The Indiscreet Letter Part 2

"You don't look--exactly like a man who's never had enough," she said smilingly.

"Food?" said the Traveling Salesman. "Oh, shucks! It wasn't food I was thinking of. It was education. Oh, of course," he added conscientiously, "of course, when the crops weren't either too heavy or too blooming light, Pa usually managed some way or other to get Daniel and me to school. And schooling was just nuts to me, and not a single nut so hard or so green that I wouldn't have chawed and bitten my way clear into it. But Daniel--Daniel somehow couldn't seem to see just how to enter a mushy Bartlett pear without a knife or a fork--in some other person's fingers. He was all right, you know--but he just couldn't seem to find his own way alone into anything. So when the time came--" the grin on the Traveling Salesman's mouth grew just a little bit wry at one corner--"and so when the time came--it was an awful nice, sweet-smelling June night, I remember, and I'd come home early--I walked into the kitchen as nice as pie, where Pa was sitting dozing in the cat's rocking-chair, in his gray stocking feet, and I threw down before him my full year's school report. It was pink, I remember, which was supposed to be the rosy color of success in our school; and I says: 'Pa! There's my report! And Pa,' I says, as bold and stuck-up as a bra.s.s weatherc.o.c.k on a new church, 'Pa! Teacher says that one of your boys has got to go to college!' And I was grinning all the while, I remember, worse than any Chessy cat.

"And Pa he took my report in both his h.o.r.n.y old hands and he spelt it all out real careful and slow and respectful, like as though it had been a lace valentine, and 'Good boy!' he says, and 'Bully boy!' and 'So Teacher says that one of my boys has got to go to college? One of my boys? Well, which one? Go fetch me Daniel's report.' So I went and fetched him Daniel's report. It was gray, I remember--the supposed color of failure in our school--and I stood with the grin still half frozen on my face while Pa spelt out the dingy record of poor Daniel's year. And then, 'Oh, gorry!' says Pa. 'Run away and g'long to bed.

I've got to think. But first,' he says, all suddenly cautious and thrifty, 'how much does it cost to go to college?' And just about as delicate and casual as a missionary hinting for a new chapel, I blurted out loud as a bull: 'Well, if I go up state to our own college, and get a chance to work for part of my board, it will cost me just $255 a year, or maybe--maybe,' I stammered, 'maybe, if I'm extra careful, only $245.50, say. For four years that's only $982,' I finished triumphantly.

"'_G-a-w-d!_' says Pa. Nothing at all except just, '_G-a-w-d!_'

"When I came down to breakfast the next morning, he was still sitting there in the cat's rocking-chair, with his face as gray as his socks, and all the rest of him--blue jeans. And my pink school report, I remember, had slipped down under the stove, and the tortoise-sh.e.l.l cat was las.h.i.+ng it with her tail; but Daniel's report, gray as his face, was still clutched up in Pa's h.o.r.n.y old hand. For just a second we eyed each other sort of dumb-like, and then for the first time, I tell you, I seen tears in his eyes.

"'Johnny,' he says, 'it's Daniel that'll have to go to college.

Bright men,' he says, 'don't need no education.'"

Even after thirty years the Traveling Salesman's hand shook slightly with the memory, and his joggled mind drove him with unwonted carelessness to pin price mark after price mark in the same soft, flimsy mesh of pink lisle. But the grin on his lips did not altogether falter.

"I'd had pains before in my stomach," he acknowledged good-naturedly, "but that morning with Pa was the first time in my life that I ever had any pain in my plans!--So we mortgaged the house and the cow-barn and the maple-sugar trees," he continued, more and more cheerfully, "and Daniel finished his schooling--in the Lord's own time--and went to college."

With another sudden, loud guffaw of mirth all the color came flus.h.i.+ng back again into his heavy face.

"Well, Daniel has sure needed all the education he could get," he affirmed heartily. "He's a Methodist minister now somewhere down in Georgia--and, educated 'way up to the top notch, he don't make no more than $650 a year. $650!--oh, glory! Why, Daniel's piazza on his new house cost him $175, and his wife's last hospital bill was $250, and just one dentist alone gaffed him sixty-five dollars for straightening his oldest girl's teeth!"

"Not sixty-five?" gasped the Young Electrician in acute dismay. "Why, two of my kids have got to have it done! Oh, come now--you're jos.h.i.+ng!"

"I'm not either jos.h.i.+ng," cried the Traveling Salesman. "Sure it was sixty-five dollars. Here's the receipted bill for it right here in my pocket." Brusquely he reached out and s.n.a.t.c.hed the paper back again.

"Oh, no, I beg your pardon. That's the receipt for the piazza.--What?

It isn't? For the hospital bill then?--Oh, hang! Well, never mind. It _was_ sixty-five dollars. I tell you I've got it somewhere."

"Oh--you--paid--for--them--all, did you?" quizzed the Youngish Girl before she had time to think.

"No, indeed!" lied the Traveling Salesman loyally. "But $650 a year?

What can a family man do with that? Why, I earned that much before I was twenty-one! Why, there wasn't a moment after I quit school and went to work that I wasn't earning real money! From the first night I stood on a street corner with a gasoline torch, hawking rasin-seeders, up to last night when I got an eight-hundred-dollar raise in my salary, there ain't been a single moment in my life when I couldn't have sold you my boots; and if you'd buncoed my boots away from me I'd have sold you my stockings; and if you'd buncoed my stockings away from me I'd have rented you the privilege of jumping on my bare toes.

And I ain't never missed a meal yet--though once in my life I was forty-eight hours late for one!--Oh, I'm bright enough," he mourned, "but I tell you I ain't refined."

With the sudden stopping of the train the little child in the Young Electrician's lap woke fretfully. Then, as the b.u.mpy 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 astonis.h.i.+ngly 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. "n.o.body 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 pa.s.sionate 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 G.o.d!" she cried out with sudden pa.s.sion. "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 a.s.serted 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.

But it was not until the Young Electrician had come striding back to his seat, and wrapped himself up in the fold of a big newspaper, and not until the train had started on again and had ground out another noisy mile or so, that the Traveling Salesman spoke again--and this time it was just a little bit surrept.i.tiously.

"What--you--crying--for?" he asked with incredible gentleness.

"I don't know, I'm sure," confessed the Youngish Girl, snuffingly. "I guess I must be tired."

"U-m-m," said the Traveling Salesman.

After a moment or two he heard the sharp little click of a watch.

"Oh, dear me!" fretted the Youngish Girl's somewhat smothered voice.

"I didn't realize we were almost two hours late. Why, it will be dark, won't it, when we get into Boston?"

"Yes, sure it will be dark," said the Traveling Salesman.

After another moment the Youngish Girl raised her forehead just the merest trifle from the back of the Traveling Salesman's seat, so that her voice sounded distinctly more definite and cheerful.

"I've--never--been--to--Boston--before," she drawled a little casually.

"What!" exclaimed the Traveling Salesman. "Been all around the world--and never been to Boston?--Oh, I see," he added hurriedly, "you're afraid your friends won't meet you!"

Out of the Youngish Girl's erstwhile disconsolate mouth a most surprising laugh issued. "No! I'm afraid they _will_ meet me," she said dryly.

Just as a soldier's foot turns from his heel alone, so the Traveling Salesman's whole face seemed to swing out suddenly from his chin, till his surprised eyes stared direct into the Girl's surprised eyes.

"My heavens!" he said. "You don't mean that _you've_--been writing an--'indiscreet letter'?"

"Y-e-s--I'm afraid that I have," said the Youngish Girl quite blandly.

She sat up very straight now and narrowed her eyes just a trifle stubbornly toward the Traveling Salesman's very visible astonishment.

"And what's more," she continued, clicking at her watch-case again--"and what's more, I'm on my way now to meet the consequences of said indiscreet letter.'"

"Alone?" gasped the Traveling Salesman.

The twinkle in the Youngish Girl's eyes brightened perceptibly, but the firmness did not falter from her mouth.

"Are people apt to go in--crowds to--meet consequences?" she asked, perfectly pleasantly.

"Oh--come, now!" said the Traveling Salesman's most persuasive voice.