Brides almost always get along beautifully with
fathers-in-law. And so do sons-in-law. Women will learn how to get
along together better as soon as it ceases to be so important to
them how they get along together.
After the thrill of the first collision the four stood in silenced
embarrassment till Jim, eager to escape, said:
"What room do we get?"
"Cicely's, if you like," his mother answered.
Jim was pleased. Cicely was the duchess of the family, and she and
her duke had occupied that room before they went to England. Cicely
was a war nurse now, bedabbled in gore, and her husband was a
mud-daubed major in the trenches along the Somme. Jim saw that his
mother was making no stint of her hospitality, and he was grateful.
He dragged Kedzie away. She was trying to take in the splendor of
the house without seeming to, and she went up the stairway with
her eyes rolling frantically.
In the Academy at Venice is that famous picture of Titian's
representing the little Virgin climbing up the steps of the Temple,
a pathetic, frightened figure bearing no trace of the supreme
radiance that was to be hers. There was something of the same
religious awe in Kedzie's heart as she mounted the steps of the
house that was a temple in her religion. She was going up to her
heaven already. It was perfection because it was the next thing.
When Kedzie reaches the scriptural heaven, if she does (and it will
be hard for Anybody to deny her anything that she sets her heart on),
she will be happy till she gets there and finds that she is only in
the first of the seven heavens.
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