by Ruth Glover
Tierney, Anne, and Pearly made their lone way from the train—having left the Toronto office and Ishbel Mountjoy far behind—under the impression that a representative would be awaiting them.
Standing on the station platform, with busy life and busy people swirling around and past them, Pearly, Anne, and Tierney came to the chilling realization that, in fact, no one seemed to be looking for them.
After ten minutes or so of looking this way and that, hoping to catch the eye of someone on the search for someone else, they looked at each other with wide, questioning eyes. Had they misunderstood?
“Now what?” Anne asked uncertainly.
“We’ll have to ask around,” Tierney said with more calmness than she felt. “Stay here,” she ordered, but when she looked back it was to find Pearly and Anne on her heels, as close as possible, and all three girls made their way through the crowd, which was, it seemed, thinning out.
Approaching the ticket window, Tierney asked, bravely, “Do you know the location of the British Women’s Emigration Society?”
“Sure don’t,” a thin faced, thick-mustached individual said cheerfully.
Perhaps the girls’ faces reflected their worry, for the man said, “Wait a minute, and I’ll ask around.”
Coming back to his window, he said, “Nobody thinks there’s such a Society here, with an office, that is. Man back there says he’s acquainted with its work, and young ladies pass through here all the time. I suggest you go to the nearest hostel and wait. You may be sure we’ll send on anyone coming here to meet you.”
The girls were hesitant, either to respond or to move.
“Tell you what,” the man said kindly, “I’ll get a horse cab to take you—it isn’t far, but you might miss it, walking. And then, there’s your baggage. So, see, you’ll get to the hostel and be fine there. Man back there,” and the speaker jerked his thumb toward the back of the station, “says it happens all the time. Says everybody but me knows about the domestics coming here regularly. Says they’re going to change the entire northwest. Now that I’ll believe when I see it.”
The man guffawed and continued, “I’m a newcomer myself; that’s why I didn’t know, you see. But I ain’t seen anything changing around here so far, except to get busier and wilder. Thought I’d make a change in it myself when I arrived; never thought I’d end up working in a train station. But soon’s I get my feet under me—”
His audience’s faces beginning to look strained, the man checked himself, called a youth, explained the need for a cab, and bade the reluctantly departing girls good-bye.
“You’ll have to share a room,” the clerk said shortly thereafter, when the girls had reached the hostel, as he studied the register in front of him. “And a bed.”
“Do you ever have other girls from the British Women’s Emigration Society?” Tierney, as spokeswoman for the trio, asked. “I mean, is there a chance someone will think to look here for us?”
“Oh yes. Yes, we have the Society’s girls come here looking for someone, and yes, someone comes looking for them. Usually it’s the family they’re to work for. I suppose anyone driving in this far, looking for a domestic, wouldn’t go back without finding her; it would be a trip—probably a long one—for nothing. If I were you I’d just sit tight and see what happens.”
“Have you had,” Anne asked in a trembling voice, “girls waitin’ and no one comes for them?”
“Well, yes, I guess that’s happened, too,” the clerk said, while the girls drew even closer together in their concern. “But to my knowledge,” he added kindly, “it hasn’t been a problem. It has always worked out, I’m sure. You just arrived, didn’t you? Perhaps you need to give it a little time—”
“Well,” Tierney, the brave one, asked, “what did they do in sich a circumstance, the lassies left waitin’?”
“They went out and found work, I suppose. There’s plenty of work, never fear. Some stay here at the hostel even when they’re working. You can do that, you know. That is,” he quickly reminded them, “if you have money. Fact is, we have such a young lady here now; she works as maid at a hotel, I believe. Maybe you’ll run across her and she can give you the particulars.”
Somewhat reassured, Tierney signed the register, took the key, and turned toward the stairs, the girls once again on her heels.
The room was small but clean. There was one narrow bed, at which the girls looked with disfavor. The cots in Binkiebrae had been narrower, but they had been designed for one, not more. As for Pearly, she was accustomed to tumbling five or six in a bed.
“We’ll have to take turns sleepin’,” Pearly offered, though after five nights sleeping on hard train seats, just who would go first and who must wait might be a problem. “I don’t think this bed was meant for more than two people.”
“We’ll manage,” Tierney assured her, feeling weary enough to sleep the night through though crammed together like sausages in a frying pan. “Now, I’m goin’ to take off my shoes, put my feet up, and rest. Maybe later we can find this lass the clerk mentioned and talk wi’ her.”
“Me, too,” Anne sighed, suiting action to words and unlacing her boots.
Off came the shoes and hats, laid aside were the capes and shawls. Each girl splashed cold water onto her face, washed her hands, grimaced at the weary, rather disorderly person in the mirror over the washstand, and turned toward the bed.
Like spoons in a drawer they lay, too weary to care. Sleep was immediate as the sounds of frontier commerce faded from their ears and the day’s bright afternoon light faded from their eyes.
It was a pounding on the door that jolted them, all three, awake, and brought them to a sitting position. It took each girl a few moments to recollect where she was, and why. But the male voice calling through the door’s thin boards finished the waking process.
“Miss Fraser! Miss Anne Fraser! Is there an Anne Fraser in there?”
Anne’s hand went to her mouth; above it her eyes were wide with terror. A male voice, in a strange place, calling her name with authority—for a moment it seemed that Anne must faint.
“Anne Fraser!”
The girls looked at each other, faces flushed with sleep, hair tumbled, ears pummeled with the unexpected, insistent pounding on the door, eyes coming into focus in the small, airless room, the unfamiliar room.
“Anne Fraser! Anne Fraser!”
Tierney took one look at Anne’s horrified face, from which the color was quickly receding, and swung her feet over the edge of the bed.
“Just a moment,” she called out.
Fumbling among the puddle of shoes on the floor at the bedside, Tierney managed to sort out her own and pull them on. Laces hanging, she stood to her feet, trying to bring the whole situation into perspective—sleeping in a strange room . . . someone knocking on the door . . . Pearly looking befuddled with sleep . . . Anne with her hand over her mouth, her beautiful eyes filled with dreadful fear . . . someone demanding entrance.
With a quick instinctive move she brushed her hair back, making a fruitless attempt to tuck it into its accustomed knot on the nape of her neck, straightened her rumpled clothes, left the shoelaces dangling, and stepped to the door vibrating with another barrage.
“Yes? Who is it?” she asked, repeating it when her voice cracked, still heavy with sleep. “Who is it?”
“I’ve come for Anne Fraser. Is she in there? I understand she is. Open the door.”
In spite of Anne’s violently shaking head, Tierney unlocked the door and opened it.
Outlined in the doorway stood one of the most harmless appearing males Tierney had ever seen. Not much taller than she, but twice as wide, he stood with fist upraised, ready to knock again, if necessary, causing Tierney to flinch at first sight. His other hand held his cap, snatched from his head the moment his eyes fell on Tierney. Soft locks of colorless hair fell over his forehead. The face below, as round as a cookie and as innocuous, featured eyes like raisins above cheeks plump and pink under fair brows an
d lashes. His little mouth, set for another squall, was round and open, perhaps in astonishment.
“Anne Fraser?” he managed, strangely abashed for one who had hollered so manfully but a second ago.
“Na na. And who might ye be, pray tell?”
“Frankie . . . Frank Schmidt. My grandfather is Franz Schmidt; he and my grandmother, Augusta, have a paper here saying a Miss Anne Fraser has been hired to work for them.”
The voice of the young man—for such he appeared to be—was soft enough now that the pounding and calling were over. He struggled to work his hand into his coat pocket—a coat that fit too snugly on his chunky frame—and withdrew a creased paper that he waved with a hopeful expression before Tierney.
Tierney hesitated . . . what should she do? A quick glance back showed Pearly and Anne still perched on the bed, faces turned toward the couple at the door, hair askew, clothes askew, expressions not far different—particularly Anne’s. Though she had removed her hand from before her mouth, and the dismay was fading from her eyes, Anne was shaking her head rather violently from side to side and her eyebrows were drawn together darkly in an expression of fierce disapproval.
“I tell ye what, Mr. Schmidt; you go doonstairs and wait, and we’ll be on doon jist as soon as we make ourselves presentable.”
The smile on Frank Schmidt’s face was cherubic. “Yah,” he said, “I’ll do that. Good day to you, ma’am.” There was a hint of an accent in his voice, as though he were not too far removed from the old country.
Tierney closed the door, turned and faced the girls, and knew immediately she’d have to go to work on Anne or have her eventually left high and dry and alone here in Saskatoon when she and Pearly had dispersed to their respective places of employment.
“What a nice young man,” she said cheerfully. “Did you see him?”
“Looked like a pudding to me,” Anne said unkindly. “All suety like.”
“Not at all. Verra polite and well-spoken. An’ anyway, suety puddings are perfectly harmless.”
“Ha! Who is he, anyway? Nae mention was made o’ any grandson; I clearly specified no men!” Anne sounded as if the whole thing was an underhanded plot against her personally.
“Annie, Annie—doesn’t it stand t’ reason there’d be relatives? Once one member o’ the family emigrates, others soon follow. And if the Schmidts are old, they’d need someone, o’ course, to come to get ye. And who better than a young, strong grandson. Be sensible, lass!”
“I’m not goin’ off into the wilderness with . . . with any strange man, I can tell ye that!” Anne declared, rising, nevertheless, from the bed and beginning the search under the side of the bed for her boots.
Pearly was at the washstand, dashing water onto her sleep-puffed face; there was no way she was going to be left behind in the room when there was drama going on below. Besides, they were in this together. Sink or swim, they’d do it together, if it were at all possible.
In spite of her determination to have nothing to do with this Schmidt person, as she kept muttering, Anne was attempting to bring order out of the chaos of her hair.
“My clothes,” she wailed, “look like they’ve been slept in.”
“As indeed they have,” Tierney said firmly, “an’ he’ll understand that. He’s not a picture of high fashion, himself. Looks like a farmer in his Sunday-go-to meetin’ clothes. And looks like they might hae been slep’ in, too.”
With Anne drawing back, still muttering, lagging behind the others, the three made their way to the small room that was waiting room and parlor. Frank Schmidt was there; he surged to his feet, his small eyes twinkling above his plump cheeks.
“Good day, young ladies,” he started politely, as though meeting them for the first time and wanting to do it properly. “My name is Frank Schmidt.”
“Aye,” Tierney said with a small sigh, “so it is. An’ I’m Tierney Caulder, an’ this is Miss Pearly Chapel, an’ this,” Tierney pulled Anne forward, “is Miss Anne Fraser.”
Pearly and Anne nodded stiffly, Anne from her safe position behind Tierney.
“I been waiting at the station,” Frank Schmidt said, “all day yesterday, and no one came. Nobody can tell for sure, it seems, chust when trains pull in. Yours must have been sidetracked somewhere, yah?”
“Yah, that is,” Tierney corrected herself, “aye, we had several layovers, and so on. We never really knew why we were delayed. But,” she said firmly, “we’re here now, and Miss Fraser has a contract with—your grandparents, is it? Franz—”
“Yah,” the burly youth confirmed. “My grandparents, Franz and Augusta . . . Gussie. They couldn’t come, of course, the age they are, so here I am.” His broad face beamed. “It’s a full day’s trip to Hanover. Wouldn’t be much sense in startin’ now; it’s too late in the day. I been bunkin’ in my wagon and will do so again tonight. I see you got a room and will be all right tonight. Yah?” Frank looked at the girls hopefully.
“Aye, we’ll be a’ reet for tonight,” Tierney agreed, wishing Anne would speak up and take charge of her own arrangements. But Anne was stubbornly silent. She was, in fact, looking at the young man with hostile eyes. One bad experience, and Anne was ready to condemn all males, it seemed.
“Well then,” Frank continued, “I’ll be here about six in the morning—that too early?”
Now he looked directly at Anne for the first time. Startled, no doubt at her fresh, young beauty, the young man blushed and, for the moment, lost his self-assurance. Having proceeded thus far with a certain poise, in charge of the situation, he lost his equilibrium almost completely.
With the small eyes fixed wide and the color high in his round cheeks, he stuttered, “Six o’clock—will that be good, Miss . . . ah, Miss Anne?”
“I’m not a bit sure—” Anne began coldly.
“That’ll be fine, Mr. Schmidt,” Tierney said crisply, giving Anne a pained glance.
Frank Schmidt couldn’t be blamed for looking confused. He stood, irresolute for a moment, then, twisting his cap, turned to leave.
“I’ll be here,” he said again, “at six. If you’ll be ready, please—” He cast a rather desperate look at Anne and made his departure.
He was no sooner out the door than Anne said, “I’m not goin.’”
“Of course ye are,” Tierney said patiently.
“Not a bit o’ it. Nae indeed,” Anne said, sitting down on a horsehair sofa and looking mutinous. “Wi’ that suety fellow? Never in a’ the world.”
“What’s wrong with him?” Pearly asked curiously. “I thought he were a sort o’ pleasant chap, meself.”
“Well, you go then,” Anne said crossly, then, seeing the stricken look on Pearly’s face, added quickly, “I’m sorry, Pearly. I’m jist upset. I said no men, remember?”
“He’s not much more’n a boy hisself,” Pearly said and withdrew from the field of battle.
“Now listen here, Anne,” Tierney said, “you’ve got to go. You’re bound, more or less, to go.”
“I dinna have to. I dinna want to.”
“But Annie, ye do have to. Ye signed a contract, remember. Your word—”
“No matter,” Anne said stiffly. “They broke the agreement—I said no men!”
“You dinna askit him—does he live wi’ his grandparents? P’raps he doesn’t.”
Anne muttered, and admitted, “I ne’er thought o’ it. But I dinna want to ride oot there wi’ him.”
“Every man isn’t tarred with the same brush, ye know. Just because Lucian MacDermott—”
“Dinna speak his dirty name!”
“But it’s true. Ye cannot blame Frank Schmidt for Lucian’s sins.”
“Are you sayin’ you’ll put me in that wagon and send me off alone wi’ that strange man?”
“Annie,” Tierney explained, still patient, “Pearly and I will be doin’ the same thing, perhaps even yet today.”
“You have to have faith,” Pearly piped up, having been quiet long enough. “We prayed about i
t, you know.”
“You prayed about it, you silly girl,” Anne said with some heat.
Once again Pearly looked hurt.
“There’s nae need to strike oot at Pearly,” Tierney said quenchingly. “Get hold o’ yersel’, lassie.” It was as near disagreement as they had come to on the entire trip. Tired, tense, weary, they were near to straining the dear, treasured bonds of friendship.
Anne burst into noisy tears. “Almost . . . almost I wish I were back in Binkiebrae!”
Tierney had little sympathy for her. “Aye,” she said grimly, “and that’s whaur Lucian is. Now listen, Annie. Try and remember what an adventure this was . . . an’ is. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, reet? Coom now, let’s go up and get yer things ready and clean up a bit; then we’ll go oot and hae a bit of supper, and you’ll feel better aboot it all . . . we’ll all feel better.”
Anne was persuaded to dry her tears and go back to the stuffy little room. The girls threw open the window, opened their bags, withdrew fresh clothes and, after a wash, donned them, whether wrinkled or not, and felt better for the doing.
Supper, after conferring with the young man at the desk, was taken at a hotel not far away. Counting out their few coins carefully the girls ordered discreetly. Their general mood improved along with the plentiful, warm food. Good humor reasserted itself, and even Anne managed a few smiles.
“Mr. Frank Schmidt,” Tierney pointed out, “is as much like Lucian MacDermott as a spavined nag is like a blooded stallion—with Lucian bein’ the spavined nag, o’ course.”
With this the laughter erupted until tears—of relief as much as hilarity—spilled over. It had been a long trip thus far, with tensions unlike anything they had experienced previously, and the girls little knew or understood the pressures they were under, and had been for weeks. Like a safety valve the laughter and tears flowed until, gasping and wiping their eyes and aware of curious glances from other diners, they managed to bring themselves and their emotions under control. It was a healing moment.
