The Pastures of Heaven by John Steinbeck
"I wonder if she'll bring a lot of servants," T. B. Allen spoke hopefully, "but I guess she'd buy her stuff in town, though. All people like that buy their stuff in town."
When the house and the garden were completed, Helen Van Deventer and Hilda, a Chinese cook and a Filipino house-boy drove up Christmas Canyon. It was a beautiful log house. The carpenters had aged the logs with acids, and the gardeners had made it seem an old garden. Bays and oaks were left in the lawn and under them grew cinerarias, purple and white and blue. The walks were hedged with lobelias of incredible blue.
The cook and the house-boy scurried to their posts, but Helen took Hilda by the arm and walked in the garden for a while.
"Isn't it beautiful," Helen cried. Her face had lost some of its resistance. "Darling, don't you think we'll like it here?"
Hilda pulled up a cineraria and switched at an oak trunk with it. "I liked it better at home."
"But why, darling? We didn't have such pretty flowers, and there weren't any big trees. Here we can go walking in the hills every day."
"I liked it better at home."
"But why, darling?"
"Well, all my friends were there. I could look out through the fence and see the people go by."
"You'll like it better here, Hilda, when you get used to it."
"No I won't. I won't ever like it here, ever." Hilda began to cry, and then without transition she began screaming with rage. Suddenly she plucked a garden stick from the ground and struck her mother across the breast with it. Silently the house-boy appeared behind the girl, pinioned her arms, and carried her, kicking and screaming, into the house.
In the room that had been prepared for her, Hilda methodically broke the furniture. She slit the pillows and shook feathers about the room. Lastly she broke out the panes of her window, beat at the oaken bars and screamed with anger. Helen sat in her room, her lips drawn tight. Once she started up as though to go to Hilda's room, and then sank back into her chair again. For a moment the dumb endurance had nearly broken, but instantly it settled back more strongly than ever, and the shrieks from Hilda's room had no effect. The house-boy slipped into the room.
"Close the shutters, Missie?"
"No, Joe. We're far enough away from anyone. No one can hear it."
Bert Munroe saw the automobile drive by, bearing the new people up Christmas Canyon to the log cabin.
"It'll be pretty hard for a woman to get started alone," he said to his wife. "I think I ought to walk up and see if they need anything."
"You're just curious," his wife said banteringly.
"Well, of course if that's the way you feel about it, I won't go."
"I was just fooling, Bert," she protested. "I think it would be a nice neighborly thing to do. Later on I'll get Mrs. Whiteside to go and call with me. That's the real way to do it. But you run along now and see how they're making out."
He swung along up the pleasant stream which sang in the bottom of Christmas Canyon. "It's not a place to farm," he said to himself, "but it's a nice place to live. I could be living in a place like this, just living--if the armistice hadn't come when it did." As usual he felt ashamed of wishing the war had continued for a while.
Hilda's shrieks came to his ears when he was still a quarter of a mile from the house. "Now what the devil," he said. "Sounds like they were killing someone." He hurried up the road to see.
Hilda's barred window looked out on the path which led to the front entrance of the house. Bert saw the girl clinging to the bars, her eyes mad with rage and fear.
"Hello!" he said. "What's the matter? What have they got you locked up for?"
Hilda's eyes narrowed. "They're starving me," she said. "They want me to die."
"That's foolish," said Bert. "Why would anyone want you to die."
"Oh! it's my money," she confided. "They can't get my money until I'm dead."
"Why, you're just a little girl."
"I am not," Hilda said sullenly. "I'm a big grown-up woman. I look little because they starve me and beat me."
Bert's face darkened. "Well, I'll just see about that," he said.
"Oh! don't tell them. Just help me out of here, and then I'll get my money, and then I'll marry you.
For the first time Bert began to suspect what the trouble was. "Sure, I'll help you," he said soothingly. "You just wait a little while, and I'll help you out."
He walked around to the front entrance and knocked at the door. In a moment it opened a crack; the stolid eyes of the house-boy looked out.
"Can I see the lady of the house?" Bert asked.
"No," said the boy, and he shut the door.
For a moment Bert blushed with shame at the rebuff, but then he knocked angrily. Again the door opened two inches, and the black eyes looked out.
"I tell you I've got to see the lady of the house. I've got to see her about the little girl that's locked up."
"Lady very sick. So sorry," said the boy. He closed the door again. This time Bert heard the bolt shoot home. He strode away down the path. "I'll sure tell my wife not to call on them," he said to himself. "A crazy girl and a lousy servant. They can go to hell!"
Helen called from her bedroom, "What was it, Joe?"
The boy stood in the doorway. "A man come. Say he got to see you. I tell him you sick."
"That's good. Who was he? Did he say why he wanted to see me?"
"Don't know who. Say he got to see you about Missie Hilda."
Instantly Helen was standing over him. Her face was angry. "What did he want? Who was he?"
"Don't know, Missie."
"And you sent him away. You take too many liberties. Now get out of here."
She dropped back on her chair and covered her eyes.
"Yes, Missie." Joe turned slowly away.
"Oh, Joe, come back!"
He stood beside her chair before she uncovered her eyes. "Forgive me, Joe. I didn't know what I said. You did right. You'll stay with me, won't you?"
"Yes, Missie."
Helen stood up and walked restlessly to the window. "I don't know what's the matter with me today. Is Miss Hilda all right?"
"Yes, Missie quiet now."
"Well, build a fire in the living-room fireplace, will you? And later bring her in."
In her design for the living room of the cabin Helen felt that she had created a kind of memorial to her husband. She had made it look as much as possible like a hunting lodge. It was a huge room, paneled and beamed with redwood. At intervals the mounted heads of various kinds of deer thrust out inquisitive noses. One side of the room was dominated by a great cobblestone fireplace over which hung a torn French battle flag Hubert had picked up somewhere. In a locked, glass-fronted case, all of Hubert's guns were lined up in racks. Helen felt that she would not completely lose her husband as long as she had a room like this to sit in.
In the Russian Hill drawing room she had practiced a dream that was pleasant to her. She wished she could continue it here in the new house. The dream was materialized almost by a ritual. Helen sat before the fire and folded her hands. Then she looked for a long moment at each of the mounted trophies, repeating for each one, "Hubert handled that." And finally the dream came. She almost saw him before her. In her mind she went over the shape of his hands, the narrowness of his hips and the length and straightness of his legs. After a while she remembered how he said things, where his accents fell, and the way his face seemed to glow and redden when he was excited. Helen recalled how he took his guests from one trophy to another. In front of each one Hubert rocked on his heels and folded his hands behind his back while he told of the killing of the animal in the tiniest detail.
"The moon wasn't right and there wasn't a sign anywhere. Fred (Fred was the guide) said we hadn't a chance to get anything. I remember we were out of bacon that morning. But you know I just had a feeling that we ought to stroll out for a look-see."
Helen could hear him telling the stupid, pointless stories which invariably ended up, "Well, the range was
Hubert didn't really want his listeners to believe it was just luck. That was his graceful gesture as a sportsman. Helen remembered wondering why a sportsman wasn't permitted to acknowledge that he did anything well.
But that was the way the dream went. She built up his image until it possessed the room and filled it with the surging vitality of the great hunter. Then, when she had completed the dream, she smashed it. The doorbell had seemed to have a particularly dolorous note. Helen remembered the faces of the men, sad and embarrassed while they told her about the accident. The dream always stopped where they had carried the body up the front steps. A blinding wave of sadness filled her chest, and she sank back in her chair.
By this means she kept her husband alive, tenaciously refusing to let his image grow dim in her memory. She had only been married for three months, she told herself. Only three months! She resigned herself to a feeling of hopeless gloom. She knew that she encouraged this feeling, but she felt that it was Hubert's right, a kind of memorial that must be paid to him. She must resist sadness, but not by trying to escape from it.
Helen had looked forward to this first night in her new house. With logs blazing on the hearth, the light shining on the glass eyes of the animals' heads, she intended to welcome her dream into its new home.
Joe came back into the bedroom. "The fire going, Missie. I call Missie Hilda now?"
Helen glanced out of her window. The dusk was coming down from the hilltops. Already a few bats looped nervously about. The quail were calling to one another as they went to water, and far down the canyon the cows were lowing on their way in toward the milking sheds. A change was stealing over Helen. She was filled with a new sense of peace; she felt protected and clothed against the tragedies which had beset her for so long. She stretched her arms outward and backward, and sighed comfortably. Joe still waited in the doorway.
"What?" Helen said, "Miss Hilda? No, don't bring her yet. Dinner must be almost ready. If Hilda doesn't want to come out to dinner, I'll see her afterwards." She didn't want to see Hilda. This new, delicious peacefulness would be broken if she did. She wanted to sit in the strange luminosity of the dusk, to sit listening to the quail calling to one another as they came down from the brushy hillsides to drink before the night fell.
Helen threw a silken shawl about her shoulders and went out into the garden. Peace, it seemed, came sweeping down from the hillsides and enveloped her. In a flower bed she saw a little grey rabbit with a white tail, and seeing it made her quiver with pleasure. The rabbit turned its head and looked at her for a moment, and then went on nibbling at the new plants. Suddenly Helen felt foolishly happy. Something delicious and exciting was going to happen, something very delightful. In her sudden joy she talked to the rabbit. "Go on eating, you can have the old flowers. Tomorrow I'll plant cabbages for you. You'd like that, wouldn't you, Peter? You know, Peter, is your name Peter? Silly, all rabbits are named Peter. Anyway, Peter, I haven't looked forward to anything for ages. Isn't that funny? Or is it sad? But now I'm looking forward to something. I'm just bursting with anticipation. And I don't know what the something can be. Isn't that silly, Peter?" She strolled on and waved her hand at the rabbit. "I should think the cinerarias would be better to eat," she said.
The singing of water drew her down the path toward the streamside. As she neared the bank, a flock of quail scudded into the brush with stuttering cries of alarm. Helen was ashamed that she had disturbed them. "Come back!" she called. "I won't shoot you. The rabbit didn't mind me. Why, I couldn't shoot you if I wanted to." Suddenly she recalled how Hubert had taken her out to teach her to shoot a shotgun. He had grown religiously solemn as he taught her how to hold the weapon and how to sight with both eyes open. "Now I'll throw up a can," he said. "I don't want you ever to shoot at a still target--ever. It is a poor sportsman who will shoot a resting bird." She had fired wildly at the flying can until her shoulder was stiff, and as they drove home he patted her. "It'll be a long time before you knock over a quail," he said. "But in a little while you ought to be able to pot rabbits." Then she thought of the leather quail strings he brought home with clusters of birds hung by their necks. "When they drop off the strings they're hung long enough to eat," he said solemnly. All of a sudden Helen realized that she didn't want to think of Hubert any more. The retrospection had almost killed her sense of peace.
It was almost dark. The night was sweet with the odor of sage. She heard the cook in the kitchen rattling the cow-bell she had bought as a dinner signal. Helen pulled her shawl close and shivered and went in.
In the dining room she found her daughter before her. All traces of the afternoon's rage were gone from Hilda's face; she looked happy, and very satisfied with herself.
"My darling. You're feeling better, aren't you?" Helen cried.
"Oh, yes."
Helen walked around the table and kissed her on the forehead. Then for a moment she hugged Hilda convulsively. "When you see how beautiful it is here, you'll love it. I know you will."
Hilda did not answer, but her eyes became wily.
"You will like it, won't you, darling?" Helen insisted as she went back to her place.
Hilda was mysterious. "Well maybe I'll like it. Maybe I won't have to like it."
"What do you mean, dear?"
"Maybe I won't be here very long."
"Won't be here very long?" Helen looked quickly across the table. Obviously Hilda was trying to keep some kind of secret, but it was too slippery.
"Maybe I might run away and be married."
Helen sank back in her chair and smiled. "Oh, I see. Surely you might. It would be better to wait a few years though. Who is it this time, dear? The prince again?"
"No, it's not the prince. It's a poor man, but I will love him. We made all of our plans today. He'll come for me, I guess."
Something stirred in Helen's memory. "Is it the man who came to the house this afternoon?"
Hilda started up from the table. "I won't tell you another thing," she cried. "You haven't any right to ask me. You just wait a little while--I'll show you I don't have to stay in this old house." She ran from the room and slammed her bedroom door after her.
Helen rang for the house-boy. "Joe, exactly what did the man who came today say?"
"Say he got to see you about little girl."
"Well what kind of a man was he?--how old?"
"Not old man, Missie, not young man. Maybe fifty years, I guess."
Helen sighed. It was just another of the stories, the little dramas Hilda thought out and told. And they were so real to her, poor child. Helen ate slowly, and afterwards, in the big living room, she sat before the fire--idly knocking coals from the glowing logs. She turned all the lights off. The fire glinted on the eyes of the stuffed heads on the wall, and Helen's old habit reasserted itself. She found herself imagining how Hubert's hands looked, how narrow his hips were, and how straight his legs. And then she made a discovery: When her mind dropped his hands they disappeared. She was not building the figure of her husband. He was gone, completely gone. For the first time in years, Helen put her hands to her face and cried, for the peace had come back, and the bursting expectancy. She dried her eyes and walked slowly about the room, smiling up at the heads with the casual eyes of a stranger who didn't know how each animal had died. The room looked different and felt different. She fumbled with the new window bolts and threw open the wide windows to the night. And the night wind sighed in and bathed her bare shoulders with its cool peace. She leaned out of the window and listened. So many little noises came from the garden and from the hill beyond the garden. "It's just infested with life," she thought. "It's just bursting with life." Gradually as she listened she became aware of a rasping sound from the other side of the house. "If there were beavers, it would be a beaver cutting down a tree. Maybe
For a moment Helen stood rigidly at the open window, looking wistfully into the grey night. Then her face paled and her lips set in the old line of endurance. Her movements were mechanical as she retraced her steps to the living room. She climbed up on a chair, unlocked the gun case and took down a shotgun.
Dr. Phillips sat beside Helen Van Deventer in the coroner's office. He had to come as the child's doctor, of course, but also he thought he could keep Helen from being afraid. She didn't look afraid. In her severe, her almost savage mourning, she looked as enduring as a sea-washed stone.
"And you expected it?" the coroner was saying. "You thought it might happen?"
Dr. Phillips looked uneasily at Helen and cleared his throat. "She had been my patient since she was born. In a case like this, she might have committed suicide or murder, depending on circumstances. Then again she might have lived on harmlessly. She could have gone all her life without making any violent move. It was impossible to say, you see."
The coroner was signing papers. "It was a beastly way for her to do it. Of course the girl was insane, and there isn't any reason to look into her motives. Her motives might have been tiny things. But it was a horrible way to do it. She never knew that, though. Her head in the stream and the gun beside her. I'll instruct a suicide verdict. I'm sorry to have to talk this way before you, Mrs. Van Deventer. Finding her must have been a terrible shock to you."
The doctor helped Helen down the steps of the court-house. "Don't look that way," he cried. "You look as though you were going to an execution. It's better so, I tell you. You must not suffer so."