Produced by Curtis A. Weyant, David Maddock, Charles Franks
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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..."