Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation Part 3

"I COULD," she said tentatively. Then suddenly, "What made you think of it? You never saw ME smoke!"

"No," said Rylands, "but that lady, your old friend, Miss Clifford, does, and I thought you might be hankering after it."

"How do you know Tinkie Clifford smokes?" said Mrs. Rylands quickly.

"She lit a cigaretty that day she called."

"I hate it," said Mrs. Rylands shortly.

Mr. Rylands nodded approval, and puffed meditatively.

"Josh, have you seen that girl since?"

"No," said Joshua.

"Nor any other girl like her?"

"No," said Joshua wonderingly. "You see I only got to know her on your account, Ellen, that she might see you."

"Well, don't you do it any more! None of 'em! Promise me!" She leaned forward eagerly in her chair.

"But Ellen,"--her husband began gravely.

"I know what you're going to say, but they can't do me any good, and you can't do them any good as you did ME, so there!"

Mr. Rylands was silent, and smiled meditatively.

"Jos.h.!.+"

"Yes."

"When you met me that night on the Sacramento boat, and looked at me, did you--did I," she hesitated,--"did you look at me because I had been crying?"

"I thought you were troubled in spirit, and looked so."

"I suppose I looked worried, of course; I had no time to change or even fix my hair; I had on that green dress, and it NEVER was becoming. And you only spoke to me on account of my awful looks?"

"I saw only your wrestling soul, Ellen, and I thought you needed comfort and help."

She was silent for a moment, and then, leaning forward, picked up the poker and began to thrust it absently between the bars.

"And if it had been some other girl crying and looking awful, you'd have spoken to her all the same?"

This was a new idea to Mr. Rylands, but with most men logic is supreme.

"I suppose I would," he said slowly.

"And married her?" She rattled the bars of the grate with the poker as if to drown the inevitable reply.

Mr. Rylands loved the woman before him, but it pleased him to think that he loved truth better. "If it had been necessary to her salvation, yes,"

he said.

"Not Tinkie?" she said suddenly.

"SHE never would have been in your contrite condition."

"Much you know! Girls like that can cry as well as laugh, just as they want to. Well! I suppose I DID look horrid." Nevertheless, she seemed to gain some gratification from her husband's reply, and changed the subject as if fearful of losing that satisfaction by further questioning.

"I tried some of those songs you brought, but I don't think they go well with the harmonium," she said, pointing to some music on its rack, "except one. Just listen." She rose, and with the same nervous quickness she had shown before, went to the instrument and began to sing and play.

There was a hopeless incongruity between the character of the instrument and the spirit of the song. Mrs. Rylands's voice was rather forced and crudely trained, but Joshua Rylands, sitting there comfortably slippered by the fire and conscious of the sheeted rain against the window, felt it good. Presently he arose, and lounging heavily over to the fair performer, leaned down and imprinted a kiss on the labyrinthine fringes of her hair. At which Mrs. Rylands caught blindly at his hand nearest her, and without lifting her other hand from the keys, or her eyes from the music, said tentatively:--

"You know there's a chorus just here! Why can't you try it with me?"

Mr. Rylands hesitated a moment, then, with a preliminary cough, lifted a voice as crude as hers, but powerful through much camp-meeting exercise, and roared a chorus which was remarkable chiefly for requiring that archness and playfulness in execution which he lacked. As the whole house seemed to dilate with the sound, and the wind outside to withhold its fury, Mr. Rylands felt that physical delight which children feel in personal outcry, and was grateful to his wife for the opportunity.

Laying his hand affectionately on her shoulder, he noticed for the first time that she was in a kind of evening-dress, and that her delicate white shoulder shone through the black lace that enveloped it.

For an instant Mr. Rylands was shocked at this unwonted exposure. He had never seen his wife in evening-dress before. It was true they were alone, and in their own sitting-room, but the room was still invested with that formality and publicity which seemed to accent this indiscretion. The simple-minded frontier man's mind went back to Jane, to the hired man, to the expressman, the stranger, all of whom might have noticed it also.

"You have a new dress," he said slowly, "have you worn it all day?"

"No," she said, with a timid smile. "I only put it on just before you came. It's the one I used to wear in the ballroom scene in 'Gay Times in 'Frisco.' You don't know it, I know. I thought I would wear it tonight, and then," she suddenly grasped his hand, "you'll let me put all these things away forever! Won't you, Josh? I've seen such nice pretty calico at the store to-day, and I can make up one or two home dresses, like Jane's, only better fitting, of course. In fact, I asked them to send the roll up here to-morrow for you to see."

Mr. Rylands felt relieved. Perhaps his views had changed about the moral effect of her retaining these symbols of her past, for he consented to the calico dresses, not, however, without an inward suspicion that she would not look so well in them, and that the one she had on was more becoming.

Meantime she tried another piece of music. It was equally incongruous and slightly Bacchantic.

"There used to be a mighty pretty dance went to that," she said, nodding her head in time with the music, and a.s.sisting the heavily spasmodic attempts of the instrument with the pleasant levity of her voice. "I used to do it."

"Ye might try it now, Ellen," suggested her husband, with a half-frightened, half-amused tolerance.

"YOU play, then," said Mrs. Rylands quickly, offering her seat to him.

Mr. Rylands sat down to the harmonium, as Mrs. Rylands briskly moved the table and chairs against the wall. Mr. Rylands played slowly and strenuously, as from a conscientious regard of the instrument. Mrs.

Rylands stood in the centre of the floor, making a rather pretty, animated picture, as she again stimulated the heavy harmonium swell not only with her voice but her hands and feet. Presently she began to skip.

I should warn the reader here that this was before the "shawl" or "skirt" dancing was in vogue, and I am afraid that pretty Mrs. Rylands's performances would now be voted slow. Her silk skirt and frilled petticoat were lifted just over her small ankles and tiny bronze-kid shoes. In the course of a pirouette or two, there was a slight further revelation of blue silk stockings and some delicate embroidery, but really nothing more than may be seen in the sweep of a modern waltz.

Suddenly the music ceased. Mr. Rylands had left the harmonium and walked over to the hearth. Mrs. Rylands stopped, and came towards him with a flushed, anxious face.

"It don't seem to go right, does it?" she said, with her nervous laugh.

"I suppose I'm getting too old now, and I don't quite remember it."

"Better forget it altogether," he replied gravely. He stopped at seeing a singular change in her face, and added awkwardly, "When I told you I didn't want you to be ashamed of your past, nor to try to forget what you were, I didn't mean such things as that!"

"What did you mean?" she said timidly.

The truth was that Mr. Rylands did not know. He had known this sort of thing only in the abstract. He had never had the least acquaintance with the cla.s.s to which his wife had belonged, nor known anything of their methods. It was a revelation to him now, in the woman he loved, and who was his wife. He was not shocked so much as he was frightened.

"You shall have the dress to-morrow, Ellen," he said gently, "and you can put away these gewgaws. You don't need to look like Tinkie Clifford."