Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation

“I felt fit for anything,” she said, with a half-hysterical laugh, that seemed voiced, however, to check some slumbering memory. “I’d have cut my throat or his, it didn’t matter which”—

“It mattered something to us, Nell,” put in Jack again, with polite parenthesis; “don’t leave US out in the cold.”

“I started from ‘Frisco that night on the boat ready to fling myself into anything—or the river!” she went on hurriedly. “There was a man in the cabin who noticed me, and began to hang around. I thought he knew who I was,—had seen me on the posters; and as I didn’t feel like foolin’, I told him so. But he wasn’t that kind. He said he saw I was in trouble and wanted me to tell him all.”

Mr. Hamlin regarded her cheerfully. “And you told him,” he said, “how you had once run away from your childhood’s happy home to go on the stage! How you always regretted it, and would have gone back but that the doors were shut forever against you! How you longed to leave, but the wicked men and women around you always”—

“I didn’t!” she burst out, with sudden passion; “you know I didn’t. I told him everything: who I was, what I had done, what I expected to do again. I pointed out the men—who were sitting there, whispering and grinning at us, as if they were in the front row of the theatre—and said I knew them all, and they knew me. I never spared myself a thing. I said what people said of me, and didn’t even care to say it wasn’t true!”

“Oh, come!” protested Jack, in perfunctory politeness.

“He said he liked me for telling the truth, and not being ashamed to do it! He said the sin was in the false shame and the hypocrisy; for that’s the sort of man he is, you see, and that’s like him always! He asked if I would marry him—out of hand—and do my best to be his lawful wife. He said he wanted me to think it over and sleep on it, and to-morrow he would come and see me for an answer. I slipped off the boat at ‘Frisco, and went alone to a hotel where I wasn’t known. In the morning I didn’t know whether he’d keep his word or I’d keep mine. But he came! He said he’d marry me that very day, and take me to his farm in Santa Clara. I agreed. I thought it would take me out of everybody’s knowledge, and they’d think me dead! We were married that day, before a regular clergyman. I was married under my own name,”—she stopped and looked at Jack, with a hysterical laugh,—“but he made me write underneath it, ‘known as Nell Montgomery;’ for he said HE wasn’t ashamed of it, nor should I be.”

“Does he wear long hair and stick straws in it?” said Hamlin gravely. “Does he ‘hear voices’ and have ‘visions’?”

“He’s a shrewd, sensible, hard-working man,—no more mad than you are, nor as mad as I was the day I married him. He’s lived up to everything he’s said.” She stopped, hesitated in her quick, nervous speech; her lip quivered slightly, but she recalled herself, and looking imploringly, yet hopelessly, at Jack, gasped, “And that’s what’s the matter!”

Jack fixed his eyes keenly upon her. “And you?” he said curtly.

“I?” she repeated wonderingly.

“Yes, what have YOU done?” he said, with sudden sharpness.

The wonder was so apparent in her eyes that his keen glance softened. “Why,” she said bewilderingly, “I have been his dog, his slave,—as far as he would let me. I have done everything; I have not been out of the house until he almost drove me out. I have never wanted to go anywhere or see any one; but he has always insisted upon it. I would have been willing to slave here, day and night, and have been happy. But he said I must not seem to be ashamed of my past, when he is not. I would have worn common homespun clothes and calico frocks, and been glad of it, but he insists upon my wearing my best things, even my theatre things; and as he can’t afford to buy more, I wear these things I had. I know they look beastly here, and that I’m a laughing-stock, and when I go out I wear almost anything to try and hide them; but,” her lip quivered dangerously again, “he wants me to do it, and it pleases him.”

Jack looked down. After a pause he lifted his lashes towards her draggled skirt, and said in an easier, conversational tone, “Yes! I thought I knew that dress. I gave it to you for that walking scene in ‘High Life,’ didn’t I?”

“No,” she said quickly, “it was the blue one with silver trimming,—don’t you remember? I tried to turn it the first year I was married, but it never looked the same.”

“It was sweetly pretty,” said Jack encouragingly, “and with that blue hat lined with silver, it was just fetching! Somehow I don’t quite remember this one,” and he looked at it critically.

“I had it at the races in ‘58, and that supper Judge Boompointer gave us at ‘Frisco where Colonel Fish upset the table trying to get at Jim. Do you know,” she said, with a little laugh, “it’s got the stains of the champagne on it yet; it never would come off. See!” and she held the candle with great animation to the breadth of silk before her.

“And there’s more of it on the sleeve,” said Jack; “isn’t there?”

Mrs. Rylands looked reproachfully at Jack.

“That isn’t champagne; don’t you know what it is?”

“No!”

“It’s blood,” she said gravely; “when that Mexican cut poor Ned so bad,—don’t you remember? I held his head upon my arm while you bandaged him.” She heaved a little sigh, and then added, with a faint laugh, “That’s the worst thing about the clothes of a girl in the profession, they get spoiled or stained before they wear out.”

This large truth did not seem to impress Mr. Hamlin. “Why did you leave Santa Clara?” he said abruptly, in his previous critical tone.

“Because of the folks there. They were standoffish and ugly. You see, Josh”—

“Who?”

“Josh Rylands!—HIM! He told everybody who I was, even those who had never seen me in the bills,—how good I was to marry him, how he had faith in me and wasn’t ashamed,—until they didn’t believe we were married at all. So they looked another way when they met us, and didn’t call. And all the while I was glad they didn’t, but he wouldn’t believe it, and allowed I was pining on account of it.”

“And were you?”

“I swear to God, Jack, I’d have been content, and more, to have been just there with him, seein’ nobody, letting every one believe I was dead and gone, but he said it was wrong, and weak! Maybe it was,” she added, with a shy, interrogating look at Jack, of which, however, he took no notice. “Then when he found they wouldn’t call, what do you think he did?”

“Beat you, perhaps,” suggested Jack cheerfully.

“He never did a thing to me that wasn’t straight out, square, and kind,” she said, half indignantly, half hopelessly. “He thought if HIS kind of people wouldn’t see me, I might like to see my own sort. So without saying anything to me, he brought down, of all things! Tinkie Clifford, she that used to dance in the cheap variety shows at ‘Frisco, and her particular friend, Captain Sykes. It would have just killed you, Jack,” she said, with a sudden hysteric burst of laughter, “to have seen Josh, in his square, straight-out way, trying to be civil and help things along. But,” she went on, as suddenly relapsing into her former attitude of worried appeal, “I couldn’t stand it, and when she got to talking free and easy before Josh, and Captain Sykes to guzzling champagne, she and me had a row. She allowed I was putting on airs, and I made her walk, in spite of Josh.”

“And Josh seemed to like it,” said Hamlin carelessly. “Has he seen her since?”

“No; I reckon he’s cured of asking that kind of company for me. And then we came here. But I persuaded him not to begin by going round telling people who I was,—as he did the last time,—but to leave it to folks to find out if they wanted to, and he gave in. Then he let me fix up this house and furnish it my own way, and I did!”

“Do you mean to say that YOU fixed up that family vault of a sitting-room?” said Jack, in horror.

“Yes, I didn’t want any fancy furniture or looking-glasses, and such like, to attract folks, nor anything to look like the old times. I don’t think any of the boys would care to come here. And I got rid of a lot of sporting travelers, ‘wild-cat’ managers, and that kind of tramp in this way. But”—She hesitated, and her face fell again.

“But what?” said Jack.

“I don’t think that Josh likes it either. He brought home the other day ‘My Johnny is a Shoemakiyure,’ and wanted me to try it on the organ. But it reminded me how we used to get just sick of singing it on and off the boards, and I couldn’t touch it. He wanted me to go to the circus that was touring over at the cross roads, but it was the old Flanigin’s circus, you know, the one Gussie Riggs used to ride in, with its old clown and its old ringmaster and the old ‘wheezes,’ and I chucked it.”

“Look here,” said Jack, rising and surveying Mrs. Rylands critically. “If you go on at this gait, I’ll tell you what that man of yours will do. He’ll bolt with some of your old friends!”

She turned a quick, scared face upon him for an instant. But only for an instant. Her hysteric little laugh returned, at once, followed by her weary, worried look. “No, Jack, you don’t know him! If it was only that! He cares only for me in his own way,—and,” she stammered as she went on, “I’ve no luck in making him happy.”

She stopped. The wind shook the house and fired a volley of rain against the windows. She took advantage of it to draw a torn lace-edged handkerchief from her pocket behind, and keeping the tail of her eyes in a frightened fashion on Jack, applied the handkerchief furtively, first to her nose, and then to her eyes.

“Don’t do that,” said Jack fastidiously, “it’s wet enough outside.” Nevertheless, he stood up and gazed at her.

“Well,” he began.

She timidly drew nearer to him, and took a seat on the kitchen table, looking up wistfully into his eyes.

“Well,” resumed Jack argumentatively, “if he won’t ‘chuck’ you, why don’t you ‘chuck’ HIM?”

She turned quite white, and suddenly dropped her eyes. “Yes,” she said, almost inaudibly, “lots of girls would do that.”

“I don’t mean go back to your old life,” continued Jack. “I reckon you’ve had enough of that. But get into some business, you know, like other women. A bonnet shop, or a candy shop for children, see? I’ll help start you. I’ve got a couple of hundred, if not in my own pocket in somebody’s else, just burning to be used! And then you can look about you; and perhaps some square business man will turn up and you can marry him. You know you can’t live this way, nohow. It’s killing you; it ain’t fair on you, nor on Rylands either.”

“No,” she said quickly, “it ain’t fair on HIM. I know it, I know it isn’t, I know it isn’t,” she repeated, “only”—She stopped.

“Only what?” said Jack impatiently.

She did not speak. After a pause she picked up the rolling-pin from the table and began absently rolling it down her lap to her knee, as if pressing out the stained silk skirt. “Only,” she stammered, slowly rolling the pin handles in her open palms, “I—I can’t leave Josh.”

“Why can’t you?” said Jack quickly.

“Because—because—I,” she went on, with a quivering lip, working the rolling-pin heavily down her knee as if she were crushing her answer out of it,—“because—I—love him!”