by Kate Hewitt
“I don’t mind at all,” Ellen answered with a laugh. After the rather turgid conversation of her cabin mate, Letitia’s candor was refreshing. They shook hands, and then Letitia subjected Ellen to a frank stare.
“We’re a strange species, aren’t we,” she said as she sat back in her chair, and beckoned Ellen to sit, as well. “The fearsome young lady, travelling alone! Are we courageous or foolish, a scandal or the future? No one knows what to do with us.”
Ellen gave a small smile, for she was slightly intimidated by Letitia’s confident and worldly air, the humor and intelligence sparkling in her brown eyes. She was a handsome woman, perhaps a few years older than Ellen, with light brown hair loosely dressed and a spattering of freckles across the bridge of her aquiline nose.
“Where are you bound?” she asked after Ellen had sat down on a settee across from her.
“Glasgow.” Ellen knew the ship was going on to London after it stopped in Glasgow. “Well,” she amended, “the Glasgow School of Art.”
“Oh, so you’re an artist! How marvelous. I do admire any kind of ability in that direction. I’m utterly hopeless. Stick figures are quite, quite beyond me.”
“I don’t know if I’d call myself an artist,” Ellen said with a little laugh. “Not yet, at any rate
“You’re going to art school, aren’t you?”
“Yes—but to learn. I’ve never even had a proper lesson before.”
“Entirely self-taught! That’s even better.” Letitia smiled, her eyes sparkling. “Besides, artists are born, not made, I suspect.”
“Perhaps,” Ellen agreed. She wished she had half the confidence of Letitia, who seemed set to sail through life—first on this ship, and certainly afterward. Ellen felt as if she were inching along in retrospect, overawed and intimidated by so many things. Last night she’d eaten in her room because she’d been too nervous to face the dining room with its tables of eight, sparkling chandeliers, and respectably middle class patrons.
And the truth was, whatever Letitia insisted, she didn’t feel like a proper artist at all, and she wondered if she ever would. Her worst fear was that someone—Henry McCallister, perhaps or even Francis Newbery, the director of the school—would tell her they’d made a mistake and there wasn’t a place for her after all. What would she do then? She didn’t have the means for the fare back, and she could hardly stay in Glasgow, a single woman alone with no occupation or support.
“What about you?” she asked Letitia. “You’re American, by the sounds of it. Why are you travelling to Scotland?”
“I’m taking a place at the University of Edinburgh’s Medical School,” Letitia answered and Ellen was suitably impressed. Of course someone as confident and worldly as Letitia Portman would be doing something so weighty and admirable.
“You’re studying to be a doctor?”
“That’s the hope,” Letitia answered cheerfully. “I had the dev—the dickens of a time finding a school that would accept a woman, of course.”
Ellen had never actually met a lady doctor before, not even during her time at nursing school, yet she could certainly believe this vibrant, self-assured woman capable of anything.
“But Edinburgh did?”
“Yes, they have been accepting women students since 1889. Very forward thinking of them.”
“Indeed.”
“Are you on your own for the voyage? Because we must band together, then. I’m sharing a room with a fearful old bat—she’s always wafting smelling salts about and talking about her nerves.”
“Oh, dear.” At least Miss Worth had not resorted to smelling salts yet.
“I’ve come here to escape, and to write my family.”
“Do they approve of your ambitions?”
“My father did. I’ve no brothers, you see, and he’s a medical man himself. He wanted to keep it in the family. My mother, however, had a fit.” Letitia grinned. “She told me I was a veritable bluestocking, and would never find a man willing to marry me, which is probably true.” She made a face. “Still, I’m not so enamoured with marriage and babies and all that. What about you?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Ellen replied, a bit taken aback. An image of Jed flashed in her mind and then was thankfully gone. “I haven’t thought too much about it yet. I’m only nineteen.”
“Nineteen! A babe in arms. I’m twenty-four.” Letitia sighed. “And I’ll be nearing thirty before I finish my studies, but it took this long to persuade my mother to let me apply, and then to be accepted. I’m lucky to have the opportunity, I know. But do say you’ll eat luncheon with me today? I can’t bear having it in my room, and people do look at me askance when I’m on my own.”
“I wouldn’t think oyu’d mind,” Ellen said with a laugh.
“Oh, I don’t, but I’m dreadfully bored. Honestly, I have the attention span of a gnat. You’ll have to tell me stories to keep me entertained.”
“I’m not very good at those.” Ellen could not imagine entertaining someone like Letitia. She was dull indeed by comparison.
“Then you shall simply have to draw me,” Letitia answered gaily, and rising from her chair, she ushered Ellen from the library towards the second class dining room.
For the rest of the voyage Letitia took her under her wing, arranging for them to have meals together, take turns around the deck, and even taught her how to play bridge, a terribly complex card game that Ellen felt she was quite hopeless at, much to the despair of her fellow players.
By the time they were nearing Glasgow, Ellen felt she’d made a firm friend, and it was a great relief after the lonely days she’d spent in New York.
“Are you nervous about starting university?” she asked the morning they were to depart. Ellen had worn her new hat, which hadn’t seemed all that grand in the shop but now felt ridiculous with its feather and ribbon band, next to Letitia’s practical, efficient plainness, dressed as she was in a dark serge skirt and no-nonsense shirtwaist, a small straw boater crammed flat onto her head.
“Nervous? No,” Letitia said firmly. “I’m looking forward to it—I’ve been applying to medical schools for two years, and I’m ready finally to begin.” She turned to Ellen with one of her frank smiles. “What about you?”
“I suppose I am, a little.” Actually, she was quite terrified, although she didn’t feel she could admit that to Letitia.
“Well, you shouldn’t be,” Letitia said briskly. “You’ve been away from home before, when you went to nursing school.”
Ellen had told her new friend the basic version of her life—from Springburn to Seaton to Amherst Island. “Yes,” she agreed, “but that was only to Kingston.”
“And you’re from Glasgow originally,” Letitia continued. “You know where you’re going.”
“But Springburn is worlds away from art school,” Ellen protested. “And anyway, I’m not nervous about being in Glasgow, or being so far away from home.”
Letitia raised her eyebrows. “What, then?”
“Just… school, I suppose.” She was finally pursuing her dream, her passion, and that terrified her more than anything else. What if she failed? What if she wasn’t any good at all? What if it didn’t satisfy her the way she longed for it to?
“I’m sure it will all go splendidly,” Letitia assured her. “It’s natural to feel nervous, I suppose,” she added generously, even though she didn’t. “But we really ought to go, otherwise it’ll be ages before we can get off this tub!” She clapped a hand on Ellen’s shoulder. “You’ll be fine. And the first free day we both have, I’ll take the train over to Glasgow. It’s not all that far, or so I’ve been told.”
Ellen smiled in relief at the thought of seeing someone familiar again. “That would be lovely.”
“Well, then. Off we go!”
At first, as Ellen stepped onto the gangplank that led down to Glasgow’s dock, she was conscious only of the smell of Scotland: sea and soot, a smell that seemed both achingly familiar and now terribly strange.
; Then, as she came down, her hat, unfortunately, falling forward to cover one eye, she was conscious of something else. Henry McCallister, the trustee she’d met on the train to Chicago, was waiting for her with a smart carriage, an expect look on his face.
He was the last person Ellen had expected to see; in fact, she’d thought never to see him again, a gentleman of great means, in a city the size of Glasgow. Yet here he was, clearly waiting for her, beaming from ear to ear.
“Mr McCallister,” she said faintly as she came down to meet him.
Henry McCallister swept his hat from his head and executed a courtly bow, his eyes twinkling. “Miss Copley! You don’t know how pleased I am that you’re finally here.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Ellen gazed at Henry McCallister in both surprise and concern. “I’m pleased to be here,” she said, executing a little bob of a curtsey. She had no idea how to treat him; he was by far her social superior, and while those lines had been blurred when they’d been two strangers on a train in the middle of America, they were starkly clear now. She was glad to see him, but she also felt uncertain. What was he doing here?
She doubted that one of the school’s trustees routinely met new students individually off the ship, and she could feel Letitia’s curiosity like a palpable thing, as she craned her neck to peer at the gentleman and his smart carriage.
“Please let me introduce my friend from the passage,” she said, willing her flush to fade as she struggled to make sense of the situation. “Miss Letitia Portman. Letitia, Mr. McCallister.”
Mr. McCallister swept an overly gallant bow. “Charmed, I’m sure.”
“Miss Portman is about to start medical school,” Ellen continued, determined to bring a normality to this strange meeting. In her wildest imaginings, not that she’d had many, of her arrival in Glasgow, she’d never once considered anyone, much less a trustee of the school, would meet her by the ship! And yet as she half-listened to Mr. McCallister asking Letitia about medical school, she acknowledged that such behavior shouldn’t really surprise her. Henry McCallister had, after all, broken with convention by inviting her to dine alone in his hotel restaurant when they’d met in Chicago—and she’d broken convention by agreeing.
Meeting her here today was, she supposed, true to his nature, and yet it still left her feeling uneasy.
“So, ladies,” Mr. McCallister said, turning to smile at Ellen, “may I offer you a ride in my carriage? Miss Copley, I was intending to take you to Miss Gray’s house and Miss Portman, I will gladly take you to whatever your destination may be.”
“Even Edinburgh?” Letitia asked with an arch of her eyebrow. She looked amused by Henry’s courtly exuberance, and Ellen blushed again as her new friend slid her a speculative look, clearly wondering as much as she was why Mr. McCallister was here.
“Perhaps not quite that far,” Henry admitted with a laugh. “I fear my horses would tire! If only I’d brought my smart new motorcar, but I am afraid I am still learning the mechanics of it, and I didn’t wish to alarm Miss Copley.” He turned to Ellen with a warm smile which she returned uncertainly before looking away. Was he being too familiar, or was she simply being over sensitive about the matter?
“I am only having fun with you, Mr. McCallister,” Letitia assured him. “In truth, I am staying the night at Armstrong’s Hotel, on Sauchiehall Street.”
“Then I shall take you there,” he declared, and went to call a porter for their cases.
As soon as he’d departed, Letitia leaned closer to Ellen, her eyes sparkling. “You never mentioned the dashing Mr. McCallister to me while we were on the ship!”
“I did,” Ellen answered just a little too quickly. “I told you how one of the trustees saw my drawings while I was on the train out to New Mexico—“
“And I thought you meant some stuffy old suit!” She raised her eyebrows in delicate query. “Mr. McCallister is a trustee? How thoughtful of him to greet all the school’s new students in such a fashion. Quite, quite considerate, not to mention time-consuming.”
“Letitia,” Ellen muttered, for she knew her friend was teasing her, and she was too disconcerted to take it in the spirit it was meant. “I don’t know whether he greets all the students,” she said after a moment, when she’d managed to recover her composure. “But he was certainly kind to me while I was in Chicago, and has always encouraged my studies here.” She drew herself up and looked her friend in the eye. “I’m grateful for his concern, that’s all.”
“As am I,” Letitia answered, her eyes still glinting teasingly. “I was planning to take the tram to the hotel. Mr. McCallister’s carriage will be far nicer.”
“I’ve arranged for a porter,” Mr. McCallister said as he returned to them with a bounce in his step. “We should be on our way shortly, I’m sure you’ll be glad to know. Travel can be so exhausting.”
“I am quite invigorated,” Letitia countered with a smile. “There is so much to look forward to!”
“Indeed there is,” he answered Letitia, but he was looking at Ellen.
The porter loaded their cases onto his carriage, and then, gallant as ever, he waved his driver aside and helped both Ellen and Letitia into the enclosed carriage himself.
Ellen sat back against the velvet cushions, hardly able to believe that she had actually arrived in Glasgow, and would be beginning her tutelage in just a few days. She leaned forward to draw back the curtain and peer out of the carriage window as they left the docks for the city proper.
It was strange to be back in the city of her birth, although the busy, broad streets of Glasgow’s center were a far cry from the narrow streets and cramped tenements she’d known in Springburn, by the railyards. Her life in Springburn, Ellen reflected, seemed almost to belong to someone else, and yet she knew despite her new clothes from the Ladies’ Mile and the pompadour hairstyle she’d spent far too long arranging this morning, the little girl from Springburn with the sad eyes and tangled hair still lurked inside her, and always would. She would never be rid of her, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to be.
“How does it feel to return to Glasgow, Miss Copley?” Mr. McCallister asked, and Ellen turned from the window.
“Strange,” she admitted with a little smile. “Very strange.” She didn’t say anything else, for she was suddenly seized with an unexpected homesickness and loneliness that seemed to catch her by the throat and bring tears to her eyes.
Quickly, to hide her sudden emotion, she leaned forward and looked out the window, determined not to succumb to that sudden sorrow. She had everything ahead of her, just as Letitia had said.
And yet returning to Glasgow reminded her of her mother, dead now for eight years, and her Da, just as lost to her out in New Mexico. The three of them had once had such grand dreams of emigrating to America; Ellen could still picture her father’s broad smile as he told her about the fish that would fair jump into her hand.
But there hadn’t been any fish, and her Da hadn’t liked the New World he’d been so excited to join. Her mother had never even made it that far, dying in the kitchen of the only house she’d known in her married life, when Ellen was just ten.
Now Ellen swallowed down the tears she didn’t want to shed, not when she was finally starting this bright new chapter of her life, not when she’d finally found the courage to pursue her own dreams. She might never be able to leave that little girl behind her, but she could leave Springburn.
“Ah, here we are, the Armstrong’s Hotel,” Mr. McCallister said cheerfully. He jumped out of the carriage and then helped Letitia to the pavement. “Miss Portman, it has been a pleasure.”
“Indeed,” Letitia murmured. She said her goodbyes to Ellen, who had also alighted from the carriage, hugging her fiercely as she whispered in her ear, “You must write me and tell me everything that happens. This is quite the exciting adventure for you, Ellen. And I hope to see you soon. I’ll write as soon as I can, with a date.”
“Yes, please do,” Ellen said fervently. “I know I
will enjoy having a friend close by, and I can’t wait to hear about all your adventures, Letitia.”
Waving merrily, Letitia went into the hotel, leaving Ellen feeling even more alone despite Henry McCallister’s presence.
“Are you ready to continue on to Miss Gray’s, Miss Copley?” Henry asked after a moment, and Ellen turned to him with as bright a smile as she could manage.
“Yes, of course. I am quite looking forward to meeting Miss Gray. Are there any other art students boarding with her, do you know, Mr. McCallister?”
“I hope you might call me Henry,” he replied lightly once they were settled back in the carriage, and heading towards Renfrew Street where the School of Art was located, along with many of the instructors’ homes.
“I…” Ellen’s mind spun as she tried to think of a way to respond. Although Henry McCallister had been friendly and solicitous in Chicago, she had assumed the difference in their social positions would make any kind of friendship beyond an acquaintance impossible, as well as deeply inappropriate. Refusing his request now, however, when he was a trustee of the school she was about to start, seemed churlish in the extreme, as well as foolish. “I’m honored,” she said finally, and Henry’s smile widened.
“And I would also hope,” he said, still smiling, “that I might call you Ellen.”
Wordlessly Ellen nodded. What else could she do? Yet she wondered what the other students, or even the professors, would think, to know she was on such familiar terms with a trustee, and a young gentleman at that.
“I am looking forward to showing you some of Glasgow’s sights, if you will allow me the privilege,” Henry continued. “When you have a moment to spare.”
“I’m sure,” Ellen murmured noncommittally. Was she crazy to wonder at the nature of Henry’s intentions? Perhaps he was simply being friendly, knowing how at sea she must feel. It felt wildly presumptuous to think he was being anything other than merely solicitous.
“Ah, here we are,” Henry said. The carriage rumbled up in front of a neat, narrow home in the middle of a row of respectable terraced houses. “Let me help you down from the carriage, Ellen.”