has well the right to take it hard the going of old friends." + +They toasted and drank silently. + +"Another one," Dick said, extending his glass. + +"Say 'when,'" said the Irishman, and with imperturbable eyes he +watched the rising tide of liquor in the glass. + +Dick waited till it was half full. + +Again they toasted and drank silently, eyes to eyes, and Dick was +grateful for the offer of all his heart that he read in Terrence's +eyes. + +Back in the middle of the hall, Ernestine was gayly grouping the +victims, and privily, from the faces of Lottie, Paula, and Graham, +trying to learn more of the something untoward that she sensed. Why +had Lottie looked so immediately and searchingly at Graham and Paula? +--she asked herself. And something was wrong with Paula now. She was +worried, disturbed, and not in the way to be expected from the +announcement of Jeremy Braxton's death. From Graham, Ernestine could +glean nothing. He was quite his ordinary self, his facetiousness the +cause of much laughter to Miss Maxwell and Mrs. Watson. + +Paula was disturbed. What had happened? Why had Dick lied? He had +known of Jeremy's death for two days. And she had never known +anybody's death so to affect him. She wondered if he had been drinking +unduly. In the course of their married life she had seen him several +times in liquor. He carried it well, the only noticeable effects being +a flush in his eyes and a loosening of his tongue to whimsical fancies +and extemporized chants. Had he, in his trouble, been drinking with +the iron-headed Terrence down in the stag room? She had found them all +assembled there just before dinner. The real cause for Dick's +strangeness never crossed her mind, if, for no other reason, than that +he was not given to spying. + +He came back, laughing heartily at a joke of Terrence's, and beckoned +Graham to join them while Terrence repeated it. And when the three had +had their laugh, he prepared to take the picture. The burst of the +huge snake from the camera and the genuine screams of the startled +women served to dispel the gloom that threatened, and next Dick was +arranging a tournament of peanut-carrying. + +From chair to chair, placed a dozen yards apart, the feat was with a +table knife to carry the most peanuts in five minutes. After the +preliminary try-out, Dick chose Paula for his partner, and challenged +the world, Wickenberg and the madroño grove included. Many boxes of +candy were wagered, and in the end he and Paula won out against Graham +and Ernestine, who had proved the next best couple. Demands for a +speech changed to clamor for a peanut song. Dick complied, beating the +accent, Indian fashion, with stiff-legged hops and hand-slaps on +thighs. + +"I am Dick Forrest, son of Richard the Lucky, Son of Jonathan the +Puritan, son of John who was a sea-rover, as his father Albert before +him, who was the son of Mortimer, a pirate who was hanged in chains +and died without issue. + +"I am the last of the Forrests, but first of the peanut-carriers. +Neither Nimrod nor Sandow has anything on me. I carry the peanuts on a +knife, a silver knife. The peanuts are animated by the devil. I carry +the peanuts with grace and celerity and in quantity. The peanut never +sprouted that can best me. + +"The peanuts roll. The peanuts roll. Like Atlas who holds the world, I +never let them fall. Not every one can carry peanuts. I am God-gifted. +I am master of the art. It is a fine art. The peanuts roll, the +peanuts roll, and I carry them on forever. + +"Aaron is a philosopher. He cannot carry peanuts. Ernestine is a +blonde. She cannot carry peanuts. Evan is a sportsman. He drops +peanuts. Paula is my partner. She fumbles peanuts. Only I, I, by the +grace of God and my own cleverness, carry peanuts. + +"When anybody has had enough of my song, throw something at me. I am +proud. I am tireless. I can sing on forever. I shall sing on forever. + +"Here beginneth the second canto. When I die, bury me in a peanut +patch. While I live--" + +The expected avalanche of cushions quenched his song but not his +ebullient spirits, for he was soon in a corner with Lottie Mason and +Paula concocting a conspiracy against Terrence. + +And so the evening continued to be danced and joked and played away. +At midnight supper was served, and not till two in the morning were +the Wickenbergers ready to depart. While they were getting on their +wraps, Paula was proposing for the following afternoon a trip down to +the Sacramento River to look over Dick's experiment in rice-raising. + +"I had something else in view," he told her. "You know the mountain +pasture above Sycamore Creek. Three yearlings have been killed there +in the last ten days." + +"Mountain lions!" Paula cried. + +"Two at least.--Strayed in from the north," he explained to Graham. +"They sometimes do that. We got three five years ago.--Moss and +Hartley will be there with the dogs waiting. They've located two of +the beasts. What do you say all of you join me. We can leave right +after lunch." + +"Let me have Mollie?" Lute asked. + +"And you can ride Altadena," Paula told Ernestine. + +Quickly the mounts were decided upon, Froelig and Martinez agreeing to +go, but promising neither to shoot well nor ride well. + +All went out to see the Wickenbergers off, and, after the machines +were gone, lingered to make arrangements for the hunting. + +"Good night, everybody," Dick said, as they started to move inside. +"I'm going to take a look at Alden Bessie before I turn in. Hennessy +is sitting up with her. Remember, you girls, come to lunch in your +riding togs, and curses on the head of whoever's late." + +The ancient dam of the Fotherington Princess was in a serious way, but +Dick would not have made the visit at such an hour, save that he +wanted to be by himself and that he could not nerve himself for a +chance moment alone with Paula so soon after what he had overseen in +the patio. + +Light steps in the gravel made him turn his head. Ernestine caught up +with him and took his arm. + +"Poor old Alden Bessie," she explained. "I thought I'd go along." + +Dick, still acting up to his night's rôle, recalled to her various +funny incidents of the evening, and laughed and chuckled with +reminiscent glee. + +"Dick," she said in the first pause, "you are in trouble." She could +feel him stiffen, and hurried on: "What can I do? You know you can +depend on me. Tell me." + +"Yes, I'll tell you," he answered. "Just one thing." She pressed his +arm gratefully. "I'll have a telegram sent you to-morrow. It will be +urgent enough, though not too serious. You will just bundle up and +depart with Lute." + +"Is that all?" she faltered. + +"It will be a great favor." + +"You won't talk with me?" she protested, quivering under the rebuff. + +"I'll have the telegram come so as to rout you out of bed. And now +never mind Alden Bessie. You run a long in. Good night." + +He kissed her, gently thrust her toward the house, and went on his +way. + + + + +CHAPTER XXX + + + +On the way back from the sick mare, Dick paused once to listen to the +restless stamp of Mountain Lad and his fellows in the stallion barn. +In the quiet air, from somewhere up the hills, came the ringing of a +single bell from some grazing animal. A cat's-paw of breeze fanned him +with sudden balmy warmth. All the night was balmy with the faint and +almost aromatic scent of ripening grain and drying grass. The stallion +stamped again, and Dick, with a deep breath and realization that never +had he more loved it all, looked up and circled the sky-line where the +crests of the mountains blotted the field of stars. + +"No, Cato," he mused aloud. "One cannot agree with you. Man does not +depart from life as from an inn. He departs as from a dwelling, the +one dwelling he will ever know. He departs ... nowhere. It is good +night. For him the Noiseless One ... and the dark." + +He made as if to start, but once again the stamp of the stallions held +him, and the hillside bell rang out. He drew a deep inhalation through +his nostrils of the air of balm, and loved it, and loved the fair land +of his devising. + +"'I looked into time and saw none of me there,'" he quoted, then +capped it, smiling, with a second quotation: "'She gat me nine great +sons.... The other nine were daughters.'" + +Back at the house, he did not immediately go in, but stood a space +gazing at the far flung lines of it. Nor, inside, did he immediately +go to his own quarters. Instead, he wandered through the silent rooms, +across the patios, and along the dim-lit halls. His frame of mind was +as of one about to depart on a journey. He pressed on the lights in +Paula's fairy patio, and, sitting in an austere Roman seat of marble, +smoked a cigarette quite through while he made his plans. + +Oh, he would do it nicely enough. He could pull off a hunting accident +that would fool the world. Trust him not to bungle it. Next day would +be the day, in the woods above Sycamore Creek. Grandfather Jonathan +Forrest, the straight-laced Puritan, had died of a hunting accident. +For the first time Dick doubted that accident. Well, if it hadn't been +an accident, the old fellow had done it well. It had never been hinted +in the family that it was aught but an accident. + +His hand on the button to turn off the lights, Dick delayed a moment +for a last look at the marble babies that played in the fountain and +among the roses. + +"So long, younglings," he called softly to them. "You're the nearest I +ever came to it." + +From his sleeping porch he looked across the big patio to Paula's +porch. There was no light. The chance was she slept. + +On the edge of the bed, he found himself with one shoe unlaced, and, +smiling at his absentness, relaced it. What need was there for him to +sleep? It was already four in the morning. He would at least watch his +last sunrise. Last things were coming fast. Already had he not dressed +for the last time? And the bath of the previous morning would be his +last. Mere water could not stay the corruption of death. He would have +to shave, however--a last vanity, for the hair did continue to grow +for a time on dead men's faces. + +He brought a copy of his will from the wall-safe to his desk and read +it carefully. Several minor codicils suggested themselves, and he +wrote them out in long-hand, pre-dating them six months as a +precaution. The last was the endowment of the sages of the madroño +grove with a fellowship of seven. + +He ran through his life insurance policies, verifying the permitted +suicide clause in each one; signed the tray of letters that had waited +his signature since the previous morning; and dictated a letter into +the phonograph to the publisher of his books. His desk cleaned, he +scrawled a quick summary of income and expense, with all earnings from +the Harvest mines deducted. He transposed the summary into a second +summary, increasing the expense margins, and cutting down the income +items to an absurdest least possible. Still the result was +satisfactory. + +He tore up the sheets of figures and wrote out a program for the +future handling of the Harvest situation. He did it sketchily, with +casual tentativeness, so that when it was found among the papers there +would be no suspicions. In the same fashion he worked out a line- +breeding program for the Shires, and an in-breeding table, up and +down, for Mountain Lad and the Fotherington Princess and certain +selected individuals of their progeny. + +When Oh My came in with coffee at six, Dick was on his last paragraph +of his scheme for rice-growing. + +"Although the Italian rice may be worth experimenting with for quick +maturity," he wrote, "I shall for a time confine the main plantings in +equal proportions to Moti, Ioko, and the Wateribune. Thus, with +different times of maturing, the same crews and the same machinery, +with the same overhead, can work a larger acreage than if only one +variety is planted." + +Oh My served the coffee at his desk, and made no sign even after a +glance to the porch at the bed which had not been slept in--all of +which control Dick permitted himself privily to admire. + +At six-thirty the telephone rang and he heard Hennessy's tired voice: +"I knew you'd be up and glad to know Alden Bessie's pulled through. It +was a squeak, though. And now it's me for the hay." + +When Dick had shaved, he looked at the shower, hesitated a moment, +then his face set stubbornly. I'm darned if I will, was his thought; a +sheer waste of time. He did, however, change his shoes to a pair of +heavy, high-laced ones fit for the roughness of hunting. He was at +his desk again, looking over the notes in his scribble pads for the +morning's work, when Paula entered. She did not call her "Good +morning, merry gentleman"; but came quite close to him before she +greeted him softly with: + +"The Acorn-planter. Ever tireless, never weary Red Cloud." + +He noted the violet-blue shadows under her eyes, as he arose, without +offering to touch her. Nor did she offer invitation. + +"A white night?" he asked, as he placed a chair. + +"A white night," she answered wearily. "Not a second's sleep, though I +tried so hard." + +Both were reluctant of speech, and they labored under a mutual +inability to draw their eyes away from each other. + +"You ... you don't look any too fit yourself," she said. + +"Yes, my face," he nodded. "I was looking at it while I shaved. The +expression won't come off." + +"Something happened to you last night," she probed, and he could not +fail to see the same compassion in her eyes that he had seen in Oh +Dear's. "Everybody remarked your expression. What was it?" + +He shrugged his shoulders. "It has been coming on for some time," he +evaded, remembering that the first hint of it had been given him by +Paula's portrait of him. "You've noticed it?" he inquired casually. + +She nodded, then was struck by a sudden thought. He saw the idea leap +to life ere her words uttered it. + +"Dick, you haven't an affair?" + +It was a way out. It would straighten all the tangle. And hope was in +her voice and in her face. + +He smiled, shook his head slowly, and watched her disappointment. + +"I take it back," he said. "I have an affair." + +"Of the heart?" + +She was eager, as he answered, "Of the heart." + +But she was not prepared for what came next. He abruptly drew his +chair close, till his knees touched hers, and, leaning forward, +quickly but gently prisoned her hands in his resting on her knees. + +"Don't be alarmed, little bird-woman," he quieted her. "I shall not +kiss you. It is a long time since I have. I want to tell you about +that affair. But first I want to tell you how proud I am--proud of +myself. I am proud that I am a lover. At my age, a lover! It is +unbelievable, and it is wonderful. And such a lover! Such a curious, +unusual, and quite altogether remarkable lover. In fact, I have +laughed all the books and all biology in the face. I am a monogamist. +I love the woman, the one woman. After a dozen years of possession I +love her quite madly, oh, so sweetly madly." + +Her hands communicated her disappointment to him, making a slight, +impulsive flutter to escape; but he held them more firmly. + +"I know her every weakness, and, weakness and strength and all, I love +her as madly as I loved her at the first, in those mad moments when I +first held her in my arms." + +Her hands were mutinous of the restraint he put upon them, and +unconsciously she was beginning to pull and tug to be away from him. +Also, there was fear in her eyes. He knew her fastidiousness, and he +guessed, with the other man's lips recent on hers, that she feared a +more ardent expression on his part. + +"And please, please be not frightened, timid, sweet, beautiful, proud, +little bird-woman. See. I release you. Know that I love you most +dearly, and that I am considering you as well as myself, and before +myself, all the while." + +He drew his chair away from her, leaned back, and saw confidence grow +in her eyes. + +"I shall tell you all my heart," he continued, "and I shall want you +to tell me all your heart." + +"This love for me is something new?" she asked. "A recrudescence?" + +"Yes, a recrudescence, and no." + +"I thought that for a long time I had been a habit to you," she said. + +"But I was loving you all the time." + +"Not madly." + +"No," he acknowledged. "But with certainty. I was so sure of you, of +myself. It was, to me, all a permanent and forever established thing. +I plead guilty. But when that permanency was shaken, all my love for +you fired up. It was there all the time, a steady, long-married +flame." + +"But about me?" she demanded. + +"That is what we are coming to. I know your worry right now, and of a +minute ago. You are so intrinsically honest, so intrinsically true, +that the thought of sharing two men is abhorrent to you. I have not +misread you. It is a long time since you have permitted me any love- +touch." He shrugged his shoulders "And an equally long time since I +offered you a love-touch." + +"Then you _have_ known from the first?" she asked quickly. + +He nodded. + +"Possibly," he added, with an air of judicious weighing, "I sensed it +coming before even you knew it. But we will not go into that or other +things." + +"You have seen..." she attempted to ask, stung almost to shame at +thought of her husband having witnessed any caress of hers and +Graham's. + +"We will not demean ourselves with details, Paula. Besides, there was +and is nothing wrong about any of it. Also, it was not necessary for +me to see anything. I have my memories of when I, too, kissed stolen +kisses in the pause of the seconds between the frank, outspoken 'Good +nights.' When all the signs of ripeness are visible--the love-shades +and love-notes that cannot be hidden, the unconscious caress of the +eyes in a fleeting glance, the involuntary softening of voices, the +cuckoo-sob in the throat--why, the night-parting kiss does not need to +be seen. It has to be. Still further, oh my woman, know that I justify +you in everything." + +"It... it was not ever... much," she faltered. + +"I should have been surprised if it had been. It couldn't have been +you. As it is, I have been surprised. After our dozen years it was +unexpected--" + +"Dick," she interrupted him, leaning toward him and searching him. She +paused to frame her thought, and then went on with directness. "In our +dozen years, will you say it has never been any more with you?" + +"I have told you that I justify you in everything," he softened his +reply. + +"But you have not answered my question," she insisted. "Oh, I do not +mean mere flirtatious passages, bits of primrose philandering. I mean +unfaithfulness and I mean it technically. In the past you have?" + +"In the past," he answered, "not much, and not for a long, long time." + +"I often wondered," she mused. + +"And I have told you I justify you in everything," he reiterated. "And +now you know where lies the justification." + +"Then by the same token I had a similar right," she said. "Though I +haven't, Dick, I haven't," she hastened to add. "Well, anyway, you +always did preach the single standard." + +"Alas, not any longer," he smiled. "One's imagination will conjure, +and in the past few weeks I've been forced to change my mind." + +"You mean that you demand I must be faithful?" + +He nodded and said, "So long as you live with me." + +"But where's the equity?" + +"There isn't any equity," he shook his head. "Oh, I know it seems a +preposterous change of view. But at this late day I have made the +discovery of the ancient truth that women are different from men. All +I have learned of book and theory goes glimmering before the +everlasting fact that the women are the mothers of our children. I... +I still had my hopes of children with you, you see. But that's all +over and done with. The question now is, what's in your heart? I have +told you mine. And afterward we can determine what is to be done." + +"Oh, Dick," she breathed, after silence had grown painful, "I do love +you, I shall always love you. You are my Red Cloud. Why, do you know, +only yesterday, out on your sleeping porch, I turned my face to the +wall. It was terrible. It didn't seem right. I turned it out again, oh +so quickly." + +He lighted a cigarette and waited. + +"But you have not told me what is in your heart, all of it," he chided +finally. + +"I do love you," she repeated. + +"And Evan?" + +"That is different. It is horrible to have to talk this way to you. +Besides, I don't know. I can't make up my mind what is in my heart." + +"Love? Or amorous adventure? It must be one or the other." + +She shook her head. + +"Can't you understand?" she asked. "That I don't understand? You see, +I am a woman. I have never sown any wild oats. And now that all this +has happened, I don't know what to make of it. Shaw and the rest must +be right. Women are hunting animals. You are both big game. I can't +help it. It is a challenge to me. And I find I am a puzzle to myself. +All my concepts have been toppled over by my conduct. I want you. I +want Evan. I want both of you. It is not amorous adventure, oh believe +me. And if by any chance it is, and I do not know it--no, it isn't, I +know it isn't." + +"Then it is love." + +"But I do love you, Red Cloud." + +"And you say you love him. You can't love both of us." + +"But I can. I do. I do love both of you.--Oh, I am straight. I shall +be straight. I must work this out. I thought you might help me. That +is why I came to you this morning. There must be some solution." + +She looked at him appealingly as he answered, "It is one or the other, +Evan or me. I cannot imagine any other solution." + +"That's what he says. But I can't bring myself to it. He was for +coming straight to you. I would not permit him. He has wanted to go, +but I held him here, hard as it was on both of you, in order to have +you together, to compare you two, to weigh you in my heart. And I get +nowhere. I want you both. I can't give either of you up." + +"Unfortunately, as you see," Dick began, a slight twinkle in his eyes, +"while you may be polyandrously inclined, we stupid male men cannot +reconcile ourselves to such a situation." + +"Don't be cruel, Dick," she protested. + +"Forgive me. It was not so meant. It was out of my own hurt--an effort +to bear it with philosophical complacence." + +"I have told him that he was the only man I had ever met who is as +great as my husband, and that my husband is greater." + +"That was loyalty to me, yes, and loyalty to yourself," Dick +explained. "You were mine until I ceased being the greatest man in the +world. He then became the greatest man in the world." + +She shook her head. + +"Let me try to solve it for you," he continued. "You don't know your +mind, your desire. You can't decide between us because you equally +want us both?" + +"Yes," she whispered. "Only, rather, differently want you both." + +"Then the thing is settled," he concluded shortly. + +"What do you mean?" + +"This, Paula. I lose. Graham is the winner. Don't you see. Here am I, +even with him, even and no more, while my advantage over him is our +dozen years together--the dozen years of past love, the ties and bonds +of heart and memory. Heavens! If all this weight were thrown in the +balance on Evan's side, you wouldn't hesitate an instant in your +decision. It is the first time you have ever been bowled over in your +life, and the experience, coming so late, makes it hard for you to +realize." + +"But, Dick, you bowled me over." + +He shook his head. + +"I have always liked to think so, and sometimes I have believed--but +never really. I never took you off your feet, not even in the very +beginning, whirlwind as the affair was. You may have been glamoured. +You were never mad as I was mad, never swept as I was swept. I loved +you first--" + +"And you were a royal lover." + +"I loved you first, Paula, and, though you did respond, it was not in +the same way. I never took you off your feet. It seems pretty clear +that Evan has." + +"I wish I could be sure," she mused. "I have a feeling of being bowled +over, and yet I hesitate. The two are not compatible. Perhaps I never +shall be bowled over by any man. And you don't seem to help me in the +least." + +"You, and you alone, can solve it, Paula," he said gravely. + +"But if you would help, if you would try--oh, such a little, to hold +me," she persisted. + +"But I am helpless. My hands are tied. I can't put an arm to hold you. +You can't share two. You have been in his arms--" He put up his hand +to hush her protest. "Please, please, dear, don't. You have been in +his arms. You flutter like a frightened bird at thought of my +caressing you. Don't you see? Your actions decide against me. You have +decided, though you may not know it. Your very flesh has decided. You +can bear his arms. The thought of mine you cannot bear." + +She shook her head with slow resoluteness. + +"And still I do not, cannot, make up my mind," she persisted. + +"But you must. The present situation is intolerable. You must decide +quickly, for Evan must go. You realize that. Or you must go. You both +cannot continue on here. Take all the time in the world. Send Evan +away. Or, suppose you go and visit Aunt Martha for a while. Being away +from both of us might aid you to get somewhere. Perhaps it will be +better to call off the hunting. I'll go alone, and you stay and talk +it over with Evan. Or come on along and talk it over with him as you +ride. Whichever way, I won't be in till late. I may sleep out all +night in one of the herder's cabins. When I come back, Evan must be +gone. Whether or not you are gone with him will also have been +decided." + +"And if I should go?" she queried. + +Dick shrugged his shoulders, and stood up, glancing at his wrist- +watch. + +"I have sent word to Blake to come earlier this morning," he +explained, taking a step toward the door in invitation for her to go. + +At the door she paused and leaned toward him. + +"Kiss me, Dick," she said, and, afterward: "This is not a... love- +touch." Her voice had become suddenly husky. "It's just in case I do +decide to... to go." + +The secretary approached along the hall, but Paula lingered. + +"Good morning, Mr. Blake," Dick greeted him. "Sorry to rout you out so +early. First of all, will you please telephone Mr. Agar and Mr. Pitts. +I won't be able to see them this morning. Oh, and put the rest off +till to-morrow, too. Make a point of getting Mr. Hanley. Tell him I +approve of his plan for the Buckeye spillway, and to go right ahead. I +will see Mr. Mendenhall, though, and Mr. Manson. Tell them nine- +thirty." + +"One thing, Dick," Paula said. "Remember, I made him stay. It was not +his fault or wish. I wouldn't let him go." + +"You've bowled _him_ over right enough," Dick smiled. "I could +not reconcile his staying on, under the circumstances, with what I +knew of him. But with you not permitting him to go, and he as mad as a +man has a right to be where you are concerned, I can understand. He's +a whole lot better than a good sort. They don't make many like him. He +will make you happy--" + +She held up her hand. + +"I don't know that I shall ever be happy again, Red Cloud. When I see +what I have brought into your face.... And I was so happy and +contented all our dozen years. I can't forget it. That is why I have +been unable to decide. But you are right. The time has come for me to +solve the ..." She hesitated and could not utter the word "triangle" +which he saw forming on her lips. "The situation," her voice trailed +away. "We'll all go hunting. I'll talk with him as we ride, and I'll +send him away, no matter what I do." + +"I shouldn't be precipitate, Paul," Dick advised. "You know I don't +care a hang for morality except when it is useful. And in this case it +is exceedingly useful. There may be children.--Please, please," he +hushed her. "And in such case even old scandal is not exactly good for +them. Desertion takes too long. I'll arrange to give you the real +statutory grounds, which will save a year in the divorce." + +"If I so make up my mind," she smiled wanly. + +He nodded. + +"But I may not make up my mind that way. I don't know it myself. +Perhaps it's all a dream, and soon I shall wake up, and Oh Dear will +come in and tell me how soundly and long I have slept." + +She turned away reluctantly, and paused suddenly when she had made +half a dozen steps. + +"Dick," she called. "You have told me your heart, but not what's in +your mind. Don't do anything foolish. Remember Denny Holbrook--no +hunting accident, mind." + +He shook his head, and twinkled his eyes in feigned amusement, and +marveled to himself that her intuition should have so squarely hit the +mark. + +"And leave all this?" he lied, with a gesture that embraced the ranch +and all its projects. "And that book on in-and-in-breeding? And my +first annual home sale of stock just ripe to come off?" + +"It would be preposterous," she agreed with brightening face. "But, +Dick, in this difficulty of making up my mind, please, please know +that--" She paused for the phrase, then made a gesture in mimicry of +his, that included the Big House and its treasures, and said, "All +this does not influence me a particle. Truly not." + +"As if I did not know it," he assured her. "Of all unmercenary women-- +" + +"Why, Dick," she interrupted him, fired by a new thought, "if I loved +Evan as madly as you think, you would mean so little that I'd be +content, if it were the only way out, for you to have a hunting +accident. But you see, I don't. Anyway, there's a brass tack for you +to ponder." + +She made another reluctant step away, then called back in a whisper, +her face over her shoulder: + +"Red Cloud, I'm dreadfully sorry.... And through it all I'm so glad +that you do still love me." + +Before Blake returned, Dick found time to study his face in the glass. +Printed there was the expression that had startled his company the +preceding evening. It had come to stay. Oh, well, was his thought, one +cannot chew his heart between his teeth without leaving some sign of +it. + +He strolled out on the sleeping porch and looked at Paula's picture +under the barometers. He turned it to the wall, and sat on the bed and +regarded the blankness for a space. Then he turned it back again. + +"Poor little kid," he murmured, "having a hard time of it just waking +up at this late day." + +But as he continued to gaze, abruptly there leaped before his eyes the +vision of her in the moonlight, clinging to Graham and drawing his +lips down to hers. + +Dick got up quickly, with a shake of head to shake the vision from his +eyes. + +By half past nine his correspondence was finished and his desk cleaned +save for certain data to be used in his talks with his Shorthorn and +Shire managers. He was over at the window and waving a smiling +farewell to Lute and Ernestine in the limousine, as Mendenhall +entered. And to him, and to Manson next, Dick managed, in casual talk, +to impress much of his bigger breeding plans. + +"We've got to keep an eagle eye on the bull-get of King Polo," he told +Manson. "There's all the promise in the world for a greater than he +from Bleakhouse Fawn, or Alberta Maid, or Moravia's Nellie Signal. We +missed it this year so far, but next year, or the year after, soon or +late, King Polo is going to be responsible for a real humdinger of +winner." + +And as with Manson, with much more talk, so with Mendenhall, Dick +succeeded in emphasizing the far application of his breeding theories. + +With their departure, he got Oh Joy on the house 'phone and told him +to take Graham to the gun room to choose a rifle and any needed gear. + +At eleven he did not know that Paula had come up the secret stairway +from the library and was standing behind the shelves of books +listening. She had intended coming in but had been deterred by the +sound of his voice. She could hear him talking over the telephone to +Hanley about the spillway of the Buckeye dam. + +"And by the way," Dick's voice went on, "you've been over the reports +on the Big Miramar?... Very good. Discount them. I disagree with them +flatly. The water is there. I haven't a doubt we'll find a fairly +shallow artesian supply. Send up the boring outfit at once and start +prospecting. The soil's ungodly rich, and if we don't make that dry +hole ten times as valuable in the next five years ..." + +Paula sighed, and turned back down the spiral to the library. + +Red Cloud the incorrigible, always planting his acorns--was her +thought. There he was, with his love-world crashing around him, calmly +considering dams and well-borings so that he might, in the years to +come, plant more acorns. + +Nor was Dick ever to know that Paula had come so near to him with her +need and gone away. Again, not aimlessly, but to run through for the +last time the notes of the scribble pad by his bed, he was out on his +sleeping porch. His house was in order. There was nothing left but to +sign up the morning's dictation, answer several telegrams, then would +come lunch and the hunting in the Sycamore hills. Oh, he would do it +well. The Outlaw would bear the blame. And he would have an eye- +witness, either Froelig or Martinez. But not both of them. One pair of +eyes would be enough to satisfy when the martingale parted and the +mare reared and toppled backward upon him into the brush. And from +that screen of brush, swiftly linking accident to catastrophe, the +witness would hear the rifle go off. + +Martinez was more emotional than the sculptor and would therefore make +a more satisfactory witness, Dick decided. Him would he maneuver to +have with him in the narrow trail when the Outlaw should be made the +scapegoat. Martinez was no horseman. All the better. It would be well, +Dick judged, to make the Outlaw act up in real devilishness for a +minute or two before the culmination. It would give verisimilitude. +Also, it would excite Martinez's horse, and, therefore, excite +Martinez so that he would not see occurrences too clearly. + +He clenched his hands with sudden hurt. The Little Lady was mad, she +must be mad; on no other ground could he understand such arrant +cruelty, listening to her voice and Graham's from the open windows of +the music room as they sang together the "Gypsy Trail." + +Nor did he unclench his hands during all the time they sang. And they +sang the mad, reckless song clear through to its mad reckless end. And +he continued to stand, listening to her laugh herself merrily away +from Graham and on across the house to her wing, from the porches of +which she continued to laugh as she teased and chided Oh Dear for +fancied derelictions. + +From far off came the dim but unmistakable trumpeting of Mountain Lad. +King Polo asserted his lordly self, and the harems of mares and +heifers sent back their answering calls. Dick listened to all the +whinnying and nickering and bawling of sex, and sighed aloud: "Well, +the land is better for my having been. It is a good thought to take to +bed." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI + + + +A ring of his bed 'phone made Dick sit on the bed to take up the +receiver. As he listened, he looked out across the patio to Paula's +porches. Bonbright was explaining that it was a call from Chauncey +Bishop who was at Eldorado in a machine. Chauncey Bishop, editor and +owner of the San Francisco _Dispatch_, was sufficiently important +a person, in Bonbright's mind, as well as old friend of Dick's, to be +connected directly to him. + +"You can get here for lunch," Dick told the newspaper owner. "And, +say, suppose you put up for the night.... Never mind your special +writers. We're going hunting mountain lions this afternoon, and +there's sure to be a kill. Got them located.... Who? What's she +write?... What of it? She can stick around the ranch and get half a +dozen columns out of any of half a dozen subjects, while the writer +chap can get the dope on lion-hunting.... Sure, sure. I'll put him on +a horse a child can ride." + +The more the merrier, especially newspaper chaps, Dick grinned to +himself--and grandfather Jonathan Forrest would have nothing on him +when it came to pulling off a successful finish. + +But how could Paula have been so wantonly cruel as to sing the "Gypsy +Trail" so immediately afterward? Dick asked himself, as, receiver near +to ear, he could distantly hear Chauncey Bishop persuading his writer +man to the hunting. + +"All right then, come a running," Dick told Bishop in conclusion. "I'm +giving orders now for the horses, and you can have that bay you rode +last time." + +Scarcely had he hung up, when the bell rang again. This time it was +Paula. + +"Red Cloud, dear Red Cloud," she said, "your reasoning is all wrong. I +think I love you best. I am just about making up my mind, and it's for +you. And now, just to help me to be sure, tell me what you told me a +little while ago--you know--' I love the woman, the one woman. After a +dozen years of possession I love her quite madly, oh, so sweetly +madly.' Say it to me, Red Cloud." + +"I do truly love the woman, the one woman," Dick repeated. "After a +dozen years of possession I do love her quite madly, oh, so sweetly +madly." + +There was a pause when he had finished, which, waiting, he did not +dare to break. + +"There is one little thing I almost forgot to tell you," she said, +very softly, very slowly, very clearly. "I do love you. I have never +loved you so much as right now. After our dozen years you've bowled me +over at last. And I was bowled over from the beginning, although I did +not know it. I have made up my mind now, once and for all." + +She hung up abruptly. + +With the thought that he knew how a man felt receiving a reprieve at +the eleventh hour, Dick sat on, thinking, forgetful that he had not +hooked the receiver, until Bonbright came in from the secretaries' +room to remind him. + +"It was from Mr. Bishop," Bonbright explained. "Sprung an axle. I took +the liberty of sending one of our machines to bring them in." + +"And see what our men can do with repairing theirs," Dick nodded. + +Alone again, he got up and stretched, walked absently the length of +the room and back. + +"Well, Martinez, old man," he addressed the empty air, "this afternoon +you'll be defrauded out of as fine a histrionic stunt as you will +never know you've missed." + +He pressed the switch for Paula's telephone and rang her up. + +Oh Dear answered, and quickly brought her mistress. + +"I've a little song I want to sing to you, Paul," he said, then +chanted the old negro 'spiritual': + + "'Fer itself, fer itself, + Fer itself, fer itself, + Every soul got ter confess + Fer itself.' + +"And I want you to tell me again, fer yourself, fer yourself, what you +just told me." + +Her laughter came in a merry gurgle that delighted him. + +"Red Cloud, I do love you," she said. "My mind is made up. I shall +never have any man but you in all this world. Now be good, and let me +dress. I'll have to rush for lunch as it is." + +"May I come over?--for a moment?" he begged. + +"Not yet, eager one. In ten minutes. Let me finish with Oh Dear first. +Then I'll be all ready for the hunt. I'm putting on my Robin Hood +outfit--you know, the greens and russets and the long feather. And I'm +taking my 30-30. It's heavy enough for mountain lions." + +"You've made me very happy," Dick continued. + +"And you're making me late. Ring off.--Red Cloud, I love you more this +minute--" + +He heard her hang up, and was surprised, the next moment, that somehow +he was reluctant to yield to the happiness that he had claimed was +his. Rather, did it seem that he could still hear her voice and +Graham's recklessly singing the "Gypsy Trail." + +Had she been playing with Graham? Or had she been playing with him? +Such conduct, for her, was unprecedented and incomprehensible. As he +groped for a solution, he saw her again in the moonlight, clinging to +Graham with upturned lips, drawing Graham's lips down to hers. + +Dick shook his head in bafflement, and glanced at his watch. At any +rate, in ten minutes, in less than ten minutes, he would hold her in +his arms and know. + +So tedious was the brief space of time that he strolled slowly on the +way, pausing to light a cigarette, throwing it away with the first +inhalation, pausing again to listen to the busy click of typewriters +from the secretaries' room. With still two minutes to spare, and +knowing that one minute would take him to the door without a knob, he +stopped in the patio and gazed at the wild canaries bathing in the +fountain. + +When they startled into the air, a cloud of fluttering gold and +crystal droppings in the sunshine, Dick startled. The report of the +rifle had come from Paula's wing above, and he identified it as her +30-30 as he dashed across the patio. _She beat me to it,_ was his +next thought, and what had been incomprehensible the moment before was +as sharply definite as the roar of her rifle. + +And across the patio, up the stairs, through the door left wide-flung +behind him, continued to pulse in his brain: _She beat me to it. She +beat me to it._ + +She lay, crumpled and quivering, in hunting costume complete, save for +the pair of tiny bronze spurs held over her in anguished impotence by +the frightened maid. + +His examination was quick. Paula breathed, although she was +unconscious. From front to back, on the left side, the bullet had torn +through. His next spring was to the telephone, and as he waited the +delay of connecting through the house central he prayed that Hennessy +would be at the stallion barn. A stable boy answered, and, while he +ran to fetch the veterinary, Dick ordered Oh Joy to stay by the +switches, and to send Oh My to him at once. + +From the tail of his eye he saw Graham rush into the room and on to +Paula. + +"Hennessy," Dick commanded. "Come on the jump. Bring the needful for +first aid. It's a rifle shot through the lungs or heart or both. Come +right to Mrs. Forrest's rooms. Now jump." + +"Don't touch her," he said sharply to Graham. "It might make it worse, +start a worse hemorrhage." + +Next he was back at Oh Joy. + +"Start Callahan with the racing car for Eldorado. Tell him he'll meet +Doctor Robinson on the way, and that he is to bring Doctor Robinson +back with him on the jump. Tell him to jump like the devil was after +him. Tell him Mrs. Forrest is hurt and that if he makes time he'll +save her life." + +Receiver to ear, he turned to look at Paula. Graham, bending over her +but not touching her, met his eyes. + +"Forrest," he began, "if you have done--" + +But Dick hushed him with a warning glance directed toward Oh Dear who +still held the bronze spurs in speechless helplessness. + +"It can be discussed later," Dick said shortly, as he turned his mouth +to the transmitter. + +"Doctor Robinson?... Good. Mrs. Forrest has a rifle-shot through lungs +or heart or maybe both. Callahan is on his way to meet you in the +racing car. Keep coming as fast as God'll let you till you meet +Callahan. Good-by." + +Back to Paula, Graham stepped aside as Dick, on his knees, bent over +her. His examination was brief. He looked up at Graham with a shake of +the head and said: + +"It's too ticklish to fool with." + +He turned to Oh Dear. + +"Put down those spurs and bring pillows.--Evan, lend a hand on the +other side, and lift gently and steadily.--Oh Dear, shove that pillow +under--easy, easy." + +He looked up and saw Oh My standing silently, awaiting orders. + +"Get Mr. Bonbright to relieve Oh Joy at the switches," Dick commanded. +"Tell Oh Joy to stand near to Mr. Bonbright to rush orders. Tell Oh +Joy to have all the house boys around him to rush the orders. As soon +as Saunders comes back with Mr. Bishop's crowd, tell Oh Joy to start +him out on the jump to Eldorado to look for Callahan in case Callahan +has a smash up. Tell Oh Joy to get hold of Mr. Manson, and Mr. Pitts +or any two of the managers who have machines and have them, with their +machines, waiting here at the house. Tell Oh Joy to take care of Mr. +Bishop's crowd as usual. And you come back here where I can call you." + +Dick turned to Oh Dear. + +"Now tell me how it happened." + +Oh Dear shook her head and wrung her hands. + +"Where were you when the rifle went off?" + +The Chinese girl swallowed and pointed toward the wardrobe room. + +"Go on, talk," Dick commanded harshly. + +"Mrs. Forrest tell me to get spurs. I forget before. I go quick. I +hear gun. I come back quick. I run." + +She pointed to Paula to show what she had found. + +"But the gun?" Dick asked. + +"Some trouble. Maybe gun no work. Maybe four minutes, maybe five +minutes, Mrs. Forrest try make gun work." + +"Was she trying to make the gun work when you went for the spurs?" + +Oh Dear nodded. + +"Before that I say maybe Oh Joy can fix gun. Mrs. Forrest say never +mind. She say you can fix. She put gun down. Then she try once more +fix gun. Then she tell me get spurs. Then... gun go off." + +Hennessy's arrival shut off further interrogation. His examination was +scarcely less brief than Dick's. He looked up with a shake of the +head. + +"Nothing I can dare tackle, Mr. Forrest. The hemorrhage has eased of +itself, though it must be gathering inside. You've sent for a doctor?" + +"Robinson. I caught him in his office.--He's young, a good surgeon," +Dick explained to Graham. "He's nervy and daring, and I'd trust him in +this farther than some of the old ones with reputations.--What do you +think, Mr. Hennessy? What chance has she?" + +"Looks pretty bad, though I'm no judge, being only a horse doctor. +Robinson'll know. Nothing to do but wait." + +Dick nodded and walked out on Paula's sleeping porch to listen for the +exhaust of the racing machine Callahan drove. He heard the ranch +limousine arrive leisurely and swiftly depart. Graham came out on the +porch to him. + +"I want to apologize, Forrest," he said. "I was rather off for the +moment. I found you here, and I thought you were here when it +happened. It must have been an accident.'" + +"Poor little kid," Dick agreed. "And she so prided herself on never +being careless with guns." + +"I've looked at the rifle," Graham said, "but I couldn't find anything +wrong with it." + +"And that's how it happened. Whatever was wrong got right. That's how +it went off." + +And while Dick talked, building the fabric of the lie so that even +Graham should be fooled, to himself he was understanding how well +Paula had played the trick. That last singing of the "Gypsy Trail" had +been her farewell to Graham and at the same time had provided against +any suspicion on his part of what she had intended directly to do. It +had been the same with him. She had had her farewell with him, and, +the last thing, over the telephone, had assured him that she would +never have any man but him in all the world. + +He walked away from Graham to the far end of the porch. + +"She had the grit, she had the grit," he muttered to himself with +quivering lips. "Poor kid. She couldn't decide between the two, and so +she solved it this way." + +The noise of the racing machine drew him and Graham together, and +together they entered the room to wait for the doctor. Graham betrayed +unrest, reluctant to go, yet feeling that he must. + +"Please stay on, Evan," Dick told him. "She liked you much, and if she +does open her eyes she'll be glad to see you." + +Dick and Graham stood apart from Paula while Doctor Robinson made his +examination. When he arose with an air of finality, Dick looked his +question. Robinson shook his head. + +"Nothing to be done," he said. "It is a matter of hours, maybe of +minutes." He hesitated, studying Dick's face for a moment. "I can ease +her off if you say the word. She might possibly recover consciousness +and suffer for a space." + +Dick took a turn down the room and back, and when he spoke it was to +Graham. + +"Why not let her live again, brief as the time may be? The pain is +immaterial. It will have its inevitable quick anodyne. It is what I +would wish, what you would wish. She loved life, every moment of it. +Why should we deny her any of the little left her?" + +Graham bent his head in agreement, and Dick turned to the doctor. + +"Perhaps you can stir her, stimulate her, to a return of +consciousness. If you can, do so. And if the pain proves too severe, +then you can ease her." + + * * * * * + +When her eyes fluttered open, Dick nodded Graham up beside him. At +first bewilderment was all she betrayed, then her eyes focused first +on Dick's face, then on Graham's, and, with recognition, her lips +parted in a pitiful smile. + +"I... I thought at first that I was dead," she said. + +But quickly another thought was in her mind, and Dick divined it in +her eyes as they searched him. The question was if he knew it was no +accident. He gave no sign. She had planned it so, and she must pass +believing it so. + +"I... was... wrong," she said. She spoke slowly, faintly, in evident +pain, with a pause for strength of utterance between each word. "I was +always so cocksure I'd never have an accident, and look what I've gone +and done." + +"It's a darn shame," Dick said, sympathetically. "What was it? A jam?" + +She nodded, and again her lips parted in the pitiful brave smile as +she said whimsically: "Oh, Dick, go call the neighbors in and show +them what little Paula's din. + +"How serious is it?" she asked. "Be honest, Red Cloud, you know +_me,"_ she added, after the briefest of pauses in which Dick had +not replied. + +He shook his head. + +"How long?" she queried. + +"Not long," came his answer. "You can ease off any time." + +"You mean...?" She glanced aside curiously at the doctor and back to +Dick, who nodded. + +"It's only what I should have expected from you, Red Cloud," she +murmured gratefully. "But is Doctor Robinson game for it?" + +The doctor stepped around so that she could see him, and nodded. + +"Thank you, doctor. And remember, I am to say when." + +"Is there much pain?" Dick queried. + +Her eyes were wide and brave and dreadful, and her lips quivered for +the moment ere she replied, "Not much, but dreadful, quite dreadful. I +won't care to stand it very long. I'll say when." + +Once more the smile on her lips announced a whimsey. + +"Life is queer, most queer, isn't it? And do you know, I want to go +out with love-songs in my ears. You first, Evan, sing the 'Gypsy +Trail.'--Why, I was singing it with you less than an hour ago. Think +of it! Do, Evan, please." + +Graham looked to Dick for permission, and Dick gave it with his eyes. + +"Oh, and sing it robustly, gladly, madly, just as a womaning Gypsy man +should sing it," she urged. "And stand back there, so, where I can see +you." + +And while Graham sang the whole song through to its: + + "The heart of a man to the heart of a maid, light of my + tents be fleet, + Morning waits at the end of the world and the world is + all at our feet," + +Oh My, immobile-faced, a statue, stood in the far doorway awaiting +commands. Oh Dear, grief-stricken, stood at her mistress's head, no +longer wringing her hands, but holding them so tightly clasped that +the finger-tips and nails showed white. To the rear, at Paula's +dressing table, Doctor Robinson noiselessly dissolved in a glass the +anodyne pellets and filled his hypodermic. + +When Graham had finished, Paula thanked him with her eyes, closed +them, and lay still for a space. + +"And now, Red Cloud," she said when next she opened them, "the song of +Ai-kut, and of the Dew-Woman, the Lush-Woman. Stand where Evan did, so +that I can see you well." + +And Dick chanted: + +"I am Ai-kut, the first man of the Nishinam. Ai-kut is the short for +Adam, and my father and my mother were the coyote and the moon. And +this is Yo-to-to-wi, my wife. Yo-to-to-wi is the short for Eve. She is +the first woman of the Nishinam. + +"Me, I am Ai-kut. This is my dew of women. This is my honey-dew of +women. Her father and her mother were the Sierra dawn and the summer +east wind of the mountains. Together they conspired, and from the air +and earth they sweated all sweetness till in a mist of their own love +the leaves of the chaparral and the manzanita were dewed with the +honey dew. + +"Yo-to-to-wi is my honey-dew woman. Hear me! I am Ai-kut! Yo-to-to-wi +is my quail-woman, my deer-woman, my lush-woman of all soft rain and +fat soil. She was born of the thin starlight and the brittle dawn- +light, in the morning of the world, and she is the one woman of all +women to me." + +Again, with closed eyes, she lay silent for a while. Once she +attempted to draw a deeper breath, which caused her to cough slightly +several times. + +"Try not to cough," Dick said. + +They could see her brows contract with the effort of will to control +the irritating tickle that might precipitate a paroxysm. + +"Oh Dear, come around where I can see you," she said, when she opened +her eyes. + +The Chinese girl obeyed, moving blindly, so that Robinson, with a hand +on her arm, was compelled to guide her. + +"Good-by, Oh Dear. You've been very good to me always. And sometimes, +maybe, I have not been good to you. I am sorry. Remember, Mr. Forrest +will always be your father and your mother.... And all my jade is +yours." + +She closed her eyes in token that the brief audience was over. + +Again she was vexed by the tickling cough that threatened to grow more +pronounced. + +"I am ready, Dick," she said faintly, still with closed eyes. "I want +to make my sleepy, sleepy noise. Is the doctor ready? Come closer. +Hold my hand like you did before in the little death." + +She turned her eyes to Graham, and Dick did not look, for he knew love +was in that last look of hers, as he knew it would be when she looked +into his eyes at the last. + +"Once," she explained to Graham, "I had to go on the table, and I made +Dick go with me into the anaesthetic chamber and hold my hand until I +went under. You remember, Henley called it the drunken dark, the +little death in life. It was very easy." + +In the silence she continued her look, then turned her face and eyes +back to Dick, who knelt close to her, holding her hand. + +With a pressure of her fingers on his and a beckoning of her eyes, she +drew his ear down to her lips. + +"Red Cloud," she whispered, "I love you best. And I am proud I +belonged to you for such a long, long time." Still closer she drew him +with the pressure of her fingers. "I'm sorry there were no babies, Red +Cloud." + +With the relaxing of her fingers she eased him from her so that she +could look from one to the other. + +"Two bonnie, bonnie men. Good-by, bonnie men. Good-by, Red Cloud." + +In the pause, they waited, while the doctor bared her arm for the +needle. + +"Sleepy, sleepy," she twittered in mimicry of drowsy birds. "I am +ready, doctor. Stretch the skin tight, first. You know I don't like to +be hurt.--Hold me tight, Dick." + +Robinson, receiving the eye permission from Dick, easily and quickly +thrust the needle through the stretched skin, with steady hand sank +the piston home, and with the ball of the finger soothingly rubbed the +morphine into circulation. + +"Sleepy, sleepy, boo'ful sleepy," she murmured drowsily, after a time. + +Semi-consciously she half-turned on her side, curved her free arm on +the pillow and nestled her head on it, and drew her body up in +nestling curves in the way Dick knew she loved to sleep. + +After a long time, she sighed faintly, and began so easily to go that +she was gone before they guessed. From without, the twittering of the +canaries bathing in the fountain penetrated the silence of the room, +and from afar came the trumpeting of Mountain Lad and the silver +whinny of the Fotherington Princess. + + + + +THE END + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Little Lady of the Big House, by Jack London + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITTLE LADY OF THE BIG HOUSE *** + +This file should be named ltlbh10.txt or ltlbh10.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, ltlbh11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, ltlbh10a.txt + +Produced by Curtis A. Weyant, David Maddock, Charles Franks +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we usually do not +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +We are now trying to release all our eBooks one year in advance +of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing. +Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections, +even years after the official publication date. + +Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til +midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. +The official release date of all Project Gutenberg eBooks is at +Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. A +preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment +and editing by those who wish to do so. + +Most people start at our Web sites at: +http://gutenberg.net or +http://promo.net/pg + +These Web sites include award-winning information about Project +Gutenberg, including how to donate, how to help produce our new +eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter (free!). + + +Those of you who want to download any eBook before announcement +can get to them as follows, and just download by date. This is +also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the +indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an +announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter. + +http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext03 or +ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext03 + +Or /etext02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90 + +Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want, +as it appears in our Newsletters. + + +Information about Project Gutenberg (one page) + +We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. The +time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours +to get any eBook selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright +searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. Our +projected audience is one hundred million readers. If the value +per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2 +million dollars per hour in 2002 as we release over 100 new text +files per month: 1240 more eBooks in 2001 for a total of 4000+ +We are already on our way to trying for 2000 more eBooks in 2002 +If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total +will reach over half a trillion eBooks given away by year's end. + +The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away 1 Trillion eBooks! +This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers, +which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users. + +Here is the briefest record of our progress (* means estimated): + +eBooks Year Month + + 1 1971 July + 10 1991 January + 100 1994 January + 1000 1997 August + 1500 1998 October + 2000 1999 December + 2500 2000 December + 3000 2001 November + 4000 2001 October/November + 6000 2002 December* + 9000 2003 November* +10000 2004 January* + + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created +to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium. + +We need your donations more than ever! + +As of February, 2002, contributions are being solicited from people +and organizations in: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, +Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, +Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, +Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New +Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, +Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South +Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West +Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. + +We have filed in all 50 states now, but these are the only ones +that have responded. + +As the requirements for other states are met, additions to this list +will be made and fund raising will begin in the additional states. +Please feel free to ask to check the status of your state. + +In answer to various questions we have received on this: + +We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork to legally +request donations in all 50 states. If your state is not listed and +you would like to know if we have added it since the list you have, +just ask. + +While we cannot solicit donations from people in states where we are +not yet registered, we know of no prohibition against accepting +donations from donors in these states who approach us with an offer to +donate. + +International donations are accepted, but we don't know ANYTHING about +how to make them tax-deductible, or even if they CAN be made +deductible, and don't have the staff to handle it even if there are +ways. + +Donations by check or money order may be sent to: + +Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +PMB 113 +1739 University Ave. +Oxford, MS 38655-4109 + +Contact us if you want to arrange for a wire transfer or payment +method other than by check or money order. + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been approved by +the US Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN +[Employee Identification Number] 64-622154. Donations are +tax-deductible to the maximum extent permitted by law. As fund-raising +requirements for other states are met, additions to this list will be +made and fund-raising will begin in the additional states. + +We need your donations more than ever! + +You can get up to date donation information online at: + +http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html + + +*** + +If you can't reach Project Gutenberg, +you can always email directly to: + +Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com> + +Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message. + +We would prefer to send you information by email. + + +**The Legal Small Print** + + +(Three Pages) + +***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS**START*** +Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers. +They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with +your copy of this eBook, even if you got it for free from +someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our +fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement +disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how +you may distribute copies of this eBook if you want to. + +*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS EBOOK +By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm +eBook, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept +this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive +a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this eBook by +sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person +you got it from. If you received this eBook on a physical +medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request. + +ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM EBOOKS +This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBooks, +is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart +through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project"). +Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright +on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and +distribute it in the United States without permission and +without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth +below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this eBook +under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark. + +Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market +any commercial products without permission. + +To create these eBooks, the Project expends considerable +efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain +works. Despite these efforts, the Project's eBooks and any +medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other +things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other +intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged +disk or other eBook medium, a computer virus, or computer +codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment. + +LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES +But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below, +[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may +receive this eBook from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook) disclaims +all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including +legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR +UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT, +INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE +OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE +POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. + +If you discover a Defect in this eBook within 90 days of +receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) +you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that +time to the person you received it from. If you received it +on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and +such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement +copy. If you received it electronically, such person may +choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to +receive it electronically. + +THIS EBOOK IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS +TO THE EBOOK OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT +LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A +PARTICULAR PURPOSE. + +Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or +the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the +above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you +may have other legal rights. + +INDEMNITY +You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation, +and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated +with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm +texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including +legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the +following that you do or cause: [1] distribution of this eBook, +[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the eBook, +or [3] any Defect. + +DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm" +You may distribute copies of this eBook electronically, or by +disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this +"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg, +or: + +[1] Only give exact copies of it. Among other things, this + requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the + eBook or this "small print!" statement. You may however, + if you wish, distribute this eBook in machine readable + binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form, + including any form resulting from conversion by word + processing or hypertext software, but only so long as + *EITHER*: + + [*] The eBook, when displayed, is clearly readable, and + does *not* contain characters other than those + intended by the author of the work, although tilde + (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may + be used to convey punctuation intended by the + author, and additional characters may be used to + indicate hypertext links; OR + + [*] The eBook may be readily converted by the reader at + no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent + form by the program that displays the eBook (as is + the case, for instance, with most word processors); + OR + + [*] You provide, or agree to also provide on request at + no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the + eBook in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC + or other equivalent proprietary form). + +[2] Honor the eBook refund and replacement provisions of this + "Small Print!" statement. + +[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the + gross profits you derive calculated using the method you + already use to calculate your applicable taxes. If you + don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are + payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation" + the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were + legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent + periodic) tax return. Please contact us beforehand to + let us know your plans and to work out the details. + +WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO? +Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of +public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed +in machine readable form. + +The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time, +public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses. +Money should be paid to the: +"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or +software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at: +hart@pobox.com + +[Portions of this eBook's header and trailer may be reprinted only +when distributed free of all fees. Copyright (C) 2001, 2002 by +Michael S. Hart. Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be +used in any sales of Project Gutenberg eBooks or other materials be +they hardware or software or any other related product without +express permission.] + +*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS*Ver.02/11/02*END* + diff --git a/old/ltlbh10.zip b/old/ltlbh10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..7bcbc22 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/ltlbh10.zip diff --git a/old/ltlbh10h.zip b/old/ltlbh10h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..f826549 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/ltlbh10h.zip |
