“And you’re emerald,” said Selina, quickly.
The General was interested but uncomprehending. He glanced now at the watch on his wrist and gave a little exclamation. “But the dinner! Our hostess, Madame Storm! It is very fine to run away but one must come back. Our so beautiful hostess.” He had sprung to his feet.
“She is beautiful, isn’t she?” said Selina.
“No,” Roelf replied, abruptly. “The mouth is smaller than the eyes. With Mrs. Storm from here to here”—he illustrated by turning to Dallas, touching her lips, her eyes, lightly with his slender powerful brown fingers—“is smaller than from here to here. When the mouth is smaller than the eyes there is no real beauty. Now Dallas here—”
“Yes, me,” scoffed Dallas, all agrin. “There’s a grand mouth for you. If a large mouth is your notion of beauty then I must look like Helen of Troy to you, Roelf.”
“You do,” said Roelf, simply.
Inside Dirk something was saying, over and over, “You’re nothing but a rubber stamp, Dirk DeJong. You’re nothing but a rubber stamp.” Over and over.
“These dinners!” exclaimed the General. “I do not wish to seem ungracious, but these dinners! Much rather would I remain here on this quiet and beautiful farm.”
At the porch steps he turned, brought his heels together with a sharp smack, bent from the waist, picked up Selina’s rough work-worn hand and kissed it. And then, as she smiled a little, uncertainly, her left hand at her breast, her cheeks pink, Roelf, too, kissed her hand tenderly.
“Why,” said Selina, and laughed a soft tremulous little laugh, “Why, I’ve never had my hand kissed before.”
She stood on the porch steps and waved at them as they were whirled swiftly away, the four of them. A slight straight little figure in the plain white blouse and the skirt spattered with the soil of the farm.
“You’ll come out again?” she had said to Dallas. And Dallas had said yes, but that she was leaving soon for Paris, to study and work.
“When I come back you’ll let me do your portrait?”
“My portrait!” Selina had exclaimed, wonderingly.
Now as the four were whirled back to Chicago over the asphalted Halsted road they were relaxed, a little tired. They yielded to the narcotic of spring that was in the air.
Roelf Pool took off his hat. In the cruel spring sunshine you saw that the black hair was sprinkled with gray. “On days like this I refuse to believe that I’m forty-five. Dallas, tell me I’m not forty-five.”
“You’re not forty-five,” said Dallas in her leisurely caressing voice.
Roelf’s lean brown hand reached over frankly and clasped her strong white one. “When you say it like that, Dallas, it sounds true.”
“It is true,” said Dallas.
They dropped Dallas first at the shabby old Ontario Street studio, then Dirk at his smart little apartment, and went on.
Dirk turned his key in the lock. Saki, the Japanese houseman, slid silently into the hall making little hissing noises of greeting. On the correct little console in the hall there was a correct little pile of letters and invitations. He went through the Italian living room and into his bedroom. The Jap followed him. Dirk’s correct evening clothes (made by Peel the English tailor on Michigan Boulevard) were laid correctly on his bed—trousers, vest, shirt, coat; fine, immaculate.
“Messages, Saki?”
“Missy Stlom telephone.”
“Oh. Leave any message?”
“No. Say s’e call ’gain.”
“All right, Saki.” He waved him away and out of the room. The man went and closed the door softly behind him as a correct Jap servant should. Dirk took off his coat, his vest, threw them on a chair near the bed. He stood at the bedside looking down at his Peel evening clothes, at the glossy shirtfront that never bulged. A bath, he thought, dully, automatically. Then, quite suddenly, he flung himself on the fine silk-covered bed, face down, and lay there, his head in his arms, very still. He was lying there half an hour later when he heard the telephone’s shrill insistence and Saki’s gentle deferential rap at the bedroom door.
Colophon
So Big
was published in 1924 by
Edna Ferber.
This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Bob Kenyon,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2020 by
Alex White and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans available at the
Internet Archive.
The cover page is adapted from
Mother and Child,
a painting completed in 1906 by
Gari Melchers.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.
The first edition of this ebook was released on
January 5, 2022, 5:05 a.m.
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