13

Still the company of the Big House thinned. Ernestine departed for Santa Barbara, Bert and his sister remembered their home in Sacramento. The free and easy life of the Big House went on. Dick worked. Graham worked. Paula maintained her seclusion.

One moonlight evening, Paula was at the piano. As Graham approached, he caught the quick expression of pleasure in her eyes at sight of him, which quickly vanished.

He talked whatever came into his head, and rummaged among her songs with her. His high baritone subdued to her light soprano with success.

“Oh, I want to travel around the world with Dick, again” she told him in a pause. “If we could only start tomorrow! But Dick can’t start yet. He’s full of work on the ranch here. What do you think he is doing now? He’s going to revolutionize the sales. He’s spending his mornings in conference with Mr. Agar and Mr. Pitts. Mr. Agar is his sales manager, and Mr. Pitts his showman.”

She sighed and rippled her fingers along the keyboard.

“But, oh, if only we could get away!”

“I thought you found it such a paradise here,” he was saying.

“I do, I do,” she assured him. “But I don’t know what’s with me. I want to go away. It’s the spring, I suppose. And if only Dick didn’t work so much! Do you know, in all the years of our marriage, the only really serious rival I have ever had has been this ranch. He’s pretty faithful, and the ranch is his first love. He had it all planned and started before he ever met me or knew I existed.”

“Here, let us try this together,” Graham said abruptly, placing the song on the rack before her.

“Oh, but it’s the ‘Gypsy Trail’,” she protested. “It will only make my mood worse.”

And she began to sing:

 

“Follow the Romany patteran

West to the sinking sun, …”

 

“What is the Romany patteran?” she asked.

“Two sprigs,” he answered. “crossed in certain ways and left upon the trail, compose the patteran. But they must always be of different trees or shrubs. It is a sign of Gypsy comrade to Gypsy comrade, of Gypsy lover to Gypsy lover.” And he hummed:

 

“Back to the road again, again;

Follow the cross of the Gypsy trail,

Over the world and back.“

 

She nodded, and said quickly:

“Heaven knows there’s a lot of Gypsy in some of us.”

Graham looked at her and wondered—wondered at her—at himself. This was no place for him by this woman’s side, under her husband’s roof. Yet here he was. This was enchantment, madness. Had he softened with the years? He questioned himself.

She is a witch, and her voice is magical, he thought, and her voice throbbed in his ear. And he knew, beyond shade of doubt, that she sensed, as he sensed, that the man and the woman met each other.

14

Almost immediately after the singing of the “Gypsy Trail,” Paula emerged from her seclusion. All the morning Graham could hear snatches of song and opera from her wing, or laughter and scolding of dogs, or the piano from the distant music room. But Graham devoted his mornings to work, and he rarely encountered Paula before lunch.

Graham learned the wide scope of her interests and talents, but he was nevertheless surprised one day when he found Paula in a corner of a window-seat, completely absorbed in her work on a piece of fine embroidery.

“I love it,” she explained. “All the costly needlework of the shops means nothing to me. Dick doesn’t like my sewing. He thinks, you know, it’s a wasting of time. Peasants can do it better. But it’s like the music one makes oneself. Of course I can buy better music than I make; but to sit down at an instrument and evoke the music oneself, with one’s own fingers and brain, is an entirely different and dearer satisfaction. Take this little embroidered crust of lilies on the edge of this flounce—there is nothing like it in the world. It’s my idea. There are better ideas and better workmanship in the shops; but this is different. It is mine, and I made it. And who will say that embroidery is not art?”

She ceased speaking and her eyes laughed.

“Good milliners or modistes,” she nodded gravely, “are real artists, and important ones, as Dick says, in the world’s economy.”

15

Another time, Graham came upon Paula, sprawled gracefully over a sheet of paper on a big table, engaged in drawing plans of a house or camp for the sages.

“It’s a problem,” she sighed. “Dick says that if I build it I must build it for seven. We’ve got four sages now, but he wants seven. He doesn’t want showers and such things, because philosophers don’t bathe, he says. And he suggests seriously seven stoves and seven kitchens.”

Graham was admiring graceful Paula. Thirty-eight! It was impossible. She seemed almost a girl, petulant and flushed over some school task.

“I understand,” she had said. What had she understood? She had thrilled and fluttered to him and with him when they had sung the “Gypsy Trail.” That he knew. And he smiled to himself.

“What amuses you?” Paula was asking. “Of course, I am not an architect. But try to build a house for seven philosophers!”

Back in his tower room, Graham gnawed his lip and meditated. That woman was no woman. She was a real child. And she was very wise. The look of her gray eyes gave the impression of poise and power. That was it—strength!

It was a perfect morning of California early summer. No breath of wind stirred over the drowsing fields. The air was heavy with lilac fragrance. Why was he here at Dick Forrest’s? Graham asked himself. Why was he not on the way to the station to catch the first train? The woman, that was the answer. He couldn’t go away because of the woman.

16

Again the house was filled with guests Paula had invited. There were singers and musicians and artist folk, and bevies of young girls with their inevitable followings of young men, mammas and aunts and chaperons.

Graham definitely abandoned work on his book, and joined in the before-breakfast swims, in the morning rides over the ranch, and in picnics outdoors. Paula was never alone. Graham could only join in the groups that were always about her. Although the young people ragged and tangoed incessantly, she rarely danced, and then it was with the young men.

Once, however, she favored him with an old-fashioned waltz. “Your ancestors perform a dance,” she said to the young people, as she stepped out.

After several minutes they found their perfect mutual step and pace, they essayed rhythmical pauses and dips. Dick voiced cried out: “They float! They float!”

There was no need to speak. In silence, without a glance at each other, they returned to the company where Dick was proclaiming:

“Well, younglings, that’s the way we old folks dance! I’m not saying anything against the new dances, mind you. They’re all right and fine. But the way you waltz, when you attempt it, is a scream. We old folks know something!”

“For instance?” queried one of the girls.

“I’ll tell you. There isn’t a girl of you that can win Paula! There isn’t a fellow of you that can win Graham! There isn’t one of you that can properly ride a horse—a real horse, I mean.”

Paula laughed and accepted the compliment.

“Oh!” Paula said to Graham. “Someday I’ll show you my goldfish. I supply the San Francisco dealers with them, and I even ship to New York. And, best of all, I actually make money—profits, I mean. Dick’s books show it, and he is the most rigid of bookkeepers. He has a staff of bookkeepers.”

“And your goldfish?” Graham suggested, irritated by her constant dwelling on her husband.

“Well, Dick keeps track of my goldfish. He keeps track of everything.”

“He is very sure,” Graham observed.

“I never knew a man to be so sure of himself,” Paula replied warmly; “I know him. He is a genius—but only in the most paradoxical sense. He is a genius because he is so balanced and normal that he hasn’t the slightest particle of genius in him. Such men are rarer and greater than geniuses. I like to think of Abraham Lincoln as such a type.”

“What do you mean?” Graham asked.

“Oh, I don’t dare to say that Dick is as good as Lincoln,” she said. “They are of the same type. Now I am a genius. For, see, I do things without knowing how I do them. I just do them. Dick, on the other hand, can’t do anything unless he clearly knows in advance how he is going to do it. He does everything with balance and foresight. Oh, I know him.”

“I’m afraid I’m like you,” Graham said, “For I, too, flare and do the most unintentional things. And I am ready to kneel before mystery.”

“And Dick hates mystery. Mystery irritates him. It excites him. He wants to know how and why, and it will be no longer mystery but a scientifically demonstrable fact.”

The situation was veiled to the three figures of it. Graham did not know of Paula’s desperate efforts to cling close to her husband, who was busy with his plans and projects. He always appeared at lunch, but it was a rare afternoon when he could go out with his guests.

“I wish you weren’t so busy,” Paula sighed in his arms, on his knees, one fortunate morning, when, at eleven o’clock, she had caught him alone.

It was true, she had interrupted the dictation of a letter; and the servant entered with more telegrams in his hand.

Dick caressed her and called her the dearest woman, although his was roving impatiently to the unfinished letter.

She slipped off his knees and out of his arms with unusual abruptness, and stood straight up before him, her eyes flashing, her cheeks white. She was about to say something of grave importance. But a bell tinkled softly, and he reached for the desk telephone.

Paula drooped, and sighed inaudibly, and went down the room and out the door.

Nor did Graham, nor even Paula, imagine that Dick was already sensing what had not happened but what might happen. He had not heard Paula’s brief significant words at the hitching post; nor had he seen Graham’s eyes. Dick had heard nothing, seen little, but sensed much.