“Say, Jimsy, how do folks do, on East here? Will your mother call on me and Kedzie, or will she look for us to call on her first?”
“My God!” thought Jim.
“What say?” said Mrs. Thropp.
Jim floundered and threshed. He had never before realized what his mother's famous pride might mean. She had always been only mother to him, devoted, tender, patient, forgiving, amusing, sympathetic, anxious, flattered by his least attention. Yet he had heard her spoken of as a human glacier for freezing social climbers and pushers of every sort. She was huge and slow; she could be frightfully cold and crushing.
Now he understood what congelation the trembling approachers to her majesty must have suffered. He was afraid to think what she would do to the Thropps. Her first glance would turn them to icicles and her first word would snap them to bits.
It is hard enough for any mother to receive the news that her son is in love with any woman and wants to marry her. Mrs. Dyckman must learn that her adored child had transferred his loyalty to a foreigner, a girl she had never seen, could not conceivably have selected, and could never approve. Even the Prodigal Son, when he went home, did not bring a wife with him. Ten to one if he had brought one she would have got no veal—or if she got it she would not have cared for it.
Jim could not be blind even now in his alarm to Kedzie's intense prettiness, but seeing her as through his mother's eyes coldly, he saw for the first time the plebeiance of her grace.
If she had been strong and rugged her commonness would have had a certain vigor; but to be nearly refined without being quite refined is as harrowing as singing just a little off the key. To be far off the key is to be in another key, but to smite at a note and muff it is excruciation. Better far to drone middle C than to aim at high C and miss it by a comma.
Yet Jim understood that he could not long prevent the encounter of his wife and her relatives with his mother and her relatives. He could not be so boorishly insolent as to forbid the meeting, and he could not be so blind as to expect success. He got away at length on the pretext of making arrangements with his mother, who was a very busy woman, he said. Mrs. Thropp could not imagine why a rich woman should be busy, but she held her whist.
Jim was glad to escape, even on so gruesome an errand, and now when he kissed Kedzie good-by he had to kiss momma as well. He would almost rather have kissed poppa.