She was, in a way, the least American of all the Lauderdales. She herself would have said, on the contrary, from her own point of view, that she was the most really American in the tribe. She loved the country, she especially loved New York, and she loved her own people better than any other with which she was acquainted. This strong attachment to everything American was in itself contrary to the ideas of most persons with whom she was brought into close relations. What calls itself society, pre-eminently, and numbers itself by hundreds, and shuts itself off as much as possible, requiring those who would be counted with it to pass a special examination in the subjects about which it happens to be mad at the time—Society with a capital letter, in fact, is tired of work, it associates home with hard labour and a bad climate, and Europe with fine weather, idleness, and amusement. ‘They manage those things better in France,’ expresses New York society’s opinion of things in general apart from business. Mrs. Ralston differed from Society, and thought that many things were managed quite as well in America.
“That’s because you’ve been abroad so much, my dear,” said her friends. “Wait till you’ve lived ten years at a stretch in New York. You’ll think just as we do. You won’t like it half so much. And besides—think of clothes and things!”
Now Mrs. Ralston did think of ‘clothes and things.’ She had never been beautiful, but she had in a high degree the strength and grace distinctive in many of the Lauderdales. She was tall, long-limbed, slight as a girl, at five and forty years of age, less strong than Katharine, perhaps, though that might be doubted, and certainly lighter and much thinner. She, too, was dark—a keen, strong face, like her son’s, with the same bright brown eyes, and the same fine hair, though not nearly so black, but her face was kindlier than his, and far less sad. She had possessed the power of enjoying things for their own sake as long as Mrs. Lauderdale, Katharine’s mother, who had kept her faculty of enjoying the world subjectively, with little interest in it for itself, but with the intensely strong attachment of easily satisfied personal vanity. The difference was, that the one form of enjoyment was doomed to destruction with the beauty which was its source, while the other increased with the ever broadening and deepening humanity in which it found its dominant interest. If Mrs. Lauderdale had been shut off from the gay side of social existence for a time, as Mrs. Ralston had been in the first years of her widowhood, she would have become sour and discontented. Mrs. Ralston had seen where the real bitterness of life lay, and the bitterness had appealed to her heart almost as much as ever the sweetness had. She had suffered in some ways much, but not long; she had been disappointed more than once, but had been repaid.
Above all, she was her son’s friend. She had lived a woman’s life, and in him she was living a man’s life, too. She had felt a mother’s fears for him, a mother’s sympathy in his failures, in his downheartedness, in the love for Katharine which had met with such bitter opposition. She had almost known a mother’s despair in believing him lost and truly worthless, and when she had found out her mistake, a mother’s triumph had made her heart beat fast. And little by little through the last months she had seen the man’s real character coming to the surface in its strength and boldness, outgrowing the boyish weakness, the youthful faults that were not vices yet and never would be now, and it was as though the growth had been in her own heart, giving to herself new interest, new life, and new vitality.
And John Ralston had forgotten that one hour in which she had doubted him, though at the time he had found it hard to say that he ever should. She was his best friend and was becoming his closest companion. Even Katharine could not understand him so well, for she knew too little of the world yet. She had given him her heart, and her sympathy was all his, but neither the one nor the other was yet quite grown.
John and his mother dined alone together that evening, and afterwards went upstairs and sat in a room which was called John’s study, by courtesy, as it had been called the Admiral’s study when his father was alive. It was a quiet, manlike room, with a small bookcase and a large gun-rack, huge chairs covered with brown leather, an unnecessarily large writing-table, a certain number of trophies of the chase, a well-worn carpet and curtains that smelled of cigars. Mrs. Ralston had been accustomed all her life to the smell of tobacco, and rather liked it than otherwise. She settled her graceful figure comfortably in one of the chairs, and Ralston sat down opposite to her in another and began to smoke.
“There’s been a row, mother,” he began. “I couldn’t tell you before the servants, but I’m going to tell you all about it now. I want your advice and your help—all sorts of things of you. I’m rather worried.”
“Do you think I couldn’t see that in your face, Jack?” asked Mrs. Ralston, smiling as she met his eyes. “There’s a certain line in your forehead that always comes when there’s trouble. What is it, boy?”
John told his story briefly and accurately, without superfluous comment, and as much of what had happened in Katharine’s life as she had confided to him. He made it clear enough that she was being tormented to give up Robert Lauderdale’s secret, and if he dwelt unduly upon any point, it was upon this. Mrs. Ralston listened attentively. When he came to the scene which had taken place on that afternoon, she leaned forward in her chair, breathless with interest.
“Oh, Jack!” she cried. “You always seem to be fighting somebody!”