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

“True for Dick,” Terrence supplemented. “And it’s helping you I am to the full stroke of your sword. Love will stray among the highest types, and when it does in steps the green-eyed monster[397]. Suppose the most perfect woman you can imagine should cease to love the man who does not beat her and come to love another man who loves her and will not beat her – what then? All highest types, mind you. Now up with your sword and slash into the dragons.”

“The first man will not kill her nor injure her in any way,” Leo asserted stoutly. “Because if he did he would not be the man you describe. He would not be high type, but low type.”

“You mean, he would get out of the way[398]?” Dick asked, at the same time busying himself with a cigarette so that he might glance at no one’s face.

Leo nodded gravely.

“He would get out of the way, and he would make the way easy for her, and he would be very gentle with her.”

“Let us bring the argument right home[399],” Hancock said. “We’ll suppose you’re in love with Mrs. Forrest, and Mrs. Forrest is in love with you, and you run away together in the big limousine —”

“Oh, but I wouldn’t,” the boy blurted out, his cheeks burning.

“Leo, you are not complimentary[400],” Paula encouraged.

“It’s just supposing, Leo,” Hancock urged.

The boy’s embarrassment was pitiful, and his voice quivered, but he turned bravely to Dick and said:

“That is for Dick to answer.”

“And I’ll answer,” Dick said. “I wouldn’t kill Paula. Nor would I kill you, Leo. That wouldn’t be playing the game. No matter what I felt at heart, I’d say, ‘Bless you, my children.’ But just the same – ” He paused, and the laughter signals in the corners of his eyes advertised a whimsey – “I’d say to myself that Leo was making a sad mistake. You see, he doesn’t know Paula.”

“She would be for interrupting his meditations on the stars,” Terrence smiled.

“Never, never, Leo, I promise you,” Paula exclaimed.

“There do you belie yourself, Mrs. Forrest,” Terrence assured her. “In the first place, you couldn’t help doing it. Besides, it’d be your bounden duty to do it. And, finally, if I may say so, as somewhat of an authority, when I was a mad young lover of a man, with my heart full of a woman and my eyes full of the stars, ’twas ever the dearest delight to be loved away from them by the woman out of my heart.”

“Terrence, if you keep on saying such lovely things,” cried Paula, “I’ll run away with both you and Leo in the limousine.”

“Hurry the day,” said Terrence gallantly. “But leave space among your fripperies for a few books on the stars that Leo and I may be studying in odd moments.”

The combat ebbed away from Leo, and Dar Hyal and Hancock beset Dick.

“What do you mean by ‘playing the game’?” Dar Hyal asked.

“Just what I said, just what Leo said,” Dick answered; and he knew that Paula’s boredom and nervousness had been banished for some time and that she was listening with an interest almost eager. “In my way of thinking, and in accord with my temperament, the most horrible spiritual suffering I can imagine would be to kiss a woman who endured my kiss[401].”

“Suppose she fooled you, say for old sake’s sake, or through desire not to hurt you, or pity for you?” Hancock propounded.

“It would be, to me, the unforgivable sin,” came Dick’s reply. “It would not be playing the game – for her. I cannot conceive the fairness, nor the satisfaction, of holding the woman one loves a moment longer than she loves to be held. Leo is very right. The drunken artisan, with his fists, may arouse and keep love alive in the breast of his stupid mate. But the higher human males, the males with some shadow of rationality, some glimmer of spirituality, cannot lay rough hands on love. With Leo, I would make the way easy for the woman, and I would be very gentle with her.”

“Then what becomes of your boasted monogamic marriage institution of Western civilization?” Dar Hyal asked.

And Hancock: “You argue for free love, then?”

“I can only answer with a hackneyed truism[402],” Dick said. “There can be no love that is not free. Always, please, remember the point of view is that of the higher types. And the point of view answers you, Dar. The vast majority of individuals must be held to law and labor by the monogamic institution, or by a stern, rigid marriage institution of some sort. They are unfit for marriage freedom or love freedom. Freedom of love, for them, would be merely license of promiscuity. Only such nations have risen and endured where God and the State have kept the people’s instincts in discipline and order.”

“Then you don’t believe in the marriage laws for say yourself,” Dar Hyal inquired, “while you do believe in them for other men?”