Green Valley
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GREEN VALLEY
by
KATHARINE REYNOLDS
Frontispiece by Nana French Bickford
[Frontispiece: They came to her hand in hand and said not a word.]
Grosset & Dunlap
Publishers ------ New York
Copyright, 1919,
by Little, Brown, and Company.
All rights reserved
Dedication
TO ALL THE LITTLE ONE-HORSE TOWNS WHERE
LIFE IS SWEET AND ROOMY AND OLD-FASHIONED;
WHERE THE DAYS ARE FULL OF SUNSHINE AND
RAIN AND WORK; WHERE NEIGHBORS REALLY
NEIGHBOR AND MEN AND WOMEN ARE LIFE-SIZE
AUTHOR'S NOTE
This book was written to cure a heartache, to ease a very real and bad
case of homesickness. I wrote it just for myself when I was very
nearly ten thousand miles away from home and knew that I couldn't go
back to the U. S. A. for two long years. It is a picture of a little
Yankee town, the town I tried so hard to see over ten thousand miles of
gray-green ocean.
When I was sailing from New York for South America that sunny June
morning in 1913, about the last thing the last friend hurrying down the
gangplank said was this:
"Of course you are going to be homesick. But it's worth it."
And I laughed.
But before that long stretch of gray-green ocean was plowed under I
knew--oh, I knew--that I was going to be most woefully homesick for the
U. S. A.
A certain tall Swede from New Jersey and I discovered that fact about
the same minute Fourth of July morning. We were standing on the deck,
staring miserably back over the awful miles to where somewhere in that
lost north our town lay with flags fluttering, picnic baskets getting
into trains and everybody out on their lawns and porches.
We didn't look at each other after that first glance--that Swede and I.
And we said the sunlight hurt our eyes.
Three months later I was sitting under the velvet-soft, star-sown night
sky of the Argentine cattle country. I had seen volcano-scarred
Martinique and had watched the beautiful island of Barbados rising like
a fairy dream out of a foamy sea.
I had marveled at the endless beauties of Rio lying so picturesquely in
its immense harbor and at the foot of its great, shaggy, sun-splashed,
smoke-wreathed mountains. I had tramped through unsanitary Santos and
loved it because it looked like Chicago in spite of its mountains and
banana trees. I had witnessed a wonderful fiesta in Buenos Aires and
had churned two hundred miles up the La Plata when it was bubbling with
rain. And I had had a tooth pulled in Paysandu, the second largest
city in Uruguay.
All that in three months! And there were still a million wonders to
see. I loved and shall always love these radiant, sun-drenched
uncrowded lands. But my heart was heavy as lead. For I was homesick.
My eyes were tired of alien starshine, of alien, unfamiliar things, and
my heart cried out for the little home towns of my own country.
But I could not go back for many, many months. So I learned Spanish
and hobnobbed with wonderfully wise and delightful Spanish
grandmothers. I grew to love some darling Indian babies. I
interviewed interesting South American cowboys and discussed war and
socialism with an Argentine navy officer. I exchanged calls and true
blue friendships with soft-voiced Englishwomen. And I took tea and
dinner aboard the ships of Welsh sea captains from Cardiff.
I had a wonderful time. I filled my notebook, took pictures and
collected souvenirs. I laughed and told stories. Folks down there
said I was good company.
But oh! In the hush of a rain-splashed night, when the fire in the
grate dozed and dreamed and a boat siren somewhere out on the inky La
Plata wailed and moaned through the black night, my heart flew back
over those gray-green waves to a little town that I knew in the U. S.
A. And to ease my longing I wrote Green Valley.
KATHARINE REYNOLDS.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I EAST AND WEST
II SPRING IN GREEN VALLEY
III THE LAST OF THE CHURCHILLS
IV A RAINY DAY
V CYNTHIA'S SON
VI GOSSIP
VII THE WEDDING
VIII LILAC TIME
IX GREEN VALLEY MEN
X THE KNOLL
XI GETTING ACQUAINTED
XII THE PATH OF TRUE LOVE
XIII AUTUMN IN GREEN VALLEY
XIV THE CHARM
XV INDIAN SUMMER
XVI THE HOUSEWARMING
XVII THE LITTLE SLIPPER
XVIII THE MORNING AFTER
XIX A GRAY DAY
XX CHRISTMAS BELLS
XXI FANNY'S HOUR
XXII BEFORE THE DAWN
XXIII FANNY COMES BACK
XXIV HOME AGAIN
GREEN VALLEY
CHAPTER I
EAST AND WEST
"Joshua Churchill's dying in California and Nanny Ainslee's leaving
to-night for Japan! And there's been a wreck between here and Spring
Road!"
Fanny fairly gasped out the astounding news. Then she sank down into
Grandma Wentworth's comfortable kitchen rocker and went into details.
"The two telegrams just came through. Uncle Tony's gone down to the
wreck. I happened to be standing talking to him when Denny came
running out of the station. Isn't it too bad Denny's so bow-legged?
Though I don't know as it hinders him from running to any noticeable
extent. I had an awful time trying to keep up so's to find out what
had happened. I bet you Nan's packing right this minute and just
loving it. My--ain't some people born lucky? Think of having the
whole world to run around in!"
The telephone tinkled.
"Yes, Nan," Grandma smiled as she answered, "I know. Fanny's just this
minute telling me. Yes, of course I can. I'll be over as soon as my
bread's done baking. Yes--I'll bring along some of my lavender to pack
in with your things."
"Land sakes, Grandma," exclaimed Fanny, "don't stop for the bread.
I'll see to that. Just you git that lavender and go. And tell Nanny
I'll be at the station to see her off."
Up-stairs in a big sunny room of the Ainslee house Grandma Wentworth
looked reproachfully at a flushed, busy girl who was laughing and
singing snatches of droll ditties the while she emptied closets and
dresser drawers and tucked things into four trunks, two suitcases and a
handbag.
"Nanny, are you never going to settle down and stay at home?" sighed
Grandma.
"Yes, ma'am," Nanny's eyes danced, "some day when a man makes me fall
in love with him and there are no more new places to go to. But so
long as I am heartfree and footfree, and there's one alien shore
calling, I'll have the wanderlust. I declare, Grandma, if that man
doesn't turn up soon there will be no new places left for a honeymoon!"
Grandma smiled in spite of herself. There were things she wanted very
much to say and other things she wanted very much to ask; but the
trunks had to get down to the station and already the afternoon sun was
low.
The two women worked feverishly and almost in silence so that when the
packing was done they might get in the little visit both craved before
the months of separation.
Nanny finally jumped on the trunks, snapped them shut, locked them and
watched the expressman carry them down and out into his waiting dray.
Then she sat down with a trembling little laugh.
"There--it's over and I'm really going! I have been to just about
every country but Japan. I believe father would rather have skipped
off alone this time. It seems to be some suddenly important
international crisis that we are going over to settle. That's why we
are going East the roundabout way. We must stop at Washington for
instructions, then again at London and Paris."
"Nanny," mused Grandma, "there's a good many years difference in our
ages but there's only one woman I ever loved as I love you. I think I
might have loved your mother but she died the very first year your
father brought her here. And she was ailing when she came. The other
woman that meant so much to me used to go traveling too. I always
helped her with her packing. Then one day she packed and went away,
never to come back."
"Was that Cynthia Churchill?" Nan asked gently.
"Yes--Cynthia. She was dearer than a sister to me, and neither of us
dreamed that a whole wide world would divide us."
"Why did she go, Grandma?"
"Because a Green Valley man well-nigh broke her heart."
"A Green Valley man did--_that_? Oh, dear! And here I have been
hoping that some day I might marry a Green Valley man myself."
"Nanny, I expect I'm old and foolish but I've been hoping and hoping
that you'd marry a home boy and fearing you'd meet up with some one on
your travels who would take you away from us forever. It would be hard
to see you go."
The last sunbeam had faded away and golden twilight filled the room.
Outside little day noises were dying out.
"Grandma dear, don't you worry about me. I intend to marry a Green
Valley man if possible. But even if I didn't I'd always come back to
Green Valley."
"No, you wouldn't. You couldn't, any more than Cynthia could. Cynthia
loved this town better even than you love it. Yet she is lying under
strange stars in a foreign land, far from her old home. Her father,
they say, is dying in California. I suppose the old Churchill place
will go now unless Cynthia's son comes back to take it over. But that
isn't likely."
"Why--did Cynthia Churchill leave a son?" wondered Nanny.
"Yes. He must be a few years older than you. He was born and raised
in India. 'Tisn't likely he'd come to Green Valley now that he's a man
grown. Still, if Joshua Churchill dies out there in California, that
boy will come into all his grandfather's property."
"Well," Nanny stood up and walked to the window from which she could
see the fine old home of the Churchills, "if any one willed me a lovely
old place like that Churchill homestead I'd come from the moon to claim
it, let alone India."
"Nanny, are you sure there's no boy now in Green Valley who could keep
you from roaming? I thought maybe Max Longman or Ronny Deering--"
"No--no one yet, Grandma. I like them all--but love--no. Love, it
seems to me, must be something very different."
"Yes, I know," sighed Grandma.
When Uncle Tony returned from viewing the wreck he assured his townsmen
that it was a wreck of such beautiful magnitude that traffic on the
Northwestern would be tied up for twenty-four hours. It was feared
that Mr. Ainslee would not be able to get his train and would have to
drive five miles to the other railroad.
However Uncle Tony was reckoning things from a Green Valley point of
view. As a matter of fact the wreckage was sufficiently cleared away
so that the eastbound trains were running on time. It was the
westbound ones that were stalled. The Los Angeles Limited Pullmans
stood right in the Green Valley station. They were still standing
there when Nanny and her father came to take the 10:27 east.
Perhaps nothing could explain so well Nanny Ainslee's popularity as the
gathering of folks who came to see her off.
Fanny had stopped at the drug store and bought some headache pills.
"This excitement and hurry and you not scarcely eating any supper is
apt to give you a bad headache. They'll come handy. And here's some
seasick tablets. Martin says they're the newest thing out. And oh,
Nanny, when you're seeing all those new places and people just take an
extra look for me, seeing as I'll never know the color of the ocean."
Uncle Tony was tending to Nanny's hand luggage and in his heart wishing
he could go along, even though he knew that one week spent away from
his beloved hardware store would be the death of him.
It was a neighborly crowd that waited for the 10:27. And as it waited
Jim Tumley started singing "Auld Lang Syne." He began very softly but
soon the melody swelled to a clear sweetness that hushed the laughing
chatter and stilled the shuffling feet of the Pullman passengers who
crowded the train vestibules or strolled in weary patience along the
station platform.
Then the 10:27 swung around the curve and the good-bys began.
"So long, dear folks! I shall write. Don't you dare cry, Grandma.
I'll be back next lilac time. Remember, oh, just remember, all you
Green Valley folks, that I'll be back when the lilacs bloom again!"
Nanny's voice, husky with laughter and tears, rippled back to the
cluster of old neighbors waving hats and handkerchiefs. They watched
her standing in the golden light of the car doorway until the train
vanished from their sight. Then they drifted away in twos and threes.
From the dimmest corner of the observation platform a man had witnessed
the departure of Nanny Ainslee. He had heard Jim's song, had caught
the girl's farewells. And now he was delightedly repeating to himself
her promise--"I'll be back when the lilacs bloom again."
Then quite suddenly he stepped from the train and made his way to where
the magenta-pink and violet lights of Martin's drugstore glowed in the
night. He bought a soda and some magazines and asked the druggist an
odd question.
"When," asked the stranger, smiling, "will the lilacs bloom again in
this town?"
Martin, who for hours had been rushing madly about, waiting on the
thirsty crowd of stalled visitors, stopped to stare. But he answered.
Something in the mysteriously rich face of the big, brown boy made him
eager to answer.
"From the middle of next May on into early June."
The stranger smiled his thanks in a way that made Martin look at his
clerk with a mournful eye.
"Jee-rusalem! Now, Eddie, why can't you smile like that? Say, if I
had _that_ fellow behind this soda counter I'd be doing a rushing
business every night."
When the Limited was again winging its way toward the Golden West and
train life had settled down to its regular routine, one dining-car
waiter was saying to another:
"Yes, sah--the gentleman in Number 7 is sure the mighty-nicest white
man I eber did see. And he sure does like rice. Says he comes from
India where everybody eats it all the time. I ain' sure but what that
man ain' a sure-enough prince."
CHAPTER II
SPRING IN GREEN VALLEY
Traveling men have a poor opinion of it. Ministers of the gospel have
been known to despair of it. Socially ambitious matrons move out of it,
or, if that is not possible, despise it. Real estate men can not get
rich in it. And humorless folk sometimes have a hard, sad time of it in
Green Valley.
But Uncle Tony, the slowest man in town but the very first at every fire
and accident, says that once, when the Limited was stalled at the Old
Roads Corner, a crowd of swells gathered on the observation platform and
sized up the town.
One official, who--Uncle Tony says--couldn't have been anything less than
a Chicago alderman, said right out loud:
"Great Stars! What peace--and cabbages!"
And another said solemnly, said he, "This is the place to come to when
you have lost your last friend." And there was no malice, only a hungry
longing in his voice.
The stylish, white-haired woman who, Uncle Tony guessed, must have been
the alderman's wife, said, "Oh--John! What healing, lovely gardens!"
There's always a silly little wind fooling around the Old Roads Corners
and so you get all the sweet smells from Grandma Wentworth's herb garden
and all the heavenly fragrance that the flower gardens of this end of
town send out.
Standing there you can look into any number of pretty yards but
especially Ella Higgins'. Of course Ella's yard and garden is a wonder.
It's been handed down from one old maid relative to another till in
Ella's time it does seem as if every wild and home flower that ever
bloomed was fairly rooted and represented there. It's in Ella's garden
that the first wild violets bloom; where the first spring beauty nods
under the bushes of bridal wreath; where the last chrysanthemum glows.
Everybody in town got their lilies-of-the-valley roots and their yellow
roses from Ella. Her peonies and roses, pansies and forget-me-nots are
known clear over in Bloomingdale and bespoken by flower lovers in Spring
Road. And as for her tulips, well--there are little flocks of them
everywhere about, looking for all the world like crowds of gayly dressed
babies toddling off to play.
The only time that poor Fanny Foster came near making trouble was when
she said that of course Ella's place was all right but that it had no
style or system, and that you couldn't have a proper garden without a
gardener. Ella had scolded Fanny's children for carelessly stripping the
lilacs.
Fanny Foster is as wonderful in her way as Ella's garden, though not so
beautiful at first sight. Of course Green Valley loves Fanny Foster.
Green Valley has reason to. Fanny did Green Valley folks a great service
one still spring morning. But strangers just naturally misunderstand
Fanny. They see only a tall, sharp-edged wisp of a woman with a mass of
faded gold hair carelessly pinned up and two wide-open brown eyes fairly
aching with curiosity. You have to know Fanny a long time before the
poignant wistfulness of her clutches at your heart, before you can know
the singular sweetness of her nature. And even when you come to love her
you keep wishing that her collars were pinned on straight and that her
skirts were hung evenly at the bottom. There are those who remember the
time when Fanny was a beautiful girl, happy-go-lucky but always
kind-hearted. Now she is famous for her marvelous instinct for news
gathering and her great talent in weaving the odds and ends of
commonplace daily living into an interesting, gossipy yarn. Green Valley
without Fanny Foster would not be Green Valley, for she is a town
institution.
However, before going any further into Green Valley's special characters
and institutions it would be well to get a general feel of the town into
one's mind. For it is only when you know how cozily Green Valley sets in
its hollows, how quaintly its old tree-shaded roads dip and wander about
over little sunny hills and through still, deep woods that you can guess
the charm of it, can believe in the joyousness of it. For Green Valley
is a joyous, sweetly human old town to those who love and understand it.
Take an early spring day when the winter's wreck and rust and deadness
seem to be everywhere. Yet here in the Green Valley roads and streets
little warm winds are straying, looking for tulip beds and spring
borders. The sunshine that elsewhere looks thin and pale drops warmly
here into back yards and ripples ever so brightly up and down Rabbit's
Hill, where the hedges are turning green and David Allan is plowing.
The willows back of Dell Parsons' house are budding and all aquiver with
the wildly glad, full-throated warblings of robins, bluebirds, red-winged
blackbirds and bobolinks. While somewhere from the swaying tops of last
year's reeds, up from the grassy slopes of Churchill's meadow, comes the
sweet, clear call of meadow larks.
In the ditches the cushioning moss is green and through the brown tangled
weeds along Silver Creek the new grass is peeping. The sunny clearing
back of Petersen's woods will be full of mushrooms as the days deepen.
And already there are big golden dandelions in Widow Green's orchard.
In these still, warm noons you can hear through the waiting, echoing air
the laughing shouts of playing children and the low-dropping honk of the
wild geese that in a scarcely quivering line are sailing northward across
the reedy lowlands which the gentle spring rains will turn into soft,
violet, misty marshes.
The last bit of frost has thawed out of the old Glen Road and in the
young sunshine it seems to laugh goldenly as it climbs up, up to Jim
Gray's squatty, weathered little farmhouse. The eastern windows of this
little silver-gray house are gay with blossoming house plants and across
the back dooryard, flapping gently in the spring breeze, is a line of
gayly colored bed quilts. For Martha Gray has begun her house-cleaning.
The woodsy part of Grove Street, the part that was opened up only five
years ago and is called Lovers' Lane because it curves and winds
mysteriously through a lovely bit of woodland, is already shimmering with
the life and beauty of spring.
Down on Fern Avenue, which is a wide, grassy road and no avenue at all,
Uncle Roger Allan is carefully painting his chicken coops. Roger Allan
is a tall, twinkling, smooth-shaven old man, and he lives in a house as
twinkling and as tidy as himself. He is a bachelor, but years ago he
took little David from the dead arms of an unhappy, wild young stepsister
and has brought him up as his own. People used to know the reasons why
Roger Allan had never married but few remember now. Here he is at any
rate, painting his chicken coops and standing still every now and then to
stare off at Rabbit's Hill where his boy, tall, sturdy David Allan, is
plowing the warm, black fields.
Up in a narrow lane, at the side window of a blind-looking little house,
sits Mrs. Rosenwinkle. She is German and badly paralyzed and she
believes that the earth is flat and that if you walked far enough out
beyond Petersen's pasture you would most certainly fall off. She also
believes that only Lutherans like herself can go to heaven. But to-day,
beside the open window, with a soft, wooing, eiderdown little breeze
caressing her face, she is happy and unworried, her eyes busy with the
tender world and the two chubby grandchildren tumbling gleefully about in
the still lane.
In his little square shoe shop built out from his house Joe Baldwin is
arranging his spring stock in his two modest show windows. Joe is a
widower with two boys, a gentle voice, a gentle, wondering mind, and a
remarkable wart in the very center of his left palm. His shop is a
sunny, cheerful room with plenty of benches and chairs. The little shop
has a soft gray awning for the hot days and a wide-eyed competent stove
for cold ones. Nobody but Grandma Wentworth and such other folks like
Roger Allan ever suspect the real reason for all those comfortable
sitting-down places in Joe's shop. And Joe never tells a soul that it is
just an idea of his for keeping his own two boys and the boys of other
men under his eye. In Joe's gentle opinion the hotel and livery barn and
blacksmith shop are not exactly the best places for young boys to
frequent. But of course Joe never mentions such opinions out loud even
to the boys. He just makes his shop as inviting and homelike as
possible, keeps the daily papers handy on the counter and a basket of
nuts or apples maybe under his workbench. He is never lonely nor does he
miss a bit of news though he seldom goes anywhere but to the barber shop
on Saturdays and to church on Sundays.
Out on her sunny cellar steps sits Mrs. Jerry Dustin, sorting onion sets
and seed potatoes. She is a little, rounded old lady with silvery hair,
the softest, smoothest, fairest of complexions, forget-me-not eyes and a
smile that is as gladdening as a golden daffodil. Few people know that
she has in her heart a longing to see the world, a longing so intense, a
life-long wanderlust so great that had she been a man it would have swept
her round the globe. But she has never crossed the State line. She has
big sons and daughters who all somehow have inherited their father's
stay-at-home nature. Her youngest boy, Peter, however, is only seventeen
and on him she has built her last hopes. He, like herself, has a gipsy
song in his heart and she often dreams of the places they will visit
together.
And while she is waiting for Peter to grow up she travels about and
around Green Valley. She wanders far up the Glen Road into the deep
fairy woods between Green Valley and Spring Road. Here she strays alone
for hours, searching for ferns and adventure.
Once a week she rides away to the city where she spends the morning in
the gay and crowded stores and the afternoon in the Art Institute. She
never wearies of seeing pictures. She never, if she can help it, misses
an exhibition, and whenever the day's doings have not tired her too much
this little old lady will steal off to the edge of the great lake and
dream of what lies in the world beyond its rim. She often wishes she
could paint the restless stretch of water but though she knows its every
mood and though she is a wonderful judge of pictures she can not
reproduce except in words the lovely nooks and beauty spots of her little
world.
Perhaps it is this knowledge of her limitations that causes that little
strain of wistful sadness to creep into her voice sometimes and that
sends her very often out beyond the town, south along Park Lane to the
little Green Valley cemetery.
She loves to read on the mossy stones the unchanging little histories, so
brief but so eloquent, some of them. The stone that interests her most
and that each time seems like a freshly new adventure is the simple shaft
that bears no name, no date, just the tenderly sweet and pathetic little
message:
"I miss Thee so."
Mrs. Jerry Dustin knows very well for whom that low green bed was made
and who has had that little message of lonely love cut into stone. But
she longs to know the rest of the story.