CYNTHIA'S SON
So Cynthia's son came home and Green Valley took him to its heart and
loved him as it had loved his mother long ago. Everywhere he was
spoken of as Cynthia's boy and no one seemed to remember that he was
born in heathen India instead of in the old porticoed house on the
Churchill farm.
Green Valley knew that very first week, of course, that Cynthia's son
was very nearly twenty-eight years old and that his full name was John
Roger Churchill Knight. But what it did not know for some weeks was
that among other interesting things Cynthia's son was a minister, a
duly certified preacher of the gospel. It was remembered in a general
way that Cynthia's husband had been some sort of a wonderful foreign
missionary or something; but a man who was Joshua Churchill's only
grandchild and heir needed no other ancestor. So Green Valley was
astounded one Sunday morning, when the Reverend Campbell was
unexpectedly ill, and the Reverend Courtney off somewhere answering a
new call, and Green Valley without a pastor, to have Cynthia's boy
quietly offer to take charge of the services.
If Green Valley was astounded to hear that Cynthia's son was a minister
it was too awed to speak in anything but an amazed whisper of that
first sermon that the tall young man from India talked off so quietly
from the pulpit of the old gray stone church.
To this day they tell how without a scrap of paper to look at, without
raising his voice in the slightest, this boy made Green Valley listen
as it had never listened before. For an hour he talked and for that
length of time Green Valley neighbored with India, saw it as plainly as
if it was looking over an unmended, sagging old fence right into
India's back yard.
With the simplicity of a child this boy with Cynthia Churchill's eyes
and smile and voice told of Indian women and children and Indian homes.
The colors, the smells, the mystic beauty and the dark tragedy of it he
painted and then very gently and easily he told of his trip back to his
mother's home town and so without a jar he landed his listeners,
wide-eyed, breathless and prayerfully thankful for their manifold
blessings back in their own sunlit and tree-guarded streets.
For no reason at all seemingly Green Valley began to wipe its eyes and
come out of its trance. Neighbor looked at neighbor and strange things
were seen to have happened.
Old man Wiley, the aged and chronically sleepy janitor was actually
sitting wide awake. Old Mrs. Vingie, who for years annoyed every Green
Valley parson by holding her hand to her right ear and pretending to be
deafer than she really was, was sitting bolt upright, both ears and
hands forgotten. For once Dolly Beatty forgot to fuss with her hat or
admire her hands in the new lavender gloves two sizes too small. The
choir even forgot to flirt and yawn and never once looked bored or
superior.
Jimmy Rand, after having carefully inserted in his hymn book a copy of
Diamond Dick's latest exploits, forgot to read it. And the row of
little boys whose mothers always made them sit in the very first pew
never so much as thought of kicking each other's shins or passing a
hard pinch down the line or even quietly swapping lucky stones and fish
hooks for a snake skin or a choice piece of colored glass.
Why, it was even reported that Mert Hagley so far forgot himself as to
absent-mindedly drop a bill into the basket when it came by. Some
said, of course, that Mert was after the repair work on the old
Churchill homestead but those nearest Mert swore that this could not
be, that Mert had looked as surprised as those around him when he saw
what he had done. Green Valley laughed and said a miracle had
happened. And even Seth Curtis got curious and remarked that he had
half a mind to go and hear the boy himself, that anybody who could peel
a bill off of Mert Hagley's roll was surely a curiosity.
Cynthia's son had walked with Roger Allan through the twilight of his
first real day in Green Valley to Grandma Wentworth's cottage and the
three had sat talking until the small hours. Then Grandma had taken
Cynthia's tall son up-stairs into the large airy guest room. She came
down a little later to find Roger gazing at a framed photograph of a
long gone day.
She came and looked too at the group of young faces. At herself, then
a girl of eighteen; at the boy beside her who later became her husband;
and at Cynthia, lovely Cynthia Churchill, laughing out at life in her
sweet yet serious way.
"Well, Roger," Grandma spoke softly with a hint of tears in her voice,
"we have waited years, you and I, for a message from her, a heart
message. And now it has come--it has come. She has sent us her boy."
"Yes," breathed Roger Allan, "she has sent us the message--she has sent
me her son."
They knew, these two, why he had come. It may be that even the tall
young man whose father and mother were sleeping the long sleep in
far-off India may have guessed why in the end the frail but still
lovely mother had begged him to go back to Green Valley, to its sweet
old homes and warm-hearted folk. To bring comfort and find it--that
had been the little mother's plan.
He believed he would find it. The loneliness that had tired him so
ever since his mother slipped away was no longer a sharp, never silent
pain, a great emptiness, but rather a sweet sorrow that was almost a
friend.
He slept in the big airy room with its patchwork quilt of blue and
white, its rugs and curtains to match, and looked at pictures of his
mother. From the windows he watched the sun rise and shine on the
merry little hills and the yellow road that wound up to his mother's
old home. As he breathed in the wine of the spring mornings he
comprehended the great hunger, the wild longing, that at times must
have overwhelmed the little mother in those last days in India. And he
thought he understood those last words of hers.
"Son, you must stay with your father as long as he needs you. But when
that duty is over you must go back to the little green town on the
other side of the world. Your father and I brought a message to India.
You must take one back to my people. Oh, you will love it--you will
love it--the little dear town full of friends and everywhere the
fragrance of home. Oh, there are many there who will love you for my
sake and who will make up to you for--me."
Her hand caressed his hair and her voice trailed off into a sigh for
she knew what he didn't, wouldn't believe--that she was never to see
that little green town across the gray-green ocean waves.
At the very last she had whispered:
"Oh, Boy of Mine, when you go home greet them all for me. And if ever
you go to rummaging about in the attic remember you must never open the
square trunk with the brass nail heads unless Mary Wentworth is there
to explain. Tell Mary I love her and that I am not sorry. She will
understand."
So as he looked out of Grandma Wentworth's upstairs windows he
remembered those last talks and understood that yearning for home.
When he had been in Green Valley only a few weeks the old life began to
grow vague and unreal. The mother was real and near. But the splendid
figure of his father was fading into a strange memory. He was a father
to be proud of, that strong, cool, selfless man who had asked nothing
of life but to take what it would of him.
He had seemed so towering, so enduring, that preacher father. Yet when
the frail mother went the strong man followed within a year. So then
there was nothing to do but go home to Green Valley. He went. And the
spirit of the vivid little mother seemed to have come with him. Every
day that he spent in the town that had reared her seemed to bring her
nearer. He could picture her going about the sunny roads and friendly
streets and stopping to chat and neighbor with Green Valley folks.
So he too roamed over the town and chatted and neighbored as he felt
she would have done. That was how he came to know every nook and
cranny, every turn of the happily straying roads and all the lame, odd,
damaged and droll characters that make a town home just as the
broken-nosed pitcher, the cracked old mirror in an up-stairs bedroom,
and the sagging old armchair in the shadowy corner of the sitting room
make home.
Not only did he come to know these people but he understood them. For
his was the quick eye and interpreting heart willed him by a great
father and an equally great mother. And because he came into Green
Valley with a fresh mind and a keen appetite for life nothing escaped
him, not even old Mrs. Rosenwinkle sitting in paralyzed patience beside
the open window of her little blind house.
He was strolling one day up the little grassy lane, thinking that it
led into the cool, thick grove back of the little house that stared so
blindly out into the green world. He had been following a new bird and
it had darted into the grove. So he came upon the little house and the
still grim old soul who sat at the open window as if to guard that
little end of the world.
It was a snug, still spot, that little green lane, and was so carpeted
with thick grasses and screened with verdure that the harsh noises of a
chattering, working world could not ruffle its peace and serenity.
Cynthia's son filled it and the still, lonely old woman was fascinated
with his bigness, his merry gladness, but most of all with his
understanding friendliness. She told him all her story, her past
trials and present griefs. And he told her strange things about people
he had seen in other parts of the world, blind people living in foul
alleys instead of sunny lanes, crippled ones with neither home nor kin
of any kind. He told her much but made no effort to convince her that
the earth was round, and when he went he left with her the very fine
pair of field glasses with which he had been tracking the wonderful
song bird that had escaped him. He showed her how to use them and for
the first time in fifteen years old Mrs. Rosenwinkle forgot that she
was paralyzed.
When he came in to his supper that evening Cynthia's son wanted to know
why old Mrs. Rosenwinkle couldn't have a wheel-chair, one of those that
she could work with her hands. He said that he thought she must be
pretty tired sitting beside that window even if it was open. And why
couldn't she have a window on each of the other sides of her room?
Grandma stared.
"My stars--boy! There's no reason that I know of why that old body
can't have a wheel chair or more windows. Only Green Valley hasn't
ever thought of it. She's always been so set in her notions and so out
of the way of things that I expect we have forgotten her."
The third time that Cynthia's son brought little Jim Tumley home
because the little man's wandering feet could not find their way to
shelter, he wanted to know why little Jim was not in the choir. So
Grandma told him, and it was his turn to be puzzled.
"But I don't understand. The church is for the weak, the needy, the
blind, maimed and foolish who don't know how to seek happiness wisely.
The happy, strong, sensible people don't, as a matter of fact, need
looking after," said Cynthia's son.
"My!" laughed Grandma, "I believe I've heard that or read that
somewhere. Do they really practice that kind of religion in aged
India? In these parts the churches are still built by the good for the
good and the unfit have to shift for themselves."
But when he asked why Jim Tumley didn't have a piano to take up his
spare time and keep him out of harm's way, Grandma was a bit
scandalized.
"Why, people in Jim Tumley's circumstances don't own pianos. It
wouldn't be proper. A second-hand organ is all they have any right to
be ambitious for. Why, Mary Tumley would no more think of touching her
savings, of buying a piano, than I would think of buying a second black
silk or a diamond ring. So much style would be wicked."
"But if it would help to save the little man--if--"
"Well," smiled Grandma, "I'll mention it to Mary the very next time I
see her."
"Do. And while you are about it you might ask Jim to sing a solo for
us both Sunday morning and evening. If little Jim Tumley doesn't sing
I won't talk," said the Reverend John Roger Churchill Knight.
So Joshua Churchill's rich grandson, Cynthia's son, traveled the high
roads and low roads and had all manner of experiences and adventures
and he discovered many stray, odd facts which later came in mighty
handy.
He rode out into the country districts with Hank Lolly, sitting beside
that worthy on the high wagon seat and listening most carefully to the
description of every farm, its inmates, the barn dimensions and
contents, the depth of the well, cost of the silo, number of pigs,
sheep, the amount of tiling, and the make of the family graphophone.
Sometimes busy farm wives came hurrying out from the back or side
doors, wiping their hands on their aprons, to ask Hank to take a mess
of peas or beans to a less fortunate neighbor or to carry a basket of
dishes over to the next farm where the thrashers were going to be for
supper; and "Hank, just bring me a setting of turkey eggs from Emily
Elby's. I've 'phoned and she has them all ready."
Mrs. Tooley, up the Elmwood road, entrusted the obliging Hank with the
following message:
"Tell Doc Mitchell that if he don't get my new set of teeth ready for
the thrashing I'll hev the law on him for breaking up my happy home.
Two of my old beaux're coming to the thrashing and if they was to see
me without my teeth they'd jest naturally make Jim miserable and me a
divorcee."
Mrs. Bodin was sending her daughter, Stella, some little overalls made
over for the twins from their grandpa's and a bottle of home made cough
medicine "and one of my first squash pies for Al. And here's a pie for
your trouble, Hank, and a few of these cookies you said you like."
Hank stowed everything carefully away, with no show of nervous haste,
and when they were well started remarked to John Churchill Knight:
"You know the best part of staying sober is that you get taken in on so
many things and almost you might say into so many families. People
tell you things and ask your help and advice and by gum after awhile
you get to feeling that maybe you're somebody too instead of jest a
mess of miserableness. Why, I've got friends jest about everywhere, I
guess.
"There's them as asks me sarcastic like if I don't find this kind of
work dry and lonesome but I jest ask them to come along and see. Why,
do you see that there house yonder? Those folks are relatives of Billy
Evans' and as soon as ever I turn this corner, Mollie, that's the
youngest girl, will start the graphophone going with my favorite piece.
The last time I come by I found a box of candy on the mail box for me.
That was from Winnie, the oldest, for bringing home her new dress from
the dressmaker's.
"Yes, sir, it's jest wonderful how human and pleasant everybody is.
Why, if I jest keep on a-being sober and associating with folks like
this--why--I'm jest naturally bound to be kind of decent myself. And
when you think of what I was--well--there's no use in talking--I was
low--jest low. Ask anybody but Billy Evans and they'll tell you fast
enough. Of course Billy's naturally prejudiced and his word ain't
hardly to be credited.
"And here I am on a nice summer morning riding with the minister and
with the whole country acting as if I'd always been decent."
Maybe it was Hank who first called him the minister. It may of course
have been that old Mrs. Rosenwinkle, who, not knowing his name for some
time, explained him to her daughter as "the new preacher of the lost."
At any rate, when Fanny Foster came to make her periodical report it
was found that to the lonely, the outcast and the generally unfit
Cynthia's son was "the new minister." And his influence was already
felt by those who as yet regarded him as just a Green Valley boy who
was helping out. Fanny Foster voiced this sentiment in Joe Baldwin's
shop when she was paying for the four patches Joe had just put on her
second best pair of shoes.
"Well--I shouldn't wonder if Green Valley hadn't got a minister to its
taste at last. He hasn't been regularly appointed and I guess he don't
realize himself that he's it but I'm pretty sure that the minute Parson
Courtney steps out that's just what's going to happen. Of course
there's them that says it can't. Mr. Austin says it would be a
terrible mistake, that he's too young; and Seth Curtis says no rich man
would be fool enough to pester himself with a dinky country church.
But I guess people like Seth and Mr. Austin ain't the kind of people
that have much to say. He's doing regular minister's work, comforting
the sick and picking up the fallen and pacifying the quarrelsome, and
it's work like that that'll elect him.
"And he's getting mighty popular, let me tell you, even with them that
no other minister could please or get near. There's old Mrs.
Rosenwinkle. She loves him just because he never tried to tell her
that the earth was round. Why, she says he's as good as any Lutheran.
And Hank Lolly said that maybe when that new suit Billy's ordered him
out of the new mail-order catalogue gets here, he'll go hear him
preach. It seems the minister's been driving around with Hank all over
creation and Hank says he can get along with him as easy as he does
with Billy.
"And did you hear what he did for Jim Tumley? It seems the minister
told Grandma Wentworth what a fine voice Jim had and what an ear for
music. And he was most surprised that Jim never even had a second-hand
organ of his own in the house but had to go over to his sister's, Mrs.
Hoskins, for to play a little tune when the fancy took him. He said it
was an awful pity that a man who wanted music so badly and was always
so obliging at weddings and funerals and entertainments should be
without a proper instrument. And Grandma just said, 'My land, nobody's
ever thought of that but I'll speak of it.'
"Well, she did and the consequence is that Mary Tumley is so nervous
she can't sleep. She says if she takes the savings out of the bank
there won't be enough money for a Keeley cure, or a respectable funeral
for Jim in case he dies. She's struggled and struggled but come to the
conclusion that it wouldn't be right and would set an awful example to
the Luttins next door, who are extravagant enough as it is.
"But it's my notion that Jim Tumley will get his organ and maybe a
piano. I saw him going in with Frank Burton on that early morning
train and it means something. Besides, Grandma told me that Frank
fairly hates himself for not thinking of it before and waiting like a
born idiot for a boy to come all the way from India and tell him what
to do for his best friend.
"Agnes Tomlins says she's got a good mind to go and see the minister
about Hen. She says that if Hen don't quit abusing her and tormenting
her she's going to leave him; that her sister Mary over in Aberdeen has
a big up-stairs bedroom all aired and waiting for her. It seems that
Hen's more than contrarily stubborn lately. He's contradicted Agnes
publicly time and again and gone against her in private till Agnes says
there's no living with him.
"But she says she would overlook everything except Hen's keeping a
secret drawer in his chiffonier. It seems Hen has gone and locked that
bottom drawer and Agnes can't either buy or borry a key that will open
it. And she can't find where Hen has hid his, try as she may. And
when she mentions that drawer to Hen, saying she wants to red up, he
lets on like he don't know what she's talking about but he does,
because he told Doc Philipps, when he went to see about his liver, that
if he couldn't wear a soft collar or a soft hat like other men and keep
a dog and smoke in the house, and eat strawberries or whistle or go to
ball games on Sundays and prize fights on the sly, why, there was one
thing he could do and would have and that was a drawer, a whole
chiffonier drawer, all to himself. And that he bet there weren't many
men in Green Valley that could say as much. Hen just swore that he
intends to have something all his own and that nobody'll open that
drawer except over his dead body.
"Dolly Beatty was sitting in the waiting room and heard him. Of
course, she's a great friend of Bessie Williams and told her and Bessie
told Laura Enbry and of course it got to Agnes. So she's going to
speak to the minister and maybe get a divorce, which will be the first
divorce scandal in Green Valley.
"Now that's the sort of thing that goes on in Green Valley. And if the
new minister is supposed to calm these troubled waters he's got my
sympathy. Joe, I think you're charging me ten cents too much for these
patches. They're not as big as the ones you put on the other pair and
those were fifty cents."
So without a conscious move on anybody's part Cynthia's son became
Green Valley's minister. All the necessary rites gone through, Green
Valley accepted him as it accepted the sunshine and rain, the larks and
wild roses, and all the other gifts that heaven chose to send.
Roger Allan and Grandma Wentworth began to call him John. But Nanny
Ainslee always spoke of him and addressed him as Mr. Knight. And he
discovered after a time that for some strange reason he did not like
this.
One day he mentioned the matter. He was walking home from church with
her. Mr. Ainslee had invited him up for Sunday dinner and the party of
them were chatting pleasantly as they walked along together.
In asking him a question Nan addressed him as Mr. Knight. Then it was
that he stopped and made his startling request. He addressed them all
but he meant only Nan.
"I wish," he said suddenly, "you would not call me Mr. Knight."
Mr. Ainslee and Billy hid a smile, said nothing and walked on. But Nan
stopped in amazement.
"Why not?" she asked a little breathlessly.
"Nobody else does. I was never called that in India. It makes me feel
lonely, and a stranger here."
"But," Nanny's voice was colorless and almost dreary, even though a
wicked little gleam shot into her eyes, "what in the world shall I call
you? I can't call you--_John_. And 'parson' always did seem to me
rather coarse and disrespectful."
He had stopped when she did and now was looking straight down into her
eyes. Before the hurt and surprise and bewilderment in his face the
wicked little gleam retreated and a deep pink began to flush Nanny's
cheeks. The suspicion crossed her mind that this tall young man from
India with the unconquered eyes and the directness of a child might be
a rather difficult person to deal with.
He just stood there and looked at her and said never a word. Then he
quietly turned and walked on up the road with her.
For the first time in her life Nanny felt queer in the company of a
man, queer and puzzled and almost uncomfortable. She was not a flirt
and her remark was commonplace and trivial. Yet this new chap was
taking it seriously and making her feel insincere and trifling. She
told herself that she was not going to like him and kept her eyes
studiously on the road and wayside flowers.
They mounted the front steps in silence but before he opened the door
to let her pass in he paused and waited for her to raise her eyes to
his. She did it much against her will. He spoke then as if they two
were all alone in the world together.
"It is true that you have not known me long. But I have known you for
some time. I saw you leave Green Valley one summer night last year and
I came from the West two months before I should have just to see if you
got safely back at lilac time."
At that Nanny's eyes lost all their careful pride and he saw them
lovely with surprise. So he explained.
"I was standing on the back platform of the Los Angeles Limited the
night you went East with your father."
Then a smile that the Lord gives only now and then, to a man that He is
sure He can trust, flitted over the tall boy's face as he added:
"And the very first evening I came back to Green Valley I held you in
my arms--rescued you."
He laughed boyishly, plaguing her. But she stood motionless with
amazement,--too angry to say a word. When that smile came her anger
faded. Through her heart there flashed the mad conviction, through her
mind the certain knowledge, that for her in the time to come the height
of bliss would be to cry in this strange man's arms.
Then she recollected herself and flamed with shame so bitter that her
lower lip quivered and she hoped he would ask her again to call him
John so that she could make him pay for her momentary madness.
But he never asked again. It seemed he was not that kind of a man.