The Indiscreet Letter.
by Eleanor Hallowell Abbott.
The Railroad Journey was very long and slow. The Traveling Salesman was rather short and quick. And the Young Electrician who lolled across the car aisle was neither one length nor another, but most inordinately flexible, like a suit of chain armor.
More than being short and quick, the Traveling Salesman was distinctly fat and unmistakably dressy in an ostentatiously new and pure-looking buff-colored suit, and across the top of the shiny black sample-case that spanned his knees he sorted and re-sorted with infinite earnestness a large and varied consignment of "Ladies" Pink and Blue Ribbed Undervests." Surely no other man in the whole southward-bound Canadian train could have been at once so ingenuous and so nonchalant.
There was nothing dressy, however, about the Young Electrician. From his huge cowhide boots to the lead smouch that ran from his rough, square chin to the very edge of his astonishingly blond curls, he was one delicious mess of toil and old clothes and smiling, blue-eyed indifference. And every time that he shrugged his shoulders or crossed his knees he jingled and jangled incongruously among his coil-boxes and insulators, like some splendid young Viking of old, half blacked up for a modern minstrel show.
More than being absurdly blond and absurdly messy, the Young Electrician had one of those extraordinarily sweet, extraordinarily vital, strangely mysterious, utterly unexplainable masculine faces that fill your senses with an odd, impersonal disquietude, an itching unrest, like the hazy, teasing reminder of some previous existence in a prehistoric cave, or, more tormenting still, with the tingling, psychic prophecy of some amazing emotional experience yet to come. The sort of face, in fact, that almost inevitably flares up into a woman"s startled vision at the one crucial moment in her life when she is not supposed to be considering alien features.
Out from the servient shoulders of some smooth-tongued Waiter it stares, into the scared dilating pupils of the White Satin Bride with her pledged hand clutching her Bridegroom"s sleeve. Up from the gravelly, pick-and-shovel labor of the new-made grave it lifts its weirdly magnetic eyes to the Widow"s tears. Down from some petted Princeling"s silver-trimmed saddle horse it smiles its electrifying, wistful smile into the Peasant"s sodden weariness. Across the slender white rail of an always _out-going_ steamer it stings back into your gray, land-locked consciousness like the tang of a scarlet spray. And the secret of the face, of course, is "Lure"; but to save your soul you could not decide in any specific case whether the lure is the lure of personality, or the lure of physiognomy--a mere accidental, coincidental, haphazard harmony of forehead and cheek-bone and twittering facial muscles.
Something, indeed, in the peculiar set of the Young Electrician"s jaw warned you quite definitely that if you should ever even so much as hint the small, sentimental word "lure" to him he would most certainly "swat" you on first impulse for a maniac, and on second impulse for a liar--smiling at you all the while in the strange little wrinkly tissue round his eyes.
The voice of the Railroad Journey was a dull, vague, conglomerate, cinder-scented babble of grinding wheels and shuddering window frames; but the voices of the Traveling Salesman and the Young Electrician were shrill, gruff, poignant, inert, eternally variant, after the manner of human voices which are discussing the affairs of the universe.
"Every man," affirmed the Traveling Salesman sententiously--"every man has written one indiscreet letter during his lifetime!"
"Only one?" scoffed the Young Electrician with startling distinctness above even the loudest roar and rumble of the train.
With a rather faint, rather gaspy chuckle of amus.e.m.e.nt the Youngish Girl in the seat just behind the Traveling Salesman reached forward then and touched him very gently on the shoulder.
"Oh, please, may I listen?" she asked quite frankly.
With a smile as benevolent as it was surprised, the Traveling Salesman turned half-way around in his seat and eyed her quizzically across the gold rim of his spectacles.
"Why, sure you can listen!" he said.
The Traveling Salesman was no fool. People as well as lisle thread were a specialty of his. Even in his very first smiling estimate of the Youngish Girl"s face, neither vivid blond hair nor luxuriantly ornate furs misled him for an instant. Just as a Preacher"s high waistcoat pa.s.ses him, like an official badge of dignity and honor, into any conceivable kind of a situation, so also does a woman"s high forehead usher her with delicious impunity into many conversational experiences that would hardly be wise for her lower-browed sister.
With an extra touch of manners the Salesman took off his neat brown derby hat and placed it carefully on the vacant seat in front of him.
Then, shifting his sample-case adroitly to suit his new twisted position, he began to stick cruel little p.r.i.c.kly price marks through alternate meshes of pink and blue lisle.
"Why, sure you can listen!" he repeated benignly. "Traveling alone"s awful stupid, ain"t it? I reckon you were glad when the busted heating apparatus in the sleeper gave you a chance to come in here and size up a few new faces. Sure you can listen! Though, bless your heart, we weren"t talking about anything so very specially interesting," he explained conscientiously. "You see, I was merely arguing with my young friend here that if a woman really loves you, she"ll follow you through any kind of blame or disgrace--follow you anywheres, I said--anywheres!"
"Not anywheres," protested the Young Electrician with a grin. ""Not up a telegraph pole!"" he requoted sheepishly.
"Y-e-s--I heard that," acknowledged the Youngish Girl with blithe shamelessness.
"Follow you "_anywheres_," was what I said," persisted the Traveling Salesman almost irritably. "Follow you "_anywheres_"! Run! Walk! Crawl on her hands and knees if it"s really necessary. And yet--" Like a s.h.a.ggy brown line drawn across the bottom of a column of figures, his eyebrows narrowed to their final calculation. "And yet--" he estimated cautiously, "and yet--there"s times when I ain"t so almighty sure that her following you is any more specially flattering to you than if you was a burglar. She don"t follow you so much, I reckon, because you _are_ her love as because you"ve _got_ her love. G.o.d knows it ain"t just you, yourself, she"s afraid of losing. It"s what she"s already invested in you that"s worrying her! All her pinky-posy, cunning kid-dreams about loving and marrying, maybe; and the pretty-much grown-up winter she fought out the whisky question with you, perhaps; and the summer you had the typhoid, likelier than not; and the spring the youngster was born--oh, sure, the spring the youngster was born!
Gee! If by swallowing just one more yarn you tell her, she can only keep on holding down all the old yarns you ever told her--if, by forgiving you just one more forgive-you, she can only hang on, as it were, to the original worth-whileness of the whole darned business--if by--"
"Oh, that"s what you meant by the "whole darned business," was it?"
cried the Youngish Girl suddenly, edging away out to the front of her seat. Along the curve of her cheeks an almost mischievous smile began to quicken. "Oh, yes! I heard that, too!" she confessed cheerfully.
"But what was the beginning of it all? The very beginning? What was the first thing you said? What started you talking about it? Oh, please, excuse me for hearing anything at all," she finished abruptly; "but I"ve been traveling alone now for five dreadful days, all the way down from British Columbia, and--if--you--will--persist--in--saying interesting things--in trains--you must take the consequences!"
There was no possible tinge of patronage or condescension in her voice, but rather, instead, a b.u.mpy, naive sort of friendliness, as lonesome Royalty sliding temporarily down from its throne might reasonably contend with each b.u.mp, "A King may look at a cat! He may!
He may!"
Along the edge of the Young Electrician"s cheek-bones the red began to flush furiously. He seemed to have a funny little way of blushing just before he spoke, and the physical mannerism gave an absurdly italicized sort of emphasis to even the most trivial thing that he said.
"I guess you"ll have to go ahead and tell her about "Rosie,"" he suggested grinningly to the Traveling Salesman.
"Yes! Oh, do tell me about "Rosie,"" begged the Youngish Girl with whimsical eagerness. "Who in creation was "Rosie"?" she persisted laughingly. "I"ve been utterly mad about "Rosie" for the last half-hour!"
"Why, "Rosie" is n.o.body at all--probably," said the Traveling Salesman a trifle wryly.
"Oh, pshaw!" flushed the Young Electrician, crinkling up all the little smile-tissue around his blue eyes. "Oh, pshaw! Go ahead and tell her about "Rosie.""
"Why, I tell you it wasn"t anything so specially interesting,"
protested the Traveling Salesman diffidently. "We simply got jollying a bit in the first place about the amount of perfectly senseless, no-account truck that"ll collect in a fellow"s pockets; and then some sort of a scorched piece of paper he had, or something, got him telling me about a nasty, sizzling close call he had to-day with a live wire; and then I got telling him here about a friend of mine--and a mighty good fellow, too--who dropped dead on the street one day last summer with an unaddressed, typewritten letter in his pocket that began "Dearest Little Rosie," called her a "Honey" and a "Dolly Girl" and a "Pink-Fingered Precious," made a rather foolish dinner appointment for Thursday in New Haven, and was signed--in the Lord"s own time--at the end of four pages, "Yours forever, and then some. TOM."--Now the wife of the deceased was named--Martha."
Quite against all intention, the Youngish Girl"s laughter rippled out explosively and caught up the latent amus.e.m.e.nt in the Young Electrician"s face. Then, just as unexpectedly, she wilted back a little into her seat.
"I don"t call that an "indiscreet letter"!" she protested almost resentfully. "You might call it a knavish letter. Or a foolish letter.
Because either a knave or a fool surely wrote it! But "indiscreet"?
U-m-m, No!"
"Well, for heaven"s sake!" said the Traveling Salesman.
"If--you--don"t--call--that--an--indiscreet letter, what would you call one?"
"Yes, sure," gasped the Young Electrician, "what would you call one?"
The way his lips mouthed the question gave an almost tragical purport to it.
"What would I call an "indiscreet letter"?" mused the Youngish Girl slowly. "Why--why--I think I"d call an "indiscreet letter" a letter that was pretty much--of a gamble perhaps, but a letter that was perfectly, absolutely legitimate for you to send, because it would be your own interests and your own life that you were gambling with, not the happiness of your wife or the honor of your husband. A letter, perhaps, that might be a trifle risky--but a letter, I mean, that is absolutely on the square!"
"But if it"s absolutely "on the square,"" protested the Traveling Salesman, worriedly, "then where in creation does the "indiscreet"
come in?"
The Youngish Girl"s jaw dropped. "Why, the "indiscreet" part comes in," she argued, "because you"re not able to prove in advance, you know, that the stakes you"re gambling for are absolutely "on the square." I don"t know exactly how to express it, but it seems somehow as though only the very little things of Life are offered in open packages--that all the big things come sealed very tight. You can poke them a little and make a guess at the shape, and you can rattle them a little and make a guess at the size, but you can"t ever open them and prove them--until the money is paid down and gone forever from your hands. But goodness me!" she cried, brightening perceptibly; "if you were to put an advertis.e.m.e.nt in the biggest newspaper in the biggest city in the world, saying: "Every person who has ever written an indiscreet letter in his life is hereby invited to attend a ma.s.s-meeting"--and if people would really go--you"d see the most distinguished public gathering that you ever saw in your life! Bishops and Judges and Statesmen and Beautiful Society Women and Little Old White-Haired Mothers--everybody, in fact, who had ever had red blood enough at least once in his life to write down in cold black and white the one vital, quivering, questioning fact that happened to mean the most to him at that moment! But your "Honey" and your "Dolly Girl" and your "Pink-Fingered Precious" nonsense! Why, it isn"t real! Why, it doesn"t even _make sense_!"
Again the Youngish Girl"s laughter rang out in light, joyous, utterly superficial appreciation.
Even the serious Traveling Salesman succ.u.mbed at last.
"Oh, yes, I know it sounds comic," he acknowledged wryly. "Sounds like something out of a summer vaudeville show or a cheap Sunday supplement. But I don"t suppose it sounded so specially blamed comic to the widow. I reckon she found it plenty-heap indiscreet enough to suit her. Oh, of course," he added hastily, "I know, and Martha knows that Thomkins wasn"t at all that kind of a fool. And yet, after all--when you really settle right down to think about it, Thomkins"
name was easily "Tommy," and Thursday sure enough was his day in New Haven, and it was a yard of red flannel that Martha had asked him to bring home to her--not the scarlet automobile veil that they found in his pocket. But "Martha," I says, of course, "Martha, it sure does beat all how we fellows that travel round so much in cars and trains are always and forever picking up automobile veils--dozens of them, _dozens_--red, blue, pink, yellow--why, I wouldn"t wonder if my wife had as many as thirty-four tucked away in her top bureau drawer!"--"I wouldn"t wonder," says Martha, stooping lower and lower over Thomkins"s blue cotton shirt that she"s trying to cut down into rompers for the baby. "And, Martha," I says, "that letter is just a joke. One of the boys sure put it up on him!"--"Why, of course," says Martha, with her mouth all puckered up crooked, as though a kid had st.i.tched it on the machine. "Why, of course! How dared you think--""
Forking one bushy eyebrow, the Salesman turned and stared quizzically off into s.p.a.ce.
"But all the samey, just between you and I," he continued judicially, "all the samey, I"ll wager you anything you name that it ain"t just death that"s pulling Martha down day by day, and night by night, limper and lanker and clumsier-footed. Martha"s got a sore thought.
That"s what ails her. And G.o.d help the crittur with a sore thought!
G.o.d help anybody who"s got any one single, solitary sick idea that keeps thinking on top of itself, over and over and over, boring into the past, b.u.mping into the future, fussing, fretting, eternally festering. Gee! Compared to it, a tight shoe is easy slippers, and water dropping on your head is perfect peace!--Look close at Martha, I say. Every night when the blowsy old moon shines like courting time, every day when the butcher"s bill comes home as big as a swollen elephant, when the crippled stepson tries to cut his throat again, when the youngest kid sneezes funny like his father--"WHO WAS ROSIE? WHO WAS ROSIE?""
"Well, who was Rosie?" persisted the Youngish Girl absent-mindedly.
"Why, Rosie was _nothing_!" snapped the Traveling Salesman; "nothing at all--probably." Altogether in spite of himself, his voice trailed off into a suspiciously minor key. "But all the same," he continued more vehemently, "all the same--it"s just that little darned word "probably" that"s making all the mess and bother of it--because, as far as I can reckon, a woman can stand absolutely anything under G.o.d"s heaven that she knows; but she just up and can"t stand the littlest, teeniest, no-account sort of thing that she ain"t sure of. Answers may kill "em dead enough, but it"s questions that eats "em alive."