“Here come the boys,” said Isabel suddenly. The robust sound of masculine laughter was heard in the hall. Robin and Stephen entered the library, carrying Jack’s cocktail and Isabel’s glasses on Mrs. Ward’s silver tray.
“Mamma!” called Jane.
“Children!” called Isabel.
The throb of the Gershwin stopped abruptly in the yellow drawing-room.
“Drinks!” rang out Cicily’s voice above the talk and laughter.
Mrs. Ward entered the room. She looked a very pretty old lady in the new black silk dress she had bought for the wedding. Her cheeks were flushed with excitement over the nut and candy dishes.
“I hope that ice was cracked right for you, Robin,” she said anxiously. “We don’t know much about cocktails in this house. Your father never served them,” she added in superfluous explanation to Jane and Isabel. “Just wine and a highball for the gentlemen. Was the ice right, Robin?”
“Perfect!” responded Robin with a twinkle. “I never saw ice more expertly cracked!”
But Mrs. Ward did not smile.
“I’m very glad,” she said earnestly.
Just then the children trooped in from the hall. Jane looked up at them with a proud, proprietary smile. They were nice children. They made a pretty picture, in the modern manner, to be sure, as they clustered about the tray of cocktails. Jenny, slim, blonde, and boyish, in the tailor-made sport suit she affected at even a June wedding, sipping the amber liquid that was just the colour of her short, shining hair. Steve, a little flushed with nuptial champagne, singing a reminiscent fragment of the Gershwin as he shook the silver shaker. Belle and Cicily arm in arm on the hearthrug. Pretty Belle, who still looked like an apple blossom, a slightly paler, rather more full-blown apple blossom, clad in the flattering, fluttering pink panels of her French frock, and Cicily smiling beside her, her flower-like head rising proudly from a sheaf of pale green chiffon. Pleasant, snub-nosed Jack coming up with a cocktail in either hand for his wife and his sister. Albert in the doorway, dark and distinguished, not very tall, lithe and slim-waisted, with something of the Greek athlete about him in spite of his cutaway, smiling, over the heads of the brown-eyed twins and his own two dark-haired daughters, at the young women on the hearthrug. Steve approached him with the silver shaker. Albert accepted his glass.
“I give you a toast,” he said suddenly. “To Muriel and the reconstructed life!”
They all drank it riotously. Albert was sweet about his mother, thought Jane. So many sons would have resented that ridiculous mésalliance. Did Albert, in his heart? Isabel, of course, voiced the thought.
“How do you really feel about it, Albert?” she inquired curiously.
“Me?” said Albert innocently, extending his empty glass toward Steve. “Why, I believe in reconstruction. Mother’s had a pretty thin time the last fifteen years. It’s never too late to mend. We all learned that in our copybooks. Another cocktail, Cicily?”
Cool and aloof and flower-like, Cicily accepted the glass. She flashed a brief, bright smile up into Albert’s admiring eyes.
“I adore cocktails,” she said.
Suddenly across Jane’s mind shot the picture of a very different Cicily. A mutinous, moody Cicily, turning in the sunshine of her little French window to declare, “Jack’s just as bored with suburban gin as I am!” This was Jack’s gin, but the child did not look bored at all. Of course she was happy. She had not meant those perilous words that had troubled Jane so profoundly. She was still smiling up at Albert Lancaster over the rim of her little crystal goblet.
“It’s fire and ice,” she said, with a little thirsty gasp. “Exciting. Like love and hate. Like life, as it ought to be.”
“Like you, as you are,” said Albert gallantly. His eyes were bent admiringly on her cool, blonde radiance. His gallantry, Jane thought, was a bit professional. A technique in handling women, very alien to Lakewood. But he had hit the nail on the head. “Fire and ice” was rather like Cicily in her high moments. She did not seem at all impressed, however, with the accuracy of the description.
“He’s irresistible, isn’t he. Belle?” she was saying calmly.
The waitress appeared on the threshold. Jane caught a glimpse of Minnie’s plump figure, hovering officiously in the hall beyond. Minnie was going to see that dinner, on this important occasion, was announced correctly.
“Come, children,” said Mrs. Ward.
Robin offered her his arm. Stephen appropriated Isabel. Steve turned up at Belle’s elbow. Jenny clapped Jack familiarly on the shoulder.
“You’re elected, old top!” she said.
Albert and Cicily were left alone on the hearthrug. She turned from him abruptly to place her empty glass on the mantelshelf.
“Cicily,” smiled Albert, “do you know what you’ve done while my back was turned? You’ve grown up into a damned dangerous woman!”
Cicily met his eyes with a frosty little twinkle of complete composure. Girls were wonderful, thought Jane. You would think, to look at her, that Cicily had been talked to like that for years.
“Then watch your step!” laughed Cicily. “Don’t get burned or frostbitten.”
Jane followed them from the room, hand in hand with her grand-twins. Belle’s dark-haired daughters trooped at her side. Their frizzy black curls recalled the Muriel of Miss Milgrim’s School. It was fun, this reunion—it was lovely to have all this big family under one roof again.
Standing behind her chair, Jane looked down the long white damask expanse of the candlelit table, across the cut-glass goblets and the Royal Worcester china and the loving-cup of roses, to the frail little matriarch in a new black silk dress who was the head of the clan, then turned, instinctively, to her father’s chair. Her
