The Happy End | Page 2

he followed into a steeper and narrower rift beyond. Here there were no clearings in the rocky underbrush until he reached Richmond Braley's land. A long upturning sweep ended at the house, directly against the base of the mountain; and without decreasing his gait he passed over the faintly traced way, by the triangular sheep washing and shearing pen, to the stabling shed.
Hannah's mother was bending fretfully over the kitchen stove, and Richmond, her father, was drawing off sodden leather boots. He was a man tall and bowed, stiff but still powerful, with a face masked in an unkempt tangle of beard.
"H'y, Calvin," he cried; "you're just here for spoon licking! Lucy was looking for company." Mrs. Braley's comment was below her breath, but it was plainly no corroboration of her husband's assurance. "You'll find Hannah in the front of the house," Richmond added. Hannah was sitting on the stone steps at the side entrance to the parlor. As usual she had a bright bow in the hair streaming over her back, and her feet were graceful in slippers with thin black stockings. She kissed him willingly and studied him with wide-opened hazel-brown eyes. There wasn't another girl in Greenstream, in Virginia, with Hannah's fetching appearance, he decided with a glow of adoration. She had a--a sort of beauty entirely her own; it was not exactly prettiness, but a quality far more disturbing, something a man could never forget.
"She's done," he told her abruptly.
"What?" Hannah gazed up at him with a dim sweetness in the gathering dusk.
"What!" he mocked her. "You ought to be ashamed to ask. Why, the house --our home. We could move in by a week if we were called to. We can get married any time."
She now looked away from him, her face still and dreaming.
"You don't seem overly anxious," Calvin declared.
"It's just the idea," she replied. "I never thought of it like this before--right on a person." She sighed. "Of course it will be nice, Calvin."
He sat below her with an arm across her slim knees. "I'm going to dig right into the truck patch; there's a parcel of poles cut for the beans. It won't be much the first year; but wait and we'll show people how to live." He repeated his vision in connection with the present Alderwith holdings.
"I wonder will we ever be rich like the senator?"
"Certainly," he answered with calm conviction. "A man couldn't be shiftless with you to do for, Hannah. He'd be obliged to have everything the best."
"It'll take a long while though," she continued.
"We will have to put in some hard licks," he admitted. "But we are young; we've got a life to do it in."
"A man has, but I don't know about girls. It seems like they get old faster; and then things--silk dresses don't do them any good. How would ma look in fashionable clothes!"
"You won't have to wait that long," he assured her. "Your father has never hurt himself about the place, there's no money in sheep; and as for Hosmer--you know well as me that he is nothing outside of the bank and his own comfort. Store clothes is Hosmer all through."
"I wish you were a little like him there," Hannah returned.
He admitted that this evening he was more untidy than need be. "I just couldn't wait to see you," he declared; "with our place and--and all so safe and happy."
II
The Braley table, spread after the Greenstream custom in the kitchen, was surrounded by Richmond and Calvin--Hosmer had stayed late at the bank--Hannah and Susan, the eldest of the children, prematurely aged and wasted by a perpetual cough, while Lucy Braley moved carelessly between the stove and the table. At rare intervals she was assisted by Hannah, who bore the heavy dishes in a silent but perceptible air of protest.
Calvin Stammark liked this; it was a part of her superiority to the other girls of the locality. He made up his mind that she should never lose her present gentility. Whenever he could afford it Hannah must have help in the house. No greater elegance was imaginable. Senator Alderwith, at his dwelling with its broad porch, had two servants--two servants and a bathtub with hot water running right out of a tap. And he Calvin Stammark, would have the same, before Hannah and he were too old to enjoy it.
He had eleven hundred dollars now, after buying the land about his house. When the right time came he would invest it in more property-- grazing, a few herd of cattle and maybe in timber. Calvin had innumerable schemes for their betterment and success. To all this the sheer fact of Hannah was like the haunting refrain of a song. She was never really out of his planning. He might be sitting on his rooftree