Her husband mused for a moment; then he said with an air of cheerful
hypocrisy: "After all, Budd is old enough to take care of himself."
But the next day Mrs. Lethbury surprised him. Late in the afternoon she
entered the library, so breathless and inarticulate that he scented a
catastrophe.
"I've done it!" she cried.
"Done what?"
"Told him." She nodded toward the door. "He's just gone. Jane is out,
and I had a chance to talk to him alone."
Lethbury pushed a chair forward and she sank into it.
"What did you tell him? That she is _not_ always--"
Mrs. Lethbury lifted a tragic eye. "No; I told him that she always
_is_--"
"Always _is_--?"
"Yes."
There was a pause. Lethbury made a call on his hoarded philosophy. He
saw Jane suddenly reinstated in her evening seat by the library fire;
but an answering chord in him thrilled at his wife's heroism.
"Well--what did he say?"
Mrs. Lethbury's agitation deepened. It was clear that the blow had
fallen.
"He...he said...that we...had never understood Jane... or appreciated
her..." The final syllables were lost in her handkerchief, and she left
him marvelling at the mechanism of a woman.
After that, Lethbury faced the future with an undaunted eye. They had
done their duty--at least his wife had done hers--and they were reaping
the usual harvest of ingratitude with a zest seldom accorded to such
reaping. There was a marked change in Mr. Budd's manner, and his
increasing coldness sent a genial glow through Lethbury's system. It
was easy to bear with Jane in the light of Mr. Budd's disapproval.
There was a good deal to be borne in the last days, and the brunt of it
fell on Mrs. Lethbury. Jane marked her transition to the married state
by an appropriate but incongruous display of nerves. She became
sentimental, hysterical and reluctant. She quarrelled with her
betrothed and threatened to return the ring. Mrs. Lethbury had to
intervene, and Lethbury felt the hovering sword of destiny. But the
blow was suspended. Mr. Budd's chivalry was proof against all his
bride's caprices, and his devotion throve on her cruelty. Lethbury
feared that he was too faithful, too enduring, and longed to urge him
to vary his tactics. Jane presently reappeared with the ring on her
finger, and consented to try on the wedding-dress; but her
uncertainties, her reactions, were prolonged till the final day.
When it dawned, Lethbury was still in an ecstasy of apprehension.
Feeling reasonably sure of the principal actors, he had centred his
fears on incidental possibilities. The clergyman might have a stroke,
or the church might burn down, or there might be something wrong with
the license. He did all that was humanly possible to avert such
contingencies, but there remained that incalculable factor known as the
hand of God. Lethbury seemed to feel it groping for him.
In the church it almost had him by the nape. Mr. Budd was late; and for
five immeasurable minutes Lethbury and Jane faced a churchful of
conjecture. Then the bridegroom appeared, flushed but chivalrous, and
explaining to his father-in-law under cover of the ritual that he had
torn his glove and had to go back for another.
"You'll be losing the ring next," muttered Lethbury; but Mr. Budd
produced this article punctually, and a moment or two later was bearing
its wearer captive down the aisle.
At the wedding-breakfast Lethbury caught his wife's eye fixed on him in
mild disapproval, and understood that his hilarity was exceeding the
bounds of fitness. He pulled himself together, and tried to subdue his
tone; but his jubilation bubbled over like a champagne-glass
perpetually refilled. The deeper his draughts, the higher it rose.
It was at the brim when, in the wake of the dispersing guests, Jane
came down in her travelling-dress and fell on her mother's neck.
"I can't leave you!" she wailed, and Lethbury felt as suddenly sobered
as a man under a douche. But if the bride was reluctant her captor was
relentless. Never had Mr. Budd been more dominant, more aquiline.
Lethbury's last fears were dissipated as the young man snatched Jane
from her mother's bosom and bore her off to the brougham.
The brougham rolled away, the last milliner's girl forsook her post by
the awning, the red carpet was folded up, and the house door closed.
Lethbury stood alone in the hall with his wife. As he turned toward
her, he noticed the look of tired heroism in her eyes, the deepened
lines of her face. They reflected his own symptoms too accurately not
to appeal to him. The nervous tension had been horrible. He went up to
her, and an answering impulse made her lay a hand on his arm. He held
it there a moment.
"Let us go off and have a jolly little dinner at a restaurant," he
proposed.
There had been a time when such a suggestion would have surprised her
to the verge of disapproval; but now she agreed to it at once.
"Oh, that would be so nice," she murmured with a great sigh of relief
and assuagement.
Jane had fulfilled her mission after all: she had drawn them together
at last.