Читать книгу Bitsy Finds the Clue: A Mystery of Williamsburg Old and New - Augusta Huiell Seaman - Страница 3
ОглавлениеTHE MEETING
The vast concourse of the Pennsylvania Station seemed dim and weird and unnatural, at that late hour of the night. It had been a rainy, dreary September day in New York, and now the streets were filled with fog. Some of the fog seemed to have drifted into the Station, augmented by the odor of many moist umbrellas and damp goloshes. The Station clocks marked ten-thirty, and around one of the gates where a train was scheduled to leave at eleven for “Washington, Richmond, Charleston, Savannah and Jacksonville” were clustered a crowd of travelers, interspersed with “Red Caps” bearing their luggage. On the outskirts of it hovered a group of three, their eyes wandering anxiously from one to another of the many entrances to the concourse.
“Do you think you’ll know her when you see her, Bitsy?” demanded a worried, motherly looking woman of the young girl at her side.
“Oh, I’m sure I’ll know her, Mother,” answered the girl a trifle impatiently. “She’s described herself to me in her letters, and she said she’d be sure to have a bit of yellow paper pinned on the lapel of her jacket. She warned me, too, that she’d probably be late, because some of her friends were giving her a party before she left. I’ll be all right, anyway, even if she doesn’t come. I’m nearly seventeen, and I’ve traveled around some by myself, already!”
“Yes, but never so far—alone,” returned her mother. “Oh, I’m sure you’ll be all right, of course. You’ve only to get on the train here and get off at Williamsburg tomorrow morning. You can’t miss it. Only I’d feel more comfortable about you if this senior who has been writing to you so pleasantly were here to sort of see you through, this first time—especially as you haven’t been very well for so long.”
The girl shrugged impatiently and turned to watch one of the entrances from which taxicab riders were apt to make their appearance. She wished that her mother would not make such constant references to her not being very strong—would not dwell on and fuss about it so much. She was glad she was going to get away where people wouldn’t be apt to know about it or comment on it. As a freshman entrant to William and Mary College, way down in Virginia, few would know that she possessed a heart that didn’t always behave itself, and, short of not going in for strenuous athletics, her troubles would remain unnoticed.
Just at that moment the gates to the train entrance clashed open, the Red Caps seized their luggage, and the crowd began to surge forward.
“Have you got your tickets and money all ready, honey?” asked the man, speaking for the first time. “You’d better get aboard at once, and meet your friend on the train. The ticket agent said that the Williamsburg students would all be in one car. I’ll see you aboard, but Mother had better stay in the waiting-room. So say goodbye to her now.”
And in that moment, Elizabeth Bates (known to her family and friends as “Bitsy” or “Bits”) on her first long journey alone to enter college as a freshman, suddenly lost all her feeling of independence and adventure, and clung to her mother in a wave of homesickness and regret.
“I’ll write, Mummy—several times a week—and I’ll be terribly careful! Don’t worry about me! Oh—goodbye—goodbye——”
Her father gently took her arm and hurried her through the gate and her mother was lost to her sight in the surging crowd. A Red Cap followed them with her hand luggage, and she was presently standing in front of her already made up berth in the subdued rustle and confusion of the semi-darkened Pullman sleeper.
“Remember, I’ve tipped your porter, so you won’t have to bother about him. And write pretty frequently so that Mother won’t worry,” Mr. Bates counseled her, as he stooped, hat in hand, to kiss her farewell. She was so tiny, and looked so frail, and had been but a short time ago so very ill! Almost his own heart misgave him at leaving her, but of this he showed outwardly no sign. Waving cheerily he left her, disappeared down the aisle and around the corner of the corridor, and Bitsy Bates was left alone, on the first stage of an entirely new adventure.
For a few moments she sat on the edge of her curtained lower berth, opening her suitcase to get at her belongings, while she surreptitiously wiped two unwelcome tears from her brown eyes. It had all looked so gay and happy and adventurous in prospect—getting away from home where she had been (she thought) too much petted and coddled and supervised since a severe illness had left her with a slightly irregular heart—away where she was to take care of herself, tend to her own affairs, and mingle with hordes of others of her own age. Gay and carefree and delightful! Why on earth should she suddenly be smothered in such a fog of loneliness at the very outset of the big adventure? Shrugging her shoulders again, she half-muttered:
“I suppose it’s because I counted so on meeting Celeste right at the start. She’s written me such nice letters! I think it’s swell for one of the seniors to take a freshman she hasn’t even seen, under her wing and sort of guide her through the first of it. I suppose they all have to do it—but she seemed so particularly nice—and now she isn’t even here as she said she’d be! Oh well, I don’t care! I can get along by myself—without any assistance from anyone!”
There were other occupants of berths, coming surging in, laughing, chattering in a subdued clatter, girls and boys of her own age or slightly older, most of whom seemed already known to one another. She eyed them as they were assigned to their various berths, but none seemed to correspond with the description Celeste Dufresne had given of herself, and none took the slightest notice of the tiny, red-haired figure sitting on the edge of Berth 10.
Suddenly a Red Cap, burdened with suitcase, golf-clubs, magazines, and other oddments, stopped directly in front of Berth 10 and pointed to the one above it.
“Right here’s yo’ berth, Miss,” he indicated to a tall, willowy young girl following behind him. Bitsy moved aside while he deposited his burdens in the upper berth, accepted his tip and departed down the aisle. And then, left alone facing the passenger who was to share the section with her, she cried with a little gasp:
“Why—why—pardon me, but—aren’t you—Celeste Dufresne? You—you have a piece of yellow paper pinned on your coat!” The tall, dark girl looked down at her for the first time.
“Oh, what luck!” she exclaimed in a slightly excited voice. “I believe it must be Elizabeth Bates—and right in the berth below me! I was awfully late—the train’s just going to start—but they kept me so long at Sally Dean’s party—and then saw me aboard. I was afraid I’d miss you. But now we’ve a grand chance to get acquainted—if the others don’t spy me too soon. I took an upper berth to save expense—I’m always short of money somehow—but didn’t dream we’d be lucky enough to have the same section. How does it feel to be starting out for the first time? I nearly passed away with homesickness when I was in your boots three years ago!”
She seated herself on the edge of Bitsy’s berth and chattered on in a warm, friendly, scrappy manner, while she took a mental survey of the new girl whom fate had assigned to her to steer through the first difficult days of college life. What a tiny mite she was! Frail and delicate looking, with bright red, wavy hair, a freckled face and slightly snubbed nose, redeemed by a pair of beautiful and wistful brown eyes. She looked scarcely old enough to have graduated from a grade school, much less to be entering college!
“You’re just like you described yourself,” ventured Bitsy half-shyly, “only you didn’t say how nice-looking you were!” In fact, Celeste was an extremely pretty girl, tall and slender, with dark, lustrous hair and heavily lashed gray eyes.
“Couldn’t very well do that!” laughed Celeste, “But thanks anyway, for thinking it! But now, tell me, what are you——”
At this moment, a lanky young fellow strolling down the aisle spied the two of them seated on the berth, and called out to the other visible occupants of the car:
“Hi!—Here’s Celeste!” There was an immediate rush toward Berth 10, and the two were surrounded by an excited mob of students clamoring their greetings to the senior, who was evidently a great favorite. After the first handshaking, the girl remembered the stranger at her side and introduced her all around. And Bitsy Bates felt a warm, pleasant glow of happiness at being absorbed so quickly into the charmed circle. But her joy was short-lived. For after the first casual “How-do-you-do-s,” they immediately forgot her and began hurling questions and miscellaneous information at the popular Celeste, who answered, parried and retorted with the glib assurance of long association.
“Come on, Celeste!” a stout, light-haired girl finally commanded. “Spud Smith has a box of two dozen French pastries in her berth. She thought she was going to save them till she got down to Williamsburg, but we’ve decided to have them right now!” They all scurried down the aisle toward the other end of the car.
“Come along, won’t you?” suggested Celeste to Bitsy, who had turned away and begun unpacking her bag, after being rather pointedly left out of the invitation. “We’re both invited—really. They’re so wild and excited about meeting again after all summer, that they don’t know how they’re behaving. But I know they’ll be awfully glad to have you.”
“Oh, no—I guess I’d rather not—if you don’t mind!” faltered Bitsy Bates. “I—I—It’s rather late and I’m awfully tired, so I reckon I’d better turn in. But I’m terribly glad we’ve met—at last!”
“So am I,” agreed the older girl, “and I’ll look in on you later, when they get through that messy feast. I don’t really want any myself—I’m bursting with sweet stuff after that party I just came from—but I want to chat a bit with one or two of them. We haven’t met since last June.”
She sauntered away down the car, and Bitsy went about the business of getting ready to retire. Later, when she was in her berth with the curtains drawn, and the train clicking away across New Jersey, she reviewed the whole episode and decided that the others were “a horrid bunch,” but that Celeste was adorable and would have her undivided allegiance forever. “But she might have stayed with me a while longer!” she thought almost savagely. “Why did she have to go off and leave me right away?” A fresh wave of homesickness struck her and she buried her head deeply in the pillow.
She woke out of a sound sleep, after what seemed hours later, when the curtains of her berth parted slightly and Celeste Dufresne poked in her head to murmur softly:
“Good night, Elizabeth! They kept me longer than I meant to stay, but we’ll have breakfast together in the morning, and a grand talk then.”
“Good night,” answered the younger girl, rousing sleepily. “But—if you don’t mind—I wish you’d call me ‘Bitsy’—all my friends do!”
“I sure will. But I think when you get down on the campus, they’ll probably call you ‘Carrots’—with that grand head of hair—” chuckled Celeste. “But you mustn’t mind it.”
“Oh, I won’t!” cried Bitsy eagerly, and she was left alone once more in the dark, the warm glow surging back to her heart. Her last thought before returning to sleep was, “Celeste’s a dear! I hope we’re always going to be friends.”
Little did she dream, however, in what a web of mystery and adventure the lives of herself and Celeste Dufresne were about to be entangled, in the tiny, sleepy little Southern college town to which they were bound!
