A few short hours, the sun will rise
To give the morrow birth;
And I shall hail the main and skies,
But not my mother earth.
Childe Harold.
The morning rose clear and brilliant. The partings were over, and Bluebell, on the deck of the river steamer, was gazing her last on the long flat shore, with its high elevators, and waving adieu to the diminishing forms of Mrs. Leigh and Miss Opie, who had seen her on board,—the latter with many injunctions to ascertain that two old-fashioned hirsute trunks containing her wardrobe were really put into the steamer at Quebec. Bluebell had treated herself to a smart little portmanteau for the cabin, being rather ashamed of her antediluvian luggage. She had ten sovereigns in her purse, that had been scraped together among them as a provision for any emergency. The Rolleston children had sent her a travelling-bag; but not even a message came from Cecil, which saddened Bluebell, but did not make her resentful, for she could not but suspect that the former's engagement to Bertie had come to an end, and that, in some way or other, she herself had been the cause of it.
A touch of frost during the last fortnight had worked a transformation on the foliage. The thousand islands were changed from green bowers to the semblance of shrubberies of rhododendron, so brilliant were the crimson and red of their leaves. They were associated in her mind with Cecil, whose artistic eye revelled in the autumn tints, and was perpetually painting and grouping them during the last fall.
It was rather lonely and monotonous in the river steamer. There was no one on board that she knew, and, as each hour increased the distance from all familiar places, a feeling of friendlessness stole over her.
Arrived at Quebec, every one seemed to push before and jostle her away; but patiently following in the stream, she found herself, with a sensation of relief on board the huge Leviathan steamer that was to be her home across the broad Atlantic.
Some misgivings respecting luggage obtruded themselves. A porter had put her portmanteau and bag on board, but the two trunks she had never seen. No one seemed to attend to her till one man gruffly replied,—"That if they were properly addressed, they would be put into the hold all right." And Bluebell took comfort in the remembrance of the labels plentifully nailed on by Aunt Jane, that she had then thought looked so nervously ridiculous.
She sat for some time alone in the saloon, waiting till the rush for state rooms should have a little subsided before making a timid request for her own.
Several people were now returning, apparently with disburdened minds, for anxious wrinkles were smoothed out into complacent curiosity. Bluebell made an incoherent attack on the stewardess, who swept by, without attending, and after being passed on from one official to the other, she found herself half-proprietess of a dark confined den, with two berths, two wash-hand-stands, and a sofa. Her partner in these luxuries had apparently taken possession and gone, for rather a queer shawl lay on one berth, and a singularly tasteless hat hung on a peg.
These significant articles deprived the little dungeon of all charms of privacy, and, feeling as if it belonged so much more to the other lodger, and she herself were somewhat of an intruder, Bluebell left her small effects in the portmanteau, which she stowed away in the most unobstrusive manner, not even venturing to hang up the brown-holland contrivance of Aunt Jane.