Rose Galbraith (2 page)

She left her suitcases at the station in care of the old station-master whom she had known since she was a little girl. He had arranged about her ticket to New York and told her about the trains.

She went across the street to the little real estate office where they paid their rent, to leave the key of their apartment, and then she came back to the station and sat down drearily on the bench that ran across the front of the building. There was no one about there with whom she could claim any degree of intimacy, although there were a number whose names she knew, and where they lived and what was their general station in life. But they had probably never heard of her, nor even seen her to notice her, except as she might have passed them on her way from school in a group of girls.

The conductor helped her lift her suitcases onto the train, and she dropped into the seat nearest the door. It wasn't far to the city where she would get her New York train. She didn't care where she sat.

But then she looked out the window, catching her last glimpses of the post office, the grocery stores, the drugstore, the little shoe shop where she had had her shoes mended so often, the garage, the church spires in the distance among the trees, the college on the hill, and lastly, as the train gathered full speed and swept around the curve out of town, the big stone high school where she had gone so regularly. She might never see it again. Would she miss it? Although it was nearly two years since she had graduated, it still seemed closely associated with her life, the background of all her contacts with young people her age.

There were the new tennis courts. There were people playing on them now. She couldn't tell who they were. Perhaps not anyone she knew, for this was vacation, and there were likely to be strangers in town.

Then the train passed on and they were lost to view. She had a sudden quick yearning for one more glimpse of the old schoolhouse before it passed out of her life forever. She leaned forward and stretched her neck to look back, catching only a far flash of the old gray stone building; then the long low shed where they parked their bicycles hid it from view till the tall hedge wiped it out entirely. They went around another curve, and the old life was gone, gone!

She closed her eyes, and the big sunny room of her school days flashed into her vision again. She saw the long aisles. The long pleasant stretch of blackboards, with windows at intervals, the neat separate desks. How interesting it had all seemed to her! How she used to love to describe it to her mother when she came home.

She saw again the rows of students, heads bent to books, others staring around and smiling. There was the first row; during her last year, Annette Howells was in the front seat, because she always needed watching, Rose had thought. She never was still. She seldom studied. She was pretty and knew it, and was always trying to attract the attention of the boys across the aisle.

Behind her was Caroline Goodson, a solid, solemn girl, overgrown, and slow of mind. Annette would never bother to chatter to her. Then Shirley Pettigrew, so pretty, and so well dressed. Who sat next? Oh, Jennie Carew, and those girls from South Addison Street. Then up to the front row her mind jumped again. Mary Fithian, then Fannie Heatherow, and then herself.

She went down the line behind her, and wasn't sure of some names. She hadn't been one who turned around much.

The third aisle was all boys. Johnny Peters, Harry Fitch—how they used to carry on whenever the teacher's back was turned as she wrote on the blackboard! And next was Gordon McCarroll across the aisle from herself. Everybody liked him. Everybody had a smile and a cheerful word for him.

Gordon belonged to a wealthy family. He might have gone to an expensive school, but it was whispered that his father preferred the public school. And certainly Gordon never acted as if he were trying to be better than anybody else. He had a genial way with him that showed he counted himself one with them all. Rose was naturally shy, and she rarely went to the school parties, or she would have known him better, she supposed. But though she did not know him well, she had great respect for his bright mind and his straightforward, manly attitude. Of course he had always said “Hello!” to her when he came to his seat in the mornings, but that was about all the contact they had ever had. No—there was the day she had been asked by the teacher to read her essay before the class, and they had clapped so enthusiastically. Gordon had looked up as she came back to her seat and said in a low clear voice, “Swell!” There had been a look in his nice gray eyes that she had not forgotten. That had been the extent of their acquaintance.

Yet now, as the memory of the last year of her school life came so keenly to her heart, his was the only face that stood out vividly.

It was ridiculous, of course, because she didn't really know him at all, and all the fancied virtues she had put upon him might be from herself, and only figments of her imagination. Yet, of them all, he was the only one she felt she would truly miss. Of course she never would have had the opportunity to be real friends with him, even if she stayed in Shandon. Why should she? She had merely lived on the outskirts of Shandon, and he lived on the Heights, in a big lovely stone house, so screened with evergreens that one could scarcely see it from the street. He lived in another world, and had only touched her world in those few school contacts. Someday he would be a great man perhaps—she felt sure from her estimate of him that he would—and she might hear his name and be proud that she had sat across from him at school. Well, that was that!

There was poor Jane Shackelton. Jane was a good girl—not the brightest student, but she always did her best. Rose had often helped her with her mathematics. She didn't even know where Jane was now. She had moved to another part of the state. She had promised to write to her, but Jane wasn't much of a writer. She probably would put it off so long that she wouldn't think it worthwhile. And even if she did, it might not get to her now, though Rose had filled out the card for the postmaster to forward her mail, in spite of the fact that she didn't really expect any. She hadn't had time to be intimate with anybody. There had always been somebody's babies to mind after school, to bring in a few extra dollars to piece out mother's small earnings. And since she left school she had been busy teaching her little music pupils. Well, it didn't matter anymore. Everything was over, Mother was gone, and somehow she didn't have much interest in the new people who would be waiting on the other side of the water.

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.