There was the strangeness of a dream about it. Madeline Holland stood
there and smiled and chatted with her guests, and nobody looked at her
curiously, nobody suspected her anguish. It was incredible, inhuman,
unreal.
There was a slight confusion in the hall. Looking across the crowded
room, she saw the chauffeur and another young fellow bringing down
Joyce’s trunks to the car that waited outside. It was over. Joyce was
married--only it didn’t seem real yet.
Even in the church it hadn’t seemed real. Madeline had been preoccupied,
distrait, her mind filled with the stupidest little thoughts. The
caterer’s men had been a little late. No one had remembered to thank old
Mrs. Marriott for her candlesticks, and she looked affronted. Would
Hilda be sure to stitch the collar and cuffs on that jersey dress before
she packed it?
There was Frank standing before the altar; and he and Joyce and Nick all
looked so strange, so pale, so grave, so unfamiliar. Joyce’s veil was a
little too long. It was the veil that Madeline had worn at her own
wedding, but the fashion had changed so!
No, the whole thing hadn’t been real. It was a dream, like all these
last days, when she had gone shopping with Joyce, when people had always
been coming and going in the house, and presents arriving, with such a
queer, excited sort of gayety in the air, and so much to be done. There
had been no time to think.
She wasn’t really thinking now--only waiting, in a daze, for that last
moment which she knew she could not endure. The perfume of the roses
made her feel a little faint. There were roses everywhere, the breeze
from the open windows made a soft stir among them, and the petals
floated down silently upon the carpet.
The big dining room had lost its look of solemn formality. It was
thronged with people, and filled with the sound of gay, light voices and
little muffled clinkings of silver on china. When a lull came in the
talk, Mrs. Holland could hear the familiar noises of the city streets,
of daily life going on out there in the heat and dust of the June day.
Unreal, all of it!
She remembered a children’s party, here in this very room, years and
years ago, yet a hundred times more real than this. It was a dreadful
failure, for Joyce had been the worst of young hostesses--such an
absurd, impulsive little thing! She had devoted herself entirely to a
rather obnoxious little girl with blond pigtails and a smug face. She
had neglected all her other guests, even quarreling with them in defense
of this idolized creature; and afterward she had been so sorry. She had
knelt in her mother’s lap, with tears running down her flushed face into
Mrs. Holland’s neck, and their arms clasped tight about each other.
“It’s so--so awful hard to be polite!” Joyce had sobbed.
But really it wasn’t. Mrs. Holland found it easy enough to be polite,
even cheerful, with that last moment drawing nearer and nearer. Mrs.
Marriott was giving her an account of her grandson’s wedding in
California.
“In a _bower_ of roses!” concluded the old lady, with a triumphant
glance at Mrs. Holland’s mere bowls and jars.
“That must have been very pretty,” said Mrs. Holland.
“It was beautiful!” the old lady corrected her, rather severely.
She went on talking, but Mrs. Holland no longer heard her, for some one
had touched the piano in the drawing-room--a little chain of arpeggios
like a sweet and drawling voice. It hurt her to hear it, for she did not
want any one else to touch that piano. She remembered Joyce, so straight
and correct, her long braid hanging down her back, playing her new
pieces for her mother and father. Such funny, sprightly pieces they
were--“The Bullfrogs’ Carnival,” “The Elfin Schottische,” “Romping in
the Barn”; and so earnestly, so heavily, so determinedly were they
played by the blunt little fingers!
No, that surely was not Joyce’s touch. Madeline wanted to know who it
could be, sitting there in Joyce’s place.
Skillfully she maneuvered the talkative old lady to the center of the
room, where she could look through the open doorway into the
drawing-room, and there she saw her--a little blond creature with the
fragile figure of a child. She was a pretty girl, very young, and a
little pitiful in her flimsy silk dress, sleeveless and short-skirted;
but Mrs. Holland saw no pathos in her at that minute, for Frank Holland
was standing beside her, looking down at her with an air of bland
indulgence.
The blond girl touched the keys again, and then she raised her eyes to
Frank’s face with a languishing smile. She spoke, and he raised his hand
to his mustache with that familiar gesture.
“He’s flattered!” thought Mrs. Holland.
She forgot all about Mrs. Marriott, and stood staring over the old
lady’s head at the pitiful scene--Frank so pleased and flattered by that
silly, vulgar little thing.
“Madeline,” said old Mrs. Marriott, “who’s that young woman talking to
Frank? I never set eyes on her before.”
“She’s poor Stella’s daughter,” replied Mrs. Holland. “I thought I ought
to ask them.”
“Humph!” said the old lady thoughtfully. “Stella here?”
“No--only the girl.”
“Humph!” said the old lady again, and was silent.
She remembered Stella very well--a cousin of Madeline’s, a pale, silent
girl, mulishly obstinate, who had taken a fancy to a man against whom
all her family and her friends had warned her. She had been bent upon
marrying him, had married him, and had vanished into a forlorn limbo.
“And that’s her child,” observed old Mrs. Marriott. “A saucy chit, I
should call her!”
“Mother!” said a voice beside Madeline, and she looked up to see Joyce’s
husband.
It was the first time he had ever called her that, and in her heart she
winced at the word on his lips. It was hard for him to say it--she could
see that. His honest young face had flushed, and his voice was not very
steady. He was a little in awe of the grave and quiet Mrs. Holland, and
yet he was doggedly determined to say what he wanted to say.
“I’ll--I’ll do my best,” he said. “She’s so fond of you, and she’s
always been so happy with you, but I--I’ll try to make her happy.
I’ll--”
Mrs. Holland held out her hand, and he seized it in a nervous grasp.
“There’s no reason in the world why you shouldn’t both be very happy,
dear boy,” she said earnestly. “You’re both--”
She stopped, because Joyce had come. The last minute was here. She
looked at her daughter, but that beloved and wonderful face swam in a
haze before her.
“Mother!” cried Joyce. “Oh, mother!”
She threw her arms about her mother, and for a moment they clung to each
other, forgetting everything else in the world. Mrs. Holland felt her
child’s tears warm on her cheek, felt the poor, eager young heart beat
against her own. This was the last moment--and she could endure it.
Shaken by a tenderness that was anguish, she could think quite clearly,
could tell herself that her feeling was wrong, could detach herself from
those clinging arms.
“This will never do!” she cried. “We mustn’t be so silly, must we?”
Her steady, smiling eyes were fixed upon her child. There was not the
faintest shadow on her face, not the least tremor in her voice. There
was nothing in her heart but the one passionate wish that Joyce should
go away untroubled and happy, to begin her new life.
For a moment Joyce wavered, ready to fly once more into those faithful
arms. Then, with a laugh that was half a sob, she gave her mother one
more kiss--and was gone.
Mrs. Holland went out with the others and stood on the top step in a
cheerful, excited group. As Joyce leaned out of the car, her mother had
a last glimpse of her face, her eyes soft with tears, a trembling smile
on her lips. Then the car started. Everything was over. Joyce was gone.