There was no word her son could have disliked more; he frowned.
“Why?” he demanded. “In what way? How is she ‘peculiar’?”
“She’s been brought up,” the old lady began, and stopped. “After all, you’re the one to be suited, Gilbert. You’re marrying her, not I. If you’ve got it into your head that she’s the only woman on earth to make you happy, very well. Marry her. And I only hope you will be happy.”
“Yes,” he said, “that’s likely, if you’re going to quarrel with her.”
“Gilbert,” said the old lady, “I’ve never quarreled with anyone in my life.”
True enough, he was obliged to admit it. He saw that he had used a wrong word. She didn’t quarrel, she didn’t argue. But she conquered. And when she disapproved of people, she changed them. He had never tried to understand her methods, but he had seen the results. He supposed it was force of character and that it must be admirable and beneficent.
“You needn’t worry about that, my boy,” she went on. “I’ve never yet had a word of disagreement with any of my sons-or daughters-in-law.”
“I know it, Mother. But living under the same roof ... and she’s been brought up very differently.”
“Yes; just as I said,” the old lady observed. “Very peculiar.... However, if you’ve made up your mind, my boy, there’s no use talking about it. I’ll do my best, as I always have done and always expect to do.”
Her son believed this; he had never doubted that she was a perfectly noble, perfectly wise and magnificent woman and he worshipped her. There was an inscrutable and malicious smile on her shrunken lips; the changeless, infinitely remote smile of god-like amusement at earth’s follies which one sees on the face of a bronze Buddha. She had a majesty beyond the need of charm or of fashion. She belonged to an old Brooklyn family which had become aristocratic by reason of having lived in the same place for four generations, and she had married into a similar one. She had always been rich and immeasurably secure, living isolated in the big house on “The Heights” like the somewhat ferocious monarch of a desert isle, an obscure and uncomfortable existence in which nothing was accomplished and nothing enjoyed. She disdained society as frivolous; and all luxury was to her abomination. She made, she said, a “proper use” of her money.