Years of Grace

worlds well lost for love? Jane did not know. Jane’s love for Jimmy had presented in her life an absolutely insoluble problem. His death had placed a question mark beyond it. If he had lived, perhaps she might have arrived at a solution. She only knew, now, that she had acted in response to an inner instinct so strong that love itself had stood vanquished before it. The instinct was victorious, but the victory was barren. She had tried to preserve the happiness of others. In reward she had been left only with a feeble, futile feeling that, in any event, her own happiness could never have been attained. A barren victory. A victory that was essentially a defeat⁠—

Nevertheless, it was impossible to think of Jimmy standing at her elbow, bound by the ties of wedlock at Cicily’s marriage. He was a phantom lover. He had to be. No other kind was possible for a Lakewood housewife⁠—for Mrs. Stephen Carver⁠—But should one sacrifice love to nothing more than a sense of decorum?

The orchestra swelled joyously into the Mendelssohn wedding march. Jane had not heard the clergyman’s last solemn adjuration. The bridal couples turned from the altar. The groomsmen and ushers drew their swords. Bright, virgin blades, flashing in the June sunshine. They made an arch of steel. Soon those swords would be spitting Germans. Today they formed a nuptial canopy. Swords should be beaten into ploughshares. They should not spit Germans. Neither should they make an arch, a churchly, Gothic arch, a glamorous, romantic arch, under which young warriors⁠—too young warriors⁠—led their brides from glamour to reality.

Cicily, radiant on Jack’s arm, threw her a sunshine smile. Belle, under shy eyelids, flashed a glance at Isabel. Jenny pranced down the grassy aisle to the rhythm of the Mendelssohn. Her nervousness was all gone. She was young and absurd and adorable. The ushers gallantly sheathed their swords and fell in to follow. Jane felt Stephen’s hand upon her arm. She knew that she was looking at him stupidly. There were tears in his eyes. Robin was blowing his nose. Isabel was frankly weeping. Muriel, beyond the satin ribbons, was powdering her tear-stained cheeks. It was over. Jane realized that she had experienced no emotion whatever during the brief ceremony. It had been routed by thought. Confused, perplexing thought. Emotion would come, Jane knew, if she looked into Stephen’s eyes. She would not look into them. She would take his arm and hold her head high and walk down that grassy aisle in the sight of that company⁠—and God, if He were really there⁠—as if she had approved of these weddings. Stephen read her heart. No one else should read it. Except her father⁠—Jane caught his grave, anxious glance⁠—and God, whose glance she could not catch.

The Mendelssohn had ceased. The congregation were nodding and whispering and smiling. The orchestra was playing “Over There.” Jane slipped her fingers through the crook of Stephen’s elbow. The ushers, already gathered around the punch-bowl under the apple tree, had begun to sing. The young male chorus swelled out joyously over the sunlit garden.

“Over there! Over there!
Send the word⁠—send the word over there!
That the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming,
With the drums rum-tumming everywhere!
So prepare! Say a prayer!⁠—”

Jane moved with light step down the grassy aisle to the rollicking rhythm of the war song. If God were in that garden, He knew her misgivings. He knew that she was praying He had blessed those marriages. If there was a God. And if He was in that garden.

II

I

“Muriel thinks,” said Isabel, “that Belle should go into mourning.”

“I’m not surprised,” said Jane. “The Lesters always had a lot of family feeling.”

“Just the same,” said Isabel, “I’ve just bought all her maternity clothes. So soon after the trousseau. And they’re so pretty. Modern clothes are really very concealing. When I think of the tight waists we had to wear⁠—and all those pleats put in to let out! Don’t you think it seems ridiculous to order another set?”

“Yes,” said Jane. “But Muriel adored her mother. So did Edith and Rosalie.”

“Oh, I’ve no doubt,” said Isabel, “that they’ll all flap about like black crows for two years. But Belle’s so young⁠—she hardly knew Mrs. Lester⁠—and the baby’s coming in two months. She’s worried about Albert. I hate to plunge her into black.”

Isabel was sitting on the window-seat in Jane’s blue bedroom. They were discussing Mrs. Lester’s death, which had occurred the night before, and Mrs. Lester’s funeral, which would take place next day. Mrs. Lester had died in her sleep. She had been found dead by her maid coming in with her breakfast tray. Her death had been a great shock to Muriel.

“Belle hasn’t heard from Albert?” asked Jane. “Any plans. I mean?”

“He has no plans,” said Isabel resentfully. “No more than Jack has. How can they plan, poor darlings? I think it’s outrageous for the Government to keep them hanging around France four months after the armistice! As far as I can see, it didn’t do anybody a bit of good for them to go over. They might just as well have stayed in Rockford.”

That was quite true, reflected Jane. Jack had not even seen action, Albert had spent the last two days of the war sitting in a muddy trench. Neither boy had struck a blow at the Germans. Albert had not seen nearly as much fighting in France as Stephen had at San Juan Hill.

“Muriel’s going to be a dreadful mother-in-law,” said Isabel irrelevantly.

Jane could not help smiling. She knew what Cicily thought of Isabel in that capacity. Belle and Cicily, in the absence of their young husbands, had seen a great deal of their mothers-in-law.

“You’d think,” Cicily had said, only last evening to Jane and Stephen, “you’d think she was going to have the baby⁠—not me!”

“You’d think,” said Isabel, while Jane was smiling, “you’d think Muriel was going to have Belle’s baby. She’s bought her some lovely things,