Yet the reaction that followed immediately was the declaration by almost everyone that he had known it would happen. How could it be other? Sarah belonged so clearly to Beulah Land that Leon seemed almost the incidental agent of her permanently abiding there. The departure of the visitors—no longer just visitors, not yet family—was put off a week so that everyone might congratulate everyone else. But plans and dates were settled at last, and leave was finally taken.

Discretion as well as etiquette dictated that the wedding be in Savannah. By having it there, the society that Penelope belonged to was satisfied, perhaps rather, mollified, having been deprived of Lauretta’s wedding.

There was no embarrassment over how to accommodate neighbors of Beulah Land, nor need to solve the persistent riddle of how to both acknowledge and ignore the marriage of Selma and Bonard.

Since the wedding was to be in Savannah, the only people from the country who made the journey to attend it were Deborah, Nell, and Felix. A bridegroom’s backers are notably less fulsome in their attentions than a bride’s. Selma had said she would go, but on the day before the family party was to take coach, she declared that she was not, after all, fit enough to travel.

Sarah and Leon took their vows to each other in the presence of a large and interested section of Savannah society at St. John’s Church. Judge Truebody gave the bride away, and Felix Kendrick acted as his nephew’s Best Man. Deborah and Nell sat alone in the front pew on the right-hand side of the church. The one surprise of the ceremony occurred when Leon took the ring from Felix to place on Sarah’s finger. To it he added, intending it as a sweet and private joke, a new ring Floyd had fashioned for him from a horseshoe nail. Sarah smiled when she recognized what had been done and cupped her hand over the two rings on the same finger, making her own meaning out of it.

22

On the night of the wedding day Selma and Lovey and Pauline sat together after supper in Selma’s room. They had eaten there—no point in setting the dining room for Selma alone—Lovey joining her daughters, as she called them both, to make a little celebration. Each enjoyed a glass of wine before having supper, and the atmosphere was genial, that of three old and trusting friends together, knowing that no one would break in of a sudden and ask any to play the part she usually played, but was relieved of playing tonight.