FANNY COMES BACK
"If only I felt the way I look. If only my feelings had been smashed
too," sobbed Fanny to the doctor that first week that she sat up in her
chair. "But I'm just the same inside that I always was and I want to
go and see and hear things."
So the old doctor, who knew how much more real were the ills of the
spirit than any hurts of the flesh, dropped a word here and there and
now no days passed that Fanny did not have callers, did not in some way
get messages, the vagrant scraps and trifles of news that, so valueless
in themselves, yet were to Fanny the lovely bits of fabric out of which
she pieced a laughing tale of life.
Outwardly Fanny was changed. She was pale and quiet and her thick
lovely hair was always smooth now and glossy and carefully dressed. It
was the one thing she still could do for herself and she did it with a
pitiful care. She looked ten years younger, in a way. And her house
was spick and span at ten o'clock every morning now. From her chair
she directed the children and because in all Green Valley there was no
woman who knew better how work ought to be done it was well done. And
then came the long empty hours when she sat, as she was sitting now, in
her chair on the sunny side of the house where she could look at her
little sea of tulips and hyacinths and drink in their perfume.
She had been trying to crochet but had dropped her needle. It lay in
the grass at her feet. She could see it but she could not pick it up.
She had not as yet acquired the skill and the inventive faculty of an
invalid.
And so she sat there, staring at the bit of glistening steel as wave
after wave of bitterness swept over her. Her tragedy was still so new
that she could feel it with every breath. Every hour she was reminded
of her loss by a thousand little things like this crochet hook. She
was forced to sit still, her busy hands idle in her lap, while spring
was calling, calling everywhere. She told herself, with a mad little
laugh, that she would never again pick up anything; never again would
she run through her neighbors' gates, tap on their doors and visit them
in their kitchens. Never again could she hurry up the spring street
with the south wind caressing her cheek. No more would she gad about
to learn the doings of her little world. Would it come to talk to her,
to make her laugh now that she was helpless? Was she never to hear the
music of living? Was she to lose her knack of making people laugh? To
lose her place in life--to live and yet be forgotten--would she have to
face that?
These were some of the thoughts that were torturing poor Fanny that
day. And then she gave a cry, for around the corner of the house came
Nanny Ainslee in just the same old way. Grandma Wentworth and the
minister were just behind her.
They stared lovingly at each other, the girl who was as lovely as life
and love and springtime could make her, and the woman whom the game had
broken. Then Nanny spoke--not to the broken body of Fanny Foster but
to the gipsy, springtime spirit of Fanny.
"I only just came home, Fanny. I went through town and saw pretty
nearly everybody, and every soul tried to tell me a little something.
But it's all a jumble. So, Fanny Foster, I want you to begin with
Christmas Day and tell me all that's happened in Green Valley while
I've been away."
Never a word of her accident, never so much as a glance of pity at the
wonderful chair. Just the old Nan Ainslee asking the old Fanny Foster
for Green Valley news.
In the scarred soul of Fanny Foster, down under the bitterness and
crumbled pride, something stirred, something that Fanny thought was
dead forever.
Then Nanny spoke again.
"I have come to tell you that I am to be married to John Roger
Churchill Knight. I have told no one but you and Grandma. I have
promised to marry him in June, so I haven't much time to get ready.
I'm hoping, Fanny, that you will come and help out."
At that, of a sudden all the old-time zest for living, the joy of
seeing, hearing and doing, surged to Fanny's very throat and force of
habit brought the words.
"Oh, land alive, Nanny," fairly gurgled the old Fanny, "such a time as
we've had in Green Valley! It was that awful cold spell after
Christmas that began it. Old man Pelley died--of complications--and
everybody thought Mrs. Dudley would sing hymns of praise in public,
they'd fought so about their chickens. But I declare if she didn't cry
about the hardest at the funeral and even blamed herself for
aggravating him.
"Of course him dying left old Mrs. Pelley alone in a big house, and her
being pretty feeble, she felt that Harry and Ivy ought to come and live
with her. Well,--Ivy went--but she vowed that there were two things
she would do, mother-in-law or no mother-in-law. She said she'd put as
many onions in her hamburger steak and Irish stew as she pleased--you
know Mrs. Pelley can't stand onions--and she'd have a fire in the
fireplace as often as the fancy struck her. Everybody thought there'd
be an awful state of things--but land--now that Mrs. Pelley has got
used to the open fire you can't drive her away from it with a stick and
she don't seem to bother her head about Ivy's cooking and last week she
actually ate three helpings of hamburger steak that Ivy said was just
reeking with onions.
"A body's never too old to learn, I suppose. There's Henry Rawlins
suddenly took the notion to quit smoking. Ettie'd been at him for
twenty-five years with twenty good reasons to quit, but no. And all of
a sudden--when Ettie's give up hope and not mentioned it for a couple
of months--he up and quits and won't even tell why. Ettie's
worried--says he's eating himself out of house and home and wants to
sleep about twenty-four hours a day.
"Talking about houses makes me think that the Stockton girls are having
their house painted by a man with a wooden leg. Billy Evans picked him
up somewhere and Seth Curtis was telling me how he came to lose that
leg. Seems like he was prospecting somewheres in Montana, got drunk,
froze it, gangrene set in and they had to amputate. They say he's a
mighty smart man too. Maybe John'll get him to paint our house when
he's through at the Stocktons.
"Talk about physical deformities! Eva Collins has got it into her head
that she's too fat entirely and she's been dieting and rolling and
taking all sorts of exercises religiously. Seems she got so set on
being thin that she practices these exercises whenever she happens to
think of it and wherever she happens to be. She happened to be right
under the lights three or four times and so she smashed them, globes
and all. Bill says she'd better reduce in the barn or else let him
charge admission for a rolling performance to pay for the broken lights.
"So there's Eva trying to thin off and they say Mert Hagley's swollen
all out of shape, having been stung almost to death by his own bees.
Of course, nobody's sympathizing overmuch with Mert. He was so afraid
of losing a swarm of bees that he forgot to be cautious and there he is
laid out. But it isn't the bee stings that hurt him so much. Mary's
been willed a good farm and a big lump of cash by some aunt that died a
month ago and hated Mert like poison. And the thing's just gone to
Mary's head.
"She's gone into the city on regular spending sprees and Mert's wild.
He can't touch the farm and he's afraid Mary'll have that lump of money
all spent before he gets out of bed. Everybody's hoping she will and
advising her to buy every blessed thing she ever had a hankering for
and things she never even heard of. Mrs. Brownlee, the president of
the Civic League, even told her to buy a dish-washing machine, and
heavens, if Mary didn't go right down and buy it. Doc Philipps advised
her to buy herself the very best springs and mattress on the
market--that it would help her back to sleep decently of nights. She's
having hot-water heat put in and is going to do her washing with an
electric washer. Seth Curtis put her up to that. And as soon as Mert
gets better she's going visiting her sister in Colorado. She says
she'll likely die of homesickness but that she's just got to go off
somewhere to get used to and learn to wear properly all the new clothes
she's got.
"Well, Mary's buying all these labor-saving machines got the whole town
to thinking and spending. Dick's put in a new cash register they say
is nice enough to have in the parlor. It made Jessie Williams buy a
lot of new silver that she didn't need no more than a cat needs a
match-box. But she got it and she gave a luncheon the other day to
some of the South End crowd and tried to get just about all that silver
on the table, I guess. Of course, it looked mighty nice but when the
women came to eat they didn't know what to do with it. They got pretty
miserable, all sticking to just the one knife and fork and spoon. And
Jessie got so rattled that she just about forgot to use the stuff too.
And finally old Mrs. Vingie, that Jessie asked just to have the news
spread, got up mad as a hornet and marched out, saying she was too old
to be insulted.
"Until a week ago Bessie Williams wouldn't speak to Alex. You know her
hair's got awful white this last year and of course, her being kind of
stout, she does look older than Al. But she says that's no reason why,
when a peddler comes to the door with anything, Al needs to let the man
think she's his mother.
"Mrs. Jerry Dustin's been to see Uncle Tony's portraiture hanging in
the art gallery. She says it's so lifelike it made her cry. And she's
awful happy about Peter. Peter's been posing for a picture for Bernard
Rollins and while he was in the studio he got to fooling with the
paints and brushes, and lo and behold, if he didn't daub up something
that looked like his mother's face when she's smiling. They say
Rollins jumped he was so surprised and he put the boy through some
paces and swore he'd make a better artist out of him than he was
himself. So there you are, and now Mrs. Dustin is dreaming of Peter in
Italy, Peter in Rome, Peter everywhere in creation, and her tagging
along with his brushes and dust rags. So she's happy.
"And Milly Sears is house-cleaning like mad, for both the boys are
coming home from the ends of the earth to visit. And Alice is putting
off the christening of her baby boy until they come. She was here to
show me the baby the other day. It's a darling. Jocelyn Brownlee came
with her and brought me samples of all her wedding dresses, wedding
gown and all. As soon as the dressmaker is through I'm to go over and
see the whole trousseau.
"There, I nearly forgot the best thing of all. It's about Sam Bobbins.
My! Here we've all been pitying Sam and Fortune's just kicked in his
door and walked in. You remember of course about Sam and his fighting
roosters? Well, Sam went off for Thanksgiving to his sister's and
while he was gone something ate up his prize stock. Must have been a
skunk, Frank Burton says. Well, they say that Sam's heart was just
about broken. Not just because his stock was gone but more because he
couldn't think of another thing to turn his hand to.
"Well, he got through the winter some way and then, while he was
sitting in the train one day coming home, he overheard two men talking
about turtles going up. Must have been two hotel men. Anyway, that
gave Sam an idea and he started right in wading through Petersen's
slough for turtles. Why, he pulled up barrels of them, and would you
believe it, they sold in the city for real money! Sam went
crazy--about as crazy as Mary Hagley got over her luck. And then along
came rheumatism and knocked Sam flat, just when he was doing so well.
Everybody said it was just poor Sam's luck. So there was Sam sick
abed, thinking about those turtles moving off somewheres else maybe, or
somebody else getting rich on them.
"And all the time he lay in bed groaning Sam's wife went around the
house doing the same. Only her trouble wasn't turtles but corsets.
Seems like Sam always promised Dudy that if he made any money she was
to have plenty to spend. Well, he treated her mighty handsome about
that turtle money. Dudy had the sense to take all he gave her and she
vowed that for once in her life she'd get herself a corset that was
comfortable.
"Well, Nanny, heavens only knows how many brands she tried but none of
them seemed built for her. Some pinched her here and others squeezed
her there and she was as full of misery as Sam was of rheumatism. Sam
finally took notice and just to keep his mind off his own troubles he
got to watching her suffering for breath and a nice shape.
"Now you know Sam's always thought the world of Dudy. So one day, when
she was getting ready to go to the Civic League meeting to read a paper
on the best ways of getting rid of flies and nearly crying because she
couldn't get herself to look right, Sam said, half joking, 'By gum,
Dudy, I'll _make_ you a corset that will fit you.'
"Well, sir, the thing stuck in his mind and grew and grew, and heavens
to Betsey, if Sam didn't really make a corset, even helping Dudy with
some of the sewing.
"Dudy wore it and took everybody's breath away, she looked so nice and
could breathe without puffing and laugh as much as she pleased. The
women got to talking about it and mentioned it to Mrs. Brownlee. And
mind you, Mrs. Brownlee went to Sam and asked him had he patented the
thing. And when he said no she went to a woman lawyer friend of hers
and she got Sam a patent, and first thing Green Valley knew here come
three big corset men to town, all of them offering to buy Dudy's
home-made corset. So Sam Bobbins has got his fortune and nobody's
begrudging it to him. The whole town is mighty proud of Sam, I tell
you.
"Good land--it must be four o'clock, for here come the children!
My--Nanny, but it's good to have you home again!"
"Well," smiled Grandma, as she watched the spring twilight sift down
over Green Valley that evening, "I've always said that this town was
full of folks who make you cry one minute and laugh the next."