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 tiptoe 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?—Teach 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 shortsightedness 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 house—how 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. “ ‘Make 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 children—nothing 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, ‘I 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 married—I 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.
John did not get married for six years. During that time his mother dried up until she was a tiny skeleton covered with bluish, almost transparent skin, and still she held on to life. Her eyes followed her son reproachfully; he felt ashamed when she looked at him. At length a classmate of John’s came to the west to look about and brought his sister with him. They visited at the Whiteside farm for a month, and at the end of that time John proposed to Willa and was accepted. When he told his mother, she demanded to be alone with the girl. Half an hour later, Willa emerged from the sickroom blushing violently.
“What’s the matter, dear?” John asked.
“Why, it’s nothing, it’s all right. Your mother asked me a great many questions. and then she looked at me for a long time.”
“She’s so old,” John explained. “Her mind is so old.” He went into his mother’s room. The feverish frowning look was gone from her face and instead there was the old quizzical smile of knowledge.
“It’s all right, John,” she said. “I’d like to wait to see the children, but I can’t. I’ve clung to life as long as I can. I’m tired of it.” It was almost possible to see the tenacious will release its grip on her body. In the night she became unconscious and three days later she died as quietly and gently as though she had dozed.
John Whiteside did not think of the house exactly as his father had. He loved it more. It was the outer shell of his body. Just as his mind could leave his body and go traveling off, so could he leave the house, but just as surely he must come back to it. He renewed the white paint every two years, planted the garden himself and trimmed the box hedge. He did not occupy the powerful place in the valley his father had. John was less stern, less convinced of everything. Faced with an argument to decide, he was too prone to find endless ramifications of both sides. The big meerschaum pipe was very dark now, almost a black in which there were red lights.