The Little Lady of the Big House by Jack London (best fiction books of all time TXT) 📕

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?" 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," 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," 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."

"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," 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?"

"I believe in them for all men. Children, family, career, society, the State--all these things make marriage, legal marriage, imperative. And by the same token that is why I believe in divorce. Men, all men, and women, all women, are capable of loving more than once, of having the old love die and of finding a new love born. The State cannot control love any more than can a man or a woman. When one falls in love one falls in love, and that's all he knows about it. There it is-- throbbing, sighing, singing, thrilling love. But the State can control license."

"It is a complicated free love that you stand for," Hancock criticised. "True, and for the reason that man, living in society, is a most complicated animal."

"But there are men, lovers, who would die at the loss of their loved one," Leo surprised the table by his initiative. "They would die if she died, they would die--oh so more quickly--if she lived and loved another."

"Well, they'll have to keep on dying as they have always died in the past," Dick answered grimly. "And no blame attaches anywhere for their deaths. We are so made that our hearts sometimes stray."

"My heart would never stray," Leo asserted proudly, unaware that all at the table knew his secret. "I could never love twice, I know."

"True for you, lad," Terrence approved. "The voice of all true lovers is in your throat. 'Tis the absoluteness of love that is its joy--how did Shelley put it?--or was it Keats?--'All a wonder and a wild delight.' Sure, a miserable skinflint of a half-baked lover would it be that could dream there was aught in woman form one-thousandth part as sweet, as ravishing and enticing, as glorious and wonderful as his own woman that he could ever love again."

* * * * *

And as they passed out from the dining room, Dick, continuing the conversation with Dar Hyal, was wondering whether Paula would kiss him good night or slip off to bed from the piano. And Paula, talking to Leo about his latest sonnet which he had shown her, was wondering if she could kiss Dick, and was suddenly greatly desirous to kiss him, she knew not why.


CHAPTER XXIII


There was little talk that same evening after dinner. Paula, singing at the piano, disconcerted Terrence in the midst of an apostrophe on love. He quit a phrase midmost to listen to the something new he heard in her voice, then slid noiselessly across the room to join Leo at full length on the bearskin. Dar Hyal and Hancock likewise abandoned the discussion, each isolating himself in a capacious chair. Graham, seeming least attracted, browsed in a current magazine, but Dick observed that he quickly ceased turning the pages. Nor did Dick fail to catch the new note in Paula's voice and to endeavor to sense its meaning.

When she finished the song the three sages strove to tell her all at the same time that for once she had forgotten herself and sung out as they had always claimed she could. Leo lay without movement or speech, his chin on his two hands, his face transfigured.

"It's all this talk on love," Paula laughed, "and all the lovely thoughts Leo and Terrence ... and Dick have put into my head."

Terrence shook his long mop of iron-gray hair.

"Into your heart you'd be meaning," he corrected. "'Tis the very heart and throat of love that are yours this night. And for the first time, dear lady, have I heard the full fair volume that is yours. Never again plaint that your voice is thin. Thick it is, and round it is, as a great rope, a great golden rope for the mooring of argosies in the harbors of the Happy Isles."

"And for that I shall sing you the Gloria," she answered, "to celebrate the slaying of the dragons by Saint Leo, by Saint Terrence ... and, of course, by Saint Richard."

Dick, missing nothing of the talk, saved himself from speech by crossing to the concealed sideboard and mixing for himself a Scotch and soda.

While Paula sang the Gloria, he sat on one of the couches, sipping his drink and remembering keenly. Once before he had heard her sing like that--in Paris, during their swift courtship, and directly afterward, during their honeymoon on the All Away.

A little later, using his empty glass in silent invitation to Graham, he mixed highballs for both of them, and, when Graham had finished his, suggested to Paula that she and Graham sing the "Gypsy Trail."

She shook her head and began Das Kraut Ver-gessenheit.

"She was not a true woman, she was a terrible woman," the song's close wrung from Leo. "And he was a true lover. She broke his heart, but still he loved her. He cannot love again because he cannot forget his love for her."

"And now, Red Cloud, the Song of the Acorn," Paula said, smiling over to her husband. "Put down your glass, and be good, and plant the acorns."

Dick lazily hauled himself off the couch and stood up, shaking his head mutinously, as if tossing a mane, and stamping ponderously with his feet in simulation of Mountain Lad.

"I'll have Leo know that he is not the only poet and love-knight on the ranch. Listen to Mountain Lad's song, all wonder and wild delight, Terrence, and more. Mountain Lad doesn't moon about the loved one. He doesn't moon at all. He incarnates love, and rears right up in meeting and tells them so. Listen to him!"

Dick filled the room and shook the air with wild, glad, stallion nickering; and then, with mane-tossing and foot-pawing, chanted:

"Hear me! I am Eros! I stamp upon the hills. I fill the wide valleys. The mares hear me, and startle, in quiet pastures; for they know me. The land is filled with fatness, and the sap is in the trees. It is the spring. The spring is mine. I am monarch of my kingdom of the spring. The mares remember my voice. They knew me aforetimes through their mothers before them. Hear me! I am Eros. I stamp upon the hills, and the wide valleys are my heralds, echoing the sound of my approach."

It was the first time the sages of the madrono grove had heard Dick's song, and they were loud in applause. Hancock took it for a fresh start in the discussion, and was beginning to elaborate a biologic Bergsonian definition of love, when he was stopped by Terrence, who had noticed the pain that swept across Leo's face.

"Go on, please, dear lady," Terrence begged. "And sing of