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. The re are plenty of ministers in Washington; or we could come back later."

"The re 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. The re 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."

II

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. The ir 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——"

The re 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 We st 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."

The re 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.

III

Waiting in Hosmer's buggy for the arrival of the Greenstream stage and Phebe Braley, Calvin was conscious of the persistence of the depression that had invaded him at the announcement of her visit. He resented, too, the new element thrust into the Braley household, disrupting the familiar course of his love. Hannah had been unreasonably distracted by the actuality of Phebe's return—the Phebe who had gone away from the mountains and become an Actress.

The buggy was drawn to one side of the principal Greenstream road, at the post-office. Before him the way crossed the valley and lifted abruptly to the slope of the eastern range. At his back the village—the brick Methodist church and the white painted Presbyterian church, the courthouse with its dignified columns, the stores at the corners of the single crossroads, and varied dwellings—was settling into the elusive May twilight. The highest peaks in the east were capped with dissolving rose by the lowering sun, and the sky was a dusty blue.

Calvin Stammark heard the approaching stage before he saw it; then the long rigid surrey with its spare horses rapidly rolled up over the open road to the post-office. He got down and moved diffidently forward, seeing and recognizing Phebe immediately. This was made possible by her resemblance to Hannah; and yet, Calvin added, no two women could be more utterly different.

Phebe Braley had a full figure—she was almost stout—a body of the frankest emphasized curves in a long purple coat with a collar of soiled white fur. A straw hat with the brim caught by a short purple-dyed ostrich feather was pinned to a dead-looking crinkled mass of greenish-gold hair, and her face—the memorable features of Hannah—was loaded with pink powder.

Calvin said:"You must be Phebe Braley. We ll, I'm Calvin Stammark. Your father or Hosmer couldn't meet the stage and so they had to let me get you. Where's your bag?"

She adopted at once an Air of comfortable familiarity."I don't remember your name,"she said, settling beside him in the buggy.

He told her that he had come to this vicinity after she had gone and that he was about to marry her sister.

"The hell you say!"she replied with cheerful surprise."Who'd thought Hannah was old enough to have a fellow!"

They were out of the village now and she produced a paper pack of cigarettes from a leather hand bag with a florid gilt top. Flooding her being with smoke she gazed with a shudder at the mountain wall on either hand, the unbroken greenery sweeping to the sky.

"It's worse than I remembered,"she confided, resting against him."A person with any life to them would go dippy here. Say, it's fierce! And yet, inside of me, I'm kind of glad to see it. I used to dream about the mountains, and this is like riding in the dream. I'm glad you came for me and let me down easy into things. I suppose they live in the kitchen home and pa'd lose a currycomb in his beard. Does Hosmer still beller if he gets the chicken neck?

"Do you sit in the holy parlor for your courting, and ain't that plush sofa a God-forsaken perch for two little love birds? It's funny how I remember this and that. I reckon ma's temper don't improve with age. They kid me something dreadful about saying'reckon,'in the talent. But it's all good and a dam'sight better than'I guess.'That's all they get off me."

Calvin Stammark's vague uneasiness changed to an Acute dislike, even a fear of Phebe. Her freedom of discourse and person, the powdered hard fare close to his, the reek of scent—all rasped the delicacy of his love for Hannah. The sisters were utterly different, and yet he would have realized instantly their relationship. Phebe, too, had the disturbing quality that made Hannah so appealing. In the former it was coarsened, almost lost; almost but not quite.