The Pastures of Heaven

by Steinbeck, John

  “It seems to me you force hardships upon yourself,” the doctor said testily.

  “We take what is given us. I can endure. I am sure of that, and I am proud of it. No amount of tragedy can break down my endurance. But there is one thing I cannot bear, doctor. Hilda cannot be taken away from me. I will keep her with me, and you will come as always, but no one else must interfere.”

  Dr. Phillips left the house in disgust. The obvious and needless endurance of the woman always put him in a fury. “If I were Fate,” he mused, “I’d be tempted to smash her placid resistance too.”

  It wasn’t long after this that visions and dreams began to come to Hilda. Terrible creatures of the night, with claws and teeth, tried to kill her while she slept. Ugly little men pinched her and gritted their teeth in her ear, and Helen Van Deventer accepted the visions as new personalities come to test her.

  “A tiger came and pulled the covers,” Hilda cried in the morning.

  “You mustn’t let him frighten you, dear.”

  “But he tried to get his teeth through the blanket, mother.”

  “I’ll sit with you tonight, darling. Then he can’t come.”

  She began to sit by the little girl’s bedside until dawn. Her eyes grew brighter and more feverish with the fren­zied resistance of her spirit.

  One thing bothered her more than the dreams. Hilda had begun to tell lies. “I went out into the garden this morning, mother. An old man was sitting in the street. He asked me to go to his house, so I went. He had a big gold elephant, and he let me ride on it.” The little girl’s eyes were far away as she made up the tale.

  “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.”

  “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 lu
ck. 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.