So Big by Edna Ferber (read books for money .txt) 📕

He awoke at eight, enormously hungry. He wondered, uneasily, just how he was going to get his breakfast. She had said his breakfast would be brought him in his room. He stretched luxuriously, sprang up, turned on his bath water, bathed. When he emerged in dressing gown and slippers his breakfast tray had been brought him mysteriously and its contents lay appetizingly on a little portable table. There were flocks of small covered dishes and a charming individual coffee service. The morning papers, folded and virgin, lay next this. A little note from Paula: “Would you like to take a walk at about half-past nine? Stroll down to the stables. I want to show you my new horse.”

The distance from the house to the stables was actually quite a brisk little walk in itself. Paula, in riding clothes, was waiting for him. She looked boyish and young standing beside the sturdy bulk of Pat, the head stableman. She wore tan whipcord breeches, a coat of darker stuff, a little round felt hat whose brim curved away from her face.

She greeted him. “I’ve been out two hours. Had my ride.”

“I hate people who tell you, first thing in the morning, that they’ve been out two hours.”

“If that’s the kind of mood you’re in we won’t show him the horse, will we, Pat?”

Pat thought they would. Pat showed him the new saddle mare as a mother exhibits her latest offspring, tenderly, proudly. “Look at her back,” said Pat. “That’s the way you tell a horse, sir. By the length of this here line. Lookut it! There’s a picture for you, now!”

Paula looked up at Dirk. “You ride, don’t you?”

“I used to ride the old nags, bareback, on the farm.”

“You’ll have to learn. We’ll teach him, won’t we, Pat?”

Pat surveyed Dirk’s lean, flexible figure. “Easy.”

“Oh, say!” protested Dirk.

“Then I’ll have someone to ride with me. Theodore never rides. He never takes any sort of exercise. Sits in that great fat car of his.”

They went into the coach house, a great airy whitewashed place with glittering harness and spurs and bridles like jewels in glass cases. There were ribbons, too, red and yellow and blue in a rack on the wall; and trophy cups. The coach house gave Dirk a little hopeless feeling. He had never before seen anything like it. In the first place, there were no motors in it. He had forgotten that people rode in anything but motors. A horse on Chicago’s boulevards raised a laugh. The sight of a shining brougham with two sleek chestnuts driving down Michigan Avenue would have set that street to staring and sniggering as a Roman chariot drawn by zebras might have done. Yet here was such a brougham, glittering, spotless. Here was a smart cream surrey with a cream-coloured top hung with fringe. There were two-wheeled carts high and slim and chic. A victoria. Two pony carts. One would have thought, seeing this room, that the motor vehicle had never been invented. And towering over all, dwarfing the rest, out-glittering them, stood a tally-ho, a sheer piece of wanton insolence. It was in perfect order. Its cushions were immaculate. Its sides shone. Its steps glistened. Dirk, looking up at it, laughed outright. It seemed too splendid, too absurd. With a sudden boyish impulse he swung himself up the three steps that led to the box and perched himself on the fawn cushioned seat. He looked very handsome there. “A coach and four⁠—isn’t that what they call it? Got any Roman juggernauts?”

“Do you want to drive it?” asked Paula. “This afternoon? Do you think you can? Four horses, you know.” She laughed up at him, her dark face upturned to his.

Dirk looked down at her. “No.” He climbed down. “I suppose that at about the time they drove this hereabouts my father was taking the farm plugs into the Haymarket.”

Something had annoyed him, she saw. Would he wait while she changed to walking things? Or perhaps he’d rather drive in the roadster. They walked up to the house together. He wished that she would not consult his wishes so anxiously. It made him sulky, impatient.

She put a hand on his arm. “Dirk, are you annoyed at me for what I said last night?”

“No.”

“What did you think when you went to your room last night? Tell me. What did you think?”

“I thought: ‘She’s bored with her husband and she’s trying to vamp me. I’ll have to be careful.’ ”

Paula laughed delightedly. “That’s nice and frank⁠ ⁠… What else?”

“I thought my coat didn’t fit very well and I wished I could afford to have Peel make my next one.”

“You can,” said Paula.

As it turned out, Dirk was spared the necessity of worrying about the fit of his next dinner coat for the following year and a half. His coat, during that period, was a neat olive drab as was that of some millions of young men of his age, or thereabouts. He wore it very well, and with the calm assurance of one who knows that his shoulders are broad, his waist slim, his stomach flat, his flanks lean, and his legs straight. Most of that time he spent at Fort Sheridan, first as an officer in training, then as an officer training others to be officers. He was excellent at this job. Influence put him there and kept him there even after he began to chafe at the restraint. Fort Sheridan is a few miles outside Chicago, north. No smart North Shore dinner was considered complete without at least a major, a colonel, two captains, and a sprinkling of first lieutenants. Their boots shone so delightfully while dancing.

In the last six months of it (though he did not, of course, know that it was to be the last six months) Dirk tried desperately to get to France. He was suddenly sick of the neat job at home; of the dinners; of the smug routine;