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

“Yes, and what of it?” Terrence was demanding, as they came up side by side. “I defy you, Aaron, I defy you, to get one thought out of Bergson on music that is more lucid than any thought he ever uttered in his “Philosophy of Laughter, which is not lucid at all.”

“Oh! – listen!” Paula cried, with sparkling eyes. “We have a new prophet. Hear Mr. Graham. He’s worthy of your steel[191], of both your steel. He agrees with you that music is the refuge from blood and iron and the pounding of the table. That weak souls, and sensitive souls, and high-pitched souls flee from the crassness and the rawness of the world to the drug-dreams of the over-world of rhythm and vibration —”

“Atavistic!” Aaron Hancock snorted. “The cave-men, the monkey-folk, and the ancestral bog-men of Terrence did that sort of thing —”

“But wait,” Paula urged. “It’s his conclusions and methods and processes. Also, there he disagrees with you, Aaron, fundamentally. He quoted Pater’s[192] ‘that all art aspires toward music’ —”

“Pure prehuman and micro-organic chemistry,” Aaron broke in. “The reactions of cell-elements to the doggerel punch of the wave-lengths of sunlight, the foundation of all folk-songs and ragtimes. Terrence completes his circle right there and stultifies all his windiness. Now listen to me, and I will present —”

“But wait,” Paula pleaded. “Mr. Graham argues that English puritanism barred music, real music, for centuries…”

“True,” said Terrence.

“And that England had to win to its sensuous delight in rhythm through Milton[193] and Shelley[194] —”

“Who was a metaphysician.” Aaron broke in.

“A lyrical metaphysician,” Terrence defined instantly. “That you must acknowledge, Aaron.”

“And Swinburne[195]?” Aaron demanded, with a significance that tokened former arguments.

“He says Offenbach[196] was the fore-runner of Arthur Sullivan[197],” Paula cried challengingly. “And that Auber[198] was before Offenbach. And as for Wagner[199], ask him, just ask him —”

And she slipped away, leaving Graham to his fate. He watched her, watched the perfect knee-lift of her draperies as she crossed to Mrs. Mason and set about arranging bridge quartets, while dimly he could hear Terrence beginning:

“It is agreed that music was the basis of inspiration of all the arts of the Greeks…”

Later, when the two sages were obliviously engrossed in a heated battle as to whether Berlioz[200] or Beethoven had exposited in their compositions the deeper intellect, Graham managed his escape. Clearly, his goal was to find his hostess again. But she had joined two of the girls in the whispering, giggling seclusiveness of one of the big chairs, and, most of the company being deep in bridge, Graham found himself drifted into a group composed of Dick Forrest, Mr. Wombold, Dar Hyal, and the correspondent of the Breeders’ Gazette.

“I’m sorry you won’t be able to run over with me,” Dick was saying to the correspondent. “It would mean only one more day. I’ll take you tomorrow.”

“Sorry,” was the reply. “But I must make Santa Rosa. Burbank has promised me practically a whole morning, and you know what that means. Yet I know the Gazette would be glad for an account of the experiment. Can’t you outline it? – briefly, just briefly? Here’s Mr. Graham. It will interest him, I am sure.”

“More water-works?[201]” Graham queried.

“No; an asinine attempt to make good farmers out of hopelessly poor ones,” Mr. Wombold answered. “I contend that any farmer to-day who has no land of his own, proves by his lack of it that he is an inefficient farmer.”

“On the contrary,” spoke up Dar Hyal, weaving his slender Asiatic fingers in the air to emphasize his remarks. “Quite on the contrary. Times have changed. Efficiency no longer implies the possession of capital. It is a splendid experiment, an heroic experiment. And it will succeed.”

“What is it, Dick?” Graham urged. “Tell us.”

“Oh, nothing, just a white chip on the table[202],” Forrest answered lightly. “Most likely it will never come to anything, although just the same I have my hopes —”

“A white chip!” Wombold broke in. “Five thousand acres of prime valley land, all for a lot of failures to batten on, to farm, if you please, on salary, with food thrown in!”

“The food that is grown on the land only,” Dick corrected. “Now I will have to put it straight. I’ve set aside five thousand acres midway between here and the Sacramento River.”

“Think of the alfalfa it grew, and that you need,” Wombold again interrupted.

“My dredgers redeemed twice that acreage from the marshes in the past year,” Dick replied. “The thing is, I believe the West and the world must come to intensive farming. I want to do my share toward blazing the way. I’ve divided the five thousand acres into twenty-acre holdings. I believe each twenty acres should support, comfortably, not only a family, but pay at least six per cent.”