Green Valley Part 11

"And, anyhow, I ain't been liked around here ever since last Christmas when I got three boxes of candy by mistake. And, gee--Nan, I don't know what to do about it. Billy Evans is the best man in this here town and I'd do most anything for him, but he's such a good guy himself he don't see that church ain't any place for a kid like me and that it was a mistake to send me with this coin."

Nan's amazement gave way to sudden enlightenment. She knew now why Grandma Wentworth had not put in an appearance, and knowing Billy Evans well, she instantly comprehended the situation.

"Barney, what in the world are you talking about, saying this church is no place for you. This is just the place for a boy who gets several boxes of Christmas candy by mistake. You come right along with me."

"Aw, Nan, why can't you drop it in for me? I just ain't got the nerve.

I'd rather get all my teeth pulled like Hank is going to do. Why, say, Nan, just the sight of old Austin makes my hair curl. I tell ya he don't like me and I'll be pinched--"

But Nan had already drawn Billy's spindle-legged a.s.sistant inside and as no man yet had been known to show anything but quiet pride when escorting Nanny Ainslee, Barney straightened manfully and with an outward serenity that amazed even himself he gracefully slid into a seat, having first gallantly stepped aside to permit his gracious lady to be seated. And life being that morning especially a thing of tender humor, they had no sooner settled themselves comfortably when f.a.n.n.y Foster, the last comer, sank down beside them, breathing heavily.

f.a.n.n.y Foster was always late for church, not from any notion that a late entrance was fashionable but because of some hitch in her domestic affairs. She always explained to the congregation afterward just what had caused her delay and the congregation was always ready to listen to her excuses, for they were as a rule highly original ones.

Fate was always sending f.a.n.n.y the most thrilling experiences at the most improper times. The children were always falling into the cistern or setting the barn afire as she was about to start out somewhere. And such things as b.u.t.tonhooks and hairpins had a way of disappearing just when she was in the greatest hurry. Not that the lack of these toilet necessities ever stopped f.a.n.n.y from attending any town function.

If the b.u.t.tonhook could not be found she set out with her shoes unb.u.t.toned, borrowing the necessary implement on the way. If she had no hairpins she put her hair up temporarily with two knitting needles or lead pencils or anything like that that came handy, stopped at Jessup's, bought her hairpins, and while reporting news in Mrs. Green's kitchen did up her hair without the aid of brush, comb or mirror.

This trait f.a.n.n.y came by naturally. She had had a droll grandmother.

It was authentic history that once at the very moment when she was getting ready to attend a Green Valley funeral this grandmother's false teeth broke, leaving her somewhat dazed. But only for a moment, for she was a woman with a perfect memory. She suddenly remembered that the wife of the deceased had an old emergency set; so, slipping through the back streets, she arrived at the house of grief, borrowed the new widow's old teeth and wept as copiously and sincerely, albeit a little carefully, over the remains as any one else there.

Now, scarcely waiting to regain her breath, f.a.n.n.y turned to Nanny with the usual explanations, only stopping to exclaim over Barney--"Land sakes, Barney, what are you doing here!" A breath and then in sibilant whispers:

"Well--I thought I'd never get here. When I come to dress I found the children had cut up my corset into a harness for the dog and Jessup's said they hadn't anybody to send up with a new one and John said he couldn't go because his foot's bad, him having stepped on the rake yesterday afternoon and not wanting to irritate it, so's he could go to work tomorrow as usual. And Grandma's up to Billy Evans' trying to keep him from going crazy or I could have borrowed one of hers. So I 'phoned Central to see if she couldn't hunt up somebody to bring me that new corset from Jessup's. Well, who does she get hold of but Denny, just as he's going past with a telegram for Jocelyn Brownlee.

He brought the corset with the string gone and the box broken and asked me to help him figure out what that telegram meant. It said,

"'Coming better call it phyllis BOB.'

"There's few men that can write a proper letter. We had to give it up.

And as if that wasn't enough, when I got to the creamery I met Skinflint Holden and he told me there was a lot of disease amongst the cattle and the men all got together and had a meeting and made Jake Tuttle deputy marshal or something. It's a wonder Jake wouldn't say something. I suppose he thinks the few old cows we have here in town ain't worth saving.

"Well, anyhow, I was hurrying along so's not to be late and just as I turned Tumley's hedge didn't Bessie come out with her face swollen so she looked homelier than Theresa Meyer. It seems she had a birthday and Alex brought her a big box of chocolates and they give her the toothache. She went to Doc Mitch.e.l.l but he put her off because he was regulating and pulling every tooth in Hank Lolly's head. She was just sick to think she had to miss Lilac Sunday and Mr. Courtney's last sermon, but she told me to be sure and listen and if he let on he was sorry he was leaving not to believe him, because he's had everything except the parlor furniture crated for a month. They've been eating off tin plates and drinking out of two enamel cups on the kitchen table. Bessie thinks that for a minister he's full of sin and self-pride. But I say even a minister--"

But at this point the hymn singing was over, the congregation settled itself in comfortable att.i.tudes, and the careful Mr. Courtney rose to deliver his farewell sermon.

It was a sermon that stirred n.o.body. Green Valley was as glad to see the Reverend Courtney departing as he was to go. His one cautious reference to their pastorless state, for he did not know that Green Valley had already selected its new minister, brought not a line of worry to the faces turned so politely to the pulpit, for on Lilac Sunday and to a farewell sermon Green Valley was ever polite.

Green Valley, listening, thought with relief of the Sundays ahead and felt very much the way a hospitable housewife feels when an uncongenial guest departs and the home springs back to its old cheery order and family peace.

When the services were over Green Valley strolled out into the May sunshine in twos and threes and stood about as always in little groups to exchange the week's news. Billy Evans' new happiness, the ten-dollar gold piece and all its attending incidents were duly talked over. Under the horse chestnuts Max Longman was telling Colonel Stratton how the day before Sam Ellis had at last leased the hotel to a Chicago man. It was reported that there was to be no new barber shop, but that over on West Street a poolroom, also run by a city stranger, was already doing business. Several people had pa.s.sed it that morning on their way to church and all said it had a peculiar appearance.

"Looks like one of those woebegone city dens, with its green plush curtains so you can't see what's going on inside. All it needs is fly specks on the windows and a strong smell at its side door. That'll come with time. I hear you can play billiards and pool in there and there's some slot machines for those too young to take a hand at cards."

So said Jake Tuttle, who now that he was a deputy sheriff on the watch for diseases threatening his and his neighbors' cattle, suddenly realized that there might be such a thing as a deputy sheriff to look out for the physical and moral health of humans.

Green Valley listened to Max Longman's announcement and Jake's comment and made up its mind to go around and see. Sam Ellis' withdrawal from business made Green Valley folks a little uneasy. The hotel in other hands might become a strange place. For a moment an uncomfortable feeling gripped those who heard. Sam, an old friend and a neighbor, with his genial good sense and old-fashioned hotel was one thing. A stranger from the big and wicked city was another.

Green Valley almost began to worry a bit. But on the way home this feeling wore off. How could things change? Why, there were the Spencer boys taking turns at the ice-cream freezer on the back porch.

There was Ella Higgins coming out with a saucer of milk for her cat.

Downer's barn door was open and any one could see by the new buggy that stood in it that Jack Downer's brother and family had driven in from the farm for a Sunday dinner and visit. Williamson's dog, Caesar, was tied up,--a sure sign that Mel and Emmy had gone off to see Emmy's folks over in Spring Road. The chairs in Widow Green's orchard told plainly that her sister's girls had come in from the city for the week-end. On the Fenton's front porch sat pretty Millie Fenton, waiting to put a flower in Robbie Longman's b.u.t.tonhole. While everybody knew that just next door homely Theresa Meyer was putting an extra pan of fluffy soda biscuits into the oven as the best preparation for _her_ beau.

So Green Valley looked and smiled and went joyously home to its fragrant, old-fashioned Sunday dinner. New elements might and would come but this smiling town would absorb them, mellow them to its own golden hue and go on its way living and rejoicing.

Cynthia's son went to dinner with the Ainslees. He walked with Mr.

Ainslee while Nan and her brother went on ahead. Nan was almost noisily gay but no one seemed to be at all aware of it.

The dinner was delicious and went off without the least bit of embarra.s.sment. At the table Nan was as suddenly still as she had been noisily gay. She let the men do the talking while she scrupulously attended to their wants. Once she forgot herself and while he was talking studied the face of Cynthia's son. Her father caught her at it and smiled. This made her flush and to even up matters she deliberately put salt instead of sugar into her father's after-dinner cup of coffee. Whereupon he, tasting the salt, made an irrelevant remark about handwriting on the wall.

CHAPTER IX

GREEN VALLEY MEN

Close on the heels of Lilac Sunday comes Decoration Day. And nowhere is it observed so thoroughly as in Green Valley.

The whole week preceding the day there is heard everywhere the whir of sewing machines. New dresses are feverishly cut and made; old ones ripped and remade. Hats are bought, old ones are retrimmed. Buggies are repainted and baby carriages oiled. d.i.c.k does a thriving business in lemons, picnic baskets, flags, peanuts and palm-leaf fans, these being things that Jessup's chronically forget to carry, regarding them as trifles and rather scornfully leaving them to d.i.c.k, who makes a point of having on hand a very choice supply.

This fury of work gradually dies down, to be followed by such an epidemic of baking that the old town smells like a sweet old bakery shop with its doors and windows wide open. There is then every evening a careful survey of the flower beds in the garden, a rigid economy of blossoms and even much skilful forcing of belated favorites.

The last day is generally given over to hat buying, the purchasing of the last forgotten fixings and clothes inspections. From one end of the town to the other clotheslines, dining-room chairs, porch rockers and upstairs bedrooms are overflowing with silk foulards, frilled dimities, beribboned and belaced organdies, not to mention the billows of dotted swiss and muslin.

On short clotheslines, stretched across corners of back and side porches or in the tree-shaded nooks of back yards, may be seen hanging the holiday garments of Green Valley men. But what most catches the eye are the old suits of army blue flapping gently in the spring breeze with here and there a bra.s.s b.u.t.ton glinting. There are a surprising number of these suits of army blue just as there are a surprising number of graves in the little Green Valley cemetery over which, the long year through, flutters the small flag set there by loving hands each Decoration Day.

There are all manner of cleaning operations going on in full view of anybody and everybody who might be interested enough to look. For there is no streak of mean secretiveness in Green Valley folks.

This is the one time in the year when Widow Green takes off and "does up" the yellow silk tidy that drapes the upper right-hand corner of her deceased husband's portrait which stands on an easel in the darkest corner of her parlor. This little service is not the tender attention of a loving and grieving wife for a sadly missed husband but rather a patriotic woman's tribute to a man, who, worthless and cruel as a husband, had yet been a gallant and an honorable soldier.

As the widow sits on the back steps carefully washing the tidy in a hand basin and with a bar of special soap highly recommended by d.i.c.k, she looks over into the next yard and calls to Jimmy Rand and asks him whether he's going to march with the rest of the school children and will there be anything special on the programme this year. And he tells her sure he's going to march. Ain't he got a new pair of pants, a blouse, a navy blue tie and a new stickpin? And as for the programme, he warns her to watch out "fur us kids because we're going to be fixed up for something, but I da.s.sent tell because it's a surprise the teachers got up."

This is the one day in the year when Jimmy Rand polishes his grandfather's shoes with scrupulous care and without demanding the usual nickel. He takes his payment in watching the blue army suit swaying on the line under the tall poplars and in hearing the crowds on Decoration Day shout themselves hoa.r.s.e for old Major Rand.

It is the one time too when Old Skinflint Holden gets from his fellow citizens and neighbors a certain grave respect, for they all know that on the morrow among the men in blue will be this same Old Skinflint Holden with a medal on his breast.

Though every preparation has seemingly been made days ago, still that last night before the event is the very busiest time of all.

Joe Baldwin's little shop is crowded. Jake Tuttle is there with the four children, buying them the fanciest of footgear for the morrow.

The two Miller boys, who work in the creamery until nine every night but have special leave this day to purchase holiday necessities, are standing awkwardly near Joe's side door and waiting patiently for Frankie Stevens and Dora Langely, better known as "Central," to depart with their black velvet slippers, before making any effort to have Joe try his wares on their awkward feet. Little Johnny Peterson comes in to inquire if Joe has sewed the b.u.t.tons on his, Johnny's, shoes, and Martha Gray has a hard time trying to decide which of two pairs of moccasins are most becoming to her youngest baby. Any number of youths are hanging about waiting for Joe to get around to selling them a box of his best shoe polish and some, getting impatient, wait on themselves. Joe, with his spectacles pushed up into his hair, is rushing around from customer to customer and through it all is dimly conscious of the fact that outside under the awning Dolly Beatty is waiting anxiously for the men folks to get out before she ventures in to buy her Joe's special brand of corn salve and bunion plaster.

And so it is all the way down Main Street. In the gents' furnishings'

corner of Peter Sweeney's dry-goods store Seth Curtis is buying a new hat, a little jaunty hat that seems to fit his head well enough but doesn't somehow become the rest of him. Seth looks best in a cap and always wears one except, of course, on such state occasions as the coming one. He asks the Longman boys how he looks in the brown fedora Pete has just put on his head and Max Longman laughs and wants to know what difference it makes how a married man with a bald spot looks.

Then he turns away to pick out carefully the kind of tie that will make him most pleasing in Clara's sight on the morrow.

In the ladies' department of that same store Jocelyn Brownlee is asking for long, white silk gloves. A little hush falls on the crowd of feminine shoppers as Mrs. Pete gets the stepladder, mounts it and brings down with a good deal of visible pride a pasteboard box containing six pairs of white silk gloves that Pete bought three years ago in a moment of incomprehensible madness, a thing which Mrs. Pete has never until this minute forgiven him.

Jocelyn, pretty, eager, unaffected, selects the very first pair and is wholly unconscious of the stir she has made. It is only when David Allan comes up and asks her if she is ready that she becomes confused and conscious of the watching eyes of the other buyers.

She has promised to go to the Decoration Day exercises with David and has hurried to buy gloves for the occasion not knowing, in her city innocence, that gloves aren't the style in Green Valley, leastways not for any outdoor festival.