That last evening, with its half-strange, excited novelty of leave-taking, and last messages and last thoughts, is still distinct in my memory; and the start with which I answered Biddy's call in the darkness of the November morning, the dressing with cold hurried hands that were not half equal to the task, the wild way in which everything came dancing through my mind, as I tried to say my prayers, the utter inability to taste a mouthful of the breakfast Miss Crowen herself had superintended, the thrill with which I heard the carriage drive up to the door, are as vivid as recollections can well be. And I am in no danger, either of forgetting the moment, when, with half a dozen of my schoolfellows who had been allowed to see me off, I descended the steps toward the carriage, the door of which Mr. Rutledge was holding open. The kind good bye of Miss Crowen, the warm embraces of the girls, Nelly's tears, Agnes' wistful look, are memories I cannot part with if I would.
The carriage door shut to with a snap, the horses started forward at a brisk pace, and we were off, and I had left school and childhood behind me forever. I did not cry at all, though I felt desperately like it; but the consciousness that Mr. Rutledge looked sharply at me to see how I took it, made me struggle harder to keep back my tears, and seem womanly and composed. In this I succeeded beyond my hopes, and before half an hour had passed, the bracing air of the fine autumn morning, the rapid pace at which we rolled along, and the new delight to my cloistered eyes, of farms, and villages, woods rich in the many colors of the fall, and meadows and uplands basking in its sunshine, made me feel as if I had been months away from school, and as if the melancholy of last night were some strange distant dream. Seventeen never dreamed more fantastic dreams than I did that morning, however, as I leaned back in the carriage and idly watched the gay landscape past which we were hurrying. It was quite a relief to me that my companion, after attending to my comfort in every necessary way, settled himself in his corner of the carriage, and taking a book from his valise, devoted himself to its perusal, and left me to my own thoughts the entire morning. He did not put it up till we reached the town where we were to dine and wait for the cars.
Dinner did not prove a very animated meal; my companion, after asking me about school, and whether I felt sorry to leave it, and a few more questions of the same nature (such as people always put to school-girls, and by which they unconsciously give great offence), seemed to consider his conversational duty performed, and fell into a state of abstraction, which made his face look harder and colder than ever; and as I stealthily regarded him from under my eyelashes, some of last night's alarm threatened to return. But I tried to overcome it, and endeavored to reassure myself by remembering how kind he was when I was so much embarrassed, and how well he had helped me through the interview that he might have made so terrible; and that he did not talk to me—why, certainly it was not strange that a gentleman of his age should not have much in common with a girl of mine.
By and by the cars came tearing through the town with a whoop and a shriek, that seemed to excite everybody wonderfully, considering the frequency of the occurrence. Passengers, porters, newsboys, in one mad crowd, rushed toward the depot, each emulating in his own proper person, the noble rage of the snorting, impatient monster, upon whose energy we were all depending. The only individual entirely unexcited, was my escort, who never for a moment lost the appearance of sang froid and indifference that an earthquake would not have startled him out of, I was convinced. Though we did not hurry, we were, before many of our fellow-voyagers, in possession of the best seats, and most commodiously, because most deliberately, settled for the journey. Mr. Rutledge was emphatically a good traveller, carrying the clear-sighted precision and deliberation of his mind into all the details of travel, and thereby securing himself from the petty annoyances that people often think unworthy of attention, but which do more than they suspect, toward marring pleasure and destroying comfort. I aptly followed his manner, and was a marvel of unconcerned deliberation in the matter of securing my seat and arranging my shawls, books and bags; which drew from him the remark, with an approving glance, that he perceived I was used to travelling. That observation, either from the fact of its being so absurdly incorrect in its premises, or from the stronger fact of its being the only one addressed to me until 7 P.M., when we stopped at F—— for purposes of refreshment, impressed itself very much upon my mind.
After the wretched meal, called by compliment tea, which we were allowed twenty minutes to partake of, had been dispatched, and we were again settled in the cars in which we were to travel all night, commenced the trials of the journey—to me, at least, for I was an entire novice, not having been twenty miles away from St. Catharine's since I was first taken there, and having but a dim recollection of that, my first and last journey till the present time. Being also subject to the most unbearably severe headaches upon any unusual excitement, it is not very wonderful that on this occasion I was attacked with one, and before night had actually set in, was as completely miserable, as in the morning I had been completely happy. Excitement and weariness began to tell most painfully upon me. Not a bone but ached, not a nerve in my whole body but throbbed and quivered. It was as impossible to think quietly as to sit quietly. Homesickness, for the home I had been longing to get away from for five years—all the miserable things I had ever suffered or dreaded—all the fancied and real trials of my life, then and there beset my aching head, and made sleep or composure an impossibility.
If there had been a soul to speak to, a human voice to say a single word of sympathy, however commonplace, I thought it would have made the night endurable. But among the sleepy, senseless crowd around, the only one I had a right to expect attention from, or to whom I was entitled to address a word, was as regardless of my existence as any of the rest. Mr. Rutledge occupied the seat before me, and the imperfect light of the lamp that rattled and flickered above us, showed me more plainly than any other object, his fixed, unsympathizing face, as he leaned against the window of the car, his lips compressed and his brow knit. He did not sleep any more than I did, nor do I think he was a whit more comfortable; but he had his impatience under better control, and never moved a muscle or uttered a sound for hours together.
It was the most torturing thing to watch him, so entirely unmoved by the discomforts that were, I was firmly convinced, driving me mad; and in my jaundiced eyes, his profile took a thousand wizard shapes. It would have been a relief if he had moved in ever so slight a degree to one side or the other; but a painted face upon a painted window could not have been more rigid than the one before me. I was dying of thirst, was smothering for want of air, ached in every limb, and there were hours yet to morning! The monotonous motion of the cars, and their accompanying noises, harsh and shrill, made to my perfectly unaccustomed ear a frightful combination of discord; and this all coming upon my excited and sensitive nerves, worked me up into a state of wretchedness that naturally resulted in that climax of woes feminine, a fit of crying.
I could no more have helped it than the wind could have helped blowing, and never having learned to control myself, could not suppress the indulgence of an emotion which, an hour afterward, I remembered with acute mortification. I tried to smother my sobs, but they reached at last the ear of my silent companion, who started, and turning toward me, asked, with a shade of impatience in his tone, what was the matter? Was I ill?
That question, so put, in the indescribable tone that shows to a sensitive ear a want of sympathy the most galling, was the best cure that could have been devised for my tears. They were done, altogether; but in their place, the angry blood flew to my face, and I inly vowed, in accordance with school-girl notions of right, never to forget or forgive the insult. Angrily averting my head, I declined any assistance or attention whatever, and pride having thus stepped in to the rescue, I was able to maintain as rigid a demeanor as Mr. Rutledge himself. For a moment he looked at me with an expression that I could not quite make out, then with the slightest possible shrug of the shoulders, turned away, and seating himself again in the corner, resumed his former attitude. That was enough; all my spirit was roused; I had always been good at hating, but the present crisis brought out powers I had never been aware of before; and there was a great deal in the fact of my having made a fool of myself in the presence of Mr. Rutledge, to help me along in detesting him; and not being in a particularly reasonable or well-governed frame of mind, the aversion I had conceived increased with alarming rapidity. It was wonderful how powerful my resentment was to keep my weariness and impatience in check. I did not move an inch nor utter a single word; I would have borne the rack and torture rather than exhibit, after that shrug, another shade of emotion.
When at last, morning being broadly awake, we were released from our prison for an hour to breakfast and rest at a way-station that seemed most utterly repugnant to those two ideas, Mr. Rutledge asked me if I would not prefer, on account of my fatigue, waiting there till the next train, which would arrive at noon?