Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation. Bret Harte
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“There's an entire stranger downstairs, ez hez got a lame hoss and wants to borry a fresh one.”
“We have none, you know,” said Mrs. Rylands, a little impatiently.
“Thet's what I told him. Then he wanted to know ef he could lie by here till he could get one or fix up his own hoss.”
“As you like; you know if you can manage it,” said Mrs. Rylands, a little uneasily. “When Mr. Rylands comes you can arrange it between you. Where is he now?”
“In the kitchen.”
“The kitchen!” echoed Mrs. Rylands.
“Yes, ma'am, I showed him into the parlor, but he kinder shivered his shoulders, and reckoned ez how he'd go inter the kitchen. Ye see, ma'am, he was all wet, and his shiny big boots was sloppy. But he ain't one o' the stuck-up kind, and he's willin' to make hisself cowf'ble before the kitchen stove.”
“Well, then, he don't want ME,” said Mrs. Rylands, with a relieved voice.
“Yes'm,” said Jane, apparently equally relieved. “Only, I thought I'd just tell you.”
A few minutes later, in crossing the upper hall, Mrs. Rylands heard Jane's voice from the kitchen raised in rustic laughter. Had she been satirically inclined, she might have understood Jane's willingness to relieve her mistress of the duty of entertaining the stranger; had she been philosophical, she might have considered the girl's dreary, monotonous life at the rancho, and made allowance for her joy at this rare interruption of it. But I fear that Mrs. Rylands was neither satirical nor philosophical, and presently, when Jane reentered, with color in her alkaline face, and light in her huckleberry eyes, and said she was going over to the cattle-sheds in the “far pasture,” to see if the hired man didn't know of some horse that could be got for the stranger, Mrs. Rylands felt a little bitterness in the thought that the girl would have scarcely volunteered to go all that distance in the rain for HER. Yet, in a few moments she forgot all about it, and even the presence of her guest in the house, and in one of her fitful abstracted employments passed through the dining-room into the kitchen, and had opened the door with an “Oh, Jane!” before she remembered her absence.
The kitchen, lit by a single candle, could be only partly seen by her as she stood with her hand on the lock, although she herself was plainly visible. There was a pause, and then a quiet, self-possessed, yet amused, voice answered:—
“My name isn't Jane, and if you're the lady of the house, I reckon yours wasn't ALWAYS Rylands.”
At the sound of the voice Mrs. Rylands threw the door wide open, and as her eyes fell upon the speaker—her unknown guest—she recoiled with a little cry, and a white, startled face. Yet the stranger was young and handsome, dressed with a scrupulousness and elegance which even the stress of travel had not deranged, and he was looking at her with a smile of recognition, mingled with that careless audacity and self-possession which seemed to be the characteristic of his face.
“Jack Hamlin!” she gasped.
“That's me, all the time,” he responded easily, “and YOU'RE Nell Montgomery!”
“How did you know I was here? Who told you?” she said impetuously.
“Nobody! never was so surprised in my life! When you opened that door just now you might have knocked me down with a feather.” Yet he spoke lazily, with an amused face, and looked at her without changing his position.
“But you MUST have known SOMETHING! It was no mere accident,” she went on vehemently, glancing around the room.
“That's where you slip up, Nell,” said Hamlin imperturbably. “It WAS an accident and a bad one. My horse lamed himself coming down the grade. I sighted the nearest shanty, where I thought I might get another horse. It happened to be this.” For the first time he changed his attitude, and leaned back contemplatively in his chair.
She came towards him quickly. “You didn't use to lie, Jack,” she said hesitatingly.
“Couldn't afford it in my business—and can't now,” said Jack cheerfully. “But,” he added curiously, as if recognizing something in his companion's agitation, and lifting his brown lashes to her, the window, and the ceiling, “what's all this about? What's your little game here?”
“I'm married,” she said, with nervous intensity—“married, and this is my husband's house!”
“Not married straight out!—regularly fixed?”
“Yes,” she said hurriedly.
“One of the boys? Don't remember any Rylands. SPELTER used to be very sweet on you—but Spelter mightn't have been his real name?”
“None of our lot! No one you ever knew; a—a straight out, square man,” she said quickly.
“I say, Nell, look here! You ought to have shown up your cards without even a call. You ought to have told him that you danced at the Casino.”
“I did.”
“Before he asked you to marry him?”
“Before.”
Jack got up from his chair, put his hands in his pockets, and looked at her curiously. This Nell Montgomery, this music-hall “dance and song girl,” this girl of whom so much had been SAID and so little PROVED! Well, this was becoming interesting.
“You don't understand,” she said, with nervous feverishness; “you remember after that row I had with Jim, that night the manager gave us a supper—when he treated me like a dog?”
“He did that,” interrupted Jack.
“I felt fit for anything,” she said, with a half-hysterical laugh, that seemed voiced, however, to check some slumbering memory. “I'd have cut my throat or his, it didn't matter which”—
“It mattered something to us, Nell,” put in Jack again, with polite parenthesis; “don't leave US out in the cold.”
“I started from 'Frisco that night on the boat ready to fling myself into anything—or the river!” she went on hurriedly. “There was a man in the cabin who noticed me, and began to hang around. I thought he knew who I was—had seen me on the posters; and as I didn't feel like foolin', I told him so. But he wasn't that kind. He said he saw I was in trouble and wanted me to tell him all.”
Mr. Hamlin regarded her cheerfully. “And you told him,” he said, “how you had once run away from your childhood's happy home to go on the stage! How you always regretted it, and would have gone back but that the doors were shut forever against you! How you longed to leave, but the wicked men and women around you always”—
“I didn't!” she burst out, with sudden passion; “you know I didn't. I told him everything: who I was, what I had done, what I expected to do again. I pointed out the men—who were sitting there, whispering and grinning at us, as if they were in the front row of the theatre—and said I knew them all, and they knew me. I never spared myself a thing. I said what people said of me, and didn't even care to say it wasn't true!”
“Oh, come!” protested Jack, in perfunctory politeness.
“He said he liked me for telling the truth, and not being ashamed to do it! He said the sin was in the false shame and the hypocrisy; for that's the sort of man he is, you see, and that's like him always! He asked if I would marry him—out of hand—and do my best to be his lawful wife. He said he wanted me to think it over and sleep on it, and to-morrow he would come and see me for an answer. I slipped off the boat at 'Frisco, and went alone to a hotel where I wasn't known. In the morning I didn't know whether he'd keep his word or I'd keep mine. But he came! He said he'd marry me that very day, and take me to his farm in Santa Clara. I agreed. I thought it would take me out of everybody's knowledge, and they'd think me dead! We were married that day, before a regular clergyman. I was married under my own name,”—she stopped and looked at Jack, with a hysterical laugh—“but