“I wasn’t hesitating!” said Stephen indignantly. Then added humbly, “I was just thinking—do—do you really want me?”
“Of course we do,” said Jane’s mother.
Stephen’s eyes questioned Jane’s a little uncertainly. He wasn’t speaking to her mother. Jane felt a pleasing sense of power. Her father looked even more amused.
“Why, of course, stay,” said Jane loftily.
Stephen looked extremely delighted. Jane’s sense of power increased. She glanced at him rather archly. She felt just like Flora and Muriel.
“Run and tell Minnie to put on another place, Jane,” said Mrs. Ward. And Jane felt just like Jane again. She was glad Stephen had come, however. It would keep her mother and Isabel from talking. She felt very badly about Muriel’s engagement.
II
I
“There!” said Isabel, with a last reassuring pat at Jane’s blue muslin train. “You look lovely.”
Jane tried to peer through the bevy of bridesmaids into the tall mirror that was hung on the dim brown walls of the vestibule of Saint James’s Church. They all looked lovely, she thought. They were carrying great shower bouquets of pink sweet peas over their muslin flounces and they wore broad-brimmed hats of pale blue straw. Rosalie looked loveliest of all, and as young as anyone. No one would ever have guessed, thought Jane, that Rosalie was twenty-five, or that she was going to have a baby before the summer was over. Jane would never have known about the baby if Isabel hadn’t told her.
Isabel had dropped in at the improvised dressing-room for a private view of Muriel’s wedding dress. Muriel hadn’t come yet. When Jane peeked through the curtains she could see the late afternoon sunshine slanting in at the west door of the church and the wedding guests entering by twos and threes, hushing their laughter as they crossed the vestibule, waiting in silence for the frock-coated, boutonniered ushers to take them in charge at the inner door. The organ was playing the Barcarolle from the Tales of Hoffmann. Jane could hear it quite distinctly.
Isabel’s eyes were wandering over the bridesmaids.
“Where’s Flora?” she asked.
“She’s not here yet,” said Jane.
“Was her luncheon for Muriel fun today?” asked Isabel.
“Yes,” said Jane.
“Was Mrs. Furness there?” Isabel lowered her voice.
“No,” said Jane. She had been sorry not to see Flora’s mother. Jane had hardly had a glimpse of her all spring. She had carried Flora off to St. Augustine immediately after Christmas and when they returned in February she had left town again at once, to visit her sister-in-law, Stephen Carver’s mother, in Boston. Stephen had said she had been very gay there. She looked tired, Jane had thought, when she came home.
“I do wonder—” began Isabel.
Her voice was a mere murmur. Jane moved away from her a little impatiently. She knew very well what Isabel wondered. Isabel and her mother had been wondering it all week. So had lots of other people, to judge from the wealth of opinion that they had managed to quote on the question. Would Flora’s mother come to Muriel’s wedding? Would she walk up the aisle at her husband’s side and take her place in the pew reserved for Flora’s family to see Muriel marry Mr. Bert Lancaster? Isabel had been inclined to think that she would never have the nerve to do it. Jane’s mother had declared that you could always do what you had to do, and that she would be very much surprised if Lily Furness didn’t carry it all off beautifully.
For Jane this continued speculation had quite spoiled the wedding. Other things had spoiled it, too, of course. The parties before it hadn’t been so very gay. The ushers were all old men, for one thing, not one under thirty-five. And for another, Mrs. Lester, who was usually so jolly and easygoing, had never succeeded in looking really happy about it. She never seemed to achieve with Mr. Bert Lancaster the comfortable maternal approach that she had with Freddy Waters and her son-in-law from Cleveland. Freddy Waters was in the wedding party. All the ushers but one were married. No, the parties hadn’t been so very gay.
“Here’s Muriel now!” cried Isabel eagerly. The bridesmaids all turned from the mirror. Here was Muriel indeed, a transfigured, preoccupied Muriel, trailing great lengths of stiff white satin, her cloudy hair hidden beneath the formal folds of her mother’s lace wedding veil.
“Look out for my train!” was the first thing that Jane heard her say. She was speaking to the maid who was carrying it very carefully over the red velvet carpet.
Mrs. Lester and Edith and Edith’s husband followed her into the dressing-room. Edith’s husband was going to give Muriel away. Old Solomon Lester was too infirm, now, to make the trip from New York to his granddaughter’s wedding. Jane’s mother and Isabel had thought his recent stroke a merciful intervention of Providence. It would be a relief, they said, to have one Lester wedding that was free from the taint of the synagogue.
Mrs. Lester stood silently by Muriel’s elbow, adjusting the wreath of orange blossoms that held the veil in place. Mrs. Lester was growing old, thought Jane. She had on a beautiful gown of wine-colored silk, but her face looked very worn and tired.
The bridesmaids made an aisle so that Muriel could look in the mirror. She stood quite still and straight, smiling into the glass. Edith and Rosalie and the maid began to arrange the long folds of the satin train. Muriel’s gloved hands were clasped on a white vellum prayer book. The third finger of the left glove was slit, so that Mr. Lancaster could slip on her wedding ring.
Jane felt very solemn as she looked at her. She thought of all the years that she had known Muriel. She couldn’t remember the time, really, before she had known her. In a way this was worse than Isabel’s wedding. Isabel had been twenty-three. Her big sister. And Jane had loved Robin. Muriel was—just
