Arriving in the breakfast room at half past seven, Graham found himself just in time to say good-by to the Gazette man and the Idaho buyer, who, finishing, were just ready to catch the ranch machine that connected at Eldorado with the morning train for San Francisco. He sat alone, being perfectly4 invited by a perfect Chinese servant to order as he pleased, and found himself served with his first desire—an ice-cold, sherried grapefruit, which, the table-boy proudly informed him, was “grown on the ranch.” Declining variously suggested breakfast foods, mushes, and porridges, Graham had just ordered his soft-boiled eggs and bacon, when Bert Wainwright drifted in with a casualness that Graham recognized as histrionic, when, five minutes later, in boudoir cap and delectable5 negligee, Ernestine Desten drifted in and expressed surprise at finding such a multitude of early risers.
Later, as the three of them were rising from table, they greeted Lute6 Desten and Rita Wainwright arriving. Over the billiard table with Bert, Graham learned that Dick Forrest never appeared for breakfast, that he worked in bed from terribly wee small hours, had coffee at six, and only on unusual occasions appeared to his guests before the twelve-thirty lunch. As for Paula Forrest, Bert explained, she was a poor sleeper8, a late riser, lived behind a door without a knob in a spacious10 wing with a rare and secret patio11 that even he had seen but once, and only on infrequent occasion was she known to appear before twelve-thirty, and often not then.
“You see, she’s healthy and strong and all that,” he explained, “but she was born with insomnia12. She never could sleep. She couldn’t sleep as a little baby even. But it’s never hurt her any, because she’s got a will, and won’t let it get on her nerves. She’s just about as tense as they make them, yet, instead of going wild when she can’t sleep, she just wills to relax, and she does relax. She calls them her `white nights,’ when she gets them. Maybe she’ll fall asleep at daybreak, or at nine or ten in the morning; and then she’ll sleep the rest of the clock around and get down to dinner as chipper as you please.”
“It’s constitutional, I fancy,” Graham suggested.
Bert nodded.
“It would be a handicap to nine hundred and ninety-nine women out of a thousand. But not to her. She puts up with it, and if she can’t sleep one time—she should worry—she just sleeps some other time and makes it up.”
More and other things Bert Wainwright told of his hostess, and Graham was not slow in gathering13 that the young man, despite the privileges of long acquaintance, stood a good deal in awe14 of her.
“I never saw anybody whose goat she couldn’t get if she went after it,” he confided15. “Man or woman or servant, age, sex, and previous condition of servitude—it’s all one when she gets on the high and mighty16. And I don’t see how she does it. Maybe it’s just a kind of light that comes into her eyes, or some kind of an expression on her lips, or, I don’t know what—anyway, she puts it across and nobody makes any mistake about it.”
“She has a ... a way with her,” Graham volunteered.
“That’s it!” Bert’s face beamed. “It’s a way she has. She just puts it over. Kind of gives you a chilly17 feeling, you don’t know why. Maybe she’s learned to be so quiet about it because of the control she’s learned by passing sleepless18 nights without squealing19 out or getting sour. The chances are she didn’t bat an eye all last night— excitement, you know, the crowd, swimming Mountain Lad and such things. Now ordinary things that’d keep most women awake, like danger, or storm at sea, and such things, Dick says don’t faze her. She can sleep like a baby, he says, when the town she’s in is being bombarded or when the ship she’s in is trying to claw off a lee shore. She’s a wonder, and no mistake. You ought to play billiards20 with her—the English game. She’ll go some.”
A little later, Graham, along with Bert, encountered the girls in the morning room, where, despite an hour of rag-time song and dancing and chatter21, he was scarcely for a moment unaware22 of a loneliness, a lack, and a desire to see his hostess, in some fresh and unguessed mood and way, come in upon them through the open door.
Still later, mounted on Altadena and accompanied by Bert on a thoroughbred mare24 called Mollie, Graham made a two hours’ exploration of the dairy center of the ranch, and arrived back barely in time to keep an engagement with Ernestine in the tennis court.
He came to lunch with an eagerness for which his keen appetite could not entirely25 account; and he knew definite disappointment when his hostess did not appear.
“A white night,” Dick Forrest surmised26 for his guest’s benefit, and went into details additional to Bert’s of her constitutional inaptitude for normal sleep. “Do you know, we were married years before I ever saw her sleep. I knew she did sleep, but I never saw her. I’ve seen her go three days and nights without closing an eye and keep sweet and cheerful all the time, and when she did sleep, it was out of exhaustion27. That was when the All Away went ashore28 in the Carolines and the whole population worked to get us off. It wasn’t the danger, for there wasn’t any. It was the noise. Also, it was the excitement. She was too busy living. And when it was almost all over, I actually saw her asleep for the first time in my life.”
A new guest had arrived that morning, a Donald Ware23, whom Graham met at lunch. He seemed well acquainted with all, as if he had visited much in the Big House; and Graham gathered that, despite his youth, he was a violinist of note on the Pacific Coast.
“He has conceived a grand passion for Paula,” Ernestine told Graham as they passed out from the dining room.
Graham raised his eyebrows29.
“Oh, but she doesn’t mind,” Ernestine laughed. “Every man that comes along does the same thing. She’s used to it. She has just a charming way of disregarding all their symptoms, and enjoys them, and gets the best out of them in consequence. It’s lots of fun to Dick. You’ll be doing the same before you’re here a week. If you don’t, we’ll all be surprised mightily30. And if you don’t, most likely you’ll hurt Dick’s feelings. He’s come to expect it as a matter of course. And when a fond, proud huband gets a habit like that, it must hurt terribly to see his wife not appreciated.”
“Oh, well, if I am expected to, I suppose I must,” Graham sighed. “But just the same I hate to do whatever everybody does just because everybody does it. But if it’s the custom—well, it’s the custom, that’s all. But it’s mighty hard on one with so many other nice girls around.”
There was a quizzical light in his long gray eyes that affected31 Ernestine so profoundly that she gazed into his eyes over long, became conscious of what she was doing, dropped her own eyes away, and flushed.
“Little Leo—the boy poet you remember last night,” she rattled32 on in a patent attempt to escape from her confusion. “He’s madly in love with Paula, too. I’ve heard Aaron Hancock chaffing him about some sonnet33 cycle, and it isn’t difficult to guess the inspiration. And Terrence—the Irishman, you know—he’s mildly in love with her. They can’t help it, you see; and can you blame them?”
“She surely deserves it all,” Graham murmured, although vaguely34 hurt in that the addle-pated, alphabet-obsessed, epicurean anarchist35 of an Irishman who gloried in being a loafer and a pensioner36 should even mildly be in love with the Little Lady. “She is most deserving of all men’s admiration37,” he continued smoothly38. “From the little I’ve seen of her she’s quite remarkable39 and most charming.”
“She’s my half-sister,” Ernestine vouchsafed40, “although you wouldn’t dream a drop of the same blood ran in our veins41. She’s so different. She’s different from all the Destens, from any girl I ever knew— though she isn’t exactly a girl. She’s thirty-eight, you know—”
“Pussy, pussy,” Graham whispered.
The pretty young blonde looked at him in surprise and bewilderment, taken aback by the apparent irrelevance42 of his interruption.
“Cat,” he censured43 in mock reproof44.
“Oh!” she cried. “I never meant it that way. You will find we are very frank here. Everybody knows Paula’s age. She tells it herself. I’m eighteen—so, there. And now, just for your meanness, how old are you?”
“As old as Dick,” he replied promptly45.
“And he’s forty,” she laughed triumphantly46. “Are you coming swimming? —the water will be dreadfully cold.”
Graham shook his head. “I’m going riding with Dick.”
Her face fell with all the ingenuousness47 of eighteen.
“Oh,” she protested, “some of his eternal green manures, or hillside terracing, or water-pocketing.”
“But he said something about swimming at five.”
Her face brightened joyously49.
“Then we’ll meet at the tank. It must be the same party. Paula said swimming at five.”
As they parted under a long arcade50, where his way led to the tower room for a change into riding clothes, she stopped suddenly and called:
“Oh, Mr. Graham.”
He turned obediently.
“You really are not compelled to fall in love with Paula, you know. It was just my way of putting it.”
“I shall be very, very careful,” he said solemnly, although there was a twinkle in his eye as he concluded.
Nevertheless, as he went on to his room, he could not but admit to himself that the Paula Forrest charm, or the far fairy tentacles51 of it, had already reached him and were wrapping around him. He knew, right there, that he would prefer the engagement to ride to have been with her than with his old-time friend, Dick.
As he emerged from the house to the long hitching-rails under the ancient oaks, he looked eagerly for his hostess. Only Dick was there, and the stable-man, although the many saddled horses that stamped in the shade promised possibilities. But Dick and he rode away alone. Dick pointed52 out her horse, an alert bay thoroughbred, stallion at that, under a small Australian saddle with steel stirrups, and double-reined53 and single-bitted.
“I don’t know her plans,” he said. “She hasn’t shown up yet, but at any rate she’ll be swimming later. We’ll meet her then.”
Graham appreciated and enjoyed the ride, although more than once he found himself glancing at his wrist-watch to ascertain54 how far away five o’clock might yet be. Lambing time was at hand, and through home field after home field he rode with his host, now one and now the other dismounting to turn over onto its feet rotund and glorious Shropshire and Ramboullet-Merino ewes so hopelessly the product of man’s selection as to be unable to get off, of themselves, from their own broad backs, once they were down with their four legs helplessly sky-aspiring.
“I’ve really worked to make the American Merino,” Dick was saying; “to give it the developed leg, the strong back, the well-sprung rib7, and the stamina55. The old-country breed lacked the stamina. It was too much hand-reared and manicured.”
“You’re doing things, big things,” Graham assured him. “Think of shipping56 rams57 to Idaho! That speaks for itself.”
Dick Forrest’s eyes were sparkling, as he replied:
“Better than Idaho. Incredible as it may sound, and asking forgiveness for bragging58, the great flocks to-day of Michigan and Ohio can trace back to my California-bred Ramboullet rams. Take Australia. Twelve years ago I sold three rams for three hundred each to a visiting squatter59. After he took them back and demonstrated them he sold them for as many thousand each and ordered a shipload more from me. Australia will never be the worse for my having been. Down there they say that lucerne, artesian wells, refrigerator ships, and Forrest’s rams have tripled the wool and mutton production.”
Quite by chance, on the way back, meeting Mendenhall, the horse manager, they were deflected60 by him to a wide pasture, broken by wooded canyons61 and studded with oaks, to look over a herd63 of yearling Shires that was to be dispatched next morning to the upland pastures and feeding sheds of the Miramar Hills. There were nearly two hundred of them, rough-coated, beginning to shed, large-boned and large for their age.
“We don’t exactly crowd them,” Dick Forrest explained, “but Mr. Mendenhall sees to it that they never lack full nutrition from the time they are foaled. Up there in the hills, where they are going, they’ll balance their grass with grain. This makes them assemble every night at the feeding places and enables the feeders to keep track of them with a minimum of effort. I’ve shipped fifty stallions, two-year-olds, every year for the past five years, to Oregon alone. They’re sort of standardized64, you know. The people up there know what they’re getting. They know my standard so well that they’ll buy unsight and unseen.”
“You must cull65 a lot, then,” Graham ventured.
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