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.
sometimes she has a real adventure. it was here at the cemetery one day that she met bernard rollins, the artist. he was out sketching the fields that lie everywhere about, rounding and rolling off toward the horizon with the roofs of homesteads and barns just showing above the swells, with crows circling about the solitary clusters of trees, and men and horses plodding along the furrows.
no artist could have passed mrs. jerry dustin by, for in her face and about her was the beauty that she had for years fed her soul. so rollins spoke to her that summer day and they are friends now, great friends. she visits his studio frequently and he tells her all about france or venice or wherever he has spent his busy summer. and she sits and listens happily.
rollins bought out what used to be in chicago's young days an old tavern and half-way house. it was a dilapidated old ruin, crumbling away in a shaggy old orchard full of gnarled and ancient apple trees, satin-skinned cherry trunks, some plums and peaches, and tangled shrubs of all kinds.
with the aid of his wife elizabeth, some dollars and much work, rollins transformed the old ruin into the sort of a country place that one reads about and imagines only millionaires may have. they say that when old skinflint holden saw the transformation he stood stock-still, then tied his team to the artistic hitching post under the old elms and went in search of rollins. he found him in the orchard in the laziest of hammocks literally worshipping the flowering trees all about him. old skinflint holden was awed.
"jehohasaphat! bern, how did you do it?"
"oh," smiled the artist, "we cleaned and patched it, put on a new bit here and there and sort of nursed it into shape. doc philipps gave us bulbs and seeds and loads of advice and then elizabeth, i guess, sort of loved it into a home."
"well—i guess," mused skinflint holden. "must have cost you a pretty penny?"
"why, no, it didn't. i'm telling you it wasn't a matter of dollars so much as love. if you use plenty of that you can economize on the money somewhat. of course, it means work but love always means service, you know."
old skinflint holden couldn't understand that sort of talk. it was said that love was one of the things he knew nothing about. his great star was money. he had had a chance to buy the old tavern but had seen no possibilities in it of any kind. so he had passed it up and now a man whose star was love and home had made a paradise of the hopeless ruin.
"and i'll be danged if he didn't have a whole small field of them there blue lilies that the children calls flags, over to one corner looking so darn pretty, like a chunk of sky had dropped there. i'd a never believed it if i hadn't saw it. i guess doc philipps didn't give him them."
rollins is a great crony of doc philipps who almost any day of the year may be caught burrowing in the ground. for doc philipps is a tree maniac and father to every little green growing thing. he knows trees as a mother knows her children and he never sets foot outside his front gate without having tucked somewhere into the many pockets about his big person a stout trowel, some choice apple seeds, peach and cherry stones or seedlings of trees and shrubs. in every ramble, and he is a great walker, he searches for a spot where a tree seedling might grow to maturity and the minute he finds such a place off comes his coat, back goes his broad-rimmed hat and out comes the trowel and seed. travelers driving along the road and catching sight of the big man on his knees say to each other, "there's doc philipps, planting another tree."
up in the big, prim old howe house sits madam howe. she is called madam to distinguish her from her daughter-in-law, mrs. george howe. she is a regal old lady of eighty-three and spends most of her time in her room up-stairs where are gathered the wonderful heirlooms,—older, far older than she.
there is the mellow brown spinning wheel, and armchairs nearly two hundred years old and a walnut table that was mixed up in countless weddings and a beautifully carved old chest and a brocade-covered settee. there are old, old books and family portraits and there is the wonderful madam herself, regal and silver-haired. if she likes you she will take you to her great room and tell you about the revolutionary war as it happened in and to her family; and about her great ride westward in the prairie schooner; about the indians and the babyhood of great cities, and the lovely wild flowers of the virgin prairie; about the wild animals, the snakes, the pioneer men and women of what is now only the middle west.
she will take from out that age-darkened, beautiful chest dresses and bits of lace and samplers like the one that hangs framed above her writing desk and tells how it was stitched by one,
abigail winslow page,
age 13.
there is one thing you must always remember if you wish to stand in madam's good graces. you must never sit down on the brocade-covered settee with the beautiful rose wreath hand-carved on its gracefully curving walnut back. some day when she gets to know you very well she will tell you of the wonderful love stories that were enacted on that settee. she will begin away, away back with some great-great-grandmother or some great-grand-aunt and come gradually down to her own time and history; and as she tells of the young years of her life, her eyes will go dreaming off into the past and she will forget you entirely. and you will slip away from that great room and leave her sitting there, regal and silver haired, her face mellow and sweet with the golden memories of far, by-gone days.
you can wander in this happy, aimless fashion all about green valley, go in and out its deep-rooted old homes, stroll through its tree-guarded old streets, and at every turn taste romance and adventure, revel in beauty of some sort. even the old, red-brick creamery, ugly in itself, is a thing of beauty when seen against a sunset sky.
the people who pass you on the streets all smile and nod, stranger though you are. and if you happen to be at the little undistinguished depot just as the 6:10 pulls in, you will see pouring joyously out of it the green valley men, those who every day go to the great city to work and every night come thankfully back to their little home town to live.
they hurry along in twos and threes, waving newspaper and hand greetings to the home folks and the store proprietors who stand in their doorways to watch them go by.
there is a fragrant smell of supper in the air and a slight feel of coming rain. here and there a mother calls a belated child. doors slam, dogs bark and a baby frets loudly somewhere. in somebody's chicken coop a frightened, dozing hen gargles its throat and then goes to sleep again. the frogs along silver creek and in wimple's pond are going full blast, and in her fragrant herb garden stands grandma wentworth. she is looking at the gold-smudged western sky and watching the sweet, spring night sift softly down on green valley.
she stands there a long time sensing the great tide of new life that is flushing the world into a new, tingling beauty. she sees the lacy loveliness of the birches, the budding green glory of her garden. then she smiles as she tells herself:
"it won't be long now till the lilacs bloom again. nanny will be here soon now. and who knows! cynthia's boy may come back to live in his mother's old home."
