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The Indiscreet Letter
by
Again the Youngish Girl’s laughter rang out in light, joyous, utterly superficial appreciation.
Even the serious Traveling Salesman succumbed 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 stitched it on the machine. ‘Why, of course! How dared you think–‘”
Forking one bushy eyebrow, the Salesman turned and stared quizzically off into space.
“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 God help the crittur with a sore thought! God 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, bumping 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 God’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.”
For a long, speculative moment the Salesman’s gold-rimmed eyes went frowning off across the snow-covered landscape. Then he ripped off his glasses and fogged them very gently with his breath.
“Now–I–ain’t–any–saint,” mused the Traveling Salesman meditatively, “and I–ain’t very much to look at, and being on the road ain’t a business that would exactly enhance my valuation in the eyes of a lady who was actually looking out for some safe place to bank her affections; but I’ve never yet reckoned on running with any firm that didn’t keep up to its advertising promises, and if a man’s courtship ain’t his own particular, personal advertising proposition–then I don’t know anything about–anything! So if I should croak sudden any time in a railroad accident or a hotel fire or a scrap in a saloon, I ain’t calculating on leaving my wife any very large amount of ‘sore thoughts.’ When a man wants his memory kept green, he don’t mean–gangrene!