“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.
[Illustration: The last glimpse of Jan.]
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.