"Why, I don't know. I said yes, of course I'd join. I couldn't be mean to the woman after what her little girl did last night," said Green Valley wives.
CHAPTER XIX
A GRAY DAY
Up on his wooded knoll Green Valley's young minister lay grieving and staring up into a gray unhappy sky, a sky choked with thick gray clouds that hung so low and were so full of sadness that even the little hills mourned and the Green Valley world all about lay hushed and penitent.
Summer was dead and everywhere tired winds moaned and sighed and sobbed and then grew suddenly still. The fine old trees were shriveled and weary, as if trying were no longer worth while. They craved sleep and peace—just rest. The gay grasses were dry and faded and when the little winds tried to rouse them they only rustled impatiently, dolefully and murmured, "Oh what's the use?"
The heart of Cynthia's son studied the low brooding sky, the dying world, listened to the wailing, mourning winds, the sighing of the grasses and it too said wearily, "Yes—what's the use of anything?"
What's the use of working and trying when the thing you want most to do you can't do. What's the use of longing when the thing you crave most can never again be given to you? What's the use of feeling big, eternal, divine, when you know that every day is dwarfed by your limitations, every friendship marred by your helplessness, every dream blurred by your ignorance? The sweetest things in life, Cynthia's son told himself with all the bitterness of youth, were memories and hopes. Memories of happy moments, hours perhaps, memories of perfect days and hopes of new days, new friends, new skies.
To-day all hope seemed dead, gone from the hillsides with the summer flowers. And the world was a sad and a lonely place. Cynthia's son had yet to learn that gray days are home days. That if it were not for gray skies there would be no low roofs gleaming through tree tops, no home fires glowing anywhere. Gray days are heart days, for it is then that the heart hungers for sympathy, for kinship. It is then that men draw together for comfort and cheer.
Cynthia's son never felt quite so alone in the world before—the last of his line. He was young and did not know what ailed him. So he lay heartsick and puzzled on his hill top and wished he had some one all his own to talk to.