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

“Jong-Keena, Jong-Keena,” they began again, while Mrs. Tully remonstrated, “Now, Paula, you simply must stop this. – Dick, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

But Dick, emitting a triumphant “Hoy!” won, and joined in the laughter as Paula took off one of her little champagne boots and added it to the heap in Lute’s lap.

“It’s all right, Aunt Martha,” Paula assured Mrs. Tully. “Mr. Ware’s not here, and he’s the only one who would be shocked. – Come on, Dick. You can’t win every time.[291]”

“Jong-Keena, Jong-Keena,” she chanted on with her husband. The repetition, at first slow, had accelerated steadily, so that now they fairly rippled through with it, while their slapping, striking palms made a continuous patter. The exercise and excitement had added to the sun’s action on her skin, so that her laughing face was all a rosy glow.

Evan Graham, a silent spectator, was aware of hurt and indignity. He knew the “Jong-Keena” of old time from the geishas of the tea houses of Nippon, and, despite the unconventionality that ruled the Forrests and the Big House, he experienced shock in that Paula should take part in such a game. It did not enter his head at the moment that he would have been merely curious to see how far the madness would go had the player been Lute, or Ernestine, or Rita. Not till afterward did he realize that his concern and sense of outrage were due to the fact that the player was Paula, and that, therefore, she was bulking bigger in his imagination than he was conscious of. What he was conscious of at the moment was that he was growing angry and that he had deliberately to check himself from protesting.

By this time Dick’s cigarette case and matches and Paula’s second boot, belt, skirt-pin, and wedding ring had joined the mound of forfeits. Mrs. Tully, her face set in stoic resignation, was silent.

“Jong-Keena, Jong-Keena,” Paula laughed and sang on, and Graham heard Ernestine laugh to Bert, “I don’t see what she can spare next.”

“Well, you know her,” he heard Bert answer. “She’s game once she gets started[292], and it certainly looks like she’s started.”

“Hoy!” Paula and Dick cried simultaneously, as they thrust out their hands.

But Dick’s were closed, and hers were open. Graham watched her vainly quest her person for the consequent forfeit.

“Come on, Lady Godiva,” Dick commanded. “You hae sung, you hae danced; now pay the piper.”

“Was the man a fool?” was Graham’s thought. “And a man with a wife like that.”

“Well,” Paula sighed, her fingers playing with the fastenings of her blouse, “if I must, I must.”

Raging inwardly, Graham averted his gaze, and kept it averted. There was a pause, in which he knew everybody must be hanging on what she would do next. Then came a giggle from Ernestine, a burst of laughter from all, and, “A frame-up![293]” from Bert, that overcame Graham’s resoluteness. He looked quickly. The Little Lady’s blouse was off, and, from the waist up, she appeared in her swimming suit. It was evident that she had dressed over it for the ride.

“Come on, Lute – you next,” Dick was challenging.

But Lute, not similarly prepared for Jong-Keena, blushingly led the retreat of the girls to the dressing-rooms.

Graham watched Paula poise at the forty-foot top of the diving scaffold and swan-dive beautifully into the tank; heard Bert’s admiring “Oh, you Annette Kellerman!” and, still chagrined by the trick that had threatened to outrage him, fell to wondering about the wonder woman, the Little Lady of the Big House, and how she had happened so wonderfully to be. As he fetched down the length of tank, under water, moving with leisurely strokes and with open eyes watching the shoaling bottom, it came to him that he did not know anything about her. She was Dick Forrest’s wife. That was all he knew. How she had been born, how she had lived, how and where her past had been – of all this he knew nothing.

Ernestine had told him that Lute and she were half sisters of Paula. That was one bit of data, at any rate. (Warned by the increasing brightness of the bottom that he had nearly reached the end of the tank, and recognizing Dick’s and Bert’s legs intertwined in what must be a wrestling bout, Graham turned about, still under water, and swam back a score or so of feet.) There was that Mrs. Tully whom Paula had addressed as Aunt Martha. Was she truly an aunt? Or was she a courtesy Aunt[294] through sisterhood with the mother of Lute and Ernestine?

He broke surface, was hailed by the others to join in bull-in-the-ring; in which strenuous sport, for the next half hour, he was compelled more than once to marvel at the litheness and agility, as well as strategy, of Paula in her successful efforts at escaping through the ring. Concluding the game through weariness, breathing hard, the entire party raced the length of the tank and crawled out to rest in the sunshine in a circle about Mrs. Tully.

Soon there was more fun afoot, and Paula was contending impossible things with Mrs. Tully.