The Eyes of the World | Page 4

I could do--for you--my son--the only
way--I could--help. I do not--regret the cost. You will--not forget?"
"Never, mother, never."
"You promise--to--to regain that--which--your father--"
Solemnly the answer came,--in an agony of devotion and love,--"I
promise--yes, mother, I promise."
* * * * *
A month later, the young man was traveling, as fast as modern steam
and steel could carry him, toward the western edge of the continent.
He was flying from the city of his birth, as from a place accursed. He
had set his face toward a new land--determined to work out, there, his
promise--the promise that he did not, at the first, understand.
How he misunderstood,--how he attempted to use his inheritance to
carry out what he first thought was his mother's wish,--and how he
came at last to understand, is the story that I have to tell.
Chapter II
The Woman with the Disfigured Face

The Golden State Limited, with two laboring engines, was climbing the
desert side of San Gorgonio Pass.
Now San Gorgonio Pass--as all men should know--is one of the two
eastern gateways to the beautiful heart of Southern California. It is,
therefore, the gateway to the scenes of my story.

As the heavy train zigzagged up the long, barren slope of the mountain,
in its effort to lessen the heavy grade, the young man on the platform of
the observation car could see, far to the east, the shimmering, sun-filled
haze that lies, always, like a veil of mystery, over the vast reaches of
the Colorado Desert. Now and then, as the Express swung around the
curves, he gained a view of the lonely, snow-piled peaks of the San
Bernardinos; with old San Gorgonio, lifting above the pine-fringed
ridges of the lower Galenas, shining, silvery white, against the blue.
Again, on the southern side of the pass, he saw San Jacinto's crags and
cliffs rising almost sheer from the right-of-way.
But the man watching the ever-changing panorama of gorgeously
colored and fantastically unreal landscape was not thinking of the
scenes that, to him, were new and strange. His thoughts were far away.
Among those mountains grouped about San Gorgonio, the real value of
the inheritance he had received from his mother was to be tested. On
the pine-fringed ridge of the Galenas, among those granite cliffs and
jagged peaks, the mettle of his manhood was to be tried under a strain
such as few men in this commonplace work-a-day old world
are-subjected to. But the young man did not know this.
On the long journey across the continent, he had paid little heed to the
sights that so interested his fellow passengers. To his fellow passengers,
themselves, he had been as indifferent. To those who had approached
him casually, as the sometimes tedious hours passed, he had been
quietly and courteously unresponsive. This well-bred but decidedly
marked disinclination to mingle with them, together with the
undeniably distinguished appearance of the young man, only served to
center the interest of the little world of the Pullmans more strongly
upon him. Keeping to himself, and engrossed with his own thoughts, he
became the object of many idle conjectures.
Among the passengers whose curious eyes were so often turned in his
direction, there was one whose interest was always carefully veiled.
She was a woman of evident rank and distinction in that world where
rank and distinction are determined wholly by dollars and by such
social position as dollars can buy. She was beautiful; but with that

carefully studied, wholly self-conscious--one is tempted to say
professional--beauty of her kind. Her full rounded, splendidly
developed body was gowned to accentuate the alluring curves of her
sex. With such skill was this deliberate appeal to the physical hidden
under a cloak of a pretending modesty that its charm was the more
effectively revealed. Her features were almost too perfect. She was too
coldly sure of herself--too perfectly trained in the art of self-repression.
For a woman as young as she evidently was, she seemed to know too
much. The careful indifference of her countenance seemed to say, "I
am too well schooled in life to make mistakes." She was traveling with
two companions--a fluffy, fluttering, characterless shadow of
womanhood, and a man--an invalid who seldom left the privacy of the
drawing-room which he occupied.
As the train neared the summit of the pass, the young man on the
observation car platform looked at his watch. A few miles more and he
would arrive at his destination. Rising to his feet, he drew a deep breath
of the glorious, sun-filled air. With his back to the door, and looking
away into the distance, he did not notice the woman who, stepping
from the car at that moment, stood directly behind him, steadying
herself by the brass railing in front