Ladybird (22 page)

The days on the train seemed like weeks to the girl. She began to grow weary of the confinement, but now they were coming to settlements, nearer and nearer together, and these were sources of great interest—seeing so many houses together, the paved streets, the many automobiles parked around the stations, the people coming and going in crowds until it seemed to her that all the people of the earth must have congregated at one city.

Once there was a real procession passing the station just at the time the train stopped there; in fact, they had come down with brass bands and all their nobility to see off some distinguished guest who was boarding the very train on which she was riding, and Fraley exclaimed at the throng.

“Oh, see, that must be something like the way the children of Israel looked when they started out of Egypt. There are women and children, too; only of course there are no cattle or sheep.”

The lady smiled indulgently, and Fraley, quick to catch the lack of sympathy in her face, flushed softly and closed her lips. She was learning fast not to speak of her Book where it could not be appreciated. Would it always be like that in the new life to which she was going?

But each new town was a new pleasure. She longed to get out of the warm train and walk all over the streets until she knew the place as she would know a friend. What pleasure it would be to travel everywhere and get to know the world as she knew each individual mountain back where she had come from!

Chicago amazed her with its miles of buildings huddled close, and at her first sight of the lake she seemed almost frightened.

“Look!” she cried in an awestruck whisper. “Is that a cloud or what?”

And when she learned it was called a lake—“But it is so big!” she said. “And it melts into the sky in such a strange way. I thought it must be an ocean.”

The lady assured her that the ocean was much larger, and she sat with her face pressed against the window, watching until it was out of sight.

After they left Chicago, the world was a continual revelation to the girl from the mountains. So many, many houses, and people in them all. So many towns and cities, and always more on ahead! The wide and stretching fields all plowed and harrowed and ready for the sowing, the miles of fences, the great barns and storehouses. The groups of cattle and sheep grazing, the comfortable-looking homes, white with green blinds nestled among tall elms, or the large old stone farmhouses that had been there for years and looked to the young stranger as if carved out of her own mountain. She asked more questions than her benefactor could possibly answer, and the woman wondered that a girl could care so much for so many things that seemed to her utterly uninteresting. Why, some of those questions had never occurred to her, though she had traveled through this region all her life. She could not tell why certain types of fences seemed to be used to fence in cattle and why some fields had only stone walls. She did not even know whether there was a reason or it was only a coincidence. She had never noticed that it was so. And it bored her to be asked.

But it continued to interest her to watch this girl, this new type of humanity, as she sat and planned how soon she could turn her into her own kind. Another pretty face on a useless creature of the world. That was what she wanted to make out of this lovely child of God.

And now, at last, New York!

Fraley was so excited she could hardly keep her seat. She wanted to stand up and press her face against the window and watch each new station. She watched the porter curiously as he went from seat to seat brushing off the dust from passengers, polishing shoes, and collecting baggage.

She almost protested when he came and took the handsome bag that now contained all the possessions she had brought from home.

“Perhaps I ought to take my Bible out,” she whispered to the lady. “I mustn’t lose that, you know.”

“He won’t lose it,” laughed the lady. “See, he has all my luggage, too. When we get out there we shall find our bags waiting for us. You will see.”

She was much disappointed that they entered the station through an underground passage. She had thought New York would burst upon her life a vision of the heavenly city, shining and great in the noonday sun, and here they were rushed through darkness, with a ringing in her ears and a strange bursting feeling in her head, and presently arrived in a large walled-in space lined with something that resembled stone, framed above with large stairs and galleries.

She stepped out carefully to the platform that was on a level close to the floor of the car and stood looking up.

“Go on, Fraley; don’t stop to look around now,” whispered the lady. “You are holding up other people.”

Fraley started with quick color in her cheeks and followed Mrs. Wentworth.

They got into a small cage a few steps from where they had stepped out and the door shut, and the whole little bunch of people with them began to rise into the air. It was a very terrible sensation not at all like being in the top of a tree, and Fraley’s face expressed distress. But a glance at her companion showed that amused look that she had learned to dread, and she dropped her frightened gaze and tried to act as if she had been accustomed to ascending mountains in an elevator.

Violet Wentworth knew just what to do. They walked across a large open plain, with many people going in different directions yet all having plenty of room. A loud voice coming from above their heads somewhere announced a train to Washington and another back to the Pacific Coast. She felt that she was standing in the center of the ways of the world. Here she was in New York! Yet she felt more of a pilgrim than ever. It was all so strange and cold and far away.

They walked across the wide space and through an archway, and a big yellow chariot drew up in front of them as if by magic. It had no horse, and it looked magnificent to the unaccustomed eyes of the girl from the wilderness. The lady gave an order, and they both got inside. Then the red-capped man put some of their bags in with them and piled the rest in the front with the driver, and they rode away.

“Can this—be—a—a—taxi?” Fraley asked in awe. “It looks like—” But here she remembered and closed her lips.

“Yes, it’s a taxi,” said her mentor. “What do you think it looks like?”

“I was just thinking it looked something like what I thought a chariot might be.”

“Oh!” said the lady, amused again. “I never saw one, but this is a mighty shabby old taxi. We’ll have our own car by this evening, I hope. I telegraphed on to have it put in shape for immediate use, but I wasn’t sure then which train I would take so I couldn’t let them know when to meet me.”

“Have you a family?” asked Fraley eagerly, half shrinking from the thought of sharing her new friend with others. “Have you any little children? Was that what made you so kind to me, because you are a mother yourself?”

“Oh no,” said the lady, laughing. “Nothing like that, thank goodness. I’ve nobody to bother about but myself.”

“But you have a husband?” said the girl fearfully. Men were such an uncertain quantity in this world.

“No,” said the lady quite crossly, “I haven’t!”

“Oh, did he die?” Fraley asked with sympathy in her voice. A dead man could do her no harm.

The lady was silent a moment, staring out of the window, and then she answered sharply, “No, he didn’t! I might as well tell you, for if I don’t, someone else will. I divorced him last fall. I’ve nobody but myself.”

“Oh,” said Fraley in a little stricken voice and sat back silent, thinking over the things she had said about people who were divorced—thinking of all the kind things the lady had done, of the pretty clothes she was wearing at her expense, trying to think of something that would be both suitable and true to say. But no words came to her lips. She could only sit back quietly and slide her small hand into the slim, elegantly gloved one with a warm human pressure.

But the embarrassing silence was soon broken by their arrival at a bookstore, and Fraley’s delight was great. Books! Books! Books! More than she had ever dreamed were in the world! Beautiful red and blue and gold and brown books. Books on shelves and on long tables that went down the room on either side.

Fraley’s eyes sparkled with joy as she made her careful selections: a beautiful, expensive soft-leather Scofield Bible with India paper and clear type for Seagrave, because the salesman recommended it as being most popular with ministers on account of its wonderful notes; and a large-print, red-covered one with colored pictures for Jimmy.

They left careful directions for the mailing of the Books, and Fraley proudly paid for them and turned away with a shining in her eyes that was wholly unexplainable to the woman of the world.

“Now,” said the lady, “are you ready to come home with me, or do you think you’ve got to racket around first and locate your family?”

“Oh no,” said the girl seriously, “I’ll look them up another time. I want to get started first and feel that I have a place to call home somewhere. I don’t want to have them think they’ve got to do anything for me. They might not like it, you know.”

“I see,” said Violet Wentworth, with a shrewd look in her eyes and a satisfied set of her lips. Then there would not be any immediate interference of a family in her plans until she had tried some things out and knew what she wanted to do. She got into the taxi and gave her order, feeling that everything was working out nicely.

Riverside Drive meant nothing at all to the little girl from the mountains, but when she saw the river, wide and shining in the afternoon sun, with the many strange boats plying back and forth upon its surface or clustered along its banks, she exclaimed with joy.

“Oh, this is going to be a wonderful place!” she said. “I’m going to love it. Now I can look off and see far away. It is almost as good as my mountains, this wonderful river. I felt so—shut in—before I saw this.”

She went up the steps of the Wentworth mansion with more wonder upon her but turned before she entered the door and looked again upon the river and at the palisades across.

“I shall come out here often and just enjoy this,” she said as she turned to follow her friend into the house.

But inside the large hall she stopped and looked around her, bewildered. The ceilings were so high and the rooms so large that she had a sense of desiring to reach out and hold on to something, lest she would fall.

There were thick rugs under her feet and beautiful vistas opening out from wide doorways, with big mirrors in which she saw her small self reflected in several different views and thought it someone else. There was one room in the distance where the walls were lined with books behind glass doors, and off in the other direction she could see a table set with dishes and candles burning over a crystal bowl of flowers.

There were people there also. A man opened the door and somehow reminded her of the porter on the Pullman. In the background was a woman wearing a black dress and a white apron and cap or curious little white bonnet on her head. A young man, a boy almost, with brass buttons on his short jacket was lighting a fire in a room opposite the door. It was all bewildering.

She presently sensed without being told that these people were servants. She watched them and wondered how she should greet them but found they did not expect anything but her shy smile.

The boy carried the bags up a beautiful staircase, and Fraley mounted it with interest. She had never seen a stairway so high and cushioned with velvet so that no sound came from a footstep.

There seemed to be unlimited rooms on the second floor, and Fraley was given one that opened across the hall from her hostess—a large, beautiful room with windows looking out on the river, and a steamer hurrying down the river made a wondrous sight. She walked straight over to the window and watched it until it was out of sight before she even took off her hat.

“It is going to be wonderful here,” she said, turning as Violet Wentworth entered the door and stood watching her. “I am afraid I shall not do enough work with all this to look at.”

“Well, forget it now,” said the lady pleasantly. “I want to show you your room. I’m putting you here right across from me so that I can have you close at hand when I need you.”

She did not explain that this room she was giving the girl was one which she had usually kept for honored guests and that she was putting the child here because she wanted her near her, because she was growing fond of her and because she longed to give her the best she had and see what reaction it would bring.

Fraley turned and looked at the beautiful room, stately in proportion, decorated and furnished by one of the greatest decorators in New York City, and at a fabulous sum. The effect was charming. To Fraley it seemed too spacious for her small self, too formal and beautiful for common use, too wonderful for the girl who had slept in a little seven-by-nine bedroom off the corner of the cabin on the mountain. But her heart swelled with appreciation of it all.

When the door to the white-tiled bathroom was open, disclosing its shining spotlessness, with all its perfect appointments for comfort, she stopped and dared not enter. It was so white it dazzled her. White floor, white walls, silver-trimmed fixtures, and a lovely rose silk curtain to the bath!

“You do not mean this is all for me alone?” she said, turning to the lady, and there were tears upon her lashes. “Oh, if my mother could know I have all this, she would be so glad. Oh, if she could only have had it, I would be willing to go back to the cabin and stay alone. She had it so hard!”

“Well, she is probably glad you are here,” said the lady, stirred almost to tears herself by the wistfulness of the young voice, “so just be as happy as you can. Now, will you unpack your own things, or do you want the maid to do it for you?”

“Oh, I will do it,” said Fraley. “I want to do everything myself.”

“You can put your things in these drawers, and here is one you can lock if you have any special treasures that you don’t want the maid to touch when she comes in to wait on you.”

“Oh, please, I don’t want to be waited on,” said the girl pleadingly. “I wouldn’t know how to act.”