Produced by Donald Lainson and an Anonymous Volunteer
MR. JACK HAMLIN'S MEDIATION
By Bret Harte
From: “ARGONAUT EDITION” OF THE WORKS OF BRET HARTE, VOL. 12.
P. F. COLLIER & SON
NEW YORK
CONTENTS
MR. JACK HAMLIN'S MEDIATION
THE MAN AT THE SEMAPHORE
AN ESMERALDA OF ROCKY CANYON
DICK SPINDLER'S FAMILY CHRISTMAS
WHEN THE WATERS WERE UP AT “JULES'”
THE BOOM IN THE “CALAVERAS CLARION”
THE SECRET OF SOBRIENTE'S WELL
LIBERTY JONES'S DISCOVERY
MR. JACK HAMLIN'S MEDIATION
At nightfall it began to rain. The wind arose too, and also began to
buffet a small, struggling, nondescript figure, creeping along the trail
over the rocky upland meadow towards Rylands's rancho. At times its
head was hidden in what appeared to be wings thrown upward from its
shoulders; at times its broad-brimmed hat was cocked jauntily on one
side, and again the brim was fixed over the face like a visor. At one
moment a drifting misshapen mass of drapery, at the next its vague
garments, beaten back hard against the figure, revealed outlines far too
delicate for that rude enwrapping. For it was Mrs. Rylands herself,
in her husband's hat and her “hired man's” old blue army overcoat,
returning from the post-office two miles away. The wind continued its
aggression until she reached the front door of her newly plastered
farmhouse, and then a heavier blast shook the pines above the
low-pitched, shingled roof, and sent a shower of arrowy drops after her
like a Parthian parting, as she entered. She threw aside the overcoat
and hat, and somewhat inconsistently entered the sitting-room, to walk
to the window and look back upon the path she had just traversed. The
wind and the rain swept down a slope, half meadow, half clearing,--a
mile away,--to a fringe of sycamores. A mile further lay the stage road,
where, three hours later, her husband would alight on his return from
Sacramento. It would be a long wet walk for Joshua Rylands, as their
only horse had been borrowed by a neighbor.
In that fading light Mrs. Rylands's oval cheek was shining still from
the raindrops, but there was something in the expression of her worried
face that might have as readily suggested tears. She was strikingly
handsome, yet quite as incongruous an ornament to her surroundings as
she had been to her outer wrappings a moment ago. Even the clothes she
now stood in hinted an inadaptibility to the weather--the house--the
position she occupied in it. A figured silk dress, spoiled rather than
overworn, was still of a quality inconsistent with her evident habits,
and the lace-edged petticoat that peeped beneath it was draggled with
mud and unaccustomed usage. Her glossy black hair, which had been tossed
into curls in some foreign fashion, was now wind-blown into a burlesque
of it. This incongruity was still further accented by the appearance of
the room she had entered. It was coldly and severely furnished, making
the chill of the yet damp white plaster unpleasantly obvious. A black
harmonium organ stood in one corner, set out with black and white
hymn-books; a trestle-like table contained a large Bible; half a dozen
black, horsehair-cushioned chairs stood, geometrically distant, against
the walls, from which hung four engravings of “Paradise Lost” in black
mourning frames; some dried ferns and autumn leaves stood in a vase on
the mantelpiece, as if the chill of the room had prematurely blighted
them. The coldly glittering grate below was also decorated with withered
sprays, as if an attempt had been made to burn them, but was frustrated
through damp. Suddenly recalled to a sense of her wet boots and the
new carpet, she hurriedly turned away, crossed the hall into the
dining-room, and thence passed into the kitchen. The “hired girl,” a
large-boned Missourian, a daughter of a neighboring woodman, was peeling
potatoes at the table. Mrs. Rylands drew a chair before the kitchen
stove, and put her wet feet on the hob.
“I'll bet a cooky, Mess Rylands, you've done forgot the vanillar,” said
the girl, with a certain domestic and confidential familiarity.
Mrs. Rylands started guiltily. She made a miserable feint of looking in
her lap and on the table. “I'm afraid I did, Jane, if I didn't bring it
in HERE.”
“That you didn't,” returned Jane. “And I reckon ye forgot that 'ar
pepper-sauce for yer husband.”
Mrs. Rylands looked up with piteous contrition. “I really don't know
what's the matter with me. I certainly went into the shop, and had it on
my list,--and--really”--
Jane evidently knew her mistress, and smiled with superior toleration.
“It's kinder bewilderin' goin' in them big shops, and lookin' round them
stuffed shelves.” The shop at the cross roads and post-office was 14
x 14, but Jane was nurtured on the plains. “Anyhow,” she added
good-humoredly, “the expressman is sure to look in as he goes by, and
you've time to give him the order.”
“But is he SURE to come?” asked Mrs. Rylands anxiously. “Mr. Rylands
will be so put out without his pepper-sauce.”
“He's sure to come ef he knows you're here. Ye kin always kalkilate on
that.”
“Why?” said Mrs. Rylands abstractedly.
“Why? 'cause he just can't keep his eyes off ye! That's why he comes
every day,--'tain't jest for trade!”
This was quite true, not only of the expressman, but of the butcher
and baker, and the “candlestick-maker,” had there been so advanced a
vocation at the cross roads. All were equally and curiously attracted
by her picturesque novelty. Mrs. Rylands knew this herself, but without
vanity or coquettishness. Possibly that was why the other woman told
her. She only slightly deepened the lines of discontent in her cheek and
said abstractedly, “Well, when he comes, YOU ask him.”
She dried her shoes, put on a pair of slippers that had a faded splendor
about them, and went up to her bedroom. Here she hesitated for some time
between the sewing-machine and her knitting-needles, but finally settled
upon the latter, and a pair of socks for her husband which she had begun
a year ago. But she presently despaired of finishing them before
he returned, three hours hence, and so applied herself to the
sewing-machine. For a little while its singing hum was heard between the
blasts that shook the house, but the thread presently snapped, and the
machine was put aside somewhat impatiently, with a discontented drawing
of the lines around her handsome mouth. Then she began to “tidy” the
room, putting a great many things away and bringing out a great many
more, a process that was necessarily slow, owing to her falling into
attitudes of minute inspection of certain articles of dress, with
intervals of trying them on, and observing their effect in her mirror.
This kind of interruption also occurred while she was putting away some
books that were lying about on chairs and tables, stopping midway to
open their pages, becoming interested, and quite finishing one chapter,
with the book held close against the window to catch the fading light of
day. The feminine reader will gather from this that Mrs. Rylands, though
charming, was not facile in domestic duties. She had just glanced at the
clock, and lit the candle to again set herself to work, and thus bridge
over the two hours more of waiting, when there came a tap at the door.
She opened it to Jane.
“There's an entire stranger downstairs, ez hez got a lame hoss and wants
to borry a fresh one.”
“We have none, you know,” said Mrs. Rylands, a little impatiently.
“Thet's what I told him. Then he wanted to know ef he could lie by here
till he could get one or fix up his own hoss.”
“As you like; you know if you can manage it,” said Mrs. Rylands, a
little uneasily. “When Mr. Rylands comes you can arrange it between you.
Where is he now?”
“In the kitchen.”
“The kitchen!” echoed Mrs. Rylands.
“Yes, ma'am, I showed him into the parlor, but he kinder shivered his
shoulders, and reckoned ez how he'd go inter the kitchen. Ye see, ma'am,
he was all wet, and his shiny big boots was sloppy. But he ain't one o'
the stuck-up kind, and he's willin' to make hisself cowf'ble before the
kitchen stove.”
“Well, then, he don't want ME,” said Mrs. Rylands, with a relieved
voice.
“Yes'm,” said Jane, apparently equally relieved. “Only, I thought I'd
just tell you.”
A few minutes later, in crossing the upper hall, Mrs. Rylands heard
Jane's voice from the kitchen raised in rustic laughter. Had she been
satirically inclined, she might have understood Jane's willingness to
relieve her mistress of the duty of entertaining the stranger; had
she been philosophical, she might have considered the girl's dreary,
monotonous life at the rancho, and made allowance for her joy at this
rare interruption of it. But I fear that Mrs. Rylands was neither
satirical nor philosophical, and presently, when Jane reentered, with
color in her alkaline face, and light in her huckleberry eyes, and said
she was going over to the cattle-sheds in the “far pasture,” to see
if the hired man didn't know of some horse that could be got for the
stranger, Mrs. Rylands felt a little bitterness in the thought that the
girl would have scarcely volunteered to go all that distance in the rain
for HER. Yet, in a few moments she forgot all about it, and even the
presence of her guest in the house, and in one of her fitful abstracted
employments passed through the dining-room into the kitchen, and had
opened the door with an “Oh, Jane!” before she remembered her absence.
The kitchen, lit by a single candle, could be only partly seen by her
as she stood with her hand on the lock, although she herself was plainly
visible. There was a pause, and then a quiet, self-possessed, yet
amused, voice answered:--
“My name isn't Jane, and if you're the lady of the house, I reckon yours
wasn't ALWAYS Rylands.”
At the sound of the voice Mrs. Rylands threw the door wide open, and as
her eyes fell upon the speaker--her unknown guest--she recoiled with a
little cry, and a white, startled face. Yet the stranger was young and
handsome, dressed with a scrupulousness and elegance which even the
stress of travel had not deranged, and he was looking at her with
a smile of recognition, mingled with that careless audacity and
self-possession which seemed to be the characteristic of his face.
“Jack Hamlin!” she gasped.
“That's me, all the time,” he responded easily, “and YOU'RE Nell
Montgomery!”
“How did you know I was here? Who told you?” she said impetuously.
“Nobody! never was so surprised in my life! When you opened that door
just now you might have knocked me down with a feather.” Yet he spoke
lazily, with an amused face, and looked at her without changing his
position.
“But you MUST have known SOMETHING! It was no mere accident,” she went
on vehemently, glancing around the room.
“That's where you slip up, Nell,” said Hamlin imperturbably. “It WAS an
accident and a bad one. My horse lamed himself coming down the grade. I
sighted the nearest shanty, where I thought I might get another horse.
It happened to be this.” For the first time he changed his attitude, and
leaned back contemplatively in his chair.
She came towards him quickly. “You didn't use to lie, Jack,” she said
hesitatingly.
“Couldn't afford it in my business,--and can't now,” said Jack
cheerfully. “But,” he added curiously, as if recognizing something in
his companion's agitation, and lifting his brown lashes to her, the
window, and the ceiling, “what's all this about? What's your little game
here?”
“I'm married,” she said, with nervous intensity,--“married, and this is
my husband's house!”
“Not married straight out!--regularly fixed?”
“Yes,” she said hurriedly.
“One of the boys? Don't remember any Rylands. SPELTER used to be very
sweet on you,--but Spelter mightn't have been his real name?”
“None of our lot! No one you ever knew; a--a straight out, square man,”
she said quickly.
“I say, Nell, look here! You ought to have shown up your cards without
even a call. You ought to have told him that you danced at the Casino.”
“I did.”
“Before he asked you to marry him?”
“Before.”
Jack got up from his chair, put his hands in his pockets, and looked
at her curiously. This Nell Montgomery, this music-hall “dance and song
girl,” this girl of whom so much had been SAID and so little PROVED!
Well, this was becoming interesting.
“You don't understand,” she said, with nervous feverishness; “you
remember after that row I had with Jim, that night the manager gave us a
supper,--when he treated me like a dog?”
“He did that,” interrupted Jack.
“I felt fit for anything,” she said, with a half-hysterical laugh, that
seemed voiced, however, to check some slumbering memory. “I'd have cut
my throat or his, it didn't matter which”--
“It mattered something to us, Nell,” put in Jack again, with polite
parenthesis; “don't leave US out in the cold.”
“I started from 'Frisco that night on the boat ready to fling myself
into anything--or the river!” she went on hurriedly. “There was a man
in the cabin who noticed me, and began to hang around. I thought he
knew who I was,--had seen me on the posters; and as I didn't feel like
foolin', I told him so. But he wasn't that kind. He said he saw I was in
trouble and wanted me to tell him all.”
Mr. Hamlin regarded her cheerfully. “And you told him,” he said, “how
you had once run away from your childhood's happy home to go on the
stage! How you always regretted it, and would have gone back but that
the doors were shut forever against you! How you longed to leave, but
the wicked men and women around you always”--
“I didn't!” she burst out, with sudden passion; “you know I didn't. I
told him everything: who I was, what I had done, what I expected to do
again. I pointed out the men--who were sitting there, whispering and
grinning at us, as if they were in the front row of the theatre--and
said I knew them all, and they knew me. I never spared myself a thing.
I said what people said of me, and didn't even care to say it wasn't
true!”
“Oh, come!” protested Jack, in perfunctory politeness.
“He said he liked me for telling the truth, and not being ashamed to do
it! He said the sin was in the false shame and the hypocrisy; for that's
the sort of man he is, you see, and that's like him always! He asked if
I would marry him--out of hand--and do my best to be his lawful wife.
He said he wanted me to think it over and sleep on it, and to-morrow he
would come and see me for an answer. I slipped off the boat at 'Frisco,
and went alone to a hotel where I wasn't known. In the morning I didn't
know whether he'd keep his word or I'd keep mine. But he came! He said
he'd marry me that very day, and take me to his farm in Santa Clara.
I agreed. I thought it would take me out of everybody's knowledge,
and they'd think me dead! We were married that day, before a regular
clergyman. I was married under my own name,”--she stopped and looked
at Jack, with a hysterical laugh,--“but he made me write underneath it,
'known as Nell Montgomery;' for he said HE wasn't ashamed of it, nor
should I be.”
“Does he wear long hair and stick straws in it?” said Hamlin gravely.
“Does he 'hear voices' and have 'visions'?”
“He's a shrewd, sensible, hard-working man,--no more mad than you are,
nor as mad as I was the day I married him. He's lived up to everything
he's said.” She stopped, hesitated in her quick, nervous speech; her lip
quivered slightly, but she recalled herself, and looking imploringly,
yet hopelessly, at Jack, gasped, “And that's what's the matter!”
Jack fixed his eyes keenly upon her. “And you?” he said curtly.
“I?” she repeated wonderingly.
“Yes, what have YOU done?” he said, with sudden sharpness.
The wonder was so apparent in her eyes that his keen glance softened.
“Why,” she said bewilderingly, “I have been his dog, his slave,--as far
as he would let me. I have done everything; I have not been out of the
house until he almost drove me out. I have never wanted to go anywhere
or see any one; but he has always insisted upon it. I would have been
willing to slave here, day and night, and have been happy. But he said
I must not seem to be ashamed of my past, when he is not. I would have
worn common homespun clothes and calico frocks, and been glad of it, but
he insists upon my wearing my best things, even my theatre things; and
as he can't afford to buy more, I wear these things I had. I know they
look beastly here, and that I'm a laughing-stock, and when I go out
I wear almost anything to try and hide them; but,” her lip quivered
dangerously again, “he wants me to do it, and it pleases him.”
Jack looked down. After a pause he lifted his lashes towards her
draggled skirt, and said in an easier, conversational tone, “Yes! I
thought I knew that dress. I gave it to you for that walking scene in
'High Life,' didn't I?”
“No,” she said quickly, “it was the blue one with silver
trimming,--don't you remember? I tried to turn it the first year I was
married, but it never looked the same.”
“It was sweetly pretty,” said Jack encouragingly, “and with that blue
hat lined with silver, it was just fetching! Somehow I don't quite
remember this one,” and he looked at it critically.
“I had it at the races in '58, and that supper Judge Boompointer gave us
at 'Frisco where Colonel Fish upset the table trying to get at Jim. Do
you know,” she said, with a little laugh, “it's got the stains of the
champagne on it yet; it never would come off. See!” and she held the
candle with great animation to the breadth of silk before her.
“And there's more of it on the sleeve,” said Jack; “isn't there?”
Mrs. Rylands looked reproachfully at Jack.
“That isn't champagne; don't you know what it is?”
“No!”
“It's blood,” she said gravely; “when that Mexican cut poor Ned so
bad,--don't you remember? I held his head upon my arm while you bandaged
him.” She heaved a little sigh, and then added, with a faint laugh,
“That's the worst thing about the clothes of a girl in the profession,
they get spoiled or stained before they wear out.”
This large truth did not seem to impress Mr. Hamlin. “Why did you leave
Santa Clara?” he said abruptly, in his previous critical tone.
“Because of the folks there. They were standoffish and ugly. You see,
Josh”--
“Who?”
“Josh Rylands!--HIM! He told everybody who I was, even those who had
never seen me in the bills,--how good I was to marry him, how he had
faith in me and wasn't ashamed,--until they didn't believe we were
married at all. So they looked another way when they met us, and didn't
call. And all the while I was glad they didn't, but he wouldn't believe
it, and allowed I was pining on account of it.”
“And were you?”
“I swear to God, Jack, I'd have been content, and more, to have been
just there with him, seein' nobody, letting every one believe I was dead
and gone, but he said it was wrong, and weak! Maybe it was,” she added,
with a shy, interrogating look at Jack, of which, however, he took no
notice. “Then when he found they wouldn't call, what do you think he
did?”
“Beat you, perhaps,” suggested Jack cheerfully.
“He never did a thing to me that wasn't straight out, square, and kind,”
she said, half indignantly, half hopelessly. “He thought if HIS kind
of people wouldn't see me, I might like to see my own sort. So without
saying anything to me, he brought down, of all things! Tinkie Clifford,
she that used to dance in the cheap variety shows at 'Frisco, and her
particular friend, Captain Sykes. It would have just killed you, Jack,”
she said, with a sudden hysteric burst of laughter, “to have seen Josh,
in his square, straight-out way, trying to be civil and help things
along. But,” she went on, as suddenly relapsing into her former attitude
of worried appeal, “I couldn't stand it, and when she got to talking
free and easy before Josh, and Captain Sykes to guzzling champagne,
she and me had a row. She allowed I was putting on airs, and I made her
walk, in spite of Josh.”
“And Josh seemed to like it,” said Hamlin carelessly. “Has he seen her
since?”
“No; I reckon he's cured of asking that kind of company for me. And then
we came here. But I persuaded him not to begin by going round telling
people who I was,--as he did the last time,--but to leave it to folks to
find out if they wanted to, and he gave in. Then he let me fix up this
house and furnish it my own way, and I did!”
“Do you mean to say that YOU fixed up that family vault of a
sitting-room?” said Jack, in horror.
“Yes, I didn't want any fancy furniture or looking-glasses, and such
like, to attract folks, nor anything to look like the old times. I don't
think any of the boys would care to come here. And I got rid of a lot of
sporting travelers, 'wild-cat' managers, and that kind of tramp in this
way. But”--She hesitated, and her face fell again.
“But what?” said Jack.
“I don't think that Josh likes it either. He brought home the other day
'My Johnny is a Shoemakiyure,' and wanted me to try it on the organ. But
it reminded me how we used to get just sick of singing it on and off the
boards, and I couldn't touch it. He wanted me to go to the circus that
was touring over at the cross roads, but it was the old Flanigin's
circus, you know, the one Gussie Riggs used to ride in, with its old
clown and its old ringmaster and the old 'wheezes,' and I chucked it.”
“Look here,” said Jack, rising and surveying Mrs. Rylands critically.
“If you go on at this gait, I'll tell you what that man of yours will
do. He'll bolt with some of your old friends!”
She turned a quick, scared face upon him for an instant. But only for
an instant. Her hysteric little laugh returned, at once, followed by her
weary, worried look. “No, Jack, you don't know him! If it was only that!
He cares only for me in his own way,--and,” she stammered as she went
on, “I've no luck in making him happy.”
She stopped. The wind shook the house and fired a volley of rain
against the windows. She took advantage of it to draw a torn lace-edged
handkerchief from her pocket behind, and keeping the tail of her eyes in
a frightened fashion on Jack, applied the handkerchief furtively, first
to her nose, and then to her eyes.
“Don't do that,” said Jack fastidiously, “it's wet enough outside.”
Nevertheless, he stood up and gazed at her.
“Well,” he began.
She timidly drew nearer to him, and took a seat on the kitchen table,
looking up wistfully into his eyes.
“Well,” resumed Jack argumentatively, “if he won't 'chuck' you, why
don't you 'chuck' HIM?”
She turned quite white, and suddenly dropped her eyes. “Yes,” she said,
almost inaudibly, “lots of girls would do that.”
“I don't mean go back to your old life,” continued Jack. “I reckon
you've had enough of that. But get into some business, you know, like
other women. A bonnet shop, or a candy shop for children, see? I'll
help start you. I've got a couple of hundred, if not in my own pocket
in somebody's else, just burning to be used! And then you can look about
you; and perhaps some square business man will turn up and you can marry
him. You know you can't live this way, nohow. It's killing you; it ain't
fair on you, nor on Rylands either.”
“No,” she said quickly, “it ain't fair on HIM. I know it, I know it
isn't, I know it isn't,” she repeated, “only”--She stopped.
“Only what?” said Jack impatiently.
She did not speak. After a pause she picked up the rolling-pin from
the table and began absently rolling it down her lap to her knee, as
if pressing out the stained silk skirt. “Only,” she stammered, slowly
rolling the pin handles in her open palms, “I--I can't leave Josh.”
“Why can't you?” said Jack quickly.
“Because--because--I,” she went on, with a quivering lip, working the
rolling-pin heavily down her knee as if she were crushing her answer out
of it,--“because--I--love him!”
There was a pause, a dash of rain against the window, and another dash
from her eyes upon her hands, the rolling-pin, and the skirts she had
gathered up hastily, as she cried, “O Jack! Jack! I never loved anybody
like him! I never knew what love was! I never knew a man like him
before! There never WAS one before!”
To this large, comprehensive, and passionate statement Mr. Jack Hamlin
made no reply. An audacity so supreme had conquered his. He walked to
the window, looked out upon the dark, rain-filmed pane that, however,
reflected no equal change in his own dark eyes, and then returned and
walked round the kitchen table. When he was at her back, without looking
at her, he reached out his hand, took her passive one that lay on the
table in his, grasped it heartily for a single moment, laid it gently
down, and returned around the table, where he again confronted her
cheerfully face to face.
“You'll make the riffle yet,” he said quietly. “Just now I don't see
what I could do, or where I could chip in your little game; but if I DO,
or you do, count me in and let me know. You know where to write,--my old
address at Sacramento.” He walked to the corner, took up his still wet
serape, threw it over his shoulders, and picked up his broad-brimmed
riding-hat.
“You're not going, Jack?” she said hesitatingly, as she rubbed her wet
eyes into a consciousness of his movements. “You'll wait to see HIM?
He'll be here in an hour.”
“I've been here too long already,” said Jack. “And the less you say
about my calling, even accidentally, the better. Nobody will believe
it,--YOU didn't yourself. In fact, unless you see how I can help you,
the sooner you consider us all dead and buried, the sooner your luck
will change. Tell your girl I've found my own horse so much better that
I have pushed on with him, and give her that.”
He threw a gold coin on the table.
“But your horse is still lame,” she said wonderingly. “What will you do
in this storm?”
“Get into the cover of the next wood and camp out. I've done it before.”
“But, Jack!”
He suddenly made a slight gesture of warning. His quick ear had caught
the approach of footsteps along the wet gravel outside. A mischievous
light slid into his dark eyes as he coolly moved backward to the door
and, holding it open, said, in a remarkably clear and distinct voice:--
“Yes, as you say, society is becoming very mixed and frivolous
everywhere, and you'd scarcely know San Francisco now. So delighted,
however, to have made your acquaintance, and regret my business prevents
my waiting to see your good husband. So odd that I should have known
your Aunt Jemima! But, as you say, the world is very small, after all. I
shall tell the deacon how well you are looking,--in spite of the kitchen
smoke in your eyes. Good-by! A thousand thanks for your hospitality.”
And Jack, bowing profoundly to the ground, backed out upon Jane, the
hired man, and the expressman, treading, I grieve to say, with some
deliberation upon the toes of the two latter, in order, possibly, that
in their momentary pain and discomposure they might not scan too closely
the face of this ingenious gentleman, as he melted into the night and
the storm.
Jane entered, with a slight toss of her head.
“Here's your expressman,--ef you're wantin' him NOW.”
Mrs. Rylands was too preoccupied to notice her handmaiden's significant
emphasis, as she indicated a fresh-looking, bashful young fellow, whose
confusion was evidently heightened by the unexpected egress of Mr.
Hamlin, and the point-blank presence of the handsome Mrs. Rylands.
“Oh, certainly,” said Mrs. Rylands quickly. “So kind of him to oblige
us. Give him the order, Jane, please.”
She turned to escape from the kitchen and these new intruders, when her
eye fell upon the coin left by Mr. Hamlin. “The gentleman wished you to
take that for your trouble, Jane,” she said hastily, pointing to it, and
passed out.
Jane cast a withering look after her retreating skirts, and picking the
coin from the table, turned to the hired man. “Run to the stable after
that dandified young feller, Dick, and hand that back to him. Ye kin say
that Jane Mackinnon don't run arrants fur money, nor play gooseberry to
other folks fur fun.”
PART II
Mr. Joshua Rylands had, according to the vocabulary of his class, “found
grace” at the age of sixteen, while still in the spiritual state of
“original sin” and the political one of Missouri. He had not indeed
found it by persistent youthful seeking or spiritual insight, but
somewhat violently and turbulently at a camp-meeting. A village boy,
naturally gentle and impressible, with an original character,--limited,
however, in education and experience,--he had, after his first rustic
debauch with some vulgar companions, fallen upon the camp-meeting in
reckless audacity; and instead of being handed over to the district
constable, was taken in and placed upon “the anxious bench,” “rastled
with,” and exhorted by a strong revivalist preacher, “convicted of sin,”
and--converted! It is doubtful if the shame of a public arrest and legal
punishment would have impressed his youthful spirit as much as did this
spiritual examination and trial, in which he himself became accuser.
Howbeit, its effect, though punitive, was also exemplary. He at once
cast off his evil companions; remaining faithful to his conversion, in
spite of their later “backslidings.” When, after the Western fashion,
the time came for him to forsake his father's farm and seek a new
“quarter section” on some more remote frontier, he carried into that
secluded, lonely, half-monkish celibacy of pioneer life--which has been
the foundation of so much strong Western character--more than the usual
religious feeling. At once industrious and adventurous, he lived by “the
Word,” as he called it, and Nature as he knew it,--tempted by none of
the vices or sentiments of civilization. When he finally joined the
Californian emigration, it was not as a gold-seeker, but as a discoverer
of new agricultural fields; if the hardship was as great and the rewards
fewer, he nevertheless knew that he retained his safer isolation and
independence of spirit. Vice and civilization were to him synonymous
terms; it was the natural condition of the worldly and unregenerate.
Such was the man who chanced to meet “Nell Montgomery, the Pearl of the
Variety Stage,” on the Sacramento boat, in one of his forced visits
to civilization. Without knowing her in her profession, her frank
exposition of herself did not startle him; he recognized it, accepted
it, and strove to convert it. And as long as this daughter of Folly
forsook her evil ways for him, it was a triumph in which there was no
shame, and might be proclaimed from the housetop. When his neighbors
thought differently, and avoided them, he saw no inconsistency in
bringing his wife's old friends to divert her: she might in time convert
THEM. He had no more fear of her returning to their ways than he had
of himself “backsliding.” Narrow as was his creed, he had none of the
harshness nor pessimism of the bigot. With the keenest self-scrutiny,
his credulity regarding others was touching.
The storm was still raging when he alighted that evening from the up
coach at the trail nearest his house. Although incumbered with a
heavy carpet-bag, he started resignedly on his two-mile tramp without
begrudging the neighborly act of his wife which had deprived him of
his horse. It was “like her” to do these things in her good-humored
abstraction, an abstraction, however, that sometimes worried him, from
the fear that it indicated some unhappiness with her present lot. He was
longing to rejoin her after his absence of three days, the longest time
they had been separated since their marriage, and he hurried on with
a certain lover-like excitement, quite new to his usually calm and
temperate blood.
Struggling with the storm and darkness, but always with the happy
consciousness of drawing nearer to her in that struggle, he labored on,
finding his perilous way over the indistinguishable trail by certain
landmarks in the distance, visible only to his pioneer eye. That heavier
shadow to the right was not the hillside, but the SLOPE to the distant
hill; that low, regular line immediately before him was not a fence or
wall, but the line of distant gigantic woods, a mile from his home. Yet
as he began to descend the slope towards the wood, he stopped and rubbed
his eyes. There was distinctly a light in it. His first idea was that he
had lost the trail and was nearing the woodman Mackinnon's cabin. But a
more careful scrutiny revealed to him that it was really the wood, and
the light was a camp-fire. It was a rough night for camping out, but
they were probably some belated prospectors.
When he had reached the fringe of woodland, he could see quite plainly
that the fire was built beside one of the large pines, and that the
little encampment, which looked quite comfortable and secluded from the
storm-beaten trail, was occupied apparently by a single figure. By the
good glow of the leaping fire, that figure standing erect before it,
elegantly shaped, in the graceful folds of a serape, looked singularly
romantic and picturesque, and reminded Joshua Rylands--whose ideas of
art were purely reminiscent of boyish reading--of some picture in a
novel. The heavy black columns of the pines, glancing out of the concave
shadow, also seemed a fitting background to what might have been a scene
in a play. So strongly was he impressed by it that but for his anxiety
to reach his home, still a mile distant, and the fact that he was
already late, he would have penetrated the wood and the seclusion of the
stranger with an offer of hospitality for the night. The man, however,
was evidently capable of taking care of himself, and the outline of a
tethered horse was faintly visible under another tree. It might be
a surveyor or engineer,--the only men of a better class who were
itinerant.
But another and even greater surprise greeted him as he toiled up the
rocky slope towards his farmhouse. The windows of the sitting-room,
which were usually blank and black by night, were glittering with
unfamiliar light. Like most farmers, he seldom used the room except for
formal company, his wife usually avoiding it, and even he himself now
preferred the dining-room or the kitchen. His first suggestion that his
wife had visitors gave him a sense of pleasure on her account, mingled,
however, with a slight uneasiness of his own which he could not account
for. More than that, as he approached nearer he could hear the swell of
the organ above the roar of the swaying pines, and the cadences were
not of a devotional character. He hesitated for a moment, as he had
hesitated at the fire in the woods; yet it was surely his own house! He
hurried to the door, opened it; not only the light of the sitting-room
streamed into the hall, but the ruddier glow of an actual fire in the
disused grate! The familiar dark furniture had been rearranged to catch
some of the glow and relieve its sombreness. And his wife, rising from
the music-stool, was the room's only occupant!
Mrs. Rylands gazed anxiously and timidly at her husband's astonished
face, as he threw off his waterproof and laid down his carpet-bag. Her
own face was a little flurried with excitement, and his, half hidden in
his tawny beard, and, possibly owing to his self-introspective nature,
never spontaneously sympathetic, still expressed only wonder! Mrs.
Rylands was a little frightened. It is sometimes dangerous to meddle
with a man's habits, even when he has grown weary of them.
“I thought,” she began hesitatingly, “that it would be more cheerful for
you in here, this stormy evening. I thought you might like to put your
wet things to dry in the kitchen, and we could sit here together, after
supper, alone.”
I am afraid that Mrs. Rylands did not offer all her thoughts. Ever
since Mr. Hamlin's departure she had been uneasy and excited, sometimes
falling into fits of dejection, and again lighting up into hysterical
levity; at other times carefully examining her wardrobe, and then with a
sudden impulse rushing downstairs again to give orders for her husband's
supper, and to make the extraordinary changes in the sitting-room
already noted. Only a few moments before he arrived, she had covertly
brought down a piece of music, and put aside the hymn-books, and taken,
with a little laugh, a pack of cards from her pocket, which she placed
behind the already dismantled vase on the chimney.
“I reckoned you had company, Ellen,” he said gravely, kissing her.
“No,” she said quickly. “That is,” she stopped with a sudden surge of
color in her face that startled her, “there was--a man--here, in the
kitchen--who had a lame horse, and who wanted to get a fresh one. But
he went away an hour ago. And he wasn't in this room--at least, after it
was fixed up. So I've had no company.”
She felt herself again blushing at having blushed, and a little
terrified. There was no reason for it. But for Jack's warning, she would
have been quite ready to tell her husband all. She had never blushed
before him over her past life; why she should now blush over seeing
Jack, of all people! made her utter a little hysterical laugh. I am
afraid that this experienced little woman took it for granted that her
husband knew that if Jack or any man had been there as a clandestine
lover, she would not have blushed at all. Yet with all her experience,
she did not know that she had blushed simply because it was to Jack that
she had confessed that she loved the man before her. Her husband noted
the blush as part of her general excitement. He permitted her to drag
him into the room and seat him before the hearth, where she sank down on
one knee to pull off his heavy rubber boots. But he waved her aside at
this, pulled them off with his own hands, and let her take them to the
kitchen and bring back his slippers. By this time a smile had lighted
up his hard face. The room was certainly more comfortable and cheerful.
Still he was a little worried; was there not in these changes a falling
away from the grace of self-abnegation which she had so sedulously
practiced?
When supper was served by Jane, in the dull dining-room, Mr. Rylands,
had he not been more engaged in these late domestic changes, might
have noticed that the Missouri girl waited upon him with a certain
commiserating air that was remarkable by its contrast with the frigid
ceremonious politeness with which she attended her mistress. It had not
escaped Mrs. Rylands, however, who ever since Jack's abrupt departure
had noticed this change in the girl's demeanor to herself, and with
a woman's intuitive insight of another woman, had fathomed it. The
comfortable tete-a-tete with Jack, which Jane had looked forward to,
Mrs. Rylands had anticipated herself, and then sent him off! When Joshua
thanked his wife for remembering the pepper-sauce, and Mrs. Rylands
pathetically admitted her forgetfulness, the head-toss which Jane
gave as she left the room was too marked to be overlooked by him. Mrs.
Rylands gave a hysterical little laugh. “I am afraid Jane doesn't like
my sending away the expressman just after I had also dismissed the
stranger whom she had taken a fancy to, and left her without company,”
she said unwisely.
Mr. Rylands did not laugh. “I reckon,” he returned slowly, “that Jane
must feel kinder lonely; she bears all the burden of our bein' outer the
world, without any of our glory in the cause of it.”
Nevertheless, when supper was over, and the pair were seated in the
sitting-room before the fire, this episode was forgotten. Mrs. Rylands
produced her husband's pipe and tobacco-pouch. He looked around the
formal walls and hesitated. He had been in the habit of smoking in the
kitchen.
“Why not here?” said Mrs. Rylands, with a sudden little note of
decision. “Why should we keep this room only for company that don't
come? I call it silly.”
This struck Mr. Rylands as logical. Besides, undoubtedly the fire had
mellowed the room. After a puff or two he looked at his wife musingly.
“Couldn't you make yourself one of them cigarettys, as they call 'em?
Here's the tobacco, and I'll get you the paper.”
“I COULD,” she said tentatively. Then suddenly, “What made you think of
it? You never saw ME smoke!”
“No,” said Rylands, “but that lady, your old friend, Miss Clifford,
does, and I thought you might be hankering after it.”
“How do you know Tinkie Clifford smokes?” said Mrs. Rylands quickly.
“She lit a cigaretty that day she called.”
“I hate it,” said Mrs. Rylands shortly.
Mr. Rylands nodded approval, and puffed meditatively.
“Josh, have you seen that girl since?”
“No,” said Joshua.
“Nor any other girl like her?”
“No,” said Joshua wonderingly. “You see I only got to know her on your
account, Ellen, that she might see you.”
“Well, don't you do it any more! None of 'em! Promise me!” She leaned
forward eagerly in her chair.
“But Ellen,”--her husband began gravely.
“I know what you're going to say, but they can't do me any good, and you
can't do them any good as you did ME, so there!”
Mr. Rylands was silent, and smiled meditatively.
“Josh!”
“Yes.”
“When you met me that night on the Sacramento boat, and looked at me,
did you--did I,” she hesitated,--“did you look at me because I had been
crying?”
“I thought you were troubled in spirit, and looked so.”
“I suppose I looked worried, of course; I had no time to change or even
fix my hair; I had on that green dress, and it NEVER was becoming. And
you only spoke to me on account of my awful looks?”
“I saw only your wrestling soul, Ellen, and I thought you needed comfort
and help.”
She was silent for a moment, and then, leaning forward, picked up the
poker and began to thrust it absently between the bars.
“And if it had been some other girl crying and looking awful, you'd have
spoken to her all the same?”
This was a new idea to Mr. Rylands, but with most men logic is supreme.
“I suppose I would,” he said slowly.
“And married her?” She rattled the bars of the grate with the poker as
if to drown the inevitable reply.
Mr. Rylands loved the woman before him, but it pleased him to think that
he loved truth better. “If it had been necessary to her salvation, yes,”
he said.
“Not Tinkie?” she said suddenly.
“SHE never would have been in your contrite condition.”
“Much you know! Girls like that can cry as well as laugh, just as they
want to. Well! I suppose I DID look horrid.” Nevertheless, she seemed
to gain some gratification from her husband's reply, and changed
the subject as if fearful of losing that satisfaction by further
questioning.
“I tried some of those songs you brought, but I don't think they go
well with the harmonium,” she said, pointing to some music on its rack,
“except one. Just listen.” She rose, and with the same nervous quickness
she had shown before, went to the instrument and began to sing and play.
There was a hopeless incongruity between the character of the instrument
and the spirit of the song. Mrs. Rylands's voice was rather forced and
crudely trained, but Joshua Rylands, sitting there comfortably slippered
by the fire and conscious of the sheeted rain against the window, felt
it good. Presently he arose, and lounging heavily over to the fair
performer, leaned down and imprinted a kiss on the labyrinthine fringes
of her hair. At which Mrs. Rylands caught blindly at his hand nearest
her, and without lifting her other hand from the keys, or her eyes from
the music, said tentatively:--
“You know there's a chorus just here! Why can't you try it with me?”
Mr. Rylands hesitated a moment, then, with a preliminary cough, lifted a
voice as crude as hers, but powerful through much camp-meeting exercise,
and roared a chorus which was remarkable chiefly for requiring that
archness and playfulness in execution which he lacked. As the whole
house seemed to dilate with the sound, and the wind outside to withhold
its fury, Mr. Rylands felt that physical delight which children feel
in personal outcry, and was grateful to his wife for the opportunity.
Laying his hand affectionately on her shoulder, he noticed for the first
time that she was in a kind of evening-dress, and that her delicate
white shoulder shone through the black lace that enveloped it.
For an instant Mr. Rylands was shocked at this unwonted exposure. He
had never seen his wife in evening-dress before. It was true they were
alone, and in their own sitting-room, but the room was still invested
with that formality and publicity which seemed to accent this
indiscretion. The simple-minded frontier man's mind went back to Jane,
to the hired man, to the expressman, the stranger, all of whom might
have noticed it also.
“You have a new dress,” he said slowly, “have you worn it all day?”
“No,” she said, with a timid smile. “I only put it on just before you
came. It's the one I used to wear in the ballroom scene in 'Gay Times in
'Frisco.' You don't know it, I know. I thought I would wear it tonight,
and then,” she suddenly grasped his hand, “you'll let me put all these
things away forever! Won't you, Josh? I've seen such nice pretty calico
at the store to-day, and I can make up one or two home dresses, like
Jane's, only better fitting, of course. In fact, I asked them to send
the roll up here to-morrow for you to see.”
Mr. Rylands felt relieved. Perhaps his views had changed about the moral
effect of her retaining these symbols of her past, for he consented to
the calico dresses, not, however, without an inward suspicion that she
would not look so well in them, and that the one she had on was more
becoming.
Meantime she tried another piece of music. It was equally incongruous
and slightly Bacchantic.
“There used to be a mighty pretty dance went to that,” she said, nodding
her head in time with the music, and assisting the heavily spasmodic
attempts of the instrument with the pleasant levity of her voice. “I
used to do it.”
“Ye might try it now, Ellen,” suggested her husband, with a
half-frightened, half-amused tolerance.
“YOU play, then,” said Mrs. Rylands quickly, offering her seat to him.
Mr. Rylands sat down to the harmonium, as Mrs. Rylands briskly moved
the table and chairs against the wall. Mr. Rylands played slowly and
strenuously, as from a conscientious regard of the instrument. Mrs.
Rylands stood in the centre of the floor, making a rather pretty,
animated picture, as she again stimulated the heavy harmonium swell not
only with her voice but her hands and feet. Presently she began to skip.
I should warn the reader here that this was before the “shawl” or
“skirt” dancing was in vogue, and I am afraid that pretty Mrs. Rylands's
performances would now be voted slow. Her silk skirt and frilled
petticoat were lifted just over her small ankles and tiny bronze-kid
shoes. In the course of a pirouette or two, there was a slight further
revelation of blue silk stockings and some delicate embroidery, but
really nothing more than may be seen in the sweep of a modern waltz.
Suddenly the music ceased. Mr. Rylands had left the harmonium and walked
over to the hearth. Mrs. Rylands stopped, and came towards him with a
flushed, anxious face.
“It don't seem to go right, does it?” she said, with her nervous laugh.
“I suppose I'm getting too old now, and I don't quite remember it.”
“Better forget it altogether,” he replied gravely. He stopped at seeing
a singular change in her face, and added awkwardly, “When I told you I
didn't want you to be ashamed of your past, nor to try to forget what
you were, I didn't mean such things as that!”
“What did you mean?” she said timidly.
The truth was that Mr. Rylands did not know. He had known this sort of
thing only in the abstract. He had never had the least acquaintance with
the class to which his wife had belonged, nor known anything of their
methods. It was a revelation to him now, in the woman he loved, and who
was his wife. He was not shocked so much as he was frightened.
“You shall have the dress to-morrow, Ellen,” he said gently, “and
you can put away these gewgaws. You don't need to look like Tinkie
Clifford.”
He did not see the look of triumph that lit up her eye, but added, “Go
on and play.”
She sat down obediently to the instrument. He watched her for a few
moments from the toe of her kid slipper on the pedals to the swell
of her shoulders above the keyboard, with a strange, abstracted face.
Presently she stopped and came over to him.
“And when I've got these nice calico frocks, and you can't tell me from
Jane, and I'm a good housekeeper, and settle down to be a farmer's wife,
maybe I'll have a secret to tell you.”
“A secret?” he repeated gravely. “Why not now?”
Her face was quite aglow with excitement and a certain timid mischief as
she laughed: “Not while you are so solemn. It can wait.”
He looked at his watch. “I must give some orders to Jim about the stock
before he turns in,” he said.
“He's gone to the stables already,” said Mrs. Rylands.
“No matter; I can go there and find him.”
“Shall I bring your boots?” she said quickly.