THE HOUSE OF PRIDE(傲慢之家)

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THE HOUSE OF PRIDE

By Jack London

THE HOUSE OF PRIDE

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. They were in ways quite different from the

women he liked best--the elderly women, the spinsters and the

bespectacled maidens, and the very serious women of all ages whom he

met on church and library and kindergarten committees, who came

meekly to him for contributions and advice. He ruled those women by

virtue of his superior mentality, his great wealth, and the high place he

occupied in the commercial baronage of Hawaii. And he was not afraid

of them in the least. Sex, with them, was not obtrusive. Yes, that was

it. There was in them something else, or more, than the assertive

grossness of life. He was fastidious; he acknowledged that to himself;

and these army women, with their bare shoulders and naked arms, their

straight-looking eyes, their vitality and challenging femaleness, jarred

upon his sensibilities.

Nor did he get on better with the army men, who took life lightly,

drinking and smoking and swearing their way through life and asserting

the essential grossness of flesh no less shamelessly than their women.

He was always uncomfortable in the company of the army men. They

seemed uncomfortable, too. And he felt, always, that they were

laughing at him up their sleeves, or pitying him, or tolerating him.

Then, too, they seemed, by mere contiguity, to emphasize a lack in him,

to call attention to that in them which he did not possess and which he

thanked God he did not possess. Faugh! They were like their women!

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 on intimate terms with sickness, nor even mild

THE HOUSE OF PRIDE

disorders; but he lacked vitality. His was a negative organism. No

blood with a ferment in it could have nourished and shaped that long and

narrow face, those thin lips, lean cheeks, and the small, sharp eyes.

The thatch of hair, dust-coloured, straight and sparse, advertised the

niggard soil, as did the nose, thin, delicately modelled, and just hinting

the suggestion of a beak. His meagre blood had denied him much of

life, and permitted him to be an extremist in one thing only, which thing

was righteousness. Over right conduct he pondered and agonized, and

that he should do right was as necessary to his nature as loving and

being loved were necessary to commoner clay.

He was sitting under the algaroba trees between the lanai and the

beach. His eyes wandered over the dancers and he turned his head

away and gazed seaward across the mellow-sounding surf to the

Southern Cross burning low on the horizon. He was irritated by the

bare shoulders and arms of the women. If he had a daughter he would

never permit it, never. But his hypothesis was the sheerest abstraction.

The thought process had been accompanied by no inner vision of that

daughter. He did not see a daughter with arms and shoulders. Instead,

he smiled at the remote contingency of marriage. He was thirty-five,

and, having had no personal experience of love, he looked upon it, not as

mythical, but as bestial. Anybody could marry. The Japanese and

Chinese coolies, toiling on the sugar plantations and in the rice-fields,

married. They invariably married at the first opportunity. It was

because they were so low in the scale of life. There was nothing else

for them to do. They were like the army men and women. But for

him there were other and higher things. He was different from them--

from all of them. He was proud of how he happened to be. He had

come of no petty love-match. He had come of lofty conception of duty

and of devotion to a cause. His father had not married for love. Love

was a madness that had never perturbed Isaac Ford. 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, his father

and he. But the Board of Missions was economical. With New

England thrift it weighed and measured and decided that married

THE HOUSE OF PRIDE

missionaries were less expensive per capita and more efficacious. So

the Board commanded Isaac Ford to marry. Furthermore, it furnished

him with a wife, another zealous soul with no thought of marriage, intent

only on doing the Lord's work among the heathen. They saw each

other for the first time in Boston. The Board brought them together,

arranged everything, and by the end of the week they were married and

started on the long voyage around the Horn.

Percival Ford was proud that he had come of such a union. He had

been born high, and he thought of himself as a spiritual aristocrat. And

he was proud of his father. It was a passion with him. The erect,

austere figure of Isaac Ford had burned itself upon his pride. On his

desk was a miniature of that soldier of the Lord. In his bedroom hung

the portrait of Isaac Ford, painted at the time when he had served under

the Monarchy as prime minister. Not that Isaac 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 trading crowd, had

sneered at Isaac Ford as a commercial soul-saver; but he, his son, knew

different. When the natives, emerging abruptly from their feudal

system, 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 who had stepped in between the trading crowd and its prey and

taken possession of fat, 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 had considered 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, had paid forty per cent; that

the bank he founded had prospered into a railroad; and that, among other

things, fifty thousand acres of Oahu pasture land, which he had bought

for a dollar an acre, grew eight tons of sugar to the acre every eighteen

months. No, in all truth, Isaac Ford was an heroic figure, 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, carried on the good work at least as inflexibly if not as

THE HOUSE OF PRIDE

masterfully.

He turned his eyes back to the lanai. What was the difference, he

asked himself, between the shameless, grass-girdled hula dances and the

decollete dances of the women of his own race? Was there an essential

difference? or was it a matter of degree?

As he pondered the problem a hand rested on his shoulder.

"Hello, Ford, what are you doing here? Isn't this a bit festive?"

"I try to be lenient, Dr. Kennedy, even as I look on," Percival Ford

answered gravely. "Won't you sit down?"

Dr. Kennedy sat down, clapping his palms sharply. A white-clad

Japanese servant answered swiftly.

Scotch and soda was Kennedy's order; then, turning to the other, he

said:-

"Of course, I don't ask you."

"But I will take something," Ford said firmly. The doctor's eyes

showed surprise, and the servant waited. "Boy, a lemonade, please."

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

the musicians under the hau tree.

"Why, it's the Aloha Orchestra," he said. "I thought they were with

the Hawaiian Hotel on Tuesday nights. Some rumpus, I guess."

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

playing a guitar and singing a Hawaiian song to the accompaniment of

all the instruments.

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

grave as he turned it to his companion.

"Look here, Ford, isn't it time you let up on Joe Garland? I

understand you are in opposition to the Promotion Committee's sending

him to the States on this surf-board proposition, and I've been wanting to

speak to you about it. I should have thought you'd be glad to get him

out of the country. It would be a good way to end your persecution of

him."

"Persecution?" Percival Ford's eyebrows lifted interrogatively.

"Call it by any name you please," Kennedy went on. "You've

hounded that poor devil for years. It's not his fault. Even you will

THE HOUSE OF PRIDE

admit that."

"Not his fault?" Percival Ford's thin lips drew tightly together for

the moment. "Joe Garland is dissolute and idle. He has always been a

wastrel, a profligate."

"But that's no reason you should keep on after him the way you do.

I've watched you from the beginning. The first thing you did when you

returned from college and found him working on the plantation as

outside luna was to fire him--you with your millions, and he with his

sixty dollars a month."

"Not the first thing," Percival Ford said judicially, in a tone he was

accustomed to use in committee meetings. "I gave him his warning.

The superintendent said he was a capable luna. I had no objection to

him on that ground. It was what he did outside working hours. He

undid my work faster than I could build it up. Of what use were the

Sunday schools, the night schools, and the sewing classes, when in the

evenings there was Joe Garland with his infernal and eternal tum-

tumming of guitar and ukulele, his strong drink, and his hula dancing?

After I warned him, I came upon him--I shall never forget it--came upon

him, down at the cabins. It was evening. I could hear the hula songs

before I saw the scene. And when I did see it, there were the girls,

shameless in the moonlight and dancing--the girls upon whom I had

worked to teach clean living and right conduct. And there were three

girls there, I remember, just graduated from the mission school. Of

course I discharged Joe Garland. I know it was the same at Hilo.

People said I went out of my way when I persuaded Mason and Fitch to

discharge him. But it was the missionaries who requested me to do so.

He was undoing their work by his reprehensible example."

"Afterwards, when he got on the railroad, your railroad, he was

discharged without cause," Kennedy challenged.

"Not so," was the quick answer. "I had him into my private office

and talked with him for half an hour."

"You discharged him for inefficiency?"

"For immoral living, if you please."

Dr. Kennedy laughed with a grating sound. "Who the devil gave it to

THE HOUSE OF PRIDE

you to be judge and jury? Does landlordism give you control of the

immortal souls of those that toil for you? I have been your physician.

Am I to expect tomorrow 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 smuggling scrape (he wasn't in your employ,

either), and he sent word to you, asked you to pay his fine, you left him

to do his six months' hard labour on the reef. Don't forget, you left Joe

Garland in the lurch that time. You threw him down, hard; and yet I

remember the first day you came to school--we boarded, you were only

a day scholar--you had to be initiated. Three times under in the

swimming 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, for I could swim . . . And I was frightened."

"And you remember who fought for you? who lied for you harder than

you could lie, and swore he knew you couldn't swim? Who jumped into

the tank and pulled you out after the first under and was nearly drowned

for it by the other boys, who had discovered by that time that you

COULD swim?"

"Of course I know," the other rejoined coldly. "But a generous act

as a boy does not excuse a lifetime of wrong living."

"He has never done wrong to you?--personally and directly, I mean?"

"No," was Percival Ford's answer. "That is what makes my position

impregnable. I have no personal spite against him. He is bad, that is

all. His life is bad--"

"Which is another way of saying that he does not agree with you in

the way life should be lived," the doctor interrupted.

"Have it that way. It is immaterial. He is an idler--"

"With reason," was the interruption, "considering the jobs out of

which you have knocked him."

"He is immoral--"

"Oh, hold on now, Ford. Don't go harping on that. You are pure

New England stock. Joe Garland is half Kanaka. Your blood is thin.

THE HOUSE OF PRIDE

His is warm. Life is one thing to you, another thing to him. He

laughs and sings and dances through life, genial, unselfish, childlike,

everybody's friend. You go through life 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 after all, who shall say?

You live like an anchorite. Joe Garland lives like a good fellow. 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 the wages you get from life. You see, he is made differently. So

would you starve on his wages, which are singing, and love--"

"Lust, if you will pardon me," was the interruption.

Dr. Kennedy smiled.

"Love, to you, is a word of four letters and a definition which you

have extracted from the dictionary. But love, real love, dewy and

palpitant and tender, 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 quit hounding Joe Garland. It is not worthy of you,

and it is cowardly. The thing for you to do is to reach out and lend him

a hand."

"Why I, any more than you?" the other demanded. "Why don't you

reach him a hand?"

"I have. I'm reaching him a hand now. I'm trying to get you not to

down the Promotion Committee's proposition of sending him away. I

got him the job at Hilo with Mason and Fitch. I've got him half a

dozen jobs, out of every one of which you drove him. But never mind

that. Don't forget one thing--and a little frankness won't hurt you--it is

not fair play to saddle another fault on Joe Garland; and you know that

you, least of all, are the man to do it. Why, man, it's not good taste.

It's positively indecent."

"Now I don't follow you," Percival Ford answered. "You're up in the

air with some obscure scientific theory of heredity and personal

irresponsibility. But how any theory can hold Joe Garland

irresponsible for his wrongdoings and at the same time hold me

THE HOUSE OF PRIDE

personally responsible for them--more responsible than any one else,

including Joe Garland--is beyond me."

"It's a matter of delicacy, I suppose, or of taste, that prevents you

from following me," Dr. Kennedy snapped out. "It's all very well, for

the sake of society, tacitly to ignore some things, but you do more than

tacitly ignore."

"What is it, pray, that I tacitly ignore!"

Dr. Kennedy was angry. A deeper red than that of constitutional

Scotch and soda suffused his face, as he answered:

"Your father's son."

"Now just what do you mean?"

"Damn it, man, you can't ask me to be plainer spoken than that. But

if you will, all right--Isaac Ford's son--Joe Garland--your brother."

Percival Ford sat quietly, an annoyed and shocked expression on his

face. Kennedy looked at him curiously, then, as the slow minutes

dragged by, became embarrassed and frightened.

"My God!" he cried finally, "you don't mean to tell me that you

didn't know!"

As in answer, Percival Ford's cheeks turned slowly grey.

"It's a ghastly joke," he said; "a ghastly joke."

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."

"It's a lie," Ford cried. "You don't mean it. Joe Garland's mother

was Eliza Kunilio." (Dr. Kennedy nodded.) "I remember her well,

with her duck pond and taro patch. His father was Joseph Garland, the

beach-comber." (Dr. Kennedy shook his head.) "He died only two or

three years ago. He used to get drunk. There's where Joe got his

dissoluteness. There's the heredity for you."

"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

THE HOUSE OF PRIDE

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."

Percival Ford looked at the Kanaka half-breed who played under the

hau tree, and it seemed, as by some illumination, that he was gazing on a

wraith of himself. Feature after feature flashed up an unmistakable

resemblance. Or, rather, it was he who was the wraith of that other

full-muscled and generously moulded man. And his features, and that

other man's features, were all reminiscent of Isaac Ford. And nobody

had told him. Every line of Isaac Ford's face he knew. Miniatures,

portraits, and photographs of his father were passing in review through

his mind, and here and there, over and again, in the face before him, he

caught resemblances and vague hints of likeness. It was devil's work

that could reproduce the austere features of Isaac Ford in the loose and

sensuous features before him. Once, the man turned, and for one

flashing instant it seemed to Percival Ford that he saw his father, dead

and gone, peering at him out of the face of Joe Garland.

"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

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THEHOUSEOFPRIDE1THEHOUSEOFPRIDEByJackLondonTHEHOUSEOFPRIDE2PercivalFordwonderedwhyhehadcome.Hedidnotdance.Hedidnotcaremuchforarmypeople.Yetheknewthemall--glidingandrevolvingthereonthebroadlanaioftheSeaside,theofficersintheirfresh-starcheduniformsofwhite,theciviliansinwhiteandblack,andthewomenbareofs...

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