It was Mrs. Mason who first asked that Paula play; but it was Terrence
McFane and Aaron Hancock who evicted the rag-time group from the piano
and sent Theodore Malken, a blushing ambassador, to escort Paula.
"'Tis for the confounding of this pagan that I'm askin' you to play
'Reflections on the Water,'" Graham heard Terrence say to her.
"And 'The Girl with Flaxen Hair,' after, please," begged Hancock, the
indicted pagan. "It will aptly prove my disputation. This wild Celt has
a bog-theory of music that predates the cave-man--and he has the
unadulterated stupidity to call himself ultra-modern."
"Oh, Debussy!" Paula laughed. "Still wrangling over him, eh? I'll try
and get around to him. But I don't know with what I'll begin."
Dar Hyal joined the three sages in seating Paula at the concert grand
which, Graham decided, was none too great for the great room. But no
sooner was she seated than the three sages slipped away to what were
evidently their chosen listening places. The young poet stretched
himself prone on a deep bearskin forty feet from the piano, his hands
buried in his hair. Terrence and Aaron lolled into a cushioned
embrasure of a window seat, sufficiently near to each other to nudge
the points of their respective contentions as Paula might expound them.
The girls were huddled in colored groups on wide couches or garlanded
in twos and threes on and in the big koa-wood chairs.
Evan Graham half-started forward to take the honor of turning Paula's
music, but saw in time that Dar Hyal had already elected to himself
that office. Graham glimpsed the scene with quiet curious glances. The
grand piano, under a low arch at the far-end of the room, was cunningly
raised and placed as on and in a sounding board. All jollity and banter
had ceased. Evidently, he thought, the Little Lady had a way with her
and was accepted as a player of parts. And from this he was perversely
prepared for disappointment.
Ernestine leaned across from a chair to whisper to him:
"She can do anything she wants to do. And she doesn't work . . . much.
She studied under Leschetizky and Madame Carreno, you know, and she
abides by their methods. She doesn't play like a woman, either. Listen
to that!"
Graham knew that he expected disappointment from her confident hands,
even as she rippled them over the keys in little chords and runs with
which he could not quarrel but which he had heard too often before from
technically brilliant but musically mediocre performers. But whatever
he might have fancied she would play, he was all unprepared for
Rachmaninoff's sheerly masculine Prelude, which he had heard only men
play when decently played.
She took hold of the piano, with the first two ringing bars,
masterfully, like a man; she seemed to lift it, and its sounding wires,
with her two hands, with the strength and certitude of maleness. And
then, as only he had heard men do it, she sank, or leaped--he could
scarcely say which--to the sureness and pureness and ineffable softness
of the _Andante_ following.
She played on, with the calm and power of anything but the little,
almost girlish woman he glimpsed through half-closed lids across the
ebony board of the enormous piano, which she commanded, as she
commanded herself, as she commanded the composer. Her touch was
definite, authoritative, was his judgment, as the Prelude faded away in
dying chords hauntingly reminiscent of its full vigor that seemed still
to linger in the air.
While Aaron and Terrence debated in excited whispers in the window
seat, and while Dar Hyal sought other music at Paula's direction, she
glanced at Dick, who turned off bowl after bowl of mellow light till
Paula sat in an oasis of soft glow that brought out the dull gold
lights in her dress and hair.
Graham watched the lofty room grow loftier in the increasing shadows.
Eighty feet in length, rising two stories and a half from masonry walls
to tree-trunked roof, flung across with a flying gallery from the rail
of which hung skins of wild animals, hand-woven blankets of Oaxaca and
Ecuador, and tapas, woman-pounded and vegetable-dyed, from the islands
of the South Pacific, Graham knew it for what it was--a feast-hall of
some medieval castle; and almost he felt a poignant sense of lack of
the long spread table, with pewter below the salt and silver above the
salt, and with huge hound-dogs scuffling beneath for bones.
Later, when Paula had played sufficient Debussy to equip Terrence and
Aaron for fresh war, Graham talked with her about music for a few vivid
moments. So well did she prove herself aware of the philosophy of
music, that, ere he knew it, he was seduced into voicing his own pet
theory.
"And so," he concluded, "the true psychic factor of music took nearly
three thousand years to impress itself on the Western mind. Debussy
more nearly attains the idea-engendering and suggestive serenity--say
of the time of Pythagoras--than any of his fore-runners--"
Here, Paula put a pause in his summary by beckoning over Terrence and
Aaron from their battlefield in the windowseat.
"Yes, and what of it?" Terrence was demanding, as they came up side by
side. "I defy you, Aaron, I defy you, to get one thought out of Bergson
on music that is more lucid than any thought he ever uttered in his
'Philosophy of Laughter,' which is not lucid at all."
"Oh!--listen!" Paula cried, with sparkling eyes. "We have a new
prophet. Hear Mr. Graham. He's worthy of your steel, of both your
steel. He agrees with you that music is the refuge from blood and iron
and the pounding of the table. That weak souls, and sensitive souls,
and high-pitched souls flee from the crassness and the rawness of the
world to the drug-dreams of the over-world of rhythm and vibration--"
"Atavistic!" Aaron Hancock snorted. "The cave-men, the monkey-folk, and
the ancestral bog-men of Terrence did that sort of thing--"
"But wait," Paula urged. "It's his conclusions and methods and
processes. Also, there he disagrees with you, Aaron, fundamentally. He
quoted Pater's 'that all art aspires toward music'--"
"Pure prehuman and micro-organic chemistry," Aaron broke in. "The
reactions of cell-elements to the doggerel punch of the wave-lengths of
sunlight, the foundation of all folk-songs and rag-times. Terrence
completes his circle right there and stultifies all his windiness. Now
listen to me, and I will present--"
"But wait," Paula pleaded. "Mr. Graham argues that English puritanism
barred music, real music, for centuries...."
"True," said Terrence.
"And that England had to win to its sensuous delight in rhythm through
Milton and Shelley--"
"Who was a metaphysician." Aaron broke in.
"A lyrical metaphysician," Terrence defined instantly. "_That_ you must
acknowledge, Aaron."
"And Swinburne?" Aaron demanded, with a significance that tokened
former arguments.
"He says Offenbach was the fore-runner of Arthur Sullivan," Paula cried
challengingly. "And that Auber was before Offenbach. And as for Wagner,
ask him, just ask him--"
And she slipped away, leaving Graham to his fate. He watched her,
watched the perfect knee-lift of her draperies as she crossed to Mrs.
Mason and set about arranging bridge quartets, while dimly he could
hear Terrence beginning:
"It is agreed that music was the basis of inspiration of all the arts
of the Greeks...."
Later, when the two sages were obliviously engrossed in a heated battle
as to whether Berlioz or Beethoven had exposited in their compositions
the deeper intellect, Graham managed his escape. Clearly, his goal was
to find his hostess again. But she had joined two of the girls in the
whispering, giggling seclusiveness of one of the big chairs, and, most
of the company being deep in bridge, Graham found himself drifted into
a group composed of Dick Forrest, Mr. Wombold, Dar Hyal, and the
correspondent of the _Breeders' Gazette_.
"I'm sorry you won't be able to run over with me," Dick was saying to
the correspondent. "It would mean only one more day. I'll take you
tomorrow."
"Sorry," was the reply. "But I must make Santa Rosa. Burbank has
promised me practically a whole morning, and you know what that means.
Yet I know the _Gazette_ would be glad for an account of the
experiment. Can't you outline it?--briefly, just briefly? Here's Mr.
Graham. It will interest him, I am sure."
"More water-works?" Graham queried.
"No; an asinine attempt to make good farmers out of hopelessly poor
ones," Mr. Wombold answered. "I contend that any farmer to-day who has
no land of his own, proves by his lack of it that he is an inefficient
farmer."
"On the contrary," spoke up Dar Hyal, weaving his slender Asiatic
fingers in the air to emphasize his remarks. "Quite on the contrary.
Times have changed. Efficiency no longer implies the possession of
capital. It is a splendid experiment, an heroic experiment. And it will
succeed."
"What is it, Dick?" Graham urged. "Tell us."
"Oh, nothing, just a white chip on the table," Forrest answered
lightly. "Most likely it will never come to anything, although just the
same I have my hopes--"
"A white chip!" Wombold broke in. "Five thousand acres of prime valley
land, all for a lot of failures to batten on, to farm, if you please,
on salary, with food thrown in!"
"The food that is grown on the land only," Dick corrected. "Now I will
have to put it straight. I've set aside five thousand acres midway
between here and the Sacramento River."
"Think of the alfalfa it grew, and that you need," Wombold again
interrupted.
"My dredgers redeemed twice that acreage from the marshes in the past
year," Dick replied. "The thing is, I believe the West and the world
must come to intensive farming. I want to do my share toward blazing
the way. I've divided the five thousand acres into twenty-acre
holdings. I believe each twenty acres should support, comfortably, not
only a family, but pay at least six per cent."
"When it is all allotted it will mean two hundred and fifty families,"
the _Gazette_ man calculated; "and, say five to the family, it will
mean twelve hundred and fifty souls."
"Not quite," Dick corrected. "The last holding is occupied, and we have
only a little over eleven hundred on the land." He smiled whimsically.
"But they promise, they promise. Several fat years and they'll average
six to the family."
"Who is _we_?" Graham inquired.
"Oh, I have a committee of farm experts on it--my own men, with the
exception of Professor Lieb, whom the Federal Government has loaned me.
The thing is: they _must_ farm, with individual responsibility,
according to the scientific methods embodied in our instructions. The
land is uniform. Every holding is like a pea in the pod to every other
holding. The results of each holding will speak in no uncertain terms.
The failure of any farmer, through laziness or stupidity, measured by
the average result of the entire two hundred and fifty farmers, will
not be tolerated. Out the failures must go, convicted by the average of
their fellows.
"It's a fair deal. No farmer risks anything. With the food he may grow
and he and his family may consume, plus a cash salary of a thousand a
year, he is certain, good seasons and bad, stupid or intelligent, of at
least a hundred dollars a month. The stupid and the inefficient will be
bound to be eliminated by the intelligent and the efficient. That's
all. It will demonstrate intensive farming with a vengeance. And there
is more than the certain salary guaranty. After the salary is paid, the
adventure must yield six per cent, to me. If more than this is
achieved, then the entire hundred per cent, of the additional
achievement goes to the farmer."
"Which means that each farmer with go in him will work nights to make
good--I see," said the _Gazette_ man. "And why not? Hundred-dollar jobs
aren't picked up for the asking. The average farmer in the United
States doesn't net fifty a month on his own land, especially when his
wages of superintendence and of direct personal labor are subtracted.
Of course able men will work their heads off to hold to such a
proposition, and they'll see to it that every member of the family does
the same."
"'Tis the one objection I have to this place," Terrence McFane, who had
just joined the group, announced. "Ever one hears but the one
thing--work. 'Tis repulsive, the thought of the work, each on his
twenty acres, toilin' and moilin', daylight till dark, and after
dark--an' for what? A bit of meat, a bit of bread, and, maybe, a bit of
jam on the bread. An' to what end? Is meat an' bread an' jam the end of
it all, the meaning of life, the goal of existence? Surely the man will
die, like a work horse dies, after a life of toil. And what end has
been accomplished? Bread an' meat an' jam? Is that it? A full belly and
shelter from the cold till one's body drops apart in the dark moldiness
of the grave?"
"But, Terrence, you, too, will die," Dick Forrest retorted.
"But, oh, my glorious life of loafing," came the instant answer. "The
hours with the stars and the flowers, under the green trees with the
whisperings of breezes in the grass. My books, my thinkers and their
thoughts. Beauty, music, all the solaces of all the arts. What? When I
fade into the dark I shall have well lived and received my wage for
living. But these twenty-acre work-animals of two-legged men of yours!
Daylight till dark, toil and moil, sweat on the shirts on the backs of
them that dries only to crust, meat and bread in their bellies, roofs
that don't leak, a brood of youngsters to live after them, to live the
same beast-lives of toil, to fill their bellies with the same meat and
bread, to scratch their backs with the same sweaty shirts, and to go
into the dark knowing only meat and bread, and, mayhap, a bit of jam."
"But somebody must do the work that enables you to loaf," Mr. Wombold
spoke up indignantly.
"'Tis true, 'tis sad 'tis true," Terrence replied lugubriously. Then
his face beamed. "And I thank the good Lord for it, for the
work-beasties that drag and drive the plows up and down the fields, for
the bat-eyed miner-beasties that dig the coal and gold, for all the
stupid peasant-beasties that keep my hands soft, and give power to fine
fellows like Dick there, who smiles on me and shares the loot with me,
and buys the latest books for me, and gives me a place at his board
that is plenished by the two-legged work-beasties, and a place at his
fire that is builded by the same beasties, and a shack and a bed in the
jungle under the madroño trees where never work intrudes its monstrous
head."
Evan Graham was slow in getting ready for bed that night. He was
unwontedly stirred both by the Big House and by the Little Lady who was
its mistress. As he sat on the edge of the bed, half-undressed, and
smoked out a pipe, he kept seeing her in memory, as he had seen her in
the flesh the past twelve hours, in her varied moods and guises--the
woman who had talked music with him, and who had expounded music to him
to his delight; who had enticed the sages into the discussion and
abandoned him to arrange the bridge tables for her guests; who had
nestled in the big chair as girlish as the two girls with her; who had,
with a hint of steel, quelled her husband's obstreperousness when he
had threatened to sing Mountain Lad's song; who, unafraid, had
bestridden the half-drowning stallion in the swimming tank; and who, a
few hours later, had dreamed into the dining room, distinctive in dress
and person, to meet her many guests.
The Big House, with all its worthy marvels and bizarre novelties,
competed with the figure of Paula Forrest in filling the content of his
imagination. Once again, and yet again, many times, he saw the slender
fingers of Dar Hyal weaving argument in the air, the black whiskers of
Aaron Hancock enunciating Bergsonian dogmas, the frayed coat-cuffs of
Terrence McFane articulating thanks to God for the two-legged
work-beasties that enabled him to loaf at Dick Forrest's board and
under Dick Forrest's madroño trees.
Graham knocked out his pipe, took a final sweeping survey of the
strange room which was the last word in comfort, pressed off the
lights, and found himself between cool sheets in the wakeful dark.
Again he heard Paula Forrest laugh; again he sensed her in terms of
silver and steel and strength; again, against the dark, he saw that
inimitable knee-lift of her gown. The bright vision of it was almost an
irk to him, so impossible was it for him to shake it from his eyes.
Ever it returned and burned before him, a moving image of light and
color that he knew to be subjective but that continually asserted the
illusion of reality.
He saw stallion and rider sink beneath the water, and rise again, a
flurry of foam and floundering of hoofs, and a woman's face that
laughed while she drowned her hair in the drowning mane of the beast.
And the first ringing bars of the Prelude sounded in his ears as again
he saw the same hands that had guided the stallion lift the piano to
all Rachmaninoff's pure splendor of sound.
And when Graham finally fell asleep, it was in the thick of marveling
over the processes of evolution that could produce from primeval mire
and dust the glowing, glorious flesh and spirit of woman.