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

Dick regarded the rosy fellowship pleasantly and long, finishing his cigarette and retaining it dead in his hand. That was what she had needed, he mused – babies, children. It had been her passion. Had she realized it… He sighed, and, struck by a fresh thought, looked to her favorite seat with certitude that he would not see the customary sewing lying on it in a pretty heap. She did not sew these days.

He did not enter the tiny gallery behind the arcade, which contained her chosen paintings and etchings, and copies in marble and bronze of her favorites of the European galleries. Instead he went up the stairway, past the glorious Winged Victory on the landing where the staircase divided, and on and up into her quarters that occupied the entire upper wing. But first, pausing by the Victory, he turned and gazed down into the fairy patio. The thing was a cut jewel in its perfectness and color, and he acknowledged, although he had made it possible for her, that it was entirely her own creation – her one masterpiece. It had long been her dream, and he had realized it for her. And yet now, he meditated, it meant nothing to her. She was not mercenary[482], that he knew; and if he could not hold her, mere baubles such as that would weigh nothing in the balance against her heart.

He wandered idly through her rooms, scarcely noting at what he gazed, but gazing with fondness at it all. Like everything else of hers, it was distinctive, different, eloquent of her. But when he glanced into the bathroom with its sunken Roman bath, for the life of him he was unable to avoid seeing a tiny drip and making a mental note for the ranch plumber.

As a matter of course, he looked to her easel with the expectation of finding no new work, but was disappointed; for a portrait of himself confronted him. He knew her trick of copying the pose and lines from a photograph and filling in from memory. The particular photograph she was using had been a fortunate snapshop[483] of him on horseback. The Outlaw, for once and for a moment, had been at peace, and Dick, hat in hand, hair just nicely rumpled, face in repose, unaware of the impending snap, had at the instant looked squarely into the camera. No portrait photographer could have caught a better likeness. The head and shoulders Paula had had enlarged, and it was from this that she was working. But the portrait had already gone beyond the photograph, for Dick could see her own touches.

With a start he looked more closely. Was that expression of the eyes, of the whole face, his? He glanced at the photograph. It was not there. He walked over to one of the mirrors, relaxed his face, and led his thoughts to Paula and Graham. Slowly the expression came into his eyes and face. Not content, he returned to the easel and verified it. Paula knew. Paula knew that he knew. She had learned it from him, stolen it from him some time when it was unwittingly on his face, and carried it in her memory to the canvas.

Paula’s Chinese maid, Oh Dear, entered from the wardrobe room, and Dick watched her unobserved as she came down the room toward him. Her eyes were down, and she seemed deep in thought. Dick remarked the sadness of her face, and that the little, solicitous contraction of the brows that had led to her naming was gone. She was not solicitous, that was patent. But cast down, she was, in heavy depression.

It would seem that all our faces are beginning to say things[484], he commented to himself.

“Good morning, Oh Dear,” he startled her.

And as she returned the greeting, he saw compassion in her eyes as they dwelt on him. She knew. The first outside themselves. Trust her, a woman, so much in Paula’s company when Paula was alone, to divine Paula’s secret.

Oh Dear’s lips trembled, and she wrung her trembling hands, nerving herself, as he could see, to speech.

“Mister Forrest,” she began haltingly, “maybe you think me fool, but I like say something. You very kind man. You very kind my old mother. You very kind me long long time…”

She hesitated, moistening her frightened lips with her tongue, then braved her eyes to his and proceeded.

“Mrs. Forrest, she, I think…”

But so forbidding did Dick’s face become that she broke off in confusion and blushed, as Dick surmised, with shame at the thoughts she had been about to utter.

“Very nice picture Mrs. Forrest make,” he put her at her ease.

The Chinese girl sighed, and the same compassion returned into her eyes as she looked long at Dick’s portrait.

She sighed again, but the coldness in her voice was not lost on[485] Dick as she answered: “Yes, very nice picture Mrs. Forrest make.”

She looked at him with sudden sharp scrutiny, studying his face, then turned to the canvas and pointed at the eyes.

“No good,[486]” she condemned.

Her voice was harsh, touched with anger.

“No good,” she flung over her shoulder, more loudly, still more harshly, as she continued down the room and out of sight on Paula’s sleeping porch.