“Will you hand me the statue, Richard?” Alicia asked. “Sometimes I like to hold it in my hand.” He jumped up and set the
David
in her lap.
“Listen, Alicia! There were only two children in the two generations before the house burned down. I put my possessions in a ship and sailed westward to found a new home. You must surely see that the home I lost took a hundred and thirty years to build. I couldn't replace it. A new house on the old land would have been painful to me. When I saw this valley, I knew it was the place for the new family seat. And now the generations are forming. I am very happy, Alicia.”
She reached over to squeeze his hand in gratitude that she could make him happy. “Why,” he said suddenly, “there was even an omen, when I first came into the valley. I inquired of the gods whether this was the place, and they answered. Is that good, Alicia? Shall I tell you about the omens and my first night on the hill?”
“Tell me tomorrow night,” she said. “It will be better if I retire now.” He stood up and helped her to unfold the rug from around her knees. Alicia leaned rather heavily on his arm as he helped her up the stairs. “There's something mystic in the house, Alicia, something marvelous. It's the new soul, the first native of the new race.”
“He will look like the little statue,” said Alicia.
When Richard had tucked in the covers so she could not catch cold, he went back to the sitting room. He could hear children in the house. They ran with pattering feet up and down the stairs, they dabbled in the ashes of the fireplace. He heard their voices softly calling to one another on the veranda. Before he went to bed, he put the three great books on the top shelf of the bookcase.
The birth was a very severe one. When it was over, and Alicia lay pale and exhausted in her bed, Richard brought the little son and put him beside her. “Yes,” she said, complacently, “he looks like the statue. I knew he would, of course. And David will be his name, of course.”
The Monterey doctor came downstairs and sat with Richard beside the fire. He puckered his brow gloomily and rolled a Masonic ring around and around on his third finger. Richard opened a bottle of brandy and poured two little glasses.
“I'm going to name this toast to my son, Doctor.”
The doctor put his glass to his nose and sniffed like a horse. “Damn fine liquor. You better name it to your wife.”
“Of course.” They drank. “And this next one to my son.”
“Name this one to your wife, too.”
“Why?” Richard asked in surprise.
The doctor was almost dipping his nostrils in the glass. “Kind of a thank offering. You were damn near a widower.”
Richard dumped his brandy down his throat. “I didn't know. I thoughtâI didn't know. I thought first ones were always hard to bear.”
“Give me another drink,” the doctor demanded. “You aren't going to have any more children.”
Richard stopped in the act of pouring. “What do you mean by that? Of course I'm going to have more children.”
“Not by this wife, you aren't. She's finished. Have another child and you won't have any wife.”
Richard sat very still. The soft clattering of children he had heard in the house for the past month was suddenly stilled. He seemed to hear their secret feet stealing out the front door and down the steps.
The doctor laughed sourly. “Why don't you get drunk if that's the way you feel about it?”
“Oh! no, no. I don't think I could get drunk.”
“Well, give me another drink before I go, anyway. It's going to be a cold drive home.”
Richard did not tell his wife she could not have children until six months had passed. He wanted her to regain her strength before he exposed her to the shock of the revelation. When he finally did go to her, he felt the guilt of his secret. She was holding her child in her lap, and occasionally bending down to take one of his upstretched fingers in her mouth. The child stared up with vague eyes and smiled wetly while he waggled his straight fingers for her to suck. The sun flooded in the window. From a distance they could hear one of the hired men cursing a harrow team with sing-song monotony. Alicia lifted her head and frowned slightly. “It's time he was christened, don't you think, Richard?”
“Yes,” he agreed. “I'll make arrangements in Monterey.”
She struggled with a weighty consideration. “Do you think it too late to change his name?”
“No, it's not too late. Why do you want to change it? What do you want to call him?”
“I want to have him called John. That's a New Testament nameâ” She looked up for his approvalâ“and besides, it's my father's name. My father will be pleased. Besides, I haven't felt quite right about naming him for that statue, even if it is a statue of the boy David. It isn't as though the statue had clothes onâ”
Richard did not try to follow this logic. Instead he plunged into his confession. In a second it was over. He had not realized it would take so little time. Alicia was smiling a peculiar enigmatic smile that puzzled him. No matter how well he became acquainted with her, this smile, a little quizzical, a trifle sad, and filled with secret wisdom shut him out of her thoughts. She retired behind the smile. It said, “How silly you are. I know things which would make your knowledge seem ridiculous if I chose to tell you.” The child stretched up its yearning fingers toward her face, and she flexed its fingers back and forth. “Wait a little,” she said. “Doctors don't know everything. Just wait a little, Richard. We will have other children.” She shifted the boy and slipped her hand under his diaper.
Richard went out and sat on his front steps. The house behind him was teeming with life again, whereas a few minutes ago it had been quiet and dead. There were thousands of things to do. The box hedge which held the garden in its place had not been clipped for six months. Long ago he had laid out a square in the side yard for a grass plot, and it lay waiting for the seed. There was no place for drying linen yet. The banister of the front steps was beside him. Richard put out his hand and stroked it as though it were the arched neck of a horse.
The Whitesides became the first family of the Pastures of Heaven almost as soon as they were settled. They were educated, they had a fine farm, and, while not rich, they were not pressed for money. Most important of all, they lived in comfort, in a fine house. The house was the symbol of the familyâroomy, luxurious for that day, warm, hospitable and white. Its size gave an impression of substance, but it was the white paint, often renewed and washed, that placed it over the other houses of the valley as surely as a Rhine castle is placed over its village. The families admired the white house, and also they felt more secure because it was there. It embodied authority and culture and judgment and manners. The neighbors could tell by looking at his house that Richard Whiteside was a gentleman who would do no mean nor cruel nor unwise thing. They were proud of the house in the same way tenants of land in a duchy are proud of the manor house. While some of the neighbors were richer than Whiteside, they seemed to know they could not build a house like that even though they imitated it exactly. It was primarily because of his house that Richard became the valley's arbiter of manners, and, after that, a kind of extra-legal judge over small disputes. The reliance of his neighbors in turn bred in Richard a paternal feeling toward the valley. As he grew older he came to regard all the affairs of the valley as his affairs, and the people were proud to have it so.
Five years passed before her intuition told Alicia that she was ready to have another child. “I'll get the doctor,” Richard said, when she told him. “The doctor will know whether it's safe or not.”
“No, Richard. Doctors do not know. I tell you women know more about themselves than doctors do.”
Richard obeyed her, because he was afraid of what the doctor would tell him. “It's the grain of deity in women,” he explained to himself. “Nature has planted this sure knowledge in women in order that the race may increase.”
Everything went well for six months, and then a devastating illness set in. When he was finally summoned, the doctor was too furious to speak to Richard. The confinement was a time of horror. Richard sat in his sitting room, gripping the arms of his chair and listening to the weak screaming in the bedroom above. His face was grey. After many hours the screaming stopped. Richard was so fuddled with apprehension that he did not even look up when the doctor came into the room.
“Get out the bottle,” the doctor said, tiredly. “Let's name a toast to you for a God damn fool.”
Richard did not look up nor answer. For a moment the doctor continued to scowl at him, and then he spoke more gently. “Your wife isn't dead, Heaven only knows why. She's gone through enough to kill a squad of soldiers. These weak women! They have the vitality of monsters. The baby is dead!” Suddenly he wanted to punish Richard for disregarding his first orders. “There isn't enough left of the baby to bury.” He turned and left the house abruptly because he hated to be as sorry for anyone as he was for Richard Whiteside.
Alicia was an invalid. Little John could not remember when his mother had not been an invalid. All of his life that he could remember he had seen his father carry her up and down stairs in his arms. Alicia did not speak very often, but more and more the quizzical and wise smile was in her eyes. And in spite of her weakness, she ordered the house remarkably well. The rugged country girls, who served in the house as a coveted preparation for their own marriages, came for orders before every meal. Alicia, from her bed or from her rocking chair, planned everything.
Every night Richard carried her up to bed. When she was lying against her white pillows, he drew up a chair and sat by her bed for a little while, stroking the palm of her hand until she grew sleepy. Every night she asked, “Are you content, Richard?”
“I am content,” he said. And then he told her about the farm and about the people of the valley. It was a kind of daily report of happenings. As he talked, the smile came upon her face and stayed there until her eyes drooped, and he blew out the light. It was a ritual.
On John's tenth birthday he was given a party. Children from all over the valley came and wandered on tip-toe through the big house, staring at the grandeur they had heard about. Alicia was sitting on the veranda. “You mustn't be so quiet, children,” she said. “Run about and have a good time.” But they could not run and shout in the Whiteside house. They might as well have shouted in church. When they had gone through all the rooms, they could stand the strain no longer. The whole party retired to the barn, from which their wild shrieks drifted back to the veranda where Alicia sat smiling.
That night, when she was in bed, she asked, “Are you content, Richard?”
His face still glowed with the pleasure he had taken in the party. “I am content,” he said.
“You must not worry about the children, Richard,” she continued. “Wait a little. Everything will be all right.” This was her great, all-covering knowledge. “Wait a little. No sorrow can survive the smothering of a little time.” And Richard knew that it was a greater knowledge than his.
“It isn't long to wait,” Alicia went on.
“What isn't?”
“Why think, John. He's ten now. In ten years he will be married, and then, don't you see?âTeach him what you know. The family is safe, Richard.”
“Of course, I know. The house is safe. I'm going to begin reading Herodotus to him, Alicia. He's old enough.”
“I think Myrtle should clean all the spare bedrooms tomorrow. They haven't been aired for three months.”
John Whiteside always remembered how his father read to him the three great authors, Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon. The meerschaum pipe was reddish brown by now, delicately and evenly colored. “All history is here,” Richard said. “Everything mankind is capable of is recorded in these three books. The love and chicanery, the stupid dishonesty, the short-sightedness and bravery, nobility and sadness of the race. You may judge the future by these books, John, for nothing can happen which has not happened and been recorded in these books. Compared to these, the Bible is a very incomplete record of an obscure people.”
And John remembered how his father felt about the houseâhow it was a symbol of the family, a temple built around the hearth.
John was in his last year in Harvard when his father suddenly died of pneumonia. His mother wrote to him telling him he must finish his course before he returned. “You would not be able to do anything that has not been done,” she wrote. “It was your father's wish that you finish.”
When he finally did go home, he found his mother a very aged woman. She was completely bedridden by now. John sat by her side and heard about his father's last days.
“He told me to tell you one thing,” Alicia said. “ âMake John realize that he must keep us going. I want to survive in the generations,' and very soon after that he became delirious.” John was looking out the window at the round hill behind the house. “Your father was delirious for two days. In all that time he talked of childrenânothing but children. He heard them running up and down stairs and felt them pulling at the quilts of his bed. He wanted to take them up and hold them, John. Then just before he died the dreams cleared away. He was happy. He said, âI have seen the future. There will be so many children. I am content, Alicia.' ”
John was leaning his head in his palms now. And then his mother, who had never resisted anything, but had submitted every problem to time, pulled herself up in the bed and spoke harshly to him. “Get married!” she cried. “I want to see it. Get marriedâI want a strong woman who can have children. I couldn't have any after you. I would have died if I could have had one more. Find a wife quickly. I want to see her.” She sank back on her pillows, but her eyes were unhappy and the smile of knowledge was not on her face.