CHAPTER IV.

MR. HAMLIN IS OFF WITH AN OLD LOVE.

Mr. Jack Hamlin did not lose much time on the road from Wingdam to Sacramento. His rapid driving, his dust bespattered vehicle, and the exhausted condition of his horse on arrival, excited but little comment from those who knew his habits, and for other criticism he had a supreme indifference. He was prudent enough, however, to leave his horse at a stable on the outskirts, and having reconstructed his toilet at a neighbouring hotel, he walked briskly toward the address given him by Maxwell. When he reached the corner of the street and was within a few paces of the massive shining door plate of Madame Eclair's _Pensionnat_, he stopped with a sudden ejaculation, and after a moment's hesitation, turned on his heel deliberately and began to retrace his steps.

To explain Mr. Hamlin's singular conduct I shall be obliged to disclose a secret of his, which I would fain keep from the fair reader. On receiving Olly's address from Maxwell, Mr. Hamlin had only cursorily glanced at it, and it was only on arriving before the house that he recognised to his horror that it was a boarding-school, with one of whose impulsive inmates he had whiled away his idleness a few months before in a heart-breaking but innocent flirtation, and a soul-subduing but clandestine correspondence, much to the distaste of the correct Principal. To have presented himself there in his proper person would be to have been refused admittance or subjected to a suspicion that would have kept Olly from his hands. For once, Mr. Hamlin severely regretted his infelix reputation among the sex. But he did not turn his back on his enterprise. He retraced his steps only to the main street, visited a barber's shop and a jeweller's, and reappeared on the street again with a pair of enormous green goggles and all traces of his long distinguishing silken black moustache shaven from his lip. When it is remembered that this rascal was somewhat vain of his personal appearance, the reader will appreciate his earnestness and the extent of his sacrifice.

Nevertheless, he was a little nervous as he was ushered into the formal reception-room of the _Pensionnat_, and waited until his credentials, countersigned by Maxwell, were submitted to Madame Eclair. Mr. Hamlin had no fear of being detected by his real name; in the brief halcyon days of his romance he had been known as Clarence Spifflington,--an ingenious combination of the sentimental and humorous which suited his fancy, and to some extent he felt expressed the character of his affection. Fate was propitious; the servant returned saying that Miss Conroy would be down in a moment, and Mr. Hamlin looked at his watch. Every moment was precious; he was beginning to get impatient when the door opened again and Olly slipped into the room.

She was a pretty child, with a peculiar boyish frankness of glance and manner, and a refinement of feature that fascinated Mr. Hamlin, who, fond as he was of all childhood, had certain masculine preferences for good looks. She seemed to be struggling with a desire to laugh when she entered, and when Jack turned towards her with extended hands she held up her own warningly, and closing the door behind her cautiously, said, in a demure whisper--

"She'll come down as soon as she can slip past Madame's door."

"Who?" asked Jack.

"Sophy."

"Who's Sophy?" asked Jack, seriously. He had never known the name of his Dulcinea. In the dim epistolatory region of sentiment she had existed only as "The Blue Moselle," so called from the cerulean hue of her favourite raiment, and occasionally, in moments of familiar endearment, as "Mosey."

"Come, now, pretend you don't know, will you?" said Olly, evading the kiss which Jack always had ready for childhood. "If I was her, I wouldn't have anything to say to you after that!" she added, with that ostentatious chivalry of the sex towards each other, in the presence of their common enemy. "Why, she saw you from the window when you first came this morning, when you went back again and shaved off your moustache; she knew you. And you don't know her! It's mean, ain't it?--they'll grow again, won't they?"--Miss Olly referred to the mustachios and not the affections!

Jack was astonished and alarmed. In his anxiety to evade or placate the duenna, he had never thought of her charge--his sweetheart. Here was a dilemma! "Oh yes!" said Jack hastily, with a well simulated expression of arch affection, "Sophy--of course--that's my little game! But I've got a note for you too, my dear," and he handed Olly the few lines that Gabriel had hastily scrawled. He watched her keenly, almost breathlessly, as she read them. To his utter bewilderment she laid the note down indifferently and said, "That's like Gabe--the old simpleton!"

"But you're goin' to do what he says," asked Mr. Hamlin, "ain't you?"

"No," said Olly, promptly, "I ain't! Why, Lord! Mr. Hamlin, you don't know that man; why, he does this sort o' thing every week!" Perceiving Jack stare, she went on, "Why, only last week, didn't he send to me to meet him out on the corner of the street, and he my own brother, instead o' comin' here, ez he hez a right to do. Go to him at Wingdam? No! ketch me!"

"But suppose he can't come," continued Mr. Hamlin.

"Why can't he come? I tell you, it's just foolishness and the meanest kind o' bashfulness. Jes because there happened to be a young lady here from San Francisco, Rosey Ringround, who was a little took with the old fool. If he could come to Wingdam, why couldn't he come here,--that's what I want to know?"

"Will you let me see that note?" asked Hamlin.

Olly handed him the note, with the remark, "He don't spell well--and he won't let me teach him--the old Muggins!"

Hamlin took it and read as follows:--

"DEAR OLLY,--If it don't run a fowl uv yer lessings and the Maddam's willin' and the young laddies, Brother Gab's waitin' fer ye at Wingdam, so no more from your affeshtunate brother, GAB."

Mr. Hamlin was in a quandary. It never had been part of his plan to let Olly know the importance of her journey. Mr. Maxwell's injunctions to bring her "quietly," his own fears of an outburst that might bring a questioning and sympathetic school about his ears, and lastly, and not the least potently, his own desire to enjoy Olly's company in the long ride to One Horse Gulch without the preoccupation of grief, with his own comfortable conviction that he could eventually bring Gabriel out of this "fix" without Olly knowing anything about it, all this forbade his telling her the truth. But here was a coil he had not thought of. Howbeit, Mr. Hamlin was quick at expedients.

"Then you think Sophy can see me," he added, with a sudden interest.

"Of course she will!" said Olly, archly. "It was right smart in you to get acquainted with Gabe and set him up to writing that, though it's just like him. He's that soft that anybody could get round him. But there she is now, Mr. Hamlin; that's her step on the stairs. And I don't suppose you two hez any need of me now."

And she slipped out of the room, as demurely as she had entered, at the same moment that a tall, slim, and somewhat sensational young lady in blue came flying in.

I can, in justice to Mr. Hamlin, whose secrets have been perhaps needlessly violated in the progress of this story, do no less than pass over as sacred, and perhaps wholly irrelevant to the issue, the interview that took place between himself and Miss Sophy. That he succeeded in convincing that young woman of his unaltered loyalty, that he explained his long silence as the result of a torturing doubt of the permanence of her own affection, that his presence at that moment was the successful culmination of a long-matured and desperate plan to see her once more and learn the truth from her own lips, I am sure that no member of my own disgraceful sex will question, and I trust no member of a too fond and confiding sex will doubt. That some bitterness was felt by Mr. Hamlin, who was conscious of certain irregularities during this long interval, and some tears shed by Miss Sophy, who was equally conscious of more or less aberration of her own magnetic instincts during his absence, I think will be self-evident to the largely comprehending reader. Howbeit, at the end of ten tender yet tranquillising minutes Mr. Hamlin remarked, in low thrilling tones--

"By the aid of a few confiding friends, and playin' it rather low on them, I got that note to the Conroy girl, but the game's up, and we might as well pass in our checks now, if she goes back on us, and passes out, which I reckon's her little game. If what you say is true, Sophy, and you do sometimes look back to the past, and things is generally on the square, you'll go for that Olly and fetch her, for if I go back without that child, and throw up my hand, it's just tampering with the holiest affections and playing it mighty rough on as white a man as ever you saw, Sophy, to say nothing of your reputation, and everybody ready to buck agin us who has ten cents to chip in on. You must make her go back with me and put things on a specie basis."

In spite of the mixed character of Mr. Hamlin's metaphor, his eloquence was so convincing and effective that Miss Sophy at once proceeded with considerable indignation to insist upon Olly's withdrawing her refusal.

"If this is the way you are going to act, you horrid little thing! after all that me and him's trusted you, I'd like to see the girl in school that will ever tell _you_ anything again, that's all!" a threat so appalling that Olly, who did not stop to consider that this confidence was very recent and had been forced upon her, assented without further delay, exhibited Gabriel's letter to Madame Eclair, and having received that lady's gracious permission to visit her brother, was in half an hour in company with Mr. Hamlin on the road.