"Here you are! you"re all right!" he said, cheerfully. "Here"s all your things: I done piled "em up first-rate for you."
Piled up they were indeed. The lunch-basket, the strapped bundle of blankets, the overcoats, the water-proofs, the leather bags, all one above the other on one bed.
"Where are we to sleep, mamma?" exclaimed Nelly.
"On top," said Rob. "Hurrah! hurrah!" and he was about to jump on the top of the pile.
"Be quiet, Rob," said his father: "we must go to bed as quietly as we can, and not wake people up. We ought to have come earlier.
Almost everybody is asleep, I think."
At this point, rose two great snores, so close that Mrs. March started.
"Mercy!" she exclaimed. "How that frightened me!"
Snore! snore! snore! The sounds came as regularly as the striking of a clock: they were most uncommonly loud snores. Mr. March looked at his wife and smiled. Mrs. March did not smile in return: she did not like this state of things at all.
At last they had sorted out the things they needed, and the rest of the things they pushed under their berths,--all but the big lunch-basket: Mr. March had to carry that out to the end of the car, and set it by the stove. Then Mr. March and Rob climbed into their bed, and shut the curtains; and Mrs. March and Nelly climbed into theirs, and shut their curtains, and began to undress. Presently, Mr. March called across in a whisper:--
"Wife, what shall I do with Rob"s clothes?"
Mrs. March was at that moment trying to find some place to put Nelly"s and hers.
"I"m sure I don"t know," she replied. "There isn"t a sign of a hook here to hang any thing on."
"Nor here," replied Mr. March: "I"ll leave them all in a pile on the foot of the bed."
"That"ll do very well for a man"s clothes," thought Mrs. March; "but I must hang up our gowns and skirts." At last, she had a bright thought. She stood up on the edge of the bed, and hooked the skirts over the rod the curtains were swung from. It was all she could do to reach it; and, just as she was hooking the last skirt on, the car gave a lurch, and out she fell, out into the aisle, and across it, through the curtains of Mr. March"s berth, right on to his bed.
"Goodness alive, Sarah! is this you?" he exclaimed, jumping up, frightened. He was just falling asleep.
"Well, I believe so," she said: "I"m not sure."
"Oh, mamma, did it hurt you?" called Nelly, anxiously.
"No, no, dear," replied her mother. "I"m coming right back." But, before she went, she whispered in her husband"s ear:--
"Robert March, I think a sleeping-car is the most detestable place I ever got into in my life. Suppose I"d tumbled into some stranger"s berth, as I did into yours just now."
Mr. March only laughed, and Mrs. March heard him laughing to himself after she had gone back, and it did not make her feel any pleasanter to hear this. At last she and Nelly were both undressed and in bed.
Their clothes and dressing-cases and travelling-bags were piled up on their feet.
"You mustn"t kick, Nelly," said Mrs. March. "If you do, you"ll upset all the things out on the floor."
"I"m afraid I always kick, mamma," replied honest Nelly. "I won"t while I"m awake; but when I"m asleep I don"t know."
Nelly was fast asleep in two minutes; but Mrs. March could not sleep. The air in the car was so close and hot it made her head ache. She had pinned her curtains tight together before she lay down, so that n.o.body could look in on her as she had on the poor lady with five children. Now she sat up in bed and unpinned them, and looked out into the aisle. It was dark: the car was dashing along at a tremendous rate; the air was most disagreeable, and there were at least six people snoring different snores.
"I can"t stand this. I must open the window at the foot of the berth," said Mrs. March. So she crept down and tried to open it. She had not observed in the daytime how the windows were fastened: she fumbled about in the dark till she found the fastening; she could not move it; she took the skin off her knuckles; she wrenched her shoulder; all this time sitting cross-legged on the bed. At last she gave a shove with all her strength, and the window flew up: in one second, an icy blast blew in full of smoke and cinders. "This won"t do, either," said Mrs. March; and she tried to get the window down.
This took longer than to get it up; finally, in despair, she propped it open about two inches with one of her boots; then she sank back exhausted, and came down hard on her watch and broke the crystal: then she had a difficult time picking up all the little bits of gla.s.s in the dark, and then, after she had picked them up, she did not know what to do with them. There was some stiff paper in her travelling-bag, if she could only get at it; at last she found it, but, in drawing it out, she knocked the cork out of the hartshorn bottle, and over went the bottle in the bag, all the hartshorn poured out, and such a strong smell of hartshorn filled the berth it waked Nelly up.
"Oh, mamma! what is it? and what smells so?" she said, sleepily.
"Only hartshorn, dear," said her mother, in a despairing tone. "I"ve upset it all over every thing. Go to sleep, dear: it won"t smell so very long."
Nelly dozed off again, saying: "I"m going to get up just as soon as it"s light. I hate this bed: don"t you, mamma?"
"Yes, Nell, I do," said Mrs. March; "I would rather have sat up all night: but I am so tired and sleepy now I shall go to sleep, I think."
When Nelly waked, it was just beginning to be light. Her mother was sound asleep. Nelly leaned over her, and looked out into the aisle.
n.o.body was up except Ben, who was blacking boots at the end of the aisle.
"I"ll get up as still as I can, and get all dressed before mamma wakes up," thought Nelly. "Poor mamma! What a time she had last night!"
At that moment, as Nelly turned her head, she saw a sight which so frightened her that, in spite of herself, she screamed. "What is it, Nell?" asked her mother, waking instantly. Nelly could not speak, but pointed to the wall at the back of their berth. Mrs. March sat upright in bed, and gazed with astonishment and alarm almost as great as Nelly"s. What could it mean? There, in the smooth panel of black walnut, which was almost as shining as a looking-gla.s.s, was the reflection of a man"s face. It was the face of the man who had been eating the cheese and brown bread and onions. He had a red handkerchief tied about his head for a nightcap; and he was sound asleep, with his mouth wide open. While Mrs. March and Nelly sat gazing breathlessly at this unaccountable sight, the head slowly turned on the pillow, and a hand came up and rubbed one eye. Nelly nearly screamed again. Her mother put her hand quickly over her mouth.
"Hush, Nell!" she said; "do not be frightened. I see how it is."
The part.i.tions which separated the sleeping-berths one from the other did not come up close to the wall of the car. There was room to put your hand through between. The black walnut lining of the car was so polished that it reflected like a looking-gla.s.s; so each person could see, in the back of his berth, the face of the person who was lying in the berth next before his.
"Goodness!" exclaimed Mrs. March; "if we can see into that berth, they can see into this one;" and she seized one of the pillows, and set it up against the crack. Then she looked down, and saw a similar opening at the foot of the berth. This one she stopped up with another pillow.
"There, Nell," she said, "now we can dress without being overlooked."
Nelly did not quite understand how these shining black walnut panels could have acted like looking-gla.s.ses, and she was a little afraid still that the queer, s.h.a.ggy face with the red silk nightcap would glare out at her again; but she hurried on her clothes, and in a few minutes was ready to go to the little wash-room which was provided for ladies at the end of the car.
"We are so early," said Mrs. March, "that I think we will be the first ones there."
Ah, how mistaken she was! When they reached the little room, there stood two women waiting for their turn at the wash-stand; a third was washing her face. As Mrs. March and Nelly appeared, one of those who were waiting called out:--
"Come in. Don"t go away. If you do, you"ll lose your turn: there"ll be lots more here directly."
"Thank you," said Mrs. March: "my daughter and I will wait there, just outside the door. We will not intrude upon you."
At this, all three of the women laughed, and one said:
"H"m! there ain"t much question of intrudin" in these sleepin"-cars.
It"s just a kind o" big bedroom, that"s all."
Mrs. March smiled, and said: "Yes, I think so;" and the women went on talking. They were relating their experiences in the night. One of them said:--
"Well, I got along very well till somebody opened a window, and then I thought I should ha" froze to death; but my husband he called the conductor up, and they shut all the ventilators up; but I just shivered all night. Real good soap this is: ain"t it?"
Mrs. March looked warningly at Nelly, who was just about to speak.
"Keep quiet, Nell," she said. But Nelly whispered: "Do you suppose that was our window, mamma?"
"I dare say," answered Mrs. March, in a still lower whisper: "keep still, Nell."
"Well, I wa"n"t too cold," said the woman at the washbowl. She had her false teeth in her hand, and was washing them under the little slow stream running from the faucet: so she could not speak very distinctly. "Well, I wa"n"t too cold," she said, "but I"ll tell you what did happen to me. In the middle o" the night I felt somethin"
against my head, right on the very top on"t; and what do you think it was? "Twas the feet of the man in the next section to our"n.