half-closed lids across the ebony board of the enormous piano, which she commanded, as she commanded herself, as she commanded the composer. Her touch was definite, authoritative, was his judgment, as the Prelude faded away in dying chords hauntingly reminiscent of its full vigor that seemed still to linger in the air.
While Aaron and Terrence debated in excited whispers in the window seat, and while Dar Hyal sought other music at Paula's direction, she glanced at Dick, who turned off bowl after bowl of mellow light till Paula sat in an oasis of soft glow that brought out the dull gold lights in her dress and hair.
Graham watched the lofty room grow loftier in the increasing shadows. Eighty feet in length, rising two stories and a half from masonry walls to tree-trunked roof, flung across with a flying gallery from the rail of which hung skins of wild animals, hand-woven blankets of Oaxaca and Ecuador, and tapas, woman-pounded and vegetable-dyed, from the islands of the South Pacific, Graham knew it for what it was—a feast-hall of some medieval castle; and almost he felt a poignant sense of lack of the long spread table, with pewter below the salt and silver above the salt, and with huge hound-dogs scuffling beneath for bones.
Later, when Paula had played sufficient Debussy to equip Terrence and Aaron for fresh war, Graham talked with her about music for a few vivid moments. So well did she prove herself aware of the philosophy of music, that, ere he knew it, he was seduced into voicing his own pet theory.
«And so,» he concluded, «the true psychic factor of music took nearly three thousand years to impress itself on the Western mind. Debussy more nearly attains the idea-engendering and suggestive serenity—say of the time of Pythagoras—than any of his fore-runners—»
Here, Paula put a pause in his summary by beckoning over Terrence and
Aaron from their battlefield in the windowseat.
«Yes, and what of it?» Terrence was demanding, as they came up side by side. «I defy you, Aaron, I defy you, to get one thought out of Bergson on music that is more lucid than any thought he ever uttered in his 'Philosophy of Laughter,' which is not lucid at all.»
«Oh!—listen!» Paula cried, with sparkling eyes. «We have a new prophet. Hear Mr. Graham. He's worthy of your steel, of both your steel. He agrees with you that music is the refuge from blood and iron and the pounding of the table. That weak souls, and sensitive souls, and high-pitched souls flee from the crassness and the rawness of the world to the drug-dreams of the over-world of rhythm and vibration—»
«Atavistic!» Aaron Hancock snorted. «The cave-men, the monkey-folk, and the ancestral bog-men of Terrence did that sort of thing—»
«But wait,» Paula urged. «It's his conclusions and methods and processes. Also, there he disagrees with you, Aaron, fundamentally. He quoted Pater's 'that all art aspires toward music'—»
«Pure prehuman and micro-organic chemistry,» Aaron broke in. «The reactions of cell-elements to the doggerel punch of the wave-lengths of sunlight, the foundation of all folk-songs and rag-times. Terrence completes his circle right there and stultifies all his windiness. Now listen to me, and I will present—»
«But wait,» Paula pleaded. «Mr. Graham argues that English puritanism barred music, real music, for centuries…»
«True,» said Terrence.
«And that England had to win to its sensuous delight in rhythm through
Milton and Shelley—»
«Who was a metaphysician.» Aaron broke in.
«A lyrical metaphysician,» Terrence defined instantly. «
«And Swinburne?» Aaron demanded, with a significance that tokened former arguments.
«He says Offenbach was the fore-runner of Arthur Sullivan,» Paula cried challengingly. «And that Auber was before Offenbach. And as for Wagner, ask him, just ask him—»
And she slipped away, leaving Graham to his fate. He watched her, watched the perfect knee-lift of her draperies as she crossed to Mrs. Mason and set about arranging bridge quartets, while dimly he could hear Terrence beginning:
«It is agreed that music was the basis of inspiration of all the arts of the Greeks…»
Later, when the two sages were obliviously engrossed in a heated battle as to whether Berlioz or Beethoven had exposited in their compositions the deeper intellect, Graham managed his escape. Clearly, his goal was to find his hostess again. But she had joined two of the girls in the whispering, giggling seclusiveness of one of the big chairs, and, most of the company being deep in bridge, Graham found himself drifted into a group composed of Dick Forrest, Mr. Wombold, Dar Hyal, and the correspondent of the
«I'm sorry you won't be able to run over with me,» Dick was saying to the correspondent. «It would mean only one more day. I'll take you tomorrow.»
«Sorry,» was the reply. «But I must make Santa Rosa. Burbank has promised me practically a whole morning, and you know what that means. Yet I know the
«More water-works?» Graham queried.
«No; an asinine attempt to make good farmers out of hopelessly poor ones,» Mr. Wombold answered. «I contend that any farmer to-day who has no land of his own, proves by his lack of it that he is an inefficient farmer.»
«On the contrary,» spoke up Dar Hyal, weaving his slender Asiatic fingers in the air to emphasize his remarks. «Quite on the contrary. Times have changed. Efficiency no longer implies the possession of capital. It is a splendid experiment, an heroic experiment. And it will succeed.»
«What is it, Dick?» Graham urged. «Tell us.»
«Oh, nothing, just a white chip on the table,» Forrest answered lightly. «Most likely it will never come to anything, although just the same I have my hopes—»
«A white chip!» Wombold broke in. «Five thousand acres of prime valley land, all for a lot of failures to batten on, to farm, if you please, on salary, with food thrown in!»
«The food that is grown on the land only,» Dick corrected. «Now I will have to put it straight. I've set aside five thousand acres midway between here and the Sacramento River.»
«Think of the alfalfa it grew, and that you need,» Wombold again interrupted.
«My dredgers redeemed twice that acreage from the marshes in the past year,» Dick replied. «The thing is, I believe the West and the world must come to intensive farming. I want to do my share toward blazing the way. I've divided the five thousand acres into twenty-acre holdings. I believe each twenty acres should support, comfortably, not only a family, but pay at least six per cent.»
«When it is all allotted it will mean two hundred and fifty families,» the
«Not quite,» Dick corrected. «The last holding is occupied, and we have only a little over eleven hundred on the land.» He smiled whimsically. «But they promise, they promise. Several fat years and they'll average six to the family.»
«Who is
«Oh, I have a committee of farm experts on it—my own men, with the exception of Professor Lieb, whom the Federal Government has loaned me. The thing is: they
«It's a fair deal. No farmer risks anything. With the food he may grow and he and his family may consume, plus a cash salary of a thousand a year, he is certain, good seasons and bad, stupid or intelligent, of at least a hundred dollars a month. The stupid and the inefficient will be bound to be eliminated by the intelligent and the efficient. That's all. It will demonstrate intensive farming with a vengeance. And there is more than the certain salary guaranty. After the salary is paid, the adventure must yield six per cent, to me. If more than this is achieved, then the entire hundred per cent, of the additional achievement goes to the farmer.»
