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

“Wasn’t it Voltaire[334] who quarreled with a king over candle-ends?” Graham queried, pleasuring in the sight of her graceful abandon. Thirty-eight! It was impossible. She seemed almost a girl, petulant and flushed over some school task. Then he remembered Mrs. Tully’s remark that Paula was the most mature child she had ever known.

It made him wonder. Was she the one, who, under the oaks at the hitching rails, with two brief sentences had cut to the heart of an impending situation?

“So I apprehend,” she had said. What had she apprehended? Had she used the phrase glibly, without meaning? Yet she it was who had thrilled and fluttered to him and with him when they had sung the “Gypsy Trail.” That he knew. But again, had he not seen her warm and glow to the playing of Donald Ware? But here Graham’s ego had its will of him, for he told himself that with Donald Ware it was different. And he smiled to himself and at himself at the thought.

“What amuses you?” Paula was asking. “Heaven knows I am no architect. And I challenge you to house seven philosophers according to all the absurd stipulations laid down by Dick.”

Back in his tower room with his Andean books unopened before him, Graham gnawed his lip and meditated. The woman was no woman. She was the veriest child. Or – and he hesitated at the thought – was this naturalness that was overdone? Did she in truth apprehend? It must be. It had to be. She was of the world. She knew the world. She was very wise. No remembered look of her gray eyes but gave the impression of poise and power. That was it – strength! He recalled her that first night when she had seemed at times to glint an impression of steel, of thin and jewel-like steel. In his fancy, at the time, he remembered likening her strength to ivory, to carven pearl shell, to sennit twisted of maidens’ hair.

And he knew, now, ever since the brief words at the hitching rails and the singing of the “Gypsy Trail,” that whenever their eyes looked into each other’s it was with a mutual knowledge of unsaid things.

In vain he turned the pages of the books for the information he sought. He tried to continue his chapter without the information, but no words flowed from his pen[335]. A maddening restlessness was upon him. He seized a time-table and pondered the departure of trains, changed his mind, switched the room telephone to the house barn, and asked to have Altadena saddled.

It was a perfect morning of California early summer. No breath of wind stirred over the drowsing fields, from which arose the calls of quail and the notes of meadowlarks. The air was heavy with lilac fragrance, and from the distance, as he rode between the lilac hedges, Graham heard the throaty nicker of Mountain Lad and the silvery answering whinney of the Fotherington Princess.

Why was he here astride Dick Forrest’s horse? Graham asked himself. Why was he not even then on the way to the station to catch that first train he had noted on the time-table? This unaccustomed weakness of decision and action was a new rôle for him, he considered bitterly. But – and he was on fire with the thought of it – this was his one life[336], and this was the one woman in the world.

He reined aside to let a herd of Angora goats go by. Each was a doe, and there were several hundred of them; and they were moved slowly by the Basque herdsmen, with frequent pauses, for each doe was accompanied by a young kid. In the paddock were many mares with newborn colts; and once, receiving warning in time, Graham raced into a crossroad to escape a drove of thirty yearling stallions being moved somewhere across the ranch. Their excitement was communicated to that entire portion of the ranch, so that the air was filled with shrill nickerings and squealings and answering whinneys, while Mountain Lad, beside himself[337] at sight and sound of so many rivals, raged up and down his paddock, and again and again trumpeted his challenging conviction that he was the most amazing and mightiest thing that had ever occurred on earth in the way of horse flesh.

Dick Forrest pranced and sidled into the cross road on the Outlaw, his face beaming with delight at the little tempest among his many creatures.

“Fecundity! Fecundity!” – he chanted in greeting, as he reined in to a halt, if halt it might be called, with his tan-golden sorrel mare a-fret and a-froth, wickedly reaching with her teeth now for his leg and next for Graham’s, one moment pawing the roadway, the next moment, in sheer impotence of resentfulness, kicking the empty air with one hind leg and kicking the air repeatedly, a dozen times.

“Those youngsters certainly put Mountain Lad on his mettle,” Dick laughed. “Listen to his song: