Chance of a Lifetime

by Grace Livingston Hill

  So they chatted as they drove up to the station.

  And then Sherrill had a surprise. For there were nearly all the crowd of boys and girls waiting to see her off. Those that worked hard got off for an hour, and those that didn’t had got together in a hurry and bought her a lovely handbag from them all, exquisitely fitted, the finest thing that was to be found in all Rockland. A sample bag from one of the jewelers’ windows.

  “If you had only told us sooner we might have done something really fine,” said Rose Hawthorn who would rather the bag had come from the city, “but I thought you’d like to know that it was from Mary Morse who suggested it, last night. She whispered to me as she was going out the door that if we were going to get something for you, please count her in for a dollar, and she would bring it to me in the morning. She brought it around six o’clock, before I was up.”

  Sherrill was fairly overcome. Her smiles and her nearly tears were so mingled that she could scarcely speak, but her eyes were searching the company wistfully, in the vain hope that Alan had come, too. Of course, he had said he didn’t see how he could possibly get off, because a lawyer was coming out from the city with some papers that had to be signed. A whole week ago he had told her that. But she still had hoped. Well, they wouldn’t have much chance to talk, of course, if he had come, with all those dear people present. Still, it would have been nice to have seen him again.

  There was not much time for even faint regrets, however, for she had scarcely made a little hurried speech of thank you for the handbag, when the train was heard whistling at the crossing. And then there were so many people to kiss all at once, and so many last words to say that if Alan had been there she would not perhaps have been able to tell him from anybody else, for they all jumped up together in one blur of homesickness as she smiled from the lower step of the parlor car and kissed Keith, who was the last, and searched out Mother’s face among the crowd to throw her a last kiss.

  She watched them all and kept her little new blue-bordered handkerchief waving until the train swept around the curve, and Bennett’s Garage hid them all from view. And then, with a choking sensation in her throat and a stinging in her eyes, she turned to follow the porter into the car.

  She let them seat her in her chair and place her suitcase in the rack and fix a cushion at her feet, and then she slipped a quarter in his hand and swung her chair around toward the window to look out. She did not glance at her fellow travelers. She was too aware of the swimming tears in her eyes. There! There went the coal yard and the lumberyard! How far they had come just while she was getting seated! And there was Silas Lummis’s new bungalow with the baby out in the yard in a little red hood, playing with the dog. How dear even old Mrs. Cowles’ little clapboard cottage looked as it whirled past! And back on the horizon, miles away it seemed, was the dear old church steeple among the tree branches. How precious it suddenly became. There they would all meet on Sunday, and she would be far away.

  She dabbed at her eyes and tried to swallow hard.

  “Hello,” said a voice at her side from the next chair, “aren’t you ever going to notice me!”

  She swung suddenly around, and there was Alan MacFarland, grinning from ear to ear!

  And then, in her astonishment, two great round tears did roll out and down her cheeks, though her smiles were beaming out all over her face like a summer shower with the sun shining.

  “Oh, Alan! I’m so glad you’ve come. I thought you said you couldn’t.”

  “Oh, I found I could just as well go up to the city and meet the lawyer, and it suited us both a whole lot better”—he twinkled. “Wish I could go all the way up to New York with you, but I couldn’t quite manage it today. If Dad had been on deck, I would have—that is, if you didn’t mind. By the way, I got a letter from Bob this morning. He’s making out fine! He says he reads his Bible every day and thinks it’s great. Says he never knew the Bible was like that.”

  Of course it was only a matter of three quarters of an hour until Alan had to get off, but it seemed to make all the difference in the world in the day, just to have had him all to herself for that little while. How they talked over the dinner and what this one said and how that one looked, and filled each other with joy, just saying the happy little things that two friends who knew each other well and have the same interests can say, and how they rejoiced together over the news from Robert Lincoln.

  As they neared the city, the boy grew serious. “I say, Sherrill, don’t you go growing up too much while you’re gone. You won’t, will you?” he spoke gravely. “You see, it would be all sorts of a mess if you grew up while you were gone, and I was still only a kid when you got back.”

  She laughingly promised she wouldn’t think of it.

  But after that they sat and watched the city approach, and the station where he must leave her, and couldn’t think of any more last things to say, because there were so many things they would have liked to say that just stuck in their throats.

  Finally Alan got up as the train drew to a standstill and, stooping deliberately over her, said in a low tone, “I’m going to pray for you every night and morning, and you’re going to do the same for me, see?”

  A light flashed in Sherrill’s eyes.

  “Oh, yes!” she promised, looking steadily into his eyes.

  Then he stooped and kissed her lips, reverently, as if he were sealing a compact, and went quickly out of the car and swung himself down the steps to the platform.

  Their eyes met as the train moved past him on the platform. He lifted his hat as if he were doing homage to a queen, and then the train swung into motion and she could not see him anymore, but her heart was very happy as she sat there for a long time with her eyes closed, just remembering all that he had said, and his good-bye kiss. It somehow seemed to be a sacred thing. It was something more than just a boy and girl kiss. Something that bound them to God and prayer, and a life of the Spirit. It made her feel happy and warm in her heart, and it seemed to make possible the long days that must pass before she might return to her home once more.

  It was a long time before she roused herself to watch the new landscape into which she was coming, before she even noticed her wonderful new fur coat that she had flung so carelessly over the back of her chair as if she were used to wearing such grandeur every day. She was going on a journey with better clothes than she ever possessed before, and she ought to be enjoying the feel of them and the grandeur of them, but instead she was remembering the dear faces she had left behind.

  Late that afternoon the train reached New York, and Sherrill, her homesickness somewhat exorcised, roused herself to get her things together and be equal to the new demands that were to be made on her. There was a new excitement upon her now. A strange city that in her mind had always held a glamour for her. New York! And she was really coming into the outskirts of the metropolis!

  She sat on the edge of her chair and stared into the blankness of the tube as they were being whirled under the river. How strange to think a river was flowing over her head. She watched the people about her in the general stir of getting ready to leave the train, and tried to look as if this was not her first trip to New York. Keith had told her just what to do at every stage of the trip. So now, she gathered her lovely coat about her, noted that the richly attired lady across the aisle looked at her with respect, and felt the prestige that her coat gave. Was that wrong, she wondered? No, it wasn’t pride. It was just a pleasant sense that she was all right and that no critic could find anything noticeably strange about her. Well, anyhow, the dear ones who had given her the coat wanted her to enjoy it. She would just rest in that and be happy with and satisfied about her clothes. They certainly were “moral support” in her approaching ordeal. She found she was inwardly quaking at the thought of meeting her new relatives.

  She had been told to go immediately on arrival to the telephone desk in the ladies’ waiting room and stand there until someone came for her.

  The red-capped porter seized
her luggage and led her up the iron stair from the train, into the amazing loftiness of the Pennsylvania Station, and although she had heard it described many times, she yet was filled with awe over its vastness, and the vistas of other great spaces framed in white marble that stretched in every direction from it.

  The porter left her in the appointed place, and Sherrill stood staring around her anxiously, wondering what the aunt or the cousin who would come to meet her would be like; looking eagerly at every well-dressed woman or young girl who came that way.

  Back and forth, up and down, sometimes not two feet from where she stood, there paced a man in livery, watching everyone who approached. Once he stopped a plain-looking girl in a blue serge suit and asked her something, but she shook her head and walked on.

  Sherrill watched the clock, and watched everyone who came, and her heart began to have strange misgivings. Perhaps they had forgotten her! It was a quarter to five, and no one had come yet. What ought she to do? Would her uncle discover it soon and come after her? Had she perhaps made some mistake about the place she was to meet them? She asked the telephone operator if there was more than one telephone desk in the ladies’ waiting room, and was coldly told no. Finally she decided to telephone her uncle’s house and find out what to do. Of course she might take a taxi, but perhaps they would come for her just after she had left. Perhaps they would not like that. She must not make a mistake right at the start. She would telephone. Surely that could do no harm. She would say she was not sure she had found the spot where they had told her to meet them. “Someone will meet you,” was what the letter said.

  So she looked up the telephone number and finally approached the operator and asked for it.

  Then, just at her elbow, a voice spoke most respectfully. “Beg pardon, miss, but I couldn’t help hearing the number. Could you happen to be waiting for Mrs. Washburn’s car?”

  “Oh yes,” said Sherrill, whirling about with a relieved smile, “do you know where they are? I must have missed them.”

  “Right this way, miss,” said the man respectfully, stooping to pick up her baggage. “I wasn’t rightly sure whether it was you or not,” he added, and gave another respectful glance at Sherrill’s squirrel coat. He did not say that his instructions had been to look for a very shabby-looking country girl.

  So Sherrill was stowed away in a handsome car, and her checks were taken by another red-capped official, and she rolled in state out a stone corridor into the great new city.

  But then there was a strange new heaviness in her heart. This was not the way they welcomed guests at Rockland, sending a chauffeur after them. But perhaps everybody was sick, or something happened. She took a long breath, sat back on the downy cushions, and tried to prepare for whatever might be before her.

  Chapter 14

  It was a handsome house on Riverside Drive where they finally arrived, but there was no welcoming door flung open, no eager relatives waiting to greet her. Not even a costly curtain drawn back to indicate any watcher at the window.

  Instead the door was opened in answer to the chauffeur’s ring by a white-capped maid who stared at her with a brief questioning glance and said, “Is this Miss Washburn?”—as if she were surprised, and with another appraising glance said, “Come this way, please.”

  Sherrill was led up a wide staircase, getting brief glimpses of stately rooms below as she passed, and down a narrow hall toward the back of the house. She had a sense of being isolated in a large boardinghouse, but the room, when it was reached, proved to be large and light and overlooking a row of backyards.

  There was a bathroom connected with the room, and a large closet, and Sherrill looked about on her new quarters with a degree of relief. It would be quite possible to feel at home in a room like that, everything else being equal, but where was the family?

  “Mrs. Washburn said to say that she would be busy until seven, and Miss Washburn is out to tea, but you would better lie down and refresh yourself, for there’s a dinner and dance this evening that you’re to attend. She said to say that she would see you at seven and arrange about your dress. The dinner is at half past eight.”

  “Oh!” said Sherrill, bewildered. “Oh, well, I don’t think I better go anywhere tonight. I’d rather stay right here quietly and get rested.”

  She was beginning to feel in a panic. No one to meet her or greet her! A dance flung in her face off at the start, and no chance to get her bearings! This was even worse than she had expected. But the person in cap and apron was speaking quite firmly, as if she had the right to order affairs.

  “Oh, but I’m thinking you’ll have to, miss. Mrs. Washburn has already accepted for you. Madam would never hear to your declining. She always says a dinner engagement is a thing you simply have to keep. If you will just let me fix a nice hot bath for you, miss, I’m sure you’ll feel quite refreshed. I’ll put some of Madame’s bath salts in it. They are very helpful. And then you can lie down till it’s time to go in to Madam about the dress. I believe she has had some things sent up she wants you to see.”

  “Oh, certainly! I don’t want to upset any plans,” said Sherrill doubtfully. “I’ll go, of course. They promised to send my trunk up at once. I suppose it will be here soon.”

  “Yes, miss, likely,” said the maid. “And would you like it sent immediately to the trunk room for the night, out of your way, or is there something you must have out of it? I can unpack it for you this evening after you have gone, if you wish.”

  “Oh no,” said Sherrill in a new panic, “please have it brought right here. I would rather unpack it myself, if you don’t mind. I know how things are, you know”—and she smiled pleasantly. “But thank you just the same.”

  The maid looked doubtfully at her, opened her lips as if to speak, then glanced at the lovely fur coat that Sherrill was taking off, and closed her lips again. Finally she said, “Well, Madam thought you would want your trunk to go direct to the store room. But if you prefer, of course.”

  “Yes, I do, please,” said Sherrill firmly.

  When she was alone, instead of taking off her hat and following the directions for rest that she had been given, Sherrill stood looking out her window, with troubled, unseeing eyes, trying to think what all this meant. How strange for her aunt not to greet her. She must not let her mother and Keith know how she had been received. Especially, she must not let Grandma know. She would feel it keenly.

  Then suddenly she whirled about and knelt down by a chair.

  “Oh, my dear heavenly Father, help me not to misjudge. Help me to be strong and sweet and go through this trial that You have given me, for Christ’s sake.”

  Then she came back to the window and tried to interest herself in the small vision of the new city that she could get from these back upper windows. Were those great masts over there, far beyond the buildings, or were they steeples?

  A tap on the door put an end to her investigations, and she opened it to find the maid with a tray, containing tea and tiny sandwiches and cakes.

  “Oh, you needn’t have troubled to do that,” said Sherrill and then realized that was the wrong thing to say. Probably tea was a regular meal in this house. She must take things as they came, as a matter of course. That was what Harriet Masters had said, and she knew it.

  It was six o’clock before Sherrill’s trunk came, but she had lain down for a few minutes and felt quite rested. She had thought out the matter of clothes, comparing as much as she knew of the occasion with Harriet Masters’ rules, and decided that the blue taffeta was the right thing to wear tonight.

  She laid out the things she would need for the evening, hung her dresses in the closet, put some of her other things in the drawers of the bureau and her hats on the closet shelf. It did not take her long. Somehow she did not linger over the process as she had expected to do when she laid those pretty garments away in the trunk. She had, in spite of her prejudices, pictured an eager cousin hovering near and admiring, and she was chagrined to find how much difference it made
to her that no one was near to see what pretty things she had. Real Paris clothes and copies of them, and no one to know it. Well, it served her right for caring so much about clothes! Anyway, she would just enjoy them and forget that they were anything different from what she might have always had.

  She was just about to don her dress when the maid came to the door and tapped.

  “Madam says she is ready for you now,” she announced, “and you will please not put on a frock. Just wear a robe. She is wanting you to try on something.”

  A flush came into Sherrill’s face and she was about to rebel at the order, when she remembered her prayer to be kept sweet and do the right thing, and she closed her lips and tried to be pleasant. Well, at least she had a pretty robe and lovely lingerie. She swept the bright folds of silk about her and rejoiced in the embroidered butterflies. They looked pretty with the silver shoes and stockings she had put on.

  So she walked down the hall to the front of the house and waited while the maid tapped at her mistress’ door. How funny this was to greet her relative first in a robe—a pretty robe, anyway!

  Mrs. Washburn lay in her bed, draped in a negligee of lace and orchid silk, with her face swathed in hot cloths, which the attendant from time to time changed. There was no opportunity for Sherrill to give the sacrificial kiss, which she had earnestly resolved upon after many soul struggles.

  “So, this is Sherrill, is it?” said a sharp, thin voice, pitched high and emanating from the steaming towels. “Well, I’m glad you came on time. I had to substitute you as a dinner guest for a friend I had visiting me, who was suddenly called home by a death in the family. So annoying. But there isn’t much time, so we’ll have to get to work. I’ve got a dress here that might fit you. If it doesn’t, the maid knows how to take it up. Suppose you put it on right away. Where did you get that robe? Is that something Carol has been buying again on my charge account? If it is, it will simply have to go back. I can’t have her doing that when she has an account of her own. Come over nearer so I can see it. What are those? Butterflies? It really is stunning! I can’t say I blame her much. Perhaps I’ll keep it for myself. Did she tell you you could borrow it?