Green Valley Part 3

Nanny came back to her valley town when the budded lilacs dripped with rain and the wooded hillsides were blurred with spring mists.

But Green Valley rain never bothered Nanny Ainslee. Those who were not out to greet her telephoned as soon as they heard she was back home again.

And just as she had gone to help pack, Grandma Wentworth came to help unpack. There were three trunks besides those Nanny had taken, from Green Valley. Nanny laughed and chuckled as she explained.

"The joke's on father. We met up with a nice American chap on our travels. He was so likable that father, who was pretty homesick by that time and would have loved anything American, fell in love with him. I can't quite understand why I didn't lose my head too. I came mighty near it once or twice. But the minute I'd think of that boy here in Green Valley I'd grow cool and calm. That's all that saved me, I believe. But father was quite taken with him and being a man he felt sure that I must be. He was so sure that my maiden days were over that he dared to be funny. One day he sent up these three brand new trunks to the hotel. Said I might as well get my trousseau while I was gadding about this time. Well--I was pretty mad for a minute. But I concluded that father wasn't the only one in our family who is fond of a joke. So I just blushed properly and went off shopping. And I tell you, Grandma, Green Valley will just grow cross-eyed looking at the pretties that I have in these treasure chests. I showed Dad every mortal thing I bought and asked his advice and was oh, so shy--and wondered if he just _could_ let me spend so much; and Dad just laughed and said he guessed an only daughter could be a bit extravagant, and to just go ahead. So I smiled again shyly and demurely and went ahead.

And when not so much as a bit of ribbon or a chiffon veil could be squeezed in anywhere I shut those trunks and sat on them and swung my feet and bet Dad that I wouldn't marry that boy after all. And he was so sure that he was rid of me at last and that he could start out on his next trip blissfully free and alone that he bet me Jim Gray's Gunshot that I'd be married in six months to the gentleman in question.

Of course it was a disgraceful business, the two of us betting on a thing like that, but somehow we never thought of that, we were so busy teasing each other. Well, of course Dad lost. I refused that nice chap three times in one week. And here I am, heart-free still, with three trunks of booty and the finest, blackest, and swiftest little horse in the county--mine. This has certainly been a profitable trip!

Poor Dad, he's so delightfully old-fashioned. He does so believe in early marriages and husbands and wedding veils. And he thinks that twenty-three is absolutely a grewsome age. Poor Dad! And he says too that for what I have done to him in this trunk deal I shall be duly punished. That the good Lord who looks after the fathers of willful, old-maidish daughters will see to that. Why, he has gone so far as to say that he wouldn't be surprised if I wound up by marrying some weird country minister. Fancy that! Why, that from father is almost a curse. And he's worried sick about my riding Gunshot. But I shall manage. So expect to see me dash up to your gate in great style any day now."

"Nanny," warned Grandma, "I don't trust that horse either. You'd better be mighty careful. That horse isn't mean but it's young and scary."

Nan however laughed at fear and rode all about and around Green Valley town. And then one evening when she was least watchful and tired from the long day's sport, a glaring red motor came honking unexpectedly around the corner. So sudden was its appearance, so startling its body in the sunset light, so shrill its screeching siren, that the young horse reared. And Nan, caught unprepared, was helpless.

From the various groups of people standing about figures detached themselves and shot across the square. But before any one could reach her or even see how it happened, a tall stranger was holding the daring girl close against his breast with one arm, and the quivering young horse with the other.

He was rea.s.suring the frightened animal and looking quietly down at the girl's face against his breast. Under that quiet look Nan's blue-white lips flushed with life and she tried to smile gratefully. When he smiled back and said, "So you _did_ get back by lilac time," Nan was well enough to wonder what he meant. And the little crowd of rescuers arrived only just in time to hear Nanny thanking him.

But when he asked her where in Green Valley town Mary Wentworth lived everybody stared and listened. Even Nan came near staring. But after the puzzled look her face broke into a smile.

"Oh--you mean Grandma Wentworth?"

He smiled too and said, "Perhaps. I am a stranger in Green Valley.

But my mother was a Green Valley girl. She was Cynthia Churchill and Mary Wentworth was her dearest friend."

"Then you are--why, you must be--" stammered Nanny.

"I am Cynthia Churchill's son."

"From India?" questioned Nan.

"From India," he said quietly.

From out the group of Green Valley folks, now dim in the May twilight, a voice spoke.

"You may come from India but if you are Cynthia Churchill's son you are a Green Valley man and this is home. So I say--welcome home."

Roger Allan, straight and tall and speaking with a sweetness in his voice those listening had never heard before, stepped up to the young man with outstretched hand.

The young stranger looked for a moment at the dimming streets, into the kindly faces about him, and then shook hands gladly.

"It is good to be home," he said, "but I wish I had mother here with me."

CHAPTER IV

A RAINY DAY

On a rainy day Green Valley is just as interesting as it is in the sunshine. Somehow though the big trees sag and drip and the wind sighs about the corners there is nothing mournful about the streets.

The children go to school just as joyously in raincoats and rubber boots. Their round glad faces, minus a tooth here and there, smile up at you from under big umbrellas. After the school bell rings the streets do get quiet but there is nothing depressing about that; for as you pa.s.s along you see at doors and windows the contented faces of busy women.

Old Mrs. Walley sits at her up-stairs front window sewing carpet rags.

Grandma Dudley at her sitting room window is darning her grandchildren's stockings and carefully watching the street. Whenever anybody pa.s.ses to whom she wants to talk she taps on the window with her thimble. She is a dear entertaining old soul but hard to get away from. Women with bread at home waiting to be put into pans and men hungry for their supper try not to let Grandma Dudley catch sight of them.

Bessie Williams always makes cinnamon buns or doughnuts on rainy days.

She always leaves her kitchen door open while she is doing this because she says she likes to hear the rain while she is working--that it soothes her nerves.

So as you come up from around Bailey's strawberry patch and Tumley's hedge you get a whiff of such deliciousness as makes your mouth water.

And more than likely Bessie sees you and comes running out with a few samples of her heavenly work. As you dispose of those cinnamon buns you forget that Bessie's voice is a trifle too high and too sweet, and that she is inclined to be at times a bit overly religious and too watchful of what she calls "vice" in people.

Over in front of the hotel Seth Curtis is standing up in his wagon and sawing his horses' mouths cruelly. Seth has been so viciously mistreated in his youth that he now abuses at times the very things that he loves. He has paid two hundred and fifty dollars apiece for those horses and is mighty proud of them. But Seth's temper is never good on a rainy day. Rain means no teaming and a money loss. Seth is a mite too conscious of money. At any rate, the loss of even a dollar makes him a sullen and at the least provocation an angry man. He isn't liked much except by his wife and children.

In his home Seth is gentle and kind. Maybe because here he finds the love and trust that all his life he has craved and been denied. Few of his neighbors know how he laughs and romps and sings with his children and what wonderful yarns he tells them, all made up out of his own head.

He is known to come from York State and has a Yankee shrewdness that some people say can at times be called something else. He is wide and square-shouldered though short, has a round stubborn head of reddish hair with a promising bald spot, close-set blue eyes and an annoying, almost an insulting habit of paying all his bills promptly and asking odds and favors of n.o.body.

To-day he was to have taken a load of stones, granite n.i.g.g.e.rheads of all sizes, up to Colonel Stratton's place. The Colonel is going to make a fern bed around his summer house.

Colonel Stratton is a real military colonel. He wears burnsides and they are very becoming. He has the most beautifully located residence in Green Valley and like Doc Philipps has some of the most beautiful trees in town. The great silver-leaf poplar guarding the wide front lawns and the magnificent hardwood maples are the pride of the colonel's heart.

The colonel has a cultivated garden that keeps his gardener pretty busy. But the wild-flower garden along the rambling old north fence the colonel tends himself. In June it is a hedge of lovely wild roses followed a little later by ma.s.ses of purple phlox. Then come the meadow lilies and the painted cup and so on, until in late October you can not see the old fence for the goldenrod, asters and gentians.

Today the colonel hoped to work on his fern bed but the weather being what it is he takes instead from his well-filled book shelves "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" and settles down to a day of solid joy.

In the big, softly stained house that stands in the solemn shade of immense pines, just diagonally across from the colonel's house, lives and labors Joshua Stillman, a man with the most wonderful memory, the readiest tongue when there is real need of it, a little man brimful of the most varied information and the sharpest humor.

For forty years and more he has been Green Valley's self-appointed librarian. He draws no salary except the joy of doing what he loves to do and he squanders, as his friends truly suspect, much secret money of his own on it. The library is housed in the old church in a room so small and dark that it hides the big work of this little man.

Joshua Stillman must be old but n.o.body ever thinks of what his age might be, he is so very much alive. He goes to the city every day and comes back early every afternoon. As he so seldom talks about himself n.o.body knows exactly what he does except that it has to do with books and small print.

Like Madam Howe, Joshua Stillman comes from the Revolutionary War district and has great family traditions to uphold. He upholds them with great humor. Not only is he full of old war and family lore, but he has been mixed up with things literary. He has known men such as Lowell and tells yarns about Emerson and Oliver Wendell Holmes.

He too came West in a prairie schooner and remembers all its wildness, its uncouthness, its railroadless state. And he tells marvellous stories about snakes, Indians and the little Chicago town built out on the mudflats. He remembers very well indeed the steady stream of ox-teams toiling over the few crude state roads. And he has in his house rare volumes, valuable editions of famous works. He lets you examine these if he thinks you are trustworthy and have a gentle way with books.

There is another rare soul, the Reverend Alexander Campbell, who must be introduced this rainy spring day. He is a retired Green Valley minister and is full of humor and wisdom. He is an easily traced descendant of the Scottish Stuarts. On a rainy day you will always find him busy writing up the history of his family. Not that he himself cares a fig for his genealogy. He is writing the book because it gives him something to do and earns him a little peace from the women folks.

He is a man whom the Lord has seen fit to try with a host of female relatives, all family proud. He can fight the Devil and has done so quite gallantly in four or five volumes of really good old-fashioned sermons, "books," as he will tell you with a twinkle in his eye, "that n.o.body could or would read nowadays." But he can not fight the women of his family, so with a mournful chuckle he sits down every rainy day and labors mightily on this great "historical work."

On sunny days he goes about his grounds, petting his trees and his chickens, and working in his garden. He has several ingenious methods of fighting weeds and raises the earliest, best and latest sweet corn in Green Valley.

But men like the Colonel and Joshua Stillman and the Reverend Alexander Campbell are representatives of Green Valley's leisure cla.s.s. They give Green Valley its high peace, its aristocratic flavor. But they are a little remote from the town's workday life, being given to dreams and memories and scholarly pursuits. They know little of the doings and talks that go on in Billy Evans' livery barn, or the hotel. They do, of course, go to the barber shop, the bank and the postoffice, and always when abroad give courteous greeting to every townsman. But they have never sat in the smoky, red-painted blacksmith shop or among the patriarchs and town wits who in summer keep open-air sessions on the wide, inviting platform in front of Uncle Tony's hardware store, and in winter hold profound meetings around the store's big, glowing stove.

Uncle Tony's is the most social spot in town and is from a news-gathering point of view most ideally situated. Sitting in one of the smooth-worn old armchairs that Uncle Tony always keeps handy, you can view the very heart of Green Valley's business life. Without turning your head scarcely you can keep an eye on Martin's drug store, keep tab on the comings and goings of the town's two doctors, and the hotel's arriving and departing guests. If a commotion of any kind occurs in front of Robert Hill's general store you see all the details without losing count of the various parties who go in and out of Green Valley's new bank.

Twice a day the active part of Green Valley dribbles into the post-office where friends instantly pair off and mere acquaintances stand idly by and discuss the weather. Besides its mail, Green Valley usually buys two cents' worth of yeast and a dozen of baker's buns and then goes down the street and orders its regular groceries at Jessup's.