“That’s funny,” she said, “not wanting to speak to me for two years and then all of a sudden wanting to have a good deal to do with me. It’s a sort of lightning-change act, like you see at the Orpheum. I guess I’d understand it better if I knew more about it.”
“Then I’ll tell you. Will you let me speak frankly, Mrs. Ryan? Have I got your permission to go right ahead and talk the plain talk that’s the only way a plain man knows?”
“Yes,” said Berny. “Go right ahead.”
He looked at the carpet for a considering moment, then raised his eyes and, gazing into hers with steady directness, said,
“It wouldn’t be fair if I pretended not to know that you and your husband’s family are unfriendly. I know it, and that they have, as you say, refused to know you. They’ve not liked the marriage; that’s the long and the short of it.”
“And what right have they got—” began Berny, raising her head with a movement of war, and staring belligerently at him. He silenced her with a lifted hand:
“Don’t let’s go into that. Don’t let’s bother ourselves with the rights and wrongs of the matter. We could talk all afternoon and be just where we were at the beginning. Let’s have it understood that our attitude in this is businesslike and impersonal. They don’t like the marriage—that’s admitted. They’ve refused to know you—that’s admitted. And let us admit, for the sake of the argument, that they’ve put you in a damned disagreeable position.”
Berny, sitting stiffly erect, all in a quiver of nerves, anger, and uncertainty, had her eyes fixed on him in a glare of questioning.
“That’s all true,” she said grimly. “That’s a statement I’ll not challenge.”
“Then we’ll agree that your position is disagreeable, and that it’s been made so by the antagonism of your husband’s family. Now, Mrs. Ryan, let me tell you something that maybe you don’t understand. You’re never going to conquer or soften your mother-in-law. I don’t know anything about it, but perhaps I can make a guess. You’ve thought you’d win her over, that you’d married her son and made him a good wife and that some day she’d acknowledge that and open her doors and invite you in. My dear young lady, just give up building those castles in the air. There’s nothing in them. You don’t know Delia Ryan. She’ll never bend and the one thing that’ll break her is death. She’s got no hard feelings against you except as her son’s wife. That’s the thing she’ll never forgive you for. I’m not saying it’s not pretty tough on you. I’m just stating a fact. What I do say is that she’s never going to be any different about it. She’s started on her course, and she’s going to go straight along on the same route till she comes to the place where we’ve all got to jump off.”