{"id":11698,"date":"2024-02-04T12:48:55","date_gmt":"2024-02-04T16:48:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/?p=11698"},"modified":"2024-02-04T12:49:00","modified_gmt":"2024-02-04T16:49:00","slug":"jack-london-the-house-of-pride","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/short-stories\/jack-london-the-house-of-pride\/11698\/","title":{"rendered":"Jack London: The House Of Pride"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"gb-container gb-container-ff0822ca\">\n\n<p>Jack London&#8217;s &#8220;The House of Pride&#8221; tells the story of Percival Ford, an extremely moralistic businessman distant from social conventions and superficial relationships, who during a party in Hawaii discovers a shocking truth about his family that confronts him with his own identity and values.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n\n<style>.kb-image11698_98c9e9-96 .kb-image-has-overlay:after{opacity:0.3;}<\/style>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-kadence-image kb-image11698_98c9e9-96 size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/Jack-London-La-casa-del-orgullo.jpg\" alt=\"Jack London: La casa del orgullo\" class=\"kb-img wp-image-11691\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/Jack-London-La-casa-del-orgullo.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/lecturia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/Jack-London-La-casa-del-orgullo-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/lecturia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/Jack-London-La-casa-del-orgullo-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/lecturia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/Jack-London-La-casa-del-orgullo-768x768.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\">The House Of Pride<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\">Jack London <br>(Full story)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Percival Ford wondered why he had come.&nbsp; He did not dance.&nbsp; He did not care much for army people.&nbsp; Yet he knew them all\u2014gliding and revolving there on the broad&nbsp;<em>lanai<\/em>&nbsp;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.&nbsp; 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But between knowing and liking was a vast gulf.&nbsp; The army women frightened him just a little.&nbsp; They were in ways quite different from the women he liked best\u2014the 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; And he was not afraid of them in the least.&nbsp; Sex, with them, was not obtrusive.&nbsp; Yes, that was it.&nbsp; There was in them something else, or more, than the assertive grossness of life.&nbsp; 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>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.&nbsp; He was always uncomfortable in the company of the army men.&nbsp; They seemed uncomfortable, too.&nbsp; And he felt, always, that they were laughing at him up their sleeves, or pitying him, or tolerating him.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Faugh!&nbsp; They were like their women!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In fact, Percival Ford was no more a woman\u2019s man than he was a man\u2019s man.&nbsp; A glance at him told the reason.&nbsp; He had a good constitution, never was on intimate terms with sickness, nor even mild disorders; but he lacked vitality.&nbsp; His was a negative organism.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; His meagre blood had denied him much of life, and permitted him to be an extremist in one thing only, which thing was righteousness.&nbsp; 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He was sitting under the algaroba trees between the&nbsp;<em>lanai<\/em>&nbsp;and the beach.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He was irritated by the bare shoulders and arms of the women.&nbsp; If he had a daughter he would never permit it, never.&nbsp; But his hypothesis was the sheerest abstraction.&nbsp; The thought process had been accompanied by no inner vision of that daughter.&nbsp; He did not see a daughter with arms and shoulders.&nbsp; Instead, he smiled at the remote contingency of marriage.&nbsp; He was thirty-five, and, having had no personal experience of love, he looked upon it, not as mythical, but as bestial.&nbsp; Anybody could marry.&nbsp; The Japanese and Chinese coolies, toiling on the sugar plantations and in the rice-fields, married.&nbsp; They invariably married at the first opportunity.&nbsp; It was because they were so low in the scale of life.&nbsp; There was nothing else for them to do.&nbsp; They were like the army men and women.&nbsp; But for him there were other and higher things.&nbsp; He was different from them\u2014from all of them.&nbsp; He was proud of how he happened to be.&nbsp; He had come of no petty love-match.&nbsp; He had come of lofty conception of duty and of devotion to a cause.&nbsp; His father had not married for love.&nbsp; Love was a madness that had never perturbed Isaac Ford.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; In this they were alike, his father and he.&nbsp; But the Board of Missions was economical.&nbsp; With New England thrift it weighed and measured and decided that married missionaries were less expensive per capita and more efficacious.&nbsp; So the Board commanded Isaac Ford to marry.&nbsp; Furthermore, it furnished him with a wife, another zealous soul with no thought of marriage, intent only on doing the Lord\u2019s work among the heathen.&nbsp; They saw each other for the first time in Boston.&nbsp; 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Percival Ford was proud that he had come of such a union.&nbsp; He had been born high, and he thought of himself as a spiritual aristocrat.&nbsp; And he was proud of his father.&nbsp; It was a passion with him.&nbsp; The erect, austere figure of Isaac Ford had burned itself upon his pride.&nbsp; On his desk was a miniature of that soldier of the Lord.&nbsp; In his bedroom hung the portrait of Isaac Ford, painted at the time when he had served under the Monarchy as prime minister.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Small wonder the trading crowd did not like his memory.&nbsp; But he had never looked upon his enormous wealth as his own.&nbsp; He had considered himself God\u2019s steward.&nbsp; Out of the revenues he had built schools, and hospitals, and churches.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Isaac Ford was gone, but he, his son, carried on the good work at least as inflexibly if not as masterfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He turned his eyes back to the&nbsp;<em>lanai<\/em>.&nbsp; What was the difference, he asked himself, between the shameless, grass-girdled&nbsp;<em>hula<\/em>&nbsp;dances and the decoll\u00e9t\u00e9 dances of the women of his own race?&nbsp; Was there an essential difference? or was it a matter of degree?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As he pondered the problem a hand rested on his shoulder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cHello, Ford, what are you doing here?&nbsp; Isn\u2019t this a bit festive?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI try to be lenient, Dr. Kennedy, even as I look on,\u201d Percival Ford answered gravely.&nbsp; \u201cWon\u2019t you sit down?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr. Kennedy sat down, clapping his palms sharply.&nbsp; A white-clad Japanese servant answered swiftly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Scotch and soda was Kennedy\u2019s order; then, turning to the other, he said:\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cOf course, I don\u2019t ask you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cBut I will take something,\u201d Ford said firmly.&nbsp; The doctor\u2019s eyes showed surprise, and the servant waited.&nbsp; \u201cBoy, a lemonade, please.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The doctor laughed at it heartily, as a joke on himself, and glanced at the musicians under the&nbsp;<em>hau<\/em>&nbsp;tree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWhy, it\u2019s the Aloha Orchestra,\u201d he said.&nbsp; \u201cI thought they were with the Hawaiian Hotel on Tuesday nights.&nbsp; Some rumpus, I guess.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>His face became grave as he looked at the singer, and it was still grave as he turned it to his companion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cLook here, Ford, isn\u2019t it time you let up on Joe Garland?&nbsp; I understand you are in opposition to the Promotion Committee\u2019s sending him to the States on this surf-board proposition, and I\u2019ve been wanting to speak to you about it.&nbsp; I should have thought you\u2019d be glad to get him out of the country.&nbsp; It would be a good way to end your persecution of him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cPersecution?\u201d&nbsp; Percival Ford\u2019s eyebrows lifted interrogatively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cCall it by any name you please,\u201d Kennedy went on.&nbsp; \u201cYou\u2019ve hounded that poor devil for years.&nbsp; It\u2019s not his fault.&nbsp; Even you will admit that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cNot his fault?\u201d&nbsp; Percival Ford\u2019s thin lips drew tightly together for the moment.&nbsp; \u201cJoe Garland is dissolute and idle.&nbsp; He has always been a wastrel, a profligate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cBut that\u2019s no reason you should keep on after him the way you do.&nbsp; I\u2019ve watched you from the beginning.&nbsp; The first thing you did when you returned from college and found him working on the plantation as outside&nbsp;<em>luna<\/em>&nbsp;was to fire him\u2014you with your millions, and he with his sixty dollars a month.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cNot the first thing,\u201d Percival Ford said judicially, in a tone he was accustomed to use in committee meetings.&nbsp; \u201cI gave him his warning.&nbsp; The superintendent said he was a capable&nbsp;<em>luna<\/em>.&nbsp; I had no objection to him on that ground.&nbsp; It was what he did outside working hours.&nbsp; He undid my work faster than I could build it up.&nbsp; 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&nbsp;<em>ukulele<\/em>, his strong drink, and his&nbsp;<em>hula<\/em>&nbsp;dancing?&nbsp; After I warned him, I came upon him\u2014I shall never forget it\u2014came upon him, down at the cabins.&nbsp; It was evening.&nbsp; I could hear the&nbsp;<em>hula<\/em>&nbsp;songs before I saw the scene.&nbsp; And when I did see it, there were the girls, shameless in the moonlight and dancing\u2014the girls upon whom I had worked to teach clean living and right conduct.&nbsp; And there were three girls there, I remember, just graduated from the mission school.&nbsp; Of course I discharged Joe Garland.&nbsp; I know it was the same at Hilo.&nbsp; People said I went out of my way when I persuaded Mason and Fitch to discharge him.&nbsp; But it was the missionaries who requested me to do so.&nbsp; He was undoing their work by his reprehensible example.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cAfterwards, when he got on the railroad, your railroad, he was discharged without cause,\u201d Kennedy challenged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cNot so,\u201d was the quick answer.&nbsp; \u201cI had him into my private office and talked with him for half an hour.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cYou discharged him for inefficiency?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cFor immoral living, if you please.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr. Kennedy laughed with a grating sound.&nbsp; \u201cWho the devil gave it to you to be judge and jury?&nbsp; Does landlordism give you control of the immortal souls of those that toil for you?&nbsp; I have been your physician.&nbsp; Am I to expect tomorrow your ukase that I give up Scotch and soda or your patronage?&nbsp; Bah!&nbsp; Ford, you take life too seriously.&nbsp; Besides, when Joe got into that smuggling scrape (he wasn\u2019t in your employ, either), and he sent word to you, asked you to pay his fine, you left him to do his six months\u2019 hard labour on the reef.&nbsp; Don\u2019t forget, you left Joe Garland in the lurch that time.&nbsp; You threw him down, hard; and yet I remember the first day you came to school\u2014we boarded, you were only a day scholar\u2014you had to be initiated.&nbsp; Three times under in the swimming tank\u2014you remember, it was the regular dose every new boy got.&nbsp; And you held back.&nbsp; You denied that you&nbsp;<em>could<\/em>&nbsp;swim.&nbsp; You were frightened, hysterical\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cYes, I know,\u201d Percival Ford said slowly.&nbsp; \u201cI was frightened.&nbsp; And it was a lie, for I could swim . . . And I was frightened.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cAnd you remember who fought for you? who lied for you harder than you could lie, and swore he knew you couldn\u2019t swim?&nbsp; 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&nbsp;<em>could<\/em>&nbsp;swim?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cOf course I know,\u201d the other rejoined coldly.&nbsp; \u201cBut a generous act as a boy does not excuse a lifetime of wrong living.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cHe has never done wrong to you?\u2014personally and directly, I mean?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cNo,\u201d was Percival Ford\u2019s answer.&nbsp; \u201cThat is what makes my position impregnable.&nbsp; I have no personal spite against him.&nbsp; He is bad, that is all.&nbsp; His life is bad\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWhich is another way of saying that he does not agree with you in the way life should be lived,\u201d the doctor interrupted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cHave it that way.&nbsp; It is immaterial.&nbsp; He is an idler\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWith reason,\u201d was the interruption, \u201cconsidering the jobs out of which you have knocked him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cHe is immoral\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cOh, hold on now, Ford.&nbsp; Don\u2019t go harping on that.&nbsp; You are pure New England stock.&nbsp; Joe Garland is half Kanaka.&nbsp; Your blood is thin.&nbsp; His is warm.&nbsp; Life is one thing to you, another thing to him.&nbsp; He laughs and sings and dances through life, genial, unselfish, childlike, everybody\u2019s friend.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; And after all, who shall say?&nbsp; You live like an anchorite.&nbsp; Joe Garland lives like a good fellow.&nbsp; Who has extracted the most from life?&nbsp; We are paid to live, you know.&nbsp; When the wages are too meagre we throw up the job, which is the cause, believe me, of all rational suicide.&nbsp; Joe Garland would starve to death on the wages you get from life.&nbsp; You see, he is made differently.&nbsp; So would you starve on his wages, which are singing, and love\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cLust, if you will pardon me,\u201d was the interruption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr. Kennedy smiled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cLove, to you, is a word of four letters and a definition which you have extracted from the dictionary.&nbsp; But love, real love, dewy and palpitant and tender, you do not know.&nbsp; If God made you and me, and men and women, believe me He made love, too.&nbsp; But to come back.&nbsp; It\u2019s about time you quit hounding Joe Garland.&nbsp; It is not worthy of you, and it is cowardly.&nbsp; The thing for you to do is to reach out and lend him a hand.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWhy I, any more than you?\u201d the other demanded.&nbsp; \u201cWhy don\u2019t you reach him a hand?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI have.&nbsp; I\u2019m reaching him a hand now.&nbsp; I\u2019m trying to get you not to down the Promotion Committee\u2019s proposition of sending him away.&nbsp; I got him the job at Hilo with Mason and Fitch.&nbsp; I\u2019ve got him half a dozen jobs, out of every one of which you drove him.&nbsp; But never mind that.&nbsp; Don\u2019t forget one thing\u2014and a little frankness won\u2019t hurt you\u2014it 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.&nbsp; Why, man, it\u2019s not good taste.&nbsp; It\u2019s positively indecent.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cNow I don\u2019t follow you,\u201d Percival Ford answered.&nbsp; \u201cYou\u2019re up in the air with some obscure scientific theory of heredity and personal irresponsibility.&nbsp; But how any theory can hold Joe Garland irresponsible for his wrongdoings and at the same time hold me personally responsible for them\u2014more responsible than any one else, including Joe Garland\u2014is beyond me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a matter of delicacy, I suppose, or of taste, that prevents you from following me,\u201d Dr. Kennedy snapped out.&nbsp; \u201cIt\u2019s all very well, for the sake of society, tacitly to ignore some things, but you do more than tacitly ignore.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWhat is it, pray, that I tacitly ignore!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr. Kennedy was angry.&nbsp; A deeper red than that of constitutional Scotch and soda suffused his face, as he answered:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cYour father\u2019s son.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cNow just what do you mean?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cDamn it, man, you can\u2019t ask me to be plainer spoken than that.&nbsp; But if you will, all right\u2014Isaac Ford\u2019s son\u2014Joe Garland\u2014your brother.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Percival Ford sat quietly, an annoyed and shocked expression on his face.&nbsp; Kennedy looked at him curiously, then, as the slow minutes dragged by, became embarrassed and frightened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cMy God!\u201d he cried finally, \u201cyou don\u2019t mean to tell me that you didn\u2019t know!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As in answer, Percival Ford\u2019s cheeks turned slowly grey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a ghastly joke,\u201d he said; \u201ca ghastly joke.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The doctor had got himself in hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cEverybody knows it,\u201d he said.&nbsp; \u201cI thought you knew it.&nbsp; And since you don\u2019t know it, it\u2019s time you did, and I\u2019m glad of the chance of setting you straight.&nbsp; Joe Garland and you are brothers\u2014half-brothers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a lie,\u201d Ford cried.&nbsp; \u201cYou don\u2019t mean it.&nbsp; Joe Garland\u2019s mother was Eliza Kunilio.\u201d&nbsp; (Dr. Kennedy nodded.)&nbsp; \u201cI remember her well, with her duck pond and&nbsp;<em>taro<\/em>&nbsp;patch.&nbsp; His father was Joseph Garland, the beach-comber.\u201d&nbsp; (Dr. Kennedy shook his head.)&nbsp; \u201cHe died only two or three years ago.&nbsp; He used to get drunk.&nbsp; There\u2019s where Joe got his dissoluteness.&nbsp; There\u2019s the heredity for you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cAnd nobody told you,\u201d Kennedy said wonderingly, after a pause.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cDr. Kennedy, you have said something terrible, which I cannot allow to pass.&nbsp; You must either prove or, or . . . \u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cProve it yourself.&nbsp; Turn around and look at him.&nbsp; You\u2019ve got him in profile.&nbsp; Look at his nose.&nbsp; That\u2019s Isaac Ford\u2019s.&nbsp; Yours is a thin edition of it.&nbsp; That\u2019s right.&nbsp; Look.&nbsp; The lines are fuller, but they are all there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Percival Ford looked at the Kanaka half-breed who played under the&nbsp;<em>hau<\/em>&nbsp;tree, and it seemed, as by some illumination, that he was gazing on a wraith of himself.&nbsp; Feature after feature flashed up an unmistakable resemblance.&nbsp; Or, rather, it was he who was the wraith of that other full-muscled and generously moulded man.&nbsp; And his features, and that other man\u2019s features, were all reminiscent of Isaac Ford.&nbsp; And nobody had told him.&nbsp; Every line of Isaac Ford\u2019s face he knew.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; It was devil\u2019s work that could reproduce the austere features of Isaac Ford in the loose and sensuous features before him.&nbsp; 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s nothing at all,\u201d he could faintly hear Dr. Kennedy saying, \u201cThey were all mixed up in the old days.&nbsp; You know that.&nbsp; You\u2019ve seen it all your life.&nbsp; Sailors married queens and begat princesses and all the rest of it.&nbsp; It was the usual thing in the Islands.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cBut not with my father,\u201d Percival Ford interrupted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThere you are.\u201d&nbsp; Kennedy shrugged his shoulders.&nbsp; \u201cCosmic sap and smoke of life.&nbsp; Old Isaac Ford was straitlaced and all the rest, and I know there\u2019s no explaining it, least of all to himself.&nbsp; He understood it no more than you do.&nbsp; Smoke of life, that\u2019s all.&nbsp; And don\u2019t forget one thing, Ford.&nbsp; There was a dab of unruly blood in old Isaac Ford, and Joe Garland inherited it\u2014all of it, smoke of life and cosmic sap; while you inherited all of old Isaac\u2019s ascetic blood.&nbsp; And just because your blood is cold, well-ordered, and well-disciplined, is no reason that you should frown upon Joe Garland.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; You are Isaac Ford\u2019s right hand, let us say; Joe Garland is his left hand.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Percival Ford made no answer, and in the silence Dr. Kennedy finished his forgotten Scotch and soda.&nbsp; From across the grounds an automobile hooted imperatively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s the machine,\u201d Dr. Kennedy said, rising.&nbsp; \u201cI\u2019ve got to run.&nbsp; I\u2019m sorry I\u2019ve shaken you up, and at the same time I\u2019m glad.&nbsp; And know one thing, Isaac Ford\u2019s dab of unruly blood was remarkably small, and Joe Garland got it all.&nbsp; And one other thing.&nbsp; If your father\u2019s left hand offend you, don\u2019t smite it off.&nbsp; Besides, Joe is all right.&nbsp; Frankly, if I could choose between you and him to live with me on a desert isle, I\u2019d choose Joe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Little bare-legged children ran about him, playing, on the grass; but Percival Ford did not see them.&nbsp; He was gazing steadily at the singer under the&nbsp;<em>hau<\/em>&nbsp;tree.&nbsp; He even changed his position once, to get closer.&nbsp; The clerk of the Seaside went by, limping with age and dragging his reluctant feet.&nbsp; He had lived forty years on the Islands.&nbsp; Percival Ford beckoned to him, and the clerk came respectfully, and wondering that he should be noticed by Percival Ford.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cJohn,\u201d Ford said, \u201cI want you to give me some information.&nbsp; Won\u2019t you sit down?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The clerk sat down awkwardly, stunned by the unexpected honour.&nbsp; He blinked at the other and mumbled, \u201cYes, sir, thank you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cJohn, who is Joe Garland?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The clerk stared at him, blinked, cleared his throat, and said nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cGo on,\u201d Percival Ford commanded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWho is he?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019re joking me, sir,\u201d the other managed to articulate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI spoke to you seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The clerk recoiled from him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cYou don\u2019t mean to say you don\u2019t know?\u201d he questioned, his question in itself the answer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI want to know.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWhy, he\u2019s\u2014\u201d John broke off and looked about him helplessly.&nbsp; \u201cHadn\u2019t you better ask somebody else?&nbsp; Everybody thought you knew.&nbsp; We always thought . . . \u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cYes, go ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe always thought that that was why you had it in for him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Photographs and miniatures of Isaac Ford were trooping through his son\u2019s brain, and ghosts of Isaac Ford seemed in the air about hint \u201cI wish you good night, sir,\u201d he could hear the clerk saying, and he saw him beginning to limp away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cJohn,\u201d he called abruptly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>John came back and stood near him, blinking and nervously moistening his lips.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cYou haven\u2019t told me yet, you know.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cOh, about Joe Garland?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cYes, about Joe Garland.&nbsp; Who is he?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cHe\u2019s your brother, sir, if I say it who shouldn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThank you, John.&nbsp; Good night.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cAnd you didn\u2019t know?\u201d the old man queried, content to linger, now that the crucial point was past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThank you, John.&nbsp; Good night,\u201d was the response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cYes, sir, thank you, sir.&nbsp; I think it\u2019s going to rain.&nbsp; Good night, sir.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Out of the clear sky, filled only with stars and moonlight, fell a rain so fine and attenuated as to resemble a vapour spray.&nbsp; Nobody minded it; the children played on, running bare-legged over the grass and leaping into the sand; and in a few minutes it was gone.&nbsp; In the south-east, Diamond Head, a black blot, sharply defined, silhouetted its crater-form against the stars.&nbsp; At sleepy intervals the surf flung its foam across the sands to the grass, and far out could be seen the black specks of swimmers under the moon.&nbsp; The voices of the singers, singing a waltz, died away; and in the silence, from somewhere under the trees, arose the laugh of a woman that was a love-cry.&nbsp; It startled Percival Ford, and it reminded him of Dr. Kennedy\u2019s phrase.&nbsp; Down by the outrigger canoes, where they lay hauled out on the sand, he saw men and women, Kanakas, reclining languorously, like lotus-eaters, the women in white&nbsp;<em>holokus<\/em>; and against one such&nbsp;<em>holoku<\/em>&nbsp;he saw the dark head of the steersman of the canoe resting upon the woman\u2019s shoulder.&nbsp; Farther down, where the strip of sand widened at the entrance to the lagoon, he saw a man and woman walking side by side.&nbsp; As they drew near the light&nbsp;<em>lanai<\/em>, he saw the woman\u2019s hand go down to her waist and disengage a girdling arm.&nbsp; And as they passed him, Percival Ford nodded to a captain he knew, and to a major\u2019s daughter.&nbsp; Smoke of life, that was it, an ample phrase.&nbsp; And again, from under the dark algaroba tree arose the laugh of a woman that was a love-cry; and past his chair, on the way to bed, a bare-legged youngster was led by a chiding Japanese nurse-maid.&nbsp; The voices of the singers broke softly and meltingly into an Hawaiian love-song, and officers and women, with encircling arms, were gliding and whirling on the&nbsp;<em>lanai<\/em>; and once again the woman laughed under the algaroba trees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And Percival Ford knew only disapproval of it all.&nbsp; He was irritated by the love-laugh of the woman, by the steersman with pillowed head on the white&nbsp;<em>holoku<\/em>, by the couples that walked on the beach, by the officers and women that danced, and by the voices of the singers singing of love, and his brother singing there with them under the&nbsp;<em>hau<\/em>&nbsp;tree.&nbsp; The woman that laughed especially irritated him.&nbsp; A curious train of thought was aroused.&nbsp; He was Isaac Ford\u2019s son, and what had happened with Isaac Ford might happen with him.&nbsp; He felt in his cheeks the faint heat of a blush at the thought, and experienced a poignant sense of shame.&nbsp; He was appalled by what was in his blood.&nbsp; It was like learning suddenly that his father had been a leper and that his own blood might bear the taint of that dread disease.&nbsp; Isaac Ford, the austere soldier of the Lord\u2014the old hypocrite!&nbsp; What difference between him and any beach-comber?&nbsp; The house of pride that Percival Ford had builded was tumbling about his ears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The hours passed, the army people laughed and danced, the native orchestra played on, and Percival Ford wrestled with the abrupt and overwhelming problem that had been thrust upon him.&nbsp; He prayed quietly, his elbow on the table, his head bowed upon his hand, with all the appearance of any tired onlooker.&nbsp; Between the dances the army men and women and the civilians fluttered up to him and buzzed conventionally, and when they went back to the&nbsp;<em>lanai<\/em>&nbsp;he took up his wrestling where he had left it off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He began to patch together his shattered ideal of Isaac Ford, and for cement he used a cunning and subtle logic.&nbsp; It was of the sort that is compounded in the brain laboratories of egotists, and it worked.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; As proof of it, he rehabilitated his father and at the same time exalted himself.&nbsp; His lean little ego waxed to colossal proportions.&nbsp; He was great enough to forgive.&nbsp; He glowed at the thought of it.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Also, he applauded Isaac Ford for having ignored the outcome of his one step aside.&nbsp; Very well, he, too, would ignore it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The dance was breaking up.&nbsp; The orchestra had finished \u201cAloha Oe\u201d and was preparing to go home.&nbsp; Percival Ford clapped his hands for the Japanese servant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cYou tell that man I want to see him,\u201d he said, pointing out Joe Garland.&nbsp; \u201cTell him to come here, now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Joe Garland approached and halted respectfully several paces away, nervously fingering the guitar which he still carried.&nbsp; The other did not ask him to sit down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cYou are my brother,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWhy, everybody knows that,\u201d was the reply, in tones of wonderment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cYes, so I understand,\u201d Percival Ford said dryly.&nbsp; \u201cBut I did not know it till this evening.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The half-brother waited uncomfortably in the silence that followed, during which Percival Ford coolly considered his next utterance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cYou remember that first time I came to school and the boys ducked me?\u201d he asked.&nbsp; \u201cWhy did you take my part?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The half-brother smiled bashfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cBecause you knew?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cYes, that was why.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cBut I didn\u2019t know,\u201d Percival Ford said in the same dry fashion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cYes,\u201d the other said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Another silence fell.&nbsp; Servants were beginning to put out the lights on the&nbsp;<em>lanai<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cYou know . . . now,\u201d the half-brother said simply.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Percival Ford frowned.&nbsp; Then he looked the other over with a considering eye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cHow much will you take to leave the Islands and never come back?\u201d he demanded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cAnd never come back?\u201d Joe Garland faltered.&nbsp; \u201cIt is the only land I know.&nbsp; Other lands are cold.&nbsp; I do not know other lands.&nbsp; I have many friends here.&nbsp; In other lands there would not be one voice to say, \u2018<em>Aloha<\/em>, Joe, my boy.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI said never to come back,\u201d Percival Ford reiterated.&nbsp; \u201cThe&nbsp;<em>Alameda<\/em>&nbsp;sails tomorrow for San Francisco.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Joe Garland was bewildered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cBut why?\u201d he asked.&nbsp; \u201cYou know now that we are brothers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThat is why,\u201d was the retort.&nbsp; \u201cAs you said yourself, everybody knows.&nbsp; I will make it worth your while.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>All awkwardness and embarrassment disappeared from Joe Garland.&nbsp; Birth and station were bridged and reversed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cYou want me to go?\u201d he demanded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI want you to go and never come back,\u201d Percival Ford answered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And in that moment, flashing and fleeting, it was given him to see his brother tower above him like a mountain, and to feel himself dwindle and dwarf to microscopic insignificance.&nbsp; But it is not well for one to see himself truly, nor can one so see himself for long and live; and only for that flashing moment did Percival Ford see himself and his brother in true perspective.&nbsp; The next moment he was mastered by his meagre and insatiable ego.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cAs I said, I will make it worth your while.&nbsp; You will not suffer.&nbsp; I will pay you well.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cAll right,\u201d Joe Garland said.&nbsp; \u201cI\u2019ll go.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He started to turn away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cJoe,\u201d the other called.&nbsp; \u201cYou see my lawyer tomorrow morning.&nbsp; Five hundred down and two hundred a month as long as you stay away.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cYou are very kind,\u201d Joe Garland answered softly.&nbsp; \u201cYou are too kind.&nbsp; And anyway, I guess I don\u2019t want your money.&nbsp; I go tomorrow on the&nbsp;<em>Alameda<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He walked away, but did not say good-bye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Percival Ford clapped his hands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cBoy,\u201d he said to the Japanese, \u201ca lemonade.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And over the lemonade he smiled long and contentedly to himself.<\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jack London&#8217;s &#8220;The House of Pride&#8221; tells the story of Percival Ford, an extremely moralistic businessman distant from social conventions and superficial relationships, who during a party in Hawaii discovers a shocking truth about his family that confronts him with his own identity and values. The House Of Pride Jack London (Full story) Percival Ford &#8230; <a title=\"Jack London: The House Of Pride\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/short-stories\/jack-london-the-house-of-pride\/11698\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Jack London: The House Of Pride\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11691,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[559],"tags":[600,570],"class_list":["post-11698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-short-stories","tag-jack-london-en","tag-united-states","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-33"],"acf":[],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":559,"label":"Short stories"}],"post_tag":[{"value":600,"label":"Jack London"},{"value":570,"label":"United States"}]},"featured_image_src_large":["https:\/\/lecturia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/Jack-London-La-casa-del-orgullo.jpg",1024,1024,false],"author_info":{"display_name":"Juan Pablo Guevara","author_link":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/author\/spartakku\/"},"comment_info":"","category_info":[{"term_id":559,"name":"Short stories","slug":"short-stories","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":559,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":419,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":559,"category_count":419,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Short stories","category_nicename":"short-stories","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":[{"term_id":600,"name":"Jack London","slug":"jack-london-en","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":600,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":11,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":570,"name":"United States","slug":"united-states","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":570,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":294,"filter":"raw"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11698\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}