Terrors thickened. Smells assaulted her sensitive nostrils, incomprehensible and horrible odors. Everywhere men delved in dirt and murk, and all unloveliness. Streets began to stretch away on either side, interminable, squalid, filled with scowling, squaw-like women and elfish children. The darkness grew, making the tangle and tumult a deadly struggle.
Was this the city of her dreams? This the magnificent, the home of education and art.
The engine's bell seemed to call back "Good cheer! Good cheer!" The buildings grew mightier but not less gloomy; the freight cars grew fewer, and the coaches more numerous. It was an illimitable jungle filled with unrecognizable forms, over which night was falling.
The man with a hoop of clinking checks came through. He was a handsome, clean and manly fellow, and his calm, kindly voice helped Rose to choke down her dread.
"Baggage checked!—Baggage—Baggage checked to any part of the city—Baggage!"
In him she saw the native denizen to whom all these horrors were commonplace sensations, and it helped her. It couldn't be so bad as it looked to her.
"Chicago, She-caw-go!" called the brakeman, and her heart for a moment stood still, and a smothering sensation came upon her. She was at the gate of the city, and life with all its terrors and triumphs seemed just before her.
At that moment the most beautiful thing in the world was the smooth pasture by the spring, where the sheep were feeding in the fading light, and if she could, she would have turned back, but she was afloat, and retreat was impossible. She pressed on with the rest, wondering what she could do if Mary did not meet her.
Mary had hardly been more than an acquaintance at school, but now she seemed a staff to lean upon. Rose looked to her as a guide to a refuge, a hiding-place from all these terrors.
Out under the prodigious arching roof she stepped, into the tumult of clanging bells, of screeching, hissing steam and of grinding wheels. The shouts of men echoed here and there in the vaulted roof, mysteriously as in a cavern. Up the long walk, streams of people moved, each one laden, like herself, with a valise. Electric lamps sputtered overhead. She hurried on, with sensitive ears tortured by the appalling tumult, her eyes wide and apprehensive.