The Valley of Content by Blanche Upright - HTML preview

CHAPTER XXII

“Out into the future—alone! Alone! Alone!” Marjorie Benton read the words aloud.

For a moment she sat very still, looking about her in bewilderment.

“Oh—oh!” she exclaimed, and again: “O-o-h!”

She jumped up from her comfortable wicker chair and ran to the bedroom door. She opened it softly. There in their little cribs, sound asleep, were Elinor and Howard. She looked about the room once more and sighed contentedly. Yes, here she was in her own wonderful little kitchen. She picked up the book she had been reading and which had dropped to the floor and placed it on the table. She looked at it, and turned with a shudder.

The door opened quietly, and Hugh tiptoed in.

“Why darling!” he whispered, mindful of the babies. “Up yet? It’s after twelve o’clock.”

With a little scream of delight, Marjorie ran to him and threw herself into his arms.

“Hugh! Oh Hugh, darling!” she exclaimed breathlessly. Again and again she kissed him. “Dearest—sweetheart! Is it you?”

“Why, honey girl!” Hugh laughed as he held her in his arms. “If this is the reception I receive after being away a few hours, I think I’ll have to go somewhere and stay a week.”

“You are my own sweetheart, aren’t you, Hugh?” She pinched his arms, and felt of his shoulders and chest.

“Of course, I am! What’s the matter with you, dear?” He shook her gently. “I’ve never seen you act this way before?”

“Nothing—only I’m so happy, dear.” She laughed hysterically as she clung to him. “Because you’re you—and I’m me—and our babies are ours—and this——”

“Whatever in the wide world—” Hugh was emphatically nonplused.

His wife giggled at his perplexity.

“Goose!” she chided playfully. “Can’t I have a few dramatics for myself, and ease up some of my emotions.” But as she saw his concerned expression as he looked at her so closely, she added: “Well, if you must know, here’s the answer. You know how I love to read a book and always put you in the hero’s place and make myself the heroine——”

“Yes, I know all about that, you little romancer,” he laughed, and he pinched her flushed cheek. “According to the different people you’ve been, you must be hundreds of years old!”

“You can make fun of me—I don’t care,” she pouted. “Well, after you left, Mrs. Birmingham sent me some books to read for her. And I’ve been reading this one!” She picked it up, only to drop it as though it burned her. “It’s all about a young couple like us,” she informed, “and they had two babies, a boy and a girl, and so I put Howard and Elinor in their places. I had just finished the story when you came in.”

“Well, it certainly must have been exciting, judging from the way I found you when I came in.”

“It was—terrible—dear!” She shuddered. “The man became very wealthy through an inheritance, but I pretended it was through an invention—Darling, what about you—I forgot to ask you?”

“Finish telling me your story first, and then I’ll tell you,” he answered quietly.

“There isn’t anything more to tell. Only the most dreadful things happened to them all. You can’t imagine how happy I was when I realized I had only been reading a book,” she sighed, “and now, dear, how about you? Were you successful?”

“Why—why,” he hesitated for a moment, “yes, dear—I——”

“Oh—no—no dear—don’t tell me that!” There was a catch in her voice as her hand went out to him pleadingly.

“Why, darling, I don’t understand you.” He tried to look into her eyes. “I thought you wanted to be rich—to live in New York and do all the things you had planned?”

“Oh, no—no.” She threw her arms about him. “I just want to stay here—with my babies, and my husband, and—my happiness!”

“Well, if that’s the way you feel about it, sweetheart, then I’ll tell you the truth,” Hugh answered. “I fibbed to you just now—I didn’t succeed.”

“You didn’t succeed?” Her eyes sparkled as she asked the question.

“No, dear.” He shook his head. “I’m an utter failure. My invention isn’t worth anything just yet. I’m afraid we’ll just have to remain poor—for awhile.”

“Oh, I’m so happy!” Marjorie exclaimed joyously. “But we can never be poor, dear, while we possess love, the greatest fortune in the world!”

“Sweetheart!” He kissed her again. “Tell me what it was that made you change your ideas?”

“It was just the book I read to-night, dear—that’s all,” she answered solemnly. “The book God must have sent me in time—just to open my eyes.”

“This little thing?” He picked up the volume from where Marjorie had dropped it on the table. He read the title aloud. “Hmmph! ‘Building Castles!’ Why that should have pleased you, dear,” he remarked, with a grin. “Isn’t that what you’re always doing?”

“No more! No more!” Marjorie shook her head till the blonde curls threatened to loosen their holding pins. “I have all the castle I want right here. Why, just look around this room! Isn’t it wonderful?”

Hugh glanced carelessly about.

“It’s a comfortable enough kitchen,” he remarked casually, “but I don’t see any particular wonders about it.”

“Oh, don’t you?” Marjorie’s nose went up in the air and she sniffed. “Why, just look at this chair!” And she whirled the wicker rocker she had sat in during the evening before him. “It’s a genuine Louis the Fifteenth,” she informed him solemnly. “That mirror,”—her hand swept in a gesture to include it, “yes, I mean the one you use to shave by in the cold weather,—but it’s from the salon of the Empress Josephine, nevertheless. And this table,—” the hand came to rest on the small table on which rested her books and the basket of neglected mending, “—why famous men and women have gathered——”

Hugh swept her to him, ending her explanations with the bear hug his wife always welcomed.

“Little witch!” he teased. “Seeing everything just the way you want it. But tell me, seriously, sweetheart,” and he lifted her face to look closely into her eyes. “I know you’ve been living on the heights for some time through your belief in me. Tell me, have you really decided you don’t want to live in New York?”

His wife snuggled closer to him.

“ ‘The heights!’ ” she repeated. “No, Hugh dear,—I’m willing to let who will live on the hilltops of life. For me, the valley. The only place I wish to live the rest of my life is in the Valley of Content.”

For a long moment—a moment when all misunderstanding was wiped out forever—Hugh Benton held his wife close to him. Then he leaned over and placed a kiss on her bright hair that swept his bosom.

“You’ve chosen the only place where you can always be happy, dear,” he said softly.

His head came up with a start. Marjorie drew away from him, to listen sharply.

“Did you hear something?” he asked her, his eyes on the bedroom door.

With finger uplifted for caution, Marjorie Benton tiptoed to the door from behind which had come the disturbing sound, and softly turned the knob. Hugh watched her with eyes of love as she disappeared. But in a moment she was back with him, the door as softly closed behind her.

“It was Elinor,” she told him. “She was sleeping on her back. Something made her cry in her sleep.”

“Dreaming, I suppose—just like her mother!” In his light-hearted relief, Hugh could not refrain from teasing, but Marjorie only laughed.

“Dreaming that Howard had broken her dolly, probably,” she agreed. “Precious baby! I turned her on her side and tucked her in. She’ll sleep till morning. Ready for tea, dear?”

Hugh nodded and slumped with a contented sigh into his seat beside the little table where Marjorie had placed her best chocolate plates and the cups for their tea. Before the stove, Marjorie squinted a moment at her fire. Then she lifted the stove lid and carefully placed a shovelful of coal on the half dying embers. The tea pot was ready with its aromatic herbs. She had seen to that, too. She lifted the kettle of boiling water from where it sang its contented tune on the back of the polished stove.

Then a sudden memory came to her. She turned, uplifted kettle in her hand to the husband who watched her with prideful eyes.

“Oh, Hugh, dear,” she remembered, “on your way to work in the morning, will you stop in at Thompson’s and send me out twelve yards of tennis flannel? I must make some new nighties for the babies. And be sure to send pink; it always washes so much better than blue——”

THE END.