Up on his wooded knoll Green Valley's young minister lay grieving and staring up into a gray unhappy sky, a sky choked with thick gray clouds that hung so low and were so full of sadness that even the little hills mourned and the Green Valley world all about lay hushed and penitent.
Summer was dead and everywhere tired winds moaned and sighed and sobbed and then grew suddenly still. The fine old trees were shriveled and weary, as if trying were no longer worth while. They craved sleep and peace—just rest. The gay grasses were dry and faded and when the little winds tried to rouse them they only rustled impatiently, dolefully and murmured, "Oh what's the use?"
The heart of Cynthia's son studied the low brooding sky, the dying world, listened to the wailing, mourning winds, the sighing of the grasses and it too said wearily, "Yes—what's the use of anything?"
What's the use of working and trying when the thing you want most to do you can't do. What's the use of longing when the thing you crave most can never again be given to you? What's the use of feeling big, eternal, divine, when you know that every day is dwarfed by your limitations, every friendship marred by your helplessness, every dream blurred by your ignorance? The sweetest things in life, Cynthia's son told himself with all the bitterness of youth, were memories and hopes. Memories of happy moments, hours perhaps, memories of perfect days and hopes of new days, new friends, new skies.
To-day all hope seemed dead, gone from the hillsides with the summer flowers. And the world was a sad and a lonely place. Cynthia's son had yet to learn that gray days are home days. That if it were not for gray skies there would be no low roofs gleaming through tree tops, no home fires glowing anywhere. Gray days are heart days, for it is then that the heart hungers for sympathy, for kinship. It is then that men draw together for comfort and cheer.
Cynthia's son never felt quite so alone in the world before—the last of his line. He was young and did not know what ailed him. So he lay heartsick and puzzled on his hill top and wished he had some one all his own to talk to.
There are things you can whistle to a robin, whisper to a tree friend or look into the heart of the sunset. There are problems you can argue out with a neighbor or solve with the help of a friend. But the heart has certain longings that you can share only with some one who is all your own and very, very dear.
It is hard to be the last of a line, Cynthia's son told himself bitterly, and in his loneliness he turned over and hid his face on his arm and let his homesick heart stray off across the seas to the land that for so long had been home to him, the land that held the dead hearts that had always robbed his gray days of all sadness.
He craved the hot sunshine, the brittle blue skies, the crowded little lanes full of filth and feet and eternal noise. Perhaps there in the old home he might find eyes that held a bit of the great love he longed for, a voice that had in it the hint of a caress, the note that would give him new courage, new hope.
No—he did not know what was the matter with him. All he knew was that summer was dead and that he had no one in all the world he could call his very own. He did not know that lying there he was really waiting for a step and a voice, a step that would stir the leaves with a joyous rustling, a voice that even on a gray day sounded gay and sunshiny. He had always liked Nan Ainslee's voice. Lately he had begun to notice other pleasant things about her. Last night, for instance, he had for the first time seen her hair, the beauty of her creamy throat and had really looked down into her laughing, wide eyes and forgotten all the world for a second or two. And the hand she gave him when she said good night was warm and full of a strange comfort. He had almost asked her to stay a while after the others left and sit beside his fire in a low chair and talk the party over with him.
The world was so still it seemed as if it waited with him. And then it came—that voice warm and gay.
"Hello—you here again?"
Then something about that head buried on that out-flung arm made her laugh softly, oddly, and say, "Isn't this a delicious, restful, dozy day? You'd better sit up and look at those shaggy gray clouds over yonder. Or are you listening to the little winds sighing out lullabies? I came here today to hear the world being hushed to sleep."
He heard and his heart jumped queerly. But he didn't raise his head until he was sure the homesick longing for some one all his own was gone from his eyes.
She had on a gray dress as soft as wood smoke. He caught flashes of flame color beneath the gray and at her breast fluttered a knot of scarlet silk. She looked like somebody's home fire, all fragrant smoke and golden flame and ruddy coals. Her eyes held the dancing lights, the visions and her voice had the tender warmth. She was the spirit of the day and the sight of her comforted his soul and filled his heart with content.
"I think it is a sad day," he said, "and I have been desperately lonely for India and my mother and father and all the little brothers and sisters and playmates that I never had. The only playmates I ever had were camels and missionaries and a few brown babies and two white hens."
He had not meant to talk in this grieving, childish fashion. But something about her brought his heart thoughts to his lips. And to-day he found no pleasure in looking down on the village roofs where Joe Tumley lay sick and miserable and Mary, his wife, wept and men and women talked and argued as he very well knew they were talking and arguing.
"What! No playmates? No boy friends—not even a dog?" Nan grieved with him.
"Oh, I had an Irish soldier's boy for two months once and a little brown dog for a week. Mother was always afraid of disease."
He could hardly believe that remembrance of these long-past things was in him. Yet he was suddenly remembering many old, old matters and with it came back the old, childish pain.
She sat down on the oak stump quite near him and there was more than pity in her eyes, only he did not see.
"Why," she advised gently, "you must have a dog at once. I can give you a wonderful collie and then on gray days you can bring him up here to your hill top or go tramping through woods and ravines with him. A dog is the finest kind of company for a gray day. And there is your attic. Why, I always spend hours in my attic these still, gentle days. I go up there to read old letters and look over old boxes full of queer keepsakes. I sit in a three-legged chair and sometimes, if I find an old coverless book and if the rain begins to drum softly on the shingles, I go to sleep on an ancient sagging sofa and dream great dreams. Haven't you ransacked that attic of yours yet?" she wanted to know.
"No. And the housekeeper insists on my doing it soon. Says that if I'm going to give Jimmy Trumbull that party I promised him I'd better have the barn and the attic all fixed up for it, because the boys wouldn't have any fun in the house and the house wouldn't stand it any better."
And then because neither one of them could think of anything else to say they were perfectly still there on the hill top. There seemed to be no need for speech. Nanny looked down at the little town and Cynthia's son lay contentedly at her feet, looking at her and rustling the dead leaves with an idle hand.
It might have become dangerous, that contented silence. For Nan at least was thinking. She was thinking how often she came to the hill top to visit with this man at her feet and how seldom he came to her door to visit with her. When he came it was not to see her but her father, her brother. With a sick shame Nanny thought how the sight of him, the sound of his voice, the very mention of his name made her heart fill with warm gladness. She loved him and he had no need of love—her love. She who had turned men away, men who were—
She rose suddenly. There was a kind of terror in her eyes and she locked her hands together to warm them, for they had suddenly grown icy cold.
"I must go," she murmured in real distress.
But he just looked up and put out his hand. And she sat down again and let her hand rest in his. And half her joy was pure misery. For she did not understand the ways of this strange, boyish man and she did not know what the end of such a friendship could be.
When those first angry drops pattered down on the leaves Nanny started up in alarm and would have raced for home. But he caught her quickly, slipped her cloak on, and before she had time to protest, they were running hand in hand down the hillside. Just as the full fury of the storm struck the house they banged the front door shut and stood panting and laughing in the hall.
It was very pleasant to sit by his fire and let the storm and the ruddy flames do the talking. But even as she sat and dreamed Nanny knew it would never do. Green Valley knew and loved her but that would not save her. So Nanny walked to the telephone and called up the one soul it was always safe to tell things to. And twenty minutes later Grandma Wentworth arrived.
It was while they sat talking in cozy comfort before the snapping fire that Cynthia's son suggested the attic.
"Mother told me once never to rummage through her old trunks unless Mary Wentworth was by to explain. So come along."
Grandma looked a little startled at that.
"We'll go," she said. "It's the finest kind of a day to go messing in an attic. But I'll step into the kitchen first and borrow two all-over aprons. My dress isn't new but Nan's is."
The old Churchill homestead was built in the days when folks believed reverently in attics. Not little cubby-holes under the roof but in generous, well-lighted, nicely-floored affairs that less reverent generations have turned into smoking dens, studios and ballrooms.
A properly kept attic in the olden days was no dark, musty-smelling, cobwebby affair. It was as neat in its way as the parlor and a hundred times more interesting. The parlor was a stiff room with stiff furniture and stiff family portraits. The attic was a big, natural room filled with mellow light, a vague hush and memories—memories of lost days, lost dreams, lost youth with its joys and hopes and sorrows.
People instinctively speak softly and reverently in an old-fashioned attic. Much of the irreverence of the young generation is due to the fact that men have stopped building the wide, deep fireplaces of old and the old-fashioned style of attic. When you take the family hearthstone and the prayer and memory closet out of a home you must expect irreverence.
There were plenty of wonderful attics in Green Valley, but not many were so crowded with colorful riches as the attic which Cynthia's son owned. When Cynthia was a girl that attic was generously stored. Cynthia's mother made her pilgrimages to it and added to its wealth of memories. Before Cynthia herself sailed away to far-off India she carried armfuls of her own heart treasures up there. One gray day, twenty gray days, could not exhaust this Green Valley attic.
Cynthia's son, being a man, went up heedlessly, even a little noisily, for attics were to him a new thing. Nan went breathlessly, her heart thumping with delight. She guessed that much joy and beauty and wonder lay stored in that great room. Grandma went up slowly and a little tremblingly. She remembered that the very last time she had climbed those attic stairs Cynthia had been with her. Their arms had been full of treasure and their eyes had been full of tears.
The three now had no sooner reached the last step than the attic laid its mystic hush upon them. They stood still and looked about, each somehow waiting for one of the others to speak. It was Grandma who broke the silence softly:
"You had some of the old furniture moved there in the corner but the rest is just as it was forty years ago—when I was here last."
Grandma knew the history of pretty near everything in sight and they followed her about, looking and listening. Somehow there was at first no desire to touch and handle things. But soon the strange charm of an old attic stole over them and they began to look more closely at things, to exclaim over weird relics, to touch old books and quaint garments. Then as the wonders multiplied and the rain drummed steadily on the roof, time and the world without was forgotten and the three became absorbed in the past.
When first she had looked about her Grandma's eyes had searched for a certain trunk, and when at last she spied it something like an old grief clouded her eyes. But as she peered about and began pulling things out to the light she forgot the trunk with the brass nailheads. She laughed when she came across the crinoline hoops and the droll little velvet bonnets.
"Here are your great-grandmother's crinolines, John. My! The times we girls had playing with these things, for even in our day they were old-fashioned. And this little velvet hat I remember Cynthia wore once to an old-time social and took a prize."
Over in another corner Nan was making discoveries.
"My conscience—look at this!" she suddenly cried. "Here's an etching, a genuine etching, a beautiful thing and all covered with dust. Why, the one I bought for a hundred and fifty dollars in Holland last year isn't half as good. Why, whoever had it put up here?"
From the other side of the huge room Cynthia's son wanted to know if an old grandfather's clock couldn't be mended.
"Why, it must be as old as the hills. It has a copy of Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac pasted on the back. It—why, it's an heirloom and I'm going to get it patched up."
"That clock used to tick in the up-stairs hall forty years ago—I remember—" Grandma stopped as if a sudden thought had struck her. She dropped an old faded lamp mat and a rag rug and came over to look at the face of what had been an old friend. Many and many a time its mellow booming of the hours had cut short a lengthy, merry conference in Cynthia's room and sent her scurrying home to her waiting tasks.
"John," whispered Grandma with sudden intuition, "I don't believe there's anything the matter with that clock. It was stopped—they said your grandfather stopped it after your mother left for India. I used to watch him wind it—here, let me at it. Yes," triumphantly, "here's the key."
Grandma's hands shook noticeably and her lips trembled as she wound it. And when it began to whir and then settled down to its clear even tick Grandma just sat down and cried a bit.
"I can't help it," she explained as she wiped her eyes, "that clock knows me as well as I know its face. Why, many a time Cynthia and I'd sit right where we could look at it—while we were telling each other foolish little happenings—so's we wouldn't talk too long."
Grandma went back to where she had left that faded lamp mat but she knew what was about to happen in that attic that day. She picked up one thing after another but she no longer saw what it was her hands were holding. For above the steady patter of the rain she could hear the old clock ticking. And to her, knowing what she did, it seemed to say:
"Tell him—tell—him—Cynthia wants you to tell him."
So she just sat down in an old chair and waited for Cynthia's son to find that square trunk with the brass nail-heads. She tried to read something in some faded yellow fashion papers but the letters jumped and blurred. And she was glad to hear the boy's shout of discovery.
"Why, here's that trunk mother must have meant! Come over here, Grandma, and look at it."
She went and sat down and was so quiet that Nanny, who had been looking up from the pictures she was dusting, laid them down and came over to watch too. Something about Grandma's drooping head and folded hands must have touched the boy, for as he turned the key in the lock he looked up and asked a question.
"Do you know what's in it, Grandma?"
"Yes," she nodded, "I know what's in it because I helped fill it. Open it carefully."
So the boy raised the lid slowly. Very carefully he removed the old newspapers, then the soft linen sheet and took out a flat bundle that lay on top, all snugly pinned up. Nan helped take out the pins, then gave a smothered cry at the lovely wedding gown of stiff creamy satin.
In silence the other things were brought out. The lacy bridal veil, the little buckled slippers, the full, filmy petticoats and all the soft white ribbony things that it is the right of every bride to have. Down at the very bottom of the trunk were bundles of letters, some faded photographs and a little jewel box in which was a little silver forget-me-not ring.
Grandma put out her hand for the faded photographs, stared at them, then passed one to Cynthia's son.
"Look closely and see if you can guess who it is?"
He took it to a window and looked long at the pictured face but finally shook his head.
"Give it to Nan," directed Grandma.
Nan looked only a second.
"Why, it's Uncle Roger Allan!"
"Yes—it's Roger Allan."
"But what has—" began Cynthia's son, when Grandma interrupted him.
"You'd better both sit down to hear this," she suggested. "Of course, I knew, John, the very first week you were home, that your mother never told you about this trunk. I can see why and I agree with her. In the first place it all happened nearly forty years ago. Then she couldn't be sure that the trunk was still here. It wasn't altogether her story to tell. She knew you were coming home to Green Valley and she didn't want to prejudice you in any way. She knew that if you learned to know Green Valley folks first you'd understand everything better when you did find out. I'm glad to have the telling of it. I'm glad to do her that service and, after all, it's my story as much as hers.
"We were great friends—Cynthia and I—dearer than sisters and inseparable. Our friendship began in pinafore days. We weren't the least bit alike in a worldly way. Cynthia was pretty—oh, ever so pretty—and rich. I was what everybody calls a very sensible girl, respectable but poor. But what we looked like or what we had never bothered us. In those days the town was smaller and playmates were scarcer. When we boys and girls wanted any real interesting games we had to get together.
"The two boys at our end of town who were the nicest were Roger Allan and Dick Wentworth. They did everything together, same as Cynthia and I. It was natural, I suppose, that we four should sort of grow up together, and that having grown up we should pair off—Cynthia and Roger, Dick and I.
"We went through all the stages until we got to the forget-me-not rings and our wedding dresses. The boys were very happy the day they put those rings on our fingers and we were—oh, so proud! It hurts to this day to remember. I think Cynthia and I were about the happiest girls life ever smiled at. Only one thing troubled us.
"In those days Cynthia's father owned the hotel. That meant then mostly a barroom. Of course, he himself was never seen there unless there were special guests staying over night. It was a lively place, almost the only really lively place in town. I suppose men had more time then and prohibition was something even the most worried and heartbroken drunkard's wife smiled about unbelievingly. Men had always had their liquor and of course they always would. Women's business was to cry a bit, pray a great deal and be patient. As I said, all men drank in those days and the woman didn't live that hadn't or didn't expect to see her father, sweetheart, husband or son drunk sometime. We all hoped we wouldn't but we all dreaded it. We heard tell of a man somewhere near Elmwood who never drank a drop but he didn't seem real. Our mothers, I expect, got to feel that drunkenness was God's will and the drink habit the same as smallpox or yellow fever. It was sent to be endured. We all felt that there was something wrong somewhere and a terrible injustice put on us but we didn't know what to do about it and so we all tried to learn to be cheerful and like our men in spite of their shortcomings.
"But one woman in this town was an out-and-out prohibitionist. She was Cynthia's mother. She came from some odd sort of a settlement in the East and Cynthia's father used to laugh and say he stole her. And I think he did. She was so lovely and sweet and had such strange notions of right and wrong. But for all her sweetness she was firm. And she set her face sternly and publicly against drink. It was the only thing, people said, about which Joshua Churchill and his wife Abby ever disagreed. Though she didn't convince him still she went to her grave without ever seeing her husband drunk.
"And her girl, Cynthia, swore that she would do the same. For Cynthy was just like her mother and as full of strange notions of right.
"Well, it was bound to happen. The wonder of it is it didn't happen before. I think I always knew that Dick and Roger drank a little sometimes with the other boys. But Cynthia never thought about it, I guess. She was an only child and guarded from everything and she supposed every man was like her father. And, anyhow, she was too happy to think of trouble. Dick and Roger were considered two of the best boys in town. There were stories now and then of Roger's mad doings but they never got to Cynthia, and if they had she would have just laughed, I expect, so sure was she that her boy was all she thought him.
"I was to be married one week and Cynthy the next. We had our wedding things ready. And my wedding day came. Cynthy was bridesmaid and Roger was best man and everything went off beautifully until the dance in the evening. Dick and I were too poor to take a wedding trip so we had a dance instead.
"And then came the tragedy. Some of the older men did it. They didn't stop to think. But they meant no real harm. In those days it was considered funny to get another man drunk. But they didn't know Cynthia's strange heart. They brought drink, more than was at all necessary and—and—all I remember of my wedding night is standing in the moonlight, holding on to Cynthia and crying miserably. I knew it would come sometime but I never dreamed it would come to hurt me then.
"But Cynthy didn't cry. She never said a word—only her whole little body seemed turned to ice. She smiled and helped us to get through with things as best we could but the smiles slipped like dull beads from her lips instead of rippling like waves of sunshine over her face.
"I had been crying for myself, over my boy, but when I saw how Cynthy took her trouble I saw that she was hurt far worse than I. But I never dreamed that things could not be mended, that she would take back her wedding day. But that's what she did.
"She refused to see Roger. Her father pleaded with her, even her mother begged her to think; the wedding was all planned, everything prepared; relatives from a distance had already started. But Cynthia never stopped smiling and shaking her head. Roger was frantic and begged me to come with him, to make her listen. I went and Dick went with me.
"When Cynthy saw me she let us in. Her father and mother and two aunts came in when they heard us. In the midst of these people Roger and Cynthy stood looking at each other with death in their eyes. They didn't seem to know anybody was there.
"'Cynthy—I love you—I love you,' Roger begged.
"'I know, Dear Boy, I know!' she cried back to him.
"'Forgive—my God, Cynthy, forgive.'
"'I do.'
"'Marry me.'
"'Oh, I want to—oh, I want to marry you,' sobbed poor Cynthy.
"'Then marry me. I'm not good enough—but I know no other man who is.'
"'Oh—Roger—Roger—you are good enough for me—you are good enough forme. But you are not good enough for my children. You are not good enough to be the father of my son.'
"I think we all knew then that it was useless. There was no answer and we were too startled to say anything. Roger grew white and the strength seemed to leave his body. His eyes filled with horror and fright.
"'Cynthy, sweetheart—' he moaned and she flew to comfort him. She let him hold her and kiss her. Then she drew his head down and kissed his hair, his eyes, his lips. She laid his hands against her cold white cheeks, then crushed them to her lips and fled.
"Roger never saw her again.
"She went away and was gone a long time. I got letters every now and then from out-of-the-way places.
"For five years I was happy. It was hard to live without Cynthy. But Roger had left town and Dick was good to me. I knew that the shock of Roger's tragedy had kept him from touching anything those five years. But as time passed and memories faded I grew afraid once more. Dick was no drinking man but everybody drank a little then, even the women. Men joked about it and the women, poor souls, tried to. Well—just five years almost to a day they brought him home to me—dead. He had had a few drinks—the first since our marriage. He was driving an ugly horse—and it happened.
"Some way Cynthia heard and she came home to comfort me. I think that when she stood with me beside Dick's grave she was glad she had done what she had done and felt a kind of peace. Roger was still gone but it would not have mattered. It was then that we carried these wedding things up here and locked them in this old square trunk with the brass nail-heads. And we thought that life for us both was over.
"Cynthy's father was glad to have her home. He sold the hotel and never went near it. He tried in every way to make up to Cynthy and his wife. For Cynthy's mother grieved about it all long after Cynthy had learned to smile again. And that nearly killed Cynthy's father. Some folks claimed it really did worry Mrs. Churchill to death, for she died the spring after Dick was buried.
"After that Cynthia took her father traveling, for he was very nearly heartbroken over his wife's death. It was somewhere in England that they met your father, John. Of course, I can understand how a man like your father must have loved Cynthy on sight. But she never could understand it. She thought she was all through with love. She wrote and told me how she had explained all about Roger and how he had said it made him love her all the more. She tried to fight him but strong men are hard to deny. He had a hard time of it, I imagine, but he won her at last and took her away to India. She wrote me when you were born and for some years after, but toward the end, when she was sick so much, I think my letters made her homesick.
"Roger came back. His stepsister got into trouble and died, leaving little David. Roger took him and raised him in memory of the son he knew he might have had. When he found Cynthia was married he had that stone put in the cemetery. He explained the idea to me.
"'The girl, Cynthia, was mine and I killed her. She is dead and it is to the memory of her sweetness that I have erected that stone. The woman, Cynthia, is another man's wife.'
"So that, then, is the history of that trunk. The thing, John, that is killing little Jim Tumley is the thing that worried your grandmother to death, nearly broke your mother's heart and certainly embittered her youth, that sent your grandfather into exile and made a widow of me. It robbed Roger Allan of the only woman he could love.
"Since that day a great many of us have learned to fight it. And there are now any number of men in Green Valley who are opposed to it and who even vote the prohibition ticket. But Green Valley is still far from understanding that until the weakest among us is protected none of us are safe.
"Some day perhaps the women will cease worrying. But before that day comes many here will pay the price. And it is usually the innocent who pay. Now let's put these memories back before they tucker me out completely."
Cynthia's son stood spellbound. He stared at the faded pictures and the little silver ring. Nan was pinning up the wedding dress and weeping openly and unashamed. It was the sight of her quiet tears that brought him back to earth.
"Oh—Nan—don't. Don't grieve about this evil thing. We're going to fight it and fight it hard. We shall save Jim Tumley yet and purify Green Valley."
When Nan got back home she went up to her room and looked down to where Cynthia Churchill's old home glowed among its autumn-tattered trees.
"What a woman! What a mother! And he is her son!"
She stood a long time at her window, then turned away with a little sigh.
"I am not made of heroic stuff. But I shall see to it that my son need never be ashamed of his mother. If one woman could fight love so can another."
When Grandma was taking off her rubbers in her little storm-shed she smiled and fretted:
"Dear me, Cynthy, that boy of yours is as innocent right now as you were in the olden days. He—why, he just doesn't know anything!"
After the last bit of glory has faded from the autumn woods and the first snowfall comes to cover the tired fields, Green Valley, all snugly housed and winter proof, settles down to solid comfort and careful preparation for the two great winter festivals—Thanksgiving and Christmas.
The question of whether the Thanksgiving dinner is to be eaten at home or whether "we're going away for Thanksgiving" has in all probability been settled long ago. For in Green Valley Thanksgiving invitations begin to be exchanged and sent out to distant parts as early as July. That is, of course, if the matter of who's to go where had not already been settled the Thanksgiving before. In some families the last rite of each Thanksgiving feast is to discuss this question and settle it then and there for the following year. Conservative and clannish families who live far enough apart so that little quarrels can not be born among them to upset this fixed yearly programme usually do this.
The greater part of Green Valley however leaves itself absolutely free until some time in August. By that time though, the heat is so intense that stout, collarless men in shirt sleeves, in searching about for some relief, think gratefully of Thanksgiving and snowdrifts and ask their wives whom they are planning to have for Thanksgiving.
"Why," may be the answer, "I hadn't thought of it yet. But I rather think Aunt Eleanor expects us this year."
"Well," answers the husband, "all right. Only if you decide to go, don't forget to take along some of your own pumpkin pies. Your Aunt Eleanor's never quite suit me. I like considerable ginger in my pumpkin pies."
Another husband may say, "No, sir! Not on your life are we going to Jim's for Thanksgiving. That wife of his is much too young to know how to make just the right kind of turkey dressing. And I'm too old to take chances on things like that now. Those pretty brides are apt to get so excited over their lace table doilies that they forget to put in the sage or onions and there you are—one whole Thanksgiving Day and a turkey spoiled forever. No, sir—count me out!"
Sometimes wives say, "We've been invited to three places, Jemmy, but let's stay home. When we go out I always get white meat and I hate it. And I like my cranberries hulls and all instead of just jell."
It is just such little human likes and notions that finally decide the matter. And so it was this year.
Sam Bobbins' eldest sister was having Sam and his wife "because Sam's spent so much money for his fighting roosters that he ain't got money for a Thanksgiving turkey."
Dolly Beatty's mother was having Charlie Peters for Thanksgiving dinner and all the immediate relatives to pass judgment on him. He had proposed and Dolly had accepted but no announcement was to be made until all the Beattys and Dundrys had had their say.
Frank Burton and Jenny were going by train to Jennie's rich and haughty and painfully religious aunt in Cedar Point. All Jennie's sisters, even the one from Vermont, were to be there and Jennie did want to go to visit with the girls. She and Frank had never been invited to any semi-religious festival by this aunt, owing to Frank's atheistic tendencies.
But the haughty and religious dame had heard rumors and was curious.
"I'll go for your sake, Jennie. But she'll be disappointed. Maybe I'd better shave my mustache so's to let her see some change in me."
Of course everybody who had a grandmother in the country was going to grandma's and early Thanksgiving morning teams were arriving for the various batches of grandchildren.
That was the only fault one could find with a Green Valley Thanksgiving—that so many went away to spend the day.
But with Christmas it was different. Christmas in Green Valley was a home day. The town was full of visitors and sleigh bells and merry calls and walking couples. Everybody was waving Christmas presents or wearing them. For Green Valley believed in Christmas presents. Not the kind that make people he awake nights hating Christmas and that call for "do your shopping early" signs. But the old-fashioned kind of presents that are not stained with hate or worry or debt.
The giving of Christmas presents was the pleasantest kind of a game in Green Valley. Of course everybody knew everybody's needs so well that weeks before the gifts, wrapped in tissue paper, lay waiting in a trunk up in the attic. And as a general thing everybody was happy over what they got. No present cost much money but oh, what a world of thought and love and fun went into it. Nor was it hard for Green Valley folks to decide what to give.
When Dell Parsons saw her dearest friend admiring her asparagus fern she divided it in the fall and tended it carefully and sent it to Nan Turner on Christmas morning.
When folks found out that some time next spring Alice Sears might have a baby to dress they sent her ever so many lovely, soft little things so she would not have to worry or grieve because her first baby could not have its share of pretties.
As soon as Green Valley knew that Jocelyn Brownlee was engaged it sent her a tried and true poor-man's-wife cookbook, big gingham aprons, holders to keep her from burning her hands and samples of their best jellies, pickles and preserves.
And such a time as Green Valley grandmothers had weaving, knitting and crocheting beautiful rag rugs to match blue and white bathrooms, yellow and green kitchens, pink and cream bedrooms. And every year there was a large crop of home knitted mittens that Green Valley girls and boys wore with pride and comfort. No city pair of gloves ever equaled grandma's knitted ones that went very nearly to the elbow and were the only thing for skating and coasting.
Christmas was the time too when dreams came true. Fanny Foster knew this when Christmas morning she opened a parcel and found a beautiful silk petticoat. No card came with it but Fanny knew.
Hen Tomlins had a baby boy for his best Christmas gift. Agnes had always opposed all talk of adopting a baby, but this year that was her gift to Hen. And they were all happy about it.
Of course, even in Green Valley a certain amount of foolishness prevailed. Everybody smiled when a week before Christmas Jessie Williams said she had all her presents ready but Arthur's; that she was waiting for the next pay day to get his; that she believed she'd get him a new pink silk lamp shade but she knew beforehand he wouldn't be pleased and would only say that he wished to heaven she'd let him have the money.
Lutie Barlow was badly disappointed with the hundred and fifty dollar victrola her husband bought her. She said she wanted a red cow to match her Rhode Island Reds.
Perhaps no one in Green Valley was so generously remembered as the young minister. But though every one of the many gifts that came pleased him he was strangely unhappy and restless. Invitations as usual had poured in on him but he had chosen to spend the day with Grandma Wentworth. And yet, though he was glad to be with her, his thoughts strayed off to a certain gray day in the fall when he ran down a hill with a girl's hand in his. He remembered the surge of joy that had rushed through him when he got her safely into his storm-proof house and banged shut the door on the stormy world without.
He thought of the hour they spent in silence before the fire that roared exultantly as the storm tore with angry fingers at the doors and windows. That, he now felt, was the most perfect hour of his life.
His mind was struggling to understand these memories, these strange new emotions. He had a queer feeling that something wonderful was waiting just outside his reach, something was waiting for his recognition.
He was standing in Grandma Wentworth's dining room, looking out the window at the winter landscape. Grandma was in the kitchen seeing to the dinner, for she was to have quite a party—Roger and David, Mrs. Brownlee and Jocelyn, Cynthia's son and his man Timothy.
Idly Cynthia's son watched the rest of the party coming through the little path that led to Grandma's door. He saw them all plainly through the curtains and plants that screened him. Jocelyn and David came last. David made a great to-do about stamping the snow off his feet, taking pains to stand between Jocelyn and the door. Then, just as Jocelyn was about to slip past him, the minister saw David reach out and sweep the girl into his arms. And Cynthia's son could not help but see the glory in the boy's eyes as the girl's wild-rose face turned up to meet her lover's kiss.
For blind seconds John Roger Churchill Knight crashed through space. And then the next minute he was living in a shining world that was all roses and skylarks and dew. He laughed, for all at once he knew what ailed him; he knew that the wonderful, tantalizing something that had so steadily eluded him, tormented him was—just Nan, the girl of the gray day, the log fire and the storm.
He was the maddest, gladdest man in all Green Valley that day until he remembered that he had sent Nan no gift, not even a greeting or a word of thanks for the beautiful collie dog she had sent him. He stood in horrified amazement at his stupidity. Jocelyn had been showing them her new ring. And Nan, his sweetheart, had not even a Christmas card.
Cynthia's son went to the telephone but even as he raised the receiver he somehow guessed what the answer would be.
Nan's father answered.
"Why, John, she left on that 1:10 for Scranton, Pennsylvania. It's the first fool thing I have ever known her to do. Stayed right here till she'd given us our Christmas gifts and dinner and then off she went to see this old aunt in Scranton. Why, yes—you can send a telegram. She'll get it when she arrives."
So it happened that when a tired, homesick, wretched girl reached her aunt's house in Scranton, Pennsylvania, she found the one gift for which her heart had cried all that long, long Christmas day. It was just a bit of yellow paper that said:
"oh gray day girl don't stay too long thefire is singing your chair is waiting and I haveso much to tell you come home and forgive."
Nobody had asked Fanny to be a member of the Civic League but she was its most energetic promoter, its most zealous advocate. Never had she had such a cold weather opportunity.
Fanny hated cold weather. It shut people up in houses, shut their mouths, their purses, their laughter. It made life grim and rather gray. Fanny loved sunshine and open sunny roads. She tried to do her duty in winter as well as in summer but when the weather drops to ten or twenty below the sunniest of natures is bound to feel it.
But this winter Green Valley women were so stirred and roused that they thought of other things beside the price of coal and sugar and yarn. The short winter days fairly flew. The Civic League was young but already it was laying out an ambitious spring programme. No mere man was a member but all the men had to do was to show a little attention to Fanny Foster to know what was going on.
"We're going to set up a drinking fountain in the business square," Fanny explained. "The men of this town have the hotel but the horses never did have a decent trough of clean water. And we're going to have a little low place fixed so's the dogs can get a drink too. This is to prevent hydrophobia.
"We've already started the boys to building bird houses so's to have them ready to put up the first thing in the spring. There'll be less killing of song birds with sling-shots, though of course there's never been much of that done in Green Valley.
"Then that crossing at West End is going to be attended to. There's been enough rubbers lost in that mudhole to about fill it, so it won't take much to fill it up. We're going to have a little bridge built over that ditch on Lane Avenue so's we women don't dislocate our joints jumping over it. But first the ditch is going to be deepened and cleaned so's it won't smell so unhealthy. When that's done the ladies aim to plant wild flowers along it, careless like, to make it look as if God had made it instead of lazy men.
"We're going to suggest that all buildings in the business section put out window boxes. We'll furnish the flowers. It will give a distinctive note of beauty to the town." Fanny was carefully quoting Mrs. Brownlee.
"Billy Evans' wife promised to see to it that Billy painted the livery barn and there's a delegation of ladies appointed to wait on Mert Hagley and see if we can't get him to mend his sheds. They're so lopsided and rickety that Mrs. Brownlee says they're an eyesore and a menace to public safety.
"There's another delegation that's going to ask the saloon keeper to keep the basement door shut when the trains come in so's to keep that beery and whisky smell out of the streets as much as possible while maybe visitors are walking about.
"We're going to send a special committee to see what the railroad will do about fixing up this old station or, better still, giving us a new one and beautifying its grounds.
"We're planning to see Colonel Stratton about starting up a club for the preservation of our wild flowers and Doc Philipps is to have charge of a fight on the moths and things that are eating and killing our fruit trees.
"The school buildings will be investigated and conditions noted. Doc Philipps says that if the heating plant and ventilation and light was tended to we wouldn't have so much sickness among the children or so many needing glasses.
"As soon as spring really comes the Woman's Civic League is going to start up a clean-up campaign. Of course, Green Valley never was a dirty town. Everybody likes to have their yard nice but there's considerable old faded newspaper and rusty tin cans lying along the roads farther out and in unnoticed corners that nobody's felt responsible for. That will all be attended to. We'll have no filth, no germs, no ugliness anywhere, Mrs. Brownlee says.
"And I've been appointed a committee of one to wait on Seth Curtis and call his attention to the careless way he leaves his horses standing about the town. Those horses are dangerous and getting uglier in temper every day. And Seth is just as bad."
This was only too true. Seth had grown bitter and even reckless of late. Ever since his quarrel with Ruth about Jim Tumley Seth had been boiling with temper. Old poisons that had spoiled his life in many ways and that he thought he had conquered crept back to tyrannize over him. Poor Seth had had so much discipline in his youth that the least hint of pressure threw him into a state of vicious rebellion. Seth had a fine mind, could think quicker and straighter to the point than a good many Green Valley men. But when that mind was clouded with anger and stubbornness Seth was a hopeless proposition. Ruth was his one star and even she, Seth felt, had set herself against him.
So Seth, who seldom had frequented the hotel, was there almost every day now when he should have been working. He even drank more than before. Not that he cared more for it but it was his way of showing independence.
So Seth was very ugly these days and his horses suffered as they had never suffered before. They too were growing ugly and vicious and so nervous that the least noise, the least stir, sent them into a quivering frenzy of fright.
Every one in Green Valley knew this and not a few men and women were worrying. Several men were making up their minds to speak sharply to Seth about it. But everybody smiled and even felt relieved when they heard that Fanny had offered her services to the Civic League in this capacity. Green Valley knew Seth and knew Fanny Foster. Fanny would most certainly tell Seth about it. And everybody knew just how mad Seth would get. Fanny would not of course accomplish much. But she would open up the subject, suffer the first violence of Seth's anger and so make it easier for some more competent person to take Seth to task and force him to be reasonable.
The minister had spoken to Seth long ago but though Seth listened quietly to the quiet words of the one man he had come to love in his queer fashion, he had set his jaw grimly at the end and said, "No, sir! I've made up my mind not to stand this interference with my personal liberty and God Himself can't budge me!"
"Yes, He can, Seth. But don't let it go that far," Cynthia's son had begged.
Now all Green Valley was waiting to see Fanny tackle Seth in the name of the Civic League. It would be funny, everybody said.
Fanny did it one sunny afternoon in early spring when the streets were gay with folks all out to taste the first bit of gladness in the air. Fanny did it in her usual lengthy and thorough manner and permitted no interruptions. She was talking for the first time in her life with authority vested in her by a civic body. So there was a strength and a conscientiousness about her remarks that struck home.
Seth was standing alone on the hotel steps when Fanny began talking but all of Green Valley that was abroad was gathered laughingly about her when she finished and stood waiting for Seth's answer.
Seth had had a glass too much or he would never have done, never have said what he did and said that day. He would never have taken poor, harmless, laughter-loving, happy-go-lucky Fanny Foster, who had never done a mean, malicious thing in her life, who had let her world use her for all the little hateful tasks that nobody else would do and in which there was no thanks or any glory,—Seth in his senses would never have held up this dear though unfinished soul to the scorn, the pitiless ridicule of her townsmen.
If Fanny had been touched with fire and eloquence because she spoke with authority, Seth too talked with a bitter brilliance that won the crowd and held it against its will. With biting sarcasm and horrible accuracy Seth drew a picture of Fanny as made Green Valley smile and laugh before it could catch itself and realize the cruelty of its laughter.
Fanny stood at the foot of the wide flight of stairs like a criminal at the bar. As Seth's words grew more biting, his judgments more cruel, Fanny's face flushed with shame, then faded white with pain.
But Seth went too far. He went so far that he couldn't stop himself. And the crowd who had gathered to hear a little harmless fun now stood petrified and heartsick. No one stirred, though everybody was wishing themselves miles away. And Seth's voice, dripping with cruelty, went on.
Then all at once from the heart of the crowd a little figure pushed its way. It was Seth's wife, Ruth. She walked halfway up that flight of stairs and looked steadily at her husband. Seth stopped in the middle of a word.
"Seth Curtis," Ruth's face was as white as Fanny's and her voice rang out like a silver bell, "Seth Curtis, you will apologize, ask forgiveness of Fanny Foster, who is my friend and an old schoolmate, or before God and these people I will disown you as my husband and the father of my children. Fanny Foster never had an apple or a goody in her lunch in the old school days that she didn't share it with somebody. She has never had a dollar or a joy that she hasn't divided. No one in Green Valley ever had a pain or a sorrow that she did not make it hers and try to help in some way. And in all the world there can be no more willing hands than hers."
The silver voice stopped, choked with sobs, and Ruth's eyes, looking down on the shrunken, bowed figure of Green Valley's gossip, brimmed over with tears.
Seth, sober now, stared at his wife, at the broken, crushed Fanny, at the crowd that stood waiting in still misery.
Ruth walked down to Fanny and flung her arms about her. Fanny patted her friend's shoulder softly and tried to comfort not herself but Ruth. "There, there, Ruthie, don't, don't take on so. Remember, you're nursing a baby and it might make him sick. It's all right, everything's all right. Only," Fanny's voice was dull and colorless and she never once raised her head, "only I wish John wouldn't hear of this. I've been such a disappointment to John without—this."
Though she spoke only to Ruth everybody heard. It was the first and only favor Fanny Foster had ever asked of Green Valley. And Green Valley, as it watched Ruth lead her away, swore that if possible John should not hear.
But John did hear three days later. And then the quiet man whose patience had made people think him a fool let loose the stored-up bitterness of years. He who in the beginning should and could have saved his girl wife with love and firmness now judged and rejected her with the terrible wrath, the cold merciless justice of a man slow to anger or to judge.
It was springtime and Grandma, sitting in her kitchen, heard and wept for Fanny. The windows at the Foster house were open and John talked for all the world to hear. His name had been dragged through the gutter and he was past caring for appearances. Grandma writhed under the words that were more cruel than a lash. At the end John Foster swore that so long as he lived he would never speak to Fanny. And Grandma shivered, for she knew John Foster.
For days not even Grandma saw Fanny. Then she saw her washing windows, scrubbing the porch steps, hanging up clothes. There came from the Foster house the whir of a sewing machine, the fragrant smell of fresh bread. The children came out with faces shining as the morning, hair as smooth as silk, shoes polished. And Grandma knew that if John Foster found a speck of dirt in his house he would have to look for it with a microscope. But there was a kind of horror in the eyes of Fanny's children. They didn't play any more or run away but of their own accord stayed home to fetch and carry for the strange mother who was now always there, who never sang, never spoke harshly to them, who worked bitterly from morning till night.
Every spring Fanny Foster used to flit through Green Valley streets like a chattering blue-jay. But now nobody saw her, only now and then at night, slinking along through the dark. And many a kindly heart ached for her, remembering how Fanny loved the sunshine and laughter.
But at last the spring grew too wonderful to resist. Even Fanny's numb heart and flayed spirit was warmed with the golden heat. She had some money that she wanted to deposit in the bank for John. For Fanny was saving now as only Fanny knew how when she set her mind to it. And she had set not only her mind but her very soul on making good. Every cruel taunt had left a ghastly wound and only work of the hardest kind could ease the hurt.
Fanny walked through the streets as though she had just recovered from a long illness. Everybody who saw her hurried out to greet her and talk but she only smiled in a pitiful sort of way and hastened on. It was nearly noon and she wanted to avoid the midday bustle and the crowds of children. She had set out the children's dinner but she hoped to get back before they reached home.
She came out of the bank and stood on the bank steps. She looked down the streets. Nobody was about and so against her will her eyes turned to the spot where she had been so pitilessly pilloried a month before.
As then, Seth's team was standing in front of the hotel. Little Billy Evans was climbing into the big wagon. She watched the child in a kind of stupor. She knew he ought not to do that. Seth's horses were not safe for a grown-up, much less a child. She wondered where Seth was or Billy Evans or Hank. She wondered if she'd better have them telephone to Billy from the bank and have him get little Billy. She half turned to do that and then out of the hotel door Jim Tumley came reeling and singing. Only his voice was a maudlin screech. Little Billy had by this time gotten into the wagon, pulled the whip from its socket, and just as Jim came staggering up, touched the more nervous of the two horses with it. And then it happened—what Green Valley had been dreading for months.
When men heard the commotion and turned to look they saw Seth's horses tearing madly round the hotel corner. Little Billy Evans was rattling around in the wagon box like a cork on the water and Fanny Foster, swaying like a reed, was hanging desperately to the horses' heads.
Hank Lolly was pitching hay into the barn loft. He saw, jumped and then lay still with a broken leg. Seth saw and Billy Evans and scores of other men, and they all ran madly to help. But the terrified animals waited for no man. And then from the throats of the running crowd a groan broke, for the school doors opened and into the spring sunshine and the arms of certain death the little first and second graders came dancing.
The school building hid the danger from the children and they did not comprehend the hoarse shouts of warning. But Fanny heard, heard the childish laughter and the screams of horror. She knew those horses must not turn that corner. Her feet swung against the shafts. Her heel caught for a minute and she jerked with all her might. The mad creatures swerved and dashed themselves and her against a telegraph pole.
When they picked up little Billy and Fanny they were both unconscious. One of Billy's little arms was broken, so violently had he been flung about and against the iron bars of the scat. Fanny's injuries were more serious.
They took her home to her spotless house with the children's dinner set out on the red tablecloth in the kitchen. The pussy willows the children had brought her the day before were in a vase in the center. Her husband came home and spoke to her but she neither saw him nor heard. They gave him a blood-stained bank book with his name on it.
And so she lay for days and sometimes Doc Philipps thought she would live and at other times he was sure she couldn't; but if she lived he knew that she would never again flit like vagrant sunshine through Green Valley streets. She would spend the rest of her days in a wheel chair or on crutches.
When they got courage finally to tell her, Fanny only smiled and said nothing. But she ate less and smiled more and steadily grew weaker and weaker and as steadily refused to see her husband.
"No," she said quietly, "there's nothing I want to see John about and there's nothing for him to see me about any more. I guess," she smiled at the gruff old doctor, "you're about the only man I can stand the sight of or who would put up with me."
"Fanny," Doc Philipps told her, "if you don't buck up and get well, if you die on my hands, it will be the first mean thing you ever did."
"Oh, well—it would be the last," laughed Fanny.
"Fanny, don't you know that Seth Curtis and nearly all the town comes here at least once a day? How do you suppose John and Seth and the rest of us will feel if you just quit and go?"
And then in bitterness of heart Fanny answered.
"Oh, I'm tired of living, of being snubbed and made fun of. I'm past caring how anybody else will feel. I tell you I'm a misfit. God never took pains to finish me. I've been a miserable failure, no good to anybody. My children will be better off without me. John said so."
"My God!" groaned the old doctor, "did John say that?" He knew now that no medicine that he could give, no skill of his would mend a heart bruised like that.
"Yes—he said that—and a whole lot more. Said I've eternally disgraced him and dragged him down and will land him in jail or the poorhouse. And I guess maybe it's so. Only all the time he was talking I kept thinking how he teased me to marry him. I really liked Bud Willis over in Elmwood better, in a way, than I did John. And I meant to marry Bud. He wasn't as good a boy as John, but he was so jolly and we'd have had such a good time together that I'd never have got mixed up in any mess like this. Maybe we would have ended in the poorhouse but we'd have had a good time going, and I bet Bud and I would have found something to laugh at even when we got there. Oh, I'm glad it's over. Don't think I'm afraid to die. I kind of hate to leave Robbie. Robbie's like me. And some day somebody'll tell him what a fool he is—like they told me. I wish I could warn him or learn him not to care. But, barring Robbie, I'm not afraid to go. But I'd be afraid to live. To live all the rest of my days on my back or in a chair—I—who was made to go? John can't abide me well and able to work. He'd hate the sight of me useless. No, sir! There's nothing nor nobody I'd sit in a chair for all the rest of my life."
"Yes, there is—Peggy."
John spoke from the shadowy doorway, for the dusk had fallen.
"You will do it for me, girl. I'll get you the nicest chair and the prettiest crutches. And when you are tired of them I'll carry you about in my arms. And you'll never again—I swear it—be sorry that you didn't marry Bud Willis."
The spring twilight filled the room. Through it the doctor tiptoed to the door and left these two to build a new world out of the fragments and blunders of the old.