The Root Cellar (19 page)

“He only owed me seven,” she said.

“Don’t give it a thought,” said the man, “not the smallest particle of a thought. Quite obviously the man is a skinflint, a welsher who doesn’t pay up what he owes. Therefore it was right and proper for you to take what was yours. And, if you got a dollar or two more into the bargain, why so much the better for you.” And off he went again into peals of laughter.

Rose had a momentary struggle with herself, knew suddenly that Susan wouldn’t keep the extra money, and thrust four dollars into the man’s hand. “Please give it back,” she said.

For a moment the man was speechless.

“Plucky little fellow,” he said at last, “plucky little fellow, now what do you propose to do? Wouldn’t go back to that village just
now. Be a foolish move, very foolish move. Get on with the excursion if I were you.”

“Excursion?”

“Indeed. The pilgrimage, the march you’re engaged on, the mission you’ve undertaken. Whatever it was that took you from your frozen northland and brought you to our fair lands.”

“I can’t,” she said. “My sister’s back there.”

“Well, my young friend, I don’t know how long it’s been since I’ve had such amusement. I’ve half a mind to hire you to keep me entertained, but since I don’t imagine for a moment that you’d agree to it, and furthermore I travel too much to accommodate you, I’ll polish off the evening in fine style for us both, in gratitude for the diversion. I’ll find your sister and buy you a dinner into the bargain. All you have to do is fold up your fortune and put it safely away in your pocket—I suppose you have a pocket somewhere under that tar—and I shall take care of the rest.”

Bemused, Rose sat down beside the hill and waited, rejoicing in her good luck and at the same time not quite trusting it. How was the man going to find Susan? He had gone off without ever asking what she looked like. But not twenty minutes later, she heard the beat of a horse’s hooves and then Hermes appeared with two figures on his back. Susan had a large bundle.

The man leaped down from his horse and handed Susan down with the grace of an old-time courtier. Before either Rose or Susan had a chance to speak, he bowed to them each in turn and said, “There you are, my young friends, delivered out of the lions’ den. As I have far to go, and old Hermes cannot manage three human beings, however small the third, and as you are no doubt accustomed to the ways of the road, please accept this cash for the meal I promised. Then I must be off. I wish, I truly wish I could avail myself of your company a while longer as I suspect your tale is an interesting one—brother and sister you most assuredly are not—but alas, I have no time.” With a flourish, he handed Rose a five-dollar bill. “Now dine in style, my young friends,” he said, “dine in style. Augustus Delfinney at your service.”

Doffing his hat, Augustus Delfinney rode back up the land toward the village and into the darkening hills.

“Susan, did you ever see anyone like that man in all your life?”

“No, I ain’t, Rose.” Susan was not at the moment interested in Augustus Delfinney. “Rose, what happened? I seen you running and all them boys chasing and I seen that Mr. Delfinney come after. I was some scared. I went to the missus where I was working and I got my pay and some other things and I hiked along the
way I seen you run. Then I seen the boys come back and it wasn’t long before he comes along on his horse and he said, ‘Yes, I believe you’re the young lady I’m looking for. Come along up here.’ I started to run and he laughed and come up close and whispered that he knew where my brother was and he seemed a nice man and I come and here I am. What did you do?”

“Have you got anything to eat in there?” Rose asked faintly, pointing to the bundle.

Susan had. She had bread and cheese, meat, tomatoes, two cold potatoes, and two pieces of pie. She also had a bar of soap, a shirt and a pair of britches and boots, all well worn but still serviceable.

“I asked for ’em instead of some of the money,” said Susan. “I took ’em for you.” There was a warmth in the way she said it, and a kind of shyness, that made Rose look questioningly at her. Without another word being spoken, Rose understood that everything was all right again between them. She sighed.

Susan started to laugh. “Oh, my, but you do look a sight!” she said.

“Never mind,” said Rose. “Give me the dinner.” She sat down and ate and only afterward did she tell Susan what had happened at the blacksmith shop.

Three nights later, refreshed, washed, neatly clothed, well fed, and with money in their
pockets, the girls sat on the train as it pulled into the station in New York City.

Rose could not talk for the excitement that had come over her. There was a lump in her throat that felt as big as a rubber ball. Her heart was pounding and she broke out alternately in hot and cold sweats. This was the end of the journey. After New York everything would be easy. Nothing bad could happen anymore. New York was her home ground. As the train jerked to a stop and the conductor bawled out, “New York Central Station! Everybody change! New York Central Station! Everybody out!” she beamed at Susan, grabbed her hand, and pulled her to the front of the line and out into the station.

The station was bigger, brighter, the crowd was thicker and there was more noise, but it was otherwise exactly like the ones at Oswego, Syracuse, Albany, and Poughkeepsie where they had got on that afternoon. Over the shouts of the hawkers, a man with a megaphone was calling, “This way to the horse cars! Come along, ladies and gentlemen! This way to the downtown depot. Connections to Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington. This way to the horse cars!”

Rose stood absolutely still as the realization sunk in. This wasn’t Grand Central Station, not the Grand Central Station she knew, with the information desk in the center, the big electric
signs at one end and—she looked up—the star-covered ceiling.

This was another station in another time, in Susan’s time, in Mrs. Jerue’s time, in Peter Maas’s time. It wasn’t the New York she knew.

She looked around wildly, refusing to believe what she saw. She began to shake and grew dizzy and cold, her knees gave out, there was a roaring in her ears. Then—blackness.

New York

A
s if from far away, voices came at her like sounds in a whirling wind, rushing near and fading again, saying nothing intelligible. Then Susan’s voice, anxious, close to her ear. “Rose, Rose.”

For a second, Rose thought she was back in the orchard at Hawthorn Bay. She opened her eyes slowly. “Poor youngster,” someone was saying, “I suppose it’s the heat. Children shouldn’t be out on their own at night like this. Pretty little boy, ain’t he?”

Then an arm thrust itself through the crowd and a quiet, authoritative voice said, “Drink this.” It was water in a tin cup. Rose sat up and drank it. She smiled self-consciously at Susan, who was gripping her hand as though she dare not let go.

“I’m all right.” She wished they would all go away. “Really, I’m all right.” She stood up carefully.

“Have you had any supper?” It was the woman whose arm had proffered the water, a tall woman dressed in gray with a big red face and kind eyes.

“I think so. I don’t remember.” She remembered leaving the shelter they had found after running away from the village of Dorland, the train ride, the excitement about coming to New York, and the hideous shock of finding out that New York Central Station was not the Grand Central Station she had been expecting.

Ignoring the kind woman, who was offering to buy them supper, she said urgently to Susan, “We can’t stay here.”

“I know,” Susan agreed. “We got to find that place you said would hold our grip and our money and get going.”

Rose looked at her blankly.

“We got to get our things and our money from that place you said keeps things that gets left on the train,” Susan repeated patiently.

The crowd around had dispersed except for the tall woman, who intervened once more to ask what the problem was. As briefly as possible, Susan recounted their misadventure on the train.

“Poor children,” said the woman. “You shouldn’t be traveling alone like this. I doubt very much if anyone has turned in either your grip or your money but, if you’ll wait here, I’ll go and inquire for you.”

She was back in a few minutes, during which time Rose sat as one under a spell. Her mind refused to work. Susan sat by her, peering anxiously into her face.

“I’m afraid no such grip has been turned in,” said the woman, “and of course no money. I haven’t much, but I can give you enough for your evening meal.”

“We got money,” Susan assured her.

“You’ll be all right then.” The woman sounded much relieved. “I have to catch a train, so I can’t stay with you any longer. You’ll be fine now, child. God bless you and bring you home safely.” With a smile and a nod, she was off, a tall serene presence amid the noise and confusion of the station.

“Rose,” Susan was saying desperately, “our grip is gone. It’s like that Joe Haggerty said. We wasn’t likely to find it nor our money. All the same, we got this far and we got some money and you know the way from here, so, like you always says, what we have to do now is get going.”

Rose followed Susan like a robot through the station. They found a little horse-drawn bus that took them to the downtown depot at Chambers Street where they expected to get the midnight train for Washington. There they learned that the train left from Jersey City on the other side of the Hudson River. They would have to take another bus and a ferry to get there.

Rose would not go. She sat down on the nearest bench. “We’ll be in Washington first thing in the morning, if we go on now,” Susan urged. But Rose wouldn’t budge.

“If you won’t go tonight, then we’d better get us a bite of supper,” said Susan.

“You go.”

“It’s because of them things you lost in the bag, ain’t it? That’s what’s wrong.”

Rose had completely forgotten her treasures—her book and her music box. She didn’t care about them. They were treasures from a world that suddenly seemed very far away. There was no comfort even in their memory.

Susan sat down beside her and tried to coax her to come and eat, but Rose still would not move. Susan would not leave her, so they stayed where they were. Before long Susan’s head was nodding; she slumped down on the bench and slept.

Rose sat straight and unblinking. The shock had passed, leaving her filled with dark, unreasoning terror. Her entire sense of what was real and what was not had been shaken. The feeling of being in a dream, which had started on the schooner on Lake Ontario, had made even the worst of the things that had happened bearable. But it had fled the instant she had set eyes on the inside of New York Central Station. Why she had expected to see Grand Central
Station—familiar, twentieth-century Grand Central Station—she did not know, but she had. And now the world was shifting and changing around her and there was nothing to hold on to. An image flashed in her mind from a science-fiction movie she had seen, the image of a man hurled from his spaceship out into the black void. And there he would be rolling and tumbling through black space for all eternity. She shuddered.

After a while her senses began to settle, and as they did the world became real to her as it had never seemed real before. Colors were brighter. Smells were stronger. Sounds were sharper. She looked around. She was sitting in the Chambers Street railroad depot in New York City in August, 1865. It was oak-paneled, with benches in rows for people to sit on, windows and a big clock at one end. There were not many people there—a young mother with a cranky baby at the end of the bench, three nuns in long black habits pacing up and down the room, an old man sleeping, and two young soldiers sitting across from them.

They looked very ordinary and, like all the people Rose had ever seen or even known, they had nothing to do with her. That special sense of belonging she had had when she had first come up through the root cellar into Susan’s world was gone as completely as the feeling of
being in a dream. She was just Rose, as ill-fitting in this world as she was in the one she had grown up in.

She stared down at her feet and they looked like someone else’s feet. In the boots Susan had got in Dorland they were the feet of David, the boy she had told everyone she was. And the britches were not hers. And she wasn’t Rose Larkin but this other person, this made-up brother of Susan’s. Reality wavered again. Who was she now? She began to tremble. Then, suddenly, Sam’s face flashed into her mind, round and earnest and kind as it had been that day in Oswego when they had sat on the wall talking. It was gone immediately, but it settled her again and she was once more solidly back in the station. Fear did not leave her entirely, but it dwindled to that much more ordinary fear of being in a strange place, knowing there was no one but herself to rely on. She was scared and hungry and she wanted to go home. And home was not New York. It was Aunt Nan’s and Uncle Bob’s home at Hawthorn Bay. She was sad she would never be able to tell Aunt Nan that she was sorry about the accident or talk to Sam or play with the twins. She saw Sam’s face again, this time with great clarity. He was sitting at the kitchen table, concentrating on playing his mouth organ. The twins were across the table listening. Sam looked up, directly at Rose, and the image faded.