Chapter XX: Partings

COMMENCEMENT Day was over and it had passed much as Janet had declared that it would when she arranged her bulletin for the benefit of Mr. Evans some months before. During the week there was a constant influx of visiting parents, friends, and relatives.

Stuart and a company of his friends were on hand to send flowers and to occupy every moment not necessarily taken up in exercises and ceremonies. Departing students came and went from the various dormitories and lodgings, making farewell calls. Groups gathered about the grounds. Few students were seen walking alone for almost every one had some friend among her classmates from whom it would be hard to part, and the melancholy countenances were beginning to outnumber the merry ones.

As Janet walked arm in arm with Teddy across the campus after the alumnae dinner, she saw Mr. Evans waiting at the gate just ahead.

"Bless me!" she ejaculated.

"What is the matter?" asked Teddy.

"Nothing except that I promised Mr. Evans long ago that I would try to afford him an opportunity to-day to receive my congratulations. I suppose I must walk a little way with him," she said apologetically. "Don't wait for me, Ted. I'll be back before long," and she turned off leaving Teddy to join Cordelia and Lee who were not far behind.

An hour later she came into the twilight quiet of the room where Teddy sat with her elbows on the window-sill gazing out into the dusky street. There were boxes and trunks standing about ready to be sent off in the morning, and overhead was a tramping back and forth. Lee, who had put off her packing till the last minute, was now giving all her attention to getting her trunks and boxes ready. Peals of laughter now and then floated in through the open window, and up the street came an excited chatter from groups of girls and young men passing by.

Janet seated herself by Teddy's side. "All by her loney, is she? Where is everybody, Ted?"

"Papa and mamma have gone to dine with the Whitelys'."

"Why didn't you go?"

"I didn't want to."

"It is too bad that we must be deprived of the boys' company this evening. Stuart said they must take the seven-thirty if they would reach the university in time for some sort of lark they were going to have. I wonder if we will be as enthusiastic alumnae as they are. The parents wanted to take in all the fun going, so they decided to go on with the laddies and leave me to follow. They actually believed I would be ready to go with them. Mamma understood, but I had hard work making father and Stuart see that I simply could not leave till to-morrow. Come, Ted, let's go up and see the girls. We know Lee is packing, but we also know that Lee would rather have the interruption than not, and maybe we can help her. If we can't be of any use, it will be fun to watch her, and we'll keep Cordelia from badgering her. I am glad there is nothing compelling this evening, and that we are left to follow the dictates of our own sweet wills. The alumnae dinner was quite as much as we could stand after the rest of the excitement."

Bright lights were burning in the rooms overhead which were strewn from end to end with Lee's possessions. "If you can find an inch not already occupied, you may have it," said Cordelia looking around at them from behind a pile of boxes.

"How will I ever get through?" said Lee pausing in her frantic rush. "I have always made it my rule never to do to-day what I can put off till to-morrow, but there are moments when I wish I were not so virtuous about it. My, but I am warm."

"We will all pitch in and help," said Janet, "and then we'll have time to cool off before bedtime."

"I am too dead tired to move," said Cordelia. "I was ambitious enough to get up early and finish my packing this morning by crack o' day. I knew if I didn't do that, I should find half of Lee's belongings in my trunks when I got home and half of mine would be in hers. I simply had to do it in self-defense, but I feel as if I had not been in bed for a week."

"And we have to start so early," complained Lee. "They will come for the trunks at six o'clock."

"All the more reason that we should get things straightened out so you won't have to be up half the night. Goodness, if my impedimenta cluttered up Teddy's room in this way, I'd hear from her."

"I can't help it," said Lee from the depths of a clothes-press. "I thought I had so little that it wouldn't take me any time to pack but I have been dragging out stuff for the last hour and there is no end to it. Where did I get it all? What do I want with it? How am I going to dispose of it? I feel as if I had nightmare."

"Lee's bump of order ought to have developed in all these years she has been pounding away at mathematics," said Teddy, "but I don't believe the bump is one bit bigger. Let me feel, Lee," and she began to tousle Lee's hair, already in a disheveled condition from frequent divings into closets and trunks.

"Don't get into a scrap, girls," said Cordelia; "it's too warm. There you go, Lee. I knew that tower of boxes would fall before you got them stowed away."

"I'll pick them up," said Teddy, pouncing upon scattered sewing materials, stocks, and ribbons. "Come, Janet, you and I will take one trunk and pack it decently so that when Lee gets home she will at least have part of her wardrobe in presentable condition. You fold and I'll pack."

"Angels of light!" exclaimed Lee gratefully. "You have saved my life."

All three worked away faithfully till finally the room began to assume a more orderly appearance, and Cordelia breathed a sigh of relief. "Oh, you blessed friends in need," she exclaimed, "how I shall miss you. It is a mournful time if one dwells upon it. Even Charity Shepherd broke down this afternoon and as for Pen Robbins, she fairly swam away in her own tears. What shall you do when you get home, Ted?"

"Oh, I don't know. I shall probably be very industrious for a time, and will join clubs of an inspiring nature, and will be so didactic and superior for a year that all my friends will begin to hate me, then I'll gradually ease down till I get like ordinary mortals and it will be possible to live with me. What shall you do, Cordelia?"

"Oh, I suppose I shall teach. Lee and I have a great scheme of getting positions together, but probably she will be in Maine and I will go to Florida; it generally works that way."

"Any one who has received a fellowship as you have done, Cordelia, ought certainly to be able to find a good position nearer home, when she is ready to take it."

"Maybe. I am not planning very far ahead. What do you mean to do, Janet?"

A happy, half dreamy look came into Janet's eyes. "I am not looking ahead very far, either," she replied. "Sufficient unto the day is the joy thereof. I am going to have home and mother first of all, and I want to gloat over them. I want to soak myself in the bliss of being at home for the next month and after that comes Polly and Ted and the Lilly of the field."

"You're not going to be bothered with that Starr child, are you?" asked Lee pushing back her hair from a perspiring face. "I think it is too funny how Janet has always had a silly little freshman tagging after her ever since she became a soph."

"You can't call Polly silly," said Janet on the defensive, "and of course I shall invite Lillie to visit me when she was good enough to have me last Easter. Surely you haven't forgotten that."

Lee clashed a tray into a big trunk and sat down with a sigh of relief. "Of course I remember it," she said reproachfully, "and I think it is high time you told us about that, you provoking secretive creature."

"It is my last chance, isn't it?" said Janet putting her feet up comfortably on a low box. "Well, girls, I will satisfy your curiosity since it is positively our last evening together. The Starrs have the loveliest home imaginable; beautiful grounds and a most artistic interior. Mr. Starr is a man of fine parts, as they used to say, and Mrs. Starr is one of the most cultivated women I have met for some time. They were simply adorable and I was fêted and entertained without stint. I met several celebrities at their house. I was invited to dine with the governor and altogether I had a perfectly stunning time."

She paused and in a half embarrassed way said: "I don't suppose any of you ever knew that Mark, the perfect man, is a cousin of the Starrs and that he was their guest at the same time that I was."

"Janet Ferguson!" Lee flung down the box she was tying up. "The idea of your never telling us that before. I think that was horridly mean of you."

"Why?" asked Janet. "Are you specially interested in the information?"

"No,—yes, I mean," Lee replied. "I'd have been much nicer to him if I had known."

Janet laughed. "You little wretch. I believe you would, and yet you have always half despised Lillie."

"I haven't really," Lee told her, "but I liked to tease you because you had always been so sly and mum about that visit to her. I took the pains to inquire about her and knew she belonged to the four hundred."

"Then you deserve that I should tell you nothing. I suppose," Janet went on with a show of indifference, "that you all know that Mr. Evans is full professor, or will be next year."

"I heard it rumored, but I did not know that it was an absolute fact," said Cordelia. "I am glad they chose him, for I think he deserves it. How did you hear, Janet?"

"He told me himself this evening."

"Why, of course; you know him quite well after spending ten days in the same house with him. You certainly can't be charged with being expansive, Janet, and yet you aren't usually reticent. I should never have called you an uncommunicative person."

Janet only smiled in reply and Lee announced that as she had no more receptacles for her belongings, that what she couldn't pack, she would have to give away.

"I'll bestow them all upon the washerwoman," she said with a comprehensive sweep of the hand which included the scattered articles remaining upon bed, chairs and floor. "Let's go into the other room; it's pretty well stripped, but it is cooler than in here."

"It is still cooler in our rooms," said Janet, "for we haven't had any lights. You two had better come down there and cool off."

"I couldn't," said Lee. "Every bone in my body aches. I might get there by sliding down the balusters, but I never could get back again. No, thank you, Janet; I'll stand by the old ship till I have to be taken off by a life-line."

Teddy and Janet lingered by the door with many words of regretful parting, and then went down to their own rooms.

"Well, Ted, it's all over; we are no longer undergraduates," said Janet, striking a match and lighting the gas.

"And this is the last evening you and I will ever be here together," said Teddy, with a catch in her voice.

Janet turned and looked at her.

The tears were running down Teddy's cheeks. "Why, Ted, why, Ted," she said commiseratingly.

"Oh, I know it doesn't mean so much to you," said Teddy, reckless of disclosing her real feelings. "You never cared very much. You always loved Polly more, and even Lillie, but I loved you best, Janet. I always did. Nobody else ever came first, and now we are going to part and you will drift away from me altogether. We shall never be classmates and roommates as we have been in this old place; never again."

"Why, Ted, why, Ted," Janet spoke in an expostulatory voice, for Teddy was now sobbing broken-heartedly.

"It is all true," said Teddy. "You never loved me half as much as I have loved you."

Janet knelt down by the side of the bowed figure and put her arms around the weeping girl. "You dear Teddy," she said, "just because I am so used to you and haven't been demonstrative, do you think I don't care? Do you think that any one will ever quite take your place? Teddy, why you are a part of me, almost. I shouldn't think of making much fuss over my own right hand for example. Have you felt that way all along? Have you been hurt and indignant when I have made love to Polly? Have you, Ted? Have I hurt you?"

"Sometimes," acknowledged Teddy with tears in her voice.

"You dear old goose, don't you ever feel so again. Don't cry, Ted, you blessed old stand-by. I shall have to do without Polly and I shall be able to very well, and as for Lillie I don't care a picayune about that baby's blandishments, but Ted, I could never get along without you. Don't you believe me?" She drew Teddy closer to her and snuggled her face down against the wet cheek. "Please don't cry, Ted," she urged.

"I won't if I can help it," said Teddy sitting up and drying her eyes, "but now I have started, I don't seem to be able to stop. I know I am silly, Janet. I don't usually make such a show of myself, do I? But," the tears flowed again, "it's so hard to part from you," she sobbed.

"But you believe that I love you, and that you must always come first among all my girl friends, you do believe it?"

"Yes, I do now."

"And you are satisfied?"

"Yes, oh, yes. Kiss me, Janet; you never do, you know."

Janet put her arms around her and kissed the trembling lips again and again, the tears standing in her own eyes. "We are going to see each other again in a month, remember," she said, "and Ted, let me tell you something; I'd rather have you for my sister than any girl under the sun. I think—I hope some day you will be. Do you hope so, too, Ted?"

Teddy did not answer, but buried her face on Janet's shoulder. "Stuart never liked a girl so well as he does you," Janet went on, "and when he has finished his medical course, why then, Ted—"

"Don't say any more," pleaded Teddy in muffled tones, "or I shall cry again."

"There's something else I want to tell you," Janet continued. "Not another soul knows it. Ted, I don't think this is the last time we shall be together in this old town, for Ted—"

Teddy lifted up her head. "Janet, I believe I can guess; it is Mark, the perfect man."

Janet nodded, then said hastily: "Oh, not yet. Some day, two or three years from now, maybe. He—he told me this evening. I didn't suppose," she continued half to herself, "that was what he meant by its being encouraging."

"What encouraging?"

"I told him once that if I ever had to choose another place of residence than my own home I'd prefer this to any. Wasn't I a goose to tell him that? But I never dreamed then."

"Dreamed what?" Teddy was never very subtle.

"That he—that he would say what he did this evening. I never began to suspect till last Easter when we were both at the Starrs'."

"You never told me that he was there," said Teddy reproachfully. "You might have trusted me, Janet."

"I know I might, but I couldn't. I was half scared and half happy and I wasn't sure and I remembered 'the hero,' and so I made Lillie promise that she wouldn't say anything about it, because she was beginning to tease me and I told her it might be the means of breaking up my friendship with Mark—the perfect man, I mean. I was just in that state of mind when a little too much one way or the other would have made all the difference in the world, so I scared her into keeping quiet about it, and I wouldn't let him see me very often for the same reason. I've told you first of all, Ted, and that is why I can't cry to-night; I am too happy."

By common consent, they moved toward the dimness of the outer room, and sat together by the window, arms on sill and heads touching. The twinkling lights of Hopper Hall on the other side of the college campus began to disappear one by one. The tramping up-stairs had ceased.

From the gardens across the way came a night breeze rose-sweet. The honeysuckle climbing over the porch below the window, sent up a waft of perfume now and then from its few opened buds. A rapid footstep echoed along the pavement once in a while. Then came silence and the coolness of the night's late hours. The two girls sat without speaking for a long time, then Janet arose and laid a caressing hand on Teddy's head.

"It's all over for Cordelia, and Lee and the others, but for me it has just commenced. There will be much more of it in the years ahead of us, Teddy, for where I go you will have to come."

Presently their lights, too, were out, and only the shining stars looked down upon the sleeping town.