O what does it mean, to those men who (except for the short furlough) have been four years in exile! They give no sign; motionless as so many statues; the black chin straps merging faces, and hiding what may be there. The June air stirs the soft edges of the black plumes, floating them off as one; the sunset glitters on buckle and bayonet; the great garrison flag curls and uncurls its mighty folds. "It may be for years and it may be for ever," before the men of that front rank will look upon the scene again. They have hated it, sometimes, and longed to get away, but now they know how well they love it. What things those old hills and they have gone through together! from the forlorn pleb days until now. And even with that thought, the band lapses softly into another mood:
"Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?"
and every heart answers to the pleading of "Auld Lang Syne."
For these classmates, after to-morrow, will be scattered to the four winds. Some, not to meet again till they are grey-haired men; never all to stand together, until the day when before the King "in his glory," "shall be gathered all nations." Believers or unbelievers, they think of it now. They may not speak nor touch each other, nor turn the head, but they think.
It is as well, perhaps, that "The girl I left behind me" puts in her word just here, and you have to laugh, partly because you were so near crying. But Lang Syne and Sweet Home have the last saying, as the band comes back to its place.
Parade goes on, and for once everybody is "present or accounted for." The orders are published, the standing read (not always, in these days), and then the graduating class come forward, and with dress hats off and held at the correct angle, shake hands with the Commandant and have a short address from him. And while the little company pass down and stand in line before the trees (not that either, now), the old Commandant turns hastily away from the show, and seeks his own front door. It is a long ago "Lang Syne" that he remembers, and far better than these youngsters, he knows what all this means.
But the music begins again, with another change. "I see them on their winding way" fills all the air. The lines break up; and buckle and bayonet, sash and plume, come gaily past the seats, and then as they pass the waiting graduates, again the plumed hats come off, while cheers ring out in eager greeting from their comrades marching by.
"I know I shall cry when it comes to that!" said a gay young first classman to me. And I have no doubt he did. But there are no lookers-on in front of them, and the old plain tells no tales.
The next ten or twelve waking hours are little but hurry and rush. The big hop on hand for society men: with farewell visits, last ends of packing, and countless bits of red tape to be tied in regulation knots. Then last looks at the river, and hands laid lovingly and for the last time upon some of the old grey rocks.
In front of the library a platform is raised, and draped with the star-spangled banner, and a canvas canopy stretches across from tree to tree. Strong ropes wall in the space below, where stand the chairs, rank after rank, and as the morning hours run on, sentinels guard the ropes against all intruders. The seats, of course, are, first of all, for cadets and people of the Post, but just there does the dear general public wish to sit, and for whom the chairs are placed affects them not at all. So, for an hour or more, there is a sort of running fight—a skirmish line—all round the lines of rope, and the sentries well nigh meet their match. Demands, complaints, exclamations, are loud-voiced and many, and neither orders nor fixed bayonets win much respect.