CHAPTER XXII
BEFORE THE DAWN
"I wonder if Fanny's sacrifice isn't enough to drive the evil thing out of our lives and out of Green Valley forever. Seems as if everybody ought to vote the saloon out now," said Grandma Wentworth to Cynthia's son a couple of weeks later, when the whole town was celebrating because Fanny Foster had sat up for the first time in her chair that day.
After all, John didn't buy Fanny her chair. Seth Curtis wanted to do it all himself but Green Valley wouldn't let him. It was a wonderful chair. You could lower it to different heights and it was full of all manner of attachments to make the invalid forget her helplessness. Of course Fanny was still too weak to use these but she knew about them and seemed pleased, even said she believed that when she got the hang of it she could get about the house and yard and might even venture into the streets in time.
And early in the morning of the day she was to get up Doc Philipps drove up in his buggy with what seemed like a young garden tucked inside it. Fanny's garden and borders had been sadly neglected during her sickness. The doctor had had John clean the whole thing up and then he came with his arms and buggy full of blossoming tulips, hyacinths and every bloom that was in flower then and would bear transplanting. And for hours he and John worked to make a little fairyland for Fanny.
"My God, John, I couldn't mend her body—nobody could. But between us we have got to mend her spirit." And the old doctor blew his nose hard to hide the trembling of his chin.
But no chair, no amount of tulips and hyacinths, could make up to Fanny the loss of her body. And Green Valley knew this. So Green Valley was talking more seriously than ever of driving out from among them the thing that was pushing Jim Tumley into a drunkard's grave, that was estranging hitherto happy wives and husbands and maiming innocent men, women and children. Little Billy was all right again but he was now a timid youngster and inclined to be jumpy at sight of a smartly trotting horse. Hank Lolly's leg was healed up but Doc said he would always limp a bit. Seth and his wife had made up, of course, but neither of them could ever efface from their hearts and memories the cruel scenes that had marred their life this past year.
Seth no longer went near the saloon. He had paid dearly for his stubbornness and would continue to pay to the end of his days. Billy Evans had swung around and was fighting the saloon now with a grimness that was terrible in one so easy-going and liberal as Billy.
But nothing seemingly could convert George Hoskins. And so long as George Hoskins was against a measure its passage was a hopeless matter, for men like George always have a host of followers.
George was a huge man whose mind worked slowly. When he first heard the talk about the town going dry he laughed—and that was enough. No one argued the matter with him for no one relished the thought of an argument with George. And only the minister had dared to mention Jim Tumley. In his big way George loved little Jim, but since his wife had sickened George spent every spare minute in her sick room and so witnessed none of the scenes that were rousing Green Valley folks into open rebellion against the evil that enslaved them.