The Little Lady of the Big House

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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....

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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 c�r�brale,� 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.

[صائد الأفكار]

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 coch�re.
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.

[صائد الأفكار]

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 prot�g� 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.�

[صائد الأفكار]

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.�

[صائد الأفكار]

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.

[صائد الأفكار]

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.

[صائد الأفكار]

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.

[صائد الأفكار]

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 madro�o 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 madro�o 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 madro�o 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 r�le, 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.

[صائد الأفكار]

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 madro�o 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.�