CHAPTER XXI

THE FIRST RAILROAD TRAIN

“Father,” said Doctor Garde’s little girl, when she saw the branching road ahead on which he must ride away from her, “you won’t get into the Rocky Fork again, _will_ you?”

“If I do, it will barely reach my saddle-girth now,” replied father, smiling.

“But you’ll be careful, won’t you, father?”

“Yes, I’ll be careful.”

Both his horse and Abram’s wagon were checked when the roads separated, while a few adieux were said. He shook hands with Miss Melissa and kissed his little girl. In a few moments he was cantering away, and Bluebell felt launched on the unknown world by herself. There was Abram, however, a figure to whom she had been accustomed so large a part of her life. And though he seemed nothing but a figure now, driving silently and looking straight ahead, for Abram was a reticent man, he was most significant of home. It was a long drive to the railroad station. Mary Ann post-office was quite back in the wilderness, and Bluebell had always thought it a suburb of the great world.

They stopped in the woods far from any house, and had their dinner. Liza had put up the best of lunches and plenty of cold tea. Abram unhitched his horse and led it to a stream to drink; then he took a sack of feed from the space behind the trunks, and fed it. Miss Calder and Bluebell sat on their chairs, but Abram took his dinner resting on the grass. When they had stopped half an hour by Miss Calder’s time, he hitched the horse again, and they moved briskly forward lest they should be too late at the station for the afternoon Baltimore and Ohio passenger train.

As they came down a slope. Doctor Garde’s little girl saw what she thought was an immense long boat sliding across a grassy plain with a roar which terrified her. It was as strange a sight as a blue or scarlet moon in the sky.

“Oh, look at that!” she cried: “what is it?”

“That’s the east-bound passenger,” said Miss Melissa. “Our train will be down soon now.”

So that strange vision was “the cars.”

She had heard of their rapid motion, and was prepared to see them shoot like a meteor; they were a little disappointing in that respect. But the smoke, the noise! And the possible danger! Suppose that train had changed its direction, and had run up the slope straight at Abram’s wagon! Bluebell had no doubt the mysterious sliding power could move where it pleased. But when they alighted at the station, she saw stretching in front of it, and as far as eye could see on each side until the parallel lines became points or disappeared behind hills, iron rails laid on a prepared road. This was the railroad; the flying boat could not leave it for a turf track and prosper. Here was matter for congratulation; but a new fear arose in the little girl’s mind which she would not on any account have betrayed. If the cars ran on wheels, as Aunt Melissa explained that they did, how _could_ those wheels keep from slipping off the polished tops of the rails? and if they departed ever so little, Bluebell knew what must follow. Her vision of riding on the cars began to take a lurid nimbus. Still, other people had ventured and lived.

The station was a small, lonely building, but several handsome farm-houses could be seen in the landscape. There were two rooms inside, in one of which a little machine clicked all the time. There were poles all along the railroad, with wires stretched along their tops, and Bluebell noticed that these wires came down through a window to this machine. She knew what that was. It was the telegraph. She had heard things went more quickly over that than over the railroad.

“I hope father and Rocketty will ride on that when they come to Aunt Melissa’s house,” she thought. “Wouldn’t the baby’s eyes pop when they went spinning along so fast! But what do folks do when they get to the poles? I should think the tops of the poles ’ud hit ’em. I guess they just swing round the poles and go on. I don’t believe I could go very fast if they _was_ telegraphin’ me.”

Miss Melissa sat on a bench in the station. Abram had attended to the tickets and had the trunks marked for delivery at Newark. He then drove his horse some distance away, and having secured it, came back to see his party off.

Bluebell slipped her hand into his and stood by him on the platform.

“You’ll soon be off now,” said he.

“Yes, sir.”

“Are you glad to get away from the Rocky Fork?”

“Oh, _no_, sir! But I want to learn at a big seminary.”

“That’s a fact,” said Abram, as if deliberation had convinced him of it.

“Mr. Banks, I s’pose you’ll see Tildy?”

“It’s likely I will; yes, it’s pretty likely.”

“If you do see her, I wish you would please tell her to write to me; I forgot to ask her.”

“I don’t know’s she can write.”

“But Teeny can. And Tildy said she was going to have a copybook as soon as her mother bought her some foolscap paper. I am going to learn to write. I am going to play music, too, Mr. Banks.”

“Yes, it’s likely you’ll learn a heap of fine things.”

“Don’t you s’pose Teeny would write a letter _for_ Tildy?”

“That don’t seem onreasonable,” admitted Abram. “Christeeny writes a fair hand. Robert, he was a good scholar. He read the Bible and Josephus clear through.”

“Yes, sir. And Joe Hall said they were singin’ so nice at g’ography school now.”

“That’s good learning,” said Abram, drolly; “but ther’s many another thing a man’d better know than singin’ g’ogr’phy. F’rinstance: how to ford a creek!”

Before Doctor Garde’s little girl could do complete justice to this pleasantry, which she and Abram, of all persons, were able to appreciate, the air was rent with a scream that turned the whole landscape for one instant into a nightmare.

“That’s the cars,” said Abram; “don’t you see the smoke comin’ round the hill?”

Miss Calder came out on the platform. The glittering monster of the rails bore down upon them as if determined to have their lives. The station agent stood ready to attend to baggage or express matter.

Before Bluebell could get her breath evenly, she was being helped up steps after Miss Calder, was walking along a long narrow room with windows on each side, and being seated beside Aunt Melissa on a velvet-upholstered seat. Red, bright velvet, gayer than Rocco’s best flowered winter dress which Liza made of a remnant of brocaded velvet among mother’s things. The seats were very soft and spongy, too. Bluebell furtively bounced up and down while Miss Melissa was settling comfortably. She sat on a seat facing her. A man obligingly turned it over for them. All at once the station began to slide backwards; and before she could recover from this, the woods and hills gently slipped away as if they had grown tired of such everlasting rest. The train was moving! What was a wagon or a horseback ride compared to this! Teetering on a sapling, or on a board stuck through the fence, or swinging in a grape-vine, must forevermore be secondary methods of motion. But where was Abram? She stretched her head out of the open window, and Miss Melissa nervously pulled her in just in time to save her flat from a flight.

But Bluebell had seen Abram far back, plodding up the road behind the station.

“I didn’t bid him good-by,” she thought ruefully, as this last symbol of her country home vanished from sight. She felt a momentary pang, such as maybe shoots through a little plant torn from its cherishing ground to be transplanted.

But there was Aunt Melissa sitting up so grand, her veil over her face and her delicate gloved hands enclosing her vinaigrette, ready for the headache which threatened her when travelling. She was a symbol of that larger life opening before the child.

Miss Calder was suffering a peculiar martyrdom. In every fibre of her sensitive nature she felt that she had robbed the lonesome spinster among the hills, who had not half her resources. But, on the other hand, she had but performed her sacred duty to the dead and the living. She knew she was considering the welfare of the children more than her own wishes. It was a waste for the refined young doctor to spend his life and energies at the Rocky Fork when by her influence she could help him to a position better suited to him. He was so humble and sorrowful himself, he had not considered that he owed a future to his dead wife’s children.

Still Miss Melissa felt she had performed a very painful duty, and regretted that she had not done it years before; for anything neglected brings with it long arrears of interest.

But Bluebell was in a fever of delight. Every object seen on that journey was stamped upon her mind for life.

When they slid into Newark, at which point their trip by rail ended, the city glamour enveloped her. To be sure, they passed squalid houses, worse than the most illy kept cabins about the Rocky Fork; and she got swift glimpses of dirty children and pens of back yards,--in short, of all the unsavory sights which spot the outskirts of a city. But these seemed picturesque. The folks must have a good time living “in town.” If the children were filthy, they could have candy every day, probably, and walk on sidewalks. Teeny said folks in Fredericktown never soiled the soles of their shoes. And oh, how beautiful the tall buildings were, when the slowly moving train, ringing its bell in state, gave glimpses of them! Streets stretching far as eye could see, carpets, dry goods, immense windows, people hurrying about dressed in their Sunday clothes and looking as if they felt the importance of living in town; carts rattling, long painted and gilded carriages with a man riding on top, appearing and disappearing around corners; and more than all, the roar of human life! How grand was a city! She even loved the smell of it, which consisted principally of escaping gas, not in good odor with more experienced noses.

Doctor Garde’s little girl was in a nervous hurry to follow Aunt Melissa out of the train when it stopped. She remembered its imperceptible starting, and what should she do if it carried her off by mistake? A man in blue clothes lifted her down from the last high step, and she kept close to Miss Calder. From the dingy brick dépôt came a light-haired, smiling man in very neat clothes. He carried a whip in his hand.

“How do you do, Archibald?” said Miss Calder with great affability. “Have you got the carriage here?”

Archibald took off his hat and bowed, smiling all the time in the most laughter-provoking way, and replied that he was quite well, and hoped he saw Miss Calder looking well. The carriage was on the other side of the dépôt.

Miss Calder said she was in excellent health, but felt threatened with a headache and would be glad to get home. She hoped everything had gone well.

Archibald assured her everything had moved as usual, except the house didn’t seem the same; and he would put her trunk up behind the carriage immediately if she could wait one minute.

“There are two trunks,” said Miss Calder: “that one beside mine which that man is pulling out of the way, is Melissa’s.”

Archibald applied himself to loading the baggage on a rack behind the carriage. Then he made haste to open the door, let down the steps, and help his mistress and her charge in. The carriage was roomy and comfortable, and drawn by two fat sleepy-looking horses, black as coal and groomed until they glittered. They seemed on the best of terms with Archibald, who called them Coaly and Charley.

Miss Calder leaned back with a satisfied sigh as they started. The cushions were easy and the stuffed back supported one to the shoulders.

It was quite sunset when they left Newark behind and drove towards the yellowing west. The three or four miles intervening between the railroad town and Sharon was a succession of lovely landscapes, and seemed one of those suburban extensions which rich men love to beautify with their villas. There was no ruggedness like that about the Rocky Fork. The hills rose in majestic proportions but softened outlines. In the afterglow left by sunset the country had an unearthly beauty. The road constantly broadened; villa after villa appeared, each standing in spacious grounds. They reached the top of an ascent, and saw Sharon set below, surrounded by hills and glittering like a huge topaz in the evening light. As they descended they lost sight of her. She was drowned from view among her abundant foliage. Bluebell began to think the road had turned aside from her, when they came sweeping around a curve and past an artificial lake, and were in Sharon’s main street, so broad that many carriages like Miss Melissa’s could drive there abreast. The street was quite lively with carriages, and Miss Calder exchanged greetings with numbers of people. One tall white building was beginning to glitter with lights from roof to ground. She knew it must be an important place, and asked with awe what it was.

“That’s the seminary,” replied Miss Calder.

Doctor Garde’s little girl felt almost dizzy as she was obliged to withdraw her eyes from the great mill of learning.

They drove far up this wide street and turned down another. The carriage stopped. Archibald opened a gate and drove half-way around a sweep under tall trees, and brought them to the steps of a large old house. It was brick. Bluebell could see vines massed over one whole end of it. There was a tall pillared veranda extending along the entire front.

The hall-door was open, and within, a globe of light hung suspended from the ceiling. Bluebell thought of the Discontented Cat who went to live with the Countess Von Rustenfustenmustencrustenberg, as she was ushered into this hall and the double parlors which opened from it. She walked on bouquets of velvet flowers as large around as a tub. The lofty rooms appeared to Bluebell one vast collection of treasures. She did not know there were such pictures, such chairs and ornaments and lounges and curtains in the world.

In this house three or four generations of Calders had lived and died. It was the first fine house built in Sharon by one of the Massachusetts colonists when the country was new. It had been remodeled and added to, and its furniture changed with the family tastes or fortunes. But the Calders never destroyed an old thing. Its former belongings were sure to be preserved in some way.

Miss Melissa entered her own room which, opened from the back parlor, and took off her wraps, bidding Bluebell take off hers also. And again Doctor Garde’s little girl was astonished by the sumptuousness of her surroundings. Then Aunt Melissa opened a door into a bathroom, and refreshed herself by bathing her hands and face at a marble stand, and called Bluebell to do likewise.