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

He crossed two patios on brick walks roofed with Spanish tile and swamped with early foliage and blooms, and gained his wing of the house, still breathing from the fun, to find, in the office, his secretary awaiting him.

“Good morning, Mr. Blake,” he greeted. “Sorry I was delayed.” He glanced at his wrist-watch. “Only four minutes, however. I just couldn’t get away sooner.”

Chapter IV

From nine till ten Forrest gave himself up to his secretary, achieving a correspondence that included learned societies and every sort of breeding and agricultural organization and that would have compelled the average petty business man, unaided, to sit up till midnight to accomplish.

For Dick Forrest was the center of a system which he himself had built and of which he was secretly very proud. Important letters and documents he signed with his ragged fist[50 - signed with his ragged fist – (разг.) подписывал лично]. All other letters were rubber-stamped by Mr. Blake, who, also, in shorthand, in the course of the hour, put down the indicated answers to many letters and received the formula designations of reply to many other letters. Mr. Blake’s private opinion was that he worked longer hours than his employer, although it was equally his private opinion that his employer was a wonder for discovering work for others to perform.

At ten, to the stroke of the clock, as Pittman, Forrest’s show-manager, entered the office, Blake, burdened with trays of correspondence, sheafs of documents, and phonograph cylinders, faded away to his own office.

From ten to eleven a stream of managers and foremen flowed in and out. All were well disciplined in terseness and time-saving. As Dick Forrest had taught them, the minutes spent with him were not minutes of cogitation. They must be prepared before they reported or suggested. Bonbright, the assistant secretary, always arrived at ten to replace Blake; and Bonbright, close to shoulder[51 - close to shoulder – (разг.) садился рядом], with flying pencil, took down the rapid-fire interchange of question and answer, statement and proposal and plan. These shorthand notes, transcribed and typed in duplicate, were the nightmare and, on occasion, the Nemesis[52 - Nemesis – (греч. миф.) Немезида, дочь богини Ночи, первоначально богиня Возмездия, карающая надменность и высокомерие], of the managers and foremen. For, first, Forrest had a remarkable memory; and, second, he was prone to prove its worth by reference to those same notes of Bonbright.

A manager, at the end of a five or ten minute session, often emerged sweating, limp and frazzled. Yet for a swift hour, at high tension, Forrest met all comers, with a master’s grip handling them and all the multifarious details of their various departments. He told Thompson, the machinist, in four flashing minutes, where the fault lay in the dynamo to the Big House refrigerator, laid the fault home to Thompson, dictated a note to Bonbright, with citation by page and chapter to a volume from the library to be drawn by Thompson, told Thompson that Parkman, the dairy manager, was not satisfied with the latest wiring up of milking machines, and that the refrigerating plant at the slaughter house[53 - the slaughter house – (с.-х.) скотобойня] was balking at its accustomed load.

Each man was a specialist, yet Forrest was the proved master of their specialties. As Paulson, the head plowman, complained privily to Dawson, the crop manager: “I’ve worked here twelve years and never have I seen him put his hands to a plow, and yet, damn him, he somehow seems to know. He’s a genius, that’s what he is. Why, d’ye know, I’ve seen him tear by a piece of work, his hands full with that Man-Eater of his a-threatenin’ sudden funeral, an’, next morning, had ’m mention casually to a half-inch how deep it was plowed an’ what plows’d done the plowin’! – Take that plowin’ of the Poppy Meadow, up above Little Meadow, on Los Cuatos. I just couldn’t see my way to it, an’ had to cut out the cross-sub-soiling[54 - had to cut out the cross-sub-soiling – (с.-х.) пришлось распахать подзол], an’ thought I could slip it over on him. After it was all finished he kind of happened up that way – I was lookin’ an’ he didn’t seem to look – an’, well, next A.M. I got mine in the office. No; I didn’t slip it over. I ain’t tried to slip nothing over since.”

At eleven sharp, Wardman, his sheep manager, departed with an engagement scheduled at eleven: thirty to ride in the machine along with Thayer, the Idaho buyer, to look over the Shropshire rams. At eleven, Bonbright having departed with Wardman to work up his notes, Forrest was left alone in the office. From a wire tray of unfinished business – one of many wire trays superimposed in groups of five – he drew a pamphlet issued by the State of Iowa on hog cholera and proceeded to scan it.

Five feet, ten inches in height, weighing a clean-muscled one hundred and eighty pounds, Dick Forrest was anything but insignificant[55 - was anything but insignificant – (разг.) выглядел внушительно] for a forty years’ old man. The eyes were gray, large, over-arched by bone of brow, and lashes and brows were dark. The hair, above an ordinary forehead, was light brown to chestnut. Under the forehead, the cheeks showed high-boned, with underneath the slight hollows that necessarily accompany such formation. The jaws were strong without massiveness, the nose, large-nostriled, was straight enough and prominent enough without being too straight or prominent, the chin square without harshness and uncleft, and the mouth girlish and sweet to a degree that did not hide the firmness to which the lips could set on due provocation. The skin was smooth and well-tanned, although, midway between eyebrows and hair, the tan of forehead faded in advertisement of the rim of the Baden Powell interposed between him and the sun.

Laughter lurked in the mouth corners and eye-corners, and there were cheek lines about the mouth that would seem to have been formed by laughter. Equally strong, however, every line of the face that meant blended things carried a notice of surety. Dick Forrest was sure – sure, when his hand reached out for any object on his desk, that the hand would straightly attain the object without a fumble or a miss of a fraction of an inch; sure, when his brain leaped the high places of the hog cholera text, that it was not missing a point; sure, from his balanced body in the revolving desk-chair to the balanced back-head of him; sure, in heart and brain, of life and work, of all he possessed, and of himself.

He had reason to be sure. Body, brain, and career were long-proven sure. A rich man’s son, he had not played ducks and drakes[56 - had not played ducks and drakes – (разг.) не проматывал; не пускал на ветер] with his father’s money. City born and reared, he had gone back to the land and made such a success as to put his name on the lips of breeders wherever breeders met and talked. He was the owner, without encumbrance, of two hundred and fifty thousand acres of land – land that varied in value from a thousand dollars an acre to a hundred dollars, that varied from a hundred dollars to ten cents an acre, and that, in stretches, was not worth a penny an acre. The improvements on that quarter of a million acres, from drain-tiled meadows to dredge-drained tule swamps, from good roads to developed water-rights, from farm buildings to the Big House itself, constituted a sum gaspingly ungraspable to the countryside.

Everything was large-scale but modern to the last tick of the clock. His managers lived, rent-free, with salaries commensurate to ability, in five – and ten-thousand-dollar houses – but they were the cream of specialists skimmed from the continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific. When he ordered gasoline-tractors for the cultivation of the flat lands, he ordered a round score[57 - ordered a round score – (разг.) заказывал большую партию]. When he dammed water in his mountains he dammed it by the hundreds of millions of gallons. When he ditched his tule-swamps, instead of contracting the excavation, he bought the huge dredgers outright, and, when there was slack work on his own marshes, he contracted for the draining of the marshes of neighboring big farmers, land companies, and corporations for a hundred miles up and down the Sacramento River.

He had brain sufficient to know the need of buying brains and to pay a tidy bit over the current market price[58 - to pay a tidy bit over the current market price – (разг.) платить значительно выше рыночной цены] for the most capable brains. And he had brain sufficient to direct the brains he bought to a profitable conclusion.

And yet, he was just turned forty was clear-eyed, calm-hearted, hearty-pulsed, man-strong; and yet, his history, until he was thirty, had been harum-scarum and erratic to the superlative[59 - had been harum-scarum and erratic to the superlative – (разг.) была в высшей степени беспорядочной и сумбурной]. He had run away from a millionaire home when he was thirteen. He had won enviable college honors ere he was twenty-one and after that he had known all the purple ports of the purple seas[60 - all the purple ports of the purple seas – (разг.) все сказочные соблазны сказочных морей], and, with cool head, hot heart, and laughter, played every risk that promised and provided in the wild world of adventure that he had lived to see pass under the sobriety of law.

In the old days of San Francisco Forrest had been a name to conjure with. The Forrest Mansion had been one of the pioneer palaces on Nob Hill where dwelt the Floods, the Mackays, the Crockers, and the O’Briens. “Lucky” Richard Forrest, the father, had arrived, via the Isthmus[61 - via the Isthmus – (разг.) через Панамский перешеек], straight from old New England, keenly commercial, interested before his departure in clipper ships and the building of clipper ships, and interested immediately after his arrival in water-front real estate, river steamboats, mines, of course, and, later, in the draining of the Nevada Comstock and the construction of the Southern Pacific.

He played big, he won big, he lost big; but he won always more than he lost, and what he paid out at one game with one hand, he drew back with his other hand at another game. His winnings from the Comstock he sank into the various holes of the bottomless Daffodil Group[62 - the bottomless Daffodil Group – (зд.) бездонные рудники компании Даффодил] in Eldorado County. The wreckage from the Benicia Line he turned into the Napa Consolidated, which was a quicksilver venture, and it earned him five thousand per cent. What he lost in the collapse of the Stockton boom was more than balanced by the realty appreciation of his key-holdings at Sacramento and Oakland.

And, to cap it all[63 - to cap it all – (разг.) в довершение всего], when “Lucky” Richard Forrest had lost everything in a series of calamities, so that San Francisco debated what price his Nob Hill palace would fetch at auction, he grubstaked one, Del Nelson, to a prospecting in Mexico. As soberly set down in history, the result of the said Del Nelson’s search for quartz was the Harvest Group, including the fabulous and inexhaustible Tattlesnake, Voice, City, Desdemona, Bullfrog, and Yellow Boy claims. Del Nelson, astounded by his achievement, within the year drowned himself in an enormous quantity of cheap whisky, and, the will being incontestible through lack of kith and kin[64 - through lack of kith and kin – (разг.) оттого, что был совершенно одинок], left his half to Lucky Richard Forrest.

Dick Forrest was the son of his father. Lucky Richard, a man of boundless energy and enterprise, though twice married and twice widowed, had not been blessed with children. His third marriage occurred in 1872, when he was fifty-eight, and in 1874, although he lost the mother, a twelve-pound boy, stout-barreled and husky-lunged, remained to be brought up by a regiment of nurses in the palace on Nob Hill.

Young Dick was precocious. Lucky Richard was a democrat. Result: Young Dick learned in a year from a private teacher what would have required three years in the grammar school, and used all of the saved years in playing in the open air. Also, result of precocity of son and democracy of father, Young Dick was sent to grammar school for the last year in order to learn shoulder-rubbing democracy with the sons and daughters of workmen, tradesmen, saloon-keepers and politicians.

In class recitation or spelling match his father’s millions did not aid him in competing with Patsy Halloran, the mathematical prodigy whose father was a hod-carrier, nor with Mona Sanguinetti who was a wizard at spelling and whose widowed mother ran a vegetable store. Nor were his father’s millions and the Nob Hill palace of the slightest assistance to Young Dick when he peeled his jacket and, bareknuckled, without rounds, licking or being licked[65 - licking or being licked – (разг.) с переменным успехом], milled it to a finish with Jimmy Botts, Jean Choyinsky, and the rest of the lads that went out over the world to glory and cash a few years later, a generation of prizefighters that only San Francisco, raw and virile and yeasty and young, could have produced.

The wisest thing Lucky Richard did for his boy was to give him this democratic tutelage. In his secret heart, Young Dick never forgot that he lived in a palace of many servants and that his father was a man of power and honor. On the other hand, Young Dick learned two-legged, two-fisted democracy[66 - learned two-legged, two-fisted democracy – (разг.) научился рассчитывать только на себя]. He learned it when Mona Sanguinetti spelled him down in class. He learned it when Berney Miller out-dodged and out-ran him when running across in Black Man.

And when Tim Hagan, with straight left for the hundredth time to bleeding nose and mangled mouth, and with ever reiterant right hook to stomach, had him dazed and reeling, the breath whistling and sobbing through his lacerated lips – was no time for succor from palaces and bank accounts. On his two legs, with his two fists, it was either he or Tim. And it was right there, in sweat and blood and iron of soul, that Young Dick learned how not to lose a losing fight. It had been uphill from the first blow[67 - It had been uphill from the first blow – (разг.) Битва была проигрышной с самого начала], but he stuck it out until in the end it was agreed that neither could best the other, although this agreement was not reached until they had first lain on the ground in nausea and exhaustion and with streaming eyes wept their rage and defiance at each other. After that, they became chums and between them ruled the schoolyard.

Lucky Richard died the same month Young Dick emerged from grammar school. Young Dick was thirteen years old, with twenty million dollars, and without a relative in the world to trouble him. He was the master of a palace of servants, a steam yacht, stables, and, as well, of a summer palace down the Peninsula in the nabob colony at Menlo. One thing, only, was he burdened with: guardians.

On a summer afternoon, in the big library, he attended the first session of his board of guardians. There were three of them, all elderly, and successful, all legal, all business comrades of his father. Dick’s impression, as they explained things to him, was that, although they meant well, he had no contacts with them. In his judgment, their boyhood was too far behind them. Besides that, it was patent that him, the particular boy they were so much concerned with, they did not understand at all. Furthermore, in his own sure way he decided that he was the one person in the world fitted to know what was best for himself.

Mr. Crockett made a long speech, to which Dick listened with alert and becoming attention, nodding his head whenever he was directly addressed or appealed to. Messrs. Davidson and Slocum also had their say[68 - also had their say – (разг.) также высказали свои соображения] and were treated with equal consideration. Among other things, Dick learned what a sterling, upright man his father had been, and the program already decided upon by the three gentlemen which would make him into a sterling and upright man.

When they were quite done[69 - they were quite done – (разг.) закончили свои речи], Dick took it upon himself to say a few things.

“I have thought it over,” he announced, “and first of all I shall go traveling.”

“That will come afterward, my boy,” Mr. Slocum explained soothingly. “When – say – when you are ready to enter the university. At that time a year abroad would be a very good thing… a very good thing indeed.”

“Of course,” Mr. Davidson volunteered quickly, having noted the annoyed light in the lad’s eyes and the unconscious firm-drawing and setting of the lips, “of course, in the meantime you could do some traveling, a limited amount of traveling, during your school vacations. I am sure my fellow guardians will agree – under the proper management and safeguarding, of course – that such bits of travel sandwiched between your school-terms, would be advisable and beneficial.”

“How much did you say I am worth?” Dick asked with apparent irrelevance.

“Twenty millions – at a most conservative estimate[70 - at a most conservative estimate – (разг.) по самому скромному подсчету] – that is about the sum,” Mr. Crockett answered promptly.

“Suppose I said right now that I wanted a hundred dollars!” Dick went on.

“Why – er – ahem.” Mr. Slocum looked about him for guidance.

“We would be compelled to ask what you wanted it for,” answered Mr. Crockett.

“And suppose,” Dick said very slowly, looking Mr. Crockett squarely in the eyes[71 - squarely in the eyes – (разг.) прямо в глаза], “suppose I said that I was very sorry, but that I did not care to say what I wanted it for?”

“Then you wouldn’t get it,” Mr. Crockett said so immediately that there was a hint of testiness and snap in his manner.

Dick nodded slowly, as if letting the information sink in.

“But, of course, my boy,” Mr. Slocum took up hastily, “you understand you are too young to handle money yet. We must decide that for you.”

“You mean I can’t touch a penny without your permission?”

“Not a penny,” Mr. Crockett snapped.

Dick nodded his head thoughtfully and murmured, “Oh, I see.”

“Of course, and quite naturally, it would only be fair, you know, you will have a small allowance for your personal spending,” Mr. Davidson said. “Say, a dollar, or, perhaps, two dollars, a week. As you grow older this allowance will be increased. And by the time you are twenty-one, doubtlessly you will be fully qualified – with advice, of course – to handle your own affairs.”

“And until I am twenty-one my twenty million wouldn’t buy me a hundred dollars to do as I please with?” Dick queried very subduedly.

Mr. Davidson started to corroborate in soothing phrases, but was waved to silence by Dick, who continued:

“As I understand it, whatever money I handle will be by agreement between the four of us?”

The Board of Guardians nodded.

“That is, whatever we agree, goes[72 - whatever we agree, goes – (разг.) все, до чего мы договоримся, будет иметь силу]?”

Again the Board of Guardians nodded.