21

There was little talk that same evening after dinner. Paula was singing at the piano. A little later, Graham suggested to Paula that she and Graham sing the “Gypsy Trail”.

She shook her head.

“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 began to sing:

 

“Hear me! I am Eros! I stamp upon the hills. I fill the wide valleys. The mares hear me; 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. Hear me! I am Eros. I stamp upon the hills, and the wide valleys are my heralds!”

 

The sages were loud in applause.

A little later, a servant entered the room, then moved noiselessly to Graham and handed him a telegram.

“Very important—I think,” the servant explained to him.

“Who took it?” Dick demanded.

“Me—I took it,” was the answer. “Night clerk at Eldorado called on telephone.”

“Yes, indeed,” Graham read the message. “Can I get a train out tonight for San Francisco, Dick?”

“Eleven-ten,” came the instant information. “You really must go tonight?”

“Really. It is quite important. Will I have time to pack?”

Dick prepared to accompany his guest outside to the car; but Paula remained in the house. In Graham’s 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. She responded to that quick pressure. There was no need for speech between them.

Paula glanced swiftly at Dick. But Dick was laughing over Hancock’s jokes. No, was her thought; surely Dick had seen nothing. How could Dick have seen or sensed? Their eyes were certainly hidden from Dick.

Was she guilty? she asked herself. Does she have anything to hide? But she was honest enough to face the facts. Yes, she had something to hide. And her cheeks burned.

“A couple of days,” Graham was saying as he shook hands with Dick at the car. “I think, when I get back, that I’ll pack.”

“But the book,” Dick protested, inwardly cursing himself for the joy he felt.

“That’s just why,” Graham answered. “I must finish it. 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, and waste hours.”

“Come back and work,” urged Dick. “If necessary, I’ll lock you in. And if you don’t do your work all day, all day you’ll stay locked in.”

Dick turned off the lights, and as he crossed the house. On his sleeping porch, glancing at his barometers and thermometers, her laughing face in the round frame caught his eyes, and, standing before it, he studied her long.

“Oh, well,” he muttered, “whatever it is, I’ll accept it.”

He looked at her picture:

“But, oh, Little Woman, don’t do it.”

22

The Big House was empty. Dick noted that Paula tried to avoid his kisses. He remembered her morning pilgrimage, and the folding of her dress in his arms. He remembered 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 smiled as he realized that her morning embrace had become suddenly desirable. Maybe to take her away with him on one of their travels? That will solve the problem, perhaps. Why not an Alaskan hunting trip? She had always wanted to go. Or the South Seas. Steamers run direct between San Francisco and Tahiti.

He brought his fist down on the desk. No, by God, he was not a coward to run away with his wife because of another man. And he did not know how far it had gone between her and Graham. Maybe it’s a spring madness that will vanish with the spring. Unfortunately, he decided, in the dozen years of their marriage she had never shown any predisposition toward spring madness. She had never given his heart a moment’s doubt. She had remained always Dick Forrest’s wife.

“Good morning, merry gentleman.”

She was blowing him a kiss from her finger tips.

“And good morning, my little haughty moon,” he called back.

And now she will come in, and he will fold her in his arms.

He opened his arms in invitation. But she did not enter. Instead, she smiled back at him, blew him another kiss, and was gone.

It was during the morning of the second day—the day of Graham’s expected return—that Dick encountered his servant in a hall with an armful of fresh-cut lilacs.

“Where are you taking them?” Dick asked.

“Mr. Graham’s room—he is coming today.”

Now whose thought was that? Dick pondered. The servant’s? Or Paula’s? Graham more than once expressed his fancy for their lilacs.

Through the open windows came Paula’s happy humming. Dick meditated.

Among the telegrams the servant handed him, was one from Graham, which Dick read twice, although it was simple and said about a postponement of his return.

“I got a telegram from Evan,” Dick told Paula. “He won’t be back till the four o’clock day after tomorrow.”

“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.

23

Paula and Dick rode out from the Big House side by side.

“You’re a wonderful man, Red Cloud,” Paula said.

“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 didn’t have a statistic that applied to you,” Dick laughed. “I merely acknowledged to myself that here was the most wonderful 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.”

Dick caught 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; but, most of all, a seeking, a searching, a questioning.

An hour passed. The afternoon sun beat down but was not uncomfortable in the shade. “Anything the matter?” he finally asked.

“No; headache, that’s all.”

“Too much embroidery,” he teased.

“Not guilty,” was her reply.

No, there will be no talk between us this day, Dick thought. The sun dropped lower. The breeze died out. The situation was as grave as he had feared. His world was crumbling about him. Old landmarks were shifting their places. He was bewildered, shaken. Their dozen years!

The fourth morning, the day of Graham’s return, came. Dick was alone in his workroom at eleven. He was bending over his desk, and signing letters. Paula tiptoed into the room. He did not look up, but while he was writing his signature he listened the silken swish of her dress. She had softly kissed his hair and said “Good morning, merry gentleman,” then she evaded the hungry sweep of his arm. What affected him as strongly as the disappointment was the happiness he had seen in her face.

24

Dick drove alone, and though he drove with speed he drove with safety. Accidents were things he did not tolerate. And they never occurred.

Paula went to the railway station to meet Graham.

“Phew!” he started to mutter: “Phew! Imagine little Paul’s thoughts if I drove with some charming girl!”

From the beginning he had restricted his attentions to other women. He had been far more circumspect than Paula. He was proud that his wife attracted fine fellows. But he was as sure of her as he was of the diurnal rotation of the earth.

He snatched a glimpse at his watch. In five minutes Graham will be getting off the train at Eldorado. In a quarter of an hour the train went by. Dick noticed Paula’s car. Graham sat beside Paula, who was driving. Dick slowed down as he passed, waved a hello to Graham, and called cheerily:

“Hello, Evan, I hope we’ll come for dinner in time.”

25

“This can’t go on. We must do something—at once.”

They were in the music room, Paula’s face turned up to Graham who stood close to her.

“You must decide,” Graham continued.

“But I don’t want you to go,” Paula urged. “I don’t know what I want. I am not 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 decide something, my love. Dick is not blind.”

“What did he see?” she demanded. “There was one kiss in the canyon, and he couldn’t see that, sir.”

“I am mad over you, mad for you,” he said. “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, 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.

“And I’m not sure,” he exclaimed impatiently. “Do you love me?”

“I love you, Evan—you know that. But …” She paused.

“But what?” he commanded. “Go on.”

“But I love Dick, too. Isn’t it ridiculous?”

He did not respond to her smile.

“It will work out,” she assured him gravely. “Dick says all things work out. Everything changes. What is static is dead, and we’re not dead, any of us … are we?”

“I don’t blame you. Continue to love Dick!” he answered impatiently. “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.

She waited with a quiet smile.

“You can’t love two men at once!” he cried again.

“Oh, but I do, Evan. That’s what I am telling you. Only I don’t know which I love more. I have known Dick a long time. You … you are a—”

“Recent acquaintance,” he broke in, returning to her.

“Not that, no, not that, Evan. I love you as much as Dick. I love you more. I—I don’t know.”

She buried her face in her hands.

“You see it is not easy for me,” she went on. “There is so much that I cannot understand. 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 does not love me.’ But I am tangled, confused. I—and I wasn’t born yesterday—have had no such experience. I loved only one man … and now you. You and this love for you have broken our perfect marriage, Evan.”

“I know,” he said.

“I don’t know,” she went on. “I must have time to work it out …”

Unconsciously, Graham’s hand went farther about her shoulder.

“No, no—not yet,” she said softly. “When you touch me, I can’t think,” she begged. “I—I can’t think.”

“Then I must go,” he threatened. 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’t deceive a man like Great Heart. I prefer to go right up to him and say: ‘dick, I love your wife. She loves me. What are you going to do about it?’“

“Do so,” Paula said.

Graham straightened up with resolution.

“I will. And now.”

“No, no,” she cried in sudden panic. “You must go away … But I can’t let you go.”