“For God's sake, never say that to me again!” he cried. “Embarrassed me! I am proud of you—you never can know how proud. I was sitting here trying to think how to tell you something my mother said about you, and just what it means.”
His mother! My heart dropped. His mother had never said anything about me, excepting criticism. I had been a bitter disappointment to her. Whatever she said would be politely cruel—at best, a damning with faint praise.
“She said,” my husband went on, “that she is very happy in our marriage, completely satisfied, and that she has come to be proud of you. I don't know how to tell you just what that means.”
I knew. I knew his mother could have given me no higher praise. I had learned what to her were the essentials; I had cultivated the manner she placed above price. But the realization brought self-distrust. Had I lost my honesty and sincerity?
Tom went on to tell me that his mother had particularly admired my attitude toward my own mother, and the manner in which I met every little failing of hers. She felt I had a sense of true values in people, and that the simplicity and sureness with which I had met this situation was the essence of good breeding.
I had not thought it possible that Tom's mother could understand my feeling for my mother and my honest pride in her real worth. Perhaps, I reflected, I had been unjust to my mother-in-law. I knew what a shock I had been to her in the early days of our marriage, and I knew only too well that even Tom had often regretted my ignorance of social usages.
They are simple customs, and should be taught in every school in America, but I had not learned them. I was happy that night and for days afterward.
Then we went back to Europe. Tom knew people on the steamer to whom I took a dislike. They were bold and even vulgar, and Tom admitted that he did not admire them. I made up my mind we should avoid them. The next afternoon I found Tom and that group walking the deck arm in arm, chatting affably. When we were alone, I asked Tom how he could do it. I know now that a man cannot hold an official position like Tom's and ignore politically important people. But he only said rather carelessly, and with a laugh, that it was one of the prices a man pays for public office.
After that I noticed that my husband was known to nearly every one. He had a glad hand and a smile for the public—because it was the public. I watched to see if he had a slightly different smile for the people of Back Bay and his own particular social class; sometimes I thought he had, and it made me a little soul-sick.
I longed for a home for my baby and a few friends I could love and really enjoy. I was not fitted to be the wife of a public man. It was the poverty and crudeness of my youth that had made me intolerant. One of the big lessons life has taught me is that people can be amiable, tolerant, and even friendly, and still be sincere. The pleasantry of social relations among the civilized peoples of the earth is a mere garment we wear for our own protection and to cover our feelings. It is the oil of the machinery of life. I have found that men and women who take part in the big work of the earth wear that garment of civility and graciousness, and yet have their strong friendships and even their bitter enmities.