living in society, is a most complicated animal.»
«But there are men, lovers, who would die at the loss of their loved one,» Leo surprised the table by his initiative. «They would die if she died, they would die—oh so more quickly—if she lived and loved another.»
«Well, they'll have to keep on dying as they have always died in the past,» Dick answered grimly. «And no blame attaches anywhere for their deaths. We are so made that our hearts sometimes stray.»
«My heart would never stray,» Leo asserted proudly, unaware that all at the table knew his secret. «I could never love twice, I know.»
«True for you, lad,» Terrence approved. «The voice of all true lovers is in your throat. 'Tis the absoluteness of love that is its joy—how did Shelley put it?—or was it Keats?—'All a wonder and a wild delight.' Sure, a miserable skinflint of a half-baked lover would it be that could dream there was aught in woman form one-thousandth part as sweet, as ravishing and enticing, as glorious and wonderful as his own woman that he could ever love again.»
* * * * *
And as they passed out from the dining room, Dick, continuing the conversation with Dar Hyal, was wondering whether Paula would kiss him good night or slip off to bed from the piano. And Paula, talking to Leo about his latest sonnet which he had shown her, was wondering if she could kiss Dick, and was suddenly greatly desirous to kiss him, she knew not why.
CHAPTER XXIII
There was little talk that same evening after dinner. Paula, singing at the piano, disconcerted Terrence in the midst of an apostrophe on love. He quit a phrase midmost to listen to the something new he heard in her voice, then slid noiselessly across the room to join Leo at full length on the bearskin. Dar Hyal and Hancock likewise abandoned the discussion, each isolating himself in a capacious chair. Graham, seeming least attracted, browsed in a current magazine, but Dick observed that he quickly ceased turning the pages. Nor did Dick fail to catch the new note in Paula's voice and to endeavor to sense its meaning.
When she finished the song the three sages strove to tell her all at the same time that for once she had forgotten herself and sung out as they had always claimed she could. Leo lay without movement or speech, his chin on his two hands, his face transfigured.
«It's all this talk on love,» Paula laughed, «and all the lovely thoughts Leo and Terrence … and Dick have put into my head.»
Terrence shook his long mop of iron-gray hair.
«Into your heart you'd be meaning,» he corrected. «'Tis the very heart and throat of love that are yours this night. And for the first time, dear lady, have I heard the full fair volume that is yours. Never again plaint that your voice is thin. Thick it is, and round it is, as a great rope, a great golden rope for the mooring of argosies in the harbors of the Happy Isles.»
«And for that I shall sing you the
Dick, missing nothing of the talk, saved himself from speech by crossing to the concealed sideboard and mixing for himself a Scotch and soda.
While Paula sang the
A little later, using his empty glass in silent invitation to Graham, he mixed highballs for both of them, and, when Graham had finished his, suggested to Paula that she and Graham sing the «Gypsy Trail.»
She shook her head and began
«She was not a true woman, she was a terrible woman,» the song's close wrung from Leo. «And he was a true lover. She broke his heart, but still he loved her. He cannot love again because he cannot forget his love for her.»
«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 stood up, shaking his head mutinously, as if tossing a mane, and stamping ponderously with his feet in simulation of Mountain Lad.
«I'll have Leo know that he is not the only poet and love-knight on the ranch. Listen to Mountain Lad's song, all wonder and wild delight, Terrence, and more. Mountain Lad doesn't moon about the loved one. He doesn't moon at all. He incarnates love, and rears right up in meeting and tells them so. Listen to him!»
Dick filled the room and shook the air with wild, glad, stallion nickering; and then, with mane-tossing and foot-pawing, chanted:
«Hear me! I am Eros! I stamp upon the hills. I fill the wide valleys. The mares hear me, and startle, in quiet pastures; 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. They knew me aforetimes through their mothers before them. Hear me! I am Eros. I stamp upon the hills, and the wide valleys are my heralds, echoing the sound of my approach.»
It was the first time the sages of the madrono grove had heard Dick's song, and they were loud in applause. Hancock took it for a fresh start in the discussion, and was beginning to elaborate a biologic Bergsonian definition of love, when he was stopped by Terrence, who had noticed the pain that swept across Leo's face.
«Go on, please, dear lady,» Terrence begged. «And sing of love, only of love; for it is my experience that I meditate best upon the stars to the accompaniment of a woman's voice.»
A little later, Oh Joy, entering the room, waited till Paula finished a song, then moved noiselessly to Graham and handed him a telegram. Dick scowled at the interruption.
«Very important—I think,» the Chinese explained to him.
«Who took it?» Dick demanded.
«Me—I took it,» was the answer. «Night clerk at Eldorado call on telephone. He say important. I take it.»
«It is, fairly so,» Graham spoke up, having finished reading the message. «Can I get a train out to-night for San Francisco, Dick?»
«Oh Joy, come back a moment,» Dick called, looking at his watch. «What train for San Francisco stops at Eldorado?»
«Eleven-ten,» came the instant information. «Plenty time. Not too much. I call chauffeur?»
Dick nodded.
«You really must jump out to-night?» he asked Graham.
«Really. It is quite important. Will I have time to pack?»
Dick gave a confirmatory nod to Oh Joy, and said to Graham:
«Just time to throw the needful into a grip.» He turned to Oh Joy. «Is
Oh My up yet?»
«Yessr.»
«Send him to Mr. Graham's room to help, and let me know as soon as the machine is ready. No limousine. Tell Saunders to take the racer.»
«One fine big strapping man, that,» Terrence commented, after Graham had left the room.
They had gathered about Dick, with the exception of Paula, who remained at the piano, listening.
«One of the few men I'd care to go along with, hell for leather, on a forlorn hope or anything of that sort,» Dick said. «He was on the
«It was a thundering sea. Boats couldn't live. They smashed two and lost both crews. Four sailors volunteered in succession to carry a light line ashore. And each man, in turn, dead at the end of it, was hauled back
