The House of Pride, and Other Tales of Hawaii E-Book

Jack London

• Herausgeber: ShadowPOET
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Percival Ford wondered why he had come. He did not dance. He did not care much for army people. Yet he knew them all—gliding and revolving there on the broad lanai of the Seaside, the officers in their fresh-starched uniforms of white, the civilians in white and black, and the women bare of shoulders and arms. After two years in Honolulu the Twentieth was departing to its new station in Alaska, and Percival Ford, as one of the big men of the Islands, could not help knowing the officers and their women.
But between knowing and liking was a vast gulf. The army women frightened him just a little.

Leseprobe

TheHouseofPride,andOtherTalesofHawaii

ByJackLondon

Publisher: ShadowPOET

THEHOUSEOFPRIDEANDOTHERTALESOFHAWAII

THEHOUSEOFPRIDE

Percival Ford wondered why he had come.He did not dance.He did not caremuch for army people.Yet he knew them all—gliding and revolving there onthe broad lanai of the Seaside, the officers in their fresh-starched uniforms ofwhite, the civilians in white and black, and the women bare of shoulders andarms.After two years in Honolulu the Twentieth was departing to its newstation in Alaska, and Percival Ford, as one of the big men of the Islands,couldnothelpknowingtheofficersandtheirwomen.

But between knowing and liking was a vast gulf. The army women frightenedhimjustalittle.Theywereinwaysquitedifferentfromthewomenheliked

best—the elderly women, the spinsters and the bespectacled maidens, and thevery serious women of all ages whom he met on church and library andkindergartencommittees,whocamemeeklytohimforcontributionsandadvice.He ruled those women by virtue of his superior mentality, his greatwealth,andthehighplaceheoccupiedinthecommercialbaronageofHawaii.And he was not afraid of them in the least.Sex, with them, was notobtrusive.Yes, that was it.There was in them something else, or more, thanthe assertive grossness of life.He was fastidious; he acknowledged that tohimself; and these army women, with their bare shoulders and naked arms,their straight-looking eyes, their vitality and challenging femaleness, jarreduponhissensibilities.

Nordidhegetonbetterwiththearmymen,whotooklifelightly,drinkingandsmokingandswearingtheirwaythroughlifeandassertingtheessentialgrossness of flesh no less shamelessly than their women.He was alwaysuncomfortable in the company of the army men. They seemed uncomfortable,too.And he felt, always, that they were laughing at him up their sleeves, orpitying him, or tolerating him.Then, too, they seemed, by mere contiguity, toemphasize a lack in him, to call attention to that in them which he did notpossess and which he thanked God he did not possess. Faugh! They were liketheirwomen!

In fact, Percival Ford was no more a woman’s man than he was a man’s man.A glance at him told the reason.He had a good constitution, never was onintimate terms with sickness, nor even mild disorders; but he lacked vitality.His was a negative organism.No blood with a ferment in it could havenourished and shaped that long and narrow face, those thin lips, lean cheeks,and the small, sharp eyes.The thatch of hair, dust-coloured, straight andsparse, advertised the niggard soil, as did the nose, thin, delicately modelled,and just hinting the suggestion of a beak.His meagre blood had denied himmuch of life, and permitted him to be an extremist in one thing only, whichthing was righteousness.Over right conduct he pondered and agonized, andthat he should do right was as necessary to his nature as loving and beinglovedwerenecessarytocommonerclay.

He was sitting under the algaroba trees between the lanai and the beach.Hiseyes wandered over the dancers and he turned his head away and gazedseaward across the mellow-sounding surf to the Southern Cross burning lowon the horizon. He was irritated by the bare shoulders and arms of thewomen.If he had a daughter he would never permit it, never.But hishypothesiswasthesheerestabstraction.Thethoughtprocesshadbeenaccompanied by no inner vision of that daughter.He did not see a daughterwith arms and shoulders.Instead, he smiled at the remote contingency ofmarriage.Hewas thirty-five, and,havinghad nopersonal experienceoflove,

he looked upon it, not as mythical, but as bestial.Anybody could marry.TheJapanese and Chinese coolies, toiling on the sugar plantations and in the rice-fields, married.They invariably married at the first opportunity.It wasbecause they were so low in the scale of life.There was nothing else for themto do. They were like the army men and women. But for him there were otherand higher things.He was different from them—from all of them.He wasproud of how he happened to be.He had come of no petty love-match.Hehad come of lofty conception of duty and of devotion to a cause.His fatherhad not married for love.Love was a madness that had never perturbed IsaacFord. When he answered the call to go to the heathen with the message of life,he had had no thought and no desire for marriage.In this they were alike, hisfatherandhe.ButtheBoardofMissionswaseconomical.WithNewEngland thrift it weighed and measured and decided that married missionarieswerelessexpensivepercapitaandmoreefficacious.SotheBoardcommanded Isaac Ford to marry.Furthermore, it furnished him with a wife,another zealous soul with no thought of marriage, intent only on doing theLord’s work among the heathen.They saw each other for the first time inBoston.The Board brought them together, arranged everything, and by theend of the week they were married and started on the long voyage around theHorn.

Percival Ford was proud that he had come of such a union.He had been bornhigh, and he thought of himself as a spiritual aristocrat.And he was proud ofhis father.It was a passion with him.The erect, austere figure of Isaac Fordhad burned itself upon his pride. On his desk was a miniature of that soldierof the Lord. In his bedroom hung the portrait of Isaac Ford, painted at thetime when he had served under the Monarchy as prime minister.Not thatIsaac Ford had coveted place and worldly wealth, but that, as prime minister,and, later, as banker, he had been of greater service to the missionary cause.The German crowd, and the English crowd, and all the rest of the tradingcrowd, had sneered at Isaac Ford as a commercial soul-saver; but he, his son,knewdifferent.Whenthenatives,emergingabruptlyfromtheirfeudalsystem, with no conception of the nature and significance of property in land,were letting their broad acres slip through their fingers, it was Isaac Ford whohad stepped in between the trading crowd and its prey and taken possession offat, vast holdings.Small wonder the trading crowd did not like his memory.But he had never looked upon his enormous wealth as his own.He hadconsidered himself God’s steward.Out of the revenues he had built schools,and hospitals, and churches.Nor was it his fault that sugar, after the slump,hadpaidfortypercent;thatthebankhefoundedhadprosperedintoarailroad;and that, among other things, fifty thousand acres of Oahu pasture land, whichhe had bought for a dollar an acre, grew eight tons of sugar to the acre everyeighteenmonths.No,inalltruth,IsaacFordwasanheroicfigure,fit,so

Percival Ford thought privately, to stand beside the statue of Kamehameha I.in front of the Judiciary Building.Isaac Ford was gone, but he, his son,carriedonthegoodworkatleastasinflexiblyifnotasmasterfully.

He turned his eyes back to the lanai.What was the difference, he askedhimself, between the shameless, grass-girdled hula dances and the decollétédances of the women of his own race?Was there an essential difference? orwasitamatterofdegree?

As he pondered the problem a hand rested on his shoulder.“Hello,Ford,whatareyoudoinghere?Isn’tthisabitfestive?”

“Itrytobelenient,Dr.Kennedy,evenasIlookon,”PercivalFordansweredgravely.“Won’tyousitdown?”

Dr.Kennedysatdown,clappinghispalmssharply.Awhite-cladJapaneseservantansweredswiftly.

ScotchandsodawasKennedy’sorder;then,turningtotheother,hesaid:—“Ofcourse,Idon’taskyou.”

“But I will take something,” Ford said firmly.The doctor’s eyes showedsurprise,andtheservantwaited.“Boy,alemonade,please.”

The doctor laughed at it heartily, as a joke on himself, and glanced at themusiciansunderthehautree.

“Why, it’s the Aloha Orchestra,” he said.“I thought they were with theHawaiianHotelonTuesdaynights.Somerumpus,Iguess.”

His eyes paused for a moment, and dwelt upon the one who was playing aguitarandsingingaHawaiiansongtotheaccompanimentofalltheinstruments.

His face became grave as he looked at the singer, and it was still grave as heturnedittohiscompanion.

“Look here, Ford, isn’t it time you let up on Joe Garland?I understand youare in opposition to the Promotion Committee’s sending him to the States onthis surf-board proposition, and I’ve been wanting to speak to you about it.Ishould have thought you’d be glad to get him out of the country. It would be agoodwaytoendyourpersecutionofhim.”

“Persecution?”PercivalFord’seyebrowsliftedinterrogatively.

“Callitbyanynameyouplease,”Kennedywenton.“You’vehounded thatpoordevilforyears.It’snothisfault.Evenyouwilladmitthat.”

“Nothisfault?”PercivalFord’sthinlipsdrewtightlytogetherforthemoment.“Joe Garland is dissolute and idle.He has always been a wastrel, aprofligate.”

“But that’s no reason you should keep on after him the way you do.I’vewatched you from the beginning.The first thing you did when you returnedfrom college and found him working on the plantation as outside luna was tofirehim—youwithyourmillions,andhewithhissixtydollarsamonth.”

“Notthefirstthing,”PercivalFordsaidjudicially,inatonehewasaccustomed to use in committee meetings.“I gave him his warning.Thesuperintendent said he was a capable luna.I had no objection to him on thatground.It was what he did outside working hours.He undid my work fasterthan I could build it up.Of what use were the Sunday schools, the nightschools, and the sewing classes, when in the evenings there was Joe Garlandwith his infernal and eternal tum-tumming of guitar and ukulele, his strongdrink, and his hula dancing?After I warned him, I came upon him—I shallnever forget it—came upon him, down at the cabins.It was evening.I couldhear the hula songs before I saw the scene.And when I did see it, there werethe girls, shameless in the moonlight and dancing—the girls upon whom I hadworked to teach clean living and right conduct.And there were three girlsthere,Iremember,justgraduatedfromthemissionschool.OfcourseIdischarged Joe Garland.I know it was the same at Hilo.People said I wentout of my way when I persuaded Mason and Fitch to discharge him.But itwas the missionaries who requested me to do so.He was undoing their workbyhisreprehensibleexample.”

“Afterwards, when he got on the railroad, your railroad, he was dischargedwithoutcause,”Kennedychallenged.

“Not so,” was the quick answer.“I had him into my private office and talkedwithhimforhalfanhour.”

“Youdischargedhimforinefficiency?”“Forimmoralliving,ifyouplease.”

Dr. Kennedy laughed with a grating sound.“Who the devil gave it to you tobe judge and jury?Does landlordism give you control of the immortal soulsof those that toil for you?I have been your physician.Am I to expecttomorrow your ukase that I give up Scotch and soda or your patronage?Bah!Ford, you take life too seriously.Besides, when Joe got into that smugglingscrape (he wasn’t in your employ, either), and he sent word to you, asked youto pay his fine, you left him to do his six months’ hard labour on the reef.Don’tforget,youleftJoeGarlandinthelurchthattime.Youthrewhimdown,hard;andyetIrememberthefirstdayyoucametoschool—weboarded,you

were only a day scholar—you had to be initiated.Three times under in theswimming tank—you remember, it was the regular dose every new boy got.And you held back.You denied that you could swim.You were frightened,hysterical—”

“Yes, I know,” Percival Ford said slowly. “I was frightened. And it was a lie,forIcouldswim...AndIwasfrightened.”

“And you remember who fought for you? who lied for you harder than youcould lie, and swore he knew you couldn’t swim?Who jumped into the tankand pulled you out after the first under and was nearly drowned for it by theotherboys,whohaddiscoveredbythattimethatyoucouldswim?”

“Of course I know,” the other rejoined coldly.“But a generous act as a boydoesnotexcusealifetimeofwrongliving.”

“Hehasneverdonewrongtoyou?—personallyanddirectly,Imean?”

“No,”wasPercivalFord’sanswer.“Thatiswhatmakesmypositionimpregnable.I have no personal spite against him.He is bad, that is all.Hislifeisbad—”

“Which is another way of saying that he does not agree with you in the waylifeshouldbelived,”thedoctorinterrupted.

“Haveitthatway.Itisimmaterial.Heisanidler—”

“With reason,” was the interruption, “considering the jobs out of which youhaveknockedhim.”

“Heisimmoral—”

“Oh, hold on now, Ford.Don’t go harping on that.You are pure NewEngland stock.Joe Garland is half Kanaka.Your blood is thin.His is warm.Life is one thing to you, another thing to him. He laughs and sings and dancesthrough life, genial, unselfish, childlike, everybody’s friend.You go throughlife like a perambulating prayer-wheel, a friend of nobody but the righteous,and the righteous are those who agree with you as to what is right.And afterall, who shall say?You live like an anchorite.Joe Garland lives like a goodfellow. Who has extracted the most from life? We are paid to live, you know.When the wages are too meagre we throw up the job, which is the cause,believe me, of all rational suicide.Joe Garland would starve to death on thewages you get from life. You see, he is made differently. So would you starveonhiswages,whicharesinging,andlove—”

“Lust,ifyouwillpardonme,”wastheinterruption.Dr.Kennedysmiled.

“Love, to you, is a word of four letters and a definition which you haveextracted from the dictionary.But love, real love, dewy and palpitant andtender, you do not know.If God made you and me, and men and women,believe me He made love, too.But to come back.It’s about time you quithounding Joe Garland.It is not worthy of you, and it is cowardly.The thingforyoutodoistoreachoutandlendhimahand.”

“Why I, any more than you?” the other demanded. “Why don’t you reach himahand?”

“I have.I’m reaching him a hand now.I’m trying to get you not to down thePromotion Committee’s proposition of sending him away. I got him the job atHilo with Mason and Fitch. I’ve got him half a dozen jobs, out of every oneof which you drove him.But never mind that.Don’t forget one thing—and alittle frankness won’t hurt you—it is not fair play to saddle another fault onJoe Garland; and you know that you, least of all, are the man to do it.Why,man,it’snotgoodtaste.It’spositivelyindecent.”

“Now I don’t follow you,” Percival Ford answered. “You’re up in the air withsome obscure scientific theory of heredity and personal irresponsibility.Buthow any theory can hold Joe Garland irresponsible for his wrongdoings and atthe same time hold me personally responsible for them—more responsiblethananyoneelse,includingJoeGarland—isbeyondme.”

“It’s a matter of delicacy, I suppose, or of taste, that prevents you fromfollowing me,” Dr. Kennedy snapped out.“It’s all very well, for the sake ofsociety,tacitlytoignoresomethings,butyoudomorethantacitlyignore.”