Green Valley | Page 8

in Wimple's pond are going full blast, and in her fragrant herb garden stands Grandma Wentworth. She is looking at the gold-smudged western sky and watching the sweet, spring night sift softly down on Green Valley.
She stands there a long time sensing the great tide of new life that is flushing the world into a new, tingling beauty. She sees the lacy loveliness of the birches, the budding green glory of her garden. Then she smiles as she tells herself:
"It won't be long now till the lilacs bloom again. Nanny will be here soon now. And who knows! Cynthia's boy may come back to live in his mother's old home."
CHAPTER III
THE LAST OF THE CHURCHILLS
Even in beautiful Los Angeles days can be rainy and full of gnawing cold and gloom.
On such a day Joshua Churchill lay dying. He could have died days before had he cared to let himself do so. But he was holding on grimly to the life he no longer valued and held off as grimly the death he really craved. He was waiting for the coming of the boy who was so soon to be the last of the Churchills.
He meant, this grim old man, to live long enough to greet the boy whom he remembered first as a baby, then as a little chap of ten, and later as a shy boy of seventeen.
Joshua Churchill had been to India several times. But he had never stayed long. He said that no man who had spent the greater part of his life in Green Valley could ever be happy or feel at home anywhere else.
Joshua Churchill went to India to see his daughter and grandson; but mostly to coax that daughter's wonderful husband to give up his fanatically zealous work among the heathen of the Orient and come and live in peace and plenty in a little Yankee town where there was a drug store and a post office and a mossy gray old stone church with a mellow bell in its steeple.
The wonderful and big son-in-law always listened respectfully to his big Yankee father-in-law. Then he would smile and point to the little brown babies lying sick in their mothers' arms.
"Somebody," he would say gently, "must help and heal and neighbor with these people."
As there was no answer that could be made to this the Yankee father-in-law said nothing. But the very last time he was in India he looked sharply at his daughter and then said wearily and bitterly:
"Sinner and saint--we men are all alike. We each in our own way kill the women we love. Cynthia is dying for a sight of Green Valley and Green Valley folks."
At that Cynthia's husband cried out. But Joshua Churchill did not stay to argue. He went away and never came back. He wanted of course to go back to Green Valley. But he could not bear to live alone in the big house where he had once been so happy. So he went instead into exile. And now he was dying in California.
As for Cynthia's husband, he discovered when it was too late to do any good that while he had been saving the souls and the children of alien women and men he had let the woman who was dearer to him than life die slowly and unnoticed. Saints have always done that and they always will.
Joshua Churchill meant to stay alive long enough to explain the shortcomings of both saints and sinners to the boy who was the last of the Churchills. He had half a mind to exact a promise from the boy. He meant too to tell him a long and a rather strange story and implore him to beware of a number of things.
But when Cynthia's son,--tall, bronzed and serene, smiled down on the old man who even in death had the look of a master, the warnings, the bitterness melted away and Joshua Churchill smiled back and sighed gratefully.
"Well, son,--I don't know as that saint father of yours and your sinning granddad made such a mess of things after all. It's something to give the world a man. Go back home to Green Valley and marry a Green Valley girl."
And without bothering to say another word Joshua Churchill died.
Nanny came back to her valley town when the budded lilacs dripped with rain and the wooded hillsides were blurred with spring mists.
But Green Valley rain never bothered Nanny Ainslee. Those who were not out to greet her telephoned as soon as they heard she was back home again.
And just as she had gone to help pack, Grandma Wentworth came to help unpack. There were three trunks besides those Nanny had taken, from Green Valley. Nanny laughed and chuckled as she explained.
"The joke's on father. We met up with a nice American