Mr. Rylands, who had seated himself, made a movement as if to rise. But Mr. Hamlin laid his hand on his knee.
“I asked you if you dared to listen. I have something myself to say of that interview. I found your wife wearing the old dresses that other men had given her, and she said she wore them because she thought it pleased you. I found that you, who are questioning my calling upon her, had already got the worst of her old chums to visit her without asking her consent; I found that instead of being the first one to lie for her and hide her, you were the first one to tell anybody her history, just because you thought it was to the glory of God generally, and of Joshua Rylands in particular.”
“A man’s motives are his own,” stammered Rylands.
“Sorry you didn’t see it when you questioned mine just now,” said Jack coolly.
“Then she complained to you?” said Rylands hesitatingly.
“I didn’t say that,” said Jack shortly.
“But you found her unhappy?”
“Damnably.”
“And you advised her”—said Rylands tentatively.
“I advised her to chuck you and try to get a better husband.” He paused, and then added, with a disgusted laugh, “but she didn’t tumble to it, for a d–d silly reason.”
“What reason?” said Rylands hurriedly.
“Said she LOVED you,” returned Jack, kicking a brand back into the fire. Mr. Rylands’s white cheeks flamed out suddenly like the brand. Seeing which, Jack turned upon him deliberately.
“Mr. Joshua Rylands, I’ve seen many fools in my time. I’ve seen men holding four aces backed down because they thought they KNEW the other man had a royal flush! I’ve seen a man sell his claim for a wild-cat share, with the gold lying a foot below him in the ground he walked on. I’ve seen a dead shot shoot wild because he THOUGHT he saw something in the other man’s eye. I’ve seen a heap of God-forsaken fools, but I never saw one before who claimed God as a pal. You’ve got a wife a d–d sight truer to you for what you call her ‘sin,’ than you’ve ever been to her, with all your d–d salvation! And as you couldn’t make her otherwise, though you’ve tried to hard enough, it seems to me that for square downright chuckle-headedness, you can take the cake! Good-night! Now, run away and play! You’re making me tired.”
“One moment,” said Mr. Rylands awkwardly and hurriedly. “I may have wronged you; I was mistaken. Won’t you come back with me and accept my—our—hospitality?”
“Not much,” said Jack. “I left your house because I thought it better for you and her that no one should know of my being there.”
“But you were already recognized,” said Mr. Rylands. “It was Jane who lied about you, and your return with me will confute her slanders.”
“Who?” asked Jack.
“Jane, our hired girl.”
Mr. Hamlin uttered an indescribable laugh.
“That’s just as well! You simply tell Jane you SAW me; that I was greatly shocked at what she said, but that I forgive her. I don’t think she’ll say any more.”
Strange to add, Mr. Hamlin’s surmise was correct. Mr. Rylands found Jane still in the kitchen alone, terrified, remorseful, yet ever after silent on the subject. Stranger still, the hired man became equally uncommunicative. Mrs. Rylands, attributing her husband’s absence only to care of the stock, had gone to bed in a feverish condition, and Mr. Rylands did not deem it prudent to tell her of his interview. The next day she sent for the doctor, and it was deemed necessary for her to keep her bed for a few days. Her husband was singularly attentive and considerate during that time, and it was probable that Mrs. Rylands seized that opportunity to tell him the secret she spoke of the night before. Whatever it was,—for it was not generally known for a few months later,—it seemed to draw them closer together, imparted a protecting dignity to Joshua Rylands, which took the place of his former selfish austerity, gave them a future to talk of confidentially, hopefully, and sometimes foolishly, which took the place of their more foolish past, and when the roll of calico came from the cross roads, it contained also a quantity of fine linen, laces, small caps, and other trifles, somewhat in contrast to the more homely materials ordered.
And when three months were past, the sitting-room was often lit up and made cheerful, particularly on that supreme occasion when, with a great deal of enthusiasm, all the women of the countryside flocked to see Mrs. Rylands and her first baby. And a more considerate and devoted couple than the father and mother they had never known.
THE MAN AT THE SEMAPHORE
In the early days of the Californian immigration, on the extremest point of the sandy peninsula, where the bay of San Francisco debouches into the Pacific, there stood a semaphore telegraph. Tossing its black arms against the sky,—with its back to the Golden Gate and that vast expanse of sea whose nearest shore was Japan,—it signified to another semaphore further inland the “rigs” of incoming vessels, by certain uncouth signs, which were again passed on to Telegraph Hill, San Francisco, where they reappeared on a third semaphore, and read to the initiated “schooner,” “brig” “ship,” or “steamer.” But all homesick San Francisco had learned the last sign, and on certain days of the month every eye was turned to welcome those gaunt arms widely extended at right angles, which meant “sidewheel steamer” (the only steamer which carried the mails) and “letters from home.” In the joyful reception accorded to that herald of glad tidings, very few thought of the lonely watcher on the sand dunes who dispatched them, or even knew of that desolate Station.
For desolate it was beyond description. The Presidio, with its voiceless, dismounted cannon and empty embrasures hidden in a hollow, and the Mission Dolores, with its crumbling walls and belfry tower lost in another, made the ultima thule of all San Francisco wandering. The Cliff house and Fort Point did not then exist; from Black Point the curving line of shore of “Yerba Buena”—or San Francisco—showed only a stretch of glittering wind-swept sand dunes, interspersed with straggling gullies of half-buried black “scrub oak.” The long six months’ summer sun fiercely beat upon it from the cloudless sky above; the long six months’ trade winds fiercely beat upon it from the west; the monotonous roll-call of the long Pacific surges regularly beat upon it from the sea. Almost impossible to face by day through sliding sands and buffeting winds, at night it was impracticable through the dense sea-fog that stole softly through the Golden Gate at sunset. Thence, until morning, sea and shore were a trackless waste, bounded only by the warning thunders of the unseen sea. The station itself, a rudely built cabin, with two windows,—one furnished with a telescope,—looked like a heap of driftwood, or a stranded wreck left by the retiring sea; the semaphore—the only object for leagues—lifted above the undulating dunes, took upon itself various shapes, more or less gloomy, according to the hour or weather,—a blasted tree, the masts and clinging spars of a beached ship, a dismantled gallows; or, with the background of a golden sunset across the Gate, and its arms extended at right angles, to a more hopeful fancy it might have seemed the missionary Cross, which the enthusiast Portala lifted on that heathen shore a hundred years before.
Not that Dick Jarman—the solitary station keeper—ever indulged this fancy. An escaped convict from one of her Britannic Majesty’s penal colonies, a “stowaway” in the hold of an Australian ship, he had landed penniless in San Francisco, fearful of contact with his more honest countrymen already there, and liable to detection at any moment. Luckily for him, the English immigration consisted mainly of gold-seekers en route to Sacramento and the southern mines. He was prudent enough to resist the temptation to follow them, and accepted the post of semaphore keeper,—the first work offered him,—which the meanest immigrant, filled with dreams of gold, would have scorned. His employers asked him no questions, and demanded no references; his post could be scarcely deemed one of trust,—there was no property for him to abscond with but the telescope; he was removed from temptation and evil company in his lonely waste; his duties were as mechanical as the instrument he worked, and interruption of them would be instantly known at San Francisco. For this he would receive his board and lodging and seventy-five dollars a month,—a sum to be ridiculed in those “flush days,” but which seemed to the broken-spirited and half-famished stowaway a princely independence.