The Little Lady of the Big House

by Jack London

  «My forfeit,» he explained. «Come on, Paul, again.» And again they sang and clapped:

  «Jong-Keena, Jong-Keena,

  Jong-Jong, Keena-Keena,

  Yo-ko-ham-a, Nag-a-sak-i,

  Kobe-mar-o—hoy!!! »

  This time, with the hoy , her hands were closed and his were open.

  «Forfeit!—forfeit!» the girls cried.

  She looked her costume over with alarm, asking, «What can I give?»

  «A hair pin,» Dick advised; and one of her turtleshell hair pins joined his hat in Lute's lap.

  «Bother it!» she exclaimed, when the last of her hair pins had gone the same way, she having failed seven times to Dick's once. «I can't see why I should be so slow and stupid. Besides, Dick, you're too clever. I never could out-guess you or out-anticipate you.»

  Again they sang the song. She lost, and, to Mrs. Tully's shocked «Paula!» she forfeited a spur and threatened a boot when the remaining spur should be gone. A winning streak of three compelled Dick to give up his wrist watch and both spurs. Then she lost her wrist watch and the remaining spur.

  «Jong-Keena, Jong-Keena,» they began again, while Mrs. Tully remonstrated, «Now, Paula, you simply must stop this.—Dick, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.»

  But Dick, emitting a triumphant «Hoy! » won, and joined in the laughter as Paula took off one of her little champagne boots and added it to the heap in Lute's lap.

  «It's all right, Aunt Martha,» Paula assured Mrs. Tully. «Mr. Ware's not here, and he's the only one who would be shocked.—Come on, Dick. You can't win every time.»

  «Jong-Keena, Jong-Keena,» she chanted on with her husband. The repetition, at first slow, had accelerated steadily, so that now they fairly rippled through with it, while their slapping, striking palms made a continuous patter. The exercise and excitement had added to the sun's action on her skin, so that her laughing face was all a rosy glow.

  Evan Graham, a silent spectator, was aware of hurt and indignity. He knew the «Jong-Keena» of old time from the geishas of the tea houses of Nippon, and, despite the unconventionality that ruled the Forrests and the Big House, he experienced shock in that Paula should take part in such a game. It did not enter his head at the moment that he would have been merely curious to see how far the madness would go had the player been Lute, or Ernestine, or Rita. Not till afterward did he realize that his concern and sense of outrage were due to the fact that the player was Paula, and that, therefore, she was bulking bigger in his imagination than he was conscious of. What he was conscious of at the moment was that he was growing angry and that he had deliberately to check himself from protesting.

  By this time Dick's cigarette case and matches and Paula's second boot, belt, skirt-pin, and wedding ring had joined the mound of forfeits. Mrs. Tully, her face set in stoic resignation, was silent.

  «Jong-Keena, Jong-Keena,» Paula laughed and sang on, and Graham heard

  Ernestine laugh to Bert, «I don't see what she can spare next.»

  «Well, you know her,» he heard Bert answer. «She's game once she gets started, and it certainly looks like she's started.»

  »Hoy !» Paula and Dick cried simultaneously, as they thrust out their hands.

  But Dick's were closed, and hers were open. Graham watched her vainly quest her person for the consequent forfeit.

  «Come on, Lady Godiva,» Dick commanded. «You hae sung, you hae danced; now pay the piper.»

  «Was the man a fool?» was Graham's thought. «And a man with a wife like that.»

  «Well,» Paula sighed, her fingers playing with the fastenings of her blouse, «if I must, I must.»

  Raging inwardly, Graham averted his gaze, and kept it averted. There was a pause, in which he knew everybody must be hanging on what she would do next. Then came a giggle from Ernestine, a burst of laughter from all, and, «A frame-up!» from Bert, that overcame Graham's resoluteness. He looked quickly. The Little Lady's blouse was off, and, from the waist up, she appeared in her swimming suit. It was evident that she had dressed over it for the ride.

  «Come on, Lute—you next,» Dick was challenging.

  But Lute, not similarly prepared for Jong-Keena , blushingly led the retreat of the girls to the dressing rooms.

  Graham watched Paula poise at the forty-foot top of the diving scaffold and swan-dive beautifully into the tank; heard Bert's admiring «Oh, you Annette Kellerman!» and, still chagrined by the trick that had threatened to outrage him, fell to wondering about the wonder woman, the Little Lady of the Big House, and how she had happened so wonderfully to be. As he fetched down the length of tank, under water, moving with leisurely strokes and with open eyes watching the shoaling bottom, it came to him that he did not know anything about her. She was Dick Forrest's wife. That was all he knew. How she had been born, how she had lived, how and where her past had been—of all this he knew nothing.

  Ernestine had told him that Lute and she were half sisters of Paula. That was one bit of data, at any rate. (Warned by the increasing brightness of the bottom that he had nearly reached the end of the tank, and recognizing Dick's and Bert's legs intertwined in what must be a wrestling bout, Graham turned about, still under water, and swam back a score or so of feet.) There was that Mrs. Tully whom Paula had addressed as Aunt Martha. Was she truly an aunt? Or was she a courtesy Aunt through sisterhood with the mother of Lute and Ernestine?

  He broke surface, was hailed by the others to join in bull-in-the– ring; in which strenuous sport, for the next half hour, he was compelled more than once to marvel at the litheness and agility, as well as strategy, of Paula in her successful efforts at escaping through the ring. Concluding the game through weariness, breathing hard, the entire party raced the length of the tank and crawled out to rest in the sunshine in a circle about Mrs. Tully.

  Soon there was more fun afoot, and Paula was contending impossible things with Mrs. Tully.

  «Now, Aunt Martha, just because you never learned to swim is no reason for you to take such a position. I am a real swimmer, and I tell you I can dive right into the tank here, and stay under for ten minutes.»

  «Nonsense, child,» Mrs. Tully beamed. «Your father, when he was young, a great deal younger than you, my dear, could stay under water longer than any other man; and his record, as I know, was three minutes and forty seconds, as I very well know, for I held the watch myself and kept the time when he won against Harry Selby on a wager.»

  «Oh, I know my father was some man in his time,» Paula swaggered; «but times have changed. If I had the old dear here right now, in all his youthful excellence, I'd drown him if he tried to stay under water with me. Ten minutes? Of course I can do ten minutes. And I will. You hold the watch, Aunt Martha, and time me. Why, it's as easy as—»

  «Shooting fish in a bucket,» Dick completed for her.

  Paula climbed to the platform above the springboard.

  «Time me when I'm in the air,» she said.

  «Make your turn and a half,» Dick called.

  She nodded, smiled, and simulated a prodigious effort at filling her lungs to their utmost capacity. Graham watched enchanted. A diver himself, he had rarely seen the turn and a half attempted by women other than professionals. Her wet suit of light blue and green silk clung closely to her, showing the lines of her justly proportioned body. With what appeared to be an agonized gulp for the last cubic inch of air her lungs could contain, she sprang up, out, and down, her body vertical and stiff, her legs straight, her feet close together as they impacted on the springboard end. Flung into the air by the board, she doubled her body into a ball, made a complete revolution, then straightened out in perfect diver's form, and in a perfect dive, with scarcely a ripple, entered the water.

  «A Toledo blade would have made more splash,» was Graham's verdict.

  «If only I could dive like that,» Ernestine breathed her admiration. «But I never shall. Dick says diving is a matter of timing, and that's why Paula does it so terribly well. She's got the sense of time—» />
  «And of abandon,» Graham added.

  «Of willed abandon,» Dick qualified.

  «Of relaxation by effort,» Graham agreed. «I've never seen a professional do so perfect a turn and a half.»

  «And I'm prouder of it than she is,» Dick proclaimed. «You see, I taught her, though I confess it was an easy task. She coordinates almost effortlessly. And that, along with her will and sense of time— why her first attempt was better than fair.»

  «Paula is a remarkable woman,» Mrs. Tully said proudly, her eyes fluttering between the second hand of the watch and the unbroken surface of the pool. «Women never swim so well as men. But she does.— Three minutes and forty seconds! She's beaten her father!»

  «But she won't stay under any five minutes, much less ten,» Dick solemnly stated. «She'll burst her lungs first.»

  At four minutes, Mrs. Tully began to show excitement and to look anxiously from face to face. Captain Lester, not in the secret, scrambled to his feet with an oath and dived into the tank.

  «Something has happened,» Mrs. Tully said with controlled quietness.

  «She hurt herself on that dive. Go in after her, you men.»

  But Graham and Bert and Dick, meeting under water, gleefully grinned and squeezed hands. Dick made signs for them to follow, and led the way through the dark-shadowed water into the crypt, where, treading water, they joined Paula in subdued whisperings and gigglings.

  «Just came to make sure you were all right,» Dick explained. «And now we've got to beat it.—You first, Bert. I'll follow Evan.»

  And, one by one, they went down through the dark water and came up on the surface of the pool. By this time Mrs. Tully was on her feet and standing by the edge of the tank.

  «If I thought this was one of your tricks, Dick Forrest,» she began.

  But Dick, paying no attention, acting preternaturally calmly, was directing the men loudly enough for her to hear.

  «We've got to make this systematic, fellows. You, Bert, and you, Evan, join with me. We start at this end, five feet apart, and search the bottom across. Then move along and repeat it back.»

  «Don't exert yourselves, gentlemen,» Mrs. Tully called, beginning to laugh. «As for you, Dick, you come right out. I want to box your ears.»

  «Take care of her, you girls,» Dick shouted. «She's got hysterics.»

  «I haven't, but I will have,» she laughed.

  «But damn it all, madam, this is no laughing matter!» Captain Lester spluttered breathlessly, as he prepared for another trip to explore the bottom.

  «Are you on, Aunt Martha, really and truly on?» Dick asked, after the valiant mariner had gone down.

  Mrs. Tully nodded. «But keep it up, Dick, you've got one dupe. Elsie

  Coghlan's mother told me about it in Honolulu last year.»

  Not until eleven minutes had elapsed did the smiling face of Paula break the surface. Simulating exhaustion, she slowly crawled out and sank down panting near her aunt. Captain Lester, really exhausted by his strenuous exertions at rescue, studied Paula keenly, then marched to the nearest pillar and meekly bumped his head three times against the concrete.

  «I'm afraid I didn't stay down ten minutes,» Paula said. «But I wasn't much under that, was I, Aunt Martha?»

  «You weren't much under at all,» Mrs. Tully replied, «if it's my opinion you were asking. I'm surprised that you are even wet.—There, there, breathe naturally, child. The play-acting is unnecessary. I remember, when I was a young girl, traveling in India, there was a school of fakirs who leaped into deep wells and stayed down much longer than you, child, much longer indeed.»

  «You knew!» Paula charged.

  «But you didn't know I did,» her Aunt retorted. «And therefore your conduct was criminal. When you consider a woman of my age, with my heart—»

  «And with your blessed, brass-tack head,» Paula cried.

  «For two apples I'd box your ears.»

  «And for one apple I'd hug you, wet as I am,» Paula laughed back.

  «Anyway, we did fool Captain Lester.—Didn't we, Captain?»

  «Don't speak to me,» that doughty mariner muttered darkly. «I'm busy with myself, meditating what form my vengeance shall take.—As for you, Mr. Dick Forrest, I'm divided between blowing up your dairy, or hamstringing Mountain Lad. Maybe I'll do both. In the meantime I am going out to kick that mare you ride.»

  Dick on The Outlaw, and Paula on The Fawn, rode back side by side to the Big House.

  «How do you like Graham?» he asked.

  «Splendid,» was her reply. «He's your type, Dick. He's universal, like you, and he's got the same world-marks branded on him—the Seven Seas, the books, and all the rest. He's an artist, too, and pretty well all-around. And he's good fun. Have you noticed his smile? It's irresistible. It makes one want to smile with him.»

  «And he's got his serious scars, as well,» Dick nodded concurrence.

  «Yes—right in the corners of the eyes, just after he has smiled, you'll see them come. They're not tired marks exactly, but rather the old eternal questions: Why? What for? What's it worth? What's it all about?»

  * * * * *

  And bringing up the rear of the cavalcade, Ernestine and Graham talked.

  «Dick's deep,» she was saying. «You don't know him any too well. He's dreadfully deep. I know him a little. Paula knows him a lot. But very few others ever get under the surface of him. He's a real philosopher, and he has the control of a stoic or an Englishman, and he can play– act to fool the world.»

  * * * * *

  At the long hitching rails under the oaks, where the dismounting party gathered, Paula was in gales of laughter.

  «Go on, go on,» she urged Dick, «more, more.»

  «She's been accusing me of exhausting my vocabulary in naming the house-boys by my system,» he explained.

  «And he's given me at least forty more names in a minute and a half.—

  Go on, Dick, more.»

  «Then,» he said, striking a chant, «we can have Oh Sin and Oh Pshaw,

  Oh Sing and Oh Song, Oh Sung and Oh Sang, Oh Last and Oh Least, Oh

  Ping and Oh Pong, Oh Some, Oh More, and Oh Most, Oh Naught and Oh

  Nit…»

  And Dick jingled away into the house still chanting his extemporized directory.

  CHAPTER XVII

  A week of dissatisfaction and restlessness ensued for Graham. Tom between belief that his business was to leave the Big House on the first train, and desire to see, and see more of Paula, to be with her, and to be more with her—he succeeded in neither leaving nor in seeing as much of her as during the first days of his visit.

  At first, and for the five days that he lingered, the young violinist monopolized nearly her entire time of visibility. Often Graham strayed into the music room, and, quite neglected by the pair, sat for moody half-hours listening to their «work.» They were oblivious of his presence, either flushed and absorbed with the passion of their music, or wiping their foreheads and chatting and laughing companionably in pauses to rest. That the young musician loved her with an ardency that was almost painful, was patent to Graham; but what hurt him was the abandon of devotion with which she sometimes looked at Ware after he had done something exceptionally fine. In vain Graham tried to tell himself that all this was mental on her part—purely delighted appreciation of the other's artistry. Nevertheless, being man, it hurt, and continued to hurt, until he could no longer suffer himself to remain.

  Once, chancing into the room at the end of a Schumann song and just after Ware had departed, Graham found Paula still seated at the piano, an expression of rapt dreaming on her face. She regarded him almost unrecognizingly, gathered herself mechanically together, uttered an absent-minded commonplace or so, and left the room. Despite his vexation and hurt, Graham tried to think it mere artist-dreaming on her part, a listening to the echo of the just-played music in her soul. But women were curious creatures, he could not help moralizing, and were prone to lose their hearts most strangely and
inconsequentially. Might it not be that by his very music this youngster of a man was charming the woman of her?

  With the departure of Ware, Paula Forrest retired almost completely into her private wing behind the door without a knob. Nor did this seem unusual, Graham gleaned from the household.

  «Paula is a woman who finds herself very good company,» Ernestine explained, «and she often goes in for periods of aloneness, when Dick is the only person who sees her.»

  «Which is not flattering to the rest of the company,» Graham smiled.

  «Which makes her such good company whenever she is in company,»

  Ernestine retorted.

  The driftage through the Big House was decreasing. A few guests, on business or friendship, continued to come, but more departed. Under Oh Joy and his Chinese staff the Big House ran so frictionlessly and so perfectly, that entertainment of guests seemed little part of the host's duties. The guests largely entertained themselves and one another.

  Dick rarely appeared, even for a moment, until lunch, and Paula, now carrying out her seclusion program, never appeared before dinner.

  «Rest cure,» Dick laughed one noon, and challenged Graham to a tournament with boxing gloves, single-sticks, and foils.

  «And now's the time,» he told Graham, as they breathed between bouts, «for you to tackle your book. I'm only one of the many who are looking forward to reading it, and I'm looking forward hard. Got a letter from Havely yesterday—he mentioned it, and wondered how far along you were.»

  So Graham, in his tower room, arranged his notes and photographs, schemed out the work, and plunged into the opening chapters. So immersed did he become that his nascent interest in Paula might have languished, had it not been for meeting her each evening at dinner. Then, too, until Ernestine and Lute left for Santa Barbara, there were afternoon swims and rides and motor trips to the pastures of the Miramar Hills and the upland ranges of the Anselmo Mountains. Other trips they made, sometimes accompanied by Dick, to his great dredgers working in the Sacramento basin, or his dam-building on the Little Coyote and Los Cuatos creeks, or to his five-thousand-acre colony of twenty-acre farmers, where he was trying to enable two hundred and fifty heads of families, along with their families, to make good on the soil.