The Happy End | Page 8

him into a
semblance of her own remoteness.
"It's in you," he said; "and it will have to come out. I'm what I am too,
and that doesn't make it any easier. Kind of a fool about you. Another
girl won't do. I'll say good night."
He turned and abruptly quitted the room and all his hope.
VI
When the furniture Calvin had ordered through the catalogue at Priest's
store arrived by mountain wagon he placed it in the room beside the

kitchen that was to have been Hannah's and his. Hannah had gone three
weeks before with Phebe. This done he sat for a long while on the
portico of his house, facing the rich bottom pasturage and high verdant
range beyond. It was late afternoon and the rift was filling with a
golden haze from a sun veiled in watery late-spring vapors. An old
apple tree by the road 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