She sighed and looked apathetically at the swiftly flying suburbs they were passing through. This was Comley, where Cathy Brent lived. They hadn’t any classes together, and Cathy had always come up on the train. Another girl she didn’t know very well, and didn’t care whether she ever saw again or not. But still, Cathy was a link between the old life in which Mother had been the center, and the emptiness of today. Cathy Brent was likely married by now to Jack Holley. They hadn’t done much else during the last year of school but saunter around the sidewalks surrounding the school building, or loiter in the halls on rainy days. How fast time went!
Or did it? It certainly wasn’t going rapidly now. This journey to the city station seemed interminable, and interwoven everywhere with memories of things that were gone.
Then suddenly they slid into the big station, and Rose gathered up her coat and her two suitcases and went on her way.
She shook her head at the red-capped porter who offered to take her baggage. The habit of her upbringing was upon her. She was able to save the few cents it would have cost, and there were things she might need more later. Of course, if Mother had been along, they had planned to have a porter carry their luggage. But now it wasn’t necessary.
She walked slowly, looking sadly among her fellow travelers. She didn’t know one of them. She felt terribly desolate. Already she was in an unknown world of strangers.
Since she had her ticket to New York, she went straight to the escalator and reached the upper platform where the New York train would arrive.
She found an empty seat on the long line of benches and put her suitcases at her feet. How happy she had expected to be when she reached this stage of their journey! And now it was all blank and sad! Mother wasn’t along! Mother’s dear precious body was lying in the quiet little corner of Shandon Cemetery, and her spirit was up in heaven with the Lord. Somehow it seemed to put her mother so very far away to think of that, as if she had become a different order of being who would not understand her child’s loneliness, till suddenly it came to her that Mother couldn’t be like that. Mother, if she was conscious—and she had always been taught to believe that the dead in Christ were conscious, and with the Lord—would remember her child, and love her, and be thinking of her as she journeyed alone.
That thought was comforting, but it almost brought the tears, and she mustn’t weep, here in the station. Mother wouldn’t want her to go away weeping.
She sat up straight and smiled a feeble little smile at a baby in a woman’s arms, a solid little baby who was interested only in her thumb, which she was sucking violently. But Rose continued to smile at the baby until for an instant, she beamed forth with a toothless, gurgling smile. Strange that an ugly whimpering little baby could suddenly smile like that! For no reason at all, it seemed to cheer her. And then the light on the signal flashed, brightly announcing the arrival of the train, and Rose stood and gathered her things together.
The train swept up in a businesslike manner, and the porters rushed over the platform.
Following the direction of the voice that roared out from the signal box, Rose found the right coach and hurried in, relieved to discover she could have a whole seat to herself.
She settled back and closed her eyes for a minute until the train was in motion and the people who had flocked in after her had settled down and got their belongings established in the racks overhead. Then there was the bustle of the conductor coming for tickets and the intermittent stoppings at other stations farther out of the city.
For a little while she was intrigued with looking at the towns they passed. She had heard their names before, and often wondered what kind of places they were. Now she studied their roofs and towers and rundown buildings. After all, you couldn’t see much from a railroad train. People didn’t live near a railroad if they could help it. The quiet lovely part of the towns was far away, hidden under the trees. She dropped her head back and closed her eyes again. She was deadly weary. It was good just to close her eyes and rest. If she only could get away from her thoughts for a little while! But then there was the waking up! It was so terrible to wake to the thought that her mother was gone, for the rest of Rose’s time on earth!
That was the last she remembered until she heard the conductor asking the woman with the baby if she wanted to get off at the Pennsylvania station, or to go to downtown New York. Then she came to herself in a panic and gathered her senses in a hurry. There was no one but herself to depend upon. She must not miss her boat!
She got out her directions and looked them over, though she had memorized them the night before. She wanted to be sure she hadn’t forgotten anything. She was to take a taxi to the wharf. That would take care of her baggage too. She glanced over the directions the ticket agent had written out for her. He used to live in New York and he knew just what she ought to do, even to the exact spot where she would find a cheap restaurant where she could get a bite to eat before she went on board, if there was much time before sailing.
Through the rush and noise of the traffic in New York City she paid very little heed to the city itself, which had always held glamor for her. She had meant to look for the place where her mother had lived when she first came to this country, and the old location where her father had a clerking job for a time until he secured a better position in another city, but somehow the taxi didn’t take the direction her mother had thought it would from the station, or else by the time she got accustomed to reading the street signs, they were too far downtown for her to identify anything.
And then they were at the wharf! It was time to pay her fare and get out.
Arrived at last at the little cubicle that she and her mother had selected with such care from the ship’s diagram, she sat down on the side of the bed with her baggage at her feet and stared blankly at the opposite wall. She was in a place at last where she had to stay, at least for a few days. She did not have to nerve herself up for the next act. She could sit right here all night if she wanted to and no one had the right to tell her she couldn’t!
It was then she felt the tempest of tears coming, the first tear stinging its way out from under her closed lids, and rolling boldly down her white cheek, and then there was an army of them coming with a rush. In an instant she would be down, conquered, giving way before her broken young heart, she who had meant to be so brave! But it was of no use to try further. She was done!
Then suddenly she was startled by a voice going by her stateroom door. “All ashore that’s going ashore! All ashore that’s going ashore!” Ringing footsteps hurried on, the clarion voice continuing the warning.
Within her heart came a sudden fierce yearning to see this parting from the shore of her native land, to take one more glimpse of the country that had been the scene of her life thus far, and she sprang up, dashing away those few tears that had ventured out.
A more sophisticated girl would have gone at once to the tiny mirror and done things to her eyes, which were no doubt red from even those few tears. She would have gotten out a powder puff to remove the suggestion of tears, and a neat little lipstick to hide the lack of a smile on her trembling lips. But Rose Galbraith had never been very conscious of self or appearance. She had worn plain, sometimes faded, often made-over garments, and shoes that had had to be carefully polished not to show their shabbiness. She had carried it all off with a grace, even in the company of better-dressed people, just because she wasn’t expecting to make a good appearance, and wasn’t thinking about it enough to worry.
And so she went along the corridor from her little cubicle to the deck, remembering well how she and her mother had traced the way again and again with a pencil along the diagram of the ship. She arrived just in time to get a place next to the rail where she could look down to the dock. A great throng were standing there, and many more were hurrying down the gangplank to mingle with them and turn to look back at their friends on the boat.
Rose looked down on that cheering throng and couldn’t see a face she had ever seen b
efore. Of course. She hadn’t expected to. But it gave her a most desolate feeling. A quick fear came that she might be going to cry again. She shouldn’t have come out here, of course. She might have known it would only make her homesick to see all these happy people going off to have a good time, with so many to see them off. And she hadn’t anybody in the world to say good-bye to her!
Of course those relatives to whom she was going might be kind enough to welcome her when she got to Scotland, even sorry to see her go if she ever could come back again, but they didn’t know her yet. She had never so much as seen them; it probably would not matter much to them if she never got there.
Well, she must stop such thoughts if she didn’t want to be disgraced right here among a lot of strangers. She would try and find something amusing to look at down on the wharf. There was a man holding a little child in his arms, and the child was shouting funny little farewells to some playmate who was sailing. She looked at the bright face of the little playmate near the rail beside her and almost envied her joy. A pleasant looking man and woman were with her. She wasn’t going off on a journey alone.
She turned her attention to a group off at the right. They were saying good-bye, happily.
“Now, Herbert, don’t you and Gladys turn the house upside down while we’re gone off pleasuring,” admonished the pretty white-haired mother, obviously talking to a handsome son whose wife was bidding the father-in-law good-bye.
She turned sharply to the left, and there were more people saying last things to dear ones. On every hand everyone but herself had someone who had cared enough to come down and bid farewell. It brought a great lump into her throat, and she was having another struggle with her tears. How silly! Tears! Because there wasn’t anybody, not anybody to say good-bye to her.
Of course there had been people in Shandon to whom she might have paid farewell visits, and they would have been kind. Maybe would have given her little gifts or something to remember them by, but she just hadn’t had the courage to go around and hear them tell how they had loved her mother and how sad it was that she was gone. It was her own fault that she had said good-bye to so few. There was Harry Fitch. If she had given him half a chance, he would have offered to bring her all the way up to New York in his car and see her off. He would have brought his sister Mary along perhaps, or maybe John Peters, or that silly Fannie Heathrow. They would have stood down there on the dock and yelled things she couldn’t hear, and laughed and carried on the way that crowd down there near the man with the child were doing, and she would have been mortified to death and been only too glad to sail away into oblivion out of their reach. Oh, she ought to be glad there were no people like that down on the wharf to see her off!
So she tried to smile, and most unexpectedly there came great, fat, hot tears plunging down her cheeks and splashing on her hand on the railing. Someone who was passing, a young man in well-cut tweeds, paused and looked down at her.
She decided not to look up till he had gone on, because she was just sure another tear was on its way down and would be sure to fall right before him. She mustn’t be seen crying, even by a stranger.
So with eyes downcast, she stood there and sighted the neat creases in the tweed trouser legs there just at one side.
But he wasn’t moving on. Was he just going to stand there? She lifted an investigating glance and met a puzzled gaze looking down at her. And then a friendly voice asked in an astonished tone:
“Why, isn’t this Rose Galbraith? It surely is! What are you doing here? Not leaving the country, are you?”
Then she looked up with a radiant face. “Oh,” she said with a great relief in her glance, “why, it’s Gordon McCarroll! I’m so glad you spoke to me! I was just feeling awfully forlorn because everybody else seemed to have someone around who knew them, and I didn’t have anyone to even say good-bye to.”
Rose looked up with her lashes all dewy and gave a shamed shy little smile, like a child that was embarrassed.
The young man looked down at her with a kind smile.
“Say, now, that’s tough. I certainly am glad I happened along! The company sent me here with some papers for an Englishman who is sailing on this boat, and I didn’t dream I’d see anybody I knew. Say, are you going over for the summer? Just a trip? My! I wish I were going! I love the water, and maybe we could get really acquainted. But I’ve got a regular job now and haven’t any time for playing around in Europe. I suppose you’ll have a great time. Where did you say you were going?”
“I’m going to Scotland,” said Rose soberly, almost sadly.
“But say! Aren’t you thrilled? I’ve never been to Scotland, and I’ve always been crazy to go, ever since I read those books we had in lit class. I liked them so much I read a lot of others too. I want to see Loch Lomond and Loch Katrine, and all the others. But you don’t seem very happy about it. Aren’t you anticipating a good time?”
Rose dropped her gaze for an instant and drew a deep trembling sigh, with just a faint glimmer of a smile on her lips as she looked up.
“I’m not feeling very happy about it just now,” she said, drawing a deep quick breath to keep the tears back, “because you see, Mother and I were going together. It is Mother’s native land, and she was so happy to be taking me back there to show me everything. But just last week she went home to heaven to live.”
“Oh!” said the young man with a great gentleness in his voice. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know. And now it is going to be very hard for you.”
Rose struggled to answer, but instead two great tears swelled out and rolled down her cheeks, and she could only lift her tear-drenched eyes to his face for an instant’s apology and then look down again. Suddenly the young man reached out both his hands and took her small trembling hands in his.
“I am so very, very sorry,” he said tenderly, and as she lifted her eyes again she met a deeply sympathetic glance. “I know how hard it must be for you,” he said, “I have a very dear mother myself.”
She flashed a look that was half a smile, yet full of sudden sorrow.
“I thought you would have a mother like that,” she said shyly.
There was an answering glow in his eyes and his fingers pressed hers again as they still held them lightly.
“Thank you,” he said appreciatively. Then after an instant of quiet he asked, “And now, who are you with?”
“Just myself,” she said with a sad little smile.
“Oh, that’s too bad,” he said sympathetically. “I wish there were somebody on board I knew to whom I could introduce you. But you’ll get acquainted.”
“Perhaps,” she said wistfully. “But I guess I don’t get to know people easily. That was why I was glad to have you speak to me. It seemed so strange and lonely here.”
“I’m glad I was here!” he said with a sunny smile, and then his handclasp gave a quick close pressure, and it was not till then that either of them realized that he was still holding her hands. Their eyes suddenly met and they laughed, a happy little friendly laugh. What would people think about it? It didn’t occur to them. Other people about them were doing the same thing. Husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, parents and children, lovers, who had a right to be holding hands. They were only schoolmates. Yet because of her need and his nearness, it seemed quite right for her hands to be lying in his in this pleasant, protected, comforting way.
Then suddenly out of the melee of laughter and tears and farewells came the screeching of the siren and the voice of the ship’s official, calling, “All ashore that’s going ashore! Last call!”
People all about gave a moan and started away from the rail, making for the exit, leaving Rose and Gordon in a little space by themselves. Farewell kisses and laughter and last words were in the air, and Rose realized that her friend was going! In a moment more she would be standing here alone again, but she would have his friendly words to remember, and his smile, his kindliness, the warm clasp of his strong hands on hers.
Then came another
warning whistle.
“I must go!” he said. “I’m sorry. But—we are friends, aren’t we? And—you will be coming back, won’t you? When?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said sadly.
“Oh, but where are you going? I must have your address!”
She murmured the name of the little Scottish town to which she was going. Her hands were still in his clasp.
“Have you friends there?”
“Yes, my uncle, John Galbraith. It’s Kilcreggan.”
“Write me, please, as soon as you land, and again when you reach where you’re staying. I shall be anxious to know how the trip went. Will you?”
“Yes,” she breathed shyly, “if you want me to.”
“I certainly do!” he said fervently.
“Last call!” came the echo from below.
Suddenly he stooped and laid his lips on hers in a warm, friendly kiss. “Good-bye!” he said earnestly. With another lingering pressure of her hands he let them go and hurried away.
Then, just at the head of the steps, he flung back and pressed a card in her hand.
“My present address,” he said breathlessly. “Don’t forget to write at once!”
And then he was gone, so swiftly and so fully that his presence seemed almost like something that had not been. Yet she still felt the warmth of his handclasp on her hands, the thrill of his good-bye kiss on her lips, and her cheeks were glowing with the memory.
Chapter 2
Rose stood for several minutes searching before she could find him in that crowd waiting down below. The gangplank had been hauled in, and she leaned over the rail and watched breathlessly, searching the throng. Would he perhaps be carried along and have to go back on the pilot boat? It would be her fault if that should happen to him.