“Don’t say such things, darling,” her mother pleaded. “You know you didn’t do any of those things.”
“But I did, mother. And the old man gave me a watch. I’ll show you. Here.” She held out a wrist watch set with diamonds. Helen’s hands shook with terror as she took the watch. For a second her face lost its look of resistance, and anger took its place.
“Where did you get it, Hilda?”
“The old man gave it to me, mother.”
“No—tell me where you found it! You did find it, didn’t you?”
“The old man gave it to me.”
On the back of the watch a monogram was cut, initials unknown to Helen. She stared helplessly at the carved letters. “Mother will take this,” she said harshly. That night she crept into the garden, found a trowel and buried the watch deep in the earth. That week she had a high iron fence built around the garden, and Hilda was never permitted to go out alone after that.
When she was thirteen, Hilda escaped and ran away. Helen hired private detectives to find her, but at the end of four days a policeman discovered Hilda sleeping in a deserted real estate tract office in Los Angeles. Helen rescued her daughter from the police station. “Why did you run away, darling?” she asked.
“Well, I wanted to play on a piano.”
“But we have one at home. Why didn’t you play on it?”
“Oh, I wanted to play on the other kind, the tall kind.”
Helen took Hilda on her lap and hugged her tightly. “And what did you do then, dear?”
“I was out in the street and a man asked me to ride with him. He gave me five dollars. Then I found some gypsies, and I went to live with them. They made me queen. Then I was married to a young gypsy man, and we were going to have a little baby, but I got tired and sat down. Then a policeman took me.”
“Darling, poor darling,” Helen replied. “You know that isn’t true. None of it is true.”
“But it is true, mother.”
Helen called Dr. Phillips. “She says she married a gypsy. You don’t think—really you don’t think she could have? I couldn’t stand that.”
The doctor looked at the little girl carefully. At the end of his examination he spoke almost viciously. “I’ve told you she should be put in the hands of a specialist.” He approached the little girl. “Has the mean old woman been in your bedroom lately, Hilda?”
Hilda’s hands twitched. “Last night she came with a monkey, a great big monkey. It tried to bite me.”
“Well, just remember she can’t ever hurt you because I’m taking care of you. That old woman’s afraid of me. If she comes again, just tell her I’m looking after you and see how quick she runs away.”
The little girl smiled wearily. “Will the monkey run away too?”
“Of course, and while I think of it, here’s a little candy cane for your daughter.” He drew a stick of stripey peppermint from his pocket. “You’d better give that to Babette, isn’t that her name?” Hilda snatched the candy and ran out of the room.
“Now!” said the doctor to Helen, “my knowledge and my experience are sadly lacking, but I do know this much. Hilda will be very much worse now. She’s reaching her maturity. The period of change, with its accompanying emotional overflow invariably intensifies mental trouble. I can’t tell what may happen. She may turn homicidal, and on the other hand, she may run off with the first man she sees. If you don’t put her in expert hands, if you don’t have her carefully watched, something you’ll regret may happen. This last escapade is only a forerunner. You simply cannot go on as you are. It isn’t fair to yourself.”
Helen sat rigidly before him. In her face was the resistance which so enraged him. “What would you suggest?” she asked huskily.
“A hospital for the insane,” he said, and it delighted him that his reply was brutal.
Her face tightened. Her resistance became a little more tense. “I won’t do it,” she cried. “She’s mine, and I’m responsible for her. I’ll stay with her myself, doctor. I won’t let her out of my sight. But I will not send her away.”
“You know the consequences,” he said gruffly. Then the impossibility of reasoning with this woman overwhelmed him. “Helen, I’ve been your friend for years. Why should you take this load of misery and danger on your own shoulders?”
“I can endure anything, but I cannot send her away.”
“You love the hair shirt,” he growled. “Your pain is a pleasure. You won’t give up any little shred of tragedy.” He became furious. “Helen, every man must some time or other want to beat a woman. I think I’m a mild man, but right now I want to beat your face with my fists.” He looked into her dark eyes and saw that he had only put a new tragedy upon her, had only given her a new situation to endure. “I’m going away now,” he said. “Don’t call me any more. Why—I’m beginning to hate you.”
The people of the Pastures of Heaven learned with interest and resentment that a rich woman was coming to live in the valley. They watched truckloads of logs and lumber going up Christmas Canyon, and they laughed a little scornfully at the expense of hauling in logs to make a cabin. Bert Munroe walked up Christmas Canyon, and for half a day he watched the carpenters putting up a house.
“It’s going to be nice,” he reported at the General Store. “Every log is perfect, and what do you know, they’ve got gardeners working there already. They’re bringing in big plants and trees all in bloom, and setting them in the ground. This Mrs. Van Deventer must be pretty rich.”
“They sure lay it on,” agreed Pat Humbert. “Them rich people sure do lay it on.”
“And listen to this,” Bert continued. “Isn’t this like a woman? Guess what they got on some of the windows—bars! Not iron bars, but big thick oak ones. I guess the old lady’s scared of coyotes.”
“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 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.”