CHAPTER XVIII

“WITH A SMILE ON HER LIPS AND A TEAR IN HER EYE”

The household was early astir on the following morning, although Miss Lochinvar was not to go into the West until early in the afternoon--not to start, that is.

But it was a pity to waste time sleeping, when, as Gladys pathetically said, Jan would have time enough to sleep on the cars when she was all alone.

The cook--who was usually as grumpy as her profession seems liable to make people--outdid herself in her efforts to get up a luncheon-box for Miss Jan which should lighten her journey and weighten--now isn’t it a shame there is not such a fine verb as that?--her own slender frame. Susan was clipping the stems of the flowers she had gone out early to buy and putting them between damp cotton on the ice in the butler’s pantry. There seemed to be no one, from the top to the bottom of the big house, which had struck Jan on her entrance to it as so cold and empty, who was not eager to show regret at losing, and desire to serve Miss Lochinvar.

Gwen and Gladys had begged Jan to bring her things into Gwen’s room, and let them all dress together, not to lose one moment of the precious few left them. And it was with no small difficulty that Jan managed her toilet, for one cousin insisted on buttoning her shoes, while the other brushed her hair; Gwen tied her ribbon, while Gladys fastened down her collar in the back, and she was so inundated with tender services, interspersed with sighs and caresses that she--not being accustomed to a maid--began to wonder if she should be ready, not merely for breakfast, but for the train at somewhere about two in the afternoon.

Viva, the unobtrusive, insisted on her right, as the elder, to take the place beside Jan at breakfast for which Jerry was clamoring, and Jack made himself detestable to both his small sisters by appropriating it for himself while they were disputing.

The three girls came down like a group of the graces, Jan in the middle, supported by tall Gwen on one side and Gladys on the other, each with an arm around Miss Lochinvar, who encircled them with hers.

Sydney, who did not approve of sentimental affection, though he was quite as sorry to part with Jan as his sisters could be, laughed as they entered. “Hang on to one another, girls!” he said. “If you hug Jan tight enough maybe the train won’t start till three.”

No one had much appetite that morning--no one but Mr. and Mrs. Graham, who ate their breakfast with what Viva found almost heartless calmness. She was not able to conceive of a state of mind in which departures mean the possibility of return, nor had she journeyed far enough into life to learn that “journeys end,” not only “in lovers’ meeting,” but in all kinds of pleasant meetings. Jan’s uncle and aunt were confident that she would return to them soon, but to the younger folk the parting seemed eternal, the distance between New York and Crescendo an impassable gulf, and even the recollection of what and whom awaited her at the end of her travels could not sustain Jan’s spirits under the present gloom.

“I’ll be down to the station, Miss Lochinvar, and start you properly with the conductor of the train and of the sleeping-car, and with the porter,” said Jan’s uncle, putting out his hand for a brief farewell. “I’ve got you a whole section, so you won’t have any one dropping down on you to-night through the ceiling of your berth, and there’ll be no one sitting opposite to you through the day. Don’t forget that both seats are yours, and don’t let any one bother you, by the way. However, I’ll fix that with the proper authorities.--Get down to the train a little early, Tina, and see that Jan’s trunks are checked, if I’m a trifle late--it’s a bad hour to leave Exchange, just before closing, but I’ll be there. Don’t look so melancholy, chicks; we couldn’t have the fun of getting Jan back, if we never let her go.” And Mr. Graham was off, wondering if he had ever taken small events so ponderously.

“Now, Aunt Tina, when are you all coming out to see us?” asked Jan, as the family, excepting only its head, gathered in the library with that tentative feeling of waiting one has when some one is going away, although it is hours before the time to start.

“All of us? At once?” laughed her aunt. “Never, I hope, for your mother’s sake.”

“Well, when will you let the children come? I want them all--first, the three oldest, if you won’t send them all at once, and then Jack and Viva. Still, it would be much better if you let them come with Syd and Gwen and Gladys to look after them,” Jan persisted.

“I hardly see how we can arrange the details of their coming just now,” Mrs. Graham said, smiling at Jan’s earnestness. “You see we are all disposed of for the next five months at the seashore--and I can not cease to regret that you could not have at least one week there with us, for the New England coast is so glorious that you would not feel that you had seen the sea at Manhattan Beach if you could get a glimpse of it tumbling in over those piled-up rocks. However, next summer, I hope, you will. Then after this summer comes school again, and Sydney will enter college if he keeps up his present pace.” And his mother smiled proudly at the handsome boy for whom in her secret heart there was an especial soft spot. “I think the most probable thing is that you will return to us. It would be very nice if you could come back in the fall, and if in the summer your mother and one or two of the younger children could join us. I don’t see much prospect of any of us going West, Janet, for after Gwen and Gladys are a little further on in their studies they must go to Europe to learn to see art properly, and to learn something of other peoples than their own. But we can not plan; we might be able to make a flying trip with the older children to the Yellowstone, and stop at Crescendo. There’s no way of being sure of the future, impatient Miss Lochinvar! If you girls are going to call on the Misses Larned and Dorothy and Cena before luncheon you would better be about it, for we must lunch at quarter after twelve to-day. There is the transfer-wagon at the door, and I hear the man bringing down your trunk, Jan.”

Gwen and Gladys mournfully accompanied Jan on her farewell visit to her teachers, who parted from her with a glimmer of genuine regret showing through their elaborate expressions of their sense of loss.

“It has been a great pleasure to teach you, Miss Howe,” said Miss Larned. “You are faithful to your tasks, docile, and amiable. I trust that the autumn will bring you back to us.”

“We wouldn’t be able to bear letting her go if we thought it wouldn’t, Miss Larned,” said Gwen.

Dorothy Schuyler and Cena North clung to Jan in precisely the same manner, though both assured her that they should be at the station to see her off. Jan only wrenched herself away by dwelling on that fact, and by promises to write very, very often.

Sydney met the three distressed girls at the door, as they returned to luncheon. “Hallo, bluing-bags!” he cheerfully saluted. “They won’t have to begin watering Fifth Avenue for two or three days yet, will they?”

“It wouldn’t be so bad to let you go if I could use my eyes to write you often,” said Gwen, as they mounted the stairs. “But when I think how lonely I’ll be, and how I can’t write, probably more than two or three times a week, I can not see how I shall get on.”

“I’ll write you, and we’ll send that daily journal, and you’ll have Gladys,” said Jan cheerily.

Gladys shook her head. “I shall only make it worse,” she said. “She’ll see a girl around, and it will remind her of you fearfully. Like that man in our Grecian mythology lesson--what’s his name?--who stood deep in water, and when he put his head down to drink it all slipped away, though he was nearly crazy with thirst.”

“Oh, gracious, Gladys! What nonsense! As though Gwen cared as much for me as for you--her own sister!” cried Jan. “You’ve all been getting so well acquainted this winter that you won’t miss me at all, except at first. And you and Gwen enjoy each other fifty times more than you did.” And Jan pinched Gwen’s arm to remind her to indorse these statements, for they had agreed privately that Gladys needed encouragement in her efforts to be more sensible, and also that she needed affection to draw out her better side.

“Yes, that’s so, Glad,” said Gwen promptly. “What with my being sick and in danger of being blind, and most of all with our having blessed Miss Lochinvar here to bring us all together, we are a much nicer family than we were, and I sha’n’t miss Jan anything like as much as I should if we weren’t getting to be really sisters. And I hope I’ll help you not to be lonely. And, Jan, I mean to do just what you say with Viva and Jack and Syd--especially Syd--and with Jerry, too, though she doesn’t count so much yet. I mean to be nice to them, and get them to love me and tell me things, and I see what you mean about its being better to have them than to have fame--though I can’t help hoping I’ll do something fine in the world yet.”

“I’m certain sure you will; you can’t help it with all your talents,” said Jan with the profound conviction so precious to an aspiring but undeveloped genius.

“Maybe I can learn to teach the children to like me too,” said Gladys with new and most becoming modesty, though not with the clearest form of expression.

After luncheon, eaten hastily and with a certainty of being late for her train on the part of the departing one, the Grahams’ landau drove up to the door. Jan had arrived without other escort than Nurse Hummel, but there was no question of Miss Lochinvar’s going away in like manner. There was not one of the Grahams--not even Sydney--who did not stand on the right to see Jan off. Sydney climbed up on the box with Henry, and they took Jack between them. Mrs. Graham sat on the back seat, with Jerry on her knee; Gladys, Jan, and Viva were to ride on the front seat, with Gwen beside her mother.

“Come, girls!” called Mrs. Graham, consulting her watch. “Viva, get out again and tell the girls to come.” Viva ran up the steps and encountered Jan in the hall, held fast in Nurse Hummel’s capacious embrace. Norah and Susan, Hannah the cook, and Maggie the laundress were waiting a chance to shake Miss Lochinvar’s hand and wish her Godspeed.

“May der lieber Gott keep you and pring you back quick und safe, liebchen!” cried Hummie. “I haf not a little girl so goot und useful among der Americans seen as you. I vish I might shake your highly-to-be-respected mutter by der hant, und say to her how much she is lucky to haf you.” And Nurse Hummel reluctantly gave up Jan and ceased her eloquence, as badly Germanized as usual under emotion, as Viva cried out that her mother wanted Jan to come at once.

“Good-by, Miss Janet; good luck to you!” said the other servants heartily, shaking the firm, warm hand Jan extended. Then with one parting squeeze for Drom, who implored, with eyes that seemed to see that Jan was leaving him altogether, to be taken, too, and a kiss on the glossy head of Tommy Traddles, whom Susan obligingly held, and who was highly disturbed by the excitement around him, Jan ran down the long steps which she had ascended for the first time with such different feelings. Now she could hardly see them for the tears in her eyes that she should see them no more.

Tucked tightly in her third of the seat with Gladys and Viva, Jan looked up at the big house as Henry started away from it. It looked just as impassive and irresponsive as on the day when she saw it first, but she loved it, for within its walls she had found love.

“Don’t eye the house so gloomily, Jan, dear,” said Mrs. Graham. “It is only waiting for you to come back, and it will not wait long, I hope.”

At the station they found Dorothy Schuyler and Cena North there before them, laden with flowers and candy, and a book apiece. Gwen and Gladys had provided Jan with a book, Sydney and Jack had given her candy and magazines, and flowers already filled her hands. They could not help laughing as they saw Dorothy and Cena’s contributions, for Jan could not have eaten and read on her journey all the food for body and mind with which she was encumbered if she had been going across the ocean on one of the slow Atlantic transports. Mr. Graham arrived just as his wife came back from checking Jan’s trunks; he, too, carried a box of candy, and stopped dismayed as he saw the supply already in Jan’s hands.

“Dear me, Janet; I wish I had brought you a box of pepsin tablets, instead of more sweets! Pray don’t eat all this candy--bestow it on the crying baby you’re certain to find on the train--it’s always there,” he said. “Now, we will all go over on the ferry with Miss Lochinvar, put her snugly in her section, and then sing: ‘Hurrah for the wild and woolly!’” The smiles that met this effort at cheerfulness on Mr. Graham’s part were feeble. The escort got into motion, and passed out on the upper deck of the big ferry-boat, all trying to keep next Jan, who could not have accommodated them all if she had had more sides than an octagon.

Mr. Graham and Sydney stowed away her bag and parcels in the rack. Sydney suggested that they put up a sign, “Fresh every hour,” for the parcels were so preponderatingly representative of a famous confectioner.

“Good-by, Jan. Write every week at least,” cried Dorothy and Cena, recognizing that Jan’s family had a claim to the last embraces.

“Good-by, dear little Janet. Tell Jennie to send you back by September if she doesn’t want me to go out and get you,” said Jan’s uncle, kissing her warmly.

“That wouldn’t scare her,” sobbed Jan, clinging to him.

“Good-by, dear. Tell your mother that I feel as though I had lost one of the dearest of my own children,” said Aunt Tina, no longer indifferent, but with something suspiciously like a sob in her voice.

“So long, Miss Lochinvar. I wish I were going with you,” said Sydney, clasping both Jan’s hands tight with sixteen-year-old sensitiveness to kissing his cousin publicly.

But Jan threw both arms around his neck, and kissed him many times, quite speechless with emotion, and Sydney did not find it unpleasant to have her love for him thus proved.

Jack gave Jan a fierce farewell hug, which she warmly returned.

Viva and Jerry were hanging on Jan’s neck as the others bade her good-by, and Mr. Graham had to detach them violently and bear them away under the inducement of waving their hands to her through the window.

Gladys kissed Jan good-by, sobbing with all her might. “Please, please forgive me all over again, dear, dearest Jan,” she whispered.

Gwen came last of all, and to her Jan clung most fondly, realizing then that of all the cousins she was leaving, this one was the dearest.

“I’m glad I had you, Miss Lochinvar,” whispered Gwen, feeling that this name was the only one with which she could part from Jan.

Jan did not speak, but the kiss with which she said good-by to noble-hearted Gwen told her how much Miss Lochinvar loved her.

The Grahams drew up in line outside the window, wiping away tears with one hand as they waved the other, and made futile efforts to speak to Jan through the double glass.

At last the wheels moved, the train got into motion, and rolled slowly out of the station.

Jan knelt on the seat, and pressed her wet face against the glass, crying, though they whom she was leaving behind could not hear her, “Good-by, good-by!”

The last glimpse they had of Jan was a rainbow one, tears running down her cheeks, while her lips smiled at them. And they turned away toward the ferry feeling that a big piece of the heart of each of them had gone with sweet little Miss Lochinvar back into the West.

THE END

Transcriber’s Note:

The text has been preserved as closely as possible to the original publication with no known changes to spelling or punctuation.