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

“He made a heavenly image of her,” Hancock kept on. “He idealized her good qualities, and put her so far away that her bad qualities couldn’t get on his nerves and prevent him from smoking his quiet lazy pipe of peace and meditating upon the stars. And when the ordinary every-day woman tried to pester, he brushed her aside from his thoughts and remembered his heaven-woman, the perfect woman, the bearer of life and custodian of immortality.

“Then came the Reformation. Down went the worship of the Mother. And there was man still saddled to his repose-destroyer. What did he do then?”

“Ah, the rascal,” Terrence grinned.

“He said: ‘I will make of you a dream and an illusion.’ And he did. The Madonna was his heavenly woman, his highest conception of woman. He transferred all his idealized qualities of her to the earthly woman, to every woman, and he has fooled himself into believing in them and in her ever since… like Leo does.

“For an unmarried man you betray an amazing intimacy with the pestiferousness of woman,” Dick commented. “Or is it all purely theoretical?”

Terrence began to laugh.

“Dick, boy, it’s Laura Marholm Aaron’s been just reading. He can spout her chapter and verse[392].”

“And with all this talk about woman we have not yet touched the hem of her garment,” Graham said, winning a grateful look from Paula and Leo.

“There is love,” Leo breathed. “No one has said one word about love.”

“And marriage laws, and divorces, and polygamy, and monogamy, and free love,” Hancock rattled off.

“And why, Leo,” Dar Hyal queried, “is woman, in the game of love, always the pursuer, the huntress?”

“Oh, but she isn’t,” the boy answered quietly, with an air of superior knowledge. “That is just some of your Shaw[393] nonsense.”

“Bravo, Leo,” Paula applauded.

“Then Wilde[394] was wrong when he said woman attacks by sudden and strange surrenders?” Dar Hyal asked.

“But don’t you see,” protested Leo, “all such talk makes woman a monster, a creature of prey.” As he turned to Dick, he stole a side glance at Paula and love welled in his eyes. “Is she a creature of prey, Dick?”

“No,” Dick answered slowly, with a shake of head, and gentleness was in his voice for sake of what he had just seen in the boy’s eyes. “I cannot say that woman is a creature of prey. Nor can I say she is a creature preyed upon. Nor will I say she is a creature of unfaltering joy to man. But I will say that she is a creature of much joy to man —”

“And of much foolishness,” Hancock added.

“Of much fine foolishness,” Dick gravely amended.

“Let me ask Leo something,” Dar Hyal said. “Leo, why is it that a woman loves the man who beats her?”

“And doesn’t love the man who doesn’t beat her?” Leo countered.

“Precisely.”

“Well, Dar, you are partly right and mostly wrong. – Oh, I have learned about definitions from you fellows. You’ve cunningly left them out of your two propositions. Now I’ll put them in for you. A man who beats a woman he loves is a low type man. A woman who loves the man who beats her is a low type woman. No high type man beats the woman he loves. No high type woman,” and all unconsciously Leo’s eyes roved to Paula, “could love a man who beats her.”

“No, Leo,” Dick said, “I assure you I have never, never beaten Paula.”

“So you see, Dar,” Leo went on with flushing cheeks, “you are wrong. Paula loves Dick without being beaten.”

With what seemed pleased amusement beaming on his face, Dick turned to Paula as if to ask her silent approval of the lad’s words; but what Dick sought was the effect of the impact of such words under the circumstances he apprehended. In Paula’s eyes he thought he detected a flicker of something he knew not what[395]. Graham’s face he found expressionless insofar as there was no apparent change of the expression of interest that had been there.

“Woman has certainly found her St. George tonight,” Graham complimented. “Leo, you shame me. Here I sit quietly by while you fight three dragons.”

“And such dragons,” Paula joined in. “If they drove O’Hay to drink, what will they do to you, Leo?”

“No knight of love can ever be discomfited by all the dragons in the world,” Dick said. “And the best of it, Leo, is in this case the dragons are more right than you think, and you are more right than they just the same.”

“Here’s a dragon that’s a good dragon, Leo, lad,” Terrence spoke up. “This dragon is going to desert his disreputable companions and come over on your side and be a Saint Terrence. And this Saint Terrence has a lovely question to ask you.”

“Let this dragon roar first,” Hancock interposed. “Leo, by all in love that is sweet and lovely, I ask you: why do lovers, out of jealousy, so often kill the woman they love?”

“Because they are hurt, because they are insane,” came the answer, “and because they have been unfortunate enough to love a woman so low in type that she could be guilty of making them jealous.”

“But, Leo, love will stray[396],” Dick prompted. “You must give a more sufficient answer.”