III
“Muriel,” said Isabel, “looked amazingly young.”
“She certainly did,” said Jane.
“And wasn’t she wonderful with Pearl and Gertie?”
“My heart rather warmed to Gertie,” said Jane. “She was crying all through the ceremony.”
“It’s enough to make anybody cry,” said Isabel, “to see a sixty-year-old father making a fool of himself.”
They were sitting on the old brown sofa in the Pine Street library. An hour before they had seen Muriel depart in a shower of rice for her trip around the world with Ed Brown. The rice had been Albert’s eleventh-hour inspiration. He had foraged for it in the kitchen and thrust it, hilariously, into the hands of the younger generation. His three little daughters had thrown it, delightedly, at their grandmother. The rice, Jane thought, had rather disconcerted Muriel.
The entire family were taking supper with Mrs. Ward. The children and grandchildren were making merry in the yellow drawing-room across the hall. Belle was strumming out Gershwin on the old Steinway upright. The throbbing notes of the jazz melody vibrated incongruously in the little brown library. The Bard of Avon looked a bit bewildered, Jane thought. His wide mahogany eyes stared blankly over the heads of the two sisters.
Mrs. Ward was in the dining-room with Minnie. It was a long time since Mrs. Ward had given so large a dinner-party—fifteen people, not counting Robin Redbreast and Belle’s youngest daughter, who had had their puffed rice in the pantry and were now supposedly asleep in the guestroom upstairs. All family, of course. Still, Mrs. Ward had brought out the cut-glass goblets and the Royal Worcester china and her very best long damask tablecloth. She had had the silver loving-cup polished and had filled it with roses for the centre of the table. Jack had brought her some gin and vermouth and Isabel had lent her her cocktail glasses. Mrs. Ward was just making sure that the nut and candy dishes were placed straight with the candlesticks. Since Minnie had been promoted from the pantry to the role of companion, Mrs. Ward’s confidence in a waitress’s eye for symmetry had wavered.
“Albert was very funny,” said Isabel suddenly, “with that rice.”
“Albert is funny,” said Jane. “Funny and nice, too. He was sweet with Ed Brown, but yet you could see he didn’t miss a trick. He was touched and amused and amusing, all at once. He treats his mother just like a contemporary.”
“Live and let live is always Albert’s policy,” said Isabel. “Belle finds it rather trying. Belle’s like me—she always has an opinion. A completely tolerant husband can be very irritating.”
“I like him,” said Jane. “I like him very much.” She hesitated for a moment toying with the thought of telling Isabel that she found Albert greatly improved, then abandoning it. You could not tell your sister that you found her son-in-law greatly improved, without tacitly implying that you had previously felt that there was room for great improvement.
Jane had never quite been able to overcome her prejudice against Albert because he was his father’s son. Jane’s distrustful dislike for Bert Lancaster was rooted deep in the hidden instincts of her childhood. She had subconsciously transferred it to his boy. That was unfair, Jane reflected honestly. Albert had sowed some wild oats in college. He had been a dangerously beautiful young man. Muriel had adored and spoiled him. But he had married Belle and gone to Oxford and entered the diplomatic service and had done very well for himself, until the lack of a great fortune had hampered his further advancement. He had given it up, temporarily, and come home to enter the aeroplane industry, to make, he had said laughingly, a million dollars. “I’ve rented my soul to Mammon” had been his phrase.
“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 brown-eyed grandson was going to occupy it—little John Ward Bridges, aged eight.
“I hope I live long enough,” she thought suddenly, “to see my great-grandchildren.” Steve, on her other hand, was pulling out her chair. She sat down in the gay staccato confusion of talk and laughter. “I hope I live long enough,” she thought solemnly, “to see what happens to everyone. To know they’re safe—”
Just then John Ward upset his glass of water in the nearest nut dish. In meeting the emergency of the moment, Jane forgot to be solemn. Later, she watched Cicily rather closely across the prattling queries and vast gastronomical silences of her grandson’s table manners. Cicily never looked happier—never looked prettier—never seemed to take more trouble to be charming and gay. Jane felt she had been a very foolish mother. There was no need to be profoundly troubled.