The Little Lady of the Big House

by Jack London

  He was gone longer than he expected, for Bonbright had left on his desk several telegrams concerning the Mexican situation that needed immediate replies. Trick camera in hand, Dick returned by a short cut across the house and patio. The dancing couples were ebbing down the arcade and disappearing into the hall, and he leaned against a pillar and watched them go by. Last of all came Paula and Evan, passing so close that he could have reached out and touched them. But, though the moon shone full on him, they did not see him. They saw only each other in the tender sport of gazing.

  The last preceding couple was already inside when the music ceased. Graham and Paula paused, and he was for giving her his arm and leading her inside, but she clung to him in sudden impulse. Man-like, cautious, he slightly resisted for a moment, but with one arm around his neck she drew his head willingly down to the kiss. It was a flash of quick passion. The next instant, Paula on his arm, they were passing in and Paula's laugh was ringing merrily and naturally.

  Dick clutched at the pillar and eased himself down abruptly until he sat flat on the pavement. Accompanying violent suffocation, or causing it, his heart seemed rising in his chest. He panted for air. The cursed thing rose and choked and stifled him until, in the grim turn his fancy took, it seemed to him that he chewed it between his teeth and gulped it back and down his throat along with the reviving air. He felt chilled, and was aware that he was wet with sudden sweat.

  «And who ever heard of heart disease in the Forrests?» he muttered, as, still sitting, leaning against the pillar for support, he mopped his face dry. His hand was shaking, and he felt a slight nausea from an internal quivering that still persisted.

  It was not as if Graham had kissed her, he pondered. It was Paula who had kissed Graham. That was love, and passion. He had seen it, and as it burned again before his eyes, he felt his heart surge, and the premonitory sensation of suffocation seized him. With a sharp effort of will he controlled himself and got to his feet.

  «By God, it came up in my mouth and I chewed it,» he muttered. «I chewed it.»

  Returning across the patio by the round-about way, he entered the lighted room jauntily enough, camera in hand, and unprepared for the reception he received.

  «Seen a ghost?» Lute greeted.

  «Are you sick?"—"What's the matter?» were other questions.

  «What is the matter?» he countered.

  «Your face—the look of it,» Ernestine said. «Something has happened.

  What is it?»

  And while he oriented himself he did not fail to note Lottie Mason's quick glance at the faces of Graham and Paula, nor to note that Ernestine had observed Lottie's glance and followed it up for herself.

  «Yes,» he lied. «Bad news. Just got the word. Jeremy Braxton is dead.

  Murdered. The Mexicans got him while he was trying to escape into

  Arizona.»

  «Old Jeremy, God love him for the fine man he was,» Terrence said, tucking his arm in Dick's. «Come on, old man, 'tis a stiffener you're wanting and I'm the lad to lead you to it.»

  «Oh, I'm all right,» Dick smiled, shaking his shoulders and squaring himself as if gathering himself together. «It did hit me hard for the moment. I hadn't a doubt in the world but Jeremy would make it out all right. But they got him, and two engineers with him. They put up a devil of a fight first. They got under a cliff and stood off a mob of half a thousand for a day and night. And then the Mexicans tossed dynamite down from above. Oh, well, all flesh is grass, and there is no grass of yesteryear. Terrence, your suggestion is a good one. Lead on.»

  After a few steps he turned his head over his shoulder and called back: «Now this isn't to stop the fun. I'll be right back to take that photograph. You arrange the group, Ernestine, and be sure to have them under the strongest light.»

  Terrence pressed open the concealed buffet at the far end of the room and set out the glasses, while Dick turned on a wall light and studied his face in the small mirror inside the buffet door.

  «It's all right now, quite natural,» he announced.

  «'Twas only a passing shade,» Terrence agreed, pouring the whiskey.

  «And man has well the right to take it hard the going of old friends.»

  They toasted and drank silently.

  «Another one,» Dick said, extending his glass.

  «Say 'when,'» said the Irishman, and with imperturbable eyes he watched the rising tide of liquor in the glass.

  Dick waited till it was half full.

  Again they toasted and drank silently, eyes to eyes, and Dick was grateful for the offer of all his heart that he read in Terrence's eyes.

  Back in the middle of the hall, Ernestine was gayly grouping the victims, and privily, from the faces of Lottie, Paula, and Graham, trying to learn more of the something untoward that she sensed. Why had Lottie looked so immediately and searchingly at Graham and Paula? —she asked herself. And something was wrong with Paula now. She was worried, disturbed, and not in the way to be expected from the announcement of Jeremy Braxton's death. From Graham, Ernestine could glean nothing. He was quite his ordinary self, his facetiousness the cause of much laughter to Miss Maxwell and Mrs. Watson.

  Paula was disturbed. What had happened? Why had Dick lied? He had known of Jeremy's death for two days. And she had never known anybody's death so to affect him. She wondered if he had been drinking unduly. In the course of their married life she had seen him several times in liquor. He carried it well, the only noticeable effects being a flush in his eyes and a loosening of his tongue to whimsical fancies and extemporized chants. Had he, in his trouble, been drinking with the iron-headed Terrence down in the stag room? She had found them all assembled there just before dinner. The real cause for Dick's strangeness never crossed her mind, if, for no other reason, than that he was not given to spying.

  He came back, laughing heartily at a joke of Terrence's, and beckoned Graham to join them while Terrence repeated it. And when the three had had their laugh, he prepared to take the picture. The burst of the huge snake from the camera and the genuine screams of the startled women served to dispel the gloom that threatened, and next Dick was arranging a tournament of peanut-carrying.

  From chair to chair, placed a dozen yards apart, the feat was with a table knife to carry the most peanuts in five minutes. After the preliminary try-out, Dick chose Paula for his partner, and challenged the world, Wickenberg and the madroГ±o grove included. Many boxes of candy were wagered, and in the end he and Paula won out against Graham and Ernestine, who had proved the next best couple. Demands for a speech changed to clamor for a peanut song. Dick complied, beating the accent, Indian fashion, with stiff-legged hops and hand-slaps on thighs.

  «I am Dick Forrest, son of Richard the Lucky, Son of Jonathan the Puritan, son of John who was a sea-rover, as his father Albert before him, who was the son of Mortimer, a pirate who was hanged in chains and died without issue.

  «I am the last of the Forrests, but first of the peanut-carriers. Neither Nimrod nor Sandow has anything on me. I carry the peanuts on a knife, a silver knife. The peanuts are animated by the devil. I carry the peanuts with grace and celerity and in quantity. The peanut never sprouted that can best me.

  «The peanuts roll. The peanuts roll. Like Atlas who holds the world, I never let them fall. Not every one can carry peanuts. I am God-gifted. I am master of the art. It is a fine art. The peanuts roll, the peanuts roll, and I carry them on forever.

  «Aaron is a philosopher. He cannot carry peanuts. Ernestine is a blonde. She cannot carry peanuts. Evan is a sportsman. He drops peanuts. Paula is my partner. She fumbles peanuts. Only I, I, by the grace of God and my own cleverness, carry peanuts.

  «When anybody has had enough of my song, throw something at me. I am proud. I am tireless. I can sing on forever. I shall sing on forever.

  «Here beginneth the second canto. When I die, bury me in a peanut patch. While I live—»

  The expected avalanche of cushions quenched his song but not his ebullient s
pirits, for he was soon in a corner with Lottie Mason and Paula concocting a conspiracy against Terrence.

  And so the evening continued to be danced and joked and played away. At midnight supper was served, and not till two in the morning were the Wickenbergers ready to depart. While they were getting on their wraps, Paula was proposing for the following afternoon a trip down to the Sacramento River to look over Dick's experiment in rice-raising.

  «I had something else in view,» he told her. «You know the mountain pasture above Sycamore Creek. Three yearlings have been killed there in the last ten days.»

  «Mountain lions!» Paula cried.

  «Two at least.—Strayed in from the north,» he explained to Graham. «They sometimes do that. We got three five years ago.—Moss and Hartley will be there with the dogs waiting. They've located two of the beasts. What do you say all of you join me. We can leave right after lunch.»

  «Let me have Mollie?» Lute asked.

  «And you can ride Altadena,» Paula told Ernestine.

  Quickly the mounts were decided upon, Froelig and Martinez agreeing to go, but promising neither to shoot well nor ride well.

  All went out to see the Wickenbergers off, and, after the machines were gone, lingered to make arrangements for the hunting.

  «Good night, everybody,» Dick said, as they started to move inside. «I'm going to take a look at Alden Bessie before I turn in. Hennessy is sitting up with her. Remember, you girls, come to lunch in your riding togs, and curses on the head of whoever's late.»

  The ancient dam of the Fotherington Princess was in a serious way, but Dick would not have made the visit at such an hour, save that he wanted to be by himself and that he could not nerve himself for a chance moment alone with Paula so soon after what he had overseen in the patio.

  Light steps in the gravel made him turn his head. Ernestine caught up with him and took his arm.

  «Poor old Alden Bessie,» she explained. «I thought I'd go along.»

  Dick, still acting up to his night's rГґle, recalled to her various funny incidents of the evening, and laughed and chuckled with reminiscent glee.

  «Dick,» she said in the first pause, «you are in trouble.» She could feel him stiffen, and hurried on: «What can I do? You know you can depend on me. Tell me.»

  «Yes, I'll tell you,» he answered. «Just one thing.» She pressed his arm gratefully. «I'll have a telegram sent you to-morrow. It will be urgent enough, though not too serious. You will just bundle up and depart with Lute.»

  «Is that all?» she faltered.

  «It will be a great favor.»

  «You won't talk with me?» she protested, quivering under the rebuff.

  «I'll have the telegram come so as to rout you out of bed. And now never mind Alden Bessie. You run a long in. Good night.»

  He kissed her, gently thrust her toward the house, and went on his way.

  CHAPTER XXX

  On the way back from the sick mare, Dick paused once to listen to the restless stamp of Mountain Lad and his fellows in the stallion barn. In the quiet air, from somewhere up the hills, came the ringing of a single bell from some grazing animal. A cat's-paw of breeze fanned him with sudden balmy warmth. All the night was balmy with the faint and almost aromatic scent of ripening grain and drying grass. The stallion stamped again, and Dick, with a deep breath and realization that never had he more loved it all, looked up and circled the sky-line where the crests of the mountains blotted the field of stars.

  «No, Cato,» he mused aloud. «One cannot agree with you. Man does not depart from life as from an inn. He departs as from a dwelling, the one dwelling he will ever know. He departs … nowhere. It is good night. For him the Noiseless One … and the dark.»

  He made as if to start, but once again the stamp of the stallions held him, and the hillside bell rang out. He drew a deep inhalation through his nostrils of the air of balm, and loved it, and loved the fair land of his devising.

  «'I looked into time and saw none of me there,'» he quoted, then capped it, smiling, with a second quotation: «'She gat me nine great sons… The other nine were daughters.'»

  Back at the house, he did not immediately go in, but stood a space gazing at the far flung lines of it. Nor, inside, did he immediately go to his own quarters. Instead, he wandered through the silent rooms, across the patios, and along the dim-lit halls. His frame of mind was as of one about to depart on a journey. He pressed on the lights in Paula's fairy patio, and, sitting in an austere Roman seat of marble, smoked a cigarette quite through while he made his plans.

  Oh, he would do it nicely enough. He could pull off a hunting accident that would fool the world. Trust him not to bungle it. Next day would be the day, in the woods above Sycamore Creek. Grandfather Jonathan Forrest, the straight-laced Puritan, had died of a hunting accident. For the first time Dick doubted that accident. Well, if it hadn't been an accident, the old fellow had done it well. It had never been hinted in the family that it was aught but an accident.

  His hand on the button to turn off the lights, Dick delayed a moment for a last look at the marble babies that played in the fountain and among the roses.

  «So long, younglings,» he called softly to them. «You're the nearest I ever came to it.»

  From his sleeping porch he looked across the big patio to Paula's porch. There was no light. The chance was she slept.

  On the edge of the bed, he found himself with one shoe unlaced, and, smiling at his absentness, relaced it. What need was there for him to sleep? It was already four in the morning. He would at least watch his last sunrise. Last things were coming fast. Already had he not dressed for the last time? And the bath of the previous morning would be his last. Mere water could not stay the corruption of death. He would have to shave, however—a last vanity, for the hair did continue to grow for a time on dead men's faces.

  He brought a copy of his will from the wall-safe to his desk and read it carefully. Several minor codicils suggested themselves, and he wrote them out in long-hand, pre-dating them six months as a precaution. The last was the endowment of the sages of the madroГ±o grove with a fellowship of seven.

  He ran through his life insurance policies, verifying the permitted suicide clause in each one; signed the tray of letters that had waited his signature since the previous morning; and dictated a letter into the phonograph to the publisher of his books. His desk cleaned, he scrawled a quick summary of income and expense, with all earnings from the Harvest mines deducted. He transposed the summary into a second summary, increasing the expense margins, and cutting down the income items to an absurdest least possible. Still the result was satisfactory.

  He tore up the sheets of figures and wrote out a program for the future handling of the Harvest situation. He did it sketchily, with casual tentativeness, so that when it was found among the papers there would be no suspicions. In the same fashion he worked out a line– breeding program for the Shires, and an in-breeding table, up and down, for Mountain Lad and the Fotherington Princess and certain selected individuals of their progeny.

  When Oh My came in with coffee at six, Dick was on his last paragraph of his scheme for rice-growing.

  «Although the Italian rice may be worth experimenting with for quick maturity,» he wrote, «I shall for a time confine the main plantings in equal proportions to Moti, Ioko, and the Wateribune. Thus, with different times of maturing, the same crews and the same machinery, with the same overhead, can work a larger acreage than if only one variety is planted.»

  Oh My served the coffee at his desk, and made no sign even after a glance to the porch at the bed which had not been slept in—all of which control Dick permitted himself privily to admire.

  At six-thirty the telephone rang and he heard Hennessy's tired voice: «I knew you'd be up and glad to know Alden Bessie's pulled through. It was a squeak, though. And now it's me for the hay.»

  When Dick had shaved, he looked at the shower, hesitated a moment, then his face set stubbornly. I'm darned if I will, w
as his thought; a sheer waste of time. He did, however, change his shoes to a pair of heavy, high-laced ones fit for the roughness of hunting. He was at his desk again, looking over the notes in his scribble pads for the morning's work, when Paula entered. She did not call her «Good morning, merry gentleman»; but came quite close to him before she greeted him softly with:

  «The Acorn-planter. Ever tireless, never weary Red Cloud.»

  He noted the violet-blue shadows under her eyes, as he arose, without offering to touch her. Nor did she offer invitation.

  «A white night?» he asked, as he placed a chair.

  «A white night,» she answered wearily. «Not a second's sleep, though I tried so hard.»

  Both were reluctant of speech, and they labored under a mutual inability to draw their eyes away from each other.

  «You … you don't look any too fit yourself,» she said.

  «Yes, my face,» he nodded. «I was looking at it while I shaved. The expression won't come off.»

  «Something happened to you last night,» she probed, and he could not fail to see the same compassion in her eyes that he had seen in Oh Dear's. «Everybody remarked your expression. What was it?»

  He shrugged his shoulders. «It has been coming on for some time,» he evaded, remembering that the first hint of it had been given him by Paula's portrait of him. «You've noticed it?» he inquired casually.

  She nodded, then was struck by a sudden thought. He saw the idea leap to life ere her words uttered it.

  «Dick, you haven't an affair?»

  It was a way out. It would straighten all the tangle. And hope was in her voice and in her face.

  He smiled, shook his head slowly, and watched her disappointment.

  «I take it back,» he said. «I have an affair.»

  «Of the heart?»