17

“Come on, Red Cloud, go riding this afternoon,” Paula asked her husband. “Get the lawyers, mines, and livestock out of your brain!”

“I’d like to,” he answered. “But I can’t. I’ve got to rush in a machine to the Buckeye. They’re in trouble at the dam. What’s the use of a dam when the bottom of the reservoir won’t hold water?”

Three hours later, returning from the Buckeye, Dick noted that for the first time Paula and Graham had gone riding together alone.

Dick stepped out on his sleeping porch to the row of barometers and thermometers on the wall. But he had come to consult, not them, but the girl’s face that laughed from the round wooden frame beneath them.

“Paula, Paula,” he said aloud, “are you surprising yourself and me after all these years? Are you turning mad at sober middle age?”

He put on leggings and spurs to be ready for riding.

“Play the game,” he muttered. And then, after a pause, as he turned to go: “A free field and no favor … and no favor.”

One day Graham laughingly said to Dick that if he didn’t go soon, he would become a pensioner and “join the philosophers”. It was the time of cocktail assembling, and Paula was the only one to put in an appearance.

“If all the philosophers together could make one book!” Dick demurred. “Man, you must complete your book here.”

Paula’s encouragement to Graham to stay on—stereotyped, uninterested phrases—was music to Dick. His heart leapt. After all, maybe he was entirely mistaken? Paula and Graham were not young to fall in love.

18

Graham was riding solitary through the redwood canyons among the hills. As he rode along, he hummed the words of the “Gypsy Trail”. Quite carelessly, foolishly, he broke a spray of laurel and another of redwood. Then he bound the sprays into a cross. When the patteran was fashioned, he tossed it on the trail before him.

His horse was nickering. And then, from close at hand, came an answering nicker. Graham swung a wide bend, and overtook Paula.

“Hello!” he called. “Hello! Hello!”

“I was just turning back,” she said. “Why did you turn back? I thought you were going over the divide.”

“You knew I was ahead of you?” he asked.

“Of course. because of the patteran.”

“Why did you turn back?”

An awkward silence was between them. Both were aware of this awkwardness, due to the known but unspoken things.

“Do you drop patterans often?” Paula asked.

“The first time,” he replied, with a shake of the head. “But the song was haunting me.”

“It was haunting me this morning when I woke up,” she said.

And Graham, gazing at her face in profile, at her golden-brown hair, at her throat, felt the old ache at the heart, the hunger and the yearning. The nearness of her was a provocation.

“Praise to the Lord for one thing: you haven’t once mentioned Dick.”

“Do you so dislike him?”

“To be honest,” 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 horse’s ears.

“I can’t understand why I remain. It’s time to go away.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Be fair, be fair,” he warned. “You and I don’t need words for understanding.”

Without speech, she looked at him. But her eyes, he saw, were glad and startled. There was no mistake. The startle lay in them, and also the gladness. And he changed the bridle rein to his other hand, reined close to her, put his arm around her, and kissed her. There was no mistake—she kissed him, too.

The next moment the blood had left her face and she rode away fast.

What had just occurred had been one of those inevitable things. He had not planned it, although he knew.

It was no longer a question of going. After what had happened, unless … unless she went with him? It was a real world, he thought; and Paula, and Dick, and he were real persons in it, realists, who looked the facts of life in the face. This was no affair of priest, of other wisdoms and decisions. Someone was going to be hurt. But life was hurt.

19

Graham did not see Paula until dinner, and when he did, he found her the same Paula. His eye could not detect any sign of the day’s great happening. In everything she was the same Little Lady of the Big House. Even when 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.

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 in San Francisco.

“Oh, adorably,” he assured her. “Don’t I, Mrs. Forrest?” he appealed.

“It is quite true,” Paula smiled.

“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.

“It’s the ‘Gypsy Trail,’ a bright, lovely song,” she said.

Graham was thinking as he sang, and he knew, too, that Paula was thinking, that in their hearts another duet was pulsing. The women applauded.

“You never sang it better,” he told Paula.

For he had heard a new note in her voice.

“And now, because I suppose you don’t know, I’ll tell you what a patteran is …”

20

The sages were at the table, and, with Paula, Dick and Graham, made up the dinner party of seven. They spoke and spoke. Paula feigned a cheerful interest. She did not appear bored, but 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 can’t apply all these floods of words to life—to my life, I mean, to my living, to what must do. I understand what they say, 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 the South American tribes. He looked as a carefree, happy husband.

But Dick’s secret interrogation was: What’s up? Paula’s not herself. She’s nervous, and Graham’s off color. He’s thinking about something else, rather than about what he is saying. What is that something else?

“Females are conservative, Leo, my lad,” Terrence said. “They keep the type true.”

“Let us find out what we are talking about. What is a woman?” Dick demanded.

“The ancient Greeks said a woman was nature’s failure to make a man,” Dar Hyal answered.

Leo was shocked. His face flushed. There was pain in his eyes and his lips were trembling as he looked at Dick.

“No, 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 discussion is vague. Leo, there are men with the personalities of women. There are two-legged human creatures that are neither fish, flesh, nor fowl.”

“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.

“You must stop baiting Leo,” Paula interfered, “and be truthful, all of you, and say what you know or believe.”

“A woman is a very sacred subject,” Dar Hyal enunciated solemnly.

“There is the Madonna,” Graham suggested.

“And the cérébrale,” Terrence added, winning a nod of approval from Dar Hyal.

“One at a time,” Hancock said. “Let us consider the Madonna-worship. Man is a lazy, loafing savage. He likes tranquility, repose. And he is with a restless, nervous, irritable, hysterical companion, and her name is woman. She has moods, tears, vanities, angers, and moral irresponsibilities. He couldn’t destroy her. He must have her, although she is always spoiling his peace. What must he do? He made a heavenly image of her. He idealized her good qualities. 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. 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 … like Leo does.”

“For an unmarried man you know too much about women,” Dick commented. “Or is it all purely theoretical?”

Terrence began to laugh.

“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 added.

“And why, Leo,” Dar Hyal queried, “is the woman always the pursuer, the huntress?”

“Oh, but she isn’t,” the boy answered quietly. “That is just nonsense.”

“Bravo, Leo,” Paula applauded.

“Don’t you see,” said Leo, “all such talk makes woman a monster, a creature of prey.” He turned to Dick. “Is she a creature of prey, Dick?”

“No,” Dick answered slowly, with a shake of head. “I cannot say that woman is a creature of prey. 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. 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 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, and he doesn’t beat her.”

Dick turned to Paula as if to ask her silent approval of the lad’s words. Graham’s face was expressionless.

“Let me ask you, Leo,” Hancock said. “why do men, out of jealousy, so often kill the women they love?”

“Because they are hurt, because they are insane,” came the answer.

“Suppose the most perfect woman you can imagine,” Terrence said. “ceases to love the man who does not beat her and comes to love another man who loves her and will not beat her—what then?”

“The first man will not kill her,” Leo asserted stoutly. “Because if he does he will not be the man you describe. He will not be high type, but low type.”

“You mean, he will get out of the way?” Dick asked.

Leo nodded gravely.

“He will be very gentle with her.”

“Let us suppose, Leo,” Hancock said, “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 won’t,” the boy protested.

“Leo, you are not complimentary,” Paula encouraged.

“It’s just supposing, Leo,” Hancock urged.

The boy turned bravely to Dick and said:

“That is for Dick to answer.”

“And I’ll answer,” Dick said. “I will not kill Paula. Nor will I kill you, Leo. That wouldn’t be playing the game. No matter what I feel at heart, I’ll say, ‘Bless you, my children.’ But just the same—” He paused. “—I’ll say to myself that Leo was making a sad mistake. You see, he doesn’t know Paula.”

And as they passed out from the dining room, Dick, continuing the conversation, was wondering: Whether Paula will kiss me good night? And Paula, talking to Leo about his latest sonnet which he had shown her, was suddenly greatly desirous to kiss him, and she did not know why.