ACROSS THE CONTINENT
It was not as though Helen Morrell had never been in a train before. Eight
times she had gone back and forth to Denver, and she had always ridden in
the best style. So sleepers, chair cars, private compartments, and
observation coaches were no novelty to her.
She had discussed the matter with her friend, the Elberon station agent,
and had bought her ticket through to New York, with a berth section to
herself. It cost a good bit of money, but Helen knew no better way to
spend some of that thousand dollars that Big Hen had given to her.
Her small trunk was put in the baggage car, and all she carried was a
hand-satchel with toilet articles and kimono; and in it likewise was her
father's big wallet stuffed with the yellow-backed notes--all crisp and
new--that Big Hen Billings had brought to her from the bank.
When she was comfortably seated in her particular section, and the porter
had seen that her footstool was right, and had hovered about her with
offers of other assistance until she had put a silver dollar into his
itching palm, Helen first stared about her frankly at the other occupants
of the car.
Nobody paid much attention to the countrified girl who had come aboard at
the way-station. The Transcontinental's cars are always well filled. There
were family parties, and single tourists, with part of a grand opera
troupe, and traveling men of the better class.
Helen would have been glad to join one of the family groups. In one there
were two girls and a boy beside the parents and a lady who must have been
the governess. One of the girls, and the boy, were quite as old as Helen.
They were all so well behaved, and polite to each other, yet jolly and
companionable, that Helen knew she could have liked them immensely.
But there was nobody to introduce the lonely girl to them, nor to any
others of her fellow travelers. The conductor, even, did not take much
interest in the girl in brown.
She began to realize that what was the height of fashion in Elberon was
several seasons behind the style in larger communities. There was not a
pretty or attractive thing about Helen's dress; and even a very pretty
girl will seem a frump in an out-of-style and unbecoming frock.
It might have been better for the girl from Sunset Ranch if she had worn
on the train the very riding habit she had in her trunk. At least, it
would have become her and she would have felt natural in it.
She knew now--when she had seen the hats of her fellow passengers--that
her own was an atrocity. And, then, Helen had "put her hair up," which was
something she had not been used to doing. Without practice, or some
example to work by, how could this unsophisticated young girl have
produced a specimen of modern hair-dressing fit to be seen?
Even Dudley Stone could not have thought Helen Morrell pretty as she
looked now. And when she gazed in the glass herself, the girl from Sunset
Ranch was more than a little disgusted.
"I know I'm a fright. I've got 'such a muchness' of hair and it's so
sunburned, and all! What those girls I'm going to see will say to me, I
don't know. But if they're good-natured they'll soon show me how to handle
this mop--and of course I can buy any quantity of pretty frocks when I get
to New York."
So she only looked at the other people on the train and made no
acquaintances at all that first day. She slept soundly at night while the
Transcontinental raced on over the undulating plains on which the stars
shone so peacefully. Each roll of the drumming wheels was carrying her
nearer and nearer to that new world of which she knew so little, but from
which she hoped so much.
She dreamed that she had reached her goal--Uncle Starkweather's house.
Aunt Eunice met her. She had never even seen a photograph of her aunt; but
the lady who gathered her so closely into her arms and kissed her so
tenderly, looked just as Helen's own mother had looked.
She awoke crying, and hugging the tiny pillow which the Pullman Company
furnishes its patrons as a sample--the _real_ pillow never materializes.
But to the healthy girl from the wide reaches of the Montana range, the
berth was quite comfortable enough. She had slept on the open ground many
a night, rolled only in a blanket and without any pillow at all. So she
arose fresher than most of her fellow-passengers.
One man--whom she had noticed the evening before--was adjusting a wig
behind the curtain of his section. He looked when he was completely
dressed rather a well-preserved person; and Helen was impressed with the
thought that he must still feel young to wish to appear so juvenile.
Even with his wig adjusted--a very curly brown affair--the man looked,
however, to be upward of sixty. There were many fine wrinkles about his
eyes and deep lines graven in his cheeks.
His section was just behind that of the girl from Sunset Ranch, on the
other side of the car. After returning from the breakfast table this first
morning Helen thought she would better take a little more money out of the
wallet to put in her purse for emergencies on the train. So she opened the
locked bag and dragged out the well-stuffed wallet from underneath her
other possessions.
The roll of yellow-backed notes _was_ a large one. Helen, lacking more
interesting occupation, unfolded the crisp banknotes and counted them to
make sure of her balance. As she sat in her seat she thought nobody could
observe her.
Then she withdrew what she thought she might need, and put the remainder
of the money back into the old wallet, snapped the strong elastic about
it, and slid it down to the bottom of the bag again.
The key of the bag she carried on the chain with her locket, which locket
contained the miniatures of her mother and father. Key and locket she hid
in the bosom of her dress.
She looked up suddenly. There was the fatherly-looking old person almost
bending over her chair back. For an instant the girl was very much
startled. The old man's eyes were wonderfully keen and twinkling, and
there was an expression in them which Helen at first did not understand.
"If you have finished with that magazine, my dear, I'll exchange it for
one of mine," said the old gentleman coolly. "What! did I frighten you?"
"Not exactly, sir," returned Helen, watching him curiously. "But I _was_
startled."
"Beg pardon. You do not look like a young person who would be easily
frightened," he said, laughing. "You are traveling alone?"
"Yes, sir."
"Far?"
"To New York, sir," said Helen.
"Ah! a long way for a girl to go by herself--even a self-possessed one
like you," said the fatherly old fellow. "I hope you have friends to meet
you there?"
"Relatives."
"You have never been there, I take it?"
"I have never been farther east than Denver before," she replied.
"Indeed! And so you have not met the relatives you are going to?" he
suggested, shrewdly.
"You are right, sir."
"But, of course, they will not fail to meet you?"
"I telegraphed to them. I expect to get a reply somewhere on the way."
"Then you are well provided for," said the old gentleman, kindly. "Yet, if
you should need any assistance--of any kind--do not fail to call upon me.
I am going through to New York, too."
He went back to his seat after making the exchange of magazines, and did
not force his attentions upon her further. He was, however, almost the
only person who spoke to her all the way across the continent.
Frequently they ate together at the same table, both being alone. He
bought newspapers and magazines and exchanged with her. He never became
personal and asked her questions again, nor did Helen learn his name; but
in little ways which were not really objectionable, he showed that he took
an interest in her. There remained, however, the belief in Helen's mind
that he had seen her counting the money.
"I expect I'd like the old chap if he didn't wear a wig," thought Helen.
"I never could see why people wished to hide the mistakes of Nature. And
he's an old gentleman, too."
Yet again and again she recalled that avaricious gleam in his eyes and how
eager he had seemed when she had first caught sight of his face looking
over her shoulder that first morning on the train. She couldn't forget
that. She kept the locked bag near her hand all the time.
With lively company a journey across this great continent of ours is a
cheerful and inspiring experience. And, of course, Youth can never remain
depressed for long. But in Helen Morrell's case the trip could not be
counted as an enjoyable one.
She was always solitary amid the crowd of travelers. Even when she went
back to the observation platform she was alone. She had nobody with whom
to discuss the beauties of the landscape, or the wonders of Nature past
which the train flashed.
This was her own fault to a degree, of course. The girl from Sunset Ranch
was diffident. These people aboard were all Easterners, or foreigners.
There were no open-hearted, friendly Western folk such as she had been
used to all her life.
She felt herself among a strange people. She scarcely spoke the same
language, or so it seemed. She had felt less awkward and bashful when she
had first gone to the school at Denver as a little girl.
And, again, she was troubled because she had received no reply from her
message to Uncle Starkweather. Of course, he might not have been at home
to receive it; but surely some of the family must have received it.
Every time the brakeman, or porter, or conductor, came through with a
message for some passenger, she hoped he would call her name. But the
Transcontinental brought her across the Western plains, over the two great
rivers, through the Mid-West prairies, skirted two of the Great Lakes,
rushed across the wooded and mountainous Empire State, and finally dashed
down the length of the embattled Hudson toward the Great City of the New
World--the goal of Helen Morrell's late desires, with no word from the
relatives whom she so hoped would welcome her to their hearts and home.