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The Indiscreet Letter
by
With the sudden stopping of the train the little child in the Young Electrician’s lap woke fretfully. Then, as the bumpy cars switched laboriously into a siding, and the engine went puffing off alone on some noncommittal errand of its own, the Young Electrician rose and stretched himself and peered out of the window into the acres and acres of snow, and bent down suddenly and swung the child to his shoulder, then, sauntering down the aisle to the door, jumped off into the snow and started to explore the edge of a little, snow-smothered pond which a score of red-mittened children were trying frantically to clear with huge yellow brooms. Out from the crowd of loafers that hung about the station a lean yellow hound came nosing aimlessly forward, and then suddenly, with much fawning and many capers, annexed itself to the Young Electrician’s heels like a dog that has just rediscovered its long-lost master. Halfway up the car the French Canadian mother and her brood of children crowded their faces close to the window–and thought they were watching the snow.
And suddenly the car seemed very empty. The Youngish Girl thought it was her book that had grown so astonishingly devoid of interest. Only the Traveling Salesman seemed to know just exactly what was the matter. Craning his neck till his ears reddened, he surveyed and resurveyed the car, complaining: “What’s become of all the folks?”
A little nervously the Youngish Girl began to laugh. “Nobody has gone,” she said, “except–the Young Electrician.”
With a grunt of disbelief the Traveling Salesman edged over to the window and peered out through the deepening frost on the pane. Inquisitively the Youngish Girl followed his gaze. Already across the cold, white, monotonous, snow-smothered landscape the pale afternoon light was beginning to wane, and against the lowering red and purple streaks of the wintry sunset the Young Electrician’s figure, with the little huddling pack on its shoulder, was silhouetted vaguely, with an almost startling mysticism, like the figure of an unearthly Traveler starting forth upon an unearthly journey into an unearthly West.
“Ain’t he the nice boy!” exclaimed the Traveling Salesman with almost passionate vehemence.
“Why, I’m sure I don’t know!” said the Youngish Girl a trifle coldly. “Why–it would take me quite a long time–to decide just how–nice he was. But–” with a quick softening of her voice–“but he certainly makes one think of–nice things–Blue Mountains, and Green Forests, and Brown Pine Needles, and a Long, Hard Trail, shoulder to shoulder–with a chance to warm one’s heart at last at a hearth-fire–bigger than a sunset!”
Altogether unconsciously her small hands went gripping out to the edge of her seat, as though just a grip on plush could hold her imagination back from soaring into a miraculous, unfamiliar world where women did not idle all day long on carpets waiting for men who came on–pavements.
“Oh, my God!” she cried out with sudden passion. “I wish I could have lived just one day when the world was new. I wish–I wish I could have reaped just one single, solitary, big Emotion before the world had caught it and–appraised it–and taxed it–and licensed it–and staled it!”
“Oh-ho!” said the Traveling Salesman with a little sharp indrawing of his breath. “Oh-ho!–So that’s what the–Young Electrician makes you think of, is it?”
For just an instant the Traveling Salesman thought that the Youngish Girl was going to strike him.
“I wasn’t thinking of the Young Electrician at all!” she asserted angrily. “I was thinking of something altogether–different.”
“Yes. That’s just it,” murmured the Traveling Salesman placidly. “Something–altogether–different. Every time I look at him it’s the darnedest thing! Every time I look at him I–forget all about him. My head begins to wag and my foot begins to tap–and I find myself trying to–hum him–as though he was the words of a tune I used to know.”
When the Traveling Salesman looked round again, there were tears in the Youngish Girl’s eyes, and an instant after that her shoulders went plunging forward till her forehead rested on the back of the Traveling Salesman’s seat.