He drives one frantic.»
«Never mind,» Paula soothed, in gurgling tones. «You will all be avenged. Dick just whispered to me to get the philosophers up to– morrow night. You know how they talk music. A musical critic is their awful prey.»
«Terrence said the other night that there was no closed season on musical critics,» Lute contributed.
«Terrence and Aaron will drive him to drink,» Paula laughed her joy of anticipation. «And Dar Hyal, alone, with his blastic theory of art, can specially apply it to music to the confutation of all the first words and the last. He doesn't believe a thing he says about blastism, any more than was he serious when he danced the other evening. It's his bit of fun. He's such a deep philosopher that he has to get his fun somehow.»
«And if O'Hay ever locks horns with Terrence,» Lute prophesied, «I can see Terrence tucking arm in arm with him, leading him down to the stag room, and heating the argument with the absentest-minded variety of drinks that ever O'Hay accomplished.»
«Which means a very sick O'Hay next day,» Paula continued her gurgles of anticipation.
«I'll tell him to do it!» exclaimed Lute.
«You mustn't think we're all bad,» Paula protested to Graham. «It's just the spirit of the house. Dick likes it. He's always playing jokes himself. He relaxes that way. I'll wager, right now, it was Dick's suggestion, to Lute, and for Lute to carry out, for Terrence to get O'Hay into the stag room. Now, 'fess up, Lute.»
«Well, I will say,» Lute answered with meticulous circumspection, «that the idea was not entirely original with me.»
At this point, Ernestine joined them and appropriated Graham with:
«We're all waiting for you. We've cut, and you and I are partners. Besides, Paula's making her sleep noise. So say good night, and let her go.»
Paula had left for bed at ten o'clock. Not till one did the bridge break up. Dick, his arm about Ernestine in brotherly fashion, said good night to Graham where one of the divided ways led to the watch tower, and continued on with his pretty sister-in-law toward her quarters.
«Just a tip, Ernestine,» he said at parting, his gray eyes frankly and genially on hers, but his voice sufficiently serious to warn her.
«What have I been doing now?» she pouted laughingly.
«Nothing… as yet. But don't get started, or you'll be laying up a sore heart for yourself. You're only a kid yet—eighteen; and a darned nice, likable kid at that. Enough to make 'most any man sit up and take notice. But Evan Graham is not 'most any man—»
«Oh, I can take care of myself,» she blurted out in a fling of quick resentment.
«But listen to me just the same. There comes a time in the affairs of a girl when the love-bee gets a buzzing with a very loud hum in her pretty noddle. Then is the time she mustn't make a mistake and start in loving the wrong man. You haven't fallen in love with Evan Graham yet, and all you have to do is just not to fall in love with him. He's not for you, nor for any young thing. He's an oldster, an ancient, and possibly has forgotten more about love, romantic love, and young things, than you'll ever learn in a dozen lives. If he ever marries again—»
«Again!» Ernestine broke in.
«Why, he's been a widower, my dear, for over fifteen years.»
«Then what of it?» she demanded defiantly.
«Just this,» Dick continued quietly. «He's lived the young-thing romance, and lived it wonderfully; and, from the fact that in fifteen years he has not married again, means—»
«That he's never recovered from his loss?» Ernestine interpolated.
«But that's no proof—»
«—Means that he's got over his apprenticeship to wild young romance,» Dick held on steadily. «All you have to do is look at him and realize that he has not lacked opportunities, and that, on occasion, some very fine women, real wise women, mature women, have given him foot-races that tested his wind and endurance. But so far they've not succeeded in catching him. And as for young things, you know how filled the world is with them for a man like him. Think it over, and just keep your heart-thoughts away from him. If you don't let your heart start to warm toward him, it will save your heart from a grievous chill later on.»
He took one of her hands in his, and drew her against him, an arm soothingly about her shoulder. For several minutes of silence Dick idly speculated on what her thoughts might be.
«You know, we hard-bitten old fellows—» he began half-apologetically, half-humorously.
But she made a restless movement of distaste, and cried out:
«Are the only ones worth while! The young men are all youngsters, and that's what's the matter with them. They're full of life, and coltish spirits, and dance, and song. But they're not serious. They're not big. They're not—oh, they don't give a girl that sense of all– wiseness, of proven strength, of, of… well, of manhood.»
«I understand,» Dick murmured. «But please do not forget to glance at the other side of the shield. You glowing young creatures of women must affect the old fellows in precisely similar ways. They may look on you as toys, playthings, delightful things to whom to teach a few fine foolishnesses, but not as comrades, not as equals, not as sharers—full sharers. Life is something to be learned. They have learned it… some of it. But young things like you, Ernestine, have you learned any of it yet?»
«Tell me,» she asked abruptly, almost tragically, «about this wild young romance, about this young thing when he was young, fifteen years ago.»
«Fifteen?» Dick replied promptly. «Eighteen. They were married three years before she died. In fact—figure it out for yourself—they were actually married, by a Church of England dominie, and living in wedlock, about the same moment that you were squalling your first post-birth squalls in this world.»
«Yes, yes—go on,» she urged nervously. «What was she like?»
«She was a resplendent, golden-brown, or tan-golden half-caste, a Polynesian queen whose mother had been a queen before her, whose father was an Oxford man, an English gentleman, and a real scholar. Her name was Nomare. She was Queen of Huahoa. She was barbaric. He was young enough to out-barbaric her. There was nothing sordid in their marriage. He was no penniless adventurer. She brought him her island kingdom and forty thousand subjects. He brought to that island his fortune—and it was no inconsiderable fortune. He built a palace that no South Sea island ever possessed before or will ever possess again. It was the real thing, grass-thatched, hand-hewn beams that were lashed with cocoanut sennit, and all the rest. It was rooted in the island; it sprouted out of the island; it
«Heavens! they had their own royal yacht, their mountain house, their canoe house—the last a veritable palace in itself. I know. I have been at great feasts in it—though it was after their time. Nomare was dead, and no one knew where Graham was, and a king of collateral line was the ruler.
«I told you he out-barbaricked her. Their dinner service was gold.— Oh, what's the use in telling any more. He was only a boy. She was half-English, half-Polynesian, and a really and truly queen. They were flowers of their races. They were a pair of wonderful children. They lived a fairy tale. And… well, Ernestine, the years have passed, and Evan Graham has passed from the realm of the young thing. It will be a remarkable woman that will ever infatuate him now. Besides, he's practically broke. Though he didn't wastrel his money. As much misfortune, and more, than anything else.»
«Paula would be more his kind,» Ernestine said meditatively.
«Yes, indeed,» Dick agreed. «Paula, or any woman as remarkable as Paula, would attract him a thousand times more than all the sweet, young, lovely things like you in the world. We oldsters have our standards, you know.»
«And I'll have to put up with the youngsters,» Ernestine sighed.
«In the meantime, yes,» he chuckled. «Remembering, always, that you, too, in time, may grow into the remarkable, mature woman, who can outfoot a man like Evan in a foot-race of love for possession.»
«But I shall be married long before that,» she pouted.
«Which will be your good fortune, my dear. And, now, good night. And you are not angry with me?»
She smiled pathetically and shook her head, put up her lips to be kissed, then said as they parted:
«I promise not to be angry if you will only show me the way that in the end will lead me to ancient graybeards like you and Graham.»
Dick Forrest, turning off lights as he went, penetrated the library, and, while selecting half a dozen reference
