"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 m.u.f.f 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.

He entered his home in the late afternoon with the reluctance of boyhood days when he had slunk back after some misdemeanor. He loathed his mission and himself and felt that he had earned a trouncing and a disinheritance.

He found his mother and father in the library playing, or rather fighting, a game of double Canfield. In the excitement of the finish they were like frantic children, tied in knots of hurry, squealing with emulation. The cards were coming out right, and the speedier of the two to play the last would score two hundred and fifty to the other's nothing.

Mrs. Dyckman was the more agile in s.n.a.t.c.hing up her cards and placing them. Her eyes darted along the stacks with certainty, and she came in first by a lead of three cards.

Dyckman was puffing with exhaustion and pop-eyed from the effort to look in seven directions at once. It rendered him scarlet to be outrun by his wife, who was no Atalanta to look at. Besides, she always crowed over him insufferably when she won, and that was worse than the winning. When Jim entered the room she was laughing uproariously, pointing the finger of derision at her husband and crying:

"Where did you get a reputation as a man of brains? There must be an awful crowd of simpletons in Wall Street." Then she caught sight of her son and beckoned to him. "Come in and hold your father's head, Jimsy."

"Please don't call me Jimsy!" Jim exploded, prematurely.

His mother did not hear him, because his father exploded at the same moment:

"Come in and teach your mother how to be a sport. She won't play fair.

She cheats all the time and has no shame when she gets caught. When she loses she won't pay, and when she wins she wants cash on the nail."

"Of course I do!"

"Why, there isn't a club in the country that wouldn't expel you twice a week."

"Well, pay me what you owe me, before you die of apoplexy."

"How much do I owe you?"

"Eight dollars and thirty-two cents."

"I do not! That's robbery. Look here: you omitted my score twice and added your own up wrong."

"Did I really?"

"Do five and two make nine?"

"Don't they?"

"They do not!"

"Well, must you have hydrophobia about it? What difference does it make?"

"It makes the difference that I only owe you three dollars and twenty-six cents."

"All right, pay it and simmer down. Isn't he wonderful, Jimsy? He just sent a check for ten thousand dollars to the fund for blind French soldiers and then begrudges his poor wife five dollars."

"But that's charity and this is cards; and it's humiliating to think that you haven't learned addition yet."

Mrs. Dyckman winked at Jim and motioned him to sit beside her. He could not help thinking of the humiliating addition he was about to announce to the family. While his father counted out the change with a miserly accuracy he winked his off eye at Jim and growled, with a one-sided smile:

"Where have you been for the past few days, and what mischief have you been up to? You have a guilty face."

But Mrs. Dyckman threw her great arm about his great shoulders, stared at him as she kissed him, and murmured: "You don't look happy. What's wrong?"

Jim sc.r.a.ped his feet along the floor gawkily and mumbled: "Well, I suppose I'd better tell you. I was going to break it to you gently, but I don't know how."

Mrs. Dyckman took alarm at once. "Break it gently? Bad news? Oh, Jim, you Haven't gone and got yourself engaged to some fool girl, have you?

Not that?"

"Worse than that, mother!"

"Oh dear! what could be worse? Only one thing, Jim! You haven't--you haven't married a circus-rider or a settlement-worker or anything like that, have you?"

"No."

"Lord! what a relief! I breathe again."

Jim fired off his secret without further delay. "I've been married, though."

"Married? Already? Married to what? Anybody I ever heard of?"

His mother was gasping in a dangerous approach to heart failure. Jim protested.

"You never saw her, but she's a very nice girl. You'll love her when you meet her."

Jim's father sputtered as he pulled himself out of his chair: "Wha-what's this? You--you d.a.m.ned young cub! You--why--what--who--oh, you jacka.s.s! You big, lumbering, brainless, heartless bonehead!

Oh--whew! Look at your poor mother!"

Jim was frightened. She was pounding at her huge breast with one hand and clutching her big throat with another. Her husband whirled to a siphon, filled a gla.s.s with vichy, and gave it to Jim to hold to her lips while he ran to throw open a window.

Jim knelt by his mother and felt like Cain bringing home the news of the first crime. Her son's remorse was the first thing that Eve felt, no doubt; at least, it was the first that Mrs. Dyckman understood when the paroxysm left her. She felt so sorry for her lad that she could not blame him. She blamed the woman, of course. She cried awhile before she spoke; then she caressed Jim's cheeks and blubbered:

"But we mustn't make too much of a fuss about a little thing like a wedding. It's his first offense of the kind. I suppose he fell into the trap of some little devil with a pretty face. Poor innocent child, with no mother to protect him!"