The Eyes of the World | Page 5

Harold Bell Wright
of the window. To their idly
observing fellow passengers, the woman, too, appeared interested in the
distant landscape. She might have been looking at the only other
occupant of the platform. The passengers, from where they sat, could
not have told.
As he stood there,--against the background of the primitive,
many-colored landscape,--the young man might easily have attracted
the attention of any one. He would have attracted attention in a crowd.
Tall, with an athletic trimness of limb, a good breadth of shoulder, and
a fine head poised with that natural, unconscious pride of the
well-bred--he kept his feet on the unsteady platform of the car with that
easy grace which marks only well-conditioned muscles, and is rarely
seen save in those whose lives are sanely clean.
The Express had entered the yards at the summit station, and was
gradually lessening its speed. Just as the man turned to enter the car,

the train came to a full stop, and the sudden jar threw him almost into
the arms of the woman. For an instant, while he was struggling to
regain his balance, he was so close to her that their garments touched.
Indeed, he only prevented an actual collision by throwing his arm
across her shoulder and catching the side of the car window against
which she was leaning.
In that moment, while his face was so close to hers that she might have
felt his breath upon her cheek and he was involuntarily looking straight
into her eyes, the man felt, queerly, that the woman was not shrinking
from him. In fact, one less occupied with other thoughts might have
construed her bold, open look, her slightly parted lips and flushed
cheeks, as a welcome--quite as though she were in the habit of having
handsome young men throw themselves into her arms.
Then, with a hint of a smile in his eyes, he was saying, conventionally,
"I beg your pardon. It was very stupid of me."
As he spoke, a mask of cold indifference slipped over her face. Without
deigning to notice his courteous apology, she looked away, and,
moving to the railing of the platform, became ostensibly interested in
the busy activity of the railroad yards.
Had the woman--in that instant when his arm was over her shoulder
and his eyes were looking into hers--smiled, the incident would have
slipped quickly from his mind. As it was, the flash-like impression of
the moment remained, and--
Down the steep grade of the narrow San Timateo Canyon, on the coast
side of the mountain pass, the Overland thundered on the last stretch of
its long race to the western edge of the continent. And now, from the
car windows, the passengers caught tantalizing glimpses of bright
pastures with their herds of contented dairy cows, and with their white
ranch buildings set in the shade of giant pepper and eucalyptus trees.
On the rounded shoulders and steep flanks of the foothills that form the
sides of the canyon, the barley fields looked down upon the meadows;
and, now and then, in the whirling landscape winding side
canyons--beautiful with live-oak and laurel, with greasewood and

sage--led the eye away toward the pine-fringed ridges of the Galenas
while above, the higher snow-clad peaks and domes of the San
Bernardinos still shone coldly against the blue.
In the Pullman, there was a stir of awakening interest The
travel-wearied passengers, laying aside books and magazines and cards,
renewed conversations that, in the last monotonous hours of the desert
part of the journey, had lagged painfully. Throughout the train, there
was an air of eager expectancy; a bustling movement of preparation.
The woman of the observation car platform had disappeared into her
stateroom. The young man gathered his things together in readiness to
leave the train at the next stop.
In the flying pictures framed by the windows, the dairy pastures and
meadows were being replaced by small vineyards and orchards; the
canyon wall, on the northern side, became higher and steeper, shutting
out the mountains in the distance and showing only a fringe of trees on
the sharp rim; while against the gray and yellow and brown and green
of the chaparral on the steep, untilled bluffs, shone the silvery softness
of the olive trees that border the arroyo at their feet.
With a long, triumphant shriek, the flying overland train--from the
lands of ice and snow--from barren deserts and lonely
mountains--rushed from the narrow mouth of the canyon, and swept
out into the beautiful San Bernardino Valley where the travelers were
greeted by wide, green miles of orange and lemon and walnut and olive
groves--by many acres of gardens and vineyards and orchards. Amid
these groves and gardens, the towns and cities are set; their streets and
buildings half hidden in wildernesses of eucalyptus and
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