The Little Lady of the Big House Part 29

"And that's why you preach the gospel of the strong," Paula went on.

"If you had been weaklings, you'd have preached the gospel of the weak and turned the other cheek. But you--you pair of big-muscled giants--when you are struck, being what you are, you don't turn the other cheek--"

"No," d.i.c.k interrupted quietly. "We immediately roar, 'Knock his block off!' and then do it.--She's got us, Evan, hip and thigh. Philosophy, like religion, is what the man is, and is by him made in his own image."

And while the talk led over the world, Paula sewed on, her eyes filled with the picture of the two big men, admiring, wondering, pondering, without the surety of self that was theirs, aware of a slipping and giving of convictions so long accepted that they had seemed part of her.

Later in the evening she gave voice to her trouble.

"The strangest part of it," she said, taking up a remark d.i.c.k had just made, "is that too much philosophizing about life gets one worse than nowhere. A philosophic atmosphere is confusing--at least to a woman.

One hears so much about everything, and against everything, that nothing is sure. For instance, Mendenhall's wife is a Lutheran. She hasn't a doubt about anything. All is fixed, ordained, immovable.

Star-drifts and ice-ages she knows nothing about, and if she did they would not alter in the least her rules of conduct for men and women in this world and in relation to the next.

"But here, with us, you two pound your bra.s.s tacks, Terrence does a Greek dance of epicurean anarchism, Hanc.o.c.k waves the glittering veils of Bergsonian metaphysics, Leo makes solemn obeisance at the altar of Beauty, and Dar Hyal juggles his sophistic blastism to no end save all your applause for his cleverness. Don't you see? The effect is that there is nothing solid in any human judgment. Nothing is right. Nothing is wrong. One is left compa.s.sless, rudderless, chartless on a sea of ideas. Shall I do this? Must I refrain from that? Will it be wrong? Is there any virtue in it? Mrs. Mendenhall has her instant answer for every such question. But do the philosophers?"

Paula shook her head.

"No. All they have is ideas. They immediately proceed to talk about it, and talk and talk and talk, and with all their erudition reach no conclusion whatever. And I am just as bad. I listen and listen, and talk and talk, as I am talking now, and remain convictionless. There is no test--"

"But there is," d.i.c.k said. "The old, eternal test of truth--_Will it work?_"

"Ah, now you are pounding your favorite bra.s.s tack," Paula smiled. "And Dar Hyal, with a few arm-wavings and word-whirrings, will show that all bra.s.s tacks are illusions; and Terrence, that bra.s.s tacks are sordid, irrelevant and non-essential things at best; and Hanc.o.c.k, that the overhanging heaven of Bergson is paved with bra.s.s tacks, only that they are a much superior article to yours; and Leo, that there is only one bra.s.s tack in the universe, and that it is Beauty, and that it isn't bra.s.s at all but gold."

"Come on, Red Cloud, go riding this afternoon," Paula asked her husband. "Get the cobwebs out of your brain, and let lawyers and mines and livestock go hang."

"I'd like to, Paul," he answered. "But I can't. I've got to rush in a machine all the way to the Buckeye. Word came in just before lunch.

They're in trouble at the dam. There must have been a fault in the under-strata, and too-heavy dynamiting has opened it. In short, what's the good of a good dam when the bottom of the reservoir won't hold water?"

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

The Wainwrights and the Coghlans, in two machines, out for a week's trip to the Russian River, rested over for a day at the Big House, and were the cause of Paula's taking out the tally-ho for a picnic into the Los Banos Hills. Starting in the morning, it was impossible for d.i.c.k to accompany them, although he left Blake in the thick of dictation to go out and see them off. He a.s.sured himself that no detail was amiss in the harnessing and hitching, and reseated the party, insisting on Graham coming forward into the box-seat beside Paula.

"Just must have a reserve of man's strength alongside of Paula in case of need," d.i.c.k explained. "I've known a brake-rod to carry away on a down grade somewhat to the inconvenience of the pa.s.sengers. Some of them broke their necks. And now, to rea.s.sure you, with Paula at the helm, I'll sing you a song:

"What can little Paula do?

Why, drive a phaeton and two.

Can little Paula do no more?

Yes, drive a tally-ho and four."

All were in laughter as Paula nodded to the grooms to release the horses' heads, took the feel of the four mouths on her hands, and shortened and slipped the reins to adjustment of four horses into the collars and taut on the traces.

In the babel of parting gibes to d.i.c.k, none of the guests was aware of aught else than a bright morning, the promise of a happy day, and a genial host bidding them a merry going. But Paula, despite the keen exhilaration that should have arisen with the handling of four such horses, was oppressed by a vague sadness in which, somehow, d.i.c.k's being left behind figured. Through Graham's mind d.i.c.k's merry face had flashed a regret of conscience that, instead of being seated there beside this one woman, he should be on train and steamer fleeing to the other side of the world.

But the merriness died on d.i.c.k's face the moment he turned on his heel to enter the house. It was a few minutes later than ten when he finished his dictation and Mr. Blake rose to go. He hesitated, then said a trifle apologetically:

"You told me, Mr. Forrest, to remind you of the proofs of your Shorthorn book. They wired their second hurry-up yesterday."

"I won't be able to tackle it myself," d.i.c.k replied. "Will you please correct the typographical, submit the proofs to Mr. Manson for correction of fact--tell him be sure to verify that pedigree of King of Devon--and ship them off."

Until eleven d.i.c.k received his managers and foremen. But not for a quarter of an hour after that did he get rid of his show manager, Mr.

Pitts, with the tentative make-up of the catalogue for the first annual stock-sale on the ranch. By that time Mr. Bonbright was on hand with his sheaf of telegrams, and the lunch-hour was at hand ere they were cleaned up.

For the first time alone since he had seen the tally-ho off, d.i.c.k 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 madcap at sober middle age?"

He put on leggings and spurs to be ready for riding after lunch, and what his thoughts had been while buckling on the gear he epitomized to the girl in the frame.

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

"Really, if I don't go soon, I'll have to become a pensioner and join the philosophers of the madrono grove," Graham said laughingly to d.i.c.k.

It was the time of c.o.c.ktail a.s.sembling, and Paula, in addition to Graham, was the only one of the driving party as yet to put in an appearance.

"If all the philosophers together would just make one book!" d.i.c.k demurred. "Good Lord, man, you've just got to complete your book here.

I got you started and I've got to see you through with it."

Paula's encouragement to Graham to stay on--mere stereotyped, uninterested phrases--was music to d.i.c.k. His heart leapt. After all, might he not be entirely mistaken? For two such mature, wise, middle-aged individuals as Paula and Graham any such foolishness was preposterous and unthinkable. They were not young things with their hearts on their sleeves.

"To the book!" he toasted. He turned to Paula. "A good c.o.c.ktail," he praised. "Paul, you excel yourself, and you fail to teach Oh Joy the art. His never quite touch yours.--Yes, another, please."

CHAPTER XXI

Graham, riding solitary through the redwood canyons among the hills that overlooked the ranch center, was getting acquainted with Selim, the eleven-hundred-pound, coal-black gelding which d.i.c.k had furnished him in place of the lighter Altadena. As he rode along, learning the good nature, the roguishness and the dependableness of the animal, Graham hummed the words of the "Gypsy Trail" and allowed them to lead his thoughts. Quite carelessly, foolishly, thinking of bucolic lovers carving their initials on forest trees, he broke a spray of laurel and another of redwood. He had to stand in the stirrups to pluck a long-stemmed, five-fingered fern with which to bind the sprays into a cross. When the patteran was fashioned, he tossed it on the trail before him and noted that Selim pa.s.sed over without treading upon it.

Glancing back, Graham watched it to the next turn of the trail. A good omen, was his thought, that it had not been trampled.

More five-fingered ferns to be had for the reaching, more branches of redwood and laurel brushing his face as he rode, invited him to continue the manufacture of patterans, which he dropped as he fashioned them. An hour later, at the head of the canyon, where he knew the trail over the divide was difficult and stiff, he debated his course and turned back.

Selim warned him by nickering. Came an answering nicker from close at hand. The trail was wide and easy, and Graham put his mount into a fox trot, swung a wide bend, and overtook Paula on the Fawn.

"h.e.l.lo!" he called. "h.e.l.lo! h.e.l.lo!"

She reined in till he was alongside.

"I was just turning back," she said. "Why did you turn back? I thought you were going over the divide to Little Grizzly."

"You knew I was ahead of you?" he asked, admiring the frank, boyish way of her eyes straight-gazing into his.