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The period of Mr. Budd's probation could scarcely have cost him as
much mental anguish as it caused his would-be parents-in-law.
Mrs. Lethbury, by various ruses, tried to shorten the ordeal, but
Jane remained inexorable; and each morning Lethbury came down to
breakfast with the certainty of finding a letter of withdrawal from
her discouraged suitor.
When at length the decisive day came, and Mrs. Lethbury, at its
close, stole into the library with an air of chastened joy, they
stood for a moment without speaking; then Mrs. Lethbury paid a
fitting tribute to the proprieties by faltering out: "It will be
dreadful to have to give her up--"
Lethbury could not repress a warning gesture; but even as it escaped
him, he realized that his wife's grief was genuine.
"Of course, of course," he said, vainly sounding his own emotional
shallows for an answering regret. And yet it was his wife who had
suffered most from Jane!
He had fancied that these sufferings would be effaced by the milder
atmosphere of their last weeks together; but felicity did not soften
Jane. Not for a moment did she relax her dominion: she simply
widened it to include a new subject. Mr. Budd found himself under
orders with the others; and a new fear assailed Lethbury as he saw
Jane assume prenuptial control of her betrothed. Lethbury had never
felt any strong personal interest in Mr. Budd; but, as Jane's
prospective husband, the young man excited his sympathy. To his
surprise, he found that Mrs. Lethbury shared the feeling.
"I'm afraid he may find Jane a little exacting," she said, after an
evening dedicated to a stormy discussion of the wedding
arrangements. "She really ought to make some concessions. If he
_wants_ to be married in a black frock-coat instead of a dark gray
one--" She paused and looked doubtfully at Lethbury.
"What can I do about it?" he said.
"You might explain to him--tell him that Jane isn't always--"
Lethbury made an impatient gesture. "What are you afraid of? His
finding her out or his not finding her out?"
Mrs. Lethbury flushed. "You put it so dreadfully!"
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.
THE END.
The Mission of Jane, by Edith Wharton.
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