“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 too long and there was a devilish wind blowing from the left, but I set my sights for it, and I thought, ‘Well, here goes nothing,’ and darned if I didn’t knock him over. Of course it was just luck.”
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 hats 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.