I never was so sorry for anybody in my whole life as I was for
Blakely; I would have done anything to have saved him the bitterness
and humiliation of that moment. As for Dad, he couldn't understand
it at all. That Blakely's mother should refuse to meet his Elizabeth
was quite beyond his comprehension.
"This is very strange," he said, "very strange. There must be some
mistake. Why shouldn't she meet Elizabeth?"
"There is no reason in the world," Blakely answered.
"Then why--?"
"She probably has other plans for her son, Daddy dear," I said. "And
no doubt she has heard that we're fearfully vulgar."
"Well, we ain't," said Dad in a relieved voice; "and as for those
plans of hers, I reckon she'll have to outgrow them. Buck up, my
boy! One look at Elizabeth will show her she's mistaken."
"You don't know my mother," Blakely replied; "I feel that I haven't
known her till now. It's out of the question, our staying here after
what has happened. Let's go up to Del Monte, and let's not wait four
months for the wedding. Why can't we be married this week? I'm done
with my mother and with the whole tribe of Porters; they're not my
kind, and you and Elizabeth are."
"Tom, I never felt, that I had a father till I found you. Elizabeth,
girl, I never knew what happiness was till you told me you loved me.
My mother says she would never consent to her son's marrying the
daughter of a man who has kept a livery-stable. I say that I'm done
with a family that made its money out of whisky. My mother's father
was a distiller, her grandfather was a distiller, and if there's any
shame, it's mine, for by all the standards of decency, a livery-stable
is a hundred times more respectable than a warehouse full of
whisky. You made your money honestly, but ours has been wrung out of
the poor, the sick, the ragged, the distressed. The whisky business
is a rotten business, Tom, rotten!"
"It was whisky that bought an ambassadorship for my mother's
brother; it was whisky that paid for the French count my sister
married; it was whisky that sent me to college. Whisky,
whisky--always whisky!"
"I never thought twice about it before, but I've done some tall
thinking today. I'm done with the Porters, root and branch.
Elizabeth and I are going to start a little family tree, of our own,
and we're not going to root it in a whisky barrel, either.
We're--we're--"
"There, there!" said Dad. "It's all right, Blakely, boy. It ain't so
bad as you think. You ain't going to throw your mother over and your
mother ain't going to throw you over. I take it that all mothers are
alike; they love their sons. Naturally, you're sore and disappointed
now, but I reckon that mother of yours is sore and disappointed,
too. As for our going to Del Monte, I never heard of a Middleton yet
that cut and ran at a time like this, and Elizabeth and I ain't
going to start any precedent."
"No, my boy, we're going to stay right here, and you're going to
stay here with us. There's lots of good times ahead for you and
Elizabeth, and in the meantime, I want you to be mighty sweet to
that mother of yours. She's the only mother you've got, boy. You
don't know what it means for us old folks to be disappointed in our
children. Now, don't disappoint me, lad. You be nice to that mother
of yours, and keep on loving Elizabeth, and it will all come right,
you see if it don't. If it don't come one way, it will come another;
you can take my word for it." As if Dad knew anything about it. He
thought then that every woman possessed a sweet mind and a loving
heart; he thinks so now. But one glimpse of Blakely's mother was
enough for me. She had a heart of stone; everything about her was
militant, uncompromising; her eyes were of a piercing, steely blue;
the gowns she wore were insolently elegant; she radiated a superb
self-satisfaction. When she looked at you through her lorgnette, you
felt as if you were on trial for your life. When she ceased looking,
you knew you were sentenced to mount the social scaffold. If it
hadn't been for Blakely and Dad, I should have died of rage during
the first two weeks of our stay in Santa Barbara.
It was a cruel position for me, and it didn't make it easier that
before we had been there three days the whole hotel was talking
about it. Of course, every woman in the hotel who had been snubbed
by Blakely's mother instantly took my part, and as there were only
two women who hadn't been snubbed by her--Mrs. Tudor Carstairs and
Mrs. Sanderson-Spear--I was simply overwhelmed with unsolicited
advice and undesirable attention. Indeed, it was all I could do to
steer a dignified course between that uncompromising Scylla,
Blakely's mother, and the compromising Charybdis of my self-elected
champions. But I managed it, somehow. Dad bought me a stunning big
automobile in Los Angeles, and Blakely taught me how to run it;
then, Blakely was awfully fond of golf; and we spent loads of time
at the Country Club. And of course there was the palace on the hill
to be inspected every little while.
Poor Blakely! How he did hate it all! Again and again he begged Dad
to give his consent to our marrying at once. But Dad, as unconscious
of what was going on round him as a two-months-old baby, would
always insist that everything would come out all right.
"Give her time, my boy," he would say, "give her time. Your mother
isn't used to our Western way of rushing things, and she wants a
little time to get used to it."
"What if she never gets used to it?" Blakely would ask.
Then Dad would answer: "You're impatient, boy; all lovers are
impatient. Don't I know?"
"But things can't go on this way forever."
"Of course they can't," Dad would agree. "When I think things have
gone long enough, I'll have a little talk with your mother myself.
She's a dashed fine-looking woman, your mother--a dashed
fine-looking woman! Be patient with her, boy."
Poor Dad! Blakely and I were resolved that he should never have that
little talk he spoke of with so much confidence. Ideals are awfully
in the way sometimes, but nobody with a speck of decency can bear to
stand by and see them destroyed. Dad's deals had to be preserved at
any price.