Her mother had cried almost continuously ever since Jane had told her of the engagement. She had cried most terribly during that one awful interview with Stephen when she tried to persuade him that if he married Jane he shouldn’t enlist. Mr. Ward had cried, too, but only once and very furtively, making no capital out of his tears. And yesterday, when Stephen’s family arrived from Boston, Stephen’s mother, in the railroad station, had cried most of all.
Jane had been terribly afraid to meet Stephen’s family. They had been very much surprised at the news of the engagement. But when they came, they proved to be very nice. They really didn’t seem to bother about Jane at all. They were mainly preoccupied with Stephen’s enlistment. The wedding was, in their eyes, a mere preliminary, a curtain raiser, to the great drama of the war. Jane was the leading lady, to be sure, but she played a conventional role. The hero’s bride again, dedicated, this time, to the romantic destiny of making Stephen happy for a week before he went away to fight the Spaniards. Jane, facing the disquieting group of future relatives-in-law, was profoundly relieved that nothing more complicated was required of her.
There were six of them and all very friendly, indeed. Except for their short, clipped accent and a certain funny something that they did, or rather did not do, to their r’s, they might have been born and bred on Pine Street. Stephen’s mother, whom Jane had, of course, dreaded the most of all, proved to have a very reassuring resemblance to her brother, Mr. Furness. She was short and plump, with the same pale, protruding eyes and iron grey hair. Like Mr. Furness she had very little to say. This deficiency was more than made up for by the fact that Stephen’s father had a great deal. Mr. Alden Carver was a very impressive gentleman. He was grey-haired, too, and he had a close-clipped grey Vandyke beard and moustache, and shrewd light-blue eyes that peered out from under his grey eyebrows with an uncanny resemblance to Stephen’s. His cheeks looked very soft and pink above the close-clipped grey beard. His collar and cuffs were very white and glossy and his grey sack suit was in perfect press. Jane thought him a very dapper old gentleman.
Alden Carver, Junior, looked just like his mother. He was four years older than Stephen and he had never married. He had told Jane, immediately, on the platform of the train shed, with the air of placing himself for her, once for all, that he was in the Class of ’88, at Harvard. Jane had received that biographical item with a very polite little smile. It didn’t help her much, however, in her estimate of her new brother-in-law.
Stephen’s sister, Silly, was easier to talk to. She talked a great deal herself and always amusingly, about horses and dogs and sailboats. Silly’s real name was Cicily, after Stephen’s mother. She was older than Stephen, but younger than Alden. Silly was thirty-one and Jane had never met any other girl just like her. Silly, it seemed, kept a cocker-spaniel kennel and hunted with the Myopia hounds and sailed a catboat at the Seaconsit races. Jane had thought she was perfectly stunning when she saw her get off the train in her blue serge suit and crisp white shirt waist and small black sailor. A perfect Gibson girl. Slim and distinguished. But that night at dinner on Pine Street she had not looked nearly as well in evening dress. Somehow lank and mannish, in spite of blue taffeta, long-limbed and angular, and, yes, distinctly, old.
She didn’t seem like a sister at all to Stephen. More like an aunt.
Stephen had an aunt, who had come too, with his uncle who was his father’s brother. The Stephen Carver for whom Stephen had been named. He was nice, Jane thought. He was a college professor in Cambridge. He lived on Brattle Street, Alden said, and his field was Restoration Drama. Jane knew all about Restoration Drama and she knew all about college professors. It made her remember Bryn Mawr very vividly, just to see his wrinkled brown tweed suit and gold-bowed spectacles. His dinner coat was just a little shiny. Jane knew she would like her Uncle Stephen. He got on famously with her father. It seemed that they had been at Harvard together. That fact seemed to help the bridal dinner a great deal.
Uncle Stephen’s wife was Aunt Marie. She looked like the wives of all college professors, thought Jane. Nice and bright and friendly and not too careful about how she did her hair. She was “Nielson’s daughter,” Alden had said, adding as Jane stared up at him uncomprehendingly, “the great Nielson.” Considering the tone in which those three words were uttered, Jane didn’t dare to inquire further. She smiled, very politely. Then she met her father’s quizzical gaze from across the room. He saw her difficulty immediately.
“Geology,” he had breathed, over the heads of their guests. And then Jane remembered. Six fat volumes, bound in brown cloth, in her father’s library. Nielsen’s Ice Age. She had never read them but she “placed” Aunt Marie, at once.
The bridal dinner, Jane had thought, had proved just a trifle disappointing. It was to be a very small house wedding, so only the two families were there. You couldn’t, somehow, be awfully gay with just two families that had never seen each other until that afternoon. Mr. Alden Carver, however, talked very steadily and informingly, to Jane’s mother and Mr. Ward chatted very pleasantly with Mrs. Carver about
