The Indiscreet Letter

The Indiscreet Letter, by Eleanor
Hallowell

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Hallowell Abbott
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Title: The Indiscreet Letter
Author: Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
Release Date: April 29, 2005 [eBook #15728]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
INDISCREET LETTER***
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THE INDISCREET LETTER

by
ELEANOR HALLOWELL ABBOTT
Author of Molly Make Believe, The Sick-A-Bed Lady, etc., etc.
New York The Century Co.
1915

THE INDISCREET LETTER
The Railroad Journey was very long and slow. The Traveling Salesman
was rather short and quick. And the Young Electrician who lolled
across the car aisle was neither one length nor another, but most
inordinately flexible, like a suit of chain armor.
More than being short and quick, the Traveling Salesman was distinctly
fat and unmistakably dressy in an ostentatiously new and pure-looking
buff-colored suit, and across the top of the shiny black sample-case that
spanned his knees he sorted and re-sorted with infinite earnestness a
large and varied consignment of "Ladies' Pink and Blue Ribbed
Undervests." Surely no other man in the whole southward-bound
Canadian train could have been at once so ingenuous and so
nonchalant.
There was nothing dressy, however, about the Young Electrician. From
his huge cowhide boots to the lead smouch that ran from his rough,
square chin to the very edge of his astonishingly blond curls, he was
one delicious mess of toil and old clothes and smiling, blue-eyed
indifference. And every time that he shrugged his shoulders or crossed
his knees he jingled and jangled incongruously among his coil-boxes
and insulators, like some splendid young Viking of old, half blacked up
for a modern minstrel show.
More than being absurdly blond and absurdly messy, the Young
Electrician had one of those extraordinarily sweet, extraordinarily vital,

strangely mysterious, utterly unexplainable masculine faces that fill
your senses with an odd, impersonal disquietude, an itching unrest, like
the hazy, teasing reminder of some previous existence in a prehistoric
cave, or, more tormenting still, with the tingling, psychic prophecy of
some amazing emotional experience yet to come. The sort of face, in
fact, that almost inevitably flares up into a woman's startled vision at
the one crucial moment in her life when she is not supposed to be
considering alien features.
Out from the servient shoulders of some smooth-tongued Waiter it
stares, into the scared dilating pupils of the White Satin Bride with her
pledged hand clutching her Bridegroom's sleeve. Up from the gravelly,
pick-and-shovel labor of the new-made grave it lifts its weirdly
magnetic eyes to the Widow's tears. Down from some petted
Princeling's silver-trimmed saddle horse it smiles its electrifying,
wistful smile into the Peasant's sodden weariness. Across the slender
white rail of an always out-going steamer it stings back into your gray,
land-locked consciousness like the tang of a scarlet spray. And the
secret of the face, of course, is "Lure"; but to save your soul you could
not decide in any specific case whether the lure is the lure of
personality, or the lure of physiognomy--a mere accidental,
coincidental, haphazard harmony of forehead and cheek-bone and
twittering facial muscles.
Something, indeed, in the peculiar set of the Young Electrician's jaw
warned you quite definitely that if you should ever even so much as
hint the small, sentimental word "lure" to him he would most certainly
"swat" you on first impulse for a maniac, and on second impulse for a
liar--smiling at you all the while in the strange little wrinkly tissue
round his eyes.
The voice of the Railroad Journey was a dull, vague, conglomerate,
cinder-scented babble of grinding wheels and shuddering window
frames; but the voices of the Traveling Salesman and the Young
Electrician were shrill, gruff, poignant, inert, eternally variant, after the
manner of human voices which are discussing the affairs of the
universe.

"Every man," affirmed the Traveling Salesman sententiously--"every
man has written one indiscreet letter during his lifetime!"
"Only one?" scoffed the Young Electrician with startling distinctness
above even the loudest roar and rumble of the train.
With a rather faint, rather gaspy chuckle of amusement the Youngish
Girl in the seat just behind the Traveling Salesman reached forward
then and touched him very gently on the shoulder.
"Oh, please, may I listen?" she asked quite frankly.
With a smile as benevolent as it was surprised, the Traveling Salesman
turned half-way around in his seat and eyed her quizzically across the
gold rim of his spectacles.
"Why, sure