It is all a stunning, bewildering, amazing and wonderful experience to Helène. She finds herself speculating as to what will come next, hoping it won’t last long, and wishing it wouldn’t be over quickly. She is under the fascinating spell of quick motion through space and is in a continual tremor of excited anticipation.
And now, all at once, the landscape changed entirely. Beautiful valleys, fine streams shaded by giant trees, broad fields, endless levels of tasseled maize moving in the wind passed by her like a swiftly moving panorama. The hills became more abrupt, the mountains shut out the horizon. Houses were now fewer and smaller. The mirror of a lake gleamed between dark foliage. A weather-beaten gray structure resembling a wrecked whaler, though it was only an ice-house, causes Helène to start back as its black shadow darkened the windows. Then came a grinding of iron wheels on the metal, a creaking and a scraping, the train began to slow down, and with a shock it pulled up at the station—Charlotteville.
She doesn’t realize that this is her goal until the conductor speaks to her and a begrimed brakeman grabs her bags with a “your station, miss.” Helène follows with a sinking of the heart and is left, standing forlorn on the hot, dried boards of the platform, contemplating a number of boxes, trunks, plows and lawn-mowers which lie around. She gazes after the fast disappearing train utterly at a loss what to do or where to turn.
“Be ye lookin’ for somebody, miss?” The question came to her in a quavering, falsetto voice.
Turning quickly she beheld a whiskered nondescript of a man looking at her with shrewd eyes and a dry smile on his thin lips.
“Yes, sir,” she answered; “Mr. Post was to meet me.”
“I guess, it’s Bill Post ye mean, miss. Thar’s his team—that sorrel over yonder. I guess I’ll tell Artie.”
It was Bill Post’s team all right—the large blondish horse of the breed of hard working cousin of a percheron and a box-like wagon on the driver’s seat of which a boy of tender years with the face of a Methuselah, sat humped. The whiskered owner of the falsetto voice deposited Helène’s valise on the tailboard of the wagon and helped her to a seat by the side of the silent and prematurely aged Artie who, without opening his lips or moving a facial muscle, gave a peculiar chuckle, and the noble steed was off at a heavy, leisurely amble.
“Git ap, Major!” came from the tightly closed lips of the boy, and at a slightly faster gait they skirted the long, rambling frame building with the sign, “John P. Brown’s Hotel,” the guests of which on the stoop stared inquiringly after the ill-assorted pair on the wagon. Next came an unpretentious structure greatly in need of the painter’s services bearing the legend, “Post Office.” Passing this they entered a gray highway, bordered with dust-covered bushes and weeds.
The first part of the drive lay across an unattractive stretch of level fields baked hard by months of constant sunlight, the green of the sparse vegetation of which seemed as though it were struggling hard to overcome the all-enveloping gray. The air vibrated with the heat and was laden with floating particles of dust. Helène’s spirits sank. Was this the beautiful, wild rural America? Her eyes were smarting and her throat parched and itching. Suddenly the vehicle turned round a sharp bend in the dust-covered road to a short bridge with a somewhat elevated approach.