“Get upstairs and dress yourself,” she ordered me.
“It won’t take fifteen minutes for that,” I said.
“Then see if the bride don’t need a pin or two,” she said. “I remember very well myself that I needed a pin to the front of my corset cover, I was breathin’ that hard.”
I went upstairs then and when I had put on my pale-grey silk frock, I knocked on Mary’s door and she called to me to come in and so I did. She was dressed and ready and was standing by the window, looking out over the hills. Her wedding gown was plain white organdy, embroidered at the hem and the neck with fine hand embroidery. She had made it herself, and it was exactly right for her. Around her neck was a little gold chain and a locket with Rennie’s picture inside.
“Your bouquet is downstairs,” I said. “Shall I fetch it now?”
The guests were already coming up the walk, and the minister was in the living room. In the morning we had cut flowers from the fields and put them into bouquets with delicate fronds of brake. But I had a few of my precious roses for Mary’s bouquet. We cannot grow roses outdoors here in our cold valley, but I lift my rose bushes in the autumn and bring them into the cellar to sleep, where it is cool and dry and dark, and in the spring I set them out. This year I forced a half dozen to make roses for Mary. They are pale pink and pale yellow, and I cut six half-opened buds this morning and made them into a cluster and set their stems into ice water to keep them from opening too wide.
“Please, Mother,” she said.
I went away at once for I heard Rennie leave his room. When I came back with the roses he was standing in front of her, holding her hands in his, and all my sorrow dropped away, never to come again. I am sure of it, for I know very well the look in my son’s eyes as he stood looking at his bride. I saw it long ago in his father’s eyes for me.
The wedding was perfect in simplicity. The valley people gathered in our living room, and all together there are only twenty or so for we invited no transient summer folk. When they were all there, Rennie and Mary, who had been moving among them, talking a little, smiling often, interchanged a look, radiant and tender. They clasped hands and went to the minister and stood before him. Then without ado he rose from his chair, and took his little book from his pocket and spoke the few words that made them husband and wife. We had no music, for among us only Mary has a sweet singing voice. After the ceremony was over, the guests surrounded the young bride and groom, and I stood aside and wept quietly because they were so beautiful, until Bruce Spaulden saw me and fetched me a cup of fruit punch.
“Occupy yourself with this, my dear,” he said, and would not leave my side.
Mrs. Matt here set forth the wedding cake she had made, a noble three-tiered confection, each layer different from the other. Mary cat the slices with Rennie’s help, and they exchanged silver goblets, each half full of the sweet wine I make every summer from wild blackberries, while the guests enjoyed the sight of them.
Then quietly, in the midst of the eating and drinking, the two went upstairs and changed to their traveling clothes and came down again, and waving goodbye they ran through the room, but waited for me at the car. There my son swept me into his arms and kissed my cheeks and Mary put her arms about us both, and so I let them go. The guests waited to make sure I was not lonely, and then one by one they, went away, and George Bowen was the very last, and he stayed to put away chairs and carry dishes to Mrs. Matt in the kitchen.
When he left he stooped to kiss my cheek.
“Goodbye,” he said.
“Goodbye, dear George,” I said, “and come back often.”
“I will,” he said and then without the slightest sentimentality and as though he were declaring a fact, he said, “Shall I call you Mother, too, since now you are Mary’s mother?”
“Do,” I said gladly.
He winked his left eye at me. “Except you’re too young to be a mother to three great gawks.”
“Nonsense,” I said.
He laughed and cantered down the front steps and stepped into his grey wreck of a car, without opening the door, and went off in a gust of smoke and gravel.
Now only Bruce was left and he stayed the evening with me. He knows that Rennie’s father is dead. Rennie told him and then told me what he had done.
“How did you say it?” I asked, half wishing he had not told.
“I said, My father is dead in Peking. My mother and I will never go back to China now. She will live here in the valley. But Mary and I cannot live here where there are no laboratories.”
“A man must go where his work is,” Bruce agreed.
“Well, your work is here,” Rennie said bluntly, “and you must be my mother’s friend.”
“I want to be that and whatever more she will accept me for,” Bruce said.
Telling me this a few days ago, Rennie looked straight into my eyes. “Mother, you will please me very much if you will decide to marry Bruce.”
“Oh Rennie, no,” I whispered. “Don’t — don’t ask it.”
“I don’t ask it,” he said. “I merely say that I shall be happy if you do.”
To this I said nothing and perhaps I shall never say anything. I do not know. It is still too soon, and perhaps it will always be too soon.
It was comforting, nevertheless, to have Bruce spend the evening with me, when everyone else was gone. I lay on the long chair, and he sat near me, only the small table between us, and he smoked his old briar pipe and said nothing or very little. The silence was comforting, too. I was very near telling him about Gerald, and the house there in Peking, and all that has happened to me. I thought of it while the evening wind made gentle music in the pines and the mountains subsided into shadows. I thought of Rennie, too, and of how he had been born, and this led me to Mei-lan, whose child was being born perhaps upon this very day. But in the end I said nothing and silence remained sweeter than speech. When Bruce rose to say goodnight, my life and love were still hidden within me.
“Thank you, dear Bruce,” I said. “You are my best friend now.”
He held my hand a long moment. “I’ll let it go at that, but only for the present,” he said. He put my hand to his cheek and I felt his flesh smooth-shaven and cool. It was not hateful to me, and this surprised me, too. But he said no more, and he went away. After that I was suddenly very tired, but sweetly so and without pain, and I went upstairs and to my bed.
…Days have passed again and I am already expecting Rennie and Mary to come home for the summer. I have had one more letter from Peking.
“It is my duty,” Mei-lan insists, “to tell you that I have borne a son. He is like his father. His skin is white, his hair is dark but soft and fine. His frame is large and strong. My mother says he will be tall. I am astonished to have such a child. We two women, my mother and I, we will devote ourselves to rear him well, for his father’s sake and for yours.”
Mine? Have I aught, to do with her child? A strange question, and I do not know how to answer it. Then I remember that this child is Rennie’s half-brother. It is possible that some day they will meet. How different will they be, these two? How much alike?
The ways of nature and of life are strange and deep. They are not to be understood. In the midst of angers and of wars love’s secret work goes on, and binds us all by blood, and this, whether love is denied or love is bestowed.