THAT MOTHER-IN-LAW
OF
MINE.
“BE TO HER VIRTUES VERY KIND,
BE TO HER FAULTS A LITTLE BLIND.”
PHILADELPHIA:
THE KEYSTONE PUBLISHING CO.
1889.
COPYRIGHT
BY JOHN E. POTTER AND COMPANY,
1879
Dedicated
TO ALL THOSE HAVING
MOTHERS-IN-LAW
OR EXPECTING TO HAVE.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER Page
I. BESSIE AND I AND BESSIE’S MOTHER 7
II. COURTING THE MOTHER 15
III. OUR MARRIAGE 28
IV. MOUNTAINS AND MORE MOTHER-IN-LAW 37
V. THE RISE AND FALL 50
VI. WHAT IS HOME WITHOUT A MOTHER-IN-LAW? 71
VII. MISS VAN’S PARTY AND ANOTHER UNPLEASANTNESS 84
VIII. ANOTHER CHARLIE IN THE FIELD 98
IX. THE SHADOW ON OUR LIFE 108
X. MY MOTHER-IN-LAW SUBDUED 115
XI. GEORGE’S NEW DEPARTURE 123
XII. BABY TALK, OLD DIVES, AND OTHER THINGS 138
XIII. A SURPRISE 150
XIV. A HAPPY PROSPECT 158
MY MOTHER-IN-LAW.
CHAPTER I.
BESSIE AND I AND BESSIE’S MOTHER.
“Why, Charlie, you sha’n’t talk so about my mother! I won’t allow it.”
“It does sound a little rough, my dear; but I can’t help it. She does
exasperate me so. She doesn’t show a proper deference for your husband,
my dear. We are married now, and she ought to give up her objections to
me. I can’t be expected to place myself in her leading strings.”
“But you mustn’t demand too much at once, and should try to conciliate
her. Now do, for my sake; won’t you, dear?”
Here we were, only a month married, and spending our honeymoon at a most
charming summer resort, where there was no excuse for getting out of
patience. Everything was beautiful and attractive: Little hotel,
strange to say, quite delightful; no fault to find with surroundings and
accommodations; my darling Bessie, as sweet as an angel and determined
to be happy and to make me happy; everything, in short, calculated to
give us a long summer of delight.
That is, if Bessie had only been an orphan. But there was her mother,
who had joined us on our summer trip, after the first two weeks of
unalloyed happiness, and threatened to accompany us through life.
Already it almost made the prospect dismal. The idea that Bessie and I
would ever quarrel, or even have any impatient words together, had
seemed to me to be simply ridiculous. I had seen what I had seen. My
dashing friend, Fred, and his stylish wife,—they had been married two
years, and a visible coldness had come upon them. I knew, by an
occasional angry whisper and knitting of the brow before people, that he
must sometimes swear and rave in the privacy of their own rooms, and her
cutting replies or haughty indifference showed that there had been a
deal of love lost between them in those two years.
Other people, too, got indifferent or downright hostile in their
marital relations. But then, I was not a dashing fellow and Bessie was
not stylish, and in other ways we were quite different from most people.
Ours had been a real love-match from the first. Bessie was simple and
unaffected, honest and pure in every thought, and determined to make me
a faithful and loving wife till death did us part. As for me, why, of
course I was generous and affectionate, ready to make any sacrifice and
bear any burden for the trusting creature who had so freely given
herself into my keeping. There should be no clouds to darken her life. I
would never be selfish or impatient, or for one moment hurt her gentle
heart by heedless act or careless word.
But plague upon it! I could not get on with her mother; and here I was,
before our summer holiday was over, and before we had settled down to
that home life in which trouble and annoyance must needs come, getting
out of patience and saying cruel things; and there was Bessie, sitting
in the summer twilight with a light shawl drawn over her shoulders,
pouting her pretty lips with vexation, and digging the toes of her
little boots into the balustrade in front of us, because I had expressed
a pious wish that her mother was in Jericho. I declare, if there weren’t
tears gathering in her gentle blue eyes!
I was angry with myself, and, putting my arm around her slender waist, I
laid my cheek against hers and said soothingly, “Never mind, darling! I
didn’t mean it. Don’t think any more about it.”
But as we sat for the next five minutes without saying a word, I
couldn’t help pondering on the possibilities of the future, for Mrs.
Pinkerton was to live with us. That was one of the understood conditions
of our bargain, and it was evident that she was to furnish the test of
all my good resolutions.
Mrs. Pinkerton had been left a widow when Bessie was twelve years old,
with a neat little cottage in the suburbs of the city and a snug
competence in a secure investment. I was fairly settled in business,
with an income that would enable us to live in modest comfort, and was
determined not to disturb the investment or have it drawn upon in any
way for household expenses. But the old lady—I already began to speak
of her by that disrespectful epithet, although she was still under
fifty—was to live with us. I had readily acquiesced in that
arrangement, for was it not my darling’s wish? And I could not decently
make any objection, for it was mighty convenient to have a pretty
cottage, ready furnished, in one of the finest suburbs of the city in
which I was employed.
Mrs. Pinkerton was a good woman in her way: how could she be anything
else and the mother of such an angel as I had secured for my wife? She
meant well, of course; I admitted that, and I ought to be on the
pleasantest terms with her, and determined from the first that I would
be. But somehow we were not congenial, and when that is the case the
best people in the world find it hard to get along agreeably together.
The course of true love between Bessie and me had run very smooth. From
the moment my old school-fellow, her brother George, now in Paris
studying medicine, had introduced me to her, I had been completely won
by her sweet disposition and charming ways, and she in turn was
captivated by my manly independence, strong good sense, and generous
impulses. I am not vain, but the truth is the truth; and, as I am
telling this story myself, I must set down the facts. We fell in love
right away, and it was not long before we were mutually convinced that
we were made expressly for each other and could never be happy apart.
So it happened that I had to do the courting with the mother. She was
the one to be won over, and it was not likely to be an easy task, for I
plainly saw that she did not quite approve of me. When I was first
introduced to her, she looked at me with her great, steady blue eyes, as
if analyzing me to the very boots, and evidently set me down as a
somewhat arrogant and self-sufficient young fellow who needed a
judicious course of discipline to teach him humility. I was generally
self-possessed and had no little confidence in myself, but I confess
that I was embarrassed in her presence. She was not at all like Bessie,
I thought. She had taught school in her youth, and had learned to
command and be obeyed. The late Mr. Pinkerton, I fancied, had found it
useless to contend against her authority, and this had increased her
disposition to carry things her own way; and her seven years’ widowhood,
with its independence and self-reliance, had not prepared her to be
submissive to the wishes of others.
Still, she loved her daughter with tender devotion, and her chief
anxiety was to have her every wish gratified. Therein was my advantage,
for I knew that Bessie, gentle and trusting as she was, would never give
me up or allow her life to be happy without the gratification of her
first love. So I set to work confidently to make myself agreeable to the
widow and win her consent to our marriage.
“You must bring mamma around to approve of it,” Bessie had said, on that
ever-to-be-remembered evening, when we were returning from a long drive,
and after an hour of sweet confidences she had surrendered herself
without reserve to my future keeping. “She is the best mother in the
world, and loves me very much, but she is peculiar in some ways, and I
am afraid she doesn’t altogether like you. I would not for the world
displease her, that is, if I could help it,” she added, glancing up, as
much as to say, “It is all settled now forever and forevermore, whatever
may befall, but do get my mother to consent to it with a good grace.”