Ihr lerntet alle nicht tanzen, wie man tanzen muss — uber euch hinweg tanzen!

Nietzsche

The school year had ebbed; the ceremonies that attended its conclusion were over. A few days beforehand, the fifth-form boarders, under the tutelage of a couple of governesses, drove off early in the morning to the distant university. On the outward journey the candidates were thoughtful and subdued; but as they returned home, in the late afternoon, their spirits were not to be kept within seemly bounds. They laughed, sang, and rollicked about inside the wagonette, Miss Zielinski weakly protesting unheard — were so rowdy that the driver pushed his cigar-stump to the corner of his mouth, to be able to smile at ease, and flicked his old horse into a canter. For the public examination had proved as anticipated, child’s play, compared with what the class had been through at Dr Pughson’s hands; and its accompanying details were of an agreeable nature: the weather was not too hot; the examination-hall was light and airy; through the flung-back windows trees and flowering shrubs looked in; the students were watched over by a handsome Trinity man, who laid his straw hat on the desk before him.

Then came the annual concert, at which none of the performers broke down; Speech Day, when the body of a big hall was crowded with relatives and friends, and when so many white, blue-beribboned frocks were massed together on the platform, that this looked like a great bed of blue and white flowers; and, finally, trunks were brought out from boxrooms and strewn through the floors, and upper-form girls emptied cupboards and drawers into them for the last time.

On the evening before the general dispersion, Laura, Cupid, and M. P. walked the well-known paths of the garden once again. While the two elder girls were more loquacious than their wont, Laura was quieter. She had never wholly recovered her humour since the day of the history-examination; and she still could not look back, with composure, on the jeopardy in which she had placed herself one little turn of the wheel in the wrong direction, and the end of her schooldays would have been shame and disgrace.— And just as her discovery of God’s stratagem had damped her religious ardour, so her antipathy to the means she had been obliged to employ had left a feeling of enmity in her, towards the school and everything connected with it: she had counted the hours till she could turn her back on it altogether. None the less, now that the time had come there was a kind of ache in her at having to say good-bye; for it was in her nature to let go unwillingly of things, places and people once known. Besides, glad as she felt to have done with learning, she was unclear what was to come next. The idea of life at home attracted her as little as ever — Mother had even begun to hint as well that she would now be expected to instruct her young brothers. Hence, her parting was effected with very mixed feelings; she did not know in the least where she really belonged, or under what conditions she would be happy; she was conscious only of a mild sorrow at having to take leave of the shelter of years.

Her two companions had no such doubts and regrets; for them the past was already dead and gone; their talk was all of the future, so soon to become the present. They forecast this, mapping it out for themselves with the iron belief in their power to do so, which is the hall-mark of youth.

Laura, walking at their side, listened to their words with the deepest interest, and with the reverence she had learned to extend to all opinions save her own.

M. P. proposed to return to Melbourne at the end of the vacation; for she was going on to Trinity, where she intended to take one degree after another. She hesitated only whether it was to be in medicine or arts.

“Oogh! . . . to cut off people’s legs!” ejaculated Laura. “M. P., how awful.”

“Oh, one soon gets used to that, child.— But I think, on the whole, I should prefer to take up teaching. Then I shall probably be able to have a school of my own some day.”

“I shouldn’t wonder if you got Sandy’s place here,” said Laura, who was assured that M. P.‘s massy intellect would open all doors.

“Who knows?” answered Mary, and set her lips in a determined fashion of her own. “Stranger things have happened.”

Cupid, less enamoured of continual discipline, intended to be a writer. “My cousin says I’ve got the stuff in me. And he’s a journalist and ought to know.”

“I should rather think he ought.”

“Well, I mean to have a shot at it.”

“And you, Laura?” M. P. asked suavely.

“Me?— Oh, goodness knows!”

“Close as usual, Infant.”

“No, really not, Cupid.”

“Well, you’ll soon have to make up your mind to something now. You’re nearly sixteen.— Why not go on working for your B.A.?”

“No thanks! I’ve had enough of that here.” And Laura’s thoughts waved their hands, as it were, to the receding figure of Oliver Cromwell.

“Be a teacher, then.”

“M.P.! I never want to hear a date or add up a column of figures again.”

“Laura!”

“It’s the solemn truth. I’m fed up with all those blessed things.”

“Fancy not having a single wish!”

“Wish? . . . oh, I’ve tons of wishes. First I want to be with Evvy again. And then, I want to see things — yes, that most of all. Hundreds and thousands of things. People, and places, and what they eat, and how they dress, and China, and Japan . . . just tons.”

“You’ll have to hook a millionaire for that, my dear.”

“And perhaps you’ll write a book about your travels for us stay-at-homes.”

“Gracious! I shouldn’t know how to begin. But you’ll send me all you write — all YOUR books — won’t you, Cupid? And, M. P., you’ll let me come and see you get your degrees — every single one.”

With these and similar promises the three girls parted. They never met again. For a time they exchanged letters regularly, many-sheeted letters, full of familiar, personal detail. Then the detail ceased, the pages grew fewer in number, the time-gap longer. Letters in turn gave place to mere notes and postcards, scribbled in violent haste, at wide intervals. And ultimately even these ceased; and the great silence of separation was unbroken. Nor were the promises redeemed: there came to Laura neither gifts of books nor calls to be present at academic robings. Within six months of leaving school,............