As she was wondering, the orchestra, in response to some hidden signal, swelled into Lohengrin, The clergyman, with the promptness of a marionette, swung out in white vestments under the arch of pink bloom. The four young men in khaki followed him. Jane heard Isabel catch her breath sharply at the sight of Jack. She saw Albert smile in self-conscious reassurance at Muriel across the aisle. Jack was staring straight down the grassy path, waiting for his first glimpse of Cicily. The first pair of khaki-clad ushers passed slowly by Jane. Then the second. Then the third. Then Jenny, successfully quaint, in her ridiculous hoopskirt. Her pale, plain little face was barely visible in the depths of Flora’s poke bonnet. What Jane could see of it looked intensely serious. Her hands shook a little as they gripped the 1860 bouquet. Her knuckles were white. She turned to face the congregation just as Belle passed by, a cloud of floating tulle, on Robin’s arm. Albert stepped out to meet her. Then Jane saw Cicily, another cloud, her head held high, her feet spurning the earth, her hand on Stephen’s elbow. She must have smiled at Jack. His funny snub-nosed face reflected the radiance of that smile. The Lohengrin faded away into silence. The clergyman took up the ritual.
“Dearly beloved brethren, we are met together in the sight of God and this company—”
In the sight of God. Was God really present, thought Jane, this sunny June afternoon, looking at them all, in her familiar Lakewood garden? Did God have time to take in all the weddings, or did He pick and choose? Did He sometimes withhold His blessing? Could God be summoned peremptorily to any altar? Did He never have another engagement? Was He not too busy this afternoon, for instance, on the battlefields of France, to look in on this little ceremony in a Lakewood garden? The clergyman’s voice droned on.
“—the holy estate of matrimony, which is an honorable estate, instituted of God in the time of man’s innocence—”
In the time of man’s innocence. That was, of course, the time for weddings. Jane thought fleetingly of André. Of herself in his arms. These four children were innocent enough. Too innocent. That was the difficulty. Too innocent to enter into that holy estate reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly, and in the fear of God. The modern generation was neither reverent, discreet, advised, nor sober. They were in fear of nothing. Certainly not of God. Certainly not of their parents. Robin and Stephen, standing side by side in that khaki-clad group of striplings, a little bald, a little grey, a little stooped, a little paunchy in their formal black broadcloth cutaways, waiting to give, reluctantly, these women to be married to these men, were the only reverent, discreet, advised, and sober individuals before that improvised altar. They were in fear of God. They were in fear of everything—for their children. But fear was foolish. Fear was, perhaps, hysterical. They were all good children. Isabel’s sobs recalled Jane’s attention to the ritual of betrothal.
“I, Cicily, take thee, John Ward, for my wedded husband—”
John Ward. Her father’s namesake. Isabel’s first baby was marrying her own. Isabel’s baby—only yesterday an armful of afghans—now a soldier in khaki, suitable cannon fodder, was marrying Cicily with her head like a dandelion. Marrying Cicily not twenty feet away from the site of the old sandpile where they had built their sand castles—
“I, Albert, take thee, Isabel, for my wedded wife—”
Albert Lancaster—the second Albert Lancaster—Muriel’s beautiful little boy who had grown up to look like a youthful Bacchus and to act like one, too, sometimes—Cicily’s laughing story of his behavior at the bachelors’ dinner at the University Club the night before had been really outrageous—Albert Lancaster, who was his father’s son—but only nineteen and heart-breakingly innocent in spite of the vine leaves—was marrying Belle—little Belle, with a face like an apple blossom.
When had she first thought that Belle looked like an apple blossom? Four years ago, at the foot of the stairs in the Lakewood hall, with Jimmy framed in the portieres of the living-room door. Jimmy, watching her kiss little Belle. Jimmy, whose mocking, informal ghost had curiously no place at this ceremony in the Lakewood garden. It paled before Stephen’s substantial presence. Stephen, who adored Cicily and had made the sandpile and had shared so consolingly in the worry and hurry and foreboding of the last hectic weeks. Weeks in which the sustaining sense of Jimmy’s cheerful companionship had faded ever so imperceptibly, but irrevocably, out of the foreground of Jane’s reveries. Lost in the bustle of preparation, the preoccupation of misgiving, Jane, for the first time since Jimmy’s death in France, had had no time for Jimmy.
“If I had gone away with him,” she reflected, “if I had married him, I suppose we should both be here today, watching Stephen give away Cicily. I should be feeling about Stephen just as I do now”—for after all there was only one way to feel about Stephen, standing helplessly by Cicily’s side before that improvised altar—“and feeling about Jimmy the way I did then—”
A faint shiver of repulsion passed over Jane. She felt herself suddenly submerged in an ignoble sense of relief at the realization of domestic decencies forever maintained, of vulgar complexities forever avoided. Were
