The Camp Fire Girls on the Open Road Part 8

"Why do I fearfully cling to thee, Maidenhood?

'Tis but a pearl to be cast in thy waves, O Love!"

Then one day the word went around that He was coming to make a speech in the college chapel. How my heart fluttered! I could hardly sit still in the seat when he came out on the platform. It seemed as if everyone could hear what my heart was saying. Soon that deep voice of his was filling the room, thrilling me with unearthly things. Again and again his eyes sought mine, full of joyous recognition, of love and longing. I smiled rea.s.suringly, trying to telegraph the message, "Be patient, all will be well."

To myself I was singing, "O Captain, my Captain!"

Unknown to himself, I had seen him before he came into chapel. I was stooping down in the shadow of the gymnasium steps, tying my shoestring, when he came along the walk and was met by Dr. Thorn, our President. They stood there and talked a minute and I heard Captain Bannister say that he was going to Was.h.i.+ngton that afternoon on the five o'clock train and that he was going directly from the college to the station. He carried a small black handbag, which Dr. Thorn offered to relieve him of, but he said no, he didn't want to leave it out of his hand even for a minute, there were valuable papers in it.

When he came out on the platform I noticed that he had the bag with him.

He set it down on the table while he talked and never got very far away from it. I looked at that bag with deep interest. What was in it?

Something terribly important, I knew. I thrilled with pride that my Captain should have such great things to look after, and longed to be of service to him.

His speech came to an end all too soon for me, who could have gone on listening for a week, and he went out before the rest of us were dismissed. No chance to speak to me or give me one word of farewell for the brief separation; only one long, lingering look between us that left me shaken to the soul. Now I knew what the Poet meant when he spoke of "the troth of glance and glance."

I wandered around by myself after he had gone. I didn't desire to speak to any of the girls or have them speak to me. I just wanted to be by myself. Roaming thus I came to the little rustic summerhouse in the park behind the college buildings, and stopped in to rest a moment. It was a lovely mild day, not a bit like winter, and not too cold to sit in a summerhouse and dream. I didn't sit down, though. For on the bark-covered bench I spied something that brought my heart up into my mouth. It was Captain Bannister's bag. No doubt about it. There was his name on a card tied to the handle. How came it here? They must have shown him around the grounds after his speech and in some way he had put the bag down in here and then gone off and forgotten it. How dreadful he would feel when he found it out!

My mind was made up in a minute. Here was a real chance to "Give Service." If I hurried I could get down to the station and catch him before he got on the train. I made sure from the watchman that he had left the college grounds. I looked at my wrist watch. It was quarter to five. Without a moment's hesitation I picked up the bag and ran out to the street. I caught a car right away and sank down in a seat breathless, but easy in my mind, because the station was only a ten minutes' ride in the car.

Then, of course, something had to happen. A sand wagon was in the cartrack ahead of us and the motorman jingled his bell so furiously that the driver got excited and pulled the lever that dumped the whole load of sand on the car track.

I jumped out of the car and looked wildly up and down the road to see if there was a taxi in sight. There wasn't; nothing but a motor truck from the glue factory. There was something covered with canvas in the back of it, and I knew instinctively that it was a dead horse. Did I hesitate a second? Not I. For the sake of my Captain and my country I would have endured anything. I hailed the driver. "I'll give you a dollar if you'll take me to the station," I panted.

The driver laughed out loud. "This is _some_ depoe hack," he said, "but if _you_ can stand it I guess _I_ can."

With that he gave me a sidewise glance that was meant to be admiring, I suppose, but I froze him with a look and climbed gravely up beside him.

"It is very important that I be there in time for the five o'clock train," I remarked by way of explanation.

"You ain't running away from school, are you?" inquired the driver genially.

"I am _not_," I replied frigidly, and looked loftily past him for the remainder of the five minutes' ride to the station.

I flung the man the dollar and was out of the truck before he had time to say a word, and raced into the long waiting room of the station. I could have shouted with relief when I saw on the blackboard the notice that the five o'clock train for Was.h.i.+ngton was forty minutes late. I was in time!

But where was Captain Bannister? Nowhere in sight. I walked up and down the length of the waiting room several times, growing more nervous every minute. Suppose that he had discovered that he had left the bag behind and gone back after it only to find it gone? The thought made my blood run cold. Would he come down to the train at all without the bag? Would he not go back and search for it, alarming the whole college? And all the while I had it safe with me! What should I do? Should I go back and run the risk of missing him, or stay and see if he came? One thing I could do. I could telephone back to the college and find out if he had returned for it.

I had just gotten inside the telephone booth and was ringing up the number when there was a commotion in the upper end of the waiting room and a large party of people entered, men and women and soldiers and young girls, laughing and shrieking and pelting somebody with rice and old shoes. Soon they came past the booth and I caught a glimpse of the bride and groom. The telephone receiver fell out of my hand and my heart stopped beating. For there, in the midst of that crowd, laughing and dodging the showers of rice, and hanging for dear life to the arm of a pretty young girl in a traveling suit, was Captain Bannister, my Captain!

I shrank back into the depths of the telephone booth and struggled to swallow the lump in my throat. Bits of talk floated in through the closed door.

"Thought you'd do it up quietly this morning and then sneak out this afternoon without anybody finding it out," I heard a voice shout, as a fresh shower of rice flew through the air.

"Went out and made a speech this afternoon, too, just as unconcerned as if it wasn't his wedding day," said another voice. "Pretty sly, Captain.

They ought to put you in the diplomatic service. You'd be an ornament."

I crouched miserably in the telephone booth, trying to collect my scattered thoughts. My Captain was married this morning! How I hated that pretty girl clinging to him and laughing as the showers of rice fell around her!

Then all of a sudden my hand touched the bag on the floor. The papers! In the excitement of his wedding day he had forgotten them! Well, even if he had, I hadn't. I would still serve my country if it did nearly kill me to go out there and face Captain Bannister. I shut my eyes and prayed for strength. It would have been so easy to slip out and throw the bag over the bridge into the river, and get Captain Bannister into a bad predicament. But I did not waver in my duty. Opening the door of the booth softly, I crept out. Resolutely I approached the crowd and walked right up to Captain Bannister.

"Here are the papers, Captain Bannister," I said in a voice I tried to make coldly sarcastic, as is fitting when talking to a man who has let his wedding make him forget his country's business.

Captain Bannister whirled around and faced me with a look of astonishment that changed to annoyance when he saw the bag. He did not offer to take it from my outstretched hand. He could not look into my eyes. He stood there, his face getting redder every minute, while the people stared curiously. At last he pulled himself together and took the bag. "Thank you," he said in a flat voice.

A dozen hands pulled the bag away from him. "Let's see the papers, Banny," called several voices. "Are they the plans of your wedding journey or your new home?"

He made a desperate effort to regain possession of the bag, but they kept it away from him and opened it. Then such a roar of laughter went up as I have never heard. Everybody was laughing but the bride, and she looked like a thundercloud. Soon the things from the bag were being handed around and I saw what they were. They were a girl's ballet dress, very flimsy and very short and very much bespangled; a pair of light blue silk stockings and a pair of high-heeled dancing slippers.

Standing on the edge of the crowd I heard one man explain to another, between snorts of laughter, how Captain Bannister had taken part in a show that the soldiers had given a week before and had worn that ballet dress. His bride-to-be had been at the show, and being a very straight-laced sort of a person had been very much shocked at the men dressed as girls. She didn't know that Captain Bannister had been one of them, and he didn't intend that she should find out. Some of his friends knew this and for a joke they got hold of the handbag in which he had packed his clothes for his wedding journey and hid them away, putting in the ballet dress instead. He found it out on the way out to the college, and conceived the brilliant idea of leaving it there. He figured that a suit like that found in a girls' college would cause no commotion; nothing like what would happen if his bride should find it among his things. But of all things--here the man who was telling all this nearly turned inside out--somebody sees him leave the bag behind and chases after him with it!

I fled without ever looking behind. My heart was broken, my life wrecked, my hopes shattered. My Captain, my Man, whose eyes had told me the secret of his love, was pledged to another! If I hadn't known it beyond any doubt, I wouldn't have believed such perfidy possible. And the "valuable papers" he was carrying around were nothing but a girl's dancing dress!

For this I had raced to catch the train, for this I had ridden on a truck with a dead horse! No doubt he had lied to Dr. Thorn about the bag, because he was afraid he would find out what really was in it.

Righteous anger drowned my heartbroken tears. With head high I wandered down to the swimming pool in the gym and prepared to go in.

"Oh, Hinpoha, come and watch me do the new back dive," called Agony. She mounted the diving platform and went off badly, striking the water with the flat of her back and making a splash like a house falling into the water. She righted herself and swam around lazily.

"Hinpoha," she said suddenly, popping her head out of the water like a devil fish, "what did you ever do with them all? I expected to get at least one."

"What did I do with what?" I asked in bewilderment.

"Chocolates, sweet cherub," said Agony, kicking the water into foam with her feet. "I sent you five pounds."

"_You_ sent them?" I echoed blankly.

"Yes, dearest child, I sent them, and it took the last of my birthday check. Who did you think sent them?" And with a malicious grin she sank down under the surface of the water.

So it had been Agony who had sent the chocolates, and not Captain Bannister! I might have known---- Oh, what a fool I had been!

"What did you do with them all?" came Agony's teasing voice from the other end of the pool, where she had risen to take the air.

"Wouldn't you like to know?" I said mysteriously.

Agony looked at me gravely for a minute. "Didn't I hear Gladys putting you to bed that night and going off for hot water?" she murmured dreamily. "Seems to me I have a faint, far off recollection." She made little snorting noises, plainly in imitation of a pig, and sank below the surface again.

I was filled with a blind fury at Agony. I wanted to jump on her and choke her. I had been standing on the diving board and on the spur of the moment I went off backwards. I had only one thought in my mind; to reach Agony and duck her as she deserved. There was a great shout as I went off, followed by a round of applause.

"What is it?" I asked, coming up and blinking stupidly at the knot of watchers gathered around the pool.

"The Hawaiian dive!" they cried. "You did it perfectly. Do it again."

Agony came up out of the pool and watched enviously. For four weeks she had been practising that dive and hadn't mastered it yet. I hadn't ever hoped to learn it. And here I had done it the very first time! They made me do it again and again, and clapped until the ceiling echoed as I got the somersault in every time. It was glorious. I forgave Agony for fooling me about the Captain; I even forgave the Captain for the time being. _He_ could go off and get married if he wanted to; _I_ could do the Hawaiian back dive!

"How did you ever do it?" asked Agony enviously, as we dressed together, "somersault and all? Do you really think there's any chance of my ever doing it?"

"Sure, you'll do it some day," I replied out of the fullness of my wisdom,--"if you get mad enough."

Your broken-hearted, Hinpoha.