Yet again and again she recalled that avaricious gleam in his eyes and how eager he had seemed when she had first caught sight of his face looking over her shoulder that first morning on the train. She couldn’t forget that. She kept the locked bag near her hand all the time.
With lively company a journey across this great continent of ours is a cheerful and inspiring experience. And, of course, Youth can never remain depressed for long. But in Helen Morrell’s case the trip could not be counted as an enjoyable one.
She was always solitary amid the crowd of travelers. Even when she went back to the observation platform she was alone. She had nobody with whom to discuss the beauties of the landscape, or the wonders of Nature past which the train flashed.
This was her own fault to a degree, of course. The girl from Sunset Ranch was diffident. These people aboard were all Easterners, or foreigners. There were no open-hearted, friendly Western folk such as she had been used to all her life.
She felt herself among a strange people. She scarcely spoke the same language, or so it seemed. She had felt less awkward and bashful when she had first gone to the school at Denver as a little girl.
And, again, she was troubled because she had received no reply from her message to Uncle Starkweather. Of course, he might not have been at home to receive it; but surely some of the family must have received it.
Every time the brakeman, or porter, or conductor, came through with a message for some passenger, she hoped he would call her name. But the Transcontinental brought her across the Western plains, over the two great rivers, through the Mid-West prairies, skirted two of the Great Lakes, rushed across the wooded and mountainous Empire State, and finally dashed down the length of the embattled Hudson toward the Great City of the New World – the goal of Helen Morrell’s late desires, with no word from the relatives whom she so hoped would welcome her to their hearts and home.
CHAPTER VII
THE GREAT CITY
Helen Morrell never forgot her initial impressions of the great city.
These impressions were at first rather startling – then intensely interesting. And they all culminated in a single opinion which time only could prove either true or erroneous.
That belief or opinion Helen expressed in an almost audible exclamation:
“Why! there are so many people here one could never feel lonely!”
This impression came to her after the train had rolled past miles of streets – all perfectly straight, bearing off on either hand to the two rivers that wash Manhattan’s shores; all illuminated exactly alike; all bordered by cliffs of dwellings seemingly cut on the same pattern and from the same material.
With clasped hands and parted lips the girl from Sunset Ranch watched eagerly the glowing streets, parted by the rushing train. As it slowed down at 125th Street she could see far along that broad thoroughfare – an uptown Broadway. There were thousands and thousands of people in sight – with the glare of shoplights – the clanging electric cars – the taxicabs and autos shooting across the main stem of Harlem into the avenues running north and south.
It was as marvelous to the Montana girl as the views of a foreign land upon the screen of a moving picture theatre. She sank back in her seat with a sigh as the train moved on.
“What a wonderful, wonderful place!” she thought. “It looks like fairyland. It is an enchanted place – ”
The train, now under electric power, shot suddenly into the ground. The tunnel was odorous and ill-lighted.
“Well,” the girl thought, “I suppose there is another side to the big city, too!”
The passengers began to put on their wraps and gather together their hand-luggage. There was much talking and confusion. Some of the tourists had been met at 125th Street by friends who came that far to greet them.
But there was nobody to greet Helen. There was nobody waiting on the platform, to come and clasp her hand and bid her welcome, when the train stopped.
She got down, with her bag, and looked about her. She saw that the old gentleman with the wig kept step with her. But he did not seem to be noticing her, and presently he disappeared.
The girl from Sunset Ranch walked slowly up into the main building of the Grand Central Terminal with the crowd. There was chattering all about her – young voices, old voices, laughter, squeals of delight and surprise – all the hubbub of a homing crowd meeting a crowd of friends.
And through it all Helen walked, a stranger in a strange land.
She lingered, hoping that Uncle Starkweather’s people might be late. But nobody spoke to her. She did not know that there were matrons and police officers in the building to whom she could apply for advice or assistance.
Naturally independent, this girl of the ranges was not likely to ask a stranger for help. She could find her own way.
She smiled – yet it was a rather wry smile – when she thought of how Dud Stone had told her she would be as much of a tenderfoot in New York as he had been on the plains.
“It’s a fact,” she thought. “But, if they didn’t get my message, I reckon I can find the house, just the same.”
Having been so much in Denver she knew a good deal about city ways. She did not linger about the station long.
Outside there was a row of taxicabs and cabmen. There was an officer, too; but he was engaged at the moment in helping a fussy old lady get seven parcels, a hat box, and a dog basket into a cab.
So Helen walked down the row of waiting taxicabs. At the end cab the chauffeur on the seat turned around and beckoned.
“Cab, Miss? Take you anywhere you say.”
“You know where this number on Madison Street is, of course?” she said, showing a card with the address on it.
“Sure, Miss. Jump right in.”
“How much will it be?”
“Trunk, Miss?”
“Yes. Here is the check.”
The chauffeur got out of his seat quickly and took the check.
“It’s so much a mile. The little clock tells you the fare,” he said, pleasantly.
“All right,” replied Helen. “You get the trunk,” and she stepped into the vehicle.
In a few moments he was back with the trunk and secured it on the roof of his cab. Then he reached in and tucked a cloth around his passenger, although the evening was not cold, and got in under the wheel. In another moment the taxicab rolled out from under the roofed concourse.
Helen had never ridden in any vehicle that went so smoothly and so fast. It shot right downtown, mile after mile; but Helen was so interested in the sights she saw from the window of the cab that she did not worry about the time that elapsed.
By and by they went under an elevated railroad structure; the street grew more narrow and – to tell the truth – Helen thought the place appeared rather dirty and unkempt.
Then the cab was turned suddenly across the way, under another elevated structure, and into a narrow, noisy, ill-kept street.
“Can it be that Uncle Starkweather lives in this part of the town?” thought Helen, in amazement.
She had always understood that the Starkweather mansion was in one of the oldest and most respectable parts of New York. But although this might be one of the older parts of the city, to Helen’s eyes it did not look respectable.
The street was full of children and grown people in odd costumes. And there was a babel of voices that certainly were not English.
They shot across another narrow street – then another. And then the cab stopped beside the curb near a corner gaslight.
“Surely this