“He is certainly brighter than I am,” he told Willa. “Once my father gave me a heifer, and I kept her until she died of old age. Bill is a throwback of some kind, to a pirate, maybe. His children will probably be Whitesides. It’s a powerful blood. I wish he weren’t so secret about everything he does, though.”
John’s leather chair and his black meerschaum and his books reclaimed him again from the farm. He was elected clerk of the school board. Again the farmers gathered in his house to talk. John’s hair was turning white, and his influence in the valley was growing stronger as his age came upon him.
The house of Whiteside was John’s personality solidified. When the people of the valley thought of him, it was never of the man alone in a field, or in a wagon, or at the store. A mental picture of him was incomplete unless it included his house. He was sitting in his leather chair, smiling at his thick books, or reclining in one of the porch chairs on his wide, gracious veranda, or, with little shears and a basket, snipping flowers in the garden, or at the head of his own table carving a roast with artistry and care.
In the West, where, if two generations of one family have lived in a house, it is an old house and a pioneer family, a kind of veneration mixed with contempt is felt for old houses. There are very few old houses in the West. Those restless Americans who have settled up the land have never been able to stay in one place for very long. They. build flimsy houses and soon move on to some new promise. Old houses are almost invariably cold and ugly.
When Bert Munroe moved his family to the Battle farm in the Pastures of Heaven, he was not long in understanding the position John Whiteside held. As soon as he could, he joined the men who gathered on the Whiteside veranda. His farm adjoined the Whiteside land. Soon after his arrival, Bert was elected to the school board, and then he was brought into official contact with John. One night at a Board meeting John quoted some lines from Thucydides. Bert waited until the other members had gone home.
“I wanted to ask you about that book you were talking about tonight, Mr. Whiteside.”
“You mean the Peloponnesian Wars?” He brought the book and laid it in Bert’s hands.
“I thought I’d like to read it, if you wouldn’t mind lending it to me.”
For a second John hesitated. “Of course—take it with you. It was my father’s book. When you finish it, I have some others you might like to read.”
From this incident a certain intimacy sprang up between the two families. They exchanged dinners and made little calls on each other. Bert felt at liberty to borrow tools from John.
On an evening when the Munroes had been in the valley for a year and a half, Bill walked stiffly into the Whiteside sitting room and confronted his parents. In his nervousness he was harsh. “I’m going to get married,” he said. His manner made it seem like bad news,
“What’s this?” John cried. “Why haven’t you told us anything about it? Who is it?”
“Mae Munroe.”
Suddenly John realized that this was good news, not a confession of a crime. “Why—why that’s good! I’m glad. She’s a fine girl—isn’t she, Willa?” His wife avoided his eyes. She had been calling on the Munroes that morning.
Bill was planted stolidly in the centre of the room. “When are you going to do it?” Willa asked. John thought her tone almost unfriendly.
“Pretty soon now. Just as soon as we get the house finished in Monterey.”
John got up out of his chair, took the black meerschaum from the mantel and lighted it. Then he returned to his chair. “You’ve been very quiet about it,” he observed steadily. “Why didn’t you tell us?” Bill said nothing. “You say you’re going to live in Monterey. Do you mean you aren’t going to bring your wife here to live? Aren’t you going to live in this house and farm this land?” Bill shook his head. “Are you ashamed of something, Bill?”
“No, sir,” Bill said. “I’m not ashamed of anything. I never did like to talk about my affairs.”
“Don’t you think it a little of our affair, Bill?” John asked bitterly. “You are our family. Your children will be our grandchildren.”
“Mae was raised in town,” Bill broke in. “All of her friends live in Monterey, you know—friends she went to high school with. She doesn’t like it out here where there’s nothing doing.”
“I see.”
“So when she said she wanted to live in town I bought a partnership in the Ford agency. 1 always wanted to get into business.”
John nodded slowly. His first anger was giving way now. “Don’t you think she might consent to live in this house, Bill? We have so much room. We can do over any part she wants changed.”
“But she doesn’t like it in the country. All of her friends are in Monterey.”
Willa’s mouth was set firmly. “Look at your father, Bill!” she ordered. John jerked his head upright and smiled gravely.
“Well, I guess that will be all right. Have you plenty of money?”
“Oh, sure! Plenty. And look here, father. We’re getting a pretty big house, pretty big for two, that is. We talked about it, and we thought maybe you and mother would like to come to live with us.”
John continued to smile with courteous gravity. “And then what would become of the house and the farm?”
“Well, we talked about that, too. You could sell the place and get enough for it to live all your lives in town. I could sell this place for you in a week.”
John sighed and sank back against the cushions of his chair.
Willa said, “Bill, if I thought you would squeal, I’d beat you with a stick of wood.”
John lighted his pipe and tamped the tobacco down in it. “You can’t go away for long,” he said gently. “Some day you’ll get a homesickness you can’t resist. This place is in your blood. When you have children you’ll know that they can’t grow up any place but here. You can go away for a little while, but you can’t stay away. While you’re in town, Bill, we’ll just wait here and keep the house painted and the garden trimmed. You’ll come back. Your children will play in the tank house. We’ll wait for that. My father died dreaming of children,” he smiled sheepishly. “I’d almost forgotten that.”
“I could beat him with a stick,” Willa muttered.
Bill left the room in embarrassment. “He’ll come back,” John repeated, after he had gone.
“Of course,” his wife agreed grimly.
His head jerked up and he glanced at her suspiciously. “You really think that, don’t you, Willa? You’re not just saying it for me? That would make me feel old.”
“Of course I think it. Do you think I’m wasting my breath?”
Bill was married in the late summer, and immediately afterward moved to his new stucco house in Monterey. In the fall John Whiteside grew restless again just as he had before Bill was born. He painted the house although it did not need it very badly. He mercilessly trimmed the shrubs in the garden.
“The land isn’t producing enough,” he told Bert Munroe. “I’ve let it go for a long time. I could be raising a lot more on it than I am.”
“Yes,” said Bert. “None of us make our land produce enough. I’ve always wondered why you didn’t have a band of sheep. Seems to me your hills would carry quite a flock.”
“We used to have a flock in my father’s time. That seems a long time ago. But, as I tell you, I’ve let the place go. The brush has got thick.”
“Burn it off,” said Bert. “If you burn that brush this fall you’ll get fine pasture next spring.”
“That’s a good idea. The brush comes down pretty close to the house, though. I’ll have to get a good deal of help.”
“Well, I’ll help you, and I’ll bring Jimmie. You have two men, and counting yourself, that’ll be five. If we start in the morning when there’s no wind, and wait for a little rain first, there won’t be any danger.”
The fall set in early. By October the willows along the creeks of the Pastures of Heaven were yellow as flames. Almost out of sight in the air, great squadrons of ducks flew southward, and in the barnyard, the tame mallards flapped their wings and stretched their necks and honked yearningly. The blackbirds wheeled over the fields, uniting under a leader. There was a little early frost in the air. John Whiteside fretted against the winter. All day he worked in the orchard, helping to prune the trees.