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Green Valley

<h3> CHAPTER XIX </h3> <h3> A GRAY DAY </h3> 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 for me. 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!" <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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