Then, in the midst of the preparations for the Christmas performance of “The Prince and the Pauper,” when everything was being rushed to its conclusion, and everybody interested in the play was sitting up all night to work on costumes or scenery, and the children were forgetting their lines or getting them mixed with lines rashly learned from Felix’s Pied Piper play, there came an interruption.
One evening Rose-Ann did not come down to dinner, and he heard one of the residents say something about somebody in Springfield being ill, and Rose-Ann’s being called home.
Knocking at her door, he found Rose-Ann packing and dressing for the journey. Her mother was ill. She was taking the train for Springfield in half an hour.
“Can I help you?”
“You can see me to the train if you want to. Come back in about ten minutes and I’ll be ready.”
He had the feeling that this was the last he would see of her....
She explained the situation as they taxied in to the station. Her mother’s illness, she was sure, was nothing serious. She was annoyed at being telegraphed for. It would upset the plans for the Christmas play. Miss Clark would be put in charge of her group, and spoil everything. The telegram was just a trick to get her back home for the holidays. And yet—“Curious!” she said, “I never get along with my mother, and I don’t believe there’s anything the matter with her, and yet I’m as worried over this telegram as if I were the most dutiful daughter in the world.... The worst of going back home is, I shall be with the whole family—especially my brothers. They’ll want me to stay there. They don’t approve of my being alone in Chicago. They’re just using mother as a means of getting me into their clutches. They’ve tried it before. And when I find that it’s simply mother’s annual ‘spell,’ I’ll tell them all what I think of them and Springfield and the furniture business—and come back. I’ve made these flying trips three times now.... And yet I am worried.”
Felix reflected that she would never get free from these family claims—that whatever she tried to do, she would be always called back to Springfield, and would obey the call. She would spend her whole life in a vain attempt to be something besides a daughter and sister of people who were inimical to all her wishes; until finally she surrendered to them.... He had the sense of hiding these hostile feelings from the swift friendly glance with which she looked to him for sympathy.
They had just time to catch the train. Felix gave her suitcase to the porter, and she took his hand. “Be good while I’m gone, Felix,” she said. “Don’t do anything awfully foolish. Good-bye.” She leaned to him and kissed him—a timid little kiss. And then they were clinging to each other in a stunned and breathless embrace, as if they had been flung violently into each other’s arms; they kissed, with a rude, strong, almost painful passion,—a kiss that hurt and could not hurt enough to satisfy them, and then become infinitely tender. It was a kiss that sought to annihilate time and space, to make them remember it and what it meant forever.
“’Bo-o-o-ard!” said the conductor, and took Rose-Ann’s elbow and put her firmly on the step. She turned and smiled back at Felix, and the train started.