The Convalescence of Jack Hamlin Page #2

"The Convalescence of Jack Hamlin" by Bret Harte is a short story that explores themes of healing, redemption, and the complexities of human relationships. Set in the American West, it follows the character of Jack Hamlin, a former gambler recovering from illness. During his convalescence, he encounters various individuals who challenge his worldview and inspire him to confront his past. Harte's vivid storytelling combines humor and realism, showcasing his signature style while delving into the transformative power of friendship and self-reflection.

• Short story

								

grace to the centre table. She then drew a chair to the table and sat
down before it with a religious magazine in her lap. The wind roared
over the deep-throated chimney, the clock ticked monotonously, and then
there came the sound of wheels and voices.

But Mrs. Rivers was not destined to see her guest that night. Dr.
Duchesne, under the safe lee of the door, explained that Mr. Hamlin
had been exhausted by the journey, and, assisted by a mild opiate, was
asleep in the carriage; that if Mrs. Rivers did not object, they would
carry him at once to his room. In the flaring and guttering of candles,
the flashing of lanterns, the flapping of coats and shawls, and the
bewildering rush of wind, Mrs. Rivers was only vaguely conscious of a
slight figure muffled tightly in a cloak carried past her in the arms
of a grizzled negro up the staircase, followed by Dr. Duchesne. With
the closing of the front door on the tumultuous world without, a silence
fell again on the little parlor.

When the doctor made his reappearance it was to say that his patient was
being undressed and put to bed by his negro servant, who, however, would
return with the doctor to-night, but that the patient would be left with
everything that was necessary, and that he would require no attention
from the family until the next day. Indeed, it was better that he
should remain undisturbed. As the doctor confined his confidences and
instructions entirely to the physical condition of their guest, Mrs.
Rivers found it awkward to press other inquiries.

"Of course," she said at last hesitatingly, but with a certain primness
of expression, "Mr. Hamlin must expect to find everything here very
different from what he is accustomed to--at least from what my husband
says are his habits."

"Nobody knows that better than he, Mrs. Rivers," returned the doctor
with an equally marked precision of manner, "and you could not have a
guest who would be less likely to make you remind him of it."

A little annoyed, yet not exactly knowing why, Mrs. Rivers abandoned the
subject, and as the doctor shortly afterwards busied himself in the care
of his patient, with whom he remained until the hour of his departure,
she had no chance of renewing it. But as he finally shook hands with his
host and hostess, it seemed to her that he slightly recurred to it. "I
have the greatest hope of the curative effect of this wonderful locality
on my patient, but even still more of the beneficial effect of the
complete change of his habits, his surroundings, and their influences."
Then the door closed on the man of science and the grizzled negro
servant, the noise of the carriage wheels was shut out with the song of
the wind in the pine tops, and the rancho of Windy Hill possessed Mr.
Jack Hamlin in peace. Indeed, the wind was now falling, as was its
custom at that hour, and the moon presently arose over a hushed and
sleeping landscape.

For the rest of the evening the silent presence in the room above
affected the household; the half-curious servants and ranch hands spoke
in whispers in the passages, and at evening prayers, in the dining room,
Seth Rivers, kneeling before and bowed over a rush-bottomed chair whose
legs were clutched by his strong hands, included "the stranger within
our gates" in his regular supplications. When the hour for retiring
came, Seth, with a candle in his hand, preceded his wife up the
staircase, but stopped before the door of their guest's room. "I
reckon," he said interrogatively to Mrs. Rivers, "I oughter see ef he's
wantin' anythin'?"

"You heard what the doctor said," returned Mrs. Rivers cautiously.
At the same time she did not speak decidedly, and the frontiersman's
instinct of hospitality prevailed. He knocked lightly; there was no
response. He turned the door handle softly. The door opened. A faint
clean perfume--an odor of some general personality rather than any
particular thing--stole out upon them. The light of Seth's candle struck
a few glints from some cut-glass and silver, the contents of the guest's
dressing case, which had been carefully laid out upon a small table by
his negro servant. There was also a refined neatness in the disposition
of his clothes and effects which struck the feminine eye of even the
tidy Mrs. Rivers as something new to her experience. Seth drew nearer
the bed with his shaded candle, and then, turning, beckoned his wife to
approach. Mrs. Rivers hesitated--but for the necessity of silence
she would have openly protested--but that protest was shut up in her
compressed lips as she came forward.

For an instant that awe with which absolute helplessness invests the
sleeping and dead was felt by both husband and wife. Only the upper part
of the sleeper's face was visible above the bedclothes, held in position
by a thin white nervous hand that was encircled at the wrist by a
ruffle. Seth stared. Short brown curls were tumbled over a forehead damp
with the dews of sleep and exhaustion. But what appeared more singular,
the closed eyes of this vessel of wrath and recklessness were fringed
with lashes as long and silky as a woman's. Then Mrs. Rivers gently
pulled her husband's sleeve, and they both crept back with a greater
sense of intrusion and even more cautiously than they had entered. Nor
did they speak until the door was closed softly and they were alone on
the landing. Seth looked grimly at his wife.

"Don't look much ez ef he could hurt anybody."

"He looks like a sick man," returned Mrs. Rivers calmly.

The unconscious object of this criticism and attention slept until late;
slept through the stir of awakened life within and without, through the
challenge of early cocks in the lean-to shed, through the creaking
of departing ox teams and the lazy, long-drawn commands of teamsters,
through the regular strokes of the morning pump and the splash of water
on stones, through the far-off barking of dogs and the half-intelligible
shouts of ranchmen; slept through the sunlight on his ceiling, through
its slow descent of his wall, and awoke with it in his eyes! He woke,
too, with a delicious sense of freedom from pain, and of even drawing
a long breath without difficulty--two facts so marvelous and dreamlike
that he naturally closed his eyes again lest he should waken to a world
of suffering and dyspnoea. Satisfied at last that this relief was real,
he again opened his eyes, but upon surroundings so strange, so wildly
absurd and improbable, that he again doubted their reality. He was
lying in a moderately large room, primly and severely furnished, but
his attention was for the moment riveted to a gilt frame upon the wall
beside him bearing the text, "God Bless Our Home," and then on another
frame on the opposite wall which admonished him to "Watch and Pray."
Beside them hung an engraving of the "Raising of Lazarus," and a
Hogarthian lithograph of "The Drunkard's Progress." Mr. Hamlin closed

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