by Bret Harte
THE CONVALESCENCE OF JACK HAMLIN
The habitually quiet, ascetic face of Seth Rivers was somewhat disturbedand his brows were knitted as he climbed the long ascent of Windy Hillto its summit and his own rancho. Perhaps it was the effect of thecharacteristic wind, which that afternoon seemed to assault him from allpoints at once and did not cease its battery even at his front door, buthustled him into the passage, blew him into the sitting room, and thencelebrated its own exit from the long, rambling house by the bangingof doors throughout the halls and the slamming of windows in the remotedistance.
Mrs. Rivers looked up from her work at this abrupt onset of herhusband, but without changing her own expression of slightly fatiguedself-righteousness. Accustomed to these elemental eruptions, she laidher hands from force of habit upon the lifting tablecloth, and then rosesubmissively to brush together the scattered embers and ashes from thelarge hearthstone, as she had often done before.
"You're in early, Seth," she said.
"Yes. I stopped at the Cross Roads Post Office. Lucky I did, or you'dhev had kempany on your hands afore you knowed it--this very night! Ifound this letter from Dr. Duchesne," and he produced a letter from hispocket.
Mrs. Rivers looked up with an expression of worldly interest. Dr.Duchesne had brought her two children into the world with somedifficulty, and had skillfully attended her through a long illnessconsequent upon the inefficient maternity of soulful but fragileAmerican women of her type. The doctor had more than a mere localreputation as a surgeon, and Mrs. Rivers looked up to him as her soleconnecting link with a world of thought beyond Windy Hill.
"He's comin' up yer to-night, bringin' a friend of his--a patient thathe wants us to board and keep for three weeks until he's well agin,"continued Mr. Rivers. "Ye know how the doctor used to rave about thepure air on our hill."
Mrs. Rivers shivered slightly, and drew her shawl over her shoulders,but nodded a patient assent.
"Well, he says it's just what that patient oughter have to cure him.He's had lung fever and other things, and this yer air and gin'ral quietis bound to set him up. We're to board and keep him without any fuss orfeathers, and the doctor sez he'll pay liberal for it. This yer's whathe sez," concluded Mr. Rivers, reading from the letter: "'He is nowfully convalescent, though weak, and really requires no other medicinethan the--ozone'--yes, that's what the doctor calls it--'of Windy Hill,and in fact as little attendance as possible. I will not let him keepeven his negro servant with him. He'll give you no trouble, if he can beprevailed upon to stay the whole time of his cure.'"
"There's our spare room--it hasn't been used since Parson Greenwood washere," said Mrs. Rivers reflectively. "Melinda could put it to rights inan hour. At what time will he come?"
"He'd come about nine. They drive over from Hightown depot. But," headded grimly, "here ye are orderin' rooms to be done up and ye don'tknow who for."
"You said a friend of Dr. Duchesne," returned Mrs. Rivers simply.
"Dr. Duchesne has many friends that you and me mightn't cotton to,"said her husband. "This man is Jack Hamlin." As his wife's remote andintrospective black eyes returned only vacancy, he added quickly. "Thenoted gambler!"
"Gambler?" echoed his wife, still vaguely.
"Yes--reg'lar; it's his business."
"Goodness, Seth! He can't expect to do it here."
"No," said Seth quickly, with that sense of fairness to his fellowman which most women find it so difficult to understand. "No--and heprobably won't mention the word 'card' while he's here."
"Well?" said Mrs. Rivers interrogatively.
"And," continued Seth, seeing that the objection was not pressed, "he'sone of them desprit men! A reg'lar fighter! Killed two or three men indools!"
Mrs. Rivers stared. "What could Dr. Duchesne have been thinking of? Why,we wouldn't be safe in the house with him!"
Again Seth's sense of equity triumphed. "I never heard of his fightin'anybody but his own kind, and when he was bullyragged. And ez to womenhe's quite t'other way in fact, and that's why I think ye oughter knowit afore you let him come. He don't go round with decent women. Infact"--But here Mr. Rivers, in the sanctity of conjugal confidences andthe fullness of Bible reading, used a few strong scriptural substantiveshappily unnecessary to repeat here.
"Seth!" said Mrs. Rivers suddenly, "you seem to know this man."
The unexpectedness and irrelevancy of this for a moment startled Seth.But that chaste and God-fearing man had no secrets. "Only by hearsay,Jane," he returned quietly; "but if ye say the word I'll stop his comin'now."
"It's too late," said Mrs. Rivers decidedly.
"I reckon not," returned her husband, "and that's why I came straighthere. I've only got to meet them at the depot and say this thing can'tbe done--and that's the end of it. They'll go off quiet to the hotel."
"I don't like to disappoint the doctor, Seth," said Mrs. Rivers. "Wemight," she added, with a troubled look of inquiry at her husband, "wemight take that Mr. Hamlin on trial. Like as not he won't stay, anyway,when he sees what we're like, Seth. What do you think? It would be onlyour Christian duty, too."
"I was thinkin' o' that as a professin' Christian, Jane," said herhusband. "But supposin' that other Christians don't look at it in thatlight. Thar's Deacon Stubbs and his wife and the parson. Ye rememberwhat he said about 'no covenant with sin'?"
"The Stubbses have no right to dictate who I'll have in my house," saidMrs. Rivers quickly, with a faint flush in her rather sallow cheeks.
"It's your say and nobody else's," assented her husband with grimsubmissiveness. "You do what you like."
Mrs. Rivers mused. "There's only myself and Melinda here," she said withsublime naivete; "and the children ain't old enough to be corrupted. Iam satisfied if you are, Seth," and she again looked at him inquiringly.
"Go ahead, then, and get ready for 'em," said Seth, hurrying awaywith unaffected relief. "If you have everything fixed by nine o'clock,that'll do."
Mrs. Rivers had everything "fixed" by that hour, including herselfpresumably, for she had put on a gray dress which she usually worewhen shopping in the county town, adding a prim collar and cuffs. Apearl-encircled brooch, the wedding gift of Seth, and a solitaire ringnext to her wedding ring, with a locket containing her children's hair,accented her position as a proper wife and mother. At a quarter to nineshe had finished tidying the parlor, opening the harmonium so thatthe light might play upon its polished keyboard, and bringing fromthe forgotten seclusion of her closet two beautifully bound volumes ofTupper's "Poems" and Pollok's "Course of Time," to impart a literarygrace to the centre table. She then drew a chair to the table and satdown before it with a religious magazine in her lap. The wind roaredover the deep-throated chimney, the clock ticked monotonously, and thenthere came the sound of wheels and voices.
But Mrs. Rivers was not destined to see her guest that night. Dr.Duchesne, under the safe lee of the door, explained that Mr. Hamlinhad been exhausted by the journey, and, assisted by a mild opiate, wasasleep in the carriage; that if Mrs. Rivers did not object, they wouldcarry him at once to his room. In the flaring and guttering of candles,the flashing of lanterns, the flapping of coats and shawls, and thebewildering rush of wind, Mrs. Rivers was only vaguely conscious of aslight figure muffled tightly in a cloak carried past her in the armsof a grizzled negro up the staircase, followed by Dr. Duchesne. Withthe closing of the front door on the tumultuous world without, a silencefell again on the little parlor.
When the doctor made his reappearance it was to say that his patient wasbeing undressed and put to bed by his negro servant, who, however, wouldreturn with the doctor to-night, but that the patient would be left witheverything that was necessary, and that he would require no attentionfrom the family until the next day. Indeed, it was better that heshould remain undisturbed. As the doctor confined his confidences andinstructions entirely to the physical condition of their guest, Mrs.Rivers found it awkward to press other inquiries.
"Of course," she said at last hesitatin
gly, but with a certain primnessof expression, "Mr. Hamlin must expect to find everything here verydifferent from what he is accustomed to--at least from what my husbandsays are his habits."
"Nobody knows that better than he, Mrs. Rivers," returned the doctorwith an equally marked precision of manner, "and you could not have aguest who would be less likely to make you remind him of it."
A little annoyed, yet not exactly knowing why, Mrs. Rivers abandoned thesubject, and as the doctor shortly afterwards busied himself in the careof his patient, with whom he remained until the hour of his departure,she had no chance of renewing it. But as he finally shook hands with hishost and hostess, it seemed to her that he slightly recurred to it. "Ihave the greatest hope of the curative effect of this wonderful localityon my patient, but even still more of the beneficial effect of thecomplete change of his habits, his surroundings, and their influences."Then the door closed on the man of science and the grizzled negroservant, the noise of the carriage wheels was shut out with the song ofthe wind in the pine tops, and the rancho of Windy Hill possessed Mr.Jack Hamlin in peace. Indeed, the wind was now falling, as was itscustom at that hour, and the moon presently arose over a hushed andsleeping landscape.
For the rest of the evening the silent presence in the room aboveaffected the household; the half-curious servants and ranch hands spokein whispers in the passages, and at evening prayers, in the dining room,Seth Rivers, kneeling before and bowed over a rush-bottomed chair whoselegs were clutched by his strong hands, included "the stranger withinour gates" in his regular supplications. When the hour for retiringcame, Seth, with a candle in his hand, preceded his wife up thestaircase, but stopped before the door of their guest's room. "Ireckon," he said interrogatively to Mrs. Rivers, "I oughter see ef he'swantin' anythin'?"
"You heard what the doctor said," returned Mrs. Rivers cautiously.At the same time she did not speak decidedly, and the frontiersman'sinstinct of hospitality prevailed. He knocked lightly; there was noresponse. He turned the door handle softly. The door opened. A faintclean perfume--an odor of some general personality rather than anyparticular thing--stole out upon them. The light of Seth's candle strucka few glints from some cut-glass and silver, the contents of the guest'sdressing case, which had been carefully laid out upon a small table byhis negro servant. There was also a refined neatness in the dispositionof his clothes and effects which struck the feminine eye of even thetidy Mrs. Rivers as something new to her experience. Seth drew nearerthe bed with his shaded candle, and then, turning, beckoned his wife toapproach. Mrs. Rivers hesitated--but for the necessity of silenceshe would have openly protested--but that protest was shut up in hercompressed lips as she came forward.
For an instant that awe with which absolute helplessness invests thesleeping and dead was felt by both husband and wife. Only the upper partof the sleeper's face was visible above the bedclothes, held in positionby a thin white nervous hand that was encircled at the wrist by aruffle. Seth stared. Short brown curls were tumbled over a forehead dampwith the dews of sleep and exhaustion. But what appeared more singular,the closed eyes of this vessel of wrath and recklessness were fringedwith lashes as long and silky as a woman's. Then Mrs. Rivers gentlypulled her husband's sleeve, and they both crept back with a greatersense of intrusion and even more cautiously than they had entered. Nordid they speak until the door was closed softly and they were alone onthe landing. Seth looked grimly at his wife.
"Don't look much ez ef he could hurt anybody."
"He looks like a sick man," returned Mrs. Rivers calmly.
The unconscious object of this criticism and attention slept until late;slept through the stir of awakened life within and without, through thechallenge of early cocks in the lean-to shed, through the creakingof departing ox teams and the lazy, long-drawn commands of teamsters,through the regular strokes of the morning pump and the splash of wateron stones, through the far-off barking of dogs and the half-intelligibleshouts of ranchmen; slept through the sunlight on his ceiling, throughits slow descent of his wall, and awoke with it in his eyes! He woke,too, with a delicious sense of freedom from pain, and of even drawinga long breath without difficulty--two facts so marvelous and dreamlikethat he naturally closed his eyes again lest he should waken to a worldof suffering and dyspnoea. Satisfied at last that this relief was real,he again opened his eyes, but upon surroundings so strange, so wildlyabsurd and improbable, that he again doubted their reality. He waslying in a moderately large room, primly and severely furnished, buthis attention was for the moment riveted to a gilt frame upon the wallbeside him bearing the text, "God Bless Our Home," and then on anotherframe on the opposite wall which admonished him to "Watch and Pray."Beside them hung an engraving of the "Raising of Lazarus," and aHogarthian lithograph of "The Drunkard's Progress." Mr. Hamlin closedhis eyes; he was dreaming certainly--not one of those wild, fantasticvisions that had so miserably filled the past long nights of pain andsuffering, but still a dream! At last, opening one eye stealthily, hecaught the flash of the sunlight upon the crystal and silver articlesof his dressing case, and that flash at once illuminated his memory. Heremembered his long weeks of illness and the devotion of Dr. Duchesne.He remembered how, when the crisis was past, the doctor had urged acomplete change and absolute rest, and had told him of a secluded ranchoin some remote locality kept by an honest Western pioneer whose familyhe had attended. He remembered his own reluctant assent, impelled bygratitude to the doctor and the helplessness of a sick man. Henow recalled the weary journey thither, his exhaustion and thesemi-consciousness of his arrival in a bewildering wind on a shadowyhilltop. And this was the place!
He shivered slightly, and ducked his head under the cover again. But thebrightness of the sun and some exhilarating quality in the air temptedhim to have another outlook, avoiding as far as possible the grimlydecorated walls. If they had only left him his faithful servant hecould have relieved himself of that mischievous badinage which alwaysalternately horrified and delighted that devoted negro. But he wasalone--absolutely alone--in this conventicle!
Presently he saw the door open slowly. It gave admission to the smallround face and yellow ringlets of a little girl, and finally to herwhole figure, clasping a doll nearly as large as herself. For a momentshe stood there, arrested by the display of Mr. Hamlin's dressing caseon the table. Then her glances moved around the room and rested upon thebed. Her blue eyes and Mr. Hamlin's brown ones met and mingled. Withouta moment's hesitation she moved to the bedside. Taking her doll's handsin her own, she displayed it before him.
"Isn't it pitty?"
Mr. Hamlin was instantly his old self again. Thrusting his handcomfortably under the pillow, he lay on his side and gazed at it longand affectionately. "I never," he said in a faint voice, but withimmovable features, "saw anything so perfectly beautiful. Is it alive?"
"It's a dolly," she returned gravely, smoothing down its frock andstraightening its helpless feet. Then seized with a spontaneous idea,like a young animal she suddenly presented it to him with both hands andsaid,--
"Kiss it."
Mr. Hamlin implanted a chaste salute on its vermilion cheek. "Would youmind letting me hold it for a little?" he said with extreme diffidence.
The child was delighted, as he expected. Mr. Hamlin placed it in asitting posture on the edge of his bed, and put an ostentatious paternalarm around it.
"But you're alive, ain't you?" he said to the child.
This subtle witticism convulsed her. "I'm a little girl," she gurgled.
"I see; her mother?"
"Ess."
"And who's your mother?"
"Mammy."
"Mrs. Rivers?"
The child nodded until her ringlets were shaken on her cheek. Aftera moment she began to laugh bashfully and with repression, yet asMr. Hamlin thought a little mischievously. Then as he looked at herinterrogatively she suddenly caught hold of the ruffle of his sleeve.
"Oo's got on mammy's nighty."
Mr. Hamlin started. He saw the child's obvious mis
take and actually felthimself blushing. It was unprecedented--it was the sheerest weakness--itmust have something to do with the confounded air.
"I grieve to say you are deeply mistaken--it is my very own," hereturned with great gravity. Nevertheless, he drew the coverlet closeover his shoulder. But here he was again attracted by another face atthe half-opened door--a freckled one, belonging to a boy apparently ayear or two older than the girl. He was violently telegraphing to her tocome away, although it was evident that he was at the same time deeplyinterested in the guest's toilet articles. Yet as his bright gray eyesand Mr. Hamlin's brown ones met, he succumbed, as the girl had, andwalked directly to the bedside. But he did it bashfully--as the girl hadnot. He even attempted a defensive explanation.
"She hadn't oughter come in here, and mar wouldn't let her, and sheknows it," he said with superior virtue.
"But I asked her to come as I'm asking you," said Mr. Hamlin promptly,"and don't you go back on your sister or you'll never be president ofthe United States." With this he laid his hand on the boy's tow head,and then, lifting himself on his pillow to a half-sitting posture, putan arm around each of the children, drawing them together, with the dolloccupying the central post of honor. "Now," continued Mr. Hamlin, albeitin a voice a little faint from the exertion, "now that we're comfortabletogether I'll tell you the story of the good little boy who became apirate in order to save his grandmother and little sister from beingeaten by a wolf at the door."
But, alas! that interesting record of self-sacrifice never was told. Forit chanced that Melinda Bird, Mrs. Rivers's help, following the trail ofthe missing children, came upon the open door and glanced in. There, toher astonishment, she saw the domestic group already described, and toher eyes dominated by the "most beautiful and perfectly elegant" youngman she had ever seen. But let not the incautious reader suppose thatshe succumbed as weakly as her artless charges to these fascinations.The character and antecedents of that young man had been alreadydelivered to her in the kitchen by the other help. With that singleglance she halted; her eyes sought the ceiling in chaste exaltation.Falling back a step, she called in ladylike hauteur and precision, "MaryEmmeline and John Wesley."
Mr. Hamlin glanced at the children. "It's Melindy looking for us,"said John Wesley. But they did not move. At which Mr. Hamlin called outfaintly but cheerfully, "They're here, all right."
Again the voice arose with still more marked and lofty distinctness,"John Wesley and Mary Em-me-line." It seemed to Mr. Hamlin that humanaccents could not convey a more significant and elevated ignoring ofsome implied impropriety in his invitation. He was for a moment crushed.
But he only said to his little friends with a smile, "You'd better gonow and we'll have that story later."
"Affer beckus?" suggested Mary Emmeline.
"In the woods," added John Wesley.
Mr. Hamlin nodded blandly. The children trotted to the door. It closedupon them and Miss Bird's parting admonition, loud enough for Mr. Hamlinto hear, "No more freedoms, no more intrudings, you hear."
The older culprit, Hamlin, retreated luxuriously under his blankets,but presently another new sensation came over him--absolutely, hunger.Perhaps it was the child's allusion to "beckus," but he found himselfwondering when it would be ready. This anxiety was soon relieved by theappearance of his host himself bearing a tray, possibly in deference toMiss Bird's sense of propriety. It appeared also that Dr. Duchesne hadpreviously given suitable directions for his diet, and Mr. Hamlin foundhis repast simple but enjoyable. Always playfully or ironically politeto strangers, he thanked his host and said he had slept splendidly.
"It's this yer 'ozone' in the air that Dr. Duchesne talks about," saidSeth complacently.
"I am inclined to think it is also those texts," said Mr. Hamlingravely, as he indicated them on the wall. "You see they reminded me ofchurch and my boyhood's slumbers there. I have never slept so peacefullysince." Seth's face brightened so interestedly at what he believed tobe a suggestion of his guest's conversion that Mr. Hamlin was fain tochange the subject. When his host had withdrawn he proceeded to dresshimself, but here became conscious of his weakness and was obligedto sit down. In one of those enforced rests he chanced to be near thewindow, and for the first time looked on the environs of his placeof exile. For a moment he was staggered. Everything seemed to pitchdownward from the rocky outcrop on which the rambling house and farmsheds stood. Even the great pines around it swept downward like a greenwave, to rise again in enormous billows as far as the eye could reach.He could count a dozen of their tumbled crests following each other ontheir way to the distant plain. In some vague point of that shimmeringhorizon of heat and dust was the spot he came from the preceding night.Yet the recollection of it and his feverish past seemed to confuse him,and he turned his eyes gladly away.
Pale, a little tremulous, but immaculate and jaunty in his whiteflannels and straw hat, he at last made his way downstairs. To hisgreat relief he found the sitting room empty, as he would have willinglydeferred his formal acknowledgments to his hostess later. A singleglance at the interior determined him not to linger, and he slippedquietly into the open air and sunshine. The day was warm and still, asthe wind only came up with the going down of the sun, and the atmospherewas still redolent with the morning spicing of pine and hay and astronger balm that seemed to fill his breast with sunshine. He walkedtoward the nearest shade--a cluster of young buckeyes--and having witha certain civic fastidiousness flicked the dust from a stump with hishandkerchief he sat down. It was very quiet and calm. The life andanimation of early morning had already vanished from the hill, or seemedto be suspended with the sun in the sky. He could see the ranchmen andoxen toiling on the green terraced slopes below, but no sound reachedhis ears. Even the house he had just quitted seemed empty of lifethroughout its rambling length. His seclusion was complete. Could hestand it for three weeks? Perhaps it need not be for so long; hewas already stronger! He foresaw that the ascetic Seth might becomewearisome. He had an intuition that Mrs. Rivers would be equally so; heshould certainly quarrel with Melinda, and this would probably debar himfrom the company of the children--his only hope.
But his seclusion was by no means so complete as he expected.He presently was aware of a camp-meeting hymn hummed somewhatostentatiously by a deep contralto voice, which he at once recognized asMelinda's, and saw that severe virgin proceeding from the kitchen alongthe ridge until within a few paces of the buckeyes, when she stoppedand, with her hand shading her eyes, apparently began to examine thedistant fields. She was a tall, robust girl, not without certain rusticattractions, of which she seemed fully conscious. This latter weaknessgave Mr. Hamlin a new idea. He put up the penknife with which he hadbeen paring his nails while wondering why his hands had become so thin,and awaited events. She presently turned, approached the buckeyes,plucked a spike of the blossoms with great girlish lightness, and thenapparently discovering Mr. Hamlin, started in deep concern and said withsomewhat stentorian politeness: "I BEG your pardon--didn't know I wasintruding!"
"Don't mention it," returned Jack promptly, but without moving. "I sawyou coming and was prepared; but generally--as I have something thematter with my heart--a sudden joy like this is dangerous."
Somewhat mystified, but struggling between an expression of rigorousdecorum and gratified vanity, Miss Melinda stammered, "I was only"--
"I knew it--I saw what you were doing," interrupted Jack gravely, "onlyI wouldn't do it if I were you. You were looking at one of those youngmen down the hill. You forgot that if you could see him he could seeyou looking too, and that would only make him conceited. And a girl withYOUR attractions don't require that."
"Ez if," said Melinda, with lofty but somewhat reddening scorn, "therewas a man on this hull rancho that I'd take a second look at."
"It's the first look that does the business," returned Jack simply. "Butmaybe I was wrong. Would you mind--as you're going straight back tothe house" (Miss Melinda had certainly expressed no suchintention)--"turning those two littl
e kids loose out here? I've a sortof engagement with them."
"I will speak to their mar," said Melinda primly, yet with a certainsign of relenting, as she turned away.
"You can say to her that I regretted not finding her in the sitting roomwhen I came down," continued Jack tactfully.
Apparently the tact was successful, for he was delighted a few momentslater by the joyous onset of John Wesley and Mary Emmeline upon thebuckeyes, which he at once converted into a game of hide and seek,permitting himself at last to be shamelessly caught in the open.But here he wisely resolved upon guarding against further grown-upinterruption, and consulting with his companions found that on oneof the lower terraces there was a large reservoir fed by a mountainrivulet, but they were not allowed to play there. Thither, however, thereckless Jack hied with his playmates and was presently ensconced undera willow tree, where he dexterously fashioned tiny willow canoes withhis penknife and sent them sailing over a submerged expanse of nearlyan acre. But half an hour of this ingenious amusement was brought to anabrupt termination. While cutting bark, with his back momentarily turnedon his companions, he heard a scream, and turned quickly to seeJohn Wesley struggling in the water, grasping a tree root, and MaryEmmeline--nowhere! In another minute he saw the strings of her pinaforeappear on the surface a few yards beyond, and in yet another minute,with a swift rueful glance at his white flannels, he had plunged afterher. A disagreeable shock of finding himself out of his depths was,however, followed by contact with the child's clothing, and clutchingher firmly, a stroke or two brought him panting to the bank. Herea gasp, a gurgle, and then a roar from Mary Emmeline, followed by asympathetic howl from John Wesley, satisfied him that the danger wasover. Rescuing the boy from the tree root, he laid them both on thegrass and contemplated them exercising their lungs with miserablesatisfaction. But here he found his own breathing impeded in addition toa slight faintness, and was suddenly obliged to sit down beside them, atwhich, by some sympathetic intuition, they both stopped crying.
Encouraged by this, Mr. Hamlin got them to laughing again, and thenproposed a race home in their wet clothes, which they accepted, Mr.Hamlin, for respiratory reasons, lagging in their rear until he had thesatisfaction of seeing them captured by the horrified Melinda in frontof the kitchen, while he slipped past her and regained his own room.Here he changed his saturated clothes, tried to rub away a certainchilliness that was creeping over him, and lay down in his dressinggown to miserable reflections. He had nearly drowned the children andoverexcited himself, in spite of his promise to the doctor! He wouldnever again be intrusted with the care of the former nor be believed bythe latter!
But events are not always logical in sequence. Mr. Hamlin wentcomfortably to sleep and into a profuse perspiration. He was awakened bya rapping at his door, and opening it, was surprised to find Mrs. Riverswith anxious inquiries as to his condition. "Indeed," she said, with anemotion which even her prim reserve could not conceal, "I did not knowuntil now how serious the accident was, and how but for you and DivineProvidence my little girl might have been drowned. It seems Melinda sawit all."
Inwardly objurgating the spying Melinda, but relieved that his playmateshadn't broken their promise of secrecy, Mr. Hamlin laughed.
"I'm afraid that your little girl wouldn't have got into the water atall but for me--and you must give all the credit of getting her outto the other fellow." He stopped at the severe change in Mrs. Rivers'sexpression, and added quite boyishly and with a sudden drop from hisusual levity, "But please don't keep the children away from me for allthat, Mrs. Rivers."
Mrs. Rivers did not, and the next day Jack and his companions soughtfresh playing fields and some new story-telling pastures. Indeed, it wasa fine sight to see this pale, handsome, elegantly dressed young fellowlounging along between a blue-checkered pinafored girl on one side anda barefooted boy on the other. The ranchmen turned and looked afterhim curiously. One, a rustic prodigal, reduced by dissipation to theswine-husks of ranching, saw fit to accost him familiarly.
"The last time I saw you dealing poker in Sacramento, Mr. Hamlin, I didnot reckon to find you up here playing with a couple of kids."
"No!" responded Mr. Hamlin suavely, "and yet I remember I was playingwith some country idiots down there, and you were one of them. Well!understand that up here I prefer the kids. Don't let me have to remindyou of it."
Nevertheless, Mr. Hamlin could not help noticing that for the nexttwo or three days there were many callers at the ranch and that he wasobliged in his walks to avoid the highroad on account of the impertinentcuriosity of wayfarers. Some of them were of that sex which he would nothave contented himself with simply calling "curious."
"To think," said Melinda confidently to her mistress, "that that tharMrs. Stubbs, who wouldn't go to the Hightown Hotel because there was aplay actress thar, has been snoopin' round here twice since that youngfeller came."
Of this fact, however, Mr. Hamlin was blissfully unconscious.
Nevertheless, his temper was growing uncertain; the angle of his smartstraw hat was becoming aggressive to strangers; his politeness sardonic.And now Sunday morning had come with an atmosphere of starched piety andwell-soaped respectability at the rancho, and the children were to betaken with the rest of the family to the day-long service at Hightown.As these Sabbath pilgrimages filled the main road, he was fain to takehimself and his loneliness to the trails and byways, and even to invadethe haunts of some other elegant outcasts like himself--to wit, acrested hawk, a graceful wild cat beautifully marked, and an eloquentlyreticent rattlesnake. Mr. Hamlin eyed them without fear, and certainlywithout reproach. They were not out of their element.
Suddenly he heard his name called in a stentorian contralto. Animpatient ejaculation rose to his lips, but died upon them as he turned.It was certainly Melinda, but in his present sensitive loneliness itstruck him for the first time that he had never actually seen her beforeas she really was. Like most men in his profession he was a quick readerof thoughts and faces when he was interested, and although this was thesame robust, long-limbed, sunburnt girl he had met, he now seemed to seethrough her triple incrustation of human vanity, conventional piety,and outrageous Sabbath finery an honest, sympathetic simplicity thatcommanded his respect.
"You are back early from church," he said.
"Yes. One service is good enough for me when thar ain't no specialpreacher," she returned, "so I jest sez to Silas, 'as I ain't here tolisten to the sisters cackle ye kin put to the buckboard and drive mehome ez soon ez you please.'"
"And so his name is Silas," suggested Mr. Hamlin cheerfully.
"Go 'long with you, Mr. Hamlin, and don't pester," she returned, withheifer-like playfulness. "Well, Silas put to, and when we rose the hillhere I saw your straw hat passin' in the gulch, and sez to Silas, sez I,'Ye kin pull up here, for over yar is our new boarder, Jack Hamlin, andI'm goin' to talk with him.' 'All right,' sez he, 'I'd sooner trustye with that gay young gambolier every day of the week than with themsaints down thar on Sunday. He deals ez straight ez he shoots, and isabout as nigh onto a gentleman as they make 'em.'"
For one moment or two Miss Bird only saw Jack's long lashes. When hiseyes once more lifted they were shining. "And what did you say?" hesaid, with a short laugh.
"I told him he needn't be Christopher Columbus to have discovered that."She turned with a laugh toward Jack, to be met by the word "shake," andan outstretched thin white hand which grasped her large red one with afrank, fraternal pressure.
"I didn't come to tell ye that," remarked Miss Bird as she sat down on aboulder, took off her yellow hat, and restacked her tawny mane underit, "but this: I reckoned I went to Sunday meetin' as I ought ter. Ikalkilated to hear considerable about 'Faith' and 'Works,' and sich,but I didn't reckon to hear all about you from the Lord's Prayer to theDoxology. You were in the special prayers ez a warnin', in the sermonez a text; they picked out hymns to fit ye! And always a drefful exampleand a visitation. And the rest o' the tune it was all gabble, gabble bythe brothers and
sisters about you. I reckon, Mr. Hamlin, that they knoweverything you ever did since you were knee-high to a grasshopper, and agood deal more than you ever thought of doin'. The women is all dead seton convertin' ye and savin' ye by their own precious selves, and the menis ekally dead set on gettin' rid o' ye on that account."
"And what did Seth and Mrs. Rivers say?" asked Hamlin composedly, butwith kindling eyes.
"They stuck up for ye ez far ez they could. But ye see the parsonhez got a holt upon Seth, havin' caught him kissin' a convert at campmeeting; and Deacon Turner knows suthin about Mrs. Rivers's sister, whokicked over the pail and jumped the fence years ago, and she's afeard a'him. But what I wanted to tell ye was that they're all comin' up here totake a look at ye--some on 'em to-night. You ain't afeard, are ye?" sheadded, with a loud laugh.
"Well, it looks rather desperate, doesn't it?" returned Jack, withdancing eyes.
"I'll trust ye for all that," said Melinda. "And now I reckon I'll trotalong to the rancho. Ye needn't offer ter see me home," she added,as Jack made a movement to accompany her. "Everybody up here ain't asfair-minded ez Silas and you, and Melinda Bird hez a character tolose! So long!" With this she cantered away, a little heavily, perhaps,adjusting her yellow hat with both hands as she clattered down the steephill.
That afternoon Mr. Hamlin drew largely on his convalescence to mount ahalf-broken mustang, and in spite of the rising afternoon wind to gallopalong the highroad in quite as mischievous and breezy a fashion. He waswont to allow his mustang's nose to hang over the hind rails of wagonsand buggies containing young couples, and to dash ahead of sobercarryalls that held elderly "members in good standing."
An accomplished rider, he picked up and brought back the flying parasolof Mrs. Deacon Stubbs without dismounting. He finally came home a littleblown, but dangerously composed.
There was the usual Sunday evening gathering at Windy HillRancho--neighbors and their wives, deacons and the pastor--but theircuriosity was not satisfied by the sight of Mr. Hamlin, who kept his ownroom and his own counsel. There was some desultory conversation, chieflyon church topics, for it was vaguely felt that a discussion of theadvisability or getting rid of the guest of their host was somewhatdifficult under this host's roof, with the guest impending at anymoment. Then a diversion was created by some of the church choirpracticing the harmonium with the singing of certain more or lesslugubrious anthems. Mrs. Rivers presently joined in, and in a somewhatfaded soprano, which, however, still retained considerable musical tasteand expression, sang, "Come, ye disconsolate." The wind moaned over thedeep-throated chimney in a weird harmony with the melancholy of thathuman appeal as Mrs. Rivers sang the first verse:--
"Come, ye disconsolate, where'er ye languish, Come to the Mercy Seat, fervently kneel; Here bring your wounded hearts--here tell your anguish, Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal!"
A pause followed, and the long-drawn, half-human sigh of the mountainwind over the chimney seemed to mingle with the wail of the harmonium.And then, to their thrilled astonishment, a tenor voice, high, clear,but tenderly passionate, broke like a skylark over their heads in thelines of the second verse:--
"Joy of the desolate, Light of the straying, Hope of the penitent--fadeless and pure; Here speaks the Comforter, tenderly saying, Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot cure!"
The hymn was old and familiar enough, Heaven knows. It had beenquite popular at funerals, and some who sat there had had its strangemelancholy borne upon them in time of loss and tribulations, butnever had they felt its full power before. Accustomed as they were toemotional appeal and to respond to it, as the singer's voice died awayabove them, their very tears flowed and fell with that voice. A fewsobbed aloud, and then a voice asked tremulously,--
"Who is it?"
"It's Mr. Hamlin," said Seth quietly. "I've heard him often hummin'things before."
There was another silence, and the voice of Deacon Stubbs broke inharshly,--
"It's rank blasphemy."
"If it's rank blasphemy to sing the praise o' God, not only better thansome folks in the choir, but like an angel o' light, I wish you'd do alittle o' that blaspheming on Sundays, Mr. Stubbs."
The speaker was Mrs. Stubbs, and as Deacon Stubbs was a notoriously badsinger the shot told.
"If he's sincere, why does he stand aloof? Why does he not join us?"asked the parson.
"He hasn't been asked," said Seth quietly. "If I ain't mistaken this yergathering this evening was specially to see how to get rid of him."
There was a quick murmur of protest at this. The parson exchangedglances with the deacon and saw that they were hopelessly in theminority.
"I will ask him myself," said Mrs. Rivers suddenly.
"So do, Sister Rivers; so do," was the unmistakable response.
Mrs. Rivers left the room and returned in a few moments with a handsomeyoung man, pale, elegant, composed, even to a grave indifference.What his eyes might have said was another thing; the long lashes werescarcely raised.
"I don't mind playing a little," he said quietly to Mrs. Rivers, as ifcontinuing a conversation, "but you'll have to let me trust my memory."
"Then you--er--play the harmonium?" said the parson, with an attempt atformal courtesy.
"I was for a year or two the organist in the choir of Dr. Todd's churchat Sacramento," returned Mr. Hamlin quietly.
The blank amazement on the faces of Deacons Stubbs and Turner and theparson was followed by wreathed smiles from the other auditors andespecially from the ladies. Mr. Hamlin sat down to the instrument,and in another moment took possession of it as it had never been heldbefore. He played from memory as he had implied, but it was the memoryof a musician. He began with one or two familiar anthems, in which theyall joined. A fragment of a mass and a Latin chant followed. An "AveMaria" from an opera was his first secular departure, but his delightedaudience did not detect it. Then he hurried them along in unfamiliarlanguage to "O mio Fernando" and "Spiritu gentil," which they fondlyimagined were hymns, until, with crowning audacity, after a fewpreliminary chords of the "Miserere," he landed them broken-hearted inthe Trovatore's donjon tower with "Non te scordar de mi."
Amidst the applause he heard the preacher suavely explain that thosePopish masses were always in the Latin language, and rose from theinstrument satisfied with his experiment. Excusing himself as an invalidfrom joining them in a light collation in the dining room, and begginghis hostess's permission to retire, he nevertheless lingered a fewmoments by the door as the ladies filed out of the room, followed bythe gentlemen, until Deacon Turner, who was bringing up the rear, wasabreast of him. Here Mr. Hamlin became suddenly deeply interested ina framed pencil drawing which hung on the wall. It was evidently aschoolgirl's amateur portrait, done by Mrs. Rivers. Deacon Turner haltedquickly by his side as the others passed out--which was exactly what Mr.Hamlin expected.
"Do you know the face?" said the deacon eagerly.
Thanks to the faithful Melinda, Mr. Hamlin did know it perfectly. It wasa pencil sketch of Mrs. Rivers's youthfully erring sister. But he onlysaid he thought he recognized a likeness to some one he had seen inSacramento.
The deacon's eye brightened. "Perhaps the same one--perhaps," he addedin a submissive and significant tone "a--er--painful story."
"Rather--to him," observed Hamlin quietly.
"How?--I--er--don't understand," said Deacon Turner.
"Well, the portrait looks like a lady I knew in Sacramento who had beenin some trouble when she was a silly girl, but had got over it quietly.She was, however, troubled a good deal by some mean hound who was everynow and then raking up the story wherever she went. Well, one of herfriends--I might have been among them, I don't exactly remember justnow--challenged him, but although he had no conscientious convictionsabout slandering a woman, he had some about being shot for it, anddeclined. The consequence was he was cowhided once in the street, andthe second time tarred and feathered and ridden on a rail out of town.That, I suppos
e, was what you meant by your 'painful story.' But is thisthe woman?"
"No, no," said the deacon hurriedly, with a white face, "you have quitemisunderstood."
"But whose is this portrait?" persisted Jack.
"I believe that--I don't know exactly--but I think it is a sister ofMrs. Rivers's," stammered the deacon.
"Then, of course, it isn't the same woman," said Jack in simulatedindignation.
"Certainly--of course not," returned the deacon.
"Phew!" said Jack. "That was a mighty close call. Lucky we were alone,wasn't it?"
"Yes," said the deacon, with a feeble smile.
"Seth," continued Jack, with a thoughtful air, "looks like a quiet man,but I shouldn't like to have made that mistake about his sister-in-lawbefore him. These quiet men are apt to shoot straight. Better keep thisto ourselves."
Deacon Turner not only kept the revelation to himself but apparently hisown sacred person also, as he did not call again at Windy HillRancho during Mr. Hamlin's stay. But he was exceedingly polite in hisreferences to Jack, and alluded patronizingly to a "little chat" theyhad had together. And when the usual reaction took place in Mr. Hamlin'sfavor and Jack was actually induced to perform on the organ at HightownChurch next Sunday, the deacon's voice was loudest in his praise. EvenParson Greenwood allowed himself to be non-committal as to the truth ofthe rumor, largely circulated, that one of the most desperate gamblersin the State had been converted through his exhortations.
So, with breezy walks and games with the children, occasionalconfidences with Melinda and Silas, and the Sabbath "singing ofanthems," Mr. Hamlin's three weeks of convalescence drew to a close. Hehad lately relaxed his habit of seclusion so far as to mingle with thecompany gathered for more social purposes at the rancho, and once ortwice unbent so far as to satisfy their curiosity in regard to certaindetails of his profession.
"I have no personal knowledge of games of cards," said Parson Greenwoodpatronizingly, "and think I am right in saying that our brothers andsisters are equally inexperienced. I am--ahem--far from believing,however, that entire ignorance of evil is the best preparation forcombating it, and I should be glad if you'd explain to the company theintricacies of various games. There is one that you mentioned, witha--er--scriptural name."
"Faro," said Hamlin, with an unmoved face.
"Pharaoh," repeated the parson gravely; "and one which you call 'poker,'which seems to require great self-control."
"I couldn't make you understand poker without your playing it," saidJack decidedly.
"As long as we don't gamble--that is, play for money--I see noobjection," returned the parson.
"And," said Jack musingly, "you could use beans."
It was agreed finally that there would be no falling from grace in theirplaying among themselves, in an inquiring Christian spirit, under Jack'sguidance, he having decided to abstain from card playing during hisconvalescence, and Jack permitted himself to be persuaded to show themthe following evening.
It so chanced, however, that Dr. Duchesne, finding the end of Jack's"cure" approaching, and not hearing from that interesting invalid,resolved to visit him at about this time. Having no chance to appriseJack of his intention, on coming to Hightown at night he procured aconveyance at the depot to carry him to Windy Hill Rancho. The wind blewwith its usual nocturnal rollicking persistency, and at the end ofhis turbulent drive it seemed almost impossible to make himself heardamongst the roaring of the pines and some astounding preoccupation ofthe inmates. After vainly knocking, the doctor pushed open the frontdoor and entered. He rapped at the closed sitting room door, butreceiving no reply, pushed it open upon the most unexpected andastounding scene he had ever witnessed. Around the centre table severalrespectable members of the Hightown Church, including the parson, weregathered with intense and eager faces playing poker, and behind theparson, with his hands in his pockets, carelessly lounged the doctor'spatient, the picture of health and vigor. A disused pack of cards wasscattered on the floor, and before the gentle and precise Mrs. Riverswas heaped a pile of beans that would have filled a quart measure.
When Dr. Duchesne had tactfully retreated before the hurried andstammering apologies of his host and hostess, and was alone with Jackin his rooms, he turned to him with a gravity that was more than halfaffected and said, "How long, sir, did it take you to effect thiscorruption?"
"Upon my honor," said Jack simply, "they played last night for thefirst time. And they forced me to show them. But," added Jack after asignificant pause, "I thought it would make the game livelier and bemore of a moral lesson if I gave them nearly all good pat hands. So Iran in a cold deck on them--the first time I ever did such a thing inmy life. I fixed up a pack of cards so that one had three tens, anotherthree jacks, and another three queens, and so on up to three aces. In aminute they had all tumbled to the game, and you never saw such betting.Every man and woman there believed he or she had struck a sure thing,and staked accordingly. A new panful of beans was brought on, and Seth,your friend, banked for them. And at last the parson raked in the wholepile."
"I suppose you gave him the three aces," said Dr. Duchesne gloomily.
"The parson," said Jack slowly, "HADN'T A SINGLE PAIR IN HIS HAND.It was the stoniest, deadest, neatest BLUFF I ever saw. And when he'dfrightened off the last man who held out and laid that measly hand ofhis face down on that pile of kings, queens, and aces, and lookedaround the table as he raked in the pile, there was a smile of humbleself-righteousness on his face that was worth double the money."