One afternoon, many, many months after the interview just described, a few keen observers among the passengers on an incoming Southwestern Express—pulling with final, smooth, exhaustive effort into its eastern terminal—noted with considerable amusement that the pulses of one of their number had quickened to such a degree, that evidently their owner found it quite impossible to resist the temptation to leave her seat and politely push forward to the vestibule of the car, where she waited until the train came to a full stop. And so it happened that Shirley Bloodgood led the first flight of men who were hurrying up the long lanes of the station toward a roped-off space where groups of people waited expectantly for relatives and friends. Not that Shirley looked forward to seeing a familiar face among them; on the contrary she was fully aware,—since she had neglected to telegraph to any one the time of her arrival,—that there was not one chance in a thousand of any of her acquaintances being there; it was merely that she had fallen under the spell of that subtle spirit of unrest and haste, which all travellers, however phlegmatic, recognise the moment they breathe the air of the metropolis. One quick, scrutinising glance, it is true, the girl threw around and about her, as she passed through the crowd, but there was no disappointment on her face as now, looking neither to the right nor to the left, she brushed past what seemed to her a hundred cabbies each intent on making her their legitimate human prey.
Once clear of the exit she turned to the porter who was carrying her bag, tipped him, and directing his attention to an urchin in the centre of a howling mob of youthful street Arabs ready to pounce upon her bag the instant the porter dropped it, she cried:—
"Give it to him—him!"
It was a chubby, little, Russian Jew with red cheeks and glistening eyes whom she selected, and, with a howl of disappointment, the other ragamuffins opened up a lane to let the victor get his spoils, stood while Shirley and her escort marched off, and then swooped down upon another victim.
"Come with me," said Shirley to the boy; and suiting her pace to his running stride, she turned her face toward the west.
As Shirley walked rapidly along, the even pavement felt resilient to her well-shod feet. The keen air brought new vigour into her face, into her body, and in it—partial stranger as she was—she detected that which the metropolitan never scents: the salt vapour of the sea. Thousands of men and women passed her, and to one and all, figuratively speaking, she opened wide her arms. The glitter of a thousand lights found an answering sparkle in her eyes.
"There is nothing in the world like it! It will ever be home—the real home to me!" cried Shirley, half-aloud. "The noise, the bustle, the crowds, the life—Oh, how I do love it all!"
For a considerable time Shirley had been living on the heights of Arizona—a wilderness crowded with space, dotted here and there with human beings. Leaving her mother out there until, under new and altered circumstances, she could arrange their home in the big city that belonged to her,—and to-day, more than ever, she knew that she belonged to the big city, that in truth she was one of its people,—she had come all the way through without stopping, reasoning that in that way just so much less time would elapse before she could return and fetch her. In the West—a land where men stood out in bold relief, because they were few, they had pointed out to her rugged specimens noted for their physical prowess, their dare-devil recklessness of life. And viewing these swaggering heroes, with the sense of personal achievement, however remote, strong upon them, a vague longing had crept into her inner consciousness.
"Oh, if I were only a man!" she had said to herself.
But now, as she swept along on the right side of the sidewalk, facing the crowd that passed her on the left, she knew and felt that here was the place of the real struggle, the battle-ground, the fiery furnace that men were tested in. Out in Arizona, it had been man to man; but here in New York, it was one man against a million. And yet, woman-like, she thought that were she unsexed, she could meet this struggle with tireless energy, could strike where men had failed, could crowd her way up, inch by inch, to the top. And thus communing with herself, Shirley walked on and on, feeling that she could walk on forever through this rush of home-going-folk—people who had done something that day with their hands—people who had unconsciously pushed the earth another twenty-four hours upon his journey.