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

From the piano, where Eddie Mason was the center of a group of girls, came much noise of ragtime music and slangtime song. Terrence McFane and Aaron Hancock fell into a heated argument over the music of futurism. And Graham was saved from the Japanese situation with Mr. Wombold by Dar Hyal, who proceeded to proclaim Asia for the Asiatics and California for the Californians.

Paula, catching up her skirts for speed, fled down the room in some romp, pursued by Dick, who captured her as she strove to dodge around the Wombold group.

“Wicked woman,” Dick reproved her in mock wrath; and, the next moment, joined her in persuading Dar Hyal to dance.

And Dar Hyal succumbed, flinging Asia and the Asiatics to the winds, along with his arms and legs, as he weirdly parodied the tango in what he declared to be the “blastic” culmination of modern dancing.

“And now, Red Cloud, sing Mr. Graham your Acorn Song,” Paula commanded Dick.

Forrest, his arm still about her, detaining her for the threatened punishment not yet inflicted, shook his head somberly.

“The Acorn Song!” Ernestine called from the piano; and the cry was taken up by Eddie Mason and the girls.

“Oh, do, Dick,” Paula pleaded. “Mr. Graham is the only one who hasn’t heard it.”

Dick shook his head.

“Then sing him your Goldfish Song.”

“I’ll sing him Mountain Lad’s song,” Dick bullied, a whimsical sparkle in his eyes. He stamped his feet, pranced, nickered a not bad imitation of Mountain Lad, tossed an imaginary mane, and cried:

“Hear me! I am Eros! I stamp upon the hills!”

“The Acorn Song,” Paula interrupted quickly and quietly, with just the hint of steel in her voice[183].

Dick obediently ceased his chant of Mountain Lad, but shook his head like a stubborn colt.

“I have a new song,” he said solemnly. “It is about you and me, Paula. I got it from the Nishinam.”

“The Nishinam are the extinct aborigines of this part of California,” Paula shot in a swift aside of explanation to Graham.

Dick danced half a dozen steps, stiff-legged, as Indians dance, slapped his thighs with his palms, and began a new chant, still retaining his hold on his wife.

“Me, I am Ai-kut, the first man of the Nishinam. Ai-kut is the short for Adam, and my father and my mother were the coyote and the moon. And this is Yo-to-to-wi, my wife. She is the first woman of the Nishinam. Her father and her mother were the grasshopper and the ring-tailed cat. They were the best father and mother left after my father and mother. The coyote is very wise, the moon is very old; but who ever heard much of anything of credit to the grasshopper and the ring-tailed cat? The Nishinam are always right. The mother of all women had to be a cat, a little, wizened, sad-faced, shrewd ring-tailed cat.”

Whereupon the song of the first man and woman was interrupted by protests from the women and acclamations from the men.

“This is Yo-to-to-wi, which is the short for Eve,” Dick chanted on, drawing Paula bruskly closer to his side with a semblance of savage roughness. “Yo-to-to-wi is not much to look at. But be not hard upon her. The fault is with the grasshopper and the ring-tailed cat. Me, I am Ai-kut, the first man; but question not my taste. I was the first man, and this, I saw, was the first woman. Where there is but one choice, there is not much to choose.[184] Adam was so circumstanced. He chose Eve. Yo-to-to-wi was the one woman in all the world for me, so I chose Yo-to-to-wi.”

And Evan Graham, listening, his eyes on that possessive, encircling arm of all his hostess’s fairness, felt an awareness of hurt, and arose unsummoned the thought, to be dismissed angrily, “Dick Forrest is lucky – too lucky.”

“Me, I am Ai-kut,” Dick chanted on. “This is my dew of woman. She is my honey-dew of woman. I have lied to you. Her father and her mother were neither hopper nor cat. They were the Sierra dawn and the summer east wind of the mountains. Together they conspired, and from the air and earth they sweated all sweetness till in a mist of their own love the leaves of the chaparral and the manzanita were dewed with the honey-dew.

“Yo-to-to-wi is my honey-dew woman. Hear me! I am Ai-kut. Yo-to-to-wi is my quail woman, my deer-woman, my lush-woman of all soft rain and fat soil. She was born of the thin starlight and the brittle dawn-light before the sun…

“And,” Forrest concluded, relapsing into his natural voice and enunciation, having reached the limit of extemporization, – “and if you think old, sweet, blue-eyed Solomon[185] has anything on me in singing the Song of Songs, just put your names down for the subscription edition of my Song of Songs.”

Chapter XI

It was Mrs. Mason who first asked that Paula play; but it was Terrence McFane and Aaron Hancock who evicted the rag-time group from the piano and sent Theodore Malken, a blushing ambassador, to escort Paula.

“’Tis for the confounding of this pagan that I’m askin’ you to play ‘Reflections on the Water,’” Graham heard Terrence say to her.