Two Little Pilgrims' Progress

VIII

It was four miles to the dépôt, but they were good walkers. Robin hung the satchel on a stick over his shoulder; they kept in the middle of the road and walked smartly. There were not many trees, but there were a few, occasionally, and it was pleasanter to walk where the way before them was quite clear. And somehow they found themselves still talking in whispers, though there was certainly no one to overhear them.

“Let us talk about Christian,” said Meg. “It will not seem so lonely if we are talking. I wish we could meet Evangelist.”

“If we knew he was Evangelist when we met him,” said Robin. “If we didn’t know him, we should think he was some one who would stop us. And after all, you see, he only showed Christian the shining light, and told him to go to it. And we are farther on than that. We have passed the Wicket Gate.”

“The thing we want,” said Meg, “is the Roll to read as we go on, and find out what we are to do.”

And then they talked of what was before them. They wondered who would be at the little dépôt and if they would be noticed, and of what the ticket-agent would think when Robin bought the tickets.

“Perhaps he won’t notice me at all,” said Rob. “And he does not know me. Somebody might be sending us alone, you know. We are not little children.”

“That’s true,” responded Meg, courageously. “If we were six years old it would be different. But we are twelve!”

It did make it seem less lonely to be talking, and so they did not stop. And there was so much to say.

“Robin,” broke forth Meg once, giving his hand a sudden clutch, “we are on the way – we are going. Soon we shall be in the train and it will be carrying us nearer and nearer. Suppose it was a dream, and we should wake up!”

“It isn’t a dream!” said Rob, stoutly. “It’s real – it’s as real as Aunt Matilda!” He was always more practical-minded than Meg.

“We needn’t philander any more,” Meg said.

“It isn’t philandering to talk about a real thing.”

“Oh, Rob, just think of it – waiting for us under the stars, this very moment – the City Beautiful!”

And then, walking close to each other in the dimness, they told each other how they saw it in imagination, and what its wonders would be to them, and which they would see first, and how they would remember it all their lives afterwards, and have things to talk of and think of. Very few people would see it as they would, but they did not know that. It was not a gigantic enterprise to them, a great scheme fought for and struggled over for the divers reasons poor humanity makes for itself; that it would either make or lose money was not a side of the question that reached them. They only dwelt on the beauty and wonder of it, which made it seem like an enchanted thing.

“I keep thinking of the white palaces, and that it is like a fairy story,” Meg said, “and that it will melt away like those cities travellers sometimes see in the desert. And I wish it wouldn’t. But it will have been real for a while, and everybody will remember it. I am so glad it is beautiful – and white. I am so glad it is white, Robin!”

“And I keep thinking,” said Robin, “of all the people who have made the things to go in it, and how they have worked and invented. There have been some people, perhaps, who have worked months and months making one single thing – just as we have worked to go to see it. And perhaps, at first they were afraid they couldn’t do it, and they set their minds to it as we did, and tried and tried, and then did it at last. I like to think of those men and women, Meg, because, when the City has melted away, the things won’t melt. They will last after the people. And we are people too. I’m a man, and you are a woman, you know, though we are only twelve, and it gives me a strong feeling to think of those others.”

“It makes you think that perhaps men and women can do anything if they set their minds to it,” said Meg, quite solemnly. “Oh, I do like that!”

“I like it better than anything else in the world,” said Rob. “Stop a minute, Meg. Come here in the shade.”

He said the last words quickly, and pulled her to the roadside, where a big tree grew which threw a deep shadow. He stood listening.

“It’s wheels!” he whispered. “There is a buggy coming. We mustn’t let any one see us.”

It was a buggy, they could tell that by the lightness of the wheels, and it was coming rapidly. They could hear voices – men’s voices – and they drew back and stood very close to each other.

“Do you think they have found out, and sent some one after us?” whispered Meg, breathlessly.

“No,” answered Robin, though his heart beat like a triphammer. “No, no, no.”

The wheels drew nearer, and they heard one of the men speaking.

“Chicago by sunrise,” he was saying, “and what I don’t see of it won’t be worth seeing.”

The next minute the fast-trotting horse spun swiftly down the road, and carried the voices out of hearing. Meg and Robin drew twin sighs of relief. Robin spoke first.

“It is some one who is going to the Fair,” he said.

“Perhaps we shall see him in the train,” said Meg.

“I dare say we shall,” said Robin. “It was nobody who knows us. I didn’t know his voice. Meg, let’s take hands again, and walk quickly; we might lose the train.”

They did not talk much more, but walked briskly. They had done a good day’s work before they set out, and were rather tired, but they did not lag on that account. Sometimes Meg took a turn at carrying the satchel, so that Robin might rest his arm. It was not heavy, and she was as strong for a girl as he was for a boy.

At last they reached the dépôt. There were a number of people waiting on the platform to catch the train to Chicago, and there were several vehicles outside. They passed one which was a buggy, and Meg gave Robin a nudge with her elbow.

“Perhaps that belongs to our man,” she said.

There were people enough before the office to give the ticket-agent plenty to do. Robin’s heart quickened a little as he passed by with the group of maturer people, but no one seemed to observe him particularly, and he returned to Meg with the precious bits of pasteboard held very tight in his hand.

Meg had waited alone in an unlighted corner, and when she saw him coming she came forward to meet him.

“Have you got them?” she said. “Did any one look at you or say anything?”

“Yes, I got them,” Robin answered. “And, I’ll tell you what, Meg, these people are nearly all going just where we are going, and they are so busy thinking about it, and attending to themselves, that they haven’t any time to watch any one else. That’s one good thing.”

“And the nearer we get to Chicago,” Meg said, “the more people there will be, and the more they will have to think of. And at that beautiful place, where there is so much to see, who will look at two children? I don’t believe we shall have any trouble at all.”

It really did not seem likely that they would, but it happened, by a curious coincidence, that within a very few minutes they saw somebody looking at them.

The train was not due for ten minutes, and there were a few people who, being too restless to sit in the waiting-rooms, walked up and down on the platform. Most of these were men, and there were two men who walked farther than the others did, and so neared the place where Robin and Meg stood in the shadow. One was a young man, and seemed to be listening to instructions his companion, who was older, was giving him, in a rapid, abrupt sort of voice. This companion, who might have been his employer, was a man of middle age. He was robust of figure and had a clean-cut face, with a certain effect of strong good looks. It was, perhaps, rather a hard face, but it was a face one would look at more than once; and he too, oddly enough, had a square jaw and straight black brows. But it was his voice which first attracted Robin and Meg as he neared them, talking.

“It’s the man in the buggy,” whispered Robin. “Don’t you know his voice again?” and they watched him with deep interest.

He passed them once, without seeming to see them at all. He was explaining something to his companion. The second time he drew near he chanced to look up, and his eye fell on them. It did not rest on them more than a second, and he went on speaking. The next time he neared their part of the platform he turned his glance towards them, as they stood close together. It was as if involuntarily he glanced to see if they were still where they had been before.

“A pair of children,” they heard him say, as if the fleeting impression of their presence arrested his train of thought for a second. “Look as if no one was with them.”

He merely made the comment in passing, and returned to his subject the next second; but Meg and Robin heard him, and drew farther back into the shadow.

But it was not necessary to stand there much longer. They heard a familiar sound in the distance, the shrill cry of the incoming train – the beloved giant who was to carry them to fairyland; the people began to flock out of the waiting-rooms with packages and valises and umbrellas in hand; the porters suddenly became alert, and hurried about attending to their duties; the delightful roar drew nearer and louder, and began to shake the earth; it grew louder still, a bell began to make a cheerful tolling, people were rushing to and fro; Meg and Robin rushed with them, and the train was panting in the dépôt.

It was even more thrilling than the children had thought it would be. They had travelled so very little, and did not know exactly where to go. It might not be the right train even. They did not know how long it would wait. It might rush away again before they could get on. People seemed in such a hurry and so excited. As they hurried along they found themselves being pushed and jostled, before the steps of one of the cars a conductor stood, whom people kept showing tickets to. There were several persons round him when Robin and Meg reached the place where he stood. People kept asking him things, and sometimes he passed them on, and sometimes let them go into his car.

“Is this the train to Chicago?” said Robin, breathlessly.

But he was so much less than the other people, and the man was so busy, he did not hear him.

Robin tried to get nearer.

“Is this the Chicago train, sir?” he said, a little louder.

He had had to press by a man whom he had been too excited to see, and the man looked down, and spoke to him.

“Chicago train?” he said, in a voice which was abrupt, without being ill-natured. “Yes, you’re all right. Got your sleeping tickets?”

Robin looked up at him quickly. He knew the voice, and was vaguely glad to hear it. He and Meg had never been in a sleeping-car in their lives, and he did not quite understand. He held out his tickets.

“We are going to sleep on the train,” he said; “but we have nothing but these.”

“Next car but two, then,” he said; “and you’d better hurry.”

And when both voices thanked him at once, and the two caught each other’s hands and ran towards their car, he looked after them and laughed.

“I’m blessed if they’re not by themselves,” he said, watching them as they scrambled up the steps. “And they’re going to the Fair, I’ll bet a dollar. That’s Young America, and no mistake!”

IX

The car was quite crowded. There were more people than themselves who were going to the Fair and were obliged to economize. When the children entered, and looked about them in the dim light, they thought at first that all the seats were full. People seemed to be huddled up asleep or sitting up awake in all of them. Everybody had been trying to get to sleep, at least, and the twins found themselves making their whispers even lower than before.

“I think there is a seat empty just behind that very fat lady,” Meg whispered.

It was at the end of the car, and they went to it, and found she was right. They took possession of it quietly, putting their satchel under the seat.

“It seems so still,” said Meg, “I feel as if I was in somebody’s bedroom. The sound of the wheels makes it seem all the quieter. It’s as if we were shut in by the noise.”

“We mustn’t talk,” said Robin, “or we shall waken the people. Can you go to sleep, Meg?”

“I can if I can stop thinking,” she answered, with a joyful sigh. “I’m very tired; but the wheels keep saying, over and over again, ‘We’re going – we’re going – we’re going.’ It’s just as if they were talking. Don’t you hear them?”

“Yes, I do. Do they say that to you, too? But we mustn’t listen,” Robin whispered back. “If we do we shall not go to sleep, and then we shall be too tired to walk about. Let’s put our heads down, and shut our eyes, Meg.”

“Well, let’s,” said Meg.

She curled herself up on the seat, and put her head into the corner.

“If you lean against me, Rob,” she said, “it will be softer. We can take turns.”

They changed position a little two or three times, but they were worn out with the day’s work, and their walk, and the excitement, and the motion of the train seemed like a sort of rocking which lulled them. Gradually their muscles relaxed and they settled down, though, after they had done so, Meg spoke once, drowsily.

“Rob,” she said, “did you see that was our man?”

“Yes,” answered Rob, very sleepily indeed, “and he looked as if he knew us.”

If they had been less young, or if they had been less tired, they might have found themselves awake a good many times during the night. But they were such children, and, now that the great step was taken, were so happy, that the soft, deep sleepiness of youth descended upon and overpowered them. Once or twice during the night they stirred, wakened for a dreamy, blissful moment by some sound of a door shutting, or a conductor passing through. But they were only conscious of a delicious sense of strangeness, of the stillness of the car full of sleepers, of the half-realized delight of feeling themselves carried along through the unknown country, and of the rattle of the wheels, which never ceased saying rhythmically, “We’re going – we’re going – we’re going!”

Ah! what a night of dreams and new, vague sensations, to be remembered always! Ah! that heavenly sense of joy to come, and adventure, and young hopefulness and imagining! Were there many others carried towards the City Beautiful that night who bore with them the same rapture of longing and belief; who saw with such innocent clearness only the fair and splendid thought which had created it, and were so innocently blind to any shadow of sordidness or mere worldly interest touching its white walls? And after the passing of this wonderful night, what a wakening in the morning, at the first rosiness of dawn, when all the other occupants of the car were still asleep, or restlessly trying to be at ease!

It was as if they both wakened at almost the same moment. The first shaft of early sunlight streaming in the window touched Meg’s eyelids, and she slowly opened them. Then something joyous and exultant rushed in upon her heart, and she sat upright. And Robin sat up too, and they looked at each other.

“It’s the Day, Meg!” said Robin. “It’s the Day!” Meg caught her breath.

“And nothing has stopped us,” she said. “And we are getting nearer and nearer. Rob, let us look out of the window.”

For a while they looked out, pressed close together, and full of such ecstasy of delight in the strangeness of everything that at first they did not exchange even their whispers.

It is rather a good thing to see – rather well worth while even for a man or woman – the day waking, and waking the world, as one is borne swiftly through the morning light, and one looks out of a car window. What it was to these two children only those who remember the children who were themselves long ago can realize at all. The country went hurrying past them, making curious sudden revelations and giving half-hints in its haste; prairie and field, farmhouse and wood and village all wore a strange, exciting, vanishing aspect.

“It seems,” Meg said, “as if it was all going somewhere – in a great hurry – as if it couldn’t wait to let us see it.”

“But we are the ones that are going,” said Rob. “Listen to the wheels – and we shall soon be there.”

After a while the people who were asleep began to stir and stretch themselves. Some of them looked cross, and some looked tired. The very fat lady in the seat before them had a coal smut on her nose.

“Robin,” said Meg, after looking at her seriously a moment, “let’s get our towel out of the bag and wet it and wash our faces.”

They had taken the liberty of borrowing a towel from Aunt Matilda. It was Meg who had thought of it, and it had, indeed, been an inspiration. Robin wetted two corners of it, and they made a rigorous if limited toilet. At least they had no smuts on their noses, and after a little touching up with the mutual comb and brush, they looked none the worse for wear. Their plain and substantial garments were not of the order which has any special charm to lose.

“And it’s not our clothes that are going to the Fair,” said Meg, “it’s us!”

And by the time they were in good order, the farms and villages they were flying past had grown nearer together. The platforms at the dépôts were full of people who wore a less provincial look; the houses grew larger and so did the towns; they found themselves flashing past advertisements of all sorts of things, and especially of things connected with the Fair.

“You know how we used to play ‘hunt the thimble,’” said Robin, “and how, when any one came near the place where it was hidden, we said, ‘Warm – warmer – warmer still – hot!’ It’s like that now. We have been getting warmer and warmer every minute, and now we are getting – ”

“We shall be in in a minute,” said a big man at the end of the car, and he stood up and began to take down his things.

“Hot,” said Robin, with an excited little laugh. “Meg, we’re not going – going – going any more. Look out of the window.”

“We are steaming into the big dépôt,” cried Meg. “How big it is! What crowds of people! Robin, we are there!”

Robin bent down to pick up their satchel; the people all rose in their seats and began to move in a mass down the aisle toward the door. Everybody seemed suddenly to become eager and in a hurry, as if they thought the train would begin to move again and carry them away. Some were expecting friends to meet them, some were anxious about finding accommodations. Those who knew each other talked, asked questions over people’s shoulders, and there was a general anxiety about valises, parcels, and umbrellas. Robin and Meg were pressed back into their section by the crowd, against which they were too young to make headway.

“We shall have to wait until the grown-up people have passed by,” Rob said.

But the crowd in the aisle soon lost its compactness, and they were able to get out. The porter, who stood on the platform near the steps, looked at them curiously, and glanced behind them to see who was with them, but he said nothing.

It seemed to the two as if all the world must have poured itself into the big dépôt or be passing through it. People were rushing about; friends were searching for one another, pushing their way through the surging crowd; some were greeting each other with exclamations and hand-shaking, and stopping up the way; there was a Babel of voices, a clamor of shouts within the covered place, and from outside came a roar of sound rising from the city.

For a few moments Robin and Meg were overwhelmed. They did not quite know what to do; everybody pushed past and jostled them. No one was ill-natured, but no one had time to be polite. They were so young and so strange to all such worlds of excitement and rush, involuntarily they clutched each other’s hands after their time-honored fashion, when they were near each other and overpowered. The human vortex caught them up and carried them along, not knowing where they were going.

“We seem so little!” gasped Meg. “There – there are so many people! Rob, Rob, where are we going?”

Robin had lost his breath too. Suddenly the world seemed so huge – so huge! Just for a moment he felt himself turn pale, and he looked at Meg and saw that she was pale too.

“Everybody is going out of the dépôt,” he said.

“Hold on to me tight, Meg. It will be all right. We shall get out.”

And so they did. The crowd surged and swayed and struggled, and before long they saw that it was surging towards the entrance gate, and it took them with it. Just as they thrust through they found themselves pushed against a man, who good-naturedly drew a little back to save Meg from striking against his valise, which was a very substantial one. She looked up to thank him, and gave a little start. It was the man she had called “our man” the night before, when she spoke of him to Robin. And he gave them a sharp but friendly nod.

“Hallo!” he exclaimed, “it’s you two again. You are going to the Fair!”

Robin looked up at his shrewd face with a civil little grin.

“Yes, sir; we are,” he answered.

“Hope you’ll enjoy it,” said the man. “Big thing.” And he was pushed past them and soon lost in the crowd.

X

The crowd in the dépôt surged into the streets, and melted into and became an addition to the world of people there. The pavements were moving masses of human beings, the centres of the streets were pandemoniums of wagons and vans, street cars, hotel omnibuses, and carriages. The brilliant morning sunlight dazzled the children’s eyes; the roar of wheels and the clamor of car bells, of clattering horses’ feet, of cries and shouts and passing voices, mingled in a volume of sound that deafened them. The great tidal wave of human life and work and pleasure almost took them off their feet.

They knew too little of cities to have had beforehand any idea of what the overwhelming rush and roar would be, and what slight straws they would feel themselves upon the current. If they had been quite ordinary children, they might well have been frightened. But they were not ordinary children, little as they were aware of that important factor in their young lives. They were awed for this first moment, but, somehow, they were fascinated as much as they were awed, while they stood for a brief breathing-space looking on. They did not know – no child of their ages can possibly know such things of him or herself – that Nature had made them of the metal out of which she moulds strong things and great ones. As they had not comprehended the restless sense of wrong and misery the careless, unlearning, and ungrowing life in Aunt Matilda’s world filled them with, so they did not understand that, because they had been born creatures who belong to the great moving, working, venturing world, they were not afraid of it, and felt their first young face-to-face encounter with it a thing which thrilled them with an exultant emotion they could not have explained.

“This is not Aunt Matilda’s world,” said Rob. “It – I believe it is ours, Meg. Don’t you?”

Meg was staring with entranced eyes at the passing multitude.

“‘More pilgrims are come to town,’” she said, quoting the “Pilgrim’s Progress” with a far-off look in her intense little black-browed face. “You remember what it said, Rob, ‘Here also all the noise of them that walked in the streets was, More pilgrims are come to town.’ Oh, isn’t it like it!”

It was. And the exaltation and thrill of it got into their young blood and made them feel as if they walked on air, and that every passing human thing meant, somehow, life and strength to them.

Their appetites were sharpened by the morning air, and they consulted as to what their breakfast should be. They had no money to spend at restaurants, and every penny must be weighed and calculated.