This trait Fanny came by naturally. She had had a droll grandmother. It was authentic history that once at the very moment when she was getting ready to attend a Green Valley funeral this grandmother's false teeth broke, leaving her somewhat dazed. But only for a moment, for she was a woman with a perfect memory. She suddenly remembered that the wife of the deceased had an old emergency set; so, slipping through the back streets, she arrived at the house of grief, borrowed the new widow's old teeth and wept as copiously and sincerely, albeit a little carefully, over the remains as any one else there.
Now, scarcely waiting to regain her breath, Fanny turned to Nanny with the usual explanations, only stopping to exclaim over Barney—"Land sakes, Barney, what are you doing here!" A breath and then in sibilant whispers:
"Well—I thought I'd never get here. When I come to dress I found the children had cut up my corset into a harness for the dog and Jessup's said they hadn't anybody to send up with a new one and John said he couldn't go because his foot's bad, him having stepped on the rake yesterday afternoon and not wanting to irritate it, so's he could go to work tomorrow as usual. And Grandma's up to Billy Evans' trying to keep him from going crazy or I could have borrowed one of hers. So I 'phoned Central to see if she couldn't hunt up somebody to bring me that new corset from Jessup's. Well, who does she get hold of but Denny, just as he's going past with a telegram for Jocelyn Brownlee. He brought the corset with the string gone and the box broken and asked me to help him figure out what that telegram meant. It said,
"'Coming better call it phyllis BOB.'
"There's few men that can write a proper letter. We had to give it up. And as if that wasn't enough, when I got to the creamery I met Skinflint Holden and he told me there was a lot of disease amongst the cattle and the men all got together and had a meeting and made Jake Tuttle deputy marshal or something. It's a wonder Jake wouldn't say something. I suppose he thinks the few old cows we have here in town ain't worth saving.
"Well, anyhow, I was hurrying along so's not to be late and just as I turned Tumley's hedge didn't Bessie come out with her face swollen so she looked homelier than Theresa Meyer. It seems she had a birthday and Alex brought her a big box of chocolates and they give her the toothache. She went to Doc Mitchell but he put her off because he was regulating and pulling every tooth in Hank Lolly's head. She was just sick to think she had to miss Lilac Sunday and Mr. Courtney's last sermon, but she told me to be sure and listen and if he let on he was sorry he was leaving not to believe him, because he's had everything except the parlor furniture crated for a month. They've been eating off tin plates and drinking out of two enamel cups on the kitchen table. Bessie thinks that for a minister he's full of sin and self-pride. But I say even a minister—"
But at this point the hymn singing was over, the congregation settled itself in comfortable attitudes, and the careful Mr. Courtney rose to deliver his farewell sermon.
It was a sermon that stirred nobody. Green Valley was as glad to see the Reverend Courtney departing as he was to go. His one cautious reference to their pastorless state, for he did not know that Green Valley had already selected its new minister, brought not a line of worry to the faces turned so politely to the pulpit, for on Lilac Sunday and to a farewell sermon Green Valley was ever polite.
Green Valley, listening, thought with relief of the Sundays ahead and felt very much the way a hospitable housewife feels when an uncongenial guest departs and the home springs back to its old cheery order and family peace.
When the services were over Green Valley strolled out into the May sunshine in twos and threes and stood about as always in little groups to exchange the week's news. Billy Evans' new happiness, the ten-dollar gold piece and all its attending incidents were duly talked over. Under the horse chestnuts Max Longman was telling Colonel Stratton how the day before Sam Ellis had at last leased the hotel to a Chicago man. It was reported that there was to be no new barber shop, but that over on West Street a poolroom, also run by a city stranger, was already doing business. Several people had passed it that morning on their way to church and all said it had a peculiar appearance.
"Looks like one of those woebegone city dens, with its green plush curtains so you can't see what's going on inside. All it needs is fly specks on the windows and a strong smell at its side door. That'll come with time. I hear you can play billiards and pool in there and there's some slot machines for those too young to take a hand at cards."
So said Jake Tuttle, who now that he was a deputy sheriff on the watch for diseases threatening his and his neighbors' cattle, suddenly realized that there might be such a thing as a deputy sheriff to look out for the physical and moral health of humans.
Green Valley listened to Max Longman's announcement and Jake's comment and made up its mind to go around and see. Sam Ellis' withdrawal from business made Green Valley folks a little uneasy. The hotel in other hands might become a strange place. For a moment an uncomfortable feeling gripped those who heard. Sam, an old friend and a neighbor, with his genial good sense and old-fashioned hotel was one thing. A stranger from the big and wicked city was another.
Green Valley almost began to worry a bit. But on the way home this feeling wore off. How could things change? Why, there were the Spencer boys taking turns at the ice-cream freezer on the back porch. There was Ella Higgins coming out with a saucer of milk for her cat. Downer's barn door was open and any one could see by the new buggy that stood in it that Jack Downer's brother and family had driven in from the farm for a Sunday dinner and visit. Williamson's dog, Caesar, was tied up,—a sure sign that Mel and Emmy had gone off to see Emmy's folks over in Spring Road. The chairs in Widow Green's orchard told plainly that her sister's girls had come in from the city for the week-end. On the Fenton's front porch sat pretty Millie Fenton, waiting to put a flower in Robbie Longman's buttonhole. While everybody knew that just next door homely Theresa Meyer was putting an extra pan of fluffy soda biscuits into the oven as the best preparation forherbeau.
So Green Valley looked and smiled and went joyously home to its fragrant, old-fashioned Sunday dinner. New elements might and would come but this smiling town would absorb them, mellow them to its own golden hue and go on its way living and rejoicing.
Cynthia's son went to dinner with the Ainslees. He walked with Mr. Ainslee while Nan and her brother went on ahead. Nan was almost noisily gay but no one seemed to be at all aware of it.
The dinner was delicious and went off without the least bit of embarrassment. At the table Nan was as suddenly still as she had been noisily gay. She let the men do the talking while she scrupulously attended to their wants. Once she forgot herself and while he was talking studied the face of Cynthia's son. Her father caught her at it and smiled. This made her flush and to even up matters she deliberately put salt instead of sugar into her father's after-dinner cup of coffee. Whereupon he, tasting the salt, made an irrelevant remark about handwriting on the wall.
Close on the heels of Lilac Sunday comes Decoration Day. And nowhere is it observed so thoroughly as in Green Valley.
The whole week preceding the day there is heard everywhere the whir of sewing machines. New dresses are feverishly cut and made; old ones ripped and remade. Hats are bought, old ones are retrimmed. Buggies are repainted and baby carriages oiled. Dick does a thriving business in lemons, picnic baskets, flags, peanuts and palm-leaf fans, these being things that Jessup's chronically forget to carry, regarding them as trifles and rather scornfully leaving them to Dick, who makes a point of having on hand a very choice supply.
This fury of work gradually dies down, to be followed by such an epidemic of baking that the old town smells like a sweet old bakery shop with its doors and windows wide open. There is then every evening a careful survey of the flower beds in the garden, a rigid economy of blossoms and even much skilful forcing of belated favorites.
The last day is generally given over to hat buying, the purchasing of the last forgotten fixings and clothes inspections. From one end of the town to the other clotheslines, dining-room chairs, porch rockers and upstairs bedrooms are overflowing with silk foulards, frilled dimities, beribboned and belaced organdies, not to mention the billows of dotted swiss and muslin.
On short clotheslines, stretched across corners of back and side porches or in the tree-shaded nooks of back yards, may be seen hanging the holiday garments of Green Valley men. But what most catches the eye are the old suits of army blue flapping gently in the spring breeze with here and there a brass button glinting. There are a surprising number of these suits of army blue just as there are a surprising number of graves in the little Green Valley cemetery over which, the long year through, flutters the small flag set there by loving hands each Decoration Day.
There are all manner of cleaning operations going on in full view of anybody and everybody who might be interested enough to look. For there is no streak of mean secretiveness in Green Valley folks.
This is the one time in the year when Widow Green takes off and "does up" the yellow silk tidy that drapes the upper right-hand corner of her deceased husband's portrait which stands on an easel in the darkest corner of her parlor. This little service is not the tender attention of a loving and grieving wife for a sadly missed husband but rather a patriotic woman's tribute to a man, who, worthless and cruel as a husband, had yet been a gallant and an honorable soldier.
As the widow sits on the back steps carefully washing the tidy in a hand basin and with a bar of special soap highly recommended by Dick, she looks over into the next yard and calls to Jimmy Rand and asks him whether he's going to march with the rest of the school children and will there be anything special on the programme this year. And he tells her sure he's going to march. Ain't he got a new pair of pants, a blouse, a navy blue tie and a new stickpin? And as for the programme, he warns her to watch out "fur us kids because we're going to be fixed up for something, but I dassent tell because it's a surprise the teachers got up."
This is the one day in the year when Jimmy Rand polishes his grandfather's shoes with scrupulous care and without demanding the usual nickel. He takes his payment in watching the blue army suit swaying on the line under the tall poplars and in hearing the crowds on Decoration Day shout themselves hoarse for old Major Rand.
It is the one time too when Old Skinflint Holden gets from his fellow citizens and neighbors a certain grave respect, for they all know that on the morrow among the men in blue will be this same Old Skinflint Holden with a medal on his breast.
Though every preparation has seemingly been made days ago, still that last night before the event is the very busiest time of all.
Joe Baldwin's little shop is crowded. Jake Tuttle is there with the four children, buying them the fanciest of footgear for the morrow. The two Miller boys, who work in the creamery until nine every night but have special leave this day to purchase holiday necessities, are standing awkwardly near Joe's side door and waiting patiently for Frankie Stevens and Dora Langely, better known as "Central," to depart with their black velvet slippers, before making any effort to have Joe try his wares on their awkward feet. Little Johnny Peterson comes in to inquire if Joe has sewed the buttons on his, Johnny's, shoes, and Martha Gray has a hard time trying to decide which of two pairs of moccasins are most becoming to her youngest baby. Any number of youths are hanging about waiting for Joe to get around to selling them a box of his best shoe polish and some, getting impatient, wait on themselves. Joe, with his spectacles pushed up into his hair, is rushing around from customer to customer and through it all is dimly conscious of the fact that outside under the awning Dolly Beatty is waiting anxiously for the men folks to get out before she ventures in to buy her Joe's special brand of corn salve and bunion plaster.
And so it is all the way down Main Street. In the gents' furnishings' corner of Peter Sweeney's dry-goods store Seth Curtis is buying a new hat, a little jaunty hat that seems to fit his head well enough but doesn't somehow become the rest of him. Seth looks best in a cap and always wears one except, of course, on such state occasions as the coming one. He asks the Longman boys how he looks in the brown fedora Pete has just put on his head and Max Longman laughs and wants to know what difference it makes how a married man with a bald spot looks. Then he turns away to pick out carefully the kind of tie that will make him most pleasing in Clara's sight on the morrow.
In the ladies' department of that same store Jocelyn Brownlee is asking for long, white silk gloves. A little hush falls on the crowd of feminine shoppers as Mrs. Pete gets the stepladder, mounts it and brings down with a good deal of visible pride a pasteboard box containing six pairs of white silk gloves that Pete bought three years ago in a moment of incomprehensible madness, a thing which Mrs. Pete has never until this minute forgiven him.
Jocelyn, pretty, eager, unaffected, selects the very first pair and is wholly unconscious of the stir she has made. It is only when David Allan comes up and asks her if she is ready that she becomes confused and conscious of the watching eyes of the other buyers.
She has promised to go to the Decoration Day exercises with David and has hurried to buy gloves for the occasion not knowing, in her city innocence, that gloves aren't the style in Green Valley, leastways not for any outdoor festival.
David watches the gloves being wrapped up and that reminds him that it wouldn't hurt to buy a new buggy whip, one of the smart ones with the bit of red, white and blue ribbon on its tip that he saw standing in Dick's window.
So he and Jocelyn go off together to get the whip. It is the first time that Jocelyn has been out in the village streets after nightfall and she looks about her with eager eyes.
"My—how pretty the streets look and sound! It's ever so much prettier than village street scenes on the stage!" she confides to David. And David laughs and takes her over to Martin's for a soda and then, because it is still early, he coaxes her to walk about town with him and as a final treat they stop in front of Mary Langely's millinery shop.
Mary Langely's shop stands right back of Joe Baldwin's place on the next street. Mary is a widow with two girls. Dora is the Green Valley telephone operator and Nellie is typist and office girl for old Mr. Dunn who is Green Valley's best real estate and lawyer man. He sells lots, now and then a house, writes insurance and draws up wills, collects bills or rather coaxes careless neighbors to settle their accounts, and he absolutely does not believe in divorce or woman suffrage. These two matters stir the gentle little man to great wrath. His wife is even a gentler soul than he is. She is the eldest of the Tumleys, sister of George Hoskins' wife and to Joe Tumley, the little man with a voice as sweet as a skylark's.
You go to Mr. Dunn's office through a little low gate and you find an old, deep-eaved, gambrel-roofed house with a hundred little window panes smiling at you from out its mantle of ivy. You love it at once but you don't go in right away, because the great old trees won't let you. You go and stand under them and wonder how old they are and lay your hand caressingly on the fine old trunks. And then you see the myrtle and violets growing beneath them and near the house clumps of daisies and forget-me-nots. And then you spy the beehives and the quaint old well and you walk through the cool grape arbor right into the little kitchen, where Mrs. Dunn, as likely as not, is making a cherry pie or currant jell or maybe a strawberry shortcake. She is a delicious and an old-fashioned cook. Why, she even keeps a giant ten-gallon cooky jar forever filled with cookies, although there are now no children in this sweet old manse. Nobody now but Nellie Langely who goes home every night to the millinery shop where she helps her mother make and sell the bonnets that have made Mary Langely famous in all the country round.
Green Valley folks have never quite gotten over wondering about Mary Langely. When Tom Langely was alive Mary was a self-effacing, oddly silent woman. People said she and Tom were a queer pair. Tom had great ambitions in almost every direction. He even made brave beginnings. But that was all. Then one day, in the midst of all manner of ambitious enterprises, he grew tired of living and died. And then it was that Mary Langely rose from obscurity and made Green Valley rub its eyes. For within a week after Tom's death she had gathered together all the loose ends of things that he had started, clapped a frame second story on the imposing red brick first floor of the house Tom had begun, converted this first floor into a store, and inside of a month was selling hats to women who hadn't until then realized they needed a hat.
There were more electric bulbs and mirrors in Mary's shop than in any three houses in Green Valley. That was why it was always the gayest spot in town on the night preceding any holiday.
It was interesting and pleasant to watch through the brightly lighted windows and the wide double glass doors the women trying on the gay creations and hovering over the heaps of flowers and glittering ornaments heaped upon the counters.
Jocelyn and David stood in the soft shadow of an old elm and while they watched David explained the customers going in and coming out. He told her that the tall straight woman buying the spray of purple lilacs for her last year's hat was the Widow Green. The short, waddly woman trying on the wide hat with the pink roses was Bessie Williams. The tall girl with the pretty braids wound round her head was Bonnie Don, big Steve Meckling's sweetheart. Steve, David explained, was so foolishly in love that he was ready to commit murder if another lad so much as looked at Bonnie.
The tall quiet man buying hats and ribbons for his girls was John Foster. And the little bow-legged one, with the hard hat two sizes too big, was Hen Tomlins who always went shopping with his wife.
So Green Valley made its purchases and hastened home to pack its lunch basket and lay out all its clothes on the spare-room bed. Even as David and Jocelyn walked home through the laughing streets, lights were being winked out in the lower living rooms only to flash out somewhere up-stairs where the family was wisely going to bed early. No one even glanced at the sky, for it was taken for granted that Green Valley skies would do their very best, as a matter of course.
When the last star began to fade and the first little breath of a new morning ruffled the soft gray silence a sudden sharp volley rang out. It was the Green Valley boys setting off cannon crackers in front of the bank. And it must be said right here that that first signal volley was about all the fireworks ever indulged in in Green Valley. This little town, nestling in the peaceful shelter of gentle hills and softly singing woods, naturally disliked harsh, ugly sounds and was moreover far too thrifty, too practical and sane a community to put firearms and flaming death into the hands of its children. Green Valley patriotism was of a higher order.
At that sharp volley Green Valley awoke with a start and a laugh and ran to put flags on its gateposts and porch pillars and loop bunting around its windows. And when the morning broke like a great pink rose and shed its rosy light over the dimpling hills and lacy, misty woodlands the old town was a-flutter with banners, everybody was about through with breakfast and certain childless and highly efficient ladies were already taking their front and side hair out of curl papers.
At eight o'clock sharp the school bell summoned the children. Then a little later the church bell summoned the veterans. And by nine the procession was marching down Maple Street, flags waving, band playing and every face aglow.
First came the little tots all in white, the boy babies bearing little flags and the girl babies little baskets of flowers, with little Eleanor Williams carrying in her tiny hands a silken banner on which Bessie Williams, her mother, had beautifully embroidered a dove and the lovely word, "Peace."
Then came the older children, a whole corps it seemed of Red Cross nurses, followed by a regiment of merry sailor boys. There were cowboys and Boy Scouts, boys in overalls and brownies. There were girls in liberty caps, crinolines and sunbonnets.
So grade after grade Green Valley's children came, a proud and happy escort for the men in blue who followed. Nanny Ainslee's father led the veterans, sitting his horse right gallantly. Nanny and her father were both riding and so was Doc Philipps.
There were plenty of people on horseback but most of the town marched, even The Ladies Aid Society, every member wearing her badge and new hat with conscious pride and turning her head continually to look at the children, as the head of the procession turned corners. The young married women with babies rode in buggies, from every one of whose bulging sides flags drooped and fat baby legs and picnic baskets protruded.
Everything went smoothly, joyously along, though a few incidents in various parts of the procession caused smiles, gusts of laughter and even alarm.
Jimmy Rand had a few anxious moments when the four fat puppies he thought he had shut safely into the barn came yelping and tumbling joyously into the very heart of the marching crowds.
Jim Tumley was down on the day's programme for several numbers. But as the line swung around the hotel and the spring winds stained with the odors of liquor swept temptingly over him he half started to step out of line. But Frank Burton guessed his trouble and ordered Martin's clerk, Eddie, to bring the little chap an extra large and fine soda instead.
Mrs. Hen Tomlins upset things by ordering Hen back home to change his shirt. It seems that Hen had deliberately put on a shirt with a soft collar and in the excitement of getting under way and trying to remember which way her new hat was supposed to set Mrs. Hen had failed to notice the crime until, her fears set at rest by Mary Langeley, she turned around to see if Hen looked all right.
Uncle Tony was in a great state of excitement. He was continually leaving his place in The Business Men's Association to have a look from the side lines at the imposing spectacle.
Here and there mothers close enough to their offspring were suggesting a more frequent use of handkerchiefs and calling attention to traitorous garters and wrinkled stockings. Tommy Downey had forgotten what his mother had told him about being sure to put his ears inside his cap and those two appendages, burned and already blistered by the hot May sun, stood out in solemn grandeur from his small, round, grinning face. The school teachers were keeping anxious eyes on their particular broods and insisting that the eager feet keep solemn step to the music.
Sam Ellis' new greenhorn hired girl, Francy, was sitting in the back seat of the buggy, holding down the brimming baskets and leaning out as far as possible so as not to miss anything that might happen at either end as well as the middle of the procession. She had been utterly unable to pin on her first American hat with hatpins, so had wisely tied it to her head with a large red-bordered handkerchief which she had brought over from the old country.
Jocelyn Brownlee, sitting beside David in his smart rig, had begged him to go last so that she could see everything. This was her first country festival and no child in that throng was so happily, wildly eager to drain the day to the very last drop of enjoyment.
Jocelyn and David however did not end the procession. Behind them, though quite a way back, was Uncle Tony's brother William. William was driving his span of grays so slowly that the pretty creatures tossed their heads restlessly, impatiently, lonely for the companionship of the gay throng ahead.
But though their owner knew what they wanted he held them back sternly. But he looked as wistfully as they at the fluttering flags and listened as keenly to the puffs of music that the wind dashed into his face every now and then.
Every Decoration Day Uncle Tony's brother William rode just so, slowly and alone at the end of the gay procession. On that day he was a lonely and tragic figure. Loved and respected every other day in the year, on this he was shunned. For he was the only man in all Green Valley who, when conscripted, would not go to the war but sent a substitute, one Bob Saunders.
Bob was killed at Gettysburg and nobody mourned him, not even his very own sister though Green Valley was duly proud of the way he died. Only on this one day did Green Valley remember the man whose death was the one and only worth while deed of a misspent life. But on this one day too Green Valley shunned the man who sent him to his death.
So every Decoration Day William came alone to put a wreath on Bob's grave and watch the exercises from a distance. When it was over he went home—alone. And Green Valley let him do it year after year.
He was never known to murmur at Green Valley's annual censure nor did he ever seem to hope for forgiveness. Green Valley had asked him once why he had done it and he said that he would have been worthless as a soldier because he did not believe in killing people and was himself horribly afraid of being butchered.
Green Valley was appalled at this terrible confession, at the absence in one of its sons of even the common garden variety of courage. It did its best for a while to despise William. But it is hard work despising an honest, quiet, just and lovable man. So gradually William was allowed to come home into Green Valley's life. And it was only on this one holiday that he was an outcast. Neither did any one ever remind William's children of what years ago their father had done. But of course they knew. Their father had told them himself. They were in no way cast down. They were all girls who loved their father and did not believe in war.
In that fashion then, and in that order, Green Valley marched down Main Street, up Grove, through lovely Maple and very slowly down Orchard Avenue so that Jeremy Collins, who was bedridden because of a bullet wound suffered at Shiloh, could see his old comrades with whom he could no longer march.
All the way down Park Lane the band played its very best and loudest as if calling from afar to those comrades who lay sleeping beneath the pines and oaks of the little cemetery. And just as the Green Valley folks came in sight of the white headstones the Spring Road procession came tramping over the old bridge, and Elmwood, with its flags and band, was coming up the new South Road. The three towns met nicely at the very gates of the cemetery and together made the sort of sound and presented the sort of sight that lingers in the heart long after other things have faded from one's memory.
Then the bands grew still and there was quiet, a quiet that every minute grew deeper so that the noisiest youngster grew round-eyed and the fat sleek horses moved never a hoof. And then, sweet and soft through the waiting, hushed air, came the notes of Major Rand's cornet. He was playing for his comrades as he had played at Shiloh, at Chickamauga and many another place in the Southland. He played all their old favorites and then very, very softly the cornet wailed—"We are tenting to-night on the old camp ground"—and somewhere beside it little Jim Tumley began to sing.
From the high blue sky and the softly stirring tree-tops the words seem to drop into little hearts and big hearts and the sweet, melting sadness of them misted the eyes. When the last feathery echo had died away the men in blue passed two by two through the cemetery gate. Reverend Campbell, who had been their chaplain, said a short prayer. At its end the children, with their arms full of flowers, crowded up and the men in blue stopped at every grave. The little boys planted their flags at the head and the little girls scattered the blossoms deep.
From beyond the gates Green Valley and Spring Road and Elmwood watched its heroes and its children. In David Allan's smart rig sat a little city girl, her face crumpled and stained like a rain-beaten rose. She was saying to no one in particular, "Oh—my daddy was a soldier too but I know that he never had a Decoration Day like this."
The bands played again and each class went through its number on the programme with grace and only a very few noticeable blunders. Tommy Downey, ears rampant, a tooth missing and a face radiant with joy and absolute self-confidence, mounted the bunting and flag-draped stage and in a booming voice wholly out of proportion to his midget dimensions and in ten dashing verses assured those assembled that the man who wore the shoulder straps was a fine enough fellow to be sure, but that it was after all the man without them who had to win the day.
The old country roads rippled with applause and Tommy's mother, forgetting for once Tommy's funny ears which were her greatest source of grief, drew the funny little body close and explained to admiring bystanders that Tommy "took" after one of her great-uncles, a soul much given to speech making.
So number after number went off and then there came the speech of the day. It had been decided at the last moment that Doc Philipps must make this, because the specially ordered and greatly renowned speaker, one Daniel Morton from down Brunesville way, had at the last moment and at his ridiculous age contracted measles.
Now Green Valley knew how Doc Philipps hated to talk about almost everything except trees. But Green Valley also knew that Doc could talk about most anything if he was so minded. He was, moreover, as well known and loved in Spring Road and Elmwood as he was in his own town. So Green Valley folks leaned back, certain that this speech would be worth hearing.
The bulky figure in army blue stepped to the edge of the platform and for a silent minute towered above his neighbors like one of the great trees he so loved. Then, without warning or preface, he began to talk to them.
"War is pretty—when the uniforms are new and the band is playing. War is glorious to read about and talk about—when it's all over. But war is every kind of hell imaginable for everybody and everything while it's going on! And they lie who say that it ever was, is, or can be anything else. Every soldier here to-day above ground or below it will and would tell you the same.
"And they are fools who say that wars cannot be prevented. War is the rough and savage tool of a world as yet too ignorant to invent and use any other. But here and there, in odd corners of the world, an ever-increasing number of men are recognizing it as a disease, due to ignorance, as possible to cure and wipe out, as any other of the horrible plagues of mankind.
"When I was twenty-three I too believed in war. I liked the uniform, I liked the excitement of going, I liked the idea of 'fighting for the right.' I was too young and too ignorant to realize that older, better men than I on the other side felt just as right as I did. In those days war was the only tool and we thought it right, and some of us went hating it and some of us went shouting like fools. I went for the lark of it, for I knew no better. I marched away in a new uniform with the band playing and the flags snapping. And on the little old farm my father gave me I left a nineteen-year-old wife with my one-year-old baby.
"Next door to that wife and baby of mine lived a man who did not believe in war, a man who, even when conscription came and he was called, refused to go to war. He hired a substitute and stayed at home. And for that Green Valley has marked that man a coward and every year sits in judgment upon him.
"Yet the man who would not go to war stayed at home to plough my fields and plant them. He it was who saw to it that that wife of mine and the wives of other war-mad boys did not want for bread. He stayed at home here and minded his business and ours as well. He wrote letters and got news for our women when they got to fretting too hard. He harvested our crops, tended our stock, and mended our fences because he is so made that he cannot bear to see things wasted, neglected, ruined.
"As a soldier that man was worthless, for the business of a soldier is to kill, to burn, to waste, to maim. He knew that and he knew that being what he was he could serve his country better doing the things he liked and believed in.
"I came out of that war a physical wreck but with a heart purified. I saw such a hell of evil, such destruction, such misery that to-day I am a doctor and a planter of trees. When I saw men torn to rags and lovely strips of woodland ripped to splintered ugliness I vowed that if I ever came through that madness I would make amends. I swore I would go through the world mending things. So terribly did those war horrors grip me. And I have tried to keep my promise. For every tree I saw splintered I have tried to plant another somewhere. I have been able to do this because of that old neighbor of mine.
"When I came home a wreck and said that I wanted to be a doctor, people laughed at the idea. But the man who does not believe in war came to me at night and offered to help me through the medical school. It was that man who made a doctor of me. He had the courage to believe and trust when every one else laughed.
"Yet that is the man Green Valley has been punishing all these years. You have been counting that man a coward when you know he is no coward. When Petersen's fool hired man let that bull out of its stall to rage through Green Valley's streets it was Green Valley's coward who caught him at the risk of his life. When Johnny Bigelow was sick with smallpox it was the coward who nursed him.
"You know all that. Yet, because of outlived and mossy tradition, you let that man ride alone, keep him out of a Green Valley day, you who count yourselves such good neighbors.
"I tell you we men in blue and gray are dead and our tool of war is a poor and clumsy thing of the past. Ours was a brave enough, great enough day. But it has passed, its story is over and done with.
"It is the new brand of courage that the new generations want and will have. And no old soldier here but is glad to feel that the days of bloodshed are over, that somewhere in the days ahead there is coming the dawn of peace, a world peace forevermore."
As suddenly as he began he stopped, for a long second there was a strange silence. For just the space of ten heart flutters there was amazement at this new style of address. No old soldier had ever talked to them in that fashion. But when they saw him striding over that stage and headed straight for William the storm broke and eddied out to where William sat, holding in the grays, not even dreaming that at last he was understood and forgiven.
After the last songs were sung the sun stood high. So then the great gathering broke into little family groups that strolled off up the roads in every direction. Here in shady spots tablecloths were spread and soon everybody seemed to be opening a basket and the feast was on.
In half an hour all manner of things had happened. The Whitely twins fell into some strawberry pies, and supposedly hard boiled eggs were in many cases found to be extremely soft boiled. Boys of all sizes were beginning to be smeared from ear to ear and two of Hen Tomlin's wife's doughnuts were found to be quite raw inside, a discovery that so stunned that careful lady that she never noticed Hen had taken off his stiff linen collar, opened his shirt and tucked both it and his undershirt into a very cool and comfortable décolleté effect.
In another half hour fat babies fell asleep where they sat, their little fat hands holding tight to some goody. Boys old enough to wonder about the contrariness of things mortal looked sadly at the still inviting tables and marveled that a thoughtful and farseeing Providence should have made a boy's stomach in so careless and penurious a fashion.
They made as many as a dozen trials to see if by any chance some corner of the said organ could be further reenforced. But when even ice-cream and marshmallows refused to go down they gave up and dragged themselves away to some spot where a more lucky or efficient comrade was still blissfully busy.
The married men openly loosened their belts and looked about for a quiet and restful spot. The unmarried ones went sneaking off where their mothers and their best girls couldn't see them smoking their cigarettes.
In the general relaxation Dolly Beatty slipped off her tightest shoe, one bunion and four corns clamoring loudly for room. And though nobody saw her do it, everybody knew that Sam Bobbins' wife had gone behind some convenient bush and taken off her new corset.
In this quiet time old friends searched each other out and sat peacefully talking over old times. The married women kept their eyes on the strolling couples, hoping to see a lovers' quarrel or discover a new and as yet unannounced affair. Little by little news was disseminated and listened to that in the elaborate preparations of the past days had been overlooked or unreported.
David and Jocelyn were in the crowd of merrymakers and yet not of it. They had selected a fine old tree a little removed from the thick of things and here Jocelyn spread their luncheon.
"It's a lucky thing," she explained shyly, "that Decoration Day doesn't come earlier in the year or I'd never have dared to go to a party like this and be responsible for lunch. About all I knew how to make when we came to Green Valley was fudge, fruit salad and toasted marshmallows. And before Annie Dolan came to teach me how to do things I nearly died trying. I was all black and blue from falling down the cellar and scarred and blistered from frying things. But now I know ever so much.
"I can make two lovely soups and biscuits and apple pie and gravy. And I know how to clean and stuff a turkey. Only last week Annie taught me how to make red raspberry and currant jell. And my burns are nearly all healed except this one. It was pretty bad, but I was ashamed to go to the doctor's so it's not quite healed yet. That's why I just had to have gloves to cover the bandage. But nobody else seems to be wearing elbow gloves so I guess I'll take mine off and be comfortable. Would you mind putting them in your pocket for me?"
David caught the silken ball she tossed him and carefully tucked it away. He insisted on seeing the burn but Jocelyn waved him aside, declaring that her hunger was worse just then.
So they ate and then sat and talked quietly of everything and nothing. All about them people laughed and chattered. Every now and then some one called to them and they answered correctly enough, yet knew not what they had said. For as naturally as all the simple unspoiled things of God's world find each other, so this sweet, unspoiled little city girl and the big, unspoiled country boy had found each other. And a great content possessed them. They did not know as yet what it was but knew only that the world for them was complete and every hour perfect that they spent together.
They sat under their tree even after the games and races had begun and were rather glad that in the excitement over the afternoon's programme they two were forgotten and free to roam about.
They went down to the creek where the burned arm was unbandaged. Jocelyn was rosily pleased to see David frown at the ugly raw scar. He gathered the leaves of some weed strange to her and when he had pounded them to a cool pulp he laid them on the burn and once more bound up the arm. He was as glad to do it as she was to have him and each knew how the other felt.
They strolled through the now deserted cemetery and read the epitaphs on the mossy stones and yet nothing seemed old or sad or caused them the least surprise. They saw Nanny Ainslee standing with Cynthia's son before a stone that had neither name nor date but only the love-sad words:
"I Miss Thee So."
But they thought nothing of it. The world was far away and they were serenely happy in a rarer one of their own.
Slowly the golden afternoon was waning. Little children were beginning to pull on their stockings, mothers began packing up the baskets and fathers were harnessing the horses. Soon everybody was ready and Green Valley, Spring Road and Elmwood, with many waves of flags and hands, each started down its own road toward home.
It was a tired, happy town that straggled down Main Street just as the sun was gilding it with his last rays. Green Valley mothers were everywhere hurrying their broods on to bread and milk and bed. In the sunset streets only the little groups of grown-ups lingered to talk over the day and exchange last jokes before going on toward home and rest.
There were whole days when Cynthia's son did nothing but loaf,—whole days when he went off by himself into the still corners of his world and let the whole wide universe talk and sing to him and awe him with its mystery.
He would lie for hours in some cool, shady fern nook under a sheltering road hedge or in the shade of some giant tree friend. At such times he scaled the thinking, wondering part of himself and opened wide his heart to the great whisper that rippled the grain, to the sweet song that swelled the throat of the oriole and lark, to the beauty that dyed the heavens and the earth, to the glad struggle for life everywhere.
In this way he had always healed all his griefs, freed his soul from doubts and stilled the many strange longings that made his heart ache for things whose name and nature he knew not.
He had discovered many of these still, restful corners from which to watch life as it went by. But his favorite spot was right on his own farm.
At the very end of the Churchill estate, as if thrown in for good measure, was a little knoll, smooth and grassy and crowned with a little grove of God's own planting.
For there were gathered together big gnarled oaks, maples, old hickory trees and many poplars. There were on that knoll three snowy, bridal birches, the rough trunks of horse-chestnuts and a few solemn pines. As if that were not enough, in the very heart of this woody temple were two shaggy old crab-apple trees and one stray wild plum.
In the spring here was fairyland. And into it Cynthia's son retired at every fair opportunity. Here he sat and looked off at the dimpling, rippling farmlands, the wandering old roads and at Green Valley roofs nestling so securely in their setting of rich greens and dappled sunshine.
From his seat beneath an oak he could see Wimple's pond with its circle of trees and through the far willow hedges caught the glittering sheen and sparkle of Silver Creek. And there before and below him lay the mellow old farm that his grandfather had left him.
The warm brick walls with their wide brick chimneys already had a welcoming look. For the tenant was gone and the old home was being repaired for its owner. But from the knoll no sound of hammer or sight of workmen marred the soft silence and sunny peace of the day. So Green Valley's young minister sprawled comfortably down, closed his eyes and let the earth music wrap him round.
He was not even day dreaming the day Nan Ainslee stumbled on him there under the oaks and pines. She had discovered the knoll when she was six years old and claimed it for her very own, sharing its beauties with no one, not even her brother. When she grew to young ladyhood she often left Green Valley for wonderful trips to the ends of the world. But she always came back to the lilacs and the seat under the great oak.
At every return she hastened out to see anew her home valley as it looked from her grove. So it was with something very close to annoyance that she looked at the sprawling figure of the usurper.
"Well, for pity sakes! What are you doing here?" she demanded.
He opened his eyes slowly and looked at her. She fitted in so well with the velvet whisper of the wind, the cool blue of the sky and the world's fresh beauty that he took her appearance as a part of the picture and was silent. It was only when she repeated her question rather sharply that he sat up to explain.
"Why, I found this spot months ago! It is the stillest, most heavenly nook in Green Valley. I come up here whenever I'm tired of thinking."
"Well—I found this place years and years ago," Nanny complained.
"What's the matter with us both using it?" he said very civilly.
"But," objected Nan, "this is the sort of a place that you want all to yourself."
"Yes, it is," he agreed and did not let the situation worry him further. He didn't offer her a seat or give her a chance to take herself off gracefully. And Nanny was beginning to feel a little awkward. She wasn't used to being ignored in this strange fashion.
"Are you very old?" the minister asked suddenly and looked up at her with eyes as innocent and serene as a child's.
"I'm twenty-three," Nan was startled into confessing.
"Why aren't you married?"
As she gasped and searched about for an answer he added:
"In India a girl is a grandmother at that age."
"This isn't India," smiled Nan good-naturedly, for she saw quite suddenly that this big young man knew very little about women, especially western women.
"No—this isn't India." He repeated her words slowly, little wrinkles of pain ruffling his face. For his inner eye was blotting out the Green Valley picture and painting in its stead the India of his memory, the India of gorgeous color, the bazaars, the narrow streets; the India that held within its mystic arms two plain white stones standing side by side and bearing the inscriptions "Father" and "Mother."
Nan, not guessing what was going on in his heart, took advantage of his silence to get even.
"How old are you?"
"Twenty-eight."
"Why aren't you married?"
"Why in the world should I be?" he wanted to know.
"Green Valley men are usually the fathers of two or three children at your age," she informed him calmly.
"Oh," he smiled frankly, "of course I shall marry some day. But a man need never hurry. He, unlike a woman, can always marry. And I intend to have children—many children, because one child is always so lonely. I know because I was an only child."
This astounding piece of confidence kept Nan's tongue tied and for a few seconds all manner of funny emotions fought within her. She wanted to laugh, to get angry at the lordly superiority of the idea that a woman must hurry to the altar. She felt that she ought to feel embarrassed but the innocent sincerity with which it was all uttered kept her from blushing and her eyes from snapping. She told herself instead that of all man creatures she had ever encountered, this boy from India was certainly the weirdest. And she wondered what a woman not his mother could do with him.
After a while she tried again.
"Don't you feel rather guilty loafing here in the sunshine?"
"No. Why—what should I be doing?"
"These beautiful afternoons you ought to be devoting to pastoral calls."
"But I attended to all the day's work this morning. I helped Uncle Roger Allan build a fence and doctored up David's pet horse, Dolly. I spaded up a flower plot for Grandma Wentworth and visited little Jimmy Trumbull who's home from the hospital. Doc Philipps says he won't be up for some time yet, so to cheer him up I've promised him a party. I also drove to the station with Mrs. Bates' ancient horse and brought home her new incubator. While I was there Jocelyn Brownlee came down to get a box she said she had there. Some teasing cousin sent her a little live pig and when she found out what was in the box she didn't know what to do. So I put the pig beside the incubator and sat Jocelyn beside me and we proceeded on our way.
"That horse belonging to Mrs. Bates is certainly a solemn, stately beast but Jocelyn's little pig was anything but stately. We made an interesting and a musical spectacle as we went along, and I know that one little red-headed boy in this town was late for school because he followed us halfway home. We passed the Tomlins place and Hen was sitting at the window, propped up with pillows. It was his first day up and we made him laugh so hard that his wife was a little worried, I think."
"Agnes is rather good to Hen these days, isn't she?" Nan ventured to ask, for the whole town knew how Agnes had gone to the minister with her domestic troubles and how in some mysterious fashion this young man had worked a miracle. For both Agnes and Hen were as suddenly and happily in love with one another as though they were newly married instead of being a middle-aged and childless couple.
But that was all the town did know about the matter. For strange to say Agnes, who had talked loud enough and long enough before about her unhappiness, now was still, with never a word to say about what made her so contented and happy. Green Valley saw her look at Hen as if he were suddenly precious and smooth his pillow and wait on him. And Green Valley wanted to know all about it. But so far nobody knew but Agnes, Hen and the new minister and he didn't seem inclined to speak about it. Not even to satisfy Nanny Ainslee's curiosity.
Once more Nanny was embarrassed and a little angry. She swung up her sunshade and started to go. This minister man with his ignorance of women and his knowledge of Hen's domestic affairs was, she told herself, a crazy, impossible creature and he could sit in his little grove on his little knoll till he died for all she cared. She'd take mighty good care never again to stray into his domain.
But just as she really got up speed the big chap under the oak stood up and spoke.
"Don't go, Nan."
The shock of hearing him say that stopped her and turned her sharply around, so that she looked straight at him and found him looking at her in a way that made the whole green world suddenly fade away into misty insignificance. Something about that look of his made her walk back.
But she trailed her sunshade a little defiantly and kept her eyes down carefully. She was a little frightened too. Because for the first time in her life she was conscious of her heart. She felt it beating queerly and almost audibly. With every step that she took back toward him she grew strangely happy and strangely angry.
He silently arranged a seat for her beside him and she sat down, folded her hands in her lap, looked off at the village roofs and waited.
He looked at her a long time. For Nanny was good to look at. Then he began to talk in an odd, quiet way as if they two were at home alone and the world was shut out and far away. And he told her the story of that locked drawer in Hen Tomlins' chiffonier.
That drawer and Hen's growing stubbornness, due no doubt to the gradual coming on of his serious illness, had very nearly been the death of poor, dictatorial Agnes Tomlins. She had always picked out Hen's shirts, bought his ties and ordered his suits and Hen had never rebelled openly. Nor did he, so far as she knew, ever dare to have a thought, a memory or a possession of which she was not fully informed.
But this last year Hen had become secretive, openly rebellious, strangely despondent, with now and then flashes of a very real and unpleasant temper. Agnes, baffled, curious, hurt, angry and afraid, had at last taken her burden to the boyish minister and then went in trembling triumph to Hen and told him what she had done.
"Yes," Hen told her quietly, "I know. He was in here when you went to the drug store and told me. He advised me to open that drawer and let you see what's in it. And I'll do it to please him. But I won't open it myself and he's the only one I'll let do it. So just you send for him. As long as you told him, I want him to see there's nothing in that drawer that I need to be ashamed of."
At this point in the story Cynthia's son paused and looked so long at the sun-splashed village roofs that.
Nan stirred impatiently.
"Well—what was it that Hen was guarding so carefully from Agnes?" she wanted to know.
"Oh—just odds and ends—mostly trifles. There was a dance programme, a black kid glove of his wife's, some letters from a chum that's dead, an old knife his grandfather once gave him when he was a boy, the last knit necktie his mother had made him and a box of toys, beautiful, hand-carved toys.
"It seems that the Tomlinses had a baby a long time ago and all the time they were expecting it Hen was carving it these beautiful toys. It was a boy and, lived to be a year old, just old enough to begin to play with things. Then it died. And nobody, it seems, knew how Hen missed that baby, not even his wife. But he had kept that box of toys in his tool shed all those years and in the last year had put it in the drawer with a few other treasures which he had had hidden in odd crannies without anybody suspecting. It was all he had, he said, that was his very own. And he showed me the handle of the little hammer where the baby's playing hands had soiled it."
It seems that Hen explained the other things too. The dance programme he saved because that was where he first knew that his wife cared about him. She had selected him for the lady's choice number. The other things Hen kept because they were given to him by people who had all sincerely liked him.
"You see," Hen had said, "nobody knows how hard it is to be a little man. Nobody respects you. Your folks always apologize and try to explain your size or tell you not to mind. And strangers and friends poke fun at you. After a while, of course, you learn to laugh at yourself on the outside and folks get to think that it's all a joke for you too and that you don't mind. But you never laugh on the inside or when you're by yourself. And you get awful tired of looking up to other people all the time and you begin to wish somebody'd look up to you once in a while.
"I used to think Aggie thought a heap of me even if I wasn't as tall as other men. Grandfather and mother and Bill Simons cared a whole lot and they didn't mind showing it often. I banked an awful lot on that baby. And he did sure like me. He followed me all around and minded me better than Aggie. It was me that always put him to bed and took him up in the morning. And he'd look up at me and raise his little hands to me and—"
Cynthia's son looked steadily at Nan.
"Do you want to hear any more?" he asked gently.
"No—no—I don't. Oh, you shouldn't have told me. I'm not good enough to be trusted with things like that," Nanny said brokenly and winked and winked her long lashes to shake off the tears.
"You wanted to be told. You were going away because I didn't want to tell you," he reminded her quietly.
"I know, but I'm just naturally spoiled and mean and wicked. But oh, won't I be nice to poor Hen Tomlins after this!"
"I'm going to have him take charge of a class in wood-carving as soon as we can get one together. He's a master hand at that sort of work and there are any number of boys in this town who will love it and look up to Hen," said the man who did not understand women. The sun was slipping low in the west, pouring a flood of mellow gold over the landscape. It caught the attic windows of the old brick farmhouse that was so nearly ready for its new and young owner.
"Look," exclaimed Nan, pointing down toward it, "there is fairy treasure in your attic."
"Yes," he smiled, "there is. There are trunks up there full of all manner of things that five generations of Churchills could not bear to burn or give away. Some day when the rain is drumming on the roof and the gutters are spouting and all the birds are tucked away in dripping trees and the world is misty with tears, I'm going up there and just revel in second-hand adventure, dead dreams and cobwebs."
"Oh, my gracious, how I'd like to be there too," enviously cried Nanny Ainslee and the next moment crimsoned angrily at herself.
"If you won't mind coming to my house in the rain," said the man who did not understand women—but Nanny wasn't listening. The setting sun flared into a last widespread glory that bathed every grass blade in Green Valley and in this strong and golden light Nan saw the 6:10 pulling in and Fanny Foster hurrying home. Jessup's delivery boy, driving back from his last trip, was larruping his horse and careful Ellen Nuby was taking in her clotheslines.
On the back porch of the Brownlee bungalow Jocelyn was shaking a white tablecloth, for the Brownlees had supper early. Jocelyn flapped and flapped, then folded the cloth neatly as she had seen Green Valley matrons do. That done, she waited.
David Allan was coming home over the hills with his team and Jocelyn was waiting till he came closer before she waved to him and greeted him. All Green Valley knew of these sunset greetings and approved.
So now Nan, with a smile of understanding sympathy, watched and waited too. She could almost see Jocelyn's happy, eager child face. David slowly drew nearer. But after one careless look at the little figure on the porch, his fine head drooped and he went on without a word and left Jocelyn standing there.
From her tree shelter Nan could see the little city girl standing very still, staring after David. Then slowly the little figure went down the steps and into the back garden. There it stood motionless again, staring into the fading sky as if seeking an explanation for David's strange conduct.
But up on the hilltop Nanny beat her hands softly and cried out in pain for Jocelyn. For Nanny knew her Green Valley and she knew that the story of Jocelyn's morning ride with the minister in the Bates' ancient carryall had already gone the rounds, even finding David in the furrows of the fields. And now the big boy was worried and wretched and perhaps angry at the little city girl whom he had so openly courted.
"Oh, dear!" Nanny began to speak her mind but stopped abruptly. For how could she tell this young man from India that he had that morning spoiled forever perhaps a lovely romance. She knew that he was innocent, as innocent as Jocelyn. And she knew that Green Valley meant no harm. It was nothing. And yet so often trouble, sorrow and heartache start in just that kind of nothingness. Out of playful little whirlwinds of careless laughter cruel storms are born.
When Cynthia's son turned to walk home with her Nanny waved him back and spoke curtly.
"My goodness—no! You mustn't. I never let anybody escort me about this foolish little town."
Then she hurried home alone and left John Knight standing on his hilltop.