The maid, smartly capped in starched ruffled muslin and black, who
admitted them to the somber luxury of the rectory, hesitated in
unconcealed sulky disfavor.
“Doctor Goodlowe has hardly started dinner,” she asserted.
“Just ask him to come out for a little,” the man repeated.
He was past middle age, awkward in harsh ill-fitting and formal clothes
and with a gaunt high-boned countenance and clear blue eyes.
His companion, a wistfully pale girl under an absurd and expensive hat,
laid her hand in an embroidered white silk glove on his arm and said in
a low tone: “We won't bother him, Calvin. There are plenty of ministers
in Washington; or we could come back later.”
“There are, and we could,” he agreed; “but we won't. I'm not going to
wait a minute more for you, Lucy. Not now that you are willing. Why, I
have been waiting half my life already.”
I
A gaunt young man with clear blue eyes sat on the bank of a mountain
road and gazed at the newly-built house opposite. It was the only
dwelling visible. Behind, the range rose in a dark wall against the
evening sky; on either hand the small green valley was lost in a blue
haze of serried peaks. The house was not imposing; in reality small,
but a story and a half, it had a length of three rooms with a kitchen
forming an angle, invisible from where Calvin Stammark sat; an outside
chimney at each end, and a narrow covered portico over the front door.
An expiring clatter of hoofs marked the departure of the neighbor who
had helped Calvin set the last flanged course. It seemed incredible that
it was finished, ready--when the furniture and bright rag carpet had
been placed--for Hannah. “The truck patch will go in there on the
right,” he told himself; “and gradually I'll get the slope cleared out,
corn and buckwheat planted.”
He twisted about, facing the valley. It was deep in grass, watered with
streams like twisting shining ribbons, and held a sleek slow-grazing
herd of cattle.
The care of the latter, a part of Senator Alderwith's wide possessions,
was to form Calvin's main occupation--for the present anyhow. Calvin
Stammark had larger plans for his future with Hannah. Some day he would
own the Alderwith pastures at his back and be grazing his own steers.
His thoughts returned to Hannah, and he rose and proceeded to where
a saddled horse was tied beside the road. He ought to go back to
Greenstream and fix up before seeing her; but with their home all built,
his impatience to be with her was greater than his sense of propriety,
and he put his horse at a sharp canter to the left.
Calvin continued down the valley until the road turned toward the
range and an opening which 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.”