I

“Karo,” said Isabel, “is just as good as sugar. In case you can’t tell the difference.”

The morning sunshine was slanting in the wide dusty windows of the Chicago skyscraper. The big bare room was hung with Red Cross posters and filled with long deal tables and crowded with smartly dressed women. They sat, uncomfortably, on caterer’s folding chairs around the tables, meticulously pressing small squares of cheesecloth into intricately mitred rectangles. Isabel was working the bandage roller at the head of the first table. Muriel, at her elbow, looked up from her gauze sponges.

“But is it fattening?” she asked.

“Everything good is fattening,” said Isabel with a little sigh of resignation.

Jane smiled as she heard her. She knew that Isabel, at forty-six, did not really care much any longer if everything good was. But Muriel, at forty-one, still cared a great deal. She was constantly repressing a slightly Semitic tendency toward rounded curves. She was still awfully pretty, Jane thought. Her blue eye had never lost that trick of dancing. They were dancing now, as she responded lightly:

“The women of this country have done a great deal for Herbert Hoover. I think the least he can do for them is to offer a few reducing food substitutes.”

Isabel did not join in the laugh that went round the table. Jane knew that Isabel seriously deplored Muriel’s tendency to be frivolous about the war. Jack had been nine months in training now at Camp Brant in Rockford. Albert was there, too, of course. The boys had left Harvard together as soon as war was declared and had joined the first R.O.T.C. at Fort Sheridan. They would undoubtedly be shipped to France before the summer was over.

Isabel and Robin took the war very seriously. They were terribly worried about Jack. As far as they were concerned, it was just Jack’s war. Though he was still safely detailed to shoot machine guns over an Illinois prairie, Jane knew that Isabel was always thinking of him lying dead or wounded on a French battlefield. Every bandage she was rolling that morning in the big bare room on top of the Chicago skyscraper was turned out with a sense of personal service for her son.

Muriel was worried about Albert, too, of course. But she took a vicarious pride in his military exploits. She loved to have him gracing her Chicago drawing-room on his brief leaves from Camp Brant, looking decorative and dedicated and dapper in his second Lieutenant’s uniform. Albert Lancaster was a very beautiful young man and he was very fond of his mother. In the presence of Muriel’s other beautiful young men he always flirted with her, very flatteringly. Jane had sometimes felt that Muriel was just a little in love with him. She had said as much one day to Isabel at their mother’s luncheon-table.

“Now, Jane,” Isabel had responded airily, “don’t suggest that Muriel is going to add incest to her list of crimes!”

Mrs. Ward had said they should not talk like that. With Bert in the helpless condition he was, it was very natural for Muriel to centre her affections on her only son.

“If she only did!” had been Isabel’s telling comment.

Muriel had been very capable about the war, however, in spite of her frivolity. She had organized the Red Cross circle on top of the Chicago skyscraper. She had ordered the supplies and enrolled the workers and persuaded the owner of the skyscraper to give them the room rent free. She was a member of the countless Food Administration and National Council of Defence committees.

Nevertheless, Isabel deplored her frivolity. Muriel did not care. She just went on being frivolous. At the moment she was making airy little jokes about the sunny side of being a famine victim.

Jane soon ceased to listen. From her seat near the window she could look out over the roofs of the smaller office buildings toward the east, past the slender silhouette of the Montgomery Ward Tower, across the desert wastes of Grant Park, to the Illinois Central switchyards, where the miniature engines, dwarfed by distance, pulled their toy trains and belched their black smoke and puffed their white steam up into the serene face of the May sky. Beyond them stretched the sparkling blue plane that was the lake.

A lovely day, reflected Jane, idly. A lovely day, with a bright spring sun and a stiff east breeze to sweep the city clean. Her hands still busy mechanically folding her gauze sponges, she gazed up, blinking a little, at the golden orb that shone dazzlingly down on the city roofs above the gilded Diana that topped the Tower. What had that sun seen, she was thinking, since it had last sunk behind the murk of the stockyards, since she herself, staring from that same window, had watched its dying rays paint the Montgomery Ward Diana with rosy fire? The words of the Stevenson nursery rhyme she had so often repeated to the children, when they were little, came into her mind.

“The sun is not abed when I
At night upon my pillow lie,
But round the earth his way he takes
And morning after morning makes.”

One morning here on the Chicago lake front. A few hours earlier a very different one on the battlefields of France. The battlefields that would so soon swallow up Isabel’s Jack and Muriel’s Albert. But the battlefields that still, in May, 1918, almost four years after Jimmy’s death, achieved for Jane their major significance as Jimmy’s last resting-place.

Curious that Jimmy’s death had never made her realize the war. It had remained for her the supremely irrelevant accident that had killed him. An act of God, like a casual stroke of lightning. Or perhaps an act of man, like the blow of a death-dealing taxi, turning too quickly on a policeman’s whistle, to crush an absentminded pedestrian under its indifferent wheels.

Jimmy had not died for Germany, in spite of his Prussian helmet. He had not died for her, in spite of his love. He had died⁠—for fun, perhaps, as he had lived. Died true to his creed embraced in night school, in a supreme desire “to be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital forces unite in their purest energy.” Jimmy had died for Pater, as much as for anything! Strange end for a hedonist.

You grew accustomed to pain, thought Jane. You really did. Even to pain like hers over Jimmy, that was so sharp, so constant, so distinctly localized that she almost felt that it had an organic focus in her heart. You grew wise and philosophical about it. You generalized. You struggled for resignation.

In her struggles for resignation, Jane knew that she was sometimes guilty of the great injustice to Jimmy of wondering if it weren’t all better so. Better so, she tried to think she meant, because of Agnes and little Agnes, who were living on the proceeds of Agnes’s third play so much more comfortably with Jimmy’s memory than they could ever have lived in his restless, unhappy presence. Jane tried to think she meant that, but really she knew she was thinking only of herself and of the intolerable problems a future, with or without a living Jimmy, had propounded.

For death had given her Jimmy. He had died loving her. He had died with that love unsullied and unspoiled. Would he have lived to love her always? Few men were capable of that. Would she have lived to see him grow indifferent, remote, concerned, perhaps, oh, vitally concerned! with some other woman? Now he was hers forever. The future held no fears. Time, changing relationships, distance, estrangement⁠—all these were powerless. She could dismiss that fearful question as to whether she had ever really, in her secret heart, wanted Jimmy to go back to Agnes. She could dismiss her vague forebodings on the world of women that waited for him if he didn’t. She could dismiss the thought of Stephen. You could love the dead without disloyalty to the living.

Nevertheless, it was an act of treachery to Jimmy’s memory to allow herself to think, even for a moment, that he was better dead. Jimmy⁠—dead. The thought was still incredible. She had never lost the illusion of his laughing, living presence. He was the constant companion of her reveries. He would be laughing now, if he could read her thoughts. Laughing at her involuntary sense of guilt. “Invincible innocent!” would be his ironical comment. You could not shock Jimmy. And he always mocked you when you shocked yourself. Jimmy would be the first to advance the consoling theory that he had made everything much easier for everyone by passing, so opportunely, out of the picture. He would have prided himself on the felicitous gesture. He would have admired his romantic role.

Yet Jimmy had not wanted to die. He had said as much, very definitely, in that last letter he had written her. Not that he hoped much from the future. But he had no fear of it. Jimmy accepted life on its face value. He lived for the moment.

Sudden death. At thirty-five. Before you knew the answer to any of life’s riddles. Perhaps you never knew that, though. Perhaps there was no answer. Perhaps all lives, at any age, ended like Jimmy’s on an unresolved chord. What difference did it make, anyway, once you were safely dead? It did not make any difference, if you had played the game and had done what you had to do and had never really regretted it.

But there was the pain at your heart that made you keep on thinking. Thinking, in spite of Stephen, whom you loved, and the children, whom you adored, and all the little practical things you had to do every day, like folding sponges for the Red Cross.

Why couldn’t she feel the war more keenly? With the maps still hung on the living-room wall and Stephen immersed in Liberty Loan campaigns, and Jack and Albert always about the house on their leaves from Camp Brant, and Cicily and Jenny and Isabel’s little Belle out every day in Red Cross uniforms, feeding hot dogs and coffee to the entrained doughboys at the canteens in the city switchyards?

They felt the war keenly enough⁠—Cicily and Jenny and little Belle. They were all eager to go to France with the boys from Camp Brant. Cicily wanted to drive an ambulance. Underage, thank Heaven! She and Stephen would not have to face that problem. Uncle Sam, a less yielding relation than two indulgent parents, could be relied upon to keep the girls at home. Yes, ignoble but consoling thought, with little Steve still only fourteen the war could not touch her immediate family.

Isabel was talking of Crisco, now. She was saying it could never take the place of butter.

Jane rose from her seat abruptly. She had promised to meet Cicily at Marshall Field’s at noon. They were going to look for a new evening gown. Jack and Albert were coming down for the next weekend. Cicily and Belle were planning a party.

II

“But you’re children,” said Stephen.

“Oh, Dad,” said Cicily, with a tolerant smile, “be your age!”

Jane looked from Stephen to her twinkling daughter. Stephen was sitting in his armchair in the Lakewood living-room. The Evening Post, which had fallen from his hands a moment before at Cicily’s astounding announcement, lay on the floor at his feet. He was gazing at Cicily with an expression of mingled incredulity and consternation.

Cicily, her hand thrust casually through Jack Bridges’s arm, was standing on the hearthrug. She looked very cool and a little amused and not at all disheartened. She looked, indeed, just as she always did, like a yellow dandelion, with her tempestuous bobbed head of golden excelsior. The severity of her khaki uniform with its Red Cross insignia enhanced her flower-like charm. It was the common clay from which the flower had sprung. She looked as fresh as a dandelion, and as indifferent and as irresponsible. Jack Bridges was in khaki, too, with the crossed rifles of the infantryman on his collar and the gold bar of the second Lieutenant on his shoulders. He had come down yesterday for that weekend’s leave from Camp Brant at Rockford. He had just learned that he was sailing for France in six weeks, with the Eighty-Sixth Division.

Jack did not look at all disheartened, either, but not quite as cool as Cicily, nor nearly as indifferent nor as much amused. He looked just like Robin, Jane thought, with his pleasant snub-nosed smile and his friendly pale blue eyes. He was glancing at Stephen a trifle apologetically, but with no lack of self-confidence.

“How could I not have seen this was coming?” thought Jane.

“We’re not children, Dad,” continued Cicily with a pleasant smile. “I was nineteen in February and Jack will be twenty-two in July. We’re both well out of the perambulator!”

“I know just how you feel, sir,” said Jack sympathetically, “and I dare say, in a way, you’re right. If it weren’t for the war, I don’t suppose we would be getting married. If it weren’t for the war I’d be going to Tech all next winter and Cicily would be buzzing about the tea-fights at home. Still, she’d soon be marrying someone else, you know. I’d never have had the nerve to ask a girl like Cicily to wait for me. If it weren’t for the war, I’d be just an also-ran!”

“Wasn’t fought in vain, was it, Jacky?” said Cicily, pinching his elbow.

He kissed her pink cheek, very coolly, under her parents’ startled eyes.

“I wouldn’t expect to keep Cicily waiting at the church very long, even in wartime,” said Jack⁠—Jane caught the note of humility behind his levity⁠—“so we thought⁠—”

“Jack!” said Cicily. “Don’t put it like that! We don’t think⁠—we know! We’re going to get married, Dad, on the last day of June and have a two weeks’ honeymoon before he sails for France.”

“Cicily,” said Jane, “you’re much too young. You haven’t had any experience. You can’t know your own mind. The war has been fearfully upsetting, I know, for your generation. But you’re still a child. Oh⁠—I know you’ve been home a year from Rosemary! But what sort of a year has it been? Just war work⁠—and Jack. Not even a proper début. He was here every evening last summer when he was at Fort Sheridan in the R.O.T.C. And since he went to Rockford you’ve been getting letters and motoring up to see him and planning to get him down here on leave! You’ve never looked at another man⁠—” Why hadn’t she seen this was coming? It was all so terribly clear in retrospect.

“You can’t get married,” said Stephen firmly, “before Jack goes to France.”

“You married Mumsy,” said Cicily sweetly, “before you went to Cuba.”

“That was very different,” said Jane.

“Why was it different?” said Cicily.

“Because your father was twenty-nine years old,” said Jane decidedly, “and I was twenty-one and I’d been home from college for two years and I’d known lots of men and⁠—”

“Well, I bet if you’d wanted to marry the first man you looked at you’d have done it!” said Cicily.

A sudden flood of memories swept over Jane. Her father’s library on Pine Street. Her mother, shrill and effective. Her father, kind and competent. Herself and André, two shaken, irresolute children, standing mute before them, a world of young emotion lying shattered at their feet. But this generation was different. No trace even of anxiety in Cicily’s amused smile.

“Anyway, I’m going to. We’re not asking you, Mumsy, we’re telling you! It’s all settled. Belle’s talking to Aunt Isabel this minute⁠—”

“Belle?” questioned Jane.

“Belle and Albert,” said Cicily. “Albert Lancaster. He’s told his mother. We’re going to have a double wedding, here in the garden, the last day of June.”

“A double wedding!” cried Jane and Stephen at once.

“Yes,” said Cicily calmly. “Do you think the roses will be out? We’ve planned for everything. Why, Jenny’s known about it for two weeks. She’s going to be bridesmaid for both of us. Just Jenny⁠—but lots of ushers, with crossed swords, you know. Belle and I are going to cut the cakes with Albert’s and Jack’s sabres.”

“Cicily,” said Jane, “this is perfectly preposterous! Aunt Isabel will never listen to you! Why, Belle’s only eighteen! Albert’s not yet twenty.”

“He will be in August,” said Cicily. “I don’t see why you carry on about it like this. I don’t see why you don’t think it’s all very sweet and touching. Belle’s been my best friend all my life and now I’m marrying her brother and she’s marrying the son of one of your best friends and⁠—”

“In the first place,” said Stephen, “you’re all first cousins.”

“Albert isn’t anybody’s first cousin,” said Cicily pertly. “So that lets Belle out. And as for Jack and me⁠—that’s all right. We looked it all up in Havelock Ellis. There’s no danger in consanguinity if there isn’t an hereditary taint in the family. We’ve been awfully eugenic, Mumsy! We’ve simply scoured the connection for an hereditary taint! And we haven’t found a thing but Uncle Robin’s shortsightedness. Of course I’d hate to have a shortsighted baby⁠—but maybe I wouldn’t as it’s not in the common line. Anyway, there’s no insanity, nor epilepsy, nor cancer, nor T.B., nor venereal disease⁠—”

“Cicily,” said Stephen a little hastily, “you don’t know what you’re talking about⁠—”

Cicily dropped Jack’s arm and sank down on the arm of her father’s chair. She kissed the bald spot on top of his head very tenderly.

“Dad, dear,” she said very sweetly, “perhaps we don’t. Perhaps you didn’t know just what you were talking about when you wanted to marry Mumsy. But still you did it. You did it and you went to war and it all came out all right. Can’t you remember how you felt when you wanted to marry Mumsy?”

Across the dandelion head Stephen’s eyes met Jane’s.

“What are we going to do with them, Jane?” he said, with a smile that was half a sigh.

“Nothing,” said Jane very practically, “at the moment. We’ll talk it over with Isabel and Robin. And Muriel, of course. I don’t suppose Bert understands much, any more, of what goes on around him, but Muriel’s always decided⁠—”

Cicily jumped to her feet and threw her arms around Jane’s neck.

“That’s a good Mumsy!” she cried. Then, turning to Jack, “Come out in the garden, old thing! The apple tree’s still in bloom!” She seized his hand and turned toward the terrace doors.

“Cicily,” said Jane doubtfully, “nothing is settled. I don’t quite like⁠—”

Cicily burst into indulgent laughter.

“What do you think I am, Mumsy?” she inquired cheerfully “Sweet nineteen and never been kissed? Oh, you are precious⁠—both of you!” She tossed a kiss to her parents on the hearthrug and dragged Jack from the room. Jane watched their slim, young, khaki-clad figures romp down the lawn and disappear behind the clump of evergreens.

“Stephen,” said Jane, “it’s a very different generation. But what are we going to do?”

“I’m going to remember,” said Stephen, rising from his chair, “how I felt when I wanted to marry Mumsy!” He took her hand in his. Dear old Stephen! His eyes were just a little moist behind his bone-rimmed spectacles. Jane kissed him very tenderly.

“Just the same,” said Jane, “I wasn’t a bit like Cicily.”

“You were just as sweet,” said Stephen, “and nearly as young.”

“But I was different,” said Jane. “I know I was different.”

She sighed a little as she slipped from Stephen’s embrace.

“Well⁠—we’ll see what Isabel has to say,” she said.

III

“I don’t see why,” said Isabel, “you object to Cicily’s marrying Jack. Poor child, he’s going to war next month. He may be killed⁠—” Her lip was trembling.

“Well,” said Muriel, “I don’t see why you object to Belle’s marrying Albert. He’s going to war next month and he may be killed.” Muriel’s lip was not trembling. Her voice was as logical as her statement.

“Belle’s younger,” said Isabel.

“Only a year,” said Jane.

“And Belle’s different,” said Isabel. “Cicily’s always equal to any situation. She’s so much more dominating. Cicily’s one of the people you know will always come out on top. And Jack adores her. He’s always adored her.”

“Well, Albert’s one of the people you know will always come out on top,” said Muriel. “I’m sure he’s very dominating. And he’s very much in love with Belle. I can’t see why they shouldn’t be very happy.”

“Of course,” said Isabel, producing her handkerchief, “neither of them may ever come home from France.”

“But again they may,” said Jane a trifle cynically. “If they don’t, of course, I suppose a war marriage would not really hurt anyone. But if they do, they’ll have to live with each other for another fifty years or so.”

“It’s very easy to see,” said Isabel reproachfully, from the depths of the handkerchief, “that you haven’t given a son to the nation.”

Jane felt a little ashamed of her cynical utterance. It was all wrong, however, to confuse the practical issues with sentimentality. They had been discussing the problem for hours in the Lakewood living-room. Robin and Isabel and Muriel had come out for dinner in order to discuss it, and now it was half-past ten and they were no nearer a solution than they had been at seven. Robin and Stephen had said very little all evening. Jane and Muriel and Isabel had said a great deal. But from the very beginning of the argument, Jane had been conscious of a fundamental difference between her point of view and that of the mothers of the prospective bridegrooms. Isabel and Muriel were staunchly united in wishing their sons to have everything⁠—anything⁠—before they went to the front.

“Those young lives,” said Isabel, now frankly sobbing, “may end in another two months. We owe those boys all the fulfilment we can give them.”

Of course, however, she did not want Belle to marry Albert Lancaster. Logic had never been Isabel’s strong point. She wanted Cicily to marry Jack and Belle to consent to an engagement. Albert would not be twenty until the first of August. And twenty was a preposterous age for a husband. Jane could easily understand, however, if Isabel couldn’t, why pretty little pink-and-white Belle wanted to marry him.

Albert Lancaster was a very alluring young person. He seemed quite grown up. He seemed older than Jack, in fact, who was two years his senior. He had inherited his father’s easy social charm and combined it with his mother’s dark beauty. Not that Albert really looked like Muriel. He looked like her family, however, though not at all like a Jew. Rather like some young Greek of the Golden Age, with his pale, olive-coloured face, his dark eyes and hair, his aquiline nose, his short supercilious Greek lip, and his flat, low Greek brow⁠—a discus-thrower, perhaps, or runner⁠—no, thought Jane, more like a youthful Bacchus. You felt that vine leaves would adorn his hair. They sometimes did, of course. That was probably one of the things that was troubling Isabel. Naturally she could not go into that in front of Muriel. Oh, yes⁠—Jane could quite understand why Belle wanted to marry him.

Now Jack, on the other hand. Jack who looked just like Robin⁠—Jack with his snub nose and pleasant friendly twinkle⁠—Jack who had played with Cicily from her cradle⁠—why did Cicily want to marry him? He was a sweet boy, of course. Clever and kindly and considerate. A much safer son-in-law than Albert Lancaster, with his looks and his inheritance and his vine leaves! But still⁠—Jane really could not understand how Cicily could want to marry him.

“I don’t see what either of you object to in either marriage,” said Muriel. “We’re all old friends. We’ve known all four children from the day of their birth. There’s plenty of money. Cicily and Belle are charming girls and best friends. The boys have both been to Harvard and are going to war and are very attractive young men. My goodness! When you think what some people’s children marry! I can’t see why it’s not all very suitable.”

“But Muriel, they’re children,” put in Stephen from the depths of his armchair.

“Kids,” said Robin solemnly, from the corner of the sofa.

“I don’t care,” said Muriel. “I was only just twenty when I married, myself. And I’ve often thought,” she continued superbly, “that life would have been quite a little easier for me if Bert hadn’t been nineteen years older than I. I believe in early marriages. I think they keep a boy straight all those important years when his character is forming. And a girl has her babies early and gets through with all that sort of thing when she’s still young enough to enjoy herself⁠—”

“But that’s just what’s dangerous about them!” wailed Isabel. Jane knew she had it on the tip of her tongue to say, “Look at you, Muriel!” Time was when she would have said it. Isabel was growing discreet with age.

“I think you’re very cynical,” said Muriel. “I think it would be lovely⁠—a double wedding, Jane, in your beautiful garden⁠—”

“In any case,” said Isabel, “I think Belle should be married from her father’s house. It’s very sweet of you, Jane, to offer⁠—”

“I haven’t offered!” cried Jane. “I haven’t done anything all evening but say we shouldn’t let them. The boys will be sailing in six weeks⁠—” She saw, instantly, that she had not helped her cause at all. Isabel again buried her face in her handkerchief. Muriel returned to the charge.

“If little Steve were twenty, instead of fourteen, Jane, you wouldn’t be so unfeeling!”

That was quite true, reflected Jane. If little Steve were the age to make suitable cannon fodder, she would want him to have everything, everything life had to give, before he went to France.

“I suppose,” said Isabel, wiping her eyes, “I suppose we’ll have to give in.”

“Of course we will,” said Muriel briskly. Then added piously, “My greatest regret is that dear Bert isn’t able to share in Albert’s happiness.”

“How is he now, Muriel?” asked Isabel curiously. For a moment the war weddings were forgotten.

“Oh⁠—quite helpless,” said Muriel. “In bed, of course. He can’t talk and I don’t know how much he does understand. He has two very good nurses, however. Such pretty girls. I hope Bert can realize how pretty they are⁠—”

“But Isabel,” said Jane, returning to more important issues, “you don’t mean you think we’ve lost the fight? You don’t mean you think we ought to let them?”

“How can we help it?” said Isabel. “But about the double wedding⁠—”

“Oh, I think that would be lovely!” said Muriel again. “Your apartment is so small, Isabel, and June’s so pretty in the country. If Jane will take it off your hands⁠—”

“I won’t take it off her hands,” said Jane. “Anyway, I think we oughtn’t to decide until we’ve talked it all over with Papa.”

“Oh⁠—Papa!” said Isabel doubtfully. “You know how Papa is, Jane. He’s really quite⁠—difficult, sometimes. The war has aged him awfully.”

“I don’t think he’s difficult,” said Jane. “I think he’s very wise. And I think we ought to talk with Mrs. Lester.”

“Well, Jane,” said Muriel, “you know Mother’s eighty. Of course she’s wonderful and she adores Albert, but I often think she’s a little out of sympathy with the modern generation. Rather critical, I mean.”

“Mamma’s terribly critical,” said Isabel. “Sometimes I think she just hates her grandchildren.”

“She doesn’t understand them,” said Jane. “But she loves them. And Papa adores them. He’s always been so proud of Jack, Isabel⁠—with the name and all.”

“Then he ought to want to see him happy,” said Isabel. She rose with a sigh as she spoke. “Come on, Muriel, we must be getting back to town.”

“What do you think, Robin?” asked Jane. “You haven’t said a word all evening.”

“I think it’s fierce,” said Robin solemnly. “Like life.”

“But what can we do?” persisted Jane.

“Nothing, probably,” said Robin. “Again like life.”

Jane slipped her arm through Stephen’s. They walked slowly with their guests to the front door.

“Well⁠—I’ll talk to Belle again,” said Isabel. “Perhaps she’ll listen to reason. And I’ll write to Jack at Rockford before I go to bed tonight.”

“I’m going to wire Albert,” said Muriel. “A very hopeful wire. I think he needs cheering.”

“I’ll take it up with Cicily,” said Jane. “And Stephen wants to talk to her. But I know it won’t do a bit of good.”

“Good night,” said Isabel, from the depths of the motor. “Button up your coat, Robin. It’s a cold evening for June.”

“Good night,” said Jane. The motor crunched slowly around the gravel curve of the driveway. Jane turned to Stephen. “Stephen,” she said, “what will we do?”

“Let nature take its course, I guess,” said Stephen grimly. “You didn’t get much help from Isabel.”

“Wasn’t Muriel terrible?” said Jane. “Did you hear what she said about Bert’s trained nurses?”

“Yes,” said Stephen, turning back to the front door.

“I’m glad it’s not Albert,” said Jane solemnly, as she entered the hall. “I’m awfully sorry for Isabel. I couldn’t bear it, Stephen, really, I couldn’t bear it, if Cicily were going to marry Bert Lancaster’s son.”

“It’s pretty rough all right,” said Stephen. “I’m sorry for Robin.”

“He’s always adored Belle,” said Jane.

“I’ve always adored Cicily,” said Stephen.

“I know,” said Jane. “But we like Jack.”

“He’s a nice kid,” said Stephen. “But as a husband for Cicily⁠—”

“I know,” said Jane. They stood for a moment, gazing rather helplessly into each other’s eyes.

“Well,” said Stephen, turning to bolt the front door, “we’d better go up to bed. I’ll turn out the lights.”

He went back into the living-room. Jane started up the stairs. She was still overcome with a sense of inadequacy for not having foreseen this calamity. But who could have foreseen it? It was perfectly preposterous. What was the matter with the rising generation? What was the matter with her own? She thought again of herself and André. Of her father and mother. She felt she sympathized with them, as never before. But with Cicily, too, when she thought of André. First love⁠—was there not a bloom about it that never came again? What would her life have been if she had married André? If she had married André would he seem now like Stephen? If she had married André she would never have loved Jimmy. She would never have known Jimmy. Jimmy would be alive now, married to Agnes, living in New York. Jane could not imagine her life without her love for Jimmy. Without her marriage to Stephen, for that matter. Yet when she thought of André and of her young self as she had been that last winter before she went to Bryn Mawr⁠—

Your inner life⁠—how confusing it all was! A chaos of conflicting loyalties! You would like to think, of course, that you were the sort of woman who was capable of experiencing, once and forever, a central, dominating passion. But as far as the essential sense of emotional intimacy went, she might as well be André’s wife, or Jimmy’s, that moment, as Stephen’s. Why had things turned out as they had? Predestination was probably the answer. Cause and effect. One thing leading to another. Free will was only a delusion. Why not turn fatalist, pure and simple, and not worry any longer? Not care.

But you had to care about your children. Worry about them, too. You had to and you ought to. When you thought of them all theories of predestination were completely shattered.

Jane turned to smile at Stephen, as he entered the blue bedroom. He looked terribly tired and quite a little discouraged, but he gave her an answering smile.

IV

“The older I grow, Papa,” said Jane very seriously, “the more I admire your technique as a parent.”

“That’s very flattering of you, kid,” said Mr. Ward with a twinkle.

“Why, Isabel and I never gave you and Mamma any trouble,” Jane went on, still very seriously.

“Oh, I don’t know about that, kid,” interrupted Mr. Ward. “You went to Bryn Mawr over your mother’s dead body⁠—”

“Oh⁠—Bryn Mawr!” threw in Jane contemptuously.

“It seemed very important at the time,” said Mr. Ward. “She thought it would damn you to eternal spinsterhood. And before that you had embarked at the age of seventeen on a clandestine engagement⁠—”

“It wasn’t clandestine!” protested Jane. “We told you right away!”

“Yes, you did,” admitted Mr. Ward, with his indulgent twinkle. “You were very good children. Still⁠—it was a bit disquieting⁠—”

They were sitting side by side on the old brown velvet sofa in the Pine Street library. The brilliant June sunshine was pouring in the west window, striking the glass bookcase doors and making them look a little dusty, just as it always had from time immemorial. The firelight was dancing on the shiny surfaces of polished walnut, here and there in the darker corners, and shining on the big brass humidor on the desk that held Mr. Ward’s cigars. Mr. Ward always had a fire, now, even in summer. The room was hotter than it used to be and the big branching rubber tree in the west window was gone. Otherwise everything about the Pine Street library was completely unchanged.

Everything, that is, but Mr. Ward himself. Jane, looking tenderly across the sofa at her father, was suddenly conscious of how old and frail he seemed. Isabel was right. The war had aged him. Or perhaps it was his retirement from business that had taken place two years before. Mr. Ward lived, now, in his little brown library. When Jane dropped in, she always found him there, settled comfortably in his leather armchair, reading biographies, or poring over the war news, or perhaps just smoking, reflectively, a solitary cigar.

The room was really very warm. Jane looked at the smouldering fire. Her glance, wandering casually over the familiar mantelshelf, met the Bard of Avon’s wise mahogany eye. The Bard of Avon always made her think of her wedding ceremony.

“Papa,” said Jane, “how can you tell, how can you possibly tell, just whom your children ought to marry?”

“You can’t,” said Mr. Ward promptly. “But you can make a pretty good guess at whom they ought not to.”

“But how can you stop them?” said Jane.

“I don’t know,” said Mr. Ward very seriously after a little pause.

“You stopped me,” said Jane. “You stopped me because you made me feel, somehow or other, though I didn’t agree with you, that you were inevitably right. Right, because you were my father. That’s what’s gone out of the family relationship since I was seventeen, Papa. Children don’t think you are right any longer, just because you are a parent.”

“Well, you’re not,” said Mr. Ward promptly. “That’s probably a step in the right direction, kid. What’s known as progress.”

“Well, it makes life terribly difficult for parents,” sighed Jane. “And I can’t help thinking it may make life terribly difficult for children.”

“Life’s terribly difficult at times for everyone,” said Mr. Ward. “A little thing like filial obedience doesn’t solve all the problems.”

“When I think of the ex cathedra pronouncements that Mamma used to make!” cried Jane. “Why, I never thought of questioning them!”

“And were they always right?” asked Mr. Ward.

“They were usually wrong,” said Jane. “But at least they stopped discussion and they decided the issue. Parents used to be just like umpires. All they had to do was to make a decision and stick to it!”

“It wasn’t an ideal system,” was Mr. Ward’s comment.

“You didn’t question it when it was in fashion,” retorted Jane. “You didn’t have the slightest hesitation in forbidding me to marry André. But we loved each other. We truly did, Papa. You never really took that into consideration. I might have been very happy as André’s wife.”

Mr. Ward’s glance was just a little intent as he contemplated his younger daughter.

“You’ve been very happy as Stephen’s wife, kid,” he said gently.

“Yes,” said Jane uncertainly. Words were too crude to define the subtleties of emotion. “Yes, I’ve been happy. But my marrying him was awfully irrelevant.” Suddenly that statement seemed terribly disloyal to Stephen. “You know, Papa,” she said in extenuation, “a war changed everything in my life.”

There was a pause, for a moment, in the sunlit room. Jane did not look at her father, but she knew, without looking, from his sudden, breathless silence that he had suffered a slight sense of shock. She realized then that her words were open to misinterpretation. She glanced quickly up at him. He was shocked. He looked at her a moment a little uncertainly. Then, “Which war, Jane?” he asked steadily.

She was awfully glad that he had put the direct question. In answering it she could answer all the unspoken questions that had been worrying him for the last four years.

“The Spanish one,” she said gravely. “The other didn’t⁠—didn’t really affect my action. I mean⁠—I mean it was all settled before⁠—” Her voice was failing her. She could not bear to mention Jimmy’s name.

“I’m glad to hear it, kid,” said her father gently.

He understood. She would not have to mention it. Jane drew a long breath and felt the emotional tension of the moment snap as she did so. She could return now to the problems of the younger generation.

“All I mean is,” she went on brightly, “you can’t really tell, can you, what will bring your children happiness? Perhaps they ought to decide for themselves⁠—”

As she spoke, Mrs. Ward opened the library door. Isabel followed her into the room. They had been talking together in Mrs. Ward’s bedroom.

“Well, I hope you’ve convinced Jane that she must put her foot down,” said Mrs. Ward briskly. Her hand was on the bell-rope to summon Minnie to bring in the tea.

“Mamma, you don’t know what it’s like to handle Belle and Cicily,” said Isabel wearily.

“I handled you and Jane!” retorted Mrs. Ward. “And very foolish you often were! If it hadn’t been for your father and me⁠—”

Jane and her father burst simultaneously into irreverent laughter. Mrs. Ward looked quite offended.

“You don’t make it any easier, John, to control the grandchildren,” she said severely.

“I’ve retired,” said Mr. Ward, when he had subdued his laughter. “From my family as from my business. At seventy-two I’m glad to be a spectator. I hand the controls over to Jane.”

V

“Jenny’s really so homely,” said Cicily frankly, “that I think we ought to feature it.”

“Feature it?” questioned Flora.

“Yes,” said Cicily, “make her look quaint, you know; as if she were meant to be funny.”

“The first duty of a bridesmaid, in any case,” said Muriel, “is to look less pretty than the bride.”

“No one could help looking less pretty than these brides,” said Flora, with a glance from Belle to Cicily.

Isabel looked pleased. Jane felt herself smiling. Jenny did not seem at all insulted by her sister’s candour.

They were all sitting in Flora’s hat shop. They had just decided on the model for the wedding veils and were now discussing the bridesmaid’s hat.

Flora’s hat shop was doing a booming business. It had been just about to die of inanition three years ago when the Belgian babies came along and gave it a new lease of life. Flora had been planning to close it when the idea came to her to change it into a war charity. “Aux Armes des Alliés,” she had rechristened it, and pasted French war posters all over the cubistic designs of the coach-house. She had charged fantastic prices and had really made a great deal of money. She had photographs of all the Belgian babies she supported, on the walls of the fitting-rooms. In spite of the submarines she made semiannual trips to Paris for the hats and the photographs. She was a member of several French relief committees and so managed to get a passport. When Mr. Furness died two years before, she had given large sums to the funds for war orphans. She had made a great many French friends and was talking, now, of going to live in Paris when the war was over⁠—if it ever was. She would like a little apartment out near Passy. But now she was discussing the bridesmaid’s hat.

“I think,” she said critically, backing away from Jenny and looking fixedly at her plain little face and straight, blonde, bobbed hair⁠—“I think⁠—a poke bonnet. Yes, Jane! A pink poke bonnet⁠—very pale. You’re right, Cicily, she must be quaint! A hooped skirt, Isabel, a pink hooped skirt, with little garlands around it and a sweet, tight little bodice. Pale pink taffeta, don’t you think, Muriel? And a little 1860 bouquet with ribbon streamers and a white lace frill. Oh, Jenny, my dear, you’ll be charming! We’ll emphasize your angles. You’ll look like a cross-stitched design on a sampler! How old are you?”

“Sixteen,” said Jenny meekly.

“You don’t look it,” said Flora. “Do you think, Jane, that pantalettes would be going too far?”

Jane thought they would.

“I suppose you’re right,” said Flora, “though I always think a wedding should be primarily a pageant. This one will be lovely. The hot weather will bring out all the roses. What are you wearing, Jane?”

“What does the mother of the bride always wear?” said Jane ironically. “Beige chiffon, of course. I didn’t think I had any choice.”

“And Isabel, too?” said Flora critically.

“Well, no. Now that I think of it, Isabel is a mother of a bride and she’s wearing grey.”

“Muriel’s dress is lovely,” said Flora. “I’m making her hat. Mauve. Let me make yours, Jane. For Heaven’s sake, get a good one, for once!”

“All right,” said Jane indifferently. “I’d be glad not to have to bother about it.”

“We’ve got to go,” said Cicily. “We’re going down to Crichton’s with Aunt Isabel to pick out my tea-set.”

“I chose Belle’s yesterday,” said Muriel as she rose.

“It’s lovely,” said Isabel. “It seems just a moment ago that you were choosing your own.”

“I know,” said Muriel. “And Flora and Jane were trying on those blue bridesmaids’ dresses. They were pretty.”

Jane thought of Flora’s blue bridesmaid’s dress lying crumpled on her bedroom chair the morning after her mother’s death. She thought of herself hanging it up in Flora’s closet, while Flora dressed in the little black frock that Mrs. Lester had brought over. She wondered if Flora were thinking of it, too. But Flora’s face was very tranquil.

“Fittings for all of you, Wednesday morning,” she said. “I’ll have a beige model here, Jane, for you to look at.”

They all went out of the brownstone stable and stood for a moment in the old carriage court. The Furnesses’ back yard looked just as it always had. Flora had the playhouse painted every year. But the houses across Rush Street had all been rented to business firms. Dressmakers and milliners and decorators had signs over every door. The clean frilled lace curtains and evenly drawn shades in Flora’s Victorian mansion seemed strangely out of place in their commercial environment. They recalled a vanished era. Flora’s lace curtains looked just like her mother’s⁠—just as clean and just as frilly and just as Victorian. She kept the old place up beautifully. She even kept the orange tree blooming in the conservatory. But if she were going to live in Paris⁠—

Jane sighed. It did not seem to her just a moment ago that she had tried on Muriel’s blue bridesmaid’s dress.

VI

Jane stood at Isabel’s side in the front row of the little congregation that had gathered in the rose garden. On her other hand, pressed close against the tightly drawn white satin ribbon, stood little Steve. Little Steve, at fourteen, was taller than his mother and looked exactly like his father. He was wearing his first long white flannel trousers, and Jane knew that he considered the occasion of the double wedding mainly important as his début into man’s estate. Behind Jane stood Mr. and Mrs. Ward and Alden Carver, the only representative of the Carver family who had come West for the wedding. Mr. and Mrs. Carver no longer cared to undertake transcontinental travel. They were both over seventy. Silly had stayed at Gull Rocks to look after them.

Across the grassy aisle, Muriel, radiant under the new mauve hat, rested one graceful mauve arm on the back of Mrs. Lester’s wheelchair. Rosalie and Edith, once more imported from Cleveland for a family festival, supported their mother on the other side. Mrs. Lester, herself, colossal in shiny black taffeta, blinked like a wrinkled sibyl in the brilliant June sunshine. There was something a little sinister about her massive, motionless figure. Her aged face, under her mantilla cap of black lace, looked like a mask of tan wax. The wrinkles, the salient nose, the cascade of double chins might have been a clever sculptor’s effigy of old age. Only the eyelids moved. Her bright dark eyes glittered behind them with a gleam of helpless intelligence that seemed imprisoned in the motionless mask. Mrs. Lester had deplored these marriages.

Behind the two families the garden was filled with guests. The orchestra beyond the clump of evergreens had just slipped from the riotous strains of “Tipperary” into the first sentimental notes of the Barcarolle from the Tales of Hoffmann. Muriel had requested it. It had been played at her wedding. Jane and Isabel had thought that the less this wedding was like Muriel’s the better. Nevertheless, they had conceded the Barcarolle.

Jane stood motionless, her eyes on the arch of Dorothy Perkins roses under which the clergyman would soon appear. It was outlined against the pure blue of the June sky. High overhead one white cloud floated, a flying dome of alabaster, above the improvised altar. The clergyman was in ambush, behind the hedge with Jack and Albert and their attendant groomsmen, waiting for the bridal party to appear at the other end of the garden. Jane wondered why they did not come. She had kissed Cicily and arranged her train, just before walking up the aisle. She wished she could lean out, like Steve, over the white satin ribbons, and see whether anything had gone wrong.

As she was wondering, the orchestra, in response to some hidden signal, swelled into Lohengrin. The clergyman, with the promptness of a marionette, swung out in white vestments under the arch of pink bloom. The four young men in khaki followed him. Jane heard Isabel catch her breath sharply at the sight of Jack. She saw Albert smile in self-conscious reassurance at Muriel across the aisle. Jack was staring straight down the grassy path, waiting for his first glimpse of Cicily. The first pair of khaki-clad ushers passed slowly by Jane. Then the second. Then the third. Then Jenny, successfully quaint, in her ridiculous hoopskirt. Her pale, plain little face was barely visible in the depths of Flora’s poke bonnet. What Jane could see of it looked intensely serious. Her hands shook a little as they gripped the 1860 bouquet. Her knuckles were white. She turned to face the congregation just as Belle passed by, a cloud of floating tulle, on Robin’s arm. Albert stepped out to meet her. Then Jane saw Cicily, another cloud, her head held high, her feet spurning the earth, her hand on Stephen’s elbow. She must have smiled at Jack. His funny snub-nosed face reflected the radiance of that smile. The Lohengrin faded away into silence. The clergyman took up the ritual.

“Dearly beloved brethren, we are met together in the sight of God and this company⁠—”

In the sight of God. Was God really present, thought Jane, this sunny June afternoon, looking at them all, in her familiar Lakewood garden? Did God have time to take in all the weddings, or did He pick and choose? Did He sometimes withhold His blessing? Could God be summoned peremptorily to any altar? Did He never have another engagement? Was He not too busy this afternoon, for instance, on the battlefields of France, to look in on this little ceremony in a Lakewood garden? The clergyman’s voice droned on.

“⁠—the holy estate of matrimony, which is an honorable estate, instituted of God in the time of man’s innocence⁠—”

In the time of man’s innocence. That was, of course, the time for weddings. Jane thought fleetingly of André. Of herself in his arms. These four children were innocent enough. Too innocent. That was the difficulty. Too innocent to enter into that holy estate reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly, and in the fear of God. The modern generation was neither reverent, discreet, advised, nor sober. They were in fear of nothing. Certainly not of God. Certainly not of their parents. Robin and Stephen, standing side by side in that khaki-clad group of striplings, a little bald, a little grey, a little stooped, a little paunchy in their formal black broadcloth cutaways, waiting to give, reluctantly, these women to be married to these men, were the only reverent, discreet, advised, and sober individuals before that improvised altar. They were in fear of God. They were in fear of everything⁠—for their children. But fear was foolish. Fear was, perhaps, hysterical. They were all good children. Isabel’s sobs recalled Jane’s attention to the ritual of betrothal.

“I, Cicily, take thee, John Ward, for my wedded husband⁠—”

John Ward. Her father’s namesake. Isabel’s first baby was marrying her own. Isabel’s baby⁠—only yesterday an armful of afghans⁠—now a soldier in khaki, suitable cannon fodder, was marrying Cicily with her head like a dandelion. Marrying Cicily not twenty feet away from the site of the old sandpile where they had built their sand castles⁠—

“I, Albert, take thee, Isabel, for my wedded wife⁠—”

Albert Lancaster⁠—the second Albert Lancaster⁠—Muriel’s beautiful little boy who had grown up to look like a youthful Bacchus and to act like one, too, sometimes⁠—Cicily’s laughing story of his behavior at the bachelors’ dinner at the University Club the night before had been really outrageous⁠—Albert Lancaster, who was his father’s son⁠—but only nineteen and heart-breakingly innocent in spite of the vine leaves⁠—was marrying Belle⁠—little Belle, with a face like an apple blossom.

When had she first thought that Belle looked like an apple blossom? Four years ago, at the foot of the stairs in the Lakewood hall, with Jimmy framed in the portieres of the living-room door. Jimmy, watching her kiss little Belle. Jimmy, whose mocking, informal ghost had curiously no place at this ceremony in the Lakewood garden. It paled before Stephen’s substantial presence. Stephen, who adored Cicily and had made the sandpile and had shared so consolingly in the worry and hurry and foreboding of the last hectic weeks. Weeks in which the sustaining sense of Jimmy’s cheerful companionship had faded ever so imperceptibly, but irrevocably, out of the foreground of Jane’s reveries. Lost in the bustle of preparation, the preoccupation of misgiving, Jane, for the first time since Jimmy’s death in France, had had no time for Jimmy.

“If I had gone away with him,” she reflected, “if I had married him, I suppose we should both be here today, watching Stephen give away Cicily. I should be feeling about Stephen just as I do now”⁠—for after all there was only one way to feel about Stephen, standing helplessly by Cicily’s side before that improvised altar⁠—“and feeling about Jimmy the way I did then⁠—”

A faint shiver of repulsion passed over Jane. She felt herself suddenly submerged in an ignoble sense of relief at the realization of domestic decencies forever maintained, of vulgar complexities forever avoided. Were 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.