13
The evening before the end of term.
Judith walked with the rest of the circle arm in arm across the grass, down the wooded path, past the honeysuckle for the last time.
The garden spread out all her beauties that were hers alone, overburdening the watchers, insisting:
‘See what you are leaving. Look at what you will never have again.’
The whole shrine lay wide open for the last time, baring its mysteries of cedar and limes and nightingales, of lawns and mown hay, of blossoming shrubs and wild flowers growing beneath them, of copper beeches and all the high enclosing tree-tops, serenely swimming like clouds in the last of the light.
They chose careers for each other, light-heartedly discussing the future, and making plans for regular reunions.
‘But what’s the good?’ said one. ‘We shall all be scattered really. We can’t come back year after year as if things would all be the same. There’s nothing more awful than those gatherings of elderly people trying to be girls together again. The ghastliness of pretending to get back to where one was! If we meet again, let it be in the big world. I shall never come back here.’
‘Oh, but I shan’t have the strength to resist it,’ said another. ‘You see I more or less know I shall never be so happy again. I’ve got to teach brats algebra. I shall be pulled back to indulge in vain regrets.’
‘Does it mean so much to you?’ murmured Judith. ‘You talk as if your life was over.’