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Page 6
"I'm married," she said, with nervous intensity,--"married, and
this is my husband's house!"
"Not married straight out!--regularly fixed?"
"Yes," she said hurriedly.
"One of the boys? Don't remember any Rylands. SPELTER used to be
very sweet on you,--but Spelter mightn't have been his real name?"
"None of our lot! No one you ever knew; a--a straight out, square
man," she said quickly.
"I say, Nell, look here! You ought to have shown up your cards
without even a call. You ought to have told him that you danced at
the Casino."
"I did."
"Before he asked you to marry him?"
"Before."
Jack got up from his chair, put his hands in his pockets, and
looked at her curiously. This Nell Montgomery, this music-hall
"dance and song girl," this girl of whom so much had been SAID and
so little PROVED! Well, this was becoming interesting.
"You don't understand," she said, with nervous feverishness; "you
remember after that row I had with Jim, that night the manager gave
us a supper,--when he treated me like a dog?"
"He did that," interrupted Jack.
"I felt fit for anything," she said, with a half-hysterical laugh,
that seemed voiced, however, to check some slumbering memory. "I'd
have cut my throat or his, it didn't matter which"--
"It mattered something to us, Nell," put in Jack again, with polite
parenthesis; "don't leave US out in the cold."
"I started from 'Frisco that night on the boat ready to fling
myself into anything--or the river!" she went on hurriedly. "There
was a man in the cabin who noticed me, and began to hang around. I
thought he knew who I was,--had seen me on the posters; and as I
didn't feel like foolin', I told him so. But he wasn't that kind.
He said he saw I was in trouble and wanted me to tell him all."
Mr. Hamlin regarded her cheerfully. "And you told him," he said,
"how you had once run away from your childhood's happy home to go
on the stage! How you always regretted it, and would have gone
back but that the doors were shut forever against you! How you
longed to leave, but the wicked men and women around you always"--
"I didn't!" she burst out, with sudden passion; "you know I didn't.
I told him everything: who I was, what I had done, what I expected
to do again. I pointed out the men--who were sitting there,
whispering and grinning at us, as if they were in the front row of
the theatre--and said I knew them all, and they knew me. I never
spared myself a thing. I said what people said of me, and didn't
even care to say it wasn't true!"
"Oh, come!" protested Jack, in perfunctory politeness.
"He said he liked me for telling the truth, and not being ashamed
to do it! He said the sin was in the false shame and the hypocrisy;
for that's the sort of man he is, you see, and that's like him
always! He asked if I would marry him--out of hand--and do my best
to be his lawful wife. He said he wanted me to think it over and
sleep on it, and to-morrow he would come and see me for an answer.
I slipped off the boat at 'Frisco, and went alone to a hotel where I
wasn't known. In the morning I didn't know whether he'd keep his
word or I'd keep mine. But he came! He said he'd marry me that
very day, and take me to his farm in Santa Clara. I agreed. I
thought it would take me out of everybody's knowledge, and they'd
think me dead! We were married that day, before a regular
clergyman. I was married under my own name,"--she stopped and
looked at Jack, with a hysterical laugh,--"but he made me write
underneath it, 'known as Nell Montgomery;' for he said HE wasn't
ashamed of it, nor should I be."
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