A moment later she had shaken hands with the Bolingbrokes; she was saying good-bye to Pontycroft from the window of the carriage which was to take her, with her new acquaintances, to the ship.
Ruth's sympathetic Italian maid, waiting and watching in the background, in a hack laden with luggage, murmured to herself: “Pover a, Poverella!”
VIII
Ruth, in a misery of wild light-headedness, responded as well as she could to the civilities of her two travelling companions, while they drove through narrow, animated streets. They reached the docks. There lay the massive ship, its relentless black hulk resting abroadside, in ominous expectation of some mysterious coming change. Ruth walked up the white gangway. The turmoil, the excited crowd, the stolid stewards,—lolling,—indifferent yet curious sentinels,—the ragged throng of emigrants passing endlessly into the forecastle, the noise of clanking wains and girders hoisting trunks and freight into mid air, all, gave to her a sense of doom, of the finality of things in chaos.... Half an hour passed before she was able to go to her room. Telegrams were handed to her, even flowers, fruit; thus rapidly does news spread; she had to talk with friends of the Bolingbrokes come to bid them God-speed, to look pleasant and pleased as everybody else did.
But when at last Ruth closed the door of her cabin behind her, she took a little step forward and with a cry threw herself upon the couch. Regardless of Paolina, who was already opening bags and unfolding dresses, she permitted herself the luxury of a passionate outburst of grief. A tornado of pent misery racked her; she pressed her face into the linen pillow to deaden the sound of her sobbing, her hands against her breast.
“Signorina, Signorina, do not feel so badly,” cried the good Italian maid, dropping Ruth's lace and beribboned morning gown and running towards her. “Oh, do not weep. It is very sad to have to leave our lovely Italian land, so beautiful, so carina. But do not weep so! What will the Signora Dor say if I allow you to make yourself ill? Think! It is I who should be weeping. It is I who am leaving all behind me, my country, my sister, my mother, and yet I do not weep.” But the tears belied her words and welled from her eyes.
Ruth clasped the girl's hand affectionately. She felt grateful for the warm Italian heart. Paolina at least was there, to keep her recollected in the exquisite life she was forsaking. Why she was forsaking it, now seemed to her an absolutely incomprehensible riddle. For the nonce she could remember not one of her substantial reasons for doing so.
Paolina withdrew the pins from Ruth's hat, removed it from her hair and put it away.
“You have crushed your pretty hat, Signorina,” she said, reproachfully. Then, very much in the tone a mother would use to distract a child:
“You did not see how pale the Signor Pontycroft looked when he said good-bye,” she added, “and Maria told me the Signora had not slept the whole night, but kept going constantly to your door and listening to know whether you were asleep. They love you very much. It must be good to be loved so much,” the girl continued wistfully. “That must comfort you. And you will soon come back to them, to Italy, when you have seen your Signor uncle and your American home—for I am very sure they cannot live without you.”