Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories Part 17

"I don't think so. I 'd guess her under twenty-five. And she probably won't look a day older than she does now for the next fifteen years."

"I don't know about that, Adams. If she's a school-teacher she 'll get more or less sharp-featured or anxious-faced and have wrinkles and crow's-feet. And those are things that do not aid and abet a woman in forgetting her birthdays."

"But she is n't a school-teacher, Wilson. She has n't got the unmistakable school-ma'am look. I 've been wondering what she is, and I don't make it out. I don't think she 's a doctor, because she has n't got the professional cast of countenance, and she 's too carefully dressed."

Wilson laughed and turned a bantering eye upon his companion. "You must be getting interested, Adams! Is it a case of love at first sight?"

"No, you know I 'm not given to that sort of thing. But I don't read much on the cars, on account of my eyes, and while you 've been reading I 've spent the time looking at the pa.s.sengers. And I found that girl and her roses by far the most pleasing items in the car."

"But she is n't beautiful," Wilson objected. "Her face is not pretty, and she 's inclined to be raw-boned."

"Yes, I 'll admit her features are irregular, and there 's fault to be found with each one. But that does n't matter. No woman with that live, creamy skin, that clear red in her cheeks, and that intelligent expression, could be any less than handsome. And she fairly glows with health and vitality. She has made me just curious enough about her vocation to want to know what it is, and if she stays on the train long enough to make an opening possible I intend to try to find out."

"Well," said Wilson, yawning, "you 're fortunate to be able to get up so much interest in your fellow-pa.s.sengers. It is n't once in a dozen journeys that I find anybody on a railroad train who does n't strike me as being an entirely superfluous person."

"Oh, well," responded Adams good-naturedly, "you must remember that you are ten years older than I am, and that you are married and settled down, while I 'm not."

"It would be better for you if you were."

"Yes, I know you are always preaching at me the advantages of double blessedness. But I 'm not going to marry until I can't help it. When the girl comes along who can make me forget everything in the world but herself, I 'll marry her, if she 'll have me."

"Which she probably won't, as things generally turn out in this world,"

the other rejoined, smiling.

In the meantime Dr. Black was dipping here and there into the pages of her book, which had proved to be Mallock's "Human Doc.u.ment," more interested in its speculations concerning human nature and human nature's twin problems of life and love than in its slender thread of story. Gradually her interludes of meditation grew longer and more frequent, until the book closed in her lap and she looked dreamily out of the window, her thoughts busy with herself, her past, and her future.

Should she ever marry? She thought it rather unlikely, but she had no definite intentions on either side of the question. She smiled as her thoughts travelled back to her first engagement, in her high-school days. She admitted to herself that she had been rather a gay la.s.sie then, and had thought more about the boys than about her studies. She remembered, too, that she had been very popular among those same boys, and that that very popularity had doomed the engagement to a brief but exciting existence.

Then she recalled how she had pa.s.sed, soon after this episode, under the influence of an enthusiastic teacher who had wakened her ambitions and led her to decide that she must make of herself something out of the usual and go out into the world and take part in its work. Then succeeded a period of such close application to her books that her parents and friends became alarmed lest she should injure herself. She ceased to smile upon her youthful admirers and treated them so curtly or talked to them so toploftily that she got the reputation of having become a man-hater.

"And I was n't anything of the sort," she said to herself, smiling and smelling her roses. "I simply did n't like that kind of young men any more. They bored me to death."

About that time, she remembered, she began to be much more interested in older men, men of more knowledge and achievement, and that they also began to show a liking for her. The teachers in the high school seemed to find it interesting to talk with her. The district attorney, who was their next door neighbor, seemed just as well satisfied, when he strolled across the lawns for a chat with her father, if he found Elizabeth alone on the veranda. The family physician encouraged the scientific trend of her reading, loaned her books by Maudsley and Darwin and Havelock Ellis, and often dropped in to talk with her about her studies, her reading, and her plans. He applauded and encouraged her first tentative notion that she would like to study medicine, and it was his arguments and influence that overcame her mother's objections and persuaded her father that it would be worth while to spend upon her medical education the money it would demand. And, finally, came the doctor's wife, asking to see her alone.

"I am sure you do not realize what you are doing," the doctor's wife said, "and so I want to put it frankly before you, as one woman to another. The truth is, my husband is falling in love with you; he is fascinated by you. And I want to ask you to save him from himself, and me from no end of heartache and misery, I 'm fond of you, Elizabeth, you know that, and I 'm proud of your abilities, and I want you to have a great success, but I don't want you to trample down my happiness on your way. He and I have always been happy together until now; and it all rests with you, Elizabeth,--as a woman you know that--whether we keep our happiness and content with each other or go straight on into such disaster and wretchedness as you cannot imagine. And so I 've put my pride in my pocket--it was no small thing to do, my girl,--and have come to ask you not to take my husband's love away from me."

As Elizabeth looked back to that time she owned to herself that, deeply moved as she had been by the appeal of the doctor's wife, her feelings had not all been of the same sort. In the depths of her soul there had been no little pride and exultation that the doctor was being chained to her chariot wheels, and she remembered quite distinctly that she had had a strong desire to keep him there. She herself had felt for him nothing more than cordial friendship and grat.i.tude; but, nevertheless, there had been mingled with generous compa.s.sion some resentment against the wife, whose appeal she could not disregard.

Two years after that episode, while at home on her summer vacation, she met a lawyer, a man of high position, wide intellectual sympathies, and much culture, who promptly fell in love with her and proposed marriage.

He interested her deeply and exercised over her a greater fascination than any man she had met before, and she gave her promise to be his wife, without thought as to its effect upon her future. But when she began to prepare for her return to the medical college he interposed an amazed veto. If she was to be his wife she must give up all expectation of a career separate from their home. She wavered and hesitated for two days, and then packed her trunk and returned to her studies. Thinking of him, as she gazed at the picturesque, wooded hills and valleys of Pennsylvania, she did not regret her action. She had never regretted it, she said to herself, but, nevertheless, she was sorry, she had always felt a distinct sense of loss, that he had pa.s.sed out of her life.

Since then, the straight road to her medical degree and through her subsequent labors had been undisturbed by emotional storms. Twice she had refused offers of marriage, but they had come from men for whom she felt no more than the merest pa.s.sing friendship. She had worked hard, and the farther she had progressed the more pleasure she had taken in her work and the more absorbed she had become in her prospects and ambitions. Looking into the future, for which she had planned and toward which she was working with all her powers, she said calmly to herself that it was more attractive to her than any other. And yet, would she be tempted to give up her ambitions and hopes of achievement if, for instance, she were to meet a man as well endowed in mind and heart as the hero of the book she had just been reading,--with such fineness of fibre and such power of loving? She would not face the question squarely, but told herself that she was not at all likely to meet such a paragon.

"And, at any rate," she thought, as she was roused from her reverie by the cry of "Dinner now ready in the dining-car," "of one thing I am very sure, and that is that I shall never marry until I meet a man strong enough in himself and in his love for me to make me forget everything else and not care whether or not I go on with my profession."

The dining-car was so full that she was about to turn back, when the waiter beckoned her to a table at which the two forward seats were unoccupied. She took one with some hesitation and turned her face toward the window.

"I beg your pardon," said a voice from the other side of the table, "but if you find it disagreeable to ride backward won't you take my seat? I do not mind it in the least."

She turned with a smiling and grateful refusal upon her tongue, saw that her two neighbors across the table were the men from the section in front of hers, and hesitated. The other man quickly added his plea to his companion's, and in a few moments they had changed seats. The one who had first spoken asked if her friends in Philadelphia got safely off the car, and presently all three were chatting pleasantly together.

When Elizabeth returned to the Pullman the one who had proposed exchanging seats, and whom his friend called Adams, brought her some evening papers. She thanked him, and, seeing that he did not at once turn away, asked him to sit down. They talked about the news in the papers, laughed over stories which one or the other told, branched off upon books, and were pleased to find that they had some favorites in common. They spoke of the scenery through which they had pa.s.sed during the day and of the brilliant sunset into which the train seemed to be plunging, and he told her of the gorgeous sunset panoramas of the Rocky Mountains and of striking effects he had seen among the snow-clad peaks of the Sierras. He related adventures into which his profession, that of mining engineer, had taken him; and Elizabeth listened with interest, asked questions, made comments, and talked entertainingly, but said nothing of her own walk in life. When finally he said good-night and went to rejoin his companion in the smoker, the evening was so far gone that the busy porter had transformed the car into a lane of tapestry.

As Elizabeth lay in her berth, musing pleasantly over the events of the evening, it occurred to her that Mr. Adams had left a number of openings into which it would have been easy for her to step with some remark about herself or her work, which would have revealed her vocation. She had not done so merely because something else which she wanted to say had happened, each time, to come into her mind. Thinking it over, she remembered so many such openings that it seemed as if they must have been made with intent. She wondered if he had been trying to find out her occupation, and smiled gleefully.

"If that's what he wants to know," she thought, "I 'll give him an interesting time to-morrow trying to find out. I wonder if he and his friend have made a wager about what my profession is. Very likely.

Well, he 's a good talker and interesting enough to help pa.s.s the time; and if he wants to try again to-morrow, I 'll be at home in this section until we reach Chicago."

The next morning, with the excuse of some trivial attention to her comfort, Adams came again to Elizabeth's seat and they were soon talking as interestedly as on the previous evening. A piece of news in the morning paper gave him opportunity to turn the conversation upon the profession of teaching for women and he talked of the n.o.ble work for the public good which women do in that way. Elizabeth listened with a little gleam in the corner of her eye, agreed with him warmly and spoke with enthusiasm of her own indebtedness to some of those under whom she had studied.

Then Adams dwelt on the widening opportunities for work and self-expression which women have nowadays, and said he thought that the profession of medicine was one for which women were well fitted, and that he was not surprised that so many women found in it congenial work and marked success. With some effort Elizabeth kept her face very serious and doubted if the profession was one for which any but the most exceptional women were suited, and, on the whole, was inclined to think that if she were very ill she would rather call a man than a woman physician. He led the talk on to other occupations in which women engage, and some Elizabeth praised and others deprecated as vocations for her s.e.x. But not once did she give any indication that they had touched upon her own kind of work. Adams looked puzzled and Elizabeth concealed behind her handkerchief a smile which she was not able to repress.

"I wonder what it can be," he thought. "She surely does something.

The expression of her face, her intelligence, and her interest in all kinds of things tell that very plainly. I wish Chicago were not so near. She 's an extremely interesting woman."

"I suppose I shall soon have to bid you good-bye," he said, as they neared the station in Chicago. "I have enjoyed our brief acquaintance very much, and if I can be of any a.s.sistance to you in Chicago I shall be glad to do so. I am going farther west, to California, on the Santa Fe line, but as my train does not leave at once I shall have some time to spare."

"Why, what a jolly coincidence!" Elizabeth exclaimed. "I also am going to California on the Santa Fe line!"

"Indeed! Then I am more fortunate than I expected to be!" His pleasure shone in his brightening face. "My friend, Mr. Wilson, stops in Chicago and I have been rather dreading the boredom of the rest of the trip. I don't read much on the cars, as I have to be careful of my eyes, and the time is apt to hang heavily on my hands. I have enjoyed our talks so much that I shall be very grateful if you will let me pay you an occasional visit during the rest of the journey."

Elizabeth cast him a sidewise glance and smile. "I think the pa.s.sing acquaintances one makes now and then and the brief friendships with people who merely cross one's path are among the most delightful of the small things of life. It often happens that they are more pleasant, for the time, than the old friendships that have lasted so long they have become commonplace."

"For my part," he answered, "I don't think a friendship is worth continuing after it has become commonplace. I think I 'd like to be arbiter of manners and customs long enough to make it quite the proper thing to march up to any one whose appearance you like and say, 'How do you do? Your face interests me and I 'd like to know you. Here 's my card.'"

"Oh, if you 'll do that," smiled Elizabeth, "I 'll do my best to help make you dictator! I've so often wished to do that very thing! But of course you don't dare. And yet you see such interesting faces, sometimes, faces of people you know you would like. Sometimes a face of that sort haunts me long afterward, and I almost wish I had had the courage to speak."

"I am glad you understand," Adams replied with a little embarra.s.sed laugh, "because now I can confess that that very desire took possession of me when I saw you come into the car yesterday."

Elizabeth bent a demure glance upon his feet. "Shall I be very gracious and make a reciprocal confession, or shall I be entirely truthful and admit that I scarcely saw you yesterday until you offered me your seat in the dining-car?"

The next day, as the train swept through the emerald levels of Iowa, Adams spent most of the time at Elizabeth's side and they talked together with constant interest and satisfaction, each feeling a growing pleasure in the other's society, and an increasing sense of consequence in whatever the other said. When Elizabeth withdrew that night behind the curtains of her berth she was possessed by such a feeling of elation as she had not felt in a long time. A smile was on her lips, and a smile was in her heart. Her pulse beat fast, her brain was active, she could not sleep. Her mind was full of the happenings and the conversation of the last two days, and all that he had said to her she went over again with vivid remembrance of the least details of look and gesture. And in the background of her consciousness a triumphant refrain was keeping time with her thoughts. "He loves me,"

it chanted, "already he loves me, more than he knows."

In the smoking-room Adams was making up for the cigars he had denied himself during the day. He moved about restlessly, possessed by an intense desire to get out of doors and walk fast and far. His mind was filled by a galloping troop of vivid memories--a pair of bright, dark-lashed gray eyes, the sound of a low, clear laugh, the turn of a rosy cheek, an opinion which had interested him, a pretty thought, a way she had of smiling appealingly after she had said something whimsical or perverse. And underlying and overlying and penetrating through all these was an irritated consciousness of the fact that it would be a long time until the next day.

Dr. Black looked out the next morning on the wide, forlorn plains of western Kansas, with her heart as flooded with happiness as they were with sunshine. A luxurious sense of power throbbed in her veins as she smiled a good-morning to Adams across the aisle. He came at once to ask how she had slept, and if she was beginning to feel the journey wearisome. Close upon the heels of her thrilling sense of gladness and mastery came the feminine instinct of concealment, and presently Adams began to notice in her manner a suggestion of reserve. There was certainly a difference, he said to himself, a little lessening of the frank comradeship she had shown toward him the day before. He wondered if he bored her, if he had shown too much desire for her society. He went away to the smoking car, where he fidgeted about, began a cigar, threw it out of the window, and in ten minutes was back again with a book he had fished out of his travelling-bag, asking if Miss Black had read it and, if not,--would she like to take it for a while?

It was Lubbock's "Pleasures of Life." No, Elizabeth had not read it, but she had read Lubbock's book on ants, bees, and wasps, and she began to tell him about it, forgetting in the pleasure of companionship the consciousness which a little while before had veiled her manner. He followed with some stories about the tarantula and tarantula hawk which he had seen while on a professional trip in the Southwest. And so they wandered on, through talk about insects and animals, back to the book which lay on Elizabeth's lap. He took it up and read to her a page here and there, and soon they were talking earnestly about the varied ideals that are possible to the young and ambitious.

Adams had not tried again, since their second conversation, to find out her vocation. His pleasure in her society had driven all thought of it from his mind. He had even forgotten that he had ever supposed her to have a profession. Elizabeth had said nothing about her work, at first from whimsical perversity. But this morning, as they talked, a definite desire crept into her mind that he should not know.

"I shall not tell him I am a physician," she thought. "It's not much longer, and for this little while I want to be just a mere woman."

And for the rest of that day it was only at rare intervals, and even then with a little shock of surprise, like that with which one suddenly comes upon some old picture of himself, that she remembered she was a doctor of medicine. The physician was submerged in the woman. And the woman was alive to her finger-tips with realization of her endowment of the "eternal feminine."

Adams slept little that night, but lay with his head on his interlocked hands, staring out of his window at the fleeting shadows of the summer night, thinking of Elizabeth, remembering what Elizabeth had said during the day, seeing Elizabeth's face and eyes and the bit of white throat that showed above her collar, hearing Elizabeth's voice, and longing to touch, with even a finger-tip, the sweep of soft brown hair that rippled away from her neck. It seemed to him that morning would never come. He looked at his watch a score of times, and, finally, rose at the first flush of dawn.

For a while he moved restlessly back and forth between his section and the smoking-room, like an uneasy ghost of murdered sleep. But at last it occurred to him that he ought to stay out until Miss Black was ready for breakfast, lest he might embarra.s.s her by being near when she should emerge from behind her curtains in morning dishabille. So he retired to the smoker, gave the porter a goodly fee to tell him when the lady in Number 8 arose, and sat down resolutely at the window with his elbows on the sill and his chin in his hands. He sat there determinedly, not allowing himself even to turn around, through what seemed hours and hours of time. Now and then he dozed a little, and awoke with a start, dreaming he had heard her voice beside him or had felt the ripple of her dress against his hand.