CHAPTER II

WHEN THE TRAIN PULLED OUT

Beth sat by the window in spotless order. Her hands were clasped in her lap; she was so still that her favorite doll, sitting stiffly opposite to her, seemed, by contrast, to be romping. But the reddened tips of the clasped fingers betrayed the severe pressure that held them so motionless, and the pallor of the usually rosy round face, and the dilated blackness of the blue eyes told the effort which kept the little girl so quiet at her post. Beth was watching for the arrival of her Aunt Alida Cortlandt’s maid, who was to carry her off to the crowded metropolis. Beth had never seen a maid--she had seen “girls,” “help,” even “servants,” but a maid! Somehow she had gathered from her beloved story-books vague ideas of maids as exalted persons who beautifully served beautiful princesses, or noble ladies. The coming of one of these to the brown village house which had been Aunt Rebecca’s home for more than fifty years, and Beth’s home for a fifth of that time was the beginning of the wonderful experiences into which the maid would lead the little girl.

Outside in the hall stood Beth’s small trunk, locked and strapped, and plainly tagged in Aunt Rebecca’s clear handwriting. The knowledge that it was there made it harder for Beth to watch quietly out of the window. Aunt Rebecca had rebelled against Mrs. Cortlandt’s suggestion that Beth should be fitted out with winter clothing in New York. Aunt Rebecca “guessed that her nephew’s daughter wasn’t going to visit her mother’s folks as if she hadn’t had a friend in the world till they remembered to ask her!” She had prepared what seemed to Beth a lavish wardrobe, and had packed it in the little trunk that Beth had always admired as it stood in the attic under the eaves. Miss Tappan had made the navy blue coat and gown to match which Beth wore then, ready to travel in. She liked it so much that she was glad that it had three tucks in the skirt, so that if New York air made her grow fast the skirt could be let down three tucks’ length, and she could wear her new suit all winter. It had a hat to match; a round navy blue felt, trimmed with navy blue ribbon that was not precisely the same shade as the hat, but was the nearest to it of all the ribbons Miss Ludd, the milliner, had. It also had a bunch of blue quills that caused Beth delightful anxiety, because of their tendency to split at their tips when she put her hat into its box.

A public carriage drove up the street and stopped at the Bristead door. Beth drew a quick, gasping, inward breath.

“Aunt Rebecca,” she said low, but with an intensity that made her voice perfectly audible in the next room where her great-aunt was cutting out work for the sewing society, “Aunt Rebecca, she has come! Oh, is that a maid?” she added.

For Beth saw a tall person descend from the carriage, pay the driver and turn toward the house. She was clad in taffeta so shining that she looked like a perfectly new, very good quality of stove-pipe; the gown fell around her in such unwrinkled stiffness that it increased the stove-pipe likeness. Her hair was black, so smooth and solid in effect that it carried out the suggestion of her being made of sheet iron. She moved with great dignity, and looked the brown house up and down with an air so superior that Beth felt a sudden fear of her. She could not have told what she had expected a lady’s maid to be like, but certainly not like this alarming person.

Ella Lowndes, who was Aunt Rebecca’s “help,” opened the door.

“Come in,” Beth heard her say. “Miss Bristead’s in, yes, and the little girl is all ready to start away with you.”

“You’d better lay off your things,” Beth heard Aunt Rebecca saying. “I’ll see that you have luncheon right away. This is Elizabeth Bristead, Mr. Cortlandt’s niece, who is going back with you,” she added as Beth came shyly forth from her observation post by the window.

“How do you do, Miss Elizabeth?” said the maid with an unexpected touch of Irish in her speech. Beth had never known any one with that accent who was not jolly, and the maid looked more serious--and older--at close range than when she had come up the walk. “No, Miss Bristead, thank you, I don’t care about any luncheon,” she went on. “I came right out here from Boston--I was over night there--and if you don’t mind there’s a train back at half-past eleven I’d like to be takin’. Then we’d catch the mid-afternoon New York express to New York, and be gettin’ there early in the evenin’. I don’t want to be hurryin’ you, but if Miss Elizabeth is really ready--Mrs. Cortlandt asked me to make the best time I could; she’ll be missin’ me if I’m gone a second night from her. They was goin’ to send up the motor car for me to bring the young lady on in it, but Mr. Cortlandt ran down to Lakewood to a speed thrial his club has to-day. He took the small car, but he wouldn’t let any shoffer but Mr. Léon Charette run it for ’um, and there’s no other he would thrust to bring the big car up here after the little girl, so I took the train.”

Aunt Rebecca almost gasped, Beth actually gasped; Aunt Rebecca because this torrent of words overwhelmed her; Beth because she had no idea what these words were all about. If the maid had said “chauffeur” instead of “shoffer” Beth would still have been in the dark as to her unknown uncle’s reasons for letting his niece come to him by train.

“Beth’s trunk is all ready; there isn’t a thing to do but get her coat and hat on,” said Aunt Rebecca. “It seems ridiculous to come all the way from New York and turn right around without so much as a cup of tea, but if you’re in such a hurry--I suppose Shakespeare knew when he said what had to be done might as well be done quickly. Beth, get your things.”

“Now, Aunt Rebecca?” cried Beth. But she departed on her errand instantly, and returned with her hat on backward above a face purple from all sorts of emotions which there was no time to sort out, unrolling her cashmere gloves as she came.

“You don’t seem to have looked in the glass,” commented Aunt Rebecca as she took off the excited child’s hat and righted it. “Here, I’ll hold your coat; pull your sleeves down first.” She lifted Beth’s coat over her shoulders with such vigor that Beth herself was raised on her tiptoes. “There’ll have to be somebody get her trunk down to the depot so’s it’ll go on the train with you,” said Aunt Rebecca. “Oh, you kept the carriage!” she added, glancing out of the window. “Then I don’t see but that you’re ready to go on your travels, Beth.”

“Mrs. Cortlandt said I was to be sure and tell you not to send anything whatever for the child to wear, Miss Bristead,” said the maid rising.

“I’ve provided for my grandniece all her life so far,” said Aunt Rebecca decidedly, “and when she starts she’ll go as I send her, which is properly clad and made comfortable. When she’s in Mrs. Cortlandt’s house she’ll wear exactly what that lady considers proper, same’s she wore here what I considered proper, but she’s going from home with all a well brought up little girl requires. I shall do my part, and Miss Beth’s trunk goes with Miss Beth.”

Beth marveled at Aunt Rebecca’s courage, and at her knowledge of the way to address a maid; she quite glowed with pride in her.

The maid drew herself up stiffly, but she said kindly: “I’m sure I’ve no objections, madam, to whatever you like to send; it’s only the matter of a baggage check in me pocketbook to me, and it’s natural the way you feel.”

She considerately preceded Beth out of the room, her silken skirts rustling more than any skirts of Beth’s acquaintance as she went. But Aunt Rebecca had no farewell to take privately.

“Be a good child,” she said, “and remember all you’ve been taught. Have a good time, but see to it that it is a _good_ time--don’t you be naughty. And no matter where you go, nor what you see, don’t you lose hold of your good Bristead principles. Speak the truth, be obedient, first to what you know is right, and secondly to those who are placed over you, and mind your manners. Then in New York, or up here among the Massachusetts hills, or wherever you find yourself, you’ll find you’re fit to be there, and you’ll always come out right whatever befalls you. Good-bye.”

She kissed Beth sincerely, but with no more display of emotion than she would have shown on ordinary occasions, if on ordinary occasions Aunt Rebecca ever kissed.

Beth threw her arms around Aunt Rebecca and kissed her again and again with the full consciousness that this was a crisis, an era in her life, upon which no calm embrace would be suitable.

[Illustration: “OH! GOOD-BYE, AUNT REBECCA.”]

“I’ll be as good, as good as goodness, Aunt Rebecca! And I’ll be dreadfully homesick and lonely without you, but I know I shall have a beautiful time. Please don’t let Tabby forget me, and if she should have an all yellow kitten while I’m gone, you will keep it for me, won’t you? Oh, good-bye, Aunt Rebecca,” Beth cried with a last frantic hug and desperate kiss. Then she ran out of the door laughing and crying, darted back to bid Ella Lowndes good-bye, finally rushed down the walk and into the station carriage. The driver leaned over and shut the door, turned his horse, guiding him with the reins laid over Beth’s trunk on end beside him, and drove down the street.

Beth watched the familiar buildings drop back of her with a puzzled sense of being in a dream. Except for a trip to Boston for a day she had never been away from the world these buildings represented; the Centre Church, the small shops, the new hall, the brick schoolhouse, the library. New York would certainly be different from this; Boston was different, and Beth knew to a figure how much smaller than New York Boston was.

The maid did not talk; Beth glanced at her uneasily. She had no idea how to address her, and she looked capable of resenting the wrong form of address. Beth decided to wait for her to begin the conversation; she was so unexpectedly elderly that that was surely her right.

The maid bought Beth’s ticket, checked her trunk for Boston, and that left little time to spare before the train came. Beth mounted the steps with rapidly beating heart and flutteringly took the inside seat by the window which the maid indicated.

“You’ve been to Boston, it’s likely, Miss Elizabeth?” said the maid at last to Beth’s relief.

“Yes, several times,” said Beth. “But I’ve never traveled anywhere else. Have you traveled much?”

“I came across the ocean when I wasn’t much above your age. I’ve traveled pretty much all over America with different ladies, and I’ve been much about Europe, Miss Elizabeth,” said the maid indifferently.

“Oh, my! Have you?” cried Beth. “I’m not Miss Elizabeth, please. Aunt Rebecca doesn’t call me Elizabeth unless she’s displeased with me, and nobody else ever does. I’m Beth.”

“You’ll have to be called Miss Beth then, for it’s not suitable for your uncle’s servants to call you by your name, so free,” said the maid.

“Isn’t it?” asked Beth. “Of course I don’t know as well as you do. Ella always calls me Beth, but she’s just Ella. What ought I to call you, please?”

“Anna Mary. I was a twin, and they named me twin sister the same name, only the other way about: she was Mary Anna,” replied the maid.

“How interesting!” cried Beth. “It’s not a long ride to Boston, is it? Not half as long as it sounds when you say you’re going there.”

“And a good thing it isn’t, for there’s no Pullman car on this train, and it’s tiresome,” returned Anna Mary.

Beth subsided. She did not know what a Pullman car was; it oppressed her to know that Anna Mary was finding this delightful trip tiresome.

They arrived in Boston early. Anna Mary took Beth for a light lunch in the station restaurant, explaining that they would have a good dinner on the train to New York. But the lightness of Beth’s lunch proved weighted by her healthy appetite; she ate an excellent lunch, though Anna Mary condemned everything they had, scornfully.

They crossed the city to the other station from which they were to start for New York. Anna Mary bought Beth’s ticket and two seats in the Pullman car, and looked after Beth’s trunk competently. As soon as the express for New York was made up Beth and Anna Mary boarded it. Beth followed her tall guide through the vestibule entrance to a car like nothing in her previous limited experience of travel. All inlaid in various beautiful woods was this car, fitted with heavy shades, hung with curtains at its wide plate glass windows. It was carpeted in soundless velvet carpeting and furnished with great swinging chairs, upholstered in green velvet. Velvet cushions waited tired travelers’ feet before willow chairs, velvet cushioned also, which sat at the ends of this car, and long, narrow mirrors between the windows gave back the smiles in a pair of happy eyes to Beth as she followed the colored porter down the aisle. He preceded them, carrying Anna Mary’s coat which she had promptly handed him, and led the way to the seats whose numbers she gave him, recorded on the checks which she had purchased in the station. Anna Mary had increased in awfulness since she had stepped on the lowest step of the car. The porter eagerly established her in her chair, hung up her coat, and seemed relieved that she expressed herself satisfied with the location of her chairs.

Beth climbed into her own great chair; it was only too comfortable; she was almost lost in its hollow, and its depth of seat prevented her feet from reaching the floor. But the observant porter quickly brought a velvet cushion for both Anna Mary and Beth, and the little girl settled back into luxury that showed her why Anna Mary had called the car in which they had begun their journey “tiresome.”

Anna Mary bought three magazines for Beth and a bunch of violets, and finally a box of chocolates from a succession of boys that passed through the car. Beth could not help knowing that Anna Mary spent more than two dollars on these gifts. It was such a great sum to expend so recklessly on her small self that Beth was almost as much troubled as pleased by such extravagance. She conveyed her feeling to Anna Mary. The maid laughed.

“All ladies have such thrifles in traveling Miss Beth. You’ll have to get used to more than that, my dear,” she said.

Beth tasted the chocolates thoughtfully. It was true, then, the unlikely things she had read in stories, of girls who thought no more of two pound boxes of candy, nor thought as much of them, as Beth thought of buying a quarter of a pound of cough drops in a white, scalloped edged bag at Armstrong’s, the druggist’s, at home!

The train proved to be a fast one; Beth had never ridden so fast. They whirled past landscapes that were shaken down into a confusing whole made up of trees, fences, hills, river, ponds and towns on a grayish-yellow November background, much as Mr. Armstrong shook together the ingredients of a prescription in a bottle.

Beth kept swinging around in her chair at first to talk to Anna Mary, but Anna Mary was plainly not inclined to conversation. She fell asleep as soon as Beth discovered this fact, and let her alone; the little girl happily resigned herself to looking out of the window, to turning the pages of her magazines, to watching the other passengers, and at last to enjoying the wonder of the great thought that she, Beth Bristead, was rushing toward New York at a fearful, yet safe speed, in such a beautiful car that it hardly seemed possible the great city held anything finer.

It was growing dusk when Anna Mary awoke with a start. She smiled at Beth with great kindness and approval. “Well, you are a good child, whatever else you may be!” she said. “I think I lost meself a few minyutes. Now, we’re goin’ to have our dinner. It’s early, but we’ll take our time at it, and be nicely back here for a while before we get into town.”

She arose and Beth followed her. “Leave your hat and coat here, Miss Beth; there’ll nobody touch ’em,” Anna Mary said, and Beth rather anxiously obeyed.

Anna Mary led the way from that car to the next one. It was entered by a passage that turned sharply around a corner, shutting off the second car from first sight. When they came around this corner Beth exclaimed rapturously. There was a brilliantly lighted dining-room awaiting them, more brilliant and gay than any Beth had ever seen. Small tables, snowy white as to covers, glittering with clear glass and even with flowers on them, stood before each window. Colored waiters in white linen, matching their gleaming teeth, but contrasting strikingly with their complexions, stood about, or flew around, napkins on arm, trays in hand, serving those already seated at the tables, waiting for others who were to come--among them Anna Mary and delighted Beth.

“I hope you are hungry, Miss Beth,” said Anna Mary taking off her gloves as she and Beth took the chairs an eager waiter had pulled back for them.

“I really am,” said Beth surprised to find it true. “I don’t see how I can be, so soon, and I’ve been eating chocolates, too, but I really am.”

“Will you pick out what you want, or will I order for you?” suggested Anna Mary.

“Oh, you, please,” cried Beth, and Anna Mary ordered. She proved to be an excellent judge of a good dinner. Beth wondered if she thought it was Thanksgiving that day, instead of next week. Oysters, soup, lobster, broiled chicken, several unfamiliar but delicious vegetables, salad--which Beth did not like--ice-cream and fancy cakes, which Beth decidedly did like--and a second order of it, at that!--coffee for Anna Mary, weak tea for Beth, to whom it was a dissipation. All this Anna Mary ordered as if it was a matter of course, and partook of critically.

Beth leaned back in her chair at last and sighed, then laughed.

“I was thinking that it seemed as if that sigh could hardly get out, I had eaten such a big, such a very big dinner,” she explained. “Anna Mary, I never had such a wonderful dinner! I think Cinderella couldn’t have had a better one if you had been the fairy godmother.”

This was not what Beth meant to say, but Anna Mary understood her meaning. “You will soon see real dinners,” she said, implying that this was “about like a box of crackers,” thought Beth, stunned by the prospect before her, and watching Anna Mary as she unrolled a large bill from the fat wad in her pocketbook and handed it to the waiter. She watched with greater awe as the waiter offered Anna Mary her change on a small silver tray and Anna Mary gathered it up, leaving half a dollar, a whole shining fifty cent piece, on the tray for the waiter to take. This he did with a bow of profound respect.

“Anna Mary,” began Beth after they had returned to their chairs in the drawing-room car, “is it really like this, only more than this, in New York?”

“It’s a great town, Miss Beth,” said Anna Mary. “There’s folks in it, like your uncle, who live like princes of the blood, going from glory to glory. And there’s many more comfortable by hard workin’, and there’s more than there should be livin’ not much better than in ash barrels, like the poor homeless cats you do be seein’ after dark. But for the most part, yes; it’s like this, only more so. And you might be puttin’ on your hat now, Miss Beth, for we’re gettin’ in.”

The train slowed up, stopped. Anna Mary took Beth’s hand and led her, bewildered, not sure whether she were awake or dreaming, down a long, cold concrete avenue between tracks, through hurrying crowds, under electric lights, into a screaming, rushing, roaring street of cabmen, travelers, trolleys. This was New York!

Anna Mary put Beth into an electric cab, gave an address, and stepped in herself. The doors that shut them in like a sort of folding lid closed upon them and the cab started. Never before had Beth ridden in a vehicle running without a track, without visible power to propel it. She held her breath.

The cab skidded along through the crowded cross street, turned a corner sharply, swung into a broad avenue alive with other electric cabs, horse-drawn cabs, fine carriages, two-story green stages with winding stairs up their backs, but with no horses to draw them; past streams of people going both ways, bright-faced girls, men in queer high hats that looked like mourning to Beth, with swinging coats that showed shining white linen, or black silk mufflers. She caught glimpses of lovely ladies in carriages, hatless, with flowers or feathers in their hair, gleaming with jewels as their beautiful cloaks parted, gowned in silks of the most exquisite tints. She saw others, walking, with lace mantillas over their hair, like the Spanish ladies in her geography, and with long coats that showed only beautiful ruffles as their wearers held up skirts and hurried to the theatre. She passed tall houses, some of them dark and solemn, some all alight, with pictures, great chairs, all sorts of brilliance, revealed through their lace-draped windows.

“Oh, am I really, really here? Am I seeing it, truly, Anna Mary?” gasped Beth.

Anna Mary caught her meaning. “You’re awake, Miss Beth; it’s New York fast enough,” she said with the pride of an adopted citizen in the vast, splendid city.