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 isolating1 himself in a capacious chair. Graham, seeming least attracted, browsed2 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 sages3 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 mooring4 of argosies in the harbors of the Happy Isles5.”
“And for that I shall sing you the Gloria," she answered, “to celebrate the slaying6 of the dragons by Saint Leo, by Saint Terrence ... and, of course, by Saint Richard.”
Dick, missing nothing of the talk, saved himself from speech by crossing to the concealed7 sideboard and mixing for himself a Scotch8 and soda9.
While Paula sang the Gloria, he sat on one of the couches, sipping10 his drink and remembering keenly. Once before he had heard her sing like that—in Paris, during their swift courtship, and directly afterward11, during their honeymoon12 on the All Away.
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 Das Kraut Ver-gessenheit.
“She was not a true woman, she was a terrible woman,” the song’s close wrung13 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 acorns14.”
Dick lazily hauled himself off the couch and stood up, shaking his head mutinously15, as if tossing a mane, and stamping ponderously16 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 ranch17. 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 incarnates18 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 monarch19 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 heralds20, echoing the sound of my approach.”
It was the first time the sages of the madrono grove21 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 meditate22 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 scowled23 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 spoke24 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 chauffeur25?”
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 limousine26. Tell Saunders to take the racer.”
“One fine big strapping27 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 Nethermere when she went ashore28 at Pango in the ’97 hurricane. Pango is just a strip of sand, twelve feet above high water mark, a lot of cocoanuts, and uninhabited. Forty women among the passengers, English officers’ wives and such. Graham had a bad arm, big as a leg— snake bite.
“It was a thundering sea. Boats couldn’t live. They smashed two and lost both crews. Four sailors volunteered in succe............