the last and surest sign of spring's arrival in green valley is gossip. the mornings may be ever so full of meadow larks, the woods moistly sweet and carpeted with spring's frail and dainty blossoms, but no one dreams of letting the furnace go out or their base burner get cold until they see fanny foster flitting about town at all hours of the day and behold the array of shiny armchairs standing so invitingly in front of uncle tony's hardware store.
when these two great news agencies open up for business green valley laughs and goes to martin's drug store to buy moth balls and talks about how it's going to paint its kitchen woodwork and paper its upstairs hall and where it's buying its special garden seed.
then the whole town wakes up and comes outdoors to work and talk. there are fences to be mended and gardens to be planted and houses to be cleaned and all the winter happenings to be gone over. all the doctor cases have to be discussed critically and the winter invalids, strong once again, come out to visit one another and compare notes. letters from special relatives and former green valley souls are passed around and read and all new photographs and the winter's crop of fancy work exhibited and carefully examined.
everybody talks so much that nobody listens very carefully, only half hearing things. and when the spring madness and gladness begin to settle and people start to repeat the things they only half heard strange and weird tales are at times the result. and from these spring still more fantastic rumors and versions that ripple over green valley like waves of sunshine or cloud shadows, sometimes causing much joy and merriment and sometimes considerable worry and uneasiness.
and all these rumors come eventually to uncle tony's where they are solemnly examined, edited and frequently so enhanced and touched up in color and form as to sound almost new. then they are sent out again to begin life all over. many of them die but some live on and on, and after a sufficient test of time become a part of the town chronicles.
everybody, of course, takes a hand at helping a yarn get from house to house but nobody makes such a specialty of this sort of social work as fanny foster. there are some green valley folks who attribute fanny's up and down thinness to this wearing industry yet both men and women are always glad to see her and her reports always drive blue cares away and provoke ripples of sunny laughter.
everybody in town has tried their hand at hating fanny and despising her and ignoring her and putting her in her place. but everybody has long ago given it up. stylish and convention-loving newcomers are always disgusted and keep her at arm's length. but sooner or later such people break an arm or a leg right in the midst of strawberry canning maybe and it so happens that nobody sees them do this but fanny. and when this does happen they don't even have to mortify themselves by calling her. she just comes of her own accord, forgetting the cruel snubbings. she fixes that stand-offish person as comfortable as can be, makes them laugh even, and telephones to the doctor. then she rolls up her sleeves and without so much as an apron has those strawberries scientifically canned and that messy kitchen beautifully clean.
and the curious, the pitifully, laughably incomprehensible part of it is that in her own house fanny absolutely never can seem to take the least interest. her own dishes are always standing about unwashed. her kitchen is spoken of in horrified whispers; her children, buttonless, garterless, mealless, stray about in all sorts of improper places and weather. the whole town is home to them but they generally feel happiest at grandma wentworth's. she sets them down in her kitchen to a hot meal and then makes them sew on their buttons under her watchful eye. sooner or later, usually later, fanny comes as instinctively as her children to grandma's door to report green valley doings.
this particular spring things promised to be unusually lively. but the rains, though gentle, had been persistent and fanny was a full two weeks behind with her news schedule. but if late, her report was thorough. she dropped wearily into grandma's soft cushioned kitchen rocker, slipped her cold feet without ceremony into the warm stove oven and began:
"good land! i never see such a town and such people and such weather! jim tumley's drunk again and as sick as death and mary's crying over him as usual and blaming the hotel crowd. she says he's a good man and don't care for liquor at all and that their liking to hear him sing ain't no reason for getting him drunk and a poor way of showing their thanks and appreciation, and that they all know that he can't stand it, him being weak in the stomach that way, like all the tumleys. mary's just about ready to give up everything and everybody, she's that discouraged.
"well—that's one mess and now there's uncle tony in another. it seems uncle tony sold seth curtis a hand axe for a dollar and ten cents. of course seth paid for it like he always does—right away. but you know how forgetful uncle tony is getting. well, it seems he clean forgot about seth paying and sent in a bill for a dollar. and now seth's hanging around, wanting his ten cents back and saying mean, smart things.
"and that lazy, gossiping crowd of worthless men folks was just killing themselves laughing and making fun of poor uncle tony, sitting right in his very own chairs and warming their lazy feet at his comfortable fire. uncle tony happened to be out and those loafers just started in and what they said about that kind old man made my blood boil. they were all mean enough, with seth egging them on every now and then about that dime that he was cheated out of. but mert hagley was the worst. of course, everybody knows mert's just dying to hog uncle tony's business along with his shop, as if the stingy thing wasn't rich enough already. well, when mert heard about that ten-cent mistake he said it was about time there were a few business changes in green valley, that a few business funerals would help a lot and freshen up things; that uncle tony was no business man, and a lot of that sort of stuff. and of course hughey mason, being a smart aleck, pipes up and says, 'that's so, uncle tony is no business man. why, tom hall says that when you find uncle tony's emporium locked at eleven o'clock of a winter morning you can bet your bottom dollar uncle tony's home shaking down the furnace, and if it's closed at four of a summer afternoon uncle tony's sneaked off home to mow the lawn.'
"well, those idiots and old hypocrites were talking just like that, goodness knows how long. they never took the trouble to see if uncle tony was really around or not. but all of a sudden i looked around the corner of the middle row of shelves and there was that poor old man sitting as still as death in his cashier's cage and looking sick to death. you know he wouldn't cheat a soul, and as for that store, he'd die without it. it's all the family he has. well i had stepped in there to buy a couple of flat-irons. the children mislaid mine. but i walked right out for i didn't want to call him out to wait on me.
"i was so mad i just walked around the block till i met mrs. jerry dustin right at simpson's corner and i told her the whole thing. she was as hurt about it as uncle tony and kept holding on to simpson's garden fence and saying, 'dear me, fanny, we must do something. i have a message for tony, anyway, and this is just the time to deliver it.'
"so back we went and we met uncle tony stepping in at the front door too. he must have sneaked out the back way and come around the front so's not to let on he'd heard anything. he was kind of white and miserable about the mouth and his eyes looked out kind of blind. but he smiled when mrs. jerry dustin said, 'good morning, tony.' i wonder," fanny digressed, "if it's true that uncle tony wanted to marry mrs. dustin once. sadie dundry says so but you know how unreliable sadie is about what she knows.
"well, anyhow, those miserable men things around that stove just smiled at uncle tony like so many judases and all commenced talking at once. but mrs. dustin didn't give them much chance. she just took up all uncle tony's attention and time. she bought and bought, being real careful of course to ask only for the things she knew he had; and to top it all she bought four quarts of robin's-egg blue paint. you know that's uncle tony's favor-ite woodwork paint and nobody goes in there for paint but what he's trying to get them to buy robin's-egg blue. seems his mother's kitchen on the old farm was done that way and uncle tony's never been able to see any other color.
"well, i thought those four cans of paint was about the highest kind of good luck but when mrs. dustin give her message i nearly fell dead, and as for them old he-gossips they were about paralyzed, i guess. why even you, grandma, couldn't hardly guess what that message was;" here fanny pulled up a sagging stocking and hurried on lest she should be interrupted.
"it was nothing more nor less than that bernard rollins, the artist, wants to paint uncle tony's portraiture. 'and, of course, tony,' said mrs. dustin in that sweet way of hers, 'you won't refuse, will you?' and i declare the lovely way she looked at him and he at her i come near believing sadie might be right by accident. but, land—in this town everybody has growed up with everybody else and somebody is always saying that somebody is sweet on somebody else or was when he or she were young.
"so there's that portraiture to look forward to. and now there's that yarn that some careless busybody started about nanny turner being left a fortune of eighteen thousand dollars. everybody's been crazy, praising her luck to her face and envying her behind her back. everybody most but dell parsons. dell felt sick when she heard it because she and nanny have been such friends and dell just knew that no matter how they'd both try to keep things the same there'd always be that eighteen-thousand-dollar difference between them when now there's nothing dividing them but a little low honeysuckle fence with a gate cut through it. and there would, of course. nanny'd be on one side, cutting aprons out of nice new gingham, and dell'd be on the other, cutting her aprons out of jim's old shirt backs.
"but as soon as nanny heard it she up and told everybody it wasn't so, that she and will wouldn't thank anybody for a fortune now that they've paid for their home and garden.
"i met jessie williams in the drug store. she was buying dye to do over her last year's silk and she says nanny was a fool to contradict a fine story like that. that she should have said nothing and used the rumor to her social advantage. jessie says that story alone would have brought that uppish mrs. brownlee that's moved into that stylish new bungalow next to will turner's to time and sociability. though the daughter isn't uppish a bit, so nanny and dell says, and visits right over the fence and just loves the children. but she don't know anything seemingly—the daughter don't. wears fancy caps and high-heeled shoes to work in mornings and was caught planting onion sets root up and doing dishes without an apron and drying them without scalding them first. but they say she's awful sweet and pretty, in spite of her terrible ignorance.
"old mr. dunn told me this mrs. brownlee was a bankrupt's widow, that when the husband died there was nothing left but this green valley lot, which he bought absent-mindedly one day, and his life insurance which though was a good one. and the widow having no money didn't want to stay amongst her rich city friends and so she's come here. they say she hates green valley like poison but that the girl jocelyn thinks it's fun living here, even though her hands are blistered and there's no place to go evenings. i heard that david allan's been plowing up the brownlee garden lot and helping the girl set things out.
"and now, grandma, what of all things do you suppose has happened? old man mullin's back. nobody can hardly believe it. he's been gone these ten years and nobody blamed him a mite when he left that miserly, nagging wife of his and went off to california. why, they say she nearly died giving him a ten-cent piece every week for spending money and that he used to work on the sly unbeknownst to her to get money for his tobacco and then didn't dare smoke it where she could see him. and he's come back. some say he's got so much money of his own that she can't worry him and that he's got to be so deaf besides that he's safe more or less.
"and as if that wasn't enough, there's talk of sam ellis's selling the hotel and going out of business. it seems since the two boys and the girl came back from college they've talked nothing but temperance and prohibition. not that they are a mite ashamed of sam. but not one of them will step into the hotel for love or money. and sam's beginning to think as they do, seems like. for they say he was awful mad when he heard about jim tumley getting so full he was sick. sam was out that afternoon and he says curley watson, his barkeeper, is a danged chucklehead. and that ain't all. they're saying that sam told george hoskins to let up on the drinks the other night, that maybe he could stand it but other men couldn't. and sam the hotel keeper, mind you! of course sam is well off but still the men haven't got over it yet. they say you could have heard a pin drop and that george stood with his mouth open for five full minutes.
"somebody told john gans that there was going to be another barber shop in town and so he's excited. and mr. pelly and mrs. dudley had their first fight this year over their chickens. mr. pelly swears she lets them out a-purpose before he's awake in the morning and mrs. dudley says that if he don't mend his fence and hurts a feather of a single one of her animals she'll have him before judge hewitt.
"of course, marion travers is spending every cent of her husband's salary on new clothes, trying to get in with the south end crowd. and sam bobbins has given up trying to raise violets to make a sudden fortune. he's changed his mind and gone to raising mushrooms down in his cellar. simpson's gray horse is dead, the lame one, and one of the white twins cut his head pretty bad on a toy engine and benny smith's wife is giving strawberry sets away. jessups are all out of tomato plants and onion sets and won't get any more, but dick has them, besides a real tasty looking lot of garden seed. ella higgins actually found that dick had two kinds of flower seed that she'd never grown or heard of.
"mrs. rosenwinkle's full of rheumatism with all joints swelled and says the world is coming to a terrible end. i guess she figures though that she and those two grandchildren of hern will be about all that's left after the thing blows over. my land, ain't some folks ignorant! and—what was i going to say—oh, yes, of course robinson ain't expected to live—and well—what was it i was going to say—something that begins with a c—good land, there's the 6:10 and i bet john's on it. he never misses his train twice in a year's time. get out of here, children. you know your father wants to see you all at home when he gets there."
there was a scramble for the door and grandma wentworth's heart ached for john foster, the big, silent, steady man who brushes his girls' hair every sunday morning and brings them fresh hair ribbons and who somehow manages to get them to sunday school looking half respectable. john never says a word scarcely to any one, from one week's end to the other. he never spends a free hour away from home, he never invites a man to his house, and he seldom smiles except at the children or when visiting with grandma wentworth or roger allan, his two friends and nearest neighbors. sometimes he goes for long walks with his girls and little bobby. most people think him a fool and he knows it.
grandma wentworth sighed a little as she thought of john foster. then she put fresh wood on her fire and poked at the stove grate till it glowed. she smiled as she remembered fanny's report.
"well, spring is here for certain. now we'll have a wedding and some new babies. they always come next."
then sitting there beside her glowing stove grandma fell to dreaming of green valley and the green valley folks of other days, green valley as it used to be in the springs of long ago. of the days when roger allan was a young, strength-mad fellow and richard wentworth was his chum and her lover. and she remembered too how right sadie dundry was. for uncle tony, in the springs of long ago, had loved the girl who was now mrs. jerry dustin.
they were such wander-mad dreamers, tony and rosalie, and exactly alike in those days. they used to go together to watch an occasional picnic train or election special go through the station, and they thought because they were so exactly alike they would most surely marry. but life, that wisely and for posterity's sake mates not the like but the unlike, brought jerry dustin on the scene,—good, practical, stay-at-home jerry dustin. and the girl who used to sit with tony on the station bench and watch the trains pull out into the wide big world left her childhood friend sitting alone and went to jerry, answered his smile and call.
so tony sits alone, for he still visits the station on sunny afternoons. but now he doesn't sit on the bench but perches on the top rail of the fence and curls his toes about the lower one.
bernard rollins caught him sitting so once, day-dreaming over the past. it was tony's face as rollins saw it then,—full of a young, boyish wistfulness and sweet pain, unmarred dreams and unstained, unbroken illusions,—that rollins wanted to paint. rollins knew that mrs. dustin was a great friend of tony's and that she would be the best person to coax a consent from the shy, gentle old man.
life, mused grandma, was a matter full of sweet and incomprehensible things,—things that now, after long years when the stories were almost finished, seemed right and just enough but that at the time were cruel and hard to bear. there was roger allan and that lonely stone in the peaceful cemetery. it still seemed a cruel tragedy. like mrs. jerry dustin she wondered often about it.
the soft spring night was full of memories and the wood fire sang of them sadly, sweetly and softly. grandma rose and mentally shook herself.
"i declare, i believe i'm lonely or getting old or something," grandma chided herself; "here i am poking at the bygone years like an old maid with the heartache and here's the whole world terribly alive and needing attention. and here's cynthia's boy back from india, and a real green valley kind of minister, i do believe; a straightforward chap to tell us of life, its miracles and mysteries; of god and eternity as he honestly thinks, but mostly of love and the little happy ways of earthly living. a man who won't be always dividing us into sheep and goats but will show us the sheep and the goat in ourselves. this is a queer old town and it almost seems as if a minister wouldn't hardly have to know so much about heaven as about fighting neighbors and chickens, gossiping folks like fanny and drunken ones like jim tumley. well, maybe,—"
but just then she looked up and found david allan laughing at her from the doorway.
"stop dreaming and scolding yourself, grandma," laughed david. "there's a little city girl living up on the hill back of will turner's who needs you most awful bad. i offered to bring her down here but she thinks it wouldn't be proper. she says you haven't called and she wants to do things right and that maybe you wouldn't want to know her. she's mighty lonely and strange about green valley ways of doing things. i most wished to-day that i was a woman so i could help her. her mother's been sick more or less since they come here and she's looking after things herself. i'd like to help her but there's things a man just can't tell a girl or do for her. uncle roger sent me over here to tell you to come across and talk about some church matters with him. but i think this little girl business ought to be tended to right away."
"rains and gossip and new girls and first violets. i declare, it is spring, david. and nanny ainslee is back. of course, i'll see about that little girl. you tell her i'm coming to call on her the day after tomorrow. tell her i'll come up the woodsy side of her garden and i'll be wearing my pink sunbonnet and third best gingham apron."
grandma took up a pan of fresh light biscuit, rolled them up in a crisp linen cloth and started out with david.
outdoors she stopped and breathed deeply.
"i declare, david, i was almost lonesome before you stepped in but now i feel—well, spring mad or something. i do believe we'll have a wedding soon and a real old-fashioned springtime."
