Little Lady of the Big House | Page 5

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