'When I left you that day on Pine Street — that day which, now, perhaps, you may not even care to recall — I thought my heart was breaking. I thought your heart was breaking too. But I was nineteen, Jane, and of course, I have learned that hearts are of tougher fibre than I thought.
*I was miserable all summer long. Miserable all winter, too, though I was working very hard over my modelling. I thought of nothing but you and counted the days until I could see you. Actually counted them, Jane, on a calendar I made, crossing one ofif every evening.'
Darling Andre, thought Jane!
'But I was nineteen, Jane. And life is life. I began, almost against my will, to be interested in all sorts of things. The Sorbonne and the studio and lots of other pure frivolities, though I was dreadfully ashamed of that, at first. Then I began to see, of course, that we would both have to go on living and growing up and changing into the kind of people that we were meant to be, and when the four years were over, we would meet and see each other again and know, instantly, if we still cared. I couldn't imagine not caring about you. But what the four years would do to you, I couldn't imagine either. I was awfully afraid of them.
'Mother wrote me about you, of course, as long as Father was in Chicago. I knew that you went to Bryn Mawr with Agnes and I was terribly glad. I knew you wanted to go and, besides that, it seemed, somehow, to put off life for you, to keep you safe in an environment that I could imagine, to shut out the world. I never heard anything about you, after that. I thought of writing Agnes, but I never did. Mother didn't think it was quite on the level, after my promise to your father, to write Agnes letters that were really for )'ou.
*And then, Jane, I entered the Beaux Arts and my work began to get me. I began to care terribly about it. I always had, of course, but this was very different. I was thrilled over what I was doing. I was thrilled all the time, day and night. I am still. I can't think of any time, during the last three years, when I haven't been terribly excited and happy to be
working with my clay. I hope I can make you understand that — how much it has come to mean to me.
Tor, Jane, I have just been told that I am to be awarded the Prix de Rome. It means three years' work in Italy. It means a chance for accomplishment that I have never known before. It means lidng for three years with the otlier students in bachelor quarters in the Villa Medici. I'll hve Uke a monk, there, in a httle white cell, working night and day to get all I can out of the opportunity the three years give me.
'Jane — I did mean to try to get to the States tliis summer. To work my way over on some boat just as soon as my courses were over and I'd finished a fountain I'm doing. I meant to spend next winter in Chicago. I thought I'd take a studio there and try to get a job at the Art Institute. I did mean to, I mean, if you, by any chance, still wanted me to come. I meant to write you a letter at this time, saying I would come Hke a shot if you would tell me to. But, Jane, surely you see that this is a chance that I can't let slip. I've got to take advantage of it. Next spring, if you want me, I'll come without fail. I'll leave Rome for a month or two — I'll manage it somehow — I'll come and we can see each other. Just as I write the words, Jane, I feel all the old emotion. Do you, I wonder, feel it, too? I feel so very strange with you. What have the four years done to you? Are you the same Jane? You can't be, of course. But are you a little like the girl that '
The sentence was not finished. Jane sat with burning cheeks, gazing at the closely written paper. How could he
write like that — as if he still cared when he was taking
this Prix de Rome? The Prix de Rome? What was the Prix de Rome? Jane didn't know and felt she didn't care. What was any prize, any reward, any opportunity compared with
love? Love, such as she and Andre had known? He had forgotten. She must face that fact. He must have forgotten. If he had remembered, nothing would have counted, counted for one moment, against the joy of reunion. 'Next spring, if you want me, I'll come without fail!' Palhd words! Insulting words. Really insulting, from Andre to her. What had the four years done to her? What had they done to hirn? Jane turned again to the letter.
'Write me, dear Jane, that you understand. And tell me that you will want to see me, next spring, only half as much as I want to see you.
'Your
'Andrf.'
'"Her — Andre"!' Jane's cheeks flushed again at the irony of the phrase. But there was stiU a postscript.
*I think you'd like my fountain. It's the best thing I've done. I wish I could show it to you. It's a study of Narcissus, gazing at his own reflection in the water. There's a nymph behind him, a deserted nymph, standing with arms outstretched, ignored, forgotten, as he stares, infatuated, in the crystal pool. There's something of you in the nymph, Jane. There's something of you in all my nymphs and Eves and saints and Madonnas. Something you brought into my life. Romance, I guess it is. Nothing more tangible.
'Andrf,'
Something of her in the deserted nymph! Something of him, thought Jane, with unwonted irony, in the fatuous Narcissus! And for this Andre she had been keeping herself for the last four years! This Andre who would rather go to
Italy and take his Prix de Rome than cross the ocean to see
the girl that For this Andre she had been steeUng her
heart against Stephen. Stephen who loved her and wanted her and was going to war, still wanting her more than life itself. Stephen who had been her very slave for the last eighteen months, who had loved her from the moment that he set eyes on her in Flora's Uttle ballroom.
Jane rose and went to her desk. She pulled out her best notepaper and seated herself squarely before her little blotter. When you killed things, thought Jane grimly, you killed them quickly.
*Dear Andre,' she wrote, 'I loved your letter. And of course I remember everything. Quite as much, I am sure, as you do yourself I understand perfectly about the Prix de Rome and I hope very much you will come to Chicago next spring. I should love to see you and I should love to have you meet the man I am going to marry. His name is Stephen Carver and he is going to war, immediately, to fight the Spaniards. I shall marry him before he goes.
'As you say, we were both children, four years ago.' Jane paused a moment, trying vainly to bUnk away her tears. It had been just a dream, she knew, but the end of even a dream was very dreadful. 'Like you I was awfully upset, at first, but as you say, life is life. I lo'ed my years at Bryn Mawr with Agnes. Soon after I came home I met Stephen. He has just persuaded me to marry him. Of course I am terribly happy.' Jane paused to wipe her eyes, then added, as an afterthought. 'Except for the war.' That seemed to dispose of ever^'thing she thought. Just one more word was needed. She wrote it — 'Jane.'
She mailed the note before dressing for dinner. When she came up to her room again Andre's letter was still lying on her desk. She made a sudden movement as if to tear it into a
hundred pieces. Then checked herself and slowly put it back in its envelope. Andre might be incredibly different. Andr
rv
Jane stood before her mirror, gazing incredulously through her snowy veil at the sUm white reflection that was herself. Fancy dress, it seemed to her, this paraphernaUa of bridal finery. Isabel stood at her side, holding her shower bouquet of lilies of the valley. Her mother was leaning against the bureau, looking her up and down and softly crying. Isabel's eyes were f
ull of tears. Minnie, standing admiringly at the bedroom door, was pressing a mussy handkerchief to trem-bhng Hps.
After the past two weeks, however, Jane was quite accustomed to being cried over. She was a hero's bride, dedicated to a romantic destiny that had not left a dry eye in her Uttle circle. Even Muriel had cried, and Mrs, Lester, of course, and RosaHe. Jane wondered if Agnes and Marion had wept a little in Bryn Mawr and Flora and Mr. Fumess in London. Flora had cabled and Agnes and Marion had written her
lovely letters. Jane had glimpsed in Agnes's a tacit attempt to retract that unfortunate, unspoken verdict of 'cotillion partner,' that Jane had read, last December, in her canditi eyes. It was quite all right with Jane, 'Cotillion partners' didn't go to war. Agnes must understand, now.
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 enhst. 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 motlier, 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 preliminan', 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 sbc of them and all veiy 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 bom 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. Fumess. She was short and plump, with the same pale,
protruding eyes and iron grey hair. Like Mr. Furness she had very littie 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 cat-boat at the Seaconsif races. Jane had thought she was perfectly stunning when she sa^v 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. Som.ehow 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 Httle shiny. Jane knew she would like her Uncle Stephen. He got on famously with her father. It seemed that they had been at Har'ard 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 poHtely. 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 librar'. 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 how much every one in the West had come to think of Stephen. Jane, herself, had sat in frozen silence between Stephen and his father, watching Isabel trying to talk to Alden about the last Yale-Harvard football game, which she hadn't seen, and Robin's cheerful attempts to interest Aunt Marie in anecdotes of his career in Cambridge. Jane couldn't think of a single thing to say, even to Stephen, in such a solemn setting. Not on the very last night before they were to be married. Stephen was silent, too. He had held her hand very tightly, under the tablecloth, and had smiled, encouragingly, every time she glanced at him. It wasn't until the guests were all leaving to walk over to their rooms in the Virginia Hotel, three blocks away, that Jane had a moment alone with him.
They were standing in the hall together, at the foot of the staircase. Stephen's mother and sister and aunt were upstairs in the guest-room, putting on their party coats. Jane's mother had gone up with them. The other men were all talking to Isabel at the front door.
'Don't let them worry you,' said Stephen very tenderly, 'You won't have to Uve with them.'
'They don't worry me,' said Jane promptly. 'I like them. I like your uncle a lot.'
Stephen looked very much pleased.
'Uncle Stephen's all right,' he said warmly. 'They're all all right, really, but I thought they seemed a little fishy this evening. A little of Alden will go a long way, of course.'
'Your mother,' said Jane hesitantly, 'was very sweet to me.'
'Mother's a dear,' said Stephen, 'when you get to know her. She's awfully domestic and rather shy.'
Jane would never have thought of that for herself. Shyness, she reflected, was a very endearing trait in a mother-in-law.
'I know I'll love her,' said Jane. As she spoke Mrs. Carver and her mother appeared at the top of the stairs. They all trooped together to the front door. Stephen lingered a moment to say good-bye to her in the vestibule. Jane smiled up at him, very calmly.
Jane,' said Stephen a little wistfully, *do you really love me?'
'Of course I do,' said Jane simply. That point, she felt, was settled at last. She was never going to worry about it any more. Stephen took her in his arms.
'Are you happy, Jane?' he asked.
/>
'Except for the war,' said Jane. He kissed her very gently, very unalarmingly. It was peaceful, thought Jane, to have all her dreadful indecision over forever.
But now, as Jane stood facing her sUm white reflection in her mirror, she really couldn't realize that she was getting married. Where were the thoughts, she wondered, that she had always imagined such a portentous occasion would engender? Where were the thoughts, for instance, that she had had at Muriel's wedding? Jane felt she should have reserved them for her own. She stretched out her hand for her showei bouquet.
'Well, I'm ready,' she said.
Isabel kissed her tenderly and turned to run downstairs to say that Jane was coming. Mrs. Ward, still crying, took her in her arms.
'Mamma,' said Jane smiling, 'it isn't a funeral.'
Mrs. Ward tried to dry her tears.
*I want Minnie to see the ceremony,* said Jane.
They all left; the room together. At the head of the stairs
Mr, Ward was waiting. He watched Jane's approach down the darkened corridor with a very tender smile. She slipped her hand through his arm. Jane's mother went down the stairs, followed by Minnie.
'Kid,' said Mr. Ward, 'you look perfecdy lovely.'
Jane smiled up at him through the tulle.
'Kid,' said Mr. Ward again, 'it will be a naval war. I doubt if the land forces ever reach Cuba. Gervera will blockade the ports.'
Jane smiled again, this time a httle tremulously. She was trying to forget the war.
The Uttle stringed orchestra under the stairs struck up the Lohengrin wedding march. Jane was glad she wasn't going to be married to those doomful premonitory notes of an organ. The viohns made even Lohengrin sound gay. She walked slowly down the stairs on her father's arm.
The little library seemed very full of people. Mrs. Ward had thought the ceremony should be in the yellow parlour. But Jane had never liked the parlour. She had declared in favour of her father's room. Old Dr. Winter from Saint James's was standing in snowy vestments in front of the mantelpiece. A little aisle led straight from the door to the hearth. The empty fireplace was filled with smilax. Two great vases of white roses were placed on the mantelpiece. The flowers met over the bald wooden head of the bust of Shakespeare. Jane's mother had wanted to take it down for the ceremony. But Jane had thought that Shakespeare was a very appropriate genius to preside over a wedding. Shakespeare had known all about weddings, 'Romeo and JuUet.' Jane remembered the friar's solemn words as she stepped over the threshold and met 'The Bard of Avon's' wise mahogany eye.
Years of Grace Page 19
