Black caught up his hat. Fanny snatched a glance at herself as she went by a sombre black-walnut-framed mirror in the hall. Cary mopped his brow and ran a finger round inside his collar. It was quite plain that his eagerness now was concentrated on the great news of his imminent departure. Suddenly nothing much mattered to him except that at last he was off, with his longed-for chance before him. That was the big thing to him now, not getting married in haste and leaving a bride behind him. It was as plain as could be in every word he said, and in the joyful sparkle in his eyes. Quicksilver in a tube was Cary Ray—and the mercury had jumped all but to the top!
The following hour was as wild a one as only those can conceive who have had an experience like it. At the end of it Cary and Jane, Fanny, Nan Lockhart, and Robert Black stood on the station platform with six minutes to spare. At almost the same instant Doctor Burns’s car drew up, and he and Mrs. Burns joined the group.
“You are all regular bricks, you know,” declared Cary, “to stand by me like this. Everybody’s here I could have wanted, except Tom, and since he beat me to a uniform, and there’s no way of getting his training camp on the wire in a hurry, I’ll have to go off unsped by him. But I know what he’d say: ‘This is the life!’ He’s said it to me at least once a week on a postcard, ever since he left us.”
“If you are half as happy to be in it as he is——” began Nan.
“I’m twice as happy—no question of it. And I want to tell all you people——” Cary paused, looked quickly from one to another, and his bright glance fell. “No, I don’t believe I can,” he confessed, “at least not in a group like this. I think what little I can say I owe my sister. If you’ll forgive me I’ll take her down the platform a bit and give her my parting instructions.”
He grasped her arm and walked away with her, the friendly eyes following the pair. Friendly? Black couldn’t help wondering just what Fanny was thinking as she looked after them. Certainly she was paler than he had ever seen her—or was that her unaccustomed sombre attire?
“Sis,” Cary said in Jane’s ear, “it’s tough to go like this, after all, with all the things I want to say left up in the air. I hope you’ll somehow make those trumps back there know what their friendship has meant to me.—I say—” he broke off to stare at her—“by George! I didn’t know you were so easy to look at, little girl. You—you—why you’re the sweetest thing that ever happened—and not just soft sweet, either—stingingly sweet, I should put it.”
“Dear, you’re just seeing me through the eyes of parting. Cary, when I get across we can surely meet sometimes, can’t we? Correspondents have more freedom of movement than other men, I’m sure.”
“We’ll try it, anyhow. Janie—I want you to know how I just plain worship you for sticking by and pulling me out of the ditch the way you have—you and Bob Black, and the Doctor. Words can’t say it—but maybe actions can. I’m taking you three with me—and leaving behind a girl who doesn’t know whether she wants me or not. Best thing to do—eh?”
Well, he was excited, strung to a high tension, eager to be off—it could be read in his every word and look. He had barely said these things to Jane before he had her back with the others, and was getting off gay, daring speeches to one and another, sometimes aloud, sometimes under his breath for one ear only. The words he left with Fanny Fitch stayed with her for many a day.