Summary
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LONELY VALLEYS
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."