Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
About the Author
1940s
Rose Galbraith folded her work dress and apron neatly and laid them in the top of the packing box. With a trembling and determined hand she drove in the nails that were already stabbed through the missing board, then she cast a quick desolate glance about the room. How empty it looked! How different from a few days before!
In imagination, for an instant, the dear old furnishings came back. The muslin curtains at the windows, terribly worn in places, but delicately darned so that their defects became adornments. The faded old rugs, one of them a hooked rug her mother had made when Rose was a little girl.
And over at the far side of the room, the fine old bed and bureau and wardrobe that had been her mother’s wedding present from her father’s side of the house and on that other side, the corner cupboard with the frail lovely china that dated back a whole century. In the middle, the leaved table that was their dining table by day and their sitting room table around which she and her mother had gathered evenings. Oh, those days, and those precious evenings, gone now forever! But she would never forget them! Her whole life would center about them as long as she lived.
She turned away from gazing at those empty places. She could not bear it. A great tear slid out and rolled down her cheek, falling with a splash on top of the box that now held so many of the things that had made up the background of her life. Curtains and pillows and blankets and quilts, several of which her grandmother, her father’s mother in the “auld country,” had pieced and quilted. Tucked in between things there were pictures and dishes and a few cherished books and trinkets.
They had sold the little gas hot plate with its tiny oven that had served them so well during the lean years since her father died, sold it to a secondhand man for a dollar and seventy-five cents!
“If I should ever be able to come back, perhaps we could get a more modern one,” her mother had said with a brave smile as they made the decision, for even a dollar and seventy-five cents meant a lot to them just now.
And that was only ten days ago!
Rose drew a deep quivering sigh and then shut her lips with firm determination. She must not break down!
The cheap upright piano that her mother and she had prized so much had been sold to a little music pupil of hers. Her mother had always hoped that someday they would be able to get a better one. But now all those hopes were over. Her mother would never get any more meals in this scant little room that had been a home to them for four long beautiful years. She would never bring any more music for the dear old piano! She had gone to spend all her days in the bright eternal home where she would go out no more forever! She would not even take this trip to Scotland for which they had planned so long, to see the old home, and the old folk who were left back in the old country. The trip for which the tickets were all purchased and tucked away in the pretty little handbag that had been her mother’s last gift to Rose, her birthday gift! And now Rose was going to have to take that trip alone! It seemed appalling to her!
It was too late to change her mind. The tickets might be returned perhaps, but where would she go? The tiny apartment had been definitely given up. The dear old furniture had gone to storage in the house of a friend. This box of leftovers was to follow in an hour. There would be only her own two suitcases left, and they were now packed and ready to leave.
Her coat and hat were hanging in the closet, the pretty coat and hat that matched her suit. Such a pretty suit, and Mother had loved it so, and insisted on buying it for her, because she said she wanted her family to see her girl looking the best she could. That blue suit was the kind she had always wanted to get for her child. But Mother hadn’t been willing to get anything much for herself. Somehow it seemed as if she must have known even when she had bought the gray tweed suit for herself, that she wasn’t to stay here long, for when Rose begged her to get a few more things that she needed, she shook her head determinedly.
“No, dear! No! Just the suit will do for me, and when we get over there I can buy some more. We’ll get what we like cheaper. We’ll maybe run over to London some day and shop!” And then she flashed a brilliant loving smile at Rose that almost made her feel that some of these daydreams might come true after all.
Rose had grown used to having to wear plain, made-over garments. It had almost seemed wicked to her to have her mother buy this suit for her. But when she saw how much it meant to her mother to dress her child up for her relatives, she said no more.
Yes, surely Mother must have realized that she couldn’t stay long. It came to Rose with a quick sharp thrust how that last morning before Mother died, she had called to her with sudden strength in her voice.
“Rose, dear, I want you to get that tweed suit and do it up to be returned. The ten days will be up tomorrow, and I’ve decided that I don’t want to keep it.”
“Oh, Mother!” Rose had said in distress. “But I thought you liked it so much!”
“Yes, I liked it,” she said with a faint smile, “but somehow I got to thinking about it in the night. I believe I’ll find something I like better—”
Her breath was short and she closed her eyes wearily, as if the effort was more than she was equal to. But she roused herself a little later and begged Rose to tie up the package and ask the woman who lived next door and was a saleswoman in the store to return it for her. And because she had been so insistent, Rose had done it.
It hurt her now, as it had hurt her while she was wrapping the package, that her mother never had that suit. Yes, surely she must have known she was going, even before the final symptoms came that made the doctor lose hope. And her mother had sent that suit back quickly to make sure Rose would have that little more money for her solitary trip to Scotland. Dear Mother! It seemed to Rose that she would never be able to spend that money for anything for herself! It seemed sacred money. Yet her mother would never have wanted her to feel that way, she was sure.
She drew another deep quivering breath and tried to steady her lips, and her gaze. The mover would be back in a few minutes. She must not be weeping. He did not know that her mother had gone away from her and left her utterly alone. He was a man from down in the city, one she had found from the telephone book.
She gathered the last few things together for him to take: the screen that had disguised the old gas hot plate, the decrepit wastebasket, a few remaining chairs, and the little tool chest that had been her father’s. She put the hammer and the screwdriver carefully away in it and locked it, putting the key in her suitcase with other keys. Then she went to the closet and got her coat and hat and the white blouse that was to be used on shipboard alternating with the blue one she was wearing now. She laid the crisp white one in smoothly, touching it tenderly. This was the last thing her dear mother had worked at, ironing that blouse, doing it late at night when she ought to have been in bed, handling it so lovingly, almost as if it were something holy. Could she ever bear to wear that blouse and take its crispness away? Oh, how was she going to bear the days of her journey without her mother? Why did she have to go now? Why couldn’t she just stay here? Those people, her relatives in Scotland, didn’t know her, and wouldn’t care. How could she go and meet them all without her mother, who had counted so much upon it?
But there had been cables back and forth, and they had been insistent. They had regretted that they could not come and bring her back with them. They were old, and not very well. And she knew it would be her mother’s wish that she should go to them.
Besides, if she tried to stay, where would she live? Get a job? But it wasn’t so easy to get jobs today. She might have to wait months, and she had but a very little money besides those tickets. Of course, she could turn in Mother’s ticket. She meant to do that as soon as she reached New York. Perhaps she should have written to cancel it sooner. But there had been so many things to do, and Mother had only just gone! She couldn’t think of everything at once.
Then she saw the moving truck stop in front of the house, and she hurriedly put on her hat. Her heart was beating wildly. This was the last minute that she had anticipated so many times during the days since they had decided on this trip. This was the moment when she had hoped to go forth so happily on a real adventure! And now her young soul shrank back. How she dreaded it. How she was going to suffer all through this thing that had been meant to be a pleasure.
Then she opened the door for the mover, and he soon cleared the room of everything.
When he was gone she gave one last desperate look around the devastated room, and then with a quick motion took the key from the inside of the door, slipped it into the outer lock, stepped out, and closed the door sharply, turning the key with finality.
She had already set her suitcases outside, and now she took them and hastily marched down the path and out on the sidewalk, hurrying toward the corner where the trolley would be stopping soon. She was thankful there was no one in sight. She could not bear the thought of prying, curious eyes. She wanted this last act over quickly. She must not go away in a deluge of tears.
There was no one in the trolley whom she knew even by sight except an old woman who did some scrubbing at the high school, and she was sitting wearily looking out the window with a lack of interest in her face. She wasn’t looking toward Rose. Their ways had never crossed, even casually. Rose had only seen her on her hands and knees scrubbing the cafeteria in the high school building. She drew a long breath. She didn’t want anybody to be looking curiously at her now, when she was leaving all the things that were known and dear to her. But she had no realization that scarcely anyone, even the neighbors, would have recognized her in her new blue suit and hat, with the handsome new coat over her arm, its lovely silver-flecked fur collar glorifying her whole outfit. She wasn’t thinking about her new clothes now. All the joy of them was gone, now that the mother who had planned for them and selected them was not there to enjoy seeing her in them. She was only thinking of the great pain in her heart, and the heaviness of having to go out alone. Praying that she might go bravely, as befitted the daughter of the mother who had planned all this for her.
She left her suitcases at the station in care of the old station-master whom she had known since she was a little girl. He had arranged about her ticket to New York and told her about the trains.
She went across the street to the little real estate office where they paid their rent, to leave the key of their apartment, and then she came back to the station and sat down drearily on the bench that ran across the front of the building. There was no one about there with whom she could claim any degree of intimacy, although there were a number whose names she knew, and where they lived and what was their general station in life. But they had probably never heard of her, nor even seen her to notice her, except as she might have passed them on her way from school in a group of girls.
The conductor helped her lift her suitcases onto the train, and she dropped into the seat nearest the door. It wasn’t far to the city where she would get her New York train. She didn’t care where she sat.
But then she looked out the window, catching her last glimpses of the post office, the grocery stores, the drugstore, the little shoe shop where she had had her shoes mended so often, the garage, the church spires in the distance among the trees, the college on the hill, and lastly, as the train gathered full speed and swept around the curve out of town, the big stone high school where she had gone so regularly. She might never see it again. Would she miss it? Although it was nearly two years since she had graduated, it still seemed closely associated with her life, the background of all her contacts with young people her age.
There were the new tennis courts. There were people playing on them now. She couldn’t tell who they were. Perhaps not anyone she knew, for this was vacation, and there were likely to be strangers in town.
Then the train passed on and they were lost to view. She had a sudden quick yearning for one more glimpse of the old schoolhouse before it passed out of her life forever. She leaned forward and stretched her neck to look back, catching only a far flash of the old gray stone building; then the long low shed where they parked their bicycles hid it from view till the tall hedge wiped it out entirely. They went around another curve, and the old life was gone, gone!
She closed her eyes, and the big sunny room of her school days flashed into her vision again. She saw the long aisles. The long pleasant stretch of blackboards, with windows at intervals, the neat separate desks. How interesting it had all seemed to her! How she used to love to describe it to her mother when she came home.
She saw again the rows of students, heads bent to books, others staring around and smiling. There was the first row; during her last year, Annette Howells was in the front seat, because she always needed watching, Rose had thought. She never was still. She seldom studied. She was pretty and knew it, and was always trying to attract the attention of the boys across the aisle.
Behind her was Caroline Goodson, a solid, solemn girl, overgrown, and slow of mind. Annette would never bother to chatter to her. Then Shirley Pettigrew, so pretty, and so well dressed. Who sat next? Oh, Jennie Carew, and those girls from South Addison Street. Then up to the front row her mind jumped again. Mary Fithian, then Fannie Heatherow, and then herself.
She went down the line behind her, and wasn’t sure of some names. She hadn’t been one who turned around much.
The third aisle was all boys. Johnny Peters, Harry Fitch—how they used to carry on whenever the teacher’s back was turned as she wrote on the blackboard! And next was Gordon McCarroll across the aisle from herself. Everybody liked him. Everybody had a smile and a cheerful word for him.
Gordon belonged to a wealthy family. He might have gone to an expensive school, but it was whispered that his father preferred the public school. And certainly Gordon never acted as if he were trying to be better than anybody else. He had a genial way with him that showed he counted himself one with them all. Rose was naturally shy, and she rarely went to the school parties, or she would have known him better, she supposed. But though she did not know him well, she had great respect for his bright mind and his straightforward, manly attitude. Of course he had always said “Hello!” to her when he came to his seat in the mornings, but that was about all the contact they had ever had. No—there was the day she had been asked by the teacher to read her essay before the class, and they had clapped so enthusiastically. Gordon had looked up as she came back to her seat and said in a low clear voice, “Swell!” There had been a look in his nice gray eyes that she had not forgotten. That had been the extent of their acquaintance.
Yet now, as the memory of the last year of her school life came so keenly to her heart, his was the only face that stood out vividly.
It was ridiculous, of course, because she didn’t really know him at all, and all the fancied virtues she had put upon him might be from herself, and only figments of her imagination. Yet, of them all, he was the only one she felt she would truly miss. Of course she never would have had the opportunity to be real friends with him, even if she stayed in Shandon. Why should she? She had merely lived on the outskirts of Shandon, and he lived on the Heights, in a big lovely stone house, so screened with evergreens that one could scarcely see it from the street. He lived in another world, and had only touched her world in those few school contacts. Someday he would be a great man perhaps—she felt sure from her estimate of him that he would—and she might hear his name and be proud that she had sat across from him at school. Well, that was that!
There was poor Jane Shackelton. Jane was a good girl—not the brightest student, but she always did her best. Rose had often helped her with her mathematics. She didn’t even know where Jane was now. She had moved to another part of the state. She had promised to write to her, but Jane wasn’t much of a writer. She probably would put it off so long that she wouldn’t think it worthwhile. And even if she did, it might not get to her now, though Rose had filled out the card for the postmaster to forward her mail, in spite of the fact that she didn’t really expect any. She hadn’t had time to be intimate with anybody. There had always been somebody’s babies to mind after school, to bring in a few extra dollars to piece out mother’s small earnings. And since she left school she had been busy teaching her little music pupils. Well, it didn’t matter anymore. Everything was over, Mother was gone, and somehow she didn’t have much interest in the new people who would be waiting on the other side of the water.
She sighed and looked apathetically at the swiftly flying suburbs they were passing through. This was Comley, where Cathy Brent lived. They hadn’t any classes together, and Cathy had always come up on the train. Another girl she didn’t know very well, and didn’t care whether she ever saw again or not. But still, Cathy was a link between the old life in which Mother had been the center, and the emptiness of today. Cathy Brent was likely married by now to Jack Holley. They hadn’t done much else during the last year of school but saunter around the sidewalks surrounding the school building, or loiter in the halls on rainy days. How fast time went!
Or did it? It certainly wasn’t going rapidly now. This journey to the city station seemed interminable, and interwoven everywhere with memories of things that were gone.
Then suddenly they slid into the big station, and Rose gathered up her coat and her two suitcases and went on her way.
She shook her head at the red-capped porter who offered to take her baggage. The habit of her upbringing was upon her. She was able to save the few cents it would have cost, and there were things she might need more later. Of course, if Mother had been along, they had planned to have a porter carry their luggage. But now it wasn’t necessary.
She walked slowly, looking sadly among her fellow travelers. She didn’t know one of them. She felt terribly desolate. Already she was in an unknown world of strangers.
Since she had her ticket to New York, she went straight to the escalator and reached the upper platform where the New York train would arrive.
She found an empty seat on the long line of benches and put her suitcases at her feet. How happy she had expected to be when she reached this stage of their journey! And now it was all blank and sad! Mother wasn’t along! Mother’s dear precious body was lying in the quiet little corner of Shandon Cemetery, and her spirit was up in heaven with the Lord. Somehow it seemed to put her mother so very far away to think of that, as if she had become a different order of being who would not understand her child’s loneliness, till suddenly it came to her that Mother couldn’t be like that. Mother, if she was conscious—and she had always been taught to believe that the dead in Christ were conscious, and with the Lord—would remember her child, and love her, and be thinking of her as she journeyed alone.
That thought was comforting, but it almost brought the tears, and she mustn’t weep, here in the station. Mother wouldn’t want her to go away weeping.
She sat up straight and smiled a feeble little smile at a baby in a woman’s arms, a solid little baby who was interested only in her thumb, which she was sucking violently. But Rose continued to smile at the baby until for an instant, she beamed forth with a toothless, gurgling smile. Strange that an ugly whimpering little baby could suddenly smile like that! For no reason at all, it seemed to cheer her. And then the light on the signal flashed, brightly announcing the arrival of the train, and Rose stood and gathered her things together.
The train swept up in a businesslike manner, and the porters rushed over the platform.
Following the direction of the voice that roared out from the signal box, Rose found the right coach and hurried in, relieved to discover she could have a whole seat to herself.
She settled back and closed her eyes for a minute until the train was in motion and the people who had flocked in after her had settled down and got their belongings established in the racks overhead. Then there was the bustle of the conductor coming for tickets and the intermittent stoppings at other stations farther out of the city.
For a little while she was intrigued with looking at the towns they passed. She had heard their names before, and often wondered what kind of places they were. Now she studied their roofs and towers and rundown buildings. After all, you couldn’t see much from a railroad train. People didn’t live near a railroad if they could help it. The quiet lovely part of the towns was far away, hidden under the trees. She dropped her head back and closed her eyes again. She was deadly weary. It was good just to close her eyes and rest. If she only could get away from her thoughts for a little while! But then there was the waking up! It was so terrible to wake to the thought that her mother was gone, for the rest of Rose’s time on earth!
That was the last she remembered until she heard the conductor asking the woman with the baby if she wanted to get off at the Pennsylvania station, or to go to downtown New York. Then she came to herself in a panic and gathered her senses in a hurry. There was no one but herself to depend upon. She must not miss her boat!
She got out her directions and looked them over, though she had memorized them the night before. She wanted to be sure she hadn’t forgotten anything. She was to take a taxi to the wharf. That would take care of her baggage too. She glanced over the directions the ticket agent had written out for her. He used to live in New York and he knew just what she ought to do, even to the exact spot where she would find a cheap restaurant where she could get a bite to eat before she went on board, if there was much time before sailing.
Through the rush and noise of the traffic in New York City she paid very little heed to the city itself, which had always held glamor for her. She had meant to look for the place where her mother had lived when she first came to this country, and the old location where her father had a clerking job for a time until he secured a better position in another city, but somehow the taxi didn’t take the direction her mother had thought it would from the station, or else by the time she got accustomed to reading the street signs, they were too far downtown for her to identify anything.
And then they were at the wharf! It was time to pay her fare and get out.
Arrived at last at the little cubicle that she and her mother had selected with such care from the ship’s diagram, she sat down on the side of the bed with her baggage at her feet and stared blankly at the opposite wall. She was in a place at last where she had to stay, at least for a few days. She did not have to nerve herself up for the next act. She could sit right here all night if she wanted to and no one had the right to tell her she couldn’t!
It was then she felt the tempest of tears coming, the first tear stinging its way out from under her closed lids, and rolling boldly down her white cheek, and then there was an army of them coming with a rush. In an instant she would be down, conquered, giving way before her broken young heart, she who had meant to be so brave! But it was of no use to try further. She was done!
Then suddenly she was startled by a voice going by her stateroom door. “All ashore that’s going ashore! All ashore that’s going ashore!” Ringing footsteps hurried on, the clarion voice continuing the warning.
Within her heart came a sudden fierce yearning to see this parting from the shore of her native land, to take one more glimpse of the country that had been the scene of her life thus far, and she sprang up, dashing away those few tears that had ventured out.
A more sophisticated girl would have gone at once to the tiny mirror and done things to her eyes, which were no doubt red from even those few tears. She would have gotten out a powder puff to remove the suggestion of tears, and a neat little lipstick to hide the lack of a smile on her trembling lips. But Rose Galbraith had never been very conscious of self or appearance. She had worn plain, sometimes faded, often made-over garments, and shoes that had had to be carefully polished not to show their shabbiness. She had carried it all off with a grace, even in the company of better-dressed people, just because she wasn’t expecting to make a good appearance, and wasn’t thinking about it enough to worry.
And so she went along the corridor from her little cubicle to the deck, remembering well how she and her mother had traced the way again and again with a pencil along the diagram of the ship. She arrived just in time to get a place next to the rail where she could look down to the dock. A great throng were standing there, and many more were hurrying down the gangplank to mingle with them and turn to look back at their friends on the boat.
Rose looked down on that cheering throng and couldn’t see a face she had ever seen before. Of course. She hadn’t expected to. But it gave her a most desolate feeling. A quick fear came that she might be going to cry again. She shouldn’t have come out here, of course. She might have known it would only make her homesick to see all these happy people going off to have a good time, with so many to see them off. And she hadn’t anybody in the world to say good-bye to her!
Of course those relatives to whom she was going might be kind enough to welcome her when she got to Scotland, even sorry to see her go if she ever could come back again, but they didn’t know her yet. She had never so much as seen them; it probably would not matter much to them if she never got there.
Well, she must stop such thoughts if she didn’t want to be disgraced right here among a lot of strangers. She would try and find something amusing to look at down on the wharf. There was a man holding a little child in his arms, and the child was shouting funny little farewells to some playmate who was sailing. She looked at the bright face of the little playmate near the rail beside her and almost envied her joy. A pleasant looking man and woman were with her. She wasn’t going off on a journey alone.
She turned her attention to a group off at the right. They were saying good-bye, happily.
“Now, Herbert, don’t you and Gladys turn the house upside down while we’re gone off pleasuring,” admonished the pretty white-haired mother, obviously talking to a handsome son whose wife was bidding the father-in-law good-bye.
She turned sharply to the left, and there were more people saying last things to dear ones. On every hand everyone but herself had someone who had cared enough to come down and bid farewell. It brought a great lump into her throat, and she was having another struggle with her tears. How silly! Tears! Because there wasn’t anybody, not anybody to say good-bye to her.
Of course there had been people in Shandon to whom she might have paid farewell visits, and they would have been kind. Maybe would have given her little gifts or something to remember them by, but she just hadn’t had the courage to go around and hear them tell how they had loved her mother and how sad it was that she was gone. It was her own fault that she had said good-bye to so few. There was Harry Fitch. If she had given him half a chance, he would have offered to bring her all the way up to New York in his car and see her off. He would have brought his sister Mary along perhaps, or maybe John Peters, or that silly Fannie Heathrow. They would have stood down there on the dock and yelled things she couldn’t hear, and laughed and carried on the way that crowd down there near the man with the child were doing, and she would have been mortified to death and been only too glad to sail away into oblivion out of their reach. Oh, she ought to be glad there were no people like that down on the wharf to see her off!
So she tried to smile, and most unexpectedly there came great, fat, hot tears plunging down her cheeks and splashing on her hand on the railing. Someone who was passing, a young man in well-cut tweeds, paused and looked down at her.
She decided not to look up till he had gone on, because she was just sure another tear was on its way down and would be sure to fall right before him. She mustn’t be seen crying, even by a stranger.
So with eyes downcast, she stood there and sighted the neat creases in the tweed trouser legs there just at one side.
But he wasn’t moving on. Was he just going to stand there? She lifted an investigating glance and met a puzzled gaze looking down at her. And then a friendly voice asked in an astonished tone:
“Why, isn’t this Rose Galbraith? It surely is! What are you doing here? Not leaving the country, are you?”
Then she looked up with a radiant face. “Oh,” she said with a great relief in her glance, “why, it’s Gordon McCarroll! I’m so glad you spoke to me! I was just feeling awfully forlorn because everybody else seemed to have someone around who knew them, and I didn’t have anyone to even say good-bye to.”
Rose looked up with her lashes all dewy and gave a shamed shy little smile, like a child that was embarrassed.
The young man looked down at her with a kind smile.
“Say, now, that’s tough. I certainly am glad I happened along! The company sent me here with some papers for an Englishman who is sailing on this boat, and I didn’t dream I’d see anybody I knew. Say, are you going over for the summer? Just a trip? My! I wish I were going! I love the water, and maybe we could get really acquainted. But I’ve got a regular job now and haven’t any time for playing around in Europe. I suppose you’ll have a great time. Where did you say you were going?”
“I’m going to Scotland,” said Rose soberly, almost sadly.
“But say! Aren’t you thrilled? I’ve never been to Scotland, and I’ve always been crazy to go, ever since I read those books we had in lit class. I liked them so much I read a lot of others too. I want to see Loch Lomond and Loch Katrine, and all the others. But you don’t seem very happy about it. Aren’t you anticipating a good time?”
Rose dropped her gaze for an instant and drew a deep trembling sigh, with just a faint glimmer of a smile on her lips as she looked up.
“I’m not feeling very happy about it just now,” she said, drawing a deep quick breath to keep the tears back, “because you see, Mother and I were going together. It is Mother’s native land, and she was so happy to be taking me back there to show me everything. But just last week she went home to heaven to live.”
“Oh!” said the young man with a great gentleness in his voice. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know. And now it is going to be very hard for you.”
Rose struggled to answer, but instead two great tears swelled out and rolled down her cheeks, and she could only lift her tear-drenched eyes to his face for an instant’s apology and then look down again. Suddenly the young man reached out both his hands and took her small trembling hands in his.
“I am so very, very sorry,” he said tenderly, and as she lifted her eyes again she met a deeply sympathetic glance. “I know how hard it must be for you,” he said, “I have a very dear mother myself.”
She flashed a look that was half a smile, yet full of sudden sorrow.
“I thought you would have a mother like that,” she said shyly.
There was an answering glow in his eyes and his fingers pressed hers again as they still held them lightly.
“Thank you,” he said appreciatively. Then after an instant of quiet he asked, “And now, who are you with?”
“Just myself,” she said with a sad little smile.
“Oh, that’s too bad,” he said sympathetically. “I wish there were somebody on board I knew to whom I could introduce you. But you’ll get acquainted.”
“Perhaps,” she said wistfully. “But I guess I don’t get to know people easily. That was why I was glad to have you speak to me. It seemed so strange and lonely here.”
“I’m glad I was here!” he said with a sunny smile, and then his handclasp gave a quick close pressure, and it was not till then that either of them realized that he was still holding her hands. Their eyes suddenly met and they laughed, a happy little friendly laugh. What would people think about it? It didn’t occur to them. Other people about them were doing the same thing. Husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, parents and children, lovers, who had a right to be holding hands. They were only schoolmates. Yet because of her need and his nearness, it seemed quite right for her hands to be lying in his in this pleasant, protected, comforting way.
Then suddenly out of the melee of laughter and tears and farewells came the screeching of the siren and the voice of the ship’s official, calling, “All ashore that’s going ashore! Last call!”
People all about gave a moan and started away from the rail, making for the exit, leaving Rose and Gordon in a little space by themselves. Farewell kisses and laughter and last words were in the air, and Rose realized that her friend was going! In a moment more she would be standing here alone again, but she would have his friendly words to remember, and his smile, his kindliness, the warm clasp of his strong hands on hers.
Then came another warning whistle.
“I must go!” he said. “I’m sorry. But—we are friends, aren’t we? And—you will be coming back, won’t you? When?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said sadly.
“Oh, but where are you going? I must have your address!”
She murmured the name of the little Scottish town to which she was going. Her hands were still in his clasp.
“Have you friends there?”
“Yes, my uncle, John Galbraith. It’s Kilcreggan.”
“Write me, please, as soon as you land, and again when you reach where you’re staying. I shall be anxious to know how the trip went. Will you?”
“Yes,” she breathed shyly, “if you want me to.”
“I certainly do!” he said fervently.
“Last call!” came the echo from below.
Suddenly he stooped and laid his lips on hers in a warm, friendly kiss. “Good-bye!” he said earnestly. With another lingering pressure of her hands he let them go and hurried away.
Then, just at the head of the steps, he flung back and pressed a card in her hand.
“My present address,” he said breathlessly. “Don’t forget to write at once!”
And then he was gone, so swiftly and so fully that his presence seemed almost like something that had not been. Yet she still felt the warmth of his handclasp on her hands, the thrill of his good-bye kiss on her lips, and her cheeks were glowing with the memory.
Rose stood for several minutes searching before she could find him in that crowd waiting down below. The gangplank had been hauled in, and she leaned over the rail and watched breathlessly, searching the throng. Would he perhaps be carried along and have to go back on the pilot boat? It would be her fault if that should happen to him.
But then her gaze swept the whole side of the ship, and she saw him hurrying off from the other plank where the baggage had been loaded aboard.
All about her were excited voices; confetti and paper ribbons flung over the rail, landing at the feet of friends, or about their necks; handkerchiefs waving; people crying; people laughing and contributing to the general symphony of sound. There were many smart sayings that were never heard above the noise of the boat as it thundered its final farewell to its native land.
But Gordon McCarroll was making his way through the crowd toward the end of the dock that was below the forward deck where he had left her. He looked up and signaled and then smiled with an intent gaze, for all the world as if she were an old friend, the kind of friend she had always in her heart wished she might be.
He was standing there and waiting, as if he had brought her down here and put her aboard. He was taking away that deathly loneliness and making her feel as if she belonged, as if he really cared for her loneliness and wanted to comfort her.
Suddenly she smiled, a radiant glow like sunshine illuminating her face. As they stood there looking at one another during those last seconds, while the ship began to move, it was almost as if words, pleasant assurances, passed between them.
And when at last the ship passed on into the dimness of the blue mist that was the sea, Gordon McCarroll still stood there, looking out at the mere speck the ship had become, thinking amazing thoughts about the little girl who was alone out there on a strange sea! The little girl whom he had known so slightly during the years of their school days together. How she had suddenly become of importance to him! Just the clasp of her hand, the touch of her lips, and something dear had crept into his heart that he could not understand nor fathom. Was that merely a thing of the flesh? No, he thought not. There seemed something almost holy about it.
She had always interested him. Her quaint answers in class had frequently drawn his attention, but he had looked upon her as someone out of an unknown world, for he had never met her elsewhere than in school, and his interest in her had always been but passing. Yet he remembered now that he had often marked the blueness of her eyes, the lights of gold in her hair that curled so naturally about her delicate refined face. And now he had seen in her today a beauty he had never noticed before. Perhaps it had always been there. Only he had not been looking for it, or perhaps the sorrow of her mother’s death had touched her with the beauty that sorrow brings. But anyhow, the memory of her face as he had just been looking down into it, stayed with him and intrigued him strongly.
The twilight was settling down over the pearly tints in the sea, and the ship had become a part of the distance, with possibly a mere speck of light stabbing it somewhere to show where it had gone, but he felt sure the little girl was still there by the ship’s rail looking back to the land of her birth wistfully, and perhaps, as he was, thinking of their brief farewell. Would he ever see her again? His heart cried out to be assured. Would it be possible for him to do anything about it sometime? When? Would he still wish to do it when the time came?
He turned sadly away and walked the length of the wharf, took a taxi to his hotel, and sat down to think before he went down to get his dinner.
And later, after going out to call on some of his mother’s friends, the memory of Rose Galbraith was with him again on his way back to the hotel. Her eyes reflecting the blue of her garments, their beauty holding his thoughts even against his will. He felt again her small soft hands in his, the thrill of her shy lips so sweet against his own. He wasn’t a boy who made a practice of kissing girls. Kissing had always seemed a very special sacred thing to him, and now that he was looking at his own action past, and the fact that it was he who had stooped to lay his lips upon hers, he wondered why he had done it. What impulse had stirred him to it? Was it pity for her loneliness? No, not that. There was nothing forlorn about her. Nothing in herself that had claimed such intimacy. She had seemed almost surprised, yet she had yielded her lips. No, it was not pity for her, nor was it promiscuous. It had seemed a fitting sacred thing. As if somehow she suddenly belonged to him and he wanted to kiss her. The farewell gave enough occasion for it, even though they had never been intimate. He was not ashamed of his action. He thought about whether he should tell his mother of it when he went home. He would not be ashamed to tell her. In a way, she would understand. There had always been a sweet intimacy between himself and his mother. But yet he wondered if she would fully understand. He had to think it over carefully and be sure he understood himself before he would feel like bringing it out into the open that way. Maybe it was just something that should be kept in his own heart till time should pass over it and set some kind of a seal upon it. Perhaps it was only a pleasant salutation, a farewell, like a handshake, that would pass into history. Yet that thought was not pleasant, for the memory of that kiss held a strange sweet thrill that was full of beauty and seemed something akin to a heavenly friendship. It was as if suddenly he was aware of having known her a long time.
Always in his schooldays, she had been somewhere about, though usually shy and quiet. Excepting of course when it came to recitations. She had always been smart as a whip in class. The teacher’s attitude toward her had been one of utter confidence. She could always call upon Rose when there were visitors present and know that there would be a perfect recitation. Yet it had never given her that look of pride and self-importance that many bright ones wore like a garment. Much praise had never made her try for a position in the limelight. She had always been so sweet and unassuming, no one had seemed even jealous of her.
Of course he had never known Rose Galbraith socially. She almost never attended the parties and picnics and gatherings of the class. Only when in the line of her studies her presence was required was she always present. She had never been out with the crowd skating or attending any of their special outings, and it had never occurred to him to ask why. He hadn’t even known except vaguely, in what part of the town was her home. But now he began to wonder why she had always been so apart from the rest. Could it be an invalid mother, or poverty and hard work that was the answer to that question? Yes, perhaps it was both, for she had told him that her mother had just died.
Poor little girl! There was such a stricken look in her face! It had seemed to call forth the finest feeling of his heart. He had felt a strange new desire to take her in his arms and comfort her. He couldn’t quite understand himself. But somehow he felt glad that he had happened along before she left.
Happened? Was it chance? Could a thing that lingered with him so keenly be just a happening? Or was it somehow planned as a kind of climax to their school days? What, that quiet plain girl whose life had touched his so rarely? Why should she seem suddenly so fine and rare? Why should the thought of her linger so poignantly in his mind? She seemed so utterly alone to go across the great ocean, going to strangers!
“Oh, God, keep her safe,” he prayed as he knelt before he slept.
Rose Galbraith, as she stood on the deck alone and watched the land recede, was conscious of a comforting gladness. The touch of his hands on her hands, the touch of his lips on hers, the look of his eyes into hers, for just that last minute before he went! It was wonderful! Breathtaking! As if God, to comfort her, had prepared a friend for those last few moments. She probably would never see him again, but for that moment she had had a perfect friend for her own, and it was something she could remember all her life.
His face upturned from the throng on the wharf, the radiance of his smile! How lovely it was that she had that to remember! A symbol of her happy school days! How glad her mother would have been to know that the nicest boy in her high school had given her as much honor for those last few minutes as if she had been a princess. Maybe it would be something like that when the end of her life came, and she was about to enter the heavenly home. Only—would there be anybody to bid her good-bye then? But she wouldn’t need them, for she would be going home.
Then at once she became aware that the deck was almost deserted. People had gone to their staterooms. There would be things to be done. Her mother had told her about it all. She must unpack some of her belongings, brush her hair, and get ready for the evening meal. Also, she must get acquainted with the small compartment that was to be her refuge during this voyage.
Slowly she found her way to the cabin, reluctant to leave the spot where that pleasant good-bye had taken place. It would always be the bright memory of her voyage, for surely none of the rest could be especially pleasant, now that her mother was not along and she knew no one else on board!