The Convalescence Of Jack Hamlin
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."
-THE END-
Bret Harte's short story: The Convalescence Of Jack Hamlin
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