Green Valley Part 18

"So I have come home to preach that. But I haven't had time as yet to do much. I've been getting up a Sunday-school cla.s.s and getting Seth Curtis interested in the church finances and getting acquainted with Hank Lolly and Mrs. Rosenwinkle and--atheists."

"Yes--and among other things you've put Jim into the choir."

"Oh, that was easy--just common sense. It's going to be ever so much harder though to get at Jim Tumley's generous friends and convince them that Jim's stomach won't stand their friendly donations.

"I don't know how I'm going to show them that if they love him they must protect him from themselves. It's going to be hard work. But he's worth saving, that little man with the lark's voice and the gentle heart."

When Jennie, hearing the news, hurried home from the other end of town, really frightened for the first time in her married life, the young minister was gone and Frank was sitting out on the back porch staring at nothing.

"Frank," Jennie began breathlessly, "is he gone?"

"Yes--he's gone."

"Frank--you--I hope you didn't get mad at him. He's different--not like other ministers--and he's really a boy in some things."

"Jennie," and Frank rea.s.sured her, "you're darn right that boy is different. He's so darn different from all the rest of them I've met that I'm going to church next Sunday. James D. and Dudley and others of that stripe will probably die of shock but just you press your best dress, Jennie, for we're surely going. Why that man's no minister.

Don't slander him. He's a human being."

Jennie's eyes grew a bit misty, for with no babies to love, Frank was her all in all and her one great sorrow was that so few people knew the real Frank.

"And come to think of it, Jennie," Frank mused, "you weren't so far wrong in thinking that it was a Christian Scientist who was coming. I guess that's just about what he is--a Christian scientist."

CHAPTER XII

THE PATH OF TRUE LOVE

Nanny was cross. She had lost her bubbling merriment and her family wondered.

"Sis, I believe you will be an old maid, all right. I'm beginning to see the signs already," her brother lazily told her one day when to some innocent remark of his she made a snapping answer.

Mr. Ainslee laughed.

"You aren't reading the signs correctly, Son," he said. "Nan's crossness can be interpreted another way. It's my private opinion that Nanny's in love."

Whereupon Mr. Ainslee dodged for he fully expected that Nanny would hurl a pillow his way. But Nanny didn't. She turned a little white, caught her breath a little hurriedly and then stood looking quietly at the two men. When she left the room her father was a little worried and her brother a little uncomfortable.

"I guess we'd better let up on the teasing, Dad," the boy suggested in the serious, soft voice that had been his mother's, the mother who had never teased.

"I wouldn't hurt Nanny for the world," penitently murmured Mr. Ainslee.

"I had no idea--oh, Son," he suddenly groaned, "I wish your mother was here to look after us all."

And the great diplomat who was known and welcomed at the courts of great nations was suddenly only a plain man, crying out his heart's need of the loved woman he had lost so many years ago.

And because the boy was the son of the woman for whom his father grieved he knew how to sympathize and comfort the man.

"I've missed her too--lots of times--even though, Dad, you've been the most wonderful father two kids ever had."

The man stared out into the sunny world outside the windows and all unashamed let the tears fill his fine eyes.

The boy, seeing those tears, all at once remembered now many times, when he was an unheeding youngster, he had seen this same father sitting at the departed mother's desk with his head pillowed in his arms.

"Dad," the boy's awed voice questioned, "is love a thing as big and terrible and lasting as that?"

The man wiped his eyes and smiled.

"Yes, Son, love is as wonderful and lasting and in a way as terrible as that. It was wrong of me to tease Nanny. But I have been worried about my motherless girl. I'd like to see her happily settled.

Somehow I've never worried about you."

"No," and the boy smiled an odd little smile that showed just how he had missed a mother's petting, "it's always mothers that worry about the boys, isn't it?"

At this second revelation and blunder Mr. Ainslee was so startled that he forgot to go in search of Nanny.

As a matter of fact Nanny had left the house. She wanted to go to the knoll and think over carefully certain matters that had been puzzling her of late. But she dared not go to the grove on the hilltop. For only half an hour before she had seen Green Valley's young minister walking up to her old seat under the oaks. Perhaps if her father had not said what he did--Nanny frowned impatiently, then sighed and walked down the road to Grandma Wentworth's. She told herself that she was going down to visit Grandma and tell her the week's news. But she was really going to find heartease and because at Grandma's she would hear oftenest the name that now had the power to quicken her heart beats and bring her a pain that was strangely edged with joy.

Grandma was weeding her seed onions and very sensibly let Nanny help.

Nanny's fingers flew in and out and because she dared not tell her own heart troubles she told Grandma about Jocelyn and David and the foolish bit of gossip that had come between them.

"I think, Grandma, somebody ought to do something about it. Can't you--"

Grandma shook her head.

"Nanny," Grandma mourned, "I'm afraid to meddle in things like that.

Love is a wonderful strange thing for which there are no rules. And the hearts of men and women must all have their share of sorrow. For it's only through pain and endless blunders that we human folks ever learn. I've seen strange love history in this town and lots of it.

And I've learned one thing and that is that each heart wants to do its loving in its own way without help or hindrance from the rest of the world. So we'd best say nothing and let David and Jocelyn find a way out of their trouble and misunderstanding."

But Nanny, with all the impatience of youth, rebelled.

"It's foolish," she stormed, "when just a dozen frank words would straighten it out."

"Yes--a dozen words would do it," sighed Grandma, "But think, Nanny, what it would cost David to say those dozen words--or Jocelyn."

"Conventions are foolish. Honesty is better."

"Yes, honesty is always best. But truth is something that lovers find hardest to manage and listen to. And you know, Nanny, even a happy love means a certain amount of sorrow."

"Does it?" the girl wondered.

"Yes," said Grandma softly, "it does, as I and many another woman can testify. I'm only hoping that a love great and fine will come to Cynthia's boy and that it won't cost him too much."

"Why," asked Nanny carelessly, "should life be easier and richer for him?"

"Because long before he was born his mother paid for his birthright and happiness with part of her own, and if G.o.d is just and life fair then her courage and sorrow ought to count for something and her loss be his gain."

"Hadn't you better tell me the whole story, Grandma?" begged Nan.