A rain was drenching the blackness of the night as the New York train reached the small city that was Phœbe’s destination. Her father had wakened her a little in advance of their stop, and when she had washed her face and smoothed her hair, she had peered through the double glass of a car window a-stream with water—and then recoiled from the panes with a sinking of the heart. How dark it was out there! how stormy! how lightless after a life-time in a city which, no matter at what hour she might awake, was always alight!
A long whistle made her catch up her hat and adjust its elastic under her chin. The porter had already taken her father’s suit-case and her own to the forward end of the coach. With a wild thumping in her breast and a choking in her throat, she followed her father to the vestibule, where the porter waited with the suit-case and a small, square stool upon which, presently, she stepped down to meet the rain.
There was a single light in the station, and beside it leaned a young man in an agent’s cap. With her hand on her father’s arm—for he was carrying both of the cases—she crossed a double line of glistening rails to the depot, not taking her eyes from the agent, who represented to her, at the moment, the sole sign of life and refuge in that black, roaring downfall.
Then, “Jim!”
“Hello, Bob!” Her father dropped the luggage and stretched both hands out to a figure that had emerged, in a shining raincoat, from the blackness.
“And Phœbe!” exclaimed Uncle Bob, lifting Phœbe from her feet and at the same time turning himself about, so that she was carried forward to the shelter of a roof. “God bless her! We’ll jump into the surrey, Jim, and I’ll have you home in a jiffy. What a ghastly night!—It’ll take the snow off, Phœbe. But we’ll have more. And then for some sleigh-rides!”
The train was gone, booming into the distance, with parting shrieks that grew fainter and fainter. As Phœbe was helped to the rear seat of the surrey, Uncle Bob holding aside the curtains that shut out the storm, she turned her head to look through the night to where great sparks were going up with the smoke of the engine. The train was leaving her—that train which seemed her only link with New York, with the beloved apartment that was to her the home-nest, with her mother—her dear, beautiful mother.
Phœbe gulped.
From the front seat sounded her uncle’s voice—a nice voice, she concluded, though not at all like Daddy’s. As if he understood something of what she was feeling—the lostness, the loneliness, the sensation of being torn up and thrust out—her father had taken his seat beside her and put an arm about her, drawing her so closely to him that, for comfort, she was forced to take off her hat. The surrey was moving. And its two side-lamps were casting a rain-blurred light upon the flanks of a bay horse. Phœbe peered forward at the horse. She had pictured him after horses she had seen in Central Park—shiny-coated saddlers, or carriage pairs, proud and plump and high-stepping, with docked tails and arching necks. But this horse was almost thin, and moved slowly, with a plop-plop-plop through the miry puddles of the unpaved street. This horse had a long tail, and his head was on a level with his back. Phœbe was disappointed.
The drive took some time. Yet conversation lagged, and was a one-sided affair between Uncle Bob and the horse, in which the former urged the latter to “Get up” and “Go ’long.” Here and there a street light shone with a sickly yellow flame through the pelting drops. Phœbe tried to see something of the town, to right and left over Uncle Bob’s wide shoulders. But only the dim outlines of buildings were discernible. Strange and stormy was the little she could see. And there rose in her a feeling against this town into which she was come; so that, with Grandma and Uncle John still to meet and know, she yet longed for a quick turnabout, and a train that would carry her away again—away and away to the great city, to her little bed and her pretty mother.