"You don"t want to go and get mixed up in any sensational nonsense and have your picture stuck in the Sunday paper, do you?"
The Youngish Girl"s manner stiffened a little. "Do I look like a person who gets mixed up in sensational nonsense?" she demanded rather sternly.
"N-o-o," acknowledged the Traveling Salesman conscientiously. "N-o-o; but then there"s never any telling what you calm, quiet-looking, still-waters sort of people will go ahead and do--once you get started." Anxiously he took out his watch, and then began hurriedly to pack his samples back into his case. "It"s only twenty-five minutes more," he argued earnestly. "Oh, I say now, don"t you go off and do anything foolish! My wife will be down at the station to meet me.
You"d like my wife. You"d like her fine!--Oh, I say now, you come home with us for Sunday, and think things over a bit."
As delightedly as when the Traveling Salesman had asked her how she fixed her hair, the Youngish Girl"s hectic nervousness broke into genuine laughter. "Yes," she teased, "I can see just how pleased your wife would be to have you bring home a perfectly strange lady for Sunday!"
"My wife is only a kid," said the Traveling Salesman gravely, "but she likes what I like--all right--and she"d give you the shrewdest, eagerest little "helping hand" that you ever got in your life--if you"d only give her a chance to help you out--with whatever your trouble is."
"But I haven"t any "trouble,"" persisted the Youngish Girl with brisk cheerfulness. "Why, I haven"t any trouble at all! Why, I don"t know but what I"d just as soon tell you all about it. Maybe I really ought to tell somebody about it. Maybe--anyway, it"s a good deal easier to tell a stranger than a friend. Maybe it would really do me good to hear how it sounds out loud. You see, I"ve never done anything but whisper it--just to myself--before. Do you remember the wreck on the Canadian Pacific Road last year? Do you? Well--I was in it!"
"Gee!" said the Traveling Salesman. ""Twas up on just the edge of Canada, wasn"t it? And three of the pa.s.senger coaches went off the track? And the sleeper went clear over the bridge? And fell into an awful gully? And caught fire besides?"
"Yes," said the Youngish Girl. "I was in the sleeper."
Even without seeming to look at her at all, the Traveling Salesman could see quite distinctly that the Youngish Girl"s knees were fairly knocking together and that the flesh around her mouth was suddenly gray and drawn, like an old person"s. But the little persistent desire to laugh off everything still flickered about the corners of her lips.
"Yes," she said, "I was in the sleeper, and the two people right in front of me were killed; and it took almost three hours, I think, before they got any of us out. And while I was lying there in the darkness and mess and everything, I cried--and cried--and cried. It wasn"t nice of me, I know, nor brave, nor anything, but I couldn"t seem to help it--underneath all that pile of broken seats and racks and beams and things.
"And pretty soon a man"s voice--just a voice, no face or anything, you know, but just a voice from somewhere quite near me, spoke right out and said: "What in creation are you crying so about? Are you awfully hurt?" And I said--though I didn"t mean to say it at all, but it came right out--"N-o, I don"t think I"m hurt, but I don"t like having all these seats and windows piled on top of me," and I began crying all over again. "But no one else is crying," reproached the Voice.--"And there"s a perfectly good reason why not," I said. "They"re all dead!"--"O--h," said the Voice, and then I began to cry harder than ever, and princ.i.p.ally this time, I think, I cried because the horrid, old red plush cushions smelt so stale and dusty, jammed against my nose.
"And then after a long time the Voice spoke again and it said, "If I"ll sing you a little song, will you stop crying?" And I said, "N-o, I don"t think I could!" And after a long time the Voice spoke again, and it said, "Well, if I"ll tell you a story will you stop crying?"
And I considered it a long time, and finally I said, "Well, if you"ll tell me a perfectly true story--a story that"s never, never been told to any one before--_I"ll try and stop!_"
"So the Voice gave a funny little laugh almost like a woman"s hysterics, and I stopped crying right off short, and the Voice said, just a little bit mockingly: "But the only perfectly true story that I know--the only story that"s never--never been told to anybody before is the story of my life." "Very well, then," I said, "tell me that! Of course I was planning to live to be very old and learn a little about a great many things; but as long as apparently I"m not going to live to even reach my twenty-ninth birthday--to-morrow--you don"t know how unutterably it would comfort me to think that at least I knew _everything_ about some one thing!"
"And then the Voice choked again, just a little bit, and said: "Well--here goes, then. Once upon a time--but first, can you move your right hand? Turn it just a little bit more this way. There! Cuddle it down! Now, you see, I"ve made a little home for it in mine. Ouch!
Don"t press down too hard! I think my wrist is broken. All ready, then? You won"t cry another cry? Promise? All right then. Here goes.
Once upon a time--"
"Never mind about the story," said the Youngish Girl tersely. "It began about the first thing in all his life that he remembered seeing--something funny about a grandmother"s brown wig hung over the edge of a white piazza railing--and he told me his name and address, and all about his people, and all about his business, and what banks his money was in, and something about some land down in the Panhandle, and all the bad things that he"d ever done in his life, and all the good things, that he wished there"d been more of, and all the things that no one would dream of telling you if he ever, ever expected to see Daylight again--things so intimate--things so--
"But it wasn"t, of course, about his story that I wanted to tell you.
It was about the "home," as he called it, that his broken hand made for my--frightened one. I don"t know how to express it; I can"t exactly think, even, of any words to explain it. Why, I"ve been all over the world, I tell you, and fairly loafed and lolled in every conceivable sort of ease and luxury, but the Soul of me--the wild, restless, breathless, discontented _soul_ of me--_never sat down before in all its life_--I say, until my frightened hand cuddled into his broken one. I tell you I don"t pretend to explain it, I don"t pretend to account for it; all I know is--that smothering there under all that horrible wreckage and everything--the instant my hand went home to his, the most absolute sense of serenity and contentment went over me. Did you ever see young white horses straying through a white-birch wood in the springtime? Well, it felt the way that _looks_!--Did you ever hear an alto voice singing in the candle-light?
Well, it felt the way that _sounds_! The last vision you would like to glut your eyes on before blindness smote you! The last sound you would like to glut your ears on before deafness dulled you! The last touch--before Intangibility! Something final, complete, supreme--ineffably satisfying!
"And then people came along and rescued us, and I was sick in the hospital for several weeks. And then after that I went to Persia. I know it sounds silly, but it seemed to me as though just the smell of Persia would be able to drive away even the memory of red plush dust and scorching woodwork. And there was a man on the steamer whom I used to know at home--a man who"s almost always wanted to marry me. And there was a man who joined our party at Teheran--who liked me a little. And the land was like silk and silver and attar of roses. But all the time I couldn"t seem to think about anything except how perfectly awful it was that a _stranger_ like me should be running round loose in the world, carrying all the big, scary secrets of a man who didn"t even know where I was. And then it came to me all of a sudden, one rather worrisome day, that no woman who knew as much about a man as I did was exactly a "stranger" to him. And then, twice as suddenly, to great, grown-up, cool-blooded, money-staled, book-tamed _me_--it swept over me like a cyclone that I should never be able to decide anything more in all my life--not the width of a tinsel ribbon, not the goal of a journey, not the worth of a lover--until I"d seen the Face that belonged to the Voice in the railroad wreck.
"And I sat down--and wrote the man a letter--I had his name and address, you know. And there--in a rather maddening moonlight night on the Caspian Sea--all the horrors and terrors of that other--Canadian night came back to me and swamped completely all the arid timidity and sleek conventionality that women like me are hidebound with all their lives, and I wrote him--that unknown, unvisualized, unimagined--MAN--the utterly free, utterly frank, utterly honest sort of letter that any brave soul would write any other brave soul--every day of the world--if there wasn"t any flesh. It wasn"t a love letter. It wasn"t even a sentimental letter. Never mind what I told him. Never mind anything except that there, in that tropical night on a moonlit sea, I asked him to meet me here, in Boston, eight months afterward--on the same Boston-bound Canadian train--on this--the anniversary of our other tragic meeting."
"And you think he"ll be at the station?" gasped the Traveling Salesman.
The Youngish Girl"s answer was astonishingly tranquil. "I don"t know, I"m sure," she said. "That part of it isn"t my business. All I know is that I wrote the letter--and mailed it. It"s Fate"s move next."
"But maybe he never got the letter!" protested the Traveling Salesman, buckling frantically at the straps of his sample-case.
"Very likely," the Youngish Girl answered calmly. "And if he never got it, then Fate has surely settled everything perfectly definitely for me--that way. The only trouble with that would be," she added whimsically, "that an unanswered letter is always pretty much like an unhooked hook. Any kind of a gap is apt to be awkward, and the hook that doesn"t catch in its own intended tissue is mighty apt to tear later at something you didn"t want torn."
"I don"t know anything about that," persisted the Traveling Salesman, brushing nervously at the cinders on his hat. "All I say is--maybe he"s married."
"Well, that"s all right," smiled the Youngish Girl. "Then Fate would have settled it all for me perfectly satisfactorily _that_ way. I wouldn"t mind at all his not being at the station. And I wouldn"t mind at all his being married. And I wouldn"t mind at all his turning out to be very, very old. None of those things, you see, would interfere in the slightest with the memory of the--Voice or the--chivalry of the broken hand. THE ONLY THING I"D MIND, I TELL YOU, WOULD BE TO THINK THAT HE REALLY AND TRULY WAS THE MAN WHO WAS MADE FOR ME--AND I MISSED FINDING IT OUT!--Oh, of course, I"ve worried myself sick these past few months thinking of the audacity of what I"ve done. I"ve got such a "Sore Thought," as you call it, that I"m almost ready to scream if anybody mentions the word "indiscreet"
in my presence. And yet, and yet--after all, it isn"t as though I were reaching out into the darkness after an indefinite object. What I"m reaching out for is a _light_, so that I can tell exactly just what object is there. And, anyway," she quoted a little waveringly:
"He either fears his fate too much, Or his, deserts are small, Who dares not put it to the touch To gain or lose it all!"
"Ain"t you scared just a little bit?" probed the Traveling Salesman.
All around them the people began bustling suddenly with their coats and bags. With a gesture of impatience the Youngish Girl jumped up and started to fasten her furs. The eyes that turned to answer the Traveling Salesman"s question were br.i.m.m.i.n.g wet with tears.
"Yes--I"m--scared to death!" she smiled incongruously.
Almost authoritatively the Salesman reached out his empty hand for her traveling-bag. "What you going to do if he ain"t there?" he asked.
The Girl"s eyebrows lifted. "Why, just what I"m going to do if he _is_ there," she answered quite definitely. "I"m going right back to Montreal to-night. There"s a train out again, I think, at eight-thirty. Even late as we are, that will give me an hour and a half at the station."
"Gee!" said the Traveling Salesman. "And you"ve traveled five days just to see what a man looks like--for an hour and a half?"
"I"d have traveled twice five days," she whispered, "just to see what he looked like--for a--second and a half!"
"But how in thunder are you going to recognize him?" fussed the Traveling Salesman. "And how in thunder is he going to recognize you?"
"Maybe I won"t recognize him," acknowledged the Youngish Girl, "and likelier than not he won"t recognize me; but don"t you see?--can"t you understand?--that all the audacity of it, all the worry of it--is absolutely nothing compared to the one little chance in ten thousand that we _will_ recognize each other?"
"Well, anyway," said the Traveling Salesman stubbornly, "I"m going to walk out slow behind you and see you through this thing all right."
"Oh, no, you"re not!" exclaimed the Youngish Girl. "Oh, no, you"re not! Can"t you see that if he"s there, I wouldn"t mind you so much; but if he doesn"t come, can"t you understand that maybe I"d just as soon you didn"t know about it?"
"O-h," said the Traveling Salesman.
A little impatiently he turned and routed the Young Electrician out of his sprawling nap. "Don"t you know Boston when you see it?" he cried a trifle testily.
For an instant the Young Electrician"s sleepy eyes stared dully into the Girl"s excited face. Then he stumbled up a bit awkwardly and reached out for all his coil-boxes and insulators.
"Good-night to you. Much obliged to you," he nodded amiably.
A moment later he and the Traveling Salesman were forging their way ahead through the crowded aisle. Like the transient, impersonal, altogether mysterious stimulant of a strain of martial music, the Young Electrician vanished into s.p.a.ce. But just at the edge of the car steps the Traveling Salesman dallied a second to wait for the Youngish Girl.
"Say," he said, "say, can I tell my wife what you"ve told me?"
"Y-e-s," nodded the Youngish Girl soberly.
"And say," said the Traveling Salesman, "say, I don"t exactly like to go off this way and never know at all how it all came out." Casually his eyes fell on the big lynx m.u.f.f in the Youngish Girl"s hand. "Say,"
he said, "if I promise, honest-Injun, to go "way off to the other end of the station, couldn"t you just lift your m.u.f.f up high, once, if everything comes out the way you want it?"
"Y-e-s," whispered the Youngish Girl almost inaudibly.
Then the Traveling Salesman went hurrying on to join the Young Electrician, and the Youngish Girl lagged along on the rear edge of the crowd like a bashful child dragging on the skirts of its mother.