The Little Lady of the Big House / Маленькая хозяйка большого дома. Книга для чтения на английском языке

“I’d promised myself to get a reply off on the first machine in the morning,” he explained, as he pressed on the phonograph and began dictating.

For a paragraph she still held his hand. Then he felt the parting pressure of her fingers and her whispered good night.

“Good night, little woman,” he answered mechanically, and continued dictating as if oblivious to her going.

Nor did he cease until he knew she was well out of hearing.

Chapter XXVIII

A dozen times that morning, dictating to Blake or indicating answers, Dick had been on the verge of saying[478]to let the rest of the correspondence go.

“Call up Hennessy and Mendenhall,” he told Blake, when, at ten, the latter gathered up his notes and rose to go. “You ought to catch them at the stallion barn. Tell them not to come this morning but to-morrow morning.”

Bonbright entered, prepared to shorthand Dick’s conversations with his managers for the next hour.

“And – oh, Mr. Blake,” Dick called. “Ask Hennessy about Alden Bessie. – The old mare was pretty bad last night,” he explained to Bonbright.

“Mr. Hanley must see you right away, Mr. Forrest,” Bonbright said, and added, at sight of the irritated drawing up of his employer’s brows, “It’s the piping from Buckeye Dam. Something’s wrong with the plans – a serious mistake, he says.”

Dick surrendered, and for an hour discussed ranch business with his foremen and managers.

Once, in the middle of a hot discussion over sheep-dips with Wardman, he left his desk and paced over to the window. The sound of voices and horses, and of Paula’s laugh, had attracted him.

“Take that Montana report – I’ll send you a copy today,” he continued, as he gazed out. “They found the formula didn’t get down to it[479]. It was more a sedative than a germicide. There wasn’t enough kick in it…”

Four horses, bunched, crossed his field of vision. Paula, teasing the pair of them, was between Martinez and Froelig, old friends of Dick, a painter and sculptor respectively, who had arrived on an early train. Graham, on Selim, made the fourth, and was slightly edged toward the rear. So the party went by, but Dick reflected that quickly enough it would resolve itself into two and two.

Shortly after eleven, restless and moody, he wandered out with a cigarette into the big patio, where he smiled grim amusement at the various tell-tale signs of Paula’s neglect of her goldfish. The sight of them suggested her secret patio in whose fountain pools she kept her selected and more gorgeous blooms of fish. Thither he went, through doors without knobs, by ways known only to Paula and the servants.

This had been Dick’s one great gift to Paula. It was love-lavish as only a king of fortune could make it. He had given her a free hand with it[480], and insisted on her wildest extravagance; and it had been his delight to tease his quondam guardians with the stubs of the checkbook she had used. It bore no relation to the scheme and architecture of the Big House, and, for that matter, so deeply hidden was it that it played no part in jar of line or color. A showplace of show-places, it was not often shown. Outside Paula’s sisters and intimates, on rare occasions some artist was permitted to enter and catch his breath. Graham had heard of its existence, but not even him had she invited to see.

It was round, and small enough to escape giving any cold hint of spaciousness. The Big House was of sturdy concrete, but here was marble in exquisite delicacy. The arches of the encircling arcade were of fretted white marble that had taken on just enough tender green to prevent any glare of reflected light. Palest of pink roses bloomed up the pillars and over the low flat roof they upheld, where Puck-like, humorous, and happy faces took the place of grinning gargoyles. Dick strolled the rosy marble pavement of the arcade and let the beauty of the place slowly steal in upon him and gentle his mood.

The heart and key of the fairy patio was the fountain, consisting of three related shallow basins at different levels, of white marble and delicate as shell. Over these basins rollicked and frolicked life-sized babies wrought from pink marble by no mean hand[481]. Some peered over the edges into lower basins, one reached arms covetously toward the goldfish; one, on his back, laughed at the sky, another stood with dimpled legs apart stretching himself, others waded, others were on the ground amongst the roses white and blush, but all were of the fountain and touched it at some point. So good was the color of the marble, so true had been the sculptor, that the illusion was of life. No cherubs these, but live warm human babies.