The Happy End | Page 8

was flushed with pink blossoms and a mocking bird was whistling with piercing sweetness.
Soon it would be evening and the frogs would begin again, the frogs and whippoorwills. The valley, just as Hannah had said, was lonely. He stirred and later found himself some supper--in the kitchen where everything was new.
On the following morning he left the Greenstream settlement; it was Friday, and Monday he returned with Ettie, his sister. She was remarkably like him--tall and angular, with a gaunt face and steady blue eyes. Older than Calvin, she had settled into a complete acquiescence with whatever life brought; no more for her than the keeping of her brother's house. Calvin, noting the efficient manner in which she ordered their material affairs, wondered at the fact that she had not been married. Men were unaccountable, but none more than himself, with his unquenchable longing for Hannah.
This retreated to the back of his being. He never spoke of her. Indeed he tried to put her from his thoughts, and with a measure of success. But it never occurred to him to consider any other girl; that possibility was closed. Those he saw--and they were uniformly kind, even inviting--were dull after Hannah.
Instead he devoted himself to the equivalent, in his undertakings, of Ettie's quiet capability. The following year a small number of the steers grazing beyond the road were his; in two years more Senator Alderwith died, and there was a division of his estate, in which Calvin assumed large liabilities, paying them as he had contracted. The timber in Sugarloaf Valley drew speculators--he sold options and bought a place in the logging development.
It seemed to him that he grew older, in appearance anyhow, with exceptional rapidity; his face grew leaner and his beard, which he continued to shave, was soiled with gray hair.
He avoided the Braleys and their clearing; and when circumstance drew him into conversation with Richmond or Hosmer he studiously spoke of indifferent things. He heard nothing of Hannah. Yet he learned in the various channels of communication common to remote localities that Richmond Braley was doing badly. Hosmer went to bank in one of the newly prosperous towns of West Virginia and apparently left all family obligations behind; Susan died of lung fever; and then, at the post- office, Calvin was told that Richmond himself was dangerously sick.
He left the mail with Ettie at his door and rode on, turning for the first time in nine years into the narrow valley of the Braleys' home. The place had been neglected until it was hardly distinguishable from the surrounding tangled wild. Such sheep as he saw were in wretched condition, wild and massed with filth and burrs.
Mrs. Braley was filling a large glass flask with hot water for her husband; and to Calvin's surprise a child with a quantity of straight pale-brown hair and wide-opened hazel-brown eyes was seated in the kitchen watching her.
"How is Richmond?" he asked, his gaze straying involuntarily to the girl.
"Kingdom Come's how he is," Lucy Braley replied. "Yes, and the poorhouse will end us unless Hosmer has a spark of good feeling. I sent him a postal card to come a long while back, but he hasn't so much as answered. Here, Lucy"--she turned to the child--"run up with this."
"Lucy?" Calvin Stammark asked when they were alone.
"Been here two weeks," Mrs. Braley told him. "What will become of her's beyond me. She is Hannah's daughter, and Hannah is dead."
There was a sharp constriction of Calvin's heart. Hannah's daughter, and Hannah was dead!
"As far as I know," the other continued in a strained metallic voice, "the child's got no father you could fix. Her mother wrote the name was Lucy Vibard, and she'd called her after me. But when I asked her she didn't seem to know anything about it.
"Hannah was alone and dog poor when she died, that's certain. Like everything else I can lay mind on she came to a bad end--Lord reckons where Phebe is. I always thought you were weak fingered to let Hannah go--with that house built and all. I suppose maybe you weren't, though; well out of a slack bargain."
Calvin Stammark scarcely heard her; his being was possessed by the pitiable image of Hannah dying alone and dog poor. He had always pictured her--except in the fleet vision of debasement--as young and graceful and disturbing. Without further speech he left the kitchen and crossed the house to the shut parlor. It was screened against the day, dim and musty and damp. The orange plush of the chairs and the narrow uncomfortable sofa, carefully dusted, was as bright as it had been when he had last seen it--was it ten years ago?
Here she had stood, her fingers tapping on the table, when he had made the unfortunate remark about Phebe;