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.