Books: The Little Lady of the Big House
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Jack London >> The Little Lady of the Big House
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23 Produced by Curtis A. Weyant, David Maddock, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
[Illustration: ]
THE LITTLE LADY OF THE BIG HOUSE
BY
JACK LONDON
Author of "The Valley of the Moon,"
"The Star Rover," "The Sea Wolf,"
Etc.
CHAPTER I
He awoke in the dark. His awakening was simple, easy, without movement
save for the eyes that opened and made him aware of darkness. Unlike
most, who must feel and grope and listen to, and contact with, the
world about them, he knew himself on the moment of awakening,
instantly identifying himself in time and place and personality. After
the lapsed hours of sleep he took up, without effort, the interrupted
tale of his days. He knew himself to be Dick Forrest, the master of
broad acres, who had fallen asleep hours before after drowsily putting
a match between the pages of "Road Town" and pressing off the electric
reading lamp.
Near at hand there was the ripple and gurgle of some sleepy fountain.
From far off, so faint and far that only a keen ear could catch, he
heard a sound that made him smile with pleasure. He knew it for the
distant, throaty bawl of King Polo--King Polo, his champion Short Horn
bull, thrice Grand Champion also of all bulls at Sacramento at the
California State Fairs. The smile was slow in easing from Dick
Forrest's face, for he dwelt a moment on the new triumphs he had
destined that year for King Polo on the Eastern livestock circuits. He
would show them that a bull, California born and finished, could
compete with the cream of bulls corn-fed in Iowa or imported overseas
from the immemorial home of Short Horns.
Not until the smile faded, which was a matter of seconds, did he reach
out in the dark and press the first of a row of buttons. There were
three rows of such buttons. The concealed lighting that spilled from
the huge bowl under the ceiling revealed a sleeping-porch, three sides
of which were fine-meshed copper screen. The fourth side was the house
wall, solid concrete, through which French windows gave access.
He pressed the second button in the row and the bright light
concentered at a particular place on the concrete wall, illuminating,
in a row, a clock, a barometer, and centigrade and Fahrenheit
thermometers. Almost in a sweep of glance he read the messages of the
dials: time 4:30; air pressure, 29:80, which was normal at that
altitude and season; and temperature, Fahrenheit, 36°. With another
press, the gauges of time and heat and air were sent back into the
darkness.
A third button turned on his reading lamp, so arranged that the light
fell from above and behind without shining into his eyes. The first
button turned off the concealed lighting overhead. He reached a mass
of proofsheets from the reading stand, and, pencil in hand, lighting a
cigarette, he began to correct.
The place was clearly the sleeping quarters of a man who worked.
Efficiency was its key note, though comfort, not altogether Spartan,
was also manifest. The bed was of gray enameled iron to tone with the
concrete wall. Across the foot of the bed, an extra coverlet, hung a
gray robe of wolfskins with every tail a-dangle. On the floor, where
rested a pair of slippers, was spread a thick-coated skin of mountain
goat.
Heaped orderly with books, magazines and scribble-pads, there was room
on the big reading stand for matches, cigarettes, an ash-tray, and a
thermos bottle. A phonograph, for purposes of dictation, stood on a
hinged and swinging bracket. On the wall, under the barometer and
thermometers, from a round wooden frame laughed the face of a girl. On
the wall, between the rows of buttons and a switchboard, from an open
holster, loosely projected the butt of a .44 Colt's automatic.
At six o'clock, sharp, after gray light had begun to filter through
the wire netting, Dick Forrest, without raising his eyes from the
proofsheets, reached out his right hand and pressed a button in the
second row. Five minutes later a soft-slippered Chinese emerged on the
sleeping-porch. In his hands he bore a small tray of burnished copper
on which rested a cup and saucer, a tiny coffee pot of silver, and a
correspondingly tiny silver cream pitcher.
"Good morning, Oh My," was Dick Forrest's greeting, and his eyes
smiled and his lips smiled as he uttered it.
"Good morning, Master," Oh My returned, as he busied himself with
making room on the reading stand for the tray and with pouring the
coffee and cream.
This done, without waiting further orders, noting that his master was
already sipping coffee with one hand while he made a correction on the
proof with the other, Oh My picked up a rosy, filmy, lacy boudoir cap
from the floor and departed. His exit was noiseless. He ebbed away
like a shadow through the open French windows.
At six-thirty, sharp to the minute, he was back with a larger tray.
Dick Forrest put away the proofs, reached for a book entitled
"Commercial Breeding of Frogs," and prepared to eat. The breakfast was
simple yet fairly substantial--more coffee, a half grape-fruit, two
soft-boiled eggs made ready in a glass with a dab of butter and piping
hot, and a sliver of bacon, not over-cooked, that he knew was of his
own raising and curing.
By this time the sunshine was pouring in through the screening and
across the bed. On the outside of the wire screen clung a number of
house-flies, early-hatched for the season and numb with the night's
cold. As Forrest ate he watched the hunting of the meat-eating yellow-
jackets. Sturdy, more frost-resistant than bees, they were already on
the wing and preying on the benumbed flies. Despite the rowdy noise of
their flight, these yellow hunters of the air, with rarely ever a
miss, pounced on their helpless victims and sailed away with them. The
last fly was gone ere Forrest had sipped his last sip of coffee,
marked "Commercial Breeding of Frogs" with a match, and taken up his
proofsheets.
After a time, the liquid-mellow cry of the meadow-lark, first vocal
for the day, caused him to desist. He looked at the clock. It marked
seven. He set aside the proofs and began a series of conversations by
means of the switchboard, which he manipulated with a practiced hand.
"Hello, Oh Joy," was his first talk. "Is Mr. Thayer up?... Very well.
Don't disturb him. I don't think he'll breakfast in bed, but find
out.... That's right, and show him how to work the hot water. Maybe he
doesn't know... Yes, that's right. Plan for one more boy as soon as
you can get him. There's always a crowd when the good weather comes
on.... Sure. Use your judgment. Good-by."
"Mr. Hanley?... Yes," was his second conversation, over another
switch. "I've been thinking about the dam on the Buckeye. I want the
figures on the gravel-haul and on the rock-crushing.... Yes, that's
it. I imagine that the gravel-haul will cost anywhere between six and
ten cents a yard more than the crushed rock. That last pitch of hill
is what eats up the gravel-teams. Work out the figures. ... No, we
won't be able to start for a fortnight. ... Yes, yes; the new
tractors, if they ever deliver, will release the horses from the
plowing, but they'll have to go back for the checking.... No, you'll
have to see Mr. Everan about that. Good-by."
And his third call:
"Mr. Dawson? Ha! Ha! Thirty-six on my porch right now. It must be
white with frost down on the levels. But it's most likely the last
this year.... Yes, they swore the tractors would be delivered two days
ago.... Call up the station agent. ... By the way, you catch Hanley
for me. I forgot to tell him to start the 'rat-catchers' out with
the second instalment of fly-traps.... Yes, pronto. There were a
couple of dozen roosting on my screen this morning.... Yes.... Good-
by."
At this stage, Forrest slid out of bed in his pajamas, slipped his
feet into the slippers, and strode through the French windows to the
bath, already drawn by Oh My. A dozen minutes afterward, shaved as
well, he was back in bed, reading his frog book while Oh My, punctual
to the minute, massaged his legs.
They were the well-formed legs of a well-built, five-foot-ten man who
weighed a hundred and eighty pounds. Further, they told a tale of the
man. The left thigh was marred by a scar ten inches in length. Across
the left ankle, from instep to heel, were scattered half a dozen scars
the size of half-dollars. When Oh My prodded and pulled the left knee
a shade too severely, Forrest was guilty of a wince. The right shin
was colored with several dark scars, while a big scar, just under the
knee, was a positive dent in the bone. Midway between knee and groin
was the mark of an ancient three-inch gash, curiously dotted with the
minute scars of stitches.
A sudden, joyous nicker from without put the match between the pages
of the frog book, and, while Oh My proceeded partly to dress his
master in bed, including socks and shoes, the master, twisting partly
on his side, stared out in the direction of the nicker. Down the road,
through the swaying purple of the early lilacs, ridden by a
picturesque cowboy, paced a great horse, glinting ruddy in the morning
sun-gold, flinging free the snowy foam of his mighty fetlocks, his
noble crest tossing, his eyes roving afield, the trumpet of his love-
call echoing through the springing land.
Dick Forrest was smitten at the same instant with joy and anxiety--joy
in the glorious beast pacing down between the lilac hedges; anxiety in
that the stallion might have awakened the girl who laughed from the
round wooden frame on his wall. He glanced quickly across the two-
hundred-foot court to the long, shadowy jut of her wing of the house.
The shades of her sleeping-porch were down. They did not stir. Again
the stallion nickered, and all that moved was a flock of wild
canaries, upspringing from the flowers and shrubs of the court, rising
like a green-gold spray of light flung from the sunrise.
He watched the stallion out of sight through the lilacs, seeing
visions of fair Shire colts mighty of bone and frame and free from
blemish, then turned, as ever he turned to the immediate thing, and
spoke to his body servant.
"How's that last boy, Oh My? Showing up?"
"Him pretty good boy, I think," was the answer. "Him young boy.
Everything new. Pretty slow. All the same bime by him show up good."
"Why? What makes you think so?"
"I call him three, four morning now. Him sleep like baby. Him wake up
smiling just like you. That very good."
"Do I wake up smiling?" Forrest queried.
Oh My nodded his head violently.
"Many times, many years, I call you. Always your eyes open, your eyes
smile, your mouth smile, your face smile, you smile all over, just
like that, right away quick. That very good. A man wake up that way
got plenty good sense. I know. This new boy like that. Bime by, pretty
soon, he make fine boy. You see. His name Chow Gam. What name you call
him this place?"
Dick Forrest meditated.
"What names have we already?" he asked.
"Oh Joy, Ah Well, Ah Me, and me; I am Oh My," the Chinese rattled off.
"Oh Joy him say call new boy--"
He hesitated and stared at his master with a challenging glint of eye.
Forrest nodded.
"Oh Joy him say call new boy 'Oh Hell.'"
"Oh ho!" Forrest laughed in appreciation. "Oh Joy is a josher. A good
name, but it won't do. There is the Missus. We've got to think another
name."
"Oh Ho, that very good name."
Forrest's exclamation was still ringing in his consciousness so that
he recognized the source of Oh My's inspiration.
"Very well. The boy's name is Oh Ho."
Oh My lowered his head, ebbed swiftly through the French windows, and
as swiftly returned with the rest of Forrest's clothes-gear, helping
him into undershirt and shirt, tossing a tie around his neck for him
to knot, and, kneeling, putting on his leggings and spurs. A Baden
Powell hat and a quirt completed his appareling--the quirt, Indian-
braided of rawhide, with ten ounces of lead braided into the butt that
hung from his wrist on a loop of leather.
But Forrest was not yet free. Oh My handed him several letters, with
the explanation that they had come up from the station the previous
night after Forrest had gone to bed. He tore the right-hand ends
across and glanced at the contents of all but one with speed. The
latter he dwelt upon for a moment, with an irritated indrawing of
brows, then swung out the phonograph from the wall, pressed the button
that made the cylinder revolve, and swiftly dictated, without ever a
pause for word or idea:
"In reply to yours of March 14, 1914, I am indeed sorry to learn that
you were hit with hog cholera. I am equally sorry that you have seen
fit to charge me with the responsibility. And just as equally am I
sorry that the boar we sent you is dead.
"I can only assure you that we are quite clear of cholera here, and
that we have been clear of cholera for eight years, with the exception
of two Eastern importations, the last two years ago, both of which,
according to our custom, were segregated on arrival and were destroyed
before the contagion could be communicated to our herds.
"I feel that I must inform you that in neither case did I charge the
sellers with having sent me diseased stock. On the contrary, as you
should know, the incubation of hog cholera being nine days, I
consulted the shipping dates of the animals and knew that they had
been healthy when shipped.
"Has it ever entered your mind that the railroads are largely
responsible for the spread of cholera? Did you ever hear of a railroad
fumigating or disinfecting a car which had carried cholera? Consult
the dates: First, of shipment by me; second, of receipt of the boar by
you; and, third, of appearance of symptoms in the boar. As you say,
because of washouts, the boar was five days on the way. Not until the
seventh day after you receipted for same did the first symptoms
appear. That makes twelve days after it left my hands.
"No; I must disagree with you. I am not responsible for the disaster
that overtook your herd. Furthermore, doubly to assure you, write to
the State Veterinary as to whether or not my place is free of cholera.
"Very truly yours..."
CHAPTER II
When Forrest went through the French windows from his sleeping-porch,
he crossed, first, a comfortable dressing room, window-divaned, many-
lockered, with a generous fireplace, out of which opened a bathroom;
and, second, a long office room, wherein was all the paraphernalia of
business--desks, dictaphones, filing cabinets, book cases, magazine
files, and drawer-pigeonholes that tiered to the low, beamed ceiling.
Midway in the office room, he pressed a button and a series of book-
freightened shelves swung on a pivot, revealing a tiny spiral stairway
of steel, which he descended with care that his spurs might not catch,
the bookshelves swinging into place behind him.
At the foot of the stairway, a press on another button pivoted more
shelves of books and gave him entrance into a long low room shelved
with books from floor to ceiling. He went directly to a case, directly
to a shelf, and unerringly laid his hand on the book he sought. A
minute he ran the pages, found the passage he was after, nodded his
head to himself in vindication, and replaced the book.
A door gave way to a pergola of square concrete columns spanned with
redwood logs and interlaced with smaller trunks of redwood, all rough
and crinkled velvet with the ruddy purple of the bark.
It was evident, since he had to skirt several hundred feet of concrete
walls of wandering house, that he had not taken the short way out.
Under wide-spreading ancient oaks, where the long hitching-rails,
bark-chewed, and the hoof-beaten gravel showed the stamping place of
many horses, he found a pale-golden, almost tan-golden, sorrel mare.
Her well-groomed spring coat was alive and flaming in the morning sun
that slanted straight under the edge of the roof of trees. She was
herself alive and flaming. She was built like a stallion, and down her
backbone ran a narrow dark strip of hair that advertised an ancestry
of many range mustangs.
"How's the Man-Eater this morning?" he queried, as he unsnapped the
tie-rope from her throat.
She laid back the tiniest ears that ever a horse possessed--ears that
told of some thoroughbred's wild loves with wild mares among the
hills--and snapped at Forrest with wicked teeth and wicked-gleaming
eyes.
She sidled and attempted to rear as he swung into the saddle, and,
sidling and attempting to rear, she went off down the graveled road.
And rear she would have, had it not been for the martingale that held
her head down and that, as well, saved the rider's nose from her
angry-tossing head.
So used was he to the mare, that he was scarcely aware of her antics.
Automatically, with slightest touch of rein against arched neck, or
with tickle of spur or press of knee, he kept the mare to the way he
willed. Once, as she whirled and danced, he caught a glimpse of the
Big House. Big it was in all seeming, and yet, such was the vagrant
nature of it, it was not so big as it seemed. Eight hundred feet
across the front face, it stretched. But much of this eight hundred
feet was composed of mere corridors, concrete-walled, tile-roofed,
that connected and assembled the various parts of the building. There
were patios and pergolas in proportion, and all the walls, with their
many right-angled juts and recessions, arose out of a bed of greenery
and bloom.
Spanish in character, the architecture of the Big House was not of the
California-Spanish type which had been introduced by way of Mexico a
hundred years before, and which had been modified by modern architects
to the California-Spanish architecture of the day. Hispano-Moresque
more technically classified the Big House in all its hybridness,
although there were experts who heatedly quarreled with the term.
Spaciousness without austerity and beauty without ostentation were the
fundamental impressions the Big House gave. Its lines, long and
horizontal, broken only by lines that were vertical and by the lines
of juts and recesses that were always right-angled, were as chaste as
those of a monastery. The irregular roof-line, however, relieved the
hint of monotony.
Low and rambling, without being squat, the square upthrusts of towers
and of towers over-topping towers gave just proportion of height
without being sky-aspiring. The sense of the Big House was solidarity.
It defied earthquakes. It was planted for a thousand years. The honest
concrete was overlaid by a cream-stucco of honest cement. Again, this
very sameness of color might have proved monotonous to the eye had it
not been saved by the many flat roofs of warm-red Spanish tile.
In that one sweeping glance while the mare whirled unduly, Dick
Forrest's eyes, embracing all of the Big House, centered for a quick
solicitous instant on the great wing across the two-hundred-foot
court, where, under climbing groups of towers, red-snooded in the
morning sun, the drawn shades of the sleeping-porch tokened that his
lady still slept.
About him, for three quadrants of the circle of the world, arose low-
rolling hills, smooth, fenced, cropped, and pastured, that melted into
higher hills and steeper wooded slopes that merged upward, steeper,
into mighty mountains. The fourth quadrant was unbounded by mountain
walls and hills. It faded away, descending easily to vast far flatlands,
which, despite the clear brittle air of frost, were too vast and far
to scan across.
The mare under him snorted. His knees tightened as he straightened her
into the road and forced her to one side. Down upon him, with a
pattering of feet on the gravel, flowed a river of white shimmering
silk. He knew it at sight for his prize herd of Angora goats, each
with a pedigree, each with a history. There had to be a near two
hundred of them, and he knew, according to the rigorous selection he
commanded, not having been clipped in the fall, that the shining
mohair draping the sides of the least of them, as fine as any human
new-born baby's hair and finer, as white as any human albino's thatch
and whiter, was longer than the twelve-inch staple, and that the
mohair of the best of them would dye any color into twenty-inch
switches for women's heads and sell at prices unreasonable and
profound.
The beauty of the sight held him as well. The roadway had become a
flowing ribbon of silk, gemmed with yellow cat-like eyes that floated
past wary and curious in their regard for him and his nervous horse.
Two Basque herders brought up the rear. They were short, broad,
swarthy men, black-eyed, vivid-faced, contemplative and philosophic of
expression. They pulled off their hats and ducked their heads to him.
Forrest lifted his right hand, the quirt dangling from wrist, the
straight forefinger touching the rim of his Baden Powell in semi-
military salute.
The mare, prancing and whirling again, he held her with a touch of
rein and threat of spur, and gazed after the four-footed silk that
filled the road with shimmering white. He knew the significance of
their presence. The time for kidding was approaching and they were
being brought down from their brush-pastures to the brood-pens and
shelters for jealous care and generous feed through the period of
increase. And as he gazed, in his mind, comparing, was a vision of all
the best of Turkish and South African mohair he had ever seen, and his
flock bore the comparison well. It looked good. It looked very good.
He rode on. From all about arose the clacking whir of manure-
spreaders. In the distance, on the low, easy-sloping hills, he saw
team after team, and many teams, three to a team abreast, what he knew
were his Shire mares, drawing the plows back and forth across,
contour-plowing, turning the green sod of the hillsides to the rich
dark brown of humus-filled earth so organic and friable that it would
almost melt by gravity into fine-particled seed-bed. That was for the
corn--and sorghum-planting for his silos. Other hill-slopes, in the
due course of his rotation, were knee-high in barley; and still other
slopes were showing the good green of burr clover and Canada pea.
Everywhere about him, large fields and small were arranged in a system
of accessibility and workability that would have warmed the heart of
the most meticulous efficiency-expert. Every fence was hog-tight and
bull-proof, and no weeds grew in the shelters of the fences. Many of
the level fields were in alfalfa. Others, following the rotations,
bore crops planted the previous fall, or were in preparation for the
spring-planting. Still others, close to the brood barns and pens, were
being grazed by rotund Shropshire and French-Merino ewes, or were
being hogged off by white Gargantuan brood-sows that brought a flash
of pleasure in his eyes as he rode past and gazed.
He rode through what was almost a village, save that there were
neither shops nor hotels. The houses were bungalows, substantial,
pleasing to the eye, each set in the midst of gardens where stouter
blooms, including roses, were out and smiling at the threat of late
frost. Children were already astir, laughing and playing among the
flowers or being called in to breakfast by their mothers.
Beyond, beginning at a half-mile distant to circle the Big House, he
passed a row of shops. He paused at the first and glanced in. One
smith was working at a forge. A second smith, a shoe fresh-nailed on
the fore-foot of an elderly Shire mare that would disturb the scales
at eighteen hundred weight, was rasping down the outer wall of the
hoof to smooth with the toe of the shoe. Forrest saw, saluted, rode
on, and, a hundred feet away, paused and scribbled a memorandum in the
notebook he drew from his hip-pocket.
He passed other shops--a paint-shop, a wagon-shop, a plumbing shop, a
carpenter-shop. While he glanced at the last, a hybrid machine, half-
auto, half-truck, passed him at speed and took the main road for the
railroad station eight miles away. He knew it for the morning butter-
truck freighting from the separator house the daily output of the
dairy.
The Big House was the hub of the ranch organization. Half a mile from
it, it was encircled by the various ranch centers. Dick Forrest,
saluting continually his people, passed at a gallop the dairy center,
which was almost a sea of buildings with batteries of silos and with
litter carriers emerging on overhead tracks and automatically dumping
into waiting manure-spreaders. Several times, business-looking men,
college-marked, astride horses or driving carts, stopped him and
conferred with him. They were foremen, heads of departments, and they
were as brief and to the point as was he. The last of them, astride a
Palomina three-year-old that was as graceful and wild as a half-broken
Arab, was for riding by with a bare salute, but was stopped by his
employer.
"Good morning, Mr. Hennessy, and how soon will she be ready for Mrs.
Forrest?" Dick Forrest asked.
"I'd like another week," was Hennessy's answer. "She's well broke now,
just the way Mrs. Forrest wanted, but she's over-strung and sensitive
and I'd like the week more to set her in her ways."
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