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Read Ebook: The House of Pride and Other Tales of Hawaii by London Jack
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Ebook has 432 lines and 34552 words, and 9 pages
The doctor had got himself in hand.
"Everybody knows it," he said. "I thought you knew it. And since you don't know it, it's time you did, and I'm glad of the chance of setting you straight. Joe Garland and you are brothers--half-brothers."
"And nobody told you," Kennedy said wonderingly, after a pause.
"Dr. Kennedy, you have said something terrible, which I cannot allow to pass. You must either prove or, or . . . "
"Prove it yourself. Turn around and look at him. You've got him in profile. Look at his nose. That's Isaac Ford's. Yours is a thin edition of it. That's right. Look. The lines are fuller, but they are all there."
"It's nothing at all," he could faintly hear Dr. Kennedy saying, "They were all mixed up in the old days. You know that. You've seen it all your life. Sailors married queens and begat princesses and all the rest of it. It was the usual thing in the Islands."
"But not with my father," Percival Ford interrupted.
"There you are." Kennedy shrugged his shoulders. "Cosmic sap and smoke of life. Old Isaac Ford was straitlaced and all the rest, and I know there's no explaining it, least of all to himself. He understood it no more than you do. Smoke of life, that's all. And don't forget one thing, Ford. There was a dab of unruly blood in old Isaac Ford, and Joe Garland inherited it--all of it, smoke of life and cosmic sap; while you inherited all of old Isaac's ascetic blood. And just because your blood is cold, well-ordered, and well-disciplined, is no reason that you should frown upon Joe Garland. When Joe Garland undoes the work you do, remember that it is only old Isaac Ford on both sides, undoing with one hand what he does with the other. You are Isaac Ford's right hand, let us say; Joe Garland is his left hand."
Percival Ford made no answer, and in the silence Dr. Kennedy finished his forgotten Scotch and soda. From across the grounds an automobile hooted imperatively.
"There's the machine," Dr. Kennedy said, rising. "I've got to run. I'm sorry I've shaken you up, and at the same time I'm glad. And know one thing, Isaac Ford's dab of unruly blood was remarkably small, and Joe Garland got it all. And one other thing. If your father's left hand offend you, don't smite it off. Besides, Joe is all right. Frankly, if I could choose between you and him to live with me on a desert isle, I'd choose Joe."
"John," Ford said, "I want you to give me some information. Won't you sit down?"
The clerk sat down awkwardly, stunned by the unexpected honour. He blinked at the other and mumbled, "Yes, sir, thank you."
"John, who is Joe Garland?"
The clerk stared at him, blinked, cleared his throat, and said nothing.
"Go on," Percival Ford commanded.
"Who is he?"
"You're joking me, sir," the other managed to articulate.
"I spoke to you seriously."
The clerk recoiled from him.
"You don't mean to say you don't know?" he questioned, his question in itself the answer.
"I want to know."
"Why, he's--" John broke off and looked about him helplessly. "Hadn't you better ask somebody else? Everybody thought you knew. We always thought . . . "
"Yes, go ahead."
"We always thought that that was why you had it in for him."
Photographs and miniatures of Isaac Ford were trooping through his son's brain, and ghosts of Isaac Ford seemed in the air about hint "I wish you good night, sir," he could hear the clerk saying, and he saw him beginning to limp away.
"John," he called abruptly.
John came back and stood near him, blinking and nervously moistening his lips.
"You haven't told me yet, you know."
"Oh, about Joe Garland?"
"Yes, about Joe Garland. Who is he?"
"He's your brother, sir, if I say it who shouldn't."
"Thank you, John. Good night."
"And you didn't know?" the old man queried, content to linger, now that the crucial point was past.
"Thank you, John. Good night," was the response.
"Yes, sir, thank you, sir. I think it's going to rain. Good night, sir."
He began to patch together his shattered ideal of Isaac Ford, and for cement he used a cunning and subtle logic. It was of the sort that is compounded in the brain laboratories of egotists, and it worked. It was incontrovertible that his father had been made of finer clay than those about him; but still, old Isaac had been only in the process of becoming, while he, Percival Ford, had become. As proof of it, he rehabilitated his father and at the same time exalted himself. His lean little ego waxed to colossal proportions. He was great enough to forgive. He glowed at the thought of it. Isaac Ford had been great, but he was greater, for he could forgive Isaac Ford and even restore him to the holy place in his memory, though the place was not quite so holy as it had been. Also, he applauded Isaac Ford for having ignored the outcome of his one step aside. Very well, he, too, would ignore it.
The dance was breaking up. The orchestra had finished "Aloha Oe" and was preparing to go home. Percival Ford clapped his hands for the Japanese servant.
"You tell that man I want to see him," he said, pointing out Joe Garland. "Tell him to come here, now."
Joe Garland approached and halted respectfully several paces away, nervously fingering the guitar which he still carried. The other did not ask him to sit down.
"You are my brother," he said.
"Why, everybody knows that," was the reply, in tones of wonderment.
"Yes, so I understand," Percival Ford said dryly. "But I did not know it till this evening."
The half-brother waited uncomfortably in the silence that followed, during which Percival Ford coolly considered his next utterance.
"You remember that first time I came to school and the boys ducked me?" he asked. "Why did you take my part?"
The half-brother smiled bashfully.
"Because you knew?"
"Yes, that was why."
"But I didn't know," Percival Ford said in the same dry fashion.
"Yes," the other said.
"You know . . . now," the half-brother said simply.
Percival Ford frowned. Then he looked the other over with a considering eye.
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