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 wrung 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 acorns.”
Dick lazily hauled himself off the couch and stood up, shaking his head mutinously, as if tossing a mane, and stamping ponderously 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 ranch. 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 incarnates 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 monarch 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 heralds, echoing the sound of my approach.”
It was the first time the sages of the madrono grove 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 meditate 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 scowled at the interruption.