The only persons at the Farm who did not go to the station to see
Arethusa off for her Trip were Miss Asenath and Nathan. Even Mandy
went, on the front seat of the surrey with Blish.
Nathan was Mandy's better half, a darkey of a deeply religious nature.
He considered a town, everything in it, and everything connected with
it, snares of the Evil One to lead men astray. Although in his youth,
and up almost until early middle age, he had been the terror of the
county seat the Saturday nights he had been paid off, he had "gotten
religion" along about the time of his marriage to Mandy, and now
nothing on earth could take him anywhere near any of his former haunts.
He had even refused to drive Miss Eliza to town when on one or two
occasions his services had been required. And he was the only human
being on record who had ever opposed her thus successfully.
But it happened most fortunately in this case, this feeling of his
about town, for he could remain with Miss Asenath and Mandy could go to
the station with Arethusa. Otherwise, she might have had to stay at
home, and this would almost have broken her heart.
Timothy and Timothy's mother and his aunt, who made her home with them,
also drove the six miles 'cross country to the little town of Vandalia
where Arethusa was to take the train, to bid her good-bye. They were
already present when the Farm delegation arrived, as early as it was
when they came, for Timothy wanted as many as possible of these last
moments with Arethusa. His mother had been sure it was far too soon to
start when Timothy called her, but she suffered from a chronic
inability to oppose any of his wishes, even by suggestion, so she had
left her housewifely counting of preserves and pickles without a word
of complaint to go with him.
Miss Letitia became a little tearful in her leave-taking.
"Letting the dear child go off all alone by herself this way for the
very first time!"
For in spite of Miss Eliza's decided and oft loudly expressed
disinclination to have her do so, to Arethusa's unbounded delight, she
was actually going alone.
Thanks to that flight of Elinor and Ross to the seashore, the State
Fair had been only a memory for more than a month. But diligent search
by Miss Eliza, in the way of inquiries at church and when in town, had
discovered a friend who was going to Lewisburg later in the Fall to
shop, and who would be more than glad to take the girl under her wing.
Then almost at the very last moment this promised company was forced to
abandon her trip and Arethusa was left high and dry. The fate of her
Visit trembled in the balance for a few days. Miss Eliza was strongly
inclined to postpone the whole affair until she could arrange things to
go with her niece herself, but she finally gave in to the pleading that
Arethusa was entirely ready. Why should she wear the first freshness
off her outfit before she made this Visit?
But if she was going alone, she was going fully-equipped so far as
advice was concerned. Miss Eliza had spent several conscientious hours
of instruction and counsel. Arethusa had been told a dozen times over
just what she was to do, and that she was to leave the train only when
it stopped for the very last time to stay, without going on. The
terminus of the line was Lewisburg.
"And if you sit there a half an hour, you make sure," said Miss Eliza,
firmly.
A great many people, added she, especially young people, get lost by
leaving trains at wrong stations.
Miss Letitia contributed her quota also, though it was more in actual
preparation for contingencies that might arise than advice. Arethusa's
name and address had been sewed in everything she had on, "in case of
accident." Miss Letitia had had a dream one night of an unidentified
body lying by a railroad track after a wreck. She dreamed the body to
be Arethusa's. Then she had read, very often, of folks whose sense of
their own identity had been taken from them most completely by a blow
on the head; this also had happened in wrecks. Should there be a wreck
and the dream come true, or the other horrible thing happen, in either
case they would never know what became of Arethusa. The thought
harrowed Miss Letitia. Fortunately, she had only dreamed the dream the
one time, so there was not quite so much danger of it being fulfilled.
Had she dreamed it three nights, Arethusa should never have gone a step
on this trip. But even had the other dreadful thing occurred, it would
have been the most careless searcher who would have failed to discover
just who Arethusa was and where she belonged, after Miss Letitia had
finished her labeling, in slanting, old-fashioned letters on neatly
bound-down squares of white linen.
The traveller carried a small packet of baking-soda, tucked into a
corner of her satchel by the long-sighted Miss Letitia, "in case of
car-sickness." There was nothing so good for nausea as soda.
Arethusa wore the dark blue suit Miss Letitia had made her, with its
plain, full gathered skirt, all lined for better warmth, and its
double-breasted coat, trimmed with the buttons from one of her
great-grandfather's broadcloth suits. Her traveling waist was pongee.
"Pongee is the best material to travel in that I know of," said Miss
Eliza. "It never shows the least bit of soil."
It was buttoned modestly to her throat, ending in a straight line,
neither high nor low which would have been most trying to nearly
everyone, but above which Arethusa's flower face rose as lovely as
ever. Her hat was a plain round felt trimmed with two really beautiful
turkey feathers that Miss Eliza had been saving carefully since the
winter previous. Arethusa had never had a feather on a hat before (only
ribbons, the year round), and she considered these feathers the height
of elegance. Her hair was fixed on the top of her head for the very
first time in her life, a graduation from the long red plait just for
this glorious Visit. Her feeling about that heavy, unbecomingly
arranged roll, and the hairpins which held it in place, was an
indescribable mixture of pride and elation and satisfaction.
Clutched tightly in one white, cotton-gloved hand was Mandy's
contribution, a small, neatly tied-up box of lunch. Her extra money was
in a little bag on a string around her neck, where Miss Eliza had also
deposited the trunk check. There was only the tiniest possible amount
of change in her purse. She carried a hand-satchel so ancient in
appearance that it might have been the forerunner of all hand-satchels,
and her trunk was a wee round-topped affair of red leather with a
canvas cover. It was a trunk which had been last viewed by the public
when Miss Eliza and Miss Letitia attended the Centennial Exposition in
Philadelphia. Miss Eliza was not one to expend money for anything, when
what she already had was still perfectly good, albeit a trifle out of
date.
Miss Eliza scorned to show her feelings as did Miss Letitia when she
told Arethusa good-bye. Consequently, she was even gruffer than usual
as she adjured the departing one not to make a fool of herself.
Mandy wept openly. Putting her head into a lion's mouth held no more
unknown terrors for Mandy than the making of a journey.
And Timothy prepared to wring Arethusa's hand almost off when it was
his turn to say farewell; he thought it was the most expression of his
affectionate unhappiness at seeing her leave them that would be
permitted him. But she held her face up to him in the most natural
manner to be kissed, just as she had held it up to Miss Eliza and Miss
Letitia and his mother; so Timothy, after a brief moment of hesitation
and remembrance of what Arethusa had said so emphatically about
kissing, took what the gods were offering and imprinted a very modest
salute on the sweet, upturned face.
Arethusa was so excited that she scarcely heard all of Miss Eliza's
last instructions, and she bade some of her party adieu more than once.
Timothy claimed the privilege of helping her on the train and escorting
her into the coach, and he deposited her satchel on a seat he turned
over to face her so she would be sure to have plenty of room.
She chattered away, these last few precious moments, as merrily as if
Timothy were companioning the adventure of this trip to Lewisburg, but
he found no tongue to reply. It is true that he was not allowed very
much chance, but even if he had been, there was no heart in him for
talk. Timothy was finding the actual reality of parting with Arethusa
for heaven-only-knew-how-long-a-time, far worse than its anticipation,
as bad as that had been.
The conductor called, "All a--bo-ard!"
And in sudden, desperate utterance of a wild little wish. Timothy
leaned close to Arethusa.
"Kiss me good-bye again, Arethusa," he coaxed, all his young heart in
his blue eyes. "Please!"
Arethusa stared at him, frankly amazed at such a remarkable request.
"What's the matter with you, Timothy Jarvis? Kiss you good-bye? Why,
the very idea! And what on earth do you mean by 'again'?"
For she was completely unaware that in her excitement she had given
Timothy that kiss.
His spirits went clear to zero, but fortune spared him the necessity of
a reply, for the conductor called another raucous signal, and the train
began to move. Timothy had barely time to save himself from being
carried off.
Arethusa stuck her head out of the car window, regardless of one of
Miss Eliza's very last and most positive instructions, and waved and
waved to the ones she had left behind on the Vandalia platform, and she
kept on waving long after they had become mere indistinguishable specks
as the train gathered speed.
Then she settled back against the luxury of her dusty red-plush seat
with a soft little sigh.
The swift motion of the train was most exhilarating, for every single
click of the car-wheels meant a turn which brought her just that much
nearer to her father and Elinor and the wonderful Visit.
After a while, when her agitation had begun to subside a trifle,
Arethusa began to remember a few of the multitude of directions Miss
Eliza had given that were most important to be carried out without
fail. She removed her hat with care and reached down into the ancient
travelling bag and brought forth a piece of manila paper in which she
wrapped it, to save its newness from flying cinders. She took off her
coat and folded it, lining outside, and hung it over the arm of the
opposite seat and rolled her white cotton gloves into a neat little
ball and put them and her purse down into her bag.
Then she drew "The Dove in the Eagles' Nest" out of that capacious
receptacle (Miss Asenath had advised bringing something to read and
Arethusa had not read this particular romance for a very long while),
propped herself primly way over in the corner of her seat and prepared
to do just as she had been told.
But she was far too excited to do much more than just open her book.
The fortunes of Christina and her two sons in the free city of Ulm, as
so graphically portrayed by Miss Charlotte Yonge, could generally
transport Arethusa far from the everyday events of her own world into
the actual Middle Ages that was the scene of their happening; but
to-day.... They seemed to have lost a lot of this power; she could
hardly keep her eyes on the book.
The flying landscape outside the window fascinated her at first and
after awhile her fellow travellers claimed her attention, and proved
far more interesting than even that. Miss Eliza could have no possible
objection to her niece watching them if she sat very still.
There were not very many passengers when Arethusa got on; one or two
men in the other end of the car, and several women and babies. But as
the tram rushed ever nearer to Lewisburg, the passengers increased in
number.
A group climbed on at one of the way stations, and took a seat just
opposite Arethusa across the aisle, and they particularly attracted
her. It was composed of a woman who reminded her very strongly of Miss
Letitia in the round chubbiness of her face and her comfortable
untidiness, although she was undoubtedly much younger, and her two
children. The sex of one of them Arethusa was unable to determine just
at first, for it was so small that the cut of its blue raiment might
have served for either boy or girl; but the other one was unmistakably
of a feminine persuasion. This child had the lightest hair and eyebrows
the watcher across the aisle had ever seen, and the very palest of blue
eyes. So light were the eyebrows that only a close inspection later on
convinced Arethusa that there were any there at all.
These travellers had a great deal of baggage, several boxes and a large
telescope, as well as a huge satchel. The handle of the telescope had
been broken off at some stage of its career, and this deficiency had
been remedied by inserting under the leather straps still remaining, a
coat hanger covered with bright red silk ribbon gathered on and tied at
the hook with gay little bows.
The children were very restless; they did much moving about, climbing
in and out of the seat. The mother seemed to find it necessary to
admonish her offspring with frequency, and Arethusa discovered in this
way that the little girl's name was "Helen Louise" and the being in the
straight up-and-down blue garment was a boy infant who answered to the
name of Peter.
At a Junction farther down the line, a Man got on. And as the car was
pretty full by this time, he took the seat just opposite Arethusa; that
seat which Timothy had gallantly turned over for her.
He buried himself immediately in a paper he carried, but when his
neighbor's liquid laugh rang out at some ridiculous antic of Peter's,
he dropped his paper and regarded her mobile face with interest.
He was rather a nice looking man, quietly dressed in well cut clothes
and he had an air of good living about him that was quite attractive.
To any experienced traveller, the neat looking leather cases with the
brass locks, which he carried, would have been quite sufficient to have
immediately told his occupation. He travelled for a notions house, out
of Cincinnati, with a territory covering most of the small towns in
three states. It was a boring business, and offered very little as
diversion on the side; but he hoped before very long to be much better
placed. He liked girls, and the one before him was one of the prettiest
he had ever seen.
They rode facing one another for about five miles, and he watched
Arethusa, without her actually realizing she was being watched. Then
she laughed gayly at Peter once more, as his mother all but saved his
life when he pitched head first off the seat, and her eager grey eyes
caught a glimpse of the brown eyes across from her, smiling in
sympathy.
"Isn't he the funniest little boy!" exclaimed Arethusa, involuntarily,
to the sympathy.
"He is," replied the Man kindly, then he added, after a bit, "Are you
travelling alone, or do you belong with the funny little boy?"
"No, sir,... Yes, sir!" replied Arethusa, suddenly covered with a shy
confusion.
"Which is which?" asked the Man, laughing, and he showed attractive
white teeth.
The friendliness of his brown eyes and his laugh reassured Arethusa of
her momentary feeling of alarm when he had spoken. Her exclamation had
not really expected a reply, and she had been quite startled when the
sympathetic eyes to which she had addressed herself had been discovered
to have this voice belonging to them.
She blushed, and dropped her head. Then she raised it again, after a
moment, and he was still smiling at her in the same friendly fashion,
so Arethusa found courage to look at him. To her rose-colored view of
the inmates of the best of all possible worlds, he seemed in that look
to be a very nice man. It is true that Miss Eliza had warned her with
emphasis against strange men, but the Man across from her could not be
said to come anywhere near the descriptions of the Ogres against which
Arethusa had been so warned. Arethusa had not had her Red-Riding-Hood
Experience as yet, and it was her habit to trust.
They rode for a few moments silently, and then Peter did what had been
inevitable for some time that he would do, he pitched head first out
into the aisle.
"Oh!" exclaimed Arethusa, and she jumped clear out of her seat at the
loud and high-pitched wail with which he made known his distress.
"That's too bad," said the Man. "But I've been afraid he was going to
do that very thing."
"So have I," answered Arethusa confidentially.
And in a very short while, she was talking away as if she had known her
new acquaintance all her life, with all the dimples and excitement and
gestures that belonged to Arethusa. But what harm to talk to such a
Nice, Kind Man? Miss Eliza had not known that she would meet this sort
of Man, she was sure. She could not possibly object to a little
Friendly Conversation with someone in the very same seat.
And he listened, truly interested, as Arethusa's enthusiasm began to
make up for the while it had been pent, in all she told him of the
coming Visit and the magnificent expectations she had of that Visit,
and of Ross and Elinor.
But the motherly looking woman across the aisle had been watching
Arethusa for some time also. And when Peter's sobs had ceased, and she
looked up once more from her family cares to see Arethusa conversing so
animatedly with her chance acquaintance, she decided at once to
interfere. She had heart enough to--at least--attempt the management of
any affairs coming under her notice which did not seem to her to be
running just as they should.
She bustled over and loomed above Arethusa and her Friendly Man.
"Know this man, dearie?" she demanded peremptorily.
"Why ... no ... I...."
Arethusa almost added, "Aunt 'Titia." For the tone of voice and the
little term of endearment and the woman herself were all rather
bewilderingly like her aunt.
"Well, I don't reckon you ought to be talking to him then," and she
turned to the man, a self-elected champion of a lone maiden, and stared
at him as authoritatively as she had spoken to Arethusa. "You're plenty
old enough to know better'n this. And you'd better get out of that seat
mighty quick, or I'll call the conductor. And you a nice-looking man,
too!"
The man turned as red as a well-cooked beet, clear down into his
immaculate collar. He wasted no time in expostulation or protest that
Arethusa's champion was interfering in something which was none of her
immediate business, but he gathered up his neat leather cases and fled
to the smoker for safety. He had meant no sort of harm, and he was so
embarrassed that he was hours recovering from the experience.
After he had disappeared down the aisle, Arethusa's defender moved her
family and most of her baggage across the way, depositing her
remarkably decorated telescope in the space between the two seats which
had faced each other for Arethusa's adventure, before the astonished
Arethusa was thoroughly aware of just what was happening.
"You sit there, Helen Louise," admonished this substitute for the Nice
Man to her daughter, indicating the end of the telescope, "and if our
friend wants to come back, I reckon he'll have to fall over you. That
was a horrid man," she added to Arethusa: "it's the likes of him makes
it disagreeable for girls to be travelling by themselves."
"Oh, no," protested Arethusa.
"Yes, he were," replied Helen Louise's mother in a positive way that
indicated superior wisdom on such matters.
Arethusa bowed to the superior wisdom and the positive tone, through
long habit of her experience with Miss Eliza when she used such a tone.
"But he looked like a Nice Man," she said, though feebly.
"It's most always the nicest looking ones is the worst at heart. I'm
raising up Helen Louise to steer clear of anything in pants she ain't
been introduced to first by somebody she knows. It's safest."
This speech had a somewhat familiar sound, though perhaps couched
differently. Arethusa had a moment of terrified remembrance of Certain
Instructions. She looked down at the bulwark of Helen Louise and the
telescope between her and the aisle, and she suddenly felt grateful to
Helen Louise's mother.
"Thank you," she said, with fervent sincerity, "thank you, ma'am, just
ever so much. I never do remember anything Aunt 'Liza tells me, she
says."
"You ain't got no real call to thank me," was the placid reply. "I'd be
doing the same for any girl as good-looking as you be; and I'd be
hoping somebody'd do the same for my Helen Louise. It seems like it's
always most easiest for young folks to keep right on forgetting just
what they ought to be remembering."
"I know," said Arethusa apologetically. "But this is the first time I
ever traveled anywhere, and...."
Mrs. Cherry (for such was the name of Arethusa's latest friend) rescued
her small son from his repeated attempts to plunge through the glass in
the car window, before she turned around to continue the conversation.
"I should have said you had. You don't look so awfully citified, now I
come to think, but I should have certainly said you'd travelled. Who's
your Aunt 'Liza, you spoke about awhile back? Ain't you got no Ma?"
Mrs. Cherry was genuinely friendly, and she was safely feminine, so
Arethusa once more launched into a glowing description of what wonders
the future held in store, and to Mrs. Cherry's interested questioning,
told what the past had been like, Timothy and all.
"You certainly have got lots of folks to care about you," was the
comment, when the narrator finally paused for breath. "And you ain't
never seen your Pa? Well! Well! Helen Louise and Peter and me we're
going to the city to meet Helen Louise's Pa. He's got work there and
we're going to live there now."
Helen Louise smiled all over herself at this mention of her father, a
toothless smile, but of unmistakable joy, and Arethusa's heart went out
to her immediately. Here, very evidently, was another girl-child whose
affections were centered largely in a male parent.
"Helen Louise favors her Pa considerable. And they're the biggest geese
together!"
Helen Louise's silvery treble piped up. "Papa and me just play and
play!" She gave herself something like an anticipatory hug. "Gee, but
I'm going to be glad to see him! I ain't seen him for a whole year
now!"
"Helen Louise, don't you be telling Miss Worth'ton no story now!"
warned her mother. Names had been exchanged. "She ain't seen him for
more'n a month reely, but I reckon it does seem 'most a year to her."
Peter now joined his voice to the conversation for the first time, "Ma,
I'm hungry."
"Bless us! But it might be dinner time, now, mightn't it. Have you got
a watch, Miss Worth'ton?"
Arethusa reached down into her waistband and drew forth Miss Eliza's
parting gift. Which was a watch that had seen Miss Eliza faithfully
through more than one decade, a large and handsomely chased affair of
gold on a long ribbon of black gros-grain.
"The child will need a watch," said Miss Eliza.
Arethusa fully appreciated the parting gift, and she reverenced the
old-fashioned timepiece fully as much as had its former owner.
What though it was a trifle heavy in her hand as she held it to read
the dial! Was it not an actual watch and gold at that, and did not its
tiny hands count off the moments of each one of the twenty-four hours
for her to note as they flew by? And was not all of its wonder her very
own now?
"A quarter to one," she announced proudly.
"Well, well, you don't say so! No wonder he's hungry! You'll be having
some lunch with us, Miss Worth'ton, won't you now?"
But Arethusa refused this cordial invitation. She could not possibly
eat a mouthful. Food would have stuck in her throat right on top of the
big lump of excitement that was already there. And besides the drawback
of this decided inability to swallow, she had not the slightest
sensation of hunger that would have tempted her to try to eat.
"I had some lunch of my own," she shyly offered the neatly tied-up box;
"Aunt 'Liza makes awfully nice jam and things and Mandy said she was
going to fix me some fried chicken. But I don't want a bit of it.
Wouldn't Helen Louise and Peter like to have it?"
Helen Louise's pale blue eyes glistened at this mention of fried
chicken. Her own lunch contained no such appetizing delicacy. She had
helped to tie it up, and she knew just what was in it. This was far
superior in every way. She pulled at her mother's dress in eagerness,
and Mrs. Cherry reached down and slapped her.
"Don't you act like you never had nothing in your life to eat," she
said sharply.
Then Helen Louise's eyes began to glisten with tears. Arethusa felt
very sorry for her. She had seemed so like a kindred spirit in her
plainly manifested father worship. So Arethusa opened the dainty little
packet of chicken and sandwiches and spread it temptingly on Helen
Louise's lap with her own hands.
"Here," she said, "you may have it, Helen Louise. But you'll give Peter
some? Do," she added quickly.
For Peter's large round eyes were regarding with a greediness
unmistakable the munificence of food that had been so generously
bestowed upon his sister.
"Well, I will say this," remarked Mrs. Cherry, as she divided
Arethusa's contribution into equal portions between her offspring,
after the donor had succeeded in convincing her that she honestly
wanted none of it. "I will say this for my children. They might be
acting like hoodlums over this here food, but they ain't never seen
none just like it before," She bit into one of Mandy's beaten biscuit
sandwiches with the pink ham in between, herself, with relish. "Your
aunt must have a mighty good cook. She cert'inly must!"
Watching the little Cherry's devour her lunch and the garrulity of
their mother consumed so much time for Arethusa, that almost before she
knew it the little wave of excitement denoting the nearing of a
journey's end swept through the car. The conductor passed by and
gathered the little slips of stiff paper from the men's hats; every
passenger began his or her peculiar preparations for leaving the train.
Mrs. Cherry began gathering up her boxes and parcels. Helen Louise was
sent to the water cooler to wet a handkerchief and then her face and
Peter's were vigorously scrubbed. At any other time, Mrs. Cherry would
have dragged both children to the cooler, but she was not taking any
chances with pretty, unprotected Arethusa. No one else should have that
seat of hers.
The baggageman came through the car; calling as he went,
"Anybaggageyouwantdeliveredinthe-city, car-ri-age or omnibus."
It gave Arethusa a most delightful little thrill all down her spine to
hear him. She was not exactly sure he was the person to give her check
to, but decided it would be best to obey the letter of the law this
time. Miss Eliza had mentioned no baggageman, but she had been most
explicit in her directions to Arethusa that she give that check to no
one but her father.
She rescued her hat from its paper protection and put it on her tumbled
hair, from which some of the precious hairpins had fallen during the
excitement of the journey; unfolded her coat and donned it; drew on the
cotton gloves and clutched her purse and satchel once more as when she
had started, and with the death grip Miss Eliza had adjured for fear of
those pickpockets with which railway stations are always infested, and
Arethusa was Ready. And she was ready with a palpitating heart, for the
brakeman had accommodatingly called, "Lewisburg," right in her very own
ear, as if he wished her to be quite sure this was the right place to
leave her seat.
Mrs. Cherry had been very busy with her progeny and her paraphernalia
and impedimenta of various sorts--it was marvelous how she managed to
gather them all together with only two hands--and she was ready also.
But even in the midst of this sleight of hand performance, she did not
forget her self-constituted guardianship of Arethusa.
"Sure you're going to know your Pa?" she enquired. "Don't you want me
to be waiting and help you hunt for him?"
No, Arethusa was very, very sure she would know him. She did not need
any help to find him.
And then with one last shrieking grind of the wheels, the train stopped
in the shed at Lewisburg, and Arethusa, all injunctions to sit still
for a half hour forgotten as if they had never been, immediately began
with her fellow passengers a movement towards the door. But so slow was
this movement that her impatient heart thought she would never, never
be out of that car.
Helen Louise's quick eyes spied, through the car window, her father,
among the crowd on the platform and she gave a joyful shout. But it was
a shout, which although loud and very near, Arethusa never even heard.
Her own eyes, star-like and intent, were busy searching that same crowd
for her own father.