The Little Lady of the Big House Part 32

"Oh, but she isn't," the boy answered quietly, with an air of superior knowledge. "That is just some of your Shaw nonsense."

"Bravo, Leo," Paula applauded.

"Then Wilde was wrong when he said woman attacks by sudden and strange surrenders?" Dar Hyal asked.

"But don't you see," protested Leo, "all such talk makes woman a monster, a creature of prey." As he turned to d.i.c.k, he stole a side glance at Paula and love welled in his eyes. "Is she a creature of prey, d.i.c.k?"

"No," d.i.c.k answered slowly, with a shake of head, and gentleness was in his voice for sake of what he had just seen in the boy's eyes. "I cannot say that woman is a creature of prey. Nor can I say she is a creature preyed upon. Nor will I say she is a creature of unfaltering joy to man. But I will say that she is a creature of much joy to man--"

"And of much foolishness," Hanc.o.c.k added.

"Of much fine foolishness," d.i.c.k gravely amended.

"Let me ask Leo something," Dar Hyal said. "Leo, why is it that a woman loves the man who beats her?"

"And doesn't love the man who doesn't beat her?" Leo countered.

"Precisely."

"Well, Dar, you are partly right and mostly wrong.--Oh, I have learned about definitions from you fellows. You've cunningly left them out of your two propositions. Now I'll put them in for you. A man who beats a woman he loves is a low type man. A woman who loves the man who beats her is a low type woman. No high type man beats the woman he loves. No high type woman," and all unconsciously Leo's eyes roved to Paula, "could love a man who beats her."

"No, Leo," d.i.c.k said, "I a.s.sure you I have never, never beaten Paula."

"So you see, Dar," Leo went on with flushing cheeks, "you are wrong.

Paula loves d.i.c.k without being beaten."

With what seemed pleased amus.e.m.e.nt beaming on his face, d.i.c.k turned to Paula as if to ask her silent approval of the lad's words; but what d.i.c.k sought was the effect of the impact of such words under the circ.u.mstances he apprehended. In Paula's eyes he thought he detected a flicker of something he knew not what. Graham's face he found expressionless insofar as there was no apparent change of the expression of interest that had been there.

"Woman has certainly found her St. George tonight," Graham complimented. "Leo, you shame me. Here I sit quietly by while you fight three dragons."

"And such dragons," Paula joined in. "If they drove O'Hay to drink, what will they do to you, Leo?"

"No knight of love can ever be discomfited by all the dragons in the world," d.i.c.k said. "And the best of it, Leo, is in this case the dragons are more right than you think, and you are more right than they just the same."

"Here's a dragon that's a good dragon, Leo, lad," Terrence spoke up.

"This dragon is going to desert his disreputable companions and come over on your side and be a Saint Terrence. And this Saint Terrence has a lovely question to ask you."

"Let this dragon roar first," Hanc.o.c.k interposed. "Leo, by all in love that is sweet and lovely, I ask you: why do lovers, out of jealousy, so often kill the woman they love?"

"Because they are hurt, because they are insane," came the answer, "and because they have been unfortunate enough to love a woman so low in type that she could be guilty of making them jealous."

"But, Leo, love will stray," d.i.c.k prompted. "You must give a more sufficient answer."

"True for d.i.c.k," Terrence supplemented. "And it's helping you I am to the full stroke of your sword. Love will stray among the highest types, and when it does in steps the green-eyed monster. Suppose the most perfect woman you can imagine should cease to love the man who does not beat her and come to love another man who loves her and will not beat her--what 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 a.s.serted 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?" d.i.c.k 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," Hanc.o.c.k 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," Hanc.o.c.k urged.

The boy's embarra.s.sment was pitiful, and his voice quivered, but he turned bravely to d.i.c.k and said:

"That is for d.i.c.k to answer."

"And I'll answer," d.i.c.k 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 a.s.sured 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 s.p.a.ce 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 Hanc.o.c.k beset d.i.c.k.

"What do you mean by 'playing the game'?" Dar Hyal asked.

"Just what I said, just what Leo said," d.i.c.k 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?" Hanc.o.c.k propounded.

"It would be, to me, the unforgivable sin," came d.i.c.k'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 inst.i.tution of Western civilization?" Dar Hyal asked.

And Hanc.o.c.k: "You argue for free love, then?"

"I can only answer with a hackneyed truism," d.i.c.k 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 inst.i.tution, or by a stern, rigid marriage inst.i.tution 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 G.o.d 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."