Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories

by Florence Finch Kelly

"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 passing 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 embarrassed 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.