A Protégée of Jack Hamlins | Page 9

by his one innocent weakness, Jack was launched upon a sea of

musical reminiscences. Scraps of church music, Puritan psalms of his
boyhood; dying strains from sad, forgotten operas, fragments of
oratorios and symphonies, but chiefly phases from old masses heard at
the missions of San Pedro and Santa Isabel, swelled up from his loving
and masterful fingers. He had finished an Agnus Dei; the formal room
was pulsating with divine aspiration; the rascal's hands were resting
listlessly on the keys, his brown lashes lifted, in an effort of memory,
tenderly towards the ceiling.
Suddenly, a subdued murmur of applause and a slight rustle behind him
recalled him to himself again. He wheeled his chair quickly round. The
two principals of the school and half a dozen teachers were standing
gravely behind him, and at the open door a dozen curled and frizzled
youthful heads peered in eagerly, but half restrained by their teachers.
The relaxed features and apologetic attitude of Madame Bance and
Miss Mix showed that Mr. Hamlin had unconsciously achieved a
triumph.
He might not have been as pleased to know that his extraordinary
performance had solved a difficulty, effaced his other graces, and
enabled them to place him on the moral pedestal of a mere musician, to
whom these eccentricities were allowable and privileged. He shared the
admiration extended by the young ladies to their music teacher, which
was always understood to be a sexless enthusiasm and a contagious
juvenile disorder. It was also a fine advertisement for the organ.
Madame Bance smiled blandly, improved the occasion by thanking Mr.
Hamlin for having given the scholars a gratuitous lesson on the
capabilities of the instrument, and was glad to be able to give Miss
Brown a half-holiday to spend with her accomplished relative. Miss
Brown was even now upstairs, putting on her hat and mantle. Jack was
relieved. Sophy would not attempt to cry on the street.
Nevertheless, when they reached it and the gate closed behind them, he
again became uneasy. The girl's clouded face and melancholy manner
were not promising. It also occurred to him that he might meet some
one who knew him and thus compromise her. This was to be avoided at
all hazards. He began with forced gayety:--

"Well, now, where shall we go?"
She slightly raised her tear-dimmed eyes. "Where you please-- I don't
care."
"There isn't any show going on here, is there?" He had a vague idea of
a circus or menagerie--himself behind her in the shadow of the box.
"I don't know of any."
"Or any restaurant--or cake shop?"
"There's a place where the girls go to get candy on Main Street. Some
of them are there now."
Jack shuddered; this was not to be thought of. "But where do you
walk?"
"Up and down Main Street."
"Where everybody can see you?" said Jack, scandalized.
The girl nodded.
They walked on in silence for a few moments. Then a bright idea struck
Mr. Hamlin. He suddenly remembered that in one of his many fits of
impulsive generosity and largesse he had given to an old negro
retainer--whose wife had nursed him through a dangerous illness--a
house and lot on the river bank. He had been told that they had opened
a small laundry or wash-house. It occurred to him that a stroll there and
a call upon "Uncle Hannibal and Aunt Chloe" combined the propriety
and respectability due to the young person he was with, and the
requisite secrecy and absence of publicity due to himself. He at once
suggested it.
"You see she was a mighty good woman and you ought to know her,
for she was my old nurse"--
The girl glanced at him with a sudden impatience.

"Honest Injin," said Jack solemnly; "she did nurse me through my last
cough. I ain't playing old family gags on you now."
"Oh, dear," burst out the girl impulsively, "I do wish you wouldn't ever
play them again. I wish you wouldn't pretend to be my uncle; I wish
you wouldn't make me pass for your niece. It isn't right. It's all wrong.
Oh, don't you know it's all wrong, and can't come right any way? It's
just killing me. I can't stand it. I'd rather you'd say what I am and how I
came to you and how you pitied me."
They had luckily entered a narrow side street, and the sobs which shook
the young girl's frame were unnoticed. For a few moments Jack felt a
horrible conviction stealing over him, that in his present attitude
towards her he was not unlike that hound Stratton, and that, however
innocent his own intent, there was a sickening resemblance to the
situation on the boat in the base advantage he had taken of her
friendlessness. He had never told her