Green Valley Part 28

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 bra.s.s 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 bra.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 d.i.c.k 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, d.i.c.k 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 G.o.d'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 d.i.c.k 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. d.i.c.k 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. d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k went with me.