The Little Lady of the Big House Read online

  But her engagement was tacitly with Donald Ware at the piano, and with no more than passing speech, she was off and away in a series of Hungarian dances that made Graham marvel anew as he loafed and smoked in a window-seat.

  He marveled at the proteanness of her, at visions of those nimble fingers guiding and checking The Fop, swimming and paddling in submarine crypts, and, falling in swan-like flight through forty feet of air, locking just above the water to make the diver's head– protecting arch of arm.

  In decency, he lingered but few minutes, returned to the gamblers, and put the entire table in a roar with a well-acted Yiddisher's chagrin and passion at losing entire nickels every few minutes to the fortunate and chesty mine superintendent from Mexico.

  Later, when the game of Horrible Fives broke up, Bert and Lute Desten spoiled the Adagio from Beethoven's Sonata Pathetique by exaggeratedly ragging to it in what Dick immediately named «The Loving Slow-Drag,» till Paula broke down in a gale of laughter and ceased from playing.

  New groupings occurred. A bridge table formed with Weil, Rita, Bishop, and Dick. Donald Ware was driven from his monopoly of Paula by the young people under the leadership of Jeremy Braxton; while Graham and O'Hay paired off in a window-seat and O'Hay talked shop.

  After a time, in which all at the piano had sung Hawaiian hulas , Paula sang alone to her own accompaniment. She sang several German love-songs in succession, although it was merely for the group about her and not for the room; and Evan Graham, almost to his delight, decided that at last he had found a weakness in her. She might be a magnificent pianist, horsewoman, diver, and swimmer, but it was patent, despite her singing throat, that she was not a magnificent singer. This conclusion he was quickly compelled to modify. A singer she was, a consummate singer. Weakness was only comparative after all. She lacked the magnificent voice. It was a sweet voice, a rich voice, with the same warm-fibered thrill of her laugh; but the volume so essential to the great voice was not there. Ear and voice seemed effortlessly true, and in her singing were feeling, artistry, training, intelligence. But volume—it was scarcely a fair average, was his judgment.

  But quality—there he halted. It was a woman's voice. It was haunted with richness of sex. In it resided all the temperament in the world— with all the restraint of discipline, was the next step of his analysis. He had to admire the way she refused to exceed the limitations of her voice. In this she achieved triumphs.

  And, while he nodded absently to O'Hay's lecturette on the state of the—opera, Graham fell to wondering if Paula Forrest, thus so completely the mistress of her temperament, might not be equally mistress of her temperament in the deeper, passional ways. There was a challenge there—based on curiosity, he conceded, but only partly so based; and, over and beyond, and, deeper and far beneath, a challenge to a man made in the immemorial image of man.

  It was a challenge that bade him pause, and even look up and down the great room and to the tree-trunked roof far above, and to the flying gallery hung with the spoils of the world, and to Dick Forrest, master of all this material achievement and husband of the woman, playing bridge, just as he worked, with all his heart, his laughter ringing loud as he caught Rita in renig. For Graham had the courage not to shun the ultimate connotations. Behind the challenge in his speculations lurked the woman. Paula Forrest was splendidly, deliciously woman, all woman, unusually woman. From the blow between the eyes of his first striking sight of her, swimming the great stallion in the pool, she had continued to witch-ride his man's imagination. He was anything but unused to women; and his general attitude was that of being tired of the mediocre sameness of them. To chance upon the unusual woman was like finding the great pearl in a lagoon fished out by a generation of divers.

  «Glad to see you're still alive,» Paula laughed to him, a little later.

  She was prepared to depart with Lute for bed. A second bridge quartet had been arranged—Ernestine, Bert, Jeremy Braxton, and Graham; while O'Hay and Bishop were already deep in a bout of two-handed pinochle.

  «He's really a charming Irishman when he keeps off his one string,»

  Paula went on.

  «Which, I think I am fair, is music,» Graham said.

  «And on music he is insufferable,» Lute observed. «It's the only thing he doesn't know the least thing about. 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 steadi
ly. «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 belonged , although he fetched Hopkins out from New York to plan 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 volumes on mechanics and physics, smiled as if pleased with himself at recollection of the interview with his sister-in-law. He was confident that he had spoken in time and not a moment too soon. But, half way up the book-concealed spiral staircase that led to his work room, a remark of Ernestine, echoing in his consciousness, made him stop from very suddenness to lean his shoulder against the wall.—«Paula would be more his kind.»

  «Silly ass!» he laughed aloud, continuing on his way. «And married a dozen years!»

  Nor did he think again about it, until, in bed, on his sleeping porch, he took a glance at his barometers and thermometers, and prepared to settle down to the solution of the electrical speculation that had been puzzling him. Then it was, as he peered across the great court to his wife's dark wing and dark sleeping porch to see if she were still waking, that Ernestine's remark again echoed. He dismissed it with a «Silly ass!» of scorn, lighted a cigarette, and began running, with trained eye, the indexes of the books and marking the pages sought with matches.

  CHAPTER XV

  It was long after ten in the morning, when Graham, straying about restlessly and wondering if Paula Forrest ever appeared before the middle of the day, wandered into the music room. Despite the fact that he was a several days' guest in the Big House, so big was it that the music room was new territory. It was an exquisite room, possibly thirty-five by sixty and rising to a lofty trussed ceiling where a warm golden light was diffused from a skylight of yellow glass. Red tones entered largely into the walls and furnishing, and the place, to him, seemed to hold the hush of music.

  Graham was lazily contemplating a Keith with its inevitable triumph of sun-gloried atmosphere and twilight-shadowed sheep, when, from the tail of his eye, he saw his hostess come in from the far entrance. Again, the sight of her, that was a picture, gave him the little catch-breath of gasp. She was clad entirely in white, and looked very young and quite tall in the sweeping folds of a holoku of elaborate simplicity and apparent shapelessness. He knew the holoku in the home of its origin, where, on the lanais of Hawaii, it gave charm to a plain woman and double-folded the charm of a charming woman.

  While they smiled greeting across the room, he was noting the set of her body, the poise of head and frankness of eyes—all of which seemed articulate with a friendly, comradely, «Hello, friends.» At least such was the form Graham's fancy took as she came toward him.

  «You made a mistake with this room,» he said gravely.

  «No, don't say that! But how?»

  «It should have been longer, much longer, twice as long at least.»

  «Why?» she demanded, with a disapproving shake of head, while he delighted in the girlish color in her cheeks that gave the lie to her thirty-eight years.

  «Because, then,» he answered, «you should have had to walk twice as far this morning and my pleasure of watching you would have been correspondingly increased. I've always insisted that the holoku is the most charming garment ever invented for women.»

  «Then it was my holoku and not I,» she retorted. «I see you are like Dick—always with a string on your compliments, and lo, when we poor sillies start to nibble, back goes the compliment dragging at the
end of the string.

  «Now I want to show you the room,» she hurried on, closing his disclaimer. «Dick gave me a free hand with it. It's all mine, you see, even to its proportions.»

  «And the pictures?»

  «I selected them,» she nodded, «every one of them, and loved them onto the walls myself. Although Dick did quarrel with me over that Vereschagin. He agreed on the two Millets and the Corot over there, and on that Isabey; and even conceded that some Vereschagins might do in a music room, but not that particular Vereschagin. He's jealous for our local artists, you see. He wanted more of them, wanted to show his appreciation of home talent.»

  «I don't know your Pacific Coast men's work very well,» Graham said. «Tell me about them. Show me that—Of course, that's a Keith, there; but whose is that next one? It's beautiful.»

  «A McComas—» she was answering; and Graham, with a pleasant satisfaction, was settling himself to a half-hour's talk on pictures, when Donald Ware entered with questing eyes that lighted up at sight of the Little Lady.

  His violin was under his arm, and he crossed to the piano in a brisk, business-like way and proceeded to lay out music.

  «We're going to work till lunch,» Paula explained to Graham. «He swears I'm getting abominably rusty, and I think he's half right. We'll see you at lunch. You can stay if you care, of course; but I warn you it's really going to be work. And we're going swimming this afternoon. Four o'clock at the tank, Dick says. Also, he says he's got a new song he's going to sing then.—What time is it, Mr. Ware?»

  «Ten minutes to eleven,» the musician answered briefly, with a touch of sharpness.

  «You're ahead of time—the engagement was for eleven. And till eleven you'll have to wait, sir. I must run and see Dick, first. I haven't said good morning to him yet.»