Hers the Kingdom (4 page)

     Owen moved in a sphere that was new to us. His days were not bound by routine, his seasons not tied to the growing of crops. He ignored limitations which others embraced—in space as well as time. He had traveled to the south of France, to the Sandwich Islands, to the territories in the far West. He was, as yet, bound to no place, was without the geographical anchors so many of us find necessary. I think that Owen could not fathom the sense of peace some people get from familiar things. He had an appetite for change, for beginnings.

     Willa, no less, longed for change; she wanted nothing so much as to
begin.
Each was to be, for the other, an instrument to achieve a dream, though Willa's, at that time, was not fully shaped, but only lay in the far reaches of her mind, aching to find form.

     Though we could not then have known it, nor would we for a time, Owen had already developed a taste for power, and the sense of mission that was its corollary.

     My memory of those days is of a flurry of activity, of high excitement and movement and tension. I had started my notebooks the year before; until then, the entries had been
predictable, routine, and monotonous. That one week accounted for more pages than the whole of the preceding year.

     Willa and Owen spoke together for the first time, alone, on the evening of his arrival. It had not been planned. She came upon him standing in the dining room, looking at the portrait of Grandmother that hung on the south wall and was always a bit askew. We seldom used the formal dining room, so it was still Grandmother's room. Willa watched Owen for a moment and she thought: He looks as if he belongs here.

     "She was twenty-six when that was painted," Willa finally said.

     He turned, considered her. "I thought for a moment it was you," he said, "until I saw that it was painted by Thomas Sully." When she didn't respond, he went on, "My family knew the artist—he painted my grandaunt's portrait. She was, as I remember, wearing that same green gown and the same dreamlike expression."

     "Do I remind you of your aunt, too?" Willa asked.

     "Not at all," Owen answered. "My aunt was perfectly cube-shaped, quite as wide as she was tall. But Thomas Sully made her look romantic. After he painted her portrait, the story goes, she went around with a pained look on her face, and it took a time for those around her to understand that she was trying to duplicate the dreamy, wistful smile Sully had given her."

     "I know," Willa laughed, "I always felt that this portrait did Grandmother more harm than good. It became her imagined self. I assure you, she was not that romantic-looking woman you see before you."

     "No?" Owen asked.

     "Grandmother was a Randolph of Virginia," she went on, "always."

     "What do you mean, 'always'?" he wanted to know.

     "Just that she was never content here on the prairie. I doubt that she was ever content after she left Virginia. She talked about the past continually. Family, tradition, that was what she cared about."

     "And you don't?" he asked, carefully.

     Willa looked at him for a long moment. Then she exhaled loudly and said, "One of her ancestors was John Randolph of Roanoke. He is supposed to have said, 'I am an aristocrat; I love liberty; I hate equality.'"

     Now it was Owen Reade's turn to wait, and he did.

     Finally she went on, "I don't believe in aristocracy. And I don't see how you can love liberty and hate equality. And I think perhaps I should go back out and enter this room again and start this conversation afresh."

     "What would you say?" he wanted to know.

     "I would say, 'Well now, Mr. Reade, how was your journey from Denver?'"

     "Liberty, equality, and other radical notions interest me a great deal more," Owen answered, teasing her.

     "What other radical notions?" Willa asked, beginning to laugh one of her trilling laughs that spilled out and over. "I have no radical notions. Please, please, let us talk about the weather . . . or Yosemite, you must have been there . . . or Yellowstone." She was laughing and Owen Reade liked it, you could see.

     "At least," he said, "you do look like your grandmother, amazingly so."

     "She was," Willa said quite seriously, "five feet and ten inches tall and she weighed one hundred fifteen pounds when that portrait was painted. In that way, we are exactly alike. Were, I should say. She has been dead for five years now, as perhaps you know."

     He nodded. "Miss Emma told me a great deal about every member of your family—except for your grandmother. She spoke of your grandfather with great reverence, and of course she is extremely fond of your father and mother. I could tell that not so much by what she said—she says little enough—but by the way her eyes shine when she speaks of either of them. I take it your mother and your aunt were great friends, even as young children."

     Willa nodded, but when she said nothing he continued, "The one person your aunt said very little about was your grandmother.
I can tell you exactly what she did say—because each time I inquired, she would repeat the same thing as if it had been committed to memory—'Mrs. Porter was a great lady from a fine old Virginia family and Willa is said to be the image of her as she was in her youth.'" Willa, of course, recognized our mother's phrase immediately, and the surprise must have registered in her eyes.

     "Yes," Willa said, "go on . . ."

     Owen, sensing that he might be moving into hazardous territory, became wary. "You must forgive me my idle curiosity," he said, "I spend so many hours alone that I tend to amuse myself by weaving small mysteries where there are none. Perhaps I'm especially interested in families because I've never been part of one." He said this without a trace of self-pity, which Willa liked. Then he said, "Of course, the Captain explained to me how he met Miss Emma—how your grandmother's family had known his, how grateful he was to her for inviting him to come to Illinois and then for giving them their start in California . . ."

     Willa was staring at him, aghast.

     "You mean Grandmother brought the Captain here?" she asked.

     Realizing his blunder, Owen said, "I am sorry, I seem to have . . . I'm afraid I've been clumsy, if I've breached some confidence . . ." He looked genuinely distressed.

     Willa put her hand on his arm to reassure him. Her touch had another effect. They seemed suddenly to have crossed some line of demarcation, and they were no longer strangers.

     At that moment two of the Little Boys burst into the room and began tumbling about Willa's skirts. She separated them with an ease born of practice, and they all went to join the rest of the family on the side porch, where the evening meal had been laid.

     Mealtimes on the farm were a test of any visitor's mettle. Usually, Pa and the Big Boys would be served at the first sitting, then the rest of us would eat. In deference to our guest, it was decided that we would eat together, fourteen of us at a long trestle table on the porch.

     Mama and Pa were not disciplinarians, which was rare in that day. Everyone was allowed to speak, even the smallest of the boys. The problem was that they all wanted to talk at the same time, and often did. They also had a habit of vanishing under the table. We would ignore them until something was overturned, or the noise became too great. Then either Willa or I would fish out the culprits and make them sit next to us for a time.

     All the while, Mama would be giving what she called an "instructive monologue." Her voice would change perceptibly, suggesting that she was reciting, verbatim, from one of her almanacs. Once started, she seemed unable to stop. On the first night of Owen Reade's visit, she broke into the general noise to say, "Did you know . . ." Willa looked at me and lifted her eyebrows, and I shrugged silently.

     Owen, unaware, looked expectantly at Mama, as if ready to be fascinated by whatever question she might have.

     "Did you know," she repeated for emphasis, "that the Temple of Diana at Ephesus was built at the common charge of all the Asiatic states?"

     Owen's mouth was full of potatoes, but before he could swallow and answer, Mama continued, "Two hundred twenty years were employed in completing the temple. It was four hundred twenty-five feet long, two hundred twenty-five broad, and was supported by one hundred twenty-seven columns of Parian marble—each sixty feet high and weighing one hundred fifty tons—furnished by as many kings. It was set on fire on the night of Alexander's birth by an obscure person named Erostratus, who confessed on the rack that the sole motive which prompted him was the desire to transmit his name to future ages."

     Owen's eyes widened slightly. He looked at Willa and she blinked and smiled, so that he would know this was part of the ritual.

     "That's terrible," Val said, and Mama frowned.

     "I mean," he went on, "to burn down a beautiful place just so people would remember who you were."

     "Well," Willa answered, "it worked. How did Mama put it? "The desire to transmit his name'—well, it's just been transmitted right here at our table. That shows you how foolish people can be . . . they should have thwarted it right away by making it an offense ever to mention the man's name again. Then people wouldn't go around burning perfectly good buildings . . . or killing presidents, for that matter."

     "Killing presidents?" Owen asked, amused by the turn the talk had taken.

     "Why else would Booth have assassinated President Lincoln?" she answered.

     Owen came back, politely, saying, "Because he disagreed politically."

     "That's the reason that is given," Willa countered, "but I think the real reason is a search for immortality . . . that is, after all, what 'keeping a name alive' means."

     Mama, who had all this time been sitting looking vaguely distressed, cut in, "Willa," she said, "do you think I am foolish for repeating his name?"

     Before Willa could answer, little Servia piped up to say, "What if you don't like your name?" Mama looked even more upset at this, as if it had never occurred to her that any of her boys would not like the names she had so carefully selected for them.

     "Why Servia," Val said to his brother, "we don't ever have to worry about that—because our names will be sure to last forever."

     The rest of us silently applauded this act of diplomacy on Val's part, and Mama flushed with pleasure, not realizing how careful the boys were to protect her.

     It was to take Owen a day or two to get used to the rough and tumble of our household. He was not accustomed to small boys, especially the kind who were allowed to be heard as well as seen.

     After dinner, Willa and several of the boys went to show Owen around the farm. We could hear the rise and fall of their talk, punctuated now and then by laughter.

     "Seems like a nice enough young man," Mama ventured. Pa didn't answer, but to my amazement, Gib did. He said, "I can't speak for what's in his head, but he's as weak as a rained-on bee."

     I thought about that for a long time, and finally I decided that Gib was right. Owen was tall and had a certain lithe bulk to him, but it was the appearance of strength, not the substance. And, I felt sure, Owen knew his limits. Why else would he so carefully avoid situations that would expose his frailty?

In bed that night, Willa told me that it was Grandmother who had brought the Captain to the farm—a fact that Mama, in all her stories, had neglected to tell us. "Grandmother must have wanted to destroy the friendship between Mama and Aunt Emma, so she found a way to get rid of Aunt Emma," Willa said.

     "So Mama married Pa," I added.

     "It was how she could hold on to the farm," Willa said, and we were silent for a long time then, thinking about it.

     I knew what was going on in Willa's mind, and I said, "It doesn't have to be that way."

     "Yes it does," Willa answered, "marriage is an economic arrangement. Always. And it is best never to forget that."

     After a while, Willa asked, "What are you thinking so loudly about?" It was our private joke, one we used often when one or the other of us could not sleep.

     "I was thinking," I said, "that it is hard to comprehend how such a hardy frontiersman as Grandfather could have built a house on the prairie frontier with a music room and a cherry-wood piano for a woman twenty years his junior."

     Willa only sighed. Then, when I thought she must be asleep, she said in a voice so low I could hardly hear: "Maybe she married him because no one else had asked her, maybe she thought he would die and leave her a fortune."

     "Maybe," I said to that, "Mama and Papa are the real lesson. No matter why they married, they are content . . . on the farm, and with each other."