[Illustration: Elinor (Norma Shearer) attends a Bohemian party at the
apartment of Templeton Druid (Ward Crane).
(_“The Valley of Content” screened as “Pleasure Mad.”_)]
THE
Valley of Content
BY BLANCHE UPRIGHT
[Illustration]
A. L. BURT COMPANY
Publishers New York
Published by arrangement with W. J. Watt & Company
COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY
W. J. WATT & COMPANY
_Printed in the United States of America_
WITH LOVE AND DEVOTION
I DEDICATE THESE PAGES
TO
Marjorie Rambeau
MY BELOVED INSPIRER
THE VALLEY OF CONTENT
CHAPTER I
Over the immaculate, freshly ironed white cotton cloth on the little
table set near the window in the kitchen-dining room of the Bentons’
tiny bungalow, a paper-shaded lamp glowed rosily. From its tempered
rays, the plated knives and forks and spoons, polished to a shine that
forgave the nickel spots of usage, caught a pinkish tinge, and the bowl
of wild roses from its place of state in the center of the table
returned blush for blush.
But neither the rosy light, nor the roses themselves had anything to do
with the bright flush that adorned Marjorie Benton’s face as she arose
from in front of the oven of her brightly shining kitchen stove. She
felt of her burning cheek with the back of her hand. The twittering
remonstrance of her canary in its cheap little brass cage, disturbed by
the metallic clang of the closing oven door, turned her gaze in his
direction. She shook her head ruefully.
“More cooking for women and there’d be less rouge, eh, Andy?” she asked,
and an understanding “tweet-tweet” was her reply. Her glance wandered to
the small alarm clock tick-ticking merrily from the shelf above her
head.
“Another ten minutes,” she murmured. The slowly moving hands of the time
piece marked off seven minutes after six. “Hugh should be here then, and
he does so like his roast just out of the oven. Hmm! So do I—” she went
on, but a cross little look of dawning discontent crept into her eyes as
she glanced at the stove distastefully,—“except that I surely would
like to have someone else take it out for me, for a change. Wonder if
we’re ever going to have a maid, or if I’m just naturally to dry up and
brown to a crisp bending over a stove all my life!”
Again she felt of her burning cheeks, as she turned toward the neatly
set table. A mended spot in the table cloth caught her eye. She smoothed
it over.
“Cotton!” she said, plaintively. “Just plain cotton! I can pretend it’s
linen all I want to, but it don’t change the threads, nor—,” and she
lifted a knife with its silver worn undisguisedly off the end and tried
the effect of turning it over. She frowned at the poor pretense.
She turned back to the stove and picked up the dish cloth she had been
using as a holder. Her hand went toward the kettle that simmered
contentedly, a contrast to the simmering thoughts of the pretty woman
who glanced at it.
“I wonder—” she began, half aloud.
She stopped, listening, the dish cloth dangling in her hand. With a
hurried gesture she dropped it, and was across the room to the door that
led into her hallway. Just a moment more she listened, her head with its
fair curls pressed against the door. Then she opened it and tiptoed
quietly through, closing it noiselessly behind her.
Before the closed nursery door she stopped once more. Unmistakable
sounds from within proved that wee ones behind that portal were not
spending their time in earned repose. Marjorie’s half frown was chased
away by an indulgent smile of mother love. Then she opened the door and
entered the room.
“Children!” she cried, as sternly as she had ever brought herself to
command. “Dear little people, what does this mean? Mother can’t have
this, you know. It’s sleepy time.”
From one of the two white cribs surrounded by their halo of the last
rays of the September sun came a little wail. Two-year old Elinor Benton
distinctly disapproved of something—perhaps of going to bed at all
while the sun still shone.
From the other crib another brown tousled head bobbed up. Its owner sat
erect. Master Howard Benton was reasoning that if his little sister who
was only two should be receiving attention, what then was his due at the
mature age of four.
Marjorie Benton’s thoughts flew to the kitchen she had just quitted, the
flush from her oven still on her face. Everything was all right there
for a few minutes, she knew. She did not approve of taking babies from
their beds once they were tucked in for the night, but surely this once
she could not refuse. Her glance rested softly on Elinor’s curly head
and her pleading eyes. Then she lifted her gently and sat down with her
in the low rocker. Baby Elinor snuggled in the protecting arms and
though she felt that she may not have been doing the prescribed thing,
Marjorie Benton’s eyes were soft and her voice caressing as her hold
tightened on her baby and she began softly to sing.
As she sang, the girl-mother’s eyes wandered about the room, resting on
the dado of Mother Goose pictures where more than one darkened spot
proclaimed an interest and love for a particular story-book personage.
What babies Howard and Elinor were! And they were hers! Hers! And
Hugh’s! Her hold tightened the least bit on the baby in her arms, who
was drifting off to dreamland.
The reverberation of the front door closed cautiously brought the mother
back from drifting. Hugh! She must hurry.
This time the child made no protest as she was placed in her little crib
and tucked in. But she stopped long enough to place a kiss on the hair
of each baby before she lowered the shade and tiptoed out.
Her hands gave a quick pat to her own curls as she flew up the hallway
to greet Hugh Benton. He had shuffled out of his light coat and turned
from hanging it on the hall rack with his arms extended to his wife.
“H’lo sweetheart!” was his tender greeting, but there was all the fervor
in the bear-like squeeze he gave her as she ran into his arms that there
ever had been in the earlier days of their honeymoon. The Bentons were
fond of remarking that their honeymoon was only extended.
Hugh Benton raised his head and looked over his wife’s shoulder.
“Um! Dinner!” he exclaimed with a boyish grin. “Pie! Your dinners are
always wonderful, dearest.” And Hugh gave his shiny-haired wife another
hug.
“Hugh! Please!” Marjorie struggled out of his arms. “You don’t know how
strong you are. You almost hurt me—and do please be quiet—the kiddies
are asleep.”
“Already?” Hugh Benton’s tone and eyes were full of disappointment. “No
romp to-night? Seems like I never do get much of a chance for a frolic
any more.”
So genuine was the young father’s disappointment, that Marjorie tempered
the laugh she gave.
“Big baby!” she chided, lovingly. “It’s not hard to see who wants the
romp most. But dinner will do you more good, just as sleep will do them.
I can’t be having my family spoiled, you know.”
“Right, dear,—just as you always are. Be with you in a minute—some of
the grime of an honest working man has to come off first.”
Marjorie Benton hurried to her dinner serving, and as she placed the
roast on the white cloth, her eyes were tender as she heard the
masculine splashing from the bath room and the soft-pedaled whistling
that accompanied it.
She whispered again softly. “Who could help loving him. It’s enough to
make me the happiest woman in the world to know——”
Her husband’s entry broke in on her reverie, and it filled her with all
the pride of accomplishment to see the glance of delight with which he
took in the simple tempting dinner. He leaned over to kiss her as he
placed her in her chair—a small attention he had not discarded since
the first days of their marriage.
“Wonderful little woman!” he complimented softly. “More wonderful every
day.”
She gave his hand a gentle pat, but tried to put a depth of dignified
remonstrance in her chiding.
“Don’t forget you’re a married man of five years’ standing, Mr. Hugh
Benton,” she urged, but the laughter in her eyes belied the dignity of
her words.
“So long!” Hugh took up the carving knife and glanced along its
sharpened edge. “You’ve a fine idea of time, Mrs. Marjorie Benton. Now
I’d say five days—” His eyes twinkled suddenly as though at some sudden
thought, and he nodded toward the bedroom. “Er—pardon me, my dear,—I
forgot,—you have the proof on me——”
“Flatterer!” Marjorie beamed on her husband as she took the service he
offered her.
“Anything new to-day?” Hugh was busy with his dinner.
“Plenty!” was Marjorie’s enthusiastic answer as she let her fork drop
and leaned across the table. “Isn’t there always,—with such children as
ours? Oh, Hugh, dear, there never were such babies,—now don’t you laugh
at me!” as a little quirk in the corner of Hugh’s mouth betrayed he was
not becomingly solemn. “You know I’m not like other mothers,—brag about
my children just because they’re mine—and yours—but you also know
they’re extraordinarily bright.”
Hugh nodded, but there was that in his satisfied expression before his
wife had completed her résumé of the day’s doings of her wonderful
infants that quite persuaded her that he was of her opinion. As he laid
aside his fork after his last bite of pie, his was the beatific
expression of the inwardly satisfied male.
“Want help with the dishes?” he asked. Marjorie smiled at him.
“If I didn’t already know you were the best man in the world,” she
complimented, “that would prove it. Don’t I know how you hate dish
wiping? No, dear, there are only a few,—I’ll do them.”
“Thereby proving your own wonder,” was Hugh’s praise. “Not another woman
in this town would refuse such an offer.”
Marjorie laughed and gave him a playful shove toward a chair as she
handed him his paper.
“There!” she exclaimed. “Take that,—and read it. Maybe you’ll find
something in it to make you appreciate your own wife and babies. I’ll be
through in a minute, and there are lots of things we can do—interesting
things—like sitting on the porch and looking at the moon or something.
It’s been splendid for the last few nights. Have you noticed?”
Hugh yawned contentedly. “Hasn’t it always been whenever we’ve seen it
together?”
It had been. Marjorie Benton was sure of that,—surer now than during
any of those five years she had been married. Everything had been
splendid. She could not help considering how much more they had of the
worth while things in the world than any of the friends they had as her
bright head bent over her dish-washing and her glance darted through the
steam of the hot water occasionally to where Hugh sat absorbed in his
paper.
Perhaps the Benton romance had not been as spectacular as some, but
Marjorie inwardly thanked the Providence that guided her that it was
more _real_. Hugh was right, too. It did seem such a short time that
they had been married. Then, anomalously came the thought that she could
not seem to remember distinctly any time when she and Hugh had not been
one. She had vague memories of the time she had been teaching school in
this very town—that seemed so long ago. She had been used to hearing
people say she was wasting her youth, her beauty and her brains in such
an occupation, but it had in a way satisfied her. Then had come Hugh. He
had come to Atwood to be cashier of the bank, and, though she did not
know it then, he was as much alone in the world as she herself. All
those nearest to them were gone. From the time of their first meeting at
a dance, Marjorie remembered that life had taken on a different meaning
to her. Her thoughts flew back to those beautiful days that followed.
Her lips were tender in their smile of reminiscence as she thought of
that time. There had been only Hugh and Marjorie. That was how it was
to-day,—except that there were two young and tender Hughs and Marjories
to bind them still closer together. Marjorie’s smile grew more wistful
as she thought, her mind far from the bright glasses she was burnishing
as they came hot from their pan of scalding suds. Hugh’s mention of the
moon to-night—He remembered it, then—She, too, remembered how they so
often sat under that big elm in the moonlight, and Hugh softly, huskily
singing,—Poor Hugh! Wasn’t it too bad he never could keep to the same
key for two consecutive bars. But he never noticed, and she knew she
never cared. What was that he was always humming?
“_What’s the matter with the moon to-night?_”
Again he was right. There never _had_ been anything the matter with it
where they were concerned. It had helped them tell their love, and
so——
“Seems like the end of a story, instead of the beginning,” whispered
Marjorie Benton to her flowered salad bowl, “but——”
And so, in three months, they had been married. There hadn’t been much
money; there wasn’t yet, but what did it matter? They had their
bungalow; it was their own. What happiness they had had in planning all
the details just as Marjorie had always planned them for herself when
she put herself to sleep nights planning for that “sometime in the
future.”
“Money!” Marjorie Benton sniffed as she swirled her dish cloth about the
pan, and with one damp hand flung back a recalcitrant bright curl that
tickled her small nose. “Humph! I’m the richest woman in the world! What
else——”
“Something to tell you, sweetheart, when you’re through.” Hugh looked up
from his paper and broke in on his wife’s reverie. “Something you’ll
like, maybe.”
“Oh, Hugh, dear! Are they going to raise your salary again?” she asked
eagerly.
Hugh laughed, but there was a rueful shrug to his shoulders.
“Nothing so exciting,” he declared. “Have you an idea that’s the Atwood
Bank’s chief occupation? No, dear, but it’s just as long a chance. I got
my patent from Washington to-day, and I believe I have some real people
in New York interested in it.”
Casually as he spoke, there was in Hugh Benton’s manner that which would
imply that he fully believed he was offering to his wife the equivalent
of fur coats and jewels and estates so large that extra sized depot
wagons would be required to transport the servants.
“Clever boy!” Marjorie flew to him excitedly. “Oh, I am so proud of
you!”
“A bit early to be too proud yet, little one,” Hugh replied in the
choppy way he bit off so many of his sentences. “Got to wait for
results. But I’ll tell you this,” and his arm slipped around her waist
as he bent for the kiss she offered, “if this thing does go through,
it’ll go through big, and——”
“And I’ll be the wife of the great inventor!” Marjorie could not
restrain her enthusiasm. Hugh smiled indulgently. But it was good to be
appreciated,—to be so completely believed in by someone. It was the
instinct of the woman who loves, though, that led her to add: “But if it
doesn’t go through, dear, what of it? Won’t we still be the happiest
people in the whole world? It couldn’t be any other way. Come on out on
the porch and let the moon tell us so.” And she drew him by a coat
sleeve out through the open door onto the small porch that the moon was
beginning to silver with its pale vivid light.
Through the trees, themselves silvered and softened from their flaunting
autumnal coloring of the day, came wafted to them the fragrance of
new-mown hay. On the top step, they sat down, their faces upturned to
the same old moon that is for lovers the world over. Softly Hugh
Benton’s arm slipped about the slender waist of his lithe young wife. As
of its own accord, her cheek nestled into the curve of his coat sleeve.
Out of the silvered darkness, a phonograph from one of the nearby unseen
homes began to play. Through the stillness came to them the voice of
John McCormack:
“_For this is the end of a perfect day._”
“A perfect day,—yes!” sighed Marjorie Benton as the singer’s voice died
out. “But isn’t that the way with all our days? They end and
_start_—perfectly.”
Hugh Benton’s dark head bent over his wife’s bright one. His lips placed
there his kiss of reverence and thanksgiving.