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
squaring the shingling; bargaining with Eli Goss, the stone-cutter;
renewing the rock salt for Alderwith's steers; but running through every
occupation was the memory of Hannah's pale distracting face, the scarlet
thread of the lips she was continually biting, her slender solid body.
He had heard that her mother was like that when she was young; but
looking at Mrs. Braley's spent being, hearing her thin complaining
voice, it seemed impossible. People who had known her in her youth
asserted that it was so. Phebe too, they said, was the same--Phebe who
had left Greenstream nine years ago, when she was seventeen, to become
an actress in the great cities beyond the mountains. This might or
might not be a fact. Calvin always doubted that any one else could have
Hannah's charm.
However, he had never seen Phebe; he had moved from a distant part of
the county to the principal Greenstream settlement after she had gone.
But the legend of Phebe's beauty and talent was a part of the Braley
household. Mrs. Braley told it as a distinguished trait that Phebe would
never set her hand in hot dishwater. Calvin noted that Hannah was often
blamed for domestic negligence, but this and far more advanced conduct
in Phebe was surrounded by a halo of superiority.
After supper, in view of the fact of their courtship, Calvin and Hannah
were permitted to sit undisturbed in the formality of the parlor. The
rest of the family congregated with complete normality in the kitchen.
The parlor was an uncomfortable chamber with uncomfortable elaborate
chairs in orange plush upholstery, a narrow sofa, an organ of highly
varnished lightwood ornamented with scrolled fretwork, and a cannon
stove with polished brass spires.
Calvin sat on the sofa with an arm about Hannah's waist, while she
twisted round her finger the ring he had given her, a ring of warranted
gold clasping a large red stone. Her throat was circled by a silver
chain supporting a mounted polished Scotch pebble, his gift as well.
Their position was conventional; Calvin's arm was cramped from its
unusual position, he had to brace his feet to keep firm on the slippery
plush, but he was dazed with delight. His heart throbs were evident in
his wrists and throat, while a tenderness of pity actually wet his eyes.
At times he spoke in a hushed voice, phrases meaningless in word but
charged with inarticulate emotion; Hannah replied more coherently; but
for the most they were silent. She accepted the situation with evident
calm as an inevitable part of life. Drawn against him she rested her
head lightly on his shoulder, her gaze speculative and undisturbed.
Once he exclaimed: “I don't believe you love me! I don't believe you're
interested in the things for the kitchen or the bedroom suite I saw in a
catalogue at Priest's store!”
“Don't be silly!” she murmured. “Why shouldn't I be when it's my own,
when it's all I'm going to have.”
He cried bravely. “It's only the beginning! Wait till you see our cattle
herded over the mountain to the railroad; wait till you see a spur come
up the Sugarloaf and haul away our hardwood. Just you wait----”
There was the clip-clip of a horse outside, and the creaking of wheels.
“I believe that's Hosmer.” Hannah rose. “It's funny, too, because he
said he'd have to stay at the hotel to-night, there was so much settling
up at the bank.”
It was, however, Hosmer Braley. He paused at the parlor door, a man in
the vicinity of thirty, fat in body and carefully clad, with a white
starched collar and figured satin tie.
“I didn't want to drive out,” he said, at once bland and aggrieved; “but
it couldn't be helped. Here's a piece of news for all of you--Phebe is
coming home to visit She wrote me to say so, and I only got the letter
this evening. Whatever do you suppose took her?”
Hannah at once flushed with excitement--like, Calvin Stammark thought,
the parlor lamp with the pink shade, turned up suddenly. An instant
vague depression settled over him; Hannah, only the minute before in his
arms, seemed to draw away from him, remote and unconcerned by anything
but Phebe's extraordinary return. Hosmer made it clear that the event
promised nothing but annoyance for him.
“She's coming by to-morrow's stage,” he went on, untouched by the
sensation his information had wrought in the kitchen; “and it's certain
I can't meet her. The bank's sending me into West Virginia about some
securities.”
Richmond Braley, it developed further, was bound to a day's work on the
public roads. They turned to Calvin.
“Take my buggy,” Hosmer offered; “I'll have to go from Durban by rail.”
There was no reason why he shouldn't meet Phebe Braley, Calvin realized.
He lingered, gazing with silent longing at Hannah, but it was evident
that she had no intention of returning to the parlor.