THE KNOLL
There were whole days when Cynthia's son did nothing but loaf,--whole
days when he went off by himself into the still corners of his world
and let the whole wide universe talk and sing to him and awe him with
its mystery.
He would lie for hours in some cool, shady fern nook under a sheltering
road hedge or in the shade of some giant tree friend. At such times he
scaled the thinking, wondering part of himself and opened wide his
heart to the great whisper that rippled the grain, to the sweet song
that swelled the throat of the oriole and lark, to the beauty that dyed
the heavens and the earth, to the glad struggle for life everywhere.
In this way he had always healed all his griefs, freed his soul from
doubts and stilled the many strange longings that made his heart ache
for things whose name and nature he knew not.
He had discovered many of these still, restful corners from which to
watch life as it went by. But his favorite spot was right on his own
farm.
At the very end of the Churchill estate, as if thrown in for good
measure, was a little knoll, smooth and grassy and crowned with a
little grove of God's own planting.
For there were gathered together big gnarled oaks, maples, old hickory
trees and many poplars. There were on that knoll three snowy, bridal
birches, the rough trunks of horse-chestnuts and a few solemn pines.
As if that were not enough, in the very heart of this woody temple were
two shaggy old crab-apple trees and one stray wild plum.
In the spring here was fairyland. And into it Cynthia's son retired at
every fair opportunity. Here he sat and looked off at the dimpling,
rippling farmlands, the wandering old roads and at Green Valley roofs
nestling so securely in their setting of rich greens and dappled
sunshine.
From his seat beneath an oak he could see Wimple's pond with its circle
of trees and through the far willow hedges caught the glittering sheen
and sparkle of Silver Creek. And there before and below him lay the
mellow old farm that his grandfather had left him.
The warm brick walls with their wide brick chimneys already had a
welcoming look. For the tenant was gone and the old home was being
repaired for its owner. But from the knoll no sound of hammer or sight
of workmen marred the soft silence and sunny peace of the day. So
Green Valley's young minister sprawled comfortably down, closed his
eyes and let the earth music wrap him round.
He was not even day dreaming the day Nan Ainslee stumbled on him there
under the oaks and pines. She had discovered the knoll when she was
six years old and claimed it for her very own, sharing its beauties
with no one, not even her brother. When she grew to young ladyhood she
often left Green Valley for wonderful trips to the ends of the world.
But she always came back to the lilacs and the seat under the great oak.
At every return she hastened out to see anew her home valley as it
looked from her grove. So it was with something very close to
annoyance that she looked at the sprawling figure of the usurper.
"Well, for pity sakes! What are you doing here?" she demanded.
He opened his eyes slowly and looked at her. She fitted in so well
with the velvet whisper of the wind, the cool blue of the sky and the
world's fresh beauty that he took her appearance as a part of the
picture and was silent. It was only when she repeated her question
rather sharply that he sat up to explain.
"Why, I found this spot months ago! It is the stillest, most heavenly
nook in Green Valley. I come up here whenever I'm tired of thinking."
"Well--I found this place years and years ago," Nanny complained.
"What's the matter with us both using it?" he said very civilly.
"But," objected Nan, "this is the sort of a place that you want all to
yourself."
"Yes, it is," he agreed and did not let the situation worry him
further. He didn't offer her a seat or give her a chance to take
herself off gracefully. And Nanny was beginning to feel a little
awkward. She wasn't used to being ignored in this strange fashion.
"Are you very old?" the minister asked suddenly and looked up at her
with eyes as innocent and serene as a child's.
"I'm twenty-three," Nan was startled into confessing.
"Why aren't you married?"
As she gasped and searched about for an answer he added:
"In India a girl is a grandmother at that age."
"This isn't India," smiled Nan good-naturedly, for she saw quite
suddenly that this big young man knew very little about women,
especially western women.
"No--this isn't India." He repeated her words slowly, little wrinkles
of pain ruffling his face. For his inner eye was blotting out the
Green Valley picture and painting in its stead the India of his memory,
the India of gorgeous color, the bazaars, the narrow streets; the India
that held within its mystic arms two plain white stones standing side
by side and bearing the inscriptions "Father" and "Mother."
Nan, not guessing what was going on in his heart, took advantage of his
silence to get even.
"How old are you?"
"Twenty-eight."
"Why aren't you married?"
"Why in the world should I be?" he wanted to know.
"Green Valley men are usually the fathers of two or three children at
your age," she informed him calmly.
"Oh," he smiled frankly, "of course I shall marry some day. But a man
need never hurry. He, unlike a woman, can always marry. And I intend
to have children--many children, because one child is always so lonely.
I know because I was an only child."
This astounding piece of confidence kept Nan's tongue tied and for a
few seconds all manner of funny emotions fought within her. She wanted
to laugh, to get angry at the lordly superiority of the idea that a
woman must hurry to the altar. She felt that she ought to feel
embarrassed but the innocent sincerity with which it was all uttered
kept her from blushing and her eyes from snapping. She told herself
instead that of all man creatures she had ever encountered, this boy
from India was certainly the weirdest. And she wondered what a woman
not his mother could do with him.
After a while she tried again.
"Don't you feel rather guilty loafing here in the sunshine?"
"No. Why--what should I be doing?"
"These beautiful afternoons you ought to be devoting to pastoral calls."
"But I attended to all the day's work this morning. I helped Uncle
Roger Allan build a fence and doctored up David's pet horse, Dolly. I
spaded up a flower plot for Grandma Wentworth and visited little Jimmy
Trumbull who's home from the hospital. Doc Philipps says he won't be
up for some time yet, so to cheer him up I've promised him a party. I
also drove to the station with Mrs. Bates' ancient horse and brought
home her new incubator. While I was there Jocelyn Brownlee came down
to get a box she said she had there. Some teasing cousin sent her a
little live pig and when she found out what was in the box she didn't
know what to do. So I put the pig beside the incubator and sat Jocelyn
beside me and we proceeded on our way.
"That horse belonging to Mrs. Bates is certainly a solemn, stately
beast but Jocelyn's little pig was anything but stately. We made an
interesting and a musical spectacle as we went along, and I know that
one little red-headed boy in this town was late for school because he
followed us halfway home. We passed the Tomlins place and Hen was
sitting at the window, propped up with pillows. It was his first day
up and we made him laugh so hard that his wife was a little worried, I
think."
"Agnes is rather good to Hen these days, isn't she?" Nan ventured to
ask, for the whole town knew how Agnes had gone to the minister with
her domestic troubles and how in some mysterious fashion this young man
had worked a miracle. For both Agnes and Hen were as suddenly and
happily in love with one another as though they were newly married
instead of being a middle-aged and childless couple.
But that was all the town did know about the matter. For strange to
say Agnes, who had talked loud enough and long enough before about her
unhappiness, now was still, with never a word to say about what made
her so contented and happy. Green Valley saw her look at Hen as if he
were suddenly precious and smooth his pillow and wait on him. And
Green Valley wanted to know all about it. But so far nobody knew but
Agnes, Hen and the new minister and he didn't seem inclined to speak
about it. Not even to satisfy Nanny Ainslee's curiosity.
Once more Nanny was embarrassed and a little angry. She swung up her
sunshade and started to go. This minister man with his ignorance of
women and his knowledge of Hen's domestic affairs was, she told
herself, a crazy, impossible creature and he could sit in his little
grove on his little knoll till he died for all she cared. She'd take
mighty good care never again to stray into his domain.
But just as she really got up speed the big chap under the oak stood up
and spoke.
"Don't go, Nan."
The shock of hearing him say that stopped her and turned her sharply
around, so that she looked straight at him and found him looking at her
in a way that made the whole green world suddenly fade away into misty
insignificance. Something about that look of his made her walk back.
But she trailed her sunshade a little defiantly and kept her eyes down
carefully. She was a little frightened too. Because for the first
time in her life she was conscious of her heart. She felt it beating
queerly and almost audibly. With every step that she took back toward
him she grew strangely happy and strangely angry.
He silently arranged a seat for her beside him and she sat down, folded
her hands in her lap, looked off at the village roofs and waited.
He looked at her a long time. For Nanny was good to look at. Then he
began to talk in an odd, quiet way as if they two were at home alone
and the world was shut out and far away. And he told her the story of
that locked drawer in Hen Tomlins' chiffonier.
That drawer and Hen's growing stubbornness, due no doubt to the gradual
coming on of his serious illness, had very nearly been the death of
poor, dictatorial Agnes Tomlins. She had always picked out Hen's
shirts, bought his ties and ordered his suits and Hen had never
rebelled openly. Nor did he, so far as she knew, ever dare to have a
thought, a memory or a possession of which she was not fully informed.
But this last year Hen had become secretive, openly rebellious,
strangely despondent, with now and then flashes of a very real and
unpleasant temper. Agnes, baffled, curious, hurt, angry and afraid,
had at last taken her burden to the boyish minister and then went in
trembling triumph to Hen and told him what she had done.
"Yes," Hen told her quietly, "I know. He was in here when you went to
the drug store and told me. He advised me to open that drawer and let
you see what's in it. And I'll do it to please him. But I won't open
it myself and he's the only one I'll let do it. So just you send for
him. As long as you told him, I want him to see there's nothing in
that drawer that I need to be ashamed of."
At this point in the story Cynthia's son paused and looked so long at
the sun-splashed village roofs that.
Nan stirred impatiently.
"Well--what was it that Hen was guarding so carefully from Agnes?" she
wanted to know.
"Oh--just odds and ends--mostly trifles. There was a dance programme,
a black kid glove of his wife's, some letters from a chum that's dead,
an old knife his grandfather once gave him when he was a boy, the last
knit necktie his mother had made him and a box of toys, beautiful,
hand-carved toys.
"It seems that the Tomlinses had a baby a long time ago and all the
time they were expecting it Hen was carving it these beautiful toys.
It was a boy and, lived to be a year old, just old enough to begin to
play with things. Then it died. And nobody, it seems, knew how Hen
missed that baby, not even his wife. But he had kept that box of toys
in his tool shed all those years and in the last year had put it in the
drawer with a few other treasures which he had had hidden in odd
crannies without anybody suspecting. It was all he had, he said, that
was his very own. And he showed me the handle of the little hammer
where the baby's playing hands had soiled it."
It seems that Hen explained the other things too. The dance programme
he saved because that was where he first knew that his wife cared about
him. She had selected him for the lady's choice number. The other
things Hen kept because they were given to him by people who had all
sincerely liked him.
"You see," Hen had said, "nobody knows how hard it is to be a little
man. Nobody respects you. Your folks always apologize and try to
explain your size or tell you not to mind. And strangers and friends
poke fun at you. After a while, of course, you learn to laugh at
yourself on the outside and folks get to think that it's all a joke for
you too and that you don't mind. But you never laugh on the inside or
when you're by yourself. And you get awful tired of looking up to
other people all the time and you begin to wish somebody'd look up to
you once in a while.
"I used to think Aggie thought a heap of me even if I wasn't as tall as
other men. Grandfather and mother and Bill Simons cared a whole lot
and they didn't mind showing it often. I banked an awful lot on that
baby. And he did sure like me. He followed me all around and minded
me better than Aggie. It was me that always put him to bed and took
him up in the morning. And he'd look up at me and raise his little
hands to me and--"
Cynthia's son looked steadily at Nan.
"Do you want to hear any more?" he asked gently.
"No--no--I don't. Oh, you shouldn't have told me. I'm not good enough
to be trusted with things like that," Nanny said brokenly and winked
and winked her long lashes to shake off the tears.
"You wanted to be told. You were going away because I didn't want to
tell you," he reminded her quietly.
"I know, but I'm just naturally spoiled and mean and wicked. But oh,
won't I be nice to poor Hen Tomlins after this!"
"I'm going to have him take charge of a class in wood-carving as soon
as we can get one together. He's a master hand at that sort of work
and there are any number of boys in this town who will love it and look
up to Hen," said the man who did not understand women. The sun was
slipping low in the west, pouring a flood of mellow gold over the
landscape. It caught the attic windows of the old brick farmhouse that
was so nearly ready for its new and young owner.
"Look," exclaimed Nan, pointing down toward it, "there is fairy
treasure in your attic."
"Yes," he smiled, "there is. There are trunks up there full of all
manner of things that five generations of Churchills could not bear to
burn or give away. Some day when the rain is drumming on the roof and
the gutters are spouting and all the birds are tucked away in dripping
trees and the world is misty with tears, I'm going up there and just
revel in second-hand adventure, dead dreams and cobwebs."
"Oh, my gracious, how I'd like to be there too," enviously cried Nanny
Ainslee and the next moment crimsoned angrily at herself.
"If you won't mind coming to my house in the rain," said the man who
did not understand women--but Nanny wasn't listening. The setting sun
flared into a last widespread glory that bathed every grass blade in
Green Valley and in this strong and golden light Nan saw the 6:10
pulling in and Fanny Foster hurrying home. Jessup's delivery boy,
driving back from his last trip, was larruping his horse and careful
Ellen Nuby was taking in her clotheslines.
On the back porch of the Brownlee bungalow Jocelyn was shaking a white
tablecloth, for the Brownlees had supper early. Jocelyn flapped and
flapped, then folded the cloth neatly as she had seen Green Valley
matrons do. That done, she waited.
David Allan was coming home over the hills with his team and Jocelyn
was waiting till he came closer before she waved to him and greeted
him. All Green Valley knew of these sunset greetings and approved.
So now Nan, with a smile of understanding sympathy, watched and waited
too. She could almost see Jocelyn's happy, eager child face. David
slowly drew nearer. But after one careless look at the little figure
on the porch, his fine head drooped and he went on without a word and
left Jocelyn standing there.
From her tree shelter Nan could see the little city girl standing very
still, staring after David. Then slowly the little figure went down
the steps and into the back garden. There it stood motionless again,
staring into the fading sky as if seeking an explanation for David's
strange conduct.
But up on the hilltop Nanny beat her hands softly and cried out in pain
for Jocelyn. For Nanny knew her Green Valley and she knew that the
story of Jocelyn's morning ride with the minister in the Bates' ancient
carryall had already gone the rounds, even finding David in the furrows
of the fields. And now the big boy was worried and wretched and
perhaps angry at the little city girl whom he had so openly courted.
"Oh, dear!" Nanny began to speak her mind but stopped abruptly. For
how could she tell this young man from India that he had that morning
spoiled forever perhaps a lovely romance. She knew that he was
innocent, as innocent as Jocelyn. And she knew that Green Valley meant
no harm. It was nothing. And yet so often trouble, sorrow and
heartache start in just that kind of nothingness. Out of playful
little whirlwinds of careless laughter cruel storms are born.
When Cynthia's son turned to walk home with her Nanny waved him back
and spoke curtly.
"My goodness--no! You mustn't. I never let anybody escort me about
this foolish little town."
Then she hurried home alone and left John Knight standing on his
hilltop.