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

And while Graham exchanged reminiscences of Mokpo with her, he cudgeled his brain to try and decide whether her continual reference to her husband was deliberate.

“I should imagine you found it such a paradise here,” he was saying.

“I do, I do,” she assured him with what seemed unnecessary vehemence. “But I don’t know what’s come over me lately. I feel it imperative to be up and away. The spring fret, I suppose; the Red Gods and their medicine. And if only Dick didn’t insist on working his head off[315] and getting tied down with projects! Do you know, in all the years of our marriage, the only really serious rival I have ever had has been this ranch. He’s pretty faithful, and the ranch is his first love. He had it all planned and started before he ever met me or knew I existed.”

“Here, let us try this together,” Graham said abruptly, placing the song on the rack before her.

“Oh, but it’s the ’Gypsy Trail,’” she protested. “It will only make my mood worse.” And she hummed:

“‘Follow the Romany patteran
West to the sinking sun,
Till the junk sails lift through the homeless drift,
And the East and the West are one.’”

“What is the Romany patteran?” she broke off to ask. “I’ve always thought of it as patter, or patois[316], the Gypsy patois, and somehow it strikes me as absurd to follow a language over the world – a sort of philological excursion.”

“In a way the patteran is speech,” he answered. “But it always says one thing: ‘This way I have passed.’ Two sprigs, crossed in certain ways and left upon the trail, compose the patteran. But they must always be of different trees or shrubs. Thus, on the ranch here, a patteran could be made of manzanita and madroño, of oak and spruce, of buckeye and alder, of redwood and laurel, of huckleberry and lilac. It is a sign of Gypsy comrade to Gypsy comrade, of Gypsy lover to Gypsy lover.” And he hummed:

“‘Back to the road again, again,
Out of a clear sea track;
Follow the cross of the Gypsy trail,
Over the world and back.’”

She nodded comprehension, looked for a moment with troubled eyes down the long room to the card-players, caught herself in her momentary absentness, and said quickly:

“Heaven knows there’s a lot of Gypsy in some of us. I have more than full share.[317] In spite of his bucolic proclivities, Dick is a born Gypsy. And from what he has told of you, you are hopelessly one.”

“After all, the white man is the real Gypsy, the king Gypsy,” Graham propounded. “He has wandered wider, wilder, and with less equipment, than any Gypsy. The Gypsy has followed in his trails, but never made trail for him. – Come; let us try it.”

And as they sang the reckless words to their merry, careless lilt, he looked down at her and wondered – wondered at her – at himself. This was no place for him by this woman’s side, under her husband’s roof-tree. Yet here he was, and he should have gone days before. After the years he was just getting acquainted with himself. This was enchantment, madness. He should tear himself away at once. He had known enchantments and madnesses before, and had torn himself away. Had he softened with the years? he questioned himself. Or was this a profounder madness than he had experienced? This meant the violation of dear things – things so dear, so jealously cherished and guarded in his secret life, that never yet had they suffered violation.

And still he did not tear himself away. He stood there beside her, looking down on her brown crown of hair glinting gold and bronze and bewitchingly curling into tendrils above her ears, singing a song that was fire to him – that must be fire to her, she being what she was and feeling what she had already, in flashes, half-unwittingly, hinted to him.

She is a witch, and her voice is not the least of her witchery, he thought, as her voice, so richly a woman’s voice, so essentially her voice in contradistinction to all women’s voices in the world, sang and throbbed in his ear. And he knew, beyond shade of doubt[318], that she felt some touch of this madness that afflicted him; that she sensed, as he sensed, that the man and the woman were met.

They thrilled together as they sang, and the thought and the sure knowledge of it added fuel to his own madness till his voice warmed unconsciously to the daring of the last lines, as, voices and thrills blending, they sang: