Part 8

I was homesick for mother. Babies were a mystery to me, although I had helped mother with all of hers. We had buried three of them in homemade coffins--pioneering is a ruthless scythe, and only the fit survive. I began to understand my mother and the glory in the character which never faltered, although she was alone and life had been hard. How could I whine when I had Tom and a good friend--and life was like a playground?

I loved the French. They regard life with a frankness which sometimes shocked my reserved Boston husband. He never accepted intimacy. The restraint of old England was still in his blood. The free winds of the prairie had swept it from mine.

My new friends in Paris discovered my happy secret. It was my all-absorbing thought, and I was delighted to be able to discuss it frankly. Motherhood is the great and natural event in the life of a woman in France, and no one makes a secret of it. I was very happy in Paris. And then--Tom had to go to Vienna.

Not even Tom, Eve, and the promised baby could make me happy there. In all the world I had seen no place where the line of class distinction was so closely drawn, where social customs were so rigid and court forms so sacred, as at the Austrian capital. Learning the social customs of Vienna seemed as endless as counting the pebbles on the beach--and about as useful. The clock regulated our habits in Vienna. Up to eleven o'clock certain attire was proper. If your watch stopped you were sure to break a social law. I once saw a distinguished diplomat in distress because he found himself at an official function at eleven-thirty with a black tie--or without one, I have forgotten which!

At first it offended me to receive an invitation--or a command--to appear at a formal function, with an accompanying slip telling exactly what to wear. Then I laughed about it.

Finally I rebelled. On the plea of ill health, I made Tom do the social honors for me, while Eve and I did the museums and the galleries and the music fetes. Years later I went back to Vienna, and I did not discredit my country. But I never loved the city. I enjoyed its art, its fascinating shops, its picturesque streets and people, and its beautiful women. But for me Vienna has the faults of France and England, the poverty and arrogance of London, and the frivolity of Paris, without their redeeming qualities.

So I was glad to return to England. The second day in London, Tom took me to an exhibition important in the art world, or at least in the official life of London. Everybody who was somebody was there. I saw the Princess of Wales and the Marquis of Salisbury, who was then Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. I saw Mr. Balfour, so handsome and gracious that I refused to believe there had ever been cause to call him “Bloody Balfour.” There was something kingly about him--yet he was simply Mr. Balfour. Years afterward I realized that to know Mr. Balfour is either to worship him or hate him. No one takes the middle course. I had begun to have a beautiful time that afternoon.

I felt happy, acutely conscious of my blessings and of one coming blessing in particular. Mr. Gladstone joined us, and Sir Henry Irving came over to speak to Eve. She told him I had just said that England had a mold for handsome men. Irving was interesting and striking, though certainly not handsome; but he took the compliment to himself, smiled, bowed his thanks, and said:

“And America for beautiful women.”

Mr. Gladstone, too, could indulge in small talk. “You should have seen her rosy cheeks before she went to the Continent,” he said, and added kindly that I looked very tired and should go down to Hawarden Castle and rest.

“Oh,” I explained happily, “it is n't that--I 'm not tired. It is such a happy reason!” I felt Eve gasp. Mr. Gladstone opened his kind eyes very wide, and his heavy chin settled down in his collar. It was the last bad break I made. But it was a blessing to me, for it robbed all social form of terror. For the first time, I realized that custom is merely a matter of geography. One takes off one's shoes to enter the presence of the ruler of Persia. One wears a black tie until eleven o'clock in Vienna--or does n't. One uses fish knives in England until he dines with royalty--then one must manage with a fork and a piece of bread. One dresses for dinner always, and waits for the hostess to say it is time, and speaks only to one's neighbor at table. In France one guest speaks to any or all of the others; all one's friends extend congratulations if a baby is coming; one shares all his joys with friends. But in England nobody must know, and everybody must be surprised. No one ever speaks of himself in England. They are sensitive about everything personal. But there is an underground and very perfect system by which everything about everybody is known and noised about and discussed with everybody except the person in question. It is a mysterious and elaborate hypocrisy.

With the aid of Eve, I made a thorough study of the geography of social customs. I learned the ways of Europe, of the Orient, and of South America. It is easier to understand races if one understands the psychology of their customs. I realized that social amenities are too often neglected in America, and our manners sometimes truthfully called crude. But I told myself with pride that our truly cultivated people will not tolerate a social form that is not based on human, kindly instincts. It was not until the World War flooded Europe with American boys and girls that I realized the glory of our social standards and the great need to have our own people understand those standards.

IV.

Fear is the destroyer of peace. I knew no peace until I learned not to be afraid of conventions. The three most wretched years in my life might easily have been avoided by a little training at home or at school.

I realize now the unhappiness of those first years of my married life. I was awkward and ill at ease in a world that valued social poise above knowledge. From my childhood I had loved honest, sincere people. After my marriage I met distinguished men and women, even a few who might be called great; but they, too, had their affectations and petty vanities. Being young, I judged them harshly because they set what I considered too much store upon absurd conventions.

In the course of my travels since, I have come to realize that social customs are a simple matter of geography! What is proper in England is bad form in France, and many customs that were correct in Vienna would be intolerable in Spain. In the formal circles of Vienna no one spoke to anybody without an introduction. In Spain there was a more subtle and truly aristocratic standard. The assumption was that anybody one met in the home of one's host was desirable, and it was courtesy, therefore, to begin a conversation with any guest. This is the attitude also in parts of France.

But in those first months I had not acquired my philosophy. I lived through homesick days, and some that were hard and bitter. I stayed with Tom that first year only because I was too bewildered to take any initiative, and because I kept hoping that things would right themselves and I would wake out of my nightmare. My baby came in the second year, and then I could not go home. The simple life of my own people slipped very, very far away. We made a hurried trip back to the United States that summer, but Tom would not consent to my going West. His own family wanted to see our baby, and they decided that the little fellow had traveled enough and should not be subjected to the hardships of a cross-country train trip. So Tom sent for mother and the twins to come to us, and they arrived at the Waldorf Hotel, where we were staying. Dear, simple mother, in her terrible clothes, and the twins, got up with more thought for economy than for beauty! I shopped extravagantly with them. The youngsters wanted to see everything in New York; but mother, despite all of those hard, lonely years in our rough country and the many interesting things for her to do and see in New York--mother wanted nothing better than to stay with the baby.

With all the children she had brought into this world one might think she had seen enough of babies. But she adored my little son. How near she seemed to me then! How hungry I had been for her, without realizing it! I felt that she loved my baby boy as she had never loved me or any of her own children. And I understood why mother never had had time to love her own babies. In the struggle for existence of those hard years she had never had a minute to indulge in the pure joy of having her baby. I sat watching her with her first grandchild, so sweet in his exquisite hand-sewn little clothes, and suddenly I found myself crying hysterically.

Mother was very dear to me from that day. Later in this chronicle I want to give a chapter to my mother and what we both suffered during this period of her visit to New York, for it marked the climax of my own development. When mother and the children started off on their return trip to the West, Tom sent them flowers and candy and fruit. He had already generously put financial worry away from my family for all time, but I knew that he was a little ashamed of some of mother's crudities. I wondered why I did not feel ashamed. I was very, very glad I did not. It gave me something tangible to cling to--a sure consciousness of power, that comes of knowing one possesses the true pride to rise above the opinions of other people.

I would have given my life, that day, to be able to assure my family that material security which they owed to my husband, who neither loved nor understood them. I looked down the years and saw myself crushed by a burden of indebtedness to a man I felt I no longer loved. Only mother's grateful, simple happiness eased my hurt. I had never approached my mother, but I knew now that if her natural dignity and great, kind heart had been given the advantages that the women in my husband's family took as a matter of course, she would have been superior to them all. Yet they barely tolerated mother--no more.

I longed to go home to my own warm, hearty, open West. I stood on the ferry after they had gone, thinking that, if my family were not so deeply indebted to my husband, I would leave him. I suppose I did not really mean that thought, but it made me unhappy. I felt disloyal and dishonest. Finally I told Tom. There was a scene; but from that day he began to understand me, and things were better. A few days later we came home from a dinner party, and, after going to the baby's room for a minute, Tom asked me to stay and talk. But he did not talk. For a long time he sat smoking and thinking. I knew he had something on his mind, and I waited. Finally I realized that he was embarrassed.

“Can I help? Is it something I have done that has embarrassed you?” I asked.

That was many years ago, but I can never forget the look Tom gave me. It held all the love of our courtship and something besides that I had never seen in his face before.

“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.