The habitually quiet, ascetic face of Seth Rivers was somewhat disturbed
and his brows were knitted as he climbed the long ascent of Windy Hill
to its summit and his own rancho. Perhaps it was the effect of the
characteristic wind, which that afternoon seemed to assault him from all
points at once and did not cease its battery even at his front door, but
hustled him into the passage, blew him into the sitting room, and then
celebrated its own exit from the long, rambling house by the banging
of doors throughout the halls and the slamming of windows in the remote
distance.
Mrs. Rivers looked up from her work at this abrupt onset of her
husband, but without changing her own expression of slightly fatigued
self-righteousness. Accustomed to these elemental eruptions, she laid
her hands from force of habit upon the lifting tablecloth, and then rose
submissively to brush together the scattered embers and ashes from the
large 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'd
hev had kempany on your hands afore you knowed it--this very night! I
found this letter from Dr. Duchesne,” and he produced a letter from his
pocket.
Mrs. Rivers looked up with an expression of worldly interest. Dr.
Duchesne had brought her two children into the world with some
difficulty, and had skillfully attended her through a long illness
consequent upon the inefficient maternity of soulful but fragile
American women of her type. The doctor had more than a mere local
reputation as a surgeon, and Mrs. Rivers looked up to him as her sole
connecting link with a world of thought beyond Windy Hill.
“He's comin' up yer to-night, bringin' a friend of his--a patient that
he 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 the
pure 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 quiet
is bound to set him up. We're to board and keep him without any fuss or
feathers, and the doctor sez he'll pay liberal for it. This yer's what
he sez,” concluded Mr. Rivers, reading from the letter: “'He is now
fully convalescent, though weak, and really requires no other medicine
than 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 keep
even his negro servant with him. He'll give you no trouble, if he can be
prevailed upon to stay the whole time of his cure.'”
“There's our spare room--it hasn't been used since Parson Greenwood was
here,” said Mrs. Rivers reflectively. “Melinda could put it to rights in
an hour. At what time will he come?”
“He'd come about nine. They drive over from Hightown depot. But,” he
added grimly, “here ye are orderin' rooms to be done up and ye don't
know 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 and
introspective black eyes returned only vacancy, he added quickly. “The
noted 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 fellow
man which most women find it so difficult to understand. “No--and he
probably 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's
one of them desprit men! A reg'lar fighter! Killed two or three men in
dools!”
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 women
he's quite t'other way in fact, and that's why I think ye oughter know
it afore you let him come. He don't go round with decent women. In
fact”--But here Mr. Rivers, in the sanctity of conjugal confidences and
the fullness of Bible reading, used a few strong scriptural substantives
happily 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 straight
here. I've only got to meet them at the depot and say this thing can't
be 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. “We
might,” she added, with a troubled look of inquiry at her husband, “we
might 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 only
our Christian duty, too.”
“I was thinkin' o' that as a professin' Christian, Jane,” said her
husband. “But supposin' that other Christians don't look at it in that
light. Thar's Deacon Stubbs and his wife and the parson. Ye remember
what he said about 'no covenant with sin'?”
“The Stubbses have no right to dictate who I'll have in my house,” said
Mrs. Rivers quickly, with a faint flush in her rather sallow cheeks.
“It's your say and nobody else's,” assented her husband with grim
submissiveness. “You do what you like.”
Mrs. Rivers mused. “There's only myself and Melinda here,” she said with
sublime naivete; “and the children ain't old enough to be corrupted. I
am satisfied if you are, Seth,” and she again looked at him inquiringly.
“Go ahead, then, and get ready for 'em,” said Seth, hurrying away
with unaffected relief. “If you have everything fixed by nine o'clock,
that'll do.”
Mrs. Rivers had everything “fixed” by that hour, including herself
presumably, for she had put on a gray dress which she usually wore
when shopping in the county town, adding a prim collar and cuffs. A
pearl-encircled brooch, the wedding gift of Seth, and a solitaire ring
next 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 nine
she had finished tidying the parlor, opening the harmonium so that
the light might play upon its polished keyboard, and bringing from
the forgotten seclusion of her closet two beautifully bound volumes of
Tupper's “Poems” and Pollok's “Course of Time,” to impart a literary
grace to the centre table. She then drew a chair to the table and sat
down before it with a religious magazine in her lap. The wind roared
over the deep-throated chimney, the clock ticked monotonously, and then
there 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. Hamlin
had been exhausted by the journey, and, assisted by a mild opiate, was
asleep in the carriage; that if Mrs. Rivers did not object, they would
carry him at once to his room. In the flaring and guttering of candles,
the flashing of lanterns, the flapping of coats and shawls, and the
bewildering rush of wind, Mrs. Rivers was only vaguely conscious of a
slight figure muffled tightly in a cloak carried past her in the arms
of a grizzled negro up the staircase, followed by Dr. Duchesne. With
the closing of the front door on the tumultuous world without, a silence
fell again on the little parlor.
When the doctor made his reappearance it was to say that his patient was
being undressed and put to bed by his negro servant, who, however, would
return with the doctor to-night, but that the patient would be left with
everything that was necessary, and that he would require no attention
from the family until the next day. Indeed, it was better that he
should remain undisturbed. As the doctor confined his confidences and
instructions entirely to the physical condition of their guest, Mrs.
Rivers found it awkward to press other inquiries.
“Of course,” she said at last hesitatingly, but with a certain primness
of expression, “Mr. Hamlin must expect to find everything here very
different from what he is accustomed to--at least from what my husband
says are his habits.”
“Nobody knows that better than he, Mrs. Rivers,” returned the doctor
with an equally marked precision of manner, “and you could not have a
guest who would be less likely to make you remind him of it.”
A little annoyed, yet not exactly knowing why, Mrs. Rivers abandoned the
subject, and as the doctor shortly afterwards busied himself in the care
of 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 his
host and hostess, it seemed to her that he slightly recurred to it. “I
have the greatest hope of the curative effect of this wonderful locality
on my patient, but even still more of the beneficial effect of the
complete change of his habits, his surroundings, and their influences.”
Then the door closed on the man of science and the grizzled negro
servant, the noise of the carriage wheels was shut out with the song of
the 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 its
custom at that hour, and the moon presently arose over a hushed and
sleeping landscape.
For the rest of the evening the silent presence in the room above
affected the household; the half-curious servants and ranch hands spoke
in whispers in the passages, and at evening prayers, in the dining room,
Seth Rivers, kneeling before and bowed over a rush-bottomed chair whose
legs were clutched by his strong hands, included “the stranger within
our gates” in his regular supplications. When the hour for retiring
came, Seth, with a candle in his hand, preceded his wife up the
staircase, but stopped before the door of their guest's room. “I
reckon,” he said interrogatively to Mrs. Rivers, “I oughter see ef he's
wantin' anythin'?”
“You heard what the doctor said,” returned Mrs. Rivers cautiously.
At the same time she did not speak decidedly, and the frontiersman's
instinct of hospitality prevailed. He knocked lightly; there was no
response. He turned the door handle softly. The door opened. A faint
clean perfume--an odor of some general personality rather than any
particular thing--stole out upon them. The light of Seth's candle struck
a few glints from some cut-glass and silver, the contents of the guest's
dressing case, which had been carefully laid out upon a small table by
his negro servant. There was also a refined neatness in the disposition
of his clothes and effects which struck the feminine eye of even the
tidy Mrs. Rivers as something new to her experience. Seth drew nearer
the bed with his shaded candle, and then, turning, beckoned his wife to
approach. Mrs. Rivers hesitated--but for the necessity of silence
she would have openly protested--but that protest was shut up in her
compressed lips as she came forward.
For an instant that awe with which absolute helplessness invests the
sleeping and dead was felt by both husband and wife. Only the upper part
of the sleeper's face was visible above the bedclothes, held in position
by a thin white nervous hand that was encircled at the wrist by a
ruffle. Seth stared. Short brown curls were tumbled over a forehead damp
with the dews of sleep and exhaustion. But what appeared more singular,
the closed eyes of this vessel of wrath and recklessness were fringed
with lashes as long and silky as a woman's. Then Mrs. Rivers gently
pulled her husband's sleeve, and they both crept back with a greater
sense of intrusion and even more cautiously than they had entered. Nor
did they speak until the door was closed softly and they were alone on
the 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 the
challenge of early cocks in the lean-to shed, through the creaking
of departing ox teams and the lazy, long-drawn commands of teamsters,
through the regular strokes of the morning pump and the splash of water
on stones, through the far-off barking of dogs and the half-intelligible
shouts of ranchmen; slept through the sunlight on his ceiling, through
its 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 drawing
a long breath without difficulty--two facts so marvelous and dreamlike
that he naturally closed his eyes again lest he should waken to a world
of suffering and dyspnoea. Satisfied at last that this relief was real,
he again opened his eyes, but upon surroundings so strange, so wildly
absurd and improbable, that he again doubted their reality. He was
lying in a moderately large room, primly and severely furnished, but
his attention was for the moment riveted to a gilt frame upon the wall
beside him bearing the text, “God Bless Our Home,” and then on another
frame on the opposite wall which admonished him to “Watch and Pray.”
Beside them hung an engraving of the “Raising of Lazarus,” and a
Hogarthian lithograph of “The Drunkard's Progress.” Mr. Hamlin closed
his eyes; he was dreaming certainly--not one of those wild, fantastic
visions that had so miserably filled the past long nights of pain and
suffering, but still a dream! At last, opening one eye stealthily, he
caught the flash of the sunlight upon the crystal and silver articles
of his dressing case, and that flash at once illuminated his memory. He
remembered his long weeks of illness and the devotion of Dr. Duchesne.
He remembered how, when the crisis was past, the doctor had urged a
complete change and absolute rest, and had told him of a secluded rancho
in some remote locality kept by an honest Western pioneer whose family
he had attended. He remembered his own reluctant assent, impelled by
gratitude to the doctor and the helplessness of a sick man. He
now recalled the weary journey thither, his exhaustion and the
semi-consciousness of his arrival in a bewildering wind on a shadowy
hilltop. And this was the place!
He shivered slightly, and ducked his head under the cover again. But the
brightness of the sun and some exhilarating quality in the air tempted
him to have another outlook, avoiding as far as possible the grimly
decorated walls. If they had only left him his faithful servant he
could have relieved himself of that mischievous badinage which always
alternately horrified and delighted that devoted negro. But he was
alone--absolutely alone--in this conventicle!
Presently he saw the door open slowly. It gave admission to the small
round face and yellow ringlets of a little girl, and finally to her
whole figure, clasping a doll nearly as large as herself. For a moment
she stood there, arrested by the display of Mr. Hamlin's dressing case
on the table. Then her glances moved around the room and rested upon the
bed. Her blue eyes and Mr. Hamlin's brown ones met and mingled. Without
a moment's hesitation she moved to the bedside. Taking her doll's hands
in her own, she displayed it before him.
“Isn't it pitty?”
Mr. Hamlin was instantly his old self again. Thrusting his hand
comfortably under the pillow, he lay on his side and gazed at it long
and affectionately. “I never,” he said in a faint voice, but with
immovable features, “saw anything so perfectly beautiful. Is it alive?”
“It's a dolly,” she returned gravely, smoothing down its frock and
straightening its helpless feet. Then seized with a spontaneous idea,
like a young animal she suddenly presented it to him with both hands and
said,--
“Kiss it.”
Mr. Hamlin implanted a chaste salute on its vermilion cheek. “Would you
mind letting me hold it for a little?” he said with extreme diffidence.
The child was delighted, as he expected. Mr. Hamlin placed it in a
sitting posture on the edge of his bed, and put an ostentatious paternal
arm 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. After
a moment she began to laugh bashfully and with repression, yet as
Mr. Hamlin thought a little mischievously. Then as he looked at her
interrogatively 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 mistake and actually felt
himself blushing. It was unprecedented--it was the sheerest weakness--it
must have something to do with the confounded air.
“I grieve to say you are deeply mistaken--it is my very own,” he
returned with great gravity. Nevertheless, he drew the coverlet close
over his shoulder. But here he was again attracted by another face at
the half-opened door--a freckled one, belonging to a boy apparently a
year or two older than the girl. He was violently telegraphing to her to
come away, although it was evident that he was at the same time deeply
interested in the guest's toilet articles. Yet as his bright gray eyes
and Mr. Hamlin's brown ones met, he succumbed, as the girl had, and
walked directly to the bedside. But he did it bashfully--as the girl had
not. He even attempted a defensive explanation.
“She hadn't oughter come in here, and mar wouldn't let her, and she
knows 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 of
the 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, put
an arm around each of the children, drawing them together, with the doll
occupying the central post of honor. “Now,” continued Mr. Hamlin, albeit
in a voice a little faint from the exertion, “now that we're comfortable
together I'll tell you the story of the good little boy who became a
pirate in order to save his grandmother and little sister from being
eaten by a wolf at the door.”
But, alas! that interesting record of self-sacrifice never was told. For
it chanced that Melinda Bird, Mrs. Rivers's help, following the trail of
the missing children, came upon the open door and glanced in. There, to
her astonishment, she saw the domestic group already described, and to
her eyes dominated by the “most beautiful and perfectly elegant” young
man she had ever seen. But let not the incautious reader suppose that
she succumbed as weakly as her artless charges to these fascinations.
The character and antecedents of that young man had been already
delivered to her in the kitchen by the other help. With that single
glance she halted; her eyes sought the ceiling in chaste exaltation.
Falling back a step, she called in ladylike hauteur and precision, “Mary
Emmeline 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 out
faintly 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 human
accents could not convey a more significant and elevated ignoring of
some 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 go
now 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 closed
upon them and Miss Bird's parting admonition, loud enough for Mr. Hamlin
to 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 himself
wondering when it would be ready. This anxiety was soon relieved by the
appearance of his host himself bearing a tray, possibly in deference to
Miss Bird's sense of propriety. It appeared also that Dr. Duchesne had
previously given suitable directions for his diet, and Mr. Hamlin found
his repast simple but enjoyable. Always playfully or ironically polite
to strangers, he thanked his host and said he had slept splendidly.
“It's this yer 'ozone' in the air that Dr. Duchesne talks about,” said
Seth complacently.
“I am inclined to think it is also those texts,” said Mr. Hamlin
gravely, as he indicated them on the wall. “You see they reminded me of
church and my boyhood's slumbers there. I have never slept so peacefully
since.” Seth's face brightened so interestedly at what he believed to
be a suggestion of his guest's conversion that Mr. Hamlin was fain to
change the subject. When his host had withdrawn he proceeded to dress
himself, but here became conscious of his weakness and was obliged
to sit down. In one of those enforced rests he chanced to be near the
window, and for the first time looked on the environs of his place
of exile. For a moment he was staggered. Everything seemed to pitch
downward from the rocky outcrop on which the rambling house and farm
sheds stood. Even the great pines around it swept downward like a green
wave, 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 on
their way to the distant plain. In some vague point of that shimmering
horizon 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 white
flannels and straw hat, he at last made his way downstairs. To his
great relief he found the sitting room empty, as he would have willingly
deferred his formal acknowledgments to his hostess later. A single
glance at the interior determined him not to linger, and he slipped
quietly into the open air and sunshine. The day was warm and still, as
the wind only came up with the going down of the sun, and the atmosphere
was still redolent with the morning spicing of pine and hay and a
stronger balm that seemed to fill his breast with sunshine. He walked
toward the nearest shade--a cluster of young buckeyes--and having with
a certain civic fastidiousness flicked the dust from a stump with his
handkerchief he sat down. It was very quiet and calm. The life and
animation of early morning had already vanished from the hill, or seemed
to be suspended with the sun in the sky. He could see the ranchmen and
oxen toiling on the green terraced slopes below, but no sound reached
his ears. Even the house he had just quitted seemed empty of life
throughout its rambling length. His seclusion was complete. Could he
stand it for three weeks? Perhaps it need not be for so long; he
was already stronger! He foresaw that the ascetic Seth might become
wearisome. He had an intuition that Mrs. Rivers would be equally so; he
should certainly quarrel with Melinda, and this would probably debar him
from 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 somewhat
ostentatiously by a deep contralto voice, which he at once recognized as
Melinda's, and saw that severe virgin proceeding from the kitchen along
the ridge until within a few paces of the buckeyes, when she stopped
and, with her hand shading her eyes, apparently began to examine the
distant fields. She was a tall, robust girl, not without certain rustic
attractions, of which she seemed fully conscious. This latter weakness
gave Mr. Hamlin a new idea. He put up the penknife with which he had
been 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 then
apparently discovering Mr. Hamlin, started in deep concern and said with
somewhat stentorian politeness: “I BEG your pardon--didn't know I was
intruding!”
“Don't mention it,” returned Jack promptly, but without moving. “I saw
you coming and was prepared; but generally--as I have something the
matter with my heart--a sudden joy like this is dangerous.”
Somewhat mystified, but struggling between an expression of rigorous
decorum and gratified vanity, Miss Melinda stammered, “I was only”--
“I knew it--I saw what you were doing,” interrupted Jack gravely, “only
I wouldn't do it if I were you. You were looking at one of those young
men down the hill. You forgot that if you could see him he could see
you looking too, and that would only make him conceited. And a girl with
YOUR attractions don't require that.”
“Ez if,” said Melinda, with lofty but somewhat reddening scorn, “there
was 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. “But
maybe I was wrong. Would you mind--as you're going straight back to
the house” (Miss Melinda had certainly expressed no such
intention)--“turning those two little kids loose out here? I've a sort
of engagement with them.”
“I will speak to their mar,” said Melinda primly, yet with a certain
sign of relenting, as she turned away.
“You can say to her that I regretted not finding her in the sitting room
when I came down,” continued Jack tactfully.
Apparently the tact was successful, for he was delighted a few moments
later by the joyous onset of John Wesley and Mary Emmeline upon the
buckeyes, 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-up
interruption, and consulting with his companions found that on one
of the lower terraces there was a large reservoir fed by a mountain
rivulet, but they were not allowed to play there. Thither, however, the
reckless Jack hied with his playmates and was presently ensconced under
a willow tree, where he dexterously fashioned tiny willow canoes with
his penknife and sent them sailing over a submerged expanse of nearly
an acre. But half an hour of this ingenious amusement was brought to an
abrupt termination. While cutting bark, with his back momentarily turned
on his companions, he heard a scream, and turned quickly to see
John Wesley struggling in the water, grasping a tree root, and Mary
Emmeline--nowhere! In another minute he saw the strings of her pinafore
appear on the surface a few yards beyond, and in yet another minute,
with a swift rueful glance at his white flannels, he had plunged after
her. A disagreeable shock of finding himself out of his depths was,
however, followed by contact with the child's clothing, and clutching
her firmly, a stroke or two brought him panting to the bank. Here
a gasp, a gurgle, and then a roar from Mary Emmeline, followed by a
sympathetic howl from John Wesley, satisfied him that the danger was
over. Rescuing the boy from the tree root, he laid them both on the
grass and contemplated them exercising their lungs with miserable
satisfaction. But here he found his own breathing impeded in addition to
a slight faintness, and was suddenly obliged to sit down beside them, at
which, by some sympathetic intuition, they both stopped crying.
Encouraged by this, Mr. Hamlin got them to laughing again, and then
proposed a race home in their wet clothes, which they accepted, Mr.
Hamlin, for respiratory reasons, lagging in their rear until he had the
satisfaction of seeing them captured by the horrified Melinda in front
of the kitchen, while he slipped past her and regained his own room.
Here he changed his saturated clothes, tried to rub away a certain
chilliness that was creeping over him, and lay down in his dressing
gown to miserable reflections. He had nearly drowned the children and
overexcited himself, in spite of his promise to the doctor! He would
never again be intrusted with the care of the former nor be believed by
the latter!
But events are not always logical in sequence. Mr. Hamlin went
comfortably to sleep and into a profuse perspiration. He was awakened by
a rapping at his door, and opening it, was surprised to find Mrs. Rivers
with anxious inquiries as to his condition. “Indeed,” she said, with an
emotion which even her prim reserve could not conceal, “I did not know
until now how serious the accident was, and how but for you and Divine
Providence my little girl might have been drowned. It seems Melinda saw
it all.”
Inwardly objurgating the spying Melinda, but relieved that his playmates
hadn't broken their promise of secrecy, Mr. Hamlin laughed.
“I'm afraid that your little girl wouldn't have got into the water at
all but for me--and you must give all the credit of getting her out
to the other fellow.” He stopped at the severe change in Mrs. Rivers's
expression, and added quite boyishly and with a sudden drop from his
usual levity, “But please don't keep the children away from me for all
that, Mrs. Rivers.”
Mrs. Rivers did not, and the next day Jack and his companions sought
fresh playing fields and some new story-telling pastures. Indeed, it was
a fine sight to see this pale, handsome, elegantly dressed young fellow
lounging along between a blue-checkered pinafored girl on one side and
a barefooted boy on the other. The ranchmen turned and looked after
him curiously. One, a rustic prodigal, reduced by dissipation to the
swine-husks of ranching, saw fit to accost him familiarly.
“The last time I saw you dealing poker in Sacramento, Mr. Hamlin, I did
not reckon to find you up here playing with a couple of kids.”
“No!” responded Mr. Hamlin suavely, “and yet I remember I was playing
with 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 remind
you of it.”
Nevertheless, Mr. Hamlin could not help noticing that for the next
two or three days there were many callers at the ranch and that he was
obliged in his walks to avoid the highroad on account of the impertinent
curiosity of wayfarers. Some of them were of that sex which he would not
have contented himself with simply calling “curious.”
“To think,” said Melinda confidently to her mistress, “that that thar
Mrs. Stubbs, who wouldn't go to the Hightown Hotel because there was a
play actress thar, has been snoopin' round here twice since that young
feller came.”
Of this fact, however, Mr. Hamlin was blissfully unconscious.
Nevertheless, his temper was growing uncertain; the angle of his smart
straw hat was becoming aggressive to strangers; his politeness sardonic.
And now Sunday morning had come with an atmosphere of starched piety and
well-soaped respectability at the rancho, and the children were to be
taken 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 take
himself and his loneliness to the trails and byways, and even to invade
the haunts of some other elegant outcasts like himself--to wit, a
crested hawk, a graceful wild cat beautifully marked, and an eloquently
reticent rattlesnake. Mr. Hamlin eyed them without fear, and certainly
without reproach. They were not out of their element.
Suddenly he heard his name called in a stentorian contralto. An
impatient ejaculation rose to his lips, but died upon them as he turned.
It was certainly Melinda, but in his present sensitive loneliness it
struck him for the first time that he had never actually seen her before
as she really was. Like most men in his profession he was a quick reader
of thoughts and faces when he was interested, and although this was the
same robust, long-limbed, sunburnt girl he had met, he now seemed to see
through her triple incrustation of human vanity, conventional piety,
and outrageous Sabbath finery an honest, sympathetic simplicity that
commanded his respect.
“You are back early from church,” he said.
“Yes. One service is good enough for me when thar ain't no special
preacher,” she returned, “so I jest sez to Silas, 'as I ain't here to
listen to the sisters cackle ye kin put to the buckboard and drive me
home 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, with
heifer-like playfulness. “Well, Silas put to, and when we rose the hill
here 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, and
I'm goin' to talk with him.' 'All right,' sez he, 'I'd sooner trust
ye with that gay young gambolier every day of the week than with them
saints down thar on Sunday. He deals ez straight ez he shoots, and is
about as nigh onto a gentleman as they make 'em.'”
For one moment or two Miss Bird only saw Jack's long lashes. When his
eyes once more lifted they were shining. “And what did you say?” he
said, 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,” and
an outstretched thin white hand which grasped her large red one with a
frank, fraternal pressure.
“I didn't come to tell ye that,” remarked Miss Bird as she sat down on a
boulder, took off her yellow hat, and restacked her tawny mane under
it, “but this: I reckoned I went to Sunday meetin' as I ought ter. I
kalkilated 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 the
Doxology. You were in the special prayers ez a warnin', in the sermon
ez a text; they picked out hymns to fit ye! And always a drefful example
and a visitation. And the rest o' the tune it was all gabble, gabble by
the brothers and sisters about you. I reckon, Mr. Hamlin, that they know
everything you ever did since you were knee-high to a grasshopper, and a
good deal more than you ever thought of doin'. The women is all dead set
on convertin' ye and savin' ye by their own precious selves, and the men
is ekally dead set on gettin' rid o' ye on that account.”
“And what did Seth and Mrs. Rivers say?” asked Hamlin composedly, but
with kindling eyes.
“They stuck up for ye ez far ez they could. But ye see the parson
hez got a holt upon Seth, havin' caught him kissin' a convert at camp
meeting; and Deacon Turner knows suthin about Mrs. Rivers's sister, who
kicked 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 to
take a look at ye--some on 'em to-night. You ain't afeard, are ye?” she
added, with a loud laugh.
“Well, it looks rather desperate, doesn't it?” returned Jack, with
dancing eyes.
“I'll trust ye for all that,” said Melinda. “And now I reckon I'll trot
along 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 as
fair-minded ez Silas and you, and Melinda Bird hez a character to
lose! So long!” With this she cantered away, a little heavily, perhaps,
adjusting her yellow hat with both hands as she clattered down the steep
hill.
That afternoon Mr. Hamlin drew largely on his convalescence to mount a
half-broken mustang, and in spite of the rising afternoon wind to gallop
along the highroad in quite as mischievous and breezy a fashion. He was
wont to allow his mustang's nose to hang over the hind rails of wagons
and buggies containing young couples, and to dash ahead of sober
carryalls that held elderly “members in good standing.”
An accomplished rider, he picked up and brought back the flying parasol
of Mrs. Deacon Stubbs without dismounting. He finally came home a little
blown, but dangerously composed.
There was the usual Sunday evening gathering at Windy Hill
Rancho--neighbors and their wives, deacons and the pastor--but their
curiosity was not satisfied by the sight of Mr. Hamlin, who kept his own
room and his own counsel. There was some desultory conversation, chiefly
on church topics, for it was vaguely felt that a discussion of the
advisability or getting rid of the guest of their host was somewhat
difficult under this host's roof, with the guest impending at any
moment. Then a diversion was created by some of the church choir
practicing the harmonium with the singing of certain more or less
lugubrious anthems. Mrs. Rivers presently joined in, and in a somewhat
faded soprano, which, however, still retained considerable musical taste
and expression, sang, “Come, ye disconsolate.” The wind moaned over the
deep-throated chimney in a weird harmony with the melancholy of that
human 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 mountain
wind 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 the
lines 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 been
quite popular at funerals, and some who sat there had had its strange
melancholy borne upon them in time of loss and tribulations, but
never had they felt its full power before. Accustomed as they were to
emotional appeal and to respond to it, as the singer's voice died away
above them, their very tears flowed and fell with that voice. A few
sobbed 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 in
harshly,--
“It's rank blasphemy.”
“If it's rank blasphemy to sing the praise o' God, not only better than
some folks in the choir, but like an angel o' light, I wish you'd do a
little o' that blaspheming on Sundays, Mr. Stubbs.”
The speaker was Mrs. Stubbs, and as Deacon Stubbs was a notoriously bad
singer 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 yer
gathering this evening was specially to see how to get rid of him.”
There was a quick murmur of protest at this. The parson exchanged
glances with the deacon and saw that they were hopelessly in the
minority.
“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 handsome
young man, pale, elegant, composed, even to a grave indifference.
What his eyes might have said was another thing; the long lashes were
scarcely raised.
“I don't mind playing a little,” he said quietly to Mrs. Rivers, as if
continuing a conversation, “but you'll have to let me trust my memory.”
“Then you--er--play the harmonium?” said the parson, with an attempt at
formal courtesy.
“I was for a year or two the organist in the choir of Dr. Todd's church
at Sacramento,” returned Mr. Hamlin quietly.
The blank amazement on the faces of Deacons Stubbs and Turner and the
parson was followed by wreathed smiles from the other auditors and
especially from the ladies. Mr. Hamlin sat down to the instrument,
and in another moment took possession of it as it had never been held
before. He played from memory as he had implied, but it was the memory
of a musician. He began with one or two familiar anthems, in which they
all joined. A fragment of a mass and a Latin chant followed. An “Ave
Maria” from an opera was his first secular departure, but his delighted
audience did not detect it. Then he hurried them along in unfamiliar
language to “O mio Fernando” and “Spiritu gentil,” which they fondly
imagined were hymns, until, with crowning audacity, after a few
preliminary chords of the “Miserere,” he landed them broken-hearted in
the Trovatore's donjon tower with “Non te scordar de mi.”
Amidst the applause he heard the preacher suavely explain that those
Popish masses were always in the Latin language, and rose from the
instrument satisfied with his experiment. Excusing himself as an invalid
from joining them in a light collation in the dining room, and begging
his hostess's permission to retire, he nevertheless lingered a few
moments by the door as the ladies filed out of the room, followed by
the gentlemen, until Deacon Turner, who was bringing up the rear, was
abreast of him. Here Mr. Hamlin became suddenly deeply interested in
a framed pencil drawing which hung on the wall. It was evidently a
schoolgirl's amateur portrait, done by Mrs. Rivers. Deacon Turner halted
quickly 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 was
a pencil sketch of Mrs. Rivers's youthfully erring sister. But he only
said he thought he recognized a likeness to some one he had seen in
Sacramento.
The deacon's eye brightened. “Perhaps the same one--perhaps,” he added
in 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 been
in 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 every
now and then raking up the story wherever she went. Well, one of her
friends--I might have been among them, I don't exactly remember just
now--challenged him, but although he had no conscientious convictions
about slandering a woman, he had some about being shot for it, and
declined. The consequence was he was cowhided once in the street, and
the second time tarred and feathered and ridden on a rail out of town.
That, I suppose, was what you meant by your 'painful story.' But is this
the woman?”
“No, no,” said the deacon hurriedly, with a white face, “you have quite
misunderstood.”
“But whose is this portrait?” persisted Jack.
“I believe that--I don't know exactly--but I think it is a sister of
Mrs. Rivers's,” stammered the deacon.
“Then, of course, it isn't the same woman,” said Jack in simulated
indignation.
“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-law
before him. These quiet men are apt to shoot straight. Better keep this
to ourselves.”
Deacon Turner not only kept the revelation to himself but apparently his
own sacred person also, as he did not call again at Windy Hill
Rancho during Mr. Hamlin's stay. But he was exceedingly polite in his
references to Jack, and alluded patronizingly to a “little chat” they
had had together. And when the usual reaction took place in Mr. Hamlin's
favor and Jack was actually induced to perform on the organ at Hightown
Church next Sunday, the deacon's voice was loudest in his praise. Even
Parson Greenwood allowed himself to be non-committal as to the truth of
the rumor, largely circulated, that one of the most desperate gamblers
in the State had been converted through his exhortations.
So, with breezy walks and games with the children, occasional
confidences with Melinda and Silas, and the Sabbath “singing of
anthems,” Mr. Hamlin's three weeks of convalescence drew to a close. He
had lately relaxed his habit of seclusion so far as to mingle with the
company gathered for more social purposes at the rancho, and once or
twice unbent so far as to satisfy their curiosity in regard to certain
details of his profession.
“I have no personal knowledge of games of cards,” said Parson Greenwood
patronizingly, “and think I am right in saying that our brothers and
sisters are equally inexperienced. I am--ahem--far from believing,
however, that entire ignorance of evil is the best preparation for
combating it, and I should be glad if you'd explain to the company the
intricacies of various games. There is one that you mentioned, with
a--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,” said
Jack decidedly.
“As long as we don't gamble--that is, play for money--I see no
objection,” returned the parson.
“And,” said Jack musingly, “you could use beans.”
It was agreed finally that there would be no falling from grace in their
playing among themselves, in an inquiring Christian spirit, under Jack's
guidance, he having decided to abstain from card playing during his
convalescence, and Jack permitted himself to be persuaded to show them
the 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 apprise
Jack of his intention, on coming to Hightown at night he procured a
conveyance at the depot to carry him to Windy Hill Rancho. The wind blew
with its usual nocturnal rollicking persistency, and at the end of
his turbulent drive it seemed almost impossible to make himself heard
amongst the roaring of the pines and some astounding preoccupation of
the inmates. After vainly knocking, the doctor pushed open the front
door and entered. He rapped at the closed sitting room door, but
receiving no reply, pushed it open upon the most unexpected and
astounding scene he had ever witnessed. Around the centre table several
respectable members of the Hightown Church, including the parson, were
gathered with intense and eager faces playing poker, and behind the
parson, with his hands in his pockets, carelessly lounged the doctor's
patient, the picture of health and vigor. A disused pack of cards was
scattered on the floor, and before the gentle and precise Mrs. Rivers
was heaped a pile of beans that would have filled a quart measure.
When Dr. Duchesne had tactfully retreated before the hurried and
stammering apologies of his host and hostess, and was alone with Jack
in his rooms, he turned to him with a gravity that was more than half
affected and said, “How long, sir, did it take you to effect this
corruption?”
“Upon my honor,” said Jack simply, “they played last night for the
first time. And they forced me to show them. But,” added Jack after a
significant pause, “I thought it would make the game livelier and be
more of a moral lesson if I gave them nearly all good pat hands. So I
ran in a cold deck on them--the first time I ever did such a thing in
my life. I fixed up a pack of cards so that one had three tens, another
three jacks, and another three queens, and so on up to three aces. In a
minute 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 whole
pile.”
“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'd
frightened off the last man who held out and laid that measly hand of
his face down on that pile of kings, queens, and aces, and looked
around the table as he raked in the pile, there was a smile of humble
self-righteousness on his face that was worth double the money.”